Tag Archives: purpose

Change Principles, Process Improvement

‘Value’ versus ‘Waste’ – why bother?

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If we want to make improvements at work we  need to balance between two sets of action: reduction of waste and addition of value. William Sherkenbach reminds us that waste and value are NOT reciprocals

– you can reduce waste but not add value;

– you can add value but not reduce waste.

You need to do both in a balanced way.           The reduction of waste does not ensure value.

This is why John Seddon always starts discussions around improvement by asking people to understand what is happening first; how much good work they produce (the stuff that people want) and what it is (why it is valuable), how much waste is produced (stuff that is not what people want) and what types of waste. Seddon calls these the WHAT’s of performance. Only once we know what is happening can we differentiate value from waste (or  ‘failure demand’ as Seddon labels it). What is interesting is that by examining demand properly we can identify those things which on the surface appear to be a customer requirement (e.g. a request for a service or a query) but can actually turn out to be driven by a failure earlier in the process. If these things are identified we can flush out built-in failures in the design of systems, procedures and policies.

To some degree or another, a given production of good output (value) will generate a parallel degree of waste. If you double the output (good things), you will double the waste output (at the very least, aside from errors due to additional pressure on people and machinery). To improve quality of output (i.e. to get proportionally more good stuff) we need to redesign the system. Identify value and eliminate waste and failure.

An analogy is water consumption. If you find a new source of water and make it available for consumers to use, but don’t fix the leaky pipes, you will just generate more leaked water. A good water system has good supply of water and a continually diminishing occurrence of leaks. Water service professionals are concerned with water catchment (source and supply channels) and the integrity of the distribution network (fixing leaks).

However, taking the idea further using a different analogy, an economical way to run a car involves a combination of maintenance and driving technique for improved fuel efficiency, or a person could simply drive the vehicle fewer miles. How you carry out your driving relates to purpose. If we only drive a few blocks to buy a pint of milk, our decision about the car’s fuel economy might be different compared to someone who uses the car to commute 100 miles per day to work. Or, if we only want to take our prized sports coupé out at weekends in the summer to impress people at parties, the decision will be different once again.

Purpose is defined by the needs of the user. The ‘user’ is the user of our product or service. But also remember that ‘purpose’ should not exist in its own bubble. If we buy a Harley Davidson motorcycle just to use it to cruise in the sunshine on Sundays, that might be just fine. However, if we ‘rev it up’ every Sunday morning as we start our trip to the seaside, the neighbours might have something to say about it.

Purpose, value & waste. The start for discussions about performance is to understand all three.

 

Further Reading:

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

Sherkenbach W.W. (1991) Deming’s Road to Continuous Improvement, SPC Press, Knoxville, TE

Change Principles, Myths

Culture “Change”: a new frontier or more disruption and waste?

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The idea of ‘culture change’ has been around at least since the 1970s.

Company culture was flagged as the new route  to progress and competitiveness. A good company culture was seen as the antidote to inefficiency, obsolescence and lethargy. The old ways were habits to throw away, to be ashamed of, to turn our back on. People who don’t adapt are seen as dinosaurs or stuck in the dark ages.

This trend in thinking gave rise to a plethora of ‘culture change’ programmes, usually involving energetic efforts to describe company values, visions, extended programmes of training, sometimes introspection (on the part of managers), browbeating and exhortation (of employees), ‘communication cascades’, ‘town-hall meeting’ and suchlike. To support this, various four-box models, multi-ring schematics, life-cycles and illustrations sprung into life to describe this intangible ‘thing’ of culture. But is ‘culture’ a cause or an effect of what happens in organisations?

Peter Drucker stated: “company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try instead to work with what you’ve got.” This is pragmatic thinking – and in many senses he is right – but not wholly so. A different perspective is needed, since sometimes the pervading culture can be damaging, counterproductive or simply unfair or unethical.

The culture in a company, or department, or team, or any type of organisation CAN actually be changed, but it is not achieved by trying to change the culture itself.  Seddon suggests that we should never make efforts to change a culture by ‘doing it to them’ (Seddon 2005). People will resent it  – and also people tend to detect any manipulation or ‘brainwashing’ a mile off. This increases resistance, undermines trust, garners cynicism and is generally unhelpful – the opposite of what you intend.

