Cracking Questions: as a series of podcasts

Aside from the traumatic human cost of Covid19 across the world, the pandemic is set to ravage the business models and disrupt the carefully crafted strategies of almost all organisations, commercial and public. This is the time when these organisations need to engage with radical and agile transformation of how they do their business. The lockdowns and impending economic crisis have not just moved the goal posts, they have re-turfed the pitch and digitised the stadium as well. 

When I wrote 'Cracking Questions' some years ago, I aimed to create a book that would help leaders shape their organisations to meet the challenges of unknown futures and still be as successful, if not more so. The book is based on the simple idea: inside every organisation are the innovative sparks and creative geniuses that just need to be allowed to use their flare and build a more productive enterprise. The questions in the book were designed to help people rediscover their own ingenuity and verve for designing better ways to do business. 

And so faced with the pandemic, I pondered on how I might help businesses 'build back better'. I decided to turn my book into a series of podcasts that anyone could listen to as they went to sleep, went for run, or cooked the evening meal (and so forth). Today I finished the last pod case (number sixteen) which is now available for all to listen to. You can still buy the book of course (with its money back guarantee) if you so wish. 

But here is main link to my soundcloud channel: https://soundcloud.com/jon-harvey-10. All the podcasts are on their, beginning with this one:  

Cracking Questions - a pod preamble - why I wrote the book (CQ1)

The rest all there too - please just subscribe to the podcast channel and I think they will all be available to you. Please enjoy and hopefully these podcasts will help you to think about how to develop your strategy so that it is able to meet the shifting economic sans of this crisis. 

Cracking Questions: now into second month of publication!

Unleash the innovative beast inside you!

Straight talking on being commissioned

This afternoon, I attended a Commissioning Academy organised by the Local Government Association to develop the skills of local councillors involved in buying services for their councils. My role was to be on a panel to give them some insight into what it feels like being commissioned (or procured). I thought I would share my opening pitch:

• The more complicated and convoluted you make your procurement process, the more likely that you will end up hiring suppliers who are brilliant at completing forms and answering tricky questions. They may or may not be good at supplying what you want.
• Remember that although your procurement process ends with selecting the 'best' supplier, this is only from the pool of those who could be bothered or had the time to enter the process in the first place. 
• If commissioners put as much effort into listening to and engaging with the market place as goes into creating 156 page procurement specifications, the world of outsourced supply would be very, very different.
• One of the biggest problems is that very few poachers become gamekeepers. Commissioners are often so darned commercially naive that taxpayers are losing out hook, line and sinker.
• From my perspective, I am very unlikely to bother bidding for a piece of work if any of these conditions are present:
• the time needed to bid is disproportionate to the work on offer
• the specification of what is wanted is buried on page 86
• the questions asked are so stupid that I cannot muster the energy to answer them
• the questions are so impenetrable as to defy all the dictionaries and thesauruses in the world
• the specification states that an essential ingredient of the service being procured - won't actually be paid for, but if you want to do it for free...
• the existing supplier has a head start (for a whole number of reasons)
• it's for a service where there will be dozens if not hundreds of bidders = too much of a lottery
• the deadline date is yesterday (or some other equally ridiculous time scale)- the requirement is over specified and does not match the stated outcome desired
• the supplier requirements are over specified (imo)- there is no scope for me to display my unique talents in the bidding process
• Early market engagement means me having an opportunity to learn about the challenges facing commissioners and showcase my talents in helping to meet those challenges. Eg whole system working to prevent later problems & build robust ways of generating valuable social outcomes.

The story behind 'Cracking Questions'

In one way or another, my life (both professional and personal) has been dedicated to helping others become and be powerful authors of their own lives. It has always seemed to me that too many people treat themselves, or allow themselves to be treated, as mere subjects in someone else's narrative. This psychological subjugation is bad for individuals, bad for communities and organisations, and indeed bad for our world.

We are demanding more and more of our finite world: as populations, needs and wants just get bigger and bigger. As a consequence, it is even more vital to provide what the world needs in the most economic, effective and efficient ways. So all organisations: business, public sector or third sector ones are, in my view, morally obliged to make all efforts to improve continuously. It also makes business sense too, of course.

Over the years, there have been many fashions in organisational development and improvement. From Time & Motion studies, to TQM, to BPR, to Knowledge Management, to Lean, to Transformation to blah blah, yada yada... And these fashions always come with a high price tag and shiny suited consultants who are the High (and highly rewarded) Priests of the new vogue.

So I figured, what was needed was this:

• A short, simple and readable book that focused on helping people come up with their own creative ideas that would improve the ways in which business is done: more economy, efficiency and effectiveness
• An approach which didn't rest on armies of external consultants to 'support' it (or indeed forests of flip chart paper to map processes to the nth degree)
• A money back guarantee on the purchase: so if the book had no value, then I would refund what you paid for it. 
• A growing hope that this book would help to develop more organisations that understand that everyone who works in them are partners, assets and co-creators of a common wealth from which more and more people can and should benefit

"Cracking Questions" is available from all the usual online book stores (with a Kindle ebook coming out very soon)

• Amazon UK
• Waterstones UK
• Amazon USA
• Barnes & Noble USA