Brian MacNeice

110: Brian MacNeice: My future life wouldn’t make a difference

Intro Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

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Jim Rembach:    Okay Fast Leader Legion, today I’m excited because I have somebody on the show today that I think is going to give us a global perspective on high performing organizations. Brian McNiece was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. As a proud Irishman he enjoyed a great childhood being part of a large extended family. He loved nothing more than a big family get-together. Growing up Brian could always be found on the field but he realized that he was never going to be a professional sportsman so he started studying how teens became high-performing. Although Brian still does carry a passion for sport, he is involved in professional sport in both rugby union and cricket. He is a semi-professional rugby referee in European and international competitions.

Also he recently stepped down after eight years as a national team selector for the Irish cricket team but Brian’s primary degree is in computer science a fact that amuses his three kids when they see him struggle with modern technologies that they are totally comfortable with. His professional career has seen him work in a ride variety of industry sectors as an advisor to senior management teams. Brian is an expert in organizational performance and high-performing teams. He advises leading Irish and international clients on driving improvements in the performance focus and culture of their business. 

Brian is also the author of the book, Powerhouse, insider accounts into the world’s top performance organizations. Brian still lives in Dublin with his wife Miriam and their three children, all boys, Charlie 16, Jack 15 and Dan 9. Brian McNiece, are you ready to help us get over the hump? 

Brian McNiece:    Jim, I’m going to do my very best. Good afternoon to all your podcast listeners. 

Jim Rembach:    I appreciate that Brian. Now I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better? 

Brian McNiece:    My current passion is all about high performance particularly high performance in a group context whether it’s to do with teams on organization. I’m absolutely fascinated about what drives performance in a group context? How do you go about understanding ** key dynamics of high-performance and how do you go about helping leaders cultivate high-performing teams in their organizations whether they’re in sports, in business whatever that you might find. 

Jim Rembach:    In the book you talk about 12 different principles that guide these high-performance organizations and I want to get into all 12 because—that’s why people need to get the book because having these case studies and going into depth in all these is really important to understand. If you were to look at these 12 principles, you can’t that all of them have equal weight even though they’re interrelated and are important, but can you say that there’s one maybe even two that kind of stands out, these without a doubt you have to be absolutely expert at what, what would they be?

Brian McNiece:    I would group them into kind of three different categories. I think—we’ve identified 12 characteristics that we found are common across all the case studies that we looked at and I think it’s important to understand that the case studies that we looked we deliberately spread the net very wide. We went to Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. We went to Finland to study the state school education system. We went Kirov Valley in Russia to look at that. We went to South West Airlines in Texas to have a look at what they did, the US Marines, doctors without borders, so it was very diverse both in terms of geography and also in terms of what people did. And what was really interesting to us was those 12 characteristics that we’ve identified in the book they repeated themselves time and time again albeit in very different ways in each of the institutions that we looked at but the same patterns were emerging over and over again. So, I would say it’s pretty hard to pick any of the 12 and drop them in terms of reports. But I would almost categorize them into three different things. I think there are characteristics that go about defining a really clear sense of purpose for an organization or team. So, without a clear sense of purpose it’s really hard to get people aligned and focused about where you want to go.

The second thing is you need to have really effective processes in place to manage the day-to-day and enough performance pressure to make people perform at their best or close to their best. So, I think you’ve got to have those dynamics in play and there’s about four or five different characteristics that talk to that that we’ve identified. And then the final thing is about people stuff, you’ve got to have the right behaviors, the right level of engagement, and the right level of feedback across your people to really sustain performance over the long term. So, I would say break it down into those three categories, will strong sense of purpose, really efficient process to help drive performance and performance pressure and then people principles that are really effective in helping sustain performance in the long term.

Jim Rembach:     Thanks for sharing that. What you just described, I’m kind of looking at within the book and that’s called a Powerhouse Performance model but there was one thing that you’re missing, you want to add that?

Brian McNiece:     You tell me what I’m missing and then I’ll talk to your listeners about. 

