egyii blog

Who’s missing in Davos this week? Sir Fred Goodwin, ex-CEO of RBS; John Thain, ex-CEO of Merrill Lynch; William Cayne, ex-CEO of ex-Bear Stearns; even Sam DiPiazza, CEO of PwC (who is in India looking into the fraud of B. Ramalinga Raju, CEO of Satyam). These and many other business titans represent the ‘old world’ of business, placed in the past tense by the economic crisis.

If we are to move into a ‘new world’ of business, we have to be able to see clearly. The old world of business focused on action and results which could be observed and measured. So long as people throughout the organisation took action that produced growth figures, it didn’t matter what was actually going on in their minds. As we now know, the kind of thinking that led to these actions and growth figures was an illusion. William Cayne was on the golf course while Bear Stearns burned. John Thain spent $1.2 million on re-decorating his office. And B. Ramalingam Raju was so envious of K.P.Singh staging India’s biggest IPO, the $2.5bn listing of DLF, the country’s largest property group, that instead of being happy with his outsourcing business, he immediately immersed himself in the property and infrastructure business, which led to disastrous financial results.

In order to see clearly in the new world of business, we need to go to the source of our emotions, behaviour and results: what is going on in our minds. Habitual thinking patterns, whether envy, grandiosity, acceptance or humility, lead directly to actions and decisions that create results. It is time for companies to put their people’s potential at the heart of business competitiveness, and in doing so show them how to get control of both their conscious and unconscious thinking.

In the old world of business, even suggesting that we focus on ‘the mind’ and ‘thoughts’ as means to produce business results would have met with derision and labels such as ‘airy fairy’, ‘psychobable’ and ‘effeminate’. There was no place for this in a culture reinforced by labels such as ‘macho’, ‘hard results’, and ‘tangible’.

Isn’t it time we grew up? Let’s start with a new set of leaders who understand the power of the mind and know how to harness it for the benefit of all stakeholders and society in general. Let’s then cascade their understandings and examples throughout our corporations so that in the new world of business people actually know what they are doing. Certainly, the hard business results couldn’t be any worse.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

Please sing karaoke with us to celebrate the year of the Ox. Your hosts are  Trip Allen, James Irvine and Andy Lau.

Who will sing it best? You? Andy? Trip? James?

Gong Xi Fa Cai KTV

Happy New Year!

Trip Allen, James Irvine and Andy Lau

Team Egyii, Singapore

In her latest blog posting Some Things Never Change, the HR Bartender (Sharlyn Lauby) reports on the results of the latest Robert Half International survey, showing that “35% of senior executives felt that unhappiness with management is the top reason for losing star employees.  This figure is up from 23% five years ago.  (FYI – for those of you who might be thinking pay is the second reason…think again.  It was fourth after advancement opportunities and lack of recognition.)”

Many reasons for low employee engagement and high employee turnover are given by companies, from unhappiness about having to accept lower pay during the downturn, to high career expectations. These may play a part, but often the perception of employees by management as being less important in creating a competitive advantage than product or service innovation and marketing strategy, is bound to send the wrong signals.

When management and senior leaders recognise that in today’s turbulent business environment, it is their people who have the potential to create that critical competitive edge that will see companies through this crisis, only then will they change their practices.  Changing practices means honouring the untapped potential in all your people, maintaining training and development initiatives, and creatively coming up with ideas on how to place employees at the centre of your strategic plan.

Only then will businesses find that the downturn can be managed and overcome.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

Hats off to Peter Flavel in his all out efforts to build a private banking arm for Standard Chartered Bank. Sixteen branches in 3 years. Talk about focused.

The recent FT article states that hs is a “stickler for detail.” What stands out is his passion for the business.

“This is a relationship business,” he says. “You need people skills. When clients arrive in our offices, the concierge offers them a coffee. Our relationship managers know where their children are being educated.”

Private banking is truly a relationship business.

For more on the ironing board….Stickler for detail…- FT 19 1 2009

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

On 16 January the Singapore Business Times hit us with another ‘bad news’ article: ‘Employee engagement in Asia-Pac drops – survey’.

As if the economic downturn were not enough. Now motivation seems to be suffering in part because, as Mak Yen Teen, Director of the Asia Pacific Research and Innovation Centre at Watson Wyatt, says, the perception of fairness of rewards at this time is down. It seems people are unhappy about accepting reduced bonuses and lower pay to help avoid layoffs. He goes on to mention that in order to manage employees’ perceptions, companies must communicate the exact reasons for the changes being made and make sure that these are seen to be fair.

No doubt the perception of rewards does have an impact on employee engagement, as do many of the actions of management. In fact, events that happen to us, whether in regard to management decisions or economic influences or some other issue, will always have some kind of effect on our feelings about our work.

But can you imagine going through your entire 40-year career allowing your mood and motivation to be controlled by events over which you have no control? When things are going well for you personally or for the economy, you are fully engaged and positive, and when things take a turn for the worse you are miserable and unenthusiastic. What a hell to work and live in! And what a burden for companies to bear!

Today we have the opportunity to create a new world of business, with new approaches and new practices. Let’s start by making sure we enable our employees to feel enthusiastic and committed, if not passionate, about their work whatever outside influences may impact them. This doesn’t mean that companies have to ‘do’ anything to their employees. It’s a mistake to think that every every employee problem can be solved by doing something to them.

Rather, let’s take a step back and show our employees how to think about their lives and work in a way that is empowering for them. Once they learn that their happiness is entirely determined by how they individually respond to events that happen to them, then they have great power to change, and get control of, how they feel and work.

Responding doesn’t just mean saying to yourself  ’Oh, the economic crisis is actually fine’. It means learning to accept what is happening and allowing yourself to go through whatever feelings, including negative feelings, that you may have. When you simply accept events and don’t resist your emotions, then your anger and frustration lessen and you begin to focus on taking whatever action you need to in order to live in the present moment, within the crisis.

So help your employees to see this crisis and any future event with a new pair of eyes – eyes that enable them to deal with it in a positive, practical way, all the time realising that how they see the event is merely a thought in their own heads. And over this they have ultimate control.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

You are probably aware of the story of the fraud committed by B. Ramalinga Raju, owner of Satyam Computer Services in India. He falsified accounts to make it appear that his company’s performance was actually much stronger than it really was. In this he was definitely a risk-taker, and this aspect of his personality may have been his downfall.

Yet the story of how he got his first business break, also through taking a risk, has some useful lessons for all of us. I quote Monday’s Herald Tribune:

“The founder of Satyam Computer Services, B. Ramalinga Raju, made a risky proposition to win his first big client, the tractor maker John Deere: If you don’t like our service, you don’t pay.

With that pitch, which is now the stuff of legend in India, he persuaded John Deere in 1991 to allow his computer programmers to work just across the street from the client’s U.S. headquarters, in a house Raju dubbed ‘Little India.’ Working only overnight shifts, with no physical contact with John Deere’s executives, the programmers got the job done – proving Raju’s theory that they could work just as well from India, and helping give birth to the country’s outsourcing industry.”

Imagine what it must have felt like setting up an office in a foreign country and working without any assurance that a result will come from it. The truth is, doing this without any guarantee most likely made the prospect of success even more assured.

This is the power of uncertainty. Let go of your tight grip on the future. Make a decision with no guarantee of the outcome and then take action and enter pure space. Accept. And pay attention to each moment, letting them flow through you. When you are comfortable with uncertainty, great courage and power will come to you.

So if you are a banker or another leader caught in the vicious cycle of thinking that goes “What specific results and I going to get if I take this action?” then my answer to you is, “I don’t know. But whatever it is, your chance of pulling yourself out of the situation you are in is better if you think carefully about your plan and then just take action with no guarantees, than if you sit tight on your hands and wait for the government, your clients, or your grandmother to do something to change your circumstances.”

My advice to you is “Don’t wait!” Take 100% responsibility for winning the game at this turbulent time, make a decision and enter the void. Now.”

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

In his new book Branding Only Works on Cattle, Jonathan Salem Baskin says, “Today’s guerilla branding…(is) about giving consumers the reason and confidence to act, and the best way of doing this is by showing them behaviour that they can understand and trust. It’s all about doing things, not about saying things.”

