Update to our Literature Search – Part III

• Difficult Truths, Too Big to Swallow
• Update to our Literature Search – Part I
• Update to our Literature Search – Part II

OK – time to bring things up to date – it’s around 5 months since we updated the list, so let’s see just how much paper has been wasted stating the obvious:

• Change Management: 69,481 (65,689; 57,604; 47,416) +46%
• Business Strategy: 71,284 (72,959; 64,603; 56,102) +27%
• Organization Culture: 34,851 (32,944; 28,965; 23,956) +45%
• Talent Management: 11,138 (10,426; 8,970; 7,206) +55%
• People Management: 50,711 (48,019; 41,848; 33,011) +53%
• Leadership: 371,927 (350,084; 302,959; 256,503) +45%
• Management: 981,451 (960,499; Not measured; Not measured) +2.2%

So, what does our cross-indexing thematic meta-analytic framework study tell us?

Hmmmmmmm…

Well, it appears that the tried and tested, traditional stuff (management, strategy, change management) are growing at a slightly slower rate than the newer disciplines of talent and people management – though personally this BadConsultant is a little disheartened to see Organization Culture not hitting the similar growth rates to talent and people

[though it does give us an idea about a book... "BadConsultant's Guide to Building a Culture of Talented People" anyone? Anyone?]

Management books overall continue to creep towards the 1 million mark, and we can’t help but feel it fitting that at around the time that’s happening, the capitalist edifices that are the logical final extension of the 20th century’s adoration of growth through industrialized

[exploitation]

expansion are crumbling left, right and centre; leaving the path open for those smart

[smaller]

organizations that have realized that talented people driving a culture that celebrates their healthy performance IS the competitive advantage.

Oh, and finally from the literature search, note the slight decrease of 1,700 or so books in Business Strategy… Artifact of Amazon’s cataloguing system, or just the shelf of strategy books pertaining to growing through sub-prime derivatives trading?

For now, BC is out – but will be back soon with a veritable litany of observation, inference, practice and learning.

Peace and love,

BC

[and no, you won't hear those two words spoken by very many of the companies that are buying many of the books above - which is why they will fail]

When Engagement Becomes Engagament

Badconsultant does a LOT of work on culture and colleague engagement. Which involves surveys, and measurement, and frameworks, and systemic change, and… er… avoidance, denial, recrimination, anger, rapprochement and… well…

[billable hours]

silliness. Just plain, simple silliness.

Like the leader who, taking the guidance that ‘leaders embody the culture’, comes to believe themselves an Incan high priest on the high pyramid, slaughtering sheep and young virgins so as to pronounce that…

WE EMPOWER COLLEAGUES!

[Badconsultant whole-heartedly apologizes for the inadvertent use of the 'E' word and takes no liability for possible downstream consequences... Though we will be happy to submit a statement of work to fix them]

And in the saying, believing that the words have become reality.

Like the manager who will obsess about survey results for a year, agonizing over what possible meaning can be gleaned from the data, all the while hearing the suggestion to simply ask people what’s important to them and what would make a difference, yet clinging to the notion that somehow there is an answer that must be given to people.

Manager play-acting the role of high priest, I guess.

Engagement doesn’t come in a box, it can’t be given, it can’t be manufactured. It’s something you solicit and nurture, not build and provide.

And how ironic is it that people who most often ask “How do I grow engagement?” are those least likely to simply engage with people?

So, let us argue the questions, let us argue the theory, let us deny that the people around us are human beings who have feelings, thoughts, cares, whims and neuroses. Let us believe that people are non-chaotic, cookie-cutter-cut-outs who respond to stimulus like pavlovian dogs.

Let us live in beautiful, blissful denial.

And anyway

[ready for it]

What is the ‘best friend’ question all about, anyway?

BC

Update to our literature search – Part II

A little over a year ago, we carried out our our proprietary literature search to inform Difficult Truths, Too Big to Swallow – Part I. We updated the search in November. Here’s the latest installment. As of this evening (November, April in parens), percent gain since original search:

* Change Management: 65,689 (57,604; 47,416) +38%

* Business Strategy: 72,959 (64,603; 56,102) +30%

* Organization Culture: 32,944 (28,965; 23,956) +38%

* Talent Management: 10,426 (8,970; 7,206) +45%

* People Management: 48,019 (41,848; 33,011) +45%

* Leadership: 350,084 (302,959; 256,503) +36%

What do these stats tell us? Nothing much, just that there are many more people writing books about business than actually being successful in business… All this really good advice and still the nature of commerce and capitalism has taken a nose-dive.

