Grass Roots Leaders

The BrainSmart Revolution in Business

Tony Buzan, Tony Dottino

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317124924
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Industrial Management
• Index: Business

Grass Roots Leaders galvanizes the emotional enthusiasm of the workforce and taps the wealth of their brain power to create an engine of innovation that ripples through the organization from the bottom up and powers it forward. Tony Buzan, Tony Dottino and Richard Israel pick up a theme they first introduced nearly a decade ago in The Brain Smart Leader and document a way of fundamentally changing the perspective and behaviour of leaders and employees in your organization. Their approach shows how to: * use the brain's capacity for solving problems and implementing innovative plans to make the organization's vision a reality; * adopt a three-speed technique - first gear to slow down and allow new learning or support for difficult transition periods. Second gear shifts up to a productive work outcome, and then third gear revs up to champion innovation and change; * apply a series of proven models for dealing with information overload, making the best use of scarce resources, such as time, and keeping sight of successful outcomes as they are developed. The book accurately captures the current state of thinking in organizations, as well as the latest research on how our brains work, to deliver a radical blueprint for how organizations need to change to survive and what this means to their managers and to their employees. If you are a leader who longs to use the grass roots intellectual capital in your organization but, given the quantity of meetings, e-mail, crises and reorganizations, you simply haven't had the time, this book is for you. And if you are an employee who is sick and tired of daily stress, bad planning and poorly thought-through changes and implementations, customer complaints but no improvements, this book is for you, too. A Brain Smart Revolution in Business starts with one person. You.

CHAPTER 1
A New Breed of Leader

A GRASS ROOTS REVOLUTION: WHAT IS IT? WHY IS IT VITAL TODAY?

To succeed in the years ahead, today’s highly competitive, fast-paced organizations must initiate a revolution.

This is an unusual revolution. Not one side against the other, but both sides against a common problem: outmoded approaches, longer working hours and constant stress. Against endless crisis-focused meetings and short-sighted solutions that result in long-term problems and disasters instead.

A revolution against ineffective, inefficient and unproductive habits we find ourselves using. Against keeping secrets and withholding information; against using our minds ineffectively and singly, not smartly and collectively. This revolution will forever transform the way we solve today’s and tomorrow’s problems.

It is time for everyone in today’s organizations to stand up and shout, “Enough is enough! We must change the way we do business day-to-day. It is affecting us all and so we must align. It may be time to slow down to go faster!”

This book will show individuals at all levels of organizations how to initiate a top-down, bottom-up Grass Roots Revolution and present the skills that will be needed to get there.

A CLOSER LOOK AT WHERE WE ARE

In today’s global economy, businesses are being asked to do more with less. But unless the system works proactively—unless they take action up front to prevent problems and anticipate changes—such frenetic activity frequently produces the opposite: errors increase, quality goes down, costs go up and customers become angrier or take their business elsewhere. And executives, managers and employees burn out.

Leaders spend 70 to 90 per cent of their time in meetings dealing with “the problem of the day.” Spending 25 per cent of an organization’s budget on fixing mistakes and managing crises is not unusual. This leaves little time, money and energy to plan and invest in the future.

CONNECTING TOP AND BOTTOM

Most CEOs believe they must know how to solve the problems they face day-to-day. But it’s not true. The truth is, people in their organizations frequently know why these errors are occurring and how to fix them, but they are not being asked or empowered to put their ideas to work. And they don’t know how to present their ideas in a way that lets them be heard.

The greatest leadership challenge of our time is connecting the executives at the top of organizations, who have the company goals and big picture, and the bottom line, Grass Roots people who have the technical skills and experience to get the job done.

Grass Roots people are front-line workers, supervisors and managers: those within your organization closest to your customers, vendors and support teams, closest to producing your products and delivering your services. Those closest to your problems and solutions.

In today’s global marketplace, we must be able to access the knowledge and creativity of everyone in our organizations to continue succeeding. Heads of organizations know this, but they are not doing it—and the results are becoming more and more outrageous, conspicuous and expensive. Exposed to this daily, we become numb—until a devastating consequence smacks us in the face.

HURRICANE KATRINA

Before Katrina struck New Orleans, everyone knew a major hurricane could deal their city a devastating blow. University studies spelled out in precise detail what could happen and lobbied far and wide for immediate steps to be taken. On a visit Tony Dottino made to New Orleans, even his salty tour boat driver warned the tourist, “This whole damn place is below sea level and, when ‘the big one’ comes, the city will be flooded.” Everyone laughed then, but no one is laughing now.

Nobody wanted the levees to break or the city to flood. Nobody wanted people to be isolated in their homes or trapped in the Domed Stadium. Nor to be forced to flee to other cities. Nor die. Then why did this happen?

