Some of you may have heard the news story the other day of the competition to discover who made the best wine, America or France. This was a repeat of one held in Paris in 1976, called ‘The Judgement of Paris’, when France was shocked when French experts, after a blind tasting, said they preferred the Californian wines. The French wince industry took consolation in assuming that the French wines would age better. So 30 years on they repeated the test. In this year’s competition, all the top five wines came from California!

What does this tell us, other than which wine to choose in future? I would suggest that the French growers, convinced that they were the best in the world had decided that they didn’t need to change. Their product was as good as it could possibly be. The Americans, on the other hand, were constantly looking at how to improve; how to prove they were as good. It is a classic, real-life, version of the Tortoise and the Hare.

Change is a dynamic. It can not be tamed or denied. Either you are going up, or you are going down! So ambition, creativity, hard work and investment need to be sustained, to become permanent features of your culture.

In the midst of Change, there is an understandable pressure on leaders to let their organisation get back to ‘business as usual’; change is stressful, and nobody enjoys feeling stressed.

An organisation is always under pressure to deliver on its day-to-day agenda, and Change is an additional burden. However, if you are not taking control of your Change agenda, then you are allowing your competitors to do so. The French growers chose to rest on their laurels, confident that no one could catch them up. Up-until-now people have paid a premium for French wines, but how much longer will they prepared to do so? In your own sector are you an American or French?

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible” Arthur C. Clarke

Interestingly, the French government, in its desire to protect the reputation & quality of French wine enshrined in law various rules governing the way wine should be made. Unfortunately for them the rest of the world just listened to what customers wanted and used their creativity to come up with novel ways of giving it to them. For example, people like the oaky taste of certain wines, the French achieve this by aging in oak barrels. The Americans discovered you can get the same effect by adding oak chips into the wine. The chips provide a similar (or better!) flavour at 10% of the cost of using barrels.

There is always another, different way to give your customers what they want. You need to be sure that you know what they want.

Another interesting thought is that wine is just pressed grape juice until yeast is added. Like many business cultures, things don’t change without a catalyst to provoke the change. Change, like a yeast culture, needs to be fed. You have to provide the right environment for it to occur. Leaders must not only talk about Change, but must also support it.

This means:-

• Hiring and promoting people with different views, experience and outlooks
• Provide a clear, compelling vision of what the change looks & feels like
• Ensure mistakes are identified properly, and learnt from, rather than condemned [if you aren’t making any mistakes you aren’t trying hard enough!]
• Resources (time, money & outside support) are made available
• Decide what is key, and then measure it, reward it and recognise it
• Identify natural champions and empower them to make a difference

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world” Albert Einstein

You can learn more about the competition at this link The Judgement of Paris – wine competition

“If we habitually focus on how to improve things that are already great, can you see how this spirit can transform ourselves, our organizations, families and communities?” Tony Robbins

How long has it been since you sat down and took stock of your life? Sometimes Life forces this upon us in the shape of a divorce, a redundancy, a promotion or some other life changing event. However, even when none of these occur, we can find ourselves looking back at where we have come from and all that we have achieved, and also those things that we haven’t, and asking “What is really important?”

Once upon a time, people really had little choice about what they did. If they were lucky, they followed in their parents’ footsteps and were taught a trade. Most people worked from dawn to dusk just trying to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. The second half of the twentieth century saw a change in this pattern and people not only could make choices but were told this was their right.

However, with choices came consequences, successes and failures. No longer was a full belly and somewhere to sleep enough of a measure of success. Maslow taught us about the hierarchy of needs, and having taken care of the life and death basics we now needed to self-actualise, or fulfil ourselves and our purpose.

“Why are we here?” is just about the most difficult question most parents get asked, but I wonder how many of us can really answer that question properly, whether as an individual or a business.

It is important to take time to take stock of what we are really trying to do and why. The way we express our goals and dreams not only defines them but also restricts & limits them. Did you want to be a doctor, or just help people feel better? Did you want to be the boss or just in charge? To be in charge or just have no one telling you what to do?

