We can use social media to build bridges and to establish connections with others in ways that we never imagined.  Many of us tend to gravitate towards "birds of a feather" - people that are doing similar work nearby.  Sometimes we expand our networks by getting to know others doing the same sort of work in other locations.. However, building an network of colleagues who do work that is different from yours can help you become far more effective.Dr. James Rawson shared with me the concept of "randomized coffee trials" - a play on the term "randomized clinical trials".  Randomized coffee trials, or "RCTs" for short, represent a cool way to facilitate connections between people in an organization or ecosystem that don't know one another especially when the people are separated by distance and time.

Here's how it works. People who want to expand their network express interest to a facilitator. The facilitator pairs up participants randomly and provides contact information to the pairs. It could be a colleague doing the same sort of work but in a different place. Or a colleague that does very different work.  Next, the pairs agree to "meet for coffee" using technology like Skype, FaceTime, Lync, etc. During their virtual meeting, the paired up individuals discuss topics of mutual interest.  You can read more about RCT's at:

http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/randomised-coffee-trials

Have you participated in RCT's? I would enjoy hearing about your experiences and the connections you've made.

   

I often hear people saying the explosion of social media in the 21st century is, in fact "anti-social" ,and causes us to become more "isolated" rather than more "social".  I wanted to share a TEDxTalk on this very topic presented by Dr. James Rawson.  He argues that social media can build a virtual community in which to transform the sharing of ideas into real life endeavors. Social media can be used to build connections and relationships to have impact on the world.

What do you think? Is social media isolating or bridge-building. Here is the link to Dr. Rawson's TEDxTalk

https://youtu.be/5txst5mOywM

To improve almost anything, one has to diagnose what needs improving and then make the improvement.  The other day, I became engaged in a discussion regarding the relative importance of the "diagnose" vs. "make the improvement" activities.  From one perspective, you could argue that diagnosing and implementing are like your right foot and left foot - which foot is more important in the walking process. Of course, both feet are equally important.

When it comes to diagnosis and implementing an improvement (or treatment of the problem), the answer is not so clear.  Some of my colleagues argued that implementing the improvement is more important. Others argued that if you don't diagnose the problem and get to root cause, all attempts to improve are futile because you will only improve by accident.  

Where do you weigh in on this matter?

Some people describe "culture" as the "unwritten rules about how we do things in our organization."  The other day, driving home from the airport, I saw a large billboard promoting the corporate culture  of a company, Delta Air Lines. The gist of the billboard was that the Delta culture made a difference for its customers.  The billboard had a URL for further information.  When I got home (I promised I didn't do this while I was driving), I visited the URL and read about Delta's culture.  There were several things that intrigued me.  First - that Delta was marketing its culture to its customers. Second, the manner in which they had taken the "unwritten rules about how we do things around here" and turned them into a written articulation of their culture called "Rules of the Road."  

www.delta.com/c...of-the-road.pdf

This leads to several questions for you:

1. Could your organization write down its "Rules of the Road?"

2. Could your organization write its "Rules of the Road" in a way that you would be proud to share them with uour customers?

3. Can an organization's culture be promoted to its customers as a differentiator?

I recently read an article in Harvard Business Review titled Help Your Overwhelmed, Stressed-Out Team (source: https://hbr.org/2015/01/help-your-overwhelmed-stressed-out-team?)

Helping teams cope with and remove excessive stress most definitely can help improve organizations.  After reading the article, I found myself thinking about the work of Steven Covey. Many years ago (late 1980s and early 1990s), Covey, author of the "Seven Habits" series of books posited that all our time falls into one of four quadrants delimited by columns labeled not-urgent and urgent and rows labeled not-important and important.

Covey argued that we tend to spend too much of our time in the "urgent but "not important" quadrant and too little of our time in the "not-urgent but important" quadrant.  Yet, it is in the "not urgent but important" quadrant where great and meaningful things are accomplished professionally and in our personal lives.  

Covey also noted that time management practices focused on prioritizing and calendarizing (allocating time for) tasks principally based upon urgency.  Covey argued that people needed to shift their planning timeframe from "today" to a far longer perspective so that we changed our perspective of "priority" to include the "important but not urgent" matters. 

I recall a carton that depicts several "cave men" pulling a wagon with four square stone wheels. As you can imagine this required a lot of effort.  Following the wagon was another cave man carrying a "round" wheel. This cave man is saying "try this new wheel, it will make your job pulling the wagon much easier."  The cave men pulling the wagon responded "we don't have time try anything new because we are busy pulling this wagon.

Ironically, despite Covey having "discovered" these important points about making time for the important but not urgent matters (and having made a lot of money teaching others about this) decades ago, I wonder why these principles haven't gained traction? Is it a lack of time? A lack of interest? Or are the ideas simply flawed?

Any ideas on why these ideas didn’t gain traction and what we could do differently today in order to feel comfortable allocating time to the important-but-not-urgent?

Any organization or organism seeking to improve does so by changing some aspect of the current condition. An athlete seeking to improve her 10,000 meter times, trains by running longer distances at slow paces and shorter distances at faster paces.  These training regimes may can result in sore muscles and breathlessness (I know, I’ve been there).  However, the athlete knows the pain associated with training is what leads to improvements in performance. In essence, the improvement comes from the change in training regime.

In many work environments, however, we loose sight of the connection between improvement and change. We focus on change and ignore the reason for change — change is the vehicle for improvement.

Charles Kettering, a famous early 20th century engineer once noted "The world hates change yet it is the only thing that has brought progress” (source: http://www.happypublishing.com/blog/15-change-quotes/).

Perhaps the reason “the world hates change” is because we focus to much on the change and too little on the improvements? Or perhaps we are comfortable with our current state and don’t care to improve? Or perhaps we don’t believe the proposed change (whatever it is) will lead to an improvement.

What do you think?

Zombie Initiatives

Recently, a colleague shared with me a story about an initiative that continued well past its useful life.  Without getting into the details, the initiative, which had good intentions, resulted in formation of a committee to review requests to use an IT application in a specific use model..  The “good intent” was to ensure that, early in the life of this use model, there would be special oversight to ensure success.  That was the good intention.  After three years and several hundred applications, the committee was still meeting on a regular basis.  When asked under what conditions the committee would deem its work completed, no one knew the answer. In fact, no one recalled who chartered the committee or who was authorized to deem the work of the committee done. What was clear was that the committee charter did not include the conditions under which the committee work would be deemed complete – even if it was just the passage of time.

Committees that never finish their work and projects that never end are best described as Zombie initiatives because you cannot “kill them” even if you try. In LEAN terms, it seemed that the wastes of Over-Processing and/or Over-Production were present here.

Often, these Zombie initiatives become such a fabric of daily work that no one even questions, “why are we doing this.” Yet, by not questioning, “why are we doing this”, we are creating the wastes of over-processing and over-production over and over again.  Imagine the resources we could free up to work on customer-value-added or business-value-added activities if we could kill Zombie initiatives, whether the initiative was a project, a committee, or a regularly scheduled meeting.

Perhaps one technique to prevent future Zombie initiatives is a strong charter for the initiative that states the conditions that will terminate the initiative.  And one of the conditions should always be the lapse of time.  The sponsor can always renew the initiative if he or she desires. But, barring that explicit renewal, initiatives should terminate or sunset.