straight conversations

 

I think the first 3:25 seconds of this interview is powerful. Here's an excerpt from the transcript:

Reporter: Following the huge win against the Pelicans we saw this team take to the court, take the locker room, go to the weight room – and that was after a big win. What has this team’s emotion and reaction been like after the Clipper’s loss?

Coach Monty Williams: It’s been the same approach…. One of the culture pieces we’ve tried to implement is we don’t let win’s and losses dictate the atmosphere and the culture we feel like we are establishing…. That’s something that I’ve learned over the years, I cannot change – no matter what happens on the floor our gym stays the same. We want everybody here excited about coming to work, and I think that allows for us to have a level of consistency in how we approach development. The most important thing is that people are excited to come to work. Nothing changed. Yesterday was the same as any other day…. We teach, we grow, we get after it. 

Reporter: You’ve been preaching staying in that middle ground for a while now. When did that mentality really set in for you?... Why is that such a key in order to get this team where you want them to go? 

Coach: …Listening to the guys that I had coached before, they didn’t always feel excited about coming to work because they thought that I was going to push them in a way that diminished their talents. I really had to take a deep look at my approach. It was one of my prayers that if God ever gave me a chance to be a head coach again I wanted to be excited about work everyday myself, but I also wanted the players to have the same feeling – when they got up out of the bed they felt really good about coming to work…. I had some straight, black and white conversations with guys that I coached, and what I heard back – I was ashamed to be honest with you. I didn’t realize it and that’s why the communication with those guys was really important for my growth. 

Monty Williams

Post-Practice Media Availability. 1/5/2021. https://www.facebook.com/suns/videos/163428998468163

response-ability

Accountability breeds response-ability. Commitment and involvement produce change. In training executives, we use a step-by-step, natural, progressive, sequential approach to change. In fact, we encourage executives to set goals and make commitments up front; teach and apply the material regularly; and report their progress to each other. 

If you want to overcome the pull of the past - those powerful restraining forces of habit, custom, and culture - to bring about desired change, count the costs and rally the necessary resources. In the space program, we see that tremendous thrust is needed to clear the powerful pull of the earth's gravity. So it is with breaking old habits.

Breaking deeply embedded habits - such as procrastinating, criticizing, overeating, or oversleeping - involves more than a little wishing and willpower. Often our own resolve is not enough. We need reinforcing relationships - people and programs that hold us accountable and responsible. 

Remember: Response-ability is the ability to choose our response to any circumstance or condition. When we are response-able, our commitment becomes more powerful than our moods or circumstances, and we keep the promises and resolutions we make. 

Stephen R. Covey

Principle-Centered Leadership. 2009/ RosettaBooks. 

4 communication approaches

Effective communications: a combination of four approaches:

1. Leaders who have to tell and retell a story over and over again should remind themselves to approach it with a “beginners’ mind” – and not lose sight of what it’s like to tell and hear the story for the first time. As Alan G. Lafley, former CEO of P&G notes, “Excruciating repetition and clarity are important – employees have so many things going on in the operation of their daily business that they don’t always take the time to stop, think, and internalize.” Paolo Scaroni, who has led three Italian public companies through major change as CEO of Techint, Enel, and Eni, agrees as he indicates the key to successful communications is “repeat, repeat, and repeat… throughout the organization.”

2. Ensure the message sticks by coining and relentlessly repeating language that is simple and memorable. Consider Walmart’s “10-foot rule,” which reminds frontline employees of the company’s customer service aspiration: whenever you are within 10 feet of a customer, look them in the eye, smile, and ask how you can help.  At Microsoft, at the end of every meeting the question is called as to, “Was that a growth mindset or a fixed mindset meeting?” This acts not just as a reminder of the desired shift, but also prompts the act of continuous learning that a growth mindset is meant to manifest. As Willie Walsh, former CEO of British Airways, explains, “The simpler the message, the easier it is to deliver. The simpler the message, the more likely it is to be consistent. The simpler the message, the easier it is to control and manage the communication.”

The language not used can be just as powerful as that which is. When Australian telecommunications and media company Telstra wanted to improve internal collaboration, it banned people from using the word “they” in conversations about other teams and unites to remind employees to work as one organization. Posters proclaiming, “no ‘they’,” like the one below appeared everywhere, and people started to call attention to references to “they” and “them” even in casual conversations.

3. Move from “telling” to “asking.” This has the benefit of also leveraging the “lottery ticket” effect to build ownership. With this technique, even chance conversations can be put to good use. At Emerson Electric, CEO David Farr makes a point of asking virtually everyone he encounters the same four questions: “How do you make a difference?” (to find out whether people are aligned on the company’s direction); “What improvement ideas are you working on?” (to emphasize execution edge health recipe); “When did you last get coaching from your boss?” (to probe on the people development management practice); and “Who is the enemy?” (emphasizing collaboration – the right answer is to name a competitor and not some other department!). This sends a clear message that these issues matter. If employees don’t have good answers for you right at the moment, you can bet they will when they are asked next time. 

4. Ensure the story doesn’t just come from leaders and instead is reinforced through as many channels as possible: speech, print, online, actions, symbols, rituals, and so on. Using multiple channels reinforces the consistent message…. The most progressive two-way communications programs take what’s known as a “transmedia” approach – not just telling the same story through multiple channels but telling different aspects of the story through different channels that all add up to the integrated picture in ways that otherwise wouldn’t be possible to build. 

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019

bring data to the table

In the wry words of N.R. Narayana Murthy, former chairman of Infosys, “In God we Trust; everybody  else brings data to the table.” Managing the program dynamically depends on good data. You have to be clear from day to day how much progress you’ve made against your plans. That means regularly measuring the impact of your change program on at least four key dimensions:

1. Initiative progress. Track progress not just in terms of time (milestones) and budget (money spent versus planned), but also against key operational performance indicators (e.g., cycle time, waste, wait times, quality). 

2. Health impact. Are management practices and their underlying mindsets and behaviors shifting to support the improvements in performance that you want to see? Targeted analytics, surveys, focus groups, and observation can give you a good read.... 

3. Performance impact. Measure key business outcomes such as revenue, cost, and risk to confirm that improvements are happening where you expect and not causing unforeseen consequences elsewhere in the organization. 

4. Value creation. Keep a constant eye on the ultimate outcome that matters. In large-scale company-wide change programs, this measure is shareholder value creation…. It is vital to have a clear-eyed view of the ultimate outcome that maters most amidst all of the other data. 

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019

the correct attitude of mind

Until the mid-1950s, the four-minute mile was regarded as beyond human achievement. Even medical journals judged it unattainable. Yet, in May 1954, a medical student named Roger Bannister smashed through the barrier with a time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds. In his memoir, Bannister explained he did what was once thought impossible by spending as much time conditioning his mind as his body. He wrote, “The mental approach is all-important… energy can be harnessed by the correct attitude of mind.”

What is perhaps more amazing is that two months later, the four-minute barrier was broken again, by Australian John Landy. Within three years, 16 runners had followed suit. So, what happened here? Was it a sudden spurt in human evolution? A new super-race or genetically engineered runners? Of course not. It was the same physical equipment, but with a different mindset: one that said. “This can be done.” No doubt there are some “four-minute mile”-like mindsets sitting beneath the behaviors you see in your organization that, if broken trough, will unlock a whole new level of performance in a similar manner to Bannister's effect on the running community. 

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019