Knowledge management and creativity / innovation – valuable adjuncts to project management. A case study

Knowledge management and creativity/ innovation enhance project management.

I am a firm believer in the value of knowledge management to enhance project management.  I also believe that the use of formal structures, such as those advocated in Lean and Six Sigma (or process improvement), and project management, give people more rather than less scope for creativity and innovation.  Creativity and innovation in turn, of course also enhance the quality of our processes and projects.  So, I was delighted to read the Turner & Townsend case study in April’s APM (Association for Project Management) magazine: Project¹.  Even more satisfying is that this feature article was the result of T&T winning the APM Project Management Awards in 2009.

Why would knowledge management and creativity / innovation be important to an organisation such as Turner & Townsend?

T&T is a project management consultancy, with more than 2,400 employees, 770 of which are project managers, operating worldwide across 59 offices.  So they are a prime example of an organisation that would benefit from effective knowledge management to ensure that employees can:

• Learn from their successes as well as their mistakes – so that they neither reinvent the wheel, nor repeat the same mistake twice
• Continuously improve the way they do things – in this case, the ‘art and science’ of project management
• Tap into the whole organisation’s experience and insights when working with their customers, and so not only achieve customer satisfaction, but customer loyalty

Creativity is the precursor of innovation:  it generates the new ideas which if accepted and applied within an organisation result in innovation.  An organisational structure that encourages and supports new idea generation and follow-through, will not only enable continuous improvement of its processes, projects and resultant customer experience, it should also result in greater employee satisfaction, morale, personal development and ultimate retention.  A recent internal staff survey suggests that T&T is achieving this kind of result with 86% of staff feeling proud to work there, and 84% indicating that they would recommend it as a good place to work.

How does T&T enable knowledge management and creativity / innovation?

Fundamental to the T&T approach is the emphasis they place on a range of formal and informal communication opportunities, using both face-to-face and electronic media, across all levels of the business.  Examples of these include:

• An ‘excellent ideas’ intranet portal – a platform for posting new ideas, suggested good practice, and tools / products.  Apparently more than 200 ideas have been posted since the initiative started two years ago, and 50% have been applied or are in the process of being so, with another 18% under review.
• Knowledge breakfasts – an opportunity for junior staff to discuss specific project related topics and then present the outcomes to their teams.
• Intranet feedback – an opportunity for employees to submit best practice and guidance for continuous development and improvement of technical and service knowledge and delivery.  The intranet thereby functions as an online knowledge base that is continuously improved.

T&T also have a strong infrastructure to support knowledge management and creativity / innovation.

These knowledge management and creativity / innovation practices are supported by the organisation’s emphasis on continuous development, with people being encouraged to participate in various training programmes.

1% of turnover is invested in research and innovation, resulting in new project management tools and techniques.

T&T also have a well-defined model or set of processes for their work with clients:

• Assess and engage: understanding client requirements, building a business case, building strong working relationships with the client and key stakeholders.
• Develop & improve: strategies and plans for implementing the project.
• Project execution plan: i.e. the manifestation of the previous step.
• Deliver & benefit: implementation for successful delivery

Although the article does not discuss this model any further, it is this kind of infrastructure that supports the identification and sharing of experiences, insights and new ideas that lies at the heart of knowledge management and creativity / innovation.

Notes

1. Head Turner. Project – the voice of project management, issue 227, April 2010, pp34-35

2. Elisabeth Goodman is Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, using process improvement, knowledge and change management to enhance team effectiveness.

Follow the links to find out more about RiverRhee Consulting, and about Elisabeth Goodman.

“Topgrading”: it’s possible to be talented AND be an effective team player

‘Topgrading’ by Bradford D Smart¹, is a wonderful testament to the existence of talented individuals who can also ‘work smarter’, ‘deliver higher quality work’, ‘demonstrate greater team work’, and ‘find ways to get the job done in less time and with less cost’.  Smart argues that it’s the proportion of ‘A’ players in an organisation that will enable it to succeed over other organisations that are also focusing on customers, quality and process improvement.

In a sense, this book contradicts somewhat the conclusions drawn by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones in ‘Clever. Leading your smartest, most creative people.’² which I’ve written about previously – see http://wp.me/pAUbH-1n.³ They would seem to suggest that talented people find it more difficult than others to be effective team players.  However, Smart’s approach seems to focus very much on managers, whereas Goffee and Jones’ could be said to be more about individuals within teams.

What is ‘Topgrading’ about?

