Purpose

“Our work this year”

giantknave Brain Farts , , , ,

I regularly notice many service organisations1 communicate to the public with a list of facts that apparently demonstrate that their services are a good thing. This usually occurs at their reporting year-end and is titled something like “Our work this year”2.

I call this the ‘didn’t we do well!’ comms.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big supporter of the concept of services that help people….and, yes, I’d like to know what these services are doing and how well this is going.

The problem, for me, is with the conventional approach to providing the public with ‘the evidence’…which goes something like this:

“This year we:

  • handled x incoming contacts [calls, texts, webchats, emails….]
  • made x outbound contacts [calls, texts, emails, letters,…]
  • sent out x ‘things’ [advice leaflets, application forms, packs/kits, results…]
  • received x referrals
  • delivered x appointments
  • provided x services
  • paid out $x
  • supported x people to achieve [things]”
  • …and on and on and on

Every time I read such a set of facts (which is often funkily presented with fancy graphics and icons in carefully curated colours), I think “Okay, so you’ve done a lot of stuff this year, but…

  • is this good, bad or indifferent?
  • have you got better at doing this stuff? [#efficiency]

and most importantly…

  • does this stuff actually deliver valuable outcomes to those you are serving?” [#effectiveness]

In short, when I look at the funky comms served up to us, I cannot tell whether the services ‘did well’…or not.

A bevy of big numbers!

You might say “but Steve, look at those big numbers!”

And I’d respond that, okay, you answered 2,000,000 calls this year! Of course that sounds a lot to me – I probably only answered 200 calls on my personal phone in the same period.

The average person is going to find the volumes that an organisation deals with unimaginable to them because, quite obviously, the organisation is operating at a profoundly different scale!

The issue is not that the number is big – it should be! – but what has been achieved? which leads me onto…

Activity vs. Capability Measures

The vast majority of big numbers published are measures of activity – volumes of things occurring.

Such measures do not tell the reader about how capable the organisation is, or the wider system that it exists within.

I’m minded of the phrase of people being “busy fools”3. Yes, you might all have been extremely busy, but busy achieving what?!

Starting with the purpose of the organisation, or the system in question, what measures would inform us as to how capable it is in meeting it?

  • The purpose of an organisation is not to answer calls, send out forms, carry out appointments – these are activities.
  • The purpose is to deliver the necessary value (what the organisation was set up for).

A tortuous illustration4:

Let’s put ourselves into the shoes of a human that has a need…

  • We search online to see what services are available
  • We find an appropriate website but can’t work out if/how our specific scenario fits so we call the advertised ‘advice line’. We are talked through some info. and emailed a link to an online form… We use this link and attempt to digitally apply for a service but we soon find that we first need a ‘customer ID’, so we request one of these and wait…
  • The organisation receives our request to obtain a customer ID and this sits in a digital ‘task queue’, to be prioritised and allocated
  • In the meantime, we call the organisation’s contact centre to chase up our request for a customer ID. The contact centre agent finds our request in the ‘task queue’. They go ahead and create a new account for us and email our customer ID to us so that we can continue…
  • We sign in to the ‘App’ with our newly minted customer ID and continue with the application that we think meets our situation
  • We try to fill in a long and detailed form on the App – it’s a bit confusing so there’s plenty of household banter about what each question is asking for and why.
  • We get to the point where we call the organisation’s contact centre to check how to properly fill it in – we want to get it right because we really want our need to be met. After talking with (another) contact centre agent, we finally manage to complete and submit the form.
  • We are sent via text an appointment slot that we must attend to discuss our application
  • We can’t make this computer-determined day/time slot, so we have to call the appointment line to rebook to a slot that works for us
  • The organisation then sends a letter to us confirming the revised appointment details, and stating that we must bring various documents with us
  • We don’t understand the letter – it reads like ‘gobbledegook’ to most lay people – and so, given the elapsed time from ‘start to now’, we really need help…so we physically go to (and queue at) our local branch to clarify what the letter is attempting to say
  • ….I could go on and on and on

But I’ll cut to the chase to use the partial illustration above to hopefully make the point:

The organisation can count up all the activities, and report that:

  • their website had x hits
  • their ‘App’ was used x times
  • they took x calls
  • they created x new client accounts
  • they processed x application forms
  • they held x appointments
  • …and on and on and on

…and, yes, the hoards of activities show that they have been tremendously busy!

If, instead, we put ourselves in ‘customer’5 shoes and understand what matters to them6 in respect of the service meeting their need, we might come up with some potential measures of capability like the following:

What matters …meaning Potentially measured by…
Time It happens quickly: and

When I need it by

 End-to-end time from need first arising to its (customer defined) satisfaction

Whether the customer was disadvantaged by the time it took (e.g. missed an important event)
Easy It was obvious what to do, and how to get it right first time

It takes minimal effort to achieve

 Whether the customer managed to get the initial ‘value step’ right first time

The number of subsequent steps in the process to achieve the customer’s need7
Transparent I understand what’s going to happen and by when

I understand what has happened and why

 Whether the customer chased as to what is going on

Whether the customer queried what has been done
Appropriate/ accurate outcome It meets my need! Whether/ how well the outcome met the customer’s need

Now, measures like these would tell us interesting stuff!

I’d love to see capability measures8 for each and every service system that matters.

Further, I’d want the organisation to be using such measures so that they know how they are doing…rather than being blinded by those big ‘activity’ numbers.

Footnotes

1. Public services: including central government departments, local government councils, health services, education institutions, …etc. etc.

2. Examples: I’ve seen sooo many examples over the years and I could provide links to several. However, I don’t really want to ‘pick on’ any specific organisations – because the point is so widespread. Rather, can I suggest that you ‘keep your eyes out’ and see if you come across one in your world.

3. The brilliant header image is one angle of ‘The busy fool’ by artist John Clark. https://www.thestratfordgallery.co.uk/artists/john-clark/busy-fool/34975

4. The illustration: Just to be super clear…this is made up…though there’s an element of truth to all of it – coming from experiences that I’ve observed from various services over the years. Please note that I could have legitimately made it a lot worse!

Bear in mind that the poor customer in the scenario hasn’t even attended the appointment yet…there’s plenty more grief that can yet come their way…which will increase the ‘didn’t we do well’ activity measures.

5. Customer: generic for whatever is appropriate for the system in question – client, patient, student, traveller, detainee,…citizen, human.

6. What matters, and how best to measure against this, will be specific to each work system. It won’t be a generic set of attributes and measures that can be applied to everything. They need to be evidenced from understanding (studying) the customers of the given service.

7. Number of customer steps: My tortuous illustration lists 8 customer interactions…before they even have their interview.

8. Capability – The right measures: This post deals with the topic of ‘the right measures…’. Its twin topic is ‘…measured right’. A post on this would contrast the madness of binary comparisons (comparing two numbers) with viewing a measure over a period of time.

“Citizens face many front doors…”

giantknave Brain Farts , , , , , , , ,

Doors-Doors-DoorsGovernments all over the world want to get the most out of the money they spend on public services – for the benefit of the citizens requiring the services, and the taxpayers footing the bill.

Government officials regularly devise initiatives, and even new departments, aimed at getting their myriad of agencies to work better together.

However, looking at this from the outside, the media regularly uncover seemingly daft (and sometimes tragic) instances where government agencies have failed to effectively act, connect and co-operate with each other. In such instances, each agency appears to ‘the person on the street’ to have been wearing blinkers with their ‘common sense’ radars turned to ‘exceedingly low’.

But is it right to lay blame on the agencies or, worse, the people acting within them? In the majority of cases, I’d suggest that the answer would clearly be ‘no’. We should be looking at the bigger ‘whole of public service’ system that they are designed to operate within.

A new phrase was termed some years back called ‘Joined up government’. The Oxford dictionary defines it as:

“A method of government characterized by effective communication between different departments and co-ordination of policies.”

When a dictionary defines a word, it usually provides the reader with an example sentence showing its proper usage. In this instance, the first example sentence given is a negative one, as in:

“There is an obvious lack of joined-up government here” (Oxford Dictionary)

i.e. Governments openly recognise that there is a big problem (a lack of togetherness)…and that they would love to ‘solve’ it…but it’s regularly in the ‘too hard basket’!

The purpose of this post is to share (what is to me) an important (and very well presented) 30 min. video by Jeremy Cox1: Budget Management and People Centred Services that nicely explains, by way of reference to a real case study, the ‘multi agency’ problem and how to go about changing it.

If you are interested (particularly if you work within the public sector) then I’d expect that watching it should be a worthwhile (and thought provoking) use of your time.

Right…if you’ve got to here then I’ll assume that you’ve watched the video…the rest of this post pulls out (what I believe to be) key things said by Jeremy Cox in his presentation (blue italics below) and my ‘wrap-around’ narrative.

Note: What follows is incomplete and not a substitute for watching the video. It’s just an aide-memoire so that I (and you) don’t have to watch the video every time to pull out the key points or discuss it with our colleagues.

