the human factor

Perception is Fundamental

2008-04-05T17:38:00.002Z

We often talk as though perception - and the possibility that a particular person's perception of reality is somewhat distorted - is some kind of anomaly. All right-thinking people see things as they really are.

The truth is a little different. The clients we do recruitment work for sometimes get a little spooked by the way in which behaviours we have predicted (purely on the basis of that person's answers to the Birkman Questionnaire) turn up in real life even though there was no sign of them at interview*. How did we know?

(At this point, please feel free to imagine Mr Bean saying "mmmmagic!")

Actually, no magic involved. Measure how someone sees their self and how they see and understand the world, and you have a far more accurate guide to how they will behave than anything they could possibly tell you about their own behaviour (even if they are doing their utmost to answer truthfully).

The reason for this is that we each have a pretty much unique combination of perceptions which, far from being anomalous, are the most powerful determinants of our behaviour. Nor are they pathological; actually, the best any of us can ever be is likely to be an expression of our behaviour when everything is lining up for us with our fundamental perceptual biases. If I think the world is a place where people need permission just to get on with the job, then I will shine when that is in place for me. If I believe that people need individual support, then my best is likely to be seen when I know I am getting support as an individual.

So beware of absolutes in the realm of organisational development and performance. There simply isn't one approach to OD or management or performance which fits all. You need to know how your people see the world in order to get the best out of them.

*We have developed an approach where we use the data coming out of the Birkman Questionnaire to develop a tailored set of interview questions (often supplementary questions) which are amazingly powerful in surfacing evidence of these predicted behaviours, positive and otherwise. Some things are better seen at interview than after they join your business...

Evidence is better than Hypothesis

2007-03-12T08:14:00.000Z

This one is for Benji, who endlessly asks me why I haven't posted since December!

Title is a deliberate wind-up - kind of. Actually there is a serious point, which I will illustrate using the Birkman Method®, the core tool in Elaura's armoury.

People often ask what psychological or even psycho-analytical construct underlies the Birkman. Answer - none. Unlike the plethora of tools which are based around - usually - some form of Jungian analysis, the Birkman is an evidence-based tool. That is to say, Dr Birkman's original research involved asking individuals to describe themselves and others, and then comparing that data with what the people who knew that individual best said about them. Not surprisingly, there was a gap between an individual's self-perception and what those who knew them said; but the gaps themselves had definite structure, which was the first step in developing the Birkman into the powerful tool it is today. This referencing of self-reported information against actual performance has been a feature of all subsequent development of the Birkman as well, and has turned out to have enormous predictive power.

A simple example. There is a Birkman scale called Public Contact. In fact the upper end of the scale is called Public Contact, the lower end Detail. People who come out as strongly oriented towards Public Contact are those who love communicating and interacting with people - including the general public - in ways which mean they have to field questions without notice and think on their feet. Conversely, those who come out strongly orientated towards Detail are those who may still be willing to communicate with the public, but for whom crossing all the "t"s and dotting all the "i"s first is absolutely critical. These are people who are not willing just to wing it.

Bring on two subjects. One is an internationally renowned public speaker; a man who could probably read the Yellow Pages to a crowd and change their lives in the process. The other is part of a senior management team at a local authority, responsible for all their media contact and in particular for selling the authority's story and successes to their constituency.

So what are their Public Contact - Detail scores?

If you answered High Public Contact, Low Detail for either, you have demonstrated exactly why evidence is a better starting point than stereotypical thinking masquerading as hypothesis. In fact, both are Low Public Contact, High Detail. Once you look at the data, it is much easier to arrive at a robust hypothesis. The Media Officer is OF COURSE responsible for thinking through the impact of every minor press release before it goes out; she knows it is no good winning a small cheap victory in one area which then gets the Authority into hot water in another. Likewise, once we know the renowned public speaker has this pattern of scores, we start to notice the way he practices new material and tries it out endlessly on friendly audiences before launching out to the wider public, and how those who travel with him can tell his stories word perfect - BECAUSE HE is WORD PERFECT too. Does he handle questions without notice? Yes - by turning them around into questions for which he is confident of the answers.

It is easy to understand why we would assume that a fluent Public Speaker or an outgoing Media Officer would be someone who was happy to think on their feet; but that isn't hypothesis, it is just a bad guess. Finding out what really makes for specific success is far more interesting - and useful - than just guessing. Or at least, that's my hypothesis...

Christmas in the Sun

2006-12-08T11:11:00.000Z

No more posts until after New Year - off with the family to my native heath down under. Have a great Christmas...

Spending Pennies to Save Fortunes...

2006-12-04T19:09:00.000Z

One feature of corporate life which never fails to fascinate - and deeply depress - me is why so many companies would rather accept the very high probability of a huge loss than make a definite decision to spend a small amount to reduce that risk.

Years ago I was involved in looking at the financial data across MNCs of the costs of failed expatriate assignments - in other words, what it cost if you sent executive X and his family to work in another country and it didn't work out. Even 15 years ago, the average cost of such a failure was around US$150k - and the likelihood of such a failure was better than one in two. Simple training for the executive and his family which was shown to reduce the risk of such failure by (from memory) around 85% cost on average around US$1500 - and many MNCs wouldn't spend that money, EVEN when confronted with the data.

Maybe times have changed in cross-cultural training; there is certainly better awareness of the issues now in MNCs (if not in all of their smaller brethren). But before you sit too comfortably, forget the cross-cultural aspect and think about a much simpler scenario: how much are you spending to determine whether new hires are likely to stay with you long enough to become productive?

