Create Better Ideas

Projects and Process and Systems, Oh My!

It’s scary out there. I have been to conferences, read articles, and seen on-line discussion groups that have spent a lot of time chewing on such things as “What is the difference between a process and a project?”, “When is a project a process?”, “If you are process oriented, can you be a systems thinker?”, etc.

 Can’t we all just get along? Project management, process improvement and documentation, and systems thinking all have their places; and none of them – in actual practice – are mutually exclusive. Remember that our definition of “correct” is “what works”.

 Project management is a way of organizing the calendar and budget that guide a project and communicating that to project participants and stakeholders in such a way that stuff gets done. When we document process – no matter the form – we are writing a recipe for how to do something over and over again and get the same quality result. When we think of either projects or processes as systems, we are acknowledging that they are complicated and that they are non-linear: Sometimes when we follow the steps, different stuff happens and we need to adjust. Process improvement and systems thinking both lead us to look at root cause when we don’t get what we want. Process improvement tends to look at the sequence in the recipe to see how it can be fixed; systems thinking challenges us to look for causes based upon the relationships among the parts and players that are affecting the process.*

At Phillips Corporation, we also talk about “well crafted plans”. A well crafted plan supports an audacious objective. It is in place before we begin, anticipating obstacles to success (like a project plan), should be recorded and reported as we go along (like a process document), and takes into account the big picture: people, culture, environment, and potential drivers and constraints (systems thinking). Some of these ideas have some contradictions to one another, but having all of them in our toolbox helps us to be flexible.

And now reality:

We set our objective, sign up the stakeholders, and craft a plan. Then the unanticipated happens, we’re thrown off track, and our lovely well crafted plan needs re-crafting. Open your toolbox and examine: Was a step missed? Should the step have happened in a different order? Were the proper tools or skills not in place? (process), Was the plan not communicated? Were all not on board? Did something scheduled or agreed to fall through the cracks without being noticed or communicated? Did we guess wrong on scope, cost, or time needed? (project) Does everyone understand their roles? Is communication happening the way it should? Is the team or organization inadvertently working against success? Are we pushing against the culture? (systems)

There are, of course, many more questions that can be asked, and we all have our favorites. Try this: if your orientation is stronger in one of the three – project, process, or systems – learn about the others or invite someone with a different orientation to join your team.

When something interferes with the execution of your plan – and something will – the more kinds of questions you can ask, the better your correction will be.

 

*(This paragraph is intentionally oversimplified. Please comment if you have questions, additions, or arguments.)

 

 

When is a 3 a 10? Some new ideas about performance evaluation

Airplanes seem to be a great place to write blog posts. I’m writing this one as I fly to California to meet with partners from Haeger, Inc. Folks are flying in from Netherlands and China to meet together in Oakdale and work on processes and OGTE!. I am really looking forward to the first face to face meeting of the Haeger Community Exceleration!Team: Sally Chen, Gena Beck, and I are the Haeger CE!T, and we have only met via Skype so far.

 The latest innovation in OGTE!, our proprietary performance management system, is the posting of regular evaluations. Our culture resists traditional performance evaluations because we feel that leaders and their partners should be in continual dialogue to the extent that a formal, uncomfortable annual meeting should be unnecessary. Our belief in the power of learning by taking on seemingly impossible goals also makes traditional performance reviews problematic. How do you rate someone who has taken on a heroic challenge, who accomplishes a great deal, but who may fall short? If someone hits every goal, were the goals audacious enough?

 We have tussled with this built-in contradiction for some time, and have arrived at a solution for now by focusing on the quality of planning, thinking, and executing against the plan. With the first deadline being March 31, leaders will have a performance dialogue with their partners  three times a year to answer the following questions:

Q1.      Quality of Thinking

Given the way this partner is thinking, planning and reflecting where on the path are they to becoming the performer described in their Role Description?

Q2.      Quality of Results

Is this partner on the path towards increasing know-how and improving results?

