Notes from a Cambridge Network talk by Eric Ries

I attended the January Cambridge Network meeting, which was focused on a talk by Eric Ries, the author of a new book entitled “The Lean Startup”.

Eric had developed the book based on the lessons learned by entrepreneurial start-ups of software companies that he had worked with in California’s Silicon Valley.  Most of these companies had been driving forward Web 2.0, and had either failed or been taken over.

Opportunities to use Lean to improve start-up success

Eric saw the opportunity to apply Lean principles both to identify value in the eyes of the customer, and to reduce the cycle times involved for gathering and obtaining learnings and so improve on their performance.

He described a “pivot approach”.  This involves “keeping one foot planted in what your idea is and the other moving with learning”.  The idea is that, as you gain feedback on your product or idea, you “pivot” (or change your plan) towards what the customer really wants.

The value of focusing on what your customer wants

The “Lean Startup” approach resonated with me as “focusing on your customers” is RiverRhee Consulting’s first principle for enhancing team effectiveness.  This enables you to identify what your customers want (and not what you think they want).

Of course you need to work out how to find out what your potential customers want, and it might involve recognition of the failure of the bright idea that you were so enthusiastic about!

Experimentation vs. customer surveys

An interesting point in Eric’s presentation was his differentiation between using a customer survey, where a broad range of feedback can be obtained from a wide sample of customers (with the results shaping general direction and strategy), and the use of experimentation.

With experimentation, customers can handle a product (in a trial or pilot), give feedback on the product, and, most importantly, give feedback as to whether they would purchase the product or not.  Once you have that knowledge and recognise that you need to change direction then you need to fire up and go again!

The more frequent the number of cycles in which this occurs the better.

In his presentation Eric emphasised that there is no point in brilliantly executing a start-up plan to produce something that nobody wants.  He also emphasised not leaving change “until the building is on fire”!

Closing thoughts

TV programmes like Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice have given us all more exposure to the concept of entrepreneurs and new business start-ups.

Eric’s background with software company start-ups in Silicon Valley seems a long way from the pharmaceutical manufacturing environment that I’m familiar with.  It was very interesting to see both kinds of organisation connected by Lean principles.

Notes

John Riddell is an Associate with RiverRhee Consulting.  He has held technical, operational and project management roles in pharmaceutical manufacturing working with both small and large teams from a local to a global basis. John is a certified practitioner in Lean Six Sigma and is highly experienced in knowledge management.  He has developed a successful programme to coach leaders in developing teams that have multiple cultures and are spread across global locations.

This is the third in our series of blogs on “Enhancing Team Effectiveness in a time of change” based on our forthcoming publication in Business Information Review, and other publications and seminars in progress.

In our first blog (Enhancing team effectiveness in a time of change – an introduction), we described the challenges being faced by organisations, teams and individuals and the impact that these changes have on them.

Our second blog (Recognising reactions to change, and responding to them) explored how people (either as individuals or teams respond to change and how to help them through their journeys in a positive way.

This third blog in the series will introduce five more specific tools for supporting teams during their journeys through change.  As it will take some time to describe each of the tools, we will just summarise them here, and hope that you will come back to find out more about them in our future blogs. (Of course if you’d like to find out more sooner, do please let us know.)

It’s natural for teams to go through a ‘storming’ phase to get to ‘high performance’

Tuckman⁽¹⁾ and Hersey-Blanchard⁽²⁾ amongst others have developed models for describing the stages that teams go through in their development. We have used a version of their team development models with teams that are just starting up, as well as with already established teams.  It helps leaders and team members to understand where the team is in its evolution, and what they could do to help it develop towards a stage of ‘high performance’. Teams are often relieved to realise that it is natural and in fact desirable to go through a ‘storming’ stage in order to get to high performance.

There are check-lists of activities that teams can use as pre-requisites for success

We have coached team leaders in using variations of a list of prerequisites as a checklist for effectiveness.  We have encouraged them to involve members of the team in its success, through workshops that explore best practices from other teams that they have been involved in.

Team temperature checks are a great way to monitor and enhance team effectiveness

We use team temperature checks as a diagnostic tool combined with the list of pre-requisites, at a time of change (including team start-up).  It helps teams to determine their status, and to actively engage all their members in a discussion on the priorities to be addressed going forward.

