Tag:

Culture

Culture – Mission: Summary

by Ron Potter August 29, 2019

We just finished the three segments of the Mission portion of the Denison Culture Survey. As a quick recap of each section:

Is the direction and future image of the company clear to everyone? Everyone from the leadership team down through the entire organization? Is there unity about what that vision is and how it will be executed within every part of the organization?

Goals and Objectives

Is it clear how everyone’s daily work, goals, and objectives contribute and lead toward that unified vision? If people are simply accomplishing the “task of the day” without thought of how it contributes to the vision, the mission has not penetrated the organization enough to make a difference.

Strategic Direction

Every organization is vulnerable to changes and disruptions in the market place. Is there a clear strategic direction to help guide people through those potential impacts?

Why Mission?

But, I started with Mission because Dr. Denison and his organization are great researchers first! They have continued to dig deep into the impact of culture on the performance of organizations.

One of the studies looked at six different performance issues. Those six included:

Profitability/Return On Assets
Growth Sales/Revenue
Market Share
Product Development/Innovation
Quality
Employee Satisfaction

As the researchers discovered, Mission was impactful in five of the six measurements. In other words, if your Mission:

Vision
Goals and Objectives
Strategic Direction and Intent

are not on solid footing, you don’t have much of a chance at achieving

profitability
growth
market share
quality (product or service)
employee satisfaction.

When it comes to building a great corporate culture, get your mission unified and deeply penetrated first or don’t waste your time.

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Blog Culture Culture Series

Culture – Mission: Strategic Direction and Intent

by Ron Potter August 15, 2019

Strategic Direction and Intent is the last element of the Mission quadrant of great cultures.

The Strategy is different than the Vision.

Strategy is a plan
Tactics are how the plan will be executed
Vision is the end-result

We talked about the Vision and the Goals and Objectives (Tactics) in the last two blog posts. This section is focused on the strategy to accomplish the goals to reach the vision.

A culture survey doesn’t focus on what the strategy is. The strategy is different for every company, every division in the company and every team depending on the skills available.

What makes up a good strategy?

Therefore, a strategy in a corporate culture must focus on

Purpose
Meaning
Impact
Game-Changing
Clarity

Impact and Game-Changing

One question on the Denison Culture Survey seems to hit many of these points directly.

Our strategy leads other organizations to change the way they compete in the industry.”

Now that gets at the heart of a great strategy. Is it forcing other people in the industry to change their approach?

Strategy should never be about making money. As we stated earlier, money is a result.

Strategy isn’t about being the best at something. This goals usually leads to better, cheaper, or faster. There’s an old joke about a sign hanging in a shop window proclaiming “Better, Cheaper, Faster.” But the second line on the sign went straight to the heart of the matter. “Chose any two!” Someone will always be better, cheaper, or faster. Being the best at any one or two is not a strategy. It’s merely your value proposition.

But a strategy that gets the competition thinking about how they’re going to compete has a real impact. It’s a game-changer. It shakes up the industry because no one ever thought about doing it that way.

The list of game-changing innovations in my lifetime is incredible. There are two that I closely relate with because they corresponded to significant moments in my life.

The Transistor. It was invented the year I was born.
The programable Microprocessor. It was invented when I graduated from college.

Those two in particular lead to other game-changing innovations such as Mobile phones (massive computers that happen to make phone calls), DNA, LED, GPS, Digital Photos, FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) almost everything in our daily lives.

I get it that you may be thinking at the moment, “What do the FAANG companies have to do with us?” We make glass jars. We make cereal. We make rubber tires.

But there is a constant revolution going on in each of these industries as well as others. Every industry and company is vulnerable to innovation and change. Is your strategy leading you to be the disrupter or the disrupted?

Purpose and Meaning

In the first year of my consulting career, I was in real trouble. I was coming to the end of my initial resources with no clients or even clear prospects. When my wife asked if I was supposed to be doing something else, my answer was “No. I believed I’d been called to this work.”

For me, helping leaders build great Teams, Leadership, and Culture was very meaningful and had a purpose. That doesn’t mean I was immune to failure, but that strong sense of being called to this work helped me persevere through the difficult times.

Does your strategy have that kind of purpose and meaning? Does it drive people to work through those difficult times when it might be easier to give up? Are people excited about getting to work, so see if they can accomplish the strategy and see how that might change the world? Does your strategy have meaning and purpose?

