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Resilience is life-long learning – a lesson from Covid

Uncertainty is a commonly used word today.  Uncertainty creates stress – and the uncertainty in our private and work lives is escalated in a world being transformed by a pandemic that comes in waves. 

In this uncertain world, there is a lot of encouragement for us to develop a resilient mindset. It’s almost as if resilience is a silver bullet – something you can take to get you through the hardships. However, I have observed a few things over the last week that have caused me to stop and think. We need to be realistic about resilience.  Many people are finding it tough. Here are a few thoughts.

It’s okay to acknowledge and say you are not coping.

Continue reading “Resilience is life-long learning – a lesson from Covid”
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Chronic Problems in Organisations

  • No shared vision and values
  • No strategic path
  • Poor alignment: bad alignment between structure and shared values, between mission and systems; the structure and systems of the organisation poorly serve and reinforce the strategic paths.
  • Wrong style: the management philosophy is either incongruent with shared vision and values or the style inconsistently embodies the vision and values of the mission statement.
  • Poor skills
  • Low trust: staff has low trust, a depleted emotional bank account, and that low trust results in closed communication, little problem – solving or poor cooperation and teamwork.
  • No self-integrity: values do not equal habits; there is no correlation between what I value and believe and what I do.

Source:  SR COVEY (1990)  Principle – Centred Leadership, London: Simon and Schuster.  Pp.165-171

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Management Heuristic 1: Know what is expected of you and your job.

The thing about becoming a manager is that we have most likely risen to that position without ever thinking about what a manager does.

In been appointed a manager we will be given a position description and perhaps a list of key performance indicators based on achieving success. There will be words about managing teams, people and resources, but the easily measurable stuff about results will be in flashing lights. There will be a lot of things to do and little guidance about how to do these. And, most likely, there is an expectation that you can get on and do the job, but no requirement nor time for you to stop and think about what the job is. It will be assumed that we know what we are supposed to be doing.

Two factors need to be considered.

The first is a purpose issue – you have to know what you’re supposed to be doing? What is the purpose of the role? What does the organisation expect of you? To understand purpose you must getting in behind the position description and understanding where you as a manager fit in the bigger picture. Why does the position exist? Why was it created?

The second is a process issue – you need to understand what it means to manage and how to manage. Your people will have three expectations of you:

  • that you know your job – know what you are supposed to do.
  • that you can be trusted – you do what you say you are going to do.
  • that you have the self-confidence to let them do their jobs

If you don’t know what your job is then you will not manage well.

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Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load in making decisions about what to do. Examples that employ heuristics include using trial and error, a rule of thumb or an educated guess.  Management Heuristics are rules of thumb that can be used by managers to be more effective.  A Rule of thumb refers to a principle with broad application that is not intended to be strictly accurate or reliable for every situation. It refers to an easily learned and easily applied procedure or standard, based on practical experience rather than just theory.  Managing is the poster child of the mantra that there is no one right way.

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INNOVATION = ideas SUCCESSFULLY applied

What is innovation? This is a question we hear often and the answer is often shrouded in myth and described as magic. It is more often than not describe in overly complicated terms, yet is by nature a simple concept.

The following definitions are a useful starting point.  The first is from the OECD (1994), an organization that includes both technical and organizational aspects in its definition – this is the definition reflected in the national frameworks.  Thus, innovation is defined as:

“any new products or processes and significant technological change in products and processes.  An innovation has been implemented if it has been introduced to the market (product innovation) or used within a production process (process innovation).  Innovations therefore involve a series of scientific, technological, organizational, financial and commercial activities.”

Richards (1985) defines innovation as the process through which new and valuable ideas are put into practice.   

The Oxford Handbook of Innovation Management (Dodgson, et. al. 2014) have a range of definitions, best described collectively as “Ideas, successfully applied”.

Innovation would appear a simple concept, and we make it unnecessarily complicated.

References: 

Mark Dodgson, David M. Gann, and Nelson Phillips (2014)  The Oxford Handbook of Innovation Management   Oxford: ISBN: 9780199694945

 OECD (1994), The Measurement of Scientific and Technological Activities (‘Frascati Manual’), OECD, Paris.

Rickards, T. (1985), Stimulating Innovation, Frances Printer, London.