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Leading Edge: May introduction from John Withers CMgr FIML, Chair of the Board

Welcome to the May edition of Leading Edge.

Across Australia and New Zealand, we’re fortunate that we are starting to see hope as restrictions begin to ease at national, state and local levels. As we prepare to lead our workforces out of the crisis, the primary concern will be of security for jobs and business and safety for our people, without whom we will not succeed.

The priority of IML ANZ and the Board is to assist our Members as we begin to emerge from the immediate impact of this unprecedented pandemic. We can only do that by adapting to the current economic climate and having a realistic outlook for the remainder of the year.

The Board remains firmly committed to enabling the Institute’s vision of creating better managers and leaders – this vision remains through good times and bad. Therefore in this edition of Leading Edge, we focus on the activities that will help managers and leaders on the road to recovery. I’d particularly like to highlight the upcoming Virtual Development Day on Friday 22nd May. I’m sure you agree that now more than ever it is essential for decision-makers to be fully equipped and prepared with the skills needed to lead well. Never before have those misnamed ‘soft skills’ been harder and more needed. IML has assembled six of our very best leadership facilitators to assist managers and leaders with the challenges that lie ahead. Please join these complimentary sessions and feel free to share IML’s invitation with your friends and colleagues.

I also encourage you to participate in the Annual General Meeting on the 28th of May and vote in the current Director election. You should have received an email from the Company Secretary with instructions and information how to take part in both of these important processes. If you have not received these communications then please contact company.secretary@managersandleaders.com.au.

Finally, as businesses begin to think about returning to some sort of normality, let us keep in mind that the crisis we are facing is health-related. As such, the safety of our employees will be of utmost importance in our decision-making in coming weeks and months. The mental and physical well-being of our staff has never been more important than it is now.
Leadership matters now perhaps more than at any time in the almost 80-year history of our Institute.

John Withers CMgr FIML

Chair of the Board

Leading Edge: April introduction from John Withers CMgr FIML, Chair of the Board

Welcome to the April edition of Leading Edge.

There’s no doubt we are all living through a time that is nothing short of extraordinary. As we watch businesses and services shut down or move online, as we need to self-isolate away from friends and family, and as we are forced to make tough decisions to keep our society safe, it can feel like our lives have been thrown into uncertainty.

These unique times bring unique challenges and I am sure we have all noted many good examples of the professionalism, courage and compassion of managers and leaders in Australia and New Zealand, as well as others who have been found wanting. As leadership professionals, the impact of COVID-19 has demanded many of us to step up to adapt and tackle adversity with new skills and knowledge we’ve never needed or utilised before.

Clearly the Board and team at IML are focusing on the challenges to ensure the organisation can weather the challenges to this business but ensure we continue to support and service our Members effectively. During this period, the Institute is prioritising support to our Members – from helping your business manage change and providing best-practice leadership strategies. Our focus is to ensure you and your organisation are empowered and equipped with the right resources to effectively navigate the serious business impacts of this crisis, and to help you facilitate a path to an effective recovery when the crisis passes.

In this edition of Leading Edge, we’ll share a few of the important initiatives we’ve implemented to assist you in leading through this period. We’ve aimed to provide a comprehensive suite of services to help managers and leaders at all levels to develop relevant and timely skill sets and expertise around crisis management. We’ve also expanded the range of free support services available to you through your Membership, so that you can get appropriate support to match your personal situation and needs. In addition our corporate consultants are developing bespoke solutions for organisations to match specific business challenges and to complement commercial responses to the pandemic. As the crisis continues to evolve, we’ll be investing in further timely and relevant services to support you and your business. If you have any requests for specific resources that we haven’t yet produced, please get in touch with our team by emailing membership@managersandleaders.com.au, and we’ll do our best to create a solution for you.  

Finally, in the face of a global health emergency, I encourage you to check in with your staff and yourself regularly throughout this period. The impact of this pandemic reaches far further and deeper than our workplaces. It’s important to put a high priority on your mental and physical health and those you lead. This crisis is a crucial test for leaders at all levels, but it is also one of great opportunity for all of us to step up and embrace the challenge and opportunity it presents. There has never been a greater need in recent memory for a strong and united community of managers and leaders than right now. 

