Another award for Stanton Marris!

By John Bruce-Jones
July 22nd, 2010 [ No Comments ]

We’re delighted to announce that our client, The London Borough of Lewisham, has recently scooped an HR Excellence Award. They have just been announced as the winners of the 2010 Outstanding Employee Engagement Strategy award.

We have worked hard with Lewisham on developing the ‘Lewisham Way’ to help engage their people and promote employee participation and breaking down barriers. So we’re thrilled to see all the hard work recognised by the HR annual awards.

The judges said Lewisham showed “genuine involvement from employees at every level – proper engagement, not just for the sake of it”.

Read more on the Outstanding Employee Engagement Strategy Award

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The six Cs of communication

By Beatrice Hollyer
July 2nd, 2010 [ No Comments ]

Nearly every client meeting at the moment touches on conversation that managers may find difficult – communicating downsizing programmes and redundancies, or just the need to manage general uncertainty and anxiety that can affect performance.

When emotions are involved, too many managers handle the conversation badly, or avoid it altogether.

We use a simple, effective tool for communicating high-concern messages, known as ‘The six Cs’. Of course there’s a skill to how you use them, but if you follow them in order, you can be sure you have at least touched all the bases:

  1. Care – show empathy with the person/people receiving the message
  2. Cut to the chase – say in a simple, clear sentence the news you have to communicate
  3. Criteria – give the three main (evidence-based, not opinions) reasons why the decision has been made, or the criteria used to reach a decision
  4. Concerns – acknowledge the concerns of the potential human or personal impact of your message
  5. Confirm – repeat the headline message to re-state the facts, and add any helpful practical details such as next steps
  6. Commitment – genuine personal commitment to provide support, keep people informed, and an organisational commitment to treat people fairly and well.   

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Are you delegating efficiently?

By Virginia Merritt
June 14th, 2010 [ No Comments ]

“Climbing the corporate ladder requires you to hand over day-to-day tasks to others. But many people find this very difficult to do – or do it in a way that leaves everyone feeling unhappy and demotivated.”

I was asked recently by The Financial Times to comment on the knotty task of delegating efficiently. We discussed the most common problems in delegating, how to overcome a fear of letting go, how to delegate well, what tasks to delegate, and who actually gets the credit when you’ve delegated a task?

I think it’s important to create a sense of ownership and empowerment. The phrase we use at Stanton Marris is ‘freedom within a framework’. But don’t let go fully as that can be very demotivating. Monitor, but don’t meddle; follow up and offer support.

When deciding what to delegate, the question you always need to ask here is: ‘Can this task or decision be done or made by someone below me?’ If they have the knowledge or capability, then do it. Hang on to broad horizon things.

Read the full article The Careerist: Delegating efficiently

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3 simple questions to improve collaboration

By Beatrice Hollyer
June 1st, 2010 [ 1 Comment ]

 How many businesses do you know with the word ‘collaboration’ in their set of values? In my experience, there are dozens.

And yet, it’s one of those organisational goals that sometimes seems to run counter to human instincts. As we often say, ‘easy to understand – hard to do’. While everyone signs up to collaboration in principle, it’s certainly not easy to achieve in practice. There are always a thousand reasons why it comes more naturally to work with the people in your immediate team than the team on the next floor, or on another site.

At the most basic level, managers are busy, and talking to people who aren’t in your immediate loop takes time. It might achieve more for the success of the business than keeping your head down in the tunnel of yet another task, but it can be hard to keep that wider perspective.  

What could this mean for your business? Improve your businesses collaboration efforts by asking these 3 questions:

  1. Do you all have a shared vision of the strategy? Go round the table and ask people to describe it in their own words. You could be surprised how much the visions differ.
  2. What is pulling you away from the shared commitment you have all made to the success of the business? An honest answer to this question from each key individual could form the basis of a fundamental re-think about how to re-energise the business and make it work for everyone.    
  3. Has everyone bought into the vision and the strategy? How do you know?  Engaging everyone from the ground up in the development of the way forward is the best way to make sure that, even when times are tough, people retain commitment to the business they have helped to shape. 

 

Advancing your own agenda might win you a few battles. But it won’t win the campaign. And success in today’s economic climate means that focus on the wider campaign, and being willing to let go of any personal priorities that don’t serve the shared goals of the enterprise, could make the critical difference for your business.

Filed under Collaboration, Communication, Partnership.

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You can spend less and benefit local place

By Lynn Fabes
May 19th, 2010 [ 1 Comment ]

George Osborne announced this week that he intends to immediately tackle the £163bn economic deficit with a proposed £6bn worth of cost cutting in public services. Although ministers promise not to damage front line services, this news is bound to strike a note of fear.

Now, I don’t know whether this level of cost cutting is possible – but somehow it has to be because this is just the tip of the iceberg – what I do know is, it is possible to spend less whilst benefitting local places. If all those accountable for public outcomes at a local level could establish the needs of local people, and look at the money that is currently being spent, it is entirely possible for them to organise themselves in such a way as to deliver the best value for money.

