Cost-saving strategies for optimising external workforce management

October 17, 2024

The landscape of work is shifting. With temporary workers, contractors, and freelancers now making up to 40% of the workforce in some organisations, managing this flexible talent pool effectively has become a critical skill for business leaders. The challenge lies in balancing cost optimisation with workforce flexibility and quality. This article explores five key strategies to help managers streamline costs associated with temporary workers and Statement of Work (SOW) engagements.

  1. Harnessing the Power of Workforce Solutions: Beware of Hidden Costs

Partnering with a workforce solution provider can offer significant benefits for temporary talent engagement and project outsourcing. These specialists provide valuable insights, helping businesses negotiate competitive rates, connect with specialist suppliers, and leverage volume for discounts. Their expertise is particularly valuable when navigating the complexities of temporary labour management.

However, it’s crucial to scrutinize the fine print. Some providers market their services as vendor-neutral while offering to waive their fees if you agree to include their affiliated staffing companies on your Preferred Supplier List. While this may seem like an attractive cost-saving opportunity, it can have serious long-term consequences:

  • Compromised supply chain diversity
  • Limited access to a wide range of talented candidates
  • Potential conflicts of interest affecting impartial advice
  • Reduced negotiating power with suppliers over time

To truly harness the power of workforce solutions, prioritise genuine vendor neutrality. This approach ensures you maintain a diverse, competitive supplier base and access the broadest talent pool possible, ultimately driving better outcomes for your organization.

  1. Embracing Geographical Flexibility

Remote work has reshaped how we think about talent acquisition and management. Forward-thinking managers are now exploring lower-cost employment locations for key business lines and considering remote or offshore roles where feasible. This approach not only widens the talent pool but can also offer substantial cost savings. Regular rate renegotiations for existing professional temporary workers ensure that compensation remains competitive and aligned with business needs.

  1. Streamlining SOW Projects

Efficient management of Statement of Work (SOW) projects can lead to considerable cost reductions. One effective approach is consolidating similar SOW projects with a single supplier, often resulting in bundled price savings. Businesses should also be open to redirecting SOW work to more cost-effective suppliers when appropriate. This strategy requires a delicate balance between cost considerations and quality assurance but can yield significant financial benefits when executed thoughtfully.

 

  1. Strategic Workforce Planning and Overtime Management

Balancing workforce composition and effectively managing overtime can profoundly impact the bottom line. By employing predictive analytics for agile workforce planning, businesses can anticipate and prepare for fluctuations in labour needs. In some instances, converting existing overtime premium to additional workers can be beneficial. Alternatively, backfilling with temporary workers at standard rates during periods of high overtime can lead to cost savings without compromising productivity.

  1. Strengthening Policy and Governance

Implementing robust policies and governance structures is a powerful yet often overlooked tool for cost management. This approach covers a range of practices, from considering wellbeing furloughs for temporary workers during holiday seasons to tightening governance of SOW engagements, particularly for travel and subsistence expenses. Ensuring all disbursements align with company policies is crucial for maintaining financial discipline and preventing unnecessary expenditure.

The implementation of these strategies can significantly optimise costs related to temporary workforce and SOW projects. Success lies in thinking strategically about workforce composition and location, leveraging expert insights, and maintaining strong governance practices. However, it’s crucial to remember that cost-saving efforts must be balanced with maintaining quality, ensuring compliance, and supporting worker wellbeing. This holistic approach leads to sustainable long-term savings and operational excellence in workforce management.

As the world of work continues to evolve, so too must our approaches to managing diverse workforce models. By adopting these strategies, businesses can navigate the complexities of temporary labour management more effectively.

Written by:

Jools Barrow-Read

Founder

I’m Julie Barrow-Read, known to all as Jools, and I’m the founder of RedWizard. With a 20-year background in strategic... Read more

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Understanding pay parity for external workers

October 7, 2024

Equal Pay refers to the legal requirement that men and women in the same workplace be given equal pay for equal work. Pay Parity extends this concept to ensure fair compensation across all demographics and worker types (including temporary workers) for comparable work.

Download our guide to find out more.

