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If you missed it, "Decisive Leadership - Effective Decision Making for Management Accountants" was published in September's edition of CIMA's Financial Management magazine.
This is a step by step action plan for Management Accountants who want to exert a stronger influence on their business in the next 3 months.
Click to read Decisive Leadership for Management Accountants
In 2010 - 11 Mitchell Phoenix have been working closely with Alderley Dubai, running bespoke in-house programs for senior and fast track managers both in the UK and Dubai.
"Alderley has undergone a program of substantial organizational change as part of its growth strategy in an increasingly complex and competitive marketplace. Central to that change is its human resources as Alderley recognizes that the quality and attitude of its people directly impacts on the customer experience and the bottom line. The Mitchell Phoenix Governing Change Program was a key element of our development process that has equipped our management team with new leadership and organizational skills as well as a common operating framework that has made a significant contribution to our success and optimism for the future. Without exception, all participants feel more confident, able and effective as a consequence of the Program."
Nick Hull, Managing Director, Alderley Dubai
“The management team of Alderley Dubai were especially rewarding to work with. Their enthusiasm, diligence and application of ideas created the results that Nick and the senior team envisaged. In addition they made use of all the available strategies in Mitchell Phoenix projects, supporting each other, building team results and spurring each other on to deliver the maximum - a great group of people!”
Kevin Yates, Managing Director, Mitchell Phoenix
Click here to read the case study
Expert Facilitation is not Facilitation by Experts
When choosing a leadership development programme, one may encounter courses which promise “facilitation by experts.” The experts will have a background in a particular industry, and will draw on this background as they develop managers from the same industry on their programme.
Mitchell Phoenix MD Kevin
Yates working with executives
at Alderley Dubai
In this way, ex civil-servants will train other civil servants, ex manufacturing directors will instil leadership and management disciplines in those working in manufacturing, ex-lawyers will develop other lawyers, and ex IT professionals will inculcate “soft skills” in current IT professionals.
When the development focuses around technical information, it is easy to understand why those with a background in a similar industry might be preferable. Non-lawyers will have no grasp of technical aspects of law, non-IT professionals will know little about the technical issues facing those working at the front line of IT.
Where leadership and management attitudes and skills are to be developed, it is less clear why those with a particular industry background will be a useful choice. An impressive track record working in a certain industry only suggests that a person is expert at working in that particular field, rather than in developing others to do so. Further, the more impressive the track record, the stronger the hold it will exert over the person’s thinking. Hard-won experience is even harder to relinquish. Yet anyone who wishes to develop wider understanding must do just that: let go of the particular, loosen their grip on their individual insights and begin to see further than their own autobiography.
Developing and inspiring others is not the same as doing oneself, as footballers who turn to management often discover. Who had a better track record than Sir Bobby Charlton? In terms of industry experience, of “been there, done it, got the medals to prove it,” at one stage he was peerless in the English game. His management career underlined the gap between doing oneself and mobilising others. For some this gap is easily bridged - Charlton’s peer Franz Beckenbauer managed the German World Cup winning team of 1990. For others it proves impossible to cross. (Charlton’s choice of subsequent activities shows how fast he learned this, and how shrewd and adaptable he is.)
What qualifications should one look for from those involved in management development? Kevin Yates, Managing Director of Mitchell Phoenix, has become convinced that there are four key factors: expert facilitation - by those who are skilled at mobilising others; robust course content; a unique day a month structure which places the emphasis on delegate output rather than trainer input; and an unwavering focus on the creation of concrete business results. When choosing a development programme, it is a strong track record in these areas which gives the clearest indicator of future performance.
Management
Development or How to Make a Soufflé
You are choosing a management development programme for
yourself or others in your organisation. Of all the factors you take into
consideration – the cost, the content, whether the course is residential or
not, whether you’ll be able to swim and sauna before the gourmet evening meal
at the venue –probably the last thing to cross your mind will be the structure
of the programme.
