Transcript
Speaker: Made on Zencastr. The all-in-one podcasting platform that makes every stage of the podcast production process so easy. Use the link to Zencastr.com in the description. There is a built-in discount.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds. a series of conversations between Abyssaida and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
Speaker: I'm your host, Michael Millward. to Today, I'm going to be learning about improving the status quo as an English person. Anything to do with the status quo, and I start thinking about the band,
Speaker: But um we're going to be looking at how to improve the status quo. And my guest is Paul Thornton, who has written a book about exactly that. Paul is based in Boston in the United States.
Speaker: Boston is not one of those cities that I have ever visited. But if I do get a chance to go... I will be making my travel plans with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where I get trade prices on trains, flights, hotels, holidays and all sorts of other travel related purchases.
Speaker: You can do the same by using the link in the description. There is a built-in discount in that link as well. Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
Speaker: Very importantly, on The Independent Minds, we will not be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Today, my guest, Independent Mind, is Paul Thornton.
Speaker: Hello, Paul. Hello, Michael. Thank you for having me on. Wait until the end before you thank me for having been on. I am very interested in this book. What's the full title of the book, Paul? The full title is Add Value, Improve the Status Quo.
Speaker: Add Value, Improve the Status Quo. And of course, I've hooked on to that bit about improving the status quo, because I think it's just ah an intriguing title for a book. And we're going to find out an awful lot more about it. But before we do that, please, could you give us a little bit of an introduction to the backstory of Paul Thornton, please? Sure. I worked 20 years in corporate America, large aerospace corporation in a variety of roles.
Speaker: And I also spent 20 years roughly as a college teacher, teaching leadership and management courses, as well as doing seminars and workshops. in a So I've been really passionate about the topic of leadership and what the best leaders do to inspire change and implement change and that type of thing. I think there's always something new to learn about it. Why a book about adding value by improving the status quo when the status quo is expression means to stay the same?
Speaker: I think all leaders are really trying to make things better. They have a vision. they have a view of what can be done differently.
Speaker: to be more efficient, to be more effective. Coaches, teachers, leaders, you know, they're they're all looking for improvement to help people achieve more, accomplish more, get more done, that type of thing. So improving the status quo is ah theme that ties into continuous improvement, leading change, bringing out the best in people. You could even say therapies, I guess, you know, Psychotherapy is aimed at helping people be more effective and operate more successfully, that type of thing. So there's a major theme in our lives that, you know, through life, hopefully we're getting a little bit better and better as we proceed and we're making changes and being more effective. Even when a situation isn't changing, a leader stroke manager, part of their role is to look for how things can be improved.
Speaker: If you are improving the status quo, it's almost as if you're improving how things happen without changing how they happen. So it's a little bit of they beneath the table type of change. There's nothing sinister about being under the table. There's no fanfare. There's no bells and whistles, so to speak. It's a much more subtle approach to change management. And it's about looking at improvement rather than change. Would that be right? Well, I think you can look at it that every day we're looking to make small changes in our process, in our methods, in our procedures.
Speaker: And then there are some big game-changing changes that happen as well. you know Transformational changes when a business decides to change their mission from you know a to B, or they they make a dramatic shift in their orientation or their target market or whatever it might be. Those are the sorts of changes that almost reinvent the organization. Yeah, you are exactly. So there's degrees of change, some small, some very large, and a lot in between.
Speaker: but change as i said earlier is something that we deal with and need to keep evolving and improving you know in the business world to stay competitive you need to keep getting more efficient and um you know cutting costs and producing better products and services and Competing. I mean, there's competition. You have competitors that are trying to beat you and take your customers away.
Speaker: So you need to stay on top your game and keep evolving and improving and and changing. And it it really comes down to change. Yes, I can see that.
Speaker: The changes that are radical, that change people's lives, not just their their jobs or their work, are is is a completely different type of change to the change that is dealing with improving the status quo. Because you're not talking about people changing their jobs, but you are talking about the people changing the way in which they perform their jobs. Mm-hmm. And you're also, I think, talking about micro changes, yeah small improvements, a little bit each day, each week, rather than yeah those changes that happen on the 1st of October, we will then be doing X. and It's little micro changes, little micro improvements that mean you can move something forward in a better way.
Speaker: In one of my books, I talk about the distinction between managing and leading. And I make the point that managers basically focus on the status quo. They use current methods and procedures and policies to get the work done, you know produce the output, produce the product.
Speaker: We need stability and we need order and we need standards and procedures and all that. But we also need the leader is someone who is more focused on What can I change to improve the operation?
Speaker: How can we become more productive, more efficient, that type of thing? So I think you need a balance of these two items, managing and leading. And depending on what's going on in your industry or your environment that you're in, you may need to spend more time leading and less time managing. That is, you need to make some dramatic changes and make some cuts and do some things differently and cut product lines and what have you. Or you may be thriving and you're really need stability and you're making some minor changes. So again, there's a balance between these two concepts of managing and leading.
Speaker: Yes, but that does seem a bit key to any level of change management, the difference between a manager and a leader. they say I do like what you said about managers are about maintaining the status quo. yeah I often see management as ah you're managing a process.
Speaker: yeah A leader leads people and a manager manages the process. yeah And one of the interesting things that you said was that the balance between management and leadership can mean the difference between success and failure for a change project. yeah I'm wondering, but how do you get the balance right? That's a good question.
Speaker: It comes down to diagnosing the situation and determining what's required to stay competitive and to be successful.
Speaker: Leaders need managers also good diagnostic skills. They have to be able to look at a situation, analyze, you know, what's working well, where are the problems, what level of change is required to improve. The competition has improved by 30%, then that tells you something. Yep. If customers are demanding that you get them the products not in six months, but in two months, that tells you something.
Speaker: So you're getting all these data points to help you determine how much change is needed at this point and why and what are the factors. And again, it's a very dynamic environment and there's a lot of factors to consider.
Speaker: Technology is changing the world, as we know, AI and and what have you. Looking at all those variables and deciding where do I need to be, what's required, and where do I put my energy and focus, and how big a change or how little a change am I going to pursue at this point in time?
Speaker: What you're saying is that it's not that you don't need managers, it's not that you don't need leadership, you need both. And the role of the manager is almost the the analytical part of the process. And the leadership is the inspirational part of the change management after what needs to change has been identified by someone who's got more management, process management skills. I would say it a little bit differently. I think the leader needs to be analytical also at times. The leader needs to look at the current situation and do a good assessment of what's currently happening.
Speaker: As I say, look at all these different variables and decide what level of change is needed to compete and succeed in a very demanding marketplace.
Speaker: When I think of leader, I think of change. When I think of manager, I think of status quo. You need both of those. And you made the good point about what level of what percentage of each do you need. Well, it, ah of course, depends on many factors.
Speaker: And in each organization, I suspect the factors will become as unique as the organization is. I totally agree. Which means that part of the traditional change management approach is almost missing if you're not thinking, okay what is the role of managers? Who do we want to be the managers? And what parts, what aspects of this change will require leadership skills?
Speaker: It's not something that in all the different change management situations that I have been in, large and small, that I've ever heard anyone talk about in terms of which part of this change management process is management and which part is leadership. I was at a company, as I said, 20 years.
Speaker: Part of my role, there was I was in charge of management training and development. The first line managers, the foreman in the operational side of the house, were typically thought of as managers. you know They just told people what to do and gave them feedback and what have you. And they really weren't very focused on change or improving their process. Let's put it that way.
Speaker: ah We spent a number of years having them go through various training programs teaching them some of the concepts relating to leading change, trying to convince them that part of your job is not only to grind the Hamburg and produce the output, but also to be thinking about what can you do differently to be more effective? How can you improve your process? What changes should you make in the the layout or the steps or the process checks you do, when whatever it might be.
Speaker: But we wanted them to not just manage, but also to lead. If you look at the ratio of the time they spent managing and leading, 60, 70% of the time they were managers and 30% of the time they were thinking about change and doing it differently and better and that type of thing.
Speaker: I think you're probably being quite generous there. I probably am. It's probably 80-20. If that. When we think about managers, I am constantly reminded that the origins of the word is the French word menage, which is where you train a horse.
Speaker: m From there, we end up with the word manager. So are our team members similar to horses? I wouldn't say that they were. I hope not. Definitely not.
