The Magic Ingredient of Coping with Big Challenges
Author: Garth Nowland-Foreman
Times are pretty challenging for most of us at the moment. Most of our non-profit leaders are having to deal with big challenges and formidable demands. What should we focus on? What is most important to do well in times such as these? What is the magical ingredient that could turn around a massively failing bricks-and-mortar retail bookstore during Covid? And what on earth could that have to teach non-profit leaders?
Read the whole story in this fascinating blog, but 'spoiler alert' It seems a key ingredient for success is not among your usual suspects. It’s not a matter of having perfect management techniques. It’s not a case of unerring separation of governance and management roles. It’s not really anything about having textbook policies and procedures for everything. While there may be nothing inherently wrong with all of these conventional metrics of good management practice, they don't make the big difference.
If this story about the remarkable rescue of Barnes & Noble has any lessons for us it is the disarmingly simple ‘love what you do’ - or as we tend to say, 'passion for the cause'. The non-profit governance model at LEAD that we share with anyone who will listen is based on taking seriously the key leadership role of kaitiaki o te kaupapa (guardians of the vision, mission and values).
This echoes what Thom Peters and Robert Waterman (from their experience working with the world's biggest management consulting firm, McKinsey & Co.) found and wrote about in "In Search of Excellence" over 40 years ago, and their lessons remain remarkably fresh. They identified eight key determinants, and the eighth, 'simultaneous loose-tight properties' (we prefer to refer to as 'simultaneous loose-tight culture'), they described as drawing together and summarising all that they previously described as contributing to excellent organisations.
What is it? "The excellent organisation has loose controls in the sense that people are not tightly constrained by supervisory surveillance, by corporate rules, by detailed performance measures, or by closely prescribed roles. Yet in these organisations, people do not wander from serving the key purposes of the organisation’s founders. The tightness of control comes from people choosing to do what is required of them because they wish to serve the values which they share with those in charge."
Why does it work? "… In managing organisations, loose-tight controls work - using culture and shared values - better than traditional tight ones. This is first, because it fits with what human beings are like (meaning-seeking creatures) and, second, because it fits with what the world is like (an unpredictable and ambiguous place). (Watson, 1994, based on Peters & Waterman, 1982.)
It turns out that excessive reliance on meticulous long-term planning, careful risk analysis and the bottom line stifles more productivity, innovation, resilience and growth than it is responsible for. It seems that it is more important to experiment and take risks, learn from the people you serve, stick to your knitting, rely on a bottom-heavy simple flat structure, and be values-driven.
Ted Gioia What Can We Learn from Barnes and Noble's Surprising Turnaround?