And now, we want to introduce the grand-daddy (or -mummy to be truly diverse) of literature search stats. As of this evening, number of books found on searching for the word ‘management’…

Wait for it…

960,499

Wait a second, let’s give that the emphasis it deserves…

960,499!!!

[nearly a million books on management and most organizations still scramble to get the basics right - sheesh!]

Cause for hope? Look at talent management and people management, finally making the catch-up run on the home stretch. Maybe organizations are finally beginning to get what it’s all about.

Maybe.

L’huego,

BC

Er… Can somebody please tell me what I have to do to be authentic?

I had the privilege of seeing Bill George speak last year on the subject of Authentic Leadership and followed up by reading his book, True North. All good stuff. Lots of moral compasses, support networks, personal belief systems and integrated diagrams

[well done, graphics department - hurrah!]

all of which make absolute sense and tie in with core psycholgical and social principles.

Good, I thought, another entry in the BadConsultant knowledge management database to be repackaged, repurposed and resold to dumb, rich clients

[we love dumb, rich clients]

everywhere.

Except then it started happening.

And BadConsultant began to feel a little like Alice down the rabbit hole, or Neo taking the red pill.

When it first happened, it was a beautiful sunny day, birds were chirping in the trees, children danced in the grass of the park, a milkman trundled by on his chinkling cart. And in the conference room, an executive pulled up a slide which described his corporate strategy as ‘True North’.

I’d seen this scene before.

What followed in that session and even more so in the months that have followed

[leadership survivalist tactics in economic crisis as last-ditch catalyst, anyone... anyone?]

was the commoditization of the word ‘authentic’ into nearly every aspect of leadership decision-making, behavior and action. Which would be great if it were authentic.

Except the same leaders who never made decisions are now touting their authenticity – but still not making decisions.

And the same leaders who ignored substantial swathes of their organization are now doing so authentically.

And in the same breath inferring that everyone else is like… er… so… rilly, rilly inauthentic.

[or non-authentic... or un-authentic... or authentic-less... They haven't quite working out the anti-authentic word yet]

So, what started as a look behind the veil of leadership, of how to navigate the singular challenges of being a senior executive in a ‘modern’ organization, rapidly descended into the land of homily, buzz-phrase and smoke-screen.

How sad.

BadConsultant openly predicts that leadership development curricula across ‘modern’ organizations will have ‘Introduction to Authenticity 101′ type courses very shortly. May we suggest some snappier titles? How about:

• ‘Knowing me, knowing you’ – how to win through denial!
• ‘The authentic side-step‘ – dancing the tango of non-commitment
• ‘Keeping it real’ – what the rap world teaches us about corporate politics
• ‘I love you just the way you are’ – don’t go changing to try to please me

Authentically yours,

BC

Who won the war for talent… Er… If it’s all right to ask that question…

A little earlier this year, BadConsultant launched Jobinions. A free service/discussion forum where people could share opinions on companies as either an employee or as an interviewee.

[and, for full disclosure, I don't make any money from Jobinions - yes, it is possible that some people aren't commoditizing everything]

The spirit of Jobinions is quite simple – tell it like it is. From the Jobinions front page:

... life’s too short to work for crap companies. They can damage your health, wealth and happiness and strip you of your potential to do your very best work. We want you to know what it’s like working for any company. And the best people to tell it like it is are the people working there already and others who have interviewed with the company.

We created Jobinions because there was nowhere to tell it like it is.

Jobinions is founded on the belief that the working world can be better and that we can help each other make great career decisions.

Jobinions is pretty easy to use – a quick sign up process, answer a few core questions on the company and you’re in, simple as that. There’s no personal information shared on the site and, I guarantee, the identity of community members will remain confidential (provided they don’t get into libel/slander).

Quite a few people signed up and created accounts. When I recently advertised Jobinions on Google Adwords, even more people signed up.

