Performance is NOT Results

An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises said Mae West.

Now there is a slim chance that the kind of performance that Mae had in mind wasn’t all that work focused – even if it does occasionally make use of a desk or a photocopier. But she is nevertheless still right about it being performance that counts. And to quote Gordon Gecko in the film Wall Street “everything else is just conversation”.

We are exercised by the use or misuse, of the words Performance and Results.

Now this is all going to sound a bit obvious but bear with us. Results and performance are not the same thing! 

Even though in many organisations they are used synonymously.

Our work in developing true high-performance cultures shows that the distinction between these words IS ever so important. Performance – the issue here is that performance isn’t results. Performance is what people do that then creates a result. So what, apart from pedantry, is the significance of that? Well how about the fact that in order to get different results you have to help your managers to develop their people’s performance, not just ask them for different results. The Emperor’s New Clothes surprise is that the vast majority of managers spend very little time developing their people’s performance – especially

when compared with the amount of time they individually spend worshipping at the altars of Email, Excel and PowerPoint.

Mae West and Andy Murray don’t feature in nearly enough consulting articles together so let’s take an example of performance from the world of sport…If Andy Murray’s coach, in the last couple of years, had just told him “I want you to win your next match” every time he lost, then he probably wouldn’t have developed as much as he has. He knew he wanted to win (get the result); he didn’t need a coach to tell him that! He just didn’t know HOW to win (develop the performance). So his coach got him to work on fitness so that he could last

5 sets, to “bulk up” so that he could hit more powerful shots, to work on his backhand because it broke down under pressure... and surprise, surprise the result is a US Open win. Just by doing what Ideas Unlimited has been shouting at the television!

What's disturbing you?

"Write about what disturbs you, especially if it doesn't seem to be disturbing anyone else" Skeeter Phelan is told by her publisher in "The Help". I'm disturbed by Syria, I'm disturbed by water shortage and the growing social divide. I'm disturbed by our decline in mental health. I'm also disturbed by the way grated cheese behaves when you are trying to clean up after a 3 year old and the smell of the house when the local Tom cat has been in. But apart from the grated cheese I don't think I am disturbed my much that others aren't. So I thought I'd dedicate this blog to grated cheese - they way it is irresponsive to a damp dishcloth, the way it curls off the plate onto the floor when you move from table to sink, its general level of unpredictability... Not really. What I wanted to say here is this. I'm disturbed by how more and more desperate many people in large organisations seem to be for space, for time to think, to be listened to, to collaborate, to churn and discuss things over, to take autonomous decisions in the interests of the mission at hand. I'm disturbed by how controlled many senior managers feel. And I include for example CEOs of large national businesses who still feel crushed by the control of Global layers above. In the Ideas Unlimited shed of ideas, we've been searching to find ways that help people in organisations (even in these times of massive change, economic pressure) create containers in which they can be autonomous; ways in which leaders can still have the assurance they need but in which executors/doers have the freedom to be human again. Is this disturbing anyone else?

Dumbing down?

The Edge Web site posted a question “How is the internet changing the way you think?” and about 169 philosophers, scientists, artists and others replied with short or medium pieces of writing at:
http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_index.html (assuming that you can still be bothered to read as increasingly people are choosing not to get beyond 10 lines of text).

Below is Brian Eno’s piece to whet your appetite or put you off altogether (is the man everywhere?).

What reading a few of these made me wonder was what it might all mean for the future of organisations? Within all of this is some inherent futurology.

Below in this extract is the idea that what is valued is still what is authentic, rare or being made rare, or being simulated. So could that mean that the things we are drawn to in our work, like a depth of real conversation, levels of intimacy and exposure, an emotional experience of work, exploring meaning in work might become more valuable as they seem to become less and less common and less and less authentic?

I’ve been thinking anyway that I’d like NOT to collude any further in the dumbing down of organisation and to find the business opportunity that is represented by the rejection of bite-sized anything-that-isn’t-edible – one writer describes the 'pancaking’ of people and thought, as people increasingly know a thin amount about a wide range.

Maybe it is as simple as helping people in organisations (re-)find the pragmatism, value, efficacy and ROI of a depth of thought about all sorts of stuff.

