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Author Archives: Pete Burden


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Do less, do it differently

Can’t remember how I came across this piece in the Harvard Business Review magazine.

But whoever sent it my way: thank you. It reminded me why I struggle with the idea of “time management”.

It’s an interview with David Allen and Tony Schwartz. David offers the Getting Things Done approach, which I tried a while back but discarded. Tony runs the Energy Project which I have much more time for.

David seems to be all about lists and mental activity. While Tony’s approach is much more holistic – focusing on physical, emotional, mental and spiritual domains. That’s obviously more up my street.

David seems to be mainly interested in getting more done in the available time. Through lists.

My argument with that is that it seems to me that life is much more about what I do. Than doing more of it.

Tony seems to be at least partly interested in getting the right things done (a la Stephen Covey: “put your ladder up the right building”).

And he is spot on to focus on habits and breaking them, I think. (Take a look at the work of Ben Fletcher and Rilke’s Room if you want to know how to actually break some habits.)

My argument with Tony, if I had one, would be that, for me, life is more about how I do what I do. About the quality of my experience.

Why is everything about energy and productivity? Occasionally, isn’t simply enjoying life more important?

I suspect that both people are highly energetic, highly capable individuals. Maybe being energetic and productive is what they most value. Good for them. But we’re not all like that.

But thanks both, you’ve reminded me to take the day off. To be a bit more idle that I might have otherwise been. To enjoy the day a little more.

Maybe you’ll do the same. Or read more if you like:


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Financial Freedom?

I have just finished reading the Real Deal, the autobiography of British entrepreneur James Caan.

I don’t usually read that kind of thing, but I have to say I really enjoyed it. It is well written and interesting, and at one or two points really pulled on the heart strings. There are several mentions of his great ability to find the best people to do things for him, so I guess those are hints that he also found a good ghost-writer. But he comes across as a pretty nice guy, who has done some amazing charitable work.

One thing that is very clear is that he measures his success in financial terms: he has a really strong need for financial success. Given the way the book describes his life, it would even be pretty easy to argue that this arises from his childhood experience, his relationship with his father, and so on.

And, wow, has he worked hard to meet that need. He describes many, many years of working long hours, and with great dedication, to give it satisfaction. And, naturally, given that very dedication, he has succeeded.

Realising this, I suddenly felt very free. I realised that, personally, I don’t have that kind of need. Maybe a little, but to nothing like the extent that James does. I like to be comfortable, but just don’t need that exact type of success.

James seems to have been unable to avoid filling that need, and this has driven his behaviour, his life, and pretty much everything he says and believes about himself. And having met that initial need, he now seems to be on a journey to continue to convince the world of his great personal value, building a school for his father, doing more and more charitable work, and on, and on.

Nothing wrong with any of this. He doesn’t seem to be hurting anyone to get his needs met.

But this also got me thinking about my needs, and how they drive my behaviour. One of my needs, for example, is to understand, and another to be understood.

Thus, I have made a career out of learning stuff, helping others understand complex things, and helping them put that knowledge to good use.

Or, at least, I have been trying to do that. Because as well as being a need, this is also one of my challenges – especially the latter part: being understood. I seem usually to understand complex things fairly easily, but, boy, do I struggle trying to explain them to others – for all sorts of reasons.

What irony. Isn’t life just perfect? Perfect as a “test” I mean…

Our biggest needs and our biggest gifts and our biggest weaknesses all come crashing together into one. And life tests us and challenges us as we work through those issues.

But what of freedom? This need to understand and be understood has clearly driven my behaviour, pretty much all my life. So although I may be free from the need to be very financial successful, am I really any freer than James?

I would like to be, I think. But I guess the only way to gain that freedom is to realise the extent to which that need drives me. Then, a little, I can perhaps choose to let it go.

What about you? What are your needs? What are they exactly?

And how do they drive you?


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Conscious Business – A Strategy

I have lost count now of the number of times I have been asked what Conscious Business is.

And I have also lost count of the numerous ways I have explained it.

I suppose it is a bit like trying to describe a mountain. It all depends which face you climb. Or whether you are interested in geology and what’s underneath it.

But here’s one more go. An attempt to boil it down to something people can take away and use.

Conscious business is a strategy – for personal, business, and ‘planet-wide’ use.

As with all strategies we tend to be interested in the outcomes it produces. Are they good, bad or indifferent?

