OCB PODCAST TEXT

Steve Tighe – Local Thought Leader & Expert

PODCAST CONTENT: Part B:

Introduction:

In part 1 of the interview with Steve Tighe, we were discussing how our societal values were shifting and how scenario planning could help organisations be proactive and agile in adjusting to external or environmental change.

Part 2 continues on from this conversation…

Angela

You’ve spoken little bit about the change in values that you’re seeing or a shift in values that we’re seeing. Some of the things that come to my mind are around you know, the recent Royal Commission into child sexual abuse the banking financial services conduct, abuse in aged care facilities you talk about the lack of trust in our society.  so there’s definitely something going on and an increased focus on uncovering those ‘awful truths’ that are coming out around a business and the way we operate an our conduct. What are your thoughts on the way we’ve been operating in the past and where you think we are going in terms of acceptable an ethical conduct in that shift in values?

Steve

I think in terms of some of those high profile cases, what you’re finding is that the theme or trend whatever you want to call it of transparency, that’s what transparency means for an organisation. It basically means your dirty secrets will inevitably be exposed and it’s the inevitability that you need to focus on. I can see why the mismatch occurs.  That is I think that a lot of senior managers their business careers were in a time where transparency wasn’t a key factor. So they have been conditioned by that and so I think a lot of their thinking will still be ’what the public don’t know won’t hurt them, or won’t hurt us.’

But I think that time has passed and so there’s almost this kind of reframing that has to happen and corporate Australia .What once prevailed, you know dirty secrets could be kept secret, that time is now past. You have two choices there. The questions to ask yourself – what are the practices that the public don’t know about but if they did, it would alter their perception of who we are and what we do? And that’s the fundamental question. If you ask that question you have two choices. You can undertake proactive innovation – so fix the issue. I think by undertaking proactive Innovation it allows you to stay in control of your own destiny, to control your own narrative. Also I think in a competitive sense that allows you to deposition your competitors, who likely have similar practices.

Now that kind of seems obvious. The other route to take is defensive innovation. And this is in my experience, most organisations or industries have an element of a dirty secret to different extremes.  So you have defensive innovation. Defensive Innovation is where you respond to a public outcry to government intervention. Now what’s the outcome of that? Well, you lose control of your destiny. You lose control of the public narrative. So there are two choices offensive or defensive. We’re still at a time – managerial mindsets haven’t shifted to the new dynamic. Invariably companies still go down the defensive root when they get caught with their pants down if you’d like.  

So why do they do that? It’s an easy question to ask – what practices are the public unaware of, but if they were, it would alter their perception? Easy question to ask, difficult question to answer. Because it takes courage and it takes honesty to answer that. By pointing it out, you’re rarely rewarded with instant gratitude. So instead you’re met with ‘well that’s just what we do around here, that’s what we’ve always done. That’s how we make a dollar and make excuses. It’s a lack of accountability, or in everyone else is doing it. or as I said to you before ‘what the public don’t know won’t hurt them.’ But if in the age of transparency you have to accept that final statement – in particular what the public don’t know -is no longer valid.  It’s about that courage and honesty to confront those inconvenient truths. Companies at this stage I think they’re grappling with the age of transparency and they’re still very poor at addressing that fundamental question.

Angela

So maybe asking that question to themselves earlier on, is more important.

Steve

Well look, I think so. And I think it’s also about saying ok if that’s the problem now how do we address this? It’s like the tobacco industry for example. Their dirty secret is about the link to tobacco with cancer and they fought that for so long. They know what goes on. And there are so many companies that know that what goes on behind their walls. Some of that may be legal, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it is ethical. You look at beauty products, whatever it may be, but these are becoming inevitably exposed in our age of transparency. So the time to fix them is while you control your own destiny.

