Aug 3, 2011 | Branding, Leadership
Really good brands often display remarkable resilience to the depredations of those who do not understand what makes a great brand, and from time to time, one is resurrected by insight and hard work.
I am not a gardener, but the most appropriate metaphor appears to be a gardening one, someone who “really understands” comes in and heavily prunes the almost dead roses to the exact size and shape necessary for renewal, and come the spring, a newly vigorous plant arrives.
Such a resurrection has been evident in the Starbucks chain of coffee shops. Founder Howard Shultz re-emerged from retirement as CEO after the management that followed him stuffed a great business, did some radical pruning, and Starbucks is now again a great business, whatever you may think about their coffee.
In England a few years ago, there was a Starbucks on every corner in the West end, and the coffee was rubbish, to be avoided, but the near death corporate experience has renewed the chain in the UK, perhaps requiring a revisit next time.
It takes a very strong leader to acknowledge the mistakes of the past that led to the weakening of a brand, and usually there are many mistakes, often small and logical when viewed in isolation, but profound when seen as a whole. This leaked memo from Shultz is such an acknowledgement, and served as the “burning platform” from which the changes to rebuild the Starbucks brand could be launched.
Jul 27, 2011 | Change, Leadership, Management
Large organisations tend to have what is usually called their own “culture” but when you look deeper, there is a more basic form of “sameness” amongst organisations in a field, particularly those in a public field, Government departments, churches, non profits and industry bodies.
I speculate that this is because they are stable, relatively long term entities, often protected from the discipline of the market to some degree, so they tend to select new employees, promote and measure performance against the criteria of those already there. This will tend to perpetuate the DNA of the organisation, and as people leave, they will often find themselves in similar organisations, thus spreading the DNA laterally.
In the Australian Public Service there is a set of guidelines driving the employment, promotion, performance assessment and cross departmental transfer processes, the “Integrated Leadership System“. It is a complex set of procedures designed to ensure even handed and consistent selection decisions, but which must result in the perpetuation of the genetic code of the APS.
This genetic coding is what makes change in large organisations so difficult, it takes a real gutsy, and very rare leader to alter the rules by which he/she rose to the point at which they can change the rules.
Jul 26, 2011 | Leadership, Management, Operations
Completing an AAR, (After Action Review) is now widely practiced, effectively a commercial post mortem after any major commercial activity. Completing an AAR has been standard practice for a long time after a capital expenditure, generally called something else, but it embodies the notion of learning from the mistakes, and successes to build capability the next time.
How much better it would be to conduct a formal pre mortem?
Project yourself into the future, a year, 2 years, whatever is appropriate, and assume the project you are considering has gone pear shaped, then conceive of all the ways in which this may have happened, and what the better option may have been. In other words, conduct a “Pre Mortem”
It seems to me that a rigorous pre mortem may be a pretty useful way of avoiding mistakes in the first place, better than having to learn from them.
Jul 25, 2011 | Communication, Leadership
Rupert Murdoch’s refusal to accept any responsibility for the behavior of his staff in tapping phones to get stories, was grand farce. Did he pay the pie-chucker?
When compared with the actions of the MD of Arnott’s some years ago when there was a poisoning scare and he was televised throwing boxes of biscuits into a dumpster, and Toyota MD Akio Toyoda recently fronting US congressional hearings to accept full responsibility for the recent Toyota quality glitches, and many others, Rupert’s gutless display leads me to a new verb.
To “Rupert”
This describes the situation where the one clearly in charge points at various and varying underlings and says “them, not me”. In all probability, those poor underlings accept the charge, as it appears young “Becky” has, in exchange for either “be quiet” money, or keep “your job” choices.
I think we can have some fun with this.
My local council, Burwood, is currently doing a “Rupert” on the approval in 2002 of a very dodgy DA, and the associated transfer of public land.
There is a bit of “Ruperting” going on in the Liberal party in relation to the support of the Howard Government of an ETS
The airport train yesterday was cancelled without notice, leaving hundreds of very disgruntled train passengers (me included) waiting for almost non existent buses out on Elizabeth Street to take us to the airport. I wonder if the new transport minister will do a “Rupert” today and blame the previous government?
Well, at least I like it!
Jul 21, 2011 | Change, Collaboration, Leadership, Personal Rant
We all understand the “God Complex” the situation where someone proclaims their universal truth about a complex problem. My solution is the right one, no argument!.
Problem is that complex problems are really, well, complex, hard to understand, and there is rarely a single right answer, and even rarer that an individual stumbles across the solution first time, without trying many potential solutions and partial solutions, revising the bits that worked, dismissing those bits that proved to be useless. Sound familiar, its trial and error, continuous improvement, or to the Lean adherents amongst us, PDCA, or the scientific method, perhaps AAR, all variations to a theme about which I have written a bit.
In the case of the carbon tax in Australia, it may be a contributor to a solution to global warming, it may make enough difference to worth the pain, it may not, problem is we will not know until after the data is in, but by then the dice will be rolled, and we cannot unroll it.
Currently we have two political leaders proclaiming the rightness of their solution to a hugely complex problem. Neither knows the answer, that will be the outcome of a hugely complex set of assumptions and outcomes containing multiples of permutations of what may happen depending on decisions and actions over which neither pollie has any control at all.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have both of these silly wallies admit they do not know the right answer, that there certainly is not one “right” answer, but agree that the problem is real, as they have done in a tacit way by each “committing” to the 5% reduction. In a bi partisan manner, map out a program of experimental measures across a range of activities, with a view to refining over time the range of measures to be put in place to reduce our emissions, and encourage the “clean” economy through technology and changed practices. This stuff is important enough to our collective future that it requires genuine wide ranging collaboration to come up with an evolutionary and decade straddling program for there to be any hope of success.
Somebody, please tell me I’m dreamin’.
Jul 19, 2011 | Leadership, Management, Personal Rant
I was struck last month by the blizzard of numbers and alternative views presented as a part of the release of the national accounts.
The economy was down, but the floods in QLD and Vic had largely caused the problem and was it short term only, consumer spending was up, but we are saving more than ever, and so on, and on, and on. However, the overall picture is so rosy that the Reserve Bank appeared likely to put up interest rates again pretty soon.
Little of it struck true at a “gut” level, a two speed economy is probably more like a 6 speed economy, with a couple of gears going backwards, and the picture if you take away mining, just a horrible mess of varying degrees.
Thank heavens over the last fortnight the Westpac chief economist has come out and said that interest rates were in fact too high, and all but the mining industry was struggling. On Monday the Reserve Bank minutes released indicated they were taking note of the problems, and rates were likely to be steady for a while.
In my patch, in and around the food industry, one of the largest drivers in the economy, the landscape is littered with landmines. It has not been worse in my 35 years of engagement. No numbers here, just tacit knowledge based on observation, discussion, and experience, all of which run counter to the heroic stuff mouthed explicitly by the treasurer, most economists, and the shiny pants set in Canberra who just rely on the macro numbers.
