The last thing you want is happy staff.

I am currently reading a huge amount about the way we think. What is evident is that we think in two main ways. The first by gut instinct and the second with more applied thought. What is fascinating is the way our demeanour impacts the way we think.

It is well documented that whenever we are shown anything, do anything, see anything our, lets call it, System 1 thinking kicks in. It is instinct, it has happened before we know about it and we may be consciously or unconsciously aware of it. We do not consciously apply mental resource to dealing with it. If I write A=76 B=32 C=19 B x C = ? you instinctively know it is a puzzle but you do not know the answer immediately. Something else has to happen.

The something else that happens is System 2 thinking. We apply mental resource consciously to deal with the challenge and come up with the answer.

What has been shown is that if we are HAPPY we are more likely to make System 1 decisions. If you don’t believe me, think about a great day. You just won a client, got a pay rise, got a job, got a tax refund, met a potential partner etc. Now think of the “impulsive” things you did on that day.

What has also been shown is that if we are stressed System 2 kicks into play. Think about a stressful day, bank suddenly empty, car broken down, children ill. We apply mental resource to the issues we are faced with and apply resource.

So staff engagement. We want our people to be HAPPY don’t we? The answer is no. If our people are ONLY happy then the place is filled with shooting from the hip, gut instinct decision making. What we want is our people to be challenged.

Staff engagement surveys do not measure the level of Challenge in people.

“Do you feel challenged in your role?”

goes nowhere near to identifying the state of your people.

The last thing you need is happy people. Make sure they find challenge in what they do. At this stage their mental resources engage. But be ready for the Tsunami of activity.

To find out more about Miascape call our office on 08700421340. Be happy. Just do it!

A blog by Duncan Bury - Miascape CEO. Like what you see here? Why not follow our social links…

The Edge isn’t just in U2

I am fascinated by edges. When I was a material scientist at Cambridge University I studied the atomic structure of materials and it was the edges of materials that fascinated me. The bit where the regular atomic structure has to change into something else. You know. The surface of a diamond or a piece of steel or a copper wire. The last bit of the thing “The edge” is highly energetic and stuff happens there. Atoms are working stuff out. Aluminium is a great example. It grabs oxygen super efficiently and forms a protective surface layer. But what happens at the surface of that oxidised layer. What happens when a knife, an edge, cuts through some materials. New edges are created and wow there is a whole load of energy dealt with.

What has this got to do with Miascape? Well I love finding people’s edges. Not their physical edges, but their mental edges. The limit of their mental models. Let me explain.

I love watching Jimmy Carr telling increasingly risque jokes to find the limits of acceptability for the audience. We all enjoy a joke but we have our limits.

That joke was funny and thats ok.
That joke is funny but I shouldn’t be laughing.
That joke is funny but it is in distinctly bad taste and no one should be laughing.
That is not funny for anyone, surely.
I’m leaving.

Where is your edge in humour? We all have one. Would you admit it? Does it change with the audience you are with? Your edge is where you get emotionally agitated and stuff begins to happen. Humour relies on edges.

We were in a meeting the other day when we found the edge of an individual and an organisation simultaneously. Individually and collectively they stated they were “Open and Honest”. However we got to a point where an individual wanted to name another individual in the organisation who was causing a problem. They were junior to this person in the organisation and they hesitated “because of consequences”. They were physically stopping themselves being “Open and Honest”. They had reached their “Open and Honest” edge.

We fear things that have not yet happened. By definition if we think something might happen, it has not happened. The “edge” is where things change from “may happen” to “have happened”. The fear is beyond your “edge”. Forget the fear and extend your edge. Where is your personal or organisational edge and is it time to move it?

A blog by Duncan Bury - Miascape CEO. Like what you see here? Why not follow our social links…

“Due diligence lite” the phrase used by Sir Fred Goodwin when referring to the exploration of the veracity of the ABN Amro deal in 2007. In todays Scotsman the headline reads “RBS was warned about Goodwin 8 years ago”. The article focusses on Goodwins behaviours and in particular his “robust management style”. It seems that companies are still doing People Due Diligence lite.

We despair when we see mergers and acquisitions moving ahead without proper people due diligence. It is not a tick box exercise. It is uncovering the unwritten rules of the organisation and the people issues that will create risk for you moving forward. Mitigating financial risk is always top of the list. Operational due diligence follows. IT due diligence has recently successfully entered the market with the likes of Intuitus. People due diligence is critical, adds value and mitigates risk. How many people were aware of Goodwins style? I am guessing just about everyone. Would it be considered in a due diligence process? I am guessing not. Miascape are experienced enough to uncover these issues and deliver difficult messages to both parties in corporate deals. To find out more call us. It could save you Billions.

