All about choice

I love the word 'choice.'  It's one of my favourite words in the English language.  I see choice like a dog - it needs to be taken out and exercised.  Sadly, it often lies in a corner, unwatered, unfed and neglected.

One day, some years ago, I was driving along a motorway in the UK and the traffic came to a standstill.  I tuned in to the local radio station which told me that, because of an accident further down the road, there was now a 35 mile traffic jam which would take at least an hour to clear.  I had some time in hand, called the client I was going to see to check that it would be ok for me to arrive late and decided to have a sleep.  I turned on some gentle music, tipped back the seat and thought that when it was time to move the driver behind me would sound his horn. I wouldn't treat it as a rebuke, but as a signal that the traffic was moving again.

I was beginning to doze off and heard a caterwauling outside.  A man was standing on the wheel arch of his 4-wheel drive car shouting and swearing at the traffic to get out of his way, because he was in a hurry.

The man was in his mid-thirties.  I suspect that the stress of living may prevent him reaching forty.  This was a man who had seriously misfiled the traffic jam in his mental filing cabinet.

In any situation, there are three choices - what can we control or be in control of, what can we influence and what simply belongs in the it's so drawer?  In the case of the traffic jam, the screaming man had filed it firmly in the control drawer.  It belonged in the it's so drawer.

The one thing we can control in any situation is how we react, as long as we have developed the self-discipline to make a choice, rather than simply reacting. That's not to suggest that we completely suppress our natural emotions; we are not automatons, and we have every right to feel stressed, upset, angry in certain situations.  What we need to do is choose the most appropriate display of behaviour according to the situation.

In any new or stressful situation, think about the outcome you may achieve by choosing different behaviours.  Will you or others feel better if you take one course of action, worse if you take another?

There are two types of choice - free choice and bounded choice.  We can't have completely free choice because, inevitably, there are social, moral, ethical and other constraints on our behaviour.  On the other hand, the boundaries which we believe restrain us are much looser than we may imagine.  We often constrain ourselves with our self-limiting beliefs then blame the world for restricting our freedom of choice.

So, feed your choice, water it, take it for a walk and feel that hugely liberating sense as you exercise it.

David

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I don't like your tie. Values in business...

Once upon a time, I asked the CEO of a large organisation what was most important to him at work.  He answered "values."  I asked him to say more and he explained that his values pervaded everything that the organisation did, that they were the foundation of the entire enterprise.  He said that chief amongst them was honesty, and that he encouraged honesty in everything.  I said "I don't like your tie and it doesn't match your shirt."  "How dare you!" he said, and I explained that somewhere in a parallel universe, someone had been talking to me about honesty..."  Honesty, in his mind, gave him permission to say what he wanted to others in his business, but did not confer on them the right to speak honestly to him.  (By the way, it was a perfectly nice, matching tie and shirt, but you get the idea.)

Values have little place at work because they are personal things.  I'd go further and say that, at some level, trying to label values can almost trivialise them; we don't really have adequate names for whatever these things are that drive us at a deeper level.  But because they are personal they can't, ergo, be corporate.  If company leaders tell me what my values should be they are denying me my personal values.  Of course, they are not really talking about values - they are talking about behaviours.  I think it's perfectly all right for a company to insist on reasonable standards of behaviour, but not to dress them up as values.

Consider this:  Take twenty people and ask them for their core values.  They will give you words like "trustworthiness", "integrity" and "honesty".  Ask them to define "integrity" and they'll give you twenty different definitions, none of them wrong, all of them personal.  So if we all define it differently, a company can't claim it as a corporate value because everyone will interpret it differently.  Values, as I said, are personal.

The only thing we can see in others is their behaviours.  I can't see your values, but I can see what you do and hear what you say and that's what counts for me at work.

Worse still, a company, having declared its corporate values, will often neglect to translate them into anything practical, so they remain an abstract statement in company documentation.  And the moment they do translate them, they have to explain them in terms of behaviours, which brings us full circle.

So there's no place for corporate values.  If a value is personal, the company can't own it.  If we all interpret them differently, we don't know what they mean anyway.  If we can' see them, they serve no purpose.

What we're left with is behaviours.  And now we have something we can discuss quite rationally.


David

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Meetings. Plain and simple

According to the Ayers report , vol 1, issue 11 (http://bit.ly/b740t1), 25 million meetings take place daily in corporate America and around half that time is wasted.  Given that the UK population is 20% of the US population, that probably means that 5 million meetings take place in the UK each day. 

If the average meeting is, say, one hour, that’s 12.5 million hours of wasted time in the US and 2.5 million hours of wasted time in the UK.  

It has been said that you could take your annual salary, add £8,000, strike off the last three figures and divide by two to determine the hourly cost to your employer of employing you.  

So, if you earn £20,000 p.a., you cost your company £14 an hour just to turn up each day.  Assuming that your colleagues earn around the same as you, multiply half the length of a meeting in hours by the number of people there by £14 and that’s how much time you just wasted.

