The Human Imprint

What drives your stakeholders?

Organisations are finding that not only internal stakeholders, but increasingly external stakeholders are having more of an input into organisational strategy, goals and objectives. Each stakeholder can have differing requirements that they expect the organisation to meet depending on exactly how they interface with the organisation. Have you determined your organisation's key stakeholders and their individual and collective requirements? First you need to determine who your stakeholders are! Stakeholders can include suppliers, customers, consumers, shareholders, workers, management, those living in the vicinity of the business location - neighbours, businesses, schools, hospitals, governmental and legislative bodies, certification organisations and non-governmental bodies. The requirements can include, but are not limited to, product safety, product and service consistency and compliance with specifications, health and safety, worker welfare, social accountability, and the organisations actual, or potential impact on the local or global environment, impact on biodiversity and protection of ecosystems, and if applicable animal health and welfare.

The organisation must determine these myriad requirements and develop an integrated strategy that not only addresses organisational performance and cost effectiveness but also encompasses the needs of its varied stakeholders. However at times these stakeholders may have opposing requirements and the management team will have to determine how they address this issue and this is the role of business ethics.

Another output of determining stakeholder requirements is the development of both brand protection and risk management strategies and defining those risks that are acceptable, those risks that need to be managed, risks that must be mitigated and possibly transferred to a supplier or alternative organisation and those risks that are unacceptable and must be eliminated. 

Organisations with vision

How do you recognise organisations with corporate vision? Is the organisation’s corporate social responsibility policy produced as a result of commercial one-upmanship or as a result of deep ethical foundations within the organisation?

Politicians are in a cycle of ever increasing their environmental credentials over and above their opponents, but does this encourage voters to actually change the environmental impact of their personal lifestyle? Nearly every day corporations and business organisations are declaring their worthiness with regard to social responsibility, food safety, environment impact, personnel health, safety and welfare, fair trade and ethical supply chains in a variety of reports and policy statements. Third party standards have also been developed that address many of these issues and organisations continue to increase the portfolio of certificates that they display in their reception areas and on their websites. What impact does all this have on the purchasing decisions of the consumers of their products and services?

Mahatma Gandhi said that "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind..." so does this suggest that the constant declaration of improved and enhanced corporate ethical credentials leaves consumers and customers non-plussed? Does the psychology of we will worry about the environment, employee health and safety, etc. when you do, leave us all inactive and weaken organisations by increasing their business risk? Consumers and customers must be able to trust the integrity of organisations and their brands and if this is based on claims and statements of intent then these criteria must be measurable otherwise performance cannot be verified and ultimately that trust may be lost.

There are a growing number of organisations where ethical standards are embedded in goals and organisational aspirations, organisational and departmental structure, job descriptions, and brand marketing is firmly based on these standards where actual performance can be measured and verified. Organisations that produce policies and associated reports without such foundations run the risk of undermining the very equity of their brands.

Finding mentors

Do we find our mentors or do our mentors find us?  What do you look for in someone who can help you improve your skills and talents? Speaking personally, the people in my life who have helped me develop my personal and professional skills seem to have largely found me rather than the other way around. A senior executive once said to me "Well you don't sow your seed on unfertile soil do you, because it is simply wasted!" I think he meant that if someone does not have the capacity to develop and learn either as a result of their intellect, skills and abilities or the mental ability to accept that they have always have more to learn and that they may sometimes have made a mistake which they have to accept, learn from and move on, then they are not worth mentoring. Everyone's resources are limited in terms of time and energy and we should not waste them! Many of my mentors have been outside of my working environment, people who have shown me how to approach life in a different way, or with a new perspective, how to prioritise my daily schedule and the demands people place on me and I am still learning!

A mentor is often described as a wise or trusted counsellor, this means that they must have life skills and have actually experienced and dealt with some of the issues that we now need to address, not just have read it in a book or been told it in a training seminar. Whilst many people can give advice some good some bad, much fewer can impart wisdom. So how do we recognise wise words?  Well I think that first we have to have trust in the person that they value us and the impact that their words will have on us and our future. We also have to trust that they do not have any other vested interest in influencing our behaviour, and that is not always easy to determine at the beginning of a mentoring relationship. Mahatma Gandhi said that “a teacher who establishes rapport with the taught, becomes one with them, learns more from them than he teaches them.” This is true with a lot of the mentoring that I undertake working with others and we have to be open to new experiences and new ways of doing things. So choose your mentors well and if they choose you then be open to their teaching! 

Presentation skills

So you were asked to give a presentation and on the spur of the moment agreed. Is time running out and are you beginning to wonder if you have made a monumental mistake?

            

Where do you start with the presentation? Well, first find out the title and the key points you are expected to address. It is very important to find out who else is talking and what they are going to talk about. You want to make sure that you do not cover exactly the same ground as someone else, otherwise the audience will just get bored. Determine how long you are going to be asked to talk for as this will help you to work out if the time you have means you can only give an overview or whether you are required to give an in-depth presentation of your topic. If you only have time for an overview then identify what you must say, what it would be good to say and the points that you will address only if you have time.

Try to think about how many slides you will have on a PowerPoint style presentation. If you are not comfortable with the technology design 3 or 4 slides that are general and will cover several themes so you don’t need to change them that often. If you are using slides or overheads limit the technical data as you don’t have the slides to be too busy. Remember graphs or data tables are a waste of time if either people can’t see them at the back of the room or they haven’t time to read them during a presentation. Don’t put too many bullet points on each slide, consider using diagrams or photographs instead of words if they convey your message, because they are much more effective.