‘Topgrading’ is about several things:

• Attracting and retaining the most talented people / high performers / top 10% of those available for a position: the ‘A’ players
• Aiming to fill the organisation with 90% (or better) A players
• Improving existing resources by coaching people who are B/C players to become A players
• Redeploying B/C players into internal positions where they might be a better fit to become A players, or if not, helping them to find positions where they can be A players outside the company.

We can / should take responsibility for ‘Topgrading’ ourselves

What is also interesting about Smart’s approach is the idea that we should, individually, take responsibility for finding those positions or roles where we can be A players, instead of being satisfied with playing a B/C role.  Indeed, in the right role, we can all be A players.  In this, he echoes people like Stephen Covey, in his ‘8^th Habit’⁴ who stresses the importance of finding one’s personal voice, and others that I’ve quoted in another previous blog http://wp.me/pAUbH-1h ⁵– about taking control of one’s working life.

Smart’s quote from Peter Drucker: Managing in Times of Great Change, is very apposite: “The stepladder is gone, and there is not even an implied structure of an industry’s rope ladder.  It’s more like vines, and you bring your own machete.  You don’t know what you’ll be doing next or whether you’ll work in a private office, or one big ampitheater or out of your house.”

Smart has a wonderfully refreshing approach for the manager, VP or CEO who is aiming to be both successful and happy.  It’s not just about career success, but about addressing 7 other critical life dimensions: wellness, family (relationships), pleasure, spiritual grounding, financial independence, giving something back (to the community), being creative – and also being resourceful to achieve balance in all of these.

He suggests that people perform periodical personal career reviews of their competencies relative to the marketplace, and that we cultivate networks of knowledge people as well as reading widely and attending seminars and trade-shows to help us with this.

‘Topgrading’ is especially about the role of the recruiter, manager, HR

This book seems a ‘must read’ for anyone looking to improve the capability of their organisation.  It is filled with guidelines and templates for interviewing, coaching, retaining and generally ensuring that your organisation has the best talent it needs.  There are dramatic case studies of the impact of Topgrading on individual companies’ stock performance.  It describes 50 competencies (!) that any manager should aim to achieve, in the categories of intellectual, personal, interpersonal, management / leadership, motivational.

Smart also challenges the school of thought of only focusing on ones strengths: he argues that a fully competent manager should aim to address his/her weaknesses, rather than relying on others to compensate for them.

Notes

1. “Topgrading” by Bradford D Smart, Portfolio, 2005

2. “Clever. Leading your smartest, most creative people.” By Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, Harvard Business Press, 2009

3. Why conventional knowledge management, process improvement and project management won’t work with ‘clever’ teams.  Or will they? http://wp.me/pAUbH-1n

4. “The 8th Habit. From effectiveness to greatness”, by Stephen R. Covey. Simon & Schuster Sound Ideas,1980.

5. Taking control of your working life as an employee; a first 100 days approach? http://wp.me/pAUbH-1h

6. Elisabeth Goodman is Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, using process improvement, knowledge and change management to enhance team effectiveness.

Follow the links to find out more about RiverRhee Consulting, and about Elisabeth Goodman.

Achieving more value with less

As Stephen R. Covey, Bob Whitman and Breck England point out, in their one-hundred-and-ten page “Predictable results in unpredictable times”¹: “in bad times, the distractions are more severe than ever… As people get laid off, the survivors have more to do.  The distractions pile up to the sky as the economy grows rougher…”

In our increasingly lean organisations, we all need to achieve ‘more with less’.  But rather than indiscriminately piling on more work with the stress and burn-out that this will entail, we need to find ways to ‘work smarter not harder’.  We can do so by focusing on what our customers value, and examining how we and our teams can deliver that value more effectively.

Covey et al’s book is a very readable synopsis of modern day thinking on how to tie a strong focus on strategy, keeping score and customer value with process improvement, engagement and empowerment of the people in our teams.  This blog picks out and discusses some of the book’s main points.

Build customer loyalty vs. customer satisfaction

We all know the importance of understanding what would satisfy our customers, but the concept of ‘customer loyalty’ takes this further.  What would it take for our customers to be emotionally connected to us, so that they would miss us if we were gone?  How far do we understand what we would need to do to achieve either customer satisfaction, or customer loyalty?

Covey et al quote a Bain survey of senior executives in 362 companies where:

• 96% said their companies were customer focused
• 80% believed their companies delivered a ‘superior customer experience’
• Only 8% of their customers agreed

From my conversations with people in various organisations, there are many opportunities for companies to gain a much better understanding of what constitutes value for their customers.

