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.

To learn more about how to do this, feel free to contact me.  I'll be happy to share some of our strategies.

 

Howard Teibel

617 448-3634 mobile

hteibel@teibelinc.com

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.

The New Normal

You'd be lying to yourself if you weren't privately hoping for the stock market to stabilize, win back your losses and pick up where you left off last September 15, 2008. It gives me comfort to think this is just another blip in the big picture and all that's needed is time for the recovery. The prevailing wisdom is "let's just get through this." Although denial is a powerful emotion and an effective way of getting through difficult times, maybe "getting though this" is not what we should be striving for. If a crystal ball could somehow show that the next five years don't look much different from today, would you navigate your business decisions differently right now?

Management struggles with questions like: Is this the time to invest or be conservative? Retrench or expand? Do we shed more workforce or move forward with what we've got? It’s even tougher for those who don't know what management will choose to do next. Am I being leveled with or should I start looking for work elsewhere?

Regardless of our role, we need to find ways to focus on accepting the challenges ahead without becoming pessimistic.

Step One: Stop fixating on the business section of your newspaper (For those who believe "information is power", continue reading but remember bad news sells much better than good news!)

Step Two: Consider we're all adjusting to a "New Normal", which is the idea that things will never go back to the way they were. Navigating the new normal is the equivalent of hitting the reset button on your computer and starting with an entirely new set of expectations, balancing reality with a positive view of the future.

A Necessary Core Belief The irony of this very difficult economy is that with so many challenges facing us, including debt issues, job losses and people’s concerns at home, many of us will come out stronger. For those that do come out ahead, a common theme you will find is a view of the world centered around optimism. Not false hope but a sense that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Optimism drives ones sense they can make a difference no matter how bad things get.

Consider the following: Management across all industries are beginning to raise their heads above the fox hole and are asking “Who are the people we want to move forward with”? Today, there is as much an opportunity to stand out as a contributor than ever before. The key question in the face of this culture of pessimism (often driven by the news) is: Can you avoid getting sucked into negativity and remain aware of the challenges, while remaining positive?

Yes, being awake to the challenges surrounding us can be emotionally draining and difficult to deal with as one person. In business, we address this by focusing on teamwork, which is much more than a poster on the wall that offers pithy sayings how to get things done. Businesses in this new economy will fail if they don’t learn how to put real teamwork into practice. Think hospital emergency rooms as the model for effective teamwork. Behave with this sense of urgency and you’re more than halfway there.

If you can find ways to bring optimism and genuine teamwork to your organization (or a business you’re looking to join), you become part of the solution. Wait for things to change and hope for the best - you’ll probably find yourself on the sidelines with a reinforced view why things are so bad.

Ten Team Behaviors To Look Out For

It's reasonable to expect teams to collaborate. Human nature however leads people to manage their own "slice of the pie". Management needs to take a hard look at the real message being conveyed across the organization about getting things done. The question can be boiled down to: Is success measured by realized strategic outcomes or is it about not being singled out as the reason for failure? Too often, senior management assumes that groups are working toward a common goal while at the tactical level, sub-groups or departments are playing hot potato with their unique tasks. Being accountable is often about not getting caught holding up the larger project versus being collectively accountable to the overall success.

What are the symptoms that point to issues of team performance? Consider these ten behaviors and attitudes:

1. Low output and productivity
2. Frequent complaints within the team
3. Internal confusion about roles
4. Ineffective meetings
5. Lack of clear goals or low commitment to goals
6. Problems working with the team leader
7. People do not speak up and contribute ideas
8. Decisions are made that people do not understand or support
9. The team does not appear to have good working relationships with other teams
10. People feel that good work is not recognized or teamwork is not valued

If you believe half of these behaviors are present in your group, it's probably worth taking a look at what can be done to proactively turns things around. Much of the work of building team is about having greater transparency and dialogue around the issues described above. Finding ways to talk about it goes a long way in addressing the problems.

The Art Of Delegating

All of us need to delegate at some point. Whether we're the person in charge or doing front-line work, delegating is a critical skill to be effective in the workplace. The difficulty is it requires the following four key behaviors:

• Ability to instruct or teach
• Patience
• Allowing the other person to make mistakes
• Letting go of an insatiable desire for control

Many of us have forgotten what's it's like to learn something new. Our own skills and competence came from others allowing us to step into new roles or responsibilities. We learn best by doing, and delegating to others gives them that opportunity to grow.