BUT…

Only 5 people have left a Jobinion, so far (not counting my initial example). There’s good stuff in those Jobinions – particularly about one major accounting firm.

I am a firm believer that the war for talent has been won by the talent – and Jobinions was built on the basis that it’s OK to have an opinion about your employer – that each of us owns our career and can be proactive in getting to do more of what we do best every day.

Yet, from the many users, only 5 Jobinions in 5 months. Why the reticence?

I did a little bit of digging, searching and reading and came across Laurie Reuttiman’s

[who is a goddess - follow what she says - laugh at her blog - marvel at how remarkably cute she is in all her pictures and... er... make sure you spay and neuter your cats, right Laurie?]

entry about Jobinions which had generated some of the users. And there was a comment that just plain made me go ‘huh?’

To quote:

Even though the post is entitled “Humor,” I’d recommend that folks NOT use Jobinions – your current or potential employer might not see the humor that you do.

Or, for God’s sake, don’t use your real name, email address or URL.

The recession makes grumpy, humorless jerks out of more people than you realize.

Huh?

[see, I told you]

HUH?!!!

“I’d recommend that folks not use Jobinions…”

because your qualification for saying so is that you’re paranoid about employers not seeing the joke?

Really?

Getting past that sort of confrontational, win-lose, serf-master employment relationship is exactly WHY I created Jobinions – it’s time to transcend the BS of the 20th century ‘modern’ organization

[read the manifesto at http://www.strengthsspringboard.com]

and put the people who create the value on the footing they deserve.

Yet even with that intent, I have the simple fact that people (many people) have signed up and created profiles – yet only 5 Jobinions have been posted. Is paranoia rampant? I don’t believe so. Reluctance to use discussion boards? Er… I won’t dignify myself with an answer to that one. Mistrust of ye olde BadConsultant? Maybe.

But at the base of it all (as I discuss at the Strengths Springboard), is that I believe the majority of people haven’t woken up to the fact that the ‘modern’ organization is near dead in the water, out of tricks, unprepared for a world where the East is faster and cheaper, the West is demanding and fickle, and value is created from ideas not reproducible, scalable manufacturing processes.

And why haven’t they woken up?

Because it’s been easier and safer to collude with the mythology. Though it may look, feel, sound, smell and taste like it, it’s not fear, not really – it’s laziness.

GM, AIG, Chrysler…

The mythology is crumbling before your eyes.

So come on over to Jobinions and tell it like it is – it’s time to build a different future – one where it’s cool to work at something you love doing and be respected, rewarded and celebrated for doing just that.

What If Managers Ran Grand Central…

Tomorrow morning, BadConsultant will once again be hitting the MetroNorth-East corridor into New York, arriving at Grand Central in the midst of rush hour.

[hey, why not say "Hi!" if you spot me?]

It’s a nice trip – I get some quiet time on the train, do some thinking, listen to my iPod, get a little bit of work done – an almost zen-like zone of tranquility. And yes, I am attempting to teach the conductors to chant ‘Ommmmmm’ when they ask for the ticket. So, it was a few weeks ago, that I emerged from the train floating a little in transcendental space, thinking of everything, thinking of nothing, flowing with the energy within and without

[don't worry, there is a point coming - I just wanted you to get my mood, maaaaan]

as I stepped out of the track doorway and into the human chaos that is Grand Central in the morning.

I started walking at my usual quick pace, practising being centered, anticipating others movement, adjusting course, blending with the mass of moving humanity. Gradually I slowed. Because I noticed the absence of something (which isn’t all that easy to do in the sensory overload of New York).

There wasn’t one inter-person collision. No-one fell over. No-one was angry with anyone else. The whole thing flowed like bees in a hive, or ants in a colony. This was a society moving naturally, this was a dynamic system, self-adjusting and evolving as I watched.

I stopped walking.

How many people do you think travel through Grand Central station every day?

Hang on a second, I’ll just nip over to Wikipedia… Wow!

• Over 500,000 visitors every day
• Over 125,000 commuters every day

How big is your organization? Mine is about 75,000. Nearly twice as many people commute through Grand Central every day as my whole global organization.

And those commuters don’t seem to need managers.

No collisions. No casualties. Give and take, ebb and flow.

If managers ran Grand Central what do you think would happen?

Let’s try the obvious…

1. Each thoroughfare would be neatly organized into bi-directional walkways to ensure that people walked in the right(®) direction
2. Each of these bi-directional walkways would have designated entry and exit points with a queuing system/process to ensure smooth transition
3. Each traveler would have to have a pre-planned, approved itinerary indicating their time of departure, destination and expected seating assignment
4. Managers would stand at the doorways, to discuss the planned itinerary and to educate the traveler in question exactly how to walk – speed, gait and acceleration – as well as testing quality of footwear and appropriateness of attire
5. Each traveler would have to ensure they had necessary budget to travel prior to commencing entering the station
6. Finally (though the list could go on and on and on) there would be totally, categorically NO SIGHTSEEING – that’s right, anyone stopping to enjoy the breathtaking setting of Grand Central would be held up on a performance management infringement immediately

It’s kind of laughable, right? Yet

[sigh]

we put up with this kind of bulls*** every day in the modern organization – and assume it is the way it has to be. In fact, right now, someone reading this blog is thinking that there’s no way such anarchy/chaos could work in an organization.

[come on, I can hear the gears whirring in your brain... Even from here]

Yet, over 125,000 people get where they want to go every day without major, or even minor, catastrophe. Why is that?

1. They want (or have to) travel – i.e. there is an intention to travel
2. The destination is clear – the overhead boards tell me which train is going where I’m going, what time it leaves and which platform
3. Signage to platforms is clear
4. Nobody has a vested interest in stopping me getting where I’m going – the only time a win/lose proposition comes into play is when someone is guarding and empty seat with their bag to avoid having me sit next to them

[probably not a bad idea]

“But,” my modern organization believer screams at me, “there’s an army of people making sure that Grand Central runs smoothly so that commuters can get through quickly!”

And that’s my point. Of course there is. But I don’t see them. I don’t talk to them. I only deal with them when things are going horribly wrong because of something out of my control. And when that is fixed, they fade away again.

Hmmmm… helping me when I need it, leaving me to do my thing when everything’s running smoothly.

Maybe the question shouldn’t be ‘What If Managers Ran Grand Central?’ but instead ‘What If Grand Central Managed Your Organization?’

Oh well, I’ll see if it’s so smooth tomorrow – knowing my luck I’ve probably jinxed Grand Central and will get to watch 5 cardiac arrests, 3 broken femurs, a small brush fire (in Body Shop), 16 muggings and 1 bizarre act of biblical revelation before I get 10 yards from the platform.

[In which case I will, of course, blog about it]

Toodle-pip,

BC

And so you’re back… from outer space…

… just turned up to find you here… with that sad look upon your face

[careful, when the badconsultant boogies, no-one's safe]

Well, haven’t I been off in the clouds for a while?

If you read my New Year’s Eve post, you’ll remember that I predicted 2009 would bring some interesting work and indeed it’s turning out that way. Jigsaw pieces are clicking into place, mechanisms are turning, sense is emerging from nonsense, s*** is indeed hitting fans.

Getting some things built and ready has taken quite a bit of time, but you’ll be glad to hear that most of the heavy lifting has now been done and I’ll be back to writing

[and helping you take the red pill]

more regularly very soon.

In the next couple of days, I’ll be launching the Strengths Springboard (the manifesto is available now if you want to sign up).

Around the same time, I’ll be doing something a little odd. Sharing a ‘Big Idea’ (i.e. one which could potentially make a lot of money for whoever brings it to life) openly on the web. There’s a high likelihood that I may get nothing back for doing so. I’ll even consult about it. Happily. It’ll be the first of many such experiments in letting ideas loose in the world. Stay tuned here or at Twitter to hear more about that.

Letting ideas loose in the world.

It is time to confound the reality we’ve all taken for granted for too long. It is time to take the red pill.

And in the meantime

[Cue disco ball]

won’t you join me in a little boogie?

First I was afraid… I was petrified…

Mañana

BC

Aaaahhh… Victimhood…

… You make us so comfortable when you stick around.

A little while ago, we wrote a piece called “Free Agent Nation?” covering what we perceive as the impending exodus of talent from corporations.

