Warren Buffet has been quoted as saying “Price is what you pay, value is what you get”

Both suggest value is in the eye of the receiver.

If that’s true and we apply it to a consulting relationship, what would clients probably NOT value?

* Egomaniacs pushing their off the shelf models of everything and anything
* Long reports that tell them what they already know but in a condescending know it all manner and to pay for the privilege
* To be charged fees that are in no way commensurate with the delivery of results
* Senior contract winners followed by schoolboy deliverers

Or is this too harsh? Surely there aren’t consultants that do that!

So what might clients actually value from a consulting relationship?

Well value can come in different guises.

It can be in the products or services that you offer e.g. workshops, training programmes or coaching. It can be in the skills, knowledge and attitudes of the people that work with them. It might even be in the alignment of a common set of principles and values.

Core value is what a client contracts with you to deliver. It is the delivery of the objectives set out in the contract as specified. Getting this right is pretty basic. Deliver what you said you would deliver exactly as you said you would (at the very least)

In addition to the delivery of core value you can also deliver unexpected value. This is when you help your clients improve their business or themselves in unexpected ways. For example,

Discovery: Helping them to see what they would have not seen or discovered by themselves.
Hidden Gems: Highlighting issues, problems or opportunities which would have gone undetected if you had simply stuck to your brief
Connection: Enabling connections for your clients to people, networks and information.
Reflection: Offering an objective ear as a sounding board or a fresh pair of eyes for an idea or problem.
Education: Enabling the transference of skills and knowledge to improve their organisational capability.
Facilitation: Acting as a guide and giving structure to problem solving, decision making and innovation
Change Management: Helping to align and engage people to changes in structure, process, or behaviours. Supporting clients to influence and communicate positive change.
Emotional Value: This might include having fun while working with you, getting promoted as a result of your joint work, feeling recognised and validated.

So when working with clients, strive to meet Einstein’s quote - “Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”

At Total Flow we passionately believe unexpected value is part of our core value.

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Authentic is a great word, one of the core values of 21st Century Leadership, and one that appears alongside organisational values such as open, honest and genuine. Values, when properly defined and used, should help define how people in organisations engage with each other within the organisation and with customers and stakeholders outside. Not because it’s nice to do so, but because where an organisation’s values are aligned to its vision and strategies,they are an integral part of achieving results.

Yet, all too frequently as in the example above,values get ignored or distorted when the going gets tough or the pressure starts to build. Even the most inspiring leaders can become dastardly dictators, terrible tyrants, or, at the other extreme, limp lettuces when up against it. All of us have the ability to turn to the dark side. There are various psychometric tools that demonstrate how we operate when things are good - and then show our default position when stressed or under pressure. I enjoy seeing the slightly smug faces of delegates when their ‘going is good’ position is revealed - and the knowing grimaces when the negative indicators of the default position are revealed.

For me, and anyone who appreciates a bit of emotional intelligence in our leaders, one of the key measures of a strong leader is someone who can continue to demonstrate the values of the organisation consistently through good times and bad- and who can and will hold to account those who don’t. It starts at the top and must go right through the organisation as part of its DNA if the values are to do their job in delivering results. This means that values and the behaviours that demonstrate them need to be embedded into personal objectives and reviews -and therefore linked to pay and reward; into programme and project reviews and into feedback mechanisms.

If values do play an integral role in delivering results, allowing them to be ignored or distorted risks not hitting precious targets that now more than ever for organisations determine survival, success and safeguard jobs.

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Always Start with the Customer
In order to always start with the customer, by definition you need to identify who the customer is. At a whole systems level this must be considered from both an internal and an external perspective.

External – any person buying and/or using your products and services – “the ultimate customer”
External – any person along your external supply chain who plays a role in the design, production, delivery, maintenance, disposal and/or support of your products/services
Internal – any person along your internal supply chain who has a part to play in the design, production, delivery maintenance, disposal and/or support of your products and services

Always Be True to Your Guiding Values and Principles
Most companies have at the very least a mission, vision or purpose for their business. Some companies go further and have a set of values or principles that define how they will go about their business and how they will interact with and treat their people, customers and suppliers.

Leanership™ goes one step further and has, as a core principle, the active engagement of those guiding values and principles as the very DNA that drives attraction, recruitment, development and retention of people (employees) customers and suppliers.

Always Integrate Structure, Process, Systems
The “silo” structures and behaviours of many companies has long been the bedrock of inefficiency, poor communication, disjointed thinking and internal competition – all of which do nothing to contribute value to customers.

