Alicia McKay's Blog, page 23

Strategy to Action with Systems and Mindset

Do what you’ve always done, and you’ll get what you’ve always got. Think about changing your systems and mindset. 

Man, I’ve felt like a fraud for the last month. I work with leaders on strategic focus, supporting them to spend their time and energy more effectively, instead of working themselves into the ground for nothing… and I’ve been working far too many hours. An unsustainable number of hours. 

I’ve been flat out travelling and working, kicking off exciting new programmes, and spending lots of time with clients setting up training, mentoring and development for 2020. My practice manager made an exciting move to Korea in January, which left a gap before my new practice manager started. In the gap, I was busy handling the back and front end, as well as getting my new manager up to speed.  

I’ve been working crazy hours, and it’s impacting my sleep, family time and balance… and what a gift it’s been. I haven’t had much choice when it comes to managing, but I do have two important tools that I have the power to choose and change. They’re critical parts of my toolbox – and you have them too, in your own life and your organisation. 

Mindset – Healthy framing, and renewed intention that this is not my default pace 

Systems - Visibility of hidden friction points 

Mindset 

The funny thing is, I haven’t felt resentful or negative about the amount of time I’ve been working, because I’m so excited about everything I’m working on. I’ve also never been more aware of how unsustainable this sort of pace is – and so I set up my intention and accountability to suit. I sat down with my three girls a few weeks ago and explained to them that for seven weeks, I was going to have to break our rules and boundaries about work. I asked them for their understanding and support, created some accountability for some new temporary boundaries, and agreed an end point. With my kids, my clients, and my team, I know that my reputation is built on what I do, not what I say I will do – and I’m committed to keeping that promise. 

The value of that mindset – excitement instead of overwhelm, creating intention and setting boundaries has totally changed my experience, even though the pressure has been the same. It’s like chalk and cheese compared to other periods in my life where I’ve run on fumes, gin and bananas until I’ve crashed, burned, and started all over again! 

Systems 

Temporarily managing all my practice administration has sparked an intense focus on the way my business runs. I’ve had to streamline my systems, find and eliminate friction points and set up better, more consistent ways to manage our work.  

Could I have done that when things were calmer, instead? Sure, but I didn’t.  

And I wouldn’t, for a couple of reasons. 

“You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits 

Systems, by their very nature, are largely invisible – even when they’re broken. When you’re a busy senior leader, you’re removed from the mechanics of how your business runs, and it’s easy for issues, delays and inconsistencies to fly under the radar. There’s no burning platform there for you – but there’s plenty of fires burning elsewhere! 

Our goals are born in the boardroom, but they die in the backroom. 

Systems are often the secret ingredient to real progress. Our goals might be born in the boardroom, but they die in the backroom. When our delegations, software tools, financial rules, policies, customer service or IT systems get in the way, progress lasts about as long as our motivation does. When one dies, the other isn’t far behind. 

Not only are they invisible, we don’t actually want to see them. We rarely have the push to transform, when things are going fine. Growth comes from challenges, changes and breaking points – which is just as true for organisations, and teams as it is for us in our personal lives. 

Not many of our important catalysts feel good. Regeneration and transformation demand pain. Think about the hardest and most important decisions you’ve had to make – relationships, job changes, health issues. How much pain did you absorb before you finally took action?  

Systems and mindset at work 

The same principles apply in large teams. I’m working with two public sector organisations who are facing quite opposite challenges, but applying exactly the same two tools I’ve pulled out for my seven week sprint: changing mindsets and enhancing systems.  

Problem 1: No Money 

The first team is a Council in Melbourne, who are grappling with a funding slash. The Victorian government announced a 2% rates cap on local government for the next financial year, which was half a point lower than initially expected. Eesh. Councils across the state are left reeling as they work out how to deliver on ambitious community strategies, demanding work programmes and organisational goals inside a smaller envelope.  

Impossible task? Maybe… or an exciting opportunity. 

We’re choosing to treat it as the latter. Finally, the executive team have the burning platform for change that they’ve been looking for, to mobilise Councillors and officers to make bold, long overdue trade-offs and changes to the way Council runs and delivers services.  