Jeremy Cox starts at a summary level by walking us through “four critical steps”:

1. The first thing to do is to study your system…and, just to be crystal clear, YOU (those responsible for the system) have to study it, and do so WITH those who operate it. A consultant cannot do this for (i.e. to) you2.

“You have to go and study because if you see it with your own eyes, you can’t deny it. If someone ‘tells you’, then you can ‘rationalise’ it away quite easily.”

2. From studying your system, you can then see and understand the effects of (supposed) ‘controls’ on its performance.

3. Only when we understand (at a root cause) WHY the system operates as it does, should we redesign…because then, and only then, is such a redesign based on meaningful evidence…as opposed to the usual ‘conventional wisdom’ or ‘current in-vogue ideology’;

and finally:

4. Devise new measures, and move to a new model of leadership.

Cox then goes into each step in some detail.

Going back to Step 1: Cox talks about studying demand.

HelpHe takes us through a case study of a real person in need, and their interactions with multiple organisations (many ‘front doors’) and how the traditional way of thinking seriously fails them and, as an aside, costs the full system a fortune.

“Understand demand in context….don’t understand people from the point of view of your organisation, understand the person and what matters to them about living a better life.”

The case study is sad…and yet not really a surprise – we all kind of know that it’s true. It shows the huge power of following some cases around the full system.

In explaining Step 2, Cox opens up the madness within silo’d (i.e. single department) thinking, which is driven by their ‘budgetary controls’.

Rules of playHe identifies three survival principles in play, and the resulting anti-systemic controls that result:

a) “We must prioritise [our] services for the most in need” which leads to attempts to stop entry into the service, and then the requirement to break through escalating thresholds of eligibility.

Such ‘screening out’ logic creates the following madness: “Your case isn’t serious enough yet…go away until things get worse!”

b) “We must stick to what we do” which leads to “I can see that you need A and B for you to get better…but, here, we only do A.”

Cox gives a real example of an alcoholic with depression being turned away by mental health practitioners because “we don’t work on alcoholism – you need to solve that first and then come back with your depression”. We can predict that such unhelpfulness will lead the needy citizen towards a rather large drink!

c) “We must limit service delivery” which leads to attempts at closing cases, doing things on the cheap, and setting time limits…all of which are about pushing things through at the expense of the needy citizen…which will lead to failure demand (probably popping up unexpectedly in another department…and therefore not seen as linked).

The redesign at Step 3 requires different principles.

IntegratedCox makes the obvious point that the actual redesign can’t be explained up-front because, well…how can it be -you haven’t studied your system yet!

…but, generally, it is likely that “genuinely integrated, local-by-default problem solving teams will emerge from [following the steps]”.

A clarification: ‘Genuinely integrated’ doesn’t mean a multi-disciplined shared building where people regularly come together for, say, case review meetings…and then go back to their ‘corners’ and work to their existing (i.e. competing) policies and procedures.

A nice test from Cox:

“How do you know a team is genuinely integrated rather than co-located?…All you have to do is look in the fridge – nobody’s written their department’s name on the milk!”

And so to Step 4: New measures and new leadership

shovelling sand with a pitchfork[Once you’ve successfully redesigned the system] “The primary focus is on having really good citizen-focused measure: ’are you improving’, ‘are you getting better’, ‘is the demand that you’re placing reducing over time’.”

Notice that these measures are about the purpose of the system (i.e. for the citizen), and NOT about the activities performed within the system. It’s not about the volumes of calls taken or visits performed or payments made or cases closed or…[carry on naming activities].

“You have to shift leaders from managing the budget top-down to adding value to the process of studying, and improving outcomes for individuals.”

The point here is that you are never done. The outcomes from a redesign can radically shift performance, but you’ll quickly be ‘back at square one’ if you haven’t grasped the WHY and don’t ‘kick on’ to yet more learning, and yet more improvement – becoming better every day – for the good of citizens, and (importantly) for the pride of your employees.

To close

What’s most interesting to me from the video is the graphic explanation of one unit of demand, a needy citizen in a really shitty situation, being bounced around – presenting at public service ‘front doors’ in multiple and seemingly unrelated ‘cases’, with each agency doing what they can but not what is required….and the needy slip ever further into their personal quagmire.

“We limit what we do to ‘what we do’, not to what the person needs.”

Cox makes the hugely important point that, once you open your mind, then the study and redesign of the work is relatively easy. The hard bit is re-conceiving the ‘system of management’. This takes real leadership and (perhaps most importantly) self-development.

Cox closes with the following comment:

“Some of the most rewarding work that I have ever done is just working with these integrated teams who are out…on the ground, with good leadership, learning how to solve problems for citizens. You actually see people’s lives turned around and people who otherwise would have been dead who are now still alive.”

This is powerful stuff! There can’t be much more meaning to anyone’s working life than that.

Footnotes:

1. The video covers one session within a ‘Beyond Budgeting’ event run by Vanguard Consulting over in the UK. The first 3 mins. is an introduction from John Seddon, and then Jeremy Cox (a Vanguard consultant) presents the rest.

Note: Cox refers to names of UK government departments (e.g. The DWP). If you live elsewhere in the world then you are likely to have similar agencies, just with different names.

2. A consultant cannot do it for you: I should clarify that an experienced ‘systems thinking’ coach CAN facilitate you through studying your system and its redesign….BUT they aren’t ‘doing it’ – you are!

I have a post with the ink half dry that explains and expands this point called ‘Smoke and Mirrors’. I guess I should get on and finish it now.

3. The NZ government is setting up a Social Investment Agency. Its “focus is fundamentally about changing the lives of the most vulnerable New Zealanders by focusing on individuals and families, understanding their needs better, and doing more of what is most likely to give the best results”. I like the intent.  I hope that those involved watch (or have already watched) the Jeremy Cox video, and consider the messages within.

Slaughtering the ‘Sacred Cow’

giantknave Brain Farts , , , , , ,

moo-cowI’ve written enough posts now to ‘write a book’ 🙂 …so it’s about time I dealt with a seemingly sacred cow – the ‘Balanced Scorecard’.

Context

First, I’ll delve into a bit of history…

Robert Kaplan and David Norton performed a research project back in 1990 in respect of measuring organisational performance.

It was based on the premise that:

  • An organisation’s knowledge-based assets1 were becoming increasingly important;
  • The primary measurement system remained2 the financial accounting system; and
  • Executives and employees pay attention to what they measure and, therefore, were overly focused on the (short term) financials and insufficiently on the (longer term) intangible assets.

balanced-scorecardThe outcome of their research project was the concept of a Balanced Scorecard of measurements (and, of course, the accompanying Harvard Business School (HBS) management book).

This retained the organisation’s financial measures (as historic results) but added three additional perspectives:

  • Customer;
  • Internal Business Processes; and
  • Learning & Growth.

The last two were said to represent the lead indicators of future financial performance.

The Balanced Scorecard quickly gained traction in many corporations. This was helped by many a ‘big consultancy’ cashing in3 on the lucrative ‘implementation’ revenue stream.

Version 2.0

Over a decade later (2004) Kaplan and Norton then took things further by linking strategy formulation and execution to their measurement ideas and came up with the Strategy Map concept (and, you’ve guessed it…an accompanying HBS management book). I imagine that this was for two reasons:

1. They saw some improvements to/ holes in the original idea;

…and with my cynical hat sat jauntily on my head…

2. They now had an adoring following that would buy the sequel which, as ever, sets out:

– the big idea in detail;

– a set of carefully curated case studies; and

– instructions on how to implement ‘the big idea’ in (on?) your organisation

strategy-mapThe ‘Strategy Map’ turned the four quadrants of the balanced scorecard into a linear cause-effect view (see picture)

The idea went that the desired financial outcomes would be stated at the top, which would then be achieved by reverse engineering down the strategy map to the bottom.

Thus, through setting objectives from top down to bottom and using measures, targets and action plans (involving initiatives with business cases and budgets), the desired outcome could be achieved.

Wow, that all looks really cool – neat looking and oh-so-complete! Doesn’t it?

So why the ‘Sacred Cow’ reference?

Well, many (most?) organisations feverishly adopted the Balanced Scorecard/ Strategy Map tools and technique as if it were common sense. Indeed, some 20 years later, it has become ‘part of the management furniture’. Unquestioned…even unquestionable.

However, I believe that there are a number of serious problems within…so let’s consider whether that proverbial sacred cow deserves to be slaughtered…

There are two angles that I could come at it from:

  1. The thinking within the Balanced Scorecard/Strategy Map logic; and
  2. How organisations typically implement these ‘big ideas’.

It would be too easy to shoot at how organisations typically implement them (i.e. how they might have bastardised it4)…and you could easily accuse me of ‘cheap shots’, saying that these aren’t Kaplan and Norton’s fault. So, instead, I’ll critique the foundational logic using four headings.

Here goes…

1. Measurement:

The foundation of Kaplan and Norton’s logic is that we must have measures if we are to manage something…and this is regarded as conventional wisdom…but here’s a counter-quote from W. Edwards Deming to ponder:

“Of course visible figures are important but he that would run his company on visible figures alone will in time have neither company nor figures. The most important figures are unknown and unknowable but successful management must nevertheless take account of them.”

