Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the category “Change”

10 Jan 2010

Strategy as Stress Survival

Nearly thirty years ago the Thomsons sold out of print newspapers, selling The Times and The Sunday Times to Murdoch. In 2007 they sold their college textbooks arm for a $2bn premium, making an offer for Reuters with the proceeds in the same month Murdoch increased its newspapers exposure with its bid for Dow Jones.

The FT’s article (30/12/09, Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson) exploring family businesses and long-term strategic decision-making also highlights the importance of paranoia and values in business leadership.

Without long-term planning and the projection of risk exposures, a company cannot look to add value over time. Past this management speak though, a healthy self-awareness and translation of leadership team stress, paranoia and questioning into strategy evaluation and revision/ actions is fundamental.

Allan Leighton (sits on several boards, inc. Selfridges and BSkyB) is quoted in another FT article (6/1/10, Judgment Call – What is the right attitude for leaders to take this year?):

‘Stay close to the detail of your business, worry frequently, don’t be complacent, and look after your people. Survive and thrive.’

‘Business needs to adapt to the new realities and get on with driving momentum, being proactive and looking for ways to keep edging forward, remembering that flat is often the new up’

Strong leadership is not a one person game. The leader – in position because of knowing what those who would be led need to be led – drives both the momentum and the action, but should also drive the questioning. Historic decisions of even the last month should be re-challenged in light of all current data and experience.

The fulfilment of the mission and big hairy audacious goals should provide the direction and framework; this should equate with the company’s best ability to deliver total stakeholder return over time (defined in both monetary and non-monetary terms).

What happens day to day, week to week and month to month should be guided by a clear bridling of your stress and paranoia as a leadership team in pursuit of the right strategic decision-making/ revision-making.

Continually switching strategies or strategic procastination/ incontinence are both unacceptable. Continually questioning yourself and whether you are doing the right things now – based on your business values – to achieve your long-term mission, is a necessity.

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Posted in Business, Change, Leadership, Management, Strategy, Stress, Vision and Goal Setting and tagged , , , | Leave a comment
01 Jun 2009
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A Personal Conflict: Handling the Stress of Business Growth with the Demands of Leadership

A very personal conflict reflected in recent 360 feedback I received from my managers and fellow directors is well covered in Harvard Business Review’s June 2009 leader: How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy

Robert Sutton found that people placed in authority become less mindful of others’ feelings and needs whilst those in subordinate positions devote immense energy to watching and interpreting the actions of leaders.

He suggests a useful framework to get bosses focused on what their people need from them: predictability, understanding, control and compassion.

1. Predictability: as much information as you can. Preparation reduces suffering and they can relax in the meantime

2. Understanding: explain why changes are necessary, and how it will affect routines. Internal communication should be simple, concrete and repetitive

3. Control: don’t frame an obstacle as too big, too complex, or too difficult to overcome: people will be overwhelmed and will freeze in their tracks. Break down into less daunting components

4. Compassion: tend to peoples’ emotional needs, however hard you are finding the process as a leader

Posted in Business, Change, Communication, Control, Leadership and tagged , ,
12 Dec 2008

How Things Start to Change When you Attribute True Value to Your Sense of Self

So how does it feel? How does it feel to think that you understand things a bit better? To think that you are a bit more certain about how things work for you and what things mean?

Unsettling is a good way of starting the description. From NLP/ hypnosis/ habit removal experiences I’ve had, it’s a similar awareness of a void. The void is the non-existence of the previous habit.

In my current situation it’s the awareness of the absence of a programme of striving for understanding or meaning in certain areas.

I’m experiencing this change from different perspectives. My interest in the content of a number of previously subscribed blogs has virtually dissipated overnight. I’m not talking here about divine revelations. It’s just a shift in understanding in how the relationship between conscious and other than conscious works. This shift makes me currently feel like I understand more, and have more answers when I look at the subject matter of these other blogs.

My feelings towards other content also feels shifted. My sense of value added by the body of self-help literature is diminished in part because I feel they’re missing the common thread. So many questions postulated without going back to that common denominator of our brains.

We are that common element in all the challenges that we perceive we face in our lives. Yet we don’t start from that psychological perspective of the workings of our brains and the relationship with our construction of ourself.

Just getting stuck into an excellent book, ‘My Stroke of Insight’ by Jill Taylor. A neuroscientist who suffered a stroke and recovered to write about the experience. Excellent, clear explanation of the workings of the brain with a description of a right hemisphere-led view of the world that takes you out of your comfort zone and then mugs everything you previously thought to be true.

Already, what this is telling me is that our approach to many personal development matters are too left hemisphere-led (thinking, rationalizing and logical detail) and thereby doomed to fail when our feelings and emotions kick-in.

So how does it feel? Invigorating and slightly scary when I look at the absence of some of the previous striving. But ultimately? Bloody marvellous……

Posted in Change, Conscious and Unconscious, Happiness, Psychology and tagged , , , | Leave a comment

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