The Business Sensai

The other day, my DVD player stopped working. Naturally, this happened the night I was sitting down to watch a movie I’d been looking forward to. Quite simply, the tray wouldn’t open (presumably, it wouldn’t close either, but there was no way to test that). As we all know, a feature of modern electronics is that there are “No user serviceable parts inside.”

Nonetheless, I decided to open it up anyway. If nothing else, I figured I could at least recover the trapped DVD one of my kids had left in the machine.

Opening it up was an interesting experience. Inside was mostly empty space with a tray and a circuit board. Apparently the major difference between a portable player and a non-portable one is the amount of wasted space.

There was also one user serviceable part: the rubber band.

Yes, in the midst of the electronics there was a broken rubber band. That rubber band acted as the “drive train” to open and close the DVD tray. Just think about that: all this high tech electronics rendered completely useless by the failure of a sixty cent rubber band. How much is that rubber band really worth? Sometimes the value is not the cost of the item but what it makes possible. Sometimes the critical problem that is blocking us from moving forward turns out to be something small and simple, but only if we know where to look and what to look for. While I could have replaced the DVD player, that would have been a much more expensive solution than replacing the rubber band. Knowing the real problem enabled me to pick the best possible solution.

I was asked recently about my opinion on attendance point systems.

“Why?” I replied.

The person explained her company was having problems with absenteeism and people changing shifts without notifying anyone in authority. Based on this, she wanted my opinion of attendance point systems, presumably on the logic that implementing one would solve her problem. Unfortunately, without knowing exactly why people are not showing up for work on time and without knowing why they’re constantly switching shifts, implementing an attendance point system is as likely as not a solution in search of a problem. Sure it might work; on the other hand, it might not work. It’s basically a roll of the dice.

So why jump to that solution? Simple. It’s easy. Faced with a problem without an obvious solution, the natural response is to impose a solution that fits the symptoms. Symptoms, unfortunately, are not the problem; they’re just the symptoms. Like taking an antibiotic for the flu, it doesn’t help and may make you feel worse.

Instead, we need to work backward from the symptoms to understand the underlying problem. With my DVD player, the symptom was that the tray wouldn’t slide out. Had I assumed the problem was that the electronics were fried, I would have tossed it and bought a new one. By investigating the problem, I had a working DVD player in less than fifteen minutes.

Investigating the problem, however, requires a certain amount of effort and frequently appears overwhelming and expensive. The lure of an obvious, easy, and, above all, cheap solution is very strong. The fact is, there are a lot of obvious, inexpensive solutions to many problems. In a business, it’s particularly easy to find an easy solution particularly if you don’t care if it actually works. If you want a working solution, though, the choices become somewhat more limited.

Investigating a problem is rarely as overwhelming as it first appears. With the DVD player, it was easy to open it up and see what was going on inside. With human systems, on the other hand, taking them apart in that way can be a bit problematic. Putting them back together again is even more tricky. The real key is to see how often the symptoms appear and under what conditions. What other symptoms are there? What do people say when you ask them about their experiences and their observations? As you put together a picture of the symptoms and when they appear, you can start brainstorming about possible causes. Does your organization have a cold? The flu? Is it suffering from growing pains?

At one company, everything was going great until they went public, had a huge influx of cash, and began a rapid expansion. Suddenly, all sorts of symptoms appeared: increased conflict, passive-aggressive behavior, confusion, inability to follow through on decisions, and so forth. Fixing the problem required first identifying what was really going on, and then crafting a solution appropriate to that organization. None of the problems were that big, but, like that rubber band, they were in critical places.

In a sense, it’s not how big the problem is that matters most. What matters most is what that problem is preventing you from doing.

How much was that rubber band worth again?

Originally published in Corp! Magazine.

“Is the product done?” a certain manager asked during a product review meeting.

“It is done,” replied the engineer building the product.

“Are there any problems?”

“There are problems.”

“What is the problem?”

“It does not work.”

“Why doesn’t it work?”

“It is not done.”

I will spare you the transcription of the subsequent half hour of this not particularly funny comedy routine. The manager and the engineer managed to perform this little dance of talking past one another without ever seeming to realize just how ludicrous it sounded to everyone else in the room. It was rather like Monty Python’s classic Hungarian-English phrasebook sketch, in which translations in either direction are random. In other words, the Hungarian phrase, “I would like to buy a ticket,” might be translated to the English phrase, “My hovercraft is full of eels.”

It was extremely funny when Monty Python performed it. As for the manager and the engineer, well, perhaps they just didn’t have the comedic timing of Python’s John Cleese and Graham Chapman.

[SYSTEM-AD-LEFT]As it happens, “my hovercraft is full of eels” moments come about far too often. What was unusual in this situation is that it involved only two people. Usually, considerably more people take part. Thus, instead of a not particularly amusing exchange between two people, there is an extremely frustrating exchange involving several people. The most common failure to communicate is the game of telephone: as the message passes along the line, it becomes increasingly distorted.

What I hear from teams over and over is, “We are communicating! We send email to everyone.” This is where the hovercraft starts to fill with eels. Broadcasting is not really communicating: effective business communications require a certain amount of back and forth, questioning and explaining, before everyone is on the same page.

Who talks to whom? When you send out an email, do questions come back to you? Or do people on the team quietly ask one another to explain what you meant? While it’s comforting to believe that every missive we send out is so carefully crafted as to be completely unambiguous, very few of us write that well. Of that select few, even fewer can do it all the time. Particularly in the early stages of a project, if there are no questions, then there are certainly problems.

When someone else asks a question, either via email or in a meeting, does everyone wait for you to respond? Even worse, does Bob only jump into a thread if Fred jumps in first? Who is Bob responding to at that point, you or Fred? Are you still addressing the main topic or is the hovercraft starting to become eel infested?

It can be extremely frustrating to ask, “Are there any questions?” and receive either dead silence or questions about something trivial. It can easily become tempting to assume that there are no questions and just race full speed ahead. However, until employees figure out how much each person understands about the project and how you will respond to apparently dumb questions, they will be cautious about what they ask. Their curiosity is as much about one another and about you as it is about the project. How that curiosity gets satisfied determines whether you have productive conversations or a hovercraft that is full of eels. In the former case, you get strong employee engagement; in the latter case, you don’t.

If you’ve been working with a team for some months, or longer, and people are still not asking questions then there are really only two possibilities: either your team is composed of professional mind-readers or you are about to find a room full of those pesky eels. No project is ever perfectly defined from the beginning. Questions and debate should be ongoing throughout the development or production cycle. A lack of questions tells you that there is a lack of trust between the team members and between the team members and you. When trust is lacking, so is engagement.

Now some good news: remedying that lack of trust isn’t all that complicated. It does, however, require a certain amount of persistence and patience.

Start by highlighting each person’s role and contribution to the project. Why are they there? What makes them uniquely qualified to fill the role they are in? Be specific and detailed. If you can’t clearly define their roles, you can rest assured that they can’t either.  Questions come when people are clear about their roles. Disengagement comes when people are not clear about their roles.

Prime the pump with questions. Demonstrate that you don’t have all the answers and that you need the help of the team to find them. Give each person a chance to play the expert while you ask the dumb questions. When you set the tone, the others will follow. Communications start with the person in charge.

Separate producing answers from evaluating answers. Collect up the possibilities and take a break before you start examining them and making decisions about them. Brainstorming without evaluating allows ideas to build upon one another and apparently unworkable ideas to spark other ideas. Pausing to examine each potential answer as it comes up kills that process.

Encourage different forms of brainstorming: some people are very analytical, some are intuitive, some generate ideas by cracking jokes, others pace, and so on. Choose a venue where people are comfortable and only step in if the creative juices start to run dry or tempers start to get short. In either case, that means you need to take a break.  Intense discussions are fine, heated discussions not so much.

Initially, you will have to make all the decisions. That’s fine, but don’t get too comfortable with it. As trust and engagement build, the team will want to become more involved in the decision making process. Invite them in: that demonstration of trust will further build engagement and foster effective communications. Effective communications, in turn, builds trust and engagement.

Having a hovercraft full of eels isn’t the real problem. The real problem is what a hovercraft full of eels tells you about the trust, engagement, and communications in your company.

I was very pleased to see that Lizzie Stark’s new book, “Leaving Mundania: Inside the World of Grownup Make-Believe” is now available. Lizzie’s book is an excellent explanation of live-action roleplaying (larping) and how it works.

But  wait? Isn’t larping just a game? How can it help my business? I’m glad you asked.

All businesses need to provide leadership to their members, motivate employees, and negotiate with individuals and organizations. The problem is practicing those skills in an environment that doesn’t feel artificial. A well-designed, serious larp provides an engrossing, entertaining training experience. Players are able to get into the game and as a result deal with the problems that come up much as they would in real life. Whether a player gives up in frustration after encountering an obstacle or comes up with a creative out of the box solution, that tells you they’ll likely do the same thing on the job. Conversely, when someone shines in the game, but is a mediocre performer on the job, that alerts employers to untapped potential.

In sports, teams practice their skills over and over to deal with every conceivable scenario. Businesses rarely have that luxury. When I design a serious larp for a business, the experience of playing in the scenario enables employees to practice and hone skills before the critical situation in which they are needed. Employees also have the opportunity to experiment and make mistakes in an environment in which there are no financial consequences to the business. Finally employees who need additional skill training can be identified before they fail on the job.