Clarity

Just like the other two elements of Mission, Strategic Direction and Intent must be clear, crisp, and concise. With large organizations, each division must be clear about how they may need to sub-optimize their portion at the moment to achieve the overall mission of the company. Is there enough clarity of the overall goal that people understand why they can’t have the resources they need at the moment to reach the ultimate corporate vision?

Hitting on All Cylinders

Impactful and Game-Changing
Purpose and Meaning
Clarity

Powerful strategies have all three.

Two out of three? You might tread water.
One of the three? You’ll lose ground.
Three out of three? This is going to be fun!

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Blog Culture Culture Series

Culture – Mission: Vision

by Ron Potter August 15, 2019

As we continue our look at great cultures, we’ve seen the four quadrants of Mission, Adaptability, Involvement, and Consistency.

We’re now looking at each quadrant in more detail. In our last blog post we identified the three elements in the Mission quadrant as

Vision
Goals and Objectives
Strategic Direction and Intent.

In today’s post and the next two to follow, I’m going to look at each of those elements in more detail.

Today we’ll look at Vision. As the Denison Culture Survey digs deeper into Vision, it tends to focus on two key aspects of Vision

The depth and motivating elements of the Vision
How the Leaders respond and react to the Vision

Depth

One of the questions in this arena is a two-part question of how deeply the vision has been shared and is it clear what the organization will look like in the future.

We’ve touched on the depth of sharing earlier but it’s worth going over again here.

I was working with a Fortune 50 company. I had spent most of my time with the ranks just below the C Suite level. At that level, they were very focused on the elements that would help them continue to flourish as one of the top companies in the world. They were developing stories, creating videos and building the elements into their software. They seemed to have a vision of their future.

Then I was introduced to one of the C Suite members and listened to him tell of the great vision that the CEO and other C Suite leaders were working on. When I asked about all of the vision pieces I had recently been working on with others down in his organization he looked at me curiously and said: “I haven’t heard any of those stories but I’m excited about our vision.”

The leaders were talking about different things than the rest of the organization. The did not have a shared vision! The vision must be the same vision no matter where in the organization it is being expressed.

Motivation

Is the vision motivating? This is the second part of the vision question. There may be a vision that is unified and deep in the organization but if it doesn’t inspire people to put forth the effort to reach the vision, it’s not worth the ink it took to print it.

“Our vision is to be one of the top recognized companies in our slice of the market place!” Not really inspiring. I’ve occasionally tried a trick with some of my clients. I’ll take their vision word-for-word but put one of their competitor’s names in instead. When it’s obvious that it could apply to either company equally, it’s not inspiring. What makes you unique? What makes you different? What is something only you can accomplish? That’s inspiring.

Leaders Response and Reaction

The other questions in this section relate to the leaders’ ability to execute the vision. Leaders often talk in terms of the long-term but make decisions that obviously have short term (read quarterly) impact. They may be trying to satisfy the investors and market by hitting these quarterly goals but it hampers the companies to reach their vision.

I know that some companies have elected not to report quarterly. I wish more companies would do the same. It helps build a better vision and long-term health for the company.

Vision

Vision must penetrate deep into the organization and it needs to be motivating and inspiring as well.

Leaders must walk-the-talk. It does no good to talk a good vision then make decisions to hit quarterly goals that will hamper the companies ability to reach that vision.

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Blog Culture Culture Series

Culture – Mission: Goals and Objectives

by Ron Potter August 8, 2019

Looking at the Mission quadrant of great cultures in more detail brings us to the Goals and Objectives element.

Tied to the Vision

Before anything else, goals and objectives must be aligned with the vision. People must see how accomplishing these specific goals and objectives will move the company towards that long-term vision.

Ambitious but Realistic

Many studies of high achieving individuals, teams, and companies reveal some interesting facts. High Achievers set goals that they believe they have a 75% probability of achieving. Once these “public” goals have been stated, they will internally work hard to reach goals they think they have about a 50% probability of achieving.

This formula says there is at least a 25% chance of failure (realistic) and then when they hit a higher goal with a lower chance of probability, they achieve an ambitious goal.

But one of the more interesting parts of these studies is that if publicly stated goals have less than a 50% probability, that becomes demotivating. Corporate leaders must be careful not to set goals that are demotivating but are ambitious. It’s a fine line that great cultures achieve.

