Category: Interviews

Don’t Think You Have To Conquer The World Straight Away

Today I came across a video from 2014 from The Happiness Start-Up School Summercamp where I was interviewed about starting a business, inspiration, and other entrepreneurial things.

At the time, I was 2 years in to launching The Social Experiences Club, one of the first online marketplaces for connecting people with experts and hosts for unique experiences and activities.

If you can ignore the amount of ‘ums’ and ‘aahs’ I unfortunately use, it does provide interesting insight into my thinking whilst in the thick of start-up mode.

An Interview With Gary Hamel

I recently listened to the Eat.Sleep.Work. Repeat podcast where Bruce Daisley interviewed Gary Hamel about his new book Humanocarcy. I posted about my excitement to recieve the pre-order of it here, and am really enjoying working my way through it.

If you are a leader, manager or worker in ANY job, this book (or notes below) is a must-read.

Whilst I rarely (well, never) take notes of the podcasts I listen to, after the first 5min it was clear I needed to capture the content. There was just so much unbelievable value Gary Hamel was providing.

And so the below represents my rough notes of that interview (which includes the below quote – so simple, yet so powerful):

Cannot assume that low-skill jobs means low-skill capabilities! – Gary Hamel

Enjoy!

What is the impact of COVID on the world of work?

  • Remote work and flexibility is possible, that will continue
  • Power moves to the periphery. Front-line people have had to use their ingenuity along with more freedom and autonomy so these people will not want to go back to traditional roles
  • Institutional and political resilience has come up short. Organisations are poorly suited to fast-moving, demanding problems and challenges beyond COVID such as racial injustice, income inequality, environmental change, automation impacts will need everyone to turn on everyone’s creativity

What is going on with the state of trust?

  • Yes very little trust, just need to look at amount of oversight, rules, policies, rule-choked processes and employees get this and know they aren’t trusted and even that their managers don’t think they are very capable
  • UK amount of discretion people have in jobs has been going down in last 20years
  • Only 1 out of 5 believe their opinions matter at work
  • Only 1 in 10 have the freedom to experiment with new solutions and methods
  • Most people can offered to buy a car or house but same people in organisations can’t order a better £150 work chair without going through crazy internal hoops and hurdles
  • The way organisations are organised it is a caste system of managers and employees of thinkers/doers which causes disengagement of people from their work
  • Gallup surveys show only 20% of those highly engaged in their work – this is ALARMING so something needs to change

What is the impact of bureaucracy?

  • A 1/3 of wage bill goes to managers, supervisors and administrators
  • A 1/3 of all hours/activities in organisations goes to bureaucratic tasks
  • In US 1983-2019 the bureaucratic class has grown by 200% (doubled) in that time-frame VS growth of 50% in all other job categories
  • It’s not about more regulation but the proliferation of new functions
  • At same time productivity per OECD has gone down since them
  • We can’t afford it anymore!
  • Many examples of post-bureaucratic vanguard of firms operating with 1/2 of bureaucratic load of traditional org
  • Dutch firm Birdszaard home-health employers 16,000 nurses and home-carers with 2 line managers with a span of control of 1-8000!
  • They do this with dividing into small teams, give them the data they need to be self-managing, connect with a social platform to collaborate to solve problems and collaborate and share best practices, hold deeply accountable with P&Ls
  • Gives all the advantages of bureaucracy with control, consistency and coordination with no drag or overhead
  • Can cut the bureaucratic drag by 50% would produce 10T gain in economic output across OECD (in UK £900B) and would double productivity growth rate over next 10 years
  • No other proposals on the table eg improving education, more incentives for capital investment
  • Economic reason, competitive reasons, social reasons as ethically the reason to do this

How do we get there?

  • Foundation for building a post-bureaucratic organisation is everyone thinking and acting like an entrepreneur, owner
  • Pre-Industrial era most owners/employees 4-5 people, all customer-focused and knew each other
  • As organisations scaled in line with Industrial revolution that was lost and no longer have the information to be self-organisation
  • Firms that do it e.g. Haier, Nucor ensure the front-line people have the information, skills, incentives, and freedom to think/act like owners
  • Still have to have coordination and tie the org together, instead of top-down it can be via collaboration
  • Some organisations have ESSP but that’s not what an owner – autonomy, right to make key decisions, right of participation in the financial upside of the business

Have we over-valued consistency and scale?

  • Bureaucracy invented to enable control and efficiency at scale with a top-down model
  • Replicability required to do things properly at scale
  • But that makes it very hard to change 
  • Control is important in most industries! 
  • But what else is important and what other ways to achieve it?
  • Orgs at heart are built to maximise control
  • Today we need orgs to maximise contribution with free to experiment, free to respond quickly to customer needs, free to solve local problems, not waiting for permission 
  • In bureaucratic model everything comes top-down which makes it hard to change fast
  • By the time an issue is big enough to attract CEO’s attention, often too late by then
  • E.g. Intel CXOs only would go after $1B Opportunities – but how do you know what is this at this scale? Only way is if someone else is already doing it i.e. not original, innovative. Nothing starts out as a $1B opportunity VS Amazon which experiments with all sorts of opportunities at different levels VS waiting for someone at the top to say ‘this is a strategic priority’ which will rarely happen

Experimentation is part of the new Org DNA

  • Pace which anything evolves is limited by the amount of experimentation that takes place e.g. humans today
  • Worrying that vast majority of employees say it’s virtually impossible for front-line employee to get a small amount of time and budget to try something new
  • More than ⅔ of employees say new ideas are greeted by hostility or skepticism 
  • E.g. central collaboration platform at a global tech retailer to share ideas and issues and real-time and treat the stores/orgs as a laboratory
  • Bezos says his goal is to build the world’s biggest lab, best place to create break-out success or fail with ideas vs if know it will succeed as have data it will likely be incremental innovation 
  • Intel hires goes through ‘Design To Delight’ programme teaching ‘design thinking, rapid prototyping, agile, experimentation’ 

Is the moment now a great opportunity to experiment?

  • We’ve had the tools/tech to enable remote working for over a decade 
  • Whilst tech becomes more available, also enables orgs to exert more control! Due to analytics. 
  • But data is not context and is historical 
  • We can assign every worker a detailed rulebook on what they need to do and somehow it aggregates into extraordinary performance. But does not reflect reality 
  • Battle of forces pushing decentralisation and autonomy and remotely, enabling lateral communications VS vertical challenging managers top-down
  • Same complexity to drive decentralisation is also pushing to exert control especially with the old guard 
  • One of the ways to ‘soothe’ a leader is to go to bed at night is that there is a policy to guide everything! I.e. squeeze the complexity of the chaos and world by creating appearance of uniformity and control but reality is far from it

The paradox of forces at play:

  • Consistency does matter – when I got to Apple store we expect certain things
  • But we do need this and creativity on the front-line with ability to tweak and change to make the real-time trade-offs
  • E.g. Nucor – unleashed the everyday genius of workers 
  • Tension between adaptability vs consistency 
  • Even if irreconcilable the eco value from scale is not what it used to be VS demand now for customised, personal experiences 
  • It will be a long slog
  • Over 70% say the prime way to get ahead is to be a good bureaucrat! i.e. horde resources, politics, climb ladder, attain positional power
  • But requires political challenge to redistribute power which no-one will like to do that 
  • System is working for anyone – workers, managers, leaders 
  • It all grows to accumulate power! We have to change that game 
  • Power needs to be fluid in orgs
  • If adding value people or a mentor or inspiring people will follow

What;’s happening in politics?

  • There’s a belief that the system is not working for them – income inequality, low wage jobs, equity
  • Workers treated like commodities, resources VS opportunity to use all competencies, skills, grow etc
  • Cannot assume that low-skill jobs means low-skill capabilities!
  • Stop talking about low-skilled jobs!
  • US Bureau of Stats – 70% low-skilled jobs are designed so people cannot use their originality 
  • Economically indefensible that we haven’t done more to given front-line people the opportunity to grow and use ingenuity

Can all orgs make this change away from bureaucracy? 

