If you were a business leader in New York City in 1886, what to sort of things might you be paying special attention? As it turns out, (as reported by Roy Williams), according to Manufacturer and Builder, the leading monthly journal of innovation and change, the big news in New York was the scandal over the proliferation of overhead electric lines.  And, there’s more. One of the most important discoveries reported in the journal was a new way to colour bricks red!!  But, what else was going on in 1886?  How about this as a starter for ten? 

• Crates containing the Statue of Liberty were being unloaded by dock workers
• Richard Sears was launching a company that would bring catalogue shopping to America
• In Atlanta, John Pemberton was finalising the concoction that would become Coca-Cola
• Gottlieb Daimler was completing the world’s first car - across the pond

As a leader, how might you make sure you are not so fixated on the slightly unusual (overhead electric lines!!) that you are blinded to crucial changes such as the birth of what was to later become the giant company Sears?

I started my “proper” working life at Longbridge - then a factory employing 20,000 workers, the UK’s biggest at the time. To join up I had to walk through a picket line of angry engineers - they were relatively polite and sympathetic to my need to reassure my employers that I was alive and well and reporting for duty. As time went on the striking got worse, the assembly workers came out and filled the nearby parks with mass meetings and angry placards. We faced a weekend when all of us in Personnel were told to go home and prepare to make thousands redundant if crucial talks between management and unions broke down. Fortunately there was a breakthrough but the knock on effect in terms of suspicion and lack of cooperation persisted for many years.

Move forward to the present day. I was facilitating a day long workshop for an excellent group of HR Managers working in local government. At one point we considered the key risks their organisation faced as it prepared for significant change. There were big issues: significant damage to service delivery, inability to simplify processes and bring in new ways of working with reduced resources, antagonistic staff, a new structure with fewer people working but with less commitment to support vulnerable people or children. We looked at the capacity of their middle managers to take their teams with them through difficult change. “Oh my goodness,” one of the managers sighed, “some of them will be great but some of our managers will be an absolute nightmare.” My Longbridge experience was partly driven by very militant unions but it also symbolised a vote of no confidence in the senior managers. It was as if the workforce all joined together to sing “You don’t know what you’re doing.” In change, the organisation as a whole may be able to take the workforce with them during economically difficult times. But some managers “won’t know what they are doing” and will lose the confidence of their teams. The result? At best poorly implemented change - at worst antagonism and tensions for years to come.

The job of senior managers during change is to find the middle managers who are most likely to destroy staff morale or commitment. Leaders need to be looking carefully at who gets their vote of confidence to take people with them through change - and who needs attention now before they create disproportionate damage.  

The Guardian recently carried an article with the theme “an obsessive focus on people - rather than a rod of iron” is the key” in tough times. They reported on research by The Work Foundation challenging the assumption that workers with a “controlling and target - driven approach” are essential. Their report stated that in tough times “Outstanding leaders focus on people. Instead of seeing people as one of their many priorities they put the emphasis on people first.”  In short the report finds that those leaders with good emotional intelligence are able to bring people through change and enable change to succeed.

Our experience of working with leaders who are driving substantial and often painful change reinforces this. Insensitive leadership of the “we have not got time to discuss this, just flipping do it” camp can produce early results but also produce disengaged, resentful, antagonistic staff leading to poorly implemented and unimaginative change. Change is not judged by the calibre of the change plan but by the effectiveness of its implementation - which in turn is driven by engaging key stakeholders. The Guardian article also quoted an extensive piece of research by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) showing that 31% of UK employees have low or no trust in senior management. This lack of trust will fuel resistance to change and leads to situations where many people bring their bodies to work but leave their commitment at home!

The good thing about emotional intelligence is that whilst some people will have some natural traits much of it can be taught. Leaders can raise their self awareness, can learn to manage their emotions and frustrations, and can develop their ability to make a positive impact and build good relationships with others. The Work Foundation encourages leaders to understand their staff. Our experience shows that leaders need to be more hands on in change; they need to monitor morale closely and recognise that even their most gifted staff can adopt strange behaviours in times of stress. Leaders need to be more prepared to give their team’s clear focus and to intervene when there are blockages. Leading change is about enabling others to change - those leaders that enable well in the coming months will make the difference between success and failure.

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Thomas Watson Snr turned IBM from a small scale mechanical data processing company to an industry giant.  He was driven by a passion to discover new ways of doing things. He believed that success was based on enthusiasm - his sales people needed to discover what their customers’ problems were and discover the best possible solutions. Around the organisation a one word poster was prominent - IBM managers and staff were constantly reminded to “Think”. In the 30’s to 50’s he took the organisation on a remarkable journey that laid the foundations for computer driven data processing.

IBM had its eccentricities under Watson (let’s all join together in the company song whilst wearing our conventional blue suits) but no one can argue with the fact that this was a period of dynamic growth.

We need thinking organisations and people today. We need cultures that encourage proactivity, and seek out new ways of doing things. Most of all given all the changes around us we need high quality thinking time. When in future years we look back on the traumas and challenges of 2009/2010 I wonder will we regret that in the busy and demanding circumstances we faced we did not mobilise our organisations to give quality time and quality discussion to thinking? Perhaps we need some posters?

‘Most managers look for golden opportunities when the good times are rolling. This is a mistake. The best ones often arise during downturns.’ So said Donald Sull, from Managing in a Downturn. Caret Consultant Tammy Tawadros recently wrote an article discussing how harnessing inquiry and capturing learning can often make the difference between an organisation that thrives and one that fails.

The current economic climate has left many organisations in the grip of huge anxiety and uncertainty about future survival. Many face grave external challenges. Internally, many are in a state of crisis. And crisis, like the proverbial cloud, carries within it the silver lining of opportunity. This is the kind of opportunity that can only be grasped and transformed into competitive advantage when there is space and the ability to think and learn collectively within the organisation. It is the very capacity that is diminished by crisis and the feelings of threat, danger and anxiety that it engenders.

It takes wise, humble and self-knowing leadership, with considerable ability, to enable the organisation to metabolise ‘toxic’ emotion, to resist overconfidence and the urgent call to action and, instead, to create the space to reflect and learn during crisis. Whilst it appears to be unfashionable still to talk about wisdom, the other qualities required by leaders at times of crisis have been well documented: humility and fierce resolve; psychological presence and personal authority; and emotional and social intelligence.

Just as each failure carries within it the germ of success, opportunities to learn abound at a time when so many leaders and organisations are in the grip of anxiety and uncertainty. But they are also, arguably, least able to harness them. Harnessing inquiry and capturing learning can often make the difference between an organisation that thrives and one that fails. During an economic downturn, successful leaders are likely to be those best able to capitalise on their personal humility and determination.

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I am not a big fan of Formula One - it’s a sport I have never attempted to understand. But even an ignoramus like me spotted that Jenson Button won the World Championship. Are there any lessons for leadership in the boy from Frome’s historic win?

I think there are two key things for me:

1. It’s not just one race - it’s a championship: in today’s challenging environment we may feel we are judged race by race. At the beginning that was good news for Button - he won event after event. But there came a time when he looked uncertain and others literally overtook him. But the challenges facing many leaders are more than on race - can they prove their long term capacity to win the World’s ‘most engaged staff in a crisis’ challenge, at the World’s ‘making difficult financial decisions’ drivers championship

 2. It’s about the delivery vehicle - Button without the right vehicle would be a nobody. Brawn emerged from very difficult circumstances at the beginning of the championship to create a winning car and driver combination. What’s your delivery vehicle - is it the organisation that works for you? Is it a lean, clean, driving machine? Does it perform like a dream or like a three legged hippo on ice? Will it take the difficult corners at speed? Is it robust enough for the drive you want to take it on in the next few months? Will the vehicle get you where you want to go next year, or does it need time in the pits?

In sport, last year’s car is often not good enough to beat this year’s. In organisations, next year’s vehicle will be taking a very bumpy and fast moving ride…is yours ready to help you win the championship?

Like a skilled surfer gracefully rides the waves, so managers must learn to surf well when it comes to change.

To say that we live in a world of change is to state the blindingly obvious.  But just because rapid and discontinuous change is an inescapable reality does not guarantee we will be good at handling it.  Every day you and I meet with or observe people who are living proof of Alvin Toffler when he said the future would shock us.  But the fact remains that the best way to prepare for the future is to understand change.  This is crucial given that in many cases when managers (or individuals!) plan for the future, we are comforted by assuming present conditions will continue - even when we are claiming things are going to be very different.

So what to do?  Many years ago, Leon Martel suggested the following by way of a strategy for mastering change:

1. Recognise the change is occurring

2. Identify changes likely to affect your business, your profession, and your personal plans

3. Determine type and probable pattern of each change

4. Rank changes by importance of effect and likelihood of occurrence

5. Make use of changes

On this final point of making use of or exploiting change I am reminded of Ralph Teeter.  His change was the fact that he was blinded in a childhood accident.  The person who drove him about turned out to be so erratic this caused Teeter to suffer from motion sickness.  This adverse change was used by Teeter in that he invented cruise control for use in cars and other applications.  What are your personal or observed examples that might illustrate points 1 to 4 of Martel’s suggested strategy for mastering change?

Caret consultants Rob Sykes and Sarah Wood bring a lot of practical wisdom to bear on the subject of commissioning in the following article, published earlier this year in the Municipal Journal.

At a recent workshop attended by a mix of agencies, a clear message rang out.

Even before the economic crisis bites, commissioners are struggling to deliver the radical change in services which will meet users’ and carers’ needs.

