What is your whale report?

A simple story with huge potential to create capacity (& improve engagement)!

I hadn’t been in Australia long when the then CEO of the company I was working for told her audience this story. It makes a couple of simple and very profound points with the potential to make a great impact on people, teams and businesses.

I am paraphrasing and also the story might also be apocryphal but its meaning is powerful.

In 1947, when she was still a Princess, the late Queen Elizabeth the second, travelled from the UK to South Africa on a state visit. She had expressed a desire to see whales.

Prior to her visit the SA authorities set up a process asking all coast guard stations to send a daily report on the number of whale sightings to a central point. The idea was to see where along the coast of SA the most frequent and numerous sightings were. The Princess’ itinerary could then be amended to include this area and she would have more chance of fulfilling her goal of sighting whales in the ocean.

Whether the Princess got to see the whales, I have no idea. What I do know is that Gail Kelly, the CEO, told the story that 50 years later the daily ‘whale report’ was still be collated.

She challenged everyone in the audience with the question:

‘What is your whale report?’

The messages are simple and very strong:

• What reports are you asking your people to complete with questionable if any value?

• How much time is this consuming, which could be redirected to high value work?

• Perhaps even more importantly, how much energy is it draining in your people?

• Equally, if you are completing one or more ‘whale reports’ why are you doing it? Have you raised it? Have you questioned and challenged it?

• If you and your team are going ‘through the motions’ with reports like this, where else is this happening? How much else is being done without thinking?

• What kind of culture is evidenced by people blindly following outdated and redundant instructions and thinking?

A simple story with powerful consequences and some high potential opportunities!