The Eighth Opportunity

Before I start let me make it clear - I am a huge fan of Lean principles and philosophies as part of the complex path to organizational excellence. I applaud the engagement of the people doing the work in making the work better. I find that people can easily grasp the idea of the Wastes and come up with ideas for their environment. I love the guiding framework of the 5Ss and the clear leadership required to create context in the organization.

So what's the problem?

I've seen one too many Lean presentations on successful initiatives where they talk about the seven wastes and give a nod to the eighth (human skills, abilities and experience) saying they know it's there but didn't include it.

Why not?! In our rush to be efficient in the light of previously predicted people shortages (maybe not now - who can tell), we are overlooking the potential of people we already have. The old customer service adage used to say that it's cheaper to sell to an existing customer than to a new one. I haven't got the numbers for recruitment but I have a sneaking suspicion that it may apply to existing people resources as well.

Is there anyone out there working in this area in conjunction with lean philosophy and initiatives in their organization? I would love to talk to you.

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The time it takes to change what's your time horizon?

In a recent keynote speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade, Peter Senge remarked that our management time horizon is shorter than our change horizon or, in other words, change takes longer than the average manager stays in the job. He also talked about what he calls our “boundaries of concern” which defines who we care about and for how long. Senge challenged us to extend our boundaries from our family and city block and include to the implications of our actions globally and for the future.

In an age where 20 year old buildings can be designated as heritage* it seems that no one is willing to build cathedrals anymore.

Enter the Long Now Foundation with the goal of promoting "slower/better" thinking and fostering responsibility “in the framework of the next 10,000 years”. One of the founders, Stuart Brand, makes the point that when he was a child “people used to talk about what would happen by the year 2000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 2000, and now no one mentions a future date at all.”

Remembering being riveted by the futuristic idea of 1984 and what might happen? I take his point … what dates are on your time horizon now? Mine is 2011 when we have been told that there will be more people leaving the workforce than joining it – I need to get out more.

Brand goes on to say “The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium."

So they built one. The Long Now Foundation is already on their second prototype (moving a little fast there aren’t you boys?) and, realizing that a clock with such a long context in time needs support for longer term content, is now developing the 10,000-year library.

Their guidelines are remarkably similar to the key characteristics of companies that have survived more than 200 years:

Identity – sense of who we are transcends what we do
Tolerance – openness to what we don’t know
Fiscal conservation – maintain control of their destiny
Sensitivity to environment – larger sense of responsibility as a natural by product of how they operate
Serve the long view (and the long viewer)
Foster responsibility
Reward patience
Mind mythic depth
Ally with competition
Take no sides
Leverage longevity

Learn more about their thinking at http://www.longnow.org/

Incidentally, the Long Now Foundation uses five digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years.

What's your "boundary of concern"?

* see this link for Vancouver’s criteria and a 2006 list of heritage registered buildings, monuments, parks and trees http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/Guidelines/V001.pdf

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On being average

Chris Koch, editor CIO magazine talks about the applicability of a traditional IT benchmark measure of cost/spending against revenue and what it means to be in the middle of the range for your industry. He speculates that if you are mid range you probably aren't spending effectively and that companies finding themselves close to their industry average in spending should be concerned. Noting that many IT benchmarks reflect only new spending and do not include the cost of maintaining what you already have, Koch says

"Average may simply mean you are managing neither piece well. Being in the middle shouldn’t be a comfort."

and to take the message home, he quotes a CSC study which found that

"companies that spend much less than the average [on IT] are three times more successful than those in the middle. And companies that spend much more than the average are six times more successful."

There are problems with external benchmarks, mostly related to knowing whether or not you are comparing apples and apples, and not all companies find value in using them. The currently popular Lean approach to process excellence, for example, ignores other industry benchmarks and measures only against itself.

Perhaps the lesson is not about benchmarking.

Highly effective organizations have strategies and plans which drive the resource allocations year over year. If companies spending more and less than average are achieving better results, could it possibly be that the average spenders are not targetting their budgets, IT and otherwise, towards specific goals? Could it be that they don't have clear objectives?

I suspect that all too often in "average" organizations, the budget is the plan.

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Is There Too Little "Know Why" In Business?

Is There Too Little "Know Why" In Business?
Published: February 2, 2007
Author: Jim Heskett, Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School.

