Showing posts with label systems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label systems. Show all posts

Thursday, March 16, 2023

after reading over 200 self-improvement books


After reading over 200 self-improvement books over the past thirty years I have determined all self-improvement and success come down to five keystone lessons that all other principles rest upon.

  1. Mindset determines your success.
  2. Goals create the map to your success.
  3. Modeling shows what leads to success. 
  4. Systems create the path to your success. 
  5. Perseverance makes you successful.
...To succeed in life, you must develop a positive and growth-oriented mindset that allows you to overcome challenges and learn from your mistakes. You should set realistic and achievable goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. You must create a system of processes, routines, and habits that help you consistently and efficiently move closer to achieving your goals. Finally, you must cultivate the habit of perseverance, which enables you to keep going even when things get tough and never give up on your goals. This is what 200 self-help books will teach you.


Thursday, November 3, 2022

see what they can do


Once a year, all Navy ships undergo a thorough assessment, in which outside inspectors validate the ship's readiness. The ship as a whole and the crew's abilities and proficiencies are rated in twenty-four categories, on a scale ranging from basic Level One to advanced Level Four. 

The purpose is to determine who much additional training the crew needs to be ready for combat. But if you assume that the higher a ship's level, the less time it would spend training at sea, you would be wrong. In fact, regardless of its readiness rating, every ship spends the next six months training at sea. 

Thus there was no incentive to reach Level Four, and in fact, no ship ever did. Level One was the required minimum, and that was usually considered good enough. 

Then Benfold came along.

Originally, my goal was to reach an overall rating of Level Two, but when I recognized the enormous potential of my crew, I raised the bar to Level Three, much to the chagrin of those who saw it as a quantum leap in their labor and my hubris. 

I must also admit that, in addition to my noble motive of making the ship as good as it could be, I wanted to blow my archrival out of the water. Their assessment was scheduled to begin the basic Level One. The CO had no idea that we were laying the groundwork to shake things up a little. In fact, we were about to rock his world.

Our first challenge was finding enough senior people to supervise the twenty-four areas of testing. My combat systems officer hit me with the unexpected news that we had only twenty qualified people who were not involved in other critical operations. 

Thinking fast, I said, "Fine - pick supervisors from the next group down. You don't always need a senior person in charge. It could be a young, third-class petty officer."

"That's never been done before," he said.

"See what they can do," I said. "The alternative is to do nothing, right? Let's assign senior people to the most demanding areas and work our way down to the junior ones. If we don't get Level Three in some categories, so what? We will get Level One or Two. We have nothing to lose."

As it turns out, the third- and second-class petty officers were so honored to be chosen that they worked hard enough for several of their teams to outshine those supervised by senior people. The search-and-seizure team was particularly impressive. We assigned it to one of the ship's most junior sailors because we suspected he had the ability to honcho it. The outside inspectors protested, saying they could not validate the work of an important team that wasn't headed by a commissioned officer. But I insisted, and the young sailor did such a fantastic job that the inspectors ate their words and placed us at Level Four in that category.

Breaking out of our stratified systems to trust the people who work for us, especially those at or near the low end of the hierarchy, was a useful, progressive change. It let us unleash people with talent and let them rise to levels that no one had expected, simply by challenging them: Make Benfold the readiest ship afloat. In that context, how could we not have done well?



D. Michael Abrashoff

It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by D. Michael Abrashoff. Grand Central Publishing. 2007. p.146-148

Monday, September 5, 2022

by design, not by default


The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless. 



Greg McKeown 

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.7

Friday, September 2, 2022

technical debt


Companies all over the world are embracing digital transformation — the use of new (or already existing) technological capabilities — as the means to better work with their customers, distance themselves from (or keep up with) their competitors, and connect various aspects of their businesses. But to succeed in this endeavor — or even to simply get the most from their current tech — they must rid themselves of a heavy burden: technical debt. Put simply, technical debt occurs when you choose an imperfect short-term solution that will require a more substantial fix later, and includes disparate systems, added software to accommodate them, and added effort to work around them.

