The below movie shows an interview with Curt Coffman, co-author of First, Break All the Rules. In my opinion his top ten covers all the pitfalls one can encounter when performing employee surveys.

#10 Your survey hasn’t changed since Bob Dole ran for president;
#9 Your survey has more items than your accounting system;
#8 Employees and managers feel more helpless after completing the survey;
#7 Your customer loyalty scores still have not improved;
#6 You are paying more than $10 per employee for data collection and reporting;
#5 By the time your survey vendor returns the data, your workforce has turned over;
#4 Employee surveys, what are those?…;
#3 You need a 3" binder to hold one report;
#2 The dog ate your action plans;
#1 You keep doing what you’ve been doing and expect a different result.
("When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change")

My both thumbs up for this powerful summary!!

PS: Thank you Craig Smith for pointing me to this video.

Since the beginning of this month school has started. For many families this indicates a moment in time where habits need to be switched and children need to make a step into a next level of development, be it in reading, writing, independent tooth brushing, cleaning up the toys, etc.

A thing that works pretty well with children is the use of a simple scorecard (mostly a board with all the days of the week, some targets and banners to be attached for every succesful achievement). All of a sudden agreements, targets and progress become visual and this seems to be very motivating. However, the thing that really makes this board succesful is the discussion prior to setting up the board: this is where buy-in happens!

For instance, some questions that are commonly covered in those conversations:
- When do we get a medal for an achievement (i.e.:‘What exactly does good performance look like?‘)
- What happens when we fail to meet the target (i.e.: ‘What does failure look like?‘)
- WIIFM: What’s In It For Me when I meet all targets?
- etc.

That’s how we get to SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Tracable. Although you can find this acronym in any MBA course, the added value of parenting is the insight that CONVERSATION and DIALOGUE is the one and only way to make smart goals. The below drawing outlines what this results into for a work setting:

Next to that, there are actually 3 kinds of KPI’s that work pretty well with kids – provided that they are SMART:
- Do new things. These KPI’s will measure new things that were not in place before;
- Do things better. Basically, these KPI’s come down to putting new tagets on existing measures;
- Stop doing things. These KPI’s measure the fading away of bad habits.

There is no reason what-so-ever to assume that a KPI at work should be more complicated than setting KPI’s with kids. It’s all about making agreements and working out the measurements TOGETHER. Forcing a balanced scorecard upon people and making people adhere to KPI’s that they didn’t buy into – or even understand – is an absolute recipe for disaster.

For people to be motivated, you will need to set goals that have been agreed upon with all parties involved. Finally – once you’ve got it all together – what’s even more important is to set positive targets instead of negative ones. For instance, you may be targeting a less than 2 per cent mistakes on deliveries or a 98 per cent of success-ful deliveries. They both measure and target exactly the same, but which one will motivate people most to perform?

Related articles:
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 5) – May 24th, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 4) – March 1st, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 3) – February 21st, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 2) – February 16th, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 1) – February 9th, 2009

Chatting with Vera the other day on all sorts of management styles; we came across one she had never heard of before: Seagull Management. At first she thought I was kidding, but after googling the term we discovered that there are 632.000 results on this entry and that it is even featured on Wikipedia.

And this is all because there is one little sentence in the book The One Minute Manager that describes the term: "Seagull managers fly in, make a lot of noise, dump on everyone, then fly out."

Regular readers of this blog are already familiar with the grumpy boss. Now you know what his birdlike equivalent would look like. What’s more interesting is that this conversation made me take the dust off my copy of the One Minute Manager, so I’ll be blogging on that one pretty soon.

Thinking about how we use the word ‘but’ in our common conversations, this week I made a strange observation. ‘But’ is a blocker, a stopper, a false yes and most of all: a crusher of commitment.

‘Yes but’ = ‘No’

‘But’ is the ultimate word to give away my power over a situation: either by avoiding to pronounce a powerful ‘no’, or by making you the effect of the situation instead of the cause. Some examples:
1. Avoiding ‘no’:
- I’ll do it now, but first I need to print that document (Meaning: ‘No, I’ll do it after I finished printing’)
- I can fix that problem for you, but it may take some time (Meaning:’ forget it’)

2. Giving away power:
- ‘Who is in charge here?’ ‘I am, but normally I do this job with my colleague, who is out of office now.’ (Meaning: I’m not prepared to commit myself if my colleague is not holding my hand’)
- ‘Are we going to make that deadline?’ ‘Yes, but there are some open issues that we need to decide on first’. (Meaning: ‘not quite’)

