Book of the Month
In this issue we bring you an overview of Peter Senge's the Fifth Discipline and why it changed the way we thought about organisations
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Coming up in our next issue:
- Holding difficult Conversations - The essentials!
- Emotional Intelligence - why Daniel Goleman's book changed the business world
- PLUS - more topical articles on business issues.
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Welcome to 'Smart Business Thinking' our free newsletter, where Agents2Change will bring you up to date business thoughts, together with a reminder of the business classics.
Agents2Change provides insight, support and practical tools for organisations to connect with their people in a meaningful way.
Learning how to connect with, energise and motivate your people is the only way that you can achieve your desired results and Agents2Change has been established to help you to do just that. 
Mary McGuire
Founder | |
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End of Q1 - How does that affect your priorites?
 April marks an important time for many companies. It is the end of the first financial quarter (Q1) and therefore a key feedback point.
By the time you reach the end of Q2, you are half way through the financial year and the path that has been set is likely to continue along its current trajectory. At the end of Q3, there is little influence or change that can come to bear on the final result.
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Remember - one hour of your time reviewing progress now, is worth two hours at the end of Q2 and three hours at the end of Q3, so put the effort in early and see how empowered you will feel over the rest of your performance year. |
If you are out there thinking that the first quarter has not been very good, but hey, I have a whole three quarters to pull it back then I would suggest that you take stock now. Not only is the Q2 period the most fruitful, it is often the only time in the year, when you have feedback on your performance and time enough to instigate changes that will impact on the rest of the year. Remember - one hour of your time reviewing progress now, is worth two hours at the end of Q2 and three hours at the end of Q3, so put the effort in early and see how empowered you will feel over the rest of your performance year.
So a few questions for you to consider in your Q1 Review:
· How well have we performed against our original targets?
· If we have done better than anticipated - why was this & can we do even more of it?
· If we have not done as well - what were the barriers to success (& how will we address them)?
· How does our performance compare with other parts of the business - and can we learn from what they are doing well (or not so well)?
· What are the End Q1 messages that we will share with the team to continue to motivate and encourage them?
Take advantage of now and see what a difference it can make to the year ahead! |
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What makes the top 100 companies so special? Engagement, Engagement, Engagement!
In the Spring, we have the Sunday Times poll of the top 100 UK companies to work for Sunday Times Top 100. It is based on how well organisations engage their employees.
Some of the things that made these companies stand out in the Top 100 was strong training & communication, managers who are excellent role models and a real sense that work is to be enjoyed. We would all recognise these as important factors in our work life, yet it is not always easy to see or achieve them.
In the large company category, a disproportionate number were from the financial sector, where over the last 10 years there has been a greater shift toward flexible working and achieving better work / life balance for their employees. Many cite additional holiday entitlements and access to sabbaticals as added features which employees value.
KPMG which came out top for the second year running for its rigorous and organised approach to engaging employees and getting the best out of them. They make the direct link between employees satisfaction and business performance, making engagement a business critical priority
Brittania Building Society's Chief Executive Neville Richardson said "It's not my responsibility to think for 5,000 people, but to create an environment where 5,000 people can think". One of the ways that he does this is to invite 10 employees for lunch every month to discuss any subject, the outputs of which are shared via the intranet.
The competitive environment, worker mobility and rapid growth created considerable growing pains for many financial services and services sector companies over the last decade. Not surprisingly perhaps, when it became a business imperative to attract and retain talent, that they are featuring so strongly in the list.
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"It's not my responsibility to think for 5,000 people, but to create an environment where 5,000 people can think" Neville Richardson, Brittainia Building Society |
One of the biggest currencies that these companies all trade in is employee loyalty and retention. Yet to achieve this you need to get employees engaged in the business. None of these companies saw engagement as a 'nice to have' or as something to be avoided, but rather, as the conduit to better business performance.
Many of the success stories centred around the inspirational leadership of the Chief Executives and their senior team. It was how they articulated the values of the organisation and showed a genuine interest in the people in the company that made a difference to how people felt about being there and wanting to stay there.
It is worth thinking, as you are busy focusing on projects, deliverables and deadlines, about what opportunities that you have to engage your workforce and inject some fun into their work? Are there things that you can do to make people feel valued and listened to? You will be amazed how much of a difference it can make to how people feel about their work and increase their commitment to the company and to you.
Look out for our PODCAST coming soon on how to engage and motivate your workforce. Visit our www.agents2change.com for more details. |
Books that changed the world:
The fifth discipline by Peter Senge
When the Fifth Discipline was first published in 1988, it became an instant best seller and is now viewed as a classic business text. It was not so much that this was earth shatteringly original - almost all of the concepts had been introduced before - but more, how Senge described the mix to ensure effective organisational learning.
What are the five disciplines?
And The Fifth, and Senge would argue the most important is:
- Systems Thinking - the most critical in bringing the other four disciplines to life - systems thinking is about how we are able to interpret a wide set of variables and their connection to the whole, using an interrelated conceptual framework.
Senge & Systems Thinking
Senge explains: "Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. Practice starts with an understanding of feedback". All activities, all organisms, all societies and all organisations, operate within a system. The exact nature and type of system varies, but it is in essence a series of activities and processes. In order to understand the system, we need to understand the results, the processes in place to create those results and measure the systems in place that are designed to manage those processes.
The challenge is therefore to understand the system; the intended and the unintended consequences of change; and to open up the dialogue in the organisation to help others to understand these factors and their role within them.
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"From their quest for continual learning, comes the spirit of the learning organisation" |
What does Senge tell us about the learning process?
Senge is one of the foremost writers of our time on the subject of organisational learning and dialogue. His view is that learning can only come from dialogue which can only come from honest and open exchange of opinions with the support of facilitation and the absence of blame.
It is real learning that gets to the heart of what it means to be human. A learning organisation "is an organisation that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future".
Organisational learning can only be achieved through the individual's learning process. Senge tells us it is "From their quest for continual learning, comes the spirit of the learning organisation".
How can we apply some of these lessons to our current environment
At the heart of this theory is the view that all things have a cause and effect and we may not know the relationship between the two. We therefore have to consider organisations as complex systems which have subtle interdependencies. This leads organisations to misread short term wins as endorsement of a path of action, when in fact it may be the result of an intervention taken some time previously. This mis-reading of action & consequence is at the heart of poor decision making. "Cause & Effect and Time and Space are not the same".
When thinking of implementing change in your organisation, the warning from Senge is to ensure that you fully understand the system in which you are operating and that you are ready to respond to the intended and unintended consequences of your change programme.
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"Cause & Effect and Time and Space are not the same" | |
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We hope that you have enjoyed the first issue of Smart Business Thinking - our free newsletter and we look forward to sending you more insights soon.
If you have any comments please do contact us at:
We look forward to hearing from you. |
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Sincerely,
Mary McGuire
Agents2change |
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