Mitigation Strategy or Contingency plan what difference does it make?

Some of our profession spend a great deal of effort making contingency plans that cover just about every conceivable scenario. In fact in some cases I have noticed it as an obsession. The first tell tale signs are a seemingly never ending barrage of “but what if?” questions. Admittedly, sometimes it can be difficult to know exactly where to draw the line.

I like to make a simple matrix, high chance/ high impact to low chance / low impact and then to focus on the areas that demand the most attention. The important point of the exercise is to make sure that you rely on the input of a wide group of people. I recommend short brainstorming sessions, beginning with everyone writing down their top ten major concerns on a piece of paper and then followed by a comparative discussion until you have enough input to build the matrix and to construct a well thought through contingency plan.

However with the recent outbreak of Swine Flu it is not always easy to recognize the logic. It is hard to work out what is hysteria and what is ‘reasonable concern’. Apparently this week the guests of the Metro Park hotel in Hong Kong were quarantined in their hotel because a few days earlier the hotel received a visitor from Mexico that had subsequently fallen ill.

The British government has been printing leaflets to be delivered into every letterbox in the land, sharing pearls of wisdom such as(and I quote):

When you cough or sneeze it is especially important to follow the rules of good hygiene to prevent the spread of germs:
• Always carry tissues.
• Use clean tissues to cover your mouth and nose when you cough and sneeze.
• Bin the tissues after one use.
• Wash your hands with soap and hot water or a sanitiser gel often.

But the one I liked best was on the BBC website:
• If you have flu symptoms and recently visited affected areas of Mexico, seek medical advice

Some people use the term ‘mitigation strategy’ while others call it a contingency plan – to be honest I don’t know the difference. What I do know is that the guests of the Metro Park have plenty of time to debate the subject, once they have completed the filling in their travel insurance forms, in the vain hope of receiving some kind of compensation.

I have always wanted to visit Hong Kong. I have flown over it a few times but never had the time to land. I am just imagining what it must be like to have finally arrived in your hotel, only to be told that you can not leave it until your holiday is over!

One last piece of great advice from the Kaikora District Council and the University of Otago, New Zealand:
‘if you have to go out in public keep at least one metre away from other people and avoid making physical contact.’

H.

Who are the best decision makers in the world?

For those of you that are familiar with my nine step approach to complex problem solving will know just how seriously I take the subject of decision making, in fact I devote a whole step to it. I place a lot of emphasis on deciding up front how the decision will be made and who exactly should take it. Depending upon the type of decision and its urgency I put forward various possibilities of approach. But this week I learned a new much simpler way and it has got me thinking as to how I could make it work within my client’s organization structures.

Imagine this. Imagine that you are looking to rent an apartment, obviously you will map some specific criteria: location (convenience and safety), price per month, number of bedrooms, oil fired or gas central heating and so on. Once you have your criteria and have viewed a few choices that fit, you then begin the difficult phase of weighing up one option against the other. This process is not so difficult if you are the only person going to live in the apartment, but imagine you were looking for a head office location for a multi-national company with desk space for 2000 administrators. What if I told you there is another way, an easier and more efficient way?

This week Dr. Elva Robinson of Bristol University offered a valid alternative to our clumsy decision making processes. She deducts from her observations that you simply need to elect a scout to go out and find a location and not to bother to compare alternatives at all.

Basically the idea is that you simply look until you find a location that meets all your criteria and move in! But that’s impossible I hear you say, and indeed it probably is for humans, but ants do this all the time. By gluing radio transmitters to the backs of 2000 rock ants Dr. Elva’s students discovered that ants appoint ‘estate agents’ that go out and look for a new nest when the old one gets close to becoming unfit for purpose. The ant agents have the full approval of the colony, they have very specific criteria and when they find something suitable the whole colony moves in and gets on with the required building and alterations. No debates, no board meetings, contracts or lawyers, just simple delegation and logical decision making.

In fact us humans are pretty bad at decision taking. If we are given multiple alternatives we may begin by approaching the topic logically, but more often than not, at the last minute we mess everything up by taking a completely irrational decision based upon instinct or a seemingly completely irrelevant criteria point, always trying to justify it to ourselves afterwards, especially if it turns out to be a bad one.

