Friday's Question
A Pause For Reflection
Action Orientation
In January 2021 we began posing a question every friday.
Our aim is to encourage regular reflection, provoke thought, share some perspectives and above all else be a catalyst for positive actions that help you, your colleagues and your organisation succeed.
Our Right Path
We need to have this feeling in place to consistently add value as the leader of a team, whatever the scale of our remit.
It’s hard to summons when we’re on a path we’re not so sure about.
We’re talking commitment. That state of mind of being dedicated to a cause or activity.
Success comes from our people wanting to deliver great results for themselves and our team.
And it comes from us being on a path that feels as right as it can reasonably feel for us.
That means we believe in the organisation, we feel comfortable with our colleagues and culture and we feel safe and trusted to do our best work.
Every slice of doubt compromises our ability to truly focus on what we need to do.
How Robust Is Our Process?
In my experience the successful teams cover four bases really well.
They aren’t perfect in each area but they cover these areas well enough that they are able to be successful.
The areas are People, Principles, Mechanics and Culture, hence PPMCLeadership™️, the basis of our programmes.
The first P is People and without the right blend and depth of talent our role as a leader is extremely difficult. Finding the right fit can be a challenge and fit cuts both ways, our interview process needs to be robust.
By its nature any interview setting is always contrived so how do we land on the right answer for all?
The tip in the video has helped me assess ‘the right fit or not’ over the years.
What approaches have you found helpful in your interviewing process?
But What About The Numbers?
It’s a question of our metrics.
Do our metrics help us?
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Mindset
Our mindset underpins everything we do.
Working on how we look at the world can have a hugely beneficial impact on our physical health and our ability to deliver great results in our work.
Whatever cards we’re dealt, good and bad, we still have a choice of how we look at those cards and what we do with them.
We are all pioneers. Nobody has performed our role, with our specific set of responsibilities, colleagues, opportunities and challenges before. It’s for us to write our own story by finding a way that works for us, our path to our success.
Our hunger to learn and to seek out new experiences of our own, and our drive to learn the experiences of others and then test new ideas and find what does and doesn’t work for us sets the platform for what we are able to achieve.
Mindset underpins much of what we cover in our programmes.
Customers
They may already be a buying customer but that in itself doesn’t necessarily mean that we want to continue to do business with them.
Our interests are not best served by engaging with every customer possible.
Some customers serve us well.
Others impact negatively on us financially, operationally and emotionally.
They drain our resources, attention and energy.
Culture
Does Our Organisation Answer Yes And Yes?
If we can answer Yes and Yes to the question in the clip we are in a great place.
Where Do We Stand In The Review Economy?
Without positive ones our business will not thrive.
And they are often a response to an experience of dealing with our people.
We’re talking reviews here.
We operate in a review economy and our culture is at the heart of the reviews we can expect to receive.
Our culture is the ways of our people.
The ways of our people are driven by how our people feel about our organisation.
For others to experience our organisation in a positive way, ways that inspire the positive reviews that help us move forward, our people have to have a positive feeling about the environment they are operating in.
What type of environment have we designed?
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Our Most Valuable Capital
The financial world consciously allocates capital.
As leaders the way we choose to invest in our people is the way we choose to invest in our future results.
How well do we invest in our people?
Put another way, how consciously do we allocate our most valuable capital?
The Next Positive Step
Every positive step takes us closer to where we want to be.
What's our next step?
Moving Forward Requires A State Of Mind
Yes moving forward is about action but it’s also about ambition and belief.
The video referenced here is a contemporary tale of ambition. Who know what the ending will be but I’m sure it’s going to be an interesting ride. I’m curious to see how it all works out.
If we don’t believe in ourselves and those around us how are we going to succeed as a team?
If we collectively park our ambition what future achievements will we miss out on?
To back ourselves we need to equip ourselves so please take some time to check out our programmes.
How Can We Add Value In Our Role?
Generosity is a good start.
