24.1.08

The Art of Innovation

Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm

by Tom Kelley with Jonathon Littman

From the flap...Ideo, the widely admired, award-winning design and development firm that brought the world the Apple mouse, Polaroid's I-Zone instant camera, the Palm handheld, and hundreds of other cutting-edge products and services, reveal its secrets for fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation. There isn't a business in America that doesn't want to be more creative in its thinking, products, and processes. In The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley, general manager of the Silicon Valley-based design firm IDEO, takes readers behind the scenes of this wildly imaginative and energized company to reveal the strategies and secrets it uses to turn out hit after hit.

From Amanda: I LOVED this book. Definitely an early contender for a book of the year in the innovation category. On to my flags...I had a zillion of them but the library has started leaving me messages wondering where this book is so I've had to pick and choose my flags to blog.

pg 13 One CEO told me that he understood for the first time, what creativity really meant and how it could be managed in a business environment. Nightline's Deep Dive broadcast was among its most popular of the year, so popular in fact that the network rebroadcast it a few months later. The response amazed us. But maybe it shouldn't have. The fact is, everybody talks about creativity and innovation, but not many people perform the feats without a safety net in front of a nationwide television audience.

...(many companies) tend to believe that truly creative individuals are few and far between. We believe the opposite. We all have a creative side, and it can flourish if you spawn a culture to encourage it, one that embraces risks and wild ideas and tolerates the occasional failure. We've seen it happen.

pg 19 Like the e-commerce revolution twenty years later, it was a time when being old and wise wasn't much of an advantage. You had to track down sources that could help you, and be bold enough to make some educated guesses. As David says, "When you're stuck with a tough decision or problem you don't understand, talk to all the smart people you know." It's the networking approach to problem solving, a lesson he learned in the early years of the firm.

pg 25 What do stand-up toothpaste tubes, all-in-one fishing kits, high-tech blood analyzers, flexible office shelves, and self-sealing sports bottles have in common? Nothing actually, except they're all IDEO-designed products that were inspired by watching real people. We're not big fans of focus groups. We don't much care for traditional market research either. We go to the source. Not the "experts" inside a company, but the actual people who use a product or something similar to what we're hoping to create.

pg 28 Seeing and hearing things with your own eyes and ears is a critical first step in improving or creating a breakthrough product. We typically call this process "human factors". I prefer "human inspiration" or, as IDEO human factors expert Leon Segal says, "Innovation begins with an eye."

pg 29 Whenever you are in that new-to-the-experience mode, I would urge you to pay close attention and even take notes about your impressions, reactions, and questions. Especially the problems, the things that bug you. We call these mental and jotted-down observations "bug lists", and they can change your life. That's what happened one day to twenty-six-year-old Perry Klebahn on a visit to Lake Tahoe ski resort.

pg 41 Empathy is about finding and listening to the Sallys of the world. It's about re-discovering why you're actually in business, whom you're actually trying to serve. what needs you're trying to fulfil Companies periodically need an empathy check. Often they fall into the trap of responding to what seems to be market needs: introducing new features simply because other companies are introducing new features. (Kodak example...) One of the first things we did was to remind team members about the underlying emotions associated with collecting, sharing, and viewing images. Jane asked each of them to write a half-page essay about picture related experiences they'd had in the past six months, anything from snapping family photos to sorting their album or mailing photos. Jane shared the personal insights with the rest of the team.... upon hearing one of these family photo-taking tales, one of the lab members said he realized for the first time how important family photos can be to families. Clearly touched, the man had a new found desire to make his project relevant to real people.

pg 55 If you want to keep in shape, you have to exercise your brainstorming muscles more than once a month. So find a suitable space, order some supplies (and some chocolate chip cookies), get a good group together, and brainstorm up several dozen possible solutions to a problem that's bugging you right now.


Brainstorming is practically a religion at IDEO, one we practice nearly every day. Though brainstorms themselves are often playful, brainstorming as a tool - as a skill - is taken quite seriously. And in a company without many rules, we have a very firm idea about what constitutes a brainstorm and how it should be organized. First, a brainstorm is not a regular meeting. It's not something you take notes at. You don't take turns speaking in an orderly way. It shouldn't consume a morning or an afternoon. Sixty minutes seems to be the optimum length, though occasionally a brainstorm can productively stretch to an hour and a half. The level of physical and mental energy required for a brainstorm is hard to sustain much longer than that. Brainstorming sessions aren't presentations or opportunities for the boss to poll the troops for hot ideas. Nor should they feel like work. And brainstorming is most definitely not about spending thousands of dollars at some glamorous off-site location. ... we call the sessions "brainstormers".


Seven secrets for better brainstorming:

1. Sharpen the focus - start with a well-honed statement of the problem. This can be as simple as a question. Edgy is better than fuzzy. We've also found that the best topic statements focus outward on a specific customer need or service enhancement rather than focusing inward on some organizational goal.

2. Playful rules - don't start to critique or debate ideas. Go for quantity. Encourage wild ideas. Be visual. Perhaps the facilitator could ring a bell when participants try to turn a brainstormer into a normal meeting.

3. Number your ideas - first it's a tool to help motivate the participants before and during the session (Let's try to get to a hundred ideas before we leave the room). Second, it's a great way to jump back and forth from idea to idea without losing track of where you are. (100 ideas per hour usually indicates a good, fluid brainstorming session)

4. Build and jump - building suggestion might be "shock absorbers are a great idea, now what are some other ways to reduce spillage when the bicycle hits a bump?" By contrast, when discussion tapers off, a good "jump" transition statement might be something like this "OK, let's switch gears and consider some totally 'hands-free' solutions that allow the cyclist to keep both hands on the handlebars at all times. What might those solutions look like?"

5. The space remembers - we have had great success with extremely low-tech tools like Sharpie markers, giant Post-its for the walls, and rolls of old-fashioned butcher-shop paper on the tables. We're not talking about taking personal meeting notes here, but capturing ideas so that the group can see their progression and return to those that seem more worthy of attention. Cover virtually every surface with paper before the session starts.

6. Stretch your mental muscles - it can be worthwhile doing some form of a group warm-up (fast paced word game simply to clear the mind - Zen practitioners call it 'beginners mind'), bring show-and-tell to a brainstomer to help visualize the wide variety of options and materials that could be applied to the session's topics.

7. Get physical - good brainstorms are extremely visual. They include sketching, mind mapping, diagrams and stick figures. Bring in everything but the kitchen sink. Have materials on hand to build crude models of concepts: blocks, foam core... and bodystorming, where we act out current behaviour/usage patterns and see how they might be altered.

pg 72 So as we approached the 100 person mark at our Palo Alto offices in the mid 1990's, we took a chance and threw things open, designating some of our best people as studio leaders and giving them an opportunity to make their pitches to prospective members. No one at IDEO was going to be assigned to a studio. Instead, at our Monday morning "all hands" meeting in Palo Alto, each leader described the type of work they favoured, and what was exciting and challenging about their approach to product innovation. We reversed that horrible childhood sandlot routine where players wait to be selected. IDEOers got to pick their team leader, not vice versa. And you got to work where you wanted to: The studio heads each chose a location for their teams, among the various buildings in our Palo Alto campus. ... amazingly, we were able to juggle the studio sizes so that everyone got their first choice.

pg 75 We believe the strongest teams take root when individuals are given the chance of picking what groups they work with and even occasionally what projects they work on. That way, passion fuels the fire. For example, we were recently asked to develop a kid's car seat. We asked for volunteers, and dozens of employees stepped forward. One of the dads who volunteered was so concerned about safety that he'd already bought ten different car seats for his three kids. He was picked, of course. To me, that's the kind of enthusiasm you need to boost a project to the next level.

pg 88 Hot teams perform... How do you start building such teams? First, forget what you learned in school. Believe that your team members will be an outrageous success before their first day of work. That's what Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, does. ... Zander...believes there are several beneficial aspects of this dramatic role reversal. First, it's a great confidence builder for his students. Second, it eliminates the often counter-productive sniping that people frequently engage in when they think only a few will win (one reason we believe bell curve grading is so flawed). But most important, students invariably knock themselves out for that A. Zander believes that they do more to earn their own personal A than they would ever do for the traditional A given by a teacher.

pg 112 Give your management team a report, and it's likely they won't be able to make a crisp decision. But a prototype is almost like a spokesperson for a particular point of view, crystallizing the group's feedback and keeping things moving. ...pg 114 Prototypes can be a source of creation and insurance. When all else fails, prototype till you're silly.

pg 128 Encourage people to solve their own space problems, and you'll likely spur innovation where you didn't know it existed. Years ago Jim Feuhrer, one of our machine shop veterans, found there wasn't room for his bike, so he hung it from some overhead hooks. Faced with higher ceilings in another building, another IDEOer, one with extensive sailing experience, devised a clever system of hooks and pulleys to hoist up his wheels. No one complained. No one was reprimanded.

