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mini case study

How trivial can who(?) get?

I would have expected the board of a major international corporation to be more
dedicated to quality outcomes, but it was soon clear that they had no intention of
doing any work. They were treating the strategy planning workshop as an outing and
a child’s outing at that. They resolutely refused to do any serious thinking for the first
hour and a senior group tried to outdo each other in facetiousness giving flippant and
meaningless answers to any question put to them. On being asked to list the key
strengths that drove their business one sub-group had only come up with “the
tightness of our girls’ skirts” before subsiding into giggles.

It was clear that I had to do something drastic. I stopped the activity and asked the
chairman to stand by the window. I invited the CEO to join him and so on until I had a
group of grinning board members in rough order of seniority queuing at the window
behind the top man. The window was on the top floor of a skyscraper hotel. I then
behaved in a less than professional, but highly effective manner. Addressing the
chairman, I asked him to open the window. (Unfortunately he couldn’t. It was sealed
to optimize the air conditioning and obviate suicide attempts. But I didn’t let that stop
me. I was angry.) Then speaking to the whole group I suggested in the strongest
possible terms with some use of language inappropriate to the consultant–client
relationship that since they were clearly of no use to their stockholders, employees,
customers or anyone else they should jump regardless of the state of the window.

As I finished my tirade the door opened and an hotel employee entered with
refreshments and a message from one of my publishers to tell me that a major
international business magazine had referred to me that day as “the world’s friendliest
guru”.

The irony was not lost on any of us and we all dissolved into fits of laughter. After
the laughter subsided we got on with the job and my clients, determined to show
their mettle did a superb job that has been instrumental in their massive global
success.

Had I only asked the right questions at the right time the humour of the situation
might have been lost, but in the greater scheme of things we would have saved time
and reached the final splendid outcome possibly with less expense and less acrimony.
When faced with a group determined not to work effectively or at all, use your
questioning skills to get them back on track quickly and with good humour. (Please
refer to the last few paragraphs of the introduction for a few ideas on how to use
questions to manage behaviour.)

Step three – the vision thing

The vision is not a short sequence of fancy words with little meaning, nor
is it a long sequence of even fancier words with even less meaning. It is, in
Tom Peters’ carefully chosen expression, the tool that will “get everybody

The big picture 11