Now, if you are thinking that an ant colony is a much more straightforward structure than a business, you should look a little closer. It certainly is much more efficient and effective. I think us humans can learn a thing or two about delegation and decision making from Dr. Robinson and her study on ants. After all, she reminds us that there are probably more ants in the world than humans – that has to be some measure of success? After we have screwed up the environment so much that we become extinct, I wouldn’t mind supposing that Rock ants will still be around taking the right decisions for their long term well being and safety.

Now it’s back to advising my clients and guiding them into bringing in the right criteria and methodology to ensure they take the right decisions. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it!

Have a good week,
Harley

Tough change: The French and the British can be so resistant!

Change managers are paid to anticipate resistance, to make strategy and contingency plans for it and, in short, to ensure a smooth transaction from an existing situation to something new.

Historically, apart from wars between countries, there have been some massive change projects that I would have been proud to have claimed to ‘have managed’ :

• 3 September 1967, Sweden switching from driving on the left to driving on the right,
• January 1, 2002: the Germans give up the Deutschmark for the Euro
• 28 March, 2005: the Irish introduce a no smoking ban in all public places, including pubs and cafe’s.

This week the French switched to a new style car number plate. Previously, the plate was issued to the person and not the car. It indicated the region from which the owner came from. As from this week the two digit regional identifier has been removed causing much upset and push back.

Probably the most resented of all the French regions is 75. If you live in Troyes and you see a car badly parked, you would likely be inclined to look at its number plate and if it turned out to be from the region 75 then you would most likely explain it away by saying “typical Parisian!” And if you were stuck behind a dithering car in the capital city and noticed that the plate came from your local home town, you would probably sympathize with the driver and refrain from honking your horn.

And so is it, from now French children won’t have the fun game of spotting regions on long car journeys, and everyone will lose (against their will) the link between themselves and their regions. But the French authorities have brought in one concession – they have left a space at the end of the plate, where the owner can add a sticker indicating where they come from. Of course, like all last minute initiatives, this has not been thought through because people can put on any sticker they like. So Parisians on holiday in Reims can switch their stickers and pretend to be from somewhere else! How strange and unpredictable we humans are. How strange that we become so chauvinistic about where we come from and where we would like to be!

In my experience, change managers have the biggest difficulty not with handling massive changes but small ones. I once managed a change project for a multi-national company where we had to introduce US Qwerty keyboards into all their offices across the globe. In Spain and Germany (where quite frankly the impact was massive) the resistance was predictably vocal but balanced and a solution was found. In the UK, however, where the difference in the keyboard is almost zero (only the British pound sign is replaced by a $, and a couple of other very minor differences) the resistance was incredible. I had not expected it and had no plan in place to fight off the vociferous and passionate resistance. The argument thrown at me was that because the change was so small, there was no point in doing it! The UK resistors expected us to make technological changes to our platform and change our purchasing procedures where in every other country, the globalization argument of ‘anyone working anywhere’ had won the day.

Life is strange and people unpredictable and as long as it remains this way, us change managers will continue to have a purpose and a very interesting life!

An e-mail from my mother and an excellent lesson on business efficiency

My mother replied to an e-mail in which I mentioned that my lawn mower is at the repairers, just at the time when I need it most. My mother is 80 years old and her lawn is bigger than a full size tennis court, with additional grass paths and grass covered orchards. In her reply she gives me seven valuable lessons in four lines of text, amazing:

Here’s what she wrote:

Harley,

Can't you borrow a mower from a neighbour, friend or relative? I get my mowers serviced in the winter when it is 10% cheaper, I must admit that Judith takes it for me to where she gets her machines serviced. We cut all the grass today, using the big machine to pick up the leaves etc. Then I can use my mulcher, a smaller, manageable size with no grass box to empty, so much quicker.

