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Tag Archives: leadership

Crazy Thinking, The Way Forward

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Ear PhoneDo any of these sound familiar to you?

  • “Our business is more complicated than other businesses.”
  • “Our products are regulated…must be in compliance…are more sophisticated…and so what you don’t understand is…”
  • “That’s not how things are done around here. We can’t make money that way.”
  • “Our technology won’t let us do that.”
  • “That’s not what our customers want”

The so called experts in your organisation are likely to be the source of such comments. They are also likely to keep repeating these statements, not because they are true but because their minds are closed to other possibilities.

Your experts are unlikely to help you with innovating within your company or industry. Doctors are unlikely to revolutionise health care, teachers won’t change the way schools teach, and your financial advisor won’t be coming telling you about cheaper or simpler products in the near future.

Expert language is often a symptom of frightened leadership, usually within a mature industry or sector. The CEO who uses such language is firmly clutching onto ideas that ‘used to work’ not creating ideas that ‘will work’.

This is not all bad news because for every such CEO an opportunity is created. How many readers remember the well know Apple advertisement that boldly stated “because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do”? Such crazy people are considered idiots by the experts but they often turn out to be winners in the end. Many people in the UK will remember Amazon’s entry into the marketplace and the huge losses it sustained initially. Now who’s laughing?

Crazy people are now challenging how we think about health care, legal services, accountancy, education, insurance, banking, energy, publishing and more,  yet the experts remain set in their ways. Our experts derive their power having shown that their way of solving a problem works well. I love a great solution but the issue is that nobody like to challenge these experts. Over time their solutions might still be good (or not). How will we know?

Things change, and fast. It is thus reasonable to assume that our solutions will not remain valid for all time. The greater the speed of change, the more we need to check that what we are doing is still ok. So what can we do? Here are 3 things that will help but you can always goa little crazy and think of more.

  1. Do not hire experts from within your industry. They are likely to see things as your people do. Instead, look for people with a specific problem-solving ability. For example, if you are having issues with queuing in a bank or supermarket why not look for experts who have similar experience at Disney World?
  2. Engage with your newest recruits who are not set in their ways.  Ask them how they see your biggest challenges.
  3. Use negative or reverse brainstorming. Gather a team of smart people and give them the challenge of generating ideas and strategies that would drive your business into the ground or simply beat it. This exercise should highlight previously unforeseen threats and also unforeseen opportunities.

Entropreneurship – Leadership for Today

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ambiguityEntropreneurship is a term that I have invented to describe the qualities and behaviours required for the type of leader that all organisations need NOW. This is why I strongly believe that in calling it Leadership for TODAY not tomorrow. Who wants to wait for something that is going to improve the fortunes of their organisation?

So what are we talking about? Borrowing Entropy from the second law of thermodynamics we have the concept of chaos or randomness which always increases. I am not suggesting that we make our organisations become ever more chaotic. I would like to give you two ideas to think about for now.

Firstly, you may remember a science experiment at school that introduced you to Brownian motion. Particles within smoke were shown to dart around like the lottery balls on a Saturday night Lotto draw. We also know that when people are allowed to interact then ideas tend to be created, modified and come to life. By increasing the ‘organisational temperature’ we can increase the likelihood of of people interacting (rather like our smoke particles). This means more ideas (and also an improved culture).

Secondly, we cannot let chaos or ambiguity increase indefinitely, nor should we waste our time trying to control it completely. Let us use another metaphor here. Imagine we have a flammable material in a barrel with no openings in the barrel. Once ignited, the barrel will explode unless we spend more and more energy trying to contain the fire/explosion. What if we do try and contain the flammable material but leave an opening for combustible gases. We are not now expending so much energy but we have now built a rocket!!

Metaphor is the best way to express the ideas but they do translate readily into business. We do not want traditional constraints (managers) but want visionary leaders who will allow a certain degree of organised, focused and healthy chaos. The leaders will set the direction but the organisation will actually be run by those at the sharp end.

The Workplace of Tomorrow

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The Workplace of Tomorrow 1Despite all of the predictions of a futuristic workplace we all seem to inhabit vastly different offices and factories. So will there ever be a workplace where everything is ideal? The answer is probably not because of the compromises that must exist but it is likely to offer flexibility and empowerment to the people that work within it. Such a place must try to accommodate the requirements of the business (usually in line with commercial stakeholders) and those of employees (and social stakeholders).

These fall into 3 main areas:

1. The organisation, Leaders and Managers
2. Employees
3. Working environment

Leaders and Managers will find their roles changing, they will be the ‘senior citizens’ of the organisation and will no longer exert influence through power and hierarchies. Influence will be through their experience, knowledge, wisdom and vision for the future. These senior citizens may very well have portfolio careers (a term used often by Charles Handy) and work for more than one organisation. They will exert influence but with less cost than the full time management of old.

