On holiday...

... and taking a break from blogging

Into reality

Organisations are generally more than capable of setting strategic direction and creating strategic plans. The real challenge, however, is not so much in deciding what strategy to adopt, but how to make it live within the business.

We observe many of our clients developing strategy road maps, creating strategy teams and painstakingly holding communication forums with staff – all of which, in terms of management science is text book. And indeed, activities such as town hall meetings, if well executed, are valuable processes. But unless staff participate in the development of strategy or understand the implications of its execution the town hall meeting simply becomes an information-giving session and an opportunity missed.

Holiday facts ... or fiction...

Hurray!  

It's stopped raining, the sun is shining and the holidays have begun.

It's also just a little more than two weeks until the Premier League – and the lloydmasters Prem begins, but more about that in a later blog.

Here are some facts to keep you thinking....

• 76% of UK CEO's and MD's favour the Caribbean for a family holiday 82% of management consultants don't have time to take all of their holiday entitlement

Behavioural safety conversations?

Been having a fascinating time in Baku running a workshop on behavioural safety conversations for one of the oil companies out here. Weather has been great at about 34˚C and the beer is expensive but cold. All in all, a good trip.

Behavioural safety conversations? 
Well, yes, it helps safety leaders think about process safety as well as personal safety and gives them the high quality coaching skills required to make a difference and we've met some great guys from Azerbaijan and Georgia who really wanted to understand the dynamics of a rich coaching conversation and use it to make their offshore and onshore work environments safer.

A couple of key takeaways for everybody:

We are pleased to announce that the next lloydmasters networking event will be at the Crowne Plaza Birmingham in September 2011.  For further information or to reserve your place please contact fiona@lloydmasters.com or call 020 8917 4520

Eliyahu Moshe Goldratt (31 March 1947-11 June 2011)

It  is always sad to hear of the passing of someone who has had a profound effect on your life, so even though I had never met Eliyahu M Goldratt, it made me reflect when I saw a post on a Linked-In group that he had died.

Goldratt was an Israeli physicist who became a business management guru, his specialism was in process improvement and optimisation where he coined the ‘Theory of Constraints’ model. This model identifies bottlenecks/constraints within a process, removes the bottleneck to improve capacity of the system and moves onto the next bottleneck.

See for yourself

Great leaders understand something that is often lost in today’s world of global connectivity – the critical, insight needed for effective leadership can come only from first-hand contact. The best executives get out of their offices to observe and engage with their frontline employees, competitors, customers, and suppliers on the job.

Most business gurus tout cleverly titled management concepts while ignoring this relatively simple practice. Each concept promotes itself as a silver bullet; most deliver benefits, but rarely to the extent advertised; and few prove sustainable over the long run.

To get the most out of first-hand engagement, consider the following principles:

• Go and see: no company embraces the principle of first-hand observation more than the Toyota Motor Corporation. A philosophy of genchi genbutsu, literally translated as ‘go and see’, permeates the organisation from the manufacturing floor to product development and even corporate staff functions. Toyota’s executive in charge of real estate visited every single property now in Toyota’s vast global portfolio of land and buildings before approving any of the investments
  
• Prepare to learn: in his autobiography, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton commented, “Most everything I’ve done I’ve copied from someone else.” Walton, like other great leaders, was a true student of his industry, always seeking out new learning opportunities. Louis Pasteur’s comment that “fortune favours the prepared mind” leads us further along the path of capturing the full value of direct observation and engagement
  
• Look for problems and solutions: although visits may suggest a focus on solutions, the real power of engagement comes from listening and understanding the problems from multiple sources. Some problems may suggest obvious solutions. Toyota, always seeking the simple but avoiding the simplistic, searches for root causes by applying the ‘Five Whys’ principle: asking several ‘why’ questions in order to determine a problem’s genesis
  
