The Zentricity Blog

I’m swapping to Wordpress

2011-07-19T15:47:00.001+10:00

In an attempt, dear reader, to give you a more friendly experience, I am swapping blog providers to go to Wordpress.

You can now find The Zentricity Blog at "thezentricityblog.wordpress.com", where hopefully you will find it easier to interact – read on your mobile device, post comments and subscribe by email, for instance.

It has been a pleasure to connect with you via Blogger, and I trust you will still visit me at the new destination.

David

The student as the teacher – two lessons from a friend

2011-07-19T13:34:00.001+10:00

I spent many hours in the nineties, without my consent, listening to a band called Pearl Jam, who played with many other grungy bands on the soundtrack of my parenting-teenagers gig. One of their signature tunes, to which I was subjected over and over, was called "Rearview Mirror". I thought about that chorus after I caught up with my friend Emily recently.

It is always a pleasure to see Emily's insouciant blonde bob bounce into the cafe. I haven't seen her for a few months, and she seemed to bring a certain lightness with her this time, which was a bit different to the tone of some of our previous catch-ups.

We have had an occasional mentoring relationship over the past 3 years. As I have frequently advocated, and as I confirmed again to myself looking in my rearview mirror, I get at least as much out of those connections as I may impart as mentor.

Here are two things of the many things I have to thank Emily for.

Yet another validation of the value of resilience

Emily is the CEO of a national organisation, and the first successor to the long-serving founding CEO. A solid phalanx of the old brigade remained on the organisation's board after her appointment, and mounted a concerted rear-guard action against the transition to a new and progressive CEO.

Personal attacks in board meetings, behind-the-scenes plotting, rumour-mongering and the spreading of misinformation were the most vicious of the tools used, abetted by the complaints of some of the senior staff unable or unwilling to cope with the change in tempo.

Throughout that process, Emily managed to cling to a sense of self-worth, a desire to see the transformation of the organisation to a conclusion, and a conviction that "this too shall pass". We had a number of harrowing discussions during that time, each time concluding with Emily's resolve to keep the mission going.

The old guard has now quit the field, to take up their pipes and slippers elsewhere; the organisation has been fully unshackled and is flying. Emily's resistance to slipping into a downward spiral, or just to giving up and walking out, has kept an important operation alive and able to move forward with renewed focus.

"The Spill"

Emily and I developed, in an organic way, a technique in our mentoring sessions which I have termed "The Spill". She would start by just letting everything on her mind tumble out, whether in any logical order or not, and we could then pull things out of that for investigation, discussion or observation.

I have found The Spill to be an invaluable tool when mentoring people who are under significant pressure – particularly CEOs, who are otherwise expected to be measured and dispassionate. But you have to be prepared, as mentor, to sit quietly, listen intently and resist the temptation to intervene until the flow has become a trickle. Only then should you start the unpacking together – as mentor try and use your scalpel rather than your cleaver in that process. Then build the plan to deal with the issues uncovered.

Thank you Emily. As ever, you teach me more than you know.

The bad things I have done

2011-07-10T11:00:00.001+10:00

"Stories are pointillistic paintings in text, not slabs of paint slapped on vast, plain walls." I just read that in the intro to a book about using a clever piece of software for writers, but it clicked with something else that has been banging around in my head the last 24 hours or so.

Memories, the things that create your own story of your life, are like those bits of pointillism as well. (I guess you have to call them "pixels" now, don't you?) But if you just focus on the little dots, you don't get to see the whole picture.

Thoughts drive feelings, and vice-versa. I've struggled with multiple minor health niggles recently, which when aggregated have knocked around my usual aim of equanimity. The lack of well-being somehow triggered a string of memories, about a collection of bad things I have done in my life.

Believe me, it wasn't hard to find a bunch of them. That process has a fair chance of either starting or exacerbating a downward spiral, where you end up getting really down on yourself and in all probability further lowering your physical well-being too.

The only way I managed to dodge that next slide into the spiral was to retreat into what was going on right now. I was walking to the station to go and see the unveiling in concert of the Australian Chamber Orchestra's new Stradivarius – how could you feel bad about that?

It was a bit of a diving catch, but enough to escape a further descent into negativity. One of my gurus, Tara Brach, says we are Velcro for bad and negative thoughts about ourselves, and Teflon for good and positive ones.

While there is no doubt that I have done plenty of bad things, they do not have to define who I can be now. I am pretty sure there are other pixels which would hopefully join up to show a picture of countervailing good things I have done, and which help to adjust the karmic balance.

So if you get assaulted by the bad vibes of your past, or even your present, maybe you can stand back, unhook the Velcro, and look at the whole picture. You are bound to look a lot better on the big screen than in that little slice of negativity you have been watching.

When inspiration fails – Where can I pull some ideas from?

2011-07-04T11:32:00.001+10:00

My aim has been to post something on my blog each week. Often it has been more than that. But it is now two weeks since I posted.

I have some stuff in the pipeline, 7/8ths ready to go. Nearly all of it, though, is more than a month old. Inspiration for new material to post has been hard to come by recently. I have been pondering why.

There are a couple of possibilities:

I'm doing too much of the same thing

You may know from earlier posts that I have been doing home renovations. In the earlier stages I was quite engaged in the actual activities of the building process. I was learning new skills, and achieving progress which gave a personal sense of satisfaction.

Inspiration for writing never seemed to be a problem.

In the last few weeks, while renovation has still been all-consuming, the process has mostly been marshalling different gangs of tradesmen, and then cleaning up or fixing up after them.

It's all been so much of the same; too much admin and not much hands-on. Inspiration has been a scarce commodity.

In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron counsels people seeking creative renewal to take a weekly "artist's date" with yourself – go and do something of your own choosing, by yourself, out of your usual rituals.

Those sorts of activities can help top up your creative well, so you can pull inspiration out of it when you need to. Different experiences beyond the quotidian usually help trigger things for me.

Travelling is also, for me, another time when bits of writing seem constantly to beg being put onto the page.

I'm not doing enough of the same thing

The current renovation regimen, with the associated fact of not living in my own house in the process, has drawn me away from my usual practice of daily writing. Or possibly, given me a tangible excuse for not writing daily.

Keeping a journal has so often, for me, brought with it unexpected insights and ideas. It has brought out things which would not have emerged if I hadn't been in front of a page needing to be filled, one way or the other with something, anything, before I could declare the day's journaling complete.

So it may also be that I simply haven't noticed things which might otherwise have brought inspiration, because I have not dedicated time to reflect or allow incubation of ideas.

As Belinda Thomson has noted in her recent blog post on Getting Past PR, there are times when you have to: "Just write". ("The day I lost my voice")

In that vein, I am doing something different – posting 2 articles at once. The second one (The girl in the white Corolla) is one of the few bits of random inspiration that has struck me recently.

In the meantime, I had better take my own advice – do something different, and do something the same.

The girl in the white Corolla – finding random inspiration

2011-07-04T11:26:00.001+10:00

A pretty girl in a plain white Corolla looked across at me, as we were stopped at a red light, and lip-synched "Love your car." And something else I couldn't quite make out: "I have one too", or "You're sexy too". The latter is admittedly unlikely. I mouthed back "Thank you" and then got all shy, hoping the lights would change. A 1999 MGF VVC, with the rare rear spoiler, has apparently still got it.

It's interesting to see what one little incident throw up, if you take a moment to notice that things are being triggered. Three things came up for me, in the next few moments.

Random inspiration

I'm not sure what made the incident stand out (beyond vanity), except that a few moments earlier I had heard a song on the radio, from an Aussie troubadour whose name I wish I could remember, called "Mario Milano's Monaro". I was perhaps just struck by the simple narrative of the song and the unexpected pleasure of the girl in the Corolla encounter.

Sentences started lining themselves up in my head, like some kind of prose poem. I can't recapture that poetry now, or perhaps I just thought it was poetic at the time. Something I hadn't appreciated, but can see now, is that inspiration can be an enjoyable experience in itself, rather than just the precursor to some sort of concrete output.

Patina

There's something re-assuring to me about the look of well-worn leather, or the dull gloss of a frequently used though aging spanner. I flatter such things as having "patina", although there is another way of looking at it, to which my wife subscribes, called "shabby".

I was mildly peeved by the comment from the guy who recently serviced the MGF, that it was "a nice tidy daily driver". Hang on – I know there are a few very minor dints and scratches. The alloy gear knob is mildly pitted and the convertible top is scuffed.

But every time I climb in and drive it, it just seems to fit; envelops me in an aura of comfort and familiarity in a world of throw-aways and rapid obsolescence. I love genuine patina, and even a bit of genuine shabby.

Simpatico

A bloke who was in the midst of an affair with a mid-sixties VW kombi (the one with the long sunroof and the flip-up split windscreens) once told me, possibly in self-defence, that there was a concept called simpatico: the reciprocal bond that can exist between a man and an inanimate object.

I'm pretty sure that he restricted the definition to men, although I wouldn't want to preclude the possibility of there being a female version of simpatico.

The MGF is a colour called Nightfire Red, no doubt some inspiration of the marketing department. I've always called it, and by extension the car, "Frankly Scarlett". I reckon I am entitled to misquote Mr Gable for lyrical effect.

Scarlett makes me smile each time I hear the snick-snick of the gearbox when I change from 3^rd to 4^th. I hardly ever notice the symphony of rattles and shakes.

I caught myself saying out loud: "Hey, I missed you" when I picked it up from the Park'n'Fly a few weeks ago.

We both love that long drive home from the airport, with the daggy 60's playlist on the iPod that goes for hours. Scarlett never complains about my rendition of 24 Hours from Tulsa, and it actually sounds in tune to both of us at 3,100 revs. That's part of the reciprocal nature of simpatico.

If ever I'm going to be seriously challenged by the central notion of impermanence, of all things rising and passing away, it will be when I can no longer half-slide, half-fall into that patina-covered leather bucket.

But anyway, I wonder what the Corolla girl actually said as I pulled away from the traffic lights blushing.

PS – If you haven't heard of Mario Milano, or his famous wrestler's finishing move the "Atomic Drop", then either you are under 50 or your dad has never bored you by recounting Mario's battles with Killer Kowalski and Skull Murphy. You could start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Milano

Unfinished business

2011-06-13T16:20:00.001+10:00

She's a wonderful woman, my wife. I started a conversation with her that I should have started 18 months ago (well, I'm a bloke, okay?). She said: "Yes, I've been thinking about that," and suggested 3 options to resolve the issue.

Suddenly, a potential problem was no longer a piece of unfinished business.

I have had another piece of business going on, which I didn't even realise was unfinished. I was playing around with an article ostensibly about clever budget ways to get from the airport to the hotel, without spending big bucks on a taxi.

A client had managed to book me into a (modest) hotel on completely the wrong side of the CBD from both the airport bus terminal and the job the next morning. I found a free shuttle bus that went to even that hotel, patting myself on the back for having done so.

As I was writing, it sort of emerged that the piece was not a helpful travel-tip blog at all, but a lament for lost status. Life used to be like this:

A big black car would waft up to my front gate and Peter would whisk me in a comfortable cocoon to the airport.
Even when I was flying economy, my god-almighty but hard-earned frequent flyer status got me preferential check-in, frequent upgrades and very decent food and wine in the no-riff-raff lounge
At the other end, depending on the city I landed in, Spiros or another equivalent would collect me in a similar cocoon at the other end to take me wherever I was going.
If the plane was delayed or cancelled, I'd be flicked onto the next flight ahead of the other punters without even being asked.

I swear, when I first saw George Clooney in Up in the Air, I thought it was about me, right down to the slip-on shoes to get through security faster, and definitely the same status obsession.

Those were the days, I was telling myself too often, sitting on some shuttle bus or other and trying to feel virtuous about it.

The kind of clients I work for now I wouldn't consider putting to that kind of expense, and I am certainly too much of a tight-arse to pay for it myself. I'm hanging on by a thread to some residual frequent flyer status, but even that is going to evaporate in a couple of months.

But I think I may finally be close to getting over the trappings of status, and finishing that piece of business.

Brigitte and I just did an overseas trip where we had no lounge access and check-in 3 hours ahead. Buying a drink at the airport bar. Finding the cheapest airport transfers and being pleased with ourselves for having done so. And hey, it was okay.

I guess the issue about unfinished business is recognising that it is actually unfinished. For me, that means usually means picking up the signals – little things that keep recurring like thinking or talking, with mild regret rather than fondness, about the good old days. Someone I don't really want to talk to, or something I am reticent to talk about.

I have someone who has unfinished business with me, and it will probably always be that way. I have finished it on my side, and unilateral finishing can be a challenge, but sometimes it's all that may be possible.

But gee, that champagne in the no-riff-raff lounge was nice. Even though I am getting close to qualifying as riff-raff myself.

When less is more – facilitating on the run

2011-06-03T13:27:00.001+10:00

I normally subscribe to the same theory about workshop sessions as the British Army SAS does for its clandestine missions: "Proper planning and preparation prevent piss-poor performance". Last week I did a job where we just winged it – but only as a considered decision. And we came out the other end in reasonable shape.

Why would I take a punt like that? The important factors were:

A client with whom I have been working for a number of years, and with whom I have good chemistry
The previous form of this client in being difficult to pin down ahead of time, with their travel commitments and generally "fluid" way of doing business
Their commitment to intent, if not always to content.

I have to say it felt uncomfortable to turn up a blank page of flipchart, and say: "Okay, here's the agenda." The first thing we put down on the page was the finishing time. Then we agreed in very explicit terms on the purpose of the session – particularly important in this context – and co-created the rest of the agenda.

What worked in the session?

Prior agreement (admittedly only the day before when I finally pinned down the CEO) that we could evolve the whole thing in the workshop itself
A frank chat at the beginning where everyone shared, in turn, "How am I feeling right now?" and "What am I up for today?"
Letting the responses to those questions guide what we were going to create – which didn't quite land where the CEO and I had thought it would, but ended up being just what the team needed to be clear about at this stage of their planning and execution cycle
A much higher degree of check-in with the group, as we went through the process, of how it was working for them; and necessary adjustments of the agenda as a consequence of the check-ins
A very conscious step at the end to see that everyone got to appropriate closure on the issues we traversed.

One thing I am not sure really worked: when the CEO said, about the timeframe we ended up facing, "... and David will keep us to time," and I threw a small, but considered, strategic wobbly about everyone need to take personal responsibility about time.

Before taking on facilitation on the run, there are a couple of things I would suggest:

Be clear with everyone that you are operating in that mode, and engage them explicitly in the co-creation process
At the very least, spend some time ahead of the session reviewing what tools or models you might need to pull out of your kitbag to achieve a result. We ended up using a simple "what do we need to DO, STOP and CHANGE, to get to where we need to be by the relevant date?"

