Blessed Are The Peacemakers

Great change is often a matter of small actions, constant conversation and doing the right thing. In this case, it is also the stuff of heroes.

The documentary The Secret Peacemaker, broadcast on BBC2 last night, was one of the most moving things I have seen for a long time. It was the story of a businessman called Brendan Duddy, who lives in Derry in Northern Ireland.

He isn't, by the normal ways of looking at things, anyone special. He was an ordinary man who owned a chip shop. But what he did was amazing.

A republican and a pacifist, Brendan acted as the broker to facilitate dialogue between the IRA and the British Government for more than twenty years during the 70's, 80's and early 90's, the darkest time of the Troubles.

He set up meetings at his house and elsewhere to get representatives of the IRA and the British Government together, during times when neither side could be seen to be talking to each other. He did so at immense personal risk to himself and his family. In Northern Ireland at this time, to be seen talking to a British soldier could get you shot by IRA paramilitaries paranoid about 'touts' or informers. Loyalist paramilitaries were shooting catholics seemingly at random. Being seen with militant republicans could have you thrown in jail indefinitely without trial.

There was nothing in it for Brendan, except the belief that dialogue was better than killing, and that the killing had to stop.

For twenty years, he spoke in coded messages on bugged telephone lines, drove through the dark to anonymous houses to convey messages to men who were ordering murders by the day, and kept it all secret from his friends and neighbours - everyone except his family.

He brokered meetings in his house, making cups of tea for killers and intelligence agents sitting on his sofa, being a trusted witness to conversations where the politically unthinkable was discussed and deals were done - ceasefires, doors kept open, promises made - that paved the way to the Good Friday agreement and the brittle but enduring peace that exists in Northern Ireland today.

I am sure that the story I saw had been cleaned up, sanitised and edited nicely - and that the truth is more ambiguous, murky and uncomfortable than the version broadcast. But regardless of what we learn in the future I have no doubt that this man is a hero of the highest order.

He did the right thing when it would have been easier to put his head in the sand. He risked everything he had to make things better, when there was no realistic prospect of success for years. And he did it effectively alone - not working for anyone else, not following anyone else's policy - but because he personally saw that something needed to be done and he could do it.

I grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles - and because I know how bleak those days were, I have nothing but admiration for this man who tried, in small steps over many years, to work to end them.

And, at the risk of sounding crass, I think Brendan can teach us something about change. First of all, the primary driver of peace process was conversation - dialogue between people - not 'communication' formally issued. Indeed the main time things went wrong for him was when some information was released the wrong way - announced in the House of Commons - rather than in discussion.

Secondly, if you want change to happen, it is much better to get out there and do something, rather than wait, even if you don't know every step of the journey. Brendan facilitated the dialogue, often when neither party was clear about what they were to talk about. Doing something and getting the dialogue going was critical.

And finally, change is about having a compass, not a map. Brendan was a pacifist - he wanted the killing to stop. He didn't have a great plan for peace, he just knew that if he could put the relevant people together, then the killing became less likely. It was a move in the right direction and that was the right thing to do.

Now the changes we have to face in our companies are much less mortal, are more defined and are much simpler than the things Brendan faced. But his example, I think, is something from which we can all learn.

- Mike

The Word Is Spreading

Bloomstorm features in a new podcast and in another blog.

Technology is a wondrous thing - it lets anyone do anything... And in this case, it lets me talk to Howard Graham of the Made Simple Group about Bloomstorm in this podcast. In it, you'll hear me explain where the name 'Bloomstorm' came from, why 'resisting change' is not what you think, and why change implementation, rather than management, is critical...

It was pleasing also to find that the most recent Bloomstorm Briefing (our free bimonthly newsletter offering tips and insight on change - you can sign up for it here) gave Howard a theme for his latest blog - on the notion of punctuality and respect.

You know what they say: great minds think alike.

Regards

- Mike

PS We've made some nice tweaks to our website - have a look and let us know what you think of it as well. Ta.

The Emperor's New Talk

The terminology of the change industry gets in the way of doing real change. Try cutting out the jargon and watch performance improve.

My friend and ex-colleague, Vincent Rousselet, has considerable intelligence and great experience of making and seeing change happen. I interviewed him today for the book I'm writing on change implementation - working title: Everything You Know About Change Is Wrong (But You Can Do Something About It) - and in the course of an excellent discussion, we wondered if, for the next change his organisation is implementing, he should remove all reference to the word 'change' altogether.

"Don't say we're implementing a change - say this is how we are going to work differently". An immediate change of focus, from jargon and 'stuff' to real activity. A chance for people to focus on real work, not workshops.