If you want an academic treatment of larping, click here. Otherwise, I encourage you take a look at “Leaving Mundania,” and think about how you can use the games she describes to help your business (and have a good time!).

Originally published in American Business Magazine.

“I’m looking forward to seeing the results of our work when I return from my two week vacation in Hawaii.”

The coughing and sputtering sounds that broke the silence came from one of the vice presidents who had just choked on his coffee. He had apparently not been briefed on the content of the talk that Fred, the CEO, was giving.

The team was pushing hard to hit an aggressive product launch deadline. The CEO decided they needed a shot of inspiration, a few words of encouragement. He called a meeting in which he exhorted the team to work long hours, work weekends and give up time with their families in order to hit the deadline. Had it not been for his rather dramatic final sentence, his little speech would have been utterly unmemorable. As it was, however, it became the stuff of legend. By the time he returned from Hawaii, two people had quit. Within six months, half the company was gone. After a year, only the CEO’s footsteps echoed hollowly in the empty corridors and offices of what had once been a thriving company.

This, it may be argued, was not the way to build loyalty.

To be fair, it was not this isolated incident that led to the exodus. The Hawaiian vacation was merely the final straw, which, under other circumstances, might have been taken as a joke. While it’s certainly possible, albeit difficult, to lose employee loyalty in a heartbeat, building employee loyalty is a process. Depending on how well you’ve managed that process, your Hawaiian vacation might be the source of some good-natured grumbling or it might be the death knell for your company. Context is everything. As for your customers, well, if you haven’t managed to gain employee loyalty, you can forget about customer loyalty.

So what is this process? In today’s environment of tight budgets and limited raises, what can be done to keep your employees coming back? It’s not as hard as you may think.

To begin with, though, let’s debunk that popular myth that employees had better be loyal because there’s nowhere else for them to go in this economy. If your business is in a profitable niche, then you can bet that other businesses will join you there. Nothing attracts competition like the scent of money. During the last recession, I had a senior manager boast to me that he’d just scoffed at an employee who asked for a raise. “I laughed at him and told him he should be grateful that he has a job!”

A short time later, that employee had a new job with a significantly higher rate of pay. If he’d received a raise, he wouldn’t even have been looking. That manager’s department, meanwhile, was set back six months by the loss of that employee.

Sure, it’s a lousy economy, and sure, it’s hard to find a job. However, those companies that are hiring like nothing better than to lure employees away from their competitors. Indeed, foolish though it may be (see the article, Who Betrays One Master ), a great many companies will only hire those who are already employed somewhere else. Never assume that your employees have nowhere to go.

The first step to building employee loyalty is to give them something to be loyal to. If that’s their paycheck, then all you’ve done is hire a bunch of mercenaries. That’s fine, until someone offers them more money. If you don’t want mercenaries, though, start by getting people excited. What is your company doing? Why does anyone care? Why should they care? Why should your customers care? It doesn’t matter whether you’re a high-tech startup, an accounting firm or a landscaper. If you can’t clearly and succinctly state the value that you are bringing and get people excited about providing that value, you’re in trouble. Recognize that your message doesn’t have to appeal to everyone. Rather, it only needs to appeal to the people you want to hire and, eventually, to those whom you’d like to turn into your clients.

Crafting an exciting message isn’t always easy, but the benefits are worth it. Most of us want to take pride in our work. The more vividly we can see ourselves providing value, the more motivated and loyal we are. Similarly, when clients receive value from a company that isn’t afraid to stand up and say, “This is who we are!” they also become more loyal. People like to support causes they believe in, so make sure your company is the company people want to spend money to support. This is something our friend Fred did well. His product was one his employees were initially extremely excited by and his customers couldn’t wait to get their hands on it. Unfortunately, that’s as far as Fred went.

Now that you’ve established the frame, if you will, the next step is to start filling in the details. Having an exciting message is only the beginning. You have to help your employees see how they fit into your corporate story. Remember, when it comes to stories, no one wants to be the bit part. Maybe everyone doesn’t want to be the hero, but virtually everyone does want to feel competent, important, valuable and useful. Exactly how you make this happen will vary somewhat from person to person, but here are some elements to focus on.

How many hats do employees wear? Some people thrive when given the opportunity to wear multiple hats on the job. Other people like to wear just one hat, but they wear it very, very well. Whether you need employees to do a variety of different things or one thing well, recognize that those alternatives often appeal to different people. When you get a match, you also get increased loyalty. When you give people the opportunity to experiment and potentially expand what they’re doing, you get even more loyalty— provided they don’t think they’ll be fired for failing. But not all experiments are successful. The best way to get employees to do more is to let them develop an area of strength and then try new things. If they succeed, great! If not, they can retreat to their area of strength and try again. Over time, you’ll end up with steadily more competent employees.

The more competent your employees feel, the more loyal they will be. By extension, the more competent and loyal your employees, the more satisfied, and hence more loyal, your customers. Fred got this one wrong on two counts: First, he rarely let anyone experiment to see if they could expand their duties. When he did, he focused on weakness instead of strength and had no tolerance for failure. The net result was that everyone swiftly became afraid to try anything new or volunteer to help out beyond the limits of their job lest it not go well.

Employees also want to feel as though they matter to the company. Can your employees see how their work contributes to the company? When I worked for IBM in the 1980s, I was a very small cog in a very large machine. Even my most successful project was a rounding error on Big Blue’s balance sheet. Fred’s company was considerably smaller and each person could see how their work fit in and mattered. Fred’s biggest mistake was that he didn’t take the time to recognize the work his employees were doing and remind them how much it mattered. Even so, the employees quit in inverse order to the importance of their contribution. Make sure everyone can see their contribution to the company and periodically thank them for it. The more visible and important their work, the more loyal your employees will be.

Part of feeling competent and important is being able to make your own decisions. While any given employee may only be able to make decisions in limited areas, nonetheless, it’s important to provide employees with the opportunity to make as many decisions as possible. Fred needed to be part of every decision, even the most trivial. Not only did this slow down progress, it also left the experts in the company mightily offended. If you’re going to go to the trouble and expense of hiring highly skilled people, make sure you let them make decisions on the best ways to exercise those skills. Create a framework, provide guidelines and structure, but give them some freedom. For example, you might give your customer support people the authority to provide refunds to any customer up to $100 (or $1,000 or $10,000 depending on the nature of your company and product/service). They’ll feel good because they’re getting to exercise their own judgment and help the customers. Then, the customers will be happy because their problem was resolved quickly. Once again, you’ve increased loyalty.

Finally, how will your employees know they’re doing the right thing? Let’s face it, no one wants to have to ask how well they’re doing and you really don’t want people bugging you all the time. That means they need to be able to see the fruits of their labors as part of the job. Developing feedback systems that keep you mostly out of the way is not an easy task, but it is a very worthwhile one. The easier it is for employees to get feedback on their progress, the more they’ll enjoy their work and the greater their loyalty. In addition, taking the time to talk to your employees one-on-one and let them know you see their efforts and appreciate them is very powerful. Back when IBM was a tiny, struggling company, a big part of Tom Watson’s secret to building loyalty was taking the time to meet everyone. Tom Watson, Jr., presiding over a significantly larger IBM, maintained the tradition.

If you take the time to get to know your employees, you also reap an additional benefit: When you know your employees as individuals, you can reward them as individuals. Rewarding someone at random because “I’ve seen your work and I just wanted to say thank you,” is a great way of increasing loyalty. Making that reward something the individual employee really values is even better. Fred could never bring himself to reward people. Instead, he always complained that their work wasn’t good enough and would find excuses not to give rewards he’d promised.

Loyalty is not something that just happens. It’s something that you build over time and put in the bank for the times when you need it. If it’s not there, a single wrong word can cost you your employees or your largest customer. If it’s there, well, you can accomplish almost anything. The choice is yours.

I was lying on my back. Standing around me were four people who, only two weeks before, had been teaching a class on appropriate emergency response in jujitsu.

The fact that I was flat on my back on the ground was not, in one sense, unusual. A friend of mine was taking his black belt exam and I had volunteered to let him demonstrate his throws on me. Things went slightly off the rails when he threw me, lost his balance, and ended up kicking me in the head.

The “thwock!” echoed through the gym.

One of the instructors was supposed to take charge. They stared down at me. I stared up at them. Eventually, I said, “Someone get me an ice pack.”

One of the men jumped slightly, turned, and ran out of the room. A moment later, he ran back in with one of those first aid kid chemical cold packs in his right hand.

“It’s not cold,” he yelled.

“You have to squeeze it,” came a voice from somewhere in the room.

In case you were ever curious, yes, it is possible to squeeze one of those cold packs too hard.

For such a small cold pack, the contents covered a remarkably large area.

I looked at my now soaking gi. I got to my feet.

“I’m fine now. Please don’t help me any more.”

Fortunately, in this situation, there was no permanent harm done and the fact that several people froze at the moment of crisis was merely embarrassing. My gi wasn’t even stained.

