‘Good leaders have empathy, respect employees and set the example. If you want to change things, you need to have a purpose, bring others along, plan properly, organise resources and implement the changes. Great organizations give people autonomy, their leaders communicate well and, above all, exhibit great alignment with their business goals’.

The above 3 statements belong to what I call ‘Impossible to disagree with school of management’ and represent a great deal of content seen in posts, books, reports and, even worse, ‘the latest research’. This lazy thinking brings zero value to the party. It is however, easy to produce and highly magnetic. It generates lots of ‘I could not agree more with you Peter’ which grows quickly in the LinkedIn petri dish.

Infuriatingly, people who jump into declaring agreement, don’t just say ‘I could not agree more with you Peter’ (exasperating in itself) but tend to repeat the proposition. That is ‘I could not agree more with you Peter. Indeed, good leaders have empathy, respect employees and set the example’.

I am highly suspicious of anything that seems to produce tranquilizer effects in the mind, that does not generate the slightest restlessness. In a recent post, whose authorship will remain private, I found an article that happily declares 20 reasons why change fails. You could easily add ‘bad weather’, ‘climate change’ and ‘long Covid’ and the article would stand, obviously highly enriched.

The ‘Impossible to disagree with’ school of management might as well also be called ‘The School of Not Thinking’.

The famous ‘Not even wrong’ category, attributed to physicist Wolfgang Pauli to describe a very poor argument that does not even reach ‘wrong’, should have a sister category in our Platitude Management Industry called ‘Not even challengeable’. My view is that entire libraries of management books, HBR articles and ‘latest research’ could dwell happily there.

Please disagree. Even, just a bit.

Learn more about our interventions here. [1]

If you want to hear more about how we can bring some Critical Thinking and new approaches to your organization, please contact my team at [email protected].

Build your own Employee Engagement argument for free. You can’t go wrong. Here are three baskets full of concepts: Basket 1: Working conditions, flexibility at work, pay and perks, reward and recognition, empowerment, good communication, people development plans, talent management, a clear vision and purpose, internal digital connections, gamification, and health & well-being programmes. Here is basket 2: Satisfaction, happiness, engagement, fun, self-belief, realization, enhancement, fulfilment, and motivation. And basket 3: Profitability, higher EPS, retention, reputation, customer satisfaction, loyalty, employer of choice, low absenteeism, safety, high quality, and resilience in adversity. Pick one from basket 1, and say that it produces something from basket 2 (pick one concept ), which, in turn, delivers something from basket 3 (pick one or two). You can’t go wrong. I bet you will always find some data with correlations between the items in each basket. Flexibility at work (basket one) creates high motivation (basket two), which leads to low absenteeism. Come on, give it a try. The combinations are great. Constructing Employee Engagement arguments is not difficult at all. There are always correlations between items from baskets 1 and 3, or 1 and 2, or 2 and 3 etc. The problem is these are correlations, not causality. Most Employee Engagement arguments that we use in organizations are semi-rich in correlations and very weak in causality. The truth is that it is hard to tell, for example, whether satisfaction delivers profitability or profitability delivers satisfaction. The fact that we may see both going together does not make the casual argument in one direction true. “Most Employee Engagement arguments that we use in organizations are semi-rich in correlations and very weak in causality.” Many Employee Engagement systems and questionnaires are based upon the assumption of something from conceptual basket 1, delivering something from basket 2 and/or 3. We have taken the argument at face value. We have converted correlation into causality. But, as the Spurious Correlations website reminds us, there is also a strong correlation between the per capita consumption of mozzarella cheese in the USA and the number of civil engineering doctorates awarded. Or the divorce rate in the state of Maine, correlating highly with the per capita consumption of margarine. “Many Employee Engagement systems and questionnaires are based upon the assumption of something from conceptual basket 1, delivering something from basket 2 and/or 3. We have converted correlation into causality.” Whilst most sensible people would not infer that feeding your son with mozzarella cheese will make it highly probable that he will get a Civil Engineering doctorate or that decrease in divorce requires banning margarine, many managers would be very happy with declaring a true causality chain the correlation between anything in basket 1 with anything in basket 2 and/or 3. The whole industry of Employee Engagement is based upon this. When I show these arguments, sometimes to large audiences in my Speaking Engagements, I get the whole spectrum of reactions. The data fundamentalists get very irritated, despite the fact that they can’t really show serious causality data. The ‘Employee Engagement people’, furnished with all their questionnaires, get even more irritated. The Cynical contingency says that what I am inferring is that we should not do anything, not bother at all about Employee Engagement initiatives because all data is flawed. But the latter is far from my position. I think we should do anything we believe will improve the company, period. It’s called Good Management, and I am all for it. But managers need to use their critical thinking more. Do as much as needed for good management, and avoid the simplistic causality interpretation of input-output: if we do more Town Hall meetings with all employees, it will give them more ‘voice’ and air time, it will improve their morale, and that will increase performance. The company is not an input-output machine. Let’s do what we believe we need to do without the constant need to justify the output! Maybe it is morally good, managerially sound and probably beneficial for the mental health of all to give employees more airtime, more voice, more saying and a more proactive role. Do you need a score in a questionnaire to tell you that you should do that? “I think we should do anything we believe will improve the company, period. It’s called Good Management, and I am all for it. But managers need to use their critical thinking more”. By the way, here is another one: the number of films Nicolas Cage appeared in correlated highly with the number of people who drowned by falling into a swimming pool. He should really stop his movie career, or else we will need to have compulsory fences around pools.

