CHANGING A BUSINESS CULTURE

Modern business has to become more agile if it is to survive in the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment that is the modern business world it exists within in. The problem is that most businesses are not agile enough to drive and maintain the necessary change from within. It takes real discipline to constantly initiate and drive change before the environment enforces change upon an organisation. Such motivation rarely exists in established organisations that are comfortable within their own skin. Like dieting, change is much desired but rarely voluntarily undertaken and sustained without outside intervention. Why?

Most organisations see themselves as unique; hence most can deny the strongest argument for change.  For such organisations change is appropriate to many others but not to them. Rather like individuals, organisations are highly critical of others but very forgiving of themselves. It is only the hungry young organisations that sustain the necessary agility to match their environment. Hence it is far more “the quick that eat the slow" rather than "the big that eat the small" in today's information driven world.

To change requires a dissatisfaction with current performance and hence an ambition to improve. The change process undertaken needs to unfreeze the organisation from itself and its established culture in order to learn the new ways and doctrine before refreezing itself to ensure the new doctrines are sustained appropriately. Change needs enthusiasm. Change needs energy and change needs ambition that is why it is far easier to sustain in young dynamic organisations.

So how can an organisation generate and sustain organisational agility?  It needs to regularly objectively examine itself and analyse where its tangible success originates from. Replicate the origins of that successful environment and the causes of that success and turn them into common processes and doctrine.  In simple terms it is unfreezing the status quo, prior to creating the new culture and doctrine amongst change agents and disciples before implementing the changes across the organisation by driving the change to a self-fulfilling tipping point. Then refreezing the new doctrine to sustain the change and ensure it is enduring.

The best way of ensuring buy in and render the unique argument superfluous is to use the evidence gleaned from within the organisation to define the new doctrine. By transmitting the evidence  regularly to all and then empowering change agents at every level to drive the required change and preach the necessary messages to those sceptics who exist in every organisation the change becomes unstoppable. With the tipping point reached those in denial will either come round to the new doctrine or leave.

If change is proving difficult it may well be useful to involve an outside agent who has less baggage with them than those who have lived within an organisation! Often it is easier to identify the change from without and drive the cultural change as those within have inevitably been imbued with the current culture.

TO CONTROL OR EMPOWER AS A LEADER

Where did you learn your most valuable lesson? Was it when being successful or when failing? When did you last really feel empowered by your leader? Leaders in the modern world have a constant dichotomy to deal with: whether to control a situation or to empower people and let nature run its course. If a leader controls a situation it offers their team members little opportunity for learning, to experience ownership or individual potential to be maximised. So allowing nature to take its course can be immensely valuable to the development of teams in an organisation. On the other hand such freedom offers the opportunity for a calamitous failure. Well leaders, get used to it. Life and leadership is like that. That is why leaders get paid more than followers because the scale of the success achieved is dependent upon the scale of risk the leader is able to endure.

Control and you may inhibit genius but remain safe and you may prevent it from ever emerging. The proximity between success and failure is all too evident and today’s leaders must instinctively know when to let go and truly empower their people without letting them succumb to a catastrophic failure! The word catastrophic is used quite deliberately here, because a great leader must demand failure from their teams.  For not too fail is not too try and if you are not trying you will never reach your full potential. However it is that leader’s responsibility to support their teams through such small failures to make sure they are not catastrophic in their effect and that the team can keep on going and keep on failing until they succeed. A leader must also make sure that the team learn from each of the failures whilst not giving up. On the other hand good leaders must also know when to impose control for it is that control that will prevent the catastrophic failure.

It is a leader’s role to facilitate performance through motivation and influence. In so doing a leader affords answers to the question why? It is the manager who will provide the answers to the how and police and drive the performance with metrics and targets. The leader empowers and inspires whilst the manager alleviates disaster and controls. Both are key and both roles may originate from the same individual or they may be roles undertaken by two quite different individuals. If they are being undertaken by two different individuals those individuals need to have an analogous relationship and understand their working relationship and each other instinctively.

You can't manage exceptional performance you have to lead it and you can't control innovation and genius you have to inspire them.  But it is in their ability to control and limit the effect of failure, in order to allow valuable lessons to be learned whilst preventing a catastrophe, that a great leader and manager’s value to an organisation are truly felt!

In conclusion leadership is all about situational awareness. It is a leader’s duty to facilitate both empowerment and control but both must be done to match the demands of the circumstances that each leader finds themselves in. A great leader will empower far more than they control!

STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE OR TRYING TO THRIVE?

The question is posed in the context of our economic situation and your business’ approach to ‘dealing’ with this. If your answer is “survive” I would suggest you are likely to be undermining your chances of success by adopting a limiting perspective and attitude. It is possible your thinking will be constraining your business options by the inflexibility of your view of the current situation. Success is achieving what you set out to do and avoiding failure is something very different. An approach Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, articulated well in his quote, “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward…”

Beware of the power of ‘spin’ and guard against it! It was widely reported the UK achieved a third quarter growth of 0.5%; furthermore, the global economy grew by about 4.5% during the same period. Yet our economic news was still dominated by a ‘doom and gloom’ perspective. The reality is growth is neither recession nor regression and ‘good news’ does not make good news copy. As an aside, I understand one CEO of a regional chamber of commerce was unable to get his good news publically aired at the time of announcing this third quarter data. Given these growth figures and that we enjoy unprecedented access (and support) to the global market place, areas of opportunity must exist to explore and exploit.

Challenge conventional thinking! ‘Niche’ is not always nice and can be a barrier to flexibility. The business ‘We Only Press Green Shirts’ is going to suffer if there are insufficient people who want their green shirts pressing. The skills, assets and resources required to press green shirts are the same as those required to press shirts of all colours, not mention a vast array of other garments. Overly simple perhaps but my point is clear; if your client base or market share is reducing what is it you do which can be applied in another way to make a profit?

Perception really matters when assessing the future of a business; challenge your perception of your business. If the diminishing client base of “We Only Press Green Shirts” is seen as being due to the real terms reduction in disposable income available for a discretionary spend service, this thinking may lead to assuming the business is destined to fail. However, if we consider the client base from a different perspective it may be possible to see an opportunity. For example, those who are working in the UK are tending to continue to work long hours and most working families are reported to be struggling to allocate the time needed for domestic work. Perspective influences branding, marketing and sales; remember perspective is not necessarily reality.

So, are you struggling to survive or trying to thrive? Do you possess the flexibility of perspective to recognise opportunity where others see only threat? Do you have the strength of mind and determination to succeed? What is your strategy for succeeding in the current economic situation and will it be sufficiently flexible to meet the needs of a dynamic market place?

An Opportunity for Command

Further to my blog ‘Which Leadership Model Now?’ I invite consideration and challenge perceptions of the concept of Command as a values and behaviours based leadership model fit for the present day. I believe the concept of Command, parodied and mocked in various forms of comic entertainment and blamed for atrocities and spectacular failures in history, as a leadership style has been over simplified and is insufficiently understood. As a result, it is too widely presumed to mean a dictatorial, non-inclusive approach to leadership and associated with a communication style almost exclusively authoritative, impersonal and direct; holistically lacking in emotional intelligence and emotional literacy. When delivering Leadership Development Training I most frequently experience delegates initially confining the appropriate use of Command as a leadership style to dealing with emergency situations. If any or all of the above resonate then you may find the following somewhat surprising and possibly challenging.

British military doctrine defines command as; the authority vested in an individual for the direction, coordination and control of military forces. It is concerned primarily with leadership, responsibility and decision making. Clearly written in a military context but very easily contextualised in a civilian perspective by replacing; military forces with assets and resources; leadership with influence and motivation; responsibility with accountability and ownership; and decision making with judgement. Based on this, I suggest Command as a leadership style is the exercise of the authority vested in a leader for the direction, coordination and control of assets and resources. It is concerned primarily with influencing and motivating people, accountability for and ownership of actions and decisions based on judgement.

I offer the following definition of Command as a leadership style for consideration:

“The application of the authority held by an individual to direct, coordinate and control assets and resources; primarily by influencing and motivating others, whilst accepting accountability for and ownership of outcomes from decisions and behaviours based on their judgement.”

I ask the following questions in relation to this definition:

As followers, is this a definition of the type of leadership we want to see and subject ourselves to?

As leaders and managers, is this a definition of behaviours and values we feel worthy of aspiring to?

Is this an appropriate leadership style for today?

THE BIG STRATEGIC GAP BETWEEN THINK AND DO AND DO AND DON'T THINK

The biggest issue in new under resourced businesses is the large gap between "think and do" and that goes both ways to "do and don't think" as well. People who spend their valuable time doing "don't think" about their business, and people who think about their businesses, don't have the time or resource to implement that thinking. The problem is "I know what to do but I don't know when I am going to do it" the most common cry in any young business and the biggest reason for them failing in the first three years. In any business there are things that have to be done, things that need to be done, things to do, things it would be good to do and things that don't need to be done. The problem is most people focus on the wrong things, whilst those that have to be done, are done, those that need to be done aren't because we are doing things that don't need to be done. How do we focus on the right things in the haze of our business environment?