Practice what you are going to say and check the presentation before the day, especially if someone else has prepared it. There is nothing worse than standing up in front of an audience with a presentation full of typing errors or slides in the wrong order.

Most important of all believe in what you are going to say, because lack of conviction comes over to the audience immediately in a presentation. People will forgive beginners nerves but they will struggle with a presentation that lacks personal belief or one where the presenter just reads from the slides parrot fashion – well they could have read it as a handout themselves! Show that you care about the topic and remember practice makes perfect.

When did you last test your product recall procedure?

The artificial hip and knee component manufacturer Smith & Nephew has had to recall more than 185 hip implants after "incorrect labelling" meant at least two patients were given the wrong-sized hip device (for further details see The Independent). There has also been, and continues to be, a number of high profile food product and product manufacturing recalls over the last twelve months. So when did you last test your product recall procedure? Many organisations have realised to their cost that they should have tested their procedure before they had a real recall situation, because either their contacts list was out of date, the product traceability procedures didn't work or personnel haven't been trained to implement the procedure.

Don't keep putting it off - test the procedure and make sure it works!

Spam blogs

In a recent post on recognition I identified that I had fallen victim to a spam blogger who was publishing my articles on their blog without attributing them to me and then used one article as a submission to a number of blog carnivals. I am not the only person who has been treated in this fashion and the Carnival of the Capitalists has written a very good article outlining the extent of this problem as far as their blog carnivals have been concerned and warning other blog carnival hosts of the blogs involved Carnival of the Capitalists blog comment.

Being English, I am usually fairly reserved in my choice of language and I have commented mainly on how it feels when you don't get the recognition you deserve for your work, thoughts and ideas. In the working environment I have sometimes had to step back and brush myself off when such an event has happened and someone has "borrowed" my ideas or vision and passed them off as their own especially when they have had more power in the organisation than myself. Some of these individuals have often gone on to then face a real personal crisis when their level of intellect and knowledge meant that they struggled to maintain the facade that they had thought of the "idea" in the first place.  Although my language may be reserved, don't think that I am not cross about what has happened, I am! However, the experience has not put me off social media as a communication tool, I am totally committed to its considerable strengths! People in over 25 countries have visited this site in the last month,  and how else would I have been able to communicate with them? There needs to be stronger controls in place within the infrastructure of the community/technology to prevent this situation from happening. Perhaps we should set up a blacklist blog so that we can identify sites that are spam bloggers and blog carnival hosts can check this site before they publish if they are concerned about any submissions.

There ... I have found something positive in this seemingly negative situation!

Measuring product performance

Quality plans describe the methods for product inspection and testing. The methodology needs to include the:
a) product parameters to be measured that define "quality";
b) inspection points in the process where the parameters need to be measured;
c) standards or specification the parameter needs to comply with;
d) documentation that includes the specification details;
d) inspection and/or testing equipment required and the methods and frequency of
equipment calibration to ensure the results are reproducible and valid;
e) legal and/or market (customer) requirements for testing and demonstrating conformance to the specification;
f) testing methodology; and
g) skills, knowledge, degree of training and level of competence required for the personnel carrying out the inspections and tests.

Quality Planning

An organisation needs to define how it ensures that products and services meet pre-defined standards and this is often described in a quality plan. A quality plan outlines the quality practices, resources and sequence of activities relevant to a particular product, service, contract or project. Quality must be planned because the organisational management system must be able to stand above any individuals. Quality plans can also be developed for new products or processes as a means of controlling key activities and ensuring that practical problems can be identified and modifications introduced at the planning stage. Quality cannot rely on informal actions because non-conformance will eventually occur. When developing quality plans the following needs to be considered: 1) Customer requirements for quality plans; 2) Independent certification bodies requirements for quality plans (if appropriate); and any 3) Opportunities for improvement of the current quality management system or the potential to control quality parameters that are not adequately controlled. Remember he who fails to plan, plans to fail

Walk a mile in my shoes

I was listening to an Elvis tribute programme on the radio last week and they played a song of his that I had not heard before entitled “Walk a mile in my shoes” written by Joe South. The lyrics of the song have stayed with me during the week and has made me consider how good we are at seeing things from other people’s perspective and whether we consciously try to understand other people’s points of view and why they behave in a certain way or make certain decisions.

It is very easy to make a judgement about someone when we first meet them or first hear someone talk about them or once we get to know them if they suddenly change in some way. We use a range of cues to assist us often visual, e.g. their appearance, degree of self-confidence, mannerisms, tone of voice, or body language and our intuition is affected by our past experiences with others who may have behaved in a similar manner. Once we have made such an evaluation we often take a lot of persuading to change our minds. Have you ever sprung to criticise someone before you have taken the time to understand their point of view? How often have you gossiped or commented about a work colleague’s erratic behaviour or said something inappropriate to them that you later regret when you find out that they have had a recent bereavement in the family or are going through another kind of personal problem?

It is so important for all of us to take the time to mentally walk in “their” shoes, understand what pressures they are under and why these concerns could be affecting their work performance. As managers we need to work with them to find ways to deal with or resolve these issues when they arise. Remember with your management team YOGOWYPI – you only get out what you put in!

Recognition

Quite by chance, I found that six of the posts that I have written on this blog have appeared on another blog without being attributed to me, as the author. Whilst it can on one hand appear to be a sort of compliment that someone likes your work so much that they put it on their own blog, it would be good to have a link, as I always do on this blog if I write about a post that I have found interesting, to say that the thoughts and ideas actually belong to someone else.

Recognition of a post, or article, is a form of positive reinforcement that others think we actually have said something that is worth saying and that in our communicating we have struck a chord with another individual!