At the end of the session, I had a mild whinge about having had less time than originally scheduled for the session. Someone said: "How much better do you think the outcome would have been if we had that extra hour?" After a very brief reflection, I had to admit frankly that we would have had no less effective an outcome if we had spent that extra bit of time.

Sometimes, you really can achieve more with less.

The Advocate – Part 2

2011-05-29T07:58:00.001+10:00

Thus the scribe continued for a few days, reading or writing for his customers. He found the words of the scroll echoing as he listened to their stories, which gradually appeared to him in slightly different perspective. What some of them sought to cling to, or wish could be otherwise, he could see as holding them back: from finding any sufficient meaning in their current existence to let them move on; or to let them find a measure of happiness. It was not in his mind, though, for him as a humble scribe to be giving them advice.

A week or so later, as he trudged down to the bazaar laden with his writing materials and silently bemoaning his own fate, he stopped, struck with a sudden realisation. What he had lately been observing about his customers' situations applied equally to his. Wishing things were otherwise gave his days nothing extra, and sapped his own ability to be happy.

He set up his small stall that morning, and looked around the bazaar. He noticed the vibrancy, the natural rhythm of the commerce which surrounded him, the colours of the stalls, the cries of the stall holders. He felt the gratitude of his patrons, for the aid he was able to render them despite their often sad tales. He became attuned to the natural joys which many of them were sharing, joys which he had not previously focused on. He felt his own spirits lift as he read or wrote of them.

At the end of that day he packed up his stall and returned to his modest lodgings with an unaccustomed lightness.

In the succeeding days the scribe's life felt as though it were filled with a little peace, which he had not experienced since his humbling change of circumstance. Then as such things happen, his former accuser whose lies had laid him so low, was caught out in another falsehood. The untruth of his accusations against the scribe was revealed; the local prince reversed the previous punishments and added interest by way of compensation.

The scribe could be an advocate once more, with assets sufficient to last him for life.

The once-again-advocate returned to his former home. He sat amidst his comforts and possessions. As he glanced around, his eyes were drawn to the scroll. He remembered the foreigner's parting advice again: "Find your purpose through its words." He reflected on his recent happiness in accepting his own life changes and even finding small joys within them.

He knew then that he would no longer be an advocate.

He retrieved and unrolled the scroll from his writing materials. He unrolled it, and observed that its spaces, where his name had appeared on first reading at the bazaar in the presence of the foreigner, were once again blank, and shimmering softly.

The scroll called to him. Its potential to transform and enlighten others became clear. The foreigner's parting words retuned to him – "Find your purpose through its words".

He gathered a pack of travelling clothes and his writing materials. He carefully stowed the scroll in his pack. He returned to the bazaar, and put his feet upon the road out of the town.

The Advocate (part 1)

2011-05-21T14:28:00.001+10:00

A successful advocate, in another place and time, had made a sound career and a good income from representing wealthy merchants, to protect their assets from depreciation or loss. He was prudent enough to put aside a healthy store of funds, so that he would be able to maintain his situation when he was no longer advocating. A childhood spent in relatively modest circumstances had taught him to hang on to what he had earned.

It was difficult as an advocate to avoid some parties suffering loss, if he was to succeed in representing his own parties. One of those losers took some malicious tattle to the local prince: a story with enough seeds of credibility for the prince to be convinced of malfeasance on the advocate's part. Sentence was delivered after guilt had been decided: revocation of advocacy rights and confiscation of assets. The advocate was reduced to the thing he most feared and had clung to most tenaciously – loss of current and future circumstances.

The no-longer-advocate fell on hard times and struggled just to eat. Former friends and colleagues shunned him, forgetting or ignoring services he had performed or favours he had rendered. "This should not be happening to me," he said to himself. "I took all precautions I could against such adverse changes." He railed against whatever fate had foiled those measures to ward off adverse change.

The no-longer-advocate was forced to seek such work as he could. He could at least read and write, rare enough skills in that time and place. He found occupation at the bazaar. For a coin, he would read letters to people who had received them but could not read them, and write letters for those who wished to send them but could not write them.

For a year the now-scribe toiled at his new craft. He heard, as he read or wrote, many tales of gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and ill repute, life and death. Along with his patrons he shuddered against the consequences of change.

One day, into the bazaar, came a man in clothes which spoke of distant parts. The foreigner brought with him a scroll, tattered now but obviously once having been richly decorated. The foreigner had a sharp and worldly look about him.

"Scribe, I wish to engage your services," said the foreigner, and unrolled the scroll. "Do what you can to decipher this for me."

The scroll was written in an unusual script, in a strange tongue but in the common language as well, as though each passage had been lettered and then translated. In the first passage, in each tongue, was a blank space. As the scribe read, the space shimmered. He saw, as he looked back at the space, that it gradually formed into recognisable letters – his own name now appearing.

"All things are impermanent," he read in the words now addressed to him. "They rise and they fall away. True happiness is not to be found in shoring up defences against change, which will all crumble, but by finding harmony in its midst."

The scribe noted the words addressed to him, but could not fathom their meaning. Change had reduced him to this humble occupation – where was harmony to be found in that?

"I see your name has appeared herein," said the foreigner. "The custody of this scroll now must consequently fall to you. Find your purpose through its words." The foreigner then turned and disappeared into the crowded bazaar.

The scribe marvelled at the foreigner's gift and parting words, but saw no sense or application in them for him. He shook his head and stowed the scroll under his writing desk. He returned his attention to the queue of customers who awaited him, to read or document their own tangles with change.

(To be continued.)

Love, hate and intrigue

2011-05-16T19:00:00.001+10:00

That may sound a bit like the précis of a bodice-ripper, but I was caught in a reflection yesterday about my feeling towards my new Kindle, and a random collection of other things kind of grouped themselves in my head.

Love

I love that Kindle:
- I love the black leather cover I got with it, which makes it look so solid and blokey.
- I love the built-in dictionary. When an author goes literary on me and describes something as "marmoreal" I can cursor down to it and find out he just means it's like marble (and is specifically outed by the dictionary as being "literary").
- I can still look like a moderately early adopter even though that's not my usual stance.
- And when I bought a Kindle-formatted version of the 6 volumes of Anthony Trollope's Palliser series for US$1, the strength of the Aussie battler meant I only paid 96 cents.
I love competent professional advisers:
- I love the way my accountant Greg doesn't panic about deadlines with the Tax Office, and just calmly sorts out the issues which would otherwise have me in a bit of a twist.
- I love the new contact lenses my optometrist Andrew just gave me, so I can read the Herald comfortably again. Plus I can decrease the font size on the Kindle and not look like I am reading a kindergarten book.

Hate

I hate the way it's so hard now to lose those last 1 and a ½ kilos out of the 4 or so I seem to put on when I took up the role of chief taster for Brigitte's new cupcake-baking endeavours.
- I hate that once I would have burned it off with a couple of long intensive bike rides; now it just seems like a grind.
I hate those fitting rooms in Myer, which have mirrors allowing you to see yourself from every possible angle
- and in particular I hate seeing where those last 1.5 kilos are hiding.

Intrigue

I am intrigued by what people think they can tell you about yourself:
- Before the cupcake tester phase, people had no reticence about telling me I looked too thin.
- The dust and dirt from the current renovations through which we are living have given me some kind of sinus reaction. A stream of people has felt quite comfortable telling me I look "puffy" or "unwell".
- But no-one ever seems to tell you that you look fat, which surely I did.
I am intrigued by the gobsmacked smile on the face of a barista when you say to them: "That was a really good cup of coffee."
- I reckon that unless you are going back to your regular place (which you only go to because the coffee is good) the ratio of great cups of coffee to ordinary ones is about 10:1. So when you get a good one somewhere else, surely it's worth acknowledging.
- I said one day in a cafe: "Who is the barista today?" One girl said: "I am. Why, what's wrong?" Seems like the last thing she expected was: "Nothing – I just wanted to say it was a great cup of coffee."
I am intrigued by the availability of a "premium leather" version of your good, old-fashioned, regular Blundstone boots.
- I have taken it as validation of my right to wear them all this winter as going-up-to-the-village boots, and in fact pretty much wear-wherever-I-like boots.
- It must be okay because the premium leather version cost $27 more than the standard version – even if they don't look too much different, I know they are.

And finally, I am intrigued by the fact that stuff like the above wants to order itself in my head as a potential blog post. No doubt, there is more than one person out there who would want to say to me: "Get a life."

You said what? Astronomy in organisational design?

2011-05-07T17:45:00.002+10:00

Sometimes, many times, I just can't predict where things will end up from a hum-drum starting point. You'd think I would know better by now.

There are times when what clients really want to talk about is "structure". Or think they do. I have always found it a little dull, compared to other elements. I had spent some previous hours discussing "structure" with one of my favourite clients, and I guess it was essentially about that: how to frame your organisation to respond most effectively to the strategic and operational challenges facing it.

Structure must also respond, sometimes, to people. This client still sits in the post-start-up, pre-explosive-growth stage, with 2 inspiring co-founders running different streams. Happy and willing to share the power and the accountability of leadership. Neither wanting or needing the glory of sole control.

In corporate style show-and-tell during the previous session, I had sketched on the whiteboard a wiring diagram with boxes and arrows, depicting the "program" and "operations" sides of the organisation, and "joint CEOs" at the top of each stream. Not an unknown paradigm.

Now we were running a workshop to flesh out that paradigm with the full team. I started again on the whiteboard, with the two joint CEO boxes at the top. Then I said: "We need a box for Eric."

Eric said "Do I have to be a box?" which was a question I had never been asked before, but a fair enough one, I suppose.

"No," I said, "what would you like to be?" We eventually settled on putting Eric inside a fluffy cloud.

"When you put me up there, can I be a love-heart?" said Gabby, who is about to get married. So in one stream of the structure diagram we had a cloud, and in the other a love-heart.

At that point I suspended judgement, and said "Okay Anna, what do you want to be?" Anna went up on the board as a 5-pointed star.

Of course I then had to back-track to the joint CEO boxes: Mary-Ruth went up as a crescent moon, and Kim as the sun. There were no longer any lines or arrows in the diagram, just clusters like two constellations. We spent the rest of the session in discussion around what would be happening on the "moon side", and what would be needed on the "sun side".

It was liberating and effective. So there's a new kind of organisational design structure: the astral plane version. It's wonderful to walk out of a job feeling like I have learned at least as much as I have contributed.

Running a decent meeting – it’s not rocket science

2011-05-03T12:25:00.001+10:00

Does anyone know how to run a meeting any more?

I have recently been to 2 annual general meetings, both for strata plan bodies corporate. Each has been chaired by a representative from the strata manager. In one of the meetings, for a body corporate which I chair, the strata manager actually asked if he could chair the meeting instead of me, "because there are a lot of technical points." Okay, go for it.

In each case, people who do this for a living paid scant regard to any proper process. They will, I am sure, just purport to fix it up with a set of minutes which will attempt retrospectively to make everything sit properly.

Really, it's not that hard. Here are 5 things which you can do (none of which were done in either AGM) when chairing a meeting which has some element of statutory requirement behind it. They will not only contribute to passing valid resolutions; they should also help the orderly flow of the meeting.

Be clear with the attendees about who is there, and on what basis, with what authority. This is particularly so with proxy holders and observers. Otherwise anyone may try to vote on the resolutions before the meeting.
Pass resolutions properly – and not just via the minutes:
- After discussion on the motion, if there is anything different to what is set out in the agenda, summarise it for the meeting
- If not, restate what the resolution is
- ASK PEOPLE TO VOTE. It's simple – "those in favour raise your hands; those against, raise your hands." Then declare the resolution passed, or not passed, as the case may be.
Consider if things on the agenda make sense to be done in the order set out. If not, seek the meeting's agreement to vary the order.
Be clear about what you can deal with in "any other business". If it is an AGM, you probably can't deal validly with anything if a resolution would be needed. Board meetings and committee meetings are different, and there is scope for a wide range of other business to be considered.
Be aware of discussion which doesn't have anything to do with the agenda item or the resolution being discussed. Look, when people only get together once a year in a forum where discussion between them all is available, they may have plenty to say about a variety of things. It's a great opportunity for them to connect and communicate. But if it's off agenda, it is fair to the people who are there to transact the business of the meeting to say:
"That's a very good question. Let's finish dealing with the agenda, then we can close the meeting and have a good discussion about it."

Is it just me, living up to a nickname I once had of "that pedantic bastard"? Maybe. But if you hang out your shingle as a professional who does this kind of business, you ought to do it properly.

And if you are an accidental chair (i.e. no-one else could be conned into taking the job), then you probably need all the help you can get. If you use these 5 steps, you will have done better than at least 50% of people who run meetings.

(If you want to see a more comprehensive one page guide to running a board meeting, or running an AGM, just email me on zentricity@optusnet.com.au)

“Doing it my way” – backing yourself for satisfaction and profit

2011-05-01T13:16:00.001+10:00

An unexpected sparkling blue-domed day. Contrarian in view of the forecast and after horizontal rain the day before, it came like a blessing. Especially on a little island off Auckland, which has a micro-climate especially suited to growing certain types of grapes.

We climbed aboard our little wine tour bus, guided by Wayne the local expert. He took us to our first vineyard, and the first lesson for the day: choosing your own path.

The vintner, call him Les, had constructed for himself one of those chequered careers which seem so typical of smaller wine-growers: originally a geologist, then morphing into a medical degree and a successful practice with a lengthy spell in Europe. Remarkable guy.

Then like so many Kiwis, the hobbit returned to the Shire; bought a few acres whose geology he could analyse and appreciate; carefully considered the history of the land including a volcanic eruption on the neighbouring island 900 years ago; planted his vines and waited.

Les only does single varietal vintages, and pretty much single paddock ones at that. He does what he reckons will work, and what he thinks he will enjoy, like:

Deciding that just doing a single cabernet franc vintage would be interesting, and "might appeal to some cab franc geeks out there"
Planting some montepulciano vines, which no-one on the island had done before, because the geography and climate of that part of the island remind him of the Abruzzi where he reckons montepulciano grows best (his wife is Italian)
Assessing that the section where some syrah is planted, split by a 1.8 metre wide creek, grows with different characteristics on each side of the creek, so he bottles each sides harvest separately.

I talked to Les about the commercial model, versus his kind of going your own way attitude, the Field of Dreams theory – build it and they will come. Plenty of money went down the drain doing that in telecoms in the recent past.

He just backs himself, his judgement and his knowledge. Marlborough is suffering a wine glut, but Les's vintages sell out, and:

There turns out to be a community of cab franc geeks who snap up his strict varietal output
His east side of the creek harvest has produced a rich and uncopiable "rosé with attitude"
His second vintage of montepulciano is not yet bottled but has a long queue of punters waiting for it
One of the world's leading wine writers has said of Les's cab franc vintages that they would "club any Chinon into submission" – Chinon apparently being the cab franc geeks' benchmark.