Why not work out the cost to you, in time and money, of going through a recruitment exercise and then losing or letting go the person in the first six months? Direct costs in such a case are normally held to be 75-100% of annual salary, opportunity costs comprise lost time (normally the time the person was with you plus three months) and what you could have earned through their work if they had been suitable (which is where this gets more situational). As a guideline, a failed recruitment in a fairly junior position earning no more than £12k could be costing you in the region of £25-30k in direct and opportunity costs. The multiple only increases with more senior positions.

Testing for role suitability and cultural fit, anyone?

Not your typical accountant...

2006-11-21T09:47:00.000Z

Finding the right person for a specific role could be a lot different from finding someone who is typical of those who are most successful in that kind of role.

Que?

You can build a very accurate composite profile of the behavioural traits and operational perspectives common to those who are very successful in a clearly defined role - for example, accountants. The profile is that of "highly successful accountants". You will be able to find job candidates who closely map onto that profile. If your brief is to find the person most likely to succeed as an accountant, then start with the top three matches for your accountant profile.

But...

How often is that the real brief? You are actually looking for someone who will work well within a specific culture or with the members of a specific team; or who will bring some fresh perspectives; or who has potential to grow into a more senior role; or whatever. Just throwing your most typical accountant (or sales manager or consultant or mechanic) into the role may give you a great accountant - who absolutely fails to perform in this specific appointment.

That's why I try to encourage individuals in workshops who have great track record in a particular set of career roles and yet turn out to be absolutely atypical of their peers. The fact that you are atypical for the role means that you most likely bring to each post some atypical strengths for that role - strengths which your organisation couldn't access by appointing just any old accountant / sales manager / consultant / mechanic.

When you identify those atypical strengths and understand how they play in your role, you have probably identified the USPs that mean you are "not just your typical accountant..."

The Eldest Son and the Family Business

2006-11-17T12:40:00.000Z

Although the last post wasn't specifically about Family Businesses as much as it was about any tight-knit organisation, McKinsey and the LSE have done some very interesting research into the management of 700+ family-owned businesses in Europe. Their finding was that there was a high correlation between a business being run by the eldest son of the family and under-performance, at least viz-a-vis family-owned businesses run by professional managers.

You can read details of the study in the McKinsey Quarterly (2006 Number 3 or at www.mckinseyquarterly.com) but one of the key conclusions reached seemed to be that precisely because the OWNERS of a family-owned business are in a stronger position wrt accountability than, say, shareholders in a publicly listed business, they can throw their net more widely to get the right external managerial talent on board without fear of losing control of the business or losing the long-term intergenerational perspective that is one of the great strengths of a family-owned business. The underlying message is the same as the point I was making in the earlier post, namely that diversity of perspective, properly understood and managed, strengthens an organisation.

(One of the things that makes family-owned businesses so fascinating to work with is the fact that you can map three distinct and overlapping constituencies using a Venn diagram: family members, owners and managers. Some people fall into only one category, some into two and some into all three. Wise and successful family-owned businesses seem to have in common that they make pragmatic, evidence-based decisions about who fits into which circle...)

Keep it in the Family?

2006-11-15T14:44:00.000Z

Succession is a central issue, not only for family businesses (although for them it is usually THE question), but also for close-knit organisations of any kind. What is going on in the heads of most of those in the second tier of leadership in such an organisation - or at least whenever they think of the top job becoming vacant - is "will it be me... or her?"

Such a situation can be immensely traumatic (to see that this isn't just a matter for family businesses, read Jack Welch on both his own succession to the top job at GE, and then Jeff Immelt's after him). Even so, things have to be pretty bad for the family to look outside (and following the theme of truly enormous but close-knit businesses, it took impending catastrophe for the IBM board to look outside for a Lou Gerstner).

While "growing your own", is generally a very sound proposition, more organisations may need to consider bringing in outside blood, not just for the very top job but sometimes to create a new layer near the top. This is particularly so for steadily (or strongly) growing organisations who have been TOO successful in reproducing after their own kind. If you have a Chief Exec and Senior Management Team who all see the world in much the same way... that is a very dangerous situation. It is even more dangerous when each of these people is a star performer in their own right.

It's the old story again of "what you can't see will most certainly hurt you". We map the perspectives of SMTs sometimes and then try mapping the issues they are finding the most troublesome against those perspectives; time and again with an SMT who have very similar perspectives, the problem areas are being MIS-DIAGNOSED. These tend primarily to be issues which fit in a domain the SMT collectively can't really see, so they reframe them - wrongly - within the field of vision they do have. That is double trouble: you have a problem you are not well equipped to solve yourselves; AND you have distorted it to make it seem more familiar (but it just won't respond to your usual approaches).

So to take a fairly bald example, a strongly sales-oriented SMT may not see that the issue is about inconsistency of service delivery, and they reframe it instead as an issue of service experience. Unfortunately, the fact that the customer's connection is only available 40% of the time will not ultimately be mitigated by the best call centre scripts and friendliest staff in Europe (although as I write this, I can't help feeling that would be a start!).

And that is when an SMT needs to bring in someone with a different view of the world - AND give them sufficient cross-cutting authority to blow the old consensus apart. (That is a different scenario from "we brought in an outside guy but he never made his mark")

Of course, you need to know what you are doing, and especially how to measure and map these perspectives. Otherwise it is very easy to simply bring in the absolutely wrong outsider - and noone wins when that happens...

Directive, Delegative, Decentralised or Disastrous?

2006-11-08T10:11:00.000Z

Re-reading a book about the North Africa Campaign of the Second World War, I was struck by the leadership and management dynamics of the British Eighth Army during a particularly low point in their fortunes. This was the time of "the Cauldron" when for at least three days the main part of the DAK (the German "Afrika Korps") lay trapped and ready to be annihilated, only for the British to do nothing; then with the DAK resurgent, the British thought they still had the Germans on the ropes... until Tobruk fell with the surrender of around 35,000 South African and Indian troops.

The fault lay not with the troops who surrendered, nor with those who escaped back to the Egyptian border, but rather with the top levels of command in the Eighth Army. General Auchinleck (the "Auk"), C-in-C for the Middle East issued commands from his Cairo base, based on the reports he received from the field commander, General Ritchie. Ritchie in turn issued commands to his subordinates, the Divisional Commanders, and they in turn to the regimental and brigade commanders. The problem was that virtually no one in the chain of command saw an order as an order; at every level, the person on the spot felt able to ignore or alter orders because of their greater appreciation of the situation (as they saw it). To compound the problem, General Ritchie often acted as if his commands had been carried out, even when he knew they hadn't. This led to the Auk telling the Prime Minster that things were going well and the DAK close to defeat at the very time when in fact the Eighth Army had just lost their last 150 capable tanks (leaving them with just 50 very incapable "I" - Infantry - tanks), the Gazala line had been abandoned and Rommel was steaming towards Tobruk.

Unfortunately, just this kind of breakdown in command, communication, intelligence - even reality - happens in organisations today.

Broadly speaking, there are three valid approaches to leadership and management. One is "Directive" - what we might call command and control. I issue an order - and I follow up to ensure it has been carried out. In the course of following up, I may become aware of factors which have arisen which lead to me modifying my original order; but an order is just that - not a suggestion. And I am very much in the loop.

The second valid approach is what we might call "Delegative". Essentially this is about agreeing what the overall plan and the required outcomes are and then delegating the responsibility for execution to subordinates. My role then becomes one of ensuring that they have the resources they need, that any road-blocks are removed, that any changes in the environment which require a change in plan are addressed in a timely manner. The objective is still the objective and the plan needs to be executed - and, yes, I am still very much in the loop.

The third valid approach is one we could label "Decentralised". This is taking Delegative a step further: we agree what the required outcomes are, but the plan and its execution and the monitoring of the immediate environment and reshaping of plans are down to the unit leaders. I simply monitor results against agreed outcomes. I am available if they need my input. Because I am watching outcomes like a hawk - guess what: I am still very much in the loop.

Which one of these is best? Surprise, surprise - they all work wonderfully well in the right setting; provided everyone knows and sticks to the same approach. In theory, the Eighth Army was Directive. In both theory and practice the DAK was Decentralised - and it was the alignment of theory and practice that was the DAK's strength. Where the Eighth Army broke down (until the coming of Alexander and Montgomery) was that the Auk and Ritchie acted as though they were Directive, expected that they had to live with something more like the Delegative model - when in fact the regimental and brigade commanders often acted as if they were Decentralised; and both the Auk and Ritchie were so far from being in the loop that when reality threatened to break in, they actively pushed it away.

With hindsight, Montgomery was far from being a brilliant field commander. He was often woefully pedantic, BUT: he shook Eighth Army by the throat and let them know that henceforth, there was going to be one way - HIS way - and that any disagreement ("bellyaching") would lead to rapid reassignment to the rear echelon, regardless of the bellyacher's rank. Aligning the theory and practice of leadership was enough to tip the balance and (thanks to the Allies' greater numbers, which they had always enjoyed but rarely profited from) win the campaign.

The moral of this story might be something like, "there are many ways to lead and manage, so choose your model - and then stick to it relentlessly."

Put it in a Box

2006-11-06T17:32:00.000Z

Sarah's insightful comment to me at lunchtime: "you don't compartmentalise things". She had been surprised to find that my morning in the office had included so many apparently unrelated action points. She on the other hand is far more likely to say, "this morning is for x, this afternoon is for y". (If you speak Birkman, we are talking low and high Structure, respectively) She then reflected on partners in a very successful small business with whom she had done some work last week; this was a key issue for them as well. One (more like me) was highly situational, found it easy to change priorities and work longer or shorter hours as the moment demanded. The other (like Sarah, higher on Structure) saw working hours as a given, and would work in a more programmed manner.

Is one approach better than the other? No - once again, PROVIDED both understand the different dynamics and perspectives involved, having both is better than having just the one.

While I am happy to be me, I can see where there is a downside to my situational, non-compartmentalised approach to life; those who are more programmed can tell where things start and finish. For me, all demands - work, family, church, whatever - can end up being a seamless robe of "things needing doing" that can run from dawn to dusk - and frequently does. So I actually help myself when I do some broad blocking out of time and say "this morning I am doing x, this afternoon I am doing y".

And the opposite camp? It will take a braver man than I to tell any high Structure person I know that they should loosen up and just go with the flow more...

Framed II

2006-11-03T12:40:00.000Z

So, to follow on from yesterday's post: whether you are in Sales or Accounting or Parts or Design; problem-solving is a big part of every day. Last time I said you might have a small problem if you assumed that everyone else framed a problem the same you did; and a much bigger problem if it turned out you were right. Unpack that, please...

Here's an example that will make things clearer (if you want a different one, go to the bottom of the Previous Posts list and click - you should then see Building Better Boards; that post contains a four-colour-coded example).

You can measure a person's approach to two closely-related thinking activities: the way they tackle problems and the way they come up with ideas. The first we can set up as scale from Linear (address the presenting problem directly using steps A,B and C to get the most immediate solution) to Global (step back from the presenting problem and try to understand the context in order to come up with the most comprehensive solution). The second we can also set up as a scale, this time from Concrete (analytical thinkers, who break things down into their "atomic" parts, and who want concrete results - preferably by yesterday) to Conceptual (synthetical thinkers, who combine known facts to come up with new constructs in a creative manner - possibly by tomorrow).