Unfortunately, many businesses are not so lucky. Even more unfortunately, it’s not the actual disasters that freeze them: handling the rare fire or power failure is barely a blip in the proverbial routine. Rather, the “disasters” that throw everything off balance and freeze decision making in its tracks are those that could have been anticipated or for which management thought that they had prepared.

Despite all their training, when the accident occurred, the four jujitsu instructors metaphorically lost their balance by focusing on the image of how bad it could be. That prevented them from acting immediately to determine how bad it actually was.

At Lacunae Software, the ship date was two days off when QA found a major bug in the software. Rather than stop, investigate the severity, and determine an appropriate course of action, the CEO announced that delaying the ship would clearly doom the company. He castigated QA for disloyalty and ordered the product to ship on schedule. Customers were not happy, costing the company more than the delay would have. Acting out of fear of how bad it could have been made the situation worse.

When things are going well and something suddenly goes wrong, it can be very easy to focus on all the potential negatives. That doesn’t help. Successful companies have the habit of focusing on what can go right. Developing that mindset takes practice:

Take a deep breathe and recognize that you have more time than you think. This is quite probably the hardest step.

• Remind yourself of the vision for your product and company (you do have a vision, right?).
• Review the steps necessary to manifest that vision. It can help to write them down as you go through them.
• List the things that can go right to move you forward from where you are. Be realistic, and also optimistic.
• Any time you find yourself focusing on what can go wrong, stop and shift back to what can go right. Evaluate the problems later.

Far too many companies never define their vision nor do they map out the path to success. The secret to success is staying on balance. The secret to not losing balance is knowing where you’re going, reminding yourself how you’ll get there, and focusing on the positive.

I frequently hear about someone exhibiting good “leadership traits.” Someone who exhibits leadership traits, the argument goes, is more likely to become a successful leader, or at least a leader.

The whole concept of identifying traits and then attempting to identify those traits in other people as a way of meaning, well, anything has a long and venerable history.

In the field of Sport Psychology, a great deal of effort was put into identifying the traits of top athletes and then using those traits to identify potential top athletes from amongst young athletes.

It failed. Miserably. Despite this fact, it’s still popular. In one of my graduate sport psych classes, we were presented with the data on using traits to identify potential top athletes (worse than chance, as I recall). Despite this, about a third of the class insisted that they would still use that method of selecting new athletes for the Olympic Team because, “It just has to work!”

In the field of leadership, a great deal of effort was spent on identifying the traits of top leaders and then using that information to identify potential leaders. It failed as well.

While it seems like a very attractive concept, that if we could just identify the traits of top <X>, then future top <X> would share those traits, it just doesn’t work. Amongst other things that came out of the various studies is that many of these top athletes and leaders did not even exhibit those traits or characteristics when they were young (were they traits that simply hadn’t manifested or learned behaviors? Not clear), and many of those who did never developed into top <X> despite all the attempts to make them so.

A good current example of this flawed reasoning is something someone recently brought to my attention: the concept of Edison Traits. It feels good, but based on the results of similar efforts in other areas, is likely to be meaningless. It appears to be based on the argument that if someone exhibits traits similar to those the history books tell us that Edison exhibited, they’ll grow up to be like Edison or something. It also appears to argue that Edison himself must have had ADHD (I’m not sure why), and that this is beneficial in becoming a brilliant inventor like Edison.

The idea that Thomas Edison had ADHD is, itself, questionable. Intensely inquisitive, challenge seeking, high intelligence does not equal ADHD (so if you think that everyone in your office has ADHD, odds are pretty good you need to take another look…).

At the risk of going off on a tangent, the general concept of trying to argue that ADHD is “Hunter’s Mind” or anything else other than a difficulty in executive functioning is also flawed. That’s not to say that ADHD can’t be used to your advantage: consider Robin Williams.

However, the argument that ADHD is an advantage to a hunter (for example) ignores the reality of survival hunting: long periods of boredom, hours spent practicing skills, etc. To the extent that I’ve read up on this topic, in present day Hunter/Gatherer societies (e.g. in Papua New Guinea), people who cannot regulate attention do not make good hunters.

To some extent, at least some of these beliefs stem from the observation that kids with ADHD do better in martial arts and similar activities. The key is “do better than what?” They do better than they would in more sedentary activities and better than they do in activities with less immediate feedback. Do they do better than kids without ADHD? Once we correct for athleticism, intelligence, etc, the answer is no. Everything that is seen as an advantage for kids with ADHD (e.g. rapid field shifting) is quite easily learnable with sufficient practice by people without ADHD, and those people without ADHD are also much more able to spend the time in routine, boring practice (granted, highly intelligent children and adults often have trouble with routine practice, but that’s not ADHD — that’s normal boredom with routine activities with distant payoffs. The best fix is to make the activity more interesting if at all possible).

Moving back to the question of leadership traits, your odds are better if you train people in effective leadership skills. If you really want to see how someone will be as a leader, put them in scenarios in which they can demonstrate leadership (if you don’t want to risk the farm, predictive scenario serious games are a good tool for leadership identification and development).

In the end, performance, not some mysterious set of traits, is your best method for identifying leaders.

I was listening to a news report this morning about North Korea’s latest rocket launch. It was quite the show, with hordes of journalists invited to watch and report on North Korea’s military might. According to one report, North Korea was also showing off for potential buyers of its military equipment.

As anyone who has ever given a software demo might suspect, North Korea’s rocket demo had similar results: it crashed. Unlike software, you don’t get to reboot the rocket and try again.

Although the news report wasn’t entirely clear on what happened, it appears that just before the first stage of the rocket finished its burn and dropped away, stages two and three both tried to ignite.

This did not go well.

Although perhaps less visually spectacular, the results are much the same when a business attempts to implement a “North Korean Rocket” approach to organizational change.

Organizational change is never easy, and on top of that, most companies make it considerably harder than it needs to be.

Change is a process: like launching a rocket, each stage needs to fire in turn. Attempting to fire the stages all at once or out of order only leads to a spectacular boom.

At least with a rocket, you might get some visually stunning fireworks.

The first stage of organizational change is getting your employees comfortable with the idea of making a change in the first place! This is one situation where focusing on what’s wrong is the right thing to do. You want your employees talking about why the status quo isn’t so hot, and how things really could and should be better. After all, if they’re all happy with the status quo, why would they want to change? As many a manager has learned, the more force you apply to make people change, the slower they go and the more likely your change initiate will fail.

Once people are in the mood for change, it’s time for the second stage: building some excitement. Rather than grumbling about how bad things are, it’s time to ask how things could be better. What would the company be like if we did make a change? How would that feel? What would working at that changed company be like? Look at both benefits to the company and benefits to the individual: no one wants a change that will leave them worse off.

In stage three, it’s time to focus on creating the confidence to change successfully. No matter how excited people may be at the idea of change, if they don’t believe they can do it, they won’t really try. It’s time to get them talking about previous successes, especially successful changes they’ve made in the past.

Finally, in stage four, it’s time to get people contributing ideas for change. Getting everyone involved dramatically increases the odds of success. The more confident and excited people are, the better the ideas they’ll come up with. The more involved they are in the idea generation process, the harder they’ll work to make the changes happen.

I worked with one client who would say to me, “Okay, I get it. I should do this, and then this, and then this.”

About then, I’d stop him, and say, “No, just do this one thing.”

He didn’t like that: it was too slow.

Every week, he’d complain that the project wasn’t moving forward. Every week, I’d ask him what he’d done, and he’d list off “this, and this, and this.”

Eventually, he decided to try going through the stages in order and one at a time. Suddenly, he saw progress.

Like the rocket, ignite the stages in the right order, and you make very rapid progress. Try to ignite them all at once or in the wrong order and you have a North Korean rocket launch: straight up in the air and then straight down into the ocean.

If they’re lucky, they might still be able to sell arms to Pottsylvania.

Remember the scene in the original Star Wars where Luke, Hans, Chewbacca, and Leia are trapped in the garbage disposal with the walls closing in on them? As the walls inexorably press closer and closer, they engage in increasingly desperate attempts to stop them, a ritual made famous in dozens of adventure movies. No matter how hard they push back against the walls, their efforts are futile. Of course, they are the heroes of the movie, so they do find another way out; after all, if they had not, the movie would have come to an abrupt ending and the fans would have been crushed.

Of course, rather than counting on finding a miraculous escape, it would have been better to have not been in that tight a predicament in the first place.

At Soak Systems, the CEO, whom we’ll refer to as Luke, recently made the comment that, “I guess I should have pushed back harder.”

He was referring to a disastrous product release, one whose eager anticipation by their largest customer was exceeded only by that same customer’s anger and disgust when they finally received it. Their subsequent email was, to say the least, crushing.

In the inevitable post-mortem, it quickly came up that Luke had made at least a couple of attempts to play with the product before it was shipped, but that engineering had “refused to let me see it.”

In retrospect, Luke felt that if he had only insisted more strongly, then clearly engineering would have complied and he would have been able to identify the problems and save the release. Luke is also capable of holding back those moving walls with just the little finger of his left hand. Okay, well maybe not.

While it was gallant of Luke to accept some of the blame for the disaster, he was actually missing the point. In fact, the question is not whether Luke could push back hard enough to convince engineering to cooperate. The question is why he was in that position in the first place. Why, as CEO, does he need to push back that hard just to get basic cooperation? It’s hard to imagine how a release that disastrous could occur without plenty of warning. If nothing else, the stink should have been obvious.