The high profile case of the last 4 years was the Greyhound industry where live baiting exposed. Basically accepted within the industry but absolutely unknown outside of the industry, which is where 99.9% of the population are? And people were appalled by it. You could imagine those replies and people within the industry that said, ‘well that’s what we’ve always done. Everyone else is doing it!’ there’s plenty of those examples perhaps less extreme, but as I said, every industry has an element of dirty secrets.

Angela

Actually I love your point around ‘control your destiny, do the right thing now, or find a way to do the right thing, now. If not, at your peril.’

Steve

It’s a really good phrase because doing the right thing I believe, will be a really big corporate theme in the next decade and beyond. That movement from corporate social responsibility to corporate social contribution and the expectation that corporations will do a lot more to contribute ‘good’ and do the right thing in communities. I think it won’t necessarily be regulation or regulatory led, it’ll be people lead (self-regulated). 

Absolutely people, employees will ask it, the consumers will ask it.

Angela

Well, we’re already seeing a lot of that coming from employees. If you think about the employment value proposition or employment branding you getting a lot more and interest from employees in this generation perhaps that are looking for a organisations who are conscious about the environment conscious about contributing back into society and being proud of working for a place they know is doing something towards the social good. So I think there’s definitely something in terms of attraction to talent that organisations can benefit from as well by doing the right thing and also their customers

Steve

That’s a big theme from what I’m seeing as well with clients that I’m working for. Purpose driven work for the employee and conscious businesses, conscious decision making are really big things I believe that are here to stay. It will force organisations to adapt what they do and how they do it, but. Also at a broader level, governments will lag behind but they will eventually catch up in terms of the measurements they use to track the success or the prosperity of countries and regions. Because at the moment they are still dominated by economics and so forth and I think those different measurements will need to catch up with perhaps where the population are moving to.

Angela

I’m definitely seeing a lot more participation and interest from organisations and senior people within organisations, even boards, looking at trying to develop more of a purpose driven organisation and then filtering that back into purpose-led leadership and connecting the organisational purpose for the individual purpose and having that sense of mutuality that just really starts to seep through the whole organisation. So you’re getting people participating in an organisation that are feeling good about who they are, what they’re doing, their bringing out their best, but they also know that’s what the company wants from them. So there’s a real sense of synergy there

Steve

Absolutely and when you get that alignment and that synergy right I think it’s a very powerful organisational momentum that you create. I think when you come across an organisation like that you can feel it. I’m lucky enough to have a client like that at the moment and as you say that synergy of being purpose driven from the top from the organisational mission and vision all the way down to leadership, the teams, individuals etc. are incredibly powerful. That’s where organisations will go to. And some of those economic terms that have really dominated the last 20, 30, 40 years they will be deemphasised and some of them or some of them might be more cringe worthy. Because they’ll just come across as the shallow indicators that perhaps they’ve always been

Angela

I can’t wait to see that happen!

Referring back to what we’re seeing in organisations, more and more that they’re getting better at articulating their purpose, their strategy and their pathway for the future and communicating that through the business units and functions and what it looks like for their delivery. But I still see that they are grappling with the day to day disruption. So we spoke about scenario planning and trying to play it forward, to understand disruption. What are your thoughts on what organisations could do to be better prepared to address that day to day disruption so things that come into your inbox or things that come into your functions that you hadn’t planned for… is there anything business can do to get better at dealing with the day to day disruption?

Steve:

Day today disruption you’re always going to get disruptions of varying levels but at a strategic sense, if they’re significant enough to disrupt the business that again comes back to scenarios. I think organisations suffer largely from myopia. They become so fixated on the here and now. So, short term thinking in terms of distance out like the next quarter or the next month of results and myopic also in terms of their focus within the industry. Broadening focus overcoming myopia if you like, thinking beyond your industry, accepting that every industry exists and operates within the broader context of society, I think that is one of the key lessons to overcome. Think outside the industry. Extend your thinking and this is where a minimum of 5 or preferably a 10-year framework or a 10-year horizon, to really expand on what really could happen to us. And then thinking in terms of multiple futures.

One of the key reasons organisations continue to be surprised I believe, is because they have a real lack of thinking about what could happen. What could happen that would really make a difference to what it is that we do? How could it happen?  And how do we rehearse a response if it does happen?  So they’re probably do 3 tips for me – thinking broader outside your industry, extending your time horizon for your planning, so you’ve always got a longer-term framework for thinking about what could happen and then thinking in terms of multiple futures. Accepting that the future is uncertain and therefore what are the key things that really matter to us, how could they develop one way or the other and how to re rehearse our response no matter how that future evolves?

Angela:

And I guess you could apply that to in a functional sense too. if you have an agenda and issues you’re wanting to move forward or your partnering cross-functionally across your business, the more you understand the different functional needs and what might be relevant for them and their future the more you could work together to address those issues together rather than address them as they come up.

Steve

Exactly. I think that strength of alignment across the organisation ultimately if you accept that you can’t predict the specifics of the future the best thing you can do is to embed internal processes that really empower you to cope with whatever the future throws at you. to me strategy is about process. And in a time of uncertainty or volatility – I think this is a really key point for your listeners – when we hear the word strategy, we tend to think of an outcome. But strategy is about a process.

So the role of a leader I think is not to take the responsibility for developing the strategy and to think I’ve got to be the best and brightest. A real leader is about saying ‘how do we embed or develop the best strategy process?’ Because we need to accept that we operate in a volatile environment. There’s no such thing as a one-time best ever strategy. It’s going to only have a limited time period in which is actually going to be successful because your environment’s always changing. So let’s not focus on developing the best ‘one off’ strategy. How do we develop the best strategy process that enables us to foresee future changes and to anticipate and prepare for them? And that becomes your ongoing strategic advantage and it also removes the pressure. Strategy is not the responsibility of one or two individuals. How does it actually become an organisational thing? That’s also a very powerful concept.

Angela

Yes, that makes a lot of sense. In your book you also talk about participation, strategy being about participating. I love that you introduce the concept of it’s not just the role of the top view the board or the executive leaders but actually there’s so much more to be gained by including other viewpoints and the thinking and creativity across the business. Obviously there to be a very attractive thing for any employee to be participating in strategy formulation, but what’s your guidance in terms of how you would select people and how you would manage the confidentiality of that as well

Steve

Well I think there are a couple of questions in there because I think it’s a really key point. First of all when you do broaden their participation people really love being involved in processes like that. Because most work is taken up with operational tasks. To actually involve people in thinking about how the future could be different and how we as an organisation may position ourselves within those futures, then to undertake such a creative and strategic exercise people really love that. It’s a really big tick.

In terms of the participation and who should be involved, one of the clichés which is coming to a bit of the end of its use by date is that whole philosophy that strategy belongs to a select few and the best and the brightest. It’s almost been like look we’re smart, ‘we’ll do the thinking for you and when we’re ready we’ll come down from the mountain, we’ll give you the tablet and will tell you what to do. You’re the implementer and we’re the strategists’ if you like. You’ve got this separation but unfortunately one of the outcomes of that, is that the people you then want to implement just the strategy have a minimal understanding of the strategy. Therefore they have a minimal belief in it. They certainly have a minimal passion for it because they haven’t been a part of it and so where does strategy tend to fail? It fails at that execution stage.

Where I’ve seen it succeed, if you go back to that library example a massive industry- wide project involving 90 stakeholders from across Victoria, quiet an exhaustive, extensive process. We’re that was a 20-year framework. What you’ve got at the end of that was an army of internal advocates, 90 advocates who have helped to develop this strategy, they helped to develop scenarios that led to the strategy, and they have this belief in it – that this is where we need to go, because we think that society is going this way. So that 90, they’re an army, so you send them out into the field and the execution of that strategy in my experience, is world-leading. That strategic framework still guys their prioritisation of projects and where they allocate funding, 7 years after it was developed. As it should be as it was a 20-year horizon. And I think that’s the advantage you get – you get that internal strategic momentum that emanates from involving people.

