Making a Positive Difference

Thoughts and reflections from Bath Consultancy Group’s conference

Forty-five people gathered for a Bath Consultancy Group conference in early May to listen, ponder, explore and plan for engaging action and learning. Initially a three-day event, we packed the content into 24 hours and stayed together in one large group (with no choices or streams for a change). This might have been counter-intuitive but it really worked and the feedback from the conference shows it was a great success.

Peter Hawkins opened the conference after dinner with a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece. He challenged us in the organisation development, consulting and coaching world to think hard about what we can uniquely do, that organisations of tomorrow really need.

Peter Hawkins pointed out that if past experience is anything to go by, between a third and a half of consulting firms will not be around by the end of this recession.  And at the same time, organisations are continuing to spend more on coaching and development – this Government, he said, has spent more on leadership development than all other governments put together.  His challenge to us was to invest more effort in coaching and working with ‘relationships’ and not just with individuals.

So in coaching, for example, this is about coaching the relationship space between CEOs and their teams or their Chairs. For development programmes it is working with the problem and not simply the participants – continuing the trend for taking training away from classroom to where the action is happening, in real play NOT role play. In Leadership Development it is moving away from nominating individuals and move towards taking the wicked issues on courses.

In the morning Mike Pedler continued this theme with some challenging reflections from history describing the current global financial crisis as an interregnum through which new possibilities could emerge. 

He shared Peter’s view that Action Learning, Organisation Development and Coaching can default to the same disabilities – all focussed on private, individualistic outcomes – and this is a symptom of dysfunctional organisations. Development becomes the sticking plasters - how we put up with the “ludicrous demands of those above and below” and manage the failures of management.

With a poetic reference from Yeats – ‘the centre cannot hold’ - Mike’s challenge to us was that the purpose of engaging action and learning was not to recreate a sense of comfort and security but to hold open the gap – to look for the “uncommitted potential for change”.  Mike pointed out that at certain points in history turbulence, or an interregnum, creates extraordinary opportunities such as the emergence of the Commonwealth Parliament in 1650; the end of the Victorian Era in the 1890s and the dreams of a new common purpose in the post war years of the 1950s. Now we have the same potential and possibilities. Can organisations really imagine new ideas? Can we hold the door open for alternatives to emerge…?

With eight contributors, table conversations and a lovely process for gathering and building on the questions and comments led by Tom Boydell and Fiona Ellis , the day felt both pacy, informative and engaging. 

Click here for a brief overview of the speakers. For others you simply had to be there - especially the Action Learning with Welsh Farmers story by Eirwen Williams and Wyn Owen. This must be one of the most successful action learning programmes – the audience actually gasped when Eirwen said, in her wonderfully understated way, “…we’ve set up over 100 Action Learning sets with over 1,000 people participating…”  – and that is in the remote rural communities of West Wales.

Overview of Sessions

Leadership in Action at Microsoft Corporation
Shannon Banks, Worldwide Leadership Development Consultant

Shannon has established a High Potential Development Leadership in Action programme working with the top 4% of leadership within Microsoft’s Sales, Marketing & Services organisations world-wide.

Before establishing the programme Shannon researched experiences of current and past programmes. She found that Action Learning had a bad reputation internally as it was a phrase that had been used as a catch all for programmes. She also found that Microsoft’s leaders were naturally action oriented – what they needed to think about was how things would be achieved and the results of it.

Recent programmes had also revolved around projects that were executive nominated and the identified groups would work on them for six months. These projects were typically neither urgent nor important – as otherwise they would have been worked on sooner.

Shannon’s programme revolved around a 3-day intensive workshop or a Leadership in Action Practicum. The Tier 1 leadership population would bring to this event a breakthrough opportunity that they had identified within the scope of their job. This would be shared with a Tier 2s from diverse backgrounds.

Key learnings from the programme are that Tier 1s retain ownership of the project and concrete actions and results are quickly realised. There is a huge amount of innovation – each group has access to a strategy consultant so that the problem can be viewed through a different lens providing innovation solutions. The outcome of the programme is that the high potentials come away with new strategic decision making tools and experience.

Click here to see Shannon's Presentation

Integrated Decision Framework
Ben Fuchs, Associate Consultant, Bath Consultancy Group

The world that we live in is shaped by decisions that are made. Unfortunately, we are all suffering from results of bad decisions or a poor decision making process. Ben gave a fascinating presentation which showed evidence that 50% of major decisions fail. When there are investigations into these decisions, we always concentrate on who did what when. We really need to know who decided what and why.

Ben presented the classic decision trap of Decide, Announce, Defend – or DAD for short. Instead of making the decision and then defending it we should use an integrated decision frame which looks at both the rational and non-rational aspects as well as the cultural and political aspects that inform how we all make decisions. An example how decisions are made in a highly political environment would be someone not speaking out when a poor decision is announced as “it’s more than my job’s worth.”

A proven strategy for effective decision-making is FEED:

• Frame the problem
• Engage stakeholders
• Explore the issue
• Decision comes last, not first.

Click here to see Ben's Presentation

 Expeditionary Campaign Infrastructure Team
Colonel John Pelton, Defence Equipment and Supplies

ECI supplies all equipment to soldiers on the ground including all accommodation, Head Quarters, medical facilities and working quarters. In Afghanistan for example this could be creating an infrastructure for 9,000 people. To increase their service to soldiers in the field, the ECI team has recently downsized its team, relocated and recreated new teams.

Colonel Pelton worked closely with a business psychologist and an internal consultant to understand the profile and dynamics of the team so that they could be engaged in the need for change.

This included involving them on identifying a better way of working, and collaboratively creating the mission ‘Making Life Better for Soldiers in the Field’. Colonel Pelton recognises that change does not come easily and that engaging your people in the need for change so that they buy into the vision of what you want to achieve is paramount. 

Click here to see John's Presentation

Complex Programme Management
Sue Pritchard, Bath Consultancy Group

Organisations are undertaking increasingly complex programme management which are multi-billion, multi-agency programmes. Sue has been commissioned by Gower to write a book presenting case studies of complex programme management. This is part of an ongoing R&D project by Bath Consultancy Group into an approach for successfully managing complex programmes.

Bath Consultancy Group has developed a six-pointed star which demonstrates six aspects required for successful programme delivery:

• Strategy – “strategy without the capacity for implementation is noting more than deception” Mike Pedler.
• Culture – As a sign in the Ford Motor Company says, “Culture will eat strategy for breakfast”. There is a misconception that if you focus on components and drive delivery you will get required outputs.
• Programme Skills – the technical skills of programme or project management remain important – doing things efficiently and effectively in times of certainty.
• Leadership – Within Project Management the pull of conventional hero model is strong. Adaptive challenges call for different leadership. Leaders need to embody how they want to work differently.
• Governance and Accountability – needing to both ensure the organisation works in the spirit and letter of the governance frameworks and focus on enabling delivery
• Learning – organisations need to learn fast and from each other in working with complexity. This means surfacing common patterns across the enterprise and attending to recurring themes, such as the “conspiracy of optimism” and speaking truth to power.

Engaging Across a Global Company in a Downturn Using a Viral Approach
John Holland, Organisation Effectiveness Consultant at Hewlett Packard

10 year’s ago Hewlett Packard had a very defined culture epitomised by ‘The HP Way’. Now, under different leadership and a dramatic change in the economic climate, HP needed to increase employee engagement. This was driven by a requirement to improve business performance in an environment of pay freezes, travel bans and reduction in training and discretionary spend – some of the common ways to increase engagement.

The organisation had identified that engagement through a ‘top down’ approach wouldn’t work – engagement needed to come directly from line managers and most of the factors that influence engagement are already under their control. HP launched ‘The Deal’ which clearly laid out what the organisation would provide to employees, and in return, what HP expected from its employees.

Click here to see John's Presentation 

Modernising Pathology Services in the NHS
Margaret Attwood & Mike Pedler, Action Learning For Service Improvement Ltd

ALSI has been working with the NHS to modernise their Pathology Services through Action Learning. Pathology Services are usually to be found in the furthest corners of the hospital and, with a workforce of scientists, are challenging collections of individuals to engage with. To achieve sustainable change, ALSI recommended setting up action learning groups or sets. These work on real challenges identified by individuals within Pathology Services to bring about whole systems change – a bottom-up approach to engagement. The first issue is identifying the groups. To do this, ALSI recruited people from within Pathology Services as area based facilitators then identified and selected the learning sets from groups who themselves understood the need for modernisation. As this approach cascades through the system, you have committed and engaged employees working on real issues and challenges to bring about sustainable change.

Click here to see Margaret' & Mikes Presentation

Impact of Turbulent Times on Natural Organisational Evolution
Christine Lloyd, Cancer Research UK

Christine Lloyd believes that every organisation has a natural cycle of decline and growth. Our role is to create the right conditions for the organisation to evolve and then we need to let it go where it should.  Organisational development, she says, polarises global / local; efficiency /effectiveness; centralised / decentralised. However, in a natural cycle of decline and growth there will be different needs at different time.

For example, in growth a decentralised operation will be more effective with the centre acting almost as a neural network where there are simple rules applied, or as Christine says, ‘Freedom within frameworks’. However, a devolved organisation can equally see costs spiral and inefficiencies creep in leading to a decline in revenues and service, leading in turn to centralisation.

Click here to see some diagrams from Christine's Presentation

After the presentations, table conversations and building on the questions and comments led by Tom Boydell and Fiona Ellis , the day felt both pacy, informative and engaging.  Please click here to see the our final questions of the day, ie. What is Stimulating us?

Please contact Julia Westbrook on This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it   if you would like to attend any of our future Action Learning Programmes or Events.