Total, whole systems, cross organisational integration is therefore crucial and the alignment of product and service offerings must be managed horizontally to see the total value stream. This in turn means training, development, performance and reward systems need to be so aligned.

Always Attract the Right People at the Right Time with the Right Skills, Knowledge, Talents and Behaviours
Skills, knowledge and talents should be taken into account when recruiting and developing people. Through the definition of learning pathways aligned to the business purpose, each role along the value stream has its own blueprint for success. Onto this it is then possible to develop a learning plan for each person; for their current role and as a development plan for future opportunities. Learning plans should focus on the development of skills, knowledge and talents and not on “fixing” people.

Traditionally careers are structured vertically and in many cases this doesn’t allow for the reward of breadth and depth of learning in a particular functional specialism nor does it simultaneously allow for development from front line, through supervision and management to executive positions.

In many organisations the “good salesman” is promoted to sales manager, the “good technician” is promoted to technical manager; the belief being that the skills, knowledge and talents for a functional speciality are the same as for a management or executive position when in fact they are very different.

Always Strive to Deliver Better Value for Your Customers

Design and deploy a change management system that promotes
- Improvements in your brand proposition
- Improvements in customer value
- Improvements to the efficiency and effective of your business systems and processes
- Improvements to the capability and competency of your people
- Engagement, communication, accountability, learning, innovation
- Appropriate leadership within and where relevant out with your organisation
- Agility of thinking, planning, action and reviewing

So to summarise;

Leanership™ is the art of leadership combined with the science of lean thinking applied by people to create lean enterprise
Leanership™ is not a role or a position
Leanership™ is not an initiative to be deployed within a set timeframe
Leanership™ is not the next miracle cure for ailing businesses
Leanership™ is not an activity which can be dictated via a PowerPoint presentation
Leanership™ is not the responsibility of just one person

Leanership™ requires business leaders to challenge their entire organisational norms
Leanership™ requires training, coaching, behaviour change and active workplace implementation
Leanership™ requires dedication over time to transform “the way things are done around here”

Leanership™ is a philosophy, a mindset and a set of principles which, when applied consistently across an entire enterprise, can significantly enhance the successful and sustainable delivery of a business’s purpose.

Is Leanership™ guiding your organisation

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My brother is considering changing his job and has a great opportunity to do something really rewarding and stretching.  He was at the stage where he risked convincing himself that the Status Quo was the better option until, over the course of a bottle of single malt, we fully explored the benefits of change.
Whatever change we might consider there are plenty of roadblocks and diversions. Whether it be giving up smoking, tackling underperforming teams, or transforming a whole organisation.
Here are my thoughts for the steps:

1. Recognise the need or opportunity from change
   These might be fear, greed, interest or altruism
2. Believe that things will be better afterwards
3. Plan how change might happen
   Anticipate obstacles, but don’t dwell on them.
4. Confirm the plan is sound
   Do you have the resource to make it happen?
5. Start
6. Check progress with feedback, results or support
7. Sustain through to the end
8. Look for the next opportunity.

I pride myself on being an improvement junkie, but still recognise that I get stuck along the cycle.  Usually it is either at step 4 or 6 because I need feedback from others to give me confidence that the idea or execution is good.  My problem is that I don’t ask until I have invested so much in an idea that I don’t want to change tack.
So turning over a new leaf: Here’s a half finished idea for a change cycle…

• What do you think?
• Have I missed steps?
• Where on the cycle do you get stuck?

Next time I’ll contrast the cycle with organisations and industries I have worked with and we’ll explore how to keep the momentum

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In the world of leadership development, the ideas on how he leads and manages his business are not new. What is unusual and refreshing is the commitment to and tangible evidence of success in a  manufacturing business based in South America.

Semler has done much to involve his employees in how the business is structured and run. And the fundamental belief behind this being a successful strategy revolves around how we treat people when they walk through the gates or doors of a business. As Semler says, ‘Workers are adults, but once they walk through the plant gate companies transform them into children, forcing them to wear identification badges, stand in line for lunch, ask the foreman for permission to go to the bathroom, bring in a doctor’s note when they have been ill, and blindly follow instructions without asking any questions.’ At Semco, Semler says, ‘we simply do not believe our employees have an interest in coming in late, leaving early and doing as little as possible for as much money as their union can wheedle out of us. After all, these same people raise children, join the PTA, elect mayors, governors, senators and presidents. They are adults’ (’Maverick’, Ricardo Semler, Random House Business Books, 2001)

