Jan 19, 2021 | Collaboration, Governance, Leadership
As we come to grips with remote working, we will also have to come to grips with the central challenge, of how do you create the sense of community and teamwork that requires face to face but is not as present in remote work.
More particularly, remote working groups that have a changing membership, often a rapidly changing membership.
Great sporting teams win because they have the right blend of talent to get the job done, then they practise and practice, and practice. What happens when the membership is not stable, when practice is not possible, simply because you cannot predict what it is that you need to be practising, and with whom.
Google has spent years and millions of dollars examining the characteristics that make groups successful. The starting point is that no Google employee is short of intelligence, otherwise, you simply do not work there, but some groups are extremely effective, and others are failures, when on paper, the group members appear remarkably similar.
They called it ‘Project Aristotle‘.
Google, if it has what we might call a core competence, it would be finding patterns in data. They have large data sets of the teams in their business, their makeup, demographically, ethnographically, education, experience, and so on, but they could find no correlation between all these variables, and the quality of the team output. It seemed almost random.
The problem was to identify how individual intelligence translated into group intelligence.
We seem to accept that teams that were working well are more productive, creative, and harmonious than those that do not, but we do not really recognise the drivers of those outcomes.
Eventually, an unexpected pattern emerged, that discriminated between high performing teams, and the others. The pattern had two characteristics of the interactions that occurred in the teams, that explained the performance differences.
Those behavioural patterns are:
Equality of conversational turn-taking.
When everyone in the team has the opportunity to speak, and is encouraged to take it, and the result is that team members hold the floor for roughly the same amount of time, the team works. It does not mean that everyone takes turns, it does mean that the culture and often unspoken norms of the group are that everyone is respected, and has value to be added to the conversation, and is therefore listened to equally.
Ostentatious listening.
Just speaking in roughly the same amount is not enough. Others in the group must be overtly and ostentatiously listening, taking in what is being said, and giving it the attention and thought it deserves. This particularly applies to the team leader.
Together, these two behavioural norms together create what risks becoming a cliché: ‘Psychological Safety’.
This is the willingness of team members to speak their mind, express opinions, and ideas, knowing that they will not be judged, that the group welcomes the views, even when they are against the ‘run of play’ or the expected. Psychological safety is the single greatest correlate with a group’s success. When team members have that safety, it unlocks their best ideas, their ability to collaborate meaningfully, and innovate creatively.
Contributing to the success of a team, on top of the two core drivers that deliver psychological safety, and contributing to them in meaningful ways, are 4 supporting behaviours.
- Team members get things done on time, and meet their obligations, in a manner that enables the team to perform its tasks to at least the standard they expect.
- Structure and clarity. Individual’s in the team have clear roles, plans and goals, and the decision-making processes the team uses are clear. When an individual’s goals and plans are aligned with those of the team, the impact is magnified.
- The work being done by the team is important to team members.
- Team members believe their work matters, and that it will create positive change.
Taking up the hard-won lessons from Google seems to make great sense to me.
How well do your processes to manage and leverage the intellectual capital, represented by your employees, work in the evolving working environments inspired by ‘The Bug?
Header credit: My thanks again to Scott Adams and his mate Dilbert.
Jan 15, 2021 | Collaboration, Innovation
Today, January 15, 2021 is the 20th anniversary of the launching of Wikipedia.
It would be easy to pass it over, but few innovations amongst the millions over the past 20 years, would have had such an impact on so many people as Wikipedia.
The evolution of Wikipedia has democratised knowledge in a manner only approached by one other innovation in history I can think of: the printing press.
I can remember being envious of those kids at school who had Britannica on their bookshelves. It was way too expensive for my parents to buy, and besides, it was out of date the day the latest version was published.
The creation of Wikipedia came out of the fertile, original mind of Jimmy Wales.
Working in finance, Wales played around with early web portals and video games, recognising the power of the net to connect people. In the mid-nineties, he was fascinated by the idea of a web-based encyclopedia, replacing the hugely expensive monolithic offerings then available. In 2000 with a couple of friends, and funding from his modest success with the web portals, he founded Nupedia, which aimed at consolidating articles written by experts voluntarily, and peer reviewed, with advertising as the revenue generator needed to make a profit.
It bombed.
The academic status quo standards for peer review almost ensured that submitting an article for the review was akin to waiting for feedback on an academic paper submitted for review, a lengthy and undefined time, with no chance of a no revision acceptance.
In early January 2001, as an experiment, Wales and co-founders Ben Kovitz and Larry Sanger created a ‘wiki’, at that time a new technology, that aimed at removing the academic barrier by opening articles to anyone to review and edit in real time.
The academics involved with Nupedia would have nothing to do with it, but such was the response, that a week later, on the 15th, the Wiki, by then named Wikipedia, was launched on a separate domain.
