Riding Out the Storm

No matter how successful or seemingly secure any business appears, there are no longer periods of calm seas for leaders in any industry.

A broad statistic reinforces: More than half the companies that were industry leaders in 1955 were still industry leaders in 1990. But more than two-thirds of 1990 industry leaders no longer existed by 2004.
Leaders today need to be at home navigating a ship through 40-foot waves — oceans that will never again be serene — and still be able to guide their crew safely from port to port. They must remain highly effective in an environment of extraordinary, ongoing stress.
In his book, Better Under Pressure, Justin Menkes sought to identify the qualities that define leaders who excel in this environment of duress. He gathered performance data for approximately 200 candidates being assessed for the CEO role at major U.S. corporations. These candidates were divided into three groups, with the top-performing quartile labelled "highly successful," the middle two quartiles characterized as "average performers," and the bottom quartile as "highly ineffective."
What emerged was that certain attributes — three in particular — were highly consistent within the top performers, regardless of industry or job type. And, even more interesting, these attributes were almost totally absent among the bottom-performing quartile.

To perform their best in today's turbulent atmosphere, leaders must possess this highly unusual set of three traits that often run counter to natural human behaviour:

1. Realistic optimism. Leaders with this trait possess confidence without self-delusion or irrationality. They pursue audacious goals, which others would typically view as impossible pipedreams, while at the same time remaining aware of the magnitude of the challenges confronting them and the difficulties that lie ahead.
2. Subservience to purpose. Leaders who see their professional goal as so important that they measure their lives by how much they contribute to furthering that goal. What is more, they must be pursuing a professional goal in order to feel a purpose for living. Their level of dedication to their work is a direct result of the extraordinary, remarkable importance they place on their goal.
3. Finding order in chaos. Leaders with this trait find taking on multidimensional problems invigorating, and their ability to bring clarity to quandaries that baffle others makes their contributions invaluable.

According to Menkes, in today's business environment of ever-escalating competition, leaders with these traits are critical to the survival of companies.

 

The good news is that these three capabilities can be learned. By learning about these attributes, you can become aware of them and choose to build them in yourself. And this can help you bring out the best in those you lead.

Simple Pleasures

Mothering Sunday this weekend was really special. My kids, unprompted by their dad (or so I am led to believe) all spontaneously acknowledged the day, and in so-doing acknowledged me in the most wonderful way. My 16 year old son, untypically non-grunting and up early, brought me a cup of tea in bed; my 14 year old diva daughter told me she loved me and had picked out a movie to watch with me while I relaxed in the afternoon, while my little one presented me with a beautiful home-made card and hugged the breath out of me. In the moment of receiving, I put aside my usual busy agenda of catching up with the housework, email and grocery shopping and gave way to the beauty of the simple pleasures of life with my family.

They say the best things in life are free.  Beyond a shadow of a doubt it is true.  Life is filled with simple pleasures, the little satisfying events we never really anticipate, but always take great pleasure in.  They are true gifts in life. We all know this to be true, but how often do we take the time to really enjoy them and melt into their moments? On Sunday, I took the time to write down my simple pleasures – it felt like a wonderful personal brainstorm of everything in life I really enjoy – and it only took me a few minutes to surface them. Here are the first 20 I wrote down:

• Luxuriating in a bubble bath with a good book
• Walking my two cheeky Labradors with my husband on a cold sunny Sunday morning
• Holding hands
• Laughing with my girlfriends over a frothy cappuccino
• Fresh sheets on the bed
• A roaring fire
• Visiting the fabric department of John Lewis
• Karaoke with the kids
• Bed time reading with my 10 year old daughter
• Family suppers full of chat and teasing
• My dad’s jokes
• Paddling in the sea
• Finishing a chapter of my book
• The smell of the baker’s shop
• A gorgeous view
• Watching old episodes of Outnumbered
• Preparing Sunday lunch for the masses
• Exploring a new city
• Writing a personal  letter to a loved one
• Dancing to Take That while cooking!

The very act of writing my personal simple pleasures made me smile. Try it for yourself, then most importantly – go and make one happen immediately. Just step off the fly wheel for a few minutes and consciously luxuriate in your own simple pleasures. As Oprah Winfrey once said “remind yourself that this moment is the only one you know you have for sure, so make it special.”

Special Days

I was inspired recently in hearing about a Canadian software company that regularly has periods it calls “4 hours silence.” The idea is that during these times no one is allowed to interrupt anyone else – the intent being to promote periods of unfettered concentration. It’s a well known time management wisdom that interruption causes inefficiency, and it was interesting to see a company actually institutionalise this idea.

It led me to think of what other workplace practices could be challenged by introducing experimental days. People regularly complain about email overuse, ineffective meetings and many other habitual working habits. By introducing specific experiment days or weeks, it may help to focus attention and at least challenge some of what have become norms.  

So how about an internal email free day, encouraging people to pick up phone or even walk to see their colleague rather than relying on the ubiquitous email - which can socially isolate people who sit next to each other or in the next office.

