Insights & Ideas
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Helping make your goals clearer, your results stronger, your journey more enjoyable
and your business more attractive
These insights and ideas reflect a commitment to share new thinking and experience, as well as providing reminders about approaches to achieving exceptional performance that have stood the test of time.
So don’t give up. Innovation isn’t a fad—it’s the real deal, the only deal. Right now, not everyone believes that, but they will—even all those corporate cost-cutters with shriveled right hemispheres.
Magentapapers
Leading Through Uncertainty
Prisoner of War camps are an unusual place to look for lessons in leadership. However, the experience of Admiral James Stockdale in the Vietnam War provides a great message and practical example about the things that have the most constructive impact on people when they are grappling with anxiety and high levels of uncertainty in their environment. Stockdale survived over seven year as a POW. Using his reflections, this Magenta Paper provides practical and actionable tips for leaders of teams who are grappling with uncertainty, in whatever guise that uncertainty presents itself.
Thriving as a Technical Leader
Regardless of whether your professional world is one of engineering, IT, the law, architecture, health services, accounting, finance or one of many other ‘technical’ arenas, the challenge of shifting from an almost exclusive orientation towards diagnosis, design, building and implementing solutions to one that involves leading other people requires you to ‘know’ different things, ‘be’ different, and ‘do’ things differently.
And it requires a capacity to function well in an environment which appears, and often is, less ordered, more fluid and much more likely to be rendered in black and grey than in black and white.
Effective leadership of technical teams by technical experts creates competitive advantage - in the competition for your customer’s interest and affection, and in the competition for the best talent. And it enables those leaders to enjoy their roles so much more. However the art and science of leadership is not always where technical professionals have focused most of their development.
This paper identifies easily accessible strategies and tips for technical leaders to help them embrace their roles, and thrive.
The Leadership Behaviours That Keep on Winning
Successful leaders are different in many way. However, in observing leaders, at all levels and in many settings, over the years, I have noticed that those who continue to succeed are good (or great) at consistently executing a relatively small number of behaviours and activities. The purpose of this Magenta Paper is to share these, with the hope that doing so simplifies your leadership journey, and makes it more enjoyable and effective.
Employee Engagement or Business Results - Which Come First?
Management literature (and that of many consulting firms) is riddled with the message that engaged employees deliver better performance. It's an easy message to accept. And it's undoubtedly true. Engaged staff are promoted as being more motivated, persistent, resilient, customer-friendly and creative. Employers, it is said, will also receive the benefit of a greater level of discretionary effort and loyalty from team members who feel connected in a meaningful way to their employer and to their leaders. And all of these benefits drive better financial performance over the short and long term.
What is less often explored is the nature of this relationship between employee engagement and business results.Specifically it is useful to explore whether, in causative terms, it is one directional, or more circular. Surprisingly few longitudinal studies have been undertaken to assess this. However a 2003 University of Maryland research paper offers insight for leaders about how to keep their differing priorities in balance.
Succession Success
It's a somewhat grim reality that, statistically, if you are a small or medium sized business owner, you are more likely to make a mess of your succession aspirations than your are to realise them. The cause of this unhappy record inevitably lies in under-performance in one or more of the following 3 key phases of successful succession outcomes - readiness, the deal, and the transition.
This 'Successful Succession' Magenta Paper provides ideas to help your succession goals become a happy reality - for everyone involved.
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Posts
A champion team or a team of champions?
The 'tyranny of or' seems to float about in conversation during every sporting season. Euphoria and angst accompany the narrative, as teams meet, fall short of or exceed the expectations placed on them.
As results are pondered in anticipation, and debriefed once known, it's often noted that a 'champion team' will usually prevail over a 'team of champions'.
The inference in this statement, that holds almost axiomatic status, is that a team can only be one 'OR' the the other - a champion team 'OR' a team of champions. This is an example of the 'tyranny of or' - where a binary position is assumed, and the prospect of realising the 'genius of and' is negated.
The 5 things that truly customer-centric businesses do well
In our transparent, disrupted and global world, strong brand loyalty is increasingly valuable - and increasingly difficult to sustain. A strong level of customer centricity is essential for winning.
There would be few businesses who don't aspire to be (or already believe themselves to be) strongly customer-centric. You'll see words suggesting how important customers are in vision, mission and values statements on walls of organisations around the world. And the predominance of customer satisfaction surveys, net promoter score assessments and the like reinforce this aspiration.
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Reading & Viewing
- 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahneman
- 'The Spark' by Lyn Heward and John Bacon
- 'What Matters Now' by Gary Hamel
- 'Mindset' by Carol Dweck
- 'Man's Search For Meaning' by Viktor E. Frankl
Daniel Kahneman won the 2002 Nobel Prize for Economics. His book 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' was first published in 2011. Drawing from multi-disciplines, including recent discoveries in cognitive and social psychology, the book presents Kahneman's understanding of judgement and decision making. These are two vital aspects of performance in a commercial setting, and in any other setting.
The book's core premise is based on the distinction and interaction between two modes of thought:
"System 1" is quick, automatic and emotional; whereas "System 2" is slower, more purposeful and deliberate, and more logical.
The book highlights several decades of academic research to suggest that people place too much confidence in human intuition.
Cirque du Soleil has been a world renowned laboratory of creativity, and a wonderful example of innovation and disruption, for over two decades.
In 'The Spark', Cirque du Soleil's former President of Creative Content, Lyn Heward, takes readers into the world of the circus. Lyn, and the artists she writes about reveal surprising secrets about the sparks that ignite their creativity.
Bill George, author of 'True North' and Harvard Business School professor describes Hamel's latest book as providing "a deeply insightful view of 21st century leadership. He captures the essence: building on values, innovating and adapting rapidly to changing environments, and being passionate in leading people rather than relying on traditional management techniques. Hamel focuses on humanity in leading rather than skills. If you follow his advice you'll become a great leader".
Every so often a truly ground-breaking idea comes along. This is one. Mindset is a simple idea discovered by world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck in decades of research on achievement and success — a simple idea that makes all the difference.
Dweck's book 'Mindset' explains:
■ Why IQ and talent alone don’t bring success
■ Why praising intelligence and talent doesn’t foster self-esteem and accomplishment, but jeopardizes them
■ How teaching a simple idea about the brain raises results and productivity
■ What all great CEOs, parents, teachers, athletes practice and do to enable those they lead, influence and inspire to live with and apply a growth orientated mindset
Born in Vienna in 1905, Viktor Frankl earned an M.D. and PhD. from the University of Vienna. He served as a visiting professor and lecturer at Harvard and Stanford Universities in the United States. Frankl was also a survivor of Nazi concentration camps.'Man's Search For Meaning', written in nine days in 1945, provides descriptions of his experiences, and powerful lessons about surviving through and thriving beyond such extreme hardship and uncertainty.
Frankly argues that we cannot avoid suffering, but we can choose how we cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose.
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