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The Five Personalities of Innovators: Which One Are You? - Forbes

We have just completed a two-parter on personality types  (Myers Briggs and the Four Temperaments, and as if to complement that, Forbes have just published this article on the five personalities of innovators.

The Forbes Insights study surveyed more than 1,200 executives in Europe across a range of topics and themes. Using a series of questions about their attitudes, beliefs, priorities and behaviors, coupled with a look at the external forces that can either foster – or desiccate – an innovative environment, a picture emerged of five key personality types the play a role in the innovation cycle.

Are you a:

Movers & Shakers;
Controllers;
Star Pupil;
Experimenter;
Or a
Hanger on?

 

 

 

Read More here:  via www.forbes.com

 

 

About us

Agents2change works with some of the world's largest companies on change and implementation issues. We regularly use personality frameworks for leadership, team and organisational development.  If you’d like to know more contact us at:  feedback@agents2change.com

Trouble at the Bleeding Edge – Or how the Mighty Fall

Earlier this week we talked about challenges at the Leading edge of change.  But what about at the other end of the spectrum?  It’s a salutary reminder of the unrelenting pace of change, when you hear that Eastman Kodak have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.  It is a mighty fall from grace, given the near monopoly status that Kodak held in the world of photography for over 125 years.  Yet it is also a stark reminder of the dramatic changes that our digital based economy has wrought. 

Kodak was once viewed amongst the world’s most innovative companies, providing innovation not only in the camera but also in the development and print field of photography.  Yet in the last 30 years it has gradually slipped further and further from the mainstream, as smaller more agile competitors, better able to respond to the rising tide of digital technology started to take its place, alongside that of the multi-media smartphone. 

Management arrogance is one of the accusations for its demise.   Yet perhaps its biggest failing was not realizing that the moment to change had arrived and passed it by; quietly and swiflty.   It is one of life’s truisms that the moment to change, is just when everything seems to be going swimmingly.  It is at the point of our greatest successes when we have to consider its demise and therefore the need to innovate and change. 

The Danger of resting on one’s laurels

Whilst Kodak fades to black, we can see a similar struggle occurring with Research in Motion's (RIMs) Blackberry.  Once the smartphone of choice for Executives around the world, it has become more and more obscured by the rise of Apple products and the demand for tablet-based technologies. 

Blackberry like Kodak is accused of failing to read the market conditions and consumer choices.  Being unclear where its core market base lies – ‘are we the smartphone for executives, or the consumer product for young people?’.  This fuzzy marketing focus has led to inconsistent R&D (such as the disastrous launch of the Storm and Playbook and the lack of a single OS platform for software development).

Fuzzy leadership  and poor engagement are also cited for Blackberry's demise.  As we fully embed ourselves in the digital age, companies that fail to provide a figurehead to tell their story, or those that don't engage their customers through the infinite options of social media are at risk of being ignored, overlooked and eventually shunned completely by their once loyal customers.

Engagement & responsive-ness, the new watchwords

How can you ensure that you are listening to and engaging your customers as you develop your products and services?

• The world’s most innovative companies all have a strong and clear strategy, communicated by a strong and clear leader
• Using social media – twitter, facebook, youtube etc., as well as the traditional media channels ensures the widest possible circulation
• Creating closed loop marketing opportunities e.g. Once an Apple product owner, one naturally migrates to the next Apple product.
• Anticipating rather than responding to trends – this one of course is the silver bullet, but the world’s most innovate see this as their raison d’étre.  What are you doing to anticipate?

About us

Agents2change works with some of the world's largest companies on change and implementation issues.  We'd love to hear your thoughts on this blog, innovation or change in general.  Share your comments here or email us on feedback@agents2change.com

Examing Culture #2 - Is Hofstede's view of Culture relevant?

Hofstede is seen as one of the key writers and proponents of cultural theory, through his research in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s and to which he has continued to add.  His research was based on employees within one organisation – IBM and covered over 116,000 responses, 72 national subsidiaries and 20 language, taking the data at two points in time over a four year period.  When first published, over 20 years ago, it was one of the most extensive pieces of research in the area of culture and lead to some critical thinking of what characteristics are observable in different national cultures.

