Change is Never Straight

Controlled chaos is a normative term in the management of change. Change is never straight. Change defies a linear constraint. Change is messy and change is curved. Leaders must be curved people.

Mentoring a growth team, we reviewed normal impact of change on the growth leader. In this model vision leads to planning and implementation leads to problems and pressures leads to perseverance leads to accomplishment and success leads to celebration and rejoicing leads to increased vision. Or you can choose crisis instead of perseverance which leads to exhaustion and withdrawal can lead to restoration can lead to increased vision. Or crisis can abort the progress. There are hundreds of divergent paths that may happen. Change is messy and curves a lot.

Change is not for straight line people. They are good at regular performance and processes. Change bothers them. A leader must learn to be a curved person. Change is inevitable and needed. Leaders lead through the curves.

There is one major curve in change you should explore and master. It is the curve between your starting level of productivity and your landing level of productivity. In that curve lies all the potential for disaster and triumph. In that curve many leaders lose sight of vision. In that curve success is assured and failure is certain. Master the curve and master change.

Starting Level: Preceding productivity curve is your present level of productivity and accomplishment. How successful are you? What are your measurements? Know them and get them recorded.

Plan: Now, plan the change that you intend to take your business or other endeavor into the next level of productivity. Go from 100 widgets a day to 200 widgets a day. Add a new product line while keeping current production levels on others. Penetrate a new market. Implement improvement in service. Change for growth.

Launch: Launch the change. Communicate, take action, and plunge into the change. Paralysis by analysis is deadly. There is a moment and point of demarcation. Take it. Fall off the mountain. That’s right fall off the mountain of your current productivity level.

Freefall: Change causes freefall. Problems come from change. Teams get confused. Productivity decreases while people absorb new information. The right screw becomes the wrong screw. Questions abound. Production plummets. This was in your plan, right? You made allowance for this, correct? No? Whoops. Fingers get pointed. Doubt crawls up the ladder to challenge the change rationale.

Adjust: Light shines. People push through learning curves. The services straighten out on the planned track. There is smiling in the camp instead of groaning. You knew you would get here, you just wished it had happened on schedule and without the problems. The changes begin to push productivity above your starting level.

Landing Level: Why endure the pain of change? Reach new levels. Plan diligently. Execute well. Adapt strong. Obtain outcomes. Receive reward. Of course, it does not always look so pretty. You might drag onto the landing level scarred and scattered.

Summary: This conversation is one I’ve had with hundreds of learning leaders. Every new leader expects smooth change, gets into the curve, panics, and needs some encouragement. Have your eyes open when you enter the change curve. You still might get blindsided, but you will be ready. Adapt with good and frequent communication and intentional feedback points. Go ahead and fall off the mountain. The landing spot is higher than where you stand.

6 Summer Tips for Business Development

This AP article stimulated good thought. It is a quick read. Take out a piece of paper as you read an write down at least 3 action items you are going to make happen.

What do you do when you are in downtime?

Every business hits downtime. Sometimes it is planned or seasonal or just happens for no explainable reason. It can be some of your most profitable time.

This AP writer – Jennifer Witter does a good job noting six downtime action items:

Grow Your Network – Refresh Your Web Presence (include social) – Assess Goals – Get Staff on Track – Automate – Get Away

Enjoy…. 6 Things Small Businesses Should Do This Summer

Manage Well – Kill The Vine

“I don’t take requests for people who are not in front of me. That’s called gossip.”

Every manager must intersect with this issue. Every manager must stop this issue as soon as it comes. You cannot let gossip abide in your team. No greater destructive force exists in the workplace.

What is gossip? Gossip is a negative leaning comment spoken by one person about another person who is not in the present conversation. Sorry if you don’t agree, that is my definition and I stick to it. After leading tens of thousands of constituents, members, and workers, this definition helps limit pain and promote a healthy environment.

What does it sound like? “Well, have you heard Jay is having trouble at home?” Innocuous? Hardly. This is a loaded, pain giving, detrimental, judgmental statement that has no place in a healthy work environment. Managers, you need to get this out of your meetings. You need to get this out of your hallways and back rooms. This is political minded manipulation and leads to the wrong decisions and conclusions.

Where does it come from? Sometimes it has a compassionate root. We really want to be tender and understanding toward others. How many times have I said something like this? Too often. That is why managers must have a no nonsense approach to prohibiting. All of us slip into these thoughts. Humans just do it. Our nature leans to wanting to include others in our judgments for affirmation of ideas. But, it hurts others.