His point is that we seem to be obsessed with trying to measure the effect of a given change (usually to ‘claim it’ for some recognition or even reward), but that we cannot accurately do so…and it is a mistake to think that we can. Sure, we can likely determine whether a change is having a positive or negative effect on the system (and thereby try to amplify or dampen it) but we cannot isolate the change from everything else going on (internally or externally; occurring right now, previously or in the future)

Deming went on to provide some examples of ‘important but unknowable’:

  • The multiplying effect on sales that comes from a happy customer, and the opposite from an unhappy one;
  • The improvement of quality and productivity from teamwork (across the horizontal value stream and with suppliers);
  • The boost in quality and productivity all along a value stream from an improvement at any activity upstream;
  • The loss from the annual rating of people’s performance (the time taken by everyone to perform this process and, of far greater concern, the resulting de-motivation and relational damage caused)
  • …and so on

Deming famously wrote that “it is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth.”

feedback-cartoonExample: Can I manage how employees feel? Yes, by how I behave.

Should I become obsessed with measuring employee feeling through those dreaded culture surveys? No!!!!

…just continue to manage how people feel – by constantly and consistently applying simple philosophies such as the most excellent “Humanity above Bureaucracy” (Buurtzorg).

Leave the constant crappy ‘surveying of the obvious’ to those organisations that (still) don’t get it.

The balanced scorecard was derived because of the major limitations of purely financial measures. However, we should not assume that such a tool is a definitive answer for what we need to manage.

Indeed, it causes damaging behaviours – with management wearing blinkers when focusing on the scorecard “because we’ve tied all our management instruments into it and therefore that’s all that counts round here.”

The highly limited and ‘helicopter view’ scorecard becomes a major part of the ‘wrong management system’ problem.

2. Balance:

This word is used as if we need to balance our focus on the four different quadrants, playing one off against the others as if they are counterbalances to keep in check.

But this isn’t the case. If we did a little bit of, say, learning and growth (e.g. developing our people) and/or customer focus but then said “whoa…steady on, not too much…we need to balance the financials” then we aren’t understanding the nature of the system….and we certainly don’t ‘get’ cause and effect.

cause-and-effect

A metaphor for business to help explain the point:

Let’s suppose that you keep breaking out in a nasty skin rash.

You could pour ice cold water on it, apply a lotion or scratch it…until it bleeds (ouch).

These actions might appear to alleviate the effects…but they are also likely to make things worse…and none of them have considered (let alone dealt with) the cause!

If you continue to ignore the cause and just treat the (currently visible) effects, things could escalate…with new effects presenting…complicating any necessary treatments…causing long lasting or permanent damage…and even death.

If you want to get rid of the rash…and keep it that way (and perhaps even improve your skin complexion and wider health)…then you need to focus your attention on its cause:

  • are you reacting to something you are putting on your skin?
  • what about something you eat, drink or otherwise introduce into your body?
  • maybe it’s something else more complicated?

And once you’ve worked out the likely cause(s) then you need to do something about it.

You work on the cause (such as stop using that brand of sun cream or stop eating shell fish or…stop injecting heroin!!) whilst checking whether it is working by observing the effect (what the likes of Seddon and Johnson would refer to as ‘keeping the score’).

You don’t think “mmm, I’ll balance the cause and the effect”…because you understand the glaringly obvious definitions behind the words ‘cause’ and ‘effect’

“Cause: A person or thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon, or condition

Effect: A change which is a result or consequence of an action or other cause.” (Oxford Dictionary)

Okay, back to that Balanced Scorecard/Strategy map thingy and a cause – effect journey:

  • mgmt-cause-and-effectSenior Management’s beliefs and behaviours determine (i.e. cause) the management system that they choose to put into effect and (often stubbornly) retain;
  • The management system creates (i.e. causes) much of the environment that the people work within (effect);
  • The work environment is the foundation of (i.e. causes) how people act and react whilst doing their jobs (e.g. whether they are engaged, innovative, intrinsically motivated…or not);
  • How people act influences (i.e. causes) how processes are operated and the nature, size and speed of their evolution (whether by continuous or breakthrough improvements);
  • How processes operate and improve creates (i.e. causes) the outcomes that customers experience…and tell other potential customers about (i.e. as advocates or detractors);
  • Customers (whether they buy from, and advocate for us or ignore, avoid and slag us off) determine (i.e. cause) whether we stay in business.

The bl00dy obvious point is that THE FINANCIALS ARE THE EFFECT! So why are we so focused on them, other than to keep the score5.

…or, in a short, snappy sentence: This isn’t something to be BALANCED!!!!!!!!

The ‘balanced’ word keeps people tied to a ‘manage by results’ mentality, rather than managing the causes of the results such that the results then look after themselves.

What winds me up even more than the balanced bit is….wait for it…applying % weightings on the four quadrants5….usually with the financials (yes, the effect) getting the lions share!

That’s like saying “We’ll focus 75% on scratching the rash but only 25% on taking fewer heroin injections”. Aaaargh!!!

Now, you might respond to me by saying you believe that Kaplan and Norton understood the problem with the ‘balanced’ word…which is why they, ahem, ‘refreshed’ their logic with their ‘Strategy Maps’ book.

The problem with this is that they didn’t attack the results thinking, they merely added to it and, as such, many (most?) organisations continue with balancing and weighting…and spectacularly missing the point.

3. Key Performance Indicators vs. Capability:

kpi-statusOkay – let’s suppose that senior management accept that measures aren’t everything and that we shouldn’t be balancing (let alone weighting) things – I hope that we can all agree that some “right measures, measured right” (Inspector Guilfoyle) are going to be very useful…

…and so to the next whopper problem – the “measured right” bit.

Nothing (that I have seen) within the Balanced Scorecard/ Strategy Map logic reflects on, let alone deals with, the hugely important subject of variation and the need to always visualise measures over time.

Management simply use a set of KPIs on a ‘scorecard’ and look at their red down/ green up arrows against last period and/or their traffic lights against budget.

This is to completely ignore the dynamics of a system, and whether such movements are predictable or not….and therefore whether any special attention should be paid to them.

The Balanced Scorecard/Strategy Map approach can therefore create a set of Executives exhibiting the ‘God complex’ (as in “I have the answer!”) whilst being “fooled by randomness” (Taleb) – blissfully ignorant of the capability of their value streams (or processes within) and doing much damage by tampering.

and last, but by no means least…

4. Strategy vs. Purpose:

The underlying assumptions within the Balanced Scorecard/Strategy Map thinking would appear to be the conventional ‘shareholder value’ view of the world.

(I’ve previously written a 5-part serialised post on what I think about this….so I won’t repeat this here)

We get fed a feast of:

In short: The core problem (for me) with Kaplan and Norton’s two books is that, not only do they retain the problematic traditional command and control management system, focused on delivering shareholder value – they use it as their foundation to build upon.

It’s therefore no wonder that organisations carry on as before (doing the same crappy stuff), whilst waving their supposedly game-changing ‘Strategy Map’ around a lot.

Have you got hold of that cow? Good…now where’s my ceremonial knife?

To end: ‘having a go’ at me because I’m being so negative

You might shout back “okay you cynic…what would you do instead?!”

Well, I’m not going to be able to answer that in a paragraph – even Kaplan and Norton took two (rather verbose) books…and more than a decade in-between…to present their logic – but I’d suggest that, if you are curious, the 130+ posts on this site would go some way to expressing what I (and I believe my giants) think.

…and if you want to start at measurement then you might want to look here first.

Footnotes:

1. Knowledge based assets: Kaplan and Norton list the following as examples of assets that aren’t measured and managed by financial measures: employee capabilities, databases, information systems, customer relationships, quality, responsive processes, innovative products and services.

2. Measurement system remaining financially based: H. Thomas Johnson’s book ‘Relevance Regained’ makes clear that it wasn’t always so. Financial measures used as operational measures (a bad idea) only came into being from the 1950s onwards. Johnson refers to the period 1950s – 1980s as the ‘Dark Age of Relevance Lost’ and ‘Management by Remote Control’. I would argue that many an organisation hasn’t exited this period.

3. Big consultancies ‘cashing in’: I can (sadly) write this because I have first hand evidence – I was there! 😦

4. Bastardising the Strategy Map includes organisations changing the order of the four elements!!!

5. Financials: There’s a HUGE difference between a) using financial measures to keep the score (which would be good governance) and b) attempting to use them to make operational decisions! Using financials to make operational decisions is to attempt to ‘make the tail wag the dog’.

Yes, accountants should keep the score, for cash flow monitoring and assisting with longer term investment decisions…but accountants should not be attempting ‘remote control management’ of operations.

6. Weighting the elements of the scorecard: See, for example, fig. 9.8 in ‘The Balanced Scorecard’ (1996) and the related commentary.

