• About

burningmanagementblog

~ Life imitates management..management imitates life

burningmanagementblog

Tag Archives: creativity;

Channelling Oprah By Accident

15 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

accidental manager, authenticity, C K Prahalad, Caroline Myss, CMI, creativity;, David Gelles, failure, flow;, Gary Hamel, innovation, innovation economy, lucky country, Malcolm Turnbull, Michael Porter, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, OECD, Oprah, Oprah Winfrey, Pfeffer, risk, risk taking, self-esteem, Soul, spirt, Sutton, Wyatt Roy

oprah_northwestern

I went to the Oprah Tour of Australia in Brisbane recently . There I’ve said it! Fair play to Oprah she did, mid-show, acknowledge the 9 or so of us blokes in attendance, whereupon we were asked to stand and received the ‘love in the room’. It was just a momentary and miniscule glimpse of what it must be like to get adulation like Oprah does. She then went on to regale the audience with her ‘recipe’ for happiness, peppered with anecdotes from her life to illustrate junctures at which important things happened. All events that have helped her form her view on happiness and success. She touched on authenticity, having clarity of purpose, intention, dedication of service and surrender amongst other things. This gave me pause for thought. While her recipe for life seemed fairly common sense I reflected it wasn’t a bad recipe for achieving success in the business world either.

Just a couple of weeks ago now Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull released the much awaited policy on innovation. In his own words this is the best time to be alive in Australia. That point may be moot but you could prosecute a strong case to say it is perhaps the most interesting (and not in a Chinese proverb sort of way). In short the main issue confronting us is the re-calibration of the Australian economy from one of pulling resources from the ground (Coal, Iron Ore and Gas) to one of innovation. We were once the ‘lucky country’ and now we are striving to be the ‘creative’ one.

Out of the earth we once extracted wealth and now we must extract from our minds and spirits (the well of creative ideas) the new wealth. Once we extracted resources and sent them overseas without much in the way of a value-add, only to buy those goods back as steel and other value-added products. Now we must do the value-add bit here. When the commodity is ideas and we don’t value add in our own backyard it’s called a brain drain. We must have ideas and then shape and polish them if we are to maintain our enviable OECD position in terms of absolute wealth and also in terms of stature and national self-esteem. This is a nice segue to Oprah  who talked a lot about self-worth. Little it appears can be achieved if this is not at its optimal level. The real challenge now will be how we manage creativity and ideas within the workplace. Just the word ‘workplace’ sounds like a misnomer  because creativity, long associated with play, may seem a slightly awkward bedfellow to work (grind) which is what we get up each day for.

The Executive corridor (or C Suite – a term I really don’t like) is populated with managers whose qualifications fall into one of three distinct groups:

  • technical experts with a management qualification tacked on;
  • professional managers whose expertise lies solely in the art and science of the practice of management; and
  • technical experts with no management qualifications to speak of.

In the past knowing more than the other ‘bloke’, and yes it has generally been a male, has been the prerequisite for promotion or advancement in the workplace. This has had two impacts:

  • the most knowledgeable person in the chain has been taken out of the position immediately lowering the knowledge quotient at the pointy-end;
  • a position requiring an altogether different skill set has then been occupied by someone ill-equipped to handle it. Arise the accidental manager.

There is nothing wrong, per se, in promoting a technically proficient worker. This can act as an encouragement to others to strive to do better (or as Oprah might phrase it, to be the best you that you can be). However before doing so there are four precursor activities that need to be set in motion first:

  • working with the soon to be promoted team member getting them to realise there is a whole body of knowledge that they don’t know but will need to;
  • helping them realise that falling back on their default technical knowledge to define their sense of self-esteem in the new role is not appropriate;
  • providing some baseline management training before the promotion; and
  • instilling in them the notion that they are now on a path of lifelong learning.

In short it is necessary to do succession planning, or as Oprah might say, find your thread, follow and nurture it.

Regrettably the world is littered with accidental managers. It has become so acute that the Chartered Management Institute in the UK, the peak body for management professionals, has identified this as a key risk to the UK’s success in the digital age. The impact of accidental managers in the workplace is varied. It ranges from small business failures to meltdowns of global enterprises; the shockwaves of which ripple across the globe. Seldom do such impacts happen without individuals and families being affected. Compare an accidental manager to a not yet fully qualified pilot. At least s/he has auto pilot to rely upon. The promotion of managers without the requisite insight, training and commitment to lifelong learning is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Those who have put in the hard yards of learning and study over the years are often left to pick up the pieces and in ‘repairing’ those mishandled by accidental managers oftentimes find themselves reaching into their wider families to help salve their wounds.

