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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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6 ideas about setting goals in your organisation | Paul

11/9/2017

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​Here are 6 thoughts about goals:

  1. It’s unethical to hold people to goals that they have set, because much of what happens after you set a goal is unpredictable.
  2. Watch out for when goals turn counter-productive. Like prescription drugs, they can have unwanted side-effects.
  3. It’s important to give yourself permission not to stick to goals when circumstances change and you need your wits about you to deal with uncertainty.
  4. Perhaps if goals are modest and short-term, they will not be so delusional. 
  5. A deadline by which you have to produce a piece of work can be very productive. I write here as a trained journalist. 
  6. If you work with others, instead of setting goals ask them what they would like to achieve. Then when you meet again, ask them what progress they have made.​
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I’d love to take a solutions focus, but I can’t let go of the problem

12/6/2017

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​Many clients have difficulty in letting go of their problem. It’s not surprising. They have lived with the problem for a while; the problem is giving them trouble and it’s worthy of respect. Yet the solution-focused practitioner pops up to say the problem may have nothing to do with the solution – and remind them that it’s the solution that the client wants. That may make sense logically, but from the client’s perspective that can be tough to accept emotionally.

Solution focused conversations

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The logical thread of better conversations

5/6/2017

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We are all familiar with tricky conversations in our organisations - the ones you put off for as long as possible or perhaps never have at all. But suppose you could handle these conversations in the best way imaginable, what difference would that make?
 
What difference would it make it to you, to your team and to your organisation? Each conversation has an impact on your ultimate results, as there is an inevitable logical thread between you, your team and your organisation’s performance.
Difficult Conversations

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Great talent, poor attitude | Janine

5/9/2016

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What do you do as a coach or a manager when there’s a mismatch between talent and attitude? An HR director called me in to coach Lucy, an experienced senior manager in a city IT and software company.  He said she was excellent at her job, but her attitude was terrible. While she was good at what she did, the pressing problem was that she was rude to people. She had a poor attitude towards company initiatives and so she was continually overlooked for promotion. If it didn’t improve, regardless of how much they valued her skills, it would be time for her to move on. ​
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What can we learn from a crisis?

8/2/2016

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There is a common misconception that in Chinese, the sign for crisis is the same as for opportunity. 

​If not through these symbols, how can we create opportunities from our crises?

Well, we can learn more about our resources and resilience. And we can learn more from those than we can learn from our mistakes and failures.

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Mistakes are events you would rather have not happened (at least at the time), because the intention was to do something different, and the immediate consequence is most often unfavourable.

I like this story of a crisis handled by Hans Zeinhofer, who I met at a conference where delegates were discussing the application of solutions-focused ideas in organisations.

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Intervision - a neat variation on supervision for managers and coaches

16/8/2011

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I learned a new word today - ‘intervision’. Any ideas what it means? Well, according to my friend and colleague Dominic Godat, it’s a form of supervision in a group setting.

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