Simple is not Easy

Why do so many managers repeat the same mistakes and why don’t they do the things that would make their and their peoples’ lives easier, happier and more productive?

Three mistakes that waste billions and cause untold misery and harm include:
1. paying bonuses and incentives, specially individual rewards.
2. sending people on courses, but not helping them to implement their learning.
3. surveying employees, but instead of acting on the results, surveying them again (and again) and in more detail.

There is compelling evidence that these three things demotivate and disengage people. Research also shows what does engage and motivate people and does create sustained value. These things are simple, if not easy.

In 1967, Peter Drucker said, in “The Effective Executive”, that “The effective executive focuses on their own contribution, which, by itself, supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations:
1. Communications
2. Teamwork
3. Self-development
4. Development of others”

In 1999, Curt Coffman, in “First Break All the Rules”, cites Gallup’s famous twelve questions that determine profitable engagement, of which the first four are:
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the right materials do my job well?
3. Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition for good work?

In 2009, David Macleod, in his UK Government report “Engaging for Success”, found (again) that people are motivated and engaged when:
1. They know where the organisation is going and their role
2. They have engaging managers who communicate clearly and give them timely, reinforcing feedback
3. They have a real voice that is listened to when giving bad news as well as good.
4. There is real integration of stated values and observed behaviours

So a quick insight is that there are simple things that work when you do them and there are things that cause real, enduring damage.

The things that do the worst harm are rewards, courses without implementation and surveys without action. I will look at each of those in detail later, but for now, I will just note that these three things seem relatively easy to make happen and give the early impression of positive action, even though they lead to negative effects later. They also get ever more complicated and worse, the more that managers try to make them work.

The things that bring the greatest benefits are all simple, but demand constant self-awareness and sensitivity to others, sustained discipline and resolution. They also require sufficient self-confidence to be able to enthuse and trust others and to be persistent and patient enough to allow the results to mature, blossom and bear fruit.

There are some leaders who do consistently do the right things and whose firms and people thrive. Some of them achieve fame and fortune and others succeed quietly. There are plenty of examples when we seek them, but even so, there are many more managers who hear the stories, who read the reports, who note the principles, but continue to mislead themselves and others by not following the examples, integrating the principles or implementing the learning. I wonder why?

In future posts I will suggest some reasons why well-intentioned managers consistently harm themselves, their people and their organisations. It has to do with illusion, self-delusion, and mistaken focus on the past and on possession. The best leaders keep very aware, focus on the future and act positively.

What is Relational Intelligence?

Dialogue Tools – Relational Intelligence

I’ve been thinking about leadership a lot during past weeks. There are couple reasons for that. One reason is that I have now spend five months working in Humap Ltd, which I think has been a great time for me to reflect about leadership. One reason might be, that our company, Dialogue Tools, is taking it’s first steps at the moment and that’s why we have been writing down some text for our first customer leaflet and becoming web pages?

Couple months ago I was having a dialogue with my Humap colleagues about the bigger picture of our company, Dialogue Tools. What is it that Dialogue Tools is actually doing? Very soon we started to talk about “Relational Intelligence”. Those two words sounded very good: Dialogue Tools – Relational intelligence.

So what is Relational Intelligence all about?

Leadership theories are in breach. After our society has strongly moved towards knowledge work the factors affecting productivity have changed drastically from what we are used to. Even one conversation can have an affect of 100 percent on effectiveness for several days, for good and for bad. In a more traditional and industrial work it wasn’t so.

Organisational measurements usually explore only individual characters: personality, role or abilities. Identifying our personality helps us to understand something essential of ourselves. However that’s not enough to tell how we act in different relationships.

Relationships are built, renewed and changed in interaction, all the time. How these interactions are built in work communities has become crucially important competitive advantage for organisations. In a complex and networked world boosting work procedures cannot solve the productivity. The value of knowledge work is created in dialogue in which shared meanings, thinking together about the future and energy are built.

