The Stanton Marris Blog

• Getting to basics on culture change

  If the term ‘culture change’ has you reaching for the metaphorical remote control to change the channel, you may have heard one too many pious exhortation to change the culture.  I’ve heard two apparently contradictory views on culture recently that reminded me of what is at the root of organisational culture.

  John Seddon of Vanguard Consulting can be relied upon for trenchant and provocative views and he recently took the head of HM Customs and Revenue to task for talking about and investing in culture change.  The point he makes is that if you can get the flow and organisation of work right then many of the organisational conditions around the work will take care of themselves.  He reminds us that organisational culture is not an end in itself – it is a property of the organisation that can serve the purpose and work of the organisation for better or worse.  If the work is inefficient, wasteful and chaotic how can the culture be healthy?

  Ed Schein of MIT who is a guru of organisational knowledge if anyone is, held a seminar at the Improvement and Development Agency at the end of last year.  He pointed out that when clients ask him for help on culture change he cannot tell them whether he can help or not as he does not (yet) know what they mean.  His response is to pursue a line of questioning that takes their often vague concept of culture change and narrows it down to a specific shift in behaviours that is required if work is to be done differently.  Culture change that is not specified in this plain language of work related behaviours is a  recipe for wasted effort….continue reading the March Inside Track newsletter

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  Published March 25, 2010
  Written by John Bruce-Jones. This article is filed under: culture change, organisational culture, values
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• The Budget and public spending

  Cuts in the public sector are what everyone has been expecting. How much and how fast is yet to be seen but it is going to be tough. 

   The challenge brings an opportunity because chopping piecemeal here and there won’t deliver the savings; so public service organisations will have to re-think what is delivered, how it is delivered and the system of institutions that do the delivering. 

  It’s time to demolish silos, cross boundaries, get over precious professionalism, ignore the usual excuses and do what is right. 

  Read the Budget at a glance  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8584608.stm

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  Published March 24, 2010
  Written by John Bruce-Jones. This article is filed under: more for less, organisation design
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• Leadership development 1,000 at a time

  The old adage goes: leadership development is a tough, laborious and lengthy process, and usually happens one person at a time. When tackling it, the industry norm is to plump straight for 1:1 coaching or small group leadership courses, which are more often than not costly ventures. But are they really impactful enough, how about challenging the norm and trying something different?

  What do you do if you only have one hour to work with a leadership issue, and an audience of 1,000 people? You book a big theatre in the West End, work with actors to bring the leadership issue to life, and you facilitate a short and crisp session for impact.

  One of our clients did just that, and the topic of the hour was leadership on safety issues, the goal of the session to make them “think again” about their leadership behaviours and the impact it has on their safety culture.

  A critical success factor for a session of this size is to manage the energy in the room. It’s a bit like photography, often you have the opportunity to take several shots of a scene, but when you only have one chance, you have to get it right first time. It’s the same when on stage instructing 1,000 people to discuss their observations in pairs, there is no room for error.  They only have a few minutes and can’t waste precious time on understanding what the task is.

  It’s important to strike a balance between encouraging your audience and increasing their level of discomfort to get your message across – not an easy task with such a large audience. So pick a target of 3-5 audience members and focus on them as your representatives of the wider audience. Don’t be afraid to ask challenging rhetorical questions, backed up with the right tone, pace and body language to drive the message home.

  The success of the event was evidence that you should think again if someone says you can’t run an effective session with 1,000 people. So why not run your next business critical session on the big stage?

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  Published March 12, 2010
  Written by Marcus Druen. This article is filed under: communication, engagement, leadership
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