Ignoring the middle ground on each scale for the moment, that means there are four broad possibilities for the way any person is wired: Global+Conceptual (big picture, new ideas - sometime), Global+Concrete (see the big picture but want results by yesterday), Linear+Concrete (step-by-step analysis and solid results in a timely manner) and Linear+Conceptual (constantly improving upon a detailed step-by-step approach).

Let's assume for the moment that you are Linear+Concrete, you have three colleagues standing with you and you are looking at the smouldering ruins of one of your high-street retail shops. You say, "well, it's obvious what we do next" and they say "yes, it is".

What do you all mean?

You probably mean that someone needs to get the manual on disaster recovery from head office, find the relevant scenario and follow the instructions. If you know there is no such manual then you will be thinking "get details of our insurance, find out how much stock and equipment was there and collect the documentation thereof," and so on.

Does anybody else mean that?

Possibly, but in a random sample we would expect at least one of the other perspectives would be represented. So at least one of you colleagues may be thinking "what opportunity does this represent to change our retail presence in this town; I must give this some thought" (Global+Conceptual) OR "what opportunity does this represent to improve our disaster recovery processes; I must give this some thought" (Linear+Conceptual) OR - if I am standing there with you - "I bet we could get short-term emergency accommodation in a couple of other locations in town (by this afternoon) and analyse performance from those temporary sites to decide where we want to be once this gets sorted" (Global+Linear).

Which perspective is right? They are all right, but none of them complete of itself.

The real problem only arises if we fail to articulate what each of us is seeing. If, having agreed that what to do is "obvious", we all set about doing what is "obvious" to us, the next scenario is likely to involve a certain amount of "what on earth did you think you were doing????" To avoid this, after agreeing that we each see something "obvious", it is worth asking exactly what that is and why. Then we can get some perspectives we mightn't have thought of ourselves, and come up with a plan that takes many or all perspectives into account (but which may prioritise certain actions over others). In other words, assume there are many perspectives at work and bring them all into play; don't assume unanimity of vision.

But what if you have just a single vision and perspective at work?

The four of you stand looking at the smoking ruin, and indeed all any of you can see is the need to follow established procedures, establish and remediate actual loss and so forth. What's wrong with this picture?

At one level nothing - certainly nothing that any of you will notice. You will have lost an opportunity to think of new options, but will be happy in your unknowing. Maybe that isn't a big deal - today. But over time, if the four of you consistently only see the Linear and Concrete aspects of your work and none of the Global and Conceptual perspectives, it is likely that you will lose significant ground to competitors or even your basic viability as a business. And hear this: the same would be true if you were all Global and Conceptual, or any other combination you care to mention.

In summary, diversity of perspective makes for better problem-framing and therefore problem-solving; provided that the diversity is a) recognised and b) valued and put to work. Uniformity of perspective makes for a quiet life - and usually a sad ending...

Framed

2006-11-02T08:42:00.000Z

It is hard to think of an activity more central to organisational life than problem-solving. Strategy may set the direction, production/performing may keep cranking the handle - but problem-solving is where all the significant stuff happens. Every day, virtually every member of an organisation solves (or attempts to solve) problems of all shapes and sizes.

So here's a thought: if problem-solving is so central to organisational life, what activity is at the centre of problem-solving?

How about: problem-framing?

What do I mean by that? It sounds like it might be another way of saying "analysis" - working out exactly what the problem consists of. But analysis only happens when framing has been done: analysis is a generally fairly logical process; framing is about perception. Framing identifies what the problem is; analysis breaks it down into its component parts.

Here's the challenge: take any three people, point them at a problem you know about and ask them what the problem is and what needs to be done. They may all preface their remarks with "well, it's obvious..." But just how often do they actually see exactly the same problem you do?

Answer is "not often", which suggests there may be a problem with problems. Of course, if when you try it, they do in fact all come up with the same way of framing the problem as you did, you have an even more serious problem.

More tomorrow...

What Price Benchmarking?

2006-11-01T10:14:00.000Z

Colleagues in the US had a runaway success, doing work for a company running a fleet of inshore and river barges (think massive Mississippi bulk carriers, not Grand Union Canal narrow-boats!). With around 600 personnel, this company's new hire turnover rate of 97% in the first year (you read that correctly: only three percent of new hires were still in job at the end of the first year) was costing them a seven-figure sum every year. And they were a good employer: caring, good policies, leave and benefits. Recruitment was carried out professionally - over and over again.

Using the breadth of the Birkman Method® (around 100 scales in total) they produced a profile of the statistically significant differences between the hires who stayed (and shone) and those who didn't. There were only a handful, and at first sight some of them looked insignificant - a difference of one decile for example in their "Production" scores - 9 and 8 respectively. 8 is still a really high score! But by using this profile in new hiring, in just the first year the turnover rate dropped from 97% to 43% (since then it has fallen even further). And that made a seven-figure difference to their bottom line - every year.

What is going on here? Firstly, all applicants were going to have a lot in common; living on a big barge for weeks at a time with just a couple of other crew members hauling often dangerous cargoes doesn't appeal to everyone. But secondly, not everyone who thought they would enjoy it really did once they found themselves out there on the Big Muddy. Only those who fit an even narrower profile were actually going to thrive. Sometimes a difference of one decile or a few percentage points was enough to accurately predict match or mismatch.

Look at the areas of your business with the highest staff turnover. Unlikely to be the executive suite (if it is, may be time for everyone to leave!); more likely that it is in the call centre (assuming you operate your own) or on the shop or factory floor. Easy to view these people at best as warm bodies, at worst as a commodity or a cost centre. And yet you undoubtedly have real stars there, as well as people who simply wish they were somewhere else (and who manage to produce a similar desire in your customers)*.

