A further nail in the coffin of the Royal Mail?

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Tomorrow is Christmas Day. It is also a Friday. On Boxing Day, Saturday, most major retailers in Britain will be open and happily doing business, and so will most on Sunday too. Although Monday is technically a public holiday, you can fairly safely predict that most shops will be open then too. Lest anyone is in any doubt, retail involves people and for the retailer to be open that means that people will be working.

Most service businesses are operating either as normal or with a limited service over the long weekend that Christmas Day and Boxing Day have created this year. For weeks, shops and other businesses have had signs up telling us of their opening hours. They know that they must compete, and that being accessible to the public is a vital component of that.

That so many people will be working over Christmas is isn't surprising - despite the huge volume of seasonal well-wishing that is happening this year, the vast majority of it is just that - seasonal - rather than Christian. According to recent surveys, 66% of the population have NO personal connection with any Faith group, and roughly 25% of the population that do are not Christian, so "Christmas Day" only really has meaning to about 3 out of every 10 people in the country. It has returned to being a seasonal celebration as it was in Pagan days, much like the American Thanksgiving. The concept of it as a spiritual celebration have long gone.

We know that the use of the postal service is in decline. So, I don't think it is unreasonable to expect them to be thinking of ever better ways of delivering their service, of doing so in ways that cost less than their competitors, and that are as accessible.

So it came as a bit of a surprise to me to take my post up to the letter box in our village today several hours before the advertised, normal collection was due (4:45pm) only to discover that it is not going to be emptied again until next Tuesday. No warning, no card in the window on the box, nothing. It seems I wasn't the only person who was caught out by this, as the box is already nearly full.

I do find it a little amazing that, in this day and age, the Royal Mail has decided to close down for four and a half days. I find it particularly strange as they keep telling us that they desperately want our business and don't want to go bust. Perhaps we should stop looking at the Police as a place for institutional racism, and instead look towards the Post Office, if it really has such a disproportionately high number of devout Christian workers who want the time off.

While I find these decisions amazing, what I object to is the discourtesy that they have shown, indeed the arrogant disregard, for people's time and energy, that failing to tell them that this is what they are doing represents. It is an institutional complacency born out of their once massive nature that is simply no longer justifiable.

I had already been looking at the number of physical greetings cards that I send each year and how many more this year were sent electronically. It seems to me that there's a simple technology gap that will soon be filled by someone. At the moment, most people will not print out the electronic greetings that they receive, but I am sure that the growth in digital picture frames will mean that someone, somewhere, is working on a device and a formatting standard that will mean that greetings sent electronically can be displayed in our homes without having to turn on the laptop and point it into the room! It is easy to do, it just needs a little work to make it practical and convenient. I would not be a bit surprised if Hallmark aren't beavering away at it as we speak. There are millions of people accepting that they can't send an aesthetically pleasing card, but instead using instant messages on Facebook and the like as a way of making contact with one another. When the facility I describe comes live, I am confident that there will be a huge demand.

So next year, I shall send even fewer greetings cards. I shall not be surprised at the news that the Post Office has gone forever. And I shall look forward to a resurgence of people sending aesthetically pleasing personal greetings, albeit electronically, rather than in sound-bite emails and instant messages as they do today.

Incidentally, I did try ringing the Royal Mail complaint's line to express my amazement. The response I received was really quite dismissive. The person on the other end of the line assumed that I was Christian and therefore was going to be taking the time off myself. He tried telling me that it would be too much work for the post men who collect from these boxes each day to slip a notice in the display panel with the Christmas closure times on it. He explained that closing like this was a tradition that "goes back hundreds of years" (which I can categorically say is not true as my Grandfather was a postman and he used to work on both Christmas Day and Boxing Day). He was "personally astonished" that I wanted to complain about the lack of information and that I expected them to collect at 4:45pm.

He did however, register my complaint, taking my address and telephone number, and gave me a reference number for them. I asked what kind of response I could expect. He explained that I couldn't - the complaint would be handled internally but I would not be contacted.

Another case of institutionalised contempt for customers.

WAKE UP ROYAL MAIL - THE WORLD IS CHANGING AND YOU NEED TO CATCH UP WITH IT!

On that not so positive note, to those of you who fall into the minority, I wish you a wonderful Christmas. To those who treat this as a seasonal celebration, I wish you the compliments of the season. To the millions of people who will be working tomorrow (not only in the armed forces, the emergency services, the retail sector, the services sector, and those in remote roles where it is simply not practical to switch off and come home) I thank you for your diligence, and wish you a very happy new year!

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
grahamwilson.org - businesscoaching.org.uk - inter-faith.net
thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Would you help me with an ebook? Collaborative project. NO CATCH!

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Every year, around this time, I start to pull together my notes about goal setting and New Year's Resolutions.

I shall be doing the same again this year. To make it a little different I began to wonder if it would be a nice idea to produce an ebook of examples of New Year's Resolutions - to give a little stimulation to a few people. Just to stress one thing, although I shall write the foreword, I would never dream of making any profit from this - I shall offer it for download from as many places as possible - my aim is to inspire people to think outside the box when they make their resolutions this year.

So this is what I'd like to do... I'd like to produce an ebook, with 52 different examples of New Year's Resolutions in it. I'll collate them and may just tweak the English, but anyone contributing an example will get full credit - in the form of their name, their website name, and a short description that they supply. I'll do my best to make the book presentable and hope that you will be happy enough to want to forward copies to your friends and colleagues too. Interested?

I'm planning on pulling this together on December 21st, so get thinking! If I'm short of entries, then I'll add more after that but absolutely no guarantees.

Why not visit this page and make an offering - http://www.gbw247.info/newyears/

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

---

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
grahamwilson.org - businesscoaching.org.uk - inter-faith.net
thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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An apocalyptic view of leadership (v2)

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My clients and colleagues know where I am coming from in my leadership development work - I have a strong interest in personal growth, authenticity, the spiritual dimension to work. I worked in the empowerment industry for 20 years, and trained as a psychotherapist.

Why the preamble? Well, I'm about to write something that may shock a few of you. You see, this morning I saw a message on a forum that nicely summarised the model of leadership that we've preached for many years - the leader in touch with themselves, highly relational, empowering of others - both employees and customers - and so on. But it worried me. This stuff has been promoted by myself and others for a long time. It has been promoted for millenia. If it was all right, surely evolution by natural selection would have made it the predominant model for leaders throughout the world? But it hasn't.

Here's my response:

The list of leadership behaviours and values that we promote, bears a strong resemblance to the kind of list that someone reading Tom Peters books back in the 1980s or Robert Greenleaf's in the 1970s would have seen. Indeed, I'm sure that Dale Carnegie would identify with them from the 1930s.

So what's new, and why do we keep needing to preach the old stuff?

In the early 1990s, the US Air Force conducted a very impressive study into future worlds, specifically those around 2025. The material is all in the public domain. They identified three global trends and used these to extrapolate a number of scenarios. The three axes were:

The rate of growth of the growth in technology

The polarisation of global power

The focus of US military activity - ie whether it was domestic or international

The scenarios developed showed that under many conditions we were moving slowly and steadily towards a less-caring, more militaristic, and even apocalyptic world - whether dominated by feudal barons or martial law.

Out of this came many insights. Among them was the recognition that our perception of many of the practices that we assume to be static - and I'd suggest leadership skills would be one of those - needs to shift. Just because we have grown accustomed to the kind of emotionally benign leadership models spouted by Carnegie, Greenleaf and others since the emergence of management from the industrial revolution dark ages, doesn't mean that life is going to be so easy for much longer.

Since the movie Wall Street hit the screens, we have had images of a less humanistic approach to management portrayed to us. Gecko wasn't the first of his kind - it was the proximity of his character to the real experience of followers that made it so close to the bone.

The factors identified by the Airforce 2025 project are leading slowly but relentlessly towards a midway point between a couple of their scenarios - a world dominated by a few axial powers (based on powerful commercial empires rather than democratically elected ones) and attacked by growing, but only loosely coordinated, terrorist/subversive forces. This is why the US is seemingly so obsessed with the imposition of democracy and the eradication of Al Khaida outside their own territories. Sooner or later domestic terrorism will prevent them from expending their efforts there, and we will see the consolidation of Eastern commercial influences focused around China and the northern Pacific Rim.

