Day 355: When a Standard isn't the Standard

Yesterday, I wrapped up a three day Whitebelt training and kaizen session, focused on our field services group, at our Toronto office. The group was an interesting mix of field technicians, project managers, service engineers, and most of the participants had to travel from their home or regional offices/work sites for this session. This group rarely got together on the phone let alone in the same room. 

They were a lively bunch, with a strong "git 'er done" attitude. After learning about value, waste, flow, 5S, fishbone/root cause analyses, RACI matrices, value stream mapping and value graphs, they went off on their way, looking for the gold, the opportunities to help improve their work and ultimately the outcomes for their customers.

Three days of searching, stumbling, spinning wheels, gaining traction, and moving forward, they reported out their findings. Lots of low hanging fruit, some really clever ideas, and some contentious ones. Contentious?  Whaaaa?

Yes - contentious because their investigations revealed that a previously developed standard was not being followed. Senior management had made it very clear that the standard was to be adhered to, yet reality showed that it rarely was.

So what happened? Why did the previous standard fail? People generally want to do a good job, so when they don't do some task a certain way, or use a certain tool it's because they either a: don't know how to do the task/how to use the tool, or b: they don't want to do so. This was a case of the latter - no one did the task, followed the standard, because it was perceived to be a big fat case of over-processing. They all wanted to do the right thing, but they also couldn't reconcile the process standard as prescribed with what was best for the company and ultimately the customer.

I can only imagine how utterly frustrating it must have been for the process owner (on the other end of a video conference, 5000kms away to boot) to hear this. To have spent the time and effort to put the standard in place -- with all best intentions -- only to hear that despite repeated directives to follow, that he was essentially walking alone.

What was surprising, however, was the perceived (over the phone, remember) steadfastness to the existing standard. I have always had external standards to which my organization had to adhere - ISO 9001, 14001, IEEE, etc. and with those, your challenge is to meet its requirements with as little effort or onus to your organization. However, internal standards are our own doing - so it's up to us as to when they should be revisited, improved, or removed even. 

We often talk about "the gap" when defining a problem. The gap is the difference between the current state and the desired, near-term future state. We use our tools to investigate this gap and to develop ways to close that gap. So given this current state, this gap between desired behaviour and actual behaviour, how do we close the gap?

Well, I guess we negotiate. 

Yep that's right, a good ole fashioned back and forth. Quid quo pro, as it were. Each side must be willing to give up a little to come to a common agreement, a common outcome. There has to be a middle ground here. Or even progress in the right direction. Anything would be better than this situation.

There are always real deal-breakers in any negotiation, those key points that cannot be relinquished or positions that cannot be softened, but there is often quite a lot of wiggle room. There is always room for improvement right? In contracts, we look at the intent of a clause, not just the letter. So it might be worth looking at the intent of this contentious standard. What problem was it trying to solve when it was created? Is that problem actually still a problem? Or have things changed enough to justify a fresh look at the situation and this standard?

Considering what I heard during the report out, I'd say it's worth the effort to do just that.

AMac

Day 345: Wrapping up the year by digging out

It has been a long and tiring year. I am pretty burned out right now, and have far too much on my plate right now. I am really really looking forward to some time off. Typically, this time of year is spent clearing away the chaff from this year and beginning planning for next year - what goals and objectives should we focus on... how will we measure ourselves... what will success look like. Things like that. But instead I find myself buried under a ton of things - small, medium and large. Complicated and simple. It's a work-alanche. 

Usually I point to my Covey's Quadrants to help me out here - but there really is a lot of change going on and it's challenging to keep up with the regular station programming and the new sitcoms.

Work needs a PVR.

Wait - no - let me correct that. 

Meetings need a PVR.

Imagine! You could fast forward through the first 5 minutes when that guy who always shows up late (wait for it) shows up late and asks "what did I miss?" And the next 3 minutes bringing him up to speed. You could whiz right through that lady's presentation since she reads every bullet point verbatim - heck, you can read right? Then those pesky extra 10 minutes when the meeting agenda has been covered but someone says "We've still got 10 minutes - what should we discuss now?"

I wish I could skip some of those wasted minutes and reclaim them for other purposes. But that's the funny thing about time - once it's gone, it's gone for good. I guess the trick is to make sure they are spent as wisely as possible.

