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Posts from the ‘Kathleen’ Category

Mar 30

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The case for resilience

As human beings we spend much of our time attempting to create consistency, producing a constant product, creating reliable and repeatable interactions. We all have mental models into which we attempt to shoehorn daily events and interactions. And yet our survival is tied not to constants, but to our ability to deal with variables – with change.

The dictionary defines resilience: “the ability to bounce or spring back into shape, position, etc., after being pressed or stretched. Elasticity. The ability to recover strength, spirits, good humor, or any other aspect quickly.” Resilience allows us to respond to and tolerate all kinds of variables. Our bodies can manage and respond to wide temperature variations, heal cuts and scrapes, speed up or slow down metabolism, and continually rewire our brain’s neural pathways. Add to this our ability to be intelligent, to learn, interact with others, and design and create things beyond ourselves. Our bodies are a good example of a resilient system.

It is easier to see stability than resilience. And, without a whole-system view, it is easier to value stability over resilience. For example: Just-in-time deliveries have stabilized inventories and often reduced costs. But, a look at the larger system shows that the just-in-time model makes the entire production system more vulnerable to shipping delays caused by weather, technology downtime, and other uncontrollable variables.

Systems, whether our bodies or our organizations need to be managed to ensure resilience, not its opposite – constancy, rigidity, and inflexibility. And yet, we are easily and continually distracted by individual events – a conversation, an e-mail, or a news story. We need to find ways to maintain a larger system view. Some of the ways to do this are to assess events by considering the history, information, relationships, and dynamic data of the whole system. We can mindfully look at and reflect on the system, its structure and relationships.  Time spent thus increases potential to discover ways of increasing our organization’s ability to restore itself, be creative, and build elastic walls that allow the organization and ourselves to not only bounce back from unforeseen events, but to embrace change.

Mar 12

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Idea for reflection – 4

I saw this quote on a t-shirt a few weeks ago and then again yesterday on Bob Sutton’s blog. I find it something worth reflecting on:

If your actions inspire people to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then you are a leader.
– John Quincy Adams

Idea for reflection – 3

Mar 11

Before the cart and the horse

I’m reflecting on the adage, “Don’t put the cart before the horse.” There is truth here. Too often organizations begin at the end of a process and end up with unintended outcomes; they put the cart before the horse. In the end there wasn’t the needed energy or passion or drive to keep the process moving forward. Or in the worst case, the cart is wrecked as it cruises out of control as it is pushed by the horse.

Even organizations that begin by going out to the barn and hitching the cart behind the horse may miss the road. They rush into the latest idea and fad, rolling down the road, chasing their perceived competitor at top speed with their best people holding the reins. But they’re on a road to an unknown destination.

In my experience, it is most helpful to spend time reviewing values, philosophy, and history before heading out to the barn. Time spent considering how the process fits the organization, its people, values, and dreams can allow the process to be tailored to reach the goal. Or in other words, the process will be designed for finding the right horse and the right cart and the right road for that organization.

Spend time designing a process before considering content. As Alexander Graham Bell said, “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.”

Mar 10

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Excellence is a habit

I like this quote that I found in The Mind & The Brain (Schwartz & Begley): 

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

From brain research done in the last 5 years, we learn that neurons (brain cells) that fire together wire together. The question is, “What do we repeatedly do?” We can either be creating excellence or mediocrity.

Daniel Pink recently listed his seven rules for writing. I’m going to modify a few of them here along with my own comments and ideas about maintaining daily habits.

  • Show up. Be present in each moment. It’s the only one I have.
  • Be useful. Seek out ways to be useful whether it’s helping with a tedious task at the office or putting dishes in the dishwasher.
  • Move. Exercise releases the stresses that build up over time and allows ideas to come to the front of my mind.
  • Connect. Have a meaningful conversation with a friend or co-worker each day. If you ask, “How are you?”, stop to really listen to the answer. 
  • Be thankful. Look for one thing each day to be grateful, even if it’s simple like the sunshine falling on the floor or a beautiful raindrop hanging from a branch.
  • Take one action. Act on and do one thing each day to advance your dream.
  • Eat well. Food nourishes me and gives me energy, which is why I choose whole foods as often as possible. (Many of my readers know that I’ve followed the Dean Ornish program since 1997.)
  • These rules work for me. Your mileage may vary.

I remind myself to keep the momentum going. Like turning a flywheel, restarting a habit takes far more energy than maintaining one. As we commit to develop personal habits of excellence, our organizations and families will change along with us.

Mar 7

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Idea for reflection – 3

If your organization is involved in giving presentations either internally or externally, it’s worth reflecting on whether your presentations are effective. Garr Reynolds posted the following link and information on his blog, Presentation Zen:

Thanks to Tim Longhurst (The TED Commandments – rules every speaker needs to know) you can see the list in an easier to read format below.

  1. Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick.
  2. Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before.
  3. Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion.
  4. Thou Shalt Tell a Story.
  5. Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Sake of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy.
  6. Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.
  7. Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desperate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness.
  8. Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.
  9. Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.
  10. Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee.

And if you don’t know about TED, you should! You can find inspiration by clicking here.

