Tag Archives: people

Change Principles, CLASSIC POSTS REVISITED (new twists on old themes), Culture, Dialogue

The Need for Speed : change need not be a slow business

February 13, 2017 Simon Black 1 Comment

An earlier version of this was first posted on 13th February 2012

Change is very often considered to be a slow and often difficult process. In particular, ‘culture change’ is seen as a long and winding road. Human beings are notable as creatures that have mastered (or, at least, have developed) the art of adapting. We have changed our knowledge, decisions, behaviour, environment, relationships, societies. It is too easy to think that we ‘don’t like change’. This is simply not the case. We are beings that not only adapt to what is around us, but we often actively choose to change what is around us. After all, it is not uncommon for us to seek to find ways to make things better or different (either for ourselves or, sometimes, others!).

My great-grandfather (who was still around when I was a youngster) was born into the Victorian age in the 1880s. He was already a young man when the Wright brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk, yet lived to experience flying in jet airliners and even saw the Apollo astronauts land on the moon. His life experiences, work and education had to adapt fairly radically, but I imagine it was a fairly natural process – that’s life.

Organisations can change faster that society as a whole. Whilst change should be seen as a ‘natural’ process, it is one which we should actively influence ourselves. Change can occur in noticeable timescales; weeks and months not years. Changes should move into short timescales to become noticeable, rather than at barely-observable ‘glacial’ rates. Herrero (2006) goes further, suggesting that if cultural changes cannot be observed in short time-frames, then something is wrong.

“Cultural change does NOT need to be a slow and painful long-term affair.” – there is a better way.
“Short-term wins CAN represent real change.” with viral networks which engage many people, small changes can lead to a big impact.

We need to accelerate change by engaging networks of people in making things happen. In a previous post it was suggested that small sets of behavioural changes, taken on and shared by informal groups of people can generate improvements in a non-linear way, as Hererro terms it, a ‘viral’ spread.

To influence others we need to encourage quick, meaningful changes; not just ticking items off the ‘to do’ list, but adopting new behaviours, new ways of thinking, new habits. These things may appear less tangible, but they do have impact, they don’t need to wait for a sign-off by top management and they do allow change to happen much quicker.

Remember to read:

Herrero, L. (2006) Viral Change, meetingminds, UK.

Change Principles, Culture, Excellence, Leadership, Service, Trust

Should we say it again? People are not the problem.

June 6, 2014 Simon Black Leave a comment

Deming famously stated “I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to the proportions something like this: 94% belongs to the system (responsibility of management), 6% special.“. In other words people-related ‘fault’ will be part of the minority 6%.

This statement tends to set people into a degree of hand-wringing ifs and buts: ‘surely he meant this only in a manufacturing system’, ‘ what about the difficult people?’, ‘ what if they are incompetent?’, ‘I am sure folks are the problem 40% of the time’ etc…

Chip and Dan Heath share a trivial, but insightful example in their book ‘Switch’. They discuss a situation (part of a research exercise) where moviegoers eat significantly more popcorn if they are given large buckets, than if they are given small buckets. To the outsider it looks like the people are ‘Popcorn Gorging Gluttons’ and we may feel that we should judge them as so. In reality, their behaviour (eating excessive amounts of popcorn) is driven by the system – the size of bucket they have been given. Change the bucket for a small one and their behaviour changes – they seem like moderate consumers. The system is the problem (large buckets), not the people.

“But aha – surely it’s their fault that they choose to scoff down the popcorn!”. True, we are sentient beings and can make choices (for example, I would hope that people who are aware of supermarket sales floor design are less likely to buy excessive amounts of fresh baked goods, fresh fruit and ‘buy-one-get-one-free’ items). I am not suggesting that we should excuse everyone of their behaviour 95% of the time. There are other things to consider – for example do we run on autopilot too often (Do we let the chimp drive the car? More for a later blog I think…)?

