Key Points
1. Another personality difference that creates conflict.
2. Bricoleurs see the word differently to non-bricoleurs
3. Bricoleurs are often side-lined.
4. Bricoleurs need to be invited into decision making situations not excluded.
I recently discovered that I am a bricoleur and it is a blessed relief to have outed at last. What this insight has done has explained how it is that I have managed to upset so many people in organisations, and perhaps other situations, over the years. It is a personality thing and, as I’ve mentioned before, it is personality differences where most conflicts begin, if not end.
Bricolage is a French word, as you’d probably guess, and originally referred to a worker who would make the best with what they had to complete a task. Thus they were people who tinkered with things, even playfully in an effort to solve a problem and used whatever resources they might have at hand. The term then became associated with art and craft. Later the usage has been broadened to include people who use their experience, their instinct, trial and error, and again, tinkering, to solve any sort of problem.
Thus, a manager or a researcher, for example, would bring whatever models are appropriate to a problem and would not be tied to a particular way of doing or thinking. They’d try something, perhaps even an amalgam of competing techniques or ideas, and see what worked rather than using a recipe driven approach. For the bricoleur, dogma and gurus who think they know the best way to approach a problem or issue are viewed with suspicion.
It is easy to see that to some people the bricoleur is nothing but a terrorist. They don’t work by the book, fiddle with process, flaunt policies and procedures, play with ideas, tinker and dislike high levels of control. This is the stuff of a nervous breakdown for the manager who is high on order, with crockery ducks flying along the wall in precise formation. The ISTJ will probably end up on high levels of psychotropic medication if a bricoleur is a member of their team. The archetypal Humphrey Applebee would be looking at Guantanamo Bay as a solution to the situation.
The truth is, of course, that we need both types in any organisation but it is easy to see where the conflict occurs. The bricoleur and the non-bricoleur are seeing the world through quite different lenses and will find it hard to understand each other’s language. Bricoleurs, in the original definition, were seen as being well-meaning amateurs by more traditional craft-persons or tradespersons who did things the ‘correct’ way. A bricoleur would see herself or himself as bringing expertise from many disciplines and experiences that enable them to see a task or problem in a different light. They’d see the other as narrow minded, limited in imagination and simply in the way.
My guess, and I don’t have any hard data to support this, is that bricoleurs would tend not to rise to the top of the corporate tree and f they did it would be an accident of sorts. Whether or not that is a good thing is open to debate and it may not matter because nature has probably spoken on the topic by making them unacceptable as leaders/managers and excluding them already.
I think organisations need bricoleurs, particularly in their decision-making and strategic processes. And it may be the case that they tend to be side-lined and ignored, infrequently being asked into the board room or places where the important decisions are made. We need people who are prepared to see things differently, ask difficult questions, be a bit different and tinker with ideas. They need to be heard and not just seen. My experience is that they tend to be seen as a bit too different, not a team player and just a bit too out there-a well meaning amateur perhaps.
Some years ago I was doing a consulting job with a great friend, Alan Davies. We were arranging a search conference to undertake a strategic planning exercise. The CEO was objecting to Alan wanting to invite union leaders and some other rebels who did not tend to toe the organisational party line. This list included customers who had not had a good experience with the organisation. Alan insisted they attend because you need to have your ‘enemies’ (not that they were really enemies but were perceived as such) in the room and not banging on the portcullis creating a stir. Best piece of management learning I every received and so too for the many CEOs who did eventually engage with the ‘enemy’, who is anyone unlike themselves.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Changing Behaviour is Trickier Than it Looks
Key points
1. Leaders often underestimate the difficulty of changing behaviour.
2. People are naturally resistant to change for sound biological reasons.
3. Teachers, trainers, coaches and managers are mistaken in thinking that well presented logic will win hearts and minds.
4. Most change efforts fail miserably.
5. Leadership behaviour can make the difference by changing habits over time.
6. Changing behaviour takes careful planning and good techniques.
Recently, I have been surprised (again) that leaders don’t understand the complexity of behaviour change. As a consequence they become frustrated when people don’t do what they have told or do what is expected.
While it is true that humans have a history of adaptation to their environment, the process is relatively slow: generational rather than situational. We are hard wired to resist rapid change.
The reason for this is simple and based on biological imperatives that are several thousand years old and belong to a world where primitive drives such as hunting, gathering, procreation and survival involved high risk activities. These activities require a lot of energy and, hence, we find ways to be energy conserving. In addition, we have a finite capacity in short and working memory that limits our attention and a significant task like change is not likely to be a natural priority.
It may be unpalatable to many but the same primitive and self-interested drives still preoccupy our species: it’s just that the behaviours associated with meeting these drives are more complex compared to pre-agrarian times. Despite having modified our environment and our control over our circumstances, we have yet to throw off this tendency to preserve energy.
Energy preserving behaviour is easily seen through the phenomenon of habits. These automatic behavioural scripts mean that we do not have expend effort to rewrite behavioural scripts for similar, and even not so similar, circumstances. Humans mostly like routine. We also tend to have quite durable values, attitudes and beliefs. I am sure you can think of many ways you demonstrate this capacity daily.
Nothing wrong with doing this, we are all just practicing an ingrained drive to survive. Recognising that this is the normal human condition is important and helps explain why we are so resistant to change. Recent research shows that changing a habit takes about three months before the new habit becomes, well…..a habit!
Changing attitudes, values and beliefs (collectively known as schema) is even more tricky and beyond the scope of this blog. In short, though, the best and quickest way to change schema is to change the person’s behaviour. The easiest way to increase resistance is to challenge someone’s schema because they will automatically find arguments to support these holy cows. We often talk about winning hearts and minds. We should, in my view, think about winning hearts by changing behaviour. But more about this in another article, even though the answer is still found in effective leadership.
I have been involved in clinical psychology work for around 30 years in one way or another. Countless people I have met have been in dreadful pain with depression, anxiety, addictions and other good reasons to change their behaviour to improve their lot. Nonetheless many have resisted change and, for various and often complex reasons, decided that they would rather stay in pain rather than ‘risk’ doing things differently. As might be expected others are very motivated to try something new even though it is hard work. Pretty well everyone needed intensive help to do this.
Sometimes people do change spontaneously but often in response to a traumatic or extremely enlightening experience that accelerates learning. Mostly motivation to change is enhanced and the required skills are obtained through the resulting expenditure of effort.
So, in the face of a natural human propensity to resist change why would anyone be motivated to change when: they are relatively healthy; their habits seem to be quite functional in the absence of any personally relevant evidence to the contrary; they are not experiencing any incongruence between their attitudes and their behaviour-in other words their behaviour makes sense to them and they feel comfortable about it; and they are being sufficiently rewarded in a variety of ways to keep on doing what they do?