Of course, you might discount a week-long programme on the
basis that you can’t afford the time out of the office (or alternatively you
might choose to shortlist it because you’ll do anything to get away for a few
days). But beyond the length of the time commitment, what else is there to
consider?
Management and leadership are activities which are done, not known. It is one thing to know
the recipe for a soufflé, for example (any good cookbook or search engine can
furnish you with the relevant knowledge), but it is something else to be able
to walk into a kitchen and make a soufflé. Similarly, it is one thing to sit in
a seminar room and receive input on how to lead and manage a team, and it is
another to go back into the workplace and actually lead and manage your team.
You would not teach someone how to make a soufflé without
asking them at some point to go and make a soufflé. There is little to be
gained from management development programmes which do not demand that managers
to go back into the workplace and apply what they have learned to create
results. This is like training chefs but never asking them to cook, like
coaching golfers but making sure they never go out on the golf course, like
banning aspiring swimmers from getting wet.
The only structure which will produce a real return on
investment in development is a structure in which delegates attend the first
part of a programme, then go and apply what they have learned in the workplace
to create results, then attend another section of the programme, then go and
apply what they have learned in the workplace, and so on. This is the only way
we learn how to do anything – from our own experience. If opportunities to
accumulate experience – and a strong demand to create results – are not built into the structure of a
management development programme, you can be certain that no real experience
has been gained, and no results created.
After over 25 years in management development, Mitchell
Phoenix’ Managing Director Kevin Yates is convinced that the only viable
structure is a day a month. “A day a month is often as long as senior people
can be away from the office,” he says, “and it keeps the focus firmly on the
delegates and their responsibility to use the material to create results. The
quality of the results which come back gets stronger and stronger as the
programme goes on and participants gain in skill and experience, so that the
results on day 6 are often much more sophisticated than those reported on day
2. The whole process is cumulative, and designed to spotlight the participants
and how they are changing and adapting what they are doing in the workplace.
“On the other hand, programmes which are geared towards input for the delegates, rather than output from the delegates (ie results), are often more cost effective and conveniently accessed via a book.
Few CEO’s Cite Paint-Balling as their Chief Leadership Influence
Rare quotations:
“I paint-balled my way to the top”
“Karaoke made a leader of me”
“I now run all meetings on an assault course”
“All new employees have to fall backwards off a desk”
“The Captain and flight crew improved safety 14.6% by singing light opera"
Finance had become much tougher on departments
who exceeded their budget...
For comedians training is one of the most fertile areas of business life. The tenuous links made between a host of activities – from actors’ trust games to orienteering – and our working practices are funny because we can all recognise the scenario. Whether it is making the accounts team go through an army assault course or asking the production division to do a karaoke for leadership programme, everyone knows someone who has done something ridiculous in the name of development, or – worse still – has had to take part in something ridiculous themselves.
If you want a development activity which is useful, rather than simply entertaining, what should you look for? After more than 25 years in development, Mitchell Phoenix’ Kevin Yates concludes that there are four pillars of successful development programmes. “Look for expert facilitation, an unwavering focus on the creation of results, a structure which will allow the creation of results, and tried and proven content,” he says.
What should this content consist of? First of all it should be usable in the workplace. Under pressure in a real life work situation, anything overly complicated, such as a theoretical ‘model’, will be difficult to bring to mind or use. Second, content should be useful, so that when it is applied it will solve a problem and/or generate concrete results. This means the content should focus on how to conduct the key activities managers and leaders undertake. Whether the focus is delegation, persuasion, motivation or anything else, concrete detail on how to do each of these things is vital. It is not enough to define the problem, the content must take us towards the solution and then prompt us to take action back in the workplace.
“Perhaps most important,” says Yates, “is that the content is based on strong, ethical business principles which senior managers can relate to, and on which they can build. They must see clearly how what is being suggested to them fits with the business principles they already hold, or with principles they aspire to and are likely to adopt.”
This article follows on from Kevin Yates' previous post on the Four Pillars of Successful Management Development (see below).
