Colin D. Ellis's Blog, page 18

We Are All Culture Makers

The influence you have on culture isn’t something that’s defined by a job title. And it’s not restricted to the office - everything you do contributes to the culture around you, be it at work, home, the classroom or the sports field.

We are all culture makers - with behaviours and mindsets that influence the success (or otherwise) and happiness (or not) of those around us.

In researching my book I got to know a lot of culture makers. In the work that I do speaking at conferences and running programs, I get to meet a lot of culture makers. I wanted a way to share what these culture makers are doing that is different and impactful and that we can all learn from and be inspired by, so I’m excited to launch the Culture Makers Podcast where I will interview culture makers from around the world and find out how they create a great place to work.

You can listen to Episode One with Dom Price, work futurist at Atlassian, by clicking below - I’d love to know what you think so hit me up on social media with #culturemakers

If you like what you hear then please subscribe on your preferred platform (we’re adding more distribution all the time) - a new episode will air every fortnight.

Episode 1

With Dom Price of Atlassian

Listen Now

In this episode hear Dom talk about falling in love with problems in order to solve them, having an opinion on (but not predicting) the future, why we need to unlearn, evolve every day and accept that failure is inevitable on the path to success. We also find out what a work futurist actually is and how Dom became one.

You Can't Copy Culture

I’m working with a number of organisations and teams at the moment to help them redefine the culture they need to achieve the goals that they have. During our initial conversation I always ask them to describe the culture that they’re looking for. At some stage during the conversation someone will say something like ‘We want to be like Netflix/Spotify/Atlassian/Google/Apple’ (but never Uber funnily enough).

At this stage - and desperately trying not to kill any enthusiasm that they have - I tell them one thing, ‘You can’t be any of those.’ And they can’t. 

It’s tempting to leave the blog there and assume that you all understand why, but I’ll soldier on and explain it anyway.

You see, culture cannot be replicated. It’s unique to that team, in that environment, with that set of circumstances, using that method, at that time and in that place. The people that work there have motivations, experience, mindsets and ambitions that other’s cultures don’t have and that’s important because ultimately that’s the crucial difference.

Those people have taken the time to create something that works for them. Something that drives them and motivates them to get out of bed in the morning, bring their best self to work, be generous with their time, smash their job out of the park and continually look for improvement.

And that latter point is important because whilst you can’t copy someone else’s culture you can look at how they do things and ask yourself the following questions:

‘What makes this approach work?’

‘Could that work here?’

‘How would that work here?’

‘What would our people need to do differently in order to achieve this?’

‘Is it right for us to do this now?’

In order for me to be able to help others to change and implement something that feels different, I scour the world looking for the different things that cultures do.

As you’d expect, this something that I cover a fair bit in my new book Culture Fix: How to Create a Great Place to Work, providing case studies from those people that are doing great things and providing insights into how you can do them yourself.

I’ve also set up a community of practice dedicated to cultural evolution. A safe place where people can share what works for them, what’s failed and how they went about it. The community is free to join and if you’re not already a member, click here.

My commitment is to continue to provide information to you on what others are doing. This week I’m in Las Vegas at the Zappos Culture Camp. Zappos are an online shoe retailer who are famed - in workplace culture circles at least - for creating a great place to work. Their CEO Tony Hseih in his book Delivering Happiness said this about culture, ‘You’ve gotta love the game. To become really good, you need to live it and sleep it.’ That’s what they do, so I’ll be sharing my learnings from the camp every day on the community.

You can’t copy Zappos, but you may be inspired by one thing that they do that could make a huge difference to your culture. What might that be?

The Human Power of a Community

In his book Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge, Etienne Wenger said, ‘Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.’

I really like this definition of what it means to be part of something that is bigger than oneself. To share one’s experiences, knowledge, failures and feelings to ultimately – and collectively – become better at something with the help of other people who wish to do likewise.

When I moved to New Zealand in 2007 being part of a community was something that I actively sought out.

I didn’t know anyone at all, so my motivation was to meet people with a shared passion as I was eager to make an impression in my new job. I was hired because I had a track record of being good with people and teams, but I knew that I didn’t have all the answers. So, I looked for opportunities to mix with people with whom I could share my thinking and actions and who could challenge my biases and assumptions.

