Harley's Blog

It's HR's turn now

harley — Fri, 23 Sep 2016 15:23:32 +0000

We’ve had industrial and cultural revolutions, we’ve had political revolutions too, all of these things have shaped the way we do business. In the evolution of the modern business models, our knowledge of Sales, Marketing and Finance processes are extremely well advanced. So much so, you might say that they have topped out. IT too has seen a tiny flattening out of possibilities in supporting our businesses, so I believe it’s HR’s turn now.

What’s new to know about HR and the services they offer, I hear you ask? Well I see giant multinationals and even small to medium sized business built like battleships with their departmental silos still not understanding that without massive change, it’s only a matter of time before they become obsolete.

So what can HR do? For a start they are extremely well placed to find a way of transitioning their organizations into agile businesses held together by small, dynamic, self-managing teams. They have the potential to shape the kinds of organizations that the students just starting out at University this month will want to work for in a few years’ time.

And if you think this is too far-fetched, I can show you examples of it working already. I can show you simple ways of changing meeting structures to allow agility and involvement, and dare I even say ‘innovation’ into deadly weekly departmental meetings.

So there are reasons to be optimistic, to be cheerful about the future. But the journey will only start when HR realize that perhaps it’s their turn to take the lead to make the biggest change in the way we do business.

Have a good week,

Harley

Add comment

Inheritance Tracks

harley — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 06:30:26 +0000

I am just old enough to have worked in a company where one addressed one’s bosses with the formality of Mr or Mrs or Ms. Communication was extremely formal and apart from anger or frustration, it was unusual to use any emotion in a business environment conversation.

Apart from the ‘Mr. and Mrs.’ part, sadly, far too little has changed in our communication styles. Business leaders still tend to be too stiff and facts based. Because of this they are unable to truly inspire the kind of commitment from their staff that they would deeply like.

I imagine this will change in time, maybe when the present leadership layer has either retired or been replaced. However, the trouble is that in some organizations the level below the leaders (N minus 1, 2 and even 3) are still tending to mimic their bosses’ communication style.

Most Saturday mornings on BBC Radio 4, there is a five-minute program called ‘inheritance tracks’. Each week a guest selects one song from their past (something that reminds them of their childhood or student days) and another that they would like to pass on to the next generation. Some of the guests are able to weave extremely moving stories around their chosen tracks. They invoke powerful images of what life was like in their world and then, in an instant, switch to what song they would want to leave for the next generation and why.

This week I ran an ‘inheritance tracks’ workshop as part of a three-day transitional leadership training. The results were staggering. Not only did it bring the participants (who hitherto hardly knew one another) much closer together as a group of people, it also demonstrated just how tough emotionally they found the exercise.

Over the three days we worked inheritance tracks into our learnings. We studied powerful speakers and we studied each other, observing when things worked and when they didn’t. We prepared, we practiced and in just three days every one of the group had reached a significantly higher level. After all, how can you possibly take people somewhere other than where they are headed if you cannot convince them with an authentic and inspiring speech? Logic and graphs and threats never won campaigns or delivered sustainability.

Have a good week,

Harley

Add comment

Presence

harley — Sun, 04 Sep 2016 11:52:52 +0000

When it comes to describing leadership styles there are two words that are often confused, especially by people with English as their second or third language. ‘Charisma’ and ‘presence’ may seem similar but their difference is important. While charisma is the kind of indescribable charm that is typically associated with extraordinary rock and movie stars, 'presence' is much more fundamental and, luckily more common. And while it can sometimes be fun to have a leader with charisma, it is certainly not essential. However, the same cannot be said for presence. All leaders need to create an air of presence, without it, their level of influence is very likely to be limited.

Some say that ‘presence’ is the first element of charisma; I see it as the ability to be noticed without showing off. For example, a school teacher with presence can enter a noisy class room and it will become silent without them having to say anything. While somewhere down the school corridor, another teacher can shout and shout as much as they like and their voice remains ignored.

Presence can be both positive and negative, it can be welcoming or scary. It begins with confidence and self-respect and ends with posture and personal appearance.

While I was talking about authenticity and acquired behaviours with some colleagues recently, I suggested that the best actors (no matter how shy in real life) can create bags full of presence on stage or behind the lens. With it, they can improvise their way into our hearts and minds, making us believe that what they are experiencing is the real thing. But is the actor's presence inauthentic? Surely if they communicating an important message which has a desirable result, can it ever be wrong? This leads me to another question.

When exactly are we acting? I personally like an element of controlled behavior, it’s what allows us to communicate with others more effectively. As long as we believe in what we say, what can be wrong with selecting how one is going to communicate it? After all, isn’t that what the best leaders do?