Employees are the citizens, still able to contribute knowledge and experience but not to such an extent. Contracts of employment may very well be zero hour i.e. employees will not be contracted for a minimum period of employment per week. Instead, their efforts will be summoned on demand. Perhaps 30 hours one week and 40 the next (or none). This will give businesses flexibility but could also leave employees some freedom to create valuable IPR in their time off as a trade off for the new contracts.

The working environment is perhaps the thing that we are currently closest to. Efficiency dictates some sort of hot desking, perhaps hot desking with feeling so that the immediate working environment is not sanitised and can be decorated or personalised. With a distributed workforce, a certain amount of sickness absence and site visits, we no longer need the amount of office space that we did in the past. Making such environments ‘modular’ also means that we can add or subtract capacity easily.

The name of the game in the future is compromise and flexibility on the part of all parties.

Undercover Boss – would you try it?

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Undercover BossMany readers will have seen either Undercover Boss or Undercover Boss USA where the boss goes undercover, working with frontline staff to see how the business is really performing. I’m sure that these companies are selected for their entertainment value but they do throw up some real issues.

In many cases the businesses are not performing but the bosses seem not to be playing the blame game and realise that in many cases head office is a little out of touch. What they do seem to get though is that if they support their staff then they will get the best out of them and stand a fighting chance of beating the recession.

So, you’re the boss. Do you dare to go undercover and find out what is really happening? How will you react when employees do not worship your photograph or have less than ideal things to say about you, their pay or working conditions? What will you do when you find that front line staff are abused, spat at or are targeted by armed robbers?

You’re not the boss. Is your the sort of business where the boss would come and find out how you are doing? If so then great, if not then how can you attract his attention? If the boss (or bosses) is not interested then I recommend you look for a new and better job right away!

Finally, no bosses should be going undercover anyway. Employees should know who the boss is and how to contact them (about important issues) and be able to equate those at the top with company vision and values. Bosses should also have their finger on the pulse and have a much better idea of the workings of their business and the opinions of frontline staff. Sounds like a call for a cull of middle management – make up your own mind about that!

Good Boss, Bad Boss?

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Good boss or bad boss?Do you identify with any of the following?

  1. You have criticised an employee openly in public
  2. You have taken credit for the work of others
  3. Your employees are anxious in your presence
  4. You expect employees to do what you tell them without question
  5. You believe employees should automatically know what to do without guidance
  6. You shout or scream at others in the workplace
  7. You publicly belittle employees as a method of punishing them
  8. You have favourites amongst your employees and you make this known
  9. You dislike or fear  delegating
  10. You constantly check the work of others and micromanage constantly

The more of the above statements you identify with, the greater the chance that you are a ‘Bad Boss’.

Think about the last time you had a ‘Good Boss’. I bet that they:

  1. Were humble about their own achievements
  2. Showed integrity
  3. Were knowledgeable
  4. Allowed people to work unhindered
  5. Provided support when necessary
  6. Were keen to try new things

And if you had a ‘Bad Boss’ they probably:

  1. Were never there when needed
  2. Wanted to know what you were doing and why
  3. Usually said ‘no’ when you suggested new ideas
  4. Made you feel as if you were not trusted
  5. Looked glum most of the time
  6. Talked about themselves a lot and listened very little

I think that you get the idea. Now which type of boss are you and what are you going to do about it?

Leading Public Sector Change

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In the current economic climate the public sector in the UK is under extreme pressure to continue to deliver the services that we need while cutting budgets. The remedies adopted by those who class themselves as leaders seem to fall into two categories:

  1. slicing thorough the organisation
  2. undergoing some form of ‘transformational change’

The first remedy is easy to implement. If we need savings of 10% then let us trim 10% from everything. This takes no account of what we do, it is just simple belt tightening and when services start to suffer our leaders just cry ‘we had to do it to make ends meet’ and ‘its all the fault of the government’. For those who cannot understand why this approach is bad, let us use the metaphor of a soccer team. A club that has a large ground, a reasonable squad of players and ground and catering staff. Times get tough and the accountants in charge cut 10% off everything each time there is a round of spending cuts. What can happen?

  1. We lose seating capacity in the stadium (10% each time) so eventually we have to lock out fans
  2. We lose ground and catering staff so eventually the pitch does not get prepared and we are also unable to generate extra revenue through match day catering and functions
  3. The number of players eventually falls below 11 so that we do not even enough players to form a team
  4. We can no longer function

In these situations common sense should prevail and we should prioritise but compare this to the public sector where this course of action is being actively pursued.

