If Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Dr Mike Lee's opinion piece , "Done properly, exams stimulate learning" (NZ Herald, 15 Nov 2017) represents the general level of knowledge and understanding of effective education within the University of Auckland Business School, then is seems clear that they need to "get a life" educationally.
He argues the case for exams, not only for assessment but for teaching too. He's been a course coordinator for nearly 50 university papers and written more than 100 exams so he clearly has extensive experience of conventional teaching and assessment but apparently not beyond that. If he did, he would realize that although such methods may work for the closed university system, they don't produce high quality, work ready practitioners. And that's surely the objective for all graduates except perhaps for the minority who, like him, join the academy.
University Business schools rely on processing large numbers of students, few of whom proceed into academe. Most graduate both as failed researchers and failed practitioners. It typically takes at least couple of years to make something useful of a Business graduate. Maybe that was accepted in the past but not now.
University lecturers must progress beyond repeating the teaching learning processes of their student experience. That's easily said but hard to achieve because they like us all are, to a greater or lesser extent, prisoners of their experience. They can't imagine much beyond what they've experienced.
We could exhort them to get out more, risk trying radical new methods. But what's to encourage or push them to do that? The University organisation is essentially a slow-learner; designed to be conservative, insular, superior, bureaucratic, and typically populated by a toxic combination of brittle experts defending their egos and expertise, and rule-bound administrators defending their power and position.
Dr Lee isn't entirely mistaken: conventional exams do achieve focused learning but not learning for effective collaborative practice. The artificial crisis created by exams strongly motivates students to competitively cram and retain information long enough to survive the exam.
Crises are great opportunity for deep needs-based learning that transforms understanding and behaviour but exam crises reinforce compliance and build expertise at the individualistic task of doing exams. I doubt those qualities are useful in contemporary academia. They certainly aren't in NZ Business. That's why 100 major NZ companies have stopped hiring on university qualifications.
Dr Lee argues that exams are good for sorting people: that those who do well at high school exams, do well at university. That looks like closed-loop thinking. Of course students who become skilled at doing exams in high school are going to be good at doing them at University. And if the University qualifies people on their skill at doing exams then its all very cozy until they step outside that closed system into the contemporary NZ commercial and industrial world.
I've taught in Universities and other Tertiary Business Schools and my business is working with privately owned businesses to change and grow. I've never seen a business sort or educate it's people by exams. There are ample actual emergent business crisis-based opportunities for learning. But conventional university education doesn't prepare people for that mode of learning. The opposite actually.
That's why it fails and we need to wake university teachers to that. Which probably means changing the funding model to drive tertiary education organisations to innovate teaching. They will claim that they are already doing it, and no doubt a few individuals are, but Dr Lee's view suggests that conventional methods prevail. So too, do my direct experiences contracting in tertiary Business education during the last several years.
Thursday, 16 November 2017
Friday, 20 October 2017
Opportunity at last to prune tertiary Business Education?
Justine Munro, Director, Z Energy and founder of 21C Skills Lab wrote in the NZ Herald “New work order requires education shake-up.” "On September 26, over 100 Kiwi companies wrote an open letter that made it explicit a "new work order" is here. In this new world of work, many tertiary qualifications are not seen by employers as preparing young people for real world roles.
Increasingly, employers value generic skills, such as critical thinking, collaborative problem solving and global literacy not typically taught or assessed in school or tertiary courses. "
The “New work order” and the redundancy of Business degrees was echoed the same day (7 Oct 2017) by Rebecca Stevenson in The Spinoff.
This is music to my ears. Good even, that self-styled education “futurists” such as Mind Lab’s Frances Valentine are investing in developing education methods that leave graduates with the elusive “generic/soft skills” that make or break governments and enterprise these days.
I’ve been hoping for over a decade that the employer market would wake up to the inadequacy of tertiary education for business, then demand better and apply market pressure to the insular, self-satisfied qualifications industry that has monopolised and commodified so-called education.
During that time, I interspersed coaching change in NZ SMEs with spells in the tertiary education sector developing learning contexts and learning management processes that actually, intentionally, and successfully developed the “generic/soft skills” that are now acknowledged as a prime competitive advantage for innovative organisations in the globalised economy. That includes the current new coalition government in NZ.
However, my efforts to propagate those methods within institutions were, like those of my local and international network of like-minded tertiary educator colleagues, stymied at pretty well every step. Typically, through inability of most managers, administrators and many academic colleagues to imagine or risk anything much beyond their personal memory of tertiary education context and process. I know first-hand that this closed-loop thinking and practice dominates even NZQA Category 1 (certified self-monitoring) tertiary institutes in 2017.
Waves of e-learning (read low cost mass delivery of the now discredited qualifications), code writing and open plan learning spaces have washed through, stripping the landscape and adding little of value.
The tertiary industry focuses on the student market which still chooses providers on brand and NZQA categorization. Especially the international student market. It’s not surprising then that so many international students, seeking work visas and eventually permanent residence, graduate to find that their qualifications win them little more than menial employment. And not surprising either that the newly elected coalition government intends to shut that door. The tertiary industry will do it hard without the easy cash that channel provided, and the change in the employer market will squeeze local enrollments too. Good!
Here’s opportunity for a hard pruning and fruitful re-growth: root out narcissistic managers and sly, sycophantic acolytes, who rode the wave, took the credit and drove quality into the ground. Time to give the real creatives room to make a difference.
Increasingly, employers value generic skills, such as critical thinking, collaborative problem solving and global literacy not typically taught or assessed in school or tertiary courses. "
The “New work order” and the redundancy of Business degrees was echoed the same day (7 Oct 2017) by Rebecca Stevenson in The Spinoff.
This is music to my ears. Good even, that self-styled education “futurists” such as Mind Lab’s Frances Valentine are investing in developing education methods that leave graduates with the elusive “generic/soft skills” that make or break governments and enterprise these days.
I’ve been hoping for over a decade that the employer market would wake up to the inadequacy of tertiary education for business, then demand better and apply market pressure to the insular, self-satisfied qualifications industry that has monopolised and commodified so-called education.
During that time, I interspersed coaching change in NZ SMEs with spells in the tertiary education sector developing learning contexts and learning management processes that actually, intentionally, and successfully developed the “generic/soft skills” that are now acknowledged as a prime competitive advantage for innovative organisations in the globalised economy. That includes the current new coalition government in NZ.
However, my efforts to propagate those methods within institutions were, like those of my local and international network of like-minded tertiary educator colleagues, stymied at pretty well every step. Typically, through inability of most managers, administrators and many academic colleagues to imagine or risk anything much beyond their personal memory of tertiary education context and process. I know first-hand that this closed-loop thinking and practice dominates even NZQA Category 1 (certified self-monitoring) tertiary institutes in 2017.
Waves of e-learning (read low cost mass delivery of the now discredited qualifications), code writing and open plan learning spaces have washed through, stripping the landscape and adding little of value.
The tertiary industry focuses on the student market which still chooses providers on brand and NZQA categorization. Especially the international student market. It’s not surprising then that so many international students, seeking work visas and eventually permanent residence, graduate to find that their qualifications win them little more than menial employment. And not surprising either that the newly elected coalition government intends to shut that door. The tertiary industry will do it hard without the easy cash that channel provided, and the change in the employer market will squeeze local enrollments too. Good!
Here’s opportunity for a hard pruning and fruitful re-growth: root out narcissistic managers and sly, sycophantic acolytes, who rode the wave, took the credit and drove quality into the ground. Time to give the real creatives room to make a difference.
Monday, 2 October 2017
Your SME’s not a peg-board of positions to plug people into. It’s a group of people who want space to grow.
Back in Sept 2013 when I was blogging a lot I wrote about increasingly disruptive effects of social media on management in “Change your Attitude or Die Like a Frog“. That title, by the way, was a reference to the “boiled frog syndrome” where it’s said that frog in a bucket of water over a fire doesn’t realize, until it’s too late, the dire implications of rising temperature. Apparently, frogs are actually cleverer than that, but are aging SME owners?
Since then the social media phenomenon has “heated up” somewhat and companies are mainly concerned about controlling time employees spend on it and what they say about the company and its managers. But the hidden effect is on attitudes to authority and expertise and on formation of personal and collective identity: how people see themselves and the organisation they work in. Evidence of unprecedented dissatisfaction with authority and establishment figures and systems is conspicuous in politics (Trump and Brexit are the extremes) and it’s affecting management too.
Personal identity is no longer mainly determined by job or career. People increasingly curate their identities and their connections in social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Furthermore, jobs, workplaces, and the employment market are changing so fast that stable job-based identity is history. So are the patriarchal, static, mechanistic, hierarchical structures typically pictured in those box-and-wire-pyramid diagrams. Yet most managers still see themselves as running such an organisation: plugging people into the pegboard of positions, as if they’re process machine-parts.
The Seek and Trade Me job adverts may pay token attention to the changing employment market by candy-coating job opportunities. But when it comes down to it, they’re typically just looking for the right part to plug into their organisational pegboard. The give-away clue is the typical list of tasks called a job description. Finding the right person to fit the position becomes a major problem when its the hole left by the aging owner of a successful SME stepping back from the operational centre where they’ve probably have been since the beginning. Where do you find such a matching part?
You’re on a hiding to nothing in that search because that owner is an outlier in an outlier organisation: less than 2% of start-ups last that long and when they do it’s probably because of a lucky fit between the idiosyncratic mix of owner attributes and market opportunity. The chance of finding a replacement for such quintessential Kiwi business owners with their cultural heritage of self-reliance, broad competence, resourcefulness and hard work, is close to zero That’s why most GM appointments to Kiwi SMEs fail, proving to the owner yet again that “you can’t trust anyone to run your business”.
