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Corporate Culture

BlogCultureCulture Series

Culture – Adaptability: Customer Focus

by Ron Potter

Customer focus is an interesting topic to me.  Henry Ford is quoted as saying “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”  He was inventing the car.  People didn’t know they needed a car.

Entirely new Product or Service

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”  Thomas Watson, president of IBM.  This was the quote from Tom Watson Sr.  It was Tom Watson Jr. that turned the punch card company toward computers of the future.

I believe Customer Focus must be driven by the Mission quadrant.  If our mission is to create something the world has never see or doesn’t know they need yet, then Customer Focus must be very selective.

I’m involved with a wonderful team attempting to create something that doesn’t exist yet.  We’re trying to take years of consulting experience from myself and a couple of other consultants and boil down the essence of building teams, being great leaders and developing great cultures into an app.  We’ve titled it GPS4Leaders.  Even though we have a great concept on how the app will work, our goal right now is to put the app in the hands of customers and let them tell us how it should look, feel and react to their use.  We’re trying to listen to the customer.

Existing Product or Service

But,

  • once the car has deeply penetrated society
  • everyone is working with computers daily (sometimes it even resides on your wrist)
  • giving you access to your Team, Leadership, and Culture progress instantly on whatever device is available at the moment

how should you then listen to your customer?

Listen to the customer from the companies position, not just your job

I recently received notice from my insurance company that my policy would be discontinued if I didn’t submit a payment immediately.  However, that particular policy is set up for automatic withdrawal, and it is the insurance company that initiates payment.  I called the company, brought the payments up to date and then asked, “Why didn’t you (the insurance company) make the automatic withdrawal?”  The answer was “I don’t know, but I’ll have someone contact you.”  I was never contacted!  The person I was talking with did their job of receiving payment and didn’t care if it happened again or not.

Listen before the customer asks

In another example, I received a regular shipment, but the shipment was short two critical pieces.  After waiting a week I called the company.  The person I talked with immediately corrected the problem and sent me the missing parts.  Did that person listen to the customer?  Sort of!

In correcting the improper shipment, the person said: “Yes, we had several shipments with this same issue, I’ll correct that for you.”

Wait a minute!  You knew you had this problem.  If fact you have several examples of it, and yet you didn’t correct my issue until I called you to see why there was a problem!

Companies that are good at listening to their customers make corrections before the customer calls them.

Listening may be unique, but it requires focus

Each company may have unique issues around listening to its customers.  An emergency room will have very different issues from a vitamin company.  A parts supply company will have different issues than a new car dealership.  You will likely need to customize your listening skills to your particular situation.  Just make sure this is a leadership issue, it’s everybody’s job; it is not the domain of a customer service department!

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BlogCultureCulture Series

Culture – Adaptability: Organizational Learning

by Ron Potter

Organizational learning requires much more than a procedure, a checklist, or even a department.  Organizational learning needs to be deeply embedded in the organization.  It must be a deeply held belief, part of everyday processes, and highly rewarded.

Reward Failure

Does your boss (or you as a boss) look for and reward those moments when learning takes place?  People learn more from failures then they do from success.  Let those two concepts sink in for a minute.  We reward learning.  Learning is the greatest from failure.  Therefore (if I still remember my algebra) we reward failure!

How many organizations will survive is they reward failure?  Not many, you might say.  But if you remember our last blog, if we don’t change we die.  You must figure out how to fail successfully to change and grow.

I remember one CEO in particular that seemed to have a good knack for successful failure.  At his leadership meetings, his direct reports began to understand that if they brought an idea forward on how to do something differently, he would “reward” them with great attention and questions.  For a moment they would get the center ring.  When someone proposed a new idea, he would ask all of the “mission” questions from the first quadrant of the Culture Survey to make sure they were headed in the right direction.  If so, he would grant permission to go ahead but with frequent updates, progress reports, and budget projections.

Noticed that he didn’t just turn them loose with no guide rails.  The idea needed to further the mission, and he also set parameters in place that would assure quick small failures before things got too out of hand if the idea didn’t work.

But the ideas were rewarded, and the person who brought the idea forward was rewarded with a “job well done” and went on to the next topic with a nice grin on their face.