I think most change agents, teachers, trainers, coaches, and managers overvalue the impact of what they do and attempt largely ineffective approaches in their attempts to change other people’s behaviour. Mostly we think that logical argument, well presented reasons attached to emotional messages, policies, procedures and simply telling people will win people over. We are often surprised and then frustrated to find that what we are doing does not work.
So, changing behaviour, whether it is our own or someone else’s, needs to be planned carefully. It requires good techniques and, we need to be motivated which is often emotionally mediated. If it is another person we need to get their attention.
Leaders can get attention by: having a good relationship with the person in the first place; being prepared to have difficult conversations; providing clear description of the desired behaviour; coaching where necessary; establishing an action plan with timelines; providing support; intervening when there are difficulties; providing resources; ensuring the desired behaviour becomes part of the KPIs (or whatever performance system is used) for that person or persons); and follow-up.
Remember too that people will find change easy and others will have reasons to be resistant. Whatever the case, we need to have a clear process that creates a reason for the person to spend energy on change.
1. Leaders often underestimate the difficulty of changing behaviour.
2. People are naturally resistant to change for sound biological reasons.
3. Teachers, trainers, coaches and managers are mistaken in thinking that well presented logic will win hearts and minds.
4. Most change efforts fail miserably.
5. Leadership behaviour can make the difference by changing habits over time.
6. Changing behaviour takes careful planning and good techniques.
Recently, I have been surprised (again) that leaders don’t understand the complexity of behaviour change. As a consequence they become frustrated when people don’t do what they have told or do what is expected.
While it is true that humans have a history of adaptation to their environment, the process is relatively slow: generational rather than situational. We are hard wired to resist rapid change.
The reason for this is simple and based on biological imperatives that are several thousand years old and belong to a world where primitive drives such as hunting, gathering, procreation and survival involved high risk activities. These activities require a lot of energy and, hence, we find ways to be energy conserving. In addition, we have a finite capacity in short and working memory that limits our attention and a significant task like change is not likely to be a natural priority.
It may be unpalatable to many but the same primitive and self-interested drives still preoccupy our species: it’s just that the behaviours associated with meeting these drives are more complex compared to pre-agrarian times. Despite having modified our environment and our control over our circumstances, we have yet to throw off this tendency to preserve energy.
Energy preserving behaviour is easily seen through the phenomenon of habits. These automatic behavioural scripts mean that we do not have expend effort to rewrite behavioural scripts for similar, and even not so similar, circumstances. Humans mostly like routine. We also tend to have quite durable values, attitudes and beliefs. I am sure you can think of many ways you demonstrate this capacity daily.
Nothing wrong with doing this, we are all just practicing an ingrained drive to survive. Recognising that this is the normal human condition is important and helps explain why we are so resistant to change. Recent research shows that changing a habit takes about three months before the new habit becomes, well…..a habit!
Changing attitudes, values and beliefs (collectively known as schema) is even more tricky and beyond the scope of this blog. In short, though, the best and quickest way to change schema is to change the person’s behaviour. The easiest way to increase resistance is to challenge someone’s schema because they will automatically find arguments to support these holy cows. We often talk about winning hearts and minds. We should, in my view, think about winning hearts by changing behaviour. But more about this in another article, even though the answer is still found in effective leadership.
I have been involved in clinical psychology work for around 30 years in one way or another. Countless people I have met have been in dreadful pain with depression, anxiety, addictions and other good reasons to change their behaviour to improve their lot. Nonetheless many have resisted change and, for various and often complex reasons, decided that they would rather stay in pain rather than ‘risk’ doing things differently. As might be expected others are very motivated to try something new even though it is hard work. Pretty well everyone needed intensive help to do this.
Sometimes people do change spontaneously but often in response to a traumatic or extremely enlightening experience that accelerates learning. Mostly motivation to change is enhanced and the required skills are obtained through the resulting expenditure of effort.
So, in the face of a natural human propensity to resist change why would anyone be motivated to change when: they are relatively healthy; their habits seem to be quite functional in the absence of any personally relevant evidence to the contrary; they are not experiencing any incongruence between their attitudes and their behaviour-in other words their behaviour makes sense to them and they feel comfortable about it; and they are being sufficiently rewarded in a variety of ways to keep on doing what they do?
I think most change agents, teachers, trainers, coaches, and managers overvalue the impact of what they do and attempt largely ineffective approaches in their attempts to change other people’s behaviour. Mostly we think that logical argument, well presented reasons attached to emotional messages, policies, procedures and simply telling people will win people over. We are often surprised and then frustrated to find that what we are doing does not work.
So, changing behaviour, whether it is our own or someone else’s, needs to be planned carefully. It requires good techniques and, we need to be motivated which is often emotionally mediated. If it is another person we need to get their attention.
Leaders can get attention by: having a good relationship with the person in the first place; being prepared to have difficult conversations; providing clear description of the desired behaviour; coaching where necessary; establishing an action plan with timelines; providing support; intervening when there are difficulties; providing resources; ensuring the desired behaviour becomes part of the KPIs (or whatever performance system is used) for that person or persons); and follow-up.
Remember too that people will find change easy and others will have reasons to be resistant. Whatever the case, we need to have a clear process that creates a reason for the person to spend energy on change.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
You Are What You Are…Or are you?
Key points.
1. We often don’t understand the impact our personality has on others.
2. Personality drives much of our behaviour.
2. Personality is partly genetic but is modified by our experience.
3. What can be an attribute can also be irritating.
4. We can modify our personality, to a point.
5. A simple change technique.
My Uncle Jack was a man of few words and had a very down to earth view of life. I guess being raised in a single parent family with two other hungry brothers during the great depression determines how you see the world. Which bring us nicely to the topic of this blog, the shaping of personality.
On discovering that I had become a psychologist and being a bit bemused by it all, Uncle Jack, who was visiting us in Australia at the time, said, ‘Well, it seems to me that you are what you are and you can’t get any arer’.
Sage advice especially given the antipathy with which humans confront change and our lack of insight of self and others. It is probably true that personality traits are hard-wired, genetic and biological. However, more recent research has shown that it is not that cut and dried. It appears that personality is modified by life experience. Moreover, we can change our personality traits by consciously working on them.
Well, that’s all well and good but why would anyone want to change what appears to the owner to be a perfectly good personality? My personality traits enable me to have a unique perspective on the world that then drives what I think and how I behave in given circumstances. I can’t help it if the idiot over there doesn’t see the same world as me!