Management Development and the Middle Ages
Businesspeople are good at measuring a return. Stereotyped from at least the Middle Ages as bean-counters with abacuses, the Blackberry-wielding modern version of the medieval merchant knows how much things cost and how many of them s/he is selling. You measure the impact of lean manufacturing techniques on the bottom line. You measure the ROI of developing and marketing a new product. You can even measure how much each individual salesperson pulls in for the business.
But modern businesspeople are useless at measuring the return on investment in management development. Research conducted by DDI found that only around 25% of organisations formally measure the results of leadership development programmes. A recent IRS survey polled 74 organisations which ran management development programmes, out of which 13 said they were a failure, 22 said they hadn’t achieved a return on investment, and only six believed their programmes had been a great success. Both sets of findings suggest that today’s management development is a long way from the shrewd calculations of yesterday’s merchants.
What can the past teach us? In the times when Powerpoint, flip-charts and break-out groups didn’t exist, the closest businesspeople got to management development was the apprentice system. Of course, no-one would advocate asking managers to live in poverty for seven years, sleeping on their boss’s floor and only having Sundays off if they are lucky (if you recognise any of that, it’s time for a move - depressed job market or not). What is instructive about the apprentice system is that it asked apprentices to produce something to prove they had learned the skills of their trade. This “Masterpiece” was visible proof of whether the apprentice had become a master or not.
Management development programmes which do not create measurable results are like apprenticeships where no masterpiece is required. In fact, they are like apprenticeships where no work at all is required. What guildsman would accept an apprentice into the stonemasons’ guild without visible evidence that he could carve stone to an acceptable standard? As turnaround specialist Ross Stuart observes, “if you can’t see any results, you have to question whether there are any.”
Management as we know it did not exist seven hundred years ago, but Mitchell Phoenix’ Kevin Yates is convinced that we should judge the development of our managers by the same yardstick that guildsmen used: the evidence of our eyes. “Only by creating results in response to the live challenges of the workplace can managers truly measure their development,” he says, “and that’s the only way you will be able to accurately judge ROI.” Because of this, Mitchell Phoenix programmes are designed to create results from the first day. “Focus on results is one of the four foundation stones of successful management development programmes,” says Yates, “and in conjunction with a unique structure, robust content and expert facilitation, they will repay your investment many times over.”
I was recently invited to discuss the concept of best practice in training: what it looks like, how it works, the measurement of effectiveness and so on. One of the aims of the meeting was to identify parameters through which the organization and design of training could be securely improved and rationalization carried out.
Between us we had a great deal of experience in the area of Learning and Development and all were keen to engage in the discussion. What became apparent was the elusive nature of the answers to the questions raised. For example: “What would you consider to be modern best practice in training?” Quickly we realized that different training requires different practices.
Training which equips others with a technical skill (banking, IT, insurance, engineering, etc.) requires the transfer of knowledge from the trainer to the delegate, and the subsequent application of that knowledge to a problem or process – simple cause and effect. For example, compliance training involves the transfer of knowledge about compliance to the delegate, who then applies this knowledge to their area of the business.
Management skills and disciplines also require knowledge (most managers have this) and the application of that knowledge in the workplace. The difference is, that knowledge is applied directly to the people we manage, rather than to the systems, products or services under our control.
People react and respond dynamically and in complex ways – they are a more unpredictable variable than almost anything else in business. The training of managers demands a learning environment which can create understanding of people and how they behave in the workplace – not simply a transfer of knowledge.
What managers learn must then be practiced in the workplace, where they can grow their understanding through their own experience. Courses should be designed to facilitate this. Straightaway it is clear that knowledge transfer is not up to the task. Just as we can’t learn to swim from a book, so developing a manager’s understanding of how he/she can be more effective requires more active engagement than simply listening to a talk or reading an article.
In addition, consider the range of factors managers deal with:
all of which will defy the application of simple knowledge and yet can be resolved by broad understanding and good management.