"Two recent books offer views of the roles of managers and leaders. The first, Know-How, by Ram Charan, sets forth eight behaviors exhibited by managers who get things done. The second, Purpose, by Nikos Mourkogiannis, could really have been titled "Know Why." It describes four kinds of purpose, "starting points" that govern what great companies do and how they do it. Each of these purposes represents a kind of "holy grail" as opposed to goals (often merely financial), missions or visions, or even a set of values. As Mourkogiannis puts it, "Let others play with 'strategy' and 'tactics' and 'management.' Purpose is the game of champions." "

According to this theory, truly transformational purpose can be found in: (1) discovery, the challenge of adventure and innovation characterized by dot-com entrepreneurs willing to work 24/7 in search of the new or unknown, (2) excellence, in which high standards are not compromised for short-term performance (as with Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett), (3) altruism, where the primary purpose is to serve (customers, employees, etc.) first and assume that profit will follow (as at Nordstrom), and (4) heroism, typically involving grand plans to change entire industries or even the way we live (Bill Gates and Microsoft).

The argument is that only one of these purposes, if pursued rigorously and successfully, is required for greatness. Putting mere goals, such as primarily making money, before purpose gets us an Enron or a Worldcom. The pity, according to Mourkogiannis, is that true purpose could have enabled these organizations to make even greater "real" profits than those they reported.

One curious aspect of the book is that relatively few examples are cited to illustrate purpose in the for-profit world. Several are used repeatedly, perhaps in part to suggest the complexities of establishing purpose in an organization. Among these, the choices included examples such as BP and The Body Shop, suggesting that purpose, a requirement for greatness, is no guarantee of long-term respect and performance.

Purpose is powerful when it comes to attracting and inspiring employees, centering a company's activities, or guiding strategic change. Executives talk about and seek these things for their companies all the time. But how much purpose do we find even at the top of a typical organization? Can we aspire to a strong sense of "know why" even if our organization is not out to change the world? In terms described here, how strong is purpose in your organization? Is there too little "know why" in business? If so, why? What do you think?

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Forty years of The Effective Executive - Appreciate our Strengths

I realized a few days ago that it is 40 years since the late Peter Drucker first published a slim volume called the "The Effective Executive" . He held several consistent messages over the years, one of which was to focus on people's strengths so that their weaknesses were irrelevant.
Yet we still persist in measuring what is least powerful in each of us and attempting to solve the problem through "training". Let's take a moment to follow his good advice - find something that someone (yourself maybe?) does well and make it even stronger. Mastery is an admirable long term goal and yet the ongoing pleasure of learning more about something we do well and are interested in may be even more rewarding.

The effective executive makes strength productive. He knows that one cannot build on weakness. To achieve results, one has to use all the available strengths -- the strengths of associates, the strengths of the superior, and one’s own strengths. These strengths are the true opportunities. To make strength productive is the unique purpose of organization. It cannot, of course, overcome the weaknesses with which each of us is abundantly endowed. But it can make them irrelevant. Its task is to use the strength of each man as a building block for joint performance

Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive, 1966

After 40 years wouldn't you think we might finally get it?

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Mantras and Affirmations

Now here's a convoluted thought - are affirmations really negative statements that link us squarely to exactly what we don't want?

Robert Fritz has an interesting and disparaging take on affirmations (Path of Least Resistance p. 105.) He believes that, rather than creating the positive image, repeating the "affirming statement" constantly confirms the existence of the negative. He gives example such as "the universe supports me" suggesting that if you really, fundamentally believed that you wouldn’t have to repeat it to force your mind to accept the thought. He holds that every time you make the affirmation, you are actually creating an image of not being supported by the universe. (There's much more... to do with the conscious and unconscious mind).

So what’s the difference between a mantra and an affirmation?

In my limited understanding, an affirmation is a statement that is designed to create a deliberate belief in the conscious mind. A mantra seems to be more uniquely personal, perhaps coming from within. Is it a guiding expression that helps you to access your deepest beliefs rather than a way to create them?

Are mantras a short form of a appreciative inquiry - a connection to a personal possibility statement? Hmmm.....

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Noticing what I notice

Leveraging the Power of the Image - turn on your Reticular Activation System!

How do we cope in these days of information and sensory excess – that constant flow through eyes, ears, nose and touch? Even the sharpest mind can only conciously deal with a few things at a time without overloading. Fortunately, there’s a screening device in our heads called the Reticular Activation System (RAS). This group of cells in the brain filters out the 99% of unimportant data and feeds the remaining 1% to our conscious mind. RAS uses rules and criteria which we establish, deliberately or not, to determine the content of that 1% and therefore to govern what we notice.

RAS is very good at what it does. For example - have you ever suddenly seen something you hadn’t noticed before, yet it was there all along? You just bought a new car in what you thought was an unusual colour and suddenly every fourth car on the road is the same make - and the same colour - as yours. This is your filter system (RAS) in action. When something becomes important to us, we notice more of it.

As we tend to get more of what we focus on, it’s critical that the rules and priorities we give to our RAS are designed to get us what we want, instead of more of what we don’t want. We can train RAS by being concious of asking better questions.

