FIVE WAYS TO CHANGE THE GAME
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JASON FOX
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April 2014, Company Director Magazine
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The Australian Institute of Company Directors is a member institute
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Introduction
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s the director of a mid-size organisation we recognise that you have a
particular set of challenges as you aim to take your business to the next
level. With tighter resources and a tough competitive environment you
need to find smarter ways to harness and manage the levers of growth and constantly
refresh your business agenda.
To address these challenges, Company Directors, in conjunction with KPMG,
has created the Directing Growth Program, a year-long blended learning and
networking program. It brings together the latest thinking, industry experts and
a community of like-minded directors to explore the spectrum from governance
to growth strategies. It uses a mix of real world and digital modules and updates to
help each business owner and director achieve the key outcomes they individually
require and to progress their skills and career as a director.
This ebook series is designed to deliver the most pertinent information across
a variety of topics of specific value to business leaders of mid-size businesses. Of
course, it is not business advice but rather intended to be helpful to your director
development.
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Five ways to
change the game
Jason Fox provides five ways in which directors can change the game when
someone else is in charge of the controls.
If you’re a director without executive powers, it can be frustrating to watch the
glacial pace of progress and development. But there are some simple “motivation
design” elements you can encourage and implement. These will not only serve to
enhance the level of productivity and progress in your organisation, but can also
boost engagement in the boardroom.
1. Get visibility of progress
Making progress, growth, change and development happen is hard work, regardless
of the level you are working at. Uncertainty is the burden all leaders must accept
when on the path to progress. This uncertainty, however, often results in lower levels
of effort and ingenuity in organisations. When people aren’t sure if their efforts
are contributing to progress – and when directors can’t see how things are being
progressed – effort may reduce and resentment can occur.
This is an incredibly important thing to reverse. In 2010, the No. 1 breakthrough
idea from the Harvard Business Review was research by Professor Teresa Amabile
and Professor Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle. They found that a clear sense
of progress was more inherently motivating to people than incentives and rewards,
clear goals and recognition of good work. This makes a lot of sense. Why would
we invest effort into something if we’re not sure if it will go anywhere? If we have
worked towards goals before, only to see the targets shift arbitrarily, it’s very likely
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that we’ll reduce the level of effort we continue to invest.
The key to getting more effort, more productivity and more momentum is
to provide a clear sense of progress. Yet, at the board level, this can be buried in
overly wordy reports and highly complex figures. What we want is a way to see
instantly how things are progressing. Some organisations can convert complex data
into beautifully visualised data. They can also generate project streams at various
contextual levels (from big picture through to mid-level detail). But it doesn’t
have to be this fancy – a simple Gantt Chart on a whiteboard can be enough to
communicate a clear sense of progress.
2. Frequency trumps duration
Next, we want to short-circuit feedback loops. Put simply, most board meetings are
simply too cumbersome, long and irrelevant. It is a vicious cycle. Agendas can be
lengthy, so not all items are covered and things get delayed to the next meeting. In
the meantime, more tasks are added to the meeting. The next meeting grows, and
so on. The solution might be to meet more often, but most directors are busy people
with a lot happening in their lives. If you can increase the frequency of your meetings,
while shortening the duration – great! But if that’s not feasible, then integrating a
shared space online that exists as a thread in between meetings could serve you well.
Just reduce the latency between decisions and feedback, in other words, short-circuit
feedback loops. A collaborative platform like Basecamp or even the use of secure
Google Hangouts could keep people productively engaged with progress. Marry
this with a visible structure, like a high-level Gantt Chart (or Basecamp’s in-built
timeline) and you’ll have an environment where people will want to invest effort
towards progress.
3. Think in terms of projects
Enough with the long-term S.M.A.R.T. goals and fixed key performance indicators
(KPIs). The view that steering a company through these times requires much more
agility and detailed planning beyond a year or two is increasingly an exercise in fallacy.
Rather, think in terms of quarterly projects. Choose three projects that matter each
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quarter – the three things that will contribute the most to progress and growth. And
then play hard.
4. Conduct experiments
Projects trump goals because they have a clear and fixed outcome. They have a
deliverable. And, as such, it is a lot easier to measure and see progress in projects. But
part of the paralysing nature of this is that some projects fail. How your board responds
to failures is a key indicator of its attitude to progress, change and growth. The path
to innovation is often non-linear and fraught with failure. The key is to fail fast, fail
safe and fail forward. Some more enlightened organisations celebrate both success
and failure, yet punish apathy. You see, if you’re failing it means you’re exploring and
trying new things. But if that’s a bit too heavy, think of it like this – in science there’s
no such thing as failure, only disproven hypotheses. So, avoid trying to come up with
the perfect strategy or plan in isolation. Instead, conduct more experiments. Unpack
the results in your board meetings and let strategy become more emergent.
5. Build the narrative
There are two main spectrums that surround any idea – abstract to detailed and
logical to emotive. When contributing to any business, it’s important to be strong
in both big picture and detailed logical thinking. But don’t forget the emotive side
of things – the story that you are contributing to; the hero’s journey of the company
you represent; and when all else fails, it’s meaning that people will rally to.
These five simple, high-level ways will help you weave a better motivation strategy
and design into the companies you represent. But remember – the house always
wins and games always favour their maker. There’s always a game at play, but with
a bit of design savvy, we can make anything work better.
Twitter @drjasonfox
For more growth and strategy resources w: companydirectors.com.au/resource-centre