Untypical Thoughts: Recent Episodes
Untypical - Geelong, Australia
Untypical by name. Untypical by nature.
Join our Managing Director, Neil Butler, as he presents short and sharp episodes about business. Every episode takes less time to listen to than your barista takes to make your morning brew.
If your barista can make coffee quicker ... change your coffee shop. They're not taking enough time with your order.
Series 1: General thoughts plus Transformagination
Series 2: The Untypical Alphabet
Don't forget that you can subscribe to Untypical Thoughts in your favourite podcast store by clicking on Subscribe above.
During the past three decades, we have seen significant progress in diversity and inclusion within corporate organisations. While there is still a long way to go, most have embraced diversity and inclusion, albeit to varying degrees.
But how about diversity of thinking?
Have you stopped and considered your communications approach or have you just gone back to what may or may not have worked before COVID-19 hit?
As you may know, one of my great passions is presenting a retro music program on community radio here in Geelong. It seems like a good time to bring together that passion for great music and untypical thinking in this Untypical Thought.
Going through some photos yesterday, I found one that I took earlier this year in my home town, Geelong. It shows the sun rising over our waterfront, with the Geelong to Melbourne ferry in the left foreground and the silhouette of the waterfront Carousel building on the right. I don’t take many photos and so I was pretty pleased to create one this good!
It got me thinking though … for many businesses, a new dawn is approaching. The start of a new post-COVID-19 era. The opportunity to completely transform how they operate. The once-in-a-lifetime chance to re-establish their business with an innovative approach that is based on a “what if we started again” mindset. The opportunity to create an organisation that really meets the changed needs and expectations of their customers, employees and shareholders.
For several episodes now, I have been presenting Untypical Thoughts about what I think the business world will look like in the second half of the 2020 calendar year and beyond. One thing we can be certain of is that we can never go back to the way things worked before the unavoidable disruption of the global pandemic. If you haven’t already done so, I’d encourage you to listen to some of the previous episodes – they set a context for what I am about to say here.
I have spoken to a number of businesses who are placing an emphasis on the word SHOULD. When this is over, we SHOULD change our processes, we SHOULD let our staff work from home when they can, we SHOULD review the way we operate, etc, etc.
Well, maybe not as SIMPLE as A,B,C and D but I am certain that these letters stand for four key skills and attributes in the reset, re-establish and re-generation activities we spoke of a few episodes ago.
Let’s step through them one at a time …
In the last episode, we introduced the concept of Transformagination and I am glad to say that we have had a number of inquiries about how businesses can work with us to transformaginate their world.
The first step is accept the fact that there is a new normal. We don’t know what that looks like for your business specifically but we do know that the old normal is not where you want to focusing your attention. Things have changed and will continue to change dramatically as the post-COVID-19 world starts to emerge.
If you are a regular Untypical Thoughts reader (or podcast listener), you will have discovered that one of my all-time heroes is Albert Einstein. For many, he was seen as being the ultimate 20th Century physicist with his famous equation E = mc2. For others, he was a philosopher like no other. For me, having been fortunate enough to have studied Physics at university, he lands somewhere in between.
Last time, I provided my thoughts on the reset / re-establish / regeneration activities that businesses will need to go through to prepare themselves for life after the COVID-19 crisis passes.
I also suggested that there is a massive opportunity to reshape the future for your organisation. You might have noticed that there has been a bit of a theme throughout the past few Untypical Thoughts – that is, that you cannot afford to be constrained in your thinking by the way things used to be done within your organisation.
Last time, we talked about how there can be no turning back. So, given that we are where we are, we should consider the options for going forward.
One option is to keep going as your business currently operates – the meticulously planned or cobbled together business continuity model that has been employed for the past month or two. Having said that it is, I don’t think that it really is an option.
As I record this episode in April 2020, the world is in the middle of the most significant global health event that any of us can remember. Apart from the obvious impact on individual people and their families, COVID-19 has created a major crisis in businesses of all shapes and sizes.
Literally, no business is exempt or unaffected.
Even those that have become busier due to the goods and services they provide have had to have a serious re-think about how they operate.
… by clinging to the side of the pool.
At some point, if you want to learn to swim, you are going to have to leave the side of the pool and remove the safety net of being able to reach out and grab the ladder. Sure, there are steps you need to take and knowledge you need to learn before letting go but if you are ever going to learn to swim, you’ll need to just let go and give it a crack.
The other day, I bought a new football supporter’s scarf which had the following written on the label – one size fits most. It is certainly the first time I have seen that used on a garment but sadly, one size fits most – or worse, one size fits all – seems to be an over-used philosophy in many organisations and on many projects.
One thing I have learned during my years of managing change and, more recently, transformation projects is that the only thing we can be certain of is that one size fits one.
There is an old saying opportunity knocks but once – but does it even knock once?
I go back to a time in the late 1980s when I had decided to leave teaching to try something different. I had done all of the “normal things” to find something – responded to job ads, spoken to members of my network, etc but, try as I might, I simply couldn’t find a new opportunity anywhere.
I recently read about someone who had just completed 50 years of service for their company. 50 years! Wow! Well done, her.
But, upon reflection, I wondered whether I should be impressed or concerned for her and the company she works for.
Many people use the words “change” and “transformation” interchangeably – as though they mean exactly the same thing. But they don’t mean the same thing … whilst certainly related, there is so much more to transformation than there is to change, even big change.
Pet hate, right there.
One of the great statements of change resistance is “yes, but the problem is…”. Every time someone puts up an idea for change, out come the hurdles, typically led by one of two phrases – either “yes, but the problem is …” or the other old chestnut “but that’s not the way we do things around here”.
I am all for people challenging new ideas and proposals for change but there is a difference between challenging and building roadblocks.