Have a good weekend,

Love Mum xxx

The seven lessons:
Lesson one: be resourceful
Lesson two: solve the real problem and don’t complain
Llesson three: plan ahead
Lesson four: save on bottom line costs
Lesson five: delegate and get the task done,
Lesson six: be efficient; use the right tool for job
Lesson seven: put the right tools in the hands of the right employees

Here’s my reply:

Mum,

Me and grass, we have a love / hate relationship – I try to ignore it and hope it goes away, it ignores me and keeps on growing!

Following your email I have put an annually reoccurring reminder in my computer to take the lawn mower in for a service on the first Saturday of December every year.

I think human evolution takes so long purely because the things we should do to improve, we don’t do – because for the most of us, planning ahead is not natural. In prehistoric times (and still today for the millions of those that are living on the edge) we lived for the now moment, each day, live or die.

In business I learned to plan ahead and have created elaborate focus, planning and progress measuring systems – but in my private life, I simply want to go home, chill out, listen to radio 4 and drink a glass of white wine in the sunshine – all the rest is an unwelcome interruption ;-)

Love Harley xxx

I know my mother, I know she’s going to reply “Harley, stop theorising and just get on with it, if you follow my advice – you won’t have to even cut the grass yourself , you lazy swine!“

If my wife reads this blog, I'll have to go and borrow my neighbours lawn mower and I'll spend my sunny Saturday cutting grass - I need an excuse, quick!

You are never too old to learn, just too stupid!

I heard this expression for the first time last week, with the timing of a true comic performer my brother in law delivered it with absolute style and panache. After quietly laughing to myself (for fear of causing upset) it got me thinking.
It is true that we humans seem to make the same mistakes over and over again, even when we are ‘old enough to know better’. Most of us are motivated to learn because we see an intrinsic benefit for ourselves. For example; we learn a new language because we want to go on holiday or do business in countries where the majority mother tongue is not the same as our own, We follow an MBA course because we want to advance our career by rapidly increasing our general knowledge of business and economics.
So needlessly to say, I get upset when I hear people say ‘I am too old to learn….’. I believe you are never too old, it is just an excuse. There are countless stories of elderly people learning the most amazing new skills. Twenty years earlier the ‘I am too old to learn’ types would probably have used some other lame excuse such as ‘I am not cut out for this kind of thing’. Why don’t people say the truth and just admit that they can not be bothered, that they are simply not interested enough in the subject to go through all the hassle of learning something new? And yet all of us, in certain aspects of our lives continue to repeat our old mistakes because we are too lazy (or dare I say stupid) to learn or know better.
I recently led an MBA course at the Solvay Business School in Brussels and it became obvious to me that not all the students had the same academic level. And sure enough some of the students scored very high in their exams while others, scraped through and although some of the difference can be put down to the amount of effort invested, another part is simply a question of intellect, or the ability to rapidly store and hold data.
I do not mind admitting that I was not the brightest student in my class, I always returned average results, so in order for me to do well in anything, I had to put in a lot more effort than the more gifted students. However, as I went into business, I realized that success is more about the application of knowledge and not so much the amount of knowledge acquired. By the time I was in my mid thirties, I had discovered my true strengths and worked hard to improve them to such a point that I began achieve real success and to understand my net worth.
Coming to terms with the fact that you cannot be good at everything is important. By selecting the best team available, to compliment your weaknesses, and then motivating them to work together, each one utilizing their unique skills to the advantage of the group – is one of the true secrets to having a successful and versatile business.
The advance of the personal computer has given people with higher emotional intelligence than academic intelligence an enormous boost. Pda’s and laptops can store and retrieve all the ‘unimportant’ information accurately and efficiently, whenever it is needed, meaning one’s inability to remember the exact date of a meeting or the name of a supplier you once met – is no longer so critical.
Even the oldest person on the planet can learn a new language – it might take them longer than a child, but a few words in the head of a wise person, are worth a thousand in that of a fool!
So if you are finding yourself saying ‘I am too old to learn’, correct yourself – you are not too old, you’re simply too stupid to admit that the subject does not interest you enough for the effort required.
Hans Eysenck apparently once claimed he could teach anyone enough mathematics to get them to university entrance level, so there is hope for all of us!
Be cleaver out there………