And this, of course, is one of the themes of the book. If you are managing change, you are not delivering it. If you are engaging stakeholders, you are not getting people to do things differently. If you are developing a communications plan, then you're not talking to your people.

It's like we've all been infected by a disease. Politicians talk like this. Business schools train their graduates to talk like this. And we pay consultants thousands of pounds to talk like this. And, after a while, we begin to believe it too: if we say certain words and do certain activities, we can sound impressive and make it look like we are doing real work, but we're not: in fact we are doing things that get in the way of real work.

Colette, my wife, says these things are 'Waffle Words' - words that sound meaningful and make you feel intelligent, but actually mean very little and deliver less. But the purpose of change is not to engage stakeholders, or to execute a comms plan: it is to improve business performance by working differently. Anything else is noise.

So next time you're involved in an activity to have people work differently, try this: do not permit anyone to use the following words and see what happens. I'll guarantee that people focus more on real results rather than the jargon.

• Change (try 'working differently')
• Strategic (try 'big' or 'important')
• Tactical (try 'small')
• Stakeholder (try 'someone who needs to do something')
• Commitment (try 'what we need them to do')
• Intervention (try 'task' or 'activity')
• Communications (try 'letting people know what they need to work differently')
• Outcome (try 'improved performance')
• Vision (try 'what we need to do')
• Rationale (try 'reason')
• Engagement (try 'working with each other')
• Model (try 'way of looking at it')
• Deliverable (try 'what we need to have')
• Performance System / incentives (try 'pay and perks')
• Process (try 'how to do something')
• Culture (try ' how we talk and do things round here')
• Analysis (try ' work out what I need to know to move forward')

To make it more interesting, try fining your consultants, say, £5 every time they use one of these terms. You could get a refund on their fee in a couple of hours...

I'm sure you can think of many others - I'd like to see your your thoughts and suggestions in the comments section below - let's see if we can create a dictionary of change nonsense together...

- Mike

The Case Against Goals

Don't let setting goals stop you getting things done.

Those who know me know that I am (in the words of my friend Sam Bodley-Scott) "built for comfort, not for speed." In other words, I carry a certain amount of excess weight.

But for the past 6-8 weeks or so I've been losing weight. A bit of watching what I eat (low carbs, low GI, anyone?) a bit more exercise and getting more sleep. And it's working.

Now I know that I'm supposed to have a goal - a target weight - to which I aspire and which is supposed to motivate me, but quite frankly such goals only make me depressed because they show me that I have a long way to go and it's going to be a lot of hard work to get there. In fact, I need to stop thinking about this right now, or else I'll get so depressed I'll have to cheer myself up with a cream cake (:-))

I am, however, serious about the goal thing. We are told, are we not, by almost every single textbook on change to set a goal and then think about how to get there. But in this case, that doesn't work for me. And in fact, I think it doesn't apply in most cases of change.

What happens when we think about the goal of a change - say an IT project, or an organisation redesign, or even a personal weight loss programme? We spend a lot of time "visioning the end state" We may spend a lot of time arguing or discussing with others how we will measure the goal. We may spend lots of time trying to work out how we will get there. Anything, in fact, instead of getting going. (BTW This is also a great place for consultants to make money. The longer they spin this bit out, the more money they make. And it's easier than actually doing the work...)

And underneath these discussions are a lot of contradictory thoughts, such as: "Damn! That's a stretch! We'll never get there," or "Fine, whatever, we'll forget about it after a few weeks like we always do," or "That is so far away, we'll never be able to do all the work we need to do to get there." As our NLP practitioner friends tell us, negative self-talk is a BAD THING, and so many change initiatives begin handicapped by a serious negative vibe.

So I haven't set a goal except that I want to lose some weight - not so much a goal as a direction. And so I've no excuse not to get started straight away. I just need to get going, see what happens and adjust things as I go. And I have: 16 lbs and counting.

And I can't help thinking that many change initiatives could benefit from a similar policy. Sure, set a direction for where you're going, but then get going. Try it out, see what works, adjust it and do it some more.

Much of the time, you'll know when you get there. And you'll get there faster, and have a happier journey - for nothing settles arguments more than delivery.

- Mike

Where I've been

Just visited the nice people at world66 and they let me create this map. Seems I've been in 26 countries and worked in most of them. That's 11% of the total. Only another 89% to go...



create your own visited country map

Dear John...

Change is matter of action, not words.

In my game, I see a lot of analyses, review many reports, hear frequent recommendations. And I'm sure they are useful, but at the back of my mind, I know...

Analysing what's wrong is easy.

Reporting our findings is easy.

Making recommendations is easy.

They are, all of them, easy. If it wasn't, why would we keep doing these things at home, with our friends, our families?

