Engine For Change

The uniform of leadership is thick skin and a soft heart.” – Chris Brady

Thanks to Rogue Polymath for tweeting the quote this morning.

Here’s a quick hint for how to rapidly create a change you want within a bureaucracy.

Stop generically naming your problem (e.g., The reimbursement amounts for company travel need to change) and instead start quoting the chapter and verse (e.g.,  Table 5 of instruction 7852.4 says reimbursements shall be calculated based on the hotel rates in Atlanta.  We recommend the rates be based on New York instead).

After choosing to drive change instead of driving people, quoting chapter and verse is the second most powerful change concept in any rule-driven bureaucracy.

You get to chapter and verse by starting with a basic problem and asking “What rule prevents me from doing X?” or “What instruction tells you to do Y?” When they quote you something you immediately seek out that source and check their facts.  Did they cite the rule correctly?  Are they referencing an old version of the instruction and they don’t know the rule has already been changed?  You’d be surprised how many surprises you find when you actually check people’s sources.

Problem stay problems when they are hidden in vague language without reference to anything solid.

Nail down the chapter and verse.  Seek the modification you need to make it read the way you want.  And, see your change driven straight on to success.  It’s not always a straight road, but I bet it’s an awful lot faster than anything else you’ve been doing.

Why not try?

Some days you might struggle to find a new idea to spark your creativity, you might drag yourself through a team meeting, you might feel like you are running on empty.

Don’t worry.  We all have days — or even weeks — like that.

The challenge isn’t to avoid those days.  The challenge is in how you refill your tank and start your change moving again.

To get yourself moving again, try these simple steps.

Step 1: Do something, no matter how small (e.g., one e-mail sent, one piece of paper reviewed, one trip to the coffee machine).

Step 2: Smile and congratulate yourself. It may seem silly, but it’ll work faster than you think.

Step 3: Say out loud, “Win!”  Depending on how empty you feel, say win as many times as necessary to get yourself feeling like your needle is moving off of empty.

Step 4:  Do something else, again, no matter how small.

Step 5: Repeat steps 1 through 4 as many times as necessary until you can feel a sense of motion.

Too often we get to empty and keep ourselves there because we demand that the first action we take immediately resets us to full and launches us forward at blazing speed.

Life doesn’t restart from stop like a bullet ride at an amusement park.  Instead, it more often starts like an old train building up steam until the wheels finally start turning.

So do whatever it takes to get yourself moving again, no matter how slowly you start.

Why not start now?

Make time to process new ideas during your week.

Too often we’re lured into thinking only in small chunks: the time between conflicting statements in a meeting, the length of a candidates sound bite or a blog post, the millisecond while you read a text.

If some thought snags on your brain and you know there is a larger idea there, jot down the thought and then schedule some real time to process it.  Maybe 30 minutes will be all it takes, but it will take some time.

Try to make time to process one idea this week.  You’ll be glad you did.

Once you’ve processed your idea, feel free to share what you’ve been thinking about in the comments section.  I, for one, am interested in thinking along with you.

Sterling Whitehead just wrote a great blog post on not being too eager to move up in your career. He encourages us to enjoy where you are and be in the present in our current positions. This is an interesting topic.

In my opinion, there are three factors that immediately come to mind on this issue.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, he proposes that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice are required to obtain mastery of any activity. At 40 hours a week, that takes you to about 5 years to mastery your job. This gives a good reason to take your time learning where you are. Of course, to move up, you don’t have to master every position along the way. Being proficient will usually be good enough.

The Peter Principle states that everyone rises to their level of incompetence in an organization. Another way of saying that is that everyone keeps getting promoted until they stop being awesome at their job. As such, they are one position above where they could most benefit the organization. That’s definitely a compelling reason to not be eager to move up.

But here’s the other side of the coin. The impending demographic tsunami of retirement-eligible senior employees will create a vacuum to be filled with younger workers that most likely will not be prepared for the opportunity. All too often, these experienced veterans do not pass on their knowledge and expertise due to personal, cultural, or organizational reasons. It would seem that at least a select few junior workers should be pushing to gain skills and knowledge to adequately fill these positions (which could become available at any time). To help them, organizations should put more effort into retaining this knowledge and facilitating its transfer. That way the pressure isn’t all on the up-and-coming employees to hop into leadership roles and produce results without being prepared.

The other option is to restructure the organization so that less hierarchy is needed to support it. Being more horizontally oriented could prevent, or minimize the number of people setting up to higher positions without being ready for them.

[This post was originally featured in the monthly Rogue Polymath Newsletter.]

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe

Driving change is not about big wins, ripe with glory and praise.  Driving change is about making the small choices each minute, hour and day to lead from the front through your own actions, to willingly let others follow and to praise all along the way.

You can be great in the little things.

You will be.

Now drive change.

Why not try?

A few weeks ago Industry Week ran a story “Can Lean Six Sigma Reduce Government Waste?“  The main title was interesting, but it was the sub-title that got my true attention, “Quality professionals say ‘yes,’ but outline challenges to implementation.”  I was shocked to find the following list of obstacles to implementation.

• An environment faced with conflicting strategies, goals, and priorities.
• Creating a sense of urgency to deploy a comprehensive improvement methodology across all government agencies.
• The personnel management model currently used by many government agencies.
• A lack of familiarity with Lean Six Sigma and how it can benefit the organization.
• Ongoing political partisanship.

The number one obstacle the survey respondents mentioned was “the very structure of the U.S. federal government, which they say can be a barrier to comprehensive evaluation.”

Really?

Those are the obstacles that are stopping Lean implementations by more than 2,500 Lean professionals that responded to online surveys of the American Society of Quality?  If I were entirely honest (and this is my blog, so why not be?), this list seem like self-serving excuses, not true obstacles to implementation.

One by one, I can show you how these obstacles exist, yet they aren’t really what prevents implementations from succeeding.

Instead, the obstacle to implementation is: the implementers reliance on driving people as the means to achieve implementation.  If only they would choose to drive change instead.  That choice would dissolve the obstacles and open up success across government, and it wouldn’t require any congressional or presidential action to begin.

Required government investment in the solution: $0.  Changing your mind is free.

Government (and citizen) benefit from the solution: unlimited.

That’s the sort of return on investment we need if we hope to get the reforms we need in our government.

If you want to reform government, start by driving change.  It’s possible to start today. Why not try?

As I promised: a one-by-one look at the survey respondents’ challenges. (more…)

A few weeks ago I included Dan Roam’s book Back of the Napkin as a class text meant to spur the students to use doodles in their driving change work.

This week a friend sent me this video by Sunni Brown (5:51) where she discusses the value of doodling in the workplace. I love her new definition of a doodle: to make spontaneous marks to help yourself think. I also treasure her assertion that when information density is high and the need to process that information is also high, you should turn to a doodle to communicate the message. I have found doodles to be a great tool for sharing ideas. If you haven’t discovered the power of doodles yet, check out Sunni’s video or if you’re really intrigued, pick up a copy of Roam’s book. It’s worth your time.

Why write something new when something well said before is worth sharing?  Enjoy “A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and ponder your purpose in life.  Were you meant to drive change?

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!–

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each tomorrow

Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er ploeasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act–act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

Are you curious about what is written on the next line?

If you’re reading this, then your curiosity must have driven you to find out. I know it only took a very slight eye movement, but you still could have chosen to stop reading and go do something else.  And if you finish reading this entire post, then it will have been your curiosity that drove you to the end.

If there’s a force that can drive your actions without you really being aware of it, shouldn’t we try to understand how it works and try to harness it to drive change?

Curiosity is that force.  Curiosity drives action.  It’s working on you right now.

And action is what creates change and improvement.

What creature is the most active and experiences the most learning and change?

The Toddler.

They are always going, doing, wanting to learn or experience something new, continually making messes and getting into things because of curiosity. And it works, maybe to their parent’s exhaustion, but they learn and change (eventually) from their own actions.

The creature next to the toddler in learning is the Scientist.  This is someone who is always experimenting to find out ‘what will happen if…’ And they learn.  Again, curiosity is the driving force.

Whether we are scientists or not, we were all toddlers once and therefore have the ability to cultivate that curious mindset again in whatever area we want to change.  We just need to have a strong enough desire to know what would happen if we took a certain action.  And then let that desire drive us to act in spite of our fears or mental obstacles that seem to hold us back.

Don’t you want to know what it will be like when you have accomplished your goals?

Feel the curiosity, and go make things happen.