It is a disease which has gripped the United States for a couple of decades; a disease which is starting to creep its way across Britain and Europe. This disease disguises itself as your friend before leaving you high and dry and wondering where it all went wrong.
What is this disease and why haven’t you heard about it before?
You have, but because it disguises itself as your friend you failed to recognise it for what it is.
I’m talking about the current endemic for motivation as some kind of magic elixir.
You can spend thousands on it, believing that with the right motivation you are but a step away from success. There are motivational speakers, motivational books, motivational screen savers, motivational….everything. It seems you can’t turn around without someone offering to motivate you, usually for a fee (the industry is worth £Billions) but not always. For crying out loud I even have friends on Facebook who seem to do little more than trot out motivational quotes (often out of context) all day long!
Thank God there are some who see this craze for motivation as the nonsense it is.
In the most recent episode of BBC2’s Dragon’s Den a clearly highly motivated entrepreneur was obviously missing one or two basic business essentials (such as understanding what ‘gross profit margin’ means) but felt that frequently repeating how motivated she was would plug the obvious (to the audience) gaps. Sanity was needed and new Dragon Hilary Devey provided it in five simple but sensible words of advice; “passion does not generate profit.”
Of course, to succeed in business, as in anything in life, you need to be sufficiently motivated, passionate about your dream. But, what none of the hundreds of motivational speakers out there will tell you as they take your hard-earned cash is that on its own that is not enough.
We’ve been here before with far more serious consequences, for what we are now witnessing in business we saw nearly a hundred years ago on the battlefields of Europe.
Back then, in the Great War, hundreds of thousands of young men lost their lives because they were sufficiently motivated to go ‘over the top’ for one more push. They were passionate in their belief that the desire for success, if strong enough, would be all they needed as they charged at another machine gun nest.
In 1917 the Battle of Passchendaele lasted for three months, cost 70,000 lives, a further 250,000 wounded and gained the allies a paltry five miles of ground.
There was no lack of motivation at Passchendaele, no lack of passion. What was lacking was strategic leadership. Our current day motivational messengers often include Winston Churchill’s words among the quotes they push as the route to success. Perhaps they should bear in mind Churchill’s words after Passchendaele; “a forlorn expenditure of valour and life without equal in futility.”
In 1917 the generals finally woke up and realised that without the right planning, without the strategy providing informed, intelligent direction for the motivation and the passion for their brave troops, the horrendous loss of highly motivated life would continue. That motivation and passion was crying out for strategic leadership to give it direction. It took Verdun, Somme, Passchendaele and many, many other inglorious battles for the penny to drop but, in the end, it did.
Fast forward to 2011; what is your informed, intelligent, planned strategic direction? What is the vision that provides your destination? What is the route map to take you to your destination?
If you don’t know, no amount of motivational speaking, books, screen savers or Facebook friends will help, all they will do is motivate you all the way to disaster.
On the other hand, if you do know where your business is going and how it is going to get there that alone should be sufficient motivation. If it’s not, you’re in the wrong business.
So, before you spend any more cash on that motivational guru, it might be wise to instead invest some of your money with a strategy expert. You know where we are!
© Jim Cowan, Cowan Global Limited, August 2011
BOMBARDIER, STRATEGY & THE MISSING BIG PICTURE
31 08 2011The recent furore surrounding the awarding of the Thameslink contract to Siemens ahead of Bombardier and its resultant negative impact on the East Midlands’ economy (in particular that of Derby) has raised many questions of Government’s handling of the issue.
Most of these questions have centred on single issues ranging from the limitations of EU law on the procurement process to the loss of jobs at Bombardier and even the value (or otherwise) of government not losing face.
But what no one has asked (or not that we have seen) is what might have been the effect of a good strategist taking a look at the issue before it became an issue…..
It’s a complex issue, one I admit to having simplified for the purpose of demonstration and of keeping this blog relatively brief. Complex or not, it is an issue that should never have arisen.
I can imagine the non-strategists way of approaching the design of the tender brief for the Thameslink contract; “what we need is the company that offers best value against the published criteria.”
It sounds sensible. I mean, why on earth would you say; “let’s award the contract to a bid which will cost us more”?
Yet, by failing to consider the bigger picture in the way a good strategist would, that is exactly what the government has done. The word ‘value’ has been applied very narrowly and so when the Department for Transport stated; “The evaluation concluded that the Siemens bid offered best value for the taxpayer and for passengers,” what they really meant was that in terms of the cost of the project it offered the best value.
But what should ‘value’ mean to the taxpayer? What are the possible negative effects of awarding the contract to Siemens?
The one that has made the biggest headlines is the shedding of jobs by Bombardier in Derby. Overlooked though has been Siemens statement that winning the contract will mean they will be creating new jobs. Will one cancel the other out?
Not even closely. Siemens own estimate is that winning the contract will lead to the creation of 300 new jobs in the UK. Meanwhile, as a result of losing the tender, Bombardier has already issued 1400 staff with redundancy notices.
That hardly balances the books and, big picture; it’s a lot worse than that. Estimates suggest that suppliers and related companies will shed, conservatively, at least the same number of jobs as a result of lost business. That is 2800 jobs lost to 300 gained. Value?
But that isn’t the big picture. We still need to factor in the loss to the local economy of 2800 people (and their families) tightening their belts and spending less (at a time the government wants us to spend more to boost the weak economy). We also need to factor in the increase in benefit payments that will be made from the public purse to those affected.
And we still haven’t arrived at the big picture a good strategist would have looked at from the outset. Depressed areas often struggle with social issues, children from depressed areas have been shown to struggle more educationally, health and well-being are generally poorer in depressed areas and without outside stimulus such areas often struggle to regenerate. All of these have cost implications for the taxpayer.
Not taking the big picture into account from the outset will leave families struggling, local economies nose diving and the taxpayer forking out far more than will be saved by the awarding of the contract to Siemens. Value?
Even ignoring the high cost of those social aspects, it is likely the axed jobs at Bombardier alone will result in at least £20 million in lost tax revenue and added benefits (Manchester University).
The more you consider the ‘issue’ of awarding a contract for the Thameslink programme, the more you realise it is far more than that single issue. As with almost everything consideration must be (or should have been) given to cause and effect, to the big picture. It is simply not possible to divorce single issues and hope they can be dealt with in isolation. Good strategists know this.
Of course, it is easy for me to be critical; I have the benefit of hindsight. But honestly, look at everything covered above and ask yourself; “were these issues really that difficult to predict?”
Now we are where we are. A mistake has been made. What does the good strategist do when recognising a mistake was made in the planning process (because mistakes do get made)? The strategist looks again at the issue and asks, “how do we put this right, how do we address the big picture so that we have our project back on track?”
You might think (as would I) the sensible thing to do would be to take a step back and put the awarding of the contract for Thameslink on hold. You might think (as would I) that now the bigger picture is clear for all to see a reappraisal would be very high on the government’s list of priorities.
Sadly not; strategic thinking remains conspicuous by its absence. Transport Secretary Philip Hammond claims that the process cannot now be reversed. Yet top legal minds such as European business law expert Chris Bovis (Hull University) say this is not so. Bovis says; “‘in theory, and in practice, the Government can abort the contract at any stage. The consequences could be serious or less serious depending how much contractually it is committed. The Government would be liable to compensate the firm for abortive costs, such as money incurred during bidding.”
Perhaps the real reason for not reconsidering was that stated by Business Secretary Vince Cable when he said such a move would “cause significant damage to the Government’s reputation.”
However, there is the hint of a small light at the end of this (railway) tunnel with the government’s announcement that it is to delay the awarding of contracts on the Crossrail programme by six months, a move that will allow a review of its public procurement process to be taken into account.
But what of the strategy? What of planning to cover the big picture? There was and is little sign of (good) strategic leadership in addressing the Thameslink fiasco and although we can hope for better on the Crossrail project, with the same people considering the matter, with the same single issue mentality unlikely to be replaced by strategic, big picture thinking, we should not hold our breath while waiting.
And what of you and your business; what is the lesson you can take from this?
It is simply this, in business as in politics there is rarely, if ever, a challenge which is wholly single issue. Remember that once you apply some common sense, big picture strategic thinking the implications of your actions (cause and effect) can usually be predicted and should therefore be planned for properly from the outset.
Plan properly now or take the pain later.
© Jim Cowan, Cowan Global Limited, August 2011
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