Catalytic Intervention

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2010-12-23T11:27:00.001Z

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Our End Of Year Review – Six People Trends We’ve Observed In 2010

2010-12-10T10:54:00.001Z

The year has remained dominated by economic uncertainty, with some sectors still in recession, whilst some (exporters) are having a best ever year. Growth has remained elusive for many with a fatal cocktail of oversupply and increasing commoditisation driving down prices.

What does this mean for people management?

The recession has not flooded the market-place with high calibre people, because either they have been locked-in to where they are or have moved jobs below the recruitment market’s radar.
The people who decided to hunker down in not wanting to be last in/first out are beginning to look around. If 2009 was about going backwards, and 2010 was about standing still, 2011 had better be about moving forwards otherwise there is large cohort of people who will be in the job market.
Self-Employment. A confluence of economic factors, lifestyle changes, enabling technology and organisations shrinking their core activities continue to drive the increasing size of the freelancing/contractor/consultant part of the working population. The people doing this kind of work range from a minority of hyper successful who through a combination of the right smarts, the right temperament and the right work ethic enjoy as much work as they want, to the majority who fashion some kind of living. And beware the consultant who is really out of work looking for a job and offers to work on a project at much reduced rates.
People engagement has been on many HR peoples’ minds. How to mobilise the whole organisation’s discretionary effort in support of common goals? Why is the correlation so strong between seniority and the application of this discretionary effort?
Many UK businesses are still over-managed and under-led. UK plc productivity figures have gone backwards in recent years, we’re still behind the US and even France with its shorter working week. Getting the middle layer of managers (the ones that deal with the bulk of employees on a daily basis) to consistently and collectively offer leadership and a sense of purpose to their teams remains a major challenge. Our own work in this area suggests a small increase in leadership behaviour demonstrated by critical mass of middle managers has had a massively positive (and more profitable) effect.
The generational divide. This seems to be increasing. Younger workers having a very different mental approach to work and their employer than their middle aged equivalents. And its more than being at different life stages. Younger people have no mortgage worries (they can’t afford one), and no pension lock-in (final salary gone and money purchase a laugh). The two main UK reasons for conservative career decisions. We sometimes work with clients where the room composition can be 1:1 in terms of number of people and number of nationalities. But then you notice they are all under 35. Technology will also drive the generational divide, not in terms of technical understanding, but in terms of application usage. Social networking, a preparedness to share personal data, affinity groups, and tribal loyalties will amplify these differences. Email is seen as the middle aged communication medium of choice.

Your own hiring/selection/development/succession planning/retention/exiting of people needs to be adaptive, innovative, motivating and sustainable. Above all it needs to be strategic.

If you would like to talk over any of the issues raised in this article or how Predaptive might be able to assist with your people policies we’d love to hear from you. Please contact us.

A Most Dangerous Position To Be In, When All The Sexy People Stuff Had Been Said But Nothing Has Changed

2010-12-10T10:52:00.000Z

Some organisations give good rhetoric. They talk about inclusiveness and claim to follow the latest thinking about engagement. They launched a Vision and Mission some time ago and have a laminated set of values issued to all. They’ve run a 360 and the CEO has held a series of ‘doughnut and coffee’ sessions. The Directors have done a ‘back to the floor’ to discover the ‘real’ story and the company made a matched contribution to Children in Need.

Yet when to talk to ‘the workers’ about how things feel in the organisation or ask them about morale, or look at how enthusiastically people have signed up for the Christmas party, peoples’ views bear little relation to all the enlightened management practice that has supposedly been going on. Cynicism, suspicion and a general weariness flavour the comments as if the organisation has done nothing at all. And that’s the point, if people receive all this communication about cultural change, about how things will be different and about a new way of doing things, and then nothing much happens, what are they supposed to think? Launching all the things in the first paragraph doesn’t make them happen.

Questions that should be asked beforehand. Why does management believe all this stuff is required? Has it articulated the problem to be solved, or the opportunity to be exploited? Has it defined measures of success for each intervention? Has it created some accountability in the process of implementation and follow thorough?

And that brings us to an uncomfortable principle. An organisations’ delivery of enlightened people practices cannot exceed the quality of its management’s ability to do so. Put more simply, management has to change and improve before the wider organisation can make the same journey. That ability to be consciously aware of its own shortcomings and to transcend is a critical early stage requirement in any people related change process.

Predaptive’s work always includes working with management on making sure any given messages always aligns with behaviour and is followed through with measurable actions. Building a world class organisation isn’t about launching things; it’s about doing things and making change stick.

What 360° Free Text Boxes Can Tell Us About What An Organisation Is Thinking and Feeling

2010-12-10T10:50:00.002Z

One of Predaptive’s customer offerings is to run confidential on-line 360° feedback and reviews. These are usually designed around a carefully developed questions set that is cross-referenced over time to indentify trend data.

Most 360°s contains a free text component, where responders can make additional comments. Below we have captured the most common positives and negatives and then themed them into a summary form. They make for interesting reading.

Negatives

Mangers that don’t walk the talk. There is a gap between what they say and what they do.
Inconsistency. Managers who are too moody, or change their stance on key issues without explanation.
Non delivery of commitments and promises.
Unapproachable. Managers who are too busy, whose diaries are too full and who can’t find quality time to work with their team.
Colleagues who are poor team players.
People who avoid responsibility, who won’t own issues.
People who ‘just don’t get it’. This usually refers to a person’s mental approach to work.
Unreasonable demands being placed on people. This is commented on across all layers of the hierarchy.
Too little visibility of senior management.
No leadership from the top.

As you might expect the positive comments are often the reverse of the negatives, but with a twist.

Positives

Managers that behave consistently.
Managers who demonstrate fairness and even handedness (no favourites!).
People who are straight talking, regardless of who in the hierarchy they are talking to.
Colleagues who are supportive.
The friendliness of fellow workers.
Colleagues who have real expertise they are prepared to freely share.
Managers who are effective coaches.
Visible senior people who demonstrate real leadership through their communications.
Managers who help simplify, prioritise and organise workloads.
Managers who make people feel valued.

If you would like to organise your own on-line 360° feedback mechanism, please contact us.

Moving Motivational Ability Up The Agenda

2010-10-18T11:59:00.002+01:00

These days most managers say they are familiar with the seminal motivation models, whether that’s Maslow or Herzberg, Expectancy Theory or Intrinsic Motivation.

That being the case why is it common to find a large minority of people in any organisation below even an average level of motivation? Is that just a standard distribution curve no organisation can escape from or is it more a comment on the quality of motivation application from the majority of managers?

When we work on designing a Management Development Centre we always include something to bring out motivational ability (or not). Being a bad motivator is something no self respecting manager would admit to, so it’s interesting to see how many managers don’t have any vocabulary for talking about how they go about doing it. When we ask the question the most common reaction is to drag up some half remembered theory (see top of article) from a training course long ago attended. Practical application seems rare. And it’s very unusual to see motivation on a management meeting agenda apart from when approached financially with something about incentive schemes.

Here’s our quick check list to get motivation properly focused on:

Make sure you (really) understand the theory. Recap, relearn to study from scratch.
Nail the difference between needs and drives. Its needs that stimulate drives, not the other way round. (Needs being a proxy for wants, hopes and desires as well as real needs).
Think about what motivates you. There is a connection here, the more self aware you are, the more sensitive you become in understanding other peoples’ motivation.
Don’t be reductive. Motivation is more complicated than just applying a carrot or stick.
Personalise. The most effective motivation strategies are designed for individuals not teams or functions.
Don’t ask people what motivates them, because either they don’t know, or they’ll make something up, or they will try to intuit the answer you’re looking for. Work out what motivates people by taking the time to get to know them. Remember all behaviour is goal directed at the conscious or unconscious level. People reveal so much through how they behave. Become a great observer of people.
Motivation is highly situational, the more context you have the more informed your insights will be.
Run a session on motivation at your next meeting, talk about how improvement strategies could be adopted.

If you would like to work with Predaptive on improving the overall quality of your mangers’ motivation skills contact us.

Why Family Is Bad For Business

2010-10-18T11:55:00.004+01:00

What descriptor do you use to describe the people who work in your organisation? Employees, workers, staff, group, team, family? Or do you stick with the literal, neutral term and call them – people?

The term that is most dangerous to use is family, and not because of its alliterative relation, happy. When an organisation talks about its people as a family it thinks its doing the right thing, focusing on being inclusive and supportive through demonstrating a collective set of cultural norms. We think it’s an incorrect metaphor for two reasons:

Family membership (by blood) is never a choice and family membership by marriage can be fraught with difficulties. You cannot appoint family members, nor can you withdraw family status. Trying saying to a sibling we cannot afford you must leave the family, never to return. Or explaining how the families changing vision means a particular family members’ skills are now ‘non-core’
The other reason is one of hierarchy. One of the pleasures of being in a functional family is everybody knows their place. Who is in charge, where we all go for Christmas, who makes key decisions etc. That’s why the opposite of a functional family is so awful; when families fight for position, try to usurp someone’s position, not make allowances for a tradition that has become the norm. This kind of ritualised behaviour in organisations can be really dangerous.

Here is a word to try on your organisation. Describe the people as a community. A high-functioning organisation will be effective in delivering the three dimensions of community:

Place - This is likely to be physical space(s), and certainly will be different virtual spaces (email, phones, web etc)
Interests - People who engage in similar work with similar skills and expertise. People who work with the same customers and get passionate about the same products and who want to achieve similar standards of excellence.
Belonging - Shared corporate values a common vision and some close personal relationships.

Membership of this community is highly conditional. There are standards of performance and behaviour that are non- negotiable, people are allowed in but it takes a while for them to become fully accepted. The community will fight to support someone who remains true to the community ethos but will expel people who let the community down.

How credible would you sound in describing (in an organisational-wide session) that we are a community?

Predaptive works on building employee engagement (which bolsters community spirit). For more information contact us.

Using Appreciative Inquiry- The Positive Way To Deal With Difficult Change

2010-10-18T11:51:00.001+01:00

How do you get a group working in a high functioning state without going into the common spiral of overdosing on problem diagnosis and failing to get to any agreed resolution?

One way might be to use the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach. This whole system approach came out of the US in the 1980s, becoming an effective organisational tool that focuses on what works and making better rather than what is failing.

AI is a constructive method for understanding what we can take from the existing organisation/working practice that’s good/works well, and how we can build on it with our version of what we are trying to achieve, what the architecture looks like and finally, how we might make it happen? The four stages are:

DISCOVERING: Identifying the organisational processes that work well.
DREAMING: Envisioning processes and practices that would work well in the future.
DESIGNING: Planning and prioritizing those processes in a workable form.
DELIVERING: Implementation of the new proposed design.

By focusing on what works, and by increasing conscious competence, teams and organisations can build real momentum around scalable new ways of working. It also works well for developing best practice norms and standards.

A challenge for AI can be engaging with people who are locked into a remedial, negative approach to problem solving. People who believe there is little or any merit their organisation or team does that can be modelled positively; they simply want to have reductive, whinging conversations. In really serious cases this mental model can have solidified into a cultural norm, sometimes infecting large teams, even whole divisions.

We use a concept we call breakthrough AI – where if we can get a senior team thinking differently, who can view the future positively, who can show (at least) a little leadership can be a breath of fresh air and can quickly start to change the collective mind-set.

If you would like to find out more about using AI techniques in your organisation please contact us.

All In The Family

2010-10-18T11:49:00.000+01:00

The political pages are full of talk of sibling rivalry, inter-family conflict and the psychological damage that family members can do to each other in work situations. Ed winning the Labour Party leadership over his older brother David looked unlikely back in the spring, but it’s a reality now.

The big decision the brothers’ face now is whether David will stay on as a cabinet member and support his brother using his experience, influence and intellect on his behalf, or step back from the shadow cabinet to defuse any speculation about conflict and set about developing a new career of his own away from that particular limelight.

Thousands of miles away Kim Jong-il has just appointed his son Kim Jong-un as a general, a move that’s probably designed to signpost a transfer of power. There are other disappointed (and possibly embittered) sons, sisters and brothers-in-law in the background, but without a free press we won’t see hundreds of pictures of them and be invited to interpret their facial expressions.

When family members work together there’s plenty more going on psychologically than in ordinary working relationships. The emotions in play can be far more intense and the stakes are different.One family member who maybe doesn’t work as hard as others is no big deal in a family who have different professions in different organisations, there may be some grumblings about a lazy kid sister but it has no major impact on the day to day lives of all the family members. If one sister is focused on amassing a fortune ready for an early retirement to a Florida villa, whilst another is busy creating a nice nest egg to help her children gain a good education and get on the housing ladder, and a brother is busy spending everything he earns (and a little more) to enjoy the life he has right now then there may be a few snide remarks at Christmas, but they’ll likely get along fine.

When those different objectives exist within a family business, and family members have varying visions of where that business is going and what the key objective is, then emotions tend to run high and the resultant conflict is just as likely to be destructive as positive.

Predaptive has worked with a wide range of family businesses over the last decade, helping them to be clear about the business goals and work more effectively together as a committed team as well as a functional family. If you’d like to learn more about how Predaptive could help your family business to succeed on its own terms then contact us.

What Is The Most Effective Learning Style – ‘One To One’ Or In Groups?

2010-10-18T11:46:00.000+01:00

Surely the answer to this is the same as the answer to any other complex issue – ‘it depends’. Historically we view learning from our experience of childhood education and classrooms of thirty or so children with varying abilities and backgrounds miraculously taking on-board literacy, numeracy, science, the arts and plenty more. This can be either incredibly stimulating or a complete nightmare for us as students in the preparation for our lives ahead in work and at play.

Most of us have had limited experience of one-to-one teaching; where we’ve been ‘singled’ out for attention or for ‘special’ requirements like learning a musical instrument. These can be very trying circumstances; intensive focus on very specific requirements with no-one else to share the attention and nowhere to hide!

Today, however, more people are looking at one-to-one coaching, for example, as a way to get specific skills honed in a style that is bespoke to our individual requirements. We all remember some words of wisdom we received from someone we looked up to as a mentor or role model that gave us that individual focus and helped at a crucial stage in our development.

There are more opportunities today to look at different learning methodologies and chose those that best suit our needs. Here are some of the key areas that should be considered when choosing between Group or One-to-One learning:

Specific or Generic
How widely spread is the skills and knowledge required? How similar is the application to other related work environments? How easily transferable are the techniques needed?

Tailored or Off-the-Peg
To what extent does the learning and material need to be adapted for its application? How bespoke does the ‘fit’ need to be for the desired effect? Is there a ready-made solution available?

Simple, Complex or Subtle
Even complex subjects can be learnt in groups but sometimes where the distinctions are more subtle than complicated, a one-to-one approach ensures better understanding.Learning StylesSome individuals thrive in group activities whilst others find it easier to take on information without distractions or the need to compete for attention.

