A while ago, I wrote a post that distinguishes between evolution and revolution. I wrote this, because I’m constantly thinking about doing radical things, and know deep down it’s the only way to both enjoy life, and be successful it in.

The world isn’t without risk, be that in our personal lives or in business. So, why do we hide from them so often?

Then I wondered, is it because of visibility?

We all know, if we take a second to stop and think, that live is full of risk – just walking across the road, something we do every day (if you’re not glued to your car) is risky. But we go ahead and cross – why? We do it because, like the chicken, we need to get to the other side. We take these risks so often, that we come blind to their very existence.

Are you so blind to the risks you take each day, that when it comes to taking new risks – you get scared?

Take a risk, or money down the drain?

Some people associate risk with disaster, taking a risk equates to throwing money down the drain in some instances; but why?

All well run businesses work well, because they plan well. They think about what they are doing and invest in well thought out ideas. They play the game, they make the game – they disturb the norm. The experts do it differently, and they do it daily.

So, how do the not so well run business do it? Well, lack of planning for a start – bad execution, poor research, blind assumptions, or by ignoring the people who know – i.e. the customer or the shop floor sales assistant.

Are you so bad at planning, so miserable at executing your ideas that you get stuck?

Are you such a poor thinker, that you can’t ask the right people the right questions?

Are you such a dreadful listener that those around you can’t support you no matter how hard they try?

If so, what exactly is it you’re doing running a business? If you have these problems, and you’re not bringing in people to solve them – are you really going to be around for long?

You wouldn’t make big business decisions on the flip of a coin, but nor would the big innovators that you see today.

When you innovate, or create a revolution, or throw out the rule book, or write your own – you take risks. But what you don’t do is take stupid risks. You have faith in what you’re about to do, but that faith is not blind.

There’s only one way to take away the fear of change, and that’s to enjoy the rush.

Do something special, do something different. If not for your business success, if not to secure a new contract, if not to capture a large market share – do it because it’s fun.

If you need help, go to a theme park. Get on a rollercoaster that feels dangerous, but has been well designed.

That what you need to do – make it feel dangerous, but design it well.

There two related concepts are quite separate if you need them to be – in fact most people, especially in business, don’t bother thinking about the distinction.

Business thinking is about just that, thinking. Many business people are driven by panic and evolution seems to be latched on to this by some.

Evolution is the steady incrimination and change of something. That’s not to say that whatever is born of evolution is the best option – just the speed at which it goes. Or, importantly, the steps it takes.
Evolution requires steps, steady, well placed, firm steps. One step after another, without skipping – at least not making a habit of it.

Revolution is much more of a burst. Steps are leaped over, and resistance is almost always strong and determined. That determination is found on both sides of the fence, the call for and the augment against.

Many business people, quite rightly, get a bit shaking when talking about revolution. It’s high risk, and the potential for high returns doesn’t always mitigate the stress.

Here’s the thing though.

A lot of businesses seem to mistake evolution for revolution. They see the slow, small steps of change and start to get worried. They panic, and say, “No - leave it how it is”.

If you’re in business, and see opportunities for change, and you find yourself saying “no”; it might be prudent to think about whether said change is evolution or revolution. If it’s not radical, it’s not hard to dip your toes in, if it’s not an explosion of differences – it’s not too difficult to put things back how they were.

You don’t always have to fight the change.

There are many companies that band the word ‘meritocracy’ around, but what does it mean and what is involved?

Meritocracy is a form of leadership where decisions about an employee’s wage, role, bonuses and the like are made on the merits that that employee presents. Skill, performance, punctuality, experience and enthusiasm are all examples that one might use to measure merit – of course that depends on the decision being made.

A meritocracy is heavily dependent on skills. Not just in the shape of employing and promoting those who have skills over those who don’t – regardless of things like gender, sexuality, age, disability, race and allegiance; but also on the part of those making the decisions.

It’s not easy to assess the skills someone has, nor is it easy to assess the skills that someone might need for a particular scenario. Yet, despite its difficulty many feel they are up to the task.

This can be seen in the somewhat whimsical manor that a lot of companies run interviews. It’s assumed that, if someone is in a certain position, then they must have the appropriate skills. A logical decision, granted, that a team leader – whose job it is to assess and maintain the skills of their charge, might be appropriate.

What if, however, it transpires that one of those very team leaders were themselves employed in a floored process? What if, throughout their tenure, no real attempt is made to confirm their skills, let alone those of their teams? Would that not forgo the benefits of afore mentioned assumption?

How do you know?

Can you tell if a team leader is a skilled team leader – by monitoring their team’s performance?

No, you can say that their team is performing well – but that doesn’t prove that their performance is due to the diligence of the leader. There are many teams that functions well, despite having very poor leadership. In fact, a good team doesn’t need a designated leader, as order is distributed automatically.

Most designated team leaders are in fact team managers.

Most real team leaders are actually part of the team – a well organised and motivated individual within its ranks. They are often over looked, don’t realise themselves, and they are often too busy getting on with it. Real team leaders don’t require a pay rise, a pedestal or an inflated sense of self-importance.

Team managers

A team manager is someone responsible for assessing skill levels, constructing feedback and providing a channel of communication for the team. They are, and rarely need to be, the person motivating and driving the team. You can have someone who is a team manager as well as a team leader – but they are few and far between.

It’s the team manager who, if affective, should be getting involved in meritocratic assessments – like those in interviews.

A good thermometer

Measuring the skills of a team manager, or an interviewer is oft over looked. It’s a scientific process, and should never be approached otherwise.

Perhaps, I try to sell to you a thermometer – a very familiar piece of measuring equipment. You, as a diligent science teacher, cook or anyone else interested in such a purchase might say, “How do I know it is a good thermometer?”
“Well,” I proclaim, “I’ll prove it!”
I take said thermometer and place in hot water, the dial, mercury or digits respond and provide a reading.

Does that prove my thermometer is good?

No, it proves that there is an apparent correlation between the temperature and the response of my instrument, but – it does not prove the instrument is correct and accurate.

You may trust me, and buy in good faith. If you were a particle physicist, however, and you were measuring the energy produced as two atoms collided – you’d want some confirmation. You’d want to make a long series of tests to confirm the accuracy of your new instrument’s design and a guarantee of its quality – or at the very least a seal of approval by some government supported body of professors.

Now, let’s get back to your team managers.

Do you trust that they can make accurate assessments of an individual – to such a skill level, as to do it in one or two hours with the aid of only a clipboard or notepad? Do you trust this, based only on fact that they have made assessments of someone before? Or, do you verify their skills of assessment stand up to scrutiny?

So where’s the merit?

What I’ve said above, can be paraphrased into many attempts as assessing and making decisions on merit. A floor in many businesses, is that they assume they are doing things right. They assume that decisions are based on merit.

That’s not to say that they aren’t doing things right. More, if you don’t assess things correctly and you don’t pay attention to the right principles – it’s all the more likely that you won’t be doing it correctly.

If you can’t assess someone’s skill – then how do you develop it, or promote it or reward it? If your assessments of someone’s skills are inaccurate, then how should you view those decisions based on them?

The problem with meritocracy

There is a major fault in a drive for a more meritocratic organisation, in that more people say, “Yes, that’s a brilliant idea – I love that” – yet rarely do you find someone actually making changes to truly satisfy the needs of a meritocracy – that of true assessment.

Many businesses use productivity incentives, but do they actually work?

Well, quite frankly – in a world were skill, experience and motivation are the key actuators in performance, it’s unlikely. Where it does have a benefit, it’s hard to prove and usually isn’t very significant. The ratio of productivity to incentive doesn’t seem to be very much, and the correlation coefficient will be erratic.

Now, give me my money

Bonuses do motivated for a while, but there are many shortcomings. If it’s late, not enough, withdrawn, doesn’t satisfy expectation or is in some way offset by a negative experience unrelated to it – its benefit is destroyed. If you do it once, it’s is expected again and again. Then, when a decision is made to move away from an incentive – those who benefited from it feel neglected, lost, hard done by and more importantly; they feel that they are now supposed to work less.

Those who don’t realise the direct benefits of incentives – ie those not earning through performance; feel left out, downgraded, disrespected and more importantly they feel – “well, I’m not getting paid more so why should I work harder?”

Incentives don’t last

An unobserved fact about incentives is that they don’t last. Let me clarify: even if the incentive is still administered – eventually it’ll be the norm to be paid an extra £100 per month. It’s no longer an incentive – it’s a deterrent. If I don’t work hard enough, the money I get will be taken away. So, the positive nature of an incentive is mutated in to the negative nature of a deterrent.

When they do create an increase in performance, they mask any other facilitators of development. Good coaching, great training and awesome leadership get confused and can’t be pinpointed. When the motivation derived from incentives build skill and experience – you then start paying bonus for no reason – your now highly skilled worker could perform just as well without the bonus; yet you’d never know. Your hands are tied so you can’t take it away, and they’re still stressed under the pressure to keep earning.

Time to normalise

Reciprocal normalisation is the response to an action that reflects the original action’s nature. Whereby, a positive response is elicited by a positive action, and a negative resonance for a negative action. Transferring to a paradigm that takes advantage of reciprocal normalisation reverses causality, also transferring obligations. Instead of the business being obliged to reward productivity, the employee is obliged to be more productive.

Potentiality is the way forward

Although incentive causes problems when attached to productivity, it can be used for other aspects of a working relationship. Instead of incentivising productivity; incentivise potentiality. This means rewarding those that have the potential to be highly productive – leaving the true productivity factors to be address more effectively with coaching, training and relationship building.

Someone who arrives on time, stays at the workstation and doesn’t have days off sick all the time has much more potential to be productive than someone who is never at their desk, wakes up late and who’s grandma dies every two weeks for 3 years.

This frees up your time to really focus on analysing skill sets, the dynamics of workflow management and ergonomics.

Giving bonuses for being on time, being at your workstations or not being absent is great.
Those who don’t receive their bonuses are highlighted and replaced if changes aren’t made – and as an added bonus the bane of management [shrinkage control] takes care of itself.

Happy workforce

Free of worry, about if they can earn their bonus, staff can become much more introspective and managers don’t have to fight a barrier of ‘bonus depression’ every month.
It’s a big change

I know the above recommendations might sounds ridiculous, but change often does. Waves will be caused, risk will rear its ugly head – but once you’re there, you’ll never go back.
Your big earner, change his pay and say, “right, you’re no longer getting a bonus – that extra £100 that you get every month anyway – is now in your wage”. The pressure comes off and now you’re free to work on focusing on skill – not effort.

Be warned though. By making these changes, you’ll expose any floors in coaching, mentoring, training and leadership – and if you don’t fix them, all the changes will have been in vain.

How good is your team? Skill sets hidden away

Picture the scenario, someone comes up to you – your manager, the board of directors or who ever – they ask, “How good is your team?”

There are three types of answers.

There’s the completely clueless, worthless and unobserved answer:
Err, well, I suppose…. they’re good at, err…

Then there’s the apt, yet vogue ‘think on your feet’ answer that doesn’t really tell you anything new:
Well, my team is good at communicating and working together, and they have good sales – bla, bla, et cetera, bla.

Finally, nay revealingly, we have:
Well, Craig is the problems solver, and everyone knows he’s the go to man. Dan is the positive one that keeps everyone on a high. Charlie and Sarah are both calm under pressure and constantly beat their targets. As a whole, they understand each other’s skills and take advantage of knowing that if they need assistance they don’t need to be on their own…

Type one is an obvious negative. As a team leader, you’re obviously lacking – what’s worse, you’re not even on the team. You sit by them every day; you chat with them, catch up after the weekend and give them their score sheets. However, you’re no real benefit.

Imagine for a minute, that you’re leading your team up a mountain – if you don’t know how far they can go each day, important medical information, experience in climbing, how many supplies they can carry or how much they have left. You and the rest of your team will need a proper team – i.e. a rescue team to come and get you.

Type two is ambiguous. Of course your team communicates well, they were employed because of their communication skills, were they not? Of course they work together, they work in the same room, at the same counter, or at the same desk – they are together! When you can say they work collectively, then you’re talking.

If this is you, you don’t know your team well enough. You know what skills they ought to have, and you know what your boss wants to hear. This however, is most likely your limit. You go through your day thinking your team is better than it is, but failing to really appreciate the work they do. Your team don’t feel praised enough, because you can’t praise them correctly.

Your team going up a mountain with you are better off than the first team, you’re intelligent, you can think on your feet and you know what’s needed. Though, you’d fair a lot better and climb a lot further, if you only knew who had the skills you needed.

Unfortunately, you run the risk of assuming your team has the skills they need when they might not. You’ll over stretch them, push them more than they should be push and rile them up.

Type three is the only true team leader - the Edmund Hillary of Call Centres, or wherever you work.

If this is you, you not only know your team personally. You know them more than they know themselves. You pay attention to how they act, how they feel and what they say. You spend a good amount of your team investigating their skill sets and preparing them for the task ahead. You can navigate them effectively, each on their individual paths.

The good thing about having you as a team leader, is they when someone isn’t feeling motivated, you don’t instantly go, “Common chaps, let’s do this!” in an overzealous tone. You probe a little, to see if there is something you can do. If there’s not, you support them through their lull in two ways.
You let them under perform while they get it out of their system and you assist them by getting yourself and the rest of the team to pick up the slack.

Up the mountain, you’ve climbed harder, faster and more effectively than the others. Your team are tired and existed, but their proud of their achievements and are happy to give you more. If things go wrong, you instantly fashion a stretcher out of halve a tree and take turns pulling. You know when to pitch a tent to stay safe, and you know when to enough is enough.

So, how to you answer the question? How good is you team?

All too often is the case, that the first two are running the show. They fumble around at the bottom of the mountain trying to get somewhere, constantly having to give different approaches to the same problem, never really succeeding.

They don’t know what’s going on, or what skills their team has. Unfortunately, this means they those skills are hidden away, and never used.

You know when you’ve got a Hillary though. Straight up the side without question and back down again. The only time tactics suddenly change for this team is when; they’ve been up and down a few times – so are board and want to try something new and interesting.