I think it’s a good strategy for personal use because it produces good outcomes:

  • it is more enjoyable – being based on authenticity and congruence;
  • it is more fulfilling – leading to better, more stimulating, and richer relationships;
  • it feels better – moment by moment, it leads away from disquiet towards more energy and peace.

It’s a good strategy for business because it produces good outcomes:

  • better short-term profits – through differentiation, reduced costs, more creativity and innovation;
  • better medium-term profits – through increased customer loyalty and lower staff turnover;
  • better long-term profits – through more resilience and flexibility in the face of market upheaval and change.

And it is a good strategy for the planet because it produces good outcomes:

  • it naturally leads to the creation of products and services that are less harmful and more beneficial;
  • it is more aligned with our deeper collective needs as humans – to collaborate, to support each other, and evolve in a positive direction;
  • it builds value for everybody, including future generations.

That’s it.


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Empowered – or employed?

I just read a neat and good little book by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler called Empowered.

It’s a kind of follow-up to Groundswell, and a very practical book packed with case-studies and charts and tools and ‘technical stuff’ about transforming your organisation into one where employees are your greatest asset – interacting with customers (using social media) to build loving relationships that propel you ever more quickly into profitability and revenue growth.

Nothing wrong with that.

But I do have one little problem with it. The use of the word employee. For example, there’s a chapter on IT security – in it one of the principles is to remember you’re an employee. The idea is that employees have certain responsibilities – presumably towards their employer. And that while freedom and empowerment are great things as they relate to dealing with customers, it is vital to always remember you are an employee.

This is clearly true in a legal sense for many people, including the authors of the book, who, it seems, are employed by Forrester Research. But that legal truth seems, to me, to come with an emotional burden and a much broader framing.

The emotional burden is one of duty and maybe even guilt. I ‘owe’ it to my employer to behave in certain ways. Presumably because they ‘gave’ me my job etc. They pay me. And they can take my job away. And like a good father he (I am sure it is a he) will look after me if I perform my responsibilities as an employee.

The broader framing is that my boss, and my company, hold power over me. I have willingly entered into this relationship with them, codified in my legal contract, and that means that while I can do certain things there are many things I must never do. Like question my contract. Or question who is boss.

I don’t want to labour this point. After all, this is perhaps an assumption that a huge number of employed people everywhere hold. I don’t know what Bernoff and Schadler really think, having never met them. And I don’t wish to offend anyone (well, only a little).

So let’s play a different game.

Imagine if rather than assuming that you are employed, and that your employer holds power over you, imagine it is the other way around. You’re the boss. You have the power.

To employ means to put to use. To put something to its natural use.

Imagine you have some needs, and are currently engaged in the process of putting everything else around you into use.

Your computer or ‘phone to read this words. Your chair to sit on. Actually you’re using your bottom to sit on, and in fact you’re using the rest of your body to good avail too. You’re using your body to breathe, see, hear, move, think etc.

And everyone around you is at your command. The organisation you work in is at your command – to do what you want it to do. Your friends and colleagues are also at your command.

Of course, they may not always like it. Like every element of the world you now inhabit they operate according to certain rules that you may only vaguely understand.

You pick up a pen and drop it and it will fall. You pick up a phone, press some buttons, and you may or may not be able to speak to the person you want to speak to. You ask someone to do something and it may nor may not happen.

But despite these natural consequences, consequences that are built into the nature of the world that we interact with, we are at the centre of our worlds, and we are using it. We are employing it. We collaborate within it, we work with other parts of it, to get what we want to be done, done.

This is what I mean by empowered. I usually call it deep empowerment but until I read Bernoff and Schadler’s book I hadn’t really understood why I add the word deep. I now know it is to distinguish it from their kind of empowerment. Which I read as empowerment within limits.

Deep empowerment is a point of view, a framing where you are in charge, and you can question anything. Including what you want your “organisation” to do. What you want your life and your relationships to be like. Even what you are in charge of. Everything.

Sometimes I call this distributed leadership. For me, it is the same thing. The whole idea of centralised leadership – special individuals leading a mass of supposedly unconscious people in one direction or another – deeply offends me. For me, everyone is a leader.

It is a moment-by-moment thing. It is a feeling. It is a framing – a way of looking at the world.

So go on. Take the power. Be the leader. Be the employer. Be deeply empowered.


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What a week

What a week that was.

Momentous change in Egypt, people power in action – again. The process that Ghandi helped start in India in the 1920 to 40s, that continued in the U.S. Deep South in the 1950s and 60s, continues today. And, it seems, enabled by ever faster, more democratic media to be, if anything accelerating. Despite the fears of a surveillance culture, centralised control and so forth, we seem (at least to this optimist) to be moving slowly in the right direction.

And on another front it was pleasing to read and hear Michael Porter, the eminent business guru, apparently joining the bandwagon of “democratic business” (WorldBlu?), “social business” (Yunus?), “sustainable business” (Anderson?) and “conscious capitalism” (Mackey?) – all things related to what we might call Conscious Business.

Pleasing as it demonstrates how mainstream these ideas are becoming.

But beyond that it is also interesting to ask “how are we to ensure that this innovation, once underway, continues?”. Many, many forces are able to kill off good ideas long before they really get established. Indeed, does entering the mainstream always represent a good thing?

Two very familiar phenomena are backlash and whitewash.

Examples of backlash are all too common – everyone is watching Egypt with concern, for example. Will the “uprising” cause a backlash from the “system” that initially appears to allow it?

Whitewash, while less violent, is perhaps more worrying. And it is equally common when change “threatens”: for example, we all recognise “greenwash” in relation to the response of mainstream business to environmental concerns. As this new type of conscious business emerges, as my friend and colleague Tom Nixon asks: “how many of, say, the FTSE 100 or the Fortune 500 have made it real?”

In response, I’d like to quote Hunter Lovins: “Hypocrisy is the first step to real change.” His point is that once somebody says something, then we can hold them to account for it.

So let’s listen to what Porter and the gurus have to say. Then see whether corporate America and corporate UK actually change. Or if they just pretend to.

And then, personally, we need to hold the line. Hold on to our own beliefs and hold others to account for what they are saying. To make sure their actions follow their words.

Of course, that requires awareness, self-knowledge and, most of all, personal strength and courage. It’s all too easy to want throw in the towel when faced by force and threat or by duplicity and pretence. Easier to give in – especially when the power of the “establishment” seems overwhelming.

For me, overcoming those desires is what Conscious Business is really about – not the big trends, not what happens in the world, not what others say and do – but what goes on inside me, the choices I make, and what I do as a result. Exploring that, in the context of business, is “the road less travelled”. But also the route to momentous change.


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Taking charge

A recent news piece on BP’s behaviour in the Gulf of Mexico made me wonder about the use of the word ‘systemic’.

I know it’s probably not what was meant. But when I read this article, “systemic” started, to me, to sound like an excuse. A reason why BP and others didn’t do what they could have. Should have.

The first time I heard that word in relation to a disaster, or a scandal of some sort, it seemed to be properly used. Indicating that there are features of the system that make a problem likely to reoccur. That the problems are deeply entrenched in the design of the system, and that these conditions ensure that individuals often behave in certain ways. That we need to reform the system. Not just scape-goat individuals.

But now, and maybe it is me, it begins to sound as if the word is trotted out whenever a major disaster or scandal occurs to absolve any individual of responsibility.

“It’s the system’s fault, I couldn’t do anything!” comes the plaintive cry.

But as Margaret Mead said:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.

Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

And where does that small group of thoughtful, committed people start? It starts, of course, with the individual. One individual needs to take a risk, change their way of thinking, say something others daren’t.

An individual within a system is, I believe, the only thing that really can start to change a system. The individual is the catalyst for system-wide change. Somewhere, sometime, were there perhaps people in BP would could have said something and didn’t? Who went along with crowd-pressure and followed the herd mentality? When there was an opportunity to say or do something different?

What does this all have to do with you and your business?

Maybe you are in a business, running it or working at the front-line, and everyone blames everyone else? Maybe everyone is rubbish at their jobs. Maybe you don’t like the way the company is set-up or structured. Maybe your boss is an idiot. Maybe the reward systems are set-up to reward the wrong things. Maybe the company regularly does bad things, or allows poor quality work in the pursuit of short-term profit.

If any of those things is wrong with the system – please don’t blame others. Don’t blame “the system”. Take responsibility. Change yourself. Be the catalyst. Be the change.

Happy New Year.


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A Meaning Economy?

I’ve written before about what a Conscious Business is. And what it is not. But no man, and no business, is an island. Businesses live and operate in a market.

And what kind of market is that? At the moment, for example, we seem to have:

  • Web 2.0 people theorising about the importance of ethereal content over physical objects, of production versus consumption;
  • psychologists, and even the UK government, propounding the importance of well-being and happiness;
  • an ever-growing discussion of environmental sustainability;
  • the feminisation of the work-place;
  • the rise of long-term, inter-generational thinking;
  • and, of course, the rise of Conscious Business – in all its various shapes and forms.

Could this all be part of an even bigger trend for the market? A shift towards what we might call a “meaning economy“? We’ve had the information economy, and the knowledge economy. (Once I even heard talk of a “wisdom” economy.)

A meaning economy for me is one in which people’s basic needs are already met through the producing power of our industrial economy. And instead people start to change their focus towards gaining more meaning in their lives.

But what is meaning? Meaning is an answer to the question “why?”, not the industrial age questions of “how many?”, or “how much?. We know how to answer those questions and we know how to answer questions about “what”, “who”,  and sometimes even “when”. Why we want things, why we have things, why we do things: the answers remain much more elusive.

Put another way, is the overall market changing so that people are no longer satisfied with just goods, and no longer satisfied with shabby, or any, “services” – are they seeking instead to fulfil their higher values?

Of course this won’t mean much to the billion at the bottom of the pyramid. But for the aspirational 5 billion people in the world – is that where we are heading?

If so, this might mean different things in relation to each of the product types we are already familiar with, and we can see that some of these trends are already underway in some areas of the economy:

  • for a physical, tangible product it means valuing the associated brand and reputation more than just the product itself;
  • for a service it means valuing the associated relationships more than just the service itself;
  • for content it means producing something that deeply touches the heart and soul, not just the mind.

In business more generally it might mean shifting our emphasis as we try to build revenue and profitability. Shifting it:

  • from technological innovation to service innovation;
  • from growing functional value to growing relationship value;
  • from improving process quality to a focus on the quality of the customer experience;
  • from strategies that grow transactional volumes to those that grow loyalty and retention;
  • and even from strategies designed to reduce cost to strategies of investment;
  • and so on.

All of these things have been identified before, of course. And some would say that a knowledge economy leads to some of these things. So, I wonder, does it add anything to see this as a change in the market to meaning away from information and knowledge? What else might that ‘frame’ tell us?


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A shake – or a hug

Sometimes I want to give the people who run our government, banks and largest companies a shake.

Yesterday at a meeting of the MDHub in Brighton I listened to a fascinating presentation by Jeremy Beckwith of Kleinwort Benson about the state of our global economy. It was a story of how all governments since the last World War, aided and abetted by the banks and large corporations, have systematically grown our public debt to a point where our economy is in such a state that no one will lend us any money. Where we can’t borrow to spend our way out of our troubles. Where things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

Other highlights:

  • nearly every country in the world is in dire financial state
  • there are many further backed-up economic problems to come
  • some countries will almost inevitably drop out of the Euro, causing untold disruption
  • 40 million Americans are receiving food stamps
  • if you’re relying on a state pension, you better make alternative plans
  • large private corporations are making record profits – based on population growth and a resulting unskilled global labour price of $2 a day
  • economic policy is out of control: we are entering a twilight zone of currency wars and other unknowns.

Oh, and the good news? Gold is at a record high. If you want to live somewhere with a reasonable economy, well you could move to New Zealand, Australia or Sweden. If they’ll have you.

So why do I want to shake them? These people who run our government, banks and largest companies? Because my first reaction is that they seem to be asleep. Asleep as they wave their children off to their private schools. As they play with their Blackberries and laptops. As they tramp from their cars and trains to their glass sky-scrapers.

Obviously these aren’t theoretical problems, in some economic text book. There are real people out there, millions and millions of them, suffering the indignity of relying on a government for benefit, having to leave home and hearth to chase that $2 a day, suffering the uncertainty of losing their home, their job, their income.

But the strange thing is I also know that many government leaders, and bankers, and the leaders of large corporations are, like all of us, trying to do the right thing. They want the best for themselves and their families, yes. But they also want the best for the rest of us too. Just as I do. Just as you do.

Of course, if asked, they’d also say that we sleep-walked too – the rest of us. And, I agree, it would be failing to acknowledge our share of the responsibility to suggest that we didn’t enjoy the good years. Why didn’t we ask those difficult questions – like how does the economy work, or why are we building up all that debt – when there was still time? Do we have so little self-responsibility we’ll just blame them for our current situation?

And I guess, if I think about it for a moment, that it hurts those government leaders, and bankers, and CEOs too – and especially it hurts them to know that all their brains and money and power and effort didn’t help them make things better.

To know that they failed.

So maybe what I really want to do is give them a hug.


