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What is a Success Analysis?

26/6/2020

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When was the last time you did something well and greeted it with a Success Analysis? 


The very concept of a ‘Success Analysis’ is not familiar to most leaders, teams or organisations. We are more used to analysing failure - on the grounds that we learn from our mistakes.


Well, there is some important learning to be had from mistakes and failures - mostly in the form of ‘Don’t do that again’. But there are neglected treasure troves of learning waiting for us when we recognise that we did something worthwhile or difficult successfully.


I was watching a colleague run a virtual session for a small group of colleagues on Zoom this week. It went so efficiently and seamlessly that I watched a recording to analyse how he did it. There were dozens of decision points that he worked to his advantage: he started, for example, with a very brief one-to-chat with each of us as we arrived at the session. We found ourselves quickly in small groups, which made connecting easier. And so on.


In my next call, the same day, I applied these and other techniques, none of them particularly tricky or spectacular in themselves. The overall effect was great - a fruitful, competent discussion that moved our project on. Just what we needed!


The way we accomplish a task may well prove to be a recipe for success - particularly in these Covid19 times, when we are experimenting with so much. 


So, here’s how to do a Success Analysis when you have a team with accomplishments to its name.


Gather your team members together, and share stories of when this success happens. When, for example, have we launched new products into our market, or improved our IT system? 

The stories will ideally touch upon:


  • What prompted us to make the improvement?
  • What contributions does each person make?
  • What conditions are helping to maintain this success?


Then invite your team to work together to generate a list of 10 (home-grown) tips you could give to a new member of the team so that they will also know how to do this.


To take the example of improving the IT system, which comes from our recent work with a bio-pharmaceutical company, our client discovered that picking the right system from a range of offers was only the start of it. 


What really made the difference was a series of short presentations to the executive team and to staff who would be using the system, to let them know the benefits of the changes and to give them the opportunity to ask questions, prepare with a training package and give it their blessing.


You might say success comes naturally, and so there’s no value in analysing it. But you need the analysis to be sure you have a recipe. Then you can follow a step-by-step process to repeat the success yourself and to and share it with others. 


And you can use the insights from your analysis to discover clues to making improvements in other parts of your organisation. Our client, for example, realised in discussion with colleagues that it was not just IT changes that met resistance in their organisation. They had unearthed an approach for introducing other changes, too, such as new rotas for production shifts.


Others argue that time is better spent investigating mistakes - to find out who is to blame and holding them accountable.


​Well, sure, learn what you can from your failures. But the real gold of knowing what to do (instead of the mistaken behaviour) is only found when we discover what works. Then we can analyse and re-apply it.
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If you’d like us to guide you through a Success Analysis - and we think everyone is going to enjoy it and learn loads - then email us about an online development day for your team. And here’s to your next success!

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How to fight fire-fighting without fighting fires

21/6/2020

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The number one complaint we hear from leaders in organisations is that they are always ‘fire-fighting’.
Now they are not actually members of the fire-brigade, so we know that fire-fighting is not supposed to be their main activity.

Most of them mean two things:
  • I don’t have enough time to get my tasks done
  • And - because of that - I don’t have enough time to think strategically (which is where I have the opportunity to add the most value)
When everyone around you is saying the same, welcome to your organisation’s Fire-fighting Culture.

This was a familiar problem before Covid 19, but shifting into the virtual world has made it even more challenging! You are at a greater distance from your people, so communicating with them becomes trickier than before. 

And, as the world comes out of lock-down, we all have to think again about how to organise our collaborations.

The key question for leaders in organisations is this: How do we create a new fire-resistant working culture, in which people take responsibility towards shared goals?

When we find successful answers to this question, we’ll have a big competitive advantage over other organisations and also over the old ways of working.

Here’s a prediction, based on evidence from our work in the past: A coaching culture will  outperform a fire-fighting culture. 

When we were invited to work with Walkers (the potato crisp people), they were losing staff fast, and their organisational survey revealed that the main reason people were leaving was because of poor communications from their immediate manager. This was consistent with findings in many organisations: 11% of employees cited ‘Manager Behaviour’ and 22% cited ‘lack of growth and development opportunities’ as reasons for leaving their jobs, in a decade-long study produced by the Employee Benefits organisation.

We trained the Walkers’ managers in Solutions Focus coaching, so that every conversation between manager and a direct report would create more clarity about who should do what, and leave the direct report feeling both empowered and supported. 

A main principle for these conversations is to follow the process indicated by our coaching model. We taught them to ask two questions and make one suggestion.


  • What's going well for you?
  • What do you want to do next?
  • Here's what I feel also needs to get done. 

