Leadership Genius

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 40 insights
from the
science of
leading
RUS SLATER

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 About the author
Rus Slater has always been interested in leadership: military,
commercial, religious, not-for-profit, sporting or even what is
now known as ‘thought leadership’. After a military career (as a
leader), he moved into civilian employment and specializes in the
areas of personal and leadership development.

He now defines, designs and delivers leadership and management

training to organizations as diverse as Royal Colleges and motor
dealerships, the civil service and global service companies. He
also provides leadership to teams of the highly paid and the
unpaid in commerce and the third sector.

Rus has also written seven other business books, sold globally in
several languages as well as the original English.

Rus leads a delightful life in rural Hampshire.

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 ‘An easy, back-pocket read for any serious business leader or
manager. The ‘big takeaways’ listed at the end of each chapter
are a really useful resource. Slater presents the evidence that
when it comes to leadership personal example, communication
and knowing your people are key.’
Lt. Gen. John Lorimer

‘Leadership Genius is a well-researched read bringing together

both traditional and more contemporary studies into an
engaging, often humorous, and most certainly accessible
observation of the art of leadership. Recommended for both
those who are new to leadership and the more seasoned
practitioners.’
Mark Heywood, Senior Manager,
Performance Management Policy,
Lloyds Banking Group

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 First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Hodder & Stoughton. An Hachette UK company.

First published in US in 2015 by Quercus US

Copyright © Rus Slater 2015

The right of Rus Slater to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Database right Hodder & Stoughton (makers)

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Rights Department, John Murray Learning, at the address below.

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this
same condition on any acquirer.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this title is available
from the British Library.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: on file.

Paperback ISBN 978 1 47360 927 3

eBook ISBN 978 1 47360 928 0

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 Contents
Introductionxi
1. Spreadsheets alone do not a judgement make 1
2. Do YOU really know what motivates your people? 7
3. It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it 14
4. I read it, but what the heck did it mean? 21
5. ‘Workers’ play time’ – is it really worth it? 27
6. As a leader, it is a matter of priorities 33
7. ‘An employee’s workspace is his castle... or should be!’ 39
8. ‘What’s “luck” got to do with it?’ 45
9. Rule No. 1: Never volunteer for anything. NOT! 51
10. The five-step ladder to increased success 56
11. To follow me they have to be able to see me, right? 62
12. It takes all sorts to make a world 67
13. To be (here) or not to be (here), that is the question 73
14. Leadership is not about brain surgery you know 79
15. Successful change begins with ‘good’ communication 84
16. Getting engaged means committing and staying the course 91
17. Spartan or ‘house and garden’? 97
18. Leadership and leaders; let’s get complex 102
19. The customer is always right... WRONG! 107
20. It sounds scientific and objective, but is it science? 112
21. Management and leadership... a hot topic! But for whom? 117
22. Look after the victims but look after the survivors first 123
23. We’re working nine to five – it’s no way to make a living 130
24. You don’t have to love the quitters but at least listen to them 136
25. Is teamwork always the answer? 142
26. Learning; it’s a generational thing 147
27. A ‘training course’ is not the silver bullet for getting people
to learn (in fact it is barely a blank cartridge) 153
28. What happens when you (or someone you manage) make
decisions under pressure? 162
29. Is getting engaged really worth the effort? 167
30. Managing the millennials... some new challenges 173

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 31. Meetings (n); Events where people get together (eventually)
and waste a lot more time than they need to 178
32. ROWE, ROWE, ROWE your boat! 183
33. Find out what your followers think about you, and talk to
them about it! 189
34. Talent management – have you got your EVP right? 195
35. ‘Trust me, I’m a manager’ 200
36. Stop paying attention to the PowerPoint® default settings! 206
37. ‘Science, schmience’... take it with a pinch of salt 212
38. Learning from successful change 216
39. Trust in your virtual team 222
40. You can NOT be serious! 227
Index233

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 Introduction
Is ‘leadership’ an art or a science?

Are ‘leaders’ born to lead, or can ‘leadership’ be taught?

These are two perennial questions that have long been debated,
probably since the first time a human sharpened a stick and
walked out of the cave saying ‘Follow me!’

The concept of leadership as a birthright has been the topic of

much debate for socio-political reasons, and now, in the 21st
century, it is generally accepted that leadership represents a series
of skills that can be learned, and exercised, much like any other
intellectual and practical set of behaviours.

Again, there is much debate about what that set of skills and
behaviours actually constitutes. This is then generally overlaid by
the political considerations of the day; it is rare that Pol Pot, SS
generals or Genghis Khan are referenced as ‘good’ leaders.

Every good bookshop (actual and virtual) has shelves of books

on leadership, most of them written (or at least ghost-written)
by military, political and business leaders, aiming to tell their
leadership story.

While many of these books are a cracking good read, and many
will teach useful leadership lessons, they tend to be very fixed in
the time and the place in which the leader himself or herself lived.
They tend to be anecdotal and driven as much by individual
personality as by any objective analysis. Many of them define
leadership in philosophical terms; their leadership was an art,
rather than a science.

Most years there is a steady flow of more ‘scientific’ papers that

are published by academics, consultancies and businesses. These
range from weighty tomes with thousands of pages of statistical
analysis to simple and straightforward survey results. Some are the
product of a large team, months (or even years) of dedicated effort
and large research grants. Others seem little more than a vehicle to

xi

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 issue a press release. Many of these papers are published and then
never heard of again. Some become the basis for other work and
some become misquoted, distorted and hence dangerous.

This book aims to provide something of a one-stop-shop by

way of a reference to a selection of 40 of these more ‘scientific’
studies. I put the word ‘scientific’ in inverted commas for one
reason. Science is, ironically, not an exact science when it comes
to human behaviour; some scientific studies, while carried out
with objective rigour, can be misleading, simply because of the
nature of the study group. A study of behaviours and reactions
may seem to be very comprehensive but then, when you dig
beneath the surface, you discover that the observations and
conclusions are based on a sample group of 15 people. Out of
a population of 7 billion so this hardly counts as a statistically
significant number.

Alternatively, the study may have had a larger study group

but one that was homogenous; many popular, recognized and
respected studies were carried out by American universities in
the 1960s. The study groups were often other students and the
student population of the time was almost exclusively educated,
white, male and from a similar, middle and upper income socio-
economic background.

The UK’s Science Council exists to advance science in the UK but

it realized quite early on that there was no adequate definition of
what ‘science’ constituted.

It came up with the following definition:

‘Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and

understanding of the natural and social world following a
systematic methodology based on evidence.’

This is great, now we have a base definition of what constitutes

science so we can separate the scientific conclusions from the
homespun philosophy.

Why does this matter? TV news and documentary programmes

are always telling us that ‘scientists have discovered X’, or that

xii

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 ‘the evidence clearly states Y...’ and generally we take their
content as read, why? Chapter 1 looks at a piece of work that is
already a couple of thousand years old. The theory it expounds
explains neatly why ‘science’ is a powerful force in the leadership
debate as well as being a lynchpin of many other issues that
affect leaders and their followers.

Back to the Science Council. What it did next is quite interesting;

the Science Council website quotes its definition and then provides
a commendation of that definition by no other personage than
Anthony Clifford (‘A. C.’) Grayling. Why does Grayling’s opinion
count? He is an MA, a DPhil (Oxon) and a Fellow of not one, but
two, Royal Societies. Clearly he is a serious intellect.

But he is not a scientist.

He is a philosopher.

That piece of work in Chapter 1 also has some explanation of

this. While we know that sometimes we can’t argue with the
actual evidence, we are generally also prepared to be influenced
by people we can respect.

In recognition of the breadth of knowledge that a leader needs in

the modern world I have not confined this book to studies that
formally and solely concern themselves with ‘leadership’ in its
purest sense. Leaders need to know about leadership, but they
also need to know about human psychology, communication,
motivation, marketing, how people learn and how customers
behave and react. Consequently, this book is wide ranging in its
base material.

It is also worth remembering that much science ends up being

proven to be wrong; phrenology was once considered to be
a respectable science but is now almost universally seen as a
pseudo-science. Neuro-linguistic programming is hailed by some
to be an irrefutable science while others decry it as mumbo-
jumbo of the most dangerous sort. So much so in fact that,
on many online forums, that single sentence would be enough
to trigger a landslide of response and counter response that
would go on until one party or another became so angered (and

xiii

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 therefore unscientific) that their comments would be removed by
the moderator.

Some of the studies included have been discredited or exposed as

bunk; these I include simply because they are now so well known
that they are seen as ‘received wisdom’.

Finally it has to be said that many studies are carried out

with less intention to find the answer than to simply act as
a vehicle for the students to practise carrying out a scientific
study. This means that many studies do no more than replicate
previous studies. In consequence, this book may refer to one
particular study; this is not to denigrate the others, simply to
avoid the book reading like many scientific studies; with every
single sentence referencing another academic’s work in order
to prove that the student has left no thesis unread and no
textbook un-thumbed.

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 1 Spreadsheets
alone do not
a judgement
make

People make decisions based on factors other than pure

logic... humans are no Vulcans!

Think about your private life for a moment.

Have you ever wanted something that you could just afford?
This is something that you wanted, but didn’t necessarily need. It
could have been a car or a new mobile phone, an item of clothing
or a holiday.

Did you buy it?

If so; why?

We all make judgements, whether in our purchases or our

decisions to do things. Our capacity to make these judgements
is not influenced solely by logical argument and demonstrable
evidence.

And this is just as relevant in the workplace as in our home lives.

Aristotle, who lived from 384 to 322 bce, was both a philosopher
and a scientist. Born in Macedonia, the son of the personal
physician to King Amyntas, he was probably at least in part
brought up within a palace.

At 18, he moved to Athens and attended Plato’s Academy where

he remained until the ripe old age (for a student) of 37. He
studied and mastered many subjects – including physics, biology,
zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre,

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 music, rhetoric, linguistics, politics and government, and wrote
on pretty much all of them.

So well known did he become as a scholar and sage that,

in 356 bce, King Philip of Macedon invited him to become
personal tutor to his son Alexander, a job he continued to do
for some 33 years. Not that Alexander was a slow developer
but he was clearly a believer in ‘lifelong learning’... even being
known as Alexander the Great didn’t dim the younger man’s
respect for his tutor.

Alexander gave Aristotle many opportunities both in regard to

the areas of study and also the basic resources to store, collate
and distribute knowledge. He established a library in the Lyceum,
which aided in the production of many of his hundreds of books.

Aristotle immersed himself in empirical studies, hence is often

viewed as humanity’s first ‘real’ scientist. His works contain the
earliest-known formal study of logic, which, in the late 19th
century became the foundation of modern formal logic. He
believed all people’s concepts and all of their knowledge was
ultimately based on perception.

Aristotle’s work influenced Jewish, Christian and Islamic

theological thought during the Middle Ages and he was revered
by medieval Muslim thinkers as ‘The First Teacher’. His work
and thoughts on ethics have gained renewed interest with the
modern (dare one say post-Christian) Western world and are still
the object of active academic study today.

Aristotle’s interest in politics and rhetoric led him to analyse

the different ways that a proposal influenced people to make
judgements and decisions.

He summarized his findings in what is usually referred to as his

‘Model of Proof’.

This is pertinent for influencers both speaking to groups and

interpersonal communication. In his day, of course, there was
no electronic communication (mass media or individual), but

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 the model stands the test of time and is still as valid in the 21st
century as it was some 2,800 years ago.

It goes like this:

There are three elements that influence people:

Logos, the Greek for ‘word’, from which we get the word ‘logic’
This refers to the clarity of the message’s claim and the
effectiveness of its supporting evidence.

The audience or other party should be able to both follow a clear

progression of concepts and see reasonable and appropriate facts
to support the message.

Ethos, the Greek for ‘character’, from which we get the

word ‘ethic’
This refers to the credibility of the speaker or writer or the
credibility of the source from whence they may be quoting their
evidence and facts.

If the audience is personally familiar with the speaker or writer,

then that person’s reputation with the audience will be critical.
Is he or she an expert in the field? Does she have relevant
experience?

If the speaker or writer is unknown to the audience, what

evidence is there to suggest that the person is a knowledgeable
expert? Remember A. C. Grayling? He has MA, DPhil, FRSA,
and FRSL after his name; these post-nominal letters establish
his credentials. Similarly, an august publication or institution
can add ethos weight to a message: ‘Source: Harvard Business
Review’, for example.

In the modern world ethos can also be added via the medium
chosen to carry a message. ‘As seen on TV’ is a prime example,
or the fact that the CEO makes a presentation personally is seen
to add credibility over having an underling pass on the message.

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 Pathos, the ancient Greek ‘suffering’ or ‘experience’
This is an appeal that draws upon the audience’s emotions,
sympathies, interests, and/or imagination. An appeal to pathos
encourages the audience to identify with the message through
their emotions; appealing to someone’s better nature, tugging
their heartstrings, emotional blackmail, sending them on a guilt
trip, appealing to their self-interest are all examples of pathos
arguments.

Think back to the opening paragraph of this chapter; did you

buy something you wanted but didn’t need? Logic said you
didn’t need it, but something else said you wanted to own
it. It could have been that you just wanted to feel great by
possessing it or it may have been that you know someone else
who had one and so you felt if it was good enough for them it
would be good enough for you. This is what people do; they
are influenced by a combination of rational and emotional
factors and they are swayed as much by the messenger as they
are by the message.

OK, so there is the study. The question now is: ‘What can you do
to use that data to make yourself a better leader?’

People will only follow you if you influence them, so Aristotle’s

‘Model of Proof’ is highly pertinent to your success as a leader.

Next time you want to influence someone, whether that person

is a member of your team, a peer, a customer or even your boss,
make sure you consider the logos, ethos and pathos of your
argument.

1. Have you set out the factual evidence in a clear, concise and
logical manner?
2. Have you established your personal credentials as an expert in
this field (or, if you have no credentials in this field, have you
made it clear that you aren’t an expert? Owning up before you
start is better than apparently being caught out later)?
3. If you are producing a slideshow presentation, have you
considered not just the content but also the colour schemes (do
they have adequate gravitas?), fonts and graphics?

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 4. Have you kept it brief enough to avoid ‘Death by
PowerPoint®’?
5. Have you practised it and rehearsed it so that you maintain
your credibility?
6. Have you referenced all your logos arguments to credible
ethos sources (remembering that, in some instances, the end
users are the potentially most credible source; if you are
recommending a corporate purchase on behalf of shop-floor
workers, then the opinion of shop-floor workers is a very
potent ethos argument). Have you taken into account the fact
that ‘credible’ means credible to the audience not just to you;
a reference to an American institution may go down well in
some countries/with some audiences, but actually put people
off in other places?
7. Have you considered all the pathos arguments that might
influence each different member or group of your audience;
what is in it for them? How will they feel about your
proposal? Try to put yourself in their shoes to see what
will make them feel good about your proposal; shop-floor
workers are actually seldom that revved up about increasing
shareholder dividend (unless of course they are shareholders)
while customers are not really turned on by the idea of making
managers’ lives easier.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Next time you give someone an instruction or objective, and
they appear to be immediately prepared to accept it, ask how
they feel about it (rather than what they think about it).
• At the next meeting you attend as an attendee rather than as
the chair, listen to the arguments put forward for different
courses of action. Assess each in the light of logos, ethos
and pathos. If you see a colleague floundering because their
argument is not ‘three-dimensional’, offer to share this chapter
with them afterwards.
• Remember the ‘three Greeks’: logos, ethos and pathos... they
really do help you to win people over.

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 Source
http://www.european-rhetoric.com/rhetoric-101/ethos-pathos-
logos-modes-persuasion-aristotle

See also
Chapter 3 – It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it

Chapter 20 – It sounds scientific and objective, but is it science?

Chapter 37 – ‘Science, schmience’... take it with a pinch of salt

Chapter 39 – Trust in your virtual team

Further reading
courses.durhamtech.edu/perkins/aris.html

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 2 Do YOU really
know what
motivates your
people?

It is a sad fact that for a long time managers and leaders

make erroneous assumptions about what motivates their
staff or followers

Kenneth A. Kovach was a professor of management at George

Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia in the US. As a professor
of management he was, of course, motivated to study motivation
and he carried out one such study in 1986.

It was carried out as a form of ‘longitudinal study’, not in that he

surveyed the same group of people as previous studies but in that
he asked the same questions in pretty much the same way as a
study held 5 years beforehand and another, some 40 years before.

All three studies presented a set of ten factors that affect a

person’s motivation at work and asked the respondents to rank
them in order of importance.

The factors were (in no particular order)

1. Good wages
2. Job security
3. Full appreciation of work done
4. Sympathetic help with personal problems
5. Interesting work
6. Promotion and growth in the organization
7. Personal loyalty to employees
8. A feeling of being involved in things
9. Tactful discipline
10. Good working conditions

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 Kovach found that the overall ranking given the factors in 1986
was significantly different from the rankings given in 1946.

 
Ranking 1946 Ranking 1986
1 Full appreciation of 1 Interesting work
work done
2 Feeling of being in on 2 Full appreciation of
things work done
3 Sympathetic help with 3 Feeling of being in on
personal problems things
4 Job security 4 Job security
5 Good wages 5 Good wages
6 Interesting work 6 Promotion and growth
in the organization
7 Promotion and 7 Good working
growth in the conditions
organization
8 Personal loyalty to 8 Personal loyalty to
employees employees
9 Good working 9 Tactful discipline
conditions
10 Tactful discipline 10 Sympathetic help with
personal problems

OK, no great surprises there. 1946 was just after World War II,
which followed the Great Depression, whereas 1986 followed a
couple of decades of economic growth in the US. You’d expect
people’s motivators to change in line with the environment they
work and live in.

One of the more interesting and valuable facets of all three

studies was that alongside the questionnaire completed by
employees was a similar questionnaire handed to their managers.
This second questionnaire asked, not ‘What motivates you?’ but
‘What motivates the people who work for you?’ The results of
this questionnaire remained completely unchanged from 1946,
through 1981 to 1986. Great!

Consistency!

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 That is what we want, isn’t it?

Sadly the managers’ questionnaires may have been consistent

across the managers and the decades, but they were completely at
odds with the opinions of the people they purported to be about!
The 1986 results looked like this:

 
Managers’ perceptions of People’s self-declared
what motivates their people motivators
1.  Good wages 1.  Interesting work
2.  Job security 2. Full appreciation of work
done
3. Promotion and growth in the 3.  Feeling of being in on things
organization
4.  Good working conditions 4.  Job security
5.  Interesting work 5.  Good wages
6.  Personal loyalty to employees 6. Promotion and growth in the
organization
7.  Tactful discipline 7.  Good working conditions
8. Full appreciation of work 8.  Personal loyalty to employees
done
9. Sympathetic help with 9.  Tactful discipline
personal problems
10.  Feeling of being in on things 10. Sympathetic help with
personal problems

Kovach was surprised that, though employees seemed to have

changed considerably over the intervening years, managers’
perceptions of employees hadn’t. Bearing in mind that managers
are employees too, and that the managers of 1986 were most
unlikely to be the same managers as in 1946, this suggested that
there was something that happened to people as they became
managers that affected their perceptions.

Kovach postulated that managers may subconsciously upgrade

the motivators that are outside their personal control when
assessing what motivates people. This reduces their personal
burden for motivation of their people, placing it more squarely
with their bosses; wages, job security and working conditions are

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 often company-wide schemes that individual managers have little
influence over.

Another researcher has suggested that the management

population simply ‘projects’ their own motivations upon the
people who work for them. Since managers are generally
promoted to being managers because they are presumably
‘driven’ and competent, they are more likely to be motivated by
tangible measures. What more tangible measure is there than the
size of your pay cheque?

The saddest fact in this is that, in spite of more than 40 years of

research, most managers continue simply to copy their older and
more established bosses’ perceptions.

OK, so there is the data. The question now is: ‘What can you do
to use that data to make yourself a better leader?’ Here are some
suggestions:

1. When Kovach did his study in 1986 he also collected some

personal data on the respondents. He found out that women
often had a slightly different profile of motivators to men.
(Generally, women put ‘appreciation’ above ‘interesting work’
at the top of the list.) He found out that employees (of either
gender) had different profiles depending on age and position
on their life path (‘money’ and ’job security’ was often ranked
higher among the younger respondents and ‘loyalty’ higher
among the older ones). So rather than take the raw data
as Gospel, make up your own mini-survey using the same
10 factors and use it with the people you lead. Find out what
actually motivates your people rather than making a wild
guess or an informed presumption. Then remember that as a
person’s life changes, their motivators may well change as well.
Whenever someone in your team:

• marries (or enters a stable relationship);

• starts a family (or gets a ready-made one with a new
partner);
• becomes a carer for an older relative;

10

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 • has a partner whose circumstances change or;
• loses a partner (to death or divorce).
• This is the time to reassess what motivates them. Subtly and
diplomatically, don’t do what one boss did and, on being
told that a staff member’s spouse had just walked out, smiled
and said: ‘Oh, great, well you’ll be looking for a lot more
overtime now you have no home comforts to rush off to!’

2. Find out what each of your people finds ‘interesting’. Just

because you find spreadsheets wildly exciting, it doesn’t mean
that other people do too. Again, ask people what particular
jobs they find interesting and try, where possible, to provide
them with interesting work. If there are boring jobs to be
done, try to rotate them, and take a leaf out of the British
Royal Household’s book below.

3. Ask yourself: ‘When was the last time I showed my

appreciation to a member of my team for something they
have done?’ If it wasn’t in the past working day, ask yourself
whether that is motivating your people (because appreciation
of work done is #2 on the generic list!). You don’t have to
award someone a medal to show appreciation, you just have
to say a few words: ‘thank you’, ‘nice job’, ‘high five’. Some
people will like to have it done in public and others will die
of embarrassment if anyone else hears... but they should hear
it! Show your appreciation if a member of your team does a
good job for a customer and the customer is too rude to say
thanks... it is motivating to know that someone noticed and
had the decency to say something.

Remember that most of the important things that motivate your

people are actually in YOUR gift. Don’t be persuaded that only
the HR department or the finance director can motivate people;
people will work for YOU if you motivate them, in spite of the
organization’s lousy wages.

11

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 At the Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace, the
temporary ‘wardens’ stand two in each of the many public
rooms. They have been trained and educated in security
and art history so they are fully briefed in the event of an
incident or a question about any of the thousands of works
under their eye. They are dressed in heavy wool three-piece
uniforms, they must stand. They may not put hands in
pockets; they are like the guardsmen outside but without
the rifles and bayonets.

Most of the visitors rent an electronic talking guide, so the

wardens may only get one or two questions per eight-hour
shift. Potentially it is the most boring job in the world!
Every 15 minutes each warden rotates to a different room
or a different duty; they may be supervising the entry queue,
or standing in a stateroom. They may be operating the
‘Rapiscan’ security system or searching bags. They may be
leading a special tour or frisking visitors.

Their managers have gone out of their way to make a

potentially boring job interesting.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Next time you hear a fellow manager moaning about the lack
of motivation in his or her team, share this chapter with them,
pointing out that almost all the real motivators of human
effort are within their grasp as a line manager.
• Sit down and take a look at your personal behaviours in the
past week. Have you shown appreciation to every member
of your team in that time? If not, get up, and go and find
something to be grateful for!
• Remember in the future that a word of thanks, a gesture of
personal appreciation and an explanation of the bigger picture,
from you, is worth far more than an incentive scheme from the
HR department.

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 Source
homepages.se.edu/cvonbergen/files/2012/12/What-Motivates-
Employees_Workers-and-Supervisorys-Give-Different-
Answers1.pdf

See also
Chapter 11 – To follow me they have to be able to see me, right?

Chapter 21 – Management and leadership... a hot topic! But for

whom?

Chapter 23 – We’re working nine to five – it’s no way to make a

living

Chapter 33 – Find out what your followers think about you, and
talk to them about it!

Further reading
www.businessballs.com has a wealth of information about the
topic of motivation

Morrell, Margaret & Capparell, Stephanie, Shackleton's Way:

Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer (Viking
Penguin, New York, 2001) is an excellent and inspiring read to
see motivation in the face of unimaginable adversity

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 3 It ain’t what
you say, it’s the
way that you
say it

You may be surprised to learn that this commonly known

communication ‘fact’ is, in fact, fiction!

It is virtually received wisdom that:

• Only 7 per cent of communication is conveyed in the words

we use;
• That 38 per cent of the meaning of our message is down to the
‘tonal influences’ – the tone, pace and volume with which we
speak;
• And a whopping 55 per cent of communication is down to
body language.

You will have probably heard commercial trainers,

communication specialists, school teachers and voice coaches all
quote these statistics.

They have been used in TV adverts for organizations as diverse

as banks and perfume manufacturers. In fact they are probably
the single most quoted statistics relating to communication and
they are definitely in the Statistical Top Ten quoted numbers.

But...

Do you know their origin?

Were you aware that they are a very filtered and altered version
of the original?

Are you aware that they are so altered as to be almost complete bunk!

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 The original and blameless source of this ‘factoid’ is Dr Albert
Mehrabian, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of
California, Los Angeles.

He came to psychology with a Bachelor of Science Degree and

an MSc in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. He received his PhD from Clark University and
began his career of teaching and research at UCLA in 1964.

His background in engineering provided him with a distinctly

empirical approach to his work. Knowing that it is only possible
to test the validity of ideas by clear measurement, he has devoted
much of his 50-plus years of research to the development
of metrics and major theoretical models for measuring and
describing complex psychological phenomena.

In 1981, Mehrabian published a book entitled Silent Messages:

Implicit Communication of Emotions and Attitudes. This was
based largely on experiments he had carried out to assess the
comparative impact of different elements or factors on the
communication of attitudes and feelings. In the experiments the
subjects listened to, and watched, assistants saying particular
words in particular tones of voice with particular facial
expressions. The subjects then reported their impression of the
underlying attitudes and feelings of the assistants.

Mehrabian’s findings were as follows:

• 7 per cent of the message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is

in the words that are spoken.
• 38 per cent of the message pertaining to feelings and attitudes
is conveyed in the tonal influences; the way that the words
are said.
• 55 per cent of the message pertaining to feelings and attitudes
is in facial expression.

These are in bold to make them stand out; they are the
true ones rather than the oversimplified and misquoted
conclusions.

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 Sadly, this is often simplified and distorted to read:

• 7 per cent of communication is conveyed in the words we use.

• 38 per cent of the meaning of our message is down to the
‘tonal influences’, the tone, pace and volume with which we
speak.
• 55 per cent of communication is down to body language.

Why is it important that we are aware of the distortion?

Mehrabian was not looking into the ‘meaning’ of

communication, but the underlying perceptions of attitude
and emotion. By leaving out the qualification that attitude and
emotion is the target, it is easy to make erroneous conclusions
such as:

• Written communication can never be as effective as face-to-

face communication.
• A telephone conversation cannot possibly convey the same
meaning as effectively as a face-to-face conversation.
• If you want someone to understand you then you really need
to be in the same room as them when you are talking to them

However reasonable those statements may sound; they are NOT

reasonable conclusions from Mehrabian’s work.

If the following words are said:

‘Fire on the third floor, evacuate the building immediately.’

They clearly convey a universally understood meaning, and no

differences of tone or facial expression are likely to change the
way in which the meaning is understood. It is of course possible
that the look on the face of the person saying them, and the
tonal influences with which they are being said, may indicate
that person’s specific emotional reaction to the message, but the
message is clear regardless.

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 Many other, more everyday business messages can be conveyed
via words alone without any loss of meaning: straightforward
factual messages, data, historic performance reports, descriptions
of processes and straightforward instructions.

Mehrabian’s experiments looked solely at face-to-face, verbal

communication. None of the experiments used telephone
communication (where, in theory, the tonal influences would
have existed but with no non-verbal elements). However, it is not
unreasonable to draw the conclusion that telephone calls do in
fact potentially hide that latter aspect.

Neither did he look into written communication in any form,

though his work is often cited as proof of the danger of
misunderstandings arising in memos, letters, texts and emails.

Why is it important to be aware of the real outcomes of

Mehrabian’s work?

As a leader you want people to follow you. Their act of following

you is a matter of their choice and it is NOT the same as you
dragging them kicking and screaming behind you. You want
them to do as you ask and as you would want. You want
them to do it willingly, happily and with self-motivation and
self-assessment so that they don’t need to be permanently and
consistently monitored.

This means that you are going to have to convince them that you
really care about, trust and value them. You are going to have to
convince them about your underlying attitudes and emotions.

You are also going to need to be convinced that they really are
self-motivated and self-assessing. You are going to have to learn
to see through the meaning of people’s words and read their
tonal influences and non-verbal behaviours to understand their
attitudes and emotions.

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609273_Leadersh_Genius_Book.indb 17 10/07/15 2:31 PM

 Note that the term above is ‘leader’ rather than hierarchical
figure of authority; when a US police officer points a 9mm
automatic pistol at you and yells at you to lie face down on
the floor and put your hands on your head, it is a fair bet
then he or she isn’t asking you to enter into a debate about
the rights and wrongs of the US constitution, the merits
of an armed police force or his or her attitude towards
zero-tolerance law enforcement.

As a leader you are going to want people to follow particular

courses of action; to be prepared to make significant changes
in their working pattern; to put the needs of customers,
shareholders and colleagues on the same footing as their own
interests. You are going to have to persuade them to trust you,
to believe in you and to take your word for things. This means
you have to give them the impression (at least) that you care,
that you are committed, that you believe in what you are saying
and that you will keep your promises. All these things are
emotions and attitudes.

OK, how much of this is relevant to you? Whether you are

already the CEO of a large organization or a relatively junior
manager you still regularly interact face to face with your own
team. If you are in the former camp then your team interacts
with immediate subordinates and so on down the line. If you are
in the latter camp, you are interacting directly with the people
at the ‘coalface’. In either case you need to convince your direct
reports of your bona fides.

If you have a ‘chain of command’ under you it is important to

ensure that the links in that chain are all aware of the effect that
their tonal influences and non-verbal behaviours have on your
message that they are cascading through the organization.

The understanding of the importance of conveying your attitudes

and emotions when speaking, and how to interpret the attitude

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 of others when listening, will always be essential for effective face
to face, verbal communication in management.

Here are three things that you can do to help you in relation to this:

1. Make a very conscious effort to have face-to-face discussions

with as many people as you can to ensure that your attitudes
of commitment, dedication, concern, respect and drive are
clearly and accurately communicated.
2. Think about the tonal influences that will help you to make
a connection with these people and improve the likelihood of
their ‘getting’ your underlying attitude. Think about the non-
verbal factors as well. Consider the PEOPLE mnemonic that
you will find referenced in the Further reading section below.
3. Pay attention to the reactions other people have to you; listen
to their words, be aware of their tonal influences and observe
their non-verbal behaviours. This will give you the opportunity
to assess your success as well as gauging their attitudes to you
and your ideas.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Next time you hear someone misquoting this research, put
them right... diplomatically!
• Before you send an email... stop! Ask yourself if you might
have your attitudes or opinions misconstrued through the lack
of non-verbal elements.
• Keep in mind the importance of making your tonal and non-
verbal behaviours match your words... if they don’t people will
see through the words or reach wrong conclusions about your
underlying motives.

Source
Mehrabian, Albert, Silent Messages: Implicit Communication
of Emotions and Attitudes (Wadsworth Publishing Company,
Belmont, 1981)

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 See also
Chapter 12 – It takes all sorts to make a world

Chapter 16 – Getting engaged means committing and staying the

course

Chapter 31 – Meetings (n); Events where people get together

(eventually) and waste a lot more time than they need to

Chapter 36 – Stop paying attention to the PowerPoint® default

settings!

Further reading
The PEOPLE mnemonic; available at www.coach-and-courses.
com/page8.htm

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 4 I read it, but
what the heck
did it mean?

There are many ways to write in English... sadly, many people

choose to write in impenetrable English!

As management evolved throughout the past couple of centuries,

managers wanted to ‘professionalize’ their field of endeavour.
Management colleges and management qualifications started
to appear. Management institutes were formed and managers
started to style themselves like the other professions – doctors,
lawyers and accountants.

Doctors use a lot of Latin. Yes, there is a reason for it; it crosses
international and cultural boundaries and is clearly understood
by an American doctor, a Russian doctor and an Arabic-speaking
doctor. But it also confuses the rest of the mere mortals of the
human race who do not have the benefits of a classical or medical
education.

Lawyers, traditionally, notwithstanding previously

established precedent, when communicating with similarly
qualified individuals, and within legal boundaries, will
usually eschew using diminutive taxonomy if there is a
more long-winded and circumlocutory way of expressing
their opinions which, of course are their personal opinions
and are not necessarily to be accepted as the opinions of
their publisher per se, who takes no responsibility for any
damage, illness, injury or loss, regardless of magnitude that
may be incurred as a result of listening to what they said.

In other words, professionals love to exclude people who aren’t

part of their clique.

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609273_Leadersh_Genius_Book.indb 21 10/07/15 2:31 PM

 Sadly, many managers follow this and write in a way that leaves
the reader wondering what the heck they are going on about.

The ‘readability’ of documents is as important as the actual

content.

Numerous studies in the 1940s showed that even a small increase

in readability could greatly increase readership and circulation of
newspapers.

In 1947, the publication Wallaces’ Farmer used a split-run

edition to study the effects of making its content easier to read.
It found that simplifying the language increased readership by
43 per cent, a gain of 42,000 readers in a circulation of 275,000.
This was on an article that was of lesser relevance to the readers.
The study also found a 60 per cent increase in readership for an
article that was more directly relevant to them.

Researcher Wilbur Schramm interviewed more than a thousand

people about their reading habits. He found that an easier
reading style helps to decide how much of a piece of writing is
read. This was called ‘reading persistence’ or ‘perseverance’. He
also found that people will read less of long articles than of short
ones. A document that is nine paragraphs long will lose three out
of ten readers by the fifth paragraph. A shorter story will lose
only two.

Rudolf Flesch, an Austrian-born American, was a ‘readability

expert’, writing consultant and author who was a staunch
advocate of plain English in the United States. A graduate of
Columbia University, he earned a PhD in English and shortly
afterwards published (in 1955) what became his most famous
book, Why Johnny Can’t Read: and what you can do about it.
This is a critique of the then fashionable new practice of teaching
reading by what was often called the ‘look-say’ method. In
Flesch’s opinion the flaw with this method was that it required
the reader to have learned words by sight. When confronted with
an unknown word, the reader was stymied. Flesch advocated
a revival of the old-fashioned phonics method, the teaching of
reading by sounding out words.

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 Flesch was a prolific author. He published many books on the
subject of clear, effective communication and the relevant one
to this chapter is How to Test Readability, which was published
in 1951.

He devised, tested and proved the Flesch Reading Ease test. This
is one of a pair of commonly used ‘readability’ metrics, the other
being the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level.

The Grade Level allocates an appropriate US school system

academic grade level (eg school students aged x to y) to any
piece of writing. The objective is to allow teachers, parents and
librarians to make a judgement about the appropriateness of
a title for their particular child or group. We will say no more
about this test specifically.

The two tests were adopted by, initially, the US military for
testing the readability of training manuals, i.e. the ability of a
reader to actually understand what the manual was supposed
to be teaching. Then they were adopted for all Department
of Defense documents. Pennsylvania then made it a legal
requirement that motor insurance policies be tested to be
readable by anyone over the age of 15. The tests are now so
widespread in the US that they are embedded as a default on
Microsoft Word® (and many other proprietary word processors)
spellchecking systems.

Sadly, many executives are unaware of this hidden gem!

The Flesch Reading Ease test uses a complex mathematical

formula that crunches the number of words in a piece of writing
with the number of sentences and also crunches the number of
syllables with the number of words. It then does some magic with
some constants and produces a nice, easy-to-see score, known as
the Flesch Reading Ease Score or FRES.

The FRES is a simple number; the higher the number, the easier
the piece is to read. It does exactly what it says on the tin. That
boxed paragraph above scores minus 45… in other words it
isn’t easy to read and understand. That passage was deliberately

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 written to be gobbledygook but I have just run the test on a
passage written by a company director which aims to teach
managers the performance management process of the company.
It scored 26. Once he had re-written it in the light of the test
score it scored 73... much easier to read and therefore more likely
to be read, and subsequently more likely to be understood and
more likely to be used.

The nice thing about the Flesch Reading Ease test is that the
score is a simple number; the higher the number the easier
the text is to read. You need no knowledge of the US school
system to understand it. Of course ‘scientists’ don’t all speak
with one voice on any topic and readability is no exception.
There are various other readability tests that are similarly well
proven. SMOG is the ‘Simple Measure of Gobbledygook’... this
calculates the number of years in education required to read a
piece of text, so again it is free from a link to the US education
system. SMOG is the preferred measure of NIACE, the National
Institute of Adult Continuing Education. It is also very popular
with the Royal College of Physicians in the UK and the Health
Department in the US.

This book ‘plugs’ the Flesch Reading Ease score simply because it
is already at the fingertips of most executives.

Sadly Flesch’s last work was Why Johnny Still Can’t Read:
A New Look at the Scandal of Our Schools, which was
published in 1981.

OK, that is the science, what can you do to put it to good use?