And now we come to the dangerous part. For those who have realised that simply hacking off 10% is not good we now introduce the ‘Transformational Change Programme’. My own personal view is that if an organisation must change then it is up to the leaders and managers to first of all decide on the reason for the change, what the post change organisation will look like and then make the change happen. However, it appears that many public sector organisations are  embarking on a course of action that goes something like this:

  1. Decide on an arbitrary cost saving
  2. Create a transformational change programme at a cost which will save an amount equal to or more than the above
  3. Draft in one or two outsiders who have successfully achieved this elsewhere (unlikely as this is not a good way of doing things)
  4. Set up a standalone project to analyse the organisation using ‘Lean’ or similar techniques
  5. Implement the streamlined processes

On the face of it this looks like a good plan but there are flaws. LEAN is meant for manufacturing or situations which can be treated as such, with highly replicable processes and little or no scope for the ambiguity that humans introduce. LEAN does not cater for humans.

Next, because of cutbacks the composition of our change projects means that they are staffed internally. This can mean that one or both of the following happen:

  • Staff are taken away from their ‘real’ jobs, leading to an accidental accelerating of our 10% cut strategy
  • Many staff are untrained for carrying out the required business analysis or project management tasks with little context specific knowledge

This may then lead to a lean looking set of business processes which can be flawed but which are then forced upon largely unsuspecting employees, reducing motivation and increasing fear and uncertainty in the current economic climate. Many leaders will say that they will ensure that this never happens but both of the above can never achieve their desired objectives.

What does work then? Well a system that:

  1. Gains buy in from front line staff
  2. Increases effectiveness
  3. Reduces management overhead
  4. Can reduce the need for compulsory redundancy
  5. Uses your own staff with minimal outside intervention
  6. Is low cost (compared to the alternatives)

Such a methodology exists. Colleague Dr Paul Thomas has coined the phrase Simplexity as a combination of simplicity and complexity theory. It has now been successfully trialled in a number of organisations. Get in touch to find out more, or see my other blog posts Ban The Boss and Ban The Boss – update.

 

The Future of Leadership

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The future of Leadership (and also Management) continues to be debated. It is widely recognised that things cannot remain as they are. We are in a challenging era and we need organisations to be more effective (not necessarily efficient), to be better places to work and to be sustainable. Up until now these have mainly not be attainable apart from in a few organisations. These few do, however, show that what we are all striving for is in fact possible. The question is, how on earth do we get there?

There are professional bodies that see themselves as the custodians of Leadership or Management, however are these the bodies to take things forward? In fact should there be representative bodies at all? The problem is that we are trying to paint a picture of the future which a) obviously does not exist b) which we wish to be different from the present.

This means that if we use the current knowledge and models from any existing sources then we are likely to be interpolating in order to create the future. Even current management thinking tells us to be wary of this. Surely what we desire is a way of extrapolating from what we already know. Fans of Douglas Adams will only be too aware of how the ‘Infinite Improbability Drive’ was extrapolated from an exceedingly hot steaming cup of coffee in The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy (please read it if you have not already done so). If Douglas Adams had interpolated then he might have just created a frothy Latte rather than an ‘Infinite Improbability Drive’.

So what does this mean for Leadership? In terms of concrete actions, I am not entirely sure. However, to find out I believe that we need to paint a picture of the future which does not have to be complete fantasy but which should not be limited by current thinking. This should maybe focus on organisational structures (or not), behaviours and the ways in which employees communicate as well as the requirements of organisations. The let us consider how we get there.

We should not throw away what we already know but neither should we accept an interpolated future just because there are aspects that we are unclear about. If there are no Leadership and Management models then let us invent them, if we do not like the language used then let us create new language. Even if we cannot do that, let us experiment and create a prototype of the future which others can borrow or add to.

The danger is that this will be seen as too high a price to pay for creating a brighter future. What price are you and your organisation prepared to pay?

Ban The Boss – see the BBC’s Business Doctor at work

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Colleague Dr Paul Thomas is known as the BBC’s Business Doctor. He has some unusual, almost radical, ideas about how to make the workplace a better place to be whilst at the same time making the workforce perform more effectively. This is a record of his time working with the waste management team at Blaenau Gwent Borough Council which was made into an hour long programme for the BBC.

These ideas can be applied to public or private sector organisations. If you would like to discuss how these ideas might be applied to your organisation then please get in touch.

Note: If you want to watch the video on the VEOH website or download the full length version then click on the VEOH logo in the bottom right hand corner of the player.