Plus ca ne change pas

You've got to hand it to the French.

As the queues build at petrol stations and residents of Marseille have taken to setting fire to the mountains of rubbish to keep the rats at bay, one can only marvel at France's systemic inability to change.

While the British swallow the most savage cuts in public expenditure since the Second World War with characteristic stoicism, the French are back manning the barricades over proposals to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. That's an extra 2 years on people's working lifetimes vs an increased life expectancy of 13 years since the pension regime last changed. And the reform will still leave the French retiring 4-5 years sooner than their counterparts in other major European economies.

Yet despite the public being held to ransom, opinions polls indicate that 70% of the French population support the strikes.

So what's going on? And how hard is it for policymakers and politicians to create public consensus for change?

Firstly, striking in France is a first resort, not a last resort. French democracy came about because people took the streets, so that's what people do - regardless of how narrow, minor or marginal their cause. Becase it's so ingrained in the cultural heritage, public endorsement for public protest is high even if the actions taken appear disproportionate and unfairly disruptive by other nations' standards.

In France, striking can be a display of selfishness or solidarity, or both at once. Scratch the surface of mass protest in France and you'll rarely find a coherent collective narrative or cause - more often a loose coming together of factions, each mobilising to defend their own interests or their own riff on a wider national theme. So students are busy blocking schools and universities right now not because the argue with the maths of the pension reforms (ie it is they who will have to pick up the tab for their parents if their parents don't work longer), but because they fear for the jobs they're not yet ready for (ie the longer old people work, the fewer the jobs for the young).

Paradoxically the French also have a grand tradition of sympathy striking, often by constituencies who have nothing to do with the original cause of the protest. So metalworkers will come out in support of teachers striking to cling onto their 13th week of summer holiday. How can Government tackle focused reform when protest spreads collaterally?

You might hope that cold, hard empirical evidence from other nations might inject a note of rationalism, but then the French are impressively schizophrenic when it comes to looking beyond their borders.

The country whose pioneering vision of the universal laws of man spawned the American constitution still believes (genuinely so) in carrying the torch for human rights across the globe. When Dominique de Villepin faced off to Colin Powell at the United Nations, he did so because history was on his side. But internationalism in France is basically a one-way street - somehow other nations have little to offer that the French are willing to acknowledge, learn from or emulate. Especially if they're "Anglo Saxon", a handy pejorative that used by the French left the way "liberal" is used by the American right - to dismiss other people's ideas out of hand because you reject the ideology that supposedly underpins them.

But perhaps the greatest barrier of all to change is psychological: the French's adolescent relationship with authority. Forgive the crude characterisation, but essentially Anglo-Saxon societies emphasise self-reliance, so the role of the state (broadly speaking) is to provide a basic set of universal services and benefits for all - while taking care (sadly rather less these days) of those who are less able to help themselves. By contrast, the French expect the state to take care of them, a culture of dependency that's so endemic that polls show that more graduates would prefer to work in the public sector than the private sector.

The French elected a reforming president who came to power on a platform of disruptive change, but have fought him every time he's tried to turn rhetoric into action. Somehow the French national psyche manages to juggle two apparently contradictory impulses - a yearning for the comforting embrace of the state's ample bosom with profound rejection of government's parental authority.

And beneath all of this is a profound malaise across French society about French identity in a globalising world, about the ability of sovereign nations to manage their own destinies in the face of macro-economic forces they can't control. And beneath all that a chronic, crippling fear of change that has ordinary people fighting to hang onto every hard-won privilege even as the state's coffers run dry.

Will history be kinder to the French than they are to themselves? Only time will tell.  

Courage to recruit difference

How often have I heard clients say they know within two minutes if someone is good for the job and then back it up with “and I’m not often wrong?” What they are really saying is “I know when I see my reflection”. And they are not often wrong - chances are they have been living with it for 30 years or more. We like people who are like us. Speak the same way. Behave in similar ways. Approach work in the ways we would.

Mistakenly leaders too often recruit their second-in-command on the basis of similarity. And that escalates to the point where it isn’t unusual to get an entire senior management team that resemble each other. They speak like each other, behave in similar ways and go about business in a familiar way.

What’s wrong with that? Well nothing if you want to continue being what you are and doing the same thing as you have always done as a business. But then not many businesses survive without recognising changing times and moving with changing markets.