It's acting on these recommendations, making the necessary change, that is more challenging.

If you don't believe me, cast your mind back to the last time you had a relationship with a 'significant other' - and it had gone wrong. (If you can't remember such a time, either you are too young to be surfing the internet or I would like a glass of whatever you were drinking at the time...)

Remember? Talking about it with your friends and forcing them to listen until they ran out of patience (three weeks for women, three hours for men) and gave you the recommendation you knew was right: 'Dump him / her'.

This is a change that is easy to say - but, for most of us, very hard to do.

And all the nonsense about 'Management of Change' doesn't help. The important thing is not 'change' - it's about making things better: more efficient, more effective, less painful. Change is not something abstract to be taught on a workshop, it's specific, it's personal and it takes time.

And, like breaking up, it's better done cleanly, with good manners and by taking into account the feelings of the other person (people?) involved. And sometime down the line, after the pain is gone (but it never really goes away, does it?) it might be possible to see that yes, things are better; yes, it was the right thing to do.

But no matter how it comes out, we shouldn't be surprised that making change happen is hard, because it's always personal.

- Mike

Change to make it easy for the customer

In every business, the customer has a job to do. Make it easy for your customer to do their job, and your costs go down and your profits up.

A couple of years ago, I worked to help a client translate feedback from customers into better ways of working. Stripped of consultant jargon, this meant: "Your customers say they don't like it when you do this. Please stop."

If only it was that simple. The things we were helping our client to change existed because the client needed to manage their costs and the trade-off of improving the customer experience while keeping costs down - was not simple.

So we turned things on their heads. Instead of thinking "what can we do to make things better?" we thought,"what can we do to make it easier for our customers to deal with us?" In other words, we considered the job the customer had to do when they wanted to deal with my client.

And you know? It worked. An example: one problem was that customers called our client for help when the information they needed was already available on the client's website. When we checked it out, we found that while the information they needed was a few clicks down the page, customers found the customer service telephone number at the top of the web page. So they naturally called straightaway, rather than taking the thirty seconds or so to look down the page.

Result? The customer got the information they needed - but after a time-consuming phone call taking five or more minutes, rather than in seconds from the website.

So our client made it easier to draw the customer's attention to the necessary information - by moving the telephone number to the bottom of the page.

Result? the number of calls from customers were cut by 50% - while customers got the answers they need in seconds, not minutes. Lower cost, happier customers.

So many companies don't realise that one of the fastest and easiest ways to boost customer satisfaction and sales is make it as easy as possible for your customers to deal with you.

In other words, pay as much time and attention to managing and motivating your customers as you do your people - and you'll be rich.

Mike

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

The first issue of our newsletter has finally hit the streets!

Bloomstorm News - Tips, Tools and Techniques from the Antidote to Change Nonsense is now available. Each free issue gives you practical tips and tools that you can use straightaway to improve your change performance.

In this issue, we explain some specific strategies for maximising the impact and value of your change efforts. You can download a free copy here.

Or, if you would like us to send you the latest free copy every time it comes out, then simply sign up here and we'll make sure you never miss an issue.

Let us know what you think, either in the comments section below, or here.

Enjoy it.

- Mike

Make Yourself Lucky

Luck happens when you do the right things.

The law of unintended consequences states that often the biggest outcomes of our actions are those we did not foresee. One example is NATO's failure to keep the peace in the Balkans ten years ago that led to today's glut of guns used by Europe's criminal underworld. McDonald's foray into salads that unfortunately drew attention to the difference between McDonald's normal fare and 'healthy' food is another. The law of unintended consequences is usually taken to be a bad thing.

When we look at people who think themselves lucky, however, much the same thing seems to be going on. But instead of a negative, it's a positive. Luck happens because people put themselves in situations that maximise the chance of a good outcome - even if they cannot predict what that outcome will be or how it will happen.

As an example, I was at a business networking breakfast yesterday as a guest of the inestimable Mr Graham. This session was very structured, very focused and worked spectacularly well. I was interested in finding potential partners - people implementing change (IT suppliers, for instance) who might need some extra firepower to make the change succeed. And lo and behold, sitting beside me was a leading supplier of software to small-to-medium-sized businesses.

What I wasn't expecting was someone from a prestigious language skills and translation company who also wanted to discuss working together, or my being able to think about new marketing opportunities through conversation with the director of a very high quality communications company.

And because we were talking together, I heard that the IT company and the communications company wanted to find actors as high-quality resources for telesales campaigns - and my sister is an actress and a member of London's oldest co-operative agency for actors, so I put them in touch.

