Cub Scouts to C Suites – Culture starts at Initiation

MY PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE

In his book The Anatomy of Power, John Kenneth Galbraith offers “conditioning” as the most powerful element in the administration of power. The more I spend time observing human behaviour, the more I realize how true his assertion is. It seems at every turn you witness the emergence of the past, we are inextricably linked to intergenerational memes that are the product of intergenerational conditioning; some good and some bad.

As a boy, I attended Boy Scouts, our “troop” leader had as a practice “running the mill”. When you did something that fell short or miss behaved, you would be instructed to “run the mill”. A line was formed with each individual about three feet apart, standing with their legs apart so as to facilitate plenty of room to swing one’s hand. The subject was instructed to get on their hands and knees and crawl on all fours down the “tunnel” formed by their peer’s legs. As the subject crawled along, the people in the line would swat the behind of the subject, open hand was the requirement.

MY PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE

It is highly unlikely you would find this practice in Boy Scouts now; I think generally that is a good thing. It did however, serve several purposes, the one most important purpose was to reveal the character of your peers. Some in the line would merely make the motion so that their "swat" delivered no pain to the subject, others would take glee in the process and make sure when their opportunity to swat came, it hurt. It was curious to me, that the behaviour of an individual which had no effect on another specific individual, would be met with vigour at the opportunity to inflict pain; they would seek to hurt only because the forum to hurt was provided. When you find people who will exercise themselves in this way, people who hurt only because there is a forum to hurt, remember them, as they are the one’s who are likely to become an institutional zealot. One understands that organization has inherent in it the forfeiting of “self” to some degree, however, a zealot, in the midst of the rational is institutional poison.

Wikipedia Definition ““Hazing is the practice of rituals and other activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into agroup. Hazing is seen in many different types of social groups, including gangs, sports teams, schools, military units, and fraternities and sororities. The initiation rites can range from relatively benign pranks, to protracted patterns of behavior that rise to the level of abuse or criminal misconduct. Hazing is often prohibited by law and may comprise either physical or psychological abuse. It may also include nudity and/or sexually based offences.”

“Fundamental Attribution Error” comes to mind here, the process of placing too much weight on innate character and under-weighting the environment that people are exercising themselves in. We need to remember, when you introduce competition between peers and add to that processes of initiation, we are creating a circumstance where the ensconced and operationally secure can seek to eliminate completion from the yet to be initiated or those yet to be through the induction process. This seems obvious enough, what is less obvious is why we persist with the process. Peer-based selection is more effective when it is criteria-based rather than the product of multi-party assessment, human assessment is very subjective and is most often influenced by things unrelated to the organization’s mission.

One understands the necessity to determine the nature of a person at the point they come to an organization; can we count on this person or not in any given situation. The question is, is the process you’ve built to determine this really giving you that information and what is the downstream effect on the overall culture of an organization and its performance.  There are few things as pernicious to an organization than “intra” organizational competition, because, in competition there are winners and losers - an organization is a product of the “some” of its parts. It is better to define the mission, set the objectives, have clarity in performance metrics and let knowledge rule rather than “gangs”.     

MY PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE

MORE ON CANADA'S CULTURE

Professional Management - DEFINED

Professional Management - DEFINED

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS MY WEBSITE

It is curious to me, that people underestimate the value of professional management; it seems very clear to me that management is a most complex undertaking and requires a set of skills to execute with. When you are a carpenter, you understand the skills of carpentry as they apply to building a box, garage, home, or skyscraper. So too, when you understand the professional management, you understand how to apply management skills to any task – professional management is the process of leading and directing an organization, there is no requirement to be a carpenter to run a construction company, one needs to understand management to run a company. It is conceivable to be both a carpenter and a professional manager, as I am, it is just unnecessary. If you are a carpenter contemplating starting a construction company, it is wise to invest the time to understand professional management, as is often the case, management skills are lacking in business startups.

I define professional management as the deployment of financial, human and physical resources toward an intended end. Here the core competency is absent any physical constraint and is absent any core competency related to actuation, it is purely, the collection and understanding of data related to actuation. The key here is a global view, what is the opportunity, what is the capital required, and who can do it. It is when people in this space migrate to actuation that bad things happen unless the undertaking is at a scale that permits the full managerial and occupational space to be occupied by one person; the name for people in this circumstance is an artisan.

   

In business, the leadership in professional management is defining the opportunity and deploying assets to arrive at the targeted outcome. Opportunities can be a new or an adjunctive business model. Professional management, in its purest form, is really the processing of information through garnered talent. Professional management is a cross-disciplinary exercise, so the ability to absorb new data, to assess functionality, to design the interface with the market is all that is required. Finally, professional management forms the organization - the structure, the culture and the perception of the organization in society at large. 

Tourism - An Industry Perspective

Tourism is an industry about sharing, sharing experience - culture, history, nature, each other, tourism is all fun all of the time. It is often asserted that WW2 saved the economy, brought the world out of  a depression - if that's true, it should the tourism industry's mission to effect prosperity through happy human exchange. 

To some degree it is the case that tourism is generating prosperity, tourism's "multiplier effect" is better than most industries. Tourism has a good capital invested versus revenue generated ratio relative to other industries - good margins. Tourism has an excellent environmental footprint versus revenue generated ratio, in the main tourism's environmental foot print is light or rides on whats in place anyway - by way of example - the transportation network is there anyway.  Tourism holds as a priority the athletics of its operating area, in British Columbia, it has been the tourism industry that has lobbied for visual quality maintenance  and enhancement along major transpiration corridors for example.   

The tourism industry spans camping at one end of the use continuum and 5 star resorts at the other, the common theme throughout is people. People and expectations, meet expectations - people have what they expected, exceed expectations - people are pleased. The definition of excellence is as diverse as the people people involved, this is both the challenge and the interest of the business. The key in to success in the tourism is an intimate - in-depth understanding of your patrons. In provisioning opportunity for enjoyment, it almost becomes necessary to know the patron better than they know themselves. People live with ostensible interests, the ones that market them socially and then they have their real wants, needs and desires. It is the marrying of the ostensible with the underlying interests, while ensuring expectations are met, that finds success. 

         

My background in tourism stems from operating a fly fishing resort for a number of years, the resort was remotely located, fly in or horse in only. The largest number of guests was 20, but rarely did we exceed 12 people, the day rate was $200 / day plus transportation, normally helicopter. It was a highly personalized environment, one came to know the guests - this was a unique industry circumstance in that many guests came for years. The ostensible rationale for attending the resort was fly fishing, and there where some fly fishing fanatics to be sure, where I witnessed the most joy however, was at the dinner table or visiting at the lodge. For the most part, the joy emanated from a fresh social environment, the unique coalescence of as social opportunity absent history or baggage and a socioeconomic natural zone - it really gives people the opportunity to be the best version of themselves. The point of the discourse is that the underlying interests where more important than the ostensible interest for coming, this was particularly true in this operations case, as this fishing resort was atypical in that a large number of our patrons were women. An effort to engineer a group of people to facilitate fulfilling exchange was, as important, perhaps more important, than people having the opportunity to catch fish. 

In life, people have needs, wants and desires, in tourism people have wants and desires - see to them and success will come.  

As tourism is a business about people, it is, like no other, a marketing dependent business - unless you've established a clientele. A start up tourism enterprise requires a large marketing budget, and in a normal tourism offering with flux and change in clientele, maintenance marketing efforts need to be as high as 10% of gross revenues. In pursuing marketing venues or avenues, vertical efforts nearly always out perform non-specific or horizontal venues - this industry likes targeted efforts. The goal of course is to establish a steady group of patrons that share the love of the experience offered, that happens readily in some operating circumstances. 

In Canada, we have seasonality that affects our offerings, likely in a larger degree than other jurisdictions. The challenge we face in the industry is to ensure complete asset utilization - destination resorts often see assets at or near idle for half the year. The key then is to seek means by which to build out usage into the shoulder seasons and off seasons. In designing a business approach to tourism, one needs to be cognisant that the excellent margins in the business can be challenged by overhead and plan accordingly. 

I've always been a believer in essentials, invest in essentials because people always need them, the tourism industry has challenged that thesis - even in economic downturns, people need fun and seek it out. There are instances where the utilization generally migrates to areas of less compensatory requirement, but if you positioned yourself in the right space you can skirt this as well. 

The tourism industry is a exciting space, people pursuing their passions, escape, adventure - it is all people all of the time - you just have to get to know them.     