When delegating, keep in mind these three things:

1. Does the delegatee understand what's expected of them? Don't assume. Ask!
2. Are you prepared for the delegatee to make mistakes or come back with questions? If not, don't delegate the work. You're only setting them up for failure (in your eyes).
3. Are you willing for this person to do the work using their style and method? How one performs the task is only one way it can be accomplished. Focus more on the outcome you're looking for, not the style or method someone uses to get there.

Are “People Projects” Becoming “Technology Projects”?

It doesn’t take much for a complex strategic initiative to become a “technology project”, void of an end-user focus. The shift from “people” to “technology” can be subtle, as the complexity of the design begins to eclipse the project team’s ability to keep users at the center of design choices. A typical response to this shift is to call anything that involves people a “training issue”, to be addressed by others at a later time. Instead of taking this responsive position, user impact should remain the centerpiece of design choices — regularly reflected on, especially during the design phase of technical projects. Make sure that someone in your organization keeps user concerns in front of the technical design team so that the question is continually asked, “how will these design decisions impact our people?” This should be a daily ritual, bringing a discipline of “translation” to the early design phase of a project, rather than leaving it to training professionals in the eleventh hour.

There Is No "Right Solution"

What makes for a great solution?  First, understand that there are real alternatives to solving a problem.  Teams at all levels in an organization fall into "analysis paralysis" because they fear making the wrong choices.  Instead, focus your team to find the best solution that takes into account the following factors...

1. What is the urgency? The greater the urgency, the more willing your team should be to act.
2. Are the problems understood sufficiently to make a sound recommendation? Again, this is not turning over every stone, but making sure there is a consistent enough understanding by the entire group to come to a sound decision.
3. Does the solution address the problem? Once a decision has been made on how to solve the problem, teams have already spent way too much time discussing the issue.  There is a "fatigue factor" that comes into play, with the collective group losing focus whether the solution still lines up with the problem.

To combat this fatigue, get to a solution with as little process and brainstorming as necessary.  With a reserve of energy still in people's battery, validate the solution against the defined issues.  Tweak the solution and check again.  Treating this as an iterative exercise will yield greater results than spending too much time hashing over the issues.  With this approach, you will end up with a better solution in half the time.

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.

Hot Potato

It’s reasonable to expect teams to collaborate, but human nature leads people to manage their own “slice of the pie”. Management needs to take a hard look at the real message being conveyed across the organization about getting things done. The question can be boiled down to: Is success measured by realized strategic outcomes or is it about not being singled out as the reason for failure? Too often, senior management assumes that groups are working toward a common goal while at the tactical level, sub-groups are playing hot potato with their unique deliverables. Being accountable is often about not getting caught holding up the larger project versus being accountable to the overall success of the project, whatever it takes.

When’s the last time you heard this from another team? “We’re not going to make our deadline and we know this will affect your deliverables. Is there anything we can do to help?” You won’t hear this because, one, it’s an admission of failure, two, groups don’t understand the direct dependencies of their actions on others, and three, teams interpret success based on meeting their own deadlines, not others’.

Transforming team silos such as this, starts with making it explicitly clear that what is expected is a commitment to the overall goal versus sub team success. No one wins if everyone doesn’t win.

New from Teibel: The Organizational Triage Workshop

Trying times, indeed. I'm hearing some of the most negative language regarding financial strength from my clients right now that I've heard in the last twenty years of work in the field. Organizations and institutions are nervous -- and rightly so. The journey ahead is perilous, but not deadly! In light of market conditions, I've compiled some of my best work, most creative tools, and key learnings in my Organizational Triage Workshop. You can find details on this new session here. I've even packaged a special edition of the session for higher education administrators faced with unique challenges, all built from my years of work specifically counseling top-tier universities.

So take a look at the new workshop, and start talking to your teams: learn to weather our economy and work together better than ever!

The Elephant in the Room

Last week, I asked the question: "What's it going to take to stop avoiding and start dealing with the lack of trust in our organizations?" It's a big question, and in most companies, it's the elephant in the room. But there are practical skills we can all develop to stop dancing around the elephant and learn to love change. For management, it’s about getting to the heart of the matter “Why am I not getting greater productivity from my people?” For staff it’s “What’s it going to take for management to understand the real problems that keep us from getting our jobs done?”

Too often these questions are posed rhetorically and we muddle through process change poised as answers, truly afraid of what we might hear if we addressed them head-on. If we’re truly going to move our business from good to great, or through these difficult financial times, a paradigm shift needs to happen in the way we communicate and listen. True communication is not about slick tools, faster internet access or even clear speaking. It’s about raising consciousness of what we put out and how we listen, being more interested in results, not the reasons for our failure.

We have to take our communication to the next level.

1. We have to solve team problems by focusing on issues and results rather than personalities and blame. 
2. We have to motivate our people to do the right things at the right time, not because they have to but because they want to. 
3. We have to reward team success in spite of  living and working in a culture that focuses on individual accomplishments. 
4. We have to develop a workforce that takes responsibility for their actions versus looking for reasons things don’t get done. 
5. We have to create departmental goals that are achievable and are understood by everyone.
6. We have to develop our workforce to embrace mistakes as an opportunity to learn, versus something to avoid.

Applying these principles builds trust in a business culture of change and uncertainty. Just try taking on one of these strategies in your own work. See if you don't  discover a renewed connection with individuals, teams and your entire organization in a way that makes your career more purposeful, productive and satisfying.

Change is the New Cultural Mantra

Imagine this scenario. You come to work one day feeling competent and productive and the next, you’re incapable of performing the simplest of tasks. The accounting system has changed, a new management team is in charge or you’re expected to use the latest PDA. When change happens, we lose our sense of what’s expected of us. These disruptions lead to anxiety and frustration, challenging our notion of productivity. Whether planned or unexpected, all change is a wake-up call. Our first reaction is involuntary, like being wakened abruptly from a dream. Once we have time to think it through, we choose our responses: “Whose brilliant idea was this?” on one side and “It’s about time!” on the other - two completely different reactions for the same event. No wonder our best efforts to manage change fall short.

We’ve been taught to communicate three things to help people in these cases: “Tell ‘em what’s coming, why it’s important, and how they can participate!”. We’re told as long as we do this, people will joyously go along for the ride. And therein lies the problem. People are just going along, ix-nay the joy.

The real problem is a deep skepticism that any “new and improved” process, management restructure or latest technology will help us do our jobs better. We’ve heard these promises before. Management may be communicating the right stuff about what’s coming but they’re ignoring the elephant in the room: What’s it going to take to stop avoiding and start dealing with the lack of trust in our organizations?

New Program for Department Administrators -- Finance Matters!

Higher Education Training ProgramFinance Matters for the Department Administrator

Course Description: This one-day workshop will demystify higher education budgeting and financial practices for departmental administrators. Participants will be introduced to strategies to align resources to fulfill the organizational mission, key elements of financial reports and statements, tools to evaluate financial results and language that will enable constructive dialogue between department and central colleagues.

Finance Matters, Image One

Attendees will learn how to:

• Relate budgets and finances to the university mission
• Articulate department and institutional goals in the budget
• Draw connections between departmental activity and financial statements
• Use financial reports and ratio analysis to evaluate and communicate results
• Work collaboratively with Central administrators to effectively manage institutional resources

About the Instructors: Howard Teibel and Tracy Filosa draw on complementary skills and in depth understanding of college and university administration to deliver an interactive and practical program.

Howard Teibel has twenty years of experience in organizational development and change management. He has led team-building programs, facilitated departmental restructurings, and created implementation and training plans for ERP initiatives. Tracy Filosa has twenty years of experience in higher education as a financial and investment analyst, management consultant, project manager, training developer, presenter and writer.

Finance Matters, Thumbnail

Download a PDF of this course description to share. For more information on schedule, and offering this course in your organization, contact Teibel Education today.

What Do You Do Anyways?

Trust in the workplace is the experience of feeling connected to our contribution and those we’re serving. It may seem lucky when we happen to fall into the right job at the right time. But the experience of trusting ourselves, the work we do and those around us is something we manage, whether consciously or not. When we feel good about ourselves and the work we’re doing, we treat each other differently than when we feel guarded and protected. Can we be more intentional about how we manage relationships and do our work so that we can increase this trust factor? Over the last decade, learning to manage change has been the mantra. Maybe it’s time to look instead at how trust impacts our relationship with change. By definition, change is constant. You can respond to it, you can be proactive, but change by its very nature is in flux. Our need to feel in control is in our DNA and drives our desire to manage change. But how much change do we really have control over? Maybe one of a few things we do have control over is how we treat each other, and how others treat us? Could it be that the attitude we bring to work has greater impact on the success of our business than any other measure?

