I was working with the Police who were struggling with change. The Area Commander was a visionary, energetic, change agent – wanting to take a force lead in delivering greater effectiveness. He described his Inspectors as the people who stand on the bridge between the future and the present. They interpret his vision and translate into a language the Sergeants and PCs can understand, they reinforce his messages and challenges, they change the culture. But the Inspectors did not buy into the role. They were not tackling poor performance, they were not engaging their teams to find improved ways of working at a local level and they were not challenging back upwards when there was a need for greater clarity around the key areas of focus.

One writer describes the problem facing leaders as “Meeting new demands with insufficient resources”. Staff are overworked – and yet talent, ideas and expertise are often under utilised as we struggle to meet the day to day demands.

Great leaders understand that they can only deliver great performance through others. They depend on others – especially middle managers – and invest time in stretching and challenging those managers. Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown in their book “Multipliers – how the best leaders make everyone smarter” describe two types of leader. Those who kill ideas, suck all the energy out of a team and lead hard working, driven and compliant teams. They want to be in control, to have the credit and ensure no one else has a voice. In contrast multipliers are brilliant at doing more with less. They cultivate ideas, they find ways of doing things more effectively, they give people responsibility and credit, and they energise their teams.

Samsung faced an enormous challenge in the 1990’s – they were way behind their international rivals like Sony. They wanted to develop an international company but had a 100% Korean workforce with very limited understanding of the global market and cultures. They invested in a cadre of middle managers – sending them all over the world to better understand how to shape and engage with the potential markets. It was a phenomenal success. By changing the middle managers mind-set and understanding they built a dramatically different future.

I was with the Chief Executive of a national charity recently – his style is to push and challenge those people with talent and potential. We have seen significant improvements in the contribution his leadership team make to the organisation – and he will continue to raise their game. They recently led a national campaign when middle managers had to step right out of their comfort zone and engage local politicians in some key changes. The end result was outstanding and gave middle managers huge confidence. Many would not have taken this risk – would have argued it was beyond the middle managers capability. But the CEO believed that with the right understanding, the right tools and on-going support that enabled learning from every political encounter the middle managers could significantly raise their game.

Middle managers take the a leader’s vision, focus and change and interpret it. Senior managers will have a long time scale, they see the bigger picture, and have a broad understanding of the consequences of their decisions. Middle managers work to shorter times scales – they look a week or month ahead and ask – “How does this new initiative work alongside my operational priorities? How do I make best use of my resources? What pace can I go at given the other requirements of my team? He/she will set direction – if they are good at their job they will ensure their team members clearly know what is expected of them.

Middle Managers are under enormous pressure and wrestle daily with the challenges of making best use of diminished resources. Their organisations want them to think differently, to find more effective ways of working, to raise performance. How many have the capacity to do so? Many leaders need to give more time and support to the struggling middle – all too often things break down because there is not a shared understanding. The questions below enable you to review your middle managers and identify areas for change.

Is your organisation stuck in the middle?

1. Can strategy implementation be improved in your organisation?

2. How often do your change projects fail to deliver on time and to budget?

3. Could more ideas, improvements, opportunities come from middle managers and their teams?

4. Do you know how well middle managers understand and are committed to your key priorities?

5. What do your best middle managers do to engage, energise and develop talent? How is this “best practice” spread?

6. Does the organisation do enough to tackle managers who demotivate, have high staff turnover, disengagement, or poor innovation?

7. Could you middle managers improve their problem solving skills?

8. What is the most important contribution your middle managers should be making at the moment?

Using this list where are there opportunities to raise the contribution of your middle managers? What could you do differently to strengthen your managers and ensure you do not become stuck in the middle?

Steve Botham, Chief Executive Caret Consulting Group

Steve Botham is Chief Executive of Caret Consulting Group and Chairman of the Chamberlain Forum

I was talking to a senior Housing person recently who told me how they had invited 3000 tenants to a briefing on the benefits changes. “Only one person turned up – clearly people are in denial about the issues,” he said “mind you many of us managers and leaders are in denial as well.”