However as a start we need to be honest enough to examine our own assumptions as placed upon others and how we judge their behaviour. As the Heath brothers suggest, to do this we need to encounter a deep-rooted phenomenon identified in psychology.

Kendra Cherry explains -“When it comes to other people, we tend to attribute causes to internal factors such as personality characteristics and ignore or minimize external variables. This phenomenon tends to be very widespread, particularly among individualistic cultures.“

In Psychology this is known as the fundamental attribution error – we automatically assume that the person’s internal characteristics are the cause of behaviour even when other possible influencing factors are present in the situation.

So let’s pull away from assumption and open our minds to what is really happening with people.

Further Reading:

Deming W.E. (1982) Out of the Crisis (p315), MIT CAES, Cambridge MA.

Heath C., and Heath, D. (2010) Switch: when change is hard, New York: Random House

Peters S. (2012) The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness. Vermillion, London.

Other links:

Cherry, K. (2014) Attribution: How we explain behaviour. http://psychology.about.com/od/socialpsychology/a/attribution.htm

Change Principles

Systems Thinking – the oldest ‘new idea’?

December 2, 2013 Simon Black Leave a comment

Deming in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s & 70s: same man, same thinking, different desks

It is easy to expect that when we work with change that this should mean ‘new’, whereas it should really mean ‘better’ or (if circumstances move the goalposts) ‘different’. The path of management learning over the past 40 years is littered with passing fads which have only delivered disappointment, but a few ideas outlast the comings-and-goings of gurus, trends and fads.

I am staggered to recall that it was 25 years ago that I first encountered the work of Dr W Edwards Deming whilst I sat in an undergraduate management lecture in the late 1980s. I have had the opportunity over the intervening decades to apply, test, avoid, seek alternatives or attempt enhancements to Deming’s ideas (and many other management thinkers). Some of my work has been in small departments, others in very large organisations; some commercial, others not. My thinking has emerged from a growth in understanding.

Deming, born in 1900, was an active communicator, teacher and consultant well into his 90s.

The forces along the top rob people of innovation and applied science. We must replace these forces with management that will restore the power of the individual (adapted from Deming 1994) — Fig 1. “The forces along the top rob people of innovation and applied science…replace these forces with management that will restore the power of the individual” (Deming 1994)

His seminars and lecture tours were still in demand from international audiences until his death 20 years ago this month, in December 1993, a couple of weeks after I passed my PhD viva. Deming continues to get a good hearing based on his books written over 30 years ago.

A freshly edited book which pulls together his collected papers was published in 2013. His illustration (Figure 1) of how a person’s motivation withers over their lifetime under “forces of destructive management thinking” rings as true today as in previous decades. Deming’s books draw on his teaching conducted over 60 years ago in Japan, ideas which arose from concepts developed by his professional mentor Walter Shewhart at Bell Laboratories over 80 years ago.

Shewhart’s own book published in 1931 is a classic, (its style perhaps less accessible to present-day readers). The observations and principles identified by Shewhart and Deming early in the 20th Century still stand up to scrutiny and practice. Their centenary approaches…

… much more than can be said for many management ideas since.

Integrity – wholeness and cohesiveness

July 3, 2013 Simon Black Leave a comment

Culture change is not something that you 'do' to people — Culture change: not something that you ‘do’ to people – unless you want to risk negative consequences

Dennis Bakke highlights in his book ‘Joy at Work’, the difference between saying to workers, ‘we really care about your welfare because we do,’ and the suggestion, ‘we care about your welfare because that will make you work harder for us’. The former offers a sense of value, the latter is more cynical.

The sentiment of valuing people has natural appeal – caring about the people who work with us simply makes sense. But at work – what does caring about people really mean?

Many organisations have ‘people programmes’ or ‘culture change’ initiatives. Do these help?

As John Seddon has often said, respect for people is not a point of intervention – it is not something you ‘do’ to people. Deming repeatedly talked about two things concerning people – the need to maintain dignity and self-esteem. Anything that robs people of these two factors is counterproductive (and as Deming also emphasised, disrespectful).

The culture that appears in any organisation – the behaviours, ways of being, talking and doing – is a symptom of the way things are set up in the organisation (the ‘system’ as Deming would call it). The fall-out from an organisation’s culture (too numerous to discuss here), can be positive or negative.

As an example, a familiar type of negative fall-out might be the lack of career development for women; this could well be a symptom of the way things are set up in an organisation, such as:

access to flexible working	provision of parental leave	plans for recruitment
how people’s ideas for improvement are implemented	Whether managers consider career development for staff	how unacceptable behaviours is challenged
how often peer groups have a voice in organisational decision	how career breaks are understood and managed	time invested in succession planning
How many women are in senior, influential roles	how performance is measured now	how achievement is measured over time

Even this short list clearly extends to things beyond people’s general value for female workers. Furthermore if you just work on people’s value for female workers and yet do nothing about the influences in the system, then nothing will change – it might even make things worse.

So, to be able to manage a team or a wider organisation with integrity, there is a need to deal with the whole system – being purposeful in dealing with change. Otherwise we just end up doing things that have no impact.

The start point is to value people anyway. The work is to improve the organisation (as a system) to deliver its purpose.

Culture change – towards one that is whole and cohesive – will follow.

Reading:

Bakke, D.W. (2005) Joy at Work: a revolutionary approach to fun on the job, PVG, Seattle, WA.

Deming W.E. (1993) The New Economics, MIT CAES, Cambridge MA.

Seddon, J. (2005) Freedom from Command and Control, Vanguard Press, Buckingham, UK.

Change Principles

Stuck in a rut? How to reinvigorate your team

June 13, 2013 Simon Black Leave a comment

Are the same old issues arising in your team?
Have you joined a team that is stuck in its ways?
Is the team intimidated by new challenges which seem like one step too far?
Have you ever felt “we’ve been here before“?
Are the moaners still moaning?
Would the team, if honest, say that they are stagnant, uninspired, or just jogging along?

What would make a difference; how can things change; are people the problem or is it something else?

In the words of Douglas Adams: DON’T PANIC

All teams go through various stages of development, from confidence to crisis, from challenge to success, from discomfort to familiarity, from suspicion to support. These cycles can occur in any order, sometimes a positive progression forwards but occasionally involving backsliding and disillusionment. A third common state is no change at all – being stuck in a rut – for months, or years.

The classic observation on team development was made by Bruce Tuckman and his memorable ‘Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing’ model. It is helpful because it sets out some of things to address which will help to oil the wheels of positive team development.

Clear goals, clear ground-rules (i.e. the ways we work together, talk to each other and use the time and space that we share), clear roles. These are the simple building blocks of effective teams. These things give space for individuals to get on with the work that they do alone and to interact effectively in the things that they need to do together. Clarifying these things as a team should also give space for people to raise questions or challenge things which don’t work well or appear to have little purpose.

So change the way the team works without meddling with the people in it. This gives everyone the choice to make progress alongside their colleagues – which, frankly, most people are quite happy to do.

Reading:

Tuckman, B.W. (1965) Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin 65, no.6: 384–99.

Tuckman, B.W. and Jensen M.A. (1977) Stages of small-group development revisited. Group and Organization Studies 2, no. 4: 419–27.

Optional bedtime reading:

Adams, D. (1979) The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Pan Books Ltd., London.

Change Principles, Excellence

Features of a high performing team

January 28, 2013 Simon Black 1 Comment

In the past I have made a several links (some more oblique than others) to celebrated efforts and achievements of sportspeople over the past year including Bradley Wiggins, Usain Bolt, and the British Cycling team and the London 2012 Olympics.

Bradford City ‘picked up the ball and ran with it’ by working together, playing to their strengths, committing effort, taking responsibility, keeping discipline, and always believing the dream!

