HSD 5

In the review of our 2010 Human Systems Dynamics Certification course {ref. HSD 3}, F. and I completed (for now) our discussion of the definition of a Complex Adaptive System. 

F. describes our review as: Continuing our travel in the past for a better future. (Which I think is cool, and reminded me of this TV show. Anyone remember the title?)

• F. questioned "system wide patterns being created by agents". Given that agents can create actions (or at least have the ability and freedom to act), some of these actions have strong connections or weak connections, and what are the parameters for this? As a real-life example: the VP of IT & VP of Operations debating and disagreeing about IT solutions for the business departments. Both VPs also have HR/Training managers with very different views. Their overall boss wants more synergy between them all. So we have emergent patterns that influence the agents (all 5 of them) which in turn influence the system, particularly with respect to the IT solutions chosen (in this example).
• Additionally, there are degrees of strength between the agents: levels of power, influence, authority, frequency of interaction, etc. Further, there may be invisible agents in the system who are not readily apparent. So as we analyze this system, we may wish to separate out the interactions between the combinations of agents and note the strength (influence) of these interactions.
• We then moved on to the question of Uncertainty. F. noted that patterns vary widely by geography and country; for example: for him, international flights leave more consistently on-time than local flights. There are differences in uncertainty according to culture, and situation.
• Our final note for this session was that some people still see organizations as mechanical and ordered and don't realize they are complex adaptive systems. Accordingly, they think they are in control when they are not, and don't see the possibility and probability of change coming.

More to come.

HSD 3 {HSD 1 revisited*}

A friend has been nibbling away at me over the last few years to review our HSD Certification course. (As I write the acronym it occurs to me that it sounds like a disease. 😜 )

HSD is far from a disease - it's a means to a cure. It stands for Human Systems Dynamics and provides a perspective on organizations and all the interactions and related ups and downs that occur when groups of two or more humans try to accomplish something.

You know: CHAOS. (The most recent elections in the U.S. and about Brexit might come to mind.)

Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone could provide some insight and practical suggestions to deal with this kind of mess? The mess being a complex system that has unforeseen and unintended consequences? Like... oh, LIFE in general?

Well, Glenda Eoyang and the HSD Institute can, and do!

And since my lovely and talented partner, Vickie Gray, and I have dealt with many messy organizations with complex problems throughout our consulting days, Human Systems Dynamics seemed very worth learning about. So we did, by taking the HSD Certification course from Glenda in 2010.

As well as being a rewarding, insightful, and revealing learning experience we got to work with a cohort of classmates with years of organizational experience and insight on the related problems and challenges they had tackled.

One of the kindred consultant spirits in the group was F., and it was his idea to review the course, share experiences and new learning, and discuss questions since six years has passed.

So F. has been poking at me and trying to set aside time in his busy practice for us to talk. Today was our first solid crack at opening our class binders and walking through the materials. 

I thought it would be useful to capture our thoughts and insights here as we go forward.

To set the stage I'm borrowing the Simple Rules that the Institute established for their course:

• Teach and learn in every action
• Search for the true and the useful
• Give and get value for value
• Attend to the part, the whole and the greater whole
• Engage in joyful practice
• Share the HSD story

Just the concept to even have Simple Rules to follow as part of the initial conditions for group behaviour was one of the first lessons. I'm sure we'll come back to this later.

Stay tuned for more!

{* My first blog post on HSD was in 2010.}

Blog History {Who'd a thunk?}

Since I just released a new version of my website, I was poking around making sure all the links worked which led me to my Blog - this one - and a shock.
 
I've made 60 posts since the first one in 2008!

Some I think aren't too bad and some are just horrible. Either way it was fun to scan through them, and that made me wonder if there was an easy way to compile a summary list.

I haven't found an easy way to do that, but I did find that Google can report the ones that were most popular - at least the top ten. They are in order below.

The astute observer will note that interest in 2011 is no guarantee of readership in 2012 and 2013. As for the desert from 2008 on - the less said the better.

The blog layout options don't make it easy to pick out interesting titles either because you actually have to select the month in the Archive list on the right to see them - not so user friendly.

That's why I've added the opening paragraphs in the list so you at least get that.
If you have some improvement thoughts, or any requests, let me know. The good news from my passion for improvement and reading is that it is great fun to post ideas in the big cyberspace library in the sky.

Here's the top ten:

Effort vs. Results on a Great Team from April, 2011

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. [Note: this forum is now the Facebook Group "The Booted"]

Agile vs. ITIL from March, 2011

A little while ago an associate in the Agile Coaching community, Yves Hanoulle, asked me about the contention often raised that Agile software development practices don't mesh with the ITIL Framework.

Team Tips – 12 {Lean, mean, machine} from January, 2013

One part of my consulting and training life deals with IT Service Management. Those are the principles and practices associated with the view that an IT department is a provider of services to its business counterparts which improve the value and potential of business outcomes. Usually good IT Service Management is achieved by adopting best practices from a framework such as CobiT or the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

Team Tips – 16 {An abundance ofAngels} from April, 2013

When I was a District Manager of Customer Service at Xerox Canada one of my managers told me she had seen an Angel. The spiritual kind, the God's Helper kind.