Problem 2: All The Money 

The second team is a central government agency in NZ who’ve had a huge funding announcement. Nice problem to have, right?  

Except that delivering on a massive new programme of work inside an already stretched-to-capacity work environment is going to require a lot more than funding to make it possible. Adding more money without changing the way they’re doing business would be like pouring water into a sieve.  

Realising this, we’ve put our heads together and kicked off a ‘fast forward’ programme with managers and experts across the business. Fast Forward is all about delivery acceleration through systems and mindset - making the boat go faster by empowering people to look at their challenges differently, identify bright spots and find concrete, specific ways to do more, faster and better.  

As the old cliché goes: necessity is the mother of invention. When we face constraints, we tend to make better decisions, because we engage a different part of our brain.  

Do what you’ve always done, get what you’ve always got 

I recently discovered the phrase ‘amor fati’. Coined by Nietzsche, amor fati is Latin for ‘a love of one’s fate’. I’m so into this. This powerful phrase encapsulates the idea that we need not just to manage adversity as it presents, but to love it. To embrace the opportunity presented by everything that happens to us, whether it looks positive, negative or neutral. 

In psychology, this is captured in the literature on post-traumatic growth. Some people seem to not just cope well with adversity, but actually thrive as a result. Death, loss and disability can break us - but some people flourish, finding meaning in their experience and applying lessons for the future that improve their lives. 

In economics and politics, Nicholas Taleb talks about being antifragile, as opposed to strong. Antifragility is about building the capacity to improve thanks to external shocks, progressively increasing our resilience to manage the next crisis – because, make no mistake, there will inevitably be another one. 

I had a conversation with a senior leader at a NZ university lately, who mentioned that coronavirus had derailed their strategy execution for the coming year. “Once things get back to normal, though, we’ll be back on track….”  

Awkward, right? Sure, the pandemic will end – but it will be replaced by the next crisis. A funding change, an unexpected competitor, a natural disaster or a scandal.  

Because real success is not coping with change, or managing the fallout well.  

Real success is succeeding because of our challenges, rather than in spite of them. 

Real success is succeeding because of our challenges, rather than in spite of them 

If your team is managing unexpected change, grappling with funding constraints – or announcements! – or struggling to get  plans and projects moving, take heart. Rather than questioning the quality of your leadership, the motivation of your people, or the value of your goals, try looking at the way you work, and the way you think. 

Ask yourself these questions: 

What is the opportunity inside this issue? 

What invisible or ignored issues has this brought to light? 

What processes and systems are making things harder? 

What is working well, that we can do more of? 

Who makes decisions and where are the potential bottlenecks? 

Where can bureaucracy be minimised? 

When it comes to systems, a clear understanding of what needs to shift – and clear accountability and timeframes for changing them - can be the difference between strategy that flies and strategy that flops.  

Recognising and making that shift is often down to our mindset. How we understand and harness our response to change –and noticing our resistance to improve until there’s no other option! 

In 48 Laws of Power Robert Greene argues that we should aim to “accept the fact that all events occur for a reason, and that it is within your capacity to see this reason as positive.” 

Skeptical? Fair enough.  

But it’s happening to you anyway, so you might as well. 

When in doubt, zoom out.

Early last year, I visited the M.C. Escher exhibit in Melbourne and enjoyed having my mind blown by some of the mind-bending perspective pieces on display.

Perspective is a funny old thing - the same things that are huge when they're right in front of us seem to get smaller when they're further away. 

It's not just our eyes that do this - our attention does too. When we deal with urgent, operational issues, our minds shift less imminent ideas and events to the periphery. 

Daniel Kahneman talks about this in his work Thinking Fast and Slow, coining the acronym W.Y.S.I.A.T.I – What You See Is All There Is. Kahneman is talking about our tendency to form quick judgements, based on the information we have available to us. Our brain doesn’t do a great job of sorting out the quality of that information either – it just gets busy building a good story about it.

For low-consequence decisions, that’s OK. It’s easy, it’s comfortable, and it’s fast.

On the big issues, though, that kind of thinking is not enough. The future of work, climate change, social issues, economic shifts… these things need more than a quick judgement. 

