Category Archives: Adeptness

New Gig Planning

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Next January I am off to a new gig, it is back with the Alberta Public Service. In December I will be leaving the Vienna Based International Organization (VBIO) I am currently work for.  It has been a good/strange/learning ride and have met some great people and have had a few successes – but time to get back to reality (and my pridwife, shoveling snow, etc.).

Just Like the First Day of School

One of the upsides of starting a new role is that you get to leave your baggage behind and start afresh.  Ideally you take what you have learned from your past mistakes and ask yourself how you can be a better person, employee and boss.  The following is in my spirit of my ‘Phrankisms‘, homage to Steven Covey and also a (non) secret plan of how I hope to carry myself into my new role in a few months.

Knowing the Shark Tank you are Swimming In

Ideally you should know the shark tank you are easing yourself into wearing your brand new (metaphoric, I hope) Speedo on your first day. A word to the wise, work communities are surprisingly small.  I have been in about 6 separate work-eco-systems (Health, ERP Implementations, Consulting, NATO, Vienna and the Government of Alberta).  In all cases, the community members had a high degree of connection – even before social media tools such as LinkedIn.  When you are a young pup the pool is large; as you take on more senior roles the shark tank gets smaller.

What does this mean?  One’s brand becomes more important and it becomes increasingly more difficult to shed a ‘poor-brand’ within a given Shark Tank.  I don’t have a specific set of actions for my new gig other than to carry a simple awareness that brand matters and don’t be surprised who has heard of you from obscure corners.

My New Gig Desired Brand (and my LinkedIn Summary): Accomplished Professional Accountant with proven success in corporate budgeting/reporting, strategic planning, system implementations, process improvement, internal controls, contracting and organizational change. Specialties: Budgeting, Strategic Planning, Process Design and Improvement.

Articulate a Noble Purpose

We have all sat in marathon mission statement drafting sessions in which the merits of a definite versus indefinite articles are discussed ad nauseam.  This is something I discussed in a risk management context: Purpose: Why Does the Organization Exist, what are its objectives?.

Is there a consistent and wide spread understanding of what the organization does?  Widespread is both top-down and inside-out.‘

Whether or not an organization has a purpose, the unit a person is working for should have a reason to exist.  In my chosen profession, finance and accounting, we are ultimately in the business of client service.  Certainly we need to consider risk, controls and compliance – but ultimately we are there to make the rest of the organization successful.

My New Gig Leadership Maxim: I will take pride in the work I am doing.  I will seek to improve the craftsmanship and quality of the product or service of my team’s efforts to help the rest of the organization be successful.

The Boat Metaphor and Image

Leadership varies by circumstances and individuals.  There are a few individuals who are larger than life and leadership comes naturally to them.  For most, it is a skill and behaviours to be learned – and that is the good news!  Good leadership is not innate and can be practiced and improved upon.  Have you ever heard of the leadership boat metaphor?  ‘There are some who need to row the boat and a few who need to steer it‘ (2×2 courtesy of Governance Today).

Courtesy of Governance Today.

I would suggest the maximum can be expanded a wee bit to be more complete:

My New Gig Leadership Maxim: ‘Leadership is recognizing that a large group of rowers must be well led by a smaller group who steer.  These two groups are in turn shoved into the water by fewer individuals who can provide a general direction of where to take the boat and then who must trust the rowers strength and the skill of those who will steer‘.

Seek First to Shut Up (with apologies to Covey)

Now that we all have our places in the boat and ready to start rowing or steering or shoving, now onto my next reminder: Shut Up and Listen. Steven Covey said this more eloquently in his fifth habit (of Seven): Seek first to understand and then be understood.

There is an inverse relationship between one’s seniority and the amount one should talk.  Of course it is hard not to talk, the more senior you are the more reverently people file into the meeting room, eyes diverted waiting for a divine message.  However, unless you can process tap-water into a nice Merlot, you had better be listening:

My New Gig Leadership Maxim: The person who talks the least and softest is often listened to the hardest.

