Day 611: House Painting (or why I should be working on my final presentation but I'm not)

Today I'm painting the house. We've been working away at repainting it since last summer. We did subcontract out a big portion of it, but there are a lot of sections that need repair or other fixes before even putting a brush to it. Plus being a heritage house (1908) there are a lot of features that, while charming, do require a lot more time and attention to not ruin. So it's a slow process. We want to do it right (and not break the bank) and there's something worthwhile in doing it yourself. At the end, hopefully we'll be able to look at it and say something like "damn that's a fine looking house."

Yet I'm three-ish weeks away from my final two presentations for my MBB program, and I've barely started. I should be using the entire day to work on them. I know this is one of my weaknesses - I like to have 90% of the solution/story/idea done in my head before I put pen to paper (brush to wood?).

I know it's not the best way to do these things, and I know it drives some people nuts. But here I am painting instead of sitting at a computer screen drawing a blank at what to type. I'm hoping (or betting) that the idea will come to me while working on something completely removed from the topics of my presentations.

Or am I just procrastinating? I've always worked like this on things where I need to be creative. If it's straight-forward items, like updating a document or analysis, no problem. Heck, if it's going for a 20k run up a mountain, bring it on, the creative side of my brain isn't needed. But for some reason when trying to be... clever? creative? I find I take a loooong time. I get it done, but usually right at the last minute. It's like the right-side of my brain needs to be under some pressure, some time-bounded stress to perform. I like it when something clicks together and the story presents itself, almost like magic.

I found this graphic from Mercedes-Benz that seems to resonate with me:

While I get some enjoyment out of the right-brain activities, quite a lot in some cases, a deadline does not motivate me any more than the activity itself. In fact, I'd feel pretty confident in saying that a deadline probably makes me want to drag my heels more than usual. 

So back to painting, while I wait for that magic moment when I see the story present itself.

AMac

Day 559: So close! Intern days done!

Yesterday was a BIG day for me as I finally completed the last required internship day for my MBB program! I spent two days at a local-turned-national retailer, working on a supply chain challenge, followed by one day at a regional food producer starting a lean assessment. And while I'm thrilled to be done this part of the program, I know I still have projects outstanding - some of which I'm not too worried or stressed about but one that is a BIG project for me and I'm going to have to make sure I git'er'done on time. Tick tock tick tock....

But back to these last two companies where I spent these days - I wanted to share an interesting observation. The first company, I'll call them Company A, had been on their lean journey a few years now. The second, Company B, hadn't even heard of "lean" or the concept of continuous improvement. Company A had a very clear problem to solve - they knew what they needed to address, perhaps not how. Company B didn't know where they were going, or even what was going on right now - they didn't even know what problems existed to be solved. Company A had staff who were motivated to solve the challenge, and who worked openly, honestly and together to get through to a solution. Company B was full of whispered hallway conversations, mistrust and fear. Company A knew their vision very clearly. Company B - no one knew one existed or was written down anywhere.

As I reflect back on the vast differences between these two companies, I am amazed at how far Company A moved the "culture needle" in a few short years, and while I think myself an optimistic person, I wonder if Company B isn't ready for real change, you know, the kind of change that requires an honest look in the mirror (so to speak).

In all my visits to all these various companies, there are many similar themes - we want to get better, we want to improve, we need to improve... our people are important, our customers are important, our shareholders are important... 

But the difference I see in those that do improve compared to those that don't is in the leadership of the organization - having the vision to see where to steer the ship, the courage to let go of control and trust their people, and the humility to understand that it's not about them (time to check the ego at the door).

AMac

Day 521: Easier to Coach than to Learn?

One of the things I do in my job is coaching. I coach people in different ways to accomplish different things - from visual management and organization to personal development and everything in between. One recent session was about helping people focus on how to manage upwards. It was in the context of the Gallup 12 - a set of twelve questions used to assess employee engagement (I wrote about it before, here). I asked everyone to look at the twelve questions and think about which ones were truly the responsibility of the organization and which had the potential for influence and action by the employee - that is, put effort where you have the ability to affect the outcome.

After the session, I decided to do the same exercise myself. And I was pretty surprised to see that in a lot of areas, I was doing a terrible job of actually taking action. Why was that? I knew the philosophy, the theory, the how-to, yet wasn't even doing it myself. Was it time or lack thereof? I don't think so. Was it desire or perceived need? This might be closer to the truth. 

It's funny how sometimes we don't take our own best advice. I live near a major hospital and am still baffled when I see doctors or nurses outside smoking. You'd think they would be leading by example, or at least doing right by themselves based on their knowledge and experience. I spend so much time and energy trying to grow or shape my career, my skills, but I completely missed this aspect of it - that for as much as I think I am doing a good job as a coach to those I coach, I am completely far less effective at coaching myself. 

It may be the hazard of the job. 

