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.

Utilisation Obsession – why your organisation is in permanently clogged chaos

If you’d prefer to watch on video than read, click here!

A state of overload and chaos has become sadly normal in organisations.  Here’s the thing – it comes from a very natural condition – an obsession with utilisation.   I’ll explain…

These ideas originated from one of the all-time gurus – Eli Goldratt.

Way Basic Work System

To demonstrate, I’ll draw my favourite diagram that my long-time clients will recognise (with one change):

The Middle System – Why Cross-Functional Collaboration Doesn’t Happen And What To Do

This article also exists as a 5-minute video.  Click here to watch if you’d prefer that to reading.

We all want more cross-functional collaboration, whether you’re an executive wanting the areas to sort it amongst themselves, in the middle yourself trying to get work done with other areas, or on the frontline just wanting some consistent messages.

There’s a reason this is often so hard, and one I can give you right upfront – it’s because we can’t see it!  Let me explain….

The social system relationships in most workplaces

As I did in my article and video on the Disgruntled Masses, this piece relies on the Organic Systems Framework of Barry Oshry.  It’s simply great stuff…look into it.  You can watch him talk on YouTube too.

Parent or Partner? The deep reason behind getting KPIs to work

Prefer to watch on video?  Click here – 5 minutes, with captions.

‘We need to get KPIs sorted’ is a common refrain, which carries with it the assumption that it is the lack of these things that is constraining performance.

Unfortunately or fortunately…there’s deeper stuff going on that we need to be aware of if we want this sort of thing to work.  And if we’re not aware of it, sorting the KPIs will actually make things worse!

You’d know from your own experience that when the next initiative is introduced, including KPIs, the sensible response is to smile politely until it blows over, then get back to work.  This is a deep issue of ownership, and to understand it, we need to go deeper into working relationships.  And for this, we’ll use the work of Peter Block.

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:

Work Models You Need to Know Ep. 1 – The Four Managerial Roles of Ichak Adizes

Want to watch the video of this? Just click here!

Today’s article is the first in a new series called “Work Models You Need To Know”.  In this series I describe and summarise in each instalment one of the models that I find useful to help my clients understand certain issues that are in their organisation, and what to do about it.

This time, it’s the Four Managerial Roles, and it’s from Dr. Ichak Adizes, an organisational consulting legend who has been in the game for decades.

Dr. Ichak Adizes

Adizes is best known for the Corporate Lifecycle, a fantastic model on how enterprises come into existence, how they grow toward what he calls ‘Prime’, and then how they can decay and sometimes even die.  It looks like this:

The simple yet powerful meeting structure

You need to focus on today. You need to focus on tomorrow. You need engagement from your people to get both done.

Nothing here you don’t already know.  So….

Need a method? Just schedule these meetings. Things will be better.

Weekly: Optimisation meeting.

Get together to look at graphs that show performance according to customer experience, cost and sustainability. Resolve issues and monitor the effects of changes you have been making.

The question here: how do we make this show run as it was intended? Read more…

“Good Enough” Leading

The managing and leading game does not get easier. Or at least it appears that way, because it’s not as if with every blog, book and article (this one included!) that two previous ones are taken away as no longer relevant.

It’s like healthcare – no one wants the second-hand machine from 15 years ago attached to them, so it just keeps ratcheting up. Yet also like healthcare, there are certain foundations which hold true:

• Food – less of everything except vegetables
• You know that pies every lunch are not a sustainable diet
• Moving every day is better for you than not moving
• If you’re finding life hard, say so out loud to someone

Do this stuff and your health will move toward… ‘good enough’.

Another other area where the principle of ‘please just give me something to hang onto’ applies is being a parent. So, on that…Dr Psych Mom (Samantha Rodman) is a brilliant blogger on things that are ‘inner’, and her advice and thinking on being a parent has helped my wife and me on numerous occasions.

In particular, her post on Good Enough Parenting was not only valuable…it was a relief!

So bringing this introductory circle to a close, lets talk about what ‘good enough’ leading looks like:

1) Do you convene your team most weeks to look at and discuss ‘how are we doing, how are we feeling, what do we need to talk about’?

2) Do you convene the team for at least a half-day every quarter to discuss ‘where are we going, what’s the plan, how are things going overall, does anything need to change’?

3) Do you share with your team all the non-individual-person-specific information that you have about your team so they can take ownership of their work alongside you.  That is, no ‘manager poker’.

4) Do you make an effort to get to know your people beyond their employee number and position description (which means asking ‘how’s it going’ and actually listening, even when it’s awkward)?

5) Do you say ‘thank you’ or ‘that wasn’t what I was looking for, let’s figure out what happened’ when it’s needed (which is more than you think)?

6) Do you make sure that the work of the team is somehow visual so it can be seen and understood by all, as well as reminding people that they are part of something bigger?  (For example, a list of projects on the wall in priority order)

7) Do you ensure that the work you have promised that your team will deliver (whether it’s to your own manager, internal customers or external) is actually possible, and do you involve the team in this decision?

8) Do you make sure that the conversations required to allow progress are had, whether they be with individuals or as a group, even though they make you anxious and you stumble through them?

To paraphrase Dr. Rodman – if you do all of these things, well, I think you’re a good enough leader.

Who agrees with me?

Self-Management: A New Study?

A recent study compared a couple of different ways of organising a production environment.

Both groups had 40 employees.  The first group had seven types of roles and was divided into 14 subgroups, with coordination, integration and continuity of the work being the responsibility of management.

The second group coordinated itself.  They had the same roles as the first group, but they decided themselves who would rotate to what tasks and which shifts they would work.

Here’s the findings:

• Second group demonstrated a much higher standard of workingship – tidier workspace, hardware well maintained, whereas the first group was more….sloppy
• The second group spent 0.5% of their time on ‘non-productive ancillary work’, the first group 33% (yep!)
• The second group had 60% less absence from the workplace, be it sickness, accident or no reason at all.
• And in terms of production….the second group produced 50% more than the first.  50%!  Or to put it another way, the first group was at 78% of potential, the second at 95%.

What’s the study?

Well…I have to come clean.  By ‘recent’, I was more on a geological timescale.  The study was conducted in the 1950s.

Two hundred kilometres southwest, teenager John Lennon hadn’t even formed the Quarrymen, let alone the Beatles.

The production wasn’t software development.  It was coal mining.  In Durham, UK.  The work was getting the coal from long walls.  Fun stuff.

You can read about it in Gerrit Broekstra’s book Building High-Performance, High Trust Organizations.

You see, the results on this stuff are in – when people have some sort of control/autonomy/authority over their own work….things are better.  We don’t need further studies on this, and if you just ponder anything in your own work life where you’ve felt totally into it…I’m sure these conditions were there.

So, here’s some thoughts on what we’re seeing here, and in similar studies and examples of self-managing enterprises: Read more…