The central premise to Hofstede’s work is that Culture and cultural identity are learned attributes developed over time and he coined the process ‘mental programming’.  

 

We can see how culture is ever-changing, in the ways that values and priorities change from one generation to another.  For example, we can see if we look back at key decades in UK society, that values changed from:  Being frugal and economical in the 1940’s  (key themes: ‘War’ and ‘Rations’); being hard-working and strong family values in the 1950’s  (key themes:  Post-war Industrial growth); being expressive and freedom of speech in the 1960’s  (key themes: Feminism, Free Love, Student Revolts); being politically aware and experiencing hardships in the 1970’s  (Increased political unrest, widespread strikes and large scale unemployment).  Thus we can say that culture is at the same time traditional yet ever changing.  The shifts in cultural values are harder to view in the day-to-day, but evident when looked at through a longer lens. 

This brings some interesting challenges to modern day multi-nationals, as it means that cultural identity and values needs to be understood and observed to a point, but that people are open to and willing to change their values and priorities if it makes sense for them to do so. 

Culture can feel like an intangible and hard to grasp concept, yet it is both general – i.e. definable at a national or continental level; but also specific – i.e. definable at an organisational, team and even family level.   And for each of these situations a new set of norms might be applied. 

Hofstede originally defined  four dimensions of culture as a way of mapping and explaining differences in national cultures.  If we look at how European countries map out on these dimensions, we see some interesting patterns:

Each dimensions looks at a different aspect of human interactions:

1.            Power Distance:  Defining and prioritizing power in their environments – e.g.. how much are hierarchies respected and maintained

2.            Uncertainty Avoidance: How important is it to know what is coming next and how much effort is invested into avoiding uncertainty

3.            Individualism ‘v’ Collectivisim:  What is more important – to be known and respected as an individual or to be part of and respected as part of a community (or group effort)

4.            Masculine ‘v’ Feminine:     “Masculinity pertains to societies in which social gender roles are clearly distinct and focused on material success; femininity pertains to societies in which social gender roles overlaps (i.e. both men and women are supposed to be modest, tender and concerned with quality of life)” (Hofstede P.82)

To these original dimensions, a fifth was added – Long Term’v’ Short Term Orientation.

 

The dimensions give us a frame of reference in which to consider and view culture, and it does allow us to perhaps explain differences that emerge across different countries, even in one geographic regions such as Europe.  However Hofstede was at pains to point out that the purpose of his cultural landscape was not to allow us to fall in to the trap of stereotyping countries and national cultures.  Far from it, Hofstede believed that by having a frame of reference, we could free ourselves up from our own cultural bias, to look at cultures with a more objective lens. 

There are a number of issues with Hofstede’s study methods and conclusions, which remind us of the need to treat it critically.  The first is that the data is focused around the respondents in one organisation – IBM.  Whilst an organisation of sufficient size  (well over 120,000 employees at the time of the research) to provide a statistically significant sample, but that does not mean it is representative on a national level.    

Blodgett et al (2008) after examining Hofstede’s model conclude that “Hofstede’s cultural instrument lacks sufficient validity when applied at the individual unit of analysis”.  McSweeney B (2002) goes further to systematically deconstruct and debunk his theories stating that “The scale problem of Hofstede’s research is radially compounded by the narrowness of the population surveyed” and that Hofstede oversimplified the importance of organisational culture as a component and a relevant factor when matching samples across countries.  Yet despite this criticism, I think that St Claire-Ostwald (2007) offers wise words when she states  “To reject totally Hofstede’s or similar functionalist models of national culture, before more satisfactory models have been developed, would be to throw away valuable insight.”

Hofstede’s model still has influence on our current thinking of Culture and its interpretation.  One can see his influence in other important models, such as those of Trompenaars and GLOBE, which will be covered in the next section of this series. 