• Helping others: Tom Taylor, former executive vice president of merchandising for The Home Depot stores, demonstrated how frontline visits offer opportunities to learn and to coach by looking for problems from a customer perspective. The Home Depot merchandising group no longer sits at headquarters making decisions far from the action. They now go to the frontlines to see what is happening and think about their decisions from a customer’s perspective
• Making it personal: it’s no wonder that many employees view executives as Dilbert cartoon characters: clueless autocrats anxious to implement the next management fad as a ‘strategic initiative’. Embracing first-hand engagement as an integral part of your personal leadership style and embedding it in a company’s culture can break the fad cycle. It connects everyone to reality and forces a collaborative, problem-solving mind-set that can produce enduring results rather than just temporary improvement

The inner game

Wimbledon. It heralds the start of summer (two weeks of rain) and all that is best about Britain and sport. Just the word conjures up images of strawberries and cream and genteel living – not that there is anything genteel about tennis these days; top players are elite athletes serving at speeds of over 140mps.

So what makes a 'champion' rather than just a great tennis player? Why is it that some players can pick-up their game when they need to? An answer may be found in 'The inner game', a coaching methodology created by Tim Gallwey in the 1970s that looks at the mental side of peak performance and though first devised for tennis players has since been applied to the fields of music, education and the workplace as well as other sports.

Cycling in Slovenia

Saturday.  4.45am.  Alarm clock.  Off to Muscat where it's 47 degrees in the shade, according to BBC Weather. Just back from Slovenia (holiday – not work).  Fabulous country – Ljubljana, the capital, is beautiful.  Full of 17th century buildings and rriverside bars and restaurants, it's like a combination of Bruges and Prague overlooked by a picture-book castle.

Spent a week in the East of Slovenia, cycling a 250 kilometer loop from Maribor (more riverside bars and the world's oldest living vine) through the hills of the wine region and the spectacular flood plains of the Mura and Drava rivers.

The scenery was stunning – the wine-growing area near the Hungarian border is centred on the pretty village of Jeruzalem, one of many gorgeous spots in rolling hills full of vineyards, cypress trees and white hilltop churches. It's like Tuscany without the tourists. My only complaint was the end-of-the-day climb up to our hotel in Jeruzalem itself.

Three of our overnight stops were at thermal spas – there are 15 natural thermal spas in Slovenia. Lounging around in a natural jacuzzi drinking the local wine is a pretty cool way to round off a day on the bike.

In summary, Slovenia is a wonderful holiday option. Even the weather was spot-on (every day sunny and 25 to 30 degrees). I'll be back.

The Apprentice – helpful to business or not?

I’m not a fan of The Apprentice – my children are. For me it’s all got a bit silly. In the office we have a sweepstake as to who will win and the winner walks off with around £100 (last year the winner said thanks, and didn’t buy so much as a box of Maltesers...), so it provides some reason for watching, but even then I would rather watch re-runs of Shaun the Sheep who incidentally, knows more about team building than all the Apprentice candidates put together.

The point is, that for organisations to succeed there needs to be a collective responsibility for  getting work done, and therefore there is a big onus on teamwork. Often this needs to include teams from other organisations because they are integral to the organisation's success. 

Powerful and productive teams

This week I’m in Aberdeen facilitating a learning programme designed to build powerful and productive teams – teams that have a strong sense of trust, are open and honest and hold each other explicitly accountable for their contribution to the team's goals. 

This stage of the project requires the teams to work on focused and relevant challenges that have been devised to give them an opportunity to:

• Practice and develop smooth processes and ways of operating
• Apply and develop key behaviours and challenge the mindset of self and others
• Build and own a process of continuous learning and improvement
• Become a high performing team
• Provide an excellent outcome for a deserving ‘client’  

Part of the criteria for selecting an appropriate challenge is that they must have a tangible output – deliver value to a charity or equivalent, be something you can take pride in, be sustainable over the long term and have an ‘emotional’ content – building a produce garden on a waste ground at the back of the Remploy factory in Aberdeen ticked all these boxes and more.

Remploy was established in April 1945 under the 1944 Disabled Persons (Employment) Act introduced by Ernest Bevin, the Minister for Labour. The first factory opened in 1946 at Bridgend in South Wales, as the factory network grew, employment was provided for disabled people returning from the Second World War. It is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) which exists to help disabled people achieve the independence, personal self confidence and wellbeing that can be achieved through sustainable employment.

