In the news

High Performing Cultures – Five lessons from the All Blacks

This week we have a guest blog on leadership culture by PRS associate Richard Watts. As the pundits consider what we have learned on the pitch from the Lions tour, Richard explores five business lessons we can learn from the Lions’ hosts – a team with a winning mentality and high expectations.

In rugby, we have just witnessed the British and Irish Lions draw a series with the All Blacks. What struck me was that the All Blacks captain after the final drawn match said, ‘we lost’. From a population of under 5 million they ‘lost’ to the Lions nations with a combined population of 69 million. However, over the last decade, the All Blacks rugby team have epitomised high performance, their win rate is around 95%, they are without a doubt the iconic market leader.

Much has been written about the All Blacks culture and how it might be applied to business. Sport teams only have to perform for short match periods, they have time to train and rehearse before they execute. In the commercial world, you are always on the pitch and there is not a bench of substitutes. So, what can we in business learn from the high performing culture that the All Blacks have built? Below are some key tenets of the All Blacks culture.

1.High Performance is the combination of Capability and Behaviours. You need to focus on creating and maintaining, under pressure, the right culture to allow winning behaviours. People can have the right skills but need to apply them in the right way.

2. People will rise to the challenge if they own the challenge. Everyone needs to take ownership. Pass the ball, as a leader pass responsibility on. Ask the right inclusive questions of your team and they will feel empowered to respond more positively.

3. No egos. No one is bigger than the organisation. Select, promote and retain people for their values not just experience. Disruptive influencers need to change or be changed.

4. Better people make better All Blacks. Yet again select carefully, you can develop specialist skills to meet your business needs, you can develop and train your people but you can’t fundamentally change a person’s character. Your values need to be more than words, you must bring them to life with genuine behaviours.

5. Leave the All Blacks jersey in a better place. Talking about leaving a legacy in your business is much easier if you are a shareholder, so it is crucial to effectively engage your employees with your brand through: a clear purpose, authentic values, a shared vision and a transparent strategy.

There are many more great examples of high performance, team and leadership behaviours to be learnt from the All Blacks. If you want to find out more about how we can help you create a high performing culture please contact us at People Risk Solutions.

Richard Watts is a leadership and strategy consultant. He has spent over a decade helping global businesses build high performing cultures with a focus on operational effectiveness. He honed his leadership skills as a senior operational leader in the Royal Marines, a high performing organisation which was based on liveable enduring values.

In the news

Leadership across different worlds: Post-truth, facts and feelings

2017 has been a strange year so far. There is a disconnect between how things are and how things feel. Last month saw a leadership contest where the winner felt like they had lost and the loser felt as if they had won. This weekend a rugby team felt like they had lost even though they had travelled to the far side of the planet, beaten the odds, come from behind in a series and achieved parity with the best in the world.

Elsewhere in the world, the G20 summit took place. Taking part was the man who had won the US presidential election, even though he had lost the popular vote and is under a Federal investigation. It may not feel as though he is particularly presidential, yet it is he with whom leaders must meet. In the Middle East, Iraqi forces retook Mosul; but the video images of a bombed-out and shattered husk of a city do not convey the feel of a victory.

There are two versions of the world – the world that is and the world that appears to be. Where should we focus our attention? ‘On reality, of course’ would be a likely answer, ‘on facts and truth’. But in a post-truth world, is there still room for fact? The General Election and the EU Referendum were certainly fought on feelings rather than facts. The Alt-Right in the US and the Alt-Left in the UK dominate the social media news space with their ‘alternative facts’. The stock market has always been based on confidence not evidence.

The truth is, as Twenty-First Century leaders, we need to be aware of both worlds. Truth may be unpopular right now, but it won’t go away. No matter how successful you may feel your business is, if the company accounts are telling a different story you may need to take action or seek assistance. If a star employee decides to move on or retire, it may feel like a disaster, but rational thought will remind you that other exceptional performers are out there just waiting for an opportunity. You may feel as though you’ve been particularly diligent regarding regulations such as the Senior Managers Regime, but you are either compliant or you are not.

