When we developed Reboot! [1] a while ago as an intense Accelerator (strategy and change accelerator), a simple premise was in our mind: there is a time and a place when you have to call time out and review your basics, confront your demons, stop being nice to each other, roll up your sleeves, and start talking plain English. And it’s doable, and simpler than people think.
Very often, the time for tweaking and fiddling with marginal improvement is gone. The time to allocate three months to super analysis is gone. The time to luxurious, lengthy soul searching does not exist. It’s time to press Reboot! Obviously this ‘stop and Reboot!’ works also very well when there is no crisis per se, but you need to create a new baseline, a ‘new normal’, and you need, or want to do it now. Oh! The magic of now! Give me one now for every twenty later.The language we use in our Reboot! is one of (finding) Sacred Cows, Elephants in the Room, examples of Bold Moves, The Heroes, and, also, The Hall of Fame of Mistakes. There are twelve parameters in total. That’s it
When I started developing this, I had an overriding hypothesis: people will need zero preparation, and will engage from minute one, when they are confronted with no-nonsense, plain language, leave-politically-correctness-at-the-door, etc. It’s amazing what a bunch of guys with no market research folder, no strategic planning binder in hand, and no Big Consulting Firm Powerpoins in the laptop, can do confronted with a large whiteboard, and armed with the power of their mind and hearts. The hypothesis has been confirmed hundred times. And, guess what. Once this is done, it’s easy to create a Game Plan. Fast forward six months, at least.
The ‘new’ CEO of Malaysia airlines is speaking the language of ‘the reset’, not improvement, not even turnaround. The UK Labour Party, after the most disastrous defeat in history, is consuming itself with the geographical/political GPS question of ‘are we too much to the left?’, ‘too little?’, ‘too much to the right?’, or ‘in the centre?’. And of course, each answer has its own fellowship. Meanwhile, close to bankrupt Malaysian airlines is somehow more advance: it is in reset/reboot mode. It’s a now question. They can’t afford anything else.
Sensible voices in the Labour Party speak the language of not rushing, reflecting, giving time to elect a new leader (oh! More magic! The leader!) analysing, and finding out about all the elements, facts and figures. In the meantime, their opponents, the majority Tory Government will press hard every single day with their policies, knowing that whilst they look and rush North, the Labour party will be stuck in navel gazing.
I wish the UK Labour Party bought itself a Big White Board. Now. Not a new GPS system.
I’ll be by the phone in case they call me for my Reboot cards!
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