By way of a blog, we’d like to introduce to you a new Talik Strategic Partner: Mark Leonard.
Mark’s into bringing together social process, somatic awareness and the cognitive principles of mindfulness meditation to organisational culture. We’re excited to have him on board
Find out more about him and his background here
Check out Mark’s fascinating take on the role mindfulness could play in addressing climate change here:
How is sustainability framed in organisations? How do alternative framings enable or inhibit action on sustainability challenges? It seems the research we carried out five years ago at Ashridge is as relevant, if not more so, today. The questions we pose still fresh. Of the 24 organisations we spoke to, from Unilever and M&S, to Natural England and Sainsbury, the majority are doing more than ever to blaze a trail for sustainable business. Interesting those who appear to have struggled (mentioning no specific names here) seem to have started with more of an ‘avoidance of harm’ framing than an ‘exciting opportunity to innovate’ one, or even a ‘this is just good business’ one. But I don’t want to generalise too much.
What’s most notably changed is that the appreciation of the complexity of sustainability issues – particularly the systemic interdependencies between them – is compelling efforts to collaborate across organisational boundaries as never before. The publication of the SDGs is directing businesses’ attention to their core purpose and encouraging new more socially purposeful business models that address the issues the SDGs highlight – poverty, water and sanitation, energy, oceans, education and so on.
All of which makes the heart of the Talik systems change model – the work of sense-making and reframing – more figural than ever. Because without the fundamental dialogic work of seeking to understand other viewpoints, values and mental models, we cannot hope to find common ground from which to design collective endeavours.
Three quarters of an hour into a coaching session today, my “coachee” – in the midst of some deep, appreciative, soul-searching – suddenly lifted his head and laughed, “I thought this was supposed to be Presentation coaching!”
You’re right. I responded. It is.
I think clients are often surprised at the way I ask them to think, or to question themselves. What does their new hobby or their favourite subject at school have to do with “being a better presenter”?
It’s all related.
Nothing in our lives exists in a vacuum (except perhaps that MASSIVE spider you were too afraid to get with a glass and a postcard!) all the parts of you that go into making up the whole that is you have an impact on the way you think, stand, gesture, speak…
If you don’t believe me, by all means go and look up the Reticulo-spinal Tract. In Medical School they refer to it as “the scientific basis for body-language”. It is constantly relaying information between the postural and emotional areas of the brain. And is the reason you might cross your arms when defending your argument, or point one foot to the door when the conversation becomes tedious.
And voice is no different. Voice is intrinsically linked to our sense of self; to our emotions. Our earliest vocal sounds are the deeply-rooted, guttural cries and squeals of childhood that wordlessly seek to express our hunger, fear, sorrow, anger, joy, love!
With time and interaction, we acquire language the means by which to describe the abstract. Our appetites, our phobias, our melancholy, rage, elation and desires suddenly have newfound release. And with increased experience we layer expectation – personal, interpersonal, social, societal, generational, historical etc. etc. etc. – on top of our external expressions of belief and craft them to be not merely acceptable but celebrated.
All those layers of expectation, all that history – without even touching on self-doubt, censure, parental criticism etc. etc. – are there in you; invisibly documenting your history like the hidden rings of a tree. When we stand up in front of even one other person and seek to tell a story (of whatever kind) all those layers have a profound impact on the sound we make and the impression we give.
A big part of what I do requires looking at those hidden/forgotten influences and exploring with you how they affect your impact. For example… If my client suddenly reveals that, “Actually, d’you know what? Knitting makes me SO relaxed…” well, that is something we can use. I’m not precious about how we find answers. It’s coaching, not problem solving. I give you some exercises, some guidance, we talk, and we find the path that is right for you. If 2minutes of knitting enables you to find centred, deep breathing and a resonant delivery (unlikely, but I’m running with the thread!) then bring your needles! It doesn’t mean I’m going to advocate that you sit in front of the Board knitting a scarf but it’s useful information – for you as much as me!
It’s an holistic approach for sure. But that’s how it really should be done – not just “bolting on” a couple of handy mnemonics. And if you’re the kind of person who shudders at the thought of having to stand up in front of people and present – in whatever capacity – there are very few quick fixes. As the saying goes: You can either do the job quickly or do the job right. So let’s do it right. Start from the ground up and you’ll not only see, but feel, the changes.