If necessary, after asking a question, I will silently count to a number (e.g. 30, 60, etc.) before saying anything else.  Silence is okay and it allows people to respond in a more intelligent fashion.

Kick the email habit

As an extension of the above, it is easy to use email as a form of conversation.  As a result, sending an email at 9PM on a work night or early Sunday AM may seem nothing more than ‘chatting’.  However, the more senior one becomes the less latitude you have to send emails out of all hours.  Your staff will wonder if they should respond and wonder if is it an expectation that they be available and online during these periods?

The reality is that unless there is a baby dying or building burning to the ground, almost nothing requires an immediate response.  Also, the last person to join the email conversation often has the greatest impact on the conversation (see the above for more on this).

My New Gig Leadership Maxim: Email belongs in work hours; use delay send and other functions to keep it there.  Alternatively let emails stew in the draft folder.  If the email is complex or controversial, send it after going for a walk or a good night’s sleep.

I will make better use of messenger like tools (e.g. Lync/Skype) for informal communication rather than email.  A messenger tool allows me to ask discrete question without the implied formality of an email – better still; a messenger tool means that email is seen as more formal and therefore has more impact.  To this end, I will also try to start each email with Thank You and Great Work and then the email content. Of course walking over to the person or telephoning them builds even better person connections.

Walk Around to Listen and Observe

‘Walking the Ship before the Battle’, ‘Management by Walking Around’ or ‘Eat One Lunch a Week in the Staff Cafeteria’.  These are all examples of the importance of moving beyond formal positional authority and building casual informal contact with both direct reports and the organization in general.

By being visible at least once per day, creates a human connection which builds trust and a shared sense of community.  By having lunch in the cafeteria you are building on a very strong human connection between food and community.

My New Gig Leadership Maxim: Strive to say good morning to my staff and try to physically visit other staff at least once per week in an informal setting (e.g. popping in, saying hello, a coffee, walk, etc.). Visit to listen, visit to understand but don’t commit – that requires a formal setting‘.

Build a Foundation Underneath

Humans are hard-wired to seek out community and affiliation.  If the work environment is not providing this environment then the humans will create their own affiliation and management will have no control over its direction, values or purpose.

This human foundation is based on realistically aligning the somewhat immutable organizational objectives to the honourable personal objectives of the staff.  This alignment is based on trust; the staff must believe that the leader has their individual and collective backs.  This does not reduce personal accountability or responsibility – but it does mean that when they honourably screw up you won’t throw them under the bus.

A side benefit of building the trust and community is receiving ‘organizational-intelligence‘ from your staff about the organization.  As with all information though, never believe/react to information blindly, trust your sources but verify before you act.

My New Gig Leadership Maxim: I will create a client service focused organization that people are proud to be a part of.  I will help people understand the larger organizational objectives so they can align their personal objectives to them.

Related to this, I will set up periodic team and 1:1 meetings with my staff.  These are the most important meetings in my calendar and protect them accordingly. 

I will set up a method to track our operational and project work to not only make people accountable but also so they have a tool to prioritize their work and in due course remember the good work they did for when they go on to their next gig.

Float ideas rather than direct them.

While leaders and managers are expected to have vision of what the organization should be and where it should go, the best vision is one that is collectively formed rather than a messiah-like-prophecy.  Invite others to contribute to the vision by not starting off with the position of ‘do it this way’.  Participation leadership increases group cohesion and helps to teach leadership.  To be clear, accountability remains with the leader and in a few instances a ‘GO DO IT‘ mantra is needed.

My New Gig Leadership Maxim: ‘I will strive to ask for input and recommendations before making significant decisions.  I will make it clear that their contributions does not reduce my accountability but it does increase my team’s participation in the decision and helps them learn decision making‘.

Practice Strategic Indifference

Strategic indifference means picking your battles and recognizing the principle of Control, Influence and Affect – CIA.  You are not going to win all or even most of your battles so get over it.  Steven Covey discussed this in Habit 3: Put First Things First Manage your life according to your needs and priorities. Spend time doing what fits into your personal mission, observing the proper balance between your production and building your production capacity.

