|
Many important concepts start this way with believers pushing it, and some fall by the wayside while others thrive. In this case, the evidence in support of SC is strong enough that decision-makers with extensive responsibilities are embracing it, and are not unhappy with their results, but we don’t know how unhappy they’re not - or how happy they are. From the scientific view, we have to be sure that any improvements attributed to SC were not due to other factors. We have to either eliminate them, or somehow account for their contribution. We also need to understand it better so there can be some level of consistency in serious in-situ experiments by executives. Scientists ask – how much of any improvement is due expressly to the strategic conversation?
This is a question that has not been adequately asked or honestly answered of many performance improvement schemes. For example, how much of a ‘quality’ program is due to the nature of the program, and how much is due to the fact that it provides a framework of topics for participants to engage in conversation about. It’s the same with any of the popular frameworks, how much is the frame, and how much is because people operating within that frame have to talk? Does the important role of conversation explain why the same development frame can work in one organisation and not the one next door?
We already know from the famous ‘Hawthorn’ experiments that simply changing factory lighting levels up can increase production temporarily. The surprise came about when changing the lights down did exactly the same thing - increased production temporarily. Were there common elements? How much more complex is the answer then for a modern performance program that is far more invasive than tweaking lighting levels! How much of any change program is due to the component parts? And how much of our impression of success of such fads is due to us only hearing the success stories? Selective conversation. No one wants to admit failure. Where are the independent test results?
There are many developmental frameworks that are used in the hope of helping improve organisational performance: frameworks such as lean thinking, quality programs, balanced scorecard ©, business process reengineering and on the list goes. A truly interesting question to aks yourself, and of those who selected the framework, is “What scientific/strategic process was used to select the most appropriate frame?” Out of all the processes available for organisatiopnal development, how were the processes chosen? This is a nasty question because almost without exception the decision was made with due dlilgence. What was the decision process?. Then a follow-up nasty question is Would people further down in the organisation get away with making decisions (choices) in the same way?
The organisations development program is a highly strategic undertaking. So is the choice about just which development program to use. We have spent considerable resources setting operational activity standards and then conforming to them in the hope that they will improve the quality of processes, actions, and products. There are whole industries and armies of experts who help organisations aim for zero defects – a very honorable aim, and the framework and processes are well and truly developed. Two questions are summarised:
- Why do these programs work well in some entities and fail catastrophically in others. An example I frequently use is the (imaginery?) case of two Foundries. Imagine two Foundries in the same suburb, similar size, similar customers, and similar profitability. Under government pressure they commence programs to introduce quality standards. Because the foundries are remote from the big cities, they end up using the same consultants. One foundry thrives and uses the program to enhance business, while the other goes bankrupt and claims that the quality program required so much time, cost and effort that they took their eye off the real ball. Now imagine that you were invisible and could walk freely within the two firms without being seen. Imagine you could hear the sorts of conversations on the shop floor, at managers meetings, and in the executive group. How different do you think the conversations would be between the two foundries? What might be the differences in conversation qualities during planning?.
- What was the quality decision process that chose the quality program. How much trust and respect can be expected from operational staff forced to comply with quality procedures, when decision-makers do not examine their own processes. Strategic prowess should match operational expertise.
Furthermore, as an invisible voyeur of conversation, how early into any ‘change’ program do you think you might be able to predict failure?
----------------------------------------------------
There is an assumption by all the organisational development models and frames that the quality of conversation is a constant - a given. No part of any of the ‘fads’ explicitly addresses the issue of quality of communication. The programs provide templates and suggest output expectations, but they forget that people are part of it all. So if there is ever a change, what was the change really due to?
Even if an executive or manager sensed the missing link and wanted to fill the gap, the only commonly available educational / training programs that look to some extent into communication are those on ‘selling’ and ‘negotiation’. But in each case, opportunities for strategic thinking and conversation preceded the selling or negotiation event, so even these texts omit strategic conversation..
From within an organisation, the question “Why are we here?” is forgotten in the pressure of operational demands. Conversational expertise becomes restricted to efforts to sell and efforts to problem-solve, and the systems reward that behaviour.
In summary, when organisations feel pressure to change they typically use models to target organisational performance via reduced costs - and perhaps improved outputs. But those models don’t work by themselves – they all use conversation. What happens if we target the element common to all models?
Q.A. (leads to) conversation (leads to ) changed behaviours desired outcomesBalanced Scorecard © (leads to) conversation (leads to) changed behavioursBusiness Process Re-engineering (leads to) conversation (leads to) changed behaviours. (Note BPR is a bit different because some re-engineered processes may simply force people to behave differently, even without conversation. Same holds for ‘Lean Systems’.)
And on the list goes.
How important is the quality/nature of the conversation? The Foundries example and others you probably know of personally, suggests that conversational attributes are crucial to success.
So here are the 64 million-dollar questions.
- If quality of conversation is so crucial, how do we tell the difference between good and bad?
- What does high quality conversation sound like?
- What are its components?
- How will we measure and monitor it?
- Would that help if we could?
To put some valid rigour into finding out, we at Deltapoint decided to approach it from a scientific mindset (Refer Strategic Conversation Research). by working through university research procedures. There is no funding involved and no commercial expectation that may be suspected of having a potential to bias results. A number of panels of strategic thinkers were assembled and prompted to define ‘strategic conversation’ and describe its individual components. It was quite uncanny how each independent group followed a similar path to arrive at almost identical answers. Their starting question was “How do you know when a conversation is strategic?” They decided that we intuitively know when we hear administrative, social, waffle and other forms of conversation, but what is it that identifies ‘strategic conversation’
All groups arrived at a similar destination, and then later agreed with the construct derived from the combination of material generated by the panels with that from academic and practitioner journals. In other words, the concept of strategic conversation, the definition, and description of its component parts had good face validity. It passed a basic validity test.
The next validity test, that SC is indeed something that can be measured and is not really something else by another name, requires the development of a way to measure SC. But why bother with any of that unless it will be worthwhile. So – does SC matter? What use is it? Will it help in any way to understand SC better?
There are too many decision-makers who like SC, and too many case examples to ignore it. There seems to be some merit in it. Besides - there’s something about putting those two words together ‘strategic’ and ‘conversation’ that captures the imagination.
Top Home
If we agree that SC is a valid concept, is it worth looking into? Will it pay off?
- Have you ever been to an important meeting that lost its way?
- Have you ever attended a meeting where people were too afraid to contribute?
- Have you ever been wrong in a business decision? (One that you later assess as silly)
- Can you tell the difference between a group that gets things done, and one that falters?
- Are you personally where you wanted to be by now?
- Is your organisation where you wanted it to be by now?
- Is your family everything you wanted it to become?
- Is your community everything it could be by now?
- Why not?
- Would SC a long time ago have helped?
- Is it too late to start?
The scientific approach
To show that SC pays off we must demonstrate that it delivers something that’s wanted. There is strong evidence that higher levels of SC will relate to better performance. Some evidence is in the form of case histories, and some may not even use the term ‘strategic conversation’, but when you read the case material, it is clearly support for SC. One prominent example is Ricardo Semmler whose two books ‘Maverick’ and ‘The 7 day weekend’ describe how setting up a climate in which people can grow and are encouraged to challenge any decisions, is a process that develops strategic conversation widely throughout the organisation. He credits his employees’ decisions with developing the firm from 350 employees in the mid-eighties to 3,000 by 2001, and growing at nearly 40% annually.
However, no studies have yet attempted to isolate the contribution of SC. Since the majority of performance improvement systems seem to have similar outcome expectations, and since conversation is the only truly common component, the question could be restated “ is all the change due to SC?” Maybe the development frames actually get in the way and limit the potential effectiveness of SC! For example, the ‘quality’ frame concentrates on quality issues – but what about all the other strategically important topics! What might happen if SC is unleashed but unencumbered by the topic limitation of frames? Ricardo Semmler did not use a frame.
On more scientific grounds, SC has been strongly linked with goal alignment, financial performance, risk tolerance, adaptability, values, flexibility, strategic awareness – and more.
Typically, organisations are concerned with performance improvements as measured by such things as efficiency, effectiveness, profit, production, staff turnover, absenteeism and so on. Some of these improvements can be approached in a mechanical or structural way that facilitates the desired outcome, but ultimately unless all the work is done by robots, success comes down to human behaviour. Organisational changes therefore usually involve changes in human behaviour. Will frames help us change human behaviour?
To understand our options as we ponder these questions about changing human behaviour, we can learn from experts whose profession is entirely focused on changing human behaviour - psychologists. Psychologists have historically relied upon ‘styles’ of conversation dictated by models of therapy to help change behaviour. In each psychological model, conversation is an important part. In clinical work, examples of the models are:
- Psychodynamic analysis leads to conversation leads to behavioural changes
- Behavioural therapy leads to conversation leads to behavioural changes
- Cognitive therapy leads to conversation leads to behavioural changes
With conversation as the common component, and because each model works about equally well, some clever researchers decided to find out whether the therapy model even mattered. In other words, is success in changing human behaviour due more the conversation than the reference model?
They found that there is a direct link between conversation and behaviour change, and the choice of therapy model was less important than the communication skills of the practitioner. In other words, there is a direct and important link between conversation and outcome:
Conversation leads to behaviour change.
The therapeutic models merely help guide the conversation. So if psychologists have been attentive enough to examine their tools, what about the same exploration into tools for behavioural change in organisations? Is the quality of strategic conversation independently important in any organisational ‘change’ program? Does the conversation have a power of its own? Do you even need a frame or a model to facilitate change?
To find out how effective conversation is, first you have to be able to measure it. You need a way to link a measure of SC with a measure of the intended outcome. If we elevate SC, will there be a related change in something? How do you find that out?
The practical and logic approach
Organisational goals have already been mentioned as including effectiveness and efficiency – amongst others. Will strategic conversation impact goals? Well by definition, if you are talking about such things in a way that is intended to generate action, then it is strategic conversation. The question then becomes one of quality of conversation. Both the foundries in the case study may have engaged in what sounded like SC. Yet we know that some organisations crash while others thrive in the same set of conditions. So what else do we need to know about SC to be able to detect the fault in conversation that leads to failures.
It’s time to refine what we mean by SC. Strategic Conversation is about the methodological and systematic communication that is intended to produce action that leads to a better competitive position than previously held. It’s the ‘competitive advantage’ that makes it strategic. Just playing ‘catch up’ and ‘follow the leader’ is not much of a strategy. This understanding accepts that in a highly competitive environment, it may conceivably require developed strategic prowess just to stay level with the other players – although there will usually remain specific areas of strategic advantage. In world class sport there can only be one winner, and the performance difference between first and last may be miniscule. We accept that those who come in the top 10 are up there at the top, and any one may well be the winner next year. Failing to be top dog does not mean strategy failure, but failing to have strategies means accepting mediocrity – you’re not even in the race. Assuming you are into sports, how do you arrive at those strategies? Well, you probably converse with someone. Perhaps a trainer/coach?
So let’s say that your orgainsation is in the game, and that you have excellent strategies, but they fail. We always come last. If implementation of strategy is the persistent weakness in the organisation, then what topic of strategic conversation could be more relevant than the need to address that weakness as a goal. The ‘means’ (usually seen as ‘internal’ and ‘efficiency’) is as important as the ‘ends’ (often measured as ‘external’ and ‘effectiveness’ [goal/target]). Swimmers have strategies about how they will adjust speed and where to position themselves during the race with the ‘ends’ in mind. They also need to pay attention to the implementation, and spend considerable time refining strokes and other ‘means’ issues.
Efficiency
In addressing this potential strategic advantage, conversation about efficiency is strategic if it gets done with precision and quality, and in such a way that the lower production costs lead to attracting and keeping more (effective) stakeholders – be they customers, investors, skilled employees, or better suppliers. Customers might be attracted by quality, convenience, and price – the organisation needs to know. Investors may be attracted by high returns, stability, reliability, and ease to buy and sell the share – the organisation needs to know. Skilled employees are attracted by… – the organisation needs to know.
Conversation about goals that deliberately attend efficiency issues, will be strategic only if it leads to action - or a deliberate decision to not act. The quality of that conversation will be influenced by such thing as conditions (trust, openness), skills of those present (interpersonal skills, language, the topic), leadership (style that suits the context), and whether there is a system for processing such conversations through to completions and evaluation.
Effectiveness
This potential strategic advantage is a complex topic but requires the organisation to provide exactly what is wanted, more accurately than does the competition. We’ve all purchased something that turned out be ineffective, and may have subsequently boycotted that supplier. Effectiveness is an accurate match between expectations and delivery. Over-delivery may improve satisfaction, but how much is too much – when do extra costs exceed benefits. How do we decide that?
An example of effectiveness is seen in the endeavours to increase revenue of organisations. To increase revenue they can
- increase the number of customers (having more goods that are more wanted by more people, and being more accessible)
- increase the number of revenue visits per customer (lift service focus against mere sales.)
- increase the revenue per visit of each customer (all those tricks that are based around standard up-sell, on-sell, higher price per item, impulse buying, more items per visit.).
All conversations that arrive at decisions that cause actions to achieve these ‘effectiveness’ goals are strategic conversations.
Differentiation
This strategy describes the varying ways that businesses need to able to respond in a rapidly changing environment. Traditional strategic advantages still remain relevant, since competitiveness will always rest on such things as location, price advantage, or differentiation. If you’re the only hamburger shop in a town of hungry people, then you get all the business. If you’re the cheapest, you’ll attract the price-shoppers. But what if there are many competitors and you can’t afford to be the cheapest? In this case, you must differentiate, and give a different reason for people to come to you - something other than price or location. So if differentiation is an aim, how do you differentiate these days. Technology won’t help you any more because every competitor has the same technology. Just about every form of previous differentiation has been neutralised, and many new forms of differentiation are easily copied. If you deliver – so will they if it works for you. If you add value – so will they.
However, one differentiator that is being increasingly promoted and is difficult to copy is the advantage offered by the collective brainpower and goodwill of all the individuals in the organisation – not just the executive. To tap into that total brainpower requires conversation of a kind that allows 1 + 1 to = 3. That doesn’t mean decision-making by committee, nor does it mean dumping of accountabilities and responsibilities while you pass the buck. If anything, it lifts the accountabilities and responsibilities in each person.
How do you get this form of differentiation?
By providing the climate and encouragement for strategic conversation throughout the organisation. As one member of a strategic group cites as a motto in his organisation “No one has a monopoly on ideas.” – and - “challenge what we ask you to do.”
Top Home
Conversation
Gerber in the ‘E-Myth’ claims that when a person decides to go into business, it requires that for some part of the day he or she stops being a plumber or accountant or computer programmer, and becomes a business-person. In other words, in addition to being a professional at the trade or other skill offered, the individual (even in a partnership etc) must be a professional business person. The language of business is different to the language of the skill, but is the same as all the other business people. OK, so just what language is that? Well there's administrative, compliance, and sales for a start, but what about the language that is used when the topic is about making the business more successful. That’s a strategic language, and it’s very different to all the other languages. It’s a language that has it’s own form, and it requires its own skill development. It’s an exciting language because it’s all about the possibilities. To speak fluent SC you need to understand it just as thoroughly as you do the administrative, compliance, or technical languages. In other words, there needs to be a balance of attention you give to all these languages. Gerber calls it the difference between working IN your business and working ON your business. He says that most people are too busy working IN the business to work ON it. In SC-speak, it means that most people talk operationally or technically and not enough strategically.
It’s easy to know when you slip up on compliance, because you end up paying fines or land in jail. It’s easy to know when your technical skills fail, because you have no customers. But SC is rubbery because you can survive without it – for a while. You may think you don’t need it, and there are always other priorities that are momentarily more important. It’s just so common in businesses - huge and tiny – there are many fires to put out. I’m too busy to be clever! But when you truly need a great strategic idea, it’s too late to look for one, so when should you do it?. If you can’t even speak the lingo, you’re lost. Ideally there should be several strategic ideas in the pipeline, at various stages of gestation and development at any one time. So thrive-ability in a competitive environment requires that you understand SC in a way that allows you to instantly identify it, use it, improve it, and by constantly refine your own understanding of what it is. You need to know its uses and its limitations, the energy resources that it warrants – and so on. There is no doubt a point where we say ‘too much SC and not enough DOING. But the need for quality of SC is never in doubt (Let’s face it, too much SC is theoretically impossible since ‘not enough action’ would become a strategic topic)..
If you have been in business for twenty years and see no reason to change anything, you may be right. If you are still in business then something’s working for you and maybe learning SC would be a waste of effort. But if you’re reading this, then either you have professional or academic interest, or there are some important questions bugging you - strategic questions that could be clarified, simplified, and actioned with help from SC.
So let’s say that you believe that things could be better – more strategic, and that you accept that SC has merit, and that you want to develop this capability for SC to the highest level necessary. It means that you believe that SC will pay dividends. So far, that’s a strategic thought, so imagine that it becomes a strategic goal to develop optimal strategic conversation. How do you action that? How do you know where to start? How do you monitor your progress so it avoids wasting time? And how will you monitor the performance of your changing SC? SC without assessment of its results, is not SC.at all.
Isn’t it interesting that SC is the only development process (including fads) where an important part of it is to look critically at itself – “how are we going in this – could our SC process be better?” There is no conventional ‘fad’ or model or frame that includes such self-critique as part of the process.
You must be able to measure it – to monitor progress, and link it to resultant improvements.
Transferability
There is one other aspect of SC that is most valuable – its transferability. SC is a skill and knowledge you can take anywhere. If you explore it and get to understand it at work, it also works in any group setting where there is a group purpose. In other words, a social or community service group will benefit from your input, as can your family. When you think about the purpose of a family unit, it changes as its members grow older and develop. Because purpose changes, so do goals. To help adjust to these changes, might it help to be able to have low conflict and high dialogue quality within the family? Would it help if everyone knew and agreed with the goals of the family and ‘how we will get there’? Family therapists tell us that many family problems are due to poor communication, and it’s even a problem in those families whose members credit themselves with good communication skills elsewhere. What would happen if you could talk to a parent or brother or sister like you do to a trusted friend? Some families can.
The individual, family, and national pay-off for better quality conversation at home is HUGE.
Top
If SC is valid & associated with distinct advantages, why measure it?
Reason 1 – efficient learning – just the missing bits
Assume that we decide to improve our organisational/family/community/self SC - can we improve it without measuring? Probably – but it would be hit and miss with wasted resources. Would you like them to start tumor surgery on your brain without finding out which bits to remove? If you decide to go back to college/university do some more study, will you repeat what you’ve done, or perhaps tackle something so advanced that you have no chance of succeeding? Development of organisation or person is all about ‘gap analysis’ – what I want or need compared to what I have. But how do you know what you have unless you measure it?
Who was it who said “What gets measured gets done”?
Reason 2 – to link SC with outcomes – ‘what works?’
How much direct impact will result simply from improving strategic conversation?
We can’t answer that question very well unless we know how to isolate/identify components of strategic conversation, can measure them, and work out how to improve poorly performing components. Then we can measure before and after on both SC and the expected goals.
Reason 3 – recognise and score on SC components
Maybe parts of our existing SC are good. Maybe certain aspects of our SC are so poor they drag down the potential contribution of the SC bits that we do well. How do we know? How do we identify those bits to improve? We can know only by measurement that allows us to target training.
Reason 4 – how much is too much?
Given the understanding we now have of strategic conversation, it can’t fail in itself, but quality and quantity of conversation devoted to a topic is highly variable. How much is enough? Can there be too much? How good do we need to be? Who amongst us needs to know this stuff so that our goals can be reached? How do we know how much we are already doing? How do we know how good we are? So if strategic conversation can’t fail, why aren’t we where wanted to be? Or didn’t we have an idea about where we wanted to be?
Top
If we measure it, do we look at the whole organisation, parts of it, or at individuals?
In thinking about SC, why not include the community and the nation! After all, the organisation is not performing in a vacuum. The organisation is part of a trading and a probably also a social community, and they have the potential to benefit from strategic conversation. It is unarguably better to be trading within a vigorous and successful environment rather than one that is poor. By the same logic, the family is part of a community, and it is better for a family to live within a safe and successful community. In other words, your increasing KSA (knowledge, skill, attitude) of strategic conversation is a valuable resource that is worth sharing around. You can do it by example, by workshop, and by opportunistic explanation - by stealth or frontal assault – evolution or revolution.
So which part of an organisation or family or community will you measure? Maybe the choice is not yours. Work out a plan by all means, but perhaps the best strategic option is to first set the climate for it to happen, which means engaging in strategic conversation about SC. Only when ‘they’ want what it offers will they want to engage in it. Any person to be measured has to want to, or the response sheet is a lie.
Top
Is this just another FAD that supports yet another industry of expensive experts?
No one can ‘own’ strategic conversation. Sure, there will be experts and it may be worthwhile to get that kind of help in getting SC rolling in an organisation at the beginning. One thing is certain though, that if the organisation is honest and approaches SC with a high moral and ethical standard that most people want to identify with and be part of, then the organisations members will rapidly become its own SC experts. You may need help while learning the language, hold you up while you wobble a bit, but just like any other language, it’s possible to learn by tapes and CD’s, but better with a teacher.
What FADs do differently to SC:
- There are no FADs that aim to make their experts redundant. On the other hand, SC develops the expertise in-house. Any expert aim is to become redundant.
- There are no FADs that are inexpensive. SC costs only time - perhaps some help at the beginning..
- There are no FADs that are focused on the ‘human’ side of strategic performance, and therefore become naturally transferable to any social setting. SC does. SC is as much at home in the family as at work.
- There are no FADs that recognise that humans want to work and do well and grow and feel good about what they do and where they work. SC does
There are many interesting examples of SC where simply telling employees where the organisation wanted to go, and giving them headroom, was enough to unleash enormous brainpower and action. SC is not a FAD. We already do it to some extent – but not as well as we could if we understood it better, and set about improving it, and removed the obstacles.
Top Home
|
