Director Job – Careful what you ask for! You just might get it!

I get this a great deal, “I want to be on the board, I want to be a director!”

Normally at this point I pause (generally for cinematic effect) and then ask, “Why in heaven’s name would you want that?”

It appears to be a complicated answer generally wrapped up in the validation of  ego, pay and a feeling that it’s the pinnacle of achievement. Many people feel that being a company director marks them out as being a senior person, often placing them ahead of others who may have MBA’s and maybe even bigger salaries.

But remember, if you are a statutory director then you are legally liable and that’s not a small thing, in fact it’s a really big thing. Not interested in Health & Safety? Well you better get interested! Working in the financial services industry in an FSA (Financial Services Authority) regulated business then you are really going to love becoming an FSA approved person (Oh yes! You’ll love that). You see once you are a statutory director you can’t plead ignorance when they coming knocking reference: corporate manslaughter, insolvency etc… “Didn’t know what was going on”, won’t cut the mustard, not in this day and age.

• Why do you want to be on the board?
• Are you prepared to think about the business as a whole, rather than in your area of vertical expertise?
• Have you developed the competence and capability to function in the boardroom?
• If you are a statutory director are you truly operating as a statutory director or just a very senior manager?

Counter this with the knowledge that ‘you can be the MD of a fish and chip shop if you want”. One of my most memorable moments happened on a workshop I attended with the Institute of Management Studies. I was sat between two senior managers, enquiring about each others roles, the one saying he was a Regional Manager, the other an Area Manager.

The Regional Manager thought she’d won the exchange as in her world a regional role is a larger role than an area role, after a few minutes of chat you could suddenly see that something was wrong:

• Regional Manager with a little smile of self congratulation: “Yes I look after the South, so as you can imagine it’s quite a big role!”
• Area Manager with complete transparency: “Gosh yes, sounds a big job”
• Regional Manager: “So what about your area?”
• Area Manager (slight hesitation, just before the landing of the Top Trump): “Asia and Europe”
• Regional Manager (Modelling a goldfish look): “Oh”

The position you hold is not a validation of who you are or what you have achieved, it’s always relative and very often is only as impressive as the size of the pool you are swimming in.

Yes indeed, be careful what you wish for!

Top Read: The Fish Rots From the Head: The Crisis in Our Boardrooms – Developing the Crucial Skills of the Competent Director - Bob Garratt

360 Degree Feedback – Breakfast of Champions

The famous film ‘Apocalypse Now’ has the immortal words being spoken by Robert Duvall, “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning”, I think as an executive coach I’d say, “I love the smell of 360 degree feedback reports being printed (in the morning is optional)”.

I don’t care who you are, the status you hold or how long in the tooth you are, there’s a little part of you that feels slightly nauseous as your 360 report lands on your desk!

Ken Blanchard said, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions” and you know he’s spot on, whatever the human endeavour, the ability to receive feedback, filter out what is or isn’t applicable and helpful and then do something with it is the absolute differential for success.

Take sports as an example, I teach a martial art called Thai Boxing and it’s a pretty tough old game. As such it attracts two types of people, those that are:

1. Completely open to learning and feedback (I like these)
2. Already thinking they are great, before they even have had a lesson (I have patience with these)

It goes without saying that it’s easier to coach someone who is open to feedback and in the gym you really do get 360 degree feedback, let me tell you everyone has an opinion and just like 360 feedback, it’s not always scientific and backed up with sound credentials….but none the less, it’s still an opinion. A good instructor (the leader of that group) creates an environment where people aren’t just shouting from the sidelines or for that matter where people keep quite. There’s balance! Feedback at the right time, not always just because you want to give it.

A formal 360 process at work can feel like an onerous task, 20-40 minutes of a persons quality time filling out a form that you often have no real sense of outcome with (what ever happens to the feedback?).

Make a 360 feedback live:

1. A slick IT system that is accessible via the internet: So it can be done anytime.
2. Questions that are linked to a leadership behaviour framework: So there is a definable benchmark standard.
3. Complete and utter anonymity. The only people identified are line managers and if you are the only person in a category (the only direct report), then you know about this: Enabling people to write the truth without fear of repercussions.
4. Training for all. Show people how to complete a 360 in terms of language, intent, content: So that their words are received with full credibility.
5. Train (though you may have to call it a Master Class for the senior population) line managers how to turn feedback into some form of Development Plan: So that 360 is seen and felt to lead to something tangible. Preferably changed behaviour!
6. DO NOT (and I’ll say it again), do not under any circumstances use 360 as ‘evidence’ in any form of disciplinary: Because the moment you do this, well you may as well write the whole thing off. People might not like someone, but most of the time they’d rather see the person change as opposed to being ‘sacked’.
7. Demonstrate that 360 generates changes in behaviour, this is change in the individual, the team and ultimately the culture: Via conversation, promotion, development opportunities, forum bring 360 to life as a exercise that adds real value.

Tip: Employee satisfaction surveys should be considered as part of the same process in essence an employee satisfaction survey is the 360 of the business and represents the 360 of the executive team.

Personal Brand – Recession Proof Yourself

Just how recession proof is your career? There is no doubt about it, in uncertain times it pays to think strategically about your career, so that you can maximise opportunities and minimise risk.

So think about your Personal Brand!

When you hear the term Career Management it’s a pro-active statement. The most successful individuals see themselves in terms of Brand. The idea is that just like any commodity your ability to represent yourself is in itself a PR exercise. Tom Peters book ‘The Brand You’ is a typically robust and sometimes over stated work , but portrays brilliantly the Peter’s soothsaying (and often right) view that 90% of the regular jobs in business, such as HR and Purchasing will be gone (or at least greatly reduced) in 10 years to the point where it won’ be a viable career choice.

The idea of Brand You is a fascinating one to employee, leaders and coaches. What we discover as we move through life is that there is a point in your career, where it’s expected that you can do the job. If you’ve been the Group FD for Pepsi Co and Walmart for the last 15 years then its understood that you can do the role, there won’t be a real challenge as to whether you can create an End Of Year Report. The questions that will be asked are whether or not you will:

1. Add value
2. Are an agreeable work colleague
3. People will follow where you lead

Of course there will be the expectation you are technically able, but honestly a good percentage of the people operating at your level are technically able, but consider how many of the work colleagues or bosses you have had, could technically do the job, but some how:

1. They got the ‘job’ done, but didn’t appear to add value
2. Peers either didn’t like them, or at the least were indifferent
3. Their team did as they were told, but were not engaged

As you are moving up the corporate ladder, you validate yourself through your outputs because when you are 21 this is the most viable method to get noticed, “Look at how hard I work, How smart I am and How wonderful are the things I create’. Which gets you moved up the ladder, but then eventually you are in the leadership group, you are at the top of that ladder and everyone who has made it there is: Guess What!? Like you!

But of course they are not. Those that continue to rise are managing their Personal Brand. The manner in which they portray themselves. Remember, “The image you portray is the destiny you chase”. Gerry Roche one of the worlds most respecrted executive recruiters talks about the ‘Essence of Management being Human Sensitivity’ and within this he talks about the ability to recognise within oneself that your differential is the recognition and development are your personal characteristics, with the predominant focus being:

• Human Sensitivity
• Communication Skills

Which both culminate with the ability to ‘get work done through others’. Yes you are with me now. Brand You isn’t just looking the part and having the ‘elevator speech’ ready (though you should), but its about honing the two points above to enable you to feel the pulse of the business and the people within and to be able to communicate to them in the moment in a manner that shows your personal integrity and connection to the moment.

Leadership in a Generation Y World

Forget Generation X, this is Generation Y! Like HD television, Sky+ and 3G: “We want it all and we want it now” and to bring it bang up to date, “we want it whenever and wherever suits us”. On the breakfast programme this morning 2 bosses were arguing over the pros’s and con’s of a flexible workforce and I’m sorry to say that the older of the two combatants was well off cue.

With comments that ran as if from 40 years ago, “when I employed sarah, I employed her for 4 days a week, now she only wants to do 2 days, which means I have the inconvenience of having to find someone to do the other 2 days”; the classic tight pan of the camera showed the other MD with a face that said “Dinosaur”, as she said, “With some careful planning, mainly done by those whom it benefits, honest boundaries and some personal integrity and to be honest I have a team of high performing individuals who value the set up we facilitate”. 

It was a classic example of ‘never the twain shall meet’. Generation X was about rebellion and getting what was rightfully yours, Generation Y’s are a far more subtle group, not neccessarirly by design, but more by the fact they really just won’t play the same game, as a young lady I was coaching recently said, “to be honest guy if they don’t do the right thing then I’m not going to waste my life fighting the good fight, I’ll vote with my feet”.

And that’s probably where the difference sits, the recognition that over a decade of ‘flexible employement’ was foisted onto the population as big business recognised it could reduce overhead via part-time and contract workers, the employment base morphed, and kids grew up not expecting a job for life and in line with improving technology they don’t want ‘flexibility’, they ‘expect’ it.

Case in point I heard a brief few words on the radio, when a lady from Cisco Systems demonstrated their new conferencing facilities at a technology college, “we showed them all this really cool stuff that we’d been perfecting for the last two years, we were so proud of how well it all worked. They just kind of stared at us and one of them said, “so it’s like my xbox then!” and basically that was the end of that.

Generation Y has grown up in the technological revolution and where as we were amazed by the next step (remember how CD’s ‘were’ amazing), the GenY’er predicts, expects and gets! the next wonderment not in years to come but as in the word from Fat Boy Slim ’right here, right now’.

Can the leadership of larger enterprises understand this new demographic? It’s tough, intellectually it’s easy to understand (see above), but to really understand this idea, is to accept that the balance of empowerment is shifting and I predict we are seeing a move to the workplace ‘facilitating’ workers input as opposed to the ‘contracting’ of their activity.

As Wolfy Smith said, “Power to the people” or maybe it should be “the lunatics are taking over the asylum?” Depends where you sit I guess.

Credit Crunch and Leadership Imagination.

It looks like the ‘good times’ are over again! I’ve really never felt completely happy with that sentiment, as it seems to me that those at the top of the proverbial tree, never really have that bad a time in the ‘bad times’.

I mean, really, if you are earning £150K+ with a 50% bonus, then you are doing alright, I mean how bad can the bad times be? Spain instead of the Bahamas, a BMW instead of a Porsche? Boo hoo!

Though it has to be said, it’s far more fun to work in a commercial setting when people are optimistic and the business has a sense of it can do no wrong. All of a sudden though the brakes are on and the ‘slash and burn’ has begun. Even the businesses that are making a healthy profit suddenly get a case of the heebe geebe’s and look to their bottom line to ensure they are not being seen as frivolous.

What’s also interesting is the psychology of leadership in these times, supposedly ‘strategic’ decisions often are the demonstration of a castrated executive team; who in reality cut back the entrepreneurial spirit and imagination, in a direct parallel to the cutting back of a budget. It shows up those who ‘need a budget to create movement’ and those who can ‘create movement on a budget’

But we know in our hearts that this is all cyclical, just like it always has been and as surely as Bell Bottoms will come back into fashion, there will be an up turn. But in the interim, opportunities will be missed, development curtailed and hires delayed.  But the reality is nothing has changed, not really!

Guess what? The sun will (I promise you) rise in the morning and the morning after and the morning after. This is important why? Simply because when you know in your heart that things are truly still the same, it’s a test of the leaders long term strategic thinking that sends a message out to the business. Keep going, nothing has really changed! Don’t believe the hype! We are strong and we know what we are doing!

Executive Coaching – Change Management Top Tips

Change projects have a habit of only reaching a partial level of success, in regards to their initial purpose. The most referenced statistics on the succes of change projects indicates a general 70% failure rate. Which is a humbling thought when one considers it might be you reputation and/or career on the line.

Over the years I have coached many senior leaders who have often shared their thoughts on change and change projects, these have mingled with my own experiences and come together nicely in these Top 9 Tips.

Top 9 Tips for delivering a successful change project  

1. It’s the people
(aka: Say it as it is, always, amen brother!)

When giving a presentation the saying goes, ‘tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you’ve told them!’… it’s one of those classic everyone already knows it statements, which though basic, is also completely accurate. Now consider that all change programs require a presentation of Why, When, Where, What, Who and How. If you where giving this information to a team you’d follow the advice above.

But this is difficult; you have to rely on many other contributing factors to ensure a coherent and direct message is being received and the bigger the business then the larger the network involved and the increased probability of mixed messages and arbitrary translation of said message.

Recently I was involved with a major integration of two leading brands, both with a 90% market recognition, ‘don’t worry said the MD, redundancies will mostly be voluntary and in the low hundreds’. 

“Within that same week a senior member of the management team had accidentally emailed the HR/OD middle management with a document that indicated that redundancies topped out at about 2,000″

So what does this prove, apart from emphasising my personal misgivings of email, it tells you that somewhere at the core of this major change effort, the largest in that industries history, that at the core there was a truth, but in the delivery there was a lie..ever heard the saying: ‘the truth will out’

When I say that the leading ‘Change Tip’ is all about the people, I underline that with telling the truth, immediately, upfront, from the start, right away, at the beginning.

The biggest mistake is to ‘over-control’ the truth, because you only have a finite knowledge of it at any given point. The truth is always the truth as it stands right now, never the truth as it might or will be.

Your people understand this…..really they do.

TIP 1:
Don’t control the truth, even when you think you are, you are wrong.

————————–
Kotter & Heskett, Corporate Culture & Performance
“The single most visible factor that distinguishes major cultural changes that succeed from those that fail is competent leadership”
————————–

Continue reading ‘Executive Coaching – Change Management Top Tips’

Executive Coaching – Change Management

Why should use an experienced consultant to help with change?

“If you think you are in control, you aren’t going fast enough”
Mario Andretti

The one thing a business craves is stability and the one thing it gets is change as the sign on Ted Turners desk says,

“either contribute or get out of the way”

So it feels right to many Business Drivers to create change, to shake things up or at the very least to enable change that facilitates results. Can’t really argue with that.

20 years ago ‘stability’ was the by-word of the shareholder and the markets, as without stability you are playing games with someone else’s pension fund, back then markets were closed or undeveloped, which meant you either refined you organization or grew it……simple, safe and satisfying.

But hey times they are a changing. Not at the rate the doom mongers would have us believe but subtlety, slowly. Consider petrol used to be under a pound and then it switched from gallons to litres, it’s now nearly £5 and you are used to it. They changed the pound note to a pound coin and you spend it that much easier, because you are not breaking into a note and you are used to it. They leak the fact that a tax will be £100, then when it comes out its £50, but that’s so much less than you’d got used to it being, it feels like a sale even though originally you’d have been annoyed at £20 and you are used to it.

“Successful companies develop a culture that just keeps moving all the time” Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Harvard Business School professor.1999

Typically the following is startlingly true: 

- 70 % of Executive Interventions fail 
- 70% of Mergers fail 
- 70% of Outsourcing Projects fail 
- 70% of Business Process Re-engineering Projects fail 
- 70% is the contribution of business leaders to organizational climate, with organizational climate contributing up to 25% in terms of overall business return (Hays Group) 

Continue reading ‘Executive Coaching – Change Management’

Executive Coaching Qualifications- Qualified or Qualification?

Qualifications are a bone of contention to those that possess them, don’t have them or are looking to utilise an executive coach. How do you choose a good executive coach?

1. Word of mouth from a trusted source will always be the predominant factor.
2. References that you HAVE spoken to, that have been coached by the individual in the last 24 months, should run hand in hand with the above.

In business you soon notice that people see themselves as great coaches or believe that this could definitely be a good thing to do to escape the rat race. I’ll become a coach! The reality is like just about any other profession or skill, just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should do it and come to think about it, just because you have been on a course doesn’t mean you are qualified to do it.

Case in point: Ever had a bad experience with a doctor, lawyer or estate agent? All have qualifications.
Another point to ponder:Ever had bad meal in a restaurant? I bet the chef has a cooking qualification on the wall!

Being qualified doesn’t in itself mean anything, but by the same token having no qualifications can be a really bad idea. Because I don’t care how bad the doctor is I’m still going to choose one with a big certificate on the wall versus my mate over the road, who says “he’ll have a crack at it!”

And of course this is the bind there are many executive coaches out there without a single qualification (these are normally the older, more seasoned coaching veterans) or perhaps they where senior players in business, sold up, paid off the mortgage and thought what next. Sir John Harvey Jones (The original troubleshooter), doesn’t have a executive coaching qualification, but you’d remortgage to have him as your coach.

There’s another factor in play, anyone with multiple qualifications in coaching all topped off with a Coaching Msc, has surely made the effort to get good at their chosen field? And yes they have, just as the MD who turns to coaching has experience coming out of their pores.

But I hear you ask,  ”Guy, what happens in your experience when you interview executive coaches to partner to senior leaders?” Ah! Well strange you should ask! Guess what it always comes down to whether or not the person is ‘qualified’ to be a coach, which means:

- Attitude
- Experience
- Commercial Acumen
- Personal Credibility
- Relationship Awareness
- Courage
- Political Savvy
- Common Sense
- Coaching capability

Qualifications? Well to be honest (and I have qualifications to) qualifications don’t really mean anything in isolation, they do of course point to the attitude of the individual in regards to their own professionalism and they demonstrate that the individual has knowledge on the topic.

What’s my point?

Well most importantly if you are thinking of working with or hiring in an executive coach:

1. Points 2 at the beginning of this blog is a must
2. Use your own judgement
3. Allow your instinct to tell you if the person in front of you feels like a good fit
4. Continually question if the relationship is adding value
5. Don’t presume they know YOU, better than you know YOU!
6. Are you reaching the milestones you both agreed on
7. Is the coach really contributing, by sharing their knowledge and emotion

An executive coach can add enormous value to you and/or the organisation, but a bad one can be equally damaging: Choose well & trust your own judgement!