Emma Birchall is Head of Research - Future of Work at the Hot Spots Movement.
Here she has the opportunity to convert leading research into practical insights for clients who are looking to find new ways of using technology to drive human capital performance.
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?
EB: Bring back the trust. They’re human.
IMI: What does this mean?
EB: From collaboration to performance to employee engagement, everything we know about work is changing – but our businesses are seemingly slow to respond. People are more attuned to sharing posts, writing blogs, and providing instant feedback through ‘likes’ and ‘favourites’ than they are to completing surveys, so why does our approach to employee engagement still centre on a set of fixed statements and a rating scale? In their personal lives people collaborate naturally with those around them and have an amazing propensity to share even when there is no immediate benefit to them, hence the success of crowdsourcing sites like Wikipedia. So, why do we spend so much time and energy in organisations on encouraging people to practice these seemingly natural behaviours at work? The challenge for businesses is to disrupt every process and practice in the organisation by asking: Why does it exist? What are we trying to achieve? If we were to start the organisation from scratch, would we choose to create this? And perhaps most tellingly of all, would this practice exist if we trusted our employees?
IMI: Where should we look for further information?
EB: For further information, take a look at the Future of Work website or follow us on Twitter @HspotM: http://www.hotspotsmovement.com/research-institute.html
Source: www.abcgreatpix.com
Emma Birchall is a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference taking place 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.
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Yves Morieux is a Senior Partner and Managing Director at The Boston Consulting Group, a BCG fellow and director of the BCG Institute for Organisation.Yves' Six Simple Rules of Smart Simplicity, has helped CEOs with their most critical challenges, for instance, moving their companies from quasi bankruptcy to industry leadership.He will be a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference on 8 October 2015.
1. What is the chief thing that managers/leaders get wrong about what effective leadership means today, in your experience?
Managers often don't understand what their teams really do. They understand the structures, the processes, the systems. But this is not what people do – it is what people are supposed to do. A company's performance or a department's performance is what it is because people do what they do, because of their actions, decisions and interactions – their "behaviours". Because we don't understand what people do, we create solutions – new structures, processes, systems, scorecards, incentives, training, and communication – that don't address the root causes.
We don't solve the problem, we simply add more internal complicatedness. And the more complicatedness we create, the less we understand what is really happening, the thicker the smoke screen, and then the more rules we add. This is the vicious circle of modern management. This is why the first rule of what I call Smart Simplicity is "understand what people really do at work."
2. Do leadership principles work best when understood as a top-down process, or is this understanding of leadership out of touch with the modern workplace?
From collaboration to performance to employee engagement, everything we know about work is changing – but our businesses are seemingly slow to respond. People are more attuned to sharing posts, writing blogs, and providing instant feedback through ‘likes’ and ‘favourites’ than they are to completing surveys, so why does our approach to employee engagement still centre on a set of fixed statements and a rating scale?
In their personal lives people collaborate naturally with those around them and have an amazing propensity to share even when there is no immediate benefit to them, hence the success of crowdsourcing sites like Wikipedia. So, why do we spend so much time and energy in organisations on encouraging people to practice these seemingly natural behaviours at work?
The challenge for businesses is to disrupt every process and practice in the organisation by asking: Why does it exist? What are we trying to achieve? If we were to start the organisation from scratch, would we choose to create this? And perhaps most tellingly of all, would this practice exist if we trusted our employees?
3. A core feature of your approach to leadership and better workplace productivity is the concept of ‘Smart Simplicity’. How does this play out in a world where the data available to companies now – be it through consumer feedback, predictive modelling, data analytics etc – has surged? Does the effective use of all of this data necessitate more complexity, rather than simplicity?
The environment is more complex – the problems to resolve in order to attract and retain customers, in order to create value and build competitive advantage – are more demanding than in the past. This is a fact of life. Based on our analysis, complexity has been multiplied by 6 over the last 60 years.
The real problem is not business complexity. The real problem is internal complicatedness – the solutions companies typically use to try to respond to this complexity: a proliferation of cumbersome structures, interfaces, coordination bodies and committees, procedures, rules, metrics, key performance indicators and scorecards. Based on our analysis this complicatedness has been multiplied by 35! This complicatedness creates obstacles to productivity and innovation.
People spend their time writing reports, in meetings. There is more and more work on work, and less and less work! A lot of data, a lot of information is always good. The difficulty – and the value-added – is sense-making, to derive meaning and knowledge from the data, so that companies can interpret and act on the data. But complicatedness makes it increasingly difficult for companies to make sense of the data. There is at the same time a data indigestion and a knowledge deprivation.
4. When it comes to Irish businesses, how do their workplace dynamics compare with other countries and what would be your principal advice to them on what to change?
Irish businesses face the same problems as other mature economies. They need to manage the new business complexity without getting complicated. Smart Simplicity is not about becoming simplistic, we cannot ignore the new complexity of business. This is why I refer to "Smart" simplicity. The six rules of Smart Simplicity concern Irish businesses because Irish businesses are also confronted to a greater complexity.
5. Should business leaders focus more on improving employee productivity per se, or should this be balanced with also ensuring that staff are happy at what they do and not afraid to be creative? How does one strike an effective balance?
We must not strike a balance here! We must break the compromise between productivity and happiness or creativity. We must not improve one at the expense of the other. In fact organizational complicatedness hinders productivity while demotivating people and making them suffer at work. They lose direction, purpose and meaning in the labyrinth. They have to work longer and longer, harder and harder, but on less and less value-adding activities.
This is why Smart Simplicity and removing complicatedness simultaneously increases performance and satisfaction at work: because you remove the root-cause common obstacles that hinder both.
6. What do you think are the key organisational challenges that face a country like Ireland over the next few years, for both business managers/leaders and their staff?
Organizations are going through a deep revolution in their ways of working. We are going through a new economic revolution, and every economic revolution entails and organizational revolution. The organizational solutions on which we have built profitable growth over the last 30 years are obsolete. Irish managers and employees will have to invent new ways of working.
Smart Simplicity provides guidelines for this, but what mainly matters is boldness and courage in breaking with conventional wisdom. Irish people are certainly well placed in this respect!
Yves Morieux is a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference taking place on Thursday 8 October. Apologies but this event has now reached maximum capacity.
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William Corless
31st May 2018
William Corless is an IMI associate on the High Impact Leadership Programme.
Related Articles
"Bring back the trust. They’re human" Six Word Wisdom from Emma Birchall
5 Tips for Motivating Employees
Developing Emotional Intelligence with Business Simulations
"Understand what people do at work" Six Word Wisdom from Yves Morieux
In the pursuit of excellence: The truth about receiving feedback
Many managers avoid giving feedback or procrastinate on annual performance reviews due to the fear of the fall-out of the conversation. People often avoid getting feedback out of fear what they may hear. On the other hand, people ask for feedback and are unable to handle it.
Feedback is still one of the major struggles that exist in all organisations. My work on leadership programmes has provided me with some insights on the common challenges in this area and solutions that have been used to meet them.
Many managers avoid giving feedback or procrastinate on annual performance reviews due to the fear of the fall-out of the conversation. People often avoid getting feedback out of fear what they may hear. On the other hand, people ask for feedback and are unable to handle it.
In Ireland, we tend to be mainly indirect when giving feedback and swing to the opposite side of the pendulum to be too direct. So, the challenge is to understand how we overcome these difficulties, especially if we personalise the feedback and it hurts our feelings.
Discover First, Manage Later
Firstly, it is really important to understand the importance of feedback to you. Many people will have blind spots and area’s to develop. The ways to overcome this are through receiving feedback, coaching or shared discovery like group work or using psychometric tools. The higher yourself self-awareness the higher your emotional intelligence will become.
Research shows that 90% of top performers have higher emotional intelligence and are far more likely to be more productive in their roles, have increased career promotions and higher salaries. Indeed, it’s estimated that emotional intelligence is responsible for 58% of your job performance.
The role of emotional intelligence is therefore crucial to your career and receiving feedback is an integral part of the development process.
Managing the Emotions
Many people react in different ways when they receive feedback. Firstly, they may go into defence mode and, under an amygdala hijack, shut down and refute the message be delivered.
Secondly, some people may only listen and acknowledge the nice things, which is the danger of the feedback sandwich, (start nice, deliver tough message and finish with something nice). This of course could be a coping mechanism.
Thirdly, people can personalise the message as it attacks their ego or self-identity. This rocks their confidence.
Listen to Unlock
Being able to listen and unlock the message that is being provided in the feedback conversation is key to high performance. The lessons that I have learned from working with clients in an executive coaching platform or in group facilitation are as follows:
See the feedback conversation as a learning conversation. You are learning about yourself, about others expectations/ preferences, ways to improve your skills and enhance your emotional intelligence.
Recognise that if people are confident to give you feedback that there is a positive intention behind the message. Usually, people want you to fulfil your potential.
Is the feedback true and objective. Seek out people that you trust will be honest with you. Follow the rule of thumb: If the overall majority agree there is something to work on, there must be something in the message for you to work on.
Understand the reasons behind your defensiveness. Understanding triggers and why you may have a strong reaction to the feedback. Working with a coach could help you with this.
Realise, that if you tend to personalise feedback. Take time to process the feedback and wait for the emotions to settle.
If you know you are sensitive to feedback, prepare yourself for this. Stay objective and ask for a follow up meeting so that you can process the information and have a productive conversation.
Seek specific feedback and gain clarity on details and expectations so you can make a development plan.
See your development plan as a challenge. Set goals to achieve this and before you know it you will be in a success spiral towards personal success.
.
Remember, feedback is essential to high performance. If you are in the pursuit of excellence, the only way to learn is through finding ways to improve. Whether you are a pro golfer, an Olympic athlete or a six nations grand slam winner feedback and analysis of your performance is crucial to your personal success.
William Corless is an IMI associate on the High Impact Leadership Programme. William is an executive coach, certified mediator and corporate trainer who works with C-suite leaders across a wide range of industries both nationally and internationally. William has continued his education studying leadership in Harvard, High-performance teams in the University of Chicago, Organisational Behaviour in the London School of Economics, Intercultural Management with Notre Dame and Negotiation in NUI Galway.
Source: www.abcgreatpix.com
Emma Birchall is a keynote speaker at the 
Yves Morieux is a keynote speaker at the 
