Tag Archives: strategic planning

MALICIOUS COMPLIANCE – THE SMILING SERPENT

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I was talking to a colleague last week over a beer. He was full of ‘disgruntle’ as he related the story of his day. Basically it went like this…

I have been working on this IT project for months, doing long days and occasional weekends. This morning I arrived at 10.15am. In front of everyone the project manager shouted at me that the project hours were 8.45am to 5pm and that I should make sure my timesheet reflected my late start. Not only was I embarrassed by the reprimand, but the project manager gave me no credit for the fact that I never left the project before 6pm – ever.

I asked him what he was going to do about it. He answer was simple – “I will work the project hours, no more, no less. Then when the project is not delivered on time, it is the PMs fault, not mine”.

At the time of writing, he has been true to his word. Working what he calls short days.

I reflected on his story and I recognised that at some point in our professional lives, we have all stood in front of a manager receiving a dressing down. Outwardly we maintained our professional demeanour, while inwardly we were seething. The situation for which we were reprimanded may have been our fault, but our motives were honourable. We were working in the best interests of the project and colleagues. In our mind the reprimand was just wrong.

After such a reprimand it is quite human to leave the manager’s office with a mindset of – stick it buddy, if you don’t want me to ‘X’, then I won’t. It’s ‘by the book’ from here on in.

For most of us the emotion subsides fairly quickly and we get on with our job recognising that we can’t please all of the people, all of the time.

The problem is that there is a minority group who do not forgive and forget quite so easily. For these people their chagrin runs deep and they cannot readily bounce back from a reprimand. These people take their ‘by the book’ vow to heart and they consciously set out to change their behaviour for the worse. Next time the manager asks them to do something they follow the instruction to the letter, entirely aware that what they were asked to do is not what the manager actually wants. They know full well that following the instruction to the letter will be counterproductive to the manager’s intent and for that reason alone, they do exactly that.

This dogmatic adherence to the exact instruction given, rather than to the intent of the instruction is termed – malicious compliance.

From a business or project point of view, malicious compliance is a treacherous form of corporate sabotage. It can be very difficult to identify and even more difficult to treat. It can manifest in many ways including; adhering strongly to shift start and stop times, not contributing to a discussion when you know the answer unless you are asked a direct question, exaggerated responses to instructions, working strictly to the agreed standard or preparing reports you know to be unnecessary or irrelevant.

Failure to identify malicious compliance can set a project back months or as I have seen in some cases, derail the project altogether. This is especially true if the ‘bad apple’ is a leader in the group. Example; If the leader starts to work to the standard hours then it won’t be long before the whole group is following suit. Equally if the leaders attitude goes unchecked, it won’t be long before the whole group is grumbling and questioning the authority and leadership of the (project) manager. This can force an unplanned change of management as that becomes the only option to bring the situation back to normal. This in turn could unfortunately reinforce the negative behaviour of the employee or group and it may be some time before management is able to get the balance of power back.

The trigger for resorting to malicious compliance will vary by individual and includes everything from an individuals need to implement a machiavel private political agenda of destabilisation to those who are suffering change fatigue and need to resort to doing the minimum just to get by.

I consider those who are machiavel to be a smiling serpent. They smile to your face while sabotaging your project. They have perfected the art of hiding in the open.

For an employee to be maliciously compliant requires the employee’s manager to know that the employee could do a better job if they wanted to. It is a case of ‘can but won’t’ as opposed to ‘can’t and won’t’. The difference between the two is motivation. The formers motivation will always be negative and the latters could be neutral or positive.

Most people cannot ‘maintain the rage’ for long and generally do not require remedial action beyond possibly having a chat with them after the emotion has passed. For this majority, bouts of malicious compliance should be seen as part of the process of building corporate experience and maturing as a professionals – Learning that you can get angry and then get over it.

For the few that do persevere with malicious compliance there are three remedies:

  1. Discuss outcomes and show belief in the person.
  2. Give short instructions.
  3. Critically listen to the employee.

Moving the discussion to outcomes forces the staff member to answer the – so what – question.

“You fulfilled the instruction – so what. What did you achieve”?

Forcing the employee to confront their contribution, or lack thereof, is a powerful means of communicating that malicious compliance cannot produce satisfactory results and that obvious and continued mediocrity cannot be ignored by either party. Both need to take action.