So if you could accurately distinguish - on the basis of probably just a small number of distinctives - between the stars and the rest, and hire ever more stars; what might that do for your business: what price benchmarking?

* a friend conducted research for a major call-centre operator in the UK who discovered that the bottom 10% or so of performers in their call-centres were so successful in making customers angry, that the company would have been more profitable had it paid them all to stay at home every day.

Partnerships

2006-10-31T12:45:00.000Z

Working together is not new - countries as well as companies were forming alliances long before anyone thought to neologize "coopetition" or sign the first PFI or PPP agreement. That isn't to say, however, that partnership working is easy. If you are in Local Government it just got more important with the new White Paper...

The core challenge of partnership working is obvious: it is very unlikely to find two organisations (let alone half-a-dozen) whose strategic and tactical interests are so closely aligned as to be indistinguishable. Finding win-win-win solutions involves sophisticated analysis and give-and-take from all sides. But here is the rub: each person involved in the partnership working comes with a bundle of personal perceptions and assumptions which may have absolutely nothing to do with the distinctives between the partners, but which yet may cause untold complications if they are not understood and factored in (or out) of both the negotiations and the actual joint working.

That is why investing time and effort in building mutual understanding of the strengths and perceptual filters of the people involved in any new partnership (or indeed any ongoing partnership) can bring about a great return on investment. So Midge and his insistence on getting to the detail doesn't represent an attempt by his organisation to slow the process down, and neither does Carol's desire to change the rules of engagement mean a lack of commitment on the part of her organisation (actually it was in order to seize a new opportunity that has arisen). Understanding that, in fact, this is how each of them is "wired", means we can begin to make use of that "wiring" and those perspectives for the common good.

The final warning of course is that trying to analyse how people are "wired" without recourse to objective data, is at best a case of playing guessing games and at worst Russian roulette - with an automatic. That's certainly why we work the way we do...

Do you know what you know?

2006-04-03T14:29:00.000Z

Organisations can be sometimes get to the top of their field by magic. By that I mean that they have a combination of great people and brilliant ideas that comes together with a favourable operating environment in such a happy way that everything works to their advantage - for a while. Then something changes, performance falls off - and suddenly everyone realises that noone actually knew what the magic ingredient was.

Truly great organisations are a little different. They sustain great performance not by magic but by knowing exactly what it is they know - and leveraging and protecting that knowledge for all they are worth. Here are three keys they typically employ...

1. Great organisations recognise that knowledge lives primarily in people's heads and that the way they select, retain, mentor, grow and, especially, connect great people matters more than having a server full of standard operating procedures. They develop people who know what they know and how it fits into the big picture.

2. Great organisations can distinguish between areas in which they have critical know-how and those in which they just need to ensure that they keep up with best practice. Failure to distinguish between these areas can mean the organisation dying under a weight of bureaucracy (where ever jot and tittle of every operation is documented to the nth degree) or that they get religious about the wrong things. Getting it right means that the organisation can focus in detail on the few things that really matter (and possibly outsource some of the rest).

3. Great organisations run their internal operations like a franchise chain. That is to say, their command of their know-how, both connective (ie in people) and captured (ie articulated critical know-how), is such that each office or region or division that opens embodies the organisation's DNA to at least the extent that a new McDonalds restaurant anywhere in the world embodies "the McDonalds way". That is more than just a comment on superficial appearance or brand presentation; the experience a great organisation delivers to its customers, clients or stakeholders will be the same wherever they touch the organisation because the same values and know-how will be brought to bear on every problem or opportunity, and with deep understanding of what those values and that know-how mean.

And the starting point for all of this is found in two simple but ultimately profound questions:

"Do we know what we know? And how do we know?"

Hidden Talent

2005-07-19T11:39:00.000Z

Here's a quick exercise. List in rank order your top three people in each of these areas of aptitude:

Sophisticated selling techniques
Solving customer problems
Operational troubleshooting
People management
Data analysis

(You might have some other categories that matter to you - add them!)

Now here's the important question: how do you know that you are right?

If you have read Rob Parsons' The Heart of Success (Hodders 2002), you will remember the story of Andrea, the young secretary who turned out to be the law firm's absolute number 1 star at taking phone enquiries and turning them into face-to-face appointments with a solicitor. The frightening thing is that Andrea's gift only came to light by accident - everyone else was already on the phone one day so she took the call.

So what is it to be: are you happy waiting for serendipity to call and point out your hidden stars? Or might a little proactive research and mapping of aptitude be in order?

What might your business look like if all your stars were shining?

Benchmarking Success Factors

2005-07-14T13:21:00.000Z

Story from my 6-year-old:

She: "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

Me: "I don't know."

She: "To get a Mars Bar. Ta-Dahh!"

Me: "...I don't get it."

She: "Neither did the chicken..."

As we all know, that chicken has been risking its life for years, crossing many of the major highways around the world, and usually for no greater reward than the gratification of getting to the other side.

Does your organisation have any greater reward than that in mind when it recruits new employees? Or is it just the gratification of completing the process and opening another personnel folder?

I would guess you would be pretty disappointed and surprised if you had to admit that the process of recruitment is less well executed now than it was ten years ago. Almost certainly it is done better now - smoother processes, better systems and so on. Here's the more critical question:

• is your recruitment process delivering more star performers to your organisation now than it was ten years ago?

In other words, has all those years of selecting staff made your organisation more intelligent about picking the ones you really want; has your organisation learnt from the huge volume of experience?

To my mind one of the most valuable exercises is to analyse subsequent performance against characteristics measured during recruitment. For a particular role (for example salesperson or call-centre operative or driver), what characteristics show up in those who are subsequently stars but are absent in the average or underperformers? Find just one statistically significant factor and you are on to something.

Or does the chicken just keep crossing the road?

One Size Fits... Some

2005-07-13T15:52:00.000Z

Great article by Robert Simons in the July/August HBR - "Designing High-Performance Jobs". Simons looks at 4 "Spans"* - Control, Accountability, Influence and Support - and how these can be tweaked in designing roles. Very thought provoking.

Caveat on this (and 101 other recent HBR articles) is that it fundamentally assumes we are all the same and can be motivated in the same manner. So for example, Simons explains how to create an "Entrepreneurial Gap", by giving someone a shorter Span of Control and a longer Span of Accountability: in other words, making them responsible for results which will demand access to resources they don't have. Simons appears to assume that any executive worth her or his salt will be turned into a rampant entrepreneur by this tension. If a particular individual doesn't perform in this situation, then presumably they have identified themselves as being "not 'A' material".

Research data suggests something a little different, starting with the insight that only around half the population are motivated in some degree by a challenge, while the other half are motivated by situations in which they are confident they can succeed. Simplifying things a little, you could vastly improve the success rate of Simons' insight by creating Entrepreneurial gaps for those who need a challenge, and excluding them for those who do not. And if you are tempted to say "but we only want the people who eat up challenge!" you need to know that performance of a challenge-averse person who has access to the resources and support that they need can far outstrip that of someone who is happy in the Entrepreneurial Gap.

*if you are familiar with Jacques' work on Span of Control - Simons is using the term in a significantly different way.

Leverage Conflict

2005-07-12T15:56:00.000Z

Not too many of us enjoy conflict. "[I'll do] anything for a peaceful life," is a common throwaway line, both at work and at home.

Fact is, any situation totally free of conflict is inherently dangerous.

Conflict of itself is generally not all that productive, and probably usually counter-productive; I am certainly not voting for war here. But the existence of, or potential for, conflict says something extremely positive:

Here are people with different perspectives on reality.

No conflicting perspectives means no conflict and no real hope of coping with a complex world of paradox and competing demands.

So the challenge is not to defuse conflict but rather to tease out the differing visions of reality that drive it - and harness that difference to your mission. As true for making a home and raising kids as it is for leading a FTSE 100 company or a major public sector organisation.

Flying to America

2005-07-11T13:21:00.000Z

Launching any strategy is like hiring a small plane in which to fly from the UK to America. Of course you check the engine log and kick the tyres and speak to the met officer, but surely there is one more question you just have to ask:

How far does she go on a tank of fuel?

The best maintained aircraft in perfect flying conditions and with a full tank of Avgas, but which has an operational range of less than 3000 nautical miles is going to get you wet if you try flying direct. So you adjust your route to take in fuelling stops at Iceland and Greenland or whatever. It's obvious.

So why do so many of us launch strategies without first checking organisational capacity?

That gives you: launch, fly, fuel warning light, crash and die.

Jim Collins' research-based work "Good to Great" came to the surprising conclusion that what he called "Level Five Leaders" (leaders like those in his study who had taken enterprises from average to exceptional performance and sustained that over the long term) were those who would first make sure they had the right people on the bus, and in the right seats, and only then decide where to drive the bus.

This grates with the popular view (the one which Collins and co expected to find in their results) of a visionary leader announcing the strategic direction and inspiring everybody to get on board with it.

I have a slight variant on this approach, which may be somewhat easier to execute under pressure, namely that leaders are right to try to understand where things should be headed, but they then have to run a reality check based on organisational capacity:

"What is possible for us as we are today?"

Once that is established and we have won ourselves some respite by tackling tough but achievable goals as we are, then we can focus on capacity building that will fit us for the final envisaged strategy; and we can launch sections of that as the appropriate capacity comes on stream.

It's obvious when you see it. "What is the capacity of my organisation?" "What could we be?" "How do I build that capacity?" Surely these are fundamental questions for any Chief Exec.

Fail to ask those questions and you are more like the pilot in a true travellers tale reported in the Lonely Planet Newsletter about 15 years ago. A western traveller was travelling on an internal flight in southern China and the flight was starting to get a bit bumpy when the air hostess came on the intercom and said in English:

"There is a very severe and dangerous storm between here and Chengdu, but we are flying on because our Captain is a very brave man."

Solving People Puzzles

2005-07-08T16:16:00.000Z

Ever assembled a team that looked world-beating on paper and then had them underperform beyond belief?

Or appointed someone with all the credentials and who interviewed - repeatedly - like a star, only to find within two months of appointment that they are clearly in the wrong job?

There are a hundred variations on this theme, and everyone has these "people puzzle" moments. Where do they come from?

The central issue is that very (very) few of us are able to accurately present who we are - really. So, to take just one of a hundred examples, when someone describes themselves as outward-going or as "a team-player", they really believe that to be true. What can come as a surprise to the individual (let alone their poor manager) is that what they have expressed is their understanding of what is socially desirable - not "how I really am". How they really are may be quite different; so keeping on with our example, some individuals who describe themselves as team-players are actually happiest when they have the opportunity to work on individual assignments.

What makes the issue more subtle is that we will generally try to live up to our view of what is best, so to begin with the "team-player" may appear to be just that. Here's the crux: our ability to deliver behaviour that matches our view of what is socially desirable depends upon our underlying orientation being satisfied over time.

So here's our self-described "outgoing team player" with an underlying need for assignments they can work on by themselves. If we happen to structure their job so that they do get to spend at least some time on individual assignments - 20%-30% even - we will probably never know there was a potential problem, because the rest of the time they will be the life and soul of the project or committee. If on the other hand, we happen to design their role so that every part of their job is collaborative, we will probably get a good start, then declining contributions followed by disruptive behaviour within the group (seen that before?).