AMac

Day 493: When "CI" means "Control and Influence"

I am just back from Edmonton, after a three day White Belt kaizen session with another of our field service groups. This session was a bit unique in that this group was able to determine their own project instead of having a sponsor prepare a project for them. Lots of interesting ideas came up, but many of them involved people who were not in the room, not on the project team. In fact most of the ideas started out with "How about that process done in Toronto?" or "Maybe we can look at how we work with those guys in Burnaby?"

These were areas they had very little control over - half of their project time would have been spent trying to influence decision makers thousands of kilometres away. 

While interesting ideas, I wanted to see what the team could accomplish there and then. We went to gemba - in this case the warehouse and the field tech's truck - and looked. What wasn't working here? What wasn't self-guiding, self-explaining? What should this area look like? What was difficult? Unsafe?

So I let them in on a little secret - sometimes the "CI" in "continuous improvement" really means control and influence.

Deciding on what improvement to make, and at what level, success will depend on both: your ability to affect change because you control the process - you are the decision-maker; and where you don't control the process, your ability to influence those who do.

So with their new version of "CI" in their kaizen tool box, standing in front of a pile'o'stuff that made no sense to them, the light bulb went on. 

"We can fix this" they said.

And so they did. 

After a whole lot of 5S, they saw the end result and how the new standard made sense for them. More importantly, they saw how they owned this new standard - no one from any of the other offices had any real control over their solution. As long as it worked for them and the type of work they did at this location, it was valuable to this team. Even better, the new standard would act as an influence on the other locations who were doing similar work.

Best of all, the team could see the logical next steps - which projects to tackle next, which additional improvements could be made - all focused on the areas in which they had the greatest degree of control. 

AMac

Day 479: The Full-Circle Effect

Last week, I was lucky enough to participate - as a presenter - at the Burnaby Board of Trade's Green Talks! event. Five minutes on any topic about the greening of our business. I chose to talk about the major challenges we had in getting employees to care about waste sorting, about their commute, about the energy use at our facility. But I also showed how we slowly changed that mindset, and how after three years, the organization had achieved some impressive results. I talked about the need for branding, guerrilla marketing (quick'n'dirty/cheap & fast/funny), and communication. This was after all a change we were asking of our employees and we needed to do a good, no - great - job in communicating why we were making this change. 

Which is more effective?

A company-wide email stating something like "Effective immediately, all employees will sort their organics into the green bins in the lunchrooms" with the email printed and taped above the bins.

OR

The new green bins, each bin adorned with distinctive, highly visual posters and labels, with the company's green mascot clearly shown, and a real live friendly person standing there explaining how and why we will sort our organics to prevent them from going to the landfill, and who gives you a lollipop as a reward for listening and sorting.

(Yes, we really did this.)

Seems pretty obvious I think. If you really want people to understand the need for a change, you have to talk to them about it. One of the building blocks of Training Within Industry (TWI) is called Job Relations (JR), and one of the core principles of JR is that you tell people in advance about changes that will affect them.

Seems pretty simple right? So why are people so surprised when the company-wide emails don't drive effective change? Why do organizations keep doing it and expecting results? Isn't that the definition of insanity?

I think it's because sending an email is EASY. Putting in some effort to (1) lay the foundation for the change, (2) talk to people about the change, (3) answer their questions about the change, (4) encourage the right behaviour with praise/reward isn't hard, but it's not as easy as sending an email. I'm pretty glad that I work with people who are willing to put in the effort to do it right. So much so that we put it on our wall.

So from being able to show off our sustainability successes at this event, and being really proud of all that we had accomplished in a few short years, less than a week later I turn around and have my doctor (my respirologist) tell me that I have developed pollution-triggered asthma. That's right. All my years of running, triathlon, cycling, swimming, skating, all those activities and accomplishments didn't make much difference - the air I was breathing on a daily basis was causing my lungs to constrict and would have eventually turned into COPD if I hadn't pushed to have it checked when I did.

The irony of this whole situation isn't lost on me. 

I'm not certain what it means - for me - yet. But I'll figure that out.

AMac

Day 461: Is it about trust?

I like to try and keep my brain thinking thinking thinking, so I often will grab a book or magazine from my bookshelf - at random - and read an article or snippet, looking for a phrase or word or concept to spark something. So it was coincidence that I grabbed a book full of articles from the mid to late 90s espousing how the Internet was going to change ev-er-y-thing ("Creating Value in the Network Economy", Don Tapscott, Ed.).

The articles were well written, and quite interesting to read, being almost 20 years after initial publication. Some were bang on, and some, well.... some still hadn't come to fruition. One of these articles was about the Virtual Organization and Trust (Charles Handy, auth.), looking at what the new millennium would need to make the virtual organization a reality.

Wait a minute - lots of companies have people that telecommute, work remotely, work in completely different time zones and locales. Sure, but lots of companies DON'T. Why?

This article suggested it was about trust - and tried to outline what the author suggested were the seven rules of trust:

1: Trust is not blind
2: Trust need boundaries
3: Trust demands learning
4: Trust is tough
5: Trust needs bonding
6: Trust needs touch
7: Trust requires leaders

Now I'm not here to write about telecommuting, remote working and the virtual organization, specifically. I'm stating that I think that the seven rules of trust apply to all organizations - virtual or bricks'n'mortar. I see the effects of high-trust and low-trust environments in most organizations I visit, and sometimes both in one organization. I bet if you stop and reflect on your organization, you might as well. So let's take a deeper look at trust.