Whenever I came across an issue or problem that I felt I couldn’t resolve then I would seek out people within the ‘community’ who could help. They became friends (some of them virtual via Twitter) and we shared a passion to improve the way that things got done. There were healthy debates, good natured disagreements, a shared commitment to try different things.

With increased access to data via the internet I was able to research how different organisations built their own communities. At that time The World Bank was prolific in this space. They had established almost 100 communities (or thematics as they called them) who were dedicated to sharing knowledge on how to improve social and economic problems from around the world. 

Where I wasn’t able to acquire a skillset required to implement an idea, I would approach the organisation to fund my development. When money was tight (and in government it predominantly was!) then I would pay my own way. I didn’t want to stand in the way of my own progress.

This is something I continue today, even though I’m self-employed. Whether it’s through the programs that I run or the books that I write, I actively seek out and share the ideas that I gleaned from others and encourage others to do likewise. In fact, I’m heading overseas to a culture camp run by a fantastic organisation in the US, which I’m looking forward to sharing with you via video.

And when it comes to culture, there are many fixed mindset people out there who will tell you that culture change is hard and yet, these people have never gone searching for the information required to make it easier. Perhaps it’s because it’s easier not to, or else it could just be that there’s no central virtual space to go, where people share what they’ve tried?

LinkedIn and Facebook are, of course, home to many active communities, but there’s lots of noise that ultimately distracts from the original intent of the community. I wanted to try something different, so I’ve launched the Culture Fix Community. It’s a dedicated place to create a virtual network of people from around the world who want to create great places to work. 

There’s a paid for section that will ultimately be the home for online culture programs, webinars and other events for those that want to invest in their culture change skills and hear directly from me on a regular basis, but interacting with each other and sharing ideas will always be free.

It’s my hope that the community of practice will provide the following value to those that choose to be part of it:

A safe, cognitively diverse place to share thoughts, actions, failures and issues

Access to case studies, research and curated content on how to positively evolve workplace culture

Insights from culture makers around the world via the Culture Makers podcast (more information coming soon!)

Access to personal development programs so that individuals are better able to lead culture change activity

Curated content on the different elements of culture from thought leaders from around the world

Recommend books and resources to help further technical knowledge.

Of course any community is only as strong as the people in it. I hope you’ll join the almost 100 people who’ve signed up so far.

To become a Culture Maker head to www.culturefixcommunity.com – see you there!

Consultants Can't Change Your Culture

Of course they can’t. You know they can’t and, to be fair, they know they can’t either.

There’s lots of things they can do to provide the building blocks for great culture, such as support for strategy development, insights and research on the essential elements of culture to help encourage a different senior management mindset or field trips to partner organisations that do culture well.

Lazslo Bock, former SVP of People Operations at Google, wasn’t so generous in his book Work Rules: Insights from Google that Will Transform How You Live and Lead, saying, ‘Consultants tend to have shallow and third hand knowledge, often gleaned from a benchmarking report from yet another consultant or from spending a few months with one client or another, rather than from sustained experience.’

I’m not sure I agree with that, but I do know that they can’t change your culture. 

Neither can the senior management team at an isolated offsite. Or the

re-branding by a marketing team.

None of these people can change the culture because, well, they don’t own it. You see, what often gets forgotten is that culture is the sum of everybody within it. It’s a sum of their skills, behaviours, stories, attitudes, beliefs and traditions.

Only the people in the culture can redefine it. Only they can create the vision, agree the behaviours, decide how to work together and make time for new thinking. And only they can reject the undesirable behaviours or poor performance that ultimately holds the culture back.

For their part, senior managers must role-model the behaviours the culture expects. They must live them in plain sight on a daily basis. Whilst they don’t own the culture, through their actions (or inactions) they have the power to destroy it.

Most importantly, senior managers must support the redefinition and evolution of the organisation’s culture. Culture is perpetual and therefore without continual positive action being taken, it can stagnate very quickly.

I spend a considerable amount of time talking to and teaching people about culture and how to build something that is both emotionally intelligent and knows how to get the job done. The most difficult part of this conversation is moving people from a fixed ‘culture change is hard’ mindset, to one where they understand what culture is and the skills required to build a great one. 