If we don’t take time to understand the information - and each other – we lose an opportunity to think differently or achieve meaningful perspective.

“You cannot help dealing with the limited information you have as if it were all there is to know. You build the best possible story from the information available to you, and if it is a good story, you believe it. 

Paradoxically, it is easier to construct a coherent story when you know little, when there are fewer pieces to fit into the puzzle. Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”

― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow

Some senior leaders are spending far too much time stuck in the weeds. When we don’t carve out that space and time (ironically, because we don’t have enough time….) we pay for it later with slow, ineffective long term planning.

More importantly, it’s extremely hard to be on the same page as the people around us, when we don’t have proper conversations – and those are hard to have when you’re down on the ground.

It's incredible what a bit of distance and perspective can do to change the way we decide what really matters. 

When in doubt, zoom out.

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20/20 Vision

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

We officially made it to the future. I’m desperately holding back the temptation to make a series of very lame but totally strategy-related “20/20 vision” jokes. 

I’m a sucker for a fresh start. I’m excited to start a new notebook, let alone a new year. This time we’ve got a new decade for goodness sake.... Excitement city. 

According to When by Dan Pink. it’s a thing. Time-based milestones like a new year are a temporal landmark, useful for navigating our way through life. 

On the first day of a week, month, age, anniversary or year, we give ourselves permission to open a new mental account and say goodbye to what no longer serve us. New Year, New Me indeed. 

The pattern interrupt of a temporal landmark gives us mental space – a prompt to consider the big picture. Seizing this momentum is a powerful way to spark something new. 

How can you grab onto that opportunity? 

In your personal life, you should set an intention. Who do you want to be this year? What would that person have to do? What should you stop doing, to be that person?

I love Dr Jason Fox's One Word initiative for this. My 2020 word is soar. I want to lift myself and others to new heights, to connect and grow, to seize momentum, but without the grit, and thrust that the last few years have needed. 

At work, you should kick off the year with fresh eyes, while everyone still has them.  Put the time in your team’s calendar now. For bonus points, schedule your strategy meetings and retreats for the full year in one fell swoop. Senior leadership teams should be scheduling in a 2-3 day reset at least three times in 2020 - book it in now.

I’ve seized this temporal landmark in my business to refocus and gear up for 2020. Inspired by Digby Scott’s Year by Design approach, my year is all mapped out on the wall, with my favourite clients, holidays, strategy and development days locked in.  

Things are changing around here

2020 is a great landmark to make some big changes and shifts. Here's some of mine:

Lifting leaders

Over the last few years, I’ve poured my heart and soul into helping teams develop clear, focused strategic direction and to make strategy real. I'm still going to do both of those things. Strategic Focus workshops are the best entry point for a new client and I love running them. 

Since publishing my first book I've been running the Strategy to Action programme and there is still nothing out there quite like it. I refine S2A every single time I deliver it, and isn’t going anywhere. In 2020, it's getting a huge boost with some brilliant supported and self-directed learning attached too.  

My big 2020 obsession though, is with developing kick-ass, strategic public leaders. It's time to soar. (see? good word, eh.) All the brilliant strategy in the world sits in the hands of our leaders. People don’t instinctively know how to think big picture, design good systems and make good decisions – but they can definitely learn. So this year is all about creating a tribe of super strategic, future-focused public leaders to take our organisations and communities into the biggest decade yet. Are you in?  

A different kind of wisdom

I committed to weekly blogs in July 2018, scrapping my existing database and starting from scratch. The first Wednesday Wisdom went out to just 28 people. 18 months later, I haven't missed a single week and there's now over 3,000 of you who get the email - and it’s climbing fast!  

In 2020, Wednesday Wisdom will still come out on a Wednesday... but only once a month. I’m going to refocus that weekly energy into deeper thinking and useful resources. I’ll be making a new resource available to readers every month - for free! - instead. This month, I sent everyone a brief summary of insights from all of my 2019 strategy sessions.

Like everyone, I can do anything, but not everything. Choosing to soar means letting other things go – even the good stuff that serves me well. More on this approach here. 

There’s lots of other exciting changes brewing, but I’m still on holiday, so you’ll just have to wait!  