Certainly diversity makes the world go around and it would be boring if it didn’t. Families, tribes, and organisations thrive on the fact that people see the world differently. However, as someone once said, one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist. In other words, it is all a matter of perspective.
What is a great strength such as attention to detail can easily morph into nit picking and obsessiveness in the eyes of another person who, most likely, does not share these traits.
Similarly we have:
Big picture thinker becomes Vague and unfocussed
Likes facts and information becomes Autistic
Sticks to their guns becomes Autocratic
Sociable and good networker becomesTalks too much-over the top
Stoic, solid, decisive becomes Autocratic
Gets things done becomes Inflexible
Busy becomes Stressed
In touch with feelings becomes Emotional
Adventurous becomes Undisciplined
Focussed becomes Autistic
Fun loving becomes Irresponsible
An attribute that attracts us to another person can eventually become irritating. In clinical work I often used to see evidence of this phenomenon in couples. It especially seemed to have an impact when circumstances changed and there was additional stress in the household such as the arrival of children, extra work responsibilities, and a change in financial circumstances. Sometimes people’s needs shift as they mature and their perception on life changes.
Having a fun loving, carefree, adventurous spouse might be very exciting for the first couple of years of marriage. It might not work so well when children come along and routine, sharing of tasks and focus are required.
The same problem can apply in our other relationships and workplaces too. We might be attracted by the decisive nature of our entrepreneurial boss and an organisation that has a reputation for getting things done. Eventually, however, this same decisiveness can become ‘poor consultative process’ and ‘aggressiveness’.
Working with someone who is extraverted and thinks out loud, likes ideas and acts on intuition can be exciting and powerful. It becomes a challenge to someone who likes order and certainty, especially when they are under stress. That person when ‘under the gun’ becomes more controlled, serious and focussed, which then confuses the extraverted intuitive type. Failing to understand what is going on can lead to an increase in tension and sometimes the fracturing of relationships.
There might be good reason, then, to think about changing our behaviour, at least in certain circumstances. This is achieved by firstly being aware of self, which is no easy task, and then being concerned enough to change. If this is achieved a simple technique for change involves:
-catch yourself thinking about behaving in a particular way.
-saying STOP before doing it.
-talk to yourself about the change and the value of doing it.
-do the desired behaviour
-congratulate yourself afterwards
-monitor reactions and reflect on the experience
Repeat as necessary.
The interesting thing is that if we keep practicing this technique, the behaviour becomes more automatic (allow at least 3 months) and personality might change as a result. The change in our values, attitudes and beliefs happens as a result of changing behaviour: much too hard the other way around.
1. We often don’t understand the impact our personality has on others.
2. Personality drives much of our behaviour.
2. Personality is partly genetic but is modified by our experience.
3. What can be an attribute can also be irritating.
4. We can modify our personality, to a point.
5. A simple change technique.
My Uncle Jack was a man of few words and had a very down to earth view of life. I guess being raised in a single parent family with two other hungry brothers during the great depression determines how you see the world. Which bring us nicely to the topic of this blog, the shaping of personality.
On discovering that I had become a psychologist and being a bit bemused by it all, Uncle Jack, who was visiting us in Australia at the time, said, ‘Well, it seems to me that you are what you are and you can’t get any arer’.
Sage advice especially given the antipathy with which humans confront change and our lack of insight of self and others. It is probably true that personality traits are hard-wired, genetic and biological. However, more recent research has shown that it is not that cut and dried. It appears that personality is modified by life experience. Moreover, we can change our personality traits by consciously working on them.
Well, that’s all well and good but why would anyone want to change what appears to the owner to be a perfectly good personality? My personality traits enable me to have a unique perspective on the world that then drives what I think and how I behave in given circumstances. I can’t help it if the idiot over there doesn’t see the same world as me!
Certainly diversity makes the world go around and it would be boring if it didn’t. Families, tribes, and organisations thrive on the fact that people see the world differently. However, as someone once said, one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist. In other words, it is all a matter of perspective.
What is a great strength such as attention to detail can easily morph into nit picking and obsessiveness in the eyes of another person who, most likely, does not share these traits.
Similarly we have:
Big picture thinker becomes Vague and unfocussed
Likes facts and information becomes Autistic
Sticks to their guns becomes Autocratic
Sociable and good networker becomesTalks too much-over the top
Stoic, solid, decisive becomes Autocratic
Gets things done becomes Inflexible
Busy becomes Stressed
In touch with feelings becomes Emotional
Adventurous becomes Undisciplined
Focussed becomes Autistic
Fun loving becomes Irresponsible
An attribute that attracts us to another person can eventually become irritating. In clinical work I often used to see evidence of this phenomenon in couples. It especially seemed to have an impact when circumstances changed and there was additional stress in the household such as the arrival of children, extra work responsibilities, and a change in financial circumstances. Sometimes people’s needs shift as they mature and their perception on life changes.
Having a fun loving, carefree, adventurous spouse might be very exciting for the first couple of years of marriage. It might not work so well when children come along and routine, sharing of tasks and focus are required.
The same problem can apply in our other relationships and workplaces too. We might be attracted by the decisive nature of our entrepreneurial boss and an organisation that has a reputation for getting things done. Eventually, however, this same decisiveness can become ‘poor consultative process’ and ‘aggressiveness’.
Working with someone who is extraverted and thinks out loud, likes ideas and acts on intuition can be exciting and powerful. It becomes a challenge to someone who likes order and certainty, especially when they are under stress. That person when ‘under the gun’ becomes more controlled, serious and focussed, which then confuses the extraverted intuitive type. Failing to understand what is going on can lead to an increase in tension and sometimes the fracturing of relationships.
There might be good reason, then, to think about changing our behaviour, at least in certain circumstances. This is achieved by firstly being aware of self, which is no easy task, and then being concerned enough to change. If this is achieved a simple technique for change involves:
-catch yourself thinking about behaving in a particular way.
-saying STOP before doing it.
-talk to yourself about the change and the value of doing it.
-do the desired behaviour
-congratulate yourself afterwards
-monitor reactions and reflect on the experience
Repeat as necessary.
The interesting thing is that if we keep practicing this technique, the behaviour becomes more automatic (allow at least 3 months) and personality might change as a result. The change in our values, attitudes and beliefs happens as a result of changing behaviour: much too hard the other way around.
