| 29/07/10 | | Book Review: The Power of Positive Deviance |
I have just finished The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World's Toughest Problems by Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin and Monique Sternin) a book I have been waiting for some time to come out. I am very glad to say the wait has been well worth it.
Positive deviance has received a lot of attention since the concept was laid out in a series of articles way back in 2000 – one in the Harvard Business Review and the other in Fast Company. The concept has recently received a new boost since it was covered in both Influencer: the Power to Change Anything and by Chip and Dan Heath (where they called them ‘bright spots’) in Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.
Positive deviance is based on the observation that in every community or organisation, there are certain individuals or groups (the ‘positive deviants’ or ‘bright spots’), whose uncommon but successful behaviours enable them to find better solutions to a problem than their peers. Positive deviance identifies these individuals or groups, who have access to exactly the same resources and face the same challenges and obstacles as their peers, and examines their behaviours and attitudes, which help them avoid problems that plague the rest of their community.
The concept of positive deviance is therefore relatively simple. It involves the identification of people who manage to thrive in a situation where most fail; figuring out what those people are doing that is different from the majority; and then getting everyone to engage in the same actions, thereby solving the problem. Sounds simple enough right? The book shows the challenges encountered in trying to use positive deviance to make a difference to a wide range of seemingly intractable problems.
The book is based around six in-depth case studies (a chapter each) on the use of positive deviance to address childhood malnutrition in Vietnam, stopping female circumcision in Egypt, reducing hospital infection rates in the US, reducing infant mortality in Pakistan, boosting sales within the pharmaceutical firm Merck, and helping reintegrate girl soldiers in Uganda.
Each of these chapters is an in-depth analysis of the power and limitations of positive deviance and how they have learnt and adapted the approach as they have gone along. These case studies really bring to life the context, situation and challenges they faced in each scenario. They are detailed, have a lot of information in them, and I've gone back and re-read most of them a number of times, and each time something new has jumped off the page for me.
Some of the key lessons I've taken, or had reinforced, from these case studies include:
1. We focus too much on the ‘what’, and not enough on the ‘how’.
We are drawn to the 'technical' stuff – the 'what', the specific practices and tools that make the individual positive deviants successful;
“That's the easy part – and only 20 percent of the work. What matters far more is the 'how' – the very particular journey that each community must engage in to mobilize itself, …discover its latent wisdom, and put this wisdom into practice.” This point really made me think about the number of articles I have articles about positive deviance, and how the vast majority of them focused on the ‘what’ the solution – not on the ‘how’ the solution was found and integrated into a community – from my experience the hard stuff.2. The danger we bring as ‘experts’ in the change process:
As the authors say: “The greatest barrier to the success of positive deviance approach comes not from the members of the community themselves but from the “experts” who seek to help them...” There is fantastic story of how a suggestion around the use of tongs for Fried Chicken fundamentally changed an expert’s view on how to deal with, and beat, MRSA
3. Creating compelling and concrete portrayals of the problem at hand.
I absolutely love the story of using chocolate pudding to bring to life MRSA and its impacts in the VA Hospital in Pittsburgh
4. Change starts with changing practices
The conventional wisdom is that knowledge changes attitudes and attitudes change practice. Positive deviance reverses that. It starts with changing practice. As people see that changes make a difference, their attitude changes and they internalise the knowledge.
As the authors say; “its easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than to think your way into a new way of acting… Once positive deviance behaviours have been discovered, the design must provide those who seek to learn with both the opportunity and the means to practice the new behaviour. A focus on practice rather than knowledge has proven to be a key element in bringing about lasting behavioural change...”
5. Use Deliberate Practice to practice the new behaviour
There is a lovely sidebar headed ‘choreographed conversations’ about training positive deviance participants in Egypt to start conversations around female circumcision. It is a great example of some of the key elements of deliberate practice.
6. Positive deviance is not the same as ‘Best Practice’
What comes out of the positive deviance process should not be confused with ‘best practices’ that we all are familiar with in our organisations. ‘Best Practices’ are typically identified by those at the top and then presented to everyone else for adoption. Positive deviance, on the other hand, is based on discovery by the practitioners themselves, which promotes buy in, acceptance, and change.
The book finishes with some absolute nuggets in how to undertake positive deviance work in a section called the ‘Basic Field Guide to Positive Deviance’. It provides a step by step guide (as much as you can within a process as fluid as that of positive deviance) on the key activities within a positive deviance initiative, as well as some really practical tips they have picked up during all of their work. My favourite one is; “Let silence speak! (Pause for twenty seconds after asking a question. That’s long enough to sing happy birthday!). Try it, you’ll be amazed how long twenty seconds actually is!
Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed The Power of Positive Deviance (http://tinyurl.com/2vykgaz). It is detailed, it’s in-depth, and provides a huge amount of information about positive deviance and the challenges to apply it to solve real world problems. It did take some effort in parts to relate the chapters back to my world. Not always easy to link stopping female circumcision in Egypt with and the challenges that I face in creating change within organizations, but the links and the lessons are there.
Lastly, a word of advice. If you want to easily understand the concepts and principles of positive deviance and get excited about it and how it has been used – start with Influencer (http://tinyurl.com/yuvg54) and Switch (http://tinyurl.com/37bnsoz). If you need to get senior stakeholders and sponsors excited about the concept, do the same. If you then want to try and use positive deviance in making a difference to the challenges you face, read The Power of Positive Deviance (http://tinyurl.com/2vykgaz).
About the authors:
Richard Pascale is an academic at Oxford University, and author of numerous books including Surfing the Edge of Chaos (http://tinyurl.com/334ceb3). Jerry Sternin was the world's leading expert in the application of positive deviance before his death in December, 2008. Monique Sternin has been an equal partner in these efforts and now heads the Positive Deviance Institute (http://tinyurl.com/kmqjb9) at Tufts University.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 28/07/10 | | How to stop executives becoming grammar nazis when defining their purpose |
In our work to help organisations make their strategies stick we often start by helping the executives get clear on their purpose. Why does their enterprise exist? If you have facilitated these types of sessions you probably seen this happen a million times: the group circles in on the essence of what's important and then suddenly they get bogged down nit picking words and trying to incorporate every possibility. In large organisation each executive wants to ensure their part of the business is included in the purpose statement and if you let this happen you end up with mush.
Here's what I do which makes a big difference. Just when they start to get bogged down I call a time out and ask them to watch this video.
From that point on everyone refers back to the Dan's messages and pull each other up when they start acting like a 10th grade school teacher and we move along at pace.
Here is an example of a purpose statement we helped deliver from the Transport Accident Commission: "A future where every journey is a safe one."
It's interesting to note that Dan uses a story to get his message across and clever use of animated graphics.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 24/07/10 | | The origins of Earth hour |
Earth Hour has been held annually since 2007, in late March. In that first year, Earth Hour focussed on getting one city, Sydney, to switch off its lights for 60 minutes. In 2010, over 1 billion people participated in 128 countries and over 4000 cities. Where did this global phenomenon originate? What forces were arrayed to make it happen?
I hadn't thought much about those questions until last night, when Shawn and I were at a conference dinner and heard Todd Sampson (of the Gruen Transfer fame...oh yeah, he has also climbed Mt Everest solo) talk about creativity. Todd described how, in 2006, he met with five other people in the Hilton hotel in Sydney. The group wanted to tackle a big question: how do you change people's behaviour for the benefit of the planet without using fear? The answer they came up with… Earth Hour. The World Wildlife Fund got behind the initiative, people's imaginations were ignited and the rest is history.
We are always on the lookout for little things that make a big difference. Earth Hour shows us that we can switch off our lights. Time to start making some beeswax candles in preparation for the next Earth Hour which will be held at 8.30pm 26 March 2011.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 17/06/10 | | Humanity at work |
Last night I started reading Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey. I highlighted a phrase in the introduction that really stood out for me. This morning I was looking through my notebook and came across notes from a conversation I had with Shawn on 19 March this year after he had read the same book. The note contained the same phrase I had highlighted last night. I wanted to share this piece of serendipity with you.
The paragraph in question was about the leaders they had worked with who were successful in implementing real and lasting change and the point noted by both Shawn and I was:
...all [these leaders] shared on thing in common...a deep and abiding recognition that their people bring their humanity to work with them every single day; that the absolute division between the work realm and the personal realm is naive and unhelpful; and that 21st Century leaders must find a more effective way to engage the emotional lives of their organisations and their leadership teams.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 12/06/10 | | A postive approach to change |
For change to stick it's often a good idea to find where things are working and then figure out how to get those successful behaviours happening where you need them.
I often tell this story, which I've read in Switch, to illustrate this positive approach to change.
In the 1990s Vietnam faced a terrible problem: many children in their country were malnourished. The government approached Jerry Sternin, who was as the time working for Save the Children in the USA, to set up an office in Vietnam. Jerry moved his family to Vietnam but when he arrived he discovered that not everyone in the government appreciated his presence. He was told by his sponsor in the Foreign Affairs department that we had 6 months to make a difference.
Now Jerry had read the research and it was clear that big issues such as poverty and water cleanliness were major factors. Jerry put these findings into a bucket he called "true but useless." He wasn't about to change poverty or how clean Vietnam's water was. Instead he embarked on finding examples where things were working.
Jerry set off to visit villages across the country. He asked people whether they knew of families who had children of a healthy weight even though they had access to the same resources as everyone else. And the answer was invariably 'yes.' They all seem to know of some families where the kids were doing much better than most. So he visited these families and observed how the mothers fed their children. Over time a pattern emerged. Mothers of children with a healthy weight did four things differently from the rest.
First they fed their children four times a day instead of twice, which was the norm. It was the same amount of food but spread over four meals.
Second the mothers were proactive in feeding the food to their children. Shovelling the food into their mouths instead of setting it in front of them to let them feed themselves.
Third they went to the rice paddies and caught shrimps and and tiny crabs and put them in their children's food.
And finally they scrounged up other vegetables and added them to the meals.
What happens next illustrates Jerry Sternin's genius. Instead of racing down the street screaming eureka and advocating everyone with malnourished kids adopt these four behaviours (who adopts ideas from strange foreigners anyway?) Sternin identifies 50 families in 14 villages who could benefit and then takes groups of 10 mothers to cook with the mothers with the healthy kids. They practice together and learn a new way of behaving.
After 6 months 65% of the children were better nourished and stayed that way. Throughout the 90s this approach benefited 2.2 million children in 265 villages and became the standard approach to remedy child malnutrition in Vietnam.
UPDATE: On the weekend I listened to this HBR podcast which has another telling of this story and introduces a new book by Jerry Sternin et al called Power of Positive Deviance
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 11/06/10 | | Dan Pink: The surprising truth about what motivates us |
Just in case you haven't seen this animation it's worth the 10 minutes to learn about Dan Pink's findings on what really motivates us.
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 3/06/10 | | Why Change Is So Hard: Self-Control Is Exhaustible by Dan Heath [video] |
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 6/05/10 | | Reducing arseholes in the workplace. Mentoring helps |
I remember this day clearly. I'd been working at IBM for a few years running the KM practice and I decided I should move into the strategy practice in what was called the Business Consulting Services (BCS). Before this move I had a lot of autonomy: I decided the type of work I'd do; I found my own sales opportunities and created and delivered projects. So I continued in this vane at BCS.
Three months into the new strategy consulting role I was summoned to the partner's office. As I walked into the room the partner slammed some paper on the table and said, "What in the hell is this?" We was holding a proposal letter I'd written that we'd won and I was now delivering. "How dare you just head write up this business without going through me," he bellowed. In the end I just stood up and told him I wasn't going to put with this behaviour and not long after that I left to start Anecdote.
The conversation didn't need to be held that way. We could have just talked and I would have learned that there is a process I needed to follow. I had no idea, but I should have guessed. It just reinforced in me that I can't stand bullying behaviour and, quite frankly, managers who are arseholes.
As such at Anecdote we have long held the "no arsehole rule" made famous by the Stanford professor, Bob Sutton. Adopting this rule has resulting in us firing a client and vowing to never work with someone who was a partner.
What amazes me however is just how these workplace arseholes continue to thrive in organisations. One view is that they have to work somewhere but surely we can create working environments that reflect a humane and reasonable work ethic.
I feel this mentoring program we designed and are delivering for a client is helping to increase humanity to the workplace. We've taken an informal approach to mentoring and have avoided the arranged marriage approach where someone in HR matches mentors and mentees (we've called the mentee the kouhai, a Japanese word with a similar meaning but doesn't sound like the tasty peppermint Mintie). In fact the informality goes further because we are advocating not even asking someone to be your mentor, which can create a rather awkward moment, rather we want people to just ask colleagues they respect and want a mentoring relationship for their view or guidance on a issue. We are focussing on the verb 'mentoring' above the noun, 'mentor.'