One place attitude has great impact is how management and staff relate to each other. In my twenty years of consulting, a consistent complaint shared by management of staff is, “Why am I not getting greater productivity from my people?” From those doing the work, the complaint is, “Management has no idea what it takes to get the work done.” This lack of appreciation of each other’s role breeds an inevitable absence of trust between these two groups and reveals a widespread lack of genuine dialogue down an organization. This disconnect has great impact on people’s productivity, motivation and connection to their work.

It’s time to stop dancing around how these two groups privately view each other and begin to develop a greater appreciation of the scope of each other’s work. Only then will management and staff begin to show the mutual respect needed to build genuine trust.

The Real Value of HR

The promise of Human Resources is to set a standard for how we work together in an organization. Take this mission statement from a Human Resource Department: The Human Resources Department will serve as a strategic partner along side of administration, faculty, and staff in supporting the mission of the Institution. The Human Resources Department will take a leadership role in providing services that support the organization by promoting the concept that our employees are our most valuable resource and will be treated as such. The Human Resources Department will act as catalysts enabling all employees to contribute at optimum levels towards the success of the business.

Unfortunately, HR gets a bad rap, often because they are forced to take on issues that should be dealt with within a department. When a manager has difficulty with one of her employees, the easy solution is making it HR’s problem. When an employee takes issue with management, HR is there to listen.

When it’s at its best, HR serves as a positive enabler, helping the employee solve their own problem. Too often it feels as if HR operates as a parent, setting limits or fixing situations, versus setting an example for what it is to help others help themselves.

This is not an easy task. Some people don’t want to help themselves. They want someone or some group to fix their situation. In these situations HR can play a useful role in helping the employee learn why it is important to solve their own problems and how to get there, versus using HR as a venting session.

For Human Resources to truly be an enabling partner, Senior Management needs to charge it with encouraging all levels in the organization to work at solving their own problems, to do the difficult work of demonstrating honest communication and working to build trust at the local level.

HR’s best asset is to help, not fix. Fixing doesn’t work; it only keeps the same dysfunctions in place.

Broadening the Definition of "The Bottom Line"

I don’t like change. If you say you do, there is a good chance you are either a masochist, a consultant, or just plain lying. Sure, there are a lot of benefits to change—it can even be inspiring, but do you really seek it out? Or is it just that you are adept at responding to it? Love it or hate it there is no denying that change is disruptive, plain and simple. In business, you’re constantly faced with change - new markets, economic forces, staffing issues, software upgrades, the list goes on. The work of the 21st century business leader is to evaluate how to deal with this endless list of opportunities and challenges, and filter it through the “bottom-line” – financial measures that reflect the health of the organization.

Besides financial measures, what else should leaders take into account in making strategic decisions? How about “Trust Equity”, or how well you and your people operate transparently with each other.

Do you not say your most important assets are those you surround yourself with? Ideally, this core group of bright, articulate and entrepreneurial individuals operate as your eyes and ears, evaluating economic, market and technology changes.

Does it matter if your financials are solid but there’s tension across department? Should you care if your staff isn’t operating to their potential but you’re still making money or expenses are under control? How often do we honestly step back from the fires we are dealing with and ask the broader question “If we were a really solid team, how much more could we do?”

Face it. You really don’t know what’s going on. Your direct reports will do everything in their power to show how well and on target they are, while avoiding news that may concern or upset you. This should come as no surprise. It’s human nature to look out for ones security.

This is a core benefit of building trust equity. Trust is the means to an end, the most important end is knowing what’s going on around you. Although we often operate by the principle “No news is good news”, it’s “What you don’t know that will kill you!” Building trust allows you to manage down in a way that encourages people to uncover issues they don’t think you want to hear.

A Clash of Cultures

As we speak, technology is reinventing relationship. Instant messaging continues to find its way into the workplace, slowly replacing that outdated technology called “email”. It should be of no surprise why this is catching on, given IM is that perfect balance of achieving dialogue without having to deal with eye contact and other interpersonal annoyances that come with having to influence people sitting across a conference table. Discussion boards, blogs, social networks – the way we connect is changing faster than our ability to embrace any of these tools. And with a generation of up-and-coming leaders who grew up embracing electronic media, our views on how work gets done and the meaning of “relationship” is under attack.

We are living in a clash of cultures, those of us who have spent a lifetime developing face-to-face interpersonal skills, and the generation that is weaving emoticons (:-o zz) and instant messaging phrases (PCM or LOL) into our professional dialogue. How do we develop new definitions of relationship and trust that draws from our rich history of oral communication while taking into account the changing nature of written communication and how work gets done? Is this cultural dichotomy something we as seasoned leaders continue to resist or dismiss (“when I was young, we walked 12 miles to school and we liked it!”) or do we collectively learn how to be efficient and effective, while maintaining that personal connection with each other? If this isn’t a perfect storm for the quote by Alvin Toffler, I don’t know what is:

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

At a deeper level, how does building trust fit into our 21st century organizations? Does it mean the same thing to future leaders of our institutions as it does to the generation who “walked the floors” and connected one-on-one with those doing the work?

These questions are at the heart of what we need to engage our current and future leaders in discussion around.

The Three Things

Around organizational objectives, we define too many goals. When we speak, we have too much content. In our business vision, there is too much we want changed. Take a step back and ask yourself “What are the three things _____ ?” (Fill in the blank)

• …I want to get done today • …our organization should be focusing on • …I want to communicate in this talk

This simple act will drive what’s most important to the surface. The rest is either a secondary concern or will get done without much thought.

Let’s hear from experts in this field, none other than Monty Python. In this scene from The Holy Grail, a monk is reading from a book of scripture:

“…First shall thou take out the holy pin. Then shall thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall the number thou shall count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shall thou not count, neither count now two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out!”

I couldn’t have said it any better.

Decision-Making and Leadership

A book that was recently introduced to me by a good friend has validated and deepened my view on leadership, how decisions get made and trust. “Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes For An Answer”, written by Professor Michael Roberto, speaks to the value of a decision-making process that focuses on “deciding how to decide” versus the purely efficient approach of finding the “right solution” to a problem. Focusing on the “decision-making process” has tremendous benefit around building trust in and across organizations. Why? Senior leaders rightfully see themselves as charged with making the right decisions for their organizations. They have a genetic disposition to seeing a problem and quickly identifying the solution. Isn’t this what we expect from those in charge? But what if being in charge is less about having the right answers and more about using the people around you to come up with the “best solution”? This is one of the premises of Michael Roberto’s book.

It makes perfect sense to solve a problem quickly when the issue is straightforward or lacks complexity. Asking for collaboration when there is no intention to consider alternatives is disingenuous and only serves to diminish trust.

However, there are many more decisions that would benefit from rigorous dialogue before coming to a decision. Cutting work force, expanding to different markets or generating new revenue streams are all examples of decisions that have many layers of complexity. In these cases, bringing the right people together having the right conversations increases the likelihood of a well thought out solution. And with the presence of honest dialogue, a higher level of trust can develop between parties.

If we find ways to encourage participation in problem solving, starting with “deciding how to decide”, our leaders and managers will be jumping out bed to get to work and participate in healthy debates. This is exciting work and gets people powerfully engaged. Not only will you get better results, but you’ll see trust in action.

You can also find Professor Michael Roberto’s blog at http://michael-roberto.blogspot.com/.

An Historical Perspective on Trust

A very interesting perspective on this topic was written by the London Professor Geoffrey Hosking. It's called: Why We Need a History of Trust. In it he speaks to trust in the context of “joint responsibility” going back to traditional Russian society. Households would collectively share the responsibility of taxes and providing recruits for the army. If one household was unable to carry their weight, another one would step up. As Professor Hosking explains “all members of a village community had an interest in ensuring every household enjoyed a basic level of subsistence, enough to pay its dues and bring up healthy young men”. This approach both served the rulers of the time and laid the groundwork for the concept of mutual aid in times of adversity.

Why care about this? Simple. Shared responsibility is how we take care of each other. No one group (family, community, society) forever enjoys continuous fortune without periodic adversity. It’s the act of providing help to others in those times of need that allow for mutual trust to develop. This applies to the world scale as well as how we approach getting work done from 9-5. We can learn a lot from bringing “collective responsibility” to the workplace.