Covey et al suggest that companies should look for opportunities to reduce the complexity and diversity of what they offer to their customers, and so do less than their competitors, but do it better.

Develop employee engagement, empowerment and loyalty

It’s a sad paradox that in difficult times, many of the people that get laid off are those who have the knowledge that could help the organisation out of recession.

Covey et al make a number of references to how Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox in 2001, managed to turn the organisation around.  One of the key ways she did this was by making fewer people redundant than others might have done, and by appealing directly to people throughout the organisation for ideas.  It may seem obvious but, as the authors point out, “only knowledgeable people can create the solutions you need to succeed in a crisis.”

These 2 other extracts from the book are also I think particularly pertinent:

“Even in tough times (perhaps especially in tough times) people want to contribute, they want to help, they want to make a difference.”

and

“When a company aligns the customer experience with the employee experience, they create employees who are passionate about what the company stands for.”

These thoughts remind me of the points Stephen R Covey makes here and in his book “The 8^th Habit”², which I’ve written about elsewhere³ about how much more effective we can be in our work if we find our ‘voice’, and also in my commentary⁴ on Goffee and Jones’ book “Clever”⁵ about the need to clearly and regularly communicate the organisation’s vision and goals to your  ‘knowledge workers’.

Push the ‘reset’ button to align around goals and continuously improve your work

Covey et al close the loop on ‘doing more with less’ by having organisations realign what they do around the priorities set by customer value and employees ideas to address them.

The priorities are in effect the organisation’s one, two or three ‘wildly important goals’.  Effective team leaders will ensure that everyone understands what they need to do in relation to these, and also that there are good measures in place to monitor performance against these measures.

Covey et al differentiate between ‘lag’ measures and ‘lead’ measures. Lag measures are typically the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) or output measures that organisations use to demonstrate to what extent they have achieved their goals.

Lead measures are more effective indicators of anticipated performance because they are based on ‘in-process’ performance.  Teams should be able to regularly review how they are doing against these lead measures, and share knowledge and lessons learnt to continuously improve their performance and so achieve the final goals more effectively.

Closing thoughts

Large sections of Covey et al’s book are devoted to the importance of execution and trust.  To me these are enablers of the 3 main themes I’ve pulled out above.

Effective execution relies on focusing on a few key goals, making sure everyone knows what they are, keeping score, and ensuring that the team reviews and improves performance.

Trust is the trust between leaders and their teams in ensuring that there is transparency around the goals and where the organisation is in relation to them, keeping commitments (on the leaders’ part), and extending trust to the team.

But trust is also about having trustworthy systems and processes such that, as for the Formula One pit crew: each knows their job: “Silently they do it, and they get out of the way.”  Great Ormond Street Hospital, London studied the Formula One team’s approach to improve the serious issues they were facing and, as a result of this, “introduced a system that defines carefully who does what, and in what order.  Every action is focused and productive; everyone has a contribution to make.”

In all of this thinking, there are strong analogies with Stephen Spear’s 4 main steps in “Chasing the Rabbit”⁶, which I also describe in one of my blogs⁷: design (or define customer value, processes and roles to achieve them), improve and share knowledge (involving everyone in these), build capabilities (through the interaction between leaders and their teams).

I’ll close with this quote in the book, which I particularly like:

“Focus on your customers and lead your people as though their lives depended on your success” Warren Buffett

Notes

1. “Predictable results in unpredictable times”, by Stephen R. Covey, Bob Whitman and Breck England. FranklinCovey Publishing, 2009.

2. “The 8th Habit. From effectiveness to greatness”, by Stephen R. Covey. Simon & Schuster Sound Ideas,1980.

3. Empowerment and self-employment; (A consultant’s) life is like a game of rummy; Aptitude, Attitude, Plenitude and Servitude.; Social networking tools, empowerment and knowledge management; Project leaders empower, project managers organise; Powerful quotes for strong performing teams… – see https://elisabethgoodman.wordpress.com”

4. Why conventional knowledge management, process improvement and project management won’t work with ‘clever’ teams.  Or will they? http://wp.me/pAUbH-1n

5. “Clever. Leading your smartest, most creative people.” By Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, Harvard Business Press, 2009

6. “Chasing the Rabbit. How market leaders outdistance the competition and how great companies can catch up and win”, by Steven Spear. McGraw Hill 2009.

