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Making minutes count after a meeting

Writing minutes of meetings offer interesting challenges. They must be neither too long nor unduly brief, just capturing the objective essence of what happened.

We usually don’t need to know who said what, for they are not transcripts, but we must record who is to follow up on what and by when. Sounds quite straightforward, yes?

Not necessarily. For instance, when I am the chairman of a board or of a board committee I often find I need to offer guidance to the minute-taker.

They will be very formally trained legal people, with equally formal company secretarial qualifications… all absolutely necessary.

However, what I often see is that they have been taught to be so focused on being technically compliant with good governance, applying standard structures and styles, that they can miss out on the spirit of a meeting.

Sure, they record who was present and who gave their apologies, tell us we confirmed the minutes of the previous meeting, identify the decisions we took, show the date of the next meeting… all those obvious elements.

But what about when someone praises an individual or a group, for instance?

In my experience, too many stiff-upper-lip minute-takers feel that’s too frivolous, too human, to include.

Chances are they even switch off listening, convinced it’s not part of their job to record other than hard facts and figures, decisions and actions.

Forget the soft stuff, keep to the point. This is not story-telling, they would protest. We are not there to entertain or to educate, just to inform.

No smiling, no frowning, we are mere dispassionate observers seeking compliance with our professional best practice.

And yet, and yet…surely it’s OK where appropriate to switch from being a robotic technical recorder to becoming a more relaxed and informal reporter – or “rapporteur”, as recorders of other events such as conferences and workshops are called.

So particularly when I am chairman of a meeting I observe when the minute-taker is and is not writing or keying in what is being discussed.

If I feel they have not been doing so and in my view, they should, I will prompt them to ensure they do.

I also encourage them that when they are uncertain as to how to record something, they should feel free to seek guidance from the rest of us during the meeting.

And if I sense that what has just been handled is not so obvious as to how to write it up, I will ask them to share how they propose to, so they and we can feel relaxed that all is well.

It’s vital that minutes be written and circulated as soon after a meeting as possible, and not only so that those actioned with follow-ups can be reminded to get going with their obligations in good time, but so we still remember clearly enough what happened at the meeting and can confirm the accuracy of the minutes.

It’s good too to circulate a draft in advance, at least to the chairperson, who then can act as a quality controller.

I like it when minute-takers key straight into their laptops during meetings rather than write on paper and transcribe their notes later, as it’s then more likely their product can be shared promptly.

And here’s another thought: as some do, have two columns on the right-hand side of the page, one for the “By whom” and one for the “By when”.

Plus, if by the following meeting the action has not been fulfilled and should have been, add a revised “By when” date – identified as having been updated.

On one board where I presently sit there’s a good practice I’d like to share with you: just before the next board meeting the minutes of the previous meeting are again circulated, but now with one-liner updates under each of the actions agreed at that earlier meeting, shown in a different colour and telling us whether the intended action has or had not been fulfilled, or if is in progress. Very helpful.

In other than board, board committee meetings, AGMs and additional official events, ones that are less formal and do not require the legal/secretarial skills of a minute-taker I often suggest it should be a revolving function, giving more people the opportunity to develop this important skill and to become more sensitive to other minute-takers in future. (I also suggest the chairing could revolve, for similar reasons.)

So, there being no further business, I declare this article closed. Date of next column: a fortnight from now, on chairing meetings. Please confirm attendance.

Iceberg of ignorance hurts firms

I was recently asked to be a panelist at an event hosted by Hofstede Insights Africa and its Kenya partner, Priority Activator Consulting.

Its theme was Aligning culture and strategy – leveraging culture to drive organisational performance, a topic where I feel very much at home.

With us were around 30 CEOs who had been invited to engage with our panel, and the keynote speaker was Hofstede’s Group CEO Egbert Schram, who described culture as “the oil that lubricates strategy”.

His early background was in wildlife management, examining their behaviour patterns, which he subsequently applied to humans – always focusing on gathering and analysing data.

This led him to quote from a study which revealed that only 15 percent of CEOs feel their corporate culture is where it should be – as a result of which their organisations underperform.

One of the big causes is the “iceberg of ignorance”, where CEOs lack awareness of problems lower down in their organisations because they only engage with senior colleagues.