Or an internal meeting free week. Many people suffer a surfeit of ineffective meetings. In some organisations that overdo meetings I’ve even come across professional meeting attendees – people who seem to do nothing other than go to internal meetings. By not holding internal meetings for a period it will help to reassess their value and discover what’s necessary and what really isn’t.

An answer the phone within 3 rings day is another idea I’ve seen work well – and it’s very appreciated by customers and suppliers in particular. All too often you try and contact people by landline or mobile only to be re-routed to voicemail. It’s all too easy to get the impression in some organisations that no one is in – or maybe they’re all attending one of those internal meetings! Voicemail is just too easy to abuse, so why not have periods of no voicemail and encourage real-time communication.

On a different tack what about a periodic dress-up day. Dress down has become a permanent feature in some organisations, not just an occasional liberation. How about instituting the very opposite, a day when everyone comes to the office in super smart work attire. It would certainly provide a talking point and you never know – a sharp suit might just sharpen the mind for some important decisions.

Of course there are many offices that are like ghost companies these days. Everyone seems to be out or working at home. In these cases I’m not sure these experimental days would make much difference. So my last suggestion is a turn-up day. Too much working at home can also isolate people. A day where absolutely everyone comes in would create a real buzz – hopefully about more than which hot desk to sit at, particularly as many companies don’t have enough desks for everyone anymore! 

Bad workplace habits can set in all too easily. Introducing some radically different days or periods will at least encourage debate and ideas about what effective working practices really mean, and it will keep everyone on their toes.

Loving What You Do

In the early 1900s, an American Engineer named Frederick Winslow Taylor, invented the concept of ‘scientific or rational’ management. Workers were like parts in a complicated machine. If they did the right work in the right way at the right time, the machine would function smoothly. And to ensure that happened, you simply rewarded the behaviour you sought and punished the behaviour you discouraged. People would respond rationally to these external forces – these were known as extrinsic motivators.

Based on this and other rational theorists, a whole system of operating and rewarding through performance based pay, developed.

Throughout the 20th century, management theorists such as Maslow and Douglas McGregor challenged some of this thinking and as a result companies relaxed a bit – dress codes relaxed, schedules became more flexible and many of the better organisations looked for ways to grant employees greater autonomy to help them grow.

The beginning of the 21st century has provided even more challenge and made us look again at the whole issue of motivation and extrinsic rewards. The development of open source software and the triumph of Wikipedia, the all volunteer, all amateur encyclopedia, challenged the laws of behavioural physics. Developers were contributing and giving their time, not for extrinsic rewards… but were driven by and for something else.

MIT management professor Karim Lakhani and BCG consultant Bob Wolf, surveyed 684 open-sources developers about why they contributed to open source projects. Lakhani and Wolf uncovered a range of motives but they found “that enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive driver”.  What drives these individuals is largely ‘intrinsic motives’ – “the fun … of mastering the challenge of a given software problem” and the “desire to give a gift to the programmer community”.

Daniel Pink, in his excellent book “Drive … the surprising truth about what motivates us” goes even further. According to Pink, not only are people motivated intrinsically but that this intrinsic motivation is just if not more important than extrinsic motivation to an individual’s performance.

Pink identifies areas in which imposing bonuses, rewards and incentives can get in the way and detract from (a) people’s enjoyment of the task and (b) their mastery of the task. This is because extrinsic rewards encourage short term behaviour and encourage individuals to perform to the level at which they are rewarded and then no more.

This is a vast oversimplication of Pink’s research but has huge implications for leaders, organisations, reward consultants and even parents – how can we motivate and reward our children so that learning is fun and not a chore.

In cases where extrinsic incentives can work such as in tasks which do not inspire passion nor require deep thinking, Pink offers some advice:

• Offer a rationale as to why the task is necessary
• Acknowledge that the task is boring
• Allow people to complete the task their own way.

For right brained, creative tasks, Pink suggests that any extrinsic reward should be unexpected and offered only after the task is complete.

Happiness, Success or Both!

“When I am successful then I will be happy” – right? All the research points to the opposite being true: when you are happy you will be more successful.

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson and her colleagues have spent over 15 years looking at how positive emotions enhance our capabilities to be more open to ideas, more creative and able to relate to people. She calls it the “broaden and build theory” (you can read a lot more about it in her book “Positivity” published by Oneworld, Oxford).

Take, for example, recognising between individuals in racial groups different from you own. Chances are testing would show you are a lot worse at this compared to recognising individuals of the same race as yourself. Except if – you were feeling positive at the time. When specifically stimulated to feel positive emotions, people’s ability to discriminate between individuals of a different race improved to be the same level as for their own race*.  They simply broadened their ability to see more about the person in front of them.

Think about what this implies for your ability to create a positive relationship with new people. How, and when, could a greater capability to see the person in front of you help in life?  These situations might come to mind:

• Being interviewed
• Interviewing someone else
• Meeting a new customer
• First meetings of all sorts
• Difficult staff conversations
• Handling difficult customers
• Negotiations

This is just one instance from a lot of research that shows increasing your level of positive feelings before doing an important task will increase your chances of doing it well.

