A temporary hiccup to working practices or an opportunity to change for good?
John Blackwell, October 2011
Realistically, it’s beyond doubt that the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics will both be stunning events, especially so given the incredible attention-to-detail from the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games (LOCOG).
They’ve done a truly superb job raising the global profile of the 2012 games – the largest ever event hosted in this country.
Such is the profile of the event, current conservative estimates are that once you’ve included athletes, officials, journalists, and tourists, et al, London will receive something over 5.5 million visitors between July 2012 and September 2012!
Fantastic job, well done – I’m a huge fan of the LOCOG work and of the Olympics as a whole.
However, there’s no escaping the massive impending business continuity challenge for all organisations inside the M25 – large or small. But, it doesn’t just stop with central London organisations. There are equal opportunities for business everywhere to glean best practice from this challenge - including enterprises avoiding cost, enhancing staff productivity, and improving the overall competitive business position.
The disruption to ‘business-as-normal’ posed by five plus million visitors dropped onto an already congested capital over a three-month period – starting 2-3 weeks before the 25th July opening ceremony and continuing to at least 2 weeks after the 9th September Paralympics games finish – will be on an unimaginable scale. Let’s consider for a moment if you’re ready for this?
The reshaped economic landscape of the last three years has led to all organisations, be it driven by necessity or opportunity, to lean their operations. The consequence is, there’s simply no surplus staff left to ‘pick up the slack’. Lean business operations mean that even the smallest disruption or staff absence has the potential to cause spiralling disruption to a business operation. How many times will a key staff member battle into the office in the summer of 2012 only to find a key colleague or member of support staff hasn’t made it in?
Transport for London (TfL) are already gloomily predicting the Underground network will be 30-50% over-capacity during this three-month period, and according to the London Assembly, transport problems remained "one of the biggest risks" to the 2012 Olympics.
Then there’s the “Games Lanes” – some 60 or more miles of Central London roads closed to all traffic other than exclusively for vehicles from the Olympic family such as coaches carrying athletes and officials, and for ‘marketing partner’ transport in whatever form that might take.
In an interview on BBC’s 2nd October 2011 Politics Show, the Transport Minister Theresa Villiers warned that commuter journey times could more than double during the three-month Olympic period. She went on to state that TfL were “...actively engaging with businesses but there was much more to do...”.[1]
This herculean business challenges haven’t escaped the attention of the LOCOG – since the outset of 2010 they’ve been running special workshops counselling organisations on reducing or eliminating staff travel, scheduling appointments for less busy times of the day, and considering using alternative methods for meetings, such as conference calls, video conferencing and web conferencing.
Business continuity planning is all well-and-good for creating logistical plans for reducing possible operational risk but the effort needed for next summer’s disruption goes far, far beyond simple ‘continuity planning’. The 2012 Games are an undeniable event that demands compelling action from all forward-looking business leaders charged with delivering the productivity and financial competitiveness. What’s required is a complete transformational change to working practices – and this is a task that cannot be underestimated.
There’s no point asking staff to ‘work away from the office’ if management habits and conventions are not addressed. There’s no point expecting staff to consider alternative methods for meetings if the remote infrastructure isn’t available to all. There’s no point assuming staff will work away from the office if they’re left feeling isolated and not trusted to get together with colleagues in regional locations when they feel it’s needed.
I could go on and on ... but the point is easy to see ...
Expecting staff to adopt new working practices – and do so at incredibly short notice given the sands of time are running rapidly, new working practices must be embedded throughout an organisation well ahead of July 2012 to ensure fluent operation. This demand alignment with the way staff are incented. Asking people to work differently to the focus of their performance metrics will only serve to thwart and stall change.
Compounding matters, people are inherently resistant to change consequently organisations must have a comprehensive understanding of how to effectively transform work practices. Today’s workplaces function through a series of complex interdependencies between HR, IT, Real Estate, and Management Culture, and isolated interventions such as a mere management missive to work away from the office or the deployment of technologies such as web conferencing in the hope that ‘people will get it’ simply will not deliver.
Experience has shown that transforming working practices is not a light undertaking. To get it right is a costly, time, and resource intensive process that demands wholehearted commitment from all involved – the collective actions of HR, IT, Real Estate, and Management Operations working in unison. However, you are asking traditionally disparate business support functions to embark on an evolutionary journey where the future isn’t known and where people find themselves changing along the way. And such factors can be notoriously tough to reconcile in a way that benefits the organisation as a whole.
To confidently create and deploy scenarios for changing work practices, it’s essential to model how your workplace interacts. It’s simply unrealistic to assume the same interventions will work for legal departments, marketing, and finance, et al – they will each expect and indeed, probably demand their own unique combination interventions, actions and stimuli to instigate change. Inside just a few weeks, modelling articulates, at a net present value detail, the opportunities for each department and their working styles to change. It also details the specific involvement from the respective business support functions to effect the required work practice changes to address the 2012 hurdles.
Expectations for change must unambiguously and swiftly percolate to each individual member of staff – irrespective of where they sit in the hierarchy. And this requires a focus on the ‘4 Ps’– answering for all throughout the organisation;
- What’s the Picture,
- What’s the Purpose,
- What’s the Plan, and
- What’s my Part.
Moving forward, adopting and embedding new working practices requires constant support, coaxing possibly recalcitrant managers and staff with metrics and incentives aligned to an ongoing desired outcome. The aim has to be for new work practices to become a pervasive principle, a philosophy that transcends every aspect of the organisation
So, in the space of this short article, I trust we’ve provided a degree of insight into the complexities and huge potential that can be realised from changing work practices.
In the austere times we find ourselves in, surely it would be a short-sighted business leader to commit their organisation and embark on such an extensive – and not to mention, potentially costly and resource intensive change for a transient three-month event. Given the well-proven opportunities for long-term and enduring cost avoidance, productivity improvement, and competitive positioning gain of your organisation, is it not beholden on all responsible, forward-looking business leaders to seize this opportunity to effect a permanent change to work practices?
About John Blackwell
John’s focus is inspiring business leadership to innovate new work futures, bound together with a compelling philosophy founded on his 35-year board level career. He specialises in creating inspiring new work futures, drawing on his own board experiences with some of the biggest firms; including MCI and IBM.
For the last decade, John has headed a 30-strong boutique professional services firm, JBA, which has assisted over 350 organisations to optimise their workplaces for effectiveness and cost avoidance.
John is a regular TV commentator, having appeared on BBC Breakfast, Newsnight, CNN, Radio 4, Sky News and a prolific columnist, contributing to the Times, Financial Times, Sunday Times, Management Issues and more.
He is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, a visiting fellow at three universities, and Director of Research at Henley Business School.
John has built his reputation on knowing organisations better than they do themselves; providing answers and solutions to problems that stifle the workplace. Working together, he helps dismantle barriers, overcome corporate inertia, and embrace a mandate for change. Transformation has never been easy, but with John’s experience, it’s going to be more possible than usual.
[1] www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15144008