So the cascading downwards of what they perceive to be needed behaviour change fails to connect with the actual needs on the ground.

Culture is about how we relate to our colleagues, our work, and the external environment, he explained.

And he asked what excites us: enjoying life? Striving for the best? Something else? And where do our incentive schemes lead us: to achieving financial results? To deal with people issues? Then, who gets promoted, and why?

An expatriate CEO shared that in his home country, he was used to a much smaller power distance between levels. He has an open door, but too few of his people are relaxed enough to enter his office and express their views.

In hierarchical organisations, Mr Schram said there’s too much upward delegation – more so if the bosses are approachable.

And an emotional dependency on them may develop, including on non-work-related issues. So unless one empowers lower layers this becomes a bottleneck, preventing the company from growing.

Fellow panellist Catherine Musakali quoted Peter Drucker’s “culture eats strategy for breakfast” line, saying it surprises her how few boards include culture as a topic on their agendas.

This led me to describe my tweak of Drucker’s quote, where through the Balanced Scorecard approach I use in my strategy development work with clients I have them devise a culture strategy that feeds into the overall one.

Having said that, we find that companies which enjoy a healthy culture but lack a robust strategy do better than those with a great strategy but without a healthy culture.

Erick Ngala, the managing partner of Priority Activator Consulting, reinforced this point, emphasising that organisational performance is a consequence of its culture plus its strategy.

A lady CEO worried that women in leadership still have a hard time, with some of her people considering her to be “bossy”, to which she did not relate.

And another CEO felt he shouldn’t get too close to his people, otherwise, he would find it too hard to take disciplinary action when needed, or to deal with poor results and bad news.

My comment: when I arrived in Kenya in 1977 I was expected to be bossy and serious, to be feared. I defied that, with my default position being a cheerful one.

But people had to know that if the need arose I did have a big stick available. It took a while for my staff to come to terms with this “situational leadership” style… and some probably never did.

What is the role of the CEO in all this? What works and what does not? Does it vary depending on the size of the organisation? Is it different when going through a period of disruption?

These were the questions for this event. For me, CEOs are at the centre of a 360-degree ecosystem.

Above them are the shareholders with their values, represented by board directors; then other independent directors, among whom hopefully the chair.

It is the chair who should bring together a collective board perspective on culture, which is shared with the CEO and the senior management team – noting that the CEO is a board member too.

Critical to all this is the alignment between the chair and the CEO. Not forgetting the head of HR.

Mentoring women leaders

Business Monthly magazine recently published a list of our 25 most influential CEOs, and 14 of those selected were women.

So good news: in recent years, female representation on boards and in senior management positions in Kenya has been on a steady increase.

Yet despite the significant gains made in the past decade or so, many organisations still lack substantial female representation at the senior leadership level.

Organisations like Davis & Shirtliff (where I am a director) have been working on filling this gap through a mentoring programme for empowering their women to fulfil their potential as leaders, and I thought it would be helpful to share how they’ve been going about it.

The “Women in Leadership” programme was started in 2022, with women who have already reached senior management positions mentoring other female staff members to nurture their leadership skills, attitudes and behaviours.

It utilises storytelling as a powerful tool, where these senior female staff share how struggles and victories in their personal lives have related to and impacted their performance in their professional lives.

The programme regularly attracts up to 170 online attendees each month, and the presenters have been described as refreshingly vulnerable and honest about their experiences.

The mentors share what they have been through regarding issues such as work-life balance, physical and mental health, disappointments and career progression in the workplace.

The sessions are open to all female staff, whatever their rank, profession or position, and Margaret Kuchio, a General Manager in the company and the programme’s patron, emphasises that inclusivity is key, as are the informal conversations that occur after the sessions between mentors and mentees.

The reality is that some of the biggest obstacles that women are facing now, both in the corporate world and elsewhere, are the absence of an enabling environment in which they can grow their competencies and rise through the managerial ranks – despite being just as capable and growth-oriented as their male counterparts.

It is out of this realisation that workplace mentoring programmes have become increasingly popular in Kenya, as more female mentors are now there to act as role models for other women in the organisation.