7. High performing organisations – interweaving process improvement, knowledge management and change management http://wp.me/pAUbH-1V

8. Elisabeth Goodman is Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, using process improvement, knowledge and change management to enhance team effectiveness.

Follow the links to find out more about RiverRhee Consulting, and about Elisabeth Goodman.

High performing organisations: interweaving process improvement, knowledge management and change management.

Approaches for building strong quality foundations are well documented in the manufacturing industry, but also occur across all business sectors and types of organisation such as flight airlines, the navy, health services, pharmaceutical research & development and education systems.

Steven Spear, in ‘Chasing the Rabbit’¹ discusses, with examples from the above, how this quality foundation for high performing (or ‘high-velocity’) and leading organisations rests on 4 main capabilities.  These capabilities are a graphic illustration of the importance of process improvement approaches such as Lean and Six Sigma, of knowledge management, and change management for effective team performance.

The 4 capabilities of high-velocity organisations

1. Design: A clear definition of customer expectations.  Documentation of the end-to-end process and associated roles for delivering these outputs, using the organisation’s cumulative knowledge of existing best practices. This is even worth doing for 1-off operations to enable learning and adaptation as a result of unexpected occurrences.
2. Improve: A commitment to seeking out and addressing problems as they occur. Involvement of key players in a ‘scientific’ approach to understand the problems (identify root causes), test solutions, implement counter-measures and resolve the problems (‘swarming’).  The importance of exploring a range of solutions and taking time to learn from them rather than converging on one too soon. Using cross-functional and possibly cross-company collaboration to tap into wider knowledge and expertise.
3. Share knowledge: Sharing what was learnt about the problems and how this learning was acquired so that the whole organisation can benefit from the new knowledge gained.  Local discoveries become systemic discoveries (‘the multiplier effect’).
4. Develop capabilities: The role of leaders in continuously developing everyone’s ability to detect and solve problems and share new knowledge (self-diagnosis, self-correcting, self-innovating and self-improving).  The leader as ‘learner-in-chief’, mentor and guide in establishing the right combination of behaviours throughout the organisation.

Problems are the consequence of complex systems and imperfect people

Steven Spear emphasizes that problems are to be welcomed as an opportunity to continue learning.  Each problem should be treated as a “consequence of imperfect people trying to design perfectly something very complex”.  By studying problems, rather than working around them or firefighting, the individual’s and the organisation’s knowledge, and the processes that they operate can continue to improve. The mastery of the complex interactions between people, processes, and what people are working on is never complete.

High-velocity organisations stand out from the pack in:

• Their focus on process from start to finish, order to supply, end-to-end, rather than departments operating in silos – structure
• Their attention to each problem as it crops up – dynamics
• Their determination to make the best use of the talent within the organisation – capabilities
• Their commitment to keep learning is reflected in the dynamic duo which I’ve described elsewhere² between short-term stability (or standardization) and longer-term agility and responsiveness (innovation).

Through these they achieve quality, flexibility, efficiency and safety.

Concluding thoughts: extracts from ‘Chasing the Rabbit’.

I’ve selected some quotes from the book, which I think illustrate the points that Steven Spear is making particularly well.

The importance of design:

“No team can design a perfect system in advance, planning for every contingency and nuance.  However… people can discover great systems and keep discovering how to make them better.”

The importance of improving and problems:

“There’s something important you don’t know about me, but if you listen. I’ll tell you” (the process talking)

“Problems are not a never-ending plague to be endured but a never-ending guide to improvement”

The importance of sharing knowledge:

“Organisations depend on their ability to accumulate useful knowledge more quickly than their competitors.”

“One must create the ability in his staff to generate clear, forceful arguments for opposing viewpoints as well as their own.  Open discussion and disagreement must be encouraged so that all sides of an issue will be fully explored.” Hyman Rickover (Founder and long-time leader of the US Navy’s Nuclear Power Propulsion Program).

The importance of capability development:

“The point of process improvement is to improve the participants’ process improvement capabilities by coaching them as they try to improve the process.”

“It is arrogant to believe that anything we have created cannot be improved.  It is pessimistic to believe that we are incapable of ever improving something that is flawed.”

Steven Spear suggests that the winning mindset for high performing organisations is that of humble optimism.  I would add: it is also one of focused determination combining the best of process improvement, knowledge management and change management (or behavioural) approaches.

Notes.

1. Chasing the Rabbit. How market leaders outdistance the competition and how great companies can catch up and win, by Steven Spear. McGraw Hill 2009.

