I Saw Something Today

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Esteban was disturbed. His last conversation with the lead tech on the floor clearly indicated the line workers had no clue how their product was being installed or how it worked once in operation. They had been having quality problems, it seemed forever. Just this past month, they had added a third QC person to staff the last shift to catch the errors quicker.

“Everybody on the bus. We’re going to make a visit to one of our best customer locations to see how our manufactured equipment works in the field.” There was a sudden excitement on the floor, a conversational buzz. Esteban was sure it was because everyone was getting paid and didn’t have to produce any product while they were on the bus. It was like a vacation.

Once on the bus, but before they pulled away from the shop, Esteban distributed a dozen drugstore cardboard cameras and some pre-printed 3×5 index cards. On the card was printed, “I saw something today.” Esteban explained they were to look for specific examples of quality issues that had an impact on the way things worked in the field. It could be about the way something fit together. It could be about the speed of the units and the volume of production at the customer’s location.

I Saw Something Today became the central piece of their quality initiative. The team built a quality book complete with photographs of things that worked well and not so well.

What would your quality book look like if your team put one together? No typing allowed, just 3×5 index cards complete with pictures. -TF

P.S. Join Executive Management Online, Orientation starts in 2 days. Session One starts in 9 days.

Is Anybody in this Meeting?

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Seven minutes have passed since this meeting began, yet of the six people in the room, only three are talking with each other. Randy is fiddling with his new Blackberry e-mail device, Sharon is sorting some papers for an outside project, and Lisa is looking at her calendar for next month. Only half the people are engaged, the other half disengaged.

The meeting started with the Manager announcing that the VIP Project had come to a screeching halt last week and the customer was mighty upset. The current discussion was to determine who’s fault it was.

Try an alternative approach to opening the meeting. Distribute six 3×5 cards, one to each team member. Ask the following question, “At the end of this meeting, what do you hope to have accomplished? You have 45 seconds to write your response.”

Forty five seconds later, go around the table and have each person contribute their intention for the meeting. Write their responses on a flip chart. Now you have a good start for your meeting. Everyone is engaged, all six of them, focused on how they can solve the problem with the VIP Project.

PS. Make Randy check his Blackberry at the door. If you don’t, he will continue to be distracted by his new addiction. -TF

P.S. Join Executive Management Online, Orientation starts in 3 days.

Big Dog Meeting Agendas

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Big Dog calls a meeting. You and five other managers show up while Big Dog holds court. The meeting is poorly planned, no agenda, you hate it, you hate meetings in general. Can’t we get back to something more productive?

I am adamant about agendas. Agendas make thinking more efficient and focused. Agendas help leverage time. But Big Dog is already leveraging time. He has five managers in the room, he only has to explain himself once. That’s (1:5) time-leverage.

Where’s the time-leverage for the Manager in a meeting with Big Dog Boss? There isn’t any!! That is why the Manager, who is now working (1:1), one hour’s work for one hour’s productivity, has more vested interest than Big Dog Boss to make sure there is an agenda.

Interesting, isn’t it? The person in the room who has the least chance of gaining time-leverage from the meeting should be the one screaming for the agenda. Do you insist on agendas in your meetings? Both the meetings you run and the meetings you attend? -TF

P.S. Join Executive Management Online, class forming now for January 22, 2005.

Leverage in Meetings

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Question:
You talk about time-leverage. You talk about working one hour to gain two hours productivity. How does that work?

Response:
No manager can afford to work very long at a time ratio of 1:1. Working one hour to gain one hour’s productivity is a shell game for amateurs. Even working managers have to devote a significant focus to time-leveraged activities. How do you work for one hour and gain two hour’s productivity, or work one hour and gain five hours productivity?

The central element of leverage comes from delegation. Let’s say you have a project that would take you five hours to complete. Rather than do the work yourself, you call a 20-minute meeting with three of your team members. In the meeting, you describe your vision for project completion and the performance standards for project completion (including quality and time frame). The rest of the twenty minutes is a discussion of the action steps and who will be responsible for what. The three team members each take a portion of the project, two 10-minute follow-up meetings are scheduled and off we go. As the manager, you will end up with approximately one-hour of meetings, while your team members will work the five hours of the project. You work for one hour, you get five hours of productivity. (1:5)

Here’s is the challenge, what does (1:10) look like? I consistently work with executives whose goal is (1:100), that is one hour’s work to produce one-hundred hours of productivity. How about you, what is your ratio? -TF

P.S. Join Executive Management Online, class forming now for January 22, 2005.

Traction

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It was a late weekend morning. I was headed south on A-1-A, returning from a solo bike run to Boynton inlet. The headwind was light, but enough to knock the speed to an even 19mph. Three hours into the ride, I was in no position to hammer the wind, yet impatient to keep the speed up.

“On your left,” was a friendly heads-up as an unknown rider with fresh legs slipped in front. I downshifted and picked up the reps to catch his wheel. I settled into the quiet space of his draft at 21mph. Seconds later, I sensed a third rider on my tail. Now we were three.

For thirty minutes, we snaked down the road, changing leads, holding 21, taking turns on the nose. I was struck with the purity of teamwork between three people who had never met before, with only three words between them.

A team will never gain traction without a common purpose.