Innovation and Creativity are not the same

I hear many top executives proclaim that they want more creativity from their people.  However, when people propose true, pie-in-the-sky, out-of-the-blue creative ideas are brought forward, they are often shot down for all the standard reasons.

Innovations are usually small, easily executable, quick ideas that help the organization change and adapt rapidly to a changing marketplace.  Innovation often falls in the category of rewarding failure.  Top executives love innovation (or at least they should).  It doesn’t have the risk of creativity, and it’s easier to make sure it fits with the guard rails described above.  Even if they call for creativity, corporate leaders are asking for innovation.  Respond accordingly.

Generational Differences

One final note is probably worth mentioning.  I grew up in the older generation.  Our generation that would ask “Why am I taking calculus?  Will I ever need it?”  The only answer I ever received was “You’ll better understand how things work.”

The younger generation grew up with electronics and access to more information than we’ll ever use or need.  They don’t need calculus; they Google it.  (Interesting how Google has now become a verb.)  Learning to them is very different from the learning process we went through.

How do we develop a culture of organizational learning in today’s environment?  My answer to that question is to ask.

  • Ask your employees about what they need to learn.
  • Ask them what they want to learn.
  • Ask them how they learn.
  • Ask what you can do to help them learn.

How do we learn?  Ask, don’t tell!

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BlogCulture

Culture: Adaptability

by Ron Potter

The next quadrant of the Denison Culture Survey we’re going to explore is Adaptability.

Photo credit: Denison Consulting

This quadrant is divided into the three sections of:

  • Organizational Learning
  • Customer Focus
  • Creating Change

You can easily see how an attitude of learning, customer focus and one of creating change will certainly make an organization adaptable.

What are some signs that we are NOT an adaptable organization?  I’m sure you can come up with a lot more examples than I could ever possibly list but here are a few that I’ve seen through the years.

  • There’s a belief in the organization that we’ve been successful for 100 years.  If we just keep doing things the same way, we’re sure we’ll pull out of this slump.
  • The industry is producing products that make our product look old.  But, we’ve gone through an extensive competitive bidding program and the cheapest supplier we’ve chosen is not capable of providing the new look.
  • Our customer feedback has dried up because we never seem to respond to the customer stated needs.  It’s just too expensive for us to manufacture it that way.
  • Everyone is doing a great job but the feedback from the customer never makes it out of the customer service department.
  • We tried to make a change but were punished for “making a mistake.”  We’ll never try that again.
  • The leadership team seemed to be focused on that issue, they just neglected to inform the rest of us.

As I said, you can probably come up with many more reasons for not being adaptable.  Those are just a few of the many that I’ve experienced with my consulting clients through the years.

It’s easy to say we’re adaptable.  We might even make an attempt at being adaptable.  But do our actions support change and innovation?  Or do people feel like they get punished or labeled for being a trouble maker if they try to make changes?  Adaptability requires organization and cultural support.

I believe it was Alan Deutschman who coined the phrase, change or die.  When the environment is changing faster than we can blink (my grandkids don’t remember a world without an iPad) that saying was never truer.  Just ask the people who ran and worked for many of the largest corporations in the world that are now nothing be memories.

The average life-span of Fortune 500 companies in the 1950s was over 60 years.  The average life-span of the companies on that list today is less than 20 years.

Change or die!

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BlogCultureCulture Series

Culture – Mission: Strategic Direction and Intent

by Ron Potter

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.

  1. The Transistor.  It was invented the year I was born.
  2. 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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BlogCultureCulture Series

Culture: Introduction

by Ron Potter

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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BlogLeadershipTeam

Team and Leadership: Summary

by Ron Potter

Over the last several weeks we have been reviewing and expanding on the elements of a great team in our Thursday blog.  At the same time, our Monday blog has been exploring more detail on the elements of great leadership.  These are the first two legs of our Team Leadership Culture (TLC) model.

In general I believe it’s important to build a great team before working on leadership skills but in reality, it’s difficult to accomplish one without the other.  In many cases, they are tightly coupled and interdependent.

Today let’s review the elements of team and leadership and see how they fit together.

Elements of Team

Truth – Respect – Elegance – Commitment

Elements of Leadership

Humility – Development – Commitment – Focus
Compassion – Integrity – Peacemaking – Endurance

Interdependence

Let’s start with the elements of Team and look at the interdependence, overlap, and alignment with the Leadership elements.

