Many clients ask us what makes a great leader of change, what makes a really good team leader, executive or manager. Well the clues in title of this post !

It’s all about people – there is nothing in human endeavour that cannot be done better if you get people aligned, on-board, engaged, up for it or what ever you say in your world. To give a little context, for the last three days and some time before in preparation, we have been assessing the skills of applicants for a range of aero technical roles in a new start up business in Europe.  This is a business that services and fixes Executive Jets for the big corporations of the world or the people of high net worth ( don’t you just love that phrase).  So rock stars and hedge fund managers who own their own luxury aircraft.  So what… what does the people thing mean here?

Well here’s the issue – you own a mega costly aircraft which is your pride and joy – do you choose a cut price service for it – no – cost is not  a buying decision here for you…. do you care where it is serviced, ie how far you have to travel… a car maybe 40 km radius of home, a jet 2 hours? that means most of Europe is a possible supplier of services … what about standards of engineering…. Aviation here; there is only one standard of engineering allowed -excellent. So how do you decide where to have your jet serviced?   PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE – you need to know they care,  that they love you as a customer, that they understand your needs perfectly.

Back to engineers in aviation – good engineers are common, the standards of training and regulation is high,  the passion for aircraft is high – however most are trained to work anonymously in hangars far away from passengers, pilots and paying fares. Most don’t see the customer in day to day life. they certainly don’t have to interact.

Private jets are different, Mick Jagger may accompany his pilot to see his planes new interior,  pick it up to fly off to Moscow,  Simon Cowell might want a particular thing sorting out and like to see it ( he loves cars and gadgets) so the people in the hangar might, and do meet the people of high net worth who decide on where to spend their large sums of money on services .

So the man in the overalls is important in the whole experience of service – he might be the difference that makes the difference.  So finding great engineers with a passion for service and the interpersonal skills to speak to owners and pilots is the trick –  real diamonds in the seams of shale that is engineering.

People make a difference- People make business’s work- People are the key to success, not systems , not processes, not software, not machines, not brands. People STUPID

This week I have been meeting clients who all face significant challenges in helping change their large and complex organistions. One is a government department and one a large bank. In discussion with clients, either leading or planning to lead change that affects the whole organisation,  we discussed how people are reacting to what seems like obvious and well planned changes. Bare in mind that both organisations are staffed by smart, intelligent, motivated people.

So describing some initiatives I have been involved in with other organisations in the past, their eyes showed sparks of recognition, nods of agreement and smiles of complicity. I was talking about the folly of organisations trying to implement change from a systems only or perfect plan approach rather than engaging staff in the whole process and using staff as the lever for real embedded change. I mentioned the stupidity of thinking because a senior leader had sanctioned it, that change would happen, and I talked about the lunacy of thinking that a  coercion strategy would deliver long term staff support. Nods and smiles of ” we understand cos we do that”.  So what is going on here?

Two very large, complex and old organisatons where smart people are smiling in recognition of major flaws in their plans to deliver lasting change? Why do we know that things are doomed to fail, can agree with other examples , share our own stories of such madness  - YET fail to challenge and act differently ourselves? What will it take for the small boy in us to tell the emperor that he is naked !!

Change agents, consultants, internal project managers, project leaders, change catalysts … whatever the title you must be prepared to take the risks needed to get things seen for what they are. Faced with the right thing or the safe thing to say you MUST say what is right.  No change agent worth his fee, salary or bonus – should be afraid of being a heratic. All great ideas are treated as madness when first voiced.  BE THAT HERETIC.  Be sure to be challenged and maybe have a shorter career with that company.

It’s not that I am saying change is easy to implement, that is not the case.. but starting from the mechanics and not the people will not help get real behavioural change into a complex organisation.  As a good and wise friend of mine says, ” polishing a turd is not clever ,even when it shines its still a turd “. If the process is broken planning to do it more efficiently or effectively is not smart – do something else instead, almost anything else. My advice – start with people.  What would make you change your way of working for the better? What would convince you, your colleagues and your staff that changes are  worth it?

Answer why first and how second and see what a difference it makes to getting change in place.  Good luck and remember you need to be taking more risks to be a real change agent !!

This is the time of year when big employers and last year undergraduates start to pay real attention to the task of hiring.  It seems this year there are more people chasing fewer genuine professional graduate roles than ever before.  What does this mean for both parties; the employer who is seeing larger numbers of applicants all apparently fulfilling their criteria, and for the graduates who are all trying to make themselves stand out from the masses.

Well for employers this is a good time to be in the market for talent. However to cut down disappointment and ensure your talent search really  give you a return,  you must be clear what you are looking for.  Obvious I know, but alas so many employers are using out of date profiles for their talent search, or at best looking for the same sort of people they did last year.  In a market of unlimited choice, such as now, its pays to be really specific in what you are looking for, and getting a system in place to market specifically to that target group and have  an assessment method that REALLY differentiates the good from the average, and the excellent from the mere good.

Here’s the trick, do some analysis of the best performers in your last cohort, and the one or two before that. What makes them distinct from the average performers? D o the same for the more disappointing hires from the same time frame.  Compare the competencies from the distinctly good and those from those that disappoint – there will be a difference and if your smart you can construct on line or mass methodology question sets to find more of the same or better.

Now what about graduates – how do you get noticed and get to the interview?  Step one, realise who has the power here – it’s not you !  When you are applying online to a scheme with an employer and they ask lots of “dumb”  questions that are all contained in your generic cv -  realise that the 2 hours a good online application takes is the first hurdle and if they ask you to outline your biggest strength again,  theres a reason, if they ask you to tell them about your biggest disappointment, theres a reason ( they might even be smart questions in the right format). Failure to pay attention here and writing in ” see cv ” is instant nil point.  On average a screened by human application gets 20 seconds of attention before the next one, online automated , milliseconds, so do as asked is point one.

Now I know, I have a son just gone through this, that the response from many graduates is, this is my final year, I am so busy, there are exams you know, its mad taking so much time over one application – THIS IS TH E REAL WORLD, the point being, if you cannot manage your time,  priorities, and social life to do real justice to the application then do not apply.  The application form is the first test of your conviction , your ability to do as asked.

Secondly if you get to the telephone interview, a common second cut, have some prep done before the call. What do I mean, well this is the MINIMUM:

Research the company web site

Know who their biggest competitors are

Know what their mission statement says, not memorize but understand what is important to them

Know the competencies they are looking for and have some examples ( not as hard as it sounds, most are shown on the careers page, how to apply page or in the more about us section of websites)

Have some note paper to jot things down and have a pen ready!

As a regular consultant with companies recruiting graduates and as a past manager of graduate programmes I am still shocked at how many graduates won’t do the minimum when preparing for interview and the moan about companies not getting back to them quickly.  I think that the good graduates will succeed, and good is well rounded, hard working and those that realise this is a game and the rules are set by the employer – to win you have to play the rules and prepare and train hard to shine.

Good luck this year to all those who are looking for the best, and to the best  – you don’t need luck, just preparation.

Be an early adaptor, get the book on the sony e reader or kindle -  have the text ready for the next flight, train journey or boring board meeting !

I am working on a couple of proposals where the client is trying to address a talent issue within their quite different organisations. Both would like some independent assessment of the people they are targeting and also both are trying to determine exactly what it is, that will in their organisation make a successful player. Nothing so unusual in that. What is striking is that having identified their issue as not knowing who is good, who really contributes and what that would look like with new hires, they then go on to say they have no time, resources or investment to solve the problem.

What strikes me is the way organisations are willing to invest in new systems, new software, new hardware, new technology or new assets to grow the organisation, but baulk at investing in people in the same way.  Surely the lack of clear talent definitions, profiles or assessment criteria is part of the problem of lack of growth.  Senior managers need to see that the people they hire are their real competitive edge and the better the decisions they make about hires, the better the company will be. I know we are in a downturn, but that is exactly the time to ensure any new hires or any new appointments really are up to the mark when we talk about contribution.

So talent is a constant problem for many organisations because they see it as a cost, not an investment. Maybe the accountants should do some utility costing of bad hiring and promotion decisions and scare themselves the real cost of poor talent management.

Just a short except from a session I did recently in London.  Hope you find it interesting, the audience seemed to.

It’s starting to happen ! we are hearing of green shoots in the economy, things are moving, house prices are stable and some showing increase… hooray we are surviving.

Good. Now what? I also see in the press that banks are paying large bonuses, that senior executives are getting pay 1000 x times the pay of the lowest regular employee and that other bad practices have not changed.  Given the severity of the crash and the real angst that followed I am not surprised to see other areas of  normal life challenged.  The UK’s parliamentary expenses fiasco is one that was waiting to be exposed and is seen to be such an example of Orwellian double standards that we are incredulous when more of the scandal is revealed.

I see in British Airways there is trouble ahead, unions and management facing off for a ruck when they should be trying to compete with the external threats… nothing new there.  Willy Walsh has taken no pay this year as a token gesture to the state of play… easier to do when you have such a reserve and such a public position, not so easy to do if you are a ground crew employee with less flex in your earnings / spend ratio.

So what is my point? I think given the state of things a few months ago and the downturns effect on management, public . employee relations, you would have thought leaders would have leant something about what is acceptable and fair. It seems to me they have not.  Large bonuses,  larger salaries and tough disproportionate reactionary measures from the top will not get people to respect the leadership of their organisations.  Leaders need to show restraint,  respect and rational judgement in these times.  I see too many wanting things to return to how they were… untouchable in good times or bad.