Changing your leadership approach – it is madness to lead in the same way whatever the circumstances. We believe the context housing is moving into is so changed that our approach to leadership needs to change as well.

There are four fundamental adjustments Housing leaders need to take in 2013

1. Be prepared

2. Monitor the changes closely and respond quickly

3. Create simple, cost effective, consistent responses

4. Support the front line

1. Be prepared this may sound like the boy scouts but this is a massive issue. The better prepared you are the less likely it is that your organisation is critically damaged by the housing changes. We are working with a range of clients on scenarios and asking – “if 50% of your clients default on payments how will you respond?” “If your staff find it increasingly difficult to handle stressed and traumatised clients how will you support them?” Etc. etc. This brings in all the key players – financial, legal, front line, customer service and asks – “how can we respond in a consistent, joined up and simple way to the challenges that lie ahead?”

2. Monitor the changes closely and respond quickly Senior managers and board members in Housing will be judged on how well they manage risk in 2013. It should be integral to the way you lead the business. It needs to be given enough time, energy –and cross company involvement so you can anticipate many of the issues and prepare.

There may be large scale risks to finance, cash flow, your reputation, vulnerable tenants, and your capacity to respond at certain key dates when changes are being implemented. Alongside this will be the many smaller but very challenging customer service issues - individual problems around payments, personal circumstances, emotional flare ups, conflict, distress that will impact all staff with customer contact.

You need a very deliberate and focused monitoring strategy. What is the key data and information at this time? How current and reliable is it? How are the changes affecting the business? What is staff morale like? Do staff have the guidance and support they need? What responses are working well? What is working less well? Can we improve our response?

Management needs to change – investing more time in reviewing the current situation. There needs to be clear and objective feedback from the front line, and the capacity to spot trends, manage and control risks and a continuous awareness of what is working well and what is not with clients and staff.  Good leadership in 2013 is going to depend on outstanding awareness of what is going on.

3. Create simple, cost effective and consistent responses. Some HAs will find their costs escalating at this time. One of the key drivers will be inconsistent working practices. If you are unprepared for problems and address each one as it arises this will take up large portions of management time – and may not pick up some of the broader perspectives e.g.financial, legal, customer service. The best way to deal with issues is to keep the response simple, to give staff the authority to act and to ensure guidelines/processes are clear and accessible. This needs preparation – and it is preparation that can save a lot of cost and angst.  Leaders need to provide clarity to the whole organisation - balancing the need to protect the organisation financially, keep your values and social purpose and being able to respond quickly and clearly too difficult situations.

Disciplines, good practices, simple procedures are critical in reducing costs. But they are unlikely to be fully fit for purpose – they need to be reviewed and updated as you get more information from the front line. I would recommend that some senior staff need to devote a lot of time to managing and improving your responses and guidelines for key issues and problems.

4. Support the front line – some of your front line will cope magnificently and become your 2013 heroes. Others will struggle. Some will face customers with complex emotional problems and extreme reactions – others may have an easier experience. Some may be working with tenants suffering mental health issues, an imploding family situation and a real inability to see a way forward. Others may be working with resilient communities where there is a good local support framework.

The front line needs the capacity to respond to a vast range of situations and reactions. They need to know they are being well supported by colleagues in other parts of the business and by their managers. Ideally they want simple processes and responses that enable them to deal consistently with different situations.

There are many challenges ahead – staff may have behaved reasonably and fairly but customers have misinterpreted their actions. Some staff may have avoided difficult issues and made things more complex. Managers will need to have strong focus on the front line. There needs to be a lot of learning going on. This is a new situation for many organisations – what does your emerging good practice look like? How can you spread good practice further? What mistakes are made and how can you avoid them being repeated?

Finally many staff work in Housing because they care, they want clients to have good houses, and they want families to flourish. This could be a distressing time for front line staff – they need lots of support. They need people with listening ears and they need to be allowed to try some things and get them wrong as they find the right way forward.