The relative importance of each prerequisite will change during the life of the team, as will the team members’ perception of how well they are performing and of what they can do to improve their performance.

Lean and Six Sigma tie in with change management

The Lean and Six Sigma process improvement philosophies and tools will trigger off change for teams and organisations, but can also be an extremely useful support for a team undergoing change.

Many organisations now use a combination of both Lean and Six Sigma tailored to their own culture and needs, and we have worked with some of them to develop strategies and implement change for continuous improvement.

Dilts’ “Logical Levels of Change” can also be a useful support for change

This last team tool is one that can be used both as a diagnostic, and as a planning tool in a time of change.  Robert Dilts is a leading figure in the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) who recognised that it is important for team leaders to address multiple levels to achieve change.  He developed the Logical Levels of Change model, as a helpful way of understanding the elements of effective team performance⁽³⁾ and so we can and do use this too to help teams and the individuals within them through change.

Our next blogs in this series will explore each of these five tools for supporting teams during their journeys of change in more detail.

Notes

1. Tuckman, B. and Jensen, M. (1977) Stages of small group development revisited, Group and Organizational Studies, 419-27
2. Hersey, P and Blanchard, K Situational Leadership.  See for example : www.12manage.com
3. O’Connor, Joseph (2001) NLP workbook.  London : Element

Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that helps business teams to enhance their effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale. Elisabeth has 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry where she has held line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting Information Management and other business teams on a global basis.  Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and in Lean Sigma and is a member of CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals), and APM (Association for Project Management).

Lucy Loh is the Owner and Principal Consultant at Lucy Loh Consulting, a consultancy that helps businesses and organisations develop their business plans, and manage change in their organisations and teams to be able to deliver those plans.  She is also a RiverRhee Consulting Associate.  Lucy has 25 years’ experience in BioPharma, where she has held management roles in strategy development and all aspects of performance management, as well as extensive internal consulting.  Lucy has expertise and experience in organisation development, benefits management and in designing and leading business change. She is a certified Master Practitioner of NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP), which enhances her work in change management and individual coaching.  She is also an accredited trainer with the Institute of Leadership and Management for Strategic Leadership.

When times are tough, some teams sink into lethargy, feeling anxious about the future. Alternatively, the business may have been restructured or downsized, with the remaining team members feeling vulnerable for their own positions. Whatever the cause, it’s exactly at these times, that teams need to feel valued and motivated.

There are some simple things business owners and leaders can do to improve team motivation, and therefore business performance:

1. Create an atmosphere of trust

Trust enables people to admit to weaknesses and ask for help. Leaders can create this atmosphere by being open and honest with them, and not “punishing” weaknesses or mistakes.

Encourage team members to share with each other.

2. Involve the team in your planning

Talk to your team members about your business plans. Ask for their ideas, what they believe the key issues are, and how they can be solved.

This will also help build that atmosphere of trust.

3. Set clear realistic goals

The goals will come out of the planning. There will be goals for the team as a whole, but each team member should have their own set of objectives, which will feed into the team goal. Make sure the goals are “ SMART² ”.

4. Get to know your team members as individuals

Spend time talking to each of your team members. Find out what’s important to them, both inside and outside work. Get to know their individual strengths, and their preferred way of working.

5. Recognise your team members individually

Having got to know your team members as individuals, use this knowledge. Everybody likes to be valued and recognised for their contribution. Give praise where it’s due.

6. Make sure each individual knows the part they play

Once goals have been agreed, then ensure progress is reviewed.

7. Seek feedback from team members

There are a number of ways of achieving this, during reviews with individuals, through regular team meetings, or on an ad hoc basis.

8. Concentrate on strengths

We all do better when we’re doing things we’re good at! You’ll get a better performance from a round pin in a round hole, rather than complaining that the square pin doesn’t fit!

9. Communicate, communicate, communicate!

Keep your team informed. Consider how you make sure your team knows what’s happening. A daily or weekly briefing is a good starting point. And the best communication is always two-way! So make sure there’s opportunity for the team to contribute.

10. Make time to have fun!!

A happy team is a motivated team! “Fun” means different things to different people, so it might be about friendly competition – meeting targets. Or it might be taking time out to have a chat about non-work stuff. It doesn’t necessarily mean going for a drink after work.

