Category Archives: Executive Leadership

What Covid Taught Me – Discipline is My Best Friend

Comments off 1217 Views1

 I once had a very wise coach who said, “Discipline is your best friend.” Years later I have come to realize how true that statement is. The global pandemic has provided time for all of us to reflect on what is working and needs to change for us to align our actions with our values. That is precisely what has happened to me once I was forced to step off the merry-go-round of consulting and endless business travel.

During this time, I have grown – in fact I have flourished. I think I am certainly an outlier. Most of the people I know are feeling isolated, burned out, and frustrated. It makes sense considering the state of our planet, our discord, and our uncertainty. So why am I doing so well?

Who am I to prosper during this time of suffering and crisis? I am just a person in Portland Oregon who accidently discovered how effective lean thinking can become when combined with a daily habit of yoga and meditation. That’s it – no big secret revealed here, just a lot of hard work invested in developing good daily behaviors.

This whole realization crept on me. I am surprised as much as you. I have struggled with food, relationships, self-esteem, body image, and discontent that borders on depression. My whole life up to this point has been a blend of moments of flashing brilliance with monumental train wrecks. It’s kind of a miracle I am here at this place – physically, emotionally, and mentally.

I learned about lean and continuous improvement in the late 1980s and have made a career coaching, consulting and training clients around the world. My focus has always included leveraging technology to enable flow (Lean IT) and creating cultures built on respect (Lead with Respect). I never imagined how mindfulness and meditation would complement connecting people and building cultures of excellence in a digital world.

I’ve experimented  with different styles of yoga and meditation on and off since the 1970s – that’s fifty years of dabbling around, never committing to a single discipline, or forming a daily routine. For some unknown reason, I got locked into a daily habit and have been practicing yoga every day for about 15 years now. The impact of a formal daily routine transformed my life and provided an unexpected payoff when the pandemic arrived. I have no intention of ever stopping. Like a magic spell, my practice has provided deep insight and a level of acceptance that has helped me thrive during these crazy times.

So how has my practice prepared me to flourish over the past two years?

What have I learned that has enabled me to rise above the discouragement of world events?

What can I share with you about this discovery? 

Reflection: Live in the Now

Let’s start with the first question. When Covid arrived in the United States I was spending 75% of my time traveling to client sites across the US as well as Europe and Australia to train and coach process improvement, Lean IT, and cultural transformation. I loved the work and the people I met, but life on the road was brutal. Living on planes and sleeping in hotels for over 10 years placed a huge toll on the things that matter most in my life – my family and my health. Fortunately, my new lifestyle has created rapid healing and recovery!

Being physically grounded due the pandemic enabled me to become mentally and emotionally grounded in aligning my actions with my values. Without inner alignment, I think we are just adrift with no real direction or meaningful purpose.

What Helped Me Most

 In a word: discipline. I believe that any healthy habit and daily routine may have led me to this place but it was yoga and meditation provided the perfect balance of body, mind, and heart that I needed to heal. You practice yoga to strengthen and quiet the body so the mind can meditate. Meditation brings concentration, then focus, and then insight. The insight is a realization of what it is you need now, in the moment. If all this sounds a bit too New Agey, all I can say is this: it works!

What Might Help You

 Take stock of your life and determine what is working for you and what is not. To do this, you need to get clear on your personal values and purpose. There are many resources available to assist you with this. Think of the degree of disciplined habits in your life and ask yourself if something needs to change. Are there behaviors that need to go? Are there new habits that need to be made? Consider the value of naming your purpose and finding a daily habit (through discipline) that allows you to focus on moving towards it. Your personal discipline becomes the fuel for you to show up as the best current version of yourself!

As you reflect on these questions, I want to leave you with this motivating quote the philosopher Epictetus that sums this up well:

“Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer.

Put your principles into practice – now. Stop the excuses and the procrastination. This is your life! You aren’t a child anymore. The sooner you set yourself to your spiritual program, the happier you will be. The longer you wait, the more you’ll be vulnerable to mediocrity and feel filled with shame and regret, because you know you are capable of better.

From this instant on, vow to stop disappointing yourself. Separate yourself from the mob. Decide to be extraordinary and do what you need to do – now.”[1]

[1] Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness, Epictetus, Sharon Lebell (with thanks to James Clear)

Leading with Respect: The Right to Be Successful

Comments off 1390 Views0

I recently had the pleasure of presenting a webinar on a topic I am passionate about: Leading with Respect.