Generously help others and others are far more likely to generously help us when we need their help and support.
Life is a team game.
Those that go out of their way to be unhelpful store up ‘trouble’ for themselves.
When we generously, perhaps unexpectedly, go out of our way to help others, even if we don’t know them, we feel great, we build friendships, we improve culture and we learn.
Generosity is a great value add.
How generous are we with our time, knowledge, skills and experience?
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Our Curiosity
Are we curious enough?
Do we ask enough questions?
Are we hungry enough to learn?
And curiosity extends beyond asking questions.
Do we try things out?
Purpose Led, Values Driven Clarity Of Mission, Vision & Strategy
Changing This One Thing Can Move Many Of Us Forward.
Some set out with clear intent but over time find themselves operating as something different.
Others aren’t sufficiently clear on what they are setting out to be.
The one thing is our set of principles.
Our day to day is made much easier when we are operating with absolute clarity and consistency on the principles that we are working to.
Having this in play paves the way for more empowered decision making and makes us easier to work with and for.
What specifically are we seeking to achieve?
Why are we doing what we are doing? Put another way, what are we here to positively contribute?
How do we want to operate along the way?
And are we committed to operating in ways that are consistent with those principles?
This applies to individuals as much as it applies to teams.
There’s much to consider when it comes to framing our team’s principles, each of our programmes give this important area the attention it deserves. They’re well worth checking out. That’s not what we say, it’s what others are saying through their use of adjectives like ‘extremely powerful’ and ‘thought provoking’.
How Do We Add Value?
A good start is to think of ourselves as a single one person business.
Who are our customers?
Who are our investors?
What do they expect from us?
How can we delight them?
A Financial Snapshot
When we operate in ways that enhance the financial value of our organisation, we enhance our value to our organisation.
In what ways do we add value to our organisation, both on and off balance sheet?
Can we articulate at a big picture level what a balance sheet is? Our CHRO, CTO and Growing As A Leader Programmes provide an overview as part of the content.
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Messaging
If our message isn't clear, then its hard for someone to buy whatever it is we are trying to sell.
A Commercial Lens On Procurement
Where will they take us?
Our suppliers, our partners.
We are the customer.
Have we done our due diligence?
Have they done this before or is our supplier learning in our business?
Would we be happy for our supplier to learn in our business?
Are we heading for a lockdown haircut?
Are the individuals assigned by our supplier to our project equipped to be able to help us change our situation for the better and in the way we want it to be changed?
How commercial are our own people in outlook?
Where will this choice take us?
How well do we diligence?
Check out our programmes designed to enhance commercial contribution. Our work has been described as ‘extremely powerful’.
How Do We Improve Employee Engagement?
The responsibility for this is shared in the following three ways.
Firstly our leadership team can choose to consciously design & construct an environment that creates the conditions for engagement.
Secondly, against a backdrop of our leadership team proactively fostering the conditions for engagement, every member of our team shares an individual and collective responsibility to make it work.
Finally we each have our own individual personal responsibility to review the context in which we are operating.
If an environment is right for many but not for us then maybe it’s time to move on.
We never operate in a perfect world of limitless opportunity but there are always proactive steps we can take to give ourselves the best chance of finding an environment in which we can be engaged.
We help leaders organise thoughts, identify steps to improve operations, craft high level plans quickly & help executives evolve their commercial outlook.
Our material has been described as ‘extremely powerful’, ‘very easy to consume’ & ‘a great asset’. Check out our programmes on this site.
This Fuels The Business Ecosystem
The success of much of what we do hinges on our ability to inspire others’ confidence in us.
To inspire others confidence, we ourselves must feel confident.
Too much confidence, hubris, drives a wedge between us and those around us.
We don’t want that.
But we do want to feel confident enough in our own abilities that, aligned with our credibility and modes of operation, we inspire the confidence of those around us.
So we back ourselves and move confidently forward with humility.
The more we know, can do and are exposed to, the greater the platform of confidence and credibility we can build for ourselves.