Let's look at the first one: trust is not blind.

How many of us work in an organization large enough or undergoing so much change that we don't know some of our fellow co-workers? Quite a few I bet. But hopefully we know the people we work with on a daily, regular basis. And once we get to know a new person, understand their role in the organization, we start to develop some degree of trust which hopefully grows over time. The organization I work for has a sister firm just south of us, which for a long time was seen as a black box of unknown-ness. We didn't know them, so we didn't really trust them. So after reaching out to my counterpart in that firm (about a specific issue) and establishing a basic relationship, we have been able to increase the level of trust and co-operation between us, between our teams. 

So I guess I'd agree with the premise that unless you can "see" the individual, it's pretty tough to just give over any level of trust to that person, and by extension their organization. So how does this apply to people we must trust in order to be successful? Like how we work with our supply chain partners? We have to develop some trust with those partners, who we don't usually see every day, we might only see them a few times a year.

Then there's rule 6: trust needs touch.

Touch doesn't need to be constant either - but frequent enough to be effective at keeping us out of the dark. The touch points also need to reinforce the trust, the relationship, and I think also the shared vision. It's a chance to ensure everyone is rowing at the same speed, the same cadence, and hopefully that we are all rowing for the same purpose or in the same direction. This one I like.

How about rule 2: trust needs boundaries.

I like this one - set clear boundaries for expected results, expected performance, then let people get on with it. Trust them enough to believe that they will perform within your boundaries. I think this is really important for creative work like design, problem solving, product innovation. Freedom within boundaries, particularly for self-contained work, lets people have some control over the way they work. If I see you trusting me, heck, I might even trust you... a bit... ok more than before....

I think my favourite is rule 7: trust requires leaders.

The article I referenced above suggests that many leaders are required - at different times and different levels - for a group or organization to be successful at achieving a goal. The author suggests that it is not possible for "... all the leadership requirements [to] be discharged by one person, no matter how great or how good." I want my leaders to be around when needed, to get out of the way when not needed, but to also help keep all of us accountable to each other and the organization. I trust my peers and cohorts when I know they are also being led, that the team is aligned and working towards the same goal, even if we contribute in different ways. 

What stuck with me is that it's for all of us to play the role of leader sometimes. It can't just be one person. But this only works if we all have the same shared vision. Oh, and remember that we are entrusted to take good care of it.

Day 440: What does it mean to be an expert?

Expert
def. someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain (Wikipedia).

Many people I have spoken with about my Master Black Belt program have said or asked something along the lines of "so you're the expert then?" And most times, I say "nah, I'm still learning, still have my training wheels on." But with only a few more months left in this program, I had to start having a conversation with myself about being the expert.

So, let's say you have decided that today is the day that you are now a real expert(tm) at something. Yo-yo tricks. Dog whispering. Cardiac bypass surgery. Lean management. Whatever it may be. You might even get it put on a business card. Maybe a t-shirt. Bumper sticker? Cool.

So I have a few questions for you, if that's ok? Humour me.
1: What makes you an expert? How did you know?
Expertise is often externally validated, such as a designation or certification, but sometimes it's about the experience under the belt (no pun intended - I think?). Experience in making good decisions or maybe experience in performing a specific task. Similar to mastery, but I think, more focused. More specific. 

I started coaching U12 flag football this spring, along with 4 other coaches. Practices have a structure, similar to those in other sports: warm-up; skills and drills; practice/play; cool-down. While I am no expert in the game, I have a sufficient level of skill and knowledge to contribute to most of the parts of the practice. However, where I was able to add a LOT more value to the group was in the warm-up and skills and drills - apparently over 20 years of athletics in a wide variety of sports (and dealing with all those sports injuries I suppose) has given me a level of expertise in how to move. Do a lunge like this, not that, and here's why. Load your legs for a sprint start like this, not that, and here's why. 

2: What changes now? I assume that you still put your pants on the same way - one leg at a time - so some cool expert pants-putting-on contraption or skill aside, what changes now that you are deemed an expert?

I guess that what changes is... me. I don't know if I would ever consider myself an expert at anything as there is always something more to learn, some additional skill or aptitude to further develop. But that doesn't mean that I don't have more education or experience than some. In the grand scheme of things, I'm still somewhere on the big bell curve of learning - sometimes on the leading edge, sometimes on the tailing one.

Simply put, being deemed an expert is a contextual designation. It depends who you are being compared against. Compared to my 11 year old daughter, I am a math expert. Compared to my 4th year math prof at uni, I am at a child's level of mathematics. So what changes? I guess I get measured differently - it's a different metric now.

3: Will you use your powers for good or evil? Since you have a choice here, are you going to help others by providing your expertise or are you going to hoard it all, meting it out only when it suits you?
Only for evil. Just kidding. :-)

AMac