There seem to be two issues:

1. It has long-been recognised that providers and stakeholders should be involved with the process, not least because they have the most knowledge of current services and what is possible. However, we were shocked to hear that in at least one health community, there is an increasing reluctance among providers to co-operate unless there are guarantees about the outcome of the commissioning process.

2. The second is not new, but may become increasingly important. We heard of providers becoming more sophisticated at managing the political process to protect their position. It shouldn’t be a surprise that providers and stakeholders use the media and politicians - that’s democracy. The issue is, what should commissioners do about it?

Well, the first thing is to pay as much attention to decommissioning as to commissioning. You can have the best strategy in the world, but, if the first time you close a home to replace it with a community service, the media and political attention is such that you have to backtrack, the strategy will be lost.

As we move into a very difficult period for public spending, it has never been more important to have first-rate multi-agency commissioning, but in the past, commissioning has all too often been seen as a bureaucratic process which needs assessment, specification and procurement.

Commissioners will need to be robust at managing markets, ensuring providers are helped to change, and introducing new providers to stimulate innovation. In a world of individual budgets, they will recognise that new approaches to the market are required.

Most of all, they will recognise that commissioning is a deeply political process. It’s easy to involve politicians in developing and opening things - the real skill is working with politicians to manage the decommissioning process.

Click here to download the article as a pdf

“People are always for change in general and then they begin to worry about particulars“.  Those were the words of Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, in an interview about the health bill currently being debated in Congress.  She is right, both Republicans and Democrats agree something needs to be done but vehemently disagree on what should be done, how it should be done, and who should pay.  This seemed illustrative of the dynamics of recession-triggered change and transformation taking place in many organisations.  People tend to agree to something needs to happen but….

Leaders in organisations could benefit from taking a leaf out of the book of Dupont’s CEO, Ellen Kullman, who advocates four principles for moving ahead during turbulent times:

• Focus on what you can control
• Adopt a new trajectory by re-thinking your business model
• Communicate, communicate, communicate
• Maintain pride around your organisation’s mission

Kullman’s organisation employs 60,000 people in 70 countries so she decided to adopt the idea that:

“If you try to change everybody at once, you are changing nobody, so you really have to start in one area, or a couple of areas and show success”. 

The impact of her disciplined implementation of these principles can be measured in many ways, not least of which are employee engagement and financial metrics.  If you were to take a leaf out of her book what might that look like?  Or, maybe you are already doing so - in which case, tell us some of your stories.

One of the truths at the heart of popular business guru Jim Collins’ research is that it is disciplined people, disciplined thought and disciplined action that helps an organisation move from Good to Great. This is strongly reinforced by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers - which claims to uncover the secrets behind people’s success.

One of the key facts he comments on is the 10,000 hours rule  - based on German research on high quality musicians. They demonstrated with violinists that those who practised for eight thousand hours by the time they were 20 were good - those that practised for 10,000  hours were world class. This research was followed up with pianists yielding the same results. Later research reinforced the 10,000 hours rule with chess players, ice skaters, fiction writers, composers etc. Gladwell shows The Beatles got to be world class through 10,000 hours of live playing and practice together. Bill Gates did an incredible 10,000 hours of computer programming  by the time he dropped put of Harvard and set up his own software company. Clearly, talent and personality link in here - to give the drive to do all that practising. But the essential point from Gladwell’s research is that great performance is not an accident - people have worked at it.

Gladwell also looks at a list of the 75 richest people in world history - 14 are American men born between 1832 and 1839. This was an incredible time of opportunity and growth and these men used their vision and talent to great advantage.  Another group emerged in the 1950’s - well positioned to lead the IT revolution. So we have people with well honed skills and abilities who are able to take best advantage of the opportunities that come their way. Gladwell goes on to talk about matching these “advantages” with the ability to work with others

“No one - not rock stars, not professional athletes, nor software billionaires and not even geniuses - ever makes it  alone”

So how does this link to leadership and the challenges of facing change in the 21st century? To a degree Gladwell’s first book The Tipping Point gives some interesting pointers here. When does a change or trend become contagious? We have the recent case of British Airways trying to get staff to accept no wages for a month - will that remain an isolated incident or will every firm be doing it?  What habits will change over the coming years - will crime increase? Will everyone stop taking foreign holidays? Leaders need to watch for the signs - to observe when a trend suddenly becomes the accepted norm. 

That then leads to the question, does Gladwell give any clues on leading change in challenging times? He points us to look at those who have had their 10,000 hours of practice in leading change - those who have been successful either in leading extensive transformations in recent years, but also those who have mastered the process of handling change in past times of crisis and turmoil. Those who lead now - people born in the 1960’s and 1970’s - may be about to start a long period of honing their skills during times of change, innovation, more effective working. Their ability to emerge from this period as world class deliverers of change will depend on how much practice they get in shaping the future, how they find and utilise the talent and change experience around them and bringing people with them.