The jubilant challenge for leadership is to understand the affect of relationships on productivity. How can we make this connection transparent and concrete?

Humap & Dialogue Tools

Some positive changes with DialogueLife. Finally marriage with Humap Ltd. came to reality in the beginning of December last year. Humap became the biggest owner in DialogueLife Ltd. Also we are in the process of changing name of the company into Dialogue Tools.

What kind of company is this Humap? To be honest I think I use this blog writing to clarify that to my self as well. We have been working side by side with Humap since the very beginning, and after this 1½ years I suppose I have some idea.

Normally I’d say it’s quite easy to say of a company that what kind of company it is. I honestly think this is not the case with Humap, and I find that very interesting. Of course if I want to be boring I can just say that it is 10-year old  Finnish consulting company that has 14 consultants, offices in Jyväskylä, Helsinki and Turku. It has two subsidiaries Humap software and Dialogue Tools. Humap is especially good in involving people in its processes with customers. Just somehow with Humap it feels that by saying such a things is nowhere enough or even in the grey area of lying because it leaves so important points out.

With some people it goes like this: You see them for the first time, or meet them for the first time and they seem quite normal or even little bit boring? You learn to know them little bit more and you realize how intelligent they are. After a time you realize that they surprise you every time and that your first impression really was not even on the same continent with what you think of them now. (after 4 years I think my girlfriend is one of these people) Do you know any people like that? For me Humap seems like this as company. Just bad marketing strategy or something else?

Picture from Humap summer days 2009

Humap the curious consultancy

For me two key things that I’ve learnt about Humap are that it is driven by passion, and that it is a laboratory. Driven by passion came very concrete when we became their subsidiary. Only question they had for us was, what are you interested in? Point here is to do things your passion and energy lies in. How many companies is lead like that!?! Humap is not divided into business areas like companies usually, but into passion-groups, if you don’t find a passion group in Humap that gets you ignited start your own and see if others join.

Humap works as a laboratory. Idea is not to read books and the go to customers to tell how things work. We test things with ourselves; we have experienced those things ourselves before talking about it with customers. One good example of this is new Amsterdam and London offices. Most of our customers are internationals these days; we need to be as well in order to have some experience how it works.

There is something more, and this is something I don’t think I’m very good explaining. Planning things in Humap is quite different from what I’m used to.  I haven’t been involved long enough to know how this really works, but it seems that things are not planned very much. We start to do things, and there is some planning, but it seems to be to its minimum. Still, I can see things happening that have needed years of dedicated work. It is interesting, must have something to do with the passion thing. Maybe some future postings about this when I understand more.

How does it sound to you? Would you like to hang out with people from this kind of company?

DialogueLife continues as a product of Dialogue Tools and this blog continues as a blog about Dialogue Life. Life goes on.

Quite impressive 360° image

http://www.360cities.net/prague-18-gigapixels

I suggest you to click that link and use the zoom. It’s impressive!

Our 360° video recording equipment is not quite so high quality, which might even be an benefit in many cases.

Get Out More!

In yesterday’s ScAm,

(http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=moral-call-of-the-wild&sc=CAT_MB_20091202), Wesley Schultz reports research showing that when people experience nature, apart from the obvious health benefits and good feelings, they also come to be less focused on themselves and more on others. Marcial Losada found that most business teams show significantly more self-focus than other-focus but the most successful teams balance self and other focus equally.

In “Bowling Alone”, http://www.bowlingalone.com/Robert Putman showed that watching television reduces community engagement, but it is increasing. In office after office we see people stuck at their desks staring at computer screens. Is it any wonder that they feel alone and that self-interest is the only interest, even though it does not satisfy. In those circumstances, it is up to the leadership teams to lead the way.

So maybe we should have more meetings outside, even in the park or al least put plenty of flowers and plants in our meeting rooms. It seems that these things do have a measurable positive impact. By making the workplace healthier and more natural, we make it measurably more effective.

Interesting blog -> Reality Mining

I just came across this very fascinating blog. Listen this:

specially designed digital device – a sociometer – was also monitoring each presentation. Through measurements such as the amount of variability in their speech, their activity levels, the amount of mimicry shown between the presenter and the listeners, among others, this device wasn’t recording what each person said in their pitch but rather how they said it. The sociometer was measuring another channel of communication that works without spoken language: our social sense.

Wow.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reality-mining

Marcial Losada Explains His Work

Didier Marlier writes a good blog about Leadership and Change. On his blog he has invited Marcial Losada to explain his rersearch. You can follow the link here. http://blog.enablersnetwork.com/2009/11/01/marcial-losada-explains-his-research-for-our-blog-readers/

Teams and Experts, Teams of Experts, Experts at Teaming

I was interested by something I read recently by Anders Ericsson, possibly in Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”, about how people really achieve expert mastery. It made me wonder about how teams achieve team mastery and how Dialogue Life can help.
“As a rule, experts practice things differently. Better than the rest of us, and similar to each other.” Anders Ericsson
Anders Ericsson “Many individuals seem satisfied in reaching a merely acceptable level of performance, such as amateur tennis players and golfers, and they attempt to reach such a level while minimizing the period of effortful skill acquisition. Once an acceptable level has been reached, they need only to maintain a stable performance, and often do so with minimal effort for years and decades.”
Anders Ericsson “Deliberate practice presents performers with tasks that are initially outside their current realm of reliable performance, yet can be mastered within hours of practice.”
Most of the knowledge and skill that distinguishes the best froim the rest is tacit knowledge that either cannot be made explicit or takes too long to explain. It also varies so subtly, but importantly, when it is affected by a varying context that itself cannot be desribed in sufficient detail in time to remain relevant. This tacit knowledge can only be developed through repeated practice and experience. When this learning takes place in a small team, each learner interweaves more vicarious and personal experience than they can obtain alone. They can see how others deal with a common situation and what happens. The actions of others opens their minds to alternative ways of behaving that may not have occurred to them spontaneously. Often they realise what they did not know before and why it is important. They do not need to make their ignorance explicit, so they can internalise their learning quickly and easily without embarrassment.
Dialogue Life helps teams to become expert at teaming. It gives timely feedback so that teams can learn how they are behaving and how their behaviour affects team performance. Team performance is the product of all the team members’ individual behaviours, each of which is, at least partially, the outcome of each other’s behaviour. Dialogue Life’s systemic approach recognizes that the actions of each team member simultaneously depend on and affect every other team member.
Many tools help people in teams to understand and value their differences. Relevant diversity is vital to help teams perform. Dialogue Life shows teams how to make the most the diversity they have and how to turn the differences into solid performance.

 In Harvard Business Review 2007 Ericsson et al wrote, “Real expertise must pass three tests. First, it must lead to performance that is consistently superior to that of the expert’s peers. Second, real expertise produces concrete results. Brain surgeons, for example, not only must be skillful with their scalpels but also must have successful outcomes with their patients. A chess player must be able to win matches in tournaments. Finally, true expertise can be replicated and measured in the lab. As the British scientist Lord Kelvin stated, “If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.”

 Marcial Losada has shown that teams that have become expert at applying the three key behavioural ratios do produce performances better than other good teams. They do produce concrete results. And their expertise can be replicated and measured in the lab.

From Having to Doing

Do people have just the ‘intelligence’ they inherited,  or has everyone the opportunity to grow their intelligence by doing things and practices that develop it?
How would people feel if they have the responsibility of determining their own ability?
Carol Dweck in her book Mindset says that people who have a ‘fixed’ theory of intelligence are mainly concerned with how intelligent they are and prefer tasks that they can do well and avoid task where they might fail. People who believe in growth or expandable intelligence want to challenge themselves even if they fail at first.

Cordelia Fine in “A Mind of Its Own” shows how people genuinely believe that they achieve their successes because of their ability and talent and that other people or uncontrollable events cause their failures. People also believe that their weaknesses are so common that there is little one can do about them, but that their talents are rare and valuable. Nearly everyone agrees with that last finding and thinks that it applies more to other people than to themselves….

Justin Kruger and David Dunning found that “people who are unskilled suffer a dual burden.” Not only are they wrong, but their incompetence prevents them understanding how mistaken they are.

Daniel Coyle in The Talent Code http://thetalentcode.com/ describes how deep practice, mindfully dismantling how a skill develops and practising it minutely builds skill. Specifically he argues that every skill is created by chains of nerve fibres carrying tiny electrical impulses through ionisation. Daily, sustained practicing develops myelin sheaths along the nerve fibres. Myelin insulates fibres so that the signal is stronger and faster. It also helps the synapses revert to their original state more quickly to be ready for the next signal.

With strong myelin sheaths, impulses can accelerate from 2 to 200 mph and refraction times (the delay between being able to accept new impulses) reduces by up to 30 times. The combined effect increases mental and skill capability by up to 3000 times. On top of that capability gain, comes the ability to co-ordinate and synchronise actions and thoughts. And on top of that come both the ability to see and respond to patterns and the freeing of the conscious mind to consider and evaluate. The key points to me are that:

1. This is universal. It applies to all people and all skills.
2. Age does matter. Myelin grows most and most quickly in adolescence and starts to decline in the 50’s, but the ability to grow it endures.
3. It takes time and sustained practice. This is the basis of the contention in Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” by K Anders Ericsson that mastery is the result of 10,000 hours of mindful practise. A sub-argument is that it takes about ten years because you cannot practice mindfully much more than 3-4 hours a day, 20 hours a week or 1000 hours a year.

Now that mindful practise is best done at the limit of what you can already do, when it takes real effort and concentration. For that you need time, a ‘safe’ environment in which you get non-judgmental feedback (not judging you the performer, but actively judging the performance) and a belief that you can do better. Which takes us back to beginning. From “Having to Doing”

The Wisdom of Crowds and How Teams Work

I was reading “The Wisdom of Crowds” over the weekend and it made me think about the importance of balancing interest in Self with interest in Others. In the book, Surowiecki’s point is that good decisions come from integrating as many different views as possible, when those views are genuinely different, which means coming from different backgrounds, incorporating different assumptions, representing different ways of thinking.

Marcial Losada found that in low performing teams only one question was asked for every twenty opinions that were offered and that people in the team showed only one thirtieth as much interest in other people as they did in themselves. I have seen those teams, where people read reports texts and emails while others present to a vacuum and then instead of engaging in dialogue, people just push their own views, listening just long enough to others to decide if they are for or against before repeating their own opinion or attacking the other person’s argument (and sometimes the person).

In these ‘teams’, the decision goes to the most articulate, the most powerful, the most confident or the most intimidating, who is rarely the most correct. Non-conforming views are suppressed or explicitly rejected. I think it is unlikely that many people in the team will stay engaged for long with such decisions, but they will fear expressing their doubts and anxieties. They may comply with the decision, but they are unlikely to commit fully to it and to be resourceful, creative or resilient in implementing it. So, although the powerful advocate will feel early success from getting their own way and ongoing success when they see implementation beginning, they will suffer frustration and disappointment later when the project gets stuck and fails. They will typically blame the implementers creating a negative and disengaging cycle that shrinks people’s cognitive ability and emotional connectedness and undermine the team’s general capability to perform.

Again we see how the three behavioural ratios interconnect and reinforce each other and why is so important for the team to ask as many questions as they advocate opinions and to balance interest in Self with interest in Others, which can be done best by believing that other people have positive contributions to make and that difference itself is a positive attribute.