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Cicero and the Progressive Manager

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cicero

“If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words.”

Cicero – Roman statesman

Hat tip to Steve Roesler.

Let’s get this straight from the start.  In my book persuading DOES NOT involve influencing employees to do something that is not in their best interest.  It involves helping them to see why the action proposed IS in their best interest.  Or to create a plan that we can all see the upsides from.

Thinking their thoughts

How do things look from their personal perspective – REALLY?  Have they worked in the organisation for 10 years and never made a promotion?  Are they more interested in the week-end than the working week?  Let’s try to be honest with ourselves about the thinking that our latest ideas might trigger.

Feeling their feelings

What do they really care about?  What matters most to them?  How do they feel about what matters?  Optimistic?  Resigned?  Detached?  Hopeful, fearful? DO they feel like they have to keep their head down and play it safe, or are they up for taking some risks in pursuit of greatness.  Are they comfortable in the bureaucratic comfort zone or do they prefer the white water of the entrepreneurial mindset.

Speak their words

Are your words clear and unequivocal – or are they weasel words – designed to create an illusion of clear communication?  Do you speak direclty to them clear about your own self interest and really prepared to re-negotiate it as they communicate reservations, concerns, hopes and desires?  Are you speaking their language?  If they are talking about fear of redundancy are you talking to those fears – honestly?

Connect or Collude

Do you really want to establish an honest connection or to collude in a pretense of communication that enable everyone to duck the real issue – ignore the 900lb gorillas?  Do you want to connect human to human or ‘work mask to work mask’? Do you want to communicate clearly what you stand for and what your best thinking is?  Are you really interested in their interests – or do you just want quiet compliance?

If the answer to the connection question is yes, human to human, naming the real issues, clear and powerful communication, honestly negotiating self interests then you are ready to communicate.  Face to face, up close and personal you will come across as caring, compassionate, honest (and if your thinking is good) capable.  Even if your thinking is not so great you are likely to elicit information that will help you to take it forward.

If on the other hand you would prefer the masks to stay on, to keep playing the management game the face to face is not going to work so well.

Your lack of commitment will ooze from every pore.

Your lack of compassion and clarity will be clear.

You will be filed in the ‘just another bureacrat’ drawer.

Mediocrity will prevail.

Year 10 – Industry Day – Work Related and Enterprise Education

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My 15 year old daughter brought home a letter yesterday telling me about Industry Day:

In conjunction with our Work Related Learning programme, we have organised Enterprise Days in which all year 10 pupils will participate.

Hidden curriculum lesson 1: Enterprise is not about freedom of expression and choice – it is about complying with the policy dictats of bureaucrats.  You’d better get used to following orders.

Teams of personnel from Industry will be coming into school to help run the days which aim to introduce pupils (to) aspects of Enterprise education.

Hidden curriculum lesson 2: Forget being a living, breathing person full passion, aspiration and imagination.  Once you are in Industry (why the capital – Orwellian reference perhaps?) you are just personnel in teams.  This way you don’t have to exercise any autonomy – you just have to follow orders.   Enterprise is a bit like a strange cult – we will introduce you to some aspects.  But others had best remain a mystery….

Hidden curriculum lesson 3: Understand the power of language to obfuscate and confuse.  I am a professional in enterprise education and I have no idea what ‘aspects of Enterprise education’ are.

Activities will focus on developing skills such as team building and communication and will be an excellent preparation towards work experience and the world of work.

Hidden curriculum lesson 4: There is a thing called the ‘world of work’.  It has laws, practices and ways of being that are different to the rest of society. You had better know how to conform.

Hidden curriculum lesson 5: If you struggle with team work and communication then the world of work/enterprise/Industry is not for you.  You had better develop your potential to survive in other worlds.  See Hidden curriculum lesson 14 below

Pupils will be working in teams and your child will take part in the Industry Day on one of the following days…

(and yes the first one is on April 1st – perhaps the whole thing is a spoof!)

Hidden curriculum lesson 6: There is little room for the individual in Industry.  They had better learn how to smooth of the sharp edges and get along with people.  We wouldn’t want too many ‘rugged individualists’ in Industry.  Forget what George Bernard Shaw said about all progress depending on the unreasonable man.  In industry we are polite, formulaic team players.

It is intended that pupils will not follow normal timings for the school day.  The day will be as follows:

08:45am – Sign in at Reception

9.00am – Industry conference starts

10.50am – Break

11.10am – Conference resumes

1.00pm – Conference ends – pupils involved in the Industry Day should go home

Hidden curriculum lesson 7: The world of work is dominated by the bosses clock.  You will do as you are told – when you are told.  Because employers are benevolent you will get a break.

Hidden curriculum lesson 8: If we do not have enough for you to do you will be laid off early.

Hidden curriculum lesson 9: You had better get used to confernces in Industry.  They are a lot like lessons – but longer.

In order to give the pupils a chance to experience some aspects of the world of work the pupils will be required to:

  • wear appropriate clothing for business; for the boys this could be simply school trousers, white shirt and a different tie (The David Brent school of office dress then).  For girls, an appropriate example would be their normal trousers or skirts and a plain top (as opposed to the haute couture that they usually wear to school).  This should not, therefore involve extra expense and I would stress that this is definitely not a ‘non uniform’ day.