This approach fails however unless the potential mentor is mindful that these approaches will happen and when they do they can switch themselves into mentoring mode. We call this 5-minute mentoring and the mentor knows (because they have experienced a range of stories from their workplace illustrating good mentoring behaviour) that they need to focus on the interests of the kouhai above, say, the interests of the company.
If enough people experience narrative-based mentoring program we believe the behaviour of managers changes and humanity increases. We have seen this happen in our narrative leadership programs with simple behaviour changes such as giving someone your full attention when they enter your office.
Let's rid our workplace of arsehole behaviour. And the quicker we do it the better we will all be for it.
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 1/05/10 | | A million versus a billion |
We have been keeping in touch with Kevin Bishop in the UK since running our Influencing Change workshops earlier in the year. A useful idea when trying to achieve change is to make the invisible visible. Kevin has just sent us an excellent example of this.
One of the main issues in the United Kingdom election campaign has been around the economy and how to reduce the huge Government budget deficit. The recession has left a record £163.4bn (AUD$269.2bn) hole in the UK Government's finances in the last financial year, as tax receipts dried up and public spending kept rising. This has meant that Britain's national debt is now an eye-watering £950bn (AUD$1.565 trillion).
These are huge numbers to try and comprehend. What is the actual difference between a million, a billion and a trillion, and how do you make this somehow real for people (including me!)?
This explanation really helped me come to terms with these huge numbers, in a format I could understand. It says:
- 1 million seconds is equal to 11 ½ days
- 1 billion seconds is equal to 31 ¾ years
- 1 trillion seconds is equal to 31,710 years
So the difference between a million and a billion is the difference between 11 ½ days and 31 ¾ years (11.5 days vs. 11,315 days)!
All figures were taken from this article.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 14/04/10 | | We need to find ways for people to feel it |
Yesterday I ran a workshop for a group of executives on how to find bright spots in your organisation (groups of people who excel with the same resources as everyone else) and then work out ways to transfer the behaviour evident in these bright spots to other parts of their business. I tried to help them feel what this is like to transfer these bright spot behaviours by telling some stories. I think I was moderately successful. It was clear to me that many participants favoured the analyse-think-change approach while I was advocating see-feel-change (Kotter and Cohen make this distinction in The Heart of Change).
I wish I had some videos like these ones that really help you feel it. In this case they have a road safety message. In both cases they trigger a future story for us increasing the chance we will modify our behaviour. Which one of these two videos had the biggest impact for you?
Thanks to the Nudge blog for pointers to the videos.
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
| 9/04/10 | | Change Behaviours by Making Costs Visible |
This post is by our guest blogger, Kevin Bishop, who recently was in Australia and ran a series of workshops with Anecdote on Influencing Change. Shawn met Kevin last year in London. Kevin was responsible for the change program for 40,000 people at the Royal Bank of Scotland.
I was working with a programme team recently who were preparing a detailed business case for Executive agreement and sign-off. During this process, the team have become very frustrated with the number of review meetings and discussions which were being held with each member of the Exec. team, and the number of times they had to go back through the loop when minor alterations were requested in the business case.
There seemed to be a disproportionate amount of time spent making very minor changes to documents and presentations and then having to meet with each Executive to talk through the changes to ensure they were happy with them. An example was when a request came through to change the font colour on a diagram, and the size of the font; "as it would have more impact". After making these changes, the whole pack had to be re-printed and re-issued.
A culture therefore existed where huge amounts of time and resource were invested in making sure the Exec. felt involved, engaged and listened too before key meetings, were expecting to provide detail on the minutiae in the pack, and every time a change occurred, they expected to be reengaged and be able to comment all over again.
It got me thinking about what you could do to potentially change these behaviours, behaviours I believe were:
- disempowering and disengaging people;
- not making the best use of the expertise in the organisation;
- adding little or no value; and
- costing the organisation financially.
I believe one strategy that could work is to help make the financial costs of these behaviours visible and known to all involved. I thought back to two examples where this has worked.
In 'The Heart of Change', (http://www.theheartofchange.com) John Kotter recounts a story about a purchasing manager who was convinced that a great deal of money was being wasted on their purchasing processes. The change required to reduce these costs would not be possible unless top management saw the opportunity, which for the most part they didn't.
To get a sense of the size of the problem, he did a small study looking at one item being purchased across the whole organisation – rubber gloves. When the study was complete, it showed that the company brought 424 different kinds of gloves! Every factory had their own supplier and their own negotiated price. The same glove could cost $5 at one factory and $17 at another.
They collected the gloves, literally all 424, put price on each one, took these to the Boardroom and invited all the division presidents to come visit the room;
"What they saw was a large, expensive table… stacked high with gloves. Our executives would stare at this for a minute. They would say, 'we buy all these different kinds of gloves?' Well, as a matter of fact, yes we do... Then they would walk around the table… They could see the prices. They would look at two gloves that seemed exactly alike, yet one was marked $3.22 and the other $10.55. It's a rare event when these people don't have anything to say. But that day, they just stood with their mouths gaping. Even today, people still talk about the glove story."
Another example was told to me by a friend recently. He was asked to assess the effectiveness of a programme's change request process, including understanding its costs. The change request process can be vital in any large programme, particularly those that have a significant IT component. It provides a degree of control around changes that may have impacts on budgets, timelines, and scope.
There were questions in this programme about the value the change request process was adding. In his analysis he found that the vast majority of change requests had no material impact on the programme, and were in fact minor, cosmetic changes. These were things like dates that had not been updated properly in master plans, even though everyone knew the correct dates and were working towards these.
When he worked at the cost of assessing each change request – and remember these were requests that for the most part had no material impact on the programme – he was staggered to find that, on average, it cost $20,000 to action each one! The vast majority of this cost was people’s time and effort to discuss, complete the appropriate documentation, and meet to approve each change request – requests that added little value to the overall programme.
Once the costs were visible, there was an immediate focus on improving and changing the change request process within the programme. Having the $20,000 figure staring people in the face certainly seemed to contribute to a change in behaviour.
So back to the problem at hand, how do you get the Executive team to change some of their behaviours around reviewing and signing off business cases? My idea is to put the amount spent in preparing a presentation, pack or business case, clearly visible on the first page of anything that goes to the Exec.. You would calculate the cost of everyone's time (programme team, support staff, Exec. etc.) in drafting papers, setting up and attending meetings, reviewing, making changes, and printing the packs etc. and then clearly show this.
You would need to ensure the number is accurate and backed up with the details behind it if challenged (e.g. the cost per resource, the numbers of hours spent on every process etc.). It would require a degree of work to set it up, but I would not see this becoming a permanent need, more like a one off to stimulate debate.
I have seen examples of this around what a meeting actually costs (see http://www.effectivemeetings.com/diversions/meetingcost.asp ), but have never seen it around preparing documentation. Can you imagine the different conversations in that Executive meeting if they were confronted with a figure of say $25,000 in preparing a pack for their approval? A figure which could equate to employing a person, full-time, in the organisation for six months.
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
| 5/04/10 | | Trigger new stories and changing behaviours |
Our mind is full of beliefs, assumptions and values which affect what we do and how we do it. Much of what we assume comes from our experiences, especially if we've told ourselves and others the story of what happen and what it means for us. Our stories help us remember and embed our assumptions.1 If we want to change our actions we need new stories that create and embed a new belief, assumption or value. We need to see it and feel it before we will change.2
One can take a systematic approach to triggering these new stories by first uncovering the assumptions you or your group live by and then designing simple experiments to test these assumptions. Kegan and Lahey do a terrific job describing a process for uncovering assumptions in Immunity to Change.3 They don’t mention stories in their approach but as I was reading their practical chapters at the end of the book it was screaming out to me that what they were advocating was a systematic way to trigger stories that could replace the unhelpful ones. The aim is to create new stories for yourself that help you to act in a new way.
Our assumptions and beliefs nearly always serve a purpose because if they didn’t they would have gone the way of the Dodo. But sometimes these same assumptions hold us back. Here is an example of a big assumption that really seemed to limit what this person thought was possible.
I remember running a workshop last year for a group of senior academics, many of them professors, on how they might improve collaboration. We were discussing two behaviours that should exist that have been shown to improve productivity: Whenever anyone has a concern, he or she speaks up and explains the concern in a complete, frank, and respectful way; and everyone holds everyone accountable for meeting expectations, for commitments, and for bad behaviour—regardless of role or position.4 As I was explaining this idea I could see a woman rolling her eyes at my comments and clearly disagreeing with what I was saying so I turned to her and said, “I can see you are uncomfortable with this idea. Would you like to share your view with the group?” Without hesitation she blurted out, “There is no way known you can just tell a professor about a concern in a completely frank and open way. I did that once and in the end I had to leave the department.”
It was clear she’d had a bad experience and was operating under the assumption that you must be guarded and careful with whatever you say to those in power otherwise you might loose your job. Now here was an assumption worth testing.
The first step is to start to think like George Costanza from the Seinfeld sitcom when he decided to do the opposite of everything he would normally do. As Jerry says in the episode, “if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.” So take the assumption “I assume if I’m frank and open with my boss, he will get angry” and design a test that does the opposite of what the assumption would advise and do the opposite. It’s important to note that your experiment should be safe. Avoid tackling assumptions where you believe an action will result in death, being fired, losing a relationship etc. Break down these more dramatic assumptions into smaller, less dramatic ones and test around the edges at first.
Then, most importantly, notice what happens. Kegan and Lahey suggest you plan for the results and think about the things that will indicate what happened and whether they tell you something new about the assumption. What did you think and feel? What did others think and feel? Which outcomes would really lead you to question the validity of your assumption?
Strong assumptions are unlikely to yield in a single test. You will need to conduct a series of experiments and reflect deeply on the results. Each experiment will create a new story for you and the ones that produce something counter to your preconceived ideas, the ones that are unanticipated will be the ones you will tell others and a change in mindset and behaviour will follow. Of course all this assumes you really want to change.
References
1. Schank, R.C. & Berman, T.R. 2002, 'The Pervasive Role of Stories in Knowledge and Action', in MC Green, JJ Strange & TC Brock (eds), Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahway, New Jersey.
2. Kotter, J.P. & Cohen, D.S. 2002, The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts.
3. Kegan, R. & Lahey, L.L. 2009, Immunity to Change: How to Overcome it and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization, Harvard Business Press, Boston, Massachusetts.
4. Patterson, K., Grenny, J., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R. & Switzler, A. 2008, Influencer: The Power To Change Anything, McGraw Hill, New York.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 16/03/10 | | Influencing change using stories |
In late February and early March we ran workshops in Melbourne and Sydney with Kevin Bishop from the UK. The workshops focussed on Influencing Change using Stories. Until recently, Kevin was heading the change activities for 60,000 staff at the Royal Bank of Scotland. We learned heaps and the feedback from participants was fantastic.
The photo show the three of us (L to R: Shawn, Kevin, Mark) last Thursday at the LIW Centre for Leadership at Chowder Bay in Sydney. The photo below shows the group having lunch overlooking the harbour. You might as well do it in style!
Our venue in Melbourne was also fantastic - the headquarters of Lifesaving Victoria right on Sandridge Beach in Port Melbourne.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 11/03/10 | | Research shows that stories create personal motivation and increase productivity |
The second Tuesday of every second month the Strathmore Unicorns Junior Basketball Club's committee meets. I'm the club Secretary and last Tuesday we were discussing the perennial topic of how to encourage our players (and their parents) to pay their registration fees on time.
Each year the Treasurer send a letter to laggards warning them that if they don't pay their fees they will not be insured and wont be able to play. This letter might have worked in the past but over the years coaches rarely stop their players from playing because of outstanding fees. So unless we become more draconian, the threatening letter approach has run its course.
As everyone was chatting I was recalling Influencer's six sources of influence and based on that model I suggested an alternative that appealed to personal and social motivation of an important person on every team: the team manager.
Here are my two suggestions. Love to hear yours in the comments.
Personal motivation initiative: we are creating a one-page handout describing why the team manager is an important role and listing four things every manager must do to be great at the job. The first on the list is to collect registration fees on time. I did think we should include a short story of how a manager did one of these tasks (more on this idea below).
Social motivation initiative: For the next four months we will share with all the team managers the overall percentage of teams that are all paid up and either congratulating them of getting all their fees in or encouraging to be as good as the rest. The overall percentage at the outset will be large which will send the message that most people are paying (social proof).
To add to this thinking I discovered this morning some important influence research which shows how stories can be added to this mix with tremendous effect. Over at the Inside Influence Report Noah Goldstein reports on Adam Grant's research showing that reminding people of the meaning and significance of their work can double their productivity. And he did this by simply sharing stories from those people who benefited from the call centre worker's hard work: in this case benefactors of a fundraising organisation.