The skills needed to build a vibrant culture can all be learned and every member of staff in every organisation, in every sector, in the world should learn them. Skills such as building a vision, running a hackathon, collaborating in different ways and and communicating effectively with different personalities will ensure that the culture of the organisation evolves to something that is relevant and continually fit for purpose.

Consultants can’t change your culture, but you can.

Pre-order a copy of my new book Culture Fix - How To Create A Great Place To Work and you’ll get a signed copy before it hits the shops plus free access to our new Culture Fix Community which will bring the book to life with peer discussions, learning resources and online content. Pre-orders close 20th September.

Don't wait until it's too late to give feedback

Everybody needs feedback, regardless of age, role, experience and length of tenure. Finding out whether you’ve met or missed expectations is a crucial facet of personal growth and productivity, yet most managers are rubbish at giving it and most people are rubbish at asking for it.

When a child tries something new and either fails or succeeds parents are quick to provide immediate empathetic feedback. Praising the behaviour regardless of the outcome (‘you showed great courage there’) and using it to inform future action. It’s a parent’s responsibility to help children acquire new skills, to learn and grow as best they can.

Yet when we get into work, the same rules don’t seem to apply.

Instead of encouragement, praise and empathy, there’s growling, gossip and blame. Sometimes there’s shouting, abuse or the silent treatment.

Yet organisations still need growth and maturity so that people can be the best most productive versions of themselves, such that goals can be hit and strategies achieved. But there’s no way this will ever happen if people are only given meaningful feedback twice a year as part of an old-fashioned, discrete task-based assessment process that everyone hates anyway. 

Regardless of how they’re dressed up, these bi-annual stack-ranking processes take too long to complete, involve complicated form filling and are often based on what a manager can recall (good or bad) from the previous four weeks. They’re all fed into a ‘machine’ and the scores are then calibrated (ugh) to produce even splits of grades across the organisation.

I’m getting demoralised just writing this…

Deloitte is just one of the forward thinking organisations that have done away with this process as they found they were wasting close to two million people hours on them!

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be setting targets. They just work better when they’re done at a team level rather than individual level and when the feedback on progress is continuous.

However - like most life skills - no-one teaches us how to give or receive feedback. Consequently, we grow up fearing feedback. It starts with setting expectations well (no-one teaches how to do that either) and I’ve dedicated a whole chapter to it in my new publication The Project Book which you can download for free here.

Once expectations around performance and behaviour are set then you have a strong foundation from which to provide empathetic feedback to ensure that the job gets done. Without this foundation then you can expect procrastination and ‘busy’ work that provides very little in the way of tangible outcomes.

People that get regular feedback perform better, for longer (flow) periods. The human brain responds to it. Indeed the limbic system works best when people are motivated, take action and receive feedback on the things they’ve done well and the things that could be improved.

And in my experience - as a former employee, manager and as a father - when feedback is provided on the behaviour, rather than a skill, it creates a much stronger reaction.

When feedback is provided on skills there’s a danger of elevating people because they’re ‘special’ or making them feel inadequate because of something that’s ‘missing’. 

But when we provide feedback on the behaviour we’re reinforcing that we want to see more or less of it when they’re addressing any task, not just the one you’re providing feedback on.

If we don’t get the behaviours that we’re looking for, then they have to be dealt with there and then. Not to wait with crossed fingers in the hope they’ll get better, but immediate feedback on the situation, behaviour displayed and the impact that it had. This ‘Situation, Behaviour, Impact’ (SBI) model has been around for a while now and is a simple approach to providing more regular insights into the good and bad of what people do.

It requires courage, discipline and prioritisation to ensure that expectations are reset to provide the basis for future feedback.

Good behaviours are infectious and they are the difference between vibrant cultures of success and stagnant cultures of failure. Good behaviours need to be celebrated to ensure that they become common practice.

Author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found in his book Flow that ‘The reason it is possible to achieve such complete involvement in a flow experience is that goals are usually clear and feedback immediate’. Without flow there’s no productivity and without productivity there’s no consistency of results.

Don’t wait until it’s too late to provide feedback. The culture and the future success of the organisation depends on it.

What is your digital transformation project actually transforming?

It seems that almost every week someone, somewhere in the world, is declaring that they're digitally transforming. Indeed the latest Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO Survey states that 44% of organisations are not just transforming, they're planning radical transformation. Yet all too often - like British politicians and Brexit - they seem to have no idea what it actually means.

'We're implementing a new ERP!'

'We're moving to the cloud!'

'We're going agile!'

'We're redesigning our enterprise architecture!'

And so on and so forth…

I was recently speaking to a CIO in Australia who asked for my advice on how to get engagement for a big digital transformation program. Here are the questions that I asked and the answers I received:

ME: What are you transforming?
CIO: Our technology
ME: Yeah, but what are you transforming?
CIO: We're implementing a new ERP and using new ways of working
ME: OK, but what are you actually transforming?
CIO: Ways of working
ME: From what to what?
CIO: From waterfall to agile
ME: OK, so no waterfall projects anymore, everything will be agile?
CIO: Well…yeah…there will be some waterfall projects
ME: So… what are you actually transforming?

Of course, the very simple answer to my question is 'culture'. So when I asked the CIO what they'd done to redefine the culture in order to realise the value from their new ERP system, the answer was 'We're sending everyone on a Scrum course'.

Of course, sending people on a course is not wrong, it's just a very old-fashioned 'command and control' approach which fails to recognise that behaviour change is the foundation for meaningful evolution. In that sense, tooling people up with the latest technical approach to delivery is only one small part of a larger piece of culture work. That said, transforming the behaviours of individuals feels like hard work so most organisations will avoid it and use lower headcount numbers as a measure of transformation, rather than the willingness of their people to embrace a different way of being. Kristine Dery, Research Scientist of MIT CISR talks eloquently about this here.

Let's face it, if organisations had provided their staff with the time to define what the new (vibrant) cultural state requires and then they'd held themselves to account to it, then there'd be no need for a transformation project in the first place. Incremental improvements would have been made and the vibrant culture maintained.

How many of the world's great cultures do you know that are embarking on a digital transformation project? I'll just wait here while you go and count them. Or else you can take my word for the fact that it's zero.

This lack of appreciation for helping humans to move from one cultural state to another is all the more surprising as the large consultancies have been pumping out research for the last four years (well, that's how long I've been reading it), to draw attention to it.

Here are some recent examples:

'Digital transformation involves change at every level of the organization' - Orchestrating a Successful Digital Transformation, Bain 2017

'[For successful digital transformation] CEOs need to look well beyond achieving technological excellence, to building a highly agile culture and organisation.' - Laurent-Pierre Baculard, Harvard Business Review, 2017

'87% of respondents agreed that culture created a bigger barrier to [digital] transformation than technology' - Cultural Transformation in the Digital World, Singapore Management University 2018

'CEOs must reflect upon, and be willing to change, their own leadership behaviors and let go of legacy aspects of culture that are barriers to progress' - Cultural Transformation in the Digital World, Singapore Management University 2018

'If people lack the right mindset to change and the current organizational practices are flawed, digital transformation will simply magnify those flaws.' - Harvard Business Review 2019

'We assessed roughly 40 digital transformations and found that the proportion of companies reporting breakthrough or strong financial performance was five times greater (90% percent) among those that focused on culture than it was among those that neglected culture (17 percent)' - Can't do Digital Transformation Without Digital Culture, Boston Consulting Group 2018

So why does it continue to be neglected?

Put simply, it's because organisations see the culture piece as too hard, so they settle for what they feel will be the second best 'fast and cheap' solutions to roll-out or implement. Most find out the hard way that these approaches almost always become slow and expensive. And whilst they may achieve headcount or operating cost savings, they do nothing for cultural evolution. One SAP study in 2018 found that of the organisations they surveyed, 84% had started digital transformations but only 3% had actually finished one successfully.

Providing the strategy for doing them is clear in the first place, digital transformation programs need to start with the staff (not the executive) defining the new cultural state and the expectations of everyone within it. If the people who you're expecting to transform aren't involved in this activity then prepare for a laborious and painful process hamstrung by a lack of engagement or a willingness to evolve. Change managers and agile coaches can help with this transformation, but only if they are used in the right way.