Sure there are times when our emotions take over, it’s only natural. But who wants a blubbering president every time they have to communicate tragic news? I believe that we all suppress and amplify our thoughts to a certain extent, but only to obtain the results we desire. Well at least, I guess that’s what we do?

Sorry for all the questions.

Have a good week,

Harley

Add comment

Trapped

harley — Sat, 27 Aug 2016 07:49:36 +0000

I don’t believe that it is exaggeration to suggest that most people feel trapped in some way. And certainly all of us have felt so at some stage in our lives. This week I witnessed being temporarily trapped as a commuter and I asked myself, 'how many of my fellow commuters are likely to feel trapped in their jobs and careers too?

The heavy weight of mortgages, parenting, and adult responsibility is something that, luckily, us humans are pretty good at bearing. But for a project or change manager whose jobs it is to create a team and lift individuals into a spirit of cooperation and purpose, personal entrapment can be a real challenge.

Of course we can reduce the topic above down to a conversation about motivation. But in order to bring an individual to a higher level of performance, one needs first to release them from the boundaries that they feel are entrapping them. Sometimes it’s purely workload but much more often it is something much deeper within themselves and their lives. If one can be released for even just a moment, the tiny glimpse of something beyond where they are now can be more than enough to spark thoughts that they may have never had alone.

In our private lives un-entrapment often occurs after times of seismic change; be it the loss of a parent or sibling, the ending of a relationship or even something as mundane as a change of house of job. All these events can spark an involuntary new beginning or re-invention of oneself. However, I believe that we can also be released via other, more desirable channels too. For example, by experiencing great art in the forms of magnificent architectural spaces or paintings or most especially for me by music and the human voice.

With September almost here, I am reminded of Richard Strauss’ The four last songs. They are in many ways about release. The setting of Hermann Hesse’s words for the first three is not only sublime but it also prepares us for the fourth and the chance to finally loosen our grip on whatever we believe is holding us back. Perhaps they are not for everyone. You need to be in the right place to start with and have some space of your own to allow yourself to become lost within them. But when you do…

Have a good week,

Harley

Add comment

World beating excellence – ‘it’s a system’ not a mindset

harley — Sat, 20 Aug 2016 07:43:16 +0000

For me, the Olympic games is more about the taking part rather than the winning. However, that being said, one can only look at team GB’s medal results with absolute amazement. How can a country so small out-perform every other country in the world apart from the US? It was not that long ago that ‘Team Great Britain’ used to be right down at the very bottom of the medal tables with only the odd hero, here and there proving themselves to be extraordinary. Today Great Britain is even above Russia, China and Germany. So what’s changed?

Unlike the ‘Leicester City’ football club story, team ‘GB’s new found status cannot be put down to a new manager or team attitude. It has to be much more than that. And it is.

For a start, it’s a question of money. For every medal won, Great Britain has invested more than 5,5 million EUR (coming mostly from the National lottery revenue). But money is only a part of the story. The secret lies in knowing exactly where to invest and how. In business we call this process building a business case. We use Net Present Value (NPV) and other matrices to measure how likely we will be in achieving a good return on our investment. Not just in money but in terms of time and effort too. “If we weren’t doing this, what else could we have been doing, that may have proved better for our business?”

It appears that the UK sport’s governing body does exactly the same thing with the heads of their various sporting disciplines (athletics, swimming, cycling, hockey etc.). Basically they ask three simple questions.

1. Give us a list of the names of those people that are likely to win an Olympic medal at the next Olympics and/or the games thereafter.

2. Explain in detail how much money you need and exactly what you will do with the money should we invest in you.

3. How many medals (Gold, Silver, Bronze) do you feel confident in delivering?

The result of this process is that any sport (or person) that is unlikely to win a medal in the foreseeable future, is extremely unlikely to receive funding, no matter how beneficial the investment might have proved in other terms.

I just wonder if this is A) right in general. B) right for business? Either way, no one can deny the Olympic medal score list.

Have a good week

Harley

Add comment

The unexpected advantages of being multi-lingual

harley — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 13:31:29 +0000

In a week where we have learned that being multi-lingual improves one’s ability to concentrate, solve problems and focus, it was an additional pleasure to learn that people who are bi-lingual are also less likely to suffer from dementia. Now this might seem like holiday news hocus-pocus but, having read an extremely interesting article (‘Why being bilingual works wonders for your brain’) by Gaia Vince in The Guardian, I also learned that with each new language one learns, one acquires a new personality too!

According to scientists, it has been proven that multi-lingual people’s responses to questions and circumstances varies depending on the language mode they are in at the time.

Gaia Vince gave an example of an English / French bilingual person who is asked their favorite meal. They answer differently depending if they are asked in English or in French. If in English then their brains will associate more with eating in the UK, and suggest meals commonly eaten in England. whereas if in French, they will tend to select typical French dishes.

Taking this further, it is commonly known that German people tend to be rather strategic and goal oriented, whereas English people tend to be more action oriented. And, apparently, all this can now be explained via language. The English can just add '-ing' to the end of a verb and leave it at that, while the more complex German grammer requires a reason to resolve it nicely. such as: (English) John is running versus (German) John is running to the bus stop.

So what does this mean for those of us that write important communications for multi-lingual environments? The bottom line is that it is not just a person’s ability to read and understand or speak in another language that is important but how they will react depending in which language they receive the message.

So, dear reader, I suppose that you are reacting (notice my use of the ‘ongoing active’ -ing) differently to this blog depending if you are bilingual or if you are in the minority group of humans (+/-40%) that only speak one language?

Have a good week,

Harley

Add comment

“You’re cold and uncaring” - “You’re too emotional!”

harley — Sat, 06 Aug 2016 11:32:05 +0000

There is nothing more distressing than having to work in an environment of personal conflict, where even the smallest thing can spark off a very heated argument. This is especially because you can find yourself being pulled in opposite directions as those involved seek to find moral support.

It’s strange how life goes but recently I have found myself embroiled in a number of completely disconnected situations where deeply entrenched animosity is seriously impacting, not only the individuals concerned but also on their organisations and ultimately families.

Obviously, I am not going to go into specifics here in public but needless to say, I have spent a great deal of energy and time trying to understand the fundamental causes of each dispute. If you like, to find the real ‘why?’ Apart from the obvious; one person (or group) wanting something different from the other, it appears that often one side tends to argue based on rational logic while the other argues from an emotional standpoint. From a diversity point of view, I am happy to report that this is not definable as a male / female phenomenon.

This is how I see things develop:

1. The logical people believe in the rationality of their argument and expect others to see things the same way as they do.

2. Because something very deep is at stake, the emotional defendants will chop and change their arguments against the logical, to try and win at any cost. When I look deeper I find that often their real problem is not the issue being argued about but something much more fundamental, such as a deep seated personal feeling of rejection or powerlessness or inferiority, or even a sense of moral injustice – “it’s not fair!” etc.

3. The logical, because they are logical, remain by their original standpoint, adapting only as and when subtle improvements to their argument emerge.

4. The logical’s inflexibility tends to make the emotional even more angry and upset. And because the emotional are unlikely to feel ready to voice their real feelings, especially with those that appear to be ‘attacking them’, the situation is very unlikely to ever come to a sustainable resolution.

Consequently, while one group might be arguing what is best for the business from a logical standpoint the other is resisting from an emotional one.

So what to do? In my role as change manager, my approach is firstly to try and defuse the situation and then to win everyone’s confidence. Once a basic level of trust has been established I then attempt to go down to the deepest emotional level s of both sides to discover the real drivers of the argument. If (and it is a very big if) I manage to achieve this I can then set out a strategy for helping each person (or side) to manage their emotions to find a way of separating them from the topic of the argument itself. This is extremely difficult and I am not a professional counselor, to say the least, so it does not always work. But sometimes you have to try.

In my experience, bringing in specialists sometimes helps, sometimes it makes things worse. So it is no wonder for me that partnerships in businesses, personal relationships and families sometimes break to the detriment of everyone involved.

Hoping you are not suffering from a reoccurring personal conflict and that if you are, someone is helping you through it,

Have a good week,

Harley

Add comment

The good old days

harley — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 13:03:31 +0000

Recently we have heard some politicians promise to take us back to the ‘good old days’ in order to make their countries ‘great’ again. And yet when their voters were asked when exactly the good old days were, they could not could come up with a period where, under scrutiny, was not as good as it is today.

In business too, it is vitally important not to be nostalgic. Good periods in the past, always had their downsides and to be honest, are often not relevant to the current situation. I do believe, however, that there is a great deal we can learn from history, especially on the impacts of technological change. But history only best serves as an indicator of the direction in which we should not be heading, rather than the one we should take.

The secret to making any significant improvement in business or society is to invent new visions that do not fix a problem as such but rather create new environments where the old way is no longer even relevant. For example, at a certain time, you need to forget about making chemical based camera film better and invent a totally new approach to capturing images, such as with the invention of the digital camera.

We can take this argument further by creating a parallel with the creation of new laws. Laws are nearly always created as a reactionary process. i.e. when something we don’t like happens we try to legislate to prevent it from happening again. However, the real challenge is not to try and stop the bad things from happening but to create an environment where they are no longer relevant. For example, when people and goods were transported by horses there was a great deal of cruelty to horses. And even if politicians saw a benefit for themselves to pass laws to try and reduce the level of cruelty, the only real solution was to invent a world where horses were no longer needed for commercial reasons.