It’s remarkable how often you’ll hear people say “We need to communicate better” or “It’s a communication issue” as if saying that alone will fix the multitudinous ills that plague them. Of course it’s a communication issue, the sad truth is, it’s ALWAYS a communication issue. Somehow, somewhere, someone isn’t communicating clearly and the butterfly effect amplifies that tiny wingbeat into the full-scale hurricane descending on some hapless soul elsewhere! Ok, I’m torturing the metaphor, but you get my point.
So, what can we do to communicate better? Well, we all know that delicious cliché, the one about listening to hear, not listening to reply – BUT let’s not let the fact that it’s a cliché rob it of its truth! It is a cliché for a very valid reason. And there’s another great irritant… BUT! That word alone must be the cause for more divorces and relationship breakdowns – of all sorts – than probably any other! The great negator: BUT. “I really don’t want to have to do this BUT…” “I know you’ve worked really hard on this BUT…” “I’d love to give you a raise BUT…” Well, we all know how these play out – and it’s hard not to feel the blood rise as you read them!
In EVERY interaction people are bringing their own agenda to bear, the reasons are legion, it could be a personal preference, a positional responsibility, a fiscal necessity; the prolific “whys” divide and multiply like a virus on a microscope slide. And it’s so hard to hear those reasons and not hear them as excuses. So hard to listen.
In Adaptive Leadership there is a useful, simple tool: Faction Mapping, to try and gain some insight into these difficult exchanges, to try and uncover the various agendas being brought to the table. Adaptive Leadership suggests that these interactions can be viewed from the perspective of participants’ Values, Loyalties and Losses.
Faction Mapping is a very similar tool to the sort of “prep” work I often do as an actor. Just as the playwright crafts a scene and includes the characters pertinent to the action of the play, Faction Mapping asks us to consider which stakeholders are relevant to a particular situation, and to consider: what their Values might be, to whom do they owe Loyalty, and importantly, what do they stand to Lose? When we put ourselves in those people’s shoes, when we attempt to view the situation from their standpoint we’re not simply being empathic for the sake of it, we begin to see how people – who, really, are just like us – are being influenced by their own pressures, being steered by forces, often, beyond their control and to begin to make some sense of their sometimes unfortunate (or downright vicious) decisions. And by recognising those pressures, experiencing their viewpoint, sometimes – while it may not make the taste in our mouth any less bitter – it provides us with an opportunity to see that these people are not monsters; they simply have their own stuff that they’re dealing with too.
And that’s not to take away from the people who ARE monsters! Some people are. There certainly are psychopaths wandering around. BUT (see what I did there?!) they are, thankfully, very few and far between. And part of good communication is (has to be), remaining objective, keeping a level head. It’s easy to let our own agenda colour our interactions – if someone has denied us before we may assume they will again, if someone has been rude we may well hold a grudge, if someone has patronized us its surprising just how effortlessly we can slide into Rebellious Child – however, if we can keep our heads when all others are losing theirs… then we have a chance to make something better. To communicate.
So practice listening to hear. Follow the flow of the conversation, see where it leads. And if – for example – you’re in a meeting and something presents itself that pulls on your mind to veer off… pause, jot it down and come back to it when this particular stream of consciousness has exhausted itself. It’s a respectful and relational way of being.
WEF thinks business is having a ‘morality moment’. They come around every so often, generally triggered by the public pronouncement of some less than savoury action by a multi-national company. The ensuing self-reflection features some hand-wringing, perhaps even the ritualistic loss of a high-profile head, but it’s uncommon for any meaningful soul-searching, let along real systemic change to take place. We shouldn’t be at all surprised. After all, the underlying values and fundamental purpose of the company remain unchallenged.
