Cherri Holland Blog

“How’s it going down there?” barked the Big Walrus from his high rock. He waited for good news. Down below the smaller walruses conferred hastily among themselves. Things weren’t going well but no one wanted to risk his ferocious bark.

For several weeks the water level in the nearby Arctic Bay had been falling and it had become necessary to travel much further to catch the dwindling supply of herring. Someone had to tell the  Big Walrus who would know what to do.  But who? And how?

Basil the second-ranking walrus well remembered how the Big Walrus had ranted and raved the last time the herd caught less than its quota of herring, and he had no desire to go through that experience again. (He had even been tempted to fudge the figures or breach the beach code to avoid the awful fallout.)

Finally Basil spoke up. “Things are going pretty well, Chief” he said. “As a matter of fact the beach seems to be getting larger.” The Big Walrus grunted. “Fine, fine,” he said. “That will give us more elbow room.”

Next day brought more trouble with a new herd arriving. No one wanted to tell the Big Walrus but only he knew the steps against this new competition.

Reluctantly, Basil approached the Big Walrus and after some small talk he said… “Oh by the way, Chief, a new herd of walruses seems to have moved into our territory.”  The Old Man’s eyes snapped open wider and he filled his great lungs in preparation for an almighty bellow. But Basil added quickly: “Of course we don’t anticipate any trouble. They don’t look like herring eaters to me.” Crisis averted.

Things didn’t get any better in the weeks that followed with more and more of the herd leaving to join the new herd. One day, peering down from the large rock, the Big Walrus noticed that a large part of his herd seemed to be missing. Summoning Basil, he grunted peevishly, “What’s going on Basil? Where is everyone?”

Poor Basil didn’t know how to explain this and put it down to getting rid of some of the “dead wood.”

“Run a tight ship I always say, the Big Walrus grunted. “Glad to hear that everything’s going so well.”

Before long, everyone except Basil had left and terrified but determined, he flopped up on to the large rock. “Chief,” he said, “I have bad news. Everyone has left.”

The Big Walrus was so astonished he couldn’t even work up a good bellow. “Left me?” he cried. “All of them? How could this happen? Just when everything was going so well!”

Many messages here, but one that resonates with me is the futility of vertical control. A performance partnership of horizontal, two-way, open communication means everyone knows what they need to in time to make the right calls. Anything else is the illusion of control.

Slightly adapted from original. I don’t know where it comes from – does anyone know the source?  Cherri

Could your workplace be killing you? Are you destroying your brain and don’t realise it? Some interesting (life threatening) findings are converging in one place: the workplace. This is disturbing given the frequency with which I hear about stress in the workplace, 99% of which is due to people; more specifically, their behaviours. Like smoking, destructive behaviours not only kill the “smoker” but also the “passive smokers” around them. Much of the stress I hear about is manager/staff interactions.

The facts:

• People spend 30-40% of time stressed/frustrated – 20% of this is anger. This compromises pre-frontal cortex functioning (increasing risk of errors and accidents) and immunity – our defense against any and all disease (Dr Tom Mulholland – Healthy Thinking)
• Those who speak to me about these problems tell me their general mood is negatively influenced as well as sleep – proven to be associated with elevated cortisol
• Elevated cortisol is directly linked with brain shrivelling and shrinkage. Key to brain health and longevity is the size of the midbrain’s hippocampus (memory centre).  A large hippocampus is associated with general brain health achieved by simple lifestyle changes within 8 weeks. (Dr Majid Fotuhi – The Memory Cure). He cites research directly linking a smaller hippocampus with dementia symptoms including Alzheimer’s
• Mid-manager stress exceeds that of the top brass. (Research conducted at Stanford University – James Gross and colleagues. Their advice includes  learning stress-reducing social regulation skills)
• Blunted emotions (from common workplace experience) lead to boredom and disconnection. Boredom is defined as “an aversive state of wanting but being unable to engage in satisfying activity.” (Prof Mark Fenskey in Bored to Death)

On the other hand, workplaces where people feel valuable, engaged, stimulated, challenged (not mollycoddled) and understood deliver up to 25% more brain functionality: creativity and resourcefulness.  www.neuroleadership.org

The workplace can either kill you or contribute to a long, healthy life.

The cure? Relationship exercises and a performance partnership approach between managers and staff whereby the success challenge is shared/co-owned; where people are able to control or at least influence factors that contribute to success. Setting goals for people who believe they have no control over success  is not only harmful; we now know it can be fatal. Tapping into the collective wisdom of people is not only a healthy antidote but may well be the  way to perform to true potential in any given situation.

Google the “new” Science of Collective Intelligence (Chris Chabris) which is of course not new at all, and has been proven for decades by smart companies maximising return from payroll investment by using all the brains in the company (not just the titled few.) Or check out the evidence provided by JRA Best Places to Work where people engagement is linked with higher performance across the key financial metrics.

It’s really a no-brainer. Ignore the obvious and your brain (and your business) may well be one of diminishing returns.

Kevin Roberts of Saatchi and Saatchi said “Execution is the killer app.”

One thing most people don’t need is more information. But most people could do with more APPLICATION of what they know. More ACTION (or TRACTION).

This is nothing new. Decades ago, Peters and Waterman identified “A Bias for Action” as a key differentiator of successful businesses.  Ready. Fire. Aim.

Not that I am in favour of mindless activity but there is no doubt that regular, consistent action is a prerequisite for business (and individual) traction.

“In my 8 years as CEO of medium sized financial company, I have found that ….a well-judged idea, but poorly executed is typically unsuccessful. A poorly-judged idea, but well executed is often very successful.” Patrick Weller

This is a similar theme to the distinction between creativity and innovation. Creativity is generating great ideas, but innovation is turning them into metal. There really is no shortage of good ideas but there is a shortage of action that turns ideas into money.

Great plans and sound intentions do not equate with success. Great habits borne out of self-discipline and self-control are the foundation for consistent action. People need to choose what works for them. Various approaches include:

• Developing a compelling vision that drives actions
• Setting goals you feel passionate about, writing them down and publishing them (or telling someone.)
• Deadlines – “no matter what” commitment to a time by when something will happen
• Starting each day with an “hour of power” – the tasks that are most likely to give most traction
• 10 X 10 – for sales people. (Ten key phone calls by 10 am)
• Keeping a log of activity and working out the numbers and conversion rates/ratios.

When you monitor what you spend, you spend less; when you monitor what you eat, you eat less, but when you monitor your actions, you do MORE and get further.

To turn good intentions into current reality you need to work the plan. One man of action is Lucas Remmerswaal (http://13habits.org). His goal is to end poverty in NZ by financially educating children and believes each should start and run multiple businesses by age 18 to learn how to create wealth and create employment. He cycled around NZ enticing school kids to give up their lunch break in favour of hearing a story: The Tale of Tortoise Buffet.

Inspired by Charlie Munger’s “Poor Charlie’s Almanack” (lauded by both Gates and Buffet) he ACTED. He hopped on a plane to interview Munger, then met Warren Buffet’s sister and got permission to use the Buffet name.

I have found that acting  consistently on what I know has had far more impact than accumulating more information or merely chasing the latest great idea. No doubt there are many in Christchurch, on this second anniversary of the September 2010 earthquake, who believe ACTION speaks louder than words.  This is time to remember the many who are toiling tirelessly to rebuild broken lives, especially since Feb 2011…………who are taking action in the toughest of circumstances. (Like all those who organised and supported tedxeqchch 2012.)  Every act counts.

My earliest recall is Enron and Andersen Consulting (accused of obstruction of justice for shredding documents); many more since then where key authority figures are dealt a blow due to rampant risk taking either by them or others on their watch. More recently, News of the World, NZ’s Accident Compensation Corporation and now Barclays (accused of rate-tampering and falsifying information to protect its reputation). It is quite clear compliance regulations, audit protocols and top/down imposition of scrutiny does not work well enough. The cost? Sometimes hard to gauge. Barclays was fined $450 Mil.  GlaxoSmithKline has just been fined $3 billion, accused of health fraud. What about the hidden costs to the average business of non-compliance; people or groups of people doing their own thing. In the human body, a rogue cell is called cancer.

What all these situations have in common is a culture that allowed this to happen. Not a culture that strongly sanctioned the actions.  Disconnected cultures (where individual agendas are put ahead of the corporation) lead to risk-taking without care for consequences.

The UK Treasury Select Committee grilled Bob Diamond about “culture” but instead he  attributed the “reprehensible behaviours” (his words)  to a group of individuals. Given that he implied they were acting out of sync with the compliance protocols at Barclays, the question is what the correcting mechanism was to ensure no contrary sub-cultures developed.

Two questions:

1. What causes sub-cultures?
2. What causes  a self-correcting, high performance, minimised-risk culture.

Culture is the way things are done in a social system. They include norms of behaviour:  habitual ways of thinking and acting. Where compliance behaviours are enforced in a vertically-controlled or externally-audited regime, a culture of no care and no responsibility is bred. Vertical control is an oxymoron as you can’t see soon enough, wide enough and deep enough “down there”.

A top/down, externally imposed, punitive, compliance approach gives only the illusion of control. My view (and that of many others and the subject of an extensive body of research) is that it is even more susceptible to compliance issues. It is at best a game of chance and the odds are stacked in favour of the rascals.

Complying for “the boss” or the auditor is not true compliance. Approaching compliance that way  fosters a non-compliant attitude.  It’s a game you can’t win, as there will never be enough people or resources to keep on top of individual agendas and wayward behaviours. Authority figures will always be outnumbered, outwitted and outscored.

What is the alternative? What creates a vigilant, consistent, reliable culture where wayward behaviours are visible earlier, challenged sooner, prevented or eliminated at source?

Building a culture of mutual accountability and agreed risk prevention provides internal (self or peer-imposed) compliance checks………..People who are fully engaged in an aligned performance culture are constantly self-checking and welcoming scrutiny by peers who see far more than “management” ever would. It is far less likely that non-compliant behaviour would a) happen b) repeat.

There is not one example I know of where vertical control has produced self-correction and risk mitigation. On the contrary I was delighted this week to hear someone (close to the frontline) describe their engaged and accountable workplace, together with impressive revenue increases. When asked how this was achieved, the answer came with no hesitation: the MD; it is role modeled from the top. Open/quick communication, uncompromising performance expectations, an involving style and trust. So simple and predictable and yet too rare. In that open climate of shared responsibility, devoid of game-playing, condescending managers and alienated staff, rascals are quickly weeded out.

When you focus on creating the culture in which people:

• comply because they would not feel right otherwise
• contribute more and more because collective success counts
• confront those who put this at risk…….

…….then you find that the slips are earnestly prevented or fixed at source.

There really is no other way that works better or costs less.

Now that I have your attention,  I’ll hasten to add that I do one-to-one coaching under certain circumstances, and can refer people in other circumstances to my colleagues who specialise in this area.

Mostly, I use a Systems approach, which requires system coaching not individual coaching. This is one of the few models that explain most of the issues within organisations, using Pareto’s 80:20 rule. Where a model explains (and can fix) 80% of issues, by addressing these in one go, the remaining 20% dissolve. (A manager said to me yesterday: if we can get a 20% improvement in our communication alone, that will make a significant difference to how we function.)

Principles of Systems Theory, largely attributed to Biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy in 1936)

• The whole is more than the sum of the parts
• A closed system is one where interactions occur only among the system components – it can only maintain or decrease its organisation (entropy/disintegration)
• An open system receives input from its environment. The result is the opposite of entropy i.e. evolution
• Communication (information) and transaction (matter or energy) are the only vehicles for exchange between parts of the system/between systems
• New information (feedback) from an open system’s environment allows a system to adapt, renew and reinvent (constant change)
• Change in one part eventually creates change of the whole system
  A system tends towards equilibrium – it resists threatening  or jolt change
• Tweak one problem (without treating the system) and another will replace it (if the system was not fixed.) An individual aligns with the system pattern.

Applied to business (a social and economic system):

• When everyone in the business contributes fully for the collective good, the collective output is more than that of each individual (“teamwork”)
• Where an individual, department, division or the entire organisation blocks feedback, the system entropies (weakens) and eventually dies. (Many organisations limp on in various forms of ill health.)
• Where information is treated as a “thing” instead of an energy form, people leak information inappropriately according to individual agendas (In the human system this would be labelled a rogue cell, or “cancer”)
• A closed system is the natural flow-on effect from the “dangling-box structure” of organisations. Many design organisations for disease then complain about the disease (and “rogue” individuals)
• An open system means everyone is a link in a value chain with connectors throughout the system (like the human body)
• Communication for the collective good comes from agreed “ways we communicate around here”
• An open system is kept healthy with engineered/regular feedback among key stakeholders throughout the environment. (A simple health step is for the CEO to chat informally to everyone/anyone – this is just one sensor of the system’s health
• No part of a system (individual or team) is non-influential
• For health, change MUST BE CONTINUOUS – engineer one-degree-at-a time (iterative) change; like boiling a frog. Continuous improvement is the modus operandi  (what Buckminster Fuller called Ephemeralisation and the Japanese call Kaizen). It keeps a system commercially-relevant and avoids system-resistance to “jolt” changes.

Back to executive coaching: critical mass lies at the frontline, not with a single executive or manager. When you change the manager, the prevailing system pressures the person back into previous behaviours to restore equilibrium. When the system changes, the individual changes.

I work with a manager and his or her team – sort of like family therapy. Outcomes? The whole team interacts effectively, people do what they’re there for, you resolve rogue cells (sometimes over night; in one instance, within 3 hours), you make the manager’s job (everyone’s job) do-able and relieve stress.

Otherwise, the danger is you get the coaching target offside, and possibly make the situation worse.  Feel free to disagree!

Eric Berne wrote “Games People Play” – there is nothing more common in business than “The Leadership Game.”

Like all games, some degree of fantasy is involved. The players pick up rules along the way and observe others to acquire winning strategies.

In commercial organisations fantasies include:

• Change title from manager to leader and there is leadership
• Because a team has a leader, the team will perform
• A leader performs well when you either breathe down their neck or leave them alone

Gaming principles suggest that:

• Employees have the numbers (critical mass) to control throughput and output
• Employees tell the power figure (person in control?) what they want to hear (or what employees want them to know or think)
• Reality is superseded by the illusion of hope
• When reality dawns, the least effective strategy is the one chosen.

How can you beat the odds in the game of business?

The only strategy that works consistently is one that takes internal competition out of the game, that treats barriers to success (and challenges) as just part of the game, and that requires all players to be on the same side.

Practically, there are a number of ways to do this, but before anything else you have to:

• See reality for what it is
• Accept there are blind spots – whoever discovers them first, gets the advantage
• Do whatever it takes to find the best outcome for all in the game

Only then, can you keep ahead of the game.