Logic bullies
Normally, 5MSM comes to you each Friday, but because of the festival originally dedicated to the pagan goddess Eostre, it’s here a day early.
Happy Easter everyone!
Vulnerabilities
Just in the past two weeks, doctors at Eastern Health in Melbourne have been denied patient records, and the Nine Network wasn’t able to produce news broadcasts, nor its journalists at The Age able to file stories. Cyberattacks have brought these organisations not quite to a standstill, but perilously close.
Over 150 Australian businesses are hacked every day, but by whom, and why? The sophistication of attacks is rising, leaving few digital fingerprints, which is why state actors such as China and Russia are suspected. Exact motives are unclear, but broad motives are obvious: to destroy trust, specifically customer trust in publicly facing institutions and corporations. Note that recent attacks have been of universities, NT Health, NSW Transport, ASIC, and even parliament.
Therefore, the cybersecurity strategy for all organisations has to be one that builds and preserves trust. Some call it ‘cyber confidence’: building operational resilience that promotes customer confidence, by getting the basics right. These essentials include protecting critical systems, hardening access policies, and keeping viruses at bay.
Question: What critical systems does your organisation rely upon to earn trust and confidence of your customers?
What not to do
Is it a coincidence that I’ve worked with three clients this week who are asking the same question: “How do we decide what NOT to do?”
In each case, they’ve suffered accretion: growth through gradual accumulation. One is a health service with 70 service areas, funded through 120 contracts. Some contribute a lot of revenue, some little. Some are profitable, some lose money. Some are ‘mission critical’, others are peripheral. They’ve found it relatively easy to assess new ventures, but have baulked at using the same criteria to reduce their existing service suite. Why?
Because of two main fears: alienating ‘rusted on’ fans, and alienating committed staff. Some service users are dependent on these services, and of those, a few are ‘squeaky wheels’. Many staff are loyal (to the organisation and their clients) and have dedicated years (and sometimes entire careers) to a service that is now past its expiry date.
So, what to do?
My advice is threefold:
Make a decision to prune. The best organisations commit to a policy of ‘amputate and regrow’, the way reptiles and bonsai growers do.
Set criteria by which to determine which limbs to take off. Make sure they’re balanced across financial, operational, and purpose factors. There might be reasons why you consciously decide to retain a ‘loss leader’.
Do it universally. Don’t be selective. Create a cycle of reviews so that every area is assessed against the criteria, perhaps on a ‘risk’ basis, with the most questionable services first.
Question: What 2 - 3 areas of your business require pruning, sooner rather than later?
Logic bullies
Have you ever encountered someone who hammers home so many rational arguments that you’re left feeling, “Yes, they’re right, but I still don’t agree!”
That’s what logic bullies do — they don’t enquire, they don’t elicit, they don’t enable. Psychologist Adam Grant coined the term to describe people who just push forward a rationale, backed factually, often with good intent. However, they disempower, they shut out alternate views, and they destroy empathy.
Logic bullying is the opposite of what great strategic leaders do — they use Socratic Questioning to draw out views, arrive at propositions, and then test these. Stephen Covey famously said it very well, “Seek to understand, then to be understood”.
Question: What can you do to reduce or eliminate logic bullying in your organisation?
Many people let me know they use these questions in leadership team meetings and the like, so drop me a line to let me know what’s of value. Even better, pass on 5MSM to others, using the ‘share’ button below.
See you next Friday,
Andrew