After a pulsating year of sporting moments in 2012 and having previously prodded at the excesses of football management, I simply cannot miss the chance to celebrate the achievements earlier this month by a humble, honest lower league football club. Bradford City FC are close to my heart, having spent many occasions at their Valley Parade home in years gone by and since then, despite a move down south, I have been able to follow their tortuous progress through financial misfortune and near-collapse with nevertheless genuinely joyful moments amongst a few hundred Bradford faithful as a regular ‘away’ fan down south) …

In the early weeks of 2013 lowly Bradford City, a club that have been in the doldrums of lower-league football for over 10 years, set the media alight with successive victories against Premier League opposition in a winning run that has taken them to a major Cup Final for the first time in 101 years. This gives the team a further chance to shine in front of 90,000 fans at Wembley, the national stadium. At the time of their only previous success, winning the FA Cup in 1911 (a week-and-a half after the Titanic had sunk in the North Atlantic), the site at Wembley was still a rural landscape of fields and woodland copses. Bradford are the first 4th tier (lowest division) team to reach any final in England for 51 years. The story is well documented elsewhere, but it is worth noting that Bradford’s entire squad of players was assembled for a total of £7500 of transfer fees – in a world where opposition players in the Premier League teams which were defeated to reach the final cost millions (often tens of millions) – EACH.

How is this possible? Surely it is a matter of assembling a team of the best, to achieve success? Bradford illustrates that there is an alternative model – to build the best team you can with what you have. And how? To get the team members to prepare and focus on the things that matter. For Bradford this was all about playing to strengths, taking responsibility, keeping discipline, committing effort, working together, and of course always believing that they could achieve the dream! As the team’s winning run extended from August 2012 against lower league opposition through to a thrilling December night against the big-guns of Arsenal and later Aston Villa in the January semi-final, all of the team’s values and actions were validated and rewarded through the results that they achieved together. This builds both self-belief and belonging which enables performance; a difficult blend to achieve purely through big-money signings. In Premier League teams this process usually takes years to achieve – with a lot of waste and at great expense! It is not just a matter of ‘chemistry’, but rather a matter of focus and action.

So in our teams let’s focus on our goals, our various roles, how we work together at a practical level and how we build positive working relationships based on mutuality and trust.

Team briefings – a particular kind of meeting…

November 19, 2012 cdv 3 Comments

By Cindy Vallance @cdvallance

In my last blog, I discussed the importance of identifying the purpose and goals of meetings so that the Chair and participants can be clear on what should be accomplished. Regular team briefings are one common type of meeting. How can these be constructed?

Relatively short, regularly scheduled team briefings are most often for:

passing on information…I have news to share with you about …

decision-making…What are we going to do about…?

Depending on the length and regularity of the meeting, there may be time to include:

gathering information…What do you think of …?

problem solving…How should we resolve…?

However, often these last two items may involve additional people beyond those in the immediate team since there may be considerations that would benefit from input beyond the team itself.

A handy discipline to think through the team meetings process is to apply the five P’s mentioned by Peter McCaffery in his book, The Higher Education Manager’s Handbook: Effective Leadership & Management in Universities & Colleges.

PROGRESS – how is the team doing in relation to specific objectives that have previously been set? It is important for the team to know that while the team’s ‘to do’ list will never stop growing, taking a moment to reflect on progress and accomplishments keeps us motivated to keep pushing ahead.

POLICIES – a shorthand word for what might be any range of initiatives. Are there new activities or changes in policies, systems or processes underway that team members should be aware of? When we are personally deeply involved in something we can forget that others are just as busy with completely different things and won’t have a clue what we are doing unless we regularly find a way to share this information so the team can gain a sense of the whole.

Note: There may be opportunities with the top two items to share information prior to the meeting to make discussion more effective. Depending how large the team is, maintaining an action log (to track ‘progress’) and circulating updates in advance (to share ‘policies’) can be practical ways to keep on track.