I hope you’re not trying to read all this on a phone - but that is a factor in what is happening – people are transacting conversations in staccato form because it isn’t acceptable to ‘send’ more than a sentence and it is becoming a norm – a style of thinking as the result of it being unfashionable to sustain attention. Txt speak rprsnts the dpth of thought that precedes action. I h8 that idea. And, whilst I don’t believe thought is a replacement for action, especially in a world in which rapid-prototyping of ideas is more important, there is a very anti-intellectual strand to commercialism which means the resulting action feels like it is increasingly insignificant and better suited to hamsters and their wheels.

Steve. 27th Jan 2010.


BRIAN ENO
Artist; Composer; Recording Producer: U2, Cold Play, Talking Heads, Paul Simon; Recording Artist
THE 'AUTHENTIC' HAS REPLACED THE REPRODUCIBLE

I notice that some radical social experiments which would have seemed Utopian to even the most idealistic anarchist 50 years ago are now working smoothly and without much fuss. Among these are open source development, shareware and freeware, Wikipedia, MoveOn, and UK Citizens Online Democracy.

I notice that the Net didn't free the world in quite the way we expected — repressive regimes can shut it down, and liberal ones can use it as a propaganda tool. On the upside, I notice that the variable trustworthiness of the Net has made people more sceptical about the information they get from all other media.

I notice that I now digest my knowledge as a patchwork drawn from a wider range of sources than I used to. I notice too that I am less inclined to look for joined-up finished narratives and more inclined to make my own collage from what I can find. I notice that I read books more cursorily — scanning them in the same way that I scan the Net — 'bookmarking' them.

I notice that the turn-of-the-century dream of Professor Darryl Macer to make a map of all the world's concepts is coming true autonomously — in the form of the Net.

I notice that I correspond with more people but at less depth. I notice that it is possible to have intimate relationships that exist only on the Net — that have little or no physical component. I notice that it is even possible to engage in complex social projects — such as making music — without ever meeting your collaborators. I am unconvinced of the value of these.

I notice that the idea of 'community' has changed — whereas that term used to connote some sort of physical and geographical connectedness between people, it can now mean 'the exercise of any shared interest'. I notice that I now belong to hundreds of communities — the community of people interested in active democracy, the community of people interested in synthesizers, in climate change, in Tommy Cooper jokes, in copyright law, in acapella singing, in loudspeakers, in pragmatist philosophy, in evolution theory, and so on.

I notice that the desire for community is sufficiently strong for millions of people to belong to entirely fictional communities such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. I worry that this may be at the expense of First Life.

I notice that more of my time is spent in words and language — because that is the currency of the Net — than it was before. My notebooks take longer to fill. I notice that I mourn the passing of the fax machine, a more personal communication tool than email because it allowed the use of drawing and handwriting. I notice that my mind has reset to being primarily linguistic rather than, for example, visual.

I notice that the idea of 'expert' has changed. An expert used to be 'somebody with access to special information'. Now, since so much information is equally available to everyone, the idea of 'expert' becomes 'somebody with a better way of interpreting'. Judgement has replaced access.

I notice that I have become a slave to connectedness — that I check my email several times a day, that I worry about the heap of unsolicited and unanswered mail in my inbox. I notice that I find it hard to get a whole morning of uninterrupted thinking. I notice that I am expected to answer emails immediately, and that it is difficult not to. I notice that as a result I am more impulsive.

I notice that I more often give money in response to appeals made on the Net. I notice that 'memes' can now spread like virulent infections through the vector of the Net, and that this isn't always good.

I notice that I sometimes sign petitions about things I don't really understand because it is easy. I assume that this kind of irresponsibility is widespread.

I notice that everything the Net displaces reappears somewhere else in a modified form. For example, musicians used to tour to promote their records, but, since records stopped making much money due to illegal downloads, they now make records to promote their tours. Bookstores with staff who know about books and record stores with staff who know about music are becoming more common.

I notice that, as the Net provides free or cheap versions of things, 'the authentic experience' — the singular experience enjoyed without mediation — becomes more valuable. I notice that more attention is given by creators to the aspects of their work that can't be duplicated. The 'authentic' has replaced the reproducible.

I notice that almost all of us haven't thought about the chaos that would ensue if the Net collapsed.

I notice that my daily life has been changed more by my mobile phone than by the Internet.

Leaders versus Leadership

There is still a lot of the ‘Great Man’ approach to leaders around. Investment has been and still is in the personification of ‘leader’ in individuals rather than the phenomenon of leadership in organisations. But might the latter be the less ego-centric future? If you believe Garrett then leadership competence is entirely contextual anyway, so a great leader in one organisation can move to a different organisation and become ‘incompetent’ overnight (and we’ve seen plenty of that).

There is now a huge ingrained expectation that leadership in your organisation will come from somebody/some people whose job that is. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in which people look to an authority figure with an expectation which authority figures then feel they must meet. But most of our clients have to stop and decide who they want to include in a programme of work as ‘leaders’ because there isn’t such a thing as a pure leadership population in the first place “well we could get our top 20 to do this but maybe we want our top 100”. Actually don’t we want everyone who has people management as part of their job to do this?”

I’m not sure what this might mean for leadership development except that it might be very much more tangibly an applied issue. Leader is a role whereas leadership might be more of an organisational process which is not properly defined and attended to as it doesn’t structurally exist. So I’m imagining it could in practice be more like ‘Quality’ or ‘ Efficiency’, ‘Sustainability’ or ‘Ethics’, i.e. Not reducible to someone’s job.

I think where that has taken me as a train of thought is to wonder what would we be doing if the intention was to bring about a feeling of strong leadership as a characteristic of the organisation rather than start at the other end with individuals who are nominally leaders? If an organisation was wanting to develop certain characteristics of the experience of being in it like direction, conviction, supportiveness, challenge, responsibility, is it possible to focus on those outcomes and work back to how they would be created and sustained systemically? That would be different to starting with the premise that the organisation is the manifestation of individuals and so we need to start with individuals. You’d still end up working with individuals and teams (what else is there? Chairs and desks?) but would it be working on something slightly or significantly different? Something to ponder on...

Changing leadership habits in the age of 'bite-sized' learning

Neuroscience boffins know more and more about how our brains work and how human beings and therefore leaders, most of whom are human beings, change their habits. See The Neuroscience of Leadership. Any Organisation Development Director or CPO who hopes to influence leaders habits better start out with this understanding. To start with, a leader will need a new insight. This insight must be generated by a critical experience or a self-generated “ah hah!” moment, so don’t even try to get one through compliance. Then the insight needs lots of support and attention over a period of months to establish it into a habit – a new set of brain wiring that will endure and affect follower experience of a leader’s daily practice. Insight + sustained and supported attention = habit change. In the days of long and languid leadership retreats at beautiful country piles, perspective shifting programmes in Africa working with the Maasai or inspiring large group interventions with tons of experiential learning, opportunities for insight and support abounded. What hope for “ah hah!” moments in today’s climate of bite-size learning, on-line workbooks and 1 day in-house programmes? We think there is some, but only if we start with a clear understanding of what really works. Ideas Unlimited Partner Lucy Ball and Eve Poole (friend of Ideas Unlimited and Ashridge Business School Egg-head) will be answering this question in an upcoming article. Please e-mail lucy@ideasunlimited.com with your thoughts or comments or to register your interest in hearing more

Leadership - a team sport

Much has been made of the individual leader. But we think leadership is more like football than long distance running, much more like a morris dance than a ballet solo, much more like group hugging than rocking gently in a corner by oneself. It's no secret now – ask any research from the last 3 years that the secrets to commercial high performance are the clarity and engagement created by leaders. What we know is that this is done by a cohort of leaders at the top of the organisation – say the top 50 or so. So working on the extent to which things are shared between them (like purpose, like stories, like norms of behaviour) is a faster route to high performance than simply honing their individual muscles.

Driving results

You can drive a car, you can drive a golf ball, you can drive a wedge between two people (I know I can), you can drive people crazy, you can drive a horse and cart through my logic but you can't 'drive results'. Results indicate what has happened and they are the 'result' of people's performance. So stop trying to work on the result and instead help your people develop their performance, i.e how they do their work, and see if that affects the result.