Dr Graham Wilson MBACP FRSA - 'The Confidant'

Dabbling with the minds of leaders and society

admin — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:56:17 +0000

The RSA has just published a report entitled; “Beyond the Big Society – Psychological Foundations of Active Citizenship”. You can download it here: http://www.thersa.org/projects/social-brain/beyond-the-big-society. It’s a fascinating read, making a call for far smarter interventions in the psyche of society.

It focuses on the model of adult psychological growth developed by Prof Robert Kegan – a model that is used by quite a few business coaches.

This builds on a previous report on transforming behaviour change: http://www.thersa.org/projects/social-brain/transforming-behaviour-change again, applied to the nature of society and the human dimension within it. Much of the evidence it draws on has a lot to offer the world of business coaching..

There has been an explosion of coaches in recent years which, in theory, I don’t have any problem with. There’s plenty of evidence of the effectiveness of one-to-one discussion on personal learning and especially in changing attitudes and values.

However, any kind of intervention that is psychological in its nature brings ethical questions and I think we need to be aware of these before we get stuck in!

A few years ago, I was Group HR Director for a very large organisation with around 150 so-called “High Flyers”. As a part of the development process that I inherited all of them were encouraged to have a coach. I did a confidential review with all of them and established that 30 had actually got one. I then asked both the individuals and the coaches to complete a simple questionnaire – anonymously. They were each asked to identify the areas that they addressed in their sessions (eg business planning, self-confidence, motivation of others, politics – the list went on to list about 25 aspects). They were each asked to rate the effectiveness of the coach/the learning of the client in each area. Finally, the coaches were asked to outline the professional qualifications and experience that equipped them to perform their role.

The ‘effectiveness’ of the coaches was generally rated reasonably high. However, the distribution was quite spread. When I compared the lower quartile with the upper quartile and looked at the professional background of the coach, there was a marked difference. Basically competent coaches had limited extensive professional training and mid- to no- management experience. The highly competent ones were all professional psychologists or similar and all had a personal career path that was comparable with that of their client.

The range of topics addressed in their sessions paralleled this. The top ones focused on attitudinal and behavioural dimensions of the client’s work, largely internal factors, whereas the less effective ones focused on the planning, goals, and how to deal with team and individual behaviour – largely day-to-day and external factors.

This led me to question what we were doing, as a business, paying for unqualified and inexperienced coaches working on less impacting aspects of performance. But it also raised the issue of whether some of the middle (and therefore ‘normal’) ones were actually dabbling in areas that they had no real understanding of?

Of course, the sample size was far too small to draw any serious conclusions about, but it is an issue that has concerned me ever since.

I’ve written before about the concerns that I have with what some people perceive as state-of-the-art team behavioural models, most of which actually date from the Vietnam War or even earlier military conflicts.

Well here we have ‘psychology’ being applied on a societal, political playing field. Again, I am sure it is necessary, but please let’s pay some attention to the relevance and expertise of those applying it.

Cheers

Graham Wilson – 07785 222380
the-confidant.info | executive-post.info

Never mind ‘resolutions’ – what ONE thing could you do…

admin — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:30:25 +0000

…to make a big difference to your work or to your senior executive job hunt?

As some of you know, I’ve written a few times in the past about New Year’s Resolutions. For example:

Keeping to your resolutions
Resolutions, goals, happiness and engagement

This year, my inbox seems to have been full of messages from coaches with suggestions for my New Years’ Resolutions. I’m sure that some of them are very sound – though, of course, as coaches they probably shouldn’t be offering advice!

However, we live in complex times, with much changing globally around us every day it seems. So, I wonder how relevant New Year’s Resolutions will be this year? Of course, some will always be, but those related to our work may be more critical – more like “urgent and important” tasks on our never ending to-do list.