Cultural transformations are driven by humans with growth mindsets who role model the behaviours and principles required to embrace everything that is new. They’ll create a willingness to ensure that you'll never need a transformation project ever again. There is nothing digital about that.

5 Factors of Consistently Great Projects

The success rates for projects globally have remained static for years and not in a good way. The Project Management Institute Pulse of the Profession 2019 report acknowledges this fact by stating up front that: ‘Despite all the talk, project performance isn’t getting any better.’ 

It’s estimated that only a third of projects globally are actually delivered on time and to budget, with KPMG estimating that less than 2% actually achieve their ROI.

Putting that into organisational context, if less than a third of people turned up for work every day and when they did they were only 2% productive, would that be acceptable?

So, what’s the answer?

Well, most organisations think that the answer is ‘ silver bullet’ method implementation and a plethora of buzzwords and approaches used by others in different industries and contexts. However, these will only ever provide a short-term lift, because the root cause of failure continues to be the behaviours of those who are accountable and responsible for projects (or initiatives or whatever your organisation calls them). This is conveniently missed when executives report back on their needless Scandinavian field trips.

So, learning from those who do delivery consistently well, here are five factors of consistently great projects.

1.   Sponsors who understand projects
These are the senior managers who don’t assume that because of their position in the hierarchy they have all of the answers and know that being the sponsor of a project isn’t just the wearing of a different hat. They get that great delivery relies on clear priorities, peer-to-peer challenge, quick decisions, the removal of pointless bureaucracy, a focus on the outcomes and management of the person responsible for delivery. They make the time for their project and role model what they expect of others.

2.   People who make the choice to lead, not manage
Those that lead the work (project managers, scrum masters, product owners etc.) understand that it's behaviours that will make their leadership style memorable, both positively and negatively. They understand that to succeed they need to be kind, caring, thoughtful, proactive and courageous and that anger, aggression, deceit and selfishness will only undermine what they're trying to achieve. They know that consistently displaying positive behaviours will encourage a supportive and productive delivery culture where trust is assumed not earned.

3.   Vision
At the heart of not only the project but also the outcomes expected, is a vision of how the culture of the organisation will evolve following the implementation of the project. It’s an aspirational statement that excites, engages and is used to demonstrate the commitment of the organisation to build something that will remain relevant and fit-for-purpose within their business landscape for years to come. It will be built by the team, acronym free and cognisant with the values of the organisation and its people.

4.   Teams that mix IQ with EQ
People who have the technical know-how to do what they need to do to contribute to the success of the project, but who also understand the human behavioural commitment they need to make to their teammates. A commitment focused on building relationships, sharing stories, creating shared experiences, helping others who may be struggling, keeping an eye on each other’s mental health and smashing their job out of the park every single day. They are relentless in their pursuit of better ways to do things and understand that feeling a little bit challenged is good for personal and team growth.

5.   Realistic measures of success
Time and cost – the two things that consistently change throughout all projects (agile AND waterfall) aren’t used as sticks to beat people with. The focus is on stakeholder experience and cultural evolution. Measuring the happiness of people and the continual link to strategic intent are seen as the motivators for building a future organisation committed to success. Where scope, time or cost are immovable, both the accountable senior manager and the responsible day-to-day manager have the courage and discipline to stick to what’s been agreed without caving to whims that add nothing to the future state.

And those latter two behaviours – courage and discipline - along with empathy, flexibility, resilience and respect are demonstrated throughout the organisation ensuring that whatever is undertaken is seen through to success or else killed off early and seen as an opportunity to learn.

Which of these five factors are you missing right now?

I cover how to do all of these in my new publication The Project Book, have you got your copy yet? If not, click here.

How much process nonsense do you have?

My son turned 13 recently and thus became eligible to join the local branch of the Australian Air Force Cadets. He’s keen to be a pilot and so enrolling became his number one priority once he’d opened his presents, had his party, eaten too much and played on the Playstation.

So, we sat down to enrol. It was an online form with a relatively straight-forward process to fill everything in. I gathered the necessary information, filled in the forms and submitted them. Then we waited.

