Caged Campanula

Posted on March 29, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 23 – Organisation Development

Napoleon only saw his troops when they were in action or on parade before him when, buffed up and motivated, they looked and felt their best. He therefore tended to disregard the occasional honest reports on their condition that did reach him, and as he did not like to hear them, dismissed them as exaggerated scaremongering.

Adam Zamoyski
1812 – Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow
Harper Perennial 2005 p.192

I like our garden. It’s a fairly easy going natural thing, not too architectural, not too wild. Friends either love it or hate it. Carol says ‘You should enter your garden for the town competition’: Gavin says ‘There’s so much you could be doing with this lovely space.’

Outside the low wall which marks the southern boundary, all kinds of plants grow in the lane, plants that have escaped from our side and are on their slow way to somewhere with forged papers and no disguises.

We like that, it’s in the nature of the thing. The plants will colonise where they will given some helping hand from the soil and the weather.

We don’t like caged birds because restraining these wild animals is not in the nature of the thing. It’s not the way things are naturally supposed to be.

As a little reminder of the natural order, I’ve just put a campanula into a birdcage and placed it in the garden.

We all have an expectation of the way things are supposed to be and last week one of my natural expectations was bullied a bit. A UK Government Minister announced a consultation on the matter of the redefining of the concept of marriage. I know what a consultation is. It happens when people are offered the opportunity to contribute to all the thinking that goes into making a decision. A consultation is either a consultation or it is not. It cannot be a half hearted affair. It either is what it is or it isn’t.

If I tell the people at work that I am going to consult them on some changes, what is their expectation? It is surely that I am going to ask them and listen to them and then, and only then, I will make a decision.

The government ‘consultation’ was widely trailed and the fuss started as fuss always will with every government change. The fuss was so great that, I think, the Government was caught off guard. So the Minister involved had to change the words a little. Now she is telling us that the consultation is not on the decision, the decision is already made. The plan will go ahead. The consultation apparently is on the implementation of the decision.

My mother would have said, ‘Well, you’ve already made your mind up. There’s not much point in my getting involved now’. I think she’s right. What’s more important? The principle? Or the Implementation? Government’s don’t do things, other people have to put into practice what governments decide. So if I tell my workforce that this decision, that I have made, which seriously impacts upon your daily work, is made. Now tell me how we should make it work! Why should they? I’ve made the decision. I’ve just made my bed and told other people to lie in it!

How do you consult? After you have already decided? It won’t be long before your people know that your word consultation is not what they expect consultation to be, and you’ll be on your own.

Consultation has become one of the dirtiest words in organisation development.

Frank McConnell

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk
and edits www.sdsaf.org

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

Posted in Attitudes, Communication, Culture, Decision Making, Development, Organisation Development | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

It’s Hardly the Myth of Sisyphus!

Posted on March 23, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 22 – Decision Making

We had learnt that heroics was the way to get killed without getting the job done and getting the job done was more important.

Stephen E Ambrose
Band of Brothers
Pocket Books 2001 p.78

I have a CD called ‘Celestial Harmonies’ being the music of Hildegard von Bingen. I don’t have much early music. How ‘Footie Anthems’ has lodged itself next to Hilda I don’t know. I remember that it was a special purchase for some charity quiz night I did once. My friends up the pub would be able to have a decent stab at football questions and very little chance of winning the weekly bag of crisps and a £5 note with their knowledge of the von Bingen woman. This misfiling didn’t really matter as I don’t do quiz nights any more and I don’t much like early music.

Yesterday I opened up a file which is a book I’ve been writing. I had two copies of the same file with slightly different names, one which goes with me on my netbook and one on the desk pc. I certainly didn’t need both on the pc and opened them to check them one against the other. The quickest way was to do a word count on each. One had 9258 words and the other had 9262. A discrepancy! For a moment I wondered what the difference was, apart from 4! What literary delicacy had been added only to one? At which point I laughed at myself. For four words, did it really matter?

