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Start a Fight in Your Next Strategic Planning Retreat

The latest research is clear.

When executives are allowed to openly disagree about important issues, they are likely to truly buy-in when consensus is finally reached.

I took that finding and applied it to the strategic planning process in an article in the Trinidad Newsday entitled Start a Fight at Your Next Strategic Planning Retreat.

You can find the entire text of the article here at the Guardian Life website.  Thanks to them for sponsoring the column.

Here is the article in full:

Start a Fight At Your Next Strategic Planning Retreat

Strategic plans are often accused of being little more than a mish-mosh of disparate ideas thrown together in a single document.  When they are disjointed  and incoherent, it makes them difficult to implement, let alone remember.  When critical opportunities pop-up in the year to implement them, they are lost.

 

The best strategic planning retreats, however, avoid this trap by encouraging confrontation and honest dialogue.  Unfortunately, most executive teams don’t have the discipline or ability to have these conversations, and for the sake of speed and “tranquility,” they avoid confrontations.  Instead, they rely on their colleagues who have that rare Anil Roberts combination of intelligence and “talky-ness” to drive the process home, leaving most others in the room as disengaged, bemused, observers.

 

The strategic planning process simply becomes an extension of day-to-day conversations… conducted instead “down the islands.”

 

A simple way to change the discourse from everyday concerns is to take the long view, and to use the planning process to define a future that is usually ignored:  one that is 30 years away.

 

Sometimes, I hear complaints.  Why should we care about a future that is that far away?

 

The fact is, an executive team is always shaping the future, whether it realizes it or not. The best teams do so consciously, while the worst only concern themselves with immediate issues.

 

Take the simple example of a company that wants to enter Latin American markets in a big way, with a goal of having 50% of its business coming from that segment.

 

The executive team realizes that it would require the creation of a bi-lingual workforce, while facing the fact that there are no Spanish-speakers on staff today,  When HR estimates that some 75% of the workforce would need to be bi-lingual to assure success, it becomes obvious that the goal won’t be achieved in a year, or even ten years.  A much longer-term plan must be crafted.

 

Something magical happens when executive teams of (usually middle-aged) professionals start to consider a long-term future.  The discussion stops being about them, and their department’s agendas, and the concern shifts to future generations, and what legacy is being left for them to manage.  They quickly realize that an executive team that crafts, for example, a bi-lingual future could be hailed for their brilliant vision in 2041.

 

By contrast, the company that suffers from a lack of new markets in 2041 will look back at prior executives with disdain, and blame them for mortgaging the future for short-term gain.

 

From our company’s work with executives around the region, we have observed that a certain kind of business altruism comes alive when they grapple with long-term futures as a team.  They come to realize that they often have very different visions of what the company will look like in 30 year’s time, and how their different points of view have led them to make different decisions.  When these decisions are in conflict, they sometimes end up working at cross-purposes, wasting time and money, but without knowing why.  In the retreat, it’s possible to get these views out on the table, and lead them to craft a single defined future.  It’s OK in this controlled setting to fight for one vision or another, with an understanding that consensus only comes when all the personal visions have been aired.

 

In one retreat I facilitated,  an executive was fully convinced that the company should become the largest in the Latin America /Caribbean region.  He fought for this vision with others in a useful way that illuminated a key reality:  they would have to move the corporation to Miami from Port of Spain to realize it.  That, they realized, was something no-one wanted.

 

Once a single picture of the future has been aligned upon, the battle isn’t finished.  After the future is translated into hard numbers like market share and profitability, these metrics must be connected back to today’s historical results in a way that makes sense.  This is normally done in a spreadsheet that shows the key turning points required to achieve the final results,

 

It’s not just a matter of filling in numbers, however.  Underlying each result and turning point are some powerful assumptions about how the company operates, and what can or can’t be done to move key indicators.  Listening to marketing, human resources, finance, IT and operations managers as they share their views, and struggle to come to consensus, is often inspiring, even when it gets heated.  They demonstrate the value of a good, fair fight for the future, and how it can lead managers to define a future that is much, much bigger than themselves.

 

 

 

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A Growing Suspicion in Jamaica

An article I wrote for the Trinidad Newsday newspaper.

The text for the article is below the graphic.

newsday-jamaica-suspicion

The recent trade dispute with Trinidad and Tobago amplified a feeling that many Jamaican business-people have felt for some time – Trinidadians are not to be trusted, and in this case they have earned the nickname passed around in local business circles: “Trickidadians.”

A seemingly “done deal” turned sour when Jamaican patties, revered across the Caribbean and the Diaspora for their quality and taste, were halted at the Trinidadian docks for dubious reasons. The fact that meat products from other countries were entering Trinidad without a problem did not escape attention.

The large number of Trinidadian products on Jamaican shelves, the number of companies owned by Trinidadian interests and the recent news that Caribbean Airlines may be purchasing one the country’s cherished institutions – Air Jamaica – only heightened emotions.

It appeared to many that those tricksters from down south were once again taking an unfair advantage.

I have done business in Trinidad and Tobago for several years, and am actually married to a Trinidadian, and I can’t say that I find Trinidadians to be any more “tricky” than Jamaicans in terms of their ethics or behavior.

At the same time, Jamaicans who meet Trinidadians can see a palpable difference in behavior that sets off warning bells in even casual meetings.

We Jamaicans are actually more comfortable doing business with Americans – after all, we know all about them from television and from having relatives living abroad. If a Jamaican is heading to the airport, the odds are that they are heading north on one of the 10 or so daily flights heading to North American, rather than south on the single flight headed to the Trinidad. Only 90 minutes separate Kingston and Miami, while a hefty 5 hour journey is required to spend the night in Port of Spain.

When Jamaicans make an international call to family overseas, the odds are good that they are calling one of the 1-2 million or so Jamaicans living in the U.S., rather than the handful that live in T&T. Many Jamaican businessmen and women are dual citizens, or hold a U.S. green card or visa, but very few care about having a CARICOM skills certificate.

There is simply very little natural interaction with Trinidad and Tobago, apart from the handful of individuals with an interest in Carnival, cricket or CARICOM. Pembroke Pines, Miramar and Kendall are psychologically “just around the corner” while Diego Martin, Arima and San Fernando might as well be on Mars. Ask the average Jamaican how many Trinidadians they know, and the answer is likely to be none.

My overwhelming impression, born out in research my company conducted, is that Trinidadians take things with a smile and a joke that we Jamaicans consider to be deadly serious. Patties stuck on a wharf, preventing free trade, look to us a lot like jobs lost, paychecks delayed and meals for the children being skipped for lack of funds. I imagine that to Trinidadians, the situation might have spawned little more than a few jokes over drinks.

I now know from experience that when Trinidadians make sport, and engage in “Ole Talk,” that no malice is intended.

But I can testify to my personal situation – when my wife falls into her “Trini talks” now and again, I sometimes argue back, which is perhaps a typical Jamaican response to a Trinidadian whose casual and jokey manner is being misunderstood.

“Pressure made for pipe, not for man” is a saying I heard from a Venezuelan who was amazed at the Trinidadian capacity to roll with the punches. Here in Jamaica, we take pressure seriously, and we aren’t about to roll with any punches. Instead, we often look to hit back.

Unfortunately, rolling with the punches has a downside.

Apart from the patties on the wharf, I have found Trinidadian customer service in general to be tinged with a Don’t Care Attitude that, with Jamaican eyes, looks a lot like a provocation.


It may well be, but the Trinidadian who rolls with the punches and cracks a joke in the face of horrendous treatment at the passport office, motor vehicle department or restaurant might do the country a disservice by tolerating too much. When a Jamaican, or any foreigner, comes to Trinidad and faces the same treatment the response is generally not one of jocular understanding.

Instead, inside, it feels like pressure.

When a Jamaican responds to that feeling with a loud complaint, Trinidadians will often mutter – “Who he think he is? We all have to deal with the same bad service here in T&T!”

True indeed.

What’s not shared, however, is the Trinidadian capacity to react with a joke, a laugh and, in extreme cases, a kaiso in the tents. Perhaps I can speak for Jamaicans when I say that we don’t laugh when the stakes are high, we don’t think it’s OK because everyone suffers in the same way, and we can be expected to protest with venom when anyone’s rights are being stepped on.

When those rights happen to be Jamaican rights, we could learn a thing or two about laughing it off, and not being so “wassy.” Trinidadians on the other hand, could learn to build service standards, and institutions, that don’t require an ability to make a joke in order to keep one’s head.

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Developing Trinidadian Managers

Last year Framework Consulting issued the findings of a study of Trinidadian executives in Jamaica (the report is available by sending an email to fwc-triniexec@aweber.com.)