How can you really make a difference in your organization? The Viral Change™ approach always addresses specific business challenges. Sometimes these are defined by people in broad terms such as ‘the need to change the culture’, sometimes in a rather more specific one, for example ‘we need to focus on innovation’. Most broad intentions will need to be translated into specific areas of transformation. Similarly, most ‘single focus’ are probably part of broader needs. Learn more here. [2]

If you want to discuss your behavioural and cultural change needs – let’s talk. Contact my team at: [email protected].

Way number 1: My team has developed these three options, A, B and C. Which one do you want us to do? Way number 2: I need you to approve A. We also have options B and C but would not recommend them. Way number 3: Just to let you know that we are doing A. We explored B and C, but they did not rank as high as A. These 3 ways describe 3 different concepts of empowerment, 3 different styles of leadership, also, 3 different organizations. The 3 are legitimate, but they are very different. Please don’t kid yourself; they are not simple variations. Many people still ask for permission for things that the leadership does not expect to have to approve. But they may do so because it’s now on their plate, in front of them. Many boards complain that decisions are ‘pushed up’ too much but do very little to change the situation. On the other hand, many leadership structures expect to be presented with options for the latter to make a final decision. Knowing whether ‘you are’ 1, 2 or 3, and, more importantly, whether you’d like to be 1 or 2 or 3, and which one of them your senior leadership team expects, is fundamental. These questions are, more often than not, simply not posed or articulated. In these cases, decision-making runs in automatic pilot mode, creating default positions that are never appropriately validated that, sooner or later, will drive people, top or middle or bottom, for different reasons, simply mad.

Learn more about leadership and its applications here [3]. [3] Reach out to my team to learn more via [email protected].

Test yourself, and your organization. Do any of these apply? Doing lots, too fast without thinking. High adrenaline, not sure of solid outcomes. Doing fast or slow, but sloppy and sloppier. Having strong ‘logic archetypes’ dominating airtime. Translation: the organization has pervasive ways of thinking and ‘logic’ that act as sacred cows nobody dares to touch. (Example: Six months of developing The Strategic Plan dictates short-term actions. In the last 10 years, no Strategic Plan has ever been achieved. Every year the cycle is repeated.) Repeating mistakes comes from either not learning or not unlearning fast. ‘Lessons learnt’ is a meeting ticking a box and not enough. Putting a premium value on intuitiveness, agility, entrepreneurial spirit and speed in a way that un-critically suggests that these are by definition great, no matter what, before one has even attempted to define what each concept really means. There is an ever-increasing desire for an extra supply of information on anything, even when the extra information never tends to change the course of things. Mistaking correlation with causality. Routinely assuming that if B follows A; A is the cause of B (try this with ‘great sales’ follows ‘intensive sales training’, not mentioning that the competitors screwed up their product launch). Banking too much on group discussions, group decisions, group accountability, and group thinking at the expense of individual reflection (by proxy: your calendar is full for months). Working most of the time on single-track logic, deterministic views, one way, no options, and lots of ‘therefore thinking’. [4] Particularly when this is not recognised or even denied. People equate ‘critical thinking’ with ‘common sense’. A variant: people say, ‘we are doing this already (critical thinking) all the time’. If you recognise one of them, dig deeper. Two, it’s becoming serious. Three, explore your doctor’s options. Four, Houston, you have a problem. Five or over, you need to stop and seriously look for ways to put that ‘critical thinking’ in the water supply. If ten out of ten, you are living in an artificial reality and at a high health risk. If you are successful, you are successful despite yourself. PS. Critical Thinking can be taught in the same way that your body can be re-shaped by going to a gym on a regular basis.

Learn more about Viral Change™ and its applications here [5]. Reach out to my team to learn more via [email protected].

The real question is, what do you want to see happening so that you can say ‘people are empowered’?

Employee empowerment is an output, an outcome. If you start thinking of employee empowerment as an input, something you are supposed to give, you’re looking at it from the wrong angle. As an input, all the airtime will be allocated to how much to give, when, and in which circumstances. Sure, you need to think about that, but the real question is, what do you want to see happening so that you can say ‘people are empowered’? What kind of state of mind and behaviours? And why? What benefits? If there are any. The why is obviously important. Why is empowerment good? Because it is? What would happen to an organization with high levels of employee empowerment? Can you visualize it? If it is not clear, stop thinking about what to give away to empower. In this path to uncover the benefits, the argument is going to take you to the territory of ‘autonomy’, whether you call it this or not. Autonomy means a degree of control that has been gained (so yes, you now need to imagine what you will need to give away, to let go). Autonomy means self-determination, self-help, ability to conduct independently. If you had that, people in the organization will probably also gain a lot of self-esteem and confidence. Trust levels will go up. Autonomy means increased efficiency and efficacy. Usually, it also means faster reactions: markets, environment, crisis. The ‘business case’ is strong. There are five ingredients that need to be cooked to achieve this. Explicit ‘permission’ from leaders. There is something, perhaps in people’s upbringing, that makes us very dependent on ‘permissions’. Don’t underestimate the need to stress and repeat this to people. Don’t take for granted that this has been heard. Trust. Call it how you like, but you need a good dose of this for autonomy and empowerment to be real. Are you prepared? Resources. If people don’t have them, there is no point trumpeting empowerment. You can’t empower people to do the impossible. Skills and competencies. Equally, you can’t empower people to do something if they don’t know how to. A safety net of some sort. Within the compliance parameters that you may have, people need to be able to fail and not only survive but spread the learning. A working definition of empowerment from the leader’s perspective may sound like this: To give control to people who don’t have it so that you can free yourself for things only you, as the leader, can do, and, in doing so, you are creating an efficient system with high levels of trust and self-esteem. All this provided that people have the skills and resources. But the trick is to start by visualizing the kind of organization you want to see, not the theoretical view of empowerment or the things you would give away (decision rights, for example). Then you need to work backwards to see what needs to happen. If you can’t visualize the benefits in the first instance, or not yet, don’t go that route. Stop talking about it.