First, test your own work: to test a piece of writing on your PC

(in Word®), simply follow the instructions below:

1. Save your work.

2. In the toolbar go to the Review tab
3. Select Spelling & Grammar
4. Change or ignore all the things that the spell checker identifies

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 5. After the last item you will get a dialogue box that contains
your work’s readability statistics:

• The first section is the ‘Counts’; it counts the number of

words, characters, paragraphs and sentences.
• The second is the ‘Averages’; it calculates the average
number of sentences per paragraph, words per sentence and
characters per word.
• The third section is the ‘Readability’; first, it simply tells you
the number of passive sentences and then, by crunching the
numbers via a complicated mathematical formula, it tells you
the FRES. You want this number to be as high as possible.
It also shows the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, which you
should aim to get in the region of 9.

(If this doesn’t happen then you probably have the

Readability Statistics turned off... go to Review>Spelling &
Grammar>Options... tick the check-box Show readability
statistics, which needs to be enabled first in Word 2010…

1. Click the File tab, and then click Options.

2. Click Proofing.
3. Under When correcting spelling and grammar in Word, make
sure the Check grammar with spelling check box is selected.
4. Select Show readability statistics.

Get into the habit of doing this regularly. If your scores are ‘bad’,
download the NIACE free readability guide entitled ‘How to
produce clear written materials for a range of readers’. You can
find the address at the end of this chapter in Further reading.
The guide is only 12 pages long. Read it and use the advice in the
guide to improve the readability of your work. Basically, think
shorter sentences. Short words. More paragraphs.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• When you get a document from a colleague and you have to
read it twice to make sense of it, ask them what it scored on
the readability test. Share the way of getting a test score via
their word-processing package or the online test mentioned

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 below in Further reading. Ask other people to test their work.
It is an eye-opener for many people!
• Get into the habit today of testing your own work; producing
material that is difficult to read is NOT a demonstration of
your own intellectual superiority... it is better to ‘blind them
with your brilliance, than to baffle them with balderdash’.
• Remember; short paragraphs, short sentences, short words...
people have short attention spans!

Source
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readability

See also
Chapter 26 – Learning; it’s a generational thing

Chapter 36 – Stop paying attention to the PowerPoint® default

settings!

Chapter 40 – You can NOT be serious!

Further reading
office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word-help/test-your-document-s-
readability-HP010148506.aspx#BM11 will help you to set up
the test in Word® or Outlook®

https://readability-score.com allows you to carry out a test on a

piece online

read-able.com allows you to test a website by simply putting in

the web address

shop.niace.org.uk/readability.html offers a free readability guide

in pdf format. Although it repeatedly refers to ‘people with
reading difficulties’, it is a good primer for all business writing

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 5 ‘Workers’ play
time’ – is it
really worth it?

Machiavelli said that a leader should instil fear in his

followers. In this more enlightened age, perhaps making
them happy works better

Ever since the human race moved (largely) from subsistence to

employed economies there have been several questions that crop up
repeatedly. Whether leaders are born or made is one, and another is
whether people really are more productive when they are happy.

Read many organizations’ ‘vision and values’ statements and you

will find some reference to making their staff (or associates or
employees or whatever they are calling them) ‘happy’. There is a
mass of anecdotal evidence that suggests that happy people are
productive people, but there is little empirical evidence that this
is true.

A study carried out over several years by the University of

Warwick in the UK and the IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor)
in Bonn has filled this gap.

‘Happiness’ was measured by a questionnaire which asked the

subjects to provide a rating score of their happiness. This was
repeated three times at strategic moments during the experiments.
Clearly this is entirely subjective, but then so is happiness!

‘Productivity’ was measured by a paper-based arithmetic test. The

subjects were asked to carry out simple additions of 5 two-digit
numbers. They were allowed ten minutes to complete as many as
they could, correctly. This was designed to replicate a white collar,
office job rather than a manufacturing production role. The subjects
were both male and female and were exclusively university students;
so all had a level of education appropriate for office-type roles.

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 The subjects’ productivity was assessed at the outset and then at
the end.

The study ran in four separate experiments with a group sample

of 713 people.

Experiments 1, 2 and 3 were carried out in controlled

environments and subjects were paid piece-rates, in real money,
for their correct answers; it was a real test of productivity for
reward rather than a notional assessment of ‘motivation’.

The individual experiments were repeated over six separate

days to obtain ‘longitudinal’ data rather than being a one-off,
and results were compared to check their validity. The different
repetitions of the individual experiments were done at different
times of the day to remove any effects of people’s biorhythms.

The awareness of the actual financial reward for productivity

was varied. The subjects were sometimes initially unaware of
the actual detail of the financial reward; similar to many real-life
jobs where connecting effort and success to financial outcome
is blurred. In Experiment 2 the reward was made explicit to see
what differences this would produce.

Corporate-sponsored ‘happiness’
The ‘happiness’ was provided by a variety of different stimulants.
These were deliberately selected to be things that an employer
could provide or replicate at a relatively low investment. They
ranged from video comedy clips to the provision of chocolates,
fruit and soft drinks.

In all cases, control groups provided comparative data.

Happiness isn’t just down to the boss though

Experiment 4 assessed the effect of real-life trauma on people’s
happiness and therefore their productivity.

The researchers didn’t inflict any actual real-life trauma on

anyone!

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 All subjects completed the aforementioned questionnaires which,
among other things, asked them about their real-life situation
and any ‘Bad Life Events’ (BLE) they may have been subjected to.
These included:

• close family bereavement

• extended family bereavement
• close family life-threatening illness, and
• parental separation or divorce.

Those who had suffered/were suffering one or more BLEs which

affected their happiness during the experiments could therefore
be measured against those who were unaffected by these
universally recognized events.

Is the received wisdom that happy people are more

productive borne out by the science?
Experiment 1... comedy and laughter and implicit performance-
related reward
The reported levels of pre-experiment happiness were virtually
the same for both the subject group and the control group.

On average, people who were ‘subjected’ to the comedy clip were

then 13 per cent more productive than the control group.

Gender seems to have had no impact: males and females showed

little difference in the increase in productivity.

Some subjects (only 16 out of 276 or 5 per cent) reported that the
comedy clip did not make them any happier BUT interestingly it
had no effect on their productivity, they were as productive as the
control group.

Experiment 2... comedy and laughter and explicit performance-

related reward
In this experiment the subject group of 104 people scores 22 per
cent higher productivity than the control group. The subject
group males score very slightly higher than the females, but the
difference in gender result was very small.

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 Experiment 3... chocolate, fruit and bottled spring-water. And
explicit performance-related reward
In this experiment with 74 subjects it was found that there was a
15 per cent increase in productivity above the control group.

Experiment 4... subjects who had recently suffered a BLE or

were in the midst of one
179 people took part in this experiment. They rated their
happiness some 7.25 per cent less happy than people who are not
affected by a BLE.

A very recent BLE had an effect, around 10 per cent less

productivity if the BLE was in the past 12 months. This
decreased over time and ceased to have any noticeable effect after
three years.

The results above are simplified and summarized (the actual

report is 43 pages in length). They mention productivity only as
successful outputs; there were significant increases in people’s
‘effort’ when happier; the number of ‘attempts’ also rises with
‘happiness’.

The report’s authors also accept that the short-term increase in

happiness, and the corresponding increase in productivity, is not
proven to be sustainable. They also accept that there has to be
a cost/benefit analysis of the methods that might actually make
people happier in the real business environment in relation to the
percentage increase in effort and productivity. Inevitably, they
suggest that further research is needed in this area (thus keeping
them in jobs in academia for a few years more!).

As usual, there is the data; what can you do about it?

1. First, spread the news! Tell your boss and your fellow
managers about this... it is the logos and ethos argument to the
pathos (see Chapter 1) we have all been feeling for years!
2. Find out what will make your people happier; perhaps
you could share the findings with them and ask them what
they’d suggest as alternatives to comedy clips and chocolates.
Once you know what this particular group would find

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 happy-inducing you can look to see if you can provide it
economically.
3. Find out what things have the opposite effect; what are the
real-life, everyday ‘buzz kills’ that make them less happy and
therefore less productive? Once you know what sucks the
fun out of life for your people you can try to make sure you
avoid it.
4. Do this on a regular basis; not just in a fit of enthusiasm that
then tails off and goes down in history as yet-another-flavour-
of-the-month initiative. What makes people happy changes
so keep on top of the situation. Variety is the spice of life.
Consider appointing someone (and rotating the responsibility)
to be the ‘smile monitor’.
5. Expect people’s effort and productivity to be affected by real-
life BLEs, but note that a 10 per cent drop in productivity isn’t
the same as a 90 per cent drop!

At one stage of its meteoric growth, the company now

known as HCL Axon actually had a board director
whose sole job was to make sure that its staff enjoyed
their jobs.

The staff members were highly valued knowledge workers

in a very competitive industry where headhunting and
poaching were very common. The Director of Fun was
responsible for making sure that staff were kept happy even
though most of them worked away from home and from
the company’s own offices on client sites.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Tell your management colleagues that it is official: work is not
a ‘four-letter word’, happy people can be busy people, and,
yes, it is a manager’s job to make his or her people happy.
• Go out into your team’s workplace today and count the
‘smiles’... actually delay that. It is probably better to look for
frowns, scowls and glum faces. If you find them, try to find out
why. Take an interest in people’s levels of happiness.

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 • Remember that you may not be the ‘Director of Fun’, but
ensuring you make people’s happiness a weekly objective will
pay dividends in the short, medium and long terms.

Source
www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/eproto/
workingpapers/happinessproductivity.pdf

See also
Chapter 7 – ‘An employee’s workspace is his castle… or should be!’

Chapter 9 – Rule No. 1: Never volunteer for anything. NOT!

Chapter 13 – To be (here) or not to be (here), that is the question

Chapter 17 – Spartan or ‘house and garden’?

Chapter 22 – Look after the victims but look after the survivors
first

Chapter 40 – You can NOT be serious!

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 6 As a leader, it
is a matter of
priorities

As if senior managers hadn’t got enough on their plates, they

have a major responsibility to make themselves redundant

So, you are a leader.

You are expected to provide a vision of the organization’s future.

You are expected to craft a mission statement for the people to

achieve.

You are expected to inspire your employees, your investors and

your customers.

You are expected to create an environment where your people

can excel.

You are expected to be the primary ambassador for the

organization.

You are expected to have solutions to problems

You are expected to do all this and...

Train the very people who are just waiting for the first
opportunity to take over your job?

Seriously?

Isn’t that completely counterintuitive?

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 Well, yes, according to Eli Cohen (former research director
of the University of Michigan) and Noel Tichy (professor of
management and organizations at the University of Michigan’s
Ross School of Business). But their research suggests that it is
also a critically important role for a leader. Their research was
published in 2007 in the book The Leadership Engine.

Their research took place over several years and took the form of
in-depth interviews and study visits with the people concerned.
Their subject organizations ranged from the virtually unique,
such as the Special Operations Forces of the US military (the
Green Berets, Navy SEALS and Army Rangers), commercial
organizations in mature industries such as Royal Dutch Shell and
General Electric, fast-moving technology organizations such as
Compaq and Intel right through to not-for-profit foundations
such as Focus: HOPE. The subjects were all US oriented but
many with global workforces.

It is that global nature that makes the topic they address so

important; in the world today your competitors are everywhere,
technology moves fast and customers are more discerning...
and fickle. Organizations have to move fast to simply stay
in the same place, to prosper requires lightning speed. This
means that organizations have to employ people who can take
decisions at a far faster rate than ever before. One very telling
comment in the book is attributed to Larry Bossidy, then CEO
of AlliedSignal:

‘Everyone in the world is doing the same things we are. For

us to succeed we must get there faster, with better prepared
people.’

What sets Tichy and Cohen’s work apart is that their research
doesn’t identify what you should be teaching people about the
details of leadership. It does, however, clearly identify several
important points about leadership and its development in the
organization:

1. Leadership is important at all levels of the organization, not

just at the top.

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 2. It is the leaders of today who should be actively developing
(personally and devotedly) the leaders of tomorrow.
3. Today’s leaders must have a ‘teachable point of view’ if they
are to develop the leaders of tomorrow.
4. The ‘teachable point of view’ becomes a ‘story’.

1. Leadership in not the sole prerogative of people with rank

In the past the world moved more slowly. Customers were
less demanding, technology was slower and change was the
exception rather than the rule. Without social media there was
no immediacy of feedback or criticism. In the present, decisions
have to be made fast; by the time an issue has passed up through
a traditional chain of command, a decision has been made
and an executive order is passed back down through the chain
of command it is too late. Either the customer will have gone
elsewhere or the issue will have become a crisis.

This means that leaders (the ones with the rank) must change
the culture to one where people below them have the ability
and the confidence to make decisions. This often means making
them without the benefit of perfect data. This requires the formal
leaders to behave differently to the way they may have behaved
in an autocratic world, as well as expecting the people below
them to demonstrate traditional leadership abilities of analysis
and decision-making.

2. Today’s leaders make the leaders of tomorrow

Tichy and Cohen make the point that time is the most valuable
tool with which leaders create new leaders. A great leader
makes and takes the time to devote to developing the leaders of
tomorrow.

• This may be actually blocking out many days in the year to

stand up and teach the ‘fast-track’, ‘high-potential’ or ‘talent’
group; Roger Enrico of PepsiCo spent one hundred days of the
business year running five-day programmes of up-and-coming
leaders.
• It may involve attending debrief, feedback and coaching
sessions directly with potential leaders, as Admiral Ray Smith
did with the special forces men in training.

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 • It may mean being active on internal business forums to provide
opportunities to share wisdom, as Jack Welch did at GE.
• It may mean writing books and teaching sessions on in-house
leadership training programmes, such as Intel’s Andy Grove did.
• It may mean facilitating the learner-leaders in Action Learning
Sets, as Ameritech’s senior management did; helping their
potential leaders to contribute US$700 million in revenue
generation or cost savings.

Action learning is a process which involves a set of people

using their knowledge and skills, assisted by skilled
questioning and facilitation, to re-interpret old and familiar
concepts and produce fresh ideas.

3. Today’s leaders have to have a ‘teachable point of view’

They can’t just stand up and do it ‘off the cuff’; there is a
considerable degree of thought required. They have to analyse
what, in their considered opinion, it takes for an organization to
succeed in their particular area of work, and in the environment
and marketplace that the organization is functioning in. They
need to form a strong and comprehensive opinion about what
it takes to lead the people that their organization employs.
This may require them to spend time thinking about their
own past actions and those of their colleagues. They may
need to benchmark against other relevant organizations and
compare differences. It will also require them to develop
informed opinions about the future of the marketplace and the
organization.

4. Creating a story from a ‘teachable point of view’

Based on their considered opinion, the leader-teacher now
creates a compelling story about where the organization has
been and where it is going. It includes the elements of how it
is going to get there as well. Then the leader-teachers tell that
story and by doing so lead the leader-learners to help them to
make it come true.

Tichy and Cohen make one very telling additional point, which
is aimed at the HR or personnel community. Historically, in

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 many organizations, the HR community has been the buyer of
‘leadership’ training. Leaders were busy leading and development
was the responsibility of the HR function. This cannot continue
as it effectively ‘outsources’ the parenting behaviours that create
new leaders:

• Now HR has to identify the leader-learners.

• HR has to identify the leader-teachers.
• It has to help them to generate their ‘teachable point of view’.
• It has to assist in creating opportunities for them to teach and
tell their story.
• It has to be prepared to surrender its control of the learning
and development of the leadership cadre of tomorrow.
• It has to convince busy senior leaders that they have the right and
the responsibility to spend a lot of their time doing something
that probably won’t show on the bottom line for several years....

And all that takes a brave a HR director!

So what should you be doing to make use of this research?

A lot will depend on your current position in the hierarchy; if

you are far enough up the organizational ladder to have a major
impact, then start shaking the tree.

If you are in middle management you are more likely to be a

leader-learner, so:

• Start actively seeking opportunities to learn from your bosses

by planting the seeds of points 2 and 3 above in his or her
mind.
• Actively encourage your bosses to spend some time outlining
their story to you and your people.
• Encourage your bosses to set up and guide Action Learning Sets
to help both improve operational issues and simultaneously
expose people to the challenge of development.
• Make it part of your weekly to-do list to actively develop the
leadership ability of the potential leader-learners in your team
(it is probably actually already part of your job description, but
is normally one that is reduced to asking HR what leadership
or management courses are available and appropriate).

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 In reality you are probably also a bit of leader-teacher;
you can learn from your superordinates and pass on their
wisdom (and a bit of yours) to your team.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Ask your boss to give you a brief summary of the five most
important traits, in his or her opinion, of a successful leader
in your organization. Don’t expect an immediate answer; you
want something considered, not ‘off the cuff’.
• When you get this from the boss discuss it with him or her.
How well do you reflect those five traits and what can you do
to improve them? Think about your people; who is the current
‘best match’ in your team, and what should you be doing to
develop that person and the others?
• Remember that developing the leaders of tomorrow is too
important to be outsourced lock, stock and barrel to the HR
department or an external consultancy.

Source
Tichy, Noel & Cohen, Eli, The Leadership Engine: How Winning
Companies Build Leaders at Every Level (Pritchett, Dallas, 2007)

See also
Chapter 12 – It takes all sorts to make a world

Chapter 16 – Getting engaged means committing and

staying the course

Chapter 26 – Learning; it’s a generational thing

Chapter 29 – Is getting engaged really worth the effort?

Chapter 30 – Managing the millennials... some new challenges

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 7 ‘An employee’s
workspace is
his castle... or
should be!’

Allowing people to take responsibility for their own workspace

may make your life easier and them more productive

Lots of organizations employ a ‘clear-desk’ policy.

Some forbid the decoration of workspaces with personal ‘clutter’.

‘Hot-desking’ doesn’t really allow for anything personal at all.

The spectre of ‘Health & Safety’ ensures that unregulated

personal possessions can be banned.

Workplaces don’t need ‘art’ and flowers; people are there to

work, not to relax.

Logic dictates that the fewer distractions from your work there
are, the more productive you should be.

Ah, but human beings are influenced by things beyond ‘logos’

arguments; remember Chapter 1? People are also influenced
by ethos and pathos arguments. If they perceive that a credible
organization somewhere else provides attractive pictures and
nice carpets, they may feel that they are hard done by. This may
result in a detachment from their employer and a reduction in job
satisfaction.

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 So do people actually care about the environment in which they
spend the majority of their working lives?

In 2010, Professor Alex Haslam and Craig Knight, of the

University of Exeter, set out to establish a number of scientific
truths relating to workplace decoration. They wanted to ascertain
what effect a person’s level of control over their own workspace
had on their feelings of wellbeing and their identification with
their employer.

The first study

Subjects for their first study represented four, fairly typical,
private sector organizations: a transport company, an office
services firm, an architectural practice and a firm of designers.

The people were based in 13 UK organizations and 3 in the

USA. They represented a spread of hierarchies: 16 per cent were
non-managers, 37 per cent lower management/team leaders, 34
per cent middle managers, and 13 per cent described themselves
as senior managers. There were 116 women and 172 men.
(Percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number.)

They completed a comprehensive survey that assessed:

• How much autonomy they had over the day-to-day

environment, such as whether they could control the heating
in their workspace
• How much ‘management’ involved them in decisions relating
to their environment, for instance, were they consulted over
space use or not?
• How comfortable they felt in their workspace
• How much they identified with their employer and their
managers
• How much job satisfaction and enjoyment they felt
• Their wellbeing, measured by such things as lighting-inducing
headaches.

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 The results of this survey confirmed four important relationships
between elements measured:

1. The more managerial control there was, the less comfortable

the employees felt. So what? Well, this suggests that no matter
how much management time, ‘expert’ advice and financial
investment the organization devotes to workplace design, it
is wasted... if the people who work in the workplace aren’t
involved and allowed some input.
2. The more comfortable people feel at work, the more they
identify with their organization and managers. So what? If you
want people to feel that they are part of your team and you
are part of theirs, then their comfort is important. People who
identify with their employer, and YOU, use their initiative and
act with integrity.
3. The more people identify with their employer, the higher
their levels of job satisfaction and enjoyment. So what?
Job satisfaction and enjoyment are things that keep people
motivated and productive. This makes your job of managing
them easier!
4. The more people identify with their employer, coupled with
higher levels of job satisfaction and enjoyment, matched with
higher levels of wellbeing. So what? People who report higher
levels of wellbeing generally have higher attendance and less
claim for time off sick. So in the short term (your day-to-day
and week-to-week management) and the long term (employee
turnover and organizational ‘sick day’ costs) there is benefit to
gain.

The overall message is one that is slightly counterintuitive:

‘Stop taking on the burden of being “responsible for managing”

people’s work environment; allow and encourage them to do it
for themselves.’

Knight and Haslam recognized that 4 organizations and

288 people may not actually represent a significant sample.
So they carried out another study.

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 The second study
In this study there were 1,643 subjects with a split of 66 per
cent male and 34 per cent female. Within this group, 55 per cent
described themselves as non-managers and 5 per cent as senior
managers with the remainder falling into the junior/middle
management level. This was felt to be a more significant overall
size of sample as well as being more reflective of the real working
population. 90 per cent of the respondents were based in the
UK with the remaining 10 per cent spread around the rest of the
globe.

The results of this survey replicated, almost exactly, the first study.

To put it graphically:

More personal Greater Greater Higher job

involvement feelings of sense of satisfaction
and autonomy comfort at identification
in the design work with the
and decor of organization
the workplace and Higher reported
management wellbeing

The report’s authors are clear that, though the connections seem
clear, there are obviously other, unassessed factors in play; a
greater sense of comfort alone will not guarantee a greater sense
of identification with the organization and more job satisfaction.
Autonomy over the work environment does not in and of itself
improve employee wellbeing. But it is certain that autonomy and
comfort are contributory factors to people’s job satisfaction and
their health and welfare in office environments.

So much for the science, what can you do about it to improve

your lot as a manager?

First, take a fresh pair of eyes to the workplaces that your people
inhabit.

1. It is quite probable that lots of your people sit in open-plan

offices. If so, what is there to delineate one person’s domain
from that of their next-door neighbour? If there is no way

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 to tell who sits where, this suggests that there is not a lot of
autonomy in regard to people’s workspaces.
2. Take a look at the differences between work time and the time
when the office is closed (in the evenings or at the weekend). Is
there any noticeable difference? If the place is stark, bare and
functional even when there are employees present this might
suggest that the place could do with some personal touches.
3. Look around the workspace. What colours are obvious?
Look at the floor, walls and any room dividers. Are they a
drab shade of neutral and boring? The following is received
wisdom among designers; orange – stimulates creativity;
yellow – intensifies the intellect and heightens motivation; red –
energizes; blue – is calming, fights physical and mental tension;
green – fights irritability and has a healing effect on the body.
4. Take a deep breath. Does the air seem clean and healthy
or stale? The Environmental Protection Agency in the US
estimates that 6 out of 10 buildings are ‘sick’ with regard
to the indoor air quality and that this is America’s top
environmental health problem. A recent study by the US
Department of Agriculture found that ionizing a room led to
52 per cent less dust and 95 per cent less bacteria in the air.
Small negative-ion air purifiers are available for a fairly modest
price.
5. Look up. What is the light like in the working environment?
Studies suggest that natural light increases both human
productivity and reduces tiredness. If your workplaces have
fluorescent tubes, investigate replacing them with full-spectrum
tubes. These emit a balanced spectrum of light that is the
closest you can get to natural sunlight. This eases eye fatigue,
helps fight Seasonal Affective Disorder and reduces cortisol
stress hormone levels.
6. Look underneath your people. What are they sitting on? Does
it suit them? Are seats set at the right height for comfort?

But...

Don’t take on the task of doing all this alone, get the team
involved. Ask the staff what they’d like to change about their
workplace environment to make it more comfortable and more.
Invite them to contribute to making these changes. Give them
some control over the workplace.

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 So what are the big takeaways here?
• Ask people what would be their ‘perfect working
environment’...
• Then help them to help you to create it...
• But avoid treading on their input, even when there are
divergent views.

Source
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100907104035.htm

See also
Chapter 13 – To be (here) or not to be (here), that is the question

Chapter 16 – Getting engaged means committing and staying

the course

Chapter 17 – Spartan or ‘house and garden’?

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 8 ‘What’s “luck”
got to do
with it?’

Luck isn’t as random or as fleeting as you might think...

or as the unlucky might claim

Some people are just born lucky; they get all the breaks, they get
the great job, they get the promotions, they happen to be in the
right place at the right time to shine on the fantastic projects.

Other people are rather like Jonah. They seem to always miss out
on the opportunities, everything they do turns to dust, they seem
doomed to a life of disappointment and mediocrity.

Humbug!

Scientifically proven to be humbug!

Professor Richard Wiseman is professor of the public

understanding of psychology at the UK’s University of
Hertfordshire. He has carried out extensive research into the
concept of ‘luck’ and its effect on people’s personal and working
lives. To this end he went out into the real world and asked
people who considered themselves either exceptionally lucky or
exceptionally unlucky to take part in his research. More than
400 people took part, ranging in age from an 18-year-old student
to an 84-year-old retired accountant. People from all walks of life
were represented: entrepreneurs, blue-collar workers, educators,
administrators, homemakers, medical professionals and sales
professionals.

Wiseman subjected them to a battery of tests, interviews and

searches over a period of several years. He got them to complete
diaries, undertake personality and intelligence tests, and to take
part in laboratory experiments.

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 For example, Wiseman gave his subjects a newspaper and asked
them to look through it and tell him how many pictures were
in it. The ‘unlucky’ people took just two minutes on average to
come up with the right answer. The ‘lucky’ people did it in just
a few seconds! How? The ‘lucky’ people noticed that on the
second page was a half-page announcement written in two-inch
high letters that read: ‘Stop counting – there are 43 photographs
in this newspaper.’ The potential ‘lucky break’ was staring
everyone in the face, but the ‘unlucky’ people missed it, whereas
the ‘lucky’ people saw it. When a subject saw it and reported
to the experimenter, they were told ‘well done, but you might
as well keep looking through the paper’. They then almost all
noticed that Wiseman also posted another, same-sized message,
half-way through the paper. This one read: ‘Stop counting, tell
the experimenter you have seen this and win £150.’ Most of the
‘lucky’ people won this cash bonus. In spite of having looked at
this page, hardly any of the ‘unlucky’ people spotted either of the
opportunities; they were only searching for photographs.

Wiseman noticed that the ‘unlucky’ people had far higher scores
for anxiety and tension in their personality tests. Anxiety is
known to disrupt a person’s ability to notice the unexpected.
‘Unlucky’ people, being tense, tend to be so intent on looking
for something specific, that they simply miss other opportunities
because they aren’t the specific thing being sought. For example
‘unlucky’ people miss the opportunities for a better job because
they are so busy looking for a particular job advert.

This covers the element of ‘noticing’ chance opportunities, but

what about ‘creating’ them?

Wiseman discovered that ‘unlucky’ people often seemed to

stay ‘stuck in a rut’; they often seemed to stay within the same
circle of work acquaintances, they had a circle of personal
acquaintances that remained constant. They tended to frequent
the same workplace year after year, and go to the same social
places repeatedly. They were creatures of habit... and this reduced
their likelihood of being in the right place at the right time in
order to ‘notice’ a chance opportunity. ‘Lucky’ people on the
other hand, either unconsciously or consciously, varied their

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 routines, did different things, and thus were exposed to a wider
variety of opportunities.

His conclusions were that the concept of ‘luck’ as a happenstance,

over which a person has no influence, is complete humbug. More
usefully, he also identified four basic principles that so-called
‘lucky’ people employ, often unconsciously, that generate positive
outcomes. The failure of the so-called ‘unlucky’ people to be
aware of (and use) these principles is what often leads them to the
negative outcomes that they ascribe to ‘just my typical bad luck’.
Here are the first two principles.

Maximize chance opportunities

First, lucky people are skilled at creating, noticing and acting
upon chance opportunities. They do this in various ways, which
include building and maintaining a strong network, adopting
a relaxed attitude to life, and being open to new experiences.
Wiseman reported one example of a ‘lucky’ person who when
going to any function deliberately decides to meet with different
types of people; he will choose a colour and then, if the colour
was, say, red, deliberately seeks out and speaks with everyone
wearing a red item of clothing. It may sound bizarre, but it
breaks a habit and opens up new opportunities.

Listen to your lucky hunches

Second, lucky people make effective decisions by listening to their
intuition and gut feelings. They also take steps to actively boost
their intuitive abilities – for example, by meditating and clearing
their mind of other thoughts.

Wiseman also found that there was a distinct difference between

‘lucky’ people and ‘unlucky’ people in the way they viewed
opportunities and incidents. People who described themselves
as ‘lucky’ had a general tendency to look on the bright side of
events actual and historical:

‘I was so lucky: I was involved in a car crash and my arm was

broken badly, but I lived, no one else died, and I also met some
really nice people.’

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 Conversely, ‘unlucky’ people tended to view the same event as
solely negative:

‘It was just my luck! The car was written off, I received a badly
broken arm and was in hospital for ages, and then back and
forth to hospital without a car!’

Wiseman found that this perception on the part of both groups

coloured their view of the future; the ‘lucky’ people, got up,
brushed themselves off and went forward expecting some degree
of success, whereas the ‘unlucky’ people tended to restrict their
future activity in the anticipation of failure... or bad luck.

Wiseman also draws some inferences with regard to events that

are not necessarily associated with good or bad luck. He talks
of someone winning a bronze medal and looking at it on the
basis of the success of getting into the medal zone, whereas the
silver medal winner is thinking that only a tiny extra bit of effort
would have put them on the top of the podium.

This led Wiseman to principles 3 and 4.

Expect good fortune

Thirdly, lucky people are certain that the future will be bright.
Over time, that expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
because it helps lucky people persist in the face of failure and
positively shapes their interactions with other people.

Turn bad luck to good

Fourthly, lucky people employ various psychological techniques
to cope with, and even thrive upon, the ill fortune that comes
their way. For example, they spontaneously imagine how things
could have been worse, they don’t dwell on the ill fortune, and
they take control of the situation.

So there are Professor Wiseman’s findings (Wasn’t he lucky to

have been born with the name ‘wise man’; almost a guarantee
that he’d end up as a professor!)

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 He created a luck school, where he teaches people certain
techniques to improve their ‘luck’. One simple and easily
replicated thing that he does is have people keep a ‘luck
diary’. At the end of each day, ‘students’ spend a couple of
moments writing down all the positive and ‘lucky’ things that
happened that day. They are banned from writing down the
negative and/or ‘unlucky’ stuff. After doing that for a month,
it’s difficult for them not to be thinking about the good things
that are happening. Almost all ‘students’ report significant
improvements in their lives, both professional and personal.

It is almost a dead cert that you will have a few ‘unlucky’ people
in your team. They may not consciously declare themselves to be
unlucky but you can spot them from some of the types of things
that unlucky people do and say as reported above.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Next time you hear a team member or a colleague looking
solely at the negative outcomes or possibilities of an
experience, tell them about this research.
• Get a copy of Wiseman’s book (the details are listed below
under Source), read it yourself, pass it round the team and
get them all to read it. Hold a weekly meeting to replicate the
‘luck diary’ mentioned above.
• Remember that ‘luck’ doesn’t exist... people wittingly or
unwittingly make their own good and bad fortune.

Source
Wiseman, Dr Richard, The Luck Factor (Arrow, London, 2004)

See also
Chapter 10 – The five-step ladder to increased success

Chapter 12 – It takes all sorts to make a world

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 Further reading
www.fastcompany.com/46732/how-make-your-own-luck

www.richardwiseman.com/research/psychologyluck.html

uhra.herts.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/2299/2289/902384.
pdf?sequence=1

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 9 Rule No. 1: Never
Volunteer for
Anything. NOT !

One volunteer is worth ten pressed men

No sexism intended; just historical realism. The term

‘impressment’ originated within the Royal Navy in
the days when the service required men to crew its
ships. The unfortunates were ‘press-ganged’ by sailors
against their will – basically kidnapped into a lifetime of
servitude at sea.

Virtually everyone will have heard someone say that the first rule
in life is to never volunteer for anything. But is there any value
in allowing, or even encouraging your people to volunteer to do
things? Things that might distract them from achieving the goals
and objectives you set them (or agree in partnership with them)?

Myriad studies over the first decade of the 21st century have
suggested that, far from distracting people, it is a ‘good’ thing to
allow and encourage them to volunteer in the community.

In the UK, Business In The Community (BITC) has two declared

aims with regard to the matter of employee volunteering:

1. To develop and embed the vision for every business to achieve

excellence in their community programmes.
2. To significantly increase the positive impact of business in the
communities of greatest need.

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 Which is all very well, but... ‘excellence’ in the first aim isn’t a
guarantee of value to the business. And the beneficiary of the
positive impact in the second aim isn’t the business, it is the
‘communities of greatest need’... so does a business get anything
out of this relationship? If times are good, and a business is flush
with money, then yes, it is nice to give something back, but is
there a bottom line value to the business that will sustain this
philanthropy when times are tougher?

BITC has produced a summary entitled ‘Employee Volunteering

Business Case’. It sets out the bottom-line benefits to organizations
that they can gain from encouraging their employees to undertake
voluntary work. The summary draws on a wide range of
studies and research predominantly from the UK but with some
international data included.

The BITC report sets out these benefits in five distinct areas that
would be relevant to virtually any business leader:

1. Consumer image – Community Service Volunteers carried

out a survey in 2013 and found that 88 per cent of the British
public is more likely to buy from an organization that is seen
to support and engage in activities to improve society.
2. Recruitment and career progression – Deloitte’s report
‘Talent Edge 2020’ found that a prospective employer’s
commitment to sustainability was ‘important’ or ‘very
important’ to 92 per cent of all potential recruits and 63 per
cent of ‘millennials’ or Generation Y (people aged between
about 16 and 31). YouGov found that 1 in 3 recruiting
managers (in the private sector; and 61 per cent of public
sector managers) rated volunteering as an asset when seeking
to fill a vacancy.
3. Employee morale and performance – YouGov’s 2010
document, ‘Volunteering is the Business’ found that 71 per
cent of employees who did voluntary work in their spare time
(with support/encouragement from their employer) declared
that this was key to improving their personal wellbeing. 85 per
cent of them reporting that their perception of their employer
was improved by the support they received.

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 4. Learning and development – YouGov reports that managers
and employees consider volunteering activities as beneficial
to improving people’s problem-solving skills, their self-
confidence, their communication and listening abilities, and
team-working. All this provided at little or no cost to the
employer.
5. Local image – Volunteering is usually centred around the local
community, raising the profile of a business in its own locale.
This has benefits with regard to attracting local recruits, local
suppliers and local customers.

So that is what the research tells us; what can you do about it?

There are two ways to extract value from this collection of

studies:

Personally, as an individual
Volunteering is valued by many recruiting managers in both the
public and private sectors, so getting experience as a volunteer
will stand you in good stead in the future. Consider offering
your current work skills to a charitable organization. Many
professions and trades have a clearing house for this activity;
some are run by the members’ institutes and some as individual
not-for-profit organizations. There are also several generic
clearing houses such as volunteeringmatters.org.uk and
www.do-it.org.uk. Examples might be mentoring, book keeping
or providing training.

Alternatively, you can select a charitable organization that is

geographically attractive or operates in a relevant field. Here
you have choices as well. You can learn new skills such as
first aid, acting as a guide for visitors or operating specialist
equipment. You could simply use your donation of manual
labour to keep you fit and healthy. Most regions also have
volunteer branches of their emergency services; you can
become a paramedic, police officer, firefighter or soldier; these
opportunities tend to provide world-class formal training
programmes and recognition.

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 Managerially, as a boss
Employees tend to feel more engaged with their employer when
the employer supports them in their desire to ‘give something
back’. Charitable volunteering also provides free training and
personal development opportunities for your people, making
them more valuable to you as an added benefit. So encourage
people to volunteer, either individually or as a group.

Chris managed a team of people for an organization. They

worked hard, each concentrating on their individual desk-
bound role, dealing with their customers over the phone or
by email. There was little opportunity for bonding as a team.

Chris instigated a two-day off-site to get people working

together in a different environment to break down barriers
and engender some team ethos. Instead of going to a
posh hotel and spending a lot of money climbing trees or
banging on bongos, Chris arranged for them to redecorate
the accommodation of a local charitable boarding school
for severely epileptic children. The charity paid for all the
materials and Chris’s team provided the workforce. The
cost to the employer was solely the team’s salary.

The project was a success in terms of team bonding, the

charity benefited to the tune of several thousand pounds of
savings, team members saw several of their colleagues shine
in a different light, demonstrating strength of character
previously unseen and a number of the team members
continued in a volunteering role with the school afterwards.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Spread the word that volunteering isn’t just for ‘bleeding
hearts’ and ‘ladies who lunch’; it brings value to those who
volunteer, those they help and society as a whole.
• Give people time and encouragement to volunteer in whatever
capacity they wish to or are able to.

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 • Remember that:
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

Source

www.bitc.org.uk/issues/community/employee-volunteering

Business in the Community: 137 Shepherdess Walk, London N1

7RQ 020 7566 8650 [email protected]

See also
Chapter 5 – ‘Workers’ play time’ – is it really worth it?

Chapter 16 – Getting engaged means committing and staying the

course

Chapter 29 – Is getting engaged really worth the effort?