Enjoy the rest of your break 

Til next MONTH (I know right!!?!) 

- A

Seize this temporal landmark.

I’m a sucker for a fresh start. I’m excited to start a new notebook, let alone a new year. This time we’ve got a new decade for goodness sake.... Excitement city. 

According to When by Dan Pink. it’s a thing. Time-based milestones like a new year are a temporal landmark, useful for navigating our way through life. On the first day of a week, month, age, anniversary or year, we give ourselves permission to open a new mental account and say goodbye to what no longer serve us. New Year, New Me indeed. 

The pattern interrupt of a temporal landmark gives us mental space – a prompt to consider the big picture. Seizing this momentum is a powerful way to spark something new. 

How can you grab onto that opportunity?

In your personal life, you should set an intention. Who do you want to be this year? What would that person have to do? What should you stop doing, to be that person?

I love Dr Jason Fox's One Word initiative for this. My 2020 word is soar. I want to lift myself and others to new heights, to connect and grow, to seize momentum, but without the grit, and thrust that the last few years have needed. 

At work, you should kick off the year with fresh eyes, while everyone still has them.  Put the time in your team’s calendar now. For bonus points, schedule your strategy meetings and retreats for the full year in one fell swoop. Senior leadership teams should be scheduling in a 2-3 day reset at least three times in 2020 - book it in now.

I’ve seized this temporal landmark in my business to refocus and gear up for 2020. Inspired by Digby Scott’s Year by Design approach, my year is all mapped out on the wall, with my favourite clients, holidays, strategy and development days locked in.  

Walking the talk

I committed to weekly blogs in July 2018, scrapping my existing database and starting from scratch. The first Wednesday Wisdom went out to just 28 people. 18 months later, I haven't missed a single week and there's now over 3,000 of you who get the email - and it’s climbing fast!  In 2020, I’m still going to blog - but only once a month. I’m going to refocus that weekly energy into deeper thinking and useful resources for subscribers to my email list. I’ll be making a new resource available to readers every month - for free! - instead. Like everyone, I can do anything, but not everything. Choosing to soar means letting other things go – even the good stuff that serves me well.

More on this approach here. 

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You Have Plenty of Time

I adopted a new mantra a couple of months ago: “I am on top of things.” 

I shared this with a good friend recently and we decided she needed a mantra too. Hers is: “I have plenty of time.” 

The thing is: the relationship between time and progress isn’t linear. Getting more time is no guarantee you’ll get anything more done.  

Have you ever achieved more in an hour than you managed the rest of the week? I regularly get “travel clarity” and achieve more on a flight from Wellington to Sydney than the rest of the week. 

What’s that about? 

Time, sure. But more than that: space. Spending more time doing the same stuff will not yield new results on its own. It can be like pouring water into a sieve.  

Richard A. Swenson talks about the concept of ‘margin’ – emotional, physical, financial and time reserves for overloaded lives. Margin, or space, isn’t a luxury. Yet, in a recent survey, 96% of leaders reported that they lack time for strategic thinking. My strategy and coaching clients tell me “BAU already demands 110%” and “we’re stuck in the weeds”. 

“Stop reading emails sent to your work address, when you’re on Christmas break.” – Alicia McKay 

Strategic thinking and action doesn’t happen by accident. Creating mental leeway is critical if you want to think clearly, make non-obvious connections and pinpoint opportunities for change.    

And the more senior your position, the more margin you need. It is literally what you’re paid to do! 

When Michael Porter followed 27 CEOs of billion-dollar companies for 13 weeks, he found that the average CEO spends 43% of their time on activities that furthered their business. They also spend about 25 minutes of every morning, strategising and planning – leaving emails, calls and other stuff until at least lunchtime.  

The most successful CEOs report diligence about time away from work too – spending an average of 45 minutes a day on exercise, sleeping an average of seven hours a night, spending three hours a day with their families and two hours on personal pastimes.  

My opinion: if CEOs of billion dollar companies can do this, we can too. 

Here’s a start: stop reading emails sent to your work address, when you’re on Christmas break. HA! 

‘til next week 
- A

You have plenty of time.

I adopted a new mantra a couple of months ago: “I am on top of things.” 