Learn more about Viral Change™ and its applications here [5]. Reach out to my team to learn more via [email protected].

The following line will short-cut months of (building) ‘alignment’, integration, reorganization, team building, coalition building, and any situation in which Peter, Paul and Mary need to start working together from somewhere zero or below. The line is: This is what I am very bad at; what about you? And it’s plural, what are we very bad at; what is this company very bad at; what about you, yours? The Old School Toolkit has a saying, “we will take the best of A and the best of B in this new merged company”. However, this is a bad start. The best of A plus the best of B may still be  [6]insufficient [6]. Also, the safe discussion of ‘the best’ tends to hide the bad and the terrible for months. Take the ‘this is what I am very bad at, what about you?’ line upfront. As you can see, it is more than a line. It is an approach, an attitude, a whole jumpstart in a box. The artist Alex Grey once said: “True love is when two people’s pathologies complement one another’s.” I think that this is a very good start to create ‘love’ in a reorg, an M&A, a whole restructuring. It should be a line and a quote for management. How about start loving fast? In a new situation (and old ones), when Peter, Paul and Mary ‘now must work together’, the three of them bring their brains, hearts, and skills and competencies with them. They also bring their inadequacies, contradictions and flaws. At the top of leadership qualities, acknowledging our own contradictions must have a strong place. We all have them. Acknowledging them is a strength. I don’t have to tell you what that approach will do for trust: you’ll see it rocketing soon. The inevitable super-hero (even if sincere) ‘this is what I/we am/are very good at’ is a starter built upon competition. My ‘very good’ is bigger than ‘your very good’ sort of thing. The ‘this is what I/we am/are very bad at, what about you?’ points straight to humanity, collaboration, cut the crap, let’s do it. Sure, you won’t see this in the PowerPoints of the Big Consulting Group Integration Plan. They never contain the how.

[5]

Learn more about Viral Change™ and its applications here [5]. Reach out to my team to learn more via [email protected].

If you care about the journey and the place, you need a story. If you have a good, compelling one, there will be lots of good people traveling with you.

“A year from now, you all are here standing in front of the CEO and you say: we screwed up! Write the script for that year, what happened to take you there.” “A year from now, you all are here standing in front of the CEO and you say: we succeeded! Write the script for that year, what happened to take you there.” Vey often I run these exercises (‘Success and Failure Scenarios’ ) with parallel sub-teams of Boards, top leadership teams or management teams. Literally I ask them to write those scripts down or at least find all the pieces and assemble them as a script would have been constructed – novel, film, short story… People are incredibly good at writing these scripts (the failure scenario is invariably faster …) and can relate to them much better than an account of goals and targets as written in the Strategic Plan. The storytellers inside all of us seem to enjoy the questions and the production of answers. A long time ago, in my work with clients, I have switched from ‘Mission & Visions’ to ‘Space in the world’ and ‘Compelling narrative’. It’s not a simple change of terms. The questions are different. The emphasis is ‘What do you want to be remembered for?’ and ‘What’s the story, your story, perhaps your unique story?’ I also insist on writing down the headlines my clients would like to see in the newspapers in year one, or two, or whatever the time frame. A couple of lines, that’s all. I have seen more Executives surprise each other in this exercise than in many other times of interaction. These visual narratives are very powerful. They bring the authentic part of us to the surface. Another method I use is to ask people to answer (all in writing, again) a question posed by their children (or other children if they don’t have of their own): ‘Dad/Mum/Sir, what do you do exactly?’ The exercise always starts with some light jokes until it gets really serious. Try to articulate ‘maximize shareholder value’ to your 5 year old. It’s scripts, narratives, stories, not targets, numbers and earnings per share. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with targets, numbers and earnings per share, but the signposts are not the places themselves. If you care about the journey and the place, you need a story. If you have a good, compelling one, there will be lots of good people traveling with you.

[7]

Learn more about our Leadership and Culture interventions here [8]. Reach out to my team to learn more via [email protected].