Speaker: You can force a horse to do something or you can almost get the horse to want to do it with you. There's two ways of doing it. Yeah. And what we need to get to is where your employees, your team want to do these things with you, not so much for you, but with you. Mm hmm.
Speaker: A large part of our organizational culture is based around a relationship between managers and employees. And the origins in many ways of that relationship is still today very strongly linked to the way in which managers behaved when you got your first managers during the Industrial Revolution. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Then when we talk about managers and their role in the change management process, before a manager can really be effective in a change management process at any level, they're going to have to really unlearn a lot of concepts, ideas, expectations of their role as a manager, much of which will not have been formally taught to them and either by reading a book or attending a training course. it's all by observing other managers and experiencing being managed.
Speaker: It's no short order, really, for a manager to get effectively involved in change to actually undo a couple of hundred years of expectations of managers and how that is ingrained in managers. And it's a big, big challenge for everyone.
Speaker: But it is an essential one that is addressed so that those managers can have that leadership role within any type of change management process. And we can move to a situation, if that is exceeded, where managers are more 50-50 between managing processes, managing situations, and actually providing leadership.
Speaker: yeah i Where I work, the managers were basically told and operated under the framework of my job is to tell people what to do and how to do it.
Speaker: They were very, very directing, you know? Yes. And we wanted them to be more facilitating, having more discussions ah with the employees, getting their thoughts and ideas, asking them questions about what would it take to improve this process? How could we do this more efficiently? You know, blah, blah, blah. So you're right. It's not an easy transition, especially some of the foremen we had had been doing it this telling behavior for, you know, 20, 30 years.
Speaker: So now all of a sudden you tell them, no, no, don't tell your people the way you have been. You need to ask them questions. You need to involve them. You need to get their input, their buy-in. And it was like a totally different approach or orientation for them. And some were like, nah, i I don't buy this. I'm going to tell them what to do. I'm like, no, we're,
Speaker: We're changing. so Yeah. But just as managers have expectations of what their role is, the people that they manage have an expectation of how their manager will behave. That's very true. And at the moment, what we have is both managers and the people they manage agreeing in many cases that being told what to do, when to do it, how to do it, is what is expected by the people who you're all wanting to change to get into this mode. Easy to run the words off your tongue.
Speaker: But it's it really is a major, major task. yeah What sort of advice do you have for a manager who's facing that type of situation, being very command and control and master and servant almost, and what's what's What would you do as a manager in that type of situation to try and start the ball rolling as a way of improving in the status quo towards getting that more collegiate type of relationship with your team? What sort of things would you put in place? I would encourage them to use more of a discussing style, asking more questions,
Speaker: soliciting more ideas from all of their employees. i would ask them also maybe to observe other managers who have gotten proficient at it, sit in one of their meetings and observe what they do and how they do it how they run the meeting.
Speaker: I would ask them to maybe delegate part of the meeting to one of their employees to let them run that part of the meeting. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: I would also maybe consider having an employee lead a discussion on a topic. You, the manager, sit quietly and observe. you know Things like that. Seeing the different how the different energy levels would shift, how the involvement would motivate people, things like that.
Speaker: It's not so much delegation and that point. It's more a case of involvement. Yeah. yeah but maybe Maybe, like I said, delegating part of the meeting, you say to an employee, I want you to lead the discussion on XYZ.
Speaker: And I'm not going to say a word. It's your session. its The 10 minutes on the agenda for this topic is yours. You lead the discussion. You ask the questions. You try to achieve the desired outcome, whatever that might be.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. I have been in meetings where managers have attempted that. And, um, it was, it was only the one meeting that we had in that project because it didn't work.
Speaker: It was, um, an interesting experience. The manager brought all of his direct reports together and asked a question. And we went round the room and halfway round the room, one person said, you know, well, what do you think to the manager, to our manager? What do you think?
Speaker: And I piped up what he thinks doesn't matter.
Speaker: i can pitch I'm remembering it now. What he thinks doesn't matter. yeah He's not come into this meeting to tell us what it is that we're going to do. He's asked us to tell him what we think should be done. And your response to that is to ask him what it is that you think you should be telling him.
Speaker: What should be done? You're asking your manager to tell you what you, what you should be saying to him. And we didn't have another meeting. It a damaged the relationships between the team because what they were looking at, what that person was looking for was almost like, yeah, I will do what you tell me to do, yeah but i don't want to think about anything until you've told me what I should think. Yeah.
