Is growth an unachievable myth for most corporations?

Your humble

[yeah, right]

correspondent, BadConsultant, was thinking of growth this morning

[on the way to his local diner for the best low-carb omelet-fest this side of the Mississippi]

and the fable of rice on a chess board came to mind. I think it’s an old Confusciuscian

[made-up words are cool]

parable, though, knowing BadConsultant‘s luck, it’s probably that bastard Aesop muscling in again.

But… We digress.

Here’s the fable. There’s this dude, who meets another dude, who offers the first dude something amazing, and then that dude, sensing the second dude is trying to pull a fast one, tells the dude that he’ll only agree to the deal if the dude offers the dude…

Ah, screw that… I don’t even know the chinese symbol for dude.

Let’s cut to the chase. It’s a mathematical core. If you put one grain of rice on the first square of a chess board, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth, etc.

[i.e. doubling each time - for those working in corporate analytics functions]

by the time you reach the 64th square there isn’t enough rice in the world to put on the square.

[forgetting for a moment that the surface area of the square is likely only a little over a square-inch, so it'd have to be a mighty, might tall tower of precisely balanced rice anyway]

The moral of the story is lost on us, except that the simple mathematics of scale soon outstrip reality. I think, if I’m right, the number of grains of rice on that last square are 2-to-the-power-of-64 (=2^64 in Excel). It’s a very, very large number:

18,446,744,073,709,600,000

A large number indeed.

[almost as much as Wall St receives in bonuses (in a bailout year)]

And so to growth.

Stop for a moment and think of a large corporation. One you work for maybe. Or one you’ve heard of. What scale of growth are they on the record as having in their sights. Let’s say it’s a range – from the conservative 8% to the more common 12%

[because we love to say 'double-digit' - YEEHAW!!!]

to the still common 20%.

Let’s take 3 companies aiming for those growth rates: Company A ($1m base-revenue), Company B ($500m base revenue), and Company C ($10bn base revenue).

And let’s say we drop in on them at 5, 10, 20 and 50 year points:

In our fantasy scenarios, anything is possible, of course. So yes, over 50 years, Company C could conceivably grow its revenue from $10 billion to $91 trillion, but BadConsultant would suggest that as unlikely. But what about Company A growing its revenue from $1 million to $9 billion in that same 50 years? Is that any more doable? If there were that size of market potentially-available, how come Company A is only $1m at the moment?

The mythology of growth is a powerful aphrodisiac. We just love to get turned on by the illusion of momentum

[and use confirmation-biased analysis to convince ourselves that our stock purchases are anything but]

we are, after all, a progression-based organism.

[guaranteed promotion and career ladders… Anyone? Anyone?!!]

But here’s the thing, pinning your hopes and dreams on growth is a risky prospect – and, we would argue, leads to the sort of behavior that creates Credit Default Swaps, LIBOR fixing, Ponzi schemes, and every other trick that brought the global economy to its knees.

Long-term hyper-growth is unachievable

[if not simply for the fact that it assumes unlimited resources - to which, the Earth might have something to say]

and every ounce of leadership and organizational energy and commitment pursuing that myth is destined for the morass of futility, frustration and, ultimately, despair.

The only growth industries left are those that result in happiness, joy, satisfaction and enoughness

[made-up words are cool]

and the company that begins to deliver to those aims – and not the illusion of certainty that is materialistic comfort purchases – will wipe the floor with those laboring for the mythology of growth.

BadConsultant won’t be holding his breath, however.

As ever, your humble correspondent,

BC

Well… Er… That wasn’t what we expected…

Hahahahaha – BadConsultant is back from an extended sabbatical, where he has enjoyed long days and sultry nights, the comfort of family and friends and complete avoidance of anything resembling a corporate 9-to-5

[you should definitely try it some time]

Refreshed, relaxed, rejuvenated.

So…

This isn’t a post about BP. Well, maybe just a little.

BadConsultant has been reading and learning a lot about randomness this past year, and the consistent delusion our fore-brains maintain that randomness doesn’t apply to us.

We kind of understand that there’s a thing called chance or luck or fate or any other term we apply to it. But, like it or not, when we sit at a roulette table in a casino watching the last twenty numbers or so on the board behind the croupier, we all see patterns – red/black, even/odd, clusters and shapes – we all do it. And then we make the cardinal error of believing the pattern we perceive in the past

[which is a delusion itself]

will extend into the future. We place some chips on our predicted number.

• It wins – our pattern was correct, we are master of the odds – we keep following the pattern, continuing disbelievingly when the pattern breaks down.
• It loses – well we’ll try just another time – because no-one wins 100% of the time, do they?

Either way, we lose money.

Because the pattern never existed.

So, to BP. Which, if you hadn’t noticed, just presided over one of the worst environmental spills in history.

The whys and wherefores of which are not the point of the post.

The point is the announcement, from January 2007, at this link: BP Announces Lord Browne Succession Plan.

