Fifth Frame

Use the difficulty. There is a great clip of a Parkinson interview with Michael Caine, where the actor describes his life philosophy of “use the difficulty”.  It came from an early career experience he had where his attempt to get on stage was blocked accidentally by a chair across the set doorway.  A more experienced actor exhorted him to “use the difficulty; if it’s a comedy, fall over it; if it’s a drama, pick it up and smash it.  Use the difficulty.” If you want to see it search for Michael Caine + use the difficulty, it's a short watch It’s a brilliant truth to take into your people leadership.  We all get things wrong - give poorly thought through feedback, overlook recognition, make bad decisions, respond unthoughtfully or fail to give clear direction.  (Or maybe that’s just me). If you do catch yourself doing these things remember there is always an opportunity to use the difficulty.  Acknowledge what you did, show some humility, try not to repeat. In my experience you will actually build deeper, better relationships if you use the difficulty, rather than ignoring it. The same with clients or customers.  Things go wrong, how you respond is often more important than the original issue. Caine’s closing remarks are probably also worth listening to though.  “Also, avoid the difficulty, at all costs”.

Everyone knows about the Pareto principle or 80:20 rule.  In many situations 80% of outcomes are linked to only 20% of causes.  For example where 80% of sales come from 20% of customers or, in the original observation by Vilfredo Pareto, 80% of land in Italy was owned by only 20% of the population. Joseph Juran - who popularised the Pareto Principle in the 1940s - renamed the 20% as “the vital few” and this idea has taken hold in many areas of organisational leadership and change. Surely, if we can just identify and change the “vital few” that’s all we need to do. Later in his career, however, Juran added to his thinking by redefining the rule as “the vital few, and the useful many” to emphasise the importance of the remaining 80% of causes/ people/ issues. In our work it is clear that whilst there often are indeed a vital few things driving change and culture, if you don’t also shift the 80% your message and strategy becomes mixed, and confused. So next time someone quotes “the vital few” at you, maybe just ask quietly if they have also thought about the impact of the “useful many”.

I talked earlier this week, in a job ad here, about the difference between the etic and emic anthropological approaches to understanding culture. If you missed it, the “etic” approach refers to taking an outside-in and analytic perspective to explain observed behaviour, often by comparison to benchmarks in other cultures or groups. The “emic” viewpoint is more inside-out and starts by looking for meaning within the context of existing beliefs, expectations and language in the target group. Whilst the wording of etic and emic is a bit clunky - perhaps odd given that its derivation is from the study of linguistics - the difference is really quite profound for organisational culture research.  Either you rely on standardised surveys and external comparisons to measure culture on imposed scales and run the risk of relying on a tool that's the equivalent of astrology or Myers Briggs for organisations (etic). Or do you dig deeply, but more subjectively, into your organisation by listening carefully and openly to people and understanding the history but maybe miss something important in the mass of data you inevitably collect (emic). Or perhaps you do a bit of both? (I'm more emic than etic, for the record.)

I regularly get asked basically the same question, but in a couple of different ways. About once a year, when I get over to the UK to see my mum (84, retired high school art teacher) she asks “tell me again what it is exactly that you do at work?”.  I struggle terribly to answer that question to her satisfaction.  You can see her mentally file it away under “things to try asking again next year”. And then about once a week a client will ask “tell me what are you working on with your other clients?”.  There seems to be a healthy interest in what others are focussing on.  This question is much less of a struggle - and here’s what I would tell someone if they asked this week. Operating model and organisation design.  There seem to be as many reasons for looking at these two parts of the performance puzzle as there are organisations but along with our partners at Orgvue it's keeping us very busy. Culture for high performance.  Coming out of Covid, responding to talent, turnover and cost issues and changing industry dynamics, the power of culture to create value in organisations has never been clearer. Leadership impact and effectiveness.  The impact of leaders - particularly in organisations facing internal or external change - continues to be key.  We are working with leadership teams at the top few levels in organisations to help them create the right outcomes. Now, if anyone can give me an answer that will make sense to my mum, I’m all ears. 

We have been doing a lot of employee listening with our clients recently - mostly through interviews and focus groups but also surveys and 360 processes.  Which means I have been reminding executive teams of the two paradoxical rules of employee feedback. Number 1 - the absolute worst thing you can do is not act on employee feedback by ignoring, discounting or attempting  to minimise it.  Once you have it - especially if you asked for it - you need to act on it. Number 2 - the second worst thing you can do is to automatically act on employee feedback as if it is all equal and true and needs to be responded to. The job of the executive is to listen carefully but then make up their own minds about what needs to be done to drive the business outcomes, culture, behaviours and organisational legacy they want.  Which in many cases will not be the same as what your people asked for.

I've been a bit slow over the past month or so with Fifth Frame updates. There has been a lot going on with new and existing clients and relationships. First things first - we continue to grow in line with our long-term aspirations, which means new people added to the team and existing team members continuing to learn and grow. These include, our two awesome winter vacationers Annika Lee and Lorraine Lee, our new admin manager Emma Louise Potter, and new additions to the consulting team Reign Limantono, Emma Banks, Phil Davey and Sandra Lin. And we have some new internal promotes, with Sasha Allerton and Órlaith Ní Fhearraigh both progressing to Manager. But one thing stays the same - our commitment to helping our friends and clients with their most complex and important people issues. At the moment that seems to mean a lot of helping leadership teams work together effectively; supporting organisations to rediscover their purpose and strengthen their performance culture; plenty of operating model and organisation design focus and a healthy dose of execution support in areas from safety to ESG to respect at work. And, most importantly, maintaining our voice in communication and resisting the temptation to click the "rewrite with AI" button.

Wishing you a safe and merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the Fifth Frame team. 2023 was another "interesting" year - but it marked our fifth anniversary as a business and continued growth in both our team and client base. After recharging over the summer, we are looking forward to 2024. A couple of things are clear about next year already - the first 100% post Covid era year. One is that it will be the year of the in-person strategy/ culture/ team offsite. After several years of forced on-line activity and lots of organisational change, it looks like 2024 is the year where every top team and extended leadership team wants to spend time together in person - rebuilding bonds and taking the time to think deeply about the big issues facing them. The second is that we will be hiring in early 2024. We recently advertised a role and were bowled over with the quality of responses - we will be getting to those first up in January. The Fifth Frame Christmas logo '24 was conceived when we were looking down the barrel of a hot and dry summer. As I write this it's 19° and pouring with rain in Sydney... Merry Christmas! Laura Applebee-Jones Zoe Harrington Dan Packham Jules Hobkirk Rebekah McGowan Liz Bancroft Kirsty Yanez Forrest Francis Baldinu Eve Farrelly Órlaith Ní Fhearraigh Sasha Allerton Angela Harris Shibani Mehta Kevin Lin