Aug 20, 2020 | Governance, Management
The term ‘After Action Review’ emerged from the US military, which formalised it after facing a range of disasters in the field, from Vietnam to the Middle East. Finally, it became obvious they were repeating the same mistakes, consistently.
They should have asked an accountant earlier.
Standard good management practise after a capital expenditure project has been to review the outcomes of the planned expenditure compared to the expected outcomes. Variations in outcome to the plan needed understanding, to ensure errors in judgement were not repeated.
In my experience, it rarely happens well enough; too much corporate politics and ego are involved. However, the idea is not a new one; it just makes absolute sense, which is why you should build it into the performance management culture of your business.
Five simple questions, the first is easy, that is the plan, the following three are where the gold of improved performance hides when you dig hard enough, and ensure the lessons are well learned. The last drives future action.
- What did you plan to make happen?
- What actually happened?
- What caused the difference?
- What can we learn?
- What specific changes will we make next time?
Such a process, embedded in your performance management culture will deliver guaranteed results. ‘Rinse and repeat’ the question process after every project. No matter how small the project may appear to be, an AAR should be automatic, simply a standard part of the process. After a while, it will become second nature to observe the things that may cause the unexpected, plan for them, and take steps to remove them before they occur.
Therein hides one of the secrets of continuous improvement in profitability.
Jul 10, 2020 | Governance, Leadership
Both sides of politics are claiming victory in last Saturday’s by-election.
Labor because they won, and Liberal because they did not lose by much, and anyway they did not expect to overturn a century of precedent in by-elections, despite the PM having high personal approval ratings for the handling of the corona crisis. Largely forgotten is the pathetic floundering that went on over the bushfire season, except by those still waiting on the promised assistance, and living in tents.
What lies underneath is a range of gaps, often chasms, between opposing views and outcomes.
It is not unusual to have substantial socio economic gaps in an electorate, it just seems those in Eden Monaro are more starkly drawn.
Gaps between the coast and inland regions, gaps in the nature of business in the varying regions, lifestyle, wealth, access to public services, and more.
The electoral result is an average, and as with all averages, they can be very misleading.
There are also substantial gaps in the apparent ‘values’ held by differing parts of the electorate, and a huge gap between the promises of politicians seeking a vote, and their performance on the ground.
As a group, we are increasingly cynical and distrustful of those in politics who espouse values, then appear to be acting in a contradictory manner.
These differences produce internal conflict that when combined with a poor economy, starts fights over how the pie is to be divided. There will be pressure on the current Covid induced income support regime, and longer term, to change corporate and individual tax rates, not just to fix the unholy mess they are in currently, but to set out to address the inequities.
However, when you have the gaps in wealth distribution, personal and corporate values, political ideologies, and powerful vested interests, you have a volatile environment, not well suited to making fundamental changes. Therefore we will get more and more Band-Aids stretched over a broken system.
Then you have the external environment to consider. There is geopolitical strife of many colours, the war for trade, technology, talent, capital, and over the systems of government that apply.
Einstein’s first law, that energy is not created or destroyed, it just moves from one form to another, seems to apply to the manner in which the pie is cut. In that process there are always winners and losers, and nobody wants to be a loser, while the winners are usually pre-ordained.
That is the situation we find ourselves in currently, wealth and power are based on increasingly fragile foundations. The implications of those foundations crumbling are challenging to envisage and articulate, and so remain undiscussed in open forums.
As I said, elections are averages, and averages always hide the essential truth.
Jul 8, 2020 | Governance, Leadership, Strategy
I am not in the habit of quoting V. I. Lenin, but he did get some big things right.
‘There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen’
We are in one of those ‘weeks,’ the inflection point of a lifetime for most of us.
Almost every trend we look at, and forecast by, is somewhat linear. There will be bumps and jumps, but overall, looked at over time, they are linear.
Most business models are built on the automatic assumption of those linear trends holding true. Our institutions utterly depend on that being the truth. As a result, when the inflection point comes, it is traumatic; the response slow and often inappropriate, assuming all will return to a ‘new normal’, that it is just another bump in the road. Perhaps a nasty one, but a bump nevertheless.