Pg 159 What exactly is cross-pollination?... There's the active, aggressive side: learning about new processes, methods, and technologies. And there's the passive, accepting side: making time or creating a place for new ideas. The best cross-pollinators encourage both of these practices. Here are a few of the ways we try to make cross-pollination an integral part of the workplace.

1. Subscribe and surf... we call this "idea wading", so the farther afield the better.

2. Play director...break the world down into scenes and become an expert at watching people perform even the smallest tasks.

3. Hold an open house...keep it casual, displaying a few crude prototypes or perhaps a quick posterboard describing what you're working on. Encourage comments and ideas...

4. Inspire advocates...mental diversity... we all need individuals who celebrate different viewpoints

5. Hire outsiders... fresh blood invigorates a company and introduces new ideas. Hire people just slightly off centre, and you'll be pleasantly surprised.

6. Change hats... creating machines for the blind...team members were taken to their own house, blindfolded, and told to try making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. ... they gained a small but tangible appreciation of the challenges of the blind.

7. Cross-train..We, too, can benefit from little drills or processes that we pick up from other businesses. This principle, of course, is exactly why businesses have boards of directors with executives from widely different fields. ... IDEO staffers spend as much time learning from noncompetitive industries.

pg 174 Our experience with pen-based computing has taught me that there's often a hidden barrier in the S-curve. Individual companies and entire industries often slow adoption rates by embracing faulty assumptions.

pg 195 As you step through the innovation process, try thinking verbs, not nouns. ... It means not focusing too much on the object or artifact: the new product, the big report, the latest ad campaign, the re-modeled store. Everybody's in the business of creating experiences, so focus on the verbs, the actions. The goal is not a more beautiful store. It's a better shopping experience. And creating more value for your brand.

pg 196 In The Experience Economy Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore argue that many business and services are coming to resemble the experience of a theme park. ... Think of experiences you might stage for your business. (example of re-designing the airport experience - really good stuff here)

pg 199 You probably don't work for an airline, but you've seen how you can begin to ask the basic question. How can I redesign my operation, install the latest technology, or retrain my staff to deliver a better experience - without, of course, breaking the bank? Start by following your customer journey, breaking it down into component elements, and asking yourself how you can deliver a better experience. (note: this excerpt earned a double flag!)

pg 214 The best products and services aspire to the classic design principle "Make simple things simple and complex things possible." Sometimes designing a winning experience is about reigning in your wish list and resisting the temptation to do too much.

pg 216 What can we learn from studying badly designed experiences? Look around your own workplace or business for routines that people hate, established ways of doing business that burden your company and/or clients and customers. Little improvements matter. Do people enjoy returning something on warranty? I sincerely doubt it. That's why when a customer returns a backpack for repair to JanSport, the company mails out a wacky response. "Hi! Warranty Service Camp is really cool. They say they're sending me home soon," reads a typical postcard. "Gotta run... we're doing zipper races today!" Silly as these sound .... nearly all the correspondence now consists of cheery thank-you notes. (they did a similar approach at IDEO with the resume process)

pg 228 Innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum. ... but you don't simply order up speed. And the path to superior innovation is rarely a direct line from A to B. Look for competitions that you might enter (or create) for your teams that emphasize the playful, speedy side of innovation. You just might get to the finish line faster.

pg 233 "The noble failures always kept us pushing the barriers," says Schwab. "We kept believing that a mistake may not be a mistake when it reflects an essentially sound strategy."

pg 250 One caveat about colouring outside the lines: You have to constantly evaluate what's too far outside. The late Gordon McKenzie, a fellow member of the Innovation Network, would call this balancing act "orbiting the giant hairball". ...the ultimate goal is it maintain a kind of continuous orbit, influencing the organization and being influenced by it, without ever getting completely snagged in the morass. So go ahead and colour outside the lines, but try your best to stay on the same page.

pg 284 You've seen hundreds of trailers in theaters. Everybody loves them. Little one-to-two minute teasers. It's a great way to capture the essence of a project, the heart of the emotional experience you're seeking in a product or service. You don't have to figure out all the technical or marketing problems. The goal is a visual prototype.

pg 293 Nearly every product can be made incrementally better, including the one you just finished. As we often say, that's why God invented clients - and bosses. Clients and bosses have budgets and schedules that bind the prototyping process. They're like the school-teacher in the movie Six Degrees of Separation who says that the secret to getting great art from second graders is knowing when to take the paper away from them.


pg 294 Give and Take
Many examples of reenergizing the culture are more subtle and built into tacit work practices. Here's an example of what I mean:

Your boss (or your client) gives you a month to come up with an important "deliverable", a piece of software, a report, a presentation, a product, or an ad campaign. We believe there are two dramatically different approaches to such an assignment. The first is to spend your month making the "perfect" version of the deliverable, polishing until it shines. Then, at the end of the month, you have the meeting with the Big Boss in which you - literally or figuratively - pull off the black velvet cloth and say "voila". Well, if your boss throws up all over the thing, you're in trouble. Ego damage, for sure. Maybe even status and career damage, depending on your boss.

The second approach to that same one-month challenge is to burn the whole first week cranking out four or five really crude outlines or prototypes. The high tech one. The playful one. The low-cost model. The pure-digital version. Then you squeeze in a ten-minute meeting at the end of the week with the Big Boss. Even in the unlikely possibility that she hates all five of your ideas, you're going to learn a lot as she tells you what's wrong with them, and you've now got three weeks to make the sixth one really sing.

Chances are, she'll pick elements from two or more of the prototypes, and you'll be able to combine the best of each in your final version. Even so, whatever criticism you get in week one doesn't sting much. After all, it's not your finished work, and you haven't put too much ego (or career risk) into any of the alternatives.

If you take this message to heart, you'll have to start training your boss, getting him or her accustomed to the idea that you'll be back around, long before the deadline, to get solid feedback. Try an up-front deadline compromise like "May 30 is great, if you'll let me have ten minutes with you on May 7 to make sure I'm on course."

As long as you negotiate up front, it's such a reasonable request that who could say no? ... What I mean is developing an attitude in which everyone you understands it's OK to show you rough prototypes. ... You'll see more good work sooner, get a chance to redirect projects headed off into the weeds, and end up with better final results.

pg 296 Over the years we've come up with some valuable innovation practice tips. Try jotting these down in your own words and posting them around your workplace. Most of all, practice them whenever you can.

- watch customers - and non-customers - especially enthusiasts.

- play with your physical workspace in a way that sends positive "body language" to employees and visitors.

- think 'verbs' not 'nouns' in your product and service offerings so that you create wonderful experiences for everyone who comes into contact with your company or brand.

- break rules and 'fail forward' so that change is part of the culture, and setbacks are expected.

- stay human, scaling your organizational environment so that there's room for hot groups to emerge and thrive.

- build bridges from one department to another, from your company to your prospective customers, and ultimately from the present to the future.

pg 297 Try it yourself. Innovation isn't about perfection. You've got to shank a few before your swing smooths out. Get out there an observe the market, your customers and products. Brainstorm like crazy and prototype in bursts. ... don't forget the true spirit of innovation. That's right. Have some serious fun.

Stifling - a nifty use of NASA

This awesome story from another manifesto titled "Mind of the Innovator: Taming the Traps of Traditional Thinking" http://changethis.com/37.01.MindInnovator

#7: Stifling
Years ago I played a dirty trick on a group of managers at a fairly large organization. Through my consulting work, I had discovered that a particular set of individuals of the command-and-control type were causing some fairly serious issues: some extremely lucrative opportunities were being dismissed, each at a high “lost opportunity” cost. Root cause? These individuals TO A PERSON would not allow their subordinates to have ideas. They had various ways of shooting ideas down. (Read a GREAT manifesto called “100 Ways to Kill a Concept: Why Most Ideas Get Shot Down”)

This group of managers took issue with my report. Luckily, an upcoming off-site presented me
with the opportunity to prove it to them.