What does matter? Don’t forget, I’m confining this to the world of work. I’m not writing about really important stuff like love and what’s for tea. How do you decide what really matters in your day? How do you decide what your work should be today?

For me, what really matters is how my organisation works or as Ambrose puts it, getting the job done. Do our people work well together to keep us moving onwards and upwards? Is their work fulfilling for them? On an hour to hour basis, am I doing what needs to be done, or just what I prefer to do?

I am constantly making lists. My ‘To Do’ lists fill spaces all over my day book which sits on my desk almost in pride of place and into which all my notes, thoughts and ideas go. I use this rather than some computer program because I like to doodle at the same time and it’s not very satisfying to doodle in Word.

So every day or so, I write a new prioritised list of what’s important to do and every day some things fall off the end. If they fall off the end then they earn a slightly higher rating for tomorrow. Some things sit on the to do list for days and even weeks. Maybe they don’t really matter that much? Or am I really putting off something important? I have worked in a lot of consultancy situations where it’s all gone wrong because people have simply not prioritised their work, only done wht they feel like doing and never got down to the important stuff to get the job done.

There, I have been really busy lately with some high priority stuff but I can now tick off the fact that I have finally written this week’s article.  No real heroics I’m afraid.

Blessings.

Frank McConnell

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk
and edits www.sdsaf.org

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

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Motoring Along

Posted on February 28, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 21 – Getting Things Done

This was the first use of her hands, her first manual act, in sixty years, and it marked her birth as a ‘motor individual’ (Sherrington’s term for the person who emerges through acts).

Oliver Sacks
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Picador 1985 (reset 2007)  page 66

I had a boss once who said ‘It isn’t ready, aim, fire.  It’s ready, fire, aim.’

It took a while for that to sink in.  He was convinced that the main reason why people got so little done especially when they were managing change is that they kept getting ready and aiming but never actually fired. 

‘Get ready, aim… Hang on, it’s moved.  Ready, aim… It’s moved again.  Ready…’

In organisations, it’s always moving, so the ideal state for ‘fire’ never really comes about. 

They say about managers, especially the new CEO, that they have to make their mark.  They have to be seen to have done something.  Some people like Colin in Cobbler’s All, realise that you don’t have to start making a big impression from Day 1.

Oliver Sacks is a neurologist and I am fascinated by his books.  Here, he quotes ‘Sheringham’ (a professional fellow of his) when he is describing a blind patient, Madeleine, who has never used her hands and therefore at the age of 60 didn’t know how to.  Sacks suggested to the nursing staff that they might leave her meal just out of reach and walk away, and one day, she reached forward and helped herself.  What happened next was astonishing and Madeleine ‘emerged through acts’.  She did something for herself for the first time and after that there was no stopping her.

Some years ago, I worked with a charity that was treading water.  I may be imagining the exact figures but I believe that their annual turnover was some £245,000.  A small number of hitches and hiccups had brought me in to work with them.  There was a conflict problem and then later a crisis of confidence when they thought they might give up their independence and be merged with a national charity. 

The upshot of my work was to ease away the conflict and help them to a new confidence in themselves.  I suggested that they allow their General Manager to ‘emerge through acts’.  They should take a small gamble, something with no great consequence if it failed.  And if it succeeded (which I thoroughly believed it would) they should do more along the same tack.  The General Manager was a very sensible and very able woman who would not damage their organisation through anything too risky.  But she was also someone who could spot a good idea when she saw one and was itching to do more because she knew that more was definitely possible.  I see from the Charity Commission website that the Board now is largely as it was then and in 2010, their turnover was some £1.9 million.

Now that lady is a ‘motor individual’.  Are you?

Frank McConnell

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com

Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

Posted in Confidence, Decision Making, Development, Learning, Organisation Development | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

All-Pervasive Simplicity

Posted on February 28, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 20    Organisation Development

But Mr Blank does not move from his spot by the window, for the simple reason that he is afraid, so afraid of what he might learn from the door that he cannot bring himself to risk a confrontation with the truth.