So who should be involved and how many? I answer that by saying you should involve as many people as is practical. So that for some organisations that might be 6 for others it could be 90. As many people as is practical.

Then you say well ‘who should we involve?’ we tend to carry our vices with us and we say ‘shall we invite Frank from the plant? ‘Oh, well Frank’s not very strategic’ – as if you know, whatever that means. I think it’s such a blurry concept. One of the advantages of scenario planning is that if we’re talking for example about a 10-year horizon we’re talking 2030 today. If there are no facts about 2030 then there can be no experts about 2030. So Frank’s opinion is as valid as yours.  When you’re talking about a long-term future it’s a very democratic process (a very level playing field it isn’t it). Exactly, so managers don’t necessarily like democratic processes. However, it is a very democratic process. And in fact in my experience again, the people that can struggle with scenarios sometimes are the people who have the most expertise about how things operate today. Because they are the ones that struggle the most with seeing how things could be different in the future. (It’s engrained in them). Exactly, that’s their foothold.

But I think who should be involved… I think it comes down to who is important. At the end of the day we’re going to produce a strategy. Who is important in helping to make sure that that strategy gets executed? You’re going to need decision makers at the top to sign off, so of course you want them. But you also want people all through your organisation whose buy-in and influence is going to be critical at all stages. So I think you cast the net wide, based on who would be important here, in the ultimate success of implementation of this strategy. Because it’s only the implementation that demonstrates whether the project has been successful or not, no matter how much fun it’s been to get involved in

In terms of privacy my experience there is that it can probably be overrated as a concern. I wonder sometimes whether that can be used as an excuse to exclude others. I’m sure. There are probably genuine concerns that people may have, but I think this goes back to the values of an organisation. It goes back to our previous conversation that perhaps breaking down trust is at the core of that.

Angela

So what I’m hearing is: put the effort in up front, because it pays dividends, massive dividends as you’re executing. Involve as its practical, but also really tap into the unique talents and experiences of ‘all of’ your workforce.

Steve

Absolutely, that’s what this is about. It’s about liberating the entrepreneurial talent that just lies dormant within your organisation. To liberate and really bring it to the fore, that’s another real advantage to the process about a participatory strategy process.

Angela

And from my experience as well, when you give that trust, you earn trust and a loyalty back as well. And that pays off in terms of effort passion and commitment to really see things through.

Steve

Absolutely

Angela

So Steve you’ve spoken a lot about the strategy of the business and I‘d like to bring it back a little bit to the HR professional perspective. In terms of the HR profession we’re seeing a lot of topical conversation around the future of work, what will work look like, how do we adapt now? What are the things we need to be doing now, to be able to be sustainable and relevant in the future – from an environment, a people, process, perspective as well? I’m interested to hear your views what is it the HR can be doing or is doing around strategic planning and what have you seen in terms of who really leads this in organisations… how it works effectively?

Steve

In terms of what I have seen and what I am saying is that HR leaders and departments are playing a real lead role in helping to design and implement strategy processes within organisations. which may surprise some people but I think there’s a real natural fit there if you think about the role of HR in terms of being about people capability and processes. Really what I have outlined in our discussion today is about a process for organisations to be proactive about the future. You take a step back and say well you know we’re not talking about strategy as output which is a traditional way.  but we talk about strategy as an ongoing organisational process and organisational capability. Well hang on, if we reframe it as that, there’s a natural fit there for HR departments to really drive that. Just as they drive many other processes throughout the organisation.

If they say our role here is to design processes that produce the optimal outcomes in terms of people capability etcetera, well then it’s a natural fit then to say well ‘how do we help to design and implement a strategy process that liberates that talent that exists within our organisation?’ I think once you move to a participatory strategy process you really are talking about strategy as organisational culture. And that really does just reinforce the role that HR can play a really leading that. And that’s been my experience particularly over the past couple of years

Angela

What I’m seeing in the industry as well and with the work that I’m doing in culture is that it’s becoming more and more closely linked with strategy. and there is a real, deep and need for organisations to work around key themes like being more proactive, being more transparent, being more collaborative and essentially building a lot more trust in the organisation. So this could be a fantastic way to really look at all of those different pillars in terms of organisational culture and how you then do that will really help you create your distinctive advantage

Steve

Without a doubt. I totally agree with you. I absolutely agree with those pillars.

Angela

So if you were to give advice to an aspiring business leader around what skills or knowledge and attributes that they needed to be a more strategic thinker, what would you encourage them to develop to boost their capability?

Steve

I think at your core is humility- In terms of letting go of a feeling that you have to be seen as the best and brightest. Or that you and only you can come up with the great idea about where this organisation will go. I think that responsibility, that senior managers feel that they now have to take responsibility for the direction of our organisation and indeed the outcomes that we achieve, I think that can weigh really heavily on senior managers. It really almost leads to a sense of isolation – I’m on my own. So what I mean by humble, being humble then opens a pathway to being much more collaborative. And say ‘you know what, I’m not here to come up with the 1 best off answer.’ I’m here to help embed processes that facilitate all of us coming up with those answers.

To me, that would be the advice that I’d say, is let go of that responsibility that sole responsibility and adopt much more a collaborative approach. Because ultimately I think your responsibility as a leader is to help embed the optimal process. You need to accept now that – as I said many times – coming up with some ‘one off best strategy’ which may be successful, the period of time at which that strategy will be a successful is getting shorter and shorter. Because of the volatility of the environment in which we live, with globalisation, technology it’s all a much more interconnected world. So the emphasis now has to move from the output to the process. By embracing that approach it almost takes a weight off the shoulders of those leaders. But not only that, I think it’s the optimal way to think about strategy. Adopting a much more collaborative approach and there’s a humility that’s required to say ‘I haven’t got all the answers.’ I think that’s what we’re saying now, with real leadership (taking more of that role of enabler.)

Angela

Ok last question I think… if you could change something, one thing about where the world is going, what would it be?

Steve

I have an issue with technology. Or more importantly, the intrusiveness of technology. I sometimes struggle to get my head around. I’m not someone who is glued to their screens. I also find it very irritating when I’m talking to somebody and they constantly interrupt our own conversation because they place an emphasis on answering the call of their screen if you’d like. So to me, I think slowing down our adoption and perhaps becoming more conscious of our use of technology is something that if I had some power over, I’d be interested in that.

I think it’s really interesting. looking at scenarios on how people use technology moving forward and how that might change, I think we’re really starting to see a bit of a push back on technology at the moment with concerns around privacy, concerns about surveillance. I think some of these social issues perhaps that technology may contribute to, such as increasing anxiety you could easily create a plausible scenario in which there’s a real push back on social media Some of the other issues there around shortening attention spans as well, the effect on attention spans, that need or over use of Technology… that’s a real slow burning issue in society today that is likely to emerge over the next 5 or 10 years. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.

Angela

I feel like we’ve covered a lot of ground but there is still a lot more that we could talk about so maybe we might have to do a few more sessions of this at some stage! I really enjoyed chatting with you. Thanks for your insight and your foresight and your contribution thank you

Steve

Thanks so much bye

END

Steve Tighe is a leading business strategist, author and speaker on the future, strategy and innovation

For more information about Steve Tighe, his book Rethinking Strategy or to enquire about his workshops or presentations, please visit his website: www.stevetighe.com.au.

If you would like to know how you can take on a greater leadership role in building a contemporary high performance culture, looking at designing and embedding effective strategy formulation processes, or expediting learning in your organisation through scenario planning, please contact Angela Lewis at Org. Culture Bites via email: NewCustomerEnquiry@OrgCultureBites.com.