By definition, malicious compliance is a conscious choice. The employee chooses to behave in this manner. Therefore, they can choose to relax their stance as well. In remedy 1 above, I mention that the manager should show belief in the person. This is especially important when the employee cannot see a way out of the situation they have created. By accepting their justifications at face value and showing belief in them as a person, the manager allows the person to ‘save face’. This gives the person room to move, to adjust their behaviour without having to fully admit fault. It should lead to the return of an acceptable level of output and behaviour.

As part of the addressing the issue, the manager should give the employee short and simple instructions where the deliverable is easily identifiable and within a short timeframe. This allows the employee to build success upon success and to receive positive feedback frequently. It will help to mitigate any self-esteem issues the person may have.

Equally, these two remedies will provide the manager with the sufficient case study material should it become necessary to begin a job transfer or termination procedure. Because – if you can’t change the people, then change the people.

The third remedy is to critically listen to the employee. If the employee is a person with obvious skills and talent who is in effect dumbing themselves down to conform to the instructions, then the manager must evaluate who is the dogmatic party. This is particularly true when a manager is dealing with a highly experienced technical person. In this case the manager may not fully understand the technical answers given to their questions and therefore they inappropriately instruct the technician into a course of action the technician knows to be wrong. The technician is unable to get the manager to understand the error in the instruction so they throw up their hands and say – “It’s not my problem, I will do what I am told”.

With thanks to Kailash Krishnan for his comments on the early draft.

MANAGING RISK, A TRIGGER FOR CHANGE

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Having spent considerable time on business transformation projects I can say with a high degree of confidence that the discipline of change management is becoming so watered down it is at risk of becoming more of a catch phrase than a serious discipline. The term is bandied about freely whenever a project is discussed without any real thought of what it will mean for the project. When project concerns are raised, the response is frequently along the lines of – that’s a change management issue or ‘we will ask the change manager to deal with that’.

The upshot is; for any given project, change management is treated as a ‘catch-all bucket’. Having said that, in many respects, this position is acceptable as the primary deliverable from almost every project is a change in behaviour at the individual and collective level.

The problem therefore becomes – for each project, how do you create a common understanding of what change management means for that specific project.

Recently I was asked to prepare a project initiation document (PID) for a client, working off their template. The template included all the standard headers such as objectives, scope, risk management, change management, budget and timeline.

This got me turning over an old chestnut of mine; what’s the difference between risk and change management.

My view is that the major reason to employ a change manager on any project is to mitigate risk and the biggest risks on any project are those represented by stakeholder behaviour. This includes scenarios where stakeholders:

  1. Do not embrace the need for the project
  2. Do not accept the deliverables of the project
  3. Cannot / will not work with the deliverables of the project.

Consider the last PID or Statement of Work (SOW) you prepared or read. It probably had a risk section with a structure and text similar to this one. The table (sanitised) is a mix of actual examples from various clients.

Risk table (4)

Column one describes the risk and column four details what can be done to avoid it becoming an issue. Columns 2 and 3 are used to rate the severity of the risk threat.

To mitigate these risks, change managers are engaged. Therefore by extension, change managers are risk managers.

Now compare the table to the following typical position description for a change manager:

This position reports to the xx manager or executive and will be instrumental in providing change management expertise in support of organisation-wide business transformation, process reengineering and resulting system developments. The primary focus will be creating and implementing change management plans to maximise employee engagement and proactively manage employee and client resistance. The change management specialist will act as a coach for senior leaders and executives in helping them fulfil the role of change sponsor and will support project teams in integrating change management activities into their project plans. The role will involve liaising at all levels across business units to analyse and effectively develop, deliver and embed change management solutions in line with commercial objectives.

Quite clearly, there are overlaps between the risk mitigation actions and the change management position description. This raises the following fundamental question:

Why do change managers not formally link their change management plans to the risk register.

By way of example here is a change management plan I chose at random from a Google search.

http://tiny.cc/n4nj1w

Change Management Plan

 

 

This is a typical example of a change management plan. At a concept level I immediately question why a change management plan needs to exist as a separate document from the PID. However, if it is to be a stand-alone document, then there is no heading I would delete.

At no stage in completing the template is the author expected to link the change management plan to project risks. In fact, the word ‘risk’ appears only once in the template where the author is expected to describe risks to the change management process.

Based on this template, how can the project sponsor build confidence that project risks are being mitigated or that the change management activities will have any relevance to the risks at all.

My observation is that a risk register is typically prepared at the start of a project and then is really only given lip service through the course of the project. If the project manager does happen to review the register, then it’s likely that the participants in the review meeting will readily explain how the risks are being managed and all is good. No panic required.

Equally and by contrast, my view is that change managers frequently start a project with a comparatively light definition of their project activities. Often with no more detail than the position description referred to above, supplemented with some reference to change activities such as weekly communications broadcasts, training plans, status reports, town hall meetings etc. Most likely they will have ‘copy & pasted’ the relevant parts of the PID into the change management plan, if one exists at all. Then when the projects gets going they generally make it up as they go, using best and last experience as a guide.

My recommendation is that change management plans are retired as a separate document, replaced by the PID or SOW and that the role of the risk register is redefined so that it becomes a change management plan.

Risk with change (4)

This will ensure that:

  1. Risk mitigation strategies are better thought through
  2. Change management is better aligned to the project
  3. Change managers understand their responsibilities more clearly
  4. Risks are continuously and actively managed, and
  5. Project managers will have a structured means of evaluating the effectiveness of the change management aspect of the project.

Let me have your thoughts.

GETTING THE MEASURE OF KPI’s

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I was talking to a client about KPIs and they passed me a large bound booklet. It must have been 200 pages. The booklet was their operations report; a compendium of KPIs. I was asked if I could assist to determine new KPIs to address performance issues within the business. I flicked through the booklet. It was filled with red and green status indicators. Mostly red. I handed the booklet back to the client and apologised – I could not help him. I pointed out that the book already held more KPIs than I could possibly think of, and that the problem was not the absence of a specific KPI, but rather the absence of response to the existing KPIs.

To elaborate this point I turned to a page at random. The three monthly trend showed three months of ‘red’. This was largely the same for all the indicators on the page. The KPI’s had been indicating an out of tolerance position for months and nothing had been done about it.

The conversation then moved to discussing the purpose of KPIs and how to make them effective in the business.

Frequently when first implementing KPI’s, the mindset is to measure everything that moves; if it doesn’t move, kick it until it does and then measure it. Unfortunately, within a couple of months, many KPIs will be found to offer so little value that they are ignored. This sends a message to managers – that it’s all talk and no action – and the slide to indifference starts.

There is only one reason to implement KPIs and that is to manage behaviour. Equally there is only one type of behaviour in an organisation and that is human behaviour. Companies don’t behave, technology does not behave, plant and equipment does not behave. People behave. But what do KPIs measure. They measure customer satisfaction, mileage on trucks, lost sales, revenues, costs, throughput, quality and productivity. The list is endless.

The underlying principle of a KPI is – if you are going to manage it, then measure it, otherwise ignore it. There is no point in measuring something you are not going to manage. To address an indicator that is out of tolerance somebody somewhere in the organisation has to do something differently. Different to what they did last time because last time they created an out of tolerance result.

The difficulty arises when the KPIs are too broad in their definition. For example; sales are down so salespeople are told to ‘get out there’ and work harder. But does the salesperson know what to do differently to improve their sales figures. Clearly their current approach is not working. They need to ask themselves – what must I do differently to ensure I get a different result – or in other words how must I change my behaviour.

The astute sales manager will know exactly what behaviours are required to make even an inept salesperson successful and they will implement KPIs that evaluate this behaviour at the micro level. The focus will be on things that the manager can actually change. This could be number of calls made, length of calls, number of times the salesperson gets through to the decision maker, appointments set and the number of times a salespersons telephone rings.

The misconception is that sales managers are in sales, or more broadly, that managers of a function are in that function. Truth is they are not. They are in a separate function called management and managers behave differently to workers (staff). Therefore the KPIs that measure a managers’ behaviour must be different to those that measure staff behaviour – even if they appear to be in the same function.

The seniority between managers introduces additional complexities.

Consider the following four relationships.

The first relationship is between first line management and staff. A key feature of this relationship is that the two roles are different. Broadly, staff deliver technical output while managers deliver an administrative output. This requires that the manager use KPIs that measure ‘technical behaviour‘.

Mgt to Staff

The second relationship is between a manager who manages workers and his/her manager. 

Mgt to Senior Mgt

 The next level is the relationship between two levels of management where neither level is managing workers.

