Level 7 Goes East – First Impressions

The Manila Diaries

11 May 2012

93 degrees Fahrenheit, Partly cloudy, Humidity 66%

The build up to re-locate to Manila has been tremendous both from the personal and business perspectives but I am now here and already noting differences and similarities to life back in the UK.  Clearly life in general will be a huge adjustment; living in a high-rise apartment, dining out more, being the ‘stranger’ in town whose physical appearance is different and so gets stared at but in a nice, friendly way and of course the climate!  High temperatures and high humidity are some of the biggest challenges I will need to address but then I keep telling myself this is all part of the experience. 

My first impressions of Manila are that it is very like other big, bustling cities with lots of people, traffic and high-rise buildings.  The people are very friendly, welcoming and honest.  I am already greeted by my first name in the local coffee shop and I had an interesting experience the other day that made me reflect on values.

Many organisations espouse organisational values of trust, honesty and integrity but the other day I experienced these values in action.  I was looking for my mobile phone (an Apple i-phone) one morning and having searched the apartment thoroughly could only think that it must have fallen out of my bag the previous evening whilst sitting in the local coffee shop.  I returned to the coffee house the next day with little hope in my heart of ever seeing the phone again, but yes, the phone had been found and it was waiting in the office, in a sealed bag, waiting for its owner to come and claim it!  I would like to think I would have experienced the same outcome in the UK, but I suspect this might not be the case (I once had my laptop stolen from my desk at work, never to be seen again).

My key objective over the next couple of weeks is to find a permanent place to live for me and my partner after which time I can then focus on business opportunities for Level 7.  I am reminded of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which suggests that unless our basic, physical needs are met fulfilment and self actualisation need to take a back seat.  Whilst Maslow is considered somewhat old hat, personally, I still think his theory helps us to put our purpose and actions into perspective.

Finally, technology is making the move to the other side of the world less traumatic; keeping in touch with the UK is easy, I just need to remember the time difference!

Signing off for now

Our Correspondent in Manila

Relationship Building: Influencing Stakeholders

Relationship Building – Influencing Stakeholders

The building and sustaining of relationships is important for business success. Our 7 steps to successful relationship building highlight the importance of stakeholder analysis and understanding. We combine this with the application of appropriate influencing styles to suit specific stakeholder values and needs to support improved and sustainable business performance.

1.       Identify stakeholders – Who are the people and groups affected by your business and what you do?  By engaging with the right people and groups in the right way you can make a big difference to the achievement of goals and outcomes.

2.       Analyse relative power - Which people/groups are important to your value creation process[1]? Conduct a power- interest[2] analysis in order to understand the degree of their power over your organisation and their interest in your business.

3.       Identify appropriate influencing styles –Use of the push/pull framework[3] offers a range of alternative influencing styles to suit different stakeholders.

4.       Tailor strategies – By combining the power/interest and push/pull analyses, strategies can be tailored to suit each stakeholder or stakeholder group.

5.       Prioritise actions to achieve quick wins and develop a forward strategy to ensure stakeholder satisfaction and achievement of organisational goals on a short, medium and long term basis.

6.       Implement – importance of designated responsibilities for implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Constant review is needed to take account of the changing status of stakeholders and groups over time as the busines environment changes.

7.       Gather feedback and refine strategies to support continuous improvement in stakeholder relations.

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[1] R Edward Freeman on value creation: http://bit.ly/yvyNLF

[2] Mendelow’s (81) Power Interest Matrix adapted by Johnson and Scholes (99): http://bit.ly/yK0xww

[3] Ashridge Business school on Influencing Skills: http://bit.ly/wpx4pf

The Human Factor

We recently had the opportunity of presenting to a group of fellow IOD members on the topic of communication styles and influencing strategies.  Our starting point was to explain why we felt the need to remind ourselves why it is important to remember that in any interpersonal communication there are two or more human beings involved and the complexities that this brings to any interaction.  Our business model is built on People in terms of how we do business and what we do.