Try the alternative; ‘And’
Funny things happen whenever you change the ‘but’ by ‘and’. The exclusion of commitment disappears and you find yourself still in charge of the situation. One step further: if you do this while you are speaking – whenever you feel a ‘but’ coming up, throw in an ‘and’ – you are forced to change whatever you were saying. In fact, you stop lying. The false ‘no’ becomes a statement of fact without exclusion, and without loss of power. Applied to the same examples:

1. Avoiding ‘no’=> being ‘yes’
- I’ll do it and first I will print that document (meaning: ‘I commit and I stay in charge of what comes first’ + note how the sentence was forces to become active because of the word change)
- I can fix that problem for you, and it may take some time (Meaning:’ Count on me EVEN IF it takes more time than we expected’)

2. Giving away power => staying in charge
- ‘Who is in charge here?’ ‘I am, and my colleague is out of office now.’ (Meaning: I am in charge here and now. Full stop. Note that some information automatically dropped which would otherwise decrease power)
- ‘Are we going to make that deadline?’ ‘Yes, and we will decide on those open issues first’. (Meaning: ‘We’ll make it here and now, whatever it takes’. Note that the ‘and’ forces you to make the sentence more active)

Becoming aware of what happens whenever we use the word ‘but’ or ‘and’ has been my favorite experiment over the past weeks. I found myself pausing a few seconds after pronouncing ‘and’. It was instant transformation.

Hello Organizational Change Practitioners,

This is to inform you that I have done my homework. A few weeks ago LinkedIn allowed us to create subgroups within this group. Subgroups are like a break-out session at a conference. They enable you to create more focused areas than in the main group.

I decided to create a maximum of FIVE subgroups. But before I would do so I asked to hear from you which ones you would recommend. I received about 90 answers, each containing on average 3 recommendations. I didn’t expect such a response!

As a next step I had to cluster. My intention was to create a poll on LinkedIn in order to select the final 5, but the polls running on LinkedIn only have maximum 5 entries. So I decided to have a second look … and there I was with the final 5! Please read on if you want to find out how I selected the final 5, and why I gave them their particular name.

PART I: CATEGORIES FOR SUBGROUPS => CLUSTERING

I obtained the below categories by shuffling, re-shuffling and re-shuffling the suggestions:

1. LEADING CHANGE
Communication
Consultants
Managers
Change Leadership
Leadership
Communication
Large Scale Change and the Individual
Leadership Support
leadership
Leadership/Sponsorship
Stakeholder Management
Communication
Building Capability
Leading teams through change
Leadership and organizational alignment
Busting silo barriers
vision, leadership & communication
leadership change
Stakeholders and sponsors
Leadership Alignment (strategy, ROI, performance issues)
Board/Exec team level interventions

2. ORGANIZATION REDESIGN
merger integration
divestment
Mergers and Acquisitions; Divestitures
mergers, downsizing, integration issues
Restructuring (merger, acquisition, re-engineering, downsizing, growth, globalisation, etc)
M&A driven change
Business Transformation
Organization Design
organization
Enterprise Architecture (touches IT, Culture, people, leadership, ROI)
Strategy driven (e.g., change in products or markets)
organisation design
Strategy
Structure
strategy,
Strategy-driven transformation
strategy
Re-engineering/ redesigning organizations (M&A, functional, performance)
Strategic Change (include M&A, Business Transformation Outsourcing)
Business Process Change
Corporate
Strategy driven transformation
Organisational Strategy
New organizations
Organization Development
change process itself
Organizational Maturity
Process
Dynamic Systems Alignment
process improvement
Alignment with HR Processes
process,
process
strategic change

3. ROI (Return On Investment)
ROI
value driven target operating model
ROI
performance management
Performance driven change
Capacity Development
Organizational Effectiveness
Performance Improvement (could include Six Sigma, Best Companies, Customer Insight, IIP, ERP, Balanced Scorecard, Training and Skills, Mentoring, etc)
Compliance driven change 

4. OCBOK(Organizational Change Practitioners’ Body Of Knowledge)
Training
Methodology
Resources (Tools and Techniques)
methodology
Books, Articles, & Research Findings
Tools and mental models
Methodology
Methodology (culture, org alignment, training, communication, coordination with business process redesign)
tools – models, methodologies, and roadmaps, processes
Change management practice
books/articles related to change
Change Models (approaches, best practices, case studies, resources)
Models and Methodologies
Lean Six Sigma Change
Methods and Tools

5. HUMAN SIDE OF CHANGE
awareness
common denominator – human beings and change. What about the ‘human element’
human behavior
human behavior
behavioral change
TRANSFORMATIONAL
sustainability (‘what makes change stick’)

6. CULTURE
culture
Cultures/Strategy
Culture eats strategy for breakfast
Intercultural
Culture change
CULTURAL
context – international, large scale, health care, etc.
culture
culture change
workplace cultural change
Culture change
Culture (public, private, non-profit, small biz)
culture
culture
organizational culture
Organisational Culture (could include Attitude change, Team Building, Motivation, Gaining ‘Buy-In’, Coaching, Engagement, Staff Surveys, Management Styles, Leadership, National and Global cultural development. etc.
Non western contributions to change

7. IT RELATED CHANGE
system changes
IT Service Management
ERP
IT Service Management
changes in IT
IT Governance
ERP
Technology driven (e.g., ERP implementation)
systems
IT projects/new systems implementation
Technology (ERP, Web 2.0, emerging technologies)
Technology-Driven Change (ERP, Web 2.0)
Technology enabled change
systems implementation
technology
systems change
‘New Technologies’ – this could then evolve continuously as new opportunities develop with advances in technology

8. WEB 2.0
E-Culture (Web 2.0 and further)
Web 2.0
Web 2.0
E-Transformation

9. INDUSTRIES
Careers
Government
Research
Non Profit IT Governance
health care delivery change management
nonprofit
energy
transportation
manufacturing
public sector
retail
health care
communications
pharma
hi-tech
Customers
Market Segments: Government; Corporate; Research; Non Profit, Emerging (e.g., Web 2.0)
Health care
health care
HR
business

10. REGIONS
regional sub-groups
geography

PART II: REDUCING CLUSTERS TO MAXIMUM 5 SUBGROUPS

In order to select the final 5, I have broadened some categories up:

1. LEADING CHANGE
2. ORGANIZATION REDISIGN & ROI (Return On Investment)
3. OCBOK (Organizational Change Body Of Knowledge)
4. CULTURE & BEHAVIOR
5. TECHNOLOGY DRIVEN OR FACILITATED CHANGE

As for "industries" and "regions", I have decided not to create them, as these are either tackled in other LinkedIn groups, or they run across our five subgroups.

PART III: WILL I APPOINT SUBGROUP MANAGERS?

I don’t know yet… let’s first see if we can make this work!

Good luck to our community and thanks again for contributing!

Luc Galoppin

PS: Not yet a member? Join us right now!

Related Articles:
Web 2.0 includes Invisible Hand – June 29th, 2009

When we make a mistake, most of us understand that we owe an apology.  We know this because when we are hurt by a mistake made by someone else, we want that person to apologize to us.   

There are many reasons why leaders don’t apologize when they make a mistake.  We may be afraid of the consequences of admitting our mistake.  We may be unsure about who we owe the apology to.  We may even be unaware that our mistake created victims.  But I think the main reason why leaders who make mistakes don’t apologize is because we really don’t know how, and we are afraid of doing something that will make a bad situation even worse.

This blog offers a quick course in how to apologize effectively. 

The first step is for leaders to understand that an apology is the most courageous conversation we can have with ourselves.  Yes, an apology is for the benefit of those we offend, and for their sakes we need to do it right, but it also has important benefits for the apologizer.  Apologizing brings a healthy dose of self-awareness, keeps the leader accountable, and generates clarity about the situation and how to avoid repeating it.   

Most of all, apology commits the leader to the practice of humility, which may be the most powerful position from which to lead.  Abandoning the need to be infallible allows leaders to be more curious and self-correcting.  The best leaders earn that distinction not by being perfect, but by acknowledging when their mistakes hurt someone, taking responsibility, expressing remorse, making restitution, and promising not to do it again.

Today, apology is increasingly accepted as a sign of strength, not weakness.  Leaders who apologize are seen as confident, signaling the three qualities that most modern leaders desire to communicate:  humility, transparency, and accountability.  Effective apology does not come easy—none of us likes admitting that we made a mistake—nor does it come without cost, but it is less costly than the alternatives of denial, deception, and cover-up.

Effective apologies are as unique as the offenses that inspire them, but they all have five components.  I call these the five Rs of effective apology.

Recognition—acknowledging the offense—establishes that an offense requiring apology has been committed. To the offender this step may seem as obvious as the offense itself, and therefore it may be tempting to just get through the apology or “get on with it.” But more often than not, skipping the recognition step results in a statement that just compounds the offense because it leaves the victim uncertain whether the apologizer understands why the victim is so upset.   Recognizing the offense requires the offender to consider at least three questions: 
1. What am I apologizing for?
2. What was the impact of my behaviors on the victim?
3. What social norm or value did I violate?

Responsibility—The key to effective apology is taking responsibility for your role in the consequences of your behavior.  It lays the moral agency for those offenses squarely and solely at the feet of the offender. What distinguishes effective from half-hearted apologies is the integrity that offenders demonstrate when they look deep into their hearts and reckon uncompromisingly with what they find there. In fearlessly pushing away all excuses, the apologizer retains undiluted responsibility. Underlying it all is the intention that the offender values the relationship and desires to rebuild it on terms agreeable to the victim.

Remorse—signals the offender’s contrition. Remorse is the feeling that we get when we realize that something we did harmed specific people, that it was wrong, and we wish we could undo what we did.  Using the words “I’m sorry” or “I apologize” is nonnegotiable. It is, in fact, the entire reason for the apology, and without such an expression you may as well not bother with the apology at all. Body language, facial expression, and tone of voice must be consistent with the words you use. 

Restitution—is the practical attempt to restore the relationship to what it was before you broke it. You can’t talk your way out of a situation you acted your way into.  For serious breaches, the apology must have some element of action. Without restitution, it becomes more difficult for offended parties to accept an apology, however well crafted. How could they? The relationship remains unbalanced. The offender continues to benefit to the disadvantage of the victim. It is no wonder that victims and judges alike pay careful attention to what an offender actually does in the way of restitution, because restitution is the clearest expression of the offender’s desire to restore the relationship.

Repetition—is a promise to the victim that the offender will not repeat the offense. A particularly effective phrase is a variant of, “I promise it will never happen again.”  It is often effective to end the apology with such a commitment; communication theory suggests that people remember best what they hear last.  An effective apology contains within it the answer to the question, “How am I to be held accountable?”  It takes more than apology to get past old habits. It requires a commitment to new values and a constant reminder that we have the ability to learn from our mistakes.

There are three things that are real: accidents, human fallibility, and apology. The first two are pretty much beyond our comprehension or control, so we must do what we can with the third.  The purpose of apology is to extend ourselves in such a way that relationships become deeper, and life becomes richer and more human in the process. All we have to do is honor the impulse—and practice. It’s not always easy, but we rarely wrestle with apology and lose.

Over the past week I experienced that the good old brainstorming techniques that are derived from de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats don’t need a nudge in the Web 2.0 age.

6 Thinking Hats

I have used this brainstorming technique in a variety of different settings: to generate ideas, to solve complex problems, etc.  The Six Thinking Hats method provides a way for groups to think together more effectively. ‘Together’ is the absolute key word here: instead of having individuals reacting their own way (as usual), the group agrees to deliberately step into each possible ‘way of thinking’ sequentially. There are 6 different types of thinking or hats one can wear in a discussion:

* Neutrality (white) – considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
* Feeling (Red) – instinctive gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling (but not any justification)
* Negative judgment (Black) – logic applied to identifying flaws or barriers, seeking mismatch
* Positive Judgment (Yellow) – logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony
* Creative thinking (Green) – statements of provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes
* Process control (Blue) – thinking about thinking

In my experience until last week – the Six Thinking Hats was a powerful tool to generate ideas and solve complex problems through parallel thinking. On top of that it creates a greater feeling of momentum in team that otherwise would be cluttered in a ‘being right’ discussion.

6 hats on Web 2.0??

By now most readers of this blog must have noticed that I am making my first babysteps into the Web 2.0 communities. One of them is LinkedIn, where I am lucky enough to manage the Organizational Change Practitioners group (4.722 members subscribed at the time of writing). Recently I decided to have ask the members contribute in which subgroups we would create in this forum.

