Those of you who know me will, I hope, recognise me as a pragmatist. Do what you can and do it well, seems to be an approach I can deliver that produces tangible benefits. However this can mean missing out occasionally on the benefits of going for the “stretch” goals. Now my argument is that the risk of trying to over-deliver and failing is too high a price for a client to pay. My belief is that one should aim to deliver what makes the client happy.
I adopted this approach on a Stag weekend I organised recently, in my capacity as “best man”. It was reasonably safe to book a city centre hotel in the UK which everyone could reach easily. I could organise meals, activities and nights out that could flex with people’s ability to attend over the weekend. Well, all went well, people who wanted to attend could afford it and everyone enjoyed themselves, particularly at the tank driving and battle at www.armourgeddon.co.uk
However, I am plagued by the question – could I have done a better job, if I’d taken a few more risks? The comedy club at www.thehighlight.co.uk was risque without being risky!
So that brings me to the question … do you want it on budget, on time and good enough or would you risk schedule, resources and cost-overrun for a more innovative implementation?
Please comment!!!!!
When I saw the front of a popular car magazine this morning, I thought it cannot be true. Bugatti have brought out a more powerful Veyron, a full 200bhp more powerful than its predecessor. Which lifts the top speed by an incredible 27 Km/h or in old money about 17 mph.
It is so obvious to ask why did they bother? Why push so hard to raise the top speed from an eye-watering 253 mph to and ear-bleeding 270 mph? You already know the answer – because they can!!
This brought me to another discussion I had only this week, about when should you invest in your business? Particularly, larger capital equipment investments. Do you invest when it is quiet, or invest when it is busy? When you are busy, why would you want to bring production down and suffer larger opportunity costs than during quiet times? Durrrrr. Yet up and down the land investment decisions that will yield higher production efficiencies are being deferred. In case of what? Probably just in case a recovery never comes and they go out of business? In which case, you might as well start packing up now!
These aren’t difficult concepts, it is not like trying to explain the new movie Inception. 
However it may well be that the planning and preparation requires that extra effort to fight against the dead hand of custom and practice. If you think I might be able to help prepare something with you, I’ll see what I can do. Suffice to say we’re having some real impacts in our credit constrained world at the moment.
Of course, if you think this is the wrong time to invest, I’d love to hear from you!!
In uncertain times having a vision is a difficult thing, 5 years off seems a very long way away in business terms. Having an “emergent” strategy and moving with the opportunities seems perfectly sensible. But what of your values? Do your values as a business change? Where do the values in your business come from? Who creates them?
Now of course I’m talking about the REAL values in the business, not the stuff that PR stick in the Corporate Governance pages (who do they think they are kidding?). For me the values in the organisation come from its leaders (who are not always the CEO or MD). The values may be communicated by statement or policy or strategy but in reality they come from the questions they ask. Those questions tell the business what the CEO is interested in and slowly the management will shift focus to align their efforts with what it believes the CEO is interested in seeing.
I was with a company recently where an out-going Human Resources manager felt it was OK to treat contractors with less courtesy than permanent staff. The telling phrase was “just a contractor”. Now call me old fashioned but a person is a person is a person, surely the expectation of courtesy is independent of employment status…. and surely outright professionalism would mean an HR Manager, worthy of the title, would have a value set a country mile from such attitudes. In the end your values will find you out.
So values stay with a business even though the vision may change. Ultimately vision can be re-set and strategy redeveloped to suit. If your values are wrong, how would you know? Indeed, what would you want them to be?
I worked with Tom Fraser on the AMP amalgamations back in 2001, now there was a man battling to imbue a business with professional values and he was respected by the people within the business for wanting to do the right thing as well as doing things right, but that’s another theme for another day.
In the meantime, courtesy and respect cost nothing!
Having been involved in managing, leading, directing and now consulting on change for the past 11 years, it is difficult enough to change one body of people and processes. To bring 2 or more groups together under one banner adds a further degree of complexity; to bring former competitors together is a whole different story. By far and away the biggest challenge was the bringing together of the UK operations (London Life, NPI, Pearl and iii) of Australian Mutual Provident. When you have a spare moment ask me about the highlights and the low lights.