Look, I know Les is doing what he's doing because he can choose to, after a long, arduous and probably lucrative career. But it's still a pretty remarkable result built on:

Confidence
Self-belief
Cross-application of knowledge – geology, geography, medieval and Palaeolithic history
Intuition
The guts to back himself on all of that.

If it can work in a high-stakes, capital-intensive business like wine-growing, I reckon there's scope for your humble blogger to back himself on a few more judgement calls.

Accurate butchery – a footnote

2011-04-24T05:24:00.002+10:00

I've learnt an even rougher version of accuracy. We were putting in the windows, and the plate for one of them needed to be lower for the window to sit at the right height.

Bill the builder set the Makita to the inevitable 10 mm depth and did his usual multiple cross-cut intervals along the 2 metre plate.

"You wouldn't chip that out for me, would you? Have you got a little tomahawk?"

Yes, I've got a tomahawk, but I've never conceived of it as a carpentry tool. "It'll be faster," Bill said. So there I was, chipping out the waste with vehemence. "There's another lesson for me," I said to Bill.

"You've heard of an adze, haven't you?" he said.

Yeah, I've heard of an adze, in fantasy novels or some 19^th century story like Robbery Under Arms. Still, whatever works most efficiently.

Bill did a bit of final cleaning up along the plate, then took my tomahawk home and sharpened it for me. It's not a total Makita world, not just yet.

Once upon a time, kids could do really stupid things

2011-04-11T19:41:00.001+10:00

I was standing with eyes down, hanging onto a steel beam which Bill the builder was welding; making sure to avoid looking at the glare from the arc welder. A big drop of welding rod fell to the ground in front of me and spattered a bright shower of sparks upwards in a blossom of reddy-gold.

It reminded me instantly of fireworks. Not of the exotic stage managed extravaganza of NYE (as we are apparently now supposed to call it) but of the chook pen in our old family home, and a little "flower pot" that dad was lighting beside the bonfire on Empire Day.

Yep, when we still had vestiges of the pink bits on the globe, and grown-ups did a mild bit of forelock tugging, and kids sang "Hurrah for the red, white and blue" while we waved dolly pegs with appropriately coloured crepe paper strips wrapped around them held by rubber bands. When we stood up and bawled out "God save our gracious Queen."

And fireworks and big blazing bonfires that dads would spend weeks building before the 24^th of May each year.

The Empire Day flashback didn't last long though, just like the day itself as imperial glory finally faded. It pointed me to the real fun about fireworks – Empire Day's successor, Cracker Night (nominally the Queen's Birthday in June), which became symbolic for me of all the stupid things boys like us could possibly manage to do with fireworks.

It's the baby-boomer blokes' lament, tinged with guilty recognition: our grandchildren will never be allowed to have the fun and the mayhem of doing dangerous childhood things.

Like these:

Putting penny bungers (shaped like baby sticks of dynamite) under jam tins and seeing how high the bunger could blow the jam tin into the air
Then when that excitement paled, upping the stakes to put tuppeny bungers (even more wickedly powerful explosives) under kerosene tins for even more chaotic results
Realising that penny bungers fitted quite neatly down a bit of water pipe, which you could bend in dad's vice into yes, the shape of a gun; then lighting the bunger, dropping it down the pipe, following it with a marble, and knowing you have created a potentially lethal weapon
Using roman candles like semi-automatic rifles in firefights running around the chook pen battleground
Going progressively up the scale to see how big an explosive you could hold in your fingers while it went off: the little tom thumbs no worries; the standard sized cracker, yep, okay; the penny bunger? No, we didn't get quite that stupid, or maybe my best mate and worst influence Greg Murphy may have once.

1966, where are you? Oh for long backyards, far enough from the house where mothers couldn't see the potential carnage going on. I know, I know, kids lost fingers, even eyes; the good burghers of Sans Souci lost letter boxes and the odd cat lost its life, when the really mean kids took up the bunger thing.

Now instead, it's like this:

Fireworks are inevitably banned from personal use, except for some lame ones you buy in Fyshwick and smuggle across the border.
It costs me $100, and a day's worth of lectures and tests on OH&S, before I can even think of being an owner-builder.
One metre high step ladders are banned from building sites because you can't have 3 points of contact while standing on them.
No council could ever again put in their parks one of those well-balanced and well-oiled twirly merry-go-rounds that you could get spinning really fast and then hang out and feel the centrifugal force and be spun off, and only lose a little bit of skin from knees and elbows.

I blame the lawyers. My former colleagues were very successful in eliminating bad luck, misadventure and just plain shit-happens from our lives, and turning it instead into someone's fault.

With that someone, of course, and their public liability insurers, having in the interests of truth and justice to be well and truly sued. And the nanny-state stepping in to protect us accordingly in line with the precedents set.

But I'm glad, I think, at least deep down, that my grandchildren will never be able to make bunger guns.

“You are my teacher” – five lessons from being given a whacking

2011-04-09T16:59:00.001+10:00

Sometimes people touch our lives, significantly, harshly or tangentially, as if blown towards us by one of the Buddhist worldly winds of pain, loss, shame or blame. I just had one of those touches, someone a bit lost and struggling , needing to find a focus of blame to help ease their suffering; or just needing to lash out to deflect some fleeting pain; I dunno which. Anyway, I got the whacking, and it was nicely pointed at one of my potential hotspots.

There's a temptation inevitably to respond in kind. I suppose whatever wisdom I may have gathered from various hard lessons learned in life tells me that when that temptation arises, saying "Stop!" to myself before finally going through with a response can save me some pain, and give that other person a shot at minimising their pain.

That latest salvo aimed at me landed, serendipitously, at a time when I had floated through quite a peaceful meditation, and a couple of days after having spent some life-affirming time with my consulting colleagues talking about respective personal journeys.

I was standing at the sink, washing dishes, just reflecting on that salvo, with a thought like, "Oh no, not again," when another thought followed (or was sent): "You are my great teacher," you who had made the carefully aimed attack. I gradually experienced the lessons I was being taught by my teacher:

Patience – it may be a while, if ever, before people's attitudes might change or their anger fade. That's okay, they are usually each more than worth me letting any such prospect of change have the space to blossom.

Tolerance – whatever is motivating the attack maybe has a fair basis in fact behind it, and that point of view is one for which I ought to show at least a bit of respect.

Humbleness – I have plenty of unworthy thoughts myself, and plenty of temptation to air them (to which I am sometimes known to succumb). I can easily marshal a biting return salvo which perhaps if I were a little more enlightened myself would not even form in my mind.

Restraint – there was an even chance, in this instance, that snapping back would be pointless and more likely counter-productive. A response would most likely fuel the suffering that prompted the attack. I could minimise that prospect by restraining the urge to say a bunch of things which would only feel good for a very short time.

Compassion – Jack Kornfield says "Compassion is when love meets pain." Its essence for me is a recognition that we are all in this shit-happens world together. I know what is behind some of the pain this person is feeling. Meeting that pain with love, at least vicariously, would seem to be the least I could do.

I have a different perspective on this person now, from assailant to valued teacher. And God knows I can use the lessons. There are other potential teachers that I should be looking out for and recognising, no doubt about that. And they're not all shooting at me.

Accurate butchery – when perfection doesn’t really matter

2011-04-05T14:25:00.003+10:00

My lesson for the week is: "If it's not going to show, it doesn't have to look great, so don't waste time trying to be perfect."

I reached the next stage of my builder's apprenticeship. Bill the builder deigned to let me use real tools, that is, tools beside a mattock and a shovel.

We have been building the frames. We went down to see eight-fingered Dan (his brother accidentally cut off 2 of his fingers with an axe when Dan was 6) and bought second hand oregon.

The used wood looks a bit scruffy but it's not going to bend or warp any further, being well and truly seasoned by who knows how many decades standing in someone else's house.

We got to the stage of rebating the top and bottom plates where the wall studs go in. You set the power saw to a depth of 10mm, then do a series of lateral cuts close together so you can chisel out the excess more easily.

My job was the chiselling. I know about chiselling. You always go with the grain of the wood; if you go across the grain, you can splinter the wood.

I started chiselling my stud carefully with the grain, then Bill the builder started on his stud. He had done 3 while I was neatly finishing my first one.

"I didn't think you could go across the grain," I said. Bill was belting the chisel across the grain with gusto.

"Framing is butchery," he said, "accurate butchery anyway. It doesn't have to look great – it's all going to be covered up inside the walls anyway."

So with licence like that I got into the across-the-grain act and increased my speed of rebating two-fold. When we got to the deeper rebates for the window and door lintels, it wasn't even chiselling; you just whacked the bigger wafers sideways with your hammer and tidied up a bit afterwards.

The Buddhists say: "To be enlightened is to be without anxiety about the non-perfection of the world." There's a place for rough and ready, if you think about when.

My carefully chiselled first rebate would work no better for its intended purpose than Bill's rough-hewn ones, and doing it my way was slowing down the process considerably. It would have looked very neat and tidy, but it will be encased by a brick wall on one side of it and a gyprock wall on the other.

When else do I waste time and energy in the pursuit on pointless perfection?

Fluffing around with PowerPoint slides – one of the great time-and-effort wasters in all creation

Insisting that each garment I hang on the line has two matching colour pegs

Cutting carrots into julienne strips before throwing them into the slow cooker.

I guess all those things are okay in their own right, as long as they aren't impeding some more pressing process. I'll be keeping an eye out for just the right time to employ some more "accurate butchery".

(Since writing this, I pegged some washing out, not caring what the peg colours were, and experienced a small sense of liberation.)

Memory jolts – being thrown back in time

2011-03-22T22:15:00.001+11:00

On top of the fridge in the old family home sat an old Bakelite wireless; they called it a "wireless" in those days even though you had to plug it in. Dark brown, with an almost art deco shape of rounded corners which echoed the curves of the Hallstrom fridge.

It was the type of radio which had the stations printed on the dial rather than numbers, as if to reflect the relative stability of society then when radio stations didn't come and go. How did they run up the dial? 2FC, 2BL, 2GB, 2UE, 2CH, 2UW, 2SM. Stations now irrelevant, or the home of shrill talk-back, or delineated by numbers rather than letters. No FM radio then.

All that came back to me unexpectedly, triggered when in the early hours one morning I heard "Pearly Shells" by Burl Ives on the radio. I was surprised by the vividness of the memory jolt. I remember that song being played on our old wireless too often, along with others like "Spanish Eyes" and "Hello Dolly".

The wireless seemed to be stuck permanently on 2GB. What would you call it now, "easy listening"? Until I was 12 or so, I had no experience of any other radio format – there was only one wireless in the house and I wouldn't have contemplated pulling a chair over, climbing up and changing the station.

Something changed for me, around 1966. Maybe it was starting high school, bringing exposure to a wider world. Whatever it was, I came across, and was captivated by, the Top 40. Every Saturday night, from 7 pm to 10 pm, they played the Top 40 on 2UE from bottom to top. Somehow I talked mum into letting me change the station just for that time, inflicting pop music on the house, and staying up till 10 o'clock.

Each week, some songs would be falling down the chart, others climbing; some shooting up the rankings as "star performers" with a bullet. I would be hanging out until maybe 10 to 10 before I could guess which song would be number 1 that week.

That Saturday night Top 40 was the highlight of my week, since I had outgrown Disneyland and was by then, if only just, a too-cool teenager. I'm not sure now what the rest of the family was doing, watching TV maybe, or the younger kids were in bed. I remember mum out in the dining room sewing and doing other jobs, tolerating the music.

The ritual went on for a couple of years may be, until mum got a small transistor radio which I was able to borrow and take into our bedroom – removing the affliction of pop music from the living areas to an audience which may have been more sympathetic or just didn't care yet, my younger brothers with whom I shared the room.

Eventually dad went on his first overseas business trip, and came back laden with duty free including the marvel of my own transistor radio. "Trannie" had a different meaning in those days.

I was struck by the power of that one sound bite, the opening bars of Pearly Shells, to pitch me back 45 years to memories which I hadn't touched for decades. Another time, I remember opening a pantry door in someone's house, and being taken back to the spicy, clovey smell of the cupboard in my nanna's old kitchen and the comfort of her cooking.

They are out there: sounds, smells, sights, even tastes, which help us, if we wish and if we care to notice, to capture things in our lives with which we have lost touch, like my tentative teenage breaking away. We just have to keep an eye, an ear and a nose out for them.

Jack Kenneth White – now at peace.

2011-03-17T17:54:00.001+11:00

Around noon on Tuesday, the Ides of March, my dad slipped away peacefully from us at Southhaven Nursing Home. His daughter and one of his sons were with him. What's the accepted phrase – "blessed release"? A wrench to our hearts nevertheless.

I spoke to one of his friends the next day, who said "He was a really nice bloke". Someone else called him "a really decent man". I remember him when he was strong and solid and capable, when at his peak he gathered respect and admiration for his vast output, his calmness under fire, his willingness to tackle the big stuff and not be daunted by it, and his capacity to pull it off.

I've learned too late, and not from him, about his early life, and some of the things which formed him, and appreciated the momentous times through which he lived at a very close remove. I regret not having talked to him more about that.

I stood beside him shortly after he left us and said to my family around me: "The best advice he gave me I didn't take. The best examples he set me I didn't follow. He bailed me out of so many of my youthful scrapes." The last few months I have reflected on and better understood the positive lessons that he taught me.

May his journey from this human existence be smooth. May his next destination be beautiful. May he be released from the pain which has dogged him. May he find the lucidity which has recently eluded him. May he be happy and free.

Taking a stand

2011-03-02T16:50:00.001+11:00

A solitary figure stood on top of the station steps, hair and clothes being snatched by the early morning wind. It was 6 a.m., I was going to the train, and the figure handed me an election flyer through the gloom.

It was my local Labor candidate, doing what candidates do. She is standing in an electorate which is odds-on to swing against her in about 3 weeks. She's lining up to replace a high profile, well-regarded local Labor member who has decided not to run again. The timing and circumstances are all against her.

In that early morning context, I didn't think I should just take the flyer and run. We had a brief chat, and I asked her how she was feeling about her campaign. "Determined," she said. "I'm not entitled to claim confidence, but people like me need to stand up at times like these for what the Labor Party really is."

I had to admire her determination, and her willingness to take a stand. The commitment to occupy a lonely corner before dawn to connect with prospective voters; the guts to be part of an election race when so many in her party have either screwed up or bailed out, or both; the willingness to cling to core purpose in the face of a potential rout. Whatever your politics, you've got to respect that kind of courage and belief.

There's a difference between plonking yourself futilely in front of a tide that won't be turned back, and the commitment to be counted for your belief even knowing that success is unlikely. May I be granted the wisdom to know that difference.

The Plank – what I’ve been learning as a builder’s labourer

2011-02-25T19:52:00.001+11:00

Coaches tell you that if you want to make progress, you need to get out of your comfort zone. I've been so far from comfortable the last three days I'm not sure where my zone begins and ends.

