It's a well-established cliché, and not without merit.  But as long as you follow the rules, culture can't get you in any real trouble.  Right?

Let's consider a new line...

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, and serves up jail time for lunch.

Just ask Beverly Hall.

Trouble at APS

The Atlanta Public School system was in shambles.

Graduation rates were pathetic, attendance was abysmal, infrastructure was a mess, and standardized test scores were a disaster. Then, in July 1999, Beverly Hall took over as superintendent.

As the new leader of this complex and dysfunctional organization, she proceeded to direct a remarkable turnaround of the 102 schools, 3,000 teachers, and 50,000 students that make up the system. Graduation rates had improved from 39% to 66%, 77 schools had been built or remodelled, and every elementary school within the system met the federal requirements mandated by the ‘No Child Left Behind’ Act.¹

In February 2009, Hall was named the National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators.²

On March 29, 2013, Dr. Beverly Hall and 34 other APS employees were indicted by a grand jury on charges that included racketeering and corruption stemming from the widespread and ongoing cheating that had allowed the school system to meet testing standards.

No Exceptions and No Excuses

For a manager who must attack the deeply embedded issues that persist in a sprawling organization like the Atlanta Public Schools there is, of course, no ‘right answer’.

But Dr. Hall started by making it clear to her employees that excuses for failing to meet expectations – primarily failing to raise test scores – would not be tolerated. Every person within the system would be accountable for delivering success. The rallying cry:

“No exceptions and no excuses.”

And to ensure that accountability was tracked, she also adopted the Balanced Scorecard as the primary tool to coordinate the implementation and monitoring of new strategies.³

The Balanced Scorecard

Developed by Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton in the early 90’s, the Balanced Scorecard has been a remarkably influential concept. It was tagged as ‘one of the most influential management instruments of the 20th century’ by editors of the Harvard Business Review.⁴

Historically ‘performance management’ has meant keeping a close eye on the company’s financial metrics while largely ignoring any other measures.

Kaplan and Norton advocated for a more balanced view of the organization by tracking performance through four lenses rather than one. This approach did not eliminate financial measures, but it did elevate other organizational capacities to equal footing. These four perspectives include:

• Financial
• Customer
• Internal Processes
• Learning and Growth

A wider view of the organization, they argued, would allow managers to track short-term results without losing site of the long-term strategies and objectives.

Thousands of organizations have implemented this framework to great success. The key is in selecting clear and appropriate indicators for each of the four perspectives.

APS cascaded the Balanced Scorecard framework down through their system, providing Dr. Hall with the overarching view that she needed to identify where things were working and where they weren't.

The results achieved were outstanding. The school system met federal requirements, Dr. Hall received national recognition from her peers and the media, and Dr. Kaplan and Dylan Miyake (the consultants who assisted Hall in developing the Balanced Scorecard for APS) published a feature article in The School Administrator.⁵

Statistically Improbable

As with many of these stories,legal authorities started looking into the situation after journalists from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper began investigating reported test scores that were “statistically improbable”, publishing the first warnings in December 2008 and continuing the investigation under the banner, Cheating our Children.⁶

Andy Porter, Dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, was one of many experts who analyzed the test scores produced by APS. Asked what the odds were that the gains were come by legitimately, he responded:⁷

Slightly greater than a snowball’s chance in hell.

If the scores being reported by APS were fraudulent, where did the system break down? Should companies abandon the Balanced Scorecard?

The Fraud Triangle

Dr. Kaplan’s reaction to this ongoing scandal has been advocating for greater use of internal controls.

The justification for these measures, in Dr. Kaplan’s words, is the ‘Fraud Triangle’ which is comprised of Opportunity, Rationalization, and Pressure.

By adding another layer of bureaucracy, the organization can create checks and balances, ensure reliable accounting records and IT systems, and create compliance with internal standards and codes of conduct.⁸

And this is where Dr. Kaplan completely misses the point.

Culture of Fear

Systemic cheating at APS did not take place because of inadequate internal controls. Systemic cheating at APS was a direct result of the culture that Dr. Hall created.

It is important to note that no one has, at this time, been brought to trial or convicted on any of these indictments.

However, it has been well established that:

• cheating the metrics was widespread within this school system;
• there were significant indicators, years before the indictments, that the results being reported were suspect; and,
• decision-making by the employees of APS was profoundly influenced by a culture of fear.

When Dr. Hall arrived in Atlanta and announced ‘No exceptions and no excuses’, she implied a real and immediate threat to her employees. The subtext was this, ‘If you do not meet the targets that we have set for you, you will not continue your employment in this organization. And we are not interested in hearing why you could not meet this requirement. This is not my problem, this is your problem. Fix it or you will have to find employment elsewhere – and elsewhere probably means not in Atlanta.’

And she followed through on her threat. Many teachers and administrators were sent on their way. Those who remained knew that failure would result in the same treatment, while those who met their targets received public praise and bonus checks.

The institutional commitment to success was so thoroughly embedded that even employees who warned the administration of problems paid the price. Teachers who were reported for cheating were suspended. The teachers who turned them in were fired.⁹

A report issued by State investigators in 2011 included, “In sum, a culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation permeated the APS system from the highest ranks down”.¹⁰

This is all quite a fascinating story, but as you attempt to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your organization, what does it really have to do with your situation? You are not running a school system, and your employees are not teachers.

There are two significant lessons that apply to any manager…

Lesson 1

First, the Balanced Scorecard is not broken. It still has great utility as a tool to surface the information that you must identify to track tactical and strategic progress. In fact, there has been well-deserved progress in adding a fifth lens to the scorecard to include measures that report on sustainability and corporate citizenship activities.

What every manager must clearly understand, though, is that the data delivered via the Balanced Scorecard is typically referred to as a ‘dashboard’. And just as the dashboard of your car delivers important data that allows you to safely and efficiently operate your car, you wouldn’t actually try to drive anywhere without looking out the windows. You exercise your judgement in determining what action to take next. It would be insane to think that you can safely drive to the grocery by staring at your dashboard.

Goodhart’s Law tells us:¹¹

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Measurement provides crucial guidance, but it is not a substitute for judgement and leadership.

As you implement processes, be careful with metrics. Indicators that become targets can and will be gamed.

Lesson 2

As a management professional, you should be far more concerned with Lesson 2:

Culture drives everything.

If the leaders in your company create a culture that values revenue over all else, then the actions and decisions of your employees will be dedicated to generating revenue, at the expense of your 'stated' goals.

If the leaders in your company create a culture of fear and intimidation where accountability is supreme, then the actions and decisions of your employees will be dedicated to meeting their numbers by whatever means necessary. Yes, this includes lying and cheating. A culture of fear will cause your employees to work for their own interests (avoiding blame and repercussions) rather than working for the good of the firm.

If the leaders in your company are dedicated to creating a culture of mutual respect and understanding where employees are empowered, and the pursuit of continuous improvement is established in a blame-free environment where all efforts, regardless of pay grade, are aligned to the mission… well, that is what you will get.

Internal controls, checks and balances, compliance standards, and codes of conduct will become largely unnecessary.

Drive out fear.
     - W. Edwards Demming

Beverly Hall claims that she never lied or cheated, and that she never directed any employee to lie, cheat, or misrepresent data.  This may well be true. However, Dr. Hall cannot hide from the fact that she was responsible for creating an institutional culture that was so unyielding and intolerant that her employees chose dishonesty as the only way to insulate themselves from the suffering that accompanied any failure.

On the day that she placed the plaque on her desk – No exceptions and no excuses – she would never have imagined that one day she would find herself in a prison because of those five words. But on April 3rd, accompanied by her legal team, she reported to the Fulton County Jail for booking.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/us/08hall.html
[2]: http://www.wallacefoundation.org/view-latest-news/InTheNews/Pages/atlanta-schools-chief-beverly-hall-named-superintendent-of-the-Year.aspx
[3]: http://vectorstudy.com/management-theories/balanced-scorecard
[4]: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09638180802481698
[5]: http://www.aasa.org/SchoolAdministratorArticle.aspx?id=11784
[6]: http://www.ajc.com/s/news/school-test-scores/
[7]: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/did-high-stakes-testing-cause-the-atlanta-schools-cheating-scandal/274619
[8]: Canadian Government Executive Leadership Summit 2013, Ottawa, Ontario, April 4, 2013.
[9]: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/whistle-blowing-teachers-targeted/nQpxt/
[10]: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/investigation-into-aps-cheating-finds-unethical-be/nQJHG/
[11]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law

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But this time it’s not from the perspective of the boiled eggs and treats, but from the perspective of the software engineer.

A Little Egg in your Excel

The concept of hiding little nuggets inside of software has a long and noble tradition among the engineers who write the code.

At least as far back as the 70’s software was released with these hidden bits. The PDP–10 mainframe produced by DEC would respond to the command line ‘make love’ with ‘not war?’ before creating the proper file.