Privately owned companies, and family businesses in particular, have some advantages over their publicly owned counterparts however when it comes to creating such root and branch transformation. They are better equipped (though for reasons they might not themselves consider beneficial) to deal with questions of ethical business conduct and can take a longer view on what business morality really means. The intergenerational nature of family businesses particularly lends itself to taking a long view, but it’s a little more nuanced than that. Let’s take three reasons that family businesses could be better equipped to engage with moral issues:
Firstly, you tend to care a whole lot more when your name is above the door. We heard last month at Edie’s Sustainability Leaders’ Forum that Michael Dell, eponymous founder, Chairman and CEO of DellEMC, had a Ray Anderson-like personal epiphany whilst walking on an African beach when he saw e-waste amongst the sand-dunes with his own name on it. Now that’s a wake-up call! Since then he’s been spearheading an industry-leading campaign for DellEMC to design “with the whole lifecycle in mind”, to close the loop on material use in their supply chain and use recycled plastics in their products. They reckon this approach is showing a net benefit of a 44% saving on natural capital values compared to using virgin plastics. Arguably of course it’s a whole lot easier to make high-impact strategic decisions like this when you own the company, but Dell still had an extended system of stakeholders who had to be engaged and convinced. What he has provided more widely though, as impassioned advocate as well as business-owner, is a high-profile conduit for channelling a bigger debate on the moral issues of technology – in design, in manufacture, in use and in end-of-life.
Secondly as a family business you likely have an inbuilt interest in real sustainability – the long-term preservation and resilience of your business and the world it inhabits for future generations. If you plan to hand on your business to your children you want to know it is pretty robust and future-proof. In the family businesses I’ve been engaged with Millennials are starting to ask some difficult questions about the companies they’re due to inherit. They’re checking the back teeth of the gift horse and asking whether it’s worth the effort to learn to ride it. Who can blame them? As legislation tightens on issues like bribery and corruption, labour practices, pollution and resource provenance, the likelihood of infringement, purely through a failure to update policy and practice, increases. Particularly in a long-established business that is slow to embrace change. SMEs generally benefit from operating under the public opinion radar, and family businesses even more so. The reporting requirements on them are less stringent than for PLCs and they’re less likely to be challenged by campaign groups. As a result, the current generation of owner-management may see enticing cost-benefits in dragging their heels. The future owners, however, might just refuse to inherit the mess. Most of us would probably agree it’s harder to dupe your own family than strangers; so whilst they may not appreciate it, family businesses have an advantage in having shareholders who can eyeball you over your cornflakes and pin you down on your carbon emissions strategy.
Thirdly, it’s generally much harder to sack family members, especially if they are shareholders too, so you have to find ways to work through differences in values and priorities to reach an outcome acceptable to all. The family commitment to each other means members cannot just walk away or shirk responsibility; they can’t hide behind legalities or articles of association to defend themselves. They have to confront directly the real and potential consequences of their actions. They have to stay present and engaged in true dialogue, acknowledging differences and working through seemingly intractable conflicts. These are valuable skills for addressing moral challenges because beyond compliance with statutory regulation, ethical policy quickly enters a world of subjectivity, cultural norms and lived values, not technical, binary decisions. As such the advice of lawyers and accountants, whilst it absolutely has its place, may be too starkly black and white to resolve tricky moral questions in business. The ability to stick with such subjective discussion, not rush to conclusion or use status and authority to close down debate are critical to hold open the space for questions of morality.
The advantages of being a family business for addressing moral issues are not purely structural; the experience of being part of a family business develops skills that lend themselves to ethical discussion also. Practicing these skills – in the top teams of private, family or public companies – may enable business to engage with moral concerns for more than another fleeting moment.
With the value of Bitcoin riding high (or maybe not by the time you read this) I figure I might ponder upon cryptocurrencies: those digital currencies such as Bitcoin that operate independently of a central bank, putting them beyond restriction and confiscation. Rather than get in to the techie stuff, though, I figure to ponder upon cryptocurrency in a wider context.
Indeed, “pondering in a wider context” is something I spend much of my professional life helping clients do, especially those that engage me to help them with strategy. By default, I tend to encourage them to think about strategy in the context of sustainability, tending as I do to worry mostly about the Planet bit of the triple bottom line of “People, Planet, Profit” not getting the attention it warrants. But, perhaps, the degradation of social systems (the People bit) warrants as much ‘worrying out loud’ as the degradation of ecological systems. If it does, how might we think about it?
In searching for a socially sustainable form of capitalism, it’s tempting to return to the works of Karl Marx. Whilst no-one’s quite managed to make his solutions work as he intended, there’s broad agreement about his assessment of the problem: as capitalism becomes increasingly efficient at sucking value from the bottom of the pyramid to the top there is increasing risk that value generation at the bottom won’t be able to keep up.
And so it came to pass in the Eighties, when the money at the bottom ran out. And so came to pass the advent of credit, such that those at the bottom could spend money they didn’t have. That couldn’t last forever and so didn’t. Sub-prime mortgages were the final straw in the Noughties, especially once lumped together into Collateral Debt Obligations.
So, what now for those at the bottom, with inflation outstripping income growth and with lenders either reluctant or abusive? Perhaps all that’s really left is for those at the bottom is to learn from those at the top and find ways to keep more of the money they earn rather than give it away: tax avoidance. Of course, those at the bottom can’t afford to buy advice like those at the top, but those in the modern, atomised, ‘gig’ economy can take advantage of cryptocurrency as the modern version of cash-in-hand. Those who trade in non-fiat currency can do so invisibly.
If such a trend grows beyond a small sub-set of private sector individuals and SMEs, countries might see austerity like never before. A shift to invisible cryptocurrency transactions that don’t attract taxes could starve governments of the revenue that pays for the infrastructure and services upon which citizens and society depend. Governments have proven themselves incapable of taxing a small number of highly sophisticated multi-national corporations. Post austerity, they might be similarly incapable of taxing a large number of individuals and SMEs dealing in cryptocurrencies. How much less can be spent on education, transport, justice, health and, indeed, the environment before what we used to think of as the First World starts to look and feel more like what we used to think of as the Third World? Should that happen, would it be sustainable or would it deteriorate into a real life Mad Max scenario?
I hope not. Indeed, I hope to be to be wrong about all the above, but figured to ‘worry out loud’ about it, anyway. Let me know what you think. But be on the lookout for an invoice specifying payment in Bitcoin.
Welcome to what we’ve learned to expect to be “the most wonderful time of the year”. From what I can tell from myself, clients, colleagues, family and friends, however, wonderful is more of an aspiration than a reality. The reality is more like a frenzied attempt to ‘get everything done’, much of which involves the acquisition of more ‘stuff’. Surely it could be more wonderful than that….
I’m minded of how one of my coaching clients recently reviewed our work together:
“One of the most important parts of this journey is that I used to think life was all about stuff. Now I think it’s all about feelings.”
I like that. Feelings are the ultimate payoff. Beyond satisfying one’s basic human needs, acquiring, owning and using ‘stuff’ only makes sense if it delivers the feelings we seek. The same goes for giving stuff, which leads to disappointment when those to which we give don’t react in the way that delivers the feelings we seek.
Furthermore, a focus to ‘get everything done’ implies the only reason to do anything is for it to be over. Then we can get on to the next thing such that that’s over, too. Do, then do, then do again and to hell with how any it makes us feel, be it in our professional or our personal lives.
Here’s an idea, and not a very big one. How would it be to do 10% fewer things about 10% less stuff and reinvest that energy to feel 10% better when we do what we do? Take 10% off our ‘to do’ list and create a parallel ‘to be’ list that focuses us on how we would like to be, how we would like to feel, whilst engaging in each of our ‘to dos.’ If we can find the seasonal journey, both professional and personal, a little more fulfilling then we stand to be less invested in the payoff we expect on the big day.
My client’s route to focusing on feelings came about through the mindfulness meditations I recommended, but we might each have our own way to stop and smell the roses. Perhaps it boils down to asking ourselves and others “how are you being?” rather than “how are you doing?”
At this time of the year, as at any time, wonderful is something to be, not something to do.
Last week I was back at the Telegraph Studios for another in an irregular series of interviews for their Business Reporter magazine – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/business-reporter/. Among the topics this time was the release of the IPhone X and the ever-growing scale and problem of e-waste.
As we head towards Black Friday – a frenzy of consumerism appropriated from the US, characterised by flash sales – it’s hard not to feel pretty depressed. It’s a bit early in the season to be suffering from SAD, but at the same time, I’m struggling to share Nicholas Stern’s optimism about renewables and the capacity for technology to address climate change.
To put my uncharacteristic pessimism in context, here are a few of the numbers I gathered for the Telegraph session. Something like 7 billion smartphones have been sold since the release of the IPhone in 2007. Now, ten years later, around 1.5 billion are sold every year and only 16-18% are recycled by a reputable and safe company. From the problem of ‘conflict minerals’ at the front end – the mining of rare metals in countries like DRC that exploit child labour and fund extreme violence – to the return of those metals at end of life to parts of West Africa where stove-top smelting means inhaling dangerous fumes from mercury, cadmium and nickel.
Yes, we urgently need to transition to a circular economy, for electronic devices especially, but we are clearly still far from it and in the meantime the speed with which our tech is replaced continues to rise. For a few more numbers and a little more persuasion to keep the cards in the wallet on Friday, have a look at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/20/electronic-recycling-e-waste-2017-gadgets
And maybe get out and enjoy the beautiful autumn colours instead!
October found me performing a new musical about the life, conviction and death of Dr Alan Turing (code-breaker, defeater of the Enigma machine, castigated homosexual and controversial suicide).
In preparation for my role as Turing’s barrister I undertook (as, indeed, I do with every role) a great deal of extensive research (thank you the internet!) And whilst this was going on, I was also making my steady way (as, indeed I do with every book!) through What Do You Say After You Say Hello by Dr Eric Berne (he of Transactional Analysis).
Now, coincidence or not (Jungians, you decide!), whilst reading Berne’s theory that a great deal can be ascertained from a person’s favourite fairy tale, I found out that Turing had been absolutely obsessed with Snow White… to the degree that his eventual suicide involved him eating a poisoned apple.
In a nutshell, Berne posits that every one of us has determined the shape their life is to follow by around age six. This Script is programmed mostly through parental dictates, the presence or absence of affection/attention and additional cultural/societal input. Transactional Analysis frequently describes how we choose others for our social and interpersonal Games (with a capital ‘G’) due to their suitability and willingness to play. In the case of our scripts we are no different, the games we play all cluster within the wider shape of the script and the players – just like those in a stage-play – dutifully fulfil their allotted roles because we are equally engaged as living elements of their script in return. The fairy tale stands as allegory for events and characters appearing in the life of the child whilst the script is being formulated and so provides the story-arc which the script eventually plays out.
What has been most interesting to me has been applying Berne’s theory to Turing’s life – it’s, naturally, much easier to identify the correlations between the fairy tale and the script in the life of someone who has already played theirs out. Not to mention someone who enacted it SO exactly at the end.
For those unfamiliar with the story of Snow White – or who have forgotten how it goes, Snow White, is born a beautiful princess. Her cruel step-mother, having consulted a magic mirror, finds that as the child grows so does her beauty until the day arrives that Snow White (aged only seven years!) is more beautiful than the prideful queen. Ordering the child’s death, she packs Snow White off with a huntsman to be done away with, but the huntsman pities the poor girl and instead allows her to flee into the forest. In the wild wood, Snow White chances upon a little house belonging to seven dwarfs and, having awed them with her beauty is granted leave to remain living with them – in return for housework and cooking. In due course the wicked queen learns that Snow White is still alive and conspires once more to kill her: first by constriction/suffocation, then a poisoned comb and finally a poisoned apple! Unable to revive her, the dwarfs place the child’s body in a glass casket where she lays for “a long time” until a handsome prince, passing through the forest, falls in love with the sight of Snow White’s still lifelike, preternatural beauty and (either by kissing her lips, or having her coffin carried away – depending on the teller) dislodges the piece of poisoned apple from her throat, returning her to life; whereupon she becomes his bride and lives “happily ever after.” (It’s worth noting, in the original Brothers Grimm tale, the wicked queen receives her comeuppance by being forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she dies! Something Disney decided to omit… I can’t think why!)
Turing was just 4 years old when he was sent from India back to the UK to attend boarding school (cast out by the queen – his mother); where he found himself in a place – quite literally – populated by “little men”.
Like Snow White (the “fairest of them all”), he was possessed of a rare quality, in this case his startling intellect, which, during the Second World War, would see him join the top secret, Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park and play a pivotal role in the cracking of the German Enigma codes and Lorenz cipher – a feat which Churchill himself regarded as having shortened the war by around two years!
