OntoSomething

Peter Block's Latest Musings - Part 2

Following the last post on Monday, here are a few more nuggets from Peter Block.

• "Analysis" is a defense mechanism against the future.

• Hospitality is central to community. We must do better at meeting strangers.

• The notion of "deficiencies" in others is simply a way of controlling each other. We must focus on each others' gifts.

• Reality TV is scripted. Don't listen to it.

• The small group is the unit of transformation. It is there that we realize we don't know each other.

• You can't transform with people who think they know you!

• We all have a story. Get bored if your story doesn't change.

I could go on... How do you like this stuff?

Peter Block's Latest Musings...

In October I went to the Organizational Development Network annual conference. This year it was held in Seattle, a gloriously frisky place with many great restaurants, including one I highly recommend introduced to me by colleague, David White, not far from Pike's Place, called Le Pichet. The broiled burgundy escargots were divine. Thanks David! But I digress.

There were several inspiring presenters at the conference. Management guru, Peter Block, was the most memorable keynoter...his provocative musings were worth writing down, and I'll share some here:

• Always acknowledge that people showed up

• Speakers are simply an excuse for people to come together.

• Organizations break us into small parts. The work of organizational development professionals is to bring people together... and to restore our humanity.

• We understand what it is to individually transform, but what about communal / collective transformation?

• All learning is social. (We can go to the mountain, but then we come back!)

• Clients are funny...they wait for 2 years to act and then are in a huge RUSH!

• Being practical can be our enemy...You can't problem solve your way into the future.

More in a few days...

Do you pull your weight in your team? Try the "high performing" team checklist.

I'm working with a leadership team right now that has asked how they can get to the next level together. They have already experienced noteworthy successes together -- becoming much more cohesive, open to feedback and change, as well as more skilled communicators...and are proud of it, but know there is more to do.

I designed a self-assessment check list, in part based on a model by Jones called "Major Growth Processes in Groups." Here is a piece of it.

Download Self-Assessment- high performing team checklist

Cómo eliminar tortas atoradas y cuellos de botella en tu equipo

(VERSION IN ENGLISH IS BELOW.)

En un restaurante Subway pedí una torta de 12 pulgadas. Me asombró la velocidad y eficiencia con que el joven empleado juntaba y armaba los ingredientes principales. Era increíblemente ágil. (Habiendo pedido muchas tortas Subway en mis tiempos, soy conocedora en lo que a velocidad para armar tortas se refiere.) Así que le dije, “¡Hombre, qué rápido eres!” y me contestó con evidente orgullo que recién lo habían clasificado entre los más rápidos para armar tortas en una competencia Subway a nivel nacional.

Pero cuando pasó la torta al siguiente empleado para que le colocara la verdura y yo la pagara, perdí toda la ventaja de tiempo que me había brindado el empleado campeón, y salí del restaurante con mi torta en un tiempo normal – quizá otros 5 minutos.

Como asesora especializada en hacer más eficientes los equipos, me encuentro a cada rato con estos cuellos de botella. En los equipos, los cuellos de botella suelen ser individuos que no comulgan con la perspectiva de la mayoría, o cuyas ideas no son tomadas en cuenta (o algún otro síntoma de disfunción de equipos). El cliente nunca saca provecho de los empleados estrella ni de la eficiencia interna cuando los equipos no afrontan las cuestiones implicadas en los cuellos de botella.

5 tips para eliminar los cuellos de botella (o la preparación lenta de tortas) en los equipos:

1. Supón de entrada que cualquiera que esté en desacuerdo (el cuello de botella) tiene una razón válida. Casi siempre es así.

2. Pídele a la persona que está poniendo resistencia que explique su renuencia, diciéndole algo como “Dinos lo que no estamos captando con respecto a esta cuestión”.

3. Escucha y haz preguntas.

4. Dale apoyo total a esa persona delante del grupo (y no dejes de reformular lo que tú entendiste que ha dicho y pídele confirmación).

5. Plantéale al grupo la responsabilidad de abordar la cuestión que ha surgido. Evita crear un ambiente en el que el disidente se sienta enfrentado diametralmente al grupo y se vea obligado a defender su punto de vista con uñas y dientes.

Conclusión: Ignorar resistencias y querer salir adelante a pesar de ellas siempre provocará cuellos de botella en un futuro. Invierte tiempo de una vez en afrontarlas y trabajarlas, y ahorrarás tiempo después.

Segunda conclusión: En los equipos sanos, el grupo se hace responsable de responder a las resistencias mutuas, de apoyarse, y de integrar pedazos de sabiduría divergente.

How to eliminate "sandwich jams" and "bottle necks" in your team

(VERSIÓN EN ESPAÑOL ARRIBA.)

At a Subway shop I ordered a 12 inch sandwich. I was absolutely amazed by the speed and efficiency by which the tall, young employee gathered and assembled the main ingredients. He was fast. (Having ordered my share of Subway sandwiches, I know sandwich speed when I see it.) So I tell him, “Wow, that was quick!” and he proudly reported that he had recently ranked among the top in sandwich-building speed in a nationwide Subway restaurant competition.

But as he slid the sandwich to the next employee for completion with vegetables and payment, I lost all the benefit of the warp speed, and was out the door in the normal time frame…maybe another 5 minutes.

As a consultant who specializes in making teams more efficient, I often run into these bottle necks. In teams, the bottlenecks tend to be individuals who do not ascribe to the majority view or who are marginalized (or some other symptom of team dysfunction.) The client never benefits from star performers and internal efficiencies when teams do not address these bottleneck issues.

5 tips to eliminate bottle necks (or slow sandwich-building) in teams:

1. Assume that anyone who is creating a bottleneck does so for a valid reason, based on some prior experience. It shows integrity to stick to what is true for oneself, so treat dissent as a gift from the person.

2. Ask the person resisting to explain his/her hesitation by asking something like “What are we are missing regarding this issue from your perspective?”

3. Listen and ask questions.

4. Fully support that person in front of the group (including restating what you heard him/her say and ask for confirmation).

5. Put the responsibility on the group to address the different perspective that has surfaced. Avoid creating an atmosphere that puts the dissenter in the polar opposite position from the majority and promotes defensiveness. Instead work with the majority to understand and address the concern.

Bottom line: Ignoring resistances and moving forward anyway will always cause bottlenecks at a later time. Remember, people usually do not need to get their own way, but they do want to be heard.

Double bottom line: In healthy teams, the group should be held responsible for responding to each other’s resistances, for supporting each other and for integrating differing bits of wisdom.

The Legal Profession vs. Management Consulting - Billing Time or Billing Value?

It finally happened...as reported in this week's Wall Street Journal (8/24/09) the legal industry is slowly breaking its tradition of hourly billing.

According to the front page article "Billable Hour Under Attack" by Nathan Koppel and Ashby Jones, clients of legal services are beginning to move away from the straight hourly models because of new scrutiny of their expenses in this tough economic environment. It seems that firms who buy legal services are renegotiating with their providers to demand flat fee billing, instead of paying fees which have risen in the last number of years to $300 - $1000 an hour, according to American Lawyer magazine.

But before I go further, why this topic on a management consulting blog? Call it a rant based on past experience when I received a $47 bill for a call to thank my attorney for her services, but I have always had a pet peeve around hourly billing in professional services industry. And the same standard applies to myself as a management consultant. I strive to consistently to bill based on the value of the services I am providing, instead of the time it takes me to complete a project. (Credit goes to Alan Weiss, PhD, and his book Million Dollar Consulting for sharpening the argument for the whole management consultant community on "value-based consulting".)

While surely many attorneys would argue the contrary (saying that I don't fully appreciate their unique challenges), the message of time-based billing from a client perspective in professional services sends the wrong fundamental message, namely:

1. Client interests (results, quality) is secondary to compensating every minute of my time.

2. Clients have no need to consider cost-benefit and should have minimal control regarding end costs.

3. There is no reason to fear that clients' hours are padded, even though billing by time and being efficient are diametrically opposed. Just trust us implicitly.

I could go on.

What's different for management consultants who bill on the value of our services (which not all management consultants follow) is that what means most in the agreement is a solid relationship with the client. And the billing structure reflects my concern for that client relationship! As long as the scope of the project does not change, neither does their cost. I will do the necessary to deliver the result according to our agreement. And having agreements which reflect this philosophy disallows surprising clients with $47 bills in exchange for a call to say "thank you."

I want to be clear that certainly many attorneys are client focused and go above and beyond for their clients. My point is simply to state that working within a time-based structure sends a mixed message regarding what is most important and puts clients and professional service providers at odds.

While the legal industry is responding to this new fixed fee trend by saying that this is a temporary "correction" in the marketplace (just as price corrections are happening in other industries), buyers of legal services seem to be seeing this move as potentially permanent. I can only hope that this economic situation continues to shake up the status quo on time-based billing, which has always seemed to me as entirely counter intuitive.

France on the U.S.: From “love-hate” to “tentative-skeptic”

I’ve just spent several weeks in France, in part to get a firsthand look at Franco-American relations on the street in 2009. A few observations, past and present…

For the last number of decades -- there has been a clear “love-hate” relationship between France and the U.S. My experience in the country over the last 25 years reveals that French perceptions of Americans generally tipped positive until about the year 2000.

For young French people, Americans were mostly regarded favorably in large part due to its economic power that yielded so much “cool stuff” that they in France didn’t have access to, but wanted. From mid-age and older French citizens, it was the U.S. role in France during the two World Wars that significantly contributed to an overall positive rapport.

But Americans were also disliked over these years for a variety of reasons, including what some see as a jealousy of U.S. economic/political dominance in the world that France once enjoyed. Said dominance came hand-in-hand with (arguably) an inevitable culture of mounting arrogance, not unlike the perception of French arrogance which stems from rhetoric on French superiority by former General and President Charles de Gaulle after WWII. All this, along with the French perception of American lack of savoir vivre, was perceived as threatening the French way of life.

