Learning Leader

Stress makes you stupid: why this matters to public agency decisions

A few years ago I co-presented with Helen Whitten of positiveworks to the title 'Stress Makes You Stupid'. We used a piece of technology called 'biodots', little circular stickers which we gave out to delegates. If you stick a biodot onto the back of your wrist you can watch it change colour according to your skin temperature; and skin temperature, I was told, is a good indicator of your stress level. When you are stressed, your body diverts oxygen from the brain to your muscle groups to aid the 'fight or flight' response. However, the depletion of oxygen levels in your brain impairs your ability to think deeply, reflectively and wisely - not that you need to do in a moment of threat!

However,the point it that chronic stress reduces our analytical and conceptual abilities to almost habitual thinking patterns. We miss opportunities because we are always living in stress, and lack of oxygen doesn't allow us to see possibilities.

Right now executives teams of public bodies all across the UK are under great stress. They will have to live with unprecedented budgetary challenges for the foreseeable future,and the future they foresee is not very far ahead at all. Just getting through the next financial year seems like a huge achievement. These decision-makers are asking themselves, "How can we maintain services whilst making 25% cuts in budget?"

My concern is that stress is shaping their approach with, shall we say, less-than-smart thinking. This quality of thinking will not allow them to conceive that this is an opportunity for positive transformational change, and that maintaining service levels is even a possibility.

Stressed public executives will miss opportunities for transformational change - radical changes to the way services are delivered, such as rationalising and sharing delivery with other local agencies. They will slash services, because their thinking abilities in this climate of stress will funnel them into limited EITHER-OR thinking.

Jim Collins and Jerry Porras found in their research that all organisations of outstanding performance reject this 'Tyranny of the OR', and instead adopt the 'Genius of the AND', insisted on more creative BOTH-AND thinking. Where are our public leaders who can do this now, who can achieve necessary budget cuts AND maintain service levels?

Today there is an opportunity to transform positively the delivery of public services in the UK. But will the stress that these chief executives live under allow them to believe this is even possible?

Inside the Minds of Star Project Managers

I'm presenting the current state of our research at the Oxford Branch of APM tonight at 6:30. Here's a copy of my presentation:

As you will see the presentation above does not fit this blog's page layout, so instead, click here: Mental Crib Sheet of Project & Programme Managers on Prezi

Refreshing PRINCE2 Audio Series - Unscripted

One of the approaches we took in recording the podcast series at
www.pearcemayfield.com/audio was to record them more-or-less unscripted as conversations between John and me. We follow the content of PRINCE2, rather than try to paraphrase chunks of the manual we explore the design approach behind each feature.

So here was the scenario: as someone who had a role in delivering the original edition in 1996, I pumped John, as one of the authors, about the new look 2009 edition. 

What happened was that, very naturally, illustrations and experiences came to mind for both of us. What emerged was a series of informed conversations on an abstract Method related to the real world. This is produced something we feel is more engaging and memorable for people learning the new edition of PRINCE2 than if we were to have produced a slick, but anodyne, audio narration of the Method. 

Besides, enough people tell us that they find the book is boring enough already!

So I'm really pleased the natural spontaneity we achieved. (Someday we may publish the outtakes.)

'Thrashing' in a project

The ever- stimulating and prolific Seth Godin is publishing a rich vein of material at the moment, not least his new book, Linchpin. Alongside this is a fascinating video about focusing on finishing, 'shipping', rather than creativity.

As someone who was found describing myself a few days ago on the Change Management course I led as "not a completer-finisher" and glorying in it, this presentation certainly has me challenged!

'Thrashing' is the 11th hour changes that people load into a project as they realise time is running out, thus ensuring that the project misses its time and quality targets. Godin quotes two simple rules from 37 Signals:

1. When time runs out, ship.
2. When money runs out, ship.

Bubble trouble on our web site

Recently we began work on restructuring our course catalogue on our website. Part of this was to design a revised graphic navigation for the courses page. Using our mind map approach we publish the diagram shown here, where the use can click on the arrow in each branch bubble and get the list of course hyperlinks to that page. 

This morning at our management team meeting we received comments from the office team that the writing in the bubbles was crude and fuzzy; they didn't like it.

We listen carefully to our colleagues, but they are not the most important group - you are. Do let me know what you views of this are by leaving a comment below. I'd really appreciate that.