We are doing an extension to the house. My mate Bill the builder is the expert, and I am the labourer/apprentice. That means, for instance, when we are cutting down a tree which is the way of the building, that Bill wields the chainsaw, while I hold the rope and Bill says: "Pull that way, and try not to pull it on top of yourself."

The big challenge, for me anyway, has been the digging of the footings. There's no room to use a bobcat, and this job is being dug by hand. That means hack out the dirt, fill up the barrow, and load it onto Bill's tip truck.

To get the barrow up and onto the truck, there's a four metre long Plank. It's about 250 mm wide. You get a bit of a run-up, push the barrow along the Plank, then tip the barrow up when you get onto the truck tray.

Sounds simple, but the Plank has taught me a few lessons over the past couple of days:

Commitment – you only really have one shot at getting all the way up the Plank with the barrow. That means you have to take a few seconds to line up, build up speed and then just go. "Keep your feet a bit sideways," says Bill. You have to keep the wheel of the barrow dead ahead, and your feet behind it on the narrow Plank. Once you go, you have to keep going. There's a 1.5 metre drop on either side.

Acceptance – Once or twice, no matter what commitment I made, or what effort I applied, just as I got to the top of the Plank I couldn't get the barrow up and over. Accept the failure, and make a choice: let it fall and clean up the resultant mess; or retreat ignominiously down the ramp with the barrow pushing me instead of vice versa. I chose the latter, thinking how stupid I would look on Funniest Home Videos.

Over-thinking – After the first 30 or so barrow loads up the Plank, I got a bit philosophical, and thought: "There must be some Zen in this – when pushing, just push." I then went up the ramp in a very un-Zen-like way, thinking through the process, got to the top of the Plank in a muddle, and had to toss the barrow sideways onto the truck to avoid falling off the edge. I was doing a whole lot better before I started analysing.

Persistence – I got pretty sick of pushing the barrow up the Plank, and physically tired as well. The dirt, however, kept coming out of the trench and there was only one place for it to go. I had no choice – keep running up the Plank. I had to apply a large dollop of "This too shall pass," and a sprinkle of "May this too serve awakening".

Suspending ego – Bill the builder is the same age as me. We each had a barrow, and it was pretty soon clear that his barrow was filled with more dirt than mine each time we respectively ran up the Plank. It took only one experiment, where I tried adding half the difference between Bill's barrow-load and mine, then almost came to grief on the Plank, for me to realise that I wasn't going to be playing any keeping-up-with-Bill games. Just whistle and be happy pushing my David-sized loads.

The Plank was an unexpected, unlooked-for mentor. If I ever hear anyone say about someone else: "He's as thick as two planks," I had better go and ask the specified person what they may have to teach me.

Handwriting – only for Luddites, or almost cool?

2011-02-20T16:49:00.001+11:00

For a guy who publishes a weekly blog post, I'm a bit of a dinosaur. I can't type properly any more. In another life, another time, I was the first lawyer in the office to type their own syndicated multi-option finance facility documents ("SMOFFs" of course). I drafted the complex bespoke clauses straight onto the screen.

The typing pool, if you can remember when there was such a thing, looked on me as some kind of scab labour. Probably rightly, looking at where things have got to.

Now, my bent arthritic fingers can't seem to find the rioght kleys wiothout hittring tqwo of them at once. The consequence is that I do all the first drafts of my blog articles, and of most other things I write, in handwriting, then do the editing on the screen after fluffing my way through the transcription and correcting the multiple typos.

Actually, I've come really to like doing first drafts by hand. I can let the writing flow much better than it would with my unavoidable typing stumbles. I can jot down multiple versions if I'm not sure about the right words, or just leave it to the editing phase. I can do it anywhere, any time; without, for instance, being hassled by airline hosties on ascent and descent when everyone else has to turn off their digital gear to meet some arcane safety requirement.

What I really need to admit, though, is that I am now a handwriting dilettante. I can remember, only 4 or 5 years ago, decrying some young bloke who noticed me writing and enquired whether I ever used a fountain pen. "Not even I am that pretentious," I said.

Well, now I am that pretentious. I really love the heft of a Waterman in my hand, and I affect using turquoise ink instead of boring blue. I consider it hip to use a Hemmingway-esque Moleskine book, the one with the dark brown covers and the creamy paper inside.

There's an element of redemption about the whole thing, too. When I was a youngster, I had really wanted to be dux in 6^th class, and in my memory of what happened (valid or not), I only came 4^th because of my mark in "writing" (yes, a real, examinable subject way back then), where I got 64/100 in the test of how well we could reproduce that awful and soulless style of writing called "modified cursive". Now I can write however I like.

Many of my friends who are still living the full time professional life are either terribly impressed with the versatility and it-factor of their iPads, or are lusting after one, trying to justify the expense. I covet that Lamy fountain pen which has no cap, but lets the whole nib retract into the body of the pen when you twist it. I'm just as busy trying to justify the expense.

Here's what some famous writers have said about handwriting:

"Writing by hand is like walking somewhere instead of whizzing there by car. We notice landmarks. We retain a sense of direction. Writing by hand will show us True North and the false switchbacks and directions that have occurred, the shortcuts that saved us nothing and took us nowhere." (Julia Cameron, The Vein of Gold)

"Your handwriting tells its own stories. Handwriting also makes your journal writing more personal. And there is a sensuality to the experience of your hand moving across a page in tune with your thoughts that itself can seem increasingly valuable." (Stephanie Dowrick, Creative Journal Writing)

I have found that when I am writing something emotional, I must write it the first time directly with hand on paper. Handwriting is more connected to the movement of the heart." (Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones)

Ultimately, I suppose, it doesn't matter whether you are a gadget geek or a retro pen poseur, as long as you write, if that's what you want to do.

6 things an organisation should be clear about (and 6 reasons why clarity works)

2011-02-09T12:00:00.002+11:00

Sometimes you get those crisis calls: "Things are falling apart a bit here, and I don't know what to do about it." I had one of those from a client recently, and I spent a couple of hours kicking around the issues with the CEO. It became apparent that much of the organisation's pain was due to the fact that several important things had never really been thrashed out, clarified, agreed on and then put down in writing.

I often see five key things being left to find a default position, consciously or not, and this was certainly the case for my client. There was also a one new one whose importance I hadn't really grasped until then, and which was particularly salient for this client.

So here are the six elements I believe are vital for an organisation to be clear about if it wants to be effective, avoid confusion and ensure longevity.

Purpose – there are entire books written about the importance of knowing the organisation's Purpose. My late and much-missed mate Grahame Maher took this as a starting point for his final challenge in the start-up of Vodafone Qatar, with his drive to build a PBO – or "purpose-built organisation". Purpose is the element that doesn't change through the life of the organisation, because it's the reason for being.

Despite its fundamental importance, the identification and expression of Purpose doesn't always come easily. In for-profit organisations, it can sometimes be hard to move beyond "maximising shareholder wealth". Finding Purpose is often an iterative process, before the final essence emerges. On one occasion I saw the CEO just decide and promulgate the Purpose, and that was at least a starting point for the eventual distillation of the company's real reason for being.

If I can't succeed in getting my point across about Purpose with some organisations, I often revert to describing it as "the reason you want to get out of bed in the morning" or "the reason why you bother".
Mission – there is a terminology issue here. Mission is also referred to in other terms such as vision, or big hairy audacious goal ("BHAG"). However described, it is a distillation of what the organisation is shooting to achieve over the next relevant period – usually 2, 3 or 5 years. Ideally Mission will spring out of the strategic planning process.

By its nature Mission does not have the enduring, unchanging nature of Purpose. For ongoing success, Mission needs to be reset at the appropriate interval, or in the face of significant changes of circumstances. Conversely, too-frequent resetting of Mission often leads to a loss of focus and less ability to deliver.
Story – this was the new one for me. The biggest issue facing this client was that there had been a bit of unilateral Story re-writing going on. Story in this context is the agreed lore on where the organisation has come from, and how in a narrative sense it has got to its present position. Story can have a profound impact on Purpose, and on Culture (discussed below).

It doesn't matter so much what the Story is; more that there is a shared view around it. New chapters in the Story can then be written – but only with the express knowledge that it's happening. When such turns are taken without acknowledgement, or are managed by stealth through revisionism of the old Story, organisations can hit the kind of crunch point my client had reached.

Michael Traill at Social Ventures Australia has been a great exponent of Story-telling. He has maintained and kept an up-to-date a written narrative of the SVA Story which is shared with the board and staff, and appropriate outsiders. The keeping of the Story has not hindered substantial strategic shifts by SVA, but has rather served to highlight and validate those shifts in a coherent way.
Culture – let's be clear about it: an organisation has a Culture, whether it deliberately develops one or not. The least effective Cultures are usually the ones which are created by default, through repeated behaviour patterns which are not consciously addressed. Sustainable Cultures are best created explicitly around a set of organisational values, and genuine and explicit agreements on "how we do things around here".

There is a cliché about "values just hanging on the wall", and it's true that just writing down the Culture won't ensure that people live it. But the exposition of Culture is the positive start.
Structure – this isn't just about wiring diagrams and reporting lines. Structure is a genuine attempt to be explicit about how various parts, and levels, of the organisation relate to each other. I am not preaching hierarchies here. In smaller organisations there is usually no alternative to flat Structures. Recognition of such an unavoidable result is useful to ground discussions about how career growth and development can be managed – always challenging in a flat Structure.

Larger organisations nearly always have formal structure diagrams. The most frequently missing parts are how to work across the structure rather than just up and down the lines and boxes – the silo effect. Being clear about cross-group working is becoming recognised as essential in a knowledge economy.
Roles – this is simply who does what. I see frequent friction points between chairs and CEOs about who has the right or responsibility for certain facets of operations and management. When there are cases with inevitable complexities, like "co-managing directors", or one I lived personally through with "legal director" and "general counsel", some open discussion and clear delineation are essential.

The whole process – getting clarity embedded

The overall process which stands behind sorting out these issues is best described by Liam Forde, one of the most inspired artists of organisational design I have known. He calls it "Clarify, Communicate, Align". First, discuss, agree and write down. Then share the output with all those who will be impacted by what has been agreed. Finally, ensure everyone understands that being part of the organisation means aligning with the agreed positions.

Clarity lower down the organisation

Being clear on these elements works equally effectively for sub-sets of the organisation. I have used purpose, mission, culture and role definition with departments, and even teams within departments. The primary requirement in this case is to ensure that anything sorted out for a sub-set aligns with the top body.

However, at least once I have used the process in reverse, in the absence of the top of the tree having gone that far and being reticent about doing it. In fact, showing that it worked at a team level served as proof of concept, to enable it to be cascaded upwards.

Why clarity works

Here are 6 reasons why I reckon that being clear on these elements of organisational design can work better:

The process by which they are clarified and settled allows all relevant views to be expressed, even if not eventually incorporated. You know how everyone feels about an issue.
The agreed positions can be easily communicated to new people joining the organisation, instead of them having to find out the hard way.
The agreed positions can act as reference points against which new ideas and directions can be tested.
They can form part of regular reviews – "how are we going against what we agreed?"
They can provide objective foundations for holding difficult conversations and giving constructive feedback. It's easier and more immediately relevant to start such a conversation with: "Our agreed culture is ##, and I'd like to discuss whether we/you have been acting accordance with it".
They can be communicated effectively to external stakeholders where appropriate.

Yep, it works

Once we finished our "Things are falling apart here" discussion, the CEO said to me "I'd always thought that stuff about being clear on purpose, mission and culture was wasting time, because we knew where we were going and what we were doing. But you guys keep talking about it and I've started to see how it can be useful. It's not wasting time after all."

Calling a time-out – what to do when you don’t know what to do

2011-02-02T11:56:00.001+11:00

I arrived at the client's office last week, ready to start our planned workshop on stakeholder mapping. My first conversation, as I walked in, was with the CEO: "Sorry David, I've realised I double booked myself and it's really important I go and see this guy [a high-flying celebrity], who's only available this morning before he disappears for a fortnight." Okay, we'll kick things off without you and catch you up when you are back.

So we started, and within 10 minutes the deputy CEO's phone rang: his mum had been in a car accident up in the country, the ambulance was on its way, and he had to leave immediately. Out of our five participants in a challenging enough process, we had lost the two senior members and were left with only three. Bit of a drama for a facilitator, that, especially one who had been flown interstate to do the job, with high expectations by the board that progress would be made with the executive team. I couldn't think of much to do right then except to say to the remaining three, hopefully not too plaintively, "Okay, let's take a time-out, and go over the road and get a cup of coffee."

It was a bit of a desperation move on my part, nothing else coming into my head, but it seemed to give us a small hiatus to allow things to get back on track. After we re-convened, we had some really rich discussion, and made solid progress to report back on when the CEO returned an hour later. We eventually produced a comprehensive stakeholder map which should provoke a valuable exchange with the board.

What had worked?

The time-out gave people a chance to get over the vicarious upset of the car accident.
It let us come back to a fresh start with the now-smaller team, without it feeling so much like we were just the left-overs
The validity of the re-start seemed to be confirmed as a proper step to take.

So when something sticky and unpleasant hits the fan, and you don't know quite what to do, calling a time-out might give you the pause you need to recover, re-group, and still achieve an effective result. (And who is going to object to having a cup of coffee in a hip cafe in Brunswick Street Fitzroy?)

Paddling the boat upstream – finding the special contribution YOU can make

2011-01-21T16:34:00.001+11:00

I learnt something important today, about myself, and validated one of my recommended processes at the same time.

I had a session with one of my favourite clients. Mary-Ruth Mendel is the founder and chair of The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, a growing and successful NFP delivering much-needed services that teach marginalised Australians to read and write.

Mary-Ruth had been processing things in her head over Xmas and New Year, and had come up with a picture in her head of where she thought the organisation was right now – in a boat being paddled upstream, through some rapids, until it could get to calmer waters. She knew who was paddling the boat now, and what kind of paddlers they were. She also knew that there were not enough paddlers to get the boat safely to where it needed to go. What she didn't know was what kind of paddlers she needed to get into the boat.

I have been through more corporate restructures than I care to remember, successful or otherwise. I've heard innumerable formulations of job titles. I know that neither structures nor titles are worth much without intention behind them.

The useful discussion we were able to have centred firstly around the need to identify what kind of skills the organisation was going to need over the next 2-3 years to achieve its mission – what kind of paddlers. We then talked about various executive structures that were used in the corporate world, what the executives did, and what they might be called – where the paddlers would sit in the boat to get the most effective forward movement from their blades driving through the water.

