Pamela Hackett, the Australian-born former CEO of a global consulting firm Proudfoot is the author of Manage to Engage. The secret isn’t in predictive analytics or lean manufacturing. The secret is in full engagement, from C-suite to middle management down to the sales and production team.
Pamela Hackett is the former CEO of Proudfoot, a consulting firm she’s worked at for 30 years. Seems rather anti-chaotic: one job, only one change. But along the way, she’s learned to embrace chaos. It’s a good thing. Here’s why.
If you’ve ever been to Mumbai, you’ve seen the chaotic crowds. People in line here and there. Hundreds in colorful saris. Will they get where they are going? That boat can’t possibly hold them all. But it does. They get where they are going.
What about airports during Thanksgiving? Two little kids in tow and 30 minutes until your connecting flight…that embarks on the other side of the airport. Still, you get there, huffing and puffing.
Don’t be afraid. Like the Sinatra song says, “That’s life.”
Pamela Hackett gets it. She’s spent a 30-plus year career advising thousands of executives and middle managers around the world on leadership. There’s been a lot of change since – trade deals like NAFTA, Netscape browsers on an internet that now powers e-commerce, climate change policies impacting businesses – each a unique disruption to business.
“If you take your nose out of your technology and engage with people, and discover what needs changing, then you’ve got yourself an agile organization. That’s a business that is continuously keeping up with the chaos, rather than that business where nobody communicates, and nobody knows what’s going on.”
Chaos no off-switch.
The author of the book Manage to Engage likens success in the fast-paced, global business climate to ‘wrestling chaos.’ Managers win by engaging with staff and building a business where employees aren’t zombified. They are there to solve problems, ringside ready for when the bell dings.
“Wrestling chaos is like changing the tires while the car’s still moving and it’s on fire,” Hackett says. “The fire brigade are running around. Someone is trying to fix the front tire while the back wheels are falling off. The concept of wrestling chaos came to me once when I was asked about leadership. The question is always framed like, ‘Why is it that so many leaders screw up?’ And I thought, ‘That’s an unusual question.’ Because what they’re saying is leadership is something seen from a culpability perspective instead of from a capability perspective.”
Playing Defense and Offense at the Same Time
In 2012, when Tom Brady lost his second Superbowl against the New York Giants, Giants’ fans taunted his wife, Gisele Bundchen. Gisele’s response to a friend? “My husband cannot (expletive!) throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time.”
But Brady was the leader of the team, so it was ‘his fault.’
Running a business is a team sport, and every employee matters. How do you get employees tuned into the game plan? Hackett recommends her ‘One, Five, Thirty’ play.
“It’s basically the servant leadership model. One – check in once a day with key people on your team, ask them how they are doing in life, how their day is going. The objective is to see if there is anything you can do for them,” she says.
“Then every five days, you do the same thing but go in for a more meaningful conversation for about 30 minutes,” she says. “You’re asking, ‘How did the week go?’ Lastly, check in once a month for a conversation about how they feel about the job.”
Middle management collects that intel and passes it up the organizational chart. People are allowed to say, ‘By the way, we probably can’t get this widget on time.’ At which point management must figure out how to prepare for that.
People are what will improve and transform the business, not the latest Google upgrade.
“People expect some new view on leadership,” she says. “It’s just how you engage people.”
In 2020, productivity went up for the first time since 1965. “For all the technology that we have, all the efforts we have put forth to increase productivity in a sustainable fashion, it really hasn’t moved the needle. People hate to admit that, but it really hasn’t,” she says.
“The other problem is you’ve got about 75% of your workforce that is either under-engaged or disengaged. You need to humanize, optimize, digitize – but humanize comes first. That’s how you engage with your workforce. Until you do that, you’re going to struggle to deal with the chaos when you need to.”
“To get creative, it can’t be some corporate response. It can’t be a bunch of consultants saying ‘this’ or ‘that’ is what’s got to be done. You’ve got to put on your hard hat and safety boots and get in there and really talk to people.”
Disengagement 101: Supply Chains in Chaos
Disengagement led to the supply chain crisis. In the chaos wrestling match at California ports and European shipping giants, chaos has taken the title belt.
“A lot of companies in heavy industry have strong risk management in place. But even when they knew something like a pandemic could happen, they never took their planning to the next level. You have to be ready for that so when it happens, you press the button on that target operating model,” she says. “Get something in place that is ready to go. Companies are seeing that they have a lot to fix.”
Can’t source a widget from China because the ports are closed? Where else can you get it? If Facebook goes down to a cyberattack, is your business still dependent on it for advertising? Shouldn’t you have found alternatives to instantly replicate Facebook by now?
“Everybody gets disrupted. The guys who survived it are the ones who were able to cope with it better,” says Hackett. “Most people are not engaged at work, and yet here we are expecting those same people to get us out of a major disruption. You’ve got to put all that together. You’ve got to figure out how to risk manage the chaos or you’re not going to survive.”