With the need for Australia to generate ideas and turn these ideas into commercial successes, there is a greater need now than ever to have managers in place who are anything but there accidentally. There are four generations in the workplace – boomers (me), Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z. As managers we will need to add this additional complexity to the existing skills necessary to run a successful business. Add to this the requirement to be able to create a culture where ideas can be encouraged, shaped and presented to market and we can begin to see that not only is the accidental manager well out of their depth but the assured manager may well be coming up short up themselves.

The ability to generate ideas is not enough in its own right anymore. The testing, hot housing, incubating and prototyping will require courage as it involves risk and risk taking. If we are to survive in the digital age and this new era of innovation, our approach to risk must change. Our default position of being risk averse can no longer protect nor sustain  us. This begs the question as to whether the existing breed of assured managers are up to the task (me included). Oprah may well prompt us to ask the question as to whether were are getting our team members to embrace their failures and allowing them to learn from them. We cannot innovate unless we fail some of the time. We cannot grow as individuals without some elements of failure in our lives. Failing in front of our subordinates is a huge display of vulnerability but without leadership by example how can we expect our team members to learn from us?

Failure starts to take us into areas where very few assured managers are comfortable to travel. Many of us may not even recognise that such terrain exists. Failure and success, creativity and innovation start to go to the spirit or soul of a person. To become successful managers we are going to have to embrace the soul and recognise the way it affects those about us. We will need to know about energy and flow. Required reading should now include Csikszentmihalyi, Myss, Chopra and Sheehy while still including Hamel, Prahalad, Porter, Pfeffer et al.

Oprah has a head-start here because she was able to build a successful media empire based on self-belief, focus, intention and surrender. She knows intrinsically that the spirit requires nurturing and in doing so, flow – the well from which we draw ideas – can bring happiness. As assured managers we are going to have to continue to learn and do so in new areas; some of which may not sit that comfortably with our scientist selves.

Highly developed intuition will be required (future blog topic on the way). I suspect business school learning will not be of great help here. Sure we can learn about digital marketing and the importance of cash flow at B School, but to learn about soul and spirit as Oprah would reflect will require us to attend ourselves. Perhaps the way of the future for managers is retreats built along the lines of ashrams? The drive that made us devote our own time to improving our management skills must be re-kindled to encourage us to learn new skills and acquire new knowledge that awakens new dimensions; those that will lead to innovation, business success and above all true happiness in the workplace and beyond.

 

Booming through the AND Paradox.

29 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

chakras;, commerciality;, creativity;, de Bono;, ecstasy;, flow;, Future Business Council;, intuition;, the next boom;

7c7756040b7325041d1586c93a8c434d_how-to-train-your-creative-brain-580x326_featuredImage

Congratulations to the Future Business Council in Australia for the release of their report this week called “The Next Boom. A surprise new hope for Australia’s economy”. In essence these young upstarts are disrupting the long-established Business Council of Australia and doing a good job to boot if their first report is any indication of future performance.

They rightly point to opportunities (albeit limited by time) that exist to exploit the burgeoning appetite amongst the world’s consumers for sustainable products and services. Many would ask what’s so new about this. Well they have been able to make the argument in a coherent way that avoids the kind of sound-bite, vox populi approach that has bedevilled similar pronouncements. Instead hey have provided a well-reasoned long-form study that avoids the climate-change curse of long and hard to digest tomes that very few have the patience or intellectual wherewithal to grapple with.

I can’t help think though that it’s a chapter short. They rightly point to drivers for a shift by consumers to a demand for sustainable products and services. The three drivers they recognise as:

  • changing consumer preferences;
  • Government regulation; and
  • environmental necessity.

Sustainable innovation, once the preserve of the CSR set, is seen as an absolute necessity now. They rightly point to the need to transition ideas at a rapid pace from lab to production line and the need for an entrepreneurial start-up culture.

In order to position Australia at the forefront of this opportunity the Future Business Council identify three key reforms:

  • Make Australian-made products the global mark of sustainability excellence;
  • Remove barriers to new business models and lift product standards; and
  • Introduce market mechanisms and boost investment in innovation, science and research.

Let’s imagine that all this happens and Australia becomes ‘start-up heaven’. How, I wonder, will all this be managed? Start-up companies, by their nature, are likely to be populated by younger minds unblemished by the inertia of older workers who have self-regulated their ideas after years of middle-management road blocks. How is such innovation, creativity and energy to be nourished and channelled? No fantastic idea will ever make it to market if you can’t get cash positive. Commerciality is not necessarily an easy bedfellow with creativity, but without it an idea is vapour. I’m not advocating the older generation here, per se, but some sensible heads on shoulders will be required to guide, coach and mentor if we are to take the next boom opportunity by the horns.

Within these start-up companies it will be necessary to create a whole new managerial paradigm. The master-servant relationship that characterises most businesses will have to be shed for a new way of working. We could look to Google or Yahoo etc. except that in many cases these companies, when you translate  their fad-speak, are in fact operating in that traditional manner. Ask any junior Apple employee who rode a lift with Steve Jobs! Rather, we need to embrace a way that encourages and nurtures creativity AND common-sense in equal measure.

The question is whether we should look forward to a new managerial modus operandi, or look back or across to models that might just be able to create a culture and climate where innovation and imagination sit comfortably with commerce and operability. To get the best out of our workforce we need to go beyond thinking of them as human capital, or worse, re-labelling them as ‘talent’. We will need to explore ways of managing that stretch the very boundary of what management is thought to be. We will need to create communication styles that reflect BOTH digital/social media modes AND age-old intuition/’telepathy’. We will need to coach our people in a way that is BOTH as if they were our children AND our co-workers. We will need to help them enter flow and embrace ecstasy AND wear the de Bono ‘black hat’ at the same time. We will need managers who develop an intuition that speaks to both creative AND commercial potential.  We will need to encourage our people to jealously guard their ideas as their own AND share them without fear. We will need them to be mindful AND mindless.

In short we will need to embrace a whole new paradox – the paradox of the AND. The managers and coaches of our innovators may not find their skill sets fulfilled through the traditional business-school route. It will be beholden on us who want to innovate, to bolster our existing business skills with other skills. It might be argued that those managers who have the courage and foresight to embrace mindfulness, flow, intuition, chakra energy and similar notions will be the ones most capable of nurturing the creative energies that lie within each of us. Quite possibly it is these managers we need to help sustain Australia as ‘the lucky country’. Only then will the next boom be ours.

Recent Posts

  • Happiness Can’t Buy Healthy!
  • Self-improvement is all the rage!
  • You Snooze…you win!
  • What’s In a Number?
  • Big Pharma – it’s time to cook!

Recent Comments

Your SCHEEME is Rad… on Your SCHEEME is Rad Man
joshymaters on Mystics and Statistics on the…
joshymaters on The Match Before the Matc…
Cool Offices | Const… on Cool Offices

Archives

  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • November 2020
  • June 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • December 2019
  • October 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • February 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014

Categories

  • communications
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • Happiness Can’t Buy Healthy!
  • Self-improvement is all the rage!
  • You Snooze…you win!
  • What’s In a Number?
  • Big Pharma – it’s time to cook!

Recent Comments

Your SCHEEME is Rad… on Your SCHEEME is Rad Man
joshymaters on Mystics and Statistics on the…
joshymaters on The Match Before the Matc…
Cool Offices | Const… on Cool Offices

Archives

  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • November 2020
  • June 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • December 2019
  • October 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • February 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014

Categories

  • communications
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • Happiness Can’t Buy Healthy!
  • Self-improvement is all the rage!
  • You Snooze…you win!
  • What’s In a Number?
  • Big Pharma – it’s time to cook!

Recent Comments

Your SCHEEME is Rad… on Your SCHEEME is Rad Man
joshymaters on Mystics and Statistics on the…
joshymaters on The Match Before the Matc…
Cool Offices | Const… on Cool Offices

Archives

  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • November 2020
  • June 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • December 2019
  • October 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • February 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014

Categories

  • communications
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • burningmanagementblog
    • Join 100 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • burningmanagementblog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...