So what do you need to make this work?

  • Be outcomes driven by looking at local needs and targeting the approach that gives real results
  • Empower people  at the local level, engage them around issues in their area
  • Have a co-ordinated, customer centric approach where all parties involved work together, removing traditionally segmented silo-working
  • Ensure excellent communication channels exist between parties at both the local and national level, to remove duplication, for example
  • Engage in mature dialogue that enables the identification and discussion about the trade-offs between organisations, to stop doing things and realise benefits across the system. 

This is not a quick fix scenario. It will be hard work and the prizes won’t be felt immediately. It will be a challenge getting all parties to work together and, at times, it might be uncomfortable – it will require a level of trust, a clear framework and a commitment to make it work.

But put these measures in place and it is entirely possible to make savings in a way that’s purposeful and meaningful. It not only mitigates a lot of the pain and risk of cost cutting, but it genuinely enhances the outcome, making local places better. Total Place has shown us that it can be done. From our work on Total Place with the London Borough of Lewisham we have seen that the possibilities are considerable and there for the taking.

Let’s just hope that when George Osborne outlines his plans for the cuts next Monday he doesn’t pull the plug on manifesto pledges and bin localism. Getting spending decisions to be taken in the round at a local level looks like one of the best options the Government has, indeed, I’m not really sure they have another viable option.

Filed under Cost cutting, Local level, Localism, Partnership.

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Partnership working and a coalition government

By Andrew Jackson
May 7th, 2010 [ 2 Comments ]

We’re suddenly faced with the prospect of a coalition government.    That seems a rather scary and unbritish thing.  It doesn’t exactly smack of strong government (remember back to Margaret Thatcher ticking off one of her wet colleagues, Francis Pym, for venturing to suggest that a rather smaller conservative majority might make for better government and stronger Parliament). 

But need we be so scared?

Look at the corporate world.  It is full of examples of alliances and partnerships.  Few companies exist completely as their own island.  They depend on suppliers, retailers and the myriad of others who make up their value chain.  They may be in consortia, for example in large civil engineering or building projects, or they may be in formal alliances as in the airline industry.  All these arrangements require strong agreement about that the deal is and what the expectations are of different partners.  And they require what we consultants call ‘partnership behaviour’.

Look also at the political world – close to home in Scotland, and further away in New Zealand.  In both countries coalition government has forced clearer agreement about policies and given their parliaments a stronger hand.

Just now our politicians could do worse than a quick refresher read of the Institute for Government/Constitution Unit publication on Making Minority Government Work.   There Professor Robert Hazell and colleagues set out a really clear headed analysis of the difference between coalition government and minority government and a very practical set of steps for all the interested parties (not excluding the monarchy) to play.

Filed under Leadership, Partnership.

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If a disaster has your name on it, your brand pays

By Rupert Symons
May 5th, 2010 [ 1 Comment ]

Big process industry companies pay dearly if safety goes badly wrong, even if the front line operators involved in a disastrous accident are subcontractors or suppliers.

On 22 April 2010 the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, operated by BP and owned by US contractor Transocean sank two days after a massive explosion killed 11 workers. Since the explosion, at least 210,000 gallons of crude oil a day have been spewed into the Gulf of Mexico.

In the words of Group Chief Executive Tony Hayward, “We are fully committed to taking all possible steps to contain the spread of the oil spill. We are taking full responsibility for the spill and we will clean it up.”

That’s going to be expensive: BP’s share of the oil clean up costs alone will be £6bn or more according to some commentators. However, that figure does not include the reputational damage that BP is suffering already over the oil spillage, made all the worse by its previous record of problems in the US. In 2005 15 people were killed and 170 injured in an explosion at an oil refinery in Texas City. Some people think the company will have to ditch its brand within a few years.

BP shares have shed around 17 percent since the oil spill crisis began, wiping about £20 billion from the company’s stock market capitalisation.

Mr Hayward also told the BBC “This was not our drilling rig, it was not our equipment, it was not our people, our systems or our processes. This was Transocean’s rig, their systems, their people, their equipment.”

All of this may be true, but as we have seen BP will still pay dearly for this oil spill disaster. In future the industry must find ways of ensuring that all subcontractors and suppliers meet the same high safety standards as the big name companies who hire them.

Filed under Brand, Corporate responsibility.

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Direct engagement over religious marriages

By Beatrice Hollyer
April 28th, 2010 [ No Comments ]

Recently I was honoured to be asked to take the role of independent chair and skilled facilitator for an exciting new initiative from the Ministry of Justice.

In response to the issue of religious marriages not being legally recognised, the Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, supported face-to-face meetings to discuss these issues directly with Imams, given their influence in the community and role in officiating over religious marriages.

Having a religious marriage that is not recognised under civil law, often means people can encounter difficulties with division of assets should the marriage break down, and with inheritance and pension issues if a partner dies. It can mean that couples cannot receive married couples’ benefits and can lead to problems when applying for passports or to institutions such as universities. Feedback from Islamic groups was that people wishing to get married would benefit from more mosques being registered as buildings where marriages can take place.

