Tag Archives: culture

Schools and Universities are NOT Businesses

Simon Sinek clearly articulates the power of purpose in his book Start With Why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action . He explains that when you understand Why you do what you do, then you have more power to take actions that are consistent with living your purpose.

When you start with why, people follow leaders for themselves. They do not follow leaders for their leaders.

Question Mark SkyWhat is the purpose of our schools and universities? Do they exist to make money? Is that their purpose?

Or do they exist to help children and adults learn how to learn so that they can contribute to creating a better world to live in?

Imagine a school whose purpose was to make money. Business people would be invited on to the school board and no doubt astute business decisions would be made to make sure that the school did indeed make money. Intuitively, what do you think that school would be like to go to? Sure, there would be talented teachers there. But would a talented teacher be 100% engaged with the idea that what they were doing was first about making money? Yes they would receive a nice pay-cheque, but would that make that teacher fully engaged with why the school existed?

What is your intuitive response to this scenario?

Imagine, on the other hand, a school whose purpose was to help children to learn how to learn so that they could contribute to creating a better world. Imagine that same talented teacher working in that school. Intuitively, how engaged with the school do you imagine that teacher would be?

Which of these two teachers would be more likely to go above and beyond the call of duty on a regular basis because of the purpose of their school? The one whose actions will help the school make more money, or the one whose actions will help children learn how to learn so that they can contribute to creating a better world?

If you are reading that I am suggesting that business people should not be on school or university councils then that is not what I am suggesting.

Schools and universities need to be rigorous in their financial practices and learn from the business community about how to make the best use of their money. But the reason for using business principles should always be in the context of serving the purpose of education. Education should not be used as the context for serving the purpose of making money.

Schools and universities require soul and a sense of belonging. The purpose of education must always drive their use of business principles, else they risk serving the wrong purpose and will diminish the education experience of the children and adults they serve.

Based on your experience, what is the purpose of your school or university?

You can view Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk here.

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented professionals to move Beyond Being Good.

Two Types of Errors

There are two types of errors that we make. The first type is public and can be easily reviewed.

The second type is not obvious and are not easily reviewed so they are nicely tucked away ‘under the carpet‘.

Gary Ryan, Yes For SuccessThe first type is errors of ‘commission‘. These are errors when we do something that should not have been done. We plan poorly. We execute poorly. We review poorly.

Good operators review these errors and make adjustments so that they do not happen again. They learn.

The second type is errors of ‘omission‘. These are errors when you don’t do something that you should do. You don’t call-out unacceptable behaviour. You don’t speak up at a meeting when you ‘know‘ that the decision that has just been made is going to fail. You see an opportunity to improve yourself but you let it slip by.

Please note that errors of omission are not errors that you judge in hindsight. They are errors caused by not taking action that you knew you could have taken at the time the error occurred.

Errors of omission are just as important as errors of commission to review. If you keep repeating the same errors of omission then you will reduce your capacity to learn and to become the very best that you can be.

Asking yourself, your team or your organisation to identify actions that you knew you had the opportunity to take but you didn’t take provides an opportunity to review the thinking that stopped you from taking the action when the time was ‘right’. Exploring these examples will provide you with real learning that will better position you the next time similar situations arise.

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented professionals to move Beyond Being Good.

Control your development

On the surface it may seem a little odd that I am suggesting that you should maintain 100% control over your personal and professional development.

running person on white background. Isolated 3D imageThe reality is that too many people hand over the responsibility for their development to their employer. They have a parent-child view of their relationship. Their employer ‘the parent’, will look after them and make sure they are properly developed.

The problem here is two-fold.

1. What if the employer doesn’t develop you? and

2. What if they don’t develop you properly?

The answer to both of these questions is that you suffer. No doubt the organisation will suffer too, but the organisation can get rid of you and then you really suffer. The risks associated with handing over 100% of the responsibility for your development are far too high. Yet that is exactly what most employees do.

Even if your employer is a ‘good‘ employer and provides lots of opportunities for you to develop, be prepared to go outside your organisation to develop the things that you need to develop. Be prepared to invest in your development. Treat the opportunities that your ‘good’ employer provides as a bonus.

This way you’ll continue to develop your talents and you will continue to be the best that you can be. Your talent won’t be at risk of being reduced over time.

Not developing your talents is guaranteed to cut your employability and long-term security. Not an outcome you want!

What I find interesting is that I spend about 30% of my time working with talented undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD university students. These students give of their time to get access to the various development programs that I facilitate. They don’t have to attend these programs. They are in control of their development.

Yet when they get a job, these very same students then hand 100% of the responsibility for their development over to their employer. It sounds crazy because it is!

My message is simple. Maintain control over your development.  Forever. Period.

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented professionals to move Beyond Being Good.

Focus on where you are going

One of my hobbies is motorcycle riding. No doubt it is a dangerous past time. A secret to safe and effective motorcycle riding is to focus on where you are going. Motorcycles ‘go’ wherever the rider is looking.

This doesn’t mean that you should ignore everything else. Quite the contrary. In fact, as much is reasonably possible, when on a motorcycle you must be as aware as possible of everything 360 degrees around you. You have to know that there is a bus coming at you from your left. You have to see the car recklessly changing lanes in your rear vision mirrors. You have to see the parked car that is just about to move away from the kerb.

Photo by David Collopy - Photfit
Photo by David Collopy – Photofit

You must be fully aware of the dangers around you. However, you must not focus on them. If you focus on the dangers your motorcycle will go toward them which is not an outcome you want.

For me riding my motorcycle provides a real and genuine metaphor for life. In my life I must maintain focus on where I am going, while being aware of the dangers around me and taking evasive action as required to steer clear of them so that I can stay on track to where I want to go.

Too often people get focussed on what they don’t want and by doing so they draw it into their lives. Poor relationships. Poor bosses. Never having enough money. Being overweight. This list could go on. By focusing on what you don’t want you bring it to life and actually create it.

Traveling the journey of life requires that you maintain focus on where you want to go, all the while maintaining awareness of what is going on around you. When danger comes, take evasive action and focus on where you need to be to get away from that danger.

This simple principle will help you to create more life balance and personal success. Keep it in mind the next time something negative draws your attention. Maintain the discipline to stay focussed on what you really want.

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented professionals to move Beyond Being Good.

To trust means that you are okay with being vulnerable

I am fortunate that my work provides me with countless opportunities to work with teams. One of the activities that I enjoy facilitating is asking the participants to form small groups and to name the characteristics of the effective and ineffective teams of which they have been members.

Examples can come from any team experience and I encourage participants to broaden their thinking about their definition of a ‘team’. Some examples of this definition include:

  • A workplace
  • A family
  • A university study group
  • A sporting team
  • A community group
  • Traveling with friends or family

After providing the participants with enough time to share their stories, I collect the results.

An interesting characteristic that always comes up for effective teams is trust. Similarly, a lack of trust is always raised as a characteristic of ineffective teams.

Trust. Easy to say. Hard to give.

Why? It is my view that trust involves a willingness to be vulnerable. In a team environment, to trust your team members means that you have faith that they will do what they say they will do to the best of their ability. When I ask program participants to describe what it was like to be trusted, they say things like:

“He never looked over my shoulder. Even though it was the first time I was doing this task, he asked if I needed any further help and I said that I didn’t. He told me that I could contact him at any stage if my circumstances changed. If I were him I’m not sure that I could have trusted me like he did. And that was special. I think I actually did the job better because I was trusted. I found it really motivating.”

“She was the leader, there was no question about that. But when we allocated tasks and she was clear that we understood what needed to be done, she let us ‘go for it’. Her door was always open and we knew that, and from time to time we would go to her for help, either physically or via email or on the phone. She was always available when we needed her. But she never, ever behaved like she didn’t trust us. It never felt like she was looking over our shoulder making sure we did it exactly how she would. And this was an important project. And we knew that, and we respected that. That’s why we created such a wonderful result. We were a real team and she trusted us!”

You can’t fake trust. It is either genuine, or it isn’t. In today’s complex world it is nearly impossible to ‘go it alone’. Leaders have to trust their team members to do their job, even if the leader could do parts of the job ‘better’ on their own.

To trust, however, requires the leader to be okay with being vulnerable. Trust can’t be broken if it isn’t given. Genuinely trusting someone means that you are prepared for the possibility that they might break your trust, which in turn makes you vulnerable.

In our world of accountability and responsibility, trust can become very hard to ‘give’. If I’m the leader, the ‘buck stops with me.’ If this project fails, then it’s my fault.

Trust is complex, isn’t it!

I doubt there is any golden rule with regard to trust. I am a trusting person, but I am not prepared to trust ‘just anyone‘. I use all my ‘three brains’ (I’ll explain what that term means in a future article) to decide whether I will trust someone or not.

Each time I trust someone I am conscious of the choice that I have just made. Trust is behavioural, so saying, “I trust you” means nothing, if all I do is look over your shoulder every step of the way. Being prepared to be vulnerable is a tension leaders have to grapple with.

Are you prepared to be vulnerable?

What are your experiences of trust both as a team member and as a leader?

How have you managed the ‘vulnerability‘ tension?

The chances are that if trust is not present in the right circumstances, then high performance is unlikely.

What is the bigger risk; the preparedness to be vulnerable and to risk achieving high performance or the preparedness to be ‘safe’ and therefore achieve under-performance?

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented professionals to move Beyond Being Good.

 

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In business some things are just plain wrong

It turns out that something far more profound than my birth occurred in 1968.

My wife and I recently viewed a film called, Made in Dagenham. The film tells the story about 187 female machinists who went on a three-week strike at the Ford factory in Dagenham, England. Initially the women were outraged that they had been classified under a waMade in Dagenhamge review as ‘unskilled’, and became more indignant when they became acutely aware of the difference in classification and wages between themselves and men doing exactly the same work.

What I found fascinating about the film and my research was that the women, led by Eileen Pullan were not skilled negotiators. They had to defend their actions within the union movement itself (largely run by men) the factory (which employed nearly 40,000 men) and their community. Their strike quickly shut down the entire Dagenham operation ‘laying off’ thousands and thousands of workers.

They stuck to their principles because the behaviour of management, while generally accepted at the time, was just plain wrong. The same level of work should receive the same level of pay irrespective of gender.

Despite the enormous pressure to return to work (including from some of the women’s husbands who had been laid off) the women stuck to their principles and only returned once a guarantee for equal pay had been established and brokered by Barbara Castle, then the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity. At the time the Secretary’s direct intervention with the women was a breach of normal protocols.

As a result of the strike the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1970, leading the way for equal pay for women throughout the Western World.

The story and its impact highlighted for me that some business practices and/or behaviours of management are just plain wrong and need to be treated as such. The courage of the Dagenham women highlights how a single-minded approach to ‘righting wrongs’ even in the most lopsided of ‘fights’ can and does result in positive change.

It would be inaccurate of me to suggest that equal pay for women is now a non issue. Quite simply it isn’t. But the Dagenham Strike started the ball rolling in a positive direction.

I recommend watching the movie, not just from an entertainment perspective but from a historical one as well.

Finally, what ‘wrongs’ need to be ‘righted’ in your organisation?

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented professionals to move Beyond Being Good.

Life’s journey teaches values

Mike Sheahan’s Open Mike interview with former Brisbane Lion’s coach and three-time premiership player Michael Voss provided a clear insight to the relationship between personal values and workplace decisions.

Sheahan queried Voss about his fallout with former teammate Daniel Bradshaw who left the Brisbane Lions at the end of the 2010 season. Voss shared that he had spoken with Bradshaw on a Tuesday at the end of the season and informed him that there wasn’t any truth in the speculation that Brisbane was making a deal to include Bradshaw in a trade to Carlton so that Brendan Fevola could be recruited to Brisbane. Three days later Voss said that he called Bradshaw to tell him that things had changed and that he was in fact, being considered as part of the deal for Fevola.

Gary RyanBradshaw then left the Brisbane Lions on his own terms and moved to the Sydney Swans. Voss admitted that he had lost his friendship with Bradshaw as a result of the process and that he felt that something wasn’t quite right with the change in the club’s position about Bradshaw over a three-day period. Voss also revealed that despite not feeling right about what was happening he contacted Bradshaw and spoke with him about what had happened and their relationship deteriorated from that point.

The big lesson for Voss was that the experience highlighted the importance of staying true to his values and as such he became a far more values based coach after that experience.

This example highlights that life’s journey will place you in positions where you need to make values based decisions. While this example involves an elite sport ‘workplace’ it is a workplace none the less. You too will face values based challenges in your workplace.

A challenge is that you may not really know what your values are to help you in such circumstances. From my perspective, you never stop learning about your values and even if you do know them, life will continue to offer you opportunities to understand them at a deeper and deeper level.

If you are not clear about your values then one way to gain a better understanding of them is to reflect on the way you feel about the outcome of your decisions or actions on an issue that has been a dilemma for you. How you feel will ‘tell’ you whether your actions were aligned with your values or not. As an example Voss said that his actions didn’t ‘sit well‘ with him and he felt that somehow he ‘…hadn’t done the right thing‘.

None of us are perfect. In an ideal world you would have absolute clarity about your values so that any workplace scenario that confronted you could be easily navigated by your values. But sometime your values won’t have been truly tested to see how important to you they are. It is the result of being tested where you really discover what your values mean to you and how you can use them throughout your career.

On this occasion Voss admitted that he got it wrong and I applaud him for his courage and honesty. The important thing to do is to learn from these experiences. You are no different. Use life’s journey to help you to clarify what your values are and then use them to guide your behaviour at work. You will find that will go home each night feeling more calm and satisfied with your behaviour as a leader despite the challenges that work can throw at you.

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented professionals to move Beyond Being Good.

Chaos and order ARE the natural order of things

Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus of VISA International, arguably the most profitable organisation in the world, explains in his book One From Many, that chaos and order are the natural order of things.

Consider this. VISA exists to exchange value, represented by digital money. How can chaos be part of such a world? Surely everything must be ordered for VISA to function.

senior couple of old man and woman sitting on the beach watchingYet its founder argues that while it is human to desire everything to be in order, the natural order of life is that it isn’t.

To demonstrate please come for a walk with me. You are standing on the edge of the ocean facing inland. Slowly you walk up the beach. At first you encounter some small sand-dunes with no sand grass on them. Then you notice some larger sand-dunes with scattered sand grass. The sand grass gets thicker as you venture inland from the waterline. Gradually the sand grass begins to give way to small shrubs, then bigger shrubs. You start to notice less sand and more dirt under your feet. Soon you are entering a forest with tall trees and shelter from the sun and the beach seems a long way behind you.

This walk seems orderly. There is an obvious progression and change from sand to sand grass, to small shrubs and eventually to fully grown trees. Yet there is a large degree of chaos that exists within the order presented above.

Sand-dunes shift. Which seed of sand grass survives and which one doesn’t is seemingly random. The same issue exists for the seeds for the small shrubs and finally the larger trees. Chaos exists side by side with order.

Dee Hock created the word ‘Chaordic‘ to describe this reality.

People who do not understand that chaos and order co-exist are constantly frustrated. As much as we may try to make the world orderly, it isn’t. One of the primary reasons is that humans are chaordic by nature. We have the power of choice and will exercise that choice in both rational and irrational ways.

Leaders need to understand that ‘chaos happens‘ from time to time. A highly valued staff member resigns and tells you they are leaving the industry. The government changes a law which directly impacts your revenue. Your computer system crashes due to a virus.

I’m not advocating that you shouldn’t do whatever you can to increase order. Look at traffic on our roads as an example. What would happen to the road toll if we eliminated speed limits and traffic lights? It is hard to imagine that increasing chaos on our roads wouldn’t increase accidents and therefore deaths. Clearly more orderly roads are safer for us all. But accidents still happen and some humans choose to break the rules.

My point is that no matter how hard we try to control everything, chaos will find a way to penetrate our order. Why? Because, it is the natural order of things.

As a leader, your challenge is to develop the capacity to live with and manage chaos when it comes. Because it will come.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and their teams to move Beyond Being Good™.

How to receive feedback from your peers

One of the most critical features of a High Performing Team is the ability of the members of the team to be able to give and receive feedback.

If you think giving feedback is hard, how would you go when it is your turn to receive it?

Would you take it personally? Would you get upset? Would you want to get back at the person who gave you the feedback?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIn order for peer-to-peer feedback to be effective it must have a context. The only reason for providing feedback to each other is so that the person who is receiving feedback has an opportunity to help them be the best that they can be for the team. All team members need to share in their understanding of this reason for giving feedback to each other. Secondly, feedback is only ever based on opinion and should be supported by evidence. But evidence is subject to interpretation which is why the folk providing the feedback must understand that there may be other valid ways at looking at the evidence that they are using as the basis for their opinion.

Next, feedback is a two-way conversation. Too many people believe that because they have provided a peer with some feedback then that peer should immediately respond and change their behaviour. Treating feedback as a two-way conversation helps to keep the purpose of feedback in focus (to help the person be the best that they can be for the team) and allows a shared understanding to occur. Once my direct reports told me that they believed that I wasn’t a very good example of life balance, one of our agreed behaviours. Specifically they felt that eating my lunch while continuing to work put pressure on them to do the same. After I thanked them for their feedback and made sure that I fully understood what they had told me, I explained that the very reason why I ate my lunch at my desk was because of life balance. At the time I had three young children and as often as possible I wanted to be home by 6:30pm to have dinner with my family and then bath my children. There were certain tasks of my role that required that I was on site and I couldn’t take the work home to do after my children had gone to bed. So I had made a conscious choice to eat my lunch while I was working so that I could get home by 6:30pm.

The two-way conversation resulted in my direct reports having an increased understanding of my behaviour. It also raised another issue. My team wanted more social contact with me instead of everything being work oriented. At the end of the conversation we agreed that I would continue to eat my lunch as I had done, but that I would make more effort to have some social interaction with them.

A challenge when receiving feedback is not to be defensive. This is why it is important to make sure that you fully understand what you have been told, and the evidence used to support what you have been told, before you explain why you have done what you have done. Which, by the way, won’t always be possible. Sometimes you will receive feedback that is a surprise and while you may understand what you have been told, you may need some time to process it.

Your mindset when you are receiving feedback is to consider the feedback as a gift. When you have this mindset then you will be open to discovering what your gift is. Some gifts are great and expected, others are wonderful and unexpected and some gifts are for the giver of the gift, not the receiver of the gift (like the PlayStation I gave my wife for her 30th birthday many years ago…). No matter what sort of gift you receive, the first thing to say is, “Thank you.”

Many people are worried about receiving feedback because they are concerned about what they might say if they receive some feedback they don’t like. This is why having a mindset that feedback is a gift is so powerful. You always know what you are going to say after hearing the feedback. Once again what you are going to say is, “Thank you”.

Finally, I am a fan of the process of group feedback than too much one on one feedback. In a group feedback process the group should only report what behaviours they unanimously agree that you should cease, commence or continue. One on one feedback can result in personal issues being over emphasised and the status of your peers being under or over emphasised. Weight of numbers is what matters. That is why when my entire team of direct reports told me that they didn’t think I was a good example of life balance it was critical that I understood what they were telling me and why they were telling me. The two-way conversation enabled me to re-enforce that I didn’t mind that they had lunch breaks – what I cared about was results.

In summary:

  • Feedback must only be provided to help peers be the best that they can be for the team;
  • Have the mindset that feedback is a ‘gift’;
  • Always say “Thank you” after receiving your feedback;
  • Unanimous group feedback is more powerful than too much one on one feedback; and
  • Feedback is a two-way conversation.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and their teams to move Beyond Being Good™.

A massive career development opportunity

In July 2010 I released my first printed book, “What Really Matters For Young Professionals! How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career“. Despite releasing my book I had a problem (fortunately it wasn’t selling the book). You see  I had originally written over 600 pages of content for my book but the market was saying that people wouldn’t buy a 600 page book.

YFCS Colour logoASo I trimmed my book down to 128 pages and even included a number of pictures to help the reader get from cover to cover. This meant that I had just under 500 pages of high quality content that hadn’t been used. Why not create an online course to support the book?

Did a better way exist to share my knowledge? At the time I couldn’t think of one. My work had seen me bridge the gap between university student development programs and corporate staff development programs. I was addressing educational needs about what to actually do in the real world that wasn’t being addressed at university. Time and again students (from both undergraduate and postgraduate programs) and graduate program employees would tell me, “Gary, we just don’t get taught this information at university. I know what you are teaching isn’t rocket science, but I didn’t know about it before and I wish I did. At least I’ve learned it now and can use this information about developing my employability skills to my advantage.

As my work evolved into Executive Coaching roles, even these people would tell me how they found the material enlightening and helpful in their roles, even though I hadn’t written the book or designed my course for them.

I’ve now been delivering these programs for over eight years in university faculties and schools as broad as business, law, education, pharmacy and even higher degree by research programs.  Universities don’t keep asking people who are teaching non-academic programs to come back year after year if the program isn’t any good and isn’t getting outstanding feedback from students.

At the start of 2013 I launched the Yes For Success Platform and included a new version of my book’s online course on that platform, except this time I gave it a makeover and called it Yes For Career Success. The course now includes 21 Modules, the extra five modules all being designed to help folk improve their formal leadership skills either at work or outside of work. You see, leadership is one of those skills you can’t learn by theory alone, you must do it. So I show people how they can develop their leadership outside of the work environment if necessary so that they can advance their career over time. I provide the tools so that you can consciously rather than unconsciously develop your skills. Conscious skill develop outstrips unconscious skill development any day of the week!

Those of you who know me personally will know that I genuinely want to help people to be the best that they can be. I am literally putting my money where my mouth is to back up that statement. For less than the price of two coffees I am providing as many people as possible (including you of course) with the opportunity to get access to the entire 21 Modules of the Yes For Career Success Program for under $10 for a full 12 months. Just the content on Systems Thinking is worth many times your fee to get access to this content. If you aren’t aware, Systems Thinking is a critical leadership skill that despite being identified by the Australian Government, the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry as an essential skill for effective leadership, is not being taught in any academic programs of Australia’s Group of Eight Universities, arguably the top universities in Australia.

This means that my program is providing you with an opportunity to master critical skills that aren’t being taught anywhere else. Clearly this gives you a significant advantage over your competition.

My offer is valid until midnight on Friday 31st January, 2014 and once again I am offering you 12 months full access to the entire 21 Module Yes For Career Success Program for just $9.97.

You can download the entire Course Outline here.

There are no bells and whistles about this offer. No marketing hoopla. It is a straight offer and that’s it.

I’m not going to repeat this offer again (those of you who know me will know that statement is true too). Click here to accept this offer.

Finally, too many people leave the responsibility for their development to someone else. Please don’t be like them. Take control of your career and learn how to master the employability skills that will separate you from the rest and enable you to have the career you desire.

If you have any questions or comments about the program, please leave a comment below.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and their teams to move Beyond Being Good™.