Truth => Humility – Integrity – Peacemaking

To build a great team, members must be truthful with each other.  Truthfulness requires Humility, Integrity, and Peacemaking from the Leadership Skill List.

Humility

Humility has been misunderstood and misused in recent years.  Often people think of “turning the other cheek” or even being a “doormat” in order to be humble.  The original meaning of the word meant great power under complete control.  Humility doesn’t mean you’re powerless.  In fact quite the opposite.  It means that you have tremendous power.  Enough power to crush your opposition.  But when you’re humble, you choose not to use that power in a destructive way but to use the power for intense learning and curiosity.  Humble people may be the most powerful people in the room but are focused on individual and team learning through curiosity.  Humble people assume the other person may know something they don’t or have a very different perspective that’s worth learning.

Integrity

Integer also comes from the same root as integer.  It means whole, complete, sound and even incorruptible.  A person of high integrity is the same, complete, whole person no matter where they are or who they are with.  You can always trust they are and will be the same and say the same thing no matter what.  This is essential for the Truth required on teams as well as Commitment.  If you can’t trust that someone is genuine and has integrity, it’s difficult to get at the truth or sustain commitment.

Peacemaking

Peacemaking is also a word that we’ll see associated with Truth and Commitment.  Peacemaking is not the absence of conflict and different opinions.  Peacemaking understands that differences of opinion is natural for human-beings but has figured out a way to work through the differences and conflicts in a healthy productive way.

Respect => Humility, Development, Compassion and Integrity

Building and maintain respect with a team requires a leadership style built on humility, development, compassion, and integrity.

It’s important to note here that when I use the word leadership, I don’t mean the identified leader of the team.  I have observed people of all ranks and positions being leaders.  True leadership comes from your actions, not your position.

Humility and Integrity

We talked about humility and integrity in the Truth section above.  The same issues apply to Respect.

Development

From my book “Trust Me” development is described as “Leaders who accept the truth and train others to seize the benefits of adversity, loss, and change.  Growing people and giving them opportunities is one of the best ways to show respect.

Compassion

There have been a few clients through the years that didn’t believe compassion had anything to do with business.  In their minds, business was logical and should be dispassionate.

I’ve often used an old adage to counter that thinking:  “I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care!”

When people feel like you care for them as a human being first, they feel trusted and respected.

Elegance => Commitment, Focus, Peacemaking

Commitment and Focus

I’ve combined these two but they do go together in many ways.  It requires a firm and aligned grip on the goal and purpose of the team to accomplish the required tasks in the simplest way with the least amount of friction.  Make the goals and purpose clear and then make sure everyone is committed.  This will eliminate much of the territorial behavior that happens with teams.

Focus is under attack more than any point in history.  All of our modern devices are determined to capture our focus thereby scattering our attention.  Our own egos also drive us to accomplish more things and be in more places than necessary or even possible.  Staying focused on the goal and purpose is the only way to keep things Elegant.

Peacemaking

Peacemaking was discussed above.  In making sure that things are accomplished in the simplest way possible, it will take a great deal of peacemaking to settle territorial disputes.

Commitment => Commitment, Peacemaking, Endurance

Commitment and Peacemaking

These two were also discussed above.  In terms of Team Commitment, it will take a strong commitment to the goal and purpose of the team.  It will also take a great Peacemaking/Decision-Making process.  Our earlier blog on Team Commitment talks about the process that provides a win-win environment which is essential to reach full commitment.

Endurance

I used the TREC (Truth, Respect, Elegance, Commitment) acronym because it looks and sounds like the word TREK.  A TREK is described as a long arduous journey.  Especially one involving difficulties and complex organization.  Building a great team is a long arduous journey.  It takes great leadership to deal with the difficulties and complex organizations.

Team and Leadership

That’s the summary of the first two elements of TLC, Team Leadership Culture.