Each change in how we express what we want opens and closes mental doors. It is important and valuable to have someone challenge what we really mean and really want.

We only have a limited amount of time, energy and resources. We all know that but how often do we take the time to make sure we are investing them wisely. Investing them in a way that gives us most of what we want, and least of what we don’t want?

Too often we live our lives, and run our businesses as if they we on a set of tramlines, and having embarked, we relinquish any options of changing directions. There are always many ways of getting to where we want to be; many routes, and many modes of transport, we just have to choose.

We tend to envy people with options, but we all have them, we just have to take the time to consider. Consider:-

• Consequences
• Alternatives
• Costs & benefits
• Other people’s needs & preferences
• Values

I remember interviewing a successful team of business professionals, many of whom talked to me about work-life balance and its importance but very few had it. It tends to be spoken of as something of an impossible dream, but we all have a balance point; it’s just often in the wrong place!

Here is a simple exercise you can do. Review your life, and in each important area (and the following are just some suggestions):-

• Work / career
• Home
• Family & Relationships
• Recreation / play
• Health
• Money
• Personal growth & spirit

Mark your satisfaction in each area on a score of 1-10 (where 1 is low). Review it and see if you are satisfied with the balance. Obviously not everything has to be a 10, some areas are more important than others (and the relative importance changes over time).

One can do a similar analysis for a business. It is important to focus on improving the things that will make a difference, not only to you, but to your staff and your clients.

Focus is everything. If you aren’t paying attention to what is really important, chances are no one is and then it is a matter of blind luck whether you get it or not.

Time for a change…?

“If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.” Mitsugi Saotome.

Charles Darwin is famous for saying that animals had to ‘Adapt or Die’. What happens when the environment changes? Some animals adapt to the new circumstance and carve out a niche… others fail to adapt and we all know what their fate was don’t we?

So what happens when the business environment changes? This can be caused by any number of factors, such as:-

• Regulatory change (for example., businesses with a turnover of less than £5.6million no longer require a statutory audit)
• New technology (such as e-mail)
• New fashions (DVDs rather than video)

Of course there are many other external causes, but let us remember that some companies internally generate these pressures. Sony is a good example of a design lead corporation that constantly innovates. They invented the market for portable cassette players and then set about eroding it with the introduction of their diskman (which plays cd’s)

So the big question is “What do you do when these changes happen?”

Most people will start by hoping that the problem either goes away or is smaller than they fear. The key is what do you do next? If you see the situation as a threat, then you are likely to fight it and feel negatively about it. Every change is an opportunity for someone, it might as well be you.

The thing to do is to ‘reframe’ the problem; in other words look at it from a different perspective. What do your customers really need now? How can you use your skills, experience and resources to meet these needs? Honda used to just make cheap little motorbikes, now they build Formula 1 engines as well.

How can you re-engineer your offering to better meet your customer needs? What is it that they wish they could have and can’t get? What should they be asking you for? Think what you are really selling. Black & Decker famously realised that their customers wanted holes rather than drills. In other words, what are they using your product to produce?

Another example is Kodak, who were always in the film business. They were forced to lay off 20% of their staff as demand for their traditional products dried up. Now they realise they are in the picture business, and are marketing booths & on-line services for printing digital photos.

If you look at the FT 250, or the Fortune 500 of say 10 years ago you will see that many of the big names are no longer with us. I’m afraid that the law of the jungle applies in the City too. Adapt or die; only the fittest can survive.

So what can you do about it?

• You can encourage Change in your business. So that it isn’t quite as scary.
• You can reward different ideas, and listen to the little guy who always has something different to say
• Talk to your customers, and those of your rivals
• Ask “How can I make this work better?”
• Retain a focus on the ‘the big picture’. How does your company fit into the larger system? What is going on in the world that could affect you and your customers?
• Root out waste, both in your system, and that caused by your products / services
• Don’t allow people to say “We’ve always done it that way”
• Drive Change, rather than waiting for someone else to

Remember, evolution is Nature’s way of weeding out those who shouldn’t breed. An example of this might be the true (but sad) story of Sylvester Briddell, Jr, who was killed in February in Selbyville, Delaware, when he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.