7. Diversity: I understand that the cow is a holy animal to some. Please don’t be offended by my use of an English phrase in expressing my thinking – no real cows were harmed in the writing of this post…and no harm is intended to those living now, or in the future 🙂

 

“Why is your proposed change so profound?”

giantknave Brain Farts , , , , , , ,

knot-systemMy recent serialised post titled “Your Money or your Life!” proposed that every ‘large corporate’* should make a meaningful change…that would be for the good of all.

Wow, that would be great!

* Where ‘large corporate’ is short form for ‘controlled by free-floating short-term thinking shareholders’.

I got thinking (as is often the case after pressing the ‘publish’ button) about readers thinking:

“Erm, okay – interesting perspective –  but why is the suggested change supposedly so profound?”

…and this caused me to question whether I had got the ‘this is a potential game changer!’ point across.

Note: What follows is relevant when considering ANY proposed change, not just the contents of my last post!

And so to a ‘systems thinking’ explanation:

First, a definition:

“A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organised in a way that achieves something.

If you look at that definition closely for a minute, you can see that a system must consist of three kinds of things: elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose1.” (Donella Meadows)

Going back to an organisation (yours, mine,…wherever) as a system to ponder:

  • The Elements are pretty obvious – they include the people, the products and services offered, the physical buildings and resources, lots of intangible pieces (distinct departments, teams within) and so on…;
  • The Interconnections are the “the relationships that hold the elements together” e. g. the physical flows of work, the business policies and guidelines, external laws and regulations, the communications (including the gossip!), and flows of information (signals that go to decision or action points…which may or may not trigger reactions);
  • The Purpose of a system, whilst essential, is often hard to see (even if you think you know what it is!):

 “The best way to deduce the system’s purpose is to watch for a while to see how the system behaves…Purposes are deduced from behaviour, not from rhetoric or stated goals.”

 What you see may be very different to what you are told.

…and so, if you want to change an organisational system, presumably through a desire to improve (and even transform) it, then you have three “kinds of things” to play with.

Taking each ‘kind of thing’ in turn:

Elements

 “Changing elements usually has the least effect on the system.”

Using rugby and the All Blacks to illustrate the point: The coaches can change one or two players but, if they keep everything else the same, then not too much will change.

Now, sure, some elements may be very important (perhaps the introduction of a brilliant goal kicker) but, even then, the worth of such a change is hugely constrained by the rest of the system.

You might change ALL the elements (e.g. players) but if you keep the interconnections (such as the game plan, methods of communication, information sharing, the environment of trust and respect…) and purpose the same, then very little change may occur.

dan-and-richieA positive example of this phenomenon: The All Blacks won the rugby World Cup in 2011 and 2015, making them the first team ever to achieve ‘back-to-back’ rugby World Cups.  They did this with a core of extremely influential world-class players3…who then promptly retired!

The world rugby media wondered how the All Blacks would rebuild, given the apparently gaping holes these players would leave. Many a pundit envisioned dark days ahead.

And yet a few weeks ago (on 22nd Oct 2016), despite introducing many new players, the All Blacks broke the world record for the number of consecutive international games won against ‘Tier one’ rugby nations (18 games). In short, rather than going backwards, they have ‘kicked on’ to even higher levels.

Their purpose and interconnections have clearly been shown to be stronger than the elements (e.g. players).

To the world of work: and organisational ‘restructures’. If you re-jig your hierarchical structure, changing the departments and faces within, but keep the methods of interconnection (the management system) and the underlying purpose the same (whether profit or political ideology), then not much has really changed.

“A system generally goes on being itself, changing only slowly if at all, even with complete substitution of its elements – as long as its interconnections and purposes remain intact.”

Further, you may have convinced yourself that your problems were ‘because of’ individuals…but consider that you may have ‘cut out’ the symptom and not the cause. If you don’t learn from this then you can expect another (costly) restructure in maybe 12 months time…and again…and again.

Interconnections

 “Changing interconnections in a system can change it dramatically.”

chris-robshawSo, staying with rugby, let’s move to the English national team.  In contrast to the All Blacks, they have had two terrible World Cups.

In 2011: they travelled to New Zealand and were awful (I know – I watched them!) They were heavily criticised for their attitude, and off field behaviour – they acted as if they were on an all expenses paid holiday…and, in the end, they were! The coach (Martin Johnson) resigned.

In 2015: they had home advantage – hopes were high. The whole of England was supporting them…but they exited the competition at the pool stages – the first time in their history. The coach (Stuart Lancaster) resigned.

So how has 2016 gone? Well, they’ve played 9, won 9…which includes:

  • achieving the Grand Slam (which they haven’t done for 13 years);
  • a 3-0 tour whitewash of Australia (a rare achievement); and
  • rising to be ranked 2nd in the World (from 8th)…just behind those mighty All Blacks.

So what’s changed? Well, England appointed a new manager (Eddie Jones)…but he has stuck with the core of previous players (those elements).

Instead of wholesale changing of the elements, he’s changed the interconnections – how they work together – resulting in players that had become labelled as ‘bad boys’, ‘past their best’ and ‘donkeys’4 being reborn, putting in controlled, consistent and herculean performances.

We don’t yet know whether the change will be long lasting…but it has most definitely been profound.

Back to the world of work: Perhaps the best known modern(ish) example of keeping the elements but changing the interconnections has to be NUMMI:

General Motor’s Fremont car plant was one of the worst performing plants in the whole industry, with high costs, low quality and terrible worker relations. GM closed the plant in 1982.

Toyota, wanting to start production in America, struck a joint-venture agreement with GM and the Fremont plant reopened as NUMMI in 1985. They rehired 85% of the original workforce (who still belonged to the Union – considered by GM as a serious problem). After taking 100s of the workers over to Japan to experience totally different thinking (involving a high degree of meaningful worker interacting), these learning’s were put into practise and the factory went on to produce the lowest cost, highest quality cars within its first year!

“Toyota took a bunch of [apparent] F Players, retrained them, put them into a great system, and magically they became superstars.” (Pfeffer and Sutton)

In short: Changing from a command-and-control management system to one that better understands systems and people will be dramatic.

Purpose

“A change in purpose changes a system profoundly, even if every element and interconnection remains the same.”

So, to switch from rugby to football: There’s an annual knockout competition in English Football, known as ‘The FA cup’. First played in 1871, it is the oldest football competition in the world. There is something rather magical about it because, given that it is open to any eligible club down to level 10 of the English football league system, it allows amateur minnows to mix it with the millionaire mega-stars…and, every now and then, create an upset – a minnow becomes a giant killer!

I searched for a game between a low-league minnow and a 1st division giant…and came up with Wrexham vs. Arsenal back in 19925. Both appeared to have had the same purpose – to win the game – but I suggest that their true purposes were rather different (and not so obviously stated).

Arsenal’s stars were probably trying to keep themselves injury free, to focus on other important matters – win their league (the 1st division) and perhaps get into their respective national sides (it was European Cup year)….and maybe avoid the embarrassment of defeat.

wrexham

In contrast, every man in the Wrexham team was aiming to become a legend!

Wrexham won 2 – 1. The crowd went nuts!

But here’s an interesting point: Wrexham, the giant killing minnow, went back to their low-league competition the following weekend and drew 0 – 0 at home with Maidstone United. Maidstone who? Exactly! The same players and staff, same coaching system, same methods of communications…different purpose!

This example, I hope, serves to illustrate the point that a (true) change in purpose will be profound, even whilst retaining the same elements and interconnections.

To the world of work: Even better than a transient change in purpose (like Wrexham’s), would be a permanent one!

…and so we finally come to that ‘profound point’ from my recent serialised post: long-term profit sharing. Bringing ‘Live Money’ into an organisation permanently changes its purpose, for the good of all…which would lead to experimentation with new interconnections…which would reinvigorate the elements (or at least naturally sort through those that fit vs. those that wish to pursue something else).

All in all – a profound change to the system. It would be…well…‘Transformed’.

To close: So, what if your ‘leader‘ changes?

Let’s say your organisation hires a new CEO – an element, but a central one. Everyone’s chattering about this ‘big change’…but will it change much?

The answer is “it depends”.

It will depend upon whether the leader understands systems and people (through education and experience, or perhaps instinctively)…because:

  • if the new leader goes on to change interconnections and, even better, the (actual) purpose then transformational change will likely occur; but
  • if that leaders attempts change merely through changing the elements (new people, new departments, a new IT system, some new products and brands….) then not much will actually change.

Changing the interconnections relates to the management system.

Changing the purpose relates to why the organisation exists, and for whom.

…and I hope I don’t need to say that a fancy new ‘purpose statement’ doesn’t, of itself, change a thing!

Footnote:

1. The word ‘Function’ is generally used for non-human systems and ‘Purpose’ for human systems.

2. Quote source: All quotes (unless otherwise stated) are taken from the excellent book ‘Thinking in Systems’ written by the late Donella Meadows (a giant to add at some point).

