Does expertise always contain the answer?
I was reminded that there might be no right answer to developing competitive advantage in a knowledge world. Lying in the emergency admissions unit of Hereford General Hospital listening to experts talking about treatment of heart problems there are evidently a range of strategies.
Most of these involve a course of treatment (written plan with SMART targets) combined with lifestyle changes (best practice).
Similarly, a commercial organisation could need to deliver real added value for customers without increasing price. Some organisations are monitoring their core business model on a day-by-day basis as knowledge and information hits the Board Room at the speed of light.
But as regular readers will know, its no good having five experts, however eminent they may be, with five different Bull’s Eyes for one organisation (or patient).
Didn’t like to ask the learned cardiac consultant and his entourage about development points from their last appraisals.
Getting CLOSER to colleagues
You have to get to know the other experts in the Board Room better than you have ever done before.
Gone are the days when finance could ignore marketing for spending all that money, and production don’t like sales because no one told them about that rush order, and purchasing, well no one talks to purchasing anyway.
No, the external demands of customers, competitors, market places and technology are changing so fast, that you cannot have internal strife of any kind.
The better the quality of relationships with colleagues and staff, the better the quality of relationships with stakeholders and customers, then the better will be the performance of the organisation.
Making it count
If your Staff Survey scores are above 90% for any area of your business, then you are either asking the wrong questions or you are allowing managers or maybe even HR, to carry out the survey themselves.
If you are trying to create real change in your organisation, specifically to develop and sustain competitive advantage in this knowledge economy, then always use a trusted ‘outside’ facilitator.
Some of the specific areas where this rule applies are in enhancing executive performance, carrying out a Staff Survey and installing an external Customer Satisfaction reporting system.
Try to do these things internally, looking from the inside out, and you are almost certainly wasting your time, your energy and your money.
The purchasing paradigm
There are so many organisations that leave purchasing to anyone that has the time to do it. Even quite large organisations with a turnover of say £30 million can have a disparate and dysfunctional purchasing function.
Part of the problem is that we all buy. Everyone buys. Just walking into a supermarket means we are buyers. Because we all buy something, somewhere, most weeks of every year, we all assume we can buy commercially.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Consider that you buy something tomorrow for £100. The real cost to the organisation is a combination of negotiated trade discount, settlement discount and length of credit. So if you agree 2.5% trade, 5% settlement and 60 days account with a supplier, what is the true cost of the deal?
If you have any managers that have a particularly cosy, long standing relationship with any of your major suppliers, try asking them that question.
Be fair though. The answer will depend on your current Cost of Capital.
Somewhere, over the rainbow…..
You get some leaders at the very top of organisations that can articulate a vision, for that is surely what it is, for the organisation, that is so far from reality that it is almost a mirage.
The most dangerous sort of leaders in this category are those that persist with their thinking, irrespective of those other members of the Board that see things differently. I know there are exceptions that prove the rule, and Richard Branson always springs to mind.
But the reality is the existing state of the organisation. If it is already fundamentally lacking in best practice, if it has a track record of poor decisions and ineffectual leadership, if staff or members are absolutely and totally confused about what the organisation stands for, if some of the Board themselves would rather hold their counsel than join in with the robust debate that is necessary, then watch out.
In these circumstances it is the blue sky thinking can actually destroy the organisation.
Problems with expertise
If you want to be an expert, you have to start giving things up. The journey from generalist to expert is fraught with choices. Stuff that you used to work with or teach or facilitate drops away as you increasingly need to focus on your particular area of expertise.
Some people in the Boardroom are unclear about their role, others even take a pride that they can 'turn their hand to anything'. This is a common and indeed sometimes a useful mindset in a start up business. As the business grows and develops you need people that specialize in an area of knowledge and information that adds real value to the intellectual capital of the organization.
Too many executives are straddling too many activities. There are often lots of practical reasons for this, particularly in small enterprises, however the better route in the long term is to concentrate on the bit that makes you special.
Outsource the rest to other experts.
Intimacy in the Board room
You run an organisation, any organisation in the public, the private or the not for profit sector. You intuitively know that you must increase levels of trust between people, if for no other reason than this is a critical element of developing competetive advantage.
There are three stages to this work, but you can't pick and choose, you have to do the lot.
Generalising about expertise
When you are an employee, however senior, in whatever organisation, it’s a bit like being a battery hen. Salary, holidays and key areas of responsibility are often stipulated.
When you decide to become self-employed, you are choosing to become a free-range chicken. One day you may find a slug, the next a brandling worm and the next, well maybe nothing at all. That’s how it is.
All the support mechanisms of employment suddenly fall away and you are on your own. In the beginning it can be tough and the reality is that although you set up in business thinking that you are going to be doing one thing, the need to pay the bills often means that you end doing lots of other things as well.
I guess that this is why many of us become, to a greater or lesser extent, generalists in the first instance. However in a knowledge world, expertise is the name of the game.
Expertise and argument
We have to be experts. That is what can differentiate us from competition in the market place. Generalists are ten a penny. A generalist can become an expert but that is another blog.
A lot of individuals and organisations are recognising that as you move along the road towards expertise in your chosen area, there does seem to be more conflict from others. This can occur for all sorts of reasons. That is another blog too.
When you are a generalist, the arrow of your message is blunt, in fact it may not penetrate very far at all. On the other hand the farther you go down the road of expertise, the more you hone the point of your message, the more slick it becomes and then it can go deep, particularly with target audiences.
So what about the conflict? That’s OK, just ride it out with logic, with creative ideas that solve problems here and now, with even a smile.
Peak Performing Board Rooms
Exceptional Board Room behaviour looks like this. There is:
· Honesty and openness between all members. Transparency is the norm.
· Genuine and mutual respect for diversity of talent and of thought.
· Individual and collective commitment to the journey towards some form of Bull’s Eye measurable statement of excellence for the organisation.
· A massive learning culture: everyone is hungry for personal development; they are hungry for knowledge.
Think about it. All exponential change in business is taking place outside the Board Room, so outdated thinking, hidden agendas, selective communication and factions are ALWAYS counter productive.
Get it right. Or continue to fundamentally under perform.