Extracting the aging owner from their (probably his) business isn’t a matter of tidying up the accounting systems and plugging in a GM. It requires a transformation of the way the owner and the employees perceive and behave in the organisation. The owner’s attempts at withdrawal typically trigger confusion, stress and conflict among employees whose established identities and relationships are disrupted when long-established tacitly understood roles, co-dependencies and systems begin to unexpectedly fail. So, the owner is drawn back in to settle disputes and repair failed systems.
Maybe the solution strategy is suggested by the ways that organisation and identity emerges on social media where there typically aren’t any pre-defined box-and-wire pyramids; people choose who they associate with, and curate their personal and group identity in the process of working out useful and fulfilling roles where they can do what they do best. In the SME context that would mean creating such space, and in that space, facilitate new and altered working relationships.
That may seem like inviting chaos but, with wise guidance, the space left by the owner’s withdrawal is potentially space for people to step up; for new combinations of responsibilities to emerge; new work relationships to form and flourish, and previously undiscovered talent to shine, so that the organisation organically adjusts to fill the hole in new ways. Remaining emergent gaps can be filled by new recruits, selected for their relational rather than simply functional fit.
SME owners may be sceptical at first that their employees have sufficient interest or capability to accomplish such a transformation. The early stages may tend to confirm that for them, but with perseverance, wise guidance and coaching, it works. The alternatives are dying in the traces, selling for a song, of simply handing it to family when they have as much chance of success as the last GM.
Where would the aging SME owner get such wise guidance and coaching? Chose people who understand the context and the dynamics. They’re probably older, experienced SME owners too, who by fortunate fit of their idiosyncratic personal attributes, experience, education, with the market opportunity, together they are effective, wise guides and coaches. Talk to Omnicom OCC and associates of course.
Since then the social media phenomenon has “heated up” somewhat and companies are mainly concerned about controlling time employees spend on it and what they say about the company and its managers. But the hidden effect is on attitudes to authority and expertise and on formation of personal and collective identity: how people see themselves and the organisation they work in. Evidence of unprecedented dissatisfaction with authority and establishment figures and systems is conspicuous in politics (Trump and Brexit are the extremes) and it’s affecting management too.
Personal identity is no longer mainly determined by job or career. People increasingly curate their identities and their connections in social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Furthermore, jobs, workplaces, and the employment market are changing so fast that stable job-based identity is history. So are the patriarchal, static, mechanistic, hierarchical structures typically pictured in those box-and-wire-pyramid diagrams. Yet most managers still see themselves as running such an organisation: plugging people into the pegboard of positions, as if they’re process machine-parts.
The Seek and Trade Me job adverts may pay token attention to the changing employment market by candy-coating job opportunities. But when it comes down to it, they’re typically just looking for the right part to plug into their organisational pegboard. The give-away clue is the typical list of tasks called a job description. Finding the right person to fit the position becomes a major problem when its the hole left by the aging owner of a successful SME stepping back from the operational centre where they’ve probably have been since the beginning. Where do you find such a matching part?
You’re on a hiding to nothing in that search because that owner is an outlier in an outlier organisation: less than 2% of start-ups last that long and when they do it’s probably because of a lucky fit between the idiosyncratic mix of owner attributes and market opportunity. The chance of finding a replacement for such quintessential Kiwi business owners with their cultural heritage of self-reliance, broad competence, resourcefulness and hard work, is close to zero That’s why most GM appointments to Kiwi SMEs fail, proving to the owner yet again that “you can’t trust anyone to run your business”.
Extracting the aging owner from their (probably his) business isn’t a matter of tidying up the accounting systems and plugging in a GM. It requires a transformation of the way the owner and the employees perceive and behave in the organisation. The owner’s attempts at withdrawal typically trigger confusion, stress and conflict among employees whose established identities and relationships are disrupted when long-established tacitly understood roles, co-dependencies and systems begin to unexpectedly fail. So, the owner is drawn back in to settle disputes and repair failed systems.
Maybe the solution strategy is suggested by the ways that organisation and identity emerges on social media where there typically aren’t any pre-defined box-and-wire pyramids; people choose who they associate with, and curate their personal and group identity in the process of working out useful and fulfilling roles where they can do what they do best. In the SME context that would mean creating such space, and in that space, facilitate new and altered working relationships.
That may seem like inviting chaos but, with wise guidance, the space left by the owner’s withdrawal is potentially space for people to step up; for new combinations of responsibilities to emerge; new work relationships to form and flourish, and previously undiscovered talent to shine, so that the organisation organically adjusts to fill the hole in new ways. Remaining emergent gaps can be filled by new recruits, selected for their relational rather than simply functional fit.
SME owners may be sceptical at first that their employees have sufficient interest or capability to accomplish such a transformation. The early stages may tend to confirm that for them, but with perseverance, wise guidance and coaching, it works. The alternatives are dying in the traces, selling for a song, of simply handing it to family when they have as much chance of success as the last GM.
Where would the aging SME owner get such wise guidance and coaching? Chose people who understand the context and the dynamics. They’re probably older, experienced SME owners too, who by fortunate fit of their idiosyncratic personal attributes, experience, education, with the market opportunity, together they are effective, wise guides and coaches. Talk to Omnicom OCC and associates of course.
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Change Your Attitude or Die Like a Frog
No matter whether or not you've
got a smart phone or tablet, whether or not you blog, tweet, are on LinkedIn or
Facebook, if you ignore their effect on your management environment then you
risk dying like the proverbial boiled frog. It dismissed as nonsense dire warnings
of the consequences of the slow flame under its tub of water.
The changes
may be so slow that they’re hardly noticeable. Yet social and mobile internet
technologies are steadily, inexorably freeing people from the mushroom farm -
from being kept in the dark and fed on bullshit; freeing them to create,
speak up, challenge, push back and rise up; freeing them to connect with anyone
anywhere, to contribute and impact on merit rather than position; freeing
them to expose bullying bosses whose power depends on concealed incompetence
and hierarchical authority. On the web, no one knows whether you’re a dog or
the senior vice president.
That’s why it’s imperative for
managers and managed to learn fast how to get things done in a world where
authority is the reciprocal of followership (for refugees from mathematics,
that means: as authority increases, followership decreases).
You don’t have to join the twittering classes, plaster the details of your life all over Facebook, or push your profile on LinkedIn and blogs to survive. But you do need to change your attitude to fit a world that expects freedoms that you may intuitively see as threats to your authority.
The message for Managerial “Frogs” is abandon that authority or die. The good news is that the rewards for abandoning it are, productive, profitable, satisfying collaborative life.
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Is a Business Exit Consultant Worth the Time & Money?
“Is the money, time and distraction of an Exit Planning Consultant really necessary? And does it really add any value at the end of the day?”
Aaron Toresen, Managing Director, LINK(NZ) poses those questions and answers them in his LINK Business email Newsletter 14 May 2013.
In answer, he baldly claims:
“The truthful answer is only occasionally. More often than not the whole "Exit Planning" nonsense is no more than fee generation by well meaning but ultimately misguided advisers.”
“Almost every business consultant, coach, or mentor has screeds of information, manuals and guides that they will happily take a business owner through, on an hourly rate, to prepare them for the sale of their business. The more complex and esoteric the adviser can make the process, the better. Often these advisers have never sold a business or indeed owned one, but nevertheless confidently march their clients through various business plans, strategic plans, checklists and milestones . . . . . .”
It turns out these claims are mainly a straw man for then claiming that his firm can prepare a business for sale in within 2 or 3 months.
What he doesn't say is whether those businesses sold for their full value to the exiting owner. The truth is, very probably not. 90% of businesses sell for less than half what they’re worth to the exiting owner.
A broker’s main interest is typically efficiency of effort to achieve increased turnover, not selling price. Most brokers want you to sell within four months for whatever the business will fetch. They want you to be grateful that they found you someone who's willing to pay to take your place in the hamster wheel. 90% of the time that’s what business owners do. Brokers typically depend on it.
However, he is right about most business consultants, coaches and mentors. That’s why, if you really do want to sell for an earnings multiple of 4-6 you need to be particular about your choice of help (and your broker).
You’ll need to establish a profitable growth curve and extract yourself from the centre of operations. Unless you've already achieved that, it’ll be impossible to achieve in 2 or 3 months, even with Aaron Toreson's personal help.
The project will take at least two years with business-savvy, trustworthy people helping you lead it. They’ll be educated, experienced business owners with wisdom, passion and expertise to share. They'll quickly, deeply understand you and your business, empathise with your situation and work comfortably within the messy reality of your business.
The project isn't so much about planning as it is about acting strategically; about changing the way your business is organised and operated; so that you have time to work on it instead of only in it.
By the time you complete the project you may have changed your mind about selling because the business will be a profitable pleasure to own.
So don't sell yourself short. You and the nation need you to realise the full value in your business and for it to continue to flourish for it's new owner.
Take care in selecting your strategic change support and your broker.
Sunday, 5 May 2013
Sailboat does 40 knots in 25 knot breeze. Why?
Collaboration is good if you’re not in a hurry. Yeah, right (Not). Surprisingly for many, collaboration is essential when you're in a hurry to win.
It’s especially amazing to dyed-in-the-wool corporate managers like former Energy Company CEO and now corporate Chair, Keith Turner. (Keith Turner. Innovation the key for Team NZ. The New Zealand Herald, Thursday May 2, 2013)
To his conventional corporate eyes, it’s miraculous:
“The speed of learning that [NZ’s] team has generated in transforming an idea into world-leading practice is quite extraordinary”
“The culture of the team is outstanding”.