Good luck

For those of you who are interested, the image on the right was a contemporary cartoon mocking Darwin and his silly ideas!

or why you only get to choose the flavour of Change you want…

Whether you realise it or not, managing Change is the key to every business. You almost certainly do not have a Change Director. You perhaps spend little time directly discussing it. However, every executive is looking at his (or her) business and making a binary decision:-

• What works well and needs maintaining?
• What doesn’t work well enough, and needs changing?

Both will require the investment of time and resources.

Figure 1: The Change continuum

However, Change doesn’t just take money and time, it needs emotion. If someone doesn’t feel passionately about something, you can bet it won’t happen! That is why each change needs a champion. Someone who can get going, when the going gets tough.. and it will.

I was talking to a local business leader today about his change program and he said to me “ Change isn’t about the big things, but about a series of little things”, and he is absolutely right! If someone tries to sell you a fix-all solution that will make everything better; don’t buy it!

Change is about creating a patchwork quilt of little things which come together to make each aspect of your business just a bit better.

Certainly there are times for big investments, such as new systems, showrooms or products, but each of these headline changes must be supported by hundreds of small initiatives to make them work.

Remember that businesses don’t change, people do. You have to win over each of your people and show them how, and why, you want them to change. You will almost certainly have to tell them, and show them more than once. Each person must arrive at their own understanding before they will move forward. Change is definitely a people business.

Once you have begun to build a culture that supports Change, nurture it and build on it. This is the heart of Continuous Improvement, getting all your people constantly reviewing what they are doing and seeing how they can add more value and reduce waste.

If you hear people saying “We have always done it that way”, or worse still find yourself saying it, then it is time to ask why you haven’t found a better way.

As Machiavelli once said (and he should know!) “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order to things.” Unless it is NOT doing so!

Time is a concept that most of us take for granted, but Einstein showed us that it is rather more complex than we think. Many of us have an idea of something which is called a ‘Time Line’, where we place the past at one end of a linear scale and the future at the other.

The other day I heard a slightly corny little verse which got me thinking about all of this.

“The Past’s history,
The Future’s a mystery,
But today is a gift,
That’s why we call it the Present”

I found myself wondering, “When does Change happen?” I’d like you to pause for a second and answer that for yourself….

I put this question to a group I was working with. About half of them answered “In the future”, because they felt they had to think about things, make plans, and then the action happened tomorrow. Others said “Today”.

I would like to suggest that the only possible time that Change can happen is today, and more specifically ..NOW.

As individuals, this is a challenge and an opportunity. If we want to lose weight, then we need to say “No” to that drink or cream cake that is on the bar or table in front of us; if we want to get fit, we need to walk up the stairs now, rather than join a gym tomorrow.

For a company, this is crucial. So many companies begin their Change programmes with consultants, then create some complex plan, whilst, today, it is business as usual… and that is where (and when) the Change program fails, because it is always ‘Business as Usual’ today. Most of us have some experience of the ‘new plan’ being set aside for some crisis, and then never being fully revived.

If you want to make something different happen, you need to do something different.

• Talk to someone you don’t usually speak to
• Listen to someone who you usually talk to
• Go a different route to work, to the photocopier, etc
• Have lunch with someone new
• Take time to say “Thank you”
• (Sincerely) Praise someone for doing a good job

“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that’s worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.” Henry Ford

“This guy pushed his motorcycle from the patio into his living room, where he began to clean the engine with some rags and a bowl of gasoline, all in the comfort of his own home. When he finished, he sat on the motorcycle and decided to give his bike a quick start and make sure everything was still OK. Unfortunately, the bike started in gear, and crashed through the glass patio door with him still clinging to the handlebars.

