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.

These are times of tension and paradox.  I am thinking of the need every organisation has for a clear and compelling picture of the future on the one hand and stubborn unpredictability on the other.  In some cases leadership is frozen into inaction as a result.  Some leaders however, choose instead to play with a range of scenarios of alternative futures. Last week a senior manager told me she was finding it very difficult to plan.  That was understandable given her understanding of planning:  that it is about predicting the future.  Things got a bit easier when she started to build and juggle alternative, supplementary, or contradictory pictures of the future and then begin to tease out resource implications and impact assessment.  How does planning work in your organisation?

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

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

“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?

‘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.

Click here to read the whole article

In the field of management practice and thought, one of my heroes is Bill George, the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, which develops medical technologies to treat chronic diseases. In his latest book, 7 Lessons for Leadership in Crisis he points out the importance of being deliberately systematic in staying positive in a crisis. To help leaders do this, he advocates learning and living by seven lessons:

Face reality, starting with yourself.

Don’t be Atlas; get the world off your shoulders.

Dig deep for the root cause.

Get ready for the long haul.

Never waste a good crisis.

You’re in the spotlight: follow your True North.

Go on offense: focus on winning now.

George also makes this observation about leaders: “Everyone inside and outside the company is watching what they do. It is imperative that they stay focused on their True North as it sets a standard internally for principled business behaviour and will make their companies stronger over time”

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