Like so many businesses, the New Orleans, Louisiana and US governments knew how disastrous “the big one” could be, but they were paralyzed by the immensity of the challenge and short-term costs. They didn’t ask what it would take to make the changes that would be needed. They didn’t develop comprehensive emergency plans in case “worst came to worst.” They didn’t anticipate the communication and supply networks that would be needed. So mass confusion compounded the crisis. There were so many top-down, bottom-up communication disconnections that even people a few blocks away didn’t know what was happening, what was needed, how soon or by whom. And neither did the leaders of government in their offices thousands of miles away.

The bottom line is: Grass Roots people knew what needed to be done to solve the problem, but they did not have the power to do it. And people at the top who had the power to solve the problem were not aligned and did not take appropriate action. So the disaster ensued. Today it is easy to see that the collaboration and $1–2 billion needed up front to prepare the city and its population—to solve the problem proactively—was a far better investment than having to come up with the hundreds of billions that will ultimately need to be spent to repair the damage to the city, and the lives of the people who called it home.

While reading about Katrina, some of you may have thought, “That’s just government.” But it’s not. The same thing is happening in major corporations. Take BP for example.

Before the disastrous March 2005 explosion killed 15 workers and injured more than 170 others, there were eight incidents at the Texas City refinery that signaled grave problems. Two incidents involved fires. Everyone knew there were serious problems but they weren’t fixed.

Here are the facts: (CCN Money.com, October 31, 2006) “Internal BP documents reveal the oil company’s knowledge of ‘significant safety problems at the Texas City refinery,’ months or years before the March 2005 explosion. According to the US Chemical Safety Board, “the company was warned of potentially hazardous conditions at the plant, “and while it improved working conditions, “unsafe and antiquated equipment designs were left in place, and unacceptable deficiencies in preventative maintenance were tolerated.”

A BP spokesman said, “We agree with the CSB in that we, too, believe that the March 23, 2005 explosion was a preventable tragedy. We are deeply sorry for what happened and the suffering caused by our mistakes.”

Instead of solving the problem proactively, “BP has accepted full responsibility for the disaster at its plant and has settled more than 1 000 lawsuits related to claims made by those injured on site, family members of those who died, and by people who suffered shock. More than $1.6 billion was set aside by BP to resolve those claims, a BP spokesman told CNN. Federal investigators have already fined the company $21 million for more than 300 safety violations at the plant.”

Was a decision made at the top that led to the death of those 15 workers? Was it short-sighted cost saving? If it was cost saving, exactly what did they save? And what more could they have saved if they had dealt with these problems proactively—solved them up front? How many business and societal disasters could be prevented if leadership had only sought and used the advice of the Grass Roots—the workers who are closest to delivering the solution? If everyone were able to contribute their knowledge and work as a team wouldn’t it increase the ability to find the best solutions?

WHY IS DEVELOPING GRASS ROOTS LEADERS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER BEFORE?

In today’s rapidly changing, highly competitive global marketplace, change is the only constant. The executive level of today’s organizations is no longer in a position to know the best solutions to the problems that emerge day by day.

Jean Turcotte, Nurse Manager of 100 nurses in the Cardio Vascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU) at Florida Hospital, says, “I believe as a leader one-day-removed from the front line, I am outdated.” And he’s right.

Your Grass Roots workers are the ones closest to the problems and the solutions. By tapping into their knowledge and experience, you and your organization can more effectively, efficiently and creatively solve not just the problems that come your way, but identify and meet the needs of your customers, marketplace and industry. By collaborating with the Grass Roots you can lead your company ahead in today’s challenging marketplace.

For a few weeks or months after the disasters like these, we are all in outrage. “How could this have happened? We have to do something.” Then as we get back into our daily grind, we become numb again.

What is the real reason these disasters keep happening? Because, as you will soon see, reactive organizations will continue making errors like these and ultimately drive them, or us, out of business—unless we make corrections.

Is your organization reactive? How about your vendors, shippers and customers?

What warning lights are you seeing or ignoring?

FIRST STEP DIAGNOSIS: TWO STYLES OF MANAGEMENT—REACTIVE AND PROACTIVE

Evaluating whether an organization is reactive or proactive is the first thing Tony Dottino does when he begins working with clients.

In crisis or reactive mode, everyone is working hard, putting in long hours, doing all they can, given company politics, and then coming back the next day to a full desk and inbox, more calls, problems and meetings. Poorly considered attempts at cost reduction lead to errors and added expenditures. Accelerating stress levels and increased health cost affect the bottom line. Creativity and innovation is squeezed out. And most expensive of all, experienced employees leave and take their (your) knowledge base with them!

In Dr Monica Reed’s book, The Creation Health Breakthrough (Center Street, 2007), she refers to research that suggests you can work yourself to death, which is happening in Japan, Korea and the USA.

Can this condition be permanent? No, because another name for the reactive mode is “The Going Out of Business Strategy.”

LET’S LOOK MORE CLOSELY AT REACTIVE MANAGEMENT

In this type of organization, errors, stress levels and turnover are high. Morale and profits are low. Employees are unhappy and want to go elsewhere. Why? Here are four factors that may be all too familiar to you.

Too little understanding and ownership of job and customer requirements

Reactive management is a one-way street. Requirements and orders come down from the top—from executives, managers, task forces or committees—the very people who are farthest from the work. Their orders are frequently unclear, their solutions off course.

Let’s look at an example: In the face of increasing overtime costs, industrial engineers at a major hotel chain were asked to do a workflow analysis. Their goal was to increase the number of rooms each worker could clean during their shift and thereby cut overtime. But it didn’t work.

Completing their study, the engineering team decided to change housekeeping’s work practices so that vacuuming would be the last step instead of the first. They wrote up new procedures and distributed them to the housekeepers.

Ninety days later, the general manager was shocked to see that instead of decreasing, time-spent-per-room had increased by 20 per cent. And overtime had gone up as well. Why? Industrial engineering’s efficiency analysis was done without involving the housekeepers. So they didn’t realize that vacuuming the rooms last would stir up dust which resettled by the time supervisors came back to check. Finding dusty surfaces using “the finger test,” supervisors were calling housekeeping to come back and clean again.

People try their best to hit the target. But when they aren’t sure what the target is and they aren’t included in the decision-making process, they are less likely to be committed to how well a decision is carried out. Or they carry out that decision to the letter of the law—to prove a point.

A reactive culture doesn’t allow time for people to ask questions or conduct question and answer sessions. It makes saying “I don’t understand” next to impossible so “wrong solutions” to problems continue driving up costs.

Wouldn’t it be better to ask the people who do the work for their input and ideas before making changes? Wouldn’t they have more ownership and commitment to carrying those changes through to your satisfaction and your customers’ or clients’? Couldn’t daily crises on both sides be avoided? If we are this ineffective with our internal customer requirements, how well are we doing with our external customer requirements?

Prioritizing by crisis

The reactive system establishes priorities according to who is on the phone, which manager needs something ASAP or which customer has an urgent problem. Constantly in crisis mode, there is little time or energy left to discover the real reason things aren’t working properly.

Facing a budget crunch, a major transportation company needed to reduce costs so they told their mechanics, “Stretch out your preventative maintenance schedules.” In the short term, the numbers looked great. But in the long term, they looked terrible.

Over the next few years, fully loaded trucks started breaking down on the road more and more frequently. Regional dispatchers had to pull crews off other jobs. If they didn’t have an empty truck, they had to either unload theirs or drive back to the yard to get one. Next they had to unload the contents of the broken-down truck by hand and wait till the tow truck came.

When the mechanics started troubleshooting the problems, they discovered that saving a preventative maintenance cost of $150 had turned into a major engine or transmission expense which ran into the thousands. The costs now included labor, towing fees, taking people off other assignments, customer refunds and customer dissatisfaction problems which ended up in the millions, instead of saving them anything at all. If we could see “cause and effect” at the same time, how much smarter and profitable would our organizations be?

In a conversation over dinner after an executive session, Tony Dottino told the president of a major airline that he didn’t like to fly. The more Tony was discovering about companies cutting back on preventive maintenance, the more concerned he was about the airlines doing the same. Little did Dottino know that Jack was a former maintenance manager so he was surprised when Jack abruptly leaned across the table and responded in a firm voice, “Tony, we would sooner close up our airline than cut back on preventative maintenance!”

In reactive organizations, we not only burn out our equipment but also our people. With so much time and energy spent putting out fires, there is little left for upgrading skills and exploring opportunities. Without new skill sets and approaches, these organizations are simply shortening the time it will take till they clearly realize, “We’re moving in the direction to going out of business.”

Reactive management keeps everyone in a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Authors’ Preface
• Introduction
• 1 A New Breed of Leader
• 2 A Proactive Approach to Change
• 3 Shifting Gears: Breakthrough Understanding … Success and Leadership have Gears
• 4 Creativity at the Grass Roots: The Power of Mind Mapping
• 5 Managing Information Overload
• 6 The Seven Principles of Grass Roots Leadership
• 7 The Lifeline to “S”
• 8 Grass Roots Power
• 9 The Brainsmart Leader
• 10 Building the Story
• 11 The 3 Day Miracle—Finishing the Story
• Further Reading
• About the Authors
• Index