I've blogged before about the power of debriefing (http://davidrowanwhite.blogspot.com/2010/09/power-of-debrief.html), and we debriefed our session when we were finished, using that methodology. What had been helpful, Mary-Ruth told me in the debrief, was for me to "translate" the picture in her head, expressed through her language, into lingo that would be more compatible with successfully recruiting the right people into the organisation's executive team. She also saw how the roles of the current executives, the people now paddling the boat, could be clarified and agreed upon. I was able to do this, she said, because I was "bilingual."

I have thought about the concept of being a "translator" before, but it has been in the context of making complex legal language and structuring more easily understood by non-lawyers.

Now, I am indebted to Mary-Ruth for highlighting the potential for a wider view of translation, and the value of being sufficiently bilingual to bring some of the experience and the lore of the corporate world into the not-for-profit sector.

More importantly, it confirmed for me that part of the Law of Dharma which says "find the special contribution that YOU can make". You may not always realise what that special contribution is, and some external perspective can help you to find it.

Finally it reinforced the power of debriefing to extract lessons from any situation. The bilingual concept would not have emerged without Mary-Ruth and I asking ourselves that simple question: "What worked really well from what we just did?"

The KPIs that really matter - Arthur’s 3 daily touch points

2011-01-17T11:48:00.003+11:00

Some bits of wisdom you hear just seem to stick, mostly because of their sheer simplicity and their statement of what should be bleeding obvious. But also, I think, because of the sincerity and humility with which you hear them imparted. I'll never forget one especially sage piece from my old mate Arthur Neely, which went, as best I can recall it, like this:

"When I'm driving home from work, or at the end of the day, I like to check on 3 things. Have I done:

Something I have to do?

Something I want to do?

Something for someone else?"

I like Arthur's review process because it makes me look across 3 different areas, and it doesn't set the bar unrealistically high. It doesn't ask, for instance: "Did I do EVERYTHING I had to do today?" It doesn't require me to be up there with St Mary McKillop; it just asks for one altruistic action. And it validates a criterion which I might not otherwise net feel entitled to rank – it's okay to do something for myself.

Basically, Arthur's 3 criteria are all eminently achievable on any given day, without any superhuman, above-and-beyond effort. I know that I don't tick all 3 boxes every day, but what do you reckon it would be like if most of us could insert those 3 ticks, even 50 per cent of the time?

Before committing his wisdom to the blogosphere, I checked in with Arthur, and he said this:

"To put some context around it, I had found that when I had reached a management/leadership position in my career there were no daily measures available to check yourself against. In my earlier career there were always some daily KPIs or deliverables that tended to keep me focused and provide some sense of achievement.

"I needed something simple to check into on a daily basis; " Improving Shareholder Value" just didn't do it for me.

"So those three little touch points worked for me, and still do.

"As a by-product I also found that they grounded me as a leader, particularly when the shit was hitting the fan as it always does from time to time."

So if you want to spend a few minutes at the end of your day in a high pay-off activity, try Arthur's 3 touch points.

(I snapped this while doing something I wanted to do - walking through the bush early one morning.)

Five moments of reverence – seeing the sacred in things

2011-01-10T09:16:00.001+11:00

I had an impulse, triggered by something I can't now recall, to think about flashes of beauty in my life. A few things popped immediately into my head, and others gathered over a couple of weeks. In the middle of that process, Stephanie Dowrick's new book "Seeking the Sacred" came out. One of her foundations in the book is the search for what she calls "reverence":

"a way of being that allows us to know awe, gratitude, delight and trust", and
"perceiving a sacred, transcendental or holy dimension to life".

And maybe what I was really recording, given the power of the images recalled, were moments of reverence. Here are 5 of those moments.

Rainbow

When the conditions are just right, with a soft offshore breeze blowing, you paddle your surfboard out and burst through a wave and the early morning sun, still low and sparkly in the eastern sky, throws its prismatic magic at the spray surrounding you. A rainbow orbits your head, out one ear and into the other, a perfect circle. Then winks away, leaving you enraptured.

Planets

Three or maybe four times a year, a portentious constellation lines up when a slender crescent moon and a bright Venus rise together, with Venus dangling below the moon's segment like a pearl pendant. The two brightest things in the sky fleetingly in tandem. That portent hung in the early night sky as the ferry skidded its way from Aegina to Athens and the taste of charcoal grilled octopus and ouzo lingered in my mouth.

Standing high, looking out

There's a look-out where I can stand, with nothing above me and everything below me. A 180 degree horizon with a 90 degree canopy above. The trees in front of me are tall and tufty, but as I look down on the more distant ones they are soft and pillowy like the ripples on a doona. Ridges stretch away in origami folds. The big sky always moving, distinct shadows fluttering over the sward of tree tops. The vast segment my view commands gives me a proprietorial feeling: the massif of Mt Solitary I can almost own.

Swallows

I sat on the balcony of an ancient house perched high on the hillside in a medieval village in Haute Provence, with a wide patch of sky in front of me and a tumbledown chimney punctuating the space. The early summer dusk was just descending, and brought with it hundreds of swallows. The ones like little jet fighters with swept back wings and V-forked tails. They wheeled and darted, silhouetted black against the sky. Banked and turned, rushed past each other. Zipped high, then stalled and fell and swooped back up. Were they chasing insects in the evening air? I couldn't see any. I think maybe their aeronautics were being performed just because they could; just flying with their avian joie de vivre.

Cypress

Doing a bit of renovation and replacing some daggy old quad-mould with fancy heritage skirting boards –a big gap along one wall needed to be patched. I bought a couple of new cypress floor boards to rip down to the right width for the patch. As soon as the saw blade bit into the wood, it released a rich nostalgic aroma, the intense woody-sweet smell from the pine. That smell kicked in a bevy of emotions: the accompanying scent of creation with wood; the long-forgotten memory of playing war-games with my 10 year old mates in the new houses they were building over the road from my childhood home when (in 1963) all new houses had cypress floors and building sites weren't locked up; the joint effort with dad and my brother Peter and me laying the cypress boards in the holiday house, when we were teenagers and the dent you made in the board with the hammer when you missed the nail was still called a "two bob bit". One momentary smell, many moments of subsequent reverence.

The essential Xmas

2010-12-21T12:24:00.002+11:00

The White family has been gradually whittling away the trappings and associated dramas of Xmas, and I think maybe we are getting closer to the essence.

We have a widespread family all of whom used to feel conflicting obligations on Xmas Day. Which side of their respective family functions should they attend – one or both? If both, for which meal with which side of the family, and how to bear the long drive in between and 2 successive ordeals by food? If for one, who would face the pangs of guilt about settling in one spot, and risk being seen to disrespect their own side of the family?

We took a decision a few years ago that we would just declare the weekend before Xmas as "White Family Xmas", and leave the 25^th free for our respective other sides. That has meant that on each of those deemed Xmas's, we have had just about a full roll-up on our day. We virtually never manage such a simultaneous collection across what are now 4 generations at any other time in the year. So we have found ourselves delighted by the first essence of Xmas – family.

We have also been paring back the Xmas present thing. We took the relatively easy step a while ago of doing Kris Kringle for the adults and the kids who have left school, and only buying and wrapping more widely for the younger kids. This year, with the health difficulties of our oldest generation, and a generally high level of family complexity, the Kris Kringle draw was put off, and put off; finally my darling sister cut through it all with this: "None of us actually needs anything, so why don't we just all make a donation to charity?"

So we christened Xmas 2010 as "Xmas for Others", and when we got round to what would have been the Kris Kringle swap, we all instead took a turn to say which charity we were donating to, and what cause they served. And then we gave the little kids their presents, and watched the joy of those unwrappings. We all felt touched by the second essence of Xmas – giving.

This has been a tough year in our family, with the supervening pain of dad going into the nursing home. But I think we all felt a bit of healing on Saturday, as we touched the twin poles of the essential Xmas: family and giving.

****

There is of course another essence, of "Christmas" rather than Xmas. It is a time of intensely spiritual significance for many people, including within my own family, and I don't wish to diminish that significance with my "twin poles" view of the secular Xmas.

Wrong turns? Or new opportunities?

2010-12-14T13:10:00.001+11:00

An impulse to turn down a side street grabbed me one morning while I was riding on my way to a favourite piece of dirt track. A break in the bush bordering the road looked like a path, and I headed down its bumpy length. The path got narrower and branches slapped against me, and then it just finished. "Wrong turn, dead end," I thought. I got off the bike to turn it around in the skinny space, and saw a snatch of sky through the trees. I leaned the bike against the foliage and stepped through, to be confronted by a startling vista.

I was looking way, way north, a direction usually hidden from me on my normal routes. I saw now rank on rank of hills, four of them one behind the other; the valleys of each ridge revealing the heights of the one behind, into the distance. A light mist was bathing the mountains that morning, and the early light was not yet strong enough to show much detail on the ridges, which showed in solid blue-grey. Each rank of hills was slightly paler than the one in front of it, and there was a perfect tonal gradation all the way to the horizon, meeting the pale sky.

A couple of minor scratches, and a short walk pushing the bike to where I could mount it again, were the only costs of the "wrong turn". Without out it, I would have missed the indelible imprint of those hills. So I guess maybe there aren't really any wrong turns, just turns.

“Namaste” – switching off my judgemental mode

2010-12-06T20:45:00.001+11:00

I was walking through the airport, on very important business, in clever, snappy businessman mode, and saw a fat, shabbily dressed person in front of me. I straight away turned on my finely-tuned judge-ometer, which came up with the reading "Fat, shabbily dressed person obviously lacking self-respect." Half a second later the judge-ometer swung around, switched to self-judgement mode, and gave the reading "There you go again, judging people and exhibiting one of your worst and most persistent traits."

What I concluded on that occasion was that the best thing that could happen to me was to be transformed into a fat, shabby person for a week, so I could see what it would be like to have other people (like me) judging me all the time. THAT would help cure me of being judgemental, and I could trade the judge-ometer in on a large dose of humility.

Which was, of course, just another symptom of judgementalism. Because I was still drawing conclusions about the inherent undesirableness, and therefore blameworthiness, of being "fat" and "shabby".

It's perhaps likely that I will never reach a sufficient state of enlightenment such that I won't have impulses to judge my fellow men and women. But I have at least been working on strategies which may switch the judge-ometer off before it can spit out a condemnatory reading.

In India, people greet and farewell each other with "Namaste", which means "I see the divine in you." It's been helpful to me, when I'm about to say (or have just said) to myself "He's fat," or "Her clothes are too tight for someone with her figure," or "He's got no idea, he's just a blowhard" to do this: STOP. Look at them. Say to myself "I see the divine in you", and then actually try and spot that divine spark which makes them a special, unjudgeable human being. If I'm being sincere, I can nearly always see some glint of divinity.

The Avatar people have a nice process too – the "Compassion Exercise". Pick out someone in a public place, look at them, and say: "Just like me, this person is seeking some happiness for their life. Just like me, this person is trying to avoid suffering in their life ... Just like me, this person is learning about life."

I still have judgement days, but hopefully they are becoming less frequent. But should I be worried instead that sometimes I have periods when I walk around thinking "Everyone is beautiful", and feeling surrounded on all sides by spots of divinity? Hope not.

What my garden taught me, part 2

2010-11-28T13:06:00.001+11:00

A couple more lessons from the garden:

Pausing

I suppose our gardens have been no different to most people's. I couldn't help, when I walked into our garden in Pymble, seeing so many things that needed doing. The gum trees rained down a constant flow of debris. Little weeds were always finding their way through the mulch. The stake of the pittosporum would give way and tip it against the fence. There were dead fronds on the big palm trees.

And that was without the projects. There was the pebble mosaic I wanted to do at the entrance to the Japanese garden. I was planning a new bed around the frangipani. There was the whole section where I had been squirreling building materials behind the shed "just in case" – it was overflowing and desperately needed rationalising.

This constant flow of things-I-oughta-be-doing was, in fact, keeping me from seeing truly the upside of our garden. What I realised is that I needed to PAUSE. Suspend the inventory of jobs. Then, instead of seeing the sticks and the leaves, look up and see the tall and casual elegance of the blue gums' trunks against the morning sky. Instead of thinking the lawn needs mowing, feel the soft give of the turf under my bare feet. Overlook the debris collected around the bromeliads and see the startling brightness of the red feather that emerged since the last time I paid attention to that plant. Forget that mulch has blown onto the stepping stones, and slowly and deliberately step on one, then the next one, and the next, and take that slow and revealing journey through the things we had been nurturing and tending, without appreciating what they were giving us back.

We get so busy with do, do, do, do that we can lose the point of what we are doing things for. It's no surprise about the cliché "stop and smell the roses." Walk into your garden, with no to-do list; pause; let it give something back to you.

Joy of the unknown

We bought a new house in Leura, specifically for the garden. The garden sold us the house but we first saw it at the end of December, and moved in mid-February. There were hydrangeas out, lots of them, and some roses. Except for the profusion of Japanese windflowers, the rest was pretty much green. Autumn came, and with it the brilliant red of the leaves on a large tupelo out the front. Just about everything in the garden was deciduous, and by the end of June all looked stark and bare. There were some green shoots poking up here and there as July progressed. I realised that what I had taken for tree roots in the lawn, and relentlessly mowed over, were in fact daffodils, and I ceased mowing them just in time.

We had been advised not to pull anything out until we'd seen what it might be. As winter faded, the show commenced. A tree burst into beautiful pink blossom. A wonderfully fragrant daphne made an olfactory assault. What I thought was onion weed was a bevy of spring stars. As one blossom tree faded another came into flower in a display of serial beauty. Last of all some alpine phlox carpeted the ground with purple and white broadloom.

Spring is just about done now, verging on summer, and the trees are back in foliage or close to it, and the perennials are flowering. The whole spring experience was one of discovery. Our expectations were vastly exceeded. The biggest kick was that most of it was unanticipated.

*****

I just had another lesson this morning, with my dear dad rushed off from the nursing home to hospital with a very gloomy prognosis. While I tried to sort out my emotions about that on paper, the climbing rose outside the kitchen window looked in at me with about 200 flowers that weren't there two days ago and probably won't be there in two days time. They have bloomed and flourished and will pass away, but their beauty will have had meaning during its time. My garden will keep teaching me for as long as I take time to learn from it.

What my garden taught me

2010-11-22T09:16:00.001+11:00

I have been privileged over the past 10 years to have lived with 2 beautiful gardens. The first one we created, building on some solid foundations and much of it out of blank space. The second one we inherited when we fled the city (partly to experience cold climate gardening) from 2 people who had been developing it for 19 years.

Gardens are a wonderful case of give and take. Apart from just the sensuous pleasures they grant in return for the efforts applied to them, I can see that my 2 gardens have taught me some important lessons in life.

Acceptance

We bought a beautiful crab apple tree. We had seen their spring show in other people's gardens and had a place for one, right near the frangipani and in direct line of sight from where we sat on the deck, and even from the dining table. We planted it; it took just two days for the possums to discover that it was a delicious entree to their night's foraging, and they munched the new growth, and broke branches by climbing on them to reach the higher foliage. Brigitte had read that you could discourage them by putting bamboo kebab skewers in the ground around the tree. She put about a hundred wickedly sharp skewers around the base of the crab apple, and then got worried about the dogs hurting themselves. It didn't stop the possums anyway.