Before we extemporize, quantify, clarify and obfuscate, we formally want to tip the hat to Daniel Pink who wrote about the subject in Fast Company and more recently in his book – we haven’t read the book yet, but will be doing so in the near future. Despite our uncanny ability to resell work we’ve previously done, and repackage others’ intellectual property with a facade of our own creation, we absolutely, totally do not steal from our bretheren – we didn’t coin the term Free Agent Nation

[though we did add the question mark]

and want to recommend you read the original article now – it was somewhere in our subconscious as we brought a lot of ideas together over the past few weeks.

OK. That’s over – phew!

Pretty transparent, right? Our owning up to an unwitting terminology ‘borrow’. Not for us the game of “that’s not fair, we didn’t know about it” – no, here at BadConsultant towers, we tell it like it is

[especially at http://www.jobinions.com - have you left a jobinion yet?]

regardless of whether it places us in positions of jeopardy.

Would that the rest of the world would do that.

Instead, we are fed a litany of excuses, blame rants, whining, whingeing, bellyaching, caviling, criticizing, deprecation, disparagement, fault-finding, griping, grouching, grousing, grumbling, kvetching, moaning, nagging, niggling, nit-picking, overcriticizing, quibbling, scathing… Well, you get the picture, right?

Through our multi-variant, cross-referential, do-loop, mega-meta-analysis of conventional wisdom-sapping framework complexes, we’ve identified that for the majority of your workforce, victimhood is a comfortable bed-fellow. For them, it’s all your fault; your fault that…

• they didn’t hit their targets
• their ideas aren’t strong enough to move forward
• there’s in-fighting within the team
• they aren’t able to develop the skills the business needs tomorrow

They’ll whine and complain

[and all those other words we cribbed from an online thesau... er... erm... our knowledge management database]

about all of it. Only they won’t do it to your face. They’ll do it in a bar, in a cubicle, in the park… Anywhere but where they need to do it: In the moment, at work, with you and the team.

To them it’s all your fault.

And guess what? They’re totally and utterly correct. It is. Because, when it comes to bringing people to a highly engaged state, it’s highly, highly unlikely that your own leadership is telling you it’s what’s expected – so the only reason you’ll do it is because you naturally believe it’s the right thing to do and have the capability to do it. There aren’t that many of you – and it’s highly unlikely you hear the whining nearly as much as others do.

For the rest of you managers, though, you are in complicity with the victims you manage – human beings perpetuate the status quo

[here we go-oh... Rockin' all over the world! Cue Americans going "huh?!!!"]

no matter how painful. Put simply, you are comfortable managing victims.

We’re going to let that sink in.

You are comfortable managing victims.

Why? Well, if you do it like you did it yesterday, no-one can hold you accountable for today’s poor results; today’s failure was perfectly acceptable yesterday. So, why change anything?

Anyone…

Anyone…

We’ll be back soon to answer the question.

έως ότου συναντιόμαστε πάλι

BC

Mental Gymnastics (or ‘To all the paradoxes I’ve loved before’)

A couple of weeks back, BadConsultant had the unparalleled joy of mingling with a small, select group of

[patsies]

executives gathered together to pass comment on some pretty astounding internal social networking technology. Cool stuff. Lots of opportunities. Of course, being BadConsultant, we extemporized, categorized, expounded and theorized just enough to bring these potential ‘deep-pockets’ to the edge of understanding of their problems and potential solutions

[our arched eyebrows and caring forehead let them know that we were like, er, rilly, rilly understanding of their pain... The draft Statement of Work letting them know we could make it all go away soooo easily...]

Of course, aside from enjoying the sound of our own voice, BadConsultant was also listening closely for inspiration. And, sure enough, it hit us about an hour into the discourse.

Think about your company. Think about mission

[spit]

vision

[spit twice]

purpose

[spit thrice]

and values

[vomit... politely]

Now that you’ve cleansed yourself of the kool-aid, think about the words that are used, and those that are used to explain just what those words actually mean (because it’s highly unlikely that the mission, vision, purpose and values can stand on their own without clarification or translation into plain english)

[No, really, what do these values mean to YOU]

OK, chances are that once the gag-reflex calms down, you’ll recognize something like this in amongst the hyperbole.