The event drew over 350 attendees, the majority of whom stayed tuned in for the entire time and were highly engaged in the chat. The fact that so many people attended shows how important and pertinent this topic is today.

Considering the high levels of stress, fear, uncertainty, and change we all are going through, it is no surprise that the topic of how to effectively create a workplace of inclusion, engagement, accountability, teamwork, and amazing results is so popular.

Lead with Respect provides 7 core areas of behavior-based patterns that change how leaders, managers, and teams show up and interact. Leading with respect involves awareness of our focus and intention, and how well we are connecting with people to create an environment of mutual trust and sustained high levels of performance. This is accomplished through the application of 7 core practices:

  1. Go and See for Yourself
  2. Create a Meaningful Challenge
  3. Listen to Understand
  4. Teach and Coach
  5. Support Others
  6. Foster Teamwork
  7. Learn as a Leader

After nine years of applying and refining these practices, I am still humbled and deeply moved when I see the impact they have on people, teams, and leaders to create mutual trust, psychological safety, and camaraderie. As human beings, we all want to be included and respected while at the same time know we are making a meaningful difference.

Lead with Respect is built on a foundation of key principles about what people need to flourish. One of the attendees asked, “Under the assumption ‘People have a right to be successful,’ how do you define successful?” This is an excellent question! As applied to these practices, success is defined by each individual person. Working with hundreds of people, I have noticed a pattern emerge: practically everyone shares the same human needs and sees success in similar ways:

  • Contributing towards a meaningful purpose or challenge (purpose)
  • Feeling comfortable sharing ideas, asking for help, and reporting problems (safety)
  • Being part of a team that you care about (belonging)
  • Helping others and being helped (teamwork)
  • Taking control of how you “show up” (autonomy)
  • Learning something new each day (development)
  • Getting better at something with persistence and practice (mastery)
  • Setting and achieving challenging goals (results)

Leading with Respect provides the framework, principles, and tools to build a working environment where people come together to create amazing results because they really care about each other, their customers, and their organization!

For more information and to connect with Mike Orzen, click here.

Honor the Work of Others by Honoring their Work Experience

Comments off 2291 Views2

Respect is less about how we feel about our people and more about what we do for our people!

So many work processes are performed “unconsciously” in the sense that they are done without a clear understanding of the key steps, degree of expected quality, how much time they should take, and how difficult the work should be. Beyond treating people well, respecting people is about being thoughtful and intentional about the work experience of the people you lead. When organizations leave work totally undefined, they leave it to each person to try to figure out the best way to do the work based on their own singular, personal opinion. This usually creates a chaotic mess.

Recently, I was working with a large tech company whose new customer onboarding process was a combination of tribal knowledge and make-it-up-as we-go work processes. After doing a thorough virtual “go and see,” it was clear to me that everyone was suffering, including the people doing the work and new customers who were shocked by the delays, uncoordinated communications, and the overall disappointing experience.

I asked the leader who I was working with, “What kind of a message do you think this sends to your people and your customers?” “We don’t really care about you!” was his reply. I think he nailed it… When work processes are left undefined and open to personal opinion, we send a strong message to people: “We accept the status quo, so do your best with our broken processes.”

When I am coaching leaders and team members, I often ask, “How long has this process been broken?” Invariably I hear, “As long as I can remember,” and “It’s always been that way,,. so we’ve learned to make it work.” But trying to make a broken process work means wasteful extra steps, mistakes, rework, interruptions, and highly variable flow of the work. It also means there is little stability around the time it takes to deliver and the quality that the customer receives. No one is happy; frontline workers live in fire-fighting mode while customers encounter a broad range of unpleasant purchasing and customer support experiences.

In response to the problem, we gathered a team to work on a rapid improvement effort around the new customer onboarding process, employing lean methods and tools. The team came together and worked so well that they completed eleven PDCA learning cycles across four A3s in a period of seven months. The results were amazing in terms of customer feedback and satisfaction, work performance metrics and teamwork!