Senior Mgt to Exec Mgt

The key feature of the previous two levels is that management is managing management. This requires the use of KPI’s that measure ‘management behaviour‘. The KPIs for each level can largely be the same, separated by the degree of aggregation applied to the more senior of the roles.

The fourth level is the relationship between directors and managers. In many respects this relationship is similar to the first level of management. From a directors point of view, business management is ‘technical delivery’ whilst directors take more of a deterministic/directive role in the organisation in that they determine strategy, the governance model, the organisational risk appetite etc.

Exec Mgt to Directors

For each relationship set, what is the role of the senior manager. This is a complex question and not easily answered in a short paragraph. But in the spirit of this article I will say; it is to ensure that direct reports are behaving in a manner that maximises the likelihood of them achieving their KPIs.

Based on this definition, for each relationship, it is mandatory that the senior of the two managers knows what behaviour is required to maximise the business benefit possible from the subordinate management function, and what behavioural changes are required when the expected business benefit is not realised.

If the relationship between the KPI and behaviour is not understood or if a KPI cannot be manipulated through changes in a managers behaviour then it is likely that the wrong KPI is been used.

WHY ENTREPRENEURS NEED TO BATH

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Entrepreneurship – the act and art of being an entrepreneur  (Source:Wikipedia).

When I was growing up my dad told me a lot of things. Most of it passed me by as I already ‘knew’ everything there was to know on the subject or because it was father telling me. There were however, two messages that stuck and have remained front of mind throughout my professional life.

The first was the story of how he came to run his own business. Basically it went like this….

“I used to come home at night and lie in the bath and think about the problems I was dealing with at work. One day I  realised that it was my bath and if I was to worry about anyone’s problems while I was in my own bath, then they should be mine. While I am worrying about my company’s problems I am not worrying about my own”.

Based on this realisation he quit his job.

He went on to say

“Nothing gets you focused on your own problems like having two young kids and no income. Now when I lie in my bath at night I worry about my problems and how I am building a life for my family”

He tried real estate sales and a couple of other ventures. Then he met a chap who had some great software but no sales. Together they built a successful software services business and he retired with peace of mind that he had looked after his family.

Over the years, there were a few variations of the story and each time he would conclude with the assertion – when you lie in your bath at night, make sure you know whose problems you are thinking of.

The second message he left me with was that the word “creative” lacked a second “C”. That it really should be called creaCtive – a mix between the words ‘active’ and creative. There is no point in being creative if you do not act on your thoughts.

I consider these two bits of wisdom to be some of the best I have ever received.

The message is simple for would be self employed entrepreneurs – worry about your own problems and do something about them.

For the internal entrepreneur it gets a bit more complex. Bath time becomes the time when the manager steps back from the desk and actively considers how the function they are managing contributes to the overall business. Bath time is the time needed to reflect and look for the insights that other people are not seeing.  Looking at problems from different angles.

It is very easy and somewhat lazy to let the routine of day to day business suck you in and to allow yourself to be controlled by your diary. When I ask managers to show me the documents they use to manage their business process, they frequently refer me to their dairy. A dairy manages time, not the business. How often do you say or hear – “I don’t have time to think”. Does this mean that you don’t have time to actively evaluate your contribution to the business?

Without making time to work on the business a manager can find themselves moving from meeting to meeting, having significant discussions but not necessarily achieving much. This is where creactivity must meet entrepreneurialism. You cannot be entrepreneurial without action. You cannot be entrepreneurial and stay in the crowd.

 As an employee, acting on your ideas is difficult.  It is likely that a manager does not have the mandate to implement big ideas (as opposed to incremental change) and ‘making it happen’ will require an enormous amount of creactivity. Change management becomes vital for success. In this instance I define change management as the internal socialisation and lobbying of the idea. As a self-employed manager, you are entitled to implement whatever decision you choose. As an employed manager, you need the support of the senior executives or directors.

To be successful as an internal entrepreneur requires that the manager is very clear on the answer to the question – ‘am I addressing a symptom or a primary issue’?

But how do you know. If you are not part of the senior leadership team you may not be privy to the more fundamental issues facing the company.  In this case you need to be equally clear on the following change management questions:

  • who will support the idea for implementation
  • will take responsibility for the activity
  • what does success look like
  • who will gain from the experience
  • who will own the risk?

