I’ve been a long-time follower of Bob Sutton’s blog, and it was about time I picked up one of his books to read. To my way of thinking, Bob has some fairly sensible advice for working with people, and I’d suggest you take a moment to hear what he has to say.

From the Preface:

“But once something was clearly not working [while writing the book], we abandoned the path quickly, stopping just long enough to figure out what we should learn before trying something new. We never stopped to worry about how much time we had wasted and never spent one minute talking about which one of us was to blame for the last dead end. Rather we were inspired by the successful firms we studied, in which setbacks and mistakes were viewed as an inevitable, even desirable, part of being action oriented. We heeded their advice that the only true failure was to stop trying new things and to stop learning from the last effort to turn knowledge into action.”

 Great advice for being action oriented — from the preface, no less!

1. Recognize that something isn’t working. (This is often easier said than done.)
2. Abandon that path quickly.
3. Figure out what to learn from the last effort, and try something new.
4. Don’t worry about wasted time, nor assigning blame.
5. View setbacks and mistakes as desirable.
6. The worst thing you can do is to stop trying new things.

My questions to you are: When did you last fail in front of your whole team (maybe even your whole company)? What did you learn? What are you trying now?

Can’t wait to read the rest of the book!

- Peter

“For years, Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System would not allow anything to be recorded about it. He argued that to do so would crystallize the process and stall the drive for never-ending improvement. I can see that copying others will work well in an organization that has a command and control management style where employees are told to follow a certain path as it will be good for the business and good for them. But if you want to develop a systems-thinking environment, copying will get in the way of deep-seated learning.”

Seems like simply making a procedure can prevent learning from happening. So why do we make procedures? To outsource the work? To be consistent in what we build?

But if we become consistent by using a procedure, we prevent learning.

If you had to choose between having employees learn, and have employees be consistent, which would you pick?

“Things take the time they take, not the time you hope they will take. Pushing for half-time produces half-baked.”

I absolutely agree! When you push for a project to complete faster, something has to give. And more often than not, it is the quality that suffers because that’s the easiest cutback to hide in the short term.

Jerry is an author of more than 40 books, including “The Psychology of Computer Programming” and “Introduction to General Systems Thinking” and was the Manager of Operating Systems Development in the Project Mercury (1959–1963), which aimed to put a human in orbit around the Earth. (Thank you Wikipedia!)

“competitive pressures (and greed) have encouraged most organizations to turn their workers into machines.

• If we can measure it, we can do it faster.
• If we can put it in a manual, we can outsource it.
• If we can outsource it, we can get it cheaper.

The end results are legions of frustrated workers, wasted geniuses each and every one of them, working the automations, racing against the clock to crank out another policy, get through another interaction, see another patient.”

I think there has been a long good run at “doing more with less”. It’s a good goal from the perspective of the employer, but needs to be tempered by the fact that you have people (not “resources”) working for you. People have their own needs and aspirations, and the best productivity will come from an arrangement that is good for both the employees AND the employers.

I’m optimistic that the next decade is going to bring more humanity and more rationality back into the work place.  I think this is in part from the adoption of agile, and in part, due to the new focus on social media. It looks a whole lot worse to be posing as a personable corporation instead of actually being personable, and people can tell the difference.

What do you think? Will there be more , less, or the same amount of humanity at work over the next decade? What do you think is influencing it?

“if you want to foster innovation, [let] people slip from under line management and strike out on their own, on projects they care about”

He’s talking about Dan Pink’s video, the surprising truth about what motivates us:

“Analysis paralysis is a phrase that describes a situation where the opportunity cost of decision analysis exceeds the benefits that could be gained by enacting some decision, or an informal or non-deterministic situation where the sheer quantity of analysis overwhelms the decision making process itself, thus preventing a decision. The phrase applies to any situation where analysis may be applied to help make a decision and may be a dysfunctional element of organizational behavior.”

I like how the see-also section refers you to Wicked problems:

“a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.”

<sigh>

“A survey by the Centre for Work-Life Policy, an American consultancy, found that between June 2007 and December 2008 the proportion of employees who professed loyalty to their employers slumped from 95% to 39%; the number voicing trust in them fell from 79% to 22%.”

The article puts the primary blame on the poor economy, but also suggests that micro-measuring employees (how many times did you smile at a customer today?) and mixed messages about company loyalty play a significant role.

Bob Sutton discusses the data further. Particularly, he is interested in how companies will fare when the economy returns.

“In fact, that’s how IBM invented the application of laser for eye surgery. A group of IBM scientists were experimenting with laser for improving IBM products. One scientist wanted to see what the effect of laser would be on a cut on his finger. Intrigued by the results, the scientists experimented on cows’ eyes and eventually human eyes. IBM eventually licensed out the technology, making millions in profit.”

“As it turns out, when we look at life-cycle analysis, a “cradle-to-grave perspective” on food products, food miles are “a relatively small slice of the greenhouse-gas pie,” says DeWeerdt. In fact, according to a comprehensive analysis last year by Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews of Carnegie Mellon University, final delivery from the producer or processor to the retailer accounts for only 4% of the U.S. food system’s greenhouse-gas emissions!”

“tasks that don’t directly add value to the customer, but enable delivering value to the customer. Sometimes these are the tasks and functions that enable the business to stay in business–like accounting, or payroll, or management.”

“The average knowledge worker switches tasks every three minutes, and, once distracted, a worker takes nearly a half-hour to resume the original task, according to Gloria Mark, a leader in the new field of “interruption science.”

Interruptions and the requisite recovery time now consume 28 percent of a worker’s day, the business research firm Basex estimates. The risks are clear. As one top executive told me, “Knowledge work can’t be done in sound bites.” “

From Fighting a War Against Distraction via The Practice of Leadership

“When making a choice between two options, only consider what’s going to happen in the future, not which investments you’ve made in the past. The past investments are over, lost, gone forever. They are irrelevant to the future.”

I agree. Too many bad things happen when people insist on preserving the past only because they paid a lot for it. It might be painful, but sometimes you have to true up and say: That might have been a good decision when it was first made, but it is not a good decision today. Be honest with yourself, and embrace the change.

Mychael Nygard analyzes the probability that a critical meeting with 3 people will be deferred till next week in Can you make that meeting?

Turns out that if they’re each 75% utilized, then there’s only a 15% chance they can schedule a one hour meeting this week.

37signallers can set their own schedules but I’d say, on average, we work a typical workday (8 hours) and we don’t work weekends. [...] A normal workweek should be plenty. Even less is ok. In fact, being short on time is a good thing. It forces you to focus on the essentials. There’s no time for things that don’t matter.

My favorite part is the ending: “Worry about the quality of your hours, not the quantity. That’s what really matters.”

Agreed.

With large batches of non-prioritized (but important) work “pushed” through the professional organization, individuals can easily be blocked due to waiting, delays, etc. But their professional behavior (and skills in multi-tasking) drives them to work on the next most important task. Integrate this over time for the large number of projects that are pushed through the organization and the unexpected result is the biggest cause of unnoticed waste – everyone “almost” working on the most important thing.

[via NetObjectives, Economies of Scale (Don't) ]

As technology allows people to do more tasks at the same time, the myth that we can multitask has never been stronger. But researchers say it’s still a myth — and they have the data to prove it. Humans, they say, don’t do lots of things simultaneously. Instead, we switch our attention from task to task extremely quickly. [...]

“People can’t multitask very well, and when people say they can, they’re deluding themselves,” said neuroscientist Earl Miller.

[via Good Experience]

For technical people, they know computers. They know software. Given the right resources, they can make a computer do anything — anywhere, anytime. [...]

For business people, they know cashflow. They know the symbiotic relationship between employees and business owners. And in this day and age, there will always be people looking for jobs. Given the right resources, they can employ people to do anything — anywhere, anytime. [...]

What technical-minded and business-minded people are doing is essentially the same. What differs is their belief in what scales.

The traditional office work environment and tools are still around, but at a very rapid pace, they’re being supplanted by newer and better tools, newer and better ways of working. The old rules are being broken, and new ones are emerging.

You could call this the Workplace of the Future, as not all businesses have adopted these models, and it will be a few years before these new rules are the norm. But for many people (myself included), this is the Workplace of Today — there’s no need to wait for new technologies or tools, because they’re already here.

So you could wait a few years, resist the new trends, talk about how great things were back in your day … or you could embrace the new rules, and be a part of the change.

[...]

If a new technology or way of working is better, let’s go with it. That doesn’t mean we should just adopt things because they’re new and shiny and trendy — sometimes the old is actually better. But if the new ways are better, let’s embrace them.

There are some great specific examples pointed out in the article (cloud computing, collaboration, decentralized office, archiving over filing, small teams over large ones, single-task over multi-task, etc), and I’d highly recommend the read.

The one question I’ve always struggled with is: how do you prove the new way is better? What seems obvious to one person, often doesn’t to someone else. For example: I have had wi-fi at home for 7 years, but never had it at work (still don’t). Seems obvious and natural to use it, but then again, what exactly would the business value to wi-fi be? We have internet-connected computers at our desks, and wired access in the conference rooms … do we really need to loose the wires? What’s the value?

Of course, I’m being a bit facetious, but the question is serious. How _do_ you get a new way or new technology accepted in the work place? Putting together a return-on-investment paper on the value of something so common as wi-fi seems a bit ludicrous.

Winning over your employees – Part 1 – Face Time
by Shaun Tabatt 

One of the biggest challenges faced by a new manager is winning the trust confidence of his / her team members.  One way that I’ve overcome this is by giving my team members enough face time.  I’ve noticed a tendency amongst managers to hide behind their e-mail client in their office and never actually set foot amongst their team members.  Over time, this tends to foster resentment and distrust between the manager and team members.  Here are a few suggestions for ensuring you give your team members an appropriate amount of face time.

1. Visit your employees in their work area 3-4 times per week.
2. Hold regular 1 on 1 sessions with your employees at least 2 times per month.
3. Hold team meetings 1-2 times per month.
4. Take a few of your employees out to lunch or coffee each month.

Overall, the objective is to deliberately create opportunities for communication.  As communication increases, trust & confidence tends to go up between the manager and his team members.  This generally leads to better job satisfaction for all and tends to do away with many of the petty challenges that come up when team members feel like nobody actually cares.

—

Shaun Tabatt is a customer support manager at a mid-sized software company in Minnesota.  He has worn various hats in the information technology field for the past 10+ years.  In addition to his technical pursuits, he also has a strong interest in Biblical & theological studies.  Shaun blogs regularly at Bible Geek Gone Wild (http://www.biblegeekgonewild.com).

In my experience, we’re all capable of bad, average, and good work. I’ve certainly done bad work at times and plenty of average work. What I’ve realized is that the good and the exceptional work is at least as much about my environment as it is about me. Average environments begets average work.