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What are you accountable for?

I love clear roles and responsibilities.

I bang on about them endlessly. To the point of driving some of the people I work with crazy.

What do I mean by clear? I mean written down. I mean completely unambiguous. Completely focussed. Like a laser beam. Sharp, accurate and to the point.

A Format

The format I usually prefer is a Role Purpose statement – just one (or possibly two) simple statements that sum up the role.

Like “Make money for the company”. “Make sure we have the information we need to manage the business”. “Find us new customers”. “Ensure we have the best team on the planet”.

It must be only one or two things – more and people can’t hold them in their minds. Too many goals creates confusion – internally.

And then a list of Responsibilities. No more than 7 or 8 (one of the few papers I remember from my first degree was on the “magic number 7”).

Things that support the Purpose, like “Create the processes we need to supply accurate and timely information”, “Recruit and manage a team”, “Work with the other directors to grow the business”, etc.

Why am I so obsessed with this?

Why am I so obsessed by these single sheets of paper (I usually suggest we add in a few KPIs for good luck)?

Because they are one of the best ways I know to create an opportunity for real accountability in a company. If the role description is clear, then holding people to account is easy. If it is wooly – well, then anything can happen, and usually does.

I am also obsessed by empowerment. I believe deeply that people should be given, and take, all the responsibility they need. I don’t believe it works for people to tell other people what to do – except in exceptional circumstances.

So, a clear role is a complement to this. It’s the Yin to the Yang.

In my view, everyone in a conscious business needs an individual, clear and unambiguous role description that describes their Role Purpose and Responsibilities. Make no mistake, these can’t be imposed from above. They need to be agreed – that is, taken on by each individual, and “owned”.

They shouldn’t overlap – or we reintroduce ambiguity. And they need to fit together as a set – so that everything really important gets done.

Without them no one can hold anyone to account, we fail to get the collective results we need as a team, and we lose our focus on our business imperatives. The things that keep our businesses alive.

WIIFM

And whose responsibility is it to ensure that everyone has these? Mine. Yours. Everybody’s. All of us that want great results from our companies.

What’s in it for me? How does it help me, or anyone else, to define my own responsibilities? Well, my life becomes simpler. I can focus. I am clear what I need to do. Maybe more importantly, I am clear what I don’t. Doing less is the key to a life of sanity.

And truly, being held to account is a good thing – not a bad thing. We sometimes think that accountability benefits the person doing the holding to account. But I think there is even more benefit to the person being held to account: we learn.

Feedback on what we do and how we do it is perhaps the most useful gift we can get from others in life.

I feel really annoyed with myself when I let people off the hook on this. But, sadly, I do. Note to self: clarify my role.


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Chicken and Egg

Climb that wall

Business is a complex system. If you don’t believe me, notice how many times the words “chicken and egg” come up in board room conversations.

Shall we hire some new people? Yes, when the sales are there. But hold on, we can’t make the sales until we have the people. Let’s wait until we have the sales – then let’s hire the people. But hold on…

If you’re not familiar with systems theory, it suggests that we like to imagine things happening largely in linear and cause/effect kinds of ways. But that a better model is that many things we encounter in life, including business, are the result of circular feedback loops and conditions as well as causes. This makes things more unpredictable, and sometimes, leads to that ‘chicken and egg’ state.

So how might we break out of these loops? How do we resolve the impasse of hiring versus selling?

Firstly, be conscious of them.

Study how systems operate. Learn from experience the subtlety of emergent properties – how unexpected results emerge as the result of changes we sometimes unwittingly make to systems. Picture them, draw them, get a feel for them. Some systems theory seems mathematical but I always think of it as more as an art than a science.

And secondly, throw your hat over the wall. There’s a story I remember from long ago about George Washington. Apparently when he was a youth he and his friends (for some reason I imagine them in the top hats and tails) used to wander around the gardens near his home, looking to steal apples, cut down trees and generally make mischief.

Sometimes they’d come up to a wall. A really high, unclimbable, dangerous-looking wall.

That’s kind of ‘chicken and egg’ isn’t it? In front of it you’re stuck. You can’t resolve the impasse – you can’t go forward.

So what happened? Well, one of them would take off his hat and throw it over the wall. That did it.

You see then they were committed – they had to retrieve the hat, so that meant they had to climb the wall. They had to go forward. And they did.

By the way I have read several introductions to systems theory but by far the best in my opinion is the late Donella Meadows book: “Thinking in Systems“.