In the ‘old world’ of business, branding was about communicating images, concepts and messages that will hopefully create an emotional connection with the audience and lead to brand loyalty. In the ‘new world’ business, according to Jonathan Salem Baskin, this just doesn’t work. People are too suspicious of your messages, and they have no interest in just listening to what you have to say. This means nothing to them without action.

In the ‘new world’ of business that we are now entering, brand loyalty rests on behaviour. Prove to your customers that you are real, authentic, and able to deliver what they want. Show, don’t tell.

This line of reasoning has a direct link to Private Wealth Management in banking. If Private Banks ever hope to win back the trust of their clients and hopefully, win over even more from competitors, then they had better shut up. Don’t make grandiose statements about your heritage, reputation and trustworthiness. Nobody’s going to listen.

To win in this new world of business, Private Banks are going to have to behave their way back to credibility. A bit like a wayward husband who has to seduce his wife all over again. Not with promises of fidelity, but with hour-by-hour actions that reveal his true intent. That’s why the future success of Private Banks is in their people, especially the people who interact and build relationships with clients. It’s in these people’s pure intent and concrete behaviours that the seed of new growth lies. It’s time for these venerable institutions to decide what specific new behaviours will win the trust of their ‘new’ clients.

So forget about designing a fancy ad campaign, or delivering a message of assurance from up on high. Get down and dirty with the specific actions your people can take to woo your clients minute-by-minute.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore 

“A man is measured by the size of his bonus rather than the depth of his integrity” Frank Partnoy, author of F.I.A.S.C.O., based on his experience as a salesman at Morgan Stanley in New York and Tokyo.

Some of the famous slogans from Frank’s days include praying on “the widows and orphans” or people who were naive and who put trust and large amounts of money into the people and institutions they invested with.

This reputation causes a big dilemma for banking today.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

In his new book Aligning Training for Results, Ron Drew Stone says, “It is vital that training professionals understand performance in order to identify needs and design, develop and deliver training solutions. …Training professionals should adopt a different thought pattern and a different performance framework that will allow us to see and communicate training and performance in a more results-centered way.”

As a training professional, what are you doing to ensure that your training leads directly to performance improvement on the job and that this improvement leads to tangible business results? In today’s budget-conscious, turbulent business environment it is vital that every dollar spent on training leads to some form of improvement in the following:

• The cost of doing business
• The profitability of the business
• The quality (effectiveness) of the organisation’s business products, processes and services
• The output (quantity) of products and services
• The time (efficiency) it takes to complete tasks and business processes, address and correct problem areas, and service the customer

It’s time for change.

Time to move on from a focus on learning requirements and participant evaluations, to a focus on execution. Do you have plans in place to identify the specific business results you want to achieve, the performance gap between where you are and where you want to be, and the execution needed to close that gap?

Have you identified all the various internal factors that need to be addressed to ensure that you are doing whatever it takes to achieve execution after the training is over?

It’s no good gaining knowledge, understanding, skills and a positive attitude if there is no execution, because this is the only thing that will lead to performance improvement and business results. If you can achieve all this, then you deserve to be sitting at the top table.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

The following posting is derived from an article in the  WSJ in September.  There are some appalling numbers and facts surrounding it.

“According to a new survey from Prince & Assoc., 81 percent of investors with $1 million or more in investible assets plan to take money away from their current advisor. An even larger number — 86% — plans to tell other investors to avoid their advisor. Only 2% plan to recommend their firm to other investors.”

For more, see:  WSJ-Revolt Against Advisors

So let me ask you a few questions…

If you are a “brand firm” what are you doing about this? Scrambling around for solutions?

If the institutions are not to blame, how will the individual advisors deal with the damage control?

What is it going to take to re-build the trust and relationship when clients are sick of having products pushed on them? (This was only successful during “good times” when no one noticed, when your portfolio was on the upswing)

 Isn’t it time for a change?

Shouldn’t the advisors and institutions be taking a different approach, as things have REALLY changed this time around?

Tell us what are you seeing out there?

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore