Category Archives: Learning

Building the Habit

Leave a reply

“Okay, so we pinned showing up to work, to starting on time to meeting deadlines,” I concluded. “Now what. What is the next habit?”

“I get the practice of meeting deadlines, but I am still stumped on what to work on next,” Naomi looked puzzled.

“You’re stuck because you are trying too hard,” I suggested. “Put the next habit on your team. Have your team decide what the next habit of competence will be.”

“If I am stuck, they are going to be stuck,” she complained.

“You are stuck because you haven’t set up some guardrails to guide their thinking. Let’s take a simple framework like MUDA,” I prompted.

“I know MUDA, that’s the seven wastes,” Naomi sparked.

“And, what are the seven wastes?” I asked.

“Moving stuff around too many times,” she started. “Making too much stuff, overproduction. Making things too complicated, overproduction. Holding too much inventory, raw goods or consumables. Unnecessary movement, work flow and work flow sequence. Waiting for stuff, white space in the workflow, creating unnecessary idle time. Identifying and eliminating defects.”

“Very good,” my turn to smile. “Do you think your team could identify one of the seven wastes and work to improve their competence? Competence is not a choice, it’s a practice, it’s a habit.”

Simply Necessary

Leave a reply

“It sounds like you understand, or have an accurate sense of your own competence, but your team, faced with a challenge, avoids, denies, or tries to negotiate back to the old way?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s almost like a way of thinking,” Naomi replied. “There are things I know I am not good at, but those things do not scare me. Some on my team seem genuinely afraid of trying something new.”

“But, if you have made it necessary, how do you proceed without a brawl or deliberate retreat?” I smiled.

“I think it is a matter of attitude. A mental state. The circumstances of reality do not change, they are what they are. It’s a matter of how a person sees the challenge of something new. If my team enters with a framework of failure, that it is going to be hard, it is going to suck and they will get yelled at for the failure, then it’s going to be a long day. Somehow, I need to change the framework.”

“But, the difficulty in the process will still be the same?”

“Yes, but it’s quite another thing if the team can see this is new, this is difficult, they will struggle, they will make mistakes, but they will continue. Things will get better and they will have small breakthroughs. Then, there will be a setback. They will have to re-focus. But, they will not get yelled at, they will be encouraged to try again. How long does it take to teach a child to walk? It is simply necessary.”

Muddling

Leave a reply

“Given your intuitive sense of competence, an understanding of your current limits of success, and what it might take to overcome those limits in the future, how does that translate to your team?” I asked.

“To run a marathon, I need to train,” Naomi replied, “I get that. But, my team appears to see things differently. If you gave me a challenge to run a marathon, and I agreed this was something I wanted to do, then I would engage in the necessary training at that distance. When I give my team a challenge, beyond their current ability to perform, they seem to shy away, avoid, make excuses, find something else to busy themselves with.”

“So, first they would have to agree that it was something they wanted to do?” I confirmed.

“In many cases, they don’t have a choice,” Naomi smiled. “If we are changing a process that requires additional technical skills, we are going to change the process, no choice. It’s similar to the question, how long do you give a child to learn to walk? There is no choice.”

“So, as a leader, you make it necessary?” I nodded.

“People will just muddle through, if you let them. If we install a new process, there is no muddle. I have to make it necessary.”

Intuition of Capability

Leave a reply

“How do you know if you are able to do it, unless you try?” I asked.

Naomi looked skeptical in her contemplation. “I think I have a pretty good understanding of my own competence, what I am able to do and what I am not very good at.”

“And, how did you come to that intuitive sense of your ability?” I pressed.

“I guess it’s just self-observing over a lifetime of trials and tribulations,” she replied.

“So, given a new set of circumstances, given a new challenge, you have an existing insight of whether or not you will be successful?”

“More than that,” Naomi countered, “I have a sense of where my failure points would be and what I would have to do to overcome those obstacles. Let’s say I was to try to run a marathon, 26.2 miles this afternoon. I am a runner, but my intuition would be that I would fail. My failure point would be in the lack of conditioning for that distance. But, I also know that if I were to train that distance over a period of 12 weeks, I would most likely be successful.”

“I assume your initial intuition and subsequent analysis is correct,” I nodded. “So, in your role as a leader, how does this self-observation apply to your team members as they are faced with new challenges for which they are not competent?”

Halt, Where Are You Going?

Leave a reply

“I want to take an inventory of my strengths and weaknesses,” said Olivia, somewhat excited.