Fast forward to 2009 in a fully globalized economy, France enjoys much of the economic buying power and all of the cool stuff it wants. And the economic crisis has reinforced long-standing French notions of the hazards of over-consumption and lack of regulation that were used as justification against following U.S. market practices. And the recent military interventions, particularly in the George W. Bush years, run harshly counter to French political ideology. Severe criticism mounts these days as well on topics that range from the poor U.S. education system and the lack of regard for the environment, as well as an ongoing culture of excesses.

Is there anything, then, which the French look favorably upon, relative to the American culture?

Certainly there is admiration for the physical beauty of the country as a whole, the country’s geographic diversity, and also for the unique cultural “can-do” optimism. And those who have traveled to the U.S. have attested to being treated very well in the U.S. Of course, the Obama factor doesn’t hurt either, but it would be premature at this point to label the French anything more than “tentative-skeptic” vis-à-vis the U.S.

BP's MacLeod: Change-management programs are doomed to fail

This came to my inbox*:

"BP executive Fiona MacLeod says corporate culture is "addicted" to change-management programs that fail because companies cannot sustain them. New leaders usually are more interested in making a "splash" than following through with measures that have been set into motion, and employees often lack the skills and training to implement change, she said."

This to me is the difference between the well-intentioned, "quick start" clients who choose big name speakers to "motivate" their leaders...and more long-term oriented, ROI-oriented clients who know that the follow-through is where the value lies. This concept speaks precisely to one of our differentiators at IA: We support our clients through a desired change with the right amount of support given their goals and resources.

2 current examples of this:

1. We are currently working with one client implementing a leadership program that has me on site an average of one week a month to work with the leadership team. Plus we implemented monthly, one-hour coaching sessions (telecon) with each leader for the length of the program. These elements are part of our plan for leadership growth and integration, after establishing individual, team and organizational goals on the front end, based on hard data. And later we will measure our results.

2. Another global client, however, is taking care of much of the support and follow-through internally, so our job is raise awareness and jump start their forward movement. We provide an initial multi-day group session, provide one hour of coaching afterwards, and join up with them again in 3-6 months to process their status, facilitate the sharing of learnings, and help them outline next steps. Our role is primarily to be present for milestones, while internally they are supporting their leaders on the day-to-day journey.

The point here is that planning for the follow-through of any initiative is the only way to achieve sustainable change that leaders want. Work out with your management consultant who is responsible for which pieces of the implementation, based on the internal resources available and make sure you have the ROI you require.

*courtesy of NAWBO SmartBrief (National Association of Women Business Owners) delivered on 7/14/09.

What Ruth Bader Ginsburg Says about Gender Diversity: A Really Interesting Interview

While diversity conversations in the US have historically taken place largely around the topics of race, ethnicity and gender given our particular cultural context (and more recently sexual orientation and differently-abled), the conversation is substantially expanding. Specifically, organizations are looking to foster an environment which is more inclusive of many kinds of difference.

That said, the current conversation regarding Supreme Court Justice candidate, Sonia Sotomayor, gives us another opportunity to explore and discuss the diversity question.

Below is a link for an excellent interview with the New York Times with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who talks about women on the bench and their effect on the dynamics and decisions of the court.

You may need to sign in (free) to have access to the article, but well worth it because of the clear examples she uses about her experience as the only current female Supreme Court Justice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12ginsburg-t.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

The Limitations of Having Goals: A Story Set in Patzcuaro, Mexico

This month, I was with my husband in Salamanca, Mexico, not far from Celaya or Morelia, for the wedding of a dear friend. The ceremony and celebration were big fun, and the following day we went sightseeing in Patzcuaro, Mexico, in the state of Guanajuato.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Patzcuaro -- world famous for its celebration of Day of the Dead, as well as for its fabulous ice cream. (Try the caramel ice cream, or “pasta” flavor.) This little town has a large, lovely square with enormous trees and park benches, lots of green space and very neat and tidy. There are big verandas in front of the shops that line the square, giving plenty of space for café tables, wandering window shoppers, and the occasional sidewalk vendor.

Patzcuaro also happens to be the former town of residence of the people we were with (the parents of the groom) when they were a young couple. That afternoon, while enjoying a lovely lunch on the square, Ramón told us a story…

Many years ago on the square, out goofing around with friends, Ramón saw an old woman sitting on the far side of the square. She was selling peaches. The group felt a bit sorry for her and spontaneously decided to offer to buy all of the peaches she was selling so that she could go home and rest. So they approached her and stated that they wanted to buy every single one of the peaches.

However, they were surprised and baffled when they heard her response and explanation: “Absolutely not,” she said. "Why?" the group asked incredulously. And after a pause she responded,"Because what in the world would I do tomorrow?”

OK. I just love this story. It pulls my brain and heart in several directions. One direction calls me to consider what happens to all of us when we have goals, but we don’t have a vision for ourselves. Toward what do my goals lead me? Without a long term plan, we can’t even conceive of what would happen if we suddenly achieved our goal 100%.

Goals seem easy: both setting them, and achieving them. Most of us have lots of practice on this. But vision is tough. A vision, by definition, leads to something bigger than oneself. It requires us to see ourselves as capable of anything, to dream big and to not be afraid to achieve it.