Here is how Grant ran his experiment.
Working in a fundraising organisation call centre, Grant divided his participants into three groups: people who were reminded of their personal benefits of the job; people reminded of the significance their tasks was having on the benefactors of their work; and the control group. The personal benefit group read stories from other employees about the benefits of the job such as money, skills and knowledge. The task significance group read stories from the people the organisation was giving scholarships to and how these scholarships effected their lives. The control group didn't hear any stories.
Here's how Golstein reports the results:
What they found was amazing. Employees in the Personal Benefit and Control conditions looked almost exactly the same after the intervention as before it in terms of amount of donation money raised and the number of pledges earned. Yet, those in the Task Significance condition earned more than twice the number of weekly pledges (from an average of 9 to an average of 23) and more than twice the amount of weekly donation money (from an average of $1,288 to an average of $3,130). Additional analyses suggest that the huge increase was driven by previously unmotivated employees increasing the number of calls they made per hour.
So my question is who's story does the team managers need to hear? I can't imagine hearing a story from the committee of how getting the money in on time will motivate anyone. Perhaps it needs to be a story from one of the players that received a scholarship or from a parent in the under eights who gets reduced fees to get them started. Or maybe it is a story from one of the coaches who all just received new coaches tops.
Grant, A. M. (2008). The significance of task significance: Job performance effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 108-124.
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 8/03/10 | | Endings are important for how we remember experiences |
Daniel Kahneman, the founder of behavioural economics and winner of the Nobel prize in Economics, tell this story in a recent TED talk.
A friend was recently listening to a recording of a beautiful symphony and then at the end of the recording there was a terrible screeching noise. "It ruined the whole experience for me," he said.
Of course the screeching didn't ruin his whole experience because he had 20 minutes or so listening to a beautiful symphony. It did, however, ruin his memory of the experience.
Endings are important. Kahneman describes Dan Ariely research1 on how people perceive pain when they have a colonoscopy.
Check out these two graphs Kahneman showed in his TED talk. They report two patients' experience of pain during a colonoscopy. The second patient clearly endured more pain over a longer period. Interestingly, when ask to report on their memory of the experience the second patient remembered it to be less painful than the first. Ariely's research concludes that people remember an experience based on what happens as the end, especially if it's trending in a direction (such as, to lower pain).
So it's important to focus on the end. We remember the whole in terms of what happens at the end. With the colonoscopy research they found that just leaving in the tube for longer and not wiggling around too much gave people a happier ending.
It's no coincidence then that a common plot structure is one where the story builds to a strong ending.
You can use this type of plot structure to plan and deliver a presentation so everyone remembers the experience. Of course a good memory of the event happens when the last thing you did is satisfying.
1. Ariely, D. 1998, 'Combining Experiences Over Time: The Effects of Duration, Intensity Changes and On-Line Measurements on Retrospective Pain Evaluations', Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, vol. 11, pp. 19-45.
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 18/02/10 | | Book review: Switch—How to Change Things When Change is Hard |
It was going to be difficult to surpass their last book, Made to Stick, where they showed us that people wont pay attention unless our message is simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and a story. And it was going to be even harder practising what they preached to make Switch stick. But I'm delighted to report that they've pulled it off and have created an engaging and useful work on how to change things when change is hard.
Switch is arranged around an analogy (immediately visual and sticky). When we are making a decision we're often torn between our rational, logical reasons and our emotional, intuitive feelings. Chip and Dan ask us to imagine an Elephant and its Rider (the mahout). The Rider represents the rational and logical. Tell the Rider what to do, provide a good argument and the Rider will do it. The Elephant, on the other hand, represents our emotions, our gut response. The Rider might like to avoid that hamburger and chips but there is very little the Rider can do if the Elephant really wants it (OK, so I'm telling you what happened last night). To complete their analogy they include the Path they are travelling along. If the Rider can direct the Elephant down a well prepared Path then there is a good chance for change. The Path might represent, for example, access to user friendly technology or effective office space design. Switch is arranged in three parts: Direct the Rider, Motivate the Elephant and Shape the Path.
On Saturday in 2000 ... In 1990 ... A doctor was asked ... Crystal Jones joined Teach for America in 2003 ... These are the first few words of the first four chapters and apart from the last chapter each starts with a story. And within each chapter are more stories. These stories are well chosen and illustrate the behaviours we need to adopt to effect change. The whole book is focussed on behaviours and rightly makes the point that change comes from changing people's behaviour. That's the level you need to take. A leader cannot afford to stay aloof. For change to occur they need to get into the detail as well as stay strategic.
As a business storyteller Switch is a treasure trove of stories to be retold in organisations. Last week I was running a strategy workshop and I wanted the group to identify a set of guiding principles for their organisation. So I told them the story of the Brazilian railway that was going broke and how Alexandre Behring and his CFO created four rules to guide everyone's spending behaviour to get them out of debt. I shared the rules with the participants and they knew exactly what I meant and were able to easily create their own guiding principles. Strategy execution is a change initiative and Chip and Dan advise us to script the critical moves.
Here is the structure of the book. Notice how each section is a pointer to behaviour.
Direct the Rider: Find the bright spots; Script the critical moves; Point to the destination
Motivate the Elephant: Find the feeling; Shrink the Change; Grow your people
Shape the Path: Tweak the environment; Build habits; Rally the herd
On page 58 we encounter our first clinic and I must admit I groaned slightly when I bumped into it. Getting me to do exercises while I'm reading is normally a pain. I was going to just skip the clinic but decided to have a read and the thing I noticed was that the repetition of the ideas in another context was really helping me to remember. I knew repetition is important but I guess the story approach sucked me in and reinforced it.
One the first things I check when I get a book like Switch is to see whether it is comprehensively referenced and what type of studies are being referred to (if any). Switch passed with flying colours. The endnotes are expansive and they share a swag of evidence for each point they make and often used the psychological experiments as stories rather than just presenting the facts.
Switch is a book that will be read by senior leaders. It's engaging, well written, funny in parts and insightful. If you're an change practitioner in an organisation I recommend you buy a handful of copies and give them to your leaders. In my experience they wont read it right away but then they'll jump on a flight and start and wont stop. At this point you'll not only have a supporter but someone who will compel your involvement. Malcolm Gladwell has served me well in the past and Switch is in the same league.
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
| 15/02/10 | | Collaboration provides autonomy |
Last week I started a new Making Strategies Stick project with a large IT company. The guys I'm working with are the technical sales folk and as we were working out their strategic story they mentioned that the passion that was once there for their products seemed to be waning among some of their technical specialists.
These guys work closely with the sales people. The way they work together, however, varies dramatically from being merely instructed by the sales people to do demonstrations of the product (they call this being demo dollies) to working collaboratively as peers with the sales people.
I asked whether those who showed a lack of passion were also the ones treated as demo dollies. Th answer was yes.
Dan Pink has done a good job in his latest book, Drive, to show that there are three important factors that affect our motivation: purpose, mastery and autonomy. It seems that in this case those treated as demo dollies were losing their autonomy (and also unable to apply their mastery) and were losing the spark for the product. Collaboration (where collaboration is when peers work together to tackle complex activities--see our paper), on the other hand, provided all three factors.
Another good reason to get serious about collaboration in your business.
Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
| 3/02/10 | | The people part of change |
In late May 2009 I was invited to advise on change management on a big project in Sydney. 
The client was a medium size logistics organisation with a history of poor performance, low staff engagement and sub-standard customer service. They were in the midst of something of a crisis. They had been directed to substantially down size, two recent reviews had condemned them for their inefficiency and appalling service and a recent reorganisation appeared to have made matters worse.
One of the first things I did was to talk with the senior leaders. The CEO explained that they had reorganised twice, reviewed and substantially modified all operating procedures and introduced new and more efficient technologies to support their work. And despite all that he explained with frustration, nothing had improved. Most of the staff were "hopeless" and he thought the best thing was to replace them all. He had introduced a compliance team to monitor staff adherence to the new rules and processes, but despite many staff being caught and punished, they hadn't improved.
I gently explained that there was no point changing structures, processes and technology if people continued to behave as they had in the past. They had neglected the people bit of their change agenda. I was mildly surprised when this explanation appeared to come as a revelation for them.
My surprise was short-lived as I observed the way they talked about their staff and behaved over the next few days. I wish this story had a happy ending. I also wish it were an isolated incident.
Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
| 2/02/10 | | One public workshop this year: influencing change with stories |
We often get asked whether we are running any public courses on our techniques but for the last couple of years we have reserved these courses for our clients.
But this February and March we are running one workshop on influencing change with stories in collaboration with Kevin Bishop, most recently the Royal Bank of Scotland's change manager in the UK.
If you would like to attend here are all the details.
We only have limited places so please let us know as soon as you can to secure a spot.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 25/01/10 | | The Mahout, the Elephant and the Path—an analogy for change |
Dan and Chip Heath have a new book coming out (Feb) and they sent me a copy of the first chapter. The title is Switch and like their last best seller, Made to Stick, it promises to be a keeper. It's all about how to motivate people to change. The first chapter has left an indelible impression because of the strong image they conjured to explain what we need to consider to influence change: the Mahout (they call it The Rider), the Elephant and the Path.
Changing behaviour involves a struggle between our rational and well-reasoned thinking and our emotional urges. The mahout represents the rational and reasoned. If the mahout clearly understands where he needs to go he'll direct his charge that way.
The elephant represents emotional urges. While the elephant might be happy to go the way the mahout directs, if she decides to go another direction there is not a single thing the mahout can do about it.
The path represents anything that might impede or assist the mahout and the elephant to get to where they are going. You want the path to be as easy to follow as possible.
So how does this translate to a business setting? Imagine you're a leader of an organisation that's decided to compete on exemplary customer service. To engage the mahout you need a clear rationale describing why customer service is so important. You would find the research that shows the factors that influence customer service and illustrate to the mahout in everyone the concrete actions you want them to take. Engaging the Mahout, however, is the easy part and the one most organisations spend most of their time doing. The hard bit is the elephant.
Engaging the elephant, the emotion, will take action and stories about things that happened. You might start by telling some stories of customer service blunders to grab their attention. Here's one that happened to me recently. It's important you find stories from the organisation. Real life examples. Negative stories, however, often in themselves wont change behaviour, partly because people don't know exactly what they need to do to get it right. So you also need to find stories of great customer service from your company. We call them Gibson stories because William Gibson (the sci-fi writer) once said: "the future is already here; it's just unevenly distributed." You just need to find these stories that represent your company's future. Tell them. Get people to discuss them. Inspire that elephant.
After engaging the mahout and the elephant you need to pave the path and remove anything that's getting in the way of progress. This might be a rewards system that's encouraging the wrong behaviour. Or it might be an IT system that is unintegrated and hard for call centre staff to use slowing down their support for customers. There are a myriad of obstacles to remove from the path.
Don't forget, the Heath brothers were the authors of Made to Stick which dedicates a chapter to the power of stories. Chapter one is full of great stories. Some you might have already heard, such as the 424 gloves that save a company millions or the 100,000 lives saves by the Donald Berwick and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
The Heath brothers conclude the chapter by saying:
Whether the switch you seek is in your family, in your charity, in your organization, or in society at large, you’ll get there by making three things happen. You’ll direct the Rider, motivate the Elephant, and shape the Path.
Photo credit: goofball12
Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
| 11/01/10 | | A story designed to change your mind |
Seth Godin has a new ebook out called What Matters Now. It consists of 80 or so thought leaders each with a page to talk about an idea that matters to them. Each idea is summed up in a single word such as Dignity, Autonomy, Attention, Difference. You can download the ebook here.
Dan and Chip Heath have a page with the title, Change. They incorporate three ideas in their one-pager that is dear to our work: stories, positive deviance and changing behaviour. Here is what they wrote.
A troubled teenager named Bobby was sent to see his high-school counselor, John Murphy. Bobby had been in trouble so many times that he was in danger of being shipped off to a special facility for kids with behavioral problems.
Most counselors would have discussed Bobby’s problems with him, but Murphy didn’t.
MURPHY: Bobby, are there classes where you don’t get in trouble?
BOBBY: I don’t get in trouble much in Ms. Smith’s class.
MURPHY: What’s different about Ms. Smith’s class?
Soon Murphy had some concrete answers: 1. Ms. Smith greeted him at the door. 2. She checked to make sure he understood his assignments. 3. She gave him easier work to complete. (His other teachers did none of the three.)
Now Murphy had a roadmap for change. He advised Bobby’s other teachers to try these three techniques. And suddenly, Bobby started behaving better.