My New Gig Leadership Maxim: I will seek to pick my battles carefully applying my team’s limited resources to the highest priority operational and project work.  Having said this, it is my expectation that my team constantly becomes more efficient and effective so as to absorb higher work loads with static resources.

Bonus!  Some bonus questions to ask as you receive information:

  1. Can you trust and verify the information?
  2. What is the worst that will happen if do nothing with this info (procrastination as an option)?
  3. Is what I am being told the problem or a symptom of a larger problem?
  4. If I am going to do something – what will I choose to stop doing to get this done?

Planning and then Learning from Failure

That is quite a list and I already know that I will have varying levels of success.  Once again, the upside of starting a new role is the ability to become a better person, leader, manager and mentor to my staff.  Wish me luck and I will let you know when I start the NEXT gig as to how this one fared.

Organizational Efficiency and Control Model

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Have you ever thought about how to make an organization more efficient?  At this point you are probably going yawwnnn, been there done that with:

  • Doing more with less (how many decades have we been doing this?)
  • Lean [Whatever] remove waste from a process.
  • Business Process Re-engineering
  • Total Quality Management
  • Lean Six Sigma

A Measure of Productivity

Despite the ‘efficiency-fatigue’ you may be feeling, by any measure we humans have become more productive.  Take a look at the following graphic from the United States on labor productivity.  American workers produce more than five times what their great-grandparents did in the 1920s.  While you could argue this has come at a high cost for the environment, climate change, labor rights, etc.; you have to admit this increase in productivity is impressive.  (Source: bls.gov/opub/…/labor-productivity-the-economy.).

Labor Productivity (US) 1947-2012

A Little Dab Will Do You

Do you notice the line?  It relentlessly increases decade over decade.  There are very few spikes or drops but the ascent continues.  Technology is one factor but another is the competitive process of organizations to be more productive/efficient.

Squeezing Out Your Family

Which leads us to the central model I want to propose.  Focusing on output-efficiency is fine up to the point when your workers go strike or stress leave. Alternatively, perhaps you cut one control too many and the auditors or the police are at your door.  In other words, organizations must balance improving their processes, their people and their need to govern and/or control everything.  These three factors form the Organizational Control and Efficiency Model:

Organizational Efficiency and Control Model

OEC Forces

  • Explicit efficiency seeks to reduce the cost of an output through better use of inputs and improved conversion of the inputs.  Six Sigma, lean manufacturing or Total Quality Management can help with this objective.
  • Implicit efficiency is the ability of resources (staff, contractors, etc.) to work effectively together toward a common objective.  Resources can be efficient despite poor systems and processes.  Alternatively, the poorly trained, disengaged or unmotivated resources can negate/thwart the most efficient process. Most business models acknowledge this through concepts such executive buy-in or proper change management.  Implicit efficiency is subtly bigger than these concepts, it is how well does your organization play together?
  • Controls ensure organizational objectives are achieved. This may be through governance, automated controls, segregation of duties, etc.  Controls protect the organization but are often a drag on explicit efficiency or can negatively affect staff morale (implicit efficiency).

More Important than Corners is the Middle and the Lines

While the three corners of the triangle are important, more important is the stuff in the middle and lines between the forces.  Organizational objectives ask strategic question such as:

  • Should we still be in this business?
  • Do we invest, hold or divest of a product, business or service line?
  • Are our people working on the right things?
  • How can we become more agile and responsive to our clients/customers/citizens?
  • Do we have the right infrastructure to accomplish our goals?

The lines represent both support and tensions between the three forces.  Some organizations have discovered that by focusing exclusively on explicit efficiency they have alienated their staff or run afoul of their internal processes.

Too many controls will impede an organization’s explicit efficiency and make the organization a death march to work for.  However, too little control can co-opt or corrupt people or processes.

Finally, implicit efficiency can give you a competitive advantage (google southwest airlines steward announcements; these are people following procedures to ensure good control of the passengers while having fun).  Disengaged or unmotivated staff can derail the best quality management program or find ways around the most elegant controls.