The very best business leaders that I have met are secure in themselves enough to know that they can’t be everything for every purpose. They recognise the need for people who are different to themselves and who view the world differently. They have the courage to take an objective view of themselves and their management team. They understand that they need to manage different people in different ways.

With our help they can profile their team and identify exactly what is needed in a person to make it work to maximum efficiency. It isn’t expensive when you factor in the cost of getting it wrong. But then I don’t think cost is the deciding factor when it comes to recruiting the right person. I truly believe that the courage to recognise fully who you are and what makes you tick plays a large part in this.

Defining yourself by what you're not

Attended TAM London this weekend - essentially a TED for the emerging Skeptics movement.

Leading lights include(d) Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry, Tim Minchin, James Randi and Cory Doctorow plus other cult figures from the blogosphere.

Actually, calling it a movement is a bit of a misnomer. It's a lot looser than that. More like an embryonic Tea Party for people who hate the kind of people who are in the Tea Party - especially creationists.

Among the eclectic crowd at TAM were geeks, astrophysicists, militant atheists, magicians and satirists. Mainly bound by two things: 1) a common belief in the supremacy of empirical evidence over faith or conjecture, and 2) a loose coalition of pet hatreds - priests, intelligent design, homeopaths, chiropractors...

As the Skeptics movement gathers pace nationally and internationally, fuelled by social media and local gatherings such as Skeptics In The Pub, it seems there's a growing recognition of the need to define what Skeptics are, what they stand for and what they have in common - without constraining diversity or independence or (heaven forfend) becoming a "creed." 

Yet, as a detached observer, I was amazed to see how successive speakers who had no problem dissecting other people's ideas with razor-like precision struggled to articulate their own shared vision and principles.

And then it struck me. Revolutionary movements tend to define themselves most easily by what they're not, rather than by what they are. The very act and process of revolution is often a rejection of dominant or established thinking and practice. Rejection provides the necessary impetus to galvanise change and often brings with it an internal culture of anger, contempt or demonisation of the existing hegemony.

This is as true of society and politics (Judaism had idol-worship and Pharaoh, Christianity had Jews and Romans, the French had the bourgeoisie) as it is of business (Apple had Big Blue and Microsoft, Virgin had BA).

To give birth to new companies and movements, all this is fine - and possibly essential - as far as it goes. The trouble is it's not sustainable. You get - quite rapidly these days - to a point where you actually have to define yourself by what you are, not by what you're not. Long-term success depends on it, especially when you yourself become the new establishment and new rivals come gunning for you. The problem is it's so much harder to do.

Perhaps that explains why this weekend the Skeptics were skirting the essential questions about what Skepticism is (applied critical thinking, empiricism, humanistic rationalism?) or a potential set of Skeptical core principles or values - and instead having peripheral debates about tone and manner (like should we be polite or mocking when tackling adversaries?).

Perhaps religion has something to teach the Skeptics after all? Empirically speaking, that is.

Don't go zombie

Change-Agents get around London by tube like anyone else and this week our attention has been captured by Virgin Trains’ cross-track poster.

Virgin would like us to try their shiny new high speed trains to Manchester and presumably forget any previous unpleasant experience we may have had on one of their older slower models.

The poster demands instant attention in between Bakerloo Line trains and wastes no time in superfluous text. It’s even being backed up with a rather cool on-line game.

We liked the simplicity of the message: here’s a good reason to change the way you go to Manchester.

If you come with us, it implies, you can look like the President of the United States and have a whole carriage to yourself and your personal assistant.

Better still, you’ll stay well clear of the living dead who are littering the M6 in their gridlocked cars in what Dante would have immediately recognised as a highway to Hell.

Change is often like this. Although the metaphor isn’t particularly new, it’s apt enough in its recognition that many of us will cling to the familiar even when that routine has become outdated.

At Change-Agency, however, we don’t see those who are reluctant to change as the living dead.

For us, they’re important individuals whose experience has made them harder to convince and whose opinions and behaviour we need to understand if we are to design a change programme that really works for everyone – even those who are rather grey and frayed at the edges.

Change and Charities

These are challenging times for many of Britain's charities. Change is being driven by several convergent factors: market fragmentation as the number of charities continues to increase, reductions in public spending and the need to attain higher standards of accountability.

In many voluntary sector organisations, change simply means retrenchment. Where can we cut jobs? Which projects can't be funded any more? How do we scale down our ambitions?