Video games are famous for hiding special treats for their players to stumble upon – dating back to 1980 when the Atari game Adventure included a secret room that held the programmer’s name ‘Warren Robinett’. In fact, whole websites are devoted to documenting the Easter eggs hidden within video games.

Business geeks get their fun too. Excel ’97 included a hidden flight simulator while Word ’97 held a secret pinball machine. (Microsoft has since cracked down on Easter eggs, concerned that they introduced a possible security risk.)

DVD’s and BluRay’s have since picked up the torch, and are often loaded with hidden gems – if you have The Incredibles from Pixar and you haven’t found at least four, well, you aren’t trying very hard.

The point to these things is that they are fun, trivial distractions from the main point of the content. They are hidden – sometimes diabolically difficult to find – and inconsequential little additions that provide the coders with the opportunity to inject some fun into a product that they spend hundreds and thousands of hours creating.

Oracle is Just a Software Company

The point? What does any of this have to do with being a manager?

I have worked with far too many managers who treat information as Easter eggs.

They expect their people to search, poke, pry, eavesdrop, snoop and gossip to find the bits of information that will help them a) perform their jobs better and, b) develop into more capable individuals.

Apparently, these managers are from the school that ‘the struggle’ is a critical component in personal growth. Or that there is power in information, and by making people scratch and dig for important data, their status and power will be confirmed and reinforced.

(Of course the cynic will say that information really is power, and by withholding it, they keep the ‘little people’ where they belong…)

They embrace the image of the ‘manager as oracle and sage’ as crucial to the success of the organization – and given the importance of that single person to the organization, then money and prestige must follow.

Odysseus is Dead

But Easter eggs in games and software are supposed to be a fun little diversion. A treat. Success in the game does not require the player to root out these morsels.

So managers – let’s lay out some of the concepts that are becoming broadly accepted as organizations struggle to cope with constant and accelerating change: cooperation, flattened organizations, cross-functional teams, eliminating silos, creative problem-solving, and, of course, the holy grail of the modern business press… INNOVATION.

These things don’t happen without an empowered and engaged workforce. And employees who don’t have every bit of available information at their fingertips – without friction – are not empowered. Employees who do not know exactly where they stand with respect to their personal and professional development will never be fully engaged.

The era of the Hero Manager is over.

If you can’t figure out why your efforts to tear down silos and create a transparent, cooperative organization are failing, start with a mirror. Then look closely at the C-suite. Your department heads are next in line.

The broad employee base is not at fault. They want to do a good job. They want to cooperate and succeed. But it’s hard to accomplish anything noteworthy when you spend your days hunting for Easter eggs instead of doing work that matters.

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Developmental Evaluation is designed to overcome the limitations of traditional formative and summative evaluation approaches, where the evaluator is a detached technician who applies standard methods to rigorously predetermined criteria of judgment.

In my experience with the federal Public Service, the biggest practical problem with the traditional approach is the lack of useful data. Our usual recommendation to remedy this is to get evaluators involved at the program planning and development stage – but this rarely seems to happen. This may be due to the absence of a viable role definition for the evaluator as part of the program development team. This is where Developmental Evaluation comes in.

What is Developmental Evaluation?

The formal definition of Developmental Evaluation suggested by Michael Quinn Patton, its originator, is as follows.

Evaluation processes and activities that support program, project, product, personnel and/ or organizational development (usually the latter). The evaluator is part of a team whose members collaborate to conceptualize, design, and test new approaches in a long-term, on-going process of continuous improvement, adaptation, and intentional change. The evaluator’s primary function in the team is to elucidate team discussions with evaluative data and logic, and to facilitate data-based decision-making in the developmental process.^[1]

Evaluators in Organizational Development

It is also interesting to note that Patton, in the same article, emphasizes the professional ‘positioning’ aspect of the developmental approach. To paraphrase, he says that this new role for evaluators may open up the organizational development market for them.

What they lose in conceptual clarity and purity with regard to the traditional definition of evaluation, they gain in market share for evaluation expertise.

The multiple skills needed to be effective as a developmental evaluator are described in an excellent Developmental Evaluation Primer put out by the J.W. McConnell Foundation. Here is what they say about it…

Developmental evaluators are often generalists – able to assess what is needed and draw upon an array of skills and competencies. Particularly useful are skills in synthesis, listening and asking difficult questions in a non-judgmental way. The developmental evaluator is a “critical friend” who can challenge assumptions while drawing upon best practices and research, as well as understanding the implications of intervention from a social and political perspective. While it is important that any evaluator have good methodological skills, it is key for a developmental evaluator to have strong conceptual and pattern recognition abilities as well as skills in both process facilitation and communication. Because developmental evaluation can be closely linked to other developmental processes, it is also helpful for an evaluator to have some familiarity with organizational change and strategy.^[2]

Is there a place for Developmental Evaluation?

Developmental Evaluation appears to have enjoyed some success in the not-for-profit NGO sector. But, does it have a place in the federal Public Service?

The McConnell Foundation Primer cited above suggests that developmental evaluation is best suited for organizations in which:

• Innovation is identified as a core value;
• There is an iterative loop of option generation, testing and selection;
• Board and staff are in agreement about innovation and willing to take risks;
• There is a high degree of uncertainty about the path forward;
• There are resources available for ongoing exploration; and
• The organization has a culture suited to exploration and enquiry.

The federal Public Service is definitely faced with a high degree of uncertainty and there is no shortage of talk about innovation. There are even pockets of iterative action learning. However, there is scant willingness to take risks and little appetite for devoting resources to ongoing exploration. Culture change in needed.

My question is this: Can ‘Developmental Evaluation’ be made to offer a bridgehead for the culture change everyone keeps talking about, or is it too far out in left field to overcome bureaucratic resistance?

What do you think – is there a place for Developmental Evaluation in the Public Service?

What are the barriers to using a Developmental Evaluation approach in the federal Public Service?

Do traditional evaluators have the skillset needed to take on an organization development role, and do they even have an interest in taking on that role?

[1] Patton, M.Q., Developmental Evaluation, Evaluation Practice, Vol. 15, No. 3, 1994, pp. 311–319.

[2] Gamble, Jamie A.A., A Developmental Evaluation Primer, The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, 2008.

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Yet in spite of this, you are still having difficulty connecting process diagrams and work flow applications – that include the events, decision points, business rules, flow control, sub routines, routing between people and systems, and so on – to real work.

Worse, you have not met the expectations of customers.

A customer, in its broadest sense, includes everyone who is on the receiving end of the output of an activity or process.

Processes Defined

A process, by definition, is a set of real activities performed by people and machines that produce an outcome.

All processes have three common traits or characteristics:

1. a trigger
2. an intended outcome
3. one or more activities

There are many types of processes that exist in organizations. Some processes exist to serve functional purposes while others provide indirect support services to the organization.

How Processes fit in Typical Organizations

Your organizational structure, whether private, public, or otherwise, is probably no different; it is hierarchical and multi-layered.

Processes, by and large, wend and meander their way around these rigid structures.

Where do Customers Fit?

Customer processes exist within every organization, yours included. They must exist for your organization to have customers. Just because most organizations don’t document these processes doesn’t mean they aren’t there. They are.

A customer process is based on the experience of the customer, from their perspective.  In other words, the customer has an ‘Outside-In’ view of the process.

A customer process always starts with where the customer touches the business (phone, email, person-to-person, mail, fax, text message, etcetera) or where the business touches the customer.

Is it easy to spot that touch point in your processes?

A customer process ends when the customer reaches their desired, expected or discovered outcome. In simpler terms, the process ends when the customer decides it is ended.

Challenging Customer Processes the Right Way

A better approach to improving and managing customer processes is to focus on the elimination of causes of work – as compared to the fixing of affects.

What do people do when they are unable to meet assigned goals within the process as they have been defined by the measures?  They find a way around the system or they simply meet process requirements while actually doing something completely different to get their work done.

Therein is a shortfall of the more familiar existing approaches to process improvement: Six Sigma, Lean, Total Quality Management, Business Process Management Systems, Enterprise Architecture Design, etcetera.

They are focused on the fixing of effects and are based on ‘Inside-Out’ thinking.

Six Sigma and Lean, for example, accept the “as is” process definition as valid; seeking to “improve” elements of “as is” processes, they focus only on doing the things that one needs to do to get the job done. In the end the causes of these affects still remain.

(Lean does challenge activities and periodically bridges the gap to doing the right thing rather than just doing things right.)

More often than not, these approaches create no customer or business value.

Instead of focusing on doing the Right Thing, their focus is on doing things right.

How Should We Improve Customer Processes?

It’s quite simple. By taking a look at a poor customer process it is easy to identify improvement opportunities – the causes of work and the points of failure.