At the off-site, there were about 75 people of varying degrees of seniority, ranging from field
supervisors to senior execs. I gave the assignment, one of those group priority exercises
whereby you rank a list of items individually and then as a group and compare (sort of a “wisdom of crowds” exercise to show that “we” is smarter than “me”). This specific exercise required you to rank 25 items with which you’ve crashed on the moon in relation to how important they were to your survival. NASA had compiled the correct ranking, so there was a clear answer.

I did the exercise with a twist. At each table I put a ringer. I gave the lowest-ranking person the
answer. It was their job to convince the command-control types they knew the right answer.
During the group exercise, NOT A SINGLE CORRECT ANSWER GOT HEARD .

After debriefing the exercise in the regular way, I had each person to whom I had given the correct answer stand up. I announced that these individuals had offered the right answer, but their ideas had been stifled, mostly due to their source and stature and seniority, or lack thereof.
I wish I had a camera to catch the red-faced managers.

We do this naturally...stifle, dismiss, and second guess the ideas of others in favor of our own.
Generally speaking, whenever I conduct problem-solving workshops, groups discuss the right answer, but it doesn’t get offered up as a solution. Because members second-guess, stifle, dismiss and even distrust their own genius.

Stifling is the deadliest of the sinful seven, because it is the most destructive.
Had you happened upon the right answer in your contemplation, but dismissed it?

my comments: I will always try to remember that there may be a ringer in every group (likely not me!). Make sure I do not stifle, but reveal and support the ringers!

21.1.08

IBM

Here's two great things I read last year that came up in a discussion this week (this reinforces the idea of blogging everything I am learning - not just books... I was given the articles to read only to realize, most of the way through them, that I had already read them)! And not only read them...

From IBM's Global Business Services, their paper on "Innovation - Shifting the strategic focus of learning" provided both inspiration and a 'sanity check' for my learning model project team to confirm we were on the right track with our thoughts. I've signed up to keep updated as new papers are released from this global think tank. Visit the website here: http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/html/bcs_whatwethink.html

The other paper was from Gary Hamel and Lowell Bryan titled Innovative Management. This is a brilliant read, and from it I used a quote for an exec presentation:

Gary Hamel: There’s a danger too, I think, of creative apartheid. Too many executives seem to believe that while a few people in the company may be really clever and creative, most folks aren’t. When you look at companies like Toyota, you see their ability to mobilize the intelligence of so-called ordinary workers. Going forward, no company will be able to afford to waste a single iota of human imagination and intellectual power.

The full paper is a worthwhile read - so many great thoughts to noodle on... http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Innovation/Innovative_management_A_conversation_between_Gary_Hamel_and_Lowell_Bryan_2065_abstract

Tonight, I've signed up for fastcompany's newsletters, Harvard Business Reviews' updates, IBM's GBS updates, and also McKinsey Quarterly's newsletter! Gnothi seauton...

Duckism no.3

From an article in Report on Small Business, of the Globe and Mail, came the story of Michael Duck, inventor of a dispenser that spits the perfect amount of cream into a cup of coffee (called the SureShot Dispensing System - look for it at a Timmy's near you).

I loved this quote from the inventor himself:

"You have to constantly re-educate yourself. You can't accept complacency - I call it the Homer Simpson Butt Groove. Sure, you're comfortable, but you can't progress. So you gotta get up and change yourself."

The Individualized Corporation

A Fundamentally New Approach to Management - Great Companies are Defined by Purpose, Process and People

by Sumantra Ghoshal and Christopher a. Bartlett

from the back of the book: Based on six years of research and hundreds of interviews with managers at every level of executive at companies such as Intel, ABB, Cannon, 3M, and McKinsey... explores the collapse of an outmoded corporate form and reveals the emergence of a fundamentally different management philosophy - one that focuses on the power of the individual as the driver of value creation in the company and the importance of individuality in management.

I didn't have a chance to flag this book as I read it, but it is one that I would like to re-read as it is rich with example and paradigm-shifting ideas.

20.1.08

Change This - New Manifestos Jan 2008

A favourite treat arrived in my inbox last week: six new manifestos from www.changethis.com. I haven't had a chance to read any of them yet, but I soon hope to devour them - they all sound tasty!

Here's the list:

42.01b Marketing Mismatch: When New Won’t Work with Old (Riffs on Meatball Sundae) By Seth Godin “People treat the New Marketing like a kid with a twenty-dollar bill at an ice cream parlor. They keep wanting to add more stuff—more candy bits and sprinkles and cream and cherries. The dream is simple: 'If we can just add enough of [today's hot topping], everything will take care of itself.' Most of the time, despite all the hype, organizations fail when they try to use this scattershot approach.” http://changethis.com/42.01.MarketingMismatch http://changethis.com/pdf/42.01.MarketingMismatch.pdf

42.02 The Future is Here and It is Bright: What Are We Waiting For? By Gary Hirschberg “We need more than simple awareness to break our generations-old,fossil-fuel-induced stupor. We have known what we should do, but we clearly have not done it. And the situation has deteriorated because of our lack of action. After more than three decades spent working in the environmental movement, I am convinced that economic self-interest—whether it is achieved by saving, earning, or a combination of the two—is the most powerful, if not the only, force capable of bringing about the future we need in time to make a difference….” http://changethis.com/42.02.FutureHerehttp://changethis.com/pdf/42.02.FutureHere.pdf

42.03 Humanize It: Bring a five-star sparkle to your customer interactions and watch your business flourish. By Leonardo Inghilleri and Micah Solomon “The best thing you can do for your business is not about new technology, brute force, or first-mover advantage. It’s something simpler. And more dependable. Humanize each customer interaction, in order to turn your product or service into much more than a commodity. In your customer’s mind, commodities are interchangeable and replaceable. Humanized relationships are not.” http://changethis.com/42.03.HumanizeIthttp://changethis.com/pdf/42.03.HumanizeIt.pdf

42.04 A “Where’s Waldo” Approach to Problem-solving By Adelino de Almeida, PhD “We’ve all encountered bad solutions that come from bad problem-solving; heck, we’ve even encountered good solutions that were somehow generated from bad problem-solving…All you need to become a proficient problem-solver is a basic understanding of the concept behind the Where’s Waldo books: unbeknownst to most, these books encapsulate all the wisdom necessary for sound problem-solving.” http://changethis.com/42.04.WhereWaldohttp://changethis.com/pdf/42.04.WhereWaldo.pdf

42.05 Ideaicide: How To Avoid It And Get What You Want By Alan Parr and Karen AnsbaughIdeaicide is deadly. People come up with lots of new ideas everyday, but nothing happens….The problem is not usually the ideas themselves….Corporate forces act to eliminate risk and make an idea conform to the company's existing business model, not to the needs of the marketplace. The edginess of the idea is gone, replaced by cold, calculated efficiency and predictability. We will show you how to bring your ideas to life.” http://changethis.com/42.05.Ideaicidehttp://changethis.com/pdf/42.045.Ideaicide.pdf

42.06 Free Your Ass and Your Mind Will Follow: Embodied Leadership By Jaime Wheal “Somewhere between Ancient Athens and today's Aeron, we’ve lost the plot and come to believe that all of Reason and Innovation resides inside our skulls. Organizational leaders require more than coaching "from the neck up" to compete in today's information age. We need to develop our physical, cognitive and relational capacities and expand our bandwidth.” http://changethis.com/42.06.FreeYourAsshttp://changethis.com/pdf/42.06.FreeYourAss.pdf

800-CEO-Read - Best Business Books of 2007

From the website: The day has finally come to announce the winners of the first annual Business Book Awards! After much reading and careful consideration, the following are the best titles of the year: The Best Business Book of 2007:

http://800ceoread.com/bookawards/

Here's the list on pdf: http://800ceoread.com/bookawards/8CRAwardWinners2007.pdf

The Dash

Who knew one of those email forwards could send such a gem? Here is the email... (As a note, I blogged about "The Dash" in Jim Clemmer's book, Growing the Distance!)

The Dash

In July 2006, a short 3-minute movie was launched on the Internet called The Dash. Since then, over 40 million people from around the world have watched it; and over 20,000 a day continue to watch it as a result of people passing it along.

The movie has been more successful than we could have ever imagined. More importantly, however, it has inspired many, many people to reflect on their lives and ask that all important question, 'Are my priorities where they should be?'

I hope you enjoy this movie and share it with those who are close to you.

Click This Link to View: www.dashpoemmovie.com

Live the Life You Have Imagined!

