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?
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.
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Watch Tom Foster on Chris Comeaux’s Anatomy of Leadership.
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?
Reggie was not defensive, but he was certainly pushing back. “It’s something I like to do,” he said. “Besides, it’s a half hour out of my day. Not something I want to delegate to someone else.”
“Are you saying, it’s something that gives meaning and purpose to your life?” I asked.
“Updating the WIP logs?” he chuckled. “I get the paperwork (electronic paperwork) in from the field. I know it is a bit clerical, but when I enter the data into the logs, I don’t know, it makes me feel good. Like I am really getting something done. Like marking things off on a checklist.”
“You are very results oriented, that’s why you were promoted to manager,” I replied. “You like to kick things off, get people moving, get things done, mark things in the WIP logs, you love to watch results, makes you feel connected to the work. You get endorphin juice.”
Reggie nodded. “You’re right. When I get the logs updated, I feel like I am in control, that the world is right. I do get a little juice out of the task.”
“Your work is different now. As a manager, your juice comes through other people, and it’s slower. It’s painful, to watch other people struggle through things that are easy for you. Your role now is to help other people feel in control, by getting them to mark progress, coaching them to the end of the project. If you continue to be intimately involved, you prevent your team from learning the details. You disable the team from organizing their work. They need your help, support and guidance, but they don’t need you to do it for them.”
“We are going to start measuring innovation,” Samuel announced.
I gave him a raised eyebrow.
“Yes, we believe our competitive advantage is our ability to innovate and bring new products and variations of products to the market, so we think it is important to measure it,” Samuel added.
“When you were working on your efficiency program, you developed metrics to determine improvement,” I said. “Why do you think your metrics worked well in those circumstances?”
It didn’t take Samuel long to ponder. “We had a system, and we worked to make that system predictable. When we determined what we wanted to control, the metrics just fell into place. Any variation was quickly identified and eliminated.”
“Pay close attention to your words,” I replied. “You were working in a system with predictability, control, seeking to eliminate variation. You now want to create a system of metrics to do just the opposite. Innovation is hard pressed to be systematic, certainly unpredictable, sometimes outside the bounds of control and designed to encourage variation. Just exactly how do you intend to measure that?”
“I want to send this guy back to training,” Roger pursed his lips.
“Again?” I replied. “This would be the third time through.”
“I know, I know. But the mistakes he makes and the bone-headed decisions he makes, they just seem careless. If he would apply himself a little harder, he might have a break-through.”
“Roger, you have a classic managerial case of fixitis,” I replied. “You think you can fix people.”
Roger nodded. “Yes, I guess I do.”
“There is a big difference between skill and capability. You can train a skill, a skill can be learned. A skill can be practiced, honed and coached. But, you cannot teach capability. Capability is what it is. Please understand, capability grows and matures through a lifetime, but not from a two week training period.”
“I know I need to delegate more,” Hannah shook her head side to side. “But, I am often disappointed when I give someone a task and they don’t complete it to my standards. It’s just easier to do it myself.”
“Okay, I will agree that you can complete the work better than anyone else on your team,” I replied. “As the manager, if you have to complete all the work, how much work can you do in an 8-hour day?”
“I know where you are going with this,” she said. “If I do all the work, our output capacity is limited to how much I can personally get done. Not to mention, everyone else will be standing around all day.”
“There is more to it than a capacity issue, output for a day,” I nodded. “It’s output capacity, forever. If all you produce is what you can personally produce in a day, the company will never grow. More importantly, you will never grow.”
What stops us from learning?
It’s not the complexity of the content, or how much there is to learn. The obstacles to learning most often exist in the head of the learner. Obstacles are more about beliefs and assumptions than the details of what has to be learned.
We learn to delegate effectively, not by learning a new delegation model, but by ridding ourselves of the assumption, if you want it done right, do it yourself. We hold back on sharing problem solving, not because the team members lacks the skills, but because there is a lack of trust. We hold back on sharing decision making, not because the team member is unable to make the decision, but because we, as managers, have always made that judgment call.
What stops us from learning is often, something inside our own head.
“Practice makes perfect,” Melanie grinned.
“No,” I replied. “Practice does NOT make perfect. Practice may make you feel better, repeating grooved, routine behaviors, but, those behaviors may still miss the mark. Practice does not make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect. It’s not the repetitions, it’s the right repetitions.”
“But, you always say that we learn from mistakes,” Melanie chided.
“Learning is making mistakes, but you have to learn from the gap. What is the future state of performance, what is the current performance, and what’s the gap?”
“So, there is some analysis going on?” Melanie confirmed.
“And, often that analysis is invisible to you because you are getting comfortable with repetition. But, it’s just a feeling. What’s the difference between training and coaching?”
“Training gets you started, but practice makes you better. Learning from mistakes only works when you recognize the mistake, and figure out how to do it differently. And, sometimes we can’t see the mistake, or the correction, as easily as someone else. That’s where a coach comes in.”
“You said you had been through training,” I nodded, “and you were able to describe the training, as scheduled, with a curriculum. What about coaching? How would you describe coaching here?”
Melanie paused for a very long time. “In my days here, coaching seems elusive. I don’t know if I can put my finger on it. Underperformance is more likely met with reprimand and training, more training, back to training. I don’t need more training, I need more practice, perfect practice.”
“The training only got you so far,” I nodded. “But, your comfort level with the skills, competence only came with practice?”
Melanie confirmed, “Lots of practice.”
“What kind of practice?” I wanted to know.
“What do you mean?” Melanie looked puzzled. “I just did what I was supposed to do, over and over, at first in fits and starts, but eventually things got easier.”
“I mean, how often did you practice, what was your duration of practice? What was your depth of practice? What was your accuracy of practice? And, how did you know you were getting better?”
“In the beginning, it was slow, frustrating. I was uncomfortable. Things didn’t turn out as expected. Each way I turned, I thought someone was going to scream at me for doing it wrong.”
“Did anyone scream at you?” I asked.
“Not really,” she replied. “I know I got some sideways glances, and likely people were talking about me behind my back.”
“If no one was screaming at you, and perhaps people were talking about you behind your back, how did you know you were getting better, improving?”
“At some point,” Melanie thought out loud, “I just got more comfortable. Maybe people were still talking about me behind my back, but, it didn’t seem that way. It was just a feeling.”
“I started this conversation by asking you the difference between training and coaching,” I reminded her. “Training was organized, disciplined, it was an event, but it only got you to a minimum level of technical knowledge. Moving toward competence required practice.”
Melanie nodded. “It’s funny. Whenever we see someone struggle in their job, our first move is to send them back to training. And, often that training doesn’t have much impact. What you seem to be saying, is that when someone struggles, they may not need more training, they might just need more practice?”