So how do we turn the positive feelings on? Well it’s not simply “thinking positive”. You need to actually create positive emotions in yourself. Many ways have been demonstrated and they can be small, simple and fast.

Some of the simplest include: writing down 3 good things that have happened to you today or 5 things you are grateful for, doing an unexpected act of kindness for someone, looking at a happy photo of people or places you love, savouring a happy memory, having a quick (positive!) conversation with a friend, reading or watching something you find amusing. Over time you will start to notice which of these actions work best for you i.e. give you a burst of positive feeling which in turn opens up your capability to think and interact more openly.

So go on and try one before your next important task. They only take a few minutes, they will make you happier and so more effective in life.

*Cohn M.A. and Fredrickson B.L. (2009) Positive Emotions.  In Lopez S.J. and Snyder C.R.(eds) TheOxford Handbook of Positive Psychology, 2nd edition,  Oxford, p. 13-24.

Music While You Work

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that music has value in the workplace. For workers involved in more repetitive tasks this has long been known. Music has been shown to reduce stress, relieve boredom and importantly, increase productivity. The rhythmic effect of music in particular has been shown to increase concentration and output. Not just in manufacturing environments either – but in other industries. In the 1980s a British Bank reported a 23% increase in the amount of cheques processed by their clearing centre when staff were listening to music. It appears that music and rhythm helps people get into a “groove” with what they’re doing. The effect is not just psychological – music has an impact physiologically. Amongst other effects music has been shown to increase alertness and help maintain a regular heartbeat.

Since the decline of manufacturing and the increase in automation and office based work – there has been less emphasis on the use of music in the workplace. It was thought that office and executive work would not benefit from music in the same degree. Yet there is evidence to the contrary. Research in Canada with software designers suggests that music also enhances creativity and concentration for demanding mental tasks.

Now we’re in the digital and internet age music listening is more personal – with the ubiquitous use of iPods and MP3 players. The University of Sheffield conducted a study of 300 office workers listening to music of their own choice for a third of their week. The researchers were looking at characteristics including inspiration, concentration, positive distraction, stress relief and managing personal space. Employees used sensible music listening practices including not disturbing fellow workers or appearing unprofessional in front of clients.

Interestingly music was shown to help people both engage in their work and escape from their work – and in that way have a positive impact on their work-life balance.

Music is undoubtedly a powerful tool, so why not try your own research? If you have some repetitive or physical tasks to do, try listening to music with rhythm and beat. If you need concentration for a task, select some music with a more calming effect. If your mood or creativity needs a boost try listening to something that inspires you.

Keep it Simple

Do you know what is one of the most annoying things in business today? It is the increasing use of business jargon.

I recently read that over 25% of business executives admitted to using jargon they didn't understand in meetings – why would you do that?

For some people I’m sure it’s a way of setting themselves apart, appearing an expert or looking really clever. However, if your intention is to sell or gain support, setting yourself apart surely puts a barrier between you and those you’re communicating with.

When it comes to selling technological things so many messages dissolve into a sort of linguistic swamp.

Here's a good example from an e-mail someone sent me recently:

At Blah-co we have just developed an email stationery online software package that allows one in house member of staff to deploy all email users with a professionally designed Email stationery template, designed by one of our team of designers to all users and to include their unique contact details, meaning not only will the presentation of their emails improve but equally as important all be consistent throughout your organisation. (whew!)

Well, I think I understand the beginning and the end and recognise many of the words in between but I have no idea what they are saying. And if they’ve paid for my email address, they’ve clearly wasted their time and money.

Would this explain it better:

Because of the way the templates are constructed our solutions avoid all types filtering ensuring your mail always arrives.

Here's another series of examples extracted from mailings sent by another firm.

• Are you one of those lucky few who have bedded down IT operations?
• Would you realise a significant increase in business agility, accelerated decision making, employees pursuing a common agenda and a heightened awareness of your strategy?
• Miss or ignore priority system availability or leadership messages.
• Adopting a new change driver that communicates change and strategy in a high impact and engaging way.
• Intranets suffer the limitations of pull technology.
• A controlled feedback channel enables you to capture a snapshot of employee morale in real time.

What are they actually talking about? If they used plain English, we might know.

So this month's idea comes from Winston Churchill, who said, "Use simple words that everyone knows, and then everyone will understand."

This is important especially if you're selling a financial or technical product or service. In the words of world renowned copywriter and direct marketing expert, Drayton Bird – “Use a bit of jargon to reassure the anoraks, but put the rest in English”.

PS - You might also like to check out Extensor's Buzzword Bingo game.  Ed.

How to Survive Christmas

This year at the beginning of November, I started to plan for Christmas. This is most unlike me, as I love to work against deadlines, but a work commitment will take me away from home for much of December. I am now all done – the food is ordered, the cards written, presents wrapped, battle of the grandparents solved, only the tree to put up – and all the decorations are down from the loft ready and waiting. This is not about me being smug, rather the exercise got me thinking about the pressure we put on ourselves at Christmas as this year I haven’t been caught up in the usual hubbub of the December rush.

