Organisation Design and Development

Stories as a key tool for change

Alistair Russell · October 21, 2020 · Leave a Comment

We got some valuable advice from a learning and development colleague to just start. Start writing up and sharing our insight, don’t wait until you are clear and definitive on what might be called a content strategy. Bring a more agile, iterative approach to our consultancy by sharing our insight with our client community. Especially, given the most important thing for us is to be the node for insightful dialogue with and amongst current and prospective clients.

In that spirit, the thought we had over the last couple of weeks is to highlight and remind us all how critical it is to set out and promote stories as part of the process of delivering change within organisations. And to pay attention to the way the stories are told. The specific steps that you take to build awareness, understanding and commitment across the organisation that ultimately lead to the changed behaviours that deliver the desired outcome.

So, we know it’s not just about having the right answer, the right thing e.g. the right digital strategy, the right enterprise architecture, the right change portfolio, the right statement of a new customer journey, the right solution design, even. We know it’s also about how you enable that ‘right thing’ to engage with the real world of the organisation and the people in it. We learnt many years ago the importance of stakeholder engagement in delivering change, how important communication is. The thought we are adding here is that it is not just getting the messages right, the words in the communication. It’s also about the way that the words are communicated and about building the messages over time to become coherent stories that will enable change. Preparing for and delivering specific conversations at the right time will ensure the stories have the desired outcome.

A good example was a discussion at a panel focused on DevOps that I chaired with HSBC, BBC and Legal and General a week or so ago. We noted that delivering value from DevOps for your organisation is not just about re-orientating your teams along product or service lines, not just about the tools, it’s not even about the ‘micro-standards’ that we made the case for in an earlier insight piece. DevOps is about shifting the behaviour of the people in your organisations as a whole, and not just those that work in digital technology. And a critical part of the process that delivers that shift in behaviour is the stories that are told about DevOps. Stories help the process get started and build confidence that the approach will work. Stories of success and learnings from failure build commitment and performance and stories sustain everyone when it gets hard.

We encourage you to devote time and resource to take your consideration of stakeholders and communication strategy to the next level of maturity. To adopt an approach which is more akin to campaigning. To consider the stories that you would like to be circulating in the organisation about the right things you are doing. And to take care to think through the steps you will take. The conversations, the messages you will deliver at key stages, the evidence and materials you will need to reinforce the power of the stories.

Stories are a key tool in changing behaviour to deliver change.

So, what’s so special about Connected Coaching?

Alistair Russell · October 8, 2020 · Leave a Comment

As a mechanical engineer who started work in the chemical industry, entered the consulting profession through the project management practice in the late 1980’s, I started with practically zero understanding of coaching as an approach to development. All my experience of leadership development and management training had been through the classic in-company and open programmes. My journey with coaching started as a consultant marvelling at the skills and capabilities of my peers, typically from the HR practice, that worked alongside me on major change programmes. They had a counselling, occupational or organisational psychology or similar professional background and were incredibly able facilitators and coaches.

Working out what coaching meant for me and getting good at it became critical when I recognised the importance of the client’s individual and collective leadership in achieving the sustainable outcomes we were there to deliver. Through PA Consulting Group, leading Executive Education at Durham Business School and developing the advisory business at CIO Connect, I have been on a journey to develop my own skills as a coach and define our value proposition for coaching. Along the way learning that the coaching of others is a great self-development approach, too. Settling on the Laing Russell approach to coaching has been the most recent stage in that journey. We have labelled our approach Connected Coaching.

Connected Coaching embodies all the professionalism that you would expect of a quality coaching service and more. A professionalism driven by a focus on the delivery of value. Professionalism that makes sure we have explicit contracting and makes effective use of supervision. In offering more through Connected Coaching, we look to bring everything that we value in Systemic Coaching approaches. And we bring additional value through our coaches making relevant, new connections into our network.