3. All Black players that retired after 2015 rugby World Cup:

  • Richie McCaw (148 caps): Regarded by many as the greatest ever rugby player, Most capped rugby player of all time, 3x World Rugby Player of the Year….and his accolades go on and on;
  • Dan Carter (112 caps): Regarded by many as the greatest ever no. 10 (fly half) player, Highest international test points scorer of all time (1,598), 3x World Rugby Player of the Year…and on and on;
  • Ma’a Nonu (103 caps) and Conrad Smith (94 caps). Most successful mid-field pairing;
  • …and other great players: Kevin Mealamu (132 caps), Tony Woodcock (118 caps)

4. England players: If you are a rugby fan then I’m referring to the likes of Dylan Hartley (‘bad boy’), Chris Robshaw (‘has been’) and James Haskell (‘donkey’). Sorry chaps…but this is what you had seemingly become!

5. FA Cup Giant Killing Context: Wrexham came last in League 4 the year before (i.e. came 92nd out of all the 92 league 1 – 4 clubs). At the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Arsenal won League 1 (i.e. came 1st out of these 92 clubs).

6. Explaining the main post Image: The system is made up of ropes (elements), knots (interconnections) and purpose (what it is intended to achieve)….which may be to look pretty or to hold a heavy load.

7. Clarification: This post is NOT saying that purpose is the only lever you should focus on. It is merely explaining the likely impact of working on each type of lever. We should be working on improving all three ‘kinds of things’ and, being a system, they are all related!

Chapter 2: “That’s what WE do!”

giantknave Brain Farts , , , , ,

Okay, so to recap, in Chapter 1 I took you back 100 years to consider the visionary Henry Ford and his foundational philosophies. I know he wasn’t a saint, I know he didn’t ‘solve the worlds problems’ and I know that he was lucky to be the right side of a technological disruption…but there’s bucket loads to learn from him.

what-peple-say-and-doThe ending of Chapter 1 was about Money power and, in particular, the idea of Dead Money provided by professional financiers – people focused on profit.

Now, I can almost hear any and every ‘large corporate’ executive, after reading Ford’s words, shouting back that “yes, yes, YES” – they understand ALL of this…they don’t run the business solely for profit…and this is why they have a rather wonderful Purpose Statement!1

To those ‘large corporate’ executives that would protest that they are ‘at one’ with Henry, I would reply with Stafford Beer’s acronym POSIWID, which stands for ‘The Purpose Of the System Is What It Does’.

To better explain this point I will borrow from my earlier post on this point:

“There’s a BIG difference in what we might like the purpose of our (organisational) system to be and what it actually is!

You can say that the purpose of the system is [XYZ] until you are blue in the face but, if this isn’t what it actually delivers, then by point of fact it ISN’T its (current) purpose.”

Every time I hear the ‘purpose’ words and then see the conflicting profit actions, I have to go and have a lie down.

Ford’s words are profound2 and agreeably fit with what has subsequently been written/said by all those giants I referred to in my earlier post ‘Oxygen isn’t what life is about’.

Here’s the summary from this post:

  • “You can state a purpose….but you’ve got to actually live it to move towards it;
  • An organisation’s purpose should NOT be ‘profit’, even though this outcome is necessary for the system and those that finance it;
  • If you think it’s the other way around i.e. that you need to state a purpose so as to chase profit, then you are likely to fall a long way short of what you could achieve…and will put your long term survival at serious risk;
  • A focus on short term profits and results for the market will likely destroy unknown and unknowable value.

For those of you who think ‘what a load of hippy liberal rubbish, of course it’s all about the shareholder’, here’s a really nice quote to consider from Sam Walton (founder of Wal-Mart):

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

…how would those shareholders feel if their investment became worthless?”

i.e. Purpose is above profit…and you can’t just say this – it has to be so.

We seem to have a problem with understanding the ‘purpose isn’t profit’ thing.

So, what’s the difficulty here? Why can’t we fix this? What might be the cause?

And so to Corporations

shareholder-demandsIf you’ve not read it then I heartily recommend a well written book by Ha-Joon Chang (Economics Professor at Cambridge) called ’23 Things they don’t tell you about Capitalism’3.

‘Thing 2’ is that “Companies should not be run in the interest of their owners”.

Now this will likely confuse most people, provoking responses like “…but isn’t this a building block of capitalism?”

And yes, in Ha-Joon Chang’s words, here’s what we are told:

  • “Shareholders own companies. Therefore, companies should be run in their interests. It is not simply a moral argument…;
  • Shareholders’ incomes vary according to the company’s performance, giving them the greatest incentive to ensure the company performs well…;
  • If the company goes bankrupt, the shareholders lose everything, whereas other ‘stakeholders’ get at least something. Thus, shareholders bear the risk that others involved do not.”

Okay, that looks pretty cut and dry in favour of the shareholders – so what is he on about?!

…but here’s what they don’t tell us:

  • “Shareholders,…as the most mobile of the ‘stakeholders’, often care the least about the long-term future of the company;
    • On mobility: whilst shareholders can sell their shares in the blink of an eye, the other stakeholders (customers, employees, suppliers and even the lending banks) have far higher barriers to untangling themselves
  • Consequently, shareholders, especially but not exclusively the smaller ones, prefer corporate strategies that:
    • maximise short-term profits, usually at the cost of long-term investments; and
    • maximise the dividends [and share buy backs] from those profits, which even further weakens the long-term prospects of the company by reducing the amount of retained profit that can be used for re-investment.

 Running the company for the shareholders often reduces its long-term growth potential.”

This could just as easily be Ford talking about ‘Dead money’!

short-termismHa-Joon Chang goes on to tear apart the 1980s principle of ‘shareholder value maximisation’ (I won’t reproduce his critique here…but it is well worth reading4).

He concludes that “[shareholders] ease of exit is exactly what makes [them] unreliable guardians of a company’s long-term future.”

Jack Welch (then CEO of General Electric) was the darling of the ‘shareholder value maximisation’ ideology…and it seemed to work really well for the large corporations…until it all inevitably came crashing down5.

Welch, many years later, reflected in an interview with a financial journalist that:

“Shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world…

…Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.”

…and, whilst it’s good that I can use this quote here, I find it convenient (to put it mildly) that Welch utters these words after he has extracted his $$$ millions from the corporation he pillaged and the ‘Guru Management’ books he sold…and now earns yet more $ from the reflective books telling us it was such a dumb idea!

“So are you trying to argue that we shouldn’t have limited liability companies?!”

llc-pros-and-consNo, I’m not.

They have been rather useful to our societies in enabling large, risky and capital intensive ventures that, whilst important, wouldn’t have happened without risk sharing – e.g. large-scale industries such as the railways.

Prior to their existence, a business person had to risk everything (including the shirt on their back) in order to carry out business…and if they failed then it was off to debtors prison.

The idea of a limited liability company was invented back in sixteenth century Europe (known as a joint stock company back then)…but, due to constraints imposed upon them, they didn’t come into general usage until the mid nineteenth century.

So why might society have wanted those constraints? Well, they didn’t trust them! Even Adam Smith, often referred to as ‘the father of economics’, said the following:

“directors of [limited liability] companies…being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they would watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in [their own business] frequently watch over their own.”

So, the idea of limited liability? – Yep, this is definitely of use to society.

But the idea of purely dead money in a business, or even of it being the master? – No, this is not healthy, for the business, for society or (for that matter) those free floating shareholders caught holding the dead money when the music for the ‘short-termism’ pass-the-parcel game stops.

The music stops when the business fundamentals bite…and they always do.

What about those businesses that buy businesses that buy businesses?!

fish-eating-fish-eating-fishDon’t they need barrow loads of private financier’s money?

…and so back to a lovely Henry Ford quote to close out this chapter:

“What seems to be a big business may be created overnight by buying up a large number of small businesses.

The result may be big business, or again, it may be just a museum of business, showing how many curious things may be bought with money.

 [True] Big business is not money power: it is service power.”

Many a big corporate has used dead money to pursue a strategy of mergers and acquisitions…and has often destroyed so much value in the process….and, after licking its wounds (and perhaps the convenient ‘retirement’ of those involved) has repeated the same mistakes, again and again.

A business becomes successful because of service power, not because it took actions that merely made it big.

The point is that ‘big is not beautiful’, service is beautiful…which will likely lead to a growing business. Cause and effect.

So…this chapter considered the likely protests from ‘large corporate’ executives that they are doing exactly as Henry implored…and why it’s really not as simple as that. In fact, if we look at the idea of ‘shareholder value maximisation’ then Henry’s definition of Dead Money appears to fit oh-so-well.

This is all very interesting…but what if this is just how it has to be! Chapter 3 will consider whether executives can do anything about this, for the good of the organisation.

Update: Link forwards to Chapter 3

Footnotes:

1. I reflect that Simon Sinek’s excellent TED talk covering ‘Starting with Why’ has done extremely well in making its way around the world.

2. If you are a manager lecturing people as follows:

“We are here to make money and to [meet our purpose], in that order!…because if we don’t make money, we can’t [meet our purpose]”

…then PLEASE re-read and really think about what Ford (and the others) are saying.