Cost v Investment
What is the budget available? Does it include the costs of premises, equipment, travel and accommodation? How much time is ‘lost’? What is the ROI expected and what is the most effective way to achieve it?

For more guidance on tailoring your personal development plans speak to us.

What We’re Watching: The Wire

2010-10-18T11:43:00.001+01:00

Management consultants and leadership gurus often spend a lot of time looking for inspirational leaders and models of managerial success with which they can inspire people.

It’s become almost a cliché to draw examples from the military and sports. Those examples are often filled with products of private education and great universities, excluding individuals from more diverse backgrounds, or adding them in as ‘exceptions that prove the rule’.

The Wire offers up a variety of perspectives on leadership, management, vision, values and goals. None of them are particularly attractive, but the contrasts between them are instructive.

The show focuses largely on the drug trade in Baltimore. We’re introduced to the harsh realities of life in a criminal gang, with strong leadership, high risks and rewards, brutal performance management and a focus on delivering financial results. Yet even in this world we see conflicts around values and goals – Is market share as important as sustainable profitability? Is some competition healthy? Does co-operation with competitors create long term security of income? These conflicts tend to lead to murder rather than a board room spat, which does draw them into sharp focus.

More interesting challenges appear when the drug trade intersects with law enforcement, the school system, local politics and the media. The need to produce quick results and TV friendly statistics pulls against the need to actually make things better for the long term. Every Sales Director can relate to the struggle between working to produce solid, sustainable revenue, and having something good in the forecast for next quarter.

We don’t recommend that you adopt the leadership and management practices you’ll see in The Wire, but it is a great way to explore how different approaches work and the benefits and limitations of each.

Great leaders and ruthlessly effective management don’t always put their efforts into the greater good.

7 Core Organisational Development Capabilities

2010-08-05T16:16:00.003+01:00

How effective is your organisational capability? Below we list the current top 7 taken from our recent work with clients. Organisations and people that can add-value in these areas seem to make a real difference.

Can you change the behaviour of your people?
It starts and finishes here. A behavioural change will lead to different activities which will deliver better results.
Engaging people through giving them meaning and direction in their work
Employers can no longer guarantee job security. What they can guarantee is a place where people feel valued and their contribution can be shown to make a real difference.
Placing leadership at the centre of your management approach
Too many organisations are still over-managed and under-led. These turbulent business times require people at all levels of be able to motivate their teams and deliver effective change. Good management practice is still critical but it needs to become a servant to strategic leadership.
Improving the design and effectiveness of your people related processes
Today people are more demanding, more expensive and more complicated to employ and manage than ever before. Legal compliance is only part of it. All people processes (appraisals, induction, succession, performance management etc.) need to be audited for the value add they should bring. If they don’t make a difference, reinvent or scrap them.
Increasing and building new performance capabilities
The recession looks like being L shaped. OD needs to be help people transcend tough trading conditions and believe they can grow the business and their own performance. This isn’t a time for explaining (again) why the market is difficult, but for doing something about it.
Energising and changing your culture
Culture is expressed values. Its though values you can a change the culture. Indentify the behavioural indicators that make the values explicit and you will move the culture. Connect to point 1
Creating high ownership and accountability throughout the organisation
Our litmus test for whether teams are fully engaged depends on if they have management imposed activity targets. If somebody is only doing something because they are being told to (and wouldn’t do it otherwise), you find a low ownership culture. High performers own their activity, they set their own quality and quantity targets to achieve the outcome they require.

How did you score? If you would like to talk about Predaptive help organisations embed these OD capabilities please contact us.

How Do You Approach People Development/Training In Your Organisation?

2010-08-05T16:08:00.003+01:00

It’s critical to get the right approach to how you develop your people. We have developed our own taxonomy for helping understand how mature an organisation’s Learning and Development approach really is.

One of the most common situations we find is how an organisation will promote the rhetoric of the right hand side but in reality have a mind-set more focused to the left.

To achieve the high impact people development of the Organisation Focused column requires a critical process to be followed.

Line management have to take ownership for, and be capable of, articulating the development gap for their people.

The required solution has to be validated and integrated with the organisations’ strategic imperatives.

The delivery phase meets the highest quality standards

Line management stay engaged with the process taking responsibility for making sure the new learning is embedded in the workplace and the success metrics are robustly pursued.

There is a clear learning loop applied where legacy practice is tested against new, current practice and emerging best practice is captured and codified.

Predaptive, in conjunction with its sister organisation Structured Training can design the most effective, high impact learning environments, including facilitating the transition your Learning and Development culture across to the right hand side of our model.

Can You Predict Business Success?

2010-08-05T16:06:00.001+01:00

Why is Google the Number 1 search business?

Why is Amazon dominant in bookselling?

Why is Rolls Royce one of the world’s top two aero engine businesses?

Why is Apple now more valuable than Microsoft?

Superficially, these questions look easy to answer; Google because they wrote a great algorithm, Amazon because they did on-line books first, Rolls Royce because they adopted/refined world class design and manufacturing techniques and then applied them with discipline over many years, and finally Apple because they have imac, ipod, iphone and now ipad.

But it's much more complicated than that. These success criteria seem so obvious now, but why only with hindsight and not at the time?

You could have bought Google shares at $85 a share when they went public, they are now worth around $485 a share (they’ve been over $650). Easy money?

Remember all the snarking at Amazon about being the world’s best internet bet but never made (and for many never would) a profit? During the 2001 dotcom crash Amazon shares could be bought for $0.08c, today they are around $1.15 and $800m profits forecast this year.

How many people thought Rolls Royce would survive their near collapse in the 1970’s, only pulling through with Government assistance to become the powerhouse they are now?

And Apple; now worth more than Google, Dell and Nokia combined. Remember when Steve Jobs was absent, there were no new products and it looked like they were sliding into irrelevance?

For organisations to thrive over the long term they need a coherent and mobilising vision, a way of looking at the market-place that others haven’t seen, and the obsessive application and pursuit of their strategic goals.

Who are the companies today that might be the Apple’s etc of the future?

Will Ocado come to dominate home delivery shopping? Can HMV avoid becoming a sunset business and reinvent themselves as an entertainment portal? - their results this week look encouraging. Will Ford complete their escape act from possible oblivion? Again the signs look promising.

All businesses trying to shape their future, how does your business’s over the horizon position look?

How Is Your Point Of View? - A Critical Requirement Of Today’s Manager

2010-07-15T13:38:00.001+01:00

One of the most revealing ways of indentifying someone who can influence beyond their level of authority and control (which is a simple, but effective definition of leadership) is to really listen for the person’s point of view. How often (and perceptively) do you hear them talk about their industry’s future, what the change dynamics facing their customers really are? How will their own role need to evolve to stay relevant? How will technology change their value chain? How will the new macro-economic environment evolve? Etc. etc.

Recently we’ve been working with an organisation that asked us to unpack the Point of View issue and turn it into something that their managers could develop for themselves. A word of caution, we found two issues that demonstrate an anti point of view, ways of behaving that masquerade as a point of view but in fact demonstrate the opposite:

Having strong opinions about what won’t happen, what won’t work and what people are mistakenly focusing on. This is saying rather than envisioning the future.
Having fixed views that don’t change. A Point of View is about passion and belief, but it’s not about dogmatism.

We found a strong correlation between having a coherent point of view and being someone others listened to as well. The person was influential, often beyond his or her own functional area and several levels higher up the hierarchy than their formal position warranted.

They were viewed as being interesting, ‘go to’ people who really know stuff, but equally they are not intimidated by not knowing stuff. Their learning curve constantly sits at a steep angle. This of course makes them interesting and valuable to clients as well. We found if these people were market facing their impact was significant. A point of view is not only good for the quality of conversation; it’s also very good for business.

The culmination of our work was the development of a point of view workshop that showed people the requirements of how to develop this (we believe) critical capability.

If you would like us to develop a point of view workshop for your managers/salespeople/potential leaders please contact Claudine McClean for an informal conversation.

Seeing Into The Future - Five Business Strategy Questions People Will Pay Large Sums For Insight Into The Most Likely Outcome

2010-07-15T13:35:00.001+01:00

We’ve always lived in interesting times, but mid 2010, there are some fascinating questions exercising people with the brains the size of planets in working out the best strategic response. What do you think will happen?

Will putting up a pay wall around the Times newspapers work? Can generic news content, laced with a few star columnists, persuade people to pay up? Will a cross-subscription model using Sky and other parts of News Corp. be used to entice people to sign-up? Many industry watchers credibility depends on the outcome happening in the way they have predicated. Most think it will fail, but has Murdoch again had a visionary moment linked to his strong business sense?
Has the airline industry fractured into different operating models? Short haul= low cost, long haul=full service, or can a long haul, low cost operator work? Will we see a different split of airline offerings; leisure either only low cost economy or private jet luxury, and business full service with all the extras? Many airlines are playing with these offerings already and, with further consolidation happening, more experimentation will happen. How will things change with the Middle East airlines operating the largest hubs in the world (they already are the largest purchasers of new jets), and what will the increasing environmental considerations do to air travel and its already shaky economic model?
Are book, music and video stores finished? Are we seeing the last 10 years of the physical product, be it a book, CD or DVD? Can your local store transition into something new, which not only offers a purchasing point but can also offer a compelling customer experience connected to that purchase, which cannot be replicated on-line?
How will BP emerge from its Gulf catastrophe? Certainly weaker, but temporarily or more permanently? Can it survive? What will be the long-term impact on deep-water exploration? Does it change the peak oil calculation? How will UK pension funds be affected?
The demographic time bomb. We all know the economic challenges of this shift in the UK population, with an unaffordable pay-as-you-go national pension scheme; but what about the business opportunities? These retiring baby boomers have disposable income, are asset rich and very discerning consumers. What will they do with this economic (and political?) leverage.

These issues might not directly affect you, but if you had to pose the five biggest strategic issues for your own organisation, what would they be? How coherently could you frame the questions and how insightfully could you answer them?

Click hear to see how Predaptive help organisations develop this critical capability.

Where Are The Cassandras In Your Organisation?

2010-07-15T13:30:00.001+01:00

If you thought Cassandra was a Greek myth long ago consigned to classical history with little to teach us about today you’d be wrong.

Simply told, Cassandra, because of her beauty, was granted the gift of prophecy by Apollo. But because she didn’t return his love he placed a curse on her so that no one would believe her predictions.

This combination of real insight and powerlessness is one of the most frustrating positions someone can be in.

Every organisations has their Cassandras, we find they fall into two types:

Reductive Cassandra
These Cassandras focus on explaining why the world will fail, why things don’t work and why new ideas are dangerous.

These people in influential positions can be very damaging. Their power of argument can be highly developed, the problem is they don’t put it to constructive use.

Passive people give up the fight of taking their arguments on so an atmosphere of negativity and helplessness takes hold.

Constructive Cassandra
These Cassandras foresight needs to be given an outlet. Some of what they say will be genuinely visionary, some will be wrong. Often the most common mistake is one of timing. They turn out to be correct but get the year or the speed wrong. Remember Apple’s 1990s Newton PDA, a visionary product without the technology to deliver it. iPad is the Newton realised.

These are exciting people to be around, they are full of ideas, some that can be heretical, challenging the orthodoxies of the day. We call this process of evaluating these ideas, risk calibration, allowing enough of the creative flow to turn into something worthwhile.

Organisations that find a way of giving the best of these ideas traction are the ones that control their futures.

Can you indentify your Cassandras?

How To Identify People With Low Ownership Issues

2010-06-11T11:21:00.001+01:00

Ownership is mind-set determined – see how many of the following you recognise:

Yes I agree with you , you’re right I need to change - soon
These numbers are not good enough, they will improve - soon
I’m going to sign up for an MBA, its time for me to improve my business education – when I get the time
I nearly told her/him what I really thought of them. I was that close to losing it.
Next month/quarter/year I will deliver a better performance
Factors beyond my control were to blame for missing the numbers (select from a long list – the wrong weather a favourite amongst some company chairmen)
It’s a personality clash, there’s nothing I can do
It's good in theory but won’t work in practice (then it’s a bad theory)
My boss is a nightmare
I don’t have the resources, or its evergreen predecessor
I don’t have the time
We can’t fire them, it's too difficult (not if done correctly)
Better ongoing mediocre performance, than a vacancy (this breeds mediocrity)
People need time to come to terms with changing their behaviour (no they don’t, people need time to change their attitudes not their behaviour)
The other department/person/division is to blame.
We are incompatible star signs (true – said a manager earning £60K plus a year)
Where can you get good people these days?
People these days are more disloyal
I have an addictive personality
I have a low metabolic rate

The issue with this list is not to test them for truth, they might be, that’s not the point. People with a high ownership mind-set seek to transcend issues not use them as excuses as to why something has not been achieved/done/actioned.

What’s good fun (or depressing if they work close to you) is, once you spot someone with a low ownership mind-set, how often these excuses crop up.

Predaptive help organisations create high ownership cultures, to find out more contact us.

How Do You Measure Up As A Team Manager?

2010-06-11T11:20:00.001+01:00

Over the last 6 months Predaptive have been working on a competency project that has indentified certain characteristics of the successful team manager. We have summarised those behavioural indicators into the following list:

They seek to add value to what the team are trying to achieve, rather than simply ‘manage’ them.
They balance the task-team-individual requirements as best they can.
They seek to work on connecting their personal goals with the organisational requirements.
They maintain the appropriate emotional distance between them and their team. Close, but not too close. Distant but not that distant.
They remember where their credibility should come from (contribution and expertise – not from position or hierarchical status).
They work to make their people smarter.
They constantly focus on increasing their motivation.
They try to make their day as productive, and their work environment as stimulating, as possible.
They make time for people, offering praise and encouragement.
They avoid the team becoming emotionally dependent on them and vice versa.
They seek to remain objective in all decision making.
They deal with the tough stuff quickly, decisively, fairly and consistently.
They hold themselves to the highest personal standards.
They work hard at championing the organisation’s vision and values. They see themselves as needing to demonstrate real role-model behaviour.
They are always confidential and discreet with information about their team. They don’t gossip about personal matters.
They focus on coaching and supporting rather than checking and policing.
They look to show they trust their people.
They offer praise and recognition where it's warranted.
They don’t seek to impose their personal views or work style on others. They allow people to be themselves.
They connect with people at the human level, not hiding behind titles or position.

Staying Power

2010-06-11T11:17:00.001+01:00

Sir Terry Leahy has announced he’s leaving Tesco after 14 years in charge. During that time the business has seen turnover rise by 310% and profit rise even more. Tesco has moved from being an also-ran in the UK supermarket field to the dominant player, overtaking Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer in profitability.