Systemic Coaching addresses a key challenge that I think the early coaching had in being solely focused on the coachee. We have all found that our coaching is much more effective if we focus on the coachee in their context and work with the coachee on the whole system – their stakeholders. As I read in the recent book on Systemic Coaching by Peter Hawkins and Eve Turner – it’s about bringing the ‘outside-in’ to your coaching. I would add it’s also about bringing the future forward into the coaching, too, working across a productive balance of today, tomorrow and the future.

In bringing our network to bear we are drawing on the power of the practical, real experiences direct from the peer practitioner that is not mediated by our Laing Russell coach and the direct connection means that a new learning dialogue can be established to mutual benefit. So whether it’s a peer, who has directly addressed a similar issue or a new perspective, we are finding that this additional connections adds significant value.

As evidenced by quotes from two coaching clients from this year:

“…Alistair created both space and a framework to explore ideas and ways forward whilst also reaching out to his own networks to enable conversations which tested my own thinking.
“..Alistair enabled me to think through properly about the path I wanted to take over the next 5/10 years which has had a hugely positive impact on both my focus and motivation. Alistair helped me to better understand my own strengths and weaknesses and utilised his vast network of contacts to allow me to interact and learn from others in my field… for anyone looking to enter in to a professional coaching arrangement, I can’t recommend Alistair highly enough!”

Build it and they (probably) won’t come

Alistair Russell · August 28, 2020 · Leave a Comment

With apologies to the scriptwriter of the Field of Dreams. Whilst the film is an enjoyable watch, that well-known quote from the film is just not true. No matter how great ‘it’ is, people will probably not ‘come’. Just because it’s there. Just because you built ‘it’.

Designing and building the best solution is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Designing and building the right things will never be enough. In whatever context, we need to build the right solution and engage with others. We need to market and sell, too.

Working with clients and indeed in getting started with Laing Russell, we’ve been reminded of how important it is to market and sell. How important it is to work with clients to work through the design and development of the right strategy, business case, operating model and structure. enterprise architecture, governance model or implementation plan. And how critical it is to build support to make it happen at the same time.

We notice and have to remind ourselves of the need to invest time and resources in engaging with and communicating with others. Maybe it’s because we tend to have design focused, solution development brains that are motivated by and are arguably skilled at getting to the best answer to a particular set of complicated challenges. Maybe it’s because our preferences are to work things out or make sense of the world. For whatever reason, we know that if we are going to deliver the right outcome we have to sell our great solutions to relevant stakeholders. We have to identify and connect with them. We need build their confidence in our capability to deliver value. Or, in terms we first picked up on service quality study tours to Disney years ago, we have to ‘manage the show’.

In our experience, the first step is to give yourself and your teams the time and the tools to manage the show. Value engagement with stakeholders as highly as getting the right answer. Clearly, provide direction, provide resources, coach and manage in a traditional sense to ensure everyone can deliver. Additionally, we recommend concentrating on three key areas:

get clear on the outcomes, in terms of what you want key stakeholders to think and feel alongside the classic sales analysis ideas of understanding their ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ and their relative significance in delivering the optimum solution for your organisation;
work super hard at simplicity, simplicity of message and method of communication and engagement;
keep learning, reflect on the outcomes from what you and your teams do, ask for the gift of feedback, keep developing your practice, keep testing yourself, keep trying new approaches.

We would value hearing what you have learnt in managing the show. What do you find works well? What tools do you use? How much time is enough?

Comfortable with Uncomfortable Debate

Alistair Russell · August 10, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Whichever label we give it, fundamentally what our clients value from the Laing Russell team is the delivery of beneficial change, done right. Changing digital technology, systems, business process, operating model or structure and changing behaviours to deliver sustained value for organisations. Recent work has reinforced for us that a critical part of doing change right, is being the catalyst for and the guide through uncomfortable debate for clients. Working with you to get more comfortable with uncomfortable debate.

Most of us don’t like conflict and very few of us like open confrontation. Consequently, we develop strategies for avoiding both. We ask for some more data, we close down debate as things get emotionally charged, we take issues ‘off-line’ etc. And yet it is in confronting the world as it is, accepting truths, no matter how uncomfortable, that organisations and leaders can make real progress – can deliver change, right.