Don’t try to change people by attempting to change people, instead influence them to change themselves. The same is true of organisations. We can avoid a great waste of time, energy and resources if we skip this approach and instead work on things which really matter to people – and matter to our organisation. Just like forcefield analysis, it is better to identify and remove the forces that are driving the negative culture, rather than push at the positives.

The most effective approach is to intervene at the point of work.  Deal with the issues which people already find difficult or frustrating. Remove the conditions which impose upon them the negative behaviours which we want to eliminate. Give them a sense of purpose to fix their ideas upon – how things could change for the better and what THEY can do about it.

Reading:

Drucker PF ( 1993) Managing for the Future: the 1990s and beyond New York: NY, Dutton.

Jacobs, C.J. (2009) Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn’t Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science, Penguin Group Portfolio, NY

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

Change Principles, Leadership

Cool runnings? Change perspectives. Just do it.

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It is a sporting theme again, inspired by the thrills of the Winter Olympics. Let’s hark back to the 1988 Calgary Games, memorable since British involvement started to impress outside the ice-rink. Eccentricities of Eddie ‘the Eagle’ Edwards, our first Olympic ski-jumper matched Martin Bell’s efforts in the men’s downhill. Even our bob-sledders were competitive.

One story, now globally famous, concerns the Jamaican soldiers formed into an unlikely bobsleigh team on a shoestring budget, qualifying in 1988 as the first tropical nation at the Winter Olympics. American expats George Fitch and William Maloney were inspired by watching Jamaican push-kart racing and had initially raised the idea. At the outset, one of the eventual Jamaican team members, Devon Harris, thought the idea was ridiculous. Another, Dudley Stokes, only got involved because his superior officer in the military told him to participate.

The story was largely fictionalised for dramatic effect in the comedy film ‘Cool Runnings’. In reality the team were warmly welcomed by co-competitors and enjoyed the support of other national teams to access equipment ahead of the Games. The Jamaicans performances improved during the Games programme, but unfortunately they crashed in their final competitive run so did not reach the final. However the precedent had been set and Jamaican teams have qualified for several Winter Games over subsequent decades including the Sochi 2014 Olympics.

So what can we learn? How does this relate to our ideas for change and improvement?

  • Just do it – and keep trying. If things don’t quite work, don’t give up. George Fitch failed to recruit Jamaican athletes, so asked the Jamaican military to find volunteers.
  • Other people respond to your initiative. Jamaica’s competitors welcomed the team as co-athletes, whilst the Olympic crowds were fanatically enthusiastic about the team’s efforts.
  • People can be inspired – your team may have skeptics and cynics, but they can all be inspired by purpose and vision of what is possible and what they can do.
  • Learn from disappointments. Since the crash of 1988, Jamaica have performed at a high level, beating established winter sport nations such as France, the USA, Russia and Canada.
  • The unlikely can become the norm. A later Jamaican team-member, Lascelles Brown, married a Canadian, and subsequently won medals for Canada at two Olympic Games.
  • Seize the opportunity – even unlikely ideas can set a new way of doing things. Small initiatives can have a lasting effect. It just takes the effort to start the ball rolling…

Links:

BBC Sport (2014) Jamaica’s ‘Cool Runnings’ bobsleigh team in 1988, Sochi 2014http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/winter-olympics/25144672

Evanovitch (2005) Interview with Devon ‘Pele’ Harris Jamaica Bobsled Team Member, Jamaica Primetime. http://www.jamaicans.com/articles/primeinterviews/interviewdevonharris.shtml

Jones E. (2014) Va. Mayor’s Little Known Link to Jamaican Bobsledding, NBC Washington http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Va-Mayor-Cool-Connection-to-Jamaicas-Bobsled-Team-243973451.html

 

 

 

Excellence, Integrity, Partnerships

Why bother with partnerships?

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‘Partnerships’ might become the new buzzword of the year. But what is this really all about? Why ‘partner-up’ in a collaboration when we used to just do it without using the ‘P’ word? The danger is that partnerships means everything to everyone but in the end does not mean anything in itself.