These mentors can guide and advise their junior counterparts, inspiring them to greater heights. For a young woman observing a female leader in her organisation with whom she identifies and who is breaking glass ceilings and thriving in her field, gives her the confidence that she too can advance to those upper levels.

The value of such women in leadership programmes is that through their mentoring the women in management positions are showing how they can make a transformative contribution to empowering other women in the modern workplace to grow despite the ongoing real obstacles.

Understandably, many women believe that to rise the corporate ladder they must be “made of steel” and behave in a “manly” way.

But in the safe space of the “Women in Leadership” programme, women share stories that debunk this myth and expose vulnerabilities that had been misconceived as non-existent.

Hearing a senior manager speak of how she rose through the ranks in the workplace while at the same time dealing with health or owes as they grapple with their own trials.

Mentorship programmes built on such platforms not only expose younger professionals to the glass ceilings that have been shattered by their seniors, but they also let the younger generation in on how their seniors manoeuvred their way through the barriers without cutting themselves too much as they were breaking the glass.

A few years ago McKinsey conducted a much-quoted study that found women to be better leaders than men in providing emotional support to staff, helping them navigate work-life challenges, and checking in on their general well-being.

Companies that run mentorship programmes that are for women and by women are tapping into the rich resource of women who have already earned the right to sit at the top tables.

And such initiatives will surely significantly strengthen their organisational culture and their performance. I happen to be speaking as a man, but what’s that got to do with it?

Winning with Jack Welch

In my last column, I wrote about the rise and fall of Rudy Giuliani, as a result of reading his 2002 book, Leadership.

And today my subject is Jack Welch, having just read his 2001 book, Winning, about which Warren Buffett said at the time of its publication “No other management book will ever be needed.”

Welch was with GE for 40 years, climbing up the ranks until he became chairman and CEO in 1981. Under his leadership, it grew its profits massively and became globally dominant in its sectors, to the delight of its shareholders.

His style was bold and competitive, as he pushed the company to become lean and agile – less “comfortable” – laying off more than 100,000 employees within his first seven years at the top.

To achieve this, in the 1980s he launched a 360-degree review process in which every employee’s manager, peers and subordinates would grade them on aspects that included team spirit, collaboration, focus, vision and adaptability.

Employees were then ranked, separated into the top 20 percent, the stars; the bottom 10 percent, the under-performers and disrupters; and the middle 70 percent in between.

The bottom 10 percent were dealt with appropriately, and many were fired. The process, which resulted in significant unhealthy competition, became known as “rank and yank”, but other big corporates, including Amazon, Microsoft and Google, soon emulated GE.

Another aspect of the unhealthy competition that Welch generated emerged when he retired in 2001 and Jeffrey Immelt was promoted to CEO.

After decades of grooming several internal leaders for the position, the decision triggered an exodus of bitter executives.

However, despite all this – which earned him the nickname Neutron Jack – Welch greatly valued the role of HR, believing the head of that function should be the second-most important person in any organisation, and at least equal to the head of finance.

The HR people should be, as he put it, “a combination of pastors and parents”.

He was a promoter of robust evaluation systems, ones that went way beyond the all-too-common mere paper-pushing.

And he believed in motivating and retaining the people with money, recognition and training; in confronting the difficult people issues – those arising from trouble-makers and big-headed stars, with candour and action; in spending half your time evaluating and coaching the middle 70 percent; and in having as flat an organisation chart as possible, as the more layers there is the more mischief some will indulge in.

The section I found most helpful was the one on firing and laying off people, where his advice was first that nobody should be surprised when they are let go.

Employees should be informed enough about the nature of their business that they understood who might be laid off in an economic downturn or a change in the industry.

If they weren’t performing well, they should be made aware of this through regular formal and informal reviews. If they couldn’t improve, they should know they would have to move on.

You should move neither too fast nor too slow in removing them, and again you must be candid. Then, you should minimise the humiliation, and encourage those on their way out that there’s a better job out there for them, more matched to their skills and attitudes.

The task of the ones informing staff members that they have been laid off or fired is incredibly difficult, admits Welch.