Paul Auster
Travels in the Scriptorium
Henry Holt and Co Ltd 2006 p 41

I have baulked at writing this piece because it is about something so simple, so obvious, it feels a bit embarrassing to write it.  But last week, someone mentioned the same problem to me and then the other day, I saw a television programme in which the Finance Manager was told that the stationery bill was £3 million and that shocked him.

So this could be the simplest and most practical tip I’ve given in this series of articles but it is something that I didn’t understand the importance of when I first spotted the problem.  So let me tell you that story.

I had become the head teacher of a medium sized primary school, around 220 pupils and 7 teachers.  In those days one of the great annoyances to teachers was access to stock i.e. exercise books, pens, pencils and so on for their pupils.  For some reason, head teachers had traditionally kept this under lock and key and teachers had to beg, justify, and scrabble for what they needed.  I told my staff that the stock cupboard would be open to them in due course but that first I needed to know what we had, what we used, and therefore how much money we had to put aside for that kind of thing.  I knew that what I needed more than anything was to replace the entire library of books in classrooms because the reading standard was disgracefully bad.  We needed bright lively attractive books for the children to enjoy.  I asked my deputy head to become the custodian and let me know his conclusions by the end of the term.  The teachers were to have what they asked for but he was to keep a record so that we could predict necessary expenditure.

Within a fortnight he was back to me.

‘Everybody has what they need and I don’t expect there is going to be much call on anything until we get to December and the Christmas art work hits a high’.

‘Well, let’s stick to the original timetable but you obviously have some first thoughts.’

Indeed he had.  At the time there were three exercise books that the children used that were very common, a tall narrow book for spellings, something similar for some number work and a broad square one used for the children’s project work, a disparate collection of writing, art and research.  In a year, with 200 children we might use 600 of the latter, and 400 each of the first two.

‘My first conclusion leads me to think that we have 12 years supply of each of the little exercise books and 15 years supply of the project books.’

I was shocked.  What a waste of money.  All that cash could have been spent on the vital restocking of reading books.  When I told the staff what the situation was they were amazed too.  And then I explained what we would be doing with next year’s money and they were delighted and lifted.  What was at that time one of the worst schools for academic attainment in the town became one of the best in no time at all.

Mr Blank could have worked with me in a recent place of employment.  We were a bit scared of doing the same stock exercise in case we needed to spend more money than we had available but exactly the same situation pertained as had been the case in my first school.  We were vastly over-stocked with stationery.

Why had these situations come about?   Simply because the boss had eased into a pattern of behaving which was comfortable and they had not questioned any of it.  No one was allowed to question it either!  No one ever reviewed the situation and asked whether this was an appropriate way to behave.  It clearly wasn’t but that way continued for year after year after year.      

It doesn’t have to be Auster’s ‘confrontation with the truth’.  Every organisation should ‘take stock’, excuse the pun, on a regular basis, maybe every three years, maybe five, certainly not longer than that and in some areas of activity even shorter than that.  Everything should be questioned and a proper consideration should be made of even the most simple stuff like how many pencils you have.  Any financial waste detracts from the excellent job you are actually trying to do.  If you don’t waste money on ball point pens that will dry up before you get to use them, you may be able to use that money on dramatically improving the service you give to your customers.  Don’t think it’s only pennies.  By attending to pennies I have turned round more than one organisation. 

Sorry if all that’s obvious but my recent experiences suggest that maybe it’s still an important message.

Frank McConnell

PS I’ve just noticed that my last piece ‘I’m Unique, Sort of’ also led off with a quote from Paul Auster.  He is a bit good!

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com

Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

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I’m Unique, Sort of.

Posted on February 25, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 19 – Self Perception

You have to be willing to admit that you don’t have all the answers. If you think you do, you will never have anything important to say.

Paul Auster
True Tales of American Life
faber and faber 2001
p xvii

When my daughter had her daughter not too long ago, there was a lady in the ward who told us a little of her story and we understood why she named her son, Precious. It put me in mind of the weightlifter Precious McKenzie, an amazingly strong man and winner of many international titles and who once had been a vulnerable and much loved new born baby.

At the birthday party of a friend of ours, a nursery school teacher was telling us of a child in her class who was called Unique. To her family, perhaps she was, but the teacher told us that unfortunately the mother was, in her opinion, somewhat over protective and could be a little awkward for the school authorities. Perhaps that was why when the head was putting together the class lists for the next term she could not resist putting one particular new child into that class. Thus it came about that there were two little girls in that class called Unique.

Eventually each of those girls would understand the meaning of their name and that’s when interesting self-perceptions might begin to flow.

We are all unique, and precious, of course we are, but we are also astonishingly like so many other people too. For years, I thought I was the only person who became really nervous in certain circumstances. I didn’t realise that we all have things we are afraid of or are unsure of.  Perhaps it is our differences that make us individual and our similarities that make us human.

It seems comparatively recent that I understood that if I feel a bit anxious about some particular circumstances, other people probably do as well. So all those years of my youth and adulthood, when I thought that my weaknesses were failings and my failings were weaknesses, I was actually acting like most other people and I was not the only one who felt like that.  Aren’t some people really good at cloaking these things!

We should have more confidence in ourselves and accept that we are not perfect in every way, that we are not good at everything, and that in many ways we are not particularly different from other people (and thanking God that we are not perfect?). 

A lack of confidence is as bad as having too much.  Looking at the queues for auditions for many of the television talent shows, it is obvious that there are as many people who believe in themselves when they have no talent at all as there are people who believe they have nothing to offer when they do. 

Some people act as though they have all the answers when they quite clearly do not.  This is a tactic to keep them feeling good, poor things.  Often they are terrified of losing their status or power so they act ‘all-knowing’.  If everything they say is the ‘best thing to say’, we all soon tire of their unceasing flow of ‘being right’. 

But if you should believe in yourself and the value of your opinion abecause if you never contribute, or only ever cautiously  contribute, then others will never hear your important view. 

Now how do you find the happy medium?

Frank McConnell

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk  

Frank McConnell, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, has specialised in Change Management as an operational manager, strategic manager and consultant since 1974. He also runs a Plain English business and doesn’t like words and phrases like Change Management, Operational Manager, Strategic Manager, Consultant, Fellow, Chartered, Institute, and Personnel but grudgingly accepts them. He loves ‘Development’.

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

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Hedging Bets

Posted on February 16, 2012 by admin

‘Over-rated quality confidence is… Hard work, that’s the secret…’.

Colin Dexter
The Dead of Jericho
Pan Books 1982
p.115

Literally Managing 18 – Customer Relationships

I have a very high hedge running down the left of my back garden. It gives me privacy from nearby properties. Maintaining privacy can be an expensive business and every now and then I have to commission someone to cut away overhanging branches on both sides and reduce the height. The privacy is maintained but the sun can show its face. Last week it was Michael who did the job and very well too.

I made him a cup of tea.

‘How’s business in these hard times?’

‘Very good actually. In a few weeks my regular garden maintenance will come back and I don’t think I’ll have time for any new clients.’

‘You tend to keep your clients?’

‘Mostly. In January I send them all a reminder of the time slots when I will be coming to see them and I ask them if they need a different time or a different job done but most people just ring up to say it’s fine, get on with it as usual.’

Michael cut my hedge exactly as I wanted it, not too even (because that would be unnatural), when I wanted (before the birds start nesting) at the height and thickness I wanted (to give me a chance of it not getting away from me) and tidied everything away (several cubic yards of twig and green stuff).

That’s great customer relations. He used his expertise to tell me what he would do to give me what I wanted and gently asked a few questions to indicate some better ways of doing things. Perfect.

‘So what has made your business so successful when everyone is struggling?’ I wondered if it was just natural or had he thought about it.

‘I think it’s a combination of things. I try to give people what they want and I always turn up when I say I will. In this business it’s really important to tidy the rubbish away too!’

Consistency and reliability contribute so much to good customer service and he knows that, but it’s hard work.

I found myself thinking. When you are a self employed single person business, good customer relationships are absolutely fundamental. Without them, your business is gone. So why doesn’t everyone who is an employee think the same way?

Surely good customer relationships are absolutely fundamental in every organisation? Excellent and efficient work with personable relationships are just as important in employed relationships as in business. How much better the business will work if it works that way. But that’s hard work too.

Before he left, Michael came and thanked me for my payment and said ‘I’ve been thinking’. I suppose there is a certain amount of time for that when you are clearing up the trimmings.

‘I’ve been doing this job for a long time now and I think I know what I’m doing. When you see businesses all round you folding and you are still doing okay then you must be doing something right.’

‘So you’re confident in yourself?’

‘Oh I don’t know about that. I don’t really take risks, I do what I know I’m good at. I’ve never really been confident, but I work hard, and I know that works!’

Frank McConnell

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk

Frank McConnell, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, has specialised in Change Management as an operational manager, strategic manager and consultant since 1974. He also runs a Plain English business and doesn’t like words and phrases like Change Management, Operational Manager, Strategic Manager, Consultant, Fellow, Chartered, Institute, and Personnel but grudgingly accepts them. He loves ‘Development’.

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

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Who’s Holding the Reins?

Posted on February 13, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 17 – Control

When we tell a story we exercise control, but in such a way as to leave a gap, an opening.  It is a version but never the final one.  And perhaps we hope that the silences will be heard by someone else, and the story can continue, can be retold.

Jeanette Winterson
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Jonathan Cape London 2011   page 8

The recent closure of the Barracks in St John’s Wood in London took me back forty years.  I was a student teacher new to a class of very pleasant nine and ten year olds in an excellent school in Lisson Grove. 

My children were sitting very quietly getting on with the tasks I had given them and I was sorting a few things out at my desk before calling the children up to me to read.  It was a blue sky day in summer.

Lisson Grove, a quiet through street off the Marylebone Road, was its usual dusty self with a very occasional vehicle passing by.  Without any warning in the silence suddenly my thirty plus pupils all, in one movement, rose from their places, chairs scratching back off the floor, desks pushed from their tidy positions, and dashed to the big windows overlooking the playground and the street.  They were all there, jockeying for position, little ones burrowing under the elbows of tall ones, before my gaping mouth had had the chance to react.  For a moment I sat shocked and then I heard what the children had heard and recognised in the silence just seconds before – the most beautiful jingle jangle of metal and the multi-rhythmic clip-clopping of the shoes of many horses pulling the gently thunderous bass of heavy carriage wheels rolling at a measured pace over the tarmac and manholes of the latently magical street.  I looked over the heads at the wonderful sight of the gun carriages of the Royal Horse Artillery heading for a firing practice in Hyde Park.  Magnificent horses, brilliant colours, mirror gleaming metal, silver clad soldiers, all their wondrous power like that of the children who seconds before had been as productively disciplined.

The children of course knew the sounds of old, this was their home territory, but it was completely new to me.  When the spectacle had gone, the children returned to their places and after a few moments of beaming and chatter, they returned to their tasks and I to mine. 

My control of this group of people had instantly gone.  And don’t underestimate small children, in a group that big they will eat you alive like a hungry shoal of piranha fish if you are not well ordered for your task as their teacher.  I have seen successful and dominant business people collapse when faced with talking about running a comany with older students than these.  I had worked hard to establish the right relationships so that the children could learn.  I was always very lucky I never had the greatest fear that teachers have, that they will lose control of their classes.

When the Circus went through town, I went with the flow and so did my control.  What could I do?  The drag towards the view was greater than any riptide.  The draw to the window was as a compass point looking north.

Sometimes, you are not in control.  And that’s just as well because we need creativity and the individual is the creator not the organisation.  With totalitarian control there is no creativity.  Winterson is clearly right, there must be silences in the story so that it can continue.