Let me summarise: lengthy-tenured CEO retires, experienced long-tenured exec ready to fill the position. New guy has global, multi-divisional experience and is very shiny. To quote from the link, the BP Chairman said:

“It is a testament to John’s managerial skill that BP is blessed with having such an impressive managerial top bench to choose from and John and I are delighted to be able to announce that Tony Hayward will be succeeding him from August 1, 2007. Tony has an excellent track record and extensive knowledge of the sector and will be able to draw on John’s wealth of knowledge over the next six months.”

[Blessed, note... Blessed!]

Well, Gulf of Mexico… How did that turn out for you?

Then there’s the opinion piece at this blog: BP Plc gets its succession planning wrong.

Let me summarise: promoting from within at BP was wrong, but at the supermarket chain, Tesco, it’s ace! Tesco develops great leaders from middle-managers but BP doesn’t.

Except BP say that they do in this document: BP Sustainability Reporting 2009 Our People.

And, it would appear, Tesco did what BP did: Tesco Board Succession Plan.

I hardly need summarise, but here’s a quote:

I am delighted Phil Clarke has accepted the role of CEO from March 2011. I have worked with Phil at Tesco for many years and I am confident he has all the necessary talent, energy and experience to take the group forward. He will be supported by an outstanding team of senior executives who together represent one of the strongest leadership teams in the world of retailing.

Well, low-middle income families in the UK, how’s that working out for you?

So, BadConsultant, what’s your point?

[That's a great question, so glad you asked, let's move on to my next slide]

Both BP and Tesco are delusional, they are looking at historic experience, inferring a pattern and building plans for the future based on that pattern.

The primary delusional indulgence of succession planning?

What’s succeeded in the past will bring success in the future.

Now, believe me, there is every reason to weight that as a high probability. But it’s not an absolute. And profiling existing leaders’ historic success so that the same capabilities can be developed in the next wave is… erm… delusional.

How many succession plans are built with a variable set of

[spit]

competencies based upon possible future scenarios? What weight is given to those possible future scenarios?

When Tony Hayward was selected for succession, 1) where was the assessment of his capability to deal with a major environmental breakdown?; and 2) what was the likelihood placed on such a breakdown happening?

I’ll help you out: 1) probably didn’t happen; and 2) less than 1%.

Because when they looked at Tony Hayward’s track record – maybe pulled up his performance reviews and ratings, or spoke with his HR rep – everything in the past was hunky-dory; and, besides, anyone with a history of having a cataclysmic failure – even if successfully handled – wouldn’t ever have a hope of becoming CEO, now would they?

So to BadConsultant‘s question of the day – when you look at your succession plan, how robust is it to things that you can’t predict? More importantly, have you ever asked yourself that question?

Or are you just building another delusional data set that supports the illusion of hunky-doryness?

Peace Out

BC

A New Remit and Mandate for HR/OD: Human Results through Organization Destruction

BadConsultant has been sojourning on a small island off the coast of somewhere warm, enjoying mojitaritas

[® BadConsultant, 9th August, 2010]

and reading many upon many books.

And we’ll start this post by being very clear, you are currently taking a first look at a concept that will become a book within the next year

[which you will scan and turn your nose up at when walking through airports - but that, 3 years' later, you'll be claiming you'd been an early reader of - and that's fine, BC will get the royalties eventually]

The book’s working title is “Destruction HR” – though that will likely change long, long before it’s published.

First, some reference points which you need to read to have some sense of where BC is standing:

1. “The Future of Management” (Hamel w/ Breen)
2. “Beyond HR” (Boudreau, Ramstad)
3. “Ishmael” (Quinn)
4. “The Black Swan” (Taleb)
5. “The Drunkard’s Walk” (Mlodinow)

[NOTE: in all the above, I've edited out the post-title sentence all these books carry for brevity's sake]

From all of the above, and BadConsultant‘s inordinate opinion and experience, we contend:

Human beings have, for centuries, been diving deeper into the delusion that it’s a) possible to live in a rational universe; and b) that human beings can create rationality through the power of their brains alone.

Note that word, per Merriam-Webster online:

Delusion (noun)

Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin delusion-, delusio, from deludere

Date: 15th century

1 : the act of deluding : the state of being deluded

2 a : something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated b : a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary; also : the abnormal state marked by such beliefs

[Bold courtesy of BadConsultant]

Fast forward to now, a century into the mythology of the modern organization. Most people who enter the workplace every day are trapped in the delusion – organizations perpetuate the myth that they are somehow rational; that things occur in line with immutable and forecastable laws.

They are not. And things don’t.

HBR case studies, best practices, business books – they all sell on the basis that the delusion can be maintained. That it’s possible to live in rational times.

[The first line of the book will be "This book does not contain a single best practice" - in fact, if BC has his way, it's the only time those two words will appear together in the whole text"]

It isn’t. We are human. We are programmed to exist and survive through

[and therefore create]

randomness.

As BadConsultant has written many times, the illusion of hunky-doryness, is largely driven by the need to perpetuate delusional rationality.

And the corporate functions are the keepers of the hunky-dory, and therefore the keepers of the delusion.

So, why a new mandate for HR/OD?