“I was also amazed to see a team assembled from all corners of the world, working on a common cause like there is no tomorrow. Designers from the world's leading experts coming together, not just for money but to participate in something truly great but with a tremendous sense of humility. That is a great lesson for corporate learning.”
To my eyes what he describes is the power of collaborative learning; failing fast and falling forward in unity. My question is how do they get to be like that; why do they behave so differently to common corporate practice?
“The sailors, the designers, the weather men are so committed together they are leaning on each other's shoulders working out what they learned the day before, how they can change the design tonight and how they can make the boat go faster tomorrow.”
“The team has been able to catapult their ideas forward at such a pace, despite the multitude of cultures present, to innovate, to spring off each other's dumb questions and to learn so quickly that in three years they have gone from knowing virtually nothing about AC72s to being now one of the best in the world. What an extraordinary learning culture.”
“What extraordinary leadership to engender such culture. Grant Dalton lives with his heart on his sleeve. He's frank, he's unassuming and he's driven. He's intense. Dalton is very much a what you see is what you get and no frills. He has welded a world-performing team together in an incredibly short space of time to achieve extraordinary performance.”
Are commitment to purpose and extraordinary leadership sufficient to replicate such fast and effective learning? I don’t believe so. In order to replicate this exceptional learning organisation we need to go much deeper than simply describing purpose and leadership.
We must delve into questions like, where does this cultural ability to spring off others’ dumb questions come from, and how do we learn to do it? How is that ability related to the leader’s candour? What is it that bonds the team? Did the leader “weld” them together or is the bonding much less rigid, less orderly and less mechanical? Much softer, fuzzier and flexible, yet far more powerful?
The guys (and girls) in Team NZ have experienced something very different - effective collaboration. They’ll have a hard job communicating that experience to others unless those others get to experience something like it. Until then, there’s nothing much to productively talk about.
The problem is to devise and operate ways to enable people to experience deep collaboration when they have no practicable notion of what it is, having never knowingly experienced it; how to get them to risk attempting something that seems odd, uncomfortable and stupid then collaboratively fail fast and fall forward; how to get high achievers to risk failing in order to learn something that they can’t understand?
If it’s going to work, building and delivering the programme
itself will be an experiential case in learning to collaborate..
Take for example the speed of the New Zealand team in
designing and proving its AC72 hydrofoil catamaran (a sail boat, but not as we
know it Jim) for the 2013 America’s Cup in San Francisco. Amazingly, the cat
can do more than 40 knots in less than 25 knots of breeze. But more amazing
than that is the speed of their development programme.
It’s especially amazing to dyed-in-the-wool corporate managers like former Energy Company CEO and now corporate Chair, Keith Turner. (Keith Turner. Innovation the key for Team NZ. The New Zealand Herald, Thursday May 2, 2013)
To his conventional corporate eyes, it’s miraculous:
“The speed of learning that [NZ’s] team has generated in transforming an idea into world-leading practice is quite extraordinary”
“The culture of the team is outstanding”.
“I was also amazed to see a team assembled from all corners of the world, working on a common cause like there is no tomorrow. Designers from the world's leading experts coming together, not just for money but to participate in something truly great but with a tremendous sense of humility. That is a great lesson for corporate learning.”
To my eyes what he describes is the power of collaborative learning; failing fast and falling forward in unity. My question is how do they get to be like that; why do they behave so differently to common corporate practice?
Turner seems to pay attention to the “what” and make
assumptions about the “why”. He notices that they “learn on each other’s
shoulders” but is unclear about whether that’s because they are committed or
that they are committed to collaborating:
“The sailors, the designers, the weather men are so committed together they are leaning on each other's shoulders working out what they learned the day before, how they can change the design tonight and how they can make the boat go faster tomorrow.”
Awareness of the distinction between commitment and
commitment to collaborating can be indicated by adding a comma to the first
line of the above sentence:
“the [men] are so committed, together they are [learning]”
“the [men] are so
committed together, they are [learning]”.
Though Turner notices that the pace at which the team “catapult
their ideas forward” and attributes it to an “extraordinary learning culture”, he
seems to attribute that culture to the usual suspects: commitment to purpose
and “extraordinary leadership”:
“The team has been able to catapult their ideas forward at such a pace, despite the multitude of cultures present, to innovate, to spring off each other's dumb questions and to learn so quickly that in three years they have gone from knowing virtually nothing about AC72s to being now one of the best in the world. What an extraordinary learning culture.”
“What extraordinary leadership to engender such culture. Grant Dalton lives with his heart on his sleeve. He's frank, he's unassuming and he's driven. He's intense. Dalton is very much a what you see is what you get and no frills. He has welded a world-performing team together in an incredibly short space of time to achieve extraordinary performance.”
Are commitment to purpose and extraordinary leadership sufficient to replicate such fast and effective learning? I don’t believe so. In order to replicate this exceptional learning organisation we need to go much deeper than simply describing purpose and leadership.
We must delve into questions like, where does this cultural ability to spring off others’ dumb questions come from, and how do we learn to do it? How is that ability related to the leader’s candour? What is it that bonds the team? Did the leader “weld” them together or is the bonding much less rigid, less orderly and less mechanical? Much softer, fuzzier and flexible, yet far more powerful?
To transform organisations to achieve like Team NZ it’s not
enough to describe and understand the general effect and generalised causes. We
must learn to perceive and behave in specifically different ways from the way
we normally do in organisations. The difference is fundamental. Unless we begin
to personally experience changed behaviour, even our understanding is unlikely
to go beyond conventional corporate perspective such as Keith Turner’s – we won’t
have a clue what it might feel like to be in Team NZ let alone how to do it
ourselves.
The guys (and girls) in Team NZ have experienced something very different - effective collaboration. They’ll have a hard job communicating that experience to others unless those others get to experience something like it. Until then, there’s nothing much to productively talk about.
The problem is to devise and operate ways to enable people to experience deep collaboration when they have no practicable notion of what it is, having never knowingly experienced it; how to get them to risk attempting something that seems odd, uncomfortable and stupid then collaboratively fail fast and fall forward; how to get high achievers to risk failing in order to learn something that they can’t understand?
The best place to do that is on-the-job; opportunistically in
the semi-structured messiness of business, dealing with actual business events.
Some educational institutions are beginning to wrestle with this, against the
flow of conventional market expectation and against their own institutional
cultures, structures and practices. The University of Auckland, Graduate School
of Business is one. Having spotted that there’s an international market for
business people who can collaborate and generate collaboration, they’re
building a practice orientated Master’s programme aimed at doing that.
Friday, 26 April 2013
Millennials less entrepreneurial than their olds. Why?
“The whiz-kid with an idea who vigorously taps out code while hyped up on energy drinks then launches a business to astronomical success is the exception, not the rule.” (David Yanofsky in Quartz)
New data from the Kauffman Foundation in the US shows that in 2012, 20-34 year olds were 30% less likely to start a new business than 35-65 year olds.
The gap’s been steadily widening since 1996, mostly due to increasing entrepreneurial activity by the olds but with a discernable decline amongst the youngsters. Especially in the closing years of the millennium.
There are many possible reasons including comparative lack of available capital amongst the youngsters, and olds needing to create jobs for themselves because they can’t get a job and can’t retire. But a third one, the effect of contemporary schooling on the youngsters, is potentially far more pernicious.
Over the western world generally major education reforms were introduced in the late 1980s and early 90s.
In New Zealand the reforms were signalled by the 1990 major report on education “Tomorrow’s Schools”. From that, the movement to de-professionalise teaching and heavily emphasise qualifications got traction through the new Qualifications Authority (NZQA) that administered the atomisation of knowledge by the Unit Standards based assessment and qualification. New Industry Training Organisations (ITOs) administered the related institutionalisation of apprenticeships.
By 2003, when I began a stint of teaching in a University Business School, the shocking effect of the reforms was well established.
As University teachers we were warned that secondary school graduates entering university could be expected to demand to know in detail, before they commenced a unit of learning, exactly what they were expected to know as a result, the process by which they would know it, and the reward structure for knowing.
I recall wondering how any of them would learn anything new, unexpected, or surprising with such restriction on insight, or risk.
Even so, I was dismayed and amazed at how risk averse my students were. They seemed to have been trained to expect surety of outcome for their efforts; unable to cope unless the expected result, the process and the reward were fully mapped out beforehand; schooled that such information was their right and anything less, bad teaching.
I refused to comply and pushed them to cope with uncertainty and risk by collaborating. I coached collaboration. The process was nerve wracking at times but the result was widespread joy at experiencing collaborative entrepreneurship. Graduates from that approach proved to be fast learners (effective in employment 3 x faster than conventionally taught grads) and natural leaders in changing contexts and emergent practice.
But my approach was unusual. The conventional undergraduate teaching methods that predominated, and still do, are effective schooling for career corporate-managers and researchers, not entrepreneurs. Post graduate teaching methods are too; maybe that’s how MBAs came to be blamed for the 2008 GFC.
Little wonder perhaps, that entrepreneurship has declined amongst schooled youngsters.
New data from the Kauffman Foundation in the US shows that in 2012, 20-34 year olds were 30% less likely to start a new business than 35-65 year olds.
The gap’s been steadily widening since 1996, mostly due to increasing entrepreneurial activity by the olds but with a discernable decline amongst the youngsters. Especially in the closing years of the millennium.
There are many possible reasons including comparative lack of available capital amongst the youngsters, and olds needing to create jobs for themselves because they can’t get a job and can’t retire. But a third one, the effect of contemporary schooling on the youngsters, is potentially far more pernicious.
Over the western world generally major education reforms were introduced in the late 1980s and early 90s.