  • If you are a smaller business, what are the principles to hold scared as you grow the org
  • Founding principle – humanity vs bureaucracy 
  • From the start highly alert to the signs of bureaucracy to stay vibrant 

US Airlines example

  • Needed to kick-off some people to allow crew on
  • Staff did not have authority to offer correct incentives
  • Passenger carried off and became worst PR disasters ever
  • The CEO said workers did not have the procedures, guidelines, rules to use their own judgement! But it was the existence of too many rules that did not allow the local staff to use their own judgement 
  • Manual at UA is 60 pages VS manual at Southwest Air 5 pages

Haier Case Study

  • Hair Chinese domestic appliances
  • They wanted to build a network company
  • They divided 80k organisation into 4k micro-enterprises
  • All businesses had rights and flexibility akin to start-ups with significant incentives
  • Tied together with internal contracts for services e.g. HR or can go outside
  • Everyone’s performance – including internal contracts – is tied together on the success of the product in the market so everyone is aligned
  • Make it easy to start new businesses, if new idea post it online internally and others can join, Haeir can give you access to their VC network and they will co-invest and you can leverage the Haier network
  • Haier to make the journey redeployed 12k middle-managers to the micro-enterprises (or left), today three is 1 level between front-line and CEO, most firms have 8 levels

 

 

 

The Future of Management

I’ve just read a great interview with management guru Charles Handy here.

Here is a great quote from that interview:

“In this disentangled world, people try to talk about agile management as a solution but management is the wrong word. It only makes sense when it is applied to things; you can manage a communication system, you can manage resources, but you can’t manage people.

Management is about making sure that people have the right ammunition to fire the Kalashnikov; leadership is about making sure they use it for the right purposes and don’t shoot their team” – Charles Handy

One core question might be this: Is there still a place for management as we knew it, and if so, what does it look like going forward? This is what most leaders, consultants, management thinkers and more are questioning at the moment.

I’m working on some perspectives so I’ll be sure to share them here soon.

 

Strategic Responses of Firms to COVID-19 Crisis

This week I developed and launched a survey designed to gather insight on how a range of firms in different sectors are responding to the COVID-19 crisis. If you are interested in completing it, the survey is here.

To provide more context, I’ve pasted below what is contained in the Introduction section of the survey:

Overview:
This survey seeks to understand what strategies, tactics and activities a sample of organisations large and small across sectors are undertaking to manage the current crisis. It is a project being run by Andrew Essa of ROCKET + COMMERCE (a management consultancy). An advisory board of cross-industry leaders is forming to interpret the results.

Geographies surveyed include firms based mainly in Guernsey and Jersey (Channel Islands), although there will be respondents from UK, EU, US, and APAC.

Timings:
The last day to complete the survey is 30th April 2020.

Interviews:
A number of short interviews via VC are also being conducted with select leaders or senior managers. If you would like to apply, please contact Andrew Essa via the details below.

Insights:
The results will contribute to a white-paper and new report series e.g. Disruptive Change 2020 Report. I will share these with all respondents in due course. It is expected to generate useful market insight for firm leadership on how your peers within or across sectors are managing and strategically responding to the crisis. The results therefore should improve firm decision-making in the short and long-term, including strategic planning, operational reviews or change management.

There may be further (e.g. 3+) surveys across the year to track strategic responses and changes over time as the crisis develops, but this will be kept under review.

Audience:
The target respondent is a senior manager, executive or experienced professional within an organisation. Firm sizes will range from international business to local SMEs, with sector coverage broad including Technology, Financial Services, Legal, Accounting, IT, Retail, Aviation, Health, PR, Government, Corporate & Fiduciary Services, Education, Charities etc.

Interview – Lance Plunkett

One of the first people I met when moving to Guernsey was a fellow Australian called Lance Plunkett. He was in the early stages of MVP development for his lost property start-up Found. I thought it would be a good idea to get to know him better and help me flesh out my developing theories around ‘start-up thinking’. I compiled some questions and shared it with him via email. Lance was good enough to provide great responses, so below is is what I received back:

What is your start-up? It’s called Found. We are a funky, agile and innovative start-up aiming to become the known brand in lost property, so that if someone ever loses or finds something they immediately turn to Found. We are leveraging the Found network of businesses and individuals to offer various insurtech products, which fit perfectly into the world of lost property and allow users to protect their valuable items. We are exploring utilising blockchain technology for proof of ownership and fraud prevention purposes.

Why do you pursue this path vs something else? It’s a really big challenge and I love challenges; for me life is about really going for it and pushing and challenging yourself in everything you do.

Why do you think you are (or will be) good at it? I know where my strengths and my weaknesses lie which enables me to identify the people I need around me in the team to pick up on the areas I am not so good at! Being a founder is a tough and lonely journey at times so having people around to help support, motivate, complement your skills, focus and enjoy the journey is important.

