Author Archives: Tom Foster

About Tom Foster

Tom Foster spends most of his time talking with managers and business owners. The conversations are about business lives and personal lives, goals, objectives and measuring performance. In short, transforming groups of people into teams working together. Sometimes we make great strides understanding this management stuff, other times it’s measured in very short inches. But in all of this conversation, there are things that we learn. This blog is that part of the conversation I can share. Often, the names are changed to protect the guilty, but this is real life inside of real companies.

Best Two Books to Give an Executive for the Holidays

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The two biggest problems faced by most executives are –

  • Defining roles and finding people to fill those roles.
  • Defining the working relationships for those roles, or structure.

That is why I wrote Hiring Talent and Outbound Air.
HT-SoftBevel-150
Hiring Talent
Most managers are not very good at hiring. They don’t practice enough to get good at it. They don’t prepare for it. They fall into traps, make the hiring decision too quickly, based on emotion. And the cost is huge. If a manager does this job well, life is wonderful. If a manager does this job poorly, life is miserable and for a very long time.

Outbound Air
Outbound Air
As we define roles for people to play, how do we define the working relationships between those roles. It’s all about structure. Structure is the context in which people work. Structure drives culture. Most org charts are full of lines and boxes. Some of the lines are solid, some are dotted. We have an intuitive feel for how we want people to work together, but there is actually a science to it. Outbound Air is a business novel that chronicles how organizations grow and mature. Everyone wants to take their company to the next level, but few have a clue what the next level is. Everything we know about organizational structure and levels of work rests on the research illustrated in Outbound Air.

Whose System Is It?

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“You were right,” Byron admitted. “I took a look at the system. The ten percent reject rate was caused by a small burr on a threaded plastic part. The part didn’t seal right and the cylinder wouldn’t hold the pressure.”

“So, your team could have worked harder, stayed longer, given it all their might and the reject rate would have stayed at ten percent?” I floated.

Byron nodded. “I was sure it was the team. I am actually sorry I yelled at them. They just seemed down in the dumps, lackadaisical, you know, unmotivated.”

“Why do you think they were down in the dumps?” I pressed.

“Probably my fault. They were, in fact, doing their best. I thought their best wasn’t good enough. I was too quick to lay blame. In the end, it was my fault. I ordered some surplus parts from another vendor. Our original supplier was so good, we only sampled one in a hundred parts in receiving, they were always good. The new vendor parts had a 50 percent failure rate, but the samples we pulled, one in a hundred, didn’t pick up they were out of spec half the time. It was the system that allowed the failure rate.”

“And, whose system was that?”

Byron almost choked, but managed to get it out. “Mine.”

Somewhere in the System

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“I know I am accountable for the output of my team, but we still have a ten percent reject rate. If my team would just try harder, the reject rate would come down,” Byron protested.

“Really? Just try harder means what?” I asked. “You told me your team was doing their best. Are you telling me, now, that they are not doing their best?”

“They seem a little down, discouraged. I know I have been on them. We need a 100 units of production each day and with a ten percent failure rate, that means we have to run 115, on average, to get our 100. If they would just try harder, they would get there.”

“I am going to make an assumption,” I said. “I am going to assume that your team shows up every day to do their best. If your team is doing their best, then there is something else in your system that is causing the failure rate. You are a smart guy. Get a big white board, draw out your system, get your team together and find it.”

Missing Targets

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“We are still missing our targets,” Byron said, shaking his head. “My team just doesn’t seem to be able to do what is necessary. We produce enough in volume, but our reject rate is ten percent.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know. We have been over and over this from the beginning. I even tried a stern lecture.”

“Are they doing their best?” I prompted.

“Yes, I believe they are doing their best.”

“They are doing their best, with full commitment?” I pressed.

“Yes,” Byron nodded.

“Then, you have to look in the mirror. You picked the team. You provided the training. You provided the tools for the team to use. You provided the materials, the process, the work instructions. You provided the inspection methods. You control all the resources around the work. You are accountable for the ten percent reject rate.”

Gratitude

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“What are you thankful for?” I asked.

The eyes from the other side of the table turned kind.

“I am thankful for this time of year, where things slow down. I stop. I stop being busy and become aware. If we don’t stop, we just keep going. Gratitude is about awareness. When I stop, my heart rate goes down. I am calm. In the quiet, I can take it in. I can watch and see things more clearly for what they are.”

“And, what do you see?” I prompted.

“I see connections, the relationships I have with other people. I play a role in other people’s lives and other people bring value to mine. It’s all about connections.”

“And, what are you thankful for?” I asked again.

“I am thankful that I am not wandering alone. I am thankful for those around me, that are connected to me. It sounds too obvious. That’s why it is so important to slow down and become aware. If we don’t stop, we just keep going.”
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During this time of Thanksgiving, I am going to stop. To become aware. See you next week, with my gratitude. -Tom Foster

Why I Interview for Habits

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Those who attend my workshops know there are four areas connected to work that I interview for –

  • Capability
  • Skills
  • Interest, Passion (Value for the work)
  • Required Behavior

Yes, there are required behaviors in any role. Some you contract for, like showing up in the morning at an appointed time. There are also required behaviors connected to culture.

And there are habits.

Whenever I look at a role, I examine the critical role requirements and identify the habits that would support those requirements. I am looking for grooved, routine behaviors, repeated behaviors that contribute to success in the role.

There are some people, given a complicated task, who will charge ahead in a flurry of activity. There are others, who, as a matter of habit, stop and plan, before charging ahead. Some roles require charging ahead, some require planning. Which habit supports the work in the role?

We think we choose our future. We don’t. We choose our habits and our habits determine our future.

How to Interview for Human Relations Skills

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
Okay, we got integrity, customer care and individual initiative. The last value we want to interview for is our people. By that, I mean respect for others, support for others, collaboration and cooperation.

Response:
Same model as the past couple of days, interviewing for an attitude, a characteristic or soft skill.

  1. Identify the behavior connected to the attitude or characteristic.
  2. Identify a circumstance where we might see that behavior.
  3. Develop questions about the behavior.

Your description identifies some behavioral things, like collaboration, cooperation and support. That’s a good start. Your team can likely come up with more related behaviors to the value you have in mind.

Connected behaviors

  • Collaboration, or cooperation on a team
  • Support for another teammate
  • Respect for a manager, or respect for another team mate

Behavior – Collaboration or cooperation in a team.

  • Tell me about a time when you worked on a project that required multiple steps and multiple people to solve a problem?
  • What was the project?
  • What was the problem?
  • How many steps involved?
  • How many people on the project team?
  • What was your role on the project team?
  • To solve the problem, how did the team have to work together?
  • When the team worked well together, what happened?
  • When the team did not work well together, what happened?
  • When the team did not work well together, what was the impact on the project?
  • How did the team know when it was working well together and not so well together?
  • When the team did not work well together, what did it do to start working better together? What steps were taken? What was said?

Behavior – Supporting another teammate.

  • Tell me about a time when you worked on a project where another team member was taking the lead, but some team members disagreed with the work method or sequence of work?
  • What was the project?
  • What was the purpose (goal, objective) of the project?
  • How long was the project?
  • How many on the project team?
  • What was your role on the project team?
  • What was the leader’s role on the project team?
  • What was the disagreement about?
  • What words were said?
  • Which side of the disagreement were you on?
  • How was the situation resolved?

Behavior – Respect for a manager, or respect for another team mate.

  • Tell me about a time when you worked on a project where you disagreed with the manager about a work method or sequence of work?
  • What was the project?
  • What was the purpose of the project?
  • How long was the project?
  • How many people on the project team?
  • What was your role on the project team?
  • What was the disagreement about?
  • How did you approach the disagreement?
  • What words were said?
  • How was the situation resolved?

You can interview for any attitude, characteristic or soft skill, as long as you can connect it to behaviors.

How to Interview for Soft Skills

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
How do you create interview questions about individual initiative?

Response:
Interview questions about individual initiative use the same model as any attitude, characteristic or soft skill.

  1. Identify the behavior connected to the attitude or characteristic.
  2. Identify a circumstance where we might see that behavior.
  3. Develop questions about the behavior.

Behaviors related to individual initiative –

  • Appropriately beginning a project without being told.
  • Continuing a project without being reminded.
  • Finishing a project (all the last steps) without being reminded.

Behavior – Appropriately beginning a project without being told.

  • Tell me about a project that needed to get started before your manager knew about it?
  • What was the project?
  • Who was on the project team?
  • What was your role on the project team?
  • How did you know what needed to be done without your manager telling you?
  • What were the first steps in the project?
  • How did you know those steps would be okay to complete without specific direction from your manager?
  • Did your manager ever review the initial work on the project?
  • What was the result of starting the project before your manager knew about it?

Behavior – Continuing a project without being reminded.

  • Tell me about a project you worked on, where the flow of the work was interrupted by other work, perhaps a long project that had stages to it?
  • How were the stages of the project planned?
  • How long was the project?
  • How did you know you were at a stopping point in the project and it was okay to complete other work?
  • How did you know it was time to pick the project up where you left off?
  • What flexibility did you have to decide where to stop and where to pick up with all of your other work?
  • How was your work scheduled?
  • Did you have your own schedule that you created?
  • How did you remind yourself that you still had uncompleted work on a project that you stopped?

Behavior – Finishing the work (all the steps) on a project, without being reminded.