  1. Build a great team
  2. Development great leadership skills
  3. Create the culture to achieve the goals and purpose

The Rest of the Year Adventure

Over the next several months we will be talking about Culture, the third leg of TLC.  We’ll be doing this in our Thursday morning blog posts.  Our Monday blogs have been dedicated to the Leadership aspect of TLC.  For the rest of this year, we’ll be using Monday’s to blog about things that provoke some thought.  These usually come from my daily experiences in life, what I observe in the world, an article or book that makes a point that I think should be shared.  They won’t happen like clockwork every Monday morning but simply when something strikes me as worthwhile.  Stay tuned.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Commitment: Decision Process

by Ron Potter

Understanding and using the right process is one key to decision making.  It also helps assure that you’ll reach full commitment to the decision rather than compliance.

There have been a number of decision types identified but one simple list includes:

  • Unilateral
  • Consultative
  • Consensus
  • Unanimous

Unanimous

Leave that to the courtroom.  It doesn’t really happen in a corporate environment.

Unilateral

This decision type has the advantages of speed, simplicity, and clarity.  However, it will waste a groups intelligence, invites resistance and lowers motivation.  It should be used when speed and time are paramount and there is a real danger in not making a decision immediately.  It can also be used when one person or team’s decision has little effect or impact on another person or team.

But the real cost of Unilateral decisions occurs with wasted time because of lack of clarity.  I have observed team time wasted by putting a “unilateral” decision on the agenda for a team meeting.  Unilateral decisions should be made and then the rest of the team informed.  Informing is more effective through other means (memos, emails, reports, etc) than making it a topic of a team meeting.  Once a decision hits the agenda, it is assumed or at least treated as if it is up for questioning, discussion or debate.  If a decision is unilateral, do not put it on the agenda!

Consensus

After observing and working with leadership teams for thirty years, I am convinced that business teams never make consensus decisions.  They may talk as if it was a consensus decision but most decisions are unilateral or consultative.  Don’t kid yourself.

There may be one or two decisions that must be made by consensus because they are so crucial to the future health and well being of the corporation but you cannot run a business by consensus.

Consultative

Almost all decisions are or should be consultative.  However, one major key to consultative decisions is that there is a clear decision owner.   I have seen hours wasted in team meetings trying to make a decision when the real issue that is being sorted out is who really owns the decision.  Unfortunately, that issue is either ignored or never stated out loud.  Consultative decisions must have a clear decision owner.  Sort that out first before you continue with the decision-making process.

The second most important aspect of good consultative decisions is a clear process.  The consultative decision leader or a good facilitator must help the team through a good process that includes more listening than talking.  One of the best processes to learn is the concept of Prudence.

Prudence

Prudence is one of those ancient words that doesn’t get much use today and most people would tell me that it doesn’t fit in today’s modern business world.  However, listen to the definition of Prudence:

“The perfected ability to make right decisions.”

As a leadership team, your goal is to perfect your ability to make “right” decisions!  Learn to follow the process of Prudence.

The Prudence process is described as Deliberate, Decide, Do.

  • Deliberate well.  Most teams either don’t do it well or skimp on the deliberation process in order to get to a quick decision.
  • Decide but be sure to use the proper decision type.
  • Do.  Execution of the decision will be much crisper, clearer and faster if the first two steps are properly followed.

Debate, Discuss, Dialogue

Deliberation can be in the form of debate, discussion or dialogue.  Let’s take a quick look at each:

  • Debate.  If you’ve ever been on a debate team you know that the goal is to win.  Often debaters are asked to take a position that they themselves don’t believe is true but the goal of winning remains.  Debate creates winners and losers.  Commitment will not be achieved when a portion of the team feels like they lost.
  • Discussion.  The idea of discussion may sound more civilized but the root word for discussion is the same root word for percussion.  In other words, he who can beat his drum the loudest will win the discussion.  Once again, discussion creates winners and losers.
  • Dialogue.  Dialogue is part of the Socratic method.  The Greek origins are “through discourse or talk.”  The Unabridged Dictionary says to “elicit a clear and consistent expression.”

Dialogue begins with eliciting, questioning, listening.  Everyone must be heard and understood.  (See my short book review of On Dialogue by David Bohm).

If you do a great job of deliberation, using dialogue, decisions will be made easier.  A decision will not only be made easier, but there will also be a full commitment to the decisions that are reached.  This happens even if individuals were opposed to the decision in the first place.  Dialogue works through those differences and allows teams to get beyond compliance with full commitment.

Once full commitment has been achieved, decision execution happens.  No revisiting.  No dragging of feet.  No sabotage.  Just clean, crisp execution.

