August 2008

During this month’s Ramble we spend time doing nothing, and gaze into the unknown.

Water Coolers
Coffee Mornings
I’m Busy Doing Nothing
I Can’t See You Until … September
Strategic Reasons
If Everything Seems To Be Going Well …
In The Arena
Circulation Details
And Finally


Water Coolers

After last month’s Ramble I received an email from an ex-colleague from the corporate world, now an independent consultant. Chris commented that he missed the so called 'water cooler' moments (substitute coffee machine if you prefer), where a chance meeting with a colleague would result in a few minutes ‘chewing the fat’ over one issue or another.

Looking back, I realise how important those few minutes could be. They are about relationship building and exchanging ideas. In a large organisation there is always someone with whom you can have these chats. Sometimes there is an element of ‘gallows humour’ when things are not going so well, but this just adds to the ‘bonded feel’.

It crossed my mind that mentoring/coaching is just an organised water cooler moment. It allows someone to talk about their issues to a ‘sounding board’ – the mentor - who can ask searching questions to check that all angles have been considered, to draw out ideas and thoughts that might be lying dormant just below the surface and to provide reassurance that the chosen path is appropriate. It seems odd that all serious sportsmen, singers etc have coaches and yet they are still a rarity in most businesses.

Coffee Mornings

At one time in corporate life I had my own office. I used to hold what I termed coffee mornings. The ‘morning’ probably lasted twenty minutes or half an hour and would be a general chat with someone, usually from another department. This was as much about relationship building as it was about discussing specific business issues.

If I was any good at my job (we’ll not take a vote on that!) it was because I had a network of people in most departments throughout the company who could be called on to bend the rules when things needed to get fixed in a hurry. Policies, procedures and processes all have their place (often in the bin!), but when the chips are down it is people and their relationships that make things work … or not.


I’m Busy Doing Nothing

Back in the 80s we invented the term ‘conceptualising’. It was a euphemism for gazing into space. Generally speaking gazing into space is frowned upon in most companies, so we do our thinking while staring intently at our computer screens or while doodling on a pad i.e. trying to look busy. But isn’t thinking being busy … assuming that it is about work. And that’s the problem, no one can tell whether it is work related thinking or just daydreaming. Anyway, does our job description list thinking as one of our responsibilities?

I was reading a review of Leadership the Hard Way co-authored by Dov Frohman. Frohman invented the EPROM chip, started Intel Israel and was largely responsible for the growth of Israel's high-tech sector. Not a bad CV!

Frohman talks about "The Discipline Of Daydreaming". He goes on to say: "Nearly every major decision of my business career was, to some degree, the result of daydreaming. ... By daydreaming, I mean loose, unstructured thinking with no particular goal in mind. ... In fact, I think daydreaming is a distinctive mode of cognition especially well suited to the complex, 'fuzzy' problems that characterize a more turbulent business environment. ... Daydreaming is an effective way of coping with complexity. When a problem has a high degree of complexity, the level of detail can be overwhelming. The more one focuses on the details, the more one risks being lost in them.”

Gosh, so Conceptualising has been validated as a bone fide business tool. We were obviously in advance of modern business practice back in the 80s!


I Can’t See You Until … September

Many, many years ago a friend of mine asked his boss if they could have a chat. Said boss consulted his wristwatch and said, “I can’t see you until September.” It remains a mystery as to why a watch was required to help with this decision … especially as it was only July at the time! The fact remains that trying to get to see some managers is rather more difficult than gaining an audience with the Pope.

Continuing with Mr. Frohman, he insists that managers must free up diaries from scheduled tasks. “… every leader should routinely keep a substantial portion of his or her time — I would say as much as 50 percent — unscheduled. ... Only when you have substantial 'slop' in your schedule — unscheduled time — will you have the space to reflect on what you are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes.” “… it takes an enormous effort on the part of the leader to keep free time for the truly important things."


Strategic Reasons

Every project should have a business reason. This is as important for the one-person business operating from the garden shed as it is for global corporations. Even if it doesn’t involve a financial commitment there will be an investment of time and resource. So the analysis is carried out but, oh dear, the sums don’t add up to a sound business case. What do you do? Convince yourself that you can sell more than originally forecast? Take the contingency out of the investment? Hmm, it still doesn’t look like a sound proposition but you desperately want to do whatever it is. I have the answer for you. Do it for ‘strategic reasons’. Trust me, big companies do it so why not you? Health warning: big companies go out of business too!


If Everything Seems To Be Going Well …

If everything seems to be going well you’ve obviously overlooked something! This is my first rule of project management.

A key element of project management is looking into all of the dark corners to see if there is anything lurking that will come out to derail the project. Of course, we can have processes that will take care of the key elements of any project but as Donald Rumsfeld said when he was US Defence Secretary, "… as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

At first reading it sounds as daft as some of his other pronouncements, but actually it does make sense (just about). What processes struggle to accommodate is the unknown unknowns. That is where you need people to use their knowledge, experience and imagination to come up with a solution.

In his book I Wanna Tell You A Story, Trevor Gay tells of a dramatic night in 1977 when he was the on-call manager at a local hospital. There was a violent storm that flooded the hospital and cut off power and telephone communications (no mobiles in 1977!). He describes how he and a very small team coped.

“The truth is we were making this up as we went along. Yes there were polices and procedures that had been written in the warmth of a comfortable office, probably in the middle of summer. Here we were in the middle of winter in a violent storm with no power and over 100 vulnerable patients. And we could not communicate with the outside world.

We developed some plans on the hoof …”

Yep, that’s how it works in a crisis and it works so much better if there is a good team spirit. For a guide to dealing with the known knowns and known unknowns, click here. For the unknown unknowns you are on your own!


In The Arena

In a speech in Paris in 1910 Theodore Roosevelt said, “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, ….” In other words, the person in there and doing things rather than standing on the sidelines.

I’ve been this way before, but why is it that some businesses are incapable of responding to an email? I know that email is a new fangled idea compared with the telephone, but surely it isn’t so advanced that businesses can’t find employees with the skills to respond to an emailed enquiry. And if they can’t, why the hell put an email address or ‘contact us’ form on their website?

Now I’m not talking about instant responses, which often will not be possible for a very small business. No I’m talking about ANY response.

I haven’t carried out any serious research but experience suggests that the majority, no, the VAST MAJORITY of small/medium businesses do not respond to an emailed enquiry. Which is good news for those that do, for they are in the arena and have given themselves a chance to win some business. If you are not in the arena you are nowhere.


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And Finally

Not so long back a ‘serious’ business would require a prestigious office. With the increasing demand for flexible working, rising fuel costs and, of course, the rapid advance of communications technology, many business people now operate from home. The website Enterprise Nation is dedicated to helping them. I am delighted to say that extracts from Random Ramblings will be appearing on the website. I suppose you’d call them short walks! http://www.enterprisenation.com/


And to finish, another pearl of wisdom from Donald Rumsfeld:
"I believe what I said yesterday. I don't know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it's what I said."

I know the feeling; it’s an age thing!

If you want to share a water cooler moment, I'd be pleased to to have your comments about the contents of Random Ramblings or indeed any other business issues.

Enjoy the month.

David