For the more enlightened, change takes on a more positive aspect. Need isn't diminishing so how do we generate more revenue? How do we return from dependency on grants and contracts from the state and foundations to independence by raising our own funds and delivering our own mission rather than that of our donors?

Yesterday, I had the positive experience of facilitating a meeting between two successful organisations in the same sector to see if and how could they could achieve more together than they do apart. They weren't focused on cost saving - although there will be efficiencies over time - but on how they could improve their services and achieve greater impact.

It was refreshing to work with trustees who were prepared to focus on the interests of their beneficiaries rather than on preserving their own positions.

Merger and acquisition in the third sector can bring about considerable change for the better. If there's a shared vision and explicit common goals, merger can reduce overheads, accelerate learning, eliminate conflict and confusion, increase influence and improve effectiveness.

Helping bring about change in the community & voluntary sectors is what Change Agents do in their own time - voluntarily, of course.

Change begins with grazed knees

I met another agent for change last weekend. Not a Change Agent with initial capitals but the self-assured headmistress of a girl's secondary who is working for much needed changes in the way we educate our children.

Speaking at her school's Open Day for prospective parents, she expounded an educational philosophy based on the premise that each child was different and responded to different ways of teaching and different motivations. That's pretty similar to the approach we take as Change Agents when working with our corporate clients.

Even better was her attitude to risk. The head became quite animated when she talked about the school's unusually adventurous play area in which they had recently installed a zip wire through the trees. This is a school which encourages girls to climb the trees in the grounds and one where "they learn a lot through grazed knees."

This is progress. A few years ago, I visited a junior school where the head told me that, in an attempt to break out of excessive health and safety controls, the Local Authority had called for young children to be taught how to take risks in play. "The problem," he said, "is that they insist that we do it on a safety mat."

There's no progress without risk. We also encourage our clients to believe that grazed knees are alright.

Fit in or f**k off?

People working in corporate HR/OD/people roles are, in general, a touchy-feely bunch. Big on emotional intelligence, schooled in the dark arts of appreciative enquiry and intellectually curious about new theories and methods to get the best out of people. So how do they cope when tools designed to do good produce the opposite effect to what was intended?

Last week we met a prospect at a global financial services company and a throwaway remark he made got me thinking. “Sadly, we use Myers Briggs”, he said, “as a stick with which to beat people.” I took this to mean that people whose personal profile doesn’t fit the corporate profile (ESTJ) aren’t valued as much as those that do. Or worse, that deviation from the ideal is seen culturally as a defect rather than a natural and welcome function of human diversity.

Of course in theory, there’s no such thing as a “good” or “bad” profile - and HR professionals and their suppliers can’t stress that enough. But corporate cultures and leadership teams are very good at forgetting this technical health warning in determining what it takes to be “one of us.”

Our conversation reminded me of the most extreme example of the same phenomenon I ever encountered. Another financial services company whose (unofficial) HR policy was “fit in or f**k off”. (Forgive the asterisks – mine not theirs.)

The leadership team would joke about it, but the potential consequences were deadly serious – particularly if you were one of the 40% of people who were assumed (wrongly as we proved) to be unsuitable or incapable for the long haul. And this in an organisation that prided itself on people as a key differentiator both inside the organisation and externally with customers – and also boasted one of the grooviest People Directors I’ve ever met.

So back to my opening question, what do you do when corporate obsession with managing only what you can measure leads to misuse or abuse of tools that were originally designed to improve performance by recognising and embracing difference and diversity? How many HR professionals bump up against this tension in their daily lives? And what do they do about it - push back, roll over or look the other way?

All unchange

It’s curious how strategic plans rarely allow for the seismic changes that may profoundly affect an organisation. How many well-considered business plans envisaged sky-high energy prices, equity values that plummeted starkly before nervously beginning a slow revival, public ownership of great financial institutions or swathing cuts in public sector spending?

We lived through an exceptionally long and heady economic cycle and have now had two years to re-think our plans based on our experience of the past and best judgments for the future. We have worked through disruption and discontinuity and are picking our way through a new political and economic landscape.

So how come so many organisations still seem to have no better strategy that cutting costs or ‘keeping our heads down’? Why are short-term considerations still dominating corporate thinking when it’s pretty clear that short-termism played a major role in the events that fractured the markets and undermined the growth forecasts of nearly every western government?