Where else does it come from? Sometimes it is simply poisonous. Yes, there are many who live to manipulate the thinking of those around them. Of course you know who they are. They are attached to the rumor vine in the work place and incipiently receive and feed the monster. Ever had a good associate maligned by the vine and lose credibility? It happens. The most astute executives fall prey to listening to viners and forgetting the source of the slander. We allow hall talkers to get into our circle and affect our decision making.

How do you stop it? You can’t. But you can limit influence on yourself and you can constrain the amount flowing in your teams. One third shift worker came to me in a shop and complained about having to hear continual negative talk from other workers. Night shifts get boring. People don’t have access to all the day information. Gossip flows. It was a good time for some intervention. One by one I met with each night, second, and day shift worker on the team. One by one, I looked each of them in the eye. One by one, I gave each of them permission to respond to any company or non-company person and say the following statement when another would start a negative complaint about another team member. “That person is my co-worker. I like to think well of them. I’d prefer you did not make negative comments to me. Why don’t you talk directly to them.” When a predatory maligner hits that wall a few times, they tend to take the pain to some other group in their life like church or family or the bar down the street. Gossip loves the path of least resistance.

What if there is truth to it? So? Truth is not the issue. Negative conversation is the issue. When my children begin to learn some reason (three years old), I instruct each of them this way. “Don’t tattle on your brother. If he is doing something dangerous, come tell me. Otherwise, just talk to him.” Hopefully, your team is older than three. Of course if a team member is doing drugs on the job or being malicious or not following procedures action needs taken. Team members may have not been able to reach them or feel threatened if they try. Then, it must be moved up the chain. Maybe a couple of coworkers can get together with the person (not alone behind the back) and talk it out before running it up the manager pole.

What happens if you don’t address it? It will eventually undermine the performance of the team. Negative politics is a painful way to live and inefficient in decision outcomes. The cumulative effect will strip away at morale. People will avoid creative thought and innovation. A dull zombie glaze might be noticed in the team when it is advanced.

Summary: My hard line stance of not taking requests for another person communicates quite clearly. When a coworker of Jack comes with the seemingly harmless, “Jack would like to take next Friday off.” I respond with, “I’d be glad to entertain Jack’s request. Why not have Jack ask me, himself?” and go on with good managing. Communicate open concern along with privacy.

At the lake, I have an acre in the woods. Poison ivy likes to vine and pop up in the shade of the trees. Every Spring, out comes the herbicide and I walk the property and kill every leaf I can find of the stuff. When I started doing this it took an hour and even some digging up of vines. After three years, it takes a few minutes. if you stop a vine when the sprout pokes through the ground, you don’t have to deal with a thumb thick vine or an hundred instances at the base of every tree.

The Rule of Synergy: Three Have to Have Accelerators

“The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” Phil

Engage others in creative and synergistic endeavors. Purposefully find ways to force team member interplay for power results. Be sensitive and firm. This is not a day at the ropes course. This is in the work place on real tasks that have real risk of failure and real potential for success and reward.

“Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential. They experience synergy only in small, peripheral ways in their lives. But creative experiences can be produced regularly, consistently, almost daily in people’s lives. It requires enormous personal security and openness and a spirit of adventure.” Steven Covey

It takes a LEADER: Good executive leaders understand this rule. Leadership is required. Manager thought tends to avoid this risky behavior. Lead.

Personal Security: The workplace should ooze with personal security and powerful self esteem and a sense of individual dignity. Of course it might not be happening where you lead. Then you need to work on it. People need to understand accountability and responsibility and the safety of making mistakes from which we learn.

Accountability means I understand my actions and results impact all those around me and I account that into my decisions. Others will hold me accountable for what I do. They will rejoice in tandem, forgive forthright mistakes, and hold me responsible for results both individual and together.

Responsibility means my action will impact me directly. I get it. I understand it. I welcome it. Good or bad results, I am responsible for my actions.

Personal security can only be reinforced in such a dual environment. Many lack personal security and are looking for everyone from mom and dad to the government to supervisors to take responsibility for their success or failures. Those people cannot thrive in synergy at optimum levels. But they can start where they are, grow, and experience more daily.

Openness: Every team has to find the place of what Jim Collins calls, “brutally confronting the facts.” It is not negative. It is a direct and non-personal approach to dealing with the blips, glitches, misstatements, wrong turns, customer complaints, and missed deadlines. Dancing around the issues because a team member is overly sensitive inhibits synergy. You have to want synergy. You have to desire synergy. You have to yearn for synergy to get past covered conversations into open, intelligent discussion.

Spirit of Adventure: A community leader speaking at a business leaders’ lunch asked for a show of hands. “Who loves to do things with uncertain results and a high risk?” Only one hand among 450 went up. “Well”, he said, “that is the definition of adventure.” Among all of these senior executives, bankers, lawyers, CEOs, and wizened warriors of the workplace, the sense of adventure had died. For synergy to happen every day, the third ingredient is a spirit of adventure. Individually and together the team needs to led into a continual spirit of adventure.

On a powerfully synergistic team, a client came with a bothersome technical improbability. Theoretically, what they were doing should work. But, it was failing at several levels of production and the supporting vendors had sent them to us for resolution. After some frustrating attempts, one of the team just would not let it go. He tested and tried and worked with the other members to come up with a solution. At first, we discovered how to force it through our production engine, but only with effort. Then synergy exploded. A simple solution was implemented that allowed the originating production shop to perform without having to upgrade their equipment or outsource the job to us. Our team invented themselves synergistically out of a job that was highly profitable. Openness means honesty. Sense of personal security means do the right thing for the client. Spirit of adventure means taking on the improbable and finding a way to do it anyway.

Manage Well – Document – Publish – Train – Measure DPTM

Manage Well : Document- Publish – Train – Measure: DPTM

Capability maturity models for process in management are based on a simple principle. Document what you expect. Publish it to others. Train them. Follow up with measurement to ensure it is being used and results are being achieved as designed. Some years before I knew anything about CMM, this was hammered into me by an astute manager and mentor. This can apply to any area. Don’t just focus on daily routines. Think about quarterly reports or employee review handling. What about an organizational change? Is it right to use email and quick information on high impact items while painstakingly covering easy routines? But, we do it, don’t we?

You don’t have to belong to the training department or use games to get this. Simple and consistent application of these principles will win you fans in your team.

Why It Works: When you DPTM, you should consider using as many different modes as possible. Don’t just write it down in an email and expect people to understand and follow. It won’t happen.

There are seven understood, primary roots of understanding in learning.

Kinetic – Do it. Touch it. Get physical with it. In a production shop, there are many for whom this is the deepest root of understanding.

Emotional – Yes, some people have to get emotional to ‘Get it.’ Emotions have a big vocabulary. Anger, hatred, frustration, joy, happiness, anxiety, fear, angst, wild hearted abandon, quizzical, consternation, confusion, engaged, light-hearted, enchanted, apoplexy, fixation, consumed, apathetic, mournful. Some people have to grieve over the last item to receive the next one. Believe it and allow for it. Don’t judge team members while they are sorting through emotions. It is a learning process. Now, if they camp on negative emotions, you have some issues to resolve.

Intellectual – Wow. Yes, we all want our team members to study and understand what is happening. But, it is not required for everyone.

Discussion – Even if the subject itself is not discussed, if there is discussion surrounding the process or procedure, it makes for better understanding. Even a negative discussion can open up the ability to understand. Leave this out at a major risk of disconnecting. I’ve seen great people leave companies just because this was not handled well.

Music – Ever wonder why that teenager can learn with loud music in the background or why every movie has sound continually? It helps. For some, it is necessary.

Auditory – We all need to hear what is happening.

Visual – Get your eyes on it. Look over the documents. Attach some graphics. This does not mean literal learning. Many visuals do not connect with the words and paper. They need additional stimulus with color and graphics and maybe even motion.

None of us use only one of these for understanding. Engage them all and you will cover your team’s needs. The more modes of communication, the deeper the message tends to embed.

What each means: DPTM

Document: When you document a policy or process or procedure, you write it down. That can and should include supporting graphics and video and screen captures where appropriate. Email is not documentation. Email might be a delivery method for a document, but an email itself should never be considered good documentation. Documentation is compliance checked, authorized, categorized, organized, stored, and retrievable. Back pocket documentation is dangerous.

Publish: Once you have agreed upon documentation that represents the policy, process, or procedure, you need a communication system that ensures all upstream and downstream team members involved have been notified. Give adequate time for review and questions.

Train: Oh, boy. This one is skipped too often. Well, she should have read it, right? Wrong. Train with the published documentation in hand or on screen. Verify and ask revealing questions that help you understand if they understand. Let the person solo the procedure with the trainer observing. In fact, have the trainer do the process in front of the person before they attempt to solo. Make sure the documentation is readily available for the trainee to refresh. Sometimes you can forget a key point or go long periods between using a procedure and need that original training material alongside at 3am.

Get a sign off. That is not a failsafe. It does challenge the trainee to pay close attention and communicate if it does not make sense to them.

Measure: Include verification and communication of measurement criteria for any routine. This is a good place to make sure the trainee understands what the expected result looks like when the process or procedure is completed or the policy followed. Then implement a measurement tool on a frequency fit to task. Everything doesn’t need measured every iteration, but much does and patterns monitored for continuous service improvement.

