If you haven’t already seen Al Gore’s DVD An Inconvenient Truth, get it this weekend and listen and watch it carefully.

Then discuss it with your family and people at work, and ask ‘What can we do immediately to reduce our carbon footprint?’

Al Gore’s slide show contained one particular segment that was inescapable. That was where he juxtaposed global temperature fluctuations over hundreds of thousands of years with CO2 levels for the same period.

The temperatures rose and fell in a precise correspondence with CO2 levels. The CO2 and temperature fluctuations meant the difference between a nice sunny day, and a mile of ice over our heads during an ice age.  They were the natural cycles over a very long period of time.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see and feel what’s happening.

You don’t have to look too far to see who is responsible. 

You don’t have to go too far to recognise who has to do something about it.

 Keep your eye on these websites

http://www.climatecrisis.net/blog/

http://globalwarningblog.com/

by Christo Norden-Powers     Copyright © 2007 Spandah Pty Ltd

Published in Director Magazine (Australian Institute of Company Directors)April 2005. Copyright 2005 Spandah Pty Ltd.

Asking the right question can save millions of dollars for companies.

If there is one factor that most recent corporate failures in Australia and overseas have in common, it is the failure of Directors and Executives to ask the right questions. Invariably, that failure is a reflection of an entrenched culture (e.g. HIH) that discourages challenging, questioning, probing for facts and seeking better strategies. That culture often starts (implicitly or explicitly) at the top – at Board and Executive levels.

The cost of not asking questions After the NAB’s $360 million currency trading losses in 2003, the NAB’s Chairman, Graham Kraehe, said afterwards :

“I think probably the primary thing [I learned from the recent events] is to not necessarily accept the information that is presented to you, be far more aggressive in questioning it.”

HIH lost its entire business – leaving $5 billion in debt – because questions were not asked. NAB lost around 10% of its profits. All up, over $5 billion between just two companies.

How much value is lost in other companies by not asking some simple questions – questions that

• challenge assertions and assumptions, 
• probe the facts, 
• cut through the ‘spin’, 
• clarify hidden meaning and purpose, 
• identify the weakness in a process, proposal or strategy.

From my experience working in Australia and overseas with small, medium and large businesses I have no doubt that the answer is: a lot – and it’s all unnecessarily lost profit.

The skills of hearing and asking

None of those questions needs to be delivered aggressively. In fact, they are generally far more effective when delivered conversationally, without aggression and with a constructive purpose. The skill of asking the right questions is an essential skill for Directors and Executives and is linked to the skill of hearing/noticing what is said and what is not said.

It is the latter – what is omitted – that creates many, many problems in business. Omissions can take various forms, including assumptions (data not available or not verified), generalisations (global descriptions that fail to define what is meant), partial descriptions and specifics (which avoid an alternative).

The skill of hearing/noticing what is missing is a skill of awareness that can be learned quite easily. Unfortunately it is not taught in business school.

Language and awareness

One of the elements of learning that skill is to recognize the patterns of language and conversation that expand, contract, direct and focus your awareness and thoughts, and then to learn the questions that reverse those functions.

There are some patterns of language that are typically used to influence and persuade – language that will slide your awareness and attention towards what the speaker (or writer) wants you to think, and away from what the speaker wants to avoid. These patterns are the tools of trade of skilled influencers – the honest, the dishonest and the accidental – as well as those who avoid accountability.

If you understand those patterns, and the impact they have on your awareness and thoughts, it is far easier to spot the issues and phrase a question that elicits useful information. However, you must be able to spot the patterns at the speed of normal conversation, because you rarely get a second chance.

There’s hardly a Board or Executive meeting where those patterns are not used, knowingly or unwittingly.

The function of communication and questions

Communication has a simple function – person A generally wants to communicate an idea to person B and influence B to think or respond in a particular way and/or to take a particular action. ‘Action’ here includes ‘to do nothing’.

To achieve that, the speaker/writer must use language that activates one or other of a number of processes within our consciousness that determine how we process information and create reality inside our minds. Even if A has no intention to influence a B to do X, if B understands the language to mean ‘Do X’ then the language will have that effect.

We must choose our language with care. We must also listen to language with care and be aware of its impact on us. Take for instance, the following example:

“At the time of writing, GMD [Global Markets Division] trading operations continue to manage risk responsibly in changing market conditions. Adherence to risk discipline is good.”

If you had read that in a report from the currency trading room during a Board meeting, chances are that you would think “Good job” and go to the next item on the agenda. An expensive decision. The quote is extracted from the APRA report into the irregular currency options trading at the NAB. It was part of a report to the NAB’s Risk Management Executive Committee in November 2003.