Friday, January 27, 2012
The Eight-Minute Rule for Presentations/Teaching/Speeches
People have suffered long enough from having to listen to incompetent presenters. I have come to believe that anyone who speaks in public must be licenced. To obtain a licence should require a rigorous theoretical and practical test. The licence would then be revoked if the speaker inflicts undue pain and suffering on the audience. During the last talk that I had to endure I even thought that transgressors should be subject to at least 30 minutes of waterboarding.
Speakers should be required, as a minimum, to adhere to the eight-minute rule and its various caveats, described below.
The Eight-Minute Rule
The eight-minute rule is defined as:
No speaker charged with the task of talking to an audience should speak for more than eight minutes before either leaving the ‘stage’ for good or engaging the audience in some meaningful and related activity between each eight-minute segment.
Talking to an audience means giving a speech at any social gathering such as an awards night, a wedding, a funeral, or a celebration of some event such as a graduation. Here the application of the rule is easy. Stand up, deliver and sit down within eight minutes and less if you can-subject to the caveats provided below.
Less obvious and ridden with more complexity (and angst for some) is that the rule also applies to any presentation to a group, perhaps a business breakfast, a five-day workshop or a lecture to university students. In this situation the speaker will need to organise the presentation into bite sized chunks interspersed with activities related to the concepts being delivered-subject to the caveats provided below.
Why the Eight-Minute Rule
The optimum attention span for an adult human being is around 20 minutes under the best of conditions and with many variables under control. Unfortunately controlling the enormous number of variables that affect attention, information processing and memory is impossible in real life and, mostly, speakers are not operating under optimal conditions.
Humans are prone to go into a trance very quickly. You may have even noticed this when you have been chatting to someone and their eyes glaze over: quite clearly they have drifted off somewhere. In this state they person is half aware of you and half listening, while the other half of their conscious is thinking of something else. This is a light hypnotic trance. As a psychotherapist I found that I could induce a trance in people simply by boring them and, indeed, this is how a lot of hypnotic induction works. If the mind is not fully occupied it will drift off somewhere else.
When you are talking to a group, or even an individual for that matter, and presenting your thoughts and ideas you, perhaps unwittingly, cause people to start thinking about what you are saying. So, even while you are rambling on some people in the audience will very quickly start to process what you are saying and disappear on tangents or simply chew over what has been said. They will think about their own experiences, contradictions and possibilities. So, these people are quickly into a trance.
There will be other members of the audience who have something else on their mind: an argument with the spouse that morning; a child who has been hiding a bong in their room; waiting for a phone call about a pressing problem at work; a hangover; that attractive person in the third row who helped with the hangover at the conference dinner last night; a runny nose. These people will drift into a trance.
All this assumes of course that you have not added to the problem by being confusing, telling awful or off-colour jokes, talking too quickly or too slowly, being overly complex, or wearing pink polka dot trousers. The room may be too cold or too hot, there is noise from elsewhere, the projection screen is too dark, and the seats are really uncomfortable or, perhaps worse, too comfy.
Then there are those who right from the start are thinking of their incredibly clever riposte to what you are saying and designing their own speech or perhaps article that they are going to write to shoot you down in flames. There will also be people who just don’t like you and turn off immediately.
All in all getting and maintaining people’s attention when speaking to a group is a very tricky task. Sadly, speaking in public is perceived in much the same way as teaching and counselling-that anyone can do it. This is a dreadful mistake because it requires great skill to speak well in public.
I have to be honest here and admit that eight-minutes is somewhat arbitrary. However, it seems about right especially if you, and I’m sure you have, suffered through a painful speech or talk for any length of time. At least eight-minutes is bearable and it is not too long out of the listener’s life, so we are being as ethical as possible in terms of inflicting cruel punishment on others. It seems about right for delivering a concept, telling a story, or making a point. And, it makes the presenter have to think about what they are doing: something sadly lacking, it seems to me, in most presentations-careful thought, that is. However, never believe that you should use the whole eight-minutes: less is good.
So, eight-minutes it is.
Applying the Eight-Minute Rule
Speeches
This is simple enough. Keep your talk down to eight-minutes or even less. Rehearse with a watch, use notes, don’t change it at the last minute because someone has just told you a good joke or given you some juicy gossip about the groom. When you have decided on what you are going to say practice in front of a critical friend or two.
Use the eight-minutes wisely:
• Look at the audience before you start and smile (if it is an appropriate occasion). Take your time and get settled.
• Talk clearly, relatively slowly and engage the audience often-mostly after each major point-with your eyes. Look AT the audience, not at a dirty mark on the back wall. Use pauses to emphasise and give the audience a moment to reflect. Raise your voice slightly when you restart to get their attention.
• Don’t tell jokes unless they are relevant to the point you are making. But use humour-check it out with your critical friend first.
• Use a story, metaphors and/or anecdotes. This is why movies keep people entranced for two-hours: they tell a story. Stories are very useful tools to get people to change.
• Make what you are saying personal to the experience of the audience. We have all experienced similar things in our lives so this should not be difficult. Do this right at the beginning of your talk.
• Find a relevant emotional hook.
• Tell them what you are going to say, say it and then tell them what you said. Then stop. Using an anecdote or story for one of these steps really works.
• Finish with an amusing anecdote or example: something that people can take away. It is most likely that this is the thing they will remember.
• STOP at eight-minutes.
Longer Presentations and Workshops
All of the above applies but with more complexity and thought.
Eight minutes is about the right amount of time to talk about one concept. Then it is important to get the group to do something. It need not be a complicated activity but should:
• Enable the participants to talk about their own experience or understanding.
• Provide an opportunity for the facilitator to see what learning has or has not taken place.
• Enable the facilitator to change course should the feedback from the group indicate the need. For example, the group may be lost or, as is most likely, have a number of questions that arise from their new learning that take the presentation beyond the ‘curriculum’.
• Involve at least application and preferably synthesis It might be appropriate to use synthesis level activities later in the workshop or presentation.
• Be at least as long as the presentation time but preferably longer. I try to have activity and feedback/discussion sessions that are at least 30 minutes or or more. It is surprising how feedback sessions can become the key presentation tool and the Powerpoint can be discarded for real interaction. The problem is that you’ll really need to know your stuff and not need to rely on props.
Once you’ve completed the activity allow yourself some time to think about a change of course given the feedback you have received. It is the kiss of death to continue talking about stuff that is either irrelevant to the group or that the group has already clearly grasped. It is vital to address the questions that new learning might have raised in the mind of the participants even if this takes you into new territory. If you don’t then the unanswered questions remain a distraction in the mind of the listener.