Many times, in my consulting work, I find myself facing a dilemma: Do I involve many people on the client’s side, engage them, teach them about ‘behavioural change principles’ or ‘behavioural DNA’, for example, and create a journey of many travellers to reach some conclusions or destinations? Or do I go semi-solo, reaching the same shores, with the same happy CEO, and the same professional fees? Journey 1 is perhaps painful. The organizational and behavioural side of consulting has this peculiar problem: Everybody thinks they know. People with little or no psychological background suddenly become behavioural experts overnight. Managers who have never managed to seriously create traction in the organization, suddenly say that they have been doing this – whatever ‘this’ means- for many years. I’ve never seen non-financial managers claiming huge accounting expertise, or non-engineers claiming manufacturing expertise, but I have encountered numerous people in the organization claiming to have a complete understanding of human behaviour, individual and social. Everybody seems to have some sort of unofficial PhD in Organizational Behaviour. Journey 2 – full provision of hands-on expertise, advise, active involvement, with no pretension of democratic participation or over-inclusiveness – is far easier and less stressful. I shared this dilemma some time ago with a good friend and client, excellent CEO, and he said: ‘Do what I do, go where the energy is and forget the rest’. There are choices. Bringing people along on a journey can hardly be dismissed as trivial. But one has to accept that it’s not always possible to have everybody ‘aligned’, to use a bit of managerial jargon. Inclusiveness is a noble aim which can turn into a pathology – over-inclusiveness – very easily. Some people have an extra need to embrace everybody all the time. They are not content with the few, or even with a pure ‘rational understanding’ of the issues. They need full emotional, all-on-board, and, if possible, happy, personally engaged people. And they don’t get tired in the process. Bill Clinton was this kind of man when president. For all his shortcomings, this was his fantastic strength. He did not want you just to ‘agree’ on X but to emotionally love X. I have to say, I have not seen many Clintonian leaders in organizations. Inclusiveness should not be an automatic goal, especially at the expense of bold progress. It deserves good critical thinking of what is possible and realistic. In the meantime, I recommend going where the energy is.

[7]

Talking about behaviours and culture, this is a good opportunity to look at how you can reshape your culture, and we have a simple vehicle to achieve this. Start your journey here. [9]

If you want to discuss your behavioural and cultural change needs – let’s talk. Contact my team at: [email protected].

In any change programme that any organization wants to start, they will start by thinking of the things that they want to change, that they want to improve. Very rarely will they express what is not for change, which is just as important as working out what can be changed. “Nobody says, ‘this will not change’.” Let me explain more in this short video.

[10]

Working out what cannot be changed When creating organizational change, consider which factors must stay the same. Is it a value system? Is it a hierarchy? What is essential for your organization that cannot be changed? Knowing and expressing this – and having a shared understanding – will make the change journey more effective.

If you want to hear more about the rules, my team and I have a great opportunity coming up very soon. Let us know if you would like to know more here [11] or via [email protected].

My team and I wish you all a wonderful Christmas break and a happy new year. We hope we can create positive organizational changes with you in 2023.

When you filter out the noise, when you try to extract the core, the fundamentals, those ‘universal rules’ of change that refuse to go, you are left with a few strong and powerful drivers. I’ve got 40 of them. And I am seriously resisting the urge to ‘get them down’ to the most vociferous few. “Campaign it” is one of them. Let me explain it in this short video:

[12]

Why “Campaign it”? In the social change arena, you don’t survive if you don’t “campaign it” – that is if you don’t campaign the changes you want to see. Yet, in organizations, we are not very good at campaigning. We often focus on top-down messages or run campaigns every few months.. that’s not enough. People in the social change arena know that they need to campaign constantly. Leaders and organizations need to learn from this. For successful organizational change, you need to campaign it!

If you want to hear more about the full set of rules, my team and I have a great opportunity coming up very soon. Let us know if you would like to know more here [11] or via [email protected].

‘Daily Thoughts’ is paused, to assess its value and its next  ‘presentation of  life’. Bear with us. In the meantime, we will post some short vignettes from Leandro Herrero’s book The Flipping Point. ^[13] Contact us if you need anything or if you wish to share any insights about how Daily Thoughts is of value to you. Thanks for being here. Don’t go away! The Chalfont Project team [email protected] ^[14]

 

To preach de-hierarchical-isation is to preach de-humanisation, not the opposite. When you reframe hierarchies as the problem into hierarchies as the solution,then you’re in business. They can facilitate, resource, create, give permission to act and buffer continuity and reassurance. Those fundamentalists who fight hierarchy as a principle tend to be the ones who are less smart at making good use of it.

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Trust is non linear (excuse my language). Usually it’s hard or long to gain, but it’s always one screw up away from killing it.

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Find out more about the range of books written by Leandro Herrero: Books ^[15]

One of us or one of them. Liberal or conservative. Top down or bottom up. Progressive or retrograde. Robust or fragile. Pro something or anti something.

The world is an orange and it is cut in two halves. You must be on either side. But only one.

It’s an easy thing for the tired mind. There are only two shelves and you must file in either. But you must choose one.

This is not just a simple anecdote. It has tremendous consequences. What if the opposite of progressive could be also non-regressive? The opposite of fragile, anti-fragile (Nassin Taleb ^[16] dixit), and any other option beyond A or B?

Bipolar thinking is dangerous and, always, a sign of poor critical thinking. It’s a Descartes infection that needs to be repelled.

Rejection of bipolarity does not mean wild post-modern relativism, where anything is possible and nothing stands as ‘the truth’. Regardless the philosophical or even religious connotations (true/false vs. ‘it depends’), bipolar thinking is simply bad thinking. Full stop.