Good Change: Relentless or Rhythmical?

As a continue to read (and value) John Kotter's latest book, A Sense of Urgency, there is a growing dis-ease that I must set out here. As I noted in an earlier post, Kotter makes a distinction between a true sense of urgency with a false sense of urgency and with complacency. But he goes on to describe this desired state a permanent dynamic:

    'It is often believed that people cannot maintain a high sense of urgency over a prolonged period of time, without burnout. Yet with all the alertness, initiative and speed, true urgency doesn't produce dangerous levels of stress, at lest partially because it motivates people to relentlessly look for ways to rid themselves of chores that add little value to their organizations but clog their calendars and slow down needed action. People who are determined to move and win, now, simply do not waste time or add stress by engaging in irrelevant or business-as-usual activities.' (p.9)'

Professor Kotter, you anticipate my objection. It reminds me of another quote, this time from Tom Watson, Founder of IBM:

    "IBM is what it is today for three special reasons.  The first reason is that, at the very beginning, I had a very clear picture of what the company would like when it was finally done. You might say that I had a model in my mind of what it would look like when the dream - my vision  - was in place. 

    “The second reason was that once I had that picture, I then asked myself how a company that looked like that would have to act. I then created a picture of how IBM would act when it was finally done. The third reason that IBM has been so successful was that once I had a picture in place of how IBM would look when the dream was in place, and how such a company would have to act, I then realised that unless we began to act that way from the very beginning, we would never get there. In other words, I realised that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.  From the very outset, IBM was fashioned after the template of my vision. And each and every day, we attempted to model the company after that template.  At the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we did, discovered the disparity between where we were and where we had committed ourselves to be,  and at the start of the following day, we set out to make up the difference. Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business.  We didn't do business at IBM, we built one." 

But I am still sceptical about living this level of urgency as a business lifestyle. Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz in The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal , and Dr Jack Groppel in The Corporate Athlete: How to Achieve Maximal Performance in Business and Life , have brought research on improving athletic performance to the business arena. All human systems operate on a stress and recovery cycle. What Loehr, Groppel, et al.
 have shown is that by introducing proper, regular disciplines ('rituals') that slightly stress more but allow a rhythm of recovery, individual performance can improve in measurable terms by as much as 20%.

Now, if this is true for individuals, could this also hold true for teams and organisations? I think there may be some carry-through into project or organisational performance. Indeed, I have come across organisations where there have been deliberate practices of planning shorter, high-stress project life cycle bursts, but then following that with a step-down into useful, but restorative recovery patterns of work.

As a Christian I draw on the Jewish tradition of Shabbat ('Sabbath') as one of my spiritual disciplines (rituals), and I can testify to the restorative nature of this practice. Among other things, it breaks the 'Tyranny of the Urgent', as Charles Hummel called it, and helps me to get my head above the weeds and remember what is truly important. It's more than a mere cliche to say that life is a marathon and not a sprint.

So, yes, working on truly urgent/important work as a tempo is energising, but I suspect it is even more productive when it is not chronic, but mixed with cycles of recovery.

How the Mighty have fallen: stories, research and the power of questions

I've begun reading Jim Collins' latest book, How the Mighty Fall: and Why Some Companies Never Give In, bought on my recent trip to Chicago. He begins the book with a story about leading a seminar at West Point to a group that included not just leaders from the military but also from commerce and the third sector. He uses this story to set the scene for his book.

This is one of the two reasons I like Collins' writing. He is a story-teller. He contextualises the points he makes and the stats he presents as part of stories.

The second reason is that he is an excellent researcher. I once heard him say at a previous Leadership Summit that. 'all great research starts with a great question.'

The question that spawned this book is, "Why did great companies decline and what are the warning signs of decline?" (I suppose that's two questions...)

As a top-flight professor he is is used to posing great questions among seminars of students. In places like Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Cambridge asking probing questions is a primary mode of teaching.

It seems to me that every great trainer and coach comes armed with .... no, not PowerPoint slides :) ... but great questions, questions that challenge and stretch students, to look a little deeper, to look for patterns in the data, to grow their own hypotheses, before being given some prefabricated model.Asking good questions, questions that provoke reflection and pertinent enquiry, helps a student bridge from their own experience and constructs of that experience to breakthrough insights.