One of my ‘confidant’ clients (http://www.the-confidant.info) decided to use our last session of this year as a strategic review. She went over the things she’d planned to do throughout the year and identified a handful that hadn’t happened. She then reviewed whether they were still relevant. Finally, she was left with a couple that seemed as important now as then. Rather than say she’d tackle them both, she acknowledged that they’d been around for 12 months and nothing had happened, and committed to deal with one in the quiet period between Xmas and the New Year.

This set me wondering what one thing I could do to dramatically improve my own business activities next year?

I have just been made very aware of my own shortcomings on the financial management side of my business. So, the one thing that I am very clear I need to embrace next year is proper management of my finances – not just projecting the income streams (I actually do that aspect of the business plan bit quite religiously each March) but far more precise tracking and recording of information, and thinking through the consequences of different aspects.

In the past, I’d have dismissed this as something that would never make a big difference. However, Anthony Mellor has helped me see some of the many errors of my ways this last fortnight. In a way, I’m resolving to do things better next year, but it is also one big thing that could make all the difference.

QUESTION: So, if you lead an enterprise, in whatever form, ask yourself what are your ‘blind-spots’ and see if there isn’t something you could do that would make a BIG difference.

I’ve noticed that the people who tell me that the employment scene, especially for senior executives, is ‘good’ are the ones who are in work and have been more-or-less continuously for the last four or five years. In my work with Executive-Post, I’d beg to differ. Some of my clients were on sky-rocketing career paths, were made redundant, and have been looking for over 6 months. It’s easy to get dispirited and one of the things I try to do is maintain their enthusiasm over the Christmas and New Year period.

One of my clients let me know on Christmas eve that he’d had a successful job interview and is going in for a final one, this time with the ultimate decision maker, in the first week of January. He’s been out of work for quite a while and I know it is going to make a world of difference.

What happened to bring about this sudden bit of good ‘luck’? Well, early in December, we agreed that he’d spend the month going back over the networking contacts he’d had over the last couple of years and pick up the thread with those he’d dropped. Among these were people who he’d been interviewed by but had never followed up with when he didn’t get a job offer. One of the first he tried came straight back with: “I am so glad you’ve got in touch. Yes, there is a job going – and actually, it would probably suit you perfectly. Why don’t you pop in for a chat?” Two meetings later and he is into negotiating.

So, my suggestion to anyone on their senior executive job hunt would be… go back over your diary for the last 18 months, see who you have not had any proper contact with, and ask them for a coffee. Fill up your diary for January now. Doing this one thing could make a big difference.

Do me a favour… Add a note to this article and inspire someone else – let us know what you’re planning on doing and even let us know when you have!

Cheers

Graham Wilson – 07785 222380
the-confidant.info | executive-post.info

What exactly is an entrepreneur?

admin — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 02:04:08 +0000

BLOG: What exactly is an entrepreneur?

I’ve been doing a lot of work around the nature of entrepreneurism lately, and thought it might be a worthwhile topic to explore with a wider group of people too.

Mention the term ‘entrepreneur’ to the public and you’ll get very different definitions. Probably because of programmes like the Dragon’s Den, many people actually confuse the individual with an idea with the investor providing the money to make it happen. Most will also assume that the term was an invention of the 1990s.

It was actually first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon, in 1755, and for many years was applied to the ‘owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.’

There are all kinds of emotional projections onto entrepreneurs – respect, an accolade, glamorous, playboy, risk taker, slightly unconventional, an eye for success, not put down by failure, arrogant, self-interested, emotionally detached, analytical, passionate, and countless more. I want to move away from these and see what constitutes an entrepreneur and what does not.

I don’t personally feel that any one definition is going to be adequate to capture what an entrepreneur is and what constitutes one. Hence this slightly longer article. So, what are the characteristics of an entrepreneur, and their ‘idea’, that warrants the term?