Jim Rembach:     That’s the planning piece.

Brian McNiece:     Yeah, sure. I think that comes in to the purpose. For me the planning piece is part of setting a real clear sense of purpose for the organization. We’ve fundamentally believe that ambition is one of the key drivers, like the starting point of high-performance. We deliberately started the book with the story of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which is the only corporate entity to ever have won the Nobel Peace prize and the reason that it did is because its founder a guy called Professor Muhammad Yunus and Economics professor based in Bangladesh wanted to try and figure out how can I eradicate poverty in my country in a country that stricken with poverty. 

And so he came up with the whole idea of Micro-lending, lending very small amounts of money to people below the poverty line and he an ambition to create a museum of poverty, in other words poverty would be a thing of the past and it was using that sense of ambition it led to a whole pile of innovative ways of approaching and tackling the issue of credit to people below the poverty line, people with no assets to underwrite the credits and has transformed the lives of so many people in Bangladesh, which is why Professor Yunus and the organization has won the Nobel Prize. Part of that planning piece is, first of all clear sense of ambition, what are we trying to do and something that provides direction and stretch and purpose and inspiration to the population of people. But then have a real clear understanding as to how we’re going to get there, what are the most important things we’ve got to do right now to help us get on the way and that’s where the planning piece comes in, and you need both.  

Jim Rembach:    That was very helpful because obviously then what I missed in the interpretation in what you are talking about is that it was the priorities that was missing. 

Brian McNiece:    That’s the next piece of the of the equation, so fine and well, as far as purpose is concerned it’s all fine and well having ambition and aiming for the stars as it were because that helps drive innovation and lots of other stuff that comes out of that. The next thing is you have to have real clear focus. You need to be really clearly focused on what matters most in terms of our success in business** what are the two or three things that matter more than anything else? And how do we become ** to those two or three things? How do we make sure everybody else is aligned around those? And how do we set a clear set of priorities right now, today for the next short period of time that will help us move the bar in performance on those two or three things that matter? And that’s something that’s going to be changing all the time what’s not changing is  you need to make sure that all your people are completely aligned at any point in time to what’s going to help deliver performance and capability improvement across the organization are achieved and that’s where the priority piece comes in. Very often we find that organizations lose that sense of priority and they have people that’s misaligned because they’re not clear on what the key priorities right now are that are going to help us drive towards that kind of ambitious target of where we’re trying to head to in the medium-term. 

Well to me it seems like this really—and even the way that you put this powerhouse performance model together you have the plan essentially as the roof if you think about it as a house you can visualize this and your priorities come underneath that and then your people and process are the foundational components, at least that’s the way that I’m seeing it and interpreting it. So, when you start thinking about this as a house model and through each particular case study you populated this powerhouse model with each of the details and insight that you found within those and one thing I want to focus on is you talked about innovation. If you start thinking about a particular powerhouse performance model and getting to be very good on execution, do you run the risk of herding your ability to innovate? 

Yes. This is the really critical points that were making. You’re right we’ve deliberately put the powerhouse model together almost as a house, four different component parts to it, the plan piece, the priorities piece, the people piece and the process piece, and you’ve correctly identified the people and processed offer are kind of foundation principles that are enablers, the plan and the priorities are the kind of top end of the house if you like. But the really important insight that we’ve learned from the case studies and also from the work that we do with our clients is that you’ve got to work in and across those four pillars at the same time. It’s not enough to say, Okay, I tell you what we’re going to do we’re going to focus on our plan for now let’s get our fund (10:42 inaudible)and then we will address all the other stuff later. You’ve got to work across all four at the same time. And part of the reason that that’s important is exactly the point that you’ve just made, if you overly focus on one to the detriment of the others, then you could be missing a trick in the case that you highlighted, you could be stifling innovation because your focus is on something else and you’re not enabling people to be innovative in terms of solving problems but how do we get better today but we really need to be better act in order to continue to be high performing. So, it’s important that you’re working across the four pillars of the powerhouse model at the same time and that becomes an organizational capability. Part of what we would do with the leadership teams that we work with is we really get them to understand how we get better at juggling these four pillars in order to really drive for better performance, sustained long-term performance within our environment. 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, that’s very interesting because for me when you start thinking about the whole—let’s think about the way that we work as individuals there’s no way we can focus on four things at one time it’s impossible, we say we can do it but it’s not the way we work we’re not wired that way. So, when you think about an organization all they are is a collective of people. So, if I have to juggle all four things, how are these organizations doing that?

