Just spotted Jim Collin’s latest book. I’ve always enjoyed his previous books – Built to Last and Good to Great. This one is Great to Bad! How once great companies fail. He identifies 5 stages of decline.

1. Hubris born of success.
2. Undisciplined pursuit of ‘more’.
3. Denial of risk and peril.
4. Grasping for salvation.
5. Capitulation to irrelevance or death.

Sobering reading as an individual, team, organisation or civilisation.

I’m thinking of climate change and the current financial meltdown.

I liked this quote – “The signature of the truly great versus the merely successful is not the absence of difficulty but the ability to come back from set-backs, even catastrophe, stronger than before.”

There’s always hope …. if it’s well-founded!

Been thinking a little about influence without advocacy.

I was reminded of an old story of a long ago US presidential campaign. I think it was Roosevelt. The story goes that millions of campaign posters were printed with Roosevelt’s photo. Unfortunately no-one had obtained permission from the photographer. Instead of seeking permission and negotiating a fee with the photographer. Someone suggested approaching the photographer with an opportunity to have his photo on millions of campaign posters. How much would the photographer pay? They accepted his first offer!

I’m not commenting on the ethics!  But it’s interesting how reframing the problem resulted in a significantly different outcome. The frame influenced the choice that was made. Different frames, different choices

There are two frames worth thinking about:

• buy or sell eg. Roosevelt story
• life or death (positive or negative)

eg. Tversky and Kahneman  (1981) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology)

Others might be:

• simple or complex
• quality or quantity
• vision or execution
• individual or group
• change or status-quo

More soon…

VFM is a bit of a catch-cry at the moment. There’s a lot of talk, but I doubt whether any significant improvement in VFM will occur. For three reasons:

1. Reducing head count and other resources puts more pressure on day-to-day operations and people have to pedal faster to keep up with business as usual. There is less time to think systemically about innovating and improving value from the public’s perspective.
2. Reviewed budgets line-by-line while appearing to save money can actually result in cost increases elsewhere in the system.  So overall costs can go up. But more importantly missing the bigger opportunity to make larger system-wide improvement.
3. And talking about the system … the wider political system is inherently highly risk averse. It would be a brave CE who would risk his reputation and career by being bold and failing.

To make significant improvements in VFM we need to:

• think systemically about what’s happening and understand the demands placed on the organisation.
• consider ‘value’ from the perspective of the consumers or public.
• identify a limited number of focus areas (no more than 5) for significant improvement. (I hear, that even Microsoft has there 3 big bets!)
• find ways to manage (rather than avoid) risk taking.

Interested in thoughts from the front lines.

For a quick start like me, building sustainable momentum is a bit of a challenge.

Earlier in my career, one of my bosses used to drive me crazy with her decision making. She was slow. She seemed to take an excessive time to come to a decision. Sometimes up to 20-40 minutes! That’s not long, but it was to me. I’d make an in-principle decision very quickly. Maybe in 2 minutes. She would ask question after question and I’d get frustrated. We would come to the same conclusion mostly. But the real difference came  when taking action. She was ready to start, I wasn’t.

The documentary I’m planning to film proves the point. I’ve enrolled people but struggled with action and momentum. I wasn’t specific enough about what I wanted to say. So taking action was hard. Finding the right people was hard. I’ve had to go back to the story I want to tell, and get a lot clearer about it. Make it a lot more specific. I’ve now done this by writing a high-level script. I’m ready to re-engage.

It seems one of the challenges of leadership is crafting the right level of specificity into a meaningful mission and communication. Too little and it’s difficult to take action. Too much and people don’t engage. But what is the right amount of specificity?

I enjoyed reading Chip and Dan Heath’s “Made to Stick” last year. It’s worth reading if you haven’t already. One of their concepts is that of ‘concreteness’. Language by nature is abstract, but life isn’t. Their suggestion is to avoid expertise language and talk about specific people doing specific things. That make’s your message concrete. I think that’s a useful idea for leaders as communicators.

It’s a cliche today to “think outside the box”. Everyone seems to want creative, innovative ideas. Few are prepared to invest in making them happen though!

I had lunch with a friend last week who talked about her boss’s interest in thinking outside the box. Liz had a different point of view. Liz was passionate about the need for more thinking “inside the box”.

I have just finished reading John Seddon’s book “Systems Thinking in the Public Sector”. It’s a sobering critique of the British government’s reform agenda. He uses some compelling examples of how ideological approaches to improving public services are in fact increasing cost and lowering quality. He takes a systems approach and draws on the thinking of Edward Deming and Taiichi Ohno. Ohno was the developer of the Toyota Production System.

Anyway, here’s a quote from Ohno.

“Everything you need to know in order to make improvements will be found in your own system. If you go looking elsewhere, you will be looking in the wrong place”

Liz is right, lets think inside the box! I think Liz sees plenty of opportunities for improvement right in front of her.

Someone once said to me “I don’t need more information, I need more insight”. That was over 10 years ago. It’s even worse today! There’s more information and, it seems, less attention to go around.

