Blog Move

This blog will now be hosted at my main website www.nickrobinson.org which is itself currently being rebuilt.

Hopefully see you there in the near future,

regards,

Nick

Book Review: Awakened Wisdom

This is a quick review of a new book by my friend and mentor Patrick Ryan: 'Awakened Wisdom'.

Bottom-line, I don't think this book is for everyone right now, but, if you're ready or hungry to make more sense of who you are and to create mindful choices around how you live your life, then don't miss it!

Patrick is an ex-Buddhist monk, a lifelong entrepreneur and a senior leader in the coaching world. And perhaps more importantly for this book, he is someone who I know from personal experience daily lives by his own code. What he preaches, he practises.

I really enjoyed many parts of this book, especially the 'Notes from the Future' sections, a kind of enlightened vision showing how inspiring things will be when our wisdom is fully awake.

Other real highlights for me include the story of how when Patrick first became a monk he experienced a deep separation anxiety when he thought he had lost his one remaining possession - a begging bowl. Being separated from his bowl overnight and then not knowing which was his from a stack of hundreds brought home in a crashing way for Patrick the absurdity of identifying ourselves with possessions. As someone who can experience a great deal of fear and anxiety about the condition of the 'stuff' in my life, I found this tremendously useful.
As he says:

"It is okay to own stuff as long as the stuff doesn't own you"

Leading on Ice

How the Best Leaders Achieve the Traction to Drive Big Scary Changes

Are you responsible for leading big changes at the moment? Perhaps changes which are scary and potentially disadvantageous to the people whose jobs might be at risk?

And perhaps you've noticed that it's difficult to get momentum going. People are resistant to the change, they don't seem to grasp the scale of the threat to the organisation, nobody wants to face just how much needs to be done in so short a time.

For leaders who have previously implemented big changes by virtue of their drive, organising skills and can-do attitude, this kind of situation can blindside them. The old way of doing things by trying even harder and persuading others to do the same just doesn't seem to work anymore.

In a way, trying to lead this kind of change is a lot like driving on ice. The rules of how you manage the car have changed. The wheels are spinning, you might be revving the engine, but you're either going sideways or going nowhere. By itself, just trying harder is no longer going to get it done.

Here's some tips from the BBC website about how to drive on snow and ice, in italics, with my leadership comments below:

• If your tyres are making virtually no noise this could be a sign you're driving on ice
  
  If the feedback you're getting from people about their progress goes quiet, you've hit a slippery patch;
  

• If your vehicle skids, depress the clutch and turn the steering wheel into the direction of the skid. When the vehicle straightens steer along the road
  
  When it suddenly becomes difficult to make progress, you need to turn your attention to that, not stay blindly focussed on your objectives. Switch back only when you have traction;
  

• If your vehicle skids, don't brake - it will just lock up your wheels and you'll skid further
  
  If it suddenly seems difficult to make progress at work, don't be tempted to call a halt to everything in order to fix it, just give it your attention - see above;

• Gentle manoeuvres are the key to safe driving.
  
  ...and to leading people who are worried about their jobs;
  

• Reduce your risk of skidding by reducing your speed, too much power is often the source of problems in snow and ice
  
  Perhaps the single most important point. If you're trying to lead change and it isn't happening, take your foot off the gas a little until the wheels can bite. DO NOT try even harder. When it looks like things are moving again, gently apply the power;
  

• Try to maintain a constant speed, choosing the most suitable gear in advance to avoid having to change down while climbing a hill
  
  OK, you've got this analogy by now, right?
  

• If you do get stuck, straighten the steering and clear the snow from the wheels. Put a sack or old rug in front of the driving wheels to give the tyres some grip
  
  If the momentum for change has gone, re-affirm the vision. Know which part of the organisation the driving force comes from and therefore which part needs to make contact with the road surface. Clear away stuff that blocks them, and see if you can change the nature of the landscape so they can get a grip.
  