At this point, the traditional thing to do is to nod sagely and observe that if they simply had better communications, the problem could have been avoided. While that observation may be true, it is definitely useless. Of course they weren’t communicating! Why not?

In Star Wars, our heroes at least had the excuse that they landed in the garbage disposal because they were trying to avoid pursuing Storm Troopers. In the resultant rush, they didn’t really have a chance to sit down and calmly discuss their options. At Soak, Luke didn’t have that excuse. There was no rush and no panic, other than the ones that he manufactured.

Effective communications comes from building trust, and trust comes from taking the time to build connections with employees and from, yes, communicating. The problem is that, as CEO, people don’t typically drop by to chat. If you want to get people talking to you, you need to seek them out. Luke didn’t do that. By comparison, IBM’s founder, Tom Watson, was legendary for showing up unannounced at different IBM locations and just dropping in to chat with different people. He was trusted as few CEOs have ever been: employees believed that he cared about them personally.

Luke, on the other hand, talked only to the people he’d worked with in other companies. When he came down to engineering at all, it was mainly to exhort them to do more or complain that they weren’t doing enough. When it became clear that the release had problems, the engineers had mixed feelings about talking to Luke. They couldn’t decide whether he would yell at them and go ahead anyway, threaten them and go ahead anyway, or simply ignore their input completely and go ahead anyway. The VP of Engineering wasn’t able to help them figure out which one it was either, so they decided to simply say nothing.

This is, perhaps, not the best way to establish strong and effective communications with your team.

Now, the fact is, Luke was certainly communicating with the rest of the company. His particularly choice of what to say and how he said it served to build a foundation of mistrust, not a foundation of trust. Sadly, in this environment, the speed of trust has nothing on the speed of mistrust.

Worst of all, Luke’s response, that he “should have pushed back harder,” only confirmed that mistrust. From the perspective of engineering, the release failed due to a number of serious problems that Luke and the rest of senior management were unwilling to address. Acting as if just yelling and demanding more would have changed anything was telling everyone in the company that Luke still didn’t acknowledge the severity of the problems.

The net result: nothing has changed since the release. The metaphorical walls are continuing to close in, Luke is ineffectually pushing back, and one after another the top people at the company are resigning. While Luke may end up with a company full of people he can push around, it’s not at all clear that any of them will be able to push a product out the door.

The situation is not totally irreparable, although it’s getting close. Luke needs to take the time to sit down with his people and actually talk to them and listen to their answers. He needs to take the time to actually get to know more employees than just those with whom he worked in the past. He has a lot of mistrust to overcome and doing that will not be easy. Whether he succeeds or not really depends on whether he is willing to recognize how little trust people have in him, and whether or not he’s willing to work to change that. Until he makes those changes, trust gets the dirt road and mistrust gets the superhighway.

Which is running faster in your company, trust or mistrust?

An article by Susan Cain appearing in the NY Times a few weeks ago argued that brainstorming is counterproductive, a poor way to stimulate creativity.

While the arguments are persuasive, they are also flawed. They appear to proceed from the assumption that brainstorming is a relatively simple process that can be done by any group at any time. In fact, effective brainstorming is surprisingly difficult, and problems with team cohesion, decision making, and leadership can easily turn it into an unpleasant time-waster. Teams that haven’t developed good conflict management and debate skills are also unlikely to brainstorm effectively. Rather than producing good ideas, they are likely to experience exactly the sorts of groupthink that Cain argues is likely to occur.

Fundamentally, though, Cain’s article confounds several problems and concludes, therefore, that brainstorming doesn’t work. So let’s look at how to make it work:

Don’t take on too much in one day. 3-4 topics are about it, probably less. In general, the more important the topic, the more that should be your focus. Spending several days on one large topic is often seen as a “waste” of time, but, done correctly, is actually the most likely way to get useful results.

Give yourself lots of time and take short breaks every 60-90 minutes. Take a long lunch break and get out of the office. Brainstorming is surprisingly draining, so taking regular breaks gives people a chance to refresh their perspective and keep the creative juices flowing. Once people start getting tired, the quality of ideas and effective debate decline rapidly.

Don’t try to cram more work into the day: after 4-6 hours of serious brainstorming, people are drained. If they know they have to go back to work afterward, they’ll hold back during the brainstorming, or do low quality work because they’re tired. Go out to dinner or something afterward and call it a success.

Separate idea generation from idea evaluation. Evaluating ideas as they are presented only invites argument and defensiveness. Instead, spend half your time collecting ideas, no matter how outrageous. Some people brainstorm very effectively by being silly or cracking jokes. Let it flow. I’ve found that the craziest ideas often provide the spark for the best solutions. After you’ve collected enough ideas, then take a break, or even wait until the next day, and then evaluate them. A little distance gives wonderful perspective.

Assign someone to collect ideas; don’t rely on memory. Use multiple whiteboards, an easel with a giant pad of paper, your favorite technology, etc. It can often help to bring in an outside facilitator who has no emotional connection to any outcome. This also helps prevent the appearance of bias or of having someone emotionally connected to a particular outcome attempting to influence the result.

Work in a large, brightly lit space. Institutional gray only dampens creativity. Yes, physical environment matters. A change of venue, away from the office, can work wonders.

If you find your team slipping into a groupthink mentality or unable to agree on a course of action, that’s not a problem with brainstorming. That’s a problem with your debate and decision making process. Bring in someone who can help you fix it, or your brainstorming efforts are going to be a waste of time (in addition, problems with debate and decision making are likely to be reducing your productivity in other areas as well!).

Brainstorming is a powerful tool, if you use it correctly.

In the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray finds himself reliving the same day over and over again. Great movie, and solid proof of the old adage that adventure is something really dangerous and exciting happening to someone else. As much as watching Groundhog Day can be lots of fun, actually experiencing it is something else again. Thus, it never fails to amaze me when organizations willingly enter the Groundhog Zone.

No, I don’t mean that they are afraid of their own shadows, although that sometimes happens too! Rather, they are trapped in a cycle that is at best non-productive, at worst, downright destructive to the organization. Worst of all: everyone knows its happening and yet no one does anything about it. Unlike Bill Murray, though, they aren’t actually trapped. They just think they are.

For example, I worked with one two thousand person organization on some serious leadership issues. The first time the organization ran into this particular problem was decades ago, and it nearly destroyed the business. Many of the top people stormed out to found a competing company. The same thing happened again some twenty years later. The third time around, we made some progress: there was no fissioning of the business. Everyone stayed put and the first steps were taken to resolving some of the long-standing structural problems that were causing this cycle to repeat. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t necessarily pleasant, but it happened.

Okay, that’s an old business. Should we really be concerned with problems that only come up every twenty years? That’s up to you; I suppose it depends on when the next time the cycle rolls around. But Groundhog moments are not limited to older companies. Younger companies can have the same problems.

At one company, the engineering teams are unable to make decisions. The same issues come up week after week: every Monday is Groundhog Day! While there is a lot of talking and a great deal of motion, there is no progress. Running around in circles may feel good, but doesn’t exactly get you anywhere. Management regularly gets involved in various ways, and always with the same results: there’s some yelling, some threats, maybe a few people get fired, and there’s a brief flurry of forward motion. After a few weeks or a couple months, though, they are right back to where they started. Even though many members of the management team know there’s a problem, even though they keep talking about the problem, they take no action despite the cost to the organization: on the order of six figures per month. Groundhog Day indeed!

So what do you do when you realize that you are trapped in Groundhog heaven? Since every company’s Groundhog Day is uniquely theirs, the key is to know how to generate possible solutions, rather than find a one-size fits none approach.

First of all, don’t be afraid of your own shadow. Recognize that something isn’t working the way it should. The longer you pretend the problem doesn’t really exist or the longer you just hope it’ll go away, the worse it will get. As Einstein famously said, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity. Whatever you’re doing to change things isn’t working. It’s time to try something else.

In Bill Murray’s case, Groundhog Day just happened overnight. In the real world, you didn’t get into Groundhog mode overnight and you won’t break out of it overnight. Stop looking for quick fixes: if they haven’t worked yet, they aren’t likely to in the future. You’ll spend more time and money trying quick solutions that don’t break the cycle than you will in committing to one solution that may take some time to implement. Organizational change, even beneficial change that everyone claims they want, is still difficult. If it wasn’t, Groundhog Day would be over by now.

Look outside the company for ideas. Let’s face it, you’ve got some really smart people working at your company (if that’s not true, you have bigger problems!). If they haven’t managed to change things, it might just be because they either don’t know how or they are too busy doing their jobs to devote the time and energy necessary to driving the changes necessary, or both. Whatever the reason, recognize that if they could, they would. Look at other companies and adapt their solutions to your specific culture and situation and bring in the resources you need to actually break the cycle.

Bill Murray has no choice but to repeat Groundhog Day over and over. Fortunately, you aren’t Bill Murray. What choice will you make?