PEOPLE – are people joining, leaving, or changing roles? Have team members been involved in activities or attended events where information has been gained that could be usefully shared? Open and transparent sharing leads to a stronger and more cohesive team.

POINTS FOR ACTION – what do we need to do before we meet again? Who will do what? Identifying action points is critical so that discussion at meetings can lead to successful implementation and progress.

PRAISE – do we show appreciation for individuals and for the team as a whole? This important element is often missed in the rush to focus on the ‘what’ but can do much to keep the team feeling positive about the work to be done and the support we have in doing it.

If you aren’t a hundred percent happy with your team meetings, why not try applying the five ‘P’s within your next few meetings to see if the approach works for you and your team? Let them openly know what you are trying. They may have even better ideas.

My next blog: what are some of the challenges and possible pitfalls to avoid when chairing meetings?

Excellence, Service

Service Excellence – Are People the Problem?

April 23, 2012 Simon Black 4 Comments

Recently, a colleague helpfully forwarded an interesting link on Service Excellence (see below). Like a lot of research on Service, it throws up more questions than answers. The researchers had analysed a range of studies of service performance and had identified a number of issues.

The headliner was that 80% of employees think service is great whilst only 8% of customers think the same. The researchers’ observations were that customer service employees have a misperception of how good they are. This interpretation seems a bit clumsy. The mismatch in this data should not really be a huge shock; to some degree, employees will tell researchers what they think they should hear – if you asked them in a pub on a Friday night they might rate service differently. The likely cause of this conflict of opinion? The fear factor – who wants to admit that they do a poor job or that their organisation is a bit rubbish?

The researchers described how “Managers are using too much stick and not enough carrot, berating staff with complaints league tables, missed targets and unfavourable mystery shopper reports. Line managers care more about targets than people, as there is data to report, processes to police, bosses to please and larger than ever teams to keep to targets.” This is a very relevant observation; however what becomes frustrating is the way that this research appears to FAIL to identify the link between symptoms (“indifferent staff”) and causes (the list of line management behaviours and protocols presented by the researchers themselves).

Even more worryingly (to use the researchers’ own phrase) the research report states “More worryingly, even when employees were shown facts about customer dissatisfaction, they were twice as likely to blame the organisation as to accept responsibility.” To say this is worrying is INCORRECT – it is not worrying it is in fact highly probable that the workforce have got it spot on; 90% of problems are caused by the system, not the people – so no wonder employees think that it is the company that is the problem!

The fundamental difficulty with the research observations is that they present PEOPLE AS THE PROBLEM, which in 80-90% of cases is unlikely [see messages repeated by heavyweight thinkers like Deming since the 1950s, Senge and more recently Seddon].

So, in summary, although the research article found out some truths, unfortunately they have only one eye open to what they are seeing. They recommend giving people (service staff) a kick as implied by their term – ‘improving attentiveness’ (how do you make people more attentive?) although like any modern HR practitioner, they include some soft and cuddly stuff (still ‘kicks’ actually), such as “Managers need to engage employees and treat them as you want them to treat customers, coach staff to think more commercially and show why giving your full attention to customers is so important.” To be fair they go on to urge managers to do less reporting on sales figures and more observing and guiding their front line colleagues. However, in any type of organisation, if you do all these positive things but don’t remove all the conditions of targets, scripts, reports, procedures and sanctions then nothing will change – except employees will get even more annoyed and will feel under increasing pressure – and this will be observable to customers, eventually, as even WORSE service. There is still a lot to learn.

To see the original summary of this research, go to the article on the peoplemanagement.co.uk site: http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2012/03/staff-deluded-over-standard-of-customer-service.htm

Better insights on service can read here:

Seddon, J. (2005) Freedom from Command and Control, Vanguard Press, Buckingham, UK.

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