A pre-Christmas thought or two...

It's getting closer to Christmas. Thank goodness. I feel a tad worn out by this year's continual assault on the senses from the forces of economic darkness, e.g. the responsibility-evading bankers all of whom remained steadfastly silent, their political acolytes, the ratings agencies, corporates evading, oops sorry, avoiding taxes, the relentless attack on the public sector as if anyone in it pays no tax or creates nothing good (ever heard of 'social goods' anyone in the Cabinet?), corrupt MP's and press and so on. It's been an unremitting year if you believe in socia, ethical justice, or any kind of justice really! Some did get their 'collars felt,' others have that yet to come - and roll-on when it does happen. Many will continue to evade their just desserts.


Time to rest just a little, as I decide whether to pursue a career as a mobile cycle repair technician or re-energise myself for another tilt at executive coaching, public service advice and interim executive work.After all, why get qualified as an executive coach and leadership mentor if I'm not going to use the fantastic learning from the programme I particpated in. There is though quite a  difference between the intent and desire to use learning and the opportunity to use that learning. 


Hope though springs eternal though and I guess I will return in 2012 with great colleagues and associates at Optimum Interventions and The Open Channel to try and do good works in those organisations and communities keen to learn, develop and grow appreciatively. 


So, I see Edge online has a light-hearted piece on strategy, particularly marketing strategies. Here's a short sample:


"When Coca-Cola first launched in China, its name was ‘Ke-kou-ke-la’, which meant ‘bite the wax tadpole’ or ‘female horse stuffed with wax’, depending on the dialect. Luckily, Coke quickly came up with ‘Ko-kou-ko-le’, which translated into ‘happiness in the mouth’. Pepsi wasn’t immune, either; its ‘Come Alive with the Pepsi Generation’ slogan translated into Chinese as ‘Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave’."


The article makes some simple points, perhaps most trenchantly about what the author of the piece charges when positioning himself as a 'marketing consultant' versus a 'strategic marketing consultant.' Quite a good deal of financial difference, actually!

Check it out here:

http://www.i-l-m.com/edge/humour_strategic_headache.aspx?utm_campaign=Edge+20+December+1+Trial&utm_source=ILM

For better or for worse?

During the past year we have spoken with clients in the public sector about their effective and courageous responses to the original emergency budget, the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review and everything that followed from then on. The highly cogent commentary from economic experts then, that highlighted the unfeasibly high economic growth expectations that underpinned the government's economic strategy and its demands on the public sector, have now been proven beyond doubt. 


We have been suggesting to clients across this period that those growth targets would not be met and that the government would be back to raid public spending again sooner rather than later. The "sooner" arrived today unfortunately in the form of further public sector pay restraint, phrased in such a way that to suggest public sector workers do not pay income tax to boot! The pension changes are also from the same school of blunt-instrument trauma to prove the Government is up for the fight.


The infrastructure announcements seem to be little more than bringing forward plans already in the pipeline from previously constrained and reduced programmes in any event. The jobs that flow from those plans take far longer to get to 'shovel-ready' than politicians allow for or hope. 


The obvious and publicly supported option to tax financial transactions was dismissed as being 'anti-pension' (you'll really have to explain that one further please) and banks again were let off the hook, again, with a tiny increase in the annual levy. 


The previous week's announcement about assistance to get 16-24 years olds into temporary work was almost laughable in its blunt-ended simplicity and a too-late acknowledgement that the Future Jobs Fund was better supported and if necessary amended, rather than peremptorily binned as part of its "bonfire of the quangos" and all things Labour. This bonfire is more one of government's critical faculties and it betrays many in a race to the bottom of the employment and education prospects of that age group. 


So it goes across society, the rhetoric of Big Society becoming ever more sharply defined by closure after closure of successful local projects, schemes and initiatives that cost relatively little yet bind together challenged communities and interest groups. Only multi-millionaires with little if any direct experience of the context and application of these schemes would dare to continue to exhort the poorest and least able to keep taking the medicine, whilst the richest 1% remain insulated. 


Latest figures now show corporate UK, i.e. UK PLC, avoids corporation tax to the tune of £70b per annum - seventy billion pounds per annum. Yep, we'll keep taking the medicine but it becomes ever more bitter.      

Government business opened up to SME's - or is it?

The Business to Business website reported today the apparent good news that government intends to accelerate the opening-up of it's business opportunities to small and medium enterprises. 