They feel guilt and anxiety before, during and after. Surprisingly, he comments, he isn’t aware of any programmes that help people develop the skills needed to conduct such meetings.

He had to fire many people over the years, he writes and never got used to it.

So his legacy is a mix of ongoing admiration and second thoughts about him and his management style. In the two decades since he left GE, many of his approaches have fallen out of favour, including within GE itself.

Today, he is often criticised as a symbol of corporate greed and economic inequality, with undue emphasis on quarterly results.

The competition he generated among leaders came at a considerable human cost, and he was considered the father of the “shareholder value” emphasis, which has since been migrating to delivering broader stakeholder value.

Much food for thought about how to define responsible leadership then and now, and within this about how to build sustainability.

How will today’s corporate leaders be viewed two decades from now? How will you be?

Giuliani and leadership

Over the holidays I read a very impressive book about leadership, whose title is simply Leadership.

Published in 2002, its author was a highly successful mayor of New York. In his book, he takes us through how he approached his job, and as I read it I was not at all surprised by how well he performed.

“Honest and compelling, wise and inspirational,” the back cover extolls.

The man was New York’s mayor from 1994 to 2001, including during the 9/11 tragedy of 2001, and he led New York’s “civic cleanup”, reforming the police department’s administration and policing practices that led to crime rates falling steeply, well ahead of the national average.

After an opening chapter on 9/11, his book is divided into ones that spell out the components of leadership as mayor.

In the first, he tells about the daily morning meetings with his senior colleagues, where they built a high-performance team who aired their issues openly, made fast decisions and followed up on them to ensure implementation.

Then we learn about the importance of preparation; becoming well-informed about key issues in the city; reading and learning; organising around a purpose; being accountable; surrounding yourself with good people; under-promising and over-delivering; standing up to bullies; and dealing with people whom you trust and who share your values.

All good stuff.

Before becoming mayor, he served as the United States Associate Attorney General, and for several years thereafter he was an immensely popular figure who appeared destined for a career at the pinnacle of American business and government.

Then in 2000, he ran against Hillary Clinton for a New York US Senate seat. For his leadership after the September 11 attacks he was called “America’s mayor”; he was named Time magazine’s 2001 Person of the Year, and was awarded an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth.

In 2008 he vied for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

You know to whom I am referring: Rudy Giuliani. Now, two decades later, his reputation is in tatters, due to his attachment to Donald Trump and his role in the Ukraine extortion scandal that led to Trump’s impeachment.

Giuliani has appeared unstable and incoherent on cable news, spinning a web of conspiracy theories with Joe Biden at the centre.

He was one of the speakers at the rally preceding the January 6 Capitol attack where he made false claims of voter fraud and called for “trial by combat”, as a result of which his licence to practice law was suspended.

So what happened? Why did he gravitate towards someone like Trump, whose leadership style is in stark contrast to that expounded in Giuliani’s book?

What led to this role model for good leadership becoming a laughing stock and a very lonely man with a drinking problem, who has now been through three troubled marriages, has no relationship with his children and has lost all his friends?

As I looked into the explanation I found that one was similar to what led Trump to degenerate into the dysfunctional character he became.

In a column about Trump a couple of years ago, I wrote that he was the frightened child of a relentlessly critical and bullying father, and now I read that Giuliani’s father was a neighbourhood tough who did time in prison for armed robbery – a possible explanation for the chip Giuliani has carried on his shoulder throughout his career and cramped his self-worth.

A second explanation was his loss in his presidential campaign, where he squandered his image as the statesman-hero and his revenue sources faded.

And yet another came with his third wife, Judith Nathan, a woman with an extravagant taste for luxury.

She introduced him to a jet-set lifestyle and to new people around him, doing everything she could to separate his friends from him and insert hers.

Giuliani described his greatest skill as his ability to surround himself with the right people.

Losing those friends who served as critical guardrails in Giuliani’s life helps explain the situation he finds himself in today.

He developed a lifestyle in search of an income, and there was no shortage of businesses and foreign governments willing to throw money at him.

As for his relationship with Trump, in return, Giuliani wanted to be his Secretary of State, a chance to reclimb to the heights of power.

But Trump thought that Giuliani’s career in law made him a better fit for the job of Attorney General.