In New Zealand the reforms were signalled by the 1990 major report on education “Tomorrow’s Schools”. From that, the movement to de-professionalise teaching and heavily emphasise qualifications got traction through the new Qualifications Authority (NZQA) that administered the atomisation of knowledge by the Unit Standards based assessment and qualification. New Industry Training Organisations (ITOs) administered the related institutionalisation of apprenticeships.
By 2003, when I began a stint of teaching in a University Business School, the shocking effect of the reforms was well established.
As University teachers we were warned that secondary school graduates entering university could be expected to demand to know in detail, before they commenced a unit of learning, exactly what they were expected to know as a result, the process by which they would know it, and the reward structure for knowing.
I recall wondering how any of them would learn anything new, unexpected, or surprising with such restriction on insight, or risk.
Even so, I was dismayed and amazed at how risk averse my students were. They seemed to have been trained to expect surety of outcome for their efforts; unable to cope unless the expected result, the process and the reward were fully mapped out beforehand; schooled that such information was their right and anything less, bad teaching.
I refused to comply and pushed them to cope with uncertainty and risk by collaborating. I coached collaboration. The process was nerve wracking at times but the result was widespread joy at experiencing collaborative entrepreneurship. Graduates from that approach proved to be fast learners (effective in employment 3 x faster than conventionally taught grads) and natural leaders in changing contexts and emergent practice.
But my approach was unusual. The conventional undergraduate teaching methods that predominated, and still do, are effective schooling for career corporate-managers and researchers, not entrepreneurs. Post graduate teaching methods are too; maybe that’s how MBAs came to be blamed for the 2008 GFC.
Little wonder perhaps, that entrepreneurship has declined amongst schooled youngsters.
Tuesday, 16 April 2013
20 yrs Advice and Advisors Changed Nothing Much.
There’s no shortage of advice and advisors for Kiwi SME owners: plenty of “should do this” and “should do that”; “should use TOC” or “should do a one-page-plan; “shouldn’t be satisfied with the 3Bs (boat, BMW & batch)”; and “should be aiming to be global magnates”. And why should they do these things? Because NZ needs them to create wealth, that’s why. But 20 years of advice, advisor, mentors, consultants, coaches or whatever hasn’t done the trick. Why?
At least part of the reason is that SME owners don’t have the time or patience for advice unless it’s immediately, practicably useful. Regardless of how justified, well meaning or authoritative it is, or how virtuous or good, it’s unlikely to have the prescribed effect unless it pops up at the right moment coming from the right person.
Advice works when, for some reason, the owner is unusually receptive and keen to change, and when it comes from or through someone that the owner trusts to produce the change. It’s an opportunistic, entrepreneurial process. Not a corporate planning exercise.
Trouble is most advisors aren’t business experienced entrepreneurs. They’re more likely ex-corporate executives or experts who, though they think they understand the SME owner, have never experienced actually having their own tender parts on the line; have always spent someone else’s money with only a salary and bonuses at risk.
And that’s not all. 50% of current SME owners are 55-70 yr old baby-boomers whose success in business is largely due to an exceptional coincidence of market opportunity and technical and entrepreneurial talent. Over 90% of SME start-ups disappear within 3 years. Only about 2% grow to be more that a job for the owner.
That 2% aren’t successful because they went to university. More likely they left school early. They’re not successful because they read endless business books or adopted every new TQM, Zero Defect, Process Re-Engineering or whatever Management fad that raged virus-like through the corporate world.
They’re successful because of who they are, what they’re naturally good at, what they happened to do, and when they happened to do it. Why would they be keen to change, especially when the advice comes from a stranger claiming to have the answer?
A current example from my experience is a substantial client whom we met through a long trusted agent/advisor of his who is also a trusted business friend of ours. The introduction coincided with the client facing unexpected demand for a new product he’d developed.
In conversation we learn that although 70 next birthday, he’s tired of being the general and operations manager - at the centre of everything – because he wants to focus on what he loves and is good at – developing new products and processes. He has a list of possible projects.
I ask him, “In the best of all possible worlds, how many of these projects would you like to take to fruition.” “All of them,” he says. “What’s stopping you?” I ask. He’s silent for a moment then replies, “No one asked me that before. My bank manager, accountant, solicitor and friends all ask “What would you want to that for (at your age)?”” “Look”, I say, “there isn’t much you don’t know about your industry and we personally know very little. So we're not proposing to teach you to suck eggs. But we do have the skills, knowledge, direct experience and network to help you remove the barriers to achieving your goal; to profitably exit what you don’t like, profitably get into what you do. It’ll take 3-4 years and involve a lot of change, including you.”
To cut the story short, we’re eight months into the project on his condition: that we complete it in 2 years not 3-4.
We aren’t “doing TOC” with him per se, or “one-page-plan” or any other “tool” or programme. But we are using those and many other approaches and techniques in a rolling-wave project to achieve his goals. In the process we're engaging with him and his people experientially so that in two years that knowledge and skill will be “built into” the organisation(s). The bits he then sells for a high price will be a great buy for new owners who likely are or want to be global magnates. He can keep the other highly profitable bits he likes.
The thing is we met him at that right time and through connections he trusts. Notice also that like him we are also baby boomers and like him we are also SME experienced entrepreneurs. Unlike him we have high-level specialist business skills and knowledge that he knows he lacks. He trusts us and we trust him too.
At least part of the reason is that SME owners don’t have the time or patience for advice unless it’s immediately, practicably useful. Regardless of how justified, well meaning or authoritative it is, or how virtuous or good, it’s unlikely to have the prescribed effect unless it pops up at the right moment coming from the right person.
Advice works when, for some reason, the owner is unusually receptive and keen to change, and when it comes from or through someone that the owner trusts to produce the change. It’s an opportunistic, entrepreneurial process. Not a corporate planning exercise.
Trouble is most advisors aren’t business experienced entrepreneurs. They’re more likely ex-corporate executives or experts who, though they think they understand the SME owner, have never experienced actually having their own tender parts on the line; have always spent someone else’s money with only a salary and bonuses at risk.
And that’s not all. 50% of current SME owners are 55-70 yr old baby-boomers whose success in business is largely due to an exceptional coincidence of market opportunity and technical and entrepreneurial talent. Over 90% of SME start-ups disappear within 3 years. Only about 2% grow to be more that a job for the owner.
That 2% aren’t successful because they went to university. More likely they left school early. They’re not successful because they read endless business books or adopted every new TQM, Zero Defect, Process Re-Engineering or whatever Management fad that raged virus-like through the corporate world.
They’re successful because of who they are, what they’re naturally good at, what they happened to do, and when they happened to do it. Why would they be keen to change, especially when the advice comes from a stranger claiming to have the answer?
A current example from my experience is a substantial client whom we met through a long trusted agent/advisor of his who is also a trusted business friend of ours. The introduction coincided with the client facing unexpected demand for a new product he’d developed.
In conversation we learn that although 70 next birthday, he’s tired of being the general and operations manager - at the centre of everything – because he wants to focus on what he loves and is good at – developing new products and processes. He has a list of possible projects.
I ask him, “In the best of all possible worlds, how many of these projects would you like to take to fruition.” “All of them,” he says. “What’s stopping you?” I ask. He’s silent for a moment then replies, “No one asked me that before. My bank manager, accountant, solicitor and friends all ask “What would you want to that for (at your age)?”” “Look”, I say, “there isn’t much you don’t know about your industry and we personally know very little. So we're not proposing to teach you to suck eggs. But we do have the skills, knowledge, direct experience and network to help you remove the barriers to achieving your goal; to profitably exit what you don’t like, profitably get into what you do. It’ll take 3-4 years and involve a lot of change, including you.”
To cut the story short, we’re eight months into the project on his condition: that we complete it in 2 years not 3-4.
We aren’t “doing TOC” with him per se, or “one-page-plan” or any other “tool” or programme. But we are using those and many other approaches and techniques in a rolling-wave project to achieve his goals. In the process we're engaging with him and his people experientially so that in two years that knowledge and skill will be “built into” the organisation(s). The bits he then sells for a high price will be a great buy for new owners who likely are or want to be global magnates. He can keep the other highly profitable bits he likes.
The thing is we met him at that right time and through connections he trusts. Notice also that like him we are also baby boomers and like him we are also SME experienced entrepreneurs. Unlike him we have high-level specialist business skills and knowledge that he knows he lacks. He trusts us and we trust him too.
Friday, 22 February 2013
Success stops learning – fail fast, fall forward: celebrate failure
The key to competitive advantage in changing and deeply uncertain
times is to discover new "right answers" and get them to market first. Previous
answers won’t do. No one, not even the boss!, knows what the new answers are.
We have to find out by experimenting together and learning fast from failures.
That may make simple sense, but doing it is hard because failure
is typically not allowed. We know that if we want to be successful we have to
look successful; associate with winners not losers. Failing is losing. Success
is winning.
Bosses and teachers are expected to know the answers.
Subordinates and students are rewarded for doing what bosses and teachers want.
To question the boss’s answer is not a good career move. With some bosses, it’s
OK to question provided you already have a convincing alternative answer. Some bosses try to look like they know by pinching subordinates’ answers for their
own and taking the credit. That’s how they got to be bosses. "Everyone knows" that’s how promotion works.
The result of this emphasis on success and knowing is that
organisations and individuals stop learning; thinking happens in interminable closed
loops; workforces become cynically compliant and/or aggressively self-serving.
How do we break that deadly loop? The answer seems to be in the
process of deliberately celebrating failure.
For instance, a Canadian Engineering NGO, Engineers Without
Borders, is an organisation that seems to have broken the loop with a process called
The Failure Report. Of course they didn’t get it right straight off. They failed
plenty along the way. Basically it’s about open admission and shared reflection
on failures.
