Instant People Skills: Coach Yourself & Others

Book titles that need more work

Just back from a couple of weeks travel - conference and vacation - where I made a note to comment on this book title. I noticed it in an airport bookstore, but had made up my mind not to get pulled in while taking time away. In this case, it was easy to say this one doesn't need to be read due to it's rather obvious "how to" subtitle.

The book: Make It Glow: How to Build a Company Reputation for Human Goodness, Flawless Execution, and Being Best-In-Class.

Big surprise. Would that be: consistently work at human goodness, flawless execution and being best in class?

Likely there really is more to say. For instance, how would you work at these things and what would your priorities be in relation to the more typical "make the numbers at all costs" approach to managing? Nevertheless the sense of it being so obvious made it easy to ignore.

Some Great Blog Sites

Every once in a while you stumble onto a gold mine and wonder why you missed it for so long. Trevor Gay is a long-term British Health System executive who retired into his own consulting practice and has created a blog actually worth looking through.

His own blog, Simplicity, I'd describe as a rather quirky, opinionated version of the concept, but that's a plus. It takes your thinking in new directions and collects links to some other very interesting, somewhat quirky stuff as well.

I started with his video and then some background, but was very interested to skim some of the blogs he links to, like these: Promanager , Hillbilly PhD, Phil Gerbyshak's Make It Great which in turn refers to this list: Top Productivity and Lifehack Blogs (a Lifehack, by the way is blog-speak for cute tips and shortcuts you can use to improve your life - or "hack" your life, in other words).

The only trouble I have with blogs, including my own is too many and too much to read. They work if you keep focused, but it's easy to get sidetracked in a thousand directions.

What bloggers link to is often misleading because they mix personal and business interests and some bloggers waver back and forth between the two far too much to make either aspect useful. If you believe in Serendipity (lucky coincidence) great, but finding what you're actually looking for can be a long haul.

Henry Mintzberg's New Idea for Leadership Development

The volunteer leadership think tank I work a lot for, Strategic Capability Network, had the pleasure and good luck to host Dr. Mintzberg in January on the subject of a new project he's developing. It's goal:  simplifying leadership development to a program companies can do themselves in-house that will compete with the International and Advanced Management programs he's run for years - the new one at a cost of a few hundred dollars versus the $45,000 to $100,000 tuition per person for the International and Advanced programs.

The long-time management guru (not at all too strong a word for a professor, author of 140 articles and13 books like Managers Not MBAs) has always worked toward taking the mystery and myths out of effective leadership… and now out of leadership development.

The new venture, CoachingOurselves, is fascinating if not entirely unheard of previously, but its great to see an acknowledged master show how simply we can develop leadership skills.

In this approach groups of managers, usually four to seven, meet together with the role of chair rotating among them, on topics of their choosing. They follow a guide in the form of an agenda and a few PowerPoint slides, created by Henry or his co-authors and learn on their own from their own discussions about their own experience.

He suggests the primary model is that the group meet once a month for about an hour and a quarter for as long as they feel they're benefiting. So far there are intended to be a couple of hundred topics to choose from with about 20 or so currently available and more in development that can be tailored, costing in the range of under $200 each - that's $200 for all five or six people, not per person… and no travel cost or time.

Obviously the major advanced and travel programs can expose managers to experiences, people and diversity that no in-house program could duplicate. Nevertheless Mintzberg insists the core feature of the expensive programs carries over - managers sharing their own experiences and learning from open discussion with each other. So it's "go big or go home" literally, with the option to learn at home now being a valid one.

It isn't a program that creates learning, it's individuals' willingness to learn and to share their thoughts, knowledge and experience with each other that makes for more effective leadership. And we know from personal experience that doing it consistently beats a one-time shot in the arm every time.

Don't Believe Everything You Think

Okay, I've finally been sucked in.  Visiting a bookstore to use a gift certificate, a new book (with an Amazon release date of January 1) by Marci Shimoff caught my eye.  On her web site she is billed as a key teacher of The Secret, a book I have consistently avoided.

Her new book, Happy for No Reason, summarizes seven ingredients for happiness in easy chapters, a more useful topic. With the Secret I certainly believe the thoughts you hold are critical to the results you achieve.  Since there isn't a lot more in the book judging from what others tell me, I haven't taken time to read it.

