By Billy BennettYesterday, I took time to do some mandatory holiday shopping with my family.  The weather is warm here.  World news has been anything but joyous.  So, the holiday spirit is still something that had not yet arrived in full.  And yet, fate had a different plan for my day.  It was my job to find a table for us in the food court at the mall.  The place was packed and I don't like feeling like I am back in junior high school looking for a place to sit among the crowd. 

So, I looked for a place with some quality personal space. 

I found it at a table with a group of youth who seemed to be having a little too much fun.  It could be that's why they had space around them.  We are taught to be suspicious of excessive happiness.  They were suspicious.   However, after hearing lots of laughter and a few attempts by one or two of them to sing a few bars, my wife leaned toward them and said "Go ahead sing us a song".   Wow.  They huddled around the table, made a couple of quick decisions and let loose.  I captured this video on the second song they sang... I was in shock during the first one.  It is a mixture of Jingle Bells and Rudolph.  Great harmony and pure joy.  In a few minutes they shared that joy - no infected their joy into the lives of hundreds of people around them.  It was amazing to watch the transformation of noise into jaw dropping attention.

It turns out they were students from our local university who had completed exams and were out relaxing and just having fun with each other.  They are members of Creative Impressions a student performing choir.  

My lessons

I think life is most fun when it gives me unexpected gifts.  How about you?  Here are my lessons from this little encounter.

1. Taking a risk to make a relationship - no matter how small - can result in great gifts.  Had I not chosen to sit where no one else wanted to sit we never would have been entertained.
2. There are people doing great things.  In spite of the news there are youth who make me believe that there is hope for a future - and it is a good one.
3. Life takes courage - but the biggest hurdle is the first step... after that everything gets easier.  Had my wife not been willing to stick her head into a group of strangers and asked the question we never would have known.  Had the group declined the request because they did not have the right acoustics or all of their members - we never would have heard.   

So, my gift to you for this season is the wish that you open yourself to the possibility that when bad news is all around you seek and find something better...the good news.  I also wish that you find the courage to explore the unusual or to take the lead when the situation is less than ideal --- and that you find the wonderful gifts awaiting you because you were willing to take a risk..

Happy Holidays.

 

By Billy Bennett

Failure can be a great teacher.  I prefer to call them “Do-Overs.”  A good review of initiatives always asks three questions: 
1.  What did we do? …
2.  How did we do it?… and
3.  How ready were individuals to accept the initiative? 

If you want to try “do-over”, improve your chances of success by considering #s 2 and 3.  Especially #3: readiness.  The readiness factor can be many things but it always includes – Trust.  Do they trust you?  Do they trust leadership? Do they trust each other? … Do you trust them?  You may get the answers on your own or you may need help from a third party – an independent observer. 

Insiders are often just a little frustrated when third party facilitators (like us) - organization outsiders - make progress doing things insiders have tried.  Why does it work for us… working alongside of leadership… rather than leaders standing alone? Usually the reason lies in questions #2 and 3.  A good facilitator establishes neutral space.   Places where conversations happen more than position speaking.  Employees feel more comfortable asking questions and offering ideas.  Leaders feel more comfortable speaking openly.  Everyone appears more “real”.  Honest. 

Good facilitators manage this differently because they know what to do, and how to approach it because they first checked the readiness- the trust levels – of individuals or groups before designing an approach. 

Consider this for your next change initiative or group performance intervention:

1. Check readiness first – think about using a third party “outsider” to help you assess potential barriers which you could face in the upcoming change.
2. Have your initiative leaders participate in facilitation education – When initiative leaders are trained in group process skills, success increases – significantly.   Do the facilitation education separate from any specific intervention process (SAP implementation, Six Sigma, Lean…).  Think of it this way – there is the process – then there is the skill.  Facilitation is the skill.  If you are launching or re-launching  (remember “do-over”) consider requesting a custom design that fits with any barriers you may have uncovered.
3. Have external “outside” facilitators available to use for special times or situations where some neutrality is needed to help groups to move more quickly beyond relationship barriers.
4. Make trust building as a goal of all work initiatives.  Design approaches that establish personal safety, healthy debate, and sharing of recognition for contribution as well as ultimate success.
5. When you review initiatives do a check on trust… “Was there anything that happened during the intervention where may have lost something?”   “Was there anything that happened that helped us to gain trust with anyone?”, “After this event, when it comes to trust, are we better, worse, or no change?”  

 Remember: Asking for help is not a sin.  Not asking for help is.

How are you approaching organization design?  How much of org design is about "org charts"?  How much of it is about moving boxes and changing layers?  How boring.  And how wrong.

