Pray harder for leadership.

Nov 19, 2019 | Leadership

 

As I look out my window in suburban Sydney, there is a bluish tinge to the air.

The fires around Sydney, and along the Australian east coast have made us all aware that we do live in a very dry continent, and that we do not value the water resources we have, in fact, we literally piss them away.

It is enlightening to watch the and hear the differing conversations going on around us, not just in the pub, but in the media.

People, those who live ordinary lives, pay their taxes  raise their kids, seem to have a different set of perspectives to those who are supposed to be leading us. They seem unable to open their traps without making it a race for political points.

What better time for the pollies to do what the rest of us have done already, and come together, recognising that we are stronger together than we are divided.

News to politicians, who seem to think and act as if the opposite were true.

It is the time for leadership, and leadership is not about how much money has been spent, or how much might be spent at some time in the future, or whether there are more or less park rangers than there were a year ago, it is about the stories of bravery, sacrifice and just old fashioned humanity that will move us.

We humans evolved with stories, it is how we understand, remember and relate to others in our ‘tribe’. We do not remember facts and figures without the context of a story, when listening to a story that engages, our neural activity increases, allowing us to feel, hear and taste the essence of the story.

What an opportunity for politicians of all colours to show leadership, to restore at least a little of the lost trust and faith, that they are there not just for themselves, but for all of us. They wonder about the position of trust they occupy in public sentiment, below lawyers, and just above child molesters. It is a problem of their own making, one that can be reversed with time, honesty, transparency and humility, so I guess that is unlikely.    

The Husband of the mayor of Glen Innes Carol Sparks, Badja Sparks now virtually homeless after fire ripped through the township of Wytaliba, said it best when he said: ‘This climate has changed. Pray for rain: Pray harder for leadership’.

 

9 process management questions from the World Cup finals

Nov 8, 2019 | Leadership, Management

The process drives the outcome, right?

Well, mostly.

So long as the process directs the actions to be taken, the order in which they are taken, and is able to withstand external pressure when it is brought to bear, then yes, it will drive an outcome.

We can look at an outcome and grumble, unexpected, unfair, and so on, but we cannot change it, although we can change the practises that drove it,

Competitively we can also disrupt the processes of others, and have our own disrupted, both internally and externally.

I watched the All blacks demolish the Welsh in the fight for third in the Rugby world cup. Demolition was one description, the All Blacks simply executed their processes with precision, focus and excellence, and the Welsh had no answer. How could anyone beat that?

Well, the previous week England did just that, they beat the All Blacks to go to the final. They beat them by disrupting their processes, not allowing them to execute in the manner in which their processes dictated they should, which would bring the outcome desired, a win.

As a result, England played the Springboks in the final, lucky to be there by beating the Welsh in the 78th minute. While England were the deserved favourites, they were beaten by a team that did to them what they had done to the All Blacks the previous week. The English processes were disrupted, and they were forced to play the game the Springboks preferred. For an hour it was a slug fest, anyone’s game, although the Springboks had the better of the set pieces, by a good margin, and then two pieces of individual brilliance sealed the fate of England.

I cannot let  this go by without reference to the Australian Wannabees. It seems they had no process, or at least not enough to make an impact when it really counted, against good opposition. How can you have a stable repeatable and yet agile process when those whose responsibility it is to execute are never the same people. The trial, mix, and match of team selection is hard to fathom, and makes building a robust, repeatable process next  to impossible, no matter how great the individual players may be.

In addition, processes must be designed with the end in mind.

No good designing a process that gives you an outcome then putting in place people to deliver the outcome who are not instantly aligned to the behaviours necessary to deliver that outcome.

Designing a process, then executing on it consistently while under pressure, are different. Both are challenging, but they are not the same thing.

  • How robust are your processes?
  • Will they be disrupted by competitive pressures?
  • Are they sufficiently agile to accommodate the unexpected?
  • Does each element of the process fit comfortably into those on either side?
  • Does each element of the process compound to build the impact of the whole?
  • Are you measuring the performance of each element?
  • How responsible are the people in ‘hands-on’ control of each element for the performance of their part?
  • Is there alignment between the processes and the desired outcome?
  • Has the overall objective been broken down progressively into its component parts?