Thirty seven Imams attended the event, including others with influence in the wider community. The discussion was honest and open, with many difficulties aired and ways forward developed. By the end, many Imams present had decided to register as registrars so as to be able to perform civil marriages as well as religious ones.

The seminar was considered by those attending to be a valuable and worthwhile exercise, hopefully the first of many. For me, it was a powerful reminder that nothing succeeds in communication like face-to-face engagement, where you are able to listen to people and respond to them in the moment. In this way, new solutions to what seem like difficult problems can often be found.

I’d also like to pass on the news that the North African food at the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in West London is absolutely delicious – and the chef is available for private parties!

Filed under Communication, Engagement.

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‘More for less’ versus ‘waste’

By Rupert Symons
April 6th, 2010 [ No Comments ]

Since last year the biggest challenge for the UK public sector has been to find ways of doing “more for less”.  Now, however, we are starting to hear a lot more about “waste” – especially after the recent TV Chancellors’ Debate.  Is this just a change of words, or is the distinction important?

Our big challenge is to reduce the public sector deficit as quickly as possible without putting the fragile recovery at risk. 

In this context, perhaps a focus on waste is useful. It certainly makes people think about how much taxpayers’ money is spent on activity of little or no value.  It might well stimulate them to redouble their efforts to find cost savings.  This would certainly help with reducing the deficit.

However, from an economic perspective, the test is that public funds should be spent on activity which gives the best possible return on investment.  You could consider waste to be part of this story – we certainly should not be spending on activity which gives little, or even negative return.  But, just as importantly, we also should not be publically financing any projects if there are more alternative options which would give a better return.  When you think about it like this, perhaps “more for less!” makes more sense as a rallying cry.

My impression is that most parts of the public sector are already looking for, and finding, cost savings, and also for more cost-effective options to initiative and projects.  Indeed they have been doing so for some time now.  At the same time, politicians are using the more emotive concept of waste to excite public awareness of the challenges on public spending, and to pressurize the public sector to find savings faster. 

So “waste” is fine for now, but “more for less” is the bigger prize.

Filed under More for less, Waste.

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Getting to basics on culture change

By John Bruce-Jones
March 25th, 2010 [ 1 Comment ]

If the term ‘culture change’ has you reaching for the metaphorical remote control to change the channel, you may have heard one too many pious exhortation to change the culture.  I’ve heard two apparently contradictory views on culture recently that reminded me of what is at the root of organisational culture. 

John Seddon of Vanguard Consulting can be relied upon for trenchant and provocative views and he recently took the head of HM Customs and Revenue to task for talking about and investing in culture change.  The point he makes is that if you can get the flow and organisation of work right then many of the organisational conditions around the work will take care of themselves.  He reminds us that organisational culture is not an end in itself – it is a property of the organisation that can serve the purpose and work of the organisation for better or worse.  If the work is inefficient, wasteful and chaotic how can the culture be healthy?

Ed Schein of MIT who is a guru of organisational knowledge if anyone is, held a seminar at the Improvement and Development Agency at the end of last year.  He pointed out that when clients ask him for help on culture change he cannot tell them whether he can help or not as he does not (yet) know what they mean.  His response is to pursue a line of questioning that takes their often vague concept of culture change and narrows it down to a specific shift in behaviours that is required if work is to be done differently.  Culture change that is not specified in this plain language of work related behaviours is a  recipe for wasted effort….continue reading the March Inside Track newsletter

Filed under Culture Change, Organisational culture, Values.

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The Budget and public spending

By John Bruce-Jones
March 24th, 2010 [ No Comments ]

Cuts in the public sector are what everyone has been expecting. How much and how fast is yet to be seen but it is going to be tough. 

 The challenge brings an opportunity because chopping piecemeal here and there won’t deliver the savings; so public service organisations will have to re-think what is delivered, how it is delivered and the system of institutions that do the delivering. 

It’s time to demolish silos, cross boundaries, get over precious professionalism, ignore the usual excuses and do what is right. 

Read the Budget at a glance  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8584608.stm

Filed under More for less, Organisation design.

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Leadership development 1,000 at a time

By Marcus Druen
March 12th, 2010 [ No Comments ]

On stage

The old adage goes: leadership development is a tough, laborious and lengthy process, and usually happens one person at a time. When tackling it, the industry norm is to plump straight for 1:1 coaching or small group leadership courses, which are more often than not costly ventures. But are they really impactful enough, how about challenging the norm and trying something different?

What do you do if you only have one hour to work with a leadership issue, and an audience of 1,000 people? You book a big theatre in the West End, work with actors to bring the leadership issue to life, and you facilitate a short and crisp session for impact.

One of our clients did just that, and the topic of the hour was leadership on safety issues, the goal of the session to make them “think again” about their leadership behaviours and the impact it has on their safety culture.