Interestingly, in the UK a disproportionate part of the population suffering from severe mental health issues and being forced into homelessness are from military backgrounds. The same is true in the US. In the US, post Vietnam, a large number of highly trained 'killing machines' returned home unable to adapt to a gentler society. Many of these adopted lifestyles that were self-sufficient and kept them on the perimeter of society and social intercourse. Many of the Al Khaida followers promoting a terrorist campaign, are said to have been trained to respond as guerillas to the threat of Russian military actions a couple of decades ago. It is from this environment that domestic terrorism may well emerge. Our present military efforts are likely to be fuelling the very force in our own countries that we are trying to eradicate elsewhere.

In this militaristic world, I agree that there will always be leaders who have the soft skills that make them NICE people to follow, but I think it is time we gave up trying to force that model down the throats of a future generation of prospective leaders. The world in which they are going to have to operate is a far harsher, far more violent, far less 'rational' one than you and I would like or have experienced.

Leaders then will command loyalty through ruthlessness, manipulation, and providing the basic physical needs (especially security) of their followers and their families by being constantly on their guard against attack. We already see this model in eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other communities. It is not a million miles from the environment of the early 20th century in Italy and Chicago, and later in Northern Ireland.

Let's stop kidding ourselves that softly, softly, touchy-feely leadership is going to work into the future, and start exploring why it is that some of us want to perpetuate these approaches when the survival of the next generation depends on a far tougher approach. It is interesting that few of, even, today's leaders join this bandwagon - I don't hear Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Rupert Murdoch, Mark Hurd or Steve Jobs preaching employee empowerment, customer focus or emotional intelligence, and they aren't exactly an ethnically diverse group are they?

It's time for a tough revision of our thinking and a very different approach to preparing thr future generation of both leaders and followers.

There now, I wonder if that shocked you?

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
grahamwilson.org - businesscoaching.org.uk - inter-faith.net
thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Have you tested your own Customer Care experience?

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Given that I spent the first third of my career helping organisations in the pursuit of Excellence (a la Tom Peters), the first element of which was to be "obsessed with customers", it is hardly surprising that I notice customer facing issues.

Today's experience with a software manufacturer highlighted an important aspect of Customer Care.

Coffee Cup Software produce tools for people preparing websites. There are some very sophisticated ones and some quite simple ones. They are low cost (rarely over £20) and work remarkably well. (OK they aren't as tried, tested and proven as other suites, but for this kind of utility I've found them to be pretty good.)

As some of you may know, I've just revamped my business coaching website (www.businesscoaching.org.uk) and in the process I used two of the Coffee Cup utilities.

One of them, which produced the enquiry form, had a simple glitch at one stage, but was easy to fix and now seems to work perfectly.

The other is intended to pull RSS news feeds from some of my special interest sites (mainly on ecademy (http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=club&op=group&cl=357)) .

Sadly it refused to work. I checked the software support forum and read through their FAQs, all to no avail. So I filed a 'ticket' with "Support" - through a medium known as "myroom". A day or so later, a message arrived from "CustomerCare@coffeecup.com" telling me that the 'ticket' was updated and that I should log on to "myroom" to read it. Keen to resolve the problem, I did so, only to find that there was no sign of either my query or their response.

So, I replied to their email asking for further help. Guess what? Yes, the message bounced back telling me that:

This "is an automatically generated message. We will not see or read the email you send to this mailbox..."

Let me get this right - the company has an email address "CustomerCare@coffeecup.com" but messages sent to it are bounced back and we are told that they DON'T READ THEM. That is not what I call 'customer care'.

It is almost akin to Marks and Spencer making people wanting to return defective items go up to the top floor and queue to speak to someone behind a metal grill! I kid you not.! They thought their exchange policy was 'customer friendly' - it was the experience that most definitely was not. It was instead totally humiliating.

Now I know that coffeecup will resolve this hiccough, but it illustrates a phenomenon that seems increasingly common lately. The leaders of organisations believe that they have listening ears - for news from within and feedback from without. They may even have invested fortunes in the systems and processes to achieve this degree of listening. And yet, the reality is that those systems aren't working properly.

So the moral is simple really. Go home, and get your son, daughter, husband, wife, partner, friend, mother, father, or simply a mate from the pub, to go through the process of testing it for you. Give them a simple but pertinent bit of customer experience and see how easy it is for them to feed it back.

It could be a salutory lesson!

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

---

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
grahamwilson.org - businesscoaching.org.uk - inter-faith.net
thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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The risks and responsiblities of personal development

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Every now and then someone launches a new 'personal development' product that is based on providing people with a fairly profound (usually physical) experience, and then getting them to relate it to the ways in which they go through life. On one of the forums that I lead, someone posted an item about one such product. This is my response...

I am very uncomfortable with the use of activities like this as a means of personal development. My concerns revolve around four aspects;

Firstly, I think it takes a considerable leap of faith/imagination to relate what someone experiences in diving, climbing, swimming, parascending, walking on hot coals, horse riding, mountain biking, or whatever, to the day-to-day realities of their work.

Let's take a simple case - Fred is mildly claustrophobic but he goes along with the idea of a diving experience for personal development. He does it, and inevitably he comes face to face with his fear. He has unconsciously evolved a career in IT operations and works late shifts, both of which have the advantage that they mean he has less contact with other people. He knows he doesn't like confined spaces, but he hasn't related this to a general avoidance of, or polarisation in, human relationships. His personal development is limited by this working pattern and the avoidant behaviour. His claustrophobia may well have some relationship to these things, but will he be able to relate it to his career limiting behaviours?

Secondly, the facilitators of these events are rarely, if ever, trained, skilled, and experienced, in dealing with the transition that the individual is experiencing when they perform the activity.

I witnessed a perfect example of this twice this week at mass training events. Because of the nature of the sessions, it was conceivable that the (self selected) participants could be put into a position where they had to confront the unresolved grief of the loss of an infant. The main facilitator of the event recognised this possibility, and chose two of her team of co-facilitators to be ready to help such a person. The recommended action was to remove them from the room and 'talk to them'. Now, her own lack of experience in this field was highlighted by her choice of those people - two more emotionally controlled individuals it would be hard to find. They were selected because they were women, not because of any counselling skills or specialist experience in working with grieving.

Going back to Fred... He may not even remember that, as a young child, his older brother (whom he revered) smothered him in his bedding one day when they were playing and then made fun of him for crying. Nor may he remember his mother's dismissive attitude that simply told the two of them to make up and stop being so rough. OK, provided that he is accompanied by an older male instructor, the personal development experience might be the perfect opportunity to explore his responses to such authority figures, and relate that to his claustrophobic defence mechanism, but will the instructor be capable of facilitating such a profound process of personal development?

I'm afraid that my experience has been that many of the individuals who feel called to offer this kind of process, benefitted from it themselves at some stage and then assume that others will too. They do not have the necessary training, skills, or experience to understand, let alone manage, the responses that they provoke.

Related to this is my third concern... It constantly amazes me that HR professionals, will allocate a senior player in their organisation to a 'coach' expecting them to work on the individual's attitudes which are impacting on their performance at work, without any consideration of the coach's credentials to do so. This needn't be negative as performance coaching of high flyers is just as much about working with their attitudes.

Let's suppose that the 'experience' works, and Fred confronts his claustrophobia, is able to expose his anger towards his brother (subsequently projected onto all male authority figures) and returns to work incapable of continuing in his role because his coping strategies have been abruptly dismantled without new ones being developed. Shouldn't he expect the person facilitating his experience to have suitable psychological safeguards in place to protect him and his livelihood? I think he should and I think a court would too.

Finally, we have to remember that, in a corporate setting, where many of these experiences have been peddled in the past, the self-selection or voluntary participation criteria may be compromised - and often were. Peer pressure, or direct orders, may lead to someone enrolling that didn't really want to be there. The individuals may be exposing aspects of themselves, to their peers, that those people should have no reason to know about in order for the individual to do their job. And related to this, what about the person who has an unseen disability and so cannot participate? Do we have the right to exclude them from the team-building or personal development activity? I would argue not, and in both situations, I would say that this is creating a good case for constructive dismissal.

I saw a simple example of this in my own career a few years ago. So called, high flyers, were sent on a four day management development programme by the company. On the third evening, the facilitators suggested that the group of participants might take responsibility for organising some entertainment. Some kind of impromptu cabaret was put together. One of the people was a guitarist and he decided to perform songs. He got up on stage, played a couple of numbers and then chose to play something 'romantic'. He directed his gaze towards one member of the group, as professional singers might often do, as if he was singing to her. After less than a verse she ran from the room screaming and was so traumatized that she couldn't complete the final day of the course. In the long-term, had she remained with the company, this would have had a serious impact on her career. It transpired that, as a teenager, she had been raped by a singer in a band who had 'eyed' her from the stage.

Setting up personal development initiatives of all kinds exposes people to transformation that they don't necessarily expect but we need to be absolutely sure that we are equipped to deal with the consequences of these things before we do so.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, supporting leaders as they achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 3 - The Sales Model

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The model is actually quite straightforward - it needs to be, because the skilled user of it has to remember it and, in the course of a conversation, for instance, be ready to shift from one stage to another, when they pick up signals from their audience that they have got the message of a particular step.

The same model is used to structure selling conversations, the writing of articles, press releases, presentations, blog entries, brochures, flyers, and even just letters. You can also use it to plan workshops, communication campaigns, advertising programmes, and lots more - literally anything that involves 'selling' through words is best communicated this way.

Before you start anything, it is important to spend time defining precisely what you are looking for from the sales activity. "Having had this conversation, I will have been successful if... I have an agreement to a further meeting." "By the end of the presentation, I need to be able to walk up to anyone in the room and for them to know exactly what the service is that I am offering." "I expect any visitor to the website to leave me their contact details and want me to call them." It can be tough to define but it is a vital step.

The selling process is broken down into five steps, remembered by the acronym, AICDC.

ATTENTION

A simple one liner or a short paragraph, that grabs the attention of the reader/listener. It can be provocative, informative, questioning, challenging, but it HAS to grab their attention. It shouldn't lie, distort the truth, embellish, or mislead - any of those will annoy the reader when they find out.

INTEREST

This is the step that builds curiousity. It should contain enough information to make the reader/listener want to know more, but also feel that they now know more than they did before. It sounds a tough balance but it's easy when you realise that lots of people don't know when to shut up! Many people in a selling situation, try to flood their listener with far too much information - the important thing is pick up the signals that they are curious, then to stop yourself and move on to the next step. Easier when you are speaking directly with someone, harder with a large audience, and may involve some experimentation with the printed word. As a rule of thumb, this is going to be about 30% of your material - maximum. (If your material calls for loads of information, then distil the essentials for this step and provide the rest as handouts, an appendix, a data sheet, or some other medium for the person to refer to later - but don't you dare then skip the rest of the steps until they have done so!)

CONVICTION

This is where we try to build a sense of relevance to our audience. We take some of the features or information that we have alluded to in the interest step and show how it relates to the audience. This isn't an excuse to keep the information giving interest building going on for longer! "When we spoke the other day, you said..., well our data suggests..." "I guess that one of the challenges you face is..., well..." "If we look at the figures for your home area..." "It must be tough managing that kind of problem, this could be the answer...". Again, this is a maximum of 30% of your material/time/slides/words etc.

DESIRE

So, we move on to building the emotional connections. There's rarely any need to refer to your own product, service, or whatever it is that you are trying to 'sell'. In this phase, you are concentrating on helping the person experience what it will FEEL like to have your help, or sometimes, what it might FEEL like NOT to do so. "It would be a huge relief to know that..." "The sense of control that you feel having ... is really reassuring" "I don't know how you cope at the moment."

CLOSE

Once you have a sense that they can see how good it would feel to 'buy' from you, then it is time to 'close the sale'. I know this will sound awfully corny to some folks who don't think of themselves as sales-people, but it really is vital. "Let's fix an appointment when we can get together." "When would be a good time for me to ring on Tuesday with the initial results?" "Give me your card, and I will send our terms through."

There's so many different ways of closing, that there could be a separate essay on those alone, but the important thing is that entering this process you had an idea of the outcome you were looking for and the close should achieve exactly that - not a half-baked intermediate step, but the actual outcome that you wanted.

And that, as they say, is that. Remember that there were two earlier parts:

Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 2 - Writing and Public Speaking are both creative forms of selling
Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 1 - The pervasive nature of selling

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

---

Working behind the scenes, supporting leaders as they achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 2 - Writing and Public Speaking are both creative forms of selling

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You might have noticed that I do quite a lot of writing and public speaking. I actually enjoy both enormously, which helps. When I was 16, I had to sit a set of exams known then as 'O' levels. Typically we did 10 or so subjects, before specialising in the following year. English as it was taught at that time was divided into two parts - English Language and English Literature.

I never could get my head around English Literature. Don't get me wrong, I love reading... there's always a dozen books on the go at any one time, and I love the excitement of both fiction and non-fiction. But I could never understand why we had to dissect everything we read and project onto the author all our own meanings and interpretations, when we knew that they had actually just been starving, living in a garret, with a girlfriend who was pregnant, and a mistress whose husband was mysteriously powerful and they were desperately scribbling to get the money to get away from it all! Not surprisingly, when it came to the exam I scraped through with the lowest pass mark.

English Language, on the other hand, fascinated me - I couldn't handle the fancy terminology of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and so on, but I loved the incredibly inexpensive way of being creative. Give me a pen (a real one with ink in it) and several sheets of paper, and I could be lost for hours. My English Language exam wasn't without a little trauma - the exam question was to write an essay on a practical joke that misfired. I remember writing a story, in the first person, about an incident at school where a bucket of water was placed above a door and fell onto someone as they came through. The punchline went "Christ, you've bloody killed him!" And in a short paragraph at the end I described the probation sentence that we had all received.

The exam finished, and I went out to the school bus, I sat alone, I began to shake, I began to get worried, by the time I got home I was in a right state. As an adult, I'd have had a drink to settle my nerves, but of course I couldn't just do that as a kid. I don't think I explained to my parents why I wanted to disappear into my room that night - I really thought I had goofed! I even thought that I'd get into trouble for what I'd written, though I soon rationalised that one away. You can imagine the relief a few weeks later when the results came through and I'd got a top grade!

With hindsight, I'd actually applied the selling model that I'm about to share with you. As you'll see below.

After a rather upsetting experience at junior school, where one teacher used me to get at another in our annual performance of song and dance (I was "Harry Hawk" in the song "Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all"), I took a distinctly back seat when it came to the performing arts!

We had the occasional balloon debate at secondary school, where I rarely got to even try my parachute, and I remember a school trip where a large group of us were stranded on a Scottish island overnight and kept each other entertained by speaking for 2 minutes on a subject of anyone else's choosing - my exposition on "the contents of an empty crisp packet" proved so memorable that someone in Australia even remembered it over 30 years later!

It wasn't until my PhD that I really got to experience that transformational moment, where we have so completely screwed up that we vow 'never again'. I was given the chance to speak at an academic conference. I completely misjudged the audience, gave a poorly prepared presentation, tried to tell them FAR too much, got mangled in my own notes and so on. I knew it was happening, but could I stop myself?

There's more to speaking than delivering - you need to know what you are going to say, in what order, and what you want the audience to do as a result of hearing you. There are far too many speakers who don't know the answer to all three parts before they open their mouths. And that is where selling comes in again - we are trying to influence someone so that they do what we want them to do.

The selling model is great, because it provides a structure, based on a simple understanding of the psychology of decision making that you can then apply to both your writing and your speaking.

So let's think for a moment about what goes on when someone decides to do something...

There are three 'qualities' that need to be met. To be persuaded someone has to have a CURIOSITY about something. If I am not curious then I will stick to what I have always done. Curiosity is an incredibly under-acknowledged professional attitude. People who have curiosity are nice people to work with. People who express an interest in you (who are curious about your story) are the people you like and will develop friendships with. Leaders who show a genuine interest in the people they work with are the ones who people will follow despite enormous personal risk and discomfort. Curiosity keeps rigidity of thinking at bay, it brings a freshness to our experience of the world. In a funny way, curiousity keeps people young - at least in their minds if not their bodies.

The second quality is RELEVANCE. There's a reason why charities that support children and animals are more popular than others. Growing up is a tough process - it involves a lot of experiments and many failures and, while we may forget most if not all of these, we can't help but experience growing up as a time of vulnerability - a time when we depended on others to help us. Most adults can therefore empathise with others who are vulnerable. If you want to win someone over tug on their vulnerability. These charities become relevant to almost everyone. Anything that we 'sell' needs to have relevance to the other person. Some will be a direct match to their need, others will satisfy a hidden psychological connection, but they always need to be relevant.

Assuming that we have somehow fascinated the other person, or the audience, and that we have convinced them that whatever we are selling them is relevant to them, we still need to do one thing to get them to go along with it...

That third quality is EMOTION. People often say they want something. They may even devote hours to studying it. The step that is missing though is a real desire to change from what they do at the moment. Ask any weight-loss specialist, and they will say that people often know all about their diet and what they need to do to lose weight, it is simply that they haven't really got excited about being lighter.

So the selling model that I'm about to explain has to (and does) address all three - it raises curiosity, it highlights relevance and it excites the passions.

Time to go on to part three...

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, supporting leaders as they achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 1 - The Pervasive Nature of Selling

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It's funny how coincidences happen. In the last few days, I've been in conversation with three different clusters of people all of whom were trying to do similar things - they either had to prepare a document for publication, deliver a speech, or start blogging.

Are they the same thing? Well, although there are obvious differences, to my way of thinking they are almost identical - they are each trying to sell something. They have an idea and they want others to be interested in it.

If you think about it, almost all the interactions we have at work are somehow or other involved in selling - we're selling an expectation of a level of performance, a way of doing something, the desire to do it in the first place, and so on. In every case, we want someone else to do something and they don't have to do so, and therein lies the sale. Some will be easy, some will be hard, but all involve selling of some kind.

A WARNING ABOUT MODELS OF ANY SORT

Businesses are steeped in processes. They have procedures for this, procedures for that, rules, dictats, systems, and so on. Some people kid themselves that they invented this, that, or the other, methodology and then go on to make it out to be their intellectual property (IP). Of course, some such claims are legitimate - somewhere I used to have a copy of the patent application for putting bubbles in chocolate bars - now that IS a neat bit of IP. Sadly, though I reckon that many of these approaches are actually nothing more than one person's attempt to appear clever.

A long time ago, I worked for a guy who figured he had invented the definitive approach to organisational change. Don't get me wrong - he knew his stuff - he could quote all the original authors and so on - but he produced a simple six step diagram and by repeating it to himself so many times, he began to believe that he had invented the new sliced bread. One of his favourite quotes was from Alvin Toffler - that "change is the only constant". He could rattle it off with a wonderful dramatic emphasis. One day, he was working through his standard pitch when a business leader stopped him and said, "Mr R, thank you, but your model simply takes us from one state of stasis to another, that's not what anyone needs - as you said; 'change is the only constant' - I suggest that you rethink your model and come back when you've tried out the new version somewhere else."

Over lunch a few months ago, I demonstrated to one prospective consultant that I too could create a super-model to describe group dynamics - their field. Let's try it as I type...

We'll think of a topic... With COP15 on the horizon, let's try something to do with climate adaptation - I know.. a model for the collection and validation of research data will do.

HEALTH WARNING - PLEASE DON'T TAKE THIS TOO SERIOUSLY - IT IS AN ILLUSTRATION

We begin with a sexy acronym - a short word that anyone can relate to, albeit in different ways. Let's try STOOL. Nice word, conveys images of Val Doonican to some, milking parlours to others.

Problem solving methodologies have been around since pre-civilisation, and although they differ a little, most have two phases - a divergent one and a convergent one. This is just a simple case of problem solving and decision making, so let's try diverging and converging steps in our STOOL model...

We begin with something nice and big - a SURVEY, which generates lots of information, though it's not easy to relate the different strands, because they are in different languages, from different sources, and different disciplines. So we have to TRANSLATE the data. It is critical to get new opinions whenever we do anything otherwise we are in danger of missing something, so we need to take our newly translated findings and make them OPEN so others can comment. Collecting their feedback we ORGANISE both the old and the new data and then we produce a report about it - we LITERATE. There you go, we have a STOOL model for the collection and validation of climate adaptation data.

Of course, we then have to sell that model to the world's scientists, academics, and politicians. But first, we'll say it over and over to ourselves until we are convinced that it is 'robust' and then we'll slap a little TM or (C) on it so others will think it is more profound than it really was.

Now, I'm sure that you and I would never be so stupid as to think that this model had any potential what-so-ever, however there are a lot of folks out there who do exactly the same thing as I have just done, and then they sell that model. Having the idea is only a tiny part of the journey to success - the toughest bit is in the selling!

END OF SILLY MODEL BUILDING ILLUSTRATION AND EXPLANATION OF WHY I APPEARED TO DIGRESS

Now, I am very fortunate, because donkey's years ago, I was offered the chance to attend a course. It was one of a series, delivered by one of the most successful management and leadership training institutions around - with a track record that stretched back to the 1920s. They taught lots of topics within their portfolio, but the consistent theme in them all was that getting anything done involved people relating to one another and specifically, getting someone else to do something that you wanted them to do.

They too had a model. It was exactly the same kind of thing as I have illustrated just now, with exactly the same health warnings. But they knew that. They weren't so silly as to think that the secret lay in the model; they knew that the difference lay in the relationship between people. It was in the application of the model rather than the words themselves.

Their model was just a way of helping us structure our approach to influencing the other person.

I'm about to share that model with you, because I happen to find it incredibly useful, but I don't want you to forget that it is still only a model.

Time to go on to part two...

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, supporting leaders as they achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Governance, fraud and the leader's confidante

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Last week's 10th Annual Conference of Corporate Governance (#wccg09), explored alternative, hopefully more effective, means of corporate governance. What emerged clearly from the presentations and the discussion was that our current approaches to governance miss the mark. They are targeted at corporates rather than individuals, at the workforce rather than the directors, at catching rather than preventing, and are a shotgun approach when a rifle is needed.

My own paper was used to start the conference. This is a slightly modified version. I have split it into two parts for posting here.

Click here for Part 1: Governance and Fraud

Part 2 - The role of the management confidante

In recent years, we have seen a growth in the field of corporate responsibility (CR). When it began, it was called 'corporate social responsibility' (CSR), and it was about helping those who lead large organisations to see that they have a responsibility towards the societies in which they operate.

While CSR has continued to evolve and there are many excellent initiatives and third-party interventions that do genuine good for the world around us, internally it has struggled. My experience is that, in some wave of euphoria, positions were created within these businesses that have come under threat when the 'luck' I mentioned earlier has become less common.

Under pressure, the well-intentioned, individuals who filled them have had to dumb down their plans and redirect them on what should really be basic operational issues - the ways and means of reducing energy costs, limiting the risk of prosecution for environmental damage, and so on. While they were once, champions of a higher set of values in the leadership of enterprises, today they are too busy dealing with simple abuses. A few had the ear of the leaders, but most were chosen from within, for their breadth of knowledge of the business and its technical dimensions, rather than their independence, the robustness to challenge those in positions of power, and their understanding of emotions, and the emotional component of individual decision making.

Back in medieval times, a landowner, would employ a confidante - someone they knew was educated, understood the human dimension to work, worked to a set of reasonably defined 'higher values' and was not afraid to challenge the wisdom of decisions - such was the calibre of the confidante - at a time when, for others to do so, would often mean summary execution.

Of course, the role was open to abuse, and the risks were known, but were outweighed by the potential benefits - better decisions, more highly motivated staff, a greater appreciation of the softer arts of leadership, and access to an independent analytical mind. In those days, such advisers often came from monastic communities as these were the bases of education and the cultivation of personal values. The popularity of the Arthurian legends with their Merlin, of Gandalf in Tolkien's stories, of the Norse God, Odin in his wandering habit, and others indicate the degree of trust people place in this wise advisor role.

The role of the 'chaplain to a household' continued until the late Industrial Revolution. There were clearly some whose impartiality could be questioned, and whose personal circumstances made their objectivity doubtful, but such relationships were under constant review.

When armies were drawn together by personal allegiance, the chaplain to the household, would often accompany the troops, and in the Boer War and especially the First World War, chaplains became an essential integrated part of the Army. Their job was not simply to counsel the young soldiers facing death, or to minister to those who had died, but to act as confidante and advisor to those in power - bringing an emotional and spiritual dimension to decision making.

While the British military stick to fairly conventional definitions of faith and religion in defining the role of chaplain, the US has opened up considerably, recognising the importance of a far wider grasp of ethical, emotional, and spiritual issues in service decision making, and while they still have a shortage, their chaplaincy today recognises and tries to represent nearly 250 different paths to the role.

While the respect once held for Faith has diminished, and many people are no longer happy with established religions and their creeds, surveys suggest that most people now see the benefit of a wider emotional and spiritual contribution to the ways in which we govern our society. Even in the fictional world of Star Trek, the Captain of the Enterprise had his own spiritual counsellor, Deanna Troy, who provided precisely this understanding.

I am certainly not proposing that chaplains, per se, should become the guardians of morals within corporates, but I do believe that by making it the norm to have identifiable individuals with clearly credible skills, acting as emotional and spiritual advisors to the leaders of larger businesses should become an important aspect of their public governance.

Many public bodies, such as NHS Trusts, already appoint such individuals as non-executive directors. There are a growing number of businesses appointing Quaker advisors to their management boards.

Is it unreasonable for us to expect the annual Company Report, to document the specific actions that each director has undertaken for their continuous professional development? Is it unreasonable to include in this a record of the number of hours of 'supervision', as the psychological profession call it, and perhaps even the credentials of the supervisor in the fields of emotional, spiritual and ethical development?

Whatever the title of these confidantes, I believe it is time for us to try different approaches and I hope that above all, these crucial aspects of management will be incorporated by future generations. The new generation, Generation WE, is demanding a new approach, and they explicitly mention spirit in their manifesto. It is up to us, baby boomers, to respond.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Governance, fraud and management of emotion in decision making

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Last week's 10th Annual Conference of Corporate Governance (#wccg09), explored alternative, hopefully more effective, means of corporate governance. What emerged clearly from the presentations and the discussion was that our current approaches to governance miss the mark. They are targeted at corporates rather than individuals, at the workforce rather than the directors, at catching rather than preventing, and are a shotgun approach when a rifle is needed.

My own paper was used to start the conference. This is a slightly modified version.

Part 1: Governance and Fraud

Our approaches to corporate governance in recent years have tended to revolve around regulatory frameworks, reporting structures, and operating standards. As if to justify the time we devote to them and, more importantly, the time we expect other people to spend on them, we delude ourselves that we are defining ways of achieving good outcomes for the day-to-day management of an enterprise. It seems extraordinary but some people seriously believe that filling in this form, following that procedure, making this statement on the bottom of our emails, or secreting a link in tiny print at the bottom of our website to a load of legalise, both absolves us of almost any personal responsibility and magically impacts on the bottom line of the business. It is a joke - a delusion. If we look back over the last 18 months we see that just about every one of those institutions that contributed to the economic 'meltdown' had all these components in place.

In practice, however, what we are really trying to address is the propensity for fraud to happen in business environments.

These frameworks, structures and standards are translated and imposed on organisations that have little or no need for them; where fraud relatively rarely happens and, when it does, it is of far less substantial scale. The end result is an ineffective approach and a bureaucratic burden, applied too widely, that achieves little.

These measures try to strike a balance between the preventative, the deterrent, and the retrospective. In practice, many so-called preventative measures merely define the technical system through which the fraudster must navigate. Deterrents have existed ever since formal legal systems emerged millennia ago and yet the courts still have a steady stream of increasingly sophisticated corporate frauds to deal with. For the kind of people determined to defraud, deterrents simply don't work. Retrospective measures may make us feel vindicated in the long-run, but do nothing to stop the hurt that is caused by the frauds. Our focus therefore has to be on prevention.

In the last two years, a number of businesses, indeed whole industries, have been exposed for their irresponsible behaviour - where they failed to assess adequately the risks they were taking with the assets of others. These have been so extreme, that the global economic system has been shaken. There are signs of recovery, and sadly, I believe that the opportunity is rapidly being lost to reinvent many of these pointless Governance measures and to replace them with more effective and targeted approaches.

While organisational theorists can identify dynamic processes (group think, collusiveness, scape-goating, and so on) that are happening well beyond the ken of mere mortals, I prefer a slightly more down-to-earth perspective.

Despite what corporate lawyers will tell you, companies do not do actually do anything. They are inanimate. It is people that do things and when they do so within the structure of a corporation it may appear as if the company is doing something, but - at the end of the day - it is the people inside it that are doing so. Even when it is of the magnitude of the recent debacles, corporate fraud always emanates from one individual, or at most a small handful, usually with one persuasive leader.

Our approach therefore has to focus on individuals.

Most corporate fraud appears to happen in democratized countries within large businesses. There are obviously exceptions, but this appears to be the commonest environment. Large businesses are actually quite a small part of the world of work. The largest employers in the world are the Chinese Red Army, Indian State Railways, and the National Health Service (NHS). While I am sure that they have their problems, there are relatively few instances of large-scale individually-generated, corporate fraud associated with them. There appears to be a difference in the set of values espoused by those who work 'not-for-profit' to the values that drive people who work in the world of 'profit'. Corruption is about values and our approaches to governance need to reflect this.

Similarly, the Gross National Product (GNP) of democratised nations is generally dominated by the micro-business community. Far more people work for themselves or for very small companies than do so for the large corporates and, while the ethics of some of their trading practices will always be open to criticism (as the victims of dodgy builders and itinerant car dealers will vouch), it is not the small fry that our approaches need to address. We need to concentrate on the behaviour of people within larger businesses.

Psychologists of crime, tell us that such people often begin with small misdemeanours and when they get away with these, so they slowly escalate. It is by no means a coincidence that a disproportionate number of speeding and parking offences are apparently committed by those in senior positions in business. When those in other positions of influence commit relatively minor offences, (such as a senior police officer caught speeding, a senior civil servant caught fiddling their lunch expenses, or a hospital administrator seeking personal favours) they are so exceptional that they hit the headlines. Such small scale offences are so common among business-people that it rarely even warrants a mention in the local newspaper.

Fraud, broadly speaking, falls into four categories;
That committed against an organisation by a (usually senior) member of it. This includes offences against shareholders and creditors by high-flying entrepreneurs.
That committed against an organisation by a client, such as insurance fraud, tax evasion, and abuse of benefits.
Acts committed by one individual against another, including the classic 'con' tricks and trade 'scams'.
And those where a number of victims are solicited indirectly, such as the Nigerian advanced fee frauds perpetrated via email.

When we talk of governance, we are largely addressing corporate fraud by one of a small number of senior members of an organisation against the other stakeholders in it.

To be successful in business calls for self-confidence, hard work, a preparedness to adapt to failure, the ability to cope with being alone, and large measures of good luck. Sadly, it seems that when things are going well, when luck is available in copious quantities, we often dismiss it, and perceive our success as being entirely down to our own skills and attitudes. In some people, (and, of course, no-one reading this paper or attending the conference could possibly be in this category), this perception breeds an arrogance, a sense of invincibility, that can lead even individuals who are otherwise quite law-abiding, to think that they are above the law, that they are a 'special case', indeed that they are not answerable to anyone.

We have known that an individual's perception that they are 'above' the rules that society creates, is embedded in their childhood - typically around 7 to 9 years of age. It is directly related to the relative absence of their father in their upbringing. Many social problems, especially those affecting young men, originate from the values developed through this absence, whether it was caused by the breakdown of marriages, military service, schooling away from home, or the 'long hours' working culture. If we are to look at ways of preventing corporate fraud, and many other ills, we need to better handle the phenomenon of single parent families, and parenting skills generally.

It seems that most of those who go on to commit commercial fraud have recently experienced financial strain or vulnerability. While they may appear affluent to the rest of us, they see themselves as being at a disadvantage, but it is often the consequential fear of loss of power, influence or status that they later report as the triggers to their criminal behaviour. This is an emotional response. It is rooted deeply within the individual and is not something that can be erased by simplistic awareness raising, 'compliance' training. Our approaches to governance need to recognise the emotional response behind fraud.

We need to provide those individuals most likely to be tempted to defraud with appropriately skilled, long-term counter-balances to help them 'normalise' their thinking. I stress again, that this doesn't mean company-wide immersion style interventions, but instead highly targeted approaches when someone begins to assume the degree of authority that might open the box of temptation to them. Corporate fraud is not always done for the direct personal gain of the individual - as I've said, it is often more complex than that.

Many frauds begin as a one-off response to the person's sense of vulnerability, albeit by an individual who has already learned that they can 'get away' with minor misdemeanours. Once their fraud is apparently successful though, we know that many begin to gain some secondary pleasure in the knowledge that they are fooling the world, and especially that they are demonstrating their superiority to others. The likelihood of committing fraud is therefore a long-term phenomenon - it is not a one-off event, but something that has a life-cycle. The emotional counter-balances that we provide to such corruption-prone individuals therefore need to be embedded within the norm of their day-to-day work, not one-off responses, or short-term fixes.

Part 2 will follow in a few days time.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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The interesting case of an OVER performing team

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Some days, it is magic! You can imagine my surprise when I was sent the following conundrum by email this afternoon, by someone who is supposedly a Leadership mentor and yet needed to ask for advice in dealing with it! It seems one of his contacts (a specialist in organisational culture no less) had asked him for help with a relatively rare leadership issue - I quote in full to make sure that no-one is in any doubt about the nature of the problem....

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Dear (name removed to protect the 'guru')

We (I) lead a group of field based service culture consultants. Over the past 5 years, we've been through a tremendous amount of change in supported programs and phases of implementation vs support roles. Through it all, we've been a bit of an experiment for the company, so we've been in "hyper-drive" to develop our people to deliver at aspirational levels to "prove our worth". As you can imagine, this type of continual Q1 focus takes its toll on all, and burn out sets in. I own the responsibility for creating this environment.

Moreover, we are at a point now in which there is no longer a need for "hyper-drive" leadership - things are running well and I believe that we can slow down to maintain successes and engage a realistic continual improvement plan. But here's the rub - I can't get my down-line leadership team to slow down! I have been deliberately watching my words and actions to set a more even-keel environment, but they are all very committed and can't seem to break the 5 year habit. Throw a reorg on top of it all and well... you get the picture.

So, can you provide any insight/stories about how I, as the leader, can model and support a change in our situational leadership mode, as well as anything that might be insightful to share with them to help realize that there can be a work-life balance when you understand priorities and see where we are in the big picture?

Thanks for your guidance!

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So that's the problem. Perhaps you'd like to spend a nanosecond thinking through YOUR response?

OK, that will do! Here's mine...

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Nice to have an easy one for once...

Simple, but attention to detail is important.

Firstly, though, I need some basic information... Key to this is what your CURRENT profit is? I'm happy to accept answers in US Dollars, Pounds Sterling, or Euros.

Next, I'd like to know what level of profit you would be happy to achieve if the team could be encouraged to slow down. Ideally, in the same currency, but if you really need to quote in a different one, I can cope.

Now, I'd like you to do the arithmetic and calculate the difference. I realise that there are two different ways to get the same answer, either will do.

Got an answer? Great. Now, I'm glad that you have top/core team agreement to this need, as it is vital to the success of the next step...

I'd like you to speak to the CFO, and ask him (it is generally better to ask, rather than write, and if there are subsequent conversations, choose a different place for each one)...

To transfer the figure that you came up with - the difference between the two profits - (Hey! I heard that one too... but the answer is a bit too spiritual for this forum.) - to the private bank account in Switzerland that I'm going to send you by private message.

OK? Great. Now the joy of this solution, is that YOU don't have to do ANYTHING with your team - they are just fine - they can carry on as if NOTHING changed. No fancy consultancy programmes, no clever acronyms, no boxer shorts printed with "go slower" slogans. Just plain and simple.

Told you it was easy!

PS For anyone with the opposite problem - a team that need to produce more, yesterday - give me a call or email - my website is www.grahamwilson.org!

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Bank holidays, portfolio careers and winter cold cures

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I was interviewed by someone from the Economist the other day about 'portfolio careers'. It was a weird conversation as she clearly hadn't got a clue what I was talking about. She had a reason why almost every strand of my work wasn't a 'real' career, the only bit she could relate to was writing and, obviously, I am "only an amateur at that". In the end, she (clearly disappointed) drew the interview to a close and asked what I would be doing over the Bank Holiday... She still didn't get it when I said that like many 'portfolio careerists', I'd be working!

I hope you get some time off - me, I'm about to make the winter's supply of Elderberry 'cordial' which has nothing to do with work other than (hopefully) keeping me at it when the germs start circulating later in the year!

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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How PowerPoint contributed to the Columbia re-entry disaster

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There are only a handful of authors whose books have been pivotal to my career. Perhaps one day I'll write a definitive list. Some that I can think of right now are;

John Rhodes' "Badgers Bend - Animal Hotel"

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's "On Growth and Form"

Tom Peters "A Passion for Excellence"

Richard Feynman's "Lectures on Physics" and...

Edward Tufte's "The visual display of quantitative information"

Strange mix, but there we are! It's been a long time since I've read any of them, and, to be honest, hadn't expected to come across any new work by any of the authors (at least two of them are dead, after all!). So it was a delight to come across Edward Tufte's blog, and to see that he is still very much involved in his field - in a very substantial and dramatic way.

Edward Tufte is younger than I had assumed him to be, from my early encounter with his work. He is an American statistician and Professor Emeritus of statistics, information design, interface design and political economy at Yale University. He has been described by The New York Times as "the da Vinci of Data", and by Business Week as "the Galileo of graphics". He is an expert in the presentation of informational graphics such as charts and diagrams, and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association.

When I was completing my PhD, I was lent a copy of his seminal book, The visual display of quantitative information, I can very honestly say (and I doubt if anyone would take issue with this) that I have never been enthralled by a statistics book - and I can't really say I was by Tufte's book, but no-one could dispute that this one made you realise how important it was going to be to you from the very first few pages.

If you would like to understand a little of the importance of Tufte's work and, if you EVER use PowerPoint to do presentations, then I strongly recommend visiting his blog and looking at this excerpt from one of his books: PowerPoint does Rocket Science. Be prepared to feel a little angry as the story unfolds!

If Prof Tufte should ever read this little tribute, I should like to say thank you. Your work influenced me profoundly and, especially in the earlier part of my own career, it was frequently in my mind and undoubtedly led to some of my own minor successes.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Speed networking - not all it is cracked up to be

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This evening, I received an invitation to attend a speed networking event in Berkshire. Now, I'm not particular keen on these kind of events, because I do feel that relationships are important in business, but the chance to have an afternoon building my business seemed appealing - especially as it involves an expenditure of only £25.

I may still go, as much out of curiosity, as having high expectations of the event. But, why should I have such limited expectations? Well, the organisers PROUDLY tell me:

"Our first event in Chelmsford attracted some 24 businesses and we had very positive feedback from all attendees, including two companies who received three orders, and a quality consultant who won a new contract."

Now their English is a little unclear: do they mean that there were SEVEN new bits of work that came from this event or only FOUR? Well, either way, my old schoolboy statistics A-level comes out and I do the obvious calculation. On the basis that any pair of companies present could have done business either way, with that number of businesses there were actually 552 potential combinations (ie initial bits of work). This means, at best a conversion rate of 1.3% and at worst a conversion rate of 0.7%.

Now, I don't know what kind of result you would expect, but those don't really seem that impressive to me. What do you think?

If you're interested nontheless, you'll find the organisers website here: www.speednetworkingberkshire.co.uk

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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How to turn down a job offer

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Even though we are in a recession and so job opportunities are harder to come by, it is important not to leap at the first offer if taking it would force you to compromise yourself further than you are prepared to go.

It ALWAYS pays to talk through the compromises that a job offer represents with someone else, preferably someone who can be more objective than you.

Having decided not to accept, you need to decide how to say NO. In these days of networking, it is vital that you do so in a professional manner that leaves room for a relationship to continue even if you are not going to join their firm, or are being recruited through a third party. You need these people in your network of contacts - you need to be in their mind should a MORE SUITABLE opportunity come up in the future.

So how do you say NO? There are really five key messages to get over:

1 Say how grateful you are for the offer (and mean it!)

2 Let them know how much effort you have put into your decision. It is worthwhile spelling out some of the key factors that attracted you initially. "Your approach to XX was particularly impressive, and I could see how much I would have enjoyed working with the members of your team who were involved in the selection process."

3 Explain the detailed reasons for your decision. These CAN be directly related to the job as it emerged to you through interviews etc, or it may be something professional, longer-term, or personal.

4 Reiterate that you treat the choice of place to work very seriously and feel that you need to be sure that the role will be one in which you can really excel, and that this particular opportunity therefore didn't feel right.

5 End your 'turn down' in a way that demonstrates openness and a desire to maintain contact. Say that you hope that they will still consider you for other positions, and/or that you hope to meet them in a networking capacity in the future.

If they try to press you to join them, then it's worth exploring what would need to change to make it a better prospect.

If not, then move them to your list of networking contacts and begin to build the relationship. It amazes me how many people, having turned down a job offer (or simply not making it through to that stage) sever all contact with the recruiter or the company. It is precisely this group of people that you need to embrace in your network.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Business preparedness for swine flu - oh, come on!

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Yes, I know that it's easy to be cynical, but when you receive an official email from a Government quasi-Quango, with particular responsibility for business continuity in the small to medium enterprise sector, containing important guidance on how to deal with swine flu, you just know that it's going to be a laugh!

Well, Business Link, in a remarkably quick response, have jumped on the bandwagon, and issued advice on just that topic. You can read:

Recommendations for workplace hygiene.

Putting contingency plans in place.

Managing employee absence.

How to cCommunicate with your employees.

Now, apart from the fact that this is addressed to SMEs, where it is as likely to be the owner/sole trader who is ill as it an 'employee', and who can presumably communicate with him- or her-self while recumbent in bed just as easily as when slaving over a hot desk, I doubt if reminding this individual to wash their hands after they have been to the loo is really going to do a lot for the prevention of flu of any kind, let alone swine flu!

However, the idea that to counter this dreadful contagion you should "create a list of the transferable skills of each employee and consider who could be retrained or redeployed in the event of staff absence." is obviously a good one. No doubt your husband or wife will find it helpful being reminded how to answer the phone and reassure customers that it's not really fatal - unless there are underlying health problems (and you don't know of any), but if your partner should not get back to them in a couple of weeks assume the worse and find another supplier. Actually to save spreading the disease through unsterilised telephone systems, perhaps it would be better to record an answerphone message instead.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember though is that before you succumb, you are advised to "ensure IT systems can cope with high numbers of employees working from home." In other words, when the cantancerous old so-and-so is on the mend, make sure that they have their laptop plugged in and connected to the broadband, because as a swine flu survivor they are sure to want to tell everyone about their miraculous recovery and the fact that their business survived too!

Have a laugh, read more here: http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=5001344587&type=ONEOFFPAGE&site=210

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Climate mitigation - McDonalds takes a lead

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Be honest, you didn't expect to read that did you?!

Well, in 2007, the US fast food industry consisted of around 250000 outlets, of which McDonald's alone had 14000 in the US and a further 32000 worldwide. Fast food outlets are extraordinarily inefficient environmentally, so it's good to see that, by the end of this year, the Big Mac will have TEN gold-standard buildings WORLDWIDE. (My emphasis.)

Their first such building opened in Sweden in 2000 (ie NINE YEARS AGO) and they currently have SEVEN. Apparently though, their commitment to such measures is increasing!

These buildings' features include lamps that use light-emitting diodes, energy efficient appliances and heating and cooling systems, daylight-harvesting technologies, sustainable and recycled materials, low-flow toilets and recycling bins. No, that was not a mistake... they are actually going to have RECYCLING bins.

I'm glad that they are taking such a lead. Sadly though, I think this reeks of being an insult to the intelligence of their customers. PR department - shoot thyself in the foot!

Read more here: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200907171300DOWJONESDJONLINE000671_FORTUNE5.htm

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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The role of a psychotherapist's supervisor

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Wow, I just received a sharp rebuttal for an article I wrote about writing to build your counselling/psychotherapy practice. The individual wanted me to know that she was 'outraged' that I had implied that marketing advice was a part of the role of a psychotherapist's supervisor.

So what is their role?

The textbook definition is that they are there to protect the therapist's clients.

OK that's fine and there are many ways to achieve this. In my experience though this is only a small part of the role. Especially in the early stages of a counselling career, there may be a need to review every client in a selective but 'verbatim' manner. (He said; I said etc) However, this need should soon evaporate and the dialogue can become more expansive.

The four areas that I find most therapists relish are aspects of personal therapy, work around their impact and presence in the world generally, developing their personal brand of therapy, and how to take themselves to market.

Personal Therapy

We are all aware that (from time-to-time, at least, all the time, perhaps) clients bring material that has some relevance to the therapist themselves. If the therapist is in personal therapy on a regular basis, then they can, of course, take this material to those sessions, but the reality is that many practising therapists stopped this some time ago. It is in both the interests of the client and the therapist to work on this in supervision. Of course, it can go deep and that might either mean that the supervision contract needs reviewing, or that the individual decides to go back into personal therapy, but either way the starting point is in supervision.

Expanding their worldly influence

Therapists chose to study and qualify because they had issues with their own history. This is one of the reasons why therapy trainings last so long! We can't be effective until we find some resolution for this material. Relatively few people seek help because they are highly socially outgoing and feel confident in public! (That isn't to say that all people who sustain a strong public profile ARE confident - we all know that most comedians and many entertainers have a long history of personal trauma and mental health crises.) Once an inner resolution is achieved to this, and the therapist finds that they have the resources to offer something to their clients, then I tend to find that they become restless and want to have a greater impact still. I don't think it is any coincidence that many leading psychotherapists, past and present, take a strong interest, and become involved, in social change and politics. As someone with whom they have a personal relationship, who understands their professional pedigree, and who has the skills to help them find voice to this drive, the supervisor is an obvious choice of support. As this often embraces their perspective on clients and their issues too, it again seems to me to be perfectly right for it to form a part of the role of a supervisor. Putting it another way, if a therapist DOESN'T feel a desire to expand their sphere of influence, at least to some degree, then I would be worried that they had not actually found an inner resolution to their own issues and might need to work on them more.

Developing a personal brand of therapy

Straight from training, a lot of therapists fret that they might break some rules, don't fully understand the subject, can't perform perfectly and so on. That's understandable. Some idolise their particular strand of trainings 'guru' - past or present. It slightly frightens me how many graduates go back to their original school, still in love with their trainers, and manage to have affairs with them - which is an indictment of the trainers rather than the graduates, but also reflects pretty poorly on the training itself. But I digress... putting idolatry to one side... Freud, Jung, Adler, etc, all started out as a student, graduated, continued to learn, developed the confidence to assert their own ideas, and did so. They developed a personal brand of therapy. Every practising therapist needs a personal brand. In my experience, far too many therapists complain that they don't get many clients and yet, when you look at their literature and their approach to marketing themselves the image is so cloudy and so confused that no-one seeking clarity (which most clients are) would consider going to them. To do this in isolation is likely to yield to either intellectually interesting but practically useless outpourings, or to dangerous distortions. To do so in dialogue is likely to mature and enrich these personal ideas and themes. Freud and Jung might have fallen out - for which they are famous - but the important thing was that they were engaged in dialogue beforehand which helped them each develop their perspectives. Of course, you needn't use your supervisor for this nurturing of ideas, and some supervisors themselves find it hard to do, but personally, I see it as an important aspect of the work. The supervisor is a part of the mechanism of the ongoing professional development of the therapist and if they aren't up to enhancing the intellectual grasp of their supervisee's practice then I wonder why they are a supervisor.

Helping the therapist go to market

And so to the original reason for this article... Should the supervisor help their supervisee develop their marketing plan and take themselves to market? Clients are protected best by having an experienced therapist with well-founded confidence and clarity of mind. They achieve this through practise. You practise by having clients - therefore you need clients. If a supervisor is to help you achieve your best, they need to help you find sufficient clients. Some will be able to do this by virtue of their position - supervisors at 'centres' usually have responsibility for referrals - some will do so with clients they can't accommodate in their own private practise - others will help the supervisee develop their own marketing plan and help them put it into place. Whatever the means, a therapist without clients is not going to keep coming to the supervisor for long, so it is in both parties interests for the supervisor to embrace this as a part of their role.

I hope that explains how I see my role as a supervisor, and how I experience my own supervisor. If it offends anyone, I am sorry, but there really are no black and white areas in the fields of human relations and perhaps it would be worth your while exploring where your own models have come from - I'm not saying you are wrong, simply that there are alternatives.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Writing to build your counselling/psychotherapy practice

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52 Themes for Counsellors and Psychotherapists to write about in their local paper

This list began with a conversation between two therapists. They wanted to build their local practices, and had decided that they wanted to find a way of getting people to come to see them. They'd tried all kinds of leaflet drops - doctors' surgeries, hairdressers, florists, funeral directors, coffee-shops and so on.

They decided to try to get a regular column in a local newspaper. Having created a list of topics, similar to this one, they scoured the local papers (including the freebies) until they found a couple that looked good possibilities. They wrote up a half dozen themes into short 250-word articles which appeared to be the size of a typical 'column' in the papers concerned, and sent them to one of the editors asking for feedback. Within a month the first appeared. It took another couple of months for the trickle of clients to build up. On occasions after publication, they had follow up calls from the local radio stations and appeared on those briefly too.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for their creativity to dry up and instead of a regular column they ended up sending ad hoc articles instead. Fortunately, by then they had a steady enough stream of ongoing referrals.

1 New Year Resolutions
2 Why birth can be so painful
3 On death and dying
4 Why grief is necessary
5 When the children go to school
6 Giving up
7 Being yourself
8 Why marriages fail and how to stop them
9 How to find a good therapist
10 Churchill's black dog
11 Whose anger is it anyway?
12 When all your choices seem to go wrong
13 Learning from our own life
14 How talking cures work
15 Feeling deserted
16 When the children leave home
17 Mid-life crises
18 Too much anxiety
19 Why suicide?
20 Getting your bloke to love you
21 There is always a choice
22 Growing old is never easy
23 Do you cry a lot?
24 Helping your child tackle bullies
25 What's this thing called love?
26 The outsider looking in
27 Surviving childhood abuse
28 Building confidence
29 Feeling proud of yourself
30 When Christmas loses its cheer
31 Tackling money worries
32 Falling out of love
33 It was never meant to be like this
34 The human need for meaning
35 Hate is a powerful word
36 No place to hide
37 Why some people are just plain spiteful
38 How fear can grip you
39 How to cope when things go wrong
40 How to cope when you lose control
41 Breaking up is never easy
42 Dealing with addiction
43 Listening skills for parents
44 Putting something behind you
45 Finding meaning in life
46 Building a social circle
47 An unnatural fear of intimacy
48 Sexual healing
49 Patterns from the past
50 What has pain got to do with it?
51 Now you've tried pulling yourself together
52 When you don't look the way you want to

If you want to discuss this approach, explore other ways of building your professional practice, or get the kind of support that you really want from a supervisor, then do get in touch.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Making heroes out of leaders

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Reading Neil Oliver's "Amazing tales for making men out of boys", published in 2008, has set me off on a reflective trail of current leadership wisdom. Corporate and political leadership, especially, have come under the cosh a great deal lately, largely around the ethical dimension, and I think Oliver's book offers some good material to explore what has gone wrong and and what needs to go right.

Unfolding the sotry of Scott's death in the Antarctic with a remarkable collection of heroic tales ranging from the Ancient Spartans to Apollo 13, Oliver explores what it takes to be a leader and a hero. Depending on your definition, not all heroes and leaders, but (often unknowingly) all leaders are someone's hero.

These days, whether out of political correctness, fear of the outcome, simple illiteracy, or ignorance, we don't tell tales of heroes. Whenever someone does something out of the ordinary, it seems the 'gutter press' are out to discover the dirt in the story or the skeleton(s) in their closet and soon the hero is undermined.

In the past, it was by knowing the stuff of legends, whether lived in their lifetime or not, that new heroes were groomed, so that they too could take a place in history. Oliver's heroes are adventurers, conquerors, the conquered, the wealthy and the poor, the privileged and the underdog, the politically astute and the poor souls who found themselves in the wrong place, at what was arguably the wrong time. Yet, they all showed heroism by doing the right thing when the situation called for it.

Do we need heroes these days and, if we do, under what circumstances?

Oliver draws some tentative conclusions about what makes a hero which certainly make a useful starting point. Heroes, it seems, have fathers who they would like to prove themselves to. Their mothers who have played other than normal roles in their lives; perhaps being responsible for the care of their mother earlier than you would expect, perhaps being too close for comfort, perhaps dying in their childhood. Heroes have often grown 'apart' from their family and other children - not always being comfortable in their company and, as adults, often socially ill-at-ease, especially with the other sex.

Heroes have a strong sense of duty to a body greater than themselves and their family. Whether to their regiment, society, the nation, clan, or humanity as a whole. This is not simply a question of putting others needs above their own; it is about being prepared - indeed even expecting - to sacrifice their own life for the sake of others. Heroes place little emphasis on the act of dying itself. While, no doubt, there are some humanist heroes most, it appears, see death as a transition rather than a final act, and therefore, they usually have some Faith that embraces such a continuum.

There are some fascinating examples of individuals who were driven by their own needs and aspirations and for whom 'success' proved elusive until they put these aside and acted self-lessly for a higher good. For those who were also leaders a consistent quality is a deep and detailed concern for the day-to-day welfare of their 'followers'. Frequently, this is not simply a question of showing an interest, but of a passionate concern - giving more than might be expected of a leader in a position of power. In return, they are not simply respected but loved, and the degree of commitment shown to them is not merely that of an employee but a devotion that could be beyond that shown to their family - and could too include the ultimate sacrifice.

While a few of Oliver's examples are individuals for whom their behaviour, in an instant, defined them as heroic, most were serial heroes. One event perhaps stands out. Often, though not always, this was their final act, but for many it was an early step in a long life of heroism.

So, a few questions for the leaders among us to ponder...

What precisely is our personal 'higher aspiration'? We might struggle to define it, and our life may not currently reflect it, but to achieve our fullest potential as a leader we should have some inkling and be working towards it on a day-to-day basis.

What is our attitude to death? Especially our own. Or another way of looking at this would be to ask what is our attitude to our own life? To what extent do we deny its possibility? Without hastening it, what do we do to simply delay the inevitable? And, what do we put off doing today on the assumption that there will be time later?

Few of us work in isolation. These days fewer still have direct 'reports', as corporate hierarchies would have them, but most of us have a number of people who are dependent on us or for whom we have some responsibility. How many would say we cared about them? How many would say our care went beyond what they might reasonably expect? What could we do, on a day-to-day basis, and from tomorrow (no later), to achieve this degree of concern?

We often get drawn into a career path that is about perpetuating the status quo. It may involve material growth but nonetheless it is about perpetuation of a system of hierarchy and seniority. I often hear leaders say, once they have retired, "this is how I wish others would do things - it isn't how I did them, but with the benefit of hindsight, it is how I wish I had." So, how about changing the time-scale? Don't wait until you retire and apologetically advise the new generation. Instead, why not take a stand? Be a hero. Regardless of the personal consequences, make a change for the better in your work. What could/should you, your business, your industry, do differently and what could you do to make this happen?

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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