Download Guide [PDF]

Written by:

Laura Handley

Strategic Operations Director

I’m Laura, Strategic Operations Director at RedWizard. Since joining in 2017, I’ve specialised in global temporary labour programmes, focusing on... Read more

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Understanding worker classification of external workers

October 7, 2024

Worker classification refers to how a worker is categorised based on their relationship with the company. This typically involves distinguishing between employees and independent contractors, even when engaging workers through staffing agencies.

Download our guide to find out more.

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Written by:

Laura Handley

Strategic Operations Director

I’m Laura, Strategic Operations Director at RedWizard. Since joining in 2017, I’ve specialised in global temporary labour programmes, focusing on... Read more

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Understanding tenure in external workforce management

October 7, 2024

Tenure in temporary labour refers to the length of time a temporary worker, contractor, or freelancer is engaged with a company, even when working through a supplier. It’s not about how long they’ve worked for the supplier, but how long they’ve been assigned to your company.

Download our guide to find out more.

Download Guide [PDF]

Written by:

Laura Handley

Strategic Operations Director

I’m Laura, Strategic Operations Director at RedWizard. Since joining in 2017, I’ve specialised in global temporary labour programmes, focusing on... Read more

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Made to measure

September 18, 2024

Why off-the-peg metrics are a bad fit

If you’re a goal setter, you’ll know that no matter whether it’s weight loss, quitting bad habits, or just vowing to walk the dog in all weathers, the distance between ambition and achievement is almost impossible to cover if you don’t know what you need to measure.

Take weight loss.

Pounds shed might seem a sensible start, but what about your body fat percentage? Or your cardiovascular ability? Or then again, now we live in a world of body positivity, who cares what the scales say? Maybe you should consider how happy you are instead?

This ricocheting conundrum is enough to drive most of us back to the biscuits.

But, alas, it’s true: your progress, whether business or personal, needs insight more than masses of meaningless data, which is why having metrics that matter, well…matters.

Make the goal delicious

A study of 2,000 adults by Second Nature found that January 12th is the day that most New Year diets fail.

Among the reasons given, the pressure to achieve unrealistic goals, hunger, and irritation were often cited, whilst the reasons to diet fared even more poorly. For instance, some people felt pressured by loved ones, others by health scares, and even 10% stated that they simply stated it was just adherence to tradition.

Now, imagine a business where your goals were triggered by fear, pressure and habit, and your reward was to feel stressed, irritable and panicked while you spent the days wondering if you’d ever reach the unrealistic target you’d set yourself.

The lesson is clear: being able to measure your success with metrics that reflect what you really want to achieve can be the difference between success and failure.

So, how does that apply to business?

Dealing with data

Of course, some metrics are obvious: you can’t run a business without money or customers, so while you’ll already have some in place, take time to assess if they’re still doing their job.

Maybe you inherited them from your predecessors and they’re overdue an upgrade, or maybe it’s the method of the measurement that needs changing – which brings us onto data.

Since 2018’s GDPR refresh, the more data you have, the riskier it is, so before you even consider how you collect and cleanse the data, think first about what you actually need to know.

What are the insights that will really drive your strategy? Only after answering this question should you consider the way in which you gather, analyse, and store data, bearing in mind that the weighty reputational damage and/or fines that can come your way if you fall foul of the guidelines.

Also, don’t forget your suppliers and partners. If you need data from them, provide absolute clarity as to what’s needed right from the start, reducing the work – and risk – on both sides.

Make your metrics authentic

Many companies, particularly start-ups, focus on so-called ‘vanity’ metrics, such as downloads, registered users and page views. But none of those measure what really matters when it comes to building a broad, engaged customer base.

Dig a little deeper and you’ll want to find out how many of those registered users are active every day, or how long they linger on your page. Do registered users really engage, or do your emails sit in their inboxes, unread? Bots can send traffic to a website, but sustained, genuine engagement can’t be hacked.

British economist Charles Goodhart’s eponymous law states that ‘when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to become a good measure.’

So, even if X rival has Y many customers, or Z many downloads, don’t let that become a target to beat if it doesn’t matter to you. Think of social media, for example. Many companies find that a LinkedIn page can do much more for them than a Twitter feed can, but it can take a lot of time and money to find that out.

Moral of the story: don’t jump on bandwagons that aren’t going to your destination.