Because the organization that succeeds in becoming completely irrational, completely human, will succeed beyond the wildest dreams of competitors. The Human in Human Resources is increasingly being proven to be the pivot point; the R of HR is increasingly demanding to be thought of as Results – i.e. what comes out of the sausage factory, not what goes in

[pig lips! I need pig lips!]

A new remit for HR: Human Results.

But what about the OD? While BadConsultant would love it if the concept of organization – pre-ordained structures, departments, roles, responsibilities – quietly slipped off this mortal coil and went to meet its maker, that’s not about to happen in the next few

[billing cycles]

decades. So, the O remains Organization… simple enough.

But it’s the D that needs radical change. It’s the D that will demand a new mandate.

Because over the years HR/OD have become addicted to a) keeping leaders happy and self-contained in the illusion of hunky-doryness; and b) adding things to the organization. Removing things is one of the great holy grails of HR/OD.

• We’ll be more strategic when we lose the transactional stuff (that never goes away)
• We need to focus only on work driven by the strategic plan (but if a leader asks me to do what I did yesterday as a favour, I’ll salivate)
• We need standard processes, but my client group needs it done their way (so we’ll help them create a shadow system)

Nothing ever comes off the conveyor belt.

It could. It really could. But the current D in OD – Development – means additive development.

As a profession, we are now introducing fixes for the fixes that were supposed to fix the fixes that were designed to fix the…

Don’t believe ye olde BC?

Take a long, hard look at your performance management process. If it isn’t a lash-up of 5 or 6 legacy processes that bears no relation to business performance, we’ll be very surprised. If it is pristine, clean and simple, understood by every manager and deployed without deflection from business performance, then a) congratulations, you’ve achieved the impossible; or b) sorry that you are so far into the delusion of rationality that you believe that.

So, BadConsultant argues the the D must change. Radically.

The new D is for Destruction.

Destruction as in tearing down global career families and losing job titles. Destruction as in giving managers complete control of their budgets, including compensation and demanding on-budget, results-based management. And once that’s in place, Destruction meaning no salary bands, no calibration, no norm distribution, no across the board merit increases – just Managers paying their team what they believe they’re worth based on the measured results they’re achieving.

[How many managers? Many fewer than currently - of course]

Destruction as in removing every policy that protects against the worst behaviors of a small minority by legislating the behavior of all. Destruction as in firing people who consistently under-perform, not moving them sideways to spread cancer elsewhere in the organization.

Getting the BC drift yet?

The shape and scope of that word – Destruction – will be the shape and scope of the book.

And there could be no better function than HR/OD to lead the future – but it won’t be the HR/OD of today.

It’ll be “Destruction HR”.

With a new remit and mandate:

Human Results through Organization Destruction

We rather think we’re starting a movement, so drop BC a line if you want to be part of it.

’til we meet again, may the mojitaritas(®) flow freely,

BC

The Illusion of Hunky-Doryness – Part II: As luck would have it, I’m bulimic

The latest in our line of mythology illumination…

• Part I

BadConsultant really should have learnt his lesson

[denial, avoidance, resistance... anyone... Anyone?]

by now. But sure enough, a moth to the networking flame, I found myself doing the circuit again a couple of weeks back. Margartias were quaffed, nachos nibbled and… erm… well there was much conversation and mutual distribution of business cards. All in all, a fun and successful week.

So why my dismay?

Well, let’s start with the obvious: HR in its current state is rapidly becoming obsolete, almost a parody of itself. So, an HR conference was always going to make me go ‘Hmmmmmm…’ more than I normally do. But that wasn’t it… If anything, I was reassured that while the function’s leaders may be missing the point, there is talent deeper in the function that is ready to emerge

[and for whom BadConsultant will be writing a book later this year]

and reinvent the future of talent and organization capability.

No. It was simply this. Being an organization culture

[groupie, geek, nerd, guru, observer, catalyst]

student, I was pleased to see the word culture appear in at least one presentation title

[did I mention that many HR leaders are missing the point?]

until I got to the session. Which was OK. Really. It was OK. BadConsultant didn’t grind his teeth once.

It was slide 3.

Slide 3.

Which repeated the homily:

“Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast”

[funny, when you type it with capitals it looks like a newspaper headline - Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast, police are searching for a bloated bureaucracy addicted to manipulating financial reports that maintain the perception of double-digit growth]

Turning to my ready reference source, Google, I get 4,640,000 hits on “culture eats strategy for breakfast quote” – and even in the first page worth of links, I see it attributed to several sources.

[obviously, the management quote just appears fully formed... like paperclips - c'mon have you ever purchased one?]

Some inventive spark had even extended the concept by suggesting that culture also ate strategy for lunch.

[though no-one had yet suggested that dinner was on the menu - a nod to work-life balance, perchance?]

Hence my dismay at the conference. Here was somebody preaching to the supposedly enlightened about a subject that IS the future of the function, leading with a phrase just about as hackneyed as something about someone being someone else’s ‘greatest asset’.

Like it or not, while BadConsultant is pleased to note that there is at least awareness that culture is eating strategy for breakfast, he can’t help observing that most corporations keep feeding new strategies to the beast in the hope that it’ll get full and stop stuffing its face. Truth is that it doesn’t… it quietly nips to the bathroom, pukes up the last strategic solution it sampled and returns to the table for more.