Brian McNiece:    First of all, if you think about it in this context, first of all you’ve got a clear sense of direction as to where we’re trying to go and that’s something that’s not going to change week-by-week, quarter-by-quarter. You’re setting an ambition target if you like for the organization that as I said before provides direction, stretch, purpose and inspiration, so that’s the kind of the true north if you like us to where we’re heading. But those change over time though is the context within which were operating changes all the time so what we’re not changing our true north looks like we are reacting to and interpreting our own individual performance and the performance of those around us our competitors, the market and were flexing all the time to make sure that our current response to how we continue to aim towards the target that we’re aiming for and is adequate fir for purpose. And so the role of the leaders are to make it clear, where are we heading? What’s the plan to get there? What does that mean you got to be focused on right now? How do we ensure that the behaviors and the ways of working and the processes are efficient to help us and enable you to do that job really well. And it’s the ones that really get that and have that working as a kind of well-oiled engine, they are the high-performing, they’re the ensuring high-performing organizations that we’ve studied and we’ve worked with as well. 

Jim Rembach:    So, I can only imagine going and traveling the world and learning about these organizations as well as your exposure to sport that you probably could sit here and just talk to us all day about inspiring things. One of the things that we use on the show are quotes. And we love to share them because they can do a lot of that inspiring and true north pointing as you had mentioned, is there a quote or two that you can share that helps you? 

Brian McNiece:    I give you two on the top of my head that I really like and that we came across in the research for the book. One we came across in a couple different contexts and when I was with the St. Louis Cardinals and when I was with the Mayo Clinic in both organizations executive said to me, “The name in front of the jersey is more important than name on the back of the jersey.” What they’re really saying to me was we work collectively as a unit to deliver high-performance, we don’t have any individual stars. In fact, if anybody was working here in this environment who thinks that they are more important than the organization itself then we’ve got a cultural misfit. It was amazing when I reflected on that and I looked at all the examples both of the ones that we studied for the book and others that I lean on, I thought that is the same in all the high-performing examples that I look at. It’s not to say you don’t have great people, great individual people there you do, but they work as part of a collective unit to try to deliver something. So, for me that’s one great quote, name in front of the jersey more important than the name on the back. Second one I give you we got when we went to visit the U.S. Marines in Parris Island, “Today’s heroism translates to become tomorrow’s expectations” in other words what is standard performance right now is going to in the future become the kind of baseline for performance and we’ve always got to improve, we can never get complacent. In fact, the organization that gets complacent, the things we’ve crafted, the things we’ve got is, is the one that’s going to get past before they even know it happens. And so that’s the second one that I really like the notion that we’re always trying to improve, we could always be better. 

Jim Rembach:    I love them both and thanks for sharing. That second one for me stands out a lot of ways and even in being a parent. You’re trying to share with your kids and try to teach them the whole resiliency as well how do you actually achieve and complacency is for the loser that’s essentially the way I interpret what you said. 

Brian McNiece:    Yes. So the biggest danger you have and one of the criteria we apply to the organizations that we studied was they have to be high performing for a long period of time, generation after generation. And the reason for that is because we get that injuring high performance is defined by being at the top end of your peer group for decades not for a point in time. And there’s lots of examples of organizations that had been there for a point in time and then suddenly something has happened. Primarily, what generally happens is they get complacent, they assumed that the success that they’re enjoying right now is going to continue and that some of the fundamentals that they had to get them successful in the first instance they dispensed with and ignore and they get complacent, so that’s the really important principle. I have this conversation with my kids all the time, I’ve got teenage kids and it’s really, really hard to get them to understand this notion of hard work, fundamentally it’s all about hard work. 

