A Wise King

‘A king with no advisors is king of ignorance.
A king with one advisor is king of bias.
A king who believes all-comers is king of confusion.’

Years ago I worked for a very experienced Manager. He had a reputation for being strong willed and not suffering fools, and if you let him down or exposed him to trouble, you knew about it. He had many years of experience in the industry and you could pretty much say that he’d seen it all.

With all the experience and knowledge he still had an interesting habit. Every Wednesday, at the end of the day, he would sit down with the HR Manager and say ‘What do I need to know?’ and he would sit and listen. He listened to things that were not his favourite topic. He was not a fluffy kind of guy, he didn’t do the people stuff easily. But he listened and found out what was going on and sought the HR Manager’s counsel.

Over the many years since I have helped organisations re-structure and have seen many of the trends in that field. Outsourcing and insourcing come and go, the arrival of the COO and what that means for structure.
I’ve seen the trend to pull all your ‘service functions under one division with one manager looking after HR, Legal, Finance, Public Affairs etc to and its that one that I’ve been thinking about recently after a number of chats with CEO’s and MD’s. Many of these organisations are finding that the ‘Senior Team’ or ‘Executive’ is largely made up of the Business Unit or Operation Leaders, with the one head of ‘Shared Services’ and the CEO/MD themselves.
Any organisation is only going to be as good as the conversation that happens around that table. And whilst alignment is good, over-alignment caused by lack of balance is a risk for business.

I’ve always thought that one of the key roles of HR, Legal, Public affairs, Finance etc was to provide council and be the voice of conscience for their area of expertise. Not just a shared service function delivering functional transactional activity. So keeping these voices away from the executive table means the CEO might not be hearing everything that he or she needs to hear. Expecting the head of the shared function to do this is a risk too as there is no way that they can be an expert in all areas (and didn't you set up their role to create synergies and cost effectiveness, not to become an quasi expert in everything?)

I’m not suggesting that you restructure to create an executive of 12 so that you have all the subject matter experts at the table all the time. But a wise CEO finds ways of getting the guidance that is needed in balance and gives his/her councillors time to give counsel.

Just like my old boss, you might not like what you hear but what he knew was that not hearing it would mean that a problem would arise that you would like to hear even less.

The Legal Minimum?

There are few businesses out there that have not had to restructure at some time or another. Sometimes its because their market has gone downhill and they need to ‘retrench’ and at other times its because they need to grow and re-invest in technology. Either way jobs change and some jobs are removed or ‘dis-established’.

When these situations occur good companies have always worked things through with their employees and managed the change with integrity and with respect for those whose lives will change. Of course, not everyone does it well and in my ‘leading through transition’ workshops I give a few examples that I have seen where distinct lack of empathy was shown.
Its because of those businesses who don't see the benefit of managing change well (and there are many), that laws are put in place. Whatever country you are reading this from I know that you will be subject to some laws that are meant to protect employees from poor management practice. In New Zealand we are no different and have laws that require us to consult with our employees on the proposed changes that an employer wants to put in place. I can see the good intentions behind that idea. A good employer should want to engage with their workforce to work the changes through and would want their ideas in how best to implement the change. In the past, before such legislation, I have tried that approach and honestly explained the problem and opened up discussions with the workforce. Unfortunately it doesn’t really work and that is the first of the two problems with the legislative approach to managing restructuring.
The first thing that crosses anyones mind when you say that you have to bring about change in the business and that means some jobs have to go or change is that people are immediately concerned about ‘me’. What do you think would happen if you tried engaging in a decent wide ranging conversation to explore all ideas and options when you are thinking ‘this could mean I lose my job’ or ‘this could be a nice tidy sum and early retirement’? Natural human instincts of self preservation come in and you don’t have an honest conversation at all. The only person that you have such a conversation with is someone who is not affected. What happens when engage with the workforce in this way is that they soon say ‘You are management! Its your job to sort these things, why haven’t you done it?’
And soon you are back to the original approach of management coming up with a proposal and then talking it through with the workforce.

And then the second problem with the legislative approach comes in. The thing about the law is that it is open to interpretation. In fact there are people whose whole livelihood depends on their ability to interpret it differently and win. That means the law is never truly fixed and you are always looking at the last case and the last interpretation. This means that every time you start a consult you are spending a lot of your time trying to avoid being the next test case because going to court costs a lot of money with those guys who enjoy debating the law that you didn’t intend to break in the first place.
And how do you avoid being another case? By managing your proposal and process as tightly as possible. In fact in many cases the employer choses to follow a line of doing the legal minimum. Its often easier, as the less you say the less likely you are to get in to trouble. In addition you minimise risk by working the possible restructuring down to the tightest option. That means there is not a lot to discuss with the workforce as there are no real options. In fact I have sat with employers who have moved away from the smartest decision for the business, and in the long run their people, because that choice could result in a challenge in court.