The Oxford dictionary defines a partner as someone “who takes part in an undertaking with another or others… with shared risks and profits“.  If we are serious about partnership it actually means something which carries very specific and, potentially, radical expectations:

1. there is a shared vision of what you want to achieve

2. work expectations are mutual and shared (but NOT contractual)

3. work is conducted through a RELATIONSHIP which builds over time, based on integrity

4. clarity: in desired results, working principles, resources, accountability and consequences

5. the association is long term – the work might change but the relationship continues

6. the association is win/win – partners have to actively seek mutual benefits

7. work output is a sum of the whole partnership, NOT just ‘we do our bit’ and ‘you do yours’

8. there is trust and openness, including when problems or difficulties occur

9. therefore, partners work together to solve problems and make improvements

Critics would argue that this list sounds fine in theory but is it of practical value? Let’s face it we have to have contracts and sometimes people let us down – we also need to prioritise our needs above others or we will not optimise our outputs, surely?

Actually we really need to consider these assumptions more seriously. When we perform at the highest level alongside collaborators or work colleagues, what are the things that really give sense to the work that we do? Is it contracts, standards, specifications, or something else?

I would argue that it is something else – we need relationships which allow us to navigate the flow of work, to be able to ask the right questions, to seek advice and resources, get goods delivered or receive the information on time. We need people who care about the work, who are bothered about the end user (and don’t just do the bare minimum to reduce their own costs). We need people who will raise problems before they incur cost or who will be honest with highlighting difficulties or practicalities before they become a real problem. This is a true work partnership.

Covey, S. (1989) 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Simon & Shuster, New York, NY.

Kouzes J.M. and Posner B.Z. (2007) The Leadership Challenge, 4th Edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass John Wiley and Sons.

Change Principles, Integrity, Leadership, Myths

Integrity – wholeness and cohesiveness

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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, Excellence

Tell me – what’s your purpose?

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sub purposeTo be clear about our work – namely, who we are serving, how to do the work, how to change, what improvement looks like- we need to be clear about one thing:

WHAT IS OUR PURPOSE?

Peter Scholtes was one of the clearest writers on this concept; for him, like Deming before, everything starts with purpose;  “Without a purpose there is no system”.

Until we have clarity of purpose, all we are doing is completing sets of tasks. ‘Purpose’ should be embedded in our thinking about work, people and organisations.

Scholtes offers a very clear analogy to illustrate the importance of purpose:

“Cleaning a table cannot be a system until the purpose of the clean table is made clear. A table clean enough to eat on requires one system of cleaning. Clean enough to dance on requires another. Clean enough to perform surgery on requires yet another. Everything starts with purpose.

“What is your purpose?” is the most useful question one can be asked. 

When thinking this way, work is transformed from being seen as tasks to carry out, to become a reason to do something which adds real value; a framework for making decisions and seeking ways to improve.

Read more:

Deming, W. E. (1993) The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education, second edition. MIT CAES, Cambridge MA.

Scholtes, P. R. (1998) The Leader’s Handbook: A guide to inspiring your people and managing the daily workflow, New York: McGraw-Hill

Scholtes P.R. (1999) The New Competencies of Leadership, Total Quality Management, 10: 4&5, S704-S710.

Change Principles

‘Design team work carefully’ – but how?

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By Cindy Vallance @cdvallance

Simon Black’s latest blog highlighted key principles for how groups might work better. His first principle – ‘design team work carefully’ will provide a strong foundation for success in maintaining and improving team effectiveness. But how? There are a range of techniques that can be used to assist in designing team work.

A useful starting point is role analysis. Role analysis? Isn’t this the job of Human Resources? Yes, often job descriptions are created as part of a central HR function. But work, and especially work with others, is never as simple as following a printed job description that more often than not is created at a single point of time and then simply filed away.

It is all too often the case that mutual demands, expectations and obligations of interdependent team members are never openly discussed. Each individual may wonder why others do not seem to be doing what they are ‘supposed’ to be doing even though all individuals are performing as they think they should.

The technique of role analysis can be effectively used to help teams and groups work together. How does it work? Individuals first each analyse their own role in the group. A few questions to ask:

What is the rationale for the role – why does it exist?
What is the role there to achieve?
What are the specific duties of the role?
What are the expected behaviours of the role?
How does the role contribute to the achievement of the group’s goals?
How is the role related to other roles in the group?

The next step is for individuals to explain their understanding of their role within the group. Other group members can then share their expectations of the role. Expectations and obligations can be modified and agreed through discussion so that all reach a common understanding.

At the conclusion of this process, the individual holding the role assumes responsibility for preparing a brief written summary (a role profile) consisting of the activities of the role, the obligations of the role to the other roles and the expectations of the role from the other roles. Sharing this summary back with the group is the final step.