This got me to thinking about some of the things I hear as I travel around the country about how people are spoken to by their managers and/or the beliefs they hold about employees in their organisation. McGregor’s Theory X Theory Y has been around for a long time, yet it seems as though there is still a substantial number of managers who believe that people need to be kept under control and cannot be trusted to behave if not tightly managed and given a proverbial boot up the backside every now and then. And when it comes to understanding processes and procedures in an organisation, no matter how unwieldy or ineffective they may be, responses are all too often ‘we’ve always done it this way’. These beliefs and behaviours demonstrate an inherent lack of respect for and trust in the individual. It’s simple - treat people like children and they will behave like children. If you’ve used any or all of these kinds of statements and questions - or if you’ve been on the receiving end, you may have experienced frustration, anger, disrespect, sulkiness, lack of motivation, tension, stress - to name but a few. I suspect that long-term positive results have been hard to find - and a lot of energy and time will have been spent in chasing people up and checking they’ve done what you told them to do. Time that could have been spent more profitably.

The buzzword of the noughties has been ‘engagement’. There is a recognition that employees require a bit more than an inflation-linked pay-rise each year and a pat on the back (or a slapped wrist when they don’t do so well) to keep them motivated and committed and many organisations are looking at engagement programmes or are slipping the word ‘engagement’ and derivations thereof, into corporate communications. However, an engaged workforce this does not make. Engagement needs to be at the heart of every conversation and every relationship - whether with customers, stakeholders or managers and their teams. There needs to be genuine commitment throughout the organisation to communicate with people in a way that recognises and values their contribution - and that points people respectfully in the right direction when they make mistakes. Evidence from both Gallup and the Corporate Leadership Council shows frightening statistics  for those who are genuinely engaged and committed to the success of the organisation (between 15 and 30%). That means alot of energy spent trying to gee up between 70 and 85% of your workforce.

Worryingly perhaps, as we approach the end of the decade and find ourselves in recession, we are trying to regain control over our lives. At home we cut down on our food bills, we switch lights off and turn down the heating to save on fuel bills. We bring in new, more stringent policies - switching electrical equipment off at the mains - only drinking wine at the weekend! In business, there is a tendency to play it safe, stick with what you know, stop spending money, minimise risks, manage people more closely. The rules and procedures become even tighter, the conversations tougher. The ‘grown-ups’ take over, not trusting the ‘children’ to behave responsibly or make sensible decisions, creating further disengagement.

Now may not be the time for your organisation to embrace the huge changes Ricardo Semler has instigated in his organisation (although if it is, fantastic - and we are up for the chance to help you!). However, taking small steps to think about the way you manage conversations with the people who deliver your business is a small first step towards genuine engagement - and a potentially enormous step to increasing employee commitment, improving individual performance and increasing business results. Gallup estimates around a 27% increase in profitability when employees are committed and engaged in the work they do. 

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In the ideal world, this all happens seamlessly. As a manager, you have a clear line of sight to the organsation’s vision and goals; your manager discusses their objectives with you - along with the targets and measures in place; you have a pleasant, inspiring and meaningful conversation that crystallises for you exactly what you need to do, how you need to do it and exactly what you will have done at the end of the year to contribute to the success of the business. You can’t wait to go and have a similar conversation with your team to set them all on the way to success, leaving you to concentrate on your bit.

Sound familiar? If not, you are not alone. Here is a selection of some of the things I hear from people at all levels of organisations:

• ‘My manager hands me his objectives and tells me to go and write my own’
• ‘I haven’t seen the business plan - I’m not sure if there is one for my department’
• ‘My department uses a scorecard/dashboard to report results - but I haven’t seen it’
• ‘I’m still waiting for my manager to send me his objectives before I set mine and my team’s’ (this was heard half way through the performance year)
• ‘There’s no point in setting objectives, things cahnge so fast they never bear any relation to reality by the end of the year’
• ‘Sometimes it’s easier to set the objectives retrospectively-at least that way they show the reality of how the year turned out’
• ‘It’s just another meaningless HR exercise that I have to do’
• ‘Why do I need objectives - I know what my job is’

So why do people need objectives if they know what their job is?

Recent research by the Corporate Leadership Council demonstrated that employees perfrom better (their research shows 20% improvement) if you can answer the following questions for them:

• What do you want me to do?
• How do I fit into and contribute to the success of the organisation?
• How am I performing?
• How can I progress my career in the organisation?
• What other factors surround my job?

Their research also found that the employee’s manager is the key to engaging and gaining commitment from the employee. Yet all too frequently, performance management - all elements of it- is seen as irksome and something that needs to be done on top of the day job if and when there is time. NEWSFLASH - if you are a manager, this IS the day job. The good news is that, the better you are at this bit of your role, the more time you have to be working more strategically at the stuff you should be  doing and less time is spent having to micro-manage or react to problems that occur as a result of people not having or taking responsibility for their work.

So, how do you do it?

• Communicate the business plans and targets

As a senior manager, you should know what these are - how can you and your team perform without them? What can happen is that objective-setting season can start before final versions of the plan and budgets are signed off. However, in most organisations, the plan is an updated iteration of the year before with key projects and deliverables amended to reflect the previous year’s successes. If you haven’t seen the plan, ask for it. If it’s not ready for onward communication, discuss with your manager what reasonable assumptions can be made - they can always be updated later.

• Set objectives

Effective objectives are set during a two way conversation that both aligns and engages your team member - ask questions to establish what will be meaningful for them whilst getting you the commitment you need.

Make sure the objectives are SMART (Specific, Measurable (linked with your scorecard), Achievable, Relevant and Timebound). And ensure that your employees know HOW to achieve them - what company values and behaviours do they need to demonstrate to achieve them?

Set short-term objectives that allow for some quick wins and that act as milestones for longer term objectives. Taht way they stay fresh and current and prevent ‘end-of-year-itis’ where you see frantic activity in the week before the annual review as people try and get stuff done that may no longer be relevant.

• Review progress

Most organisations plan for half yearly reviews. This should be the bare minimum and ideally objectives need to be reviewed on an ongoing basis to ensure employees haven’t been taken down any blind alleys or are working on projects that don’t align to company success; and to re-engage and re-focus them on the role they play in creating success.

• Re-visit objectives

‘No plan survives its collision with reality’ (Susan Scott, ‘Fierce Conversations’). There is no point getting to the end of the year and trying to review someone’s performance if the objectives you are reviewing bear no resemblance to reality. Priorities change - external and internal events have an impact on the business being able to deliver what it set out to do at the beginning of the year. Objectives can be changed and amended in line with these changes- but not because the individual concerned has not delivered.

Ongoing communication, engagement and performance management

Too often, team members turn up to reviews with a set of objectives nobody remembers setting. The copies they bring are dog-eared, creased, crumpled and coffee-stained from where they have been dragged out of the bottom of a drawer from under a year’s worth of paperwork. Too often, managers turn up with versions that are out of date and have never even been signed off.

If you want to get the best out of your people, you need to speak to them on a regular basis. What does ‘regular’ mean? Well, not once every six months! We are talking at least once a month for a quality conversation. What does ‘quality’ mean? Well, not ‘walk with me on the way to my next meeting’. And not a 10 minute chat in an open team space over the top of a desk divider, but in a quiet area with phones and Blackberrys switched off (no-one is that indispensable) so that you can update your employee on any changes that might have happened or might be looming that will impact on their progress and any blockers that might be getting in the way ; so that you can discuss together ways in which those blockers might be removed; so that you can recognise progress and successes and identify next steps; so that you can nip in the bud any performance issues and agree on measures to address them.

Still not convinced? Let’s go back to that 20% performance improvement. This is a pretty conservative figure and it can seem as though there’s a lot of effort that needs to go in to get 20% more. However, think again. If each person in your team was really performing 20% better than they do now, what would it look like?

• 20% of projects coming in 20% quicker and at 20% less cost?
• 20% less of your time spent answering questions and resolving day to day problems?
• 20% better attendance from each person?
• 20% fewer customer complaints?
• 20% more potential clients turned into sales?

And what about you?!

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The principles of Lean thinking are

* Define value from the customer’s perspective
* Define the value stream activities for the waste free delivery of each product/service
* Align the value stream for continuous flow
* Manage demand at the pull of the customer
* Seek to continually perfect what you have created

However, Leanership™ goes further. It is about
* Creating and communicating a vision and strategic direction that highlights customer value, fosters profitable, enterprise wide growth and innovation
* Aligning the organisational stakeholders (internal and external to the enterprise) to deliver customer value
* Engaging with and inspiring all stakeholders (internal and external to the enterprise) to be accountable for delivering customer value
* Being sufficiently agile to thrive in and through times of uncertainty and change

The purpose of any business is the
1. Continuous delivery of customer centric value
2. Continuous delivery of innovative and profitable products and services appropriate to a chosen customer base
3. Continuous engagement of capable and accountable people in worthwhile work to deliver and improve the flow of value to the customer

If this is true then the purpose of the people within a business is to imagine, design, deploy and leverage structures, systems, processes, skills, knowledge and talent for the benefit of their customers and themselves.

