I was recently speaking with a participant at a conference I was presenting at and he was telling me about the loss of productivity because of their use of an older, slow piece of software. Many times, when people are underperforming, it is because of the individuals’ behaviors but often the cause is lack of resources or the system. When the equipment or system is causing poor performance in a department, it is the manager’s role to do everything possible to influence the senior leadership to provide adequate equipment and / or alter the system. We have heard the organizational change has to come from the top down. Yes, this may be true, but what about if you are in a middle management leadership position. Your employees are looking to you for leadership and to create any changes needed to support them in their roles. Too often senior leaders are making decisions for the organization without direct knowledge of what is really needed and the impact it will have. In the LEAN LEADERSHIP model that Toyota made famous, organizations seek to bring their decision making to the bottom of the leadership hierarchy as often as possible. Tapping into the knowledge of frontline workers by asking them what they need to perform their jobs faster and better, organizations can save an enormous about of time and money. As a workplace leader, your responsibility is to make it easier for your team to do their job. That’s not saying you need to make the job easy for them. You need to prevent or remove obstacles obstructing them in the process...
Last week, I presented at a project management conference on leading a safety culture, a culture where near misses are seen as a significant learning opportunity and not as potential disasters that are swept under the rug for fear of reprisal or job loss. A near miss is an unplanned event that did not result in injury, illness, or damage – but had the potential to do so. It is safe to say that of the dozens of the minor and major incidents I was involved in over 15 years of leading expeditions, most, if not all, were successfully resolved due to past learning from documented near miss situations, everything from arranging and paying for an Indian military helicopter to perform a dramatic rescue at 12000 feet in the Himalayas, to managing challenging river crossings in the Yukon to encountering grizzly bears deep in the back country of Alaska. Fortunately, most organizations I worked with had progressive cultures around documenting and learning from near misses. Unfortunately, not all organizations are like this. Recently, I have been speaking with some project managers who work in a culture of fear of disciplinary action for being involved with a near miss incident. This fear has caused them to not want to report near misses and minor incidents. Alternatively, I know of several organizations that have rephrased the term ‘near miss’ to ‘good catch’. I know it is only semantics but in an area that usually conjures up fear, semantics can be important. One company not only expected to report ‘good catches’ on potentially dangerous situations but also have their employees report “good catches’ of...
Part 2 Most of my life, people have told me I was hardworking, especially my schoolteachers. It always felt a bit odd because I didn’t necessarily feel like I was working harder than anyone else. Perhaps they would say it because I didn’t do particularly well with their testing methods, but still wanted to build my confidence because being called a hard worker by someone of authority feels good. Or perhaps they understood locus of control (LOC) and wanted me to develop a strong external LOC in me from an early age. As I discussed in last week’s post (How Your Locus of Control Explains Your Thoughts, Actions, and Motivations), LOC measures generalized belief in internal versus external control of reinforcement. In the post, I have mentioned an example of how the US Marines develop an internal LOC among their new recruits. Here, I will give another example of how this can be developed in children as well as adults. Don’t Tell Them They Are Smart! Someone’s LOC can be influenced through training and feedback, especially children. New York Times’ business reporter Charles Duhigg highlights one experiment by Stanford physiologist, Carol Dweck to demonstrate this in his book, Smarter, Faster, Better. The experiment gave students in grade 5 a series of challenging puzzles to complete. All were told they did well. Half of them were told they must have worked hard at solving the problems. The other half were told you must be really smart for solving the problems. The second round of puzzles included some easier and more challenging ones. The kids who were praised for their intelligence...
I was sticking to the back of the group with our slowest team member as we hiked up a remote unnamed peak in the Pelly Mountains in Canada’s Yukon Territory. At the time, I was leading a month long backpacking and canoeing expedition with a group of educators from across North America. Jane was moving steady but slowly. She was not in the best of shape, had limited backpacking experience and had never stood on top of a mountain before. She was determined to make it up the mountain but as things started to get tough, she began doubting herself and expressed many negative thoughts. I knew she was capable of making it to the summit and that she would be overjoyed when she got there. It would be a great confidence boost to her to help her through challenging moments during the rest of the expedition and more importantly, her life back home. When her speed slowed, my encouragement picked up. As we took our final steps to the summit, tears were streaking down from Jane’s eyes, and she belted out “Thanks to the lord, he got me up here!” I was surprised and frankly a little disappointed to hear her comment. In respect to her religious beliefs, I didn’t respond to the comment but I really wanted to say was “I just saw you dig deep and hike up the mountain on your own two feet. You were the one who physically got you here, way to go, awesome job. If you can do this, you can tackle just about any challenge, I’m so proud of you!...
If you are reading this in your usual workspace, look around: what does this space say about you? Is it as bare as the day you moved into the space? Does it have the mandatory corporate flare of inspirational posters and the latest promotion? Or, is it decked out with family photos and your children’s artwork? When I have a meeting at a bank, I always notice how sterile their offices feel. There is never any personal effect on display, not even family photos. Last year, I was meeting with my account manager and we were talking about our families. As I looked around, I noticed the only thing on the walls were posters of the latest corporate promotions and on his desk were business cards and a holder for corporate trifold brochures. I had observed this for years but this time I decided to ask him why he didn’t have a photo of his family on the wall or his desk. I was shocked when he said that it was a corporate policy that employees were not allowed to display personal effects in their offices. I thought how sad that is. I am all for having a clean office to meet clients in but come on, you can’t even show a family photo. There have been many studies done on the benefits of having employees decorate their workspaces. If you can provide people with a comfortable workspace, they are more likely to be effective. When we are not comfortable, our attention is divided, not focused. When people customize their workspace they feel a sense of ownership, and an...