I still have 3.5 work days left this year, and hopefully they will get me closer to starting with a clean slate for 2015. Until then, I will continue to try to escape the work-alanche the same way you try to escape a (real) avalanche:

Hold your breath and just keep swimming.

AMac

Day 324: What Makes a Coach a Good Coach?

Following up on my last blog post about what makes someone coachable, I wanted to look at what traits or attributes make a coach a good coach. Having spent almost 20 years in multisport, I asked some of my fellow athletes what they thought was important in a coach. Now, these are related to athletic coaching but I wanted to share.

I found a few common themes:

• Continued learning in the field, either sport-specific (particularly for technique-driven sports like swimming) or sport-supporting (such as psychology, nutrition, for example)
• Some level of competency in the field, usually demonstrated through some level of athletic achievement
• History of helping others achieve similar/related goals
• Honesty/Open communicator/Realistic
• Personal integrity
• Adaptability
• Better at listening than at talking

I think this is a good start but it's missing... something. Where's the passion? The inspiration? The accountability? I think a good coach inspires their athletes to try harder, to have passion, to push past their boundaries even the imaginary ones. Good coaches also have the courage to have difficult conversations with their athletes, including those that involve failure, set backs or resetting expectations.

I have found personally that good coaches are easy to follow. They are committed to the athlete and to the process of development. They invest a great deal of time and energy and emotion doing something for which they have real passion. And I think a good coach has that real passion for the development and success of their athlete, not just for the sport itself. 

So as much as I love doing improvement work, real boots-on-the-ground kinda stuff, I must now learn to love helping others do that work, to stand back and support those doing.

AMac

Day 303: Coaching children and coaching adults - what makes you coachable?

I have been helping out my speed skating coaches by being another on-ice adult for the kid's sessions. Some of these sessions can have 25 kids, and with one coach, it can be a challenge to keep them engaged. Even with a whistle.

I really enjoy working with the kids, which range in age from 7 to 14, as they are all so unique. They all have different abilities, different strengths and opportunities, and different personalities. Standing around the centre circle, listening to the coach, some listen intently, others goof off; some are shy and others are outgoing.  But once they start skating, the differences become physical. You can also easily see who was listening and who wasn't. :-)

Some kids are very coachable. What do I mean by coachable? A quick Google search turns up the following coachable traits (as espoused by those SMRTer than I): 

• Humility/critical self-evaluation
• Intrinsic motivation/bias to action
• Purity of purpose/singular focus
• Willing to surrender control/valuing the coaching message
• Strong belief in ability to succeed/faith/stubbornness

Kids perhaps have other elements at play that must be addressed by both the coach and the kid:

• Fear/fear of physical injury/fear of failure
• Desire to conform/be part of the team/contribute to team success (for team sports)
• Emotional immaturity

This past week I was able to spend several days coaching adults, very experienced SMRT adults, in kaizen, and specifically coaching on value stream mapping and cycle time reduction. I was there to challenge them, keep them on track and focused on the target outcomes of the kaizen. And of course, to keep developing my coaching skills.

So as I look at the list(s) of traits of coachable kids listed above, how well do these map to adults? How well do these correlate to my experience?

I found some of the challenges that come with coaching adults are:

• Historical bias to action ("In my company, we did it this way, therefore it is the right or better way"/"You have to use this tool or method to solve that problem")
• Unsure valuation of the coaching message ("I know just as much as these guys"/"I know better"/"I already know how to solve this problem, so I don't need to listen/read/pay attention")
• Desire to stand out/be recognized ("Hey team, look at the cool solution I came up with"/"I have an MBA")
• Difficulty in honest, critical, non-self-deprecating self-evaluation ("I'm terrible at public speaking"/"I'm awesome at PowerPoint")

Writing this down - if nothing else - helps me keep in my mind what behaviours I need to avoid or minimize to be more coachable. Particularly in valuing the coaching message. 

Now I just need to develop the same list of what makes a coach a good coach.

AMac

Day 296: Happiness and its place at work

I was having a conversation with a cohort today about happiness and success - does one yield the other, and if so, in what order? Does happiness result in success, or does success result in happiness?

I think happiness leads us towards success, and although there are some successes that make me happy, that happiness is transitory, temporary. It's a kind of feedback loop - the positive reinforcement of the success will increase the happiness overall. That leads right back into the intrinsic motivation to seek challenges and work towards success.