What is it about Christmas? It’s supposed to be the season of joy and goodwill, yet for many of us Christmas can be incredibly stressful – and there are dozens of surveys to prove it!  Research commissioned by the Food Standards Agency reveals that preparing and cooking a traditional turkey is second only to shopping as the most stressful Christmas activity. A MORI survey of 2,000 adults found that many Christmas shoppers would prefer a trip to the dentist to the stress of hunting for presents and that only one in five adults actually enjoys the experience. And according to mental health charity MIND, one in five of us gets stressed during the festive season.

Christmas should be fun but – if you're not careful – it can also send your stress levels soaring. We are busy for weeks before the festive holiday even starts, buying presents and going to parties. We overload our bodies with rich food and stimulants – like alcohol and caffeine – which increase stress and, worst of all, we have high expectations of Christmas which piles on the pressure. But remember, you can make the choice not to be stressed now.

So write down a list of all the things you absolutely have to do.  If there are too many things on the list, put them in order of priority and cross off the bottom third or give those responsibilities to someone else.  Then, at the top of the list, write down your “Christmas mission statement”:

"To have a relaxing stress-free Christmas with lots of fun and laughter."
Merry Christmas!

Reversing the Trend

There’s growing evidence that the difficult economic environment is impairing the work-life balance of many managers. The Chartered institute of management issued a report this year “The Quality of Working Life” 2012, which presents some stark findings:

• Job satisfaction has declined to 55%, as opposed to 62% in 2007
• The percentage of managers who feel that senior managers are committed to promote employee well-being has declined from 55 to 39%
• 46% of managers are now working at least 2 hours a day over standard working hours
• 42% of managers report having experienced symptoms of stress – up from 35%
• 43% of managers report working in a culture of “presenteeism” – where people do not take time of even when ill. This is up from 32% in 2007
• 63% or parent managers are worried that working hours are impacting relationships with their children 

It’s a situation that doesn’t bode well for the future – particularly as we’re likely to see and extended period of economic difficulty. It’s interesting also to note that the report also states that the most widely used management style in the UK is authoritarian, bureaucratic and reactive – and that use of these styles is increasing.  It shouldn’t be a surprise, as it’s well known in management psychology that when under pressure people revert to more a more authoritarian management approach.
 
There’s a danger though -  that all of the good work achieved in the last 20 years in terms of progressive management styles, empowerment, and promotion of work-life balance could be undone by a prolonged period of economic gloom.

In an environment where the culture of the organisation doesn’t promote all the factors that enhance work-life balance, it’s essential that people take a hand in their own situation. The place to start is to re-assess your own values and make a determined effort to live according to them.

For too long work has assumed the number one role in people’s lives, where people have become willing to compromise not only their own work-life balance, but their health, well-being and family life as well.  This happens despite the fact that in surveys most people regularly cite family life as their number one priority.

The central question is: do you have the courage to challenge the status quo of your own life and really start to live according to your values? If well-being, fulfilment, personal satisfaction and family life are really the most important values, then what prevents you not living up to them?

Answering these questions may be difficult, and doing something about it may be even more difficult, but if you are able to get your personal values and priorities in synch with your work, it is likely that you will feel more satisfied and fulfilled overall.

 

Learning From the Best

The Hay Group conducts an annual survey on the best companies in the world for leadership. They ask employees for their views on their own company and ask them to rate 3 companies they admire most for leadership. The top 20 is a compilation of ‘praise from outsiders combined with plenty of admiration from within.’

Once the top 20 and regional groups have been identified, each of the elite group our analysed as to their leadership practices and key differentiators highlighted (the biggest gaps between the ‘elite’ group and the rest). The 2011 study was headed up by such companies as GE, P&G, PepsiCo and Southwest Airlines.

These companies were better than the rest in a number of different areas but in particular they distinguish themselves in four particular areas.

Firstly, the top 20 companies expect people at all levels to exercise leadership and bring value to the organisation.  This is at two levels – at the individual and at the organisational level. Firstly, individuals feel they have the opportunity to develop and practice leadership capabilities. At the organisational level the business takes and adopts views and ideas from across the entire organisation, not just from headquarters.

Secondly, the top 20 companies ensure they have a workforce which reflects their markets and local communities – they don’t fear other cultures but embrace them. For instance, they are more likely to recruit local leaders to manage local offices rather than send out headquarters staff. Diversity is increasingly high on the agenda for the best companies because they know that 55.1% of the world’s talent comes from south east Asia and only 17% of further educated people are white males.

Thirdly, the top 20 companies have leadership programmes in place to help managers adapt to change and to manage cross culturally. These companies are moving more quickly than others to flatten their business structures and diversify their workforces with the goal of improving their efficiency and competitive advantage in markets around the world. But most importantly they are providing the skills and tools to help their leaders to succeed in these different markets.

Fourthly, the top 20 shows a greater interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) than other companies. But this is not all about being altruistic. The top 20 recognise that helping employees achieve greater work-life balance is a critical retention strategy.