Widespread Agreement

Gaining agreement is often more difficult than it seems on the surface. Different functions within an organization attract people with varying patterns of thought. Some of the easiest ones to see are the designers vs. the manufactures. Designers are artistic. They use different parts of their brain and think about style and form. Manufactures are often hands-on engineers. Things are matter-of-fact and practical. Making the most beautiful, cost-effective product often create opposing views. Leaders must help the organization balance these conflicting goals to reach the ultimate vision.

Track Progress

Goals and Objectives don’t carry much value if we don’t know where we are on our journey.

This is a personal story that I’ve shared before, but I have used many times with great success to help teams move forward along their journey.

When my children were very young, we lived in Utah, but much of our family resided in Michigan. Every summer we would make that 1,600-mile trek, often in a small car. It seemed to me that we hadn’t even reached the border between Utah and Wyoming when I would hear the question from the back seat, “are we there yet?” I soon banned that question from our family vocabulary. But I did give each child a detailed map and told them they could ask, “Where are we?” as many times as they wanted. They quickly figured out that when they plotted the first point on the map that we had a long way to go, and the frequency of questions diminished rapidly.

People want to know where they are on the Trek.

Measuring progress:

Identifies accomplishments on a regular basis
Identifies goals to be accomplished next
Motivates them to work harder on the next goal
Helps accomplish the overall journey sooner.

Goals and Objectives

Tied to the Vision
Ambitious but Realistic
Widespread Agreement
Progress Tracked

These elements of Goals and Objectives are another aspect of great cultures.

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Blog Culture Culture Series

Culture – Mission

by Ron Potter July 25, 2019

Everyone has a different definition of Mission, Vision, Values, etc. I’m not here to promote one definition or the other, I’m just going to use the definition found in the Denison Culture Survey.

Mission

Mission is the title of the first quadrant.

“Do we know where we are going?” is how Denison describes this quadrant. Whether you call it mission, vision or whatever, that simple question gets to the heart of this quadrant.

Clarity and Alignment

Do the people, including the leaders, know where they’re going?

What are they trying to accomplish?
Do they see the big picture?
Are they simply trying to accomplish tasks?
Can they give the “elevator” speech about where the company is going in the future?

There’s an old story about the early days of the space mission. As one of the scientists was leaving the building, he walked past a janitor sweeping up in the cavernous assembly building. Wanting to be friendly, the scientist asked, “What are you doing there?” The person sweeping up replies “Haven’t you heard? We’re going to the moon!” Regardless of the position in the company, every person knew the mission of the company.

Vision

Vision is about keeping an eye on the long-term vs the short-term. I’ve seen many corporate leadership teams make decisions that no one thinks will be healthy for the company long-term, but it will help them meet quarterly reporting to wall street and investors.

Some of the corporate leaders I’ve talked with this about will reply that their mission and vision is to make money. I’m sorry, but it’s not! Simon Sinek, one of my favorite authors and bloggers, clearly states the profits are not “why” we do something, profits are a result of what we do. It’s always a result. It’s only a result.

Goals and Objectives

I love golf analogies. They speak to so many aspects of life. One of the differences between average golfers and really good golfers is their image of the target. To the average golfer, the target is often the ball. We end up concentrating on hitting the ball rather than producing a swing that will launch the ball toward the true target, that spot down the fairway or the green.

In average corporate cultures, the target is often getting to work, doing your job and going home at night. All too often, there is little thought about what the real target is and everyday work is going to help achieve the desired results.

Great cultures help all employees understand how their work will advance the corporation toward the goal.

Do people really understand the connection between their daily goals and objectives and the long-term goals and objectives of the corporation or team? Great cultures do.

Strategic Direction and Intent

The world changes rapidly around us.

Competition changes. We talk about this change with words like disruption. A competitor invents something new or puts a new twist on things that disrupt the entire industry. If a culture has good strategic direction and intent, they are constantly looking out for and watching competitors so they don’t become a victim of disruption.
The consumer changes. The Consumer Packaged Goods industry has been dealing with this over the last few years. If you look at the pre-packaged food industry, you’ve seen CEO changes, Board changes, buy-outs, and consolidation. Everyone is looking for a way to combat the disruption. Many times it happens because these companies have had tremendous success for decades and it’s hard for them to think that the strategy that got them here won’t get them through this next threat. You can’t think that way anymore. Consumers are changing too fast.
The industry changes. I could go down many paths on this issue but I’ll choose one, government regulation! When regulations change it can affect an entire industry almost overnight. Great cultures are prepared.

Scenario Planning

One approach that I’ve seen work well to combat all of these shortcomings is scenario planning. Pick a few “worst-case scenarios.” Even if no one on the team thinks this could possibly happen, make a list of the worst possible events the team can think of. Then do some scenario planning. Spend some time talking about “what if” parts of or even the whole scenario were to happen, what would we do?

Teams that have gone through these scenario planning sessions are more apt to see changes sooner and less likely to make panic moves to counter the change once it’s obvious. They feel like they’ve already faced this issue and know in general what they need to do to counter or mitigate the negative impact. And they did it during calm times, not times of panic.

Companies that constantly keep these three things in mind create Great Cultures:

Vision: Does everyone in the company know what the desired future looks like?
Goals and Objectives: Does everyone know how their daily work impacts that long-term vision?
Strategic Direction and Intent: Does everyone know that the future is filled with challenges but we’ve tried to think through many scenarios? Are they able to raise the alarm if they see things happening that could trigger one of the disruption scenarios?

You’ll note that I started each one of those segments with “Does everyone….” That’s the point of building a great culture. It’s transparent. It’s well known. People can speak up from everywhere if they see disruption coming.

One of the best CEO’s I’ve seen would spend time walking and talking with people throughout the company. He often said that he got the best early warning signals came from the truck drivers and people who worked in shipping. They seemed to be intuned with “the street” and if he would ask, they gave him early signals of things changing.

Culture means everybody, not just the leadership team and their direct reports. Is the whole organization aware of the Mission?

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Blog Culture Culture Series

Culture: Introduction

by Ron Potter July 18, 2019

What is Culture?

A dictionary definition says “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an organization.”

We hear a lot about a corporate culture being toxic or exciting or siloed or productive. But in my mind, many of those conditions have more to do with Teams and Leadership than they do with Culture.

If there is a toxic environment, that’s usually caused by poor leadership that is ego driven rather than humbly driven.

Exciting environments come from leaders and teams developing people to face difficulties and obstacles in innovative thoughtful ways that utilize the skills and experiences present.

Siloed environments happen when teams are unable to work through their difference and reach a committed direction or approach.

Productive environments exist when teams learn how to elegantly use the resources they have to get the most out of an organization in a simple way.

Focusing on “culture” doesn’t cure any of the identified difficulties or enhance any of the identified strengths. Building better teams and leadership improves those issues.

So what should be looked at when we think about and measure culture?

Culture Model

I first met Dan Denison many years ago when he was completing his research on corporate culture at the University of Michigan. One of the things that caught my attention right from the start was Dan’s purpose in finding those items that can be measured on a survey that actually impact the bottom-line performance of an organization. I knew that would catch the interest of every senior corporate leader I was working with. They are very bottom-line focused. If Dan could demonstrate that certain parts of the environment or culture actually had an effect on financial performance, I knew we had a winner.

From that initial work, Dan has gone on to be Professor of Management and Organization at IMD – International Institute of Management Development in Switzerland as well as found and become CEO of Denison Consulting in Ann Arbor, MI. I would encourage you to visit his website at www.denisonconsulting.com.

The Denison model identifies four quadrants with three subsets each. In this blog, I’ll introduce the four quadrants and then go on to explore each one in more detail over the next few months.

Four Quadrants of Corporate Cultures

Mission – Adaptability – Involvement – Consistency

Much of the wording you’ll see to describe each of these quadrants come directly from the Denison materials. I trust Dan will see that as flattery and not plagiarism.

Mission

“Do we know where we are going?”

High performing organizations have a mission that tells employees why they are doing the work they do, and how the work they do each day contributes to the why.

Adaptability

“Are we listening to the marketplace?”

High performing organizations have the ability to perceive and respond to the environment, customers, and restructure and re-institutionalize behaviors and processes that allow them to adapt.

Involvement

“Are our people aligned and engaged?”

Highly involved organizations create a sense of ownership and responsibility. Out of this sense of ownership grows a greater commitment to the organization and an increased capacity for autonomy.

Consistency

“Does our system create leverage?”

Consistency provides a central source of integration, coordination, and control, and helps organizations develop a set of systems that create an internal system of governance based on consensual support.