Further reading and resources

https://vinspired.com/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMTQvMDMvMTEvMT
cvMjcvMDQvMjEyLzA2XzA3XzQ0Xzc4N19Wb2x1bnRlZXJp
bmdfaXNfdGhlX0J1c2luZXNzX0ZJTkFMLnBkZiJdXQ

www.csv.org.uk/?display=volunteering

www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20
Assets/Documents/IMOs/Talent/us_talent_talentedge2020
employee_042811.pdf

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 10 The five-step
ladder to
increased
success

A goal shared is a goal made a lot more likely to be achieved

When I first left the army in 1987 I was employed in a sales

role. I attended a training course and one of the trainers was
an extremely successful salesperson and sales manager, who
also happened to be female, young, pretty and blonde. She was
earning around £84,000 a month.

In a session on the setting and achieving of goals, she informed

us that a 1953 study at Harvard University had found that only 3
per cent of a specific group of people wrote down their life goals.
Twenty years later that 3 per cent were earning, on average, 10
times more than the people who didn’t express goals or didn’t
write them down. When she started out she had set her heart
on owning a Porsche 911 sports car. She had made a label that
looked like this:

9:11

She stuck it over her current car’s digital dashboard clock so it

always reminded her of her goal.

One of the delegates on the course, a 50-something-year-old man,

had taken a rather oppositional view of this particular trainer (he
was not positively influenced by her ‘ethos’ – see Chapter 1), and
questioned her about the ‘provenance’ of this study, claiming that
he knew for a fact it was actually conducted at Yale University.

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 In fact, they were both wrong; the whole matter was a very
plausible-sounding urban myth of unknown origin, as was
proven by Dr Gail Matthews (Dominican University of
California) and Steven Kraus (Harvard University) in the later
1990s. The discovery did, however, lead Matthews to undertake
a similar study herself.

Matthews made the study more robust than the legendary

condition of write or don’t write and she shortened the target
period from 20 years to 4 weeks.

She recruited 149 people – 37 men and 112 women, aged

between 23 and 72, and based in the US, the UK, Belgium, India,
Australia and Japan. They were all in paid employment in public
and private sectors, and represented a fairly wide range of levels
of authority and responsibility.

They were divided randomly into five groups and each group was
set a different condition, as outlined below.
 
Group No. Condition
1 Simply think about what they wanted to achieve over
the four-week target period and consider its difficulty,
importance, whether they had the skills and resources
to achieve it, their commitment and motivation, prior
attempts and prior success.
2 Everything asked of ...make a written record of
Group 1, plus... their deliberations
3 Everything asked of ...formulate action
Groups 1 & 2, plus... commitments to move
them towards the
achievement
4 Everything asked of ...send the written
Groups 1, 2 & 3, plus... record of goals and
action commitments to a
‘supportive friend’
5 Everything asked of ...send weekly progress
Groups 1, 2, 3 & 4, plus... reports* to that supportive
friend
(* this group was sent
weekly reminders to send
the progress reports)

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 Individuals in all groups had the freedom to select their own real
goals to achieve and they ranged from pure work-related goals,
to career goals, and ambitions related to wellbeing. For example:

• completing a project (including completing a chapter of a

book, updating a website, selling a house, writing a strategic
plan, winning a contract, recruiting staff and preventing a
hostile takeover)
• increasing income
• increasing productivity
• getting organized
• enhancing performance
• improving work/life balance
• reducing work anxiety and learning new skills.

At the end of the four-week period all the individuals were asked
to score themselves on a scale of 1 to 10, to reflect the level to
which they had succeeded in achieving the goals they had set
themselves.

The outcomes are shown below as the mean score for each
group.

Mean Goal Achievement

Group 1 4.28

Group 2 6.08

Group 3 5.08

Group 4 6.41

Group 5 7.6

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

To put the outcomes into words:

• Your likelihood of achieving a goal is enhanced by 26 per cent

if you write down your goal.
• Your likelihood of achieving a goal is enhanced by up to
50 per cent if you engage in some form of action planning,

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 sharing and regular reporting. (Comparing Group 1 with a
combination of Groups 2–5).
• Creating a series of action commitments in order to
incrementally move towards the goals increases the likelihood
of success by 18 per cent.
• Taking some accountability for success by sharing your goals
with another person increases the likelihood of success by 49
per cent.
• Showing commitment to the accountability, by regularly
reporting progress to that other person, increases the
likelihood of success by 77 per cent.

Matthews terms the three elements of the experiment as:

• Written goals (written down and therefore more concrete than

purely ethereal)
• Commitment to goals (thinking through a plan of action)
• Accountability (sharing the goal and progress towards it with
another party).

There is the research; what can you do about it?

As a leader in the 21st century you undoubtedly already write

down your goals and you almost certainly expect your people to
write down theirs, even if only as an email communication. You
also expect to get and to make regular reports of progress.

However, Dr Matthews’ study didn’t use the ‘boss’ as the person

who subjects committed to and reported to but a ‘supportive
friend’... what is the difference?

 
A boss… A supportive friend...
...has a vested interest and ...has no personal obligation to
obligation to his/her boss to make sure that someone achieves
ensure goals are met. but takes an altruistic interest.
...has the power of censure if ...wants to see progress for the
either reports aren’t produced, or sake of the subject, no one else.
if progress is deemed inadequate
...is the boss in the eyes of the ...is a friend
employee

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 So it is unlikely that you can realistically presume that the study
equates directly to your relationship with your staff. Neither,
if you are a senior manager, can you presume that your direct
reports can take the role of ‘supportive friend’ with their staff.

‘Supportive friends’ are more likely to be co-workers in the

same department and at an equal level in the hierarchy; former
colleagues who have moved in, within or away from your
organization; former colleagues from previous employers; or
social friends and family.

Encourage your people to socialize informally among

themselves. Allow people to take breaks and have ‘water-
cooler’ conversations with co-workers. (Though perhaps
unhealthy in other ways, the ‘tobacco network’ of smokers
who network with people from other departments as they
all huddle out in the rain to feed their habit, is often a great
source of ‘supportive friends’.)

Encourage a buddy-system to grow within the organization and

beyond.

Employ external business coaches, or encourage cross-functional

coaching.

Encourage the human resources and learning and development

business partners to act as ‘supportive friends’.

Assist your people in joining professional associations and

institutes that have local chapter meetings where they can meet
and form supportive relationships.

Think beyond your staff’s day-to-day and quarterly goals;

consider their life goals and their career goals. Encourage extra-
curricular activity and corporate social responsibility.

Think beyond the organizational/operational goals that your

boss sets and that you set yourself. Think about your life goals
and your career goals. Achieving personal life goals makes
people happier and more fulfilled, it usually also broadens

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 horizons and makes for more rounded personalities. Having
and achieving career goals makes people more successful and
happier; not everyone wants to be the CEO, and that is good,
but what do people want? Do they know what they want?
People taking a greater degree of active interest and control of
their careers may lead to them leaving you and seeking pastures
new, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if they
remember that you were the person who helped them achieve
their goals rather than yours!

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Ask people to show you their written goals; not just for this
financial year but for their life, or at least the foreseeable
future.
• Change the screensaver on your computer or smartphone to a
text message with your current goal on it; this way you’ll not
only have written it but you’ll have a constant reminder of it
and other people will see it as well.
• Remember that just writing down a goal increases the
likelihood of achieving it by more than 25 per cent... if
someone came and offered to sell you the secret of improving
performance by that much you’d be a fool not to listen.

Source
www.dominican.edu/academics/ahss/undergraduate-programs
-1/psych/faculty/fulltime/gailmatthews/researchsummary2.pdf

See also
Chapter 1 – Spreadsheets alone do not a judgement make

Chapter 8 – ‘What’s “luck” got to do with it?’

Chapter 18 – Leadership and leaders; let’s get complex

Chapter 39 – Trust in your virtual team

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 11 To follow me
they have to be
able to see me,
right?

Your people really can be more productive when you aren’t

there to manage them!

You know that your people don’t actually need to have you in
eyeshot all the time. But here is the real question; we live in the
21st century, with the Internet and personal computers, video
conferencing, webinars, mobile phones and broadband. So why
do we still have the majority of our people traipsing into the
office every day to work?

Famously, Yahoo! banned working from home in February 2013,

having been exponents of the practice for several years. Marissa
Mayer, the decision-maker behind the ban wasn’t echoing the
cynics’ cry that working from home was actually a charter for
‘shirking from home’. She was aiming to increase the informal
channels of communication that exist in a co-located workplace;
the water-cooler conversations and the almost casual chats that
she believed led to great ideas.

At least one disgruntled (but anonymous) Yahoo! employee took

a different view, working from home meant that ‘I didn’t have to
put up with numbskull self-important programmers constantly
yakking to each other LOUDLY from the next set of cubicles
about non-work-related stuff, and I wasn’t being distracted every
20 minutes by some bored soul coming over to my desk to go for
coffee or foosball [sic]...’.

A joint study by Stanford and the Beijing University School of

Management looked at the whole issue of productivity of people
working from home (WFH for short). This study was completed

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 in Q3 of 2011 having run for nine months as a pilot programme.
The results of the experiment were quite striking, albeit that the
sample group, though quite large, was very homogenous; the
people were all call centre operatives in the travel and hospitality
sector from one organization.

Here are some basic facts about the study, each with some
comment thrown in about them:

1. 996 employees were offered the opportunity to work from

home four days a week and come into the office to work for
just the one day. 503 of the people offered the option declared
a serious interest... so 50 per cent of people wanted to work
from home when offered the option and 50 per cent didn’t.
2. Of the 503 people who wanted to, some did not meet the
eligibility criteria. Those that did were divided randomly to
create a WFH sample and a control group (people who wanted
to work from home but weren’t allowed to). The WFH group
was provided with identical IT systems and workflows as their
control group cousins. Both groups continued to receive an
element of their remuneration as performance-based pay... so
this study really does compare apples to apples with regard to
the work done and the equipment; the only variable was the
location.
3. Over the nine-month period of the study, the performance of
the WFH group was 13 per cent better than the performance
in the office. This was made up of several factors: first, they
were actually working for longer in each shift (often due to the
greater convenience, if you will excuse the pun, of a shorter
distance to the loo, the kettle and the snack facilities); their
productivity rate during each shift also went up (due to greater
peace and quiet and fewer distractions). So this study suggests
that people working from home actually worked harder and
smarter rather than ‘shirking from home’.
4. The control group’s performance remained constant, in
comparison to their previous performance and in comparison
to other groups in the company who had never been offered
and lost the opportunity to work from home. So it didn’t
raise an expectation and then rock the boat to investigate the
option.

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 5. The WFH group reported far higher scores in job satisfaction
and improved attitude towards the employer, leading to a
whopping 50 per cent drop in staff turnover in comparison to
the control group. So if you want to keep your good people
and you want to keep them productive and they want to work
from home… the advice seems to be to let them!
6. Interestingly, the study also noticed that WFH employees had
a lower promotion rate... it was not investigated further to see
if this was due to the organization not wanting to give extra
authority and responsibility to people who weren’t in the office
or whether WFH people felt sufficiently fulfilled not to apply
for greater responsibility and pay.
7. The employer reported that over the nine-month study they
had saved approximately US$1,500 per employee (that would
work out at US$2,000 per year). So not only does productivity
rise, but costs fall as well.
8. After the study the employer decided to continue and expand
the WFH option to all employees, including allowing the
original WFH group to re-opt. Two-thirds of the control
group opted to stay working in the office (in other words,
they changed their minds from ten months beforehand)...
the primary reason given was concerns over the loneliness of
working without daily visual contact with their colleagues.
Half of the WFH group chose to return to the office
environment... most of these were the poorer performers but
there were also some higher performers who were lonely.
So though most people initially yearn for the ‘freedom’ of
working from home, it isn’t for everyone... but trying it out or
seeing it in your close colleagues tends to help people make a
sustainable decision.
9. After the experiment was over, the people now working from
home returned a 22 per cent higher performance... almost
double the experiment’s result, suggesting that the more
‘selective’ the decision-making, the higher the benefits.

The report’s authors are at pains to point out the homogenous

nature of the work group and their particular tasks do limit the
direct applicability of this study to the world of work in general.
However, they also point out, and are right to do so, that some of
the more generic findings can be assumed to be entirely relevant
to a great many modern, office-related roles.

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 OK, there is the research and its findings, what can you do
about it?

1. Do some research into the ‘overhead’ costs of providing a

desk chair, office phone, heating, lighting, parking space, etc.
for each employee in your team. Many managers and leaders
are amazed at how much it costs an organization just to put a
metaphorical ‘bum on a seat’.
2. Ask your team to keep a record of the amount of time they
lose due to unwelcome distractions. Make sure you let them
know why you are doing this, otherwise they’ll assume that
you are just micromanaging them. Convert that time to a cost
to the business.
3. Ask your team who would want to work from home, and
for how much of the time. Tell them that you are considering
the possibility of being more flexible about people’s actual
presence in work. Ask them to consider whether they have a
suitable space to use, whether they have adequate broadband
facilities (if applicable).
4. Investigate the specific IT needs with regard to security and
data protection... almost anything is possible, though some
very secure systems may be expensive.
5. Ask yourself whether you are prepared to trust the people
in your team to work from home. The reality (from the study)
seems to be that people are actually trustworthy, but that isn’t
necessarily the same as you actually having the trust in them!
6. Think back over the good people you have lost in the past;
any that left due to pressures of home life, children’s needs,
elderly parents or distance of commute. Consider if you’d
been more able to allow them to work from home for a
couple of days or even the whole week whether they would
still be with you.
7. Trial the situation: benchmark the situation in the office, set
a review period, and then re-analyse at the end of the review
period. Perhaps allow everyone (or the appropriate people) to
work from home one or two days a week at the outset.
8. Get your own management style in order. Start thinking
about ROWE (see Chapter 32), where people are not driven
by staff calls and they need objectives and results to target.

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 9. Look into how to get the best from a remote team; can the
water-cooler conversations still happen when you are hundreds
of miles apart? But are they less casual and are you the person
who needs to make them happen?

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Tell people about this study; the source is quite readable
(though it is 45 pages long and does get a bit statistics heavy)
and you could start or fuel a revolution.
• Lead by example. NOT by going home yourself, but by
creating an environment where people (including you) can
work from home, at least some of the time.
• Remember that just because you can’t see them working they
probably are, and just because they can’t see you leading, you
can still be doing so.

Source
https://web.stanford.edu/~nbloom/WFH.pdf

See also
Chapter 5 – ‘Workers’ play time’ – is it really worth it?

Chapter 7 – ‘An employee’s workspace is his castle... or

should be!’

Chapter 17 – Spartan or ‘house and garden’?

Chapter 23 – We’re working nine to five – it’s no way to make

a living

Chapter 39 – Trust in your virtual team

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 12 It takes all
sorts to make a
world

One of the most dangerous ways to recruit is to recruit in your

own image... too many ‘people like us’ is a recipe for disaster

You are a leader.

This implies (or even demands) that you have followers.

In some cases these followers may act simply as individuals, in

isolation from each other with the only common denominator
being their ‘followership’ of you.

Alternatively, you may have followers who act independently and,

to add to their motivation, you encourage them to gently compete
with each other; a sales ‘team’ might be a good example here. It is
quite usual to find in this example that they all come from similar
psychological moulds. They may have diversity of age, race,
religion and sex but they have similar personalities and characters.

Think of the TV programme The Apprentice... the

candidates are all highly competitive, slightly sociopathic,
egotistical and highly driven. It would make for rather dull
TV if they weren’t.

It is relatively easy to identify what will make for success and

then stick to recruiting to that pattern.

The third option, and probably the most common, is that they,
and you, bond together and you encourage them to cooperate
with you and each other towards a single common objective.
In this format, there is still competition as a motivator, but

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 the competition is external, against other teams or other
organizations.

The forerunner of the famous Henley Business School was called

the Administrative Staff College. From the 1960s they ran a ten-
week course for potential board directors where the delegates
were formed into eight teams to run business simulations, each
team operating as a commercial company and competing with
each other. In 1969 they invited Dr Meredith Belbin to observe
the teams in action. He built his own small team of professional
researchers with differing specialist approaches and for the next
nine years they observed, assessed, monitored and analysed
pretty much every move the delegate teams made.

The outcomes of their research were first published in 1981

as Management Teams –Why They Succeed or Fail. Belbin
continues to work in the field of management.

Belbin and his colleagues found that almost regardless of the

intellect or the education of the individual team members, it
was the balance of different team behaviours that was a greater
contributor to whether a team became successful or not. They
identified (eventually) nine different ‘roles’ that were critical for a
team’s future.

The ‘roles’ are not necessarily each a different person, but

each of the roles needs to be demonstrated regularly by
someone in the team on a regular basis in order for the
team to have the balance that predicates success.

A successful team in work (as opposed to sport) needs to have:

• Some creative, imaginative free thinking. Generation of ideas

and problem-solving capacity. Belbin refers to this as Plant
behaviour.
• Outgoing, enthusiastic, communicative. Exploration of
opportunities and development of contacts. This is Resource
Investigator behaviour.

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 • Maturity, confidence, identification of talent. Focus on goals.
Effective delegation. This is Coordinator behaviour.
• Challenging assumptions, dynamic, thriving on pressure.
The drive and courage to overcome obstacles. This is Shaper
behaviour.
• Sober, strategic and discerning. Sees all options and judges
accurately. This is Monitor/Evaluator behaviour.
• Cooperative, perceptive and diplomatic. Listening to others,
averting conflict. Belbin labelled this Teamworker behaviour.
• Practicality. Turns ideas and thought into plans and actions.
Organization of work that needs to be done. Reliability and
efficiency. This is Implementer behaviour.
• Painstaking attention to detail, anxious enough to want to
check and recheck things. Searches out errors. Polishes and
perfects. This is Completer/Finisher behaviour.
• Dedicated relevant technical knowledge and determination to
use it. This is Specialist behaviour.

Recognition of the need for these behaviours presents some

interesting challenges to any manager or leader:

Completer/Finisher behaviour can be seen as nit-picking, or

worse; looking for things to criticize. Shaper behaviour can
be seen as negativity, stamping on ideas or on the person
who came up with them. Teamworkers can be seen as fluffy
peacemakers, more interested in everyone being nice to each
other than in getting the job done. Coordinators can be seen
as lazy because they delegate and Implementers can be seen
as bossy.

Being a successful leader or manager requires you to accept these

conflicts as healthy and to manage them, and the bruised egos,
for the overall good of the team.

Belbin went on to develop assessment tools to help identify what

primary behavioural preferences a person has for the relevant
behaviours and these are exceptionally powerful for leaders and
other team members.

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 A team in a bank’s IT department was clearly having
problems. Its current project was at serious risk of not
coming in on time; one of their previous projects was a
renowned disaster. There was constant friction between two
different pairs of team members, which was just below the
formal complaint-of-harassment level.

The team manager took the team for a facilitated off-site

meeting to try to get them functioning. They all took a Team
Role preference questionnaire. When they saw the results on
the wall they realized that there wasn’t a single person who
had a preference for Completer Finisher behaviour. This was
the primary cause of their past failure. Almost all of them had
a strong preference for Plant behaviour and there was very
little balancing Coordinator or Implementer behaviour.

Their new-found understanding helped them to sort out

their differences (for the large part) and, without laying
people off and recruiting new people they were able to
start functioning a lot more effectively. They hit their next
delivery date on time and to standard.

So, how can you get value out of this research? There are
numerous different ways to exploit it:

1. Get a Belbin® Team Role report on yourself; this will give you
the tools to do some self-analysis. Armed with the knowledge
of your own preferences you can take a new look at your
career choices. Given that many people are promoted to
management positions based upon their technical knowledge,
it may well be that you have little preference for the more
‘leader-y’ behaviours and knowing this will help you.
2. Still on the self-analysis front, you can now look at your
attitude to other people; have you labelled others as bossy,
when in fact they are simply Shapers? Have you disregarded
someone’s actions as overly critical when in fact they were
doing the critical action of a Completer/Finisher?
3. If you have a team to lead at present, get a Team Role
report for each team member. This will give you a good

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 understanding of the strengths and weakness of the team as a
whole.
4. Share the explanation of the Team Roles with the team, since
this allows them to self-assess and, as such, is a powerful way
of improving teamwork.
5. Use Team Roles when you are looking to recruit; this will help
make the team more complete and is infinitely better than
recruiting PLUs (People Like Us – that is, recruiting in the
image of the existing team)
6. When there is an incident, whether it is a problem in achieving
a goal or a clash between team members, make a concerted
effort to assess the behaviours of the members of the team to
see if there is an obvious deficiency in any one or more of the
Team Roles. Alternatively, is there too much of one particular
behaviour? This is an excellent way to look at cause and
effect. Obviously, once you find the real causes you can put a
considered plan of action in place to prevent future problems.

Belbin’s work is considered seminal in the field of teams and

teamwork. His company, Belbin Associates, is still going strong
in the consulting market and its product is used by many
successful organizations.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Next time you hear someone moaning about a fellow team
member ask them what team role behaviour they think the
person was exhibiting about which they are not happy.
• Next time you feel that things are not going well in the
team you are in (the management team, or your own work
team) look around and analyse the behaviours; is there an
imbalance?
• Remember that though ‘birds of a feather may flock together’,
it takes all sorts to make a team function successfully.

Source
Belbin, R. Meredith, Management Teams – Why They Succeed or
Fail (Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, 3rd edition 2010)

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 See also
Chapter 6 – As a leader, it is a matter of priorities

Chapter 18 – Leadership and leaders; let’s get complex

Chapter 20 – It sounds scientific and objective, but is it science?

Chapter 21 – Management and leadership... a hot topic! But for

whom?

Chapter 39 – Trust in your virtual team

Further reading and resources

www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=302 to buy Belbin Team Role reports
online

For other resources, handouts, explanatory notes to share with

the team www.belbin.com

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 13 To be (here)
or not to be
(here), that is
the question

Managers and leaders can have a major effect on people’s sick

records... you don’t have to be a doctor to make people better
As a leader and manager you are responsible for the work
productivity of your people in relation to the pay you give them.

Several other chapters of this book refer to the studies done

into people’s productivity when they are ‘at work’. This chapter
looks at a regular study undertaken to look at the situation when
people aren’t ‘at work’. Why the inverted commas on ‘at work’?
This study looks at ‘absenteeism’. That title was originally coined
in the days when to be at work was solely and purely a matter
of one’s geographical location. The presumption was that if
an employee wasn’t at their place of work, then they weren’t
producing anything, but they were costing the organization
their salary. Britain’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and
Development carries out a regular survey into the topic of
absenteeism. They are looking not at physical location of the
employee but the days when the employee is formally accepted to
be non-productive. They are looking at staff sickness.

The 2013 report is based upon 618 respondent organizations

from across the UK in June and July of that year. These
organizations ranged in size from fewer than 50 staff to more
than 5,000. In total the headcount represented was some
2.3 million employees. Respondents represented:

• the private sector in two guises: private sector services and

private sector manufacturing and production
• the public sector
• the not-for-profit sector.

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 The survey sought data on absentee levels, cost of absenteeism,
the causes of absenteeism and the rise in ‘presenteeism’. (In this
instance, presenteeism is defined as coming in to work when
actually unfit to be there, rather than the alternative definition
which is pretending to be present when in fact absent.)

Snapshots
Here is a brief selection of snapshots of information from
the survey findings; some are included here because they are
perhaps contrary to the received wisdom and some because they
scientifically confirm matters that are otherwise blindingly obvious.

1. Levels of absence are higher in the public sector than in the

private sector; the public sector loses an average of 8.7 days
per employee per year, in comparison to 6.6 in the private
sector as a whole.
2. There is a perfect correlation between size of organization
and lost days per employee: the bigger the organization the
more time people take off for sickness. (1–49 employees =
6.6 days per employee per year lost. >5,000 employees = 9.2)
3. Three-quarters of private sector days lost are due to short-
term absences of fewer than seven days, in comparison to
only half of the public sector.
4. Long-term absences (4 weeks or more) are three times more
likely in the public sector than the private sector.
5. 60 per cent of public sector organizations have a formal
target for the reduction of absenteeism.
6. The public sector reports a financial ‘cost’ of absenteeism
per employee per year of £726, some 55 per cent higher than
the private sector’s £469... though it has to be said that it is
comparing apples to oranges; the two sectors measure the
cost in very different ways and so while the figures themselves
are valuable, any comparison between sectors is actually
quite meaningless.
7. Absence due to non-genuine ill-health (or, in the CIPD’s own
words, ‘pulling a sickie’) is nearly four times more likely for
manual staff, and twice as likely for non-manual staff, in the
private sector than the public sector. So the common belief
that ‘You wouldn’t get away with that in industry’ is wrong!

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 8. Stress is cited as the single most common factor across all
employees for long-term sickness.
9. ‘Volume of work’ and ‘management style’ are cited as the
two biggest causes of stress across the board.
10. 78 per cent of employers (who have taken any steps to
manage presenteeism) have advised managers to send
home staff who come in sick, and 56 per cent have made
arrangements for staff to work remotely if the nature of their
condition makes remote working appropriate.

Most usefully, the survey also asked what actions organizations

were taking to counter and manage absenteeism. It then went
a stage further, and asked respondents to rate the effectiveness
of these actions. ‘Manage’ in this instance covers prevention/
avoidance as well as after-the-event actions. With regard to short-
term absence these are the top five:

 
Most common actions Most effective actions
1. Sickness absence information 1.  Return-to-work interviews
given to line managers
2.  Return-to-work interviews 2. Trigger mechanisms to review
attendance
3. Allowance of leave for 3. Line managers take prime
family circumstances (carer/ responsibility for managing
emergency/dependent/ absence
compassionate)
4. Trigger mechanisms to review 4. Disciplinary procedures for
attendance unacceptable absences
5. Disciplinary procedures for 5. Sickness absence information
unacceptable absences given to line managers

The full options list in both cases was of 23 items including

various ‘cost implication’ measures such as health benefits,
employee assistance programmes and attendance bonuses.
Interestingly, the five most effective actions are all measures that
present no extra cost to the employer; they are about the line
managers at the coal face doing their jobs a bit differently.

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 For long-term absences:

 
Most common actions Most effective actions
1.  Return to work interviews 1. Occupational health
involvement
2. Changing work patterns or 2.  Return-to-work interviews
environment
3. Sickness absence information 3. Changing work patterns or
given to line managers environment
4. Risk assessment to aid return 4. Tailored support for line
to work after a long absence managers (e.g. online support
care conference with HR)
5. Occupational health 5. Restricting sick pay
involvement

This study is a ‘longitudinal’ one; the CIPD repeats it annually

so the actual document contains a lot of comparative data
relating this year to last year and identifying trends in the overall
situation and in specific sectors.

So there is the research, what can you do to benefit from it?

Much will depend on your position within your organization.

If you are a senior manager you can look at your organization’s
overall strategy for absence management. If you are a line
manager you can be looking at the way you manage absence in
your team and looking to see how you may influence the overall
direction of the organization.

The first point to note is that absence management is not an

HR issue; it is an issue for line management, be that at team,
department, division or organizational level. In other words
absenteeism is a leadership issue rather than an administrative
issue.

Return-to-work interviews (RTWI) are very effective tools in

managing both long-term and short-term absenteeism and they
are completely within your remit.

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 Here are some best practice guidelines for planning and carrying
out a return to work interview (remembering that they are the #1
‘most-effective’ tool in short-term absence management):

• Be familiar with the team member’s attendance record (this

also fulfils numbers 2, 3 & 5 of the ‘most effective’ measures
for short-term absences).
• Carry out an RTWI after each absence; it doesn’t have to
be a big, formal occasion, a three-minute chat may well be
adequate. Do it within a day of their return and do it in
private, where you can both speak without interruption or
being overheard.
• Welcome the team member back to work.
• Seek confirmation that they are fit to work (from the point of
their own capacity and the likelihood of them affecting their
colleagues).
• Investigate the cause of the absence.
• Remember that it is not necessarily your responsibility (or
your right) to provide advice or a solution to the cause of the
issue. It is your responsibility to minimize the effect it has on
the performance of the individual and the team. So, without
prying, and without trying to be a doctor or counsellor,
try to offer solutions or refer the team member to support
organizations (in house or open to the public).
• If the absence relates to a disability, pregnancy or a work-
related accident, undertake a risk assessment and inform the
HR function.
• Agree a review period and/or any actions required as
appropriate.
• Make and keep notes confirming the RTWI; these may be
needed in the future if the absences require more structured or
more formal intervention and support.

If at any stage it becomes apparent that absence from work could

be a matter of misconduct or performance capability rather than
ill-health, seek advice from your HR function. (Which is moving
you towards #4 in the ‘most effective’ tools for managing short-
term absenteeism.)

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 So what are the big takeaways here?
• If one of your peer group mentions a team member of theirs
who is absent ask them when they are planning on doing
a return to work interview... if they aren’t (or they aren’t
planning to follow best practice) tell them about this chapter
and the report it refers to.
• If one of your staff takes time off then make sure you carry out
an RTWI... it doesn’t have to be a major event, but it shows
that you have noticed that they were away and that you care.
• Remember that absence is not somebody else’s responsibility;
it is yours!

Source
www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/survey-reports/absence-
management-2013.aspx

See also
Chapter 5 – ‘Workers’ play time’ – is it really worth it?

Chapter 11 – To follow me they have to be able to see me, right?

Chapter 17 – Spartan or ‘house and garden’?

Chapter 23 – We’re working nine to five – it’s no way to make a

living

Chapter 32 – ROWE, ROWE, ROWE your boat!

Further reading
www.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/7/t/B04_1.pdf

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 14 Leadership
is not about
brain surgery
you know

It really can help a leader to have an understanding of the

physiology of the human brain… even if you don’t plan on
cutting open your followers’ skulls!

In November 2014 Britain’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and

Development published a report entitled ‘Neuroscience in action,
applying insight into L&D practice’. The report is aimed at
learning and development professionals, but it is just as relevant
to leaders in other disciplines for several reasons:

• They may be buyers of L&D services or products.

• They may be called on to design and deliver training of some
description during the course of their working year.
• They have a day-to-day management/leadership responsibility
for developing their team (especially their future leaders: see
Chapter 6).
• Undoubtedly they themselves should be learning every day as well!

The report is based on a series of case studies and surveys within a

specific group of eight organizations. They span public and private
sector, domestic and international organizations. They are involved
in manufacturing, utilities provision, professional services, leisure,
financial services, healthcare and emergency services:
 
Organization Description
Allens A major international law firm
BT A global telecoms company
Fitness First A health club company with 377 clubs in 16
countries
(Continued)

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 Organization Description
Imperial College 6 hospitals and 1 college working together to
Healthcare NHS Trust form the UK’s first academic health science
centre and employing 10,000 people
SABMiller A beverage and brewery organization
employing 70,000 people in over 80 countries
Unum A specialist financial protection insurance
provider in the UK serving 1.6 million
individuals and half of the FTSE 100 list of
companies
Volvo The automotive conglomerate employing
110,000 people in 19 countries
Welsh Ambulance 3,000 staff. 250,000 emergency calls per annum
Service NHS Trust and 1.3 million non-emergency journeys

The report’s authors wanted to identify what benefits an

understanding of neuroscience was bringing to the layperson in
work. Neuroscience is the study of the human brain and nervous
system; the increasing sophistication and availability of such
machines as fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging)
scanners allows scientists to ‘see’ brain activity and therefore to
link cognitive and behavioural neuroscience to behaviours and
learning within the workplace. The advantage of this approach
is that it is cross cultural and free from language barriers; human
brains in South Africa, Peru and Australia all work in the same
way, as do the brains of lawyers and call-centre operatives.

The report cites numerous corporate results that the respondents

put down largely to the influence of the use of neuroscience:

• Fitness First saw a staff turnover rate drop of more than

60 per cent
• The Welsh Ambulance Trust solved a problem that the
organization had been grappling with for 20 years
• Fitness First has seen an improvement in its net promoter score
of 15 per cent.

The report is clear (it appears in a highlighted text box on

the second page of Chapter 1 which is regarding the value of
neuroscience) that a fairly large amount of the neuroscience
does little more than support what people already knew. As the

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 authors put it: ‘It helped to confirm their intuitions or validate
their practical experience.’ This is valuable in a number of ways:

1. It gives confidence by reinforcing beliefs and opinions, and

supporting plans and intentions.
2. It adds weight to the things that people ‘know’ but perhaps
don’t ‘do’ (or do as much of).
3. It discredits any unproven received wisdom that is
contradictory.

Most usefully, the report contains a very user-friendly article as

Appendix 1. This is entitled ‘Five “no-brainers” from neuroscience
research’ and is written by Dr Paul Howard-Jones, reader in
neuroscience and education at the University of Bristol. He begins
by making a point that is very valid to all leaders and many
followers. The brain is plastic; it changes, like a muscle, the more
you exercise specific parts of it the more those parts grow. He
demonstrates this by mentioning that there is a direct correlation
between the size of the brain region critical to navigation and the
number of years the brain’s owner has been a London cabbie.

For readers unfamiliar with the rules concerning London’s

black cab drivers, they are not allowed to refer to sat-nav or
maps, but must take and pass a practical course and exam
in memory navigation of the whole London area.

Similarly, trainee jugglers show increases in the relevant areas of

their brains after as little as three months of training in the art of
juggling.

Here is a short summary of the five no-brainer points:

1. Improve creativity two ways: First, working independently can

be detrimental; the brain concentrates on the matter in hand
by reducing its activity in automatic thinking processes. This
can help solve the problem but it can also lead to a mental
block or a fixation with a particular solution. Interacting
with others opens up the automatic thinking processes and
can help shift a mental block. Second, the brain responds

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 creatively to unusual challenges. For example, in adult brains
the straightforward challenge to create a story produced
less activity in the brain than the challenge to create a story
incorporating a list of unrelated words.
2. Improve learning by spacing it out in shorter chunks: Received
wisdom has suggested that ‘little but often’ improves people’s
capacity to learn... neuroscience has now told us why. We do
more internal ‘verbal rehearsal’ in the down-time between
learning sessions, and this reinforces what we have learned by
repetition. This works not only for rote learning of facts but
also learning sequences such as mathematics and grammar.
3. Improve your memory by getting a good night’s sleep: When
you sleep well your brain unconsciously reflects on the
experience of the day; this reflection is, once again, a form
of reinforcement, committing our experience to memory. If
the experience was intentionally ‘learning’, clearly the sleep
helps. If not, it is still a good idea to be able to remember what
happened at work yesterday!
4. Technology can be a double-edged sword: Relaxing ten feet
in front of the TV before bedtime helps release the sleep-
inducing melatonin. Working (or playing) at a bright computer
screen 20 inches away delays the natural release, resulting in
poorer sleep (see point 3 above). On the other hand there is
evidence that some off-the-shelf action games can help people
to improve visual attention and avoid visual distraction. (For
example, laparoscopic surgeons who play video games make
significantly fewer errors than ones who don’t.)
5. Get off your butt if you want your brain to work better: Both
in the short term and long term, exercise increases blood flow
to the brain and improves brain function. In one experiment 2
× 3-minute sprints improved people’s memory function by 20
per cent in an immediate test. In the longer term, the brains of
physically fit people usually have a larger hippocampus than
for unfit people; the size of the hippocampus is directly related
to memory.

A final little useful element of the report is a condensed (also

5-point) tip list from the survey participants. It relates very much
to ‘brain-friendly learning’, but since you want to learn from
every experience you have (and as a leader you want your people
to do likewise) it is included here.

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 Five brain-friendly techniques recommended by the survey
contributors

Find and give time and encourage active reflection.

When providing information, do it in short bursts; 10 to

15 minutes rather than three-hour presentations.

Introduce physical movement into the day; even if it is just a

walk around the block.

Introduce opportunities for people to find things out for

themselves, rather than spoon-feeding them.

Try to bring some emotion into the messages: shock or laughter

are proven to make messages far more memorable than the
grey ‘corporate’ language and images of a staid organization.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Ask your (-self and your) people every day to reflect on what
they have learned in their experience today.
• Try avoiding giving your opinion on things and ask your
people for their ideas.
• Remember that your brain is more powerful than your
computer... switch the PC/Mac/tablet/smartphone off and
just think!

Source
www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/research/neuroscience-learning.aspx

See also
Chapter 13 – To be (here) or not to be (here), that is the question

Chapter 18 – Leadership and leaders; let’s get complex

Chapter 26 – Learning; it’s a generational thing

Chapter 40 – You can NOT be serious!

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 15 Successful
change begins
with ‘good’
communication

Many organizations and leaders are secretive about change

until ready to make it... this is the reason many changes fail!

Change is inevitable; no organization can stand still and expect

to survive.

There are many pressures on a leader when initiating and driving

through a change programme:

• A commercial need for confidentiality

• A reluctance to ‘wash the organization’s dirty linen in public’
• The sheer size of the organization (or the geographic spread of
its constituent parts)
• A reluctance to openly say ‘we need to change but I don’t
know what or how’.

As a result, many senior executives will create a small team to

help them plan and manage the change. This team may include
experts specifically drafted in, external specialist consultants
and other senior managers. They operate on a ‘need to know’
basis until they have come up with their plan. Only then are they
comfortable in sharing it with the rest of the organization.

In 2002, Mercer Human Resources and the International

Association of Business Communicators conducted a major
survey regarding change practices around the globe. They
sought opinions from 12,000 people from a wide range of
organizations and at a wide range of levels of seniority. They
then sampled senior executives from Fortune 200 companies to

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 get a different perspective. Then, based on their findings to date,
they interviewed 250 communications executives to identify what
were the best and worst change management practices.

Their findings suggest that the most effective and successful

change initiatives benefit from a very different approach.

