Are you energised?

I am a great believer in leadership energy.  

A key aspect of leadership is taking the group forwards - whether it be in business, in sports, in other walks of life; it is the leaders who have the vision as to what is needed next and create the energy and motivation to get it done.

I like to think of leadership as the "job description" you write for yourself, rather than one you are given.  I have also heard it called the "worry work" by clients.  I guess we know what that means - the issues and ideas that need attention that you worry over until they are done - whether it is 3 in the afternoon or 3 in the morning.

This brings me to the theme of this blog - energy.

Your energy as a leader is essential to your community.  Often energy is shared by a number of people, but if the leaders' energy is low it is likely to affect things more significantly.  This is because energy can be contagious and "energising" for those around you.  If you are in charge, you will give the lead and even your energy level is shared by your team.

So how do you ensure, if you are doing the "worry work" and waking up at 3am with it, that it is not your anxiety that becomes shared?  How do you keep your own head clear and your confidence high in face of all of the barriers and risks you might face?

Here are some tips to keep you energised for the upturn in 2011


Physical fitness can help reduce anxiety


Physical discipline
Make sure you look after your heart and circulation.  The key areas to focus on are regular exercise leading to deep breathing, and good eating routines.

Even a brisk 40 minute walk each day will improve your clarity of thinking and energy.  It does this by driving more oxygen into the system, and creating positive hormones; both are beneficial for energy.  Over the longer term, cells can adapt to higher levels of exercise and improve energy production generally.

Pay attention to your eating times.  You should be able to notice that your energy gains or wanes depending on how and what you eat and drink.  Paying a little more attention to this will help you work out how to manage a gain rather than exhaustion.

Choose food that maximises your energy!

My own energy cycles through the day.  After 45 minutes of intense work, a short break is a great idea and if I follow this I am much more productive.   If I work without stopping, over days and weeks, I get constitutionally tired.  Constant unrelieved stress like this can be very bad for long term health.    If I start the day with exercise of some sort I am much clearer and more decisive and feel more positive regardless of what is thrown my way.




Choose to play to your strengths
Discipline over what you do during the day will also have a major impact on energy and productivity.  You can probably identify pretty easily those tasks/activities where:

• Your energy increases
• You lose a sense of time
• You feel fully absorbed
• You are challenged to use your experience and skill but not so much that you feel out of your depth
• It feels more like the real you

Honesty here is the hardest thing, because, in business in particular, sometimes tasks or roles that do the opposite of the above bullets seem to command status, power and higher pay.  No doubt you can identify parts of your role that you hate but just cannot bring yourself to give up.

The reality is (and I am sure with a bit of thought you will recognise this), that your impact will be far far greater by focusing on those activities that are of most value to the firm and at the same time give you the bulleted list above.  With a bit of thought I am sure you could adjust your focus towards energising tasks and you will see the benefits provided the tasks that you let go of are capable of being taken up by a colleague (if indeed they are really needed).

For those chores that cannot be delegated or shared, adapting the way you approach them (e.g. what you think about while you do them, or what environment you create to do them in) will bring you back into a higher energy and more productive mode .  Even chores can be made more pleasurable with a bit of thought.

Find your top five strengths from the stengths survey on http://www.authentichappiness.com/ and then think about using them when you are engaged in your least favoured tasks.  You may well see improvements.

None of these suggestions will of themselves help you deal with the most significant challenges.  However, a better habit of energy, over time, can build your love of life and your energy reserve ready for the times of higher challenge.  Perhaps this will be just enough and certainly your colleagues and family will appreciate the reduced anxiety and increased chillout factor.

A final warning

Watch out for over-heating your team!

Too much energy can be overwhelming!  Sometimes those you meet who are on a constant high are actually rather tiring to be around.  That's certainly true of me at times - I can be pretty intense.  What I have found to be of use is to pay much closer attention to those I am with and manage my energy accordingly.  It may sound weird, but it is certainly possible first to match the energy of your group.  Do this well and you will synchronise with them.  Then when you raise your energy the group will often follow you up!  It takes a bit of practice, but it definitely works.

Keep energised and enjoy your R&R, and your whole team will reap the benefits.

Do you love your work too much?