What they learned* is:
- The Failure Report is a dynamic tool for learning but the real power is its ability to shift organizational cultures.
- It is absolutely critical to have buy-in and support from the highest levels of management - the boss must risk reporting failure too.
- Understand your organization's unique failure foundations – identify and actively remove the blockages to people speaking openly about failure.
- Decouple ego from activity - maximise and acknowledge learning from failure so that ego can remain intact though failure
- Tell stories but don’t paraphrase them into simple lessons for others - tell them in full and in context and leave discussion and interpretation to individuals and groups. (I just failed that by posting this list*)
- Go big or go home. No sugar-coating allowed - be dedicated to honesty and humility and deal with the elephants in the room.
Monday, 18 February 2013
What’s changed in 12 months?
Maybe it’s now obvious that the economy isn’t going to simply “bounce back”; maybe the pressure for enduring radical change is closer to tipping point.
Nevertheless, so long as our circumstances allow us to ignore or deny that - allow individuals and organisations to simply blame others for failures and claim credit for fortunate successes, nothing new is learned and nothing changed.
National politics is obviously dominated by that sort of behaviour. It’s less publicly obvious in business where executives, earning 50+ times their employee’s average wage, continue to take bonuses and repeat their sorcery for the next anxiously credulous company.
The most likely place for transformational change to break out is on the fringes of markets and industries, in outlying parts of larger organisations and in smaller firms (SMEs).
However, though SMEs don’t have the bureaucratic burden and organisational inertia of big firms, they are likely locked into their own historical co-dependent behaviours and relationships. Those behaviours and relationships developed around and out of the founders personality and skills coupled with complementary market opportunity. Through them the firm survived and grew – succeeded. That success, perversely, shuts out new learning and change.
An army of conventional mentors, coaches, consultants, and educators won’t change that because they’re locked into their own conventional histories. To have transformative effect they must first transform themselves and their organisations. But they have the very same impediments that their clients have. How then do we break this single loop control circuit?
I’m writing about this in a series of posts in another blog http://www.businessexit.co.nz/_blog/My_Blog
Business Exit Ltd is a collaboration of mature business people who, for one reason or another, have been fortunate to experience transformative change and to experience leading it too. Our passion is to collaboratively exercise and develop our unusual experiential knowledge and wisdom, for good.
Although we are mature (old dogs), we are keen and effective learners, putting the lie to assumptions about change being the preserve of youth. To the contrary, we observe that young, educated people these days are strongly risk (change) averse.
We are interested to hear other’s stories as well as share our own.
Nevertheless, so long as our circumstances allow us to ignore or deny that - allow individuals and organisations to simply blame others for failures and claim credit for fortunate successes, nothing new is learned and nothing changed.
National politics is obviously dominated by that sort of behaviour. It’s less publicly obvious in business where executives, earning 50+ times their employee’s average wage, continue to take bonuses and repeat their sorcery for the next anxiously credulous company.
The most likely place for transformational change to break out is on the fringes of markets and industries, in outlying parts of larger organisations and in smaller firms (SMEs).
However, though SMEs don’t have the bureaucratic burden and organisational inertia of big firms, they are likely locked into their own historical co-dependent behaviours and relationships. Those behaviours and relationships developed around and out of the founders personality and skills coupled with complementary market opportunity. Through them the firm survived and grew – succeeded. That success, perversely, shuts out new learning and change.
An army of conventional mentors, coaches, consultants, and educators won’t change that because they’re locked into their own conventional histories. To have transformative effect they must first transform themselves and their organisations. But they have the very same impediments that their clients have. How then do we break this single loop control circuit?
I’m writing about this in a series of posts in another blog http://www.businessexit.co.nz/_blog/My_Blog
Business Exit Ltd is a collaboration of mature business people who, for one reason or another, have been fortunate to experience transformative change and to experience leading it too. Our passion is to collaboratively exercise and develop our unusual experiential knowledge and wisdom, for good.
Although we are mature (old dogs), we are keen and effective learners, putting the lie to assumptions about change being the preserve of youth. To the contrary, we observe that young, educated people these days are strongly risk (change) averse.
We are interested to hear other’s stories as well as share our own.
Friday, 24 February 2012
Is Depression Costing Your Business? Probably!
The cost to UK business alone of poor mental health management is in the region of £25 billion per year (Centre for Mental Health, UK);
Depression is soon set to become the second most common cause of disability globally, after heart disease (World Health Organisation)
One in four adults will suffer from a mental health problem in a given year and the majority of these people will suffer depression (British Office of National Statistics)
(Global Business Magazine, February 2012)
And guess what? The most significant impact on workforce stress and depression is the way work is organised and managed! The latest findings on workplace depression suggest that the solution is to ensure that people
- Are able to see how their output makes a valuable contribution to the organisation.
- Are allowed as much variety as possible in the tasks they carry out, the speed at which they work, the way in which they work and even the place in which they work if possible.
- Receive regular performance feedback – repeated studies have shown that uncertainty about performance is a major stress factor.
- Are given ownership of their responsibilities.
- Are provided with suitable opportunities for learning and problem-solving
In short, workplaces that have [open] communication and that allow their employees greater flexibility and control have fewer instances of depression.
Hardly rocket science! But despite manager-talk, few organisations get anywhere near approaching such a climate. Most are so interpersonally dysfunctional (mad) that they could hardly be better designed and operated to intentionally produce depression and anxiety.
The secret is to transform the context: the members’ shared unconscious and conscious assumptions about the way the organisation functions.
So how do we do that? The best time to do it is when the organisation is in crisis. The current global economic climate offers many exceptional opportunities. However, most such opportunities are squandered with conventional restructure, cost cutting, and consequent reinforcement of what’s bad about the way we typically organise and communicate.
The best way to do it is to engage in widely inclusive strategic planning and execution along lines advocated by
· Denning(2010) The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century (available on Kindle from Amazon USA for NZ$18)
· Hamel (2011) Reinventing the Technology of Human Accomplishment (Management Innovation Exchange Video)
· Kim and Mauborgne (2005) Blue Ocean Strategy (available on Kindle from Amazon USA for NZ$11)
· Sinek(2010) How Great Leaders Inspire Action (TED Video)
· Weick and Sutcliffe (2007) Managing the unexpected: Resilient Performance in and Age of Uncertainty (available on Kindle from Amazon USA for NZ$18)
All write about strategy for organisational transformation.
These aren’t “tool boxes” for managers to apply to the managed. The transformation begins with managers’ open commitment to first transform their own behaviour, despite the perceived risks of loss of authority and chaos. Most managers fail at this first hurdle.
To succeed they’ll need the full support of their board of directors and accountability, with education and encouragement, to a coach skilled in such transformational process. That way they can learn experientially - the fastest most effective way - to lead the transformation process.
The benefits: market leadership, unimagined high levels of client and employee satisfaction, amazing technical innovation, reduced costs, higher profits.
The most powerful determinant of NZ business success today is all in the mind.
Monday, 2 January 2012
How to be successful in 2012 and beyond (II)
Pervasive belief in individualistic self-improvement, goal achievement, profligate consumption and bullshit opulence was the target of my previous post: the tongue-in-cheek rant “How to be successful in 2012 and beyond” .
The satire was too subtle (or maybe too long) for some. For instance a friend commented on Facebook, "Hey Steve, it's not that I don't believe in what you say... but I've had one hell of a 2011, and none of it was planned. Happy New Year and very best for 2012, planned or not."
I replied, “ My (satirical) point precisely. I'd say you have had a very successful year "dancing in the moment".
The thing is that he and we all seem to have become so accustomed, so programmed to the mantra of individualistic self-improvement and goal achievement that we tend not to see or value other forms of success.
This was highlighted for me in 2011 when as business development coach I “went back on the tools” a couple or three days per week to provide some flexible trades capacity in a client’s property maintenance business while we set it up for growth.
Not surprisingly the growth strategy includes niche-focusing, differentiating, and enhancing the value of his services, so to increase the price.
Turns out that the first task was to rebuild his concept of the value of what he does. His belief was that his service is manual work and therefore low status, low value, competing on price.
I can understand his belief. You don’t have to look far to see that success is widely regarded as not-doing manual work. It’s indicated by graduating from manual to administrative work. The further you are removed from the manual work into administrating it the higher the financial rewards and status. High paid people don’t get their hands dirty. This is I think grotesquely apparent in the differential between shop-floor and CEO remuneration.
I set out to convince him that despite the virtualisation of many aspects of contemporary life and the reification of financial services, administration and “knowledge work”, people still dwell in bricks and mortar. They depend on built-in utility equipment and services that suffer wear and tear. At the same time, the skills and knowledge needed to maintain and renovate these things, or even to install them properly in the first place, are increasingly alien to most.
The value of that skill and knowledge becomes acutely apparent with hard times, natural disaster, and environmental degradation when maintenance and renovation become a favourable alternative to profligate consumption.
Another thing I discovered with working on the tools was that I quickly got fit. There’s something about sustained physical activity that can’t be achieved in a thrice weekly, intense, hour-long gym workout, no matter how hard you go.
It wasn’t only the physical health but also the mental health of directly creative activity and tangible product – such a contrast to sedentary intellectual work in a typically manipulative bureaucratic setting.
I mentioned my re-evaluation of manual work to a surgeon friend who replied that surgery is labour. This was confirmed when a paediatrician friend confirmed that surgeons have lower status in medical circles than other medical specialists because they are the plumbers, fitters, carpenters and decorators.
To return to the opening topic: in contemporary life it seems that success has become such a narrow and distorted belief that it rules out pretty much all people and activity except being on target to become or being a Glossy-model-looking CEO in “knowledge work” living at peak-consumption.