How many organisations do you work with today who are really embracing global issues and diversity in the way that these respected companies are.

Some other notable facts from the survey:

• 90% of the best companies expect employees to lead regardless of their position
• 100% of Europe’s top 10 companies prioritize work/life balance
• Only 9% of Europe’s top 10 use higher pay and bonus opportunities to attract leaders

Food for thought!

Teams and Morale

It’s a known fact that the higher the morale in a group, the higher the performance and the willingness to endure stress and hard work. Think of the effectiveness of morale in the military - who can hardly be said to experience an ideal work-life balance - or consider the emergency services in New York in the wake of hurricane Sandy, with all the reports of their heroic work and 24hour shifts.

Morale is different to motivation - it's a quality and an attitude that relates more to the group than the individual. Teams with high morale exhibit willingness, creativity, resilience and high levels of camaraderie and inter-personal respect. There is no doubt that facing a mutual danger or challenge with a clear sense of mission also helps.

Sadly work for many has become far more individually focused in recent years. People have their individual tasks, responsibilities and performance targets - and whilst the word team is liberally used in the workplace, there is often very little actual teamwork. A team meeting which discusses things and then hands out tasks for individuals is not really teamwork. Real teamwork is about facing challenges together and performing a task as a team - witness the military and emergency services again.

So I believe there's a strong case for bringing more real teamwork back into organisations again- and that many organisations have gone too far towards a culture of individual accountability. I had a job once as an IT manager for an oil services company - and I remember well that the closest we came to real teamwork was when disaster struck with the 1987 UK hurricane. Everyone rallied to rescue the computers and the valuable oil exploration records that we stored on behalf of major oil companies. There was a high sense of mission and the effect on morale was tangible for weeks.

I'm not saying that you need a disaster to build teamwork - but it's well worth looking for opportunities that involve people thinking, deciding, perspiring and doing together. Just talking and holding meetings somehow doesn't quite do it!

Team tasks that break down barriers between managers, staff and ranks are also important. This was very noticeable in Gareth Malone's recent TV programme about workplace choirs. In watching managers and staff singing together in the Royal Mail you could visibly see the change in morale.

If you take the time to create opportunities for real teamwork in your workplace I am sure you’ll reap the rewards.

Driving Higher Performance

Feedback loops are essential for the growth, development and regulation of every living organism. Without messages from one cell to another, none of our body processes would stay in kilter, we wouldn’t be able to respond to new challenges and any growth would be dangerously chaotic.

In many ways our growth and development as an effective manager or leader is similarly dependent on getting the right feedback. I recently came across research from the Corporate Leadership Council* looking at the top 10 ways to drive higher employee performance. One probably obvious but vital insight is that managers can drive or destroy employee performance – by around plus or minus 40%.

Top of the list for things that drive better performance is effective informal feedback. To be effective, the informal feedback should:

1. be fair and accurate
2. be from a source knowledgeable about the employee’s performance 
3. contain feedback that helps the employee do the job better

The greatest negative effective on performance was experienced when a lot of emphasis is placed on weaknesses in the employee’s performance of the job – rather than targeted on what the employee could do better.

Apart from the very important implications about how to train managers to give feedback and performance reviews, it struck me how important these lessons are for our own self-feedback loops. Every one of us experiences a degree of self-talk in our heads – for many it’s their greatest critic! This self-talk certainly qualifies as regular and informal feedback. But how well does our self-talk score in terms of accuracy, fairness, and being focused on how we could do the job better?

In my coaching discussions with effective leaders, I am struck by how well they manage their self-talk. They link their actions to clear outcomes and measure their own success in achieving these. Their inner self-talk is used to review their performance fairly, accurately and openly, aware that some things might have been done better another way. Most importantly, they give themselves the feedback they need to perform better without letting it dent their confidence in themselves.

So if we want to drive higher performance, a very good place to start is training our own inner voice to give us the quality of feedback we need: fair, accurate and focused on how we can do the job better.

* “Improving Talent Management Outcomes” by Corporate Leadership Council

The Flexibility Trend

Over the span of history there has been an undoubted trend of improvement to work-life balance. The average working person in the 19th century worked an estimated 60 hours per week, whereas today in the UK the average is 42.7 hours.  Maternity and Paternity leave are both enshrined in law and in April 2011 new legislation came into affect increasing the flexibility of entitlement for both parents.

In  the last two decades  there has also been a considerable increase in other schemes that positively impact work-life balance, such as flexitime, home working and part-time working. Today, some 26% of employees are estimated to make use of flexible hours arrangements, some 25% occasionally work from home and 27% of UK employees work part-time.  The figures for all these statistics were between 10 and 15% in the Eighties.

Yet despite these trends there are some significant imbalances. One in six UK employees works 60 hours a week or longer.  There are also significant imbalances between the public and private sectors, and between large and small businesses.