A critical success factor for a session of this size is to manage the energy in the room. It’s a bit like photography, often you have the opportunity to take several shots of a scene, but when you only have one chance, you have to get it right first time. It’s the same when on stage instructing 1,000 people to discuss their observations in pairs, there is no room for error.  They only have a few minutes and can’t waste precious time on understanding what the task is.

It’s important to strike a balance between encouraging your audience and increasing their level of discomfort to get your message across – not an easy task with such a large audience. So pick a target of 3-5 audience members and focus on them as your representatives of the wider audience. Don’t be afraid to ask challenging rhetorical questions, backed up with the right tone, pace and body language to drive the message home.

The success of the event was evidence that you should think again if someone says you can’t run an effective session with 1,000 people. So why not run your next business critical session on the big stage?

Filed under Communication, Engagement, Leadership.

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Employee engagement award nominations

By Beatrice Hollyer
February 5th, 2010 [ No Comments ]

Two Stanton Marris clients have recently been nominated for awards for our work with them.

London Borough of Lewisham and Birmingham City Council have beaten tough competition to be nominated for the Employee Engagement award by Local Government Chronicle. The nominations highlighted ‘cutting edge corporate work’ which displayed councils’ ambition and imagination.

Lewisham LBC has been nominated for the ‘Lewisham Way’, an innovative service transformation programme developed with HR by Stanton Marris to engage teams across the council in service improvement. 

Birmingham City Council’s BEST programme, which has already won four major awards for the combined BCC BEST team and Stanton Marris, has been nominated again for transforming employee communication and engagement.  35,000 employees have experienced a BEST workshop, resulting in motivation up from 56% to 83%.

We congratulate our clients on their nominations and are proud to be part of their success.  The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on 24 March 2010 at the Grosvenor House Hotel, and we wish them both the best of luck.

Filed under Engagement.

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Mindful leaders

By Virginia Merritt
January 21st, 2010 [ No Comments ]

businessman

Recently on TV a small feature caught my attention. It reported a rather surprising innovation being trialled in a secondary school in Kent which is using lessons on building ‘mindfulness’ to help the pupils be more aware of themselves and what is going on around them.  The pupils themselves are already saying that it is helping them to focus more both in class and in their school work and achieve better results. The classes are simply exercises in ‘mindful meditation’ 

Mindfulness meditation is a Buddhist idea also known as ‘insight’ because the intention is to gain insight into the true nature of reality.  While concentration involves focusing our attention on a single object, in mindfulness, every aspect of experience is welcomed and appreciated.

This strikes me as something that would be a useful technique for busy leaders who are aware that they and their organisations have become ‘addicted to action’ (a phrase used by a client recently to describe their prevailing culture). To help break the habit, leaders need to learn how to become more mindful; in our risk-aware yet very complex worlds, a mindful leader is someone who will intuit sooner what is going on, ask the right questions and ensure that the important things are being prioritised.

To be mindful leaders, we have to take on the role of an impartial observer of everything that passes before our attention.  Our intention is not to be focused, but rather to be mindful, that is, to be fully aware and awake of what is going on in the present moment.  It is being used as a key concept in leading important issues like safety to spot potential fatal risks, but it’s one that surely has currency as a core leadership attribute for us all.

Filed under Leadership.

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How to live on Planet Introvert

By Rupert Symons
January 8th, 2010 [ 2 Comments ]

Planet Introvert

About 25% of the population are introverts.  This is a minority, but a significant one, especially since there seems to be a greater concentration of introverts amongst intellectually gifted people.

Myers Briggs defines introversion in terms of the source of energy which a person draws on in order to function in the world.  Introverts get their energy from within.  Extroverts need external stimulation (a bit like lizards in the sun). Jung says that we all prefer to behave as introverts or extroverts – one or the other.  We are born with this preference, and it remains with us throughout our lives.  However, this does not mean we cannot behave in other ways.

If you are an introvert, there are some very interesting things going on in your head and your heart.  Myers Briggs identifies four functional preferences (sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking), all of which play out in a person’s behaviour.  But they do so in a particular order (from most preferred to least preferred). So the first thing introverts can do to bring balance to their personality is to focus on their second preference.  It’s the easiest one to work on, and usefully it happens in the outside world – so people will notice the change quickly.

Practice makes perfect, so try out small ways of extravert-like behaving during your day.  Here are some examples:

  • Take a look at your diary and move meetings so that they occur when you will have most energy
  • If you have friends who are introverts, or many of your colleagues are introverts, talk to them about their experiences of this preference.
  • At the next meeting you attend, seek out a participant you have not met before and introduce yourself to them before someone introduces you
  • The next time a thought occurs to you in a meeting, say it rather than writing it down
  • If someone asks a question in a meeting, get the first word in rather than waiting for everyone else to speak

Click here to read the full article on ‘How to live on Planet Introvert’

Filed under Communication, Engagement.

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Do we have the talent we need for the future?

By Virginia Merritt
December 4th, 2009 [ No Comments ]

Looking to the future

This is the question many business leaders are now asking themselves. The recession woke us up, forced us to evaluate our business propositions (a good thing in my view), prompted us to redefine our strategies for the changing marketplace and that is now bringing hard questions about our current talent into sharp focus.