    Ask an impertinent question and you are on the way to a pertinent answer. (Jacob Bronowski)

Conference Mapping

How do you make sure that a group of 11 leaders mobilise their learning from an intense two-day conference in two hours and also commit to action? Well, here's how I tried...

I was with a group of leaders, mostly from the Bristol area, at the Leadership Summit this year. The Summit included some great speakers and memorable sessions including Andrew Rugasaria from Uganda speaking on Trade not Aid, Jessica Jackley, founder of the excellent Kiva, and Gary Hamel to name but a few.

After the Conference I was asked to facilitate this two hour session in a small room in the Marriott, Schaumburg. These are the steps I took them through:

1. Clarified and agreed the objectives.
2. Asked for the first three sessions that were most memorable for them.
3. Arranging them into three groups I showed them a Mind Map template I had drawn on a flip sheet. It had the central theme (one of the sessions) and four branches radiating out:
4. 1. Key points
   2. Key quotes
   3. Interesting thoughts provoked (strong or logical association not necessary)
   4. Actions or responses we might take
5. Then I gave each group a different session a different coloured flip chart pen and they each did a mini-group Mind Map.
6. After a few minutes I got them to circulate the maps so that each group was working on a new  session.
7. One more iteration of this allowed all to contribute to all three Maps
8. Then I hung their handiwork up around the room and asked them for any emergent themes that come out for them across all the sessions. (I always find it amazing how different speakers even when not briefed can build on certain emergent themes in a good conference.) I listed these on a flip chart.
9. I moved every other delegate around the room so that people were now working in new groups. And we repeated steps 5-8.
10. There was time for one final round of Mind Mapping and delegates 'voted' for the last three sessions - and no, Tony Blair's session didn't make the cut! (Brits will understand, Americans will be bemused.)
11. Towards the end of the two hours, I allowed everyone to walk around all nine of the group Mind Maps, in a sort of gallery, just taking the time to review all their collective thoughts.
12. At the end, I closed by giving them a few moments to reflect and write down actions they would commit to, and the name of someone they would be accountable to and share with their committed actions. One of these actions, in true David Allen style, should be done day 1 back in the UK and should take no more than 20 minutes. And, as you can see, I documented all this work by camera for later distribution to the group as a permanent record.

All in all, this process worked well, given the richness of our experience, lack of IT in the room and the severe time constraint. I would do this again, but only for a group of about this size.

This Blog is Five Years Old!

My first post was on August 5th 2004.

I'd like to think that five years is a respectable vintage for a blog. Does this mean I was an early adopter?

Early on, some of my colleagues and associates were pretty sceptical about my blogging. You know, that tedious thing of pronouncing 'blogging' as if it were something crude and slightly disreputable.

I've persevered because I enjoy it so much.

Over the last five years I've found I settled into a certain style, but also a sense of when I should post and when I should not. Received wisdom is that you should blog frequently. I've taken the line of only posting when I feel I have something to say.

However, I have a growing sense that my opinions on this are secondary. It is more important what you, dear Reader, would appreciate. So do let me know. I feel this will continue to evolve in style and content.

Finally, thank you for reading this blog. Your attention matters.

Could PRINCE2 be like a mattress?

In this post I'm playing around with similes, exploring ideas. As a trainer I'm hunting for a good illustration. "PRINCE2 is like ..." So let me try this one out on you and let me know what you think...

During John's Breakfast Briefings on the 2009 edition of PRINCE2 I've been reflecting on a basic tension that is deliberately placed there for anyone wishing to apply it. The tension is between principles, which should never change, and that the method should be tailored. It's paradox. But the ancients valued paradox as way to greater insight and wisdom. Perhaps we should too.

Why does this apparent contraction work and, not just work, but produce better results?

Well this is where my search for similes comes in.

I think PRINCE2 is like a mattress. A mattress has certain constraints - its basic dimensions, its cover and binding - but it also has a 'give'. It has flexibility.

A few years ago my wife and I made one of our best purchases. We invested in a good quality mattress, one of those tempura mattresses that shapes itself to your body whilst giving you support. It was a little on the pricey side, but it has paid dividends in many comfortable nights' sleep. The mattress has a set shape and the structure of the material will only 'give' so much before it resists.

It seems to me that PRINCE2 has constants in its principles, a given structure, that make a project recognisably a PRINCE2 project. But project by project will take its own shape.

So let me know what you think of this simile, or if you can think of a better one.