by Richard H Merrick

Exploring Change – the speed of understanding

Over time. “Change Management” has become a label, like “Quality” and “Innovation”. The labels make the subject safe. People design a process, and make it something that can be done to people and organisations. I suggest that is a potentially lethal approach.

We have three reactions to change. the first is denial – the idea that this is an anomaly, and that things will get back to normal. The second is neutralisation – finding a way to cope with it. The third, is transformation.What initiates transformational change is understanding – a deep, meaningful, relationship with what is happening in our individual and business world. 

And what triggers understanding is engagement – curiosity and a motivation to explore what is happening and the confidence – and courage – to face it head on.

There are three triggers – a mindset that embraces change, the confidence to start without knowing quite where it will finish, and the motivation to do it.

In every organisation the most critical path is that of engagement. Engagement triggers inquiry. Inquiry triggers understanding. Understanding triggers action.

In every organisation – we can map that critical path. It is dependent on all the variables – personality, power, relationships.

It is not a “standard process” – a change machine. It is personal, thoughtful and generous, and it changes by the day.

Change happens at the speed of understanding. Anything less than understanding makes a business obsolescent.

GrowHouse is an inquiry based consultancy, specialises in exploration to find hidden sources of value, and the identification of sacred cows that hinders it.

by Richard H Merrick

Potbound.

It’s Spring. On the one hand I love it – the end of winter, renewal, growth everywhere. On the other hand, it can overwhelm me. Everything grows at once, and there is that sudden rush as we seek to bring our gardens under control. Despite the regularity of Spring, it still takes me by surprise. I had become used to Winter.

It strikes me that in reality, businesses are much the same – and that we can learn a lot from Gardeners.

Businesses have seasons. They sprout from an idea, grow, thrive and then wither.

Gardeners in tune with nature benefit. They do not try to ignore the seasons, they work with them. They variously take cuttings, grow seedlings, graft plants onto new rootstock. Create hybrids.

They fell, prune, and transplant.

They know how to look after the soil.

They know when to harvest, and when to plant.

So why is it in business, we don’t do the same? We often expect our idea to thrive as though it’s always Spring. We let the business grow, but in effect keep it in the same pot – a mixture of products, markets and locations, amplified by processes, protocols and the fertiliser of efficiency. – and the danger is, it becomes potbound.

As the business grows, so do the people in it – ideas, ambitions, confidence, networks. This growth needs room.

But far too many of us have let  let our businesses become potbound. People and ideas find nowhere to grow, so they wither whilst the main plant absorbs all the nourishment, until, inevitably, Autumn arrives.

I’ve often wondered why we are so resistant to letting businesses die back.

I guess there are lots of structural reasons – prime amongst which are that investors and bankers don’t like the idea of a pause in growth, even though that is necessary to gather the resources for the next stage of growth. As owners and employees we become dependent on the produce. We got used to perpetual credit and have become very poor at harvesting and storing so we can overwinter. We fell out of the idea of rhythms and cycles. Which is a mistake.

Generally speaking, we’re nowhere near as good at managing business cycles as gardeners are at managing the seasons.

In the industrial era, the main nutrients for our business was capital and fixed assets – machines and offices.They were easy to measure, difficult to move and could be kept in the asset register.They could be hothoused. They were difficult to transplant successfully – it was an expensive and risky process.

In the connection economy, the main nutrients for our businesses is talent – and that’s as mobile as dandelion seeds. It will take root anywhere conditions permit. It’s difficult to measure, and cannot be owned.

Traditional businesses are struggling in the connection economy. Everything they do is replicable. They are unwieldy, and have to resort to forcing growth through extracting every ounce of cash, even though the peak of their cycle has passed. They become hostages to the expectation of continual Spring.

Connection economy businesses on the other hand are flexible, and can find the space to grow because they are mobile. They experiment, hybridise and adapt. They can follow the seasons. There are lots of places in them for talent to grow, and talent has a choice.

After seven years of economic winter, Spring has arrived.

Time to cultivate your business.

If you want to know more about helping businesses thrive throughout the seasons, talk to us at the GrowHouse.

by Richard H Merrick

Productivity – it’s a mind game

It’s budget day in the UK, and there’s a lot of chatter about productivity – or more accurately, the relative lack of it in the UK. I suspect that, as with many large organisations, including governments, they’re looking in the wrong place.

In the industrial economy mindset, productivity is measured mechanically – outputs – mainly framed in money as a function of inputs – again, mainly measured in money – capital, labour costs etc.The pursuit of it has also taken a mechanical, process path. Quality, Process, Lean, Six Sigma. All very valuable, but finite tools.

In a connection economy, the prime driver of productivity is bandwidth – measured as the efficiency and lack of friction in the creation of value. If creativity is the process of turning ideas into value, then the determinants are allowing and enabling people to think creatively, and connect those ideas to places – people, businesses, universities – wherever – where they can thrive.

Most businesses are structured to strangle creativity at birth. Goals (particularly SMART ones) create the focus and pressure that stops creativity in its tracks.

We do not have ideas for money – we have ideas. Everything we know about idea generation, from Dan Pink’s work DRIVE, and the more detailed PUNISHED BY REWARDS (Alfie Kohn) tells us that applying extrinsic rewards to intrinsic motivation kills it.

Great sports coaches don’t teach players to kick a ball, or play a shot – they are working with people who know how to do that. Great coaches work with people to understand their game.

In business, most of our Learning, Development and coaching is focused on behaviour – how to kick the ball, and that’s an industrial era approach.

The answer to the productivity paradox is right in front of us. Helping those we work with to understand their game. It’s about inputs. We know how to process the hell out of inputs, we ‘re just very poor at enabling them.

If we want to increase productivity, we need to do more work, and more getting out of the way, on enabling their generation.