They set up (or take over) an enterprise that has scope to be much more. This implies that they have seen, in their own mind, what that potential is, and have some kind of passion to want to pursue it.
They have a vision of that enterprise being ‘more than’ just themselves. There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone wanting a business that is entirely them, and doesn’t involve other people. They are sometimes referred to as “solopreneurs”. Some of these are entrepreneurs because they fit the other characteristics and see their brand as being bigger than them, even if they remain the only person servicing it. However, there are many small firms consisting of one or two people who have no desire to grow any larger. These don’t fit into my model of what makes an entrepreneur.
Their enterprise is scalable – it is capable of leverage – perhaps it could be reproducible elsewhere, perhaps it could organically expand. The key is that there is a potential for substantial growth that does not simply involve the proprietor from working longer and longer hours or doing bigger and bigger deals. They may do these things but the growth needs to come from somewhere else.
Whose vision includes the life of the enterprise beyond their own period of influence. The term ‘exit strategy’ is sometimes bandied around. What I am referring to here may mean that they have considered their exit strategy and that they see the enterprise in new hands and continuing to grow, alternatively, they may plan for a buy-out, a floatation (which may leave them in the chair, but provides the means for them to be removed if their investors wish), and so on. The key is that the vision of the enterprise is that it takes on its own momentum and will continue to do so when the founder departs.
Whose enterprise has a net positive environmental impact. For lots of people this will not be an expectation. There are plenty of enterprises which are established to make money, relatively quickly, and which then close down. Are their proprietors entrepreneurs? While this might well have been the case in the past, I don’t believe that it is acceptable today. It’s a personal moral viewpoint, but I’m happy with it. By ‘environment’, I do not mean purely ecological constraints – I am referring to the overall impact of the enterprise on its environment as a whole – local communities around it, its profession, its suppliers (and their communities), and its customers (and their communities). My argument is that if it is depleting its environment then ultimately it cannot meet the scalability and longevity criteria above.
And, finally, for me, I do not believe that all entrepreneurs and their enterprise need to be businesses nor necessarily ‘for profit’. If someone establishes a new Art Gallery, a civic hall, a charity of some sort, and they do so with the vision that I have implied above, then to me they are as entrepreneurial as someone who is building a business.

An illustration that I often use is of two hairdressers. Both established their businesses in fashionable parts of London in the 1960s. Both continue to this day. One has, obviously, refurbished their salon, and has seen a steady transformation of the ownership, but it has never grown beyond what it was when it began. Thus it meets all the criteria but it hasn’t been scalable. The second opened up a few shops every month is equally fashionable areas of the world. Their staff all trained under the founder in London, and rather than buy in hair care ‘product’ they launched their own brand. They were acquired by a major fashion house but retained their brand and the founder continued as Chair and chief inspirer for many years. By the time he was ready to retire completely, he had already been simply a figurehead for a decade or more, and there was an able leadership team already really running the show. HE was an entrepreneur, in my terms.

So, those are my thoughts. It is not as precise an area as some people would like, so what do you reckon? Have I missed some essentials? Have I excluded some very important enterprises?

Cheers

Graham Wilson – 07785 222380
the-confidant.info | executive-post.info

The art of Organisation Development (OD)

admin — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:39:48 +0000

OD is the art of organisation development – the application of behavioural science to turn work into a positive and successful place in which people are fulfilled.

As a discipline, OD emerged in the 1950s as a product of an initiative in the United States known as the ‘quality of work life’ movement. The QWL movement was largely sponsored by the employee’s unions, but it gained widespread attention and was seen as a positive endorsement of, and stimulus to, progressive management practices.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the term ‘excellence‘ was applied simultaneously by the White House and by two management commentators, Bob Waterman and Tom Peters, to the idea that long-term corporate success followed from four key characteristics – customer obsession, employee empowerment, transformed leadership and institutionalised innovation. Those four tenets were the bedrock of the QWL movement too.

In the intervening years, other initiatives have been based on the same model, though sadly few people read the whole book before they apply their own interpretation to the title! Examples would be Total Quality (TQ), Business Process Reengineering (BPR), and the Balanced Scorecard, each of which assumed the four tenets as precursors for the environment they were proposing.