I think it’s shown that in the good times we were much more focused on managing the talent we needed for today; attracting the best, developing and retaining the people that are critical to delivering results in the short term. And we didn’t have to worry too much about the performance of some people who were comfortable in their roles, doing a good job overall, but maybe in danger of plateauing in terms of contribution to the business.

That’s changing – and although there are always some notable exceptions of forward-looking organisations who anticipate the skills and attributes they need for the future – the vast majority have not been preoccupied with looking round the corner when it comes to new skills, new jobs and new generations of talent. A scary fact is that the top 10 jobs that are in most demand now did not exist just five years ago. As someone quoted to me last week, “Leadership is about fixing the future state”, so what are we doing as senior leaders today to assess and plan for the workforce we need in say 2012 to create and deliver the future?…

Read the full article in the November issue of MT Entrepreneur Weekly

Filed under Leadership, Talent management.

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Lessons to learn from the public sector

By Andrew Jackson
November 12th, 2009 [ No Comments ]

Lessons to learn

It used to be a one way street.  A public sector anxious to learn would look to the private sector to know how to do things better.  From the public sector reforms of the 80s where ‘private = good, public = bad’, to the Blair reforms with an increasingly mixed market, the public sector has always had a slight inferiority complex about the private sector.  (This perpetuated the myth that there was one homogenous thing called the ‘private sector’ which was uniformly excellent in all that it did…)

But there are distinct signs of the tables turning.   There are some real lessons of excellence that the private sector can now learn from the public sector.  Let’s start by remembering that government runs some really big businesses… and well (look how Job Centre has responded to a very rapid rise in unemployment in the last year as an example).   But it goes deeper than just running big businesses well.

Most big businesses nowadays work in a global context and have a multiplicity of shareholders, customers and business partners to manage.  Yet look at the complexity of the delivery of public services.   ‘Managing stakeholders’ has become a very sophisticated business in government.  For example, the Department of Health is actively working with industry to develop coordinated action on the obesity, alcohol and wider public health agendas. The Foreign Office is in many ways a world leader at stakeholder management.   Local government manages complex local partnership arrangements across health, police, education, business and the communities they serve…

Read the full November Inside Track newsletter here
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Filed under Inside Track, Stakeholder Management, Values.

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What makes boards great?

By Beatrice Hollyer
October 30th, 2009 [ No Comments ]

What makes boards great

The board of a newly-merged business recently put ‘getting to know each other better’ at the top of their wish list for the board. Given their huge strategic agenda and complex business challenges, enjoying a board dinner or two together could seem like fiddling while Rome burns.

In fact, knowing each other as people is the basis for respect between board members, and respect is the basis of trust.  Members of the board had instinctively latched on to the thing that would make most difference to them adding real value to the business. 

Research shows that the conventional wisdom about what makes for good boards – regular attendance, relevant skills, manageable size, etc – are insignificant compared to good relationships, characterised by open and honest discussion, mutual challenge, and commitment to a clear, shared purpose.

 The secrets of what makes a good board turn out to be not structural, but social. .. 

Read the full October Inside Track newsletter here
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Filed under Inside Track, Leadership.

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Make the most of your critical friends

By Virginia Merritt
October 16th, 2009 [ No Comments ]

Critical friends

It’s good for SMEs to have a number of people that they can call upon for advice and support.

A few years ago when my business was reviewing its proposition and strategy, we realised that we’d reach that age – and growth stage – when we would benefit from a fresh, external perspective: people who were prepared to challenge our thinking and help us reach sound market-based decisions.

We didn’t want people who would take on the formal roles of non-executives (though that of course may be the best option for many larger businesses); we needed people with whom we could share our strategic dilemmas, so they could provide us with an objective steer. Our solution was to set up an informal advisory panel of three or four ‘critical friends’…

Read the full article in the October issue of MT Entrepreneur Weekly

Filed under Leadership, Strategy process.

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Attracting talent without big bonuses

By Tom Byam-Cook
September 15th, 2009 [ No Comments ]

Attracting talent

‘Bonuses are back’ makes a good headline, but it disguises the reality of life in the city. Research by ORC Guideline shows that job losses in financial services represent about eight percent of the total UK unemployment figure of 2.4 million.

The old model is broken – for the time being, at least. Many people will look in vain for their big bonus. Without it, people accustomed to this powerful financial incentive for high performance may drift, or become actively disengaged.  This is a serious business risk when a demotivated fund manager could mean the loss of millions in minutes.

Here are some more creative ways financial services business are finding to retain and attract the best talent when you cannot commit to a bonus-linked pay structure:

  • Focusing on prospects for career advancement
  • Creating opportunities to develop marketable skills
  • Fine tuning motivation through frequent, light-touch employee satisfaction surveys
  • Designing more imaginative compensation programs…

Read the full September Inside Track newsletter here. You can also sign up for free Inside Track membership.

Filed under Inside Track, Talent management.

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The MacLeod Review on employee engagement

By Andrew Jackson
September 1st, 2009 [ No Comments ]

MacLeod Review

I read with interest the recent MacLeod Review by David Macleod and Nita Clarke, in essence a comprehensive review of employee engagement.  At its heart is a simple, clear message.  Employee engagement does make a difference to business performance.  There’s nothing new in that, but the real import of the review is the rallying cry it makes for a national awareness campaign. 

That provides a real test for Peter Mandelson’s Department for Business Innovation & Skills.  Can government show the imagination and skill to galvanise employers and leaders to put the lessons of this report to work?  For if employee engagement is a key driver of productivity, then surely this report should provide a core agenda for a department which has economic recovery and long term economic sustainability at its heart.

Of course, the subject is close to our hearts as consultants.  It embodies a philosophy that underpins much of our work.  It’s warming to see Birmingham City Council – the largest local authority in Europe - singled out as a case study.  This was based around benchmark work we did a couple of years ago in support of the team there.  It has since won numerous prizes for innovation and engagement excellence.

One of the lessons we take from our work is that employee engagement is not some sterile process to be achieved through complex plans and communications structures.  Rather it needs to be steeped in a context that people can truly engage with. The success in Birmingham was down to people believing in the strategy. Employee engagement for employee engagement’s sake doesn’t work.

Another key learning goes to the heart of leadership intent and attitude. Most people in the workplace have a deft sense of how authentic their leaders are and whether they are being genuinely involved in the running of the business.  It is only when that leadership authenticity underpins employee engagement that you reap the real dividends.

So, go and read the report. But most of all take its lessons to heart.  Do something in your workplace to help raise awareness of the importance of this subject.

Filed under Engagement, Leadership, Strategy process.

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The importance of flexible leadership

By Anna Simpson
August 25th, 2009 [ No Comments ]

Flexible leadership

In times of uncertainty, people look towards their leaders more than ever before and need reassurance that their leaders are taking the organisation in the right direction. So it is crucial in these times that leaders take a step back and consider the impact that they are having on the organisation through their leadership style.

Leaders often assume that leadership style is a product of their personality, rather than a choice they make. A recent Harvard Business Review article by Daniel Goleman, entitled Leadership That Gets Results, suggests that the most effective executives use a variety of different leadership styles, switching between these in different circumstances.

There are six basic leadership styles, each based on emotional intelligence competencies: Coersive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pace setting and coaching styles…

Read the full August Inside Track newslettter here

Filed under Inside Track, Leadership.

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Putting priority on communication

By Virginia Merritt
August 11th, 2009 [ No Comments ]

Man with megaphone

We’ve always known that communication is a core skill for a successful leader. It’s hardly surprising that this core skill is being severely tested in our more testing market environment. More surprisingly, it’s the skill where leaders still lack confidence and find it hard to work out both what to do and how to do it. As one senior HR director said to me recently: ‘Don’t assume that leaders know how to handle difficult news’.

In times of rapid change, people are searching daily for clues about the state of the business and will look for it by magnifying every bit of leadership behaviour, interpreting it, looking for hidden meaning and signals; they need to see you to see the whites of your eyes so they can be reassured about the authenticity of what you are saying. All too often, in a time of crisis the response from senior directors is to cut themselves off from the day to day business while they go into a huddle to work out the new crisis strategy or plan. At that moment invisible leaders are the most damaging action to the business. At times like this you need to be on the front foot with your own highly visible, personal and relentless communication campaign in order to manage the mood of the moment.

From my experience, we have to turn communication on its head; see it as listening and learning rather than informing and involving. As soon as leaders realise the value of the information they can acquire by being out there talking to people about their concerns, about their customers and about their business, they can see it as quite a sophisticated form of radar communications, and as a valuable data gathering activity, rather than a chore. It’s a win-win, as people feel reassured to see their leader face-to-face, and leaders feel reassured by picking up signals directly about the environment without any forms of interference. So what can you be doing?

  • Give weekly updates – via an informal channel such as a personal blog or email – and in your own words
  • Make weekly visits to all sites and offices, have informal lunches with small groups of employees, listen to what’s going on
  • Share the key challenges – ask people what they think should be done e.g. ‘How can we maintain our margins in these highly competitive times?’ – you will be surprised at the ideas that will come in
  • Communicate immediately when you take a decision – don’t leave people in the dark
  • Celebrate an early success that shows the new strategy or plan is working, help people to believe it’s the right thing to do.

People know things are changing; they want to see that the company is keeping pace with those changes. So avoid telling them what you think they want to hear and focus on being with them, being honest and being alert to the signals that will tell you when it’s time to change tack.

Filed under Communication, Leadership.

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Staying connected in stressful times

By John Bruce-Jones
July 30th, 2009 [ No Comments ]

Connected hands

Many people are familiar with the Myers Briggs Type Indicator test for whether you draw your energy from within yourself (in Jung’s term, Introversion), or from people and outside things (Extroversion). 

What may be less widely known are the ways that personality types shape responses to stress. When the share price is tumbling, the groups of employees seeking refuge in the pub are likely to be E types; the I types may become withdrawn and stop connecting with others. Neither response positively contributes to leading the business through tough times.

 So how to find the constructive middle way, whatever your natural inclination?

  • Walking and talking – more than ever, when the business and its people are under stress, touching base with people and showing interest in them helps teams to stay connected
  • Listening and responding, not reacting – when people want to download, give them a hearing before you join in or suggest a different view.
  • Notice your own behaviour – in tough times, the signals sent by leaders’ behaviour are louder than ever. Make sure yours are calm and consistent.
  • Stay cheerful but grounded in reality – spin makes people suspicious, but good humour helps people pull together, even when times are tough.

Filed under Engagement, Inside Track.

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Time to get your strategy right

By Virginia Merritt
July 21st, 2009 [ 3 Comments ]

In today’s edition of the FT, management columnist Stefan Stern, writes that “business leaders ought to recognise, as they catch their breath after months of turbulence, that the strategy they were pursuing until recently is unlikely to be right for today. .. Leaders need to develop sensitivity to the mood of the organisation if they want to avoid the unpleasant surprise of being confronted by colleagues who refuse to follow the script.”

As we know, organisational identity offers a point of stability when everything else is changing.

Stefan goes on to say “in a battle between culture and strategy, culture usually wins. So in drawing up new strategy, make sure it is not in conflict with an organisational identity that could otherwise engulf and overwhelm it.”

Read the full article Time to get your strategy right

Filed under Leadership, Organisational identity, Strategy process.

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Giving a damn actually matters

By Lynn Fabes
July 8th, 2009 [ No Comments ]

It never ceases to strike me how much the successful leaders we speak to care deeply, not only about achieving delivery and results, but also about their people and what their organisations are really trying to achieve. This is often in the face of the multiple challenges and risks that leadership brings, now in these challenging times more than ever.

These successful leaders manage to marry caring deeply with having a clear line of sight to the desired outcomes and the real purpose of their organisation. They know exactly what the goals are and keep them firmly in mind and, importantly, they are able to transmit that sense of passion and vision to their people.

Allowing passion and caring to show takes courage and a deep seated conviction for leaders. You can only do this if you are genuinely sighted on what you are aiming to achieve, if you know what is important and believe that it is worth the challenges that you will inevitably face as leaders.

Read the full July Inside Track newsletter here

Filed under Communication, Engagement, Inside Track, Leadership.

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A clutch of awards!

By John Bruce-Jones
June 26th, 2009 [ No Comments ]

A clutch of awards

We always choose to work in ‘blended teams’ with our clients, building the ownership and skills for ongoing work to transform performance, and helping to boost energy and commitment.

So we are especially delighted at the recent success of our client, Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe. BCC has just been garlanded with no less than four awards for its BEST programme, which was designed, developed and piloted with Stanton Marris.

BEST is an innovative and ambitious employee engagement programme designed to create a culture of innovation. Its success has been recognised in the past two weeks by four major prizes: 
1. Gold Award for HR Excellence, HR Excellence Awards 2009
2. Employee Engagement Strategy of the Year, HR Excellence Awards 2009
3. People Management prize, 2009 Management Journal Awards
4. HR Innovation prize, PPMA Awards 2009

All of us at Stanton Marris congratulate our client on this tremendous success.

For further information on the Birmingham BEST programme

Filed under Engagement.

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Bringing strategy evolution alive

By Beatrice Hollyer
June 5th, 2009 [ 1 Comment ]

Breakfast forum

We’ve just had the first opportunity to discuss the findings of our research with a group of clients. A lively and enjoyable discussion over breakfast reminded us of the power of thinking together.

Testing the key themes in the report against the challenges facing our clients in their businesses today, it was exciting to see a consensus emerge that brings together the four themes in a compelling story. One that’s not only relevant to the current challenging market conditions but also, as someone said, a model for the next five to ten years.  

We summarise it as follows:

  • The old model for organisations and leadership is gone for good – look at the impact of the internet and what’s happening now in politics. Hierarchical authority is disappearing as people demand honesty and accountability from their leaders and entitlement to a voice for themselves – at work as well as in broader society. (This points to the research theme around the need to revive the strategy process.)
  • The recession has given healthy impetus to essential changes in the way we do things, especially leadership, communication and complexity.  (All of which carry organisational risks to the execution of strategy.)
  • Leaders need increasingly to be role models and facilitators of honesty and the courage to tell the truth across the organisation – this is personally challenging for individual leaders and leadership teams. (Linked to the research theme around adapting leadership.)
  • Even when leaders get this right, the risk is that it breaks down in the management chain. The whole organisation needs practical support to  act consistently with what they value about the organisation, and to share common purpose about what’s best for the firm. (Drawing on the notion of a collective organisational identity to do this.)  

We look forward to seeing these discussions continued and new voices joining them on this blog!

Filed under Leadership, Organisational identity, Organisational risk, Strategy process.

