Engine For Change

On Tuesday I brought you Favorite Quotes (so far): Part 1.  As promised, this is Part 2.

• Beauty, about the beauty in living as a driving change example
• Fierce Urgency of Now, about how time rushes past whether we like it or not
• But What About…, about the perils of groupthink
• No Letters After My Name, about how there is no formal training in driving change
• Immense Ranges of High Mountains, about seeing a victory and a disappointment at the same time and still keeping moving toward your goal

Thanks for journeying with me back through these quotes of the week.  I hope you’ve found one or two that spoke to you and urged you forward.

I find strength in the words of others, as they show me they’ve seen the challenges I see and they haven’t given up.

I won’t give up either.

Will you?

This week I’m going to recap my favorites from my Quote of the Week posts to date.  In the comments section you can nominate your favorites or nominate new quotes that I should post about.

These are not in any particular order

• Real Progress, about turning around if the road you are on isn’t getting you nearer your goal
• Meant to Shine, about feeling confident about being yourself in a world that is frightened by your light
• Choose Freedom, about the power you unleash when people are free to follow you
• I Still Shout, about not losing your will to fight even when no one seems to listen
• Patience, about waiting until the time is right, but not sitting quietly by doing nothing in the meantime
• Surplus of Meaning, about the importance of stories and metaphors when you’re leading people to a new place
• Very Frustrated, about how you should admit your frustration to yourself and to your team and use that moment to re-energize your change

Join me again on Thursday for Favorite Quotes (so far): Part 2

I’m a We Be. We be here before you and we be here after you.” – told to Dee Jacob during an implementation.

I laughed out loud when Dee Jacob shared this line during her presentation at the Theory of Constraints International Certification Organization (TOCICO) conference.

I’ve met whole We Be families during some implementations, yet I don’t know which is harder, to be an outsider amongst the We Be or an insider, proclaiming a new vision.

The insider’s peril calls up a quote from the Bible, John 4: 44

For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honor in his own country.”

Either way, insider or outsider, driving change is a challenge.

You could use the existence of both quotes to confirm to yourself that you won’t succeed no matter what, and you may as well give up now.

Or….

Or, you could notice that both roads, insider and outsider, are rough and then keep charging along anyway to create the change you believe in.

Why not keep charging?  It’s the only way to win in the end.

May you have a happy, productive week driving change, be you an insider or an outsider or both.

When you’re at work in your job or in your volunteer organization, how long is the time span you’re considering when making decisions?

Do you think about today, the next few weeks or the next ten years?

If you manage people or lead an organization, what is the time span your people are considering?  Do you know?

Someone’s time span matters because it is, in part, a reflection of your organization’s effectiveness.

Even as far back as 1957 researchers documented that in a strong command-and-control organization a person’s time span shrinks as the organization demands passivity to management, submissive subordination to rules (and leaders) and dependency upon others.

These factors sum into a regression to the time span of infancy (the day or the moment) in once capable adults.  Chris Argyris wrote about this in his early work  Personality and Organization: The Conflict Between System and Individual.

Put into the terms of Engine for Change, what Argyris was documenting was a part of the psychological effects of driving people.

Introduced in any organization, room to drive change acts as a powerful and quick acting antidote to the regressive infancy.  When you drive change you watch each person’s time span rapidly returning back to a normal, adult range. They become curious about and motivated toward creating the long-term future for the organization and they are ready to act.

When you drive change you replace passivity, submissive subordination, and dependency. Instead you get someone’s personal passion for a change combined with their advocacy for the change that matters to them linked with the creation of their own plan to reach their goal. It’s amazing to watch.

If you’re struggling to get the people in your job or your volunteer group to look out past today, just check to see how much you are driving people and inducing passivity, submissive subordination and dependency.

Then, start driving change and watch your time horizons expand together.

Why not try?

It may not be an appetizing way to say it, but I’m still trying to digest all that I heard, saw and discussed during last week’s Theory of Constraints International Certification Organization (TOCICO) conference.  I can’t yet decide where to start learning more, where to first apply the new information I gathered, and where and when I can make the most difference in my life, organization and community.

Is there anyone out there who has already taken action based on what we heard, saw or discussed?

If you have, what did you do?

If you haven’t, what are you planning to do?

Knowledge is only powerful when we act upon it.  I plan to act soon. How about you?

We judge ourselves mostly by our intentions, but others judge us mostly by our actions.” – Eric Harvey and Alexander Lucia in Walk the Talk

Today went by in a flash, probably because I was so focused on getting through my presentation this afternoon.

We had one plenary session to start the day, “Can TOC Cure the Ailing Health Care System?” by Dr. Gary Wadhwa.  Though he admitted his presentation was not a policy pitch or a political statement, he showed how he had use TOC to invigorate his practice and help the local health system along the way.  His point in general was that health care must be solved, so why not use the thinking processes and other essential tools to solve it.  His goal was an ever flourishing health care system.

Eli Schragenheim presented “The Role of the Transition Period in Implementing a Change.”  He noted that implementing TOC changes paradigms and understanding paradigm changes takes time.  He provided details on how to lead a group of people through the uncertainty of a significant change, TOC or not.  I’m excited to try out some of his suggestions. If you can get your hands on the presentation files or the video, you’ll want to check this presentation out.

In “Implementing Constraints Management with Lean Six Sigma: Lessons Learned at Anadolu Medical Center,” Bahadir Inozu and Vickie Kamataris presented their SystemCPI solution. They used to improve performance in a hospital in Turkey.  I appreciated their model of how they break apart a conflict into which tool (TOC, Lean or Six Sigma) best fits the conflict.

The final presentation I watched before giving my own was “A New Breakthrough Tool for Reducing Changes in Projects by 50%,” by Andy Watt.  It’s hard to say that any of the presentations was my favorite, but with Andy’s presentation I can see a huge amount of rapid wins that could be achieved if I can only get its content before people who struggle with project scope creep.

Finally I presented and all of that was quite a blur.  The computer system wouldn’t quite support loading my presentation, so after fits and starts swapping between computers I was introduced and on my way.  The audience, from where I was standing, seemed to remain engaged, perhaps only watching to see if the energetic pregnant lady in front of them would run out of steam before the presentation ended.   After the presentation several people wandered up to the front to thank me, which always is unexpected by appreciated.

I’m so excited I came to the conference and so grateful to my employer for supporting my participation.  The people who had to approve for me to attend know who they are, they read this blog, and will likely read soon just how grateful I am.  I’ll thank you again when I return on Monday.

I still have tonight and most of tomorrow at this location so I still have time to talk/think/absorb so much more.  Now that my presentation is done I’m glad to lean back and relax for a while. Thanks to everyone who’s been reading my updates and following along with the conference.  I’m glad we could take this journey together.

Presentation done!  I started late due to technical difficulties but I still had time for questions and still gave back five minutes of my time.  Super win!  Thanks for all the support from everyone along the way.  More information on today’s conference day to follow.

It’s not if something can be done, but how.”

With that quote Kristen Cox of Utah’s Department of Workforce Services launched into her presentation, “More Efficient Government: Implementing TOC in Utah’s Department of Workforce Services.”  She shared with us the amazing results her organization has gained in just the past year.  The organization decreased the days to approve someone for benefits, shrunk their call wait times and lowered their cost per case all while their case load tripled and their payroll dropped by more than 80 employees through planned attrition. Oh, and they’ve returned $6 million to Utah’s state government in only six months.  She encouraged all in the audience to “walk through their confusion” to get where they want to go.  The presentation was very impressive.  When the videos from this conference are posted at TOC.tv in the next few weeks, I encourage you to watch this presentation.

Going back to an earlier presentation, Andrew Kay’s  “Structured Practical Techniques for Implementing TOC” was wonderful and I’m already excited to show to all my friends at work the whole presentation (or at minimum the story about the company that lost >$100,000 in profit because they refused to buy a $230 grinder for three days).

Before dinner I was happy to present, for the second time in two days, my motivation mapping concept to a few more willing friends.  Thanks to Tim and Kendra for their committed attention.

The night ended with a celebration of life for Eli Goldratt.  For three hours I sat enthralled by all the stories his friends and colleagues told of the first time they met him, their favorite memories of him, and the impacts he had on their lives.  I’m sorry I never got to have my own Eli story, but he lives on through them and through all of us interested in TOC.

Tomorrow’s my big day, albeit late in the afternoon.  I’m ready (I think).  This should be a lot of fun.

Day 3 has been action packed.  Rushing between breakout sessions always seems to drain more of an attendees energy than sitting in coordinated sessions in one location.

Today I’ve had the great opportunity to watch four presentations, with another soon to start:

• USing TOC and Critical Chain to Pull People Out of the Favelas in Brazil by Bill Taylor where he shared his first attempt at a Unified Field Theory of Management model.
• SDAIS – A Road Map for Continuous Success by Dee Jacob of AGI Goldratt.  AGI works with the U.S. Navy’s aviation logistics organizations.  I’m excited to read Ms. Jacob’s book, Velocity.
• Personal Challenges in Implementing TOC by Oded Cohen of Goldratt Schools where he described the challenges a TOC manager has in gaining the support of superiors, subordinates and peers.
• Implementing a Process of On-going Improvement (POOGI) at Great Lakes Copper Inc. to Drastically Increase Capacity by Chris Mitchell and Jack Warchalowski about a copper mill in Ontario that used DBR and total TOC solutions to revive their business.

I’m waiting now to listen to Structured Practical Techniques for Implementing TOC by Andrew Kay of TOC3 of Australia.

If any of the titles sound interesting to you, just post a comment with your questions and I’ll see if I can answer them.  We’re all learning here together.

Perhaps my friends at the conference who attended other sessions will post what presentations they attended and offer the same service (Hint to Steve Holt and Hilbert Robinson especially).

Back to the conference I go.