Culture is ever-present and all-pervasive and however much we want to imagine that business as usual can continue without it, it cannot.  However by becoming more aware of it, is the first step in managing its consequences.

Please share your thoughts or experiences on cross cultural management here, or email us if you would like to find out more about our work in this area at feedback@agents2change.com

 

Further Reading:

Blodgett J, Bakir A &  Rose G (2008)  A Test of the Validity of Hofstede’s Cultural Framework, Advances in Consumer Research (Volume 35)

Hofstede G (1994) Cultures and Organizations: Intercultural cooperation and its importance for survival; Software of the Mind, London: HarperCollins

McSweeney, B. (2000). Hofstede's model of national cultural differences and their consequences: A triumph of faith – a failure of analysis. Human Relations, 55(1), 89-118.

St Claire-Ostwald B (2007) Carrying Cultural Baggage: the contribution of socio-cultural anthropology to cross-cultural coaching, International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring 5(2), 45-52

 

Corporate & Functions # 3 – Role Clarity – Who should be doing what?

In this mini-series we are looking at the role and value that functions can play in supporting large global corporations.  The second of our five areas is role clarity within Functions. 

Although there is a logical and clear argument for the need for functions, in practice the 'what & how' of functional contribution to business success can be blurred.  This confusion can be a symptom of unclear strategy or the lack of clarification at key points during the organisation’s growth and diversification. 

The frustration that is felt by the businesses when there is this confusion is palpable.  In their need for quick, responsive and appropriate services they can sometimes resort to extreme measures including the creation of ‘shadow’ functions within their segment. In one global financial services provider this had become a common way of overcoming corporate obstacles, leading to a plethora of IT and finance systems within the group.

The coordination between functions when they implement cross-functional or group-wide processes can also lead to breakdowns in communication.   Businesses can be overwhelmed by the latest imperative from Finance Function, whilst in the middle of a major IT implementation.  The deadlines compete or over-ride one and other, leaving the businesses overwrought and under-resourced.  A global credit risk insurer were implementing a mult-strand major strategy overhaul and  soon ran into the ground with their implementation efforts.  It became clear that the reason for this was that there were simply too many corporate centres making requests of the business units, leading to high levels of tension and communication breakdown.

One tool that can help clarify roles is called the RACI.  It records who is Responsible for doing a task; who is ultimately Accountable for getting it done; who needs to be Consulted before a decision is made; and who needs to be Informed that something is changing.  It’s a simple yet very effective tool to bring about clarity.  

 

 

In our next instalment we will look at Achieving Operational Excellence.  If you have experiences you wish to share, please comment here or contact us at feedback@agents2change.com

Corporate & Functions # 2 – Quality of Leadership within & across Functions

In this mini-series we are looking at the role and value that functions can play in supporting large global corporations.  The first of our five areas is Leadership within Functions. 

There are many reasons why leadership is, or is perceived as poorer within the functions rather than in the line.  Sometimes it is about the culture of the organisation.  If the business / segment are encouraged to be independent and autonomous, then Functions can sometimes play second fiddle.  This has the result of undermining the confidence & leadership of the Functions.  Similarly, if the pendulum has swung too much towards the Functions – which is a phenomenon frequently experienced after a lot of merger & acquisition activity - the rush to consolidate to one business identity and creating a ‘one size fits all’ solution can lead to poorly thought out services or policies that are not fit for purpose in the various business environments. 

In both these situations the functional leadership has a critical (& somewhat overlooked) role.  Too often the organisation in its frustration can either parachute in excellent business (line) managers who have a reputation for turnaround situations in the field, but with very little technical understanding of the functions role.  Leaders parachuted in in this way can feel overwhelmed in a new and very different environment and in some situations feel overlooked by the organisation.  Additionally the lack of technical skill can result in poorly thought out or mis-aligned interventions for the businesses.  In one Supermajor oil company a business leader was parachuted in to run the HR function with disastrous results, by oversimplifying the model and the HR offer and increasing frustration felt by the business. 

