The SOAR model for strategic planning

A quick thank you to our readers. We know you are out there - the stats from blogger.com tell us that. It's good to know our readership is international. It would be great if some comments were made to really develop the strands and themes we pursue. Nevertheless, knowing we are not shouting down a deep pit to hear only our own voices come back is gratifying.


Ok, on to business. Thursday was an important day. I facilitated an event for a group of trustees who are the board of a large charity focused on a specific public service. The theme, broadly speaking, was thinking about and planning for the future of the charity and those who benefit from its services.


Across many years the SWOT model (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) has been an almost ever-present feature of sessions such as these that I have participated in, as a corporate team and board member. What struck me often in those sessions was that despite being a 50/50 model of the positive and negative, i.e. strengths/opportunities and threats/weaknesses, the conversations seemed to over-concentrate on the latter. Strengths/opportunities were almost taken for granted, of little importance when set against the need to really get under the skin of our threats and minimise our weaknesses. The best of our knowledge and experience were brought to bear on the twin 'evils' that threatened our future success and weakened our current position. The proportion of attention paid to the T/W was nearer 75%, leaving a meagre 25% for the S/O.


Shift forward many years and the writings of David Cooperrider, Jackie Stavros and others gradually opened doors on an alternative model. Yes, another four box model, but whilst the number of boxes and two of their titles, Strengths and Opportunities, were familiar, the overall impression and impact of the model was very different. At first sight it was also a little counter-intuitive, i.e. having four boxes that offered no apparent space and time for the deficits. The other two boxes were and are Aspirations and Results. How could his be? Where do our weaknesses go? How do we recognise the threats all around us? What do I do with my sharpened awareness of all that is difficult and draining?


Well, of course there will always be a need to recognise these deficits, and act upon those requiring attention, but the underpinning of appreciative and strengths-focused thinking places them in a more positive and embracing framework. By shifting the atmosphere and attention from the deficit to the appreciative, the conversations using this model changed. The energy in the room seems to remain at high levels for the whole of the day. There are no longer the familiar dead spots to planning and future search events. The wholeness of an organisation is held in the room for longer, as is the view that competition and risk can be set in a framework of opportunity identification and long term aspiration and ambition for the organisation.


So it was with the trustees of the charity on Thursday. As we worked across the day, first on the strategic inquiry elements of strengths/assets and opportunities, and then into the appreciative intent elements of aspiration/ambition and results, the temptation to drop into the deficit simply receded into the distance. Of course, the trustees at first almost stifled themselves from mentioning weaknesses and threats, but once they appreciated that it was fine to highlight these, 'though in this much more positive context and framework, the (re)balance of good and less good was easily achieved.


This is not the first time I have been able to use SOAR. In fact, across the past three to four years it has become a strong feature of the tools I use to work with leadership teams, boards, functional management teams and others. All, without exception, find it a little unsettling at first, the deficit paradigm being so strong even now, but as each event unfolds the potential of the model becomes more apparent to participants and a more natural response begins to develop. One that provides good breadth and depth of opportunities, strong ambition and hard-edged outcomes - all built on the strongest of bases, i.e. our strengths and assets; the best of what is.


Our group of trustees enjoyed the experience, identifying a host of possible opportunities; created some ambitious futures; and ended with specific, SMART goals and challenging future outcomes for their organisation. All of this alongside exploring and sharing a strong sense of where their charity is, what its assets are and how these influence the present and future.  


SOAR - what do you have to lose? 

Mark Cavendish makes the point about talents and strengths

I've facilitated dozens of workshops around the twin themes of appreciative inquiry and strengths-focused change. Particularly in the strengths-based workshops I have concentrated on positing the notion, which is counter-intuitive for many, that time spent on improving weaknesses is never as well spent as time on optimising your talents and turning them into true strengths.


Part of the joy of the work with groups is seeing how they deal with and challenge the counter I put to the predominant paradigm of failure and deficit search they are so used to working within, i.e. the model that demands we search out failure and weakness, (over) concentrate on it to achieve some personal or organisational improvement and then create programmes to eradicate those weaknesses. Nothing against sorting out obvious problems, but the balance in many places is all wrong - an over-concentration on deficit and little or no attention to what works well, what individuals are great at doing and how we can do more of these things.


I frequently use the HTC cycling team as an example of strengths-based management, sharing quotes from their team managers that show clearly they engage riders for their strengths and ask them to make the most use of their talents to create true strengths, as in the case of Mark Cavendish and his sprinting ability.  


In one event I was challenged by a participant who almost triumphantly announced that of course Mark was a great sprinter but "he would never win the Tour De France", and of course in a moment the full impact of his own insight created his deeper learning. Indeed, Cavendish never will win the Tour, and he neither wants to nor will ever attempt to - he can't climb the highest mountains fast enough. He will though become the greatest ever sprinter to have graced the world's finest single-sport event; he will win more stages than any other sprinter and might well win the highest number of stages by the time he ends his career. His is already only the second British rider to have won of the Tour's three leading jerseys and has 20 stage wins to his name in 5 years. 


And there it was - the realisation that optimising strengths is about recognising what you are good at, i.e. those things that really energise, motivate and give you that sense of achievement, and working to make the best of those. Sometimes too it's not only about what's within ourselves, what we also see with Cavendish is that he has a team around him who work tirelessly to place him in the best position to launch his sprint. (He has shown though he can win without his lead-out train as well). Teamwork is a feature of optimising the talents of each other.


Our public and commercial organisations really must get the message. Ignoring talents and strengths can cost you output, productivity, energy and commitment. Those organisations who build the engagement of their employees through recognising their talents and turning them into strengths can achieve productivity levels up to 2-3 times greater than those that don't. 


The research is there; the evidence before our eyes, the test is to believe in our talents and of those around us in our teams to release the energy and passion and go on to be the best we can.

Cuts deepening silos, not breaking down barriers

Guardian Weekly reports that “if it is now looking unlikely that the cuts will "transform" the way public services are delivered, it is certain that spending reductions are doing nothing to change the way Whitehall operates. If anything, spending cuts are reinforcing the autonomy of departments and the strength of the silo walls.


That much is clear from the Commons public administration committee's end of term report on Whitehall departments' plans, which comes on top of all the other evidence that departments are baronies and central coordination mechanisms are weaker than they were under the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, which were not noted as exemplars of a joined-up approach.”


http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/2011/jul/20/mps-criticise-whitehall-silos?&

And just for fun, I do like checking in occasionally with John Cridland of the CBI who has this wonderful way of basically saying, "give it to the private sector and we'll sort your public services". In his repsonse to the local services White Paper, bearing in mind he'd just recently rubbished the Government's reform agenda as being slow and not deep enough, he returned to the  private sector theme with gusto, just stopping short of saying, "never mind those pesky little mutuals and social enterprises - give it to the big boys and they'll do a job for you". He's about as one-eyed on the matter as it can be, naturally enough perhaps given who he speaks for. At least he provides a clear boundary for us to see how far right-wing thinking goes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/2011/jul/11/reactions-public-service-reform-white-paper#start-of-comments

A week is a long time...for politicians, journos and top cops

My last blog was but a short week ago, when I bemoaned the deficit behaviours of those in the media spotlight. A list of miscreants which later included those who report on the news as well as those who make it - unwittingly or otherwise. Andy 'it's (not) a fair cop' Hayman turned out to be a mere entre to the firestorm that rapidly engulfed serving senior police officers who were lunched, dinnered, or strategically advised by serving and former NI staffers. 


I also wrote some time ago that the fox hunt that was developing around the NI story was faintly absurd, and so it has proved, as MPs fell over themselves to put the boot into the dying NoW and what could be a mortally injured NI. I was once told that auditors were accountants who found the front-end too hot to handle and preferred instead to roam the battlefields, bayoneting the dead and dying. I feel this about the MPs putting the boot in now. If they'd got some principles and bottle earlier, as with Chris Bryant MP, they would look less like auditors doing the bayoneting etc.


Let's see how the Select Committee goes tomorrow. Will it be tally ho! or more like being "savaged by a dead sheep", either way I hear the chattering classes are having friends around for drinks to watch it - the first time in Select Committee history surely that anyone other than policy wonks and resting actors take in its day-time proceedings. I exaggerate for effect.


What does this have to do with things like organisational culture, leading change, learning and appreciative inquiry. Well, at first sight, not a lot, then on the other hand, what are we actually witnessing here? It reads a lot more like an array of (organisational) cultural insights, e.g. what is the culture at the top of the Metropolitan Police that made these dreadful conflicts of interest (at best) and shoddy investigating so much the norm? What is/was the cultural vacuum at NI/NoW that made endemic the illegal hacking of 'phones and payments to police officers? A recent book was entitled "Where were coaches when the banks went down". Where were the regulators when the papers went wrong?  


There will be so much more detail to come, that's for sure. The resignations have not ended. The reach of the scandal has a few yards yet to go. As with MPs expenses, it feels like a 'gift' that just keeps on giving. I say that however not in a sarcastic way, but seeing it as a 'gift' in the way it might encourage deep self-analysis, culture change and a paradigm shift in behaviours that we were told MPs experienced after their expenses debacle (although they were soon squealing about the new system that demanded receipts and time spent filling in forms - if you work in, say, local government, you'll think what IS the fuss about having to fill in an expenses form). 


Maybe we are seeing the end of the 'grey areas' that dubious senior managers and politicians like to inhabit as if they are some special breed that can navigate these shadow areas - the public service equivalent of the 'masters of the universe' who navigated the mystical world of debt instruments, until they unhinged the whole western banking system. Maybe. These are not games to be played to 'big boys' rules, but games that should simply not be played.


These shifts of cultural norm, calls to greater transparency and improved standards of behaviour are meat and drink to many of you who have worked your management and leadership careers in many other parts of the public service. For instance, never putting yourselves at risk by accepting hospitality, at any level, (it was so much easier to simply say 'no thanks' and insulate yourself from any claims of influence, justified or otherwise, at a later date). Always seeking to be as open and transparent as practicable; pushing the boundaries of behaviour, not the dubious kind, but the kind that encompassed acceptance of responsibility, high ethical standards and appropriate loyalty to profession and community. Of course there were and are dilemmas in public service, but the need to properly investigate wrong-doing, not accept hospitality and avoid putting yourself and your team in the way of harm or conflict of interest do not qualify as dilemmas - they qualify as good professional judgement.


And the Appreciative Inquiry aspect of all this? Well, AI posits that every, (every) organisation has a positive core. How hard must we look at each of the organisations in the spotlight over the past few months to discover its positive core? I believe not as hard as we first might think. What's critical is that those charged with leading the change, altering the culture and improving behaviours, will want to work with those who remain and discover the positive core, the things that work well and must be carried forward into the future, and the 'best of what is' before they dream afresh about how great these institutions might yet become. If, however, they believe that more top-down exhortation holds the key, they will see short-term gain but long-term pain. 


Trust the process and seek to capture the causes of success, not failure -we've had quite sufficient of those thank you.     


    

How can we rescue a week of behavioural deficits?

What do I notice about this week? Well, sadly too much that is about failure - of systems, processes, behaviours, trust and so on. Two of several notable examples were juxtaposed today.


First, Southern Cross, who having pledged in mid-May that their 'get-well' plan was well thought out and would succeed, even if it meant the loss of several thousand service jobs, simply come back two months later and says it's closing. I do suspect that the developing and almost bottom-less cesspit that is the News International story has somehow taken attention away from the largest single failure of a care housing landlord in recent history (if not the largest failure in living memory). Do also go back to my blog of mid-May on Southern Cross that highlighted the part Blackstone's played in this - but they are free, clear, back in the USA, having created the basis for the failure in the first place - according to some trusted commentators at least.


Second, the 'shellacking' today by the Parliamentary Select Committee of the top cops involved in the News International 'investigation' reflected very badly on at least two of the most senior police officers in the largest city police service in the country, if not Europe. Whilst in one of their cases I heard at least some contrition and acceptance of having done a less than thorough job (to put it mildly), in the other there was little contrition or even apology - more a faux horror at being asked if he's ever taken a payment for information. Whilst being a tad cheeky question, it was fully understandable given the context of the Committee's deliberations. With the propensity of the press to call for the heads of public servants in other cases of poor performance, are we going to have the same in this case? Or, have the 200 job losses at the NoW sated the lust for 'heads must roll'? For now, anyway.


Amidst all of this concentration on the behavioural deficits, systemic failures of trust and rampant venality, are there any rays of light?  Well, check out this link, where changing behaviours is the subject, and Alcoholics Anonymous the model of learning regarding behavioural change.


http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/scott-asalone/2011071118492

What is expected of leaders-to-be?

A recent report from the Institute of Leadership and Management has highlighted the way large organisations carry out their leadership succession planning. 

The massive pressures on so many organisations to make the best of their talent, to avoid discontinuity from gaps in leadership consistency, expensive (and sometimes less than successful) recruitment and selection processes and the current significant financial strictures particularly on the public sector, mean that succession planning becomes ever more important to organisational sustainability. 

The ILM conducted in-depth interviews with senior HR professionals in predominantly large corporate organisations and consulting firms. This is what they found about the key attributes expected of leaders-to-be:

Leadership traits

Senior HR professionals emphasised a distinct set of personal characteristics that future leaders need to possess. These were principally in the relationship and inter-personal domain - visionary, motivational and inspirational people, emotionally intelligent, trustworthy, natural leaders and communicators, and who are also driven and ambitious.

The ability to motivate, displaying emotional intelligence and being a 'natural' leader were the most important characteristics when recruiting senior leaders.What’s more, future leaders needed to demonstrate a broad mix of all these characteristics if they were to be able to progress to the top. Strengths in one area did not compensate for weaknesses elsewhere.

Skills and knowledge

Future leaders also need a range of skills and knowledge to support their personal characteristics;

1. Appropriate technical and professional skills in relevant areas like law, accounting or engineering.

2. Commercial and financial skills and high levels of business acumen

3. Skills in people management and development, communication, coaching and feedback and team management skills

Depth of experience

The right mix of personal characteristics supported by the appropriate skills and knowledge are necessary but not sufficient – potential leaders need to have a broad range of experience encompassing different roles and, where appropriate, different sectors and industries.

Future leaders also need to be able to cope with pressure and failure with nearly a quarter of respondents stressing the importance of being able to deal with difficulties and challenges.

Education and training

The right personal qualities generally outweighed any gaps in an educational record according to the survey respondents and most businesses develop leadership and management abilities through
in-house, modular programmes that are closely tied to the business’s own operations, culture and goals, using their own developers or external training providers who know them and understand their industry.

What’s more, they want training that will transfer into improved performance, and will employ coaching and secondments to enable this learning transfer. Knowing about leadership and management isn’t enough – future leaders have to be able to put what they know into practice.

Business schools

Respondents were equivocal about business schools. Half of respondents were neutral about the effectiveness of business schools, while a third thought they were effective. While they recognise that business schools had some strengths, their major weakness was that they do not have that deep understanding of the business and its particular characteristics that they looked for in training providers.

With regards to MBAs, respondents acknowledged that they demonstrate that the holder has acquired appropriate knowledge but were critical of the disconnect between what is learnt in business schools and the workplace. The reality of the industry and workplace and an individual's ability to lead in practice for most trumped the theory and intellectual capacity of the MBA.

So, the HR professionals said they were looking for a blend of experience, knowledge and skills, many of which can be learnt and developed both on the job and in a formal training context, but ultimately it is a rich mix of skills and experience which will differentiate future leaders.

NOT about News Corp.

I'll probably leave the furore around News Corp alone - mainly because for as long as I can recall I have refused to have anything to do with that corporation or its media products such as Sky, The Times, Sun, NoW and so on. The developing bandwagon of commercial and consumer deserters of the NoW is to my mind faintly absurd, although richly deserved by a corporation that has for a long time through its outlets displayed questionable and venal behaviours, if one cared to look. It is after all only a couple of months since Sky sacked two (although maybe not the only) sexist presenters, Keys and Gray. It's just a bad lot one might assume from these latest and far more serious and disgusting revelations.


How long will these desertions last? Probably until those companies/politicians need those organs to advertise their wares/lever them back into the limelight. A week is a long time in politics, today's news is tomorrow's fish and chip wrapper and so on. But if you have some decent principles then not getting into bed with them in the first place means you don't have to join any bandwagon when it starts. News Corp shows itself again to have significant disreputable elements that, taken across a long view, might lead the man on the Clapham omnibus to assume it is a dysfunctional and not fit-for-purpose corporation. Anyway, I said I'd probably leave this alone.


Now for some important stats to amaze your friends, improve your reports and impress your clients:

• In England, local authorities' total expenditure was £168 billion in 2009-10.
• In 2009-10 local authorities employed 1.8 million full-time employees staff and nearly 50 per cent of service expenditure (gross of income) was spent on these employees.
• About 64 per cent of local authorities' gross income in 2009-10 came from central government (through grants or re-distributed non-domestic rates). Other income from local sources included council tax, sales, fees and charges, council rents and capital receipts.
• The largest share of net current expenditure in 2009-10 was on education services with 37 per cent of the total. Social services accounted for a further 17 per cent, housing (excluding Housing Revenue Account) 16 per cent and police 10 per cent.
• Average Band D council tax, for a two adult household, in 2009-10 was £1,414 an increase of 3 per cent on 2007-08.
• In the North East, 56 per cent of dwellings are in the lowest council tax band (Band A) compared to just 4 per cent in London.
• Average in year council tax collection rates in 2009-10 stood at 97 per cent compared with 92.6 per cent in 1993-94.
• The average in year council tax collection rate in Inner London Boroughs has risen from 76.0 per cent in 1993-94 to 94.6 per cent in 2009-10.
• Revenue expenditure has increased by 149 per cent cash terms between 1993-94 and 2009-10. The corresponding increase in real terms was 68 per cent.
• About 25 per cent of revenue expenditure is funded through council tax.
• Revenue spending per head in 2009-10 was highest in parts of the North and London.
• All shire counties spend £500m or more a year, while most shire districts spend less than £40m a year.
• Local authority capital expenditure has risen from £14.3 billion in 2004-05, to £21.4 billion in 2009-10.
• Capital spending per head in 2009-10 was highest in London and the North East.
• In 2009-10 capital expenditure of £5.0 billion was financed by unsupported borrowing, under the new prudential system in place since April 2004 (23 per cent of the total).
• Local authorities' gross outstanding debt at 31 March 2010 was £54.4 billion, the largest proportion of which is owed to the Public Works Loan Board (75 per cent).
• Local authorities' investments at 31 March 2010 were £21.5 billion following a fall of approximately £4.5 billion during 2009-10; nearly 70 per cent of these investments were deposits with banks or building societies.

Early Intervention Bonds - Big Risk. Low Opacity?

Here's a piece from the Prevention Action website, of May 2010:

"Among new mechanisms for funding early intervention that do not depend on Government money, Allen (Graham Allen, MP, Labour) and Duncan Smith suggest an early intervention bond or some similar financial instrument that will allow private and public investors to invest in proven programs.

"Funds could be raised on the market and dividends paid as children's health and development improves (and calls on expensive treatments subside)."

They end on a pragmatic but optimistic note. "As politicians we must avoid the temptation of claiming to have found the magic bullet, whether it is Family Intervention Projects or Family Nurse Partnerships, in isolation from all the vital supporting components. In Nottingham's case, several proven programs working alongside excellent mainstream services compound and complement each other. 

"As in other aspects of politics the stakes with respect to early intervention are very high. It matters for the millions of individuals and future generations who will benefit, and it moves us closer to giving early intervention the same depth and permanence as the National Health Service."

Scroll forward to June 2011. The ideas have developed and firmed-up enough to be launched formally. Here's what Polly Toynbee writes in today's Guardian:

"... the plan put forward yesterday by Iain Duncan Smith, Oliver Letwin and Labour MP Graham Allen to issue "early intervention bonds" to solve the infinitely complex problems of families in trouble flaps away into delusion.

Here is the fantasy. Poverty and social dysfunction, addictions, depression, crime, teen pregnancy and illiteracy cause expensive crises. One person can cost scores of thousands a year in prison, courts, rehab and A&E overdose visits. But what if the very clever people in the City could roll all that sub-prime behaviour into an investment product? It's as clever as a credit default obligation. With a wave of a wand, the risk from all that bad stuff can be placed with investors instead. Social investment bonds could evaporate poverty and its consequences at no cost to you or me. These people can be monetised to turn a profit for all. Amazing.

Nick Clegg, speaking in the City recently, explained that if investors paid for preventative work up front, the state would repay them later out of money saved. He called for "creative ways to bridge the gap between initial investment and the long-term returns", praising the City as "one of the most innovative financial services centres in the world". Duncan Smith, writing in the Guardian last week, quoted private equity investor Sir Ronnie Cohen as predicting that social impact bonds are "the wave of the future" and "the new venture capital".

Do these bonds sound suspiciously like a relative of the sort of bonds based on packages of toxic debt, traded until their mortgagees defaulted on their loans? That then unraveled so rapidly in 2008/09 taking several international money houses with them, Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns included? And almost sank RBS and LLoyds, consuming over £60bn in public funds to keep the service tills working? Surely not. 


Or maybe it's a type of back-end loaded PFI. The sort of pay-later model that leads to this recent report:

"HM Treasury’s ‘inadequate’ monitoring of trading in Public Finance Initiative (PFI) debt has allowed banks and builders to ratchet up £2.2bn in undetected profits, an industry analyst has claimed.

There are about 920 PFI projects in the UK with a capital value of £72.3bn, of which 720 are operational. A report by Dexter Whitfield from think tank the European Services Strategy Unit alleges few PFI projects would have received approval if average subsequent profits of 50.6% had been taken into account at the evaluation stage.

Entitled The £10bn Sale of Shares in PPP companies, the report reveals the Barnet hospital PFI project was subject to five later transactions and the Calderdale hospital scheme was sold nine times between 2002 - 2010.

Research shows PFI firms have subsequently sold the equity of 622 schemes on the secondary investment market and the scale of such deals is significantly higher than the sales identified in the HM Treasury PFI equity database and estimated by the National Audit Office (NAO).

Report author Dexter Whitfield said:'The level of profiteering from PPP equity transactions makes a nonsense of the original value for money assessment.PPP projects are little more than money-making mechanisms for builders and banks.'

Among its recommendations the report calls for standard contracts to be re-written, imposing a ceiling on profits taken from PFI equity, together with a requirement that the public sector should have a 50% share in any profit above a specified level.

It also calls for the scope of HM Treasury's PFI equity database to be extended to cover all historic and future equity sales, made publicly available and regularly updated.Additionally,spending watchdog the NAO should research the longer-term effects of the growing secondary market.

Margaret Hodge, chair of the influential Public Accounts Committee agreed with Mr Whitfield’s call for greater oversight of the system,'so that if there is some profit over time in the funding of these PFI contracts, that profit can be shared between the taxpayer and the private investor.' 

Now, early intervention clearly works, and Sure Start centres were one of the manifestations of that understanding. So, if the Coalition believes so much in early intervention why is it calling for the creation of what we must consider to be risky, bond-based initiatives to fund the interventions? Might it be to do with cuts elsewhere that are damaging projects like Sure Start with 20% cuts and removing ring-fencing and/or getting expenditure like this off the public books? 


Short termism amongst traders has variously caused the collapse of the pound, the collapse of banks and rupture of sovereign economies. Why would we possibly want to introduce this risky model into the funding of (early) interventions, with the attendant difficulties of measuring improvement statistically tight enough to trigger payments to the investors? 


Finally, what's the safety net for the bonds if their market fails? Will it be the taxpayer again, as it was with the banks recently, even though risk purportedly rested with the banks - which in the final analysis could not be allowed to fail, in the UK at least?     

These bonds really require a long, hard look.

Executive Coaching

The Positive Psychology website is always a mine of fascinating articles and research write-ups. Take this link, which is to an article featuring a 2008 coaching conference bringing together theorists and practitioners to explore the intellectual and evidenced-based foundation for the emerging field of coaching psychology. The GROW model makes an appearance, as do various short pieces exploring the development of coaching psychology, models of practice and noted authors. Despite being a 2008 article it opens the door into a range of more current articles which those of us keen to explore positive psychology and its organisational benefits find a helpful resource.


http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/louis-alloro/200809291053

In addition, at The Open Channel, coaching is an essential feature of our practice. The GROW framework is one of several we use with clients. Frameworks provide structure to individual coaching sessions and also help clients to locate themselves in the piece of work, being able to see the development of the themes and threads in each contact session. We'll say more about the impact of coaching in later posts, as we reflect on and explore the implications of our real-world work with clients.