These are parts of a process that are unnecessary, parts that customers find irritating, parts that are a burden or don’t make sense, or parts where something simple has been made unnecessarily complicated.

To uncover and challenge these causes of work and points of failure, a process analysis approach that relies heavily on the unique ability of people to take in contextual information – and then to make sense out of it – is needed.

It can be found in the CEMMethod (Customer Expectation Management Method).

CEMMethod is a philosophy for managing an organization by putting the customer at the heart of everything that is done.  Introduced in 2007, the CEMMethod continues to be refined to this day.

Improving processes by this method is predicated on getting the right people on the process improvement team. It’s a lot easier to put actions into play if the people affected by the change, and who must implement the change, are on the team to start with.

Your Real Processes

What has been your experience? Have you ever evaluated your internal processes from the perspective of your customers?

If you want to focus on what really happens in the everyday working lives of the people in your organization doing the work, and the experiences of the customers of your organization, please let us know, I am sure we can help.

The forum included sessions along the key themes of Lean, talent and employee engagement, food quality and safety, and sustainability strategies. Presenters discussed their own experiences, lessons-learned, best practices, and featured new technologies that might help manufacturers:

• Manage regulatory requirements - understanding and responding to FSMA requirements and new legislation 
• Manage their supply chain - FSMA and GFSI implications, and vendor performance audits and evaluations
• Manage recalls
• Manage risk – taking a more holistic approach to managing risk and adopting a risk management strategy that is not reactive but proactive

And last but not least,

• Manage change - We were reminded again this year that there are two equally important kinds of change management that food manufacturers should be concerned about; operational change management that deals with changes to products and new product development, and the change management that we can simply define as leading groups of people through periods of significant change and uncertainty.

The Missing Link

Something that I felt was missing from this event was a presentation along the lines of “Creating a Strong Commitment to Food Safety” – a planned session at the upcoming Food Safety Summit Expo & Conference in Baltimore, April 30 – May 2, 2013.

Although several session outlines included phrases like “integrating food safety principles and culture” and “promoting a culture of safety”, few presentations really delved into the “people issues”.

How do you engage your employees to care about food safety and quality? Aside from Melissa Smith-Tate’s excellent presentation on promoting a culture of operational excellence and Lean through recruitment, retention, and developing leadership competencies, the other presenters hardly even mentioned the words “people” or  “employees”. (I’ve opted not to highlight our own presentation, which touched on cultivating employee engagement in order to implement a “culture of food safety”, for arguments’ sake.)

I am even going to go so far as to say that some presenters just don’t get it at all when they include “Altering workforce culture overnight” as part of their session outline.

Creating real change is not an event.  It is a process that requires a context, a plan, and effective, ongoing leadership.

In our experience, change is generally regarded as a bad thing both by people and corporations, i.e., something is wrong if we need to change. The problem is that many firms lack the organizational maturity to lead their people through the challenge of changing the way they approach food safety either on the production floor or in their administrative processes.

Change is Good

There are many reasons that changes made to implement a food safety culture or improve employee engagement don’t work:

• Lack of leadership.
• Not tied to strategy.
• Seen as a fad or quick fix.
• Short-term perspective.
• Political realities undermine change.
• Grandiose expectations versus simple successes.
• Inflexible change designs.
• Lack of measurable, tangible results.
• Afraid of the unknown.
• Unable to mobilize commitment to sustain change.

Bottom-line, change management is a task for leaders.  Managers can define projects, develop measures, and monitor systems – they cannot create lasting change.

And as leaders, you need to create a culture that accepts the fact that what we do – and how we do it – changes all the time. 

Change is a good thing – it makes us better.

Change Leadership

So, the question that spins out of all this focus on leadership:

Is it time to change the term “change management”?

Would the process be more accurately conveyed if we started referring to it as “change leadership”?

As part of next year’s summit, I would like to see “Leadership” somewhere in the themes alongside change, food safety. I am convinced that the delegates would leave standing room only in such a session.

Did you attend the summit in Dallas? I would love to hear someone else’s perceptions of the event! 

However, the food and beverage industry moved more slowly than other manufacturers to embrace off-shoring of manufacturing and sourcing opportunities.  Many people lived with the perception that their food was a domestic product.  Those days are now long gone too.

A Trust Industry

Pharmaceutical firms work in a heavily regulated marketplace because governments recognize that their citizens are concerned with the safety and efficacy of the chemicals that they ingest.  The drug companies also recognize that theirs is a trust industry.  If the buyingpublic comes to the conclusion that a company cannot be trusted, that they are willing to peddle medicines that might cause illness, then those companies will not survive for long.

Food and beverage producers are slowly coming to accept that they are members of this same trust economy.  Unfortunately for many of them, they waited much too long before accepting this reality.

Now they are faced with a wave of regulatory requirements and customer expectations with respect to the quality and safety of the products they offer.

New Processes

Globalization brings incredible growth opportunities, but the accompanying challenges cannot be ignored.

Tracing and tracking inputs and outputs throughout a complex supply chain and across multiple borders have resulted in much greater risk exposure and potential liability for food manufacturers.  The increasing worldwide adoption of GFSI as the accepted standard for food safety compliance has also complicated the administrative burden for producers.

According to CERT-ID, a leading third-party food safety certification body, to achieve certification the applicant must demonstrate a significant range of capabilities including:

1. Senior management that is fully committed to the implementation of the requirements of the Standard,
2. A well-documented food safety plan and HACCP,
3. Operations with well-documented sanitation and GMP procedures in place,
4. An internal audit system that identifies non-conformances and provides corrective procedures and preventive action for resolution of non-conformances,
5. Clear and well-documented procedures for monitoring the performance of suppliers,
6. Traceability through documentation of every ingredient and final product and service,
7. Well-documented evidence of layout, process flow and segregation,
8. Operations with an incident management system in place,
9. A well-documented handling requirements for specific materials, e.g., materials containing allergens and identity preserved materials, and,
10. Well-documented training procedures including records for employees.

Minimal Effort Is Minimal Growth

Many food and beverage producers view these steps as a minimum effort that has to be met to achieve their GFSI and FSMA requirements.

The truth is that a commitment to food safety and quality can provide these firms with a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

The problem is that most of these same firms lack the organizational maturity to lead their people through the challenge of changing the way they approach food safety either on the production floor or in their administrative processes.

Modern IT systems can resolve much of the internal pressures that result from intricate supply chains, complex regulations, and rapid turnaround times.  But firms that attempt to integrate these systems without also developing the capacity of their human resources to properly use them will find that they are unable to capture the full value of their investments.

And the executive leaders of these firms cannot be fooled into thinking that they will make a few changes to their processes, gain their certifications, and slide back into ‘business as usual’.

There is no sector within the global economy that is not undergoing continuous, transformational change.  The food and beverage sector has been relatively insulated from these pressures, but those times are gone forever.

Constant Change Is Reality

New interpretations of FSMA requirements emerge on a seemingly weekly basis.  The GFSI guidelines will continue to evolve and mature with every passing year.

Continuous change is the new reality.

There is no sense in ignoring this.  Accept it and move boldly into the future or deny it and slide quickly into obsolescence and the obscurity of history.

The job of the senior management team is not to direct their company through the requirements of GFSI certification.

The job of the senior management team is to lead a complex organization through the very difficult task of developing the maturity in their people and their systems that will allow them to effectively execute their strategy – within an ever-changing market and regulatory environment.

New technologies and new IT systems will continue to play a critical and expanding role in this new reality.  But without the people to tie the technologies and the IT systems and the execution strategies together, no amount of capital investment will save these firms.

Companies must realize that corporate culture and organizational maturity will determine the ultimate success or failure of their investments.

Firms that accept this will recognize the need for an in-house capacity to implement the change management programs, the leadership development programs, and the training programs that will allow them to maximize the impact of their technology investments.

And firms that can accomplish this transition can stop playing defense and use quality and food safety as a competitive advantage. 

The campaign has a goal – like many of these corporate initiatives – to raise money for mental health programs.  

This is a commendable, but of greater importance is the underlying ‘Let’s Talk’ aspect of the movement that seeks to eliminate the stigma so often attached to any aspect of mental health.

The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) reports that 1 in 5 Canadians will suffer from some form of mental illness in their lifetime.  Anxiety and depression are the most commonly reported issues, yet nearly 50% of people who suffer from these afflictions have never talked to a doctor about the issue.  Despite the existence of relatively effective treatment protocols, many do not seek assistance because of the stigma that is attached to mental illness.

Mental Health and Engagement

We spend quite a lot of time in this space talking about organizational culture and employee engagement – what it is, how to measure it, the impact it has on organizations, and how to improve it.  But what we have never really touched is the impact that these things have on mental health.

The importance of physical health and safety has been well recognized – and even regulated – for years.  But our society has not shown any willingness to openly acknowledge the fact that emotional health is equally important.

