Story time
Every business, every individual has a story to tell.
I have worked with some wonderful people over the years, at all levels in organisations, but particularly in the SME / family business arena.
When I now speak to business audiences at home or abroad I can get really carried away with all the stories, the successes, the triumphs over adversity of some of these people. Some CEO’s work really hard, others have creative genius, yet others make a real difference to peoples’ lives and to their community. Some do all of these things.
It need not be boasting or self important posturing, it can be simply telling a story, particularly the bits that can enhance the lives of other people.
Perhaps it’s time to tell your story
Old fashioned principle centred leadership
Stephen Covey first brought the above phrase to my attention, but it is amazing how often it is valid today.
It starts with the premise that any one person is essentially trustworthy. That is to say that someone is of good character in the first place – they are honest and open, what they say is what they do. The other half of trustworthiness is competence and this means that someone has the skills to do the job (the how to), knowledge to know what to do in various circumstances and attitude which is the ‘wanting to do’.
At a personal level when someone is trustworthy they can look forward to a relationship with someone else that is based upon trust. This sort of relationship thrives upon a level of self disclosure, mutual respect and responsiveness.
When people in organisations create relationships based upon trust then this paradigm can spread throughout because it works both vertically and horizontally. For example, if staff trust their managers then there is a much greater chance of excellent communication and a fast response to change.
When managers and staff work effectively together there is a great chance that leadership within the organisation is inspirational. The real pay off is that when the directors or the senior management team plan, set targets and goals and make decisions then all people are rapidly in alignment with those plans.
Sometimes it is a change in leadership that inspires changes throughout the organisation. Get it right at the top and then you can cascade this culture down. If there are unresolved issues at Board level then the culture of transparency will be at best, partial in the organisation.
Networking and communities
It took me a while to get into networking and like many introverts it is still quite hard work. What intrigues me is how different networking organisations are trying to attract members. Even the
BBC World Service exhorts its listeners to download broadcasts, listen to a pod cast or participate in an email debate.
There is no shortage of choice; you could be eating a ‘Full English’ in one town every single morning and a substantial lunch in another nearby town every single afternoon. Then you could spend each evening working through all your
Ecademy contacts and messages.
I see a networking community a bit like a plate that the juggler spins on top of a stick. Talented jugglers can keep several plates up in the air at once with the occasional judicious spin. From a purely business perspective I think that we all have to work out which communities to join, because they all demand resource (time, energy and money) and which to, frankly, ignore.
Too many plates spinning and they all coming crashing down.
Crunch
Some Board Rooms must react faster to the four factors that are impacting on every business but which are completely outside the control of any director.
The fact is that the demands of the knowledge economy are continuing to transform the world of business. Today:
• customers often want and expect more value for less cost
• competitors can emerge from anywhere on the globe
• market places are evolving as we speak
• technology can revolutionise business models at 186k miles per second
More than ever before, we all now have to change our thinking, change what we do and change how we behave.
It will be Board Rooms where the relationships are such that in every case, one and one makes three or even four. These are the places where innovation and creativity will be at its very best.
Innovation and creativity are the clues to developing and sustaining competitive advantage in the knowledge economy.
Trying too hard
The more that anyone understands about exactly why they want to be an executive in an organisation, the easier it is to align their tacit knowledge with the needs of the business.
I have one CEO who travels one hundred and two miles to work every morning and one hundred and two miles home every night, quite apart from marketing and promotional evenings. He makes no bones about wanting the six figure salary he earns.
Another reads her emails at 10 o’clock on a Friday night and replies at 4 o’clock on a Saturday morning. She is a fourth generation family business CEO with a spiritual need to pass the business on to the next generation in better shape than when she inherited it twenty years ago. She wants to leave a legacy.
Yet another CEO loves his customers above all else. He really will do almost anything that customers ask, request or demand. At base he has low self-esteem. The bottom line is that he needs approval and when customers order, he gets his fix.
When you meet an executive that seems to be trying too hard, they usually need to do a little more work on themselves in the first instance. That way they will align their energies more closely to the organisational bull’s eye.
Or they will leave.
In it for the long term
It may seem to be counter intuitive but the very best quality business referrals come from those relationships that have taken the longest to build.
Why should this be? It is simply because we meet so many people in this information and communication age. It may amount to hundreds or even thousands of people in one way or another in just one year.
So who do you trust? Who do you do business with? Some people that make a great first impression can prove to be the least reliable.
Trustworthy people have both character and competence but it takes a while to discover exactly who has what.
Mentoring magic
All top people need a mentor. It doesn’t matter what you do or who you are, working with a trusted expert is the fastest and the most effective way to improve your performance.
I started professional speaking a couple of years ago as a new route to market for my consultancy services. My mentor is one of the top business and motivational speakers in the UK, if not the world. He wanted to know why I don’t convert more of my talks into business referrals than I do.
After one hours’ conversation, here are some of his answers:
· You are currently giving too much information away so that people form the impression that they can do the work without you.
