Are We Really That Helpless?

We hear how angry many people are about the demise of the world’s economy and the reasons for it.  The media is showing interviews with working people losing homes and jobs and in Europe of people actually hitting the streets to protest.  But what will really change?  We are ruled by the rich and privileged.  We have been brainwashed into believing the market economy is the only way to structure our economic affairs.  The rise and fall of our economic destinies is just a natural outcome of this system of political economy.  Why is this accepted?  The masses of humanity are poorly served by free market economics yet we blindly accept that we cannot have a system we control.  We accept that we can not have an egalitarian political economy in which all are fed, housed and educated.  Civilisation?  You are kidding.

Performance Flipping- Leadership Inverted

I have been troubled to the point of some deep pondering about performance management in the so called modern organisation.  What I see and experience does not really conform to any of the previous descriptors- performance poorly defined, management- you have got to be kidding, and modern defined by a mechanistic paradigm.  With the rush of enthusiasm for web based tools to ‘manage the process’ I see even more detachment from anything resembling a dialogue or conversation between two human beings.  I am not a big fan of lagging indicators- any idiot can look at the past and reflect although in my own experience my reflection includes biases that seem to increase the further back I try to reflect.  The same thing occurs when assessing performance.  When you add a keyboard and a neat software interface with cute little icons the whole thing becomes a safely detached process that can be completed with all the bias and fallibility both in human perception as well as human communication.   The results of these ridiculous rituals are then fed into a neat little sorting mechanism that can graphically depict my workforce and neatly separate the favoured the from the also rans.  How about turning this around.  How about a reverse performance review that is a predictive indicator.  How about inverting the pyramid of hierarchy and have the pointy end on the bottom with organisation providing performance feedback on the leadership?  This would provide a great way to weed out the dead leadership wood as well as offering a predictive indicator of how well the organisation may perform in the future.  The one tool I have seen that approximates my vision of this is the XQ Survey from Franklin  Covey in the United States.    I would like to see more work in this area- flip the performance maniacs on their head.  Servant Leadership?  Based on what we have all been through the past few months maybe we need a real shift in our thinking about leadership and who should be measuring whom?

Love, Fear and Leadership

I guess I have been focusing a bit on the atmosphere of the world around me lately.  Difficult times are useful for reflection and although this is an economic crisis that dominates our world view at the moment there are a collection of issues facing humanity that will affect how or whether we survive.  We all know they are there but most of us make our way through our lives without paralysis caused by fear or withdrawal.  One can sense a collective reduction in the energylevel of people- I sense it on the train, on the street and in offices.  It is a strange sort of feeling coming off the highs of the past decade or so.  Have you read ‘A Course in Miracles?’    I still pick it up occasionally and it long ago introduced me to the concept that all human behaviour is linked to either love or fear.  If one looks at our lives within our tribes, families, communities and organisations you can engage in an interesting analysis.  Consider the structural leadership model from S. Covey that includes four levels of leadership.  In a concentric set of rings the innermost is Personal Leaderhip, next is Interpersonal Leadership, then Managerial Leadership and Ultimately Organisational Leadership. This is an excellent little model.  My observation is that our society (choose one since I believe this is a common characteristic) has lost the ability to motivate human behaviour from Love at the Managerial and Organisational levels.  Do not get hung up on the labels; Organisational and Managerial can be substituted for Strategic and Operational, (some may differ).  My position is that the higher we go in human organisation the less we use Love as a paradigm for behaviour and decision making and the more we rely on Fear.  Often the reliance on Fear is grounded in the fact that this is what drives our own behaviour and we transfer this into our organisations, communities, families, nations, wherever.  Love resides (if at all) in the personal and interpersonal levels.  Love of oneself, love that emanates from the self outward to others in interpersonal thought and action.  The fog of fear permeates our thoughts and behaviour when we begin to lead others in groups or we need to drive outcomes from others. We have not yet learned that love is far more powerful and its manifestation creates dramatic and lasting change in individuals and the collective output of organisations, clubs, communities, families and nations.  I guess this rant is a bit raw but it is felt.  I know one of my repulsions at what is going on in our world now; economically, environmentally, geo-politically is the fear that we have allowed to creep into our individual psyches and the total lack of resistance we have shown to the fog of fear permeating everything. Leadership is needed now more than ever; we all know it and now is the time to show it.  Motivate yourself with love, reject fear where you find it.

Perform Your Way to a Pigeon Hole

In a cynical moment I may lament a sense that human interactions are increasing digital as opposed to interpersonal with physical proximity.  I like social networking but I am on a self restricted program after discovering I could burn golden hours responding to emails and updates.  Well the other day I had another experience that ignited my cynicism.  The world of human resources (a ridiculous term) is moving strongly digital with on-line software to automate processes and capture data.  I was invited to explore a few ‘Performance Management’ software solutions that are popular and growing in acceptance.  I cannot stand the term ‘performance management’ and after seeing these new software systems to assist this process I dislike the term even more.  I have recently written an article that has as its premise the notion that our ideas around leading people are prehistoric.  If you wish to assist a person to be more effective in their work life then you must have a conversation; not one time based conversation but an ongoing conversation that never ends- it is always open. You do not support or improve a person’s work effectiveness by meeting with them once a quarter or half yearly or worse annually.  Those of us who have sat on both sides of the desk in these ridiculously uncomfortable rituals know they do not usually result in much at all.  Well back to the software.  With these software ’solutions’ a manager can simply add observations about a person that is recorded against that person in the database.  They can even include a picture to make it a bit more personal!  The manager can add commenets and measures against all sorts of indicators and behaviours.  Once we have the inputs then we can create a neat diagram where all our people are represented as coloured humanoid figures placed against a grid to indicate comparison with others.  So you want to look for some candidates for a new role?  Simply visit your computer screen and pop up one of these graphical depictions of our biological assets and select a few that are positioned up there in the top right quadrant.  Easy!!!  Time for a cull?  Do the same thing but now we are going to terminate those in the bottom left quadrant.  I know I simplify this whole thing……..just a bit.  I know I don’t want to be a coloured humanoid positioned on a quadrant- as a leader I want to see into the faces of the people I work with.  I want to have an ongoing conversation as broad and expansive as we wish to make it and this will vary between individuals.  My experience has strongly demonstrated that people conjoin to a common purpose when they are supported as individuals with autonomy and leadership; not management.

A Personal Growth Manifesto

I have just finished Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser.  I am sure glad I read this book.  My mom brought the book over from the United States for her visit with us here in Australia.  I devoured this book in a few train journeys to work and a round trip flight to Sydney.  I must admit to not knowing much about Elizabeth Lesser before reading the book but I had heard of the Omega Institute of which she is a co-founder.  Broken Open explores personal growth through the prism of human hardship.  It speaks to all of us whether we want to admit to having difficult periods in our lives or not- we are all pretty much the same.  Elizabeth writes in a conversational style with great clarity to enable easy comprehension and a strong link between the words and your emotions.  Some of the examples of personal hardship and growth are emotional triggers that in my case need some subduing in the train and the 737.  I highly recommend this book- it is a trigger for introspection, gowth and centering back on what is important in our lives amongst the turmoil and gloom.  I vowed I would make the lessons of this book stick- I can say my head is still above the black clouds that seem to be consuming our humanity currently.