I have seen people doing some not-so-good things that I sometimes do. Yikes! I have a lot of incentive to cut down on those things.
The past several days I have been around people who are complaining a lot about something. It is really annoying to be around them as they complain. Don’t they see how it all looks? Don’t they see how their complaining is only making things worse?
Then I recall that I sometimes complain. Surely I don’t look like that? Enough denial. Yes, I do look like that.
Here is an exercise, most of which I learned from consultant Jerry Weinberg.
Make a list of three or four things that you do that you suppose irritate other people.
Keep that list with you, glance at it everyday so you will remember the things.
Look for other people doing those possibly irritating things.
When you see someone doing one of them, take note of how it looks and what it accomplishes.
The results will probably teach you as much as the last several days have taught me.
Projects to reduce work, production, or consumption should reduce costs. This corresponding reduction in costs, however, rarely occurs. Instead, an increase in cost often happens. Please be attentive to what you are doing and watch for this contrary behavior.
There are many things than many people want to reduce.
Consider body weight. The average American should reduce their body weight. Many Americans, however, claim they cannot afford the cost of losing weight. This has always perplexed me. Losing weight should cost less money, not more. To lose weight, you eat less food. Eating less food means buying less food, which means spending less money on food – not more.
What happens with the vast majority of people is that they think of costly ways to lose weight:
join a health club
hire a weight-loss trainer
buy special food
and so on
This really doesn’t make any sense. It does make sense, however, when we consider that the subject is a person and we remember that persons don’t always behave rationally. Eating less food – a guaranteed way to lose weight that costs less money – isn’t much fun. The things listed above, and others, are more fun.
Now consider something like process at work. Process can be good, but it can be onerous if there is too much of it. Reducing process should cost less. After all, once we reduce process we are doing less work than before. Less work costs less hours and less money. Simple, right?
Process, however, returns us to persons who often behave irrationally. So, to reduce process, we usually:
join a process improvement group
hire a process-improvement consultant
buy a new, special process methodology
hey wait, this all sounds a lot like weight loss
And like weight loss, it doesn’t make any sense. Reducing process is a matter of considering every step we do and asking, “Do we really need to do this?” Simple, but not much fun.
So, the next time you embark on a project to reduce what you do or produce or consume, remember that reducing means doing or producing or consuming less. That should mean spending less, not more.
Change is not easy. No change is easy. Don’t fool yourself into believing that changes you suggest will be the exception. Prepare for the pain.
I am taking a long walk (1,000 miles, almost finished). This past week my logistics changed. All I had to do this week was walk, no backtracking with a bicycle. This was going to be easier. (Please note, when you hear either of the two italicized phrases hold onto something safe as trouble is approaching.)
Well, I was wrong. I have grown more blisters in the last six days of walking than in the previous 25.
What went wrong?
Simple, I changed something. But the change was supposed to make walking easier. It will make walking easier, once I adjust to it. It took at least a week to adjust.
As a manager, I make changes in the process, changes in the seating, changes in the team, changes in just about anything that I believe will make the work better. Most of the time, the changes I make do make the work better – eventually.
We settle into a routine. It doesn’t matter if that routine is wonderful or dreadful. It is a routine – familiar and comfortable in some way. Change the routine, and pain follows. The pain may be short lived and replaced in the long term by pleasure. Nevertheless, the pain will be there.
Consider my walking. The muscles in my body had grown accustomed to my situation. I didn’t like the situation (mental and emotional) and knew there was a better way. The better way came, but my muscles needed a week or so to adjust. The adjustment period H U R T.
Consider a system-building project. Our mental muscles grow accustomed to our situation. A change may eventually be better, but it will take some time for our mental muscles to adjust. The adjustment will probably H U R T. Change almost always H U R T S.
Please expect pain and complaining from your colleagues when you “help” them by changing the situation to something that is, uh rather will be, easier. Yes, even when it comes from all-knowing, well-meaning, I-must-be-the-exception-to-this-rule people like you and me, change brings pain. Work through it. Have some resources available to ease the pain and don’t be surprised.
Managers and leaders should encourage their colleagues. Sometimes the well of compliments runs dry. There is, however, one fundamental compliment that is always appropriate.
I was wandering through a new, unfamiliar, and uncomfortable place hoping to find something on which to anchor myself. Then I heard someone call my name. All was well.
This happened to me a couple of weekends ago. I was at a high school marching band competition, the weather was lousy, I knew no one, I was wandering, and heard a young woman yell (they don’t call out in Mississippi, they yell), “Hey Uncle Dwayne.”
It was my niece. She was sitting with some friends, saw me, and thought enough of me to call to me and run down and give me a hug. I was impressed that she wasn’t embarrassed to let her friends know that she knew an old man like me. My niece gave me a fundamental compliment,
She recognized me
Now to managing and leading. As a manager and leader, I find it important to compliment my colleagues – often. Okay, go out and buy a little paperback with a title like 99 Good Things to Say to People. Cheaper yet, Google “good things to say to people.” (Google returned 164 million hits.) Perhaps we can say some of these things and sound sincere.
