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Three Ladies
I recently had the pleasure of attending both a dinner & a lunch where the guest speakers were Jenny Shipley, a previous Prime Minister of New Zealand & first lady to achieve this. Secondly, Rachel Reece is a City Councillor, previously Deputy Mayor in the previous term, @ Nelson City Council. Ignoring politics & putting any such views to one side, I was, & still am of the view both ladies are extremely capable, plus they had some immensely valuable contributions (still) to make in their respective roles.
Jenny covered a myriad of issues effecting business today, significantly more than I have space to cover. However, in summarising her address, I would say these were to me the salient features:
- Business complexity is increasing
- Time frame for making decisions is reducing
- Doing what we have always done is going backwards
- As leaders we need to be speaking with our people, rather than speaking at them.
- And, we need to be engaging with the next generation(s) – X & Y
- It is not what you know today, it is what you do NOT know.
Whilst Jenny concentrated on addressing issues facing business Rachel concentrated on those facing Local Authorities. Again, to summarise, extremely briefly:
- The need to becoming better communicators through better listening
- Is the humility to arrogance radar currently right?
- When a local authority becomes perceptively the ‘enemy of the public’ it is time for an attitudinal change.
A recent article in the National Business Review discussed the need for men to have female brains & think more like women to succeed in business in a newly chaotic economy. Quoting Ann Herrman-Nehdi, the term VUCA is being used to describe today’s economy & stands for: volatile, uncertain, complex & ambiguous. “We have a fallacy of being able to manage & predict change, but now I think the gig is up. We now recognise the weight of change has come to the point, in this new VUCA world we are in, there is absolutely no way we can predict what is going to happen.”[1]
This type of environment could encourage individuals & companies to be reactive, rather than to anticipate changes. “The key thing was to be adaptive. Mental dexterity was the key to keeping ahead of the game.” “Women are able to adapt the way they use their brain, finding creative solutions to challenges. In contrast, men often just keep trying harder rather than changing tact.” The good news guys, is: “Men are really good at doing one thing at a time, which means they are very good at focusing; & we can lift our game, we just need to work at it more than women do”
So, what is at the heart of making change happen? If we could narrow it down to a few fundamentals what would we focus our efforts on or at least aim never to lose sight of? Sometimes a simple message is the best clarification. Perhaps a quote by Javier Bajer (Munro & Forster) on the topic of culture change:
The way to change temperature is by opening the window or by turning the heating up or down. You don’t ‘do’ temperature, you do something else & a change in temperature is the outcome. It’s the same with culture. You can say ‘be more innovative’ – but it doesn’t just happen. Humans don’t change because you tell them to. You need to create an environment to make things happen.
Something we should all consider going into the New Year with our forthcoming challenges?
[1] Full copy of the article can be obtained from Charlotte Woodfield & NBR December 2nd – cwoodfield@nbr.co.nz