I shared this with a good friend recently and we decided she needed a mantra too. Hers is: “I have plenty of time.” 

The thing is: the relationship between time and progress isn’t linear. Getting more time is no guarantee you’ll get anything more done.  

Have you ever achieved more in an hour than you managed the rest of the week? I regularly get “travel clarity” and achieve more on a flight from Wellington to Sydney than the rest of the week. 

What’s that about? 

Time, sure. But more than that: space. Spending more time doing the same stuff will not yield new results on its own. It can be like pouring water into a sieve.  

Richard A. Swenson talks about the concept of ‘margin’ – emotional, physical, financial and time reserves for overloaded lives. Margin, or space, isn’t a luxury. Yet, in a recent survey, 96% of leaders reported that they lack time for strategic thinking. My strategy and coaching clients tell me “BAU already demands 110%” and “we’re stuck in the weeds”. 

Strategic thinking and action doesn’t happen by accident. Creating mental leeway is critical if you want to think clearly, make non-obvious connections and pinpoint opportunities for change.    

And the more senior your position, the more margin you need. It is literally what you’re paid to do! 

When Michael Porter followed 27 CEOs of billion-dollar companies for 13 weeks, he found that the average CEO spends 43% of their time on activities that furthered their business. They also spend about 25 minutes of every morning, strategising and planning – leaving emails, calls and other stuff until at least lunchtime.  

The most successful CEOs report diligence about time away from work too – spending an average of 45 minutes a day on exercise, sleeping an average of seven hours a night, spending three hours a day with their families and two hours on personal pastimes.  

My opinion: if CEOs of billion dollar companies can do this, we can too. 

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You Can't Work With What You Can't See

Put your hand up if you’re ever been a martyr.  

Walking around carrying an invisible load of resentment, wondering why every other unreasonable person can’t see how busy or troubled you are. 

Not sure? Here’s a few signs: 

You only tell people about it that can’t do anything (your spouse or friends, rather than your boss or colleagues)

If someone who you complain to offers a suggestion, you reject it

You look super capable on the surface but you don’t feel it.

OK, we’d better stop before this becomes a therapy session. I know I’ve been that person before, and I know leaders who find themselves behaving like this sometimes too.  

It’s easy to end up here. 

When we work in complex teams, in complex workplaces, with lots of functional diversity, the risk of martyrdom is high. When we’re all overloaded, and we’re operating in silos, the risk is even higher. In those kind of environments, it’s easy for things to fly under the radar. 

That’s how we get stuck and problems become worse than they need to be – because we can’t see them. 

 “You can’t work with what you can’t see” 

There is no way your leadership team can fully appreciate just how much is going on, if they can’t even see it. In the HBR article ‘Too Many Projects’ (https://hbr.org/2018/09/too-many-projects) Hollister and Watkins talk about the damaging, cumulative impact of having too many initiatives on the go. Without visibility of the full load, staff at all levels end up under unreasonable pressure and start resenting each other. 

Here’s the thing: we can’t work with what we can’t see. 

In The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo starts every project in exactly the same way: by requiring her subject to make a big pile of all of their stuff.  

It’s not until you see all 28 of your black t-shirts in one big pile in front of you that you realise how ridiculous things have become. 

Whether it’s too many projects at the exec level, too many tasks at a personal level or too many black t-shirts, you can't work with what you can't see - and you gain nothing by being a martyr.

Put all your things in a pile, share your pile with others, and go from there. 

‘til next week 

- A 

You can’t work with what you can’t see.

Put your hand up if you’re ever been a martyr.  

Walking around carrying an invisible load of resentment, wondering why every other unreasonable person can’t see how busy or troubled you are. 

Not sure? Here’s a few signs: 

You only tell people about it that can’t do anything (your spouse or friends, rather than your boss or colleagues)

If someone who you complain to offers a suggestion, you reject it

You look super capable on the surface but you don’t feel it.

OK, we’d better stop before this becomes a therapy session. I know I’ve been that person before, and I know leaders who find themselves behaving like this sometimes too.  