Stephen Balzac is an expert on leadership and organizational development. A consultant, author, and professional speaker, he is president of 7 Steps Ahead, an organizational development firm focused on helping businesses get unstuck. Steve is the author of “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” published by McGraw-Hill, and a contributing author to volume one of “Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play.” For more information, or to sign up for Steve’s monthly newsletter, visit www.7stepsahead.com. You can also contact Steve at 978-298-5189 or steve@7stepsahead.com.

The firestorm incited by the Komen Foundation’s decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood hit the front page of the NY Times today.

What’s interesting here is the magnitude and virulence of the reaction. It’s not like Komen’s decision is the first attack on Planned Parenthood. Indeed, viewed in context, one could argue that this is just one attack out of many relatively indistinguishable attacks. So what’s going on here?

Fundamentally, the Komen Foundation made people feel like tools and fools, while simultaneously making them feel disgusted with themselves.

How this happened is relevant to any organization, non-profit or for-profit, that depends upon a large constituency to provide it with resources, be those resources money (e.g. customers buying product or making donations), time (e.g. volunteers), credibility (e.g. convincing your friends to support the organization), etc.

Organizations pay attention to their power bases. Organizations group people into a few different major groups:

1. The people who don’t care and won’t care no matter what; no significant effort is expended on these people.
2. The people who fundamentally believe in the cause/mission/values of the organization and provide resources to the organization, but pay little attention to the details. The organization will invest a certain amount of its resources in the form of public relations and outreach to convince these people to continue provide their resources (time, money, goods, etc). Because these people have demonstrated that they aren’t all that involved, or will provide resources no matter how much they might complain, the organization doesn’t really care what these people think or do so long as they continue to provide those resources.
3. The people who pay close attention and are actively involved and mobilized. These are the people who are actually important to the organization because they might withdraw their support if they don’t like what they see. The organization will focus its efforts on courting those people and make policy decisions intended to please those people.

Now, one can argue that if you push the people in category 2 far enough, they might well change their behavior and withhold resources. This is a valid argument, however there are two problems with it: 1) it can take a very long time for someone to decide they are so unhappy as to radically change their behavior and 2) would you pay more attention to the person who has already demonstrated their willingness to withhold resources if they are not happy or to the person who has demonstrated that they might withhold resources in some nebulous and poorly defined future state, but to date has been willing to swallow whatever you feed them?

In the case of the Komen Foundation, if someone jumps up and screams and yells about them cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, but in the end says, “But I strongly believe in their mission, so I’ll continue to give them money,” then that person’s opinion doesn’t matter. That’s category two.

Here’s the problem, at least for an organization: people enter category two because they believe in the values of the organization and see the organization as being congruent with their belief system. In the case of Komen, many people not just donated their money, but they also advertised the organization, gave their time, and encouraged their friends to donate. They saw themselves as part of a larger group dedicated to a worthy cause. They saw themselves as valued contributors to that worthy cause.

And then, pow!, all these people suddenly find that the values they thought the group held are not actually the values. They suddenly find that Komen is operating according to a set of values that may, in fact, contradict the values of its supporters. It’s kind of like thinking that you’re supporting Smokey the Bear and discovering that you’re really supporting Stokey, the fire-setting bear.

In other words, people get very upset when they realize they are in category two. They are upset for three significant reasons: the easy and obvious reason is that they’ve just discovered that they are being taken for granted. Instead of being seen as valued contributors, they are being seen as tools. This makes no one happy. We like to feel important, that the organization views us as a person, not a tool to its own ends. This is one of the reasons, by the way, why really good customer service is such a powerful tool for creating customer loyalty. It makes people feel they matter.

The second, and more serious, reason is that when an organization appears to be acting against its stated values, we feel fooled or tricked. For example, people tend to get more upset when an Apple device fails to work correctly than when a Windows device fails to work correctly. Apple Just Works and when it doesn’t, we feel tricked, whereas when a Windows device fails to work correctly, that’s just normal. When Google does something perceived as evil, people react very strongly: for example, when Google agreed to censor search results in China. Facebook, on the other hand, is an entirely different story.

The third, and most serious reason why people get upset, is that when we realize that supporting the organization means acting against our own personal values, we feel deeply betrayed. Not only did we support something we actually don’t believe in, we’ve put our credibility on the line by convincing our friends to support it as well. Now it’s personal: our self-image has just been called into question.

In one stroke, Komen managed a triple whammy: they hit all three reasons why people might get upset. The only surprising thing is that the reaction hasn’t been even stronger. On the other hand, the news cycle is still young.

Originally published in Corp! Magazine.

Once upon a time there was a staircase. Although it wound its way up from floor to floor in the manner traditionally associated with staircases, this was no ordinary staircase. Although it stood in a courthouse in Franklin, Ohio, in a fashion much like other staircases, yet it was not like the other staircases. With most staircases, those who look down see stairs beneath their feet. With this staircase, however, those who looked down saw the floor below and those people walking up the stairs. They saw those who stood at the bottom of the staircase, for this staircase, you see, was made of clear glass. While we have no information as to whether those climbing the staircase felt a sense of vertigo when they looked down, we do have definitive information about what they said when they looked down: “Hey, those people at the bottom of the stairs are staring up my dress.”

Although the news report was slightly vague on this point, we may safely assume that this comment was made only by those who were, in fact, wearing a dress.

But yes, it seems that people on the staircase made an observation that had eluded the architects who designed the staircase: that if you can look down through the glass, you can look up through it as well.

When questioned on this point, the architects responded by saying that they had naturally assumed that no one would be so inappropriate as to stand at the bottom of a glass staircase in a courthouse and look up women’s dresses.

When this insightful observation was relayed to the judge, he replied that, “If people always exercised good judgment and decorum, we wouldn’t need this building.”

The architects had carefully considered their building material. They had thought about how to make the glass durable and resilient. They had considered the problems involved in building a glass staircase in such a way that it would continue to look good even after having hundreds of people walking up and down it each day. They had, in fact, solved each one of these problems.

What they had not considered was how the customer, to wit, the people in the courthouse, would actually use the product. They were so fixated on the concept that a staircase is for walking on, not staring through, that they failed to consider the ramifications of their architectural decisions. To be fair, architects are hardly unique in making this type of mistake. It can be very easy to let your assumptions about how something should work or how it will be used to blind you to how it will actually work or be used. Consider the example of the business school competition to design a helicopter. The contest was judged on a number of factors, including the weight of the finished product. The winner was the helicopter without an engine. Apparently, no one had included “able to fly” in the criteria for success. The assumption that, of course, a helicopter should fly was so taken for granted that no one thought to see if it was included in the rules.

On the bright side, it had considerably less severe consequences than the situation involving the helicopter that flipped upside down while in flight. Or the data analysis software package that looked like it had crashed the computer, causing users to reboot shortly before the calculations were complete. Or the organizational improvements that led to a massive talent exodus.

In each situation, the people designing the end result honestly believed they were giving the customers, including the employees in the final case, what the customers had requested — and that belief prevented them from considering any other possibilities.

“We asked!” the designers protested. “That’s what they said they wanted.”

Were the customers really asking for a helicopter that flipped upside down or an expensive glass staircase that had to be subsequently covered? Of course not. But somehow, that’s what the designers heard.

The problem was that they asked the wrong questions, further leading them into their one, narrow, view of the result. Thus, no one ever stopped to imagine how the end product, be it staircase, contest rules, helicopter, software, or organizational procedures would actually be used.

In each situation, rather than seeking information, the people asking the questions sought validation. They already had an idea in their heads, and any inquiries they made were aimed at confirming that idea, not testing it.

When you say, “This is what you wanted, right?” or “What do you think of this approach?” odds are you aren’t requesting information; you are requesting validation. Indeed, even if you are seriously trying to get information, such questions usually get you validation instead. This is because the client assumes that you, as the expert, know what you’re talking about.

So how do you ask for information? One answer is to change the time frame. Instead of asking them to imagine the future, pretend it’s the future and imagine the past: “If we went with this approach, and six months from now you weren’t happy, what would have gone wrong? If you were happy, what would have gone right?”

This small change causes people to actually imagine using the product or living with the new procedures. Now, instead of validation, you’ll get information. That information may shake up your carefully constructed vision of the future, but that’s fine. Better now than after the sightseers congregate at the bottom of that glass staircase. A future retrospective also forces you to be more honest with yourself and to address the issues in front of you.

What challenges is your business facing? If, six months from now, you had successfully addressed your most persistent problems, what would you have done to make that happen?

Why do so many people end up overcommitted at work, in volunteer activities, or socially?

The tendency to say “yes” to any request stems from several sources.

First, most of us like to think of ourselves as the type of person who helps others. Thus, when a friend or colleague (or boss) asks for help, that request immediately triggers us to think, “But if I don’t help, what does that say about me? I’m not <selfish/mean/self-centered/uncaring/etc.” So, we agree to help in order to protect our self-image.

Second, and related, is what’s known as social theater: in certain environments, there are certain role expectations that are taken for granted. Helping others is often one of those expectations. Therefore, when someone asks, we agree almost automatically, without really thinking through the consequences, or even the wisdom, of the decision. Essentially, behaviors that we learned at some point in our lives without really thinking about them become automatic behaviors later when the right trigger presents itself.