Notes

1. Sue Parsons is owner and principal trainer at Vámonos Training & Development, a training organisation specialising in team and leadership development. Sue has over 25 years experience in retail in management and training roles, and wide experience in the third sector, as volunteer, trustee and paid member of staff. She is a qualified MBTI Step 1 practitioner, and an associate member of the CIPD.
2. SMART  goals or objectives are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic / Relevant, Time bound
3. Editor’s note: as Sue says, maintaining motivation is essential when times are tough, in times of change, and indeed throughout the life of a team.  Although motivation is not a main offering of my company, RiverRhee Consulting, it is one that comes into a lot of the work that we get involved in, in enhancing team effectiveness.  So it’s great to have the opportunity to host this blog from Sue on this theme alone.  Our latest RiverRhee Consulting Newsletter made several references to individual motivation and the role it plays in enhancing team performance, and a previous blog on employee engagement, may also be of interest to readers.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,000 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

As a trainer and consultant on Lean and Six Sigma, I’ll find examples of the principles and tools in practice in every aspect of everyday life.  The following blog illustrates the difference between ‘batch’ and ‘single piece flow’ that we might experience when the customer is what is being moved through a process!

Customer pain

Last Sunday I twisted my ankle coming off a pavement in the mad scrum to catch the airport shuttle between Gatwick terminal and my EasyJet flight to a work assignment in Barcelona.

Someone in a yellow jacket and a kind fellow passenger helped me onto the bus, got me a seat, and offered me water and pain killers.  Once arrived at the airplane, the same kind man in the yellow jacket cleared a space for me on the steps leading up to the plane. I collapsed with relief into a seat, bent over with nausea and faintness, whilst waiting for take-off, vaguely surprised at the absence of attention from any of the air stewards as they hurried up and down the aisle. Meanwhile the passenger in the seat next to me had a loud rant about how she hated economy airlines.

This disagreeable experience was an extreme version of my previous unpleasant experiences of being treated as part of a ‘batch’ of customers in the airline process: a system generally adopted by other low cost airlines.

We seem to have relinquished the right to have any form of quality customer service in return for paying a cheaper fare.  Arriving early at our final destination (with a pre-recorded electronic cheer) seems to be the only other point of the quality, time, cost triangle that we have a right to.

Customer delight

3 days later, sitting in Barcelona airport with my colleague, waiting for my return flight (to Stansted this time), I was describing the wonderful queuing system I’d experienced with Southwest Airlines a few years ago.  We were assigned a boarding letter / number based on check-in sequence.  A line of posts at the departure gate reflected the letters and numbers and passengers calmly lined up in their pre-assigned sequence when it was time to board the plane.  No mad scrum.

What was our surprise this time, when we made our way to the departure gate 20 minutes before final boarding time, to find the a complete absence of people and queues.  We showed our boarding passes and were ushered onto an almost empty bus, whilst I carefully avoided twisting my ankle on the curbs (this time?) clearly marked with yellow tape.

There was no pushing or shoving on the plane as several passengers were already seated, and we found 2 adjacent seats and space to store our hand-luggage.  More passengers gradually arrived, and the plane left, and arrived early.  The general mood on the plane seemed relaxed and happy.

A stewardess joked with me about both of us being short as she helped me reach the overhead luggage compartment to replace my laptop that I’d only remembered to switch off just as we were preparing for take-off.

Although a question remains about extra fuel costs for more shuttle trips between the airport and the plane, for us as passengers, this economy flight experience managed to score highly on all 3 points of the quality, time and cost triangle: true customer delight.

A case study of ‘single piece flow’ rather batching?

Whilst the Southwest Airlines approach is simple and presumably adds no additional cost to the airlines, it will still result in everyone boarding the plane at once: in one batch.  So there will still be the queuing on the plane whilst people find their seats and somewhere to store their luggage.

EasyJet’s approach in Barcelona last Wednesday matched the flow of people boarding the plane to their arrival at the departure gate.  Although we didn’t see what happened when the first people arrived at the gate, what I and my colleague experienced was very streamlined, very simple, apparently very efficient and a real delight.  Of course I’ll be expecting something similar now next time I catch one of their flights!  The Kano model  in action..

Notes

Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that helps business teams to enhance their effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale. Elisabeth has 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry where she has held line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting Information Management and other business teams on a global basis.  Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and in Lean Sigma and is a member of CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals), and APM (Association for Project Management).