According to Mark Wigginton, an Austin, Texas-based personal development coach "The questions you ask yourself will determine how the Reticular Activation System will respond to your search. If you ask yourself, ‘Why can’t I seem to find a job?’ your brain will hand you a list of seemingly valid reasons why you aren’t moving forward. As you bring the reasons you can’t progress to the forefront of your mind, your RAS will automatically seek out reinforcement. ‘I can’t make progress because of conflicts with my schedule, my family responsibilities, I don’t know the right people, etc.’ But if you ask yourself, ‘What one thing can I do today to move my job search forward?’ your RAS will lead you toward the results you want.”

How Do Visual Cues Work?

Visual images hold amazing power.

First, let’s look at how the brain processes information. The mind simply can’t keep up with the 36 million bits of visual data that bombard it every second so the conscious mind doesn’t bother trying. It simply passes most of the info along to be processed somewhere else. According to brain specialist Amy K Hutchens, 99% of learning is done on a non-conscious level. “That’s a fancy way of saying that vision dominates your brain activity and behaviors.” she says, “Basically, what we see can determine how we act”.

That’s good…except that what we see is also a result of what we believe. That makes more sense if we look at the missing link – what our eyes “see”, the information that is sent to the brain, must be processed and categorized somehow in order to be meaningful.

In addition to a reticular activation system, which is a physical cellular structure, each of us has a frame of reference created by among other things our life experiences, value sets, and beliefs systems. Sometimes called a mental model, this is each person’s unique lens through which they view the world. It is by testing information against this frame of reference that we create meaning for ourselves and through this lens we attempt to understand what we “see”. If the incoming information does not fit with our frame of reference, there is a good chance that we will reject it. In other words, we will only see what we already believe.

Seeing The Good Stuff

The “reticular activation system” (RAS) sorts through those millions of bits of data, making sure that you’re only aware of certain things and details you do not want to miss – those things that you have established as important - such as hearing your name in a crowd. If you are only going to get one percent of all that information, it is essential your RAS is clear on what it needs to look for and let you know about.

Unlock the Genius Within

In his recent book, “The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, James Newman, Harvard Professor and expert on the human mind, proposes that the brain was originally designed to be bicameral- meaning, we could use both sides of the brain. Somewhere along the way, he explains, the brain functions literally broke in half and we lost that ability to use both sides of the brain. Newman proposes a solution to doubling our brainpower by learning to use our Reticular Activation System. Knowing how to turn this system on is the secret of teaching your brain how to accumulate all the knowledge on a given subject you need- thus, you develop “genius like” powers, and have all the knowledge you need to become an expert, on any given subject. Bernard Baars at the Colorado Neurological Institute describes this technique as contrastive analysis. He claims that it’s possible to give the brain a framework for differentiating conscious and unconscious processing.

The Knowledge is in the Room

Our brains accumulate an amazing amount of knowledge and take in a tsunami of information every day. Your brain uses the priorities, which you consciously or unconsciously fed to it, to determine the past and present information that is most relevant to help you achieve your goals.

Todd Beeler, a highly successful NLP trainer and a sales coach, compares this function of the brain to a computer. If you are looking for information on goal setting and you do a search only in your own computer, you might find the few articles you happened to save for future reference. Handy, but you are only using a fraction of the computer’s potential. Ask the same computer to search on the internet and in a matter of seconds it will find an extraordinary amount of information on goal setting from around the world.

Your Reticular Activation System is similar to a sophisticated search engine. As we know from internet searches, the better the search criteria, the better and more relevant the information found. By actively setting your priorities – or search terms – you consciously program your RAS to focus on bringing to your attention the relevant information from a flood of sensory input. So, how do you super charge your RAS and unlock the amazing data gathering potential in all of us? Todd’s suggestions include:

1- Be as specific as possible about your challenge and create a powerful question designed to get you what you want. Remember that your RAS will understand the question as the priority. Asking “why can’t I” will find all the why-not reasons and problems. Asking “ What do I need to achieve…” will find the enabling data.
2- Describe the outcome you want in as much detail as possible and set a deadline for getting answers. Focus your RAS entirely on the ideal outcome you desire and all the good that is going to come from it. Including the benefits of the preferred future produces positive emotions that help to engage your RAS even more effectively.
3- Have faith in the process. Stay alert and open to the information you receive. You are asking for something you don’t have now so you may be challenged to do something new to get it.
4- Do something with the information you get. Follow those hunches! Have the courage to act, otherwise you are telling your RAS that this was not really a priority and weakening the conscious process.

Think about a time when it seemed that all your ducks were lining up in a row without much effort on your part. Was there a time when what you needed seemed to magically appear? Understanding how your own internal mechanisms work to support your real intention could perhaps make that happen more often. Instead of “putting it out to the Universe” put it to your reticular activation system.

Be careful what you ask for – you just may get it!

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