We moved the crab apple down into the Japanese garden, away from the possum route we hoped. I banged four stakes in the ground around it, and put bird proofing net around the stakes as a possum barrier. The poor little crab apple never recovered. By protecting it, we put a barrier between it and our capacity to nurture it.

We dug it out and gave it to Jenny, to plant in her garden in Leura. It is growing happily, and will put on a show in spring, I expect.

Sometimes, despite our expectations, some things are not meant to be in the way we plan them to be. Our efforts to make them be that way can sometimes work against any prospect of success. Sometimes the answer is to accept that a thing will not work out; to accept that gracefully and let it go without regret. That thing, like the crab apple, may just flourish somewhere else.

Patience

I was always fascinated, ever since I first saw them, by the row of cloud trees I used to see outside the Buddhist temple near the hotel in Tokyo where I frequently stayed. The ones where the branches are cultivated so there are tufts of foliage floating like clouds in a spring-time sky. They were junipers though, and pretty slow to grow in my experience.

I thought I could take a permissible short cut and try growing a cloud tree with lilly pilly. I bought one with an undefined mass of leaves and thought I'd go home and start trimming, see what would emerge.

Something held me back though; when I looked at the plant I saw nothing cloud-like at all. Instead of starting to chop and try and force a cloud to appear, I thought I could let it grow for a little while and see what developed. Over the next few months it was hard to keep the secateurs in my pocket. But after about 12 months my abstinence was rewarded. Three main branches were growing, in a lateral enough plane to stake one shoot out on each side and leave one central stem.

So far, I have a large bank of low cumulus cloud at the base of the cloud tree, and three puffs of cirrus floating above; a couple of higher clouds are in the process of forming if I can leave them to take shape. It wasn't easy keeping the cutting implements away, and avoiding the intervention to force a result. But I reckon it's been worth the wait.

Lines and Squares

2010-11-16T20:51:00.001+11:00

Whenever I walk in a London street,

I'm ever so careful to watch my feet;

And I keep in the squares.

And the masses of bears,

Who wait at the corners all ready to eat

The sillies who tread on the lines of the street,

Go back to their lairs

And I say to them "Bears,

Just look how I'm walking in all the squares!"

My mum used to read me that when I was little. It's from a small book by A. A. Milne called "When we were very young", which also had "They're changing the guard at Buckingham Palace", and "John had Great Big Waterproof Boots on", and "Christopher Robin is saying his prayers", and plenty more little gems. I'm sure it wasn't mum's intention at the time, but "Lines and Squares" left me with a long term, strongly held superstition about where I could walk. Once I was in a fair bit of strife (only about 10 years ago, I'm ashamed to admit), and I figured it would all come out right if I didn't walk on any lines on the way to the station each morning. The problem was, the route to the station took me through the local school and across the playground. It was painted with basketball, netball and handball courts, all on top of each other. To get across the playground, I felt, and probably looked, like I was playing hopscotch.

I've been trying to kick the lines-and-squares affliction. At its root, like many afflictions, is probably fear. My friend Sarah Friis says: "Fear is our belief in our own inability to deal with an action or its consequences." Walking in the squares has been a tangible way for me to deal with that belief, I guess. The trouble is, it doesn't do anything to change the belief.

I've spent too much of my life thinking maybe I'm just a bit of a coward. Too much time being paralysed and not dealing with the thing feared. Through some hard lessons, I have found four things which help me with fear.

Recognise it

It really helps me to know when it is fear that is driving whatever current emotion I am trying to deal with. Upsetting emotions can come from sadness, grief, hurt at the plight of others – they are things you can sit with in a different way than being afraid of something. Recognising fear as the driver at any given time can almost be a relief, because then I know what I have to deal with.

Name it

It's really useful to me to be able to identify exactly what the fear is. It is not always immediately apparent, and some investigation is often needed. I spent time chasing down and articulating one fear, which I found out deep down to be the fear of being left alone. When I can name it, I can face it a whole lot more confidently.

Don't beat yourself up about it

I've done plenty of that, proclaiming myself to be a bit of a coward in the face of various fears. It doesn't help with the resolve needed to deal with the fear. I'm not alone in being afraid, and it doesn't make me less worthwhile. It just is, like being happy or feeling grief. I remind myself just to accept it as part of life.

Do something, anything

The most destructive part of fear for me is the paralysis it brings. If I have been able to recognise and name a fear, and not beat myself up about it, the final bit for me is to do something to address it. Often the smallest step I can take is the best step, perhaps because it's the easiest. Open and read that email I haven't really wanted to read. Create a document and save the file and write a heading even if I can't write the whole document just yet. Just doing one little thing usually helps to shake me out of the paralysis.

Recognising, naming, doing something – the most usual result I get is a validation of the well-worn statistic that 80% of what you fear never happens. And the other 20% - well, at least I'm not crumbling in front of it. So I'm sorry Christopher Robin, but I just want to say: "Bugger you, bears, I'm walking on the lines."

The Riding

2010-11-10T06:47:00.001+11:00

I was on the way home from a pretty special bike ride (see the recent post on "Place") and there had been a fair bit of hooting and hollering from the joy of the ride: muddy, wet, and cold notwithstanding. I had jumped the bike over the drainage humps, and felt the giddy liberty of mid-air; I had given it its head down short steep rocky slopes hanging on grimly; I had valued the low gears grinding back up those slopes; I had felt the rush of riding really hard along the flat pebbly sections. I had thoroughly enjoyed riding my bike.

As I rode home the last few k's, still in the relatively quiet early morning, something else crept up on me in that peaceful time. Out there, in the dirt, it had been just me, my bike and the track, all having a great time together. Now, it was no longer the rider and the ridden, and the duality dropped away till it was just one thing – the riding. No need for an excited, congratulatory self, digging it all, but enough to be part of what was happening in that moment, fine to be nothing. No need for an observer to observe it, or a doer to do it. It just was. "When you recognise this, you will realise that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything" says Kalu Rinpoche, the Tibetan lama. "That is all."

The experience didn't last that long, and I drifted back to me, my bike and the road, but it was a moment of awakening. There are plenty of good things written, spoken and podcasted about non-duality by much more enlightened hearts and minds that mine. The riding, though, was an exquisite validation that when the self falls away, awareness doesn't need to; in fact it heightens, and an ordinary rural back road early on a Saturday morning can become as sacred as any temple, anywhere, even when you are splattered with mud.

****

After I wrote this blog, I came across this from Jon Kabat-Zinn in Coming to Our Senses, writing about a field near his house which he walks past each day, at different times and in different seasons:

In walking these paths, there is less and less separation between me and the view when I give myself over to attending , when I allow myself to come to and to live within my senses. Subject (seer) and object (what is seen) unite in the moment of seeing. Otherwise it is not seeing. One moment I am separate from a conventional scene as described to myself in my head. The next moment, there is no scene, no description, only being there, only seeing, only drinking in through eyes and other senses so pure they already know how to drink in whatever is presented, without any direction at all, without any thought at all. In such moments, there is only walking, or standing, or only sitting ....

Yep, that's what I'm talking' about.

Place

2010-11-02T09:55:00.001+11:00

It's a long drive, and it was late at night. I was tired, and Brigitte was asleep in the seat beside me. But as I got closer to the destination, the tiredness fell away; and when I turned off the highway and pointed the car at Sussex inlet I felt my heart soften, and a bunch of negative vibes melted away. I drove the last 13 k's probably a bit too fast, but it was just some joy, too long hidden, bubbling out.

I had forgotten the importance of place. There are plenty of things which we can use to make sense of an imperfect and shifting world, but place can be taken for granted. With somewhere like Sussex Inlet, for me, place can be inter-woven with emotional threads reaching back 45 years, from late childhood, to teenage surf zealot, to gonzo uni student, to young father and now (young, I hope) grandfather. I don't believe, though, that the peace which settled on me on Friday night was just about happy memories. The place was speaking to me.

I got up early the next morning, with only my son Tim and baby Kennadie awake at that hour, and snuck out on my bike. I turned onto a vaguely familiar dirt road, was dive-bombed by a currawong, and had a black wallaby race across my path. It was early, it was muddy, and no other fool but me was out there in the conditions; I had it all, all to myself. The road was fast in spots, and in others the bike sank to its axles (and my feet) in cold dirty water stretching right across the path. The conditions didn't matter. Fast or boggy, descending or slogging uphill, the place was special and granted just to me. My hoots of exuberance bounced off the trees and mystified the black cockatoos. On the way home, I pulled in at a little look-out with a view over the rocky cove which had been one of the favoured, treasured surf spots and I connected with the place, as well as the memories.

I stood on the wharf at sunset, Kennadie on my hip and the tumble-down trees edging the far bank; the evening light tinting the clouds, mirrored in the ruffled water. A place like many others, I guess, but a place to me.

It's there if you let it be there. Feel it through your feet, or your pedals, or even the car's tyres. Place can touch you, caress you, restore you. You just have to keep your senses open so that when you get to the right place, the link is made.

Three lessons from my father

2010-10-21T10:55:00.003+11:00

I have just had that gut-wrenching experience of putting my dear father in a nursing home, for permanent high-level care. A bloke who, in his prime, could turn his hand to anything from the dark art of cost accounting to the greasing and oil-changing of a 1937 Dodge.

Probably from having been a teenager in the sixties, I can see now that I spent a lot of time devising lessons about what not to do in life, based on an opposition to some of what he did, which from here looks pretty self-righteous on my part.

Now, as he sits in his favourite chair, diminished, I see glimpses of the younger, resourceful, capable dad. I have started to collect the positive lessons from my father. Here are three strong and memorable ones for me:

Keep your left hand behind the cutting edge

When you are holding the chisel in one hand, and the piece of wood in the other, you don't want to be in the position where, if the chisel jumps, you end up chiselling yourself. Keeping your left hand behind the cutting edge was just a piece of dad's common sense imparted to young, enthusiastic but impetuous carpenters who went down the shed to "make something". When I look back, it was also about risk management. You can take some simple enough steps to prevent damage, without really compromising the ability to achieve the outcome. Apply a bit of care to the way you set something up, and then execute it. Think about it while you are doing it. Keep your form.

On another level it's about what is worth what. Seemingly keeping that bit of wood a bit steadier with your hand in front of the chisel, and risking a deep gash and some stitches – or taking it a bit slower, even clamping the wood to the bench instead. Sometimes the bit of extra time saved, or the effort, isn't really worth it.

You can have a go at really big things

My dad was, by training, experience and inclination, an accountant. That didn't stop him from tackling some really big projects. We had a block of land down the south coast. With four kids at school, the only way there was going to be a holiday house, in dad's view, was if he built it himself. There was room down the back, in the chook pen, to build a set of dummy foundations. At his workplace, the temporary office premises where he had been overseeing a factory start-up, were being pulled down. He bought the discarded timber beams for a song, each one of them 12 inches x 2 inches (that's 250 mms x 50 mm), and a giant saw-bench that the builders had been using. He ripped the big beams into 4x2s and 3x2s for the frame of the new holiday house.

He built the roof first, sitting it on the dummy brick piers. It was a hip roof, not an easy-way-out gable roof. That meant a whole lot of compound mitre cuts, blending two different angles, for all those rafters as they met the hip coming down from the ridge. I wish I had watched all that, and got dad to show me how to use that thing with all the dials and numbers called a "rafter-graph". I have tried to cut compound mitre joints since and I know how hard they are to pull off. He must have cut 25 or 30 of them. He assembled the roof with the double-headed nails they use for concrete formwork; numbered all the beams; then pulled it apart easily because of those clever nails. Then he built the wall frames. Left them intact, hired a bloke with a truck and had it all carted down the coast. We all had a hand in putting it back together, dad and my brothers and I. It's still there 40 years later. And everyone still loves going there.

Building a house isn't something your average accountant does. Dad did, because he was prepared to have a go at it – at something really big.

Bricolage

There's a current trend called "decluttering", throwing out anything that you don't need for the present or the immediate future. There is, however, a competing theory known as "bricolage": taking whatever you might have at hand, and using it to address whatever need you currently have – even if it means having stuff around, just in case you might need it to address such a need. Dad always had a fair amount of stuff down the back. It is arguable that he had too much of it. (Actually, it's undoubtable). But his first response to doing a job was to assess what he already had, rather than writing out a shopping list and then going out to buy it. A wedge to keep a door open. A bookshelf. A set of swinging boards to hold scores of tools in a confined space. That idea of thinking about how some issue, some challenge, can be dealt with by using what you already have, has been a wonderfully helpful, life-long example to me. Even though it means I have to find somewhere to keep that supply of assorted lengths of timber, empty containers, a variety of fasteners and a wide array of seldom used tools – just in case.

I reckon bricolage applies just as importantly to people. I have twice started new jobs, each time with advice from the HR director that "you really need to get rid of so-and-so out of your department – we thought we would wait till you started so you could do it." Each of those two so-and-sos were not "got rid of" – they knew a whole lot more than me about the company and the job I was supposed to be doing, and they were already at hand. Each of them re-invented themselves to be consecutively the two best, most loyal team members I ever had. So often, it's all about what is already in the kitbag.

What I find sad now is that I can't tell dad about the importance of those three lessons to me. His cognitive ability has slipped just beyond the capacity to take it in. I tried a little while ago to remind him, on his Father's Day card, of "keep your left hand behind the cutting edge", and he just gave me a friendly smile. So I learned one more lesson out of the whole process: acknowledge the lesson to the teacher while they can still appreciate the acknowledgement. But dad: thanks anyway.

E+R=O

2010-10-09T17:20:00.001+11:00

This is a great insight from my mate Liam Forde.

The first thing that comes into your head when something happens is often not the best thing. Something or someone may have pushed one of your buttons. I've been particularly prone to that if something looks like injustice, or if someone else is taking credit for something I've done. Your first reaction is probably not your intuition speaking. It's more likely to be patterned behaviour, or be fuelled by adrenalin in a 'flight or fight' response. What you don't get then is an opportunity to work out what the best response, as opposed to the first response, may be. When the event happens, the response, whatever it may be, will determine the outcome. Event plus response equals outcome - E+R=O.

You may not, probably will not, control the event. What you can control is the response, and you can therefore influence, or even drive, the outcome. There's just one thing you need to do that: Stop! Before you speak, before you act - stop, examine what you are about to do or say, maybe take a breath. The Buddhists call it "the sacred pause". Then decide what your response will be, rather than let your adrenaline, or your hot buttons, or even your prejudices, decide it for you. It happened to me a while ago, when my wife claimed credit for an idea that I reckoned I had, and I jumped right in and said '"No, that was my idea". And it didn't actually matter a damn whose idea it was, and a great response would have been to say nothing. Or even better, to have said "Great idea darling."