The top five WORST change practices were:

1. Failing to communicate to all employees about change

2. Not articulating change vision/objectives rationale
3. Being dishonest about change processes and implications
4. Not giving employees a voice in the change process
5. Failing to plan for change.

Number 1 clearly suggests that the small dedicated change

management team approach, operating on a need-to-know basis,
is divisive.

Number 2 clearly suggests that if people don’t understand ‘why’

a change is necessary they are less likely to support it; usually,
senior management understands why a change is necessary and
what it is aiming to achieve but all too often this is considered
either too complex for the masses or simply that ‘theirs is not to
reason why’.

In number 3 ‘dishonest’ not only means actively lying about

implications but also hiding the implications or not telling people
until ‘the time is right’.

Number 4 is a double whammy: not only do people feel resentful

that they were not consulted, but also the lost opportunity to
avoid the later flood of ‘I could have told you that wouldn’t work
because...’ comments.

Number 5 probably doesn’t need any further comment... except

to say that trying to avoid it may result in closeting yourself
away with a team of experts and producing a splendid plan that
completely falls into the traps of numbers 1 to 4.

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 The top five BEST change practices were:

1. Effective communication
2. Employee involvement or buy-in
3. Leadership and commitment from senior management
4. Evidence that management is ‘living the change’
5. Explicit business imperative for the change.

In Number 1 ‘effective’ covers the timing of communication

as well as the content of the messages. It also covers the media
delivery method – but more of that later.

Number 2 clearly suggests that the ‘small team of specialists’

approach needs to engage in a lot of consultation with the
workforce (not just their trade union). It also links to the matter of
effective communication: simply giving people information doesn’t
get their involvement and buy-in, you have to get information back
from them. Communication is a two-way process.

Number 3 has another big message for the ‘small team of

specialists’ approach: senior management cannot simply brief
a team and leave it to get on with it. The leadership has to be
involved with the change programme on a day-to-day basis and
not continue their own operations as if it were business as usual.

Number 4 is dependent upon the type of change being

initiated. If the change is cultural or behavioural this is fairly
straightforward. Management simply has to identify the new
culture or behaviours that are needed and do them themselves
and manage in a way that encourages and creates role models.

Where the changes being brought in only really affect the ‘rank
and file’, it is more challenging for managers to demonstrate
that they are also ‘living the change’. What needs to be done will
depend on the circumstances, suffice it to say that if managers
are aware that they need to be seen to ‘live the change’, then
most will be able to work out how to with regard to the specific
situation they find themselves in.

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 In Number 5 the most important word is ‘explicit’. Organizations
instigate change for any number of reasons, for instance:

• to comply with new legal regulations

• to fight competitors
• because the economy has shrunk and their market is
disappearing
• to respond to new technology
• to reduce cost and waste thus increasing efficiency
• to catch up with smaller changes that should have been made
in the past
• to continually improve
• to prepare for an expected change in their market
• in response to customer demand
• to absorb or be absorbed after a merger or acquisition.

Whatever the reason it must be made clear to everyone and then

be repeated often. This avoids the old joke:

‘When you are up to your arse in alligators it is difficult to

remember that the initial aim was to drain the swamp.’

Bonus observation from the author’s own experience

I have a lot of experience working with the public sector in the

UK, be that central government, local authorities or quangos.
One of the constant comments I hear from public sector
employees is that the changes foisted upon them are changes
that are made simply because a different political party is now in
government.

I also do a lot of work in the commercial and not-for-profit sectors

and have heard many stories of change programmes that were
initiated from the top simply because they were following a ‘fad’
or fashion. Sometimes that fad was related to new technology or
software that was seen to be cutting edge, and sometimes it was to
do with the latest management culture/style theory.

In neither of these situations is there a clear ‘business imperative’

for the change... they appear to be initiated on a whim.

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 A change in government may well result in major changes for the
public servants in their administration, and the mandate of the
people is the business case.

Adopting a cutting-edge technology or a new management style

requires a detailed analysis of the benefits that it will bring... this
then becomes the business case for change.

Media for communicating change

The study also looked at the media for communicating change to
the workforce. It looked at two aspects of this: availability and
value. The results are below:

 
Media Availability Value
a. Individual meeting between manager and 89% 76%
staff member
b. Departmental/team meetings between 90% 67%
manager and staff
c. Email or other ICT 95% 65%
d. Leadership presentations to staff 82% 45%
e. Organization’s newsletter 90% 32%
f.  Information packs/brochures 81% 27%
g.  Information helpline 51% 22%
h.  Employee grapevine/rumours 98% 19%
i. Video 66% 14%
j.  Bulletin boards 80% 12%

Particular points to note with regard to the medium or channel of

communications are:

d) leadership giving a formal presentation is less than 50 per cent

effective as a demonstration of the critically important need to
show commitment to the change. Leadership producing a video is
even less effective.

f), g) and i) are all very commonly used but all very low on effectiveness.

c) is perhaps surprisingly successful; predominantly due

to their speed and perhaps the fact that they are two-way

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 communications since people can respond with a question or
challenge.

a) and b) though possibly the most time consuming, and reliant

on the individual manager’s communication skills, remain the
most effective way of preventing change from failing.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Start engaging with your people NOW. Don’t wait until
you have a change programme in the offing. Tell them the
strategies of the organization and explain why these are the
strategies; that way, when you need to explain a business
imperative for change they will be used to understanding the
bigger picture.
• Instigate a regular meeting with your people to ask them
what changes they’d like to propose. What change is your
workplace screaming out for? Are you completely happy with
the following six characteristics of the organization. Use the
SCREAM mnemonic:

• Staff: the number of people, their locations and job

descriptions, the way they are organized and where they are
located. This can also extend to include whether you have
got the right people in the first place!
• Culture: this is the general culture that we have in the
workplace. Are we autocratic or consultative, are we militant
or pacifist?
• Resources that you have to work with: this can range
from the tools to consumables, from the computers to the
workwear.
• Environment in which you work: everything from the
cleanliness and tidiness to the lighting, heating and
ventilation.
• Abilities of the people: does everyone have all the skills and
knowledge that you’d like them to have in order to do the
job well and keep them and you happy?
• Methods (both the ones that each person uses and the overall
method that connects it all together).

• Remember that communication is the key to successful change.

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 See also
Chapter 1 – Spreadsheets alone do not a judgement make

Chapter 4 – I read it, but what the heck did it mean?

Chapter 28 – What happens when you (or someone you manage)

make decisions under pressure?

Chapter 37 – ‘Science, schmience’ ... take it with a pinch of salt

Chapter 38 – Learning from successful change

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 16 Getting
engaged means
committing
and staying
the course

An engaged workforce isn’t something that is fluffy and nice-

to-have-when-you-can-afford-it. It is a strategy for success

The Corporate Leadership Council is a global membership

organization that exists to give scientific rigour to management
development. It publishes around 200 studies per annum with
the aim of ‘helping business leaders evaluate new issues and
challenges’.

In 2004 it published a major study into the topic of employee

engagement. The report begins by pointing out that there are
differing definitions of what actually constitutes ‘engagement’
and so to provide clarity they laid down their own definition for
the purposes of the study.

Engagement is the extent to which employees commit to

something or someone in their organization and how hard they
work and how long they stay as a result of that commitment.

The sample group for the study was significant:

• more than 50,000 people

• from 59 different organizations
• in 30 countries
• across 14 industries
• 54 per cent male and 46 per cent female
• the full range of working age, from 18-year-olds to 60+

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 • tenure ranging from new starters to employees with 31+ years
of service
• across virtually all work functions and positions in the
organizational hierarchy.

It is valuable to note that the terminology of the report

refers to ‘employees’... this includes not just shop-floor
staff but also supervisors, managers, senior managers
and even the leadership team themselves; although 68 per
cent of respondents were non-managerial, the remainder
represented up to and including VPs and senior executives.

The study categorized two types of commitment:

Rational commitment: The extent to which an employee

judged the benefits to their own self-interest – be they financial,
developmental or professional.

Emotional commitment: The extent to which the employee

valued, enjoyed and believed in their work, their manager, their
co-workers and their organization.

(As you can see, the study looked at four ‘focal points’ for
commitment: work, colleagues, manager and organization.)

The study measured two ‘outputs’ of commitment:

• Discretionary effort: an employee’s willingness to go beyond

their job description by helping co-workers, taking on extra
responsibilities and proactively developing themselves and
working practices.
• Intent to stay: their desire to remain with their current
employer based upon whether they intended to start
looking for a new job within a year, whether they frequently
considered handing in their notice, or whether they were
already looking for another job.

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 The respondents’ answers ranged across the bell curve for
commitment:

• 11 per cent were true believers. These people demonstrated a

high level of commitment to their work, their colleagues, their
manager and the organization. They were high performers
who regularly assisted colleagues, volunteered for extra duties
and looked for ways to do their jobs better.
• 76 per cent were agnostics. This group comprised pretty good
performers who neither went out of their way nor shirked.
Their intentions to stay ranged widely. They showed a high
level of commitment (emotional or rational) to one of the focal
points but had only moderate levels of commitment to other
elements.
• 13 per cent were highly uncommitted. This cadre comprised
poor performers who frequently put in just enough effort
to get by. They were four times more likely to desert the
organization than the agnostic employee and nine times more
likely than the true believers.

The report runs to some 45 pages, so here is a précis of some of

the more interesting of its discoveries.

1. Demographic generalizations and received wisdoms aren’t

always right. For instance, the belief that younger people have
little commitment. The differential between the under-40s and
the over-40s as a percentage of the most committed employees
are 10.6 per cent and 11.7 per cent respectively. Similarly,
the difference between parents and non-parents is very low;
the percentage of the most committed is 10.8 per cent and
11.4 per cent respectively.
2. The differences between organizations were enormous! The
percentage of an organization’s workforce that ranked in
the ‘true believer’ category ranged from 23.8 per cent of the
population in the ‘best’ organization to a derisory 2.9 per cent
in the ‘worst’.
3. While engagement was significant to the overall rates of
observable performance improvement it was not the only
factor; 40 per cent of performance improvement could be

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 linked to employee engagement and a remaining 57 per cent
was actually down to ‘direct performance inflectors’... these
include job relevant information, on-the-job development and
having the right resources.
4. 10:6:2 ratio... a 10 per cent improvement in a person’s
commitment results in a 6 per cent improvement in the
discretionary effort they put in. A 6 per cent improvement in
effort produces a 2 per cent improvement in performance.
5. 10:9 ratio... a 10 per cent improvement in commitment
results in a 9 per cent reduction in the likelihood that an
employee will leave. (When you consider the cost of recruiting
and inducting a new employee you can see the value in
retaining people, especially once they are committed to the
organization.)
6. 71 per cent of companies with above-average employee
engagement did better in terms of 12-month revenue growth
relative to their specific industry competitors. 62 per cent of
companies with below-average employee engagement scored
worse than their competitors.
7. It wasn’t the rational commitment that had the most effect
on employees’ efforts, but the emotional commitment. A
strong emotional commitment to the organization resulted in
a 43.2 per cent higher level of discretionary effort... whereas a
strong rational commitment to the organization only resulted
in an 18.4 per cent higher level of discretionary effort. Similar
differences were found for the commitment to team and
manager.
8. Conversely, a strong rational commitment to the organization
results in the highest improvement in intent to stay, though
emotional commitment is still strong in the retention arena.
9. Very interestingly for senior executives are the effects that
their behaviours have on their people’s discretionary effort.
Demonstrating that you:

• are open to new ideas

• care deeply about employees
• make employee development a priority
• are committed to creating new jobs.

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 Creates a greater amount of discretionary effort from your
people than any of the more commonly seen traits of leading and
managing people, selecting and implementing strategy, or your
day-to-day process management ability.

The study went on to identify the ‘levers’ on engagement; those

elements that organizational managers can use to improve
employee engagement at all levels.

The study identified more than 300 different levers and the
report lists the top 160 of these. Interestingly for all aspiring
and incumbent leaders and managers, the report identified
that almost every action a manager takes has an effect on
discretionary effort. The report lists more than 40 day-to-day
management actions and characteristics that have an impact in
excess of 20 per cent. They include (among others):

• Commits to diversity
• Demonstrates honesty and integrity
• Adapts to changing circumstances
• Clearly articulates organizational goals
• Sets realistic performance expectations
• Accurately appraises employee performance
• Defends direct reports
• Trusts employees to do their job
• Listens carefully to views and opinions
• Holds people accountable
• Articulates the long-term vision for the future.

The report also provides a handy guide to the top 50 ‘most

effective levers of engagement’. Bearing in mind that more than
60 per cent of the respondents were from non-managerial grades
the top two are very interesting. They are 1) Connection between
the individual’s day-to-day work and the overall strategy of the
organization; and 2) the importance of my job to organizational
success.

So, when was the last time you discussed these elements with the
individuals in your team?

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 So what are the big takeaways here?
• Spread the word that employee engagement isn’t just a nice-
to-have-when-we-can-afford-it. It is a genuine contributor to
bottom-line productivity and efficiency.
• Get hold of a copy of the report and assess your organization
or team to see what you are doing to exploit the different
levers.
• Remember that a large number of the levers of engagement
are related to the individual actions of members of the
management... in other words, YOU!

Source
www.usc.edu/programs/cwfl/assets/pdf/Employee%20
engagement.pdf

See also
Chapter 18 – Leadership and leaders; let’s get complex

Chapter 21 – Management and leadership... a hot topic! But for

whom?

Chapter 29 – Is getting engaged really worth the effort?

Chapter 33 – Find out what your followers think about you, and
talk to them about it!

Chapter 35 – ‘Trust me, I’m a manager’

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 17 Spartan or
‘house and
garden’?

Should a workplace be solely functional or are plants and

artwork beneficial to productivity?

Health and safety demands the removal of unnecessary and

potentially dangerous clutter (even if H&S doesn’t actually
demand it, it is often cited as the rationale for clearing non-
organizational items from the workplace).

Equality consideration removed the girly calendars and smutty

cartoons of yesteryear... and in many workplaces a zero-tolerance
approach means that nothing is allowed on the walls.

When organizations are laying-off staff and cutting operations

back to the essentials it is seen as wasteful to spend money on
frivolities such as office plants, artwork and nice decor.

The received wisdom for most industries is that in order to

maximize productivity workspaces should be clear of clutter,
functional and ‘lean’. This approach was initially espoused by
Josiah Wedgwood in the 18th century and Frederick Taylor then
reiterated the concept in his theories of scientific management,
and the lean movement in the late 20th century has reinforced it
further.

The intuitive nature of the lean workplace theory is, however,

seldom backed up with any genuine proof of its genuineness... it
is simply seen as ‘common sense’.

Various studies have been carried out over the years that look at
the enrichment of office space and the effects on both the actual
working environment and the workforce’s perceptions. For
instance, plants in the workplace can have measured effects on

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 air quality and psychological effects on people’s perceptions of
air quality.

In 2014, Marlon Nieuwenhuis, of Cardiff University in Wales,

led a study with three colleagues from other UK, Australian and
Dutch universities – Tom Postmes, University of Groningen, Craig
Knight, University of Exeter, and Alexander Haslam, University
of Queensland. Their work was different to the previous studies
in that it focused solely on the provision of plants and it measured
productivity as well as the workforce’s environment.

Their study used real commercial offices of a functioning

business. The methodology was to take a single, large open-
plan office floor and divide it into two separate areas, one to be
landscaped with plants and one to remain stripped and purely
functional. This removed differentiations of lights, accessibility
and location as well as providing ‘before and after’ comparisons.

The study ran in three phases:

1. Environmental satisfaction: measuring the workforce’s

perceptions of a) the air quality; b) ability to concentrate;
c) satisfaction; and d) productivity.
2. The same areas of measurement but with two differences.
a) more objective methods of measuring productivity rather
than subjective perception; and b) an extended timeframe.
3. Purely a measure of productivity.

Study 1 took place in London in the hot-desking offices of a

consultancy company. The staff were very well paid and operated
with a high degree of professional autonomy. They could choose
where in the office they worked. A survey was carried out
before the greening of the study area and then again two weeks
afterwards. In comparison to the people who worked in the lean
area, the people who worked in the green area reported that
the air quality was better, they were able to concentrate more
effectively and after three weeks their productivity was enhanced.

One surprise was that the staff working in the lean area
reported a similar rise in their level of satisfaction with the work

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 environment. (It was surmised that though the planting wasn’t
immediately in the lean area the staff working there passed
through and saw the landscaping during their working day,
which suggests that greening the common areas as well as the
discrete workstations is worthy of consideration.)

Study 2 took place in the Netherlands in a financial services

company’s contact centre. To counter the surprise effect
mentioned above, in this study the team used two different floors
of the same building. The staff here were less well paid and
in a more hierarchical structure. Their productivity is already
measured in terms of call duration, time they put the caller on
hold and the time taken to complete post call records. Surveys
were carried out and productivity measured before the study
started, two weeks in, and three and a half months in.

Again the green area staff reported higher perceptions of air

quality and satisfaction than the people working in the spartan
area, and this was common in the short- and longer-term
surveys. There was a marginal difference in the reported level of
concentration between green and spartan. The surprise was that
in spite of staff perceptions being improved by the greening of
their workspace, the objective measure of productivity showed
no difference. This potentially calls into question the bottom-line
short-term value of greening the office but the measurement does
need to be considered; call duration is widely used as a measure
of call centre agent productivity but it measures efficiency rather
than quality. There are many reasons why a call may be short
and only one of them is that the customer has received a high
level of service.

Study 3. In the light of the outcome of the productivity measures

in Study 2, Study 3 moved to a more rigorous and objective
‘laboratory-style’ measurement of productivity. The study took
place in London in the offices of a professional service company.
Participants were briefed and randomly allocated a workstation
in either the lean or green space. The two spaces were laid out
identically and provided with identical furniture and equipment.
The green space was also fitted out with large plants and every
participant in this area could see at least three from their desk.

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 Participants were asked to evaluate their workspace prior to
starting the three time-pressured tasks; information management,
information processing and vigilance.

• Information management was tested by sorting a shuffled

stack for company memoranda into chronological order
against the clock.
• Information processing was tested by completing a multiple-
choice quiz on the content of the memoranda, again against
the clock.
• Vigilance was tested by timed ‘proofreading’ of a document
and extracting information from it.

The outcomes of the study were conclusive: a green workspace

was more appreciated by employees; they were faster in their
work and with no increase in the rate of errors.

The overall study provides a clear debunking of the myth that

‘lean and mean’ is beneficial to productivity. Making a workplace
‘a green and pleasant land’, rather than ‘a dark Satanic mill’,
not only makes people happier but it also makes them more
productive; they work more quickly, they can concentrate for
longer and they exhibit high levels of accuracy and quality.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Spread the word; tell people, especially the people who hold
the purse strings, about this research. Pot plants aren’t just
pretty, they actively contribute to the bottom line.
• Encourage people to bring plants into work and have them on
their desks. (Bonus observation from the author: one of my
clients has a small basement room in their office building. It
has no windows and no natural light, it is quite cramped and
the actual air quality is nothing to write home about but it is
one of the most popular meeting rooms in the building. The
walls are decorated with a giant photo-mural of a forest; it
isn’t a landscape just green trees in dappled sunlight... perhaps
even pictures of plants are beneficial to our perception of
wellbeing!)

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 • Remember the power of plants; if you need to boost
productivity in a particularly difficult time, consider ‘decking
the halls with boughs’ rather than ‘clearing the decks for
action’.

Source
Nieuwenhuis, M., Knight, C., Postmes, T. & Haslam, S. A.
(2014), ‘The Relative Benefits of Green versus Lean Office Space:
Three Field Experiments’, Journal of Experimental Psychology,
Vol. 20 Issue 3 pp 199–214

See also
Chapter 5 – ‘Workers’ play time’ – is it really worth it?

Chapter 7 – ‘An employee’s workspace is his castle... or should be!’

Chapter 11 – To follow me they have to be able to see me, right?

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 18 Leadership and
leaders; let’s
get complex

Leadership isn’t simply a matter of getting people to follow

you... it is also about having the wisdom and capacity to
balance your style

Over the years the debate about ‘what is leadership’ and what
makes a good leader has carried on and on… Mary Uhl-Bien,
Russ Marion and Bill McKelvey published an article in January
2007 to propose a new approach.

The content of that article is included in this book not because their
approach is based on a new study, but because their approach is
so heavily referenced to other works. The whole article is 22 pages
in length and nearly 4 pages of that is taken up with references to
other scholarly studies. It could be referred to as ‘How to Become
Ridiculously Well Read on Leadership Theory in One Easy Lesson’.

The premise of their article is that most leadership models and

theory are based upon what succeeds in an industrial age. It is
generally top-down and is excellently suited to a production
economy where control and centralized goals are critical to
success. Our world economy is no longer predominantly
production based; we live more in the ‘knowledge era’ and a
different paradigm is appropriate to leadership and leaders.

In the knowledge age and in knowledge-based organizations

the need is for more informal networks of individuals sharing
expertise and driving towards the rapidly shifting objectives,
whereas in the production/industrial age the need was more for
alignment, standardization, control and homogeneity.

They propose a new model, which they call Complexity

Leadership Theory. In this they draw a difference between

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 ‘leaders’ (as in the people recognized in a hierarchy as having the
formal authority) and ‘leadership’ (as in a series of functions that
bring about success). To quote from the report:

Much of leadership thinking has failed to recognize that

leadership is not merely the influential act of an individual or
individuals but rather is embedded in a complex interplay of
numerous interacting forces.

Complexity Leadership Theory defines three leadership functions:

adaptive leadership, administrative leadership and enabling
leadership.

Adaptive leadership
This is the dynamic that arises through people’s interactions
when they adjust to, and cope with, tensions and problems.

It is not an act of authority and it happens throughout the

organization.

It appears when interdependent individuals or groups are

competing over differences in ideas, needs and preferences.

It results in:

• alliances of people and groups

• development of new ideas
• solutions and outcomes.

It is the catalyst for most change in the organization; an example

of adaptive leadership might be when two parties with opposed
opinions are engaged in a debate over relative merits and suddenly
one or both generates a new understanding of the situation.

This is often referred to as an ‘a-ha’ moment.

‘A-ha’ solutions cannot realistically be claimed by any one

individual; they are the product of tensions between different
opinions and therefore one will only happen when the interaction
takes place.

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 Adaptive leadership is really only recognized when the outcome
has significance and impact:

• Significance is the practical usefulness of the outcome. This can

be measured in revenue, efficiency, cost saving or effectiveness.
• Impact is the level to which the outcome is embraced by
people other than the group who gave it birth.

Impact can be completely independent of significance as it can

be directly affected by the rank or reputation of the ‘parents’
and the imaginations of other people; most of us are aware of
insignificant ideas having a major impact due to the authority
of the originator. Conversely, we probably all know of instances
where brilliant ideas had virtually no impact simply because
they were not circulated. This can also be directly attributed to
the level to which ‘administrative leadership’ is exercised.

Administrative leadership
This is the series of activities by individuals (or groups of
individuals) where they plan and organize actions to result in
an efficient manner. Administrative leadership builds vision,
structures tasks, allocates resources, defines strategies, and
manages crises and conflicts.

Administrative leadership is almost always a top-down

function based upon authority and position. It has the power
to make decisions, and this is an area where:

an excess of administrative leadership can stifle people’s

capacity to change, evolve and develop new ideas.

The authors are clear that administrative leadership is still

appropriate to support a performance management culture and
situations where accountability and compliance are business
critical.

Enabling leadership
Enabling leadership is twofold:
1. It is the creation of the environment and the conditions where
adaptive leadership can occur.

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 2. It is the effective balancing of the control and certainty of
administrative leadership and the freedom and conflict of
adaptive leadership.

Enabling leadership behaviours can happen anywhere though

middle managers are often most ideally placed to exhibit them.
Three things that enabling leadership does to foster adaptive
leadership (and thus innovation) are:

• to foster and encourage interaction between different

individuals and groups
• to highlight and underline mutual benefit to these parties
• to inject some creative tension, motivate and coordinate
action.

Enabling leadership can also affect the impact of adaptive

leadership by disseminating the innovative ‘a-ha’ outcomes
throughout the organization.

Enabling leaders demonstrate personal commitment to the idea,

promote the idea through informal networks and willingly risk
their position and reputation to ensure its success.

Reading the article is quite hard going, since it is scattered with

references to other people’s work, academic jargon and long
words. Wading through its 22 pages is not for the fainthearted.
However, once you can get the gist of it, it is in itself an ‘a-ha’
moment; it all makes perfect sense and clearly paints a very
useful model for leadership in a knowledge economy.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• If you work in any environment other than a production one,
question the concept that traditional leadership will take your
organization through the next decade successfully.
• When you are looking to promote or recruit, look for people’s
enabling leadership skills as well as their administrative
leadership ability – regardless of whether they will be taking
on a formal management role.
• When one of your team brings you a problem, remember this
particular line: ‘A major function of leaders has historically

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 been to solve problems, to intervene when dilemmas arise
or when individuals differ on task-related activities. Such
action, however, can stifle interdependency and limit adaptive
mechanisms.’

Source
Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R. & McKelvey, B. (2007), ‘Complexity
Leadership Theory: Shifting leadership from the industrial age to
the knowledge era’. The Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 18 Issue 4 pp
298–318
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984307000689

See also
Chapter 6 – As a leader, it is a matter of priorities

Chapter 16 – Getting engaged means committing and staying the

course

Chapter 29 – Is getting engaged really worth the effort?

Chapter 34 – Talent management – have you got your EVP right?

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 19 The customer is
always right...
WRONG !

When it comes to customer complaints, prevention can be

better than cure... and far less expensive in the long run

We’ve all heard the old adage that the customer is always right
and we all know that it is more observed in spirit than in reality.
Most organizations measure the number of complaints that they
receive from customers but often they don’t actually analyse the
underlying reasons for the complaints.

TARP (Technical Assistance Research Programs) was the name of

a US organization that championed data collection and analysis
in the field of customer satisfaction. We say ‘was’ because
although the organization goes from strength to strength it has
changed its name to CX Act.

In 2001 the then president of TARP, John Goodman, unveiled

the results of a major survey into customer complaints, the
underlying causes for the dissatisfaction and some case studies to
demonstrate how organizations had radically reduced customer
dissatisfaction in innovative ways.

In large part his objective was to turn organizations’ strategies

from ‘complaint management’ to ‘complaint prevention’ through
a scientific analysis of their current complaints.

Since the causes of customer complaints vary – depending on

factors such as the nature of the product or service, the price
and the industry sector – Goodman presented the causes simply
in categories rather than in a ranked order of magnitude. The
categories were common across industries:

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a. Defects b. Marketing c. Misleading d. Customer e. Customer
caused by overpromises marketing error that is ‘stupidity’ or
production a reasonable unreasonable
or service mistake customer
failure or expectation
employee
error

Goodman’s contention was that only the first category could be

addressed by the production/operations or the customer service
function. The others required a more holistic effort to rectify.

More importantly, TARP was making the point that with

intelligent effort on a holistic basis, many issues could be
prevented from recurring (i.e. they could be pre-empted with
future customers). Obviously with a little foresight this could be
taken a stage further and many could be foreseen and therefore
prevented altogether in the future.

Simple quality checks, good recruitment and training, and

effective performance management should reduce defects to
minimal levels. This is fairly self-evident and most organizations,
large and small, already make significant efforts to achieve this.

Marketing overpromises and deliberately misleading marketing

are, clearly, predominantly the remit of the marketing and sales
departments. More recent situations in most developed nations
suggest that this is still a widespread problem. Consistent
lawsuits and government-mandated compensation campaigns
on the grounds of mis-selling are costing businesses dearly.
HomeServe was fined £30.6 million for mis-selling emergency
cover insurance. Banks have faced massive costs over PPI claims.
Energy company tariffs have been heavily criticized. Solar panel
sales are under scrutiny. Many companies have now recognized
the danger of financial incentivization of their sales force,
especially for these high-value items.

Complaints that arise due to customers making a reasonable

mistake is almost always preventable. Goodman referred to
a flooring manufacturer/installer who received a number of
complaints that their new flooring was failing. They rapidly

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 discovered that customers were continuing to clean their new
flooring using the same cleaning products that they had always
used. This was unnecessary and was the cause of the damage,
but the customers were unaware that the new flooring didn’t
need, and was in fact damaged by, the abrasive nature of the
old cleaners. The company immediately embarked on a contact
programme with all their customers. They rang each one and
spent a few minutes explaining the change; this eliminated the
problem almost immediately and presented the image to the
customers of a caring and considerate supplier.

Goodman went on to reinforce this particular case study with

another from Alamo Rent A Car. Alamo produced a small,
inexpensive ‘educational’ pamphlet entitled ‘The Consumer’s
Guide to Renting a Car’. They mailed this out to 2,000 of their
customers. They then surveyed this group and a control group of
2,000 other customers to whom they had not sent the guide. The
survey showed two important outcomes:

• customers who received the guide and then rented a car were
24 per cent more satisfied than those who didn’t receive the
guide before they rented.
• the group who received the guide were 15 per cent more likely
to rent from Alamo next time than the group who didn’t get
sent a guide.

Alamo also measured the incidence of problems for the two

groups of customers in their post-guide rental period. The
number of calls from guide recipients remained almost identical
to the non-guide renters BUT the difference was the outcome
of the calls. The guided customers’ calls resulted in significantly
fewer and less costly (to Alamo) bills.

While sending out pamphlets has a not insignificant cost, this

sort of education of customers can also be done more simply
by labelling. Dannon/Danone makes and sells cherry yoghurt.
Cherries have hard stones and ensuring that all stones are
removed without reducing the fruit to a liquid is a very costly
business. Danone overcomes the potential for problems by
labelling the individual pots with a warning that they may

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 contain stones. When the labelling was removed, the number of
complaints doubled. When the label was reinstated, the number
of complaints halved.

Goodman’s final category was customer stupidity or

unreasonable expectation. To demonstrate this Goodman quoted
several complaints received by a manufacturer of domestic
bleach. The customers were complaining about the unpleasant
taste of the product; they were using it to try to whiten their
teeth! Clearly there is little that can be done to completely
eradicate complaints borne of customer idiocy, but if you ever
have to call a software or hardware supplier to seek assistance
you will note that nowadays one of the early questions you are
asked is: ‘Is the computer switched on?. It may appear that the
help desk is insulting your intelligence but the reality is that some
customers have proven to be that ignorant.

OK, there are the survey findings, what can you do with them?

The first message is that it is really important to identify root

causes of problems and complaints, even if your customers are
internal. Do this either as a specific project or simply by making
notes of the issues over a period. Sort the root causes into
categories along the lines of those Goodman identified.

Once you have identified the causes, decide who in the

organization you need to involve in the solution; you may be
able to simply put a plan into practice with your own team,
alternatively you may need to get the marketing or packaging
departments involved. If you genuinely believe that customer
stupidity is a significant contributor to your problems, it is
probably worth considering whether there is anything you can do
to mitigate the issue.

Many organizations are already at this stage so you need not

fear being laughed at; sets of carving knives are available that
are clearly labelled as not suitable for children under 36 months,
cough mixture for the under-5s carries a warning not to operate
heavy machinery after taking a dose, fruit-flavoured soaps and
shampoos tell their customer that they are not foodstuffs, and

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 inflatable pool toys in the shape of crocodiles warn us that they
are not lifesaving equipment. Most of these warnings are a direct
or indirect result of the TARP survey.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Next time someone in your team is exasperated about having
to deal with a complaint, ask them to analyse the root cause;
then they (or you) will be in a position to prevent it happening
again.
• Take the time to proactively assess the causes of problems
and complaints. Once you know the causes, you can sensibly
prioritize your responses.
• Remember that though you cannot legislate against stupidity
you may well be able to mitigate the effects it could bring.

Source
www.customerservicegroup.com/pdf/csn1210docs.pdf

See also
Chapter 1 – Spreadsheets alone do not a judgement make

Chapter 4 – I read it, but what the heck did it mean?

Chapter 35 – ‘Trust me, I’m a manager’

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 20 It sounds
scientific and
objective, but is
it science?

There can be ‘good’ science and ‘bad’ science or good science

used badly.The magic is in knowing which you are looking at!

You are looking to recruit a new person to your team. The role
is going to be business critical. You want to get it right first time.
You decide to take a more objective and professional approach
than just: ‘I’ll recognize good when I see it.’ You draw up a job
description and a person specification and you discuss these with
the team members to get a sense check. All going well so far…

Next you go to get a bit of best practice advice from the HR

function and they suggest that to make it really scientific
and objective (and to avoid accusations of bias or unfair
discrimination) you have all the applicants undertake a
psychometric test.

Technically speaking these sorts of instruments are actually

‘assessments’ not ‘tests’... you can’t fail them, they simply
assess you not test you. However, the common parlance is
‘test’ so we’ll use that term.

They suggest a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI. This is a

widely used assessment tool; McKinsey and Co. uses it, General
Motors uses it. In fact, so many organizations use it that two and
a half million tests are administered every year and the owners
are rumoured to generate more than US$20 million per annum
from it. It has been around since 1943, so it isn’t exactly a flash-
in-the-pan, fad/fashion tool either; it’s proven.

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 The test requires a person to complete a questionnaire of
93 questions that analyses four different areas of personal
preference:

1. Decision-making – are you a logical and objective decision-

maker or a values-driven decision-maker?
2. Inward/outward focus – are you the ‘life-and-soul’ or the quiet
contemplative type?
3. Information absorption – are you a purely facts-based person
or more of a visionary?
4. Your ‘outward’ life preferences – are you a careful planner or a
seat of the pants maverick?

(For brevity, I’ve paraphrased the alternatives in the descriptions

above.)

In each of the four areas there are two opposed alternatives, so

any one person will be categorized into one of 16 categories.
Each category is known, like the MBTI itself by a four letter
acronym.

The theory is that you, as the manager can aim to replace a

leaver with a person of similar personality. Or you could be
looking to recruit someone with complementary personal traits.
Or you may have identified that a particular type is successful in
this role and wish to use the test to look for aptitude.

Great! This takes the guesswork out of it. It gives you confidence
in your decision. Or it saves you from making a major and very
embarrassing error. What a brilliant tool!

But is it?

Even the owners have said that it shouldn’t be used for

recruitment and selection purposes.

Others are sceptical of its value as a scientific test at all.

So what is fundamentally wrong with the MBTI?

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 The premise is that personality is a constant and that therefore
once you have been assessed as being of a particular personality
type this type will remain with you always. While leopards may
not change their spots, is the MBTI a reliable way of identifying a
person’s personality type?

Scientific studies have been carried out to simply test and retest
the same people to see whether they get the same results when
they take the test. As long ago as 1979, Howes and Carskadon
carried out a study with a five-week gap between the test and the
retest; they found that up to 50 per cent of people got a different
result the second time.

There have been a number of studies that have looked to identify

the reasons for these changes; they have identified a number of
areas of concern relating to the statistical machinations of the
test results and the ‘binary’ nature of the categorizations (if you
scored 100 out of 200 you’d be in one category but if you scored
105 out of 200 you’d be in a different category; it is black or
white with no shades of grey). Suffice to say that, regardless of
the underlying reasons, if the test is not reliable over a short five-
week period we need to be rather reticent about using it to make
such lifelong decisions as career path, recruitment or promotions.

The reason why MBTI is so widespread and popular with

its champions remains untested, but perhaps there are three
main reasons. The first is that ‘if it’s good enough for General
Motors then it is good for everyone’. So many big reputable
organizations use it that people don’t necessarily question it.
Second, the people in these organizations who administer it have
spent a not-inconsiderable licence sum to do so; people who’ve
paid a lot of money for something seldom want to damage their
own credibility by accepting it was a lemon! And, finally, the
results are always quite flattering... looking at the first words of
each of the 16 categories you are:

• Responsible
• Warm
• Idealistic
• Innovative

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 • Action oriented
• Sensitive
• Gentle
• Intellectual
• Outgoing
• Playful
• Enthusiastic
• Inventive
• Efficient
• Caring
• Friendly or
• Strategic

So everyone gets a warm, fuzzy glow from the assessment. It’s

happiness all round.

So there is the ‘science’, questioned by other science. What good

is this to you as a leader?

Avoid using MBTI to support or guide recruitment decisions.

Even the owners have said that it shouldn’t be abused for this
purpose. Use your own intuition and use a sensible and objective
process. Identify the competences that you need the recruit
to demonstrate in order to be successful in the role. Look for
evidence of these competences in their CV or covering letter.

Ask competency-based questions in the interview, and analyse the

answers you get.

Get your team to join in the interview process so that you not
only benefit from their intuition but also their expertise. This will
also show them (and the applicants) that you respect and value
your team members and their judgement.

If appropriate, set real pass or fail tests for people applying for
the job; there are many ‘ability battery’ tests available that give
you a genuine understanding of an applicant’s reasoning skills,
mathematical agility and linguistic ability.

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 Plan a sensible, welcoming but testing induction programme for
the new starter once you have found the person you want.

Use the probation period to ensure that the skills, abilities and
motivations that you were presented with in the recruitment
process match up to the person who has joined the team.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• MBTI can be helpful for teambuilding activities but if
someone wants you to use it in recruitment just say ‘No’.
• Make the effort to assess and select the long way round rather
than trying to go for a quick shortcut such as MBTI.
• Remember that sometimes that which appears scientific, or is
widely accepted as scientific is in fact not quite all people crack
it up to be.