I suspect that is not the case currently, this is not a bump in the road; this is a U-turn down a bush track into the unknown.
Forces build for a while in the background, looking linear, and then some sort of catalyst creates a confluence that totally changes the forces that drive the industry. The resulting chaos creates opportunity as much as it creates uncertainty, disharmony and dislocation of the pre-existing status quo.
Today, we are watching as several trends come together, which will create a new normal, looking little like the old one.
The digitisation of everything, has taken a dose of steroids since January, changing the way we shop, communicate, and work. To me it looks a bit like I imagine the confluence of the internal combustion engine and electricity looked in 1920. They had been around for a while, but suddenly converged to become transformative powerhouses that led to a 50 year burst of productivity increases.
Similarly with education. We have been wandering down a road of increasing commercialisation of education, marketing a tertiary qualification to Australians as the road to a good life and to international students as the ticket to wealth and a visa, while gutting the development of trade skills. Suddenly we have closed borders, the major source of international university students actively discouraging coming to Australia, and a massive shortage of depth of trade skills we cannot fill with 457 visas.
The education sector is in deep financial and philosophical trouble.
What about energy? For years we have clung to coal as not only our primary energy source, but as a huge magnet for international investment and export commodity sales, to the active exclusion of alternatives. Now we have wind and solar producing energy more cheaply than coal, and technology rapidly solving the storage problem. At the same time, the distribution of power is changing rapidly from a centralised system to a localised one. That confluence must be producing a bad case of reflux in Canberra. Political donations, existing political institutions, and relationships will not be enough to stem the tide, and the outcome is likely to be bloody, inevitable, and very soon.
Coming at us are revolutions in biology, driven by gene therapy and CRISPR. The human genome was first mapped in 2003, at the cost of billions. Now you can send a sample along and get your own map for a couple of hundred dollars. CRISPR, discovered in 2012, has accelerated our gene editing capability faster than Henry Ford’s production line accelerated the manufacture of cars, and look what happened then. Massive investment in roads, the 2 day weekend, and people travelled daily further than they had in a lifetime just a generation before.
That is before we consider the coming tsunami of AI, Quantum computing, additive manufacturing, and the new materials being developed with properties that seem to be out of the mind of Jules Verne.
As the old Chinese proverb goes: ‘May you live in interesting times’. We are, and to some measure that will be due to the changes driven by the Chinese journey out of poverty into world dominance in just over 30 years. This is trend reaching a tipping point without a lot of notice, or thought about the consequences.
Are you ready?
Jun 29, 2020 | Collaboration, Governance, Leadership
I was recently asked to turn my mind and experience to the question of mentoring, and to reflect on the benefits and pitfalls that may be present.
Over the years, I have had the benefit of a couple of mentors who profoundly influenced my view of the world, and in turn, have set out to pass on these lessons to others.
At the core of a mentoring relationship is the opportunity to engage in ways not easily replicated in the normal run of activities in an enterprise. Attributed to Benjamin Franklin is the sentence: ‘Tell me and I will forget, show me and I will remember, engage me and I will learn’. Over 45 years of commercial life, this simple observation has proven to be absolutely true.
The means of engagement comes from Greek philosopher Socrates, and as a result is commonly called the ‘Socratic Method’. It relies on leading someone to a conclusion by asking questions. By driving towards a conclusion that the mentee reaches by themselves, being directed by questions, the impact will be greater, as they will be fully engaged.
Objective of a mentor/mentee relationship.
To pass on experience, both professional and life, that enables the mentee to develop their capabilities and skills faster than would otherwise have been possible.
The role of a mentor is:
- Develop the mentee professionally and personally. To achieve this requires mutual trust and respect, which has to be earned, as it will not be just given, in either direction.
- A precursor of trust is that there is a clear understanding that mutual confidentiality will be maintained.
- Listen to the words, and understand the meaning of the words of the mentee, as a means to ensure there is clear understanding of the questions, problems, and personal nuances present.
- Help the mentee to solve their own problems themselves, do not do it for them, but assist in the process by questioning.
- Not to expect, or want the mentee to be a clone of yourself. Everyone is different, and those differences of experience and perspective should be encouraged and leveraged.
- Advocate for the mentee, offering exposure and guidance to others in the enterprise, and to the challenges that emerge in every organisation and personal career.
- Deliver appropriate resources to the mentee when they will be most useful
- Act as a role model
The process of mentoring
- Establish ground rules, goals, and mutual expectations early on.
- Do a ‘needs’ assessment and gap analysis, that recognises the strengths and weaknesses of the mentee, as well as their opportunities for growth. The gap analysis should be influenced by the next logical step, mentee aspirations, and observed/agreed weaknesses that require being addressed.
- Agree mutual goals for the process, together. What are the expectations and goals of both parties?
- Agree a formal contact schedule, supplemented by the ‘rules’ that may apply around informal contact.
- Listen and question, rather than advising, and only advise after listening. This should be an iterative process, and advice should be the last item, well after questions that are often ‘What if’, ‘Why not’, or ‘How’, have been exhausted
- Let them make their own decisions and understand the consequences of accountability, and the buzz that comes from it.
- Be mutually accountable
- Recognise, address and be transparent about your own biases.
- Build trust, an authentic connection.
- Recognise a round peg that may be in a square hole, and provide feedback and assistance to either reshape or move elsewhere, to everyone’s benefit.
- Finally, and perhaps most importantly. Ensure there is a sense of psychological safety for the mentee, such that they are prepared to open up, knowing that there are no negative repercussions, just advice and acceptance. This will only happen over time, and assumes that the relationship has evolved positively.
- Not every mentor/mentee relationship will work, and there should be no hesitation for either party to acknowledge that, and move on.
Why invest the time in mentoring
- Every enterprise needs to build a functional and leadership ‘bench’. People move on, and around. A successful enterprise ensures that there are processes in place to renew management and leadership capability that are robust and continuously improving, so that they can accommodate those movements of individuals.
- It is a means to identify and develop those skills that will be of benefit to both the enterprise and the individual.
- Mentoring is a powerful way to build personal and functional networks. This enables problem solving and collaboration on a scale much wider than would happen in the absence of a mentoring process.
- Teaching, or mentoring, is the process of breaking down and addressing challenges and problems, considering options, and their possible outcomes. Engaging in such a process improves the capability of the mentor, as much as it does that of the mentee.
- It is simply making a contribution, not only to the mentee, but to the organisation and wider community.
What makes a good mentor?
- They need to be keen to do it, and enjoy the process
- They must engage with the mentee, and show they value learning, and teaching, and learning as they go from the act of teaching.
- They will encourage mentees to go out of their comfort zone, continually expanding it by way of active listening and Socratic questioning.
- They provide regular, formal and informal feedback, and articulate the paths to improvement.
- They are experts, and willing to share that expertise.
- They show the mentee the value of being mentored, what is in it for them.
- Leads by example.
- Recognises that the process is one of education, not training. Educating implies developing an open and critical analysis of situations, and formulation of tactics that reflect that situation. By contrast, training implies the application of a template that tells you what to do, which may not always be the optimum reaction. The ‘Why’ is always more important than the ‘What’ in a conversation.
What makes a good mentee?
- Watches and learns from the mentor
- Critically evaluate the lessons taken from the mentor and actively discuss the implications and application of the lessons.
- Willing and able to engage in the process
- Puts a high priority on the relationship with the mentor, without becoming dependent
- Actively engages in mutual critical thinking in the setting of goals, improvement initiatives, and improvement milestones.
- Is able to accept negative feedback when it comes, by seeing it as an opportunity to improve, rather than an attack on performance.
A final observation. In this day of #metoo and great sensitivity about the relationships of all types between genders in the workplace, we have to be absolutely transparent. The majority of mentoring relationships, at least in the near future, will be between a woman and an older man, someone who has the power by virtue of position and influence that can be leveraged for the benefit of the younger woman. In some instances this may create an obstacle absent in a mono gender relationship.
Jun 12, 2020 | Governance, Management
Preparing forecasts is an integral part of most jobs these days, even if it is just how much available capacity there might be on the machine tomorrow, and how best to fill it.
Most forecasting I see is based on the financials, and is one of two methods: The ‘spreadsheet method’, where 4.5% is added across the board, and bingo, a forecast. Easy. The second method is driven by numbers of a different sort: the Net Present Value equation, the present discounted value of forecast future cash flow, which is more often than not driven by spreadsheets with hurdles imposed.
Neither is much good by themselves.
More recently, a range of pretty sophisticated modelling tools have become generally and cheaply available, which despite their sophistication, still have to be fed data and assumptions to spit out an answer.
Effective forecasting takes in a range of qualitative factors, some of which can be massaged into the algorithms, with the caveat that they then have some sort of relative weight applied.
- A realistic assessment of the resources required to reach an objective. Of increasing importance in this calculation are the capabilities of the people required to deliver the outcome.
- An assessment of the strategic, competitive and regulatory environment in which the forecast lives. Generating forecasts without due consideration of a range of factors external to the business, over which they have little if any control, becomes little more than wishful thinking.
- An assessment of the impact the successful initiatives will have on the external environment, particularly competitors. I see way too many forecasts that ignore the simple fact that competitors will not sit still while you eat their lunch. Failure to adequately anticipate and accommodate their reactions in the tactics to be deployed, and their forecast outcomes, is just plain dumb.
- A continuous and rolling After Action Review process. This process ensures the impact of tactical actions can be assessed, and the lessons applied to following forecasts. A forecast should be a ‘living’ document, something that accommodates, adjusts and builds on the facts and changing circumstances as they emerge.
Back in the day when I ran large marketing departments, forecasting was a key part of any project plan. When product managers came to me with their forecasts, I was not so much concerned with the numbers, as I was with the assumptions included and the relative weights of those assumptions. I also insisted that any forecast had three components, a best case, worst case, and forecast case, prepared separately, with different weights allocated to the variables. This gave us a range with which to work, and importantly, ensured some thought had been put into the implications of the ‘pear-shaped’ outcome.
The disturbing thing was always how inaccurate our forecasts were, no matter how hard we worked. This does not mean we did not try hard enough, simply that telling the future is a challenging task, not to be undertaken lightly.
Once again, my thanks for the header to Scott Adams and Dilbert.
Jun 5, 2020 | Governance, Leadership
Observing the virulent spread of ‘The Bug’ and the institutional responses from around the world, there is a disturbing commonality that points at a deficiency in political and ethical leadership, until the horses are running free, and the stable almost empty.
In this country, at least we have been consistent.
Consistent in denying there was anything to worry about until the crisis is upon us.
Since the 90’s there have been strident calls by scientists that we need to get off our collective arses and address the emerging human causes of climate change.
Ignored, until people die in fires, and then slowly, edged towards the backburner.
Similarly, the clusterf**k that has been the management of the Murray Darling basin, although people may not have died, water has been ‘allocated’ under dubious circumstances, natural flows disrupted, investment distorted, and money made on the ‘QT’.
Now we have the Bug, and people are dying as it spreads, and particularly in the US, the systems are now seen as having been gutted, and are grossly inadequate to manage the crisis. That crisis is now escalating beyond anything foreseen to racial violence, unleashing forces from what now appears to be a cultural pressure cooker with devastating results.
In commercial life, the situation is the same. BP engineers knew that the Deepwater Horizon rig was a bomb waiting to go off, Boeing engineers knew there were problems with the 737Max’s software, executives in Australia’s banks and insurance companies were ripping off the estates of dead people, and enabling payments to the makers of child porn, and that ‘oldies’ were dying of neglect in aged care facilities.
There is a pattern to this political and corporate selective blindness that should deeply disturb us all.
The problem is known, when it is called to the attention of senior management it is seen as ‘inconvenient,’ so it is ignored and buried in favour of short term profit. Those doing the questioning are shut down, fired, or intimidated into silence. The problem persists in the dark corners until a crisis occurs, followed by hand wringing, press releases, provision of a sacrificial head for public consumption, and promises to do better.
The only antidote is what Ray Dalio calls radical transparency.
Shine lights in all the dark corners, create a culture where those lights are not selective or optional, but core ingredients of the culture.