Idea for reflection – 2

Mar 6

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Creating a space for critical thinking

I continue to reflect and consider how we can bring critical thinking into our organizations. As I discussed in my last post, one of the challenges with critical thinking is not allowing the questions to derail the process. Questions are only part of an environment that encourages critical thinking.

When a situation calls for critical thinking, people are often already stuck and anxious. When a situation is tense or stressful, people’s brains can shut down the thinking process and shift to fight, flight, or freeze mode. In other research done by Dr. Stellan Ohlsson on impasses, he experimented with helping people solve problems by suggesting what the solution is not and alternatively by giving clues to move people toward the solution. In both cases, only 5% of people eventually reach a resolution. His next strategy was to dive deeply into the problem and look for the root cause. This too was only marginally effective.

With insight and ideas on the line, seeking ways to improve the environment and allow people to move from stress to a reflective state of mind is most important. Here’s a short list of ideas on how to do this (these ideas come from the IPNB research):

  • Encourage the person by showing appreciation or recognizing their status and role in the organization
  • Increase confidence and certainty by clarifying the objectives
  • Assure the person that they will be making the decisions and discovering the needed ideas
  • Ask the person to simply the question to a sentence or a few words

Once the environment is calmed, and people are in a better frame of mind (brought about by reducing the load on the limbic system and frontal cortex), questions may be used to encourage the person to focus on their own process. You can begin by encouraging them, “You have good ideas. Let’s explore what your ideas are rather than think about mind.”  David Rock in Your Brain at Work (p. 213) suggests the following four questions to stimulate reflection:

  • If you stop and think more deeply here, do you think you know what you need to do to resolve this?
  • What quiet hunches do you have about a solution, deeper inside?
  • How close to a solution are you?
  • Which pathway to a solution would be best to follow here?

By shifting the environment from one of stress, blame, or argument, the brain research shows that people can be more effective. As the leader or coach, you have to be willing to allow and encourage people to find their own solutions. Real change and progress are then possible.

Mar 5

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When questions derail the process

Given my passion for critical thinking and good questions, I was glad to find some balance in the world this week. Scott Anthony wrote a guest blog over at the Harvard Business Review about how questions can kill innovation. He discusses the way that people can use questions to endlessly delay action by analyzing each opportunity to its death. This is true of people within corporations or people who are entrepreneurs.

Continually researching the answer to questions that start out with, “What about . . .” or “What if . . .” can lead to gridlock or inertia. Tom Kelley in The Ten Faces of Innovation gives a name to the people who play this game, Devil’s advocate. They jump into a discussion, “Let me just play Devil’s Advocate for a minute . . . .”

Whether confronting an endless questioner or a Devil’s Advocate, it is possible to move forward. Anthony suggests trying a quick and dirty test in the marketplace with your concept to see what the response is. Kelley encourages people to engage in constructive criticism and debate – to move beyond an argument threatening to destroy a fragile idea or concept.

In my own experience, options for getting unstuck include asking the group or person to step back and remember what the larger goal; doing a quick prototype of an idea or concept; or changing the question to one that requires action, “What is the first step you could take in the two days to make this a reality?” Creativity and innovation can flourish when there is a balance between questions and actions.

Mar 1

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What’s your experience?

Today in his blog, Work Matters, Bob Sutton told an interesting story on the worst advice he was given and has this interesting paragraph at the end of his post:

One of my mottos in life (which I first heard from a Stanford undergraduate years ago named Kathy) is, “Don’t believe everything they tell you.”  This is especially true if they add something like, “I have been in the business for 25 years and I know what I am talking about.”  As one of my former students, Andy Hargadon used to say in response to this line, “Do you have 25 years of experience, or have you experienced the same year 25 times?” (bold face, mine)

I found this worth reflecting on for a mid-winter Monday. It also brought to mind the thinking I was doing in early January about goal setting.

Feb 28

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Idea for reflection – 2

For further reflection: a set of rules for “intelligent design” (with apologies to Darwin) from Tim Brown of IDEO:

  1.  The best ideas emerge when the whole organizational ecosystem–not just its designers and engineers and certainly not just management–has room to experiment.
  2. Those most exposed to changing externalities (new technology, shifting consumer base, strategic threats or opportunities) are the ones best placed to respond and most motivated to do so.
  3. Ideas should not be favored based on who creates them (Repeat aloud.)
  4. Ideas that create a buzz should be favored. Indeed, ideas should gain a vocal following, however small, before being given organizational support.
  5. The “gardening” skills of senior leadership should be used to tend, prune, and harvest ideas. MBAs call this “risk tolerance.” I call it the top-down bit.
  6. An overarching purpose should be articulated so that the organization has a sense of direction and innovators don’t feel the need for constant supervision.

– Tim Brown in Change by Design (p.73-74) 

Idea for reflection – 1

Feb 27

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Idea for reflection – 1

I’m constantly running across ideas worth pondering. So here’s one for reflection . . .

My work with music … has taught me the deepest respect for the emptiness between the notes. Of course, there is no music without the silence. It is silence that actually gives life to sound.
  – Jane Lowey quoted in Listening Below the Noise

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