This is the second in our series of blogs on “Enhancing Team Effectiveness in a time of change” based on our forthcoming publication in Business Information Review, and other publications and seminars in progress.

In our previous blog (Enhancing team effectiveness in a time of change – an introduction), we described the challenges being faced by organisations, teams and individuals and the impact that these changes have on them.  Today’s blog focuses more on recognising reactions to change by individuals and in teams, and how to respond to them.

Understanding the change cycle: the Kübler-Ross change curve

This approach was developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and was based on her work with people confronting grief.  It illustrates the typical stages that people go through in response to change, and is at the core of most approaches to managing change.

Whether the people affected view a particular change as predominantly positive and to be welcomed, or as something negative, they will go through some version of this change cycle.

In this description, the stages are named for the prevalent emotion or activity experienced.

When a substantial change happens, many parts of the organisation are affected and go through this curve and at different rates.  Within any one team, the individual team members go through the change curve at different rates.

Using the change curve to support team effectiveness during change

It is important for leaders of affected teams to recognise that they too are travelling through the change curve.  They will need the emotional resilience to travel through the change curve quickly themselves.  This gives them the capacity to monitor the responses of the team members, supporting each one according to where they are in the cycle, and assisting them if they get ‘stuck’ at a particular point.

The flexible leader will recognise that some members will focus on the rational reasons for the change and view it as a ‘task’, whilst others are more likely to focus on the people impact and the disruption to relationships.  Both are likely to go through the curve in different ways, and so require a different management approach.

All change involves ‘letting go’ of something, and it is important to actively create space for this to happen.  In one reorganisation where a team was broken up, they held a celebration party, where they acknowledged all the learning and accomplishments they had achieved together; this was their way of letting go in a positive way, and developing energy and resources for each of them to take forwards.

In another team, where a team member was stuck in depression, the team leader spent time listening to that person and their sadness about what they were leaving behind, and then gradually coached them into seeing some possibilities in the future.  Other resilient team members can also support their colleagues in an informal way.

The people with whom the team interacts (its stakeholders, suppliers and customers) may also be going through change, and so the same principles apply.  At a time of change, a number of people will not be operating at their best, and yet much is expected of them.  It is a time for mutual respect and support!

Our next blog will explore the tools that can be used with teams to support them during their change journey.

Notes

Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that helps business teams to enhance their effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale. Elisabeth has 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry where she has held line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting Information Management and other business teams on a global basis.  Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and in Lean Sigma and is a member of CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals), and APM (Association for Project Management).

Lucy Loh is the Owner and Principal Consultant at Lucy Loh Consulting, a consultancy that helps businesses and organisations develop their business plans, and manage change in their organisations and teams to be able to deliver those plans.  She is also a RiverRhee Consulting Associate.  Lucy has 25 years’ experience in BioPharma, where she has held management roles in strategy development and all aspects of performance management, as well as extensive internal consulting.  Lucy has expertise and experience in organisation development, benefits management and in designing and leading business change. She is a certified Master Practitioner of NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP), which enhances her work in change management and individual coaching.  She is also an accredited trainer with the Institute of Leadership and Management for Strategic Leadership.

Knowledge Strategy was the theme of one of the two break-out groups at NetIKX’s 22^nd September 2011 seminar led by Chris Collison.

(For a more detailed account of the seminar itself, you may like to read Nicola Franklin’s NetIKX blog, or for a more cursory insight, Elisabeth’s NetIKX51 tweets.)

A knowledge management strategy is something you should be able to hold in your head

Our discussion kicked off with what proved to be a slightly provocative but very helpful statement from Steve Dale: “A knowledge management strategy is something you should be able to hold in your head, not in your hand”.

People felt that you needed to start with something more explicit such as:

• An internal audit to discover what’s going on in your organisation and to identify what is needed
• A white paper to stimulate discussion amongst stakeholders

The ideal is to get to the point where the strategy has become the way people act, their way of working.  Then, yes, it can be something ‘in the head’ (or tacit).

A knowledge management strategy depends on organisational culture

Stuart Ward in particular reminded us of the need to set the definition of the knowledge management strategy, and how it should be introduced, within the context of the organisational culture and values.

We agreed that we need to clarify organisational values first e.g. how open it wants to be, as these will influence attitudes towards knowledge sharing for example.

Organisational change will put knowledge management strategies back to zero!

