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.

We are used to change; many organisations have almost become change junkies looking for the latest idea or the smartest improvement. There are different types of change - some is fast moving and potentially high risk e.g. I was once involved in a merger where huge change needed to be achieved within 48 hours to meet regulatory requirements. I have been involved in redundancy programmes that need to have pace so that people know where they stand as quickly as possible. Other change takes time; some of our finest examples of changing and thriving communities in the UK have taken 15 - 20 years to bring about. With these extremes in timescales and scope it is difficult to be prescriptive about the best way to achieve change.

What we do know, however, is that up to 70% of change programmes fail to deliver what they set out to do - some commentators put the figures higher. This means that change can be an extremely expensive, exhausting, all consuming waste of money. John Kotter, often viewed as the guru of change, states:

“The number one problem organisations have is all about creating a sense of urgency - and that’s the first step in a series of actions needed to succeed in a changing world.”

Kotter argues that urgency is essential. Gallup’s work suggests that this links closely with people knowing what is expected of them. Leaders need to articulate a clear, achievable and ambitious vision - it may need to challenge some attitudes, it must clarify what will happen next (and the realistic steps) and gain the commitment of a significant proportion of those delivering the change.

Change leaders know about the need for a clear vision, a detailed plan, the need to manage risks and key stakeholders. These are “the good practices of change”. David Maister makes a very telling point about change:

“Knowing that something is good for us is not necessarily a predictor that we are going to do it.”

The vision, the planning and the processes of change can be brilliant but ultimately it is the people element that plays a key role. Are the people who need to deliver this change committed to making it work? Some people just don’t want to change. The reasons can vary greatly but gaining that commitment to act in a time of great uncertainty and stress may well be the thing that will separate out the organisation’s heroes of 2009 from the organisational losers.

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“Most interesting was the horse. Since the eyes are mounted on the side of a horse’s head, the sharpness in the video screens was exactly opposite that of a human being. Humans see peripheral objects, at the corners of our eyes, as blurred and distorted; but we see the centre in sharp focus. Horses, at least according to this Japanese representation, see the peripheral as sharp. When they look, at the centre, the place where their eyes meet, the image is distorted and elongated”

When you consider the data on organisational change the facts are warrantedly depressing. Consider for example, the finding that only ten percent of all carefully formulated strategies are successfully implemented.  Perhaps the words of the great sociologist Emile Durkheim have something to teach us:

“When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. 

When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.”

This raises the need (when planning needed changes in your organisation) to consider how to get them deeply ingrained in the values, mindset, and skill set of individuals. Without this you might as well forget about it.

 Source: J. Stewart Black & Hal B Gregersen (2008) It Starts With One

Senior Managers did not get to be Senior Managers by being stupid… okay, there are a few exceptions to the rule but they really are exceptions. Senior Managers are technically competent, they bring a lot of expertise and awareness to their roles. All things being equal, however, technical competence does not separate the good from the great - or the quick from the dead!

Relationships are key. Great Senior Managers are differentiated not by what they know, but by how they act. They do not constrain their capable people, take them for granted, or expect the impossible.

But they do challenge, release, enable. At times like these we need clarity of thinking, great decisions and excellent implementation. Great Managers realise the onus is not on them to provide these themselves, but to release them in others.

I remember an excellent Sales Director I worked with. We worked hard to produce a proposal for him that we really thought was the best way forward. He made us go back and trim something off it and we thought we were doing the impossible! But, as we worked at it we found ways to address his concerns. He had got us thinking ’til our brains hurt - and he was right to do so.

What is the value of sharp thinking to your organisation right now? What impact will it have if you can have some “breakthrough” ideas? How can you enable innovation? Your ability to enable your team “to bring their brains to work”, to fully engage the challenges and opportunities facing you, will have far more impact than your personal expertise alone. Peter Drucker once said, however:

“Half the leaders I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop”.

We often have behaviours that get in the way - we may be very competitive and hold others back, we may need to add our ideas and imprint to things and stifle objectivity, we may undermine others by our remarks, we may come across as negative - the list goes on. Do you understand the flaws that you have that can hold others back?

At Caret we see sharp thinking, new radical ideas, issues linking together, problems solved every day in our privileged role as organisational consultants. We also see many barriers to effectiveness, but we are convinced the talent, the ideas, and the need to succeed are there - go out and tap into it!

Studies have found that less than 10 percent  of effectively formulated strategies carry through to successful implementation.  Some 90 percent of companies consistently fail to execute strategies effectively.  One key to effective strategy execution is the fact that it results from executing the right set of strategic projects/work streams in the right way.  These numbers seem to chime with the experience and research of change expert John Kotter.

Referring to his work for the book Leading Change, Kotter explains:

“That book was based on the analysis of about one hundred efforts in organisations to produce large scale change: implementing new growth strategies, putting in new IT systems, reorganising to reduce expenses.  Incredibly, we found that in over 70 percent of the situations where substantial changes were clearly needed, either they:

• were not fully launched, or
• the change efforts failed, or
• changes were achieved but over budget, late, and with great frustration

We also found that in about 10 percent of the cases, people achieved more than would have been thought possible.  Surprisingly, at least to us, in those 10 percent a similar formula was used in virtually all instances”

Sound familiar?  What has been your experience?