Thought Patrol Podcast

I thought it was a good time to take some of my own advice and review this year with 2020 hindsight. We all know it's been an extraordinary year. We all came into 2020 with 2020 Vision. As with any new year, there were expectations of what we would do, what we wouldn't do, and what the year was going to look like. The overused quote from Mike Tyson that “everyone has a plan until they get a punch in the face”, is so true for 2020. I want to take a look at the “lockdown leadership lessons” that I've learned or at least have had reinforced, with 2020 hindsight. 

The first one for me has been to “enjoy the journey”. Greg Anderson, the American author, said “Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.” It's such a simple concept, yet worth contemplating if you're like me; very focused on the outcomes, the destination, and the achievements. VIEW MORE HERE

What is it about bad news? It sells well, travels fast and seems to catch our attention. Our 24-hour news cycle is unfortunately built on it. Despite all the views to the contrary there is nothing wrong with communication in most companies. All and every staff survey will put communication at the top of things to improve, and yet bad news will get around a team at the speed of gossip.

Organisations leak news and despite all the efforts to maintain secrecy, people inevitably know something about what is going on. Many leaders endeavor to cloak everything on a ‘need to know’ basis, as if there is a risk of everyone knowing what’s going on. The trouble with this is, people talk and if there is bad news brewing, they will automatically assume the very worst. So even if you have dire news, let people know, be transparent, go broad in your reach for ideas and input, and trust your team to handle it well.

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Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winner in economics, once wrote: "Productivity is not everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything."

 

Are you frustrated by how long it takes to get things done? Why is that? What would it take to get higher productivity? We do have a major problem with productivity levels of below 1%, despite all our technological advances. Something is fundamentally wrong, not at the fringes but at the core of how we do leadership, business and run organisations.

 

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People are human, would seem to be self evident; yet do we treat our teams that way? Are they just organic machines? Of course not! Sometimes as leaders we become so fixed on our goals and KPIs we forget we are hiring flesh and blood, flawed, inconsistent and subject to outside influences. They are not unlike you and I.

Occasionally I wake up and don’t want to do today, it’s not my usual good morning God, it’s more like good God it’s morning. We all have families and relationships that aren’t always perfect; or is it just me.

 

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Do you have people in your organisation who don’t or won’t make decisions? Is there a lack of ideas? It’s almost as if they’re afraid. What you may need is more trust. ‘Trust trumps fear’ all day!

A recent YPO Global Pulse Survey of thousands of CEOs showed that, nearly all (96%) of leaders rate building and maintaining trust with stakeholders a high priority, with nearly half (42%) saying the importance they place on building trust with stakeholders has increased in the past five years.

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The marketplace is moving at a staggering rate, digital disruption is everywhere. Your business model is under duress regardless of your industry. Business models used to fail every ten to twenty years now it’s every three to four years; sometimes less. Recently Spotify disrupted iTunes, the iconic disruptor of the music industry. “No innovation no business!”

 

To move fast enough organisations and their leadership have to be inherently agile, encouraging innovation to be in their DNA. Only in agility and innovation is there the likelihood of sustainability.  If you don’t innovate, you die. 

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Is it hard to implement strategies and get alignment in your organisation? Are your team not engaged in your strategic direction and lack passion? Perhaps they lack ownership; and there may be a reason for that. “People own what they help to create.”

How inclusive are you when you plan, create ideas and establish direction? I have found that almost universally in our Stragile planning sessions, we have high involvement and engagement, and subsequently implementation is a breeze in comparison to traditional strategic planning. Check out Stragile.co if you want to know more.

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Cutting costs is a simple way to improve profitability, in theory at least. However in the real world of a dynamic marketplace, imperfect people, unforeseen circumstances, collateral damage and unintended consequences, the spreadsheet seems to lie.

 

No one has ever cut their way to sustainable profitability. Then when the result isn’t met, a new round of cost cutting and the inevitable and perennial restructuring continues. The axe is not your friend.

 

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Do you find that small things slow you or your team down? Do you get dragged into issues that are really inconsequential in the scheme of things? What you need in momentum and lots of it! Momentum crushes problems.

 

John Maxwell has a great metaphor that I’m going to borrow, because it’s a great one. John talks about a train being in a station waiting for passengers. When it’s ready to go, a log of wood is placed in front of it. This seemingly small obstacle will make the train unable to depart; spinning its wheels, unable to move. Yet, if the same log were placed on a track when the train was moving at full speed, it would provide no resistance at all. Probably not even noticed, as the momentum of the train overcomes the resistance, of a now insignificant obstacle.

 

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I want to challenge a cultural phenomenon; when asked how we are, especially in a work or business context, our positive response is that we’re busy. Now whilst the complete opposite of that is a problem, being busy may not be our most effective state. Being busy is not necessarily good.

 

Recently the World Health Organisation added burnout to its official list of diseases. The term was first applied as a psychological diagnosis in 1974 by Herbert Freudenberger. Which is a splendid name.

 

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