Consulting

What’s the Point? Getting Strategy Right

Alistair Russell · April 19, 2023 · Leave a Comment

Prompted by reading and reflecting on a recent article “Getting strategy wrong and how to do it right instead” published in McKinsey Quarterly, we concluded that the best place to start is with the “what’s the point” question.

Real, open, informed discussions amongst senior leaders are essential if you are going to get strategy right. In all our experience, the fundamental, “do not pass go” questions flow from this perspective including:

how will the strategy be used?
what will people do differently as a result of the strategy?
what effect will that different behaviour have?
what benefits should flow from the use of this strategy
who will recognise those benefits?
what differences in what things will key stakeholders notice?
how will those effects be measured?

We find these “what’s the point” questions useful at all levels of our strategic work. Both in defining what we do with, or on behalf of, our clients, what is produced and how it is produced all provide the foundation for getting strategy right.

Whether it’s working across the organisational leadership team interrogating organisational strategy and what it might mean for digital systems, data and technology. Testing for coherence and relative priority of strategic goals and objectives. Or working to review an application portfolio to inform strategic decisions to say invest, migrate or retire key systems. Or developing the set of enterprise architectural principles that technology and organisational leaders will use to test prospective solutions for both business and technical “fit”. All of these strategic activities depend for their success on a clear articulation of what they are for – their point.

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.

Client First and Clear: Thoughts on being a coach and a consultant

Alistair Russell · March 9, 2022 · Leave a Comment

So, what did you do at work today, dad? Whilst its getting on for 30 years since our son first asked me that question, it remains a powerful and useful question for us all at Laing Russell. What did you do? What difference did it make? What did you learn? What will you do next? The team at Laing Russell have for many years worked along the full spectrum of consulting approaches. Delivering team and individual development as “pure play” process consultants and coaches. Working collaboratively with clients to deliver critical capabilities and products. Through to responding directly with our advice and guidance based on the evidence – termed “doctor-patient” in Ed Schein’s seminal work “Process Consultation: Its role in Organisation Development.”

Laing Russell has always recognised there are many approaches to delivering value to our clients. And to that end we offer coaching, mentoring and consulting services. Recently, another member of our team has taken time to accredit and develop their capability as a coach. This has prompted us to reflect on what we do and how we do it – what are we going to do at work, today?

Our key conclusions are to affirm our client first focus and to be clear. The beginning and the end of how we deliver value is what our client wants and needs. What our clients want and need in terms of outcomes and deliverables and what they want and need in terms of the most effective way for us to work together. Working as coach, as mentor or as executive consultant across the full range of consulting styles. Client first.

An insight from the coaching development programme is the importance of being explicitly clear and indeed keeping under active review the contract with the client. Here we mean contract in its widest sense. Contract in the classical, commercial sense with proposals etc. and perhaps more importantly contract in the sense of how we work collaboratively as organisations, as teams and as individuals.

A strong idea from one of the coaching models, Co-active Coaching, is the concept of coaching being a “designed alliance” that is in service of the client’s needs. Our insight is that this idea of a purposeful, designed alliance focused on delivering for the client should be applied to all our consulting work. Taking time to pay attention to the contract at start, throughout and on conclusion of an engagement. Making sure that the client is getting what they want, as work progress making sure that agreed outputs deliver the anticipated value and that we are working together in the right way. Flexing our approach as required, as we progress through an engagement whether as coach, mentor or consultant.

We are re-doubling our efforts to be clear and client first in our practice. To deliver on a “designed alliance” in all our work with clients. We are finding that clear contracting on the way we work either as coach, mentor or consultant is helping us build more positive, more productive partnerships.

References:

Process Consultation: Its Role in Organizational Development (1988); Schein, E, Prentice Hall

Co-active Coaching (2018); Kimsey-House, H; Kimsey-House, K; Sandahl, P and Whitworth, L; Nicholas Brierley

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.