Summer Holiday 2010

We're on holiday for the next few weeks, so this blog will be even quieter than usual for a while.

In the meantime, here's a couple of old favourites you might like:

Leadership issues

Having more ease and gracefulness in life and work

Contador Makes His Own Rules

Why the Best Leaders Pay Attention to the Way that People Regard Rules

If you're a Tour de France fan you probably won't have missed the controversy this week around Alberto Contador's decision to break one of the strongly held (but unwritten) rules of cycling and take advantage of a rival's misfortune. By breaking that rule he won the 15th stage, took the yellow jersey and looks set to win Le Tour. (read more about that here)

Alberto's attitude to the rules of cycling has a useful lesson for leaders of all kinds, because it shows very clearly that different people can have very different ways of regarding rules. For leaders, this means that you simply cannot rely on the 'rules' of the organisation, unwritten or even very clearly laid out on posters all around the place, to guide what people do and how they do it.

The best leaders pay attention to the way that individuals around them regard rules. Fortunately, there are some useful guides and shortcuts that help us understand what is going on.

The Dutch cross-cultural communications expert Fons Trompenaars has shown that there is a cultural influence on the way that we regard 'rules'. Put really simply, people from Universalistic cultures focus more on rules and are more precise when defining rules and standards, whereas people from more Particularistic cultures expect rules to be adapted according to different situations. Trompenaars found some evidence that countries with Latin roots took a Particularistic view, although I don't think he specifically mentions Spain where Sr. Contador hails from. Another Dutch expert, Geert Hofstede, is also really worth reading on different cultural attitudes to rules.

In an everyday setting the work of Roger Bailey and Shelle Rose Charvet is pretty useful to help understand how members of your team are likely to respond to written and unwritten rules. They found that people tend to have one of four types of responses to rules in organisations:

1.) The majority of people follow a My/My pattern, believing that the same rules apply to everybody. They tend to be generally good for managing subordinates, stating clearly what they expect from others and abiding by the expected rues of behaviour themselves. My/My pattern people can sometimes fail to appreciate that what works for them will not always work for others and you'll need to lead them through this startling revelation!;

2.) A very small proportion of people follow a My/Blank pattern towards rules, with pretty structured behaviour themselves but giving almost no consideration to the impact of what they do on others. If you're leading one of these people, you need to understand that this is not a malicious thing and you may need to minimise or isolate any negative impacts of their 'eccentricity';

3.) A slightly bigger minority of people follow a No/My pattern about rules, struggling to follow guidelines themselves but being quite willing to pass on rules to others. If any of your team operate this pattern, they'll need some clear direction and perhaps some coaching from you around the lack of credibility that their apparent failure to 'walk the talk' can have;

4.) An appreciable minority of people operate a My/Your pattern towards rules, knowing the policies and guidelines to follow at work, but being reluctant to pass them on to others, which they would regard as arrogant or presumptive. This can create anxiety around them and stress for the person themselves. It's my belief that this pattern contributes to a lot of the problems that arise when a My/Your pattern person is promoted from being a first-line supervisor in a structured environment with very clearly laid out rules for all staff to follow, to a leadership position where the rules of behaviour are no longer provided by the organisational structure, but need to come from the team leader. You'll need to carefully coach these people into understanding that providing structure and direction for others is actually a very respectful and helpful act which most people (with the exceptions above) will appreciate.

Get Your Hands Dirty

Why Leaders Need to be Actively Involved at the Point of Delivery

I watched 'The Undercover Boss' on UK's Channel 4 TV yesterday evening.

It underlined for me the importance of leaders being actively involved at the point of delivery of your business, as the programme really showed how this gives revelatory insights that no amount of performance data ever will.

Yesterday's programme followed the UK boss of Best Western Hotels as he worked, undercover, as part of the kitchen, grounds and cleaning staff in several hotels. What he found was absentee-owners failing to invest, dedicated and overworked staff making up for half-thought-through expansion plans and blatant attempts to by-pass the quality control measures. As a an ex-Best Western fan, I'm sure even more would have been found if there'd been time!