If you are interested in this technique for your workshops and want to see more detail have a look at the following article:
Hase, S. (2010), Learner defined curriculum: Heutagogy and action learning in vocational training, Southern Institute of Technology Journal of Applied Research, Special Edition on Action Research, available at http://sitjar.sit.ac.nz
Speakers should be required, as a minimum, to adhere to the eight-minute rule and its various caveats, described below.
The Eight-Minute Rule
The eight-minute rule is defined as:
No speaker charged with the task of talking to an audience should speak for more than eight minutes before either leaving the ‘stage’ for good or engaging the audience in some meaningful and related activity between each eight-minute segment.
Talking to an audience means giving a speech at any social gathering such as an awards night, a wedding, a funeral, or a celebration of some event such as a graduation. Here the application of the rule is easy. Stand up, deliver and sit down within eight minutes and less if you can-subject to the caveats provided below.
Less obvious and ridden with more complexity (and angst for some) is that the rule also applies to any presentation to a group, perhaps a business breakfast, a five-day workshop or a lecture to university students. In this situation the speaker will need to organise the presentation into bite sized chunks interspersed with activities related to the concepts being delivered-subject to the caveats provided below.
Why the Eight-Minute Rule
The optimum attention span for an adult human being is around 20 minutes under the best of conditions and with many variables under control. Unfortunately controlling the enormous number of variables that affect attention, information processing and memory is impossible in real life and, mostly, speakers are not operating under optimal conditions.
Humans are prone to go into a trance very quickly. You may have even noticed this when you have been chatting to someone and their eyes glaze over: quite clearly they have drifted off somewhere. In this state they person is half aware of you and half listening, while the other half of their conscious is thinking of something else. This is a light hypnotic trance. As a psychotherapist I found that I could induce a trance in people simply by boring them and, indeed, this is how a lot of hypnotic induction works. If the mind is not fully occupied it will drift off somewhere else.
When you are talking to a group, or even an individual for that matter, and presenting your thoughts and ideas you, perhaps unwittingly, cause people to start thinking about what you are saying. So, even while you are rambling on some people in the audience will very quickly start to process what you are saying and disappear on tangents or simply chew over what has been said. They will think about their own experiences, contradictions and possibilities. So, these people are quickly into a trance.
There will be other members of the audience who have something else on their mind: an argument with the spouse that morning; a child who has been hiding a bong in their room; waiting for a phone call about a pressing problem at work; a hangover; that attractive person in the third row who helped with the hangover at the conference dinner last night; a runny nose. These people will drift into a trance.
All this assumes of course that you have not added to the problem by being confusing, telling awful or off-colour jokes, talking too quickly or too slowly, being overly complex, or wearing pink polka dot trousers. The room may be too cold or too hot, there is noise from elsewhere, the projection screen is too dark, and the seats are really uncomfortable or, perhaps worse, too comfy.
Then there are those who right from the start are thinking of their incredibly clever riposte to what you are saying and designing their own speech or perhaps article that they are going to write to shoot you down in flames. There will also be people who just don’t like you and turn off immediately.
All in all getting and maintaining people’s attention when speaking to a group is a very tricky task. Sadly, speaking in public is perceived in much the same way as teaching and counselling-that anyone can do it. This is a dreadful mistake because it requires great skill to speak well in public.
I have to be honest here and admit that eight-minutes is somewhat arbitrary. However, it seems about right especially if you, and I’m sure you have, suffered through a painful speech or talk for any length of time. At least eight-minutes is bearable and it is not too long out of the listener’s life, so we are being as ethical as possible in terms of inflicting cruel punishment on others. It seems about right for delivering a concept, telling a story, or making a point. And, it makes the presenter have to think about what they are doing: something sadly lacking, it seems to me, in most presentations-careful thought, that is. However, never believe that you should use the whole eight-minutes: less is good.
So, eight-minutes it is.
Applying the Eight-Minute Rule
Speeches
This is simple enough. Keep your talk down to eight-minutes or even less. Rehearse with a watch, use notes, don’t change it at the last minute because someone has just told you a good joke or given you some juicy gossip about the groom. When you have decided on what you are going to say practice in front of a critical friend or two.
Use the eight-minutes wisely:
• Look at the audience before you start and smile (if it is an appropriate occasion). Take your time and get settled.
• Talk clearly, relatively slowly and engage the audience often-mostly after each major point-with your eyes. Look AT the audience, not at a dirty mark on the back wall. Use pauses to emphasise and give the audience a moment to reflect. Raise your voice slightly when you restart to get their attention.
• Don’t tell jokes unless they are relevant to the point you are making. But use humour-check it out with your critical friend first.
• Use a story, metaphors and/or anecdotes. This is why movies keep people entranced for two-hours: they tell a story. Stories are very useful tools to get people to change.
• Make what you are saying personal to the experience of the audience. We have all experienced similar things in our lives so this should not be difficult. Do this right at the beginning of your talk.
• Find a relevant emotional hook.
• Tell them what you are going to say, say it and then tell them what you said. Then stop. Using an anecdote or story for one of these steps really works.
• Finish with an amusing anecdote or example: something that people can take away. It is most likely that this is the thing they will remember.
• STOP at eight-minutes.
Longer Presentations and Workshops
All of the above applies but with more complexity and thought.
Eight minutes is about the right amount of time to talk about one concept. Then it is important to get the group to do something. It need not be a complicated activity but should:
• Enable the participants to talk about their own experience or understanding.
• Provide an opportunity for the facilitator to see what learning has or has not taken place.
• Enable the facilitator to change course should the feedback from the group indicate the need. For example, the group may be lost or, as is most likely, have a number of questions that arise from their new learning that take the presentation beyond the ‘curriculum’.
• Involve at least application and preferably synthesis It might be appropriate to use synthesis level activities later in the workshop or presentation.
• Be at least as long as the presentation time but preferably longer. I try to have activity and feedback/discussion sessions that are at least 30 minutes or or more. It is surprising how feedback sessions can become the key presentation tool and the Powerpoint can be discarded for real interaction. The problem is that you’ll really need to know your stuff and not need to rely on props.
Once you’ve completed the activity allow yourself some time to think about a change of course given the feedback you have received. It is the kiss of death to continue talking about stuff that is either irrelevant to the group or that the group has already clearly grasped. It is vital to address the questions that new learning might have raised in the mind of the participants even if this takes you into new territory. If you don’t then the unanswered questions remain a distraction in the mind of the listener.
If you are interested in this technique for your workshops and want to see more detail have a look at the following article:
Hase, S. (2010), Learner defined curriculum: Heutagogy and action learning in vocational training, Southern Institute of Technology Journal of Applied Research, Special Edition on Action Research, available at http://sitjar.sit.ac.nz
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
From Knowing About to Knowing: An Example of Leadership and the Psychological Contract at Work
Unhappy with definitions of learning and rather traditional, if not ancient, teacher-centric educational practices a colleague, Chris Kenyon, and I have been thinking about an alternate view since around 2000. If you’d like to read more about this please search the word ‘Heutagogy’ and all will be revealed in detail.
However, one of the more challenging ideas we have posited is differentiating between having knowledge about something and actual learning. We find out about something in a training program or at school, and it is stored away in memory: we might even be able to recall it in an examination. In neurological terms the knowledge (or skill) has little impact on other neurons at this time. But later we have an experience that brings that knowledge or skill into play and in this ‘Ah, Ah’ moment lots of neural connections are made that result in us seeing the world in a different way, This may be a slight change in perspective or it might be dramatic: a continuum of impact perhaps. Some of you will no doubt be thinking of brain plasticity and, yes, this idea has been borrowed from neuroscience. I’ll deal with the educational and organisational implications of this idea later, after giving a personal example.
I once wrote a paper on what happens in organisations when psychological contracts are violated. As the name implies, these are unwritten contracts that occur in the minds of people but they are no less important or binding than those signed in blood. When we arrive in a workplace, we observe how people treat each other and how managers treat their staff. Very quickly we develop expectations about how we will be treated and those expectations are usually consistent with our observations. This is a psychological contract. A breach of this contract can be devastating for employees and can cause problems ranging from disengagement to very complex workers’ compensation claims. Sadly, managers and leaders are often unaware of this important aspect of organisational culture. In short, when people perceive they are being treated differently this is quickly translated into a sense of unfairness, resentment, anxiety, and a need for justice.
It is clear from reading my paper that I knew about psychological contracts at that time. I can assume that most people would assume that my knowing about the subject constituted learning. By most current definitions of learning this is probably the right assumption. In fact, I was able to include the concept in my corporate training programs and, as a psychotherapist, treated people who had experienced a violation of their psychological contract.
However, relatively recently I really learned about psychological contracts by being a victim. The result was startling. Clearly the addition of emotion to my understanding was important. This is akin to the different between bacon and eggs: the chicken is involved but the pig is committed. I also instantaneously made vast neuronal connections that completely changed the way I see the idea of psychological contracts. It was really interesting how I was able to relate the concept to other areas of psychology, particularly leadership and management behaviour, in ways that I had not done previously.
For me this was a great example of the difference between knowing about something and real learning. The implications of this idea are wide ranging but I’ll stick to a couple of major points here. We can never be sure when learning occurs in other people: it occurs when the learner is ready not when the teacher expects. It is probable that real learning will occur in a real life situation, not in a training room. Unfortunately, we still tend to think of education and training as an event rather than as context. We also don’t know, unless we check, what impact the educational experience is having on the learner. Thus, the concept of the fixed curricula or the fixed and carefully designed training program becomes inappropriate for the individual, if not the group. The same can be said for the way in which we assess knowledge and skills, and even performance: it needs to be contextual and individualised based on the learner’s (staff member’s) experience not the teacher’s (manager’s) expectations.
If you’d like to know more or discuss these issues further please contact me at stewart.hase@gmail.com.
However, one of the more challenging ideas we have posited is differentiating between having knowledge about something and actual learning. We find out about something in a training program or at school, and it is stored away in memory: we might even be able to recall it in an examination. In neurological terms the knowledge (or skill) has little impact on other neurons at this time. But later we have an experience that brings that knowledge or skill into play and in this ‘Ah, Ah’ moment lots of neural connections are made that result in us seeing the world in a different way, This may be a slight change in perspective or it might be dramatic: a continuum of impact perhaps. Some of you will no doubt be thinking of brain plasticity and, yes, this idea has been borrowed from neuroscience. I’ll deal with the educational and organisational implications of this idea later, after giving a personal example.
I once wrote a paper on what happens in organisations when psychological contracts are violated. As the name implies, these are unwritten contracts that occur in the minds of people but they are no less important or binding than those signed in blood. When we arrive in a workplace, we observe how people treat each other and how managers treat their staff. Very quickly we develop expectations about how we will be treated and those expectations are usually consistent with our observations. This is a psychological contract. A breach of this contract can be devastating for employees and can cause problems ranging from disengagement to very complex workers’ compensation claims. Sadly, managers and leaders are often unaware of this important aspect of organisational culture. In short, when people perceive they are being treated differently this is quickly translated into a sense of unfairness, resentment, anxiety, and a need for justice.
It is clear from reading my paper that I knew about psychological contracts at that time. I can assume that most people would assume that my knowing about the subject constituted learning. By most current definitions of learning this is probably the right assumption. In fact, I was able to include the concept in my corporate training programs and, as a psychotherapist, treated people who had experienced a violation of their psychological contract.
However, relatively recently I really learned about psychological contracts by being a victim. The result was startling. Clearly the addition of emotion to my understanding was important. This is akin to the different between bacon and eggs: the chicken is involved but the pig is committed. I also instantaneously made vast neuronal connections that completely changed the way I see the idea of psychological contracts. It was really interesting how I was able to relate the concept to other areas of psychology, particularly leadership and management behaviour, in ways that I had not done previously.
For me this was a great example of the difference between knowing about something and real learning. The implications of this idea are wide ranging but I’ll stick to a couple of major points here. We can never be sure when learning occurs in other people: it occurs when the learner is ready not when the teacher expects. It is probable that real learning will occur in a real life situation, not in a training room. Unfortunately, we still tend to think of education and training as an event rather than as context. We also don’t know, unless we check, what impact the educational experience is having on the learner. Thus, the concept of the fixed curricula or the fixed and carefully designed training program becomes inappropriate for the individual, if not the group. The same can be said for the way in which we assess knowledge and skills, and even performance: it needs to be contextual and individualised based on the learner’s (staff member’s) experience not the teacher’s (manager’s) expectations.
If you’d like to know more or discuss these issues further please contact me at stewart.hase@gmail.com.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
What does brain plasticity have to do with leadership?
There are three related issues that I’d like to briefly mention here on the way to providing some hard science that people who want to be leaders could find useful, if not compelling.
The first is that the ‘great’ debate about whether leaders are born or made is a non-event. The issue is more about what people do that make them leaders and whether they have the capacity to perform the behaviours. It is clear that some people can’t be good leaders and others can. The second issue is closely related to the first and that is that people in leadership roles do not pay much attention to the social, anthropological and psychological evidence about what great leaders do and how to get the most out of people and, ergo, organisations. Leadership is treated a bit like counselling and teaching (other than in schools), that it that anyone can do it, without any formal training, if they have the inclination. It is fascinating that we still promote people to leadership roles on the basis that they have demonstrated high levels of competence in their profession (being an engineer, academic, town planner). Lastly, for this little article at least, the leadership literature is, at best, fluffy and has probably not had much impact, other than the occasional halo effect, on what most people in leadership roles do at the coalface.