The figures may be open to question, but the fact that we waste an inordinate amount of time in meetings isn’t.  In many of my training courses I ask delegates what is the biggest waste of time in their working life and they say “meetings”.  When I ask what they do to change the way they conduct meetings, they blush and shuffle their paperwork.  So although they realise that they are wasting huge amounts of time in meetings, they continue to institutionalise the very behaviours which they condemn.

Here are some ideas to make your meetings more effective:

1. Ensure that every meeting has a purpose.  If that purpose, traditionally, has been to share information, then think about other channels you could use.  Often I hear complaints that if we distribute information by e-mail or put it on Lotus notes, nobody reads it.  That’s a different issue.  Think again about the relevance of the information to its target audience, the frequency of communication, the level of interactivity in the communication, the complexity, the style in which it’s written and the level of “push” and “pull” in the communication.  If you truly believe that the information is important and nobody is reading it, then you have a management issue.  What you don’t have is a meeting issue.  Information passing can be achieved through many better means than meetings
2. Gauge the responses of regular participants to regular meetings.  If they lack energy, arrive late, make excuses not to come, then you need to do something to enliven them or cancel the meetings.  Don’t blame the participants – the meetings in their present form simply don’t work.
3. Cancel the regular meeting. If you have a Monday meeting every week, it’s probably because you’ve always had a Monday meeting every week.  Try abandoning it for a couple of weeks and see if it makes a difference to anyone.  Shift it to different days each week. 
4. Rotate the chairmanship.  Let each person who regularly attends your meetings (if you insist on a regular meeting) chair the meeting.  This tends to bring a fresh perspective to the meeting and each meeting feels different and new – as a result, it becomes more purposeful
5. Make sure the meetings are chaired properly and appropriately.  A good Chair draws out quiet people who look like they have an interesting contribution to make and limits the length of contribution from the more vocal people.  In a meeting, everyone’s equal except the chairman.  If the chairman is the bombastic, noisy one, make representations to remove or change the chairman (or rotate the chairmanship, as above).
6. Don’t ever allow AOB on the agenda.  Meetings should have a purpose.  Any other business is not purposeful.  If participants haven’t told the chair in advance what they want on the agenda, then their topics don’t belong on the agenda.  AOB is usually a chance for those with their own ‘hobbyhorses’ to hijack the meeting and talk about things which are not relevant to the theme of the meeting
7.  Stick to your agenda.
8. If some of the meeting is irrelevant to some of the participants, just invite them to the relevant parts.  (This will only work well if you are all in the same premises. )  Call them as you are approaching the topics to which they can contribute
9. Prepare people for the meeting.  Let them know what’s expected of them, what they need to read or prepare and how long you expect them to speak on their own topics.
10. Ring round before a meeting to check that everyone who says they are going to come really will come.  If key people can’t make it, cancel the meeting and let everyone know the reason.
11. Only invite people with something to contribute.  If certain people don’t contribute to the meeting, don’t invite them again.  Don’t ever invite people simply for fear of offending them.  If they ask why they haven’t been invited to a meeting, ask them what they consider their contribution to be.  If it’s simply to be informed, tell them you’ll send the action points later.
12. Be prepared to introduce new people to a regular meeting (if you insist on having a regular meeting – see point 3, above).  New people bring fresh blood and ideas and break the rituals which dog your regular meetings.
13. Dispense with minutes and produce action points.  One of the jobs of a good meeting secretary or chairman is to chase people after the event (or before the next meeting) is to check on people’s progress in taking action. 
14. Check with people before a meeting whether or not they have prepared the appropriate topics.  If they haven’t, cancel the invitation or tell them that they won’t be needed on this occasion.
15. Try holding your meetings standing up.  They’ll tend to be very focused and purposeful.
16. Find out from your regular meeting-goers what would improve the meetings.  If the ideas seem reasonable, implement them
17. Make your meetings as green as possible.  Don’t ask anyone to travel if they can join the meeting via an audio or video link.   Travelling time is wasted time, it’s not green and it’s unproductive.

Finally, imagine that it’s your money being spent on the meeting.  Would you choose to spend it this way?  Would you allow such a waste of time and money? What would you do to make your meetings work?

David


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The humble leader - humility as a strength in leadership

In an earlier blog, I spoke about quiet leadership and I’d like to continue that one with a few ideas around humility in leadership.   Far from being a weakness, humility can be a great strength in leadership.

A leader who displays humility is approachable.  Approachable people are trusted – and if people trust you, they tell you things. It’s difficult to lead an organisation when your staff are frightened to tell you what’s really happening and soft soap you to save their own skins or withhold some parts of the truth to protect themselves from you.  I’ll guarantee you that if you play the tough leader, you won’t know the half of what’s happening in your organisation.  People will take action and make decisions without your knowledge or blessing, crossing their fingers that they have done the right thing, because it seems safer than approaching you to discuss their ideas.  They would rather take the risk of getting something wrong than having to face you to effectively ask permission when you have erected walls around yourself.  If you don’t know your own organisation, it’s difficult to imagine how you can lead it effectively.