So what do we do - make sure everyone gets a mix of team and individual work? No good - our example is just one dimension of many; further more there are people who are the opposite of the case we have used; people who describe themselves as rugged individualists but who need the support of the group much more than they realise. And of course there are those who are more true to label - team-players who largely are that sociable, and individualists who really would prefer to be left to get on with it.

So what do you do? Here's two options.

1. Talk - in depth - to people who have worked for or around the person or people in question BEFORE you appoint them to a position or your team. In particular, run the person's own descriptions of who they are and how they work past these informants, and see whether and to what extent they want to qualify these descriptions. Where you uncover evidence of something else going on beneath the surface you may want to reconsider making the appointment at all. Alternatively you may feel justified to go back to the individual and test out variations on them. "We need you to work on these two project teams, but I was wondering if you could also take on a piece of solo research..." (or whatever the issue appears to be.) Look for the light in the eyes. You may have just saved yourself another horrid people puzzle.

2. Get accurate measurement of your people and take the guesswork and supposition out of the equation. A good deal of my professional practice involves exactly this - deploying diagnostic tools that give an accurate reading of individuals and teams as they really are. Word of advice - avoid tools that only involve self-description of behaviour; after all, that is the whole problem: we aren't very good at describing ourselves.

Mr Incredible

2005-07-07T11:09:00.000Z

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has remarked on several occasions that he has never managed to draw a strip where someone hasn't emailed him the next day and told him that something even more extreme actually happened in their company. I have had a similar experience working with author and speaker Rob Parsons on The Heart of Success (2002) and The Money Secret (2005) - stories went into the book which could only be used after they had been toned down; reality was just too unbelievable.

A rather frightening proportion of these true stories seem to relate to the personal credibility, or lack thereof, of Chief Execs and other senior managers and the programmes they promote and the statements they make.

If you are the CEO of any sizeable organisation you will likely know from experience that the 20% of what you do that delivers 80% of your contribution to the enterprise is actually - to onlookers - very simple. The decision to go with Black. Or white. Yes. Or no. Up. Or down. Mentoring three direct reports in an organisation of 30,000 employees. Decisions and input that look simple but which are profound enough to still be influencing the fate of the organisation as much as 25 years on.

Here's the rub, and you may well find the way I am expressing it offensive, but here goes:

for CEOs there are no intermediate points between
"woman or man of integrity"; and "devious little weasel".

Harsh! But it is precisely because of the impact of those simple and profound acts that are the territory of the Chief Executive, that they enjoy none of the leeway which might be granted to lesser mortals (and don't get me wrong - I am a very long way from condoning moral equivocation for anyone). You either are, or aren't, a person people can and should trust.

There is no such thing as a CEO who is "a bit of a chancer" but such a nice guy that people forgive him or her their pecadilloes. No need for me to name names - you can list 20 names of fallen leaders yourself, people who enjoyed wide acclaim one minute and then brought themselves and often their organisation down when the true nature of their dealings came to light.

It never starts with accounting fraud or insider dealing or clever structures. You either prove or destroy your credibility every time you give and then have to keep your word. Time and time again I go into organisations and hear of senior leaders giving to their people with one hand on a good news day, and then cynically taking more back with the other on a day suitable for burying bad news - and the incredible thing is that these leaders clearly think they have got away with it. Trust me - they are fooling no one.

So what is your reputation among the employees of your organisation? When did you last commission someone to find out for you?

You can be as tough or demanding as you like, or warm and empathetic, but what matters to the people at the coal face is - can they trust you? Men and woman of integrity make mistakes. Some of them will even make mistakes that cost others their jobs. But they will walk away with their integrity intact.

(And not have to spend the next two decades telling fairy tales to the press!)

Building a Better Board

2005-07-06T12:07:00.000Z

Started writing this as a magazine article, but just in case I never get around to finishing it, here's a summary...

Driving Blind

When my father was in his early 80's and still mentally and physically active, his sight started to go. We discovered afterwards that he had developed small holes in both his retinas.

What was interesting is that for a long time he had no idea anything was wrong. I knew before he did - after riding with him in the car and seeing how many parked cars we nearly hit. He only accepted there was a problem when he couldn't find a pine tree when he was standing right in front of it, even though he had seen it clearly from a distance.

Turns out that that wonderful piece of adaptive super-connective tissue called the human brain copes with sensor failure (in this case, of Dad's retinas) by providing ghost data to fill the gaps. So instead of a figure-eight black spot in the middle of his field of vision, Dad saw a bland extrapolation of whatever was being received by the neighbouring still-functional cones and rods. Amputees often experience something similar - they can even tell you how the missing limb feels.

The question is, was Dad better off because of this compensation? He was spared a disconcerting visible gap - but at the risk of killing himself driving into a parked truck.

Driving the Enterprise

So what is the connection with your Board? It is unlikely, I agree, that any of your board members are as old as my father was or that they could all simultaneously be suffering the same physical degenerative condition he had.

But what then if I told you that when it comes to navigating your Enterprise through the crowded market-place, the average Board is in fact very likely hampered by small but critical gaps in its ability to see? What if every scan by the Board of your business and its environment has small areas where what is seen bears little or no relation to reality? Just how keen are you to drive your organisation at speed into an immovable reality?

Let me give you 3 scenarios to illustrate what I mean, and do so using a simply but powerful analysis of perception, color-coded as follows:

Reds are production, action oriented people. The job needs doing by yesterday.
Yellows are systems, data oriented people. The results already in predict whether or not the next plan will succeed.
Blues are creative, planning oriented people. How things are today is less important than where we could be in 12 or 48 months time.
Greens are persuasive, sales oriented people. Carpe diem - it's a world of opportunity out there!