Members of the group had direct experience of having had a relatively clear knowledge management strategy in their organisation, only to find that they had to start all over again as a result of mergers or acquisitions.

In addition, not only did redundancies result in loss of key knowledge with the departing staff, but in some cases they also resulted in the loss of those who were key drivers of the organisation’s knowledge strategy.

A key consideration is how to implement knowledge management strategies

We came back many times to the factors that were needed to enable successful implementation of knowledge management strategies.  Participants mentioned the importance of leadership from the top, champions, opportunities for presentations combined with Q&A sessions, training, case studies / stories demonstrating the value of knowledge management etc.

For those wishing to explore this subject further, I recommended reading “Influencer – The Power to Change Anything”, by Kerry Patterson et al, McGraw Hill, 2008.  This provides an excellent framework for shaping implementation strategies.  A brief overview of “Influencer” is available in one of my earlier blogs on change management.

Technology is not the answer for knowledge management strategy, but it helps

Our discussion ended with a recurring theme for knowledge management practitioners: the role of technology.

One of the participants described the situation in their organisation where people carry out After Action Reviews or Learning Retrospects because this is something that is expected.  However, they don’t necessarily understand why they are doing these, or what the outputs can be used for, so that the results effectively end-up in an IT ‘bin’ (or black hole).

Conversely, I mentioned the recent inspirational talk by Jimmy Walls, organised by the Cambridge Network, where he showed powerful video clips of individuals of all ages and backgrounds enthusing about sharing their knowledge with others through Wikipedia articles.

One of our participants suggested that knowledge sharing needs a social context: we share with our friends more than with our co-workers.  The old ‘water-cooler’ scenario, lunch-time seminars (with lunch provided), creating open spaces for networking, were all approaches that we discussed for creating this kind of social opportunity.

Note

Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that helps business teams to enhance their effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale.

Elisabeth is also Programme Events Manager for NetIKX.

Lucy Loh and Elisabeth Goodman have been preparing a few publications and seminars that deal with enhancing team effectiveness, strategies for personal and organisational change, and team development in the context of project management.  We thought it would therefore be timely to write a series of blogs picking up on some of our thinking in these areas.

All organisations, whether in the public, third or private sector, are continuing to experience organisational change on a large scale.  Whether this involves reshaping, redefinition of roles or just addressing internal efficiencies, all of these bring huge challenges.

At the same time, teams within these organisations must continue to deliver today as well as achieve changes to their own roles and services for delivery tomorrow.

Challenges facing today’s teams

As we write, in the second half of 2011, many global economies, including the UK’s, are undergoing unprecedented change.  These macroeconomic changes are triggering change at all levels in the public, private and third sectors.  The public sector faces the challenge of having to do ‘more with less’.  The private sector is seeking increased efficiencies and effectiveness, and is looking at innovation of products, services and the ways in which it does business.  The third sector has the opportunity, and challenge, to take on activities previously performed by the public sector.

Although today’s wave of change has been primarily created by economic conditions, change is now a constant, so this series of blogs is relevant whatever the trigger for change.

Impact on organisations

The economic conditions have created a scale and rate of change to challenge organisations, and the teams within them, as never before.  Within organisations, some teams are being downsized, with difficult choices to make about which people to retain and which to let go.  Often, a team is in the position of waiting and watching as the change ripples down the organisational layers towards them.  Some teams are being reorganised, revising their priorities, or making a case for their survival.  Teams are being asked to be more effective than ever, at a time when they are under more pressure than ever.

Impact on individuals and teams

It is important to recognise that all change involves people: what they do, and / or how they do it.  Many people in today’s organisations have spent their working lives in a period of relative stability.  Their expectations about the emotional ‘contract’ with the organisation (their future, their working style, and terms and conditions) may now be challenged, leading to a sense of uncertainty and instability.  Their job content (what a job comprises, how it is to be done, and how performance is assessed) may have been stable for years.

For many individuals, change is demanding, personally and emotionally, as things that were important in the past are put aside, and new ways of working take their place.  But change also offers an opportunity for renewal: to look again at what each team does, and to reposition the team to meet the voice of its customers.

To sustain team effectiveness during change, engagement of the team throughout the process is crucial.  As Peter Senge said, “People don’t resist change.  They resist being changed”. We believe that it is the uncertainty associated with change that can be so difficult and painful to cope with, and that everyone needs to feel that they have some sort of control over their situation.  Team leaders should value expressions of resistance as an opening up of dialogue on what people are thinking and feeling, paving the way for constructive discussion on how best to go forward.