A blog by Duncan Bury - Miascape CEO. Like what you see here? Why not follow our social links…

We all recognise that feeling of frustration where others don’t seem to be performing at the professional level that we expect. However, as humans we are destined to show up as amateurs when we try and interpret our world and other peoples’ behaviours in that world.

You see, we are fundamentally flawed as thinkers. For a number of reasons it is highly unlikely that we interpret the world as it really is. All sorts of lovely little humanisims keep getting in our way.

Allow me to explain. As a child we enter this world with little understanding of how things work. Our earliest experiences may involve crying and understanding that this leads to changing, feeding or cuddles. This is how we learn. However it starts getting so much more complicated as we realise that other people are thinking and learning too.

When we interact with an object its fairly straight forward. It is small, hollow circular shape. Its made of ceramic and has a handle on the side. I can organise this data and decide that based on my previous experience, or what others have told me, this is indeed a mug. From here I can attribute all sorts of qualities such as good for holding a hot drink. That it came from a holiday in Corfu and that it would serve me well for my 11am cup of coffee.

The mug does not think. It does not actively monitor the way it shows up to me and attempt to manipulate this to its advantage. That is to say, the mug doesn’t show up with a ring of old tea hoping to put me off using it. The thinking is all on my part.

Enter stage left another human. Well now it all changes as this person also thinks (unlike our dodgy mug) They have a million experiences, values, ideas and emotions. All this ’stuff’ has been accumulated since they entered the world as a baby and a total novice at interpreting other people.Now they know a lot of stuff about how people are. But do they know the right stuff?

You see when we meet a human we use the same system that we use for an object in identifying and making some assumptions about it. And that is why we are flawed as thinkers and nothing more than keen amateurs when it comes to understanding people.We make huge assumptions based on appearance, sex, age and research has shown that even a persons name can lead to preconceived ideas.

All this before that person even opens their mouth, blinks or breaths in front of us. Then there is the fact that the person we are perceiving will be to some extent self monitoring their behaviour. So they may be showing up as slightly offhand when in fact they are attempting internally to arrange their behaviour in order to show up as professionally as possible. It is our perception that creates our reality. It is the other persons internal thinking which creates theirs. Combine this with all the other assumptions we make due to the environment we are in, what we have been told about the person by others and the colour of their socks. Person perception really requires PhD thinking yet we do it in a split second based on all sorts of dodgy assumptions. We are a bunch of amateurs really.

Jane Buick - Miascape MD

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Rules, regulations, do’s and don’ts or to give it its posh name “governance”, its there for a reason. The reason however is often forgotten and replaced by blind and inflexible behaviours where individuals have become slaves to the rules.

Have you ever ridden a bike or perhaps even a motorbike? If you have you may know from painful experience that if you visually focus on a large rock, no matter how much you turn the handle bars you are still likely to ride straight into it.

In my experience organisations suffer from crashing into the brick wall of governance on a regular basis. People are so focussed on governance that they crash straight into it and their project stops there. It doesn’t seem to matter that the project was perhaps the most transformational thing to happen to the organisation in years nor that it could have added significant value to the bottom line and or reduced costs. It just didn’t tick the right boxes in the right order and as governance has promoted itself to king, poor old project didn’t stand a chance.

We can see evidence of the brick wall of governance all over our society. Unfortunately it is  sometimes fatal. Recently the Guardian  ww.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2181466,00.html reported on Keith Lane who has reluctantly given up his amazing suicide watch on Beachy Head due to governance running the thinking of those around him. In this instance I fear that governance probably created more casualties than it prevented, because that was its original job, wasn’t it?

So the next time you are standing with an amazing idea, project or concept in hand staring at that big old wall called governance or risk consider this; What happens when you are on your bike heading straight for a big rock and you turn your gaze and focus on the path you actually want to travel down?

Great projects, concepts and ideas get past governance because the big focus is on the value of delivering the project and is not focussed, white knuckled, on getting past risk or governance. Great projects tick all the boxes without trying to tick the boxes. Great projects are led by people brave enough to focus on where they want to get to, they don’t bend the idea to get it ‘through’ thereby leaving it useless on the other side of governance. Great leaders focus beyond the myre of governance and cultural do’s and don’ts. They fixate on a future landscape and simply ride to it.

Jane Buick - Miascape MD

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Behaviours don’t always make sense to us. The trick is not reacting to seemingly crazy behaviour until we understand the thinking behind it.

I am, as many of you know, a passionate horse lover and particularly an aficianado of classical riding. I am exceptionally lucky to have a lovely Lusitano mare which came from Portugal several years ago. Picture a big, flame coloured war horse and that’s my angel.