Prosperity Mine Project - FEDS SHUT IT DOWN - SHAME

Lakes sacred, well maybe, what is sacred FOR SURE is the health, happiness and wellbeing of children, in this case the the local band's children's future is at stake - now the prospect for a prosperous future for them is diminished. Spiritual contemplation, the act of attaching metaphysical contemplation to a geo physical aspect is fine I suppose, until the human condition is impaired or harmed, this makes as much sense as any other radicalised religious act. This mine is exactly the kind of project that could contribute to the band's prosperity and all of our prosperity. The fact that a federal body has intervened and arrested a mining project in British Columbia is another example of the feds overstepping their bounds, this is our province and our backyard we are absent the need for Ottawa to tell us how to run it - I resent their heavy-handedness in this matter. There is nothing pretty about mining - but for dollar return / square foot of environmental impact, it is hard to beat. I wish the band well, subsistence must agree with them.

http://globalnews.ca/news/1175296/federal-government-rejects-new-prosperity-mine-project-west-of-williams-lake/

Business – Agriculture is a land play

There is a propensity in the world of high tech and escalating knowledge sector to overlook some of Canada’s mainstay industries; I am eager to draw your attention to agriculture. By way of example, the Cattle industry while experiencing a positive place in the cycle now, has traditionally been a “marginal” business. The cattle is trade heavily commoditized & well supplied, and as such, the prices garnered for cattle at sales hover around the industry wide average cost of production; so the reality is that cattle essentially take care of themselves financially – the people and assets to care for them but not the land base.

The Land associated with Cattle ranching then needs to stand on its own as a holding, and it does – over the course of the past decade it has exceeded inflation by good margins pretty consistently. The demand for agricultural land and the land’s resulting value is in no way related to the ability of the land to produce income through agriculture; if it were, agricultural land for ranching would be worth nothing, given the industries track record. The value for agricultural land comes from the western cultural imperative to own land and / or the speculative value of the land as a real-estate development and / or as a pure holding.

So why have cattle, well because, all the land will do is raise cattle in most cases and cattle provide a means by which to “maintain” ownership, in that, the process of ranching sees to the land asset’s care and wellbeing. So, while cattle-ranching is a more or less breakeven endeavor, with a grand spiritual surplus, it has value. The good news comes in the other opportunities that land base provides for companion enterprise, the cattle and land provide an essentially “free” place for other related businesses to function. Never underestimate the stability and opportunity that comes with accessing one of Canada’s mainstay industries, agriculture was here to get Canada started and it will be with us for a long long time.

Please see link below for past agro enterprise concepts and proposals

https://sites.google.com/site/midfraseragro/

Organisational Behaviour - Leading by consent and the age of creed.

Organizational Behavior, management, business, 

There has been an evolution in the nature of the workforce, perhaps more aptly named, economic participants. Many of the management regimes now in place in the public and private sectors evolved into being with two prominent preconditions; firstly, the desire for a single authority to control the mass, and secondly, a large asymmetry between the leadership’s knowledge and the lead. In the presence of these conditions, evolved the “fearless leader”, the wellspring of inspiration and direction or in the parlance of the sixties “the man”. Today these two preconditions have, in most cases, been usurped. The young people of today leave more knowledge latent than their predecessors had, they are creative, educated and current, the fearless leader is often inept by comparison on many levels. Given that participants are more educated, they have expectations with respect to being extended more leeway in execution, and a more democratic and less authoritarian occupational environment.  

This is the age of creed, that is to say, one must define the organization's purpose or mission and communicate it by a well-developed credo. The credo is the source of leadership in the organization, all people in the organization are subordinated to it, not to authoritarian power mongers, but to the ideals and purpose found in the credo. From purpose flows objectives, in the modern organization, it is objectives that are given to people as opposed to instructions. In this atmosphere people have the ability to function in concert, but with independence. This facilitates self-actuation and greater “buy-in” than the traditional hierarchy. Accountability comes from the understanding of metrics and indicators as opposed to the most often subjective assessment of someone put somewhere.

While the direction given by the credo may have evolved from a former point in the organization’s development or it may have been group sourced from throughout the organization’s contemporary operating circumstance; the credo provides the substrate for all organizational action and policy.

In this atmosphere, a culture of individual action emerges and leadership, rather than barking orders, becomes a resource; the organization becomes knowledge lead.

Combine the credo culture with a flat organization that has management pushing down more responsibility rather than trying to hold power and a lot of the damaging dynamics of the organization are diminished. Management is a function in this case, as opposed to a plumb; people define themselves as successful by seeing their measured response to the organization's mission, as opposed to the number of people they have “under them”.  Language like “my people’ and “my staff” are rendered defunct. Organizational politics are reduced because 100 people are absent neither need nor desire to compete for the one management chair. People always seek in any given system to better their lot, when there is a narrow offering for advancement they then tend to spend most of their time with an intra-organization concern related to advancement, rather than fulfilling their function.

This modality of building structure both scales and cellularizes more easily than the traditional hierarchy; it builds out on incentive and function, rather than intra-organizational competition. This effects a generally more healthful environment in the expansion phase of an organization as people have clear direction absent supervision.