Consulting Practice

Delivering client value through focused, yet carefree talk

Alistair Russell · February 2, 2023 · Leave a Comment

A team conversation this week prompted the reflection that fresh perspectives and new productive actions result through focused, yet carefree talk. Noting carefree might not be quite the right term, it’s certainly not care-less. By focused yet carefree, we mean that uninhibited talk that is based on trust. Talk that is not wedded to any specific decision and is focused on meeting the agreed objectives, delivering agreed outputs and outcomes.

One way to describe how our work as facilitators of strategic decision taking and planning delivers value is through the clarity and commitment we prompt through focusing their “talk”. The new insight for us was that we deliver more value if we facilitate more carefree talk.

In our experience talk with other people is always productive. The requirement to be clearer, more specific and less abstract to communicate effectively one’s thoughts and feelings often produces new perspectives. The questions from others help. The challenge from colleagues, the questions from a supportive and perhaps even an antagonistic perspective do provide breakthroughs, they can illuminate an issue not previously seen, can show potential new paths. Talk helps.

Focused talk adds a further dimension which is about being disciplined in your talk. Often as a facilitator we add value simply by keeping the team focused on the agreed question or issue at hand. Being clear about both what and how we are talking. Focused talk invites all parties to be clear with each other. To contract with each other on purpose, objectives, outputs and outcomes.

The new insight for us was how much being carefree adds. Entering the “talk” free of cares about what the specific decisions and actions of session may be. Starting the workshop or the meeting letting go of any pre-considered analysis and not being wedded to any particular path or solution, yet being focused on the purpose and desired outcome can produce a better outcome. We find that being carefree opens the mind, encourages better listening and can deliver more value. Value through a way ahead that everyone is committed to and more likely to deliver. Value delivery through focused yet carefree talk.

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.

Rip it up and start again?

Alistair Russell · July 15, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Every now and again a song lyric becomes the summary of an idea for me. Over the last couple of weeks a key theme of sessions with clients has been to what extent should their pre-pandemic strategy, approach or play-book be ditched and an entirely new approach be set out. Or, with acknowledgement and respect to the great Edwyn Collins and his erstwhile colleagues in the band Orange Juice, should we “Rip it up and start again?” And in line with our last insight post its proved a useful, powerful question.

The two key foundations for this challenge to us all to “rip it up” are:

the enduring benefit of what we might call “zero-basing”; taking yourself, your team and your organisation back to first principles; re-assessing the needs of your customers, clients and colleagues and making sure you can make the case for what you deliver, how you deliver it etc. as if you were starting from scratch, with no legacy, no technical or organisational debt and then deciding on and committing to the strategy on that basis; not because that was what it was at your last board meeting when it was reviewed.
the importance of ‘managing the show’; a learning point for me in early years working and advising senior executives was that developing the best answer, make the business case for the most logical and rational strategy was never enough; to be successful you have to communicate actively with your stakeholders; you will not be successful without also having the best communication strategy; you have to manage the impression that you have the best strategy and build confidence and trust in your approach.

We need to manage the show and the analysis.

We see it as imperative you consider if the time is right to “rip it up”. To take the opportunity of this changed business and society context to signal to your colleagues and/or customers that the strategy you started the year with is not the one that you will be persisting with. To reinforce the adaptability and agility of your team and your organisation by coming forward at pace with a new strategy. A new strategy that clearly builds on all the fundamentals that you know about how and why your organisation is valuable and incorporates the learning from last three months. A strategy that re-focuses yourself, your team and your organisation forward and is presented as something that is more dynamic than before, and will be under more frequent review.

Drawing on insight from corporate comms colleagues, a few thoughts:

choose to give yourself enough time to do this work, managing the show as well as the analysis takes time, especially when you are looking to get better at it;

get clear on the outcomes, in terms of what you want key stakeholders to think and feel.

work really hard at simplicity, the alignment of audience, message and your method of communication is key.

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.