Would we ever expect our manager to be sacked because we weren’t performing?

Being a member of the England football squad is like being part of a project team. It’s not your day job and you have two bosses. You are bringing together a group of talented individuals that are going to work together towards a common goal… like winning the World Cup (we wish). The components that have to come together to succeed are complicated. It is not as straight forward as an employee having the fear of losing their job, or even that different people are motivated by different things… money, recognition and sense of achievement. The key to successfully managing a team of this nature is more about building a community than traditional managerial motivators.

Community Management what does that mean?

It has more to do with understanding the bigger picture, seeing the vision and getting people to buy into their part in that vision. This is not in the traditional corporate mission, vision, values context but in a more pragmatic, holistic way that exposes the fact that you do not have control over all the decisions you would like to make and because of that you put more accountability and ownership on those indiviuals who have the skills you require to deliver the end goal.

When Fabio’s management style was being scrutinised by the media, my contribution was “I wonder what would happen if Fabio asked the players “who is up for it today?” “where would you like to play?” and the ownership was on the players themselves to say for the good of our end goal this is what should happen! This may sound like nonsense but when you strip all the crap away these are guys that love nothing better than to kick a ball around a field and win – sometimes we add so much more to these situations than there should be and the simplicity is lost.

Why have a Manager then?

Someone has to pick the members of the community and getting that right is essential. Here there needs to be the courage and strength to pick the stars but also pick the players with potential who are hungry to show what they can do. Then there is the huge task of managing and motivating the individuals. Teams who do not work together on a daily basis have different needs to those that do and the motivation to succeed is different. This is not about money, it is more about how the world see you and may be even an opportunity for you to give something back, develop in a different way. There has to be much more focus on what an individual will get out of this so that the team bond can be formed and developed.

Football like work is a big part of our lives, real change here could inspire us all

Achieving the balance of engaging the consumer and building a relationship through the product lifecycle could be groundbreaking for businesses and individuals but many companies are still scared of giving the consumer a voice without control and so levels of adoption are limited.

Is it as simple as they would have to consider how they collate ideas from the public? How they screen these ideas and how they can keep the consumer involved through development & launch without their competitors taking their ideas and bringing them to market faster & cheaper?

There are toes in the water…

Unilever are giving people the opportunity to create adverts for their biggest Brands

Ford have set up a dedicated website to gather ideas from the general public and allow other people to rate the ideas – the most popular will be elevated to a “most-popular” list and reviewed by Ford’s advanced product planning and marketing teams

You can join the family at Innocent Drinks and they will ask you what you think they should do from time to time.

To name but a few.

Isn’t the beauty of engagement is that it is a two way street?

Is the real two way conversation too much to expect? At the end of the day these people have to run a business. This would mean the jury is still out on if social media interaction has a tangible benefit.

Unilever are running their new campaign as a competition with a monetary prize for the winner. Is this the way engagement should be tackled? Contribution that makes a difference gets a financial reward? Would this make the consumer see this avenue as an opportunity to earn additional income or should the idea of having your idea potentially on the screen be enough?

Does this type of engagement threaten the professional services that would traditionally be involved?

In the case of Unilever the advertising campaigns have been the domain of creative agencies with in- house marketing teams but with a more demanding consumer and access to a whole new world of social media is there a more effective way to bring the consumer what THEY want?

Is there a difference between the effectiveness of professional services and a consumer community when it comes to understanding what the consumer wants?

Companies have relied on professional creatives to gain a competitive advantage and paid the price. With today’s new age social media we the consumers are at the click of a button and we’re cheap!

Are we cheap and good?

How great would it be if you thought of something you really want…

A shower gel with a different smell or an ice cream with a new flavour and you could tweet your favourite manufacturer…

They then engaged with you the loyal customer and put the idea to the vote…

It doesn’t have to end there…

They could keep you up date through the development process, let you see packaging designs, colours, launch dates and you can tell them what you like, don’t like…

Would this involvement bring a more transparent market place and stronger brand loyalty or would the consumers ‘voice without control’ prove too much?