We’re wired to focus on what’s not working. But Murphy asked, “What IS working, today, and how can we do more of it?”
You’re probably trying to change things at home or at work. Stop agonizing about what’s not working. Instead, ask yourself, “What’s working well, right now, and how can I do more of it?”
Chip and Dan Heath are the authors of Made to Stick and the soon-to-be-released book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.
It's not a coincidence that the Heath brothers decided to tell a story to illustrate their idea and try and persuade the reader to adopt a different approach to change. They dedicate a chapter to the power of stories in their book, Made to Stick and conclude the book saying that most of the other effects described in the other chapters are encapsulated in stories. So let's look at some of the features of this story and why it might be effective.
The simple story structure creates an image for us of both Bobby and Murphy (and let's not forget Ms. Smith). I can see Bobby sitting on a swivel chair restless and bored. If the story creates vivid images for us there is a good chance it will grab our attention and we will remember it. We've all seen Bobbys in our life, so it's easy to picture him in this story.
Names are important. Humans care about other humans. We want to know the names. Case studies often lack names and suffer for it. Again it creates attention through authenticity and empathy for people.
Also notice how they start with the story and then provide the advice. They didn't want the reader to slip into a confirmation bias where we automatically discount suggestions as our first instinct. The story first allows us to pull the idea to us, own the idea ourselves before a suggestion is made by the experts.
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
| 9/11/09 | | More proof that emotion is a powerful force in making sense of information |
In 2004 Drew Westen and his colleagues put together an experiment to see how people of a particular political persuasion (Democrat or Republican) make sense of new information. Drew is a neuroscientist and advises political candidates on how to garner voter support. In this experiment he scanned the brains of 15 committed Democrats and 15 committed Republicans while showing them slides of conflicting information. Here are two examples:
Democrat example
Initial statement (Slide 1): During the first Gulf War, John Kerry wrote to a constituent: "Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition ... I share your concerns. I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work."
Contradiction (Slide 2): Seven days later, Kerry wrote to a different constituent, "Thank you for expressing your support for the Iraqi invasion of Kawait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis."
Republican example
Initial statement (Slide 1): "Having been here and seeing the care that these troops get is comforting for me and Laura. We are, should, and must provide the best care for anybody who is willing to put their life in harm's way for our country."—President Bush, 2003, visiting a Veterans Administration Hospital.
Contradiction (Slide 2): Mr Bush's visit came on the same day that the Administration announced its immediate cutoff of VA hospital access to approximately 164,000 veterans.
The committed Democrats and Republicans had no problem seeing the contradiction for the other party and rated the contradiction on average 4 out of 5 but this contradiction was nearly invisible for their own party where they rated it on average 2 out of 5. And the control group without an affinity saw all the contradictions.
Now that result might be obvious but Drew and his team were scanning these people's brains at the same time as they were assessing this new information and they found something that is fascinating. The brains did register the conflict as an unpleasant emotion but for the political partisans they were able to shutdown that distress quickly through faulty reasoning. But here's the thing. Once the negative emotions turned off, the positive emotions turned on. They weren't just feeling a little better, they were feeling good.
Some implications of this research.
Don't think you can provide nifty arguments to change people's minds. People will reason things away in whatever way they can and feel good in their answers regardless of how faulty the thinking.
Emotion has a large part to play in our decision making so we need to employ ways of connecting with people that are emotional, such as stories.
In a large change initiative you are just not going to get everyone accepting a new way of thinking or approaching things so it's important to work with those people who can take on the ideas and show the others it can be done.
Westen, D. 2007, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, PublicAffairs, New York.
Westen, D., Kilts, C., Blagov, P., Harenski, K., & Hamann, S. (2006). The neural basis of motivated reasoning: An fMRI study of emotional constraints on political judgment during the U.S. Presidential election of 2004. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 1947–1958.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 18/09/09 | | Dan Pink on Motivation - and his subtle use of stories |
Dan Pink TED talk has an important message: what scientists know about the detrimental effects of incentives remains largely unknown and unpractised by managers. He argues, which I totally agree, that we need to create workplaces which provide autonomy, possibility for mastery and purpose. These factors truly motivate us.
The video, see below, is also interesting for how Dan users stories. Take a look first then I will make some comments below.
Dan is very aware of the power of stories. In his book, A Whole New Mind, he dedicates a chapter to how important storytelling is as a skill. But he also knows that business people are scared by the term and when they hear the word 'story' they assume what is being said is made up, fluffy, unbusiness-like. So Dan frames his presentation as a legal case, focussed on the evidence, with the full persuasive power of the best legal minds (mind you he does some lovely self-deprecation at the start of the talk to connect with the audience).
Dan even goes as far as saying, "this is not a story, it is a fact ..."
But here's the thing. Dan's talk is full of stories. In fact he employs one of my favourite story patterns: the scientific experiment. Scientific experiments are great because to explain them you have to tell what the scientist did and when and the best ones of some unanticipated result--terrific elements for a story.
I counted 7 stories in Dan's presentation (one every 2. minutes or so). Quite a few for someone is telling the audience that he is not telling a story.
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
| 8/08/09 | | Narrative or story-based approach to employee engagement |
Late last year, a company approached us on the topic of employee engagement.
They’d received the results of their biannual engagement survey and, as with previous years, realised that the data pointed them to strengths and potential weaknesses but didn't help understand what was really going on, or what to do about it. The data might show that 63% of staff agreed or strongly agreed with the statement 'I am proud to work for this company' and this might be down 6% from the previous survey. On its own however, the data doesn't help with the question "what does this mean and what should be done? "
Narrative approaches are excellent for exploring these sorts of issues and helping organisations find out what is really going on, and what actions they can take to reinforce things that are going well, and improving things that need work. The survey data is vital 'targeting information' but on its own it is an insufficient basis for planning. Thus, exploring employee engagement is a natural marriage of traditional approaches such as surveys and the emerging practice of narrative.
Our approach to staff engagement looks like this:
- Employee engagement surveys often focus on areas such as: do people say positive or negative things about the organisation; their intent to stay with the company; and whether they are motivated to strive to do the best they can for the company. In preparing for the narrative project, the survey data is examined to identify the themes to be explored, the geographic or structural areas to focus on and the people to involve in the project. Key stakeholders are also asked for their views on the survey results and the things that are of most concern or surprise to them.
- We use anecdote circles during the 'discovery phase' of these projects to collect a large number of examples (anecdotes) of how staff at all levels in the organisation experience issues on a day-to-day basis. The anecdote circles are an intervention in themselves as they get groups of people sharing their experiences; people value the opportunity to be listened to and participants learn from each other about how things get done. Recently, during an anecdote circle, a participant related how he received a call early one morning from his manager asking if he’d heard about the severe storm warning for his area (he hadn't). The manager was worried about him driving to work in the storm and requested that he work from home that day. The guy telling the story was really impressed by the phone call. This was a great example of how small actions can really help build employee engagement.
- In the sensemaking phase a significant and diverse groups of influencers are exposed to a cross-section of the collected anecdotes and are facilitated to engage in dialogue with each other to identify issues and themes regarding the current situation. The idea of sensemaking is to develop a rich and common understanding among these influencers of the current situation and its history. Exposure to the anecdotes provides participants with insights into what really goes on in the organisation; this can be quite confronting at times. Nonetheless, sensemaking is a vital step as the individual and collective understand it provides is the springboard for deciding what action to take. The sensemaking workshop takes between 4 hours to a full day and one of its valuable side effects is that individuals will often change (deliberately or sub-consciously) their behaviour back in the workplace as a result of the new understanding they’ve developed. This is an important step as one of the key actions to improve staff engagement is to 'stop doing things that piss staff off.'
- Complex problems cannot be 'solved' in any traditional sense and the way to make progress is to try things and see what happens. Using the deep understanding developed during the sensemaking phase, we involve the influencers in identifying the actions that can be taken to move the situation in a desirable direction. Our approach to this stage (which we call initiative design) is strongly influenced by the characteristics of complex problems meaning we encourage the organisation to identify lots of small scale actions that can be implemented at an individual or team level, based on the knowledge that with complex problems, little things can make a big difference. We also encourage the development of a 'continual improvement process' that aims to get these changes embedded in the fabric of the organisation.
- The final stage is to monitor what happens as a result of the actions taken - reinforcing the patterns that are beneficial and disrupting the ones that aren't. This is achieved through the embedding process developed during sensemaking and by using techniques such as most significant change. A planned monitoring regime is important as it helps detect changes - it also works as an incentive to implement the actions identified during intervention design
Since the initial approach, several other unrelated opportunities have emerged to work with companies to explore their employee engagement outcomes. Our extensive work in leadership/management development also has a strong link to employee engagement (as the main roles of a manager can be summarised as 'driving performance' and 'building engagement'). It looks like employee engagement is a growing area for us to apply narrative approaches.
Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack
| 9/07/09 | | Two ears, one mouth |
I
can't remember who first said to me "you have two ears and one mouth, and you should use them in that proportion" but it is one of the best pieces of advice I have ever received. Also, when working in many organisations, I notice it is not applied that widely. Shawn and I have come across two examples earlier this year where 'listeners' were let go and noisy and opinionated people were never considered to be candidates for retrenchment because of their 'visible contribution' to the organisation (it was probably more their 'audible contribution'). These sorts of decisions further undermine an organisation's capability to make progress with complex problems.
Listening has a vital role in tackling complex problems, such as any change initiative, either social or organisational. We use our Narrative Insight (story listening) techniques to explore and help make sense of the patterns relating to these complex issues. The following excerpt from The McKinsey Quarterly emphasizes why we should put more effort into listening and less into telling:
In a famous behavioral experiment, half the participants are randomly assigned a lottery ticket number while the others are asked to write down any number they would like on a blank ticket. Just before drawing the winning number, the researchers offer to buy back the tickets from their holders. The result: no matter what geography or demographic environment the experiment has taken place in, researchers have always found that they have to pay at least five times more to those who came up with their own number.
The lesson is clear - you need to listen to and act on the needs and perspectives of the stakeholders. Even if you don't like what they are saying. People value what they have a sense of ownership in and you need to listen to find out what that is. And where there is anger, resentment etc around an issue I have found the advice of Professor Brenda Dervin to be spot on.."anger dissipates when people are listened to".
If you happen to know of the original research referred to in the McKinsey article we would love to hear about it.
Reference: 1. The McKinsey Quarterly 2009 Number 2, pages 101-109
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
| 28/06/09 | | Don't second guess me |
I am working on a project requiring a major organisational transformation. On
Monday, the division's chief heads off to Canberra to get a mandate to make the change from head office. One of his biggest concerns is head office continuously second-guessing him as he leads the organisation through the change process. He recognises that in complex situations there are no correct answers and there are likely to be many different opinions about what should be done, and head office has a habit of trying to micro-manage things.
I suggested using a story to demonstrate how head office second guessing might be fatal to the change process. This story from a BBC program 'The Human Mind' came to mind:
In October 2001, a fire crew was fighting a fire in a disused bingo hall in Leicester in the UK. Even though it was big, the fire chief decided it was safe enough to send the crew into the building. They were starting to make progress in knocking the fire down when the fire chief decided something was wrong, and ordered his team out of the building. The team protested, unwilling to give up the progress they had made. But the fire chief insisted and as they exited the building it exploded in a massive fireball. If the decision to evacuate hadn't been made the entire team would have been killed. It turns out that the fire was one of the rarest and most dangerous phenomenon in firefighting - a backdraft. The fire chief had never experienced a backdraft before, he just knew that something was wrong and they needed to get out. In the ensuing investigation it turns out there were three things that were unusual: the smoke was more orange than usual, air was rushing into the building rather than out of it, and the fire was unusually quiet. The fire chief was right in his decision, he just didn't know why at the time.
Relating the story to being second-guessed by head office might go like this. "Imagine if head office were there at that fire. There was no evidence that anything unusual was happening, the team were arguing against the chief (they wanted to stay and fight the fire) and they were making good progress. Chances are that head office would have overruled the fire chief and told him to keep fighting the fire, and the entire team would have been killed. And the head office decision would have been perfectly rational and the whole thing written off as a tragic accident."
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
| 23/06/09 | | Publicsphere - Government 2.0 |
Senator Kate Lundy hosted yesterday's Publicsphere #2 event on Government 2.0. I attended Parliament House for the morning and 'watched' online throughout the afternoon (using the live blog, video stream and the twitter traffic (#publicsphere). It was interesting to watch presentations to an audience of 150 people, the majority of whom had laptops open and were twittering (about the event in the main) and googling relevant info to add into the twitter traffic. Personally, I felt a little overwhelmed by the many channels of information and didn't get much value from the presentations themselves.