The bottom line is that 2013 is a year when Managers need to be more hands on, planning well, responding quickly and managing risks. They need to invest more time in managing the business and keeping it safe.

Caret Consulting Group bring specialist leadership support to Housing in challenging times.

The Centre for Local Economic Strategies believe that many communities face a 10% reduction in their income in the next three years – with, of course, more serious consequences for those who lose their jobs. Other commentators are concerned about “housing churn” as neighbourhoods see well established households forced to move elsewhere in response to benefits cuts.

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) state “Cuts, recession, and benefits changes create an unmanageable spiral of decline.”

Building resilience NEF say resilience “depends on relationships – and the quality of those relationships – in a particular place between public, commercial and social spheres.” Social Capital in a neighbourhood becomes a really important indicator of that neighbourhood’s capacity to survive the challenges thrown at it. The development of social capital requires the active and willing engagement of citizens within a participative community.

Research by the Chamberlain Forum in Birmingham demonstrates a strong correlation between social capital and house prices. People want to move into communities that are lively, proactive, supportive and generous. Housing associations benefit from the deliberate actions they take to equip and enable the community.

US author Edgar Cahn talks about the core economy – the real economy happening under the surface. This is fuelled by relationships, through family, community and the things we love and give time to. Can we tap into this core economy to build resilience?

Four steps to resilience

Four key steps a Housing Association can do directly or working with others are

1. Co-production: This is a technique to enable communities to work together with the public sector and housing providers to address those problems that won’t go away. Inevitably austerity is a great catalyst for fresh thinking and the neighbourhood that learns to adopt and shape its own way forward raises its chances of success.

2. Time banking – time banking links to the core economy. A time bank is a way of organising, extending and promoting self‐help and social networks between citizens and/ or between citizens and public services. Participants ‘deposit’ their time in the bank by giving practical help and support to others and are able to ‘withdraw’ their time when they need something done themselves. In a time bank, everyone’s time is valued equally: one hour = one credit. Time banking recognises and encourages people using their talents to benefit their community

3. A neighbourhood plan – a neighbourhood plan best mobilises people when it is focused on priorities that people can unite behind. We advocate a simple one page plan with five key neighbourhood priorities. Issues neighbourhoods may wish to priorities include loneliness, struggling families, poverty, health inequalities and youth unemployment.

4. A neighbourhood manager – neighbourhoods need a catalyst who can help them think through their key needs, help them shape solutions and enable citizens to engage with service providers, drive community projects and enable great communication.

NEF make the point that many of the organisations society relies on to build community resilience have been squeezed to breaking point. Housing Associations with their broad perspective, networking capacity and awareness of local needs may find themselves taking a more proactive role in building social capital.

The Challenge for Housing

In our contact with many RSLs we increasingly talk about the need to create a new culture, a new way of doing things. In doing so there are three key challenges Housing providers face

1. FOCUS – those organisations that succeed in challenging and complex times have a really clear focus. They have robust discussion about their priorities and manage their impact well. This creates alignment – the organisation works well together with a real focus on results.

2. CONSISTENCY – in a time when many neighbourhoods will struggle with large economic and social challenges Housing providers need to be credible and trust worthy.  Housing providers face a wide range of customer issues as benefits policy changes. They will need to work hard before issues arise to ensure they can address problems in a consistent and transparent way. Consistency will deliver value for money - poor preparation could lead to a wide variation in responses and significant added cost.

3. SUPPORT THE FRONT LINE – the Housing front line will be a place with many stresses and pressures – they need excellent support. This is a prime culture issue Managers – and the wider organisation needs to be supportive and enabling whilst maintaining standards.

In short Housing Associations will themselves have to become resilient if they are to face the shocks and changes that lie ahead.  They need to build their own social capital if they are to work effectively with stressed neighbourhoods. This is a time when a good Housing Association may be the difference between survival and economic decline for our communities. We need to be ready.

