New leadership!

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 KL: Simon Sinek NBForum 2015

Simon Sinek was in Finland (F: Link in Finnish) and was asked for some advice for our government. The situation is bad, but together you can pull through: just involve all the people.

My friend is educating herself more, in order to make her two degrees more compatible to the market. There are some remarkable theories, she shrieked, but they're all in vain, if the grassroot employer doesn't have them as a tool. 

This is how it all dawned on me.

As we were reaping the harvest this weekend, I offered to prepare some zucchini soup. For some reason ;) my mother in law was very articulate to guide me through the motions. Okay, she is a small woman, and the zucchinis were quite big.. Anyway, just split them in half and then half the other way. Okay? 

A few moments later I stand with my academic degree, pondering what Sinek had just said in my earphones, and there is this vast very curved up zucchini. Can I just cut the giant into three pieces so that I can use the knife more handily..? 

Flash of understanding!

THIS is why processes make organization dumber! That is why they drop the customer in between where it just ain't nobody's business to help her out.. 

The guidelines were specific. One who desires to do it the other way just has to have a bigger picture about what it is she or he is doing. Without the bigger picture (without courage to try something else?) the advice at hand is the only way to move on, till the doomsday. Guidelines without a licence to apply belong to assembly line only. And yes, by all means, do transfer that work to the robots!

A good leader inspires and gives hope, Sinek also said, and lets people solve their common problem together.

Later (F) someone asked where to get a leader like that.

It is not about the core knowledge of one particular leader, it is shared leadership. It is time to act, for these problems cannot be solved by one man.  Or one woman.

Productivity: quantity or entity?

In some public sector strategies the aim is to improve the productivity but there is also anticipation of a new leadership.

In public sector offices instructions used to be signed by one man and then all the public and personnel obeyed. Budgeting was supposed to take these offices to a more business-like supervision.

Certain problems still prevailed. There seemed to be little or no connection between the annual actions and their budgeting; change management and project-like financing arose a problem time and time again. One thing is common in both private and public sector: sub-optimization.

Productivity is haute couture in the Aging Europe

Anja Alasilta blogged about result-based rewarding in emergency call centers (F). Quantities and rewarding seem to be an equation with few solutions in all public sector.

Productivity states that its measure should be, say, phone calls per call center worker. That rate will thus get improved only if "You just talk faster to the customer"?!

Tax Administration took the customer in the focus by early 2000's. Niche experts needed to broaden their horizons, and all of a sudden there was no point in counting bits and pieces. The real issue was to track the whole customer process. What happens to the quality of a tax return if our guidance is A, B or C?

We began to talk about the impact of our actions. Instead of viewing our own doings alone, we now search impressiveness in customer's process.

We talk about the new leadership as something that is insightful and participative for our personnel. We are looking for ways to support innovations and their dissemination. How do you do that?

What kind of organization would best support innovation?

Leader is like a Captain

Driving an organisation to its goal is a bit like being a captain.

You set the goal, choose the way and steps to get there, set the tasks for your team - and lift their spirits.

A recent HBR article reflects on making good decisions.

Center versus business unit

Business units do their job on the front line, close to the customer whereas the center is the one who can see the big picture. It can set the broader goals, and it keeps the organization focused on winning.

The way I've come across this phenomenon, I would now strongly go for the centralized option. For it seems to be that only with the bigger picture can one tell between different choices, which of them will benefit the organisation most. The sub units tend to sub-optimize and their aim is easily focused on the short term revenue/goal.

Dreaming about brilliant leadership

On the other hand, I still dream about tools that would steer the whole organisation to one commonly set direction without the parts wanting something of their own. - Have you found that toolkit yet?

Nick Morgan wrote a nice article in Forbes. In Leadership Is All About Emotional Persuasion he points out a few things defining successful leadership:

Persuasion means changing someone's mind. If the mind isn't changed, the person hasn't been persuaded. -- So a leader's job is to change minds, to push followers to make new decisions.

Something alike can be found in Pentti Sydänmaanlakka's thinking. In his book on intelligent leadership (Älykäs johtajuus Talentum 2004), he, too, defines leadership as a process: "Leadership is a process where the leader effects an individual or a group in order to reach the common goal" (translation mine).

A heart-warming example in Sydänmaanlakka's book names a few principles regarding leadership:

Emphasize the meaning of the customer

Give room to people who make things happen

Acknowledge competence

Inspire yourself and everyone to top results

Function versus function

Who actually does the balancing act between product development and marketing during the design of a new product? Let's assume marketing is the function to tell what the customers want, and the R&D project has some slightly different goal - who will bring the common goal to decision-making?

Cross-functional decisions seem too often to elude in compromise solutions, not to mention the frequent need to be revisited because the right people were not involved from the start!? On the other hand, if we would really act customer-centric (not just talk about it), shouldn't this problem vaporize away, this instant?

Inside versus outside partners

Good decision makers recognize which decisions really matter to performance. Knowing that together with the commonly shared goal are, in my experience, the main elements to make any organization prosper.

Good decision makers, a.k.a good leaders think through who should recommend a particular path, who needs to agree, who should have input, who has the ultimate responsibility for making the decision, and who is accountable for follow-through.

Good leaders thus make the process routine. And, as the result, they gain better coordination and quicker response times.

In times like these, we need good leaders.

Passion will spread your wings

Welcome to my blog in English. Thanks Nathan for your support!

My first post is loosely based on my previous post(F). I am a co-writer in a team blog Lupa palvella(F).

The name translates nicely to License to Serve! The team is spectacular: we share the passion for our work and our customers. Or should I say, for our customers and, hence, our work.

Ken Auletta picked up 10 things Google can taught us.

Passion wins

Focus is required

Vision is required, too

A team culture is vital etc.

If more officers could let their thoughts be broadened like this, who knows how marvellous it would get to go to a government office. There are no limits to good service, if you start with thinking about your customer.

Change calls for new thinking, new leadership

YLE(F) and the Police(F) have been the first public sector offices to enter and engage the areas of the social media. YLE, our national broadcasting company, is sharing content in new ways and challenging the audince to co-creation. The Police seems to have started by meeting with its primary audience - and is doing a great job, I might add! In a country of 5 million, Facebook community of 1.5 million the Police has reached a fan club of over 36 000 fans.

Leadership is under constant change. The world is so complicated and there is so much information that .. we need motivation and to free our natural creativity. - Mikael Jungner, CEO, YLE.

Passion for customer to lead the business

Steve Denning is about to publish an interesting book, Radical Management. In my public sector perspective, (For full picture, please read Steve's original seven principles) there are four wonderful steps to success:

Client delight, which demands

Continuous innovation, which can be brought up in

High-performance teams, increasing well-being; resulting

Higher productivity, thanks to clients and teams

Vision and courage to management

Vision and courage will lead the way to new ways to find and offer help to the customers in need.

A team that is allowed to use its own passion will inevitably exceed the expectations set upon it. - Mikael Jungner

I recently wrote about the concept of shopping malls: Instead of all the government agencies building up their own sites (and silos), how about going out there, where the customers get together?

Virtually they are there having conversations about different topics of their interests and needs. And the officials? We should be there, too. Not controlling or supervising but listening and offering the advice when and where needed.

Learning new ways to address the customer needs, organize our services and offer customer value in new ways.