For me this was a tough question as I am a well known tough talker and many times I have had to consider if I crossed the line. So have I?

Undoubtedly throughout my career yes several times. Does that make me a bully? No.

Why?

At Cheeky Monkey we are driven by our client’s company objectives. What they want to achieve is very personal to us because we know we can have a direct impact on that with the work that we do on their behalf.

We are passionate and uncompromising in delivering a Human Approach to Innovation and Change:

• We say what no-one wants to say and everyone wants to hear
• We think, say and do the unthinkable for the management team

And as a result of this we deliver business benefits that go way beyond the project headlines.

It is the management of change by being focused and passionate about the PRIZE, delivering objectives, improving profitability and winning!

It is never personal and never about personality. It is also never about the protection of authority or status.

I have never been interested in whether the situation looked good for me. If it delivered and the team were seen to be successful as a result of our actions it’s a job well done.

What can you do to make sure you are not crossing the line but are in fact tough enough?

• 1. Your team need to know why they are doing what you have asked them to do and where it fits into the bigger picture
• 2. They want to be treated as adults, so when they challenge what is being done and why, listen and be honest with your response
• 3. Make performance appraisals relevant and more frequent. Personal objectives need to be stretching but achievable and show progression and success
• 4. Reward people in a way that makes a difference to them; be able to answer the question “what’s in it for me?”

Unhappy workers can’t work, that is a fact. But what is making them unhappy your style of the fact they can’t deliver. Some people are just not up to the job and then it is a HR issue.

The ability to manage your emotions is of course critical. Frustration is the precursor to anger add stress to the equation and BOOM!! The forces of hell will be unleashed and Alistair Darling can tell you how that feels.

WHY? When they know it will make a difference?

As I read the Times, one after the other these stories added to the argument well underway in my head.

First the crimes of neglect. The parents of two brothers whose toxic upbringing, led to them torturing two innocent children. “31 missed opportunities to take action that would have prevented the crime”.

We live in an imperfect society where we know that people can ignore their responsibility and are not always accountable for their actions. To protect the innocent people who get caught in that imperfection there is a process and rules, a safety net.

How could this safety net have missed so many opportunities to make a difference?

Part of the training we deliver is “don’t be sheep”. If after following the process and rules you can see that something is wrong take accountability for ensuring that the right decision is made, don’t just tick boxes and then sit back and ignore responsibility by thinking your job is done.

Courageous Frances Inglis, jailed for 9 years for the mercy killing of her son. The process and rules allow for the starvation of her son, “If a vet let a dog die like this, he would be reported to the RSPCA”, but not by lethal injection which is of course what we do to put an animal out of its misery.

The process and rules followed but to what end? I have no doubt the Frances was willing to end her own life to stop the suffering of her son, being imprisoned does nothing to protect anyone, not her or society. So by following the rules and process here what difference have we made?

The mother of “Britain’s sickest child” jailed for 3 years after faking his illness. This boy had been seen by doctors more than 325 times and had undergone 9 operations. She managed to do this by bullying hospital staff and playing them off against each other.

The story focuses on the cruelty of the mother and I am not for one minute disputing that but come on, 325 times in front of a doctor and 9 actual operations, she is not the only person under the microscope here surely?

Don’t be sheep

My final story “courage and comradeship keys to survival in an inhospitable land” working in Sangin, Helmand. The armed forces the pinnacle of a world that relies on people following process and rules, taking responsibility and being accountable. People who understand the value of these things and the difference they make but who have the intelligence and courage to do what is necessary when it is necessary.

These are people who make a difference everyday

So as I close the paper and look at my parachute I thank my luck stars that a life will not depend on me finding out why this team are not following the PLM process and rules and are shirking both responsibility and accountability, but I will act like it does because I know it will make a difference.

One of the big news stories of the week (and a nice distraction from the weather) was Google versus China. Acts like this just make us remember that freedom of speech and information still doesn’t exist for all people (and businesses make moral compromises under the guise that some progress is better than none, but that is for another blog)

Freedom of speech and information still doesn’t exist for all people

I am always getting into trouble for something that I have said or questions that I ask. I have an unquenchable thirst for understanding and I prefer to get that by talking to people first, reading second.

My first experience of this being an issue was when I was travelling Vietnam many years ago. I hate war but was drawn into what had happened there by what I saw in the museums, I guess on first reflection I thought it was “the other side of the story” and it was, but it was also censored, very blatantly censored and this made me want to know more.

I spoke to people that had lived through the war and to a certain degree were still living that regime. I had so many questions but I was told that the people who were talking to me would be punished if I persisted with my questioning…

…Punished? For talking to me (scruffy backpacker) about a war that has been so well documented and analysed over many years by many people – why?

How lucky were we in the “free world” to be able to express an opinion and write and talk about what we see happening around us. We take this for granted, how can it be any other way?

Does this mean we believe everything we hear, see and read?

I read an article written by Christiane Amanpour in which she talks about her 20 years on the road as a journalist. She makes a really interesting point about the fact that technology is bringing us more information but we are getting less and less understanding.

It is so easy now just to flick through the headlines, especially online. Who reads a paper from cover to cover? In our time starved day do we keep up to date by scanning what we see and taking it all at face value?

What makes you delve deeper, go beyond a headline?

Even if you do read the detail, how often do you follow up? News is now so much about the new headline, we have “Breaking News” everyday. It is actually really hard to follow some stories through and without doing that how much can we really understand?

If we don’t understand or challenge what we hear, see and read it might as well be censored, we are still being manipulated aren’t we?

I have seen this creep into the workplace over the last few years too. When I started out the emphasis was on “Executive Summary” that was all your boss wanted to see. Your project may have lasted 6 months and generated a shed load of data but you had to sum that up in one meaningful page.

This lead to reports being given in the form of presentations, work would be pre-circulated but the chances were your boss would be reading it while you were presenting.

The advent of email has resulted in constant updates of information being “shared” in a fast and furious way. Most of us speed read or don’t read them at all.

Texting and Twitter have to be the icing on the cake. It is really hard to put something of meaning and intelligence over in 140 characters which is why Twitter is full of self indulgent banter, fun but doesn’t help our understanding.

All these things have their place but my concern is they seem to have replaced our desire for detail.

The devil is always in the detail

When we go into different businesses the first thing we do is listen. We soak up what people have to tell us because we have to understand before we can help.

We have the freedom to do that, learn from what has gone before and it means that our future has a higher chance of success.

China still has some of the most patriotic citizens in the world. Hopefully this stand by Google will see China taking another brave step in trusting in their own and loosening the grip.

For the rest of us, let’s get into the detail, go over 140 characters and understand something that will allow you to challenge in pursuit of your own better future.

• Snowday.co.uk (all about school closures)
• Snowday.com (coming soon? going to miss the boat there guys)
• A Times article from 3rd Feb 2009 when the industry valued last year’s snow disruption at £3bn
• Snow day live blog from the Guardian
• Some interesting news from Twitter, with a great screen shot from Trendsmap which sadly only shows the popular terms used in the south but the article confirms that in the north we featured more terms like “sledging” and “snowman”!

Today The Business Desk reported that business across the NW could have lost as much as £50m as a result of absenteeism yesterday!!

Cheeky Monkey HQ is in Lymm. We are well and truly snowed in but did this raise panic through our ranks and stop our world, no.

Why?

We are set up to work remotely, like I thought so many other businesses are? Are the stories of more flexible working and the increasing use of technology really what they seem?
We have swapped the motorways for conference calls. Sharing data files via our cloud. The snow is not stopping emails, SMS messages or Messenger.

What’s all the Fuss About?

We have sent our snowy pictures to our colleagues in Nigeria, those in Toronto cannot believe what a fuss we are making about this and our friendly Swede Patrik quite rightly said if anyone wants to attack the UK they just have to wait for a bit of snow.