Get to full commitment by identifying your decision type and using a good process to reach commitment!

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Elegance: Summary

by Ron Potter

We’ve looked at three of the four sections that will help us build great teams: Truth, Respect, and now Elegance.  This week’s blog is a summary of the Elegance portion that has been written about over the last three weeks.

Elegance is made up of Simplicity, Focus, and Role Clarification.

Simplicity

Simplicity:  We all know the old adage KISS, Keep It Simple, Stupid.  I love old adages because they’re built on truth, even if they are a little rude like this one.  But the point is right on target.  Keep It Simple!  Once we start adding complexity to an issue, it becomes less elegant, more prone to mistakes, missteps, miss understandings, and missed results.  Our human brain is lazy and overloaded.  It looks for ways to simplify things so we have the capacity to understand and deal with complexity.  The more we simplify the greater chance the team has to perform together.

Focus

Books have been written about how our modern technology is not only destroying our focus but is destroying our ability to focus.  That’s scary to me.  But, like any muscle or ability, we can enhance that ability through dedication and practice.  You’re not going to be in good physical shape without regular exercise.  You’re not going to be a good reader without reading on a regular and disciplined base.  You’re not going to be focused without regular exercising of focus.

In every case, the concept is simple but the execution is difficult.

  • Go out for that walk, run, or bicycle ride on a regular basis.  Get to the gym several days per week.  Seems simple enough.  But it takes dedication and determination
  • Pick up that book rather than turn on the TV or flip through social media or complete just two more games on your phone.  Seems simple enough.  But, there we are, watching TV, finally looking up from our social media not realizing that we just spent an hour.  Time is more valuable than money.  We can always earn more money.  But, once you spend that hour, ten minutes or even ten seconds on something frivolous, it’s gone forever.  You’ll never get it back.  Focus.

Role Clarification

This one is a negative, not a positive.  While simplicity and focus are things that will greatly enhance teams, demanding that everyone stay in their “swim lane” or just do their role well and don’t worry about everyone else is a negative when it comes to great teams.  Yes, good teams rely on everyone knowing and doing their roles well but great teams tend to blend and mix thinking and perspectives in order to come up with the best solution.  Great teams function more like orchestras where the parts blend well together and are much richer and stronger in harmony they are as individuals.

Elegance

Elegance is the third leg of our team journey.  It’s an important and positive leg but is more subtle than the previous two.  When we’re not sharing the truth or showing respect, it’s obvious.  When our Elegance is slipping it is not always to see it happening right away.  Stay diligent on this one.  Look for the signs of Elegance waning.  Build an Elegant team.  It’s powerful!

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Elegance: Role Clarification

by Ron Potter

This will be our last blog post on the Elegance section of TREC: Truth, Respect, Elegance, and Commitment.  We’ll summarize these three elements in our next blog as you begin to see the entire journey to great team development.

This post, a subtopic of Elegance, is about Role Clarification but I want to start with one of those statements that seem to have gone viral in corporate speak.

Stay in your Swim Lane

If you’ve been in the corporate world over the last several years, you’ve probably heard this term.  I’m not sure who started this cliche but it sure wasn’t someone who knew how to build great teams.  This is NOT one of my favorite sayings.  Every time I hear this statement it’s in reference to someone who has:

  • crossed the boundary
  • stepped on someone else’s toes
  • “presumed” to know better than the “expert” how things should or should not be done

Whatever the reason for the irritation, it sends a message that everyone is supposed to do their own job and somehow that will make the team effort successful.  This message reveals a couple of beliefs at the core of team building.

  1. Build the right set of skills, do your job and everything will be just fine.
  2. No one has the skills or experience to question the “expert.”  Questioning the expert questions their competency.

There are some fallacies in those beliefs.

  • Skills and competencies are what will make a team and a corporation successful.  WRONG!
    The reason this belief exists is that most corporations depend on the measurement of skills and competencies as the measure of internal success.  Promotions, pay levels, and other rewards are based on these measurements.  Research and experience points to the fact the good people skills create more success than job skills and competencies.  It’s just that people skills, leadership style, and team engagement are harder to measure.
  • Other research shows that new creative, innovative, breakthrough ideas almost always come not from the expert but from the person who has a different perspective altogether.