“We will be innovative”

or

“We will think big, but act small”

or even

“The spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well here”

Recognize that? And who could argue?

Well… Er… Us, actually…

You see, this was the blinding flash of insight that hit us at our small round-table. And the paradox in this question is so simple that it’s beautiful.

How do you lead an entrepreneur?

Because the hyperbole breaks down right there. Entrepreneurs and large corporations are mutually exclusive. It really is that simple. We have bounced this oxymoronic paradox off a number of BadConsultants over the past week and are convinced

[that it'll be chapter seven of our planned business tome]

that there isn’t an answer that keeps the distinction clean.

“Well, er, of course you can’t have complete chaos in the…”

or

“Oh… I’m sure that’s not quite what they were getting at…”

or

“Yeah, that’s right… Our execs are really full of s***, aren’t they?!!!”

And, of course, the reality is some mixture of all three plus a little bit of naive optimism – Execs really do think that entrepreneurship is possible in the modern corporation because

[they're delusional]

they think that all the stuff that is stultifying the innovation and energy in their organization, all the stuff that is introducing risk aversion at a greater rate of knots than they’re losing customers, all the stuff that gets in the way of transformational decision making is somehow voluntary – i.e. that employees are making a conscious choice not to take their ideas forward. Replete with their over-stuffed egos and illusions of hunky-doryness, these executives commit massive, grand narcissism: They just need someone to lead them.

Hmmmm… Everything in the system stays the same but we expect different results tomorrow than we did today… Isn’t that close to the common-speak definition of insanity?

So, back to the question: How do you lead an entrepreneur?

And the answer: You can’t. All you can do is set an unachievable goal that they already want to take a shot at, give them some means (but not all the means) and tell them to get going. Nothing else. Just that. It means thinking like a venture capitalist. What’s the return on investment on the idea? What’s the risk of failure? What’s the get out clause? What’s the level of confidence that this person can really take this to the next level?

Leading us to our final observational question. The one that’ll really make you go “Hmmmm” and want BadConsultant to spend some time in the next few weeks

[billing]

working through the potential impact and giving you some options.

How much of your current executive development/training/experience is specifically geared to develop venture capitalist capabilities?

Clue: It’ll be one of the following answers…

1. Huh?
2. What?
3. Why?

Until we meet again, adieu!

BC

Free Agent Nation?

It used to be that talented people expected to have to compromise their talent.

We’ll let that sink in.

It used to be…

OK. Let’s explain.

Talented people in corporations know one thing. They are forced to compromise their ability to do their best work (what comes naturally) day after day. It can be because of a bad boss, inefficient processes, a lack of commitment to corporate mission or the inability to see how their talent will be rewarded in the short and long term.

And it’s that very last bit that we’re focusing on today.

Because the ‘deal’ used to be this: ‘compromise your talent today because in the long run it will play out in a corporate career’. In fact, this is little more than the corporation-as-parent mythology and, at its root, is based on fear. Fear of what? Being unemployed without benefits, having to take risk and be judged upon your performance, to be self-reliant. In that mythology, the bigger the better: bigger salary, bigger title, bigger office, bigger retention, bigger bonus. So, safety used to be the payback for compromise on talent.

And there it is again. Used to be.

Because the promise of payback for compromise has been completely, totally and royally wiped from the map thanks to the economic soufflé currently melting markets the world over.

If the risk we described above is that of not having a corporate parent at our back, then right now, in terms of staying with a company, the risk of staying pretty much looks like the risk of going.

Risk of Staying ~ Risk of Going

Except for talented individuals, the Risk of Going also includes the promise of meaningful work, ownership, accountability, risk and the not insignificant fact that a much greater proportion of any working day is likely to be spent doing what comes naturally – being the glorious, diverse, talented individual they are.

The economic soufflé has finally proven that the endless search for bigger isn’t the be-all-and-end-all.

Corporations used to view retention risk as that of talented individuals going to competitors because of the promise of ‘bigger’. Right now, corporations should be shifting that view.

Because right now, the biggest retention risk is of talent individuals voluntarily leaving the corporation, going free agent to do exactly what they’re already paid to do and selling it to whoever they want.

The war for talent is over… The talent won… And right now, corporations are going to begin to learn that the hard way.

BC