Team Tips - 7 {I, Robot}

Here's a challenge from some who have heard about, but not fully experienced, the Core Protocols in action:

Using protocols of behaviour turns us into robots.

Sure.

And the use of best practices in our work puts us in process hell, building quality into our results is expensive, rules inhibit creativity, great results require huge effort, and the earth is flat.

Just in case you haven't guessed yet, I have a bias. Yes, I am a fan of the Simple Rules and Tools for great teams – the Core Protocols from McCarthy Technologies.

And my bias is toward action, getting the best results with the least effort, being clear and explicit in communications, using standards of process to provide consistency of quality wherever possible, and promoting creativity and excellence.

If you have an uncontrollable urge to “roll your own” and be as free as bird with no constraints in developing and providing your particular product or service, then fill your boots.

I trust you won't be offended if I don't get into your car for the next trip across town, or get into the aircraft your company provides for travel. I'm just not that comfortable in blowing through stop signs and red lights because they are too constraining. Nor would I be thrilled if the pilots for my next flight didn't care to check the aircraft, do any pre-flight cockpit work, ignore air traffic control, and attempt the take-off from the taxiway with only fumes in the fuel tanks.

Yup; those dang protocols do inhibit things.

Like:

• using all the comfortable legacy behaviours that aren't productive and deliver low quality results
• having low bandwidth communication full of blather and unspoken assumptions
• spending more time on project management than on producing product
• getting tangled up in whining, complaining, and the Drama Triangle
• producing mediocre products or services so we don't achieve too much revenue

So if you are getting your very best results already, if you are sure there is nothing you can gain by trying a different approach, if you are completely, outrageously happy, financially secure, and have absolutely nothing else to offer the world, then please ignore the Core Protocols. Instead, please send me your own protocols.

The commitments from the Simple Rules and Tools include using the Tools – the Protocols – or something better. So I'm serious. If you have something better I need to know.

But in the meantime give the Simple Rules and Tools a try. How does any idea become a reality except by eventually trying it out and looking at the results?

Mainframe computers, became mini computers, became personal computers, became laptops, became hand held devices, etc. Computer assembly languages fostered compilers and interpreters, etc. Waterfall project management became more agile with – you know.

If you feel that protocols would turn you into a robot, then perhaps you need to be the one to show how they don't have to.

Of course you can also persist in ignoring the success of the Simple Rules and Tools, and sail your boat off the edge of the world.

Your call. :-)

Team Tips - 3 {Who gets to play?}

The next challenge for teams I have chosen is from Ben N.:

New member ?

“How to select members for a great team?”

The smartest way we have seen people get selected for a team is to have all potential team members attend the team building workshop: Simple Rules and Tools for Great Teams. This session is also known as BootCamp by the originators of the event, Jim and Michele McCarthy, and is based on their book Software for Your Head.

By inviting potential team members to participate in this workshop the boss* is setting some initial conditions which help define the basis for the team. (* see Team Tips - 1)

1. The workshop is NOT mandatory. Accordingly, the people who attend are only those who want to be there; hence, want to be part of the team
2. By participating in the session attendees are immersed in the Core Protocols – the Simple Rules and Tools. This helps everyone involved get to experience and practice these foundational behaviours for great teamwork, and some will invest energy in this learning and thrive in it, and some may choose not to
3. During the session, the team members develop a Shared Vision for that team. If someone doesn't wish to share that vision they are free to follow their own dream and so move out of the original team
4. The team members that find that the Core Protocols as used by the team deliver on the promise of high band-with communication, fast decision making, the development of trust, a focus on results of high quality, etc. become their own self organized team. Any attendees who don't are again free to not participate, possibly forming their own team working in other ways

The boss gets the result: a self organized team, following Simple Rules and Tools that are repeatable in any situation, scaleable for any size of group, reliably working to produce the best results on time every time. Any attendee who chooses not to be part of this, effectively self-selects themselves off the team.

Our experience with this approach is that:

   a) bosses have used the session to “do the hiring”. That is the immersion becomes the hiring process, and the check for personality chemistry, and the probation period, and any other scrutiny one wishes for in a hiring process. (And the cost of a “normal” personnel search, interview and hire, and possible failure after three months of probation more than pays for the session.)

   b) or alternatively, they have seen after the session who should be, or remain, “on the bus” [Good to Great, Harper Collins, Jim Collins] and can identify those who don't wish to work on the team using the Core Protocols. (Again this saves considerable energy and cost dealing with employees who have turned out not to be a good fit.)

Team

The quick answer then is: Have the team select their own members.

If the team already exists, then they are the best people to determine who will fit well on that team, who can aspire to the team's shared vision, will use the team's commitments to responsible behaviour, and follow the team's protocols for information sharing, decision making, self improvement, development of great products or services, etc.

And just as the great teams work with a bias toward action instead of discussion, and incrementally building prototypes, and perfecting them, they can do the same thing in confirming new members. That is, work with them over a probationary period for everyone to confirm that the newly expanded team is functioning as well or better, and similarly the team is a good fit for the new member.

Great teams learn to let ideas go, and similarly can accept that their world isn't perfect for everyone. Sometimes the shiniest, prettiest, smartest new hire just shouldn't be on this team. The Core Protocols provide the tools to deal with that.

Again, the underlying premise in all these answers is that the team is using the Simple Rules – the Core Commitments in the Core Protocols – and the Tools – the Protocols themselves for their day to day operation. This is simply the smartest approach for any team that we have found.

So here is the “catch”. If what I am suggesting doesn't seem workable in your situation, then you need to use the Simple Rules and Tools for Great Teams (or something better).

To add your questions to the list add a comment below or tweet me @ReevesResults.

Effort vs. Results on a Great Team

There's another interesting and important exchange underway in the Core Protocols Group forum (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/TheCoreProtocols). This one is about the relative merits of effort versus results.


As with all these discussions – in this forum or any other medium – a lot of the debate revolves around the meaning, and the implications, of the words used. For example, from Peter A.:

I think we're getting caught up on multiple interpretations of "effort". On the one hand effort refers to "the number of hours spent doing something", which is how it's being used in the results/effort ratio. On the other hand, I think the article is primarily using effort in the sense of "applied oneself diligently against a defined standard with realtime feedback" (i.e. Deliberate practice). While more is better in some sense here, the key point is that this kind of practice is a good thing vs. not practicing or ineffective practice.

and:

... there are multiple interpretations of what "results" mean. If results include the ability of the individual/team to produce more/better output in the future at less cost, the strategy/math for optimizing results/effort is different than if you only value output for the current time interval.

The “article” referred to above is The words that could unlock your child (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13128701) which has the punch line

This reveals a radical new approach to the way we engage with children - that we should praise effort, never talent; that we should teach kids to see challenges as learning opportunities rather than threats; and that we should emphasize how abilities can be transformed.

and even a comment left on behalf of Einstein!: 

This from Einstein:

"I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas."

Since my operating slogan is “It's not about effort – it's about results”, I can't avoid weighing in on this issue.


Let's set aside the unanswered questions from the article about how we encourage children versus adults, and whether or not we praise talent, or ability, or hard work, etc., and the words we choose in each situation, and with each personality – all complex adaptive systems!


My slogan is to make the point that in any enterprise, effort that doesn't finally produce a satisfactory result isn't truly effective and hence worthwhile. We can't get distracted by claims of hard work, and even true hard work, if it doesn't deliver. And please note I added the word “finally” to cover the obvious examples of practicing, failing, recovering, trying again which are all necessary efforts for most of us to build skills and competence to achieve a goal.


The real point is that effort all by itself with no achievement except fatigue is not a valuable  commodity. At least in the exercise gym fatigue is an indicator of potential muscle development. 


Nonetheless, when did you last go to the store to buy “effort”?

Well, Mr. Reeves, our company employees worked night and day to design, fabricate, and ship this product. We didn't actually get it operational, but we worked really hard at it. How many would you like?

Jeez, boss, I was here till midnight working on that analysis for you and I know you needed the answer for that important client sale this morning. Although I didn't get it done, I really worked hard at it.

You know I haven't taken a vacation in 3 years!

It is certainly NOT that effort isn't required. We don't go to the “Results Tree” and pick results off the low hanging branches. But if we praise effort without results, or in place of the required results, then we are not being smart. At the worst we are deluding ourselves that somehow hard work (and what is truly hard?) is an acceptable alternative to an actual achievement. (Scan all the news reporting from the United Nations, and governments in general, to see examples.)


And if we are in business, and only concentrating on effort, then there will definitely be a final result and that will be failure.

Leadership 9

Here's a crackerjack job description of The Leader (or more precisely The Formal Leader) as provided by Harrison Owen in his book Wave Rider (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008)

• "deals easily with massive diversity
• comprehends mind-bending complexity
• works simultaneously on multiple levels
• rises above chaos, confusion, and conflict
• tolerates tidal waves of change
• never loses their cool
• always in control
• mixes all of the above to produce wholeness, health, and harmony"

Why this over-the-top description is “Mission Impossible”, even without the hyperbole, is nicely revealed as Harrison Owen works through the implications for leadership when we are knocked off track by some of the common organizational muddy thinking, such as:

• defining every business issue as a problem we can fix
• dealing with the unintended consequences of our fixes
• the Closed System Hoax
• the Whole Systems approach
• Process Re-Engineering
• we can control everything that is moving

If we hang onto these models and paradigms, and our common approaches to deal with them, then we truly need the Mission Impossible Leader.

