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Ricardo (4s): Hello, everyone. Welcome to the five minutes PM podcasts. Today I'd like to discuss with you one thing that we just released about a week ago called People Manifesto, and this is part of my work with the Brightline Initiative. And this was developed in about 10 months of work, including people from BCG, people from Lee Hecht Harrison, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and we had a lot of discussions and we try to address the people component on the strategic change. So all the time, when I talk about converting ideas to results, I always tried to use a metaphor, like a bridge to one side, the ideas and the other side of the actual results.
Ricardo (47s): then, you have a bridge connecting these two dots. And one of the key components of this bridge is People. And of course, right now, I'm not saying anything new, because if you go to every single organization, they will say that people are the central piece, people, the most relevant assets, etc, but we tried to give some insights and we tried also to create some provocative insights on that. And we created a Manifesto with four statements. And the first one is about Leadership, and it says Leadership is overemphasized. And let me explain this. If you go to every single business school on earth.
Ricardo (1m 28s): They talk about the relevance of leadership. We need to create more leaders. We educate our kids to be leaders, but what is the problem we face today? You also need followers. At some point, you need to stop leading and you need to start following other people. For example, in an organization, when we do you think, for example, 10 days ago, I had the chance to hear Louis Gerstner, the former IBM CEO. And he said that about 400,000 employees at IBM and how he could make it move. So you need to have great leaders. And this is obvious and this we have probably thousands of books on that, but we need to have a massive amount of followers.
Ricardo (2m 12s): So we need to create a supporting structure that allow followers to do the work they need to do. So we need to understand that is not only leadership that matters but followship too. The second aspect of the People Manifesto it's about collaboration, and it sets collaboration is key, but its not everything. So let me split this. Collaboration is key on this point I'm not even thinking that collaboration is not important to teams, because Collaboration break out silos, Collaboration improves diversity, Collaboration helps People do get better engagement.
Ricardo (2m 56s): But its not everything. Why? Because some parts of the work on the transformation, they require individual talent and not every single human being inside of your organization needs to be part of a team. So People or some types of work, they will require that you work alone. And in this case, we need to empower these people to make their decision into move. Not every single person must be part of a team. Despite of knowing that teamwork is key. So you need to balance that because sometimes you try just to create teams for everything and some types of work, they require a different set of skills.
Ricardo (3m 42s): Then people will do much better by working alone. If you give him or her enough empowerment to do that. The third one is called Culture is never built. And I like to connect you to the word build because what I'm telling him that you can change a culture, but you cannot change using a checklist or a blueprint. You can not say, Oh my organization needs to become, with more intrapreneurial spirit. So let's do entrepreneurship course. No, it's not like that. It does not happen this way. It's a much more evolving process.
Ricardo (4m 23s): It's much more a behavior process. It's lead by example and, in changing culture takes time, it's like an organism. So you don't think, and this is why we like, and I was very strict on the word built. Built means it's not something that you make a plan and you do, Culture is a transformation process. And it's about collective tension between people is how people engage and interact to each other. So we need to understand that. So when we talk about oh, you need to change culture. Yes, but you don't change culture by just simply putting people to training or do in the workshop. Its not like that.
Ricardo (5m 3s): And I'm not saying that these will not help, but we are talking that changing a cultural behavior, it's a much more complex and organic process. And last but not least is probably my favorite one. I don't like to say favorite because of course, I like all of them, but this is one for me. It's so evident. People act in their own self interest. Let me tell you, every single time you are interacting with someone, understand that on the other side, people are hearing, what you were saying. And we are framing this into their own self interests. So even if I decide to record this podcast for you, it's my own self-interest I act based on my Interest, if my interest is to help, I help.
Ricardo (5m 53s): Why am telling you this? Because many times we try to frame the Interest of the organization, but we do not engage the interest of people. So what happened, people don't by the change, and we need to understand, people love talking about change, but honestly, between us people hate change. You loved to talk about other self-interest people change, but not your change because change creates instability. So it's in your self interest to protect yourself, to avoid this change. So why you need to understand that because every time you are going to a transformation, you are trying to bridge this gap between the Idea and the results, what is on paper and what it's in reality, you must understand that people will always act on their own self interest, and you need to create stimulus.
Ricardo (6m 52s): You need to build a team that has a common share or interest. And when I tell this it's because sometimes when you move to a transformation, some people will not feel that that change is part of their own self interest and they will leave. And this is a natural part of the business, this is a changing environment. So you need to understand you continue working until you have your Interest. So this is the key driver. And this is why, for example, I love when people say, I don't know where the company is heading towards, I don't know where we are going with this strategy.
Ricardo (7m 33s): Most of the time, you say you don't know, but in reality, you know, and the problem is that you don't like, and then you prefer to say, you don't know then you disagree because that strategy maybe it's against your own self-interest or creates some instability that you don't buy. And this is a natural human process. So always think about that. So this People Manifesto it's a little bit provocative So you need to understand that this can help you to handle People and also you can download and get more information at brightline.org. So I hope you enjoyed this podcast. And see you next week with another five minutes PM Podcast.