Schedule

Over the next several weeks I’ll break down each one of these four quadrants into their three subsets and share many experiences I’ve had through the years of companies that have improved over time. Some of them have changed rapidly, others slowly but steadily and unfortunately some not at all. But there always seemed to be reasons for the growth and development or lack thereof. One thing that has been very clear, the growth and development that did or did not occur was caused by internal issues, not external environments.

Just as a reminder, these blogs will be our Thursday morning series. Our Monday morning blogs will be less structured and disciplined and made up of issues and ideas that are striking me at the moment.

Thanks for coming along on this journey with me. I’ve appreciated your loyalty and comments. And don’t forget to share this connection with someone you know. It will be more fun when we increase the size of our community.

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Blog Culture

You can’t fix culture

by Ron Potter August 17, 2017

I named my company Team Leadership Culture because those were the three elements that made a company great. You can think of those three elements as a triangle: Team and leadership at the base of the triangle, culture at the top. If you have not taken the time to build great teams and great leaders, a great culture is not going to develop.

Team is the most important. With a great team, lots of wonderful things can happen, sometimes even with mediocre leadership. However, great leadership without a good team almost always fails.

Teams can be easier to build than great leaders. Many times, out of peer pressure or for other reasons, members of the team will at least fake good teamwork for a period, knowing its expected. Often, even if it is fake, other team members take advantage to accomplish some great team performance. The old adage “fake it until you make it” works well also.

Teams we can built. Leadership is a little more difficult. The book A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver DeMille explains our education system by describing how it was originally formed. During the foundation of this country, great leaders were formed through a series of mentors, tutors, and subject matter experts spending personal time with individuals to help them develop their leadership skills. We had trade schools to help people become good craftsmen. Becoming a good butcher, baker or candlestick maker (carpenters, millwrights, blacksmith’s, etc.) happened through trade schools. Good livings could be made by learning a trade.

DeMille, by tracing the history demonstrates that our colleges, universities, and MBA programs of today are the natural extensions of those original craft/trade schools and apprenticeship programs. As people earn their MBA, they’re becoming great craftsman. In the language of business today, they’re learning the skills of management.

However, leadership is an art, not a skill. It still takes mentors, tutors, and subject matter experts spending personal time with individuals to help them develop their leadership skills.

But, the title of this blog post is about culture, not leadership. Why can’t you fix culture? Because culture develops out of great team work and leadership. Without the base of teams and leadership, culture can never sit at the top of the triangle.

If the culture of the company is not where it needs to be, taking a survey to “fix” the culture will never work. If a human being has lost their balance, running them through a test to see how their balance has improved or deteriorated every few months does nothing to fix the problem. The doctor will check to see if it’s a skeletal/muscular issue (team) or an inner ear sensing issue (leadership) first. After working on one or both of those, only then will the balance be rechecked.

Culture, like balance, can’t be fixed. Only the underlying, foundational issues can be fixed.

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Blog Leadership

Warmer-Warmer-Cold-Colder-Warmer

by Ron Potter October 6, 2016

My grandkids always loved that game where they search for the prize and are directed by words of “warmer” if they’re headed toward the hidden prize or “colder” if they are moving farther away.

Through the years I’ve met and worked with hundreds of executives in my consulting work. Some of them I seem to gain almost an instant connection with while others seem to take much longer and many times doesn’t develop into a close relationship. None of that has to do with respect or competence. I have great respect for many of them but have not necessarily developed close relationships.

It does however have to do with warmth.

One exercise that I’ve run through the years demonstrates this and always surprises me and others with the results. I’ll show a list of characteristic of a person they have not met but can assume are valid. They include words like skillful, determined, intelligent, warm, practical and a few others.

I show a slightly different list to each half of the room (without the other half seeing the list) and then ask them to rate the individual on traits they might expect from that person. These traits are always presented in pairs such as: reliable – unreliable, ruthless – humane, dishonest – honest. The list is reasonable long and you can see the pattern.

When we finish the exercise one half of the room will give the nod to the more positive descriptors such as wise, happy, humorous, reliable, honest, unselfish while the other half of the room tends to give higher scores on the negative descriptors such as ungenerous, shrewd, irritable, unpopular and dishonest.

Why the difference? You’re getting warmer. Each half of the room received an identical list of characteristics with the exception of one word. One list contains the word warm, while the other list contains the word cold. Is the person seen as warm or cold? That was the only difference between the lists. Those with the word warm assumed the person had the positive traits listed above. Those with the world cold assumed the negative traits.

