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

Little Murders

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Most managers are unaware of the fishbowl in which they live. Years ago, I received some sage advice from one of my scoutmasters as a young patrol leader. “When you look at your own behavior in front of the other scouts, remember, you can’t go take a pee without everyone knowing about it.”

Every move a manager makes is amplified and remembered. If a manager arrives at work and walks past the receptionist without saying, “Good morning,” well, then, the business MUST be going down the tubes.

Jules Pfeiffer, a famous cartoonist, used to have a series he called, Little Murders in which he depicted the little murders we each commit every day. Little Murders we commit, often without intention or even awareness. We may not be aware, but it is still a Little Murder.

Who did you walk by today, without stopping, without a cheery remark, without a smile? How many Little Murders did you commit today? Remember, amplification works in the other direction, too. A few moments, a kind word, a warm handshake, a listening nod may make all the difference in a team member’s day. -TF

White Boards

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One inch higher on the left and the magnetic white board would be level. It had been the subject of much speculation on the shop floor that morning. There were several theories floating around, but no one had correctly guessed what the boss had in mind.

While the shop floor was organized according to a logical work flow, production had gotten further and further behind. The right jobs were late, the wrong jobs were early.

Last Friday, the boss had taken an informal poll. “George,” he said, “tell me, how do you know if we are ahead of schedule or behind schedule?” It was a fair question, but one that George did not know how to answer. “Well, boss, I guess if we were behind schedule, someone would come out here and tell us.”

It was an interesting response, seeing as how the floor was running only 28% on-time delivery. The boss walked over to the foreman’s office, leaned in and asked, “Say, John, when we are behind schedule, which I know is most of the time, do we ever tell anyone out on the shop floor?”

“Oh, no, boss, if we did that, they might get discouraged and quit.” Another interesting response.

You see, the boss had just heard of an experiment in a plant where they simply published production numbers on a daily basis to everyone in the plant. Every time there was an improvement over the previous day, the manager would circulate and thank everyone. No bonuses, no pizza, just a complimentary remark. The slow group in the plant improved from 83% efficiency to 87% efficiency. The fast group, however, improved from 96% efficiency to 162% efficiency (62% beyond predicted capacity.)

One inch higher on the left and the magnetic white board would be level. I wonder what your numbers would be. -TF

Contagious

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What is more contagious than a positive attitude? A negative attitude, of course!

At the beginning of most classes I teach, I always ask, “Think of one positive thing that has happened to you this past week.” Often, there are blank stares, quizzical looks, some hard thinking going on there. Given another thirty seconds, most can finally come up with something. What makes this exercise so difficult?

A much easier question would have been, “What is the worst thing that happened to you this past week?” People never have trouble coming up with that one. They are happy to tell you about things not working out in their lives. Interesting that makes them so happy.

Thinking negative thoughts is largely an unconscious activity. People express negative thoughts without thinking. Idle gossip is rarely intentional, it just happens and those who get sucked into it are not even aware they are traveling in that direction.

As a manager, if you want to set a positive tone, you will have to challenge your team to think about positive things. The expression of positive thoughts is a conscious activity. It requires active thinking. It is work to think that way. Positive thoughts and positive expression only occur intentionally. As a manager, it is your responsibility to challenge your team to think this way. -TF

Visualization and the Budget

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How do we know when we will run out of money? That’s what budgets are for. What is this budgeting process all about? How do you teach someone how to budget? How do we create comprehensive budgets for something in the future?

Strip all the accounting jargon away, and you find that a budget is, simply, the money part of every business plan. The first step in planning is visualization, seeing into the future and imagining the resources required. Working with my students, I insist that their visualizations include colorful detail, the smell of the room, the focus of light, the heat of the moment. When the vision of a project can be described in vivid, compelling terms, the job of imagining the budget becomes so much easier. How do I teach people to budget? I teach them to visualize the future and imagine the resources required to create the picture. You can do this individually or with your team.

The second step of any business plan is taking inventory (not literal inventory), but reviewing the historical elements that got you to the present. Prior projects often have “budgeted” costs and always have “actual” costs. Reviewing these historical reports combined with that clear picture of the future will create a budget with fewer surprises. -TF