2. How Lean can bring real benefits to innovation in Pharmaceutical Research Six Sigma & Process Excellence IQ, 8th January 2010, http://www.sixsigmaiq.com/article.cfm?externalID=1720

3. Elisabeth Goodman is Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, using process improvement and knowledge management to enhance team effectiveness.

Follow the links to find out more about RiverRhee Consulting, and about Elisabeth Goodman.

Fake work – a real opportunity to enhance team effectiveness

‘Fake Work’, by Brent Peterson and Gaylan Nielson is an excellent dissertation on a common cause of frustration and wasted time and effort at work.  According to the authors’ research, 53% of workers believe that they do work that does not count, and 54% feel that their creativity, talent and intelligence is under-used.  Unfortunately fake work is so well-established in many organisations, that not only have cartoon strips and television programmes (e.g. Dilbert and The Office) been based on them, but people actually delight in following them!

Fake work is at the heart of what I aim to help people with to enhance team effectiveness, hence this blog of my impressions of the book’s content.

What is fake work?

The authors define fake work as: “effort under the illusion of value”.  Whereas real work is “work that is critical and aligned to the key goals and strategies of an organisation.”  “It is work that is essential for the organisation’s short-term and long-term survival.”

Most of us will be familiar with the more obvious sources, or potential sources of fake work:

• Meetings that have no clear purpose or agenda, fuzzy start and end times, and actions that are either ill-defined or not properly followed-through;
• E-mail threads that include long cc: lists of people who have no direct connection or interest with the topic under discussion.  And e-mails themselves with unclear purposes / content or that could have been better addressed through a direct conversation;
• Searches of the internet, and indeed use of social media with no clearly defined aim or structure to the search / use of the tools;
• Phone conversations again that ramble on beyond their original intent.

There are other more insidious forms of fake work though:

• Teams or individuals that are asked to spend time pulling together recommendations which are not reviewed because management have already decided on their direction;
• Reports (such as monthly reports), that are either not read, contain more information than is needed, or duplicate previous reports;
• People coming into work early, or leaving late because that is the expected norm, or because they feel they need to look busy.

Why is there so much fake work?  What are the causes?

The authors describe 4 main causes of fake work:

1. Strategy: the organisation’s strategy is unclear, or work is not aligned to it. “Probably the greatest generator of fake work is employees and their leaders who don’t regularly review the work they are doing and its relationship to company strategy.”
2. Job descriptions: the individual’s remit is unclear; they do not have clear priorities; deliverables and timelines are not well defined.
3. The team: there is a lack of cohesiveness within the team; poor communications; attitudes and behaviours promote or condone fake work. “Everyone has something to contribute  to a company, but no single person can successfully contribute anything if his or her efforts aren’t aligned to the team’s and the company’s strategic goals.”
4. Management: inadequate at addressing all of the above; not providing the necessary coaching and support to promote ‘real’ work.

How to address fake work?

The authors take their readers through a series of paths, which are essentially a variation of cycles such as Deming’s Plan, Do, Check, Act.

• Plan: covers the importance of defining the company’s strategy, required behaviours, measures of success and communications that will enable everyone to understand the strategy and align what they do in relation to it.
• Do: requires managers to role model the right behaviours for real work, communicate, coach and support their teams.  It also requires team members to understand the different attitudes and strengths within the team, and how they can complement each other, as well as to challenge behaviours that do not support real work.
• Check: involves reviewing work against the measures of success, obtaining feedback, checking assumptions, and also listening to the stories that are circulating within the organisation.  This latter is an interesting take on the work of Snowden and Denning who use stories for sharing knowledge within organisations.
• Act: is about taking action as a result of the ‘check’ step to review and adjust plans and so correct behaviours.

Conclusion.

Although the authors do not mention it, process improvement techniques such as Lean and Six Sigma, are ideally placed to help people check for, understand and address fake work.

The following reflection, however, provides an excellent way to address fake work at the ‘helicopter’ view: “Think through all the activities you do in a given day.  How many of them are real?  How many of them are fake?”  I’ve certainly found this a very useful perspective to take in anything I do!

Notes

1. “Fake Work”  by Brent D. Peterson, Gaylan W. Neilson

2. Deming’s PDCA cycle – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA

3. Steve Denning on storytelling – see http://www.stevedenning.com/Business-Narrative/default.aspx

4. Elisabeth Goodman is Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that uses process improvement and knowledge management to enhance team effectiveness.