John Withers CMgr FIML

Chair of the Board

Managers and leaders of Australia and New Zealand; this is your time to SHINE

By David Pich CMgr FIML

IML ANZ Chief Executive

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Ironically, this saying is a modern iteration of an observation from ancient Greek physician Hippocrates’: ‘for modern diseases, extreme methods of cure are most suitable’. And here we are in 2020, deep into a thoroughly modern crisis that is caused by a thoroughly modern disease. We must – quite rightly – leave the medical response in terms of methods of cure and prevention to the experts (and I pause to give a shout-out those at the frontline of COVID-19 who deserve all honours and awards for their efforts).

Other than fully following the instructions of the medical experts, as managers and leaders, what should our own approach be? What should managers and leaders do in the new normal that is COVID-19? Be the experts at leading well.

I say to all managers and leaders; this is your time. It’s your time to lead. It’s your time to apply the skills that you’ve learnt – those totally misnamed ‘soft skills’ that aren’t actually soft at all but are extremely ‘hard’. These are the skills that you’ve been honing, working on, reading about, watching YouTube clips about and practising. In your time as a manager and leader you haven’t always got things right, but you’ve done your best and you’ve bounced back each time. Now is your time to bring all of these skills together. It’s your time to SHINE as a manager and a leader.

Here’s how you can make your leadership skills SHINE;

Show vulnerability. This is an extraordinary, once in a generation (at least!) situation that is impacting everyone, personally and professionally. As leaders we’re not expected to be superheroes. We have lives and families too and we’re in the same boat right now as our staff. It’s important to share our own stresses and worries as this helps to normalise the stresses and worries that our staff are currently experiencing.  

Hold regular communications sessions. Regular communication across multiple channels is absolutely crucial, especially when staff are working from home or aren’t always in the normal office environment. It’s up to the leaders to set up these communication lines and to walk the talk by ensuring that you are always on the calls, replying to messages and sending emails. Don’t go missing – ensure that you are very visible. At IML ANZ we have set up an All Staff Hump Day Huddle on Zoom. My leadership team has a WhatsApp Group and all teams have set up eChat Sessions and Microsoft Team groups.

Include your team in decision-making (aka, delegate). The sheer number of decisions that leaders need to make right now is incredibly daunting. The very best thing a leader can do is to share the decision-making load. Involve others in the decisions that need to be made, seek opinion and advice, call out for different views so that you can weigh up the pros and cons of things you are considering. At IML we decided to move staff to a working from home model very early in the COVID-19 outbreak. This decision was a leadership team decision that came about after much discussion and consultation. As the leader you need to facilitate the decision-making process, you don’t need to make all the decisions yourself.

Notice things. This is absolutely key during times like this. It’s critical that as a leader you establish ways for you to know what is happening in your business and amongst your staff. Mental health is likely to be significantly impacted and you need to be checking in and making suggestions to assist staff who are impacted. You’re not expected to be a counsellor or a psychologist. That is best left to the professionals. But you need to have your finger on the pulse of your team so that you can point people who need assistance or advice to the correct resources. One way to do this is to contact people regularly and to ask direct questions, such as; Are you OK? Are you feeling lonely or isolated? Are you struggling with anything right now?

Empower your people to make their own decisions about their own situation. One size doesn’t fit all and the current pandemic will impact different people in your team in different ways. A key role as a leader is to recognise this and to allow people to make the right decision for themselves and their families. What makes you comfortable as a leader might make others feel very stressed. It’s time to apply all the emotional intelligence you can muster.

As a leader, as this crisis unfolds this is your time to SHINE. I’ve included below the first all staff email that I sent to my team this week. Feel free to read, comment below or steal the content. See if you spot the SHINE elements in the email. It’s obviously not perfect, but it might be a good start for leading your team or business through the next few weeks and months.

This is an unprecedented time for managers and leaders. It’s undoubtedly a time of crisis and of considerable confusion. But it’s also an opportunity for managers and leaders to show how absolutely critical sound leadership is. It’s your time to shine and to lead well.

– STARTS –


Subject: CEO Update 1. Please read

 Good morning team

I hope you all had a good weekend. I’m not completely sure what ‘good’ means anymore, but at a very base level – I hope you’re all well and feeling healthy.

First, I want to apologise to the entire team. I was a little quiet last week. I did speak to each of the GMs many times, but I quite literally didn’t have time to write this All-Staff email. On a personal note, Eileen and I are having our house renovated. The entire back of the house has been removed (including the whole kitchen). On Monday last week, the builders accidently cut through the sewer line in the back garden. As a result we’ve been without a kitchen, washing machine and toilet all week. It hasn’t been pretty!

On top of that, many of you will know that I’m the President of my kids’ school Parents & Citizens Association. The P&C employs 25 staff, all on casual contracts. If (when!) the school closes these 25 staff will likely lose their income. I spent much of last week trying to find a solution to this very sticky issue. The announcement yesterday that schools in NSW, VIC and ACT will close from tomorrow makes it more likely that Queensland will follow suit sometime soon. My own kids (Pearl and Olive) are no longer in school from today – this is a personal decision that Eileen and I have made based on our own reading of the situation and the experience of other countries. For example, Germany closed all schools two weeks ago.

That phrase ‘personal decision’ is really key, and other than to say ‘hello’ to you all, it’s the reason for this email. I want to say this …

These are uniquely difficult and different times for everyone at IML. Everyone is impacted by the current situation, but of course different IML staff members are impacted in different ways. Some people have kids, others don’t. Some have medical issues, whilst others don’t. Some staff live alone, others live with family or in shared accommodation. On top of all of this, we all have our own personal concerns, anxieties and responses to the COVID-19 situation. My personal response might be very different to yours. And my decisions and actions based on that response will also be both personal and different.

So, and here’s the point (sorry it took me so long to get to it!), every IML staff member must make a personal decision about what they will do. This includes – but isn’t limited to; childcare arrangements, living with family members, locations etc. All I ask is that you let your manager or GM know what you’re doing. Communication is key in all of this. But, fundamentally, you are empowered to make decisions based on your own personal views and circumstances.

It’s always good to give examples, so here’s a couple to illustrate what I’m talking about.

Example 1. You have kids and you decide to keep them home from school / childcare where normally you would drop the off and then head to work or work from home. IML totally understands this and supports your decision. Family and health comes first. Please let your manager know that you’ll be less available due to the change in circumstances at home.

Example 2. You live alone and you think it would be better if you went to live with your parents during this time. IML totally understands this and supports your decision. Family and health comes first, Please let your manager know where you’ll be and what the change in location might mean to your working from home situation. IML will then assist with any technology issues you might encounter.

As I’ve said, communication is key and I’ve asked all GM’s to ensure that all teams are talking across various channels (email, Zoom, WhatsApp etc). I also want to ensure that no one at IML is any more stressed than they need to be at this time. If anything at all is concerning you, please do get in touch with your GM, with HR or with me personally. My eDoor (yep that’s a thing these days!) is always open.

To emphasise my point again, you must do what’s right for you, your health and your family at the moment. Of course, it’s important to keep the IML business running, albeit in a very different format. We’re all empowered to ‘do our best’ in what are very unusual and difficult circumstances.

As an example, today I’m planning to pop to KMART first thing to buy some games and puzzles for the kids. Then I’m spending an hour reading with Olive. Then I’m writing a couple of IML articles (Yes, it’s happening, Whitney!). Then I’m doing some (very) simple maths with Pearl for an hour. She’s 9 and I’ve realised that Year 3 Maths is way beyond my capability.  

This is how my days are going to look for a few weeks – I and the leadership team fully support however your days will look.

Finally, I do want to say this; if you’re feeling unwell, please let your GM know (as well as following medical procedures). We need to keep an eye on each other and look out for each other, even from afar.

Sam will be setting up an All Staff Huddle later this week. It’ll be great to chat to everyone and see / hear how everyone is doing.

Have a great day 😊

Dave

-ENDS –

Please don’t hesitate to contact me or the Institute of Managers and Leaders Australia and New Zealand if there is anything we can do to assist you or your teams through these tough times.