In Happy for No Reason the standard basics about achieving happiness appear: the concept of a happiness set point, physical health, meaningful work, friends, a close love relationship and several others, some of which she reveals in her You Tube video, linked from the book's site.  Very slick. You can pretty much get the ideas in the first few listings if you search "Happy for No Reason" in Google. She calls them seven "steps," but they're really not steps as much as habits that must work together.  Not a heavy-duty book, but with generally solid, comprehensive ideas.

The idea that stood out most as new and different is summarized in a chapter about a step called "Don't Believe Everything Think." I notice she describes the same concept in a video on her site about The Secret, arguing that many of the 60,000 thoughts we are said to process daily are misleading and that feelings are a better indicator of whether we are moving forward positively or feeling so negative that we will mess things up.  This sounds like an interesting idea that bears some further thought.

More than anything I was impressed by the packaging.  I see she is even a cofounder a group of 100 motivational speakers who have created a site called the Transformational Leadership Council. It's a quick list of many big as well as smaller names in the motivation business. 

Slick packaging doesn't mean the information is any less helpful.  If anything we can hope that it will encourage more people to take key ideas seriously and use them.  We're all in the process of trying to lay out the most useful, simplest and most appealing ways of getting the same principles in front of people. A good effort.  Both her MBA and media training certainly lend power to the message whether or not they make her an expert in these areas.

Testimonial: Success Is Not Complicated

"Success is not complicated. Clear objectives, workable implementation plans, and the discipline to stay the course..." reads a testimonial on the website of a change consultant from an organization he helped. 

Exactly.  The "clear objectives" noted in the quotation are the Strategies (as I call them in my model) that you choose to arrive at your goals.  "Workable implementation" means building Habits.  And "the discipline to stay the course" is all about finding Balance in the midst of constant up and down emotions ranging from highly Positive to Honest recognition of the hurdles.

Why emphasize the same five key words in every single situation instead of finding a specialist and learning specialized words for each new challenge?  The reason is simple.  Doing so connects what we do successfully in one situation to all others. When we generalize our skill we give ourselves a far greater chance of succeeding immediately in every new situation without much additional training.

Every time we read a success story, we are likely to find the author using different words from earlier ones.  The result is people imagine the principles may be different in each situation when they are not.  By seeing the pattern in the skills you develop for one situation, you can apply the same principles immediately to the next.

The ultimate objective is to give people themselves the tools they need in the simplest possible form to achieve whatever results they want.

Showing how to apply these five basic concepts consistently in every situation means people become expert at all of them and at balancing them together.

One way to reinforce this for yourself is to translate what you read about success in any situation into these five ideas.  You'll begin to see the pattern instantly wherever you look.  That will add to the ease with which you use the skills in an unfamiliar situations.

More On ADKAR And Easier Change

My objective with my five principles is a simple model for what you or organizations actually need to do to be effective in all sorts of situations. ADKAR (previous post) looks helpful for organizations.  Stephen Covey's seven habits work well with individuals.  Both could be stretched to the opposite situation (organizations or individuals), but most systems are designed primarily for certain types of challenges and from a single point of view.

ADKAR's elements - Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement - effectively describe end results needed for organizational change. As a memory aid they don't point toward HOW to achieve these, which is where I find most managers ask the most urgent questions.  The strategy is good; how can it be executed?

Take "desire" for example.  Desire or motivation often seems to managers the most difficult thing to develop in yourself or others if it isn't there to begin with.  ADKAR accurately suggests that once you become aware of the need for change you need to create a state of wanting to or desiring change.  But how?

My corresponding principle is "positive."  I describe the five principles as habits you need to build toward in yourself, others or both. With this in mind, I think managers have a relatively easier time concluding what they need to do - talk and behave in ways that get people into habits of feeling positive about aspects of work in general. Most can think of ways to be more positive, more of the time.

You can't usually get a group of people fired up, motivated or filled with desire to change on the spur of the moment.  There are exceptions.  When the theater you're in is burning or some other inescapable crisis makes it absolutely clear that you should all be motivated, pretty well any leader who stands up and points to the door is seen as charismatic. 

Highly charismatic individuals seem to have the ability to motivate groups purely through words.  Unfortunately lots of CEOs attempt this by putting speeches on video and sending them out to the troops.  Needless to say, lots fail.