There are also some great non-successes (read: failures) that - over the long view - can make me happy because they eventually contribute to a future success. I have observed that many people learn best when they fail, er, struggle with a task, instead of having it handed to them on a silver platter or being spoon fed. If it was easy, it wouldn't be as much fun when you succeed. 

I had a pretty epic failure this past weekend, when I competed in my very first short-track speed skating meet. I had a terrible time in my three races, partially due to a nagging injury with my foot, but mostly due to a nagging negative attitude. I came into the meet expecting to perform horribly - so I wasn't surprised when I did. I tried to blame the injury for it all, but in reality, I had already admitted failure even before I started. My mind was not ready for me to perform the task in front of me, I had not prepared my mind (and heart) to do the work. 

I'm a pretty positive person overall - I prefer to be a positive force for change - but even I get grumpy now and then. Sometimes the storm clouds are a-rumbling and I throw a little lightning around. Sometimes it's very targeted at an individual or an incident, sometimes it's a general annoyance with the world. Usually the latter means I need a vacation while the former is an indication that there's a specific opportunity for improvement. 

I have another 6 weeks of fairly focused work ahead of me, before I can take a real break. Within that time, I have one more speed skating meet and our recertification audits. Both are BIG DEALs to me. I want to be successful at both. So it's time to knuckle down, and get on with the tasks at hand. I just have to remember to smile once in a while. 

Day 289: How do you help really really SMRT people? Get out of their way

This week I had the pleasure of helping a Black belt team with supply chain kaizen at a local technology company. This team, almost 20 people strong, was chock full of really really smart people. 

In fact they were so SMRT that I really had little to do, little to offer in they way of help beyond the occasional suggestion or challenge to the group. It's a bit of an odd sensation. I suppose I could have stuck my nose in to more conversations, but I was worried about overly-directing them, or influencing them too much. As always, I might have gone after different areas or opportunities than what the group chose to pursue, but that's one of the great benefits of participating in these events - I get to see what unfolds and enjoy the chance to see how other people think.

Balancing the "too much" vs. the "too little" is still my challenge. It's hard to find the sweet spot. 

This week was also a chance to let go a bit more, to be away from the office and delegate a fairly important and high profile activity. I am really lucky to work with a very competent team, so I knew it would all be ok. But I was very anxious in that I wished I could have been a fly on the wall and seen what had transpired! I think I will take this as an opportunity to further reflect on my role at my organization and how that might still further evolve.

AMac

Day 282: Where did the time go?

I have been lagging in my blogging activities lately, and I really have no good reason for it. OK I was busy with... work? family? friends? dog? skating? racing? volunteering? coaching?

Yep - all those things have been keeping me busy. Most of those things, I would say are important.

So why do I feel like I haven't accomplished much?

Perhaps it is because there are too many things in that list. Many of us have been led to believe that the ability to multi-task is a GOOD THING. 

It's the kind of attribute we like to put on our cover letters and resumes, we list it in job descriptions as something desired of our candidates.

But the older I get, the more I realize that not only am I terrible at multi-tasking but that a lot of other people are pretty bad at it as well. It's been written that our brains can only keep a reasonable grasp of 5 to 9 things/concepts/thoughts at one time. So why do we try to do more than that? 

There are a lot of times when multitasking will cost more time/money/energy and cause more confusion/defects/grief. Particularly when we don't give our brains enough time to rest - a break between tasks - to allow for refocusing.

Since I returned from my conference in mid-September, I have been running around like the proverbial headless chicken, trying to keep tabs on too many things, fingers in too many pies, ears tuned into too many conversations. 

Information is everywhere around me. I can get emails on my phone, my iPad, my laptop, and I can seamlessly transition between all three. I can IM with my peers on any of those devices; no problem. I can watch TV, YouTube, or some obscure European movie with subtitles on any of those devices, while thinking about that supplier audit I need to finish planning, you bet. I can take my laptop to a meeting and work away, while still keeping an ear on the conversation going on around me. 

No I can't. Not really. Not if I want to be effective at the task at hand.

So if I leave my phone at my desk and miss your text, or don't answer your email right away, don't take it personally. 

I'm just trying to focus on something.

AMac