It’s easy to end up here. When we work in complex teams, in complex workplaces, with lots of functional diversity, the risk of martyrdom is high. When we’re all overloaded, and we’re operating in silos, the risk is even higher. In those kind of environments, it’s easy for things to fly under the radar. 

That’s how we get stuck and problems become worse than they need to be – because we can’t see them. 

There is no way your leadership team can fully appreciate just how much is going on, if they can’t even see it. In the HBR article ‘Too Many Projects’ Hollister and Watkins talk about the damaging, cumulative impact of having too many initiatives on the go. Without visibility of the full load, staff at all levels end up under unreasonable pressure and start resenting each other. 

Here’s the thing: we can’t work with what we can’t see. 

In The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo starts every project in exactly the same way: by requiring her subject to make a big pile of all of their stuff.  

It’s not until you see all 28 of your black t-shirts in one big pile in front of you that you realise how ridiculous things have become. 

Whether it’s too many projects at the exec level, too many tasks at a personal level or too many black t-shirts, you can't work with what you can't see - and you gain nothing by being a martyr.

Put all your things in a pile, share your pile with others, and go from there. 

Permalink

The Paradox of Public Leadership

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” 

“I must be cruel to be kind” 

“The child is the father of the man” 

Literature is full of paradox – ideas that are both contradictory and true. Whether it’s Dickens, Shakespeare, or Wordsworth, paradox provokes questioning. It gives us pause to ask: what’s really going on here? 

Greg McKeown, in Essentialism, talks about the paradox of success' He argues that the more options we have, the more distracted we become from our highest level of contribution. Similarly, when I work with public leaders, I talk about the paradox of public leadership – when the further we advance, the further away we move from our original value (and the harder it can be to feel satisfied.) 

“He who confronts the paradoxical exposes himself to reality.” - Friedrich Dürrenmatt 

This is true not just for individuals, but for the entire public sector. The more we’ve added to our plate and the further we’ve evolved, the further we risk drifting from our original value.  

Last week I talked about the opportunity cost of our time – how we can do anything, but not everything. (OK, maybe I ranted a little bit too. I love getting feedback from you all, by the way, and I LOVED the response from that one! I’m pleased you enjoy my ranting…) 

I’m not ranting this week, but I would like to issue a challenge. I think there’s real value in using paradox to uncover hidden assumptions, just like an author or playwright might. 

What would happen if we used the paradox of public leadership to take a closer look at the choices we are making in our teams and organisations?  

I think it’s worth asking tricky questions like…  

What do we assume about the services we deliver, the areas we are involved in, or the way we do things?  

How have these assumptions shaped our evolution as a team or organisation?  

Do we really understand the core value we deliver?  

When should we stop certain programmes – or should we do them forever? 

Is this the best use of our time and energy?  

Are there others who would do a better job of this? 

Could there be other options we haven’t considered? 

 ‘til next week 

- A 

The paradox of public leadership.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” - “I must be cruel to be kind” - “The child is the father of the man” 

Literature is full of paradox – ideas that are both contradictory and true. Whether it’s Dickens, Shakespeare, or Wordsworth, paradox provokes questioning. It gives us pause to ask: what’s really going on here? 

Greg McKeown, in Essentialism, talks about the paradox of success' He argues that the more options we have, the more distracted we become from our highest level of contribution. Similarly, when I work with public leaders, I talk about the paradox of public leadership – when the further we advance, the further away we move from our original value (and the harder it can be to feel satisfied.) 

“He who confronts the paradoxical exposes himself to reality.” - Friedrich Dürrenmatt 

This is true not just for individuals, but for the entire public sector. The more we’ve added to our plate and the further we’ve evolved, the further we risk drifting from our original value.  

I think there’s real value in using paradox to uncover hidden assumptions, just like an author or playwright might. What would happen if we used the paradox of public leadership to take a closer look at the choices we are making in our teams and organisations?  

I think it’s worth asking tricky questions like…  

What do we assume about the services we deliver, the areas we are involved in, or the way we do things?  

How have these assumptions shaped our evolution as a team or organisation?  

Do we really understand the core value we deliver?  

When should we stop certain programmes – or should we do them forever? 

Is this the best use of our time and energy?  

Are there others who would do a better job of this? 

Could there be other options we haven’t considered? 

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