Jim Rembach:    It is. And you’ll see it is a learned behavior. But it’s funny though I think we’re born with it because we need in order to survive but then we have our parents take over if you’re fortunate enough and then we kind of lose it and we have to regain it in order for us to succeed as adults. 

Brian McNiece:    Yeah, exactly. An organizational culture is exactly the same. You’ve got to work hard at making sure that you’re driving for a continued success and when you enjoy success you’ve got to recommit to that and say, Okay, what do we now need to do in order to stay where we are?

Jim Rembach:    I’m sure on the flip side of the spectrum going through and studying and analyzing and even having clients that are wanting to achieve we see the downside of ones that fail they don’t have the 12 principles, can’t have a well-oiled machine and build our powerhouse and it happens for us as individuals too. And on the show we talk about getting over the hump, where we didn’t have some of the things in place and we’d learn lessons and hopefully we learn to take a better path as a result. Is there a story that you can share when you had to get over the hump? 

Brian McNiece:    I would say there’s probably several but one of the humps I had to get over—I started out my career working in large consultancy practices and advisory business, and so I work in a bit for that kind of environment. And I got to a point where I was looking at the impact of the work that I was doing—we were hired to do lots of work for organizations that wanted the name of the organization attached to the piece of work not necessarily that interested in actually implementing what was being recommended, I just get really frustrated with that and I suppose what you might call an epiphany moment where I said, Is this my future? Is this what I really want to do? Do I want to go and start working for organizations that are really committed to trying to be the best they can be and are genuinely bought into the notion of if they want me to come and advise them and help them that we can work in partnership to help deliver that and so that the work I was doing setting a real impact as opposed to a report that might sit on the shelves that has a nice name or imagine everybody gets really comfortable because of that but doesn’t really leave to action our change. So. I suppose that was probably the biggest epiphany moment that I had and it was why it together with my business partner and co-author James Bowen why we set up the business that we did because we just really wanted to make a difference with client work that we did and I was worried that that was not going to be the case if I stayed where I was. 

Jim Rembach:    Take us to a time where you actually remember specifics around when that kind of hit of hit you. 

Brian McNiece:    So, I was working on a project for a semi-state organization based in Ireland and they were looking for a report on a strategic issue but we almost got instructed before the thing started that, look there’s a right answer here and so we need to make sure that this report comes up with this right answer and it’s going back up an argument that we’re trying to kind of position. I remember thinking at the time, well, if you already know the answer, why are you paying us to write a report to give you the answer. Why don’t you just get on and lead yourself and save all—one, save the hassle and time and money associated with this and the security of having a respected big four consultancy practice put their name to report that comes with the same recommendation that you already have concluded. So, it kind of just got me questioning, well there’s got to be more to this advisory work that I’m doing this. So, that was probably one of the biggest kind of aha moments, if you want to call that for me personally on a professional basis. 

Jim Rembach:    When we start thinking about fulfillment, when we start thinking about growth, when we start thinking about well-being knowing that we’ve made a difference is a critical component and you weren’t. 

Brian McNiece:    Yeah. Well, I was worried what my future life is going to be writing a whole bunch of stuff that wasn’t going to make any difference at all. So, I committed in that moment to say, Okay, forget this let’s go and work with people where I can genuinely make a difference. I had in chance my business partner had somebody who’s very like-minded in that respect and so we set up a practice on that basis and thankfully 8 years later we stuck to that principle, I think if you talk to any of the clients that we work with they’ll say part of the reason that they hire us is because we’re committed to their success and that input that we have has an impact in terms of their business performance. So I can’t ask for any more than that I feel completely satisfied that we’re living life with a sense of purpose and meaning to the work that we’re doing.

Jim Rembach:    Yeah, definitely finding those clients that want that no complacency role, right?

