Leadership is not rocket science

Transforming health care by growing collaborative care

Over the past 2 years I've had the honour of working with a project championed by the College of Registered Nurses of Nova Scotia seeking to move collaborative care (health care professionals working as integrated teams) from happening occasionally to widespread practice.  Here is a video that captures the journey to date:

Working Together: Moving Interdisciplinary Practice from Theory to Action from Ravi Tangri on Vimeo.

How does this impact you?

I've worked for nearly 20 years helping a wide range of industries develop innovative strategies, both from the inside of the organization and from outside as a consultant.  In my work, one thing I've heard over an over again when I provide examples of innovation to spur thinking is 'that's fine for them, but we're different'. 

Yesterday I wrote about innovative leadership from restaurants in the face of the current economic challenges, and I suspect they will garner a similar reaction from some.  'That's fine, but we're different', and that, to be blunt, is a cop-out.

Having worked with and in so many industries, what I see is that the industry itself has very little relevance.  What is important are the people and their perspective, and they all deal with people and have a perspective. 

Do you engage your people?  Do you look for new opportunities?  Do you create leader-ful communities?  Do you believe that you can learn from other industries and organizations, even if they have nothing to do with what you do?  These actions and perspectives are common to all successful strategic innovation.  If  you believe you can engage your people and innovate, you're right.  If you believe you can't, you're right.  It has nothing to do with what business you're in.

And time and again, when we work with our various clients, they also come to realize this, and that is why they succeed.  Yes, they are 'special' as all individuals are special in their own unique way.  But they are not 'special' in that the principles of effective leadership and innovation will not work for them.  That is simply an excuse to take no action and to stay in helplessness.  And that is an excuse you have to abandon if you really want to take the lead, especially today.

That's my 2 cents.  What do you think?

Now here's innovation despite this challenging economy

I just heard about two restaurant owner who got tired of everyone being down because of the economy (and probably their business being down as well) and decided to bring some joy back to their clientele - so they took away the prices.  This is a story about restaurants, but the learning is relevant to us all.

It all started with the Little Bay Restaurants owned by Peter Ilic.  Because of the credit crisis hitting his customers, he wanted to ensure that they felt that they were getting value for their meal, so for the month of February he's allowing his customers to pay what they want for their meals - and there's no fine print.

In a Reuter's news release, Peter says, "It just seemed the right thing to do with everyone under the cash and feeling pretty miserable."

In Montreal, the Taverne Crescent had been forced to close for lunch on Mondays and Tuesdays since the start of 2009.  Then the owners heard about what Peter Ilic had done and felt it might bring back some of the joie de vivre that has faded in the current economic climate. 

As happened with the Little Bay Restaurants, most customers have been paying a fair price.  Even if they don't that's OK.  Nicky Odorisio, co-owner of the restaurant says "If someone pays a quarter and they've never been here before, and they like the product and they like the place, maybe they'll come back for dinner on a Saturday night when it's our regular menu."

He's looking at the long-run, not focused on the short term ka-ka.

I applaud both these entrepreneurs.  Instead of just cutting back and shutting down, they're focused on how to create unique value and a unique experience for their clients.  It reminds me of a few years ago when Hurricane Juan hit Halifax and shut the city down.  power was out for days, so not only did most homes lose all their food, so did all the restaurants.  Most did nothing.  The Ardmore Tea Room on Quinpool Road, however, realized the food was going to waste and they knew that many people didn't have supplies, so they set up  a barbecue and gave away 2,000 meals. 

The kicker - as of the writing of this story, the Ardmore Tea Room still hadn't received an insurance settlement for Juan.  This was an act of pure service to the community.

During Hurricane Juan, every restaurant faced the same crisis.  Only one looked at what they could do and how they could make a difference and serve the community.  In this current economic crisis, many restaurants (and other businesses) are facing challenges and downturns.  How many are taking action like Little Bay and Taverne Crescent? 

Most restaurant owners would say that these people are crazy and that they're going to lose their shirts - and use that as a justification for doing nothing.  First of all, that isn't happening.  Yes, there are people getting a free lunch, but there are others who are paying more than the meal is worth - and they'll be back for other meals at full fare for a long time.  Second - whether this works or not, at least they're doing something and looking for ways to create value for and loyalty from their customers.

All of us are afraid and may feel helpless at times.  Staying in fear and helplessness indefinitely, however, is a choice.  And these entrepreneurs are choosing to take action despite their fear and despite the economy.

I applaud them for taking action, and if I were in their cities, I certainly would reward them with my patronage, now and in the future.

That's my 2 cents.  What do you think?

The opportunity in these challenging times

There is opportunity in these challenging times because they are so challenging.  The question is - are we ready to take the leap of faith to take a chance?

