Good Bastards & the Spirit of Christmas

The Christmas message of joy in discovering new life and new hope came together surprisingly for me last week in a business meeting of diverse minds, perspectives and strengths in a common purpose.

I opportunistically (for that is my way) introduced my friends and clients at Challenge Trust (Mental Health Service providers) to my friends and former colleagues at The Social & Community Health Section of the University of Auckland (UoA) School of Population Health (SoPH). My hope and expectation was of new and exciting collaboration.

My role with Challenge Trust is about achieving business growth & development. My connection with SoPH stems from collaborating with them as a faculty member of UoA Business School when it had a division on the same Tamaki campus as SoPH. That collaboration grew out of a sense that the issues in social and community health are congruent with those in businesses and institutions and a passion to do something with that.

The meeting confirmed the expected and discovered unexpected potential for new, exciting collaboration and relationships in common purpose and passion: to make social and business communities healthy and therefore sustainably more productive places to live and work.

We got to talking about Challenge Trust’s dramatically successful model for recovery that they apply to themselves and their professional interrelationships as well as to their clients and their client communities. Their model has six essential elements that must be addressed together:

1. Clinical Health

2. Emotional Health

3. Spiritual/Cultural Health

4. Environmental Health

5. Physical Health

6. Economic Health

We got to talking about how organisations are inherently fundamentally dysfunctional and how through a recovery approach they can become “high functioning”. We got to talking about how individual and organisational recovery relates to resilience and “human resource” sustainability.

This brought to my mind a story that I told them to illustrate how a firm without specific knowledge of Recovery, but seeking to sustainably engage it’s employees and delight its customers, had begun to implement what in many ways amounts to the Recovery model:

A labour hire firm were seeking to identify an inspiring, engaging common purpose or goal; one that would profitably differentiate them from their competition. They tried typical business goals like being the preferred supplier to the top/largest/best operators in the construction industry with decade-spanning interpersonal customer relationships. But it didn’t catch on. Too much bicycle, not enough frog?

So back to the drawing board they went and realised that what they would really like to be is “Good Bastards who do business with Good Bastards”. A good bastard is NZ vernacular for a rugged individual with a good heart, who looks out for his mates and, all said and done, loves them, has their welfare at heart and would do anything for them.

They then imagined what a firm of good bastards would be proud to look like in 10 years if it was a raging success. They decided that they would be proud to be in the news for having flown an A320 full of their people (150) into a disaster zone for a week long recovery mission where their people volunteered their time and the firm paid the rest of the costs. That would require them to be a successful business, largish and most importantly be a community of really good bastards. This big hairy audacious goal (Jim Collins) caught on fast.

Building the capability to respond at the drop of a hat to such a disaster clearly required long term action that started right away. So they began by collaborating with their banker’s employees to clean up three local beaches and have a BBQ together.

To begin recognising good bastard behaviour they implemented a quarterly Good Bastard Award for clients and one for employees.

They decided that good bastards are safe bastards: they look out for their workmates; an important behaviour in construction site safety. So they began a programme of sponsored safety promotion events on client sites and included aspects of safety and safety awareness in their quarterly surveys of employees and clients.

This firm is The Labour Exchange and to me that’s the spirit of Christmas in action in business.

The meeting of minds and purpose where I told that story is also the spirit of Christmas in action: joy in discovering new life and new hope.

Best wishes for Christmas: peace & goodwill, new life and new hope.

Steve

Bicycle or Frog? Kiss . . . . .

Did the pricess kiss a frog to get her prince, or was it a bicycle?

To borrow Alistair Mant’s bicycle/frog analogy: we continue to treat organisations as if they are bicycles when these days they are more likely frogs.

You can take a bicycle apart, lay out and polish all the bits, modify and replace them, and when you put it back together and oil it, you have a bicycle. If you do that to a frog, when you put it back together you don’t have a frog. There’s something missing: life. A bicycle is a machine. A frog is a living thing.

Ever come out of a management team meeting feeling disappointed, flat; not excited, but can’t quite put your finger on why. Sure the usual personalities were there, the usual predictable behaviours and perspectives, but you know you can rise above that if there’s something really worth doing together, everyone’s working to their strengths, and the results are blowing you and your clients away.

It’s not that you were intentionally being negative or difficult. You actually wanted to be energised and inspired; to energise and inspire. But the usually effective process of reviewing progress and performance against the various KPIs, reviewing priorities then agreeing who, what and when for the next period somehow lacked life.

Ever felt like that? I have.

Maybe you’re tired and depressed by energy sapping stuff happening in the rest of your life. Maybe some wandering virus is having a go at you. Maybe you lost your sense of purpose. Maybe its just been a long hard year. Whatever, life seems to have gone out of work. It seems mechanical; a job.

Work’s like this for about 55% of the workforce (Marcus Buckingham): The Disengaged. They’d much rather be in high performing teams (if they could imagine what it’d be like). They and/or their managers may even be into the paraphernalia, tactics and techniques of “high performing teams”: but it’s just not sparking.

There’s a good chance that’s because the paraphernalia is little more than a set of managerial tools used mechanically and dutifully in the belief that tools magically transform disengaged workers into engaged ones; even into high performing teams.

I won’t work. Partly because “everyone knows” that these tools are just more management bullshit: for over a century managers have been using systems and structures to get things done as expected; "to control people and play on their fears; systems and processes that suppress rather than reveal and ignite the emotions that energise and inspire" (Steve Denning, see below); that achieve machine like predictability and reliability.

With a frog approach we would use those same tools differently. As the saying goes: it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it. So instead of using the tools to increase predictability and mechanical reliability we could use them to delightfully surprise ourselves and our clients: to energise and inspire continual, iterative learning to delight; with each delight revealing new possibilities. Kiss the frog to get a transformation.

If you want the real oil on achieving such a radically different approach to management; such delightfully inspiring and energising workplaces and people, be sure to grab a copy of Steve Denning’s new book when it comes out around November 2010. I’ve had a peek. It’s good! Radical, with it’s roots in his previous work.

How to fix a “mental” organisation.

It’s not that hard to understand how to transform a "mental" organisation (see Is your firm “mental”? Probably) into an engaged, innovative, exciting, satisfying one. But the evidence shows that it’s clearly hard to actually do it. Harder even than changing a golf swing.

That’s because its usually a manager who’s “fixing” the managed. Trying to “get buy-in”: to argue, sweet talk, trick or command the managed to change their “swing”: their dysfunctional habits. It doesn’t work! That manager behaviour is perhaps the main barrier to recovery. Recovery isn’t a “fix”. It’s a way of life (for managers particularly).

Leading edge practitioners and their fortunate patients in the field of mental health – recovery from psychiatric dysfunction - know this and have developed an effective approach to achieving recovery.

You don’t have to be a psychologist to “do recovery”. It’s “common sense”. Communities and ordinary people can do it. In deed, they are the ones who do it. Perhaps the biggest impediment to recovery in the mental health field is the “mental” organisations that practitioners and patients are obliged to inhabit and deal with and the pervasive “industrial” management assumptions and habits that “drive” those organisations.

In Is your firm “mental”? Probably and Organisational Therapy I observe that organisations are normally “mental” and point out how the Recovery Approach to treating psychiatric dysfunction can be adapted to treating “mental” organisations.

In It’s OK we’re not OK . . . . I address the 1st of the 14 facilitating environmental factors for recovery : “promoting accurate and positive portrayals of [interpersonal dysfunction]”:

I outline some simple group activities that initiate recovery process. The activities facilitate participants’ surfacing, recognising and discussing different interactive styles and the consequences of different styles, and then productively portraying them to transform interpersonal and organisational dysfunction into engagement, innovation and satisfaction.

Surprisingly perhaps, that simple set of activities (that teams intrinsically enjoy) actually address all the remaining 13 environmental factors too. Here they are again:

Focusing on strengths

Using language of hope and possibility

Developing and pursuing individually defined . . . . goals

Offering a range of “wellness strategies”, options for treatment, rehabilitation and support

Supporting risk-taking even when failure is a possibility

Actively involving [customers], family members, and other natural support in interventions planning and implementation

Providing individually-tailored services taking one’s culture and interests into consideration

Encouraging users participation in advocacy activities

Helping to develop connections with community

Systematically addressing illness-related factors that impede recovery

Promoting valued [organisational &] social roles, and interests

Enabling participation in meaningful activities

Building supportive relationships

Here’s the thing: that simple set of activities is just a beginning. The key to success is in the ongoing execution of the plan: rhythmic daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually meeting to share change stories, acknowledge contribution and celebrate success, identify blockages then review and agree who will do what tomorrow and through the week, month, quarter, and year to continue the progress; and review and agree how individual and team contribution and progress will be measured .

It’s OK we’re not OK . . . . . . .

What a relief it’s OK that we’re not OK: to discover, experience and learn that we are deeply different from each other and that that’s OK; that it’s good that we perceive, interpret and react “the world” fundamentally differently; that mobilising those differences to achieve something good together, something we couldn’t do on our own, is deeply satisfying and miraculously effective.

I see this relief when a team realises that we are each ‘slack’ (de-energised) about some aspects of our work and ‘keen’ (energised) about other aspects; that that’s not only OK but excellent provided we recognise and get clear about those differences then make room where we can, for them to flourish and complement each other.

It’s not a competition to excel at everything, not a race to be the most OK, but a quest to learn together to continually delight others and ourselves by what we accomplish together.

This realisation can be powerfully achieved when team member’s together disclose their personality profiles and openly discuss how their attributes relate to the roles they play in the team.

I’ve found that a good way to kick-off this process is for the team to map members’ personality profiles on a big sheet of paper between them on a table. (Extended DISC profiles work very well).

Then share stories of personal attributes at play in their respective role behaviours, in what they enjoy and want to develop about those roles, and what they get nagged and badgered about. Relate this new awareness to the purpose, responsibilities and performance measures of their roles.

Next discuss what they could begin to change in their roles and behaviours to mitigate dysfunction within the team (Patrick Lencioni’s “Five Dysfunctions of a Team” are a useful framework here).

Finally agree a plan, beginning with who will do what tomorrow and through the week, month, quarter, and year. Be sure to also agree how progress and change will be measured and to commit to a meeting rhythm for review and sharing change-stories.

Organisational therapy

Diversity in teams is arguably essential for innovation and change, but tends to be a nightmare for interpersonal relationships. Misunderstanding and conflict are probable, even desirable when diverse perspectives and personalities interact for change. You could say then, that teams and organisations of diverse individuals are probably intrinsically interpersonally dysfunctional: can never be truly “sane” but can, with support, be “high functioning”.

I used this mental health analogy in my post “Is your firm mental? Probably.” Though the concept was first published a year ago* I was reminded of it in a conversation with a client mental-health NGO about the possibility of offering organisational therapy service to firms wanting to generate high-performing teams.

To get a feel for the applicability of the recovery approach, consider the following list titled “Recovery as a process: Environmental factors facilitating recovery”*. Notice how, with a few minor [edits] to shift the tenor from psychiatric to interpersonal dysfunction, the list seems eerily familiar . . . . . . and applicable to treating interpersonal dysfunction in an organisation.

• Promoting accurate and positive portrayals of [interpersonal dysfunction].
• Focusing on strengths
• Using language of hope and possibility
• Developing and pursuing individually defined . . . . goals
• Offering a range of “wellness strategies”, options for treatment, rehabilitation and support
• Supporting risk-taking even when failure is a possibility
• Actively involving [customers], family members, and other natural support in interventions planning and implementation
• Providing individually-tailored services taking one’s culture and interests into consideration
• Encouraging users participation in advocacy activities
• Helping to develop connections with community
• Systematically addressing illness-related factors that impede recovery
• Promoting valued [organisational &] social roles, and interests
• Enabling participation in meaningful activities
• Building supportive relationships

* Tse, S. & Barnett S. Recovery Oriented Services. Clinical Management in Mental Health Services. December 2008. Blackwell: London. Figure 8.3. Recovery as a process and outcomes (adapted from: Mancini et al., 2005; O’Connell et al., 2005; Roe et al., 2007)