This was a team with nothing, except a common purpose, executing skillful manuvers, supporting each other, communicating precisely with each other. There was no orientation, no “get to know you session,” just a purity of purpose.

When your team works together, how clear is the purpose? What is the commitment level of each team member to that purpose? You don’t need much else. -TF

Focus or Not

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There were twelve incredible opportunities staring at Roger, all of them saying, “Pick me!”

Once an organization gets some traction in their market, over the hump of cash flow and all that, the next biggest trap is the incredible opportunities.

As your company grew, everyone said, “You’ll never make it,” but your company did. Who is to say that your company cannot be successful at all of the other opportunities staring down at you?

Sometimes, the most important decisions that you make, are the decisions about what not to do. The growing organization needs to focus its efforts on becoming more successful at their core business. There will be plenty of time, later, to chase down that incredible restaurant deal or that mail order pharmacy company.

Disciplined focus, execution, not opportunities. Stay out of the trap. -TF

Fast-Brain “Storming”

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We had twenty minutes to complete the assignment. Go!

Our job was to document 180 discreet operational steps in a manufacturing process, placing each step in an approximate sequence. We had nine volunteer managers from each of the operating areas.

Step One: We distributed little 3×3 sticky note pads to each manager, along with one of those bold felt tip marking pens. 19 minutes. Go!

Instructions to the Manager group: On separate sticky notes, please write down the key words describing the most important operational steps in your area. Please select the twenty most important (major) steps in your area. Ten minutes from now, when you are finished, you should have twenty separate sticky notes, each with an important step written on it. Any questions? Go!

While the managers prepared their sticky notes, we taped 27 feet of 36 inch wide butcher paper on the wall. Double thickness, in case someone wanted to write on it (save the wall). We lightly marked and divided the butcher paper into nine sections, one for each person.

Time’s up. Please take your 20 sticky notes to the butcher paper. Arrange yourselves in the same sequence as your areas on the floor. Stick your notes on the paper and place them in the sequence that work is performed in your area. You may draw appropriate arrows and make appropriate notes on the butcher paper to further clarify your operational steps. You have five minutes. Go!

Team, we still have 3 minutes left before our twenty minutes expire. There is coffee available on the table at the back of the room. Thank you very much for your cooperation today.

Now, what could you do with a flow chart like that, documenting your work flow? -TF

The High Road

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How many of your team members, do you suppose, drove to work this morning, saying, “I think I will come to work today and do a really crappy job?” Wipe that smirk off of your face, you know it is not true.

What really makes the difference in the performance of your team members? Each morning they arrive at work, ready for the day. They could perform well, or they could perform poorly. What makes the difference?

Managers will most often agree on this management challenge: How do I motivate my people? My team seems to be suffering from a lack of motivation. If I could just figure out how to motivate my people, everything else would fall in line.

The difference between poor performance, good performance and superior performance is the simple result of a choice. Managers cannot motivate their teams into high performance. Individual team members choose high performance. For every manager, the challenge is to create the circumstances where people most often choose the high road. -TF

No Respect

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Question
I just don’t know how to gain their respect. Sometime in the meeting, it’s as if they are not even listening to me. They nod and agree, promise to follow through. The next day, they are back to the same non-productive behavior. They don’t even respect the meeting. They show up late, sometimes not at all. Where are their priorities?

Response
Rodney lives on in the lives of many managers. Expecting respect, demanding respect didn’t work for Mr. Dangerfield and doesn’t work for most managers.

You will never gain respect until you, as their manager, bring value to their thinking and their work.

Stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about your team member. If you, as a manager, want to bring value to the thinking and work of your team members, start by asking them questions. Through questions, you can help them clarify, explore, challenge, plan and follow-up.

In my years in the classroom, I have found that no one really listens to me, anyway. So, I stopped lecturing and started asking questions. Something happened. My students started learning from themselves.

Start. Start asking questions that bring value to the thinking and work of your team. Rodney will rest in peace.

Oh, if you are not getting the response you want, you are asking the wrong question. Happy New Year -TF

Seduction of the Red Zone

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Stephen Covey calls it the tyrrany of the urgent. I don’t think it’s tyranny, I think it is a subtle seduction, the seduction of the Red Zone.

Take two parameters of time, IMPORTANT and URGENT. Now, that’s where the action is. When I ask for a list, I get enthusiastic responses:

  • Customer complaints
  • Request from the boss
  • Project deadline due last Monday
  • BIG customer problem

URGENT and IMPORTANT!! Stuff a manager can really sink their teeth into. Are managers good at this stuff, these special requests, last minute deadlines and BIG customer problems? Yeah, baby, in fact, they are Managers because they are good at this stuff.

“I am on a break in a meeting, thought I would call in, please, give me a problem to solve.”

This is the juice that managers thrive on. They begin to fall for anything that even looks URGENT and IMPORTANT. After a while, URGENT alone is good enough. Please give me some more juice.

But, what about the IMPORTANT, but NOT-URGENT stuff? What kind of management behavior is that? You know, planning, delegating, coordinating, controlling, directing. Not much juice there, but what impact would these behaviors have on things in the red zone? With better planning, delegating and coordinating, some things in the red zone go away.

By the way, the red zone is where heart attacks start. -TF