Two weeks later I received an email back saying that I’d forgotten some medical information (my bad) and that I had to change his preferred name from his full name to just his forename. It was a simple ‘go and change it’ email.

So, I did. I added the missing medical information, then went to the name and address page. Except, all those fields were protected, so I was unable to change them. So, I saved the new form, printed it off and had us both sign it (again), and sent it back.

A week later my wife received a phone call to say that because we’d entered the preferred name incorrectly and because their system couldn’t cope with hyphenated names (which his surname has), the whole application had to be cancelled and we had to start all over again. Sure enough the next morning, we had the ‘declined’ notification.

I’m not really the kind of person to get angry at something like this, but I was pretty frustrated and had two simple questions:

Why couldn’t the name field be ‘unprotected’ to enable people to change it in case of mistake (after all the site is password protected, so it’s secure and this can’t have been the first time something like this has happened)? And if not, then;

Why couldn’t they make the two small changes themselves in the background to save me (the customer in this scenario) having to spend time going through the entire process again?

But if I’m honest, this kind of thing is happening in organisations all over the world. Things that could be simplified to make the lives of staff and customers simpler are instead left unattended and thousands of people are similarly frustrated with process nonsense.

Many times during my permanent jobs, I felt that people were deliberately making life difficult for others. They were stubborn, intransigent or just unwilling to even listen to the challenges faced and the loss of value or productivity as a result.

I’ve lost potential ‘stars’ during a recruitment process because we took too long to process paperwork. I lost good rates on contracts for the same reason, with procurement often taking over three months to complete their processes. It was always hard for me to performance manage people because of the HR process and don’t get me started on the 10 levels of business case required to get  a much-needed project started.

Senior management decision-making was no better, with decisions left un-made for weeks on end as a result of the constant need for proof or delivery of a perfect document. One company I worked for even implemented agile ways of working, but still insisted on PowerPoint presentations to back up business cases that contained the same information!

There’s simply no excuse for this.

I’m not advocating the removal of all process, as I understand how important some of it can be to ensure the quality of the product or service being delivered. I’m merely advocating removal of nonsense process and very possibly the people that defend it.

In their book Uncommon Sense, Common Nonsense (which I highly recommend), authors Jules Goddard and Troy Eccles call for simplicity to be as important as quality management and I think this is a great idea. They also say that ‘There are greater returns on simplicity than there are on scale.’

Many organisations are using the implementation of more agile ways of working as an opportunity to make things easier, whilst others are using it as an opportunity to shortcut what's there already without addressing the root cause! 

One of the reasons that I'm not in favour of innovation hubs is that creativity and ideas live inside everyone, not a special group of people in a funky office area. However, staff are rarely given time to think and be creative. If they were then maybe some of the process nonsense would be challenged more regularly and more efficient ways of doing things would naturally occur?

What process nonsense do you have and how are you encouraged to call it out? 

Do you have the behaviours to go with your qualifications?

I love the determination of people who invest time and money in developing new technical skills. They’ve recognised an area of competence they’d like to acquire, a skill gap they’d like to fill or perhaps they simply enjoy studying. 

Gaining any kind of professional qualification can be a lengthy process involving hours of reading, revising and some practical application.

But the technical qualification itself just isn’t enough anymore.

I say ‘anymore’ because in the past people were hired and promoted based on their education or length of tenure, not the way they behaved or treated other humans. We used to kowtow to those with letters after their names and if they treated us like crap, that was somehow OK because, you know, the letters.

Some people like to wheel out their academic prowess on demand to act superior or make a point as to how they’re more in tune with the world than others will ever be. ‘I’ve got a degree in…’, ‘I’ve got all the agile certificates’, ‘I’ve been to [insert name of highbrow university]’ and so on.

And yet, if they behave like dickheads, then all the letters and fancy education that they’ve paid lots of cash for are for nought!

Let me reiterate – before I’m lynched by the certification mob – technical qualifications are hugely important to ensure that a person has the relevant skills to do the job they’re employed to do and, as the owner of a few certificates myself, I know that without them I could never have progressed in the manner that I did.

However, unless they’re accompanied by a set of behaviours that demonstrate that they understand what it means to be a humble, empathetic, vulnerable, collaborative and courageous human being, then there’s a good chance they’ll become unemployable very quickly.

Many large organisations have finally seen the light and have placed soft skills at the top of their list of desirable skills.

Google, Ernst and Young, Deloitte, Hilton Group, Apple and Nordstrom are just some examples of organisations that used to insist on a college degree in order to be considered for a job, but this is no longer the case.

Apple CEO Tim Cook went a step further earlier this year and explained why it wasn’t necessary anymore, saying, ‘So we’ve never really thought that a college degree was the thing that you had to do well. We’ve always tried to expand our horizons.’

These horizons now stretch all the way to emotional intelligence, once considered as a secondary skill when compared with academic excellence. Yet – as Daniel Goleman found – only through people better understanding their emotions can they ever hope to unlock their true potential.

And this is critical for organisations looking to build self-motivating teams or wanting to address poor culture.

Great cultures require emotionally intelligent people who know how to get the job done using multiple ways of doing things. Only when you have this mix do you get improved communication, greater agility, seamless collaboration and endless innovation.

When people behave in a way that’s contrary to the culture that you’re looking to create they need to be coached, mentored or (if they’re unwilling to change) managed out. Of their transition to a more flexible approach to delivery services, former ING COO Bart Schlatmann said, ‘We lost a lot of people who had the right knowledge, but not the right mindset.’

You don’t get a certificate for being emotionally intelligent. What you get instead is the satisfaction that you’ve treated someone in a way that they appreciated, leading to a greater sense of psychological well being, belonging and trust.

And that is worth more than any professional qualification.

When It Comes To People Development, Don't Wait!

“Use it or lose it.”

As a senior manager, I heard this phrase many times towards the end of a financial year. We’d been allocated funds for staff development months ago (it was never enough, but that’s a different blog) and for some unfathomable reason we’d allowed ourselves to be swamped by ‘busy’ work and hadn’t spent the money we’d been given.

Looking back now, I’m not sure anyone really explained to me why it was important to spend the money early. Maybe they didn’t need to. Maybe managers should understand and ignore the pressures and commit early rather than wait to see what - if anything - will break.

Sure there are likely to be needs as they get into the business end of the financial year, however, in order to hit the targets they’ve been set, they need to get their house in order as soon as they possibly can. Not only that, but most organisations almost always over-promise what they can deliver, which means less time later on.

It’s not like we don’t know what needs to be done. Most of the requirements for development are obvious and in front of senior manager’s eyes.

They can be found in official things like:

Annual appraisals (or monthly feedback if you’re on to it)

Engagement surveys

Failed projects

Exit interviews

Strategic intent.

And less official (but often more telling) things like:

The number of unproductive meetings held

The amount of emails sent

The way people talk to each other

The amount of time taken to get to know each other

How often success is celebrated

The amount of time taken for innovation.

Staff development budgets exceed over $100bn every year, with one report stating that the average spend per staff member is over $1000. Yet there are still organisations that don’t take it seriously, then wonder why by the end of the financial year, they are nowhere near hitting their targets.

By spending the money up front not only do you ensure that staff have the skills required to achieve the goals for the year ahead, but also that it’s done before the following can happen:

There’s too much work and so development ceases to be a priority

There’s an operating cost squeeze, and the two things that positively impact staff morale - development and travel - are sacrificed, whilst dead duck projects are allowed to continue.

There are many who will say ‘all development is good development’ - but in my experience this is a false statement. The greatest value myself and my teams ever got came from programs that challenged our biases, behaviours or assumed skills. They gave us intellectual property that we could immediately apply as they were tailored to our team, in our industry at that point in time. Standard courses produce standard outcomes and who wants to be standard?!

Programs that provide people and teams with the following knowledge will pay for themselves across the year:

How people can be the best most productive version of themselves

How they can better communicate with those around them

How they can challenge poor performance or behaviours

How to build teams that know how to get the job done

How to positively affect the team and organisation culture

The technical skills to fill the gaps they have to be effective in their role.

By giving people this information as early as possible in the year there’s never a risk of losing the money dedicated to development and the culture will be better for it. Don’t wait until it’s too late!

Got budget to spend
by EOFY?

Then buy now, develop later. Contact us for programs and dates: hello@colindellis.com