Your ‘money comes first’ lecture is a classic case of ‘the tail wagging the dog’.

3. Anti-capitalism? Just in case you think Ha-Joon Chang, and perhaps I, a Communist, here’s a few lines from his concluding chapter:

“My criticism is of free-market capitalism, and not all kinds of capitalism….There are different ways to organise capitalism. Free-market capitalism is only one of them – and not a very good one at that…..so, capitalism, yes, but we need to end our love affair with unrestrained free-market capitalism, which has served humanity so poorly, and install a better-regulated variety.”

He goes on to set out eight principles to have in mind in redesigning our economic system.

4. Shareholder value maximisation: If you don’t want to buy Ha-Joon Chang’s book (it’s bloody good!) but do want to delve a little deeper in respect of “the dumbest idea in the world” then here’s a Forbes article that does similar.

5. General Electric: They became infamous during Welch’s tenure as masters of ‘legal earnings manipulation’ so that they always hit their earnings projections…and this was over a period of decades!

However, their underlying business didn’t look so hot when the pressure came on in the two crashes of the 2000s. Their share price (see graph below) tanked from $41 in Oct 2007 to $7 in March 2009.

ge-share-price-chart

 

Where’s the meat in your sandwich?!

giantknave Brain Farts , , , , , ,

sandwichI came across a LinkedIn ‘research’ report that had been shared on a social media platform the other day. It had a grand title:

The 2016 Workforce Purpose Index: ‘Purpose at work – the largest global study on the Role of Purpose in the Workforce.’

Mmmm, sounds interesting. And, wow, ‘largest global study’ – must be important – I’d better have a read…and so I did…and then I found myself doing a bit of frothing at the mouth. I do that when stuff winds me up…I’m okay, honest 🙂

Now I am absolutely NOT getting at the person who shared the ‘report’, or any persons liking or positively commenting on it. Just to clear up any potential confusion at the start: I totally agree that the premise of ‘purpose at work’ is to be ‘liked’….and in fact passionately argued for. An earlier post uses an Ackoff essay to explain why this so.

But here’s some other stuff that I thought as I read through the ‘report’:

Helpfulness?

The introductory pages deliver the usual ‘listen up people – purpose matters’ message. This is, for me, like the ‘Buy low, sell high’ advice – blindingly obvious…but not particularly useful.

Profit?

And so to the page on “Purpose brings profit”: Yes, I agree with this…but, at the risk of repeating my ‘blindingly obvious’ mantra, this shouldn’t really be surprising i.e. if you passionately understand and serve your customers with what they actually need (this is fundamentally different to ‘selling to them’), then you have a high chance of success. Simples.

What the report fails to tackle, let alone drive home, is that many organisations get their logic ‘in a twist’ i.e. their (subconscious?) thinking is that ‘If we craft, and then regularly, state a cool-sounding purpose, then we can focus on our real purpose of profit.’ This is NOT what ‘purpose brings profit’ means!

A focus on growth and profitability doesn’t unlock purpose – indeed it will likely do the exact opposite. This isn’t to say that you can’t grow and be profitable. Of course you can. It is to correctly state the cause-effect relationship between a fanatical focus on a meaningful purpose (cause) delivering sustainable and healthy growth and profitability (effect).

Again, I’ve written about the ‘what and why’ of this previously in a post titled ‘Oxygen isn’t what life is about’.

People?

To quote from the report:

“Key Finding: Given the right role and environment, [people] are ready to tap into their purpose and reach a higher potential at work”.

Now, I absolutely agree with this statement but I get sick of, what I consider to be, the spectacularly obvious being dressed up as a ‘finding’. This is ‘McGregor 101’: How you treat me will determine a massive amount of how I behave.

And so to the next quote:

“this correlation of satisfaction at work and purpose orientation was consistent in virtually every country and industry studied.”

This is where I write “No sh1t Sherlock!” That would be because we are all humans – which is a nice segue to Dilbert, and the Theory of Evolution.

Capt obviousIt’s a bit like all those scientific research projects spending scarce grant money to confirm that ‘water quenches our thirst’ or ‘alcohol gets us drunk’ or [insert one from today’s supposed news].

The trouble, for me, with stating the obvious but missing out the important contextual piece is that organisations then run away shouting “oooh, quick, quick…we’ve got to find our purpose! Let’s gather round and play with some words.”

And they spectacularly miss the point.

Purpose driven?

So let’s get to the nub of my critique: The report implies that there are three different types of people*, these being those who are primarily:

  • Purpose-driven; or
  • Status-driven; or
  • Money-driven.

They then follow this line of reasoning with….have you guessed it?…the recommendation to search for and select purpose-oriented ‘talent’.  It even suggests adding the ‘what is your primary drive?’ dimension to an organisation’s talent selection criteria 😦

The hilarity of this is that they may recruit lots of (currently) purpose-driven people…and then kill it. It’s the same old talent message – don’t endlessly seek talent, recognise and tirelessly work to unleash the talent from within.

So, back to the ‘research report’: sure you can ask someone to respond to survey questions as to which category they currently associate themselves most with (i.e. purpose, status, money)…but where is the consideration as to WHY someone might answer as they did.

* are they ‘types’ of people….or are they outcomes that people have arrived at or been driven to?

Some examples:

  • how many of you started a new job with passion and purpose, but within 6 months – 1 year, had been beaten back to surviving on merely the money and seeking some status to get noticed?
  • how many of you started your ‘careers’ focused on getting on the ladder and earning enough money to gain a roof over your heads and have a family….and how many of you have reached a certain level of wealth and/or experience where your priorities have changed?1

To conclude:

Yep, purpose is important.

Yep, I can’t really disagree with the blindingly obvious littered throughout the ‘report’.

…but if the report were a sandwich, it is bland, limp and empty – where’s the important and insightful stuff that needed to be said?

In short, where’s the meat in the sandwich?!

Does this matter? Well, yes, it does. The problem with such reports is that they allow the top management of traditional (‘command and control’) organisations to gleefully wave them about, shouting “nothing to see here – we know all of this and, even better, we’ve got it totally covered!”

Total codswallop.  As I wrote in an earlier ‘Blackadder’ post, a report is only valuable if it covers what needs to be said, not what they want to hear.

The report spectacularly misses the huge point that:

“People’s behaviour is a product of their system. It is only by changing [the system] that we can expect a change in behaviour.” (John Seddon)

What sort of system environmental things am I talking about? If you read Deming’s 14 points for management you will get a good idea. At a high level, let’s compare two environments and then you tell me which would enable you to focus on your purpose and which would see you struggling to survive through status and money:

Traditional A better way!
Hierarchical (authority…superiority) ‘Social’ (responsibility, equality)
Fear/ blame Trust/ ‘safe to fail’
Rules and consequences Guidance and support
Growth and Profitability Customer, customer, customer
Budgets, financial measures, cost cutting ‘Purpose’ operational measures, variation
Implement ‘best practise’ on the people (plans) Problem solving by the people (experiments)
Cascaded personal (or team) targets Value stream capability measures
Judgement, through rating and ranking Coaching, through non-judgemental feedback
Carrot and stick compliance Intrinsically motivated
Incentives Profit sharing
Competitions, and hero (people) awards Collaboration, and achievement focus
… …

 Whether a person can (will) be purpose-oriented is hugely down to the environment in which they work. Simples.

Footnotes

1. This is rather obvious: take your pick from ‘Herzberg’s Motivators & Hygiene factors’ or ‘Maslow’s hierarchy of needs’.

2. I ‘get’ that LinkedIn are merely trying to drum up business by suggesting we all need to find ‘talent’ but….grrrrrr.

Oxygen isn’t what life is about

giantknave Brain Farts , , , , , , , , ,

LungsI often hear people talking about the need for profit and that my thinking must address this fact. I respond that it does, but not as they might think. This post tries to explain.

There are two types of ‘for profit’ organisational thinking, both of which consider that profit is necessary…and there the similarity ends.

Type 1: Considers profit as the overall goal and purpose of the organisation ‘at any cost’;

Type 2: Perceives profit as necessary for the organisation’s survival, but not its reason for existence. Profit to such an organisation “will be seen as breathing is to a human organism, but not what life is about.” (H. Thomas Johnson)

The difference in management systems and outcomes for these two types of thinking will be profound.

Below are a number of convergent viewpoints from key thinkers backing a ‘Type 2’ view on profit:

________________________________________________________________

Aaron Dignan, in his talk on the operating model that is eating the world, explains the over-riding importance of purpose. He uses the examples of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Tesla (and many other highly successful organisations operating beyond traditional 20th century western management thinking) to explain that:

  • It’s not about the money, it’s about the mission [purpose]. The idea of putting values above revenues is really important and defines how powerful that purpose can be!
    • Put another way, placing profit above your stated purpose means that it usurps this purpose.
  • The leaders of these organisations, such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, make this very clear to the market: “This is our mission, it’s long term, if you don’t like it, get out of our stock”.
    • This message is very useful for the company and potential investors – it provides transparency; allows the company to focus on what it is actually trying to do; and it allows prospective and existing investors to make clear investment decisions…it also provides them with a high degree of confidence in the organisation.
  •  Playing a long game is a really good sign that an organisation has its purpose screwed on tight. They’re not playing to the (financial reporting) quarter or to ‘the man in the street’, they are playing to the purpose…and that means that they might have to make long term bets and let things play out and then cash out over time.