Re Energized leadership is not about getting back to how it was, its about better and different leadership. Something that values explanation, values engagement of people, values getting things done with people not in-spite of people. Maybe there’s some more learning to be had yet from this recession.

Bring on the revolution… raise our expectations of leaders and follow only those worth following !

I did a speech to a group of people interested in leadership at the NHS  for London earlier in the year.  They bring in a number of speakers from business, consulting and academia to inspire their talent managers, leaders and HR staff.  I was asked to speak about leadership of change.  A big organization and a big issue for any leader.  See the pod cast here :

NHS PODCAST

if the podcast doesn’t load go back a page on the NHS site to find  Masterclass and then select the podcasts for the video…

Many people think that change is about big bang revolutions in the work place.  A lots of planned change can be seen this way – getting a reorganisation through, getting a new project launched or changing the business model entirely. However much of what we ask people to do is about incremental change, ratcheting up performance and getting more from the same resources.  Do the same tactics and principles apply here as in big bang? I think they do, but it requires more skill from the leader to get the same momentum. A series of small incremental changes, well executed can provide as much increase in performance as a big bang initiative.

So what are the skills required to get momentum in these less dramatic change processes? You would not be surprised to hear then that they are still about the 3e’s Envision, create a view of what cumulatively the change will bring about and how this is a good thing, Engage – what do you want people to do and why them, and Execute – the plan that you share about how it works in practice and how they contribute day by day by day.  If anything the need to really understand the individual is greater here as there is less dramatic challenge.

Leading change will not always be a bet the company issue but it will never be an issue where you can take contribution from people for granted.  Leadership is defined by follower and getting people interested and commited to slow burn change is a real skill and worth the effort.

It’s not an absolute, but in my opinion there are no secrets to time management… most really good leaders I have worked with are excellent at it.  What does that mean?  as most of these people are hard workers by most peoples standards.  What strikes me time and time again about really good leaders are they are soooooo focused. So focused that they find the means to delegate really well,  that they find the means not to be distracted by the small and inconsequential and they find the time to spend energy on those areas that makes a difference.  A feature of good leaders time management is that they almost never sacrifice face time with staff for task time.

When the genie of the magic lamp appears for me and grants me three wishes the first will be to ban time management programmes, they serve no useful purpose except to highlight how poor some of us are at focusing on the critical. People don’t need more time management tools they need  a clear purpose in life and their work and get on with it. All trivia will evaporate believe me.

The second wish would be interpersonal, very satisfying and not for publication on a blog.

Finally the last would be to improve the status of educators across the globe to that of the past where those that enabled the learning of others were seen to be wise and respected.  If we spent more time and got better people into our childrens education in the front end we as a society would spend less sorting out the mess later on.

In a recent speaking engagement with the NHS in London I presented some of the ideas from our book on the dual economy and the reasons why there is a split in buying habits and expectations from the market. It’s  either lean or luxury,  low cost and low care or  high value and high expectations.  My examples were from the airline business and from retailing, but meant to spark some interest and thought from the NHS executives.

The question I was asked in the masterclass that followed was about the need in the NHS to offer high care and meet high expectation whilst being low cost.  My suggestion to them that this was neigh impossible got the response that I didn’t understand their industry.  Well on reflection I think they are right, at least in terms of the politics of their situation.  In no other area of endeavour, except maybe the military, do we ask so much from the people we employ as public servants.  On the one hand we ask for real value for money and on the other we ask for exemplary patient care treating each person as an individual and with individual needs and expectations.  If we look at the economics of this it does not add up…. individualisation takes time and to a lesser extent money.  High performance in terms of treatments takes investment in skills and expertise that is not cheap.  Low cost enterprises don’t hire expensive well trained staff, don’t invest in great infrastructure and don’t pay for good advice and services.  The two situations are not compatible.

Take the US model where health is provided by private contractors and insurance based arrangements. It works to a degree , except for the very low income or no income. Germany and France are similar in some respects – you pay to get a great service and both the USA and our European neighbors have high standards. Care costs !

So what has this got to do with change and leadership? Well the question was asked by someone who seemed resigned to doing the impossible – being asked to do something that economically was not logical – being asked to split his focus.  Well I think in the Uk at least the task is to deliver exemplary care at a reasonable price.  Not to be lean and mean and low cost – just right cost.  Not to cut the budget and cut the care but to spend well and not waste money that is better spent. Re framing his question would have been a better response from myself, to what could you do really well and do for less cost than now? We can all improve but we  don’t have to be world class on service and price…. ask an economist.. the math don’t work.