A 50+ year research project collecting data from around the world and whose results we have used powerefully in a whole range of corporate interventions, has suggested that we all combine all of these perspectives in some ratio or other; however, some of us are most strongly oriented to just one of these, some two or three. A few of us can switch between all four (which - perhaps surprisingly - doesn't make for an easy ride); others are only faintly influenced by any of the four.

1. The one-eyed Board. Strong founders can impress their strength of character so forcibly upon the enterprise that only like-minded individuals can ever make it onto the Board of Directors. "A man (or woman) after my own heart" is a dangerous criterion for selecting Board Members. So for example, the Board of a local power utility in the US whose profile I was shown; nine people who were "Red" almost to the exclusion of any other perspective. My questions were "where did they find nine such Red people?" - and "when do they hit the wall?"

"Six months ago," was the reply. "I warned them that they desperately needed some other perspectives, especially some Blue people who could see the big strategic picture or they would fall off the curve. 18 months later they went on the block in a fire sale."

An extreme case, but a common complaint. Remember, these people - just like my Dad - don't know what they can't see. What they could see was that they were the best team any of them had ever worked on; the knottiest problems were subjected to the laser-like gaze of their combined operational expertise and gave way in a trice. What they had absolutely no way of knowing(at least until my colleague tried to help them) was that they didn't know what they couldn't see, namely that their industry was changing rapidly and that operational effectiveness by itself couldn't save them. They hit the parked truck doing 90. What you can't see most certainly can hurt you.

2. The Different = Complementary Myth. Unfortunately this issue of perspective and perception runs a lot deeper than skill or ability or experience. The implication of this is that you can assemble a group of very different people - an Accounting Partner, a Corporate Lawyer, an HR Specialist, a successful serial Entrepreneur, a Trades Union leader and the Pastor of the 1000-member Church in your community and, while you may indeed have a broad spectrum of experience represented, there is no guarantee that that experience is being moderated to you via the full spectrum of complementary viewpoints. In fact, your apparently diverse Board may have been attracted to your organisation by what is a strongly shared perspective, for example that they all share a Blue concern for the future well-being of your community or a Green delight in the possibilities opened up by your innovations.

Even if - as is more likely - you have more than one strong perspective at work, that is not the same as saying you have complementary perspectives. So for example, your Board might comprise people who are either predominantly Blue or preedominantly Green in their outlook. Doesn't the Blue long view counterbalance the Green focus on immediate opportunity?

Answer - not really. What distinguishes Blues and Greens is a difference in their communication preferences. Greens are direct communicators, while Blues tend to be much more reflective in their approach. So far, so good. But what they share is a focus on people and process rather than on task. So who is bringing a more task-oriented viewpoint to your Boardroom table? The missing Reds and Yellows would supply that deficit; in their absence the most wonderful innovations may be introduced and "sold" to other stakeholders, but who is going to ensure that execution and follow-through matches all the talk?

3. Problem-Framing. Good news, now I am going to tell you that even if you have the most complementary perspectives assembled since the Flood, it still may not do you any good - at least not unless you can help them to understand one another's perspectives. One of the reasons that the "One-Eyed Board" above can be so comforting to have around is that there are rarely any fundamental differences of opinion.

But what happens when you really do have the full complement of viewpoints around the table? Such a Board can easily fall into an established pattern where the same people carry every argument and others rarely speak up. Why?

Problem-solving is not the fundamental activity of any team; problem-framing is. In other words, solving a problem is relatively easy once you have correctly framed it. However, it is in the process of framing problems that our perspectives come most strongly into play.

So you and I can both be looking out the Boardroom window at the pot-holes in the road outside, but you may be framing the problem as a lack of action (a Red viewpoint - "why has noone got on and fixed that") whereas I know(!) that the real issue is a failure to think about why the holes keep appearing - perhaps the road has been built in the wrong place (that's my Blue viewpoint). We turn back to the rest of the Board and simultaneously shout "Get on with it!" and "Stop and think!" - and then turn and look at each other in disbelief. Maybe that happens a few more times, but sooner or later, both of us write the other off as stupid - and one of us, probably me with my less direct Blue approach, stops speaking up. So in a short time we have a Board where you can always be trusted to kick things into action, and I can be trusted to fume silently. Or perhaps you get fed up with my constant "prevarication" and sit in silent frustration while I attempt to paint my picture of where we should be going. Either way, for all practical purposes we might as well be the One-Eyed Board.

Unless, that is, we can learn to appreciate the view point each of us can't see; and that is the mark of any genuinely complementary team. If someone attacks your point of view, I can explain it to them to your satisfaction - and vice versa. That is when a Board can drive down the street with some hope of avoiding parked cars and jay-walkers alike.

No Management without Measurement

In the same way that the only way to establish my father's condition was to subject him to diagnostic eyesight tests, the only way to establish perspective is to measure it. The fact my father had made it safely down the road one more time did not give him a clean bill of health!

The tools for accurate measurement of perspective exist (just ask - jonmason@elaura.com) but what are you going to do with them? How do you build a better Board?

Short answer: recruiting to fill the gaps (using of course the same basis of measurement as a guide to recruitment, rather than individual CVs alone) is the second step, not the first. The first step is to help your existing Board to understand who they already are and identify for themselves the gaps in their field of view. One of the best ways of doing this, after introducing them to the concepts and the actual measured data for themselves and the Board as a whole, is to use this as an opportunity to review recent important decisions taken - not necessarily with a view to changing the decisions unless that is strongly indicated, but as a source of illumination.

"So when I said x, you heard y and that's why you suggested z? That's a big relief - I was worried you'd lost your marbles, old man..."