Business conversations tend to take place in what Cliff Bowman, Professor at Cranfield School of Management labels the Zone of Comfortable Debate. Typically, when working with our colleagues we operate in that comfort zone of rational, dispassionate debate, using our well-developed technical skills to solve specific problems. But, all too often, there are critical issue that are not discussed – sometimes labelled the ‘elephant in the room. It was Cliff Bowman’s conclusion from his research and our experience that identifying and addressing these critical issues is were good strategy, where both direction and commitment to substantive, beneficial change is made. Bowman called the place where the real issues are confronted and worked through the Zone of Uncomfortable Debate or ZOUD!

And like so many things the ZOUD is not a new idea. We value the combination of the idea of the ZOUD when it is integrated with the inclusion of the shared support and commitment for a goal or objective. The 18^th century Scottish philosopher words – ‘truth springs from argument amongst friends’ sums up a guiding thought for our work with clients. We work with you to identify and focus on the critical issues that will not go away. And we pay attention to developing and building the shared commitment – the ‘friendship in Hume’s words. We will work with you to hold the tension that we all feel as we enter the ZOUD and work through to a strategy and plan that you can commit to and deliver. Sticking with and working through the discomfort that goes with it, can and does achieve great results.

So, next time you are in a strategy workshop, review meeting, 1:1 with one of your team or any situation where you get that nagging feeling that you are skirting around the issue, avoiding uncomfortable debate, ask yourself a couple of questions:

What’s the subject we are avoiding talking about?
What are we pretending not to know?

And do something. Perhaps comment that you get a sense that you might not be talking about the critical issues, maybe invite your colleagues if they share your intuition. Reminding or introducing the idea of the ZOUD could help position the discussion. We will often put a slide with picture of David Hume at the start of a workshop deck to prompt an explicit ‘ways of working’ conversation. The image provides the opportunity to introduce and remind us all of the concept and the value of uncomfortable debate. It also provides a useful reference point to encourage truth telling and productive, perhaps uncomfortable debate.

Powerful Questions

Alistair Russell · June 16, 2020 · Leave a Comment

We spoke with a number of established clients in developing Laing Russell’s positioning, seeking to understand what was the source of our value. A common theme that got us thinking was that whilst knowing stuff is important, clients speak in terms of the value is based on asking really good questions.

Aligned with our encouragement for all of us to engage in reflective practice, we wondered what makes a good question in our context? In the spirit of sharing our insight and encouraging a discussion, some thoughts follow. Let us know what you think.

The key themes from our reflection were that good, powerful and productive questions are:

specific to context, good questions and their impact are socially constructed, they work best when they are relevant, based on human connection, have meaning and are significant. The nature of consulting engagements is that the context is significant, the harder bit is using all one’s skills and experience to build connection and asking questions that are and feel specific, we work hard to avoid generic, consulting playbook questions.
Indicate a direction, one way to think of consulting is as a catalytic process, applying a new force to the complicated set of systems that are an enterprise. Good questions, point in a direction and guide either divergent or convergent thinking for the client.
- divergent questions would be… how might you?….what could you…?
- convergent questions would be…what are the priorities here?…why? which specific issue(s) should you address first?
Balance depth and degree of challenge, deep, existential questions are mostly unproductive. Good questions encourage deeper consideration than a client would do on their own, the client should feel what we call a learning force. A force that builds on the human connection to promote new thinking. Noting we should not push or pull the client in directions that are unhelpful. The qualities of balance are embedded in :
- asking open questions that promote new thinking whilst remaining relevant to the context;
- holding the level of intellect required to engage successfully in any debate to the intellectual common denominator within the client;
- engender excitement through the realisation of possibilities.

In our experience, the foundation is the relationship. Powerful questions that challenge the client fundamentally require that human connection or trusted relationship. This trust is evidenced by client seeing you as integrated, yet distinct, part of their enterprise’s network.

To complete the loop, on reflection, our success in building enduring relationships with clients is dependent on our ability to ask really good questions – it’s certainly part of the secret sauce that we apply. The other part is working with the client to deliver answers, at pace.