I just read an interesting post by Eugene Borukhovich entitled  The Future of Healthcare Design is Already Here.  Design - especially organization design - is a passion of mine.  I have a bias.  I believe most organizations are designed by evolution - by happenstance - rather then purposeful design.  Eugene's article triggered a memory of the wonderful organization design work done when people purposefully create something that delivers a totally new and special experience for customers and users alike.  No place can use that kind of thinking more than in healthcare. 

I hope you use Eugene's article to you make you think about more than the  dashboard he shows.  I think Eugene would be disappointed if you did.  While Eugene's article is about visual design for us all as we engage with the healthcare system... it is also about the system.  Therefore it is also about the design of the organization within the system. 

The problem with most organization design processes is they often focus only on positions, boxes and layers.  This is often separate from thinking of how the customer of the system, and the people connecting with the system should experience the system.  In this case how should patients and professionals experience the #bigdata information in healthcare? 

Do you use tools to spark imagination?

The dashboard tool (created using Memolane)is just that a tool.  However, Eugene uses it to open up a three dimensional view of what the healthcare experience should be --could be like.  The System.  It allows dreaming.

I've participated in organization design processes where something less cool than this sparked a vision of systems working in a different way.  I will never forget the sugar cubes... or the beer glasses... or the single piece of data that were all used to redesign organization systems and therefore the structure and how people worked.  

If you are going to create organization designs that last and produce exceptional results - then you must re-think systems...you must re-think the experience...you must re-think results.

What are you using to spark imagination in your organization design?  Are you just shifting boxes and writing job descriptions?  Or are you sparking dreams of a new way of working?

I would love to hear...

Recently, I had two similar meetings.  Each began with “we tried [fill in the blank] …. but it didn’t work”

Meeting #1 was with a CEO.  He told me of their initiatives to engage a very important group.  The result: Lots of effort - minimal response.  Most of the checklist items I suggested were met with “Yep. We did that.” 

In meeting #2, executives described a great effort to change the organization structure.  They were now a couple of years into the new design and results were, well, not good.   People were not responding.  “We did everything – the usual stuff”. 

Two cases… Same employee response, “We’ll get back to you.”

In each of these conversations you could tell they were dangerously close to giving up on their people. They were one step from concluding “our people are too difficult to change”. 

Usually, a conversation like this includes a question to me, “So what can you do?”   It comes across the table like a well hit forehand.  The server hopes to score an ace or prepares to receive our power return – Namely, “here’s the secret I have that you don’t”.   Sometimes we do – but that’s not the real answer.  We avoid playing the game.  Why?  Because gaming IS the problem.   That is what these and other organizations find themselves doing: throwing a series of initiatives, at a problem and expecting…hoping… for a great response.  Imagine hitting a great shot at your opponent and he stands there watching the ball fall to his feet.  No return.  No engagement.  (Perhaps, a little yelling at the umpire)  When the expected response does not come from employees, we conclude something is wrong – the next step is typical blame assignment… “is it us ” or “is it them…Are they unchangeable?”

It’s the trust “thing” again

Organizations have years of hard wiring expectations in employee minds.  A certain level of trust questioning starts all interactions.  It is like your personal computer that, over time, becomes cluttered with fragments… software leftovers.  Everything slows down and if you push too hard you find the inevitable blue screen of death.   You face these “trust leftovers” in any change.  You cannot overcome years of hard-wiring with “normal” actions or a few “one- off” initiatives. You must plan to unravel and rewire.  It is difficult.  Most give up at difficult.  However, rarely is it impossible.    

Before I go too far, let’s get back to gaming.  What’s wrong with gaming?  You can sum it up in one word:  opponent.  Organization games put people in competition with each other.  Competition is good and playing games are fun – when it is against the right competition.  Your players are supposed to be on the same side.   When the game is between “insiders” trust filters every initiative you attempt.   Trust is the key to this hardwired system.   

In our last post we started with step one of  Aligning People Skill #2: Cultivating Trust – by redefining winning .  Do it well and each person has a clear view of what it takes for success.   I wish it was as easy as it sounds.  It is not.  It is only the start because when you redefine winning you don’t just change the rules – you  change the game itself.  No longer is it insider gaming that defines success, but “organization winning”.  If you do it right, the real focus of any organization winning will be to bring your product or service to a world that needs what you have to give.  This is a game of all of us versus the competition.  Not each other. 

A CEO commenting on his competition once said “We beat them because they spend so much time doing business with themselves.”  Gaming.

Great leaders learn this lesson early.  If there is too much gaming there is too little trust.  If there is little trust, normal initiatives do not work.  Change the game – by stopping it.