  • Tell me about a time when you worked on a project that never seemed to end, that when you thought the work was done, there were still more steps to complete?
  • At the end of the project, what kind of items popped up, still undone?
  • At the end of the project, how did you find out about those undone items?
  • At the end of the project, how did you keep track of those undone items?
  • Did you personally have to complete those undone items, or were there other people working on those items with you?
  • How did you track what you got done and what others got done?
  • At the end of the project, when ALL the items were finally completed, how did you know there were NO uncompleted items left?

You can interview for any attitude, characteristic or soft skill, as long as you can connect it to behaviors.

How to Interview for Customer Care

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
How do you interview for a customer service position? We are not concerned about product knowledge, it’s the soft skills, attitude, customer care?

Response:
The structure for developing these questions is the same no matter what attitude, characteristic or soft skill you have in mind.

  1. Ask yourself, what behaviors are connected to the attitude or characteristic.
  2. Identify, in what situations you might see that behavior (connected to the attitude or characteristic).
  3. Develop questions about the behavior.

Your question above shows an interest in a value called “customer care.”

Step One. What are the behaviors I would see in a person who cares about customers?

  • Taking the time to listen, really listen, to a customer.
  • Taking responsibility for a misunderstanding with a customer.
  • Identifying something special about the customer and being responsive.

Step Two. In what situations would I see those behaviors?
Step Three. Develop questions about those behaviors.

Behavior – Taking the time to listen, really listen, to a customer.

  • Tell me about a time when you thought you knew what a customer wanted, but found out it was something completely different?
  • What was the project?
  • What did you think the project was about?
  • How was that different from what the customer really wanted?
  • How did you find out there was a difference (in purpose, objective) in what you understood and what the customer wanted?
  • What was the impact on the project when you found out the customer wanted something different?
  • How did the customer express the difference?
  • How clear was the customer in explaining what they wanted?
  • How was the problem resolved?

Behavior – Taking responsibility for a misunderstanding with a customer.

  • Tell me about a time when your customer made a mistake and you had to make it good?
  • What was the project?
  • What was the misunderstanding about?
  • What was the mistake made by the customer?
  • What was the impact of the mistake on the project?
  • How did you learn of the mistake?
  • How did you define the problem to your team?
  • How did you define the problem to your customer?
  • What corrective action was taken?
  • How was the problem ultimately resolved?
  • What was the impact on the customer relationship?

Behavior – Identifying something special about the customer and being responsive.

  • Tell me about a time when you were able to do something special (unexpected, above and beyond) for a customer?
  • What was the project?
  • What did the customer expect?
  • What did you do that was special for that customer?
  • How did you find out that the customer would be surprised?
  • How was this different than routine customer service?
  • What was the impact of this “something special” on the project?
  • What was the impact of this “something special” on the relationship with the customer?

Enough for today. Perhaps tomorrow we can tackle “Initiative.”

Why Time Span is Important

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
Why is Time Span important? I don’t see how the length of time it takes, to complete a task makes a difference in writing the role description.

Response:
Calibrating the level of work in the role description is absolutely critical for the manager to gain insight into the decision making and problem solving required for success in the role. If the hiring manager cannot determine the level of decision making and problem solving, the successful search for a candidate will mostly be based on luck.

Intuitively, we can agree that some problems are more complex than other problems. Intuitively, we can agree that some decisions are more complex than other decisions. But, intuitive understanding does not help us measure that complexity.

And I am not talking about detailed complexity. Engineers love detailed complexity. They write computer software to handle all the detail in scalable databases. That is not the complexity I am talking about.

The complexity I am talking about, is the complexity created by the uncertainty of the future, the complexity created by the ambiguity of the future. That complexity can be measured by identifying the target completion time (Time Span).

Do you remember Murphy? Murphy has a law. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. How long do we give Murphy to play? That is Time Span.

The Time Span of a problem or the Time Span of a decision will give the hiring manager insight into the talent (capability of the candidate) required to be effective in the role.

  • Short term problems can be solved through trial and error.
  • Medium term problems may require experience (documented experience).
  • Long term problems (problems we have never solved before) may require root-cause or comparative analysis.

The Time Span of the problem will indicate the method (and capability) required to solve it.

Remember the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? The Time Span of the problem at hand was short. The problem required an emergency solution. We watched on television, in real time, as engineers cobbled together trial and error solutions. We did not need a sophisticated well thought out solution. There was no time for longitudinal studies of hydraulic pressures in geological fissures. We just needed a mechanical wrench to choke off a hole in an underwater pipe.

But longer term, when drilling rigs are designed, to simultaneously get to the oil AND safely protect the operating crew AND protect the long term environmental impact, well, that solution will require a bit more than choking off a hole in a pipe.

The Time Span of a problem or the Time Span of a decision gives us insight into the talent required to be effective in the solution. And the person selected out of the candidate pool makes all the difference.

The solution is seldom a matter of WHAT, more often a matter of WHO.