Well, it’s time that we acknowledge this central place that mental health holds, particularly as it relates to employee engagement.

The laundry list of positives that emerge from an engaged workforce have been repeated many times.  So let’s do it again…

• Improved productivity
• Improved retention
• Improved creativity
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Decreased absenteeism
• Higher profits
• Higher returns to shareholders

Sounds good, right? Now stop to think for a moment and put yourself in the shoes of an employee who is struggling with intermittent issues of depression.

Does your firm have an internal culture that is open to conversations around issues like this? Would an employee be frightened for his/her long-term prospects and potential for advancement if superiors were aware that there was any history of mental health issues?

I’m not the first to say it, but I might repeat it more than anyone else:

Culture does not emerge from employee engagement. Engagement is a product of the organizational culture.

And culture is largely driven from the top down.

If your senior executives have created a culture of understanding, tolerance, and acceptance, then it is likely that employees will be likely to seek the treatment they need, and will be valuable, engaged members of the firm for a long time.

On the other hand, in situations where the culture is intolerant, cutthroat, and prestige is dictated by position, then positive employee engagement will be difficult to engender in the best of circumstances.  For those who are dealing with larger emotional issues, the likelihood that they will end up as ‘disengaged’ workers is far more probable – and will end up costing the organization a lot more than some sick days.

Progress

The good news – progress is being made.

Last month the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), with the Bureau de normalisation du Québec (BNQ), released the first National Standard of Canada for Psychological health and safety in the workplace – Prevention, promotion, and guidance to staged implementation.

(Yes, this is the same group that sets the standards for electrical outlets, construction materials, and computer networking gear.)

The CSA, working closely with the CMHA, has released a standard for mental health issues in the Canadian workplace.  The existence of this document will set the stage to hold those employers who routinely ignore these issues to be held accountable for their inaction.

These same organizations that would never think of using non-CSA compliant wiring, fixtures, outlets, and other components in their facilities – how are they now going to react to psychological standards being set for their operations?  The same facilities that require two people, a beeper, saw horses, safety belts for the operator – all to move a forklift though a big box store – how are they going to react to issues that have a real, well-demonstrated impact on mental health:

• bullying bosses
• constant, chaotic urgency
• a toxic corporate culture
• excessive workload
• pursuit of profit above all else

The document itself should prove quite a fascinating read for anyone in an executive leadership position.  Start with just the purpose of the document and think about how these four subheads will impact your workplace:

1.1 Purpose

This Standard specifies requirements for a documented and systematic approach to develop and sustain a psychologically healthy and safe workplace, and provides complimentary information in Annexes A to G.  This Standard provides a framework to create and continually improve a psychologically healthy and safe workplace, including

1. the  identification and elimination of hazards in the workplace that pose a risk of psychological harm to a worker;
2. the assessment and control of the risks in the workplace associated with hazards that cannot be eliminated;
   Note: For example, stressors due to organizational change or reasonable job demands.
3. implementing structures and practices that support and promote psychological health and safety in the workplace; and
4. fostering a culture that promotes psychological health and safety in the workplace

Exposure

It seems that there a great many organizations – beginning with the Canadian Federal Government – that will find themselves well out of compliance with this new CSA standard.  This will, of course, immediately beg the question, “how much exposure does this create for us?”

I think that the publication of this standard could create a real lever to force large organizations to finally acknowledge, accept, and actually face the real health consequences that they create for their employees by ignoring the bullies, the toxic culture, and the stressors that they actively cultivate to ‘motivate’ their employees.

I wish all of the corporate risk management officers good luck on this front!  It is going to be most interesting to see how long it takes for a major lawsuit to emerge that leans heavily upon this new standard.

What do you think? Am I over-estimating the importance of this document? Is the tide turning with respect to emotional health?

Want more information on these issues? Follow #workplaceMH on twitter and start with this page Mental Health – Psychosocial Risk Factors in the Workplace by the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety.

You might also enjoy our white paper: Demand Stress and Depression in the Workplace

Or some related posts:

Disability, Mental Health and the Canadian Public Service
Are your employees engaged? Are you engaging your employees?
Is Work-Life Balance Beyond Our Reach?
Overcoming the Stigma of Mental Illness in the Workplace
Do you trust me?

Teams and collaboration have never been more important in the workplace; more and more Gen Y’s and Gen Z’s are joining the workforce and expect group work and sharing ofideas/information to be the norm.  The world is mobile and connected, and virtual teams are as common – if not more common – than ‘real’ ones.

In The 9 Ingredients of Effective Teams we took a look at what we consider to be the most essential ingredients for creating effective teams, how to assess the actual effectiveness of your team, and some steps you can take to improve your team’s effectiveness.

Another good indicator of team performance is how decisions are made within the team framework.

Clear and Effective Decision Processes

You can tell a lot about how well a team is functioning by watching its decision-making process. 

Ideally, the team should....

• Discuss how decisions will be made – when to take a poll or when to decide to by consensus.  Are there times when a decision by only a few people is acceptable?
• Explore important issues by polling – a simple show of hands will do.
• Decide important issues by consensus.
• Test for consensus – "This seems to be our agreement.  Is there anyone who feels unsure about the choice?"
• Use data as the basis of decisions.

Indicators of potential trouble in the team’s ability to make effective decisions include:

• The team concedes to opinions that are presented as facts with no supporting data.
• Decisions are made by one or two people in the group – without team members agreeing to defer to their expertise.
• Decisions are made by a minority.
• The team too-frequently falls back on "majority rules" or other easy approaches that bypass strong disagreement
• The team makes decisions by default – team members do not respond to a statement and silence is interpreted as consent.

It is clear that for a team to be a truly effective high performance team, it must be able to make decisions by “reaching consensus”.

What is Consensus?

The goal should be to reach decisions that best reflect the thinking of all group members by "reaching consensus".  While consensus might be defined differently, for team building purposes it is important to be clear about what consensus is and isn't, so here are some guidelines:

Consensus is....

• Finding a proposal acceptable enough that all members can support it; no member opposes it.

Consensus is not...

• A unanimous vote. Consensus may not represent everyone's first priorities.
• A majority vote. In a majority vote, only the majority gets something they are happy with; people in the minority may get something they don't want at all, which is not what consensus is about.
• Everyone totally satisfied with the outcome.

Consensus requires....

• Time
• Active participation from all group members.
• Skills in communication - listening, conflict resolution, discussion, facilitation.
• Creative thinking and open-mindedness.

Aiming for consensus at a meeting requires a much different strategy than if you were just going to keep on arguing until you had a unanimous vote (or even a majority vote). To reach consensus, the team must let each member participate fully in the decision, and this is rarely a quick and easy process.

Not every decision must have the full support off every team member – in fact, it is impossible to have such agreement in any group.  Your group should decide ahead of time when you will push for consensus.  Decisions that may have a major impact on the direction of the work, project, or conduct of the team – such as which problem to study, or what ground rules to establish – should belong to everyone on the team.

Brainstorming and nominal group technique methods provide structured ways to reach consensus.  Other, less formal, methods exist, and a team can explore them as members become more comfortable working together.

Plan – Do – Check – Act

So what can you do to help your team become a high performance team if this means that it must be able to make decisions by “reaching consensus”?

The answer is actually quite simple – PDCA:

Plan - Have the team leader direct a discussion on decision-making within the team. 

Do - Make decisions as a team.

Check - Occasionally designate someone to watch and give feedback on how decisions are made so the group can talk about necessary changes. If necessary, bring in a facilitator to lead the process.

Act - Once the team agrees on what changes will be made in the decision-making process, it’s time to put it to the test. (Repeat as needed)

And, as with so many other things in life, practice makes perfect – the team will improve its ability to make effective decisions as it racks up experience making them.

Does your team make effective decisions? How does it reach consensus? Does your team even worry about consensus?

For those who are unfamiliar with the Stoos movement, you can learn about it on my post announcing the event.

A new evaluation tool?

I knew full well that I would write up my reaction to the event. So, I took notes and listened carefully to the message of every speaker. Right?

The Stoos Connect organizers took a unique approach to broadcasting this event. Rather than make the feed available to whomever wanted to watch, they had locals organize sites where individuals from a given region could meet to watch the proceedings. The upside of this was that we were fortunate to meet some fascinating, like-minded people here in Ottawa. And watching the speaker on a shared screen allowed us to react immediately to the presentations. We would talk about what was being said while they were still saying it.

In retrospect, I think this offers a really unique way to judge the quality of the presentations.

Speakers who were engaging held our attention. Those who were obviously reading their text or promoting their latest book weren’t likely to keep us from our in-room chatter. Perhaps someone can figure out a way analyze this attention capital as a marker to evaluate presentations in the future?

And the Best Speaker was…

Normally, I would highlight the two or three speakers who really delivered. But, because of the back-and-forth that was occurring at our site (probably true of all the satellite sites) we simply missed the nut of some of the presentations. I suppose this is why I’ve been so slow to write this recap – I missed quite a bit.

Did the organizers of Stoos Connect have this local interaction in mind when they decided to go with the ‘satellite’ approach to remote delivery? I suspect that they did. And I commend them on their decision.

Meeting people from Ottawa who were thinking about the same things as me was – in the long run – more valuable than hearing the thoughts of Steve Denning yet again. (If you are really interested, Steve basically used his time to preach – these are important issues that aren’t getting enough attention – we have to get out there and make more noise – proselytize – build the congregation – hallelujah!)

What I Learned

I learned that ‘Stoos’ is not pronounced the way we North Americans think it should be. It’s not like ‘loose’ or ‘booze’, but – if I remember correctly – more like ‘close’ as in ‘don’t stand so close to me’. (can anyone confirm?) UPDATE: Thanks to Wim! We'll go with 'close' but it starts with a 'sh' sound – so 'Shtose' it will be for the iron-eared Anglophones!

What did I learn that matters? Two things emerge when I think about the event:

First, the Stoos Network does not aim to become a movement. Rather, the goal is to become a ‘movement of movements’. The floor is open for any individual or any group who believes that the current system of organizational management is broken. No one approach is endorsed as the ‘right way’ or the ‘future of management’. Instead they are in a continual search for new ways to answer The Problem.

Second, despite the ‘open arms’ platform, at this point in the discussion there is clearly a preference for all things Agile/Scrum/Lean. Of course this reflects the background and interests of the early organizers, no surprise there. However, time will tell how open they are to other messages and philosophies. It also means that I need to work harder to educate myself in the details of these emerging alternatives to traditional management.

What’s next?

So what is next? I don’t know – but I look forward to seeing what bubbles up!

I do know that complexity and the rate of change continues to accelerate in our world. Pretending otherwise is a losing game. We must accept complexity in the long-term while seeking ways to simplify short-term efforts.

This is where the ‘agile’ approach to management emerges. We shorten our strategic horizen, pick a direction, sprint toward an identified goal, then stop and re-evaluate the reality in which we find ourselves. Did that sprint create real progress toward the goal? Has the goal changed? Do we continue in the same direction?

Ultimately, Stoos Connect delivered what any good conference should. I met some new friends, and it made me reconsider my own thinking and where I want to explore next.

There are certainly still those managers who think they can tell their people what to do, what to think and what to care about – then ‘Prest-o, Change-o!’ – some magic happens, and everyone on the production floor is committed to moving high quality products out the door.

Occasionally, it will even appear that the pronouncements from the C-suite actually have an impact.

“Quality is job one!”

But much like that ‘magic’ show you caught during your meetings in Vegas, it is an illusion that will be glittery, short-lived, and will never hold up to scrutiny under the light of day.

Engagement

If you pay any attention to business management theory these days, you cannot escape the concept of Employee Engagement.

Kevin Kruse, on Forbes.com, provides a typical definition:

“Employee engagement is the emotional commitment an employee has to the organization and its goals, resulting in the use of discretionary effort.”

Years ago, we just called it morale.

The point is that engaged employees are emotionally invested in the whole firm – they believe in what they are doing and are dedicated to their peers, their supervisors and the company. The mission of the company provides them with purpose. They are loyal to the people and the brand.

When done right, engagement is a powerful cocktail, and the power is contained within the concept of discretionary effort.

Discretionary Effort

Most of us have financial commitments that we must pay every month – mortgage, car, utilities and groceries – those non-discretionary expenses that we must pay to maintain our household. The remaining money that we decide to spend on things like entertainment, club memberships, hobbies – these represent our discretionary spending.

In the same way, we all have discretionary effort that we can choose to ‘invest’ in our work. Much like our household budget, we all have a baseline effort that we must provide to meet the basic requirements of our job. But you can think of many situations in which you chose to (or, indeed, chose not to) go above and beyond what was required to simply get your job done.

It might include volunteering for an ad hoc committee, teaching a new hire or showing a supervisor where quality issues consistently creep up. These things aren’t required of an individual to ‘do their job,’ but when people consistently go beyond the baseline requirements good things happen for the company.

And, it turns out, having engaged individuals who are willing to contribute their discretionary effort brings about a raft of good things. According to the Journal of Applied Psychology (Business-unit-level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement and business outcomes: A meta-analysis), increased levels of employee engagement correlate with higher profit, productivity and customer satisfaction while decreasing absenteeism, turnover, and accidents.

Creating Engagement

The steps necessary to create employee engagement, and thus capture the many associated benefits, has been the subject of numerous articles, books and posts. You can find many excellent resources with a web browser and a couple of minutes.

However, if you are looking for the silver bullet, the one sure-fire way to create positive engagement in your staff, start with the mirror.

Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of the Gallup Organization, has been studying these issues for years, and in his words, “…lousy managers, not lousy benefits, create miserable workplaces. And lousy managers tend to create lousy, miserable employees.”

So, back to the issue – how to make your employees care about quality. Heck, let’s expand the issue; how do you make your employees care about anything?

You can’t make them.

You can guide them. You can create an environment in which everyone from the CEO to the receptionist cares about quality. You can make it clear in both the stated and the unstated company values that quality comes before all else – including short-term revenues and share price. You can be honest and transparent and concerned more with people than with income statements.

Mr. Clifton says it best, “Solutions come when employers understand that the art of supervising and managing in the new millennium is closer to being a coach than to being a boss.”

Employees must trust that the political leadership has the best interest of both them and the Canadian public as they attack the budget deficit while striving to improve the overall performance of the public service.

So then, how do we reconcile these dueling priorities — improving the functioning of the public service while reducing its resources?

Productivity Rationale

While the solution is multifaceted and difficult – what Peter Denning might call a Wicked Problem, the only way out of this situation is improved productivity. At the root of above average performance is a workplace culture that engages employees.  It is typically a necessity, and often, the only solution. Consider the recent data from Aon Hewitt on employee engagement:

• 4 employees out of 10 are not engaged
• Engagement rates are not improving significantly

Research has time and again proven the powerful connection between employee engagement and employee performance – and how that connection results in organizational success.   To good leaders this is not news; it is something that has been intuitive to them for some time.

If you dig into the research a little further, you quickly come to the realization that we don’t have an employee engagement problem; what we have is a failure of leaders and managers to create an engaging work environment.

This picture results in a virtual “call to arms” for managers to reconsider their personal conception of the practice of management, leadership, and employee engagement.

Unfortunately, while organizations are trying to be more effective with the same or fewer resources, initiatives that target management and leadership development are typically dropped and employee engagement takes a hit!

Measuring Employee Engagement

While the Gallup instrument or the Conference Board “Employee Engagement Barometer” can provide managers with reliable information regarding employees’ attitudes and engagement levels, it might be more useful for leaders to hold up a mirror and take stock of their own attitudes and behaviours to better understand their impact on employees.

What would your responses to these questions be and what do they reveal about your employees’ engagement?

• My employees are proud to work for (organization name).
• My direct reports enjoy working for me.
• My employees have the materials and equipment that they need to do their job to the best of their ability.
• I value the opinions of my employees.
• I regularly speak with my direct reports and discuss their plans for professional development.
• My employees know where they stand with me at all times – they know exactly where I feel their strengths and weaknesses lie.
• My employees are committed to doing quality work.
• My employees are motivated to contribute more than what is expected of them in their jobs.
• My direct reports are not planning to leave my unit or the company.
• I provide my employees with the opportunities they need to learn and grow.
• My employees feel a sense of accomplishment in their jobs.
• Overall, my employees are satisfied with their jobs.

Our Challenge to You

I would challenge every manager:  if you do find that your employees are not engaged, then as their manager, you are responsible for their engagement.

To (yet again) quote Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO at Gallup:

DHS employees aren’t miserable for the reasons Congress heard. They’re miserable because -- unlike the employees at Wells Fargo -- they have lousy managers and supervisors. Yes, lousy managers, not lousy benefits, create miserable workplaces. And lousy managers tend to create lousy, miserable employees.

What actions can leaders take to improve their employee engagement?

A good first step is to review The Ten C’s of Employee Engagement, a list in which Gerard Seijts and Dan Crim from the Ivey Business School summarized what they found in the literature.

Engagement = Caring

Engagement is not something that just happens – it is the result of involved leaders who carefully create a work climate that supports employees with the right skills, knowledge, and development opportunities. And most importantly, who support them when the going gets tough – and it always does get tough.

(Click here to read Part 1)

But these work force adjustment (WFA) recipients are not the only public servants affected by cuts as managers and coworkers struggle to reorganize, refocus, and move forward to continue service delivery to Canadians. The typical outcome is that frontline staff are simply left to “do more with less”.

Without leadership guidance, though, they have no real understanding of how to adapt their work processes to accommodate the increased load. Ultimately, these ever-increasing demands can have a devastating impact on the workforce.   