Starting with what the employee is thinking - about what’s going well for them and what they want to do next - is a good way to build engagement. And then including what the manager needs to see keeps the conversation grounded in the reality of the organisation’s needs. And so by the end of the talk, staff are far clearer about their role and immediate next steps. 

What’s more, the top team signalled their commitment to this new coaching culture by being the first to attend the training, then clearing space in their diaries to coach their direct reports.

In short, it worked. Over a period of just a few months, retention rates went up and staff said that the quality of communications had noticeably improved. 

Perhaps you’d say that this would not be possible in your organisation: if we stop fighting fires, everything is going to burn down.

The clue here is to escape the metaphor. Not everything will turn to cinders. In fact, everyone remains keen to get things done, so although there’s a brief period of adjustment, it’s a small price to pay for long-term, sustainable improvements.

Sure, to begin with, some things may not get done, or may be done more slowly. And that might feel awkward in the short term. But very quickly - if, let’s say, you put in place an improved system - within a few days, it will have already relieved the pressure. Which in turn creates space for your next considered improvement.

That’s coaching on a large scale. Each conversation between manager and report, or between colleague and peers, is set up to address a significant issue. After every conversation, you make small changes immediately.

The result is a renewed sense of control, and an atmosphere in which calmness replaces descents into panic at the slightest signal. 

When managers adopt a coaching style, they quickly get a sense of how it builds capacity in their colleagues, encouraging everyone in the organisation to work out their own solutions. And that takes a load off of the leaders’ backs. 

Staff - the very same people who seemed so frustrating before - are rediscovered as resourceful. 

We’re planning soon to re-open our popular online course, SF Coaching in the Workplace, to teach precisely these skills - a programme that means you will save time by conducting conversations that are purposeful, without being uncomfortable or confrontational. You can increase performance in a way that makes you and your direct reports feel good.

We’ve opened our waiting list so that you can sign up to learn how to coach in your organisation to get better results - mostly by ensuring fires don't break out so often in the first place!  

 
Click here to join the waiting list and receive a free series of useful coaching resources.
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Should I stay or should I go - how to make deciding easier

17/6/2020

 
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I was recently coaching a senior executive who was having difficulty making a decision. After a promotion, he was struggling to manage a large team and was trying to decide whether he should get help to do his job better or leave the company to find a more specialist role elsewhere.

It struck me that we tend to think about decisions as if they are binary: stay or go - keep or discard. This works with relatively simple decisions. Shall I eat an apple or orange? Wear the blue or black top today? But with more complex and weighty decisions, it adds a rigidity that easily mutates to indecision and stuckness.
There is no need to limit ourselves to a forced choice when there are often far more possibilities available.My client was putting immense pressure on himself to make a quick decision, ‘so that I can move forward’. This was producing the opposite effect, creating so much pressure that he’d come to a complete standstill. He’d made his 'pros and cons' list, he’d talked himself round in circles and he’d berated himself for lacking clarity about what to do next. Now the impasse was overwhelming and detracting from his work even more.
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It was clear that he needed a fresh approach – via an appetising metaphor. Like a good pot of tea, decisions often need time to brew. Sometimes it’s not the decision itself that’s especially tricky. It’s the knots with which you entangle yourself – as a response to the pressure you perceive in the situation. It’s the story you tell yourself about ‘lacking confidence to do the right thing’. So rather than focus on the content of the decision, let’s pay attention to the process.

I asked my client to consider on a scale of 0-10 how confident he was that he’d make the right decision. He said 8. 'How come it’s an 8 - and not a 0?', I asked. He explained that he’d made good decisions about his career before, and that whatever he decided, he knew he would make the best of the outcome.



Curious, I asked him about these other good career decisions and how he’d done that. What did he know about making good decisions about his career? Soon he was listing actions to move this forward -  contact a head-hunter, chat with his boss, organise mentoring or training on team management, explore other suitable in-house roles. There was plenty to do while the decision brewed - actions that would provide more information, make progress and generate possibilities.

So next time you’ve got an important decision to make, give yourself more choice and allow things to emerge by asking yourself what you know about making good decisions, what’s worked before and what can you be getting on with whilst it’s brewing. You never know, you might even have time for a nice cup of tea.



If you want to learn more about these conversational life-changing skills, we’re re-opening our popular online course, SF Coaching For The Workplace, later this year.

It's a programme that will equip you with practical tools to turn things around without being uncomfortable or confrontational. 



You can get onto the waiting list now. 

​Sign up here if you’re interested to learn how to coach in your organisation to get better results.



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