Hidden curriculum lesson 10:  In the world of work you will be one of many clones – similarly dressed and equipped to deal with the challenges of the stationery cupboard.  In the world of work we will continue to discriminate by gender.

  • sign in at Reception by 9.00am.  This will mean that for this day the pupils will enter through the main entrance.

Hidden curriculum lesson 11: We will confuse you by our ambiguity over timings.  Although earlier we said that you could sign in at Reception at 08.45am – you must be signed in by no later than 09.00.  Got it?  Any non-compliance in the first instance will be dealt with by sarcasm.  You should be clear that in the world of work though time-keeping is a tool of power and any difficulty you have with it could lead to severe disciplinary consequences

Hidden curriculum lesson 12: The world of work is obsessed with clocking in and clocking off on time – get used to it.  Again forget autonomy, initiative and flexibility.

  • behave in an appropriate, business-like manner and follow all instructions from the personnel running the Industry Days

Hidden curriculum lesson 13: Learn to moderate your behaviour when in the world of work.  Understanding the mysteries of what constitutes ‘business-like’ could hold the keys to the kingdom of the corner office on the third floor.

Hidden curriculum lesson 14: There are alternatives to the ‘world of work’.  These include the worlds of:

  • warcraft
  • benefits
  • crime

If the ‘world of work’ as experienced on Industry does not set your heart racing and your soul singing then perhaps one of these is right for you?

It is no wonder that so many highly committed educationalists who take the development of young people seriously are less than supportive when it comes to ’embedding enterprise in the curriculum’.

If Enterprise champions are pedalling such ill-conceived and poorly thought through programmes they deserve to be left to their own devices.

My eldest daughter went through a similar programme last year.  The highlight for her was the ‘Enterprise Wordsearch’.  You have to love those teachers for their great sense of irony!

18 tips for Better Partnership Working

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I have just completed a 2 day workshop with a great group of partnership managers.  Here is what I learned!

  1. Get really clear and comfortable about your self interest. Your personal  reaction to the opportunities and possibilities offered in your role.
  2. Communicate this powerfully in language that the recipient will understand and value.
  3. Develop your professional self interest – the overlap between your individual/personal and professional/organisational response to what REALLY matters.
  4. Build your power to influence what really matters through investing in person to person relationships. Invest in a series of 121s. Share what really matters to you. Be clear on how they will perceive you.
  5. Use the allies/opponents/adversaries/fencesitters/bedfellows model to help you structure this.
  6. Become power hungry (why wouldn’t you want power to make what you believe in happen? Don’t leave power for the bad guys of this world to grab!)
  7. Building a powerful coalition around your ideas inside the business is as important as building one externally.
  8. Know your reputation – find ways to find what people REALLY think of you and your agenda – but are too polite to say!
  9. Don’t be busy fools. Work on the most powerful relationships. That is the relationships that give you the most power – this has little or nothing to do with the ‘authority’ power of the other party. Think leverage. Think goals.
  10. Think ‘enlightened self interest‘  and here.
  11. Ring fence thinking time – 2 lots of 90 minutes a week – to develop your agenda – rather than respond to the needs and agendas of others. This will increase your sense of control and reduce your levels of stress – as well as making you much more effective and creative. GUARANTEED.
  12. Agree on the ends.   Be different, challenging, creative and risky when it comes to the means. You don’t always have to play by the rules. Think Mandela.
  13. If you play by the rules of bureaucracy it will find ways of stifling change.
  14. Don’t let years of socialisation in being helpful and humble result in you being a selfless partner. Nobody wants to partner with Uriah Heep – but they may just take everything you have.
  15. Resist the safety of bureaucracy – maintenance, safety, dependency (external locus of control).
  16. Pursue the entrepreneurial way – greatness, courage and autonomy (internal locus of control).
  17. Don’t waste too much time and energy on the difficult people. Invest it in those who share your self interest – life is just better that way.
  18. Always take your own chalk and be cautious in your selection of cues….(this is not a mystical metaphor – just a statement of fact).

Anything I have missed?

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Carl Jung

More on 121s

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The real pupose of 121s is to build a relationship.

An honest, robust, respectful constructive relationship.

This takes time, effort, curiosity, courage, honesty and a degree of self disclosure.

An effective relationship helps us to understand self interest.  Ours and the self interest of each and every team member.

Once self interest is understood we are in a position to make agreements that work for all parties – to establish win wins.

It allows us to provide support, encouragement, development and opportunities that helps others become much more powerful and effective in their work.

“Raising someone up does not reduce your stature-it exalts you in ways you have to experience to believe.”

Ken Blanchard

Web 2.0 – What’s the Fuss About?

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Great piece by McKinsey that does a top job of explaining why Web 2.0 is getting so much attention.

In essence – its quick, cheap, extends your reach and provides you with insight and feedback.  It can definitely give you an edge.

It is not all up-side – there are issues of time management and the digital divide – but that’s life!  Nothing’s perfect.

I have been blogging for a couple of years now as well as twittering (a lot) Facebooking (a little), using wikis for collaborative writing and product development and forums for community building.  My interest started a bout 10 years ago when we took on a post grad student studying knowledge management for a year.  That got me into the theory of and practice of knowledge management – especially communities of interest and practice and the facilitation of large groups – both online and face to face.

Read the McKinsey piece here.

Also happy to share what I know.

If you want more than the occasional blog post from me you can follow on twitter at www.twitter.com/mikechitty