But, of course, this leads us to the reductio ad absurdem dead end. There is no such Leader, and if anyone claims that they are – well, shame on you for paying any attention to them.

Happily, Harrison shares an alternative with us he has seen in action over the years of observing his brain child in operation – Open Space Technology. He has observed exactly what we have seen in our teamwork development BootCamps (ref. Leadership 1 blog, January 2009). That is, “Authentic Leadership”.

In other words, the Formal Leader (someone in charge due to their title, job grade, or the organization chart) is absent, and not only not needed but actually an impediment to productive results. But other leaders emerge as required to provide “the stimulus, direction, and focus for useful activity”.

And this type of leadership appears due to

“... Passion and Responsibility. Or more precisely, Leadership emerges from the confluence of Passion and Responsibility.”

“... passion united with responsibility create the needed sense of direction and focus that can get the job done. That is Leadership.”

How interesting that in his 20 years of observation of high performing groups he has seen the same emergent properties as we see in teamwork BootCamps. Even more delightful, Harrison recognizes these emergent properties as similar to those noted by Stuart Kauffman dealing with questions on the origin of life in his study of self-organizing biological systems. (At Home in the Universe, Oxford University Press, 1995)

How scary that we still cling to notions of the organization as a mechanistic system, and Leaders being in charge in a command and control model.

Management 4

Q: As I recall, you were suggesting that we need to start at the beginning of the story?

A: That's right. If we are going to discuss “Management” we need to know what we are actually talking about.

Q: I feel some definitions coming at me.

A: Right. Let's see what some sources have to say.

Q: Is this going to take long?

A: That depends on you. :)
Here's the first one: Among Webster's offerings for Management: “the judicious use of means to accomplish an end” (1).
And for Manager: “to handle or direct with a degree of skill” (2)
and “to exercise executive, administrative, and supervisory direction” (3).

Q: So?

A: Well, for starters, your bozo Manager in our previous discussions seems to have fulfilled definition (1) - “the judicious use of means to accomplish an end”. Whether you perceive his contribution or not, he used the means – you – to accomplish an end – you produced your results.

Q: But he didn't contribute – he didn't help me at all.

A: Agreed, but he didn't need to did he? In effect he used definition (2) - “to handle or direct with a degree of skill”, with you as a capable employee. That is he handled you with skill by staying out of your way and letting you produce.

Q: But he didn't lead at all, and spent his time playing office politics.

A: OK. Will you give me an example of his “office politics”?

Q: Sure; he was constantly in meetings with the other managers negotiating priorities, and tasks, and who was going to do what, and generally sucking up.

A: Good; that sounds a lot like definition (3) - “to exercise executive, administrative, and supervisory direction”. “Executive” direction is about executing – getting tasks done. That requires working out and understanding priorities, and who is going to be involved. “Supervisory” direction is about arranging to have those “who”s – like you - actually do the tasks.
I do agree that “generally sucking up” isn't in the dictionary definition. :)

Q: So you are telling me that according to the definitions my Manager was actually doing his job?

A: Yup.

Q: But that just can't be right. Where's the leadership? Where's the getting involved and helping get the tasks done? I didn't see him contribute at all!

A: Right.
Based on your criteria he did a damn fine job – as a Manager. The definitions so far haven't mentioned leadership, or getting involved in your tasks.
And let's be clear about the record for your scenario. You said “I knew my job, I knew my objectives, I knew my boundaries, I knew how to get things done and I did them.” How did you know your job?

Q: Well, I was hired with the knowledge and skills I needed.

A: And who hired you, and checked that you had the knowledge and skills?

Q: My Manager and the Human Resources assistant with the skill tests and new hire paperwork.

A: And how did you know your objectives, and boundaries?

Q: They were part of the job description and my performance objectives documents.

A: Good! Definitely a better start than I've seen in a lot of companies.
How did you know “how to get things done”?

Q: I figured out who the important people were who knew the operation and the inside tips.

A: Excellent! Did anyone help make sure you got your job description, performance objectives, introduced you to key people with experience?

Q: OK, OK. Don't rub it in; my Manager set things up for me. But then I was on my own!

A: And it worked out fine from what you said before.

Q: But surely there's more to managing than what I saw him do for me.

A: Yup. There's lots, but before we get to that let me ask you something. How do you feel about your Manager now?

Q: Well I'm not about to give him a big hug if that's what you mean.

A: That's fine. There's probably some Human Resources policy about that. :)
Besides you don't even have to like him – just respect him by believing he is a smart, rational human being like you until you have solid data to the contrary. After all he is your best customer.

Q: Whoa! You might have wrangled me into accepting he's not as big a bozo as I thought, and in fact, according to you, did the right things for me. But my “best customer”? Now you are talking like the bozo. How can my boss be my customer?

A: Let's find out next week. :)