What proportion of your working week is consumed by creating reports, updates, responses to KPIs and other tasks of that kind? More importantly, what proportion of your working week is spent creating reports, updates and responses to KPIs that actually add value?
Yes, we need to keep track of progress – but seriously, how many weekly, fortnightly and monthly reports is too many? And, given the structure of many organisations, once these reports are consolidated and sanitised for senior consumption, how accurate are they anyway – are they presenting the true state of play or presenting an upward impression that might be less than 100% accurate?
Most large corporate organisations have a Chief Risk Officer (CRO) – either someone with that title or someone who takes on responsibility for risk across the business. But I have a theory that we should rename them the Chief “No-Risk” Officer …
Closely related to the previous “really busy”, is the “tell me about it” movement.
Colleague: How are you?
You: Really busy
Colleague: Tell me about it
So, two things fall out of this.
In the last episode, I called out what I think is a growing trend of people being asked / expected / pressured into working on their weekends and after hours. Whilst it may not be necessarily written into their job descriptions, it seems that many, many people are heading home after a day’s work and getting their laptop out. Others are firing up their email on Sunday to get a head start for the week.
It was Loverboy who, in 1982, had a hit with the song “Working For The Weekend” but, 38 years later, it seems that their sentiment has been replaced for many people. It seems that for many, there is an expectation that “everybody’s working ON the weekend” … and in many cases, after hours during the week as well.
A long time ago, I trained as a Physics teacher and, in doing so, came to appreciate that, to be a good physicist, I believe you must also be a good philosopher. In fact, much of what used to be called natural philosophy is now regarded as physics.
One physicist who is regularly quoted as a philosopher is Albert Einstein – if you don’t believe me, enter “Albert Einstein quotations” into your favourite search engine. One of his most quoted (and, often, misquoted) statements relates to his definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But I prefer to use a variation on the same theme, that is – if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. In other words, unless you do something different today, tomorrow will be exactly the same.
Consider a log cabin with three solid walls and a fourth wall with a single window. That window is perfectly square – from top to bottom, the window measures exactly 1 metre. From left to right, the window measures exactly 1 metre.
Can you picture it?
One the great catchphrases of the management consulting movement of the 80’s and 90’s was “think outside of the box”. Most agree that this slogan had its genesis in the “nine dots puzzle” where you are asked to connect nine dots, arranged in a 3 x 3 configuration, with four straight lines … but without lifting the pencil off the paper.
How many emails do you get each day? For most people, the answer is “too many”. And, of the emails you get, what proportion are written in black 11pt Calibri font? 80%? 90%?
Of the emails that you receive, what proportion of them do you read, digest and act upon? 10%? 20%?
It seems to me that email is becoming (has become?) another form of “white noise”. Sure, every now and again, you’ll see an email from your boss or an important client which will grab your attention – you might even have a rule set up within your email program to highlight those ones. But how much critical information is just getting lost in the flood?
Last week, I spoke about the equality of importance within an organisation or team and I was surprised by the level of feedback I received. It seems that there are many businesses where the implied (if not, stated) importance seems to be directly proportional to how close someone is to the top of a organisational diagram.
Sure, the level of responsibility associated with roles tends to increase the further you travel up that diagram but, typically, so does the remuneration. They sort of balance each other out, don’t they?
Unfortunately, the workplace is often like a human pyramid.
A client was telling me about a conversation he overheard in his workplace the other day which brought back a memory of the first day of my second year of teaching – in February 1985.
Firstly, the recent conversation as told by my client …
“A new employee was being introduced to some of the people she was going to be working with and after providing the name of each person, the introducer told her that they were the senior, the officer and the assistant. Nothing more was said. No mention of what each of these people did. No mention of how the new employee might interact with each person … just a statement of rank and implied importance”.
There’s a phrase that gets me fired up. Closely related to “same s**t, different day” (tidied up for family viewing), no one ever uses either phrase to inspire themselves or anyone around them, do they?
You ask someone how they are and there it is … same old, same old. Ask them how their day is going … same st, different day**.
To me, both phrases translate to much the same thing – a statement of acceptance of mediocre circumstances. It says to me “I am just going through the motions and can’t be bothered doing anything to change it“.
Last week, I spoke about lazy recruiters and given the response I have received, I felt that a follow-up post was warranted.
I have noticed that many organisations have started using an even more automated process for their acceptance of resumes and cover letters using application systems (e.g. Taleo) . Typically, these are used by the big corporates in the market who have seemingly ditched the recruitment companies and started advertising directly through job boards and other networks like LinkedIn.
Here’s something that annoys me and I don’t think it’s just me.
And before I go any further, my apologies to the few recruiters who I think do a great job – you know who you are.
As you would know if you were to visit my LinkedIn profile, I have what could be best described as an eclectic background when it comes to employment history and skill set. I clearly don’t fit the traditional model of accountant, personal assistant, project manager, school teacher (I was once), mechanic, etc, etc.
What a great word – brilliant!
There are two quite distinct meanings (probably more) of the word – one to do with intelligence and ability and the other to do with glittering, sparkling, shining brightly.
I was reading a magazine the other day and stumbled over an article that discussed the proposed “downsizing” of a company. The outcome of this “downsizing” exercise was supposed to be a “20% reduction in our workforce”.
Time to dust off the soapbox and address one of my pet hates …
Why, in business, do we continually use euphemisms for people?
OK, so the word complexification may not appear in your dictionary so let me define it for you:
COMPLEXIFICATION– the often sub-conscious urge to take something that was once simple, re-engineer it and produce a result that is significantly more complex than the original version. It is the direct opposite ofsimplification(the deliberate act of taking something complex and making it simple).