When it comes to people, we need to remember that feelings are not always telegraphed. We need to develop our emotional intelligence and empathise with how the world feels to others. The records may show that an individual has achieved a great series of results recently. However, you can’t assume that they’re feeling positive about this – the effort may be utterly draining them. An analysis of requirements and skills could indicate that someone is ideally suited to their role, whilst they may actually feel great frustration in their current position and be deeply unhappy.

Leaders need to be able to keep track of multiple worlds. The way the world is – the cold, hard world of facts, laws and reality cannot be ignored. However, the way the world feels is important too – judging trends and gauging direction is how you recognise opportunities. Last, and by no means least, is the need to remember the personal worlds that people inhabit. Clients, competitors, employees, and partners all see the world through their own lens and it is a reality to be mindful of. A work culture is a reflection of how a leader leads, and cultures of understanding can evolve where these worlds can co-exist without friction.

Bearing these things in mind might not help make any sense of a strange year on a strange planet, but it may help you to navigate the strangeness more easily.

Outplacement and Career Transition

Redundancy: From feeling anger to finding opportunities

The days of carriage clocks and gold watches as long service awards are fast disappearing. Not only because employers are discovering more varied gifts of recognition but because long service itself is increasingly rare. Most people currently working can expect to be employed across multiple companies, maybe even multiple industries, during the course of their career. There are likely to be several changes. Not all of them will be voluntary.

This can make people angry. But that is okay. No amount of articles you read about how redundancy is increasingly commonplace can diminish the fact that it can hurt. Ignoring that hurt and treating this particular transition as any other career stepping stone may not be good for your health. Career workshops full of strangers and online guidance do not do justice to the emotions in play. A more personal, human touch is often required.

Redundancy may be the ‘new normal’ but, as PRS’s Career Transition expert Peter Wilford explains, it can also represent ‘a psychological crisis’. For many people caught up in the process ‘redundancy can bring a sudden sense of loss in two areas; the practical loss of income and the psychological impact of loss of status, companionship and the mental well-being associated with being fully employed. It can also undermine our sense of self-esteem and bring about a fear of what’s to come in the future’*.

In a situation like this, there is likely to be sadness and fear – as well as anger. These are emotions that need to be recognised, accepted and worked through. Redundancy releases emotions similar to a bereavement or relationship breakdown. Emotions from events like these can be repressed or brushed under the rug but may continue to haunt you, could ultimately resurface and will certainly impede decision making when it comes to choosing the right career destination for the future.

So how do you deal with a potential psychological crisis, come to terms with change and effectively plan your next steps? Personalised redundancy counselling is the most complete solution. Due to the similarities with bereavement, the Kubler-Ross grief cycle is often used to understand reaction to redundancy: Denial, followed by anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. Everyone’s timescale for moving through this will be different and everyone’s needs will vary accordingly, which is where ‘one size fits all’ group sessions can feel unhelpful and an e-learning programme devoid of empathy.

One to one counselling adapts according to the needs of the individual. For those who have completed the cycle and accepted their new situation, counselling takes the form of practical advice and support in finding a new position. Others who have experienced a significant setback as a result of being made redundant – such as a loss of confidence – can work on overcoming their specific challenges too. Services can also be tailored to support an individual when a broader change is required – if, for example, an entire sector of the economy was contracting.

Whether you need to provide genuinely effective outplacement services for your team members or require such a service yourself, the bespoke approach of redundancy counselling helps people feeling anger, feeling fear or feeling fine to seek out the most appropriate opportunities for the next stage in their careers.

* You can find out more about our associate Peter Wilford here and, if you would like to explore this theme in more detail, you can read his full article here.

For a conversation about career transition and outplacement services, you can contact PRS here.

In the news

A Leadership Tale

Once upon a time there were three leaders trying to gain control of their country. One was a confident leader who was so determined to be strong and stable that she told everyone. Unfortunately she did not display other authentic leadership qualities such as some humility, a willingness to engage with her people and believed everything that her advisers told her.

Another leader focused a lot of his energies towards the younger voters. He promised lots of things that would appeal to them like minimum pay, scrapping of university fees and making the environment much more youth friendly. He also came across as authentic and relaxed when talking to voters. He also made good use of social media and communicated effectively.

Finally there was the leader who inherited a political party that was in complete disarray. He also had to try and sell an old set of policies that had already been achieved and there did not seem to be anything new to offer. He definitely came across to voters as someone who had been given a “hospital pass”.

So what was the result. Bizarrely, the person who won the election actually felt that they had lost – mainly because they were expected to win by a massive landslide and did not. The person who came second felt that they had won because they had not been wiped out. Finally, the leader is disarray remained In disarray and not only did not get voted in, but also resigned as leader.

So what is the key leadership lesson? It is all about trust – If all the other factors had remained the same, different levels of trust could have altered the fortunes of all three.

If the first leader had established a strong trust with people beforehand, they may have supported her decision not to engage with the process, maybe even seen it as a sign of superiority. But not enough trust was there. The second leader’s ideas were considered by critics to be too fanciful and optimistic. But many people ignored the negativity because they trusted him. The third leader had to rely on trust. Having been dealt an empty hand, he had to create belief for his followers in a new relevance and purpose. But the trust wasn’t there.

The moral of the tale? If you can persuade your people to put their trust in you then success is much more likely.

In the news

When People Risk Costs £150m

If you want to understand People Risk, take a look at the recent case of British Airways’ £150,000,000 system failure. People Risk is the potential cost and harm that can befall a business when its people make poor decisions. It’s not always obvious how the actions of individuals within a company affect the business as a whole. However, every so often, an example like BA comes along which makes People Risk starkly clear.

The £150m outage is believed to be the result of a single operator’s error. The event is classed as a system failure and, indeed, the IT system did fail. We underestimate systems. It is easy to blame unfortunate events on faulty systems, malfunctioning technology or flawed processes. However, what causes systems to fail? Quite often the root cause is people – in BA’s case, a person.

Security experts maintain that the human element is always the weakest link in the systems they design. High level data security and encryption is most easily undermined by the executive who leaves their laptop on the train or who sets their password to ‘123456789’ or ‘password01’. The BA IT system had its own backup to switch to in case of failure. A likely cause posited for the total shutdown is that someone manually interrupted this automatic switchover sequence, flooding the servers with double the normal voltage.

The BA story is an extreme example. Flights grounded worldwide and thousands of stranded passengers are big news stories. Such large scale errors may not be common, but they do bring questions about People Risk to the fore. How many smaller, unreported People Risk events are taking place on a daily basis? What preventable costs are businesses unknowingly incurring from individual errors and decisions? What is the level of People Risk within your own business?

People may often be the weakest link but that does not mean that they’re inherently flawed. People need to be invested in to the same extent as systems they operate or are a part of. BA had invested in Uninterruptible Power Supplies which have the capability to maintain the current after a mains failure with battery power whilst backup generators automatically spool up and take over. What was potentially missing was an engineer with the competence and confidence to know this, to remain calm and not to manually intervene during the spooling up period.

Reducing your People Risk involves making the most out of your people. People don’t have a backup setting that can spool up in the event of a failure; they need to get things right in the moment. Training, development or coaching your people enables them to make the right decisions at the right time and ensures that your business is as cost effective as possible. As the systems around people grow ever more complex and the stakes of failure rise, reducing your People Risk is more important than ever.

If you would like to have a conversation about People Risk, you can contact PRS here

Or, take a look at our HR Healthcheck:
You probably already make a substantial investment in your people. The People Risk Solutions HR Healthcheck has been designed to help you protect that investment and give you a fixed cost, highly professional, rigorous and independent overview of your people risks. Read more here…

In the news

When to Stay and When to Go

Managing Departure

You are not always in control of your own departure – just ask the miserable crowds stranded at Heathrow and Gatwick following BA’s global IT failure. However, some people’s departure from work is very much within their own control. Some leaders have and will face the prospect of deciding when to step down…or deciding not to.