Remploy is now one of the UK's leading providers of specialist employment services for disabled people and those experiencing complex barriers to work. Tailored services include development, training, learning and rehabilitation to help individuals prepare for, gain and remain in sustainable work, whilst providing employers – in the private and public sector – with the skilled staff they need to realise commercial benefits.

There are insufficient mainstream employment opportunities for all unemployed disadvantaged and disabled people, so job creation through commercial and social enterprise is critical. Remploy is therefore developing a model to support the creation of jobs for disabled and disadvantaged people through an alternative approach to the Remploy factories.

In order to develop the model Remploy has identified five of its existing sites to trial this new approach. The Social Enterprise model will enable each of the five factories to explore opportunities appropriate for their local economy and community, building on the existing skills and assets of sites and employees. Each of the sites is managed by an individual with a background in social enterprise. They are supported to develop a number of social firms, the nature of which will depend on each of their localities and markets. Expertise to support work experience and trainees is incorporated into each site.

The Aberdeen factory is one of five Remploy sites involved in a pilot project to look at developing some current activity into social enterprises. Ben Mardall has been employed as Social Enterprise Manager to take this forward. The aspiration is to develop a multi-functional building promoting active inclusion to support the integration of disabled and disadvantaged cohorts into the workplace by offering a cross cutting theme which addresses unemployment and provides work opportunities for people furthest from the labour market. Although all the businesses are commercially focused, all profit is spent on the social objectives of the enterprises. Our objective to offer a ‘hand-up’ not a ‘hand-out’.

The Aberdeen site is at the vanguard of that process.

Should you require any further information about Remploy Aberdeen, contact Ben Mardall, Social Enterprise Manager: ben.mardall@remploy.co.uk

Should you wish to learn more about lloydmasters learning programmes see our website or contact the team: info@lloydmasters.com

Assuring the delivery of major projects

Effective project delivery is of prime importance to virtually all our clients. Major projects in one form or another have increasingly become a core business activity for organisations in every sector.

Our clients in construction, transport and energy have long recognised this, but the role of projects is now much more central to the day-to-day working of all kinds of organisation. This is true even in the public sector where government departments now see Programme and Project Management – PPM – as critical to their remit.

Despite rapid growth in the scope and importance of projects, many organisations still struggle to achieve effective project delivery. Our experience points to several reasons for this. In major public sector projects, for example, there is often a mindset of assumed failure from the outset; in the construction sector there is widespread failure to learn from the lessons of previous projects.

In almost every instance we see of non-delivery, the root cause can be traced back to the start of the project. The reasons for project failure seldom materialise from thin air midway through the project; invariably they can be traced back to the way in which the project was set up.

Key causes for project failure which we have identified are:

• A failure to align and engage critical stakeholders. This means that when problems do arise, there is no common understanding of how they should be addressed. Rather, the parties fall back into partisan posturing and blame
• An inability to understand and manage risk – not just commercial risk, but risk relating to safety, relationships, the political context and so on

We have worked extensively with our clients to minimise the risk of non-delivery.

In every instance our interventions are designed to improve the way in which the project is set up for success. Perhaps the single most important part of being set up to succeed lies in not so much in formal plans and programmes but in the way the various parties build sustainable working relationships. It is these relationships which enable collaboration to endure, even when the going gets tough.

There is widespread talk of the difficult economic climate bringing an end to collaboration and partnership in project work. What’s the need, runs the argument, when we can use financial muscle to squeeze improved performance from our supply chain? All the evidence we have seen is that this approach is ultimately self-defeating as it fails to address the main reasons for non-delivery. Unless the parties to any major project are aligned in terms of goals, intent and interest, fundamental fault lines exist which will inevitably be exposed in the delivery phase.

The glamorous and not-so-glamorous life of a consultant

Last month: Shanghai. First visit to China – amazing place. The pace of change is just phenomenal, as is the level of entrepreneurial energy. The investment in infrastructure is eye-opening. It’s an area in which they are not catching up with the West – they are overtaking us and leaving us floundering quite literally in the slow lane.

Dave and I took the bullet train to Hangzhou: 202 kilometres in 40 minutes and a processing efficiency through the stations (security baggage checks and all) which held us up for a maximum of 10 seconds. What a contrast with the dreary security lines at Heathrow!