As I see it, one of my key skills is being creative and innovative in problem solving I really enjoy this process. I am very willing to listen to and learn from others so that I can develop my own skills, self analysis and being honest with yourself and your own performance is important you have to be able to take criticism from others and I am good at this.

I am prepared to make sacrifices to make this happen I worked for a year on my business earning no money and living on a boat!

For me personally one of the keys to success is building relationships; relationships with investors, clients, customers and your team. It’s important to be personable, honest, human and considerate to others – these are hugely important values to me.

I really believe in what I am doing and share that belief and passion with others.

What does ‘entrepreneurship’ mean to you? For me it’s about being creative and innovative in solving problems and finding better ways of doing things.

What do you consider to be the ‘start-up mindset’? Which do you think are the most important for start-up success? Please explain with any relevant examples. I have met many successful business people/entrepreneurs; some are great visionaries, some are great creators, some are crazy, some are straight-laced and some are great with numbers BUT the one common thing amongst them all is their commitment and determination to their business or idea. The start-up mindset is about commitment to your goals and conviction in your business. I had the idea to solve the problem of lost property three years ago and have kept working on it and have maintained a true belief in it ever since which I know will see it through to success.

I liken my approach to business to the first time I went skiing. I learnt as an adult and went to the slopes with my three best mates, all of whom could ski really well. I remember thinking ‘Right, what’s the quickest way to get good at this so I can ski with them and not get left behind?’ and I concluded that it was by teaching myself on the most difficult black run! Charging head first into many big crashes, I got up and went again and again. I did learn very quickly and could ski down that black run in no time. It was a riskier approach but one that I calculated was worth it and that I could achieve — the rewards were big – I could ski with my best mates! Throwing yourself with commitment and passion is important and I certainly try to do this in life and business. As an entrepreneur you have to take risks however the risks I take are certainly calculated and thought through.

What are the different ways you have used to develop or improve such attributes? (If helpful, refer to any practical tactics, tools, habits, experiments or other useful strategies) I read a lot about successful people and how they do things. I study the characteristics and behaviours of sportsmen, coaches and entrepreneurs. I am very observant of others around me and how they behave, and learn from mentors, friends, peers and family.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? Learning how to fail and how to lose is a key to growing as a person. I played professional football for many years at a high level but failed to reach the very top level. I had the opportunity but didn’t really commit myself, as I should have. I have certainly applied the lessons I learnt from that to my business life now. Learning from previous mistakes would be in my top five tips for success!

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? (If helpful, what questions do you ask yourself?) I find being healthy mentally and physically helps and if it all becomes too much a good walk with the dogs in the fresh air can help clear the head. I am good at dealing with stress and tough situations. Talking through my business problems with those trusted colleagues, friends and family is really important.

In the past five years, what new belief, behaviour or habit has changed your life?For me personally I was very immature and unfocussed for many years. I loved that part of my life and don’t regret it for a second – it was fun and I learnt a lot! But I now feel a new maturity and confidence in my skills and have the focus and ability to channel those skills into something I really believe in.

Where do you derive creative inspiration for new products / services? How do you put it into practice? I naturally look at processes/the way things are done and am always imagining what I could do to make that process better. I think of new businesses or ideas to solve problems daily. Looking at new technologies is fascinating and a great way to see how they can help make things better, safer, cheaper, faster etc.

What is your approach to managing risk?  Please provide any example(s), if relevant. I take risks everyday as a business owner but they are calculated risks, all decisions are carefully considered, researched and discussed with others when needed. Surrounding yourself with good people minimises risk and I try hard to do that.

How do you know when it’s time to pivot, change direction or quit? Please provide any principles, tactics, criteria etc. I think this is easy to identify – needs must type thinking. If you are set up as a lean agile business change should be easy.

What advice do you have for your 20yo self about to enter the ‘real world’? What advice should they ignore? I wouldn’t want any advice or change a thing, the mistakes I have made are all part of learning and growing.

Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by? 

There are no wrongs or rights in how to become successful;  there are many paths to where you want to go.

Success takes all shapes and forms – it doesn’t necessarily mean how much money you have.

Be humble, kind and considerate to others.

Always listen to others’ advice – you can pick up teachings from everyone you meet even if it’s ‘that’s not how to do it’!

Take the road least travelled.

What are the books that you most recommend or gift to other people?

I like Richard Branson’s books they are fun, honest and an easy read with some great lessons within.