I have been reflecting on the toughest issues to influence as a business coach.   Common barriers affecting high flyers include; insufficient strategy, fear of action, poor decision making, low self-confidence, beliefs that do not support success.  However, each of these is relatively easy to spot and there are good ways to work on them to get an impact.

Perhaps the hardest to deal with is loving work too much - where positive intentions collide and the appearance of success in every area distracts the executive from realising there is greater potential entirely missing from the picture.  The specific issue is personal success combining with highly positive attitudes to a range of tasks and not seeing what is not achieved but could be with a different approach.

Here is your high flying CEO; Monday morning.  She picks up the weekly priority list; done the night before (good start).

1.  Read final documents and prepare for final meeting for an acquisition by a top client, really me, love the technical detail and cut and thrust of negotiation, big money on it, tick

2. Cashflow nearing overdraft limits, read partner debt lists and do the rounds with the weaker guys, getting their actions going to bring in some cash, helps the firm, uses my courage and persuasion skills to the full, tick

3. Strategic review preparation; need to read Gladwell's book, and review the market research, talk to the board about the key issues and prepare the ground for Thursdays strategy session.  My experience counts, great fun and vital for our future, tick

4. New client presentation, best fun, I'm really good at it, need to show I can still top the new business chart, tick

5. Property issues to be addressed, where will we go next at the fast growing Manchester office, complex negotiations, lots riding on it, I have vital views on how the practice offices should locate and look, tick

6. Our plans are to double with acquisitions, I have no likely firms in the viewer, need to identify partner to help target and start the process, must be me as I have clear views on the ideal target, tick.

7. Senior and capable colleague having a wobble, offers in from competitor, personal persuasion needed!  Tick.

Great at everything, loving all of it; sound familiar?  It's all good for the firm so what's the issue?

I am reminded of the scene in Band of Brothers - the episode was "the Breaking Point", the scene is the attack on the town of Foy, breaking out after the siege of Bastogne.  Colonel Winter's men are led by Lieutenant Dike, who makes mistakes, leading to casualties and a faltering attack.  Winters had risen to lead his company, loved his men, was a great field leader.  Seeing the problems he rushes forward, and is harshly called back by his commander.  "Winters, get back here, your place is on the line, not in the attack!"  Winters replaces Dike with Spiers in the heat of action and the attack goes in successfully.

Of course Winters could have led in the attack.  But his commander knew only Winters had the experience of his men and battle to manage the overall campaign and unfolding situation.  If distracted by close action, or worse taken out by chance or failure, the whole campaign might fail.

The point of experience is constantly to challenge yourself to have the greatest impact and focus.  Who is forcing you to take a step back and stay focussed on a simple list of your greatest strengths?  My own coach is fond of encouraging an annual "garage sale" of tasks.  Half must go - and each year the half on the fire sale are things that are more impactful than the last year's list.

What are the consequences of giving in to all the pleasures of their high performance ability?

What is the practice or firm missing that it could have by now, but for their distraction?

Why is there no succession of tasks that should not be top of their list, but do need high skill?

What growth could have been achieved had they focussed on increasing activity around their top three skills and replacing resources for the remaining tasks?

Wise CEO's and partners seek to surround themselves with people cleverer than they are.

The hardest thing to get people to realise is that when there appears to be nothing wrong, it is their great capability that might be the biggest barrier to their potential.

Do you love your work too much?  Are you too good to benefit from coaching?

Failure to implement - a matter of self-doubt?

We had a great session of PB Entrepreneurs on Wednesday last week, on the issue of failure to implement.  And, my goodness me, what happened on the day really highlighted how the self-doubt of CEO's holds back change.  For me it also highlighted why being in a group of peers, and provided with a chance to discuss difficult decisions, can be so useful in business.

Before I come to what happened on Wednesday, some reflections on doubt:

Doubt is not always bad - in fact you might even say that doubt is a useful state to have.  Nothing in life is certain, and a combination of poor information, inexperience and overconfidence can be fatal!

Doubt prompts us to double check, to gather support and information before deciding.  With it we prompt ourselves to question our motives and actions.   All good things.