Orchestras and Choirs

Teams should function more like an orchestra.  If you want a quick read about what that looks like, try Maestro: A Surprising Story about leading by listening by Roger Nierenberg.

I’ve been a choir member off and on for years.  I just love the harmonizing of the various parts.  When it all comes together in a crescendo, it just sends a chill down your spine and sometimes brings tears to your eyes.  Hearing and being a part of a 12, 50 or 100 member choir as they bring their voices together is a wonderful experience.

Rehearsals

Rehearsals are very different and a great learning experience.

  • The leader expects each section to know their part and perform it well
  • The leader will often stop us to say, “This section is not working, let’s listen to each part then put it all back together again.”
  • Often we’re instructed to tone our section down a bit so that the overall piece can be better understood.  “Basses, tone it down.  The sopranos are carrying the melody at this point and you’re drowning them out.  The audience can’t hear the melody.”
  • “Now basses, pick up the energy and the lead from the sopranos and bring it together with the same enthusiasm.”

The orchestra conductor leads us.  He expects us to know our part and corrects us when we don’t do it well.  But when we do it together it sounds awesome!

Business teams don’t usually function in this manner.  “Stay in your swim lanes” or “Know your job assignment and do it well.”  Seldom do I hear team leaders asking a section to tone it down, work at something other than your optimum rate, blend with the team, pick up on their enthusiasm and build something great together!

Build Team

Knowing our roles is important.  Building a great team means bringing it all together, not just maximizing each part!

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BlogLeadership

Arresting Avoidance

by Ron Potter

The tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness.”
—M. Scott Peck

Avoidance-oriented people tend to move away from things that threaten them in order to protect themselves. Why? There are a number of reasons.

Avoidance as Protection

Often it is due to excessive concern about embarrassment. We just don’t want to be embarrassed or, more often, to embarrass someone else. We hold back—we don’t tell the truth—and poor organizational or personal behaviors are perpetuated.

Fear is another culprit. Sometimes it just seems easier to run and hide. Maybe the issue will somehow just go away? That’s classic avoidance—a sign of cowardly leadership.

Another reason for avoiding problems can be oversensitivity to the feelings or opinions of others. We just don’t want to hurt anybody. The other person is so nice; why should she have her parade rained upon? Issues are circumvented, and facts are ignored. We avoid the short-term pain and inflict a longer-term problem within the team and the organization.

And then there is the old standby character quality that causes so many problems: unhealthy pride. Some of the people who are most adept at avoidance are very proud, especially if exploring the gory details of an organizational issue might make them look bad.

Overcoming Avoidance

Leaders who develop a humble heart and a willingness to confront concerns do not allow pride to interfere. They are open to opportunities for self-growth because they are secure in who they are and are not preoccupied with themselves.

Avoidance holds back an organization whereas a commitment to improvement will positively influence your own development as well as the development of interpersonal relationships, teams, and overall company effectiveness.

It takes great courage to change a pattern of avoidance and seek instead to make improvements and overcome the pain or difficulty in making decisions, confronting people, or being overwhelmed by circumstances or self-doubt. It is not easy, but the benefits you will experience from making this change are far greater than the “benefits” of avoidance.

Freedom from avoidance enables leaders to focus attention on determining when a situation needs action and improvement.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Elegance: Simplicity

by Ron Potter

Let’s continue our TREC to a great team.

You’ll recall that Aristotle defined four levels of the Pursuit of Happiness.  Level 4 is the highest level that produces the most happiness.  Aristotle’s words to describe this level were Truth, Love, Beauty, and Unity.  I’ve converted those words into Truth, Respect, Elegance, and Commitment.  I’ve made this conversion for a couple of reasons.

  1. Words like Love and Beauty are not often found in our corporate language today so I’ve converted Love to Respect and Beauty to Elegance
  2. I like to use language tricks to help you remember a concept.  TREC sounds very much like the word TREK.  The word TREK means a “long, arduous journey.”  Building a great team is a long, arduous journey.  You’re on a TREK

If you intend to start that journey of building a great team, following the concepts of TREC will help you accomplish that goal.

We’ve looked at Truth and Respect in our previous blog posts.   Our next topic is Elegance which will include the subtopics of

  • Simplicity
  • Focus
  • Role Clarification

Today we’ll start looking at Simplicity.