Now here’s the scary part. We judge a person as being warm or cold in the first 15 seconds of an exchange. Now that’s not confined to the first time you meet a person. It relates to the first 15 seconds of every exchange. I’ve often heard people say, “As soon as Dave walks in the door I know what kind of day it’s going to be.” That first 15 seconds.

Kids look for the prize of the game be getting warmer and warmer. You’ll also collect the brass ring if you work at getting warmer and warmer. Greet people so they know you’re genuinely glad to see them. Be warm in that first moment. You’ll tend to gain the benefit of the doubt throughout the day.

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Absurd!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: The More We Communicate, The Less We Communicate

by Ron Potter May 19, 2016

I’m continuing my series on an in-depth look at a wonderful little book that’s twenty years old this year. The title is “Management of the Absurd” by Richard Farson. You may want to consider dropping back and reading the previous blogs about ABSURD! I think it will put each new one in great context.

“The notion that people need to communicate more is perhaps the most widely accepted idea in management, indeed in all human relationships. Whether it’s called counseling, team building, conflict resolution, or negotiating, it boils down to one idea – that if we talk it over, things will get better.”

I just finished another Culture Survey’s with a client. (Actually I dealt with three client surveys over the last six weeks.) There are a couple of items that always get low scores on every company’s survey and one of them is the need for more communication.

Unfortunately, most corporate leaders respond to the noted lack of communication with more information. Seldom do people want more information. Every organization and person I know, including myself is overrun with information. We carry around the knowledge (and information) of man in our hand in a device we ludicrously call a phone when it uses about 0.001% of its capability to provide phone service. What we don’t carry around with us is the wisdom of man.

People don’t want more information; they want more meaning. What does this mean? How should we interpret these numbers? Give us meaning. Tell us stories. Help us understand.

Our author says:

“Almost all of this information is quantitative rather than qualitative and is of little use to top managers, who are dealing with predicaments that seldom yield to logical analysis. What these executives require is more likely to come from the advice of their colleagues than from comprehensive displays of data.”

Simon Sinek notes that great leaders inspire action by starting with Why! If you haven’t seen his video check out YouTube for “Why, How, What” or Simon Sinek below. Why starts with meaning. People are seldom interested in what you do but they are often interested in why you’re doing it.

The more we communicate, the less we communicate. The more with inspire with meaning and helping people understand why, the more we communicate.

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Absurd!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: Technology Creates the Opposite of its Intended Purpose

by Ron Potter April 21, 2016

I’m continuing my series on an in-depth look at a wonderful little book that’s twenty years old this year. The title is Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson. You may want to consider dropping back and reading the previous blogs about ABSURD! I think it will put each new one in great context.

Chapter 7 is titled: Technology Creates the Opposite of its Intended Purpose

Our author anchors this chapter with the statement “Technology helps us in countless ways, but it always backfires. The term for this phenomenon in medicine is iatrogenic, meaning “physician-induced.” There are more than a thousand different diseases that would not exist if not for the practice of medicine and the existence of hospitals.”

A couple of years ago I personally experienced one of these iatrogenic hospital infections. The heart operation I went if for went well and I would have recovered quickly except that I contracted one of the hospital infections that made my daily life miserable and actually caused more life threatening risk than the heart operation. Now, had my father and the kind of heart operation available to him years ago like I do today, he may have lived long enough to know his grandchildren. So the intended consequence of better heart care was indeed met. But the unintended consequences of difficult to contain and kill hospital infections was itself more life threatening.

Two major consequences that I see playing out in the corporate world today that fit into this category are email and forecasting.

Email and Forecasting

I’ve written about email in other posts and probably will again but let me summarize quickly here.

I couldn’t run my business today (nor could any other enterprise) without email. And in fact as I was cleaning out some cupboards this week I came across my original Blackberry. The Blackberry was introduced in January 1999. I believe I purchased mine in March of 1999. I’m not opposed to email or the devices we use to send and receive.

The problem I have is that emails are not well suited for many reasons other than exchange of information (iatrogenic). Because of the proliferation and 24/7 availability of email we tend to use it for project management, decision making, arguments, disciplining, developing and a whole bunch of other reasons where it just doesn’t work very well. Use it for information sharing but put it down and call or meet with the person or team to solve, improve or advance all of the other issues.