Giuliani’s mind was made up though: Secretary of State or nothing. Nothing it was, and now he is more remembered for his embarrassing advocacy on Trump’s behalf.

Competent or confident politician?

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Some time ago I wrote an article about Trump as a man whose I’m-OK-You’re-not-OK behaviour, one that required consistent win-lose interactions with others, masked a deeply insecure soul. Yet despite these insecurities, despite this lack of self-esteem, he built up extraordinary self-confidence, and through bullying, cheating and lying he achieved all that he did.

I refer to this as I recently read a provocative article in the London Times about Britain’s immediate former Prime Minister, Liz Truss. The headline said it all: “Truss proves talent-free bluster isn’t just for men”. And the opening paragraph tells us she broke one of the last glass ceilings. Not as the first female PM in her country, for she was not, but as “the first woman to reach the highest office propelled by gargantuan self-belief alone”.

Writer Janice Turner rightly reckons the kind of self-belief she displayed has not been associated with her gender. Indeed, she tells us, feminists have been known to pray “Lord, grant me the confidence of a mediocre man”.

We’ve been reading a lot about women holding back from higher office while younger and less experienced men lobby their way through. Here though, Ms Turner observed “a shameless, narcissistic, talent-free sense of entitlement”. Wow. Lots in common with Trump for sure, and indeed with so many politicians the world over.

I have also written about the competence-confidence matrix, with the competent one who lacks confidence often suffering from the “imposter syndrome”, while the confident one who lacks competence displays a cocky arrogance. The ideal position, as espoused by my heroes such as Ed Schein and Adam Grant, are those who behave with “confident humility”.

So where is Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss’s successor, in all of this? In a much better place. We have been reading about the values with which he was brought up and which it appears he has been able to largely hold on to despite entering the cut and thrust world of win-lose politics: family, honesty, education and hard work. Not a bad quartet.

His competence, certainly in matters financial, is indisputable. And his communication skills are definitely superior to hers. Well, that’s no big deal, as rarely have I come across such a wooden performer as Liz Truss in such a high office. Boy was she in need of coaching…but who knows, maybe her excess of self-esteem over self-awareness made her uncoachable.

How about our politicians here? For sure some are more competent than others, and some are better communicators than others. Many are at their best at high-octane campaign rallies whose objectives are mere entertainment, hype and goodies-distribution, while others know how to switch between such show-business performance and more serious and substantive output.

To be a politician, confidence is everything. As each one puts themselves forward for election, they are certain they will win, however justified or unjustified their optimism. So it was with Truss, so it was with Sunak; and so it was with all our political candidates in August, including those who lost.

Our responsibility as citizens is to study the competence-confidence mix of those who seek our votes, where competence includes adherence to good values and where mere confidence is woefully insufficient.

It was good to see the Mkenya Daima campaign focusing on this requirement for not only selecting good men and women, but then holding those who succeed at the ballot to account. It is why the Mkenya Daima tag line is Nitatenda Wajibu Wangu (I will do my responsibility).

It’s so dispiriting to me to see huge numbers of voters in the developed world casting their support for the Trumps and the Trusses of this world.

It shows the weakness in the civic education provided in so many countries that allows for populist promise-makers to get away with what they clearly should not… including Boris Johnson and his Brexit ones.

We’ve been through our elections just a few months ago. Have we selected enough of the humbly competent? Stay on the ball, fellow Kenyans, as President William Ruto has challenged us to do.

Rishi Sunak promised British citizens a government of “professionalism, integrity and accountability at all levels”. And President Ruto, when he confirmed his new cabinet, also called for integrity and accountability. We must indeed “do our responsibility”.

Managing public service delivery

The roles of Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi have been defined as follows:

Assist the President and the Deputy President in the coordination and supervision of government ministries and State departments.

In liaison with the ministry responsible for Interior and National Administration, oversee the implementation of national government policies, programmes and projects.

Chair and coordinate national government legislative agenda across all ministries and State departments in consultation with and for transmission to the party or coalition leaders in Parliament, facilitate inter-ministerial coordination of cross-functional initiatives and programmes.

And coordinate and supervise the technical monitoring and evaluation of government policies, programmes and projects.