Building a Strong Triangle

What are your thoughts?  Should this be a triangle, square or an even more complex geometric shape?  How well is your organization at balancing these 3 forces?  Does this model help when talking about efficiency and organizational effectiveness?  Drop me a note with your thoughts.

ASK-ACTION Emails

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Have you ever gotten one of those rambling emails in which the request is buried somewhere in a sea of asides? Given that it is from your boss, you press on trying to divine what the &%#@^ she is asking for! (note, all examples are fictional and any resemblence between current and past bosses and this example is purely coincidental).

Alternatively, you receive an email that clearly articulates its purpose in the first two lines and a quick scan tells you what to do or even whether it is applicable to you. If you would rather receive (or send) the second type of email, read on to learn about the ASK/ACTION format.

What are you ASKing of me?

An ASK/ACTION Email looks something like this:

Ask-Action Email Format

The Elements of an ASK

There are four parts to an ASK/ACTION email that help to make it clear:

  1. SUBJECT:  that provides a summary and the deadline.
  2. ASK: What is the context for this email.
  3. ACTION: What do the recipient(s) need to do; a clear statement of what needs to be done, by whom and by when.
  4. BODY: Additional details as applicable.

After the two liner, additional information is provided to flush out the request.  Nevertheless, this is the ASK/ACTION email format.

Bonus Points and Additional Links

Some other thoughts and suggestions when using an ASK/ACTION email:

  • If you are using the Lost Assignment and Task Epidemic methodology, consider using the TASK name in the subject line.
  • Send one email for one ASK/ACTION; apologize though and note if multiple emails are coming through.
  • Personalize your emails if possible.
  • For group emails, consider following up with a short conference call to explain the ask, this allows for more than one channel of communication.
  • Send a meeting invite out as a reminder only, thus the above email would be converted to a meeting with a location of ‘Reminder Only’ for 2099-12-31 at 4pm.
  • Use the BCC to reduce email churn but notify people at the beginning, for example: You have been BCC’d to protect your privacy.
  • If you are including documents but have a shared repository (e.g. network drive, SharePoint, etc) note that there is a courtesy attachment but specify the master version with a link: Master Version: M-Drive:2098-2099\Analysis\HelpMe\.

Some other links and thoughts on this:

Citizen Centeric Experience – PwC Event 2017-11-24

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In my ongoing effort to remember the key notes from events and conferences I have attended, some thoughts on Rethinking the Customer/Citizen Experience; 2017-11-24.  The overview blurb was:

We will look at transformation through the lens of both the ultimate end-user experience, and the internal employee perspective which inherently must be connected to successfully implement change.

Personas and Small Things Create Big Results

Two key themes that came out of the event.  The first was the use of personas to aid in develop a good customer experience.  The second was the importance of implementing big things through a series of small steps.

Personas

Developing a persona is an attempt to understand behaviors of customers/clients.  These are done to help frame development and make changes.  The recommendation is to limit the number of personas to less than six and ideally 3-6.  A single persona is then used to track a collective journey through a process journey.  One description of a persona is as follows (Adapted from Agile Modeling):

A persona defines an archetypical user of a system.  The idea is that if you want to design effective software, then it needs to be designed for a specific person. Personas represent fictitious people which are based on your knowledge of real users. Unlike actors, personas are not roles which people play. In use case modeling actors represent the roles that users, and even other systems, can take with respect to your system. Actors are often documented by a sentence or two describing the role. Personas are different because they describe an archetypical instance of an actor. In a use case model we would have a Customer actor, yet with personas we would instead describe several different types of customers to help bring the idea to life.

It is quite common to see a page or two of documentation written for each persona. The goal is to bring your users to life by developing personas with real names, personalities, motivations, and often even a photo. In other words, a good persona is highly personalized. 

Personas and the Public Sector

According to PwC, personas have been used successfully in various public sector organizations including the Canadian federal government.  My Spidey-risk-senses however went up over two aspects:

  1. The volume of the personas.  Governments do things that no one else wants to do, given the myriad of our product lines; can we realistically develop personas for the breadth of services provided?
  2. Personas as a Cause Celebre. What is the risk of personas becoming a political nightmare? Our society has become increasingly sensitive and intolerant to labels. What are the risks of not having the right personas to meeting a groups demands or having to remove a persona because it does not match an external groups political objectives?

Personas But Tread Carefully

The answer is to use personas but create them through engagement with those they represent. As well, some political mettle is likely required to explain to role of a generic persona that provides a model or analog to society at large (heck, is this not the description of a representative democracy!). Nevertheless, have an emergency risk mitigation plan for either the creation of politically mandated personas or for suppression/modifications of personas for similar political imperatives.

Other than these risks, using a customer experience focused technology methodology can be highly applicable to the public sector. Like most things though, the proof is in the execution and delivery. This leads us to the second part of the morning’s presentation –

Small Steps to Implement Big Change

I am a big fan of the Agile method (e.g. small successes building over a few weeks to a larger objective) versus waterfall.  My observation for governments though is that the larger organization has a hard time with Agile.  It is easier to understand and support a multi-year, multi-million dollar project (e.g. put a man on the moon by the end of a decade) than approve the objective but in a series of short sprints (e.g. what do you mean you plan to have 520 sprints to get a man on the moon!).

Of course I am not being entirely fair to governments in saying this.  After all, it was Apollo ELEVEN that landed on the moon, Apollos ONE through TEN were examples of very LARGE sprints. Nevertheless, here is my thinking about any project:

  1. Large objectives are fine (moon, replacing an aging system, etc.)
  2. The objective must be broken into a series of steps (phases, projects, etc.)
  3. Each step in turn should not exceed the following:
    1. Six months in length
    2. $500,000 in expenditure
    3. 25 people for the entire project team.
    4. Only start upon the successful completion or closure of a prior step.
    5. Turn over is limited but also encouraged, e.g. no more than ~90% of the team is the same project to project but no less than ~50% of the team has changed.
  4. The above measures can be an average for a system, thus
    1. Subsequent phases can get larger but only after smaller projects have successfully concluded
    2. Professional judgement and risk tolerance is encouraged so that the above is a strong guideline and not a set of absolutes.

 

 

 

Seven Days of Disruption

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On November 22, 2017, the Edmonton Chapter of the Financial Management Institute is running an event entitled ‘Disruptive Writers‘.  In addition to hearing 3 great speakers discuss their books on either future disruptions or managing change, we will be playing a game called ‘Pin the Tale on the Disruption‘.  Sort of a mini-Delphi of what participants at the conference think will be the biggest challenge to the Canadian Public Service between now and …. ohhhh, say…. 2025 (e.g. about 7 years hence).

The Source of Disruption

There is a variety of sources for the disruptions but they are primarily based on the excellent work of the A.T. Kearney who have produced 3 Global Trend documents (available as follows):

It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future (Yogi Berra)

A word of caution about the difficulty of making predictions.  Inevitably something better or worse will have muscled all of the excellent possible futures out of the picture.  In addition, Black Swans and the unpredictable are a near certainty.  So, to my future self, I profusely apologize/acknowledge for being so absolutely wrong/right in naming the following future disruptions.

A Laundry List of Disruption (in alphabetical order)

  1. Accelerating Global Climate Change and the cost to mitigate (2015 and editor)
  2. Biotechnology: Frankenstein, Super-bugs and Super-cures (adapted from 2016 and editor)
  3. Canadian Competitiveness and Productivity (editor)
  4. Changing Nature of Power (2015)
  5. Cyber Insecurity (2015)
  6. Dawning of a new urban transportation age and the Canadian City (2017 and editor)
  7. Depopulation Waves (2015)
  8. Evolving Artificial Intelligence (2015)
  9. Geopolitical Realignment and Continued Global Violent Extremism (2015)
  10. Growing debt overhang (2017)
  11. Immigration and Changes to the Canadian Values and Characters (editor)
  12. Indigenous Power (editor)
  13. “Islandization” of the global economy (2017), NAFTA Negotiations and the rise of protectionism (editor)
  14. IT Revolution 2.0 and the Rise of the Machines (adapted from 2015)
  15. Post Consumerism (adapted from 2016)
  16. Quebec and Regional Tensions (editor)
  17. Resource and Commodity Supply, Demand and Price (adapted from 2015)
  18. Rising storm of populism; Canada and Cultural War in the Age of Trump and the Progressives (adapted from 2016 and editor)