White is the New Black

Enjoy the snow! As far as we are concerned the snow has bought a bit of calm to our lives. We have to walk instead of drive. People are acting like a community again, swapping tales, helping each other and more than anything just talking (and having snowball fights, building snowmen and sledging!).

Find a Different Way

If your business is suffering the snow may be your wake up call to look at different ways of working. It is going to be a beautiful day perhaps more of us need to see this as a sign to move into the new decade a different way.
And before anyone starts I know we can’t do everything in the virtual world, I am desperate to get my hair cut and so far that cannot be done online…

“Work life balance is about people having a measure of control over when, where and how they work. It is achieved when an individuals right to a fulfilled life inside and outside paid work is accepted and respected as the norm, to the mutual benefit of the individual, business and society.” – flexible-working.org

It is perceived by my nearest and dearest that I don’t have the right work life balance and they believe it has got worse. As I am sat on the plane ready to start my holidays I have some time to wonder why (and nicely prove their point at the same time!)?

Has the recession pushed me to work harder?

Throughout this credit crunch period I have been anti recession, believing that we could talk ourselves into and just as easily out of this mess. I don’t dispute there was a mess and that the decisions that were being taken in certain sectors that could not continue. There had to be fall out.

It is true, I didn’t want to be part of the fall out, so did this environment push me to work harder?

Like many (or all) business owners, I work everyday. I did before the recession kicked in and I have no doubt I will continue to do it when it’s gone.

I want Cheeky Monkey to be the best Change Management Consultancy it can be. I want the people who work at Cheeky Monkey to contribute in the best way possible and be the best they can be at what they deliver. I want Cheeky Monkey to be successful and that is what pushes me.

Success = being the best you can possibly be

Always Connected!

The recession may be playing a part but other things are having a bigger influence. We have embraced social media as a way of engaging with a broader spectrum of people and keeping us sharp. We are operating on a Cheeky Monkey cloud, access to everything by everyone without having to be at a desk.

To make sure we could do this efficiently we invested in the latest Blackberry’s and iPhones. Fantastic, I am linked to our client’s networks, integrated calendars, business and private emails, messenger and our whole social network from something that fits in my pocket. My god it’s efficient, and allows me to work 24/7 wherever I am. I am probably at 18/7 if I am being honest and my friends and family are constantly telling me its going too far.

My Blackberry has had the biggest effect on my work life balance.

Although I am one of those people who is in the pub checking my BB at regular points, at least I am in the pub. It was not long ago I made choices on going out or not going out based on how much work I had to do and most of the time it was the latter. Although my working day has increased, so has my social activity…

The lines between my work and life are blurred, what is wrong with that?

So, as we make our approach into Nairobi I am happy that I will be able to keep in touch with my fellow monkeys and our clients with ease and enjoy a fantastic family holiday. I have control over my work life balance, technology has given me this and it is for the better.

“You can create opportunities to share content, but whether or not people will is out of your hands” – Alex Hardy, twitter 04/08/09

Cheeky Monkey love to communicate, it’s the perfect way to share our knowledge and experience, and learn from others. We always have a lot to say but we believe in democracy and understand that communication is not one way.

In June 2009 we launched our Blog; overcome with excitement we actively encouraged our loyal followers and supporters to leave a comment on our first two posts. Since then we have left our Blog to fate, fate has no voice.

Would you like to say something?

We know you are reading our Blog! From our hometown of Manchester to our regular visitors from Zurich and our loyal fan in Greece, we know you are reading our Blog. Why don’t you talk to us?

This week Nina and I have had a number of conversations and debates that have stemmed from my last Blog post “Honesty”, my question to them has been, why didn’t you comment?

The general consensus is that our readers feel they are “not qualified to comment”

We want you to be part of the discussion, your comments, whether they be shatteringly honest, frustratingly stupid, sincere or insightful are what will make our Blog come to life.

We’d like to get to know you

Blog’s are written to be read, shared and debated; it gives us a nice feeling to know that someone somewhere is reading what we have to say. We’d like to know what you have to say.

Feel free to say hello