I have a number of personal contacts who are teachers and who happen to work in good schools here in the UK.  What do I mean by good schools… not my definition but that of the inspectors who have rated at least two of them ” outstanding” in terms of the education they provide.  What is interesting to me is that in both of these schools the teachers I know and it seems their peers find the leadership of the head master appallingly bad.  In one where I have much more knowledge,  the heads actions would not be tolerated in any other organization.  Poor work ethic,  poor technical skills in their subject,  atrocious man management,  blame culture and not backing staff against parents or the local authority in times of  disagreement.  So what is happening?  In these two examples both schools in terms of performance of their task are really outstanding against an external standard and the experience of the kids.

My belief is in areas of vocation, rather than jobs,  people rise to the challenge of doing good work regardless of the head of the organisation.  More so than in a commercial organisation the drive and determination of the staff makes great things happen. The larger good, the clear worthwhile goal , the uniting interest , serves to somehow replace the leadership placed by authority.  A good result can be gained by the leadership emerging from a second, third level line of the organisation.  In these institutions people lead themselves where there is a vacuum of real direction and support – in some instances in spite of objections and interference from above.

So what can we learn from this? Well  shared goals and uniting beliefs, which are hallmarks of a vocation, seem to have more drive than any vision or mission from a leader who you don’t believe adds any value. Can we as managers of people get more shared understanding and more of a core belief in what we are doing? I think we can.

What is really sad is how good could these schools be if the head teachers were good? that is such a waste !!

When we as consultants or internal change agents  are working in any organization,  however large or small that is, we should consider the variety of ways change can be brought about.  At least in terms of process, there are many many many tools and approaches for improving organizational performance.  At least I have never been  asked to  directly instigate  intentional reduction in effectiveness, so I have to assume improvement is the common aim of change programmes.  I am still surprised at how wedded to one or two method many of us can be,  not because of their superior utility, but because we have always got results from using them or because we have deep experience in them.  As change agents, consultants, managers tasked with getting improved organizational performance we should be eclectic thinkers,  management magpies,  raving researchers,  midwives of innovation, seekers of nuggets of novelty and all round scavengers of ideas that work – regardless of their provenance. If we don’t develop new tool sets and new approaches to using tools, getting to mastery of our crafts then all human invention would have stopped at the wheel, hewn from a solid block with a crude axe.. no need to find something better.

Search the literature of group dynamics, psychology, lean systems, quality management, Open Space Technology,  NLP,  cbt, brief therapy,  Problem solving methodologies,  Engineering design,  influence and social networks to find new and novel approaches to your organisation – if hitting the nail with  your hammer is causing you rsi, GET SOME MORE TOOLS  or get out of the game of change.

In these days of cyber networks its easy to think we are really well connected, have contacts,  know people and are linked in.  Well relationships are critical to  leadership and even more so when taking others on a change journey… so why not pay a little more attention to the relationship we have.  Making explicit what is implicit is  a starting point.  As an exercise for individuals relationship mapping is a great way to make you think about who you know, and what they know and how they influence your success.

See the text below for a way of mapping what is, what should be and how to get from one to the other… no man is an island, or even a small nationalistic country – co operation, interdependence and plain old scratching each others back is back in fashion… not that it was ever really out.

For the last week I have been working with a large group of internal consultants expanding their understanding of the nature of change management and the role of consultants.  The participants of the programme, which is an accredited programme awarding certificates in consulting fundamentals, were already practitioners of change. However in their public service setting they were mainly concerned with and focused on the optimization of logistics and supply chain matters.  In their evolution they has used a number of sophisticated optimization tools, spread sheet and analytical engine based techniques to deliver improved efficiency and performance.  Unfortunately the success of this approach has made many of them, and their organization’s managers blind-sighted to many of the other approaches and alternative tools available to manage the successful change.

What  was most surprising to me was the lack of emphasis placed on the softer skills of consulting and change,  the relationship building and influencing skills.  The week was revealing in many ways… the depth of confidence and belief in the methods that the participants displayed,  the restricted range of approaches they used,  the organization constraints placed upon them ( by an organization clearly in need of change)  and the lack of engagement with the client that many of them expressed. It seemed the clients needs were secondary to getting work done.

As we progressed through the module of study and education,  there were many occasions where the sound of pennies dropping was akin to standing next to a slot machine paying out the  jackpot !

Relationships and influence are everything in change management ! No tool, regardless of provenance or power will work where there is no trust and credibility.  People chose to change, people chose to follow, people chose who to trust and these choices  are all based on relationship and influencing skills.

So what is my point in this post? If you work in change leadership, as an internal consultant or manager of projects then think about what you concentrate on when leading change, if its tools and processes then you need to change the way you change.  Influence is everything – any system can be made effective if the people who use it want it to work well. You role in leading change is creating the conditions for people to want to do a great job and get great outcomes, without influence you are playing the game with the dice loaded against you.