External and internal drivers of change

Some organisational change is driven by factors outside the organisation, to which it then has to react.  In other cases, an organisation can proactively choose to change, interpreting the changes in customers, services and demand likely in the future and reshaping itself accordingly.  In each case, a particular team may discover that its customers have changed, or the needs and wants of their existing customers have changed.  This means that the value which the team delivers to its customers must also change, which in turn alters the nature of the team itself, its roles, and what ‘good quality’ looks and feels like.

In addition, the team members will have a wider set of established stakeholders with whom they have a good relationship, and whose needs and styles of working they understand well.  As the organisation changes, the stakeholders for the team may change, bringing the need to build relationships with a new set of people.

The UK local government election in May 2011 offers a vivid example of change in organisational values.  A number of councils changed from leadership by one political party to leadership by another, with a substantial turnover in the Councillors themselves.  The incoming Councillors held different political views and values (political and other), and had different manifesto commitments to the outgoing Councillors.  Almost overnight, the local government officers needed to stop working with previous Councillors, and begin adapting to a new programme of work described in the manifesto.  This is change at its most radical: a new direction, new values, new stakeholders, a new programme of work, and new ways of working.  This is the ultimate requirement: sustain delivery to the team’s customers in parallel with evolving the team and its effectiveness.

Concluding comments

Jay Galbraith, a world leader on organisation and team development, tells us : “Every organisation is perfectly designed to get the results it’s currently achieving”.  We believe that it is critical for teams to design themselves for effectiveness, to manage the status quo and to increase their resilience for change.

In this series of blogs, we provide insights into the challenges for the effectiveness of teams when their organisations are changing, and practical tips and suggestions on how to lead and maintain a thriving team.

Our intention is to provide ideas and techniques that both leaders and members can use to improve the effectiveness of their team, whatever its sector or current level of performance.  We describe core principles and general approaches to team development (often initiated from inside the team) and show how to use these to address change from outside the team.  We share ideas on how to ‘diagnose’ the current state of the team, whether it is performing well and is strongly aligned with its customers, or less so.

Our next blog in this series will address: “Recognising reactions to change, and responding to them”.

Notes

Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that helps business teams to enhance their effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale.  Elisabeth has 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry where she has held line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting Information Management and other business teams on a global basis.  Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and in Lean Sigma and is a member of CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals), and APM (Association for Project Management).

Lucy Loh is the Owner and Principal Consultant at Lucy Loh Consulting, a consultancy that helps businesses and organisations develop their business plans, and manage change in their organisations and teams to be able to deliver those plans.  She is also a RiverRhee Consulting Associate.  Lucy has 25 years’ experience in BioPharma, where she has held management roles in strategy development and all aspects of performance management, as well as extensive internal consulting.  Lucy has expertise and experience in organisation development, benefits management and in designing and leading business change. She is a certified Master Practitioner of NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP), which enhances her work in change management and individual coaching.  She is also an accredited trainer with the Institute of Leadership and Management for Strategic Leadership.

Why do people participate in Communities of Practice² (CoP)?

An Applied Psychologist or a Knowledge Management person might tell you it is for the pure enjoyment and commitment to their identity as an expert in the field.  People want to contribute something to their field, to leave a mark, to better the practice, and to be seen in a positive light amongst their peers in that domain. They often self-identify in occupational terms, and part of their persona hinges on that occupational identity – The answer to “who am I?” is often coloured in occupational terms.

People offer discretionary participation and exchange of ideas motivated by intrinsic forces of their own personalities, and the behaviour of the company should be to support them, enable them, and in some cases to defer to them when it comes to their expertise.