Anyway, yesterday early evening was one of those guilty pleasure times where I found myself finishing work a bit earlier than I thought. It was the perfect autumn day. As the sun began to drop down the temperature started to change. Across the reddening sky geese cackled as they made there way to somewhere distant and presumably warm. Tractors buzzed around the tiny country lanes with flashing orange lights, loads of potatoes and tired looking farmers.The ever increasing wind sent crunchy leaves whirling and scratching their way across the small Tarmac road that you knew by looking at it would be cold to touch and definitely no longer gooey under a hot summer sun. Long grass recently turned an insipid yellow looked soggy and miserable and squelched as I walked out to the fields.

Hooking up my horse I chatted away as normal but rather than her usual intense listening (as I see it but far more likely the anticipation of a nice big hay net) her focus was far beyond me, I couldn’t see anything but her gaze was intense, ears pricked and the flight response at the forefront of her mind.

Walking to the yard her behaviour seemed more odd. It wasn’t like her at all! Neck craned skyward as she jogged this way then that occasionally stopping dead to stare at the sound in the distance I could neither hear nor see.

I placed the saddle carefully on her back, much more so than normal but she was too intent on pawing with her front leg anxiously at the ground to notice. Eventually I climbed aboard and we were off.

In hindsight the following events were no surprise based on the behaviour leading up to us setting off. I didn’t fall off but I felt that for over an hour I was sitting on mount Vesuvius with mini eruptions punctuating our outing.

I was not annoyed by this “silly” behaviour just a little frustrated and puzzled. Everything seemed fine, I mean no thunder, dogs chasing us or fireworks going off. Yet my mare behaved as if all of this was happening, just over the horizon and, worse still, it was coming our way!

I had done everything I normally did, nothing greatly different yet I was sitting on a fire breathing dragon.

Have you ever been in a situation where your staff, your wife, your husband your partner seem to be behaving really oddly for no apparent reason? Did you react to the behaviour or did you question what thinking was running that behaviour? Did it turn out that they had an insight that you didn’t have which totally explained their behaviour.

You see, as humans we react to the environment we find ourselves in and it just so happens that some of the stuff that makes up our environment is made up by other people’s behaviours.In this case my horse’s behaviours were making up a large part of my environment!

The environment is not stable but dynamic and ever shifting, making sense of it is almost a full time job. As a leader we need to be able to see beyond the surface and understand what’s really going on with our people. What thinking is driving their sometimes seemingly erratic behaviours?

If we take the time to understand this we can be far better informed. Not only that but our reaction to the behaviour will manage rather than fuel it.

And my horse?

“Winter is coming, look around. Winter is coming and you haven’t even noticed yet!”

Jane Buick - Miascape MD

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The UK Gang Conference is out to solve the problem of gangs and has asked Bill Bratton from the States to help them. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15229199.  However call me naive but gangs are not necessarily bad. In fact I would argue that gangs are necessary in our society. As ever my drum is beating about language use and abuse. If I were to substitute the following words instead of “gang”, the images in your head would be different I am sure. 

Here are the words. Team, Group, Collection, Assembly, Congregation, Body. 

What about organised “gangs”. Lets give them some names. Scouts, Brownies, Christians, Muslems, Jews, Manchester United, Scottish Rugby Union.

So what our society misses is that it is not “gangs” we are are opposed to, it is what those “gangs” do.

Now one of the problems is that society condones certain gangs and outlaws other. And rightly so. But why do these outlaw “gangs” come together? Simple I say.

1. They are looking for people with the same ideas as theirs or ideas they aspire to hold
2. They are looking for something to do
3. They have little guidance in focussing on “interests”
4. They respond to be “respected” and “loved”
5. They want to convert others to their way of thinking and behaving
6. They aspire to be different, paradoxically

It does sound a bit like looking for religion doesn’t it?

We should encourage the formation of “gangs” but we should provide resource to give them what they need in a positive way. Any ideas?

Duncan Bury - Miascape CEO

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Steve Jobs, for me would have been a dream client. Why? Big budget, big company, trips to the states?

Answer, none of the above. For me Obama’s quote sums it up-

“Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it,”

It is this combination of assets that made the man. It is this combination of assets that is so rare elsewhere and that is indeed a tragedy.

The reason few people are like this is because of their thinking models. There are of course people who think differently. There are people I come across who are exceptionally talented in their field. There are very very few people who truly believe that they can do something really different.

Believing you can do something is not to be confused with arrogance, I meet thousands of the latter type! They are usually “brilliant” at everything and rarely bother to ask if anyone else in the room has a hidden talent. But ask them to do something radical, something that won’t necessarily go down well with their boss, their organisation or indeed with the people who elected them into their position in the first place and they will find every which way to side step that one.