Team Tips – 10 {A word with you ...} from October, 2012

There's a wonderful push across the world to translate the Core Protocols, from McCarthy Technologies, into a variety of languages by people who want to use this information locally with teams for whom English is not their first language.

Team Tips – 13 {What's in a name?} from February, 2013

On April 21st. Vickie Gray and I will conduct another Great Teams BootCamp. The details are here.
You'll notice right away we are calling this one a “Creating Time BootCamp”. Over the years since 2003 that we've attended, helped at, or held a Camp ourselves we've always debated with ourselves what we should call each session.

Team Tips - 7 {I, Robot} from March, 2012

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.

Software for Your Head #4 from March, 2011

Finishing the project team kickoff meeting story from Software for Your Head by Jim & Michele McCarthy.

Team Tips - 4 {Is this for me?} from November, 2011

Another challenge for teams comes from Jose R.:
“Can everybody work in teams?”

Team Tips - 5 {Trust me!} from November, 2011

We're having a snow day; first of the season.
So it's a good time to tackle this challenge for teams from Jose R.:
"How can you recover trust inside a team that has lost it?"

Simple Rules and Tools - Perfection Game

Making something better and better

The other night at the Aikido dojo some members were tested and successfully achieved their next level of ranking. Immediately before the tests all of us worked through a regular class which usually has us start with practicing a very basic and simple technique and build on it towards a pretty startling movement.


To the casual bystander this approach can seem odd. If I am learning to spin my opponent around me almost horizontally, force them to the mat, and then secure them immobile, why should I spend time practicing having them grab my wrist over and over... and over?


Where's the cool drag them one way, clothes line them across the neck in the other direction, take them off their feet using their own momentum, and have them slam down on the mat, all with a flick of the wrist, twist of the hips, hardly needing a deep breath?


Well, of course, Aikido isn't about being “cool”, or slamming your opponent, who is actually more your partner in an intricate dance than a real threat. At least in the dojo.


And the whole development of these intricate moves occurs step by step, just like learning to fly an aircraft, or any other criteria-based instruction. When one can demonstrate satisfactory performance of one task or movement, then one can progress to the next step.


In particular, at each step one can review, evaluate, and improve to develop a firmer foundation for the next step.


This continuous building and adding to achieve a startling amazing result is one thing Great Teams practice doing during the the Simple Rules and Tools of Great Teams Immersion. The Tool is called the Perfection Game. The initial “movement” is simply whatever idea or proposal is suggested for the team to consider from one of the team members. That person asks one or more of the others to “Perfect” it, and the protocol begins.


It's a very special, structured, and positive form of feedback:

• it only occurs at the requestor's asking
• it indicates how much value the responder is hoping to provide to improve the suggestion
• it covers the aspects of the suggestion the responder likes with only positive comments
• it indicates any improvements the responder would like to see to make the suggestion as close to perfect for them as it might be – the value the responder is adding

That last step is where the continual building, improvement, and adding value occurs, particularly when the whole team is involved – either at the same time or in stages.


So if you like the opportunity for continuous improvement – kaizen – in your martial art, your flying, driving,... whatever, or are just looking to make an idea better in any situation the simple tool the Perfection Game protocol is ideal.


Find out more about the Simple Rules and Tools for Great Teams at http://www.BusinessImprovementResults.com/news.html


Get a free copy of all the rules and tools known as The Core Protocols at  http://www.BusinessImprovementResults.com/whatresults.html


See our example of the Perfection Game at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40a4Lf0hsaI&NR=1

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.

Software for Your Head 2

Continuing with the stereotypical project team kickoff meeting from Software for Your Head by Jim & Michele McCarthy.

We left off (from page 5) with:

My, but you’re feeling anthropological today, aren’t you? Is it maybe the presence of the cynics nee idealists? Does it touch you somehow?

Whatever. The scarcity of vision does strike you as interesting, even though it’s not a major topic of conversation (or even a minor one, for that matter). You know that most of these team members would agree that “shared vision” is a vital thing for a team. Why, if you went around the room and asked who was for and who against a shared vision, almost all would vote for it. Some would hedge or go technical on you (define this, what do you mean by that, it depends). But none would vote no. And yet, despite this general conviction, no one seems committed to a particular shared vision, or attempts to achieve one on this team. Of course, catching a shared vision, that’s a tough problem. Who knows where lightning will strike? Who has mapped the rainbow’s end? You note that there are a few who absolutely believe that a shared vision is the vital ingredient for a successful team. Still, no one speaks up about this obvious vacancy.

Instead,while you drift in and out, they plod on through the usual meeting follies, cracking a few minor jokes, interrupting without reason, talking overlong and repetitively, sporadically fighting for control, while somehow meandering through a poorly conceived and prematurely written agenda. Yet all the while the people on this team are somehow numbing themselves to a frightening lack of vision of where it is they are going. You wonder, why doesn’t anyone speak up? Don’t they care? You are willing to bet dollars to dog biscuits that plenty of perfectly good beliefs and values are lying dormant within the members of this team—beliefs and values that would make all the difference, if only they were put into practice.

