Nellie the elephant

Greetings.

As spring time fast approaches, Cicero would like to give you all fair warning, especially those of you who live and work in Londinium.

It is now only going to be a matter of days before Cicero will be travelling back and forth to his VTSSB with legs bare and on display looking as always like two sticks of celery poking through a paper bag. For as the crocuses start to appear so do my legs. You can decide which is the prettier sight.

Now do you work in BA? Hopefully not. Or in an organisation which is dealing with change? Of course you do. Are you required to help the business lead its people through the change curve? Of course you are. Do you need some thinking to help? Of course you will.

Well help is at hand but only if we can learn to think a wee bit differently.

As people we think about things both rationally and emotionally. Cicero knows that he should stop eating chocolate to stay slim but there’s an emotional side of the brain, and even Cicero has an emotional side to his brain, that says he just loves chocolate and must have some to gobble.

Now imagine a rider sitting atop an elephant who, for the purposes of this story, we shall call Nellie. The elephant rider represents our rational, analytical side. The rider will determine the direction he wants to go and will set off in that direction. But it’s Nellie, the emotional side, that will provide the power and in any battle of wills it is Nellie who will win. And this is why Cicero loves to eat chocolate. And why BA is in such a mess.

If we take this analogy to its natural conclusion and if we want to achieve change in either our personal or our corporate lives we need to align both sides of the brain-we must point out the direction for the rider and the path to follow but we also motivate Nellie to undertake the journey. It is not enough for our people to understand intellectually that our business must start to move in a different strategic direction. People need to be motivated to move in that direction.

Consider BA at the moment. Their people will understand rationally that their business needs to change if it’s to survive but they are not being motivated or engaged emotionally to support their Head Honchos. At BA Nellie is well in truly in charge. Of course this is very apt for a business whose business is jumbos!

It is now time to stop rolling out change initiatives via 100 slide PowerPoint deck analyzing reasons for change. It is time to help our people believe that they are the kind of people who can successfully make that change. This is what can help encourage Nellie to change direction.

So where should we look to help Nellie find the encouragement and inspiration she needs?

The usual approach, and this is approach favoured by BA, is to try to change by telling our people we should be like someone else and adopt their practices. We tell our people we should be more like Tesco or Apple or Nike. This is garbage. Cicero never liked it when his sainted mother told him to be more like his brother. So why should this approach work for our people? Why will this work for Nellie?

Instead we should be looking for bright spots within our own business. We shouldn’t be trying to encourage our people to be more like anyone else. This does not work. Instead we should try to be more like ourselves at our best. We should be focussing Nellie’s attentions not on anyone else but about what she has done in the past or doing great now that has worked tremendously well and use this to give Nellie the power we need to go in the direction we want her to go.

Maybe BA should be reading this to help get their Nellie going in right direction. And everyone else get away for Easter.

In any business the only constant is change. Any good leader requires the ability to handle and deliver change. To do this successfully we must pay attention to creating the emotional and rational case for change. We need to scale up bright spot successes. And we must use our power as a top leader to smooth the path to change and help our people step up to the plate. It is up to us to learn how to drive Nellie the elephant in the direction we want to go. Over to you.

Is it only me……but surely there are more important things going on in the world?

These are tough and challenging times both domestically and abroad.

At home we are in the grip of a pre-election febrility. As a nation we are living well beyond our means which means our economy is a mess. People continue to lose their jobs even though we are being assured that green shoots are appearing. And Cheryl and Ashley’s marriage is in trouble.

Abroad we are nowhere nearer getting Afghanistan and Iraq sorted and our brave fighting boys (and no this is not state sponsored violence!) continue to lose their lives and body parts to help build Mr Blair’s political legacy. Peoples' lives in Haiti and Chile remain as shattered as their country. And poverty remains rampant in Africa and the Indian sub-continent.

These are indeed difficult and dangerous times.

And yet what was the lead news item on our State broadcasting organisation earlier in the week…….wait for it……..are you ready for this?............the news that a certain Mr David Beckham,32, had ruptured his Achilles tendon. Come on, is this really the most important thing going on in the world? Why does this warrant leading the news? Cicero bruised his arm upper arm last week, why was this not covered?

Now it might only be me but does anyone really care? Clearly the rupture of an Achilles tendon is going to be painful for said Mr Beckham and his inability to drive the kids to school or to pop out to the local Aldi with Mrs Beckham for the weekly shop might cause some disruption to the smooth running of the Beckham household, but does it matter to anyone else?

So why did the BBC make this the lead news item across all its news channels with lots and lots of talking heads of doctors telling us all about the Achilles tendon. No doubt it is something to do with the cult of celebrity and the relentless dumping down of our state media.

The Reithian role of the BBC was to educate and inform. Please get back to it. Unless of course this is being used as an excuse to provide the masses with an anatomy lesson. Maybe that’s it. This time we know all the Achilles. The last two World Cups taught us that the Metarsals were not Greek islands. Maybe it is Cicero who is being thick here. Doubt it. But what do you think?

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.