David Pich

Reinventing business structure

By Jason T Smith

It’s often said that if you keep doing the same thing then you shouldn’t expect a different result. For more than a decade, I led my franchised physiotherapy business, the Back In Motion Health Group, with a traditional vertical organisational structure that mostly worked… up to a point, anyway. But I felt we could do much better.

Our model was unintentionally suffocating talented people through hierarchy and self-limiting position descriptions. Job titles and lines of reporting became discriminatory. Strategy and decisions were mostly formulated in a linear, top-down fashion. Conversations happened behind closed doors. Without noticing it, elitism and class divisions crept into our workplace. People were being artificially designated into executive, management and support strata. Influence was driven more by seniority and position, than by intelligence and merit. Creativity was dying.

The organisational structure that we had was quite normal – the traditional pyramid – but it certainly wasn’t optimal. Especially given that I was just about to set an unreasonable objective of doubling our group footprint over the next three years. We affectionately dubbed it ‘7/50/100’. It was the aspiration to have our brand accessible in seven states and territories of Australia, delivering $50 million worth of physiotherapy and related services, through 100 locations. So, it became time to shake things up.

3D MODEL

We didn’t just turn the traditional pyramidal organisation chart upsidedown as some have attempted. It wouldn’t have worked. We didn’t quite go flat or matrix in our management approach either. This was more about a change in our inner state, than it was a governance strategy. We needed to think, talk, and behave differently. We rounded out our organisational model into a threedimensional spherical expression with no top and no bottom.

Congruent with the spirit of innovation that characterised the change, we gave our new way of life its own name: ONEteam™.

We bounced forward. Or, as management literature might refer to it, we generated ‘adversarial growth’. We evolved through the pain of failures in the past, driven by the hope of the future. We reset our culture around the imperatives of over leadership and under-management. People had their titles stripped, and we dismantled traditional job descriptions. Colleagues were grouped into ‘functions’ and ‘pods’, and people no longer reported to a ‘boss’. We all served the mission rather than a (wo)man.

A MINIMALIST MOVEMENT

The principles of collaboration, distributed authority, and peer accountability became paramount. Individuals identified their best contributions to the workplace, kept their role profiles fluid to ensure agility and adaptability to changing demands, and no longer needed permission to get the job done. Performance was assessed in real time, financial records were laid bare, and strategic workflow became streamlined into the essentials. Minimalism reigned, as we sought to build a champion team, rather than a team of champions.

We even allowed peers to set their own remuneration bands within an overall salary cap, assist in the hiring and firing decisions, and decide their own bonus and incentive reward systems. Why? Because the owners can only guess what their people are motivated by, and inevitably will get it wrong some of the time.

We pulled down office walls, changed seating configurations to cluster people into more functional arrangements, and built additional breakout and meeting rooms. Reserved car parks were opened to all staff on a first-come basis, and we all shared the kitchen cleaning roster.

Even our meeting formats got challenged. We wanted less of them, and more decisions within them. Only those people with a contribution to make or an outcome to achieve were expected to attend. Every meeting was minuted and published for the whole team, with no secret business or hidden agendas.

A REAL SHAKE UP

In short, most things in our once-traditional workplace changed. Only a few essentials remained. We got turned outside-in and downside-up. A real shake up. But this change wasn’t haphazard or poorly considered. It was a metamorphosis of careful design. An intentionally new structure.

We bred a race of corporate freedom fighters. We fought against our own traditions, our flawed habits, and our ineffective strategies of the past. Today, we have achieved brand presence in more than seven states or territories, generated revenues in excess of AU$50 million per annum, and host more than 110 locations in Australia and New Zealand.

Our leadership revolution revealed an authentic and scalable way to give each team member the freedom to do what they love and excel at it. And in facilitating this, we gained so much more.

Jason T Smith is the founder of the Back In Motion Health Group, the Iceberg Leadership Institute and the SOS Health Foundation. In his book, Outside-In Downside-up Leadership (Major Street Publishing AU$29.95), Smith shares how he and his colleagues found the sweet spot between authentic collaboration and the holy grail of peer accountability in their workplace.

This article originally appeared in the December 2019 print edition of Leadership Matters, IML ANZ’s exclusive Member’s magazine. For editorial suggestions and enquiries, please contact karyl.estrella@managersandleaders.com.au.