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Posts tagged ‘Organization Development’

Jun 29

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Animals and other shapes in the sky

I was thinking about an organization that schedules a monthly day of reflection for members of its leadership team. Each member gets one day a month – when they do not show up at the office, but take time for themselves. Through personal relationship, I’ve learned that all kinds of things happen on those days, from a long motorcycle ride through the Flint Hills to a morning spent reading at a coffee shop to an afternoon spent drinking iced tea and listening to music on the back porch.

The value to the organization? Incalculable. When these leaders come back refreshed, they can bring a better perspective on themselves and their role as well as on the organization. I’ve seen creative and inspiring ideas come from their time away.

In that spirit of reflection, today’s New York Times has an article about wandering minds. I was in interested to learn that our minds wander about 30% of the time. Here’s the summary quote:

“For creativity you need your mind to wander,” Dr. Schooler says, “but you also need to be able to notice that you’re mind wandering and catch the idea when you have it. If Archimedes had come up with a solution in the bathtub but didn’t notice he’d had the idea, what good would it have done him?”

I’m asking myself if I am being intentional about creating space for my mind to wander – time to wander when I’m observing it and discovering new ideas. Or am I scheduling my life full from morning-to-night with meetings and more hours that I care to admit writing and working at the computer? My guess is that I need to build in some intentional procrastination in order to achieve better incubation.

What animals or shapes have you seen in the sky today?

Jun 28

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Waiting for feedback?

Over the last 2 or 3 months, I’ve written about the importance of leaders and managers giving feedback and the ongoing need to reinvent management as we know it.

So, it’s time to turn the tables and ask all employees to look in the mirror: Am I waiting for feedback? Why am I waiting for someone else to approve my work, to make a suggestion for improvement, or to give permission for a next step?

While no one wants to step over boundaries, the boundary line is more elastic than most of us think it is. And, I would argue that most bosses don’t want to spend all of their time supervising, let alone micromanaging. What many of them want is for people to be self-motivated and self-starting – to be self-employed at work:

Here are some of the unwritten attributes that define the self-employed at work phenomenon, which I’ve written about before from the boss’ perspective:

  • Be creative and inventive – see your work as owned by yourself, not by your employer or supervisor.
  • Be self-initiating and self-evaluating – identify problems and issues and evaluate what is working and what isn’t, suggest and initiate potential solutions. Don’t wait for others to do it for you.
  • Take responsibility – see yourself as an actor that participates in creating the internal and external work environment, you are as responsible for what happens in the organization as the next person, including your supervisor.
  • Be professional – master and author your work role and career. Don’t be an apprentice forever, continually imitate others, or only mimic the company line.
  • See the system as a whole – look beyond your own role and part to see the whole, your relationship to the whole, and how the parts work together.

In the end, each of us has to value and find meaning in what we do each day. So, let’s stop waiting for the person in the next cubicle, across the hall, or in the corner office to provide feedback, give approval, or check the “completed” box. It’s up to each of us to try out new ideas, move existing balls down the field, and be responsible for just getting it done. And, yes, we are capable of doing it – without waiting for feedback.

Jun 23

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The assumptions of scientific management

in 1908 Frederick Taylor carried a stopwatch in to a steel plant in Philadelphia and began the time and motion studies that would lead to his publication, “The Principles of Scientific Management.” His goal was to find the “one best method” of work – substituting “science for rule of thumb.”

We no longer are surprised by the efficiency and productivity that scientific management delivers. But I would suggest that we have forgotten the six basic assumptions that Taylor makes. Here is a summary as set out by Postman in Technopoly (p. 51):

  1. The primary goal of labor and thought is efficiency.
  2. Technical calculation in all respects is superior to human judgment.
  3. Human judgment cannot be trusted because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity.
  4. Subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking.
  5. What cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value.
  6. The affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts.

I’ve been pondering the impact that these assumptions have on our organizations and how they influence our decisions and actions on a daily basis. Are we tempted to make everything in our lives more efficient? Are we tempted to apply efficiency standards to our relationships too? Are we at risk of trying to measure things that require wisdom and not process and procedure?

We forget these assumptions at our peril.

Postman, N. 1993. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York, NY, Vintage.

Jun 22

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Resource: Organization Development resources on the web

Here are some of the sites where I find useful information and resources for working with organizations, learning, critical thinking, and life:

Marshall Goldsmith Library
Find articles on Peer Coaching and Leadership. There are also videos and podcasts.

Jim Collins
Find downloadable tools, articles, and audio video items dealing with organizations and personal development.

IDEO
Find resources on thinking, articles on design and critical thinking, decisions by design, and videos on everything from organizational transformation to customer service.

In addition to this summary, I would point to the Blogs of Interest and Articles of Interest linked on the left sidebar of our blog.

What are the web resources that you find useful for working with your organization? I encourage you to comment and share the links with all of our readers!

Jun 21

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Resource: Harvard Business Review

Is your first response, “We can’t afford to subscribe to the Harvard Business Review…”? I will agree it can be pricey, especially if you subscribe to both print and on-line. But the on-line site offers some free, useful resources, including magazine resources that are available to non-subscribers. I include a summary here:

The HBR Blog Network includes the ability to search by subjects such as Imaging the Future of Leadership or by blog author. Here are some of my favorite HBR bloggers:

Marshall Goldsmith on Leadership, Managing people, Coaching
Rosabeth Moss Kanter on Innovation, CSR, Leadership
Roger Martin on Strategy, Leadership, Innovation and Critical Thinking

Some recent blog posts of interest:

12 Things Good Bosses Believe
The 15 Minutes that Could Save 5 Years
How to Translate Training into Results

If you’re interested in hearing what some of the influential leaders, researchers, and educators are saying about organizations, you’ll want to check out these links.

Jun 18

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Resource: Leader to Leader Institute

There are many free resources on the web, but not all are created equal.  The Leader to Leader Institute, which was founded as Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, is one that contributes a variety of useful and inspiring resources. I’ll point to a few:

Their on-line journal has many free articles: Leader to Leader Journal.

Another useful resource is the Thought Leader Gateway, which includes an ability to search for articles, interviews, and videos by author. For example, this link will send you to a short biography of Peter Drucker and list Drucker resources available from the Institute.

Or if you’re interested in innovation and organizational practices, check out their Innovation in Practice section.  And, there is a video library of dialogues with leaders.

Finally, they are challenging organizations to ask and answer five essential questions: What is our mission? Who is our customer? What do the customers value? What are our results? and What is our plan?  Can you answer those questions for your organization? Could you tell me the answer in 3 minutes or less?

Jun 16

The discipline of learning through education

“A well-trained man knows how to answer questions, they reasoned; an educated man knows what questions are worth asking.” – E. Digby Baltzell

This quote appears inside of an article about the Bell Telephone Company’s experiment with educating executives in a broad range of topics.  The executives attended a 10 month program designed to expand their horizons by reading a wide range of books, engaging in discussion with leading thinkers, and listening to guest lecturers.  In the end, even though the graduates better understood the world around them, were more interested in the workings of society, and could see more than one side of an argument, Bell ended the program. The unexpected outcome was that in expanding their confidence and critical thinking capabilities, the executives  were more likely to put their families and communities ahead of the company’s interest in the bottom line.

Katzenbach and Khan in Leading Outside the Lines write that today’s formal leadership programs can create a “self-reinforcing system” when they are based on templates designed to reproduce more leaders like those already in place. Choosing formal leaders is usually based on a process defined by degrees and certifications, alongside demonstration of increasing responsibility and delivery of bottom line results. Many training systems have been adapted from the Bell experiment to better serve the company interest in the bottom line.

Or do they serve it better? I would suggest that both are needed. The discipline of learning through education should be broad as well as deep. People need to be well-trained in technical skills. And, people need to be educated in a wide range of subjects and how to be critical thinkers. No company stands alone. Each is part of larger systems that include families and extended families, communities that are connected to schools and housing, and the global community.  We need leaders who can debate and consider all sides of a question, but most importantly, “know what questions are worth asking.”

Jun 15

The courage of “First Who”

I’ve long had an appreciation for Jim Collin’s work, Good to Great.  Friesen Group has done research in the non-profit sector using Collin’s hypothesis about Level 5 Leaders.  Our thirteen year-old has been coming home from summer basketball preaching the Good to Great principles as set out by his coaches – the book is now in his summer reading pile.  And yet, outside of books and magazine articles, I have never personally known anyone who practiced the principle of “First Who, Then What“.

Then this past weekend, I had an opportunity to have a conversation with the leader of an organization I have been privileged to work with a couple of years ago. He told me the story of his latest personnel hire.  I was stopped short when he said, “I did it without having a job description for the position.”  His goal is to allow the person to use their knowledge and skills within the organization  to develop something new; to allow their work within the organization to emerge rather than trying to shoehorn them into a specific, existing job function. It’s a classic example of, “first who, then what.”

In a month when a friend encounters multiple organizations who are screening job applicants based on an exact, computer keyword match to a job description, and using interview check sheets that further reward the use of keywords and stories that represent specific behavioral norms, I am challenged by this conversation.  In a week when I’ve been asked how an organization can go about developing a standardized training system for getting people to conform to their definition of leader, I am challenged by this conversation.  In a day when I wonder how best to continue growing our own organization, I am challenged by this conversation.

First who … not a clone of someone already here, not someone who can conform, but …  first who. There is power in practicing what we preach.

Jun 15

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The space between words

Phil Jackson used to run Chicago Bulls practices in complete silence (Sacred Hoops, p. 119).

I’ve used Nancy Kline’s ideas about silence and listening, presented in Time to Think. It allows each person in a group 5 uninterrupted minutes to speak to the topic at hand. If the individual chooses not to use all of their time, the remainder of their time is spent in silence.

I’ve watched groups of adults and of teenagers struggle with the times of silence. In one case, even 2 minutes to speak or be silent unnerved several individuals.

What would it mean to meet in silence? No cell phones. No e-mail. No video games played under the table. What kinds of connections could be created that would not exist in any other environment?  What would emerge from deep listening?  What would occur as a result of time spent reflecting together?  How would we as individuals be changed?  How would our organizations be changed?

Are we as aware of the space between words as of the words themselves?

Jun 9

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Bibliography for the Biology of Learning

Recently I had the privilege of leading a seminar on the Biology of Learning. My goal was to bring multiple disciplines to bear on the question of the intersection of the research into interpersonal neurobiology and education and organization development. With my background in cell biology and organization development, this is an intersection that I find fascinating. Below is the bibliography that I used for this seminar. I hope those interested in IPNB and education will find this resource useful.

The Biology of Learning 

Buxton, B. 2007. Sketching User Experiences. San Francisco, CA: Elsevier.

Cozolino, L. 2006. The Neuroscience of Human Relationship. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

Doidge, N. 2007. The Brain that Changes Itself. 2007. New York, NY: Viking.

Gardner, F. L. & Moore, Z. E. The Psychology of Enhancing Human Performance. New York, NY: Springer.

Geake, J. G. 2009. The Brain at School: Educational Neuroscience in the Classroom. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Iacoboni, M. 2008. Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Johnson, S. & Taylor, K. (Eds.) 2006. The Neuroscience of Adult Learning. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Kegan, R. & Lahey, L. L. 2009. Immunity to Change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press.

Kegan, R. 1994. In Over Our Heads. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press.

Kelley, T. 2005. The Ten Faces of Innovation. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Medina, J. M. 2008. Brain Rules. Seattle, WA: Pear Press.

Pink, D. H. 2009. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.

Rock, D. 2010. Your Brian at Work. New York, NY. Harper.

Schwartz, J. M. & Begley, S. 2003. The Mind & The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. New York, NY: Harper.

Siegel, D. J. 2010. Mindsight. New York, NY: Bantam.

Siegel, D. J. 2007. The Mindful Brain. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. 2005. Understanding by Design (2nd Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

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