How to rediscover what really matters to you

Go back to absolute basics

  • What do you hope to achieve this year?
  • What are you getting up every day to do?
  • What does success look like?

Try to distil your answers into just one sentence that typifies your ambition, both in the short and long-term. Hopefully, having done that, you’ll have defined what it is you’re here to do, and what you’ll need to know to check you’re on course.

Make them flexible

Whatever your sector, while metrics provide insight, they can also be active drivers for change, particularly if the solutions that support their monitoring have the versatility to ‘slice and dice’ the data to provide different perspectives. Consider using an independent data analytics specialist to discover new insights.

Get comfortable with discomfort

As Peter Drucker, the father of business management, said, ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.’ Discovering your meaningful metrics might be uncomfortable at first, but it’s necessary.

  • What are your weaknesses?
  • Where do you struggle the most?
  • Which figures are mostly red?

Remember that the right metrics can provide multiple insights

Take the British Retail Consortium’s data on footfall.

On first read, it simply reveals hard numbers, but the insights from that can inform strategy and innovation in many different areas, such as post-pandemic behaviour, number of empty retail units, British retail success compared to EU economies, the resilience of retail parks as opposed to their high-street counterparts, the impact of remote workers on the city retail environment; the list goes on…

Finally, don’t forget the importance of a great PMO.

Whether yours is in-house or out-sourced, an effective PMO team keeps the company’s heartbeat going by providing critical metrics on strategic alignment, operational efficiency, execution and value delivery. And not only are those vital to the success of your projects (or portfolio or programme…), but to that of your overall business, by supporting a standardisation of best practice, culture, governance, and resource management, too.

If you liked this, you might also like our article about wellness metrics:

Written by:

Jools Barrow-Read

Founder

I’m Julie Barrow-Read, known to all as Jools, and I’m the founder of RedWizard. With a 20-year background in strategic... Read more

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The unusual art of business change

September 18, 2024

A masterclass by Picasso

Pablo Picasso, born in 1881, was arguably the most famous artist of modern times. A name synonymous with a rare and revolutionary genius, he was a high-spirited, gifted and difficult man who, it was rumoured, could draw before he could speak.

Highly dismissive of following the herd, Picasso sought above all else to innovate beyond what had already been, principles which are vital when changing ourselves, our businesses, and our world. In the words of the man himself:

  ‘Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.’

One of Picasso’s greatest strengths was that he remained open to life, both its beauty and its terror.

As bullish and forthright as he could be, he was also incredibly moved by the world around him and drew deeply on his emotional responses to fuel his work, particularly during the volatile early years of the 20th century, in which he lost a lover while the First World War raged, and Einstein’s theory of relativity turned the known to dust.

From his melancholy ‘blue’ period, triggered by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas, through to his masterpiece Guernica (which Hitler deemed ‘degenerate’), Picasso took from what was to turn it into something new and powerful.

This act of changing pain into art is a clear precis to the modern-day business attribute of agility, where both the need and the willingness to respond quickly can be the difference between success and failure.

Businesses who survive change are not coincidentally the ones who are able to rapidly shift their processes, making moves that are as much about attitude and open-mindedness as they were about logistics.

He was also quick to see things differently and create accordingly. In 1907, along with fellow artist George Braques, he invented Cubism, in which images were torn up and rebuilt as a distorted visual that shifted standards and perceptions. By tearing up the rule book, Picasso created not just a new style, but the very freedom and space for other people to do the same.

Modern artists who’ve been inspired by him include Jasper Johns, David Hockney and Jackson Pollock, and all great business leaders have left similar legacies.

Breaking new ground might be painful, but don’t shy away from making difficult decisions just because no-one else has. Somebody has to take that step sometimes – why shouldn’t it be you?

But while Picasso made many radical changes in his life, he didn’t make them for the fun of it.

As art for art’s sake will always lack a certain depth, unnecessary change can likewise seem gimmicky and alienating. Being change ready, for example, is an important foundation on which to begin to design and implement a new solution, so don’t waste time rearranging surfaces when it’s the substance of the change that matters.

Finally, Picasso hated the complacency that could come with success. Looking at big companies such as Nokia or Yahoo!, who fell at this hurdle, you can see this is a timeless truth. He could’ve been addressing a business change conference when he said

‘Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.’

Of course, nobody wants to be struggling, but staying competitive means keeping a healthy awareness that if you don’t change, maybe another company will. A little bit of dissatisfaction can keep your competitive edge sharper than most, and to be self-critical is to keep yourself open to opportunities that others might miss. We are all a work in progress.

Asking ourselves questions such as ‘How can we see things differently?’ can unlock myriad possibilities as to the future we are creating with each decision we make. It may take guts to throw away the familiar and jump into that fertile void of potential, but most of us live each new day in an old way.

Just imagine what we could create if we embraced the possibility to live differently and change boldly.

That a man like Picasso, mercurial and visionary, may only come about once a century, perhaps even less, should not prevent us from understanding that we can all be innovators, and that we can all find that sweet spot where response meets revolution.

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Written by:

Laura Handley

Strategic Operations Director

I’m Laura, Strategic Operations Director at RedWizard. Since joining in 2017, I’ve specialised in global temporary labour programmes, focusing on... Read more

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Why wellbeing is the metric that really matters

September 18, 2024

Say ‘wellness’ to somebody and they’ll probably think you’re talking about juice-mad Insta influencers or gym bunnies who live, sweat and die by the hashtag ‘livingmybestlife.’ But the concept of wellness – or wellbeing – has been much maligned as a faddy gimmick, when it actually plays a crucial role in supporting your people.

Best characterized by asking an employee how – as opposed to what – they’re doing, it can be most easily described as a genuine and practical interest in, and consideration for, your staff, and it can reap very rich rewards for companies. A study by Soma Analytics revealed that, amongst other criteria, companies whose end of year reports featured the phrases ‘mental health’ and ‘wellbeing’ three or more times had double the profits of those who didn’t.[1] Yet, convincing a busy C-Suite that wellness matters can be tricky; after all, how do you implement it and, more importantly, how do you measure it? Read on to find out how.

Well-what? And why?

Wellness matters because people who are motivated, cared for and valued are more likely to perform better. And if they perform better, your business performs better; it’s the most basic business maths there is. In fact, get wellness into the heart of your business, and it’s a win-win for everyone, resulting in improved bottom lines, reduced labour turnover, and enhanced motivation[2]. It also goes hand-in-hand with engagement, a subject on which Simon Little, Chief People Officer at Navico is passionate. Describing the plusses of an engaged work-force, such as people making discretionary effort, he makes the salient point that, ‘if everyone does that, you’ve got a very clear competitive advantage over an organization where your employees don’t.’

And wellness has also got one of the best ROIs going, with Deloitte’s most recent report into mental health in the workplace revealed that businesses can expect to get £5 back on every £1 spent invested in securing employee wellbeing.[3]

What’s wrong?

If you’re an HR professional, you’ll know that the workforce has a problem. With 42% of employees suffering insomnia, 56% suffering at least one dimension of workplace stress[4], and the rise of presenteeism, an insidious issue which doesn’t affect absence but does affect productivity, engagement and quality, business is under assault from sickness. Add Covid-19 into the brew and the mix gets truly toxic.

As Matthew Knight, founder of freelancers’ support network, Leapers, explains, ‘the narrative of “work/life balance” suggests that work and life are two distinct things whereas work is a huge influence on your life, and what’s happening outside of work is a huge influence on work. So there’s really no mental health at work –  just mental health.’ Couple that with the fact that over 70 million work days are lost each year to sickness, at a cost of £2.6bn to British businesses[5], and it’s clear to see that prioritizing wellbeing isn’t just a tick in the box but a metric that you simply can’t afford to ignore.

How to measure it

Any performance metric must answer the question, ‘did the initiative deliver what was expected?’ so begin by discovering what you want to improve by analyzing the As-Is. KPIs such as the Bradford factor, labour turnover, and referrals to Occupational Health can be combined with interviews and questionnaires to highlight your current situation and provide valuable insight into what you might wish to work on. You can then define the deliverables, and whether it’s increased productivity, improved staff retention, or heightened engagement, you’ll be spoiled for choice when it comes to the innovative and constructive measurables that will help provide insightful, solid information. Here’s our pick of tips and tools;

1 – Get app happy

Check out Teamphoria to improve a sense of community, OfficeVibe to drive performance, or Impulse, that seeks to understand employees’ emotional response to organizational policies, or help your employees to track their health with Medintu.

2 – Ask the right questions

Clear communication helps foster a feeling transparency within an organization, so talking with your employees is a great way to measure the mood. Whether you consider email surveys which afford anonymity, or regular sit-downs to talk through any concerns, keeping these channels open will help you understand how you’re doing. And remember that mental health remains a sensitive topic, so consider couching questions on this topic in a positive light, for example, how energized they are by their work, or how productive they feel.

3 – Process, outcome and impact measurements

Trust in a three-tier system to help measure short, medium and long-term results across a series of benchmarks, such as participant engagement, readiness for change, and ROI, and you’ll get a full picture of how the initiative is working for you, enabling you to refine your strategy at any stage.

How to be well

There’s plenty of choice when it comes to designing and implementing your wellness initiative, whether you choose to deliver in-house initiatives or recruit external specialists. A quick Google reveals a whole host of external providers, such as Elevate Your Health or The Wellness Team, while serious subscribers can sign up to Mind’s initiative, which helps assess and improve your approach to mental health against a national index.

Initiatives that build openness, such as collaborative work environments can help create a culture in which people feel at the heart of the business, while traditional enticements such as subsidized gym memberships remain popular choices. Opportunities which link employees to the community, such as voluntary work or mentoring, can increase a feeling of purpose and connection, while more imaginative steps, such as starting a choir or letting dogs into the workplace, are growing in popularity. Encouraging exercise within the workplace, such as creating team ‘step count challenges,’ could help forge bonds and get fit at the same time, while training and equipping mental health ‘First Aiders’ to be people’s first port of call can really unleash your company’s potential to show their creativity and compassion for each other.

But the most important aspect to understand is that by putting people first, particularly when it comes to business change, you are prioritizing their wellness. So whether it’s business as normal or anything but, sincere and long-term wellness initiatives will help keep people engaged, happy and productive. Indeed, if your business is facing a change, consider using a people-centred approach that emphasizes employee wellbeing.

A word of warning …

Like anything, wellness can be misused, so it’s important it’s treated with integrity. Citing employee well-being as the reason to move to remote working won’t come off well if you’re actually cutting 70% of the workforce by doing so. Remember, employees value the clarity of a message, however unpalatable, so while wellness can be used to support, it must never be used to try and bury bad news.

So, what do you think of workplace wellness, are you implementing it and if so, how? We’d love to hear your feedback!

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Can inspiration unlock the desire to change?

September 18, 2024

People and change: Can inspiration unlock the desire to change?

Prosci’s ADKAR model has stood the test of time in the world of change management. But… what if we added a new element to the model? Could it unlock the desire to change?

For those new to change management, ADKAR is a framework for understanding change at an individual level. It focuses on five key elements, all of which must be in place for change to be implemented successfully—Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement. Each element acts as a ‘building block’ and one cannot happen without the other.

Out of all the elements, desire is the one that interests me most. The desire to embrace change is a personal decision—it can’t be forced. This is where logic falls short. And creating more awareness about the need for change doesn’t make a blind bit of difference. It’s a relief to know that we still have control over our own minds—at least to a certain degree!

“More and more awareness will not result in desire… desire is difficult because it is ultimately a personal decision that is not under our direct control. ”

—ADKAR e-book

Prosci’s approach to desire is to positively influence a person to embrace change by:

•  Effectively sponsoring change with employees and peers

•  Preparing managers to be change leaders

•  Assessing risks and anticipating resistance

•  Engaging people in the change process

•  Aligning incentive programmes

 I’d say this is a very logical approach. And I’ve no doubt it will help to nudge people along. It may even result in them accepting change.

 But…

Perhaps it’s possible to trigger a natural desire to embrace change in a person by introducing a new element to the ADKAR model—one that’s not based on logic—inspiration.

 “Inspiration: The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative”—Oxford dictionary
Is an inspired individual more likely to feel the desire to embrace change?

Sometimes a decision isn’t logical but it just feels right. That’s because we’re motivated by feelings not rational thought. It’s our feelings that drive us forward and give us confidence. When we’re inspired by a person or organization, we follow their lead, not because we have to but because we want to—it just feels right.

“People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.”

—Peter Sense, American systems scientist and senior lecturer

So, how can your business inspire individuals to change? First, it must have a deep-rooted sense of why it exists. And that comes from looking back, not forward. It’s not driven by strategy. It’s driven by staying true to a purpose or cause. Answer the why and tell your business story, be authentic, give each individual a sense of purpose, a feeling of belonging—make sure they understand that they’re part of something bigger.

Ultimately, an individual will feel inspired when they believe in your purpose or cause, feel they matter, they’re safe, and that they belong.

Below is a breakdown of what I believe needs to happen for these feelings to emerge:

Do I matter?
Everyone needs to feel they’re contributing in a unique way, so make sure your people feel:

•  Valued

•  Trusted

•  Guided by inspirational leaders

•  They can make a difference

•  They’re appreciated and publicly acknowledged

I want to feel safe.
The world is full of uncertainty so it’s important to create an environment where people can learn, grow and take risks. Make sure your people:

•  Have a voice

•  Can clearly see the business cares and looks after its people

•  Understand the important role they play

•  Your business is not all about profit—people come first

I want to belong.
We all have a basic need to belong and feel part of a group. Make sure your people know they’re:

•  Part of the bigger picture

•  Part of a team, all working together towards a common purpose or cause

•  Respected and admired

•  They’ve similar values and beliefs to the business

Your thoughts?

I’m confident that if each individual within a business understands the important role they play, how they can achieve on a personal level, believes their work is worthwhile, and feels inspired—the desire to embrace change will come naturally.

“People need to know that their work is worthwhile at both the individual and organization levels and this is arguably the most important need.”

—The Ken Blanchard Companies, a global leader in management training

Prosci’s ADKAR tools and methodologies clearly have great value. After all, 80% of fortune 100 companies have used ADKAR, so something is right! But having said that, there’s still mystery surrounding what makes an individual feel the desire to change.

The decision to change is ultimately up to the individual. True, but perhaps when an individual is inspired, they’re far more likely to positively embrace change.

Do you think there’s a missing element between awareness and desire in the ADKAR model?

Could it be Inspiration?

#changeblogchallenge #changemanagement #projectmanagement #blog #leadership #PMO 

This article was a response to the #ChangeBlogChallenge 2019 on Change Readiness

Written by:

Laura Handley

Strategic Operations Director

I’m Laura, Strategic Operations Director at RedWizard. Since joining in 2017, I’ve specialised in global temporary labour programmes, focusing on... Read more

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A new perspective

September 18, 2024

One photo changed the world, how can you change yours?
Diversity of perspective is an important part of innovation, which is a key driver for growth. Look around your table, do you see replicas of yourself or do you have diversity in your team?
A powerful perspective

They weren’t meant to be taking photos at all. Every minute of their time in space had been ruthlessly scheduled by NASA. So, when in a stolen moment, Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, took a brief photo of the earth on December 7th 1972, it was more a disciplinary matter than the creating of an image that would go on to become one of the most reproduced images in history – ‘The Blue Marble.’ The sun was directly behind Schmitt as he took the photo, capturing the world from the Mediterranean to Antarctica, with the clear lines of the African coast cast vividly in the beautiful bright light of day. Playful weather systems chased themselves across vast oceans and muted slabs of land, changing endlessly as they went. It provided a beautiful but life-shifting perspective on the lonely home of mankind. It became a symbol of the nascent environmental movement, while as one of the other astronauts on board that day, Gene Cerrnan, said,

That’s humanity, love, feeling and thought. You wonder, if you could get everyone in the world up there, wouldn’t they have a different feeling?

 

Adjusting your focus

Now, we appreciate you’re not going to get that same feeling of awe standing in a business park looking up at your office, but the value of seeing your company from different angles still stands. The word ‘perspective’ is best defined as ‘a particular attitude or way of regarding something,’ which seems reasonable enough until you remember that there are as many perspectives as people;  so to get as full a picture as you need to make good decisions, you actually need a diversity of perspectives, both of distance and opinion.  Zooming out to see your business as an entire entity can provide you with an overall perspective of achievements and challenges, a sort of holistic health-check, while zooming back in can provide a counterview that informs critical decisions; the micro-detail, the specifics, and the interdependencies. But is it possible for one person to have both perspectives at the same time?

 

A diversity of vision

It’s crucial to invite a diversity of opinions to the table, without it innovation will be inhibited and business change and transformation potential limited. And that’s something business leaders really struggle with, we naturally gravitate towards people we perceive as having the same value system, as wrong as this may be; our unconscious bias kicks in. Look around the table at who is involved in decision making, do you honestly have diversity? Not only diversity of colour or gender, but also diversity of experience and thought. The C-Suite perspective can be informed by those on the frontline who are more tangibly affected by the change, or outside contractors who can help to realign your business with your new objectives. An article from Scientific America called ‘How Diversity Makes Us Smarter,’ stated that,

‘decades of research by organizational scientists, psychologists, economists and demographers show that socially diverse groups are more innovative than homogenous groups.’ 

And it’s that diversity of thought and experience that deepens the conversation, helping to trigger new perspectives and innovations, that can come from the most unexpected places. That people fear the psychological risks of change can also be mitigated against by actively seeking out their perspectives. After all, who doesn’t feel better when someone knows and cares about how we feel?

 

Keep yourself connected

But what happens if you don’t widen your perspective? Well, you stall, that’s what. You even risk complete failure. If you’re too focused on the details, you lose sight of the big picture, and if you only stand back to look at the finished product, you’re blind to the daily nuances and needs that keep your company ticking over. In business, as in life, everything is connected – few things operate successfully in silo, and if they do, that solo success is critical to the success of something else. You simply can’t get away from connection, and that connection can also mean to your rivals and disrupters. Corporate history is full of infamous failures of companies whose singular vision meant that they missed the call to innovate – Kodak, Blockbuster, and MySpace are just three of a growing list. They could only see things from one perspective and failed to consider smaller rivals who were gaining pace with nascent technologies and new markets. So, let’s add in another perspective – the business landscape around you.

 

Change begets change

While there are various theories of change management, a reliably central tenet of them all is that you can’t change one thing without changing another. Again, think of the Earth and its tectonic plates bumping against each other; that they do so means that other things are forced to shift, too; continents move further apart, buildings collapse and tsunamis are triggered from terrible depths. So, to understand and execute change well, we must be able to understand the implications that the change will make; a department-level change is a dangerous undertaking if we don’t explore the effect on other departments. Meanwhile, an ambitious company-wide change will involve not just systems and processes, but all your people too, which drives complexity and without the necessary buy-in, you might as well not bother. Let’s use another astronomical example; on return to Earth an astronaut will need physiotherapy and psychological support in order to rebalance the body and mind, one without the other will not suffice. Nothing changes independently and nothing heals independently, which means that when it comes to business, it takes a rounded perspective to fully appreciate and support change, identify and mitigate risks, and get your people on board.

 

Invite in an outsider

Working with an external specialist business change company can also be a great idea, for the simple reason that they come without preconceived notion, they are unaffected by company politics, are neutral in their approach, and have first-hand insight into how similar companies have tackled the same challenges. Just as someone looking through your wardrobe or bookshelves will invariably find the one thing you haven’t worn or read, inviting outsiders to look at the same view you’ve been chewing over will give rise to a different perspective on what you have, want, or want to become and as such can offer up a perspective that an internal just wouldn’t be able to provide.

 

A unifying vision

One of the poignancies of the Blue Marble is how beautiful the world looks from a distance, when the struggle, disease, and distress of life is easy to see when you’re actually on the surface. Of course, a perspective is neither right nor wrong, but the decision not to seek out as many as you can, will lead you to bump into blind spots that you’d have otherwise been able to avoid. When the Blue Marble was photographed, everyone was experiencing something different. Some people died as the shutter clicked, while others were born. Some slept, others ate, some were stuck in traffic, while others undoubtedly drifted free from a boring moment or difficult conversation. No individual experience was the same, but the uniting force of a new perspective changed the way that the world saw itself, and how humans regarded their home. Treat your business in the same way, get different perspectives and try and find a unified vision, be in awe of what you can achieve together.

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An i on change?