Yet I sometimes exhaust the encouraging things I have to say to people. Recognition is one thing that encourages and never seems to wear out.
Simply acknowledge that the other person exists. Use their name. I can even smile when I do these things.
I think it was Dale Carnegie who once wrote about how a dog “smiles” and wags its tail when it meets someone it knows. Recognition, that is all.
Some days it rains – literally and figuratively. Have a plan that provides a way to make use of the time.
I have been outdoors all day recently while taking a walk. Guess what? Some days it rains. Sitting in the office back in Northern Virginia we would look out the window now and then and comment on the weather. Windy, cloudy, sunny, and some days it would rain. Then we would sit back down on our fabric-covered chairs that would roll and swivel and move in eight other directions, put our hands on the keyboards and do whatever.
It is different outdoors. When it rains and rains heavy, what I planned to do may not be possible.
Rainy days bring to mind several questions. One of the more prominent questions is,
What do you do now?
This is a form of the old question,
What is Plan B?
Plan B is a good plan to have. I do much better at life when there is an envelope with “Plan B” scrawled on it. The contents aren’t as important as its existence.
Life is short. There are many wonderful, interesting, and learning-rich things to do. Plan B helps me take advantage of some rainy-day time.
My recent Plan B is “find a place to sit and drink coffee.” I catch up on reading and writing. I talk to people like the lady my age who had her seven-month-old grandson with her who was cute, had big blue eyes and reminded me so much of my grandson that I haven’t seen in five weeks that I wanted to cry. Then there was the elderly lady who ran a little diner that was rebuilt by people in the community after her original diner burned to the ground and they couldn’t let her go into retirement that way because they loved her too much. Then there was the evening spent with a thousand teenagers who didn’t realize they were supposed to be stupid, undisciplined, and rude so they were smart, disciplined, and respectful – even to an old guy wandering around in a bright yellow jacket.
Yes life is short and some days it rains. My life works better when I have a Plan B and wait out the rain with interesting things and wonderful people.
Does any of this apply to business or to the business of building systems? I think so. I also think you can find the connection and apply accordingly.
It seems that it is difficult to find the right type of people to hire into a project. We need people to be creative at some times and pound-it-out to do the work at other times. I found a place where we can recruit lots of such people.
Saturday evening I was surrounded by several hundred, maybe a thousand, teenagers. They were:
doing something bigger than themselves
doing something none of them could do alone
having the discipline to be rigid at one point and creative at another point
knowing when to choose between the two
being a part of a large group
working towards a group’s goal
having fun
They were not:
acting disrespectful towards anyone else in any way
I was attending a high school marching band competition in Meridian, Mississippi (why I was there is a long story, but I was Taking A Walk and…).
So I look up at the list of things these teenagers were doing and not doing. I would happily have any of these kids working with me building a system. These are all attributes of people who can work together and build great systems that delight people and add to their lives.
A couple of odd things: (1) I’ve been told that today’s kids are all about “me” and not about anything more than “me.” (2) Mississippi is supposed to rank last or next to last in all achievement-related things.
I guess all these things “I’ve been told” and these “supposed rankings” are wrong.
What is right is these kids. What is right is the kids all across America in small towns, big cities, rural areas, and every place else as well.
The evening ended with a performance by the “Maroon Typhoon” – the Jones Country Junior College Marching band from Ellisville, Mississippi. You’ve probably never heard of them, but they have performed, among other places, at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York City and the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena. That’s not bad for a group of 18 and 19 year old kids from rural Mississippi. My niece is in that band now; my nephew was a couple of years ago.
Yes, I think we’ll be alright. All we have to do is get out of the way and let them lead.
Adjectives describe our work and the results of our work. Hence, our worked is judged by the adjective. More to the point, our work is described by the person who selects the adjective.
ad·jec·tive
n. Abbr. a. or adj.
The part of speech that modifies a noun or other substantive by limiting, qualifying, or specifying and distinguished in English morphologically by one of several suffixes, such as -able, -ous, -er, and -est, or syntactically by position directly preceding a noun or nominal phrase.
from dictionary.com.
Adjectives modify nouns. Consider a test of a system. We perform the test (“test” is the noun), we complete the test, and we describe the test with an adjective. We could say:
successful test
failed test
agonizing test
glorious test
fun test
See how just a little adjective in front of “test” can make such a difference.
How was the test? Which one of these adjectives is correct? That usually depends on one factor:
the person selecting the adjective
Beauty is often in the eye of the beholder, and so is the adjective. The person who has the opportunity or authority to select the adjective often determines the outcome.
But we are testing a system; this is objective, right? I think it should be objective, but I have rarely seen it occur that way. Subjectivity – the selecting of the adjective – has been the norm in my life.
But let’s define the criteria before the test so that it will be objective. Guess what, the pre-test criteria is a bunch of adjectives. Someone will select those adjectives.
Try this exercise:
Listen for adjectives
Notice who selects those adjectives
Do this exercise over several weeks
Note the patterns
Who selects the adjectives where you work? Why do they select the adjectives instead of someone else?
The familiar is comfortable. The comfort, however, sometimes hides risk and impending doom. Take care.
I have been on the road for two weeks walking mostly through rural Alabama. This weekend I am in Tuscaloosa. This is a university town, so it differs from most of the places I have been. I was driving around on Sunday morning (a no-walking day) and before my eyes was a shopping center just like I would see in Reston, Virginia (home base). There before my eyes was a Starbucks, Chipotle, Panera Bread, and even a Five Guys (a hamburger chain based in the Washington, D.C. area – how did a Five Guys get here???).
Ah, familiar. Such a feeling of comfort came over me. Go to Starbucks for coffee, sit in Panera for coffee and WiFi and maybe a sandwich. Go to Five Guys for a hamburger with jalepenos and grilled onions and maybe some fries. I was looking forward to this.
Familiarity is comfortable. That isn’t an original thought with me. I have experienced it many times before this experience today. Ahh, I have been here before, I like this.
What could go wrong? Well, a lot of things. Consider the (dying) newspaper industry. Quite familiar for many decades and quite comfortable.
I rarely see impending doom while comfortable. Consider the (dying) newspaper industry. They never saw the impending doom.
I suppose we could run through a long list of examples where people were in the familiar, became quite comfortable, and didn’t see possible problems coming. Consider the (dying) newspaper industry. Ooops, I mentioned that one twice already. I guess I am familiar and comfortable with that example. I better think of another one. The railroads once ruled America – familiar, comfortable, doomed. Bell once ruled telecommunications – familiar, comfortable, doomed. IBM once ruled data processing – familiar, comfortable, doomed.
What did I do this day? I had a cup of coffee at Starbucks. While drinking it I listened to a conversation of three college students. That made my day. Lunch? I drove past Panera Bread, Chipotle, and Five Guys. Instead I ate at a local barbeque place. It wasn’t familiar, so it wasn’t as comforting, but it was really good.
Clutter is a bunch of things that seem to pile up and get in the way. Physical clutter is easy to see. Mental clutter isn’t easy to see. Clutter – physical and mental – tends to drain energy with no action resulting. I recommend avoiding mental clutter by putting ideas into a place for later use.
While taking a walk, I see thousands of different homes in rural, suburban, and urban settings. Some of the homes are fabulous. Some of the homes are lacking much in comfort.
One of the attributes that separates homes is clutter. Some homes are surrounded with this and that and this and that and…well, a lot of clutter. See, for example, this little trailer and a lot of clutter to the right.
Next to the left is a photo of another house trailer with no clutter. This shows that you don’t have to own a large, red brick classic home to have no clutter.
Clutter affects the lives of the people living in those homes. I know people who live in places like that on the right. They despair much of the time. They know they should pick up something, but there is so much there, they don’t know where to start. They usually sit about thinking of where to start, but never actually starting.
Now to mental clutter. It is hard to see when a person has a lot of mental clutter. It is all in their head, and I don’t know how to see into anyone’s head. I have carried around a lot of mental clutter at times in my life. I struggled to think straight or think at all with mental clutter. I knew I should do something with all the ideas I had, but I couldn’t decide where to start. I thought and thought about starting, but never started.
I subscribe to techniques of arranging ideas like Jerry Weinberg’s Fieldstone Method. These techniques basically call for putting the ideas in an idea place. The placed ideas are no longer cluttering the mind. They are gone, no worries, no confusion, no more rearranging clutter.
When I have an idea, I put it on a 3×5 card. Later, I may put the content of the cards on my computer. Regardless of the media, the concept is simple – take ideas out of the mind and put them some place for later. That frees the mind to create new ideas or work with saved ideas.
I like to work alone. Being alone, however, brings a heightened risk. There is great value in having another person to talk to. Absent others, checklists and other reminders are helpful.
I have been taking a walk this past week. I have been all alone in doing this. I won’t describe the stupid things I have done so far. Needless to say, I have wasted a little time and cost my feet a few unnecessary steps.
I am a pretty smart guy. Not the brightest, but I usually do okay. A week like this past one has re-taught me the value of having someone to talk to. Just to talk about what I am thinking or not thinking. Little things, but things that can make a difference.
Adjustments? Yes, I made some by the end of the week. I pause a few minutes at regular intervals. I check what is in each of my pockets – slowly, carefully, and thoughtfully. I check the time, the weather, and several things that could alter my day.
In the evening, I have checklist on my laptop computer’s desktop. I click on it the first thing and read through it. I created the checklist the first evening. I am glad that I have it.
I like to work alone – I really do. I have learned that I can work alone and accomplish much. I can also goof. A little humility comes along now and then to teach me the value of other people in even the smallest things.