This, of course, does not apply to emergency or life-threatening situations, where you may have to act immediately and by reflex. But generally, you have a choice. As my old boss Russ Hewitt said, "Shit happens, suffering is optional". When an event happens, your response dictates or strongly influences the outcome. E+R=O. Your choice.

What if you don’t really need the money?

2010-10-01T16:04:00.001+10:00

My father had what I would have called the great good fortune to be retrenched at 57. After nearly 40 years with the one company. The retrenchment was due to the closure of a joint venture plant which had reached the end of its economic life. So there was no shame in it, and I don't think he felt any. His long service with the company made the retrenchment financially advantageous to him.

But over the next few years I watched my dad's internal clock slowly wind down, and twenty years later it hardly ticks at all. Dad had a bit of a part-time job for a while, but it seemed to fizzle out. As best I could work out, he didn't really need the money at the time, and there didn't appear to be anything left to fire him up, or keep him busy beyond counting the collection plates after church on Sunday mornings.

I find myself in a similar kind of position of "not really needing the money." My life joint venture partner might well respond "what's need got to do with it?" But I have caught myself once or twice, recently, thinking that it's pretty relaxing spending an hour to read the paper thoroughly in the morning, then put in a solid couple of hours in the garden before having a coffee in the village.

During one of those recent thorough newspaper readings, I came across a reference to Oscar Niemeyer, the famous architect, "still busy at work at 102." That, and a few other nudges from different directions, have set me thinking about what is the spark which must keep glowing, to make "semi-retirement" the vibrant, valuable, worthwhile stage it ought to be? A very relevant question at 56, with plenty of "lifestyle options" available to keep me fully, though not perhaps meaningfully, entertained.

The drivers which I am about to share are of course very personal ones, and unavoidability tinted with the colours of a later-in-life spiritual journey of which work is just a part. But here they are, for the record if nothing else.

Mortality

I have been to funerals over the past few years of good people who have left this earth in their 40s, 50s and early 60's. There are no guarantees. While the statistics say I have 21.9 years left here, in coming to an average there are always low scores to offset the big numbers. I still feel the pressure of things in my head, in my history, which I think are worth extracting, crystallising, applying in new circumstances, and passing on to others. Lessons which I may have learned at someone else's expenses, and are thereby tinged with a karmic obligation. Hard-earned insights which might save someone else pain and suffering if shared. What if the 21.9 years are 10, or 5, or 6 months, or tomorrow? Things often feel like they are queuing up inside me for dissemination, and I have to get as many of them out, and shared, and applied, as fast as possible. Just in case.

Service

It seems to be more common these days that people in their middle years have a view about "giving something back". To me there are a couple of supervening reasons to keep going in service of meaningful goals. The first one is gratitude. I've received plenty of lucky breaks in life and garnered lots of advantages. To undertake worthwhile things helps balance the celestial ledger. The second one is something that the Buddhists call "right livelihood", which asks us to love our world through our work. Aligning "love for the world" with our jobs when we are full tilt at our careers isn't always a simple process. I have found that there is inevitably greater scope for this kind of work/world love alignment once the imperatives of career advancement and family support diminish – like, it's never too late. Kahlil Gibran said: "All work is empty save when there is love, for work is love made visible."

The dividend from this alignment is the well known outcome that when you give something back and help others, you can't avoid helping yourself.

Purpose

I've been very fortunate over the past 7 or 8 years to have had mentors who have shown me the power of having a considered, articulated, explicit purpose in life, and who have helped me to discover my own purpose. At a vocational level, that purpose is to help people and organisations find clarity and direction. Just to be pursuing those "lifestyle options" will not be enough to help deliver on my purpose. Purpose stands as a measure against which both the big issues, and the small stuff, can be compared.

Renewal

Being involved in real work means I spend time with smart young people. Their talent, their energy, their ideas, spark me up and put the kind of charge in my batteries that I can't find in books, blogs or discussions with my peers. I'm working with one young star at the moment in a context she calls "thought partnering". That is a generous description in my view because she's actually showing me how to do something outside my current skill set. Hopefully I am adding something back in the thought partnering process. Another renewal effect comes from working as part of a team, instead of just running a solo operation, and feeling the rewards of shared endeavour.

Doing it anyway

There is a piece of wisdom called "The Paradoxical Commandments". They were mistakenly attributed, for a long time, to Mother Teresa. It doesn't matter what the source is; it's the wisdom that counts. They have been helpful to me in showing that good and important things might as well be done whether or not they are to stand the test of time, whether or not they set up some kind of legacy. They also help me to be conscious of not wanting to accumulate good deeds in service of my own legend. Some of the commandments which most connected with me were:

"What you spend years building, someone may destroy overnight. Build anyway"
"The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway."
"Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give the world the best you've got anyway."

Self-esteem

It's not very altruistic, I suppose, but I just feel better about myself when I am doing things that matter, and aren't focused only on me. That same caveat, of being careful not just to be acting in service of my own legend, is important in this context: pride is very close to self-esteem on the merit continuum.

This all started out with my dad. It looks like an exercise based on what I learnt not to do from him, but I am grateful for the positive lesson drawn from his example. What I do know is that I had two big advantages which my dad didn't – I had him for a father and my mum for a mother. Those are other stories yet to be told.

The Power of the Debrief

2010-09-19T17:57:00.001+10:00

Debriefing a mission is standard practice for people in the military. Debriefing some of the things we do at work and in life can give a lot of benefits - time for reflection, celebration, learning and enhancement. You can debrief anything, from a hard conversation to a long and complex transaction.

I learnt this framework for debriefing from my friends and mentors Liam Forde and Sarah Friis. It's very simple but effective, and revolves around three questions:

what went well
what didn't go so well
what could be done differently next time.

Depending on the situation, the debrief might best be dealt with at a personal level – what do I do well, what didn't I do so well, what could I do better next time.

If there are two or three of you debriefing, you can run it by answering those three questions yourself. You can then have the other people answer the questions about you as well, so you get instant and valuable feedback. If there was no-one else there with whom you can de-brief, like a debrief for a hard conversation, you can still grab someone and say 'let me do a debrief with you'. You can then (respecting the confidentiality of the other party to the hard conversation) ask yourself the three questions while the other person listens. Last resort is to do it in writing – I often debrief in my daily journal.

If the mood takes you, there are two further questions you can ask to get some positive closure on the issue you are debriefing:

what do I congratulate myself for from the situation
how am I going to celebrate.

I have found this to be a very powerful process. It can take some discipline, and sometimes you have to push people if you are using the personal variant of the first question – what I did well – although they usually have no trouble with the other two. Taking positive reinforcement from the debrief is a valuable component. So if you really want to capture all the learnings and benefits out of any situation, do a debrief.

The Managing UP Kit part 7 – You and the chair

2010-09-14T10:08:00.001+10:00

The CEO's relationship with the chair is a critical one for the success of the organisation – each of you is at the pinnacle of the respective arms of management and governance. As with any relationship, it usually works best when the two people involved are clear about the nature and boundaries of their place in the relationship, and there are clear and agreed lines of communication.

In other words, you need to be prepared to talk to each other about how you will talk to each other, and make the terms of your relationship as explicit as possible. Here are some of the areas where is it helpful to have agreement:

You need to be clear about each person's role as the public face of the organisation. Who will be the primary media representative; from whom will comment be sought? Which areas are clearly the territory of the chair, and which are the CEO's?
You need to understand when, and in what circumstances, you can disagree with each other in the board room in front of the other directors, and how the difference of opinion can be constructively dealt with.
You need to know the boundaries of the open access you have to each other – is it 24/7, no weekends, not after 8.00 pm?
You need a working ability to give each other constructive feedback, and a willingness to receive it.
You should be clear about the nature of the chair's role as your mentor, and how that can work best for both of you.

What chairmen need most, in my experience is "No surprises" – if there is bad news the chair should not find out about it first in a board meeting and without prior mention. The chair has credibility to maintain with the other directors, and will undoubtedly want to assess how the most constructive result can be obtained from the adverse situation.

The Managing Up Kit part 6 – Board access to management

2010-08-22T11:48:00.001+10:00

One of the most contentious issues in board – management relations is the degree of access which individual directors may have to the organisation's management team. The most useful way to regulate that access is to have a protocol approved by the board on the circumstances in which directors may interact with management.

There are a couple of ways in which such a protocol can be developed. You may want to raise it with the chair and include (with their consent) a discussion at a board meeting in which a protocol may be hammered out and articulated. Or you may want to try the power of the first draft and prepare something for the consideration of the chair initially and then the board. The form and content of the protocol need to be organisation-specific, but here is an example of what a typical protocol might look like.

Protocol for board access to management

Directors may have access to the CEO at any time and for any reasonable purpose. The CEO should have access to directors for their guidance and counsel in relation to areas of particular know-how, experience or skills which the director may have.
Directors may have access to the members of the senior management team to seek information or clarification ahead of a meeting about matters covered in the board papers.
Directors may give constructive feedback directly to the CEO about the CEO's performance in relation to specific matters.
Before giving any constructive or negative feedback to a senior executive about their performance, or that of their staff, directors should consult with the CEO and. if the CEO requests, allow the feedback to be passed on by the CEO if that is the CEO's preference.
However, directors should feel free at any time to give positive feedback or reinforcement to executives (as long as it is not "Well done, BUT….")
When giving constructive feedback to the CEO or executives, directors should follow accepted practice and ensure that the feedback is given with an appropriate degree of respect, and is timely, prompt, specific and supportive of learning.
Directors should not seek information from or access to staff outside the senior executive team without prior consultation with the CEO, who may in their discretion propose an alternative course.
Directors are encouraged to provide counsel and mentoring to executives, after consultation with the CEO and the chair on the most appropriate way to do so.
When dealing with each other, directors, the CEO and executives should act and communicate in a way which is respectful, open, transparent, and for the purposes of the business of the organisation, or the personal development of the CEO or executives.
Directors should be aware of the potential for appearance of preferential treatment about the organisation's products or services when dealing with management – obtaining things for free or at deeply discounted rates.

The Managing Up Kit part 5 – Be clear about what you want from the board

2010-08-15T18:23:00.001+10:00

A frequent source of confusion, and therefore of ineffectiveness, between board and management is a lack of clarity about what the board is actually being asked to do at a board meeting. There are a number of potential outcomes when a matter is considered by the board. An issue may be for the board's information, such as a survey of the external competitive environment. It may be for noting, such as a risk management report, so the board can show they have considered relevant prudential matters and discharged their duties. It may be for a decision in principle, so that further work can be done to focus more sharply the final decision. Or it may be a request for a formal resolution, so that a transaction or course of action can be undertaken.

If you are not sure, and explicit, about what you are asking the board to do, neither will they be. You may end up with something unhelpful, or delay-inducing. Take the time to articulate exactly what you want from the board. Even if you don't get it, you will have the board in the right territory, and you will give them the opportunity to delineate what they want done before they will agree to what you are seeking.

Do you want the board:

Simply to be informed about something
To note, for their benefit or yours, some action or state of affairs
To agree to something in principle, and also to agree on what else needs to be done before any final approval is given by them
To decide, and authorise formal actions to be taken
To decide, with conditions precedent before any action is taken, but still granting authority to proceed without further board involvement (a very useful mechanism for CEOs for getting on with things)?

Whatever it is, make sure you tell them clearly. State what outcome you want in any board paper or board report; include it briefly in a separate column in your first draft agenda (eg "note", "agree in principle", "resolve"), to help the chair support you in getting what you need.

Finally, be prepared for the eventuality that you may actually get everything you asked for. A common follow-on from the board in such circumstances is "What else do you need?" or "What will be the next step after that?". Not being able to articulate that next stage may mean you miss out on an opportunity that might not come again soon.

The Managing Up Kit part 4 – Taking one for the team

2010-08-12T15:20:00.001+10:00

One of the inevitable parts of being a leader is taking the responsibility for what your team members do. They won't always produce the best results – none of us do. Sometimes there will be serious mistakes. When those happen, and are being explained to or reviewed by the board, probably the least successful tactic a CEO can employ is to focus the blame on the executive or team member who has made the mistake. I've watched it happen often in board rooms. Mostly it looks obvious and undignified. The same result occurs when one executive tries to pin an unfortunate consequence on another executive, in front of the board.

When mistakes happen, usually the most effective way to deal with them is just to take the position with the board that "it happened on my watch, and I take responsibility for that". To the extent that the circumstances allow, the board will see where actual blame lies. The CEO will appear much more statesmanlike by not pointing the finger at someone else.

That's not to say that the mistake or poor performance should not be dealt with appropriately or on its own merits. Just don't do it in front of the board.

The Managing Up Kit part 3 – are you on the board as well as being CEO?

2010-07-29T14:52:00.001+10:00

It's not unusual for the CEO also to be a member of the board; that's where the title "managing director" came from. Being on the board, as well as being CEO, brings an added layer of complexity which is worth your while thinking, and talking, about.

The CEO "reports" to the board in a line management sense, and is certainly accountable to the board for the performance and success of the organisation. But there are no grades of directorship. Every director has the same duties, responsibilities and liabilities under the law – subject only to their obligation to employ their individual skills and expertise in a way that any similarly skilled person would reasonably do so as a director. In their capacity as director, the CEO is a brother or sister in liability with the rest of the board.

This dual nature of the CEO's role can cause some difficulty however, particularly for the CEO's participation in board meetings. I think the key to successfully managing the duality is to accept it as inevitable, and to be clear which hat you are wearing – CEO or director – at any given stage in the board meeting. In presenting reports to the board, or discussing the organisation's performance, you are unavoidably wearing the CEO hat, and should expect the board to ask searching questions or make incisive comments – in other words not treat you as one of them. When the board is making important decisions or approving significant transactions, you are entitled to put on your director hat, and exercise your rights as director on an equal footing with the rest of the board.

This is sometimes a hard thing for the board to recognise. It is an issue which is worth a specific discussion with at least the chair, to ensure that the rest of the board should expect there will be times when you will not be answering to them, but standing side by side with them.

In my experience this is not a card to be over-played, and tactically it is usually preferable to put on your director hat only when the context really requires it. This may be when you feel that the board may not be heading in the right direction, or when consensus is not appearing likely and a vote may be needed. The power of your director's hat is probably inversely proportional to the number of time you explicitly put it on.

One thing you should bear in mind about your position on the board is the information imbalance. As CEO you will be aware in great depth of the organisation's circumstances, performance and prospects. Non-executive directors touch the organisation much less frequently (see a previous post on "Managing the board") so be conscious when you do wear the director hat that you will have information the rest of the board does not, and act accordingly.

