Unless you’ve been out of the UK for the past week or so, you will undoubtedly be aware that P&O Ferries has been in the headlines. This followed their firing of 800 employees and immediately replacing them with agency staff. Now, it is hardly unheard of to announce a redundancy programme of that sort of number of employees, but it is pretty unusual when that number represents 46% of your entire workforce! Yet even that wasn’t what created the backlash of this announcement.

No, what really created the storm is the way the whole affair was handled, because:

1. The employees (a number with over 30 years’ service) were notified via a short (three-minute) video-link and expected to immediately evacuate their vessels and go home with security guards on hand to escort them off;
2. Their agency replacements were waiting on shore to board immediately after they had disembarked.  

Not since I saw the redundancy of an entire division of employees who were all in the top ten percent of performers, have I witnessed anything like it. Headlines are referring to it as an extreme example of the ugly side of capitalism. But it isn’t. It is just a further revelation of asinine management and the complete lack of understanding of the value of people and the consequence of treating employees exclusively as costs.

A quick attempt to model the numbers gives a quick idea of the thinking behind the decision.

“In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Benjamin Franklin may have been correct about the inevitably of death and taxes, but they are not the only certainty in life. You can definitely add change to the list.

Describing change and the pace of change and the increased complexity it creates as a critical factor of modern life is rather a cliché. It is so much a factor of life that, as long ago as 2010, managing it was cited as the biggest concern for C-Suite executives. (IBM: Capitalizing on Complexity. Insights from the Global Chief Executive Study)  Yet it seems odd how little the need for adaptability follows from such discussion. Or, even worse, how little adaptability is recognised as being a people management issue.  

“Our people are our greatest asset” How often have your heard that statement from an organisational leader? I bet you have and more than once! Perhaps you’ve even said it yourself.

Yet, how much do you believe it?

No doubt everyone who says it means it sincerely. But how much scepticism does it garner?  Especially amongst the employees concerned? The fact is that it is a dangerous statement to make because, unless you actually account for, manage and treat your people as assets, calling them assets simply makes you a hypocrite!

It doesn’t matter how nicely you treat your people, or how considerate you are to your employees, you ultimately account for, manage and treat them as costs. Of course that’s not your fault. It is traditional accounting convention. But, like it or not, that unavoidably makes you a hypocrite. But that’s not it’s only short-coming.

As a business leader you invest a fair proportion of your time in your organisation’s brand – consciously and unconsciously. Your efforts are conscious when setting strategy and corporate culture objectives but mostly unconscious when overseeing daily operations. Needless to say, this can have a diluting effect on your brand building.

Why?

To communicate effectively you’re going to need

1. Information, which becomes
2. Knowledge, which leads to
3. Experience, which leads to
4. Proficiency, which gives you
5. Wisdom, which gives you
6. Deeper Experience, which gives you
7. Authority

At least that is what I learned from a recent “Wizard of Ads”, Roy H Williams’, weekly newsletter. Impressed, I decided to depict it graphically.

In creating this, I realised two important lessons.

1. Each “need” is effectively a stage or milestone and thus, in and of itself, effectively inert.
2. The process is a cycle and thus continuous.

These are significant because they mean:

1. Their qualitative measure is not innate, but dependent on how they are derived.
2. Even “authority” becomes redundant if it is not continually updated.

Nevertheless, this provides a useful start in the quest for proficiency, which you would have to think is the objective of any and every organisation. Certainly it provides a solid argument for “continuous improvement.” So let’s examine how this can help you and your organisation.

Developing proficiency is a people-dependent process. It can perhaps be better depicted as delivering milestones using a simple equation or series of equations as follows:

1. Consciousness x Context = Knowledge
2. Knowledge x Application = Experience
3. Experience x Practise = Proficiency

And, if you want to move beyond Proficiency to Authority

4. Proficiency x Challenge = Authority

Naturally these terms are subjective and the equations perhaps simplistic, but hopefully they give you some indication of the scope of the process and the iterative nature of what is involved if you wish to optimise your level of proficiency. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you wish to find out more or need my help to further your efforts.

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If you like what you have read contact me today to explore how my original thinking could help you break though logjams that are inhibiting your business or how my ‘Every Individual Matters’ Model could help you value your people and provide the catalyst to help you create an organic culture where everyone cares and the business becomes our business, embedding continuous improvement that engenders ‘love at work’ and transforms – and sustains – organic business performance.