But, because you are acting as a kind of mentor or coach, and are really troubled by this curious vision oblivion, you decide that the obvious first step is to get them going on a shared vision.

This would help. Short-term, anyway. Now that you’ve decided how to help, you can barely restrain yourself from saying something that might awaken their somnolent vision-building potential. But you say nothing now, and not only because of the difficulty of fighting the others for precious airtime, and of suborning the agenda, but because you intuit that jumping in with that straightforward and inarguable direction (get a vision, people!) might be a long-term mistake. You are having a growing belief that there just may be bigger, tastier fish for you to fry here. No sense settling for little crappies, you think, when some big ole lunker bass might be about.

You are increasing your degree of presence.

The problem, you think, is not merely that they ought to acquire a shared vision. Clearly, they need one, and they aren’t about to get one, not with their present behavior, anyway. And yet, your intuition whispers that the lack of a shared vision is not the most important issue to address. So, trying that on, you think some more. What was that about fish to fry? Teach a man to fish, etc. Yes, that’s it.

You know that some of these team members do believe in having a common purpose. You know the whole team would really catch fire if team members just had this one big, energizing, lightning-striking, all-solving vision! But here, on this team, almost unbelievably, not one person will even say anything about this AWOL vision.

You wonder why would they lie and betray their beliefs. A little more of your dwindling supply of innocence goes poof. There must be some explanation.Maybe the lack of shared vision is the symptom here, not the problem. The problem with this team is that not one damned person on it is speaking the truth. They don’t really lie, not much; they just focus on the smaller stuff, because the bigger stuff is too scary. So they don’t tell the truth. Not all of it, anyway. Hell, not even the pieces of it they have.

So now what?

Continues soon. Sound familiar? Please comment.

Software for Your Head 1

As we prepare for our “Simple Rules and Tools for Great Teams” Immersion (aka McCarthy Technologies's BootCamp) I re-read the foundational book “Software for Your Head” (online version). I think of it as the book based on the “movie” the team is about to make in the immersion simulation.

The authors, Jim and Michele McCarthy, set the stage for the development of the Core Protocols for great teams in the book with the following story.

I always find myself transported into this story as the central character, agreeing ferociously with his thinking having been there so often in the past. I hope you will resonate with it too.

From page 4 on:

“Imagine a team at the beginning of a new project.

Pretend this team is having a meeting. A kickoff meeting for a new product team members have been asked to build. And you—because of your experience with so many teams over so many years here; because you’ve been to so many kick-offs; because you’ve seen what was the greatest that happened here, and the absolutely not-so-great so many times; because you have worked shoulder-to-cubicle with many of the people on this team; because you have fought for quality so noisily and so consistently, for so long, even though the victories were minor and infrequent; because you are a good thinker and a sensitive person; because you are now finally a bit more accepted by senior management; and because you have shown your loyalty, they feel, and show some promise as a more senior mentor—have been asked to observe this team at this meeting at the beginning of this new product creation effort.

It is a meeting more like other meetings than unlike them. For the most part, the atmosphere is like the dozens of other project starts: There’s a drop of hope to go around, and a squirt of suspended disbelief (maybe this time things will actually go right), and a dollop or two of slippery new belief in the promise of the rare blank sheet, of the chance to do it right this time. Of course, there is the old bucket of dilute scars and cynical vapor being pumped into the air by that whining dehumidifier, and the great pool of dispassion is nearby, too (gets a lot of use). But there’s some of it all, anyway, in the usual proportions.

Dampened by these ambient team fluids, the team members are discussing many things at this kick-off meeting: process, schedule, costs, risks, competition, time lines, and the like. Company politics. The expected disputes are here, contained within the acceptable bounds of conflict, but left mostly unresolved. Handled so-so, but as per usual. You readily discern the rivalries, the alliances. You can feel the newbies’ poorly hidden excitement and fear, and you can smell the repressed hope of the cynics. Your mind drifts in and out of the meeting when the classic technical issues, the old standbys, resurface for another great gulp of communal airtime. Hello, old friends. We’ll discuss you inconclusively once again, once again.

One thing gets you thinking. You notice that the vision behind the product is mentioned only in passing. You see that any discussions about purpose here are strictly pro forma, dispassionate. Technicalities and the usual resource constraints are the real bread and butter of the discussion, the things people care about, fight about. To the extent they care about anything, you think, they care mostly about the things that they believe stop them. They’re creating some sort of blame scenario out of real and imagined deprivations— in advance. It’s like shaking rattles at the evils beyond their control. Go away, bad gods. But they always win, don’t they, if you believe in them at all. That’s why they’re there. To win.

My, but you’re feeling anthropological today, aren’t you? Is it maybe the presence of the cynics nee idealists? Does it touch you somehow?”

I'm pausing here to let us both carry on with our lives. Please let me know when you are ready to continue. More to come!