The other extreme is the Group CEO in his or her frustration hires in a technical expert with a strong track record to oversee the function/ functions without the history of the organisation’s culture, the danger is that in their rush to make an impact, the business can feel browbeaten into accepting changes that seem out of synch with the way that ‘things are done around here’. 

Neither is a good outcome and the ideal middle ground between the two; a leader who understands the technical requirements of the function, whilst still being highly attuned to the needs of the business – which may indeed be quite diverse and even contradictory.  Their confidence as a leader needs to be balanced with their appreciation of their role ‘in service’ of the business.   It requires a finely tuned ego that can switch between leadership and followership as the situation requires.   

In our next instalment we will look at role clarity.  If you have experiences you wish to share, please comment here or contact us at feedback@agents2change.com

How to Achieve Sustainable Change

To bring about radical improvements in how teams operate, it is important to focus equally on what they are doing and how they are doing it.  Focusing purely on behaviour, without linking it to business process and performance leads to poorly focused development.  Focusing on processes and systems without considering behaviours leads to unsustainable or poorly realized improvements.    It requires a number of things to occur:

Engaging Leadership

Coaching and engagement is essential to sustainable change.  Coaching allows for a frank and timely exchange of views about their leadership style and the interventions in a safe and confidential environment.  It is only by having the space and opportunity to do this, that leaders can learn how to set the right tone and follow that through in their own behaviour, to maximize impact with their team.

Developing a team identity and goal

Bringing the team together to explore how they work together and how that can be improved is a powerful exercise in galvanizing efforts and overcoming resistance.  A key output is a ‘team charter’ that articulates the goals (performance results), in-year milestones, dependencies and how individual roles will contribute to the achievement of those goals. 

Defining Individual Roles

After defining the team charter, individuals then develop their own team role.  It is defined in terms of contribution to team results, but also behaviours and team expectations of each other. 

Defining Processes & creating service standards

Part of the challenge for teams is how to get a shared picture of the end-to-end process, the hand-offs and where performance might be compromised.  By involving all team members in the process mapping and identification they buy-in to the improvements that are identified.

Creating a performance management framework

One of the big reinforcing tools to embed and then maintain new behaviours is a visual performance management framework. The team need to be engaged; not only in the data gathering, but also in understanding and responding to the data as it is reported.  Performance dashboards can lead to lively team discussions, because everyone understands what is required and their role in achieving it. 

Maintaining momentum

It is important, once the changes have been made, to maintain them.  Leaders play an important role here in ensuring that weekly and monthly team meetings are given the priority that they deserve and that data is regularly reviewed.  Praising good performance is just as important as highlighting and questioning poor performance. 

Who we are

Agents2Change has an unblemished track record in delivering significant improvements in key business results: profit; production; reliability; safety; to large scale process industries.    Our team of highly experienced consultants have the knowledge and skills to help you tackle the most daunting of behavioural change agendas informatively and effectively.  For more information, comment here, or email us at:  feedback@agents2change.com.

How much does culture matter to an organisations performance?

In recent client conversations we have been exploring some of the issues that they are managing in driving through change.  It is surprising, despite universal acknowledgement of its importance in an organisation’s performance, how little attention is paid to culture when matters most.  Culture is nothing more and nothing less that the manifestation of rules, routines and norms within an organisation or team.  It is, to borrow another metaphor, a puzzle wrapped up in an enigma.  It comes out in the way that decisions are made, in how priorities are agreed and teams behave together. 

A technology group was finding it hard to integrate their development teams with their marketing teams.  As the dominant culture was IT or Engineering Culture (See Schein’s three cultures) then the emphasis was on efficiency of processes that are designed to eradicate human error or interference in the performance of their products.  This type of culture brings us great innovations – think iPhone, Facebook and the advanced micro-processors.  Equally this culture can become insulated and resistant to outside influences or market needs. 

In manufacturing companies the challenge can be balancing the need for smooth operations and team needs whilst still paying attention to efficiency and performance measures.   Our work with a packaging manufacturer in 2010 unearthed challenges in how to get the constituent parts of the production line working together for the greater good.  Paying attention to small details was easy, but linking it to a bigger picture of organisational performance and customer needs can be more difficult. 

In Financial groups, we see a very good focus on the market needs, the financial indicators and shareholder value.  However if this is the exclusive focus, it can lead to employees feeling like expendable resources or feeling disenfranchised which will directly impact their motivation and sense of loyalty to the company. 

Organisational culture is inextricably linked to performance and it is one of the trickiest areas for leaders and CEOs to get to grips with, especially if they arrive new into a company.  Global companies often have a dominant culture, which has developed through history, experience and the ‘norms’ that have developed over time, but this will not be the whole story.  There will be pockets of cultural identity that may differ from the dominant culture as a result of the focus of differing occupational groups, regional or national variations.  The challenge therefore is to understand and manage those cultures appropriate to their environment rather than try to push through one single cultural identity which may end up isolating and alienating large swathes of your constituency.

 

Some Culture Take Aways:

• Culture does have an impact on performance and it can be a positive or a negative influence
• The first step to changing culture is understanding it, so it is important for leaders to pay attention to the cultural flags that indicate what is important to the people within the organisation
• Large organisations often have multiple cultural idenitites.  These can work alongside each other and if productive can work happily together without the need for merging.

What experience do you have of managing or changing culture.  We'd love to hear your about your experiences.  Please post your comments here or email us at:  feedback@agents2change.com.

 

Treading the False Road – the attraction of new beginnings

There is something altogether enticing about a new beginning.   A new season, a new year, a new decade – they all bring a sense of renewal, of possibilities and of change.  We can find the energy and motivation to make resolutions, to put energy into new projects and to focus on new results precisely because of this sense of renewal.   For a while we can believe that anything is possible; we can hit that target weight, we can regain that fitness level, we can quit smoking, and perhaps this time we can.

In organisations we can set off on the same hopeful road of change, on a wave of enthusiasm and energy.  It can coincide with new financial year or a new era for the company.  Sometimes it is preceded by months behinds closed doors with strategists to develop a challenging set of goals to rally around.  A team of enthusiastic and usually gifted managers are then intensively trained in change management methodologies and then sent forth to make things happen.  The analogy is like sending Christopher Columbus on a four week intensive sailing course and then asking him to go forth and discover new continents.  He might just be successful but his odds are little better than chance.  In fact even with years of experience, Columbus made some fatal errors in his calculations and in fact failed at his task which was to find a faster route to the Indies, but history is made on such errors. 

The reason that this enthusiastic endeavour could be termed a false road is that it assumes that knowledge can be assimilated into experience in one step.  We cannot build a plane whilst learning the principles of aerodynamics.  We cannot speak a language fluently after the first lesson.  Yet somehow, organisations hope that an intensive programme on transformation theory will allow a group of enthusiastic managers to deliver results that have never been achieved before.  Where does such optimism come from?

 

The False Road tells us that:

• Enthusiasm can win out over experience
• If enough people believe something to be true – it will be true
• We don’t need to plan for failure – if we can’t see it coming, it does not exist

Real Transformation tells us that:

• We have to have gone through the change curve at least once to really understand what it takes to achieve sustainable results
• Success is only 30% to do with theories and methodologies and 70% to do with relationships, engagement and brining people along a journey
• Tenaciousness is key, because at the lowest point, when everything looks hopeless, is the time when big change is likely to occur. 

What organisations often fail to do is build in capacity for Change to occur.  They bolt on Change duties to current day job demands.  It’s a bit like asking someone to train for a marathon, but asking them to still focus on their rowing skills.  One does not necessarily support the other.  Yes you still have to deliver on current operations and improvements whilst you are building a new type of organization.  Both are very demanding and they require different and distinct management responses.  It was Einstein that said “Madness is to keep doing the same thing over and over but each time expecting a different result”, or in other words, if you focus on the same things you get the same results.  But do you want the same results?

So before investing too heavily in that all singing, all dancing change management course for your budding change champions ask yourself – is that enough to support them to deliver extraordinary results in these demanding times?  What else might they need in terms of practical help, support, information or coaching to increase their chances of success?  Some well targeted support now could make a huge difference to their chances of success in the long term.

Please share your comments or experiences here – or email 

 

Why is Change so Difficult: 2 – managing the rational aspects of change

Often when people refer to Change Management and describe its components they describe the rational aspects of Change.  These are the tools and processes that define, control and oversee the change process.  These are important tools and make a significant contribution to the success of change programs.  They do not tell the whole story, as our first blog on Why Change is so Difficult and the third in our series will testify, but it does make up a third of the success recipe.

Transformation and change needs to be treated like any other big programme in that it requires a dedicated team, programme management discipline and good governance.  It was Kotter who wrote about why change fails and many of the reasons come down to not being set up for success in the first place.

It is surprising how many organisations that we work with that mistakenly believe that Change will just occur alongside the day job, without investing much time or effort in the process of change itself. If you are expecting to bring about significant financial results, you need to invest in the resources to make it happen.  The size of a change team will depend on the scale of change that is required.  As a rule of thumb there is probably one change manager (or change champion) required for every workstream within the change programme.   Whilst your change managers can be sourced internally if you have those skills on tap,  you may need some experienced external resources to provide the leverage and momentum that can be difficult to create from within.

Effective Programme management is essential.  It ensures scrutiny of the process, regular updates and strong risk & issues management.  For impact and influence, programme managers need to be high profile senior players with exceptional influencing skills.  Gifted amateurs have their uses, but driving major change is probably a risky gamble and one that is best left to areas where the stakes are not so high.

Finally there is Governance.  It comes down to just how important are these results to achieve for the organisation.  If failure is an option then the odd check-in here and there will be fine.  However if you are depending on these results to turn the organisation around then scheduling time at the senior table is important.  An hour a week or fortnight of the key directors accountable for delivering these results is not unreasonable.  And if you have invested in a good programme manager, they will ensure that the meetings are well prepared, focused on essentials and bringing the right level of information to your attention.

We’d love to hear about your experience of change so please post a comment here or email us on feedback@agents2change.com.

 

Is the separation of Strategy from Execution a trap?

The reason for the question is a recent article in Harvard Business Review presented the idea that the separating execution from strategy is a flawed and somewhat doomed approach. Roger L Martin in his article The Execution Trap puts forward the argument that the separation of strategy from execution is spurious and leads to disempowering staff, turning them into choiceless doers.  But does it?

Our most sought after service at Agents2change is designing the right process to implement a strategy. We do not come from the perspective that one is and should be divorced from the other, but more that the development of the strategy is about defining broad direction and principles and implementation is defining how to achieve this through a detailed and robust planning and execution process.

Martin argues that separating one from the other leads to discontinuity and an isolation of staff from the engagement process. He presents the example of a bank teller that has developed a well rounded theory on how to treat customers that is not in the standard manual, yet she feels reticence to record and share her views. Her reticence might be as much to do with her own lack of confidence in playing such a role, yet he concludes that it is due to a top down implementation with little engagement or involvement of staff in shaping and realizing the strategy. This approach, he argues,creates divisions in organisations between choosers and choiceless doers.

We would argue that strategy often requires a strong partnership to get to execution. A car designer for example, only realizes the vision of his creation through partnership with his engineers who have the know-how to put that vision into practical application. If he takes a haughty approach and fails to engage them in the creative process of realizing the strategy then the project is doomed from the outset. Yet he recognizes that he requires a different set of skills to realize the strategy. It is the same for organizations. The separation of strategy from execution is not an unnecessary split; but a quite sensible partnership between what to do and how to get it done. Good execution should have at its heart dialogue and engagement with staff to make the strategy live and work in local environments. On that point we are in complete agreement.