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The vital ingredient in communication

By Rupert Symons
May 20th, 2009 [ 3 Comments ]

Handwritten letter

I found myself wondering why the personal letters sent by the Prime Minster to those affected by the recent smear scandal landed so badly.  Much of what he did was right. He used a very personal channel (handwritten letters) to communicate his messages.  He acted swiftly. The letters were short and clear.  He showed that he had taken action.  So what was missing?

In delivering ‘high concern’ messages, it is vital to start off with a demonstration of empathy.  This doesn’t mean an apology necessarily. Rather it means putting yourself in the recipient’s shoes and acknowledging their emotions.

So, one extra sentence at the beginning of the letters might have helped – something like: “I know that you must be feeling justifiably angry and disgusted by these events.  I felt the same when I heard about them”.

Empathy costs nothing, but can make all the difference in times of emotion and crisis.

Read the full May Inside Track newsletter here

Filed under Communication, Inside Track, Leadership.

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The risk of risk departments

By Beatrice Hollyer
April 28th, 2009 [ 1 Comment ]

Black swan

Nassim Taleb’s 2007 book ‘The Black Swan’ has been back in discussion recently as people debate whether the economic crisis fits the category of ‘black swans’ – something no-one could have predicted, but of which a single occurrence invalidates previous beliefs (such as ‘All swans are white’). Did anyone really predict the banking crisis? Certainly no-one acted to prevent it.

Taleb’s thesis reminds us of what someone called ‘the risk of risk departments’ – by having a department devoted to risk, you create the illusion that you have dealt with it. In fact, what often derails strategy is what nobody is dealing with – how people behave. A strong culture can be a powerful asset, but I believe it can also entrench behaviours (such as conformism and consensus) that inhibit innovation.

Filed under Organisational identity, Organisational risk.

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Engaging the power of organisational identity

By Katrina Coulson
April 16th, 2009 [ No Comments ]

organisational-identity

When times are tough, more than ever the organisation must pull together and stay energised to succeed. But this is just when the pressures of the recession will tend to push people into battening down the hatches. Instinctively, many individuals will try to protect their jobs by focusing on their own agendas. It can feel counter-intuitive to lift your sights above your individual concerns to focus on the whole firm’s success. So how can leaders help people to do that?

One answer is more face-to-face communication. That personal, human contact will connect with people’s raised emotional needs at times of anxiety and help keep morale stable. One Chief Executive told us, ‘I’ve told managers not to complain about the share price, as that just makes things worse, but try and help people stay positive.’ Another way to tap in to people’s positive feelings about the business they work for is through what we call organisational identity – a reminder of who we are and what we stand for, as an organisation. This might include stories about how the business has come through bad times before, reminders of what its founders believed, or finding ways to reinforce what people value most about the business.

Our recent research shows that many leaders have discovered this route to engaging the heart and soul of the business in the challenge to deliver as a united team. What’s the emotional life of your business? How are you connecting with it?

Filed under Communication, Organisational identity.

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Are we really changing?

By Beatrice Hollyer
April 8th, 2009 [ No Comments ]

blog-signpost

We have all pretty much accepted that the global economic crisis has caused a fundamental shift in the way we will think about doing business from now on. But have we yet made any fundamental changes to the way we do strategy? Some leading companies have reacted by refusing to publish hard financial targets as they know they may struggle to achieve them. Others are being more thoughtful about what needs to be in their place. How can we convince first our people, then our key stakeholders and shareholders that we do have distinctive organisational attributes and market strengths that will help us stand firm and survive the turbulence – not just in tact,  but in fact stronger and more resilient?

Our recent conversations for this research have revealed a new pressure on leaders to be much more explicit about the organisation’s core purpose, its DNA, the unique qualities that are valued by customers and employees alike. This needs to be woven into the strategic thinking right from the start to convince the sceptics that you really do have something to offer.

It would be interesting to know how many companies are reviewing the way they think about strategy in these different times.

Filed under Leadership, Organisational identity.

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So what is strategy evolution anyway?

By Virginia Merritt
April 7th, 2009 [ 3 Comments ]

Strategy Evolution flyer

‘Strategy evolution: adapting to a new world’ brings together the shared intelligence of 45 of today’s leaders on how to make your strategy work in the new business environment -  the culmination of our research, and precious time kindly given up some very busy leaders to share their experiences of the new risks to successful strategy execution.

During these frank conversations we were perhaps surprised to find little evidence of the desire to reduce their exposure to risk. Instead, we found a growing awareness of the need to be open to all the new opportunities present in the changing markets they serve. And if that means identifying and managing the organisational risks that inevitably go with them, they’ll do that better if they stick close to the heart of the business and the passions of the people who make it work. As a result we saw some organisations starting to reconsider the way they develop strategy and others focusing on adapting their leadership – all with the intent of emerging fitter and stronger from the current recession.

We hope this is just the start of a lively debate, and welcome any comments on the research or your experiences of making strategy work in your organisation.

Filed under Leadership, Organisational identity, Organisational risk, Strategy process.

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