A valuable insight, is to be able to distil the vital few from the trivial many. Whoever you are – whether you’re a chief executive, policy analyst, HR specialist, mother, fireman, or anyone. Malcolm Galdwell wrote an interesting book on this – “Blink”.  It takes experience to pick the ‘right’ vital few.

Many organisations are currently operating with significantly constrained resources (compared to a year ago). For too many the response has been for their people to pedal faster! Do more with less, but the underlying thinking hasn’t changed. Too many organisations/teams still lack a coherent and simple strategic plan which shapes the focus and engagement of their people. And the current economic pressures aren’t helping. Everyone is simply to busy to think differently.

This is part two in my emerging leadership framework. It seems important that leaders can take what is personally important to them and turn it into a strategy that creates relevance for them and their teams in their work environment. This is a piece of “thought leadership”.

A useful tool can be to build a team charter . This would be explicit about the future that the team is building. I call it the intended shape of the future. While we can’t control everything that influences our future, there is a lot that we can control. So it is important to make some deliberate choices about where to focus. And there should only a few areas of focus! I’d recommend 3-5. I call them the pillars, that support the intended shape of our future. I understand that Microsoft, with all it’s resources, has their “3 big bets”. I’ll bet their people can remember 3!

It sounds simple, but it requires the ability and intention to synthesise a wide and diverse range of inputs. It requires a discipline to stop doing some things. And, it requires the courage to keep going. Then we can start to shape the future we want, rather than react to the future that simply arrives.

There’s a great speech by Al Pacino  in the movie ‘Any Given Sunday’.

OK, it’s a boys movie.

But putting  the aggressive competitiveness to one side. What’s the message?

It’s that, small things add up.  Whether you’re talking about communication, leadership, relationships, sport, finance, music, acting, or anything else. It’s the little things that add up. That matter.

It means that the future arrives slowly (inch by inch) and then quickly. It can be a big surprise. A big unpleasant surprise. One morning we wake up and trillions of dollars of wealth has disappeared!

Behaviour by behaviour, we create our future. And the future of others around us.

Jan Carlzon talked about moments of truth

Malcolm Gladwell talks about outliers

de Niro talked of the inches

What are  the inches that matter to you?

Take care of your inches!

I was speaking today with a prospective client about some coaching.

We ended up discussing an individual’s personal brand.

I’ve always liked the idea of expanding the idea of a communication objective from a specific piece of communication, to a longer term communication strategy. Like a personal brand.

In essence, over time and many interactions, how do individuals want others to:

• think about them
• feel about them
• act towards them

Of course, your audience matters too. What do they want and value?

One of the attributes valued highly these days is creativity.  Perhaps I’d like people to think of  me as creative! I’ve written before about creativity, and the importance of  listening to others for ideas. Rather than coming up with ideas all by yourself!

So, in the spirit of borrowed creativity, here is Fast Company’s Top 100 Most Creative People (to listen to).

http://www.fastcompany.com/100/mcp.html

Borrow, learn, distil, reapply, combine, but most of all enjoy.

Yesterday, I spoke to a group of independant professional advisors/counsellors. The topic was networking, as a marketing tool. I made three points:

1. The predominance of social networks can be seen as much more than a marketing tool. I think they are becoming an extension our brains and are making us more intelligent. Our intelligence afterall, is the result of the brain’s complexity – the billions of neurons interacting with each other. By connecting to other individuals we significantly multiple the possible interactions. Connecting our neurons to neurons outside our brain. The beginnings of a global brain (see Peter Russell’s “Global Brain”  http://www.peterrussell.com/GB/globalbrain.php).
2. But, chemistry matters. The chemistry that connects the neurons in our brain to each other is a complex bio-chemistry. The neurotransmitters that pass signals across the synaptic gap (between neurons) has to work. Or we don’t think effectively, or at all! Between people that chemistry is the chemistry of conversation. Important elements of the chemistry of conversation include – effective questioning, active listening and empathy. That chemistry has to work too.
3. And, that chemistry also includes ‘attitude’. Someone spoke of those who think of networking as “working the room”. If that’s your attitude, I doubt the conversation chemistry will work. I find it best to leave your agenda at the door. Just talk to people, enjoy talking to them, be curious, be yourself . Let any business opportunities emerge. Don’t work the room!

As always, interested in your perspectives.

I’m enjoying Patricia Madson’s quick book at the moment. Improv Wisdom – don’t prepare just show up!

Here are her 13 maxims for life.

1. say yes (to everything).
2. don’t prepare.
3. just show up.
4. start anywhere.
5. be average.
6. pay attention.
7. face the facts.
8. stay on course.
9. wake up to the gifts.
10. make mistakes, please.
11. act now
12. take care of each other.
13. enjoy the ride.

Sounds like a great manifesto to me. But I think it takes a lot of preparation to be unprepared. Just as it takes a musician years of practice to be unprepared and jam.