You see, most people are not bold.

Now by bold I don’t mean that they never get nervous, feel anxious or question their own thinking. That separates the bold from the arrogant who never question themselves but never actually do anything of any consequence.

Bold people, those that people see as great leaders, like the late Mr Jobs, Feel anxious. Why? Because the chances are they don’t know exactly how they are going to do something.They don’t quite know exactly how they are going to climb the mountain or change the world. There are perhaps gaps in their knowledge or skills. That is what creates anxiety, the “not knowing”.

The thing about these great leaders, the Steve Jobs of this world, is that they press “go” anyway. They believe that it is their duty to truly question the status quo and do something really different. They fill the knowledge and skill gaps on the way by finding out, up-skilling or surrounding themselves with the right experts.

Arrogant people don’t move. They stay comfy and positively repel those who have the skills and knowledge that would breach the gaps that they themselves have.

Great leaders can see how the world could change, in their eyes, for the better. They believe that they can do this. Any anxiety they feel about the “how” is put to bed by finding out. They are not scared of being briefly unpopular. In short it isn’t all about them, Its all about something or someone else and this never ever falters.

Great leaders learn to love that anxiety of not knowing.

Jane Buick - Miascape MD

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The “meeting terrorist”. We all know them. The ones whose sole goal is to disrupt the meeting itself or the purpose of the meeting. During the course of our work we attend many meetings. With our experience we can “read” a group of people very rapidly. The language they use, the position they take in the meeting, the gestures they use are all indicative of their intention. They often flag their intention from the start of the meeting. Remember “you cannot NOT communicate what you are thinking” if someone engages you in conversation for long enough. It is of course our job to manage such people in meetings. So what are some of the tells of the “meeting terrorist”.

They often challenge the purpose of the meeting by enrolling others in the statements they make.

“Does anyone know why we are having this meeting?”

They often make statements that enrol others in their personal view.

“We all think the plan is wrong don’t we?”.

“Everyone knows the plan is wrong”.

They encourage others to make comments to disrupt.

“John, you were saying there is no point in discussing this”.

They challenge the credibility of others not the veracity of the argument.

“I don’t think you have the experience to make that (possibly quite valid) comment”.

They use “silent brackets”.

“The solution is obvious (you idiot)”.

They establish false credibility in their argument.

“Yes but I know we are going down a wrong path”.

They question process and it is often combined with enrolling others.

“Do we really need to go through this?”

They attenuate the language that others use.

“So what you really mean is ……….”

So the language is interesting, but what about their behaviours. What we often observe of the “meeting terrorist” is they cast knowing looks across the table in an attempt to enrol others in their revolution. They enrol others at breaks and look to build a cell. They often encourage others to expose arguments they would not put on the table themselves. They like to establish their seniority in the room by their seat selection and they show disinterest in the topic of conversation.

The “meeting terrorist” would be just as easily identifiable if they wore a t-shirt that said “meeting terrorist” in the meetings they attended.

To find out more about “meeting terrorists” and how to handle them give me a call. Everyone wants to… don’t we?

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There are three basic things that impact us as human beings. The environment in which we find ourselves, the mental models we carry (the filters through which we see the world) and the behaviours of those around us. Wrapped around all this stuff is emotions and thinking.

Hominidae (Humans, Chimps and gorillas) first appeared fifteen million years ago. Homo sapiens (Humans) appeared 500,000 years ago and “modern” humans appeared 200,000 years ago. Evolution is a slow thing.

So two hundred years ago, in 1800, the population in the UK was about a sixth of what is it now. Times were hard, life was short and the majority of people lived in poverty.

In 1400 the population was probably about 3m in the UK. Life was hard and most people lived in poverty and life was short.

In 1086 there is a figure banded about of about 2m for the population. Life was hard and most people lived in poverty and life was short.

If we go back to the year 1000 we are going back only one two hundreth of when modern humans appeared and one five hundreth of when humans appeared on this planet. Thats two orders of magnitude.

Evolution is a slow thing. In the last 100 years human society has developed hyper-rapidly. Our environment has changed hyper-rapidly. Our behaviours have changed hyper-rapidly and our mental models have changed slowly. Our feelings have changed super slowly and our emotions have changed hyper-slowly. We have not evolved in the Darwinian sense of the word.

It is any wonder that society is falling apart? Our evolution as animals is way behind our societal development. We are speaking of two orders of magnitude slower at least. The reason society is not working is nothing to do with government policy it is all to do with the lack of evolution in response to the change in environment, behaviours and mental models. We are still, in evolutionary terms, the humans that roamed plains, hunted for food, lived in small societies, had simple language and simple needs. My question is will evolution of humans EVER catch up with the society in which we find ourselves?

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