Forecasting is another place where I see the siren song of technology creating unintended consequences. The belief seems to be that if we just have more information (often striving for “all” the information) it will help us become better forecasters. Brain science debunks that theory right off the bat. The human mind is just terrible at forecasting. If you want to debate me on that statement, I’ll start with political polls and forecasts. End of argument! And other research done by the people who actually study forecasting for a living tells us that the companies who seem to be best at forecasting do it with a minimum amount of data. More data doesn’t make better forecasting.

And of course to end on a personal note that all of us have either experienced or participated in, just watch the family out for dinner sitting at the same table together, each on their device “communicating” with someone else. It’s an astounding and sad example of technology creating the opposite of its intended purpose.

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Absurd!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: Relationship Over Skill

by Ron Potter February 13, 2016

Chapter 3 is titled “The More Important a Relationship, the Less Skill Matters”.

I often start many of my team consulting assignments with a session called “Human Beings vs Human Doings.” The point is we do most of our relating to each other at work based on what we do or in some cases by what we are not doing. In either case we tend to relate to each other as Human Doings.

But we’re not human doings, we human beings! Who you are not what you do is what really makes the difference. I never know where these sessions will lead because it’s often one of the first things I do with a team and I haven’t had the opportunity to get to know them as individuals yet. But in every case some of the most profound stories about human lives have come out. There have been tears, roaring laughter, broken hearts and considerable pride as we listen to each other’s stories.

What strikes me is there are often certain story lines that seem to repeat themselves on certain teams. I remember one team several years ago where three of the team members had grown up in families with severely handicapped siblings. Even though they had worked with each other for a few years they didn’t know about the shared experiences. Even when there is complete dedication and love, families with handicapped children share a great deal of stress and pressure together. Knowing there were other members of the team that had shared similar experiences created a bond and a determination to help and support each other (all members, not just the ones with the handicapped siblings) that was far beyond anything that could have been created through your normal corporate team building exercises. We began to form true bonds. The more important the relationship, the less skill matters.

The author shares a couple of stories in the book when talking about what people remembered about their boss.

“They tended to be moments that the bosses were not likely to remember and would probably think were insignificant, yet often revealed something of their humanity.”

He also goes on to say “In both parenthood and management, it’s not so much what we do as what we are that counts.”

Have you established some real human bonds with your team? People want to know who you are, not just what you do. Being real human beings, not just corporate facades creates the bonds that we need to build real team, overcome the challenges of live and work, and allow for the patience that it takes to make mistakes and grow together.

Being genuine and being vulnerable are two of the phrases I’m hearing a lot lately in corporate consulting circles. Being genuine and vulnerable makes you real. People want to work with and for real people.

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Quick Deciding vs Quick Learning

by Ron Potter March 12, 2015

Photo credit: Anne-Lise Heinrich, Creative Commons

I have observed what I believe to be a very detrimental shift in thinking within our corporate cultures over the last 15 years.

We’ve been inundated with instant communication that is with us everywhere 24/7 (I had one of the first Blackberrys as soon as it hit the market in early 1999). To be clear, I’m not railing against this technology. I love it and I couldn’t imagine running my business or staying in touch with my family and the world without it. But it has interjected a sense of speed and quickness that is altering the way we think and decide as we try to conduct business in a globally connected world.
However, this belief that we must decide quickly changes the dynamics of decision making in a detrimental way. Good decision making (See my post on Prudence) requires good deliberation. However, if we’re in a quick deciding frame of mind we get defensive when:

someone raises an issue that feels like it is not in line with the current thinking or
will open that proverbial “can of worms” if we entertain the idea, or
they simply don’t agree with the current approach.

Teams have developed all kinds of behavior to suppress, shut down or discount the questioning view point. This eliminates good deliberation and will lead to an inferior (or even wrong) decision.
The shift we need to make is back to a quick learning attitude and then use a good process to make good decisions. What’s interesting to me is that teams who have mastered this quick learning leading to good decision approach, consistently make decisions quicker than those with the quick deciding attitude (not to mention better decisions).
Get better at

- Quick learning with a…
- Team of diverse points of view and…
- Practicing good deliberation techniques to…
- Reach great and lasting decisions.

You and your team will feel more productive, less stressed and will also begin to gain the reputation as high achievers.

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