Sources
www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personality-test-
meaningless

www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/develop/
mbti.pdf

See also
Chapter 1 – Spreadsheets alone do not a judgement make

Chapter 12 – It takes all sorts to make a world

Chapter 33 – Find out what your followers think about you, and
talk to them about it!

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 21 Management
and leadership...
a hot topic! But
for whom?

Your management and leadership skills are important to you.

But they are a heck of a lot more important to the people
you manage or lead

Britain’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

commissions regular research into relevant topics in the UK
employment market.

It conducted an online survey of 2,000 UK employees in 2012;

the respondents were selected and weighted to be representative
of the UK workforce in relation to sector and size (private, public,
voluntary), industry type and full-time/part-time working by gender.

The survey covered a wide range of topics including job

satisfaction and engagement, employee attitudes towards their
managers, focus on management development, pressure at work,
work/life balance, employee attitudes in relation to the economic
downturn and people’s job-seeking situation.

This chapter concerns itself only with the section of the focus on
employee attitude to their managers.

Of the total respondents some 28 per cent managed one or more

people. 35 per cent of the males were managers and 21 per cent of
the females.

Overall, 35 per cent of respondents who reported they managed

one or more people were in the voluntary sector, followed by
30 per cent in the public sector and 27 per cent in the private
sector.

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 On the whole, the respondents reckoned that their managers
were committed to the organization (74 per cent) and that their
managers treated team members fairly (71 per cent). So, generally
speaking, managers aren’t thought of as doing a bad job.

When you look into the detail of the survey there are some
valuable nuggets to be found about people’s day-to-day
behaviours as managers, as perceived by the people they manage.

It is of course important to remember that managers are people/

employees and team members as well as being managers; it is not
simply an ‘us and them’ situation.

The first interesting discovery was the relative importance that

respondents placed on the required skills for success in their
roles. They were asked ‘How important do you consider each of
the following skills as contributing to your effectiveness in your
management role?’ and the table below shows the percentages of
respondents selecting the relevant skill as ‘very important’.

People management skills 62

Operational management skills 47
Technical expertise 38
Organization/planning/project 43
management skills
Managing finances/budgets 28
Monitoring of work process 36

The single most important skillset for managers regardless of

their sector, is people management skills, and yet a large number
of people are promoted to management responsibility on the
grounds of their technical competence.

That is the ‘big picture’ element of the respondents’ approach, but

then there are some related results that are also very interesting.

There is a significant contrast between how managers say

they manage people and the views of employees towards their
managers.

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 • For example, 50 per cent of managers reported that they
meet each team member every week. However, only 17 per
cent of respondents said that they met with their manager
weekly. In fact, people reported that their manager met them
less frequently than once a month. A ‘meeting’ is a moveable
feast so people were also asked not just about frequency of
these meetings but also duration. Again there were interesting
differences of opinion.
• Asked ‘How much time overall per month do you spend
talking to each person you manage about their workload,
objectives and any other work-related issues?’ 64 per cent of
all managers reported spending more than 30 minutes per
month per person. However, 62 per cent of people reported
that their manager spent less than 30 minutes per month on
this activity. Having a useful and productive meeting, and
spending time in a meeting, is also a movable feast, so people
were asked what was discussed in those meetings.
• The gulf between what managers reported was always
discussed and what the managed thought was always discussed
was again significant:

Team
Manager member
Topic discussed report % report % Difference %
Achieving objectives 33 18 15
Instructions 23 16 7
Performance feedback 46 17 29
Praise and recognition 63 19 44
Joint problem-solving 40 15 25
Coaching 30 6 24
Personal development 20 7 13
Manager listening 80 38 42
Innovative ideas from the 31 15 16
team member
Team member’s ‘wellbeing’ 51 19 32

A certain amount of licence may be given to differences

of interpretation; for instance I list a discussion as being a

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 ‘coaching’ session, but the employee may have listed it as being
about solving a problem or developing their abilities.

However, even given this degree of margin the differences overall

are significant: managers think that they listen but the managed
clearly don’t feel as if they are listened to.

Not surprisingly these results correlate to the levels of satisfaction

people have with their immediate manager. Managers were
asked how satisfied they thought their people were with them as
managers. People were asked how satisfied they actually were
with their managers.

The differences between perception and reality were again quite

wide:

Manager Managed
opinion opinion Difference
Very satisfied 15 24 9
Satisfied 65 34 31
Neither satisfied nor 19 26 7
dissatisfied
Dissatisfied 1 11 10
Very dissatisfied 0 5 5

There are several interesting points that come out of this table:

First, that actually managers are very ‘popular’ with a larger

number of their staff than they expected to be.

However, they are grossly overestimating their success in

satisfying the bulk of the team the bulk of the time.

They are also making an inaccurate presumption about the

proportion of their team that really don’t care/are neutral

They are significantly (and possibly dangerously) underestimating

the levels of active dissatisfaction with their management
abilities.

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 OK, there are the raw scores, what can you do to make use of
this to improve your leadership and management of your people?

‘People management’ skills are deemed to be the single most

important skillset in determining and contributing to the
effectiveness of a manager. So as a manager and leader you need
to be dedicating a significant of your time and/or intelligent effort
to managing the people in your team. Yet the survey suggests that
many managers (62 per cent) are actually spending less than 30
minutes per month with each team member. Bearing in mind that,
even calculating on a seven-and-a-half hour day, there are 9,000
minutes in a working month, this means that more than 60 per
cent of managers spend less than 0.3 per cent of their time actually
managing each staff member; the rest of their time is spent on
other technical, operational and customer-related activities.

So the message here is: ‘Take the time to lead and manage.’
This may require you to learn and discipline yourself to delegate
more of the operational and technical duties, or you may need
to simply find ways to improve your personal efficiency to free
up time to manage. Doing this should also allow you the time
to improve that 83 per cent of people who report that they have
time with their manager less than once a month.

The two biggest gaps with regard to ‘quality’ of manager/

employee discussions were the lack of ‘praise and recognition’
and the lack of ‘manager listening’. If you have a team member
working for you and you are not on the brink of sacking them
for incompetence then they must be doing things right/well. So
the next message is: ‘Catch people doing things right.’ Yes people
are paid to do things right but a simple word or two of praise
from you will have a major effect on people’s sense of wellbeing
and it costs nothing. If it helps, there is a welter of suggestion on
the web of ways to do this; for example, http://www.citehr.com/
235290-100-ways-saying-well-done-business-process.html. Some
of the suggestions are a bit toe-curling but the gist is there.

Other than catching people doing things right, managers also

need to listen more. This is counterintuitive in two ways:

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 1. Managers are often thought of as being managers (and are
generally paid more) because they have the answers to the
questions people ask. But... ‘The wise manager doesn’t give the
right answers, but poses the right questions and listens to the
answers’.
2. ‘Listening’ is seen as a passive activity; if you are listening
then the control of the meeting is in the hands of the person
speaking; your staff member. This is only a problem where you
have to keep control due to time pressures. Refer back to the
earlier message about taking time to manage; dedicate the time
to listening to your people.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Don’t assume that your people have the same opinions of your
strengths and weaknesses that you have; take time to ask them
and find out what they really think.
• Take time to manage people, listen to them, observe them.
• Remember that you may be doing better than you imagine!

Source
www.cipd.co.uk/binaries/employee-outlook_2012-sprng.pdf

See also
Chapter 4 – I read it, but what the heck did it mean?

Chapter 10 – The five-step ladder to increased success

Chapter 31 – Meetings (n); Events where people get together

(eventually) and waste a lot more time than they need to

Chapter 33 – Find out what your followers think about you, and
talk to them about it!

Chapter 39 – Trust in your virtual team

Chapter 40 – You can NOT be serious!

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 22 Look after the
victims but
look after the
survivors first

If you have to make redundancies, do all you can to mitigate

the negative effects on the people you rely on in the future

Rifting, rightsizing, downsizing, redundancy programme, lay-

offs, excess-reduction or smart-sizing, call it what you will.
When an organization reduces its headcount through anything
other than natural staff turnover there are two outcomes for the
individual in its workforce.

You are either a leaver or a survivor.

The impact of the initiative on the leavers is self-evident; they

leave. They may become unemployed, they may retire, they may
change career or find another job.

The people who keep their jobs are the survivors. They are
expected to continue to work diligently for the employer that
gave them a second chance.

Anecdotal evidence has suggested that survivors are not always

grateful for that second chance and that organizations shouldn’t
rely on that expected goodwill.

Cranfield School of Management (specifically Kusum Sahdev and

Dr Susan Vinnicombe) produced a report in 1998 that looked
into and contains a wide variety of valuable information in
regard to downsizing as an activity.

The report is based upon a series of interviews and then

survey responses from HR managers and directors in the UK

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 employment market. They specify the importance of the survey
group as much of the previous work in this topic has been
carried out in the USA where employment law and protection
of employees is (or at least was) somewhat less stringent than in
the UK.

Initially, they interviewed 10 HR practitioners whose

organizations had gone through downsizing within the past
12 months. From those interviews they developed the question
set for the survey, which was responded to by 90 HR directors
and managers out of a pool of 1,000 similar executives. Out of
the 90 returned questionnaires, 60 organizations had downsized
in the previous three years. The sample represented a significant
cross-section of the workforce in the UK, taking into account the
size of the organizations in terms of number of employees.

Staff population Sample proportion

501–1,000 8.9%
1,001–2,500 41.1%
2,501–5,000 19.6%
5,001–10,000 7.2%
More than 10,000 23.2%

The split between private and public sectors was roughly 60/40.

Although a small majority, 55.4 per cent, of the respondents were

from the south-east of the UK, the remaining 45 per cent were
well spread across the rest of the nation.

Sector representation was as follows:

• 23.2 per cent manufacturing

• 16.1 per cent local government
• 12.5 per cent finance and banking
• 12.5 per cent from the health service
• 35.7 per cent covered a combination of IT, services,
transportation, engineering, telecommunications and utilities.

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 The rationale for downsizing
The first discovery of the study was that downsizing is not always
solely a symptom of a ‘problem’. While about 15 per cent of
respondents quoted cost reductions and cost control as reasons
for the decision to downsize (and a lack of funding was also
quoted by 25 per cent of organizations), other reasons to reduce
headcount include:

• restructuring
• relayering
• changing organizational culture
• technological advancement
• strategic outsourcing
• multi-skilling
• adapting to new competencies.

The alternatives
In terms of strategies to avoid downsizing, 48.2 per cent didn’t
use alternatives but relied solely on cutting the headcount.

More than one method was used by some organizations.

37.5 per cent used contracting out and redeployments of certain

staff and categories of staff.

Part-time opportunities were used by only 16.1 per cent.

Reduced hours contracts were only offered by 10.7 per cent of

the organizations.

Other methods used included:

• recruitment moratoria
• non­renewal of fixed-term contracts
• termination of temporary contracts
• overtime bans.

It appears that on the whole, employers preferred one-off

reductions in size rather than being more flexible and offering
interim solutions.

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 Support to the leavers
Generally, organizations were ‘humane’ to the people leaving:

78.9 per cent provided counselling and support via their own HR
team

50.9 per cent used the leaver’s own line managers to provide
support (talk about being fed by the hand that bit you!)

And 68.4 per cent paid external career counsellors/outplacement

consultants

(There was obviously some overlap with some organizations

providing two or more sources of support)

Support to the survivors

Sadly, the support given to survivors is generally lacking:

• on average, about 5 per cent of the workforce received some

training for their new roles (where they were ‘picking up the
slack’ resulting from their colleagues’ departure)
• about 20 per cent of the population got some sort of
counselling on a group or 1:1 basis.

There is little evidence of any attempt to rebuild the changed

dynamic of the work teams.

Survivor reactions
Respondents defined survivor reactions as:

‘fearful’ ‘most’ or ‘some’ survivors

‘defensive about their roles’
‘task-focused’
‘suffering a sense of loss of colleagues’
‘let down by the company’ ‘some’ or ‘a few’
‘angry’
‘bitter’
‘trapped’

It is worth remembering here that ‘survivors’ refers to all the

remaining staff and management of the organization... so the

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 atmosphere and culture of the organizations was summed up by
the words in the left hand column... not a nice place to be
40 hours a week!

This was evidenced by the fact that:

• Stress levels were reported to be up in 75 per cent of cases

• An individual’s commitment to achieving targets dropped in
some 19 per cent of cases
• Loyalty to the organization dropped in 47 per cent of cases
• Motivation decreased in 45 per cent of cases
• Trust in the organization and its management fell in 66 per
cent of cases
• And more than 70 per cent of people were reported to feel that
the fun had gone out of their workplace.

The ‘bottom line’

Overall performance revealed interesting outcomes:

• 49.1 per cent of HR directors/managers felt that performance

had actually gone up
• 45.6 per cent felt that downsizing did not make any difference to
performance levels and 5.3 per cent felt that it had gone down.

However, staff turnover increased in some 30 per cent of

cases; many of the people who were kept on in the redundancy
programme quit shortly afterwards, which brings with it
significant potential costs of recruitment and induction. With
stress levels rocketing and commitment motivation and loyalty
all down, it has to be asked whether this improvement in
performance is likely to be sustainable.

The report goes on to look specifically at the future opportunities

and challenges for the HR community – so as this book isn’t
aimed at (exclusively) HR people, we will not dwell further on
the study, but look at what it means for leaders and managers.

1. If faced with the possibility of making redundancies in

reaction to any market conditions, look first at the alternative
options. Many in the modern workforce would welcome the

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 opportunity for part-time work, casual work, a contractor
arrangement or a subcontract. Perhaps they wouldn’t ask for
one but as an alternative to losing their livelihood entirely in
one fell swoop it would probably be a nicer option for the
individual and have a less severe effect on the survivors.
2. If you do go down the downsizing route, don’t forget the
survivors: surviving managers will need the resources to
rebuild their teams, they’ll need time to manage, coach and
support them through this transition. They may need extra
management training and development to improve/widen
their management skills. Operational staff will need technical
development to help them pick up the slack more effectively;
this isn’t just about milking more out of the remaining
bodies but helping them to reduce their stress and long-hours
alternative. It also demonstrates a commitment to them and
their career; this reduces the fear of being on the next tranche
of bloodletting – no one invests in a person just before axing
them.
3. Keep the ‘fun’ things – be it the Christmas party or the
social club, inject some fun activities into the teambuilding
resources. Give people and their immediate supervisors
the encouragement and resources to inject a bit of light-
heartedness back into the workplace.
4. Make as solid a commitment to people as you can to the fact
that the redundancies are now at an end. If you aren’t high
enough up the organization to do this on your own initiative,
chase your boss and your boss’s boss to get the green light to
do so. The sooner you can do this the sooner the survivors
start to feel like the lucky ones. The more you can do this the
faster people will regain some trust in the management that
they perceive has let them down.

Anecdotal evidence from the author’s own experience is

that as the leavers resettle they tend to keep in touch with
their former colleagues... the colleagues then look at the
leavers’ new sense of purpose, compare it to their own
feelings: ‘fearful’, ‘defensive about their roles’, ‘let down by
the company’, ‘angry’, ‘bitter’ and ‘trapped’...

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 So what are the big takeaways here?
• Spread the word that the survivors are critical to future
success, so just keeping their jobs is rarely enough.
• If you have had to let people go, get out to the survivors and
rebuild your team.
• Remember that even though ‘jobs for life’ are a thing of the
past, people still like to belong.

Source
https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/retrieve/483/coareport910

See also
Chapter 5 – ‘Workers’ play time’ – is it really worth it?

Chapter 7 – ‘An employee’s workspace is his castle... or should be!’

Chapter 9 – Rule No. 1: Never volunteer for anything. NOT!

Chapter 26 – Learning; it’s a generational thing

Chapter 28 – What happens when you (or someone you manage)

make decisions under pressure?

Chapter 35 – ‘Trust me, I’m a manager’

Chapter 39 – Trust in your virtual team

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 23 We’re working
nine to five –
it’s no way to
make a living

Part time doesn’t mean second class... it just means part time

For many people the perception is simple; if you have a ‘job’

you work nine to five, five days a week. You have Saturday and
Sunday off and that is it. This is a perception that is perhaps
a lot less true than many people think. In 2009 the Australian
Bureau of Statistics collated data from several contemporary
governmental censuses and published a report entitled ‘Patterns
in Work’. The report provides data relating to people’s working
patterns and preferences and given that Australia is a developed
nation with an ethnically diverse population of more than
20 million and a wide industrial/commercial base there is no
reason to believe that the working patterns in the country are
significantly different from any other developed nation.

According to the report, some 30 per cent of the working

population was working part time, working fewer than
35 hours a week (in all their jobs combined). This proportion
had increased from 16 per cent 30 years previously.

Some 20 per cent of the working population worked on a casual

basis, regardless of the hours they worked they had no formal
contract and were not entitled to paid holiday or sick leave.
(Note that this doesn’t include ‘owner/managers of incorporated
enterprises’ (OMIEs). These are people who work in their own
limited liability company, such as contractors.)

17 per cent of the people in work were owner/managers; they

worked a full week and took their own responsibility for holiday
or sickness cover. This group included all forms of owner/

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 manager, whether they were a limited liability company or not
and regardless of whether they employed others or not. The
proportion of owner/managers had fluctuated between 20 per
cent and 17 per cent over the previous decade.

63 per cent of the working population was categorized as

‘employed’; they worked more than 35 hours a week and were
entitled by law to paid holiday and/or paid sick leave. Over the
previous decade this number had fluctuated between 59 per cent
and 63 per cent.

The report then gives some of the characteristics of the people in

the different employment categories:

Selected Owner/ Total

characteristics Units Casual Other Total manager employed
Average age years 33.7 39.2 37.9 46.4 39.5
Proportion % 55.8 45.5 48.0 32.3 45.1
who are
women
Proportion % 70.0 16.7 29.5 28.2 29.3
who work
part-time
Average hours no. 16.3 23.1 19.2 18.9 19.2
usually worked
by part-timers
Average hours no. 42.7 42.9 42.8 51.4 44.4
usually worked
by full-timers
Number ‘000 2,075.7 6,586.6 8,662.2 1,972.2 10,634.5

The ABS Survey of Employment Arrangements, Retirement and

Superannuation, which was conducted in 2007, asked people to
describe some of their usual work patterns and then asked them
what patterns they would prefer to work (taking into account the
effect this might have on their income).

64 per cent of those employed people surveyed usually worked

all of their hours during daylight hours, defined as between seven
in the morning and seven in the evening.

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 Almost all of these people (96 per cent), who only worked during
daytime hours liked it that way.

Among the remaining 36 per cent of employed people who

usually worked some or all of their hours at night, over two-
thirds (68 per cent) actually preferred to be working some or all
of their hours at night.

Similarly, among the 63 per cent of employed people who didn’t

usually work at all on the weekend, virtually all (96 per cent)
preferred to have their weekend off.

Of the other 37 per cent of employed people who did usually

work on the weekend, almost two-thirds (65 per cent) were
following their preference for working some or all of their hours
on the weekend.

People who usually worked over the weekend and preferred to

work over the weekend were a diverse group. For example:

• 30 per cent of people were casual employees

• 26 per cent were owner/managers
• 59 per cent were male
• 26 per cent were aged 15–24 years
• 17 per cent were aged 55 years or older.

This is in comparison to all employed people where the figures

are:

• 20 per cent were casual employees

• 20 per cent were owner/managers
• 55 per cent were male
• 17 per cent were aged 15–24 years
• 15 per cent were aged 55 years or older.

65 per cent of employed people felt they were working close to

their preferred number of hours.

14 per cent of people wanted to work more hours than they were
usually working

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 21 per cent would have preferred to work fewer hours for less
money.

Part-timers who were dissatisfied with the number of hours they

were working tended to want more hours, whereas full-time
employees who were dissatisfied tended to want fewer hours.

People who only just worked full-time hours (i.e. those who
usually worked between 35 and 39 hours a week) were among
the most content: only 13 per cent wanted to spend more time
working.

Of the people who usually worked a longer than 49-hour week,

51 per cent were happy with the number of hours they worked.

Only 3 per cent of this group actually wanted more hours, while
46 per cent would have preferred to work fewer hours and accept
a commensurate drop in pay (where appropriate, i.e. where the
employees are paid overtime).

24 per cent of employed people who wanted to work fewer hours

felt that their work and family responsibilities were ‘rarely, if
ever’, in balance.

At the same time, 41 per cent of them felt that their work and
family responsibilities were ‘often if not always’ in balance.

Qualitative responses in this area were that some people wanted

to work less mainly to be able to spend more time caring for
children, but the single most commonly cited main reason for
wanting to work fewer hours was to spend more time on social
and/or recreational activities.

There is the data, what use is it to you as a leader?

1. Many organizations offer flexible working practices and

though they are often formally available to all, there is
frequently a perception that they are available for family
employees. Single or childless employees need not apply as
they will be judged unfavourably. But the survey showed that

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 ‘the single most commonly cited main reason for wanting to
work fewer hours was to spend more time on social and/or
recreational activities’. So make sure that the letter and the
spirit of the policy is available to all, spending less time at
work isn’t a statement of lower loyalty or commitment, it is a
demonstration of a balanced individual and a more sustainable
employment situation. It is better to keep a good employee for
fewer hours a week than to lose them altogether.
2. When reorganizing or looking to make the sort of changes
that often result in downsizing, remember that, of the full time
employees, 46 per cent may prefer to work fewer hours and
accept a commensurate drop in pay. So before embarking on
a headcount-cutting project, ask the current workforce if they
would like to accommodate the organizational needs without
the mass disruption of downsizing.
3. Listen to the voice of the workforce, look at the number of
people still working ‘out of hours’: if people are working
long hours, remember that ‘46 per cent may prefer to work
fewer hours’. That means that nearly half of your staff may be
unhappy about the long hours they are having to work. And
that ‘24 per cent of employed people who wanted to work
fewer hours felt that their work and family responsibilities
were “rarely, if ever,” in balance.’ People’s families are a major
influence and an influence that is increasing. When long hours
become the norm, many people will vote with their feet and
depart the organization leaving you with significant bills to
recruit and induct new people. Give serious consideration to
recruiting someone on a part-time and/or casual basis to take
up the extra workload even if you can’t justify another full-
time employee.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Ask people how they prefer to work rather than imposing an
all or nothing approach to a job or no job.
• Be flexible about other people’s working patterns; we all
understand that occasionally we have to make sacrifices, but
not on a permanent or very frequent basis.
• Remember that in the 21st century there are often options for
employees; they are less beholden to their employer for their
livelihood.

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 Source
www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/Lookup/4102.0Main+Feat
ures50Dec+2009

See also
Chapter 12 – It takes all sorts to make a world

Chapter 13 – To be (here) or not to be (here), that is the question

Chapter 24 – You don’t have to love the quitters but at least

listen to them

Chapter 32 – ROWE, ROWE, ROWE your boat!

Chapter 39 – Trust in your virtual team

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 24 You don’t have
to love the
quitters but at
least listen to
them

Someone leaving your employment may be seen as disloyal...

but that may mean that you haven’t earned their loyalty!

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development calculates

the average cost of recruiting an employee in the UK at between
£8,200 and £12,000. So once you have recruited a decent
employee, at any level in the hierarchy, it makes financial sense
to try to keep hold of them. Notwithstanding that it is widely
recognized that some turnover is a positive thing, it is also a clear
truism that too many people leaving is financially costly and
has potentially detrimental effects on customer service, internal
relationships and operational continuity.

This chapter looks at two studies that have been done looking
at why people quit their employer; one in the UK and one in
Bangladesh. The two have been chosen since one relates staff
retention in a mature, developed economy with relatively high
levels of protective employment legislation and the other relates
to an emerging economy engaged in rapid economic growth
and relatively low employment protection law. It is unlikely that
it costs between 942,000 and 1.4 million Bangladeshi Taka to
recruit one person.

The UK
Benchmark Recruit, a Sheffield-based recruitment consultancy,
surveyed more than 3,000 individuals to assess their declared
justification for quitting their previous role. The results are
tabulated below, ranked in order of magnitude.

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 Primary reason for leaving %
1 Lack of faith in the leadership team 22.58
2 = Feeling unappreciated 19.35
2 = Feeling disengaged/demotivated 19.35
3 Lack of financial reward 12.90
4 Redundancy 9.68
5 No belief in the company’s service/product 6.45
6 = Travel/location 3.23
6 = Clash with colleague 3.23
6 = Poor relationship with line manager 3.23

It is interesting to see the apparent similarity between the #1

reason and the last one in the list; people cited a lack of faith in
the leadership of the organization as the single biggest reason to
quit, whereas a ‘poor relationship with their line manager’ was
actually pretty insignificant. This tells us that the relationship can
be pretty good even though there is no faith. In other words:
‘I quite like you; you’re a nice person, but I have little respect for
your abilities.’

Second equal is a pair of responses that ring bells with so many

of the other studies in this book. Feeling unappreciated and
feeling disengaged or demotivated. Each of these accounts for
20 per cent of the people who quit.

So more than 60 per cent of an organization’s drain is down to

three causes and those three causes all relate to the behaviours of
management. If management was more open about its decision-
making process and more consistent in its communication
and listening with the shop floor, then people would feel more
engaged and have greater faith (obviously succeeding in the
market would help enormously as well!).

The survey also asked people to ‘describe’ their current role by

putting it into one of four categories:

1. My perfect job (25.5 per cent)

2. A stepping stone in my career (38.5 per cent)

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 3. A stop gap to pay the mortgage (16.5 per cent)
4. A dead end job (19.5 per cent)

While this looks potentially frightening it is worth a little

analysis.

A quarter of people are in their perfect job; so long as they

can be engaged and appreciated they will stay and will apply
discretionary effort.

Nearly 40 per cent are in a stepping stone period; good – this

means that they are thinking about their career and this role is
right for them at the moment. Nurture and develop these people
and they are your management/tech specialists of the future. Treat
them well and even if they leave for something better (as opposed
to leaving you in desperation), they may serve well as alumni in
the future or even return to your fold with greater expertise.

One in six of your people may be there simply to pay the

mortgage. Although they may hit your bottom line with
replacement costs at some stage in the future, so long as they are
managed well, they will still give you a fair day’s work for a fair
day’s pay in the interim.

One in four sees this as a dead-end job. As with the previous

category, they may leave shortly. Your challenge is to make sure
that though they may not be going anywhere, they remain happy
and productive in the time they are with you.

Bangladesh
Three academics from the Bangladesh University of Business
and Technology and Port City International University (Md.
Jahangir Alam, Md. Mahofuzur Rahman and Md. Farid
Hossain Talukder) (see Sources, below) carried out this study
and surveyed 103 employees from different organizations who
had left their previous jobs or had declared an intention to leave.
The areas of sampling were mainly Dhaka and Chittagong:
Bangladesh’s two largest cities.

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 The demographic of the study group was as follows:

Male 86.67 per cent

Female 13.33 per cent
Public Sector 3.8 per cent
Private Sector 6.2 per cent

Their questionnaire used a 1 to 5 scale, so people were rating a

series of factors that contributed to their decision to quit.

The results, in order of influence, were:

1. Low salary
2. Absence of pension
3. Inappropriate performance appraisal and recognition
4. Less scope for personal growth and development
5. Low incremental increase in income
6. Lack of bonus
7. Inadequate number of paid hours
8. Inadequate facilities (accommodation, transport, etc.)
9. Excessive pressure
10. Low job satisfaction
11. Poor management

Clearly there are some differences between employee attitudes

and expectations in an emerging economy and in a developed
economy. In Bangladesh the money issue, a typical Maslow
‘hygiene factor’, is top of the list, whereas the British survey
surprised the survey team when they saw that money was less
important than several other criteria.

To put the outcomes of both surveys together they look like this:

Bangladesh UK
1 Low salary 1 Lack of faith in the leadership
team
2 Absence of pension 2 = Feeling unappreciated
3 Inappropriate performance 2 = Feeling disengaged/demotivated
appraisal and recognition
4 Less scope for personal growth 3 Lack of financial reward

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 5 Low incremental increase in 4 Redundancy
income
6 Lack of bonus 5 No belief in the company’s
service/product
7 I nadequate number of paid 6 = Travel/location
hours
8 I nadequate facilities 6 = Clash with colleague
(accommodation, transport,
etc.)
9 Excessive pressure 6 = Poor relationship with line
manager
10 Low job satisfaction
11 Poor management

However, if we look a bit closer at the Bangladeshi results we see

that the survey separated ‘salary’ from ‘incremental increase in
income’, ‘bonus’ and the ‘number of paid hours’. These factors
came in at numbers 5, 6 & 7, after ‘inappropriate performance
appraisal and recognition’ and ‘scope for personal growth and
development’.

The results, though clearly not the same, are actually much more
similar than they at first appear. The overwhelming message
is that human beings are remarkably similar but that if you
are managing a global organization be aware that there are
differences in different parts of the world.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Ask around your own workplace; what made people leave
their previous jobs?
• Look at the lists of reasons people quit; then look at your
management style and your organization… what might your
present colleagues be saying in a couple of years’ time when
they are asked why they left you?
• Remember that there is no silver bullet to keeping good
people; it is a package of criteria ranging from the day-to-day
thank yous to the annual salary review.

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 Sources
www.cipd.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/C725AF28-202C-41FC-99CD-
0EABB5A5B28D/0/4357MBAbookletWEB.pdf

www.cipd.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/746F1183-3941-4E6A-9EF6-
135C29AE22C9/0/recruitmentsurv07.pdf

https://www.academia.edu/8403929/Identifying_the_Reasons_
for_which_People_Quit_their_Jobs_An_Empirical_Study_in_the_
Organizations_of_Bangladesh

See also
Chapter 5 – ‘Workers’ play time’ – is it really worth it?

Chapter 18 – Leadership and leaders; let’s get complex

Chapter 21 – Management and leadership... a hot topic! But for

whom?

Chapter 23 – We’re working nine to five – it’s no way to make a

living

Chapter 26 – Learning; it’s a generational thing

Chapter 32 – ROWE, ROWE, ROWE your boat!

Chapter 34 – Talent management – have you got your EVP right?

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 25 Is teamwork
always the
answer?

If your teamworking ethic is too good it can become dangerous;

you need to have some disagreement and conflict

You are the boss. You have a team. The team is high-functioning;
there is a strong degree of cohesiveness, a commitment to achieve
the goals and a strong sense of urgency. Your people think
alike. There is seldom conflict in the team. You don’t spend a
lot of time talking round and round the issues. The focus is on
rapid decision-making, agility and action. You personally don’t
necessarily make all the decisions, they are consensus decisions;
the team all agrees and then all support the decisions. You run a
high-performing team.

But...

The decision in the early 1960s to launch the ill-fated Bay of Pigs
invasion was taken by a group operating just like yours.

The decision to go ahead with the 1986 Challenger space mission

(the ill-fated rocket exploding shortly after take-off killing all
seven astronauts) was taken by a group operating like yours.

The decision to launch Gulf War II and the invasion of

Afghanistan...

Those teams were operating in what is now called ‘groupthink’.

Is your team in danger of falling into a similar trap?

Irving Janis coined the term ‘groupthink’, in his 1982 work,

Groupthink: Psychological studies of policy decisions and
fiascoes (Houghton Mifflin).

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 Groupthink tends to occur in highly cohesive groups in which
the group members’ desire for consensus, cohesion and action
becomes more important than objective evaluation of problems
and potential outcomes. When this happens the result can be a
serious deterioration in mental efficiency, poor analytical thought
and lax moral judgement, while all the time the appearance is of
efficiency, teamwork and effectiveness.

Groupthink is most likely to emerge when:

• the group is very cohesive

• the group becomes insulated from qualified outsiders, and/or
• the leader promotes his or her own favoured solution.

Fred Lunenburg, of Sam Houston State University in Texas,

has carried out a study of the literature and assessments of a
wide range of academics on the subject. He has produced a very
comprehensive document, outlining Janis’s identified symptoms of
groupthink. This helps leaders spot the difference between healthy
consensus and cohesion and the dangerous slide into groupthink.

He also outlines Janis’s strategies to avoid groupthink and

obviously the unintended consequences of it.

Symptoms that suggest your team may be moving into dangerous

areas:

1. Illusions of invulnerability – A majority or all of the team

members develop an illusion of invulnerability; this is often the
result of a string of successes and achievements. Longstanding
high-performing teams are hence very vulnerable.
Unfortunately, this causes them to start to take extreme risks
based on optimistic assumptions. There is a belief that ‘we’ve
done it before therefore we will, of course, do it again’.
2. Irrational rationalization – Team members collectively and
individually rationalize in order to discount or minimize any
warnings, caveats or concerns. They may rationalize away
concerns about the likelihood of problems or the impact of
those problems. In short, they ‘extenuate the negative’.

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 3. An overwhelming sense of ‘right’ – The team develops an
unquestioned belief in the group’s moral superiority; as a result
it ignores/waives normal ethical or moral consequences of the
decisions. It may be verbalized as: ‘for the greater good’.
4. Stereotyping non-members – Group members develop
stereotyped views of outsiders in opposition as being either:

• too evil and/or

• too weak and/or
• too stupid and/or
• too insignificant...
• ...to be considered, negotiated with, or respected.

5. Internal policing of the ‘team’ ethos – Team members turn on

any member who expresses strong doubts about, or argues
against, any of the team’s attitudes, illusions or commitments.
They declare almost any dissent as disloyalty or demonstrating
a lack of commitment to the other members of the team or the
team’s objectives/ethos. ‘If you aren’t with us, you are against us.’
6. Self-criticism – Individuals censure themselves for any
deviations from the team’s consensus, minimizing the
importance of their individual doubts and counterarguments
relative to the team’s cohesion. ‘I had a tiny niggling doubt, it
was nothing really, I was just being paranoid, but now I see
that I was wrong.’
7. The illusion of unanimity – There is an illusion of shared
unanimity concerning judgements conforming to the majority
view. This is partly due to #6 above and is strengthened by
the assumption that the resulting absence of dissent is equal to
consent. ‘So we are all agreed then, good, next item.’
8. The appearance of ‘Mindguards’ – Some team members
appoint themselves as guard dogs and gatekeepers, ‘protecting’
the group from external information or opinions that might
question their shared comfort about their outputs.

How you can avoid groupthink.

1. Actively encourage the airing of objections and doubt, where

necessary appointing someone (possibly on a rolling basis) to
act as ‘Devil’s Advocate’.

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 2. When delegating, or when initiating decision-making and/or
policy-making to a team, avoid stating your own preferences
and expectations.
3. Split your team into two sub-teams to work on the same
question, each carrying out its deliberations separately. Clearly
this appears to be unproductive and potentially competitive,
but it can have major benefits if it avoids groupthink.
4. When considering alternatives, again split the team into sub-
teams to consider them independently, then get the sub-teams
back together to compare recommendations.
5. Encourage each member of the team to periodically discuss
the team’s deliberations with trusted associates and report
their discussions back to the group.
6. Invite outside experts, or qualified colleagues within the
organization, but from outside your team, to your team
meetings. Encourage them to challenge the views of the team
and its members.
7. Show respect for rivals and other stakeholders, actively seek
out and take seriously any warning signals from these parties.
Take time to consider these parties’ reactions to your decision.
8. After reaching a consensus about what seems to be the best
course of action, hold a dedicated meeting at which you and
the other team members are expected to express as vividly
as you can what could go wrong for the team and its chosen
solution.

Groupthink is a very dangerous phenomenon for a leader. It

often sneaks up on you after a long period of success when it
seems that everything your team touches turns to gold. It often
exhibits signs similar to a high-performing team – a cohesive
group that seldom disagrees, appears to be efficient and is
action oriented. However, groupthink bites and the fallout is
considerable. Usually when it bites, it is the leader who gets the
blame as people start claiming that the culture was one where
dissent was discouraged and yes-men (or yes-women) thrived.

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 So what are the big takeaways here?
• Ask people to challenge the status quo and the consensus.
Phrase your questions carefully, ask: ‘What could go wrong?’
‘How could this go wrong?’ ‘How could this be perceived?’
rather than asking if people agree with the team decision
(or your decision).
• Appoint a Devil’s Advocate to challenge decisions. Then be
seen to treat that person’s challenges seriously.
• Remember that groupthink can look like a high-performing
team, so if your team is currently performing well, don’t rest
on your laurels. Beware groupthink!

Source
www.nationalforum.com/Electronic%20Journal%20Volumes/
Lunenburg,%20Fred%20C.%20Group%20Decision%20
Making%20IJMBA%20V13%20N1%202010.pdf

See also
Chapter 12 – It takes all sorts to make a world

Chapter 18 – Leadership and leaders; let’s get complex

Chapter 21 – Management and leadership... a hot topic! But for

whom?

Chapter 28 – What happens when you (or someone you manage)

make decisions under pressure?

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 26 Learning; it’s a
generational
thing

Don’t believe everything you hear about the ‘youth of today’,

but do believe this: it is based on science

When reading the newspapers or listening to the news one often

hears references to the exasperation shown by employers at the
problems of the younger generation. They have problems with
basic mathematics, their written work is of a poor standard, they
have short attention spans and unrealistically high expectations
of their career.

How realistic is this media image of this entire generation?

If it is realistic, what can you do about it as a manager and

leader?

Research by Carina Paine Schofield and Sue Honoré (both

of Ashridge Business School in the UK) has identified the
‘missing skills’ of the younger generation. They also assessed
and developed recommendations for those concerned with this
generation’s development. Finally, they outline the potentially
positive impact of this group on the future of learning for all
generations.

