Navigating the 3 C's: how do you score?

Here is a short questionnaire to test how successful your business will be over the next 18 months. It is based on the premise that the most successful businesses are ones that balance

• Creativity,
• Commitment and
• Complexity

Every business needs innovation to delight their customers, stay ahead of their competitors and to keep driving down costs. Creativity is the fuel for innovation and many businesses are brilliant at not recognising when it is needed, or worse, crushing it out of people.

With the commitment (or engagement, as it is often called) of everyone involved in a business, everything becomes that much more possible. People work smarter and more steadily: not just harder and harder (and harder).

In our frenetic world where new technologies and ideas approach us from all angles, and customers want that something different and bespoke: managing complexity is critical. If a business cannot handle the complex demands it faces, it will quickly fade away.

Are you and the other key leaders of your business balancing these three C’s well enough? Try this questionnaire and see how you score

Statement	How much do you agree with the statement? (Where 1 is ‘not at all’ and 7 is ‘totally’)
1.        I can easily remember the last time one of my team had a brilliantly creative idea that added to our overall performance.	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
2.       In fact I can remember quite a few times before then too when people around the business have come up with new and fresh ideas.	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
3.       In my (part of the) business, we do things very differently now to three years ago – new pressures mean we have had to change	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
4.       I usually come away from a meeting with colleagues or business contacts with at least one new idea.	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
5.        When my team and I sit down together, I just expect there to be creativity and there usually is.	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
6.       Often at work, I am delightfully surprised by the ingenuity of the people I work with	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
7.        In my business, there is no effort needed to sell the new strategies, people know what they need to do already – and are doing it	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8.       People all face the same direction in my business, not in some regimented way, but with a clear focus on the future	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
9.       I enjoy coming to work and so do all my colleagues: we work hard, but we also have fun	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
10.     Staff appraisals are not the turgid box ticking exercises I see in other businesses, in ours we have lively conversations about the past and future	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
11.      The plans in our business don’t just gather dust in filing cabinets, we use them to handle the pressures we face	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
12.     In fact we don’t really have large planning documents, instead we have a community of people who all understand what we need to do	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
13.     Just like a good military general, I don’t spend all my time in the valleys, I am often up on the hills looking further & beyond the current challenges	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
14.     I read newspapers, magazines & journals to spot the trends that are coming our way – there are patterns in most things	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
15.     My team and I are able to work the detail as well as we work the big picture – we can link it all together	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
16.     I use every chance I get to talk with suppliers and customers about what changes they are seeing, or would like to see	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
17.     Things are much more complex than they used to be, but I think we have managed to have big enough conversations to handle these changes	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
18.     Sometimes I get scared when I think about everything the business needs to achieve but I know I can rely on everyone to bring their piece of puzzle	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
19.     Come the end of the week, I am able to relax and know we are surfing the waves of change rather than being drowned by them	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
20.    I spend a good chunk of my time managing the future and not just to reacting to the present day challenges	1 2 3 4 5 6 7

If you scored 140, you need to bottle what you company is doing and sell it! Certainly if your score was somewhere above 110, your company is probably far more creative, engaged and strategic than most. You will enjoy coming to work. Between 60 and 109 is probably around average – but is average enough? How might you up your score? And if your score was below 60, there is probably room for some change – you, your business or both.

This, of course, is not a scientific survey but merely one to prompt reflection. The ideas underpinning it though are – the best companies are the ones where creativity, commitment and complexity are blended well together.

Becoming a more intelligent business

I am really enjoying doing some work with a large premium car company at the moment - helping them enact their ambitious strategy for the future. As part of this, I got to hear one of their Board give an impressive presentation about the challenges facing the company. He made the very powerful & succinct point (known to all of us engaged in helping organisations handle complexity) that not long ago, managers had about 20% uncertainty in their future to handle whereas now it is more likely 80% uncertainty. 

The challenge facing leaders is how to prepare and support their teams and organisations face this future. It seemed to him - and to me - that the only way in which this can be possibly done is by ensuring that every member of an organisation is optimally aligned to the company's strategy, amply engaged in wanting to make this strategy happen and plentifully empowered to take action in support of the overall plans. Only in this way will the company be sufficiently agile and 'intelligent' enough to shape the future (not just succumb to it).

Somebody once defined intelligence as knowing what to do when you don't know what to do (I will dig out the author later - promise!). On this basis we need organisations to have both the systems and the people enabled to be supremely intelligent.

How are you doing this in your business?

How is your organisation just that little better prepared for an uncertain future than it was yesterday or last year?

Austere:IT' ...sweating the existing systems

I am now in the advanced stages of organising a conference on a 'make do and mend' approach to public services IT. It will be a different style of conference - a highly interactive and dynamic conference - in that all present will be able to shape the agenda on the day - towards what can be done to sweat, tweak, exploit (etc) existing IT in order to achieve more with less.

This is in the context of there being no money to buy expensive new systems or upgrades - hence the title.

If you are interested in finding out more, possibly attending and getting involved in the debate - please contact me: jon@jonharveyassociates.co.uk . Thanks

The date to pencil into your diary is 10 June 2011

Otherwise - please watch this space for further details...

WOSonOS 2012: Do you want to be part of making it happen?

Saturday 7 May 11am – 6pm and Sunday 8 May 10am – 1pm

Odd Fellows Hall, Bristol (Full details below) 

Are you interested in Open Space Technology? Do you want to share and extend your Open Space skills?
Would you like to connect to people in the UK and worldwide who are using Open Space in many different ways?


Do you want to join a community of people who are working towards the World Open Space on Open Space (WOSonOS) in the UK in 2012?

What is WOSonOS?
WOSonOS is an unparalleled international gathering of Open Space practitioners who come together to share their wisdom and experience around group practice and self organisation.

It takes place once a year, each time in a different country in the world. 2012 will be the event’s 20th anniversary and the first time it will ever have taken place in the UK.

What is this event? Over the coming months Improbable, in collaboration with other people and organisations around the UK, will be holding a series of Open Space events to create a vision for WOSonOS 2012 and make decisions about how to implement that vision. We held our first of these last November in London. There was a great turn out and many enthusiastic discussions began.

Whether you attended this and want to come back for more, or whether this will be your first ever experience of Open Space, you are equally welcome to come to Bristol on May 7th and 8th for this next event. 


As well as being the vehicle for planning WOSonOS these events are an opportunity for different people to gather and build a UK OS community of practitioners and participants, interested in forming a generous space in which to share ideas and learn from and support each other.

Many diverse people who work with OS come to WOSonOS with an attitude of generosity – sharing stories, swapping skills and creating new ideas and projects. If you are interested in being part of and contributing to the creation of this event please come to our next Open space in Bristol!

Hope to see you there,

Phelim McDermott of Improbable (@openspacer)

Liz Martins & Vivian Broughton of Constellations Open Space Partnership

Jon Harvey of Jon Harvey Associates (@jonsharvey)
Romy Shovelton of Wikima (romy@wikima.com)

________________________________________

DETAILS

Date: Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th May

Time: 11am - 6pm & 10am – 1pm

Venue: Oddfellows Hall, 20 West Park, Bristol, BS8 2LT.

Directions: Oddfellows Hall is just off Whiteladies Road, a few minutes walk from Clifton Down Railway station.

Parking is unrestricted but sometimes difficult to find. There is a multi-story car park at Clifton Down, off Whiteladies Road, and some parking at the station. There are frequent buses along Whiteladies Road from the centre of Bristol.

Link to Map - http://tinyurl.com/65a47ft 

Booking: To cover costs we are asking for £20 per person or for you to pay what you can.

To book your place call Improbable on 0207 240 4556
or email office@improbable.co.uk

For access issues, or any other enquiries please also use the above contacts.

New digest

As this blog has been uploaded more than 15,000 times - it seemed like a good time to produce another digest of some of the more popular posts.

It is categorised and indexed for easy reading.

You can access it here on Google docs

Spring: a time for leadership to flower

The sun is beginning to feel warmer, flowers are beginning to bloom and my willow tree is laden with leaves about to burst... it's Spring!

So as Nature wakes up again, what kind of leadership do we need this coming year? Please complete the sentence:

A leader is someone who...

To help your sap to rise, below is a list of response to my question "What three words sum up the kind of leadership we need for 2010?" on Linked In (and there is more on my blog here too):

• Murad Salman Mirza: persevering, invigorative, visionary 
• Mark Orr: Honesty, integrity & definition 
• Ger Bargerbos: integrity, empathy & visionary 
• Dean Fygetakes: duty, honor, country 
• Josh Chernin: imaginative, open-minded & decisive. 
• Jørgen Brøndum: determination, will & hard work (believe that is one too many, but found it relevant enough to take the risk...) 
• Trevor Durnford: Host Not Hero (This originates from a powerful article written by Mark McKergow of Solutions Focus Fame (www.sfwork.com) 
• Adrian Snook: not Gordon Brown 
• Michaela Kassar: honesty, integrity & innovation (of a longer list) 
• Abdul Rahim Hasan: lead by example 
• Phil Johnson: authenticity and service 
• Samir Sharma: creative, connected & collaborative 
• Rajib Lochan Pathak: passionate, humility & flexibility 
• Raju Swamy: country, business & productivity 
• Michel Langelier: strategic, committed & enabler 
• Rohail Alam: basics, trust, & communities 
• Souri: empathy, integrity & ability 
• Wayne Patterson: responsible leaders needed 
• Gaurav Bhargava: vision, integrity & commitment 
• Sam Whitten: innovative, proactive & impressive 
• Lou Storiale: integrity, accountability and performance 
• Wallace Jackson: creativity, optimization & applicability 
• Dave Maskin: listen, learn & open to change (OK, so #3 isn't one word)... 
• Judy B. Margolis: decisive, diplomatic & wise 
• Peter B. Giblett: collaboration, brand intervention & revenue opportunities 
• Larry Ellis: humble, accountable & experienced 
• Kevin Kuhl: adaptable, humble & aware 
• Kenneth Strong: ethical, proficient & action 

(Thanks to all those people)

So again, here we are at the beginning of Spring 2011:

UPDATE

I posted this same question on LinkedIn - and received some interesting replies...

• Nearby Express (SEO at NearbyExpress): A leader is someone who is responsible for both himself
• Chris Mobbs (Director, Innovation for Growth): can inspire results.
• Ravindran Ramiah (Senior IT Systems Manager at Tamweel PJSC): We need leaders who can prepare us to handle summers and winters in a better manner than we have handled so far
• Gordon Gardener (Construction Professional): ....can get off their big fat behinds and lead!
• Kenneth Larson (Retired Aerospace Contracts Manager): leads the troops by developing the resources, understands the kinks and bends in the road & manages creative tension (there is more on  LinkedIn)
• Dave Maskin (Trade Show Booth Traffic Builder): ... is more concerned with everyone, rather than just one segment of the population...
• Chris Barton (Management Executive): ...will complete the task/project on time, every time and won't care who gets the credit.
• Cheryl Roshak (President at Cheryl Roshak Associates): A leader is someone who has the courage of his convictions and is not swayed by vested interest parties and has the innate intelligence to think clearly and see problems from all angles.
• Tim Tymchyshyn (Wireless Networks): Who rules with an iron fist
• Lisa Kohn (Chatsworth Consulting Group): who are thoughtful – who take the time to think through the necessary end results, who think about the leader they want to be, and the best ways to act and be to get there
• Robyn McLeod (Leadership Development Consultant): We need leaders who have the courage to get out of the way and let the stars among them rise and shine
• Cassandra Mack (PMP Director, Emerging Markets): Isn't afraid to ask people what they think and listen to what they have to say...and then act like they have a set of b@lls to get something done about it.
• Patricia Wiltshire (Forensic ecologist, botanist, palynologist, mycologist at University of Aberdeen):  Has to be scrupulously honest, and have the strength to make changes that are for the common good bu which may be unpopular and generate a great deal of opposition. He should not worry about votes but get on with a job.
• Guy Battaglia (Professional Information Recruiter): What is with all this 'leadership' bull? leaders this...and leader that... I don't understand... (more on LinkedIn)
• Mark Herbert (Changing how people and organizations work together): understand and value relationships rather than transactions...

Thanks to all those people

A leader is someone who.....