Take a look at the auto industry.  With the turbulence that is hitting this industry, management and the unions are united against a common 'threat'.  That type of situation creates opportunity for change that may never come again - the type of opportunity I encountered fifteen years ago.

In the early nineties, the military in Canada was making massive cuts and laying off as much as half of its civilian workforce.  In order to keep their jobs, the remaining civilians had to bid for their jobs against private sector firms.  That created an alignment between the unions and the management (those in uniforms) like never before.  On many bases, both were united in finding a way to keep the jobs that remained.

I was fortunate to work with many of these bases then to reinvent the work - and often the bases - so that it could be done with half the people, and so that they could survive the competitive bids from the private sector.

The point is that prior to that process, you never would have seen management and the union working so closely together with such open communication as I saw on some bases.  It would not have happened without the threat of losing the remaining jobs on top of losing so many to start with.

We like to think that we, as human beings, are intelligent and can make the intelligent choices, and yet so often we prove ourselves wrong.  Take the labour crisis that's about to hit the industrialized world on the heels of this recession. We've known that this was coming for decades - it's a simple matter of demographics - and yet most organizations still, to this day, don't have effective succession planning in place and are not ready for the retirement of the boomers.

In the next 5 years, you're going to see huge change coming that nobody would go near a year or two ago because we weren't in crisis then.

We don't have to wait for that.  Right now this economic crisis has changed the playing field.  Unions and management and other stakeholders are working together with a common agenda - people who you never would have pulled together around the same table a little while ago.  How can we leverage this to produce lasting change that makes a long-term difference, not just try to survive the next few months?

What do you think?

Upcoming webinar on leading complex change

If you're challenged with leading complex change, this webinar will focus on how you can gain more leverage by approaching your challenges by seeing the people involved as a living system rather than as elements of an org chart.  Click here for more information.

How leadership impacts healthy workplaces

There is growing evidence that creating a healthy workplace actually creates a more productive and - in the private sector - profitable organization.  Hard data is showing that the old autocratic, and even bureaucratic environments actually harm and impact productivity and profitability.  There is a bottom line to effective leadership, and we have to measure it and hold leaders accountable to create the quality, healthy workplaces that are truly possible.

On Friday I attended a conference on Advancing Quality Workplace Quality Healthcare in Nova Scotia, which is a leader across Canada in this work.  There were representatives there from the national Quality Worklife Quality Healthcare Collaborative, who have prepared guidelines and a strategy for health care organizations to craft healthier workplaces.  The Conference Board of Canada has prepared a report Healthy People, Healthy Performance, Healthy Profits, which shows how employers investing in their people impact not only their own productivity, but also impact the social determinants of health, reducing the burden on the health care system.

All of these findings are phenomenal, and well-based in solid evidence, and taking the action they recommend does impact outcomes. I applaud everyone who has invested so much into developing this work and these initiatives - they are making a difference and they will make a much larger difference in the days to come.

I have only one concern.  Both of these reports (and others like them) speak of the impact of the organizational culture (simple english: how you work and interact in the work environment) on workplaces and on health.  There are great recommendations and examples in the Conference Board report of initiatives such as backup child care services or ergonomics, and of how they impacted productivity.

My concern is this: 70+% of the organizational culture is shaped by the leadership.  While it is mentioned, leadership has not been explicitly identified as a core driver and leverage point for creating quality, healthy workplaces. There's talk of 'implementing best practice leadership guidelines', but little more on how to build accountability and sustainability.

If you follow many of the issues identified further upstream, such as absenteeism, turnover and lost time due to accidents, as I did in my book, StressCosts Stress-Cures, the root cause of much of these problems is leadership and leadership style.  I document evidence that shows that, over a ten year period in one study, private sector organizations with more effective people management practices have far higher sales growth, profits and profit growth than those that don't.  For turnover, the data is black and white: people don't leave jobs - they leave bosses.

Leaders have to take responsibility for their impact on their people - and, as a result, on their productivity and effectiveness.  Only when we start regularly measuring leadership and holding leaders accountable for it will we tap the full potential in creating and shaping health, quality workplaces. 

All of the other work that is happening and that is outlined by these reports is good - it creates good change.  There's just so much more that's out there if you can give your system teeth and hold leaders - all the way to the top - accountable for how they impact their people and their workplaces.

That's my 2 cents. What do you think?

How Facebook impacts you...

I've heard a number of people expressing discomfort with Facebook, particularly with its potential impact on your work life - the information people may be able to get about you for interviews, or as a leader or whatever.

Well, here's an interesting take on what Facebook would be like in real life:

A tale of two service encounters

I recently had two service encounters that told me a great deal about the culture and leadership of these environments.  If you want to know what the leadership and systems are like in a workplace, look at how the front-line employees work and respond to situations. 

