"It's very difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on not understanding it". Upton Sinclar

15. Silos destroy organisations.

We’re now beginning to understand and appreciate that diversity is one of the critical ingredients that drives success in teams & organisations. When I use the word diversity I’m talking more than demographic diversity (age, race, sexuality, religion) I'm including diversity as it applies to perspectives, experiences & thinking styles. 

Daniel Kahneman wrote in his powerful book ‘Thinking Fast & Slow” that ‘we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness’. Successful organisations ensure they have the appropriate training in place to ensure their people are aware of the benefits of diversity as well as any bias that may be limiting their effectiveness; but it’s more than this.

It’s important to master the silos you may have in your team/organisation, rather than be mastered by them. This may always be a work in progress – one way to break these down is to ensure you align/reward people (pay and incentives) behind organizational successes – less of the ‘eat what you kill’ incentive structures. Another is encouraging information flows & knowledge and set up individuals and team to work more cross functionally – the modern day hackathons I think do this well sometimes.

At P&G we had a document – a PDR (Personal development review) and at the end of the year you had to complete (in 250 words) a summary of the years deliverables/successes & learnings as part of your annual review. Reviewing one of these documents (Yes I’ve still kept some of them!)  I remembered that our annual objectives were broken into 2 main themes – building the business and building the organization (50:50 split) – that taught me from the start of my career that we will only be successful when we’re all successful and that teamwork is crucial for success.

Two powerful reads to further your insight into the damage silos can do include Gillian Tetts 2015 book – The Silo Effect – brilliant, frightening and unfortunately relatable. The other from the great Matthew Syed – Rebel Ideas – provides some great examples of the power of diversity. Enjoy.

16. Do you play not to loose, or do you play to win?

John O’ Keefe was a Group VP at P&G & President of the Health & Beauty Products in Europe when I joined our European organisation. I never interacted with him directly (unfortunately). However, I learnt lots from him as all employees in Egham were lucky to get given a copy of his book Business Beyond The Box when it was published. This book is as relevant for individuals today as it was back then. He said that “the rate of change is now so high that incrementalism will not work, let alone maximise your potential. Staying comfortable in the box of incrementalism will lead to failure” this book was published in 1998 – 23 years ago.

His book and the practices I’ve seen in some successful teams was to ‘cut loose from the limited mindsets of the present and the past and adopt new mindsets to bring breakthrough success in the future”. Business planning would include in depth situational analysis and not just within your category/business area but from what I like to call the 6 Cs – consumers, category, competition, company, charter (legal and regulatory environment/technology & trends) all worked into change scenarios as a springboard into the start of business planning.  

I do believe that organisations need operators who are focused on the day to day BUT one does need also to have someone (teams) that are focused very much on the medium or long term and making appropriate plans to cannibalise themselves. A successful lean innovation team I worked with in Asia creating new to the world innovations for the PepsiCo system were not P&L responsible. This allowed us to truly think outside the box when it came to identifying and satisfying Asian consumer unmet needs in the beverage space. (Of course the magic of Ian Tetro, Apurvi Sheth and Geoff Painter played a big part in that journey too overseen by Sanjeev Chadha) 

17. See the world the way it is, not the way you are…

 … and if you can’t please make sure you have good people around you who do. Always have your end customer in mind when it comes to ‘checking in’ with what you’re doing. Will they get it? Does it help them do the jobs they want done? It's not just external.

How are the processes working in your organization, what do your people think is working/not working? Are you asking them? And if you are – are you listening to the answers & willing to do something about it?

18.  We should all be acting like Amazon is getting into our business.

So said Alex Gorsky the CEO of Johnson & Johnson some years back. He said that one always needs to think how your organization can be more efficient and effective. I’m a fan of a burning platform and there are no shortage of them. I talked before how the past should be a springboard and not a sofa. Unfortunately, some individuals, teams (and/or businesses) sometimes rely on what made them successful and never look to evolve. Big mistake. The only constant is change (unless it’s from a vending machine). Scott Eblin wrote a great book called the Next Level back in 2006. It detailed some strategies individuals can take to ensure as they progress through an organization they continue to upskill. People need to realise that the deliverables or skills that got them to the position they are in now, may not be the right things to make them a success going forward. An exercise I’ve seen work several times is literally to ‘fire yourself and/or your team’ and then rehire yourselves and work through what you would do differently if you were starting afresh – a great exercise to execute before annual objective setting.

19. Complexity is the enemy.

‘The farsighted Xerxes sees only a distant horizon on which ambitions are opportunities: simplicity is the searchlight that shows the way.’

Speaks for itself. The most impressive people I’ve come across have are simplifiers. You want to engage and motivate folks, you want to get people on side, you want to appear smart – simplify.

20. The Power of Conversations

Being Irish of course I’m going to mention this, but there is method in my madness. The simple fact is that there is a power to striking up conversations with people outside of your day to day circle. Back at the start of my career I remember I would take an hour or two “out” on a Friday afternoon (every Friday) and walk around our Egham site – out of the skincare building and wander over to Haircare, or the analytical dept, drop by oral care, spend some time in the library or see what was happening in microbiology (as one does). Why did I do it? To be honest I was getting excited about the upcoming weekend but it was also to catch up with folks, see what they were working on, check in, share thoughts with what was going on in skincare or the company or the competition or the marketplace – I often remember saying, when asked what I was doing out of my patch that I was notworking, I mean networking. This was 25 years ago but the concept of going out of the way to meet people who can help you understand how the business ticks & their roles has been something I’ve done in every organization I’ve ever worked in. It’s made my roles more enjoyable, identified new projects to work on and help me have a better impact. It’s more difficult now that most of us are not in the office but are you scheduling one coffee zoom call with someone from a part of the business you don’t normally interact with a week or even a month?

“Conversation is still the most important and valuable forms of communication but technology and the pace of work transpire to make it one of the rarest”

Eric Smith. How Google Works.

“Knowledge comes not from knowledge kept but knowledge shared. A company’s value and reward system should recognize this”

Bill Gates 1995

“We don’t want anyone at any level keeping vital insights and concerns to themselves” 

Patty McCord Powerful. Netflix Culture 

I promised 25 so 5 more tomorrow......