Follow the links to find out more about RiverRhee Consulting, and about Elisabeth Goodman.

The problem with relying on intuition for process improvement and decision making.

In a previous blog “There’s more to decision making than meets the eye… or why we shouldn’t dismiss gut feelings“, inspired by Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Blink’¹, I made a case for the discretionary use of intuition in decision making.  I argued that:

1. There seems to be a particular role for intuition when: a) encountering very new or different options for which known criteria are just not valid; b) where decisions based on intuition just cannot be explained in a logical way
2. There are circumstances where it would be quite risky to rely on one’s intuition: a) when under tremendous stress; b) when there is just too much information to be digested; c) where our subconscious ‘houses’ prejudices that we are not conscious of.

Comments from my readers suggested that other practitioners of Lean and Six Sigma also see a role for intuition alongside factual based analysis of problems and root causes, in the evaluation of potential solutions, and in decision making.

Having now read Ben Goldacre’s book ‘Bad Science’², I have some new reflections to add to this discussion.  Goldacre cites three main problems with intuition.

1. Our brains are conditioned to look for and ‘see’ patterns, and causal relationships where there may be only random noise.

Goldacre gives examples of random sequences of numbers that, when presented to people, ‘reveal’ clusters and patterns when statistical analyses would show that none exist.

The ability to rapidly and intuitively spot patterns of activity, and causal relationships between them, may, in the past, have been an important survival mechanism for humans, but could today be very misleading in process improvement where, for example, we want to make sure that we focus our efforts on addressing the truly significant problems.

Approaches such as Pareto analysis, quantification of issues (or Undesirable Effects – UDEs) and matrix diagrams can help us to review data more objectively and thereby focus on the right things.

2. We have a bias towards positive evidence.

In the words of Francis Bacon, quoted by Goldacre: “It is the peculiar and perpetual error of human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than negatives.”

We are much more likely to pay attention to findings that prove our theories, than to those that do not. That is why, in another quote in Goldacre’s book, Darwin made a point of noting every piece of negative evidence that he came across.

Goldacre expands on this bias further by saying that we:

1. Overvalue information that confirms our hypotheses
2. Seek out information that will confirm our hypotheses

Our natural bias towards positive evidence is also why process improvement and change management exercises such as force-field analysis, SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) analysis, FMEA (Failure Mode Effect Analysis) and Six Thinking Hats can be so powerful.  Knowledge Management practitioners also make a point of capturing ‘deltas’ or ‘what could be improved’ in learning reviews, retrospects or ‘After Action Reviews’

These tools, when applied to process improvement and decision making, encourage us to think about what might prevent our solutions from succeeding rather than getting carried away by how wonderful they are!  They also help us to present this understanding more clearly in our communication activities or dialogues with our stakeholders (sponsors, colleagues and customers).

3. Our assessment of the quality of new evidence is biased by what we believe.

If we are aware of this potential pitfall we can aim to be more receptive to opposing views.  In a team of people that have been working together for some time, common beliefs may be more predominant than instances of opposing views.

An effective team leader could look out for and encourage differences of opinion as a potential way of overcoming the team’s bias in assessing new evidence.  Discussions with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders could also be very powerful for this.

Conclusion

Now that we know that we can be additionally blinded by our need to see patterns, causal relationships, and confirmatory evidence of what we believe, we need to be doubly cautious in applying intuition for process improvement and decision making.

As change practitioners know, we value resistance from stakeholders as this highlights potential areas for consideration that those implementing the change may be blind to.  We know now that we should also value resistance from stakeholders as a counter-balance to the risks of intuition.

However, we should continue to bear in mind that there is a role for intuition in certain circumstances.

Notes

(1) “Blink.  The power of thinking without thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell, Back Bay Books, 2007

(2) “Bad Science” by Ben Goldacre, Harper Perennial, 2009

(3) Elisabeth Goodman is Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that uses process improvement and knowledge management to enhance team effectiveness.

Follow the links to find out more about RiverRhee Consulting, and about Elisabeth Goodman.

Taking control of your working life as an employee; a first 100 days approach?

At 4am on a fresh autumn morning, a coach load of members of the European Pharmaceutical Student Association (EPSA) began their early morning journey from Genoa, Italy, to Nice (France) to attend a workshop on ‘Personal Career Development – new to the job or ready for a change?’  This was one of the sessions organised by the DIA’s 3rd Annual Clinical Forum in Nice, France, and also an integral part of EPSA’s own conference taking place simultaneously in Genoa!