The team celebrated briefly only to discover that improvement work was not a one-time effort. It became painfully obvious that the process for this and every other type of work needed to be adjusted and improved on an on-going basis in perpetuity! When I asked the leader and team members for key insight and takeaways from this experience, the common recognition was that:

  • Work processes need to be defined, shared, and honored by everyone doing the work
  • It was not enough to improve the work once; ongoing improvement was essential
  • Teams needed to be deeply involved in the improvement effort, but also needed support from their leaders and someone who knew lean thinking and practice
  • None of the other points really matter if the people who are doing the actual work do not feel respected by their leaders
  • The best way to show respect is to enable team members to improve their own work processes as a central element of their daily work

So what concrete actions can leaders take?

  • Go and See – spend time with your people doing the daily work on the front lines to understand what it is to stand in their shoes and do the work
  • Identify the core work processes that the team performs (just ask folks!)
  • After watching, asking, and observing, ask yourself, “Is this work process stable, commonly applied, predictable, and effective?”
  • If not, ask the team to answer the question, “What is the problem we need to solve?”
  • Create an opportunity for the team to hold an improvement event (aka Kaizen event) with adequate support and coaching for them to be successful. 

In short, honor the work of others by honoring their work experience. As a leader, when you take the time to deeply understand the challenges your team members face and the impact this has on teams and customers, you will demonstrate more respect for people while driving improved performance. This is a win-win for the customer, the team, and the entire organization.

Ultimately, it is not what you personally think or feel about the idea of respect that counts; it is about what you actually do to support your people. Demonstrate your respect for others by

Principles Systems & Tools – What Shingo Can Teach Us About DevOps

Comments off 3407 Views0

 In my last post, The Power of a Game: What I Learned from Facilitating the Phoenix Project Simulation, we explored how DevOps and Agile practices are built on underlying Lean principles that go back decades to a time before the Toyota Production System. When you look into the history of Lean, it is almost impossible not to encounter the great thinker Shigeo Shingo. Shingo worked closely with Taiichi Ohno(the father of the Toyota Production System) to advance Lean thinking while building the lean production system at Toyota.

As someone who attempted to apply Lean to IT long before DevOps came into existence, I have always said that DevOps is about creating an environment where it is safe to look deeply, question what is happening, think crazy things, experiment, and learn based on outcomes. Ten years ago, I was invited by The Shingo Instituteto serve as a teacher, coach and assessor. I had recently been awarded the Shingo prize for my book, Lean IT – Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation. What I learned from Shigeo Shingo’s writings heavily deepened my understanding of the role of Lean and flowin IT. These ideas are reflected in the Lean Enterprise Pyramid below and it’s amazing how effective they are with Agile and DevOps.

Principles & IT Excellence

A principle is a timeless universal truth that controls outcomes whether you believe in it or now. Think of it as a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of beliefs and behaviors. Principles govern consequences and outcomes – both positive and negative. “Create customer value” is a core principle in business success. If you don’t believe in customer value, or don’t deliver it, your prognosis is pretty bleak.

In Lean IT, I introduced some key principles that drive IT success (see the Principle Pyramid image).

Let’s begin with a working definition of DevOps – a mindset, tool set, and set of practices that combine software development and IT operations to shorten the development/operations life cycle to deliver small iterative features, fixes, and updates often and in close alignment with business objectives and value creation.

Consider the lean principles pyramid from a DevOps perspective :

  • Foundation principles build an intentional culture of trust, respect, focus and learning
  • Behavior ishow we show up and engage
  • Perspective is a fresh new way of looking at IT work
  • Flow is the outcome of effective DevOps in action
  • Capstone of the pyramid fosters a regenerative culture of trust, safety, experimentation, collaboration and innovation
  • Outcomes are higher quality IT solutions and services, in less time, with less cost with healthier teams!

For DevOps, Agile and High-Velocity IT of any flavor to be successful, each of these principles must be addressed. You can’t address them all at once, so I suggest beginning at the base while taking steps to enhance flow. If you focus on these two elements, respect for people and flow, you will always be progressing in the right direction!

Systems & IT Excellence 

Shingo defined a system as a collection of tools and tasks that are highly integrated to accomplish a specific outcome. The Shingo Model captures the important relationship between principles, systems, tools and results. It also supports three key insights which clarify how to achieve excellence in IT (or any organization). IT needs to get good and then continuously get better with its systems, tools and results (no kidding!). Understanding how these elements are informed and reinforced by principles is essential to making this happen.

The insights:

  1. Ideal Results Require Ideal Behavior
  1. Beliefs and Systems Drive Behavior
  1. Principles Inform Ideal Behavior

For DevOps & Agile, the Shingo Model provides a logical sequence for change. Put another way, what are the key questions we need to answer?

  1. What do the ideal behaviors of DevOps look like?
  2. A) What beliefs do our people have today and what beliefs do they need to embrace DevOps? B) What systems (think: work systems, procedures, policies and technology) do we have in place today, what behaviors do they drive and what needs to change?
  3. How can our understanding of lean principles clarify our understanding of question #1?

Take a moment and reflect on the role of principles and systems in your transformation. The more you ground your approach in the stability of principles, the greater your chances of success. If you or your organization does not truly believe in these principles, a conversation around which principles you do believe in would be a good place to start.

Please let me know if this is helpful and what obstacles you encounter.

Michael Orzen has been serving as a Lean coach and guide in the IT space for over 25 years. His passion for hi-velocity IT, respect for people, mindfulness and continuous learning have made him a highly sought adviser and coach to many IT leaders. He lives in Portland, Oregon and can be reached at mike@mikeorzen.com.

Show Respect, Psychological Safety and Social Neuroscience

Comments off 4871 Views0

The focus of our work and teaching in recent years (Mindful Coaching, Helpful Coaching, Leading with Respect, Humble Inquiry Questioning, Coaching for Development) has led us to three questions we believe are critical for the Lean/ Continuous Improvement community to consider:

  1. Why would a practical business leader like Fujio Cho make “Show Respect” the third part of his advice to leaders?
  2. What is “Psychological Safety” and how does “Show Respect” help create it?
  3. What does Neuroscience research indicate about the link between “Show Respect” and “Psychological Safety?”

1)  Why “Show Respect?

Mr. Cho urging leaders to “Go See” and “Ask Why” makes sense as part of basic Toyota problem solving thinking. You want to grasp the actual conditions rather than assume you know, and you want to dig down to the underlying causes of problems rather than put band-aids on the symptoms. But why is “Show Respect” so important for Mr. Cho? Is it just because he’s a nice guy? (The team members at the Georgetown Toyota plant in Kentucky certainly felt he was when he was president there.)

We believe there is a practical business reason why Mr. Cho stresses the importance of leaders showing respect for employees. And it goes beyond the focus Toyota puts on the employees who do the work that creates value for its customers. Remember that when Mr. Cho was President and CEO of Toyota Motor Corporation (all of Toyota world-wide) he led creation of the first authorized description of the Toyota Way. Images such as the one shared above are often used to illustrate the key elements of the Toyota Way.

In most depictions of the Toyota Way, the fundamental values or pillars are the same, Continuous Improvement and Respect for People.

Mr. Cho was being very practical in his focus on “Showing Respect” as a critical management and leadership practice. If Continuous Improvement is the pursuit that helps a company solve problems, improve performance and adapt to challenges of change, Respect for People is the key to engaging employees in continuously making and sustaining improvements that makes it work. A company cannot afford enough managers, supervisors and specialists to address all the small things that need to be improved to maintain smooth flow and effective operation. The employees who do the value creating work have to willingly take on that responsibility. Employees who do not feel respected for their knowledge, capabilities and contributions are not likely to make the effort to go beyond assigned tasks and responsibilities very often.

Many in the LEI community who are involved in trying to overcome the obstacles in the cultures of their companies and engage employees in continuous improvement as part of their jobs have intuitively recognized the importance of leadership “Showing Respect” for their efforts. But we have not been successful in demonstrating to leaders and executives how their traditional management thinking and behaviors undermine their desire for the benefits of employee engagement. We hope to provide a first step toward making the case with this article.

2) What is “Psychological Safety” and how does “Show Respect” help create it?

The freedom to be yourself without fear of judgment is, in our opinion, the most significant obstacle to creating a culture of deep learning and continuous improvement.

In virtually all organizations, physical safety is a given. Most governments protect workers from the risk of accidents by enacting laws and regulations covering building codes, fire safety, ventilation, hearing and eye protection, gloves, hard hats and steel-toed boots. And most companies have programs that stress the physical safety of their employees. But there is another kind of safety that is just as critical as physical safety. It is psychological safety and we believe it has an incredible impact on an organization’s culture and the way people behave and think about their work, their colleagues and the interdependent aspects of their jobs.

In her new book The Fearless Organization, Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson defines psychological safety as “the belief that the work environment is safe for interpersonal risk taking. The concept refers to the experience of feeling able to speak up with relevant ideas, questions, or concerns.” This quality is invisible, seldom managed well and, when neglected, highly influential on employees’ understanding of their role and place in their companies.  The critical question is, do employees feel it is a reasonable personal risk to speak up or not just go along?

Why is psychological safety so difficult to foster and maintain? There are many factors, but perhaps the most significant one is the way our brains are wired. Most people crave positive recognition and appreciation while avoiding criticism. We tend to be very concerned about what others think of us. We are often overly reactive to negative feedback and those who disagree with our ideas. (More on why this is so in Part 3: What does Social Neuroscience research indicate about the link between “Show Respect” and “Psychological Safety?”)

For people to engage at a much deeper level, they must feel instinctively comfortable being themselves and sharing what’s inside (ideas, concerns, ambiguities, unknows, uncertainties, hunches, etc.). This may seem obvious, but when we cannot be ourselves, we expend most of our attention protecting our image rather than engaging in meaningful dialogue! We are careful with our words, don’t talk about mistakes and withhold information – all with the purpose of managing what others think about us! This takes an incredible amount of energy and focus. The effort drains us of the spark we need to be creative, be open-minded, hear dissenting ideas and process tough feedback.

In her numerous studies of high performing teams Edmondson learned another fundamental aspect of psychological safety: it’s primarily local.  The social environment in teams and groups can vary widely across organizations. The overall culture in an organzation is a factor but it is the sense of safety within a group that is the main influence on how willing members are to speak up and speak out. And the greatest determinant of the sense of psychological safety in a group or teams appears to the behaviors and assumptions (i.e. leader knows, decides, tells) of the leader. What the leader does, does not do, expects and will not accept sets the time for the team. Edmondson’s findings are supported by a two-year Google study of performance and work environment of a 180 teams (Project Aristotle). The local leader is the primary source of members’ assumptions about the balance between fear versus safety that infleunce their sense of what is and is not a reasonable personal risk.

Continuous improvement is more difficult than anyone seems to want to admit because it’s continuous! This requires amazing reserves of drive, passion and stamina to persevere through the inexhaustible challenges, countless iterations of trial, discovery and learning, and the inevitable failures that must be embraced if we are to learn, improve and make meaningful change.

Without psychological safety, a team, a department and an organization are severely handicapped because they are deprived of the full contribution each person has the potential to provide. With psychological safety, people share everything they have to give, and everyone – and the company reap the benefits.

3) How are “Show Respect” and Psychological Safety linked?

In keeping with basic lean thinking let’s look beneath the outcome of Psychological Safety for the human processes that create or destroy it.

Neuroscience research has made significant gains in understanding the things that happen in the structures of our brains during different human activities. Using functional MRIs available since the 1990s it is possible to observe what happens inside the brain during both cognitive processing and social responses. Functional MRIs show movement of blood in the brain which indicates neural activation. In other words, neuroscientists scientists can now see which parts of the brain are engaged in specific brain activities. These insights demonstrate how respect and trust contribute to a sense of psychological safety and how their absence makes us afraid of taking risks in social situations.

Physical pain and painful social situations activate the same pain neural network and in much the same way. When we have physical injuries or experience social pain such as rejection, humiliation, embarrassment or criticism our brain reacts to them with similar physical sensations and emotions. That means we experience emotions and social pain in and with our bodies.

As an example, please close your eyes and think of a particularly embarrassing or humiliating moment in your teen years. How does your body respond? Most people experience a physical reaction such as a tightening stomach, flushing, tingling or tightening in the face, a feeling of distress. Many jerk their heads or bodies to try to shake off or get away from the feelings. The later is a flight response because your threat network has also been activated also and you experience the memory as a danger to you socially. Also consider how we describe the impact of such social situations: “I was crushed.  She broke my heart.  It was a real blow.”

Outright rejection of us or our ideas; angry or harsh criticism (especially in public), exclusion from an ingroup or inside information, the humiliation of a public put down, being discounted, disregarded or taken for granted, and being bypassed through favoritism all trigger some form of pain reaction in our bodies and some degree of feeling unsafe or threatened. Over time, experiencing these “social injuries” or seeing them inflicted on others creates impressions of “that’s what to expect around here.” Over time those impressions become unstated assumptions and form our unconscious recognition, and that of our group, of the culture of the company or organization.

Such an implicit understanding of our work environment is critical because it leads to other assumptions about whether it is safe to speak up, make suggestions, point out problems, disagree with management and your peers.  If we do not feel we can risk speaking up, stepping up, reaching out, pointing out and suggesting it is very unlikely we will commit much continuous time and energy to addressing problems and working on improvement.  If we do feel safe and respected and valued for our capabilities it is much more likely we will see it as a reasonable risk to exercise discretionary effort (meaning to go beyond what can be required or demanded) and willingly engage in continuous problem solving and performance improvement.

There is another important aspect of the brain activity related to our social lives. Pleasant physical and social experiences also activate the same reward network in our brains. That means when we sense we are included, valued, useful or given meaningful responsibility it is not just an idea, it is also a pleasurable and rewarding physical experience. Think of expressions we use to describe these moments: “Helping him warmed my heart. It gave my spirit a real lift. I felt 10 feet tall when she handed me the award.” The implication is that what we are experiencing is both physically and socially rewarding. Our human need to feel connected and accepted is being met. This makes it much more likely that we will feel safe exercising our discretionary effort and willingly take responsibility for contributing and making things better.

The equation for Discretionary Effort is simple but getting it to add up is difficult:  Respect + Acceptance + Trust = Psychological Safety.

Mr. Cho was right about the importance of RESPECT. Rodney Dangerfield complained he couldn’t get any. Aretha Franklin demanded it. According to researchers, acceptance, trust, respect and being useful were originally critical to our survival because they meant inclusion – and safety – in the family or social group. In our brains they are still essential in our new “families” and “communities” – our companies and organizations. Without this social “security” we don’t feel we can take the risk of contributing aswe are able. When respect is not demonstrated and a sense of psychological safety is not part of the culture, we are destined to see struggles such as many companies are having engaging employees in continuous improvement activities and sustaining their involvement.sustaining their involvement.

A collabroation with my good friend David Verble.

Lean IT Forum 2018 – Closing Keynote

Comments off 0 Views0

Accelerating Innovation with Lean, Agile and DevOps

From the perspective of Lean IT, Agile, and DevOps what is innovation and why is it important? Lean IT, Agile, and DevOps provide a solid collection of tools and methods to create more effective IT teams and value streams, but what steps and tools can we leverage to drive innovation and rapid advancement within IT? This talk explores the central drivers of accelerating innovation and provides specific examples of its application in IT environments. How do I make sense of the various methods of Lean IT, Agile, and DevOps to drive innovation? Discover a unifying model you can use to pull these disciplines into alignment and avoid confusion from the “big three.”
Join Lean IT pioneer and innovator Mike Orzen as he pulls together themes from the day’s great speakers.
Thrilled to have Pierre Masai, CIO of Toyota Europe, begin the summit with a talk on “The route from Toyota Production System to Lean IT, Scrum and DevOps!” I have known Pierre for several years and always learn a great deal whenever I hear him speak. What a privilege to have him attend this year’s forum.

Authentic Leadership – Effective Leadership for Agile, Lean & DevOps

Comments off 0 Views0

A Valuable 2-Day Masterclass for Leaders and their Direct Reports – 

Getting results applying Agile, Lean & DevOps is common but usually relies on a handful of people who carry most of the weight because they are excited by the new tools and methods. These early adopters act as champions of change and are essential at the start of an IT transformation. For change to persist, innovation to be sustained and continuously improved, everyone needs to be engaged!

This is where effective leadership is crucial. Using hands-on exercises and role play, this workshop will position you to understand and experience the key behaviors needed to effectively lead Agile, Lean IT & DevOps teams through an enterprise transformation.

Currently, most DevOps, Lean IT, and Agile transformations are not led by CIOs. They are often led by the director of operations, chief architect, or director of development. It is good these people have been given the authority and/or responsibility to introduce a significant change in the way work gets done. But there is a potential downside: without the vision, alignment, and commitment a CIO brings to the discussion, these efforts can collapse for many reasons including lack of commitment across the entire IT service delivery value stream, conflicting priorities, entrenched silos within IT, lack of internal coaching and support, and overburden of bottleneck resources (just to name a few).

The success of the transformation begins and all too often ends, based on the degree the CIO and their direct reports actively lead and authentically connects. To lead people effectively, leaders need to understand the “Why,” the “What,” and the “How.” This is a mindset, skill set, and toolset that needs to be learned, practiced,  and adjusted based on the culture of the specific organization and the challenges they encounter. Leaders throughout the organization must be able to connect with people at a very real and meaningful level that fosters trust, transparency, respect, and new ways of working across silos. This is tricky stuff for almost everyone and the CIO is the pivotal influencer of how seriously and deeply people will go to make their transformation succeed.

 

 

How Do You Know If You’ve Created a Meaningful Challenge?

Comments off 4094 Views0

Have you ever issued what you thought was an inspiring challenge for your team, only to discover they were underwhelmed and far from motivated? Many organizations that have mission statements displayed in their lobby, company values laminated on the back of employee badges, and team banners hung from rafters proclaiming lofty goals – but it may not be surprising that when their people are asked, “What do you do here and why is your work important to you?” most look puzzled and perplexed as they attempt to articulate an answer. This response is global: from the U.S. to Europe to Asia to South America – over 75 percent of people I speak with seem to lack a meaningful challenge which serves as a source of motivation, caring and commitment.

In Lead with Respect, one of the core practices is to create a meaningful challenge. How does creating a meaningful challenge demonstrate respect for people? Why is it so important that the people on your team perceive the challenge as meaningful on an individual and personal level? When people understand goals and objectives, acknowledge them as having relevance, and feel they can trust co-workers and leaders, profound levels of engagement and self-initiated involvement emerge.

The challenge must be clear 

Often challenges are vague aspirations which mean different things to different people. For example, “To delight our customers by delivering outstanding value” may sound like a worthy goal, but most people find it difficult to translate into specific behaviors which can be modeled, coached and measured. People need to understand the why of their work and identify with its importance in order to deeply care about outcomes. In other words, people need to clearly understand the why before they will genuinely care about the how and the what! (See Simon Sinek’s TED talk classic Start with Why). When the reasons why are distorted, vague or left undefined, there is little personal commitment to performance and even less motivation for improvement.

Clarity is not enough 

Clarifying the reason why the work is important is a good start but it may still lack the motivational power to engage people at a visceral, deep-seated level. How do you know if your people understand the challenge and find it meaningful enough to be inspired to take action?

One approach is to simply ask them, “Do you feel our team has a meaningful challenge?” They will most likely say, “Yes.” Be sure to follow it up by asking, “Why?” and “Can you give me a specific example of how our challenge was meaningful and motivated you?” These conversations show respect for people through honest dialogue. Focus more on listening than on speaking during these encounters. Look for examples of behavior (physical acts) that are tied to the challenge. If the challenge truly is meaningful and clearly understood, people have no difficulty describing it and drawing a recent example of how they were guided to take action because of it.

How does this fit in with go & see?

The next time you are at the gemba, watch and listen for evidence that a meaningful challenge is part of the discussion. Is the challenge understood and shared? How frequently does it come up in conversation and how is it used? Are people inspired by the challenge or discouraged, intimidated, or detached as a result of it? Can you connect people’s actions back to the challenge? How does the team know they are winning or losing (reaching their goals)? Do they care and if so, why do they care?

Take a look, reflect, and experiment

Leading with Respect is all about engaging hearts and minds and moving beyond people simply giving the minimum effort, going through the motions, or only doing what they are told to. When a meaningful challenge is present, people care at a personal level and join together as a team to find the energy, creativity and commitment needed to meet the challenge. It’s a beautiful thing to see! Take an honest assessment of your challenge and its effectiveness at creating motivational impact on behavior. Ask these questions to yourself and to your team and reflect on your current condition. If your need to improve the effectiveness of your challenge, develop a countermeasure and run an experiment to learn more deeply about the impact of a meaningful challenge on your team’s level of engagement, commitment and self-assumed accountability.

This post was also published by the Lean Enterprise Institute here.