Because technical debt is the result of shortcuts — choosing quick fixes over a long-term investment — it causes plenty of problems in the here and now. It adds enormous friction any time people need to coordinate work together across silos. There’s also the ongoing expense to exchange data between systems; the unquantifiable costs associated with being slowed down by your systems, whether you’re in the midst of digital transformation or responding to a competitor’s move; and the price you must eventually pay to redesign and simplify systems. And technical debt and its costs compound over time.

At first blush, executives may dismiss technical debt as the province of their IT departments. That conclusion camouflages the root cause of the issue, however. In truth, technical debt stems from the way the businesses are structured, and how departments develop their own systems and languages for getting their work done.



Effective Digital Transformation Depends on a Shared Language, by David C. Hay, Thomas C. Redman, C. Lwanga Yonke, and John A. Zachman. Harvard Business Review. December 14, 2021

Thursday, August 26, 2021

transformational change


The first thing to understand about transformational change is that the external environment -- technology, regulation, competition, the economy -- is forcing change upon your organization. Your organization is a sub-system of a larger system, and it must align its systems to the external world. Sometimes that external environment demands rapid change that may be uncomfortable for everyone.

Lawrence M. Miller


Sunday, April 25, 2021

A.D.K.A.R.

 


Awareness represents a person's understanding of the nature of change, why the change is being made and the risk of not changing. Awareness also includes information about the internal and external drivers that created the need for change, as well as "what's in it for me."

Desire represents the willingness to support and engage in a change. Desire is ultimately about personal choice, influenced by the nature of the change, by an individual's personal situation, as well as intrinsic motivators that are unique to each person.

Knowledge represents the information, training and education necessary to know how to change. Knowledge includes information about behaviors, processes, tools, systems, skills, job roles and techniques that are needed to implement a change. 

Ability represents the realization or execution of the change. Ability is turning knowledge into action. Ability is achieved when a person or group has demonstrated capability to implement the change at the required performance levels.

Reinforcement represents those internal and external factors that sustain a change. External reinforcements could include recognition, rewards and celebrations that are tied to the realization of the change. Internal reinforcements could be a person's internal satisfaction with his or her achievement or other benefits derived from the change on a personal level.


Jeffrey M. Hiatt

ADKAR: A Model for Change in Business, Government and our Community. 2006. Prosci Research. p.2,3

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

water the roots

In 1968, I was traveling with Thich Nhat Hanh on a Fellowship tour during which there were meetings with church and student groups, senators, journalists, professors, business people, and — blessed relief — a few poets. Almost everywhere he went, this brown-robed Buddhist monk from Vietnam, looking many years younger than the man in his 40s he was, quickly disarmed those he met...

But there was one evening when Nhat Hanh awoke not understanding but rather the measureless rage of one American. He had been talking in the auditorium of a wealthy Christian church in a St. Louis suburb. As always, he emphasized the need for Americans to stop their bombing and killing in his country. There had been questions and answers when a large man stood up and spoke with searing scorn of the “supposed compassion” of “this Mister Hanh.”

“If you care so much about your people, Mister Hanh, why are you here? If you care so much for the people who are wounded, why don’t you spend your time with them?” At this point my recollection of his words is replaced by the memory of the intense anger which overwhelmed me. When he finished, I looked toward Nhat Hanh in bewilderment. What could he or anyone say? The spirit of the war itself had suddenly flled the room and it seemed hard to breathe.

There was a silence. Then Nhat Hanh began to speak — quietly, with deep calm, indeed with a sense of personal caring for the man who had just damned him. The words seemed like rain falling on fire. “If you want the tree to grow,” he said, “it won’t help to water the leaves. You have to water the roots. Many of the roots of the war are here, in your country. To help the people who are to be bombed, to try to protect them from this suffering, I have to come here.”