A manager should never try to control everything.  Everyone has their right to be themselves. 

I was only a couple of years in my last job, a position that required some hard decision making and some tight discipline.  At the same time more than half of the staff members were given the individual kindness that they needed when something was difficult for them.  The strict CEO who had to work very hard to pull an organisation out of a real hole was a human being first, as were the staff, and I could not control those personal domestic circumstances that were so upsetting for individuals,.  That CEO simply had a duty to walk alongside his colleague and give support – not domination. 

If you show that kind of respect to individuals’ rights then only the most hard bitten of employees will take advantage.  Total control is never good.  Creativity cannot flow from that.

Frank McConnell

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com

Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk

Frank McConnell, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, has specialised in Change Management as an operational manager, strategic manager and consultant since 1974.  He also runs a Plain English business and doesn’t like words and phrases like Change Management, Operational Manager, Strategic Manager, Consultant, Fellow, Chartered, Institute, and Personnel but grudgingly accepts them.  He loves ‘Development’.

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

Posted in Attitudes, Motivation, Success | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Cobbler’s All

Posted on February 10, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 16 – Decision Making

…making a decision was only the beginning of things.  When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.

Paulo Coelhho    
The Alchemist  
Harper Collins 1999  p.71

Yesterday, Colin, my local cobbler, told me an amusing story.  He was nineteen and worked near home repairing shoes.  The small private business had just been sold to a national chain.  Top brass came in to the shop to discuss what would be happening next and they asked Colin to be the branch manager.

‘I was shocked!   One day I’m minding my own business repairing shoes and the next I’m minding somebody else’s business as their manager!’

‘It was a great act of faith on their part.   You were quite young but they obviously thought you had it in you.’

‘Well, yes, but it was so out of the blue.  When the big bosses left, I suddenly realised that it was down to me.  I was in charge!’

‘What did you do?’

‘I went to the loo!  I needed some thinking time.  After a few moments of panic, I realised I had to make some decisions.’

‘About what?’

‘Well, that was the thing.  There was nothing to make any decisions about.  Everything was okay.  So, I took a deep breath and decided that I wouldn’t change anything right away because I didn’t want to get anything wrong.’

He told me that over the next several weeks, not wanting to ‘get anything wrong’, he would just take a quiet look at the business and everything about it.  He would work at really understanding everything about how the place worked and didn’t work.  So it took him quite a while before he made any decisions to change anything.

‘It was such a relief when I realised that just because I was in charge that didn’t mean that I had to start changing things all over the place.’

How wise from a nineteen year old.  I have seen, so often, that people are so desperate to put their own stamp on things, to make their mark, to make some statement of intent, that they blunder all over the place exercising their power (but not their brains).  That really isn’t necessary.

‘So what happened when you did eventually change something, when you did actually ‘make a decision’?’

‘No problem.  There were only three of us in there anyway and one was a weekender.  When I did DO something nobody batted an eyelid.  I think they realised I wasn’t going to upset the apple cart just because I could.’

Excellent.  And last night I watched a television programme that described how so many CEOs of big companies had psychopathic tendencies.  They could have learnt from Colin who takes great pride in putting a proper shine on my shoes.

Frank McConnell

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk  

 

 

 

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Golf and the Art of Decision Making

Posted on February 2, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 15 – Decision Making

I began to see what had been right in front of me all along – what I would have seen sooner if my mind hadn’t been flying around in a blind panic, like a sparrow trapped in an attic room.

Dolores Claibourne
Stephen King
New English Library paperback edition 1993 p.150 

 
I’ve just had my fourth golf lesson at Darenth Valley Golf Course with Pete Stopford. This week we worked on rhythm. I get on well with Pete, his style of teaching matches my style of learning, and I am constantly struck by the similarities between what he tells me or asks me to think about and the way that work works. Golf is a performance art, so is management.

Too often, on the course I stand and look at the fairway (not the trees!), imagine where I see my ball landing, and practice my shot two or three times. I know what I want to do and how I want to do it. Then, when I play my shot, I do something entirely different! Why on earth is that?

My father was a regional billiards champion and I played a lot of billiards when I was young. These days it’s snooker. Sometimes without really thinking about it, I know even before I have played the shot that it’s the wrong thing to do, and yet I still go and play that exact shot! Why? How can I be that stupid? I stand up from the table with my cue still resting on the cushion, shaking my head, astonished with myself.

There’s something in the preamble to making a decision that needs to be thought about. Working on rhythm with Pete the other day put me in mind of how people deal with that preamble. What Pete was trying to show me is that a good rhythm will work wonders for my play and I think the same is true about management decision making.

I think the rhythm is this.

We have something we need to make a decision about. We give ourselves time to think. We consider the various influences on our decision (how important is it? Will it cost a lot? And so on). We take a balanced view of all the possible outcomes (which may include consulting with people) and we choose what we think is the best option of the bunch. We take a good look at how we think this approach will work out. Then we give our commitment to it, the decision is made and we get on with it. We DON’T do something else at the last moment (as I often do in golf). We DON’T change the implementation of the decision in the middle of doing it. We believe in ourselves and our judgment and we back ourselves to get it right. We stick to what we have decided and we carry it out. If, at the last moment, something important changes and this will have an effect on our decision, then we should stop and go through the whole process again right from the beginning.

Rhythm helps you control the decision and its implementation.

That rhythm applies just as well to my golf shot as it does to the next development at work. That rhythm helps to prevent my next golf swing being ‘like a sparrow trapped in an attic room.’

Nobody gave me an official golf style handicap in management (but what a good idea that might be!) and all I can hope for is that over the years with more and more experience, my management got better than my golf! It wouldn’t be difficult.

Frank McConnell

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk  

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Minding Your Own Business

Posted on January 26, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 14 – Being Well Advised

Knowledge never kills, I have preached for twenty years to anybody who would listen to me: but ignorance can.

Our Game
Sceptre 2006 p.138
John le Carré

I see in my dairy that next week I will chair the panel of judges for the public speaking competition that Young Enterprise runs every year in this area.

Every year for some years now I have been very impressed by the energy and commitment of the participants. They are entertaining as well as informative and if perhaps, out of nerves or a lack of familiarity in being looked at by an audience, they deliver their interesting thoughts a little too quickly to be given the highest marks for presentation, their argument is invariably fresh and therefore worth listening to.

They are about sixteen years old and they remind me of my ideal company. Given a free hand, and one hardly ever has such, I would make sure that my workforce includes at least two people of each decade of age. I would have two teenagers, two in their twenties and so on as far as I could get them. I would have two in their nineties and two centenarians, if they were available.

The reason for this is simple. I do not believe that I have the only opinion that matters. I don’t know everything and I believe that the opinion of every age group is important to my business. It may be me who has to make the final decision on something but it will be a decision that is informed by the perceptions of all those age groups. They will have varying degrees of experience and their experience may be very relevant or somewhat distant from the matter under consideration but they can all offer their perceptions and that will help me make a better final decision.

It’s a bit like an in-house focus group. How useful that could be! In so many organisations the power is in the hands of a single narrow age group. Their perceptions could easily be too narrow because of that. Take any age group and you could punch holes in the value of the decision making if there is a narrowness in its profile. Take for example the forties. By that age, people have all been about a bit. They’ve learnt the business and its business environment very well. But here I will generalise and invent a worst case scenario – this could be a dangerous age group because it connects with people in their teens or seventies mainly through having children or parents of that kind of age. For people of forty, teens and parents are people to be looked after and protected and that’s not the best way to think about and relate to your customers and clients. I agree it’s a pretty poor portrayal, but it’s possible!

So, I would want a focus group of people I will listen to with great respect so that I can understand every age group’s needs in relation to my business. Le Carré is surely right, such knowledge and understanding can only be useful, such ignorance might kill off the business.

Frank McConnell

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk  

Posted in Communication, Decision Making, Motivation, Perceptions | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment