Archive for the ‘Motivation’ Category

What do you believe about yourself?

If you believe you can’t do something, you can’t.

If you try something and it doesn’t work, you might be able to pull it off next time.

If you believe you’re not good enough, you’re not.

If you try something and it doesn’t work, you’re still good enough.

If you believe someone’s opinion of you matters, it does.

If someone disparages you and you don’t believe it, they’re wrong.

If you believe you can do something, you can.

If you try something and it doesn’t work, try it again.

If you believe you’re good enough, you are.

If you try something and it doesn’t work, you have always been good enough.

If you believe someone’s opinion of you is none of your business, it isn’t.

If someone disparages you, ask them if they’re okay and ask if you can help them.

What do you believe?

What will you try next?

What will you do when someone disparages you?

Image credit — joiseyshowaa

The Keepers of the Process

If you want to improve the work, ask the people who do the work.  They know the tools and templates. They know the ins and outs of the process. They know when and how to circumvent the process. And they know what will break if you try to change the process. And what breaks is the behavior of the people that use the process.

When a process changes, people’s behavior does not. Once people learn the process, they want to continue to work that way.  It’s like their bodies know what to do without even thinking about it.  But on the other hand, when a process doesn’t meet the need, people naturally modify their behavior to address the shortcomings of the process.  And in this case, people’s behavior doesn’t match the process yet they standardize their behavior on circumventing the process.  Both of these realities – people like to do what they did last time and people modify their behavior to address shortcomings of the process – make it difficult for people to change their behavior when the process changes.

When the process doesn’t work but the modified behavior does, change the process to match the modified behavior.  When that’s not possible, ask the people why they modified their behavior and ask them to come up with a process that is respectful of their on-the-fly improvements and respectful of the company’s minimum requirements for their processes.

When the process doesn’t work but the people are following it anyway, ask them to come up with ways to improve the process and listen to their ideas.  Then, run a pilot of their new process on the smallest scale and see what happens.  If it makes things better, adopt the process on a larger scale and standardize on the new way to work.  If it makes things worse, stop the pilot and try another improvement suggested by the team, again on a small scale.   Repeat this process until the process performs satisfactorily.

When the people responsible for doing the work are given the opportunity to change their processes for the better, there’s a good chance the broader population that uses the process will ultimately align their behavior to the new process.  But the change will not be immediate and there may be some backsliding.  But, because the keepers of the process feel ownership of the new process and benefit from the change, they will continue to reinforce the new behavior until it becomes new behavior.  And if it turns out the new process needs to be modified further, the keepers of the process will make those changes and slowly align the behavior to match the process.

When the new process is better than the old one, people will ultimately follow the new process.  And the best way to make the new process better than the old one is to ask the people who do the work.

Image credit — Old Photo Profile

Goals, goals, goals.

All goals are arbitrary, but some are more arbitrary than others.

When your company treats goals like they’re not arbitrary, welcome to the US industrial complex.

What happens if you meet your year-end goals in June? Can you take off the rest of the year?

What happens if at year-end you meet only your mid-year goals? Can you retroactively declare your goals unreasonable?

What happens if at the start of the year you declare your year-end goals are unreasonable? Can you really know they’re unreasonable?

You can’t know a project’s completion date before the project is defined.  That’s a rule.

Why does the strategic planning process demand due dates for projects that are yet to be defined?

The ideal future state may be ideal, but it will never be real.

When the work hasn’t been done before, you can’t know when you’ll be done.

When you don’t know when the work will be done, any due date will do.

A project’s completion date should be governed by the work content, not someone’s year-end bonus.

Resources and progress are joined at the hip.  You can’t have one without the other.

If you are responsible for the work, you should be responsible for setting the completion date.

Goals are real, but they’re not really real.

“Arbitrary limitations II” by Marcin Wichary is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Two Sides of the Equation

If you want new behavior, you must embrace conflict.

If you can’t tolerate the conflict, you’ll do what you did last time.

If your point of view angers half and empowers everyone else, you made a difference.

If your point of view meets with 100% agreement, you wasted everyone’s time.

If your role is to create something from nothing, you’ve got to let others do the standard work.

If your role is to do standard work, you’ve got to let others create things from scratch.

If you want to get more done in the long term, you’ve got to make time to grow people.

If you want to get more done in the short term, you can’t spend time growing people.

If you do novel work, you can’t know when you’ll be done.

If you are asked for a completion date, I hope you’re not expected to do novel work.

If you’re in business, you’re in the people business.

If you’re not in the people business, you’ll soon be out of business.

If you call someone on their behavior and they thank you, you were thanked by a pro.

If you call someone on their behavior and they call you out for doing it, you were gaslit.

If you can’t justify doing the right project, reduce the scope, and do it under the radar.

If you can’t prevent the start of an unjust project, find a way to work on something else.

If you are given a fixed timeline and fixed resources, flex the schedule.

If you are given a fixed timeline, resources, and schedule, you’ll be late.

If you get into trouble, ask your Trust Network for help.

If you have no Trust Network, you’re in trouble.

If you have a problem, tell the truth and call it a problem.

If you can’t tell the truth, you have a big problem.

If you are called on your behavior, own it.

If you own your behavior, no one can call you on it.

Image credit – Mary Trebilco

Effectiveness at the Expense of Efficiency

Efficiency is a simple measurement – output divided by resources needed to achieve it. How much did you get done and how many people did you need to do it? What was the return on the investment? How much money did you make relative to how much you had to invest? We have efficiency measurements for just about everything. We are an efficiency-based society.

It’s easy to create a metric for efficiency. Figure out the output you can measure and divide it by the resources you think you used to achieve it. While a metric like this is easy to calculate, it likely won’t provide a good answer to what we think is the only question worth asking– how do we increase efficiency?

Problem 1. The resources you think are used to produce the output aren’t the only resources you used to generate the output.  There are many resources that contributed to the output that you did not measure. And not only that, you don’t know how much those resources actually cost.  You can try the tricky trick of fully burdened cost, where the labor rate is loaded with an overhead percentage.  But that’s, well, nothing more than an artifact of a contrived accounting system. You can do some other stuff like calculate the opportunity cost of deploying those resources on other projects. I’m not sure what that will get you, but it won’t get you the actual cost of achieving the output you think you achieved.

Problem 2. We don’t measure what’s important or meaningful.  We measure what’s easy to measure.  And that’s a big problem because you end up beating yourself about the head and shoulders trying to improve something that is easy to measure but not all that meaningful. The biggest problem here is local optimization.  You want something easy to measure so you cull out a small fraction of a larger process and increase the output of that small part of the process.  The thing is, your customer doesn’t care about the efficiency of that small piece of that process.  And, improving that small piece likely doesn’t do anything for the output of the total process.  If more products aren’t leaving the factory, you didn’t do anything.

Problem 3. Productivity isn’t all that important. What’s important is effectiveness.  If you are highly efficient at the wrong thing, you may be efficient, but you’re also ineffective. If you launch a product in a highly efficient way and no one buys it, your efficiency numbers may be off the charts, but your effectiveness numbers are in the toilet.

We have very few metrics on effectiveness.  But here are some questions a good effectiveness metric should help you answer.

  • Did we work on the right projects?
  • Did we make good decisions?
  • Did we put the right people on the projects?
  • Did we do what we said we’d do?
  • After the project, is the team excited to do a follow-on project?
  • Did our customers benefit from our work?
  • Do our partners want to work with us again?
  • Did we set ourselves up to do our work better next time?
  • Did we grow our young talent?
  • Did we have fun?
  • Do more people like to work at our company?
  • Have we developed more trust-based relationships over the last year?
  • Have we been more transparent with our workforce this year?

If I had a choice between efficiency and effectiveness, I’d choose effectiveness.

Image credit – Bruce Tuten

When It’s Time to Defy Gravity

If you pull hard on your team, what will they do? Will they rebel? Will they push back? Will they disagree? Will they debate? And after all that, will they pull with you? Will the pull for three weeks straight? Will they pull with their whole selves? How do you feel about that?

If you pull hard on your peers, what will they do? Will they engage? Will they even listen? Will they dismiss? And if they dismiss, will you persist? Will you pull harder? And when you pull harder, do they think more of you? And when you pull harder still, do they think even more of you? Do you know what they’ll do? And how do you feel about that?

If you push hard on your leadership, what will they do? Will they ‘lllisten or dismiss? And if they dismiss, will you push harder? When you push like hell, do they like that or do they become uncomfortable, what will you do?  Will they dislike it and they become comfortable and thankful you pushed? Whatever they feel, that’s on them. Do you believe that? If not, how do you feel about that?

When you say something heretical, does your team cheer or pelt you with fruit? Do they hang their heads or do they hope you do it again?  Whatever they do, they’ve watched your behavior for several years and will influence their actions.

When you openly disagree with the company line, do your peers cringe or ask why you disagree? Do they dismiss your position or do they engage in a discussion? Do they want this from you? Do they expect this from you? Do they hope you’ll disagree when you think it’s time? Whatever they do, will you persist? And how do you feel about that?

When you object to the new strategy, does your leadership listen? Or do they un-invite you to the next strategy session?  And if they do, do you show up anyway? Or do they think you’re trying to sharpen the strategy? Do they think you want the best for the company? Do they know you’re objecting because everyone else in the room is afraid to? What they think of your dissent doesn’t matter.  What matters is your principled behavior over the last decade.

If there’s a fire, does your team hope you’ll run toward the flames? Or, do they know you will?

If there’s a huge problem that everyone is afraid to talk about, do your peers expect you get right to the heart of it? Or, do they hope you will? Or, do they know you will?

If it’s time to defy gravity, do they know you’re the person to call?

And how do you feel about that?

Image credit – The Western Sky

The Giving Cycle

The best gifts are the ones that demonstrate to the recipients that you understand them. You understand what they want; you understand their size (I’m and men’s large); you understand their favorite color; you know what they already have; you know what they’re missing, and you know what they need.

On birthdays and holidays, everyone knows it’s time to give gifts and this makes it easy for us to know them for what they are. And, just to make sure everyone knows the gift is a gift, we wrap them in colorful paper or place them in a fancy basket and formally present them. But gifts given at work are different.

Work isn’t about birthdays and holidays, it’s about the work. There’s no fixed day or date to give them. And there’s no expectation that gifts are supposed to be given.  And gifts given at work are not the type that can be wrapped in colorful paper. In that way, gifts given at work are rare. And when they are given, often they’re not recognized as gifts.

The gift of a challenge. When you give someone a challenge, that’s a gift. Yes, the task is difficult. Yes, the request is unreasonable. Yes, it’s something they’ve never done before. And, yes, you believe they’re up to the challenge. And, yes, you’re telling them they’re worthy of the work. And whether the complete 100% of the challenge or only 5% of it, you praise them. You tell them, Holy sh*t!  That was amazing.  I gave you an impossible task and you took it on. Most people wouldn’t have even tried and you put your whole self into it.  You gave it a go.  Wow.  I hope you’re proud of what you did because I am. The trick for the giver is to praise.

The gift of support. When you support someone that shouldn’t need it, that’s a gift. When the work is clearly within a person’s responsibility and the situation temporarily outgrows them, and you give them what they need, that’s a gift. Yes, it’s their responsibility. Yes, they should be able to handle it. And, yes, you recognize the support they need. Yes, you give them support in a veiled way so that others don’t recognize the gift-giving. And, yes, you do it in a way that the receiver doesn’t have to acknowledge the support and they can save face. The trick for the giver is to give without leaving fingerprints.

The gift of level 2 support. When you give the gift of support defined above and the gift is left unopened, it’s time to give the gift of level 2 support. Yes, you did what you could to signal you left a gift on their doorstep. Yes, they should have seen it for what it was. And, yes, it’s time to send a level 2 gift to their boss in the form of an email sent in confidence. Tell their boss what you tried to do and why you tried to do it.  And tell them the guidance you tried to give. This one is called level 2 giving because two people get gifts and because it’s higher-level giving. The trick for the giver is to give in confidence and leave no fingerprints.

The gift of truth. When you give someone the truth of the situation when you know they don’t want to hear it, that’s a gift. Yes, they misunderstand the situation. Yes, it’s their responsibility to understand it. Yes, they don’t want your gift of truth. And, yes, you give it to them because they’re off-track. Yes, you give it to them because you care about them. And, yes you give the gift respectfully and privately.  You don’t give a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum. And you don’t make the decision for them.  You tell them why you see it differently and tell them you hope they see your gift as it was intended – as a gift. The trick for the giver is to give respectfully and be okay whether the gift is opened or not.

The gift of forgiveness. When someone has mistreated you or hurt you, and you help them anyway, that’s a gift. Yes, they need help. Yes, the pain is still there. And, yes, you help them anyway. They hurt you because of the causes and conditions of their situation. It wasn’t personal.  They would have treated anyone that way. And, yes, this is the most difficult gift to give. And that’s why it’s last on the list. And the trick for the giver is to feel the hurt and give anyway.  It will help the hurt go away.

It may not seem this way, but the gifts are for the giver. Givers grow by giving. And best of all for the givers, they get to watch as their gifts grow getters into givers. And that’s magical. And that brings joy.

And the giving cycle spirals on.

Image credit – KTIQS.LCV

Whatever your situation, be thankful for it.

If you’re thankful for the success you’ve had, you’re in for a letdown because your success will be short-lived. And don’t take it personally – the Universe knows regression to the mean is real and it will bring you to your knees whether you believe it or not. Like with all things, success is impermanent.

Your success has a half-life.  Sure, your success has been good. You’ve made money; your brand has prospered, and everyone is happy. But, don’t get too comfortable because it’s going away.  Your recipe will run out of gas as your competition targets your success and figures out how to do it better. But don’t blame your competitors’ hard work. Blame yourself and your success.  It’s pretty clear your success has blocked you from doing things differently.  The real problem isn’t your competitors’ success; the real problem is your success.  Your success has blocked you from trying something new. As the thinking goes – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But, if it ain’t broke now, it will be broken soon.

If you’re sad (unthankful) because of the failure you’ve experienced, you’re in for a burst of goodness because your failure will be short-lived. And don’t feel special – the Universe knows regression to the mean is real and it will bring you success if you believe you’re worthy of it. Like with all things, failure is impermanent.

Your failure has a half-life. Sure, your failure has been bad. You’ve not made money; your brand has suffered; and everyone is unhappy.  But, don’t hold onto your discomfort because it’s going away.  Because your recipe hasn’t worked, you’ll target your competitors’ success and try a new recipe.  It’s pretty clear your lack of success caused you to try a new recipe. And because you tried something new, you figured out how to do it better.  But Don’t give credit to your competitors.  Give credit to yourselves for trying something new. The real root cause isn’t your competitors’ success; the real forcing function is your lack of success.  Your lack of success has opened up your thinking and enabled you to try something new. As the thinking goes – if it didn’t work last time, do something different. And that’s just what you did.

Don’t be thankful for your success; be thankful you have smart people who want to make a difference. And don’t be unthankful for your failure; be thankful you have smart people who want to make a difference.

As a leader in a successful company, what will you do to support people who want to make a difference? As a leader, you must protect their new ideas from the army of people that want to regurgitate what was done last time. Because of your success, their new ideas will be taken out at the knees. And what will you do? Will you roll over and kowtow to un-thinkers? Or, will you take the bullets and advocate for ideas that violate your long-in-the-tooth, geriatric recipe that can no longer deliver what it used to?

And as a leader in a yet-to-be successful company, what will you do to support people who want to make a difference? As a leader, you must protect their new ideas from the army of people that have no idea what to do next. Because of your failure, their new ideas will be met with negativity and derision. And what will you do? Will you give in to the naysayers? Or, will you take the bullets and advocate for ideas that transcend your unsuccessful recipe?

Be thankful for your success, but don’t let it limit you from trying something new.  And be thankful for your failure, and use it to power your new ideas.

Whatever your situation, don’t dismiss it. Whatever your situation, learn from it.  And whatever your situation, be thankful for it.

Image credit — Irudayam

How To Know if You’re Moving in a New Direction

If you want to move in a new direction, you can call it disruption, innovation, or transformation. Or, if you need to rally around an initiative, call it Industrial Internet of Things or Digital Strategy. The naming can help the company rally around a new common goal, so take some time to argue about and get it right.  But, settle on a name as quickly as you can so you can get down to business. Because the name isn’t the important part.  What’s most important is that you have an objective measure that can help you see that you’ve stopped talking about changing course and started changing it.

When it’s time to change course, I have found that companies error on the side of arguing what to call it and how to go about it.  Sure, this comes at the expense of doing it, but that’s the point.  At the surface, it seems like there’s a need for the focus groups and investigatory dialog because no one knows what to do.  But it’s not that the company doesn’t know what it must do. It’s that no one is willing to make the difficult decision and own the consequences of making it.

Once the decision is made to change course and the new direction is properly named, the talk may have stopped but the new work hasn’t started. And this is when it’s time to create an objective measure to help the company discern between talking about the course change and actively changing the course.

Here it is in a nutshell. There can be no course change unless the projects change.

Here’s the failure mode to guard against. When the naming conventions in the operating plans reflect the new course heading but sitting under the flashy new moniker is the same set of tired, old projects.  The job of the objective measure is to discern between the same old projects and new projects that are truly aligned with the new direction.

And here’s the other half of the nutshell. There can be no course change unless the projects solve different problems.

To discern if the company is working in a new direction, the objective measure is a one-page description of the new customer problem each project will solve.  The one-page limit helps the team distill their work into a singular customer problem and brings clarity to all. And framing the problem in the customer’s context helps the team know the project will bring new value to the customer. Once the problem is distilled, everyone will know if the project will solve the same old problem or a new one that’s aligned with the company’s new course heading.  This is especially helpful the company leaders who are on the hook to move the company in the new direction.  And ask the team to name the customer.  That way everyone will know if you are targeting the same old customer or new ones.

When you have a one-page description of the problem to be solved for each project in your portfolio, it will be clear if your company is working in a new direction. There’s simply no escape from this objective measure.

Of course, the next problem is to discern if the resources have actually moved off the old projects and are actively working on the new projects. Because if the resources don’t move to the new projects, you’re not solving new problems and you’re not moving in the new direction.

Image credit – Walt Stoneburner

520 Wednesdays in a Row

This is a special post for me. It’s a huge milestone. With this post, I have written a new blog post every Wednesday evening for the last ten years. That’s 520 Wednesdays in a row. I haven’t missed a single one and none have been repeats.  As I write this, the significance is starting to sink in.

Most of the posts I’ve written at the kitchen table with my earbuds set firmly in my ears and my family going about its business around me. But I’ve written them in the car; I’ve written them in a hospital waiting room; I’ve written them in a diner over lunch while on a three-week motorcycle trip, and I’ve written them at a state park while on vacation.  No matter what, I’ve published a post on Wednesday night.

I write to challenge myself.  I write to teach myself. I write to provide my own mentorship. I have no one to proof my writing and there are always mistakes of grammar, spelling and word choice. But that doesn’t stop me. No one limits the topics I cover, nor does anyone help me choose a topic. It’s just me and my laptop battling it out. It doesn’t have to be that way, but that’s the way it has been for the last ten years.

I used to read, respond and obsess over comments written by readers, but I started to limit my writing based on them so now my posts are closed to comments. I write more freely now, but I miss the connection that came from the comments.

I used to obsessively track the number of subscribers and Google analytics data. Now I don’t know how many subscribers I have, nor do I know who has visited my website over the last couple of years. Now I just write. But maybe I should check.

When you can write about anything you want, the topics you choose make a fingerprint, or maybe a soul-print. I don’t know what my choices say about me, but that’s the old me.

What’s the grand plan? There isn’t one. What’s next? It’s uncertain.

Thanks for reading.

Mike

 

image credit — Joey Gannon

Will your work make the world a better place?

As parents, our lives are centered around our children and their needs. In the shortest-term, it’s all about their foundational needs like food, water, and shelter. In the medium-term, it’s all about education and person-to-person interactions. And in the longest-term, it’s all about creating the causes and conditions to help them grow into kind, caring citizens that will do the right things after we’re gone. As parents, our focus on our children gives meaning to our lives.

Though work is not the same as our children, what if we took a similar short-medium-long view to our work? And, like with our children, what if we looked at our work as a source of meaning in our lives?

Short-term, our work must pay for our food and our mortgage. And if can’t cover these expenses, the job isn’t viable. In that way, it’s easy to tell if our job works at the month-to-month timescale. You may not know if the job is right for you in the long-term, but you know if it can support your lifestyle month-to-month. And even if it’s a job we love, we know we’ve got to find another job because this one doesn’t support our family.

Medium-term, our work should pay the bills, but it should be more than that. It should allow us to be our best selves and be an avenue for continued growth and development. If you have to pretend to be someone else, you need a new job. And if you’re doing the same thing year-on-year, you need a new job. But, where it’s easy to know that your job doesn’t allow you to pay for your food and rent, it’s more difficult to acknowledge that your job isn’t right because you’ve got to wear a mask and it’s a dead-end job where next year will be the same as last year.

Long-term, our work should pay the bills, should demand we be our best selves, should demand we grow, and should make the world a better place, even after we’re gone. And where it’s difficult to acknowledge you’re in the wrong job because you must wear a mask and do what you did last year, it’s almost impossible to acknowledge you’re in the wrong job because you’re not making the world a better place.

So, I ask you now to stop for a minute and ask yourself some difficult questions. How are you making the world a better place? How are you developing yourself so you can make the world a better place?
How are you growing the future leaders that will make the world a better place?

For many reasons, it’s difficult to allocate your energy in a way that makes the world a better place. But, to me, because the world changes so slowly, the number one reason is that it’s unlikely your work will change the world in your lifetime. But, as a parent, that shouldn’t matter.

As a parent, if your work won’t change the world in your lifetime but will change the world in your children’s lifetime, that’s reason enough to do the right work. And, if your work won’t change the world in your children’s lifetime but will change it in your grandchildren’s lifetime, that is also reason enough to do the right work.

Image credit – Niall Collins

Mike Shipulski Mike Shipulski
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