Have a look at that quote again, and consider which questions you might ask to prevent problems arising when faced with similar language. Two things stand out that signal potential problems:

1] The language is largely global. Global language expands awareness to encompass many possibilities without being specific. Sounds great, means little. Everyone believes that they understand what is meant, but when asked they all give different meanings. Like flying over a territory and not being able to see the details. For the NAB, the problems were in the details of how things were being done. You don’t need technical expertise to tackle this type of language. If the language generates global awareness, simply direct and contract awareness by asking for specifics: “What do you mean by ‘trading operations’?” “What do you mean by ‘manage risk responsibly’?” “What risk, specifically?” “What do you mean by ‘changing market conditions’?” “To which risk disciplines are you referring?” With the verbs (process/action words) you could ask: “How are you managing the risk?” “How are market conditions changing?” Then, from all the (global) possibilities, the mind is focused on what the language means in practical terms.

2] The word ‘good’. When you are dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars of exposure, ‘good’ raises potential deficiencies in the adherence to risk disciplines. The word ‘good’ is more contracted or limited than ‘excellent’. There is a gap that is unexplained between ‘full adherence’ and partial, ‘good adherence’ – ‘good’ is a comparative word: “If adherence is ‘good’, compared to what? Prior adherence or the required standards?” “Where is it falling short of required standards if it is only ‘good’?”

Those questions alone would probably have led to a review of the NAB’s procedures, and they only take a few minutes to ask. But if that is not enough, there is more. The next phrase that deserves attention is “At the time of writing..”. That phrase contracts or limits timeframe and directs and focuses the reader in some narrow band of time at which the words were written.

You can quite simply re-direct the mind and step outside of the limiting time frame by asking the questions: “What about in the months prior to the report?” “What is the position since the report was written?”

Apart from being full of global language, the two sentences have another element that directs and focuses awareness towards managing risk and adherence to risk discipline. Sounds like the trading room has everything under control. But in directing awareness to the ‘management’ of risk in positive terms, they can cause the mind to by-pass the essential issue of what exposure the bank had. To re-direct the mind back to that issue, ask: “What is our exposure.”

These are some simple questions that can save companies many dollars and generate better results by getting to the facts and identifying processes and strategies that may require attention.

Having done that, what do you do next?

The other side of the coin is that questions are an excellent, fast and very effective way to facilitate solutions, commitment and accountability. There are around 22 questions that will turn virtually any business problem into a solution and strategy with full commitment and ownership. But that is another story for another time.

What a dreadful thought for any parent, but it’s a reality with the current increase in childhood obesity, fast foods, processed foods and the extent to which electronic devices have replaced physical activity.

In 2005 I watched Jamie Oliver’s show about changing the eating habits of UK schoolchildren. He made an interesting statement: The current generation of school children in the UK is the first generation in history that is predicted to die before their parents. This does not mean dying at a younger age than their parents. It means dying before their parents die. The reason? The food they eat and lack of exercise. Kids are overweight, having strokes, having heart attacks, contracting cancer because of the rubbish they eat – often, I regret to say, because of their parents’ choices.

Similar trends are found in Australia and the USA. If the human side of that equation does not disturb you, consider what would happen to our social and economic structures if we regressed to accepting an average life of 40 years or less for the current generation of children, while their parents reach old age?

Maybe cloning organs is an option in that case, but somehow I feel that eating better and producing better quality food is a more sensible and sustainable way.

Jamie Oliver was able to demonstrate that with a few pence extra spent on government subsidised school lunches, and some common sense, the quality of children’s diet can be improved dramatically, with a corresponding rise in energy, concentration, learning ability and quality of behaviour over a period of only a couple of months.

With childhood obesity and early health problems (diabetes, cancer, cardio-vascular disease) rapidly on the rise in many countries, let’s hope that the food companies take note and act on it. This is a case for corporate social responsibility, and not simply slick PR.  It’s not simply the junk food and fast food industries that need to consider how they can assist in changing the quality of food they provide – some are already responding to the public’s wishes – but also the food growers and processors. The latter are a particularly important link in the health chain as the large food production and food processing companies dominate the food supplies for the major supermarkets.

In the meantime, I can make a difference to my 11 year old daughter’s life by steering her (and me) towards better food choices and buying wisely when shopping.

One food producer that is innovating and making a positive difference is Twynham’s, one of Australia’s biggest primary producers. Twynams is willing to invest in better, healthier ways of growing food that will inevitably impact positively on our health – and make a better profit. Read about Twynham’s innovative farming an business practices using biological soil enhancing products instead of synthetic products. They’re looking for improved soil biology and structure, better trash cycling with more nutrients available to crops, more efficient water use, root growth, fewer pests and improved nutrition, and that means more money in the bank. Initial tests show higher yields than with synthetic products. Read about Twynham’s here.

By Christo Norden-Powers          Copyright 2007 Spandah Pty Ltd