This week: Arlesey, between Luton and Stevenage. Don’t come here for a holiday. It’s a complete dump. The highlight of my week is a lukewarm beer in the bar of my cheap hotel just outside Luton. I’m so bored that even writing a blog seems exciting.  There’s a reason T’pau didn’t have a hit with 'Arlesey in Your Hand'.

Telepathy and business consulting

Sometimes I get really fed up with the service levels in the UK so when I get excellent service I really take notice.

Last week I got that superb service from a one Michelin star restaurant in a pub! The difference came from the politeness and attentiveness of the staff – not in my face but always there when needed, almost by telepathy. It helped of course that the food was also outstanding.

But what has any of this got to do with business consulting?

Well it goes without saying that fantastic service levels with our clients are an absolute must – but how do we go the extra mile; build a relationship that's 'telepathic'?

• Be in regular contact to find out what is on their mind and important to them in their business – even if it is not something we can help with
• After a project has finished continue the ‘after sales service’
• Be interested in them as a person not just about their business

Over 20 years, lloydmasters have worked with more than 100 clients and developed long-term client relationships that allow both parties to grow. If you would like to learn more about us and how we might work with your business email: info@lloydmasters.com.

Through the looking glass

An overview of systems thinking

In order to make things manageable we need to simplify things. But when do we make things unmanageable by oversimplifying things? It often boils down to how we look at things.

A deeply entrenched approach is to distil ‘three key success factors’, ‘five golden rules’, etc. Many people consider it the ‘natural’ way of looking at, and simplifying things. It is reinforced almost daily by presentations condensed to ‘three bullet points’ and a growing appetite for creating ‘laundry lists’, for example, of best practice and lessons learnt.

Unfortunately, this level of analysis frequently fails to deliver the goods. To understand why, consider this approach through this illustration.

The way in which the variables of a problem are viewed, shapes the actions that we take. If we look at the factors as independent, we accommodate the notion of being ‘acted upon’ and that forces affecting us are ‘out there’ (‘if only management would get their act together’, or ‘if only they were team players’). This gives rise to blame stories (they…) and ‘victims’ (us). We don't see our own role in the matter, we constrain our thinking and we fail to see the inter-connected and reinforcing nature of the factors involved. In short, we either come up with inadequate solutions or we fail to get into action at all. To break out of this we need to look at cause and effect as a ‘two-way street’, of which we are a part and where the dominating relationships are changing over time.

Consider an alternative view on the ‘failing organisation’ above. When an organisation is ‘failing’, it tends to be more difficult for managers to perform effectively. It is as valid to assert that ‘poor management’ is caused by a ‘failing organisation’ as it is to assert that a ‘failing organisation’ is caused by ‘poor management’. Similarly, an organisation that is unable to attract and retain good people will soon start to fail. But equally, when an organisation has good people and begins to fail, its best people tend to seek more attractive jobs elsewhere.

And so it is with the other factors – the causal relationships run both ways. This is illustrated below.

With such a ‘web’ there is little value in thinking of the ‘key success factors’. Rather, we need to consider the ‘key driving relationships’, the impact they are having and how they are changing over time. This is far more insightful for understanding the problem situation and for creating an effective intervention.

Appreciating a ‘two-way street’ brings the locus of responsibility for driving forces within the reach of actions that can be taken in the organisation. For example, “we are at the mercy of world oil prices”  becomes “we can't control oil prices, so we must manage the impact of oil price volatility on our business”.

This approach determines how things really work and enables an effective strategy to be developed to address the problem situation.

The starting point for looking at things this way is often only a feeling of unease, awareness that things could be better than they are...

The Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny walks into a bar and asks the bartender, "Do you have any pickled eggs?" "No we don't", says the bartender. The Easter bunny leaves. He comes in the next day. "Do you have any pickled eggs?" he asks. "No we don't, and if you ask me again I'll nail you to the wall!" yells the bartender. So the bunny leaves and comes back the next day and asks, "Do you have any nails?" "No" says the bartender. "Well in that case, do you have any pickled eggs?"

The Abilene paradox

The Abilene paradox, coined by Professor Jerry Harvey of George Washington University, 1974.

'A married couple and the parents of the wife are sitting on a porch in 104-degree heat in the small town of Coleman, Texas, some 53 miles from Abilene.

They are engaging in as little motion as possible, drinking lemonade, watching the fan spin lazily, and occasionally playing the odd game of dominoes.

At some point, the wife’s father suggests they drive to Abilene to eat at a cafeteria there. The son-in-law thinks this is a bad idea but doesn’t see any need to upset the apple cart, so he goes along with it, as do the two women. They get in their old Buick (with no air conditioning) and set off. During the journey they drive through a dust storm. When they reach Abilene, they eat a mediocre lunch at the cafeteria and return to Coleman exhausted, hot, and generally unhappy with the experience.

It is not until they return home that the frustrations reveal themselves. It is revealed that none of them really wanted to go to Abilene – they were just going along because they thought the others were eager to go.'

Inability to cope with agreement:

• Much agreement in organisations is actually false consensus
• It occurs because many people feel they might be isolated, censured or ridiculed if they voice objections
• This often leads groups to adopt inappropriate goals, without commitment, without ownership
• Is a setup for organisational failure

Building strong dialogue and advocacy/inquiry skills, as well as building confidence that one will not be alienated if one speaks one’s mind, are necessary for making the decision not to go to Abilene.

For more information contact dave@lloydmasters.com

Education and the learning organisation

Education is central to our philosophy at lloydmasters and we aim, wherever possible, to up-skill our clients when we work with them so that relevant skills and learning from our consultancy work stay within the organisation.

One obvious way of doing this is to get members of our clients’ organisations to work with us; another is for us to create ‘micro worlds’ through workshops.In such workshops we structure the process to help create a genuine dialogue so that people can discuss and challenge each other’s mental models and beliefs in a positive but relentless way – thus creating better mutual understanding and awareness, i.e. learning. This process is shown in the model above: ‘the learning wheel’. Frequent use of this on an individual or team basis helps create a true learning organisation.

Conscious incompetence – a step towards a generative safety culture?

Safety culture often sits in the realm of ‘unconscious incompetence’. That is, a poorly used ‘label’ with no specificity and little translation into practical application. This is despite the fact that safety culture is identified as a major factor in practically all major accidents, incidents and systems failures.

The safety culture of an organisation reflects unconsciously adopted norms, beliefs, expectations and worldview. These manifest themselves as deeply ingrained and unique routines (ways of ‘doing’) and influence what information and knowledge the individual ultimately attends to and ultimately accepts (ways of ‘being’). People play out roles according to the ‘unwritten rules’.

A first step towards building a positive safety culture is to move from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence by making the safety culture visible and understanding its impact. This is a difficult step to make because we stand in an emotional relationship to what we know or believe.

Making your safety culture visible may challenge some of the core assumptions and beliefs of the organisation. Moving from conscious incompetence to conscious competence requires shared learning. If shared learning is to proceed successfully, a necessary shift in the group belief system is equally important as one in the individual belief system. Group members should be invited to test the validity of their beliefs about the organisation, about other people and about how they themselves ‘show up’.

Knowledge and belief are not ‘cold’ and feelings can act to enable or frustrate learning, especially in deconstructing old mental models to make room for new ones. Furthermore, information and knowledge, whether generated externally or internally, are subjected to the perceptual filters of the existing culture. At its heart, building a safety culture involves reorienting group values, assumptions, norms and behaviours through changing cognitive structures (e.g., multiple causation of accidents, human error, group practices vs. individual attitudes) and emotional structures (e.g., fairness, positive reinforcement, trust and accountability). This requires the opportunity to unlearn unconsciously adopted beliefs and behaviours which block new learning and action. It requires the fostering of genuine communication and to eventually create feelings of congruence and personal leadership – vital ingredients for a generative safety culture.

Transatlantic mouse (part 2)

On the flight, dinner is served and I start to reflect on my mouse friend and its potential demise at the hands of a cruel de-mouser person in a jump suit and scary mask.
My mind jumped back in time to a business book titled “Who Moved My Cheese”…

(to be continued)