Brian McNiece:    Yeah, absolutely. We have the benefit of almost screening our clients in the same way that they might screen us before they hire us. We want to work with clients that are absolutely committed to delivering better performance and who buy into that. Once we get that it’s a great experience and have some great client relationships as a consequence of that. 

Jim Rembach:    Without a doubt, promoting the book, with a consulting work, three teenage boys all the work that you’re doing and sport trying to further the activities and the performance in those areas, you got a lot of things going on and we didn’t even talk about your wife I’m sure you spend time with her too I hope. 

Brian McNiece:    Yeah, yeah, yeah—

Jim Rembach:    What are your some of your goals?

Brian McNiece:    I suppose you’re right absolutely, there’s an awful lot of different things going on and fundamentally—you started your introduction to me based on some family stuff and for me family is number one. Mariam my wife and three boys are my absolute priority, so everything I do is to try and make sure that they have the right guidance in terms of bringing up the boys and we’ve got a good healthy respect for family life. Thereafter I fill it up with all the other stuff and I think part of what I want is Miriam and the boys to be proud of me for is that there’s a whole bunch of stuff that I’ve achieved over the course of my career in life not just in business but outside of business as well and that passes off onto them as well and that they use that as inspiration for what they might achieve in their lives too. 

Jim Rembach:    And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

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Jim Rembach:    Alright here we go Fast Leader Legion listeners it’s time for the Hump day Hoedown. Okay, Brian, the Hump Day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Brian McNiece are you ready to hoedown? 

Brian McNiece:    I’m ready, yeah, let’s go. 

Jim Rembach:    What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Brian McNiece:    Oh, okay, I would say nothing. And I would say that to all of the leaders that listening to this podcast, there is absolutely nothing that is holding you back from being a better leader today. There is no reason that you can’t commit to being a better leader. Just commit to it and get on with it. That would be my message. 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Brian McNiece:    I would say, be really authentic and value everyone that is involved in your organization, get to know them, have real conversations with them, really engage with them. And I describe engagement as a contact sports so get out of your office get up tight, close and personal with as many people in your organization as possible and provide real authentic leadership.

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Brian McNiece:    I would say ambition and having the drive if you like to try and achieve something and then thinking about how I am going to achieve that. Starting out with something that I think—for example writing this book—when decide to write this book we were like, we never write a book before is this something we can do? Look, let’s commit this and we’ll figure out how we go about doing this. So, I would say ambition. 

Jim Rembach:    What do you feel is one of the best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Brian McNiece:    Stubbornness, not taking no for an answer. Just keep going if you hit a road block keep going, try and get this, get over it get past whatever it takes. 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners, it could be from any genre, and of course we’re going to put a link to Powerhouse on the show notes page as well. 

Brian McNiece:    After Powerhouse the second book that I would recommend, I would go for a book called, The Goldmine Effect by a guy called Rasmus Ankersen. It’s kind of a very similar genre to ours, a lot of his thinking alliance to our thinking and that’s book that I really liked. 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going too fastleader.net/Brian McNiece. Okay, Brian this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you have been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything you can only choose one, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Brian McNiece:    Okay, so this goes back to something that we talked about earlier I would say just absolutely commit to an ethic of hard work and nothing replaces it. The most successful people that I’ve ever come across they all share a hard-working gene so commit to hard work ethic that will be it. 

Jim Rembach:    Brian it was an honor to spend time with you today can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you. 

Brian McNiece:    Yeah, Jim absolutely. First of all thanks very much for having us on. Secondly, you can find us—so the details on the book you’ll find on at the performancepowerhouse.com or you can find the details about our consulting practice at kotinospartners.com or if you look up on Twitter or LinkedIn for Brian McNiece, Kotinos partners, face he knows partners James Bowen, you’ll find us so just reach out to us and the more people that we chat is better were always fascinated to hear stories about high performance and people who are interested in sharing our focus and our passion for high-performance. 

Jim Rembach:    Brian McNiece, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

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