The Managing-Up Kit part 2 – Embracing the Power of the First Draft

2010-07-16T18:00:00.002+10:00

It is usually unrealistic to expect that people in non-executive positions will have the time (or possibly the experience or know-how) to be preparing important material that impacts on you personally or on the organisation you lead. What senior or non-executive people can contribute much more practically is to review drafts. That has likely been a large part of their more recent lives. Giving a chair or a director a blank sheet of paper is mostly a recipe for disappointment, or an invitation to be given something back you don't want or won't like.

Some of the things you should consider doing as a first draft, if you haven't got them in place already, are:

Your job description – it's likely that the only one which exists is the one prepared by the recruitment agency or the headhunter; suitable for that process but not so useful for explaining what you will do on a day-to-day, or quarterly, or annual basis. Have a go at writing down what you do – a high level description including the purpose of your job; then your responsibilities; then the things you are held accountable for; and then functional things. Think about how it can be expressed in terms of deliverables. Then share it with the chair. It will be interesting to get their perspective on what they think your job is. They can discuss, comment, amend, delete – but it is very unlikely that they will scrap it and re-write it from scratch.
Your own performance goals and KPIs – there will inevitably be a negotiation process with the chair and even the board in coming to the final version. In doing your first draft, it's helpful for both you and the person doing your review if you can be as specific as possible in setting up measures, as tangible as possible , and as objective as you can make them. Some goals may be more difficult to nail down as numbers, particularly around the assessment of your leadership. This may be a place to use 360 degree feedback or staff engagement scores. When performance review time comes, you'll find you will be managing up more effectively, and be having a more fruitful conversation, with a good framework to hang the conversation on.
The board meeting agenda – The way the board meeting runs, and therefore the way the board and management interact, are both heavily influenced by the board meeting's agenda. Sadly, the construction of the agenda often ends up in a vacuum, or defaults to the company secretary if there is one. The final authority over the agenda rests with the chair. For the reasons discussed in "Managing the board", they are unlikely to draft it personally. There is usually a priceless opportunity available to produce a first draft of the board agenda, which is more likely to be appreciated by the chair than to be seen as presumptuous. There will invariably be some adjustment to your draft, but you will have taken an important step in influencing the context, and thus the outcomes, of the board meeting.

The Managing-Up Kit – how CEOs can work more effectively with their boards (part 1)

2010-06-28T11:58:00.001+10:00

For an organisation to run most effectively, the CEO needs a sound working relationship with their board. Boards by their nature have a number of features which need careful attention from management:

Boards must produce collaborative decisions and results derived from a number of individuals with different skills and backgrounds
Directors usually have other jobs, and do not touch the organisation on a frequent basis
Directors face particular, and sometimes stringent, legal duties and obligations

This blog series provides a number of suggestions and tools to help CEOs develop productive relationships with their boards.

Managing the board

If your board is comprised of part-time, or "non-executive" directors, there are some important factors you need to bear in mind as a CEO or senior executive, to ensure that you have the most productive relationship possible with the board.

Because of the intrinsic nature of their interaction with the organisation, non-executive directors generally do not touch it or its business or operations on a regular basis

There are two major consequences which flow from this irregular interaction:

You cannot assume that directors will remember in detail what has happened in previous board meetings or strategy retreats. It is usually helpful to give a quick recap or summary of what has been previously discussed or decided by the board before launching into any new stage. When preparing reports or presentations, it is simple enough to commence with something like: "Directors will recall that at the last board meeting, it was agreed that there were three important factors to be taken into account [then list them], and it was decided to take the following actions [then summarise them]"
Because of their intermittent touches of the organisation, non-executive directors form impressions, fairly or not, on the basis of the occasional things they see or hear which affect them personally, or push one of their particular individual hot buttons. It is useful to draw on your observations of the board generally, and directors individually, to identify particular hot spots they might have. You will then be in a better position to minimize the chance for any unproductive interactions. For instance, lawyers on the board (like me, sadly) are likely to react adversely to typos; accountants generally don't like to see numbers that don't add up. Give yourself a head start by eliminating avoidable errors.

Top tips for new NEDs

2010-05-09T16:08:00.002+10:00

I was talking over lunch to a bloke who had just scored his first serious non-executive director appointment – a very serious one, in fact, to a top 10 listed company. I made so bold as to offer him my top 3 tips on being a good NED.

Before you say anything in a board meeting, ask yourself why you're about to say it. I've seen too much boardroom discussion which is ego-driven, banging on about old hobby-horses, or just not being of any use to the topic or agenda item under consideration. A slight pause before you throw in your bit can help to ensure that it has relevance, is not being driven by some collateral purpose, and will have the right tone for that moment. This might even include a bit of calculated frustration or stroppiness, which can play a useful part in the board dynamic – as long as it is calculated.
Master the art of the intelligently naive question. Management will often, intentionally or not, start discussions at a place some distance from the most sensible starting point for the board's purposes – often because they would prefer not to explain or justify some of the basic underlying assumptions. Testing these assumptions is a vital part of the NED role: while you might initially appear to be a bit dumb in bringing the discussion back to a more basic level, it is more likely than not that your seemingly naive question will flush out some crucial piece of information not previously revealed, or something worth debating.
Don't let an acronym pass you by if you don't know what it stands for. I guarantee that you won't be the only person in the room in that position. That may include the person spouting the acronym. I once caught out the director of the technology division (surely the high temple of the cult of the acronym) talking about a vital and expensive piece of equipment called a GGSN. I asked "What does that stand for?", and he didn't know. It turned out to be a compound acronym, where one of the letters stood for another acronym. Informed debate needs everyone to understand clearly just what is being debated. Like the GPRS Gateway Service Node, not the General Gauge Sensor Network or the Great Green Sea Nymph.

I'm not sure the new NED was quite ready to display as much ostensible naïveté as I was recommending, so early in his tenure and in front of his heavy-hitting colleagues. I suppose it is ultimately a matter of balance, but you don't always have to look clever to be clever.

The Board Coach

Recruiting not-for-profit directors part 4 - The Recruitment Process

2010-05-09T15:42:00.002+10:00

After you have done the skills analysis, put in place your building blocks, and assembled the recruiting materials (see the previous blogs), the next issue to be decided is “Who will be responsible for the recruitment process?” This can depend on the resources available to the board. The most common route is for the board to establish a committee (historically called the “nominations committee”) to oversee the process, in line with the board’s guidelines and the results of the skills analysis. The ultimate aim of the committee is to come up with recommendations to the board for appointment – either a short list or a preferred candidate.

Your board may not be large enough for the luxury of another committee – if that is the case, then either the whole board can run the process, or a lead director (with sufficient time on their hands to do what is necessary) can be given the job of coming up with the recommendations to the board.

Remember though, the final decision on appointment is of course for the whole board to agree on.

The next issue is “How will we locate and target the right candidates?” If you can afford it, or can secure the services pro bono, you can try the executive search process. Alternatively you can advertise in suitable publications or forums. And you can tap the various networks which the current directors have.

Whichever route you decide to take, make sure you stick to a consistent process. For example, if you take the search option, then it is important that any potential candidates identified through other sources (like tapping the networks, or the inevitable “I know someone who would be perfect for the board”) are fed into the search pool. This helps counter the effect of the Old Mates Act, which has been responsible for plenty of poor board appointments, whether in commercial organisations or NFPs.

Making the final decision

Your skills analysis process should give you a clear guide to make the decision on whom to appoint. Remember, you are recruiting into your gaps. You will have the concrete set of core business and functional skills to take into account, and the filter of the organisation-specific factors to overlay on the pool of identified people. The last filter is “How will any of our candidates fit in with the dynamic of the current board?” That question may vary if your current board dynamic is not as effective as it should be, and might instead be “How will any of these candidates help us improve the dynamic?” This might be, for example, by increasing diversity on the board.

The last step before formal appointment is the delivery of your sales pitch, developed during the building block process, and a frank discussion with the candidates of the expectations the board will have of its new members. Are your candidates up for it? Really? Believe me, it can be far easier to appoint a new director than to remove an existing one.

The formal resolution for appointment

Check the constitution! There will be a section headed “appointment of directors”, or something similar, which will set out how directors are validly appointed. It may be by the board resolving to fill what is known as a “casual vacancy”, because someone has recently resigned; or it may be by filling an empty spot which has either not been filled for some time, or has never been filled. These two kinds of appointments are usually valid until the next annual general meeting, when the appointees will have to re-elected through the normal AGM process.

But the appointment process can vary widely between constitutions, so check your own very carefully and don’t assume it will be like anyone else’s. The safest route is to use the actual words of the constitution to frame the formal board resolution – for example:

Pursuant to clause 43.1 of the company’s constitution, the board resolves to appoint XYZ as a director of the company, to fill a casual vacancy and to hold office until the end of the next annual general meeting of the company.

The constitution will also specify the maximum number of directors who can hold office at any one time – make sure you won’t be exceeding that maximum.

So that’s it. Good luck with finding the right people for your board, who will add value, enhance the board dynamic, and help your organisation achieve its vision.

The Board Coach

Recruiting NFP Directors Part 3 - Assembling Your Recruiting Materials

2010-04-12T18:28:00.002+10:00

With your building blocks in place, you will be ready to assemble the final part of your recruitment materials. There are 3 vital documents which will allow you to approach potential directors with confidence:

• A statement of what the board will expect of new directors. This should have been previously agreed by the board. It should cover matters like the annual board schedule, including commitments outside board meetings such as the annual strategy retreat, if you hold one, and fundraising events; a willingness to align with your organisational values; and preparedness to sign up for the way the board works together, as set out in the board protocol. A reasonable assessment of the amount of time which a new director would need to spend to meet the necessary duties and commitments is also a great help in giving a realistic picture of the job, and in ensuring that the new director will know what they are up for.

• A letter setting out the major terms of the appointment. The letter should be clear on the term for which the new director is being appointed, and a summary of any of the “expectations” which are of a sufficiently formal nature to warrant inclusion.

• The sales pitch which you will present to potential appointees. You need to give candidates a great and compelling story if you want to get the best ones. The sales pitch should cover:

Why we want you – including the skills, experience and personal qualities identified in stage one, the skills analysis; how we found you; why we think you would be a great fit for our board and our organisation

What our organisation does – a summary which can be supported by other accessible written material if necessary

What we can offer you – such as comprehensive board papers, sound management, good risk management, board training and development, or any other strong features you might like to emphasise

“What’s in it for me?” – what a director in your organisation can expect to get out of being involved, beyond just a warm inner glow. This might include exposure to new networks of contacts, the opportunity to receive training or learn new skills, value for your CV or any other tangible positives you can identify.

With these materials assembled, you can now establish the actual recruitment process.

The Board Coach

Recruiting NFP Directors Part 2 - Recruitment Building Blocks

2010-04-08T17:45:00.003+10:00

Given the difficulties in finding any not-for-profit directors at all, it can be pretty competitive to attract the best ones to your organisation. You should make your recruitment process as professional, and your offer to potential appointees as attractive, as possible. This means having the right building blocks in place.

The most important recruitment building blocks are these:

A clear articulation of your organisation’s values and vision. What is its reason for existence, where does it want to make its major impacts, and what will it hold sacred and immutable while doing so? Being able to give a coherent and passionate explanation of these factors will put you well ahead of other organisations in the recruiting race.
An agreed and explicit document which sets out the role of the board. What areas will it choose to be active in, besides those few functions which the law says it must cover? What roles will it aspire to play, such as being a role model in the sector, or setting the culture and tone for the organisation? What will be the split of responsibilities between the board and management. A clear statement of the role of the board is probably the factor most widely lacking in NFP governance.
A board protocol on how the board will work together. This should be a clear and agreed statement of the board’s group dynamic, which can range from turning up on time to and being properly prepared for meetings, to being prepared to engage in robust but respectful debate on crucial issues. It should be something from which a potential director can evaluate just what kind of a culture they would be operating in.
A version of your strategic plan which can be shared, without giving away too much confidential information. It will be very helpful for a potential director to get an idea of what the major strategic challenges will be.
A current directors’ and officers’ liability insurance policy, with an available summary of important terms and a certificate of currency. Without this, you won’t even be in the race to recruit new directors.

Armed with these building blocks you will be able to embark on the next stage of your recruitment process.

The Board Coach

“Don’t just grab any warm body” - Effective recruiting of directors for NFP boards

2010-03-24T13:51:00.002+11:00

Anyone involved with boards of directors in the not-for-profit world knows the challenges involved in finding new directors. A job on an NFP board is invariably unpaid, usually time-consuming, and no less likely to bring potential liabilities with it.

I have been working with four NFP boards over the past couple of months where board composition has been a hot topic. The discussions around the board table usually lead to various incumbent directors saying something like: “I know XYZ, they would be great for our board and they have great experience in [law, finance, marketing or some other impressive occupation]”. There are then at least one or two other such helpful suggestions; the temptation is that given NFP directors are considered to be so hard to find, boards will take any warm body with a halfway-decent CV.

Every time I hear this, I have to intervene with a fervent “WAIT!” It may be better to have a vacancy on the board than fill it with someone who is not right for the job, the board or the organisation.

While recruiting new NFP directors may seem to be a real hurdle, you can put your board in the best position possible to find and attract the best candidates. There are just a few simple rules to follow.

The first rule is: “Only recruit into the gaps”. Before any recruitment process starts, the board should have a session where it looks at the skills, experience, knowledge and personal qualities it will need on the board to deliver the strategic plan, or meet the various strategic challenges the organisation will face, over the next two to three years.

The board should look at the skills and other factors from three perspectives:

Core business – what are the essential activities which the organisation delivers and for which there should be some coverage on the board? Think about the Coles Myer board a little while ago: knowledgeable and experienced people but no-one with solid retail experience.

Functional factors – what skills etc would it be advantageous to have on the board to support the core business? This where professional backgrounds in particular areas can become relevant.

Organisation-specific factors – what personal qualities, philosophies, and mix of these are important to your organisation? These can include diversity of gender, ethnicity, age or background; commitment to the causes your organisation stands for; and resonance with the social need your NFP is seeking to address.

Even an Excel dummy like me can put these various factors into the first column of a spreadsheet, then put each director’s name in the next few columns, and hey: you can now assess which of the various factors are already covered with the board’s current composition – and where the gaps are. These are the gaps into which you should recruit new directors. You may then need to apply one last filter over the gaps – overall fit. What kind of a person do you need to work successfully within the culture and collegiality of your board and your organisation?

Hint 1. – each director will assess the extent to which they might fill the factors identified, but some people are too humble, or might be over-enthusiastic, about their own abilities. It can help to do a peer review of skills, with either the chair or the rest of the board looking at each director’s own assessment.

Hint 2. – having someone external to the board run the identification and assessment process can leave the board to concentrate on the work at hand, and can manage the peer review in a less threatening way.

I’ll cover the remaining simple rules for effective recruiting of NFP directors in subsequent posts.

“The Board Coach”