As the conversation turned to leadership the game was raised another level. Here there was no doubt that understanding and effectiveness were the critical goals. To create learning that delivers this level of effectiveness requires 4 elements:
Robust content that stimulates questioning, curiosity and deep understanding
Training based on output, not input – leaders and managers learn through their own experience and need training that causes a change in thinking, understanding and practice
A structure that promotes learning transfer – Short, intense and demanding seminars followed by a period where learning can be realized
Expert facilitation – not facilitation by experts - What’s the difference? Leaders learn from their own experience, not that of others. Leadership learning occurs when people work on their own approach, not when trying to adopt that of others.
All Mitchell Phoenix programs are built on these 4 principles.
Mitchell Phoenix' Managing Director Kevin Yates recently published the ebook, How to Build a Successful Leadership Development Project in which he outlines the central factors required if a leadership program is to yield real return on investment. In this extract, he explores who the sponsor of the project should be...
It is quite likely that an incoming senior executive has identified the opportunity for an improvement in the leadership skills of the management group. This may be a promoted MD, CEO or someone brought in with recent experience of greater leadership capability in another organisation (competitor perhaps?) This sponsorship is the best possible start point for gathering support from the board and will be a natural step to engage the wider management population.
Three levels of management need to be converted for the culture change to take effect. This means CEO, board and senior operational management. In a large organisation you will also need to engage the best of the next tier down to make it complete and secure. After that, leadership by example and sweeping demand for better practice will permeate the business. In the longer term, standards of behaviour have to be rigorously applied and defended. (This latter effect will be determined by the quality of leadership thinking delivered by the development project itself).
What happens when only HR or a more junior group have identified the need? Clearly we have to build more support into the senior operational areas and the CEO has to be sold on this need. By highlighting concrete examples of sub-optimal behaviour; raising questions about succession, ownership of goals, poor meeting management, and crisis culture we can lay the groundwork for a decision to be made. In addition, issues of falling standards of recruitment and greater attrition can be flagged. Lack of choice and quality in promotions and honest performance review will further bring the messages home. Leadership profiling tools can be brought to bear to display, empirically, the opportunities for personal growth.
There has to be acceptance of this need at the highest levels. Ready & Conger, in their analysis of why leadership development projects fail, identify lack of ownership as the principle ‘pathology’. Their solution, ‘everyone should own it’, is long on good advice but short on how to achieve it. In this article, I discuss the 5 steps necessary to build a successful leadership development project (click to read).
Firstly, what is the problem? Presumably your organisation has a sense of what it needs to achieve in broad terms and in detail - strategy, business plan, distributed goals etc. There will be people in place (mostly) and the wherewithal to achieve the goals. All of these lend themselves to analysis and verification: what is the current capability to enact the organisation’s strategy?
If there is a perceived lack of leadership in your organisation, this implies two things:
1. An observer (or observers) has compared the current standard of leadership in the business with a higher standard known to exist elsewhere (at a previous company, at a higher level of management, etc) and found it wanting
2. This observer understands the drag on business performance that poor leadership exerts, and the potential boost to business performance that higher quality leadership will provide
Needless to say, where there is no perceived gap between current standards of leadership and a higher standard, the link between leadership and business performance will not be understood, and there will be no investment in leadership development.
If we are going to measure improvements in leadership then what is it that we are to measure? We are all likely to have a definition of leadership, and who is to say if my definition is better than yours? Let’s sweep this debate aside for now, it requires time not available in this paper and is not entirely necessary. What counts is your recognition of potential. At this stage, it is enough if you and/or your organisation have recognised a leadership gap to exploit and the potential to exploit it. Here are some clues as to the extent of that potential:
* Ownership of initiatives and/or goals is patchy
* Blame culture when things go wrong
* Complaints of phoney reward systems
* Pockets of ‘resistance to change’
* Upward delegation prevalent
* No trust between people and divisions
* Gaining commitment is like herding cats
* ‘Yes but’ begins every sentence
* …and finally the simplest of all – you prefer not to battle against it!
These are the symptoms of poor leadership. There is a neutral position where leadership is adequate and displays few of the negative factors and some positive attributes. Most organisations occupy this position.
click here to download the full ebook
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