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Speaker A Just this think a little bit back on since we started on when was it, two weeks ago? No.
Speaker B Just thinking back over that evening.
Speaker A And yesterday, what's been your most valuable learning so far? And is there a key question that you still have? That's kind of a real lingering question. So think of those two things.
Speaker C We'll just do a little polling around.
Speaker A What'S been my most useful or insight whole thing that I've picked up so far and what's a major question still hanging out, this one. So just give that a few minutes left. You're ready? What's your most valuable insight?
Speaker D Sorry?
Speaker A What's your most valuable insight?
Speaker E Which was the two and a half. It's not about the complexity of the task, it's about the complexity of the role.
Speaker A Yes. Very good.
Speaker D Anybody else? In terms of a key insight?
Speaker A Anything else?
Speaker D Key insight? I found it very interesting how quickly people looking at those role specifications without a lot of experience with time spanner levels were able to infer. And extrapolate from that what is the likely level of work of the role. That was very interesting for me how people could zero in on good.
Speaker E Cool.
Speaker A Bret, I think the interesting thing for me is there was a different way you talked about how we look at the time span of different types of point. So if you are an airline pilot, that kind of thing, all that breakup time span. I was at a session with Elliot one time when that whole question of the airline pilot came up and I thought at the moment his answer was really quite good. He said, I don't know, but you know what? What you really need to do is go and find someone in the airline who's being held accountable for the quality and effectiveness of the work of an airline pilot. That person would probably tell you what the time span is. I think that's a very important understanding. Right.
Speaker D Anything else?
Speaker A Yes, Adam.
Speaker C I thought it was particularly interesting and helpful to be with a team or the group and talk looking at gaps and looking at compression and looking how certain functions are or are not resourced and beginning to be in. That thought space and thinking about what are the consequences of the compressions and the gaps in the structure and beginning to sort of work with it as a puzzle and developing kind of a mental vocabulary and like an ability to kind of conceptually work with. That was very interesting.
Speaker A Well, I think that'll continue too, Adam, when you guys get together to do the designs, because it is like a puzzle, at least I would describe our work. We always treat it's kind of like a puzzle. It's a big thing and you're kind of putting all these little pieces together and trying to fit things together and always kind of going back. I think you mentioned this George Harding fellow that was a very valuable person to many of us he's passed away now but got us into this work because he's out in Canada. And he always said too, when we're doing the work, we go and collect data and we bring it back and stuff. He really pushed hard to say what does the Requisite principle say about that? In other words, if we don't ground our thinking and ground our recommendations and ground those things we're saying to our clients and the principles then we're just like anybody else off the street, we're just providing our opinion. So that whole notion of really doodling it and grounding it in the principles is really part of the path.
Speaker D Any other kind of insights?
Speaker A And I'll move to any question, any other major insights? How about questions? Any major burning questions that are still on our minds?
Speaker E Sustainability.
Speaker A Sorry?
Speaker E Sustainability.
Speaker A The sustainability of the work.
Speaker E Yeah. So I see consultants going into an organization saying that you have whatever period of time to set this up, then leave and then what happens afterwards? Nancy touched a little bit on it when she said I'd get a team of internal resources to do that work. But I think that's probably not the norm in all cases. And what happens after the fact when you're going two years later?
Speaker A Well, hang on to that too. Lyn I think because we've got a whole section just before we stop this afternoon on implementation and I think we'll cover some of those kind of issues and some of the opportunities and some of the dilemmas, if you will. Yes, sir.
Speaker F It's more like trying to understand those ones that yesterday we were discussing a lot and trying to look at different roles and their level of work. When we do that for the CEO, it was not completely clear to me and maybe understand a little bit more from your experience. How is that done? If it's usually done, the CEO look at his own role. You have to go to the board and have some type of discussion. And in that particular case, is it really clear distinction between the role and the person or maybe less?
Speaker A Well, I know in our work my colleagues can speak we actually do interview the CEO about his or her work, his own work.
Speaker F For the other roles we always interview like the manager about the subordinate role and for the CEO.
Speaker B We would interview.
Speaker A The CEO about his or her own role. We would interview the CEO about all of the director for his roles. And wherever we can, we will try to we've had it not in all.
Speaker F Cases, but in some cases we can.
Speaker A Usually get to a couple of people on the board that would be the most relevant people. Relevant? You can't really twelve person board?
Speaker F Yes, but there's usually a couple of.
Speaker A People on the board that are like the chair, for example, would be the person that I would normally try to get to see and usually can't. So you talk to that person or a couple of people on the board about the CEO's role and their expectations. So you kind of get a little calibration between what he or she says versus what they're saying. And for the most part, actually, fortunately, there's been more of the front and less alignment, which is a good thing. But yeah, I don't think the process differs that long. Just say we got to talk to you about your role and understand those things.
Speaker F One of the things, but try to understand better, because when you talk to the manager, I think it's very clear the type of tasks that are being assigned, the type of accountability. But when you go to the CEO, I'm not sure that it's always so clear, especially when you're talking about long term accountability. Maybe it's a misalignment on the whole system. Probably.
Speaker A As I said, our experience has been we get pretty good clarity from most CEOs. I mean, they're probably there because most of them belong there and they have a lot of clarity. So I wouldn't shy away from if you're getting client opportunity, I wouldn't shy away from asking as a consultant. We all have needs as a consultant to be able to do our work well, and we shouldn't shy away from those needs. If you have a need to talk to the CEO, push for the need to talk to the CEO. Don't be shy to act. The worst thing that will happen is someone say no. All right, but if you don't ask, you never know. One of the things I think about yesterday too, in terms of one question that we've often asked when you're in a larger project and doing interviewing a bunch of people, is start off with a question. We thought the question is this little exercise that we're going through that your boss or your CEO's commissioned to do this thing. What are you hoping to get out of this exercise? What would you consider would be some success criteria if this whole thing went really, really well? What would you like to see come out of the other end? And it's been amazing to us the kind of responses we get to that in terms of it's almost like a subtle way of getting at a whole cultural thing in terms of what people would like to see changed. One of the things that comes out from our research on that or from our experience on that is I would say probably in 90% of the responses to that question, the one that's mentioned the most often is, boy, I would certainly like to have more role clarity. It's amazing to me how that's so high. And sometimes in our work, what we found too is that sometimes it's not as much a huge or a significant change in the structure. It's what's required is just a lot more work on helping people get more clarity of role control vertically in terms of between bosses of ordinance and laterally in terms of rights and obligations. And some of the cross boundary stuff that Ron was talking about yesterday in terms of who gets to do what to whom, it's okay. Any other questions that are out there burning?
Speaker G Just got one call which is interested to ask the table. It's slightly outside of what we did. Your guys view on the reason why CEOs don't seem to pay a lot of attention to structure necessarily and then need to get in an expert to actually help them do it. Why that instinct isn't there in the first place to think I need to sort out my structure. There's obviously some structural problems going on. I can create role clarity by actually telling that person what I want them to do. It's not that hard, but yet they don't actually go about doing it. So I'm just wondering what your personal view is as to what it is that causes CEOs to not pay attention to this stuff until they end up in a mess.
Speaker B Let me answer a little broader question. A little broader question. Is there are two key roles that should have accountable sorry, I think there.
Speaker D Are two key roles in an organization.
Speaker B That should have some accountability. And I call it organization design rather than structure. It's bigger than structure. One is the CEO and the other is the head of human resources. When we go into an organization, those are the two key roles. Neither one of those in our experience, tend to have that on their agenda. With a CEO, one might say that the CEO has got all this stuff to do so he or she doesn't focus on this. There have been a number of comments in terms of boardwork. That board should insist that CEOs are accountable for designing effective organizations because there's research showing that it produces significant results. I would consider it a significant factor in risk management for both a board and a CEO, but it tends not to be addressed. Heads of human resources I presented a couple of months ago at a conference in the US. And there was general agreement. Number one, that organization design probably provided heads of human resources with the most significant opportunity for impact because a lot of the other impact stuff are small, right? Or bits and pieces, number one. Number two, it's probably the most underutilized intervention of senior HR executives. So a real paradox between those two. But it tends not to be on the agenda of either of those folks. And my sense is those are the two key folks.
Speaker G I've found the same thing, but I haven't come up with the reason why is that? But that's because we're all sitting here, right? Of course we're into this stuff. Is it boring? Is that the reason? Is it just boring? If you're a CEO like structure, how boring is that? I'd rather do something like product development.
Speaker E Or maybe speak from personal experience, because a lot of this stuff falls into this gray area of you don't really know who owns it. Is it CEO? Is it, HR? Is it COO? I mean, who knows? I personally suffer from this.
Speaker A Jerk.
Speaker D We learned very early on a CEO doesn't take ownership over it. We may have a project. We will not have a successful project. So the initial two weeks of engagement here's, phase zero A and zero B, I make it explicit to the CEO, I've got to determine whether you're serious about it because you're going to waste your time, your money, my time. I feel I have to put the tail on the donkey for that. We've had a number of board members who, when the CEO drove a successful project, got very interested in it. Some have come to our seminars, and it's an interesting dilemma. One in particular has introduced us to the CEOs of seven other companies where he's on the board. But a board member can't prescribe to the CEO that they use Ro because that then gets into their executive accountability. They can strongly urge them to look at it and to further suggest that the information we would get back from you will help us with our fiduciary accountability, because we now know the integrity, the efficiency of the organization. We now know whether you've got a huge risk with a weak talent pipeline. But the ability of a board to prescribe the implementation of Ro is shaking.
Speaker A Well, I think maybe the question in that one is that's probably a research project. Maybe we need to go and ask them why.
Speaker G I think the answer is don't know.
Speaker A I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker D All right.
Speaker A We've got to move on. So, Nancy, we're going to move on.
Speaker B To the section on.
Speaker A Three tier managerial leadership.