With these three issues in mind it is interesting to actually look at the science behind what people need to do in order to become good leaders. The evidence is pretty well overwhelming concerning the conditions in which people perform best at work. The tragedy is that the evidence is not accessed, oversimplified or incorrectly interpreted. I know of many organisations that have been sold psychological ‘pups’ by consultants or whose CEOs have read a trendy book on leadership at the airport that sounds good but has not evidential base. These ‘pups’ come in the form of untested theories and models that are anecdotal at best. They might consist of colourful and sexy personality testing instruments that have no reliability or validity whatsoever and are simplistic in the extreme. Medical practitioners, psychologists, dentists, nurses, physiotherapists, engineers are required to use evidence based practice. Why not people in leadership roles?
We know from many social psychological experiments that people work best in an environment where they have control over their immediate work, are informed, make a contribution to decision making, feel that what they do is worthwhile, feel that they have a positive future, feel a valued member of the team, are acknowledged for what they do, are appropriately rewarded, have interesting work, and enjoy optimal variety in their work,
We also know, again from social psychological research, what it is that good leaders do to have influence and to get the best out of people. They have empathy, listen attentively, have good interpersonal skills, make people feel valued by involving them, are optimistic and positive, involve people in decision making that affects them, and don’t micro-manage (they believe that expertise outranks rank). Good leaders consciously create the type of environment or culture described in the paragraph above.
In recent years technology has made it possible to view in living brains how experiences change our brain structure, how new neural networks grow and how relationships between the various are affected. In general it can be said that positive experiences have a growth and positive effect on our nervous system and negative experiences have the opposite.
This research has now given us some explanations of why the social factors described above seem to be important in what has come to be called employee engagement. People perform best in a situation of what I call Goldilocks Stress: it has to be just right. That is, not too much and not too little. This means the environment has to be safe and you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to see that the factors described above from social research lead to a sense of safety. People are more likely to learn and adapt when they feel safe and is a central theme in the research on brain plasticity.
Research into brain plasticity also tells us that people learn and function better in enriching and challenging environments. This would explain why people tell us that they enjoy work when they feel that they are involved, have a valued role to play, work in functional team settings, have a role in decision-making and have control over what they do. Positive parenting has been shown to have very powerful cognitive and emotional advantages to children thus exposed. There is no reason to suspect that the same thing is not true for adults whose brain, we now know, develops throughout the lifespan.
Finally, we can see the role that positive interpersonal relationships are such an important aspect of leadership. Specifically, it is easy to see why people report that they most admire and are engaged with leaders who have empathy, listen and demonstrate good interpersonal skills. In short, it has a positive effect on their nervous system. Bullying behaviour, for example, has the opposite effect: it creates stress, reduces enrichment and diminishes cognitive ability.
At least there is a significant physical science to reinforce the already considerable social psychological evidence that what managers/leaders do really does matter. As does what they do not do.
The first is that the ‘great’ debate about whether leaders are born or made is a non-event. The issue is more about what people do that make them leaders and whether they have the capacity to perform the behaviours. It is clear that some people can’t be good leaders and others can. The second issue is closely related to the first and that is that people in leadership roles do not pay much attention to the social, anthropological and psychological evidence about what great leaders do and how to get the most out of people and, ergo, organisations. Leadership is treated a bit like counselling and teaching (other than in schools), that it that anyone can do it, without any formal training, if they have the inclination. It is fascinating that we still promote people to leadership roles on the basis that they have demonstrated high levels of competence in their profession (being an engineer, academic, town planner). Lastly, for this little article at least, the leadership literature is, at best, fluffy and has probably not had much impact, other than the occasional halo effect, on what most people in leadership roles do at the coalface.
With these three issues in mind it is interesting to actually look at the science behind what people need to do in order to become good leaders. The evidence is pretty well overwhelming concerning the conditions in which people perform best at work. The tragedy is that the evidence is not accessed, oversimplified or incorrectly interpreted. I know of many organisations that have been sold psychological ‘pups’ by consultants or whose CEOs have read a trendy book on leadership at the airport that sounds good but has not evidential base. These ‘pups’ come in the form of untested theories and models that are anecdotal at best. They might consist of colourful and sexy personality testing instruments that have no reliability or validity whatsoever and are simplistic in the extreme. Medical practitioners, psychologists, dentists, nurses, physiotherapists, engineers are required to use evidence based practice. Why not people in leadership roles?
We know from many social psychological experiments that people work best in an environment where they have control over their immediate work, are informed, make a contribution to decision making, feel that what they do is worthwhile, feel that they have a positive future, feel a valued member of the team, are acknowledged for what they do, are appropriately rewarded, have interesting work, and enjoy optimal variety in their work,
We also know, again from social psychological research, what it is that good leaders do to have influence and to get the best out of people. They have empathy, listen attentively, have good interpersonal skills, make people feel valued by involving them, are optimistic and positive, involve people in decision making that affects them, and don’t micro-manage (they believe that expertise outranks rank). Good leaders consciously create the type of environment or culture described in the paragraph above.
In recent years technology has made it possible to view in living brains how experiences change our brain structure, how new neural networks grow and how relationships between the various are affected. In general it can be said that positive experiences have a growth and positive effect on our nervous system and negative experiences have the opposite.
This research has now given us some explanations of why the social factors described above seem to be important in what has come to be called employee engagement. People perform best in a situation of what I call Goldilocks Stress: it has to be just right. That is, not too much and not too little. This means the environment has to be safe and you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to see that the factors described above from social research lead to a sense of safety. People are more likely to learn and adapt when they feel safe and is a central theme in the research on brain plasticity.
Research into brain plasticity also tells us that people learn and function better in enriching and challenging environments. This would explain why people tell us that they enjoy work when they feel that they are involved, have a valued role to play, work in functional team settings, have a role in decision-making and have control over what they do. Positive parenting has been shown to have very powerful cognitive and emotional advantages to children thus exposed. There is no reason to suspect that the same thing is not true for adults whose brain, we now know, develops throughout the lifespan.
Finally, we can see the role that positive interpersonal relationships are such an important aspect of leadership. Specifically, it is easy to see why people report that they most admire and are engaged with leaders who have empathy, listen and demonstrate good interpersonal skills. In short, it has a positive effect on their nervous system. Bullying behaviour, for example, has the opposite effect: it creates stress, reduces enrichment and diminishes cognitive ability.