Steve Botham is Chief Executive of Caret Consulting Group and Chairman of the Chamberlain Forum

I was in an organisation recently which said the first fifteen minutes of every meeting are a waste of time because senior management are late so everyone who has made it on time (a diminishing number) wastes their time. How much unproductive downtime does that create? Are senior management complicit in driving organisational inefficiency? There’s plenty of evidence of poorly prepared, poorly facilitated, unfocused meetings that lead to poor decisions, actions that are not followed through and the disappointing decision to meet again!

Becoming sharper, faster, fitter – just as Olympic athletes continually have to increase their personal best so do leaders in challenging times. A focus on improving your meetings culture can make a significant impact on the organisation.

Meetings Focus – the first question is what is the purpose of your meeting? Some meetings lost their purpose a long time ago – they keep on meeting because no one has the courage to end its existence. Most organisations can reduce their meetings by at least 10 – 20%. The impact and usefulness of your meetings is directly related to the focus and clarity within your organisation. A colleague works on a quarterly basis with a client’s leadership team to ensure they have five clear priorities for the coming quarter. From this they plan their weekly operational meetings ensuring they focus on the priorities and they have quarterly strategic meetings to ensure they are planning for a shaping the future. The leaders ensure the entire organisation and its meetings are aligned to work together at the same pace to deliver the priorities.

We often quote Jim Collins and say – organisational success depends on the deliberate actions you take. So much of that deliberate action is around meetings. Being deliberate in setting time aside for high quality innovation, being deliberate about focusing attention on making the organisation more effective, being deliberate about horizon scanning- looking longer term at risks and opportunities and ensuring the organisation is well prepared.

Be prepared - arguably one of the most important task a leader has is to sort out the agenda for his/her meetings. To many supporting papers are written to impress not enable decision making, going into uneccessary technical detail. Sometimes this is in response to one technically detailed committee member who makes life a misery for all their colleagues. This is all poor time management.

Another time management issue is around selecting people to be at the meeting. Some don’t need to be there all the time, some don’t need to be there at all. A timed agenda helps bring focus to the most important issues and bring advisors in and out of the meeting effectively.

Facilitate well – a meeting should be about collecting a wide range of perspectives and making the best possible decision. Some Chairs think it is about an opportunity to ramble and rubber stamp the decision they wanted the meeting to agree. Great Chairs recognise that a meeting is a collection of loud people with lots of ideas and enthusiasm and quiet people with important nuggets of insight. Great Chairs encourage the quiet and the reluctant to contribute and build up their confidence and they tackle counter productive behaviours – a dominant voice, tensions, lack of engagement etc. head on.

It’s rude – organisations slip into ineffective and often just plain rude behaviours. I worked with a large organisation where a senior manager annoyed everybody he came into contact with by arriving late, fiddling with his emails during the meeting, taking calls, and then criticising decisions when he himself had not been engaged in shaping them. People felt he was communicating real lack of respect for them and the subject under discussion. Others tell us – our CEO fiddles with his emails all the time. What’s the message? This meeting and you people in it are not as important as what is going on elsewhere. In todays environment blackberries and IPads mean that people are not fully engaged in the meetings – and the meeting and relationships suffer as a result.

Performance Management – Chairs need to take responsibility for performance managing their meetings. They need to ensure actions are followed up and staff are challenged when inaction occurs. If the actions don’t happen however good the quality of your debate this was an unsuccessful meeting.

I came across a situation where one willing meeting attender had 50 incomplete actions against his name. He makes unrealistic commitments to act and the Chair has not challenged his unreliability.

A meeting is measured by its impact. Increasingly good teams finalise their decisions at the end of the meeting – reviewing what was agreed, sharpening their actions, ensuring the timescales are challenging but realistic and it is clear who is doing what.

Staff morale – you won’t please everybody with your Chairing skills. Some may accuse of being to task oriented and not investing enough time in the team – others will say we are to pink and fluffy and should just concentrate on task. Some will say the meeting is to structured, others not structured enough.  What you must aim for is a consensus that your meetings are outcome focused, that everyone makes a strong contribution and the meetings are real value for money – and we really do want to meet again!