Many public service employees also experience a climate where their activities are directed by top-down legislative requirements or regulated processes.  Some of these might even have sanctions attached – think of examples where confidentiality is a legal mandate.  This situation creates a dilemma for leaders and managers who want to be open and transparent - their options may be limited and information often cannot be freely shared.

The result?  Misunderstandings and distrust where employees are not clear as to motive and intent behind managerial decisions and directives.

The result in both situations is that employees show up for work, but their hearts are elsewhere.

“They’re miserable because… they have lousy managers and supervisors.”

        – Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO at Gallup

Employees are slackers

Gerard Seijts and Dan Crim from the Ivey Business School, report that 54% of employees are not engaged.  More troubling yet are the 17% of employees who are actively disengaged and, “...busy acting out their unhappiness, undermining what their engaged co-workers are trying to accomplish.”

Due in part to high levels of disengagement, leaders and managers tend to treat employees as slackers.  In reality, however, most employees look forward to contributing to the work of their colleagues, teams, and organizations.  They take pride in their accomplishments and their professional reputations; work is, after all, a key source of identity and fulfillment.

Engaging employees and ensuring “fit” requires that leaders and managers develop an awareness of the impact that uncertainty and constant change creates.  It requires a continuous communication plan – including authentic, face-to-face contact.  Employees need to know what contributions they can make and what personal impact they may face.  Above all, employees need to know that leaders and managers care about what happens to them.

As a manager, what can you do to engage your employees?

Value and Appreciation

Employees need to contribute to discussions that involve their work.  It is a key signal from management that their knowledge and efforts are respected.  This can also provide a critical learning opportunity for leaders.  Ultimately, this provides employees with the sense that they are contributing to the overall goals of the organization, this, in turn, provides meaning and purpose to their work.

Edwards Deming, who paved the way for quality as a management priority, emphasized the importance of a change-friendly culture and participative management, as well as a work environment free of fear in which employees get the training needed to analyze and improve the system.  All of these conditions spark and imbed drive, commitment, and loyalty – necessary for high performing organizations. 

Action

So what can a manager do to improve employee engagement?

First, make sure employees understand the big picture.  Changes in staffing should be carried out with as much transparency and involvement as is possible – especially for those staff that will be affected by the changes. You can dramatically mitigate the inevitable hit on employee morale:

• Make sure their input is factored into your decisions. If not, explain why not.  Help them develop an understanding of the outcomes you’re projecting and create an early commitment to the plans that will follow.
• Present the total plan and work through it with the front-line teams early and often. Use effective communication to combat rumours – which are typically worse than the reality.
• Build engagement with employees by giving them the full picture and show them how changes to the work processes – that THEY OWN – will be critical to the future success of the organization.

Come back next week for Part 2 of this discussion

Click here to read Part 2

And, in fact, it was in a Forbes.com post that I learned about a movement in management change that Steve began last January with co-conspirators Jurgen Appelo, Franz Roosli, and Peter Stevens.

These four were joined by 17 others in Stoos, Switzerland – a tiny alpine village accessible only by rail or cable car – to form the eponymous Stoos Network.

The Mission

The reason for these people to travel from four continents to the Alps of central Switzerland? Only to facilitate a complete transformation in the application of management in the modern business landscape. Their day-and-a-half meeting resulted in the following communique:

Reflecting on leadership in organizations today, we find ourselves in a bit of a mess. We see reliance on linear, mechanistic thinking, companies focusing more on stock price than delighting customers, and knowledge workers whose voices are ignored by the bosses who direct them. All these factors are reflected in the current economic crisis, increased inequity, bankruptcies and widespread disillusionment.

There has to be a better way.

In January 2012, a diverse group of twenty one people including senior executives, business strategists, managers, academics, and lean/agile development practitioners from four continents, met in Stoos, Switzerland. We believe that we uncovered some of the common characteristics of that better way. For example, that organizations can become learning networks of individuals creating value and that the role of leaders should include the stewardship of the living rather than the management of the machine.

Most importantly, we committed to continue our work, both in-person and online. A problem this size will require many minds and hearts. We’d love to hear your voice and your experience. Help move the conversation forward by joining our LinkedIn Group and on twitter with hashtag #stoos.

Let’s start the transformation, before it’s too late.

Communiqué of the Stoos 21
Stoos, Switzerland, January 2012

You will note that there is no mention of the ‘right way’ to manage or any roadmap to success. The first meeting was – as was only appropriate – about identifying the problem. The solutions lay in the future and will be uncovered only with a great deal of communication, bumps, bruises, hurt feelings, lingering resentment, cooperation, collaboration, fatigue, intrigue, perspiration, inspiration, and facilitation.

Join the movement

I have been tracking this group for some months as the movement has slowly grown and spread to a few – primarily European – local ‘satellites’. In the parlance of the discussion board, I have been a lurker. But it’s time to get off the bench and into the game.

And the source of this sudden inspiration? Stoos Connect!

This event will be held on 25 January 2013 – not coincidentally World Stoos Day – in the De Balie (Salon), Leidseplein, Amsterdam, and features a great speaker lineup.

Like many events these days, Stoos Connect will be live broadcast via the Internet. Unlike pretty much any other event, the broadcast is not being made available to individuals. Rather, they are inviting sites where locals can gather together to actively participate in the event.

With all of this as a backdrop, I couldn’t be more proud of my own managers here at Delta Partners who, when I told them about this whole thing and my desire to volunteer our boardroom as a satellite site for Ottawa, the only response I heard was, “of course”.

So, if you too would rather be a ‘steward of the living rather than a manager of the machine’, please plan to join us here at the Delta Partners office on Friday, January 25th from 9:00am - 3:00pm. Just drop me a note to let me know if you are interested.

Can’t wait to see you.

  - Geoff

If only we had done this two years ago, we would have been working closer together as an organization.

This statement reflected the frustration that members of both the (elected) County Council and the (hired) County Staff and Managers were feeling at the end of a strategic planning workshop that we recently completed in Eastern Ontario.

This wasn't the first strategic planning process this County had been through, but the background issues were such that repeating the same process would not have worked for them.  Leading the participants through a different approach proved to be exactly what was needed to break the logjam that was holding them back.

Why Strategic Planning Works

We have been running a number of these planning sessions with Municipal and Regional governments lately, and, through repetition, we find that a number of valid outcomes emerge that should encourage leaders at this level to initiate a strategic planning process that results in a Five-Year Strategic Plan:

• Provides the corporation with better control over external forces
• Serves as a decision making and resource allocation tool
• Brings everyone in the corporation together so that they are on the same page, in turn creating alignment between Council and Management
• Raises Council’s awareness of current issues and operations
• Creates a document suitable for public relations
• Increases morale within the corporation and develops a sense of trust and cohesion
• Relates the corporation’s capacity to community need

Whatever the story, Council, Staff, and community stakeholders will need convincing of the benefits of a Strategic Plan before they will be convinced to take action.

The Situation

We know from a recent Eastern Ontario Wardens Conference (EOWC) report (A report on the Financial Sustainability of local Government in Eastern Ontario)  and other internal reports, that the Counties of Eastern Ontario are facing the same or similar situations financially, socially, culturally, economically, and environmentally.

Strategic planning is the process by which a municipality or region envisions its future and develops the necessary procedures and operations to achieve that future.

The problem is about finding ways to integrate the longer-term vision and plans with the shorter-term strategic action plans.

Competing Agendas

As any complex organization attempts to move forward, two competing agendas will emerge.

We refer to one as the “Sustaining Agenda” and the other as the “Change Agenda”.

The Sustaining Agenda is about continuing on with what has always been done.  Certainly there is always room to create efficiency and streamline processes, but essentially it is about continuing the business of the corporation – what it does and how it does it.  But please don’t take this as a dismissive statement!  In most cases the activities and processes that are in place are there because they are critical to the functioning of the community – think ambulances and snow plows. The Sustaining Agenda is driven by the Mission Statement, and answers the question, “Why are we here?”

In contrast, the Change Agenda addresses the question, “Where do we want to go?”  The Vision Statement drives the effort to develop strategies that meet new and emerging issues of significance that impact heavily on the corporation’s operations.

Complementary Agendas

Unfortunately, many stakeholders hold the view that these two are mutually exclusive.  There are many reasons for this, but the most common is that limited financial and human resources – mixed with a heavy dose of risk aversion – require that a ‘zero sum’ approach to evaluating outcomes be invoked.

However, the reality of the situation is that one feeds into the other.  As the processes and improvements of the Change Agenda become ingrained within the operations of the corporation, they eventually become part of the Sustaining Agenda.  And, where continuous improvement is a priority, the new Sustaining Agenda will drive the Change Agenda forward.

Our focus is on improving the performance of the region or municipality through an approach that makes clear who owns the Sustaining Agenda and who owns the Change Agenda, what resources will be available to each, and how the performance of each will be evaluated.