Robust, repeatable processes are the foundation of performance, will yours withstand the pressure?

 

The two things we have to achieve for our grandchildren

The two things we have to achieve for our grandchildren

Oct 31, 2019 | Governance, Leadership

Yesterday I listened to a hysterical condemnation of Woolworths, who had come clean to the Employment Ombudsman when they realised they had underpaid staff.

Another example of big business rorting workers, or more evidence of the impact of overwhelming complexity of a system causing self implosion?

Woolworths is the biggest private sector employer in the country, so it is reasonable to assume they have the will and resources to ensure employees are paid properly. On the other hand, with the complexity of the award systems, staggered and differing shifts, varied hours of operation, and the sheer number of people moving from one job classification to another, across locations, the complexity of the payroll must be staggering.  

Over the millennia, as we humans have become more ‘civilised’ and our social and commercial systems more sophisticated and complex, from the early Greeks through to today, there has been an increasingly delicate balance at play.

Varying supply systems and the bureaucracies that control them, deliver the means by which the surplus from our collective endeavours is distributed. While the cost of that complexity is less than the revenue generated, we continue to become more complex. Once we reach a tipping point, where the revenue generated is less than the cost of the management bureaucracies that enable it, we become pointed at shitters ditch.

Look at almost any part of the ‘management’ systems in a democracy. There are always competing priorities, with vocal advocates on all sides. The tax system, NDIS,  defence, social welfare, personal power Vs institutional power, and on, and on, and on. In Woolworths case, the responsibility to get employees pay correctly compliant with various agreements and regulations, while remaining in control of, and extracting maximum return from the biggest expense incurred in operating, is such a balancing act.

It seems to me we have reached if not passed the tipping point.

As Hemingway asks in the Sun Also Rises:

‘How did you go bankrupt?‘

‘Two ways:  Gradually, then suddenly”

Unless we find ways to address just two challenging items, we will continue to slide, as complexity increases, goals become more fluffy,  and accountability diffused .

Those two items:

Priorities.

Focus.

We have to identify and prioritise the few key things upon which the future of our children and grandchildren are based.

We then have to focus resources on their achievement. It will be long term, incremental, and politically difficult, but the alternative is ugly.

The challenge is the same for any enterprise as it is for the country, only the scale is different, along with the accountability. After all, politicians have 3 or 4 years to make a start, depending on the location, while public companies have  to make adjustments quarter by quarter or be castigated by the stock markets.

I wonder if we mere mortals have the grit and foresight to act?

A very rare few do, they are not mere mortals, they are true leaders.

Have you seen any recently?

 

Cartoon credit: Scott Adams and his mate Dilbert.

 

 

 

A critical antidote to confirmation bias.

Oct 28, 2019 | Governance, Leadership, Management

Confirmation bias is a seductive bitch.

We see what we expect to see, the things that confirm our existing views and expectations, to the exclusion of alternatives. When taken to extremes,  loonies like holocaust deniers, and the ‘no vac’ lot emerge and sprout their fact and logic free poison, and attract a small following, and the rest of us just fail to understand how.

We humans tend to see things as if we were looking out a window.  It consumes less cognitive energy when patterns of the past are just assumed by our brains to be repeated, so that is the brains default. The further back from the window, the narrower the view, but however close you get, there is still a restriction.

The challenge therefore is to find an alternative window through which to look at the problem facing you, or better still, assemble a few others with different windows through which they look at the same problem.

Do  not just  think outside the box, get another box!

One way to use this different box, or window, to continue the metaphor, when facing a challenge is to ask better questions, ones that force the challenge to be examined from different perspectives.

  • Why is it so?
  • Where is the leverage?
  • Have we described the problem correctly, or just the symptom?
  • What is the pain point?
  • What has to be true for this outcome to emerge?
  • For this expected result to become about, which assumptions have to be accurate?
  • What happens if we do not decide?
  • What does this challenge look like in other arenas?
  • Are we relying too much on data?
  • What does the behaviour of others when confronting this really look like?
  • Is the data we have reliable, or has it been ‘managed’?
  • How is this different?
  • Have we simplified the challenge sufficiently for a solution to emerge?
  • What would the devils advocate say?

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Driving change in a business means butting heads with confirmation bias.

This is why you need a distinct catalyst to kick it off, and keep it running, for the change process to be successful.

Ask better questions!

Who, and How, do we trust?

Sep 30, 2019 | Governance, Leadership

 

 

To me it is a paradox that we have never been so connected, and yet we have never been so polarised and isolated.

With all the information we could possibly hope for, we as a society seem to avoid using it to make sensible rational decisions that will stand logical scrutiny. 

We humans evolved in groups of around 150, according to the well accepted theory first posited by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. It is the number of people with whom we can maintain stable personal relationships. 

Richard Edelman in his presentation at the Davos conference earlier this year put it as, ‘Trust is local, and very personal’. The comment is based on the 2019 version of the long running Edelman Trust Barometer. It seems to reflect the ambiguity of our evolutionary selves, limited as we are to Dunbar’s number of 150, and our modern  selves, inundated with ‘friends’ served up by the connectivity of the net.

We have substituted the ‘natural’ depth of a relatively few relationships, with the breadth of many superficial, perhaps illusionary ones.  I have 800 connections on LinkedIn, and while I have been very careful, really only know a small number. There are 6,000 names, email addresses and phone numbers in my contacts list, all of whom I have physically met at some point in the last 20 years, but again, really know only a tiny percentage of them.

In a complementary piece of research to the Edelman barometer, the  IPSOS  Global trustworthiness index showed that scientists are the most trusted profession in the world, followed by doctors. Globally, politicians are the least trusted group. 

In other words, the group least trusted by people are those who are instituting the policies that impact on our lives, often in contradiction of the suggestions of the most trusted group in our midst. Our children will inherit the impact of many of the decisions we make, should we not be making them with the best information we have, informed by those who understand it, in the best interests of those who follow us?

It seems not, and my head hurts trying to figure out why.

 

The photo in the header is lifted from a video taken at the UN last week where President Trump and Teen activist Greta Thunberg presented their differing views.  The most powerful man in the world, Vs a 16 year old Swedish schoolgirl. Who do you trust?

 

 

 

 

3 words summarising the challenges of maximising productivity

Sep 25, 2019 | Leadership, Management

 

‘Rhythm’, ‘Flow’ and ‘Balance’.

These three simple words reflect the ideal state for a process, big or small, in any enterprise. That state where the process is optimised for both efficiency and productivity, which are very different beasts. I have seen highly optimised processes that are still way short of being  productive, simply because there has been too little time spent considering the most productive use of the range of resources consumed by the process.  For example, US car companies used to  be highly efficient at driving the assembly of a car through a production process, but the cars they produced were terrible.

Rhythm.

Everything happens in an orderly and predictable manner, the ebbs and flows of volume have a cadence to them that enables the appropriate level of resource to be planned and allocated. No surprises!

Flow

The product being produced, or the process being followed proceeds in an uninterrupted manner, without obstacles, and complications. Achieving ‘Flow’  should be a core objective of anyone charged with the responsibility of managing a complete process, or participating in any part of a process, which is all of us. In most cases creating flow is like fitting a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle together. Complex at the beginning, but when completed, the picture is obvious, with no irregularities.

Balance

There are always forces acting against both rhythm and flow, forces that tend to distort the process. Seeking to balance all these forces is a job of leadership, and when efficient processes are optimised, all these forces are kept in ‘Balance. It is a  bit like trying to balance a top heavy piece of wood on the palm of your hand, you have to keep all the forces acting on the wood in balance in order to keep it vertical.

When you need some assistance in herding all the cats involved in this crucial but often easily pushed aside exercise, let the experience I have gathered over 40 years help you.