The question of whether or not Arsene Wenger would stay as manager of Arsenal or leave was raised yet again at the weekend and answered this Wednesday with the signing of a new two-year contract. His story, though, remains an interesting case study.

Another Roll of the Dice

Wenger has been a leader for over 20 years. He has undoubtedly been a successful leader, with more FA Cup wins than any other manager. This weekend’s record 13th Cup win could have been a suitable occasion to ‘go out on a high’, but perhaps it was not ‘high’ enough. Wenger has unfulfilled ambitions – he has never won the Champions League and far rather exit with Arsenal as domestic league champions than cup victors.

Arsenal fans have ambitions too. They want the same successes as he does but, as each year goes by without them, increasing numbers call for a new leader to achieve them. It is a situation familiar to many beyond the world of professional sport – just when do you call it a day? Do you gamble on a last chance at glory and, should you fail, risk denting your hard won reputation from the years before?

Controlling the Agenda

In politics, Tony Blair engineered his departure before the 2010 election. Clouds had gathered surrounding his decision to invade Iraq and his popularity was on the wane. He chose to leave as PM, on his own terms rather than face a likely election defeat. Margaret Thatcher, on the other hand, clung on despite falling polls. The knives came out from within her own party and the end of her career was an ignominious one.

Parliaments are intended to last five years and a football season the best part of a year. The unexpected can and does happen, but there is often more time for strategic thought. In business the timescales are often much shorter and success can turn to failure very quickly. When should a successful leader step aside from their business?

Do you manage the agenda and pick your moment, or wait for the wolves to reach the door? Even if you’re not at that stage in your career it’s worth giving some thought as to how you would like to step away. The ‘stay or go’ moment may be thrust upon you by a sudden crisis or success and you may well be grateful that you took the time to think through the pros and cons beforehand.

Outplacement and Career Transition

Enabling Successful Outplacement and Career Transition

Embracing change as a positive

Change in the business world today is something that is expected as a norm and to be encouraged and extolled. It’s commonly realised that the world is changing faster than ever before and that those who remain stuck in their ways will be left behind. Businesses want to be the agile, evolving mammals not the lumbering dinosaurs. In this environment, it’s easy to be excited about changes in the world around you – changes to your own life and career can be a different matter though.

Most of us are not merely reconciled to, but have fully embraced the changing world and the opportunities it presents. Externally, we have learnt to identify, change and improve aspects of the business we are part of. With regards to our own roles within a business, we have become more comfortable with being flexible and more open to training and development. However, career transition itself can still seem a daunting prospect, particularly when it may be imposed as a result of restructuring of the business.

Don’t get left alone or lost in the crowd

If you or your staff are facing this prospect, you can take comfort in the fact that you’re not alone. Career transition is part and parcel of the modern world and there are tangible ways to smooth the journey. Very few people now remain on a single career path, receiving a gold watch on retirement for their efforts. Adaptation and restructuring have made involuntary transition much more commonplace, as well as accepted by new employers, and increased connectivity brings an awareness of opportunities which leads many to make decisive changes themselves.

Of course, the downside to the increasing regularity of career transition is the growth of mass-market services which have grown to facilitate it. If there’s anything as bad as being alone, it’s being treated as a part of the faceless crowd. When it comes to transitioning your career, online tools, self-diagnostics, e-learning and other ‘one size fits all’ approaches aren’t always suitable for such a significant and personal step. Group seminars can provide useful information but cannot deliver the personalised service one would consider appropriate. We believe that one-to-one support is the most effective way to make the transition.