To enable people to sustainably engage in this purpose is the rationale for Leanership™

The foundations of Leanership™ are outlined above and are applied through the following principles

* Always Start with the Customer
* Always Be True to Your Guiding Values and Principles
* Always Integrate Structure, Process, Systems
* Always Attract the Right People at the Right Time with the Right Skills, Knowledge, Talents and Behaviours
* Always Strive to Deliver Better Value for Your Customers

In part 3, I will discuss in more detail each of the princples of Leanership™

Do you have a view on Leanership™? Let us know by lwriting a comment we would like to hear your views

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Much has been written about lean thinking; what it is, how it works, what the tools, techniques and concepts are and how different companies can translate those concepts into working models for their business.

Both leadership and lean thinking are seen as enablers for organisational success and yet…

- Many organisations still struggle to deliver sustainable profits and growth
- Many organisations still struggle to effectively attract, deliver for and retain their ideal customers
- Many organisations still struggle to be sufficiently agile to innovate and create remarkable products and services to compete in or lead their market
- Many organisations still struggle with the internal conflict of function/division v the business as a whole
- Many organisations still struggle to recruit, develop, retain and engage inspired employees who are capable and motivated to deliver for their customers

Perhaps it’s time for a different approach?

If the answer is yes, could that approach be Leanership™ - the art of leadership combined with the science of lean thinking applied by people to create lean enterprise.

In part 2 I will talk about what Leanership™ is and why it may be just that different approach to deliver real transformation.

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COMPATIBILITY

Sales managers or directors need their teams to deliver for their company and their customers. They need their teams to collaborate effectively. Often this is interpreted, as we need people who are XYZ and who can do ABC i.e. a team of like minded individuals equally capable and equipped. Great managers say, “excellent teams are built around individual excellence. The manager’s role is to make sure that each individual is positioned in the right role…to balance the strengths and weaknesses of each individual so that they complement each other” (2)

Having a team with diverse skills and talents adds strength, as there are opportunities for flexibility and adaptability. As markets change, a company’s speed of reaction becomes paramount to maintaining competitive advantage. This may mean creating ad hoc teams or to use a military term “rapid reaction forces”.

These teams may consist of people who don’t know each other, aren’t located together and have no experience of the task/market or product they are being asked to deliver. However, through their diverse capabilities, talents, nationality and cultural awareness, as a compatible team, they can collaboratively determine their goal, plan and implement a strategy to deliver successfully much quicker and effectively than could a like minded group, who all think and act the same. Imagine a soccer team with 11 goalkeepers!

CONNECTIVITY

“…the reason for virtual team failure is directly related to the difficulties of building trusting, positive relationships across the three boundaries of geographical distance, time zones and cultural differences.” (3)

Where a company is a global player, the nature of its commercial teams is different. A salesperson may have to manage a multi-site and/or multi-country customer and become a global account manager. They need to manage a global strategy in local markets and deal with the differences of time, location and culture. They need to think and communicate differently to ensure their customer, their team, their manager and their HQ and support areas are kept informed and aware of what they are doing for and with their customers. Providing and using appropriate resources to manage this connectivity issue will often be a key factor in effectiveness. To truly share information and learn from it to benefit the customer e.g. develop new products, takes well developed communication structure and processes.

“If one part of the company learns something important about a process or market or customer, it has to be communicate to all…Sharing knowledge avoids re-inventing the wheel and with all players up to speed, less explanation is required to make changes and become more nimble in the market. That is the core of a learning organisation” (1)

As such sales managers will take the role of conductor and orchestrator ensuring that all the players keep in time, play the same tune and complete on cue together to give an unforgettable performance for their audience.

CREATIVITY

“Inside the successful organisations of the future, product developers must translate the customer’s changing needs into new products and services. Tomorrow’s corporate leaders will have to discover new ways to make sure that everyone in the organisation… keep their eyes on one thing; the customer” (1) If they don’t their competitors will.

If a more intimate relationship between company/salesperson and the customer is needed, the traditional selling methods of “selling” features and benefits won’t work. A more consultative/partnership approach needs to be adopted. This will involve people being industry, market and customer specialists. Only then can innovative or creative solutions be discovered. Maintaining the edge is crucial to success. Taking this one step further, means that companies need to create processes for dealing with change and having the will, resources and structure to exploit it ahead of their rivals.

Delivering global value to customers has a variety of implications for salesforces. To keep ahead of the competition requires capable people, compatible teams, connectivity networks and creative solutions. The task for company leaders is to provide the structure and resources for managers to deliver these for their people so they can deliver the value to their customers.

1 – The Great Business Challenges of the New Millennium – HR Chally 2002
2 – First Break All The Rules – Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
3 – Grovewell.LLC www.grovewell.com

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