It’s Rocket Science! Another leadership lesson from a mission of Captain Hanks

Prefer to watch rather than read?  Click here to watch the video. (This one is much better on video)

Remember Apollo 13?  The time when Tom Hanks got together with Kevin Bacon and the other guy and tried to fly to the moon?  Then the spaceship went BANG! and they had to try to get back.

To save power, they had to move to a smaller area of the craft, which created an issue as the carbon dioxide filters weren’t designed for that situation.  Too much carbon dioxide in the air is not conducive to being alive, so the obvious solution was to take the one from the bigger area of the craft and use that.

Genuine Buy-In – the power of CAPI

Prefer to watch on video rather than read?  Click here, it’s 4 mins, with captions.

My work with organisations often involves getting groups together so they can see their work situation, make decisions on what needs to change and put these into action.    Which means at some point in the preparation, we are going to be asking “right, so who do we need to have in the room”?

That’s where I lean one of the brilliant concepts of Dr. Ichak Adizes, called CAPI.

51 – The magic number for ownership, accountability and engagement

Prefer to watch on video than read?  Just click here – 5 mins with captions.

Engagement, ownership, accountability…whatever you want to call it, we all want to see (and feel) more of it.

Like all things, half of the game is internal, and there’s a magic number that can help get us there.

Pretty Pictures

Let’s start with our standard managerial hierarchy…

…even the way it looks give us a certain sort of vibe.

Here’s a more modern way to draw it:

Looks a bit kumbaya with being in a circle and all, but taking out the cynicism, it looks a bit more like everyone’s involved. 

The Beach Ball – The brilliantly simple metaphor for getting reality on the table

Prefer to watch on video?  Just click here (3 mins with captions)

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein questioned whether there is such a thing as private language.  Can something that can only be understood by one person be considered to be real?

Beach Balls

Well…good news…we don’t need to figure that out. Instead, we can use the brilliant metaphor of the beach ball from Susan Scott, author of Fierce Conversations.

It goes like this – if I hold up this ball – what colour is it?  Blue and white.

A Simple Change for the Buy-In, Accountability and Agility You Want

Prefer to watch the video?  Just click here.  4 minutes, with captions.

Your people want more communication.  I know this because your latest staff survey had this as the second-biggest issue behind cross-functional work.

You want more buy-in and commitment.  You also want more accountability or ownership taken, and you want your team, your division, your organisation to be more adaptable, responsible, or dare I say it….that ‘a’ word.

The good news is there’s a simple step you can put in place that lays the foundation for this (not the panacea…but the foundation)

Be networked they cry!

If you’ve been alive and in organisations this century, you’re tired of being told that you need to go from this:

Will It Make The Car Go Faster? A Crucial Work Design Principle From Formula 1

Click here to watch this as a 5-minute video instead.
(It’s got captions)

There’s a lesson in the industry of Formula 1, by which I mean Grand Prix racing, either the most boring thing you’ve ever watched, or an amazing mix of technical skill, driver skill, and one huge political social gossip fest!

The Goal is Clear

There’s one goal in Formula 1 – to win the world championship.  Call that the vision.  From there, the breakdown is clear:

To win the world championship, you need to win more races.  You get the latest version of this after every race, it’s like your monthly report going to your governing body.  Looks like this:

How to make your organisation more adaptable WITH your hierarchy.

(Would you prefer to watch me explain this on video?  Just click here!)

This time we’re going into “fluid, flexible, task-based structures”.  Very fancy sounding words.

First, a quote.  This is from a KPMG report on the things that will change from COVID that was titled with great importance: “Our New Reality: Predictions after COVID-19”.

Remote work will break traditional management structures

As we shift from managing inputs to managing by outcomes, current organisational hierarchies won’t make sense. A shift to flatter and more fluid task-based structures will follow and require new management skills and changes to performance measurement and reward programs. Company culture will also need to be re-examined.

Hierarchies “won’t make sense”.  Come on!

3 Common Sense Org Design Principles to Bring Back from COVID Working

(If you’d like to check this out on video rather than read it – click here)

COVID working has seen some easily forgotten org design fundamentals come right to the surface. Here they are – don’t let heading back into the physical workplace see you lose the benefits of common sense ways of organising work.

Focus Until Done

The first one is focus until done.  We’ve seen this with remote working.  Before Covid, if your organisation is normal, you’ve had some sort of ‘flexible working’ thing happening for the last two years.  And it’s consisted mainly of reports and a small group with laptops somewhere, not much else.  This is not a competence issue.

What’s happened now?  Look at all the IT teams that were able to get most of their indoor workforce remote within a day or two!  They didn’t suddenly get 10 times more productive.  Instead, the organisation actually let them focus on this one thing until it was done before they went onto the next thing.

Circle Work: achieving cross-functional customer focus

A TEAM OF OWNERS

Ask any group of people to draw their ‘org chart’, and they’re going to draw something like this:

There is nothing wrong with this – it’s a useful diagram that shows managerial relationships – who is accountable for which teams.  This has value simply because if a given team is doing great, or not so great, it’s convenient to know who to talk to.  And we can have meetings of five teams by coordinating five calendars instead of forty.

Here’s the thing though – this visual representation becomes the dominant mental model for how we think about work.  Notice how it implies four separate people, only connected through one other who sits ‘over’ them.  It’s not a big leap from here to see how relationships of dominance and dependence can emerge, with the friendly version being the ‘caretaking’ manager, the not-so-nice version being the autocratic manager.  Either way felt ownership of the work is gathered in just the one person.  Not nice if you’re that person.

(Click here  for a pdf version of this post)

So here’s a change.  Draw your team like this….

…as a Circle, that gathers around the work of the team – it’s mission.  But notice a key feature – we still have a managerial leadership  role.  And we define that role very deliberately – as the role that takes accountability for the team delivering it’s mission.  So it has the authority to convene meetings, to name the conversation that needs to be had, and, when required, to make decisions if the team can’t naturally find a consensus that makes sense.  Read more…