And there’s the problem. We’ve created another myth that supports the culture of averageness, where failure is acceptable so long as it doesn’t do too much damage, so long as the illusion of hunky-doryness is maintained.

Organization culture is bulimic. It binges, pukes, binges, pukes, on and on in a continual cycle

[and it has REALLY bad teeth]

and the one group of people who are able to see it for what it is, has even the closest appreciation of what makes it so and, some would argue, already have political permission to act upon it, choose not to do so but instead – because they’ve been indoctrinated to believe that a seat at the table comes from being a ‘Strategic Business Partner’ – collude with the self-destructive behavior.

So, if organization culture is bulimic, why aren’t we treating it as such:

1. Intervene
2. Introduce self-awareness of the situation
3. Identify automatic thoughts
4. Encourage behavioral experiments
5. Structured, controlled rebuilding of identity

BadConsultant would argue that we’ve actually got pretty good at steps 1 and 3 – well, those of us running organization surveys may have done if we’re not just using a framework off the shelf, however the very last thing that HR

[heck, let's be expansive: Corporations!]

will do is encourage experimentation in order to rebuild identity. That might destroy the illusion of hunky-doryness. It might erode the slavish HR belief structure that leaders have all the answers

[clue: they don't]

that it’s possible to make everyone behave in predictable ways

[clue: it isn't]

that a corporation can protect itself from all risk

[clue: it can't]

That’s the mythology that is the illusion of hunky-doryness.

So.. Bottom line…

The next time your business leaders offer up a strategic solution to your current business challenges, start watching your culture closely. If it goes quiet and politely excuses itself from the table, it may be time for you to knock on the bathroom door and say “it’s time we had a talk”.

And that knock may be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.

With love,

BC

Innovation isn’t just for things – Part VI

As if there’s any point in providing the history:

Part I – Part II – Part III – Part IV – Part V

From your exhaustive re-reading of all the preceding parts, you’ll know that we have three questions:

1. Who is your ideal employee?
   

   A: Those employees most likely to maintain and grow their productivity in the future and who have the most potential to increase value for our future customers

2. What proportion of your workforce could be classed as your ideal employee?
3. How do you increase that proportion?

In Part V, we were beginning to build the answer to the second question, by looking at how to derive products

[yes, and services]

from a simple customer value proposition

[BINGO!]

and identifying 5 areas of work most critical to bringing that product to life:

• Innovation
• Production
• Brand
• Face
• Culture

So, there you have your answer… R&D, Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales and… er… HR?

Except.

Not really. The answer to question 2 isn’t simply that those organizational functions are important, despite the

[claims of the respective leaders of those functions trying to avoid budget cuts]

mythology of corporate abnormality holding them near sacrosanct as it perpetuates the illusion of hunky-doryness .

You see, we know those functions and there’s a panoply of individual contribution within and across them. We’re not talking about performance – we’ve got that covered in the answer to question 1. The contribution we’re referring to here is that of making the future look different to today. Yes indeed, even amongst the home of the future(®) that is R&D, there are more folk intent on keeping things just the way they’ve always been than those who truly want to break new ground.

Even R&D is populated with

[geniuses, geeks, nerds, robots... delete as appropriate]

people. And without a catalyst or

[cattle-prod]

leadership, the majority of people will seek to maintain an uncomfortable status quo rather than leap into the unknown.

So, one way of answering question 2 is simply:

Those employees who are willing to be your ideal employee

but that’s somewhat circuitous logic

[which BadConsultant would only use if being paid for this contribution]

and wholly unsatisfying.

So let’s try and construct a more detailed and nuanced answer to question 2 – What proportion of your workforce could be classed as your ideal employee?

Those employees who willingly and consistently flex our innovation, production, brand, face and culture to develop and deliver products and services that release unseen potential for our customers

OK, let’s throw that against the wall and see what sticks.

[yes, this stuff really is as easy as cooking pasta]

Taking the first two answers together, we have increasing individual productivity to meet future customer needs by willingly flexing innovation, production, brand, face and culture to release unseen potential. Or:

Performer – Customer – Potential

And yes, there are those who will say that Customer should always come first, and to those commentators BadConsultant would say

[bad luck, we're writing this]

this blog doesn’t make it easy to draw venn diagrams but, if it makes it easier for you:

The answer to question 2 is, therefore, those employees who use innovation, production, brand, face or culture willingly and consistently to stay in the red ‘sweet-spot’.

Alles klar? We’ll be back soon to transition from question 2 to question 3 – What can you do about it?

Stay cool,

BC

Checking in, not checking up

Been a busy few days for ye olde BadConsultant, launching DidWe.net (I’ll be posting about that in the coming days).

DidWe very much builds upon the Strengths Springboard, which I created last year. At that time, I couldn’t quite be as transparent as I generally aim to be, so it was the Strengths Springboard was something of a soft launch. Now that I’m unfettered and free, I thought I’d share some of that document here to level-set the group-tipping-point

[misused hyphens are cool]

as it really is the distillation of much of what I write about here at BadConsultant.