Simplicity

One definition of the word Elegance says “the quality of being pleasingly ingenious and simple.”

I think every team would want to be known as ingenious.  Our corporations are pushing for more innovation every day.  But I think simplicity is the more powerful and difficult of the two.  In fact, being ingenious in the simplest form is the most powerful type of innovation.

Albert Einstein said,

The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.”  He also said “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”

Notice that with the pause right in the middle, he indicated that it would take courage.  Taking something complex and making it simple is genius at work but it takes courage.  Why?

I think one of the answers to that question is that you are a professional or expert.  Often you have earned your right to be on the team because you have become a professional or an expert at something.  Professionals and experts tend to make things more complex to prove themselves or show-off their genius.  But, back to Einstein’s quote, any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex.  Real genius happens when things are simplified, made more elegant, streamlined, easier to adjust to changes, quicker to adopt.

Part of your TREC is to come up with the simplest, most elegant solution possible.  It’s not easy and it takes courage.

The other reason I’ve seen through the years for making things more complex rather than simpler is that it’s hard to be held accountable when things are bigger and more complex.  I’ve seen “expert” after “expert” explain away why a plan or structure didn’t work because “who could have predicted something like that would happen in a system so complex?”

Make things simpler, clearer and less complex.  Might you be held more accountable?  Yes!  But high-performance teams hold themselves more accountable than anyone else will.

Simplify, simplify, simplify.  Take out the complexity.  Bring more clarity.  Be a more elegant team.  People will notice.

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BlogTrust Me

Learning in Chaos

by Ron Potter

As Peter Senge defines it, a learning organization is an organizational structure in which “people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.”

In this sense, a learning organization is an organization that is continually expanding its ability to create and re-create the very patterns and structures by which it operates.

At least that is the goal.

Quick-Deciding Creates Chaos, Learning Order

Unfortunately, what I have found in my work is that quick decision making has won. In many cases, leaders have abandoned the learning organization in favor of the quick-deciding organization.

In times of chaos, confusion, and change, peacemaking leaders need to focus attention on making sure their organizations are quick learning rather than quick deciding.

The fast-paced environment of product development, competition, and shareholder expectations has forced many organizations to adopt a quick-deciding mentality. In this model, a team (much like a football team needing to score before time expires in the fourth quarter) is in a hurry-up offense. The goal is to make decisions. But as Tom Peters correctly observes, “As competition around the world boils over as never before, firms caught with bloated staffs and dissipating strengths—from Silicon Valley to the Ruhr Valley in Germany—are looking for quick fixes. There are none.”

Leading Toward Learning

So how would a two-pillar, peacemaking leader respond?

The goal of the quick-learning team is to seek out and develop opinion rather than steamrolling over it or quickly mustering forces against it. Feedback is highly desired rather than feared.

In contrast, feedback is offensive when you are a quick-deciding team. You develop “sides” on all issues. The competition heats up. Winning at all costs is what counts.

Members of a quick-learning team are all on the same side of the fence, looking at an issue with differing opinions, experiences, and ideas.

Meeting Agendas

Meeting agendas are often a surprising enemy. Leaders, staring at an agenda, feel compelled to make decisions within the time allotted. In most cases, true discussion of the issues and everyone’s opinions (the rooting-out process) is bypassed in favor of table talk that centers on implementation.

We suggest a meeting agenda that maps out what the team wants to learn about an issue. Learning should be the goal with good decisions the result. Remember that the goal is learning quickly and then making good decisions, not just deciding quickly.

Patience is Key

“Patience,” said Saint Augustine, “is the companion of wisdom.” Problems and day-to-day crises test our wisdom and our ability to make decisions under pressure. Great leaders are people of patience and constant learning.

It is the leader’s job to pull everything together into a quick-learning rather than a quick-deciding environment. The leader holds the dialogue together and asks questions that are designed to help team members clearly communicate their information and thoughts about the agenda item. In this way, the meeting’s goal is met: quick learning—rather than quick deciding—for the purpose of making good decisions.

The leader needs to develop not only an inclusive mind-set but also one that honors people for who they are and what they bring to the process. Each person brings unique strengths and outlooks to the table.

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