Jim Forest

"Nhat Hanh on Meditation: Like Rain Falling on Fire." Jim & Nancy Forest Blog.  November 13, 2018

Friday, April 22, 2016

trust employees

In this world of intense scrutiny, where everyone is looking at what you do...one reaction is to create management systems, more process, more controls, and more bureaucracy. Relying on traditional supervision, process and controls would inhibit serving clients responsively, and stifle employees' creative energies. We cannot apply Industrial age management systems to address post Industrial age needs. There is a better alternative, which is to trust employees. Values are the glue, the bond that binds us together in the absence of controls. These must be genuinely shared values; they can't be imposed top-down. Values provide employees a framework to make decisions when management systems and procedures are unclear. It comes down to judgment, based on shared values.


"The Future of Leadership" by Samie Al-Achrafi. The Huffington Post. 10/30/2015

Saturday, September 19, 2015

managing vs. leading

Companies manage complexity first by planning and budgeting-setting targets or goals for the future (typically for the next month or year),establishing detailed steps for achieving those targets, and then allocating resources to accomplish those plans. By contrast, leading an organization to constructive change begins by setting a direction - developing a vision ofthe future (often the distant future) along with strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve that vision.

Management develops the capacity to achieve its plan by organizing and staffing-creating an organizational structure and set of jobs for accomplishing plan requirements, staffing the jobs with qualified individuals, communicating the plan to those people, delegating responsibility for carrying out the plan, and devising systems to monitor implementation. The equivalent leadership activity, however, is aligning people. This means communicating the new direction to those who can create coalitions that understand the vision and are committed to its achievement.

Finally, management ensures plan accomplishment by controlling and problem solving – monitoring results versus the plan in some detail, both formally and informally, by means of reports, meetings, and other tools; identifying deviations; and then planning and organizing to solve the problems. But for leadership, achieving a vision requires motivating and inspiring – keeping people moving in the right direction, despite major obstacles to change, by appealing to basic but often untapped human needs, values, and emotions.


John P. Kotter
What Leaders Really Do.” Harvard Business Review. 1990.

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

reasons why change efforts typically fail


1. People leading the change think that announcing the change is the same as implementing it.

2. People’s concerns with change are not surfaced or addressed.

3. Those being asked to change are not involved in planning the change.

4. There is no compelling reason to change. The business case is not communicated.

5. A compelling vision that excites people about the future has not been developed and communicated.

6. The change leadership team does not include early adopters, resisters, or informal leaders.

7. The change is not piloted, so the organization does not learn what is needed to support the change.

8. Organizational systems and other initiatives are not aligned with the change.

9. Leaders lose focus or fail to prioritize, causing “death by 1,000 initiatives.”

10. People are not enabled or encouraged to build new skills.

11. Those leading the change are not credible. They undercommunicate, give mixed messages, and do not model the behaviors the change requires.

12. Progress is not measured, and/or no one recognizes the changes that people have worked hard to make.

13. People are not held accountable for implementing the change.

14. People leading the change fail to respect the power of the culture to kill the change.

15. Possibilities and options are not explored before a specific change is chose.

When most people see this list, their reaction depends on whether they have usually been the target of change or the change agent. Targets of change frequently feel as though we have been studying their organization for years, because they have seen these reasons why change fails in action, up close and personal. The reality is that while every organization is unique in some ways, they often struggle with change for the same reasons.

When change agents look at this list, they get discouraged, because they realize how complicated implementing change can be and how many different things can go wrong. Where should they start? Which of the fifteen reasons why change fails should they concentrate on?

Over the years it has been our experience that if leaders can understand and overcome the first three reasons why change typically fails, they are on the road to being effective leaders of change.


Ken Blanchard

Monday, August 17, 2015

three basic truths of leadership

In my 40 years in business, I’ve learned plenty of management lessons – more than a few the hard way. To help my students from repeating the mistakes of the past, I give them three basic truths of leadership to take with them as their careers gain altitude. They are these:

People > Things

Actions > Words

Wholes > Parts  


Joel Peterson, Professor of Management at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
In A Great Business, People Trump Things. Forbes Magazine. 10/17/2012