A leader who displays humility engenders loyalty.  If those around you know they can talk to you and have an adult conversation with you, they will demonstrate a great deal more loyalty to you.  If your failure to display humility is perceived as arrogance, they will talk about you behind your back, plot against you and, at worst, work against you.  Disloyalty and demotivation go hand in hand and demotivated people throw lots of energy into being unhappily emotional at the expense of being cheerfully productive.

A leader who displays humility stretches others.  Tell someone who reports to you that you have an idea which you would like to bounce around with them.  They’ll be flattered, motivated and eager to help.  Now you may already know the answer to the problem you’re presenting but this doesn’t matter – the very act of involving the other person shows you trust them, it involves them in the kind of decision making which is part of your working life and it motivates them to want to help.  Above all it stretches their thinking in ways in which their day job may not.

If you involve others in your decision making, then you are effectively starting your succession plan.  It pays for any ambitious leader to have others snapping at their heels, hungry for their job just as you, if you are genuinely ambitious, are snapping at someone else’s.  Now if you are only it for yourself, you won’t care about developing others to take your position when you move up a rung because your focus is solely on you, rather than the organisation.  If you have a real interest in the organisation, then succession planning is part of your responsibility – to ensure that as you move up the ranks, so there is someone behind already trained to slot into the role which you vacate.

You can’t be humble all the time.  Sometimes you have to make tough decisions, be directive and simply get on with things.  But a selective display of humility now and then will do wonders for your credibility and motivate those around you to do even better.

David

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Quiet leadership

I was heartened in a recent LinkedIn discussion to see that I was not alone in thinking that charisma is not a necessary quality in leadership.  Leadership books have romanticised the notion of leadership to the point at which corporate leaders have become a breed apart, looking down on their organisations from a lofty perch with a clear view in every direction.  Their very presence turns heads.  They walk into a room and see only themselves reflected in the eyes of their admirers.  They are, in short, latter day narcissists.

In my experience of working with a vast number of private and public sector organisations, real leadership isn’t at all like that. The best leaders quietly get on with leading.  They are not in it for personal glory, instead having a real desire to see their organisations succeed. They realise that the organisation is simply a group of people temporarily working under the same banner and that if they develop good relationships with their people, they’ll probably do well. 

The big noises in leadership are self-promoters, great at their own PR and often using their current organisation as a stepping stone to the next.  They have little interest in leaving anything behind, and abundant interest in what they can take out of an organisation. 

And the sad thing is that for many years we’ve believed their hype. We’ve bought their autobiographies and “how I did it good” books and believed that this is what leadership is all about.  Worse still, we’ve tried out their ideas without first thinking about their relevance to our own organisations. 

Behind the scenes, this has caused some damage.  Many leaders today hold up the celebrity leaders as role models and berate themselves when they find it difficult to emulate them.  At times they appear to imitate their heroes, rather than looking inside and asking “who am I and what do I have to offer?”

So, throw away your ‘I’m-a-leader-please-worship-me’ books and spend a little time reflecting on what’s good about you, what you can do and what, given some support and encouragement, you may be able to do in the future, and you’ll start to see nice things happen.  You may not get a round of applause as you walk into a room; you may not be the most charismatic person on the block;  but you will be you.  

And once you stop emulating others and discover what you’re all about, life just gets better. 

David

We work all over the world providing management and leadership development. We'd love to hear from you. Call or drop us a line:

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Specialists? No, we just want generalists...

Now, here's a thing.  Once upon a time, we used to hunt out specialists, often put them through fairly rigorous tests and then really value their specialisms within our companies.  Now we hunt out specialists and, within minutes of their arrival in our companies, hand them a competency framework and tell them that they will be appraised on all ten areas.  


And here's a second thing.  Most organisations, according to the CIPD, either have a competency framework or are planning to introduce one, and either create it in-house or in-house with the help of external consultants.  What they produce is more than 80% generic.  So they have probably wasted enormous amounts of money developing something which they could have found on the internet in seconds and adapted in an hour to appear to relate to their own organisations.


So now we have specialists who aren't allowed to specialise, working to competency frameworks which are so generalised that most companies are using almost the same one.  Is it me or is there something deeply flawed in the logic here?


Take a look around your organisation, pick anyone at random and try to remember what made you want to hire them at the outset.  If it was anything more than their decorative appearance, then probably they had something of real value to offer.  To what extent have you capitalised on their strengths, encouraged them to develop those strengths, shown recognition of their ability?  Or did you simply hand them a competency framework and tell them to report back at the next appraisal?



David



We work all over the world providing management and leadership development.  We'd love to hear from you.  Call or drop us a line:


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Isolation ward: socialisation for the self-employed

After years of corporate life, when often the only reason they went into the office was to socialise, many self-employed people feel a tremendous sense of isolation when they strike out on their own.  They yearn for the contact with others, the shared jokes by the coffee machine, the hot gossip, the flirtations, the chance meetings in corridors.

