Stairway to Seven

Colin Catney, Chief Operating Officer at National Museums NI.

My seven steps for business success

Colin Catney is Chief Operating Officer at National Museums NI, an organisation which operates four museum venues and serves as custodian to 1.4 million objects in Northern Ireland’s national collection. Using over 30 years of experience of organisational change and development – gained across multiple sectors including in the telecommunications, drinks manufacturing, broadcasting, textiles and management consultancy – Colin has worked within the Executive Leadership Team at National Museums NI to spearhead a programme of organisational change designed to build a more ambitious, relevant and resilient public museum service. The following seven steps to business success are based on the change journey that Colin has steered at National Museums NI in the past six years

1. VISION AND VALUES FIRST

Critical to business success is the expression of a clear organisational direction of travel – the ‘Vision’ – and the creation of a framework of ethics and behaviours that determine the culture and experience – the ‘Values’. Through this, everyone can be aligned to the organisation’s goals and culture. The secret? The Vision and Values must come to life in the organisation and permeate everything. Importantly, senior leaders must be the exemplars, referring often to the Vision and living and breathing the Values every day.

2. CREATE THE LINE OF SIGHT

Organisations spend a lot of time creating strategy, business plans, and performance management systems; but can fail to align these for employees. Creating line of sight from strategy to delivery enables individuals and teams to understand and constantly strive towards strategic progress. Success is setting everything that is done within this context. Through this, everyone can tangibly see their contribution, course correct if necessary and celebrate success on an ongoing basis.

3. BUILD YOUR LEADERSHIP BENCHSTRENGTH

The strength of leadership across an organisation is often the critical factor in success or failure. Leaders at all levels directly affect – positively or negatively –culture and performance. Understanding what is expected of leaders is a critical success factor. Openly expressing this and putting into place both learning programmes and performance measures on what is expected of each leader, aligns leadership competence and behaviours with organisations goals. To not do this is leaving leadership to chance.

4. SLOW IS SMOOTH, SMOOTH IS FAST

This saying is borrowed from the American Special Forces and I love it. The concept speaks to an organisation characterised as in control, together as one, resilient, able to deal with conflict and crises thoughtfully in a measured way. It speaks to sound collective judgement and a confidence in the future. It builds trust in the workforce and builds a positive reputation with stakeholders and customers. It is the antithesis of the ‘busy fool’. But, to create a culture characterised in this way takes time, consistency, courage and confident leadership.

5. WORK TO BUILD TRUST – EVERYDAY Trust is the essential ingredient in positive human relations. When it is there and tangible, then things get done and relations are good. When it does not exist or is eroded, then conflict rises and things can’t or don’t get done. For any organisation, building trust every day is essential for success. Leaders must be equipped to do this and must understand what being trustworthy looks and feels like. Failure to embed the building of trust into the organisation’s development plan can undermine success.

6. PEOPLE BUY IN TO WHAT THEY COCREATE

It always amazes and excites me when I see colleagues think and perform outside their immediate role. Create the right circumstances for people to get involved beyond the confines of their role and they will – and do so willingly. The organisation benefits from the knowledge brought and new perspectives gained, and individuals gain by the motivation felt in participating in something new, exciting, and important. It takes courage to create such a culture if it does not naturally exist but with courage comes reward – it’s a no brainer really.

7. DON’T LEAVE TEAMS TO CHANCE

We all work in teams. We structure organisations around teams. But how much structured team development do we put in place to help these teams reach genuine high performance? There are four areas a team – any team – needs to build together and constantly monitor and improve. They are: clarity on the team’s purpose; contracting on the team’s dynamics and ways of working; building together a positive team reputation; and managing and monitoring the team’s performance. If a team is consciously doing all of these and it is exemplified by strong team spirit, then that team is well on the way to high performance.

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