But if you work with a group of people over time and have always been honest and positive with them, encouraged them to take initiative, and they've seen the results that occur when they jump into action as you suggest, they are very likely to do so again when you point out that change is needed. They build on already positive beliefs that taking action makes sense. They are positive about acting and positive they can succeed. That's how "desire" bubbles up when needed - a lot of small positive elements adding together.

Am I splitting hairs? Maybe. But my focus is decidedly in favor of describing what's needed in terms people can most easily see how to put into action. Consistently positive people make both organizational and personal change far easier.

ADKAR? What the heck is that?

It always seems amazing when you find others have come to conclusions similar to your own, though exactly why that should be is puzzling. If your thinking is solid, why shouldn't others come up with the same ideas?

One of the deluge of consultants' newsletters recently mentioned a change management acronym I had not heard of previously: ADKAR, but I recognized its similarities immediately. It represents a description of ingredients for change management process: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement - from work by an organization called Prosci.  I was startled to realize this is very similar to the five key principles that I promote as the core of people skills and leadership.

In short it means people must become aware of the need to change, they must have a desire to change, the knowledge to, the ability (which is different from knowledge) and then they need reinforcement while making the change.  All of these are true and actually very insightful, especially the emphasis that is put on these being the core, key and essentially only ingredients to pay attention to.  It's a dramatic simplification of what's needed to make individual personal or organizational change.

When you find a potentially competitive theory, you want to analyze it carefully to see whether or not it achieves or fails at the objectives you are trying to achieve. This one has some interesting parallels, but also important differences. Because it's so close to what I use as the keys to being effective, I will offer some deeper analysis in a series of posts.  Let me just say the theory seems to make a clear distinction between individual change and organizational change. The same principles apply so I'm not sure why that is.  Therein lie some interesting questions, which we will explore.

In any case I think this is an excellent summary of the ingredients that are required for successful change. What I'm trying to achieve that's a bit different is to show how people actually manage to create these ingredients and get them working together.  How do you help someone become aware of the need, to develop the desire, find the knowledge, build the ability and where will they get the reinforcement?

The 4 Hour Work Week

So many people recommended Timothy Ferriss' book, The 4 Hour Work Week, I ultimately bought it to avoid a ten-month wait as #250 on the library waiting list. My initial thoughts were largely confirmed.

The one truly useful idea we all ought to be thinking in terms of is... how we can accomplish more in less time. Today's technology offers opportunities undreamt of in the past to streamline work both within as well as outside organizations. Yet most people still plod in to the office or workplace to do relatively repetitive jobs that don't seem to change much or accomplish a lot. We seriously need to take a look at alternative approaches to what we're doing daily and Ferriss certainly presents an authoritative case for one, but only one, variation. While useful to stimulate ideas it's impossilbe for everyone to use his model nor should most try.

That catchy title is what's driving book sales. It's become another of his get rich schemes it appears, though Ferriss insists in interviews (sample here) that he isn't making a career of this. The other ideas he collects are not a lot to get excited about, though someone probably needed to gather them all into one place as a "state of the times" tale and a challenge to the rest of us to find better ways.

Ferris is a gen X'er who found and applied the ideas hinted at in Dan Pink's Free Agent Nation and the web resources that seemed to grow out of those ideas, like elance.com and others - virtual assistants ready and willing to help him set up online businesses and similar direct mail-type endeavors that, according to his report, have made him rich - one of "The New Rich" as he defines it.

The book and related web sites such as here contain useful information, particularly if you want to market "stuff," travel the world with your new-found wealth or hire virtual assistants or Free Agents to help you. My sense from other sources is there are lots of virtual agency sites that he could have included, but hasn't.

His underlying messages form a strange mix, some logical, even insightful, and others distinctly disappointing. You can make millions with little personal time investment... if you happen to hit a lucky idea, are willing to risk some questionable practices and find the right people to do it all for you. Of course, just off the top, it would be impossible for everyone to do this because there'd be no one doing the actual work, no virtual assistants because every one of them would be attempting to find their own virtual assistants to help them become big winners.

I tend to agree with the negative reviews of his book on Amazon, which you can find if you scroll way down this page, but it may be worth skimming just for the fire it lights in every reader to find a better way to think about and reach their goals. If this dubious approach can succeed, surely there must be better ones. This is one I could have "read" in the book store or library in 10 minutes.

The Toyota Way?

A senior Human Resources VP mentioned the other day the value of having her senior executive read "The Toyota Way." I thought, "gee I wonder why we're still pushing that basic book from 20 years ago." A day or so later an email pitch arrived from the Canadian arm of a "world-wide" consulting firm specializing in "productivity improvement." It suggested the answer.

Since improving results is what I focus on from a human resources and leadership perspective the question is critical. Is someone missing something?

The consulting organization promotes typical North American and European-style approaches. It clearly grew out of an accounting firm broadening its offering to "productivity." Their approach is almost entirely lean manufacturing processes and similar "fixes" that can be "installed" in organizations to reduce cost and streamline out waste in materials and procedures. For a fee they'll happily come in and spend "4 to 10 months" at your business figuring out which would help. I've seen this done with teams of 5 to 25 people. It isn't cheap.

If you've ever tried this you'll hear them SAY frequently that none of it works unless the people buy into the processes. A very key point, they'll tell you... and then typically proceed to ignore input, order people to change and "install" the system the way they always do. When it doesn't work, "culture" gets blamed.

The Toyota Way by contrast outlines 14 core principles that have clearly worked over the years to make Toyota one of the most effective and productive organizations on the planet, with no signs of slowing down or petering out. While the book or ones with similar information about their approach continue to be updated (as recently as 2005) the principles have been applied since the mid-1970's... consistently - more than 30 years. Few corporate strategies survive anywhere near that long today, with most evaporating on appointment of new senior executives.

A quick review of the 14 principles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way) shows the first 8 appear a lot like the consulting firm - process improvement and so on, with the notable exception of the first principle: "take a long term view." When you read more closely you notice the principles are divided with the last six focusing directly on people and leadership. Look again and you notice that half of the first principles do, too. They may be about improving processes with process methodology, but they emphasize that it must work with and through the people.

The over-riding concept is building a "learning organization" for "continuous improvement" and there is only one ingredient that does the learning and improving - people! In fact, the processes are simply aids to help the people learn for themselves. They are not "solutions" to be "installed" by outsiders who know best. They are tools people in the organization use daily to improve things for themselves. Toyota long pre-dates Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline, itself written more than 15 years ago, which is often said to be the origin of the term "learning organization."

Apparently very few organizations have learned. The dominant "solution" is still this sort of flawed consulting rather than the proven Toyota Way and its variations adapted to all sorts of industries by a tiny minority of very successful companies.

Managing Now Requires Greater Skill With Complexity

Humans excel at managing complexity, but not everyone develops the skills. Many believe they don't need to. Surprisingly, to date, it has been leaders who ignored ambiguity and complexity who most often succeeded - a major paradox. They saw a particular set of facts through experience in a specific industry and behaved as if those facts would always remain the same. By simplifying (but in the wrong way), they gained clarity that helped them act decisively with great confidence. Action often trumps accuracy. But....

Complexity and ambiguity are harder to handle than pure factual analysis, so if the latter will do, the analyst will solve the puzzle sooner and more accurately, just as computers handle very detailed challenges as long as the rules are clear, complete and unambiguous.

It takes greater skill to anticipate an uncertain future. Today greater uncertainty is the norm. Many entrepreneurs fail because they over-simplify and eventually get caught by unexpected events. We need their confidence, but their certainty only takes them as far as present circumstances hold. Now we realize the same applies to corporate leaders.

Command and control managers excel in analytic, unambiguous situations. But they try to reduce every challenge to that and deal with it as if all factors are completely clear whether they are or not.

I can recall many instances where a CEO ordered a specific solution despite the fact that many at the executive table felt subtleties were being missed. Of course, that will always be true. We need to act and we can never wait to be 100% correct in every detail. But today we need to listen to more input than ever before leaping to conclusions. The difference is we can't afford to let bosses cause those with ideas to remain silent even though that may have speeded up decisions it in the past. We have to learn to leap to conclusions just as quickly while nevertheless absorbing as many of the complexities of the situation as possible because there is so much more to take into account. Over-simplification becomes a serious liability.

With change happening faster and, more importantly, with more complexity, our leaders and teams need greater ability. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Yet Boards still appoint CEOs on the basis of their apparent confidence that they have absolute, simple answers. We need to ask ourselves how we can meet these opposing needs: greater input, yet rapid decision-making. The key will be understanding the different skills required to handle complexity.