Cause and effect: If you truly focus on purpose, the effect will be a highly successful organisation (and happy investors).

________________________________________________________________

Sir Richard Branson has a very clear philosophy on priorities : “put your staff first, customers second and your shareholders third”. This is the complete opposite of the traditional view, but there is a simple yet profound logic within which Branson says “should go without saying and it’s surprising that it still doesn’t in many organisations”.

Put simply, if the people working at your company are 100% proud of the job they are doing, are given the tools to do a good job, are treated well and (consequently) are proud of the brand then they are going to truly look after the customer.

Cause and effect: The shareholders do well because the customers do better because your staff are (truly) happy.

A caveat: Don’t think that you can hoodwink your staff (i.e. with words, ‘canned fun’ and/or bribes) into thinking that they are ‘first’ if this is not so…they will see right through such a facade.

A reality check: If your people aren’t proud of what they do/ where they work then you have a problem with your priorities.

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Mike Rother, in his book ‘Toyota Kata’, sets out an interesting historical perspective of how we arrived at the traditional 20th century (Western) management approach. In it he quotes Alfred P Sloan (President and then Chief Exec. and Chairman of General Motors between 1923 – 56) as saying:

“We are not in the business of making cars, we are in the business of making money.” *

You might come back at me and say, “well he’s right isn’t he? We might ‘say’ our purpose is ‘xyz’ but it’s actually about the money.”

To this, I would say that we need to recognise that customer, employee and investor make up necessary components of an organisation’s system and, going back to harmony or cacophony, we should understand that we can’t put one component (e.g. investors) above the others and expect it to be good for the system. In fact, to do so will cause unknown and unknowable harm to the system.

We need to understand the system and its purpose and then act in such a way as to derive a win/win/win scenario….which goes back to Dignan’s point about purpose and Branson’s point about priorities.

Cause and effect: Optimising the system will be good for all of its components over the long term.

A caveat: If you ‘say’ it’s all about purpose but underneath it all it isn’t then don’t be surprised at your inability to move towards it. This is a classic case of POSIWID.

* Note: General Motors made a 2007 financial loss of US$38.7 Billion and, after running out of cash soon after, entered ‘Chapter 11’ bankruptcy in 2009. After selling off or discontinuing many brands, it emerged as a new company with new management and financial bailouts from both the US and Europe, with a net cost to US taxpayers (to date) of US$12 Billion.

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Thomas (Tom) Johnson, Professor of Accounting and author of the book ‘Profit beyond measure’ wrote in an article on the excellent ‘Lean Edge’ site that “financial results such as revenues, costs and profits are by-products of well-run human-focused processes”.

He goes on to make the following comparison:

“…the Toyota people in Japan who founded and grew the company down to the 1990s saw the company as a disciplined organization of ’employee/suppliers’ whose purpose is to serve ‘customers’ in a way that earns sufficient profit to ensure the long-term survival of the organization. 

…those of us from the West, on the other hand, for the past 30 to 40 years have viewed the purpose of business as making profit, by any means considered legal.

…the contrasting view held by Toyota people who founded and built that company from the 1950s to 2000 considers that a business exists to provide opportunity for humans to exercise their inherent creativity in gainful employment serving needs of other humans. The people who held that view saw the purpose of the business to be continuous improvement of a system designed to enable humans to serve other humans gainfully and sustainably”

It’s interesting to note that there are plenty of organisations around the world (Dignan refers to some in his video above) that have understood the ’cause and effect’ of Toyota’s view i.e. that everyone (including investors) does well if an organisation sets out and truly pursues its purpose, with its long term success being the outcome.

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And finally, if we go back to Simon Sinek’s ‘start with why’, he makes some things very clear:

‘Why’ is not about profit…that’s just an outcome:

“By why, I don’t mean to make a profit, that’s a result. By why, I mean what’s your purpose, your cause, your belief? Why does your organisation exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning and why should anyone care?”

You can’t just state your ‘why’ (your purpose). It actually has to be what you believe! If your actions are about profit over your stated purpose then this evidence will be seen, taken on board and acted upon accordingly:

“…what you do serves as the proof of what you believe.”

People ultimately follow leaders for themselves. If the actions of those leaders do not align with the beliefs of the workers then don’t expect them to follow:

“We follow those who lead, not because we have to but because we want to. We follow, not for them but for ourselves.”

Finally, there’s a really important point implied but not explicitly stated by Simon Sinek: The leaders of an organisation need to provide the environment, through an appropriate management system, that enables the purpose and does not frustrate it.

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In summary:

  • You can state a purpose….but you’ve got to actually live it to move towards it;
  • An organisation’s purpose should NOT be ‘profit’, even though this outcome is necessary for the system and those that finance it;
  • If you think it’s the other way around i.e. that you need to state a purpose so as to chase profit, then you are likely to fall a long way short of what you could achieve…and will put your long term survival at serious risk;
  • A focus on short term profits and results for the market will likely destroy unknown and unknowable value.

For those of you who think “what a load of hippy liberal rubbish, of course it’s all about the shareholder”, here’s a really nice quote to consider from Sam Walton (founder of Wal-Mart):

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

…how would those shareholders feel if their investment became worthless?

Note: The above raises a ‘big hairy question’ – There are many corporate forms…but which ones help and which ones hinder an organisation’s ability to truly live its stated purpose? This is something that the world’s politicians and financial markets are currently grappling with. Here’s an interesting ‘Economist.com’ article about this.

Starting with ‘Why’

giantknave Brain Farts , ,

Sinke quoteMany an organisation spends a great deal of time and money on the re-branding band wagon. Some outcomes are good, others not so good…and many fit into the ‘huge waste of money’ bucket.

One area that has come up for this  ‘re-fresh’ treatment over the last few years is an organisation’s purpose statement and I suspect that this has a lot to do with the success of the hugely watch-able’ ‘start with why’ TED talk (and related book) by a chap called Simon Sinek back in 2010.

Sinek is a passionate and persuasive orator. If you’ve not watched it before (or if it’s been a while) then I’d highly recommend you spend the 18 mins. to watch it.

Now, what strikes me most about this very insightful talk is Sinek’s comparison between the Wright Brothers and Samuel Pierpont Langley (their main competitor in the flying race).

Two questions I ask myself:

  • Do you think that the Wright Brothers started by crafting a crisp clear ‘Why’ statement, and they then needed to continually look at it to motivate themselves and those around them? I doubt it, they didn’t need to.
  • Do you think things would have been different if Samuel Pierpont Langley had sat down with his corporate advisors* (perhaps at the point that they were struggling to advance) and, after a bit of deep word smith-ing, they had come up with a great ‘purpose’ statement?…because, wow, that now changes everything…erm, NOT!

[* As a quick segue, here’s a wonderful short skit by Dan Heath about what happens when a committee get together to write a corporate statement.]

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that I ‘get’ what Sinek is saying and I agree that, for an organisation to be really successful, it needs to be very clear on its purpose …but there is a chasm between stating (and oft repeating) a catchy ‘purpose’ statement and living and breathing what it means (and removing the obstacles in its path).

There is also a ‘rub’ between an organisation stating a meaningful purpose and it being funded through investors with likely different motives*.

[*I’ve got a post ready to go on this – it will be ‘next cab off the rank’]

Finally, how does an organisation’s fresh and contemporary ‘Why’ statement impact/ fit with/ replace their old purpose statement? It is highly likely that the issue wasn’t with the old one. I think the issue (which remains) will likely be with how the organisation works.

To repeat the end of my recent ‘Principle of Mission’ post:

It doesn’t matter how clearly [any] leader articulates intent if their people don’t want to follow.

Setting out a clear and meaningful purpose is but one (key) part of the overall system. The rest comes down to management’s beliefs and behaviours, and the environment that this creates.

The bit that blew me away from Sinek’s talk is the following:

“Those who [truly] ‘lead’ inspire us, whether they are individuals or an organisation…we follow, not because we have to but because we want to…we follow not for them but for ourselves.”

If an organisation really wants a win/win/win (for employee, customer and investor) then it needs to start with the employees, to provide an environment where they are working towards the purpose*, not for the money but for themselves.

* Addendum: Beware POSIWID.

The Principle of Mission

giantknave Brain Farts , , , , , , ,

NapoleanSo I’ve written a few posts to date about ‘purpose’.

This post explains a related term, ‘Principle of Mission’, by taking us back through military history (sadly the source of much of our breakthrough learnings).

The phrase ‘Command and Control’ as applied to the common form of organisational management is associated with the military and how they traditionally functioned.