It may seem an odd thing to say, but I see doubt as a strategy - a state to be used where it is appropriate and for a clear purpose.  Dr Martin Seligman, author of "Authentic Happiness" and founder of the US positive psychology movement, in his book "learned optimism" follows the same line.  If the cost of failure is high, he notes, pessimism is a useful strategy to follow.

The key here is choosing confidence or doubt as appropriate, not being bowled along by an uncontrolled internal state.  As you read, the question is, do you recognise when your decision making is hampered by a sense of self-doubt that is not appropriate for the circumstances.  Even when it is the right approach to take, how often does it adversely affect decisions to act.  What about for your team?  Does it hold back change and getting that edge?  Does it slow your team down?  What can you do to overcome it?  Do you rely on a sense of support from your group before you gain the self-confidence to act, or can you act regardless of others?

What are the quick solutions to the crippling inertia of doubt?

Here's one.  My client rang me for advice, facing a major but tough decision.  It had come up suddenly, challenged his whole business model, his risk, his people, the lot.  Faced with the need to make a pretty big investment decision by the end of the week, we decided to put his issue to the PB Entrepreneur group as a case study.

In 20 minutes, he had presented his issue in enough detail for the group to get the gist of it.  We then had 20 minutes of questions around the group, by the end of which the structure was pretty neatly drawn out on the whiteboard, with funding transactions, incomes and costs.  There were also a heap of useful comments.  Finally we called it to a halt with a last set of comments, no liability accepted, from each of the members - they were asked to give one "do", one "don't" and, based on the information presented, to comment on whether they would invest.

In business, mistakes set us back months, create huge frustration and may even cost us our livelihood.  Doubt is natural, caution is common and the sensible seek the company of mentors, or challenging colleagues to help.  But how often, when faced with a difficult decision, do you get your experienced team around you, and use a structured approach to address it with speed.  Under a bit of pressure, I am always amazed at how much more focussed a team can be.

Who knows if he will make the right decision.  The views of the group were mixed.  But my client rang up filled with doubt, and by the end of the case study session had had the chance to talk it through with an experienced group of business leaders, and had to deal with a series of challenging questions.  I have no doubt that as a result he was much better informed, and his confidence in his ability to decide had risen.

Self-doubt would not be the limiting factor.

Failure to implement - the impact of structure

As I was getting up this morning I found my thoughts drifting back to 2006.  I am not sure why, someting to do with leadership and gaining competitive advantage had been whirling around in my head, probably related to some current client work. 

By 2006 at Price Bailey, we had restructured the leadership function and constitution, and the new Board had put together a great one page plan, and had definitely implemented some radical and much needed action.  The business was on a new footing.  However, the more positive side of our plans were not proving so easy to get going.

Is it easier in implementation to get rid of problems than it is to gain new advantages?  Certainly seems so from most of the practical experiences I have had with clients over many years and in my own business.  It's a bit like an accountants profit exercise...anyone can cut costs, but few can grow income.  I am sure you get my drift here.

The key to this is structure change, and it is something that many strategic plans miss.   As soon as you have agreement as to the new goals for an organisation, you must address the structure and assess how it will need to change. 

Structure comes in two forms inside a business.  There is the explicit structure; departments, roles, responsibilities, reporting lines, levels of authority, policies and procedures, etc.

Then there is the hidden structure; skills, teamworking and rapport, beliefs and confidence, communities and friendships, alliances, customer ownership.  Hidden structure includes things that appear explicit but are not really written down anywhere, like meetings, informal management processes.  Just look in that key database of any business, the outlook calendar, and you will see the glue that is preventing new activities in everyone's week! 

Structure is like an iceberg - perhaps 10% of it is visible, written down, really how it is, above the surface.  The real weight and content is normally all hidden away below the water line.  To get things going in a new direction, you need to address what is under the water!

What we found was that while we had set out a new vision and leadership function within the firm, we hadn't changed the management structure or any of the old informal rules of the firm, so we had a hybrid of old PB with new PB grafted on, and they didn't really work together.   The restructure process involved reshaping departments and roles and frankly all of the informal aspects to line up towards the new strategy.  It took a year to get it in place and to get over the initial phase of re-alignment that everyone in the firm had to go through.

Once it was done, everyone's market focus was much clearer and the positive agenda (looking after our customers more consistently and appropriately and getting growth) really started to happen.

So the message from my breakfast today seems to be: 

If you are struggling to get the change you have planned for ask yourself this question: is my business the right shape to deliver that to me?  Take out your pencil and rubber, and draw up a structure that is best suited to deliver your strategy on the right.   Draw out the existing structure on the left.  The change you need is in the gaps between the two structures.

Don't get me wrong, that was not all that was needed.  The years of work that have followed have been as full as the restructure year.  But without that change, they could not have taken place in the way they have.
So watch out!  You're shiny new structure will quickly develop a heap of new hidden weight.  Keep things visible from now on.  What are the key performance indicators and other forms of feedback you need to ensure that all that informal bonding is congruent with your new goals? And what can you do to influence the forming structure towards your goals?  Immediate engagement with the new tasks and continuous improvement are crucial to getting as much alignment as you can. 

I hope the coalition get to read this blog.  Perhaps it was something on the Today Programme that set this off.  Have a good weekend.

Failure to Implement - A Fatal Disease

Failure to Implement, as Paul Dunn of the Results company used to say, "Is a fatal disease."  Even now some of the best consulting businesses in the world promote around getting ideas off the paper and into life.  It's crucial to competitive advantage, and firms that implement better have the edge over those that get stuck.

(Un)Inspired by a three clients I thought I would share some thoughts with you on this disease, that illustrate different aspects of the problem.

Client one; "no alignment"
A great example of a common cause of failure to implement needed change; this client had to start to change because of the desperate results they were facing.  The challenges of failure forced them to take action, and the actions were good enough to get them back to a baseline.

They have however, so far been unable to address the root cause of their failure to thrive, which is a lack of unity of purpose among the key shareholders.  Unless this is addressed they will struggle to hit their potential as too much energy is spent in argument and disagreement, and energy for customers is low!  The MD realises this, and is finally ready to challenge his colleagues fairly on the point. 

There will be some hard times, and there are plenty of choices ahead, but there will be a great release of energy through some hard truths being spoken.  If they resolve the issues honestly, there is a chance to re-channel these energies into competing with competitors rather than each other.

Client two: "no confidence or experience"
The leadership of this very entrepreneurial client, in common with many, has limited experience of what can be achieved by the different professionals in more successful businesses.  In this case, they are great technically but had not understood sales.  For years the CEO resisted the very idea of sales.  He would counter that it was not really possible for a non-technical sales person understand the product benefits.

He just could not, in his mind, justify the investment in professional sales, and no amount of ROI planning would gainsay the risk aversion.

Was the bigger risk not getting sales help, or paying for it and getting it wrong?

Eventually he bit the bullet, and within six months was at first surprised and the delighted to hear his salesman politely request that he stop coming to meetings, so that the sales guy could operate more freely (and successfully!)  Growth took off.

What we believe about the world is based on what we have experienced.  The truth is that most of us have experienced so little, and some of our unchallenged beliefs will hold us back.

Client three: too much talk, no action
The final client had identified clearly the opportunity to grow, and the competitive threat to the business if they did not grow.  To get growth required some big decisions, which they felt they had made.  And yet still nothing happened.

Rather amazingly, the problem appeared to be not knowing how to act.  All of there energy was put into researching options, analysing and justifying marketing opportunities.  No energy or projects were directed into customer and new business development activities.

In this case the balance of the team was at fault, as well as their experience, led by thinkers with little concept of how to act on the very good and detailed thoughts.

I am sure you can think of many more cases to add to these.  The few businesses I know that can identify competitive advantage and move quickly to take the ground are normally winners.  The rest are average or lucky!

PB Entrepreneurs

At Price Bailey we provide a forum for our entrepreneurial clients.  We meet once a quarter for a half day to discuss the major issues each of us has to grapple with to be successful in business.  It gives us a chance to share ideas, to support and learn from each other.

There are often case studies presented by members for feedback from the group and a range of supportive online resources are provided to support the group's work.

I have started this blog to write about some of the issues arising from the main theme for the forthcoming quarterly meeting, and plan to publish these in advance of each meeting and from time to time to add other thoughts.

If you are not a member of the group you are still very welcome to follow and comment on this blog if you find it useful.

The meetings dates, titles and locations are published on LinkedIn under my events tab.