I don't think the "undercover" part is necessary for anything other than sensationalising it for TV. And actually might work against you long-term, unless you want to become known as the kind of boss who sneaks around lying about your name and background. It worked out OK on the programme and it was genuinely touching to see during the 'reveal' the emotional impact that even a tiny bit of acknowledgment of their efforts had on the staff involved.

Key points for leaders who really do want to know and grow their business and to value the people who actually deliver it:

• get out there and get your hands dirty
• acknowledge people when they are trying to do a good job
• use quality measurement as a tool to direct support, not sanctions.

Click on the link below or the picture above to see the programme. Please note there are adverts at the beginning:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/undercover-boss/4od#3105089

The Business of Agriculture: Event Review

My team at the Institute of Directors put on another fantastic event last night, around the business of agriculture. It was something that we'd wanted to do for some time, based here in the green rolling pastures of dairy-farming Cheshire, but not personally knowing much about the practical business issues of this sector. I'm sure it's something we'll want to follow-up on too.

Most of the work on the event was handled by IoD stalwart Ian Walton, thanks again Ian.

We were hosted by Nunsmere Hall, always a friendly and beautiful venue and because the weather was good, could take our pre-meeting food and drink on the terrace.

Unfortunately, something in the local pollen caused a reaction in my throat and instead of doing my usual Chairman's welcoming speech I had to ask my colleague Andy Duxbury to step in; what a star he is!

First we heard from Julie Richards, an accountant from agricultural specialists Howard Worth, who confessed herself a 'farm-daughter'. Julie took us through the business of agriculture with some excellent insights into the types of financial and business issues this important sector faces. Highlights for me included:

• 2008 saw the first net imports to the UK of raw milk (how and why did we allow that?!)
• as a farmer, you'll get a premium from Tesco if you use their accounting software/tool - but that means they know your profit margins to the penny; ouch!
• in 2004 the number of farms in the UK was around 65k, just six years later that figure has reduced by 10k
• the gap between the most financially successful and the struggling farms continues and will continue to widen
• strategically, the middle-of-the-road is a dangerous place to be positioned in this sector, probably meaning you need to be really big, or really cheap, or very specialised (or probably all three!) to compete long-term
• well-managed diversification is a possible route to boost profitability (& Julie did a great analysis of the different routes to diversification, which I won't reproduce here).

Next, we heard from Liz Sutton. With her husband Roger, Liz founded well-known Cheshire-based Delamere Dairy 25 years ago. With a long-held dream to become farmers and an awareness that, starting from scratch, they would need to do something different, these two entrepreneurs decided to get into farming goats' milk. 25 years later and they have the largest market share in most of the key UK goats' milk products, a thriving own-brand range, including many award-winning cheeses and a turnover of £15m. Their story is inspirational in many ways, a classic case of starting with a dream, working like crazy to turn it into a business and then being flexible and determined to make that business successful. Some great highlights for me included:

• buying a copy of the 'Grocer's Directory' early in the business' development, in order to telephone potential buyers for their goats' milk, and starting at A for Asda. They got the deal!
• deciding to outsource much of the work, particularly packaging. Although this narrows profit margins, it seems to have allowed them to focus on a real depth of understanding about the product and to successfully exploit that
• planning at the right stage to bring in management support and a sensible exit strategy for the founders.

After Liz' presentation we got to sample some of the tangy goats' milk itself and equally delicious cheeses and butter.

For me, this was a great example of what we should focus on with IoD events - the chance to hear it straight from local businesses now successful in national and international arenas, about the issues they have faced and dealt with, in a way you probably don't get anywhere else, and in great surroundings with the company of 30 or so other like-minded business-people. Excellent!


Pictured, from left to right:
Richard Barnett (Howard Worth), Roger Sutton (Delamere Dairy), Ian Walton (IoD), Liz Sutton (Delamere Dairy), Julie Richards (Howard Worth)