Very good. Coordinating and facilitating, supervising and overseeing. With Mr Mudavadi’s extensive and varied experience, and as someone known to be “the adult in the room”, I don’t doubt that he will add value. The question I ask is what systems will he have available to support him to play his role effectively – and this without duplicating the not dissimilar functions of the Deputy President.

Different institutions and approaches have been introduced in succeeding administrations to carry out the kinds of functions described in the Prime Cabinet Secretary’s job description. I go back to the Kibaki days when the Public Service Reform and Development Secretariat (PSRDS) brought in such goodies as Results Based Management (RBM) and the Rapid Results Initiative (RRI). I was a member of the consultants for Kenya team that supported PSRDS with these excellent initiatives, which were beginning to make a real difference when it was disbanded.

What largely remained was the Performance Contracting Unit, which had been separate, and then as now it, unfortunately, has fallen far short of delivering on its significant potential.

As I have seen in so many government entities whose performance contracts I have studied over the years — at the national and also devolved levels — the performance indicators very rarely extend to assessing the ultimate desired impact of an initiative.

Instead, the participants play safe, with easy-to-measure mere output indicators, like in this common example. Objective: “Train 40 staff on the XYZ system.” Indicator: “40 staff trained.” That’s it. No consideration of what the staff learned or how they applied it and with what consequence.

As I put it in the many workshops I facilitate on such subjects, those involved were too timid and unambitious to keep asking the “So what?” question, till that ultimate desired impact was defined and hence the extent of its achievement, could be assessed.

By the way, it’s why I’ve never been a fan of the term monitoring and evaluation or M&E as it is commonly known. For it too readily describes what happens. Yes, work is monitored, and yes, it is evaluated – both necessary, and yet unless there is a “So what?” of the monitoring and evaluation in terms of driving higher performance as a result of the M and the E, we have not reached the sufficient.

This is what RBM and RRI were all about. And through the World Bank others and I introduced PM4R – Performance Management for Results. Yes, for results.

So, Bwana Mudavadi, please review the performance contracting system, and ensure that the capacity to deliver what it should is developed and applied. Then, do not have fragmentation of the institutions supporting you and whom you will be supporting.

Take the Vision 2030 Delivery Secretariat seriously, as it drives its five-year medium-term plans and extends its horizon beyond 2030. And do not have other delivery units at the national level that overlap or compete. Also, consider the re-establishment of the National Economic and Social Council. It will help you, the DP and the President.

So much has been learned about what it takes to have high-performance teams deliver on their mandates with impact. We have seen such teams in action at both the national and county levels, and we know the critical success factors involved. In my work supporting the government over the years, I have helped leadership teams overcome non-technical obstacles to performance. Here the challenge of defining appropriate performance indicators requires even more deep thought, motivating and enabling the route to success.

Do not over-complicate the systems, Sir, and focus on the disproportionately significant. But above all nurture a focus on the aspirational future.

How to agree without giving in

A few weeks ago I was invited to run a workshop on negotiating skills for a group of senior engineers who sell capital goods for a well-known European multinational, and it took me back to the last century when I was an account manager offering large IT solutions using mainframe computers.

It reminded me of my library, where I knew I had some material on the subject. I found more books than I expected, including some which I don’t remember ever reading!

Undoubtedly the best known among them is Getting to Yes – Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, by Roger Fisher, William Ury, together with Bruce Patton of the Harvard Negotiation Project. The second edition, the one I have, was published in 1991, and I strongly recommend this classic.

Here’s the essence of the “principled” negotiating laid out there, which has you neither too soft nor too hard. If you are too soft you end up the exploited loser, while if you are too hard you fail to develop a relationship and are likely to restrict yourself to a one-off transaction, as the other party won’t wish to deal with you again.

(This was the case with Trump, during his time as a wheeler-dealer in the New York real estate business, as we learned in “his” book, The Art of the Deal.)

Principled negotiators are in between: reasonable and fair, aiming at mutual benefit. They build and preserve relationships, assuming the other party is a partner and not an opponent. Put briefly, it’s a win-win approach to interacting, the one I adopted right from when I launched into the capital goods marketing business in the late 1960s.