Many public sector organisations have a considerable amount of schemes to assist work-life balance. These include provisions for:

• Special leave including  bereavement leave, parental leave,  elderly or ill dependent leave
• Career breaks and educational leave
• Very flexible part-time work including term-time working
• Job sharing
• Time-off for community working

Whilst some larger private sector organisations offer a similar range of schemes, there are actually very few legal requirements for flexible working.  The employment act of 2002 introduced a parental leave provision whereby parents of children under 6, or disabled children under 18, are entitles to up to 4 weeks of unpaid leave each year.  For all parent of children under 16 you do have the right to ask for flexible working, and your employer must ‘reasonably’ consider it – but that’s about as far as it goes. The only other clear right that exists is for youths of 16 or 17, where employees must allow a degree or paid educational leave.

The argument for flexible working and other work-life balance schemes does have other potential benefits other than those for the employee.  Most surveys suggest there is an increase in morale, productivity and staff retention where employers offer good schemes. There are wider potential benefits too. The energy conservation benefits of home working as one example.

But despite the improvements in work-life balance schemes, there is still a long way to go. After all, 27% of people working flexibly leaves 73% of people who don’t, and 1 in 6 people working over 60 hours a week is 16%!

For any significant breakthrough or step forward there needs to be a mindset change, where employers challenge commonly held assumptions including:

• Part-time workers are less committed that full-time employee
• Job-sharing is impossible for important jobs
• Homeworking or teleworking makes it hard to monitor what people are doing
• It’s impossible to accommodate all these flexible working schemes if you’re a small  business

If these assumptions can be challenged and new models found, working life could be very different in 30 years time -  and if not we may well struggle to build an economy with more flexibility, less carbon emissions, greater employment and more social responsibility.   

The Ultimate Question

I’ve spent all of my career in marketing and one of the most interesting customer feedback mechanisms I’ve come across has been the Net Promoter Score.

Net Promoter is a customer loyalty metric developed by (and a registered trademark of) Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company, and Satmetrix.

It was introduced by Reichheld in his 2003 Harvard Business Review article "The One Number You Need to Grow” (which he later expanded into a book “The Ultimate Question”, 2006 HBS Press)

Companies obtain their Net Promoter Score by asking customers a single question - The Ultimate Question -  on a 0 to 10 rating scale: "How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?"

Based on their responses, customers can be categorized into one of three groups:

• Promoters (9-10 rating), 
• Passives (7-8 rating), and 
• Detractors (0-6 rating). 

The percentage of Detractors is then subtracted from the percentage of Promoters to obtain a Net Promoter score. A score of 75% or above is considered quite high. Companies are encouraged to follow this question with an open-ended request for elaboration.

Proponents of the Net Promoter approach claim the score can be used to motivate an organisation to become more focused on improving products and services for customers and to build ‘good profit’.

The potential downside of NPS, or any survey or feedback programme, is that if handled badly it can have a negative impact on customer loyalty. We’ve all had experience of being interrupted during a family meal or our favourite TV programme by a phone call from someone soliciting our feedback.

But there are ways in which surveying can enhance customer loyalty and Reichheld gives some examples:  

• At Harley-Davidson, for example, customers are treated like family members – they get phone calls only from recent Harley retirees (hired back part-time) who know the company and its products well and who are charged with listening closely to customers. Not coincidentally, these retirees generate deeper customer insights while also reinforcing the Harley culture and brand.
  
  
• At Southwest Airlines, president Colleen Barrett insisted that any employees who wanted feedback from a customer write a personal letter requesting that information and explaining what they intend to do with it. They must also write a thank-you to customers who respond, describing the actions that will be taken as a result of their feedback.

How many of you have examples along the lines of Harley-Davidson or Southwest? What about the other side of the coin? As always it is interesting to share and learn from others.  

Sense of Belonging

A couple of weeks ago I was the headline act at Wembley Stadium. Before you think “never heard of you”, I was part of a 1000 strong Choir at the Saracens Leicester rugby game. It was a wonderful, proud experience, singing alongside like-minded people who love to sing and it got me thinking about a sense of belonging and community.

In his 1943 paper, "A Theory of Human Motivation" American psychologist Abraham Maslow cited belonging as the third most important human need on his hierarchy of needs, after only physiological and safety needs. In a culture that values independence, we sometimes forget that our survival and ability to thrive depend on interrelationships.

It is a reality that we define ourselves by gender, race, creed, nationality, occupation, religion, abilities, hobbies, skills, etc. There are many ways to define ourselves and if you think about it, it mostly has to do with grouping. As much as some of us hate being categorised or stereotyped we do it all the time!  When asked what we do we answer our occupation. In that instance we are defining ourselves by our job.

Even if you see yourself as ‘a loner’, you are still a member of one group or another – family, friends, social media, organizational departments, the gym, your football club, your children’s class at school, etc. Some we enjoy and others less so, some we feel included in and welcomed into and others excluded from – which, as most of us know, is not a good feeling.

Community can help bring meaning and support into our lives but it can be a double edged sword. In some cases, the things that create the sense of belonging are negative aspects of being human; such as drug addictions, alcoholism and racism. Indeed, you can argue that much of what is wrong with this world revolves around either lack of belonging or the reverse - toxic groups and communities.

What is interesting and provides food for thought for all of us is scientific evidence that people with more social support and a sense of belonging in their support networks are less likely to experience depression (University of Michigan).

So spend a few minutes thinking about the groups you belong to. What do they give you? What do you get out of the group? And of course, what do you give to the group? Remember relationships are all about give and take.

I feel genuinely connected to my choir, not just because I enjoy singing or go with good friends, but also because we share a sense of pride and belonging. For me, community is important because a community supports the people in it. And to read in the sports pages of the Sunday Times the day after our Wembley Stadium appearance that “the choir looked great and sounded great” was just magic.

Returning to Work - A New Perspective

Summer holidays can really help in bringing perspective to your work.  Two or three weeks away from your daily routine gives you a distance from which to view things. In the atmosphere of a summer evening away work takes on a different perspective – you can see it as an important part of your life, but maybe not the most important part - and certainly not the all too consuming pressure that it can become when you’re in the thick of it.

Problems and issues at work loom large when you’re caught up in them everyday – to the extent that they can seem larger or more insurmountable than they actually are.  When you have mental distance from them they take on a truer perspective.   

The fresh feeling you get after the holiday break can recede quickly once you are back at work, but returning from holiday does give you a chance to take a fresh look at unresolved issues, challenges and opportunities - and bring a fresh perspective to them before continuing with business as usual. Imagination and creativity can work better after a break as well.  It may well be that solutions to problems come to light that you just couldn’t think of before the break.

Companies hire consultants to bring objectivity and a fresh outlook, which they can do simply because they’re not involved in the everyday business. Taking a break and coming back into work with fresh perspective gives you the chance to be your own consultant – and at a fraction of the cost! 

Many people get one other important realisation after a break, provided they’ve resisted keeping in continuous touch by mobile or email. They realise that the business went on quite well without them!

If that’s the case for you, take the time to consider whether you delegate enough. How did they cope without you? Who rose to the occasion? What opportunity did your absence give others?

So the message for this month is simple – use the benefit of your recent holiday break to put your work into perspective, to view it with refreshed eyes and to share the burden of your work with the people who filled in for you while you were away.

Look for the lessons - even when you succeed

In my last posting (Why Leaders Don’t Learn from Success) I described how success can lead to failure as individuals and organisations fail to learn as a direct result of their success.

As individuals we hold certain theories, models, principles and beliefs that guide our actions and our decision-making.

Sometimes these theories are quite sophisticated and rooted in science and in other cases they are pretty informal.

Learning is the process of updating our theories. We will typically challenge our assumptions, models and theories when something has gone wrong.

Failure provides a motivation for individuals (and organisations) to learn. This has been true from the time we first tried to walk or ride a bicycle. We fall down, it hurts and we try another approach.

An amazing number of high ranking executives report that early failures in their careers taught them lessons that ultimately led to their success. Without failure to provide the challenge, we need to challenge ourselves.

Here are five ways in which an organisation can learn from success:

1. Celebrate success but examine it - when a win is achieved, the organisation needs to investigate what led to it with the same rigour and scrutiny it might apply to understanding the causes of failure. This may be an uncomfortable process and it may reveal tha a company’s major success was due to good luk rather than good judgement. 
2. Institute systematic project reviews – Pixar, which has had 11 hit animated films in a row, conducts rigorous reviews of its production process. It religiously collects data about all aspects of a production and uses this to “stimulate discussion and challenge assumptions”. Staff don’t like doing them and would prefer to celebrate a film’s success, but Ed Catmull, Pixar President, sees the benefit of not becoming complacent. 
3. Use the right time horizons – In industries such as pharmaceuticals and aerospace, the development and feedback timeframe is long. It is critical to keep the appropriate time frame in mind when reviewing performance rather than focus on recent events. 
4. Apply the root causes of the success – replicating success is important but that does not mean creating a check list of all the things to do the same way the next time. Break down each process into “something we can directly control” and “something that is affected by external factors” and study those elements under direct control using such tools as Six Sigma. 
5. If it ain’t broke, experiment – in scientific research and in engineering, designs are subjected to ever more rigorous tests until the thing they are designing actually breaks. Organisational experiments can be conducted to push boundaries, provided the cost and impact are managed. 

The path to effective learning involves simple but counter-intuitive steps: Managers must actively test their theories, even when they seem to be working and rigorously investigate the causes of both good and bad performance.

Ironically, understanding success can better prepare you to avoid failure.

Engaging People in Tough Times

Employees feel engaged and deliver growth when they share a clear agenda and are using all their talents.  Leaders add true value when they communicate clear expectations, outcomes and boundaries to allow others to be successful. 

Right now we are all being asked to do more with less. Many corporate leaders have responded to the tough environment and huge uncertainties by:

• Cutting people and rewards – but not necessarily expected outputs
• Pulling decision-making upwards – to give a sense of control

These actions are very understandable but make it a difficult environment in which to keep people engaged and motivated. In the face of this challenge, managers need to step back and get very clear about how they create employee engagement.

