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Why Leaders Need To Break With Consensus To Seize Opportunities

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Anyone who has suffered the loss of a close relative knows the frustrations of dealing with officialdom. The process must always have been disheartening and upsetting, but the drive to put everything - from bank accounts to utility bills - online has arguably made it worse. Suddenly, passwords as well as account numbers are required in order to bring the deceased's affairs to a close. Except not in every case. Almost randomly, some organizations are as good as could be expected in the circumstances (sometimes even better). Others are hopeless to the point of crassness. Unfortunately, the technology companies - those whose leaders claim to be dedicated to making transactions easier - often fall into the latter camp.

There could, of course, be any number of reasons for the general inability to deal with what has to be one of the most predictable events in a customer's life. And the likelihood is that it is a combination of them rather than just one. One possible reason is that organizations have gone to such trouble to codify and systemize jobs that the individual really has no room for taking any form of initiative. Indeed, it is obvious in most cases that they are operating from a script, that being the only excuse for asking the bereaved at the end of the call if there is anything else they can help you with (i.e. sell) today and then urging them to "have a nice day". No wonder so many companies are enthusiastic about using robots in call centers. They effectively already do.

Another is that, for all the effort businesses go to in order to prepare for life in what we are constantly told is a highly volatile and unpredictable environment, they seem to devote few resources to dealing with things over which they can have some control. Treating the families of customers with proper respect at a difficult time for them may seem insignificant to those involved in setting strategy and fixing sales targets, but it might have a bigger effect than they realize. Who knows how many people are won over to a company by dealing with an employee who shows some sympathy or empathy for their situation?

Still another is regulation. Companies are often so terrified of unwittingly falling foul of the law that they put a blanket ban on anything that might land them in trouble. On the face of it, this looks a sensible approach. After all, better safe than sorry. But it can also make the organization look ridiculous. Arguing that data protection legislation prevents them from dealing with somebody helping an executor deal with the endless administration is just dumb.

Doubtless, there are still more. But at the heart of it all is the fact that, for all the talk of wanting to be agile, nimble and innovative, most organizations are as stiff and unresponsive as they ever were. Indeed, it is arguable that the arrival of technology - with its firewalls and the like - has made the situation even worse. That warning you hear when you contact a call center about calls being recorded and monitored for training is a reminder to the staff as well as to the caller.

If companies - and government bodies and charities, which can be just as bad - are really to focus on the customer, as they say want to, they really need to get away from an approach that appears to be built around what is most convenient and simple for the organization rather than what might suit the customer. In his fascinating new book Unsafe Thinkingthe journalist and expert on story telling and creativity, Jonah Sachs, talks about how companies can be so focused on the consensus and the tried and tested that they lose sight of a great opportunity. To illustrate his point he describes how the U.S. drugstore chain CVS in 2014 announced it would stop selling tobacco. Given that this product accounted for about $2 billion a year, this was a pretty big risk to take, even if continuing to sell tobacco was hard to square with the idea of being a health and wellbeing company. But the company executives responsible for the decision argued that the business was moving more into health care and that the potential gains there would soon make the items that drug stores traditionally sold - such as cleaning supplies, candy and tobacco - in Sachs's words, "a sideshow". And so it has proven.

But, as Sachs points out, as well as the decision has worked out for CVS and for Helena Foulkes, the executive who championed it, it is the exception rather than the rule. Examining how Foulkes was able to persuade a large organization to take a highly unsafe leap (even if it made sense on an ethical basis), Sachs came to the conclusion that leadership can play a big part in infecting a group with boldness and creativity. His view is that leaders can increase the flexibility and creativity of those around them by applying two seemingly contradictory forces - disruption and security.

Disruption involves breaking the consensus that often comes before a group has fully understood a situation. It requires teams to examine things felt to be true and to engage in productive conflict. But this sort of activity can be hard work and psychologically demanding, which is why security is important. Leaders can be more successful in bringing about change if they make team members feel safe by, for instance, letting them know they are valued, incentivising them to take chances and not punishing them for mistakes.

This is all very well, but Sachs also has practical tips for success. Noting that "information from the edges" - in the CVS example the data showing that the healthcare market was changing - can be vital in making teams think differently, he suggests that leaders not share their thinking at the outset of the project. That is likely to exacerbate what is known in psychological circles as "shared information bias". Instead, leaders should stress the importance of getting ideas from the edges and of hearing what the group does not already know. They should also encourage everybody to speak on the basis that some team members - particularly those from minority groups - might through cultural bias be more likely to keep quiet.

More radically perhaps, he says that research suggests that important meetings should be longer than usual when possible. "Peripheral information  often takes more time to emerge, and when we prize speed and efficiency, meetings can end before the ideas from the edges surface," Sachs writes.

 

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