Third, many businesses foster a culture of obedience and pressure to always get more done in less time. Although this cultural baggage is ultimately destructive to the business, as it leads to burnout and corner-cutting, in the short-term it appears to be very rewarding. Thus, it gets repeated and hailed as an emblem of the dedication and productivity of the employees. It is, in reality, a sign of a company with relatively low functioning teams: high performance teams know their limits and are willing to stand up for them. Low functioning teams, and the members thereof, routinely bite off more than they can chew.

Fourth, when we over promise and fail to deliver, we frequently assume that the problem lies within us: if we’d just worked harder, if we were just a little more skilled, if we just a little smarter, and so forth. Thus, we become even more determined to “get it right” the next time around. In truth, the problem was not that we weren’t working hard enough, or weren’t smart enough, etc. The problem was that we simply tried to do too much, not some personal failing that can be corrected by working harder.

So how do you prevent this from happening?

There are several techniques, which can be used singly or in combination.

One trick is to identify the thought or image that pops into your head the moment someone asks you for help. It can be hard to catch this, but with a little effort, most people will discover that some image flashed across their brain and that they are reacting to that image instead of the request for help. That image might be a thought about how important it is to help others, or a belief that other person can’t succeed without your help, or an image of being fired for not helping, etc. This is one of those situations where if you ask 99 people to describe their image, you’ll get 99 responses . Once you catch the image, you can look at it and ask yourself if it’s actually realistic. Do they really need your help that badly? If you’re a productive employee, do you honestly think you’ll get fired for saying “no?”

Another thing to recognize is that boundary testing is a normal part of all relationships: we instinctively attempt to understand our environment, and that includes understanding what we can and cannot expect from the people around us. Not knowing the boundaries is anxiety producing. Children do this sort of boundary testing all the time, and when they don’t find a boundary their behavior only gets worse until they get a reaction. Adults are different only the sophistication (and even that is arguable!) of their boundary testing. Thus, saying “no” is a form of setting boundaries. Setting boundaries actually helps make other people feel more secure because they now know what to expect from you, and also establishes you as a peer of the person making the request. Consider, the only people who are, in our society, nominally prohibited from setting boundaries are children. Children are typically expected to comply with most adult requests (how often did you hear, “When your mother asks, it’s not a request!” when you were growing up?). Thus, it’s important to recognize boundary testing and also recognize that setting limits is beneficial for everyone.

Another approach is to reverse the question: “I’d love to help you, and I’m not sure how I can fit this into my schedule. Let me go through with you what I have to get done over the <time> and you can help me figure it out.” Frequently, people ask for help without realizing the degree of imposition. Going through your constraints and asking them to help you figure out how to fit in their request is often a good technique to get them to realize just how much they are asking of you. If, in the end, you still decide to accept the request, you’ve at least enabled them to recognize just how big a favor they’re asking.

Note that if your boss is making the request, you can still apply this approach, with a slight modification: “I would love to do this, and I’m concerned that if I agree, these other projects will suffer. Please let me know your thoughts on how I should prioritize these different tasks.”

By the way, it can help to block out chunks of time on the calendar representing the total amount of time you expect a task to take (when you estimate how long a task should take, add 25%… most of us underestimate!). Tasks never seem that big when you’re thinking about them abstractly, but when you create a visual representation, you’ll be amazed how much time you’ve allocated.

All right, so  you’re already over-committed, what do you do? The best thing is to take an honest look at your tasks, prioritize, and then start contacting people. You can start with either your lowest priorities or your most recent “Of course I’ll do that!” Either way, you need to say, “I’m sorry. I know I told you I would help you, and I’ve discovered that these prior commitments are going to take much longer than expected.”

No, the other person won’t be happy. However, they will be a lot happier that you told them early on, not at the last minute. The longer you wait, the more painful the conversation becomes, the angrier they’ll be, and the worse you’ll feel. Moreover, you’ll be that much more likely to give in when they start complaining, leaving you feeling overworked and bullied.

It’s barely the start of the new year, and I’ve already received half a dozen identical articles touting the benefits of SMART goals as the solution to all my New Year’s resolutions.

Now, to be fair, they have a point as far as it goes: New Year’s resolutions have a shorter half-life than champagne at a New Year’s party. However, that’s about as useful as these articles get.

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound, SMART goals are often touted as the secret to personal and business success. Unfortunately, it’s a pretty safe bet that most of these goals will go the way of all New Year’s resolutions. Why? Because none of these articles actually tell you how to make SMART goals work. In fact, most people who try the SMART approach for any but small and relatively easy goals frequently find themselves frustrated and disillusioned.

Well-constructed goals are extremely powerful tools for getting things done, increasing concentration and motivation. Successfully completing a well-constructed goal builds self-confidence. Unfortunately, creating a well-constructed SMART goal is not quite so simple as the average article makes it out to be.

To begin with, a specific goal is only useful if it’s something you can control. Although this may seem obvious, the fact is that far too many people set goals that appear to be under their control, but really are not. For example, consider the athlete who sets the goal of winning an upcoming tournament: it’s specific, it’s measurable, it has a time of completion associated with it, and presumably it’s highly relevant to the athlete. Is it achievable? Depending on the athlete’s level of skill, very possibly. However, the athlete has no control over the difficulty of the competition. He may simply be outplayed by a more skilled opponent.

Furthermore, although the goal is measurable, in that the athlete will know whether or not he accomplishes it, the measurement is not particularly useful. At no time will he know how close he is to accomplishing the goal, where he needs to focus his energies, or what else needs to be accomplished. The athlete is far better served by setting the goal of exercising certain key skills in the competition, skills that have a high probability of leading to a victory. Not only will he gain the self-confidence boost of accomplishing his goal, he may just win the tournament. Whether your goal is winning a competition, selling a product to a particular customer, or getting a specific job, focusing mainly on outcomes only gets you in trouble.

Another problem is that a goal may simply be too big. If a goal takes years to accomplish, it can be extremely difficult to maintain motivation. Big, ambitious goals are wonderful, but they need to be carefully structured. It is vital to break them down into subgoals that can be accomplished in a much shorter period of time. The perception of progress is critical to maintaining motivation, whether for an individual or a team.

Having too many goals is another common problem. Well constructed goals are great, but if you have too many of them at once, they become a distraction. Many people can focus on three to five unrelated goals without a problem, but not ten or twenty. Keeping in mind that each goal might generate numerous subgoals along the way, it’s easy to see how having more than a few key goals can easily balloon out of control.

Is the goal something you really care about? Many people have goals that they don’t really care about. Perhaps they’ve been told it’s something they ought to do or they believe they should do, but they don’t really care about the outcome. If you don’t care whether or not you accomplish a goal, it’s hard to find the motivation to do it.

Used properly, SMART goals can be a very powerful and effective tool. Well-constructed goals can increase motivation, improve focus, and build self-confidence. Used improperly, they can decrease motivation, and destroy self-confidence. If you’re using SMART goals, here are some questions to ask yourself:

Do I control the outcome?

Can I measure progress in a meaningful way?

Is my goal too big? How can I break it up?

Do I have too many goals? Is there enough time in the day/week/month to work on each one?

When will I work on each piece of my goal? How will they chain together?

Do I really care about my goal? Is this something I genuinely want to accomplish?

Good luck!

Knowing where you are going as a company, and having a simple, clear, exciting vision that you can communicate well to your employees can improve performance dramatically. So why doesn’t it work more often?

The key to having a powerful vision is to be consistent across all aspects of your corporate behavior. If you want people to care, they have to feel that they are caring about something that matters up and down the company.

Take, for example, the recent debacle at Lowe’s. As several articles in the NY Times discussed,  Lowe’s decided to fund a reality show called “All-American Muslim.” This show committed the unforgivable sin of revealing that Muslim Americans are much like every other American as opposed to being terrorists. In response to complaints from one group, Lowe’s then pulled out of the show, triggering a great deal more complaints, this time from almost everyone else.

Now, Lowe’s might claim to support diversity and oppose racism, as quoted in another Times article:  “In a statement on its Facebook page, Lowe’s said it had ‘a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion’ but had pulled its spots from the show because it ‘became a lightning rod’ for’individuals and groups’ with ‘strong political and social views.’ ”

In other words, it appears that Lowe’s feels strongly about supporting anything that no one argues with. Unfortunately, this does not exactly send a message about strong commitment to your own values. One has to wonder how an employee at Lowe’s will feel about the corporate vision going forward from here.

By comparison, let’s look at the employees of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai. As discussed in a recent news story, when gunman attacked the city three years ago, employees risked their own lives to protect guests at the hotel. This can be directly attributed to the Taj’s consistent vision of providing outstanding customer service no matter what, a vision that is carried out at all levels of the organization and reinforced at every opportunity.

As I discuss in my book, “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” a vision needs to answer some key questions, including:

• “Where are we going?”
• “Why do we care?”
• “Why does anyone else care?”
• How will the world change, even a little, if we accomplish our vision?”

These are all important and necessary questions to address, but they are not sufficient to make your vision work. You also have to believe in the vision, and you have to demonstrate that you will stand up for what you believe in. Otherwise, you shouldn’t waste your time with a vision: you’re better off not standing for anything at all than demonstrating that you won’t stand up for what you claim to care about.

Originally published in Corp! Magazine

I have three cats. Cats being the creatures that they are, I have only to sit down to read a book and instantly there is a cat on my lap. Regardless of which cat it is, a familiar pattern ensues: first, the cat carefully positions itself in front of my book. Once I adjust to move the book, the cat then carefully positions itself on one of my hands. This continues until I give the cat the attention it’s seeking. At that point, it first butts its head against me and then, purring loudly, turns and sticks its behind in my face.

I am sure that there are people who find this end of a cat absolutely fascinating. I’m even quite sure that there are contests in which cats win awards for having the most beautiful behind. For cat breeders and cat fanciers, it can be a big deal to win one of these cat trophies. It is a cause for great celebration.

In an office environment, however, a catastrophe is anything but a cause for celebration.

The worst thing about catastrophes is that they happen about as often as a cat sitting down on top of the book you’re reading. At least, to listen to some managers, it certainly sounds that way. Somehow, every little thing, every small problem, was magnified until it had the aura of impending doom. In short, every setback was becoming a prize for the cat with the most beautiful behind. At one company, the conversation went something like this:

“We’ve found a major bug in the software.”

“We can’t delay the ship.”

“We can’t ship with this bug.”

At that point, the manager started screaming that the product would go out on schedule, or else. When he finally calmed down and I was able to talk with him privately, he told me that he knew that if the company didn’t ship on time, the customers would abandon them and they would go out of business. He was happy to ship non-functional software to avoid that fate.

When he calmed down still further, he agreed to delay the ship.

I am sure that most readers are chuckling to themselves right now. After all, delays in software are legendary. Obviously, this manager was overreacting. True enough; the question is, why? Why would a perfectly sensible, intelligent man react so negatively to something which is, frankly, a common event in the software business?

It turns out that this particular company prided itself on holding to very aggressive schedules. The schedule was so aggressive that they were virtually always running behind. Therein lay the problem.

Time is a funny thing. We react very differently depending on how we perceive it. Being behind schedule all the time had the effect of generating a certain sense of urgency, which was the stated intent of the aggressive schedule. Unfortunately, the urgency generated in this situation was of the slightly breathless, heart-pounding sort similar to what one might experience if being chased by a very large cat of the “has a big mane” variety.  A cat which, I might add, is looking to do more than just sit on your book.

The problem with aggressive schedules is that, in fact, being behind schedule can generate the same panicked response in people that they would feel in a situation which actually was dangerous. While in those situations, we’re very good at running away or fighting desperately, but we’re not good at making cool, rational decisions or developing innovative solutions to problems. Each pebble encountered along the road becomes a giant boulder. When we do finally get to the end of the project, rather than feeling a sense of accomplishment and success, there’s more of a sense of relief that at last it’s over. What’s missing is the thrill of victory that energizes people for the next project. That feeling of success is the key to getting, and keeping, people excited and motivated.

In short, instead of the team beating the schedule, the schedule was beating them.

Conversely, when a team is running slightly ahead of schedule, something very different happens. Running ahead of the game means that the team is feeling a constant sense of success. When people feel successful, they work harder, they are more creative, and they look forward to coming into work each day. Teams that are running ahead of schedule are more likely to develop innovative new solutions to problems rather than just slap on band-aids. Feeling that you have the time to stop and think is critical: just think about how easy it is to miss the obvious when you are feeling rushed.

The trick is to view your schedule as a living document. It’s something that you will constantly adjust according to the situation, especially at the beginning of a project. The less you know about potential difficulties down the road, the harder it is to plan: so don’t. Instead, plan to plan. As you move forward, you can revise and project the schedule further and further into the future.

If you find yourself running behind, that’s feedback. Pay attention to what it’s telling you. Is something more complicated than expected? Is someone overwhelmed with a task that turned out to be significantly more time-consuming than you thought? Did something go wrong? Is a vendor habitually late with parts? Is your schedule just plain too aggressive?

If you’re running ahead, that’s also feedback. It might mean that the schedule is too easy and your team isn’t being challenged. Be willing to become more aggressive. It could mean that you need to slow down: are people rushing and cutting corners? At one company, pressure on QA engineers to rush product inspections led to some very expensive and embarrassing recalls and some very irate customers. Moving way ahead of schedule could also mean that your team is working too hard too soon: success is a marathon, not a sprint. Burn out early and you won’t reach the finish line.

Leave the catastrophes to the cats.

Stephen Balzac is an expert on leadership and organizational development. A consultant, author, and professional speaker, he is president of 7 Steps Ahead, an organizational development firm focused on helping businesses get unstuck. Steve is the author of “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” published by McGraw-Hill, and a contributing author to volume one of “Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play.” For more information, or to sign up for Steve’s monthly newsletter, visit www.7stepsahead.com. You can also contact Steve at 978-298-5189 or steve@7stepsahead.com.

I was recently quoted in the NY Times on the subject of preparing for annual performance reviews.

The fact is, performance reviews are extremely stressful. Some business professors argue that we should drop them completely. Far too often, rather than providing benefit to the organization and useful feedback and a promotion to the employee, they only promote the Peter Principle.

Performance reviews can benefit both the employee and the organization, but they have to be done correctly. That means starting by establishing and agreeing upon goals. Of course, even that is tricky, as goals require actual thought to do well. The key point here is to identify desired outcomes and then focus on the behaviors and learning opportunities that will lead to those outcomes. Taking the time to focus on and identify productive and effective behaviors produces the most effective goals. It also means the performance review is now focused on providing the employee useful feedback and opportunities to build their strengths instead of arguing over failures and getting wrapped up trying to remediate weaknesses.

On that point, it helps considerably to recognize that people have both strengths and weaknesses. Yes, I know, this is a great shock to some people, particularly many managers. Tailoring goals to fit people’s strengths produces far more motivated, enthusiastic, and productive employees than goals that are focused around “fixing” their weaknesses. Don’t get me wrong: weaknesses that are based in a lack of knowledge are eminently fixable; but those that are based in a lack of fundamental talent or ability are simply frustrating to everyone when you try to fix them. If you give people some room to experiment and, gasp, fail, you and they will quickly figure out which is which and how to best focus their time and energy. Build people’s strengths enough and their weaknesses matter less and less.

The other key point on performance reviews is to provide specific feedback: it doesn’t help to tell someone they are “too aggressive” or “too passive.” That is your perception. Tell them exactly what they did that you saw as aggressive or passive. Good or bad, the details matter if you want someone to repeat a positive behavior or end a negative one.

Performance reviews can be a waste of time and energy or a powerful tool to improve performance in your organization. Like all power tools, you need to use them correctly.

“Daddy, can I have that?”

As the holidays approach, a familiar refrain is heard. More common than Jingle Bells or other traditional Christmas music are the unending requests from children for various toys. Even for those who do not have young children, there is the pressure of deciding what gifts to get for family and friends. Indeed, in one sense, the parents of young children have it easy: their kids are at least telling them what they want. Of course, if all the kids got all the toys they asked for, we’d be able to pay off the national debt about fifty times over. Since very few people have that sort of money, a certain level of decision making still needs to take place.

Although web-based retailers have certainly removed a great deal of the terror normally associated with holiday shopping, nonetheless it remains an oddly exhausting activity. An hour of shopping on Amazon.com may not leave us battered, bruised, or pepper-sprayed by over-eager shoppers, but it can still leave us feeling like our brains have turned to jelly and are dripping out our ears. Not only does this lead to some very odd looking stains on our shoulders, it can also be very hard to focus on much of anything else. Attempting to put off the e-shopping is even worse. In many cases, the effort of not shopping can be more exhausting than the shopping itself! When it finally happens, the shopping experience is all the more, let us say, poignant.

So what is going on here anyway? How can a few mouse clicks be so draining?

As psychologist Roy Baumeister and John Tierney explain in their book, “Willpower,” the act of decision making is oddly tiring. The more important the decision feels the more exhausting it is. When it comes to buying gifts for family and friends, well, the level of import often feels insanely high. Even worse, the more decisions we make, the harder the next one becomes. Eventually, we hit the point where we start making really bad decisions, such as deciding to go to the store at the last minute: even for those of us who are comfortable and familiar with the Internet, going to a bricks-and-mortar store often remains a natural and reflexive action no matter how utterly crazy the experience actually is. Worst of all: we don’t even realize how bad our decisions are becoming; all we know is that everyone around us is simply getting more and more unreasonable and the information we’re looking at more and more poorly written. Well, at least it appears that way and will only get worse when you’re experiencing decision fatigue. When our brains get tired, they start taking shortcuts, such as reverting to non-decisions such as “I’ll deal with it later,” or reckless ones such as buying our kids that “Build a killer robot” kit, complete with working death ray and nuclear reactor.

When it comes to buying presents, this once a year experience, nightmarish though it may be, is ultimately not all that big a deal. Sure, it may feel that way at the time, but ultimately it generally works out, albeit with the occasional bizarrely ugly sweater or killer robot along the way. In a business environment, however, this sort of decision fatigue can be both subtle and costly.

It turns out that there are two types of decisions that are particularly difficult. Coincidentally, they are also the types of decisions that arise quite frequently in businesses, at least those that involve more than one person. These two types of decisions are those involving compromise or negotiation and those involving innovation and trying out new ideas or ways of doing things.