“What for?” I asked.

“I think it’s important for us all to be more self-aware,” she replied.

“Why?” I pressed.

“I’m sorry, I thought you would support my interest in some self-reflection.”

“Self-reflection is fine, it’s a worthy pursuit, but for the purpose of what? Let’s say you take a complete inventory, a strength here, a weakness there. And, your observations are absolutely accurate. So what? What have you really accomplished?”

“Well, I would be more self-aware,” Olivia was a bit exasperated.

“Compared to what? A strength here, a weakness there, compared to what? Your inventory is just an inventory. I want to know where you want to go. What does life look like, feel like, taste like in your imagination of the future? What is your next destination on your journey? What is its color? Who is with you? What it your purpose in traveling there?

“When you get clarity in your vision and purpose, then self-reflection will be helpful. Understanding your strengths that will power your journey, facing your faults that might stop your journey, that’s the real value of self-awareness. Before you take an inventory, tell me where you are going.”

Clothes for the Emperor

Leave a reply

The emperor has no clothes, the onlooker said, to the gasps of others. It’s easy to identify in other people. “Only when the tide goes out, do we find out who’s been skinny dipping,” said Warren Buffet.

Who is the emperor? Pogo says the enemy is us. Why is that such a surprise?

We figure out the world as it stands, at least in relation to our small circumstances. We are comfortable. We build our lives on the routine. The biggest mistakes are made when times are good.

The world changes. The first step in the cycle of loss is denial. The tide goes out and reveals our exposure, and we are the last to see it.

Seeing nakedness in other people is easy. Not so much for self-awareness.

Everything Slows Down

Leave a reply

“You wanted to see my training plan, so here it is,” Riley said, pushing the packet over to me.

“Looks good, I like it. You put some thought into each team member. They all need something different,” I replied. “Except you forgot about one person.”

Riley tilted her head. “No, I got everybody on my team.”

“Except you,” I smiled.

She smirked. “Yeah, well, our industry doesn’t have training for people at my level.”

I nodded in agreement. “I believe that, but ask yourself if there is something you need to learn that would make you more effective. In fact, think of it this way. Your team is not going to grow much better than you. If you, as the leader, are not growing, at some point, everything slows down. Or stops. If you want your organization to be best in class, the first person to start with is you.”

What Has Changed?

Leave a reply

What has changed? It’s a useful exercise. What has changed in your industry? What has changed about your customer? What has changed about your company, its products and services? What has changed about your team? What has changed about yourself?

Those positive habits you nurtured so carefully may have to be considered. Those habits may be keeping you from responding to the changes around you. It’s a constant reassessment.

What has changed?

Out Loud

Leave a reply

Much in your life will be determined by how you think and what you think about. Unfortunately, most people don’t think with much intention related to what they think about, and have little discipline about how they think. Words are the way we organize what we think. If you don’t know what you think, translate it into words, meaning, talk it out, talk it out loud.

When you talk your thoughts out loud, you will discover what you think and how you think. Sometimes, when you talk out loud, you will find your thoughts brilliant. Other times, when you talk out loud, you will discover the awful truth of the defect in your thinking.
—
Watch Tom Foster on Chris Comeaux’s Anatomy of Leadership.

The Balance

Leave a reply

An important tool for personal efficiency is the calendar. It allows us to synchronize our time with other people and events. To be even more efficient, our calendar lets us see the white space between things. A time management principle called chunking tells us to put things together, combine, to get rid of that white space. Soon, we have full day filled with color, no white space, perfectly efficient.

In delegation, if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. A truly busy person is someone who has mastered the art of white space, knows how to slot something in, adjust their schedule and carry on as if it was all there in the beginning. This is the ultimate in creating order in the midst of chaos.

And soon, we have a life full of things on our calendar. Our calendar has us. This is the rat race, the hamster wheel. Is something missing.

The balance in life is not to create order out of chaos. The balance is created on the edge between order and chaos. We have to have enough order to allow time for chaos. Thinking is unstructured exploration into chaos, and with our calendars, we have eliminated it. Most CEOs, executive managers and managers don’t have enough time to think.

Sometimes, it gets so bad, we schedule a retreat on our calendars, to give us time to think. Is it possible to schedule a daily retreat, in the midst of order, which has now become our chaos, to simply think, to reflect, to examine, to explore, to focus attention. Could you make thirty minutes a day, to do nothing but think?