Their study was more holistic than looking solely at the younger
generation; they included people up to the age of 63 to ensure
that their results actually compared generations rather than
making assumptions about previous age ranges while studying
the younger group.

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 They defined the generational categories by birth year as:

• Baby Boomers – 1946–1963

• Early Generation X – 1964–1976
• Late Generation X – 1977–1981
• Generation Y – 1982–2002

The younger generation they were focusing on is the ‘Generation

Y’ group, also commonly referred to as:

• millennials
• the iPod generation
• the ‘me firsts’
• the Internet generation
• the echo boomers
• the Nintendo generation
• the digital generation
• generation ‘why?’
• generation next
• the ‘I’ generation, and
• the net generation.

The study involved a detailed review of existing published

material on the subject by academics and business leaders,
followed by qualitative and quantitative data collection.

• 133 individuals, representing 59 organizations, from both

public and private sectors undertook a series of face-to-face
interviews and/or focus groups
• 692 individuals responded to an online survey (the online
participants and literature review was global; the other
research was UK centric)
• 284 participants completed a Kolb Learning Style Inventory.

Respondents were aged from 16 to over 63 years, representing

the full range of employment-age people.

The table below summarizes the findings relevant to Generation

Y respondents:

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 Strengths common to all members Questioning established processes
of Generation Y Approachability and friendliness
  to all ages
Work/life balancing
Networking outside organization
Trust
Lack of prejudice
Flexibility
Energy
Abilities which vary between Loyalty
Generation Y members Respect
Focus/concentration/attention
span
IT skills
Communication skills
Motivation
Creativity
Communication skills
Global outlook
Teamwork
Managing others
Expectation of quality
Weaknesses common to all Budgeting/financial management
members of Generation Y Self-awareness/emotional
intelligence
Risk assessment/risk-taking
Taking criticism
Written English
Analysis/deeper thinking
Self-management

Outcomes
1. One outcome of the study that challenges the common
perception of Generation Y, the iPod/Nintendo/Internet
generation is that in spite of being very au fait with
technology, the generation is not universally at home with
modern productive technology... many struggle with common
workplace applications.
2. Generation Y is also infamous for eschewing the value of
memorizing information for the sake of quick recall, preferring
to ‘Google-it’ (or any of the myriad other online information
sources) at the time of need. Unfortunately, there seems to be
a very significant lack of ability to analyse, judge or risk-assess
that information to ensure that it makes sense or is accurate.

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 3. This lack of judgement and analytical skills also creates
common difficulties with problem solving; where a solution is
clearly right or wrong there is little issue, but where a solution
is in shades of grey, many ‘Generation Yers’ really struggle.
Their mindset (gained from the games they play(ed) and the
education system they enjoyed) is to use trial and error until
they succeed. They see each ‘failure’ as a learning opportunity
in comparison to the older generations who see a failure as a
failure and therefore prefer to analyse, judge, plan and then
carry out a more considered course of action.
4. Although they may be great social networkers, many young
people struggle with face-to-face communication, particularly
when handling difficult messages from and to other people. This
is not generally to say that they can’t give feedback, but that they
often lack the emotional intelligence to do so diplomatically or
sensitively. Generally speaking, their self-awareness and ability
to accept criticism and feedback is not brilliant.
5. Very few ‘Generation Yers’ have developed an innate sense of
risk assessment, whether that concerns basic health and safety,
or the consideration of implications and consequences of
courses of action. They therefore have a tendency either to be
fully risk averse or verging on reckless!
6. Many ‘Generation Yers’ have short attention spans and low
boredom thresholds; they are more attuned to short sharp
bursts of any particular activity, than to long plods.
7. #6 also manifests itself in a degree of impatience; ‘Generation
Yers’ don’t like hanging around waiting for things.

OK, there is the data from the surveys. The report’s authors also
go on to make recommendations regarding the development of
Generation Y. Many of them spill over to the development of all
other staff or offer other mutual benefit.

These are broken down into five areas:

• High-quality learning and development in remedial business

skills: the content needs to up-skill the individuals in verbal
reasoning, maths, budgeting, written English, team skills
and relationship management. The style of this learning and
development should be experiential, reflective and relevant to

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 the role, not didactic or theoretical. Ideally using a blend of
activities and styles.
• Redefine career paths by the use of projects and secondments:
most learning is now informal rather than formal, and much
of that is achieved on the job. Traditional career ladders do
not suit modern business practice and flat hierarchies. They
are also an issue with impatient Generation Y. Focus on
finding ways of developing the individual, enriching learning
and retaining all your good staff as well as Generation Y.
Involvement in small projects alongside the main job, and
secondments to other areas of the business are excellent ways
to broaden your development and learning approach.
• Provide personal one-to-one support by coaching and
mentoring: Generation Y expects more support in their growth
and development than previous generations. One-to-one
coaching and mentoring are seen as successful methods of
retaining them and motivating them to achieve higher goals.
Be aware that they are used to almost exclusively positive
feedback and encouragement, so coach/mentor needs to be
skilled in introducing more critical feedback, which clearly
should be developmental.
• Deliberately engineered mixed generational projects and
reverse mentoring: ‘Mixed generational projects’: avoid
creating a project team made up of specialists in the field with
similar levels of expertise, but deliberately putting a range
of seniority/experience in the team. This provides learning
for all team members and has been shown to break down
stereotypical beliefs about different generations. It can also
help avoid ‘groupthink’ (see Chapter 25). ‘Reverse mentoring’:
where a more experienced employee and a Generation Y
employee coach each other in different aspects (for example,
office politics and use of new technology). This encourages the
development of both parties and helps to drive inclusion and
the sharing of ideas. The pairs need to share the same desire to
make the relationship succeed.
• Encourage value-add networking: Generation Y has grown
up in a culture where knowledge and advice can be obtained,
virtually, from anywhere. These wider networks are also
beginning to be exploited in the same way by older generations
as well. Consider developing a network that includes your own

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 employees and ex-employees, knowing that their contribution
may continue to be high. (See Chapter 27.)

Value-add networking is not the same as encouraging

vacuous social networking, OMG, LOL ;-). But be aware
that the same policies, firewalls and security processes
designed to stop this activity may detrimentally affect
people’s ability to access value-added networking.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• If you hear someone moaning about the youth of today, point
out two things: first, that there are inherent and valuable
strengths in their differing culture and approach; second, not
all Generation Y people are alike, some of them are focused,
respectful, motivated and articulate.
• If you are responsible for L&D (and every line manager/leader
IS; see Chapter 6), take into account that the general learning
style of Generation Y is different from the traditional format.
Exploit that for maximum impact.
• Remember that everyone is an individual and you need to
know the individuals rather than relying on stereotypes!

Source
http://staff.ashridge.org.uk/Website/Content.nsf/FileLibrary/B89
ECF594F4B61FC802576880055F97A/$file/360_Winter09_web.
pdf#page=27

See also
Chapter 30 – Managing the millennials... some new challenges

Chapter 36 – Stop paying attention to the PowerPoint® default

settings!

Chapter 40 – You can NOT be serious!

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 27 A ‘training
course’ is not the
silver bullet for
getting people to
learn (in fact it
is barely a blank
cartridge)

People learn every day; you can save a lot of money and learn
a lot more even if you don’t go to business school

Historically, organizations used to always work on the principle

that people learned by going on a training course. Many people,
once they had passed their initial exams or apprenticeship,
never attended another class in their entire working lives. More
enlightened employers provided training for people as they rose
up the ranks within their employer. Hence, training departments
were formed to support this.

In the 1960s Professor Allen Tough started to research and to

question this paradigm and his studies identified that, in actual
fact, about 70 per cent of all ‘learning projects’ were initiated and
planned by the learner, not the employer. His work became the
foundation for many other studies into the field of adult learning,
not least of which was one carried out by the Centre for Creative
Leadership and published in 1996 in the book The Career Architect
Development Planner by Michael M. Lombardo and Robert W.
Eichinger. This was the book that coined the phrase ‘70:20:10’.

70:20:10 describes their findings relating to the sources of

learning among most adults with managerial responsibilities:

• 70 per cent is learned from the hands-on experience of doing

tough jobs; not just learning by mistakes but also successes.

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 The pertinent fact is that the learning comes from doing,
rather than formal instruction or discussion.
• 20 per cent is learned from talking to and observing other
people (mostly, but by no means exclusively, their boss)
• 10 per cent is learned from attending formal training/academic
courses and from reading.

Not unlike the work by Mehrabian mentioned in Chapter 3, you

may not like the concept of apparently fixed percentages, and the
authors have been at pains to point out that 70:20:10 is not a
rule but a guiding principle.

This chapter looks at a related and contemporary study

published as ‘The Teaching Firm: Where Productive Work and
Learning Converge’ from the Education Development Center Inc.
of Massachusetts, USA.

This study researched more than a thousand participants in seven

different organizations. It engaged in shadowing-observation
and interview, in-depth individual interviews and focus groups
of small teams of employees. The whole population was then
subjected to a survey questionnaire which was statistically
analysed. This analysis includes all aspects of the demographics
of the respondents with regard to their age ethnicity, tenure,
education and income. Researchers also gathered organizational
data regarding goal-setting, business metrics and organizational
procedures.

The authors go to some lengths to point out that their findings

predicate a very high impact of the target organizations’ context
on the outcomes and methods. In other words, their report does
not tell readers how to successfully implement informal on-the-
job learning in their own organizations; this does not detract
from the value of the study in a generic sense.

The report identifies and concentrates on two aspects of informal

learning in a high-performing organization:

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 Why informal learning occurs
The report identified that individuals seek informal learning for
personal desires with regard to their achievement.

Individuals seek to attain:

• a sense of belonging to a social group or community

• recognition from their superiors, peers and subordinates
• comfort and security from working in a safe and attractive
working environment
• satisfaction from having control over their own work and
output
• pride in their accomplishments and their increasing mastery of
their chosen career
• satisfaction of overcoming challenges and solving problems
• pride in the sense of contributing to a larger worthwhile
enterprise.

It was found that most informal learning is driven by the need

to achieve these goals and this is most dramatically seen where
individual workforce members’ goals clearly link to, align with
and support organizational goals.

This may seem obvious and simplistic, but since informal

learning is driven by the individual not the organization, then
it must be accepted that the senior management must create
a culture where informal learning will occur, rather than
setting informal learning as a goal in itself. In a culture where
organizational goals are seen as important, the individual
workforce member is fully aware of the organizational goals, and
if he or she has personal targets that clearly relate to these goals
informal learning will be more likely to happen by default.

Individual goals and targets need to be set within a culture that

reduces the separation between management and employee
responsibility; in other words where everyone is more
empowered and less supervised. This in turn requires a situation
where employees are encouraged to a take a greater part in:

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 • decision-making
• cost reduction
• quality and productivity improvement
• problem-solving.

And to achieve this, all employees need to understand:

• the metrics the organization uses for measuring quality and

productivity
• where their role fits in the overall organization and its
processes
• how to communicate effectively with their customers, be they
internal or external
• how to document their processes and results

And be held accountable for their personal output.

Clearly all this requires more management and leadership than

simply giving someone a job description and leaving them to get
on with ‘business as usual’ for the next ten years.

How informal learning occurs

The report identified 13 work activities where people learned
the most. By engaging in these activities people either gained
knowledge or developed skills that improved their productivity.
The 13 are listed below by value rather than frequency; for
instance whilst peer-to-peer communication happened almost
every day it produced less valuable learning per interaction than
the rarer interaction with customers.

• Teaming
• Meetings
• Interacting with customers
• Supervision
• Mentoring
• Shift change
• Peer-to-peer communication
• Cross training
• Exploration
• On-the-job training

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 • Documentation
• Execution of one’s job
• Site visits

The report gives a huge wealth of detail (the report is 297 pages
long) about each of these activities, far more than can be
covered here. This is a very potted summary of the best practice
contained in the report.

A. Teaming – this is the title given to the creation of a team to

address a particular problem or goal. Teams can be created
from the actual work team, a cross-functional/hierarchical
team or a team with specialists. People learned most when the
team had:
• authority over the outcome
• resources to achieve the outcome/goal expected
• diversity of perspective
• team decision-making
• appropriate time schedules.

B. Meetings – informal learning occurs mainly through observation,

participation and questioning. So meetings should have:
• active participation from all attendees
• clearly stated goals and agendas
• an open-minded chair who encourages open exchange of
ideas and opinions.

C. Customer interaction – this helps people to not only

understand the customer’s immediate needs but also to see the
‘bigger picture’. Customer interaction should be facilitated by:
• orientation and focus of people’s roles to be customer centric
• encouraging visits by the customer and to the customer
• trusting employees to interact with their customers.

D. Supervision – this includes orientation to policy and

procedure, explanation of expectations, day-to-day monitoring
and feedback on performance and assistance in small-scale
problem-solving. Effective supervision includes:

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 • close proximity between the two parties and frequent
interactions
• an environment conducive to constructive feedback and
questioning
• a sense of trust and credibility between the two parties.

E. Mentoring – differs from supervision in that the mentor is not

responsible for the individual’s output, hence no expectations
or monitoring. Mentoring is often more about longer-term
issues for the individual rather than the day to day. This is
often an informal arrangement at the choice of both parties.
To encourage mentoring on this basis the organizations
should:
• acknowledge expert employees
• promote a culture where people are encouraged to seek out
and spend some time with each other, mentoring and being
mentored.

F. Shift change – the study was exclusively engaged with

manufacturing employers and hence this element is very
sector specific. To translate it to a wider audience it relates to
a transition period where one team or individual hands over
the reins to the next in the process. To make this effective as a
learning opportunity (as well as to improve productivity), it is
important to:
• allow adequate time for the handover
• allow and encourage some personal interaction as well as
purely productivity-related aspects
• have a common objective (rather than a competing one)
between the parties.

G. Peer-to-peer communication – this includes the goal/work-

orientated interactions but also, importantly, the social
interactions (water-cooler chats, social meetings, ‘gossip’)
as well. In order to maximize the learning value of this the
organization should:
• provide spaces and opportunities for people to meet and chat
• trust that this is the valuable activity of networking rather
than seeing it as ‘notworking’.

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 H. Cross-training – this covers both individuals learning the
other roles in their own area and individuals spending time
learning about other elements and functions within their
organization. Both add value since the former multi-skills each
individual employee and the latter improves the understanding
and commitment to the bigger picture. Effective informal
cross-training requires the organization to allow time and
resources to this activity (to the learner and the ‘provider’).

I. Exploration – this is the process whereby individuals initiate

self-directed study or seek out resources that will help them to
learn. To maximize this the organization should:
• recognize and encourage personal reflection
• provide trust, time, opportunities and resources to people to
stretch their horizons, through secondments, projects and
‘acting rank’
• be tolerant (within reason) of mistakes and errors; using them
as learning opportunities rather than blaming opportunities
• allow, encourage or provide access to resources for people to
explore and learn.

J. On-the-job (OJT) training – this is where a peer trains a

newbie into their role. 80 per cent of the respondents reported
that they learned from their peers in contrast to only 29 per
cent from their manager/supervisor. On top of that, 81 per
cent of people reported that they enjoyed the role of training a
newbie. To maximize the value of OJT there needs to be:
• tolerance for mistakes during the learning period
• sufficient time given to both parties
• amendment of productivity targets for the ‘trainer’
• clear learning/training goals for both parties
• an appropriate level of challenge.

K.  Documentation – traditionally, documentation is a management

responsibility, but the study found that all individuals gained
from taking responsibility for documentation of their own and
their team’s performance. Producing other documentations such
as user manuals, standard operating procedures, newsletters
and instruction sheets also helped people to develop new skills
as well as to become more familiar with bigger picture issues.

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 Clearly to do this people need to have the resources and
recognition as well as management trust and tolerance.

L. Execution of one’s job – this is so obvious that it almost

belies consideration! But to maximize informal learning AND
productivity the study identified some critical elements to this
apparently mundane aspect:
• an appropriately stretching challenge!
• employee empowerment to solve problems themselves (with
support but without having the problem taken away)
• encouragement to improve job processes.

M. Site visits – the study looked only at visits to customer sites to

see the products in use. Obviously, one can also consider visits
to suppliers and even benchmarking visits to best practice
organizations. The important elements for exploiting these are:
• frequency and quality of the visits
• opportunity to see the products/best practices/raw materials
in use in the ‘real world’
• support to reflect on, implement and integrate ideas gained
from the visits.

So much for the study, what can you do about it to make

informal learning really happen?

Each of the 13 elements listed above includes the bullet points

critical to success. By seeking every opportunity to initiate each
of the elements you provide the raw materials for learning, by
putting the bullet-pointed facets into place you maximize the
learning and the productivity of each element. Job done!

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Tell people about this study; not the training department or
L&D function, but your staff and peer managers/leaders. You
will see that most of the enablers of informal learning are in
the hands of the line management and the senior management
of the company, rather than the HR function.
• Look at your team (and your own situation). What opportunities
exist today for informal learning?

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 • Next time you are writing or reviewing a person’s annual
appraisal, and you are thinking about their development over
the next period, remember that there are 13 options listed
above. You can use any of these (or even all of them) before
you start looking for a training course.

Source
eric.ed.gov/?id=ED461754

See also
Chapter 6 – As a leader, it is a matter of priorities

Chapter 26 – Learning; it’s a generational thing

Chapter 31 – Meetings (n); Events where people get together

(eventually) and waste a lot more time than they need to

Chapter 34 – Talent management – have you got your EVP right?

Chapter 38 – Learning from successful change

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 28 What happens
when you (or
someone you
manage) make
decisions
under pressure?

It may be that when the going gets tough, the tough get going,
but they may well go in the wrong direction if they wait for
the going to get tough before plotting their course

Many studies over many years have shown that stress influences
people’s performance. Much of this research has focused on how
stress affects memory, but it was clear that stress also affected
emotional reaction, decision-making and other behaviours.

Research in 2012, by Mara Mather and Nichole Lighthall of the

University of Southern California, examined the impact of stress
solely on decision processes. It revealed two important findings:

1. Acute stress encourages the selection of previously rewarding

outcomes but also impairs the rejection of previously negative
outcomes.
2. Acute stress magnifies differences between men and women
with regard to the strategies used to take risk-related decisions;
men take more risk and women take less risk under stress.

Both these findings are based not just on observed behaviours

but also on chemical analysis of different brain actions and
reactions to decision-making in stressful situations. This chapter
will not attempt to detail the ‘dopaminergic reward-processing
brain regions’, the ‘striatum, especially the nucleus accumbens’
or the ‘orbitofrontal cortex’. Neither will it attempt to make

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 sense of the procedures that require people to be ‘injected with
a radiotracer’ allowing researchers to observe the ‘activity of
specific neurotransmitters’ in their subjects’ brains via ‘positron
emission tomography’.

The report quotes two behavioural studies carried out under

experimental conditions where the decisions involved selecting
a cue that would give either a rewarding outcome or a negative
outcome. The two studies used rather different stressors on the
subjects: one required them to immerse their hands in iced water,
providing a physical stressor, and the other required them to
speak in public and at the same time carry out mental arithmetic.

A control group, unstressed, was also used in both studies.

Keep doing what you’ve been doing

The stressed group showed a marked inclination to take decisions
that provided the same rewards that they had chosen when not
stressed, in other words their judgement became more impaired
and they were more likely to simply continue to do what they
were used to doing.

Particularly interestingly, when the reward was food related, they

continued to choose the food reward even when sated, whereas
the unstressed group avoided this ‘gluttony’.

There was no difference between males and females in this set of

tests, just between the control groups and the stressed groups.

Venus and Mars divide

Another experiment referred to in the report indicates a gender
divergence under stress in decision strategies.

In this research the subjects had to choose between:

• safer options: that offer lower potential gains, but also lower
losses, and
• riskier options: higher potential gains, but also higher losses.

Study participants were tasked with inflating a series of balloons

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 shown on the computer screen, the larger a balloon got, the
more it was worth to the participant. Conversely, as the balloon
got larger there was an increased risk of it popping, reducing its
value to zero.

To maximize the value of their balloons, participants had to

choose when to ‘cash in’ each balloon. Risk-taking is therefore
simply defined by the number of pumps the subject put into each
balloon before deciding to cash it in.

Half of the participants underwent the iced water stressor before

undertaking the task, half didn’t and were the control group.

The study’s findings were that:

• Females took less risk on individual balloons than males

whether stressed or not.
• Females who were stressed took less risk on individual
balloons than females who were not stressed.
• Males who were stressed took greater risk on individual
balloons than men who were not stressed
• Females who were stressed took considerably less risk than
males who were stressed, by a factor of around 30 per cent!

It is worth noting however that the risk-taking in stressed males

did not reach a level of diminishing returns; they were therefore
able to earn more reward than their female counterparts.

This exercise was then replayed, but this time the reward was
for speed; a constant amount of time was allowed and the more
balloons each subject inflated, the more they ‘earned’. In this
iteration, stress did not affect the number of pumps per balloon
that participants made (risk-taking) but, instead, affected their
decision speed and number of balloons cashed in.

In the control group, males and females each cashed in

13 balloons on average.

In the stressed group males cashed in an average of 19 balloons

and females only 7!

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 In this study the participants were actually in an fMRI scanner
and the researchers observed consistent differences in the brain
activity between the males and the females of each stressed and
control group.

There is the science, but so what? What can you do with it as a

leader/manager?

The laboratory studies reviewed here provide evidence that stress

affects decision-making and risk-taking. Managers and staff
members are often under conditions of stress. So:

First, be consciously aware that stress has an effect on people’s

decision-making capacity; they are more likely to go for
previously successful options. This reduces creative problem-
solving, entrenches the status quo and is more likely to lead
to organizational inertia at the very time when new thinking
is required. On the other hand, it can make people repeat
previous errors, again at just the time when fresh approaches are
appropriate.

Either way, one person taking sole responsibility for decision-

making, while under stress is a recipe for danger! If that one
person is you as a leader... need one say more?

Second, be aware of the differing effect that stress has on

people’s attitude to risk. It changes it. This makes objective risk
assessment far more important than it might otherwise be. It
also suggests that risk assessment carried out, if possible, at a
time clear of stress is better than risk assessment carried out
under stressful conditions. Clearly this is not always possible;
risk assessments often have to be carried out in the heat of the
moment. If this is the case try to get people who are not under
the same stress to carry out the risk assessment.

Be aware of the gender differences in risk attitude and decision-

making under stress. Take them into account when allocating
decision-making tasks. That is not to say that you should allocate
tasks according to gender, but to ensure mixed, and therefore
more likely to be balanced, teams to consider decisions.

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 Be suspicious of decisions made by single-gender teams, but do
remember that, in the tests, the males’ more risky strategies didn’t
result in failure.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Challenge people in your team about their attitude to risk
taking when under stress (don’t actually challenge while they
are under stress but talk about their stress-time attitudes at a
safer time).
• Think about how you allocate decision-making and risk-
related management tasks to people when the going gets
tough... or do you keep it to yourself? Think about who you
might turn to to help you balance your attitude to risk and
decision-making under pressure. Try to take major decisions
early enough to avoid the stress pressure associated with
leaving the decision-making until the last minute. Encourage
your people to do likewise.
• Remember that this isn’t gender stereotyping; it is backed up
by genuine neuroscience.

Source
Mather, M. & Lighthall, N. R. (2012), ‘Risk and Reward are
Processed Differently in Decisions Made Under Stress’, Current
Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 21 Issue 1 pp 36–41
www.usc.edu/projects/matherlab/pdfs/MatherLighthall2012.pdf

See also
Chapter 8 – ‘What’s “luck” got to do with it?’

Chapter 10 – The five-step ladder to increased success

Chapter 25 – Is teamwork always the answer?

Chapter 35 – ‘Trust me, I’m a manager’

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 29 Is getting
engaged really
worth the
effort?

This is the ‘sequel’ to Chapters 9 and 16... it reinforces and

supports the importance of winning the hearts and
minds of your people

‘Engaging for success: enhancing performance through employee

engagement’ is a whopping 157 pages long. It is a Crown
copyright document and can be downloaded free of charge from
the ‘Source’ reference at the end of this chapter.

It is the work of David MacLeod and Nita Clarke, in response to

a request by John Hutton, the UK’s Secretary of State for Business.
They commenced work in the autumn of 2008 to ‘take an in-
depth look at employee engagement and to report on its potential
benefits for companies, organizations and individual employees’.
The report was published in July 2009.

It should be recommended reading for every manager, leader or

management or leadership aspirant in the world.

It doesn’t record a new experiment or survey, but it collates and

codifies a myriad scholarly works from around the world. The
authors make it quite clear that no single one of these works is
individual, exclusive or irrevocable proof, but that as a body of
work, by a wide range of academics and business minds, they
present very compelling evidence that, yes, employee engagement
is worth it.

This chapter doesn’t aim to summarize the entire report. It only

aims to cover Chapter 2: The Case for Employee Engagement –
The Evidence.

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 The chapter opens by accepting that many critics of the concept
of employee engagement point out that there are organizations
where no effort is made to engage employees and they are clearly
disengaged, but, in spite of this, the organization thrives and
prospers. This is a truism. As the authors point out, there is also
a significant body of evidence that clearly suggests that those
organizations that do actively engage their employees see, in the
case of commercial, profit-making firms, an improvement in their
financial results and, in the case of public sector and not-for-profit
outfits, an improvement in their service levels and efficiency.

The commercial sector

Engagement and income
A global study by Towers Perrin in 2006 covered 664,000
employees from 50 companies, representing a range of different
profit-making industries.

✓ Companies with a highly engaged workforce improved

operating income by 19.2 per cent over a 12-month period
× Companies with low engagement scores saw operating income
decline by 32.7 per cent over the same period
✓ Those companies with high engagement scores demonstrated a
13.7 per cent improvement in net income growth
× Those with low engagement saw net income growth decline by
3.8 per cent.

Engagement and employee sick days

A 2006 meta-analysis by Gallup looked at 23,910 commercial
business units and found that:

✓ More highly engaged employees take an average of 2.7 days

per year
× Disengaged employees take an average of 6.2 days per year.

Engagement and staff turnover

Development Dimensions International (DDI) reported in 2005
that in a Fortune 100 manufacturing company:

× Staff turnover in low engagement teams averaged 14.5 per cent

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 ✓ In high engagement teams it was 4.8 per cent.

Engagement and absenteeism

(‘Absenteeism’ is unauthorized sick days, ‘throwing a sickie’,
unconfirmed compassionate leave, lateness.)

That same DDI study found that:

× In low engagement teams absenteeism hovered around 8 per

cent
✓ But was only 4.1 per cent in high engagement teams.

Nationwide Building Society has a sophisticated approach to

measuring engagement and comparing it to other measures on
performance.

✓ They have calculated that if all their retail areas brought their
engagement scores up to those in the top third, and there was
a corresponding improvement in the absentee rates, this could
represent a financial saving of £800,000 per annum.

Engagement and risk

Nationwide found that on a risk scale of 0-30, where 0 might be
described as ‘take no risk at all’, and 30 might be a ‘devil-may-
care attitude to risk’...

✓ Highly engaged staff score 15

× Staff with low engagement score 27

Engagement around the world in the same organization

Standard Chartered Bank researched their branches in Hong
Kong and Ghana between 2002 and 2004 and found that:

✓ Branches where employee engagement was high achieved

16 per cent higher profit margin growth than branches where
employee engagement was low
✓ and had 46 per cent lower voluntary turnover.

The studies listed above all relate to commercial organizations

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 and the value to them of higher employee engagement, but what
of the public sector?

The public sector

Engagement and pride in the ‘badge’
A 2006 survey carried out by Ipsos MORI of staff in UK local
councils, found that:

✓ where the council was rated ‘excellent’ by the Audit

Commission, there was a higher level of ‘staff advocacy’; that
phenomenon where staff were proud enough of their employer
to speak highly about it to others outside.

Engagement and education results

The results of a schools survey by West Berkshire Council, as
presented to the MacLeod report authors in February 2009,
found:

✓ Significant correlations between school staff engagement and

pupil attainment.

Engagement and productivity, motivation and stress reduction

Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe, professor of leadership at Bradford
University, has carried out a three-year longitudinal study of
46 mental health teams working in Britain’s NHS. Her study,
published in 2008, indicates that

✓ a culture of engagement predicted performance. ‘We were

able to provide evidence that engaging leadership does, in
fact, predict productivity. We also found that this style of
leadership increases employees’ motivation, job satisfaction
and commitment, while reducing job-related stress. Leadership
skills alone do not have such a transformational effect.’

Engagement and service delivery

In 2006 South Tyneside Council committed to improving and
maintaining high levels of employee engagement; positive results
by 2008 included:

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 ✓ Growing satisfaction by residents with South Tyneside as a
place to live: up 4 per cent to 77 per cent
✓ A total of 77 per cent of residents felt that the council was
working to make the area safer, up 12 per cent since 2006.

And finally... Engagement through wellbeing during a period

of downsizing
A four-year longitudinal study, by Professor Sharon Parker from
Sheffield University (published in 1997), showed that despite
downsizing and increased work requirements there was no
overall decrease in wellbeing from before, to after.

The potentially detrimental effect of increased demands appeared

to have been offset by initiatives introduced as part of the
downsizing strategy. The study showed that though downsizing
and higher demands on the workforce are usually associated
with poorer wellbeing, increases in participation can offset
this, maintaining staff wellbeing and contributing to higher
engagement and performance.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Spread the word about these study results; engagement is not
just a nice-to-do when you can afford it, nor is it an only-to-
be-done-to-increase-profits. Quote the numbers... they speak
for themselves.
• Make engagement a priority for you and your organization...
it may not show results on the balance sheet in the next
financial quarter, but it will bring across-the-board benefits for
all the stakeholders in your sector.
• Remember that there are many ways of measuring
engagement, and many facets that contribute to improving it
or reducing it. There is no silver bullet, it requires consistent
effort.

Source
www.engageforsuccess.org/ideas-tools/employee-engagement-the-
macleod-report/#.VL9NrmByapo

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 See also
Chapter 2 – Do YOU really know what motivates your people?

Chapter 5 – ‘Workers’ play time’ – is it really worth it?

Chapter 9 – Rule No. 1: Never volunteer for anything. NOT!

Chapter 13 – To be (here) or not to be (here), that is the question

Chapter 21 – Management and leadership... a hot topic! But for

whom?

Chapter 33 – Find out what your followers think about you, and
talk to them about it!

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 30 Managing the
millennials...
some new
challenges

Dinosaur managers (and leaders) lead as if they are living in

the past... but if their followers are living in the present there
could be lost opportunities

The millennial generation, Generation Y; the people born post-

1982 are stereotypically different from the previous generations.
By 2025, three-quarters of the global workforce will be
millennials, but how much have organizations changed their
working practices in response to the generational difference?
How much do they need to change? It isn’t likely that the existing
world of work is going to change the ingrained characteristics of
an entire generation.

In January 2014, Bentley University in Boston, New England,

created The PreparedU Project to ‘spur a national dialogue and
uncover solutions’ to the differences between millennials and
what employers are currently geared up to do.

They ran their study in two phases:

First, they conducted the ‘Millennial Preparedness Study’. This

looked at what:

• corporate recruiters
• business executives
• parents
• higher education leaders, and
• millennials themselves

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 ... thought about the preparedness gap that Generation Y faces in
today’s workplace.

Then they asked 1,031 millennials, ages 18 to 34, what they

think about their own preparedness for their professional life and
what they wanted out of their career.

1. 50 per cent of millennials say the main reason people their

age are unprepared for their first job is a poor work ethic.
However, 89 per cent of them admit to regularly checking
work email after work hours, while 37 per cent say they
always do. When asked what would make them more
productive their responses included: more flexible work hours;
more remote working; more frequent, shorter breaks during
the working day; and fewer/shorter meetings... everyone wants
those things to make them more productive.
2. The typical, traditional 9-to-5 schedule doesn’t appeal to
many millennials: 77 per cent say flexible hours would make
the workplace more productive for people their age. This may
be part of a wider shift towards a more equitable work/life
balance; according to Aaron Nurick, professor of management
and psychology at Bentley, since the 1970s people have been
pushing for more workplace flexibility. It’s to be expected that
the younger generation is on the edge of this trend. Obviously,
an organization’s consumers must be taken into account and
they will ultimately determine to what extent flexible work
schedules become viable. New, more mobile technology
already allows some of us to work from anywhere at any time.
3. Older generations tend to think millennials favour texting and
social media for all their communication, but:
• 51 per cent of millennials say they would rather communicate
with a work colleague in person
• 19 per cent by email
• 14 per cent by text
• 9 per cent live phone call
• 7 per cent online ‘chat’ or similar.

There are gender differences, however; male millennials are

slightly more likely to prefer speaking to a colleague in person
(56 per cent) than women (48 per cent), while women tend to

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 rely more on email for communication (23 per cent) than men
do (13 per cent).
However, it does also depend on the topic of the
communication; Millennials crave validation of their outputs;
praise and comment... this they prefer to seek out face to
face. They also recognize their need for clear direction and
expectations from their manager/client and prefer to do this
face to face as well.
txt is da bst way to chat to m8s
4. Millennials may be more ‘responsible’ than most of the older
generations imagine. When offered a choice between two
otherwise identical jobs, 96 per cent of them said that good
healthcare benefits would be an important factor in their decision.
5. Millennials are often perceived to lack loyalty. But 80 per cent
of millennials believe they’ll work for four or fewer companies
in their career. A surprising 16 per cent anticipate staying in the
same career for their entire working life. This is a belief and it is
at odds with the current statistics; a 2010 study by the Bureau
of Labor Statistics in the USA found that, on average, people
had 11 different jobs in their career. This figure was pretty stable
regardless of educational attainment, ethnicity or gender, so the
millennials’ hope for stable employment would seem to be at
odds with the reality of the labour market they are entering.
6. Millennials want to work for organizations they deem ethical,
but they still have a strong desire for regular salary increases.
79 per cent expect a pay rise every year.
7. Millennials view career success differently than their parents
do. Rather than striving for the CEO spot, 66 per cent of
millennials would like to start their own business and 37 per
cent want to work on their own. This may account for some
of the findings in ‘5’ above. When you run your own business
you can stay with the same employer all your life, though you
may have a different client every day.

So there are the findings of the study, what can you do to take
advantage of them to get the best out of the millennials of
Generation Y?

‘Growing up in a world of technology and instant gratification,

they are interested in putting in extra effort, but only if they can
clearly see the benefits,’ said Susan Brennan of Bentley University,

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 commenting on the report. This means that when managing
this group you need to be constant and consistent in reminding
them of the benefits they gain; you may not be able to say: ‘Do
this well and there is a promotion in it for you’ or ‘Do this well
and there is a bonus in it for you’ but try to verbalize the WIIFY
(What’s In It For You) on an almost daily basis. Use some of the
developmental suggestions covered in Chapter 26; for example,
putting people on exciting projects as a reward is a great way to
motivate millennials.

Encourage and support extracurricular social responsibility, if

possible, in work-paid time. This can be used as a reward or
simply to support the millennial’s desire for #6 above. It is also
an opportunity for the organization to generate good PR, so it
has a payback to the employer as well as the employee.

Get out of your office and talk to people rather than falling back
on email. Especially note the important things for face-to-face
communication; directions and validation, the two ‘end points’
of good performance management. But note that millennials are
already predisposed to dislike meetings (they probably learned
that from their parents’ moans and groans) so try to improve
your meeting management skills. (See Chapter 31.) Use the
Internet technology available for meetings so that more work can
be done remotely. This will kill two birds with one stone.

Encourage people, where possible, to have a micro-business of

their own as well as a job working for you. Many organizations
already allow this and some actively encourage it; so long as
the individual’s micro-business isn’t directly competing with
you (or reliant on stealing and selling your office supplies),
there are several benefits to this policy. First, it encourages
the development of a higher level of commercial acumen than
you may be able to offer in the job description. Second, it will
probably ‘sort the wheat from the chaff’... most start-ups fail,
so it will prove that being your own boss and running your own
business is not as easy as it looks. This might both prevent the
good people from leaving you and prevent them from taking the
big leap to a non-salaried role and failing spectacularly.

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 Where possible, provide as flexible a workplace as you can.
Challenge the old notions of the strictly 9-to-5, operate a more
ROWE type of environment (see Chapter 32).

So what are the big takeaways here?

• The millennial generation is actually not that different from
their parents and grandparents once you get below the surface,
so next time you hear one of your colleagues moaning about
the ‘youth of today’, share the findings of this report.
• Improve your management of meetings; be more accurate in
your directions and be more giving of genuinely constructive
feedback. This will not only help the millennials immensely,
but everyone else as well... including you!
• Remember that millennials are people too... to treat them
differently may well be to discriminate unfairly, either against
them or against your older team members.

Sources
www.slideshare.net/BentleyU/preparedu-the-millennial-mind-
goes-to-work-41415813

www.mindflash.com/blog/2011/05/how-many-jobs-do-americans-
hold-in-a-lifetime

See also
Chapter 4 – I read it, but what the heck did it mean?

Chapter 10 – The five-step ladder to increased success

Chapter 23 – We’re working nine to five – it’s no way to make a

living

Chapter 30 – Managing the millennials... some new challenges

Chapter 31 – Meetings (n); Events where people get together

(eventually) and waste a lot more time than they need to

Chapter 32 – ROWE, ROWE, ROWE your boat!

Chapter 34 – Talent management – have you got your EVP right?