The power of a really good story

To communicate well you need to find a common level of understanding. At its highest (most intellectual) point it can be a professor sharing knowledge to his or her students, on the lowest level it can be two people engaged in physical arm to arm combat or a couple making love.
However somewhere between these extremes is the power of a really good story. There is no doubt in my mind that a powerful story can have an enormous impact. For managers, consultants and leaders it is one of the finest ways of sharing personal vision, beliefs and insight. And if the story can be reduced to a single line or slogan, then the chance of it being remembered long after it was originally told will increase dramatically.

Take Shakespeare, for example – how many people know the story of Romeo and Juliet and how many people remember the line “Romeo, Romeo where for art thou Romeo?” Take Hamlet with its litany of one liners:
‘Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice’ (listen more than speak)
‘Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy’ (live within your means)
‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend’ (do not lend or borrow money, especially with friends because you are likely to lose both).

Last week a colleague told me a story about his childhood, growing up on a Greek island. The story was powerful and engaging, it shared with me the innermost thoughts and values of the story teller. It turned a colleague into a friend; someone that I felt I could rely on in times of need.

What is your story? Everyone needs to have their own. How do you ensure that people remember you after your first encounter is over? How do you install in your listeners a feeling of trust? Your story needs to be clear, engaging and in its very essence true (you can embellish a little but only for the sake of entertainment and good communication).

Make sure your story can be edited for length, to slip comfortably into the amount of time you have with your audience and not to fill it completely. A good rule of thumb is anywhere from thirty minutes to thirty seconds. Look straight into the eyes of your listeners. If you lose their engagement, adjust the length but never the content. It is your story, share who you really are. Your story should not be used as a weapon or a con trick to win the favor of your audience. For as Shakespeare wrote (again in Hamlet): ‘to thine ownself be true’ (be genuine, be true to yourself). You are who you are and although you may aspire to being someone else, it is you that matters and not who you might want to be or become that is relevant in business. Those matters are for you and your councilors.

Enjoy your week

The guy's a liar

The guy’s a liar, he really is. He told me that it he didn’t go running to his N+1 when is all along his N+1 maintains it was him and him alone that briefed him from the very start.
Anyone working in change management knows that reading people and learning their motives is the trick to identifying the real challenge ahead. The trouble is that most people do not tell you the truth, at best they offer you their version of it. They tell you whatever it is they think you want to hear. However, there a few people that actually believe the lies they tell, converting them into a new and strange reality the moment the words pore out of their mouths. So when you speak with their colleagues (to try and get a 360deg view of the situation) you find that their version of ‘the truth’ is consistently out of line with the common view (assuming one can be detected).

Everybody wants to convince you that they are to be trusted (and indeed everyone should be). But some people are simply unable to objectively separate fantasy from reality. Interestingly, once this tendency has been identified, it can in fact make one’s life easier, simply because liars and fantasist are very often consistent.

A few years ago I worked with a guy that spent a great deal of time and effort telling people what he had said to this boss and that. However, once I had come to the conclusion that he was in fact living in a fantasy land of his own making; he became the easiest person to read of all. Everything he said was both the truth and a lie at the same time: it was the truth in as much that what he told me was indeed what he wanted to say, but a lie in as much that he had in fact done completely the opposite. For example if he said ‘I tried to warn the CEO that he was going in the wrong direction but he didn’t listen’ – in reality meant: ‘I congratulated the CEO on his insight and vision, unfortunately however I didn’t know what to believe in at the time, but looking back the CEO was obviously steering us all in the wrong direction.’ Eventually he became so predictable, I simply had to reverse what I heard and I was instantly very close to reality. It’s just like when people open with a qualifying statement such as ‘I am not a sexist, but……’ and then follow with a barrage of outrageous comments and observations. Somehow the pretence seems to make them feel immune from future attack or persecution.

So the guy is a liar, he is only telling me what he thinks I want to hear – and my knowing this, in a strange way, makes my job a little easier because if everyone told the truth, how would I ever know?