Individual Benefits of Communities of Practice

Here are the most salient benefits as I see them:

1. Occupational Security
   Gone are the days when an employer could offer guarantees of employment for life, but while the employer can’t offer job security anymore, being in active contact with a broad network of practitioners in their field, the individual is far more likely to find their next position through a contact than on their own. (Hudson 2010)
2. Passion
   Let’s face it, some people will get out of bed at 4am, trek across bug-infested marshland, and endure mosquitoes, nasty sandwiches, and soggy clothing – just to catch a glimpse of a rare bird. They don’t do that because anyone paid them, but because they get a thrill out of it.
3. Community
   Besides spotting that elusive Red-Belied Woodpecker, the next best (or even better) thing is to tell people who would understand why that got you to crouch for hours in discomfort bordering on agony. They get it – they know what it’s like and you don’t have to explain why, just where, when, and how. Not only do they understand, but their questions are passion-supportive, and their suggestions are net contributions.
4. It’s Bigger than ME
   Besides what we know about a good life and a great career (passion, expertise, reward) (Collins 2001), and about fulfillment (mastery, autonomy, purpose) (Pink), what makes this transcendental is that it feels bigger than the individual – they get to feel a sense of being an integral part of something bigger than mere success, a sense of meaning.

Benefits of Communities of Practice as perceived by Senior Management

Let’s turn to the hard-nosed CFO/COO and explain why they should care and how this may hit EBITDA and make the investor smile?

Let’s count the ways:

1. Succession Planning
   A CoP is a ready-made breeding ground for succession-planning and risk mitigation because it identifies and trains natural replacements should an expert leave or become unavailable. Not only will you know who the stand-ins are, but they will already have an idea of what the need is and have methods and ideas similar to the person they replace.
2. Recruitment
   CoPs naturally extend out into the regions beyond the organization and not only would the CoP know who is out there, but also have a track record on them and be able to point the recruiters at a specific place to fish and specific people to approach. It reduces the time and cost of recruitment to mere pennies on the dollar and with far higher success rates.
3. Retention
   People who are passionate about some aspect of their job tend to stay there and are likely to view fondly an employer that makes exercising their passion a reality, and see it as a good place to work – even when somebody flashes more money to entice them away. Once the cash side is “sufficient”, passion beats money almost every time.
4. Engagement
   Engaged workers are productive workers, and nothing spells engagement quite like being passionate about one’s occupation. By creating social groups built around mutual passion for an occupation, CoPs drive engagement for as long as the firm’s mission and the occupation domain are aligned.
5. Intellectual Capital
   CoPs generate intangible assets that can be replicated and reused, and which increase performance in the form of methods, processes, techniques, and case studies and results. On their own, these increase performance, but when turned into explicit knowledge can be licensed out or sold for hard cash (Like Kodak is interested in doing to raise cash). When hinted at publicly, they drive up market value and can push share-price up. They also siphon up knowledge created by other firms and create a net gain in intangible assets.
6. Reduction of Waste
   CoPs produce standards, templates, and documentation that cut down on mistakes, reduce re-inventing the wheel, and force a reduction in variation.
7. Quality
   Standardization and process improvement lead directly to improvements in product and service quality, and the relentless refinement native to a CoP drives out error and variance, and steadily increases quality.
8. SPEED!
   Ever hear that the grapevine is faster than light? Well this is where the social network acts directly to the benefit of the organization.  “Hey look what I found” is faster by orders of magnitude than drafting a corporate memo, and gets to the right ears in the right jargon faster than a speeding bullet.
9. Adaptive Capacity
   CoPs have a finger on the pulse of changes in their domain of excellence and are quick to notice developments in technology or practice, and this gives the firm a head-start on noticing changes in the business environment, and also the flexibility to make appropriate changes in good time.

Conclusion

Firms that do provide the infrastructure, scaffolding, and deference to grow CoPs will find themselves with more engaged and more productive staff, higher levels of Intangible Assets, and over and above lowered costs and increased revenues, could see a climb in the share price as the market puts value to the non-physical assets they have built.

Notes and references

1. Matthew Loxton is an occasional guest blogger on topics related to Elisabeth Goodman’s blog site themes of process improvement, knowledge management and change management – key topics to support Elisabeth Goodman’s work at RiverRhee Consulting on enhancing team effectiveness. Matthew holds a master’s degree in Knowledge Management from the University of Canberra, and donates KM expertise to medical institutions
2. “A Community of Practice (CoP) is a dispersed group of people with a common interest in a subject who have decided to work together to share what they know, learn from each other and work collaboratively to achieve common goals.  Their involvement with each other is voluntary, although it may be driven by cascaded objectives, and they do not have the same management reporting line. A CoP requires active facilitation and support with a careful balance of formality / informality” definition taken from John Riddell‘s definition included in Elisabeth Goodman’s presentation: “Sustaining Effective Continuous Improvement In An Organisation: A Holistic View”, at IQPC Business Process Excellence in Pharmaceuticals, Biotech and Medical Devices, London, 7^th April 2011 http://slidesha.re/h2vVhN
3. Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great : Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. New York, Harper Collins.
4. Hudson (2010). Networking: Tapping into the Hidden Job Market.
5. Pink, D. H. (2009) Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. Riverhead Hardcover

On 6^th July, we held a very enjoyable second iteration of our APM workshop on this topic in Norwich, having run it previously in Stevenage in May.