September 18, 2024

Okay – hands up, we’re guilty. When we started these articles, we knew we’d talk about Apple at some point, and you probably did, too. But in our defence, how could we not? Created by the formidable Steve Jobs, Apple was the first to champion design as much as function, changing the way that the world saw technology from the preserve of geeks to an aspirational lifestyle must-have. This refined aesthetic radicalized the way in which the world literally works, and it’s the first company to break the trillion-dollar value ceiling by doing so. But while Jobs broke new ground, he did it with a singular vision that alienated and corrupted as much as it innovated. He reportedly never gave a penny to charity, scorned collaboration, and loathed criticism, preferring to call even his customers idiots than face feedback. However, there is more than one way to run a company, and Apple’s now CEO, Tim Cook, who turns 61 today, is proof that it’s possible to lead – and to change – differently.

A quiet and private man, who prefers solitude and exercise to the more glamorous life his fortune could offer him, Cook focusses on holistic values, such as collaboration, diversity, and simplicity, and has transformed Apple in his decade at the top, turning it into the most valuable and desirable conscience-led company in the world. Let’s find out how.

A wider vision

While Jobs was a purist, Cook’s willingness to explore other markets has given the world a greater diversity of products, such as AirPods and the Apple Watch. But he’s also developed Apple as a services company, with subscriptions to Apple Music, AppleTV+ and podcasts being just three of the ways in which Apple earnt a staggering £53bn from their services alone in 2020. This canny move, providing the content to go with the products, has also strengthened Apple’s already impressive ecosystem, too.

Keep it simple

A company that earns over $3,600 of pure profit every second might be expected to have a lengthy mission statement, but Cook sums up Apple’s in just a few words – ‘We focus on making the world’s best products and enriching people’s lives.’

Overcomplicating mission statements is a common mistake for companies to make, but if you can’t sum it up in a sentence, it needs to go back to the drawing board. Certainly, at RedWizard we simply want to help people do change better; that the nature of that change will be different for every client doesn’t take away from the focus of what we do. So, maybe it’s time to think about your mission, too.

Love what you do

A notably quotable man, Cook proves once again that he understands the process when he said, ‘Let your joy be in your journey – not in some distant goal.’ Understanding that each step builds upon itself, the end result becomes a consequence of focussed, passionate thinking and development, rather than the other way round in which companies mistake their goal for stock price or revenue. As Cook says,

‘You have to focus on the things that lead to those.’

While Apple created their own market, and keep it hungry for more, they wouldn’t be successful if they weren’t good at delivering on the dream. ‘You have to find the intersection of doing something you’re passionate about and that, at the same time, is in the service of other people,’ he once said,

‘I would argue if you don’t find that intersection, you’re not going to be very happy.’

Nothing is wasted

Apple have tried – and failed – at many things. You probably won’t remember its defunct social network Ping, or its attempted email service MobileMe, but you might remember the pain of its botched attempt to usurp GoogleMaps with its own version. But change that doesn’t work can lead to change that does – if you can examine the mistakes you made. Cook again; ‘The most important thing is, do you have the courage to admit that you’re wrong? And do you change?’So, make some time for a little self-reflection and ask yourself what’s been your biggest mistake? And how did you learn from it?

Don’t be afraid to diversify

It can be difficult to broaden your vision to include other people, and this was something Jobs was infamously poor at doing. But Cook actively seeks the dissenters, the critics, and the outliers, firmly believing that it takes discomfort to make brilliance. ‘I think the most diverse group will produce the best product,’ he has said. Cook is also a keen champion of personal diversity, and in 2014, became the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to come out as gay. In his public letter, he noted that ‘If hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is…then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.’

Giving back

Cook said it best when he said that ‘People should have values, so by extension, a company should.’ So, Apple has been part of the ConnectED initiative since 2014, giving $100m of teaching and learning solutions to US schools, while its Employee Giving Program means that they match every hour or dollar donated by its employees to community organizations. Cook has also pledged to give away all his personal fortune in time. Now, while we can’t quite see ourselves doing that, we can all use our professional platforms to do good, whether we volunteer, donate, or connect with community initiatives to share skills and knowledge. We’ll close with Cook’s words –

‘You don’t have to choose between doing good and doing well. It’s a false choice, today more than ever.’

Written by:

Jools Barrow-Read

Founder

I’m Julie Barrow-Read, known to all as Jools, and I’m the founder of RedWizard. With a 20-year background in strategic... Read more

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