Saturday 21 March 2015

Leadership - A Duty of Consistency and Common Sense



I read a newspaper article today about a Japanese academic, an expert on China, who works at my old alma mater, the University of Nottingham. She has been forced to leave the UK because she has failed to meet the home office requirement of living in the UK for more than 185 days a year. She was unable to meet that commitment because she had to travel for her work and spent 270 days in China in 2010 and 202 days there in 2011. She has an Australian husband and a one year old son born in the UK. After initially being denied the right to stay in the UK, a judge declared that it was not in the national interest to deport her given her expertise (she advised the UK Government and some of her research was government funded). The Home Office in its infinite wisdom appealed and she has abandoned her claim because of increasing legal expenses.

Meanwhile the country pays host to scores of foreign criminals, often ruthless and violent, who manage to evade deportation, even after serving lengthy prison sentences because they have conned the increasingly useless justice systems over their human  rights.

Before you turn away, this isn’t another article about the nonsensical human rights regulations and their constant abuse and deliberate misinterpretation by our liberal elite. The problem is more that we have lost sense of consistency and common sense in so many parts of our daily lives.


The problem occurs in government, across the civil service, in local authorities but is also rife in private companies and corporations. The larger the instituition, the larger the problem. As systems get bigger, they get exponentially more complex, and as complexity increases inconsistency is almost inevitable. The failure to address inconsistency is largely because we fail to use common sense.

How often do we see businesses embarking on massive redundancy programmes, eliminating their valuable, knowledgeable and loyal staff, only to take on more useless managers and expensive contractors with no loyalty, and with no experience of the real and specific organisational issues that face them.

If we could use a little common sense every time we spotted an inconsistency, we could start to eliminate the inconsistency at least, and maybe even fix the root cause of the problem that gave way to the inconsistency in the first place. In my circles it’s called Continuous Improvement. By fixing problems as you encounter them it is possible to start to control complexity by reducing the number of problems that can occur in the future.

But instead of fixing the right problem, our leaders cover up the issues by creating new rules and regualations and introducing more complexity and more inconsistencies. And the vicious cycle starts over.

As we head towards the general election our politicans should seriously think about policies that end these nonsenses and engage their frontal lobes with a bit more rigor before they embark on the next round of rules and regulations that make our blood boil.

Sadly, it will be too late for Dr Miwa Hirono.



Tuesday 17 March 2015

Teams In the Workplace – Flogging a Dead Metaphor?

You could probably wallpaper a small city with the amount of material that has been written about Teams in the Workplace. That search term alone provides 112,000,000 items to browse through. It seems that nearly every day a new article pops up on LinkedIn or HBR or some other illustrious business compendium about how to better manage your teams,  the dangers of underperforming teams,  how to rebuild a failing team and the like. And, inevitably, a good percentage of these articles will make reference to the sports team metaphor.


I’ve been lucky enough to have worked in some very high performing teams whilst simultaneously being part of some very high performing management teams. Conversely, I’ve worked in some highly dysfunctional teams, almost always under even more dysfunctional management. Since I’ve been self-employed I’ve spent most of time my working with groups of people who are referred to as teams, but who are really more a bunch of people thrown together organisationally, geographically or functionally (or a mix of these). The distinguishing feature of these people is that they primarily operate as individuals supporting other individuals, groups or even 'proper teams'.
In the circles I operate in, mainly the quality and process management and consulting world, there are plenty of lone wolves like me. Auditors, project quality managers, process evangelists and consultants often act as one man bands – working with and amongst many teams, but almost always on the periphery of the teams themselves. The nature of the work sometimes necessitates this, but often the people who take on these roles do so because it fits their personalities both in and out of the workplace.

For extroverted introverts like me, this is an ideal situation. I get to focus on the things I do best, for the people who matter the most – namely my customers. I’m not generally subjected to random time-wasting team meetings, and rarely have to suffer the humiliation of clichéd team building exercises like bowling night or a two day outward bound course, both of which fill me with utter dread – the former because it’s a showcase for my total lack of bowling ability, the latter because I used to spend much time in the mountains in the company of my dog or with just a few close companions.


That doesn’t make me anti-social – I’ll go and share a beer and good conversation with my colleagues any day of the week – I’m just averse to being organised in the name of team building when I’m not a member of a genuine team. (Some people might say that I take this aversion even further, and that I’m actually averse to being managed, but I couldn’t possibly comment.)

Good, competent individuals know what needs to be done to achieve the appropriate synergies between themselves and their colleagues. Good leaders are able to see where there may be deficiencies in skills (hard or soft) and plug the gaps accordingly with additional staff or through coaching and mentorship. Likewise, they see where there is discord and take appropriate actions. With good people and good leadership, teams actually become self-forming and self-managing.
 
I often think we have taken this whole sporting metaphor too far when we’re dealing with the workplace. Shoe-horning a group of individuals into a ‘team’ when it isn’t necessary is a waste of time and effort by all parties. I often see it as (yet) another management indulgence – because the books and the articles say it’s a good thing, so a manager does it. The reality is that the vast majority of professional sports people fit into this category of 'groups of individuals' rather than teams. Squash and tennis players, swimmers and athletes, golfers and cyclists are primarily individuals brought together on occasion to compete under a flag - an artifical team - Team GB, the Ryder Cup team or the Davis Cup team. There may be some strategic pairing or tactical placement of individuals to boost the overall 'team' achievement but ultimately it is always about the performance of the individual, regardless of the team. Even soccer, cricket and rugby teams are ultimately teams of individuals and even the best managers are powerless to do anything about a group of players who can't produce the goods on the day.
I said at the beginning that I'd worked in some very high performing teams. Those 'teams' were made up of hugely talented individuals and guided by hugely talented leaders. None of them indulged in puerile team building exercises - they succeeded because of mutual respect, and the  desire to do the best for themselves and the people they worked for, and with, both internally and externally.
The witicism says that there's no 'I' in team.  I'm not so sure about that. The best teams are full of 'I's!