As with the previous seminar, our audience ranged from people and organisations with very limited knowledge of Lean and Six Sigma, to those who had adopted it as a way of working.  So the challenge was, in 1 to 1 ½ hours, to give enough of an overview of Lean and Six Sigma for those who were new to the subject, without boring those with already a fair amount of expertise.

At the same time, our goal was to make the session as interactive as possible, with discussions and exercises that would enable people to actively reflect, learn from each other, and more importantly, consider if and how Lean and Six Sigma could assist them in their roles as Project Managers.

Our mapping of Lean and Six Sigma against the project triangle seemed to resonate with the delegates i.e. with Lean aiming to reduce time and cost, and Six Sigma aiming to increase quality.

We achieved an excellent level of discussion and interaction in both seminars, and here are some of the conclusions that the delegates came to.

There are many Lean and Six Sigma tools that people have already found to be useful and/or anticipate being useful.

Examples of tools highlighted during the discussion in Norwich were:

• Kano (and Voice of the Customer)
• Time value map
• Use of historical data
• Control charts
• 5 Whys
• Gemba
• Poke Yoke
• Pareto Analysis

Our audience in Stevenage listed more or less the whole gamut of Lean and Six Sigma tools!

Lean and Six Sigma can definitely enhance the delivery of projects.

Delegates were unanimous in this,.  One break-out group suggested that Lean and Six Sigma fits particularly well with the operations area of organisations, and that process improvement initiatives will lead to projects.

Delegates identified several ways for how Lean and Six Sigma could enhance the delivery of projects.

Using Lean and Six Sigma at the start of a project (during the concept and definition stages).

The Define, Measure and Analyse stages of the Lean Six Sigma DMAIC framework and associated tools can be very effective in identifying the problems which will lead to generating and/or justifying projects.

They help to define what the problems are and how to address them, and also to define the project brief.

Tools such as Pareto analysis help to identify the things that are important, and make sure that the biggest issues are tackled first.

Process analysis will help to eliminate waste before implementing new (e.g. IT) solutions.

The Lean Six Sigma tools and the data-based approach create greater confidence.

Delegates particularly liked the ability to use robust data collection techniques and tools such as force-field analysis to structure their thinking.

They also liked the ‘5 Whys’ for getting at the root causes of problems and surfacing clients’ real issues.  They also suggested using ‘5S’ to organise information (not just physical things)

The Improve stage of DMAIC can help with the implementation stage of projects

It can help with the definition of roles in a project, in particular in relation to sponsors and to ensure that the project is focusing on what is of value to the customer (this also happens at the Concept and Definition stages of projects), and relating that to the realization of benefits.

The Control stage of DMAIC (and Knowledge Management) can help with project close out

Many delegates were already familiar with the idea of capturing learnings at project close-out, but they liked the fuller ‘After Action Review’ (AAR) frame-work and the emphasis on considering who can learn from the lessons learnt.

They also liked how the various visual tools of Lean and Six Sigma could help with ‘highlight reporting’ in project management.

The Lean and Six Sigma and Project Management ‘virtuous’ circle may go on infinitely or break and re-start depending on the organisation.

Our presentation included a suggested overlay of the Lean and Six Sigma DMAIC structure over the project lifecycle.  Delegates pointed out that this may be the case in organisations such as Pharmaceutical R&D where projects are the regular way of working.  In other organisations, the DMAIC structure continues into the operational way of working once a project is completed, although it may in time spawn new projects.

Notes

1. Elisabeth Goodman is Owner and Principal Consultant and John Riddell is Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting– a Business Consultancy that helps business teams to enhance team effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale.
2. To see previous newsletters and blogs on subjects relating to Lean and Six Sigma, and Project Management see the RiverRhee Consulting newsletter, and Elisabeth Goodman’s blog site.