So, without further ado

[and definitely without annotations and formatting gorgeousness you can get at the linked PDF]

from ‘The Strengths Springboard – is your organization ready?’ I present ‘Checking in, not checking up’.

***************

Hopefully by now, I’ve managed to convince just one little corner of your thoughts that if you get a clear, specific focus on customers and the outcomes that are meaningful/critical to them, then encourage colleagues to first meet and then exceed outcome-driven performance standards, you’ll begin to create an environment where strengths-based working can flourish.

Play it right and you will see a virtuous cycle begin to form: Aspire à Succeed à Aspire à Succeed à Etc.

But that doesn’t mean that the cycle will be self-fulfilling, or maintenance free. It’s true that, in some rare organizations, a control-free culture has been created but none of us should be naïve enough to believe that a quick flip of the Strengths Springboard switch will magically change a century’s-worth of the ‘modern’ organization.

We have to change the nature of performance relationships – particularly that of the manager-colleague.

First, let’s speak openly of beliefs that are enshrined in the ‘modern’ organization: Theory X & Y. McGregor proposed this motivation theory in the 1960’s and it has become so deeply baked into subsequent theory, management science and practice to be taken for reality.

The ‘modern’ organization built its Taylorist utopia on the Theory X assumption that employees were lazy, work-avoiding, ambitionless drones that had to be energized, organized and controlled by the manager.

In Theory Y organizations, however, employees were seen as desirous of self-fulfillment, aspirational, seeking opportunities, ready to learn and… well… strengths-based, I guess.

Which leaves managers with a choice – to be either a Theory X or Y manager. The difference?

·       A Theory X manager checks-up on her direct reports (i.e. doesn’t trust them to deliver on their commitments and therefore manages their work).

·       A Theory Y manager checks-in with her direct reports (i.e. trusts them to deliver and offers support to their efforts).

The trick here is to recognize that, while managers need to be a bit of both, if you truly pursue the Strengths Springboard, the Theory Y approach will be much, much more prevalent.

Checking-in, not checking-up.

Strengths-based working benefits from strengths-based management.

That seems pretty common-sensible to me.

But this paper isn’t about strengths-based management directly – once again, I recommend Marcus Buckingham’s outstanding work on that subject. Remember the Strengths Springboard is about the organization’s belief system. How can we gear the system to help a manager see why the nuance in belief is important?

Theory X – given a chance, employees are a net drain on the organization.

Theory Y – given a chance, employees create value for the organization.

Perhaps looking at the value created by each employee will help build the case for Theory Y beliefs.

To do this, we’ll make use of GAAP data published on any publicly-listed company. Here’s the equation:

Value Created per Employee ($) =	Gross Revenue – Operating Costs
	Number of Employees

What’s great about this equation is that it recognizes that there are costs associated with employees, but that for those costs there is a return on investment. It’s almost the perfect equation for symbolizing business intent.

1.     Are we growing revenue?

2.     Are we managing cost?

3.     Are we optimizing each employee?

Let’s take a look at an example using figures quoted on Yahoo!

Intel Corp 2008 Gross Revenue:                 $37.6 b 2008 Operating Expenses:                       $27.9 b 2008 Number of Employees:        82,500 2008 Value Created per Employee = $117,139

Some others:

·       Whirlpool Corporation =       $10,429

·       GE =                   $175,610

·       Google =                   $328,902

Thinking in terms of Value Created per Employee begins to position the time spent with employees not as a Theory X “get their lazy butts moving” but instead very much more along the lines of a Theory Y “I am investing in an asset that is capable and willing to grow”. Indeed, a manager of 10 direct reports at Intel in 2008 could be described as managing a value portfolio of $1.1 million.

Have you ever thought about a manager as an investment professional?

Checking-in, not checking-up. How are my investments doing? Active portfolio management. All of it comes into play once value is on the table.

Now, let’s add one more spin of the wheel in regards to checking in.

Theory X assumes that the organization owns, and is stuck with, the colleague. But remember the stats relating to Free Agent Nation that I described earlier. When 30% of the US workforce is self-employed, choosing to be freelance, how exactly does any manager or organization hope to perpetuate a Theory X belief system?

When the worker is choosing to deploy their talent, you’d better not be checking-up on delivery. When the worker knows by the very nature of the employment relationship that they are a competent, proud professional, there really is no space for pseudo-parental checking-up shenanigans. In the Free Agent scenario, it really is time for mutual respect. It really is time for Theory Y.

So, get your managers positioned as investment professionals, focused on making the performer successful and maximizing the return on investment. Teach them to be active portfolio managers. Celebrate those who increase the return on investment – measured increase in meaningful outcomes coupled to increased engagement – through an action-based approach to strengths development.

Checking-in, not checking-up.

If only everybody would…

Ahhhh, change management

[or, to ascribe its formal status, let's capitalize]

Change Management… How doth we love the sound of thy name? How many are the ways that we shall enshrine your virtues and purvey your countenance? How rich are the opportunities to spread your beneficence across a world that has lost its way in human foibles and trinkets?