Tesco is unusual amongst its rivals in having long standing Chief Executives. 14 years gives a person time to see their vision turned into reality, passing through painful times of change as part of a strategy that shareholders, customers and employees know is likely to be given the opportunity to make it to fruition, making them more likely to stick with it.

It’s not just Leahy who has been given the chance to succeed. Despite being formed in 1919, Tesco has only ever had five CEO’s. One was Jack Cohen, the founder, the following two were his son-in-laws, followed by Lord MacLaurin. Lord MacLaurin was plain old Ian when he took over, his remarkable achievements at Tesco gave him the profile that led to a peerage. He claims his most important decision whilst at Tesco was appointing his successor, rather than turning Tesco into the UK’s largest retailer.

During the 14 years that Sir Terry Leahy has been with Tesco, Marks & Spencer have had five Chief Executives, the same number that Tesco has had in the last century. Marks & Spencer has not enjoyed the steady good fortunes of Tesco over that period.

Whilst it may be wise to replace a Chief Executive who isn’t delivering the goods, or an Executive at any level who isn’t performing, it’s worth reflecting on whether giving people time to execute their vision and invest in selecting and mentoring a successor can produce better long term results for all stakeholders.

To talk through how you can develop a vision led strategy, or to discuss your talent management plan contact us.

Taking Over A New Senior Role – The First 100 Days

2010-05-20T12:01:00.004+01:00

When taking over a role that puts you in charge of a business it's critical you use the first 100 days wisely. Much of the success you have in the first 2-3 years in the role will be determined by how effectively you use these 100 days. It’s surprising how many people think this early period is one for reflection and review rather than for action and change. As Napoleon observed when appointing a new general, you can do nothing to them in the immediate days after they are appointed, they can do what they will, because to criticise them would make the appointment look a mistake. Senior managers/directors should use this time accordingly.

Below we’ve put together a checklist developed from our senior executive coaching work. Doing these things more or less in parallel fashion will use those 100 days to real purpose.

Engage With The People

Informally meet all staff you are responsible for face to face ASAP. This can be onerous and arduous if you cover a lot of territory but it needs to be done. Town hall style is fine if a lot of people are involved.
Communicate a high level ‘impressions’ based overview of what your leadership will mean and what people can expect to see from you in the first few months. Communicate a date 120 days after you have started where you will talk about what you have learned and what your first year plans are going to include. This will inject a sense of pace and purpose into your approach. Stick to the timetable.
Conduct a 1-2-1 interview with all direct reports. Get them to present their KPIs and plans for the relevant period.
Meet all second line reports 1-2-1. Informal discussion to get their views establishes another line of communication without undermining their bosses (your direct reports).
Hold a team building workshop with your direct reports team. Focus on developing/reviewing/inventing a Purpose Framework of Vision, Values and Strategic Goals.
Start to form a view around the shape and composition of your direct reports team.
Set up a regular meeting process with your boss. Drive the agenda, make it your own. Spend time getting to know them and what pushes their buttons.
Network like mad across the organisation and in key adjacencies.
Begin gathering your key team; you need people you can really trust and relay on. If you are going to bring in people from a previous organisation try to balance their appointments with some incumbent promotions.
Key early relationships if you are at MD/CEO level will need to be with your Chairman, FD/CFO and HRD.

Think About Your Personal Leadership Style

Decide what kind of leader you want (and don’t want) to be.
Correlate that to the immediate needs of the business. Does it require transformation, remedial action, a steady hand, shaking up???
Be prepared to make clear statements about your management/leadership style, what you won’t tolerate and what you really like to see in others. Clarity here will send out clear signals of intent and begin the important early process of expectation management.
If relevant, make sure people you have managed previously recognise that things need to change; old relationships cannot necessarily carry on as before.
Change things. Symbolic change can be hugely significant in setting out a new style, a new way of doing things. Never say "I’m not going to change things until I’ve had a good look at things". Do not begin with a strategic review, this creates a period of stasis and anxiety at the same time

Getting Your Hands On The Things That Matter

Get your arms around and understanding of the key data sets with the three requirements of
- Full disclosure
- Absolutely correct
- Available in a timely fashion
These data sets will be:
- Financial, including; cash, profit and loss and the balance sheet. Make sure you understand the balance sheet as well as the FD. Go through the overhead line by line to understand what the business spends its money on.
- Operational, including all key functional metrics especially those relating to customers, margins, input and output costs. Test the effectiveness of the Board/Management Report. Improve/change as required.
- Compliance, all issues to do with risk, regulation, health and safety, HR policies etc.
In these early weeks is more critical to understand problems/issues than to blame people for poor data. Openness is more important than quality (for now).
Planned decisions. Capture all decisions that are in the pipeline. Understand those that are legally binding, those that are committed, those that reversible.
Reputational Risk. Make sure all currently known issues are known to you. Be very clear with your DRs that for you, surprise (not bad news) is the worst sin of all, and will be very negatively received.

Engaging With Stakeholders

Map all key stakeholder groups.
Develop clear views around stakeholder risks, where power resides and think about where you need to quickly build relationship equity.
Develop engagement plans for individuals and groups.

Getting Your Strategic Point Of View Organised

Become the expert in understanding the current strategy and why it exists (or not) in the form it does.
Ramp your learning on understanding the market context, competitive pressures and major change drivers ASAP.
Get out and meet key customers, use it as an opportunity to evaluate the Sales Director.
Keep testing the organisation against the critical capability - Do we have the people, processes and proposition to GROW this business? Make this a standing agenda item.
If you need additional resource/focus to make this happen – do it.
Use the emerging Purpose Framework development to inform the major strategic themes.
To begin with remain as open and neutral as possible, opinions and decisions are a next stage.
Look for quick, small wins, improving the figures is a short cut to increasing your credibility, licence to operate. Do not become a ‘jam tomorrow’ leader.

Activate Real Performance Management

Understand all key performance drivers. Make sure accountabilities are clear and the reporting line from top to bottom is transparent and understood.
Validate current practice and improve where necessary around the right things being focused on by the right people in the right way at the right time
Review performance management system, develop as required (tactical). In the first year make a more strategic appraisal and to its effectiveness.
Focus on accountability, responsibility and ownership. Evaluate how expectations are set and met.
Review and reset consequences model (positive and negative).

Remember, you’re going back to the organisation after 120 days. This is as much to show what you have been doing as what you are going to do more/less/differently.

Predaptive work with CEOs or other Directors in an executive coaching capacity and on top team development. To find out more contact us.

Vision Building – What It Is And Isn’t

2010-04-14T15:56:00.000+01:00

From our work we’ve gleaned the following do and don’ts around Vision Building:

Don’t have a Vision and a Mission. We’ve never seen an organisation successfully communicate both of these and show how they can function interdependently. Also when you ask people to quote one they often quote the other. A good vision will do all you need it too.
No numbers or dates. Something that states £100m by 2015 is a goal not a vision.
Visions are aspirational and as much about the journey as the destination. They are for the long term, something that needs changing or can be achieved in 5 years is probably not long term enough.
Creating a future that a vision captures is where the real benefit is. There is nothing more motivating for someone than to have a future articulated to them that they would like to become part of.
Don’t confuse visions with marketing strap lines, clever word play or alliterative statements. Sure, you’ll want to distil it down to a short phrase, but start with the long version, otherwise it’s just a word-smithing exercise.
Where does a good vision come from? It comes from a passionate point of view of what someone or some team wants to create. Vision building is not a technical, tick the box exercise, it should come from the heart, a clear expression of a future state which is different from the current state.
If it’s done as in point 6 it becomes a statement of intent. It should be directional, broad enough not to be restrictive, specific enough to allow options to be discriminated for and against.
Finally, the most important point, vision building is a deep act of leadership, you're offering people an opportunity to take part in taking others (customers and employees) on an exciting journey together.

See Values and Goals for the other two components of an effective Purpose Framework.

Predaptive help organisations build and implement effective Purpose Frameworks; for more information please contact us.

Values – How They Underpin Everything An Organisation Does

2010-04-14T15:53:00.002+01:00

In building an effective Purpose Framework how you approach Values is critical to get right. Below we summarise the main points:

Culture is expressed values. Values are the basic building block of what it feels like to work in a particular organisation. If you want to change the culture, change the values.
A values driven organisation needs fewer rules, its values act as a touchstone for guiding peoples' actions and behaviours.
Values are not ‘common sense’, or ‘unnecessary because we all have values’. An organisation without clear values will not be able to offer any kind of ethical, contextual or behavioural framework. Whilst your personal values may be obvious to you they are not obvious to me. See MPs expenses for more context.
Distilling them down into five or six maximum is a good idea. Ten or more values is too many for people to carry round in their heads.
The whole focus should be on the behavioural expression of those values. You are not making a personal comment on an individual’s values, but on their visible behaviour - either positively or negative, as it relates to your values. The key here is to develop behavioural indicators.
You are not asking people to leave their personality at reception and become an organisational clone, indeed one of your values might speak to originality or creativity. An organisation does not have dominion over what people think or feel, but it can motivate people to behave in certain ways and proscribe behaviours it deems unhelpful or antipathetic to building its vision.
Values must always be viewed as a set. Never allow selective quoting, and never play ‘top trumps’ where one value is viewed as being superior to another.
A values-driven organisation feels inclusive, people are more positive about giving their discretionary effort, customers notice the difference.

See Vision and Goals for the other two components of an effective Purpose framework.

Predaptive help organisations build and implement effective Purpose Frameworks; for more information please contact us.

Securing Your Future - Setting Strategic Goals That Deliver

2010-04-14T15:45:00.003+01:00

Given your organisation has its Vision, it now needs a set of Strategic goals that will drive its activities, priorities and decisions towards making that vision a reality. It’s in the Goals you find out how serious the organisation is about creating a future that is more than just a larger set of financial numbers than it's currently achieving.

Strategic Goals don’t normally number more than 10.
They will be clearly articulated, easily passing the ‘water cooler’ test of being understood by everybody.
Although simply stated, they will have significant detail underneath with a clear plan of how they will be achieved, with milestones and accountabilities clearly labelled. Strategy is essentially the mechanism for delivering the Strategic Goals.
Strategic Goals need to be masters (not servants) of, and integrated with, the current year’s business plans.
They should be more than just about financial growth. Profit is an output of doing something, so making more profit is a function of doing different things. The most effective sets may cover such things as:
- What it is you are selling?
- How you intend to engage differently with customers?
- Expansion, where, how, when?
- Solo or by making new partnership or alliances?
- Organic or acquisition?
- How you intend to use and develop your people capital?
- Technology, a disruptive focus or just a condition of play?
- Intellectual property development?
- Innovation?
- New markets and/or new segments?
- Challenging existing orthodoxies?
- New/emerging value chains?
- New costing models?
- New routes to market?
- Optimising or transforming – or both?
Leadership is critical to the process of developing effective and mobilising Strategic Goals. Without a point of view about the future, linked to the vision of what your organisation isto become, your Strategic Goals will not drive anything.
The best time frame is 4-7 years.

See Vision and Values for the other two components of an effective Purpose framework.

Predaptive help organisations build and implement effective Purpose Frameworks; for more information please contact us.

It’s Time To Get Real With The People You Still Employ

2010-03-11T13:32:00.001Z

We are seeing an interesting people issue emerging as we move into a post-recession environment.

A strand of the workforce that survived the redundancy programmes but was only just competent in their roles. They were happy to keep their heads down and the employer having cut the overhead dug in for the reminder of 2009.

These businesses are now looking to grow their revenues as quickly as possible back to pre-credit crunch levels, which means having a look at the quality of the people who will make it happen, and they are faced with a stark truth. The quality of your business performance will never exceed the quality of the people responsible for its delivery. The only exception is if you are lucky enough to have a product or service that people want to buy in spite of the people they have to deal with.

Managers who can only rationalise and justify problems are no good to you when your marketplace is sluggish and/or volatile. You need people who can transcend their current environment and develop new conditions of business, moving from a reactive stance to a much more proactive one.

It isn’t the worse performing people which hold an organisation back; it’s having too many mediocre ones in key positions. And there is a further brake on this being sorted out as a function of normal market conditions. Any recovery is unlikely to drive high levels of new employment, slow improvement continues to create a very tight jobs market, so these very average managers are not going anywhere of their own volition. This can create a real sense of negative change inertia, the good people who hoped the leaner organisation would be more agile and innovative find it’s even more frustrating than before.

The challenge for HR is to move from downsizing to genuine building of bench strength. It’s the only way to grow the business ahead of a poor demand curve.

What People Do On Trains

2010-03-11T13:27:00.003Z

Train travel is instructive for observing the work habits of ones fellow passengers. We think it is a very under researched area of human behaviour deserving of more attention.

Computer Jockeys
Hunt and peck typing is still the most popular form of typing. It’s interesting to see a form of genuine equality, neither sex seeming to have lots of competent typists. Our unscientific research shows Word and Excel being the most common programmes (excluding email see next section) with PowerPoint a very poor third. It’s much more common to see people watching films, although interestingly more in the evenings than mornings, a treat after work perhaps?

Writers
Still a common activity. Note taking and list making the most prevalent forms.

Talking
Only to people you’re travelling with, otherwise a very weird thing to do.

Email
BlackBerrying (or version of) very popular. Often done with lots of frowning, either due to frustration or difficulty reading the screen.

Phoning
We think this is less common than it used to be. Very little on the morning commute unless train delayed, evening calls ‘I’m on the train’ still easy to overhear, but generally the serial phoners are a smaller hard core.

Reading/Annotating Work Stuff
Prep for meetings easy to spot. Evidence of lots of printing still going on. Like all reading sends a lot of people to sleep...

Staring Out The Window
Who knows if this is work related?

Non Work Activities

Sleeping
We think more common among younger travellers. Burning multiple ends of several candles perhaps? Snoring seems to be generally tolerated by fellow passengers.

Newspaper Reading
If you work for a national newspaper you must weep every morning when you see the number of Metro readers.

Texting
It's in the non work section because so many people are smiling while they do it. People seem to enjoy text messaging.

Book Reading
Pleasingly still common.

Media Players
Noisy headphones the most annoying thing on trains, watching video becoming more common.

What is fascinating to speculate, is how much peoples’ industry on the train has anything to do with the quality of their productivity, and how they contract with themselves around the balance of work/non work activities.

Managing In A Changing World

2010-03-11T13:22:00.000Z

We may now know when the budget is going to be, and from that it’s a short logic leap to know when the next general election is going to be, but even William Hill is reluctant to speculate too strongly on who the next UK Government will be. What we do seem to know for sure is that a new Government will bring new changes, and regardless of the ministers in charge it’s safe to say those changes are going to bring at least as many challenges as they will opportunities for the organisations we work in.

Planned change can work really well when organisations have time, resources and clear parameters to work within, and confident enthusiastic managers and leaders to help implement that change. Yet change isn’t always planned and sometimes it’s us that’s reacting to change created by others. The ability to withstand constant change, to remain resilient in the face of relentless change, and to have the confidence and capability to drive yet more change through successfully in change weary organisations will be a key management skill for the teens (the teenies?).

How well does your organisation handle planned and unplanned change? How well positioned are you to be flexible in the face of a changing marketplace? If you’d like some help with making your organisation flex-friendly, give us a call, we’ll be happy to help.

Being In The Matrix – There Is No Spoon*

2010-02-11T13:31:00.006Z

Matrix structures are sometimes the only effective way of deploying a multi-dimensional strategy. The problem is they are beyond many organisations’ maturity to successfully execute. In fact some attempts have failed so badly it can be career limiting to even suggest ‘going matrix’ around some CEO’s.

However, for some organisations a matrix gives them the flexibility to achieve much more ambitious and sustainable strategies – with great results.
Below we offer a simple summary of the strengths and weaknesses of a matrix versus the most common structural designs.

Predaptive have successfully helped organisations implement a matrix structure, if you would like to find out more please contact us.

*No prizes for guessing the film quote – he is the One.

What The Toyota Recall Tells Us About An Organisation’s Mind Set?

2010-02-11T13:29:00.000Z

Toyota has a hard won reputation for being the best car company in the world and from 2008 they also become the biggest. This was achieved without making any significant acquisitions, all done from relentless, organic growth.

And then the mood music started to change. During the last 12 months there has been the odd warning from a couple of senior Toyota executives about being the biggest not automatically meaning you stay the best; about needing to avoid complacency, retain some humility. These siren voices now seem too little, too late.

Toyota’s long term success has now presented them with their biggest challenge. The cornerstone of their reputation was built on quality, which led to reliability, which led to repeat sales; a virtuous circle of business excellence. And with their hybrid technology they added a sexy ingredient to the mix; innovation.

This is now at risk. The recalls won’t destroy the company but they will force it to confront how it runs its business model. GM was the biggest car company for many decades, but with a much simpler supply chain, much less deployed technology (in production and in the vehicles) and a much longer product cycle. Toyota’s complexity may have got ahead of its capabilities, allowing systemic failure to develop.

And there are also early indications that it believed its own reputation. Customers complaining about the accelerator pedal or the braking system can’t be correct because the quality systems prevent these kinds of things from happening. Ergo, we’re right and they’re wrong. A classic symptom of an arrogant mind-set.

And their success also means they don’t just have millions of Toyota customers they have thousands of Toyota families – because when something works brilliantly, why not buy another one? And nobody won referrals like Toyota because satisfaction is contagious. But so is being let down, people will want to share just as much their sense of being duped. Toyota is like all the other companies, not special, but average.

How they respond it critical; not only do they need to over communicate they need to develop a new narrative, one that shows why these issues occurred and why similar problems can’t reoccur. They need to show tactical humility and a strategically different way of thinking about their business model. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

Genesis Hubris Nemesis – Which Stage Are You At?

2010-02-11T13:27:00.000Z

In this article we thought we’d share with you an overview of a new way of looking at business maturity, taken from some very wise, old ideas. We have identified three key stages, each with its own distinctive attributes.

Genesis
This is the most important stage, not because it is responsible for beginning the journey (although that’s pretty significant), but because leaving it means you move into very dangerous territory.

A Genesis mind-set is entrepreneurial, creative and hungry to learn. It contains the spark that started things off and it’s the flame that powers your development. The challenge is to maintain the Genesis phase indefinitely. Andy Grove, ex boss and co-founder of Intel, talked very compellingly about remaining paranoid, not allowing complacency to settle in, and never believing your own publicity. Paranoia that your success could end at any moment is a very healthy fear to have. Maintaining a dynamic position in the Genesis phase is harder than it looks.

The problem is some people don’t find this challenge exciting, they find it debilitating, they want to move into a more comfortable phase, where Hubris awaits.

Hubris
Literally, pride before a fall. Hubris is very seductive lulling you into a false sense of security, making your success feel permanent and your competitive position secure. And for a while this remains true. You will be at your most successful just before your success declines. The rate of decline will have a lot to do with the amount of Hubris imbibed. You will be able to indentify organisations, business people, sports people, celebrities who are in the Hubris phase. It’s tantalising to watch because they are the least aware of the oncoming third phase, Nemesis.

Nemesis
Retribution follows Hubris, and for many the fall is very painful. This is when the unsustainability becomes clear, its obvious (now) things couldn’t last; the career stutters, even collapses, the organisation fails, all the chickens come home to roost.

As you will see this journey’s arc can apply to individuals and organisations. It applies to business people, sports people, politicians and entertainers.

The challenge is to firstly become conscious of the dangers and then to work hard to stay in the Genesis phase. It may be challenging, but it will certainly deliver a more future proofed outcome.

Predaptive specialise in helping organisations to effectively change, by developing deep Genesis capabilities that convert into real competitive advantage. To talk about your change issues please contact us.

Values Driven Culture

2009-12-10T12:29:00.002Z

What do the MPs expenses row and the Banking Crisis have in common? A set of rules being followed without a framework of values to inform peoples’ behaviour.

It’s striking how similar the two issues were. People saying they’ve done nothing illegal, done nothing wrong, simply following the rules. What is scary about this is how little contrition has been shown. The MPs still feeling hard done by and the Bankers going back to their old ways, paying themselves the huge bonuses as soon as they can.

When you see values informing behaviour it stands out. Three weeks ago Wigan Athletic lost 9-1 to Tottenham. This was a pretty humiliating defeat. The players (not the manager) volunteered to pay all their travelling supporters costs for travelling to the game. They were under no obligation to do so, they didn’t hide behind rules, they simply did the right thing. The following weekend they won, showing huge resilience and team spirit. This bounce back is not unconnected to their values driven behaviour.

Anderson Consulting were the biggest audit firm in the world, they were destroyed by the Enron scandal because they took the money rather than be true to their historic values of probity and integrity.

Organisations without values need lots of rules. And people in that environment without the coalescing force of values then set out to game the system (see MPs again). You will see compliance not commitment to change, box ticking not real engagement around reporting, people doing the minimum (always inside the rules), but always reluctant to mobilise their discretionary effort.

With clearly communicated values, consistently demonstrated by management you create a purpose driven culture, informed by bought into standards that are non-negotiable. This creates something to work and live up to, and reduces the need for extensive and onerous rules. Never forget, for somebody who wants to remain disengaged there is never enough rules, they will always find a way round them.

Predaptive successfully works with organisations to develop values driven cultures. If you would like to talk more about helping your organisation to do the same, please contact us.

People Howlers

2009-12-10T12:20:00.004Z

Given the end of the year is looming we thought we would capture in one place the 10 worst examples of people management practices we have come across this year:

Using the economy as a reason to get rid of people rather than engaging with them around the real reason why they are not suitable.
Saying there is no bonus for people whilst giving out huge redundancy payments to people you haven’t the courage to performance manage.
When a VR programme is underway saying to some applicants you are too good to ‘let go’; the money is going to be used to sort out the people we want out. See previous point.
Interviewing potential recruits and not telling them they have been unsuccessful.
Managers who talk about vision and values and then do the opposite.
Treating induction as a one day tour of the office and issuing the log on password. It’s no surprise this organisation has a very high first year churn rate.
Not setting the annual bonus plans until the first quarter numbers are in.
Allowing a salary review date to slip, with no communication around why.
Using the difficult economy as a reason to underpay new recruits, or in one circumstance not pay them at all.
And latest news just in; cancelling the Christmas party for the wider population and senior managers going away for a secret dinner.

What we find interesting is managers often have a real blind spot around these issues. In the name of realpolitik they believe this way of operating gets the job done. The problem is with this approach is the affect it has on morale and job satisfaction. We have been to several Christmas parties recently where the recently redundant are positive and being as constructive as possible about their new situation and the people who are still working in the organisation are anxious and fearful about their employed position. This idea that you should be just be thankful you have job so put up with everything, including the way the organisation behaves, is the refuge of the deeply mediocre manager.
If you want cheering up after reading this watch our favourite clip of the year. It’s happy, clever, ridiculously addictive and cool to boot!

Proust Questionnaire

2009-12-10T12:17:00.001Z

With the holidays almost upon us, Christmas parties are in full swing and soon we’ll be looking forward to the year ahead. It’s a great time to explore the ‘Proust Questionnaire’. This structured set of questions have drawn revealing and insightful answers from people from the salons of fin de siècle France through to the celebrity revelations in Vanity Fair today.

You can try the questionnaire for yourself online, or for an interesting conversation starter with colleagues, try the print version. It could make an intriguing conversation booster for tamer Christmas parties, but remember, it’s not a competency based interviewing structure for recruitment.

Why Culture Change Is Not Understood – With A Short Guide To Greater Understanding

2009-11-12T12:12:00.002Z

The recent past has forced many organisations to confront a painful truth. There was something amiss in their culture which meant either they didn’t see the problems coming as the clouds of recession gathered and/or their culture is inhibiting their ability to respond effectively to the new economic realities. Hence the need for culture change.

The problem is that for many organisations they seem not to understand what they are trying to do. Their terms of reference are ill defined and their ability to articulate the cultural current and desired states is poor. There is also confusion over timescales. Often you will hear managers talk about cultural change taking ‘many years’ which its tantamount to saying the culture can’t be changed, whilst others will talk about a three month culture change project.

This is why culture change fails.

To help organisations approach culture change more productively we have prepared a prompt guide to at least try to organise your thinking and process of examining culture change more productively:

Firstly a definition. Culture is expressed as a set of behaviours that are viewed by the organisation as normal and expected - what is often referred to as ‘the way we do things round here’.
Next, values are not a synonym for culture. Values (what you believe in and stand for) inform the way you behave, when those behaviours normalise you have an expressed culture.
So if you wish to change your culture you need to think about what your current values are. By values we don’t mean the laminated 6 phrases on the back of a company swipe card, but the things the company really believes in.
By proper examination of the values you can begin to decide on their appropriateness and think about changing them but you need another compass bearing before you can set a new direction.
The organisation’s vision. What is the organisation’s purpose? Again a real vision isn’t a marketing strap-line on a business card, but a much more fundamental expression of what you are trying to achieve.
As these two concepts start to germinate and synthesise (don’t worry about also needing a mission- we’ve never seen an organisation satisfactorily manage a vision and mission in any added value sense at all) you can focus on the catalyst for cultural change - the organisation’s and individuals’ behaviours.
Behaviours are the visible manifestation of values. By focusing on behaviours which are both definable and controllable you can start to shape a new culture.
This is where we can answer the timing point. Many behaviours can be changed in the very short term which will give you a quick win but they won’t (yet) be unconscious; they will easily revert unless the process is vigilant. This is the longer term perspective.
To affect permanent behavioural change a key component is an organisation’s consequences model. There has to be consequences, both good, bad and indifferent, for a person’s behaviour to permanently change; and this must be separated from their performance. If good performance creates license for bad behaviour any culture change stops right there.
Finally, never call it a programme, project or campaign, and never use the word launch. Culture change is a process, a journey, not a destination, it is organic and constantly present.

Difficult Questions That Effective HR Functions Are STILL Trying To Answer

2009-11-12T12:07:00.002Z

A lot has changed recently in organisations, whether they are public, private or voluntary sector. HR teams have often found themselves dealing with issues they hadn’t expected, yet some of the key questions that faced HR people have hardly changed at all. We posed these questions 18 months ago, how many have you found a satisfactory answer to?

How do we retain the trust of our people when we are constantly re-organising, restructuring and removing people from the payroll? How do we ‘value our people’ whilst in a permanent state of change?
Skills shortages are getting worse, meaningful price increases are out of the question, and the cost to serve our customers is rising faster than revenue growth. How do we increase productivity, without adding further to our costs?
The legislative framework for employment best practice is increasing in scope all the time. What are the most effective ways of maintaining flexibility in our payroll (often one of our biggest expense lines) allowing us to grow, shrink and change shape as required?
People are becoming more complex in their motivational needs and wants. Whether that’s generational or life stage driven, as an organisation we have to offer attractive, innovative employment practices and benefits, how do we do it affordably?
What are our policies on diversity, equality, grievance, discrimination (in all forms), how to we effect ‘trade-off’ compliance with agility?
The role of HR needs to become one of catalytic agent of change as well as (instead of?) a writer of policies, procedures and people related administration. How do we effectively make that transition?
How do we put leadership at the centre of our organisation’s development agenda?
What is the most effective way in engaging employees in taking part in difficult change processes where a possible outcome of which might put their own job at risk?
How do we build an effective integrated ROI model for our people development, compliance and people administration expenditures?
How do we resolve the paradoxes and seeming contradictions in much of the inter-related nature of the previous 9 questions?

Whilst Predaptive don’t claim to have a set of neat, simple answers to these questions, we are working in various ways on helping client organisations to answer them, and where that is impossible, to at least work up a meaningful response.

Badwill And The Shovel Ready Foxtrot Economy

2009-11-12T11:59:00.001Z

The recession has launched its own share of buzzwords, here’s a few we’ve been hearing lately. If there are any you’re noticing trending, let us know.

Badwill:
The opposite of goodwill, the negative effect on sales and share price (or electoral chances) experienced when the public learns about unacceptable personal or business practices.

Dead Cat Bounce:
A temporary up turn in markets following a swift decline in sales followed by a further fall.

Decremental:
The opposite of incremental, a state of steady decrease.

Foxtrot Economy:
A state in which the economic figures released indicate fast-fast growth, but are followed by further quarters of slow-slow growth.

Funemployment:
A self descriptor for people who find themselves out of work and enjoying spending time doing other things that a full time job didn’t allow, usually only used by people without pressing financial obligations.

Shovel Ready:
Descriptor of a project that is ready to start just as soon as financial resources are made available.

Zombie Company:
A business usually in financial services which is not financially viable without government loans and guarantees.

A Call To Arms For A Dying Form Of Communication

2009-10-07T16:33:00.002+01:00

Here is the current list of ways you can choose to communicate:

Phone - Mobiles and Landlines (direct, home and company)
Email (work and personal addressees)
Twitter
Blogs
Texts
Fax
LinkedIn
Facebook (plus several others social networking flavours)
and Web Forums/Postings.

Far too many and the choice is increasing. There is one form of communication missing. Spotted it yet? Hand written communication as in Letters, Cards and Notes etc. It’s being squeezed into extinction.

Have a look around your desk area, office privacy screens, notice boards etc. What is most proudly (apart from photos) pinned/stood on display? It’s letters of congratulation, well done cards and thank you notes.

The letter or card still carries a power other forms of communication cannot match. Why? It’s original, a one off, it can’t be duplicated. It's permanent, it can’t be deleted or manipulated. Somebody made a deliberate effort to create it, with careful thought as to the medium (bought or homemade card) and its appropriateness. Next, effort has had to go into the writing of it, especially a handwritten (the Rolls Royce) version. This is all before the content is absorbed.

All this significance is without also considering what additional intrigue and excitement is bought to the table by the envelope!

Do you keep a memory box? How many emails or texts have you printed out and put in? None to not very many.

The use of hand written communication is dying out, it is becoming rarer to receive, which is why it is even more highly valued.

If you are interested in being an effective manager then the use of recognition and praise will feature in your tools of choice. Written praise, for all the previously stated reasons turbo-charges any verbal praise. It creates a record (which is why some misguided managers say they don’t use it), because people will never throw these things away, not because they wish to use it against their employer but because they value it so highly.

Look round your office see how people value personally written things and think when you last sent someone a handwritten letter or note.

Predaptive work in helping organisations improve their levels of employee engagement by creating more effective management practices.

How Would Your Party Conference Go?

2009-10-07T16:19:00.004+01:00

We’re reaching the end of the main political party conference season, and whilst conferences may lack the cut and thrust of yesteryear, they are still really interesting to observers of organisations in action.

Purists bemoan the lack of free speech and the careful co-ordination of messages, lessons politicians took from the corporate world, yet if your organisation were to run its own party conference how would it go? Let’s take a look at a couple of components.

The keynote speech – always fun to watch, not so much for the content, but for the body language and reactions of the rest of the top team. How would your top team react? Would they be on board with the content? Would they feel that the leader was fairly representing all views? Would they take joint responsibility for the success (or failure) of the speech? Or would they shuffle uncomfortably, thinking the leader was unworthy of their respect and attention? Would they pull faces and snigger, hoping for failure? A strong top team who work together for success and can disagree passionately in private whilst retaining respect for each others contributions makes a big difference to success.

The fringe – if your next organisation wide conference allowed fringe events what would they be like? Would there be events calling for new leadership because of lack of faith in the existing leader? Would there be bitter arguments about the future direction of the organisation with no-one taking responsibility for outlining a coherent vision? Or would there be small teams championing exciting ideas ready to lead projects in the future? Fringe events give a real idea about how engaged the ‘workforce’ is, and how much ownership they’re taking for the success of the organisation, both in the past and for the future.

The Confidence Of Tigers

2009-10-07T16:16:00.000+01:00

The regular season for American baseball has come to an end and the post season build up to the ‘World Series’ has begun. The season finished a little late this year, as despite playing over 150 games, the American League Central had to go to a tiebreaker game at Minnesota.

The tiebreaker wasn’t expected. At the beginning of September the Detroit Tigers looked a safe shoo-in having led the league for some time, and with a seven game advantage at the beginning of September. The collapse was momentous, with the Tigers becoming the first team in Major League history to fail to reach the playoffs having had a three game lead with only four games to play.

Watching the collapse has been instructive not only for baseball fans, but for anyone interested in managing performance. The Tigers don’t have a great recent history, their League win was in 1987 and it’s 25 years since they’ve won the World Series, so this was a huge opportunity for them and one which they seem to have worked hard to lose.

So what can organisations learn from the disintegration of such a high performing team? Strategists will point to the rotation of players, wearing out the most successful pitcher too early in the closing games of the season, leaving him unable to contribute at the critical moment. Commentators will point to some unnecessary showboating as some players opted for riskily aggressive plays that would showcase their skills rather than more conservative actions that protected the team. Coaches will ponder whether they were too tolerant of the down time actions of big name players who may have performed well on field but brought unwelcome attention to the team through late night partying and fracas.

All of these elements damaged the confidence and self belief of the team, and they made enough mistakes in the last month to last a whole season; an expensive collapse for the franchise holder. Freezing at key moments affects teams in far less high profile situations and the ability to trust each others’ contribution, challenge damaging behaviours and building each others confidence, is key to consistent team success.

How To Develop And Share Best Practice Effectively

2009-09-10T13:21:00.003+01:00

Most organisations now have some form of intranet, a place where documents and files are shared. Some organisations have realised the power of turning that system held data into a form that drives learning and builds/deepens organisational capability.

Let’s start with first principles. There are things your organisation does poorly, well enough and brilliantly. If you are a typical organisation the distribution of the number of times you might see those three standards will be shaped like a diamond. The majority of activities will be average, creating a bulge in the middle with the poorly and brilliantly stuff both being present but smaller in frequency. Imagine changing the distribution so creating a different shape - an inverted triangle, with brilliant activity at the top, being most common and average/ poor quality activity being rarest.

By following a conscious process of defining, capturing and disseminating activities that create value, and performed better than the industry standard, you will be driving the development of your own best practice.

However the problem quickly develops of how we maintain this best practice, making it available to others and easily updatable, with clear ownership and access rights. That’s where your IT can really start to work for you.

By building an on-line repository of best practice your organisation will have created the opportunity to accelerate the development of value added learning, knowledge that converts into real commercial advantage in increased profits.

Using industry standard, off the shelf software these on-line learning hubs can become the best practice centres of excellence.

Take for example a sales related learning hub. Our experience has shown us that most sales processes distil into 20-25 pieces of sales best practice. Imagine those 20 odd examples of how to do things codified into exemplars. Doing things this way we know to work more effectively than doing other ways. Each piece of best practice is owned by the person who is the current standard holder, who is available for coaching/helping others, until someone else improves on the practice so becomes the new owner.

All contained in a place securely accessible 24/7 by everyone, easily updatable and be enriched with supplementary material. Adding feedback mechanisms, forums, blogs tweets and wiki elements are all possible. And the usage data can be analysed in real time, making improvements a snap.

Predaptive have advised, designed and built these best practice learning hubs for large and small organisations. If you would like a demonstration please contact Claudine McClean.

The Recession Is Now A Year Old

2009-09-10T13:19:00.000+01:00

The recession is now a year old (happy birthday?) and during that year employees have been under pressure. Pressure to deliver results with reduced budgets, pressure to bring in new business when leads have dried up, pressure from seeing friends and colleagues leaving their business and those of their customers and suppliers through redundancy and pressure to keep working.

People react differently under pressure, some thrive whilst others worry and some become aggressive or irrational. Individual responses create a real challenge for managers to get the best out of people without creating a stressful environment. The responses of managers themselves go a long way towards setting the tone of the organisation and the mood of employees.

That tone will itself set the pace of recovery. Employees who feel supported and motivated will seek out new opportunities and take calculated risks to win business and out service the competition. Employees who feel that the best approach is to keep their heads down and look busy without rocking the boat won’t be in the forefront of a recovering economy.

Checking the climate in your business and taking steps to ensure that managers know which behaviours will get the best out of people has never been more important. Predaptive’s 360° feedback system gives you the insight you need to identify pockets of excellence, as well as those areas which need development. It provides individual managers with a clear action plan of how they can improve their day to day interactions to get more out of their teams as well as peers, meanwhile all employees benefit from feeling increasingly valued and listened to.

Utilising your bespoke feedback from Predaptive you can be sure that any investment in development is absolutely focused on areas of need, providing a clear path to return on investment.

Making The Most Of Development On A Budget

2009-09-10T13:17:00.000+01:00

As the economy picks up (whether into a V or a W) work patterns will become more erratic and reduced workforces will be stretched until sufficient confidence returns to add new people. This means employees working hard and carrying out tasks they aren't used to or even trained for. Under increased work and learning pressure tempers can fray and levels of service can slip at a critical time for customer confidence.

An ideal learning solution is to ensure that everyone has the right training and plenty of time to try out new skills, but that has to be balanced with the reality of already stretched workforces and increasing customer demands. Organisations are turning more and more to pragmatic blended solutions, giving people just enough training and support to get through whilst a better long term solution is worked out. Peer to peer coaching, just in time training, and handy user guides are all making a valuable contribution to 'getting on with it'.

E-learning is providing a valuable link in the chain. When employees need a quick boost in knowledge, a reminder of key processes, and an improvement in confidence, a twenty minute session around a core skill provides just enough input for employees, providing motivation to carry on with learning at a later date.

As customers start placing orders and workflow increases we're seeing signs of creative and ambitious employees seeing opportunities to grow their jobs, experience and responsibilities. Budgets remain tight and learning interventions need to be targeted, but employers that want to keep hold of their brightest talents are working hard to provide them with the development they crave. Coaching, mentoring and e-learning all provide key elements of the development mix in straightened times.

The Power Of Peer Group Pressure

2009-08-11T15:33:00.002+01:00

Peer group pressure is often cited as being an important, even critica,l component of building a high performance team environment. We thought we would dig a little deeper as to what peer group pressure is and how to create the right conditions for it to flourish.

Common standards, consistently applied, are vital. Teams have to know where they stand, what expectations are being made of them (both individually and collectively) and what the consequences are for different levels of output. Next, there needs to be as much focus on the right behaviours and activities as there is on performance. How people fulfil their role is as important as what they achieve.

The team must have a clear, higher purpose, something more than simply doing the numbers, or beating target. Peer group pressure comes from wanting to excel at something, to create something special, to be rated by people whom you respect as doing something impressive. Or put in sporting context, ‘we don’t just want to win trophies, but to be remembered as a legendary team.’

An open culture of meaningful feedback, constructive criticism and effective conflict management needs to be upheld. You cannot have peer group pressure without peer group review. The amazingly consistent quality of Pixar films (Toy Story through Finding Nemo to Wall-E and now Up) is driven by extensive peer feedback created in daily reviews of each others work. This focuses on the need for trust and respect for people and their work, another critical component of the peer pressure mix.

Peer pressure cuts both ways. It holds people to account, miles from the office or team colleagues, peer pressure helps maintain the standard of output, you are doing it not only for yourself but also for the team. But also it looks to offer support. When a team member is struggling, everyone piles in to help, ‘we stand or fall together’.

There are significant benefits from Peer Group Pressure:

higher morale
performance standards are more challenging
faster induction and resulting speed to competence
increased peer-to-peer coaching
steeper learning curves
more collegiate atmosphere
more challenging conversations
increased creativity and innovation

If you would like to create a high performing peer group pressure team environment Predaptive can help - contact us.

Making A Comeback

2009-08-11T15:21:00.003+01:00

Times are changing fast and jobs, roles and personnel are changing with them. That makes a step into an old role far scarier than it might at first appear.

Lance Armstrong made a surprising return to cycling after four years, having retired at the top of his game. A finish on the podium of the Tour de France was quite an achievement but not the win he’d aimed at. Finding that although his manager believed he was capable of winning and was willing to make sure he did, not all his team mates were working to ensure his success, a situation he wasn’t used to. Alberto Contador won the race, from within the same team, without the level of support he felt he deserved.

Michael Schumacher looks set to return to Formula One, a decision driven by events rather than purely by ambition. He’ll be coming back into a sport which has again changed, and he’ll be coming back without the opportunity to win the Championship. He’ll also be coming back to a car that simply isn’t as competitive as he’s used to.

Armstrong cycled well, putting in an astounding physical performance, but his comments about team mates both during and after the race were less than graceful, and the team looks set to implode, aided by a financial crisis. It will be interesting to see how Schumacher reacts to his changed status and the challenge of less than ideal equipment.

Outstanding performers can be as much a product of perfected processes and high performing teams as they are a product of natural talent. In sports the great unanswerable questions are of whether stars of old would be even better with today’s training regimes and equipment, or whether today’s top performers would have made the grade in the past.

The question for modern business is – are your top performers doing better because of favourable circumstances rather than real competence and effort, and can your organisation do more to release the talent of others who are not getting support they could capitalise upon?

Do You Have To Do Much More Than The Other Guy?

2009-08-11T14:31:00.002+01:00

Prepare yourself for a flurry of commemorations later this year when it will have been 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell signalling the demise of East vs West thinking. There will be plenty of books published, and in his book, 'Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire', Victor Sebestyen makes some fascinating observations about the period.

In some fairly heavy going academic text he argues that it wasn’t the irresistible allure of Western capitalism, Levi’s Jeans and Coca-Cola that lead to the demise of the Soviet Union. It wasn’t the strong rhetoric of Reagan and, closer to home, Thatcher that made the difference. It wasn’t even the courage and leadership of the Polish priest who became Pope John Paul II and stirred up thoughts of freedom in Poland, along with Solidarność.

The core argument is that the Soviet empire was just not very good at anything. There was little left to defend and so a safe transition to jobs in a democracy looked like a good idea.

Some businesses develop a hugely successful model of just being good enough to be better than the competition, take a little bit of slack out of the processes, spend a little more time listening to customers, demonstrate a smidge more care in product design and manufacture and it will be enough to bring customers over to you.

Great employers know it too. It’s not just money and brand that keep great employees. Spending a bit more time coaching them, offering a few extra opportunities to develop, creating a few new delegation opportunities all lead to happier more motivated employees.

You may not need grand gestures and great rhetoric to work through the recession, you just need better customer service and employee management than your competitors.

Are You Director Material? – A Follow Up

2009-07-10T10:02:00.001+01:00

Last month we provided a checklist on being an effective director. This turned out to be one of the most popular articles we have published, with lots of comment from readers. This got us thinking – why? Below we’ve pulled together the comments and synthesized them with our own views into 6 major themes:

The first and obvious point is there is a lot of ambition to become a director. It’s still seen as a real career aiming point, even though the rewards are not always obvious and the legal liabilities onerous.
‘I wanted to test my director against your checklist’. For many managers they do no hold their Director in very high esteem, our summary has given form to their frustrations.
It seems that for some, the Director role is a function of position not action. The objective of becoming a Director has been achieved, that in itself is enough for some and their direct reports see it clearly.
We also learned that for many Directors there is no clear mandate between their functional role and that of being a Director. Some were offered IOD training but many were not. As you might expect, this issue was more prevalent in Private, rather than PLC organisations
Another common issue in Private, proprietor-led companies is the promoted, loyal employee problem. Often a successful, long standing relationship between an owner and key lieutenant is ‘rewarded’ with a directorship. The problem is the relationship doesn’t change, the new Director now having the right to see everything but feels embarrassed to ask, the owner carrying on as before, perhaps still with too much informality around procedure and board process. This problem can be especially acute when the employee director joins a board of family/shareholder directors.
The long ago promoted Director who acts as an obstacle to progress. Experience is only of any value if it is leveraged effectively. If not, experience can be as much a liability as asset. It is critical Directors stay up to date and recognise their previous experience is a wasting, not growing asset. In this world of discontinuous change, insight and innovation are much more significant attributes for a director to have than just rear-view mirror experiences.

The major learn we have got from this thread of conversation is that the boardroom is rightly seen as a major driver of competitive advantage, but for many organisations they need to do much better.

If you would like to discuss you Board or top team development we’d be delighted to assist please contact us.

Being Trusted – Perhaps The Critical Requirement For Today’s Leaders

2009-07-10T09:58:00.001+01:00

All organisations are having to change, at a faster pace and in more radical ways than ever before.

This puts the requirement for leadership at a premium, where decisive, inspirational action from those in positions of power and influence is obvious and value-adding. The problem is many people who need to implement these different and challenging requirements look at their leaders with a crooked eye, thinking ‘Why should we follow you?’, ‘We don’t really trust you’.

With trust a leader can achieve much more, without it they will struggle to do more than exhort people to do better. Where does trust come from? To help clarify your own thinking we have put together a summary of the behaviours that stimulate feelings of trustworthiness.

Consistent - You need to behave in ways that allow people to feel they always know where you’re coming from. People would prefer someone who is autocratic all the time to someone who flip-flops between being controlling one minute and laissez-faire the next.
Fair - You cannot have favourites, or be mercurial in your decision making. People need to see you are objective and even-handed in all your dealings with others.
Reliable - Always do what you say you will do, never over-promise and under-deliver.
Values Driven - People need to see what you stand for through your dealings with others.
Discreet - You are you good with other peoples’ confidences.
Straight-forward - Effective leaders need to be political to some extent, but trusted ones are only political in the positive sense of being in tune with the hidden agendas and underlying group dynamics, not manipulating, double-dealing and back stabbing.
Supportive - You not only help people with work related issues but offer broader support when needed
Tough - You will say the (very) difficult stuff even when it makes you unpopular. You are not interested in how many Christmas cards you get, only in being effective and increasing the effectiveness of those around you.
Human - People relate to you because you have empathy for their position, and you don’t put yourself on a pedestal.

These attributes are in no order of importance, and cannot be adopted as a short-cut to trustworthiness. People have got to have belief in your sincerity.

Predaptive work extensively in coaching managers to become more effective leaders. If you would like to find out more, please contact us.

Are You Striking The Right Leadership Balance?

2009-07-10T09:55:00.001+01:00

When times are tough people look for leaders to give them confidence and hope like never before. When the route to take isn’t clear, having confidence that someone in the team, the department or the organisation knows where they’re going makes it easy to follow. When people are behaving strangely in situations that they’ve never faced before it’s reassuring for others to know that there’s someone who is behaving in the way they not only expect, but they’d like to behave themselves.

Being a leader in tough times is no different than being a good leader in the boom times. Leaders strike a balance between confidence and empathy, they are able to clearly articulate their vision of what the future should look like, but are not so blinkered that they won’t listen to input from others or take account of a changing context. They are able to drive people forward with enthusiasm and motivate them to higher performance without pushing them into an uncomfortable stress zone.

Having one leader in an organisation is better than none, but having an organised and synergistic leadership team leads to sustainable higher performance. Unfortunately, much leadership reading and theorising focuses on the one transformational leader rather than the transformational leadership team. Having a group who respect and trust each other enough to have open discussions and to challenge the views and actions of others ensures better leadership, more robust decision making and effective implementation.

Finding the right balance at the right time isn’t easy, but Predaptive work with leaders to help them be more effective individually and to make a really positive impact as a high performing, functional leadership team. To find out more about how Predaptive can help your leaders to make a bigger impact contact us.

Are You Director Material?

2009-06-10T16:53:00.002+01:00

This month we provide a checklist for you to test yourself against the benchmark for being an effective Director. If you are already a Director then this will provide a wake-up call to make sure you are still doing all you need to.

Do you have the required minimum intellectual horsepower to understand and contribute to the conversation around Finance, Strategy, Compliance, & Operational Excellence? If you do, but don’t have the skills, develop your own Personal Development Plan.
Do you demonstrate the required Director legal literacy?
Do you keep your personal learning ahead of the rate of change in the relevant sectors? All Directors should demonstrate relevant market insight.
Are you a Leader? Effective Directors are leaders of people, not simply operational or functional managers in a senior position.
Do you demonstrate a passion for what the organisation does? Are you happy being with customers?
Do you have a track record of success which you apply to the benefit of the organisation?
Does your contribution make a transparent difference to the growth and development of your organisation, in addition to your functional responsibility?
Do other people look up to you as a role model? A Director must have the credibility and respect of all levels of the organisation they come into contact with.
Do you have sufficiently developed interpersonal skills? Are you easy to get on with? Will you deal effectively with conflict and difficult situations? Are you self aware? Emotional maturity gives a sense of being personally secure, making you much less liable to indulge in unacceptable behaviour.
Do you have sufficient personal presence? Can you effectively represent the organisation at external events and at company conferences?
Do you put the organisation first, sometimes even when in conflict with your personal life or personal preferences?
Do you behave pro-actively? Doing what it takes, without being asked?
Do you demonstrate the integrity to uphold the office?
Do you uphold the vision & values of the organisation?
Do you demonstrate a capacity for hard work?

Some organisations get this right, others have very little conscious understanding of what being a Director means, or explicit criteria when making Director appointments. One thing is for certain, making ill-informed Director decisions will have long term negative consequences for your organisation, and getting it right will have significantly positives outcomes for many years to come.

Predaptive spend significant time working with Directors and senior managers, in improving team and organisational performance. For more details contact us.

Interviewing An Apprentice

2009-06-10T16:49:00.002+01:00

This year’s Apprentice season has come to an end and not only has Sir Alan given someone a new job, he looks to have landed one for himself too.

The Apprentice makes for great TV viewing, with plenty of lessons to be learned, mostly around not putting yourself or your family through a reality TV show. Feedback we’ve received over the last couple of weeks seems to indicate that some people have been watching the interview episode as an instructional video. HR Managers have reported baffled candidates wanting to understand why they weren’t successful, and asking why the recruiter from the line was asking aggressively phrased yet seemingly irrelevant questions.

Meanwhile baffled recruiters are asking why people don’t want to accept the jobs they’ve been offered – with those candidates muttering about ‘other offers’ and ‘more attractive industries’, to reveal when pushed that the interviewer didn’t seem in the slightest bit interested in talking about the job or their suitability, but fired one weird question after another, occasionally not waiting for an answer.

Recruitment techniques do need to test a candidate’s capability to do the job, not simply to ‘ace’ an interview, and with interview coaching sessions being commonplace employers do seek to ask unexpected questions and challenge experience, however, the simple recruitment rule remains important, you want to know if the candidate can do the job. The best way to find out is a competency based recruitment approach rather than a trial by confusion.

Predaptive work with organisations to help ensure that their people recruit against a fair and consistent process, ensuring reliably good hires and a quick transition from new starter to confident performer. To find out more contact us.

Would Anyone Miss Your Brand?

2009-06-10T16:46:00.002+01:00

With mergers, rescues and collapses having been a major part of business life over the past year it’s worth reflecting on some of those brands which have disappeared or will disappear soon. This week Lloyds Banking Group has announced that Cheltenham and Gloucester branches will be leaving the high street. Along with them go Abbey, Alliance + Leicester and Bradford & Bingley as their brands become absorbed into Santander. None of the banks brands have been around too long in their current form, they were already merged or contracted names of local building societies, and whilst no-one predicted the banking crisis, takeovers were mooted for all of them long before the credit crunch.

Walking along my high street I notice that Woolworths isn’t there any more, or Zavvi. Whilst I may have had no emotional connection to Zavvi it was a useful place to pick up a CD on a whim, and I’m sure each time I need a piñata or childs dressing up outfit I’ll rue the passing of Woolies, but that’s not a weekly occurrence. It’s not inconceivable that Vauxhall will disappear, along with any number of GM brands which merge into an Oldsmobile blur, and I’m sure not in a hurry to learn how to say Setanta properly if they won’t be around next season.

These disappearing brands have been teetering for years and whilst it’s sad to see some go, it’s not a surprise. With each of them the question seems to be “What were they about? What did they stand for?” Customers and employees find it difficult to express what their unique purpose is/was. Whilst they may have had mission statements, they all seemed to share a lack of clear, differentiated purpose. Without a clear, well articulated Purpose Framework businesses struggle to motivate and mobilise both employees and customers. IS your Purpose Framework strong enough to carry you through tough times? To find out more contact us.

Changing Your Organisation - Recession Or Not

2009-05-14T09:55:00.001+01:00

Assuming you’ve already made the critical changes required for your organisation to survive, the next challenge is how should you change your organisation to thrive?

Different approaches are being deployed; some organisations believing any further change is dangerously destabilising, others who believe that developmental rather than remedial change is always required if opportunities are to be taken and competitors kept at bay.

In our work we see an interesting coloration that identifies this more pro-active change capability. The quality of leadership focus in the Senior Management Team* (SMT) determines the degree of competitive advantage development present in the organisations’ change agenda.

Predaptive have developed a summary checklist to help identify this change - leadership symbiosis:

How much of a defined and effectively prosecuted Vision is there for the organisation?
How values driven is the organisation?
Is the majority of SMT meeting time focused on customers and market opportunities rather than internal (and seemingly intractable) problems?
Is the SMT a functional, integrated, value adding entity?
Is the SMT visible around the whole business?
Is leadership demonstrated more by this group than talked about?
Is there an articulated strategy that the whole management population understand?
Are structures viewed as servants to the strategy rather than the other way round?
Are projects managed effectively, creating real differences in the business?
Are people working on development activities as well as ‘business as usual’ stuff, rather than being ‘too busy’ for anything other than the day job?

There is obviously a lot going on behind these headline questions, with significant dependencies between all of the 10 points, but the conclusions are clear. If an organisation scores poorly on the above then its ability to change is severely restricted.

The notion that change is a remedial, difficult and extraordinary activity, rather than an exciting, developmental opportunity rich activity is a very dangerous one and a totally alien concept to leadership focused Senior Management Teams.

*Senior Management Team is the Directors plus all their direct reports.

Bird Flu, Banks, Swines and You

2009-05-14T09:53:00.000+01:00

It seems that we’re never too far from a crisis. Whether we’re crunched by credit, panicked by pandemics, or outraged by outbreaks, there’s always something to be worried about. It may seem that all that worry is wasted energy, and to a large degree it is, however, some of that concern delivers real benefits when the Next Big Thing comes our way.

Looking back it’s easy to think that the Financial Services Authority could have found something more productive to do in the months leading up to the credit crunch than pull together board directors and key strategic managers from the leading UK banks and financial services businesses to take part in a large scale bird flu pandemic simulation over a number of weeks. Other organisations undertook their own emergency planning programmes, involving people at all levels to ensure that all foreseeable risks were covered. Bird flu has not made it to large scale human to human transition, so we’re not very worried about it now, the credit crunch was not foreseen so wasn’t planned for.

However that planning has already been used by businesses throughout the UK, reducing panic, maintaining business as usual and making life better for everyone. The need to keep cash moving is always identified by economists and criminologists as a key priority in emergency situations. When it looked like some UK banks could fall over, and panicky customers sought to draw out their cash, bird flu planning procedures helped to mobilise cash. When snow ‘gripped the country’ at the start of 2009 and people couldn’t get to work, bird flu planning procedures kicked in to ensure that thousands of employees could carry on working from home seamlessly, thanks to IT departments planning for restricted movement.

The emergence of swine flu has already seen organisations raise their internal preparedness level. It will be great if it doesn’t get used in a pandemic this year, but the planning that people do now will make business smoother in the long term.

Did You Choose A Real Leader?

2009-05-14T09:50:00.001+01:00

The news has been full of Members of Parliament’s expenses this week. The publication of itemised expenses claims with receipts has been great fun for the newspapers as they construct lifestyles based on charges for swimming pool maintenance, ‘gourmet’ dog food and ladies underwear. For the MPs concerned it’s been embarrassing.

The MPs could feel that they are being unfairly victimised in trying to do a difficult job, living in two locations and trying to balance parliamentary, constituency and family life to the best of their ability within the rules.

Unfortunately it seems that the public doesn’t see it that way. People are expressing anger not at MPs salaries, or at the rules that allow them to claim allowances, but at the way in which MPs have claimed what seemed like unreasonable expenses and as a group worked hard to prevent the public from knowing what the money was spent on.

It seems it’s not the MPs honesty that the public sees as lacking, but their integrity. People don’t like to feel that people they trust would do something which they see as being unfair and underhand. People in leadership positions are held to a high standard of behaviour and those who fail to meet that standard can quickly lose the trust and respect of their followers.

We see the same thing happening in organisations when senior managers cancel all non-urgent expenditure whilst continuing to utilise their travel budget to the max, or when leaders announce pay freezes for all employees and pay themselves a bonus. Leadership means living up to the standards that other people aspire to, whether it’s easy or not. Leaders who do this gain respect, trust and loyalty, all vitally important ingredients of a successful team.

LGA's TLA's and BS

2009-03-18T12:27:00.003Z

For yor amusement, here's the list of 200 words that the Local Government Association would like to see 'banned' from its communications in the future. We've added some English translations, feel free to suggest your own.

Across-the-piece - working togather
Actioned - done
Advocate - suggest
Agencies - groups
Ambassador - figurehead
Area based - local
Area focused - local and functioning
Autonomous - independent
Baseline - start
Beacon - good example
Benchmarking - measuring
Best Practice - a good way
Blue sky thinking - thinking
Bottom-Up - asking people for their views
CAAs - TLA
Can do culture - functioning
Capabilities
Capacity
Capacity building
Cascading
Cautiously welcome - unwelcome
Challenge - problem
Champion
Citizen empowerment - democracy
Client - person
Cohesive communities - working together
Cohesiveness - working together
Collaboration - working together
Commissioning - buying
Community engagement - democracy
Compact
Conditionality
Consensual
Contestability
Contextual
Core developments - developments
Core message - message
Core principles - principles
Core values - values
Coterminosity - working together
Coterminous - working together
Cross-cutting - working together
Cross-fertilisation - working together
Customer - person
Democratic legitimacy
Democratic mandate
Dialogue - talking
Direction of travel - direction (unless this is about which way the tram should really run)
Distorts spending priorities - wastes
Double devolution - pizza topping for the indecisive
Downstream
Early Win - success
Edge-fit
Embedded - working
Empowerment
Enabler
Engagement - talking
Engaging users - talking
Enhance - improve
Evidence Base - facts
Exemplar - good example
External challenge - problem
Facilitate - help
Fast-Track - speed up
Flex - change
Flexibilities and Freedoms
Framework - guide
Fulcrum - pivot
Functionality - working
Funding streams - revenue
Gateway review
Going forward - in future
Good practice - good way (though why good practice and best practice both on the list?)
Governance
Guidelines - guide
Holistic - working together
Holistic governance -working together
Horizon scanning - looking
Improvement levers
Incentivising
Income streams - revenue
Indicators
Initiative - idea
Innovative capacity - ideas
Inspectorates
Interdepartmental - working together
Interface - talking
Iteration - version
Joined up - working together
Joint working - working together
LAAs - TLA
Level playing field - fairness
Lever
Leverage
Localities - local areas
Lowlights - bad things
MAAs - TLA
Mainstreaming
Management capacity
Meaningful consultation - talking
Meaningful dialogue - talking
Mechanisms - ways
Menu of Options - choices
Multi-agency - working together
Multidisciplinary - working together
Municipalities
Network model
Normalising
Outcomes - results
Output - result
Outsourced
Overarching
Paradigm
Parameter - limits
Participatory - involving people
Partnership working - working together
Partnerships - working together
Pathfinder - person trying something new
Peer challenge - asking questions
Performance network
Place shaping
Pooled budgets - working together
Pooled resources - working together
Pooled risk - working together
Populace - people
Potentialities - chances
Practitioners - workers
Predictors of Beaconicity - signs we're doing well
Preventative services - stopping bad things happening
Prioritization - choosing the most important things to do first
Priority - the most important things to do first
Proactive
Process driven - bureaucratic
Procure - buy
Procurement - buying
Promulgate - spread
Proportionality - fairness
Protocol - guide
Provider vehicles
Quantum
Quick hit - success
Quick win - success
Rationalisation - cut back
Rebaselining - starting again
Reconfigured - starting again
Resource allocation - budgeting
Revenue Streams - income
Risk based
Robust - working
Scaled-back - cut back
Scoping
Sector wise
Seedbed
Self-aggrandizement
Service users - people
Shared priority - working together
Shell developments
Signpost
Single conversations
Single point of contact
Situational
Slippage - delay
Social contracts
Social exclusion
Spatial
Stakeholder - person affected
Step change - big change
Strategic - planned
Strategic priorities - planned
Streamlined - cut back
Sub-regional - very local
Subsidiarity
Sustainable
Sustainable communities
Symposium
Synergies
Systematics
Taxonomy
Tested for Soundness - working
Thematic
Thinking outside of the box - thinking
Third sector
Toolkit
Top-down
Trajectory
Tranche - piece
Transactional
Transformational - changing
Transparency - easy to understand
Upstream
Upward trend - improving
Utilise - use
Value-added - better
Vision - idea
Visionary - idea
Welcome
Wellbeing
Worklessness - unemployent

There's an awful lot of phrases and words on the list which translate as 'working together'. Why is that?

Techniques For Avoiding Redundancy

2009-03-12T14:14:00.000Z

There is no sure fire way to avoid redundancy, however there is real evidence of positive discrimination around the criteria used for selection that can improve your chances.

How To Avoid Redundancy (1)

Do the job you are paid to do brilliantly.
Create as much additional value around your contribution as possible.
Be a high quality, low maintenance person.
Be reliable.
Be easy to get on with.
Constantly demonstrate flexibility and a “can do approach”.
Learn at a faster rate than the pace of change in your industry.
Build your internal network.
Volunteer.
Be pro-active in suggesting new ideas.

Think about how people are promoted, by becoming the obvious choice candidate. Avoiding redundancy is that same process in reverse, becoming the least obvious choice candidate.

For some people the above list will be too late. For them there is another set of criteria that can be equally effective in keeping you off ‘the list’.

How To Avoid Redundancy (2)

Sleep with the CEO – don’t stop.
Be the only one who knows how the computer system works. Make it impossible for anyone else to learn.
Be too expensive to fire.
Sleep with your biggest customer – don’t stop.
Offer to work for nothing. You might think you are now, but you could go even lower.
Go off work with stress to do with ‘the way you are managed’ just before the consultation process begins.
Let it be known you have significant information that would benefit the competition.
Become a drinking companion with the Business Editor of your local, or better still, national newspaper.
Collect non-compliance data, especially around health and safety. A recent death (not yours) can help here.
Sleep with the person controlling the redundancy process – don’t stop.

Important Note: Points 1, 4 and 10 should only be considered individually, combining them can lead to serious health risks.

Too Little Focus On Barriers To Effective Change

2009-03-12T14:13:00.000Z

In all change situations there is a (sometimes toxic) mix of both organisational and individual barriers. As most attention is focused on communicating the external reasons for the change (competitive pressures, cost problems, changes to the business model/operating factors etc) the organisational and individual dynamics of change are often ignored or down played. Yet effectively addressing these areas will create a much stronger people platform on which to build the change process:

Organisational Barriers

Structural inertia - people are carefully selected, trained, and rewarded in connection with their roles. When people are focused, changing things can be very difficult.
Work group inertia - strong bonds are made between people that form into rigid groups which can be resistant to any change that threatens their social norms.
Threats to the balance of power - changes to who is in charge, allocation of resources and reporting lines all can have a significant impact on change resistance.
Previous unsuccessful change - the baggage carried around about previous bad experiences can be a strong block on new change initiatives.
Compositions of senior management groups – dysfunction amongst these groups will severely hamper the change process.

Individual Barriers

Economic insecurity - will changes to my job threaten my future earning capacity?
Fear of the unknown - comfort and security are derived from familiar things, the opposite is also true.
Threats to social relationships - disruption to social groups threaten peer group satisfaction.
Habit - the way we perform a role becomes second nature. Change can move us out of this comfort zone.
Failure to recognise the need for change - without personal buy-in to the change an individual will resist it.
Demographic background - three major factors that contribute to change suggestibility: younger in age, better educated and less experience of the organisation they currently work in. The opposite applies.

With the potential barriers identified, the challenge is how to address them.

The Top Ten Myths Of Getting The Best From People

2009-02-10T16:08:00.005Z

There are certain people related practices that are deemed necessary in the modern organisation. Some of these tools are at best implemented poorly; at worst completely misunderstood and create a worse effect than not being used at all.

1. Money based incentives are the most effective motivator. If you motivate people with money, that’s what they focus on - money (see the current economic crises for many dodgy examples).

2. Managers targeting peoples’ activity as much as results. People need to own their personal activity. Needing to be targeted by management implies they have a better idea of what someone should be doing than the person themselves, which results in compliance not commitment around what needs to be achieved.

3. Annual performance appraisals add value. They have a law of diminishing returns, staying alive only through constant revising or worst, simply changing the form. Without this ‘newness’ the process quickly loses peoples’ attention. An embedded continuous feedback model is much more low key and much more effective 360° feedback is just another management tool. In the wrong hands, done in the wrong way it can do a lot of damage. 360° requires very careful setting up and debriefing, and should always be used with the utmost care.

4. All managers can be trained as coaches. Most managers haven’t got a clue, their organisations’ culture often being completely antipathetic to coaching. Coaching starts with culture, feeds into management style and only then skills development.

5. Putting teams under extreme pressure at teambuilding events builds better teams and individual self-confidence. What with the lead up, weeks worrying about going, the stress of the event itself and the lack of connection back into the workplace it rarely achieves a net, lasting gain in anything productive, especially morale.

6. Psychometric tests are a window on peoples’ souls. Some are better than others, but any test that stereotypes or labels people is dangerous. In some organisations it’s common to hear people blame their profile for what they are or aren’t doing.

7. Succession planning when it means no more than identifying people for promotion to more senior roles. This quickly creates a currency of ‘face-fitting’ and ‘ticking boxes’. Bench strength is not built in this way, but through understanding strategic organisational capability requirements linked to identifying and nurturing potential.

8. Using Vision and Values posters, screensavers, mouse mats etc. to promote what the organisation is really about. Unless people can a) see evidence that their managers are acting as

9. Vision & Values role models and b) every employee can relate the language to their own job role and behaviour it will achieve nothing. In fact it’s likely to make things worse, creating even greater cynicism.

10. Sending out group wide email from the CEO that says nothing more than a bland press release might say, written in business speak few can understand. If you are going to communicate to people, have something material to say in language that is simple and direct.

Predaptive work with clients in not only avoiding these mistakes but also in creating effective organisational change through effective people development practices. Please contact me for an informal confidential discussion about improving the quality of your people practices:

Andrew Brown
E: andrewb@predaptive.com
T: 01789734333

Getting To Work Through The Snow - A Proxy For Revealing Our Approach To Work?

2009-02-10T16:06:00.001Z

Some people made it through the snow last week, some people didn’t. Some worked from home and some threw snowballs. What does this tell us about peoples’ attitude to work?
It would be really interesting to see the different approaches to getting to work from people who live in the same street with the same travel resources and family issues, who work in the same place and those who do similar kind of work. What would the differentiating criteria be? (Vice versa applies)

Would older people do better than younger people?
Would managers do better than the front-line?
Would women do better than men?

Or are the criteria more difficult to quantify? The personal attributes of motivation, ambition, responsibility, a greater sense of duty etc being more significant?

With some certainty we can predict, short of the street actually being cut off, there would be some people who got in and some who didn’t. Like the person who lived at bottom of the hill who parked their car at the top the night before who made it to work, the person who walked the 5 miles to work, and the person who simply set out a lot earlier, and was prepared to get home a lot later. (All actual examples).

A factor seems to be how convincingly we can claim to work from home. With a phone, internet connection and networked computer working from home would seem a snap. Much of the research into productivity suggests people who work from home are more productive than in the office. If that’s the case, rather than lost productivity we should have achieved a performance gain last week. However, a lot of peoples’ working from home seems to be dealing with inbox stuff, a few planned phone calls and generally ‘being available’. Much rarer is somebody working from home in the snow doing some significant, original work.

Probably the most important factor will have a lot to do with our conscience, how we handle guilt. The snowball throwers will have found a rationalisation that gives them licence to enjoy themselves, some lucky people were even given a free pass by their employer (we’re shut go out and have fun), but most will have come to a more ‘personal’ accommodation.

When the next snow comes it will open a revealing window onto our work/life landscape, one that might be more insightful than we realise.

The Top 10 Reasons Why Training Your People In Tough Economic Times Is A Bad Idea

2008-11-12T13:41:00.004Z

We thought it was time to stop all this political correctness around valuing your people in a downturn and tell it like it really is, with the top ten reasons not to train people - the real deal.

1. It gives people new skills and new ideas which they have to try out back in the workplace. This is dangerous because they are finding the job difficult enough as it is.

2. It can send out the wrong signal – like you value them. What you really want is for people to feel like you might fire them at any minute, it keeps them sharp.

3. It’s a great way to save some money. A few hundred pounds not spent on a training course for someone responsible for thousands, perhaps millions of pounds of customer/product/process/organisational value is better than increasing their ability to unlock new opportunities or reduce our business risk.

4. It confuses them. We need the gloom and doom message to be consistent, so giving them a positive, enjoyable experience shows us as being inconsistent.

5. It implies we have a plan of which training is only a part. This will raise expectations that we know what we are doing, when in reality we don’t.

6. It introduces them to people from other organisations (if an open training course) which might give them thoughts about comparing pay, conditions or work practices. People are better off kept ignorant.

7. It forces a dialogue with their line-manager, around business objectives, coaching points and development goals. Managers haven’t got time for this; they’ve got too much other pressure to cope with.

8. It takes people way from the job, and they’re off enough already through low morale.

9. It improves people’s CVs, and they might leave if they think they’re too smart.

10. It’s a waste of time and money. We never implement new stuff when they come back because we’ve been too busy covering for them whilst they’ve been away. Anyway, after the brief positivity we see for the first few days, they seem to become even more miserable than before they went on the course.

Training people at this time, you’ve got to be having a laugh!

What We're Playing

2008-11-12T13:38:00.002Z

What We're Playing

Tinner’s Trail

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/35570

DesignedBy:
Martin Wallace

PublishedBy:
Warfrog (including Treefrog)JKLM Games

By special client request this month we’ve been playing Tinner’s Trail. You may not have thought about designing a board game around the economics of copper and tin mining in nineteenth century Cornwall, but Martin Wallace has.

The game sees you as a mining entrepreneur looking to use your time and money to maximise your investment. Unlike many other board games being the best miner won’t bring you victory, you have to end the game with the best long term investments. You’ll need to make money mining then invest that money for maximum return before it becomes uneconomic to extract copper and tin.

You’ll be doing this against a backdrop of unpredictably fluctuating commodity prices, erratic property prices, fierce competition and limited time to implement your plans (sounding familiar?).

You can take a confident lead on investing in the most productive assets, or choose the recessionista strategy of leaving other people to blaze a trail whilst you pick up what’s left cheaply and make the most of the bargains.

One useful mechanic which is perhaps underused in both games and life is the ‘Pasty Seller’. If you don’t have the money to invest in new plans, or the resources you want just aren’t available when you want them, you can send your workforce out to sell pasties and raise cash, rather than complaining about the economy and the restrictions you’re working under. Whilst your business may not have pasty baking facilities, it always pays to make the most of any slack time to get out and talk to customers to see what opportunities are out there.

Managing Complex Communications

2008-11-03T13:50:00.003Z

If you’re reading this we haven’t all been swallowed into a black hole. That’s a good thing, and the people at CERN have been working hard to re-assure everyone that when they switch on the Large Hadron Collider there will be lots of interesting data generated, which may change our view of the universe and challenge our assumptions, but no ‘end of the world’ scenario.

Many organisations struggle with small scale communications of change and new ways of working, finding large scale changes and world wide communications close to impossible. Scientists are not often held up as the best communicators, but on this occasion they’ve certainly tried hard and achieved a good deal of success. There’s plenty that HR teams can learn about clear communication of complex messages.

What can we learn from the CERN experience?

* Begin your communication? plan early
* Match your communication to your audiences - choose the content carefully
* Build your communication in manageable chunks, from awareness to understanding
* Work to engage your audience(s), make your message interesting and relevant
* Expect people to have fears, be prepared to answer questions honestly
* Utilise trusted people to help get your message across, a team of Pathfinders or Champions
* Don’t be afraid of not having all the answers – with any change programme it’s OK to have a few ‘don’t knows’ as long as the overall message is clear

You may or may not want to supplement your message with a rap video, it worked for CERN, but it’s not likely to work for you.

The Biggest Business Cliché – Our People Are Our Greatest Asset

2008-11-03T13:40:00.002Z

This comment has become so hackneyed it’s also achieved a kind of post modern status – you can’t be serious. When people hear it they smile wryly, waiting for the ironic or platitudinous punch line, never expecting to discover any real evidence or intention that gives the statement meaning or weight.

Look at how much organisations pay annually in servicing and licensing costs above the original purchase/installation cost, thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands per annum. And then look at the per-captia spend reinvesting in their people - the lowest pay settlement the company can get away with and a few hundred £/€/$ per person spent on training (which is often the first thing to be cut in difficult trading conditions). Not a very compelling justification of the ‘greatest asset’ claim.

Let’s look more positively at how an organisation might live up to the statement. Take the material valuing of someone. If we ignore market-rate pay and benefits, treating both as a base line required minimum investment, the valuing part of the statement would be demonstrated in the premium invested above that base line.

Bonuses are an interesting area. If they are paid for individual performance they are being paid conditionally, if the performance wasn’t there then neither would the bonus. This is why people can earn huge sums of money and still view their employment transactionally, because their employer views them in the same way.

The employee would really be valued (as the most important asset) if the employer spent money on them above the market norm unconditionally. Giving somebody a bonus/time/benefit for who they are (a great person) rather than specifically for what they have done, shows how they are really valued. Plus the monetary worth expended for the motivational impact is hugely disproportionate. For example; somebody who has used all their holiday entitlement and is on a tight budget, has a significant personal problem for which they would ordinarily take time from their vacation allowance and they can’t afford unpaid leave. Their line-manager sees this dilemma and helps out with some additional paid time off. The manager subverts the system for the benefit of the employee. There is all kind of risks: precedents being created, people taking advantage, others piling in with requests etc. All those risks are worthwhile, because the demonstration of some humanity towards this employee and their problem will create a deeper permanent level of engagement. They will feel valued.

Next month we will look at non material ways of valuing employees, reflecting their ‘greatest asset’ status.

Predaptive works with organisations on increasing employee engagement and developing motivating environments please visit http://www.predaptive.com/ to find out more.

Commuting For Success

2008-10-24T14:00:00.001+01:00

Commuting has always been a time consuming experience, but with fuel prices at their current levels and congestion in the UK leading to delays it now takes up more time and money, so how can you make the most of your commuting time.

You can always read work papers and mentally plan for the day ahead or reflect on the issues you’ve encountered, but what if you want to make good use of the time without turning it into part of your working day?We took an informal survey of some of our most successful customers and here’s what they told us about Commuting For Success:

I’m using my time on the train to read, not another pile of contracts, but all the novels I wish I’d read years ago. I could save them up for when I retire, but I’m really enjoying escaping into other worlds, other lives. It’s surprising how much I learn from them that I can apply to everyday life.

My iPod has transformed my commute. At first I couldn’t see the point in shutting myself off to listen to music, but I’ve discovered I can download audiobooks which I find inspiring, the commute seems shorter and I feel smarter.

I’m loving Radio 4. I drive for hours every week and used to listen to a few favourite CD’s, but now I learn something new everyday, whether it’s something I thought I’d be interested in or not.

I’ve started shunning the Metro and shelling out 80p on a newspaper. I can read the news on the way in, getting myself in a business frame of mind. I save the supplement for the way home, it helps me relax and think about more social and arts related things before I get home.

Brain Training helps me switch my brain on in the morning, whether it’s Nintendo or the crossword, doing something abstract helps me get thinking and I feel far more alert and creative when I get to work. Super Mario is more of a trip home treat!

What are your active learning commuter tips?

The Absence Of Values In The Credit Crunch Meltdown And Why They Are Really Needed

2008-10-24T13:57:00.003+01:00

As the credit crunch unwinds and we can better see how much toxic debt resides where, the question comes to mind, how did these organisations values inform the behaviour and decisions of the relevant executives? Predaptive’s trawl of the publicly available data indicates that virtually all of the UK and US banks involved have at some time either spoken about or published material about their values (what they believe in and stand for) or their culture (the behavioural norms that inform their actions).

This turn tends to be largely rhetoric rather than anything of real substance.Let’s take a common term used – Integrity. How should integrity translate into practical action? You can’t talk for long about integrity without coming to trust, perhaps a bank’s most important asset. For a bank to jeopardise its trust with customers, commercial or retail, would be as crazy as a doctor making diagnoses for personal rather than patient gain, but that’s the equivalent of what the banks did.

They did not behave illegally (so we assume), and seemed to stay within regulatory boundaries, but not within any kind of meaningful values framework. What were the belief systems these banking executives were using to inform their strategy? Well, now we know. How to make the most short term money (with personal bonuses to match), by leveraging their capital base many times over.

Like a drunken dancing, it only makes sense whilst you’re doing it, looking at it from any other context looks ridiculous and unsustainable. And when most of your peers are also doing it, affirmation that you look cool is easy to come by.

UK Savers made a simple assumption when they put their money into Icelandic banks. That all banks’ risk policies and governance procedures were the same, so savers put their money with the Icelandic banks simply because they offered the best rates. The banks weren’t working to a values framework and neither were the savers.

There has been a lot of speculation that ethical banking will do well post-crunch. Yet this ethical definition is usually taken to include their policies around environmental and exploitative practices. In the future it will be worth testing their values on a much broader basis connected to their fundamental way of doing business, caveat emptor indeed.

What this demonstrates is there is the market space to create a real competitive differentiation. To be a commercially focused, values driven organisation, by demonstrating the public rejection of certain types of lending and related financial instruments.

Empowerment

2008-08-20T08:52:00.001+01:00

Why don’t the people in my team show more empowerment? Why doesn’t my manager give me more empowerment? This common cri de coeur is often built on a misunderstanding of what empowerment really is about:

Empowerment is not a synonym for delegation. Delegation is about giving authority and responsibility but not accountability to someone. Empowerment goes a step further by ceding accountability as well.
Empowerment is a two-way street. It can only be given to people who are looking for it. It can only be taken from organisations (or particular managers) prepared to give it.
It is more about mind-set than technique.
Empowerment will not work in a Parent/Child Culture, only in an Adult/Adult one. You cannot tell people to be more empowered; neither can you obtain it by constantly complaining about its absence.
Empowerment naturally thrives where there is high ownership, because empowerment is a synonym for accountability.
Empowerment is about wanting to take control of something and being prepared to own the outcome.
It’s never about doing what is asked, but always about doing what it takes.
Empowerment also thrives in values driven culture, because an organisation’s values create a ‘permissive space’ for desirable behaviours. Rules based cultures achieve the opposite effect, constraining people to stay within set boundaries.
Empowerment feeds more empowerment, because extended licence is obtained through successful disobedience, or something we more commonly call initiative.
Taking empowerment requires people to have ambition for their role so they can stretch themselves, to take more on, to show what they are capable of. People who only want to do their job will see the language of empowerment simply as a ‘con’, being asked to do more without any benefit to them. This also might make them more visible, which can be dangerous.
Empowerment also naturally occurs where leadership is present, because self confidence and confidence in team members promotes the taking on of new tasks and perhaps failing before getting it right. Leaders constantly create opportunities for this.
The same goes for organisations that have a coaching culture. A good coach will be someone who makes people feel they are empowered, because they will encourage people to believe in themselves.

To summarise, empowerment is about a compact of understanding between the organisation and the employee. For a full definition of the term Empowerment and other Organisational Development terms click through to Predaptive’s Organisational Development Glossary.

Pragmatic Or Lack Of Integrity?

2008-07-10T10:49:00.005+01:00

Your organisation needs to change shape, whether that's due to economic circumstances or because of a change of strategy. This can mean cutting back on the work force. In such circumstances, how do you approach redundancy issues?

Of course you need to follow due process, which is relatively straightforward, but what about the practice of using redundancy to avoid performance managing people?

Making people redundant who should have been tackled for performance or behavioural issues long beforehand show management at its worst. The arguments for doing this are well rehearsed. A manager sees an opportunity to remove someone who they have not been prepared to tackle through direct engagement and, at worst they even delegate the process to the HR department. It seems a pragmatic thing to do - difficult person gone, no risk of non-compliance around unfair or constructive dismissal and little conflict, being able to cite external factors or economic reasons.

The problem is this way of managing (or lack of it) eats into the moral fabric of the organisation in three ways:

Firstly, it shows to everyone a lack of leadership when it comes to problem people. When this happens across several functions as a matter of policy you can see credibility leak away from the line managers involved.
Secondly, it says "we don't take performance, behavioural or excellence in general seriously, and you can forget about any real conversation about organisational values".
Thirdly, and most damagingly of all, these problem people often know they are in a difficult position and when redundancy is proposed, or sometimes offered, they try hard not to show their pleasure at getting a (sometimes sizable) pay off. To good people around them this is insidiously damaging to morale. Why are these people not dealt with directly, and professionally and at worst being rewarded with a pay off?

Sometimes organisations lose the plot so badly they see this weeding out of problem people in this way as a positive thing, even telling good people who under voluntary arrangements would like to go are told no because they are 'too good', we need to sort out this other group. With the money saved from not making inappropriate people redundant, you could increase bonuses, perhaps postpone needing to cut the salary bill completely.

Something that might look pragmatic, turns out to show little integrity.

Change - Sitcking With It

2008-07-08T10:15:00.001+01:00

Change programmes fail far too often. In response organisations spend plenty of time planning the change (a sensible idea), launching it, communicating it (another must do), but still find themselves losing enthusiasm when the excitement of the new change has worn off and the daily reality of making the change work becomes the focus.

Change programmes don’t often fail publicly with an ‘abandonment event’, they simply run out of steam and the people who cynically claimed they would ‘believe it when they saw it’ or ‘wait and see what happened before getting excited’, smile and say ‘I told you so’.

What change requires is real effort over an extended period of time. This week has seen some fabulous examples of people who have refused to give up and have reaped the rewards. I gave up on Andy Murray when he was two sets down against Richard Gasquet, but he didn’t give up on himself and went on to his best Wimbledon performance ever. Federer didn’t give up against Nadal in similar circumstances and whilst he may not have won an extra button for his cardigan he certainly reinforced his reputation as one of the finest tennis players ever.

Thomas Voeckler may not have gained a stage victory on Sunday but he ended the day with his polka dot jersey, not something anyone would have predicted a week ago. He’s not the most talented rider in the Tour de France, but he is one of the most determined and resolute, and given his 2004 performance he may keep the jersey for a few days yet.

Whilst opponents span their way through the rain and into the gravel at Silverstone, Lewis Hamilton got on with the grim job of staying on the track to work his way up from an awful qualifying round to take the win. It wasn’t pretty but it showed determination, resilience and spirit, characteristics which serve organisations well in times of change, particularly in tough market conditions.

What these sports people have shown, whether they ended up as winners or not, is what can be achieved if people set their goal and stick with it, in spite of hecklers, doubters and fierce opposition.

Laminated Or Live?

2008-06-26T10:29:00.001+01:00

We often visit organisations with clearly articulated values. They’re easy to spot, they have posters with the values on in reception, and often employees each have a handy little credit card sized version of them to carry around. Some even wear their security passes on values embossed lanyards.

We occasionally visit organisations with a well embedded set of corporate values. They sometimes have those values on posters, but what is striking is that the people throughout the organisation exhibit those values all the time in everything they do.

The second type of organisation is far less common. We often find that values are simply seen as a marketing or HR project that will go away sometime next year when the next initiative is launched. We’ve experienced selfish sales behaviour rewarded in companies with ‘Teamwork’ as a core value, and incredible rudeness and discrimination as the norm in an organisation with ‘Valuing All Our People’ printed on the mugs on everyone’s desks.

So how do organisations make the transition from laminating their values to really living them?
We’ve found that an important early step is to express those values in behavioural terms, making clear how those values can become a part of everyone’s role at every level of the organisation, every day. This allows people to think about how they can personally make a difference.

Another key feature of organisations that really live values is open discussion about them. This can be hard to engender, particularly where upward challenge is not the norm. An effective route to activating debate is 360° feedback around the values behaviours, giving people a structured and safe way to give and receive objective, behaviourally based feedback. Once people begin talking about values based behaviours, they quickly engage with them and build the confidence to challenge not only the behaviour of others, but what they personally are doing in values terms.

360° feedback also gives the organisation a view of its collective strengths and areas for development, allowing targeting of interventions, and identifying any pockets of excellence.

The Objectivity Of Distinterest

2008-06-26T09:44:00.001+01:00

The European Championships have been a delight to watch this year. With the absence of any of the home teams, people in the UK have been enjoying the football without the stress that comes from being emotionally involved. When watching games with friends and catching up with colleagues the talk has been of great skills, real endeavour, commitment and style.
We’ve even been involved in conversations about the high standard of refereeing and the courage of a referee who isn’t afraid to change his mind when he’s made a mistake. That’s not something you hear from partisan fans.

Without the pressure of wanting a team to win, and without the pre-conceived ideas about who will play well, who will get booked and who should never have been selected, it’s easy to see beautiful football in action. And now that Italy, France and Romania have gone home (personal prejudices aside!), we can watch and observe objectively; the way teams play is as valid as the result.

Managers can suffer from the same lack of objectivity when watching the performance of their own team and the individuals within it. When things are going well it’s easy to mistake mediocre performance delivered with style and charm as being outstanding, whilst when overall performance isn’t meeting expectations, it’s far easier to spot mistakes and inactivity. Personal performance and behaviour may not have changed or may have improved, but the overall mood can colour observations. And when you introduce the additional layer of personal preference or antipathy things really get subjective. A likeable under-performer who supports the same team as you, compared to somebody you don’t enjoy the same rapport with, who is at a similar level of performance, needs you to have clear-sighted motives, dealing equitably with both parties.

Taking time to add some emotional distance before assessing performance, and taking care to really observe behaviour rather than assume it, makes a big difference to both appraising and developing people.

Drivers Of Employee Satisfaction

2008-06-25T20:29:00.003+01:00

The findings in the FT's Best Workplaces study show that the most admired companies consistently do well in four areas:

Respect: People are shown respect by the organisation and also on a peer-to-peer basis as well. With respect comes trust, and feeling you are trusted counts significantly towards your self esteem.
Work-Life Balance: This doesn’t mean employees are looking to ‘only’ work their contracted hours. What they are looking for is some give and take, whether that’s around family crises, personal illness, or getting the washing machine fixed. The feeling that the organisation can ‘flex’ its policies on a fair basis counts for a lot.
Pride: People want to feel proud of where they work. That pride might be connected to some work in the community, the way customers or employees are treated, or their work environment.
Job and Skills Advancement – People want to feel that as individuals they are developing and their organisation is facilitating that development.

All these themes connect to one thing. An organisation that has a sense of its own identity, what it stands for, and how its people fit into their vision.

Organisations that demonstrate the seven attributes outlined below tend to be places where employees want to work.

A coherent vision and a consistent approach to working towards it.
Values based. Personality based businesses tend only to build cohering teams around the personalities, being values based means the personalities are transcended.
Customer Driven. A genuine and verifiable approach to firstly meeting customers needs and wants in a formalised way and then empowering people to exceed those expectations as they see fit.
A functional, self confident (never arrogant) management team that demonstrates real leadership behaviours.
A balanced scorecard approach to measures and objectives that takes a medium to long term view.
A preparedness to take the tough decisions, early and as fairly as possible.
An organisation which wants to stay ahead of its sector’s learning curve. Yes it makes mistakes, but it always tries to ‘fail forwards’, taking something positive from the error and making some new connection or testing another insight.