Developing Successful Organisations and Teams

Welcome to our newsletter! I send it to friends, colleagues and other work contacts to tell you what's going on and point to some free resources on my main website.

I work in three main areas - Leadership Development, Talent Development and making Projects and Teams work. But really it boils down to one main issue - helping managers get the best out of others.

In this issue you'll find some editorial, a Case Study, this time about developing project managers into customer-focused leaders, how you can learn to Get More out of People, a Top Tip, an announcement about a fascinating R&D managers' workshop and some information about our Team.

John Faulkes, August 2005

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What's your biggest headache at the moment?!

During the last few months we've been helping some friends at the Intrinsic Partnership to run a series of seminars for small and medium-sized businesses. Each time we've asked the audience to tell us which issues were the most challenging for them at the moment - from a range of strategic, operational, team and people management topics. Each time, the highest scoring issues were:

• "How can I get my staff to share my drive and passion to succeed?"
• "How can I/we shift the focus of people to be more commercial and customer oriented?"

There is a joy in working with highly committed people! Everywhere, managers are trying to encourage more of their staff to share their drive to change, but it is an uphill struggle. And as we’ve said honestly and directly at the seminars, we need to stop asking, “why don’t they…?” and instead face up to a much more truthful question: “why would they…?” Inspired leadership is the only way to affect peoples’ commitment –more and more this is what we focus on.

By the way, the Intrinsic Partnership has the best answers to these questions that I've seen in my career. Why not come along to one of the (free) seminars? Contact us to find out more.

Case Study - developing commercially-focused project managers

A central labs service organisation is working with us at present on this issue. For them , success and growth is all about excellent customer relationships. Their project managers are the key customer-facing staff.

But the company's dilemma is an all-too-familiar one:

• The departmental leadership team want project managers to be driving change - introducing a 'third ring'* attitude to customer service into their projects, pulling together the internal departments in the organisation using influence and personal impact.
• Many of the project managers have a different mindset. They are focused on processes and rules. They regard themselves as co-ordinators. Any leadership role for them they felt should be formally established in the firm's hierarchy, not assumed.

We began with frank and open sessions led by the department manager and asked the project managers for their views. Their message was loud and clear - "we want you to clarify what you expect from us!"

We were then able to work with the leadership team in defining staff roles and expectations for the future, with clearly identified behaviours and measures. Then, instead of 'business as usual' performance reviews (they fell due in late July), we gave them the tools to inspire real discussions about minimum standards, new opportunities for change and development into these meetings.

The next steps are to ensure that the leadership have the skills and plans in place for coaching the project managers to achieve new goals. We'll report again in the next newsletter! Meanwhile, contact us if you want some more details.

(*The ‘third ring’ model of customer service is a great way for you to assess whether you are really doing enough to succeed and grow – talk to us about it!)

Coaching you to coach

We often ask people how they could do their jobs more effectively. They usually ask for more leadership. They mean a variety of things by this. But one is: “we want more time with you, to talk through projects, get advice and guidance, to learn how to improve….”

We can help you to develop into a coach. Talk to us or check the links below:

Read about our new ‘Coaching and Developing Talent’ questionnaire – currently generating a real ‘wow!’ in an international consumer goods firm. It can assess your current skills and give you straightforward advice.

A model and training program – ‘Cubic Coaching’ – high impact coaching in times of stress and pressure. We have developed this with John Neal, a leading exponent of business and sports coaching.

This newsletter's top tip: ‘There’s a pattern here….’

Managers often find themselves repeating conversations with staff about ineffective performance. Some people seem to blame everything on external factors. A delay in delivery was due to a technical screw-up in another team; a failure to send a vital document was due to a misunderstanding – nobody’s fault, and so on.

You need to break through this. Do you want to say ‘why is it always you and not anybody else?’ Well that’s exactly what to communicate, though in a nicer way! ‘There’s a pattern here, isn’t there?’ is a great way to do it. Identify the trend and ask why it’s happening.

One thing to be especially careful of is being drawn into arguments over single issues. At all costs, stay away from the question ‘Don’t you think that…?’ Make statements to convey your views, rather than asking loaded questions.Do get in touch about this – we’d be happy to talk it over.

Further a field

In September, we are participating in the Drug Information Association Workshop, ‘Project Management and Knowledge Working – driving productivity in the management of R&D’. Follow this link to find out more about this event, which we think may interest you.

We have also been assisting the Pharmaceutical Industry Project Management Group to launch its new web site. In particular we’ve helped with a section on project leadership and teamwork ‘Making Projects Work’. Take a look, the site is free to join, and find out more about PIPMG. You will find details of the November meeting ‘Licensing – a better way forward?

Meet our Team

We work as a network of associates and we can help you to develop your leadership approach, manage and develop the talent in your business and enable teams and projects to work at maximum effectiveness.

Check out advice, guidance and latest thinking on these three key issues on our main web site!

We have a great deal of experience in the pharmaceutical/biotech sector.

We can help to:

• Assess business / IP opportunities
• Build scientific/commercial consensus to help product development and portfolio management
• Clearly establish roles/responsibilities of and links between project teams and line management
• Establish a formal project system in start-ups and discovery organisations

	John Faulkes John leads TeamCommunications. He started his career in the pharmaceutical industry, including many years in HR / Development. He has worked extensively with management teams, developing leadership, driving organisation change and performance. Also helping to make complex project / line organisations work, and large, bureaucratic bodies to sharpen decision-making and build inter-disciplinary collaboration. He has worked with large and small pharmaceutical, fast consumer, engineering and public leisure sectors.
	Ralph White Ralph works frequently with John to help pharmaceutical clients. He is a qualified pharmacist with a doctorate in pharmacology. He has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for many years, as a scientist, project manager and learning and development specialist. Ralph is an expert in organisational approaches to pharmaceutical product development. Ralph’s Web site is: www.ppmld.com
	Louise Whitehead Louise is a business improvement and change specialist with a background in the food and leisure sector. She was appointed the first female HR director within Whitbread plc. As a consultant she has led major change programmes in consumer goods, automotive, pharmaceutical and large public sector organisations.