His wife had been working in the kitchen. She came running at the fearful sound, and found him crumpled on the patio, badly cut from the shards of broken glass. She called 911, and the paramedics carried the unfortunate man to the Emergency Room.

Later that afternoon, after many stitches had pulled her husband back together, the wife brought him home and put him to bed. She cleaned up the mess in the living room, and dumped the bowl of gasoline in the toilet.

Shortly thereafter, her husband woke up, lit a cigarette, and went into the bathroom for a much-needed relief break. He sat down and tossed the cigarette into the toilet, which promptly exploded because the wife had not flushed the gasoline away. The explosion blew the man through the bathroom door.

The wife heard a loud explosion and the terrible sound of her husband’s screams. She ran into the hall and found her husband lying on the floor with his trousers blown away and burns on his buttocks.

The wife again ran to the phone and called for an ambulance.

The same two paramedics were dispatched to the scene. They loaded the husband on the stretcher and began carrying him to the street. One of them asked the wife how the injury had occurred. When she told them, they began laughing so hard that they dropped the stretcher, and broke the guy’s collarbone.”

The Darwin Awards 1998

This apocryphal tale may provoke a smile or even cause the odd chortle. No one believes such foolishness or such a chain of events could ever happen and yet I would ask you to pause and consider some Change initiatives that you have encountered. Have they not sometimes been flawed with some of this kind of stupidity? Let’s see if we can’t learn a lesson or two from this poor unfortunate’s pain.

“Bad planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part” Proverb

What did they do wrong ? (Though perhaps you might feel asking what they did right might be a quicker question!)

There was:-

• No planning at any stage of this activity, by any of the parties
• No resources appropriate for the tasks
• No communication until the ambulance men arrived and then it had unfortunate consequences
• No stage of the task was properly completed
• No stakeholder engagement

We can also see the cost of taking your eye off the ball. The Law of Unforeseen consequences has full rain.

I think you may agree this now looks a little more like some situations that you have observed.

So Ladies & Gentlemen, as you sip your early morning coffee and contemplate the week ahead, please don’t repeat any of these unfortunate errors and your teams will thank you for your attention, care and planning!

“Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.” AA Milne

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now” Alan Lakein

Who is at the top of any organisation? Assuming that you have moved beyond the one-man-band or founder-run organisation, then the answer is the people who have proved themselves most successful in the past. The historical paradigm is that you join a company, build a track record and move on up. The thing is this tends to assume that what has gone before is the best, and possibly only, indication of what is to come.

Let me illustrate, think back to the first World War, the men in charge of the conflict in 1914, such as General Haig, were born in the Victorian age, round 1860, they were weaned on tales of glory and cavalry charges, such as the charge of the Light Brigade in 1854. As boys these were the games they would have played. They had no conception that war could be so radically changed by things like the airplane, gas and the machine gun. They were referred to afterwards as donkeys leading lions.

“Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind” Douglas MacArthur

I would suggest this is a far easier trap to fall into than you might think. Last month I was writing an article quoting from David Maister, here is the quote again “As evolutionary biologists have taught us, the more adapted (ie. Comfortable) you are in your current environment, the less likely it is that you’ll be adaptive to environmental changes.” In other words, it is yesterdays winners who control the rules by which we will play tomorrow’s game. If you consider the global scale of the present economic challenges, such as:-

• The Credit crunch and banking crisis
• The emergence of China & India as global economic powers
• The oil price
• The Middle East situation

Do we really feel that tomorrow’s game will be the same as yesterdays or has someone just invented the next ‘machine gun’?

“Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.” Douglas Bader

You need people in your organisation, or if not within it, then working with you, who can challenge your thinking and ask those dumb questions. Can you honestly think that any normal person would think it was ok to give mortgages of 120% and 5 times salary? Where might Lehman Bros, Halifax or Northern Rock be today if someone had just spoken up and said “That seems like a daft idea to me!”

You need to ask questions like “What is the best way to do it?” rather than “How can we do it?” Perhaps rather than asking how to win this game, you should be considering how to change the game so that you can win it….