At least there is a significant physical science to reinforce the already considerable social psychological evidence that what managers/leaders do really does matter. As does what they do not do.
Monday, June 13, 2011
When Management Decisions Get in the Way of Productive Workplaces
It constantly amazes me, despite all we know about human behaviour, that managers can still get the implementation of change completely wrong. Psychology may not be a completely exact science and there is much we don’t know yet but it is better than whim. Moreover, there are some things for which we have ample evidence. For the purposes of this article, these are that employees more fully engaged in their work and more productive if: their job satisfaction is high; the culture is essentially democratic; they are valued; intrinsic reward is the norm; they feel they have autonomy in their work; relationships are fulfilling; the work has meaning and purpose; and there is optimum variety in the work.
It has also been shown that as little as a fifth of all employees in developing countries are fully engaged at work and, hence, fully productive. More importantly, workplaces are potentially psychologically unhealthy, if not managed well, and this has considerable impact on those who work there. There are dire consequences indeed of managers not being aware of what is required to develop and maintain a positive workplace culture. And it is the management of an organisation that is fully responsible for the culture.
An experience I once had with an organisation has reminded me of the fact that managers make decisions based more on the quirks of their personality than they do on evidence from the scientific literature. For example, a high controlling, autocratic, punitive, aggressive, micro-management style will result in very specific decisions when it comes to day-to-day management and, in this case, the implementation of change.
I was asked to assist a group of people cope with change in their organisation. The program was, inappropriately, called Change Management. The brief for the job was that a change initiative had come a little unstuck and that a group needed help with dealing with the outcomes of the process. Immediately my antennae started quivering. When things go wrong in an organisation it is often decided to conduct a training program rather than look at the reasons for the problem. It is easier, or more comfortable, to implement a training solution than the higher complexity of a systems solution.
Closer inspection and on commencement of the ‘training’, the situation became clear. Had senior management carefully designed a change process designed to create enmity, negativity, angst, and dysfunction, they could not have done better than what occurred through incompetence.
The organisation had implemented a quality system and a new quality team to review the work of some 300 others. The change process, if you could call it that,: was completely ‘top down’; had no stakeholder consultation or involvement; devised a system of performance management for non-compliance; produced a complex and ambiguous manual that was intended to be a living document (like the law) on which to base decisions of compliance; created a lengthy adversarial system to manage the inevitable disputes over the decisions on non-compliance; was implemented in a culture that used email to deliver quality reviews due to the distributed nature of the organisation; and there was no attempt to make informed decisions after a lengthy trial when things clearly were not working, other than to conduct a change management program for the quality team (not the whole organisation).
In short, all the tenets of implementing successful change were ignored. This resulted, predictably, in: a classic in-group - out-group situation with all the enmity that this causes, especially against the quality team; high levels of stress for everyone; a high level of angry rather than co-operative disputation; team leaders protecting their ‘turf’ by defending non-conformance formally and informally; avoidance of personal contact between the quality team and the other employees; an adversarial culture; job insecurity; reduced job satisfaction; poor relationships; and alienation.
This could have been completely avoided had senior management bothered to read the change management literature or obtain advice from someone who did. Sadly, this was probably not likely to occur given the personality of the senior manager implementing the change.
The ‘change management’ program very quickly became a strategic planning exercise, based on the needs of the quality team, and was extremely successful. Unfortunately, we needed to have the whole organisation in the room and conduct a search conference, or similar process. Perhaps then we might have made a difference. As it stands this organisation will fail to function at an optimum level for a very long time. Worse it will remain an unhealthy workplace with all the sequelae that it entails. And all due to management by personality.
It has also been shown that as little as a fifth of all employees in developing countries are fully engaged at work and, hence, fully productive. More importantly, workplaces are potentially psychologically unhealthy, if not managed well, and this has considerable impact on those who work there. There are dire consequences indeed of managers not being aware of what is required to develop and maintain a positive workplace culture. And it is the management of an organisation that is fully responsible for the culture.
An experience I once had with an organisation has reminded me of the fact that managers make decisions based more on the quirks of their personality than they do on evidence from the scientific literature. For example, a high controlling, autocratic, punitive, aggressive, micro-management style will result in very specific decisions when it comes to day-to-day management and, in this case, the implementation of change.
I was asked to assist a group of people cope with change in their organisation. The program was, inappropriately, called Change Management. The brief for the job was that a change initiative had come a little unstuck and that a group needed help with dealing with the outcomes of the process. Immediately my antennae started quivering. When things go wrong in an organisation it is often decided to conduct a training program rather than look at the reasons for the problem. It is easier, or more comfortable, to implement a training solution than the higher complexity of a systems solution.
Closer inspection and on commencement of the ‘training’, the situation became clear. Had senior management carefully designed a change process designed to create enmity, negativity, angst, and dysfunction, they could not have done better than what occurred through incompetence.
The organisation had implemented a quality system and a new quality team to review the work of some 300 others. The change process, if you could call it that,: was completely ‘top down’; had no stakeholder consultation or involvement; devised a system of performance management for non-compliance; produced a complex and ambiguous manual that was intended to be a living document (like the law) on which to base decisions of compliance; created a lengthy adversarial system to manage the inevitable disputes over the decisions on non-compliance; was implemented in a culture that used email to deliver quality reviews due to the distributed nature of the organisation; and there was no attempt to make informed decisions after a lengthy trial when things clearly were not working, other than to conduct a change management program for the quality team (not the whole organisation).
In short, all the tenets of implementing successful change were ignored. This resulted, predictably, in: a classic in-group - out-group situation with all the enmity that this causes, especially against the quality team; high levels of stress for everyone; a high level of angry rather than co-operative disputation; team leaders protecting their ‘turf’ by defending non-conformance formally and informally; avoidance of personal contact between the quality team and the other employees; an adversarial culture; job insecurity; reduced job satisfaction; poor relationships; and alienation.
This could have been completely avoided had senior management bothered to read the change management literature or obtain advice from someone who did. Sadly, this was probably not likely to occur given the personality of the senior manager implementing the change.
The ‘change management’ program very quickly became a strategic planning exercise, based on the needs of the quality team, and was extremely successful. Unfortunately, we needed to have the whole organisation in the room and conduct a search conference, or similar process. Perhaps then we might have made a difference. As it stands this organisation will fail to function at an optimum level for a very long time. Worse it will remain an unhealthy workplace with all the sequelae that it entails. And all due to management by personality.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)