What kind of attitude makes for an effective negotiator? Here, let me turn to another of the books I pulled down from my shelf, The Negotiator – A Manual for Winners, by Royce Coffin. It was published in 1973, and I inherited it from my father, who in those days was a management consultant as I am now.

Coffin advises us to be self-confident and optimistic, so we can be relaxed, creative and bold. He then suggests not rushing at talks.

Rather, be patient, and take time to understand and to build trusting ties. And do so by being friendly and cheerful, and applying a light touch. If necessary, pause to review and reflect, and consult with others.

From The Negotiating Game – How to Get What You Want, by Chester Karrass (published in 1970, and also inherited from my father), I learned about the “negotiator trait clusters”.

First is task performance, involving planning, problem-solving, initiative, product knowledge, reliability and stamina. Next comes aggression (or, as I would prefer to call it, assertiveness). Here he identifies power exploitation, competitiveness, team leadership, persistence, risk-taking, courage and defensiveness.

To a softer trait now, socialising, meaning personal integrity, being open-minded, tactful, patient, compromising and trustworthy, plus displaying an acceptable appearance.

Being an effective communicator is also key, with verbal clarity and good body language, focusing on listening, generating warm rapport, plus skills in debating, role-playing and coordinating.

A final duo: first self-worth, involving self-control, self-esteem and dignity, enabling one to gain the other party’s respect – and even to risk being disliked; and possessing high ethical standards. Plus gaining the boss’s respect, and being identified with a sufficiently senior organisational rank.

Last but not least, one’s thought processes: general practical intelligence, education, insight, analytical ability, decisiveness, negotiating experience, broad perspective, and clear thinking under stress.

The last publication I’ll refer to is my Summer 2008 edition of the Harvard Business Review, whose theme was Great Deal Making – The Art and Science of Negotiating, and rereading it vividly reminded me of the lessons I learned when I was in the game, ones I now share as a consultant.

I can’t resist ending by saying that I was recently with one of the workshop participants and I asked him if what we covered had made a difference. He confirmed it had with the recent signing of a major order.

The personal drivers to success

I recently facilitated a very interesting workshop that brought together Africa region’s leaders of a long-established multinational. Thanks to Covid, this was the first time they were meeting physically, and this under their recently installed president.

As we were preparing the workshop he told me he wanted to share with his team what he described as his “personal success drivers”, his “rules for himself”.

Having come up with this thought, and looking back on other teams he had led, he regretted not having shared such thoughts with them, as a result of which he realised they weren’t sure what his expectations would be, either of himself or of them.

While fully accepting that it’s not how he always behaves, it is how he knows he should. “I am sharing these thoughts with you so that you get to know me better,” he explained, adding “I know that if I state my intentions publicly you will hold me accountable to do as I say.” All so impressive.

The first of his big three drivers, taken from Jim Collins’ book Good to Great, is getting the right people on the bus, and in the right position. Addressing performance issues decisively is uniquely challenging work, he acknowledged, and tolerating second best has a very negative impact, resulting in unfairness, toxicity and lethargy.

Job number two, he continued, is creating a winning culture where everyone is operating at their best. “Do my manager, my team, my work environment, my business make me feel like I’m all-in?” they need to ask.

Thirdly, he believes it’s the biggest current businesses and the biggest opportunities that must always get most of his attention: the 80:20 rule.

He then listed his remaining seven drivers, all to do with empowering the best talent relative to the biggest priorities. When it matters, he likes understanding business issues and business plans “in data-based depth”, appreciating that questioning assumptions is a great way to learn, as is history.

“If we are not defensive about past mistakes, weaknesses, unmet needs and gaps with others, then each gap becomes an opportunity to grow our business,” he declared.

He wants to talk about the business the way it is, not the way people want it to be. “Face the brutal facts so we can do something about them,” he urged, acknowledging that balancing communication is an art form and separates good leadership from bad.

Trust is key to this, and rating performance on results, analysing what is working and what is not.

He will be transparent, and he does not like filtering information from his team, while trusting that everyone will to do the same. They must all “question, challenge, confront and clarify”. He then admitted to “overcommunicating”, repeating himself so as to ensure the full absorption of his messages.