Being clear on the answers to these questions will significantly improve the way you communicate and market the idea within the company. You may ask yourself – why should I bother; I have a good idea and if the company is not interested then that’s the company’s problem, not mine.

Being and entrepreneur is not easy. If you are happy being a good employee, then turn up every day and do a professional job. Write your ideas down on an email and move on. If you want more, if you want to make a big contribution to the growth of the company,  then you need to look at the business as if it were your own and take time to think about the big picture. Bath time is a good time to do this. So is mowing lawn or any other time when you can be alone with your thoughts.

How do you start – draw a picture, write up a mock marketing brochure. Not a PowerPoint slide pack, but a proper A4 brochure that describes your idea. Keep it to one page. It is not a technical document. It’s a marketing document. If you can express your idea on one page and include a picture, then you are well on your way to making a great start to commercialising your idea.

SWATTING THE S.W.O.T

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The S.W.O.T (SWOT) analysis is a staple model in any self-respecting business analyst’s  kitbag and specifically those in the strategy function. As the acronym indicates, the purpose of the SWOT is to determine the Strengths and Weaknesses within the business and the Opportunities and Threats posed by the external environment.

These terms can stand alone but the synergies between them drive real insights. Example: Strengths and Threats are closely aligned. This does not mean that for every strength there must be a corresponding threat. It does mean that if you consider one aspect of the business a strength, then it is wise to seriously consider what’s happening in the market that could challenge that strength.

For example, about eight years ago, I was facilitating a two-day offsite workshop with  a  group  of  senior managers. They  argued strongly that their primary competitive advantage was that their call centre was “in-country.”  I  suggested that  the  telecommunications market  was already changing and call centres were moving offshore and becoming a commodity service. 

They refused to accept this point and said their product was reliant on having an in-country service. I pointed out that they already serviced New Zealand from Australia, but they said that was different. They now use a call centre from offshore. They were forced to, as the threat they originally denied has almost become the standard go-to service  for all players in their market.

The four quadrants of the SWOT are typically drawn up in a 2 by 2 grid. The truth is that I seldom ever see a SWOT that I consider to be worth

the paper it is written on. The inadequacies are threefold:

1.   The content lacks context.

2.   There is no obvious answer to the “so what?” question and

3.   The content is frequently riddled with motherhood statements.

A motherhood statement is a statement that makes little or no sense in the negative. By way of example, I Googled “SWOT Analysis” and picked the first result, which you can see in the graphic.

SWOT

If you look ‘Strength’ – the first line is technological skills. This is a great example of a motherhood statement. What does it mean? Try state it in the negative. You could go for “no technological skills” but what if the intended strength was ‘unique technological skills’ or perhaps it was referring to situation where the company had done away with need for technological skills. If the negative of the statement cannot be easily articulated then the positive should be considered equally nonsensical.

Additionally using a 2:2 grid tends to limit the thinking and divorce the authors from intended scope of the SWOT analysis. The author frequently captures the obvious statements and once they have a handful of statements for each header they stop. For mine, the graphic is a good example of this point.

To address these issues I recommend overlaying the SWOT analysis against the process being analysed.  At the highest level, the process is the value chain.

Value chain

Other processes could be the procure to pay, order to cash or a detailed process such as warehouse management.

Using the value chain the The SWOT would look as follows

Value chain and swot

Now take the strength of ‘technological skills’ – where would you apply it; or take the weakness – sub scale – where would you apply it (whatever it means).

Once you have completed the analysis, review it for empty cells – does an empty cell mean there is genuinely no content for that cell or does it mean that the authors have not thought hard enough about it.

Using this layout, you can prepare a meaningful analysis without using statements.

Red is weak, Green is strong.

Value chain and swot and harvey balls

Visually it is readily obvious that the company has a problem in Inbound Logistics, Operations and Sales and Marketing. The strength is in Outbound Logistics followed by Service.

Finally the ‘So What’ question must be answered. If you look at the Agrowiki SWOT graphic it is impossible to draw a meaningful conclusion from the analysis. If you look at the SWOT analysis in association with the value chain it is substantially easier to draw meaningful conclusions from the analysis.

There are no right or wrong answers when working with models. But there are stronger and weaker analyses. Giving a model context will always produce a stronger result. Here’s wishing you all the best with your future modelling.