(Image courtesy of http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServlet?Filename=Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articles/0230150304.html)
When you bring together disparate groups of people you have to be ready to lead through conflict. This transition is sometimes stylised as FORMING, STORMING, NORMING AND PERFORMING. It requires prepared, educated, skillful leadership to make this a rewarding process. Fail to prepare your team leaders for this challenge and you are preparing to fail. Effective leadership acts as a pressure relief valve, distilling concerns and issues into actions and learning. It is a time to identify and incentivise good performers and an opportunity to witness and address underperformance.
Change is always very personal and good leaders monitor not only how their teams address the tasks in hand, but how the individuals in those teams also perform. (Image courtesy of http://www.vinepartnership.co.uk/index.php?page=more-self-help). Their progress needs to be monitored because it is probable that people will migrate left from time to time, even if their longer term direction of travel is from left to right on this diagram.
So, if your changing and you think it is about equipment and processes and a bit of sheep-dip training, you may be preparing to fail. To avoid any nasty surprises try our “Change Readiness Audit” and prepare to succeed!!
Copyright Viz - Roger Mellie, The Man on Telly
Well a week into the Telethon that is the coverage of Leader’s debates in the UK’s elections, I thought it was time to discuss communication. As per usual, the confluence of conversations provides an opportunity to muse on an issue and today I thought it was about time we covered this important topic. Not least because we’re seeing it done well and poorly … all in one project!
I was hugely enthused by my meeting this week with Freddie Rostand, a former BBC film maker (http://www.rostand.co.uk/). For the first time on a Change programme we are using videos to cascade information to the people who are affected by the projects. They have proved very successful and have succinctly communicated the benefits experienced by colleagues involved in the work so far. In a 10 minute DVD the reticence to get involved melts away, as people see folk they know within their company, recount their tales of the journey from old to new. Incredibly powerful and as Freddie says, “in a video age, it is how we expect to get our information”.
So in our video age, will the enthusiasm for Clegg translate into action in the polls, well I think not entirely, because communication is about the message as well as the medium. No doubt he will do better than expected and this is surely to be at Cameron’s expense. With no overall majority it seems likely that Clegg is certain to find himself in one government or another, who’d have thought that 6 months ago?
It seems we all like a bit of telly, how about using it to make some of your communication work?
Wednesday April 7th, 2010
As is the way with my blogs, it is astonishing how evidence seems to flood in when I have an observation to offer. We have recently been involved in re-pricing a piece of work. The client had said they only wanted the plain “vanilla” of what we could offer but after starting to work with us, realised we could do so much more for them. So now they want the whole Tutti Frutti with crushed nuts … at Vanilla prices! More of which later.
In a further example of influences on pricing, I was staying at a refurbished country inn recently and I got chatting to the proprietor. I told him how nice it was to be staying in such a lovely old hotel, given so many of them are in such a poor state of repair. He said he had Travelodge and Premier Inns to thank for it, because there typical £60 per night charge (excluding breakfast) had become the norm for the business traveller and more of these were choosing to stay away from the battery farms and in these more interesting establishments. This meant they were able to lift their mid-week prices quite considerably, giving more revenue to justify further investment in the hotel.
The final example came from a tendering process we were running for a client. The winning bid was the lowest cost and the highest quality, making its selection a formality. They had the foresight to try to find out how much they had won by but in reality they already knew they had left money on the table. So now the client is getting Tutti Frutti at Vanilla prices … which brings me back to our negotiations.
Know your market, know your client, know your value and you have a much better chance of pricing correctly, and how did we do? Well we’re being paid for the Tutti Frutti but they’re getting the crushed nuts for free!!
There is a lot of nonsense talked about Customer Service and even worse done in its name. At best it should be the route to increased sales at increased margins. At worst it is an extra layer of expense compensating for regular under delivery.
Every business, organisation and project has to plan to serve its customers, that way you maximise their potential and you minimise the risk to your future sales and reputation. Howeever how many do fail to plan and miss out on this valuable opportunity.