Steve Botham is Chief Executive of Caret Consulting Group

You can imagine the scene when a small child comes to her Mum with a sore finger. Mum will crouch down and say breezily “There, there do you want me to kiss it better.” Or we can think about the beautiful Princess who wants to turn her ugly toad into a handsome Prince – just one kiss should do the trick!

Imagine you take over an ugly toad of an organisation. Kissing it better is probably career limiting but we will be tempted to do the next best thing – we will restructure it and create a new strategy and hey ho a handsome Prince type organisation will soon appear. Or will it? In truth re-structuring and strategy re thinking may still leave us with that Toad. Why – because we have not addressed the real issue – the organisation culture –“ the way they do things around here.”

Management guru Peter Drucker once said famously  “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Let’s have a look at some characteristics of a Toad like culture.

· Meetings don’t lead to clear decisions

· When decisions are made they are not implemented properly

· The organisation is confused about its priorities leading to fights over resources, conflicting messages and staff not knowing where they should invest their energy

· Projects go way over time and budget and don’t deliver what they set out to do

· Complex changes seems to just produce confused people

· The organisation lacks focus

· People turn up for work but leave their commitment and enthusiasm and ideas at home

· We constantly get blown off course by problems and risks we should have seen coming

Many organisations are looking at cost and efficiency. Now is the time to challenge unhealthy cultures where deeply embedded habits need to be changed. These habits are like that “Toad” greedily absorbing time, money, resources and people that could be better used elsewhere.

Patrick Lencioni in his powerful and challenging work “The Advantage” says “The health of an organisation provides the context for strategy, finance, technology and everything else that happens within it – which is why it is the single greatest factor determining an organisations success.” How healthy is your organisation – does it need you to kiss it better?

As a simple starting point how productive are your meetings -  do they deliver good robust decisions? Do they balance discussion between strategic and operational focus? Do they invest time in stepping back and looking at organisational effectiveness and horizon scanning? How often do messages from meetings fail to get cascaded – leading to no action? How often do people emerge from the meeting with different views on the next steps and who is accountable for what? On a scale of 1 – 10 what score would you give your meetings culture – and what would happen if you improved it?

Is your organisation healthy or does it need to get better? Here is a simple organisational fitness check-up. I suggest you spend twenty minutes on this with your leadership team and identify key areas for improvement. Those twenty minutes could significantly help you become more effective.

If 1 = Very poor and 5 = Consistently high performance what scores would you give for the following signs of organisational health?

You might complain this is still too long a list. What will make the most difference? The key gift a leader can give to their organisation in challenging times is the gift of clarity. Staff and stakeholders in effective organisations clearly know  - what their priorities are, how their work best helps (or hinders) others in their contribution to the priorities, and  the best ways to deliver the priorities successfully.

Some would argue that we have tolerated underperforming organisations for too long. There are reasons why it has never seemed to right time to improve our meetings, our communication and stop the unnecessary in fighting.  We may feel daunted by the hard to tackle hard culture issues when things like strategy and action plans seem more urgent and we feel more comfortable shaping a strategy than rebuilding a culture.

Many organisations are looking to lean thinking and other process improvements  in these challenging times. But lean thinking can never succeed in an ineffective culture –you have to fix the culture as the first step in sharpening the processes.

Organisational health and a high performing culture will be at different stages from organisation to organisation. Ultimately the responsibility for culture change and organisational effectiveness is a leadership matter. Working on this is about making it better – addressing the issues that sap an organisation and releasing energy, time and resources. The best organisations invest time in continually reviewing and improving their effectiveness – and turning toads into Princes and Princesses.

]]> http://www.bloggingonleadership.com/2012/09/26/making-it-better-a-fresh-perspective-on-organisation-effectiveness/feed/ http://www.bloggingonleadership.com/2012/08/09/is-bullying-making-a-come-back/ http://www.bloggingonleadership.com/2012/08/09/is-bullying-making-a-come-back/#comments Thu, 09 Aug 2012 16:59:36 +0000 Steve Botham http://www.bloggingonleadership.com/?p=296 I was hearing the tale recently of a newly appointed CEO who started to put his hand out like a Policeman stopping the traffic to curtail discussion in his meetings. At first his colleagues thought it was a high five gesture but soon realised it was a way to control his team. They felt the cold air of a new culture and leadership style and the organisation is beginning to see raised staff turnover .

Psychologists refer to displaced aggression. It is prevalent in primates where dominant animals attack inferior animals and the inferior animal then attacks an even more inferior animal.

In organisations dominance can come through hierarchies, high technical knowledge, speed of working, personal confidence and impact etc. Bullying comes when people misuse their dominance to undermine others. Nobody admits to bullying – we rationalise it and  call it “being more hands on”, or” more directive”, or “sharpening performance”.

In times of challenge and pressure bullying inevitably increases as people at the top or technical specialists transfer their stresses to others. Ironically this is rarely productive - people under stress can perform wonderfully when encouraged and enabled. Under bullying the culture will only ever be compliant, proactivity and innovation will be stifled and the workplace will be constrained and joyless.

Some bullies are naturals - they always feel others are inferior to them and deserve to be treated with disrespect. Others can dip in and out of bullying. We allow our stress to tip over to others and become more aggressive, less tolerant, more demanding and - perhaps unconsciously we become the bullies. More bullying about? Almost certainly. In stressful times we need to monitor our stress to ensure our staff and colleagues don’t feel we are the new bullies on the block

Steve Botham

Meeting Customer Needs in Challenging Times

Any Housing leader who loves a good worry will be in their element at the moment – there are worries galore. “I am really concerned that we are going to lose our credibility with our customers” one CEO from a very highly regarded HA told me recently. “Our customers are going through horrendous situations at the moment” said another, “and we hardly dare tell them that it is going to get worse.”

The recent NHF report Building Future reports that Housing Associations provide services to eight million people.  Many of them in trouble, hurting, and stressed.  People will complain bitterly as your staff provide unpalatable options for them as benefit issues hit, people will question why your team are so well paid when they and all their friends are out of work, people will damage your properties when they feel over charged – or they simply cannot afford your prices.

We use the phrase “predictable surprises” – the things we should think about before they come up and bite us. It’s predictable that we will see more stressed customers, customers with increased mental health problems and customers who begin to see you as part of the “establishment” working against them. This in turn leads to stressed staff that become more reluctant to engage the majority of customers because of their negative experiences with a few.

Housing Associations are naturally customer and community focused – they have mission statements such as “Our aim is to deliver excellent customer care services to all our customers” “We will work to the highest possible standards of service and professionalism.” No problem with that – the question is what does excellent customer service look like in 2012? Who determines the standards?

It’s time to revisit customer service. We start by asking – what does our customer want in 2012? 2013? 2014? Some of the basics remain – they want a decent home, to be treated as human beings, to be able to access information and support easily. But new issues exist – how do we communicate in the social media age? How do we handle those who are downsizing from the home you told them was “ideal”? How do we support people under added stress? How do we streamline and simplify our processes to reduce errors, take out costs and save time? Do we need to provide more choice – what some Councils are calling the Easy Jet approach with a more basic core service and a choice of additional support?

But in Housing the customer relationship is two way – Has have always wanted to encourage “good citizenship”, proactive tenants” “community volunteers”. Again in a changing environment – what do good customers look like in 2012 – how do you reward and encourage them? How might this link to an increased number of social enterprises, community “companies” and trusts – people who contribute to the value of your assets.

One Housing Association claims it has got its customer service right because it has supplied training, got the processes in place and monitors its performance regularly. This seems very limited to us. We need People and Community Leadership strategies in place – and they need to be at the heart of your organisation. Key things to look at include

· Review your purpose – is it to provide “excellence” – what does that mean in cash strapped times? Do customers want excellence or value for money? What’s most important to a family on reduced income? Or an elderly person with reduced social care support?

· Scenario planning – what are the predictable surprises for your customers? The difficult challenges your staff will face? The challenges that your processes and standards need to be able to respond to. What will you need to monitor in coming months

· What customer service skills are needed – a ready smile and a telephone friendly voice may not be enough for a customer with a mental health problem, a host of clients resisting eviction or a Council asking you to do stock transfer within very tight timescales.

· What are your values? What will give you a firm reference point in challenging times

· Is your leadership fit for purpose (“of course we are” you cry – but we are entering unchartered waters). Do you work together robustly to ensure the organisation is focused, effective, and aligned. What behaviours will get rewarded and encouraged in the future?

· Will your managers provide coaching and support to enable front line staff to deal well with the challenges they face? Will you ensure that you are learning from the new challenges you face and constantly getting better at what you do?

· What will you stop doing? How will you get rid of processes that are to long? How will you stop inefficient working in your organisation? How might you create more standardisation to reduce costs

The secret? - High impact leaders who work effectively together to shape and deliver a new customer strategy and develop the organisation capacity to deliver that strategy. Leaders who understand the future risks for their customers and staff.  Leaders who bring real focus and clarity in order to energise and align the organisation. Leaders who ensure that customer service training or development is not treated like fairy dust sprinkled on children to make them play better but is linked with “what we reward, what we role model as leaders, what we talk about.”  Leaders who can innovate and improve their organisation and the services it provides with changes that will be well implemented. Leaders with the humility to recognise they have not got all the answers but make best use of the expertise, talent and energy within their organisation.

Steve Botham

Caret Consulting Group are experts in delivering change, enabling leaders and shaping and empowering leadership teams within Housing. We work in partnership to help HAs shape the future

It is 100 years since Captain Scott and his colleagues perished in the freezing conditions they faced in their return from the South Pole. They were brave, determined, valiant – and a little stupid! They were beaten to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen – his team was much better prepared, they paced themselves on the journey and managed their energy well, they used many flags to guide them to their food depots on the way back so they were sure to find them in the hazardous conditions they used – Scott relied on one flag. Amundsen was a great survivor.

Over the years Caret have often worked with clients using Jim Collins work – Good to Great.  It has many strong lessons about organisational effectiveness and high impact leadership. But we are aware that good as Collins work is many of our clients face huge challenges in the current economic environment. They may feel that survival is much more important than any move to being great. Collins has heard the cry and over the past nine years has been asking the question – what makes organisations great in times of challenge – who are the organisations that deliberately and intelligently build their chances of survival? Who are those whose actions increase the chances of disaster?

Collins research forms the basis for his latest book “Good by Choice”. He makes an insightful comment about leaders “The best leaders we studied did not a visionary ability to predict the future. They observed what worked and built upon proven foundations. They were not more risk taking, bolder, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons. They were more disciplined, more empirical and more paranoid.”

He compares the heroic and tragic figure of Captain Scott – with Amundsen. We can identify with those who would feel that Scott is the more attractive figure to emulate. Indeed there is an organisational pressure towards the stiff upper lip, never give up, ignore the pain barriers, keep the chaps going – and think of England mentality.  Amundsen wrote “I may say that this is the greatest factor—the way in which the expedition is equipped—the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order — luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.” -from The South Pole, by Roald Amundsen.

Collins calls for strong discipline – greater consistency with good habits, performance management, goals setting – not regulation and hierarchy but a disciplined approach to working well. He promotes empiricism – facing challenging issues with as much well analysed information as possible.  These disciplines drive growth. He refers to Dubroni the instant camera pioneers, VisiCorp the computer spread sheet inventors, Star the safety razor pioneers. But we are much more aware of Polaroid, Microsoft and Gillette who did not do the breakthrough work but did the hard disciplined stuff of taking things to market.

Collins encourages hard conversations – “this is what we will not do”, “this is what we stop”,” this is what is nice to do not a need to do.” Robust conversations get to what is really important and remove the “crud” that gets in the way of success. That robust conversation extends to paranoid conversation about what can or could go wrong. Paranoid behaviours keep these organisations safe and ensure they are much better prepared for changes and bumps along the way.

We believe Collins research is important for many of our clients. Increasingly Caret Consulting Group are working through coaching and workshops to enable more robust conversations, review the level and effectiveness of the disciplines in place, strengthen implementation practices, enable fresh innovation and new thinking, and develop excellent staff engagement. Many organisations will struggle to survive the current challenges – but great organisations build the frameworks that enable them to achieve greatness even in times of the biggest challenge.

Why not talk to us about how we can help your organisation develop the disciplines its needs to succeed in challenging times.

For more information contact Steve Botham at steve@caret.co.uk or phone 07740946146

]]> http://www.bloggingonleadership.com/2012/06/26/the-great-survivors/feed/ http://www.bloggingonleadership.com/2012/02/09/get-a-good-cornerman/ http://www.bloggingonleadership.com/2012/02/09/get-a-good-cornerman/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:08:26 +0000 Danny Morris http://www.bloggingonleadership.com/?p=290 Angelo Dundee, who died on February 1st, was cornerman to Mohammed Ali and fourteen other world boxing champions including Sugar Ray Leonard and George Foreman.
 
In the tributes that have been paid one in particular stood out. NPR’s Tom Goldman said that Dundee was “a savvy cornerman who would motivate fighters who wanted to give up and find unorthodox ways to help.” One example of this is when Ali (then Cassius Clay) was dazed in a fight with Henry Cooper. In order to buy some time, Dundee slightly enlarged a small tear in one of Ali’s gloves and asked the referee if he could put a new glove on the boxer. As the LA Times writes, “none were available, but the incident added valuable seconds to Clay’s rest time, allowing him to recover and go on to win on a fifth-round technical knockout.”

All leaders need a good cornerman: someone to patch them up, encourage them to fight on, and help them think a little differently. Who’s in your corner?

Whether they are an insightful friend, a trusted colleague, or a professional coach – get a good cornerman.

The £372m cruise-liner with state-of-the-art navigation equipment, an experienced crew, repeating the same voyage it makes 52 times per year, ran aground just metres off the Italian coastline. The ship capsized so quickly that the lifeboats and safety rafts on the port side became unusable. It meant that many of the ship’s emergency procedures no longer functioned or were invalid. For a time staff tried to help stranded passengers or colleagues without being clear if rescue was possible. 

I think the plight of Costa Concordia’s crew bears some similarities to the challenges facing many leaders today: Leadership is in crisis. The world is now nowhere nearly as predictable as it has been for the last fifty years. Consequently we are unable to rely on what has guided us in the past to steer us safely into the future. We are therefore left with a challenge few leaders have grappled with before: managing the no longer and the not yet. What we relied on no longer exists or is uncertain (e.g. the euro) and a new operating blueprint has not yet emerged. No wonder businesses and governments, let alone cruise-liners, are capsizing!

So what should leaders be doing? Whilst the world around us is uncertain I remain convinced that the principles of leadership have not changed. We still need to, for example:

• Clarify purpose & values
• Articulate a picture of the future that is better than today
• Design and execute a plan to arrive at that future (including the deployment of systems & processes to help keep on track)
• Implement numerous ways to engage customers, staff, shareholders, communities, and other interested parties into that plan

Frameworks, models, principles and even luck will certainly help leaders to become significantly more effective. Yet even these are insufficient.  For me one of the richest qualities of a leader is having the courage to unashamedly lead and not to give up.  I like how Mary Lou Anderson puts it:
 
Leaders are called to stand
in that lonely place
between the no longer and the not yet
and intentionally make decisions
that will bind, forge, move
and create history.

We are not called to be popular,
we are not called to be safe,
we are not called to follow,
we are the ones called to take risks,
we are the ones called to change attitudes;
to risk displeasures,
we are the ones called to gamble our lives,
for a better world.