Anything presented to us as a bipolar choice should smell bad. It’s a cheap shortcut. We can do better. Our minds can do better.

Agree or disagree?

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Critical Thinking ^[17] Accelerator from The Chalfont Project:

 

At The Chalfont Project, we have crafted a short intervention on Critical Thinking ^[17]:

• Do you feel like you’re missing the time to reflect and makes changes?
• Do you feel like your team has fallen into bad habits, business is unproductive and no one takes ownership to change it?

In this short intervention we teach you and your team Critical Thinking methods and questions that will help you focus your time on the things that matter, make good and fair decisions and escape the dangers of human biases. We will also help you apply these methods to your everyday challenges in your organization.

You will learn about strategy acid tests and many mind fallacies, including various biases, and the practical Critical Thinking methods that you can use to address these.

 

This high impact, short intervention will:

• – challenge ways of thinking
• – provide immediate and trackable actions
• – drive change
• – develop a better way of functioning across the team, department or organization.

 

Contact us ^[11] to find out more information or discuss how we can support your business.

 

The late Stanislav Andreski (1919-2007) ^[21] British Professor of Social Sciences, in one of his vintage passages in ‘Social Sciences as Sorcery’, reminded us of the power of persuasion by ‘the numbers’, or, in his case a mathematical formula that provided the full legitimation of an argument. And what kind of argument? None other than the existence of God.

 During his stay at the court of Catherine II of Russia, the great Swiss mathematician Euler got into argument about the existence of God. To defeat the voltairians in the battle of wits, the great mathematician asked for a blackboard in which he wrote:

(x + y)² = x² + 2xy + y² , therefore God exists

Unable to dispute the relevance of the formula which they did not understand, and unwilling to confess their ignorance, the literati accepted his argument.

We all have Eulerian moments in organizations, and they come in the form of magic ROIs, magic Risk Analysis and sophisticated financial statements that not many people question. Don’t question the numbers! The numbers are the numbers!

It’s the ‘in God we trust, others bring data’ argument.

The popularity of surveys and rankings, come from the legitimisation of an argument via a score of some sort. There is nothing wrong with numbers and scores. What is wrong is us accepting them blindly, uncritically.

Also, any number, score, percentage, can be read in more than one psychological context. ‘20% of teenagers get drunk on Fridays’ sounds horrible; a serious problem. Probably it is. But, that also means that 80% of teenagers don’t get drunk on Fridays. Which ‘facts’ you pick depends on what message you want to get across.

In the battle of Gantt charts, scores and tables, the power of the Army may overwhelm us. Our daily organizational questions may not be about God’s existence, but our reaction might be quite similar to the people in the court of Catherin II: Unable to dispute the relevance of the formula which they did not understand, and unwilling to confess their ignorance, the literati accepted his argument.

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Critical Thinking ^[17] Accelerator from The Chalfont Project

 

At The Chalfont Project, we have crafted a short intervention on Critical Thinking ^[17]. In this short intervention we teach you and your team Critical Thinking methods and questions that will help you focus your time on the things that matter, make good and fair decisions and escape the dangers of human biases. We will also help you apply these methods to your everyday challenges in your organization.

You will learn about strategy acid tests and many mind fallacies, including various biases, and the practical Critical Thinking methods that you can use to address these.

This high impact, short intervention will:

• – challenge ways of thinking
• – provide immediate and trackable actions
• – drive change
• – develop a better way of functioning across the team, department or organization.

 

Contact us ^[11] to find out more information or discuss how we can support your business.

This quote is from Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988) ^[22], American science fiction writer, who was famous for his quotes. This one has many uses and interpretations, which fall on the unkind side. Applied to people, well, you get the message. But it also brings several messages to the table.

• Persist in doing something that will never produce fruit
• Having people (sorry, he said pigs) in the wrong jobs
• Being resilient for the sake of it, as opposed to ‘fail fast’ and move on
• How being stubborn is rarely a good idea
• The overall futility of pursuing wrong avenues and expecting them to turn out well
• How in many cases the only outcome is the duo ‘waste of time’ and ‘annoying somebody’.

Again, reliance is not stubbornness. One of the arts of leadership is to switch gears at the right time and being able to say: wrong path, sorry, now, this is next. Also to make sure people are in the right places (skills, competences). And knowing and finding out which ones these are is another leadership feature.

There is a common practice in many organizations that consists of moving people around jobs. It’s noble and useful for obvious reasons. But I have seen many times in my professional life, the abuse of this when people rotation becomes a mantra. Critical thinking should come first. In many cases, this mantra, does not ‘teach the pig to sing’ and the result is that they become very annoyed. Intellectual tourism around jobs may sound great, but it has its limits.

 

 

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Critical Thinking ^[17] Accelerator from The Chalfont Project:

 

Renew, transform, re-invent the way you do things. Organizations today need to look at better ways, alternative and innovative ways to change the status quo. It’s not about being radical for the sake of it. Only if you try radical ways will you be in a better position to find your ‘fit for purpose’ goals.

As Michelangelo said: ‘The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark’. He was a radical in the way we talk about it.

_____________________

At The Chalfont Project, we have crafted a short intervention on Critical Thinking ^[17]:

• Do you feel like you’re missing the time to reflect and makes changes?
• Do you feel like your team has fallen into bad habits, business is unproductive and no one takes ownership to change it?

In this short intervention we teach you and your team Critical Thinking methods and questions that will help you focus your time on the things that matter, make good and fair decisions and escape the dangers of human biases. We will also help you apply these methods to your everyday challenges in your organization.

You will learn about strategy acid tests and many mind fallacies, including various biases, and the practical Critical Thinking methods that you can use to address these.

 

This high impact, short intervention will:

• – challenge ways of thinking
• – provide immediate and trackable actions
• – drive change
• – develop a better way of functioning across the team, department or organization.

 

Contact us ^[11] to find out more information or discuss how we can support your business.

Attention re-structuralists, strategists and people about to be sold a multi-million pound reorganization solution that will solve all those nasty problems of collaboration, customer-centrism and agility, all in one, and in one bill.

Every new structure or system designed to solve a problem brings along new and different problems which in themselves may constitute a bigger problem than the one it was intended to address in the first place.

Any structural solution (translation: new group, division, team, business unit, re-structuring, re-shuffling, re-organization) created to fit a particular problem (and perhaps sold as a perfect solution that just seems to be exactly what is needed) needs to be implemented with at least the provision to deal with unexpected consequences and paradoxical outcomes. Some will be emergent, many could be predicted.

The designing of solutions needs to address the potential liabilities of the new design. No system, including organization architecture, will be neutral. In fact, as it’s said in the ‘systems approach culture’, the system always kicks back.

Even more, there is an application of The Chatelier Principle: any process sets up conditions opposing the further operation of the process.

The solution, always kicks back.

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For more on organizational design from Leandro and his team of Organization Architects – watch our webinar on:

 

The new Promised Land of the so-called ‘future of work’

We know that the new organization has to be very adaptable and flexible, beyond what it has been in the past, but what are the organizational   principles that can lead to that? Is there a singular best model? Or, more importantly, can several possibly competing models coexist in one single organization? And, if so, what kind of management and leadership are to be reinvented?

This webinar has now taken place. Please click on the link below to visit our On Demand page.

View for FREE On Demand ^[23]

 

Here is a ‘very novel’ concept. Employee Engagement is needed because… it’s good in and of itself. Because work enhances human nature. Because engaging people with their work is a moral obligation of both, providers and takers of work, as part of human enhancement. In this model, meaningful, enhancement, enrichment from work is a moral imperative. If engagement is morally right, it also means work that matters to the individual beyond the benefit of the organization. Full stop.

This thinking is so alien to business that it’s likely to be dismissed by many. After all, many people sustain that the organization per se, and in particular the business organization, is an amoral entity. It has undergone moral surgery. Its imperative is not to deal with any morality other than the purpose of the firm and the goals of the owners. Shareholder value is shareholder value. If the firm has a value system, it’s up to management to figure out how to increase that shareholder value within the corporate value frame. Employee/people’s enhancement as human beings, in this thinking, is not here nor there, unless expressed specifically in relation to the value system itself.

For people who don’t ascribe to this model, the above statement ‘engaging people with their work is a moral obligation as part of creating human enhancement’ is a leftist fairy tale.

The ‘ethics of work’ (not the same as the ethics of business) is not precisely a new topic. It’s just that business organizations are busy ‘making other plans’ (as in John Lennon’s ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’).

We have three strong pillars in our modern history. (1) Max Weber’s ‘The Protestant Ethic’. (2) The Catholic Social Teaching, a scattered series of documents with detailed development on seven principles: life and the dignity of the human person; call to family, community and participation; solidarity; dignity of work; rights and responsibilities’; options for the poor and vulnerable; and care for God’s creation. Most of them address ‘work’ one way or another. (3) The Right to Work is treasured within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These three pillars have, both, followers and critics.

Pros. The model brings back some conversation about ‘purpose’, in which people may agree or disagree, but still, the conversation will be in the air. I still use with my clients a 1990 lecture from the great Charles Handy ^[24], with the title ‘What is a company for? ^[25]’, which challenged many assumptions at the time and which continues to be relevant today.

Cons. It’s hard to bring this conversation in the context of ‘busy people making other plans’. But, if we can have a Cow Model (number 2) ^[26] I don’t see why we could not have a moral model.

So what?  Purpose is not the same as this ‘Employee Engagement as moral imperative’, but they are sisters. This model says: when you look at all models, all possibilities, all surveys, all rankings, all happy cows, all air time, could you slot in a possibility that work in itself should be enhancing and (the corollary), if this is the case, then management needs to look at employee engagement also as employee enhancement? What if we added a moral obligation here, in this model? Would the sky fall?

Next, the final model: (Real) Activists on the payroll.

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REBOOT! The Game Plan

Renew, transform, re-invent the way you do things. Organizations today need to look at better ways, alternative and innovative ways to change the status quo. It’s not about being radical for the sake of it. Only if you try radical ways will you be in a better position to find your ‘fit for purpose’ goals.

As Michelangelo said: ‘The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark’. He was a radical in the way we talk about it.

 

At The Chalfont Project ^[3], we have crafted a series of short interventions called Accelerators ^[17]:

 

Reboot! The Game Plan ^[17]

Do you feel like you and your team are stuck in the day to day doing of things and many aspects of the running of the organization don’t make the agenda?

There may or may not be anything obviously wrong. Or maybe there is. But this is not a good enough state of affairs.

This high intensity, accelerated intervention takes leadership teams of all levels through a process of discovery and identification of both stumbling blocks and enablers will be followed by a clear ‘so-what’ and an action plan. It results in alignment around a well crafted Game Plan that reflects where they see the organization/team/department in the short to medium term and a detailed commitment to action that can be tracked.

This high impact, short intervention for senior teams, will:

• challenge ways of thinking
• provide immediate and trackable actions
• drive change
• develop a better way of functioning across the team, department or organization.

 

Contact us ^[11] to find out more information or discuss how we can support your business.

 

In WWII there was a curious episode of an injection of critical thinking, not entirely well publicised. Big bomber airplanes in the Allied camp were shot down more and more, and the lucky ones that returned to base did so with multiple bullet holes, all over the place in the fuselage.

It was obvious to people that this was a sign that the fuselage needed to be stronger, with more armour and protection. But heavier plates would not necessary help the performance of the airplane.

A Jewish mathematician who had fled from Hungary, Abraham Wald ^[27], was asked to look into the problem. I don’t know exactly why him. But the first thing he did was to sketch the distribution of the bullet holes in the returning planes. Doing so many times, he saw a pattern: the areas with more holes were wings, tail and the nose of the aircrafts, whilst others such as the cockpit and a section of the back were not. The answer was simple: these areas with the holes were the weak areas of the fuselage, the ones that needed the extra plates, the reinforcement, the thicker armour.

Really?

Wald turned the problem and the logic upside down. The reframed question now was not where the bullet holes were in the aircrafts that returned, but where they would be in the ones that didn’t. If areas of the fuselage needed reinforcement and the extra armour, it was not the ones with the holes – the aircrafts returned after all – but the ones with no holes at all such as the cockpit and part of the back. Presumably, this is why those aircraft did not come back.

Wald reframed and inverted the problem. It did not cost anything. Certainly at that time, sophisticated simulations that would have been the order of the day today, were not available.

Seeing the problem upside down, reframing and finding ‘the other side of the coin’, is a tool within a good Critical Thinking approach.

As in the previous Daily Thought, another case of ‘ ^[28]Invert, always invert’ ^[29].

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ACCELERATORS from The Chalfont Project

 

Renew, transform, re-invent the way you do things. Organizations today need to look at better ways, alternative and innovative ways to change the status quo. It’s not about being radical for the sake of it. Only if you try radical ways will you be in a better position to find your ‘fit for purpose’ goals.

As Michelangelo said: ‘The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark’. He was a radical in the way we talk about it.

 

At The Chalfont Project ^[3], we have crafted a series of short interventions called Accelerators ^[17]:

• Reboot! The Game Plan –  ^[17] Do you feel like you and your team are stuck in the day to day doing of things and many aspects of the running of the organization don’t make the agenda?

There may or may not be anything obviously wrong. Or maybe there is. But this is not a good enough state of affairs.

This high intensity, accelerated intervention takes leadership teams of all levels through a process of discovery and identification of both stumbling blocks and enablers will be followed by a clear ‘so-what’ and an action plan. It results in alignment around a well crafted Game Plan that reflects where they see the organization/team/department in the short to medium term and a detailed commitment to action that can be tracked.

 

• Critical Thinking ^[17] – Do you feel like you’re missing the time to reflect and makes changes? Do you feel like your team has fallen into bad habits, business is unproductive and no one takes ownership to change it?

In this short intervention we teach you and your team Critical Thinking Methods and Questions that will help you focus your time on the things that matter, make good and fair decisions and escape the dangers of human biases. We will also help you apply these methods to your everyday challenges in your organization.

You will learn about Strategy Acid tests and many Mind Fallacies, including various biases, and the practical Critical Thinking methods that you can use to address these.

 

These high impact, short interventions for senior teams, will:

• challenge ways of thinking
• provide immediate and trackable actions
• drive change
• develop a better way of functioning across the team, department or organization.

 

Contact us ^[11] to find out more information or discuss how we can support your business.

The difference between the critical thinker and the un-critical one is not a difference in IQ, or mental strength, or some sort of genetic privileges of the brain. It is a difference in practicing questioning, versus little questioning, or not questioning at all, or taking life at face value.

The critical thinker is always in the mental gym, exercising. The un-critical thinker is not very fit. But not very fit people are not necessarily ill. They get by in different ways, usually with some disadvantage.

The critical thinker is restless. Like the gym goer or the daily jogger, he or she has butterflies in their stomach as soon as they’re not exercising. These are mental butterflies, signs of restlessness, feeling uncomfortable with the status quo, the un-questioned life, if you want to get a bit philosophical.

Critical thinking can be learnt. As I said before, it’s like going to the gym. It’s a praxis, exercising, getting fit. The main gym exercises of the critical thinking are questions. The critical thinker is always learning (and practicing) how to ask questions. The other type of critical thinking fitness has to do with avoiding mind traps, mental tricks that we generate all the time. These are the so called fallacies and cognitive biases. Again, one can learn to deal with them.

The good critical thinker needs also a good dose of emotional and social intelligence to understand that ‘asking questions’, and, in particular, ‘asking questions very frequently’ as a habit, can be very, very annoying to others. Yes, critical thinkers can be a pain. It’s so much easier not to ask too many questions!

But if you have emotionally-intelligent critical thinkers in the organization, you are very lucky. You won’t be completely immune to failure. But you will have constant fresh air. A healthy environment with a constant flow of fresh air is a gem, a privilege.

There is a quote by H L Mencken (1880-1956) ^[30] that says: “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” The critical thinker is gently aware of this. He is also aware that he or she may be the one providing that neat and plausible solution.

Critical thinking has wonderful unintended consequences: being humble is one. Free from the heavy load and duty of being always right, a burden that the uncritical thinker tends to bear, the critical one is agile and nimble.

If you could see your organization as a school of critical thinking, no matter which industry, no matter what size, you’d be on the winning track.

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Critical Thinking ^[17] Accelerator from The Chalfont Project:

 

Renew, transform, re-invent the way you do things. Organizations today need to look at better ways, alternative and innovative ways to change the status quo. It’s not about being radical for the sake of it. Only if you try radical ways will you be in a better position to find your ‘fit for purpose’ goals.

As Michelangelo said: ‘The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark’. He was a radical in the way we talk about it.

_____________________

At The Chalfont Project, we have crafted a short intervention on Critical Thinking ^[17]:

• Do you feel like you’re missing the time to reflect and makes changes?
• Do you feel like your team has fallen into bad habits, business is unproductive and no one takes ownership to change it?

In this short intervention we teach you and your team Critical Thinking methods and questions that will help you focus your time on the things that matter, make good and fair decisions and escape the dangers of human biases. We will also help you apply these methods to your everyday challenges in your organization.

You will learn about strategy acid tests and many mind fallacies, including various biases, and the practical Critical Thinking methods that you can use to address these.

This high impact, short intervention will:

• – challenge ways of thinking
• – provide immediate and trackable actions
• – drive change
• – develop a better way of functioning across the team, department or organization.

 

Contact us ^[11] to find out more information or discuss how we can support your business.

 

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi ^[31], a 19^th century Swiss mathematician is remembered by many things in his scientific turf, but by one in particular outside the field: ‘Invert, always invert’. He used this phrase to suggest that hard mathematical problems could be addressed better, and eventually solved, by inverting the problem, articulating it in its inverse form, by working it backwards.

In recent years, the quote perhaps needed the visibility lent by Charles Munger ^[32], business partner of Warren Buffet. Munger is revered in many quarters as great thinker, and his pointing into directions, from general wisdom to investing wisdom, gets good highlights. He has referred to ‘Invert’ many times in his writings and interviews.

‘Invert, always invert’, is a very pragmatic and heuristic mental trick that we at The Chalfont Project ^[3] have long incorporated into our Critical Thinking ^[17] programme armamentarium. It is part of a broader set of ‘Reframing’ approaches. Reframing forces us to ask alternative questions to the question that seem to be obvious, or the given one.

For us in day to day management, a simple example of ‘invert, always invert’, is to invert the question. The question may be ‘how can we (succeed and) achieve X goal by Y time?’. This is a very standard question, but the problem may be complicated and people may get very stuck in the finding of the answer or answers.

Indeed, it may be that you find yourself already on the road with several brainstorming sessions and a few PowerPoint ‘summaries’ in your pocket, but you may feel that you are not getting closer to an answer or even a clear path towards it. And this may well be despite the overgrowing analysis of the issue.

Stop there. Invert! Reframe the issue as follows: ‘How can we completely and thoroughly screw up and fail miserably?’ Restart now. I can guarantee you that renewed energy will come to the collective brains, people close to falling asleep under the previous question will wake up, and, progressively, the dull infection of brainstorms will turn into speed recovery with exciting and creative exercises. Try it. Invert the problem.

Give to the inversion a serious change, not just a game or a mental trick. Apply the same brainstorm techniques that you use. Write down the principles of a Strategic Plan to Fail Miserably and Being Ashamed Fast.

At some point, when enough light has come up, you will invert again and will address the original question.

Reframe, always reframe.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Critical Thinking ^[17] Accelerator from The Chalfont Project:

Renew, transform, re-invent the way you do things. Organizations today need to look at better ways, alternative and innovative ways to change the status quo. It’s not about being radical for the sake of it. Only if you try radical ways will you be in a better position to find your ‘fit for purpose’ goals.

As Michelangelo said: ‘The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark’. He was a radical in the way we talk about it.

_____________________

At The Chalfont Project, we have crafted a short Accelerator on Critical Thinking ^[17]:

• Do you feel like you’re missing the time to reflect and makes changes?
• Do you feel like your team has fallen into bad habits, business is unproductive and no one takes ownership to change it?

In this short intervention we teach you and your team Critical Thinking Methods and Questions that will help you focus your time on the things that matter, make good and fair decisions and escape the dangers of human biases. We will also help you apply these methods to your everyday challenges in your organization.

You will learn about Strategy Acid tests and many Mind Fallacies, including various biases, and the practical Critical Thinking methods that you can use to address these.

This high impact, short intervention will:

• challenge ways of thinking
• provide immediate and trackable actions
• drive change
• develop a better way of functioning across the team, department or organization.

Contact us ^[11] to find out more information or discuss how we can support your business.