Things I liked about the event were:
- 15 minute presentation format - this forced speakers to have a few clear messages
- The diverse technologies available meant there was something for everyone
- Meeting some very interesting people and catching up with some people that I haven't seen for ages
- It was very well organised and all up it ran pretty smoothly
- Seeing the passion in Kate Lundy's eyes for getting this stuff happening
Things I didn't like about the event were:
- A constant stream of presentations with no provision for discussion. It appeared that the organisers thought that electronic interaction via twitter and commenting on the live blog obviated the need for people to speak to each other. Exacerbating this was the preference for eating into the few breaks to make up time.
- Realising that I couldn't cope too well with the multiple inputs while attempting to build a mind map of things that resonated with me (and watching others appear to handle it with ease). I did learn a lot about twitter on the day.
One of the key themes was the urgent need for change in the people component of the equation. Politicians and public servants live in a culture where behaviour is focussed on control of information, avoidance of risk etc. Not that they have any bad intent, they just live in a world where this is the norm. Nearly every speaker touched on this issue. Nonetheless I expect that tradition will hold and only a miniscule proportion of funding will address the change component. One approach is to find out government positive deviants and work out how to influence others to adopt their behaviours and methods. There must be some out there.
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
| 21/06/09 | | Not just a journey... |
I started work this week on a major change project. Our 'three journeys' concept for embedding change and making strategies stick is really resonating. I must admit to walking into the project with some trepidation...a broken organisation that needs to be fixed or 'blown away' (a nice metaphor...not!). After four days there I feel a sense of enormous optimism. There is an alignment of circumstances that provide a great impetus for change. This is the project of a lifetime for the leadership team - the permission to create an amazing transformation.
On Friday afternoon one of the team noted that it was not just a journey we are starting on, its an adventure.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 22/05/09 | | The co-evolution of technology and organising |
The technology we use changes the way we organise and the way we organise effects the technologies we use. This hand-in-glove interaction is called co-evolution. Take the example of the invention of the spinning frame during the industrial revolution of the 18th century. The spinning frame made possible large scale cloth production and created the need for factories, which in turn affected how water and steam were used to drive machinery in those factories.1
Are we seeing a similar co-evolution between information dissemination technology and how knowledge programs are organised? The two killer apps for the PC have been the word processor and the spreadsheet. With these two tools we were able to create documents. Consequently many knowledge sharing initiatives focus on creating and sharing documents. This limited us to sharing what we could write down.
YouTube started in 2005 (here is the first video uploaded to the site). It’s a site for sharing videos. Now that it's easy to share videos more companies are building this form of information dissemination into its knowledge sharing programs. The interesting thing is that the tool changes the type of knowledge shared. It seems to me that videos encourage us to share practices and tell a story of what happened or how to do something. This type of knowledge helps us share values, principles and lessons in a more compact and digestible way. Sure, documents can be used to do that too but that wasn’t the default use and it took so much effort.
As we witness the rise of the video we'll need to develop other skills to make the most of it. Most importantly, you guessed it, video creators will need to be adept at finding and telling stories. Just as we learned the language of documents (structure, headings, font sizes, margins, footnotes etc.) we will need to learn the language of video. And that language will partly involve characters, events, action, time and place.
1. Beinhocker, E. D. (2006). The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics. Boston, Harvard Business School Press.
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
| 18/03/09 | | A leader's role to trigger stories |
Yesterday I popped out for a meeting at the National Australia Bank. They have a new CEO, Cameron Clyne, and last week he announced a restructure that has substantially flattened the organisation. While the restructure has been the topic of lots of conversations and stories inside and outside the bank, Cameron has done two other things that has got employees talking.
Meeting rooms are always at a premium in large organisations and NAB, at their beautifully designed Docklands headquarters, is no exception. Until Cameron's intervention there were meeting rooms set aside only to be booked by general managers. That's no longer the case. Anyone from the rookie analyst to the CEO has the same rights in booking and using any meeting room in the building.
The second change involves the CEO's lodgings. The previous head honcho and his staffers resided in an office referred to as the bubble. There were two levels of security to gain access to this space and the CEO would catch the elevator from the car park to bubble without having to venture through the rest of the building. Cameron is dismantling the bubble and is relocating his office next to the internal cafe, without any special refurbishment to his new space. You can't miss the dismantling as it affects half the foyer. A pretty clear symbol of change.
Now these stories might not be 100% factual. But as story guru Robert McKee points out, "What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens." These are the stories some staff are telling about the new CEO and they view his actions as exciting and energising. In their mind a wonderful change is going on.
Then something interesting happened in the meeting. The person I was talking to said it was incredibly difficult to gain direct access to the CEO. That he had a coterie of minders that he brought from New Zealand with him that intercept any approach. And that this is how it should be because he is an incredibly busy man with tremendous responsibilities.
It's interesting that the positive stories created by the meeting room and bubble change seemed to create a positive aura over other activities involving the CEO.
A lesson for leaders is that in addition to be able to find and tell your own stories, it's also important to do things that create positive stories in the organisation. Be remarkable so people remark on your behaviour. But also listen to what stories you create and what people infer from them.
Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
| 8/03/09 | | Complexity based interventions and the role of peer pressure |
A few weeks ago my youngest daughter was kidnapped by her school bus driver. Actually it wasn't just my daughter, it was every child on the bus that day.
It all started a few weeks before the kidnapping. Every day on the way home from school the bus would reach the first stop and one of the boys would ring the bell to get off. The bus would stop but no one got off. And every time this happened the bus driver would admonish the kids. His frustrations grew. The last time it happened before the kidnapping he cracked it and warned everyone on the bus that if it happened again he would lock the doors and not stop until he got to the end of the route--in some cases that meant the kids would be miles away from their homes.
Well, you know what happens. On that fateful day one of the boys rings the bell, no one gets off and the driver locks the doors and keeps driving. About half way to the end of the bus route, and many stops after my daughter's normal departure point, a mother was driving to the bus stop to pick up her child and noticed the wayward bus with her son in it. Starsky and Hutch style she cuts off the bus at the lights and the kids are released.
I was furious and rang the bus company, like all the other parents who had children on that bus, and spoke to the general manager, who apologised profusely and quite frankly said all the right things. Then I got thinking, how might one deal with this sort of situation using an intervention design approach like I use in organisation to help change behaviours. Obviously just yelling at the kids wasn't working so I thought, how about the silent treatment. What if the bus driver said to the kids that if the bell was rung and no one got off he would sit there for 10 minutes--calmly and quietly. Now this is where peer pressure comes into play. Ten minutes seems like an eternity to a kid and kids want to get home for afternoon tea (I did anyway). So after a while the kids would work it out for themselves and put pressure on the bell ringer to cut it out.
So I rang up the general manager again and told him my suggestion. He listened then told me all the reasons why this wouldn't work. Of course why would he take my advice? He doesn't know me, I'm not like him and as Nancy Dixon and Tom Gilmore describe in a recent post, I haven't earned the right to provide help.
Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
| 4/03/09 | | Building a collaborative workplace - the video |
I've just uploaded the video of the presentation where you will see the embarrassing larger than life size portrait of me in my undies. Please skip over that part quickly.
Building a collaborative workplace using stories from Shawn Callahan on Vimeo.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 3/03/09 | | Building a collaborative workplace with stories |
Here's my presentation (with audio) that I delivered to the Victorian Public Sector Continuous Improvement Network (VPSCIN) yesterday.
I'm still trying to work out how to sync the audio with each slide. The Slideshare slidecast tool failed me so any help would be greatly appreciated. The main problem was that the blue beginning and end markers didn't appear when I selected a slide.
Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack
| 21/02/09 | | KM is change - and how to do it with stories |
Here is my presentation from the Ark KM for the Experienced Practitioner. I have to admit that it probably doesn't make too much sense without the commentary and the note are not the best but happy to answer any questions.
The presentation is a case study illustration of our three journey narrative approach to organisational change.
Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
| 21/01/09 | | Profiting from Collaboration |
Google and P&G are both known for their innovation capabilities and strict internal policy. Driven by market forces, they made an exception. They swapped about two-dozen staffers who spent weeks dipping into each other's staff training programs and sitting in on meetings where business plans get hammered out. This is terrific example of purposeful collaboration delivering results.
The Wall Street Journal reported that about a year ago, P&G's then global marketing officer, Jim Stengel, was concerned that one of the biggest initiatives in the company's laundry-soap history -- a switch to smaller bottles with a more concentrated formula -- didn't include enough of an online search-term marketing campaign. Google, on the other hand, was interested because they were keen to get a slice of P&G's $8.7 billion annual ad pie. (Read full article here.)
The opportunity to collaborate generated many tangible benefits for both companies. And that's not surprising because a collaboration experience can improve the level of conversation, energise teams and have a positive impact on the bottomline. This example illustrates three ways that companies can profit from a simple collaboration program.
1. Identify missed opportunities
In April, when actress Salma Hayek unveiled an ambitious promotion for P&G's Pampers brand, the Google team was stunned to learn that Pampers hadn't invited any "motherhood" bloggers -- women who run popular Web sites about child-rearing -- to attend the press conference. "Where are the bloggers?" asked a Google staffer in disbelief, according one person present. ...With mommy-bloggers, Pampers was quick to follow Google's advice. After failing to invite any to its April Pampers press conference, in July it invited a dozen or so to visit P&G's baby division in Cincinnati. The bloggers claim to have drawn anywhere from one-hundred thousand to six million visitors to their Web sites.
2. Learn how to embrace change
The big question that P&G grappled with was "How does a brand morph from one-way to two-way communication with the consumer?"One of the first results of the collaboration was an online campaign inviting people to make spoof videos of P&G's "Talking Stain" TV ad and post them to YouTube... In the end, of the 227 spoofs submitted, a handful were deemed good enough by P&G to air on TV. The campaign was successful enough that Tide plans to use more consumer-generated content in the future, P&G says.
3. Understand each others' language
Google job-swappers have started adopting P&G's lingo. During a session on evaluating in-store displays, a P&G marketer described the company's standard method, known as "stop, hold, close": Product packaging first needs to "stop" a shopper, Mr. Lichtig said. "Hold" is a pause to read the label, and "close" is when a shopper puts the product in the cart. Google's Ms. Chudy gasped. "This is just like our text ads," she said. The headline is the "stop," its description is the "hold" and the "close" is clicking through to the Web site. "This is going to get so much easier, now that I'm learning their language," she said.
External collaboration can have many advantages. The biggest being that it allows new ideas and disciplines to enter the organization, some (or most) of which challenge the status quo of practices, processes and the way the industry works.
Something to think about:
- How can you profit from collaboration?
- Who are the people you can invite to collaborate with?
- What will be your first step to getting started?
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 12/01/09 | | Gaining insight with archetypes |
To change the way we work we need to change our mental models, and that requires insight.
In The Neuroscience of Leadership David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz describe how our improved understanding of the brain is helping to reorient how we design organisational change initiatives.
The article recommends leaders create situations where their people get a new insight into how they view things: what is the dominant mental model?
One of the most effective technique to help create this insight is archetype extraction. It involves collecting anecdotes from people in the organisation on a theme such as customer service and extracting the archetypes from the many stories.
An archetype is a embodiment of the organisation's culture in the form of a complex yet familiar character. An archetype is usually partly good and partly bad; a complex mix of traits. Not to be confused with a stereotype, which is typically an oversimplification based on simple categorisation or role: "Oh, he's a librarian."
We take these anecdotes into a workshop of 10-20 thought leaders and influencers who could benefit from an alternative perspective.
The workshop participants identify the characters and their character traits from the collected anecdotes on customer service and using a facilitation process they morph into the archetypes, which are often drawn by a cartoonist for greater visual impact.
The cartoons in the post depict some of the archetypes that illustrated the culture of a large Australia organisation. Once the archetypes are identified people can then use them to discuss some of the un-discussables without getting personal.
Most importantly the participants will have obtain a new insight on how the organisation views itself or another group.
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
| 14/12/08 | | Just trying out Scribd |
Three journeys: A narrative approach to successful organisational change
Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
| 9/09/08 | | Narrative-based Change Management |
Our new workshop now has a new name. We're calling it
Putting Stories to Work: Delivering meaningful Change and Engagement
What managers need today is a tool that empowers them to inspire people into action. Narrative techniques can deliver a range of benefits to an organization. It's just a matter of learning the techniques and then putting them to practice.
We've redesigned our narrative techniques workshop with a focus on engagement. Over two days we aim to teach managers how to create a resolve among their staff so that they see the value of the change efforts being undertaken in the organization and participate enthusiastically.
There will be lots of opportunities to practice the techniques and learn from each other's feedback during the sessions. Join us on November 11 and 12 in Melbourne. And if you're keen for us to come to your city, we'd love to hear from you.
A big thanks to Dave Pollard, Nerida Hart, Chris Colton, Luke Naismith, Jeff de Cagna , and Bret Treasure for their suggestions on the workshop name. The conversations triggered some good ideas.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 6/08/08 | | Imbuing your workplace with stories |
A company that values customer service should be teeming with customer service stories. But what do you do if this is not the case? The Ritz-Carlton has developed a narrative-based approach for ensuring customer service is in the minds of all their people. It was described in this Business Week article but I first discovered it reading Maxwell and Dickman's The Elements of Persuasion. This is what the Ritz-Carlton has done.
Everyone in the company is encouraged to submit stories of RC people going above and beyond. Each week a story is selected and sent out to all the RC hotels around the world and this story is read out at the Line Up meetings, the gathering of staff before starting a shift. Here's an example of one of these stories as told by Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman, which RC call their WOW stories.
Like a lot of good stories, it starts on a dark and windy night. In this case, a blustery February when the downstairs bar that Fran tends was largely deserted. "The only one in the room was an older gentlemen, the sort of executive that has been drinking the same scotch for the last fifty years." A young, good-looking couple--we'll call them Dick and Jane-- came in dressed in laua shirts despite the weather and ordered mai tais. They seemed a little morose, but Fran is the sort of bartender who can get anyone to open up, and soon they told their story. Dick and Jane had just been married. They had always planned to honeymoon at the Ritz-Carlton in Kapalua, Hawaii. In fact, they had a reservation already booked for six months in the future, but Dick had just been diagnosed with cancer--a particularly nasty form of Hodgkin's lymphoma--so they pushed the date forward and were in L.A. for chemotherapy. This might be as close to Hawaii as they ever got, so they were bravely trying to make the most of it. When Fran tells the story, at this point her eyes take on that slightly stunned look that comes to cancer patients as they struggle to find the right balance between hope and denial. Obviously, the couple's story touched her deeply.
Fran got someone to cover the bar and sprang into action. She found Don Quimby, the manager on duty and together they went to the banquet hall prop room and collected anything that reminded them of Hawaii--a fishing net, a collection of starfish and seashells, a poster of Hawaiian hula dancers at a luau--and quickly gave the couple's room a make over. They even filled a cooler with sand and stuck in a sign that read "Dick and Jane's Private Beach." Then Don found an electronic key from the Ritz at Kapalua that a previous guest had left behind by mistake and reprogrammed it so it worked on Dick and Jane's room door. Don put on a Hawaiian shirt and went out to deliver this new key to them. He led them to their "new Hawaiian Honeymoon Suite," where a complimentary bottle of Champaign was waiting. And for the next three days staff of the hotel did everything it could think of to make the couple feel like they were on a Hawaiian honeymoon of a lifetime.
Three times a week staff recount WOW stories in the Line Ups, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Each time a WOW story is told it triggers a conversation about what everyone sees as significant in the story and often prompts the retelling of other stories of things that have happened in their own hotel. So rather than receive a corporate directive on how to behave staff vicariously experience behaviour that everyone recognises as exemplary.
You receive a $100 if your story is selected and at the end of the year there is a competition to select the top 10 stories.
This approach has many of the features of Most Significant Change except that the conversation around the stories happens at the coal face rather than among the decision makers. Mind you, someone in HQ is selecting the stories and this process could be expanded to include a MSC style selection process with the decision makers.
If done well your organisation would definitely be teeming with values in action stories.
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 1/08/08 | | Staff induction - not quite |
Last year Robyn and I ran an interesting project for a large government agency to help Aboriginal people join the department and become productive as quickly as possible. More importantly the department wanted to retain more of their Aboriginal staff who would often leave for a myriad of complex reasons. Of course the project was narrative based.
A couple of months ago we presented a paper at LearnX describing this project and what we learned. I just remembered and uploaded the paper to our whitepapers section. Love to hear what you think.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 25/07/08 | | Being a connector has its risks |
New research has shown that we notice popular people and don't notice unpopular people. OK, so we probably didn't need research to tell us that but Cameron Anderson and Aiwa Shirako were investigating how reputations form and Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily describe the results this way:
It turns out that your reputation for cooperativeness is only affected by your behavior if you're already popular. If you're not popular, it appears that no one takes notice of your behavior, so it has no impact on your reputation. People with lots of social connections can build a good reputation -- or a bad one -- with much more ease than people with few social connections.
So for those people doing social network analyses spotting all the connectors you should also be providing these hubs with a warning: it's true you are in a great place to build your reputation but also equally good place to tear it apart.
Cameron Anderson, Aiwa Shirako (2008). Are individuals' reputations related to their history of behavior? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94 (2), 320-333 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.94.2.320
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 24/07/08 | | Trust creating behaviours |
I went to KM Australia this week and the issue of trust was mentioned many times. I noticed, however, that very few people went beyond generic statements like trust is essential for knowledge sharing, trust is the bandwidth of communication etc. I find these high-level statements unhelpful in practice and so I suggested to the conference participants that we come up with some specific trust creating behaviours and then use a dotmocracy to vote on what everyone thought was most important.
Here are the trust creating behaviours I suggested. I also invited others to suggest their own. There were two additions; the last two in this list.
- Being open and honest about your intentions
- Looking after your colleagues when times are tough
- Consistently delivering good work
- Team members are involved in decision-making
- Being able to speak your mind in meetings
- Being generous with what you know
- Giving credit where credit is due
- Making promises and keeping them
- Being prepared to allow the group to come up with "your idea" rather than tell them how you believe it must be
- Creating an environment where positive feedback always comes first and participation is encouraged
Here are the results. About 50 people participated in the vote.
'Making promises and keeping them' comes out on top followed by 'Being open and honest about your intentions' and 'Giving credit where credit is due.'
There were only two votes cast on the new proposals, the last two listed above, which probably reflected an error in our process. They were added to the dotmocracy after most people had already voted.
What do you think are the essential behaviours for fostering trust? Remember, behaviours are something you can spot, not abstract concepts like dedication, being humble or caring for your colleagues.
Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
| 14/07/08 | | What's real work at your work? |
Last week I ran a half day workshop to get a group thinking about their knowledge strategy. We got into a conversation about what things constrain knowledge-related practices such as peer assists, after action reviews, decision games etc., and one of the participants hit the nail on the head, "we have our real work and then everything else is an add on."
So if knowledge practices are not defined as 'real work' then you will face an uphill battle.
How might you turn things around? Here's an approach using Patterson et al's Influencer model.
Identify the vital behaviours you want to encourage. Search for these behaviours by seeking out people and groups who are already great at incorporating knowledge-related practices and observe them, collect stories about how they get things done. Compare these observations with groups who are poor at implementing knowledge-related behaviours.
A vital behaviour might be: Managers ask how the after action review went and what was learned from the process.
So now you need to encourage this behaviour (and probably 2 or 3 others, not 8 or 10 others). The Influencer model suggests 6 sources of influence to draw on. There are two basic questions that must be answered in the positive for someone to change: Is it worth it? and Can I do it? These two questions are reflected in the two columns in this diagram, motivation and ability.
1. Make the undesirable desirable. This is all about tapping into people's intrinsic motivators. For example, in this case you might focus on what it means to be a professional and the upmost importance of learning.
2. Surpass your limits. You can't expect people to adopt new practices without building new skills. This source of influence is about helping people build their abilities. It's about giving opportunities to try things out, engage in deliberate practice and obtain fast and effective feedback.
3. Harness peer pressure. If people you respect are doing it then it's more likely you will do it. Find the opinion leaders and get them on board first. The rest will follow.
4. Find strength in numbers. Actively build your social networks so you can tap into them when needed.
5. Design rewards and demand accountability. Use rewards carefully and only after the other sources of influence have been exercised. Link the extrinsic rewards to the vital behaviours rather than outcomes.
6. Change the environment. Physical spaces affect the way we work. Give people visual cues, create places to work, use the physical environment to reinforce the behaviours you desire.
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 30/06/08 | | Recognition, praise, credit |
"Credit is infinitely divisible. Give it away every chance you get, and there's always plenty left for you."
Don Berwick, Head if Institute of Healthcare Improvement 100,000 lives campaign (I see it is now 5 million lives), quoted in Influencer p 164.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 22/06/08 | | Innovators are a bad choice for change |
I'm thoroughly enjoying reading Influencer at the moment and the story of Dr Everett Rogers grabbed my attention. After finishing his PhD his first job was to help Iowa farmers adopt a new strain of corn which promised much higher yields. He spoke to many farmers and couldn't get a single one to try out the new strain. They just didn't trust this researcher who was so different from the farmers. He was a city slicker who was naive about farming practice, so what would he know.
Dr Rogers persisted thinking, if only he could get one farmer to try it out and then they could influence everyone else. After a time he did find someone to try out the new corn, a hipster dude who wore Bermuda shorts and fancy sunglasses. He enjoyed a bumper crop but the other farmers were unimpressed. This maverick farmer derided their way of life, he was an outsider and there was no way they were going to adopt anything from a Bermuda short wearing weirdo.
This failure springboarded Dr Rogers into a career of studying why good ideas are not adopted.
"Rogers learned that the first people to latch onto a new idea are unlike the masses in many ways. He called these people innovators. They're the guys and gals in Bermuda shorts. They tend to be open to new ideas and smarter than average. But here's the important point. The key to getting the majority of any population to a adopt a vital behavior is to find out who these innovators are and avoid them like the plague. If they embrace your new ideas, it will surely die."
It turns out it is a much better strategy to get on board the early adopters, the opinion leaders (about 14% of the population). Mind you if the opinion leaders don't like your idea, then you are sunk.
The book suggests the best way to find the opinion leaders is to ask everyone to list the people who they believe are most influential and trusted. When the same names keep being suggested (perhaps 10 times) they are the opinion leaders. I wonder about the practicality of getting this list made. Would it be done as a survey? A social network analysis survey would find this information as well as uncover those people who are most connected.
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
| 16/06/08 | | Storytelling and leadership |
It's obvious to most people that good leaders are good storytellers. Stories help inspire action because they transport the listener to experience the events recounted in the story in a way that conveys emotion, context and a picture of what happened, and why is happened. We remember these stories. They help change our minds and in doing so, change our behaviours. Storytelling is an important skill for leaders.
But it's not the only way to use stories to help leaders improve their capabilities.
18 months ago we started a narrative-based leadership development program for a global pharmaceutical company. We collected 150 stories of good and bad management behaviour from the staff and then use these stories in a two day program. Twelve managers attend every month and one of the activities we do with them is to facilitate a conversation around the question, which stories are most significant?
One of the stories often selected as significant is a seemingly simple account of a woman whose manager stops whatever he was doing whenever she visited his office, moves to a table in the middle of the room and invites her to sit down and then totally focusses on her. She felt that she was being listened to and her ideas were important. It was remarkable for this woman because other managers didn't do that. The leaders in the program often choose this story as significant because they feel that if only they could get more managers doing this it would create a groundswell of change.
A few weeks ago we refreshed the stories for this company in preparation for a new phase of leadership development, and lo and behold, staff told stories of how their manager, whenever they knock on their office door, he or she stops what they’re doing, comes out from behind their desk and… you guessed it… focuses totally on them and their issues.
Imagine if we conducted the leadership development program by listing the behaviours a good leader displays and then tried to persuade them with logic and reasoning. Change is unlikely. But in this case the leaders worked things out for themselves and inspired themselves to change.
Both approaches to using stories to enhance leadership capabilities are important.
If you want to help your leaders be better storytellers, then get them along to our Storytelling for Business Leaders workshop or we can bring it to your organisation.
If you want to learn how to collect and make sense of stories as a way to change behaviours them come along to our Business Narrative workshop.
We run these workshops in Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, or anywhere else in Australia or the world for that matter :-)
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 15/06/08 | | Internal blogging builds trust in leadership |
In a blog post of 9 June over on The Melcrum Blog, Abi Signorelli describes how leaders in her organisation were blogging internally and how trust in the leadership has increased tremendously as a result. Apparently some of them are even twittering.
We posted previously about the contribution of internal blogging to organisational culture change. Good to see more examples emerging. Are there any others out there?
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 29/05/08 | | The head office pattern |
Smart people hate being told what to do. In many of our projects we see the 'head office pattern' where HO is seen as a sort of 'Big Brother' (in the Orwellian sense) and not really trusted. This can often be caused by HO wanting to control things and, often unintentionally, alienating the very people they are seeking to influence. "We want people to work more collaboratively, and here's how we want you to do it!" Of course, if HO wants to see more collaboration across the organisation, they must behave in a collaborative manner and not impose their will in the expectation of compliance.
The following is a microcosm of the HO pattern.....
In 2005 I was working in a change project. The project team were the 'head office' representatives. One of the team asked for my feedback on a meeting agenda he was putting together for a group of key business stakeholders. I read the first bullet point on his PowerPoint slide and told him ... "if I received this from you I wouldn't attend".
He was taken aback till I explained that his first bullet point was 'to agree on the XYZ model' and that he had obviously made up his mind what he wanted to do and he appeared to be planning to spend the meeting trying to convince people that what he had already decided was correct. I suggested he change the agenda item to read 'discuss the pros and cons of adopting the XYZ model'. He immediately understood that this creates an entirely different mindset and he later reported that the meeting was quite productive.
To tackle the head office pattern we need to be constantly aware of our language, motivations and most importantly, our behaviour. Get your messages proof-read, 'call' the 'head office mindset' when you see it and think about what you are trying to achieve and whether it is genuine. If it isn't genuine, be assured that your stakeholders will notice even though they mightn't say anything about it.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 22/05/08 | | New Whitepaper: Three journeys—A narrative approach to successful organisational change |
David Drake (renowned narrative coach) and I have written this white paper to pull together our thinking on how to use our three journeys approach to organisational change and also add a coaching perspective. I hope you find it useful and of course feedback is welcome. Here's a little blurb.
This paper describes the approach we take with clients to successfully foster change in their organisations. It is based on our deep knowledge of both complexity and narratives, and it reflects our holistic approach in working at both systemic and personal levels to help organisations and their people move forward. Coaching is integral to our process at each step of the way and to our clients’ success in reaching their change and improvement goals. Our approach helps leaders and organisations embrace the need for change, approach it openly, prepare for it fully, and achieve the critical outcomes—whether it be a new technology, a turnaround, a new strategy or some other cause.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 15/05/08 | | Lessons from Lewis & Clark—a new white paper is coming |
David Drake and I have written a new white paper describing a narrative approach to successful organisational change. We've built on our three journeys metaphor, which you might remember was inspired by the epic exploration of the the US West by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Apart from describing the three journeys we've drawn a set of lessons from the Corps of Discovery (the nickname for the expedition) for each of our three journeys. Here are the lessons from our first journey:
- It is important to be clear on sharing the rewards before there are any.
- Travelling requires both authority and freedom/permission.
- Change requires an organisation to venture into unknown territory; it is as much about discovery as it is about design.
- Every change process has its “St. Louis”—a jumping off point into the unknown, a hub for action, and a platform to which one can return.
- Often the landscape changes merely as a result of setting out on the journey.
If you'd like to early notification and the ability to get this paper before we publish it more widely, please sign up for our monthly newsletter. In the next few days I will share the lessons for the second and third journey.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 1/04/08 | | Jumpstart storytelling - creating the conditions for collaboration |
When we start on a major change project we will often run a number of workshops with the leadership team to really get them to own and define the project. A big part of this activity is getting this group to collaborate and work as a team. In the past we have run sociometry exercises, anecdote circles and future backwards activities to get this group to gel. But I have a much better way now thanks to Seth Kahan's jumpstart storytelling technique.
How to run a jumpstart storytelling session
- Divide the participants into groups of 6
- Ask everyone to provide a concrete and specific example in response to a story eliciting question that is related to the objective of the workshop or project. Most recently I ask a workshop participants to recall when they have been proudest of the work they or their colleagues have done?
- Each person gets 90 seconds to tell their story.
- When everyone in the group has told one story ask the participants to remember the story that was most powerful for them; what resonated the most. And ask them to remember who told that story.
- Get everyone to switch groups to there is as many new faces as possible in their new group.
- Ask everyone to retell their story they have just told. Because this will feel a little weird I suggested they observe how their story changes and improves in the retelling. Again 90 seconds per story. At the end of everyone retelling their story reassess which story you think is most powerful and remember the storyteller.
- Depending on the size of the group you can switch groups again.
- Now the fun begins. Ask everyone to remember the person who told the most powerful, relevant, engaging story and go over to them and place your hand on their shoulder and keep it there. After a while a network of people forms and clusters appear revealing the high impact stories. Invite the people the group chose to retell their story to the whole group. Lead the applause at the end of each telling.
The energy goes through the roof with this technique and people get to hear stories they have never heard before. Most importantly the group gets to know each other at a deeper level. There is one more advantage as well if your project is narrative based: the leaders experience the power of narrative in the first 5 minutes of the project.
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 13/11/07 | | Three stories and an argument |
Larry Lessig has a presentation style named after him. You guessed it, the Lessig Method. Professor Lessig is a copyright expert and champion of creative commons. And in this presentation he demonstrates the power of presenting stories before presenting his argument. Steve Denning makes the point in his latest book, The Secret Language of Leadership, that if someone has a strong opinion and you present them with an argument to change their mind, it only serves to reinforce their strong opinion, regardless of how good your argument is. However if we are presented with a story illustrating the failures of the current situation followed by an aspirational story, then the person is more likely to take notice of a following new point of view. Enjoy this 18 minute video.
| 5/11/07 | | Changing people's attitude toward change |
Collaboration brings with it change and complexity and uncertainty. How are we going to do this? What will happen next? Why should we work like that?... are some of the questions that mark the beginning of a collaborative project. It’s all a state of mind! A matter of perspective.
I’m Chandni and I’m new at Anecdote. My first blog is about my experience in managing collaboration and change and an interesting technique - a 10-second test!
To pursue my passion for knowledge, narratives, complexity, people, culture, and change, I’ve flown all the way from UK (where I did my MBA) via Mumbai (India, where I am originally from) to Canberra. My journey at Anecdote started on October 22 and I’m having a great time doing what I really love.
In my previous roles (as Chief Knowledge Developer and Head of the Knowledge Initiative at an ITeS company), I always thought that bringing about change in the culture was a simple thing. Our workforce was young and spirited and we were innovative and had an open working environment…what could be difficult about that?
Well, I was obviously very wrong and spent a few years figuring out why some people share what they know quite easily, some literally ‘find’ obstacles and put them in the way or some simply don’t want to be disturbed. So I divorced the explicit aspect and started exploring the social aspects of knowledge-sharing behavior, and in talking to people I discovered that narratives have a unique power that often remains untapped. Aligning the right technique to the right situation, that’s where the trick lies. I’m guilty of missing target too!
Let’s change that.
At Anecdote, we continuously seek and design techniques to deal with the complexity within organizations by understanding the ‘story behind the story’. What stories are people saying about an event or experience in their workplace?
Now, (this is my MBA talking) a lot has been said about how denial is the first stage in change management. And collaboration initiatives are a big change for people sometimes. BUT the more important aspect is that there are reasons and stories that form this denial in people’s minds.
Here’s an interesting technique I stumbled upon on Ken Thompson’s blog. He has some good collaboration techniques listed, but this one is a great insight. He calls it a 10 second test to assess people's reaction to change.
How can you quickly find out what each team member's number one concern is about working in this scenario?Dr Lewis recommends you get each of them to repeat the following 5 words out loud without thinking about it too much:
"We can’t do that here”
Listen carefully to which of the five words they stress – if its:
We – they are worried about their Identity
Can’t – they are worried about their beliefs and values
Do – they are worried about their skills
That – they are worried about their behavior
Here – they are worried about the environment
It might then be useful to probe the domains the participants seem most concerned about using anecdote circles to collect stories about the concerns that in fact may be the cause of their resistance or concern.
When you try it out, let us know how it went for you. We’d be happy to hear your story ☺
Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
| 12/09/07 | | Intelligence agencies adopting social software |
I'm giving a presentation to the Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers (AIPIO) conference in October so I'm keeping my eye out for relevant news items. Here's one passed on to me by Nerida Hart. Any other pointers would be appreciated. The topic is narrative approaches to knowledge retention.
“How do you transform analysis?” asked Thomas Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence for analysis at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). “One word: attitude. For people to collaborate and bring new and vital skills to the intelligence community, we need to change our attitude.”
Technorati Tags: intelligence
Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
| 24/07/07 | | Architectures of control |
Just discovered this interesting blog on how designers are using the built environment to control our behaviour. There is an interesting post on how a European airport cafe removed all the handy flight monitors in their vicinity so patrons would not sit in the cafe too long. They would get worried that they might have missed their flight. I remember McDonalds doing something similar by installing immovable and uncomfortable chairs.
Here is how the Dan Lockton describes his blog topic.
‘Architectures of Control’ are features designed into things which intentionally attempt to restrict or enforce certain behaviour on the part of the users. The most prevalent examples are DRM and other attempts to control how users can interact with software and data, but similar thinking (in different degrees) is evident in many aspects of the built environment - such as anti-loiter and anti-homeless benches - and in product design in general. The term ‘architectures of control’ is used by Lawrence Lessig in the seminal Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, although the basic idea has been expressed in a number of fields by many different people.
And did you know that there are water detection stickers on phones?
(via Savage Minds)
Technorati Tags: design, control architecture
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 27/05/07 | | Staff induction - it's just learning |
The way you enter an organisation has a big impact on how you perceive the place you work. The recruitment process (really part of staff induction) creates a range of expectations and if these expectations are unmet a subtle erosion of trust occurs—not what you want on day 1. A common view of staff induction is that it all happens the day you start and mostly over within a week. A typical induction involves being taken around the floor by you manager to meet your new colleagues and shown the places to eat, then the new employee sits through a session with a group of other new starters where senior people tell what they think you should know—strategy, policies, who's who in the zoo. Invariably there is too much information to take in on day 1.
I have been asking people, “How long after starting here did you feel you really knew the organisation and job you were doing?” Most people said it took them 12-18 months in a large organisation to really feel on top on things. Staff induction, therefore, needs to be more gradual and unfold over time as we experience the organisation we've joined. We need a slower and longer-term approach, one that better balances intellectual and emotional learning.
Here's how I reckon this might work.
Day 1—the basics of survival, security passes, floor plan, toilets, colleagues, managers, colleagues sitting down for coffee to let you know of the gotchas to avoid
Week 1—why you are here and how your work fits into the big picture, cycles of activities, people you need to know, show how to elicit stories from people, meet some of the people you need to know and get them to tell a story or two, where to find information such as policies and processes and the staff directory, team lunch
Month 1—how to get your expenses paid, stuff about pays, people you need to know, conversation about how to get ahead around here, know what managers to avoid, conversation with your manager about what you need to do to make a good contribution, understand the wider network (check out the social network charts)
Quarter 1—reflect of what you have achieved so far and discuss with your manager, ask “where do things happen here?”, understand your purpose and how it links to what the organisation is trying achieve, know who you can trust, have lunch and coffees with people, ask questions and stay curious.
Year 1—sit back and think about what you learnt, help a new employee get up and running, tell them your stories of how you started, wonder what you don't know,
Staff induction is simply learning how you fit in and learning is social. Each step of the way conversations are necessary. Here are some more things I believe about learning. If you think about staff induction as a learning process we immediately understand why relying solely on a classroom approach is ineffective.
The job of HR professionals is to provide the formal induction activities and then support the informal methods in the full knowledge that induction occurs primarily informally over a period of a year of so.
Technorati Tags: hr, staff induction
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 27/04/07 | | The story of the old man and the insulting children |
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I’m reading Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn. It’s a terrific book. This story struck my funny bone so I thought I’d share it with you.
Each day an elderly man endured the insults of a crowd of ten-year-olds as they passed his house on their way home from school. One afternoon, after listening to another round of jeers about how stupid and ugly and bald he was, the man came up with a plan. He met the children on his lawn the following Monday and announced that anyone who came back the next day and yelled rude comments about him would receive a dollar. Amazed and excited, they showed up even earlier on Tuesday, hollering epithets for all they were worth. True to his word, the old man ambled out and paid everyone. “Do the same tomorrow,” he told them, “and you’ll get twenty-five cents for your trouble.” The kids thought that was still pretty good and turned out again on Wednesday to taunt him. At the first catcall, he walked over with a roll of quarters and again paid off his hecklers. “From now on,” he announced, “I can give you only a penny for doing this.” The kids looked at each other in disbelief. “A penny?” they repeated scornfully. “Forget it!” And they never came back again.
Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
| 27/02/07 | | Redressing the balance in developing knowledge strategies |
Strategies should result in a set of actions making the organisation more valuable to whoever it serves. Knowledge strategies are no different but most organisations develop a knowledge strategy in the following way:
- the company engages consultants to analyse their needs
- the leaders are asked, "what result would you like to see at the end of the project?" The consultants capture this information as the project's vision.
- the consultants interview staff, conduct focus groups and compile an inventory of important knowledge assets
- gaps are identified between what currently occurs and what needs to happen to achieve the vision
- a report is written and there's considerable debate over the structure, format and wording of this document
- the knowledge strategy and associated implementation plan is presented to the executive group for their approval
- everyone is exhausted but pleased with the document
- there is little energy left for the actions needed to make the required changes
Don't get me wrong, a process like this is what’s mostly needed to undertake an effective knowledge strategy. It suffers, however, from a problem of balance. The weight of effort is on developing the document—the strategy or plan. Little energy or process is left for people to take actions that will change how things are actually done. The further the organisation gets away from the initial strategy development exercise, the greater the apathy to implement the original plan. The ideal situation is one where the top down focus on defining what to do is balanced with a process that enables people to do things that will make the organisation more valuable to whoever it serves.
So what if we put less effort into the knowledge strategy design and more into implementing strategic actions?
There are three reasons why we should shift the balance from viewing the strategy as a thing to redressing the balance towards the process for implementing the strategy.
- businesses are less predictable and long-term, linear plans rarely achieve their stated goals
- embedding actions in the day-to-day activities of the organisation allows new ways to tackle problems to emerge
- the process moves the responsibility for making a difference to how knowledge is created, shared and used to everyone in the organisation rather than a typically under-resourced knowledge management unit
So how might this look? The best solution is one developed by people in the organisation, one that develops the process for embedding the strategic actions into the day-to-day activities. To give you an idea of what it might look like here are some ideas adapted from David Maister's suggested approach for conducting a strategy.
The initial knowledge strategy design should result in some objectives, which might include things like:
- improve knowledge sharing
- enhance innovation
- reduce impact of people leaving (knowledge retention)
- build skills and know-how
- improve everyone's ability to find relevant knowledge when they need it
- improve how we learn from experience
Ideally, there should only be two or three objectives. Six is too many.
The process starts by giving each group within the organisation one sheet of paper for each objective. Each sheet has four columns. The group lists, for each objective, the actions they are going to take over the next three months to help achieve the objectives. A senior member of staff works with the group acting as a friendly sceptic or mentor. This mentor's role is to ask question, helping the group to stretch their plans or to reign in over enthusiasm. At the end of the session, the mentor sets a date to meet with the group again in three months where they will review how they went, what they learned and establish a new set of actions for the following three months.
The four columns to fill in for each objective are:
- the action to be done
- who is responsible for ensuring the action is completed
- the date the action will be completed
- a description of how the group will know the action has been completed
It’s important that the group focuses on actions and not goals. For example, if the objective is “improve knowledge sharing” then rather than provide a goal such as, “build better relationships with the policy division,” describe a tangible action like “organise 3 brown bag seminars with the policy division.”
By repeating this activity every three months the organisation begins to embed knowledge-related activities into their day to day business. It becomes second nature. The three-month time frame also feels achievable and tangible. It gives the groups something in the foreseeable future to aim for. One last benefit of a shorter time frame for action is that it enables the organisation to sense and respond to the changing business environment making it more nimble and resilient.
You might be thinking, “Yeh, but what about those initiatives that take longer than three months to accomplish?” Of course this will be the case. Sometimes the organisation will be able to identify longer-term initiatives, such as the adoption of communities of practice or an intranet implementation, in the initial knowledge strategy design which can be implemented organisation-wide. Here I am arguing for a balance between the more traditional approach to developing a knowledge strategy with a greater emphasis on embedding the knowledge actions.
Maister, D. H. “Ready, Set, Go: Fast-track Strategy.” Strategy in Professional Business Retrieved 27 February, 2007, from http://davidmaister.com/podcasts/4/45/.
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
| 27/02/07 | | Don't tell me what to do, tell me a story |
Last week I returned from my morning walk to find my 11–year-old daughter filling the blender with ice cream to make a banana smoothie. My first reaction was to say, “What are you doing eating ice cream for breakfast? That’s a bad habit to get into. It’s unhealthy. You should stop having ice cream for breakfast” The response was a dismissive grunt in my general direction. Hmmm, that didn’t go well.
After we sat down to eat breakfast I started to tell my daughter a story. “When I was in high school my parents really had no idea about healthy eating and we used to drink soft drinks all the time, ate lots of bread and hardly touched fruit.” Then the phone rang and I answered. When I returned to the table my daughter said, “go on, you were talking about when you were in high school.” I continued the story which conveyed the message that the habits you form now will be with you for the rest of your life. I made no mention of the smoothie.
A week has gone by and ice cream hasn’t featured on our breakfast table.
Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
| 30/01/07 | | Defining intent in a change management program |
A while ago I argued that the target metaphor was inappropriate for change projects. The idea that anyone could accurately define a change target, aim at it, and then hit it with a well shot arrow was, at best, an illusion. In most cases the possible, beneficial end states are wide and varied.
So the question is, how do you define an intent that provides direction, inspires action yet is not overly prescriptive? John F. Kennedy provides a good example.
In his now famous ‘man on the moon’ speech, Kennedy kicked off the US entry to the space race with the following goal:
First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.
This statement of intent is concrete (landing a man on the moon), active (landing, returning, achieving), simple, time bound (before this decade is out), and is in the form of a mini story (land the man and get him home safely).
The military are well versed in providing strategic intents for missions because they know that No plan survives contact with the enemy. Chip and Dan Health explain the military’s use of commanders intent (CI).
CI is a crisp, plain-talk statement that appears at the top, of every order, specifying the plan’s goal, the desired end-state of an operation. At high levels of the Army the CI may be relatively abstract: “Break the will of the enemy in the Southwest region.”
Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad suggest three key aspects of an effective strategic intent:
- Sense of Direction. "Strategic intent (...) implies a particular point of view about the long-term market or competitive position that a firm hopes to build over the coming decade or so". It should be a view of the future – conveying a unifying and personalising sense of direction.
- Sense of Discovery. A strategic intent is differentiated; it implies a competitively unique point of view about the future. It holds out to employees the promise of exploring new competitive territory.
- Sense of Destiny. Strategic intent has an emotional edge to it; it is a goal that employees perceive as inherently worthwhile.
These examples provide a sense of what a change management team needs to achieve, but we still need a way to develop a useful intent. As you might guess, my suggestion is largely participative, using stories and question-based. But I have run out of time to finish this post so I will write another making some suggestions on how you can create your strategic intent for a change management program. In the meantime any other examples or descriptions of how you do it would be appreciated.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 26/11/06 | | How a community can find the information it needs |
Social searching is the next big step in helping you get the search results you need. This is how it works. Someone in your community creates a community search engine for your group and then everyone in the community starts using it. When the results appear you add value by telling the engine which results don’t belong and which ones should be promoted to the top of the list. The more the community uses the engine the better the results.
I’ve created three social search engines using Swiki from Eurekstar:
- people issues related to knowledge management
- evaluation of hard to measure initiatives
- meaningful organisational change
If you are interested in these three topics please bookmark these links and use the search feature as much as you can. We can then see, as a community, how we can improve our searchability.
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 18/11/06 | | 4 ways to use your time more effectively |
Wherever I go I hear the same thing, “I’d love to do it, but we just don’t have enough time.”
‘It’ is anything they know is important, and could make a difference, but they are totally overwhelmed with their current tasks. The thought of something else is just too much.
So why is there such a lack of time? Here are my top 7 reasons:
- Someone else sets your agenda and fills you schedule with tasks
- You don’t know what to say ‘no’ to
- We can do so many things these days, so we do
- We want to keep an eye on everything because the world is complex and changing and we are constantly distracted
- Our physical workspaces encourage distractions
- We are more connected than ever and technology keeps the channels open
- Being generalists we tackle new things over and over and never are really proficient
These suggestions will help you wrest control of you time.
- Learn a task management method like Getting Things Done. I’d recommend getting David Allen’s book
of the same name and put it into practice. Better still, get your organisation to invest in a GTD training program (addresses issues 1 and 3).
- Understand your priorities and work out how your work fits in to the big picture. If it doesn’t fit in to either the big picture or your priorities then say ‘no’ (issue 2)
- Get into a community of practice and learn how to work smarter from your peers and with your peers that already do it. Rather than try and keep up with all the changes in your discipline, share the workload. Social book-marking is one possible tool (issues 4 & 7)
- Periodically close down the communication channels. Turn off the mobile, Skype, email and then find a cafe where you can work anonymously. You’ll be amazed at how much work you’ll get done (issues 5 & 6).
Obviously this is not a comprehensive assessment of the why there is such a lack of time in organisations and what to do about it (I just don’t have the time 
). But what advice would you give to someone who seems to be flat out like a lizard drinking?
[Thanks to Nancy White for a conversation this morning about this issue]
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
| 13/11/06 | | The lure of numbers--employee engagement is good for business |
Gallup has done a survey of 1000 US employees investigating the relationship between engaged employees and innovation. At first glance it seems impressive. There are lots of numbers, a couple of graphs and even a statement at the bottom of the article describing the survey limitations. The results, however, hinge on their definitions of employee engagement (see pretty graphic).
So how did they determined who fell into which engagement category? This seems to be a vital missing piece. There is no indication of the questions they asked or the scales they used. Without this information the rest of the ‘data’ is nonsense to me. Here are some of the findings.
When GMJ researchers surveyed U.S. workers, 59% of engaged employees strongly agreed with the statement that their current job "brings out [their] most creative ideas." On the flip side, only 3% of actively disengaged employees strongly agreed that their current job brings out their most creative ideas.
The study also showed that engaged workers were much more likely to react positively to creative ideas offered by fellow team members. When asked to rate their level of agreement with the statement "I feed off the creativity of my colleagues," roughly 6 in 10 engaged employees (61%) strongly agreed, while only about 1 in 10 actively disengaged employees (9%) gave the same answer.
In the race for evidence-based management I imagine people are taking these results and believing what they read and quoting the figures (fully referenced of course) in business cases as if they are gospel. Perhaps I’m missing something but without an understanding of how these categorisations are made it’s difficult to assess the results’ veracity.
I would love to hear what Bob Sutton thinks of these types of ‘evidence-based’ pronouncements masquerading as research.
Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack
| 13/11/06 | | Measuring knowledge work - when measures become targets |
The whole fraud is only possible because performance metrics in knowledge organizations are completely trivial to game. Joel on Software
Joel demonstrates a weakness of metrics in assessing the performance of software developers and somewhat cynically suggests that large management consulting firms actively exploit this weakness. Whenever I have a choice between malicious intent and incompetence I tend towards the latter as an explanation. Personally I believe large consulting firms have these problems because they are steeped in particular mental models, namely the idea that organisations are machines and if you can’t measure it you can’t fix it. Fredrick Brooks understood this and painted a clear picture of the complexity of managing software development projects in his classic, The Mythical Man-Month
So what is the weakness Joel uncovers? Companies want to improve performance (excellent objective) and consulting companies have methods to measure the current performance (it’s good to know where you stand). But here is the big mistake: the consulting company makes the measure of performance a target. And this is what happens:
Consulting company comes in, gets all the programmers in a room, tells them all about Function Points [the measure of performance] and stuff, and how productivity is REALLY IMPORTANT.
Programmers remember that scene from Office Space where Bob and Bob, the consultants, recommended all the people to get fired.
Programmers start writing a heck of a lot more function points. For example you can triple the number of function points in your code simply by round tripping everything through an XML file. Big waste of time, prone to bugs, does nothing, but each file you touch adds a function point. W00t!
Consulting company comes back, measures again, and lo and behold, with all the round trips through XML the function point count is up drastically. Consultant announces that Oil Company is now at 151.29% productivity. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
Here is an alternative approach.
- Work with the leaders to get a broad picture of what they think performance is in the context of software development. Get them to paint that broad picture while resisting the temptation to fill in all the gaps.
- Ask the software developers to define the performance measures and keep them to a minimum.
- Be clear what will remain measures and what will be the targets
- Add to the metrics approach a qualitative assessment of impact using Most Significant Change (see Zahmoo to learn about this technique).
This approach is based on the idea that any journey of change (actually I prefer the metaphor of the expedition) should be created three times. The first creation is in the minds of the leadership group (however you want to define that). The second creation of the journey is in the minds of the participants. Finally the journey is created for real as everyone sets off together and it’s here that everyone discovers that is never turns out the way they expected, so a willingness to monitor and adapt is essential.
[thanks to Les Posen for the pointer to Joel’s post]
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
| 9/08/06 | | Positive deviance |
One of the concepts of Appreciative Inquiry is to identify the positive deviants in a system and to find out what it is they are doing that works. The Positive Deviance Initiative has put this approach to the test in development projects since 2002. The concept is to identify the things/people that are successful in a system (the positive deviants), find out why they are successful and apply this learning broadly. The case study of ‘anti-girl trafficking’ in Indonesia provides a powerful example of how his approach can have stunning results.