Manage well. Apply sensible principles. Consider impact. Have fun.

In Plant Planning Survey – 2 minutes. Free Download

Print13 happens in a few weeks. This international gathering of In-Plants and Commercial printers is a powerful way to meet some new folks, get educated and informed, and see what is new and changing.

Your progress probably won’t be on a banner, but it should be noted. I want to note it. You can help many others by taking 2 minutes and clicking.

Once I receive your information, I’ll send you a FREE DOWNLOAD of management principles that are gaining great reviews worldwide. Then, I’ll send you the second set right before Print13. These pithy principles take no more than 2 minutes each to read and can change your team’s results.

See you there:

R33 – In-Plant Extreme Makeover: From Reactive to Responsive

Date: Tuesday, September 10

8:30 am – 10:00 am

R33 – In-Plant Extreme Makeover: From Reactive to Responsive

Date: Tuesday, September 10

8:30 am – 10:00 am

Speaker: Phil Larson

Description:

Whether you are tasked as the new manager in succession to follow a manager of multiple decades or are part of an executive committee challenged to build a service responsive in-plant to meet current business demands, you need a fresh approach. The old ways just won’t do the job anymore. What will you do? Executives need good answers from you. You may not survive without this information.

You will learn:

Workflow Efficiencies: You’ll understand simplified LEAN principles you can gain back useable capacity improvement.
Value Add: how to improve your single source provider influence in the mind of the customer.
Product Optimization: Get the right product mix that has high benefit and fits your location, equipment, and people.
Online support and PDF workflow stabilization
Client and Customer Management: You will learn key conversations you need to have and what to say when you have them.
Business Development / Expansion: You can grasp the long term view balanced with optimizing the existing business and have an outline to present to decision makers.

Who should attend: In-Plant managers and assistants, Executives with In-Plant line responsibility, Commercial providers looking to improve sourced arrangements, Marketing and sales reps wanting to understand customer decision making, In-Plant technical and creative and customer service support, and Vendors to In-Plants who need to “get it” to support the business

Track:
Inplant/Transactional

Phil Larson, President
Shepherd Consulting

The Five P’s of a Manager’s Portfolio Allow Right Building

The Five P’s of a Manager’s Portfolio Allow Right Building

Assessing a business operation takes scrutiny of the right five P’s. Get it wrong and you can find yourself damaging more than building. Get it right and the right stuff comes together. Look to the heart not the surface. Uncover riches.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. Abraham Lincoln

First Things: Begin with the end in mind. This is another article, but you need to be reminded before you look into the P’s. Every operation includes an objective to be measured and met. Don’t look too deeply into the organization before you determine this item. Otherwise, the P’s, which may be out of position, can lead you to wrong places. If they were perfect, why would anyone need you? They must continually be adjusted to measureable objectives.

People: Take time to review the people set. Are the right passions, personalities, and portions (skills sets) on the team? Is this set to succeed or set to fail? Has this team been intentionally built and honed or sporadically pieced together? What will it take to realign and make productive? What is missing? What is unbalanced?

Props (Tools and Technologies): Examine the tools and technologies in the operation. Are they current? Are you trying to hit a big hairy audacious goal with skinny, smooth banana peels? Has the shop been kept upgraded or held back with cost cutting for years? What will be the investment? Is the team “too techy” and loaded up with an oversupply so that no tool is really mastered?

Processes: If you can’t document the processes clearly, you don’t know what you are doing. Deming said something similar to that. He’s right. In one shop, it took two years to get process documentation settled. Development teams kept changing the underlying processes without ever settling on the existing. No one really knew what a good result at the end of the day looked like. After documentation was settled, the team performed smoothly and on time every day according to company needs. This is a touchy and tough area to address. Don’t avoid it.

Projects: Projects in motion reveal major needs if they are rightly designed. The lack of defined projects is a sure sign of a disparate, disorderly, and dying operation. Are capital improvements in motion? What services are being designed for future delivery? Is there a training program? Crosstraining?

Products and Services: Well, why do you exist without these? Service catalogue? Do the focused customer groups know how to get great service and what service is available? What of these are core critical to the overall organization? Why?

Summary: If you take these five P’s and write down three notes, you have the beginning of a great business plan. 1. What is the inventory or status of the P? Make a list of the items and critical criteria, benefits, advantages, and demographics. Assess alignment to objective and need. 2. What needs changed? 3. What is the impact on the other four P’s when I change it?

That’s enough for now. Business is building. Never stop building.

There is no magic route to riches in your business.

In 2004, Dick Gorelick wrote this insightful 101 Ways for printers. It applies to any endeavor. Just sub your business where it says graphic arts or printing. You will be amazed at the insight you gain. Printing was entering a revolution of digitization at this time. It is a $640 billion business and continues to grow. Here are some of his opening words and a link to the full article. You will fell like you have been mentored by a tremendous manager after you read and will have much to do. Read. Muse. Grow.

In our world, business is building.

“There is no magic route to riches in the graphics arts

There is a positive side to every business challenge. Turning lemons into lemonade is dependent upon one’s inclination to avoid assigning blame and a willingness to accept — and understand — change as a permanent condition in this dynamic business environment.

There is no single, magic route to riches in the graphic-arts industry. That’s because success is the product of coordinated management of customers, supplies, staff, equipment and the graphic-arts community at large. Equally as important, management of these elements needs to be accomplished under the umbrella of a strategy that is credibly differentiated from competition — something that is critical if a company is to cope with the impact of price competition.

Since not all companies are the same, it is highly unlikely that all 101 ways outlined here will be applicable to everyone. In many cases, printers may already be addressing these issues. No one way is likely to revolutionize a profitability statement, no matter how conscientiously it is adopted. However, improved performance is likely to result with the adoption of many of these ways, when they are used to support a differentiated strategy.

Action without purpose loses its potential. Implementing several ways in this article can contribute to the attainment of your organization’s business objectives.” Dick Gorelick

Full Article at American Printer

Pareto For Managers Building People

“80% of the results come from 20% of the effort. Focus on the right 20%.” Phil

Right this minute, my desk is a mess. Multiple projects for clients and engagements in the non-profit sector press for attention. How do I decide what to pick up and what to put down? Building the people around me seems the best and most prudent decision to engage effectiveness. Those built today become power for tomorrow.

The decision mechanism of important versus urgent seems inadequate. Important plus urgent must be priority one. Important but not urgent brings best results and is priority two. Not important but urgent earns a three. Finally, not important and not urgent should go to trash bin or some holding pattern for when it changes to something that needs attention.

Executives and managers can make multiple critical decisions every hour. Sometimes it seems there are multiple decisions each minute. There is a way to sort. There is a way to prioritize and get optimum results.

Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God. Thomas Jefferson

Maybe this quote is a little out of place for the discussion. Or is it? Is the tyranny of urgent matters as tyrannical as a king in a country across the ocean? Maybe it is closer to home and more impactful on bad and disorderly living than a governmental system could be. Somehow, I don’t think Jefferson was pointing us to Godliness as much as making a strong position for self governance. Self governance reduces tyranny of the urgent

80/20 : 80% of results come from 20% of the people. 80% of sales come from 20% of the customers. 80% of our smiles come from 20% of our thoughts. One and one we can make comparisons of 80% from 20% whether they are true or not. This is not a rule but a guideline. In the work of developing people it is most applicable when you focus on the right 20%.

The Right 20% Takes Right Approach

Stimulate Creative Thought: This is a right 20% in developing others. Don’t just allow creative thought, stimulate creative thought. Management by the book and standard operational procedure can produce quality and it can also produce stiff brained obeisance. Robot staff will not produce the right 80%.

Challenge Progress Reports: How often do you open a progress report and wonder if anything of any real value was accomplished? Do you ask questions? Do you get clarification? Are you managing for effective, right results or just results? Our desire to please others and do the expected job can cause us to use reports as promotional material instead of decision making material. Unchallenged over time, everyone can get caught in meaningless redundancy and semantic fluff.

Affirm Specifically: “Good job, Jack.” That is a lame statement. “Jack, I appreciate your taking care of the details on this report while providing a succinct executive summary from which I can make a decision.” Okay, Jack can curve his future results to match that statement and bring me the 80% effectiveness I need from 20% of his efforts.

Correct in Private: It is tough to resist correction at the time of fault. When coaching a developing team, it was painful to watch failure after failure pile up at an event. Stupid is as stupid does. Finally, I interjected some correction. The result was an angered staffer, who was doing the best he had been coached in the past. Now, I had to get him aside, heal the pain, and get him reengaged in the success of the moment. Better would have been to take mental notes and review in a post mortem along with all of the successes.

Summary: You can get 80% of results from your staff with 20% of your effort. They can get 80% of their results from 20% of the effort. All the fancy grids and principles are useless if you are not concentrating on the right 80% and the right 20%. Those come from developing your team to target in manners that build the person not just the results. In the end, it is the person that will make the results appear within any system or process or procedure.

Champion Fathers Tourney and Luncheon — The Time is Right.