The fact is, compromise and negotiation are relatively rare skills in the animal world. Outside of Tom and Jerry, I’ve never seen a cat negotiate with a mouse. When dogs and cats compromise, it usually involves one of them running up a tree (lest there be any confusion, it’s usually the cat). Even for people, compromise is surprisingly difficult at the best of times, not just when the old Christmas spirit is sapping our self-control.

Now, I am often told that compromise and negotiation is something that certainly managers and salesmen need to do, but what about everyone else? How much compromise and negotiation really takes place in an office? Quite a lot. Brainstorming, problem solving, group discussions all involve compromise and negotiation. So does simply dealing with life in the world of cubicles. When everyone is suffering from decision fatigue, it becomes much harder to work with other people. Little things become major irritants simply because it’s that much harder to shut them out.

Innovation and trying out new ideas run into trouble for much the same reasons. There is a much greater tendency to let problems fester or to accept those natural and reflexive solutions, the solutions that we don’t really like but which are familiar and oddly comfortable despite the actual unpleasantness they bring. In other words, the functional equivalent of going to a large department store, tired and grumpy children in tow, on December 23^rd. At least in that case you get to join all the other people who are doing the same thing.

Fundamentally, new ideas are particularly difficult to accept when we’re suffering from decision fatigue. Meetings to address what should be simple problems can drag on for hours and, at the end, no one can actually make a decision. This only increases the frustration level.

So what can be done to avoid these problems?

As many an endurance athlete has told me, “Eat before you’re hungry, drink before you’re thirsty.” In other words, don’t wait until you’re feeling grouchy and out-of-sorts to get a healthy snack (or even an unhealthy snack, though the benefit doesn’t last nearly as long). If you wait, you’re already making bad decisions and it can take a long time to get your brain back on track. Athletes who wait too long to eat or drink suffer from rapid performance collapse, and getting hit with decision fatigue is very similar. The major difference is that an endurance athlete whose performance collapses knows it. With decision fatigue, we don’t always realize just how drained we are until the next day when we ask ourselves, “How could I have been so stupid?”

Next, take breaks. They don’t have to be long, but getting out of the office for a few minutes to take a walk or get a snack can do wonders to replenish our mental energy before we start making bad decisions.

As the old adage goes, make haste slowly. If you do have to make a major decision, sleep on it. Make it first thing in the morning when you’re fresh, not at the end of the day. If you’re running a meeting, separate any decision making from the rest of the meeting. Take a long break before making any decisions or, again, if possible wait until the next day. Finally, recognize that everyone is always a little distracted at this time of year. Take that into account in your planning. It’s a lot more productive to build a little extra time into the schedule than to have to go back and fix bad decisions.

Making good decisions and getting along with our coworkers can be hard enough at the best of times. Don’t let the holiday spirit make it harder.

This article was originally published in Corp! Magazine.

The names have been changed to protect the silly…

History teacher Norman Conquest had a very difficult student, Sasha Pandiaz. Sasha was constantly disruptive in class, driving Norman up the wall. Finally, Norman decided on a simple solution: when Sasha misbehaved, he would be sent out into the hall for five minutes. If he misbehaved three times, he spent the entire class sitting in the hall.

Inside of a week, Sasha was spending the entirety of each class in the hall. Sasha, it turns out, didn’t like the class. Although Norman thought he was punishing Sasha, apparently no one bothered to inform Sasha of that. As a result, Sasha was quite happy to miss each class; the long-term negative of a bad grade in the class was simply too far off and abstract to change Sasha’s behavior.

Fred was the VP of Engineering at Root-2 Systems. Fred had the habit of indicating his displeasure with engineers in his department by assigning them projects that were not particularly fun or interesting. At least, Fred didn’t find them particularly fun or interesting. Unfortunately, the engineers did. Rather than feeling punished, they thought they were being rewarded! As one engineer put it, “I thought Fred was ready to kill me, but then he gave me this really cool project.”

Thus, for example, instead of realizing that Fred was punishing them for blowing off a meeting, engineers believed he was rewarding them for skipping a meeting that they thought would be a waste of time. As a result, they kept repeating the behaviors that were infuriating Fred. By the time he figured out what was going on, Fred was bald.

At Mandragora Systems, Joe took over a key product team. He regularly exhorted his employees to work together: “We’re a team!” Joe cried loudly and often. But when it came time to evaluate performance, the song was a bit different:

“What were you doing with your time?”

“I was helping Bob.”

“If you’d finished your work, why didn’t you come to me for more?”

“I hadn’t finished.”

“Then why were you helping Bob?”

“It was something I could do quickly and would have taken him all night.”

“If Bob can’t do his job, that’s his problem. Worry about your own work.”

Astute employees soon realized that the key to a good review was to focus on their own work and devil take the hindmost. While Joe won points with his boss for his aggressive, no-nonsense style, and for his success in identifying weak players and eliminating them, something rather unexpected occurred: team performance declined on his watch. Instead of a team working together and combining their strengths, he ended up with a group of individuals out for themselves and exploiting one another’s weaknesses. The fact that this was damaging to the company in the long-run didn’t really matter as it was very definitely beneficial to the employees in the short-run.

There are several lessons to be drawn from these experiences.

First, it doesn’t matter whether you think you’re rewarding or punishing someone. What matters is what they think. If they think they’re being rewarded, they will naturally attempt to continue to get those rewards. If that means you lose your hair, so be it. If, on the other hand, they think they’re being punished, or at least not rewarded for their efforts, they will change their behavior no matter what you might say. Your actions really do speak louder than your words.

Second, no matter how much we might tell employees to think about the long-term rewards and delayed gratification, short-term rewards offer an almost irresistible lure. If you create a contradiction between the short-term and the long-term, most people will go for the short-term.

Third, if you want a strong team, you must reward team-oriented behaviors. If you only reward individualism, you’ll get a collection of individuals. For some jobs, that really is all you need. For many other jobs, though, it’s virtually impossible to succeed without a team.

In the end, people will do whatever they hear you telling them to do. It pays to make sure that what they are hearing is what you think you are saying.

This article was originally written a couple years ago, but always seems rather appropriate for the holiday season…

The holidays are the season for Yankee Swaps. Now, a Yankee Swap would seem to be a fairly simple and straightforward activity: each person either chooses a wrapped gift or steals an opened gift from someone else. This latter activity can, of course, trigger a chain reaction, but that’s part of the fun. At the end, everyone feels like they had at least some measure of control over the outcome. One would think it difficult, if not impossible, to mess up a Yankee Swap.

However, all things are possible. In this case, one company held a Yankee Swap with incredibly detailed and complicated rules which had as its most salient feature that no gifts were opened until the very end. In other words, the experience was transformed into the equivalent of a very slow grab bag: a long, frustrating, totally random process at the end of which people felt that they had no control over the outcome. Ironically, the most common complaint from employees at this company is that many of the rules are complex, time consuming, and leave them feeling like they have very little control over how they get their work done.

Now, a Yankee Swap is a pretty insignificant event, little more than an amusing party game. However, how a business goes about designing a small process says a lot about how it goes about designing larger, more significant processes: process design is strongly influenced by institutional habits and beliefs. With a small process, it’s easy to see the results of that belief in action because the entire event can be seen at one time; with larger processes, cause and effect may be separated by weeks or months, and the process is often so big that no one ever views it as a whole. The company ends up wondering why their results are poor, but can’t figure out the reasons. Those small processes can provide valuable insights into the company’s methodology and assumptions; recognizing consistent causes of small problems can enable you to avoid large ones. Ultimately, more important than improving one process is improving how the company designs all its processes.

In designing a process, it helps to clearly understand what you are trying to accomplish. Why did this particular company choose to redesign the Yankee Swap? Was there an actual problem that someone was trying to solve? Clearly, someone felt a need to come up with something, although their motives are impossible to fathom. As a result, they got a process that rather missed the point, but did end up reflective of the organization as a whole. However, it’s generally more successful to focus on results:

• Clearly define the objective. If the objective is to solve a problem, take the time to look at the symptoms and consider what they mean. When do they come up? Under what circumstances? Remember, the symptoms are not the problem, they’re just the symptoms. Generate a list of hypotheses and then test them to see if they lead to the observed symptoms. Solving the wrong problem will generally make things worse, not better.
• Describe what a successful outcome will look like. What will have changed? What behaviors will be different? Make this concrete. If success is, “people will have more fun,” how will you know? If the picture isn’t clear, identify the questions you need to answer to bring clarity. This may be an iterative process.
• Identify what you can change and what you can’t. You probably can’t change the economy, but you can change how you deal with it. Tom Watson Sr., founder of IBM, used the Great Depression as an opportunity to build up a highly trained, extremely loyal workforce and a stockpile of equipment. When WWII started, IBM was in an excellent position to capitalize on the reawakening economy. If everything falls into the “can’t change” category, you need to revisit your goal or problem formulation.
• Brainstorm possible solutions or approaches. Record ideas and do not evaluate any of them until you have a significant number of possibilities. Don’t worry if some ideas are silly or off-the-wall: innovative solutions come from the most unlikely sources.
• Will your solutions really get you where you want to go? Do research. Don’t rely on opinion and conjecture.
• Define your action steps.
• Execute and evaluate. Did it work? If not, check your problem formulation and try again.

If you’re not getting the results you want, what steps are you missing?