More on Happiness

This time the nuggets on happiness came from Wolfgang of Metrik Management: http://app.mailworkz.com/email_view.asp?bhjs=1&bhsw=1280&bhsh=800&bhswi=929&bhshi=605&bhflver=5&bhdir=0&bhje=1&bhcold=32&bhrl=-1&bhqt=-1&bhmp=-1&bhab=-1&bhmpex=&bhflex=&bhdirex=&bhcont=lan&group_idno=1221021&outgoing_idno=1221041&email_idno=3000235&bhkbps=96780

(gosh I hope that link stays alive!)

He shares that happy and money are not connected. Puerto Rico is the happiest country in the world, and Mexico is second. Canada is 10th, USA is 16th.

Professor John Helliwell (UBC) says happy in the workplace comes from five things and he relates it to the satisfaction an equivalent income would produce:

1. Trust in the workplace = $115K per year
2. Variety is worth $90K
3. Jobs that require skills = $60K
4. No conflicting demands = $42K
5. Enough time to do the work is valued at a lousy $30K per year

Woflgang goes on... often managers are held hostage by poor performers who threaten with pay raise challenges. Remember they may talk money but that's not what makes the human heart sing, its other issues like the five points above that produce that resistance.

Work on trust, variety, new skills, no conflicts, and enough time to do the work and you'll have the happiest workforce in the world. People in the Caribbean are poor yet they are happier than rich and developed nations. Money doesn't buy happiness anywhere, especially not in the workplace. Compliance and willing cooperation are the direct results of a happy workplace.

The Pursuit of Happiness

from the National Post: http://www.nationalpost.com/newsletter/story.html?id=203751

This was a timely article as it appeared around the same time I started to read "Stumbling on Happiness", also mentioned here.

Here's what stood out for me:

Christopher Barrington-Leigh, an economist at the University of British Columbia, says the initial discoveries in this field have been "revolutionary."

"Income doesn't matter much [to happiness], so that's devastating for economics. And to the degree it does matter, it's relative, which is devastating for economics, because everything in economics is always assumed to be absolute benefits," he said.

He cites a comparative study he did, ranking Canadian cities based on income and life satisfaction. What he found was that in the richer cities (Toronto, Calgary, Ottawa) people were the least satisfied with their lives, whereas in the smaller and poorer ones (Charlottetown, Quebec City and especially St. John's) people were far and away the most happy.

"The richer your metro region, the less happy you are," he says. "That means that every time you've got an economist measuring welfare based on aggregate income, or a politician seeking to expand the GDP of their region, or a central bank who has this idea that GDP is a decent proxy for well-being, those ideas are based on theory that has assumptions that appear to be wrong ... When we're chasing GDP as an economic policy, it's a rat race. People are no better off if you raise everyone's boat at once, in economic terms."

and...

Prof. Haslam's embarrassment was not immediately pointed out to him, which is unfortunate, because it illustrates a crucial aspect of his theory of happiness, which he developed with John Helliwell of UBC, his partner in a program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

What they have found is that, if there is a key to happiness, it is belonging -- to families, clubs, sports teams, churches, the more the better. Belonging, what they call social connectedness, predicts happiness far better than wealth, health or intelligence. It even predicts how well one will recover from a stroke.

In the maps of major Canadian cities they created based on Statistics Canada data, which plot income, life-satisfaction and trust of one's neighbours (as judged by one's estimate of the likelihood that a neighbour would return a wallet they found containing $100), it is clear that the trust map resembles the happiness map far more than the income map does. Pockets of the cities where trust among neighbours is highest correspond to the happy places, and these are often the economically poorer places. Toronto's Scarborough region is a good example. Similarly, areas of low neighbourly trust correspond to unhappy places, and are often the most wealthy, leafy and seemingly pleasant parts of town.

Social connectedness, they say, is slowly being recognized as the true key to happiness.

"For some reason, people think that certain things are going to make them happier than they do," says Prof. Barrington-Leigh, a colleague of Prof. Helliwell.

A good example is the trade-off some people have to make between a larger house and a longer commute to work.

"They underestimate how miserable the commute is going to make them," he says. "They make a mistake, and so we end up being committed to keeping up this lifestyle, when in fact the things that would actually make us happier are these social connections, these community connections, family connections."


Levi's Changes Everything

An inside account of the most dramatic change program in American business.

I came across this article as I was searching for tips on how to help employees navigate through change, in relation to a challenging project I was working on. This great find became the source of inspiration to guide me in the advice and recommendations I provided. Love it!

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/03/levi.html

Especially this excerpt:

So many efforts like this fail. What steps did you take early on to improve the odds of success?

We did a fascinating exercise in October 1993, midway through the design phase. We took 70 veteran managers from across the company and reviewed every major change program in our history. We went off-site for two days. We wrote on easels, filled up flip charts, basically created storyboards of change. Then we analyzed which programs had worked, which hadn't, and why.

We reached two conclusions. One, we're much better at starting change than finishing it. We get people excited, charge forward, then somehow the momentum evaporates.

The second conclusion -- and this had a real impact on us -- was that we haven't done a good job preparing people for change. That doesn't mean sloganeering. It means getting down to the level of real human beings. What do they worry about? What gets them excited? What new skills and behaviors do they need?

So we created a collection of resources to help people move forward: videos, seminars, workbooks, self-diagnostics. You can't expect people to change if you don't give them the tools. But we don't spoon-feed materials to anyone. We create opportunities for people to change, but we can't change them. They have to change themselves.

and..

Sidebar: Tools

1. "The Little Blue Book"
Spring 1994 was an anxious time at Levi's. The new supply chain had been designed, but rollout was months away. So the change team created a handbook to help people prepare.


"Individual Readiness for a Changing Environment" is an informal, 145-page binder (dubbed the "little blue book") full of self-assessment tools and self-improvement resources. One section, called Knowing Myself, contains diagnostics that measure personal values, interests, talents, and attitudes. Another section, Taking Action, offers advice on upgrading skills. A final section, Marketing Myself, presents a refresher course on resumes and interviews.

In the spirit of self-reliance, Levi's didn't blanket the company with books; employees had to request it. "It's amazing how long people kept asking for it," says Susan Weaver, a member of the "individual Readiness" team. "We had to keep producing copies." Ultimately, more than 4,000 people asked for copies.

Weaver says the "little blue book" sent a clear message: "People understand that they are responsible for their career, their path through Levi's. You are the author of your own life now."

2. "The Lunch Box"
Question: How do you prepare thousands of people to apply for jobs they've never heard of in an organization that's never existed?


Answer: "Mapping Your Future," a collection of materials (known as "the lunch box") describing the new Levi's and the process for staffing it. It contains booklets for outlining design principles behind the new company, posters tracing the interview-and-evaluation process, even a career-planning workbook. Unveiled in November 1994, it became the most important self-help tool in the change process.

"We have lots of people who haven't done a job interview in 10 years," says Paula Piccirilli, a member of the "Mapping Your Future" team. "I don't care what level you're at, that's scary."
Levi's distributed nearly 4,500 lunch boxes -- 4,000 in English, about 400 in Spanish. Nearly 1,500 employees attended follow-up workshops. The material, everyone agrees, had a genuine impact.


"One sales executive told us he spent 60 hours poring over the information," says Piccirilli. "He was an extreme case. He also wound up as a vice president in the Dockers organization."

3. "Graphic Gameplan"
At Levi Strauss & Co., as at so many companies, more work is becoming teamwork. But it's not always easy for new teams to agree on key objectives and priority action items. Enter the Graphic Gameplan.


The Gameplan process (which requires a full day to complete) invites team members to discuss themselves and their work and to post notes as the conversation proceeds. The group creates, in one giant display, a visual overview of the group's resources and work challenges. A finished Gameplan includes a team portrait, critical success factors, key obstacles, major work categories.
The Gameplan has become a popular tool inside Levi's -- in part because it's built around conversation, in part because the output is so visual. "People have taken it up without anyone helping them," says Susan Weaver. "We have a colleague in Brazil to whom we send stuff. She did a Gameplan with a team there. A few weeks later, she told us, there were new Gameplan displays in three different meeting rooms. People were doing it themselves, in Portuguese. It's just so usable."