The Business Benefits

Key to engagement is getting people to “buy-in” to the purpose of the work and feel connected with the outcome. This is simply stated in research findings from The Corporate Leadership Council in 2007 which showed that “Employees who can see a clear link between how their individual efforts relate to organisational goals … engage with the organisation and perform at their best. Increasing the connection between the employee’s work and the organisation’s strategy drives positive employee engagement and performance by up to 33%.”

When people are engaged and motivated you get:-

• Success without having to oversee every single detail
• Cohesion in a team
• The energy to overcome obstacles
• Things done faster, to a higher standard
• A positive, happy team
• New ideas and better processes

The 5 Key Principles of Positive Engagement

Creating engagement involves using 5 principles:

1. Start with creating compelling shared goals – involve people in this process directly
2. Be motivated yourself – your energy is infectious whether positive or negative
3. Understand what’s in it for them -remember that what motivates you might not work for other people
4. Gain the support of all your stake-holders – they affect whether staff believe it’s worthwhile or not
5. Give feedback - being clear about what is expected of someone is essential to stimulate engagement and performance.

Employee engagement is not something you can get a quick fix for but consistently using these 5 principles builds engagement with both the work and with you as the leader. That leads on to better outcomes for everyone.

Why Leaders Don’t Learn from Success

I was once fascinated by an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled ‘Why Leaders Don’t Learn from Success’.  To illustrate its point the article focussed on the case of the Bologna-based Ducati Grand Prix motorcycle team that entered the MotoGP for the first time in 2003.

Being a newcomer, it approached 2003 as ‘a learning year’ – a time to acquire knowledge that would help to develop a better motorbike for future seasons. To that end the team fitted its’ bikes with sensors to capture data on the bike’s performance and riders were asked to provide feedback at the end of each race.

Then something unexpected happened. The team finished among the top three in nine races and with each success the team focused more on winning and less on learning spending very little time analysing the data it collected.

In 2004 they decided to radically redesign the team’s bikes for 2004 rather than incrementally improve the 2003 model. At the end of 2004 they ended third overall which was considered a failure due to the team’s high expectations. Only then did the team examine the team’s approach to developing bikes.

Further research in entertainment, pharmaceutical and software industries saw the same phenomenon. There were three impediments to learning:

1. Making dangerous attribution errors – any number of factors may lead to success. In racing it could be the rider’s talents and decisions, luck, weather, bad riding by competitors. It is all too common for executives to attribute success to their own insights and managerial skills and downplay random events or external factors outside their control.
2. Falling prey to the overconfidence bias – Confidence is critical in business but success can make us believe that we are better decision makers than we are. Overconfidence can infect entire organisations causing them to ignore warning signs such as dips in customer satisfaction or increases in quality issues. Overconfidence amongst bank lenders has contributed to our current downturn.
3. Failing to ask why - success is commonly interpreted as evidence not only that your existing strategy and practices work, but that you have all the knowledge and information you need. When you’re confronted with failure it’s natural to ask why disaster struck – unfortunately success does not prompt such soul searching. Toyota’s drive in pursuing higher and higher sales blinded them to the fact that quality was being compromised. This was only revealed when it was forced to recall a number of its vehicles.

Success can breed failure by hindering learning at both the individual and the organisational level. Learning from success is a great challenge and, because it’s counterintuitive, maybe an even greater challenge to learning from failure.

Going For Gold

When facing an important occasion in your work – be it an important interview, a crucial negotiation or presentation - how do you prepare yourself to be able to give your optimum performance?

Watching the world’s leading tennis players this last two weeks at Wimbledon, there are some lessons that can be drawn about what it takes to excel when things really count.

The physical athleticism and technical skill aside it’s always striking to see that it’s the mental state, attitude and preparation that can make the all-important difference.

So why not draw some tips from the Wimbledon champions for whatever your next important match is?

Make sure you relax the day beforehand – you simply cannot work at pressure all the time and have enough in reserve when you have to tackle something that may demand everything you’ve got.

1.  As seen with Andy Murray’s coaching from Ivan Lendl – reduce the highs and lows of your emotional state. You may of course be nervous but don’t give way to over elation, anger or disappointment. Extreme emotions simply sap energy, take away from focus, and take time to recover from. Most importantly don’t beat yourself up!
2. Have a strategy and a game plan, but be flexible and be prepared to change and adapt if it’s not working.
3. Know your strengths and play to them, but be prepared to take risks at crucial times. Remember you’ve actually got to go for it – you can’t succeed with just a defensive posture.
4. Be prepared to go the distance. You may face setbacks but you need to have the wherewithal and resilience to turn things around when they’re not going your way.
5. Don’t project too far ahead. Stay with the next important moment because every small step counts.
6. Probably most importantly - have an utter and unassailable belief that you can do it.

These tips are not a guarantee that you can just step into the elusive “zone” but it’s unlikely you’ll find that zone without them. Part of the key is in not trying to do it yourself – but trusting in your systems and faculties -  and their capabilities, training and experience. We are at our best when our bodies, brains, mind, emotions and instincts are in harmony - all pulling in the same direction. When that happens the challenge for us is to let it happen and to ‘go for gold’.