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.

The high incidence of mediocre performance suggests that the route to remarkable does not lie in the typical approaches to managing, training or developing people. One key is strong and relentless focus on putting people’s strengths to best use. But organisations can develop ingenious ways to mask mediocrity.

Incompetent - what a useful word! Shorthand for useless, inept, hopeless, bungling, unskilled, and ineffectual, organisations strive to avoid or overcome incompetence at any cost. But, as a strategy, is it worth the effort? In the words of Peter Drucker:

 “It takes far more energy and far more work to improve from incompetence to low mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence… The energy and resources - and time - should go into making a competent person into a star performer”.

Competency: a useful but limiting concept? While competent is certainly an improvement on incompetent, we intuitively recognise that the concept describes something far from remarkable performance. Think Tiger Woods! Think Yo Yo Ma! David Beckham! Gary Kasparaov! In describing these remarkable performers, ‘competent’ would be a woefully inadequate term.

It is my sincere belief that most people do not go to work with the intention of achieving mediocre performance. But something happens as a result of how they work, how they are trained, managed, and developed. Developing the skills and discipline to achieve remarkable performance is not an easy route - but then it seems the road from incompetent to mediocre is no short-cut either. Some navigation tips can certainly make for an easier journey.

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For most Senior Managers and their organisations, times are tough. So tough, in fact, that paying attention to internal relationships can seem an indulgence. But, it gets worse. There’s growing anecdotal evidence that some managers use today’s business pressures as an excuse to neglect staff or to be rude.

If the managers reporting to you do not evidence this problem that’s just great. If, on the other hand, even just one of them shows a pattern of incivility you have to take action. So, why the urgency? This toxic behaviour of incivility corrodes performance.

Professors Christine Porath and Christine Pearson set themselves the task of gauging the impact of incivility on performance. As they put it, ‘”To understand the impact of incivility on performance, we polled several thousand managers and employees from a diverse range of US Companies about their responses to rudeness at work.”  They learned that among those at the receiving end,

             48% decreased their work effort,

            47% decreased their time at work,

            38% decreased their work quality,

            66% said their performance declined,

            80% lost work time worrying about the incident,

            63% lost time avoiding the offender, and

            78% said their commitment to the organisation declined

 At a time when organisations have no resources to spare (people, goodwill, money), we can ill afford incivility by managers.

This is a question about what drives the legendary violin maker Sam Zygmuntowicz.  In a piece in this month’s Forbes, Maureen Farrell chooses the following paragraph to introduce us to this master craftsman, this artist’s artist who works fifteen hours a day to create just six instruments a year.

‘In 2003 a violin by Samuel Zygmuntowicz for Isaac Stern sold for $130,000 at auction, the highest price for one by a living luthier. Last year Yo-Yo Ma played a Zygmuntowicz cello worth an estimated $80,000 while on a two-month tour. When it went back to the shop for a tune-up, Ma went back to his mainstay, a 1733 Domenico Montagnana (1686-1750) worth $2.5 million. “I want to give Ma a reason to leave his Montagnana at home”, says Zygmuntowicz, 52. “I keep thinking, what could be better”.’

My response to this amazing dedication to improvement was to think, ‘if I could only work on 14 improvement challenges a year, what would be this month’s focus?’ Does this ring a bell with you at all?

Away days are often seen as an unwelcome interruption to normal day to day running of the organisation, like an unwanted present or visitor. So the preparation, if any, is typically rushed or sparse. Many managers do not clear the everyday operational clutter in their minds to make space for focussed thoughts on the agenda or issues for the day.

Yet the preparation for away days is critical. The thinking time and shifting of mind sets away from the normal day to day operational realities enables participants to contribute and be engaged with the topic of the event. The world back at the office can operate without you - it does when you are on holiday - but on those occasions we tend to plan more and put things in place.

Away days are also opportunities to build on existing or new relationships as well as tap into each others’ expertise, experience and knowledge. Interestingly more and more people who join an organisation attend away days even before or soon after they start work. First impressions can be lasting impressions in these instances; someone new to an organisation needs to prepare well with disciplined thoughts and disciplined action in creating a positive credible impression. This may augur well for long term collaborative working and quicker access to resources.

In fact the G20 meeting is an away day for the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the world. We can see all participants have issues back at home, but despite this they have a common purpose and their preparation has been thorough in looking to:

• Stabilise the Global Economy
• Introduce a more rigorous controls on the financial sector
• Put the economy back on track for sustainable growth

All of these have a huge impact on what is going to happen in the future. The French and Germans seem to favour more rigorous regulation and have even before the away day made their feelings clear by trying to influence the event. They could not have done this without some disciplined thought beforehand. Obama is new to the team so he will be using some of his time to make a credible impression for building and maintaining new relationships with other nations.

Are these the right things for the G20 to focus on or will they disappear into the Bermuda Triangle like some other G20 issues like the eradication of poverty!?