Self-employment doesn't have to be a lonely business.  It's just that the methods of communicating change.

First, realise that your telephone bill is going to be high.  It's worth having a separate business line installed so that you can separate your work and home bills.

Second, learn to type.  It doesn't matter whether or not you use the 'correct' fingers, but it does matter that you develop reasonable speed.  Your computer can be your social lifeline, and if you are still pecking out one  word a minute, you'll find your new social life develops rather slowly.

Then it's time to hook up with others.  Your contact list is your best friend here.  Get it as up to date as you can, then  make a point of calling two people every day for no good reason at all.  It keeps you within their sights and may sow the seeds for future work.  It's useful to have something to say to them when you call, but what you choose to say need not necessarily focus on work.  You'd be surprised at how often someone will say, within a week or two of your call "I was just thinking about you - are you interested in talking about a piece of work?"

Equally, e-mail two people for no good reason and you'll see the same kind of results.

Seek out people with whom you have lost contact through LinkedIn, Plaxo, Friends Reunited or other social networking media.  Don't do the hard sell with them - be conversational and mention in passing what you are now doing.  Again, you're sowing the seeds for future work whilst increasing the number of people with whom you can start to have contact.

LinkedIn provides a great space for meeting like-minded (and annoying) people - just like real life -  and the discussion forums can be educational, fun, aggravating and always interesting.  Contacts there can provide sources of  work. Ecademy provides a similar meeting space.

If you are feeling really brave, try Tweeting through Twitter.  It's a quirky tool and takes a little getting used to, and with practice can start to open up new contacts and, potentially, new business.

If you are working from home, get out of the house at least once every day and take a walk.  Ideally, go to a shop or somewhere where you can have face to face contact with others, albeit just for a few minutes.

Occasionally, attend a networking event - whether a training course, a formal business networking forum or a conference - it does't really matter.  The main thing is to get in front of other people.  In an earlier blog ("Klingons and wallflowers", January 2010), I talked about the joys of networking events, and you may pick up some useful tips there.  If you are well prepared, have your elevator pitch ready and don't have too much spinach between your teeth, you'll find that people want to talk to you, and you stand a reasonable chance of increasing your contacts.

Ultimately, self-employment can be more rewarding than corporate life, and if you work at forging contacts, it need never feel lonely and isolated.

David


We work all over the world providing management and leadership development.  We'd love to hear from you.  Call or drop us a line:

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Self-employed with a boss

If everyone in an organisation worked as if they were self-employed, what do you imagine they would do differently?  


While we are in the thrall of our bosses, how much does that constrain us?  How much more creative would we be if we had no boss?  How would we view spending if it were our own money?  How would we define our own roles?  How much more productive could we be?  How much more intrinsic motivation would we find in our erstwhile routine activities?


Imagine this:  Tell a team of people in your business that, just for one week, they have to imagine that they are self-employed, running their own independent businesses which, incidentally work better when they collaborate with the other small businesses around them.   If there are business-critical constraints which you have to introduce into the mix, then do so, but leave them feeling that they have relative autonomy. 


What do you think would be the result?  What could you learn from it?  What might they learn from it?


At the end of the week, bring them back together and let them talk about the experience.  What did they do differently?  What did they enjoy?  What was difficult?  In what ways did their thinking about the organisation change?  What did they learn that they would now like to introduce into their daily working practices?  How did it feel?


When we consider that we work for someone else, we tend to place boundaries around our own freedom.  When we work for ourselves, we feel a greater sense of freedom to make decisions, to be creative, to think and plan for ourselves.  


That simple shift in mindset could re-energise your team.  Would you dare?




David


We work all over the world providing management and leadership development.  We'd love to hear from you.  Call or drop us a line:

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What's new, pussycat?

The music industry was for some time in denial of the simple idea that fewer people are now interested in buying CDs if they can download tracks from the internet instead. They were late entrants into a field which could have netted them huge profits sooner, had they been prepared to accept that their business model was no longer working.  Instead, they made themselves unpopular by decrying piracy as people illicitly downloaded tracks from rogue file sharing websites, whilst lacking the foresight to set up something similar themselves.  Some years ago, Microsoft were late entrants into web-based society, not initially seeing the potential uses of the internet in their business.  Now we see cloud computing (itself simply a newly rehashed version of the old idea of workstations and file servers) threatening to replace desktop copies of application software and desktop data storage.

A great question for every business, regardless of size, is "Is my business model sustainable?"  If you continue to do what you have been doing to date, will your business survive?  Is there any danger that you have buried your head in the sand, ostrich-like, hoping that some new fad or fashion which might affect you will go away?  Is there something new on the horizon which could actually present you with a real opportunity.