Teaching Gears to Be a Better Manager

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In the Spring I run a weekly program called ‘Wheeleasy Wriders‘ which teaches newbie cyclists how to go from a painful 20KM ride to thinking that a 60KM ride is a breeze. Although this is a hobby, the techniques that I use are directly translatable into a work environment and the reverse as well – Wheeleasy Wriders makes me a better manager – last week is a good example.

How To Explain The Round Gizmos On a Bike

Many new riders are scared of their gears.  Although a marvel of engineering, they do require a small investment of time to learn how to use them properly.  But using gears effectively is not what this blog is about (however the blogs listed below DO talk about such things).  Last week I took a page out of my work environment and did the following:

  1. I broke the riders into groups of three composed of 2-newbies and 1-experienced rider.
  2. I separated married couples into different groups (more on this later).
  3. My request was that each newbie explain to the other newbie how their gears worked on their bike (as if the other explainee-newbie was going borrow the explainer’s bike).
  4. After a couple of minutes they switched roles and the explainer became the explainee.
  5. The experienced rider was there to listen and provide additional information, corrections and encouragement.

Teaching Focuses the Mind

The result was that most of the newbies self-assessed their gear knowledge higher after the explanation than before.  Why, for the following reasons:

  • They had to actively recall past explanations and externalize the content and concepts.
  • Based on the recall, they had to match the explanations to what they were seeing.
  • There was a small amount of anxiety to get the explanation right.  This anxiety actually helps to better form memories.
  • Anxiety notwithstanding, the experienced rider represented a safety net.
  • The experience rider had to compare their own mental-model of how gears work into two different newbie explanations.  This conversion strengthen their own understanding of the gears.
  • I separated the couples because people who know each other very well can have a harder time communicating.  They use codes, shortened forms of speech, etc. that takes away from the effort to externalize and codify a complex topic (such as how bike gears work).

Giving Training the Gears

I use similar teaching methods at work when I need to train people.  Rather than standing around in a parking lot explaining bike gears, at work this is done through webinars and conference calls.  One of my ‘rules’ is that I actively encourage cheating on my exams. Thus, other audience members are encouraged to help the ‘trainer’ out. Because the audience knows they be asked next to provide an explanation, there is better attention and retention for the content.  I have learned a few cautions/guidelines though:

  • Always Build Up: This is not about ridiculing or embarrassing the person. Before asking the question, be reasonably assured the person can answer the question or be guided to the answer. Only use this technique (or select the person) if the person can feel more positive about themselves after they have done the activity.
  • Be Ready to Move On … QUICKLY: You may discover that you asked a person who simply does not know or is getting flustered by the attention.  If so, quickly move on so that person is not social embarrassed.  Moving on could include: providing lots of clues, going to someone else or changing the subject.
  • Gentle Humour Lubricates: use gentle and positive humour to help the situation. Be careful that the humour is not caustic or ridicules the person. A bit of self-depreciation works for me.
  • Mix Up the Couples: mix and match people who don’t know each other well.  This forces different levels of communication effort.
  • Bit Size the Learning: if possible, focus on only one to two key concepts in each session.  More than this will overload the person and create too much anxiety.
  • Summarize, Crystallize and Repeat the Learning: be sure to repeat the 2-5 key messages from the learning so that the memories can quickly form around these kernels. Memory and learning works best when there are mnemonic devices or conceptual construct to hang the details on.

Good luck with your efforts to train and explain in your organization.  Also, if you want to learn more about riding or how to use your gears, be sure to read: