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Issue 10 September 2006
September’s Perform is here! We hope you continue to find it a useful good read. Several of our readers have sent us testimonials and we are delighted that you find it informative, thought provoking and not too long! Enjoy the read and, as always, we would welcome your ideas for content.
This month for my great leader I’ve gone back in time yet again, This It’s the story of armies, elephants, the Alps and the Roman Empire…..and, of course, Hannibal. His story fascinated me when I was at primary school. How did African elephants get to the Alps in winter over two thousand years ago? Research has revealed an inspirational leader fighting against the Romans for his city state. Visit our website to read the article by clicking here.
Einstein spent the last twenty years of his life in the professional doldrums. He appeared fixated by his own successes and refused to accept the usefulness of quantum mechanics theory. His mind was closed to the idea. I suppose we all tend to suffer the same way. What worked well for us in the past must work well in the future. We all tend to bring the same solutions to problems – ask a consultant! Of course, things change, the world turns, new possibilities arise and situations that look the same may be, in fact, quite different. There is a story that nicely illustrates this, from the Suez crisis. President Nasser of Egypt had nationalised the Suez Canal, owned chiefly by French and British interests. For various reasons, strategic interest and political grandstanding among them, France and England invaded the Canal Zone with Israeli support. The Egyptians, calculating that the French and British would accept the nationalisation, were completely outgunned. Soviet influence was very strong in the Middle East at the time and the story relates advice from a Military Attaché. The Attaché told Nasser to withdraw his troops to the centre of the country and wait for winter. This good advice had brought victory for Russia against Napoleon and Hitler after all! We like to stick to what we know worked once before. Finally, I would like to introduce the term “groupthink”, originally coined in 1952 by William H. Whyte, an American writer on organisations. Groupthink describes the process where a group of people all agree and are unable to voice dissent. We become over confident in our invulnerability, in our correctness and decision-making. The classic example of Groupthink usually cited regards the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (sic) in 1941. The US had received many indications of the Japanese attack. They disbelieved clear statements from both the Peruvian ambassador and a British double agent. The US had broken Japanese ciphers. They intercepted a message to the Japanese agent on Honolulu asking about warship disposition and another to Japanese diplomats in Washington instructing them to destroy confidential information immediately, this just four days before the attack. Finally, they picked up signals from the Japanese Carrier fleet just an hour before the attack.
None of this information fitted their analysis that the Japanese would  attack Southeast Asia, although they recognised an attack was certain after the breakdown of talks.One thing is for certain, if you are over confident and do not have an open mind then you will miss new ideas. If you want to challenge the status quo and hear new ideas call us now 01787 378851. Alternatively, you can email us on openmind@motivationmatters.co.ukfor an initial discussion with a consultancy based on situation analysis and bespoke solutions, which fit your need exactly.
A question from the floor at a recent seminar struck an interesting note. How is it possible, to be an inspirational leader when you are team leading in a 9 to 5 rule bound environment? This environment is the one most of us have at work. Not many of us work in dramatic situations that give rise to stirring calls to action. Shakespeare’s Henry V puts it well when he is inspiring his soldiers at the town of Harfleur: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, ( From The Gutenberg Project http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext98/2ws2310.txt) Stirring stuff indeed: however, could we cope with exhortation like this several times a day?  I suspect only adrenalin junkies would find this acceptable all day long, while the rest of us would find it extremely tiring!If you accept that inspirational management produces excellent results, and we do, then how can we bring the benefits without exhortation exhaustion? Perhaps President John Kennedy gives us a better example. In 1961, the US faced the fact that the USSR had a substantial lead in space technology. This came as shock to a nation comfortable with its technological superiority: even more so as the USSR, was the principal Cold War enemy.
JFK had this to say in a speech at Rice University, Houston in 1962 (after his speech to Congress the previous year seeking funding): “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” This may not be as stirring as Henry V’s Harfleur call to arms, but sets out a great mission to inspire a huge organisation to careful but rapid activity. Yes, it is true that inspiration has to come from the top. Inspiration embodied in the mission, and channelled through the goals, strategies, tactics, tasks and daily achievements will drive astounding levels of performance. The difficulty is in designing the work content of jobs so that the daily achievements show progress toward that over-arching inspiring great mission. Make a step toward achieving that mission now, call us on 01787 378851
or email achievement@motivationmatters.co.uk
Have we made you stop and think about your own organisation and what could be gained by improving things? If you are curious about the improvements in performance that are possible, or you would like to know how to solve specific performance problems, then resolve to make a difference this minute. Call us now on 01787 378851 or email performance@motivationmatters.co.uk to start improving performance. After all Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”!
We hope you enjoyed this Perform. Please forward it to anyone you feel would enjoy it. Please look at the information on our website for more details and articles. The next Perform will be in a month.
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© Motivation Matters 2006
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time it’s to the time before Christ was born.