OD then, reflects a discipline concerned with helping organisations develop these four tenets. It is the application of science, but with a very clear set of values about people and work underlying it. Today, most people refer to OD, rather than QWL or ‘excellence‘.

For fairly simple psychological reasons, the modern management world distrusts the qualitative and favours the quantitative.

One consequence of this is that managers in ‘scientific‘ industries (such as manufacturing, finance and engineering) often give the impression that they consider themselves a step above those in the ‘soft‘ industries (such as leisure, arts, and healthcare).

For the same reasons, a science has evolved around the behaviour of people at work – this is known as OB (organisational behaviour). OB does not have the same underlying values implicit in it and can be applied in circumstances where an OD practitioner would refuse to be involved. Classic examples would be the application of performance improvement techniques in sweatshop factories.

As the old Sy Oliver song went: “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.”

HISTORY: This article was written and published elsewhere back in November 2004. It gets referred to from time-to-time, but I was slightly surprised to discover this week that it had been copied completely onto a Malaysian HR website! So, I thought I’d put it here as well – closer to its spiritual home!

Was Marshall Field really all that wrong?

admin — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 01:08:20 +0000

I have learned something today. According to a debate on another social networking platform, apparently, if a customer wants something that is beyond their full understanding, then if they fail to learn enough to be able to explain to the person who is going to supply that thing what it is they want, then it is the customer’s fault if they don’t get what they want.

Let’s put that in different terms….

Let’s suupose that Fred wants a website for his business, but Fred isn’t a website developer.

Fred asks around and discovers that there’s a website developer called Wilbur. So Fred contacts Wilbur and asks him for a quote.

Wilbur is not a consultative salesman, so he listens to Fred’s ill-informed ramblings, and gives him what Wilbur thinks Fred ought to want.

Fred isn’t all that happy, but figures that this is a draft, so he tries to explain what he wants in different terms. Wilbur nods sagely, and disappears for a few days. Fred figures he’d better try writing it out, so he sends Wilbur a more detailed email explaining what he’s after. Eventually, Wilbur comes back with something else – still not really what Fred thought he’d described.

By now, Fred is pretty fed up but when he says as much to Wilbur, he is told; “I’m not telepathic you know! You don’t understand what is involved. You didn’t give me the right information, You kept changing your mind, even before the previous changes were completed!”

Now, apparently, so I have learned today, “it is the responsibility of the business owner to communicate their requirements, their goals, their current situation and future plans.” Regardless of the business owner’s trading position, it seems that “the pressure of trying to keep a small web development business running (let alone in profit) in this ever increasingly competitive industry means that there is no time or other resources to be teaching the business owner how to write a web design brief, even though it would create a better outcome for everyone.” [My emphasis.]

Now, I realise that the world has moved on a bit, and so obviously has normal business practice. Incidentally, there was a conference the other month all about trying to restore confidence and trust in the City of London. It followed a year long project sponsored by the Lord Mayor.

However, (and I’ll call myself the traditionalist before anyone else can) there was an extremely successful businessman back in the early 1900s, who coined a phrase. Well, actually, it isn’t entirely clear whether it was him that coined it, or one of his employees who went on to run his own extremely successful business. Just to clarify, by ‘successful’, I mean that they were very profitable AND they lasted a LONG time. Over a hundred years to be precise.

The American businessman was Marshall Field, and he was the man who grew the definitive business known as “Marshall Field and Co”, based in Chicago. So successful was he that he not only established that iconic store, but he also founded the University of Chicago (jointly with John D Rockefeller) and the Museum of Natural History in Chicago too, which further benefitted from a legacy of $8M when he died in 1906.

His employee, left the US to establish an equally impressive retail empire in London. In 1909,he built a magnificent property in Oxford Street, and apparently even persuaded the GPO to let him have the London telephone number “1″. He promoted the idea that shopping should be an enjoyable entertainment, rather than something one did out of necessity. Sadly, his wife died in 1918, and he suffered huge personal problems thereafter.

However, a measure of the man, is that he wrote a book which was published in 1918, entitled “The Romance of Commerce” In it, he had chapters on ancient commerce, China, Greece, Venice, Lorenzo de Medici, the Fuggers, the Hanseatic League, fairs, Guilds, early British commerce, trade and the Tudors, the East India Company, Northern England’s merchants, the growth of trade, trade and the aristocracy, Hudson’s Bay Company, Japan, and representative businesses of the 20th century.

His leadership style is captured well in some of the phrases that he often used:

The boss drives his men; the leader coaches them.
The boss depends upon authority; the leader on good will.
The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm.
The boss says “I”; the leader, “we.”
The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown.
The boss knows how it is done; the leader shows how.
The boss says “Go”; the leader says “Let’s go!”

His name? Well, it was Harry Gordon Selfridge.

So what was that phrase that no-one knows which of these two significant successful businessmen coined, but was their trademark – indeed their bond – in all their endeavours?

The customer is always right.

I can only guess that for the likes of Wilbur, the web developer, such a phrase is an anathema. It will interesting to see whether his name is iconic, in the UK or the US, in over a hundred years time.

Best wishes

Graham Wilson – 07785 222380
PS My free ebook, “The Senior Executive’s Emergency Job Hunt“, is available to download now.

Business Book of the Week – Understanding the Small Business Sector – Storey

admin — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 23:54:36 +0000

I’d like to draw your attention to a blog by Julian Thompson who is the director of projects at the Royal Society for the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (the RSA). Julian has worked as a social researcher for 10 years. Specialising in qualitative methods, he has undertaken major participatory research programmes and strategic futures work for government, voluntary sector and private sector organisations.

In a blog entitled “Entrepreneurs in the valley of death” which was published today, he begins:

“Having rather excited myself with the entrepreneurial potential of Gen Y in yesterday’s blog, I was subsequently given the research equivalent of a cold shower, courtesy of some fascinating data and insights provided by Prof David Storey of Sussex University.

In an event at the RSA hosted by Prof Jay Mitra of Essex Business School, Storey laid bare the sobering facts surrounding the survival rates of new businesses.

These are important lessons for those looking to run or invest in small businesses,and some of them go against the dominant myths of entrepreneurship. So I thought I’d share.

The rest of the blog can be read here: http://www.rsablogs.org.uk/2011/emboldened/entrepreneurs-valley-death/

David Storey, OBE, is Professor at the Department of Business Management and Economics at University of Sussex, UK. His book, “Understanding the Small Business Sector“, although it was published in 1994, is currently said to be the most highly cited work on Entrepreneurship or Small Business.

Storey’s talk will I hope soon be available as a podcast via the RSA – when I discover that it is there I shall pop a link to it here. In the meantime, perhaps you’d better get hold of a copy of his book anyway.

Incidentally, if anyone reading this and visiting the RSA website is interested in applying for Fellowship of this quite extraordinary 21st century think-tank, let me know and I will be happy to explain more.

Best wishes

Graham Wilson – 07785 222380
PS My free ebook, “The Senior Executive’s Emergency Job Hunt“, is available to download now.

the-confidant.info – Helping leaders see situations, organisations, themselves and others, differently
executive-post.info – Motivation and advice for senior executives exploring new opportunities
corporate-alumni.info – Supporting former staff now; building a network of advocates and recruits for the future
inter-faith.net – thefutureofwork.org

London (W1 & EC3) – Oxford (OX2) – skype

How crowd accelerated innovation is transforming the nature of entrepreneurship

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:07:56 +0000

There have been entrepreneurs forever, though the industrial revolution created the conditions for far more of them to find an expression for their skills and ideas.