The old PEST analysis model may seem hackneyed but it still has relevance.  In its latest incarnation, as a STEEPLE model, it can be even more useful if only as a checklist of the areas to which you need to pay attention to ensure that you are, as far as possible, predicting what may hit your business from the outside so you are prepared to manage it from the inside.

STEEPLE stands for:

• Social
• Technological
• Economic
• Environmental
• Political
• Legal
• Ethical

The last word, "ethical," is the new kid on the block and is not going to go away.  Whether you like it or not, corporate social responsibility isn't just a flavour of the month and needs some attention now. It's worth spending some time with your colleagues brainstorming everything you can think of which falls under each of these headings and  assessing the likely impact on your organisation.  Don't worry unduly about sorting out your brainstormed ideas into neat categories; there's lots of overlap between the STEEPLE categories and it's purely there to kickstart your thinking.

When you've listed everything which may affect you, give it a weighting according to the level of risk it poses and consider the level of urgency you need to apply in managing it.  Be searingly honest in your assessment of risk.

Now you have your weighted, risk-assessed list, revisit your strategy and judge whether you need to refine it to accommodate the findings of your STEEPLE analysis.  Remember that strategy is dynamic and at least viscose if not entirely fluid.

Now you can sleep a little easier, knowing that you have made the first steps towards embracing what's new and what you can't or shouldn't avoid.  The next steps can be exciting, because they give you an opportunity to look at your business afresh and gauge with a little more certainty what you have to do to make it work and keep it working.

David
We work all over the world providing management and leadership development.  We'd love to hear from you.  Call or drop us a line:

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Benchmarking? Time-wasting!

One of the standard tools in the business toolkit is benchmarking, and I'd like to suggest that it has limited value.  The idea of benchmarking is simple - we assess what we are doing against our competitors.  If they are doing something wonderful that we are not, we copy them.

Problem 1:  If we benchmark ourselves against competitors, we are looking at the results of their old thinking - in other words we're seeing the results of something which they planned some time ago, and it will take us some considerable time to implement what they are doing.  By the time we do, they - if they are any good - will have moved on to something else, so we are always riding in the wake of their success.

Problem 2: I used to be a professional musician and there was an instrumentalist I particularly admired. I learnt, painstakingly, to play just like him. I was delighted one day to read a review in the music press which compared me to him. Then one morning I woke up to the realisation that the best I could ever be, if I continued to pursue this route, was a copyist - someone with no style of their own. I set out to create my own brand and style and received far better plaudits from reviewers who never again compared me to him.

The best businesses have their own brand and style, their own flair and edge. They may well look at the competition but ultimately it's their internal recognition and development of their own talented people that creates their success.  If we are simply copying what others are doing well, then we are copyists and not originators.  Our brand is a shadow brand, without any real form or substance.

Problem 3: How do you compare like with like?  Because your organisation is (theoretically) different, it's almost impossible to know whether you are really comparing things which are similar.  For example, your production processes and equipment may not allow you to do what your competitors are doing without huge financial outlay;  the other organisation may have people skilled in areas which your organisation can't match.

Problem 4: It's expensive and time-consuming.  Why not pour that time, money and energy into positive developments within your own organisation?

Problem 5: You'll never find your own talents if you spend your life comparing yourself to others.  Which was really problem 2, but I liked it so much I thought I'd paraphrase it.  It provided a useful benchmark...

There is a place for competitor analysis and for quick and dirty comparison with other organisations.  But don't let benchmarking gather momentum and become an end itself.

David
We work all over the world providing management and leadership development.  We'd love to hear from you.  Call or drop us a line:

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Klingons and wallflowers - business networking

You've packed your business cards, combed your hair, washed your face, arrived at the networking event and you're raring to go.


You enter the conference hall and see scores of little groups of people engaged in conversation.  They all appear to know each other, or at least are giving the impression of being very comfortable in each others' company.  The thought of approaching and trying to break into one of these groups is daunting.  


You noticed that, dotted around the edge of the room are lots of people standing on their own, obviously feeling just as you feel.  You catch someone's eye; they smile; and the damage is done.  You've made a friend for the day - and you won't shake them off.


Take a step back from the heightened emotion of the networking event and consider why you and others are there.  People go to conferences and business networking events to meet people who may be useful to them in their work.  It's as callous and calculated as that.  They are not looking for friends and it's not a dating agency - it's about making the best "use" of people.


Those ranged round the edge of the room - the wallflowers - are there because they find it difficult to approach perfect strangers and strike up a conversation. At the first sign of encouragement from you, they'll become your personal klingon, clinging on to you for dear life because you were nice to them and talking to you is less scary than approaching someone else.


If they are nervous about approaching others, the likelihood is that they have been nervous in other situations.  Follow that logic through and they probably don't have an extended network, because they are not terribly good at networking.  And so, callous and cold-hearted as it seems, they are the very people to avoid because they are unlikely to be useful to you: the very people you don't want to meet.