Change
It takes curiosity, diligence, boldness, creativity, great communication and willing heavy lifting.
We can appoint anyone we want to lead the project but if an appetite isn’t there for it then it’s never going to happen.
And if it doesn’t happen there’s a reasonable chance that in a few years we find ourselves playing a daunting catch up game.
We’re talking change.
Never mind heading to a new normal or reverting back to an old normal.
There’s never been any such thing as a normal.
Our planet is in motion.
We have to continually adapt.
Change has always been an imperative.
We rarely have to ‘transform’ though, focusing on proactive evolution can be a great strategy.
A change mindset is a key underpinning of our Growing As A Leader Programme, designed for those of us leading a business unit, operations, a department and even a smaller team.
Business Process Improvement, Why Wait For Others?
It matters yet it's often overlooked.
And it's a missed opportunity for all involved.
Those of us engaged in and around a process are well placed to know how to fix what needs to be fixed.
Why wait for others?
Taking the initiative is helpful, impactful and empowering.
Acquiring Knowledge While Building Relationships
Having this is place enables us to move towards opportunity.
The process of putting this is place establishes and cements relationships.
Without this in place the quality of our engagement falls short.
The more curious we are to learn about our own and other organisations, and the circumstances in which they operate, the more we are equipping ourselves to identify possibilities to add value both internally and externally.
Proactively constructing a solid foundation of relevant knowledge sets us up for success in any engagement.
The hungrier we are to learn from others the more we signal we respect and value them and their contribution and knowledge.
The process of striving to understand an organisation is a natural vehicle for us to establish and deepen important relationships that move each party forward.
How hungry are we to learn?
The content in our programmes has been carefully crafted to cover many bases including providing you with tools to help you understand, assess and analyse any organisation with which you engage.
We'd be delighted to have you join us for one of our programmes.
Adding Value As A Leader, A Business Lesson From Sport
On June 11th 2016 Wales began their 2016 European Championship tournament in Bordeaux.
It was Wales’ first major international football tournament in nearly 60 years.
Few expected they would go on to become the smallest nation to reach a semi final in the history of the competition.
The management team didn’t kick a football during the tournament.
Our work helps you put the pieces in place in your work.
Check out our programmes on this site.
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What underpins employee engagement?
Five years ago few predicted Wales would become the smallest nation to reach a semi final in the history of the European Championships, Europe’s international Football competition.
Few would have believed it could have been done.
This was Wales’ first major international football tournament in nearly 60 years.
How could this tiny country do so well on the big stage when it finally arrived?
It couldn’t have been done without the strong emotional underpinnning to the team’s physical achievements.
It couldn’t have been done without a massive level of both physical and emotional commitment.
People with both energy and ability are capable of delivering great results, sometimes extraordinary results.
Management fostered an environment that inspired a strong level of positive emotional energy.
Our work helps you find ways to foster environments that inspire positive emotional energy.
Check out our programmes elsewhere on this site.
The Road To Outperformance
It takes time.
It’s the consequence of careful thought, many intentional decisions and a lot of activity.
In my experience it’s never a fluke.
When we dig a little we find the foundation has been built over an extended period.
Outperformance takes a huge amount of hard work and there’s no such thing as an overnight success.
And it starts with today.
Selling To Business Leaders
The word means not completely or according to strict definition.
It can also mean not physically existing as such.
The word is virtual.
If it’s virtual, it still meaningfully exists.
Often we may formally have no team that we run.
But none of us work in isolation and all of us need others to help us succeed.
Whatever we do in life we find ourselves leading virtual teams.
Sometimes those teams include individuals that don’t work for the organisation that employs us, they may even work for a customer we are engaged in selling to.
Our ability to develop, lead, influence, support and add value to the myriad of virtual and physically existing teams that support us over the course of our career ultimately shapes our ability to succeed.
What Platforms Have We Designed?
What platforms have we designed to help us move forward beyond the pandemic?
Is our collective energy, our fuel, in a good place?
Each of us is running multiple teams, sometimes fleeting.
Formal or otherwise, consciously or otherwise, we are continually forming alliances to get things done.
Uncertainty, opportunity, resource constraints, anxiety and much to do are all likely in our mix today.
How consciously are we designing the environments we are relying on for our success in the months ahead?
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Keeping Them In The Loop
Shortfalls in this typically undermine our prospects of success.
A reluctance to do this often undermines the confidence of those around us in us.
But what do we do when we don’t have all the answers?
The ‘this’ referred above is communication.
Allowing uncertainty to prevail is damaging to our success and the success of our wider team.
Delay while we discover is rarely a good solution where we don’t have all the answers.
It’s usually more productive to openly and promptly share whatever it is that we can share.
Even the simple act of sharing that we don’t have clarity on something is helpful, particularly if we also share our roadmap to a clearer view.
The more openly we communicate what we can communicate, as soon as we are able to communicate it, the more likely we are to inspire the confidence of others in us.
Aspects of communication feature as one of the elements within each of our programmes.
A reluctance to do this often undermines the confidence of those around us in us.
But what do we do when we don’t have all the answers?
The ‘this’ referred above is communication.
Allowing uncertainty to prevail is damaging to our success and the success of our wider team.
Delay while we discover is rarely a good solution where we don’t have all the answers.
It’s usually more productive to openly and promptly share whatever it is that we can share.
Even the simple act of sharing that we don’t have clarity on something is helpful, particularly if we also share our roadmap to a clearer view.
The more openly we communicate what we can communicate, as soon as we are able to communicate it, the more likely we are to inspire the confidence of others in us.
Aspects of communication feature as one of the elements within each of our programmes.
Sector
This is one of the important areas where our hunger to learn can pay real dividends to both our own organisation’s performance and our own career prospects.
The stronger our knowledge of our sector and the various players and dynamics within our industry the more informed and of a better quality our decision making is likely to be.
For example when hiring there can be a tendency to think someone from our industry is always the best fit for a particular commercial role we have available.
The problem with this thinking can be that organisations in different positions within the supply chain often have vastly differing resources, priorities and cultures.
Having a strong knowledge and network across our industry equips us well both operationally and strategically.
The more enquiring we are of colleagues throughout our industry the more knowledgeable we become and through this process the stronger the relationships we develop.
The more we learn the more our confidence grows too.
Being hungry to learn about our sector is an important attribute for any of us seeking to add value in our role.
An important aspect of all of our programmes is to help you stand back and make big picture sense of an organisation whether operating internally or seeking externally to engage with that organisation.
Trial And Learn
Trial And Learn
We have to do this, practically we have no other choice.
And this often means taking risks and being prepared to park our preferred measurement mechanisms.
We can’t hold back and hope that nothing is changing.
Because what exists around us won’t remain the same for long.
Our world continually moves.
We go backwards when we don’t move forwards, doing nothing never means standing still.
Having the curiosity to try new things out, to do things a little differently and to see where it takes us, to see what happens, is key to our future success, our future existence even.
Return On Investment In Overheads
Both involve spending money yet they are often considered in different ways.
An asset is defined as a useful or valuable thing.
An overhead is defined as a cost or an expense.
Both involve financial outlay.
We often consider asset purchases in the light of what return they are expected to deliver for us.
Specific overhead items are often discussed in a context of operational necessity. The emphasis here is typically focused on the level of expenditure rather than the return that expenditure will deliver.
What if we were to apply an asset purchase lens to each item of overhead expenditure?
Is it possible we would then make some alternative choices in our allocation of funds?
Put another way, do we appropriately consider our return on investment on each item of our overhead expenditure?
Our work focuses on areas where we can improve our commercial contribution whatever our role in our organisation. From the CEO to the new recruit starting a career everyone has a commercial role to play.
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Data
We can’t avoid much of it but it can often pay to consider what we can avoid, and what we can streamline.
The more we retain the more we find we have to explain.
And our ability to explain it well shapes others’ perception of us, it shapes our career prospects.
The right level of data can help u drive decisions.
Too much data can serve to dampen performance by shifting attention towards analysing and away from doing.
It can also dampen our career prospects.
The more we have to explain the harder it is for us to explain clearly and succinctly.
Adding Value
How proactively do we do this?
And we really are the only person able to do this specific thing.
Each of us operates in a unique role at a unique time, ours is a unique situation.
Nobody else has done our particular role at this precise time in history, with this specific set of colleagues, organisational situation and wider economic circumstances.
We have unique pockets of knowledge and a set of past experiences nobody else in the world has.
What can we draw from this to help others?
What extra can we bring to the table to add value to those around us right now?
Email Overload
This is an area where every one of us has an opportunity to add value to those around us.
Often the easiest thing to do is over communicate and over share.
By resisting the temptation to email anything more than is absolutely necessary and only copying those who really need to know, we are delivering a helpful service to our colleagues and our organisation.
The burden of email and other messages is for many (perhaps most) overwhelming.
A widespread culture of email overload is a great practical opportunity for HR and Training to deliver ROI.
The numbers of emails circulating can be measured and our team’s perceptions of our internal email culture can be surveyed.
Steps can be taken to analyse the main areas causing a challenge, policies created and training rolled out.
The impact can be measured in the periods that follow.
In some cases at the root of excess email is a sense that employees have to cover themselves, a sense that the environment is not safe for them to do otherwise.
This is a problem in the culture that again can be investigated and steps put in place by the HR and Training teams in conjunction with the CEO.
The less burdened our people, the safer our people, the better our business results are likely to be.
Simplicity
The more of this we have to do the more difficult our work becomes.
It can be frustrating for all involved.
Explanation requires both time and energy.
The more difficult our idea, our proposition, our information is to explain, the more arduous the process.
The simpler the better.
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That Conversation
We may discover a way to improve customer experience, increase employee retention or enhance the leadership contribution we make within our organisation.
Perhaps we'll share resources, receive an introduction or learn a new way of looking at a common issue.
Maybe we'll better understand a flavour of customer, an industry or work practices with which we've previously been unfamiliar.
We could even find ourselves evolving a connection that over time grows into a longer term friendship.
We'll never know the outcome if we don't engage in that contact, that dialogue, that connection.
Business Partnering
Some are characterised by warmth and collaboration.
Some are characterised by friction.
Some are characterised by indifference.
The nature of interactions between departments reveals and influences a part of the culture that prevails in an organisation.
Our culture is our organisation's fuel.
It shapes the energy and enthusiasm with which we approach our work.
There's many ways we each can individually positively influence our organisation's culture.
What would happen to our culture if we each approached every interaction with a member of another department with the mindset that they are an important customer of our department's business?
How To Empower Middle Management
The better our analytics and the flatter our structures the more these roles disappear.
We all have a responsibility to help those affected, including those affected.
The days of industrial era hierarchical structures are on the wane.
The middle management turnstiling of taking orders from on high and passing them down to the team and taking information from the team and aggregating it to the top is ebbing away.
In the wrong hands it was anyway too passive, ineffective and, for many involved, a bit soul destroying.
There’s now less room for ‘it came from those upstairs’ or the distant relaying of events.
These roles are dissolving.
We thrive when we are able to, and do, make decisions and shape events.
The middle management layer roles that today thrive and have a prosperous future are those that operate at or close to the front line, supporting and coaching colleagues in serving customers.
Theirs is a role of service and decision making rather than of administration, observation, directives and information exchange.
Getting commercial and staying close to our people and customers is the reality of our time and it’s a great thing.
The more engaged we are with the realities of our business ‘on the ground’ the better the quality of our decision making and the more human our experience.
Our most senior leaders can help with clarity to help more of us thrive.
The existence of clear principles defined by a top leadership team that operates consistently with those principles is a true vehicle for the empowerment of all, including middle managers.
Decision making is much easier when we know where we stand.
4 Ways To Improve Business Performance
Big picture there are likely at least four distinct broad areas of opportunity for improving the performance of our respective businesses.
The first broad area is the environment in which our people operate.
This is key to unlocking additional employee engagement where shortfalls exist.
Based on surveys undertaken in recent years global employee engagement is low.
Could this represent a very significant collective under-utilised ‘off balance sheet’ asset in today’s business environment?
A modest improvement in engagement could be impactful in the context of our bottom line.
The remaining three areas are all about developing our people and are discussed in the video.
There’s three rather than a single group to reflect differing natures of roles.
We invest much on both recruitment and remuneration.
Yet the opportunities likely available to us with a modest investment in employee development is often overlooked.
Developing the commercial confidence and capability of many of our people could deliver significant upside.
If we’re cautious or not convinced then we can always experiment with care.
Simply the act of investing in this area has the potential to boost moral, engagement and loyalty.
If we never attempt to invest, we’ll never know what we’re missing.
Distance Is Costly
They hold our commercial fate in their collective hands.
Distance from them can be costly over time.
A business has much colour beyond a spreadsheet.
Distance may be the consequence of a lack of commercial confidence.
This is easy to fix by not holding back and instead being curious, studying, engaging, observing and building relationships.
An out there mindset enhances lives as well as results.
A good strategy for hitting our numbers is to focus on our people delivering the numbers.
Our people may be internal or external.
They can be found among our team, our customers, our suppliers and our partners.
Management involvement in resolving a problem sends a very powerful positive message.
We ignore our customers and our people at our future numerical peril.
How Can Learning & Development Support Strategy?
Its never a fluke.
Its always the happy consequence of a series of conscious actions.
Outperformance can never be guaranteed and the specific recipe is never the same yet there are recurrent ingredients.
There’s much a learning team can contribute when set up to succeed.
Clarity aids decision making and the learning strategy process.
Where it exists, a lack of clarity in organisational strategic planning makes life much more difficult for all involved, including learning professionals.
So the first priority of the leader of any team is to be clear on the cornerstone principles of our overall plan and these include our strategy.
How can a Learning & Development leader, in fact any of us, execute effectively and with as little friction as possible in an environment of uncertainty or confusion over our overall game plan?
Making The Best Of It
The points touched on in this video apply as much to experienced leaders as to first time ones.
Having to do it is a very different proposition from wanting to do it.
This applies to us in our role as much as it applies to those working in our team.
As a leader, assuming we are settled in and fully focused on our role, it’s natural we want our team to deliver the best.
At the same time we have to deal with reality.
Conditions don’t always allow us to deliver what we’d like to.
Our people are already fatigued and being at the delivery end of perfectionism can quickly tip them into much less productive contributors.
Our work (link above) helps evolve skills and mindsets to achieve the difficult balance of adding strategic and operational value whilst keeping things running.
Our work is based on significant operational experience.
These practical skills and mindsets are needed like never before.
Our first time leader programme is coming soon.
How To Be A Great Line Manager
It’s not always about what they do.
Taking a lead from others that we admire and respect is one of several great ways for us to add value to those around us.
Our impact is as much about what we choose not to do as it is about what we choose to do.
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Content
Rob's content is carefully crafted to be engaging and are centred on tools and methodologies developed by us based on the lessons of real world operational experiences. We have intentionally developed them to be straightforward and memorable for day to day use. They are frameworks for leadership, organising thought, operational execution, performance improvement and career management. Our programmes are also based on these ideas. The tools and frameworks include PPMCLeadership™️, The Three Levels Of Endeavour™️, The Four E's Of Communication™️, The Five Cornerstone Principles Of Planning™️, The CulturalVEST™️, The Natural Cycle of Team Success™️, The Seven Core Foundations Of The Confident Business Leader™️ and The Ten C's Of Outperformance™️.