Now, we've highlighted before that there is a fairly sizeable gap between the espoused theory of openness to competition and the actual theory in use, i.e.the much harsher reality, of Messrs Maude and Whatmore (Maude's senior civil servant). One example must be that so many so-called open opportunities to tender are in fact provided to aggregating websites who charge hundreds and thousands of pounds for SME's to access even the most rudimentary of tender information. If a company wishes to have access to these public sector opportunities across all of the regions and across the professions, the annual bill for signing-up with these aggregator sites can run into four figures quite easily. 

The issue is not one of affordability but the ethical position of a government professing to be opening up its business to small business when at the same time creating barriers to the most basic of information to access those opportunities. Oh, and one more thing - I understand that it is not apocryphal that the big four consultancies have all in the recent past bid £1 for a piece of government work that was worth several millions, i.e. they 'bought' it. Just how can SME's compete with that degree of...'rigging', or is that too strong a word?

Here's what BtB said "Cabinet Office Secretary Francis Maude is to announce plans to put over £50bn worth of public works and services tenders online. This will be a major shake up of central government procurement. The idea is to make it easier and faster to bid for government work, especially for smaller companies who often lose out when pitching for public projects. Government departments will be instructed to break contracts into bite-sized chunks to make it easier for small and medium-sized enterprises to get involved. The initial work going online will relate to IT and facilities management, with building and infrastructure projects going online from April 2012. These changes will simplify the process for SMEs and make it 40% faster to do business with the Government."

Security of tenure for housing to be tied to work or training

The Municipal Journal has just reported that Wandsworth LBC is considering introducing a 'Housing into Work' scheme for new housing applicants. They would be subject to fixed-term tenancies tied to periodic reviews of their employment status.

Tenants who fail to take steps to find work or improve their employment prospects during the fixed term face the prospect of losing their homes.

The Council's Housing spokesperson Councillor Paul Ellis said: "We are effectively creating a contract with selected new tenants to support and help them find a job or gain new skills. In return we expect them to take up these opportunities." 

Some questions that spring to mind include: who will be the "selected" new tenants and how selected; what is the degree of support and re-skilling they will have to contract to undertake; who will manage this contract; how narrow or permissive will the "expectation" to take up the opportunities; and how will its outcomes be measured when a family's human right to a roof over its head is at stake?

He went on to say even more portentously that 'People who refuse to meaningfully to look for work without good reason will forfeit their right to a council home." The definition of "meaningful" will be absolutely critical here.

Further, he suggested that 'This isn't about punishing people who are made redundant or cannot find a job. It is about having a way to penalise those who can't be bothered to make the effort.' So, it's not just a test of meaningfulness, they will also have to prove the degree to which a tenant has been "bothered" to find work and it is de-facto about the housing landlord now taking on the role of "penalising" its tenants not for their behaviour as tenants bit for their capacity to participate in an economy which is in recession - that's a big stretch. 

This really does begin to look like soundbite territory for the Daily Mail.It also begs the question that if this about jobs and skilling, why not concentrate on those aspects and not complicate it by tieing those outcomes to social housing availability? It is also potentially discriminatory, selecting one group in society to have their housing put at risk. 

The MJ tells us that the council are also looking into giving working families higher priority in the allocating homes. Which would suggest a consistency of approach at least, whatever one might think of the higher profile elements of the policy. What happens when/if they lose their jobs - might this policy be expanded later on to deal with existing tenants in work?

Cllr Ellis added: "It is important that our housing estates have a good mix of people from all walks of life and with different socio-economic backgrounds. We believe that increasing the number of families on our estates who are in work will act as a beacon for those around them." Which of course we would all welcome from a social balance viewpoint, but rather than create balanced communities by wider societal means, the balance will be narrowly socially engineered.

We have already blogged earlier this year that Wandsworth LBC caused controversy after threatening convicted rioters with eviction from their council homes. Despite the 'big brother' rather than 'big society' aspects of this policy  Marlene Price, vice-chair of the Borough Residents' Forum - the organisation representing the council's 33,000 tenants and leaseholders - welcomed the proposals.

She said: '"I support the council's efforts to encourage people to do all they can to improve their lives and improve the life chances of themselves and their families."

The MJ finishes it piece by revealing the policy draws on new powers contained in the Localism Bill - "giving local authorities greater freedoms and flexibility when it comes to determining who is given a taxpayer-subsidised home." We'd be interested to understand just exactly what the nature is of the "tax-payer subsidised home". Council housing finance has been complex for years, being a mix of capital and revenue funding, public borrowing and housing benefit - but this phrase is just too general and potentially emotive to be trusted.  

The policy could be effective later this month. Comment now. 

CIPD Annual Conference and appreciative approaches to change

I've spent the past two days at the CIPD Annual Conference in Manchester helping on the exhibition stand of a friend and colleague in the UK and European AI Networks and Associate in The Open Channel, Sarah Lewis. Her company Appreciating Change has had a stand at both the CIPD HRD conference earlier this year at Olympia and now this one.


Across the two days we have spoken to dozens of visitors to the conference and exhibition. These are HR professionals across all sectors who are principally charged with recruitment, selection, advancement, reward and so on. Amongst this group we found a significant number of HR managers who are also responsible for change; change in culture, structures, processes, and in introducing various approaches to those changes.


That in particular is where we came in, introducing appreciative and strengths-focused change approaches, positive psychology and solution-focused models into the conversations. For some, but not most, Appreciative Inquiry was well known and in use, particularly we found this in the NHS and local authorities and also in other sectors. The reports of the contribution AI and strengths-focused approaches make were highly positive, especially when taken across a longer term, e.g. a year or more. The professionals reported improved levels of employee engagement (and productivity), improved working relationships across organisational tiers with more effective performance management and appraisals. 


In other cases, AI and associated approaches were yet to be discovered  - which is exciting! It means there is new territory to be explored; situations offering significant potential for positive and sustainable change and employees who will find the interest, power and innovation that comes from constructing new visions, missions, strategies and actions from an appreciative standpoint. To some extent all that is required is for those organisations yet to discover the best of what is and build on that to create the best of what might be, is to have some appreciative conversations. These can be crafted by practitioners, such as we had at the exhibition, alongside champions in organisations as a result of a series of planned appreciative activities or they might crafted within the organisations with some limited support from practitioners; whatever suits the circumstances best. All of our companies offer the full range of solutions, from one-to-one support all the way through to large-scale group events involving hundreds of people and several innovative models of engagement including World Cafe, Open Space and Simureal.


Whatever clients choose, we have the experience, the passion, knowledge and skills to unlock their stories and their expertise. We can support them to discover, dream, design and create their new destinies. Critically, the focus is on the potential within the client's organisation - our role is to find ways to help them uncap the potential in whatever form it's held, e.g. people's talents and strengths, creating fruitful new working relationships, encouraging innovation and prompting imagination. It's the untapped potential that offers so many organisations the opportunity to achieve more, or better, in the challenging public service, third sector and commercial environments we face.         


  

Truth deniers on public sector pensions at it again - this time it's Dominic Lawson

Dominic Lawson makes some good points in today's i newspaper about the current pensions debate.

For instance he points out that "barely a third of all private sector workers

have an employer-sponsored scheme at all." Yet, instead of castigating the

private sector employers for atrociously failing their employees, and by the way

possibly flouting the law, he eulogises this scandal and uses it as a stick to beat public

sector employers with.



He then goes on to recycle the tired old untruth about the relative scale of

public sector pensions, completely failing to distinguish between those funded

from general taxation and those funded by their fund participants and local

employers, i.e. with not a single penny of general taxation used in those funds.



It is to his discredit and that of the i, that this partial description, even in

a piece headed "My View", is allowed to see the light of day. Until critics like

Lawson present the whole picture their arguments will always fall short of

making a persuasive case for change. While he's it, i.e. telling only half a

story, why not report on the Footsie 100 Directors' average annual pensions at

£279,000. Now there is a scandal - these 'masters of the universe' have ruined

the value of many of our industries (apparently without paying pensions to their employees

according to Lawson) and banks yet walk away with fortunes.


How about reporting on that Dominic?

European Appreciative Inquiry Network

Last week, I spent almost four days in Manchester participating in the AI Network. This self-organising network of appreciative and strengths-focused advisers, facilitators and practitioners of all descriptions, has met 12 times across Europe over the last five years. The event is structured around Open Space and World Cafe technology, which provides highly engaging ways for groups to connect, combine and co-create. 


Across a series of short yet intensive sessions we covered a wide range of themes and subjects, including imagining a new Europe through the use of AI, case studies of successful change across all sectors using appreciative and strengths-focused methods, on-site visits to community projects using AI in live action for the benefit for the community, sharing ideas to create commercial markets for these approaches and to improve our practice plus so many more.


The power of the network event lies in the knowledge and wisdom colleagues' bring to the sessions and of course in the time we spend together between the sessions. The experiences we share are based in the practical, hard-edged, real-time world, helping individuals,teams, groups, organisations and whole communities to develop, grow and change. This change has to be sustainable, repeatable and maintainable, yet unique to every situation. That's why the approaches we use in the appreciative world are not the simplistic, formulaic, 'four-box' models as promoted by some consultants. These are ethical, principle and science-based approaches, concentrating on facilitating the knowledge and skills of the client-community, not on the 'expert' knowledge of the consultant that often create a dependency culture in the client. 


Our goal is to help our clients create insights, build knowledge and develop capacity as rapidly as practicable. Our work frees the client to identify their talents, build on their strengths, dream their futures and create their own destinies. The examples we have from practice span all sectors, countries, cultures and interests; they are both energising and real.


Check out the networkplace.eu for the latest in the news of AI in Europe and beyond. There are regional AI networks gradually starting to emerge in the UKand the UK AI network has been flourishing for several years. All can be accessed by this link:  http://www.networkplace.eu/web/page.aspx?sid=736      

Attack on pensions challenged this week

I've previously written about how many employees across all sectors deserve better from their pension schemes, whether final salary or defined contribution, public or private sector. What's clear from so many studies is how little most of us will be getting when we come to retire and how so many public sector pensions are not 'gold plated' at all, despite the rhetoric spouted in numerous debates. 


So much of that debate about pensions has been skewed by government and its policy proponents as a public v private, cuts v fairness debate, when the actual position has most of us, across all sectors, looking forward to relatively little in retirement and after a decision made by Osborne in 2010, even less. 


The attack on all pensions via the government's 2010 budget announcement that in future pension and benefits up-rates will be based on the Consumer Prices Index rather than the Retail Prices Index will be challenged in the courts by public sector unions this week. It's not only public sector pensions that will be affected by this 2010 decision, it's also estimated that hundreds of thousands of private sector workers will be affected as well.


Why the change? The CPI is less generous and the RPI a more accurate indicator of inflation, which of course is why Osborne claimed the former was the more appropriate index - it suited his agenda then and still does now. It's mean spirited, an attack on millions who had a 'contract' with their employers stretching back years. In numbers terms the estimated savings of this change equate closely to the vast sums shovelled into the banks to save our banking system (and keep those 'masters of the universe' in their inflated salaries, pensions and bonuses). 


As we find too often, profit and benefit is privatised for the few, loss and cuts transferred as a burden to the public and those who serve the public. It appears the vested interests of the few continue to set the terms of policy, rather than the needs of the many. That's sad, iniquitous and will yet again find a voice in the wider society and economy over the longer term as people's quality of life and their sense of justice affected. Good luck to the challenge in the courts.          

More on Nokia, Santander and service quality

After yesterday's blog highlighting the groundbreaking work of public and third sector services in supporting families with multiple problems and challenges, I couldn't help but return to another service related theme.


In August I wrote about the appalling quality of a mobile 'phone product of Nokia that had blighted part of my life and business. Not opinion - fact, based on a personal experience. I also reported a while before that on Nokia's collapsing market value, i.e. from £200bn to £15bn in ten years. I made connections between the quality of their product and this collapse.


Now, some of that value collapse will also no doubt have been due to the panicking 'markets' - another bete noir of mine, i.e. the 'red braces' of the City who are incapable of managing their portfolios and our pensions on time horizons of more than 24 hours. Their inability to regulate their own emotions and make the rest of us pay, is simply the flip side of the venality of the bankers whose packaging of toxic debt has left us with a £60bn+ debt burden now being taken out of the hide of the public and third sectors (and tangentially from the private sector as well).


Where is this leading? Well, my eye was taken by a small side-bar in the press on 30.9.11 which simply read:


"Nokia is axing a further 3500 jobs on top of the £871m cost-cutting plan announced in April. Nokia will cut 1300 jobs from its location and commerce division, which makes maps for Nokia 'phones, and close its Cluj factory in Romania, resulting in 2200 job losses (which must be catastrophic for that city in one of Europe's poorest states - SL). The redundancies, which will not affect the UK (phew - dodged a bullet there then, didn't we - SL), follow a year of upheaval at Nokia. In April Nokia said it would cut 4000 jobs and transfer 3000 employees to Acccenture, as Stephen Elop, the new CEO, restructured the company to focus on smartphones."


All I would say to Stephen is this - if your company concentrated more on improving the quality and reliability of its products than a particular market segmentation, and spent a fraction of its almost £1bn restructuring costs on reliability, it might not have the reputational cache of a city trader (whether wearing red braces or not) and the future prospects of the Greek Government. 


I was also tickled to read in an article side by side with the Nokia piece, that Santander's UK banking arm was suffering a profit hit due to slow economic growth, low interest rates and regulatory costs. As a result, a floatation of the UK arm was being delayed until 2013. Whilst I have not shared this before, my company had a long and fruitless dispute with Santander as a result of it peremptorily freezing an account of ours. Despite several rounds of appeal we were never able to extract a simple and courteous reply to two questions:


Why we were not informed the account was about to be frozen?
Why we were we not informed immediately it had been frozen?


Simple enough questions one would think and if posed of many public sector bodies would receive a reply and in good time. Not from Santander though. Britain's second (?) most complained-about bank simply quoted, or should I say parroted, its regulations in each response. In effect we were told "we did this because we could and we don't have to tell anyone we're going to do it or when we have done it'. 


And this is the so called 'commercial' approach to service delivery that the public sector is exhorted to replicate? Well obviously not, but you get the point. I hope the two new CEO's of these organisations will finally attend to not only the strategic direction of their organisations, but also the experience of individual customers s upon whom their future economic and reputation prospects rest to a greater or lesser extent.

Open Public Services - Worcestershire Family Intervention Project

Here's an interesting piece from the Open Public Services website describing a family intervention model in Worcestershire. Below the short article you will find a link to a much longer piece on a larger scheme in the City of Westminster.

"What was the situation?

Worcestershire has pockets of deprivation and families with multiple problems and complex needs who are not coping. For some families, the patchwork of support and service silos was exacerbated by rural isolation and two tier local government and there was little prospect of breaking the cycle of multiple interventions.

Inspired by the Dundee Families Project, Mel Bailey from Vestia Community Trust set about building a partnership between Children’s Services, the Police and Worcestershire Housing Associations to establish a Worcestershire Family Intervention Project (WFIP).

How does it work?

The WFIP has a pooled budget with contributions from Housing Associations, Supporting People and Worcestershire County Council. Project workers work intensively with a small caseload of families, over a prolonged period to help them transform their lives. Workers tasks are determined by the needs of each family and not their ‘service silo’ and they are recruited on their ability to do whatever it takes to help families turn their lives around

Staff work flexibly and are with the families when they need help the most; early mornings getting the household up and ready for school or evenings helping establish bed time routines. It is not the staff’s job to get the children up or put children to bed but to help the parents acquire the necessary skills

What were the results?

115 families across Worcestershire have been supported since 2009, and the scheme has generated estimated savings of £8 million (according to the DfE Negative Outcomes Costing Tool). Anti Social Behaviour has been reduced by 40% and those under threat of eviction have been reduced by 27%. 41% of cases have reported improved parenting as a result of the scheme and 36% have reported improved behaviour in school."

Also worth a read is a much longer report of a larger project in the City of Westminster, the Family Recovery programme that began in 2008 which, has some quite startling numbers concerning the savings and avoided costs from their programme. You can read it here: 

http://www.localleadership.gov.uk/docs/Repairing%20broken%20families%20Sept%202010.pdf

Open Public Services White Paper

The Open Public Services White Paper is in the consultation stage and SOLACE have produced their response on behalf of 1700 Chief Executives and senior managers. Acknowledging that a peace, of sorts, has recently broken out between the profession and Eric Pickles, this still seems to satisfy itself to move along the surface of the White Paper, tending to make thoughtful, conciliatory comments. Admittedly, it identifies some important points about the centrality of local government to the probable success of the eventual legislation and what local government is already doing in regard to aspects like competition and procurement, neighbourhood working and community engagement. But it avoids mounting a more ‘in-terms’ critique of the underlying assumption, and massive risk, in the government programme, i.e. the fragmentation of local government services as the sine qua non of its plans for localisation. Nevertheless, there are recognisable strategic and tactical considerations in something as important as this first stage consultation and having the response point out, a touch trenchantly, it’s local government that leads the public sector in delivering so many of the changes required of the wider public sector, was welcome. Read SOLACE's response via the link.

CIPD reports on job losses - deeper consequences being felt

The CIPD website has reported this today, 15th:

Dr John Philpott, Chief Economic Adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) comments as follows on official labour market statistics for the period April-June 2011 published earlier today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS):



It's clear from the large quarterly fall in employment and very sharp rise in headline unemployment that the UK jobs market is weakening significantly and that we can expect unemployment to continue to rise well into next year. What's most worrying is that the private sector jobs recovery has slowed markedly while the public sector jobs cull is accelerating rapidly. Indeed, the loss of public sector jobs in the second quarter of 2011 dwarfs what might have been expected from the current Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast and is more in line with CIPD forecasts. This suggests that the OBR may have to substantially revise its forecast for the employment and unemployment outlook to 2015 - which will be bad news for the Government as we enter a very uncertain period for the UK economy.

This is just one of several pieces of particularly bad news, not just for those in the public sector in terms of job losses (110,000 jobs lost between March-June 2011), but for public service managers in managing the practical consequences of the government's policies.

For instance, a colleague told me yesterday that youth homelessness figures are spiking alarmingly and family homelessness will go the same way once the government's housing benefit cuts and caps become effective in January 2012. This has largely been hidden from wider public view but for families who will be forced to move home, disrupt their children's education and lose important family and social networks, the impact of the benefit savings measures could be catastrophic. After a decade and more of housing directors in the big cities and elsewhere working tirelessly to eradicate the use of bed and breakfast, are we going to see a return to its use?



At the level of communities, my experience in the East Midlands in the late 1990's was that community sustainability is built in inches and lost in yards, and as rental-tenant 'churn' gathers pace, many socially damaging and divisive activities rush in to the fill the void left as community continuity gives way discontinuity.

The downward spiral for a community can be rapid and extremely difficult to reverse without significant public and voluntary intervention. Neither of these sectors are now in the shape to provide the depth and continuity of support that they were 3 years ago. The private sector, despite rhetoric to the contrary, neither cares nor, unless it sees a profit, is particularly interested in these aspects of the society it is part of. It is of course interested when the incentives provided by the public purse are sufficient, but the level of those is a fraction of the level of the first decade of this century and will probably never return to those levels.    

This is a complex scenario that requires people of huge commitment, energy and passion, and the public, voluntary and community sectors have those in abundance - even now. The risk is that so many of our finest public servants are now doing roles of exceptional breadth and greater complexity, with little or no recourse to external support, of even the most rudimentary kind. Just at the moment when those with something to offer are ready, willing and able to do so, the new orthodoxy of 'external support is bad' is at its strongest. And, even if a senior manager has some resources to use external support, there is political opprobrium and organisational reputational risk in accessing that support. That simply can't be right.

Finally, let us not forget that the smoke screen so often put up by those in power that this is all the fault of a previous government and/or what the public sector had coming to it, bears no simple mathematic test - £65b was provided to two banks and more generally, to save the casino bankers from decimating our financial systems. Not a single banker in the UK has paid any price for that deceit and ineptitude, and certainly not the same price as the 110,000 public sector workers are now paying as they lose their jobs during the past 3 months. 

Well Being and a critique of the consultation on the measures

The Positive Psychology website has been tracking the government's plans to measure well being. The Office for National Statistics has been carrying out a £12m national consultation as part of the work to identify the most appropriate measures for the well being metrics. The PP article is a cogent and reasoned critique of the risks of creating the measures in the way Government suggests and what may flow from those in policy terms. The article is worth a read.


http://mail.aol.com/34062-111/aol-6/en-gb/Suite.aspx

Broken Britain? Broken Nokia. Useless Vodafone.

News from the front-line of customer service. Regular readers will know I have little time for rubbish customer service from the much vaunted and over-hyped private sector. Typically, this manifests itself via mobile 'phone providers. Todays' story is high quality.


I have a Nokia E72.Nokia? You know, the company that was worth £200bn in 2001 and is  now worth south of £15bn and falling. Read this and you won't be surprised why the fall in value. 


Last Friday, 19/8, my handset, the 2nd of the last 6 months, failed again. Cue contact with Vodafone. Excellent response, new E72 handset arrives next day. They had though refused to provide another, different make, at least until I "upgrade", i.e. pay more and commit to a longer contract. Never mind, reload all data onto the handset and away we go. 


Wednesday of this week, the white-screen of death returns to the new handset and the phone fails. Cue call to Vodafone, who replace within 24 hours, but refuse to supply another make. Frustrated but in dire need to keep connected, I accept a second new handset and re-provision the handset again, re-load all data and off we go. 


Today, only 24 hours later, that handset, i.e. the third of the week, fails. Cue call to Vodafone who this time blame Nokia outright, refuse to provide anything other than another E72. I say, no thanks, and then the 'dance of the blind' takes place. The operative calls the "upgrades" department - but I don't want an upgrade say I - but they refuse to provide a different make. He suggests a "downgrade", yes, there is such a thing, but, the "upgrades" department refuses me a "downgrade". They will though credit me with £20 to spend in their shop to get a pay-as-you-go, but not email capability and that would deny me a replacement3G handset. All one-way. No notion of fairness, proper service, a decent response. Nothing. Just a dumb offer, an insult and a classic flip-off.


Getting the picture? I can't upgrade, even though I don't want to. I can't downgrade, even though I don't want to. I can't get similar, only identical. Is this starting to sound a bit like Kafka's The Trial? I think so. The operative tries the other department one last time, but in absolutely classic style "the computer say no". Yes, he really did say those words, the computer does not allow him to provide anything other than an identical replacement. And this time it will take 5 days to get it to me because, of course, it's the Bank Holiday!


He wouldn't even provide me with my PUK numbers so I could remove my business and go elsewhere. I have to "put that in writing" via their website, which when I tried was experiencing technical problems. Classic obfuscation - "put it in writing" - the old 1970's answer to everything.


What do I draw from this?

1. The decline and fall of customer service from Vodafone. A once quite efficient and helpful company.
2. The almost complete collapse of any 'empowerment' of a front-line employee, who must get sick and tired of fronting a faceless, bureaucratic and unhelpful back-office.
3. The shadowy 'upgrade department', who actually call the shots but you never to get to speak with them (I did ask several times to speak direct but the operative isn't allowed to do that)
4. The moronic parroting of 'customer service' language that is actually the complete antithesis of customer service.
5. The realisation, time and again, that call-centres simply do not work because they reduce all individuals, i.e. you and me, to a default stance; that of a fit-the-company template, or you don't fit at all.
6. The powerlessness that this induces. There is no-one to complain to, no resolution, no simple way to take your business elsewhere.
7. The comfort that the public sector will invariably out perform the hopeless service that companies like Vodafone and Nokia now provide.
8. The sense that those twin imposters, profit and growth, have so infected companies that they have almost completely lost touch with the reality customers have of using their defective products and trying to navigate their labrynthine and unhelpful so-called customer services.

 I know within these organisations there will be people who go to work to try and do a good job, to help others, but they are being massively let down by 'managers,' whose main interests are short-term targets and bonuses. Exactly the focus that led to the banking crisis and financial meltdown of 2007-09. 


When will they learn? 

Scorching critique of the uber-class

An interesting piece on the squeezed middles, unwittingly squeezed between the under-class and the uber-class, where-in the latter reside those who wrecked the economy and continue to escape absolutely free of punishment, with those in the former who decided to (very wrongly) take something from their neighbours and community are punished at sentences with 30-50% severity premiums.

http://www.publicservice.co.uk/blog_story.asp?id=309

We should see balance, responsibility and accountability for all in society, no just those who have their collars felt most easily. Will we finally see the hierarchy at News International bought to book with the latest disclosures and senior police officers who acted in concert with them properly held to account, just as the 'rioters' are?

Until then, whenever we have the choice or opportunity let's focus on what's working well in our communities, strengthening our voluntary and community sectors to work ever more deeply with young people to engage with them, then uncover and nurture their talents, whilst trying to resist siren calls for deeper public sector cuts. And these will come, if the recession slips into a depression and relatively small-scale business regeneration palliatives coupled with 'the markets' fail to deliver the transformation of the economy. 

Pause, reflect, understand and move on - not take revenge

Eight days since I last blogged and when I did the riots had taken place only in north London. What a difference those ensuing few days made, both to the 'landscape' of the ensuing violence in a variety of cities and just as importantly  to issues such as the reactions to the events, to community cohesion, to government/police relations and so on. Have a look at the link for an interesting piece on causes of the unrest. 
http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/blog-posts/2011/08/the-single-biggest-cause-of-rioting.htm


The propensity for mass hysteria, evidenced by the various reactions to the News International saga, was re-affirmed massively by the sorts of reactions we've seen in the (predominantly) right-wing press and media. 


The suggestion of conjoining of offences committed in city centres to someone's tenure, and not even the perpetrator's tenancy, but their mother's, is worthy of the 'knee-jerk' epithet more than any other. Local authorities and other social housing landlords have over the years strengthened tenancy agreements to allow for action against activities in relation to the proper conduct of the tenancy  and actions more widely in the vicinity. This development though seems to take the sense of those agreements to a different level.  If LB Wandsworth succeeds in its quest to gain possession of a social housing tenancy, one presumes the civil court judge will apply some pretty stern tests to a case based on a criminal act that has no connection to the tenant or the property in question other than a familial one, once removed at that. I would have thought the European Courts might also be asked to get involved at some point.


The more important issue however is why should those in one tenure only, face double jeopardy? There is no legal or moral basis for punishing people solely because of their tenure-and that's what this is. Will we see private sector tenants and home owners with family members who are convicted then be evicted? You answer the question. And that's called discrimination.


The government's desire to exact revenge rather than let the police and courts do their job, is a weakness, not strength. Neither of those bodies are perfect, both are under huge pressure to respond, from the press, public and also worryingly by a government demanding the harshest of penalties, some would say disproportionately harsh looking at the sentences. Also, the courts have the powers they require to deal with these matters in the criminal courts, and not to expand the scope into peoples' tenure. 


It's as if the government has its Falklands War, only a year and a bit into their tenure. The manna from this particular poisoned heaven averts attention from the £60 billion (sixty billion pounds) as yet unrepaid to the taxpayer by the banks and bankers; the £6.5 (six and a half million pounds) annual bonus one banker paid himself this year; the £1b (one billion pounds) and more government owned banks set aside for last year's bankers bonuses; the massive cuts to public funding of services and so on. 


I'll finish with 2 thoughts. First, that at this time what we have also seen is the wonderful, positive core of many of these communities as they respond, clean-up, band together to self-protect (and I don't include EDL-inspired vigilante groups in this) and call for peace and reconciliation. This positive core is helped by government and other parties setting the scene for repair and rehabilitation, providing effective, clear-thinking leadership and not bidding-up the revenge, all allied to some attempt to understand and explain what happened (which is NOT the same as condoning it).


And finally, an apparently prescient, forward thinking politician said this in 2010; "Imagine the Conservatives go home and get an absolute majority, on 25% of the eligible votes (they got 23%)...they turn around in the next week or two and chuck up VAT to 20%, we're going to start cutting teachers, cutting the police, and the wage bill in the public sector. I think if you're not careful in that situation...you'd get Greek-style unrest". That politician...Nicholas William Peter Clegg.

Haringey and the Tottenham riots

A quite momentous week, often for the most puzzling or troubling of reasons, e.g. USA’s downgrade to AA+ reliability (which panics 'the markets' - ever wondered just exactly what or who these 'markets' are and why they panic so easily?) juxtaposed with the highly local 2011 Tottenham ‘riots’, which if nothing else seems to show the relative fragility of community cohesion. The continued reduction in third sector sustainability, the lack of sustained growth in the economy and waves of redundancies in both the commercial and public sectors suggests a winter of discontent, whether of an employment relations nature or of community resilience.

Here's one recent perspective. Given the Tottenham events, a compelling video from Haringey about the effect of cuts on youth services, seems worryingly prescient.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/video/2011/jul/31/haringey-youth-club-closures-video?CMP=twt_fd

Councils must reveal what they own

A report today on the Public Service website tells how the Coalition would like all local authorities to publish details of their assets. They report:


"Rather than cutting frontline services and funding to voluntary organisations, local authorities will have to publish full details of all their assets so the public can see which ones could be sold to generate revenue, the Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has said.

To help them along, the coalition has produced a map of buildings and facilities that 87 English councils own, including hotels, restaurants, pubs, golf courses, sports stadiums, a sailing club, an airport and around 20 cinemas. Roughly 66 per cent of the country's £385bn worth of public sector assets are reckoned to be owned by councils.



"We need to know, now more than ever, exactly what assets are publicly owned," Pickles said. "The general public probably have no idea of the sheer scale and scope of property and land on the public sector's books. In many cases it goes way beyond traditional frontline services.

"I want the public sector to take a good hard look at what they own. By cataloguing each and every asset councils can help government find innovative new ways to utilise them, improve local services, keep council running costs down and save taxpayers' money."


We hope this does not presage a spate of misreporting about local government that tends to follow such 'hold the news' type stories. It's obviously no surprise that Council's own assets. Perhaps the eclectic mix might surprise, but surely in this new localised, big-society world, diversity of assets is a strength not a problem. Or is it that it's local authority ownership per se that is the problem here? The LGA says:

"Peter Fleming, chairman of the Local Government Association's improvement board, insisted that local authorities were already saving millions of pounds through smarter use of their assets. This included gathering different council services together under the one roof to reduce building management costs and sharing space with other councils, public bodies and the voluntary sector.

"The key issue remains that if the public sector is to find really big savings then Whitehall has to look at its own assets," he said. "Government agencies and the NHS must stop working in isolation and start sharing office space with each other and local authorities."

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.