I expect most of you have seen some classic war films/documentaries of a bygone age and you can paint the picture of the following scene in your mind’s eye:

  • A large area of land, perhaps outside a castle/ fortified town or out on the plains;
  • Various units of men drawn up in formations on either side
    • perhaps divided into infantry, cavalry, archers and artillery (where the technology available would depend on the age – from catapults through to cannons);
  • …and a small huddle of officers up on a hill (and a safe distance from ‘the action’), surrounding their General seated on a white stallion.

The General has an objective and a detailed plan of how he is going to achieve it!

“Roll cameras, action”, and we see the General giving orders (Command), watching the melee (perhaps via the help of a telescope), receiving reports ‘from the front’ (Control) and adding to and/or revising these orders.

battle scene

And so to 14th October 1806 and the twin Battle of Jena-Auerstadt , at which Napoleon’s far smaller French force faced the might of the Prussian Army. However, Napoleon won a decisive victory and he did so because he did far less of the commanding-and-controlling thingy and, instead, used a different way of thinking.

In the aftermath, the Prussian military performed what we might call a retrospective to work out how they were so convincingly beaten and what they should learn from this.

Their post-mortem noted that Napoleon’s system provided his officers with the authority to make decisions as the situation on the ground changed and, crucially, without needing to wait for approval through a classical ‘chain of command’. Thus, they could adapt rapidly to changing circumstances.

If a French regiment got stuck in the proverbial mud, there was no wallowing around waiting to see what Napoleon thought they should do about it! Conversely, the Prussians in that same quagmire would be cannon fodder.

In the decades subsequent to the Battle, General Scharnhorst and then Helmut von Moltke built a new Prussian military culture, aimed at leading under conditions of uncertainty. Von Moltke wrote1.:

  • “in war, circumstances change very rapidly, and it is rare indeed for directions which cover a long period of time in a lot of detail to be fully carried out”;
  • “[I recommend] not commanding more than is strictly necessary, not planning beyond the circumstances you can foresee”;
  • “[instead] the higher the level of command, the shorter and more general the orders should be. The next level down should add whatever further specification it feels to be necessary…this ensures that everyone retains freedom of movement and decision within the bounds of their authority.”

And perhaps to the key point: Military orders must always clearly explain their intent i.e. the purpose of the order. This means that anyone carrying them out is focused on the intent and not blinded by any prescribed method.This new military way of thinking has been adopted widely though, perhaps surprisingly, the old command-and-control logic has lingered.

Hence why we get the best selling book ‘Turn the Ship Around!’(2012)2. in which Captain L. David Marquet eloquently writes about how he turned the fortunes of a U.S. Navy Nuclear submarine around by turning followers (his officers and staff) into leaders. A major theme in his story is about enabling his staff to think in terms of intent instead of merely waiting for, and following orders.

“What happens in a top-down culture when the leader is wrong? Everyone goes over the cliff.” [Marquet]

Bringing this together, The Principle of Mission is for leaders to describe the intent of the organisation’s mission, clearly communicate why it is being undertaken and then let the people get on with working out how to achieve it …and this is instead of, not as well as, making highly detailed plans and then controlling their execution.

And so to organisations:

We aren’t ‘in the army now’ but we all work with organisations that can learn from the above. We should be clear on each of our value-streams and their (customer-driven) purpose.

Such purposes set out clear intent to the system and its people tasked with delivering it.

…and a reminder that profit is not the purpose (or at least it shouldn’t be).

The role of the leader:

John Seddon wrote a fascinating book in respect of the UK public sector called ‘The Whitehall effect’3. In his chapter ‘Getting a focus on purpose’ he writes that:

“Politicians* should get out of management. But they should have a lot to say about purpose….

[this] means a shift away from the central dictation of operating specifications such as targets, standards and activity. Instead, service leaders must be free to make responsible choices about the measures that will best enable them to achieve the purpose…Freed from the obligation to deploy the paraphernalia of [dictated methods], it will be up to the service leaders to choose how they improve their services against purpose, placing value on ‘better practise’ which is dynamic (anything can be improved) rather than ‘best practise’ [Ref. Benchmarking] which is static (as well as misleading). They will be guided by the rudder of efficacy, not the rudder of compliance – and they will be judged by the same token.”

* The Politicians in this quote are the leaders of what has been termed ‘UK Plc’. I am asking leaders of organisations to substitute themselves for the politicians in this quote.

Thus, the leader-service manager feedback question changes drastically:

  • From: “Have you done what I told you to do?”
  • To: “How do you know how well you are doing in achieving the (customer driven) purpose of the service?”

This is a radical shift and opens the way for true adult – adult coaching conversations.

An aside: Steering committees

I have seen a fair few high level steering committees over the years. Most fall into the command-and-control trap. Picture the scene:

  • A Project Manager reports back to the steering committee;
  • The committee discuss what is before them and, using their opinions, dictate how the Project should proceed;
  • The Project Manager is uncomfortable with this outcome but chooses to carefully manage his stakeholders (i.e. doff his cap to them)…so he takes the committees ‘decisions’ back to the team;
  • …and the team quickly and clearly explain why following such a path would be quite mad;
  • …and so the Project Manager has to commence an impossible juggling act.

In short: Committees should not dictate the ‘how’, but they should be absolutely clear on the ‘what’* and ‘why’ (the principle of mission).

* this is referring to a target condition, not a target date.

A HUGE clarification:

It doesn’t matter how clearly Napoleon, or any other leader, articulated intent if their people don’t want to follow.

Setting out a clear and meaningful purpose is but one (key) part of the overall system. The rest comes down to management’s beliefs and behaviours, and the environment that this creates.

…and finally, if you like the military discussion above, here’s a link to a short and highly related post called Why don’t you just written by ‘The Lean Thinker’.

Notes

  1. Source of quotes: von Moltke’s ‘Guidance for Large Unit Commanders’ as quoted by Stephen Bungay in his book ‘The Art of Action’.
  2. Marquet’s book is an excellent, easy read.
  3. For those of you who don’t know too much about the UK, Whitehall is a road in central London on which most of the government departments and ministries reside. When someone talks about ‘Whitehall’ they are usually referring to the centre of the British government and its civil servants.

The catalyst for writing this post was reading about the term ‘Principle of Mission’ within the book ‘Lean Enterprise’ by Humble, Molesky and O’Reilly.

School boy debating society

giantknave Brain Farts , , , ,

donald-trump…so I was in a room with a few Executives who had ‘spared me some of their time’ to allow a discussion about how I could help them move their organisation towards its stated purpose.

I said something and almost immediately one of the Executives leapt back with a seemingly clever (or was that merely ‘conventional’) and forceful counter. He then looked at me in such a way as to imply that:

  • what I had said was clearly very stupid; and
  • my lack of immediate and razor-sharp response to his challenge proved that he was right.

The implication was that I didn’t know ‘as much’ as him (as in “Silly boy, you are wasting my time…best go away until you can justify being before me”). There was no consideration that I (might) know different things to him.

I took a moment, I pondered what he had said, I thought about what I had said and I provided a reasoned response.

…and he leapt back with another counter, getting more animated and looking around the room at his fellow executives for emotional support. They (quite naturally) returned some smirks to him, translated as clear and obvious agreement with what he was saying.

I quickly realised that this had (unexpectedly) escalated, that my original comment had not fitted into his current world view and that there was no way that I would alter his thinking by attempting a short verbal rational explanation…so I politely said words to this effect and attempted to move on.

..and so he and the Executives sat back with smiles on their faces, looking smug that they had ‘won the argument’ – and that they were clever, and clearly more so than this upstart before them.

Hang on a minute! ‘Won the argument’? Who said there was an argument? It certainly wasn’t supposed to be (Cue Monty Python ‘argument’ sketch).

I suspect that such meetings with ‘command and control’ executives are all too common.

I compare them back to what I imagine to be the format of public school boy debating societies:

  • you have a position which must be pushed, and defended, at all costs;
  • you’ve got a fixed time to put your point across;
  • there will be a vote at the end to determine a result;
  • there is glory to be seen as the winner;
  • there is mirth to be shown to the loser, who will be considered ‘weak’; and
  • once the debate is over, it is ‘case closed’.

Note: None of the above was actually a surprise to me. I know about different worldviews, about rational vs. normative change and about the boomerang effect*.

(* the unintended consequences of an attempt to persuade resulting in the adoption of an opposing position instead).

The reasons for writing this post are merely to share:

  • the similarity between exchanges with ‘command and control’ executives and school boy debating; and
  • how easy it is for such a well meaning ‘rational’ conversation to descend into a head-to-head ‘win or lose’ argument.

…oh yes, and as some form of therapy for me 🙂

 

To all those executives out there:

If you are an executive and people put forward ideas that differ to your own, I’d humbly suggest you see this as a (free, yet valuable) opportunity to self-develop and improve (rather than protect) your world view.

As a point of fact: If the person in front of you believes differently to you then there must be reasons for this…and it could be very useful for you to consider and understand why…and thus mature and/or expand (rather than defend) your thinking.