Author Archives: Catherine Holdsworth
Career lessons from The Walking Dead: be adaptable
16 March 2016 by Catherine Holdsworth in Business and finance, Entertainment, Working With The Walking Dead
Rick, Morgan and the other characters who have lasted share in common an ability to adjust to change; to understand that the important thing is to work with the world as it is now not as it used to be or as they wish it could be again. Rick gets into the swing of the new world very quickly, from waking up, dazed, in the hospital to battling his way out of Atlanta in only a few days. Morgan too was quick to adapt. While his wife was looking to the past – grabbing the photo albums – he was preparing himself for the apparent present and the likely future. He had already worked out what the world was like at that time and was doing what was needed to cope with it, whereas she was just thinking of what she would miss from the past, or need when the current situation reverted to ‘normal’.
Many fields, such as law, accountancy and medicine require that practitioners keep up to date with changing processes, legislation or methodology. It should be a requirement for you, too, if you want to get ahead. Change is inevitable: once you have accepted that you can begin to move forward.
Ask what is changing
In The Walking Dead the changes are both catastrophic and sudden. Nobody really had time to prepare for the new reality or take steps to avoid it. As we see in the back story show, Fear The Walking Dead, a problem that started small rapidly escalated as the authorities misunderstood both the problem itself and its potential lasting impact. In a huge city like Los Angeles the virus quickly spread among the population.
In your working life changes can be sudden and catastrophic, but more commonly change is gradual. Is your industry changing – have you read articles about new technologies, routes to market, operating systems? What are your organization’s competitors doing and what might the implications be for you if your business follows the same route? How is the economy faring? You need to keep your eyes and ears open – you stand a better chance of surviving change if you are well informed.
Work out what you need to do to be part of the change
Having accepted that the world is changing Rick and Morgan both work out what they need to do to be part of the new world.
Seeing the changes is only the first step; understanding what you need to do requires greater thought. So Tara and her family noticed a change and realized the need to survive, but they thought the safest thing to do was hole up in their flat with all the food and water that was available. Not only was this a short-term plan but it also meant they weren’t out in the world learning more about the changes taking place. If it had not been for the presence of The Governor when their father died Tara, her niece and sister may also have been turned. Not everybody is able to make the creative leap from observation to a plan of action, so if you can do it you will have a distinct advantage over your contemporaries. As Henry Ford famously said, ‘If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.’ While others thought change meant more of the same but better, Ford approached the advancing world from a more creative angle. .
Perhaps you work in a business that sells two different products or services. You note from reading the industry press that a new technology has been developed, and you realize that said technology could revolutionize one side of the business, the side you are not currently involved in. So what do you need to do to arm yourself with the know-how and credentials to switch to the side of the business that is shortly to be in the ascendancy?
Take steps to achieve that
When Rick decides he needs to survive and works out he needs weapons to help him he goes to the logical place – King County Sheriff ’s Department, where he used to work – and stocks up on what guns and ammunition remain. Having heard that there is a refugee centre in Atlanta, where the Center for Disease Control is also located, he sets off in that direction, calculating that his best chance for survival lies there.
It is no good knowing what you need to do in order to be part of the change if you do not act on that information. Is there a course you can attend that will give you the background or qualifications you need in order to be part of the new world? Perhaps you need to read round the subject – could you do this as part of your daily commute? Ambitious and committed people use every opportunity they have to further their careers – time on the train spent reading a blockbuster novel, no matter how entertaining, is time wasted if you could be immersing yourself in future-facing thinking. And don’t forget the N word – networking – maintain good connections with others in the industry or other parts of your organization. They can be both mines of useful information and routes to the next phase of your career.
Zombie identification for beginners
25 February 2016 by Catherine Holdsworth in Business and finance, Entertainment, Working With The Walking Dead
By now you should have had enough time to settle in to watching the rest of season 6 of The Walking Dead and you may have noticed a few parallels between the show and your work life. However, if you’re wondering what on earth we’re on about, then perhaps you need some help identifying the zombies of your office. It may surprise you to learn that the office joker is a walker underneath all the bravado and banter. And did you know that what you have for lunch can indicate whether you or your colleague are also walkers? It can be difficult to tell who is and who is not a zombie in large offices but here are some helpful tips to help you be on the lookout and hopefully help you avoid the pitfalls of becoming one yourself.
They’re followers. Watch a herd of walkers and you will note that they all move in the same direction at the same speed, only changing course in response to noise or movement. There’s no independent thinking, no courage or daring. Thus it is with the walkers in your workplace – they do the job as prescribed, and no more.
They arrive on the stroke of 9 and leave at exactly 5. They go to lunch at the same time every day, refuse to stray outside the bounds of the system (‘More than my job’s worth’) and are careful to avoid doing anything not in their job description. Their job is just something they have to do 35 hours a week in order that they can collect a pay cheque every month. It’s something to be got through and survived. They slow down projects by insisting they can only do the work within their fixed systems and schedules.
They’re the office joker. Office jokers may seem happy but this is just a way of getting through the day – it’s the only way they get meaning from being at work. They carve out a niche for themselves – everybody knows who they are – but they are never going to be taken seriously. Which means their career progress within a particular organization is going to be limited. They distract colleagues from their work and disrupt company culture.
They resist change. Regardless of whether it’s moving the coffee machine, changing the invoicing system or a complete departmental restructure they don’t like it and it’s not going to work. In fact they’ll do all they can to ensure it doesn’t. You’ll never see the resistors put as much effort or creative energy into anything as they put into trying to keep things the way they’ve always been. Not all changes are good and some have huge implications for the business and the individuals working within it but these people haven’t thought deeply about the changes – they just dislike them because they are not what went before.
They’re always right but they’re never willing to put their money where their mouth is. This kind of workplace walker could spend the whole day telling colleagues why management is doing everything wrong, and will bore you for an entire lunch hour if you’re unlucky enough to encounter them in the canteen. They particularly love introducing new recruits to all the flaws of the department or organization – it gives them a sense of power. They create a bad atmosphere in a team, making their manager’s job a lot harder.
It’s not their fault. Zombies never own up to their mistakes, not even to themselves, which means they can never learn from them. With the workplace walker there’s always a reason for an error but it’s because of some failing in the system or a problem created by one of their co-workers: ‘I wasn’t given the figures from accounts in good time’, ‘I only did what the project manager told me’, ‘that’s the answer the system gave when I put the information in’. They can become aggressive if any suggestion is made that they could have done something to mitigate the situation and make more work for their manager and colleagues because somebody else has to sort out their errors.
They don’t stand out, or they stand out for the wrong reasons. A typical office zombie just won’t get noticed by management outside their department. If they do catch somebody’s eye it’s likely to be for the wrong reasons: ‘Oh yeah, the guy who’s always playing practical jokes’, ‘Is she the one that really kicked up a fuss when we moved the coffee machine?’ This is not the route to promotion.
They eat the same lunch every day. In 2015 research undertaken for butter manufacturer Lurpak into the eating habits of 2,000 office workers revealed that 32 per cent of UK workers eat exactly the same lunch each day – a cheese sandwich. The average worker has been doing this for almost four and a half years and despite the monotony, 40 per cent of respondents said that lunch is usually the highlight of their working day. That’s just depressing, and seems to be further evidence of a lack of care about work, that it is something routine, just to be got through. In order to work at your best you need to be in good health; nutritionists advise that to help achieve that goal we should eat a wide variety of foods; just one reason to shake up your lunch habits.
Just as the humans in the series all carry the virus and are capable of becoming walkers, we all have the facility to fall into workplace zombie habits. But now you know what to look out for you’ll be able to catch yourself if you ever seem to be behaving like a walker and pull yourself back onto the path to career success.
What would Rick do? Ten career-boosting tips from The Walking Dead
15 February 2016 by Catherine Holdsworth in Business and finance, Working With The Walking Dead
The most talked about show on TV, The Walking Dead, returns to British screens this evening. Adrenaline-infused, gory and at times heartbreaking, the show has garnered a huge fan-base over the last six years and is promising to ramp up the action still further this spring. But as well as high-octane human drama, the hit series is the source of some surprisingly good advice for anybody interested in boosting their career, claims a new book published this month. Working With The Walking Dead uses incidents, themes and characters from the show to demonstrate how readers can avoid becoming one of the walker herd at work. Included are these ten tips:
- Work out your mission: without a goal, work can become mindless toil; witness Abraham’s energy when Eugene tells him he has an important mission for him – and his distress when he discovers it has all been a sham.
- Pick the right organization: it is much easier to work in a place that shares your approach to career building. Rick’s group is like a family in which everybody is invested, while Joe’s Claimers all aim for individual self-advancement – which doesn’t suit Daryl.
- Speak up: follow the rules, stick to your job description and don’t ask questions and pretty soon you’ll find you are one of the walker herd. To get noticed you need to take every opportunity you can to show you are thinking creatively and wholly engaged with pushing the business forward.
- Respect others: Deanna’s inclusive style of leadership makes everybody feel valued. She listens, considers and aims for consensus rather than forcing her views on others, and Alexandria is (OK, was) a peaceful and well-ordered town as a result.
- Take a break: Rick never allowed himself to stop for a moment. It eventually took its toll on him as he began to hallucinate dead members of his group, including his wife. A lesson for us all on the importance of rest.
- Love your mistakes: most are not career-fatal. As Deanna says, ‘Some day this pain will be useful to you’, so treat mistakes as learning opportunities. Just make sure you don’t repeat them.
- Be adaptable: one crucial difference between the show’s survivors and those who failed to make it past the first season is the ability to take changing circumstances in their stride – even benefit from them. Embracing change is the only way to avoid getting left behind in business.
- Don’t be a bastard: the demise of The Governor, Dawn and the residents of Terminus demonstrates that nasty guys do not finish first. Ambition does not mean destroying everybody in your path: Daryl’s competent, tough, nice – and still around.
- Dare to be different: don’t think there is only one way to get to the top. Just as, in the safety of Alexandria, Rick yearned for the danger of the outside world, some people are simply not cut out for corporate life. Setting out on your own may be a less sure route to success but that’s all part of the thrill.
- Walkers aren’t the main problem: our gang’s survival would be easy if all they had to worry about were the undead; it’s the other people who create danger. Careers don’t happen in isolation, so keep an eye on what your ambitious colleagues are doing.
By presenting simple business concepts in an entertaining way the book aims to encourage people who may never have picked up a business book before to engage with their careers.
The Process Approach – everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler
26 January 2016 by Catherine Holdsworth in Business and finance, Implementing ISO 9001:2015
Paul Simpson, co-author of Implementing ISO 9001:2015 looks into how applying the Process Approach can make reregistering for ISO 9001:2015 easier than you think.
It’s highly likely that many of us seeking improvement in effectiveness and efficiency of the way our work functions see process analysis and mapping done well as part of the solution. However, when done badly they can get in the way.
We’ve probably all seen the extremes – on the one hand perhaps a wall full of mind-sapping detail, on the other a series of banal boxes neither helping staff and leaders. So this quote, ‘Everything should be made simple as possible, but no simpler‘ attributed to Albert Einstein, is a useful stimulus in thinking about making process analysis useful, and to help ISO 9001:2015 registration.
The point of analysing our processes is to ensure we understand how each process works and what we need to do as individuals, leaders and organisations to ensure the process operates efficiently and delivers effectively. So that’s it – simple! We sit down flowchart the process step back and say ‘Abracadabra’ and we’ve stepped into a state of Nirvana through the Process Approach. If only it were so.
Let’s take a step back from the quote and do some digging:
- The published quote from Einstein that comes closest to ‘our’ subtitle is: ‘It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.’Now apart from being a lot less easy to read and understand this more complex quote covers a lot more ground and options that we will address later.
- How this came to be attributed to Einstein is through an article in the New York Times by the composer Roger Sessions where he says: ‘I also remember a remark of Albert Einstein, which certainly applies to music. He said, in effect, that everything should be as simple as it can be but not simpler!’
So please forgive me as I translate the Einstein quote into a summary we can apply to our process analysis as we look to make transition to ISO 9001:2015 certification:
We have to break each process down into as few simple steps as possible based on our experience of how they work in real life. And we must ensure that we understand their relationships and contribution to the other processes in the overall system in generating outputs for the customer.
So for each process step, we need a more profound understanding of the activity than just to type a simple flowchart box description.
Taking an everyday example: most manufacturing processes and many service deliveries have a final flowchart box: ‘Deliver goods / Drive to service delivery point’ – Abracadabra again!
Again, if only it were that simple. Most blog readers have real world experience of driving. In the UK where I drive most, it is notoriously unpredictable and the same applies for every national capital and many trunk roads in most countries around the globe. If we are to truly understand the process approach we need to spend time and effort on that one box on our flowchart ‘Deliver goods’.
Here is a short list I came up with that frame the activity:
- Delivery instructions
- Available vehicle
- Loading arrangements
- Distance to customer
- Available driver
- Traffic situation
- Accidents
- Weather conditions
- Customer security procedures
- Unloading arrangements
The process approach says you have a good understanding of each activity element and can control them to satisfy your customer.
Drilling down into a couple then:
Available driver
- Licence to drive vehicle class?
- Competent to act as your organisation representative out on the road?
- Current clean licence?
- Time on tachograph to complete planned job?
Contingency for:
- Peaks in demand?
- Holiday / sickness absence?
- Traffic situation
- At departure time?
- At planned return time?
- Roadworks on the primary route?
- Alternative routes in the event of a disruption?
- Major events (sporting / social) along planned route(s)?
- Unusual expected traffic pattern (holiday periods)?
In order to demonstrate they have ‘determined’ their processes (under the requirements of ISO 9001:2015 Clause 4.4.1) organisations need to answer all bullets above (and a lot more I haven’t thought of). Many answers won’t come from the same area the driver is in but may be carried out by individuals working in other processes: recruitment / licence checking (perhaps in HR), or traffic monitoring (in a central logistics function) for example. So our organisational complexity builds and we have a range of support processes influencing our ability to ‘Deliver’ – a single box in one order fulfilment process. Obviously, this is now a lot of work but it does have a purpose: By understanding our process better we are able to improve it and cope with eventualities as and when they happen.
When we have done this we will have taken our ISO 9001 quality management system from a ‘thin skim’ document to an efficient, resilient way of working and we will have satisfied quality management principle 4 – Process Approach: ‘Consistent and predictable results are achieved more effectively and efficiently when activities are understood and managed as interrelated processes that function as a coherent system.’
‘Leadership is often a duet rather than a solo’
21 January 2016 by Catherine Holdsworth in Business and finance
We’re used to seeing leaders exerting their charisma and putting forth their opinions, but we hardly see the collaborators, those who made the leader look so good. Being Number Two may not sound like a very attractive position to most aspiring entrepreneurs, but Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove, authors of What we mean when we talk about leadership, show that it can be the person behind the spotlight who gets all the glory.
Do we have unrealistic expectations of our corporate and political leaders? This was one of the questions we asked Harvard Business School’s Rosabeth Moss Kanter when we spoke. Her answer was illuminating: ‘Yes. If the expectation is that a single leader can do it all then it is unrealistic. But it is also interesting how much a single leader can set in motion. In turnarounds it is quite striking how much fresh leadership can accomplish by unlocking talent and potential that was already there in the organization but which was stifled by rules, regulations and bureaucracy.’
So, individual leaders can be hugely influential and powerful. They can change things. But, and it is an awfully big but, leaders are nothing without followers. And some follow more closely than others. Look around at many great leaders and you will see a reliable accomplice at their side – think Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, William Whitelaw and Margaret Thatcher, Alistair Campbell and Tony Blair and so on. Leadership is often a duet rather than a solo.
So, the John Wayne type of heroic leadership loner is history? We asked leadership guru Warren Bennis. ‘Yes, the Lone Ranger is dead,’ he replied:
Instead of the individual problem solver we have a new model for creative achievement. People like Steve Jobs or Walt Disney headed groups and found their own greatness in them. The new leader is a pragmatic dreamer, a person with an original but attainable vision. Ironically, the leader is able to realize his or her dream only if the others are free to do exceptional work. Typically, the leader is the one who recruits the others, by making the vision so palpable and seductive that they see it, too, and eagerly sign up.
Chris Gibson-Smith, chairman of the London Stock Exchange and a former BP executive, emphasized the teamwork element of business – and of leadership: ‘Business is a team-based enterprise; there are almost no exceptions. The combined brain is a bigger brain than the individual brain. There is almost no problem that is not better solved by engaging a group of the right sort of people with the right skills in the solution harmoniously.’
Richard Hytner, deputy chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, has studied leadership duos and champions the role of the much neglected number two. The reality, he points out, is that we can’t all be number ones – there aren’t enough number one roles in the first place and many of us would be ill-suited to them anyway. ‘The truth is we spend most of our careers, even as heads of functions, factories, geographies or service lines, serving at least one master, yet choose to shape our identity as early as we can as a number one, a supreme leader. Where, after all, is the glamour in shaping an identity as one who merely advises or assists?’ says Hytner.
What is needed is a new model of leadership for all leading players, one that assigns roles clearly and aspirationally, and one that encourages more people to discover, through choice, not just the well-trodden path to the top but the joys of leading from the shadows as a destination in its own right. By conflating all types of leader into just two: A – the ultimately Accountable – and C – the Consiglieri (there are usually more than one) who liberate, enlighten and deliver for the A, the role of the second is elevated to equal amongst firsts, circumventing the tyranny of the number one’s titular supremacy and the prevailing undercurrent of ‘second syndrome’.
The original consiglieri were the advisers to leaders of Italian mafia families, made famous by Mario Puzo’s novel, The Godfather. As Richard Hytner makes clear, consiglieri also operate in more legitimate fields.
They are the deputies, assistants and counselors who support, inform and advise the final decision-makers of organizations. Consiglieri – or Cs – are leader makers and leaders in their own right. While only a few go on to become ultimate A leaders, many more perform roles in which they make, shape, illuminate and enhance the success of the out-andout A leader and the organization. ‘The majority of consiglieri positively embrace their roles,’ says Hytner:
They have not settled gloomily for C after having their love for A spurned. They have learnt the joys of influencing As whom they admire and respect. They wish to be close to power across their organizations and to have autonomy to get their jobs done. They are insatiable learners, accruing new experience as if their life depends on it (which, as some consiglieri have discovered, it sometimes does). They have found their greatest and most consistent pleasure in helping others reach their full potential.
The first question for leaders is whether they are prepared to recognize that leadership is not an activity performed by them in splendid isolation. The second is how they can best create and work with their own consiglieri.
Resources
Richard Hytner, Consiglieri (Profile, 2014).
Making it in a man’s world. We talk to Susannah Clarke, co-author of Implementing ISO 9001:2015
6 January 2016 by Catherine Holdsworth in Business and finance, Implementing ISO 9001:2015
Engineering and process management are sectors that are dominated by a male workforce. While it may seem to be a ‘man’s world’, Susannah Clarke, co-author of Implementing ISO 9001:2015: Thrill your customers and transform your cost base with the new gold standard for business management has over 30 years’ experience in this industry. As one of the Managing Partner’s at Process Management International, (PMI), Susannah promotes quality management, writes articles, speaks at conferences, coaches and consults on organisational improvement.
In between promoting her book and working at PMI, Susannah kindly answered some of our questions about what it’s like to work in such a male-dominated sector.
What is it about engineering and process management that appeals to you?
My father is an architect, so I guess the root of it all comes from that. I was amazed by the need to be precise, which at first seemed tedious as a child, but then watching the result, seeing something innovative and creative be built, from those thousands of small details I found quite inspiring. Having said that, in my business life I haven’t always been a fan of process. I struggled to see the link into the service world in which I was working, and in the early days made that common mistake of imagining that process made work restrictive, boring and repetitive.
However as my business grew, and more people had similar jobs to perform, I soon realised that without process, mistakes were made which resulted in unhappy customers and employees spending time on fixing the mistakes as opposed to delivering what the customer wanted. So we started to change that and worked on creating robust processes for the work that was being done and as a result found ourselves able to go to customers and make suggestions, show them how we could do things better, faster and right first time and not only did that make the customer happy, it meant they gave us more work! That appealed to me, naturally and it also appealed to the people working with me because they could think about the art of the possible and not be limited by the amount of ‘fire-fighting’ and problem solving they had to do.
Have you ever come across people who weren’t willing to be directed by a woman?
To be honest no, I haven’t. That’s not to say I haven’t dealt with some difficult people, but inevitably there is more to the problem. I’ve always worked hard to sit down with people, customers and staff, to find out what’s going on, what bothers them and what I can do to help the situation. At PMI (Process Management International) we call it ‘Giving people a good listening to!’ My experience has been that when people really believe you care, when you’re not just paying lip service to their complaint, then they start to work with you and become a returning client. After that, it doesn’t matter whether you are a man or woman they are happy to work with you because they trust you.
There are many women working as business consultants. What made you switch from large companies like NatWest and GSK to the world of engineering and process management?
When I left NatWest I became self-employed and started my own business as a trainer. I’ll be honest, at that time I was very against working for a large company, having gone through Black Monday in the City and seen the departure of many members of staff. So I was very happy to be working as my own boss. My opportunities grew and I had to start sub-contracting work to other trainers in order to service all the customers and then eventually I merged my business with another very similar size business that was also run by a female owner-founder and created a new consultancy, Prelude.
The aim wasn’t to avoid large companies, it was to have the freedom to shape our own company and community – to work with a group of like-minded people who wanted to do the best job for a customer. We could be nimble and adapt to our environment to offer new services. It was during this time that process management became important to us in order to service new and existing customers and continue to grow. We were also flexible in our hiring policy and had several women who were employed part time doing fantastic jobs, helping them through their maternity leave and return to work as it suited them. As a consequence these employees were incredibly loyal to us.
Around 2004/2005 one of my clients asked us to take on managing a service for training administration for a large process improvement/lean six sigma programme they were rolling out with a company called PMI (Process Management International). That was the first time I had worked with the company and I was impressed by how they were organised and the processes they had in place to manage the training. We continued to work together and develop the opportunities beyond that original client. In 2007 I had sold the business and completed my earn out and PMI offered me some consultancy work with them. They also offered me the chance to go on a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt course, which almost blew my mind! I learnt so much in such a short space of time and had so many ‘ah ha’ moments. After that there was no going back.
I’m not saying I don’t get carried away and sometimes forget those principles, but I’m lucky enough now to work with some brilliant consultants who have many years of experience in this field and they are masters at catching me before I shoot off in the wrong direction.
I still think of myself as someone who works with large companies. I just don’t work for them!
How have things changed in the past 30 years for women operating in the manufacturing industries? And what advice would you give to young women entering the world of engineering and process management? (Or business in general?)
We still have a dearth of women in manufacturing and engineering. Read any of the studies on these sectors and they indicate that around one third of the manufacturing workforce and only around 15 to 20% of the engineering workforce is female. Research attributes this to gender pay inequity, work-life balance, insufficient women at the senior executive level and so on, but realistically women only become really aware of these challenges once we have entered industry, don’t we? So isn’t the question more about how do we make a career in these sectors more attractive to women?
Fundamentally I believe we need to start early with the right education in schools and the elimination of stereotypes. When I was 16 I went to a boys grammar school. There were only eight girls in my year, so the school didn’t cater for ‘girl’ subjects. I studied woodwork, graphics and metalwork along with the boys, all the girls did, and I rowed in a coxed four because there weren’t enough of us to make a girl’s team for netball or hockey. I think this helped to break down traditional stereotypes for me. The other thing I found was that from age 11 onwards the boys had specific lesson time allocated to debate current affairs. They had been taught and encouraged to create cohesive, constructive arguments as part of their education. They were preparing the boys from an early age to have a view, be able to express it and learn how to prepare for such discussions. I know we do more of that in our schools today, certainly my daughters are proficient at creating a strong argument! But I still put my head in my hands when I look at the Design & Technology options available to them and their female bias.
What advice would I give them?
There are no limits except those you impose upon yourself. That’s the best advice I could give a woman.
- Understand Systems Thinking, regardless of which sector you work in, whether it is service or manufacturing. Get to know W. Edwards Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge, Systems Thinking, Theory of Knowledge, Variation and Psychology. The four elements are essential to your own and your organisation’s success. Once you understand these and have a decent personal kit bag of tools and methods you can call upon in the different situations or challenges you find yourself, you will be amazed at how good you feel about what you are doing and what you can achieve.
- Be naturally curious rather than jumping to solutions. The more you can ask about what’s going on, using great open questions which avoid making others feel defensive, the more people will open up to you and involve you so that you can learn about the current situation and contribute towards what improvements may be possible in the future.
What have you found the most challenging aspects of working in this field?
There’s so much to learn! But that’s good because I really enjoy learning. However it’s important to remember when to ask for help from others with more knowledge and experience. Influencing others to trust the methods comes a close second. People get into their own habits. They have always done things their way or the way they were told, so persuading them to suspend judgement, try new approaches, change their thinking, is naturally sometimes hard work.
What is the most rewarding part of your job?
There is nothing quite like working with either an individual or team who are struggling and gradually seeing their lights come on as they start to realise what options are open to them, that there are some theories they can have a go at.
There is also something about people realising that they don’t always have to be right first time. I’m not suggesting that people should go off and make huge changes without considering the consequences of course. But helping people realise that they can consciously try small changes, test out a theory or two, see what results they get, learn from the results and then adopt (do it), adapt (change it) or abandon (discard it completely), is very liberating for them. People can get obsessed with things being either right or wrong. I don’t think that’s helpful. I think that prevents people trying new ideas, so giving them an environment, a method, which enables them to make mistakes in a controlled way is amazingly rewarding because they become so enthusiastic about what’s possible by working that way.
Is there anything you think you would have done differently knowing what you know now?
It is absolutely true that “If I knew then what I know now I would have done things differently, deliberately rather than based so much on gut feel.” I started my first business when I was about 22 and I knew how to work hard and was happy to work hard, but I didn’t know anything about systems thinking or process management so I would have made different decisions with data. In 2007 I studied Executive Coaching and Performance Coaching and that has really had a huge impact on my ability to listen, ask questions and coach others and whilst I wasn’t bad at that before, I could have been so much better if I had really developed those skills earlier in my career.