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Bay Jordan

Bay is the founder and director of Zealise, and the creator of the ‘Every Individual Matters’ organizational culture model that helps transform organizational performance and bottom-line results. Bay is also the author of several books, including “Lean Organisations Need FAT People” and “The 7 Deadly Toxins of Employee Engagement” and, more recently, The Democracy Delusion: How to Restore True Democracy and Stop Being Duped.

I bet you are doing more to monitor customer experience than ever before. That’s a pretty safe bet because technology has simply made it so much easier to interact with your customers and ascertain how they feel about dealing with you. But, are you achieving the results you expect?

Your answer, naturally, depends on what you expect. But it also depends on whether your expectations are reasonable. Are you sure they are? That requires a much deeper dive into the customer experience you are looking to provide. Let me explain.

In his book, “Leadership” the Pulitzer Prize winning author, James MacGregor Burns defines leadership as, “The reciprocal process of mobilizing, by persons with certain motives and values, various economic, political and other resources, in a context of competition and conflict, in order to realize goals independently or mutually held by both leaders and followers.” When you distil this, you can identify two primary elements:

• Two parties - leaders and followers;
• Goals - each party wants to achieve a specific purpose.

You cannot have leadership without both these essential elements. Burns, however, expands on this and avers that there are basically two types of leadership: transactional leadership and transforming leadership.

Silo-thinking: even if unfamiliar with the term, you are likely familiar with its effects. That’s because the root of silo-thinking is differentiation and distinction. And this has consequences – conscious and unconscious.

You define any activity, role or responsibility according to predefined criteria, which may be shaped by the person, their applied skills and training or the way in which they create, use or adapt a system to carry out their assigned tasks. This is all well and good; only all too often we tend to identify ourselves by our roles and what we do. Even Aristotle (384-322 BCE) recognised this, as he is reputed to have said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” As result we, personally or collectively, tend to become:

• Protective and – clinging to the adage that “knowledge is power” – erect barriers to ensure that we maximise the perceived value of what we offer, and thereby our status; and/or
• Self-absorbed or unduly focused and single-minded, and thus uncooperative.  

Collectively this may be at the individual business unit, functional or even divisional business unit rather than at the enterprise level. But when it occurs at the collective level – and is recognised – it is identified it as ‘silo-thinking.’ That’s when you start to take steps to remedy it.  Unfortunately, even when you do, you may not realise how pervasive and pernicious it is.

VUCA is an acronym increasingly widely used to describe the operating climate you, like most organizations, face today: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. This environment makes much of what you have learned about management obsolete and demands a new operating paradigm. A bazooka, as you may know, is a portable, electrically fired, rocket launcher for launching a projectile against tank armour.

The headline is a parody of a UK television advertisement for a brand of medical gel used to treat warts that calls for you to “Bazuka™ that Verruca!” By making a pun out of their brand name, the advertisers are attempting to convince you that their product will quickly and effectively exterminate your problem. VUCA is not so one-dimensional. Yet, while retaining the onomatopoeia and, hopefully, some sense of that imperative, my headline aims, rather, to alert you to the fact that you can still ‘blow up’ VUCA. 

An article from Chief Executive magazine Can you do VUCA? 5 Key Strategies for Success offers a good starting point. It not only explains VUCA and its ramifications but also clearly spells out proven, useful strategies for “doing” it.  These, however, will only take you so far. They are only strategies and, as you know only too well, there is a big difference between developing a strategy and implementing it. I am offering you something that will significantly strengthen your implementation arsenal.

Synergy. That is a word that may not seem to be as popular or prolific as it once was. Yet that doesn’t make it any less relevant. Like any leader, you are likely facing the imperative to improve productivity and performance and do more with less. (It may be a new year but that does not mean your challenges are all new!) And, what is performance improvement but a quest for greater synergy?

Empowerment is another widely used term. One that hasn’t lost its popularity to the same extent, perhaps because of its promise. The difference is that synergy is an outcome – something you have to work hard to achieve – while empowerment is held up to be the magic formula for creating synergy. So, how successful have your empowerment initiatives been?

If they have not delivered, or even come close to delivering, the results you were expecting or had hoped for, let me share a few ideas that might resurrect your hopes, re-inspire your efforts and reinvigorate your results.