Speaker: Almost like an episode of Downton Abbey where the the Dowager Countess says to her grandchildren, her granddaughters, no, you don't have an opinion until you get married and then your husband will tell you what your opinion is Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. and Well, that that is reality in certain situations that people have been told what to do so long that they're not motivated to think and express their ideas. They are looking for the manager to tell them what to do and how to do it. You know?
Speaker: yeah um Yeah. And that, though, when you look at the situation that we're in now with more people working remotely because yeah they'll work in an office that is part of and the organization, but their manager may actually be on a different continent because organizations are much more international nowadays.
Speaker: You've got to have people who i are um people who are comfortable thinking through things for themselves and coming up with a solution. And then it's that old adage that i often heard in my employee career was like, don't come to me with a problem, come to me with the problem and the solution.
Speaker: This is the problem. This is the solution I propose. Yes, go away, do it. But with people being remote from their managers, Managers are going to need people are going to say, this is the issue, this is the challenge, the problem. This is what I'm going to do in order to resolve it.
Speaker: And then when the manager comes online, because of the time differences, three hours later or four hours later. Five hours later, it's all been resolved by someone who understood what the situation was, had the knowledge and the skills and the competency to put it right, and then can tell the manager, this is what's happened. And that's like they're dealing with the status quo in a way that maintains the status quo, but because of the actions that they've taken is also improving the status quo because the understanding that they have
Speaker: of how things work will have improved by or as a result of them having to remedy a problem. it's It's a little bit like raising children. Early in life, we use more of a directing style. We tell the child what they can do, can't do, and there's rules and regulations and all that.
Speaker: As they get a little bit older, we start to discuss. And as you said, good discussions require the other person, the child, to start thinking. When the parent says, what would you do in this situation and why? And ah how would you deal with this obstacle? Or if your peer group did X, Y, z what would you do? So you're getting them to think and analyze situations.
Speaker: Also, as in the corporate world, you're getting them used to collaborating. That's happening more and more these days. But yeah, thinking for themselves is a critical skill.
Speaker: And then the next step is the delegation. um One of the things I have in one of my books is that there are basically three approaches or three styles that leaders use, and it's directing, discussing and delegating.
Speaker: I call it the three D's. But basically, that's where you're you're trying to get to the point where you develop the person their skills, their awareness, their business sense, and you can delegate to them more and more so that frees up your time as a leader.
Speaker: And you can think about more strategic things and alignment and things like that. And there they are capable of handling and making decisions and getting the resources they need and you know getting the job done with little to no supervision. That is the aim, isn't it? That is the aim.
Speaker: Just like raising our kids, we want them to be mature, capable, competent individuals when they get into their 20s and yes what have you. And yeah it doesn't always work out that way, but that's what we want. That's what we want. That is, and I think it's a great way of describing, we want people to be able to do things for themselves. Yeah. We don't necessarily want them to upset the apple cart. So it is a way of yeah maintaining the status quo. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: but or adding to the status quo improving the status quo whilst actually getting people to operate differently within the status quo it's really interesting paul really interesting yeah i really do appreciate your time today it's been it's been great thank you very much okay thank you michael my pleasure brilliant i am michael mill ward and i have been having a conversation with the independent mind paul thornton You can find out more information about both of us at abeceda.co.uk. There is a link in the description alongside links to Paul's website and opportunities to find out more information about his books.
Speaker: At The Independent Minds, we believe that it's important to be healthy. And one the best ways to stay healthy is to know the risks early. That is why we recommend the health tests that are available from York Test, especially their annual health test.
Speaker: The annual health test from York Test provides an assessment of 39 different health markers, including cholesterol, diabetes, vitamin levels, organ functions, all sorts of various different things.
Speaker: The annual health test is conducted by an experienced phlebotomist who will complete a full blood draw at your home or workplace. Hospital standard tests are carried out in a UKAS accredited and CQC compliant laboratory. You can access easy to understand results and guidance to help you make effective lifestyle changes anytime by your secure personal wellness hub account. There is a link and a discount code in the description.
Speaker: I'm sure you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Paul and I have enjoyed making it. Please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere.
Speaker: To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
Speaker: Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye. Thank you.
