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            [post_content] => Adrian Funham photo2Previously a lecturer in Psychology at Pembroke College, Oxford, he has been Professor of Psychology at University College London since 1992. He has lectured widely abroad and held scholarships and visiting professorships at, amongst others, the University of New South Wales, the University of the West Indies, the University of Hong Kong and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He has also been a Visiting Professor of Management at Henley Management College. He has recently been made Adjunct Professor of Management at the Norwegian School of Management. Since 2007 he has been nominated by HR magazine as one of the 20 Most Influential People in HR. 

IMI: Based on your current work – if you only had 6 words of advice to give a business – what would they be?

AF: Every Disruption involves threat and opportunity.

IMI: What does that mean? AF: We live in turbulent times: times of both threat and opportunity that really test managers. So what are the fundamental principles of good management to ensure staff are happy, motivated and productive? Can you teach experts to become good people managers and if so, how? What is the role of money in motivation? And how can we engage rather than disenchant our staff? We know from futurologists that the world of work is changing fast, even though many predictions have not come true. But where we work, for whom we work and with whom we work are all in flux. How do you manage the older worker? What are young people really like in the work-place? What is the work-place and organisation of the (near) future going to look like? Finally, I address the (continual) management of change. Which strategies work best and why? No one ever said managing people was easy: but we can learn to do it better and ensure our organisation thrives and survives in an uncertain world. Adrian Furnham is a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference taking place on Thursday 29th  of September. To register please click here.   [post_title] => "Every Disruption involves threat and opportunity" Six Word Wisdom from Adrian Furnham [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => every-disruption-involves-threat-opportunity-six-word-wisdom-adrian-furnham [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-05-11 19:56:20 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-05-11 19:56:20 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.imi.ie/?p=16066 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 11952 [post_author] => 65 [post_date] => 2015-09-25 15:20:30 [post_date_gmt] => 2015-09-25 15:20:30 [post_content] =>
sue cox
Sue Cox is a Learning and Development Consultant and a Tango dancer.  She has worked extensively with the public and not-for-profit sectors as well as the corporate world and has developed and led social inclusion projects across the UK. She is interested in how we develop our own potential and how we connect better with others in order to be more effective in our organisations and relationships. She will be a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference on 8 October 2015 IMI: Based on your current work – if you only had 6 words of advice to give a business - what would they be?

SC: Want better leadership? Develop your followership.

IMI: What does this mean? SC: Many organisations invest heavily in developing and recognising good leadership but give little or no thought to actively cultivating good followership. Leadership is, by definition, a relational process however there is no leadership unless there is a leader/follower dynamic. When we focus only on developing leadership, we give visibility and importance to one aspect only, neglecting the contribution of followership and the untapped potential of the relationship between the two.  How much do we lose by doing so? A powerful illustration of what this looks like in practice can be seen in Argentine Tango. There is a misconception in Tango that the leader is in control and the follower is relatively passive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tango is complex, improvised and co-created in the moment and it depends entirely on the leader/follower dynamic.  Good followership amplifies and strengthens leadership; good leadership maximises the followers’ contribution. The quality of their connection elevates the whole dance to a greater level of performance. Misconceptions about leadership and followership are seen as often in the boardroom as they are in the ballroom. If you want to release potential in your organisation and be resourceful and creative in the way you respond to change and opportunity, the challenge is to develop everybody’s ability as both leader and follower, so that each can play their full part in co-creating the dance. IMI: Where should we look for further information? SC: Visit my website at Ballroom2Boardroom.com 

tango

Sue Cox spoke at the IMI National Management Conference on Thursday 8 October. This event has now reached maximum capacity however if you would like to be added to the waiting list, please email your contact details and company name to conference@imi.ie. [post_title] => "Want better leadership? Develop your followership" Six Word Wisdom from Sue Cox [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => want-better-leadership-develop-followership-six-word-wisdom-sue-cox [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-05-11 20:42:07 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-05-11 20:42:07 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.imi.ie/?p=11952 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 12567 [post_author] => 71 [post_date] => 2015-10-23 10:58:22 [post_date_gmt] => 2015-10-23 10:58:22 [post_content] =>

In my opinion there are three organisation wide people focused initiatives that I have found particularly helpful in creating high performance cultures:

  pedro  blog The result: A workforce with the right capabilities, willing to go the extra mile (engaged) and enabled to perform at their best. An organisation where strategic priorities and culture are aligned and working together to deliver an exceptional customer experience and, in turn, impact / profits and shareholder value.

