WL Gore is an amazing company which seems to continue to thrive in times good and bad.  Many things help explain this striking achievement not least what has been dubbed (by Director Magazine) its guide to management:

1. Belief in the individual. If you trust individuals and believe in them, they will be motivated to do what’s right for the company.
2. Power of small teams. They encourage fast decision-making, diverse perspectives and collaboration.
3. All in the same boat. Associate stick plan means all staff share in the risks and rewards. It gives incentives to contribute to the organisation’s success.
4. Long-term view. Investments are made for long-term success and fundamental beliefs never sacrificed for short-term profit.

I don’t know about you but I find much that inspires and challenges me in equal measure in these easy to understand (if difficult to implement) principles.

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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Oliver Nyumbu, Caret’s Chief Executive, will consider how senior managers can minimise the risk of haemorrhaging good talent at a forthcoming Birmingham Forward lunch event on 2 February 2010.  He will also explore sustainable strategies for developing an engaged and energised workforce.

For more information and booking details please click on the link to the Birmingham Forward website below:

http://www.birminghamforward.co.uk/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=137

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?

Perhaps annual or six monthly performance appraisals are a resounding success in your organisation.  If that is the case, then count your blessings because on the whole, performance appraisal is a failed enterprise. Consider for example the fact that, as research shows: 

• Managers don’t like doing appraisals - some would rather attend ten dentists’ appointments on the same day than do an employee appraisal.
• Employees don’t always find a positive experience

Or consider this:

• Employees hired by the appraiser receive higher scores than others
• Evaluations are more positive for underlings with managers from the same social demographic
• Performance reviews (in jobs where work is difficult to assess objectively) mostly reflect employees’ ability to ingratiate themselves with the boss

The spectacularly damming aspect of the traditional review process is that it fails to help employees to learn something about a better way to work. But as Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer’s article suggests ‘A recession is a good time for managers to focus more on evidence and less on received wisdom or old habits. Asking hard questions about performance management would be a good place to start.’ Read his whole article for further discussion

“In the seven seconds it takes to complete an average Grand Prix pit stop, a driver will get four fresh tyres, a tank of fuel, an inspection to remove debris from nooks and crannies, and maybe some shiny new parts to replace any track casualties…115.8 man-seconds of work are completed in just 7 seconds” reports Tony Borroz in the November ‘09 edition of Wired Magazine.

The achievements of Formula 1 pit stop crews are amazing whichever way one looks at it.  Consider for example the fact that some of these jobs would take an afternoon at your local garage. I can’t help but wonder the looks and verbal abuse suffered by the person who first suggested this was all possible. In terms of what you and your team have recently achieved, what has constituted your equivalent of F1’s longest seven seconds?

How many lives have you got?  SecondLife, a free 3D virtual world, isn’t just for nerds; it’s a lively role - playing blogosphere of the imagination, one where role play is as real as it gets, partly because you choose what/who you want to be and in what kind of life - and feedback isn’t obligatory!

How might it help in ‘real’ life? It provides an opportunity to try things out safely. You have an alter ego where your real identity remains hidden. There’s a lot to be said for experiencing how it feels to be someone entirely different - gender, race, religion, historic time - can provide a huge learning experience. How about designing a spacecraft which looks more like a flying Tudor ship and being able to solve an organisational problem at a stroke? Or climate change? Or design a new hospital? Or local authority office?

Many universities now have second life sites; you can walk into the library, the students’ union, visit a lecture….

One of the most wonderful things is that SecondLife provides opportunities for the severely disabled to have an alternative life, to experience the same world as others in that second life community. Their voices are heard; they feel affirmed; they play.

What might all this teach us in the here and now? That profound things can be said where there is trust and no comeback; that mistakes can be made and learned from; that play is a basic need and one which enables ideas to sparkle; that we can all be innovators…

“What’s going on?” “Can we make this work?” “What do you think?” Three normal questions. Do we get honest answers? Jim Collins in Good to Great talks about facing the brutal facts; history tells us of lots of situations where groups working together failed to face the brutal facts - whether it be Hitler in the Führer bunker or airlines where the crew did not challenge each other with fatal consequences. The ability to gather all the information needed; to encourage the introverts to share, the nervous to be bolder and the reluctant to take some risks is a key leadership skill. Given the long term impact of many of the decisions we are making at the moment, leaders need the ability to ensure people are engaging in conversation, thinking things through robustly and challenging “group think”.

It is worth reflecting - next time you ask “can we make this work?” how do you get your colleagues fully engaged? How might you challenge them to raise their game in the next round of decision making?