Feb 10, 2025 | Leadership, Management
When most people hear the word dissent, they think, troublemaker.
And sure, dissent can ruffle feathers. It challenges the status quo, pokes at comfort zones, and often triggers defensiveness or knee-jerk loyalty to “the way we’ve always done it.”
But here’s the thing: dissent, when done right, is one of the sharpest tools in your decision-making arsenal.
Dissent can expose blind spots, cracks in logic, and perspectives you might otherwise miss. It’s also constructively contagious. When one person feels safe to question the narrative, others find the courage to share their own opinions. That is how real progress gets made.
Too often, dissent is misread as a personal attack. Instead of hearing a critique of an idea, people take it as a critique of themselves. Cue the drama, defensiveness, and derailed conversations.
This is a sensitive balancing act for leaders.
Effective leaders know dissent isn’t just a “nice-to-have,” it’s essential. If you’re surrounding yourself with “yes people,” you’re not leading, you’re herding.
Leadership means being secure enough to invite challenges to your thinking. It says, “I care more about the right outcome than about being right.”
I once worked with a leader who actively encouraged what he called “impersonal dissent.” It was not a free-for-all. It was a structured process where we played devil’s advocate on every significant decision. The thinking was simple: the more diverse the viewpoints expressed, the more we leveraged available relevant data, the better we would understand the problems, explore possible solutions, and therefore optimise the odds of a positive outcome.
One plus one was not just three, it was exponential in value.
But here’s the kicker: it wasn’t a democracy. When all the arguments were on the table, the leader made the final call. And when the decision was made, the dissenting voices stopped, by convention, the decision became a group decision which all supported. That balance between encouraging dissent but knowing when to move forward was key to our success.
I discovered the downside when that person to whom I had been reporting left the business. I was elevated into his role, now reporting to an MD of the group whose view of dissent was different. Being still young, and somewhat impervious to his displeasure, believing I had the runs on the board to claim the right to ask questions and argue a dissenting perspective, I did not last beyond the first ‘restructure’.
Header courtesy Scott Adams and Dilbert.
Dec 9, 2024 | Communication, Management
From time-to-time leaders and managers must deliver bad news.
Delivering bad news is one of the most stress inducing actions any manager and leader must undertake from time to time.
My technique over the years has been what I call ‘delivering a Sh*t sandwich’.
The bad news sandwiched between two pieces of better news.
For example:
‘Sales are going well and are above budget’.
‘Sales in your area are poor, your colleagues are carrying your short-comings and are becoming very tired of that’.
‘We are sending you to the ‘Harvard improve your sales skills course’ next month hoping it will help you improve.’
This generally works quite well.
The alternative as demonstrated by the following story I found from an anonymous source, is to deliver some outrageous and imaginary really bad news, which then makes your bad news seem like a huge relief in comparison.
“Dear Mom and Dad
I’ve dropped out of school. Bob and I have moved to Alaska. His penal officer has found him a job, and we live above the gas station where he pumps gas. The doctor says my pregnancy is coming along as well as can be expected.
Love,
Jane
P.S. There’s no Bob, I’m not pregnant, and I didn’t drop out of school. But I got a D in chemistry. I just wanted you to read this with the right perspective.”
Note: this last technique also works in reverse.
Rolls Royce no longer display their cars at auto shows. In that environment, they are hugely expensive vehicles, with many very good, and much cheaper alternatives. Instead, they now display at air and boat shows, where by comparison, a Roller is pocket change.
Nov 20, 2024 | Communication, Management, Strategy
When thinking about selling your business ensure you spend time and effort identifying the intangible components that could contribute up to 90% of the value of the sale
Almost 6 years ago I wrote a post that identified intangible value at 87% of the Standard and Poor’s index. An update to that index done by Ocean Tomo now puts the number at 90%. While this is a small increase only, it is off an extraordinarily high base, and the index is based on 2020 numbers. Given the run of technology stocks over the last couple of years, I hazard a guess that the number is now well over 90%. It is the last 10% that is, as everyone knows, the hardest to capture.
This is a considerably greater percentage than the other major stock market indices. For example the European S&P at 75%, Shanghai Shenzhen index is at 44%, and the Nikkei sits at 32%.
This wide disparity comes from the makeup of the indices.
The US S&P top ten contains nine technology businesses the outlier being Berkshire Hathaway. In order, on Nov 16, 2024, the top ten and their share of the index is:
NVIDIA 7.2%. Apple 6.8%, Microsoft 6.2% Amazon 3.8%, Meta 2.5%, Alphabet 2.1%, Tesla 1.8%, Broadcom 1.7%, Berkshire Hathaway 1.7%.
