Effectiveness is a miracle

I am busy preparing with colleagues a program on transformational leadership. Pretty pretentious. What does really transform a business, a mission, a work situation?
I remember a client, a Brazilian engineering firm, who, in the seventies, spent 1,5 million dollars on a motivation program for its employees by a prominent US consultancy firm. What difference did it make? Half a year later, bosses and employees couldn't tell.
I think of seminars I attended by famous authors. What did I really learn from them? From a lecture by Carl Rogers I just remembered one example he gave. That example stuck in my mind and taught me something.
I recently met a Finnish colleague. In the early eighties I gave a workshop for his new consultancy firm how to do strategic consultancy. He remembered only two things I taught them. Interestingly, those were exactly the only two items I remembered teaching them. At least, I didn't teach them wrong things, because they became the premium strategic consultancy firm in Finland. But the encounter reinforced my general impression that teaching that is not part of the real daily work, has a moot chance of being remembered or, more important, having effectively improved practical work. Therefore, I am a great fan of Action Learning. If people have been to a 3-year MBA-program and they are asked years later what it meant to them, quite a few mention first and foremost the contacts and business relations they won, not the course content.

Though I don't come across as a particularly modest person, I have always felt very modest about the real and durable effects of my seminars, training programs and consultancy assignments. I am relieved when I hear years later that at least some people had some real benefit.
Few subjects are more important than leadership. Few subjects are more slippery and more intangible. So to start a program on leadership that really will make work situations more effective, more meaningful, more rewarding and more successful, is pretty pretentious.
I want to concentrate on the few interventions and exercises that at least have helped some managers or some consultants in my experience. I did (and I still do sometimes) with a colleague a program called 'Management and Intuition.' How more intangible can you get? To my amazement, I got the highest evaluations on any management program I ever did, on the item I expected it least: practical applicability. That taught me something.
Once a prospective client asked an other manager what kind of a consultant I was. The answer was "a no-nonsense consultant." That was a great compliment, especially because I deal in intangibles: strategy, mission, leadership. If a new type of gearbox in a car is nonsense, it wont survive the test phase. But in consultancy and coaching the difference between meaningful and meaningless, effective and ineffective is much more difficult to establish. And it may change between one person and the next, one situation and the next.

I want to present a program that is effective. That may be pretentious, but that's my ambition.
I think I am about ready. I will blog and tweet about it when it's presentable.

Meanwhile, if you have any experience of a lesson you learned that really changed your way of working, share it in a reaction to this blog. Others may learn from it, I may learn from it.

The March of Folly - about power and sex

I read Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly right after it was published in 1984. I reread it now. Being a fan of 'good government' - today often changed in 'good governance' - it remains interesting to read her shortlist of misgovernment:

1. Tyranny or oppression
2. Excessive ambition
3. Incompetence or decadence
4. Folly or perversity

Tyranny and oppression we can  read about each day and we can watch the uprisings against it, especially now in the Arab world. Excessive ambition, also known since Paul Kennedy as imperial overstretch, we know mainly from the US. On a personal level, many more examples can be found. Decadence doesn't survive too easily in today's interconected world, incompetence is rampant. And as to folly, think of the Peace Process (yes that one). This reminds about an old quip about processes: a process is anything that is almost succeeding for a long time.
Tuchmann defines folly as grounded in preconceptions, contrary to common sense, rational inference and cogent advice. Government is it favorite field, because power not only corrupts, it also blinds. She sees lust for power as the chief trigger of political folly. Government remains the paramount area of folly because there men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.

Combine this with the often noted connection between sex and power: powerful men are usually oversexed. Think of that IMF-chief (whose name I strangely can't remember right now, although it is blaring all day over the news). Now the relationship between sex and folly we don't need to explore. Even love, that much nobler emotion, can blind us easily. Anyway, power, sex and folly are a potent cocktail. Good for storytelling, bad for real people. Now what again is the name of that Italian prime minister?
Are powerful women also oversexed? Probably often, but they are less aggressive about it - and they usually don't need to be.
Anyway, the March of Folly has a twin sister: The Waltz of Folly.

Bankers and Bonuses: does size matter?

Are bankers overpaid? Maybe and maybe not. Compared to whom? I want to make an unfashionable suggestion: they should get higher bonuses - but in a different way. In stock, not in stock options. Bankers should co-own banks.
To receive bonuses in the form of stock options makes directors want to increase short-tern share value - and it rewards them when they sell them.The idea is that in this way their interests and the interest of stockholders are aligned. First, it is only half true. Second, it is only half true.
First, because the prime interest of investors is dividend, the interest of first-level speculators is share value. And the interest of second-level speculators is volatile share values. Second, because bonuses don’t align. Alignment would mean that directors get extra paid when the stock goes up, and pay back when it gets down. But they cash when things get well, and they don’t pay when things get rough. The intelligence of shareholders apparently has its limitations, just as with ordinary mortals.

Directors, especially directors of banks should get bonuses in the form of shares, shares that can only be sold when they leave the firm and not faster than 10% a year. That will tie them to the long-term success of their firms. That will align their interest much better with the shareholders - and with the personnel by the way. Employee-owned stock can be administered by a foundation that issues certificates, which may make the whole operation cost less.

It could be argued that this is less tax-avoiding. Oh my! It could be argued that it makes people dependent on their successors. Oh my! Often, directors leave after impressive feats that bring their hidden costs out in the open long after they left. The proposed solution would make people interested in having good successors. Nothing wrong with that.

Altogether, this would mean that as to bonuses, size doesn’t matter that much. It is the kind of bonus that matters.

Debts and Greek tragedy

When a creditor can't pay the debtor, who is responsible? The creditor of course. But when credit comes on top of credit and keeps growing and the debtors know this, who is responsible? And when debtors know the risk and so ask for higher interest, and so the debts grow extra fast, who is responsible? Of course still the creditors. But now the debtors become responsible too. If it is selling mortgages to poor people, or big banks lending to countries. The moment interest rates get higher because of risk, debtors should know what they are doing.

And governments cannot and should not economize to the extent their tax base shrinks.

In a real debt crisis, debtors should suffer. They don't like that, so they try to shift the burden. They should not be allowed to do so. Shifting the burden is one of the classic systemic sins, like the tragedy of the commons. Any division of sharing the burden is arbitrary, but the creditor is always more responsible than the debtor, criminal debtors excepted. So my suggested arbitration is that debtors take 1/3 of the burden and creditors 2/3. So 1/3 of the Greek debt should be discounted. And interest rates should be average, without risk premium.

Or debts should simply be traded. Speculators like risky and muddy waters. They can't earn on simple discounts. So they are against simple rules.

And if banks come into trouble? They don't. They went into trouble. To big to fail? To big to learn. Don't tell me this is not feasible. When nothing is feasible, everything becomes feasible.

Helsinki and Tampere

A new round of organizational constellations and a new round of the Leadership Game.
What kind of themes did the participating management consultants have?

•  What to focus on? And in what market?
•  What do i write my management book about?
•  How do I make my consultancy more profitable?
•  What is the best way to become influential?
•   What is the next step in the development of my company?
•  How do I build an influential consultancy doing meaningful work?
•  How do I get work that has my heart in it?
•  How do I get rid of the ‘dogs’ in my work?

During the game, with many the focus shifted or became more precise. New ideas, new awareness and, above all, more focus. One colleague bought the Leadership Game, so Finnish managers can reflect on their behavior and their career also.

In constellation work it is not only the thoughts the representatives get, but also feelings and bodily sensations. One of the most common bodily reactions is the tendency to change position or posture. People may have other kinesthetic sensations, like heaviness, warmth or coldness. In one constellation, one of the participants had an even more peculiar sensation. In the constellation were two square pillars. The office building once had been a factory. The representative was positioned with her back to one pillar. She represented an entrepreneur and felt herself as a kind of locomotive. Then she got the strong sensation that the pillar behind her and the whole building started to shake and tremble. She knew it didn’t happen, but she felt it nonetheless.
This reminds me of a constellation I did in São Paulo, about the problem around the Nr.2 director in the firm. He suffered forever from high blood pressure, had had already several heart surgeries and gave everyone around him high blood pressure. When his representative stood tall, legs a bit apart, telling the world that he felt strong, a rumbling was heard and the building trembled slightly. But that was a real earthquake, pretty uncommon there.

The eternal doubt of consultants is if their work really does matter. So it is nice to experience that once in a while our work is among the movers and shakers.