The idea of an open source, editable encyclopedia had its challenges, some of which remain today. However, the original vision of Wales and Sanger to ‘Imagine a world where every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge‘ has been largely realised.
Wikipedia continues to evolve, managed by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded for that purpose by Wales in 2003. Wales remains a critical voice in its management.
Can you imagine the last year, disconnected, without Wikipedia as a source?
Happy 20th Wikipedia.
Jul 24, 2020 | Collaboration, Lean
An application of Occam’s Razor to all the fluff and consulting clichés around lean thinking and implementation, brings lean back to its simplest form possible.
It has only 2 elements.
Learn to see waste.
Once you teach yourself to observe the waste in a process, you see it everywhere, from the big things in your work life, to the simple things. Ever lose your car keys at home? It takes some time and frustration as you try and remember where you left them? Waste. Put a hook, or bowl, or have specific place that you deliberately put your keys in every time you walk in the door, and you will not lose them again. After a short time, it becomes an automatic action. Fail to do it one day, and the frustration at the wasted time and effort in finding them comes home big time.
Eliminate waste by continuous improvement.
Once seen, take some action that reduces the waste. In the keys example above, it may be that you try the hook, but from time to time, you come into the house with armfuls of shopping. It is hard to reach a hook with an armful of shopping, so you adjust by putting a bowl on the hall table specifically for the keys, which is waist height, so more accessible. In time, it may be that one set of keys near the front door adds extra walking when you need to go out the back door, so you add a specific back door key to a bowl next to the back door.
Continuous improvement, to everything you do.
Incrementally improving a range of these small things, bit by bit, creates momentum and delivers compounding results.
Everyone knows about the race to the South Pole between Scott and Amundsen. They also know that Amundsen won the race, and lived to talk about it, while Scott and all his party perished. What few know is the manner in which the two parties attacked the challenge. There were significant differences in the logistic tactics used by each party, and many played a role in the eventual outcome, but one is not always quoted in the literature, which may have played a key, but little understood role. ‘Continuous compounding’
Amundsen broke camp each day early, and was travelling by dawn, and every day, he covered 15 nautical miles (28km) sleet, blizzard, or sunshine. At that point he made camp, even if it was still early in the day, preserving the stamina of his men and dogs. This created a rhythm that converted to momentum, every day getting closer to the goal, to win the race and return safely.
Scott did neither.
By contrast he made a choice each day, to hunker down in bad weather, or at the other extreme, travel 30 miles, or more, creating no cadence or momentum to the task of achieving the twin goals. There are many other ‘lean’ lessons in the race that are relevant. For example, Amundsen used dogs, which could eat the abundant penguin and seal meat collected on the way. Scott used ponies, which required much more looking after as they sweat with effort, and eat only the grain that had to be hauled.
Little things removed, add up very quickly to big things, and when combined with organisational cadence, create momentum.
How long would it take for you to change a tyre on your car? 20 minutes? an hour? 2 hours after waiting for the NRMA to turn up?
The F1 record for four tyres is 1.8 seconds. Over the course of a race, often won or lost by hundredths of seconds, a few tenths several times during the race can mean the difference between a podium, and a straggler. All the F1 titleholders have done is remove waste, and work as a team, with a few tools to automate the repetitive actions.
‘Lean thinking’ has been turned into a complex toolbox by many, requiring expensive services to implement. However, in its most basic form, it is really just critical thinking, common sense, and simplicity.
Header photo credit: Tim Chong
Jun 29, 2020 | Collaboration, Governance, Leadership
I was recently asked to turn my mind and experience to the question of mentoring, and to reflect on the benefits and pitfalls that may be present.
Over the years, I have had the benefit of a couple of mentors who profoundly influenced my view of the world, and in turn, have set out to pass on these lessons to others.
At the core of a mentoring relationship is the opportunity to engage in ways not easily replicated in the normal run of activities in an enterprise. Attributed to Benjamin Franklin is the sentence: ‘Tell me and I will forget, show me and I will remember, engage me and I will learn’. Over 45 years of commercial life, this simple observation has proven to be absolutely true.
The means of engagement comes from Greek philosopher Socrates, and as a result is commonly called the ‘Socratic Method’. It relies on leading someone to a conclusion by asking questions. By driving towards a conclusion that the mentee reaches by themselves, being directed by questions, the impact will be greater, as they will be fully engaged.
Objective of a mentor/mentee relationship.
To pass on experience, both professional and life, that enables the mentee to develop their capabilities and skills faster than would otherwise have been possible.
The role of a mentor is:
- Develop the mentee professionally and personally. To achieve this requires mutual trust and respect, which has to be earned, as it will not be just given, in either direction.
- A precursor of trust is that there is a clear understanding that mutual confidentiality will be maintained.
- Listen to the words, and understand the meaning of the words of the mentee, as a means to ensure there is clear understanding of the questions, problems, and personal nuances present.
- Help the mentee to solve their own problems themselves, do not do it for them, but assist in the process by questioning.
- Not to expect, or want the mentee to be a clone of yourself. Everyone is different, and those differences of experience and perspective should be encouraged and leveraged.
- Advocate for the mentee, offering exposure and guidance to others in the enterprise, and to the challenges that emerge in every organisation and personal career.
- Deliver appropriate resources to the mentee when they will be most useful
- Act as a role model
The process of mentoring
- Establish ground rules, goals, and mutual expectations early on.
- Do a ‘needs’ assessment and gap analysis, that recognises the strengths and weaknesses of the mentee, as well as their opportunities for growth. The gap analysis should be influenced by the next logical step, mentee aspirations, and observed/agreed weaknesses that require being addressed.
- Agree mutual goals for the process, together. What are the expectations and goals of both parties?
- Agree a formal contact schedule, supplemented by the ‘rules’ that may apply around informal contact.
- Listen and question, rather than advising, and only advise after listening. This should be an iterative process, and advice should be the last item, well after questions that are often ‘What if’, ‘Why not’, or ‘How’, have been exhausted
- Let them make their own decisions and understand the consequences of accountability, and the buzz that comes from it.
- Be mutually accountable
- Recognise, address and be transparent about your own biases.
- Build trust, an authentic connection.
- Recognise a round peg that may be in a square hole, and provide feedback and assistance to either reshape or move elsewhere, to everyone’s benefit.
- Finally, and perhaps most importantly. Ensure there is a sense of psychological safety for the mentee, such that they are prepared to open up, knowing that there are no negative repercussions, just advice and acceptance. This will only happen over time, and assumes that the relationship has evolved positively.
- Not every mentor/mentee relationship will work, and there should be no hesitation for either party to acknowledge that, and move on.
Why invest the time in mentoring
- Every enterprise needs to build a functional and leadership ‘bench’. People move on, and around. A successful enterprise ensures that there are processes in place to renew management and leadership capability that are robust and continuously improving, so that they can accommodate those movements of individuals.
- It is a means to identify and develop those skills that will be of benefit to both the enterprise and the individual.
- Mentoring is a powerful way to build personal and functional networks. This enables problem solving and collaboration on a scale much wider than would happen in the absence of a mentoring process.
- Teaching, or mentoring, is the process of breaking down and addressing challenges and problems, considering options, and their possible outcomes. Engaging in such a process improves the capability of the mentor, as much as it does that of the mentee.
- It is simply making a contribution, not only to the mentee, but to the organisation and wider community.
What makes a good mentor?
- They need to be keen to do it, and enjoy the process
- They must engage with the mentee, and show they value learning, and teaching, and learning as they go from the act of teaching.
- They will encourage mentees to go out of their comfort zone, continually expanding it by way of active listening and Socratic questioning.
- They provide regular, formal and informal feedback, and articulate the paths to improvement.
- They are experts, and willing to share that expertise.
- They show the mentee the value of being mentored, what is in it for them.
- Leads by example.
- Recognises that the process is one of education, not training. Educating implies developing an open and critical analysis of situations, and formulation of tactics that reflect that situation. By contrast, training implies the application of a template that tells you what to do, which may not always be the optimum reaction. The ‘Why’ is always more important than the ‘What’ in a conversation.
What makes a good mentee?
- Watches and learns from the mentor
- Critically evaluate the lessons taken from the mentor and actively discuss the implications and application of the lessons.
- Willing and able to engage in the process
- Puts a high priority on the relationship with the mentor, without becoming dependent
- Actively engages in mutual critical thinking in the setting of goals, improvement initiatives, and improvement milestones.
- Is able to accept negative feedback when it comes, by seeing it as an opportunity to improve, rather than an attack on performance.
A final observation. In this day of #metoo and great sensitivity about the relationships of all types between genders in the workplace, we have to be absolutely transparent. The majority of mentoring relationships, at least in the near future, will be between a woman and an older man, someone who has the power by virtue of position and influence that can be leveraged for the benefit of the younger woman. In some instances this may create an obstacle absent in a mono gender relationship.
Nov 6, 2019 | Collaboration, Marketing
Bees are essential to our survival, they are fascinating insects. There is much we can learn from their habits, the outcome of millions of years of evolution. They do not just fly around at random, pollinating as they go, they are highly organised, focused, collaborative, and each plays a specific role in the hive.
As a kid, I used to watch my grandfather catch bees in his fantastic rose garden, cultivated to attract bees. He captured them in a bag, and made them sting him on his knees, believing it eased his arthritis, born of a life of physical labour. Modern medicine has isolated a molecule in bee venom that is associated with arthritic pain relief, demonstrating again, that old wives tales are sometimes true.
Back to the question, what do bees know about marketing strategy?
It turns out, a lot.
Advertising and mutual benefit.
Flowers, which attract the bees, need to tell the bees that there is something they like, nectar, on offer. However, there is a mutual benefit, as the bees pollinate the flowers as they take the nectar. A mutually beneficial arrangement, with many variations across the varying ecosystems.
Value proposition.
To attract bees, plants that need to be pollinated, have flowers, the bigger and more decorative, in general the better. They want the bees to be attracted, be rewarded for the visit, and return, so they offer lots of nectar. The flower is an attractive façade that makes a promise, fulfilled by the nectar. This encourages the bees to return, which is much better than a once only visit. Bit like building a brand. Invest, attract, and work towards repeat business.
Communication and referral.
Bees communicate, they signal to each other when they have found a good source of nectar by doing elaborate ‘dances’ in the air. ‘Word of wing’ advertising perhaps?
Selective Resource allocation
Plants use a lot of their limited resources producing flowers. Being a world where nothing happens on a whim, it follows that there is more value in the allocation of resources to creating flowers than to alternative uses. Perhaps flowers are just plants with an advertising budget?
Collaboration and innovation.
Bees have roles in the hive. One role is of the explorer. These bees ignore the ‘word of wing’ of their colleagues, and range more widely looking for new sources of nectar. This is a necessary function, as if there was not exploration, the nearby sources of nectar would be consumed, and with no alternatives found, the hive would die out. In commercial terms, these are the R&D or Innovation bees. They are making the investment now, so the longer term survival of the hive is assured.
Not always as it seems
Not everything that appears attractive is valuable. Orchids are rare, beautiful, and highly evolved, and are traps for the unwary bee. Usually orchids are a one stop shop for a bee, the scent of the orchid lures the bees in, they pollinate the orchid, but then cannot get out. Once word gets around the bee community these plants are dangerous, the bees avoid them, which is why orchids are an early flowering group of plants, and are widely scattered, so the bees have less opportunity to spread the word of the danger. They are like that really nice looking restaurant in a tourist area, the locals avoid it like the plague, but the tourists go in, and get fleeced, but the owners know the tourists are a once only visitor, so it does not matter, as there is no tomorrow, it is a once only transaction.
Metaphors from the natural world abound in management literature, for a very good reason: we can learn a lot from them.
Sep 12, 2019 | Collaboration, Innovation
People quite like the freedom of a workshop where there are no limits, where the objective is to generate as many ideas as possible. They then feel satisfied that they have done their bit for the innovation efforts of their employer.
Nonsense.
Unfocussed Ideation bears little relationship to innovation.
Having done many workshops over the years, there are some practices I have found by trial and error that work.
Closely define the innovation assignment.
Usually this is done by clearly articulating the problem to be solved. The more you understand about the problem, the context in which it occurs, and the costs it generates, the more relevant and ultimately useful the ideas for possible solutions will be.
Diversity.
This is not a call for a politically correct workshop group, but one that acknowledges that people have different ways of looking at problems and potential solutions. Everyone has a differing style of thinking and expression, and all are useful. Having a range of practical, professional and analytical skills, domain knowledge, personal commitment to a solution, and organisational position creates the sort of cross pollination opportunity that can lead to insight. However, a significant hurdle I often see is where there is someone of organisational power in the group, who fails to throw off the mantle of the position for the duration of the workshop. Better that they were absent, having offered their support to the process.
Have a structure.
It seems counter intuitive to have a structure to run an ideation workshop, but without structure you risk skating over the surface. The structure needs to ensure everyone has equal voice, and opportunity to use it. There needs to be appropriate idea generating techniques used, and the workshop needs to be adaptable as things evolve, and importantly, it must be interesting, engaging and fun. It also must be recognised as the serious exercise it really is, not just some junket for a couple of days.
Have a professional facilitator.
This need not necessarily be someone from the outside, but it needs to be someone who stays in the background, separated from but directing the conversations. The facilitators job is to direct the traffic, ensure the right questions are asked and answered, and to ensure that the light is thrown in all the possible corners.
Create expectations.
Ensuring the exercise is taken seriously is partly dependent on what happens after the exercise, as everyone will be watching. Follow up on the workshop outcomes by allocating specific tasks, accountabilities and timelines to individuals and groups. This will ensure as far as possible the workshop has ‘legs,’ and people do not just go back to their normal jobs next week. It will also frame their expectations of the next step. Using the SMART framework can help, as does creating some urgency in the discussions, as in: something must be done now!
Ideation is a core part of the innovation process, not some sort of separate exercise, and the expectation that that outcomes will play a serious part in the whole innovation process is really important for the depth of thinking that goes on in the workshop.
Need a hand with this stuff, give me a call.