Now switch your gaze to the people in the middle of the room, chatting away merrily to others.  They are there because they already know how to network, and so probably have reasonable networks which could enhance yours. 


Single out one of the little groups and look at the way they are standing - is the group open or closed?  In other words, is there a gap big enough for someone else to join in or are they so engrossed in each others' company that they have closed the physical gap, leaving no space for anyone else to join them?  


Open groups are unconsciously inviting others to join them, either because their conversation has run its course or because one of them is trying to get away from another.  Simply walk over and smile.  It's a all a game and they understand the rules.  After the person speaking has finished what they are saying, one of the people in the group will turn to you, shake your hand and ask you about yourself.  Remember that you can be as useful to them as they are to you. Be ready!


To start, learn to shake hands properly.  Trivial as it sounds, it has a big  effect on the impression that you create and the first few seconds are all important in creating the best impression.  A handshake is just that - a shaking of hands.  It's not about offering a hand to be shaken. The grip should be firm and the palms should touch - an arched hand or proferred fingers feel horrible to the other person.  Shake the hand, make eye contact, smile and introduce yourself.


When you introduce yourself, say your name twice - first name alone, then whole name.  For example, I would say "Hello, I'm David - David Cotton."  It will sound perfectly natural to the other person and it gives them two opportunities to hear and remember who you are.  If they hear your name, they are more likely to introduce you to others.  If they don't it will embarrass them, and you may lose opportunities to be introduced to others.  If you don't catch their name first time, say immediately: "I'm sorry. I didn't catch your name."  Don't wait until you have to introduce them to others because it's embarrassing to tell them then that you don't know who they are.  Say their name back to them to further ingrain it in your psyche - "Hello, Jane, it's nice to meet you."


Now tell them about you.  There is nothing worse in networking than declaring your title or grade as an opener.  I've been to many events for both the private sector and the public sector and public sector people in particular are fabulous at telling everyone their grade and department.  "Hello", they say, "I'm an AO in DwP."  Well, nobody cares, and you just bored everyone!  AO is a paygrade and is not interesting to anyone.  


This is where your 'elevator pitch' is so vital.  What can you say about yourself in 20 seconds that's sufficiently interesting to make someone else ask a follow-up question?  And that's what it's all about.  It isn't about selling yourself or your organisation in those few brief seconds.  Instead, it's about dropping hooks into the conversation so that the other people are interested enough to bite - by asking a follow-up question - because they are genuinely interested in what you said.  If they glaze over as you speak, you either talked for too long or expressed yourself in an uninteresting way.  Think about the outcome of your work and use that to concoct your elevator pitch.  It's more interesting to hear that you collect money to build roads, schools and hospitals than to say you're an EO in HMRC.   


Do take a stock of business cards with you.  Exchanging them as you are introduced to a person doesn't work - at this stage you don't know anything about the other person and it gives the impression of being a little too zealous.  Get into conversation and then, if they seem interesting, say "Oh, perhaps I can give you a card?"  which means "Please give me your business card."  


If you are stuck with a real bore, there are plenty of ways to get away.  Here are a few:

• "Well, it has been lovely to talk to you and I hope we meet up again"
• Tell them you need the toilet
• Open up the circle, indicating that there is room for others to join you.  Introduce whoever joins the circle, mutter "excuse me" as they are talking and wander off
• "There's someone else I must catch up with..."

As the use of social networking media software becomes prevalent, perhaps we'll see a  reduction in the number of face to face events. For the moment, they are still relatively common.  Enjoy them!


David


We work all over the world providing management and leadership development.  We'd love to hear from you.  Call or drop us a line:

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I don't care what I leave behind - I won't be there to see it

I've been thinking a lot recently about stewardship, initially prompted by a friend and colleague and brought to the fore in a conversation with delegates on a recent training course.

The course delegates were enjoying a jolly good moan about one of their computer systems which didn't work. They said that it had been slow and lacked functionality ever since it was introduced three or four years ago.  I asked what they had done about it and, after a few sheepish looks at the floor they admitted that, apart from grumbling to each other in private, they had done nothing.

I asked what they would say if a new joiner came into their team and asked the same question.  How would they explain that they had known about the faults but done nothing to get them fixed?  What kind of legacy were they leaving to new people coming into the organisation?  We explored other aspects of the business which upset them and unearthed a long list of things which didn't function as they wanted and which had gone unchallenged.

I asked if they feared raising the issue of things that didn't work, or if they were unsure who to approach to get them fixed.  They said they had no qualms about approaching the appropriate people to fix the problems and knew exactly who to go to.  So why hadn't they done anything about it?

Well the answer was simple: they couldn't be bothered!  It was easier to sit and moan than to go and talk to someone and rectify the problems.

It struck me that in a vast number of  organisations there are  people who prefer to moan about things than do something about them.  Now of course there are lots of organisational reasons why they behave in this way and they are/will be the subject of future blogs.  But at the heart of this is a real lack of "stewardship" - the idea that we are only temporary members of any organisation and what we leave behind us is inherited by others who continue to work in an organisation long after we have left.

So it's worth thinking, at whatever grade you work, what's your legacy?  Are you a real steward for the organisation or is your concern about the here and now and what's in it for you?

Perhaps the best new year resolution you can craft for yourself is to become a steward, so that every system, process and function in your gift works so well that you would be proud to pass it on; you behave at work as a role model for others, passing on a legacy of trust and respect which you would hope future generations in your organisation would follow.

Or you could just not bother.  After all, whatever you leave behind is immaterial.  You won't be there to see it.

David

We work all over the world providing management and leadership development. We'd love to hear from you. Call or drop us a line:

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It's snowing - let's blame someone

Britain's press is seized by a hysterical urge to print the word "snow". It appears in every newspaper headline and is the main story in every TV and radio news report. Why? Not because it's snowing, but because it's someone's fault.

Now it's not the first time it ever snowed in the UK, and probably won't be the last. But we are running out of salt and grit and we have to blame someone. We could blame the local councils for not planning ahead. We could blame the Meteorological Office for not predicting the extent of the snow. We could blame the national government because...they exist.

At the heart of all this is a real social problem. No longer can we accept that accidents happen, that there are sometimes exceptional circumstances, that someone made a mistake, that something just went wrong. Instead we have to point accusing fingers and seek out culprits.

The same trend is becoming prevalent in business. Accidents are now incidents. Mistakes are "critical." People need to be punished.

Somewhere deep down I think we may be losing touch with our humanity, forgetting that humans are - well - human, and that sometimes things just do go wrong. For every second we point the accusing finger at others we are neglecting to offer support, sympathy, help and constructive advice.

There's a lovely psychological term to describe our behaviour: "false attribution error." When we make a mistake we know all the circumstances which led to it and, although others don't have that level of circumstantial detail, we want them to make allowances for what we have done. When others make a mistake, we don't allow for all those circumstances and simply blame them for the results of their mistakes.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it's snowing. The main roads are clear and with a little caution we can navigate the side roads which are not. And do you know what? The snow looks beautiful.

David Cotton
E: david@wize-up.co.uk
W: www.wize-up.co.uk
Twitter: Wize-Up

Don't bother to grow your business...

Some years ago I was asked to talk at a conference whose theme was "Growing your business."  The conference was aimed at owners of businesses valued at around £10m who wanted to take them to the next stage. I was the penultimate speaker in a long day of talks from venture capitalists and business angels.

I asked for a show of hands from the 150 delegates - "How many of you want to grow your business?" Around 95% raised their hands.

Twenty minutes later, when I asked the same question, fewer than 20% raised their hands.

In the minutes between the two straw polls, I told them the story of a client of mine. I won't tell you precisely what he did because it was so specialised that it would hint at his identity, but it was related to the production of a specialised food item.  He had a passion for what he did, was internationally recognised for it (although he had a staff of just eight people) and had won more than 80 awards for excellence in his field.  He was very hands-on in his chosen field and loved nothing more than getting up at 5:00 every morning to collect the ingredients for his product and go back to his small kitchen to create this wonder food.

Trade was good, he was making a very comfortable living and able to pay his staff well.

I asked him about his plans for the following financial year.  He said he wanted to grow the business - double his staff, move into larger premises, open a showroom/museum devoted to his wonder product and double his revenues.

I asked what that would mean in practical terms, and as he began to think it through, his face fell and he began to realise that as the business grew, it would take him further and further away from the very thing he was passionate about - the very thing which had encouraged him to start the business.  In the space of 20 minutes he had talked himself out of growing the business.

We spent the rest of the session talking about sustainability - what he would have to do to ensure that he was well equipped internally to cope with external changes so that the business continued at the same levels as before.  I left him a happy man.

Hearing this story, many of those at the conference started to re-examine their real drivers, to think about what it was that gave them a buzz about running their own businesses.  Sure, by the time they had reached the £10m mark, many had already moved away from a hands-on approach but most were still sufficiently close to the business to remember what inspired them to start it in the first place.

I wasn't invited back to the conference the following year.

As a business owner, where is your passion?  What makes you want to get up in the morning? How can you reignite that fire at the start of a new year?  How can you sustain that interest and momentum in the future?

David

Email: david@wize-up.co.uk
Web: www.wize-up.co.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wizeupltd
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Why would anyone follow you?

In my leadership workshops I sometimes ask delegates to define 'leadership' on the grounds that if we are going to spend the next day or two exploring the concept, it's useful to start with a common, agreed definition.

Their definitions are often lengthy, quite tortuous and overcomplicated.  To me, the definition is very straightforward: Leaders have followers.  If you do or say anything which inspires people to follow you, you're leading.  Leadership has little or nothing to do with position or title and a lot to do with behaviour.  I spent several years as a school governor and watched 11 year old children who had more authority in the classroom than their teachers - other pupils were drawn, like magnets to them, hanging on their every word and copying their behaviour.

Everything that you do and say as a leader gives permission to your team to do and say the same things.  If you come into the office looking like hell on earth because you spent a night on the town then you've just told your team it's ok to look like this.  If you shout and bully your team, then it's ok for your team to do the same.

So now, why would anyone follow you?  Don't hide behind a title, because that doesn't make you a leader.  Don't hide behind value statements,because nobody can see your values.  All they see is how you behave.  Here are some question to ponder:

• What kind of behaviours are you demonstrating which you would want other to follow?  
• What do others think of you?  (When did you last ask them?  Would you want to hear the answers?)  
• Do you know what impression you are creating for other people?
• Is there a match between what you believe you are exuding from the inside out and what people are seeing looking from the outside in?
•  And really importantly, do you care?

The media/book/big personality cult of leadership has been quite damaging to real leadership. The best leaders are also good managers, in touch with their business and the people within the business.  Cult leaders are removed from the day to day operations of their businesses, making a big noise but divorced from operational practicalities. Real leaders don't have to have planet-sized egos and enough charisma to fill a football stadium; instead, they need to have an ear to the ground, talk to people, demonstrate quite naturally to others the standards of behaviour they expect and get on with the job.

I'd love to hear your comments and feedback.

David

We work all over the world providing management and leadership development. We'd love to hear from you. Call or drop us a line:

T: 44 (0)161 929 4145
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Stop doing training needs analyses

When I first started working in training and development, it was the fashion to conduct a training needs analysis every time anyone identified an issue within a business. After all, there's no point in hiring training professionals if they are not doing training work, is there?

The problem is that each time you do a training needs analysis, you presuppose that training is the solution. And sometimes you'll be right. And sometimes you won't.

Businesses suffer business problems. To be effective as an in-house trainer, you must have a real grasp of the business. Without that, you're likely to produce isolated interventions which have little lasting value.

More useful - as well as developing an understanding of what the business is all about - is to do a business needs analysis, spending time analysing business requirements with no presupposition that training will be the solution.

In 1986, Nithin Nohria, William Joyce and Bruce Roberson began the Evergreen Project1, one of the biggest management studies ever undertaken. It set out to determine which management techniques are real indicators of long term success, measured in terms of "total return to shareholders". Its conclusions were that the major tools and techniques, such as total quality management, Kaizen etc had no effect on the bottom line at all. They discovered startling consistency amongst the successful businesses. Each one of them excelled in four "Primary practices" and any two of four "secondary practices" (and it didn't seem to matter which two).

Successful companies were great in Strategy, Execution, Culture and Structure.

They were also great in any two of Talent, Innovation, Mergers & Acquisitions, and Leadership (!)

The book neatly summarises the findings in each of the eight "practices". Turn the summary into a series of questions, tweak it for your business and you have a wonderful framework for a business needs analysis. Use the questions to really discover what's going on in your business, in a department or team and you'll find:

• you gain a greater understanding of the business
• you can make more pertinent recommendations for business improvement
• you increase your credibility as a business partner

So next time you're tempted to do a training needs analysis, stop and think - how do I know that the outcome should be training? If there's any doubt in your mind, consider instead a small scale business analysis. It won't cost any more than a TNA and it will reveal vastly more.

And if you need help in conducting your business needs analysis, call us on 44 (0) 161 929 4145 or email info@wize-up.co.uk. We'd be delighted to help.

David Cotton

www.wize-up.co.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/wizeupltd

1 Nohria, Joyce and Roberson: What really works: The 4+2 formula for sustained business success. Collins, 2003, ISBN-13: 9780060512871, ISBN 0060512784

New year, new directions

Some years ago I was asked by the Board of Directors of an SME to help them to more effectively deliver their strategy. I hope it doesn't take a trained consultant to work out that my first question was "What's your strategy?"

To a man (they were all men) they pointed to the Finance Director and said "Ask him!"

The FD blushed a deep scarlet, pondered and then had a lightbulb moment.

"Reduce our cost base by 3% and double our margins over the next, erm... three years."

His colleagues applauded.

I repeated that I had asked them for their strategy, not their financial targets.

Over the years, I've found that the same confusion exists pretty much everywhere. Strategy is sexy stuff, talked about constantly in Boardrooms and yet little understood.

Without a clear strategy, a business has no direction. Without direction, everyone becomes task focused and silo-based. It becomes fairly easy to tell the organisations with no strategy. Just go to a board meeting. Typically, as one person gives their monthly report, the others are hastily scribbling theirs. There is little point in listening to the person speaking, because nothing they say has any direct bearing on your own functional area. 80% and more of the meeting looks backwards instead of forwards. If you have no direction, discussion of the future has no framework or structure.

So, why not start the new year by reviewing your strategy.

We can help you with our 1-day Strategy Review or 2-day Strategy Programme.

Call us on 44 (0)161 929 4145 or info@wize-up.co.uk

David Cotton

www.wize-up.co.uk