Before that, entrepreneurship was given a huge stimulus when Gutenburg transformed the process of spreading ideas through the invention of printing.

Undoubtedly, the internet has done a lot to allow the spread of ideas again, but it has been limited in the past by its dependency on text. As video begins to take over as the medium of choice on the internet, so we are witnessing a massive explosion of entrepreneurial thinking.

In this presentation, Chris Anderson one of TED’s curators, explains how the nature of the innovative process is unfolding and will continue to escalate in the next few years.

He proposes a model of innovation, where three elements are needed….

The ‘crowd’ – an audience some of whom will be interactive with the innovators.

The ‘light‘ – which has to be shone on the innovation – a preparedness to share as yet not necessarily perfect ideas. Moving away from the secretive laboratories and guarded IP knowing that it is by sharing that better ideas will emerge.

The ‘desire‘ – a human drive – a passion of some kind. Some ‘desire’ may be selfish, some purely altruistic. Whatever the drive, without desire new ideas founder.

It’s a useful way of assessing entrepreneurial ventures. Have they tested their proposition with a crowd? Have they exposed it to critics (and, more importantly, developers)? And do they have a REAL desire to make it happen?

At the end of his talk, Chris introduces Christopher Makau, broadcast live from his own community. In a clip that lasts less than a minute, Makau illustrates the model perfectly, and does so in such an inspiring fashion that he provokes the TED Global audience to give them both a standing ovation.

Best wishes

Graham Wilson
PS My free ebook, “The Senior Executive’s Emergency Job Hunt“, is available to download now.

Whatever happened to quiet time? “Because I love the new you.”

admin — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 12:03:10 +0000

THIS IS NOT A WHINGE.

Many of us seem to be spending more and more time working, or doing work-related things. The days of the 9-to-5 are a nostalgic dream. Work-style forms of communication along with the demand for 24/7 fast response seem to have permeated our social lives too.

These days, you’ll routinely see parents (usually mothers) pushing buggies with one hand, while apparently texting with another. Even that is an out-of-date interpretation – as they are more likely to be communicating via a social media network.

The Blackberry was launched as a business tool allowing push-form email to reach busy peripatetic executives so they could keep in touch with their office. These days, it is an ‘essential’ tool in the management of a busy home life. Even parents who stay at home, to look after their children, routinely use instant messaging and the social media (esp Facebook) to keep in touch with friends and relatives throughout the day.

Just as employers began to fight back against the tide of social media and the “misuse” of work-based PCs for personal purposes, so they discovered that they had to embrace Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn for their own activities. At the same time, the platform switched from PC to smartphone and was effectively removed from their control.

As Blackberry technology was largely superceded by smartphones, these tools were not even marketed primarily to business users but to domestic ones. All the same tools and more were in demand from the tech-hungry ‘domestic manager’. What’s more, the home-based parent has personal disposable cash to pay for the many ‘sell-ons’ that are offered via these devices, whereas the business-user relying on a tool provided by their employer often can’t buy even if they want to do so.

I SAID THAT THIS WAS NOT A WHINGE…

The consequences of these massive social changes are important.

There are many that I could focus on, but there’s one that I want to highlight.

One of the most important aspects of personal growth, whether for self-, leadership-, or organisational-development, is the ability to engage in reflective practice. It has been proven time-and-time again, that the most satisfied and successful people routinely spend time in reflective practice. Whether this takes the form of some structured meditative process, or a repetitive activity (I’m off to mow the lawn in ten minutes), taking time to look back over the last few hours and to draw lessons both consciously or unconsciously from it massively improves happiness, well-being, present and future performance.

For some, these lessons are best caught in a journal, for others, it’s the act of reflecting and interpretation rather than documenting the conclusions.

By their nature the majority of blogs are accessible to the public-eye and so, perhaps, few contain these reflections, though a handful of politicians (a breed who have traditionally been fervent journal keepers) have embraced this format, and already there are twitter archive tools to capture the thoughts of those who use the 140 character medium.

However, on the whole, the impact of the fast and furious, 24/7, social media, instant communication environment has been a serious decline in the number of people who make it a habit to reflect purposefully on their lives.

Earlier this year, I started working with a new client. He’s a businessman engulfed (indeed almost consumed) by this culture. Our sessions proved to be the only time that he was able to escape, turning off the technology, sitting in a calm environment, and recounting some of the events of the previous few days. As we began to do so, and I began to offer alternative interpretations of the motives and drivers of those around him, he began to see that he had not only been failing to learn from his experiences, but he had been dangerously over-interpreting some of the behaviours of his peers, reports, bosses and competitors, not to forget his wife and daughter.

His entry point to the world of journalling, is to keep a list of events that he wants to talk through with me. Whether he takes it further we will see. While his colleagues are probably too wrapped up in their own frenzy to notice the consequent change in his behaviour it has not escaped his family. For his birthday last week, his teenage daughter bought him a beautiful fountain pen and classic notebook inscribed; “because I love the new you!”

Dr Graham Wilson is an organisational psychotherapist – a confidant to senior executives – helping them understand company psychodynamics, situations, politics, and their own and other people’s behaviour –
the-confidant.info

Calling a halt to mindless change – 13 years on, have we learnt the lesson yet?

admin — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 11:41:44 +0000

It was a sad day this week, when I learnt of the death of an old colleague, John Macdonald. This isn’t an obituary, there are times and places for those, but I would like to reflect on one of his key messages.

In ‘retirement’, John was an author and speaker, and it was as a speaker that I first met him. We were both ‘on the platform’ at a series of conferences in India, organised by their Institute of Directors. We soon discovered that we shared the same publisher too. Several of John’s writing projects in the 1990s were books in the “Successful Business in a Week” series sponsored by the Institute of Management – I lost count of how many titles he contributed.

Earlier in his life, he had been involved in local politics but much of his work was in the field of quality – quality improvement, quality management, and total quality management. He ran the Philip Crosby organisation in the UK and, perhaps as a result, was a proponent of a systems and procedural approach to organisational change.

Over dinner at several conferences, we bounced different interpretations of these themes around. He understood the ethology and behavioural approach that was my background, but insisted that the technological of his own was of higher priority. We didn’t differ, we complemented, and I believe that the Indian audiences enjoyed this contrasting perspective – possibly more so than UK and European ones did.

On one of these trips, John’s baggage was mislaid by British Airways, and so he used it as an excuse to have a distinctive suit made by an Indian tailor in less than 24hrs. A few months later, I heard him address a UK conference on the lessons we could learn from India on ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing. He warned the delegates that if they failed to move with the times they would soon witness an Indian takeover of British industry just as the Japanese had a few years before. How right he proved to be.

John’s seminal work, though, was still to come. In 1998, his book; “Calling a Halt to Mindless Change: A Plea for Commonsense Management” was published by AMACOM. For a while it achieved celebrity status, and he was interviewed on radio and TV, and did a speaking tour or two off the back of it.

His thesis was essentially captured in the title. However, it needs a little unwrapping. After a working lifetime of promoting change, he was not suggesting that change initiatives should stop. Nor was he suggesting that all such programmes were ‘mindless’. What he was challenging was the degree of understanding and focus that many organisations had before they instituted the latest shift.

We had often swapped stories of the Boards that began a process and then failed to follow through – usually because they were so keen to begin that they hadn’t really understood where they were going, and what the inevitable consequences would be, before they started. As a result, they got frightened and drew back. Sometimes, of course, it was too late – in fact, usually it was too late. The decision to change had already been a last ditch attempt, though many would deny it, and when the scale of the effort that was needed became apparent they would fear what outsiders might say – especially the financial analysts – they would look for a face-saving opt out.

In the last few months, we have heard politicians promoting change in the NHS, in the military, in the police, the judiciary, and the coastguard – not to forget their demands for change in the Civil Service as a whole. We’ve heard them baying for change in the media, banking and financial sectors. Under pressure to deliver results, these pronouncements have usually been followed by a commission of one kind or another, a hurried report full of ambiguities – generally leaked ahead of publication, and then an event that proved the vulnerability of the Nation should any change actually happen.

I am not suggesting that this is purely a political or governmental issue – there are, I am sure, plenty of commercial enterprises that are reorganising, reinventing, or just reviewing, as I write this column.

This all leaves me wondering whether anyone has learnt John’s essential lesson and whether change processes are any more enlightened than they were 13 years ago?

Dr Graham Wilson is an organisational psychotherapist who works as a confidant to people in positions of power helping them understand company psychodynamics, unfolding situations, politics, and their own and other people’s behaviour. His latest book is “The Senior Executive’s Emergency Job Hunt“.

Cultivating ‘gravitas’ – What is spirituality?

admin — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:10:17 +0000

A long time ago, I was asked to give a talk at a leadership conference on the theme of ‘Developing Gravitas‘. To accompany most of my talks, rather than hand out copies of any slides that I use (which I don’t often do), I prepared a ‘brief guide’. This has proved to be one of my most enduring guides – every couple of months someone contacts me and asks me for more information or to have a chat about the content. (If you want to read it, there’s a copy as a blog-post here: http://www.the-confidant.info/2010/acquiring-gravitas-sometimes-called-charisma/.)

One of the qualities of gravitas that often attracts leaders is the ability to remain calm regardless of what is going on around you. Key to this is to remain detatched from any fear of the outcome. In other words, if there’s danger all around and your chances of survival are slim, then it is important not to think of the likely outcome and be driven by fear that this is inevitable. Acknowledge it, perhaps, but then concentrate on getting on with the immediate tasks and don’t ponder on the future.

I was talking this through with a client the other day, and I happened to use the term ‘spiritual’. They had always associated ‘Spirit’ with religion and were puzzled at my use of it, which prompted the question;

What is spirituality?

This might be one of those articles that you quickly skip over, and I do understand, but for the sake of completeness and because it did occupy a significant chunk of our time yesterday, I thought I put down a few words as a starter in a dialogue.

It is very tempting, some would say it is a natural step in the process of maturing, to ask this question. However, I am not so sure. In fact, I am fairly convinced that it is unhealthy to want to know the answer to this. Looking for answers to unanswerable questions distracts us from the practice of actually living spiritually. Ultimately, someone who is spiritual has understood themself sufficiently that they no longer have an interest in the answer.

This isn’t saying that intellectuals are less spiritual than other people. It is all about the need to actually live something rather than intellectualise around it.

Without wanting to align myself specifically to Buddhism, I would however borrow from their language, and describe it as living in such a way that cultivates wisdom and compassion.

This means that it can evolve in a being without conscious effort as it is possible for something to be cultivated by its environment and, especially, its experience of that environment. It also means that all animals can experience spirituality – not simply humans.

Thus wisdom and compassion are about the practice of living. In order to live compassionately, we need to do so in ways that will not cause suffering to both ourselves and to other beings – now and in the future. In order to live wisely, we need to concentrate on the present – letting go of the past, and not being obsessed with the future; we need to recognise any attachments that we have especially to things that we have not experienced ourselves, so are based on other people’s opinions and interpretations, and shed ourselves of them.

This raises all kinds of dilemmas and tensions. Sometimes, it is important to look to the future in order to live compassionately – especially when we are trying not to harm the environment or future generations. It also explains the balance of my work in coaching – we focus on the present to prepare for the future, but we do not obsess on the future which is often outwith our control anyway.

I could whitter on at length, but that will do for now!

Best wishes

Graham Wilson - 07785 222380
PS My e-book The Senior Executive’s Emergency Job Hunt is available for FREE download now.