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 31 Meetings (n);
Events where
people get
together
(eventually) and
waste a lot more
time than they
need to

Whether you run or attend meetings you can probably

improve their productivity... if you don’t believe that, read on

More and more people are spending more and more of their
time in meetings than ever before. An MIT survey in 2007 by
Rogelberg, Scott and Kello of 1,900 business leaders revealed
that they are spending 72 per cent more of their time in meetings
than they did in 2002 and 49 per cent of them expected their
time in meetings to increase.

Another survey reported that:

• most professionals believe >50 per cent of time spent in

meetings is wasted
• >90 per cent of people admit to daydreaming in meetings
• 73 per cent have brought in and done other work in meetings
to pass the time productively
• And, amazingly, 39 per cent admit to having fallen asleep in a
meeting!

Everyone has advice on how to make meetings more productive

but there is actually little empirical research to back up much of
this advice.

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 One useful study into meetings and meeting management
was published in 2009 by Kelly A. Lambing, who is research
committee chair of the St. Louis Institute for Internal Auditors
and team leader, Internal Audit Services at Anheuser-Busch
Companies, Inc.

108 audit professionals completed the survey, which assessed

a range of aspects of meetings and meetings management. The
survey asked not only for the reasons why unproductive meetings
were unproductive, but also why, in the respondents’ opinions,
the productive meetings were so much more productive.

The survey group came from a pretty wide range of levels within
the hierarchy:

Professional 15%
Senior professional 26%
Professional team leader 10%
Manager/senior manager 31%
Director/partner & above 18%

The causes of failure

Respondents were asked to rate a series of factors that
contributed to their meetings being unproductive and the
following trends were noted:

1. Diversions: People ranked having too many diversions to

the focus of the meeting as being the definite and most likely
factor for unproductive meetings.
2. Objective not met: Respondents indicated that not reaching
the objective was the third-highest definite factor and second-
highest likely factor causing meetings to be judged a waste time.
3. Ineffective meeting chair: The chair not fulfilling their
responsibilities for controlling and directing the meeting was
cited as the second-highest definite factor and fourth-highest
likely factor for unproductive meetings.
4. Too heavy an agenda: Finally, respondents cited having too
many agenda items to cover in the allotted time was the third-
highest response as a likely factor for unproductive meetings.

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 The causes of success
People were also asked to consider the meetings they considered
productive and to rate the factors that made them so. The results
of this question did not reveal concise elements, but do provide
an insight into the factors of productive meetings.

1. On-track with agenda: People indicated that staying on track

with a given agenda was a definite factor in making meetings
successful.
2. Purpose: Attending a meeting that was immediately relevant
to their job duties was the second-highest definite factor to
productive meetings.
3. Effective chairing: Effective chairing was cited as the third-
ranking definite factor to productive meetings.
4. Concise agenda: Having a concise agenda was the highest
likely factor to predicate success.
5. Objective met: Feeling as if the objective was met was the
second most likely factor.
6. Group size and venues: Finally, having an appropriate number
of attendees and good venues/technology tied for being the
third-highest likely factor.

The report recognized that there are fundamentally two types of

meeting and the two have rather different dynamics.

There are meetings where the objective is the passage of

information but no real feedback or engagement is sought from
the ‘audience’. And there are meetings where decisions need to
be made, usually on the back of some information passing at
or before the meeting. The respondents in this survey reported
that the split between the two was almost half and half and
the feedback they gave referred to both types. However, the
most significant failing in decision-making meetings was for
the decision to be rescheduled (for any of the aforementioned
reasons) to a future meeting. Of course anecdotal evidence
suggests that if this can happen once it can become a serial
occurrence and the decision can be delayed again and again and
the meetings simply become a talking-shop.

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 The beauty of this study is that it goes straight on to make
recommendations for improving the effectiveness of meetings.
Here is a summary of the recommendations.

• Develop a brief and to-the-point objective for the meeting.

• Evaluate from this whether a meeting is required to achieve the
objective.
• Decide who needs to input to this objective. There should
be fewer than 15 people working together on any decision-
making meetings, while information-sharing can be as large as
needed… if someone isn’t needed, don’t invite them.
• Include your objective in the meeting invitation.
• Produce an agenda; keep it to less than one-page and head it
with the objective to keep it in focus. Allocate time to each
agenda item while remembering that the ideal meeting length is
between 45 minutes and an hour and a half. Assign around
10 per cent of the time to introducing the meeting, 85 per
cent for the achievement of the objective and 5 per cent to
conclude it.
• Distribute the agenda at least one day in advance of the
meeting; be clear what preparation people need to do before
they turn up.
• Introduce the meeting and attendees, repeat the objective
and set expectations for the meeting attendees with regard to
behaviours (e.g. questions and comments) and timings.
• Actively lead the meeting by keeping the agenda on track. If it
is a particularly formal meeting or a contentious decision you
may want to have a neutral facilitator/chair.
• Stop any diversions or new topics. If they have value, ‘park’
them on a visible list so they can be addressed outside/after the
current meeting.
• Summarize each item as it is completed, ensuring that actions
and timescales are clearly allocated to a responsible person.
• If appropriate, meeting minutes should follow the flow of
the agenda and include attendees, discussion, decisions and
actions agreed-upon. They should be issued within 24 hours to
attendees and other stakeholders.
• Periodically, survey meeting attendees’ opinions on meeting
productivity to help maintain and improve the effectiveness of
meetings. (Page 18 of the study contains an excellent tool for
this really useful activity.)

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 The report goes on to look at the use of technology,
teleconferencing, video-conferencing and ‘web-hosted interactive
media’ as alternatives to face-to-face meetings. The technology
of 2015 is massively different from the time the report was
compiled in 2008 so we will not look into that aspect here.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• If you come out of a meeting feeling that it just wasted an hour
or more of your life, don’t just put up with it, tell the meeting
chair about this chapter. Especially bearing in mind that
several other people probably felt the same as you did!
• Take Lambing’s work to heart. Start following the advice and
recommendations above; they are not too onerous and could
save you and your team hundreds of unproductive hours per
year.
• Remember that meetings are vitally important to organizations
and they are also probably the single biggest time-waster of
most people’s lives!

Source
https://na.theiia.org/iiarf/Public%20Documents/Increasing%20
Meeting%20Effectiveness%20for%20Internal%20Auditors%20
-%20St.%20Louis.pdf

See also
Chapter 3 – It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it

Chapter 4 – I read it, but what the heck did it mean?

Chapter 10 – The five-step ladder to increased success

Chapter 25 – Is teamwork always the answer?

Chapter 32 – ROWE, ROWE, ROWE your boat!

Chapter 36 – Stop paying attention to the PowerPoint® default

settings!

Chapter 40 – You can NOT be serious!

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 32 ROWE, ROWE,
ROWE your
boat!

Now is the time to try to break away from measuring,

monitoring and rewarding time spent doing work, and start
rewarding the achievement of results

As soon as we are born our lives are managed by the amount of

time spent on doing things:

• We are expected to walk/talk/read by the time we reach a

particular age
• We are expected to practise the piano for so many hours a day/
week
• We attend school for a given number of years.

This is then reinforced as we reach adulthood (another time-

related milestone).

• Our degree at university takes a certain amount of time to

obtain regardless of how much work we put in or how bright
we are
• Our wages or salaries are calculated by the hour/day/week/
month almost in spite of our productivity
• People judge us by how many years’ experience we have, even
if by law they aren’t technically allowed to
• Pay reviews are often incremental, based on number of years’
service, albeit that part of this is to handcuff us to our current
employer.

Many organizations are trying to find a way to break out of this

culture; why? Because it predicates attendance rather than results
and results are what keep commercial businesses running and
public sector organizations serving the populations they support.

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 One apparently successful methodology to help achieve this
change in focus is ROWE™ – Results-Only Work Environment.

Brainchild of Jody Thompson and Cali Ressler, of CultureRx, a

ROWE ™ changes the focus:

From… To…
Culture of entitlement Culture of opportunity
Focus on schedules and time off Focus on work
Subjective conversations Objective conversations
Individual focus Team/organization focus
Time as the currency of work Results as the currency of work
Freedom without accountability Accountability first
Managers say: ‘All hands on deck’ Results coaches foster: ‘Everyone
on point’
Manages flexibility (permission- 100% autonomous and
based) accountable
No results? No more flexibility No results? No job

Sounds good, but does it work?

CultureRx’s website has a number of case studies to read; they

range from family businesses to advertising agencies, accounting
firms to consultancies – all claiming significant success as a result
of the ROWE™ approach.

The difficulty (for this book) is that ROWE™ is a proprietary

brand and relies on a specific client-focused ‘formula’, so how-to-
do-it isn’t an easy pick-up model.

However, if we assume that the proof of the pudding is in the eating,

we can look at one of the case studies to see if the concept works.

In August 2011, 50 volunteers out of the 240-strong staff at

Prairie Lakes Area Education Agency (PLAEA) in rural Iowa,
USA, began to pilot a Results-Only Work Environment.

The PLAEA serves schools in 14 counties across 8,000 square

miles with 30,000 students and 3,500 educational staff.

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 After piloting it for a year, the PLAEA was sufficiently impressed
to roll it out to the rest of its employees. This was not during
a period of economic success and easy decisions; PLAEA faced
significant hiring and staff-retention challenges, due to the rural
location and the bureaucratic nature of the role. The area was
losing population and school enrolments dropped by around 10
per cent between 2005 and 2011. Education budgets are based
on number of students, so budgets were falling, hampering
recruitment and encouraging a focus on costs.

The ‘test-pilots’ started off by working together (in their specific

work teams) to answer five fundamental questions:

1. What is our outcome?

2. Who is our target audience?
3. What activities will help us achieve that outcome?
4. What activities will NOT help us to achieve that outcome?
5. How will we measure success?

This focused their minds effectively and one of the most potent
comments from the case study documentation is:

We are trying to block out the noise and clutter of all the things
we used to ask people to do that did not lead to improved
results for our students. We are moving to an environment in
which we make all meetings optional; do not require people to
update their calendars on a daily basis (they still keep one for
themselves, because they know where they need to be to achieve
their results) but rather focus on the work that needs to be
done; and we are trying to involve more of our staff members
in our Agency’s leadership. We hope that the people closest to
the decision impact will embrace this enhanced autonomy and
decision-making authority – because we know that this will lead
to a more effective and enjoyable work environment.

By making this change in focus the teams were able to produce

some impressive sounding results:

‘Our goal with our ROWE™ project was to increase reading

accuracy rates....

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 We were able to get in there with students and teachers....

And it worked. Students raised reading accuracy scores and

when we were done all of the students were reading above the
95th percentile.’

Unfortunately, the case study doesn’t specify the starting point

from whence the study began so though the comment was that
100 per cent of the students were in the 95th percentile by the
end we don’t know what amount of improvement this actually
represents. However, we do know that the section concerned was
the Special Educational Needs section, so it is fair to assume that
the result was quite impressive.

Other benefits quoted without specific measurement are:

• Increased value to taxpayers as a result of the new focus on

results
• Greater efficiency and productivity
• Easier talent attraction and better staff retention
• Elimination of non-productive meetings
• Improved clarity in goal-setting and measuring of outcomes.

The ROWE™ allowed staff to be more in control of their time

and this is reported to have produced greater efficiency. Most
of the staff spend a lot of their time out of the PLAEA’s office,
driving to schools and meeting with teachers and students. The
ROWE™ created ‘grown-up’ work culture that allowed people
to focus on results rather than face time. Each employee was
trusted to take their own decisions about where they needed to
be, and when.

This chapter doesn’t intend to be a thinly veiled advert for

CultureRx, but it is a quasi-scientific look at the movement away
from the time-bounded culture and the benefits of focusing more
on results as a way of engaging employees and empowering them
to succeed at what they need to do. ROWE™ was a vehicle for
achieving this and so is worth investigation.

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 So what can you do with this knowledge to improve your
leadership and management of people and achieve results even
when times are tough?

1. Focus on opportunities; these can be opportunities to

improve the service the customer gets or opportunities for the
employees to be more effective.
2. Meet with your people and ask them the five questions that
appear early in this chapter. Explain the concept of a ROWE™
to them and ask if they’d value working this way.
3. Set good objectives with your people; these are objectives
that focus almost exclusively on the needs of their customers,
whether they are internal or external. Make sure that these are
set, reviewed and measured regularly enough to make them
meaningful; an annual target is all very well, but too far away.
Quarterly, monthly or even weekly targets are more likely to
be effective, so break the annual targets down.
4. Eradicate as many unnecessary meetings as you can and reduce
reporting down as much as possible to be results focused.
5. Reduce your personal reliance on people’s face time... working
with the customer is more important than being seen in the
office. Encourage others to follow you in this; it only needs
one witty riposte of ‘hello part-timer’ to really cheese off the
person who has been focusing on results and therefore not in
the office.
6. Support people’s empowerment and taking of this
responsibility. If they need to have better technology in order
not to have to come in for face-to-face meetings, then give
them this technology.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Tell your people and your peers about the successes that
organizations have had by focusing on results rather than
timekeeping. It is so obvious that many people actually miss it!
• Take a critical look at your own objective-setting and
measurement capability; improve that and you’ll improve your
productivity.
• Remember that presentism doesn’t necessarily equate to
success and a lack of face time doesn’t necessarily equate to
slacking!

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 Source
Ressler, Cali & Thompson, Jody, Why Work Sucks And How To
Fix It: The Results-Only Revolution (Portfolio, New York, 2008)

www.slideshare.net/eddodds/plaea-case-study

See also
Chapter 7 – ‘An employee’s workspace is his castle... or should
be!’

Chapter 10 – The five-step ladder to increased success

Chapter 11 – To follow me they have to be able to see me, right?

Chapter 21 – Management and leadership... a hot topic! But for

whom?

Chapter 29 – Is getting engaged really worth the effort?

Chapter 39 – Trust in your virtual team

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 33 Find out
what your
followers
think about
you, and talk to
them about it!

Listen to the grass roots grumbles as much or more than you

listen to the boss’s opinion of your success... the latter will
follow the former

You get your annual appraisal from your boss. It is usually based
predominantly on your attainment of targets; the ‘what’ you have
achieved.

What the boss doesn’t necessarily see is the detail of how you
achieved it; you may be an absolute slave-driver, bullying and
coercing your people to hit their targets and fulfil your needs.
So long as you keep the boss happy everything else is irrelevant;
you’ll get a good appraisal and you’ll rise up to the top of the pile.

You may know that your people think you are a slave-driver, and
you may not care.

Or you may be kidding yourself that they are following you

willingly when in actual fact they are following out of fear. They
may not argue with you because they agree with you, or they
may not argue with you because you write their annual appraisal
and they don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them.

So ‘upward feedback’ was invented to allow managers and leaders

the power to see themselves as others see them. It is a potentially
powerful tool in correcting or confirming a person’s self-image.

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 The First Tennessee Bank in association with La Salle University
undertook what is still the longest validated study of the effects
of upward feedback processes; for five years, 252 managers
were the target group of upward feedback from their staff. The
outcomes of the study are enlightening in a number of ways.

Many organizations use 360-degree feedback tools as part of

their performance management cycle. (360-degree feedback is
marginally different to the upward feedback of the study but the
outcomes are very similar.)

Some simply give the individuals the feedback and allow them
to self-manage their reaction. However, Locke and Latham’s
1990 study showed that feedback alone is not often adequate
to lead to behavioural change. Instead it is the goals that people
set in response to feedback that drives improvement and makes
the whole exercise worthwhile. While some will effectively
self-manage to some degree it seldom results in significant
improvements.

Some demand that an individual discusses their feedback with

their manager and then the two discuss the reasons for any
feedback that suggests a need for behavioural change. This then
leads to a consensus on how much the manager can and will
change their future management style and specific behaviours.

Some expect that the individual discusses their feedback with an

independent coach/mentor and agrees their reaction. This may
work well when the individual accepts the feedback as accurate
and fair, and wants to improve. The most obvious problem with
this approach is that the individuals most in need of change are
the ones least likely to accept the feedback and want to change.

The study in question, being upward feedback (rather than

360-degree) encouraged the individuals to meet and discuss the
feedback, and their reaction to it, with the very people who had
rated them – their direct reports.

The format of the feedback was constructed based on a series

of in-house focus groups designed to identify the management
behaviours believed to be appropriate to effective leadership,

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 productivity and implementation of strategic business objectives.
The assessment consisted of 29 behaviourally based items, each
rated one a 1-to-5 scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree.
The specific items covered included information-sharing,
encouragement of team work, listening, positivity, continuous
improvement, fairness, accessibility, recognition, support,
empowerment, development of staff skills and acceptance of the
feedback.

The results
The project clearly showed that managers initially rated ‘poor’
or ‘moderate’ showed significant improvements in their later
upward feedback ratings over the five-year period.

Managers initially rated as ‘excellent’ maintained this rating over

the five-year period.

Managers who did meet with their direct reports to discuss their
upward feedback improved more than other managers who
didn’t.

Managers who didn’t have these meetings every year improved

more in the years when they did have these meetings with direct
reports than in years when they did not.

So there is the data, what can you do about it to improve your

management and leadership?

If your organization doesn’t have an upward feedback process

in place then create one yourself or with your team; the 29
questions they spent five years evolving are listed below to
perhaps help you to generate a holistic approach.

1. M
 y manager shares with me the information I need to do
my job.
2. W
 hen I need it, my manager provides information about
how I’m performing my job.
3. M
 y manager has helped define the boundaries of
empowerment for my position.
4. My manager promotes teamwork within our work unit.

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 5. M
 y manager promotes teamwork between people in our
work unit and people in other work units including those
companywide.
6. My manager listens to my suggestions.
7. M y manager keeps me informed on what the company is
trying to accomplish.
8. M y manager keeps me informed on what our work unit is
trying to accomplish.
9. M y manager involves our work unit in continuously
improving the way we service our customers.
10. My manager encourages me to develop myself.
11. My manager makes sure I am trained to do my job.
12. My manager treats me with respect.
13. My manager lets me know when I’ve done a good job.
14. M y manager presents a positive attitude towards the
company and company policy.
15. M y manager shares how Empowerment, Family Matters
and Continuous Improvement initiatives can continue to
improve our work unit’s customer loyalty.
16. M y manager works with me to ensure I understand the
standards/goals on which my performance review will be
based.
17. My manager is accessible for discussions.
18. M y manager and I have discussed the knowledge, skills, and
abilities that could affect my progress at this organization.
19. I have confidence in the fairness of my manager.
20. M y manager makes sure that I present my views on my
performance reviews.
21. My manager promotes a positive atmosphere.
22. M y manager makes sure that I get the recognition for my
performance.
23. O ur work unit has plans in place for resolving customer
problems.
24. M y manager helps me understand our work unit’s service
approach.
25. I f I thought I needed to go out on a limb to deliver excellent
service, I am confident my manager would support me.
26. M y manager works with me to help resolve conflicts
between work and family/personal issues.
27. M y manager coaches me on how I can continuously
improve the service I provide to my customers.

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 28. M
 y manager has held a feedback session concerning last
year’s Leadership Survey with our work unit.
29. O
 ver the next 12 months, which one of the above items
(1-28 above) should your manager work on the most?

If your organization already uses a 360-degree or upward

feedback instrument, you can use that.

After the results are in, hold a meeting with the people who have
provided feedback for you. Tell them upfront that the purpose is
to help you to improve your management, not to chew them out
for being mean or to thank them for being nice.

Don’t ask for justification of their ratings; that will just open
an argument. Probe to ensure that you understand the reasons
behind their rating but avoid getting defensive.

Ask them what they think would be a better approach for you
than the approaches you have been using so far. This will move
you towards sensible action plans for improvement.

Outline SMART objectives for improvement and ask the team

for their support, this means letting you know if you go off track
(i.e. some at-the-time upward feedback). Then as you all return
to BAU (Business As Usual) make sure you keep on top of the
improvements.

SMART = Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant,

Timebound (or similar; many organizations make changes
to the words without changing the mnemonic).

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Tell your people that you would actually appreciate upward
feedback and that you won’t treat it as ‘questioning the boss’ or
‘criticism’ (so long as it is given at an appropriate time and place).
• Stick to what you said in #1 above!
• Remember that if you don’t know what you do badly you
can’t improve it.

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 Source
https://www.tamu.edu/faculty/payne/PA/Walker%20&%20
Smither%201999.pdf

See also
Chapter 2 – Do YOU really know what motivates your people?

Chapter 21 – Management and leadership... a hot topic! But for

whom?

Chapter 25 – Is teamwork always the answer?

Chapter 31 – Meetings (n); Events where people get together

(eventually) and waste a lot more time than they need to

Chapter 39 – Trust in your virtual team

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 34 Talent
management –
Have you got
your EVP right?

Just paying a (bigger) salary isn’t the way to get and keep
good people... there is a lot more to it than that

Talent management is seen by many as a key contributor to

success. McKinsey’s 2008 survey ‘Why Multinationals Struggle
To Manage Talent’ cites the top third of organizations (in regard
to their talent management) generate 39 per cent more profit per
employee on average than the bottom third.

Towers Watson’s Global Talent Management and Rewards

Study 2012-13 took place between the end of April and the first
week of June 2012. In total, 1,605 respondents participated in
the survey; 40 per cent of the sample was from the Asia-Pacific
region, including a very large sample from China. Europe, the
Middle East and Africa contributed 26 per cent, North America
25 per cent and Latin America approximately 10 per cent.

Organizations had to meet a size threshold based on the number

of employees or be part of a global organization. Two-thirds of
the responses came from multinational organizations, and the
remaining one-third were from large domestic organizations.

The industry representation was:

Manufacturing 31 per cent

Financial services 18 per cent
IT and Telecoms 16 per cent
Health care 12 per cent
General services 8 per cent
Wholesale and retail 8 per cent

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 Energy and utilities 6 per cent
Public sector 2 per cent

The study classified the employers according to the maturity of

their EVP: their Employee Value Proposition.

The term refers to: ‘the collective array of programs that

an organization offers in exchange for employment. It
defines “the give and the get” between company and worker,
encompassing every aspect of the employment experience – from
the organization’s mission and values; to jobs, culture and
colleagues; to the full portfolio of total rewards programs.’

The classification of the employers according to their EVP was

into four groups as follows:

Group 1. Do not have a total rewards approach or a formally

articulated EVP.

Group 2. Have formally articulated an EVP and adopted a total

rewards approach. There is a greater focus on an integrated
strategy for managing rewards and talent, and they have stated
objectives for each reward and talent management programme.

Group 3. Have effectively communicated their EVP to all

employees and delivered on their EVP promises.

Group 4. Have differentiated their EVP from their competitors

for talent (as opposed to their market competitors, though these
may overlap) and have customized EVPs for critical workforce
segments.

Results and findings

First, the bottom line:

• Global Group 4 employers are twice as likely to have financial

performance substantially above their market competitors.
• In fast-growing economies the difference is a factor of two and
a half times more likely.
• In developed economies it is around one and a half times.

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 This suggests that having a differentiated and customized EVP
will predict higher financial success despite the economy in which
the employer operates.

Next, let’s look at some snapshots of the component parts; in all

cases the comparison is the Group 4 with the Group 1:

• In developed economies Group 4 employers found it 6 per

cent easier to recruit and 9 per cent less difficult to keep their
good people.
• In fast-growing economies Group 4 employers find it 11 per
cent easier to recruit good people and find 28 per cent less
difficulty retaining their people than Group 1 employers.
• Across the board the Group 4 organizations are twice as likely
to formally identify the employees whose skills are critical to
the health of the organization.
• They are also almost twice as likely to formally identify the
top performers.
• They are also almost twice as likely to formally identify
the high potential people and nearly three times as likely to
actually tell people that they are high potential employees.
• In Group 4 employers, people are nearly twice as likely to
understand how their basic pay is determined.
• Employees in Group 4 organizations are nearly four times
more likely to understand how they can personally influence
their career future.
• And they are more than three times more likely to report that
their line manager is effective at providing career management
support as well as immediate line management supervision.
• They are 25 per cent more likely to think that the company’s
leadership development activity both supports the goals and
strategy of the organizations and helps to create and maintain
the desired culture in the organization.
• They are nearly two and a half times more likely to actually
think that the company’s performance management process
helps to create a high-performing culture.
• They are 76 per cent more likely to report that the
performance management system links an individual’s salary
to their actual performance.

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 As you can see, the study was wide ranging and comprehensive;
these are just snapshots, perhaps about 30 per cent of the full
findings of the report.

So there is the data, what value is this to you as a leader?

Only 18 per cent of the sample companies made it into the

Group 4 category. Group 2 and 3 represented 26 per cent and
23 per cent respectively and the other 32 per cent of
organizations fell into Group 1.

So if your organization is in Group 4 already you need to make

sure that you stay in that group; it makes your life as a manager
a heck of a lot easier. You can recruit and attract good people
more easily, you can retain and motivate those people with less
effort and this will have a beneficial effect on your financial
results.

If your organization is in the Group 3 you only have two actions

to go to move into Group 4 and reap the extra benefits for the
relatively little effort.

• You need to benchmark your EVP against the organizations

you compete with for talent. You may already be somewhere
close to this already; if you feel that your salary offerings
and benefits packages are ‘competitive’ then you are already
carrying out some benchmarking. Close the circle by looking
at the other aspects of the EVP; career support, management
and leadership development and linking pay and benefits to
individual performance.

If you are currently in Group 2 then you are on the way but you
have a major communication task to fulfil to get to Group 3. It is
now about making sure the workforce knows what you are doing
and why.

If you are currently in Group 1, then you have a way to go. You
have seen the benefits that this approach to EVP can take, both
bottom line and in terms of easing day-to-day operations. Get
coordinated talent management approaches going soon. Even
if you are currently a small organization with plans to grow, it

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 is much better to get the infrastructure in place now than to try
to install it later into a larger organization, plus you can start to
reap the rewards sooner.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Tell people about the benefits of a total rewards approach
and a coordinated EVP. It makes individuals’ lives better and
affects the bottom line as well.
• Promote as much of it as you can in your own sphere of
influence, even if the organization won’t adopt it overall. You
can get some benefits for yourself and your team.
• Remember that ‘Talent Management’ isn’t just a euphemism
for the graduate fast track programme... there is way more to
it than that, for everyone, not just the high potential people.

Sources
www.towerswatson.com/en-GB/Insights/IC-Types/Survey-
Research-Results/2012/09/2012-Global-Talent-Management-and-
Rewards-Study

www.talentnaardetop.nl/uploaded_files/document/2008_Why_
multinationals_struggle_to_manage_talent_M.pdf

See also
Chapter 6 – As a leader, it is a matter of priorities

Chapter 21 – Management and leadership... a hot topic! But for

whom?

Chapter 23 – We’re working nine to five – it’s no way to make a

living

Chapter 24 – You don’t have to love the quitters but at least

listen to them

Chapter 29 – Is getting engaged really worth the effort?

Chapter 32 – ROWE, ROWE, ROWE your boat!

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 35 ‘Trust me, I’m a
manager’

To err is human, to regain public trust after you’ve erred just

takes a bit more skill and knowledge (and guts)

The Institute of Business Ethics, the IBE, is a charitable

organization based in London that aims to ‘raise public
awareness of the importance of doing business ethically, and
collaborate with other UK and international organizations with
interests and expertise in business ethics’. That is the theoretical
bit of its objective.

On a more practical note it also ‘helps organizations in the

development, implementation and embedding of effective
and relevant ethics and corporate responsibility policies and
programmes. It helps organizations to provide guidance to staff
and build relationships of trust with their principal stakeholders.’

‘Trust’; generally people judge another party’s trustworthiness

according to a combination of three elements:

• Ability or technical competence: do we believe that they are

able to deliver what they offer?
• Benevolence: do we believe that delivering it in the offered way
is in their best interests?
• Integrity: do we believe in their honesty and fairness
towards us?

If our overall judgement is positive, this increases our willingness

to ‘risk’ dealing with them – to trust them, be they a person or an
organization. This trust might take the form of:

• buying their products/services

• investing in their stock, or
• working for them.

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 But, should we have any reason to change our beliefs in any one
of these attributes; Ability, Benevolence or Integrity, they lose
our trust.

In February 2012 the IBE issued a publication that took six case
studies and analysed them in some depth. Four of the case studies
deal with organizations where:

• some people within each of these organizations had lost

sight of the importance of ethical behaviour in their business
transactions
• they had all been found out, publically
• they had all caused serious damage to their reputations and the
trust that stakeholders had in them
• they had all had to put significant effort and resources into
rebuilding that trust and they had all had to eat a lot of
humble pie.

The publication’s authors were Dr Graham Dietz, senior lecturer

in human resource management and organizational behaviour at
Durham University, UK, and Dr Nicole Gillespie, senior lecturer
in management at the University of Queensland, Australia.

The organizations and their situations were:

• Siemens: Accused of systematic bribery in 2006, the scandal

cost Siemens €2bn of fines, as well as ‘repair’ costs of around
€63m
• The BBC: The ‘phone-in’ scandals in 2007-08. As a result the
BBC had to pay to have 16,500 staff trained in ethics as well
as paying a £50,000 fine
• BAE Systems: Persistent allegations of corruption in major
sales resulted in £258m worth of fines and £1.7m bill for an
internal audit and an undisclosed cost for training 88,000 staff
• Severn Trent Water: Found guilty of distorting performance
data for the industry regulator Ofwat and fined £7.8m.

The report also covers another case study; one where the
organization was proactive in identifying a problem and open
about getting it sorted out:

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 Mattel, the toy giant, was faced with a series of quality issues
after item sales in 2007, when two unrelated failures came to
light in quick succession. They had sold 20 million potentially
dangerous toys in 43 countries. The firm’s proactive and honest
approach has drawn widespread kudos and minimized the
potential damage to their reputation (and of course the health of
several million children).

The case studies support a series of actions (that had been

initially described in the authors’ previous 2009 publication
‘Trust Repair After an Organization-Level Failure’) that are
commensurate with keeping or rebuilding trust in the event of a
crisis:

Stage 1
Respond immediately, within 48 hours, of the incident coming to
light. This comes in two forms: what to say and what to do.

Coming to light can also mean internally. If a ‘whistleblower’

raises an issue to you through internal channels it is critical
to be seen to be responding seriously and quickly. Failure to
do so may be seen as intent to cover up the issue with the
corresponding consequences

Say: Acknowledge the incident honestly and clearly, express

the organization’s regret in simple language (don’t be ‘mealy-
mouthed’), announce the action you are taking immediately to
mitigate the effects on relevant stakeholders, announce a full
investigation and committed resources to prevent reoccurrence.

Do: what you just said!

Stage 2
Carry out or sponsor an accurate, systemic, inclusive and, if
appropriate, independent diagnosis of the cause(s) of your
organization’s failure. This must demonstrate an appropriate
sense of urgency and importance, and be actively transparent.

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 Stage 3
Carry out the deliberate actions arising from Stage 2. Again this
comes in two forms; what to say and what to do.

Say: Apologize again (subject to culpability) and announce what

reparations you are going to make (as appropriate). Announce
the remedial action that you will put in long term.

Do: Derived from Stage 2, carry out a full implementation

of remedial actions across the organization (as required),
prioritizing according to failure type but with the caveat:
‘Structural, procedural and cultural interventions should be
adopted concurrently. For example, strengthening compliance
monitoring and codes of conduct must be backed up (at the same
time) with senior leaders’ exhortations and training investment.’

Stage 4
Instigate a programme of accurate, systemic, multi-level, timely
and transparent evaluation of the remedial actions.

This four-stage process sounds pretty straightforward and easy;

however, the authors make it clear that the rebuilding of trust
after a high-profile failure can take years rather than months.
They also note that the effects on staff morale are potentially
enormous; existing staff often carry a sense of shame for a long
time. This period is extended when there are senior managers still
in the organization who may have been tainted with suspicions
of exhibiting, encouraging or turning a blind eye to unethical
behaviour. ‘Whistleblower amnesties’ are often the most effective
way to clear the air in this instance.

The report is predominantly advisory in its nature, and there are

three particular paragraphs that every manager should keep in
mind on the topic of trust and the organization:

‘Guard against the downgrading or marginalization of

trustworthiness and ethical procedures in the aggressive pursuit
of quick growth. Too much growth, too fast, can weaken the
robustness of organizational systems and values.’

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 If your organization is growing rapidly (or has grown rapidly)
don’t rest on your laurels and congratulate yourself on your
success. Put in robust policies to make the ethical stance clear
to all. Make time to ensure that everyone knows the policy and
therefore what is and isn’t acceptable. Ensure that in the focused
pursuit of success, no one loses sight of what is right.

‘Centralized corporate structures can paralyse local

responsiveness, but de-centralized structures can lead to
ungovernable local autonomy. There is a fine balance to be
struck between trust and control.’

This is a challenge for any organization, large or small.

‘Centralized’ can mean physically in another city or country, or
vested in another group or even person. If your organization
appears to have either an iron grip or total autonomy, rather
than a balance, there is a strong likelihood that some unethical
behaviour is being demonstrated somewhere.

‘In its live (Blue Peter) show on 27th November 2006, an

“unavoidable technical difficulty” meant that no viewer could
get through to the studio to take part in a charity phone-in
competition. In the “blind panic” of a live broadcast, a junior
employee – unbeknownst to the programme editor onsite – asked
a child visiting the studio at the time to pretend to be the winner.
Initially, the programme makers not only covered up what
had happened, but the researcher responsible was apparently
congratulated by the programme’s editor for “keeping the show
on the road”.’

There is a fine line (and a grey one) between the use of initiative
and a lack of integrity. Yes the show went out on TV without a
hitch, but again that focus on success (bearing in mind that the
BBC is not a commercial organization so the focus wasn’t on
profit) led to a ‘little white lie’... even the ‘good’ lies are lies!

So what are the big takeaways here?

• If you hear one of your peers mention any form of unethical
behaviour, challenge it. Share the costs of unethical behaviours

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 as outlined in the early part of this chapter. Ask people what
they’d say in court to justify their unethical action or their
encouragement/condoning of it.
• Make sure you are not encouraging or condoning unethical
practice. Make sure that your people know that you welcome
a heads-up of any concerns where ethics are involved.
• Remember that unethical behaviour bites your customer
relationships, your shareholder relationships and your staff
relationships.

Source
www.ibe.org.uk/userfiles/op_trustcasestudies.pdf

See also
Chapter 1 – Spreadsheets alone do not a judgement make

Chapter 3 – It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it

Chapter 4 – I read it, but what the heck did it mean?

Chapter 15 – Successful change begins with ‘good’

communication

Chapter 19 – The customer is always right… WRONG!

Chapter 25 – Is teamwork always the answer?

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 36 Stop paying
attention
to the
PowerPoint®
default
settings!

Follow this advice to make a major improvement to your use

of this potentially lethal tool

PowerPoint® – there can’t be an office (except perhaps those

owned by Apple) that doesn’t have it. Most managers use it
regularly. At some stage in our careers most of us suffer its
appalling abuse to the level of ‘Death By PowerPoint’.

To combat bad PowerPoint® habits there is a plethora of advice,

but it is almost universally based on anecdotal evidence and
personal opinion. There is hardly any actual scientific evidence
for what makes good or bad PowerPoint®.

But there is some. Dr Joanna Garner (of Old Dominion

University), along with Dr Sarah Zappe, Michael Alley, Lauren
Sawarynski and Keri Wolfe (all of Pennsylvania State University,
University Park) carried out a genuine lab condition test to
compare two differing formats of PowerPoint® slide and the
effect they had on the audience’s ability to both understand and
remember the information contained in the presentation.

The two formats were:

• the ‘default’ format, as embedded in the application: of a topic

phrase headline supported by a bulleted list of subtopics or
content

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 • the ‘assertion-evidence’ slide format: the heading is a succinct
sentence assertion (in words) and the body of the slide
supports that heading with visual evidence: photographs,
drawings, diagrams, graphs, or words and equations arranged
in a visual way.

The researchers noticed that the choice of format can affect the
success of the presentation in three ways:

1. The format can affect the focus of the presenter (or designer)
when deciding what to put on the slide. For example, an
apparent difference is that if the assertion-evidence approach
is taken the designer thinks of the presentation in terms of
insights, features, results, and conclusions that the audience
needs to know (the assertion), rather than topic phrases. The
outcome of this is that the presenter is less likely to include
extraneous details.
2. The choice of format of the slides can affect the delivery of
the presentation. For instance, bulleted lists tend to encourage
the presenter to turn to look at the screen (in the worst cases
to actually read from the screen). The presenter breaks eye
contact with the audience and sometimes looks as if he or she
needs the visual aid more than the audience does.
3. Perhaps, most importantly, the format of the slides affects how
much the listener understands and can later recall of the detail
of the content of the presentation.

The research considered only this third effect.

The team carried out an experiment in which two different

audiences listened to the same narrated presentation. Though the
audio element was identical, they saw different types of slides.

One audience of 55 people saw ‘traditional’ topic-subtopic slides;

the other, of 56 people, saw assertion-evidence slides. The stats
looked like this:

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Characteristic Topic-Subtopic Assertion-
Slides Evidence Slides
Number of slides 11 10
Total number of words on 334 193
slides
Average words per slide 30.4 19.3
Total length of presentation 6 m 17 s 6 m 17 s
Projected words per minute 53.2 30.7
Percentage of slides with 54.5 100
relevant graphics
Number of slides with 0 9
animations
Total number of words in 1,003 1,003
spoken script
Spoken words per minute 159.6 159.6

As soon as the presentation was over, each audience was tested

individually on both their understanding and their factual recall
of the content.

A week after the presentations, the audiences had a further

test on the content of the presentation. This unannounced test
occurred in their normal environment.

The idea was to parallel the situation that occurs when any
audience sees a presentation, although the audience had only
the presentation to base their understanding of the information
upon; they were not given the opportunity to ask questions or to
request further details or reiteration.

Results
Comprehension
In the scores for comprehension of complex concepts immediately
after the presentation the group who saw the assertion-evidence
slides had a 16 per cent better result than the group who saw the
topic-subtopic slides.

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 In the scores for comprehension of complex concepts one week
after the presentation the group who saw the assertion-evidence
slides had an 18 per cent better result than the group who saw
the topic-subtopic slides.

Basic recall
Some less important statistics were verbally mentioned in the
script of the presentation.

These were included as subtopics in the topic-subtopic slides but

they did not appear on the visual of the assertion-evidence slides.
The group who saw these statistics on the visual scored 30 per
cent better than the group who only heard them.

Primary statistics appeared on both slide decks and the recall was
identical between both groups on both tests.

Caveat
In spite of the scientific nature of this report, one may argue
that 55 people (American university engineering students) are
not representative of the world as a whole. However, put this
with your own knowledge of being subjected to 400 slides one
after the other, each with a title and a series of bullet points,
and you would probably accept the report’s findings as a breath
of fresh air!

So there is the data; what can you do with it to improve your

performance as a leader?

Next time you are called upon to present to a group, use the
assertion-evidence approach for your visual aids. Look for
good, appropriate visual representations of the subject; photos,
drawings, graphics, clip art or graphs rather than words and
numbers.

Avoid bullet points if you possibly can.

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 Rather than simply ‘bullet pointing’ words, if you have to use
words then...

Make them visual

Think about, and plan, what you are going to SAY before you
start trying to create the slides; this helps you to avoid falling
into the topic-subtopic habit, which you might otherwise be
drawn into.

People may find this a bit disconcerting at first; we are conditioned

to PowerPoint® slides that look like this:

This is the topic

• This is a subtopic
• This is another sub topic
• 95% of business slides look like this
• They are all as boring as can be

So they may be a bit shocked to see a slide that looks like this:

39% of people admit to having

slept through a presentation

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 Recognize that this makes your job (at presenting) harder; the
slides no longer act as a pauper’s autocue and you need to find
good graphic images that are free to use.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Tell your bosses about this research; it may save you from
being bored to death by poor visuals that you can’t remember
the day after. Tell your people about it so that they develop
better PowerPoint® usage skills.
• Change your own PowerPoint® tendencies; think graphically.
• Remember that it does mean extra work, so start preparing
your next presentation early!

Sources
www.writing.engr.psu.edu/research.html

www.engr.psu.edu/speaking/Visual-Aids.html

www.writing.engr.psu.edu/slides.html

See also
Chapter 4 – I read it, but what the heck did it mean?

Chapter 10 – The five-step ladder to increased success

Chapter 26 – Learning; it’s a generational thing

Chapter 31 – Meetings (n); Events where people get together

(eventually) and waste a lot more time than they need to

Chapter 40 – You can NOT be serious!

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 37 ‘Science,
schmience’...
take it with a
pinch of salt

Beware this example of the fact that if you say it often

enough everyone will believe it

If you have been in any management role in the developed world

for more than a year you will doubtless have been told, read or
seen a PowerPoint® slide that tells you that 70 per cent of all
change programmes fail. You’ve probably seen it more than once.
If you’ve been around for a bit longer you’ll have seen it dozens
of times. If you did an A level, a degree or higher in a business-
related topic, you’ll have seen it repeatedly.

Where does it originate from?

In 1993, James Champy and Professor Michael Hammer

published a book: Re-engineering the Corporation?. This was
based on research on Business Process Re-engineering initiatives
in the last two decades of the 20th century in large organizations.
It contained the statement:

‘Sadly, we must report that... many companies that begin

reengineering don’t succeed at it… Our unscientific estimate is
that as many as 50 per cent to 70 per cent of the organizations...
do not achieve the dramatic results they intended.’

In 2000, researchers Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria published

‘Cracking the Code of Change’ in the Harvard Business Review.
The sentence that grabbed people’s attention was:

‘The brutal fact is that about 70 per cent of all change initiatives
fail.’

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 These two sources became widely read and quoted in academia
to support and validate studies and reports into management
practice and into change. They have also been widely used
in management consulting, to help develop and sell change
management ideas, theories and methodologies.

Thought leaders are still quoting them, for instance, Daryl

Conner’s 2012 blog post states:

‘Change practitioners have some culpability for the atrocious 70

per cent failure rate of change initiatives.’ (www.connerpartners.
com/how-challenging-is-the-change/the-dirty-little-secret-behind-
the-70-failure-rate-of-change-projects#sthash.bOgjhEXS.dpuf)

Ron Ashkenas wrote in the Harvard Business Review in 2013

that:

‘... most studies still show a 60-70 per cent failure rate for
organizational change projects – a statistic that has stayed
constant from the 1970s to the present.’ (https://hbr.org/2013/04/
change-management-needs-to-cha)

However, as long ago as 1995, Professor Hammer wrote...

‘Unfortunately, this simple descriptive observation has been

widely misrepresented and transmogrified and distorted into a
normative statement… There is no inherent success or failure
rate for reengineering.’

There was nothing in ‘Cracking the Code of Change’ in the

Harvard Business Review to actually support or justify the
‘brutal fact’ and no mention of where it came from.

The simple fact seems to be that once published by (a) reputable

scientist(s), a statistic is accepted as being right. In Chapter 1
we looked at Aristotle’s ‘Model of Proof’. The ethos argument
explains what has happened here; reputable people have made a
statement and we generally accept that they know what they are
talking about. When more reputable scientists repeat the initial
assertion, usually in their work’s references, the ethos strengthens.

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 ‘70 per cent’ looks like a logical statistic. It has more logos
potential than ‘many’, ‘most’ or ‘a lot’. So added to the ethos, the
assertion becomes even more likely to influence.

Once established the assertion gets repeated and repeated often

enough it reaches a position where it is almost irrefutable.

Almost irrefutable.

More recently, there has been a significant amount of questioning

regarding this ‘70 per cent of change initiatives fail’ assertion:

www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/markhughes-060910.pdf

conversationsofchange.com.au/2013/09/02/70-of-change-
projects-fail-bollocks1

Believers might accept that the 70 per cent statistic is unproven

but claim that it is still quite viable, based on their own
experience and or anecdotal evidence. These challenges, however,
set out some very plausible arguments against the underlying
likelihood.

It is important to note that these challenges are not dismissive

of the need to plan and execute change sensibly. Their primary
thrust is to attack the fear-mongering that is generated by the
dilemma that such a massive likelihood of failure may engender;
in other words, to dilute the pathos argument (back to Aristotle
again). Under the pressure of a clear need to do something
different, but faced with the choice between ‘fail by stagnation’
and ‘fail by attempting to change’, it is hard to make a rational
decision (see Chapter 28).

Ok, that pooh-poohs the so-called scientific evidence; what

can you do with this new knowledge that the old knowledge
was dodgy?

When someone quotes this ‘fact’, ask them why they believe it.
Have they checked any empirical research? Have they questioned
it at all; what defines a change programme or reengineering?

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 What defines success? What effect does this statistic have on their
approach to instigating or managing change in the real world?

Don’t repeat the statistic yourself; you may be challenged on it by

someone who is aware that it is little more than an urban myth.
It also has potentially dangerous side effects; faced with a 70 per
cent chance of failure it can lead to resistance to change or even
a total denial that change is the lesser of two evils. It can create
a negative attitude to any (sensible) plans you create; ‘you led us
into a situation where we desperately need to change, you say
that change is 70 per cent likely to fail, what confidence do we
have that you are the person to lead us out?’

If you do need to change, simply make sure you plan for it

sensibly. Chapter 38 covers a study that may help in this activity!

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Don’t pass on stuff that you hear without challenging it.
• Don’t blindly believe everything you see hear or read;
challenge it.
• Remember that:

‘By doubting we are led to question,

by questioning we arrive at the truth.’
Peter Abelard

Source
conversationsofchange.com.au/2013/09/02/70-of-change-
projects-fail-bollocks1

See also
Chapter 1 – Spreadsheets alone do not a judgement make

Chapter 28 – What happens when you (or someone you manage)

make decisions under pressure?

Chapter 38 – Learning from successful change

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 38 Learning from
successful
change

Before you spend a heap of money employing a firm of

‘change management consultants’ read this chapter... it may
save you a fortune

‘Change is the only constant’: we’ve known this since Heraclitus

said it (in Greek) in around 500 bce. Generally speaking,
managing change is a bit more involved in the 21st century than
it was 2,000 years ago.

IBM carried out a survey in 2013/2014 that looked at the

experiences people had of deliberate change programmes, what
proportion of these had been (proportionally) successful and
what factors had contributed to the success.

Between September 2013 and February 2014 the researchers

carried out nearly 1,400 interviews and a series of online surveys.
The results represent opinions of people in 48 countries and
more than 20 industries. Individuals taking part ranged from the
executives who sponsored change projects through to project
managers, change specialists, functional subject matter experts,
other people involved specifically in the change project and
people in corporate roles.

They started off (reporting the results) by sharing the figures for
success of the change projects:

• 45 per cent of organizations achieved ‘less than 48 per cent

success’ in their change projects
• 35 per cent achieved between 48 per cent and 75 per cent
success in their change
• 20 per cent achieved more than 75 per cent success in their
change projects.

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 IBM decided to call the last group, the 75 per cent+ success
achievers, ‘Change Architects’. They analysed what it was that
these organizations did that was different to the majority and,
therefore, what it was that predicted success.

They found three factors that they called: Lead at all levels, Make
change matter and Build the muscle. These titles are a bit all-
encompassing, so they added definition:

Lead at all levels

Success in change programmes starts from the top, but it includes
the entire organization – the leadership sponsors the change, the
middle management owns it and the overall culture promotes
change at every level of the organization. Asked what the most
important aspects of successful change were, the responses were
as follows:

 
Top management sponsorship 83%
A shared vision 64%
Corporate culture that motivates and promotes change 57%
Honest and timely communication 53%
Ownership of change by middle management 51%
Employee involvement 46%
Change agents (pioneers of change) 39%
Efficient structure and roles within organization 27%
Skill-set of project team 24%
Efficient training programmes 18%
Adjustment of performance measures 14%
Monetary and non-monetary incentives 9%
Focus on project management tasks 7%
Regular status reports to management 6%

Note that the elements in cells that are shaded are the elements
that relate to ‘things’, whereas the more important elements
above and unshaded are about people’s attitudes and behaviours.

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 The study then outlines the reported ‘most effective means of
changing attitudes and behaviours’:

 
Involve leaders in role modelling 73%
Establish and communicate a compelling case for change 73%
Identify and empower people who are passionate about 64%
change
Align performance goals 45%
Use reward and recognition systems 28%
Create top-down pressure through hierarchy 10%
Apply sanctions where necessary to achieve compliance 4%

A single statistic that is important in making these things happen

is that in the Change Architects group, 64 per cent of senior
managers were held accountable for the driving of the change
agenda. In other words, it was written into their KPIs (Key
Performance Indicators) and objectives, whereas in the less
successful groups the figure was 45 per cent.

Another major difference between the Change Architects group

and the other, less successful organizations was the relative
use of employee input: 71 per cent of Change Architects seek,
consider and implement employee suggestions in relation to
the changes. This compares to only 52 per cent of the other
organizations.

Make change matter

Critical to the success of change programmes is the clarity of
vision of why the change is vital to the organization. This must
be well understood throughout the whole organization and
throughout the whole lifetime of the change programme.

89 per cent of respondents measured the progress of their change

programme mainly against delivery milestones and through
status reports of task fulfilment.

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 In contrast, the more successful organizations were much more
likely to measure progress against such ‘soft’ factors as the
adoption of appropriate skills and behaviours (57 per cent more
often than all others), understanding of organizational benefits
(52 per cent more often) of the change, commitment to personal
role and case for change (50 per cent more often), and level of
senior leadership support (39 per cent more often).

Build the muscle

Change is a constant but it is becoming increasingly important
for organizational health.

55 per cent of the Change Architects always or regularly use a

formal change management method. This compared with only
42 per cent of the less successful organizations.

36 per cent of the Change Architects trained their responsible

people in the use of a formal change management method.
This compares with only 28 per cent of the less successful
organizations.

33 per cent of the Change Architects consolidate their

change management professionals into a centre of excellence.
This compares with only 24 per cent of the less successful
organizations.

In other words, the organizations who treat change as a recurring

constant rather than an ad hoc reaction to stimuli are more likely
to manage change successfully.

The challenges associated with successfully implementing change

initiatives remain heavy with ‘soft factors’, such as corporate
culture and motivation but when asked to rate the future
challenges to implementing more change, respondents saw the
hard factors (marked * below) as increasingly significant.

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Corporate culture 40%
*Shortage of resources (for example, budget, people) 44%
Complexity is underestimated 44%
*Change of processes 36%
*Change of IT systems 35%
Lack of commitment at higher management 23%
Lack of transparency because of wrong or missing 20%
information and communication
Lack of change know-how 19%
Lack of motivation of involved employees 17%
*Technological barriers 17%

There is the data; what use can you as a leader make of it, to
improve your chances of success?

First, look at your organization; has it got the ‘muscle’? Are you
building change management professionalism as a career path for
people or is it a spare-time activity away from their day job?

Then look at your ‘hard’ factors. Could your ICT systems adapt
to change or are they hardwired to remain rigid? How about
your business processes. Could they flex or would that break the
organization?

If you have change in hand at present, look back at the second

table in ‘Lead at all levels’. Does your senior leadership team
actually role model appropriate behaviours? Are their bonuses
reliant on the success of the change programme? Are the middle
managers actually targeted to achieve the change or is all the
onus on the ‘Change Management Team’? An example the
author came across in the early 2000s was an organization
where the CEO had declared a need to reduce the headcount by
20 per cent through improved efficiency. After two whole years
the head count actually rose by 1.5 per cent! Simply because the
programme to identify and plan efficiency improvements was
being handled entirely by a dedicated team and no one else was
targeted to achieve a reduction in headcounts.

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 If you have change in hand at present and you have a dedicated
team responsible for it, find out what mechanism exists for
employee suggestions to support the change, if there aren’t any,
or they aren’t working, remember that: ‘71 per cent of Change
Architects seek, consider and implement employee suggestions in
relation to the changes. This compares to only 52 per cent of the
other organizations.’

You can increase the likelihood of success by widening the net to

involve and include everyone.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Spread the word that successful change is about more than
successful planning; the soft factors are critical.
• Prepare yourself and your team for the management of change;
work change learning and change targets into the fabric of
everyone’s career and day job.
• Remember that change can be successful; but not often by
chance!

Source
www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/html/gbs-making-change-
work.html

See also
Chapter 15 – Successful change begins with ‘good’
communication

Chapter 18 – Leadership and leaders; let’s get complex

Chapter 28 – What happens when you (or someone you manage)

make decisions under pressure?

Chapter 37 – ‘Science, schmience’... take it with a pinch of salt

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 39 Trust in your
virtual team

It is both important and possible to build and maintain

relationships of trust between people who rarely if ever meet

It is a truth universally acknowledged that to work well with

someone towards a common goal you have to have a reasonable
degree of mutual trust. So what is the situation when you don’t
actually clap eyes on that person for a considerable percentage of
the time you are supposed to be working in harmony?

Kaisa Henttonen and Kirsimarja Blomqvist, of the Lappeenranta

University of Technology in Finland, set out to analyse the
challenges and possibilities in building trust through technology-
mediated communication in virtual teams.

Trust was defined in their study as the ‘expectation of the

capability, goodwill and self-reference visible in mutually
beneficial behaviour enabling cooperation under risk’.

They undertook this by conducting two case studies:

Case study A was a global management team. It was a multi-

state, transnational team working across multiple time zones.
The 23 team members originated from Asia, USA, Australia and
Europe. Eleven worked in their own home country, the remainder
were either from the organization’s home country working
abroad or were from other nations working in the organization’s
home country. 58 per cent spoke English as a second language.

Case study B was a specific work team engaged in service. Its

workflow was regular and ongoing. All team members were
of the same nationality and spoke the same first language. The
13 permanent members were all located in the same country and
time zone; in fact some were co-located in small clusters. Some
had also previously worked in the same team as others. (There

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 were also some ‘temporary’ team members drafted in and out
to cope with seasonal high workloads.) All the team members
undertook similar tasks in the team and job rotation was used.

Both teams were from the same Nordic ICT company.

Approximately 40 per cent of each team took part in the study.

The participants’ opinions, based on their own experiences in

global virtual teams, formed the basis for the research. This
took the form of an interview based on 21 open questions.
These questions were given to the participants in advance as
the questions were quite demanding and needed recall of past
incidents. All the interviews were carried out over less than one
month.

Case study findings

1. There usually needs to be some common trait among the
members of a team so that they all ‘fit’ together. The study
found that these common bonds can be widely varied;
in case study A the declared rationale for the creation
of the virtual team was to improve efficiency through a
centralized management team rather than a disparate group
of independent managers each managing their own site
differently. The fact that the team members were all managers
and all of a similar position in the hierarchy was cited as
adequate to create that fit and confidence in each other’s
competence. In case study B, the team members were selected
from a large pool of volunteers. The team’s work was to be in
an area thought to be full of promise and career potential. This
shared interest and the perception that the team was a selected
‘elite’ was felt to be a significant contributory factor in both
the fit of the individual members and their immediate, innate
perception of their teammates’ capability.
2. In both cases the team members were in contact with each
other prior to any face-to-face meeting. The language used
in emails during this period tended to be rather formal and
stilted with very few social cues. Once the team members
had met, their written communications took on a more
conversational tone. After the initial face-to-face meeting the
volume of communication also rose. This increase in volume

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 and the more conversational tone were cited as contributing to
increases in a feeling of trust.
3. Once the teams started functioning, the action of delivering
agreed results contributed to the building of trust. This was
common across both teams, even where the action of one
member didn’t actually impact operationally on another
directly.
4. A member taking initiative and being proactive, especially in
the sharing of information, contributed to the building of trust
in them specifically.
5. Case study B team unanimously reported that ‘social
information’ in addition to ‘task information’ helped to build
trust. Theirs wasn’t a universal opinion; two members of Team
A were a bit sceptical that social relationships could actually
form virtually, voicing the opinion that relationships need face-
to-face contact in order to evolve.
6. These results concerning social communication indicate that
some element of care and concern, the ‘goodwill’ component
of trust, is present in these interactions. Also that a positive
attitude towards cooperation, the ‘self-reference’ component of
trust is also delivered via this channel.
7. Most of the Team B members suggested that a written, public
record of the integrated goals and matching responsibilities
helped. They also felt that all the team members should
be aware of the assumptions and values behind the
responsibilities.
8. Where team members were interdependent (case study B)
there was evidence that when people are trusted and trusting
they will make extra discretionary effort. Conversely, it
was considered that if some team members refused to make
discretionary effort, when in practical terms they could, it
impacted directly on the trust level within the team.
9. Finally, maintaining as stable a team as possible, not
constantly changing the members, was considered important.

So, there is the data; what use is it to you as a leader and

manager?

Most of the nine findings listed above are also true when you
are dealing with a co-located team. The obvious difference is the

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 lack of face-to-face contact, informal visibility and the difficulties
associated with information flow. Here are six logical actions that
flow from the research:

• If at all possible, get a face-to-face meeting set up quickly so

that the team can physically shake hands and size each other
up. If this is not viable, get a good quality video-link meeting
for the same purpose.
• At this initial ‘kick-off’, get everyone to introduce themselves
and establish their individual credibility to be on the team.
If you send out a heads-up about this in advance you can
ask the team members to prepare a short presentation style
introduction; their completion of this is a subliminal first
delivery of an agreed outcome.
• Open up informal, ‘social’ channels of communication.
Encourage people to share some personal information about
themselves to make them appear more human and less distant.
Don’t force this and certainly avoid trying to do it before the
work-related communications but actively encourage it.
• While it is clear that everyone is busy, and that your formal
virtual meetings need a sensible agenda, try to get some ‘less
work-related’ chat going. You can do this at the beginning or
end of the formal progress meetings, or have separate meetings
dedicated to this.
• Encourage and publicly applaud any proactive behaviour.
• Ensure that you make your communications as informal as
you reasonably can; while you have to be careful to ensure
that your meaning isn’t lost, you can write like you speak and
speak like you speak, too. Try to spread your communication
media as well; communicate with team members outside the
formal progress meetings on a one-to-one basis as well as
addressing the group. Text a team member just to ask how
things are going, or just to say thanks for a small job. Text is
seen by many as an informal channel of communication.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Speak to your remote team members regularly; one to one and
informally, even if you’ve got nothing to say, ring them up and
ask them how it’s going.

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 • Read back your emails and messages; do they sound serious
and formal? If so make a serious effort to lighten up!
• Remember that it isn’t difficult or slow to build trust in a
virtual team; it just takes a bit more intelligent and concerted
activity.

Source
www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/wbs/conf/olkc/archive/oklc5/
papers/e-3_henttonen.pdf

See also
Chapter 1 – Spreadsheets alone do not a judgement make

Chapter 3 – It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it

Chapter 11 – To follow me they have to be able to see me, right?

Chapter 12 – It takes all sorts to make a world

Chapter 21 – Management and leadership... a hot topic! But for

whom?

Chapter 23 – We’re working nine to five – it’s no way to make a

living

Chapter 32 – ROWE, ROWE, ROWE your boat!

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 40 You can NOT
be serious!

‘Some people think work is a matter of life or death, this is

disappointing; I can assure you it is far more serious than that.’
With apologies to Bill Shankly

With all the responsibility that goes with it, being a leader is no
laughing matter. Running a business is a serious business, and
frivolity should be kept away from the day-to-day challenges of
striving for success.

Or should it?

Humour is common to almost all human interaction and

consequently has an impact on work teams and larger
organizations. Sadly, most managers and leaders fail to take
the subject of humour seriously. Often they simply reject its
numerous benefits. Humour is a multifunctional management
tool that can be used to achieve many objectives.

Eric Romero of Intrepid Consulting and Kevin Cruthirds, lecturer

in the Department of Management at the University of Texas,
published an enlightening (and enlightened) document in 2006. It
was wittily entitled: ‘The Use of Humor in the Workplace.’

The article is a careful study of a range of other academic works,

rather than a single piece of original research in its own right.
As such, it draws on numerous credible sources and it presents
a selection of findings that demonstrate the value of humour to
managers and leaders, even in the dark times of recession and
economic gloom and doom.

Without peppering this chapter with the original references, here

are ten ways that humour can benefit a leader or an organization:

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 1. Senior team members (not just managers but members with
more seniority; i.e. the ones who have been on the team
longest) often feel an understandable and laudable desire
to maintain the team’s identity and integrity. They often
use mildly aggressive humour; good-natured teasing, light
ridicule, a bit of mockery, on the greenhorns. This helps
to shape their behaviours to conform to the team’s norms.
It also ensures that they prove themselves worthy of their
membership of the team. Once the newbies conform, they are
accepted as full members of the team and the ribbing fades
away. Having undergone the initiation they are now proud of
their acceptance and defensive of the team.
2. Group cohesiveness can be achieved and improved both
through positive reinforcement within the group and the
reduction of any external threat. For example, in a group
faced with the threat of external competition, people
often use aggressive humour by making jokes about their
competitors. By deriding the competition, the group members
are placing themselves above the threat and, in doing so,
perceive a feeling of triumph over it.
3. Shared laughter and a bit of fun helps the bonding process.
This enables team members to stick together in the face of
adversity. People need to support and rely on each other to
complete projects or hit targets.
4. Humour also has a positive effect by making interactions
less tense. This aids communication by creating a more open
atmosphere which enhances listening, increases the likely
acceptance of the message and improves understanding.
Humour has an ‘attention-getting’ quality that aids
comprehension and assists in persuasion.
5. Moderate, self-deprecating humour can help a person of
high organizational status to identify (and be identified) with
their ‘audience’. This helps to lower hierarchical barriers
by reducing tension and temporarily reducing the speaker’s
status.
6. Humour can also be used to enhance a person’s power in a
hierarchical relationship. The freedom to use humour is often
associated with higher status people; so the person making
the witty comments must be the boss!
7. Humour can allow one to critique without producing

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 negative interpersonal effects. It can reduce the resistance
people usually feel when they are critiqued because they can
laugh with the person offering the light-hearted criticism.
Shared humour is inconsistent with taking offence, so it often
aids freer and more honest communication.
8. There is strong evidence that humour reduces stress. Joking
about a stressful situation distracts people from fear and
develops a sense of control over it. This can be both for the
person who makes the humorous comment and the others ‘in
the same boat’ who hear the comment and find it gives them
both a sense of control and a feeling that they are not facing
it alone.
9. Humour is linked to improved creative thinking; it promotes
openness to new ideas by relaxing people and making them
less likely to criticize mistakes or reject new ideas. #6 above
leads to a safer environment for people to act on new ideas
more freely. Individuals in a humorous environment are more
likely to engage in creative problem-solving as well as direct
creativity.
10. Humour can be successfully used to make dull but important
routine tasks more interesting.

The study defined different types of humour: self-deprecating

humour, aggressive humour (both full-blooded aggressive and
mild-aggressive), affiliative humour and self-enhancing humour.
Obviously, the different types have different effects in different
situations and therefore the wrong type of humour in the wrong
place can be destructive.

Humour can also be used to encourage people to use/access/

want to attend learning and support material. In a 2005 article
published in Teaching of Psychology, professors Mark Shatz
and Frank LoSchiavo reported that when the designers inserted
a range of humorous and light-hearted elements into an online
course, students logged on more often because they were more
likely to enjoy the experience.

OK, there is the research, what use is it to you as a leader?

Think about the situations that you face every day: managing
people’s performance, defining strategies, setting objectives,

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 handling downsizing or budget cuts, selling to customers, dealing
with people conflicts, solving problems or building your team.
Where might you be able to engender a bit more cohesiveness,
or generate a bit more creativity by injecting just a smidgen of
humour? How might you be able to calm down an irate client,
or improve someone’s performance by using a light-hearted
analogy?

If you have to put together a presentation to the board, or to

the staff, or to fellow managers, could you find some suitably
humorous images to slip into the slides to help people to accept
and remember your content (who knows, you might be able to
keep them awake through the presentation as well!)

‘People learn nothing when they’re asleep and very little

when they’re bored.’
John Cleese

Mr Cleese put his money where his mouth is and in 1972 was
a founder member of the company Video Arts. It is still going
strong more than 40 years later. Watch some of their training
videos; they prove that business and management are too serious
a pair of subjects to be all dull and worthy about.

So what are the big takeaways here?

• Encourage other people to lighten up as well. ‘Gravitas’ may
be seen as important in leadership, but a bit of levity can
induce any of the ten benefits listed earlier.
• Keep a sense of humour about you and use it; you don’t have
to become a stand-up comedian in order to reap some of these
benefits. Just try not to take every situation you encounter as if
you were an undertaker with toothache.
• Remember that this chapter is based on research done by
academics; people who have chosen to work most of their lives
with people who haven’t yet grown up.

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 Sources
rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/09/19/
rspb.2011.1373

www.apa.org/monitor/jun06/learning.aspx

stress.about.com/od/stresshealth/a/laughter.htm

ww2.valdosta.edu/~mschnake/RomeroCruthirds2006.pdf

See also
Chapter 1 – Spreadsheets alone do not a judgement make

Chapter 3 – It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it

Chapter 5 – ‘Workers’ play time’ – is it really worth it?

Chapter 12 – It takes all sorts to make a world

Chapter 33 – Find out what your followers think about you, and
talk to them about it!

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This page intentionally left blank
 Index
360-degree feedback, 190 Complexity Leadership Theory, 102
70:20:10 learning sources, 153–4 consensus, see groupthink
consumer, see customers
absenteeism, 73–9, 169 ‘coordinator’ team role, 69
action learning, 36, 37 Corporate Leadership Council, 91
adaptive leadership, 103–4 corporate trust, see trust
administrative leadership, 104 creativity, 81–2
air quality, 43, 97–8, 99 credibility, 3, 4, 5
Alamo, 109 cross-training, 159
Alexander the Great, 2 customer complaints, see complaints
appreciation, 11, 12 customer stupidity, 110
Aristotle, 1–2, 4, 213 customers, 35, 52, 107–11, 174
assertion-evidence slides, 207–9
Dannon/Danone, 109
‘bad life events’, 29–31 decision-making, 35, 64, 113,
BAE Systems, 201 142–6
BBC, 201, 204 and stress, 162–6
behaviours, 67–71, see also unethical see also groupthink
behaviour downsizing, 123–5, 127–8, 134, 171,
Belbin Team Roles, 68–72 see also redundancy
BITC, 51–2, 55
BLEs, see ‘bad life events’ emotional factors, 4, 18–19, 92, 94
body language, 14, 15–16 employee assessment tools, 112–16
brain, the, 80–3 employee engagement, 91–6
Business In The Community, see BITC and absenteeism, 169
and education, 170
chance opportunities, 47 and income, 168
change architects, 217–21 and pride, 170
change behaviours, 217–19 and productivity, motivation and
change initiatives, 212–15, 216–21 stress reduction, 170
change management practices, 84–9 and risk, 169
change, see change management and service delivery, 170–1
practices and sickness, 168
Chartered Institute of Personnel and and staff turnover, 168–9
Development, 73–6, 79, 117, 136 during downsizing, 171
Cleese, John, 230 Employee Value Proposition, see EVP
CLT, see Complexity Leadership employees’:
Theory assessment of managers, 118–20
commitment, 92–4 motivations, 8–11, 92–3
communication, 14–19, 85, 86, 88–9, wellbeing, 40, 41, 52, 97–100
137 workplace involvement, 41, 43, 54,
peer-to-peer, 158 64, 86, 89, 91, 95, 115
verbal, 14–19 enabling leadership, 104–5
complaints, 107–11 engagement, see employee engagement
due to customer stupidity, 110 engagement levers, 95
due to mis-selling, 108 ethos, 3–5, 39, 56, 144, 213–14
prevention of, 107–9 EVP, 196–9
root causes of, 108–11 exercise, 82
‘completer/finisher’ team role, 69 exploration, 159

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 feedback, 35, 119, 150–1, 157–8, 180, listening, 19, 120–2, 134, 136–40,
189–93 189, 192
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, 23, 25 logos, 3, 4–5, 39, 214
Flesch Reading Ease test, 23–4 long-term absences, 76
Flesh, Rudolf, 22–3, 24 luck, 45–9
full-time workers, 130–1, 133 luck school, 49
lucky hunches, 47–8
Generation Y workers, 148–52, see
also millennial generation management skills, 118–22, 137,
Goodman, John, 107–11 191–3
grammar check, 24–5 talent management, 195–9
green working environment, 97–101 managers, 117–22
group cohesiveness, 228, 230 managers’ perceptions of staff, 9
groupthink, 142–6 Mattel, 202
MBTI, see Myers-Briggs Type
happy employees and productivity, Indicator
27–31, 64 meetings, 178–82
home workers, 62–6 memory, 82
house plants, 97–101 mentoring, 151, 158
HR, 11, 12, 36–7, 76, 77, 112, 123–4, micro-businesses, 176
126–7 millennial generation, 173
humour, 227–30 and attitudes to work, 174–5
see also Generation Y workers
IBM, 216–18 mis-selling, 108
identifying with employer, 41, 42, 52, Model of Proof, 2–3, 4, 213–14
54, 64 ‘monitor/evaluator’ team role, 69
‘implementer’ team role, 69 motivation, 7–12, 17
influence, 2–5, 39, 76, 134, 139, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, 112–16
214
informal learning, 151, 155–60 National Institute of Adult Continuing
Institute of Business Ethics, 200–1 Education, see NIACE
neuroscience, 80–1, 82
Janis, Irving, 142–3 NIACE, 24, 25, 26
job satisfaction, 39, 40, 41, 42, 64, night workers, 131–2
117, 139–40 office air quality, see air quality

knowledge economy, 102, 105 office environment, 39–43, 97–101, see

also green working environment;
leader-learner, 36–7 workspaces
leaders, 102, 105–6 on-the-job training, 153–4, 159
developing, 33–8 owner/managers, 130–1
leadership, 102–6, 121–2
adaptive leadership, 103–4 part-time workers, 130–1, 133
administrative leadership, 104 pathos, 4–5, 39, 214
enabling leadership, 104–5 peer-to-peer communication, 158
leader-teacher, 36–8 people management skills, 118, 121–2
‘lean’ working environment, 97–100 ‘plant’ team role, 68
learning, 82 Plato’s Academy, 1
action, 36, 37 PowerPoint®, 5, 206–11
informal, 151, 155–60 praise, 121
on the job, 153–60 presenteeism, 74, 75
sources, 153–4 private sector absenteeism, 74
life goals, 56, 60 productive meetings, 180–2

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 productivity, 27–31, 62–4, 98, 99, 100 teaming, 157
public sector absenteeism, 74 teamwork, 142–6
‘teamworker’ team role, 69
quitting, see work leavers Technical Assistance Research
Programs, 107–11
readability of documentation, 21–6 tonal influences, 14–19
recruitment, 52–3, 67–71, 94, 105, training:
112–16, 134, 136, 197–8, see also courses, 153–61
employee engagement on the job, 153–4, 159
redundancy, 123, 127–8 trust, 128, 200–5
‘resource investigator’ team role, 68 in virtual teams, 222–6
results culture, 183–7 rebuilding, 202–5
Results-Only Work Environment, see
ROWE unethical behaviour, 203–5
return-to-work interviews, 75–8 unlucky employees, see luck
risk-taking and stress, 162–6 unproductive meetings, 179
ROWE, 183–7 upward feedback, 189–93
RTWI, see return-to-work interviews
verbal communication, 14–19
SCREAM mnemonic, 89 virtual teams, 222–6
Severn Trent Water, 201 volunteering, 51
‘shaper’ team role, 69
shift change, 158 Wedgwood, Josiah, 97
short-term absences, 75, 76 weekend workers, 132
Siemens, 201 WFH, see working from home
site visits, 160 whistleblowing, 202–3
sleep, 82 work:
slide formats, see PowerPoint® leavers, 126, 136–40
slideshow presentation, 4, 207–9 motivation, 7–12, 17
SMART objectives, 193 ‘survivors’, 123, 126–9
SMOG, 24 workers, see employees
‘specialist’ team role, 69 working patterns, 130–4
staff turnover, see work leavers full-time workers, 130–1, 133
stress, 75, 127, 162–6 home workers, 62–6
humour as antidote to, 229 night workers, 131–2
supervision, 157–8 owner/managers, 130–1
supportive friend, 57, 59–60 part-time workers, 130–1, 133
‘survivors’, 123, 126–9 weekend workers, 132
work/life balance, 117, 133–4, 149,
talent management, 195–9 174
TARP, see Technical Assistance workspaces, 39–43, 97–100
Research Programs written goals, 56–61
Taylor, Frederick, 97
‘teachable point of view’, 36–7 Yahoo!, 62
team: younger generation’s missing skills,
roles, 68–72 147, 149–52, see also Generation
virtual, 222–6 Y workers; millennial generation

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This page intentionally left blank
 GE lus
Bring a little
genius into
your day.

609273_Leadersh_Genius_Book.indb 237 10/07/15 2:31 PM

 SO MUCH OF WHAT YOU'VE BEEN
TOLD ABOUT BUSINESS IS WRONG
Too many theories, not enough
real-world evidence. The
Genius series cuts through
the noise to bring you proven
research from around the
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INNOVATIVE: Genius is the only series of
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IN-DEPTH: Our authors have read thousands of

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that you don't have to. The 40 most compelling
insights each form a chapter of their Gemas title.

UNRIVALLED: Our authors

PRACTICAL: As well as explaining the a re lea ding authorities in
research, the Genius series shows you their respective fields-their
practical ways to implement these teachings will improve your
in a business setting. work and business skills.

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 COMING SUMMER 2015

ISBN: 9781-173616007
HRR £12.99. Paperback

ABOUTTHE BOOKS
Présentation, sales and strategy are topics surrounded by myths and received wisdom, but it doesn't
nave to be that way. The Genius series brings together 40 proven pieces of research in one place and
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Simon Raybnuld is a speaker and trainer. As a speaker, tie specialises in resilience, emotional
robustness, public speaking and presenting. As a trainer, he is Hie director of the training company
Aware Plus. He worked for 24 years as a university researcher, publishing in many peer-
reviewed journals and developing an internalional reputation.
Graham Jones is a leading aiitlioiily on the sueni» of soiling. He is a Member of Hie British
Psychological Society, a Visiting Lecturer al Umvetsily of Buckingham Business School, and an
Associate Lecturer at Hie Open University. He has written more than 20 books, which have been
translated aiound the world.
Richard Jones is a strategic and change management consul tant and entrepreneur in the field
of télécoms and technology. He has consulted at board and government level on projects from
Kazakhstan to Kansas and from Curacao to Colombo. He has co-founded several different companies.
one of which was acquired for-15 million GBP, another of which floated on the Nasdaq, and anoîher
has now received 50 million USD of investment.

609273_Leadersh_Genius_Book.indb 239 10/07/15 2:31 PM

 JOHN
MURRAY
LEARNING

J M Learning

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