One-to-one career service

The significance of the moment requires a more individual approach. People Risk Solutions offer a package of one-to-one sessions for those undergoing career transition in order for our clients to take full advantage of the situation. Not only is this a time of change, it is an opportunity for growth and a chance to analyse your skills, behaviours and preferences – not only to secure your next appointment but to increase your effectiveness and happiness.

This is also a very personal process. There are bound to be emotions in play during a moment of transition, both positive and negative. Elation at a new challenge and excitement to be taking a new path may sit side by side with fear of the future or worry about self-worth. Talking through your options and ambitions with a specialist in a one-to-one setting allows you to focus on the positives and draw up a tailored career strategy.

Though career transition has become a more common occurrence, it remains a significant moment in anyone’s work life. It is a time for contemplation, but also a time for action. Using one-to-one sessions to talk though the process, and build positive plans for the future, allows you to extract the most value from this time of reflection and to decide on the best course of action for you and your career. To find out how PRS could help you to navigate a period of change, or to book a series of one-to-one career transition sessions, contact us here.

Senior Managers Regime

The Senior Managers Regime – The Future

Will your business be affected?

The Senior Managers Regime is due to be extended in 2018. After its initial introduction to the senior staff at banks and insurance companies in 2016, the Regime was extended this March and the new conduct rules applied to almost all staff. Next year, asset managers, financial advisers, stock brokers and others will also be affected. As change rolls on, what can we learn from the past year that will help reduce risk and raise management effectiveness?

A crucial lesson for those due to be affected in 2018 is to act fast. There was a degree of last-minute panic as this year’s deadline approached. In an interview given to Financial News on the readiness of the City’s banks, Allen & Overy’s Sarah Henchoz remarked that it was “incredible how many of them are still asking a lot of quite basic questions about what’s required of them”. A sizeable amount of information is required and compiling the individual references is a substantial HR undertaking.

Do you have a system in place?

It is linking the certification process to existing Human Resources systems which banks and insurers have found most challenging. Certification verification and performance management are two different fields, yet this method is preferable – especially as individuals records need to be maintained for six years, despite staff turnover and employees leaving the firm.

The creation of individual records has therefore not been without issue. In a statement this March, the FCA reported that:

“In some cases, we have seen evidence of overlapping or unclear allocation of responsibilities… In other cases, firms appear to be sharing responsibility amongst some staff at different levels of management, obscuring who is genuinely responsible”.

It is not clear whether this obscuring has occurred intentionally or due to the complexity of the task, but the FCA are clear that a culture of individual accountability needs to be established and the lesson for those who will be required to join this culture next year is to be as precise as possible.

Are your people ready?

A crucial feature of the Senior Managers Regime – and the area where People Risk Solutions has provided the most assistance in the past year – has been the adoption of the Conduct Rules. Over the past year, Senior Managers and certified persons have not only had to abide by these rules but ensure that their team was ready to do so as well by the 7th March 2017.

The conduct rules are designed to set a minimum standard of behaviour and ensure that staff always act with integrity. In order to meet these demands, staff have needed to familiarise themselves with the Compliance rules specific to their business and to focus on day to day issues like data sharing and personal share dealing.

If your business or organisation will fall under the Senior Managers Regime in 2018 you need to be putting systems in place, preparing your people and reducing the risk of breaching rules and triggering regulatory sanctions. Using the experience we have gained helping banking and financial firms through this change, PRS offers bespoke workshops and practical HR support that will allow your staff to fully understand the Conduct Rules and experience real life case study scenarios of the Regime in action. To avoid a panic when the deadline nears and to ensure you and your people are fully prepared, contact PRS today.

In the news

French Lessons – Macron’s election from a leadership perspective

The election of Emmanuel Macron as the next French president comes as a relief to many, but presents France, Europe and the world with a series of unknowns. At this stage there is much speculation, in terms of policy at least. However, from a leadership perspective there are some interesting learning points.

Whilst our General Election may be framed as an individual leadership issue due to the Brexit negotiations, it is not designed to be so. The French presidential election, however, is all about the individual and therefore their leadership capability, as well as policies. When the French populace were asked to assess presidential capability, it appears that age and experience were no longer two of the essential leadership qualities required.

France seem to have broken the mould by not only voting in the youngest ever president, but also one who runs the newest political party. Created only a year ago, En Marche is not unlike a start-up company and has a staff with an average age of around 30. As people’s work and home lives are regularly transformed by similar, disruptive companies comprised of young individuals, it is not surprising that they place trust in youth, enthusiasm and drive.

The average age of CEOs is declining, and has been since the 1980s. As a leader, Macron seems to be displaying all the modern qualities needed in a social media age. More important than experience is authenticity. In his case, he presents himself as a man of the people, questioning the status quo but not wanting to destroy it. He has pledged to renewal and change; fresh faces and new blood.

Yet this change is likely to be tempered with continuity. Experience is still vital to meeting the demands of government. It will be interesting to see who he appoints as his key lieutenants in government. For all the benefits of youth and enthusiasm, many are expecting Macron’s cabinet to be balanced and anchored by some established political heavyweights. The fact that these individuals may be drawn from across the political spectrum makes the composition of this cabinet particularly intriguing.

Too many experienced old hands and his vision for change may be undermined, too few and his government may be underprepared for the task ahead. Getting the balance right will be crucial for him and reinforces an old lesson for us: That a capable leader is nothing without a capable team to lead.

Senior Managers Regime

The Senior Managers Regime in 2018

A New World

From 2018, the Conduct Rules laid out in the Senior Managers Regime will apply to all financial institutions – we are expecting further details in June 2017. This is an expansion of the current regime for the banks and insurance companies to whom it has previously, and currently, applies. The introduction of a culture of individual responsibility is a significant change and it presents a major challenge to the businesses it will affect.

When the responsibility is placed on people, businesses need to ensure that their people are informed and involved, or they run the risk of breaching rules and triggering disciplinary and regulatory sanctions. For Senior Managers, it is vital that the people they manage get to grips with the new rules by providing practical training and introducing systems and processes to help manage the process.

Providing a Guide

As the SMR was introduced throughout the banking and insurance industries, People Risk Solutions has run workshops on Culture, Values and Regulation designed to integrate the new regime into affected businesses and organisations. These interactive and case study driven sessions are now adapted and open to any business whose people will require familiarity with the conduct rules.

At the heart of the new culture are the core 5 rules themselves, which are as follows:

• Rule 1: You must act with integrity
• Rule 2: You must act with due skill, care and diligence
• Rule 3: You must be open and cooperative with the FCA, the PRA and other regulators
• Rule 4: You must pay due regard to the interests of customers and treat them fairly
• Rule 5: You must observe proper standards of market conduct

In order to fully understand the rules and the manner in which they are to be applied to everyday work, our workshops provide an overview, not just explaining what the accountability regime is, but why this is happening and what the intended purpose is. We then use a series of scenarios to bring the rules to life for everyday work.
From a broad examination of the regime, participants are then able to identify the key features of the required culture and, crucially, how these differ from the past.

Bespoke Direction

Rules are a framework designed to be rigid and intransigent. However, the businesses and organisations they are to be adopted by will be varied, with subtle and important operational differences. This is why each workshop addresses how the new regime will work at your organisation – working with Senior Managers to create a compliant system which will uphold the values and purpose of the rules within a familiar framework.

To test these systems and ensure that participants are able to apply the rules in the real situations they will be facing, a series of scenarios has been developed – each drawn from real-life case studies. The ultimate aim is for delegates to use the understanding and experience of the session to create personalised action plans they can immediately implement when they return to their work.
The FCA has stated that their extended regime will be ‘clear, simple and proportionate’. The complexity comes with the integration of these clear rules into complex organisations. Using our experience gained providing assistance to the banking and insurance industries during 2016 and 2017, People Risk Solutions will be on hand to provide the training and HR support your business requires.

To find out more, contact us