These issues are thorny and typically carry a lot of emotional baggage. This means that we must create an environment of trust and open communication to give them the space to deal frankly with the “Elephants in the Room”.

When done properly, the Strategic Plan bridges the two and brings focus to strategies and action plans.  It clearly identifies obstacles and sets out what needs to be worked on in the next 3 – 5 years to realize the strategic vision.

Performance Measurement provides the underlying support for tracking strategy, creating a reporting methodology, and provides a means of evaluating ongoing progress.

Steps in Strategic Planning

The basic steps of the strategic planning process that we employ (fundamentally, as shown in the diagram below) include information gathering through document review and consultations (stakeholder engagement), information analysis, identification of critical issues facing the organization, development of a strategic vision, mission review/revision, and development of strategic directions and strategies.

• The Practical Vision – determining the practical picture of the corporation’s desired future for the next three to five-year planning period.
• The Underlying Obstacles – uncovering the underlying obstacles that will prevent the realization of the strategic vision.
• The Strategic Directions – proposing strategies to deal with the underlying obstacles.
• The Action Plans – developing the substantial actions required to carry out the priority Strategic Directions.

Do you follow a similar process as you develop your strategic plans or is there another framework that has proven valuable to structure the steps you follow?  Does this framework provide for the development of new approaches to corporate operations while creating buffers to insure that current services are not disrupted?

Cherish the season and the opportunity to spend time with friends and loved ones.

We look forward to seeing you all again in 2013!

From all of us here at Delta Partners,

The best conferences, workshops, etc., have both a cognitive and an experiential effect on participants.  I don’t generally get a great deal of benefit from these events because the cognitive component is rarely new and I tend to shield myself from any experiential impact that might force me to change in some way.  Worse still, it might force me to confront the need for a change that I am incapable of making.  Furthermore, I feel that being over sixty years of age entitles me to make such an admission with a certain degree of impunity.

Nevertheless, this conference started me thinking about my personal journey through global transformation.

Idyllic Childhood Fantasies

Having grown up as a child in the 1950s, I was imbued with expectations of the life recently depicted in the television drama ‘Mad Men’.  According to my impressionable ten-year-old mind, all one had to do was get a university education, and then it was a life of liquid lunches and cavorting with secretaries.  It seemed as though a good education was a passport to a life of affluent idleness.  Needless to say, the gap between my childhood-implanted expectations and the current reality is profound – and a measure of the changes that I have personally undergone.

Social Transformation Through the 70's

Outside of science fiction, my first awareness of computers in the world came in 1971, when I was working as adouble entry bookkeeper in London.  On my daily commute on the Tube from Hammersmith to Knightsbridge,there was an advertisement for an IBM mainframe.  I don’t recall the details, but I do recall thinking that this was an exiting development that would have aninteresting effect on the future.  Almost incidentally, my next two jobs, at the senior clerical level, had me co-ordinating at the interface between a mainframe computer and its user community.

In 1973, I returned to the business of getting that university education.  By the time I left university in 1981, the world had indeed changed.  The feminist movement had all but eradicated the opportunity to harass the few remaining secretaries, and productivity had become an issue – even for professionals.

My Digital Age Begins

Literally my first task as a professional in 1981 was to research and purchase something called a PC.

Believe it or not, it was a chore to get my head around the difference between random access memory and a hard drive, let alone deal with the fact that hardware and software were sold separately.  I struggled to understand that I would need an IBM XT with a 5 megabyte hard drive and 256 kilobytes of RAM.   I purchased a database ‘shell’ (that I would have to configure for use), and a word processing package for my secretary.  Yes, I actually had a secretary who insisted upon being referred to as an Assistant, and I still gave her stuff to type.  Change is hard.

As a born analyst, I didn’t really appreciate the PC until my next job, several years later, when I discovered spreadsheets.  By this time I was doing my own typing and also appreciating the ability to record my thoughts in a non-linear fashion.  My boss at the time, who was a generation older than I, still refused to do ‘secretarial work’ on the PC – and I recall thinking how well I had moved with the times.  Eventually, I would start to use e-mail and maintain a fast Internet connection – and that is just about where it ends.

So, my comfortable limits of change (remember where I started) appear to be with the astonishing analytic power that I have with the PC, the ease and control of communication that I have with e-mail, and the information at my fingertips that I get with Google and the Internet.  However – and this is really the point – as profoundly different as my life is because of technology, I am now staring into an even deeper abyss of social media (and who knows what else as speed and connectedness become increasingly pervasive).

This is what I realized as I listened to the presentations at the Public Sector Transformation 2012 conference, which has prompted me to confront the need for a change that I may not be capable of making.

Limits of Adaptation?

The following anecdotes and tidbits of information from the conference presentations are indicative of what sparked this line of thinking:

• A young child is presented with a sheet of paper and she sweeps it with her finger, expecting it to behave like a touch screen.  How do you explain how paper works and why one would want to use it?
• Filmmakers resist the demand to release parts of their content prior to completion of the finished work.  How do you get them to willingly expose their creations to bureaucratically influenced distortion?
• With a mobile workforce, work is something you do, not a place to go.  What happens to the personal friendships at work, on which so many people rely for their general well being?
• To be resilient an organization must dramatically reduce the time it takes to go from ‘that can’t be true’ to ‘we must face the world as it is’.  What is the achievable limit to the speed of adjustment?

I sense that these questions may be largely rhetorical, coming from a place and time prior to the current revolution.  However, that is precisely the point.  What are the new questions that need to be asked from a place and time in the near future?

Out on a Limb

Right now, I am out on a limb with no clue as to what is about to happen.  This is not exactly a cry for help, as I have a highly stable and satisfying personal life to sustain me.  However, I would be interested to know what others think.

Is this merely the normal situation of an aging professional who should probably retire rather than try to keep up?  Or, is there a real sea change happening – in which case I should probably retire rather than try to keep up?

If I’m not ready to retire, what substantive advice can I receive from younger colleagues who are on the other side of the generational divide, or are you already too far ahead to relate to my questions?

Is it a case of Wittgenstein’s famous dictum?

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”

Overall, I think that we have successfully delivered on our goal to provide our clients and readers with articles that are readable, accessible, timely, current, helpful and valuable. We’ve attempted to share our professional knowledge and experience to help both individuals and organizations succeed.  And, we try to get people to think more deeply about concepts that are critical for successful leadership and management.

While you may have already read some of our recent blog posts, there are others whose title may not have grabbed your attention at first glance or that you may have missed entirely.

So, we again took stock of our inventory and we came up with this short list of our ‘must read’ 2012 posts to share with you.

Delta’s 2012 Top 10 Recommended Blog Posts

1. To lead change, we must learn to teach (Geoff Schaadt)
Part 1 of an excellent 5 part series that ties together how our brains think, knowledge maps, automaticity, memory, learning, and emotion with the things you must take into account as you attempt to lead a group of humans through a transformative change process!

2. Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field: Leadership or Bullying? (Jim Taggart)
One of our most popular posts of 2012! Bob Sutton describes Steve Jobs: “I have come to believe that whatever Jobs was in life, in death he has become a Rorschach test -- we all just project our beliefs and values on him.”

3. The 9 Ingredients of Effective Teams (Debra Sunohara)
The ability to quickly bring groups together and create effective teams is becoming more and more important in the evolving workplace.

4. Food Safety Culture at the Heart of Canada’s Largest Meat Recall (Francis Loughheed)
Changes in the way that government inspectors carried out their work was not reflected in the culture of the executives and managers at XL Foods.  The result was Canada’s largest meat recall ever.

5. Demoralized Workforce – What can a manager do? (Debra Sunohara)
Research has time and again proven the powerful connection between employee engagement and employee performance – and how that connection results in organizational success.   To good leaders this is not news, it is something that has been intuitive to them for some time.

6. Why All Public Service Managers Need to Care About Evaluation (Greg Tricklebank)
Results-based management in its current iteration has been around for over ten years and has taken firm root in the Public Service modus operandi as evidenced by the new Policy on Evaluation that requires all direct spending to be evaluated every five years.

7. Service Improvement – What are the alternatives? (Allen Black)
Organizations tend to focus on people, procedures, and tools to improve their business but what about the processes that hold everything together?

8. Tapping Your Innovation Potential (Alcide DeGagné)
Budgets have been allocated. Meetings are frantic, issues get raised, and plans get drawn up, rejected, and redrawn. The innovation agenda is a major contributor to the mix needed to meet strategic and operating goals; in fact, it is the only path to success.

9. The First Step to Anything: Care. (Geoff Schaadt)
 It doesn’t cost anything to care, and the results can change everything.