The most common corporate reaction has been to slash and burn: cut costs and preserve the illusion of firm management and short-term profitability. This has been a time to let go of irreplaceable people, stop hiring bright grads, cut back on R&D and can the advertising. Counter-cycle theorists have failed to be heard despite a reasonable weight of evidence in their favour.

For many companies, drastic downsizing may have appeared to be the only choice although it would have been good if the marketers, HR managers, product developers and strategic planners had been given the opportunity to offer creative options to the strident calls for cuts from the finance department and, ironically, the bankers.

Now that most businesses have dealt in one way or another with short-term survival, this could be a good time to reconsider what needs to be done to achieve economic, social and environmental sustainability. This is certainly a great time to think about what makes your people tick and how to make the most of their capacity for growth.

We can wait for outside pressures to change the way we act or we can hope that the taxpayer has enough left spare cash to bail us out after paying his gas bill. Alternatively, we can use this time to drive positive change from within. This could be the time for companies to make the best of their human and physical assets to put themselves in control of change rather than at its mercy.

Not surprisingly, at Change Agency, change is our business. Low overheads, no debt and a wealth of talent have put us in good shape to help public, private and voluntary sector organisations to develop a positive agenda while others are still adjusting their tin helmets in the bunker or waiting for the spending review to do its worst.

Big Society: change for the better?

So what are we to believe: is David Cameron's 'Big Society' a big idea to change public life for the better - or just a sweetener to ease the bitterness of sweeping cuts in public spending?

Whether the Big Society is either or both, our new PM is undoubtedly an agent for change although clearly not a Change Agent ready to tackle the organisational challenges of companies and the voluntary sector.

The Big Society certainly responds well to the view of many of us that Britain has been over-regulated, over-governed and overwhelmed by kilometres of double-sided super adhesive red tape. It's an idea that appeals to localism, community building, individual responsibility and the roll-back of the nanny state.

As with all concepts in their early stage, the Big Society is still just an idea. Big on philosophy but rather small in terms of empirical evidence.

It's in its formative stage and no one, not even David Cameron or his bemused followers at Conference, have really any idea what it's going to mean in practice - except of course cuts in public spending.

The Big Society is unquestionably a significant driver for change that is going to present significant challenges and opportunities for every sector.

It should bring about a more entrepreneurial environment for business linked to an expectation that companies will make higher levels of contribution to the communities in which they buy, work and sell. It's also going to challenge severely companies who have depended on the state for volume and margin. They will need new markets and new ways of doing things.

The impact on the voluntary sector is going to be profound. Over the past decade or so, many non-governmental organisations have forgotten how to fundraise and have financed their rapid growth by becoming sub-contractors to the state. The Big Society calls out for social enterprise: a dynamic third sector and a growth in volunteering but without being very clear about where the money or the extra volunteers are coming from.

The times have been a changing since long before Bob Dylan turned the thought into a lyric but these next few years could be exceptional.

In all the uncertainty, we can be sure of this. Change will be difficult for many and disastrous for some - particularly those who sit and wait or those without the resources to think and act effectively for themselves. It will great for those in every sector who take the time to consider the possibilities, develop their options and make them happen.

If we can make it work, the Big Society could herald the Innovation Era. If we fail, recession will become a fond memory of gentler times.

Confessions of a reluctant blogger

For years I've been meaning to blog, but pulled back from the brink every time I've geared myself up to do it.

There are a whole bunch of conscious reasons for this. For example:

1) Analogue generational - for someone not reared on social media, it just didn't feel natural or intuitive.

2) Craft - the best of British over-education had taught me that written self-expression was supposed to be structured and meticulous, not free-form and spontaneous.

3) Absence of relationship - why reveal yourself to a potential audience of billions over whom you have no influence, when what you value is direct dialogue with people where the context is clear and shared?

4) Humility - why would anyone else be interested in yet another narcissistic exercise in vanity publishing?

5) Time - a scarce enough resource, without squandering it further.

Etc.

But what's been trickier to acknowledge or accept is a deeper underlying mechanism.

Blogging was something I felt I had to (professionally, socially, culturally - you name it), not something I wanted to do. The imperative to change my behaviour came from without - from a strange new world with new norms and dynamics that I hadn't signed up to - rather from within.

As we frequently advise our clients, change simply isn't sustainable if it is just an imposed response or reaction to an external stimulus - it also needs to take root and grow within in order to be felt, owned and authentic.

So here we are. Head says I'm up for it. Let's see if heart and habit follow...