It’s a bit like the challenge facing our borders. Ultimately you have two options, to try and invent better and more efficient ways to defend them, or to find a way to dispense with borders altogether. After all, it’s not that radical a concept. Our European forefathers found a way to break down the borders and tax barriers that surrounded their cities in order to stimulate free movement and trade. I appreciate that, for now, someone might still see a benefit in checking my passport at the border, but I am yet to still to be convinced that there is any real benefit in doing so.

Today, I am constantly on the lookout for people that are prepared to think a long way outside the box. People who can visualize, philosophize and invent new business solutions based upon new concepts, rather than outdated paradigms. Solutions that look into the future and offer the potential of something significantly better than what we have today.

Have a good week,

Harley

Add comment

How to draw an alien - a lesson in change reticence

harley — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 10:08:12 +0000

According to professor Thomas Ward, if you ask a bunch of people to draw an alien the majority of them will present you with something looking like this. However, commonsense tells us that if mankind were ever to detect alien life the chances are that the alien would look anything but like a human. And yet, because cinema once created an image of an alien with human like features, we tend to follow the norm and depict them that way. And so it is that once something has been invented, we tend to find it almost impossible to invent radical redesigns, but get stuck in cycles of minor modifications. This process is known as inadvertent plagiarism.

Professor Ward’s findings go a long way to explain the extremely slow pace of change in business environments. At times our nineteenth century notion of what a company is, how it is structured, managed and developed seems impossible to shake off. We seem only able to very gently modify their constructions. Relatively small adjustments, like centralizing or decentralizing processes are still seen in many organisations as radical changes.

The internet too, is taking much longer than one would expect to change even the basics of our traditional distribution and retail structures, where the price we pay in the shop is over six times the original manufacturing cost, and the entity that proportionally the least is often the producer.

Therefore, if we are to expect our existing personnel to re-design our existing structures then we must, at the very least, try to inspire them to think the seemingly unthinkable. And when they do come up with something extremely radical then we need to take them very seriously, if genuine innovation has even the slightest chance of breaking through. After all, nature only advances through a series of errors and therefore we need to encourage errors if we are to advance at all.

My advice for your next brainstorming session is to begin by drawing an alien and to paste the results on the wall. The artist whose work is furthest away from ET, should not only be given a prize, they should also be encouraged to lead the creative process from there on!

I am off to re-draw my alien, only then will I begin to tackle a distribution process I am struggling with at the moment.

Have a good week,

Harley

Add comment

“This company is insane”

harley — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 13:04:37 +0000

Is this what you think about your company? Is this how people in your team would describe your organization to others? Luckily for us change managers is that most companies are indeed insane but only according to the definition as per Albert Einstein who famously reported:

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results each time.”

It is so easy to criticize and to make telling observations. It’s also pretty easy to come up with great new ideas. What is much more difficult (as explored in last week’s blog with our CIO’s) is to get people to behave differently; that once accepting that change is a good idea and needed, to actually do something about it. Because this is so difficult we find our companies far too close to Einstein’s definition for our liking.

Perhaps one of the big differentiators in great scientists and successful people in general, is that when they see something is not working, they immediately try another way – and keep trying other ways until they find one that works.

Edison, Franklin, Tesla, Babbage, Maxwell, Smith, Faraday, Ford, Einstein – the list goes on… all these people had enormous powers of concentration, inquiring minds and the ability to stay open and look for different ways of solving a problem.

Change management, if it is to offer any benefit at all, needs to provide the missing elements to motivate people to pick up their good ideas and to implement them in a sustainable way. And yet still, so many companies fail to recognize that this is the key area where they are going wrong. It’s not in their organization charts, or in their worst processes, it’s in their inability to be able to do anything about them.

If I, on a personal level, am to do anything useful at all with my remaining years of working with clients, it will be to give them the tools and the encouragement they need to bring about change. The challenge is, there’s only one of me and many potential clients and although through The Partnership we are gaining more leverage, we are still only a drop in the ocean. I know my team are not the only change management specialists in the world but it seems so hard to find others that understand even the basics of how to get teams moving in a new way.

So yes, ‘insanity’ it’s an accurate diagnosis for many organisations. However, we know the cure. All we need to do is to find enough qualified change managers to administer it. After all, we should only need one per client as it is not the change managers that need to change, it’s their client’s! – Correction: Change managers can also be found suffering from ‘insanity’, mostly brought on by two drivers: 1. Exhaustion at their place of work. 2. Tackling their own ability to change when it is required within their environment! :-)

It’s a wonder we advance at all – but we can, believe me!

Have a good week,

Harley

Add comment