As one of the ways that Elisabeth Goodman, principal consultant at RiverRhee Consulting ⁽¹⁾ helps to improve team effectiveness, productivity and morale is to enable team members to generally ‘find their voice’, Elisabeth took the opportunity to listen to what others have to say on this subject.  This article, with the kind permission of the speakers involved, documents what she learnt during this workshop.

Carl Metzdorff, Principal at ACES Health Care, introduced the concept of ‘the first 100 days’ as one that obviously applied to Obama’s and other US Presidents’ first days in office.  It’s also a concept that organisations use in the days following mergers and acquisitions.  Carl used it to describe the priorities that a new manager should address in his / her first 100 days.  He suggested that the first 100 days are a period of grace or temporary incompetence whilst the incumbent is getting to grips with their job.  It’s a time when effective communication is essential, when the individual is expected to form their team, shape and share their strategic direction, and start delivering results.  To achieve all of this, a new manager would do well to start developing their plans before the start of the 100-day period, as this can run out very quickly.

For an individual ‘finding their voice’, wanting to make themselves visible, and make an impact that will shape their career going forward, a 100-day approach might be a very useful framework.  Thus they too could do some useful preparatory work to identify their values, career goals, and key stakeholders in the organisation.  They could use their first 100 days to connect and communicate with the key stakeholders and get input on how they could best deliver value to the organisation as well as effectively start shaping their career.

Nicolaos Gentis, PhD Student and Teaching Assistant at Industrial Pharmacy Lab, and Parliamentarian for EPSA, also emphasized how important it is for students to be clear on their wants, skills/talents, strengths and weaknesses when considering their career direction. He also talked about the importance of communication in the early days of a new job both to learn from others, and to ensure that the job develops as the individual would wish.

Wim Souverijns, Senior Director Global Marketing Excellence, Celgene, own career is a vivid illustration of how switching jobs during the course of a career is part of the deal nowadays.  In 12 years he has worked in 3 industries, 4 companies, 6 jobs, and has had 4 international moves.  He suggested that a desire to learn and a basic curiosity are key factors for creating ones own career opportunities.  Wim also stressed the importance of reflecting on ones career objectives, on what matters to the individual, and what they are good at or enjoy doing in time.  Companies will try to get the best out of an individual, for the benefit of the organisation.  The individual needs to decide independently, where they want to go. Again, he stressed the importance of communicating with other stakeholders, in this case with one’s boss, and of identifying a mentor or coach, to help steer one’s career in the right direction.

Finally, Max Beckmann, Managing Director of Beckmann Bio, reminded people that being self-employed, or starting one’s own business, is also an option as a route for achieving your potential, if working within an organisation no longer meets your needs.  Whilst being employed has many benefits, if it gets too limiting in terms of the scope of an individual’s work, their level of responsibility, or their income, then being self-employed may be the answer.

However, the self-employed route is not a choice to be taken lightly!  The alternative is to take a long hard look at your values, goals, talents and strengths; consider how you could meet the needs of others from within an organisation; and take a 100-day approach to achieving it.

Notes

⁽¹⁾ This article focuses on one of RiverRhee Consulting’s key goals: helping teams achieve improved team morale.  We enhance team effectiveness for improved productivity and team morale by:

1. Focusing on your customers
2. Simplifying and streamlining what you do
3. Optimising information and knowledge assets
4. Ensuring successful business change

If individuals within a team are clear on their personal objectives, strengths and on how they can best support their customers, then they will play a powerful role in helping the rest of the team enhance its effectiveness and productivity.

Follow the links for more information about RiverRhee Consulting, and about principal consultant, Elisabeth Goodman.

URS – a case study of an organisation that values the resources and knowledge of its employees

A few years ago, URS had a change in Managing Director for its UK business, and an opportunity to re-appraise how it was running the business.  It recognised that a key factor was the resource and knowledge of URS’s employees, and its desire to not only retain people, but also ensure that they had a strong career path, and a sense that their contributions are valued.

URS is an extremely large environmental and engineering company, with 55 thousand employees spread across the US, Asia-Pacific, and most of Western Europe, and a turnover of $10.5 billion per year.  Its HQ is in San Francisco.  It is split into 3 divisions: the URS Division, which focuses on engineering and environmental consultancy and design; the Washington Division which focuses on programme, construction and project management for transportation and energy sector projects and for the nuclear industry in particular; and the EG&G Division which focuses on defence projects.

