The 15-Minute Meeting
We’ve all been there — the eternal ineffective meeting. The facilitator labors on and on, agenda lost long, long ago, with no end in sight. But it is possible to hold effective meetings; meetings with focus, attention, participation, and accountability — and it all starts with a collective understanding of the rules of the field. In this episode, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright outline those rules and provide suggestions for all who are plagued with ineffective meeting-itis on how to spark the right team behaviors and get back on track.
Listen now…
How do you increase productivity without carrying a big stick?
It’s easy to say you want to cultivate an environment of collaboration and communication on a team. It’s another thing all together to actually achieve it. When you are faced with team behavior that’s in the dumps, how do you pull the right people together, inspire that spirit of innovation, and get people working together again without getting mired in politics and frustration? This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright take on this issue and offer key strategies for bringing your teams together.
Listen now…
We’re always selling
Walk into your next management meeting and tell your team that you think they need to learn to sell better, you’re likely to feel a chill enter the room. Sales has a tough reputation inside organizations. And yet, so many core skills from the art of selling apply perfectly to the interactions we engage in day to day.
This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss how we are always selling something, whether it’s a project idea, a need for partnerships among business units, or influencing a group to buy into a new direction. Selling is ultimately about listening, then conveying how your idea meets another’s need. It’s about great communication and negotiating skills, something all of us can continue to improve on.
Listen now…
Stop Doing and Start Helping!
There is nothing more arrogant than walking into an organization, assessing a people or process issue and believing you can single-handedly create a permanent solution.
The failure in most organizational projects is the presumption made about the giver and receiver relationship, the giver being those helping with the change and the receiver, those inheriting the change. The three most important presumptions are:
- The receiver is asking for the specific advice given
- The receiver is open to the advice, diagnosis or solution offered
- The giver understands enough of the problem to give this advice
These may seem like fair presumptions but more often than not, advice is given on incomplete information and both sides do not have a shared view of the problem. The problem doesn’t get fixed, the recipient doesn’t own the solution and the blame game for a less than satisfactory solution takes center stage. Sound familiar?
The Missing Piece
The first thing to recognize is the difference between advice and help.
When I consult with a surgeon, I’m looking for advice, a diagnosis and for that person to take care of the problem. Accountants, lawyers, doctors, architects – these roles are structured around evaluating a situation, applying expertise and doing the work. The person is the means to the solution.
Building a high-performing workforce is different. True success comes down to behavior change. Positive attitude, teamwork, trust, practice – these skills are the cornerstones of an effective workforce. You can’t talk someone into having a good attitude, exhibiting teamwork or being willing to make mistakes as a way to develop skills – they must want it themselves and be willing to do what it takes to get there.
But it’s so much easier to just give advice and then walk away, you say.
Projects involving people that end up being perceived as unsuccessful stem from an overemphasis of trying to solve their “problem” versus looking for ways to help them help themselves. At the heart of making positive change stick is asking this question:
“If diagnosing and advising only perpetuates a dependency and lack of self-reliance, how can you help the group take greater responsibility for their problems and solutions?” Focus on ways to get the groups to practice and immerse themselves in the behaviors that will build their confidence to do the work on their own. Stop doing it for them.
Yes, being an expert is useful but don’t confuse expertise with being helpful. Expertise doesn’t changes behavior. To get people acclimated to a new way of doing something, you must ask deeper questions about how they learn, retain information and are able to repeat this behavior on their own. Whether you’re the sponsor, manager, consultant or colleague, step back and find ways to allow individuals and groups to do for themselves, versus being so quick to solve their problem. Only then will they be able to run with the ball in a self-reliant way.
A great book that deconstructs the “helping relationship” is Edgar Schein’s book “Process Consultation Revisited – Building the Helping Relationship”. This book single-handedly helped me reshape how to think about consulting and make sure the responsibility for change lies with those needing to live with the change.
Stop calling it collaboration!
If you’re helping a group work together, collaboration is not what you’re looking for. It’s the behaviors that make up collaboration you want to focus on, most noticeably – coordination.
Coordination can be measured and quantified (who does what, by when and how the work is performed), while collaboration is the spirit these behaviors. It’s the difference between a vision and a goal. A vision is where you want to end up while a goal is how you get there. When someone spouts “let’s collaborate”, trust your instinct and ask them “what do you mean by this?” You’ll quickly discover there is another layer of meaning that gets to the behaviors you’re trying to influence.
There’s nothing wrong with terms not used in everyday language (otherwise called jargon), except when no one, even the speaker knows what they mean. Point out these elephants in the room. It will help everyone get to the intent behind the words spoken.
Raising the Bar on Buy-In!
Asking for “buy-in” to your latest initiative will get you passive indifference at best. Maybe indifference is what you’re looking for – light years improvement from outward dissatisfaction or hostility. But if what you really want is to motivate stakeholders (senior management, administrators, researchers, faculty or staff) to your idea, buy-in often only produces a willingness to not go against the initiative.
Most likely you’re looking for champions or enthusiastic support. Saying to a group “we’re looking for your buy-in” communicates you want to inform, not involve. The way to get enthusiastic support is if you bring them into the circle by asking for help, feedback, ideas and participation. Yes, some stakeholders may ask difficult questions. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that by keeping them at arm’s length with periodic updates that you’ve got their support.
Too often the bar is set too low around what we can ask or expect of others. For a group to be jazzed about an idea, you’ve got to get them involved in the change, not just inform them what’s coming.
If It’s Not Broke…
There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place. ~Washington Irving
As part of a larger strategic effort to improve operational performance across your organization, centralizing business functions can be a very useful change. The rationale behind these projects is that by reducing redundancy, the quality of the work can be improved, processes can be made more efficient and cost savings can be realized.
If only it be this easy. Like many initiatives that include structural and people change, solving one problem creates another. Imagine an army of people sitting in their metaphorical chairs for years at a time, comfortable with what they know and their position in the organization. Centralizing work changes all the rules.
Three guiding principles will help when embarking on centralizing work projects:
1. Getting management on the same page
The best way to create positive momentum on these projects is to have leadership speaking with one voice. Once new roles are defined and the model is tested (ex: a Business Center becomes operational) it is critical for staff to know that management will hold people accountable to their new roles. Without a consistent voice from management and regular reminders of people’s roles, staff will push on the boundaries of their shifting responsibilities, making it much more difficult for everyone to adjust to the new model.
2. Building trust by being inclusive
The process your staff will go through getting accustomed to new roles and responsibilities takes time and requires patience from everyone involved. Management should set up check points where people can weigh in how the new process is working. Asking for feedback and genuinely listening to their ideas and concerns will go a long way to helping build trust. The more people feel they have a voice, the more they will take ownership in the change.
3. Attitude is everything
Two primary groups are affected by this change – those who will be inheriting the work of others and those giving up pieces of their job. Although this can be stressful, at some point people need to make a choice – they’re either part of the solution or part of the problem. This doesn’t mean accepting an unworkable process, rather for all players to ask themselves what they can do to help the new process succeed.
By applying these three principles – Leadership speaking with one voice, management listening to staff ideas and concerns and most importantly everyone asking themselves how they can be part of the solution – this is how you get through initiatives that involve changing roles, responsibilities and reporting lines.
Communicating Bad News
Breaking down communication barriers is no easy task, and it opens the classic question of what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Management is waiting to hear what’s really going on while staff is waiting to hear it’s ok to communicate breakdowns or bad news. (This, by the way, is not the same as complaining, which is communicating bad news with no commitment to action.)
Organizations are often left with the “blame game” being played out over every missed deadline or poorly rolled out deliverable. Here’s what management needs to realize – your staff will not take the step of communicating bad news unless you explicitly demand it of them. For staff – you may never get explicit permission from management to stop filtering bad news. The good and bad news? Regardless of your role, the ball is in your court.
BPMA Write-up
I spoke at the Boston Product Management Association meeting when this note popped up in my Google alerts: BPMA Meeting Roundup for April-June.
The central idea of the talk is pretty simple: miscommunication untreated fosters mistrust. I think of it as an illness; one that starts as a cold, but transforms over time into a cancer. It’s much easier to treat when addressed quickly and openly.
These meetings are usually stocked with great speakers. I’m thrilled to be included in this list. If you’re a BPMA member, make sure to look for the presentation itself in the discussion forums on the BPMA website. Next time, I’ll make sure the notification is up before I actually do the talk!
Welcome to The Trust Blog
As a function of the teibelinc.com redesign, I struggled mightily with a few things.
- How to characterize change as both a constant struggle to overcome organizational adversity, and at the same time to communicate that I am a great optimist and advocate that such obstacles can be overcome.
- How to show that I believe strongly that the best change projects are not always just about incorporating the new, but putting the same old pieces of the organization together in new, innovative ways.
- Should I put a blog on the site?