Building Capabilities:

Capability building is central to organisational performance. There is a need to identify and focus development interventions on those competencies that add the most value to the organisation’s business performance i.e. those that enable the effective execution of the organisation’s strategy. A recent Economist study reported that “61% of respondents acknowledge that their firms often struggle to bridge the gap between strategy formulation and its day-to-day implementation". Moreover, in the last three years an average of just "56% of strategic initiatives has been successful.”1. Companies can improve on this track record by paying far greater attention to the capabilities they need to successfully implement their strategy. C.K. Prahalad and G Hamel, in their HBR article “The Core Competence of the Corporation” argue that “the real sources of advantage are to be found in management’s ability to consolidate corporate-wide technologies and production skills into competencies that empower individual businesses to adapt quickly to changing opportunities”. They go further to state that unlike products, technology and processes which can be easily copied and replicated, core competencies are difficult for competitors to imitate and therefore can become a unique source of long term competitive advantage.

Caution:

A common mistake organisations make is to over-focus on today’s capability needs at the detriment of important longer-term capability needs that might end up not being addressed. This requires organisations to look into the external environment to identify future threats, challenges and opportunities and their impact on the capability requirements of the organisation going forward.

Engagement

There is a growing body of evidence over the past decade that validates (1) that engaged employees outperform their non-engaged co-workers and (2) the quantifiable relationship between levels of organizational engagement and financial performance Engagement is an employee’s willingness to expend discretionary effort / to go the extra mile at work Towers Watson’s Global Workforce Study 2014 found that only 4 in 10 employees are highly engaged; that close to a quarter (24%) are disengaged, and another 36% can be described as either unsupported or detached. A full 60% of employees lack the elements required to be highly engaged. This engagement gap presents a great challenge but also a great opportunity to improve organisational performance Organisations need to make engagement an organisational priority led from the top, assess current employee engagement levels and, develop and implement engagement plans.

Supportive Work Environment

Capability building and staff engagement, however, can take a company only so far. Factors specifically related to the work environment also play a critical role. That is, organisations need to provide employees with the support they need to do their work efficiently and effectively. E.g. providing people with the tools, resources and support to do their job effectively, giving them meaningful work and creating an environment that promotes employees’ physical, social and emotional well-being. In these environments:
  • People are clear on the strategic direction of their organisation and what they are expected to deliver and the way in which to deliver it (Role Clarity)
  • People understand how their job contributes to the success of his/her department and organisation (Task Identity)
  • People understand the positive impact their work has on others within or outside the organization (Task significance)
  • People are trusted, empowered and given the right level of autonomy to perform their role (Autonomy)
  • People are given enough on the job learning and growth opportunities to improve themselves and achieve their potential (Mastery)
  • People receive on-going constructive feedback on performance from customers, colleagues and the manager for development
  While an organisation’s culture can become its main source of long term sustainable competitive advantage, proactively managing, improving or changing is one of the most difficult leadership challenges.

Can your organisation’s leadership opt out?

If so, do they run the risk of their organisation becoming less and less attractive to employees and shareholders? Becoming irrelevant?

What do you think? Would love to hear your views on this blog as well as your thoughts on things / initiatives that can enable the creation of a high performance culture.

  1“Why Good Strategies Fail: Lessons for the C-Suite,” Economist Intelligence Unit, 2013, http://www.pmi.org/~/media/PDF/Publications/WhyGoodStrategiesFail_Report_EIU_PMI.ashx  
Pedro3-SHRM.jpg
Pedro Angulo is the new Programme Director of the IMI Diploma in Strategic HR Management and contributes on the IMI Diploma in Executive Coaching. Pedro is an Organisational Effectiveness Business Partner in AIB and Chairperson of the Irish EMCC (European Mentoring and Coaching Council). He is a motivational speaker and regular presenter at HR, coaching, change and business conferences / events. _____________________________________ [post_title] => And the result: A workforce with the right capabilities & willing to go the extra mile [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => result-workforce-right-capabilities-willing-go-extra-mile [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-05-11 20:33:50 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-05-11 20:33:50 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.imi.ie/?p=12567 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) )
Fabio Grassi

Fabio Grassi

20th Mar 2018

Fabio Grassi is the Programme Director for the IMI Diploma in Executive Coaching.

Related Articles

"Every Disruption involves threat and opportunity" Six Word Wisdom from Adrian Furnham
"Want better leadership? Develop your followership" Six Word Wisdom from Sue Cox
And the result: A workforce with the right capabilities & willing to go the extra mile

Creating Buy-in for Change

A Constant State of Change

We are in a constant state of change. Most of that change is so imperceptible that we don’t even realise it occurs until we look back several years and notice its impact. Sometimes we are faced with the need for drastic transformational change, both personally and professionally. It is this change that often causes a range of mixed reactions – especially when it involves others.

In both cases intentionality plays a critical part in the impact the change has for us individually or collectively. Sometimes we don’t have control over the actual change that is taking place. However, in these times we do have the choice on how to interpret the change and reframe it in a useful way.  For example, we all grow old but choosing our attitude towards this problem can make a significant difference in the way we age.

Change takes a team, and getting everyone on board is vital for success
(Photo source)

Sometimes we do have a degree of control over what we change and how we change. In these times we must ask ourselves the critical question ‘what is the change for?’ Most organisations engage with this type of change on a regular basis and find it challenging to engage their employees in fully committing to the process. Much of the reason for this is that the reason for change is not communicated, but rather the steps that management believe takes to achieve it.

In my experience the success an organisation has in engaging their employees in a change process is directly proportional to the quality of their intentions.

What is the change for?

Answering this question requires the change leaders to understand every stakeholder’s perspectives; for change to be embraced by everyone there must be a valuable outcome for everybody involved.

Typically, private organisations change to generate shareholders benefits and in the process they completely forget to articulate what benefits there might be to other critical stakeholders that will be charged to implement the change.

In the case of public organisations the change should be in the interest of the public, yet it is often decided upon and implemented independently from the public engagement. If we are clear who the change is for, it makes it easier for people to engage with it.

What do we stand to lose?

Social science tells us that we are more motivated by the fear of losing what we already have rather than the possibility of gaining something we don’t have. In change, we often refer to it as “the burning platform”.

Carefully understanding what we do stand to lose if we don’t change can create a strong motivator for change.  It is also important to understand what we stand to lose if we do change. The problem here is to clearly understand the long-term implications of change.

Often our attention focuses on selling the change initiative to stakeholders, enhancing positive outcomes and reducing the impact of negative outcomes. This is a very dangerous approach as it generates a bias on critical cost benefits analysis.

When we engage with change new perspectives emerge that might make the change counter-productive, but we are reluctant to backtrack because the level of commitment and investment to that point is so great we don’t want to lose it.

Where are we heading?

The best way to focus people in engaging with change is to clearly articulate the final destination. This is the essence of successful change as it functions as a beacon. Every time we face a challenge along the change way knowing the details of that destination allows us to make the necessary adjustments.

Even when the change programme start to show signs of potential losses we can stop and reorganise to prevent such losses while focusing on the benefits and keeping our eyes on the ultimate prize.

What’s in the way?

To engage people in the change process we must also become aware of what stops them from moving forward. The core job of leaders in charge of implementing critical change is to clear the path of any obstacles that make it difficult to pursue. Clearing that path is about providing clarity, simplifying processes, mediating conflict, providing necessary resources etc. The easier it is to walk the change path the more likely people are to follow it.

What is everyone’s role?

This is a critical question because ultimately engaging people in change requires them to do something. We have to be clear about what we expect from every individual. They have to be clear about what is expected of them and how they are expected to interact with each other.

Most of us want to control change. The reality is that change is something that emerges, we can choose to adapt to the change as it emerges, and we can shape the way it unfolds, but that requires understanding its purpose, engaging everyone in the effort, and being prepared to let it go.


 

Fabio Grassi is the Programme Director for the IMI Diploma in Executive Coaching. Fabio is a specialist in the development of team performance, collaboration and motivation.