I spoke to Malcolm Weston, Knowledge and Information Manager in URS Corporation Ltd the UK-based company within the URS Division, and Treasurer on the NetIKX (Network for Information and Knowledge Exchange) committee, to get a better understanding of what URS was doing to build strong teams, foster knowledge sharing, and generally enable good morale within its organisation.

URS are recipients of the Investors In People (IIP) award. When the new UK Managing Director was appointed and URS Corporation Ltd was established as the company through which the URS Division would operate in the UK as part of the wider URS group, it was an opportunity to take what was already a core of good practice in the Bedford office, and introduce it as a model for the rest of the UK organisation.  The Divisions’ clients also strongly encouraged them to apply for the IIP award as a formal badge of approval for the way they worked.  URS got its first certification in 2003 / 2004 on the strength of what they already had in place, and were again successful on the IIP’s second visit, despite increases in the level of standard expected.

The kind of practices that URS has adopted to qualify for the IIP award include:

• Strong employee empowerment in areas such as safety and employee / team recognition.  Safety is a key aspect of URS’s work, and any employee can stop a piece of work if they see that something unsafe is taking place.  Likewise, any employee can nominate an individual, or a team that they feel has gone out of their way to help others or to contribute to the organisation’s work.
• There are also strong employee benefits such as sports & social clubs in most offices – which build the quality of interaction within teams; opportunities to take part in charitable events during company time, and with matching company sponsorship; the ability to buy extra holiday time; medical membership for the individual plus reduced rates for family members.
• There is an annual staff satisfaction survey, the results of which are reviewed as part of the quarterly team briefings relating to the IIP award held by Department Heads.

There are examples of how URS values expertise and knowledge sharing:

• The career progression path enables individuals to be recognised and to progress as technical experts, rather than having to become part of the management progression.
• Strong relationships are maintained with those who decide to leave, such that some of them continue to collaborate as external consultants with URS, or indeed return to URS on a higher grade after gaining external experience.
• URS will sometimes support smaller specialist consultancies, for instance by providing Health & Safety advice.
• There is a UK Business Improvement Board, on which Malcolm sits as an advisor for knowledge sharing strategies and techniques.
• The corporate intranet includes subject / group areas for sharing knowledge and experience, and Malcolm is also introducing ways to capture and share knowledge between projects.

Altogether, URS illustrates an appealing range of approaches for building strong teams, fostering knowledge sharing, and generally enabling good morale within its organisation.

Powerful quotes for strong performing (effective) teams

Followers of my blogs will know that I have been reading Stephen Covey’s “The 8th Habit” and have found it very inspirational both from a personal perspective, and for the various ways in which I help teams become a strong foundation for their organisations.

I particularly liked the following quotes which Covey includes in his book:

“There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” Victor Hugo. This is very pertinent to Change Management.  How many times have I and others I know tried to introduce a new way of thinking or working that we think is absolutely right for the situation, only to find that we just can’t make it happen.  And then, maybe a few weeks, months or even years later, it’s suddenly easy to do, and everyone else is adopting the idea as if it was their own: like ‘pushing against an open door’?  The skill is in recognising when it’s the wrong time to introduce this kind of change, and when it’s the right time..

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Henri David Thoreau. This to me is very relevant to why we do root cause analysis in process improvement. It’s all too common a failing to try to treat the symptoms of a problem, rather than to look at the causes.  We can spend a lot of unnecessary and ineffective energy addressing the symptoms of a problem, rather than finding the root cause and tackling it once and for all.

“The difference between what we are doing and what we’re capable of doing would solve most of the world’s problems.” Mahatma Gandhi.  This is of course a very powerful call for each individual to find their ‘voice’ and be great rather than merely mediocre.  It applies to any organisational unit too.  For a team, it’s about understanding roles and responsibilities and how each team member can contribute and help the other team members to achieve the organisation’s goals.  It’s about ensuring that the team members understand what customers value and is working on the right things, before spending time on process improvement to do things right.

“To every man there comes in his lifetime that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered a chance to do a very special thing, unique to him and fitted to his talents.  What a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for the work which would be hist finest hour.” Winston Churchill.  This quote seems to bring us full circle to the first and subsequent ones in this blog i.e. recognising when the time is right, understanding where ones energy is best spent, being clear on what our customers value, playing our role within the tangible or virtual team(s) that we are a member of to achieve a truly great performance, and lasting value. Empowerment in a nutshell?

I’d love to hear from you if you find the above of interest – comments here or contact me via: http://www.linkedin/in/elisabethgoodman