10. Strategic Planning as an Organizational Learning Model (Alcide DeGagné)
The planning process is essentially about learning – “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”

Not only did we publish more than 60 blog posts in 2012, we also published a new white paper and released the French version of Managing Change: A workbook for personal and organizational change:

• La Gestion du Changement: un cahier d’exercices pour le changement personnel et organisationel
• Organizational Culture vs Climate

What do you think – how did we do? Which of our posts was your 2012 favourite?  What topics did we overlook?  Are there issues we spent too much time on?  Are there areas where you would like to see more depth?

We’ve had a lot of fun working on these projects in 2012, and we hope the year was a good one for you too.

Best Wishes and Happy Holidays – we look forward to delivering more great content to you, our readers, in 2013!

And so, as many of us think about how we will strive to improve ourselves in 2013, here is a list of our recommended reading:

5 New

The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg

Charles Duhigg takes a look at the science behind habits, why the exist, and how we can change them.

Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back, Andrew Zolli, Ann Marie Healy

An insightful look at resilience and how encouraging adaptation, agility and cooperation can help us rebound rather than fold under the pressure of change.

Smart Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey, Greg Link, Rebecca R. Merrill

Having convinced us of the importance of trust and how to build it in The Speed of Trust, the authors take it one step further in Smart Trust and illustrate the impact of a ‘high trust’ climate of organizations.

Collaboration, Morten Hansen

Morten Hansen provides leaders, government, and organizations with a ‘how to’ get collaboration right in a focused, disciplined, and results-oriented way.

Brain Rules, John Medina

Brain Rules succeeds at breaking down how our brains work in plain English and in an accessible, informative, and engaging way. A must read for any and all who want to know how to ‘get the most out our brains’.

5 Old Not so New

If you haven’t yet read these five books, this holiday season may be a good time to give anyone of them a try.

The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, Bob Sutton (2010)

According to Sutton, “The most important reason that I wrote this book is that demeaning people do terrible damage to others and to their companies. And even though there are occasions when being an asshole helps people and companies “win,” my view is that if you are a winner and an asshole, you are still an asshole and I don’t want to be around you!”

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip Heath & Dan Heath (2007)

One of the most popular business books of the last decade.

Leading Change, Kotter (1996)

In 1996, John Kotter published Leading Change, which quickly became the seminal work in the change management space.16 years later—an eon in the Internet time-space to which we have become accustomed—and Leading Change is still the work that most change management professionals will point to when asked “how to do it.”

The Empty Raincoat, Charles Handy (1994)

 "We were not destined to be empty raincoats, nameless numbers on a payroll, role occupants, the raw material of economics or sociology, statistics in some government report… If that is to be its price, then economic progress is an empty promise." Handy feels that everyone’s challenge is to fill their empty raincoat and create meaning in their life.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey (1990)

A classic resource and approach to personal organization, prioritization, and efficiency. 

5 To Be Released

2013 is already looking promising with new books scheduled for release from some of today’s most influential business writers including Seth Godin, Brian Solis and Eric Schmidt.

The Icarus Deception, Seth Godin (December 31, 2012)

The New Digital Age, Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen (April 23, 2013)

What’s the Future of Business, Brian Solis (March 18, 2013)

A title that is sure to draw some attention!

Doing More With Teams, Bruce Piasecki (April 2013)

Give and Take, Adam Grant (April 9, 2013)
Why do some people rise to the top while others sink to the bottom of the ladder of success?

Please let us know which books you think we’ve missed that really should be included here!

Managers and executives from the Baby Boom generation face some particular challenges as they contemplate retirement while continuing to attend to their managerial responsibilities.

Ten ideas

Here’s a list of suggestions to keep in mind – boomer managers and executives – as you interact with your younger cohorts.

1. There is life after work. Take a cue from Gens X and Y.
2. You don’t own all the corporate knowledge.
3. Listen to Gens X and Y before speaking. What are they really saying?
4. Be clear in your communication – don’t try to be hip.
5. Be who you are, no facades – Gens X and Y will appreciate it.
6. NEVER say, “This is how things are done around here.”
7. Don’t provide answers. Ask Gens X and Y for their solutions to problems.
8. Be clear on your expectations and accountability.
9. Emphasize that the customer/client/citizen is the organization’s reason for existence.
10. Leave a positive legacy with your organization. Mentor an up-and-comer.

Silos or Commons

There are two paths when it comes to how people will work together in the future:

• either people will continue to maintain the fences and silos around their respective generations,
• or they will flatten these barriers and figure out how to collaborate.

There’s an enormous amount at stake with respect to our collective future and quality of life.

Where do YOU stand on the challenges facing society and organizations from the perspective of an ageing population and the implications for leadership?

The content of this post is primarily drawn from our e-book: Leadership and the Intergenerational Divide: Issues, Trends & Solutions.

The not-so-common knowledge? What you can do to avoid those big numbers as you implement your own transformation project.

Selling people short

A lack of adequate attention to the people-related aspects of organizational change is emerging as the most significant reason for transformation project failure.

Effective change management involves much more than the mere application of processes, tools, and techniques. Strategy, technology, policies & procedures, financial resources are components found in most change initiatives. Unfortunately, leaders almost always underestimate the impact of human relations and organizational culture – values, attitudes, perceptions, and feelings – on change implementation, and they fail to recognize that organizational change starts with personal change.

In a previous post, Resilience – Help your team spring back, we explored what motivates people to change, and what makes some people more adaptable to change – in other words resilient.  Another component to understanding personal change is to recognize and understand how people typically react to change.

What are the common reactions people have to change?

Denial

You work as usual and see to your activities as if nothing has changed – as if nothing will change. You refuse to come to grips with the change. But denying change can only work for a short time.

Your prolonged denial will prevent you from facing your feelings and reactions. Denial, in the long run, hampers the natural evolution of the change process.

Resistance

You harness only the negative aspects, whether personal or organisational, of the change. Depending on your personality, you might express yourself with anger and frustration, with active resistance, with depression, with inaction or with sabotage. You are determined to stick with tried and true methods over new ways of doing things. You often need time, attention and ample communication in order to put aside the old and embrace the new.

Exploration

You begin to look forward – with caution. You look for the benefits of the change, and ways to implement it. You creatively rely on your problem-solving skills and explore how and where you fit within the change framework. Even if you seem to be “on the fence”, you are nonetheless open to the idea of active involvement in the process.

Engagement

You completely commit to the change by fully backing a successful implementation. You are excited, energetic and enthusiastic. Often, you are an agent of change, and help others to explore and commit themselves to the change.

Life isn't as serious as the mind makes it out to be.
     - Eckhart Tolle

When people look forward to change, their initial reactions to it can include excitement, enthusiasm, even a kind of ecstasy. If people are not in favour of the change or if they are surprised by it, they may then experience disbelief, bargaining, betrayal, anger, and sadness.

Some of us start with denial but with time, lots of communication, and some much needed help, move through resistance and exploration to end up fully engaged and committed. By allowing yourself to express these emotions, eventually you can accept the change – which is quite different from undergoing the change itself. Other people stay stuck in denial and resistance and never do embrace the new.

Skills for surviving organizational change

A “normal” response to change can include any element related to denial, fear, anger, anxiety, resistance, excitement, desire to sabotage the organization, and finally acceptance. There are, however, some steps that we can take to develop personal skills that can help us manage change.

1. Control your thoughts and emotions
   What do you choose, and when do you choose it?  For some, this is the most difficult skill approach.

2. Let go of the past, and focus on the future
   It can be tempting, but resist the urge to stay in the “good old days”. Your supply of energy is limited. Where do you want to use your energy, in the past, or turned toward the future?

3. Be flexible and adaptable
   These are the hallmark qualities of today’s professional. Don’t be judgemental; bear in mind that something new is neither good nor bad – it is simply different.

4. Find balance in your life
   It is important to find balance in life, such as work, family, finances, friends, spiritual pursuits, health, stress management, and personal and professional development.  If work itself takes up most of your life, the least disturbance will have profound effects.  Remember that work is nothing more than what you make of it. It does not define you as a person.

5. Don’t adopt a hostage mentality
   True job security is found within yourself! This means that job security follows you wherever you go.  It is important that you stay current and work on skills development, as required. Choose the learning method that suits you. If you are a self-learner at heart, adopt methods that capitalize on this fact. The lifelong learner is in a better position in the long run, because they stay on top of market requirements. Explore your options.

6. Live in the mindset of renewal and continuous improvement
   Remember that you have talents in more than one area.  Think back to all that you have accomplished in your lifetime. Actually, change is nothing more than a new way to evolve. Stay open and positive, and everything will work out.

Personal action plan

Ask yourself – What will I do to move forward? Find balance? Challenge myself? Be pro-active? Stay positive?

Action follows planning, so make the planning real.  Write things down and give your ideas substance, clarity and permanence.  Most of us accept the need for an organizational change management plan, so why do we resist creating a personal change management plan as we face ever-accelerating uncertainty?