That has got to be sick. My successful business clients, in terms of profitability, health and contribution to society, have overcome that programming to find a much more fruitful concept of success. It’s about finding hope, joy, and peace in doing good things together: in collaborative enterprise.
That’s practically the antithesis of individualistic self-improvement and goal achievement.
Saturday, 31 December 2011
How to be successful in 2012 and beyond.
According to many who (by the popular definition) are successful and according to the many popular analysts of success, achieving it is as “simple” as sticking to a regime like:
Step 1: (re)picture what success will look like in 10 years. Be sure to think Big, Hairy, and Audacious (Thank you Jim C) ; beyond your imagination of how to get there.
Step 2: decide up to three main 3-5yr thrusts that will take you towards that 10yr vision.
Step 3. set an goals for 2012 that will addresses the highest priority action within those 3-5 yr. thrusts
Step 4: set up to five actions for the first quarter
Step 5: Take action and monitor your progress and focus weekly, monthly quarterly and review your goals annually.
Interestingly, by this definition most people are not successful, arguably because in reality they don’t stick to the regime. This begs the questions: 1) Are most people therefore failures? 2) Are there grades of success?
At dinner parties and other gatherings this summer we’ve played the game “Who’s the most successful?” That game is always on, but seldom explicitly. So we decided to put it on the table.
We discovered, as you might expect that personal notions of success seem strongly affected by life experience.
According to one summary circulating in the email, notions of success are broadly age related and a kind of cycle of life:
We found that politically, people seem to vote for government that they believe will assist them to achieve success on their terms and thus increase their chances of winning – or at least getting a good grade.
We found that people whose children are "successful”, but are “unsuccessful” themselves tended to measure their success in terms of their children’s material success if the kids are rich, or creative success if they’re artistic, or got “good jobs” if none of the above. Or it might be reproductive success if they’re producing lovely children.
Some argued that success is belonging, contributing and growing according to one’s strengths. (Liberal).
Others argued that success is to do God’s will to further his kingdom on earth. (Religious).
Success seems to vary between cultures. For instance a Chinese lad from Taiwan observed that in his community the “top dog” has the biggest house and flashest car. He observed that in Kiwi culture the “top dog” cooks the BBQ. Maybe that’s why Kiwi’s are regarded as less commercially aggressive
.
Anyway, it quickly became clear that people tend to define success pretty much to suit themselves (or get very depressed). This can be a problem when a modern economy, especially in the current recessionary climate, needs economic growth to prosper; needs people produce and buy more stuff: needs success to be materially measured.
We figured therefore that the best policy is to foster materially measured success by nationally standardising success measures along materialistic lines: to have National Success Standards; that these be administered by a dispassionate bureaucracy, preferably an already established one to avoid set-up costs.
In New Zealand, achievement standards are administered by the New Zealand Qualification Authority (NZQA). NZQA administrators will likely be very pleased to acquire the increased span of control.
NZQA’s hold over NZ education is also an advantage because if we have National Success Standards and we want everyone to have equal opportunity to be successful (egalitarian) we must have widely available education for success.
Because we need a quick return on the education investment we can’t wait for kids to qualify in Success and work their way into the corporate workforce. We must educate the existing workforce starting NOW.
So we must rapidly develop and deploy a programme of tertiary level courses in Success which would necessarily be night classes at universities and polytechnics.
That way working people could study to qualify in Success while they continue to work during the day. Along the way they could apply their learnings to their workplace and families and whole workplaces and families could become successful!
If we act quick enough, 2012 can be a huge success for everyone! ;-)
Step 1: (re)picture what success will look like in 10 years. Be sure to think Big, Hairy, and Audacious (Thank you Jim C) ; beyond your imagination of how to get there.
Step 2: decide up to three main 3-5yr thrusts that will take you towards that 10yr vision.
Step 3. set an goals for 2012 that will addresses the highest priority action within those 3-5 yr. thrusts
Step 4: set up to five actions for the first quarter
Step 5: Take action and monitor your progress and focus weekly, monthly quarterly and review your goals annually.
Interestingly, by this definition most people are not successful, arguably because in reality they don’t stick to the regime. This begs the questions: 1) Are most people therefore failures? 2) Are there grades of success?
At dinner parties and other gatherings this summer we’ve played the game “Who’s the most successful?” That game is always on, but seldom explicitly. So we decided to put it on the table.
We discovered, as you might expect that personal notions of success seem strongly affected by life experience.
According to one summary circulating in the email, notions of success are broadly age related and a kind of cycle of life:
We found that politically, people seem to vote for government that they believe will assist them to achieve success on their terms and thus increase their chances of winning – or at least getting a good grade.
We found that people whose children are "successful”, but are “unsuccessful” themselves tended to measure their success in terms of their children’s material success if the kids are rich, or creative success if they’re artistic, or got “good jobs” if none of the above. Or it might be reproductive success if they’re producing lovely children.
Some argued that success is belonging, contributing and growing according to one’s strengths. (Liberal).
Others argued that success is to do God’s will to further his kingdom on earth. (Religious).
Success seems to vary between cultures. For instance a Chinese lad from Taiwan observed that in his community the “top dog” has the biggest house and flashest car. He observed that in Kiwi culture the “top dog” cooks the BBQ. Maybe that’s why Kiwi’s are regarded as less commercially aggressive
.
Anyway, it quickly became clear that people tend to define success pretty much to suit themselves (or get very depressed). This can be a problem when a modern economy, especially in the current recessionary climate, needs economic growth to prosper; needs people produce and buy more stuff: needs success to be materially measured.
We figured therefore that the best policy is to foster materially measured success by nationally standardising success measures along materialistic lines: to have National Success Standards; that these be administered by a dispassionate bureaucracy, preferably an already established one to avoid set-up costs.
In New Zealand, achievement standards are administered by the New Zealand Qualification Authority (NZQA). NZQA administrators will likely be very pleased to acquire the increased span of control.
NZQA’s hold over NZ education is also an advantage because if we have National Success Standards and we want everyone to have equal opportunity to be successful (egalitarian) we must have widely available education for success.
Because we need a quick return on the education investment we can’t wait for kids to qualify in Success and work their way into the corporate workforce. We must educate the existing workforce starting NOW.
So we must rapidly develop and deploy a programme of tertiary level courses in Success which would necessarily be night classes at universities and polytechnics.
That way working people could study to qualify in Success while they continue to work during the day. Along the way they could apply their learnings to their workplace and families and whole workplaces and families could become successful!
If we act quick enough, 2012 can be a huge success for everyone! ;-)
Friday, 5 August 2011
Manager or Leader: red-herring
Should bosses be managers or leaders? Is there a difference? Can leaders be managers? Can managers be leaders? Whatever, it’s irrelevant. The debate’s a red herring.
It was maybe relevant in industrial-age 20thcentury when the boss’s prerogative was simply to control workers either by inspiring (leading) or manipulating (managing) them; when leaders and top managers (executives) were the unquestioned priests of the church of Industrial Management.
It’s time to break the spell. It served the industrial age well but it’s an albatross round the neck of business in the post industrial age: where rates of change are exponentially increasing and high-wage economies and maybe ecological survival depend on people being radically creative, passionately engaged, deeply committed and highly collaborative; where everyone’s a marketer because everyone in the organisation vitally affects the customers’ experience.
This new world needs a fresh understanding of leadership that enables diverse personal strengths to flourish in rich, close, open collaboration; that enables each member to lead according to their strengths.
We need a new understanding that charismatic leadership is just one of many forms of leadership: that, for instance, an introverted analyst can lead precision and attention to fine detail; an independent egotistical salesperson can captain sales effort; a systematic, reliable process improver can lead quality assurance.
It’s time for the “leaders and drivers” to allow the rest to actively and vitally engage in leadership. Trouble is, everything in conventional experience tells us, leaders and led, that that’s courting disaster: inviting anarchy; presiding over descent from control into chaos.
Yet conventional leaders and managers who deliberately learn to allow other forms of leadership to flourish, experience almost miraculous results. The learning’s not easy. It feels risky: like managerial suicide. It’s counter intuitive. But with wise support and professional coaching it happens. Not overnight but typically over 2-3 years with early signs of success clearly evident in 12 months.
This change isn’t something that leaders and managers do to others. It’s fundamentally what leaders and managers do to and amongst themselves. It’s about the systematic changes they make to their interpersonal behaviour and expectations.
It’s about the changed responses that they receive in a spiral of change from mechanical co-operation to dynamic, interpersonal collaboration. It’s about organisation changing from “boxes and wires” structures to rich webs of interpersonal relationships between people with diverse talents and strengths and deeply shared purpose.
This is the new key to competitive success in the 21st century. Are you up for it?
Will you dismiss it as “crazy-idealistic” dreaming considering the sort of people you have to work with? OK. Carry on as usual. Maybe your market will stay locked in the 20th century. If it doesn’t, get ready to eat the dust from your competitors who make the change.
Also published on MPS Pegasus
It was maybe relevant in industrial-age 20thcentury when the boss’s prerogative was simply to control workers either by inspiring (leading) or manipulating (managing) them; when leaders and top managers (executives) were the unquestioned priests of the church of Industrial Management.
It’s time to break the spell. It served the industrial age well but it’s an albatross round the neck of business in the post industrial age: where rates of change are exponentially increasing and high-wage economies and maybe ecological survival depend on people being radically creative, passionately engaged, deeply committed and highly collaborative; where everyone’s a marketer because everyone in the organisation vitally affects the customers’ experience.
This new world needs a fresh understanding of leadership that enables diverse personal strengths to flourish in rich, close, open collaboration; that enables each member to lead according to their strengths.
We need a new understanding that charismatic leadership is just one of many forms of leadership: that, for instance, an introverted analyst can lead precision and attention to fine detail; an independent egotistical salesperson can captain sales effort; a systematic, reliable process improver can lead quality assurance.
It’s time for the “leaders and drivers” to allow the rest to actively and vitally engage in leadership. Trouble is, everything in conventional experience tells us, leaders and led, that that’s courting disaster: inviting anarchy; presiding over descent from control into chaos.
Yet conventional leaders and managers who deliberately learn to allow other forms of leadership to flourish, experience almost miraculous results. The learning’s not easy. It feels risky: like managerial suicide. It’s counter intuitive. But with wise support and professional coaching it happens. Not overnight but typically over 2-3 years with early signs of success clearly evident in 12 months.
This change isn’t something that leaders and managers do to others. It’s fundamentally what leaders and managers do to and amongst themselves. It’s about the systematic changes they make to their interpersonal behaviour and expectations.
It’s about the changed responses that they receive in a spiral of change from mechanical co-operation to dynamic, interpersonal collaboration. It’s about organisation changing from “boxes and wires” structures to rich webs of interpersonal relationships between people with diverse talents and strengths and deeply shared purpose.
This is the new key to competitive success in the 21st century. Are you up for it?
Will you dismiss it as “crazy-idealistic” dreaming considering the sort of people you have to work with? OK. Carry on as usual. Maybe your market will stay locked in the 20th century. If it doesn’t, get ready to eat the dust from your competitors who make the change.
Also published on MPS Pegasus
Monday, 18 April 2011
Who do you think you are?
Who you think you are is affected by the context you’re in and it affects the behaviour of those around you. Who you think you are at work is affected by your assumptions about what your work role means and the cultural dynamics of the organisation.
This was highlighted for me recently by a client’s story:
For as long as I’ve known him my client’s been disappointed with the performance of his sales manager. The sales manager hasn’t achieved the potential indicated by his personality profile and successes outside work. He’s good but not great.
Yet recently he showed brilliance, but not in the usual work context. He and my client were at a supplier’s international conference. My client, unable to cope himself with all the relationship building opportunity and expectation, totally delegated half of that to his sales manager.
The sales manager’s performance in that context was vastly improved from normal. Had my client not known the sales manager’s underlying personality profile, he’d have been worried that his sales manager was on drugs of some kind.
My analysis: that goes to show what’s possible if you can change the organisational context. Next step is to raise the experience to consciousness and deliberately seek to change the local (internal) context to enable that brilliant performance back home.
I recommended my client tell his sales manager how amazingly effective he had been in that outside setting. Then ask him how they could together work to change their behaviours and assumptions to enable the sales manager to tap that previously hidden strength.
He’s done that. The sales manager was surprised and pleased to have been caught being brilliant. They are deliberately working to change their relationship and the organisational dynamics. My client is taking the lead by being accountable to his sales manager for changing his own behaviour.
Who you think you are can turn innovative, curious, dynamic and effective people into comparatively conventional, apathetic, dull and ineffective drones; turn considerate, reflective and humane people into insensitive, bullying manipulators (and vice versa). (For more on bullying see What to do about workplace bullying)
You are just as susceptible to those affects as those around you. Reading about and understanding that effect won’t immunise you. If you’re the boss and your people are behaving badly or unproductively then the change starts with you deliberately changing the way you behave.
That’s probably going to be difficult because who you think you are is deeply engrained. (For more on that see Why good people behave badly in organisations). The good news is that it’s difficult for everyone so you don’t have to become a saint overnight to steal the march on the competition.
This was highlighted for me recently by a client’s story:
For as long as I’ve known him my client’s been disappointed with the performance of his sales manager. The sales manager hasn’t achieved the potential indicated by his personality profile and successes outside work. He’s good but not great.
Yet recently he showed brilliance, but not in the usual work context. He and my client were at a supplier’s international conference. My client, unable to cope himself with all the relationship building opportunity and expectation, totally delegated half of that to his sales manager.
The sales manager’s performance in that context was vastly improved from normal. Had my client not known the sales manager’s underlying personality profile, he’d have been worried that his sales manager was on drugs of some kind.
My analysis: that goes to show what’s possible if you can change the organisational context. Next step is to raise the experience to consciousness and deliberately seek to change the local (internal) context to enable that brilliant performance back home.
I recommended my client tell his sales manager how amazingly effective he had been in that outside setting. Then ask him how they could together work to change their behaviours and assumptions to enable the sales manager to tap that previously hidden strength.
He’s done that. The sales manager was surprised and pleased to have been caught being brilliant. They are deliberately working to change their relationship and the organisational dynamics. My client is taking the lead by being accountable to his sales manager for changing his own behaviour.
Who you think you are can turn innovative, curious, dynamic and effective people into comparatively conventional, apathetic, dull and ineffective drones; turn considerate, reflective and humane people into insensitive, bullying manipulators (and vice versa). (For more on bullying see What to do about workplace bullying)
You are just as susceptible to those affects as those around you. Reading about and understanding that effect won’t immunise you. If you’re the boss and your people are behaving badly or unproductively then the change starts with you deliberately changing the way you behave.
That’s probably going to be difficult because who you think you are is deeply engrained. (For more on that see Why good people behave badly in organisations). The good news is that it’s difficult for everyone so you don’t have to become a saint overnight to steal the march on the competition.
Monday, 21 March 2011
How to Radically Change Business Teaching and Learning
Public education is failing to produce people skilled at collaborating in enterprise; at bringing their particular strengths and passions together to collaboratively, dramatically exceed the possibilities of their individual strengths and limitations. Conventional organisation, management and research have failed to produce new practice.
To get a feel for the problem, go to Fernando Reimers on HBR and the TED LinkedIn discussion, Our Education System is Failing . . . . (more popular than WikiLeaks).
There is no shortage of ideas, research and recommendation on what should be done about it. There’re even maverick teachers creating and delivering programmes that can and do produce people who know their passions and strengths and naturally, actively collaborate instead of merely (dysfunctionally) co-operate.
The barrier these mavericks face is to sustain and grow their innovations in organisations and markets that have little concept of education other than as experienced: typically industrial age, conveyor belt, control focused, uniformity and standardisation by process and qualification.
The good news is that sooner or later opportunities pop up to achieve deep, widespread change. One such opportunity may be in New Zealand high school Business education. There is an acknowledged need to produce graduates with the skills and behaviours to radically improve the effectiveness of New Zealand business enterprise. In response, the high school Business curriculum is in process of radical revision with radically different teaching an learning processes in mind.
The challenge is to spread the experience of the radically different ways of managing learning that bring this new curriculum to life. That’s not only about making room for teachers to experience new ways, then enact them. It’s also a matter of addressing the typically conventional assessment models and other education management systems and processes designed to control teachers in much the same way as they are expected to control their students.
A collaboration of organisations and people passionate to achieve such a transformation was recently formed to tackle this set of problems in a radically different way. It came together from concept to action over the first three months of 2011, with initial financial support and international research interest confirmed in mid March. It doesn’t even have public website yet and intentionally probably won’t for a while yet.
It's a collaboration of Omnicom OCC Ltd with the Faculty of Creative Industries and Business of Unitec Institute of Technology, and Unitec Falkenstein Trust, a Business education trust associated with Unitec but established by successful business entrepreneur Tony Falkenstein.
The collaboration’s first project, a pilot weekend-intensive workshop with follow-through coaching for a diverse range of invited participants, is booked for early May. Although the focus is initially local, the hope and plan, if the pilot is successful is to go national, and eventually international.
The intention is to generate transformative change by exposing seasoned (in this case, high school Business) teachers to the new experience and possibilities of a radically different way of managing learning; then to coach them in their efforts to collaboratively enact their new experience within their respective institutions.
The way that the process is organised and operated is crucial because the purpose is to interrupt conventional behavioural loops: to achieve a transformation, not an intellectualised, incremental modification in teacher and learner behaviour. One way of seeing the transformation is from control-centred management and experience of learning to learning managed and experienced collaboratively.
The teaching and learning model that initially influences the thinking and action in this teaching and learning transformation process was conceived and developed by Roger Putzel, St Michaels College, Vermont and subsequently further developed and operated in multiple sites around the world including in New Zealand.
Putzel’s approach, called XB, was developed for transformative teaching and learning in Business related subject areas. So it seems an ideal platform to transform Business teachers, Business teaching, Business students and the business of education for business.
But that’s not all. The same basic model can be applied to teaching and learning anything, anywhere: even in a commercially focused learning organisation. In fact it can be easier to implement there than in institutional education . . . . . . .
To get a feel for the problem, go to Fernando Reimers on HBR and the TED LinkedIn discussion, Our Education System is Failing . . . . (more popular than WikiLeaks).
There is no shortage of ideas, research and recommendation on what should be done about it. There’re even maverick teachers creating and delivering programmes that can and do produce people who know their passions and strengths and naturally, actively collaborate instead of merely (dysfunctionally) co-operate.
The barrier these mavericks face is to sustain and grow their innovations in organisations and markets that have little concept of education other than as experienced: typically industrial age, conveyor belt, control focused, uniformity and standardisation by process and qualification.
The good news is that sooner or later opportunities pop up to achieve deep, widespread change. One such opportunity may be in New Zealand high school Business education. There is an acknowledged need to produce graduates with the skills and behaviours to radically improve the effectiveness of New Zealand business enterprise. In response, the high school Business curriculum is in process of radical revision with radically different teaching an learning processes in mind.
The challenge is to spread the experience of the radically different ways of managing learning that bring this new curriculum to life. That’s not only about making room for teachers to experience new ways, then enact them. It’s also a matter of addressing the typically conventional assessment models and other education management systems and processes designed to control teachers in much the same way as they are expected to control their students.
A collaboration of organisations and people passionate to achieve such a transformation was recently formed to tackle this set of problems in a radically different way. It came together from concept to action over the first three months of 2011, with initial financial support and international research interest confirmed in mid March. It doesn’t even have public website yet and intentionally probably won’t for a while yet.
It's a collaboration of Omnicom OCC Ltd with the Faculty of Creative Industries and Business of Unitec Institute of Technology, and Unitec Falkenstein Trust, a Business education trust associated with Unitec but established by successful business entrepreneur Tony Falkenstein.
The collaboration’s first project, a pilot weekend-intensive workshop with follow-through coaching for a diverse range of invited participants, is booked for early May. Although the focus is initially local, the hope and plan, if the pilot is successful is to go national, and eventually international.
The intention is to generate transformative change by exposing seasoned (in this case, high school Business) teachers to the new experience and possibilities of a radically different way of managing learning; then to coach them in their efforts to collaboratively enact their new experience within their respective institutions.
The way that the process is organised and operated is crucial because the purpose is to interrupt conventional behavioural loops: to achieve a transformation, not an intellectualised, incremental modification in teacher and learner behaviour. One way of seeing the transformation is from control-centred management and experience of learning to learning managed and experienced collaboratively.
The teaching and learning model that initially influences the thinking and action in this teaching and learning transformation process was conceived and developed by Roger Putzel, St Michaels College, Vermont and subsequently further developed and operated in multiple sites around the world including in New Zealand.
Putzel’s approach, called XB, was developed for transformative teaching and learning in Business related subject areas. So it seems an ideal platform to transform Business teachers, Business teaching, Business students and the business of education for business.
But that’s not all. The same basic model can be applied to teaching and learning anything, anywhere: even in a commercially focused learning organisation. In fact it can be easier to implement there than in institutional education . . . . . . .
Monday, 14 March 2011
Measuring a “pound of flesh”
TEU’s Nigel Haworth is probably right to pejoratively call University of Auckland VC, Stuart McCutcheon a Managerialist.
In this latest stoush with the Tertiary Education union McCutcheon claims the rational high ground (NZ Herald). But to Haworth and many others he’s behaving like an industrial Shylock demanding his pound of flesh; his stance smacking of conventional managerial thinking and arrogance: underpinned by a particular set of unquestioned assumptions about how to measure and get better performance.
Of course in his mind McCutcheon is simply being rational; more rational than fellow academic Haworth, and denies wanting a “pound of flesh”. But to Harworth and the significant proportion of university employed academics in the union it clearly feels like that.
The thing is, there are far more productive measures of performance and satisfaction than those that demand or seem like they demand “pounds of flesh”.
Steve Denning commented in a recent communication:
“As I look back on my many years as a manager, I can see that one of the things that kept management grinding along on its death march was the measurement system. So long as the managers used a measurement system that kept tracking "things", it meant that "people" and "teams and "storytelling" inevitably got the short end of stick.
So managers often talked a good game about people and teams, but at the end of the day, what really mattered was whether you made your numbers.”
Traditional management will keep grinding onwards unless and until we change the things we measure and crucially, the way that we measure them.
We must pay attention to the people elements, not just the "things" or "outputs" that an organization produces.
Steve’s doing a 5 part series in his Forbes blog on measuring what really matters. Part 4 on measuring time has links to the previous 3 parts. Part 5 is in the pipeline.
In this latest stoush with the Tertiary Education union McCutcheon claims the rational high ground (NZ Herald). But to Haworth and many others he’s behaving like an industrial Shylock demanding his pound of flesh; his stance smacking of conventional managerial thinking and arrogance: underpinned by a particular set of unquestioned assumptions about how to measure and get better performance.
Of course in his mind McCutcheon is simply being rational; more rational than fellow academic Haworth, and denies wanting a “pound of flesh”. But to Harworth and the significant proportion of university employed academics in the union it clearly feels like that.
The thing is, there are far more productive measures of performance and satisfaction than those that demand or seem like they demand “pounds of flesh”.
Steve Denning commented in a recent communication:
“As I look back on my many years as a manager, I can see that one of the things that kept management grinding along on its death march was the measurement system. So long as the managers used a measurement system that kept tracking "things", it meant that "people" and "teams and "storytelling" inevitably got the short end of stick.
So managers often talked a good game about people and teams, but at the end of the day, what really mattered was whether you made your numbers.”
Traditional management will keep grinding onwards unless and until we change the things we measure and crucially, the way that we measure them.
We must pay attention to the people elements, not just the "things" or "outputs" that an organization produces.
Steve’s doing a 5 part series in his Forbes blog on measuring what really matters. Part 4 on measuring time has links to the previous 3 parts. Part 5 is in the pipeline.
Friday, 25 February 2011
And the forecast is: Wrong
The Business Herald in the New Zealand Herald this morning (Friday 25 Feb 2011) features an edited extract from Dan Gardner's new book "Future Babble". In the excerpt Gardner writes mostly about how "we" continue to believe experts' predictions about the future when they are notoriously, conclusively, consistently wrong. According to Gardner this is because our minds are hard wired to seek simplification and certainty. But it doesn't work! Gardner's excerpt ends where I think the real problem lies:
"And that leads to the ultimate conclusion, which is one we do not want to accept but must: There are no crystal balls, no style of thinking, no technique, no model will ever eliminate uncertainty. The future will forever be shrouded in darkness. Only if we accept and embrace this fundamental fact can we hope to be prepared for the inevitable surprises that lie ahead."
The excerpt offers no clue on how we might "embrace" this uncertainty but the Christchurch earthquake and aftermath this week and ongoing, dramatically indicates how. The key to survival, recovery and prosperity lies in our capacity to collaborate.
But command style management, focus on dispassionate information, and individualistic reward systems ensure that most of us seldom, if ever experience collaboration. At best we experience co-operation only.
The key to thriving in a climate of uncertainty is unity through shared vision in culture that constantly questions and tests its assumptions. To get that we have to engage diverse perspectives. Conventional management practice requires compliant uniformity, often called "alignment".
It seems pretty clear to me what has to change. Education, especially Business education, for one, has to change: not so much what is taught and learned, but HOW it's taught and learned (and assessed): collaboratively.
That said, the problem then becomes how to change education. How do we do that when bad education is endemic:
Students expect “add water and stir” education. They just want a recognised qualification at lowest cost.
Industrial era management practice is the main blockage in commerce too. Take the Borders failure. Check out Forbes blog for more on that.
Industrial era management ideology and practice is so endemic it doesn't get questioned. It's like water to a fish. We're immersed in it - hierarchy and compliance. Question it! Encourage others to question it. If you're a manager, encourage them to question you.
Stop investing in what was, when the answer is in what could be. Stop using tools and technology to shore up the status quo. Together risk finding a radically new way to manage.
To manage the risk and grow your courage, hire an experienced change-coach, learn from people and industries that have already done it. Start with books like: Umair Haque The New Capitalist Manifesto; John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison The Power of Pull; Ranjay Gulati Reorganize for Resilience; Rod Collins Leadership in a Wiki World; and Carol Sanford The Responsible Business.
For a comprehensive account of the rise and fall of 20th Century management as well as an account of the principles and practices underlying the reinvention of management, read Steve Denning 's The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management (Jossey-Bass 2010).
"And that leads to the ultimate conclusion, which is one we do not want to accept but must: There are no crystal balls, no style of thinking, no technique, no model will ever eliminate uncertainty. The future will forever be shrouded in darkness. Only if we accept and embrace this fundamental fact can we hope to be prepared for the inevitable surprises that lie ahead."
The excerpt offers no clue on how we might "embrace" this uncertainty but the Christchurch earthquake and aftermath this week and ongoing, dramatically indicates how. The key to survival, recovery and prosperity lies in our capacity to collaborate.
But command style management, focus on dispassionate information, and individualistic reward systems ensure that most of us seldom, if ever experience collaboration. At best we experience co-operation only.
The key to thriving in a climate of uncertainty is unity through shared vision in culture that constantly questions and tests its assumptions. To get that we have to engage diverse perspectives. Conventional management practice requires compliant uniformity, often called "alignment".
It seems pretty clear to me what has to change. Education, especially Business education, for one, has to change: not so much what is taught and learned, but HOW it's taught and learned (and assessed): collaboratively.
That said, the problem then becomes how to change education. How do we do that when bad education is endemic:
Students expect “add water and stir” education. They just want a recognised qualification at lowest cost.
- Universities want to deliver recognised qualifications at lowest cost.
- Employers want recruits with recognised qualifications, like they got when they were at university because that’s the easiest criteria to winnow the applicants.
- University teachers are up to their eyes administrating and researching. Why would they upgrade their pedagogy when the markets accept what they currently produce?
Industrial era management practice is the main blockage in commerce too. Take the Borders failure. Check out Forbes blog for more on that.
Industrial era management ideology and practice is so endemic it doesn't get questioned. It's like water to a fish. We're immersed in it - hierarchy and compliance. Question it! Encourage others to question it. If you're a manager, encourage them to question you.
Stop investing in what was, when the answer is in what could be. Stop using tools and technology to shore up the status quo. Together risk finding a radically new way to manage.
To manage the risk and grow your courage, hire an experienced change-coach, learn from people and industries that have already done it. Start with books like: Umair Haque The New Capitalist Manifesto; John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison The Power of Pull; Ranjay Gulati Reorganize for Resilience; Rod Collins Leadership in a Wiki World; and Carol Sanford The Responsible Business.
For a comprehensive account of the rise and fall of 20th Century management as well as an account of the principles and practices underlying the reinvention of management, read Steve Denning 's The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management (Jossey-Bass 2010).
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