In the Royal Marines a colour sergeant said to me "Sir, you are not clever enough to think of more than ten things, so just make sure they are the right ten things" extremely wise counsel that has held me in good stead ever since. The solution is simple its called STRATEGY, by planning and identifying what all our issues are and where we want to get to, we can identify our big issues and focusing on the top ten of them  as we develop disciplines and processes that keep our businesses on track.

Strategy for me starts with identifying the purpose of the business, why does the business exist. Then the destination needs to be identified and shared. It is the head mark showing where the business needs to get to through the identification of a vision. The vision becomes reality through dividing it into missions, from which plans are drawn up, to achieve each mission milestone. Risks need to be identified and contingencies prepared for before the allocation of resources are considered, both in terms of the talent required and the priority of allocation.

Strategy has to be simple and effective and need not be an over complicated difficult and challenging process. Strategy needs to be empathic with a business and not prescriptive. It is a matter of the simpler the better but it also provides a guide to getting to where you want to be and not a fixed route to the destination. To be effective strategy has to adapt to circumstances and the environment in an organic way. It is far more like a sat nav than it is a printed route map description to a destination.

LEADERSHIP AND THE NHS

I find it interesting that the Keogh Report found failures in care at 14 hospitals, 11 of which have been put into special measures. We now know none of the 14 has been given a clean bill of health and that then raises the possibility that there are other failing hospitals out there. The 14 investigated in this review were a snapshot of poor performers chosen because they had the worst death rates for the past two years.

The key question for me being how was this allowed to happen given the role of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the leadership within each of the hospitals and their associated trusts? For me there is a fundamental dilemma between care and business. Basically the NHS will spend as much as it is given on caring if it were allowed to do so. However it is seen as a bottomless pit by the Treasury and those responsible for funding it. The clash of the two cultures, care and frugality, needs to be addressed by strong and decisive leadership to maintain the necessary and somewhat precarious balance in an affordable and efficient way. The issue being exposed in the media at the present is the current lack of balance with either one of the two cultures gaining supremacy. If the care side wins Trusts go broke if the business side does people die unnecessarily.

The real leadership dilemma is how does the government maintain standards at an affordable level? It has tried to do this from without using the CQC to maintain the standards and this has now been proven to be a flawed process although the government will maintain and enhance that philosophy with the appointment of Sir Michael Richards and his army of inspectors.

The real problem is not going to be changed from without, the problem is a cultural one and the clash of cultures within the NHS and culture can only be transformed through strong leadership throughout an organisation and a clear and unambiguous strategy that is understood and bought into by those who work within it. This cultural change has to be driven internally by great leaders. Cultural change cannot be driven from without the organisation. I believe the government should be investing in the leadership within the NHS rather than repeating its previous error of unsuccessfully imposing change from outside an organisation. Culture is after all "how people do things round here when no one is looking" and during inspections someone is looking.

The challenge now for the NHS and those in charge of monitoring it - the regulators, NHS England and the government - is to identify exactly how widespread poor performance is and how they can then deliver the necessary cultural balance to drive the required improvement in standards in an affordable way through strong and effective internal leadership.

THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING ON LEADERSHIP

I love Henry Ford’s quote "Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right" and the problem is most of us learn during our formative years that failure is something to shy away from hence “The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” Sven Goran Eriksson. It is key that we become more positive in our outlook and start believing “I can if,” and not “I can’t because,” when faced with struggles or doubt. Many average businesses fear failure whilst the great ones I know pursue success.
However, sometimes it isn’t enough to be the only one who believes in you – positive people make positive things happen they inspire each other to greatness. Collective positive thinking produces a self generating power that lifts group performance way beyond the expectation of any individual involved. Attitude is infectious and attitude drives behaviour “The success of a journey often depends more on who you are with than where you are going.” feel the power by surrounding yourself with “I can if” people rather than I can't because people .
Key to this is how an organisation deals with failure, if a blame culture exists and failure is stigmatised real lessons are never learned and real progress never made. Failure is always a pre-cursor to success. Just think of the great inventions and the number of false dawns that are learned from.
Powerful groups have always existed the book of Ecclesiastis states, “Though one person may be overpowered by another, two people can resist one opponent. A triple-braided rope is not easily broken.” and the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus said, “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”
Some of the most successful organisations I work with recruit solely on attitude or happiness, they employ just positive people and inspire each other to greatness. Timpsons is one example of such an organisation that in its recruiting truly looks just at attitude because skills can be taught and learned; a positive disposition cannot be induced in any college. Your attitude is your own, make sure you take advantage of its power. “Every relationship in your organization will affect you one way or another. Those who do not increase you will inevitably decrease you?” John Maxwell
Successful modern leaders need to be positive in their outlook to influence and inspire those they lead.