At those key moments of truth, management is rarely there.  It's the front-line employee who is either motivated to solve the customer's problem or totally tick them off.  For the sake of $2, one organization destroyed what had been a great customer experience, and the other went out of their way to solve a problem.  Little effort.  Big difference.

Last Sunday I took my six-year-old son to a movie, and afterwards, we went to play air hockey in the arcade at the movie theater.  We bought tokens for the games and went to play.

Well, one of these tables had no pressure in the middle, so the puck kept getting stuck at the middle of the table, and in the other table, the puck was stuck every time you scored a goal on one side.  I had to get the staff of the theater to come and unscrew the panel every time that happened.  The first time this happened, I asked the staff member to put new tokens in because it took so long to get the puck out, and she refused - she said if we didn't get a score of 7, she'd do it.  Then after the puck kept getting stuck, I just got frustrated and asked for our money ($2) back.  Both the staff member and the acting manager refused - they said they couldn't do it.  They could only give me more tokens because another company looked after the machines and the money for the tokens. 

Now that was next to useless.  The only thing in the arcade my son could play was the air hockey, and both machines were broken. All they needed to do was to give me $2 back, and I would have walked away mildly disappointed.  Instead, they totally ticked me off and destroyed what had been a great afternoon experience.  For the forseeable future, going to a movie is going to be tainted by that experience.

Let me say this was not the fault of the staff member and the acting manager.  This was the fault of either the manager or the entire organization. They do not trust event he acting manager to make a discretionary decision worth $2.  What does that say to the manager?  Whenever you limit and control your people and act like they don't trust you, you will lose.  They have lost far more than that $2 from me as I will be far less likely to go there in the future for my own use, for time with my son, for birthday parties for my son, for whatever.  And I'll be telling all my friends about this experience which will spread the effect even further (I'm bloggin about it, but I won't name them in this forum).  The lifetime value of me as a customer is significant and it has been impacted.

So let's look at encounter number 2.  The very next morning I had to fly to Toronto to do a talk for a client.  I was supposed to fly back the next day (Tuesday), but that morning I heard that a nasty weather system was supposed to be hitting my town, which meant I probably wouldn't be able to get back for a couple of days. 

I spoke to the agent at the airport and asked what it would cost me to get back Monday night as I wanted to minimize the cost to my client.  She said that if it was weather-related, she could change it no charge, but the weather system was not listed on her computer yet.  I asked if a storm warning from the Weather Network on my blackberry would help.  Technically, they're only supposed to act on what's in their own system, but she knew that one day of bad weather meant 3 days of extra work for her and her companions here (and across the country) rescheduling people and dealing with frustrated people. She knew that if she didn't help me now, she or one of her peers would have me added to an ever-growing line-up the next day. She changed my flight no charge.

What's interesting is that, of the two airlines in Canada, WestJet is known for being extremely customer responsive and for delivering great customer service.  Air Canada is the target for lots of criticism and flak as a bureaucratic, former government corporation.  I was flying Air Canada, and they were wonderfully responsive.

I don't know how all of Air Canada is, because I'll be truthfull - I've been frustrated with their bureaucracy in the past.  But I can tell you that the supervisor of these agents at this airport does not tie the hands of his or her people with bureaucratic red tape.  (S)He frees up his/her people to make the right decision with the right information, and in return, they've significantly grown my loyalty and I'm happy to spread the word about them (notice that I do name them - and I"m delighted to do so).

Effective leadership comes down to maintaining the people systems - of aligning employee goals with the organization's and making the gap between where you are and where  you need to be relevant to the front-line employee.  And then providing simple, timely feedback.  As I detail in some articles starting here, that's what effective leaders do.  Managers, instead, focus on controlling the actions of their people, tieing their hands up in knots so they can't respond.  At those moments of truth, they have no ability or motivation to do anything to help the customer.  And that costs them big time over the long haul.

That's my 2 cents.  What do you think?

The lost generation? I think not.

I found this to be a very powerful video.

What do you think?

Why you need to invest in leadership development now

The knee-jerk reaction to tough economic times is to cut, cut, cut.  Whether that's marketing, training, or leadership development.  And research shows that is exactly the wrong thing to do.  Those who make those cuts struggle to recover when the recession ends - and some don't.  In contrast, those who continue to invest strategically take off like a rocket with the economy.

Research conducted by Belkin & Associates showed that 86% of companies with strategic leadership development programs were able to respond rapidly when facing changes in the business environment.  In 2006, Laurie Bassie and Daniel McMurrer stated in the Harvard Business Review that "The bottom line: organizations with the best human capital practices provide returns to shareholders that are three times greater than those of companies with weak human capital practices."

The results are there.  The question is - do you respond with knee-jerk, fear-based cutting, or do you invest strategically for the long-term?