· Your stories are very powerful but some of them will frighten people and when they are thinking about booking you, that is what they will remember.
· You need to engage people more emotionally with your process as it affects them now.
· You are speaking and then pitching, you need to change the emphasis to pitching as well as speaking.
· It is a very fine line between giving a great talk with people booking you, and giving a great talk and no one booking you. You are wrong side of the line!
How come I couldn’t work all this out for myself? Because I am no different from you. No one can do it on their own. That’s why one and one needs to make three or even four. This is the clue to innovation and creativity.
Innovation and creativity are the clue to developing and sustaining competitive advantage in the knowledge economy!!!
Confusion
It is surprising how many people at the top of organisations are not really sure that they want to be there. This is not immediately apparent as you observe them going about their daily tasks of running the business.
The real issues emerge when you take someone off the treadmill, remove them to another environment and start to explore issues around time and energy and behaviour and personality. When you apply this thinking to aspects of work and family and hobbies and the local community then the gaps start to appear.
People say “Well I wish I could spend more time with my children” or “We haven’t had a proper holiday for four years”.
And the really surprising thing is the number of people that make a fundamental change to their lives as a result of this kind of discussion. Those that don’t make any changes usually go back to work feeling a lot more confident about what they are doing and why they are doing it.
So it’s win:win really.
Leadership styles
We were discussing how different leaders behave with their people, how some favour a consensual style whilst other prefer a more autocratic approach.
I wondered whether it is even possible to adopt elements of best practice in organisations where the emphasis is on telling people rather than asking. My colleague for this discussion is an HR professional with the Ministry of Defence. He quite rightly pointed out that military leaders very often have to lead from the front and that consensual leadership would be inappropriate in some circumstances.
Certainly it would be hard to imagine a 360 degree appraisal of Sir Winston Churchill for example. It seems that a key aspect of the more authoritative leadership styles is that people are convinced that the leader is right. So called ‘conviction’ politicians are revered precisely because of their convictions.
I wonder if this applies in commercial organisations.
Where one and one makes……a half
There is so much competition in the market place, so much need to focus on the increasing demands of customers, that when one encounters poor quality relationships at Board level, it has to be sorted out.
Yet time and again, right at the end of an appraisal of very senior people, it is commonplace to discover, when you finally sum up and ask “Is there anything else that you would like to talk about?”
There is an awkward silence, some uncomfortable fidgeting and finally the appraisee says. “Well I really do not get on with Stella”.
And this is usually the very tip of the iceberg. Gentle probing reveals a whole catalogue of disputes, arguments, lack of cooperation and a huge waste of time, energy and money. And of course everyone knows about this because we all give ourselves away with our words and our tone of voice and our gestures.
That is how it is.
Fudging it
When a leader moves on there can be a succession of candidates in the pipeline. Some organisations have already canvassed several potenial candidates so that the handover is as smooth and seamless as it can be.
Alternatively the organisation could find itself with a shortfall of candidates or no interest at all. This can happen because the organisation is going through a poor trading period or because of adverse publicity. Sometimes it is simply an inadequate response to the extreme demands of a combination of customer needs, powerful competition and a volatile market place. Occasionally the organisation is woefully off the pace and as if to compound their problems, they decide to appoint a 'stand in' CEO that is already on the payroll.
This person can be from any discipline whatsoever: finance, marketing, production or sales. And if this person hangs around long enough, their reward is invariably a full time post.
There is no bull's eye, no consensus, no dialogue, no marketing strategy, no commitment to continuous organisatioal or personal development.
Nine times out of ten the appointment is a disaster for the organisation and a disaster for the individual.
Behaviour
It is the behaviour of the people at the top of any organisation that is the single largest determinant of the culture enjoyed by everyone else, including customers, suppliers and stakeholders.
The quickest and easiest way to find out about the culture in any organisation is to conduct a simple staff survey on one sheet of A4. Use a variation of the ten indicators of the Investors in People Standard but reframe them as questions: “To what extent is the plan for continuously improving the performance of xyz Ltd defined and understood?”
You ask people to score:
4 = This always happens
3 = This usually happens
2 = This sometimes happens
1 = This occasionally happens
0 = This never happens
And you ask people to add a comment to their sheet to substantiate their scores, particularly the high or the low ones. Not only will the directors get an instant profile on the health of their organisation, but this exercise forms the basis of a strategy to improve the scores next time.
Always use an external facilitator for this .
The facilitator
Organisations often face difficult decisions. It can be a marketing issue, maybe something to do with finance. It can be structure or processes or culture but every organisation has a Key Change Project whether they acknowledge it or not.
It sometimes takes a facilitator to help the process of making the best decisions. I have two or three people like this myself. They look at my business from the outside in whereas I can only see it from the inside out.
If you decide to use a facilitator or mentor or coach always satisfy yourself that they are absolutely trustworthy: they have both character and competence. Secondly they need to be people that are unafraid to say anything that they believe is in the interests of the business.
You don’t have to do what they say, but you do have to listen.