We know what Obama was like leading a campaign for change - he set out an attractive vision and created a strong and diverse coalition of support. His dreaming pre his inauguration as President was attractive and persuasive. Now of course he has to move those ideas into action. I wonder if his own energy and eloquence makes his Treasury Secretary look inadequate in comparison. President Bush in contrast looked increasingly isolated and inept in the second half of 2008 as the economic crisis gathered pace and his treasury team therefore were more clearly in the driving seat.

We know that Obama is inspired by the character and story of Abraham Lincoln. It is an example many of us could learn from. Doris Kearns Goodwin in her book “Team of Rivals” describes how one Cabinet member had previously described Lincoln as “A long armed ape” - other appointees were fiercely independent and had very different agendas from their President.

Lincoln set out some leadership principles that guided his behaviour. Let us remember the context he was in - America was deeply divided not just on the issue of slavery but on the balance of power between the various states and the role of Washington. Tensions grew into civil war - a bloody and costly conflict that tore the nation apart. Like Lincoln, Obama is leader at a time of historic challenge and significance. The analogy goes further; many leaders are in a similarly challenging position as they face challenges which in their combined impact are unlike any they have seen before. So Lincoln’s principles carry resonance for all leaders - they include “Surround yourself with whatever talent the given enterprise requires” “Welcome - indeed strongly encourage - principled dissent” “Appreciate effort but only reward performance” “Lead with firmness in the right”.

These are powerful leadership principles. One of the early tests of Obama’s Presidency will be how he handles the dwindling credibility of Mr Geithner. Some of this dwindling credibility is the direct result of political attack but some of it is about image and character. He needs to reinforce Geithner as part of his “yes we can - yes we will” campaign. He needs to let Geithner demonstrate strong leadership himself - perhaps he could lend his beleaguered some of his Lincoln books. America, and therefore the world, needs clear economic leadership at this time. The need to dream here about the type of world we want to live in over the next ten to twenty years is crucial. He needs really high calibre debate, the sharpest minds, and the most insightful challenges. Lincoln fostered robust debate; Obama needs to do this to in order to turn his dreams into reality.

Clarifying vision and compellingly casting it wide through soaring rhetoric. Do you remember that during the US elections? What a strength this was in the then Senator Barak Obama.  If I remember correctly his strap lines included the likes of ‘Change We Can Believe In”. He certainly spoke very passionately of bringing change to Washington.

Now, with the elections a fading memory, Mr Obama is actually in Washington and needs to prove himself to be a dreamer in the sense meant by T.E. Lawrence, when, in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, he said:

“There are dreamers, but not all human beings dream equally. Some are dreamers of the night, who in the dusty recesses of their mind dream and wake in the morning to find it was just vanity.  But the Dreamers of the Day are dangerous people because they act their dreams into reality with open eyes. And, as the past seven years show, the people of Dunham and Company are Dreamers of the Day”.

My money is on the President successfully transforming the economy but it is perhaps going to be a lot tougher than the election trail may have suggested.  Consider, for example, the need for all his team to have consistent and planned visibility as part of implementing the vision.  In The Times newspaper, Tom Baldwin observes that Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, “…has cut an increasingly forlorn and embattled figure in recent weeks”.  For all we know Mr Geithner could be technically brilliant but if he does not do something about his visibility and ‘presence’ he could well put his job and his boss’ election promises at risk.  Indeed, Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, has recently said that his confidence in Mr Geithener is “waning every day” and that “If he keeps going down this road, I think he won’t last long”.

Clarity of vision is indeed critical but the capacity to combine substance and symbolism in executing the vision is crucial for both the main leader and those around him or her.  What do you think?

I just want to point you in the direction of a strong article written by the Dan Oestreich, an American writer, on how to handle redundancies in a way that is consistent with how your business would also handle growth:

There is no beautiful way to do reductions and layoffs. But pain can be reduced significantly if the process is guided by values greater than the dollars that must be saved. I am not suggesting that the need to cut costs should be avoided; I’m saying the “what” and the “how” should be guided by how the enterprise has already defined itself. Either the values it says it lives by are important or they are not. One thing that I am certain about, given my line of work, is that most of us contain a highly sensitive wire about others’ hypocrisy. As a consequence, we keep looking for advice about how reductions can be conducted without setting off the wire.

It’s a long and thoughtful piece and you can find the rest here.  Image from Pulpolux !!! on flickr.

 

“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”

A few years ago, my good friend David Stanley died. Prior to his death, David had been a Director at Caret and it was a real joy (if challenging!) to work with him.  One of his favourite pastimes was to identify and challenge orthodoxies in a team, business, or industry.

Recently, I thought of David as I read Mark Stevens’ book Your Management Sucks. In it he says:

 “The overriding message of this chapter is to challenge conventional wisdom. Look closely, and you’ll see that what is often deemed to be the smart thing is actually stale thinking masquerading as the truth. It is a set of assumptions that have gone unchallenged by creative minds for years and gather a presumption of absolute/time-tested/unassailable truth; precisely because they have worked their way into so many minds they are deemed to be fact.  But all they really demonstrated is staying power”

So, what is it in your organisation or in your individual ways of working that could benefit from the David Stanley Treatment?