The partners and leaders will arrive at a conclusion, and write an explanation based on the following 4-point scale:

The Evaluation Scale for both questions are:

Level 1:  In comfort zone - business as usual (not improving)

Level 2:  Improvement pace uneven

Level 3:  On the path of rapid improvement

Level 4:  Is a Virtuoso  --  both a master at his/her craft and irrevocably on the path of improvement

 My hunch is that very few if any Phillips Corporation partners are 1’s, but let’s take a look at 2. The scale reminds me of another one I helped with at a prior employer. One of the ratings on that scale was “meets expectations”. This sounds a lot like a “C” grade in school. Not bad, but not great. But what if the expectations are extremely high? Then “meets expectations” is really more like an “A+”.

 My thinking about “2: Improvement pace uneven” is similar. Really fine performers will have up and down days. I will forget to use the new process, get stuck in an old habit, or get distracted by the many other tasks that need to be done but that don’t necessarily address my priorities. I will still accomplish a whole heck of a lot. Does that make me a 2? If so, then 2 is a very good rating. “3: On the path to rapid improvement” is probably a mark that will be met only rarely.

One challenge as we experiment with this new scale is that we are mostly all used to a 4-point scale from school, where a 2 is “average”. I would like two things from the partners using this format this month:

1.  Forget about the old “ABCDF” grades, and read what the ratings actually mean.

2. Let us know how it goes as you get your head around the concept and have performance dialogues with your partners.

 Would also love to hear from readers who are not Phillips partners. What do you think of this approach? Is it "new", or just new to us? Upsides? Downsides?

Thanks -- Bill

 

Making the Impossible Possible

I am in the process of reading JUST LISTEN, by Mark Goulsten.  Mark is a psychiatrist, and helps people work through difficult negotiations.  In fact, he is part of the training process for FBI hostage negotiators.  While I think the book is very interesting and deserves a complete read, there is one excerpt that I thought applied to the Phillips culture.

The chapter is called the Impossibility Question, and starts off with a quote from Louis Brandeis, a Supreme Court Justice:

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.

Does any of this sound familiar?  Let me continue before you answer.

To summarize the chapter, Goulsten offers an approach for helping people get past the impossibility stage of a problem, and start to envision the solution.  While the explanation into why it works is more complex, the solution is simple: Just Ask.  Let's give a scenario to make sense of it:

Team Leader:  What do you consider an impossible goal?

Salesman:  Doubling my margin in a down economy

Team Leader:  That does sound challenging...but what would make it possible?

Salesman:  Well, I have enough projects quoted; I would need to close 80% of them to achieve this.

Team Leader:  Wow, that sounds audacious...what can I do to help you increase your closing ratio?  Maybe a training course?

If you review the scenario, we started with something that the salesman felt impossible, and changed the mindset to consider it possible...all in one question!  This opens the doors to dialogue about possible solutions.  We have made the impossible possible!

Now let's get back to how this chapter sounds familiar...Phillips has set up a system to constantly challenge the impossible.  Through OGTE, impossible challenges are made possible.  After the challenge is posed (the Performance Objective), the mechanism allows you to consider what you need to do to achieve the impossible.  Once a plan of attack is formed, smaller actions are identified (Planned Accomplishments).

 I have one more example, this time a real world example:

My son: I can't tie my shoe, it is impossible.  Can you help me?

Dad:  Tying your own shoes is very tough, but what could you do to figure out how to tie your own shoe?                          

My Son:  Well, I could practice, and you could show me what to do after I make the loop.

Dad:  I think you have a good plan.  It isn't going to be easy, but I know you can do it.

While he is not perfect at it, my son can tie his shoes.

Does Necessity Create the SMARTER Objective?

"Necessity is the mother of invention!"

It is often said that difficult situations inspire ingenious solutions. For example, a machine tool salesman, in a down market, with a wife and 2 children and a mortgage, was given the arduous goal of doubling his sales of machines from 25 to 50 machines in a the year or look to work elsewhere. In the case of the machine tool salesman necessity what would cause him to accomplish this objective.

When I say 'objective' above I really mean SMARTER objectives, which are defined as:

SPECIFIC
MEASUREABLE
AUDACIOUS
RESULT ORIENTED
TIME BASED
ENGAGING
RAISING THE BAR

I think ingenious solutions are driven by a person's core values and beliefs. You must be completely committed and totally determined to accomplishing your SMARTER OBJECTIVES. I believe that by establishing a well crafted plan with SMARTER objectives, you will be more likely to succeed or overcome that challenge.

Now I ask, do you think the SMARTER objective creates necessity or does necessity create the SMARTER objective?

 

 

 

Neccesity is the Mother of Invention

Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

It is necessity that leads us to think, to learn, and to act in the ways that we need to in order to become the person who will overcome challenges.

Whether the necessity comes from within us or from the outside, or it is some mix of both, knowing that we have no option but to succeed is more powerful than any pep talk.

I grew up in a neighborhood with many new immigrants, and sat as a wide-eyed kid listening to the many adventures that got them to the United States: swimming across the Danube while border guards strafed the water with machine guns, staying rolled up in a carpet while soldiers searched the house, finding out that emigration papers would only be approved if everything was left behind. I also heard stories of surviving day to day in concentration camps – holding on by a desire to get through it all.

These are dramatic examples of being driven by necessity, and of making great effort and taking great risks to achieve a goal. Something pushes us from the inside or the outside to do what must be done. The adventures may not always be great – I can also remember being driven to approach a table with a teapot on my first summer job. I had to overcome an incredible fear of going up to strange, important-seeming adults and asking if they wanted a refill.

What’s your necessity story? Don’t worry about playing “Can You Top This?”.  We haven’t all climbed Everest. No matter your experience, it will help us all to understand this peculiar thing that works on us to get important things done.

Please comment…

Audacious Goals and Maintaining Credibility

Living our word is a simple idea, but how does it apply when creating a well-crafted plan to achieve Audacious or Stretch goals - objectives which are seemingly unattainable with present resources?

Here is the struggle:
"I am challenged to set audacious goals and create well-crafted plans to achieve them. My performance (job) is based on achieving my audacious goals. So what happens if I fall short of these audacious goals? I took accountability for these goals, so how does this reflect on my credibility?"

A very valid concern!

I think most of us get caught up on one component of a well-crafted plan – accomplishing the goal. And when we fall short we think we failed! Which, on one level we did fail - we did not achieve our goal. But just because we did not accomplish our goal, doesn’t mean the well-crafted plan was a complete failure. Here is a diagram to break down a few key components of a well-crafted plan:

Through deeper dialogue between the partner and team leader, it should be clear that even though the goal was not reached, what else was accomplished? What was learned? What competencies were gained? What can be done next with this new knowledge?

Deeper dialogue is the missing ingredient here, and your performance should not be based solely on one component of a well-crafted plan. Remember that audacious goals only look impossible at present because we need to gain competencies in order to achieve the goal.

My questions to you, how do you set audacious goals and still maintain your credibility? Thoughts in general on living your word?

Activities vs. Accomplishments

It's easy to confuse Activity for Accomplishments... 

If you're busy, it's easy to convince yourself that you're working hard.  The "getting ready" becomes the objective and you get to "check-off" a lot of "To-Do's" from your list and you go home feeling like you "Accomplished" a lot.  But have you?

The key flaw in "Activity" is that we do not create a clear performance expectation (or result). 

I have operated under this "Activities" based model for years as I'm sure some of you have.  But when I learned to start writing my activities as "Planned Accomplishments" instead of a "To-Do" list, I started to see the VALUE CONTRIBUTION, or the specific, measurable RESULT from the activity.  I found this to be way more impressive then a checked off, "To-Do" list!  

So, how do we go about turning Activities into Planned Accomplishments?

I think it starts by always thinking of what the END RESULT will be once you have completed the activity. We should always be thinking "WHY am I doing this activity"? 

I was looking back through my last years' business plan and found an activity that simply said "Attend a COBRA law seminar".  Now, I know when I wrote that statement, I'm sure I had good reasons for attending this seminar, but none of that was noted in my statement.  Why did I want to attend that seminar in the first place?  What was I hoping to learn from attending that seminar?  What would be the value contribution of me attending that seminar?

If I were writing that activity today, I would write it like this:  "Attend new COBRA law seminar to learn what is needed to bring our current COBRA policy in full compliance thereby eliminating our risk of receiving any penalty fees".  Wow, what a difference a few extra words make!!

I think I am on to something great here!  What are your thoughts?