This was all set against a backdrop of the digital world and the social media environment in which we all inhabit to a greater or lesser extent.  This too brings a range of personal and business challenges to the themes of personal and mass communication.

Our final point was to advocate a balance of use and appropriateness towards the personal and digital worlds of communication.  They can co-exist perfectly and can provide effective and efficient ways of reaching out to our target audience but in the words of one academic:

“It’s so rewarding to connect with human beings. It’s so good for our bodies to do this. Everything we know as psychologists tells us it’s the most wonderful thing. So if we’re losing that, I think that is distressing.”

Sara Konrath, Research Assistant Professor, University of Michigan

Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention, 2010.

In a recent article by McKinsey, business people are called to think about the effect of the human factor on the subject of service design and delivery.

https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Marketing/Sales_Distribution/The_human_factor_in_service_design_2922

What’s your view?  What impact will the digitial world ultimately have on the human factor?

Innovation Challenge Week 7 - Curiosity

What is curiosity?  For me, the essence of it is being able to open up my mind to possibilities and what might be ....

Spending time with family and friends over the festive holidays has meant that I have spent time in the company of young children and it has been fascinating to observe their inquisitiveness.

Present opening, I am sure like in many other households, was enjoyable and frantic.  Very small children seem to prefer playing with the wrapping paper or the box in which the toys came and sometimes disregarded the actual item itself.  It started me thinking about the value we assign to items once we are in a position to understand what the word value means.  With very little experience of the world, babies tend to place equal value on items until through learning and reinforcement they come to realise that some items have more or less value to them than other items.  Next year will be interesting to see whether they are still more excited by the wrapping paper or by the actual gift itself?

So what have I reflected on in terms of my own curiosity over the last couple of weeks?  It has been difficult to assign equal value to objects or aspects of situations because my experience and knowledge which I cannot un-know causes me to apply my own set of personal filters to those objects and situations causing me to come to a biased conclusion.

When working with business people to help develop their creative thinking skills, I often encourage people to: try and see something through the eyes of a child (i.e. be non-judgemental, place equal value on aspects of the object / situation, experience the object or the situation as if for the first time) but this week has reminded me that this is sometimes easier said than done.  But following one of my principles which is start making a change by taking small actions, I have been trying out new experiences such as: 

·         Reading a section of the newspaper that I would normally discard

·         Watching a film or a TV programme that I would normally find myself saying “I’m not interested in ......”

·         Finding an alternative walking route to the station / shops

·         Researching a subject but from an alternative / unusual perspective

This has reminded me that there are new things for me to experience that are within my immediate reach, no matter how inconsequential that experience may seem and which will help to retain my child-like curiosity!

On the other hand, we can take a leap of faith and immerse ourselves in some of the bigger questions life throws at us.  http://curiosity.discovery.com/

Innovation Challenge Week 6

Find patterns and create combinations

This week has been one of tidying up things before the festive season takes hold.  However, I have kept to my word and combined last week’s habit (writing things down) with looking for patterns and creating combinations.  I decided to revisit a creative thinking technique called Morphological analysis whereby you analyse an element of your problem into discrete components and then combine these different components to see if anything interesting jumps out at you.  You can find more creative thinking techniques from this website.

http://www.mycoted.com/Category:Creativity_Techniques

The focus of my analysis was to see if there were any new and interesting ways of engaging with our clients and potential clients that were not part of our existing strategy.  Whilst there isn’t anything novel that appears out of this analysis, it has provided me with some useful insights that may have other uses.  So a worthwhile exercise.

As with many creative thinking techniques, I find it is important to practice using them in ways that are helpful and not to just slavishly follow the instructions.  In fact something novel may occur just because you are not exactly following the instructions!

Next week which is the last challenge looks at the role of curiosity.  I look forward to reporting on how my curiosity has been tapped during the festive week.

Signing off from Level Seven and wishing all our readers Happy Holidays.

Innovation Challenge Weeks 3, 4 and 5

Risk Taking / Escape / Write things down

Some interesting reflections about these habits and my lack of action.  First of all I’ll deal with risk taking; at the end of week 3, I left the UK for a long weekend to travel to sunnier surroundings with some friends.  During the week I reflected on the notion of risk taking and found it difficult to find something about which I could take a risk that was relevant, appropriate and timely and could write about before I left.  (Clearly my enthusiasm for the Innovation Challenge was waning!) I pride myself on being open to risk as throughout my life I’ve taken all sorts of personal and career risks and have always managed the consequences to my advantage.  So, on the basis of keeping things simple, I decided to risk not writing a blog entry for the 3^rd week.  My rationale was the belief that no one was actually reading our blogs, so I felt the risk would have little, if any, consequence.

Imagine my surprise when I heard that at least one person was following the blog and was looking forward to each instalment!  I have spent the day thinking about the consequences of my actions and how to manage them.  Of course, the easiest thing to do is to sit down and write a blog entry, which I am doing now.  The hardest thing to do is to deal with my feelings, which are a mixture of guilt (for not following through with the commitment I made at the start of this challenge) and the feeling of letting someone down (even 1 reader is worth continuing with the challenge).

My reflections have reminded me about the following:

1.        Every risk has consequences.

2.       Consequential actions are easier to manage than consequential feelings.

3.       Don’t make assumptions.

4.       Escape is not an option

This last point leads me to the previous week’s habit – Escape.  Using the definition within the Seven Habits of Innovation (my basis for the challenge); this is about escaping out of your usual environment to help with the creative flow.  Over the years I have learned that I am at my most thoughtful, creatively, when I am travelling in a car or by train.  Both the physical and metaphorical journeys of getting from point A to point B help me to think differently about things.  Whilst the previous week took me to a different environment, I did not have any specific problems to ponder on.  I am, however, confident that when I need to tap into some creative time, I can manoeuvre myself into an appropriate setting to help set the mood.

(Problem + Different environment = Potential Solution)

This week’s habit focused on writing things down.  A good habit to get into for all sorts of reasons, so in the context of this challenge I searched out my Creativity & Innovation journal which I write in periodically.  I use this to capture ideas and thoughts about creativity and innovation that will be useful in Level Seven's work and research.  Again, just like ‘Escape’ I do use my journal effectively but perhaps I could widen it out to include other topics.  There is benefit to be gained in cross-fertilisation of ideas, so next week I will attempt to be more proactive about this habit.  This could well help with next week’s challenge which is ‘Find Patterns and Create Combinations’.

I will report back next Friday.

Thank you to our readers!

Employment Law and Authentic Relationships

Government plans to overhaul key areas of employment legislation have not surprisingly led to the full spectrum of responses from those who say ‘jolly good, about time’ to others who see it as a charter for unscrupulous employers. The basis for the plans is the view that employment law impedes business growth and therefore changes are proposed to legal provision including dismissal and the employment tribunal system: http://bit.ly/u72lcK

Whether the proposed changes will lead to greater profitability can only be a matter of conjecture. Making it easier to dismiss someone, for example, is much more complicated than just getting rid of a problem person: covering that person’s work, finding a replacement and then training them up bring a raft of costs which need to be balanced against other savings. The law has a clear and crucial place in ensuring fairness, protection for employer and employee and consistency of practice but whether someone can legally be dismissed after one or two years is actually not the point. The point should be that we build good relationships and that those with people management responsibilities work to establish clarity and fairness. There is a danger that we can become so legally driven that the law becomes a distraction from basic good practice and authentic human relationships. An understanding of the legal risks must be part of the management ‘toolkit’ but this knowledge should support and rationalise business driven actions rather than be the sole driver.  

Creating an environment in which there is mutual trust and respect supported by clearly articulated standards, processes and sanctions provides the strongest context in which to develop happy, performing employees managed by effective managers and led by authentic leaders. 

Have a look at our Level Seven ‘7s’ to see how legal awareness can be created within an open and honest culture http://bit.ly/uRGEiG.