The Leadership Sphere

Neller HR Champion (CEO) Award Winners Partners with TLS

A firm partnership

The Leadership Sphere has been working with top tier law firm Allens Arthur Robinson to build capability in the areas of effective conversations, feedback and coaching.  Recently, Michael Rose won the Neller HR Champion (CEO) Award at the HR Leadership Awards.  

Susan Ferrier, Director of People and Development at Allens Arthur Robinson says, 

"We have worked with the Leadership Sphere for the last two years to help lift the skills of our partners, lawyers  and other professionals in the areas of effective conversations, feedback and coaching. The aim of the training is to help us deliver our firm and people strategies of building an energised and highly engaged workplace where people’s own personal values and the firm’s values work together in a way that motivates and inspires. 

We see effective conversations and relationships as critical foundation capabilities for creating a culture where high performance is expected and recognised and our values observed and promoted. 

TLS have been an outstanding thought partner for our firm and through their innovative and thoughtful delivery have helped fundamentally shift how we manage, lead and engage with each other."

Strategy and the Fat Smoker

The title of David Maister's latest book doesn't give many clues to it's central theme, but it is catchy. 

Maister suggests a focus first on what to change, and then on how to change. Maister points out that real change requires a permanent shift in organizational habits - analogous to the permanent change in eating habits required to lose weight and keep it off.  In order to succeed at such change, you (the organization) must be fully and completely committed.  So you better be sure you want it!

There are three central questions asked:

"Which diet, if integrated into our normal running of the firm, would actually get us to perform at a higher level, enough to achieve the benefits we seek?

"Which would we be prepared to adopt as a natural part of our regular lifestyle?

"If we don't like any of these diets can anyone think of another that will have as much force as these, but that we could live with more easily?"

He concludes by offering six suggestions for building the commitment that permanent change requires:

1. Give it time - permanent change is hard and takes a long time.
2. Change the scorecard and rewards system.
3. Management must change how they act, how they are measured and how they are paid, or the rest of the organization will not change.
4. Focus on principle more than on tactics.
5. People must choose to get with the program or not - you can't force people to be committed to the change.
6. But if they choose not to get with the program, you need to get them out quickly.  This is especially true at the top - if a member of the top team is not committed, that person needs to go.

   Download strategy_and_the_fat_smoker.pdf (PDF 453 KB)
   

 

The title of David Maister's latest book doesn't give many clues to it's central theme, but it is catchy. 

Maister suggests a focus first on what to change, and then on how to change. Maister points out that real change requires a permanent shift in organizational habits - analogous to the permanent change in eating habits required to lose weight and keep it off.  In order to succeed at such change, you (the organization) must be fully and completely committed.  So you better be sure you want it!

There are three central questions asked:

"Which diet, if integrated into our normal running of the firm, would actually get us to perform at a higher level, enough to achieve the benefits we seek?

"Which would we be prepared to adopt as a natural part of our regular lifestyle?

"If we don't like any of these diets can anyone think of another that will have as much force as these, but that we could live with more easily?"

He concludes by offering six suggestions for building the commitment that permanent change requires:

1. Give it time - permanent change is hard and takes a long time.
2. Change the scorecard and rewards system.
3. Management must change how they act, how they are measured and how they are paid, or the rest of the organization will not change.
4. Focus on principle more than on tactics.
5. People must choose to get with the program or not - you can't force people to be committed to the change.
6. But if they choose not to get with the program, you need to get them out quickly.  This is especially true at the top - if a member of the top team is not committed, that person needs to go.

   Download strategy_and_the_fat_smoker.pdf (PDF 453 KB)
   

 

Book Summary - Good to Great by Jim Collins

In his previous bestseller, Built to Last, Jim Collins explored what made great companies great and how they sustained that greatness over time. One point kept nagging him, though - great companies have, for the most part, always been great, while a vast majority of good companies remain just that: good, but not great. What could merely good companies do to become great, to turn long-term weakness into long-term supremacy?

Collins and his team of researchers used strict benchmarks to identify a group of eleven elite companies that made the leap from good to great and sustained that greatness for at least fifteen years. The companies that made the list might surprise you as much as those left of (the likes of Intel, GE and Coca Cola are nowhere to be found).