Your Job Is Change

When change programs are doomed before they start ... When old leaders are stumped by new challengers ... When change itself is changing ... read this awesome article found here http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/39/jobischange.html

It inspires me to be a change insurgent. Check out this excerpt:

The Job of the Change Insurgent

The old change agent is as much a thing of the past as the old environment for change is. The old change agent could help a company do things faster, cheaper, better. He could try to push the company toward a linear improvement in its performance -- cutting costs, questioning bad practices, applying new technology to an old task, inching the company closer to its customers. But the mind-set for change -- as well as the process for change -- was limited, mechanical, point-to-point.

The change insurgent operates with a different mandate and a different mind-set. Rather than coming up with better products, the change insurgent continually invents better organizations. For the change insurgent, doing "it" faster, cheaper, and better is no longer the goal -- because "it" keeps changing. As a result, the change insurgent focuses less on specific products or specific markets, and more on organizational readiness. The whole organization has to scan technologies for possible applications, scan markets for possible needs, scan all other organizations for newly emerging technologies or markets -- and then move like lightning.

Rather than aiming for growth, the change insurgent aims for dexterity. In the 1990s, the Web gave companies a new mandate: Stop cutting costs, and start growing revenues. In the 2000s, the next phase of the Web is giving companies another mandate: Get more disciplined about growth and more focused on adaptation. It's no longer enough just to grow. The job of the change insurgent is to focus companies on their ability to maneuver and to change direction.

Rather than just cutting costs, the change insurgent has to explode the organization and put it on the Web. The change insurgent's job is to turn an old-line company into an online company. And in the course of making that change, the change insurgent has an opportunity to change the larger context within which the company operates. Rather than keeping operations in-house, the insurgent relies on B2B Web-based auctions and partnerships. Instead of paying suppliers a fixed price, the insurgent gives them equity. In place of fixed payrolls, the insurgent relies on performance-based pay, stock options, project teams, and contract workers.

Rather than working from the top down, the change insurgent works from wherever he is. Many change agents used to depend on title, authority, or official sanction to undertake their change programs. Change insurgency doesn't depend on formal rank; it depends on great ideas, powerful visions, and daring examples. There's no way that the people at the top can know enough about technology, markets, or the potential of people in and around the organization to be the major instigators of change. There's no way that change can be planned as a formal "program." The job of the people with the most formal authority, the "chiefs" -- chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer -- is to create an environment in which change insurgency can flourish.

Survival Is Not Enough

One of the biggest concepts I picked up last year was from 'learning organization' guru Peter Senge who describes the change process as organic rather than machine-like, which is where most companies go wrong. This article picks up on that idea: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/54/survival.html

I particularly loved this part about zooming:

Stable times force us to think of our companies as machines. They are finely tuned and easy to copy, scale, and own. We build machines on an assembly line, focusing on how to make them cheaper and ever more reliable. If your company is a machine, you can control it. You can build another one, a bigger one. You can staff it with machine operators and train them to run it faster and faster.

In times of change, this model is wrong. Our organizations are not independent machines, standing in the middle of a stable field. Instead, we work for companies that are organisms. Living, breathing, changing organisms that interact with millions of other living, breathing, changing organisms.

This is not business as usual. It's a new principle that is going to feel unnatural at first. We will need a new vocabulary just to discuss it. We will need to reinvent what it means to lead or to work in an organization.

The Evolution Alternative

Evolution -- defined as inheritable modifications over many generations -- is the most powerful tool we have for dealing with change. Individuals and companies can put this organic process to use by permitting change to occur, by not fighting it. A mutation is a mistake or a random feature that is created when a gene, or an idea, is altered and then transferred. By finding positive mutations and incorporating successful new techniques into a company's makeup, organizations can defeat their slower competitors.

It is our fear of changing a winning strategy and our reliance on command-and-control tactics that make us miserable -- not change. Change doesn't have to be the enemy. We start bypassing our fear of change by constantly training people to make small changes. I call this "zooming." Then we can build a company that zooms and attracts zoomers. As the company gathers steam, it will distance itself from its competitors and dominate markets by embracing the changes that will inevitably come.

Success Secret - Know When To Ask For Advice

I came across this article courtesy of the National Post.

Some excerpts:

But then there are an elite few who take asking for help to Olympic levels. Two weeks ago, I heard two of them speak on an entrepreneur panel at the SOHO Small Business conference in Vancouver.

On the face of it Brian Scudamore, a high-school dropout who built a rubbish-hauling business into franchise giant 1-800-GOT JUNK?, has little in common with Marla Kott, a $500-an-hour accountant who runs Imprint Plus, a maker of innovative, high-quality name tags. But when one audience member asked the panelists what they look for in a mentor, both Kott and Scudamore said they go straight to the top.

Both Vancouver entrepreneurs say they ask themselves who would be the best person to talk with about any issue. Then they contact them. Scudamore has what he calls a carefully tended MBA database (Mentor Board of Advisors) -- 750 people who have responded positively to his requests for help out of the blue.

Whether it's Howard Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks, or E-Myth author Michael Gerber, "I've never been afraid to call," Scudamore says. "It's amazing how busy people will take time out to help another entrepreneur." He may have to nudge some a few times, but Scudamore says 90% of the people he's contacted have willingly given their time.

....
Scudamore scours newspapers and magazines for stories of successful business people, adding them to his file of people to call when he faces challenges similar to theirs. That tactic landed him meetings with digital marketing expert Seth Godin, Subway founder Fred DeLuca, and Costco's Jim Sinegal. He has talked leadership with Boston Philharmonic conductor Benjamin Zander and met with Bell Canada CEO George Cope to learn how Cope runs effective meetings.

The key to contacting VIPs is to target them precisely, know what answers you're looking for, and respect their time. The best way to approach them? "Sincerely," he says.


Read the full story here: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=1a77b930-d2f2-4555-8f86-e73b1840e460&k=23125

Blogs and Learning at Organizations

A discussion with a colleague in December had sparked curiosity for me to see what has been written about blogs and learning…

I found this interesting link from this article’s references:
http://istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Winter2002/feat.weblogging2.html

It has the context of developing a knowledge log while in school, but I think this idea could be transferred to the corporate world (as we know it already has). The argument to “why this is a good idea” is perhaps in the quote at the end:

Here is a final thought: When I worked at Forrester (I was the senior Internet analyst at Forrester between 95-97), I sat next to
George Colony the CEO. One day he turned to me and said a very smart thing that will soon apply to most companies: "My company is full of very intelligent people that I spent a lot of time, effort, and money pulling together. Everything they think about while they work here is valuable. The thoughts that aren't captured and put to use by the company is like grain dropping to floor from a mill stone. My job as CEO is to find ways to scoop up that grain and put it back onto the mill stone so it can be made into flour and sold." K-Logs automate this process. The skills needed to make K-Logs successful long-term need to be started in school.

Here is the rest of the article...

K-Logs and Continuous Education

Note: This is another post to the
K-Logs (Weblogs for knowledge management) community -- 147 strong and still growing. If this topic interests you, you are welcome to join.

Ok, I stretched my mind a little into the future on this post. It deals with how I think K-Logs could be used to provide people with a continuous learning process after they leave school.
As background, I posted a link recently to an article by Peter Drucker that talked about how we are moving to a highly competitive knowledge society. Education, in order to better serve the needs of this society, must adapt. How? It must help people create and maintain a continuous learning cycle. Knowledge goes stale over time and knowledge workers, in order to continue to be productive at their jobs, need to constantly improve their domain expertise.


This is something K-Logs can help with. Most people, when they leave school, take nothing with them besides what is between their ears and a few text books that are quickly put out of date. Our current system forces people to go back to a classroom setting to rejuvenate their knowledge set. Most people can't afford this. Particularly given Drucker's predictions of the level of market competition there will be.
If students were required to build and maintain a K-Log during their years of residence at school, they would leave with: 1) a strong habit of continuous analysis and writing, 2) subscriptions to data streams (articles, documents, and other relevant data -- both free and for fee $$), 3) living connections to teachers and students they met, and 4) a chronicle of their learning process at school.

From the schools perspective, K-Logs could improve the economics of the relationship. It could charge its students for RSS subscriptions to the Weblogs of teachers at the school (a continuous stream of insight provided by teachers that are constantly reading and analyzing the newest information available in the field of study) and other data streams. It would also create a new channel for relationships with alumni that would provide a backchannel for insight on how knowledge they are learning in school is being applied in the real world. Finally, it puts a whole new spin on what it means by going to a school -- in this new world you just don't attend, rather you "join" the schools knowledge sharing community.

From the students perspective, he/she could claim not only having attended a good school but also that they are continuously connected to that school's knowledge stream/system. Would that be a benefit in a job interview? You bet. I always want to hire people that are always at the top of their game. Also, a well maintained K-Log would provide potential job seekers with a living, breathing resume about what they have learned. In a job interview, people often ask about the details of specific things people have learned or done. It would be much more valuable to read about the experience in a K-Log (you can use categories to limit access to K-Log data).

Here is a final thought: When I worked at Forrester (I was the senior Internet analyst at Forrester between 95-97), I sat next to
George Colony the CEO. One day he turned to me and said a very smart thing that will soon apply to most companies: "My company is full of very intelligent people that I spent a lot of time, effort, and money pulling together. Everything they think about while they work here is valuable. The thoughts that aren't captured and put to use by the company is like grain dropping to floor from a mill stone. My job as CEO is to find ways to scoop up that grain and put it back onto the mill stone so it can be made into flour and sold." K-Logs automate this process. The skills needed to make K-Logs successful long-term need to be started in school.

Here is the links to Drucker's articles:
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=770819
Here is my post on it in the K-Logs list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/klogs/message/47

Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars

A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers that Turn Colleagues into Competitors

by Patrick Lencioni (founder and president of The Table Group, a management consulting firm specializing in executive team development and organizational health)

from the intro... To tear down silos, leaders must go beyond behaviour and address the contextual issues at the heart of department separation and politics. The purpose of this book is to provide a simple, powerful tool for addressing those issues and reducing the pain that silos cause. And the pain should not be underestimated.

Silos - and the turf wars they enable - devastate organizations. They waste resources, kill productivity, and jeopardize the achievement of goals. ... There is perhaps no greater cause of professional anxiety and exasperation - not to mention turnover - than employees having to fight with people in their own organization. The good news is that this is all immensely avoidable. In fact, I have never used a tool with clients that has been so universally and successfully adopted.

I love all of Patrick's books - the fable format makes them easy and enjoyable reads, with the subject matter always powerful and full of learnings. Ones to own, for sure!

Excerpt from the book:

Test Number One
Jude spent much of that evening preparing for the next morning's session with Lindsay and her team.

By the time he arrived in the conference room at the hospital, he was feeling pretty confident
that his theory was more solid than ever. But that confidence was offset by the reality that a new
group of executives could change everything.

As soon as the team of eight was seated around the table, Lindsay introduced Jude and succinctly explained the reason he was there. "We need to start working as a hospital, and not as separate departments that happen to share a building."

Everyone seemed to be in agreement with the goal.

Jude then went to the front of the room and asked the group a series of questions about their
behavior as a team. How comfortable were they in being open with one another? How much did they engage in honest debate? That kind of thing.

After an awkward few minutes, the team opened up. Soon enough Jude came to the conclusion,
as Lindsay had suggested he would, that there were no blatant personality clashes among the group and that the silo issue was probably more structural and organizational than interpersonal. So Jude moved to his pitch.

First, he asked them for examples of crisis situations they had been in, and for the next ten
minutes helped them come to the realization that teams often perform at their best when their backs are up against a wall.

He told the group about his wife's emergency room experience, which not only was helpful in
driving the point home, but seemed to help them come to know Jude as a person rather than just a consultant.

As the lesson was beginning to take hold, out of nowhere Jude asked a rhetorical question of the
group, one he decided should be a staple of his workshops in the future: "Why wait for a crisis?"

It was as though he had just told them about electricity.

He continued, with more enthusiasm than he had yet demonstrated to a group of clients. "Why not create the same kind of momentum and clarity and sense of shared purpose that you'd have if you were on the verge of going out of business?"

That set off an outbreak of nods and raised eyebrows from the suddenly engaged audience. Now that he had them where he wanted them, Jude decided to get right to the meat of his session and asked the $64,000 question: "What is the single most important accomplishment that this team needs to make in the next six or nine months?"

My flags...

pg 135 "This is not about figuring out how to accommodate all our functional areas. I really don't care about your departments or titles or functional responsibilities. I want all of us focused on what's important, regardless of where it falls in the organization." He looked at the legal counsel. "And that means I want you, as a member of this team, to be just as involved and interested in what we're doing around products and marketing as you are around legal issues. That's why I put you on my staff. Not because you're a good lawyer, but because you can contribute across the board."

pg 141 After an awkward few minutes, the team opened up. Soon enough Jude came to the conclusion, as Lindsay had suggested he would, that there were no blatant personality clashes among the group and that the silo issue was probably more structural and organizational than interpersonal.

pg 149 Jude put it on the list and stood back for a moment to let them soak it all in. Then he decided not to wait for someone to ask the next inevitable question. "Now, I bet some of you are thinking, what about our day jobs? Rest assured that we're not forgetting the fact that we have to continue doing surgery and treating patients and paying bills and collecting insurance. ...Those tasks are and will always be critical. But if that's all we're thinking about, then every month and every quarter and every year that goes by won't make this a better hospital.

pg 155 Lindsay was suddenly fired up, and spoke out with more force than usual. She seemed to be responding to what her COO had just said. "Then let me be very clear to everyone here. You should all go back to your direct reports and tell them what we're focused on here. We need to help them understand what our priorities are, and why we can or can't do some of the things they want."

pg 178 Components of the Model - the model for combating silos - as illustrated in the fable - consists of four components:
- a thematic goal
- a set of defining objectives
- a sent of ongoing standard operating objectives
- metrics

Thematic Goal - definition - a single, qualitative focus that is shared by the entire leadership team - and ultimately, by the entire organization - and that applies for only a specified time period.

To avoid politics and turf battles, executives must establish an unambiguously stated common goal, a single overriding theme that remains the top priority of the entire leadership team for a given period of time. In turn, this thematic goal serves to align employees up and down the organization and provides an objective tool for resetting direction when things get out of sync.

Before further exploring the exact nature of a thematic goal, it might be helpful to describe what it is not. A thematic goal is not a long term vision or, as Jim Collins and Jerry Porras refer to it in their terrific book Built to Last, a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Nor is it a tactical metric or measurable objective.

While it is certainly a good idea for companies to have both a vision to motivate people over the long term and a set of tactical objectives to guide their daily activities - and most do - the thematic goal lies somewhere in between the two, and I believe it may well be even more important. That's because it bridges the two by making the vision more tangible and by giving the tactical objectives more context.

Figure 1: Thematic Goal - the single, temporary and qualitative rallying cry shared by all members of the leadership team

Let's look at the key elements of a thematic goal to understand how it happens (bits below are excerpts from the book).

Single - in an organization, there can only be one true thematic goal in a given period. That's not to say there aren't other desires, hopes, and objectives at play, but none of them can be attempted at the expense of accomplishing the thematic goal. Every organization needs a top priority. When a company is tempted - and most always are - to throw in one or two extra top priorities, they defeat the purpose of the thematic goal, which is to provide clarity around whatever is truly most important. This is best summarized by the wonderfully simple adage, "If everything is important, then nothings is." Something has to be most important.

.... Oftentimes, a team's initial guess at a thematic goal will actually be one of the defining objectives that create the context for the goal.

Qualitative - the thematic goal is not a number, and it is not even specifically measurable. It is a general statement of a desired accomplishment. It requires a verb, because it rallies people to do something. Improve, reduce, increase, grow, change, establish, eliminate, accelerate.

Time bound - the thematic goal does not live beyond a fixed time period, because that would suggest that it is an ongoing objective. ... it is a desired achievement that is particularly important during that period, and must therefore be accomplished in a corresponding time frame (usually somewhere between three and twelve months, depending on the nature of an organization's business cycle and unique situation).

Shared - The thematic goal applies to everyone on the leadership team, regardless of their area of expertise or interest. While it is true that some thematic goals will naturally fit largely within one particular executive's area of responsibility, it is critical that all team members take responsibility for the goal, and for doing anything they can to move the company - not just their own department - toward the accomplishment of that goal. That means executives must remove their functional hats, the ones that say finance or marketing or sales, and replace them with generic ones that say executive. They must dare to make suggestions and ask questions about areas other than their own, even when they know relatively little about those areas.

But a thematic goal, on it's own, will leave an organization confused about what exactly to do. And that's where defining objectives come into play.

Defining Objectives
Once a thematic goal has been set, a leadership team must then give it actionable context so that members of the team know what must be done to accomplish the goal. These are called defining objectives because they are the components or building blocks that serve to clarify exactly what is meant by the thematic goal. Like the thematic goal, defining objectives are qualitative and shared across the entire team.

