Networking: So Obvious?

I always advise people to a refresh their networks. 'Time to get networking' I nod sagely, and everyone agrees.  'Yes you are right I have been neglecting that of late'.  'Must get stuck in'. 'Great advice'. 

I know that it has taken me a while but I started to think about what that statement actually ment, and if I had a clue what networking should be, or whether I was slipping into cliche?

Is networking saying hi to people you have ignored for months?  Or, maybe, working your way through a mountain of business cards in order to select a few to write to people:  'I met you at such and such a conference..'. Or go early to a seminar and mingle.  Is any of that networking? Does it work? What is the point? 

 My ten conclusions:

 1. A network is not a one to one connection.  It is about being part of some kind of group.  It is the power of the collective that makes a difference.

 2. Sometimes announcing I am here, I am full of beans ....is a worthwhile message. You slip into the consciousness of your community.

 3. Joining a group (even an online group such as LinkedIn) is potentially useful. 

 4. If you catch up with a people you have not contacted for a while, then don't start with 'can I pick your brains?' and don't ask for something in the first two minutes. Otherwise this will be your last catch-up.

 5. Read stuff. A great article can work better for you  than 50 spurious emails to people you hardly know.

 6. Comment, have views. Be a player. 

 7. Ask for advice  in the most appropriate places. People like being asked. Usually.

 8. Think about your groups and contacts.  There are more out there than you think.

 9. Be happy and positive.  No one wants a moan who feels sorry for him or herself.

 10. This is not a quick fix for the next few days.  You are starting on a journey.  See it as a one year term investment:  it might go up and down from day to day, but the trend should be up, and you will be in a better place after one year. If you give up after a week you will have expended energy for nil return.

 So networking is important.  But it is worth trying to work out first what that means to you personally and what you want to achieve.

Why so Sentimental?

My gym closed last week. No big deal, it is part of the redevelopment of London Bridge in the light of the arrival of the Shard and the creation of a bogus new quartier 'The London Bridge Quarter'.  The station itself will be transformed in a few years and my gym just got in the way.  So way so sentimental.

Well, it has nothing to do with the bricks and mortar.  The place was never very upmarket and it needed a major refurb. It was the people:  both staff and members. It felt like a small community. Everyone looked after everyone else.  There was a warm atmosphere in the place and it felt a home from home.

True of every place:  we love a job because of the people not the buildings or the business.

Yet we are most careless of those people; particularly the ones who -without being star performers- act as the glue to keep the place together. They are always not taken seriously enough and missed only when they have gone and it is too late to do anything.

Think about your best communities and do something to keep them together.  And all that might be is a thank you.

What’s Innovation got to do with learning?

Paper prepared for the Chatities Conference 15th September 2010

Innovation and creativity are going to be at the heart of many learning and development conversations over the next year.  I can almost guarantee it.  The current financial crisis has prompted organisations in the public, private and non-governmental sectors to be thinking hard about how they can manage their way through crisis, and deal effectively with the, as yet, unknown.  If you want proof, look at the new book by Thomas Freedman: ‘This Used to Be Us’. In it he argues strongly that innovation is the only option if the US is going to flourish again, as most of the innovation is happening elsewhere in the world.

In the charities sector it is no less true.  The current funding malaise will require organisations to think in entirely new ways in order to survive, and those that do will leave those that do not a long way behind.

If you want additional proof, I have been reading a timely book.  Havard Business Press has just published:  Innovation to the Core by Peter Skarzynski and Rowan Gibson.  I think you should read it as well as Friedman’s.

This is a book that gives case study after case study of organisations thriving through better investment in people, and through building an effective environment where ideas flourish and diverse communities feel empowered and motivated.  And the message is really simple:  you can innovate your way out of almost any crisis.  And you can innovate your way to game changing successes.   And the places that innovate, are the organisations of the future, because they can cope with uncertainty, ambiguity and volatility better than the average operator.  And increasingly we live in uncertain times. 

The book takes apart the processes required to embed what it defines as three separate kinds of innovation.  The first allows you to exploit an entirely new opportunity, the second, to revalue the unappreciated, and the third to leverage your strengths. You do this by questioning deeply held dogmas inside your organisation about what drives success, and spotting unnoticed patterns or trends that could point the way to new opportunities.  It means thinking of your organisation as ‘a portfolio of skills and assets’, and if you learn to get inside the mind of those you serve you can articulate unmet and unvoiced need. Skarzinski and Gibson call this: ‘challenging orthodoxies, harnessing discontinuities, leveraging competencies and strategic assets and understanding unarticulated need’.

So what has this got to do with learning?  The answer is everything!  Innovation will not happen because the Chief Executive thinks it is a good idea.

Building innovative organisations requires long-term commitment and long-term investment of effort.  Innovation requires an environment that values ideas, as well as skills, systems and processes to manage and exploit those ideas.  Innovation requires a cadre of experts and implementers from across the whole organisation.  All of this implies a whole swathe of training and development initiatives both to drive cultural change and deeply to embed the requisite skills and attitude.  It simply can’t happen with out the engagement of the learning teams and the driving commitment from the top.

The authors list three pre-conditions for generating these breakthroughs.  The first is space for reflection and experimentation.  The second is building a diverse community to create divergent thinking, and the third: fostering what they call:  ‘connection and conversation’ which is the breeding ground for ideas.

Organisations that innovate ask themselves some pretty fundamental questions on regular basis about whom they serve? What they provide? How they provide it? And how they differentiate their services?  You need to do this in order to question the fundamentals, and gain new insights.  None of that is worth anything, unless action and change occurs.  And this is where you need to build what they call ‘an innovation architecture’ in your organisation. 

To get at the truly great ideas, you need to generate, manage and evaluate lots and lots of ideas that may not go very far, in order to create the few that will endure.

This is all about learning: learning to learn and learning to adapt, in order to cope with the increasing pace of the world outside. This requires skill development, organisational development, a coaching and mentoring culture, reward for ideas; a celebration of team work and boundary spanning as well as clear evaluation of impact and contribution.  If you are supporting learning in your organisation this is not a bad place to start. 

Thoughts on West Ham's Relegation

First published in Training Zone

Any failure is hard to bear but one where the team finished bottom of the table and were the first to be relegated is doubly hard. No glorious fight to the finish or plucky rally but an ignominious downright straight up failure.  No saving graces really and not much to cling onto in terms of "if only this decision... or if only that ball had gone in".  No this was defeat fair and square.

But there are always lessons to be learned.  And lest self-pity overwhelms rational thought (this, after all, is a great club), here are my ten lessons learned for the wider benefit of the community and they are not just about football.  Because if football means anything then it is universal in its impact and application.  So here goes:

1. It is not about individual talent.  This is somewhat of a cliche but it is true nevertheless.  Here was a team laden with international players of high calibre yet they failed to retain their place in the Premiership. They did not look like a coherent team; they did not play like a coherent team; and, if the rumours of training ground discord are to be believed, they did not behave like a coherent team.

2. You have to believe in your team mates and trust them for the overall performance to raise.  Discord and disharmony rush onto the heels of distrust and disrespect.  Without that fundamental mutual accord, a blame culture begins, and then everyone is trying hard not necessarily to do the right thing but to do nothing wrong. Trying hard not to stick your neck out too far lest it get chopped off always ends up with poor team performance. This was a suspicious and distrustful operation and it got worse and worse.

3. Leadership is critical. This, again, may be a cliche, but it is still true at a profound level.  The leadership was lacking and there was no plan or motivation.  Avram Grant proved to be neither a gifted technician nor a powerful motivational leader.  And without strong leadership there is no sense of direction and no commitment to get things right on the part of the players.

4. Don't flog dead horses.  It was clear by January that Grant was hopeless.  Yet the owners persisted with him against all expectations (including Grant's it would seem).  There was only the flimsiest of evidence that Grant could turn round a failing team after not achieving much all the way through the first half of the season.

5. Hope over expectation is not a good philosophy. But we all persist in believing that everything will come right.  Occasionally this is true but mostly the odds are correct.  As the Irish saying goes:  'the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that is the way to bet!' Taking the hard decision early usually pays off in the end.  Would Tottenham have survived in the Premiership with Jol in charge?  Would West Brom have stayed up if they had not appointed Roy Hodgson in January.  Two hard decisions that seem, with the benefit of hindsight, right and sensible.

6. Winning is winning.  Saying that they played well, saying they were unlucky week after week does not make up for the lack of points. After protest upon protest, it appeared as though self-delusion had set in, and a leader who believed his own rhetoric was dangerous and out of control, because he was disconnected with reality.

7. Demotivation is hard to turn round.  It is one of the salient truths that it is faster to slip into demotivation than it is to climb out of it.  And a team with its head down just seems to lose out again and again.  'You make your own luck' seems hauntingly true when you see luck not just running out, but hurtling in the other direction.

8. We build our own luck.  The great teams simply never give up.  They fight for the full 90 minutes and can do spectacular things right up to the end.  They believe in themselves and their own ability, so fighting is obvious and natural. And the opposite is obviously true.

9. This trauma was eminently avoidable.  There was no need for West Ham to be relegated.  They had plenty of really good players and showed form on a few occasions when they discovered a bit of passion and flair. But they could not survive without a change of leader and that decision was never made until it was too late. So blame no one but the people in charge who failed to make a tough decision. As a result, they will have to make a string of tougher decisions over the coming months. Another truth:  avoiding action now often means tougher action later.

10. Doing nothing is often worse than doing something.  Fear stops you making a difficult decision, and the result is paralysis. A 'new beginning' regardless of whether it is new or even a beginning clears the table and prepares those involved to get stuck in, with a different attitude and perspective. The Hawthorn research of the 1930s showed that.  Allowing the status quo to stagnate and then fester, ends up in disaster most times.

So the great insight is that leadership is important and motivation is critical;  (always assuming that your team has exceptional skills). A football team is like any workplace team except that their actions and talent (or lack of it) are visible on the outside.  For all those wringing their hands in despair at their team's performance or leaping at the memory of a great season - look inside the workplace: does it feel like West Ham or does it feel like Man U. And there should only be one possible answer to that question if you are going to hang around!

In Memory of Douglas Adams

Today is the tenth anniversary of his death and this quote from a 1999 article sums up the guy for me:  on the ball, challenging and very funny.

"I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are."

Thanks to Shaun Usher (@LettersOfNote) for the reference.

The article also reminded me of how huffy John Humphreys was about the new fangled internet in 1999 and the appalling way he read out urls to show that he did not really approve!