Even amongst these behemoths, there is a strong skew to the top three. This top ten constitute 35.4% of the total value of the 500 companies in the S&P index. The Pareto Principle at work, again.
The trend is also clear amongst the other major indices. From much lower bases, they are all heading towards the increasing valuation of intangibles in the total value of their stock.
Ignoring this trend and failing to respond is leaving money on the table.
Over the last few years, I have consulted on several projects where small businesses have been sold. In each case, the sale has been made at a considerable premium to the standard industry multiples that would usually be applied. The driver of the premium has been the effort put into identifying and articulating the value of intangibles to the purchaser. I’ve called it finding the ‘Rembrandts in the roof’, a phrase I picked up somewhere after reading of a dusty Rembrandt was discovered and authenticated in the roof of an old house in Amsterdam 30 years ago.
Are you actively looking to identify and quantify your hidden Rembrandts?
Nov 15, 2024 | Governance, Leadership, Management
We tend to think that the person on the top of the pyramid has the power to do whatever they wish within the boundaries of reason and the law.
To some extent this is true but there remains only five tools they can use.
Volume.
Price.
Costs.
Culture.
Strategy.
Everything in a business stems from these five fundamental tools when they are focused laser-like on customers..
A leader that has at their fingertips a few simple metrics that reflect these five tools, and focuses attention on the drivers will be successful.
The first three are quantitative. The fourth, culture, is much harder to define quantitatively. However, there are measures that will deliver insight, such as staff churn, Surveys into items such as psychological safety, diversity of training, thought, and experience, and team collaborative success.
Strategy is also qualitative, in that it cannot be measured except in hindsight, by which time, it becomes useful only as a lesson, and driver of future strategic choices.
The combination of culture and strategy, when they are mutually reinforcing, and aligned is a potent combination, that drives the quantitative allocation of resources, measured in outcome by revenue, price and costs.
Header generated by the newest shiny thing in a subsection of the toolbox: AI.
Nov 7, 2024 | Analytics, Management, Marketing, Strategy
How do you anticipate the reactions of competitors to your initiatives?
First you must understand them holistically and well. The better you understand them, specifically the strategic and tactical frameworks they work with, the better able you will be to anticipate and respond. You should also reflect on the leadership of your competitors, as their behaviour drives their decision making.
11 questions to ask yourself and your team:
- Will they react at all?
- Will they see and understand the strategic and tactical drivers of your actions?
- Will they feel threatened?
- Will mounting a response be a priority?
- What options will they actively consider?
- Do they have the right mix of resources to respond meaningfully?
- Which option are they most likely to choose?
- How many moves ahead do they look: do they play draughts or chess?
- What metrics do they use that will influence their decision making?
- What are the lead times required to respond effectively?
A final and key question in this volatile environment that is often missed:
- Who might emerge to be a competitor, who could change the dynamics of your market that currently would not be classed as a genuine competitor?
Commercial history is littered with failures to see the possibility of a disruptive new competitor emerging from left field.
Anticipating competitor reactions to your initiatives is a competitive superpower.
It enables you to strike at their weak points, and repel their advances at minimum cost to you, while having them consume resources for no result.
The downside of focusing on competition is that your customers do not see the world as you do. They are looking for the supplier who best addresses their need, solves their problem, or scratches their itch.
Those who spend their time looking over at their competition are risking taking their eyes away from their current and future customers. Lose sight of your customers, and one way or another, you will be eaten!
Oct 21, 2024 | Lean, Management
Seeking highly efficient processes is the holy grail of most operational managers.
Is it the right goal?
‘Garbage in.. Garbage out’ still applies, even if the garbage gets a slick coat of paint on the way through.
The process as implemented might be efficient, optimised, but does it deliver the outcome in the most effective way?
A typical example is from a while ago when the NBN was (compulsorily) connected.
The technician turned up just within the time window, to do the connecting work, and did it quickly and it seemed, efficiently.
After about 45 minutes, he informed me it was all done, all I had to do from there was connect up the modems around the house.
When I expressed surprise, that until everything worked, the job was not complete, I was told: ‘Not my job, I have 7 connections today, and I am behind by almost an hour’.
Clearly there was an optimised process of installation by NBN subcontractors in place, the final few feet being the responsibility of the retailer. However, as far as I was concerned, I had paid the compulsory $172 for ‘connection’ and it was not complete until everything worked.
It may have been an efficient process from the perspective of the NBN, but from the perspective of someone who had paid for a service, it sucked.
The technician was prevailed upon to ensure that the job was complete, to my eyes. The problem for him was he failed to meet the stupid KPI imposed by someone seeking an efficient process, rather than one that optimised the outcome.
Header image is obviously courtesy of AI, and is therefore not optimised by a human.