In the study, we interviewed over 30 Trinidadian executives on their experience working in and leading companies in Jamaica, and the report distills the best practices that we found.

A new Trinidadian manager to Jamaica needs to keep in mind certain Guiding Principles, and also to learn some new habits.

Principle #1: Accord Respect
Above all, a manager must be respectful towards each and every employee. A manager is conferred with greater hierarchical power than they would normally receive in Trinidad, and when they come to Jamaica this power may not be well understood.

Practice #1: Be deferential and humble, until it starts to almost feel silly. Use Mr. and Mrs. wherever possible. Start conversations in formal language, and in a very formal manner, as if one were meeting the Queen of England. Say Good Morning, Good Evening and Good Night in a way that connects with people. Look for the moment when the formality is broken, and seize it, because at that moment the real conversation is about to start.

The manager is expected to be the most formal person in the room, until the environment becomes relaxed.

e.g. Say Mr. __________ or Mrs. ______________ even with good friends in the workplace

Practice #2: Don’t tell jokes in public at other people’s expense. Pecong has no place in the Jamaican workplace. It is a dangerous practice in this environment, to be used only in private, and only with the closest of friends. Never use humour to pull people down, or to give any kind of feedback, even jokingly. A Trinidadian manager is better off practicing jokes at their own expense.

Principle #2: Stay in the Role of Manager
Jamaicans will expect a manager to always be the manager — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They don’t expect them to behave, dress, socialize or drink differently after hours, on weekends, on holidays or at parties. It is better to play ignorant, and ask for help about how to interact with people in a new social environment.

Practice #1: Dress the part of manager, even on weekends, until it becomes abundantly clear that the culture will accept any deviation from the expected.

Practice #2: Drive a clean, modern car.

Principle #3: Demonstrate a powerful social conscience
If there were ever a “History of Jamaican Workplaces” book written, the dominant themes would be force and exploitation. The idea that a company exists primarily to enrich its shareholders is one that is simply unacceptable. A Trinidadian manager must learn that a Jamaican company exists for everyone in society and in the community.

Practice #1: Seek to give back to the community outside the company in tangible and visible ways.

Practice #2: Give gifts to employees at Christmas and Easter time, and create programmes to assist employees’ families that are well publicized.

Principle #4: Understand an Executive’s Phases of Adjustment
Coming to fully appreciate Jamaican culture is a process, and the Trinidadian manager needs to understand the phases that they will go through as they adjust to the new environment. Read the section on Phases of Adjustment for Executives from the report.

Practice #1: Get help. Cultivate a network of other Trinidadian executives outside the company. Get outside help if the transition is proving to be difficult.

Principle #5: Maintain the Hierarchy for a Long Time
While Jamaican workers appreciate being included in decision-making, executives need to be seen as the decider of important decisions (until sufficient trust is built). Workers will quickly criticise a manager who delays making decisions by trying to be too participative.

This is not to say that the hierarchy should be maintained forever. Instead, it should be abandoned only slowly, and carefully, as the manager transforms his relationship with the workers. It often takes longer than the Trinidadian manager thinks it should, but once the foundation is built, he/she will frequently find that the depth of loyalty that’s generated is deeper than they found in Trinidad.

Practice #1: Ask for input to decisions, but stand ready to make a command decision.

Practice #2:Break instructions down into the simplest details, and be ready to follow-up intensely. The average workers education level in Trinidad is much higher, and it shows.

Learning Points

Learning Point #1: Individual Application

One manager’s habits and style may not work for another. Each manager must develop their own style, and experiment with different approaches until they find one that works for them. This takes some willingness to feel uncomfortable as they adapt practices that might be laughed at in Trinidad.

Learning Point #2: Experimentation

Learning Point #3: Learn about oneself is the key to changing

Learning Point #4: Most practices will feel unnatural and phony

Many of these practices will feel unnatural at first, and would fail miserably if attempted in Trinidad. The point is that they work here in Jamaica, and they are exaggerated somewhat in order to provoke a Trinidadian manager into a different mode of action. The mistake that many Trinis make is to assume “all a we is one” when in fact the workplaces in both countries are very different.

Many of the ideas in this article were developed from the Caribbean Acquisition Project and the book “Why Workers Won’t Work” by Kenneth Carter. They are available as downloads from the Framework website (http://www.fwconsulting.com).