Let’s look at issues around the art and science of planning. We all know the “fail to plan, plan to fail” maxim but do we all plan in enough detail? Recent research on people with heart conditions showed that seven out of eight failed to adopt a healthier eating and exercise regime despite clear communication of the likely consequences. Perhaps we have a belief that we can bluff our way through when it comes to it. Is abhorring managerial professionalism another symptom of the English disease?
Continue readingCategory Archives: People management
Grow your own Talent
Talent, skill shortages will return as the UK returns to work. I sense a huge pent up desire to go make a difference, make some money. Brexit is done, Covid is on the run. Time to make some money! Don’t run out of your scarcest resource – grow your own!
Continue readingDoes employee engagement lead to more reward?
Let’s boil employee engagement down to the basics. Engagement relates to the psychological contract between employer and employee. Fundamentally it moves away from the idea of “economic man (or woman)” which even economists now recognise fails to predict much of human behaviour. Instead of a “you chop a hundred logs I pay you one pound” contract, the form is that “both parties will make their best endeavours for the other”, to do their best in a business setting. Some organisations operate a hair trigger “fail and be fired” policy while others regard moving someone on to greener pastures as a catastrophic failure of organisational culture. The model we promote is “tribal”. If someone has worked successfully for years and now needs leniency for a time you give it. If the tribe’s shepherd has kept everyone supplied with mutton for years but now has a performance issue, bear with it. He or she may well bounce back more committed than ever, as they don’t want to let their tribe down.
Continue readingDistributed Intelligence
In 1999, work started on MEMS (Micro-Electromechanical Systems) at the University of California, Berkley. The aim was to produce a sensing, computing and communicating system in a one cubic millimetre size. These dust motes, dubbed Smart Dust, could be scattered or carried in the air forming a sensor web covering a wide area. The project closed in 2001 having reached a mote size of a few cubic millimetres. Certainly, there was a lot of R&D activity in the next size up – the insect size. So, the next time you take a swipe at a Bluebottle fly remember it may just be doing a TV audience survey! The distributed intelligence idea is interesting though. Henry Ford is attributed with the complaint that whenever he hired a pair of hands, he got a brain too. Of course, these days we recognise that you cannot run a successful organisation without using all the brains you employ.
Continue readingA quiet word with the Chairman
The Chairman has asked for a quiet word. You quickly review your KPIs, check with your Direct Reports that you are informed on the latest happenings. And off you go…..
Continue readingLearning
“The world is just a great big onion!”. Baby-Boomers will recognise this as the title of a Marvin Gaye song. I want to use an onion as a metaphor for the world, life and our perceptions, to show they are multi-layered like an onion. Whatever we investigate, we see the surface and as we drill down, we uncover layer after layer of reality – just like an onion. Sometimes the surface layer – or common sense – can be dramatically different to the deeper truths in the deeper layers. These thoughts spring from two workshops I attended recently. Both put over ideas that were “outer layer” rather than “deep truths”. Consequently, as common sense, they made sense, but in fact, the ideas were false at deeper levels.
Continue readingInspirational leadership
How is it possible to be an inspirational leader when you are team leading in a 9 to 5 rule bound environment? Not many of us work in dramatic situations that give rise to stirring calls to action. Shakespeare’s Henry V puts it well: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead.” Stirring stuff indeed: however, I suspect only adrenalin junkies would find this acceptable all day long!
Continue readingLaughter at Work
Research shows humans laugh on average 17.5 times a day. Clearly, more research is needed, on the effects of lockdown and remote working, on the current average. Children may laugh 300 times a day, so I suppose we become more serious as we get older. The research does not show how long people, on average, are incapacitated by laughter. Clearly any time lost in the workplace is a drain on productivity. This is not the behaviour you want in the workplace; you want people leaning into the job.
Continue readingKeeping an open mind
Einstein spent the last twenty years of his life in the professional doldrums. He appeared fixated by his own successes and refused to accept the usefulness of quantum mechanics theory. His mind was closed to the idea. Of course, things change, the world turns, new possibilities arise and situations that look the same may be, in fact, quite different. There is a story that nicely illustrates this, from the Suez crisis. President Nasser of Egypt had nationalised the Suez Canal, owned chiefly by French and British interests. For various reasons, strategic interest and political grandstanding among them, France and England invaded the Canal Zone with Israeli support. The Egyptians, calculating that the French and British would accept the nationalisation, were completely outgunned. Soviet influence was very strong in the Middle East at the time and the story relates advice from a Military Attaché. The Attaché told Nasser to withdraw his troops to the centre of the country and wait for winter.
Continue readingPrejudice And Expectation
Of course, we all carry our prejudices and stereotypical views around with us. Some of these are from “expert” sources. A few years ago, a notable German airline gave a booklet on local customs to its passengers to the UK. It was amusing to read that we English, eat Fish & Chips from newspaper followed by tea and cake around 4pm. Everyone knows Health & Safety have banned newspaper food wrappers! No doubt the English have their own, equally weird stereotypes. Some time ago I went to a famously foul-mouthed comic’s show and joined in the laughter at the stereotypical French jokes. These same jokes would have drawn the same audience response three hundred years ago! Perhaps it is lazy and comforting to have knee-jerk stereotypical responses. It helps to bond us together as a team, as a group, as an organisation, or nation. To make an inclusive group you must exclude others. Very often, our prejudices are hidden in our stereotypes. This is a block to creativity and blunts progress.
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