And he called for “good sense email practice”. His organisation has recently introduced a matrix structure, and this is always a challenging environment within which to communicate and coordinate. But the team must get used to working within the matrix.

Don’t surprise him, he requested, and he won’t surprise them. He is accountable to his people, he readily accepted, for handling interactions with his seniors on “the tough stuff”.

And he cares deeply about how happy they feel working with each other. If something he’s doing is not working for them, he wants them to tell him. He will do the same, but as trust is being built, a go-between may be helpful.

The junior most person who is qualified to lead the way should do so, he continued, challenging such people to present proposed solutions with every challenge. For this to work well they must be empowered.

And asking the right questions will provide the path to such empowerment and hence enable the people to deliver success. “This is always better than telling people what to do,” he concluded, asking the team to help him avoid the “it’s faster if I do it” trap.

Finally, he insisted that “it is not ‘OR’, it’s ‘AND’.”, as lazy choices must be avoided. It is not, for instance, a choice between focusing on financial results or on people, or between short and long-term results. It is both.

The softer side of Kaizen

The Kenya Association of Manufacturers and the Kaizen Institute recently held their 17th Annual Congress, and I’m writing about it as I was one of the keynote speakers at the event. I have for long been an admirer of Kaizen, which is all about waste reduction and continuous improvement.

It was first largely applied in the manufacturing environment, but it soon spread to other sectors – for who doesn’t want to do away with waste, and shouldn’t we all be focused on continuous improvement?

The reason I was asked to contribute to the congress is because however necessary the technical aspects of Kaizen are, the waste reduction and improvement cannot be actualised unless the non-technical, or human, aspects are also taken care of. This is what takes an organisation from doing the necessary to thinking through to the sufficient.

These non-technical aspects require a significant investment of time and resources, but many technically-focused and task-focused people complain that this just takes away from efficiency, delaying the completion of tasks. Yet what they do not appreciate is the consequence of not investing time in aligning those involved in the tasks with each other.

It is this kind of neglect that sees people confined in their narrow functional or geographical silos; focused on short-term sub-optimisation at the expense of long-term sustainability; witnesses them indulging in conflicts that lead to stalemates and prevent timely or appropriate decision-making.

When attention is not paid to how well people communicate with one another, some will stay silent without contributing their thoughts, some will be too assertive, and poor listeners.

So my presentation urged the participants not be so “efficient” that it prevents them from being “effective”, suggesting they should invest time in building high-trust relationships, that then enable collaboration and consensus building.

They should also invest time in building a coaching mindset in their organisations, so their people develop and where personal goals align with organisational ones.

The return on this investment is that the staff will offer superior contributions, and good people will be attracted and retained, as they learn and they grow.

By taking time to develop both their technical and non-technical skills, and within a high-trust culture, leaders will feel comfortable empowering others and delegating to them, freeing them up for more strategic activity.

Another “inefficient” use of time is holding back from the default position of telling others what to do, but rather taking time to understand before seeking to be understood. For we must accept that we don’t know what we don’t know.

The speaker before me was the Kaizen Institute’s Joint Managing Director Jayanth Murthy, who proposed that we all pray for “Better, More, Faster”, for quality, growth and speed – which is what Kaizen delivers.

He reminded us that most strategies fail because of poor execution, and showed us a cartoon of a pair of exhausted fellows pushing a cart with square wheels… while within the cart are round ones!

He then gave examples of how this is manifested in real life, quoting Charles Darwin’s observation that “it is not the strongest of the species who survive, or the most intelligent, but those who are most adaptable to change”.

After me came another confident optimist, Jas Bedi, the Chairman of KEPROBA, the Kenya Export Promotion and Branding Authority, who talked about the huge potential in Kenya for import substitution and exports, and about the need to have a borderless EAC and for the continent as a whole. We must add value, and consolidate imports as a regional redistribution hub, he also insisted.

The room at Kempinski was filled with Kaizenologists from leading manufacturing companies around Kenya… all taking “inefficient” time away from their tasks back in their gemba (Kaizen terminology for the workplace), so as to learn and to share. Ah yes, the full spirit of Kaizen lived here: the best knowing they can still get better.