Well I have seen good and bad this week. A client has reported a spectacular improvement in sales due to the adoption of our structured sales process and the training. We have been able to deliver on objectives 6 months ahead of schedule. Great news for the client because sales are increasing and he can save money on his training contract with us. Great news for us because the Chief Exec now wants us to participate in higher value work related to the expansion of the sales team.
…. and the bad? Well we were working jointly with one of the Big 5 consultancies on a project at the moment. Contracts are up for renewal. Now it looks like we are going to double our presence on the project and the Big 5 guys are going to be let go … there’s only so often you can let the customer down!
In October there will be a conference on Leadership at Chelsea Football Club and no I’m not joking and yes I plan to be speaking at it! Though I have to admit I do hope the furore over John Terry will have passed by then.
Anyway, the usual debate is about whether Leaders are born or made and so I thought I would share a thought or two on the topic. You see I think that people sometimes confuse Leaders and Leadership. I believe it is possible to learn all that is required and develop the appropriate skills to demonstrate Effective Leadership but only circumstances find Leaders. National crises tend to throw up the sort of strong leadership that people look for when they want to be taken through the storm. The very same Leaders fade without the crisis to provide a contrast. In good times people look for more amenable, accessible, knowledgeable people. In times of crisis they look for clear vision, conviction, purpose, charisma and effective communication.
So what? Well the truth of the matter is that investors and management place great stock in people who lead businesses. That is why Chief Executives are paid more than other members of the board. So what is the search and selection process looking for:-
Leaders or Leadership?
Is the talent development programme developing Leaders or Leadership?
If you would like to consider the topics further I’ll let you have a copy of some presentations I have delivered on the topic, all I ask is that you attribute anything you quote.
… and to finish off, since I have been so irreverent as to include a picture of Churchill, I thought I might butcher another of his more famous quotes which I saw applied to “blogs” …
Never in the field of human endeavour has so much been written by so many and read by so few …
If you’re reading … let me know what you think!
Wednesday February 24th, 2010
The full quote is “To err is human, To forgive is to be divine” and is attributed to the 18th century poet Alexander Pope. In this he is stating that it is usual for humans to make mistakes….. so if that is the case, how do we plan for it? You see there is a much earlier version of the quote which goes back to the Roman, Seneca the Younger, where he says “To err is human, To persist is of the devil” in other words, if you keep making the same mistake then there is something more malignant at work.
Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong and teaches us to expect the unexpected. In Risk Management there are many tools for undertaking this work and in crafting your risk strategy, the right application of these approaches will help you plan for the best and prepare for the worst.
This week a client has asked us to complete a risk audit and prepare business continuity plans. Our 4 step plan is designed to help that business give visibility to its risk management and confidence to its staff, investors and customers.
On the 19th April there is a talk entitled “People Matter more than Ever” at the Royal Automobile Club on Pall Mall, London at 5.30pm. I have a couple of tickets, so if you would like to join me, please let me know. Fabio Capello will be in the house that evening to, but he will be at the Annual Football Dinner!!
Monday February 15th, 2010
Is there room for passion in business or is it all about the hard-bitten logic of the bottom line?
Well having spent a good part of Valentine’s weekend watching 6 Nations rugby, I have to say I believe it is about both! It is clear to me that those who know what they are trying to do, have a better chance of getting to where they want to be; whereas those who BELIEVE they can get there, truly optimise their chances.
PASSION is belief made personal and we all benefit from this level of commitment to a goal, it gives us purpose and motivation. Logic helps us define our goals but not the drive to get there; logic gives us the mechanisms by which we can measure our progress; direct our enthusiasm and control our effort. I have worked in businesses where the belief of the business leadership does not reflect the facts about that business’s capabilities; I have also worked in businesses that are prepared to sacrifice the passion in its people to drive bone-cutting cost savings. A business losing that passion can find it hard to re-grow.
So what is driving your business forward? Are you optimising the chances of success? Or is your enthusiasm just burning cash?
Will your grit determination grind out mediocre survival; will your belief executed under control bring success to you inevitably or will your belief bring the unlikely into your grasp. I’ll leave you to decide which games of rugby I’m talking about!! – No prizes, but I’d like to hear your guesses!