After the war, the State itself assumed the mantle of Wicked Queen and fearful of Turing’s vulnerability to blackmail (because of his homosexuality) first “constricted and suffocated” him by refusing him an overseas passport – in so doing cutting off opportunities for employment and personal growth – and then “poisoned” him with chemical castration. His debatable suicide viscerally realised the most memorable element of the Snow White story: the final poisoned apple, laced with cyanide and found half-eaten on his bedside cabinet brought his script to a dramatically literal ending.
So… if, in the story, Snow White wakes up and lives happily ever after… how does that work when Turing himself died in 1954? Well, sadly this is of course where real life departs from fairy tale. There is no fairy-prince, no return from sleep and the script dies with the protagonist. Yet, and one might say I’m stretching here, the mid-1990s saw the declassification of the work done at Bletchley Park and since then, thanks to books, documentaries and films Turing’s fame has grown. The story, one could say mythology, of Turing is reawakened; his script continues. In 2013 he was awarded a posthumous pardon, and his name has also been everlastingly attached to the legal precedent now called Turing’s Law which saw the pardon (in many cases also posthumous) of the many thousands of gay men who were punished for their sexuality by the draconian Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. Turing has finally been recognised for his ground breaking work, he is now acknowledged as the father of modern computing and is considered a hero in the eyes of many… “the fairest of them all.”
Turing’s life fits Berne’s Fairy tale Script theory so neatly it has been a real joy to pick my way through both Berne’s tome and Turing’s history and find where they intersect. And it has left me wondering about my own favourite childhood story and the script I myself am playing out as I move from the ciphers of Bletchley Park to the wilds of the Highlands and Shakespeare’s eponymous anti-hero, Macbeth; from the feted to the fated, from the hero to the villain.
I was working recently at a business school with a group of experienced executive coaches looking at the relational aspects of organizational life. One of the many Chief Execs who attend the programme, asked rather irritably
“How do you justify spending time and resources on this to shareholders?”
It feels to me like trying to convince people that breathing is important to sustain life. How do you imagine things get done in an organization full of people? Do people always simply do what you ask them to? Do they understand and act on every communication? Do all the relationships on the Board seem clear and straightforward all the time?
Businesses are – more than anything else – networks of social interactions, thousands and thousands of them everyday. And thousands and thousands of them have an intent and meaning at the covert psychological level, which is different from the overt social level interaction.
Leaders have to be able to work with this, and I would add that part of the job is communicating the value of this work to shareholders, politicians and other stakeholders.
It made me wonder if there is a chronic negligence amongst senior leaders (or perhaps more amongst shareholders, politicians and trustees – those stakeholders sitting outside the day to day running of the organization and who demand outcomes or performance) regarding their ability to understand and work with with the relational, psychological elements of organization.
To give a simple example:
In Transactional Analysis theory we talk about a “social level interaction” – the overt exchange
Leader “Good morning, George. What time is it?”
George “Nine thirty”
And a “psychological level interaction” – the covert –unconscious exchange
Leader “Hello George, You’re late again”
George “F*** you, I worked until 10pm last night.
Our real, felt response is to the psychological level communication – but what if you are unaware of your psychological intent?
In practice the exchange might go…
Leader: Good morning. What time is it? (Spoken)
George: .You don’t appreciate how hard I work: I’m out of here (Unspoken but acted on)
And the leader is baffled.
The difficult thing is that communication goes through George’s filters and meaning making – his experience, his assumptions his frame of mind – and then together with the leader’s intent – out pops the meaning and out of the organization goes George. As the social theorist George Mead said, “the meaning of the gesture is in the response”
So what to do if you are stuck in a repeating interaction which always ends poorly or confusingly or if you are trying to communicate something and repeatedly being misunderstood
Your weapons are self-awareness and curiosity. Self awareness helps you to understand your own filters and assumptions (What expectations do I have which are hidden? What assumptions am I holding about what is valued here?)
and curiosity replaces ‘what the hell is wrong with George?” with
“I wonder what is happening between me and George, that we have this mismatch in our communication?”
To work with the relational dynamics authentically in your organization takes practice and dedication and most often a trusted thinking partner who can help you challenge your own assumptions. It is likely to pay dividends – perhaps even indirectly the ones that shareholders are concerned with.