Qualitative - assigning numbers and dates to defining objectives only serves to limit the involvement of the entire leadership team members who cannot see how they might directly impact a numerical target. Rest assured, quantification comes soon enough.

Shared - it is worth restating here: often the best suggestions and ideas about an issue come from people not closely involved in the issue. They bring valuable objectivity, even naivete, to the table.

Time-bound - when then thematic goal is no longer valid, the defining objectives also change.

Standard Operating Objectives - in addition to the objectives that provide definition around the thematic goal, it is critical to acknowledge the existence of other key objectives that a leadership team must focus on and monitor. These are ongoing objectives that don't go away from period to period. The danger for a company lies in mistaking one of these critical objectives, like revenue or expenses, for a rallying cry. Most employees find it difficult to rally around"making the numbers" or "managing expenses" knowing that these will continue to be trumpeted as critical over and over again in future period. ... Calling revenue a standard operating objective shouldn't diminish the importance of achieving it. In fact, it sends a message that the effort is always important, but not enough to generate success on its own.

Metrics - ... a leadership team can now start talking about measurement. Keep in mind that even metrics are not aways quantifiable numbers. Often they are dates by which a given activity will be completed.

pg 197 Managing and organizing around the thematic goal... weekly, first go around the table and give every member of the team 30 seconds to report on their top three priorities for the coming week. Then review your team scorecard, which is nothing more than a to-be-graded list of the items that make up the defining objectives and the standard operating objectives. Colours assigned to each area (green, yellow, red) are a simple, qualitative assessment based on the judgement of the leadership team members. ... The point of the exercise is to tap into the judgement and intuition of the people running the company as to which areas are doing well and which aren't. Once the ratings are done - this usually takes five minutes - the team is ready to decide where to spend the time and energy available during the remainder of the meeting. And this would be the time for someone to challenge a teammate who is planning to spend a good chunk of time that week on an issue that is either disconnected from the thematic goal or related to an area that is already doing well.

... as obvious as this may seem, it is an extremely common problem among many teams. All too often, executives spread their time evenly across all departments and issues, giving equal attention to every topic regardless of where it falls in terms of importance or progress. Meetings become show and tell sessions designed to give everyone time to talk about their departments and activities. This only reinforces silos and makes it more likely that critical issues get too little attention from the entire team.

pg 204 As for BHAGs, every organization should probably have them. .. But they don't provide enough guidance about what people should actually focus on once they get to work. ... it's the thematic goal that ties it all together. Without it, BHAGs lose connection to day-to-day activities, and weekly metrics become arbitrary and lifeless numbers that seem to serve no purpose other than their own. A final thought about this. When a thematic goal is clearly established and communicated, employees should be able to look up from their work at any given time and see how they're contributing to an outcome that is far enough away to given them the ability to succeed, but not so far away that they cannot ever imagined being finished. They should be able to see how the company's long term vision connects to its short term objectives.

pg 206 Like a canary in a coal mine, a confused or conflicted employee can be a sign that the thematic goal and defining objectives aren't being communicated effectively, or more importantly, aren't being used to manage the organization from above.

For PDFs of The Silos Model, Thematic Goal Roadmap, and more, visit www.tablegroup.com

19.1.08

Kiss Theory Goodbye

Five Proven Ways to Get Extraordinary Results in Any Company

by Bob Prosen

There is a bit of a story behind my reading this book. As part of a Learning Model team, I introduced the concept of "main things" from Monday Morning Leadership, by David Cottrell. This idea resonated with a director on our team, and I happened across Bob's manifesto here: http://www.changethis.com/31.04.NotDirtyWord/download. I sent the manifesto to the director with the words "this is how to operationalize 'main things"! Turns out he owned the book - picked up at the airport a while ago but hadn't had a chance to read it, so he sent the book my way to enjoy.

My flags...

pg 6 There are five crippling habits that get companies and organizations nowhere fast:
1. Absence of clear directives
2. Lack of accountability
3. Rationalizing inferior performance
4. Planning in lieu of action
5. Aversion to risk and change

pg 8 Actions to take now - start getting results immediately by taking these actions now:

- Write down and quantify your top three objectives. How do you know you are achieving them?
- Send a memo to five members of your top management team. Ask them to send you their top three objectives and the ways they know the organization is achieving them.
- Send a similar memo to five of your best middle managers. Also ask them to send you their top three objectives and the ways they know the organization is achieving them.

- Compare and contrast the responses you get from top executives and middle managers. What have you learned? What will you do to increase alignment and teamwork resulting from everyone knowing and delivering against the top three objectives?

pg 15 Being able to differentiate between excuses and real problems is an essential part of management. Be responsible to people, not for them. By removing roadblocks to success, leaders enable employees to become fully responsible for delivering results.

pg 16 When the most productive leaders hear someone rationalizing inferior performance, they switch the conversation from negative to positive. Instead of asking why an individual hasn't met a goal, ask what he's doing to get there. Does he need help? What stands in the way? During these conversations, make certain ownership and accountability are maintained while you focus on actions required to achieve the desired outcome.

pg 21 Actions to take now - Before proceeding, begin learning about these proven execution models by taking these actions now:
1. List your three worst work habits.
2. Write down your management team's three worst habits.
3. What steps will you take to address your habits and what requests will you make of your team to improve theirs?
4. How can you make the culture more welcoming to change?
5. How do you know rewards are tied to measurable results throughout the organization?
6. Schedule two walkabouts per month to ask employees what they are working on and to see how well they are performing.

pg 34 Here is a secret I use to increase the probability of making the right hiring decision: During the latter stages of the interviewing process, after my colleagues and I have met with the prospective hire several times, I ask the candidate to write a one-page action plan describing what he or she will do during the first sixty days on the job. The next time we meet, I ask the person to present the plan. This not only allows me to evaluate the candidate's style, approach, and critical thinking skills, but it also gives me a ready-made performance plan by which to evaluate the person in the months to come. If I'm hiring to fill a senior position, I ask for a three-month action plan.

pg 40 Tips on how people learn and remember. People retain the following:
- 10% of what they read
- 20% of what they hear
- 30% of what they see
- 50% of what they see and hear
- 70% of what they say and write
- 90% of what they say and do

pg 47 Actions to take now - But before you move on, here are some actions to take now:
1. Write down the three most important ways for you to improve your leadership abilities along with key milestones and dates for achieving them.
2. What are the three most important ways for your managers to improve their leadership abilities? How and when will you communicate this to each member on your team?
3. How can your company or organization communicate better with its employees and stakeholders?
4. Who needs to delegate better? How can you get him or her to do that?
5. Do you have the right people in the right positions? If not, what actions are you prepared to take to accomplish this?
6. Does the company or organization make and meet commitments without having to follow up? If not, what actions will you take to make this a reality?

pg 57 Salespeople who meet and continue to exceed their quota should be able to earn as much as possible. Remember, all good salespeople immediately decode the compensation plan to determine how to max out. If they see unlimited earnings potential, their motivation will extend beyond quotas and plans. Yes, it's expensive, but what a return on investment!

pg 58 I'm often asked if it's better to hire people with strong product and service experience and teach them how to sell, or hire people with proven sales ability and teach them the company's products and services. I strongly recommend hiring people with proven sales experience in your industry or an adjacent industry. The next-best alternative is to hire people who know how to sell and teach them your products and services. It's far too difficult to teach people how to sell, and it rarely works.

pg 60 To increase sales, try using the following vernacular:
Language to use / Language to avoid:
Presentation / Pitch
Investment / Price/Cost
Own / Buy
Future Client / Prospect
Companies we serve / Customer
Agreement / Contract
Approve / Sign

pg 69 At NCR, I had the opportunity to work for Mark Hurd, who was recently named chief executive officer and president of HP. Mark is one of the best at improving operating efficiency.

pg 71 If not closely managed, these costs mysteriously grow by one person or investment at a time until they represent a significant and unnecessary burden on the business. In lieu of increasing these costs, look for alternatives; for instance, outsourcing functions such as recruiting, training development, payroll, and copy reproduction. Deploy technologies such as PDAs to allow employees to manage their own schedule, and e-mail and follow up on calls without administrative support. Automate expense reporting, document approval processes, and benefits administration.

pg 79 One of the most effective ways to reduce unnecessary costs while improving product and service quality is to have a robust quality process that utilizes root-cause analysis (RCA) and irreversible corrective action (ICA).

Step 1- Identify the problem. The problem must be quantifiable and measurable.
Step 2 - Determine the most likely cause categories.
Step 3 - Collect data (i.e. one month period).
Step 4 - Represent the data (i.e. bar charts, graphs of the four weeks of data).
Step 5 - Create a Pareto diagram to determine which cause category represents greater than 80 of the problem. The objective is to avoid spending time on the less important cause categories.
Step 6 - Determine RCA for the 80% cause categories identified in step 5 (can be several categories added together to equal 80%).
Step 7 - Implement ICA test.
Step 8 - Track results for three weeks to validate improvement.
Step 9 - Institutionalize ICA. (i.e. train entire department)
Step 10 - Repetition (repeat steps 5-9 with the next largest cause category until the company is once again achieving its goals on the particular problem.

pg 105 There are also a number of key questions you should regularly ask your existing customers: What can we do to better serve you? What do you want more of? What do we need to do to win more of your business? Remember, asking these questions is just the beginning. Taking action on the answers is where you begin to build customer loyalty.

pg 130 Ultimately you should have a direct line of sight from individual objectives through the operational plan to the business plan and the company's financial performance. Every person in your company should know exactly how his or her individual objectives tie directly to the success of the business. The concept that everyone is a part of a larger process becomes part of your holistic culture.

pg 133 In an accountability-based culture supercharged for action, you shouldn't have to tell anyone how to do his or her job, but just what needs to be done. If you've hired smart, made certain your team understands the objectives, put the right people in the right jobs so they can fully use their skills, and empowered them to do what they do best, then you should rarely have to get involved in how things actually get done.

pg 134 Part of what drives an accountability-based culture is unyielding commitment and belief in the company's primary objectives. Everyone must believe in the mission and agree that the chosen path is right. To test this commitment within your company, get into the habit of walking around and talking to people. Get off your beaten path and talk to people you don't regularly encounter. Then simply ask them what they're working on and why they're working on it. The relevance of walking around (in this chapter) is that you can use this technique to better instill an accountability-based culture. To help accomplish this, determine the following: Can employees tell you how their work directly contributes to achieving their organization's top objectives? Do they understand why they're doing what they're doing? Can they explain the company's objectives in their own language, or do they simply regurgitate a mantra?

If they can't do these things and do them well, pay attention. Look deeper. This is exactly where superior leadership makes a difference. These seemingly small adjustments add up, and if they are not addressed, they grow into big problems that are much harder to solve. Most often this is caused by a breakdown in communication or commitment. Generally, middle management is the key breakdown to successful execution of objectives. Middle managers bridge the gap between the plan and what employees would be working on every day.

pg 141 If you've removed or substantially reduced the roadblocks and your company or organization is still not progressing toward profitability, chances are you have people in the wrong positions. Clearly, people must be given more than once chance to achieve. Then, if they fail repeatedly, it's the leaders job to recognize that these people are in a position to fail and make a change. In retrospect, leaders often say they waited too long to act.
I was once asked by a company to work one-on-one with the vice-president of sales, who wasn't making quotas. My first order of business was to ask him what was standing in the way of making the numbers. He identified three issues that we resolved in less than thirty days. Without any other roadblocks, he agreed that at the end of sixty days, if he wasn't making quota, it was on him, not the company. As it turned out, before the sixty day mark, he saw that he was in the wrong position and left on his own to pursue other interests.

pg 146 Everyone needs to know the company's most critical objectives - from top leadership down to the line worker. Everyone should be able to articulate what business you're in, the top objectives for the current year, and their personal alignment with those objectives. To lead everyone to this point of understanding, stay on message. Talk often about the things that matter the most. This is an extremely effective way to gain alignment.

The old "open door" policy goes a long way toward helping leaders and workers clarify information so that people can do their jobs and meet their objectives. There's no quicker way to lose touch with an organization than to close your door to write memos and send email. Get out and talk to people, and stop sending email to people who sit right next door. Trust is built one-on-one, not in electronic relationships. Sometimes we solve the problems faster face-to-face when we don't have to deal with repetitive memos and emails.

pg 148 One way to encourage an open, communicative environment is to be free with your ideas. The more information you disclose, the more information people are willing to give you. It's a leader's role to being the process. A good way to do this is to speak often in front of employees and field questions. When answering questions, give enough information to ensure understanding. Ask people what they think of certain ideas. Get them involved and feeling like an insider.

pg 154 There's no better way to stay in touch with your organization than to take frequent walks around the company and listen, ask questions, and observe. This is not management by wandering around, but purposeful visits to ensure that all employees understand how they contribute to achieving the company's top objectives. If you don't schedule time to do this, you won't do it, and avoiding this responsibility can lead to big problems. The objective is to look for and ensure alignment between the company's stated objectives and what people are actually doing. To accomplish this, you to ask only two questions: What are you doing today to help the company achieve its objectives? What one thing could we do to make your job easier? ... Take this purposeful walk at least a couple of times a week. Don't plan where you're going ahead of time, just block out the time and do it. Don't announce your plans in advance. Show up in places you haven't been. Go to the loading dock. Go to the customer service desk, accounts payable, or the manufacturing floor. It only takes twenty or thirty minutes to mind a few people you haven't talked to in a while and ask them those two questions.

pg 156 Another way to talk to people you don't normally have contact with is to host skip-level meetings with people who don't directly report to you. ...These can be casual meetings over lunch, with you in your best listening mode, or you can ask to attend an meeting impromptu. When you do this, I strongly suggest just being an observer. Remember your purpose: You're verifying alignment and finding out what stands in the way of the organization achieving its top objectives. You're not there to take control or to get people to like you. Instead, you're assessing the culture to determine what changes are required.

pg 157 If your bad news is likely to be on the ten o'clock news, it's even more important for you to be the one to tell employees first. Sometimes this is impossible, either because the information is privileged or legally can't be shared in advance of public disclosure. If this happens, hold a general conference with your employees as soon as possible, even if it means a conference call at midnight. Clear the air and answer questions. People can handle bad news if you tell them about it early. Explain why the situation occurred, what's being done, how it impacts them, and how they can help.

pg 160 As a leader, you must be attuned to communication that promotes a victim mentality. If you're hearing excuses, you've got victims. Here are some common victim excuses: "I couldn't get it done because the other department didn't ..." "It's not my responsibility" "I'm not paid enough to be proactive" "I don't have enough resources" "We've tried that before and it didn't work". The best way to break out of this negative cycle is to ask why three times. If this doesn't work and the conversation wanders into excuses, get back on course with one question: What do you need to accomplish your objectives? Stay focused there, and employees will have no room for excuses.

pg 188 Are you watching for busywork? Pay special attention to staff and other corporate functions, such as accounting, human resources, and information systems. Are they engaging in non-essential work and generating unnecessary reports instead of action that supports the company's top objectives? If so, how do you root out busywork? Ask your P&L and business-unit leaders to annually evaluate the effectiveness of the support they receive from each central staff or headquarters department. Ask them to list what they want the staff or department to continue doing, stop doing, and start doing. Then take action and hold the leaders accountable.

pg 189 Have you run out of time to plan?
1. Determine your top priorities. There should only be three or four. Write them down and keep them on your desk so you won't get distracted.
2. Delegate, delegate, and then delegate some more.
3. Perform a three day time study. Write down where you're spending your time for three days and, at the end of the three days, assess yourself:
- are you spending time on too many things that aren't priorities?
- what types of activities are taking more time than they should?
- Where are you gravitating in the business?
- Is that the best place for you to be spending your time?
- What issues are coming to you that shouldn't?

From the middle:

Daily Checklist - end indecision, increase your productivity, kiss theory good bye and get the results you need. Take these seven steps every day:
1. Give clear directives. Be short, be definitive, and get to the point.
2. Require accountability. Focus on results, not on activity.
3. Never rationalize poor performance.
4. Avoid overplanning. When a plan is in place, execute.
5. Embrace change. Search out opportunities to improve your organization and results.
6. Help every member of the team win.
7. At the end of every day, ask yourself, "Did my actions today help move the organization closer to meeting its objectives?"

The Leader's Role - make everyone who report to you win! Four steps to achieve winning results:
1. Clearly define everyone's objectives, establish quantifiable metrics, and measure performance.
2. Have each person identify the top three barriers to acheiving his or her objectives.
3. Agree on specific actions, responsibilities, and time frames to remove or minimize the barriers.
4. Hold everyone accountable for results and disproportionately reward those who acheive their objectives.

Gaping Void Goodness