Each individual then ends up with a better understanding of what their own role is, what the perceptions and expectations of others are, and how all roles fit together. Role profiles are not static but can be modified as needs change over time.

Effective use of the technique of role analysis can reduce role ambiguity (am I supposed to be doing that or is it your job?), role conflicts and misunderstandings. The technique can also help ensure commitment to the individual roles that have been collectively and collaboratively defined.

Next time, another technique for group working…

Myths

Teamwork is best – or IS IT?

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Group working is one of those topics that is awkwardly both straightforward and complex depending upon how you look at it.

Conventional wisdom sets us to assume that more heads are better than one and this maxim is often used as a justification for working in teams. But is it always a helpful perspective? In the spirit of Change Academy, we need to consider alternative views in order to get a more complete picture.

Cindy Vallance recently posted the question “When are many heads better than one?” This is a sensible question to ask when considering group working. As Cindy points out, sometimes teams are created to simply fulfill a structural need; to fill an office space or to organise a number of individuals under the supervision of a manager. These, as Cindy implies, are not good reasons for organising group working.

Tug of war
A set of clones with the same job is not a recipe for a successful team

What do we really know about team performance? And, if we are honest with ourselves, do groups always work better than individuals?

The answer, surely , is no. Have you ever sat on a committee and wondered ‘why are we all here?’?

Let’s take a sporting analogy. Put five excellent runners into a relay team. How well do they perform? In many cases, really well.

However if I think of the British men’s sprint relay team, in four of the last five Olympics they have been disqualified (1996, 2000, 2008, 2012). In 2004 they won the gold. In each Olympic competition the job is the same and, for the British team over this period, several individuals participated in the team more than once . So why is there such a wide difference between good and poor performances? It is sometimes easy to put it down to a mistake; incompetence or lack of attention, but sometimes the truth lies deeper.

The Ringlemann effect suggests that something different can happen in teams. If people’s personal roles are similar they can be disinclined to put everything into their work (this is a subconscious effect causing ‘free-riding’ rather than deliberate loafing). This effect has been shown in cases where a single worker has been put in a team with ‘non workers’ (i.e. people deliberately faking effort, but not actually doing real work). Even in these instances, the ‘real’ worker is often measured as putting in LESS effort than if they were doing the task on their own. In the classic experiment, assuming that men pulling a rope individually perform at 100% of their ability, apparently two-man groups perform at 93% of the average member’s pull, three-man groups at 85%, with eight-man groups pulling with only 49% of the average individual member’s ability.

So what is the solution? Never work in teams? No this would be a bit foolish, there are better questions…

1. Design team work carefully? Yes

2. Ensure a clear sense of purpose? Yes

3. Establish some reasonable measure of performance or achievement? Yes

4. Agree ways of working together, along with a readiness and willingness to improve ? Of course

5. Encourage trust and mutual respect amongst team members? Yes, but make sure that at its foundation is an understanding of 1-4  above.

So, reverting to my previous blog on teamwork, we must focus on our purpose, our goals, understand our differing roles, agree how we work together at a practical level and look to build positive working relationships based on mutuality and trust.

Like anything in life, if we have a team of people, we need to regularly re-consider the purpose of the team. Do we have a team because it adds to achieving the purpose, or is it just because we have always had a team?

Next time you are in a turgid committee meeting, or your project team has ground to a halt, – have a think about how the group could work better…

 

Further reading:

Beckhard, R. (1972) Optimizing Team Building Effort, J. Contemporary Business.  1:3,  pp.23-32

Ingham, A.G., Levinger, G., Graves, J., & Peckham, V. (1974). The Ringelmann effect: Studies of group size and group performance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 10, 371–384.

MacDonald, J. (1998) Calling a Halt to Mindless Change, Amacom, UK

 

 

 

 

Change Principles, Updates

Building and Maintaining Resilience

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imageBy @cdvallance

The past few weeks since my last blog have been a struggle. Like many others around the University I have been battling what a colleague referred to as ‘the ubiquitous Kent bug.’ While I very much doubt that Kent is alone as an organisation that has had many of its members fall victim to a range of winter colds and flus, it has certainly been difficult for me to identify anyone absolutely brimming with energy and enthusiasm of late. Add to this a bout of cold, wet, grey weather, short days, dark nights and many work challenges. So what can be done?

For me, the only way to regain and then maintain my personal and professional resilience in relation to work is to reflect on the question ‘why do I bother?’ What do I believe about why I get up every morning and go to work? Of course I need and want a pay cheque. That is a given. But this isn’t enough for me and I believe it isn’t enough for others either. I believe we all (or at least the great majority of us) want to feel that we are making a positive difference in what we do and that we also want to share these feelings of pursuing a common purpose with others.

How do we do this? In my last blog, I shared six keys to successful change coined by leading thinker Rosabeth Moss Kanter. To recap, these were:

Show up, speak up, team up, look up, don’t give up, lift others up.

In my next few blogs I will discuss why I believe groups and teams are key to organisational success. This is partly selfish. My hope is that sharing my thinking about something I care about – team work and collaboration – will also help me rebuild my own resilience and restore my own energy in trying to make a positive difference at the University of Kent.

Change Principles, Effective Meetings, Updates

The Challenge of the Chair

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By Cindy Vallance @cdvallance

The challenge of establishing the conditions for a productive meeting falls to the CHAIR and much of the success of a meeting comes down to ADVANCE PREPARATION.

While the hints and ideas that follow should not be seen as prescriptive rules, they can provide ways to think through each meeting element.

As mentioned previously, once again, it comes back to first considering the explicit PURPOSE and precise OBJECTIVES of the meeting, or each part of the meeting.

Once the purpose and objectives are set, it is then useful to consider the meeting SIZE. Seven to ten is generally ideal for discussion. A meeting with over fifteen in attendance starts to become unwieldy and it will become increasingly difficult to ensure everyone’s voice is heard. In these cases, if discussion is desired, it can be helpful to first provide the context, then break into smaller groups for discussion and save time for a report back from each group at the end so thoughts can be collected and summarised.

Estimate the LENGTH of the meeting; two hours is generally a good maximum but many meetings can be effectively conducted within an hour.

The LOCATION of the meeting is also important. Ideally, everyone should have a clear view of everyone else; a round or oval table can be beneficial if the Chair does not wish to convey a hierarchical structure.

Do people need to ATTEND all or only part of the meeting? While having people come and go can be disruptive, it is worth considering on a case by case basis.

The Chair should draw up the AGENDA and circulate with applicable papers a minimum of two days in advance of the meeting (or longer depending how large that pack of pre-reading is, of course). Agenda items should be allocated in priority order so that the most important items are scheduled while people are fresh. Do students attend the meeting? Is their section always last? Why not try reversing the order? It is helpful to save a positive item for the end (see the point about praise in my last blog). However, if the meeting is a difficult one, it is important not to include something positive for its own sake. Simply thank participants for their honesty and engagement within the meeting.

It can be useful to request a brief SUMMARY DOCUMENT in advance from people who want to add agenda items to the meeting. This provides them with the opportunity to outline the purpose and objectives of their item(s), so the same rigour begins to be practiced by everyone.

DURING THE MEETING itself it is the responsibility of the Chair to maintain control by guiding the participants in a clear, transparent and respectful way through the agenda. It can be helpful to think of the Chair role as a facilitator who remains objective and impartial within the meeting even while having a direct and personal stake in the matters at hand. Getting engrossed deeply in the subject matter while simultaneously getting others involved are not activities that easily mix.

Once AT THE MEETING, the Chair should

Start the meeting on time

Clarify the objectives of the meeting so everyone has a shared understanding

Introduce each topic by putting it into context and explaining the purpose and objective of the item

Control the pace and time of the meeting

Keep discussions to the point by asking clarifying questions

Conclude each item by summarising what has been agreed or decided

Finish off by recapping all actions and time scales by individuals and confirm shared understanding

And what about AFTERWARDS? The Chair should:

Reflect on whether the meeting was successful in meeting its objectives by considering: what went well; what could have gone better? It can be helpful for the Chair to test their own perceptions with a few others who attended and who will be honest with us since we can either be our own worst critic or we can let ourselves get off too lightly

Confirm the minutes or action log and circulate to participants as soon as possible (ideally within a few days following the meeting)

Check that those responsible for actions have received the notes and taken action according to agreed timescales

Does all this feel just slightly overwhelming? Even as I write, I am cringing as I think how often I don’t manage to get all this right. However, since we spend so much time in meetings, isn’t it worth our concentrated and conscious efforts to make the best use possible of this ‘supertax‘ of work?

This blog has discussed the ‘what’ of meetings; my next blog will discuss some principles to keep in mind in relation to the ‘how’ of working with groups.