Where, oh where, to start?

Well, first off, let’s refer you to our newly coined term: BureaucraSy. And

[because you're likely an executive who is just tooooo busy, important and, above all else, infallible to actually take any time gaining new knowledge]

let’s summarise – people experiencing frustration introduce fixes that don’t work but induce frustration in other people who then introduce new fixes that… over and over and over in an endless cycle of

[billable hours]

well-meant insanity.

And each one of the fixes is accompanied by

[cue parting clouds, rays of sunshines and heavenly host of angels]

a robust change mana… sorry… Change Management Plan.

Because those fixes are firmly rooted from the view of the fixer as to how people should work, not how people are working.

Let’s take as an example the introduction of document management systems that require fifteen fields of meta-data to enable cataloguing and retrieval of information. That’s how the system works, it’s a beautiful, perfect filing regimen – the intranet equivalent of the dewey decimal system – everything in its right place. Disciplined. Clean.

So, logically, that’s how every user should work, right? Right?

The project team runs ahead and builds the chang… Change Management Plan with that in mind, drawing up from/to scenarios, business case definition, executive alignment assignments, training, knowledge transfer, incentive/dis-incentive cycles, WIIFM statements, etc, etc, etc.

[oh, how we love you billable hours]

Except.

Take the average employee – let’s call him Bob – and accompany him home, ask to look in his sock drawer. Chances are it isn’t meticulously arranged by colour, material weight, rate of aging

[sock aging ratios can be made available at badconsultant.com for the right price]

nor will you find order in the t-shirt drawer or the shirt rail in the closet. Join Bob at his desk and ask to look at his e-mail. Chances are that his inbox is overflowing with many items out of date but not dealt with – if you’re lucky, Bob might use a folder structure to store old messages, or he might just be one of those people who copies himself on emails that he sends so they remain in his inbox, rather than making use of his ‘Sent Items’. Finally, let’s join Bob as he looks at his local drive, where he stores working documents. Chances are it’s chaos, absolute chaos.

But it’s a chaos that makes sense to Bob. That doesn’t mean it works, it’s just his reality and he knows how to work within it. It’s the way he is working.

Other, more organized people might take a look at Bob’s ways of working and scream in horror: “no-one should work that way!” Some might shower pity upon him. Others may even claim that there’s no way Bob could ever be a high performer with working practices such as his chaotic use of e-mail.

And they would, of course, be wrong.

But in the modern organization’s BureaucraSy, they would be able to make enough noise to the right people to justify a fix. And so the Change Management Plan would emerge for how people should work.

And everyone would be expected to change.

Every Bob and Bobette would be expected to undo their whole reality because there was a supposedly better way that they should work.

Wouldn’t it be better to invest the time, effort and

[billable hours]

emotional energy to listen to Bob and hear what would help him improve his performance and what gets in the way and then design the limited, minimal solution that he is already seeking – not the fix that tries to change his fundamental being?

Or in other words, how about we de-capitalize change management so we move away from:

“Everybody should… if only everybody would…”

to

“Where performance is blocked… somebody will be able to…”

Now, that’s a Change we could sign up to…

BC

I looked up and BOOM! Drive-by Collaboration!

A while back, your trusted adviser BadConsultant elucidated the madness of the Random Act of Leadership

[and boy-oh-boy haven't we seen a few of those in the intervening years?]

which has proven to be one of the most enduring

[legacy]

of our posts. Not a surprise to us, the RAOL is just so common that we all experience it at some point.

But as we were observing the artificial abnormality of the modern organization, we identified a sympathetic bedfellow to the RAOL, for which we now humbly

[yeah, right]

coin the term ‘Drive-by Collaboration’.

Here’s the thing. The modern organization built it’s mythology upon growth obtained through industrialized manufacturing, where people were akin to ‘human production units’ that could be added and removed much like plant machinery – people were just another part of the machine. Which was fine when industry was only about designing, making and selling ‘things’.

But then, along came the late twentieth century: the internet, conspicuous consumption, lifestyle choices, the escape from the base of Maslow’s hierarchy

[for some of the world, at least]

and, over time, people began to notice that… erm… er… human beings are odd. They have aspirations. They don’t act predictably. They have a sense of fairness. They have energy that they choose to use positively or negatively. They form relationships.

The organization frowned a little, it’s furrowed brow couldn’t quite compute this weird species that didn’t act like machines.

And, because it’s the way things are in organizations, the search for ‘fixes’ for the ‘broken’ machines was on.

• Aspiration? Let’s create career tracks to leadership roles.
• Predictability? Let’s re-engineer processes and increase the BureaucraSy.
• Fairness? Let’s complexify pay based upon activities and ‘calibration’.
• Energy for good or bad? Let’s survey people to try and fix their ‘engagement’.
• Relationships? Let’s, like, er… rilly, rilly get people to focus on teamwork.

And thus every grouping of people in any context was suddenly a matter of team. Any hierarchical organization of working units was a team. Any random gathering of individuals in any context was a team. And team described ‘us’.

• CEOs stood up in front of a thousand people and said “you are a great team”
• Managers sat with their direct reports and said “when it comes to our team…”
• Endless multitudes of HR and OE professionals engaged in the debate of whether it truly was “a team or a group of people”

All of which set against the backdrop of the rise of the boomers, that was so clearly I-hiding-in-us-centric: surely we can find the answer to how to save the rest of the world from itself?

[can I hear you say kumbaya!]

Yup, if you had any sort of relationship at work it was grounded in ‘team’.

Another puzzle-piece of the modern organization myth was put in place: “We are a team”

[more recently enhanced to include the word 'diverse' - killing two birds with one stone]

Except.

The ‘solution’ didn’t match the ‘problem’.

A strong relationship is not a matter of team, neither are the best teams founded on strong relationships. And, with the square peg refusing to fit in the round hole, a weird reverse osmosis began to happen – suddenly relationships were enshrined within the confines of the team.

Being nice was more important than performing.

Consensus replaced urgency.

Activity replaced outcomes.

And everyone… EVERYONE… presumed they had a right to be involved in everyone else’s work whenever they wanted to and in whatever way they wanted to be involved.

So we saw the emergence of the Drive-by Collaboration

[DBC - can I hear you say acronym!]

where a ‘team’ is working to achieve an agreed output, moving against plan, delivering just enough activity to be deemed worthy in the end of year performance calibration exercise. All of a sudden, at a regular meeting, Joe pipes up: “Betty swung by my office yesterday and thinks we should re-gear the change management plan.” The room goes silent. Maybe Betty’s got a point. Maybe they’ve missed something in the change management plan. They quiz Joe, but he doesn’t have much more to add – apparently, Betty had a been on her way out to lunch and had just dropped in to mention the change management plan.

BOOM! – Drive-by Collaboration!

The team, not wanting to upset Betty because we’re all, like… one big team… undoes months of hard labor and sets the project back by two months.

No-one thinks to ask whether Betty has a right to an opinion, a credible base to challenge the plan, or the veracity of her judgement.

That’s the beauty of the DBC, it happens quickly, takes little effort on behalf of the DBC’er and creates major downstream impact for everyone else. And it damages the business.

But Betty’s happy that she’s been heard, the myth that “we are a team” is perpetuated, and nothing changes.

So that’s all right then.

BC

What can the Winter Olympics teach us about corporate abnormality?

So, the Winter Olympics

[or, more accurately to their rebrand, the Olympic Winter Games - as if the Olympics weren't brand enough]

are currently being staged in our favourite city in the world, Vancouver. And, this being all things BadConsultant, we thought we’d take a moment to reflect on what we can learn about corporate abnormality from said sporting occasion.

Right now, let us state for the record that this is not one of those pieces where we’ll try and make tenuous links between physical prowess and day-to-day work

[to us, they're as appropriate as animal metaphors]

besides, we’ve already covered a lot of that in “The Strengths Springboard – Is your organization ready?” Instead, we thought we’d share some less obvious observations and inferences. In no particular order:

It doesn’t matter how well organized you are, hydraulic systems can still screw you up. You can have the most coordinated, rigorously planned spectacle but at the end of the day, your physical mechanisms can undermine all of human ingenuity. So, while you can turn the floor into majestic orcas and, for a few moments, send a delightfully androgynous man flying through the air to the enlightening strains of Joni Mitchell, sooner or later an automatic door won’t open and your crystalline Olympic crucible will end-up a lop-sided tripod.

What do we learn? Things ain’t perfect, and the show must go on. Plan for perfection but don’t freeze when it doesn’t happen.

[and, as always, count on Wayne Gretzky to keep his cool]

People are more interested in stories than the facts. Apolo Anton Ohno heading off to Hollywood to dance with stars then returning to his sport (focus, achievement, the celebrity myth), Lindsey Jacobellis trying to win gold for the one she threw away in a moment’s adrenalized exuberance (redemption), the veterans Shen and Zhao capping a glorious career with gold (aspiration, completion, romance, olympian dream), and on, and on, and on. Very little mention of stats or specifics of performance

[oh, how much we miss the BBC at times like these]

and curiously little focus on the actors after the event – almost as if the story exists regardless of the actor. Just people, even the commentators, repeating the core stories.

What do we learn? Always focus on telling the right story; if you don’t, people will wrap their own story around you.

Who tells the story makes a difference. In the US, the Winter O… Sorry, Olympic Winter Games are being carried by NBC and affiliates only. The majority of talking head/anchor work is being carried out by the channel’s illustrious news anchors. And, as if we should be surprised, the coverage is very much more “newsy” than “sporty”

[so far, CNN hasn't claimed to be the 'best nordic-cross-ical team on television' and, mercifully, Wolf Blitzer has yet to wear lycra]

including a near predominant focus on only the US athletes

[though we don't think that's a factor of NBC]

and those in contention for the medals

[no chance of seeing the Jamaican bobsleigh team this year, except... No, they had a film made about them so there's a news angle in there...]

and very much geared to crisis reporting.

What do we learn? If you let the news media tell your story, they will present news based on crises and you will become a story of crisis. Get the right commentator up front and control your story.

Coaches watch performers. We cover this in The Strengths Springboard quite a bit, so won’t belabor it here, but while Shen and Zhao’s gold medal brought tears to our eyes, BadConsultant was struck most by their coach, Yao Bin, whose quiet absorption in his team’s performance was beautiful – his back story was as interesting as the skaters

[there you go,...story, story, story]

but it wasn’t even that… Put simply there was love, care and family in that coach’s gaze – how many of our managers look upon their own teams in such a way.

What do we learn? The best coaches love their teams – teach them to step into that love and own it responsibly.

We’ll keep a watch out for any other learnings, however will leave you with one final small thing from last night.

It doesn’t matter how meticulously you plan, organize and deliver upon a complex, multi-stranded endeavour, sooner or later you’re going to get blamed for the weather. And when you are, know that it’s because you’re doing a fine job of delivering the goods.

Go, Vancouver!

A bientot,

BC

You’re like who, exactly?

A little while ago, we wrote about the recent

[gimmick]

trend for ‘leaders’ to search out their authenticity. When that quest is coupled to a corporate communications function… well the result was never going to be pretty.

[we will use the term 'authority figure' for leader here on out - not only because it's more accurate, but also because it doubles our word count - and eventual fee]

Here’s the deal:

• The authority figure wants to create an impression of what he is not
• The professional in the communicator knows they need to support the authority figure in creating that impression
• But the writer in the communicator just wants to describe the leader they wish the authority figure was (but isn’t)

Surprisingly, everyone wins – because they all draw upon stereotypes to express themselves. And the funny thing about stereotypes is that… well… er… we all have them – and I don’t have to agree with anyone else about what mine means to me. We can choose the same stereotype and take away very different meanings.

So, for example, the authority figure, having read enough books to know that ‘Change Management’ is a big thing these days

[NOTE: it is very important to capitalize words like Change Management so as to add import to your sales pitch - you may say you should capitalize it in order to... wait for it... capitalize upon it]

and wanting to be authentic, knows that they need to create an impression of welcoming, leading and thriving in change.

The professional communicator goes looking for role models of change.

While the writer draws upon probably the most over-used quote about change because it gives them a warm and tingly feeling all up and down their spine:

“You must be the change you want to see in the world”

Which was Ghandi – and the authority figure, professional and writer know that there was a movie about him by Richard Attenborough, so he must be a role model. And in one fell swoop, the authority figure’s inauthentic authenticity has been tagged as being Ghandi-like, gaining perceived personality by association.

[and, BTW, do we even need to mention that most corporate authority figures are baby boomers? They LOVE Ghandi. For them, Ghandi is like MLK without the race angle...]

Everyone celebrates and goes home with the comfort blanket of having survived another day.

Except.

There was only one Mahatma Ghandi

[and, yes, the Brits just started a football chant]

yet how many corporate authority figures have been likened to that one-off?

We’re guessing tens of thousands. Not to mention all the wannabe professional climbers who buy into the myth.

So, if all these tens of thousands of mini-Ghandis

[and he was kinda short already, so you know that they're likely to have REAL Napoleon complexes]

are being the change they want to see in the world, then we have to presume that the change they want to see in the world is to not change anything at all.

Which is why BadConsultant tends to snigger out loud when authority figures get called leaders.

So, with all that in mind, we wanted to provide more reasonable, rational and, above all else, authentic words to describe the average authority figure:

“[...] was not a man who accepted the hand life dealt him. In his mind, boundaries were as much mental shackles as physical restraints – and he was not a man to be hemmed in by tradition, especially when a few audacious risks here and there could be balanced against huge personal and political gain. As someone who was starting out with more ambition than real influence, he needed to work his way up the hard way – by earning vast sums of money to fund his political goals. For that he needed a success on the scale of Alexander the Great, an achievement that would ensure his name echoed… in tones of hushed reverence, something that would quell the doubters and win him the position he felt he deserved… “

That’s actually a lift from the book ‘Boudica’ by Vanessa Collingridge, describing the young Julius Caesar. In BadConsultant‘s experience, this is much closer to the reality of authority figures: working hard, pulled forward by ambition, taking risks that are in their own manifest self-interest. All of which tied to expectation of entitlement to the big job.

It is the achievement and personalized power motives writ large.

And, though he doesn’t get mentioned much in modern organizations, there’s much more Caesar to the reality than Ghandi. But in our politically correct world, naked ambition is now a no-no

[slightly-veiled ambition, however, is just fine and dandy]

and conquering others is, like, sooooo not something we do any more

[pay no attention to the Iraq and Afghanistan behind the curtain]

so no authority figure, professional communicator or writer would dare to even consider using Caesar as the touch-stone for exemplary leadership.

Wouldn’t it just be easier for all involved, instead of opining and searching for the elusive

[read: absent]

role-model leader, to celebrate the Caesar within?

Wouldn’t it be more… erm… authentic?

Or would it risk uncovering the embarrassing truth that even then, when compared to Caesar, the authority figure is little more than a young boy playing at ‘Romans’?

Have a wonderful day,

BC