So watch this space for our big unveiling in early September, and find out what the new look Stanton Marris is all about.

• If you’re in a meeting and it’s clear that individuals in the room are still fighting other outside battles in their heads, ask them to take five minutes to follow you on an exercise. Ask them to choose a word – any word – that has positive or neutral connotations for them, close their eyes and concentrate on repeating that word until you tell them to open their eyes. If their mind wanders, tell them, it’s ok, and just to note that their mind wandered and bring the mind back to repeating the word. The atmosphere after these five minutes will be dramatically different – much more relaxed, with people focused on the task at hand and each other, their thinking much clearer.
• Or, when you need to switch from one major task to another, use the same exercise on yourself. Successful political and business leaders are masters at doing this without realising it. They can make the switch in seconds rather than minutes. They have to be, as they switch from dealing with terrorist threats to discussing the budget to dealing with the latest political scandal to hit their party.
   
  How strange that such a simple, quick thing as taking the time to refocus can be so key to delivering one’s best performance.

We have worked hard with Lewisham on developing the ‘Lewisham Way’ to help engage their people and promote employee participation and breaking down barriers. So we’re thrilled to see all the hard work recognised by the HR annual awards.

The judges said Lewisham showed “genuine involvement from employees at every level – proper engagement, not just for the sake of it”.

Read more on the Outstanding Employee Engagement Strategy Award

When emotions are involved, too many managers handle the conversation badly, or avoid it altogether.

We use a simple, effective tool for communicating high-concern messages, known as ‘The six Cs’. Of course there’s a skill to how you use them, but if you follow them in order, you can be sure you have at least touched all the bases:

• Care – show empathy with the person/people receiving the message
• Cut to the chase – say in a simple, clear sentence the news you have to communicate
• Criteria – give the three main (evidence-based, not opinions) reasons why the decision has been made, or the criteria used to reach a decision
• Concerns – acknowledge the concerns of the potential human or personal impact of your message
• Confirm – repeat the headline message to re-state the facts, and add any helpful practical details such as next steps
• Commitment – genuine personal commitment to provide support, keep people informed, and an organisational commitment to treat people fairly and well.   

I was asked recently by The Financial Times to comment on the knotty task of delegating efficiently. We discussed the most common problems in delegating, how to overcome a fear of letting go, how to delegate well, what tasks to delegate, and who actually gets the credit when you’ve delegated a task?

I think it’s important to create a sense of ownership and empowerment. The phrase we use at Stanton Marris is ‘freedom within a framework’. But don’t let go fully as that can be very demotivating. Monitor, but don’t meddle; follow up and offer support.

When deciding what to delegate, the question you always need to ask here is: ‘Can this task or decision be done or made by someone below me?’ If they have the knowledge or capability, then do it. Hang on to broad horizon things.

Read the full article The Careerist: Delegating efficiently

And yet, it’s one of those organisational goals that sometimes seems to run counter to human instincts. As we often say, ‘easy to understand – hard to do’. While everyone signs up to collaboration in principle, it’s certainly not easy to achieve in practice. There are always a thousand reasons why it comes more naturally to work with the people in your immediate team than the team on the next floor, or on another site.

At the most basic level, managers are busy, and talking to people who aren’t in your immediate loop takes time. It might achieve more for the success of the business than keeping your head down in the tunnel of yet another task, but it can be hard to keep that wider perspective.

What could this mean for your business? Improve your businesses collaboration efforts by asking these 3 questions:

• Do you all have a shared vision of the strategy? Go round the table and ask people to describe it in their own words. You could be surprised how much the visions differ.
• What is pulling you away from the shared commitment you have all made to the success of the business? An honest answer to this question from each key individual could form the basis of a fundamental re-think about how to re-energise the business and make it work for everyone.
• Has everyone bought into the vision and the strategy? How do you know?  Engaging everyone from the ground up in the development of the way forward is the best way to make sure that, even when times are tough, people retain commitment to the business they have helped to shape.

Advancing your own agenda might win you a few battles. But it won’t win the campaign. And success in today’s economic climate means that focus on the wider campaign, and being willing to let go of any personal priorities that don’t serve the shared goals of the enterprise, could make the critical difference for your business.

Now, I don’t know whether this level of cost cutting is possible – but somehow it has to be because this is just the tip of the iceberg – what I do know is, it is possible to spend less whilst benefitting local places. If all those accountable for public outcomes at a local level could establish the needs of local people, and look at the money that is currently being spent, it is entirely possible for them to organise themselves in such a way as to deliver the best value for money.

So what do you need to make this work?

• Be outcomes driven by looking at local needs and targeting the approach that gives real results
• Empower people at the local level, engage them around issues in their area
• Have a co-ordinated, customer centric approach where all parties involved work together, removing traditionally segmented silo-working
• Ensure excellent communication channels exist between parties at both the local and national level, to remove duplication, for example
• Engage in mature dialogue that enables the identification and discussion about the trade-offs between organisations, to stop doing things and realise benefits across the system.

This is not a quick fix scenario. It will be hard work and the prizes won’t be felt immediately. It will be a challenge getting all parties to work together and, at times, it might be uncomfortable – it will require a level of trust, a clear framework and a commitment to make it work.

But put these measures in place and it is entirely possible to make savings in a way that’s purposeful and meaningful. It not only mitigates a lot of the pain and risk of cost cutting, but it genuinely enhances the outcome, making local places better. Total Place has shown us that it can be done. From our work on Total Place with the London Borough of Lewisham we have seen that the possibilities are considerable and there for the taking.

Let’s just hope that when George Osborne outlines his plans for the cuts next Monday he doesn’t pull the plug on manifesto pledges and bin localism. Getting spending decisions to be taken in the round at a local level looks like one of the best options the Government has, indeed, I’m not really sure they have another viable option.

But need we be so scared?

Look at the corporate world.  It is full of examples of alliances and partnerships.  Few companies exist completely as their own island.  They depend on suppliers, retailers and the myriad of others who make up their value chain.  They may be in consortia, for example in large civil engineering or building projects, or they may be in formal alliances as in the airline industry.  All these arrangements require strong agreement about that the deal is and what the expectations are of different partners.  And they require what we consultants call ‘partnership behaviour’.

Look also at the political world – close to home in Scotland, and further away in New Zealand.  In both countries coalition government has forced clearer agreement about policies and given their parliaments a stronger hand.

Just now our politicians could do worse than a quick refresher read of the Institute for Government/Constitution Unit publication on Making Minority Government Work.   There Professor Robert Hazell and colleagues set out a really clear headed analysis of the difference between coalition government and minority government and a very practical set of steps for all the interested parties (not excluding the monarchy) to play.

On 22 April 2010 the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, operated by BP and owned by US contractor Transocean sank two days after a massive explosion killed 11 workers. Since the explosion, at least 210,000 gallons of crude oil a day have been spewed into the Gulf of Mexico.

In the words of Group Chief Executive Tony Hayward, “We are fully committed to taking all possible steps to contain the spread of the oil spill. We are taking full responsibility for the spill and we will clean it up.”

That’s going to be expensive: BP’s share of the oil clean up costs alone will be £6bn or more according to some commentators. However, that figure does not include the reputational damage that BP is suffering already over the oil spillage, made all the worse by its previous record of problems in the US. In 2005 15 people were killed and 170 injured in an explosion at an oil refinery in Texas City. Some people think the company will have to ditch its brand within a few years.

BP shares have shed around 17 percent since the oil spill crisis began, wiping about £20 billion from the company’s stock market capitalisation.

Mr Hayward also told the BBC “This was not our drilling rig, it was not our equipment, it was not our people, our systems or our processes. This was Transocean’s rig, their systems, their people, their equipment.”

All of this may be true, but as we have seen BP will still pay dearly for this oil spill disaster. In future the industry must find ways of ensuring that all subcontractors and suppliers meet the same high safety standards as the big name companies who hire them.

In response to the issue of religious marriages not being legally recognised, the Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, supported face-to-face meetings to discuss these issues directly with Imams, given their influence in the community and role in officiating over religious marriages.

Having a religious marriage that is not recognised under civil law, often means people can encounter difficulties with division of assets should the marriage break down, and with inheritance and pension issues if a partner dies. It can mean that couples cannot receive married couples’ benefits and can lead to problems when applying for passports or to institutions such as universities. Feedback from Islamic groups was that people wishing to get married would benefit from more mosques being registered as buildings where marriages can take place.

Thirty seven Imams attended the event, including others with influence in the wider community. The discussion was honest and open, with many difficulties aired and ways forward developed. By the end, many Imams present had decided to register as registrars so as to be able to perform civil marriages as well as religious ones.

The seminar was considered by those attending to be a valuable and worthwhile exercise, hopefully the first of many. For me, it was a powerful reminder that nothing succeeds in communication like face-to-face engagement, where you are able to listen to people and respond to them in the moment. In this way, new solutions to what seem like difficult problems can often be found.

I’d also like to pass on the news that the North African food at the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in West London is absolutely delicious – and the chef is available for private parties!