Simplistically the less you say and the tighter the options you offer, the less likely you are to be really consulting and that defeats the higher intent of the reason for the legislation in the first place.

Why has this happened? Well, the courts have got wary of people who use restructuring as a way of managing performance and that means many of the actions in court and the decisions being made are to make it tougher on employers who may be trying this. Of course it is another story to consider why it could be easier to manage a restructuring than to manage poor performance but lets leave that aside. The point is that some employers try this route and the more they do so, the tougher the courts will make their testing of cases to see if it was a true consult.
Can we change it? I’m not sure whether we can unless the legislation is overhauled, but it may help if employers restructure when they need to restructure and manage performance when that is required!

Strategies for sameness

Let me ask you a question. 'How unique is your business/division?'
If you could rate your business/division out of 10 for uniqueness what score would you give it?.
When I talk uniqueness I mean the kind of uniqueness that gets you market-place advantage over anyone else.

Unless you are one of the few products in the world that has a complete monopoly, you are likely to have someone who competes with you in the market. Your product may look different, taste a little different, be presented differently, named differently, but at a basic level its still something that someone else can make. In fact the consumer choice of your product over another is a preference. A car is still a car however well you market it.

So is there much true uniqueness there in your product?
If you are offering a service it's likely that many other people will be offering that service too.
The conditions that surround your business are likely to be the same as your competition. The same marketplace, same customers to target, same environment, same labour pool opportunities. So no real uniqueness there. In fact a pretty level playing field.

The things that make your business unique or not must therefore be within your control. That means that they must be within your business/division and not in the context around you.
So how unique is your business inside? You think you score close to 10?

Do you have a unique vision, mission and values set? Really?
Is your strategising process commonly used?
Do you follow commonly methodologies to develop business plans?
Do you demand consistency on a daily basis but ask for innovation on that one strategy day?
So is your strategic start point really unique? Does your strategy give you advantage?

Lets look at the processes and tools you use to deliver strategy:

Do you use a commonly available I.T platform?
Do you use a commonly available data management tool?
Do you use a commonly available CRM system?
Do you buy and use commonly available equipment?
Is the machinery you use for manufacturing commonly available?
Is your office/factory any different from those around you?
Do your suppliers supply other people?
Do you have much uniqueness there? Are you using process, systems and tools that are unique to your business? So is there much competitive advantage in those?

Its a fact of the modern world that many of the platforms of business are commonly available. I often say to clients ‘anyone can buy the latest version of Microsoft windows, so is that something to hang your hat on as a competitive advantage?’ Yet many companies spend a vast fortune on new systems as if they will give them an advantage when in fact the system or tool just keeps them in the market

So by now you will be saying ’My people are my advantage!’.
Every business says that, but have you tested that against the uniqueness question?
Do you use commonly available HR ideas and approaches? e.g. competency maps.
Do you buy and use commonly available HR tools?
Do you use commonly accepted remuneration policies?
Do you follow commonly adopted appraisal approaches?
Do you follow commonly adopted selection processes?
Do your training and development approaches differ significantly from anyone else’s?
Do you have a tolerance for people who don’t make life easy?

It’s another fact of the modern world that many of the HR systems and processes adopted in the last decade have been designed to manage consistency and to provide certainty for the business. Business has demanded that of the HR community.

So the best approach to managing HR has been to ‘follow best practice’. Unfortunately following best practice means doing what someone else has already done.
There is nothing unique in following best practice. There is unfortunately no competitive advantage in best practice. Best practice is like benchmarking. It has a built in second place mentality.

My question for you this week is ‘how often do you ask your business to find you uniqueness?’ How often do you support the trying of something different? How often do you ask a supplier the question ‘who else have you delivered this for?' Not because you want to be sure that it is already proven, but because you want to do something different to anyone else. Do you actively recruit people who will challenge the business? Do you tolerate the ‘deviant thinkers’ who go against the norm (but are difficult to manage). Do you review your best practices and say ‘tear them down because everyone else is doing that’ or ask the question ‘is that best practice doing anything for me other than keep us safe and second place?’

Let me ask you do you strategise for sameness or uniqueness?