Engine For Change

Each time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage, and confidence in the doing.” – Theodore Roosevelt

We gain when we act.  Others gain too.  There is a power in our actions beyond ourselves when our actions are examples to others.

This weekend, my three-year-old son, born with spina bifida and named after President Theodore Roosevelt, rose to a challenge and raced in a kids dash using his Lofstrand crutches.

The local paper posted a picture of him being cheered on by the crowd.

My little Teddy gained confidence in the doing and spread confidence to the crowd by his example.

This week, as you debate whether or not to face a fear, consider not only what you’ll gain in the doing, but also what others will gain by watching your example.

Be bold. Act.

Spread strength, courage and confidence.

Drive your change.

Why not try?

Last Saturday some friends and I sat around discussing our various techniques for creating change within large organizations.

During a portion of the conversation we were debating whether or not to create change in a large organization you need to…

A. Change policies from the top of the organization across the whole organization or

B. Start the change with a small group of people within the organization and grow the change from there.

At the start of the debate many of us assumed that top level change was the key to starting a change, so most of our talk revolved around how to get the attention of the right top leaders to get them to change the organization-wide policies.

I participated in the conversation, but something didn’t sit right with me.

In my experience, top-down, organization-wide changes are rarely effective.  The best changes I’d seen started with a few people choosing to behave in a different way and gradually carving out a larger and larger space in the organization where their new behaviors were okay.  I could describe these situations to my friends, but I was lacking a concept that could pull together the theme between all the situations.

Then, the light bulb came on.

If in projects you protect what matters (the due date) from uncertainty with a project buffer maybe what was protecting these start-small changes from failure was an equivalent buffer from the uncertainty of the organization: a policy buffer.

When a new boss announces he is changing the standard and X, Y, and Z behaviors are now expected, regardless of what the rest of the organization is doing, that boss is creating a policy buffer around his group.

When a small group of like-minded coworkers bands together to improve their team meetings or agrees to bring in only healthy treats to share, they are creating a policy buffer around their informal group: no bad meetings or donuts here.

When a community of practice shares their lessons learned, maintains standard behaviors in essential processes, and leads their people in empowering ways, they are establishing a policy buffer between them and the other communities.

A policy buffer is a set of explicit behavior and/or policy differences between the group changing and the larger organization or system.  The group’s maintenance of this policy buffer is essential in protecting the new behaviors or policies from the influences of the old ways of doing things.

Use of project buffers revolutionized projects.  Inventory buffers advanced logistics.  No one knows yet what policy buffers will do for change implementations, but I have a hunch we’ve found a big piece of our grand solution.

I can’t wait to get started.  I’m off to build my policy buffers for my important changes.  What are you going to do?

I think there is a flaw with traditional brainstorming.

Often, the brainstorming process demands that you throw out whatever is in your head, regardless of whether you are passionate about the issue or not.

Since the fuel to sustain you and others through a difficult change is passion to see the vision become reality, why would we want to leave passion out of brainstorming?

Hence, next Tuesday, I’m experimenting with a pre-brainstorming exercise called Soap Box Presentations.

Before a large group starts its brainstorming, I’m giving any passionate group members a chance to take the stage in front of the whole group and share an issue they are passionate about.

Borrowing from Toastmasters International’s playbook, soap box presenters will be following the O-R-E-O method (Opinion, Reason, Example, Opinion) and will, using only three to five minutes, be allowed to make their case as to what the group should work on this next year and why.

I’m hopeful that these short opportunities to share their passion will plant the ideas into the heads of all the members, and maybe lure the others to join these passionate people in their work.

Next Tuesday will be the first experiment, so I’ll have to report back to you on how it goes.

Meanwhile, have you ever tested an improvement on the traditional brainstorming methods?  If you have, what did you do and how well did it work to start you toward a big change and a big win?

My mother always reminds me,

You can’t do it all.”

So, bouncing off of that thought, I’m officially seeking some help to get me through my busy fall months.

Would you like to be a guest blogger at Engine for Change?

During the months of September, October, November, and maybe even December, I’m in need of many guest bloggers to keep this blog up and running, full of new content while I am off line having a baby (my third) and caring for my newborn plus my 4-year-old son after he has surgery in late September.

I bet you’ve got some posts you’ve been dying to share, but the thought of creating your own blog is too much.  Then, guest blogging is for you.

Maybe you have a few favorite quotes that you’ve been hoping I would pick for the quote of the week.  Just send those in to me too.

The sooner you send your posts or quotes to me, the sooner I can get them ready and scheduled for later posting.

I can’t guarantee I’ll post every submission I receive, but you never know if I’ll post your stuff until you send it to me.

Submit all guest posts to engineforchange@gmail.com.

Thanks in advance for helping me through a few busy months.  I couldn’t and wouldn’t be writing this blog without you.

Now, let’s go out there and have a great week driving change.

Don’t forget to lavish thanks on the people who make your wins a reality as you are driving change.

If you aren’t thanking them, chances are no one else is either.

Who are you going to thank today?

Make a list of ten decisions you made in the last two weeks, small decisions or large decisions; it doesn’t matter.

Now put a check mark next to each of those decisions you made to avoid or run from some consequence you feared.

Put a star next to each of those decisions you made to seize or run toward an opportunity.

Which group won? The check marks or the stars?

There are plenty of things to fear in this world.

There remain many things worth running from.

Yet, the things to fear are small when compared to the opportunities you could run toward. Right now. Today.

When you’re feeling tired, frustrated, or ready to give up, make a list of your decisions and make the check marks and the stars.

If the check marks (the fears) are still winning, stop and take a deep breath.  Make a list of a few decision you can make right now, today, that you could put a star next to.

Now, make those opportunity capturing decisions.

See what happens.

I bet you’ll like the results.

There are some people who, if they don’t already know, you can’t tell ‘em.” – Yogi Berra

Too true.

So, show them instead.

See if you can knock them over with your example.

See what happens then.

When you’re driving change, often part of your journey is determining who is responsible for the whole or the parts of the area you wish to change.  Sometimes you’ll find that though someone or several people should be responsible, actually getting one or more of them to admit their responsibility is next to impossible.  Here’s a trick I use to visualize the responsibility gaps.  Try it out and see how it works for you.

• Choose a problem or area of contention to discuss.

• Attempt, as much as possible, to get all the people you perceive have some portion of responsibility into one room. This is often harder than it sounds and can be skipped in favor of a more speculative method, but that method won’t yield more than a quarter of the results if everyone involved is present.

• Label a point on a piece of paper or a white board as the problem spot then draw a large circle around it.

• Ask the parties involved what portion they perceive (or know through documentation) is their responsibility. As you draw the picture, show only those overlapping regions which the people in the room offer to you.

• When each “semi-responsible” party is listed in the drawing, follow up by asking the group if there are any areas where their responsibilities overlap.

• After correcting the drawing for those areas, ask if there are any areas where no one is responsible. Mark those unclaimed regions.

• The fun for the participants comes when you ask them “Who should be responsible?” This is often an easy answer for people to give because they get to do what they’ve long done non-visually, leave the responsibility with others.

• With this current state responsibility map, ask the group who benefits if this problem is resolved. Note any groups or individuals listed that have no responsibility in the map.

• Ask the group who suffers if this problem is resolved. Note any group or individual listed that has no responsibility in the map.

• Ask anyone present who has responsibility but defined in narrowly why they define their responsibility so narrowly. Listen for past incidents of punishment for exceeding perceived responsibility (e.g., the top leader punished me because I didn’t ask permission before I tried to fix that last time). Try to determine whether or not the conditions that created that situation still exist, e.g., was that the behavior of that person or is that the ongoing expectation of anyone in that position.

• Ask how we could free people to assume greater responsibility. To amplify this question, you should target it directly to those in the room who in the past have actively limited the responsibility of others. “Bob, what action will you take to free people to assume greater responsibility?”

• Ask the group to close their eyes, keep their eyes closed, and raise their hands only if they agree with the statement, “I will assume a different range of my responsibility tomorrow, and behave differently now because of this analysis,” raise their hand.

• Continue questioning until you see enough of the right people raising their hands to make near-term progress on the issue.

• Share your responsibility map with anyone who wasn’t present during the actions above.  Add their feedback to the map.

• Start driving change with those truly responsible.

I have a newly acquired pet peeve: trying to discuss a Lean organization.

Why is this a pet peeve?  Because “Lean organization” is a high level abstraction that in common usage does not have a common definition.

Try this experiment for yourself: Ask two or three or four people what a Lean organization is and see what they say.  Did they all list similar attributes or did their definitions vary wildly?  In my experience it is likely that their definitions vary wildly.

Why is this important?  Because in organizations we are often searching for another high level abstraction “alignment” and in our search for “alignment” we mistakenly assume that if two people when asked, “What type of organization do you want to be?” spout back to us, “Why, a Lean organization of course.” that we have somehow achieved “alignment.”  In reality, all we have done is teach the parrots how to repeat the new often-said phrases of our organization.

When an organization’s words lack meaning you have  a hollow organization.  Hollow organizations think they are making progress toward their goals when really they are talking themselves into a stupor.

If you’re curious how to free yourself or your organization from such a stupor, check out Stuart Chase’s 1939 classic, Tyranny of Words.  You’ll never treat words the same again.

Let’s fight for meaning, one word at a time.

Why not try?

Your life does not getter better by chance.  It gets better by change.” – My daughter’s fortune the other night at the Chinese restaurant

Have you been waiting for luck or chance to find you.

Stop waiting.

Start driving the change you want.