Learning Leader

The most important thing you must work on

2011-12-30T11:58:31+00:00

I'm indebted to the writings of Michael Gerber ('The E-Myth Manager' and other associated titles) for explaining the common error that many of us who lead growing businesses can fall into: we get seduced into working mostly in the business rather than working on it. I find that this time of year is particularly good to stand back and reflect more broadly on how it ought to develop.

However, I find even this perpsective is becoming a little limited for me. For example, time and again, I hear experienced venture capitalists remark that the pitch is often not the thing that swings it for them in deciding to invest in this company or that; they find that they do not so much invest in a business plan or a business model as in the leaders themselves. They invest in the people; people who strike them as so remarkable and invigorating that they will back them with their own money, all in order to become part of their story.

So I find myself standing back from working in the business, even from working on the business, and working on me. This becomes a different take on the tradition of New Year's resolutions. The question I ask myself is, 'How can I develop in 2012 in four areas of my life?'

Physical.
For me, this primarily affects matters of diet and exercise. How can I so eat and exercise that the energy I bring to leading my company goes up? I've come to value regular exercise in my struggle to gain energy. Often I will get ideas - such as the one for this post, for example - during or at the end of a workout; presumably because there is more oxygen coursing through my brain. So it becomes stupid for me not to exercise.
Mental.
How am I stretching myself with my own reading and study? Major influences in my life are the other blogs to which I subscribe, the books I read (more history, agile management, and human psychology these days), and the Scripture my vicar occasionally asks me to preach on. Keeping a regular journal and writing this blog also help me keep sharp.
Emotional.
As someone with a tendency to the melancholic, I find I must work consciously on this one. One of my favourite quotes from C.S. Lewis is, 'Joy is the serious business of heaven.' I aim to be more thankful, to smile rather more, to sing more, to play more. I find being around my grandchildren helps enormously.
Spiritual.
As a Christian I practice the traditional disciplines, but privately as directed by my Rabbi (see Matthew 6:1) so I'm cautious about going into more detail here. I find these habits have helped keep me grounded as a businessman as to what 'success' really means, and they bring me back regularly to focus on what really matters.

Of course, all these areas affect each other, so I must attend to them all.

If you, dear reader, think I have missed anything, I'd value hearing from you.

As we all enter 2012, may I wish you and your loved ones well, a year in which we all grow. Remember the most important thing any of us can work on is ourselves.

The Story of the 100th Monkey

2011-12-28T09:38:36+00:00

I came across this story about in one of the groups I subscribe to on LinkedIn. It is attributed to Ken Keyes Jr.:

The Japanese monkey, Macaca Fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years. In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkey liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant.

An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.

This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.

Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes -- the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.

THEN IT HAPPENED!

By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!

But notice: A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea...Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes.

Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.
Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people.

But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!

There is a similar observation in the Heath Brothers' book on how change can happen, Switch: How to change things when change is hard, in human society. They record the remarkable rehabilitation of many American troops who returned from Vietnam addicted to heroin. Such was the strength of social norms back in the communities that these troops returned to, that it had a powerful change affect in helping these individuals get clean and establish new lifestyles.

We look for change to happen sometimes over too limited a field - a few key individuals here and there; when change gains traction more and more people come on board. We now have the term 'The Wisdom of Crowds'. There is also the Power of Crowds.

The 'bubble' and why you should worry about it

2011-12-02T20:35:14+00:00

Gary Barlow, song-writer and member of Take That! was asked recently how he, generally considered all-round Mr Nice Guy, could be so cruel and cutting wth some of the contestants he was judging on the UK TV's "X Factor". The excuse he gave was that when he found himself up on stage behind the judges' table he experienced being in "a bubble" that made him suspend his normal considerations for people.

Also interviewed recently on BBC's Radio 4 was a former journalist for the British tabloid newspaper "The Daily Star". He was being asked about Lord Leveson's inquiry into alleged excessive and intrusive practices of tabloid journalism. He described the Star's newsroom as a sort of "bubble", where the personal pain inflicted on subjects written about and on their families was rarely, if ever, considered; merely whether a story would "stand up" (boost circulation).

This dissociation of what we say about people with the consequences on them isn't confined to reality TV judges or tabloid journalists, of course. We learn that bankers, politicians, wheel-clampers, burglers and bureaucrats also have their own bubbles that they live within.

The world right now seems replete with bubbles but rather short on empathy, the ability to put oneself in another's shoes.

This week, I've been leading our leading Change Management Practitioner course and some delegates have commented on the theme of empathy that has emerged from a number of authorities in this field: Daniel Goleman, Stephen Covey and Carl Rogers, to name but three. There is an overwhelming argument from such authorities that empathy is a key skill in influencing the people around us.

I think this world would be a better place if we were little more self-aware and burst a few of these bubbles. What do you think?

With presentation skills practice makes perfect

2011-11-22T10:40:51+00:00

One of the techniques I use is to practice. I always give my worst presentations in private. Rehearsing has given me the crucial feedback that my written notes/mind map would never give me and saved me from much public embarrassment, and saved the public from many a tedious, incoherent rambling.

Although rehearsing in private is hard work and feels artificial I have learned to value it as a private discipline. More times than not I would prefer to put the first rehearsal off. I find myself drawn to the graphics I will use and squander many an hour searching for that illusive 'right' image on the web.

On average I like to rehearse three times. It gives me a fluency of phrase, a confidence to be less dependent on my own notes/mind map, and helps me hear first the tempo and emphasis of what I have prepared.

Malcolm Gladwell in 'Outliers: the Story of Success' formulates a rough rule that it takes about 10,000 hours to master any complex skill, be it ice hockey, a musical instrument, or software development. Whether this figure is absolute for all skills or even true when it comes to public speacking, I don't know. But what I do know is that most of us only get a few crucial minutes in public to get our message across with clarity and impact. Private rehearsal is the only way I know of giving ourselves the mastery development time for this crucial influencing skill.

I'm speaking tomorrow, in fact, at the Best Practice User Group's Annual Members Conference in Milton Keynes. I'll be speaking on Programme Communications within MSP: Best Management Practice from Experience. If you see me there, please come and say 'hello.

P.S. I promise not to do 'Death by PowerPoint'. I'll be using Prezi.

Agile Stakeholder Engagement

2011-11-18T08:50:59+00:00

The whole process of stakeholder engagement must not be thought of as purely linear. Management guides on this such as MSP(Managing Successful Programmes) have this sort of sequence:

In reality it looks more like this:

I came across this account yesterday by a programme manager leading a huge physical move of his organisation to new HQ premises:

“I found from talking to staff that many knew little about the programme and were anxious to know more. Consequently I developed the ... Strategy.”

He goes on to describe the new communications channels he set up and how he planned key messages that flowed through them.

Once again we find that the best management ‘map’ may be useful, but it is not quite the ‘territory’ we find ourselves travelling through.

Audio Book a Hit! ... #PRINCE2

2011-11-17T14:30:54+00:00

Recently we launched an audio series on the increasingly popular PRINCE2 project management method on our website... and it's really taken off!

What we set out to do was to record 'informed conversations between John Edmonds and me, where I interrogate John in a friendly, conversational sort of way, since John was one of the authors of the most recent edition.

I think people appreciate that we have hit upon a fairly accesible way of getting into an otherwise dry management reference.

Now ... where are the out-takes?

The Art of Training Alchemy

2011-11-07T14:23:04+00:00

One way I explain 'what we do' is as a sort of alchemy. We turn the base metal of dry management theory and turn it into the pure gold of business performance.

Now although parts of the PRINCE2 reference book on project management include passages originally written by yours truly and more recently and extensively by my colleague and fellow-blogger, John Edmonds, nevertheless I will admit something...

... the PRINCE2 reference is quite a boring read.

It's boring if you try to read it from beginning to end, as you would, say, a novel. It's dry if you read huge chunks in one go. (Although I do know clients who have done this.) It does not have any unifying 'story' of a project to lead you through it by example.

So our business is simply to bring this dry book - and others like it such as MSP, P3O, M_o_R, Making Sense of Change Management, and so on - to life. We turn the lead into gold.

I say 'simply', but these seems to be beyond many in the management training business. 'Bringing to life' for me includes:

catering for different and complementary ways of assimilating information (the visual, aural, intellectual and kinaesthetic)
the element of colour, surprise and fun
encouraging clients in what they aleady know and understand
bringing fresh, value-added stories, images and research to reinforce the core material
using conversation to lead people into new, profoundly more effective, ways of seeing things and doing things.

I've bemoaned often enough the black-and-white slide copies that pass for course materials or study guides, how PowerPoint visuals are mistaken for dense bullet lists, how material is presented in a way that suits the lecturer, not the delegate.

I continue to bemoan these practices because they are becoming all the more common, it seems. In these lean times, we see a resurgence of this as the norm, particularly as the market demands 'commodity training' to be delivered ever more cheaply.

When will the people who buy such nonsense ask themselves what outcomes they are really buying? If you pay base prices, you are likely to get base metal.

Strategy: Making it so

2011-11-01T09:32:03+00:00

I was talking with a friend last night and our conversation turned to our work.

"What is it your company actually does?"

"We help our client make their strategies happen."

My friend, a retired accountant replied

"That's interesting. Do you help also them do their strategic planning?"

"We can do, but in our experience that is a relatively well-tilled field. The really hard part for our clients is putting their strategic plans into practice so that they get the outcomes and performance they really want."

My mind flipped back to Captain Jean-Luc Picard. It's relatively easier to say the equivalent of , "Make it so." the senior executive feels its a courageous, defining moment, and she can easily delude herself that the decision is the hard part done.

But really it is all in the execution. All our planning and decision-making comes to nothing if we can't make it happen.

So my friend probed further:

"Is there such a thing as a poor strategy?"

"Of course."

My mind touched on the most common reasons for poor strategy:

I've seen strategies written in a vague, abstract and contradictory manner.
I've seen strategies that are otherwise worthy, but are out-of date; the world has moved on, and such strategies no longer address current or breaking external drivers.
Outside the few senior elite, I've heard rumours of a strategy, but no one else is quite sure of what it is.

But whatever the strategy is, it stands or falls in its execution through programme, project and change management, and the joined up governance between these.

Rear view mirror management

2011-10-20T15:10:55+01:00

We've been doing research around what people in programmes and projects actually think and do. One of the really disturbing phenomena we have uncovered is that most project managers spend a lot of time reading and writing reports about what has happened.

Consider this for a moment. The focus appears to be in the past. The past is past. It has happened. It's history. So it is immutable. (... unless you are a journalist or a politician.)

Only the future is malleable. As leaders we can only affect future outcomes.

Some of our subjects claim to spend over 40% of their week working on reports against achievement. This is equivalent to driving by the rear-view mirror, an accident waiting to happen.

So why do we have this obsession with status reports that are out of date soon after they are written? The answers are dreary and deceptive. I'll leave that for another article.

Meantime, think about 'when' you focus your attention as you lead your organisation through change. Is it in the past, now or in the future?

Finally: What's the difference between an accountant and a leader? It's 'when' they focus their attention.

Pipes, Waste, DNA & OBASHI

2011-09-22T16:18:42+01:00

I've just read the trainer report of our first OBASHI Foundation course. It was a two-day event run at Eynsham Hall, Oxfordshire earlier this week. It seems to have gone extremely well, with Richard Rose, the course owner and trainer, being very positive about the course outcome and the potential of OBASHI.

What is OBASHI? Well, an approach for all people - from senior executives to technical people - in an organisation to agree and discuss the structure of that organisation, identify where there may be waste and duplication, and decide what the future capability (design) of the organisation should be.

'OBASHI' is an acronym for Owner, Business Process, Application, Server, Hardware, and Infrastructure. (When I first heard the term, I thought 'OBASHI' was the latest management concept coming out of Japan...)

Developed originally to map the complex configuration of pipes in oil refineries, this technique was translated to general business processes and systems. Using OBASHI can, for example, go a long way in helping define a programme Blueprint, of both the current capability and the target capability.

The two-day course is accredited and ends with a short exam. Alternatively we already have an e-learning product for this qualification. Click here to know more.