Lucky to meet these people? You bet. But I - and more particularly, they (because they do this every week, and I was just a visitor) - got lucky because we were clear about what we wanted and put ourselves in a situation where this kind of outcome was possible.

The same thing applies to change. Nothing is more corrosive to a change programme than cynicism. Cynics set an implicit expectation of failure. And given that we all know that in business, as in life, you get what you pay attention to, if we expect bad things then bad things we will get. I'm not saying that cynicism creates bad luck, but it makes it much easier.

Wouldn't it be great to have lucky projects instead? Yes? So how would we do that?

First thing - don't debate with the company pessimists, ignore them. Don't talk, act. Get your good folks together (the 'Company Optimists') and be really clear about the things you want to happen. With them, identify events, or circumstances or beliefs that might make these things possible or more likely.

After that it's simple. Do what you can to make these events, circumstances and beliefs happen. You can't be sure that any single thing will guarantee the outcome, but do enough of the right things and the rights things will happen.

If you do this at the start of every project (or better yet, at the start of every week), I guarantee your change project will start being much, much luckier in ways that no-one can predict. And what's more - it'll be a damn sight more enjoyable journey.

- Mike

Fun, Risk And Reward

We all have new opportunities to market ourselves, and the rewards can be tremendous, if we can live with the risks.

Lew Grade was the archetypal show business impresario, larger than life with cigars to match. In the sixties, he had a franchise on Britain's independent television network about which he was famously (and erroneously) quoted as saying was "...a licence to print money."

Nowadays, of course, the franchises struggle to make money because the business model has changed - but if you can produce content, then there is still money to be made in television. And even though they might argue about it, TV production is like any other business - make the most attractive product you can at the lowest cost, and sell it effectively.

So I should not have been surprised when, at a business networking event this afternoon, the person sitting next me was Deborah, a very professional assistant TV producer. Turns out, of course, she was there not to scope out sales opportunities but to get referrals. Her company has a new series in the works.

In each episode, their cameras will follow the daily work of a senior manager in a mid-sized company, observing how s/he works with their people, and getting responses from the people afterwards about the managers' performance. The idea is to highlight areas - behaviour, assumptions, thinking - where the manager needs to improve. Think of it as our old friend 360-degree feedback, but watched by a couple of million people.

S/he then gets some advice and coaching from an expert off-camera to address the problems, and the cameras follow the manager again, to see how / if the manager's performance has improved. An interesting premise for a programme, but strongly dependent on two things - the character of the people selected for each show, and the calibre of the experts providing advice.

Deborah was at the event to ask us if we knew of people who might be good candidates for the show. The ideal candidate is quirky, with a strong personality and is likeable - because for the show to succeed, the audience must be able to identify with the protagonist.

Why on Earth would someone volunteer for this role?

Publicity.

Publicity for the company, and publicity for the person themselves. If they are lucky, this could be a fantastic breakthrough opportunity for the person and their company.

And this crystallised something that I had been suspecting for a while - as the TV companies have found out, traditional marketing models as taught in business schools are seriously in trouble.

Nowadays, for most of us, quality of service is a critical part of how we compete. But service is always personal - at bottom line, we trust a service because we trust the people behind it. So marketing increasingly needs to reveal the people behind the service. In the old days, this used to be almost always by word of mouth. But now we have many more channels to do so: blogs, social websites - and now reality TV.

The cool thing about each of these ways of reaching a potential market is not only do they give potential customers an insight to the values and thinking of their potential supplier of services, but these methods also scale - it takes the same effort to reach one person as it does to reach a million.

I am sure that you, however, have also worked out the downside to these (relatively) new forms of publicity. Because these reflect reality - albeit in a distorted mirror - they also can quickly reveal the character flaws of the individual concerned - and do so to millions of people.

On TV, of course, these risks are magnified. Good reality TV depicts people under pressure in situations with which the audience can identify. We watch because we want to see how these people respond - will they buckle, or will they triumph? For a medium -sized business, the potential rewards are phenomenal - do a good job, and potentially the world could be ringing you up, placing orders. Do a bad job, however, and the only sound on your phone line could be that of drifting tumbleweed...

And no-one wants to be ratnered.

But this is what business is about, isn't it? Big risks for big rewards - and, if you're lucky, have some fun on the way.

And if I have to choose between something safe or something secure, or risky, rewarding and fun, then fun wins, every time.

Not because I'm a hedonist (although I am) but because fun begets enthusiasm, and enthusiasm begets passion - and passion is the most contagious, most saleable, most profitable thing that any business can have.

So we scratched our heads, and came up with some names and I think Deborah got what she came for. I look forward to seeing what she produces - I'm sure her enthusiasm will make it something great.

And why are we in business, if not to do things with passion, to make something great?

- Mike