Does Process Kill Innovation?

I think this is a fairly common debate.  I tend to find a lot more Six Sigma types in resource and commodity companies.  In these environments they also tend to have more clout.  The mindset is conducive to the engineering process driven environment and hence like a hot house flower they thrive.  I am sure that process is not a bedrock for  excellent innovation; what I am not so sure of is whether process supports and sustains innovation.  I think this will form part of my next research project in Metacomm.  I have plenty of clients asking me these types of questions and I can draw upon my own business experience as a leader, owner and consultant.  I do think the paradigm will be either/or; it will be an ‘and’ paradigm- my forecast now.  Process is to many a comfort- to others a big brick wall.  Our environment as individuals and organisations demands agility- the world is changing quickly and big changes are more sudden than in the past.  My own bias is toward a non- process dependent collaborative environment with my colleagues.

Corporate Reality in the Trenches

Today has prompted me to have a rant about organisational behaviour and in particular corporate behaviour.  This observation is not limited to large organisations although the pathology I outline here is far more common in larger organisations.  There is one level of corporate behaviour that we read about in places like the Australian Financial Review or the Wall Street Journal. This is wear the slick looking folks wearing suits and wearing the rectangle fashion eyeware play the business game in our society that worship business.  This is all fine for those that want to play the game.  In the trenches where the lengthy chain of command finally touches a customer is what I call the trenches.  This is where we see what real corporate behaviour is like when it is expressed in a relationship with a customer.  The folks in the tall glass box might get some figures but never can figures illustrate behaviour and effectiveness in customer dealings.  Today I had an experience with a major telco that I never imagined could occur in the day and age.  I had an experience that if  I had a chance to convey by word or print would be considered fiction.  This telco has ‘invested’ millions in new systems, processes, fancy brochures and websites.  I am sure this company would also claim to conduct training for those with customer interaction.  The problem is the people were nice but the execution was pathetic.  There was no acountability, no escalation, no empowerment to make a decision.  This was a scene out of the 1980’s  and maybe early 90’s.  For goodness sakes most firms have evolved but this one is stuck.  If I were a suit in the tall glass box I would never know what is happening in the ‘trenches.’   If this is the result of our business obsessed, business school idolising,  spend massive bucks on consultants ethos then we have little to cheer about.

Interpersonal Leadership-Can It Be Virtual?

This is an interesting blog from Tom Davenport regarding firms who are begining to migrate back to office based work.  In the past few years we have heard the constant drum beat of firms who have offered home based work, leadership that is dispersed in different locations and the adoption of the ‘you can work anywhere’ paradigm.  Indeed we can all ‘work’ anywhere thanks to our technology but there is a big difference between ‘doing work’ and creating and executing on objectives effectively.  Leadership is difficult on a webcam- worse in email and instant messaging.  A face to face interaction may deliver faster results but there is far more going on in an interpersonal interaction that contributes to interpersonal leadership and at its core the creation and sustenance of trust.  Of course we need not apply one extreme or the other but I am certain that many of us who have worked in both co-located office environments and home based offices realise that each is good but not necessarily exclusive.  Of course there are many other factors that contribute to the effectiveness of working remotely and not the least is the type of work peformed.

Whingeing Yank Business People – How Much More Can We Endure?

From the land of Ivy League business schools, economic disparity and virtually no social safety net we must hear the incessant moaning of overpaid executives about their fate.  It must be good to know that if the whole free market capitalist system collapses you can live off your wealth.  I love the word used in Australia to describe complaing…….’whingeing’ or better said as ‘wingein’.  The rest of us need to keep working and most of us out here in the ‘rest of the world’ (developed) live in sane societies with social safety nets and without the incredible disparities in income and lifestyle.  We have to compete with companies shielded by the hard and soft power of the United States.  It was not always so.  Globalisation and ‘flat earth’…..maybe but not yet.  I have worked for American companies run by supposedly well educated B school graduates who disappeared into the a**hole of complexity while their organisations were moribund.  Maybe we will all collectively learn from this recent economic cycle, maybe not.  My hope is that at least some folks in the world’s current super power learn that those at the top are not necessarily the most qualified to be there.  I hope we can regain a common sense- quit worshipping business leaders, stop segregating with false classifications based on privilege.  Intelligence is not necessarily reflected in common sense.  Common sense is not a graduate program from Harvard Business School.  Academics are not necessarily ground level participants.   Everybody stop your ‘whingeing’; get real about what is really important in your life and get on with it.  Business is business- like a merchant stall in Damascus.  Love the Bazaar!

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.