What I witnessed next was multi-thinking at different dimensions at the same time. One of the most beautiful examples of Six Thinking Hats I have ever witnessed from close by!  At the time of writing, there were over 85 reactions that demonstrated the six thinking styles:

* Neutrality: people responding directly to the question at hand (e.g.:"I suggest to creat a subgroup on human behavior")
* Feeling: people volunteering to become a subgroup manager (e.g.: "Great idea, Luc. If you need help, I would be ready to facilitate/moderate the Web 2.0 group")
* Negative judgement (Black): people opposing to the idea of subgroups (e.g.:"Seems to me the additional structure may add bureaucracy rather than make it easier to navigate and participate.")
* Positive Judgement (Yellow): people supporting the idea (e.g.: "I think having focused discussions would be great so that when dealing with a particular issue, you wouldn’t be all over the place.")
* Creative thinking (Green): people suggesting additional ideas (e.g.:"Maybe a poll would be a good idea to select the final five")
* Process control (Blue): people looking at this process happening (e.g.: "watching and participating in a wonderful new (to me at least) process: asynchronous, large-group virtual conversation and decision making"); one participant even Twittered this discussion thread!

Invisible Hand

The most fascinating observation however, was that the discussion thread almost chronologically went through all of these hats. In the same way as during brainstorming sessions each thinking hat is triggered by one reaction, which sparks a range of reactions that belong to the same thinking type.

Coincidence? Not in a million years. But then, what caused this to happen? How did the group trigger a specific hat, go to a climax of reactions, a decline and then moved on to a next hat? How did the group decide the order of the hats to think by? Honestly – I DON’T KNOW. But I did experience that we were parallel thinking! We simply cannot deny that there is some kind of invisible hand doing some fine work.

Stakeholder management passed away June 20, 2009 surrounded by his family. He died of top-down-command-and-control disease. He was the widow of certified nincompoops. Born in theory to social scientists, he leaves his beloved children Dullness and Cognitive Dissonance. He is also survived by his grandchildren Workshop-till-you-drop, Toolkit-from-here-to-Tokyo and Audit-the-hell-out-of-you. He leaves behind numerous devoted flipchart papers and Post-its. A private ecology service has been held.

Connections in lieu of flowers to Organizational Change Practitioners or any other community you are passionate about!  Stakeholder Management’s death leaves a void in all our lives. Although we shall gather together to remember our friend in the near future for now, we welcome Community Facilitation!

- date of birth – since the beginning of mankind
- time of birth – any time, any generation
- weight – immune to gravity
- length – a multiplication of connections

Join us for a baby shower honoring, the Web 2.0 and all its web applications that grant us a new literacy.
RSVP by yesterday @ Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Wikipedia, any blog and friends.

Related articles:
Web 2.0 is a Major Organizational Change Accelerator – August 10th, 2008

In addition to the articles on parenting as a management skill that I posted in February 2009, there is one more insight I’d like to add. I found out that the epicenter of organizational change management is hidden in the simple mechanism of cause-and-effect. And I found out about it by being home between television time and dinner time on an average working day.

When I ask my 3 year old son to stop watching television and to come to the dinner table, I’m most likely to receive a ‘No!’ and when I persist in my plan, tears and other forms of ‘Resistance’ will follow for the next ten minutes or so.

However, when I get involved in his frame of reference, I tell him that the television will be shut down when the clock turns seven or when the episode he is watching ends. I can also tell him he can count to three for me to turn off the television, etc. It’s a game he gladly subscribes to; running to the dinner table – eager to start dinner.

What happened here? In the first situation I would be using my parental authority to reinforce an action. This likely results in ‘Revenge’, ‘Regret’ or ‘Rescue’. In the second scenario I am using a different approach: instead of pushing harder I take one step back – BUT I STICK TO THE OBJECTIVE, i.e. television out and on to the dinner table.

By stepping back I inverse the cause-and-effect relationship: I let him be the cause instead of the effect of the situation. This is more likely to result in a ‘Responsible‘ response: I give him the opportunity or the ‘ability‘ to ‘respond‘ positively to my request.

The same is true for organizational change efforts. The point is that you can achieve most of the goals by underscoring the objectives, stepping back and then leaving people the opportunity to become involved in the solution. Instead of pushing harder straight on to ‘Resistance’ you are stepping back and allowing ‘Relationship’ and ‘Respect’.

I bet one can’t learn that lesson so profoundly and deeply at Harvard or Wharton the way I did between the dinner table and the TV set.

Related articles:
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 4) – March 1st, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 3) – February 21st, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 2) – February 16th, 2009
Parenting as a Management Skill … Huh? (part 1) – February 9th, 2009

Last week, someone made me aware of the fact that a 4 hour meeting we attended with 30 persons accounted for almost one man-month. Unfortunately, it never says so on the invoices or the time-sheets of the participants. In case this would be explicit, people would be meeting far more efficiently. And I am talking about plain and simple easy-to-implement improvements … no rocket science – just another point of view.

We need to realize that one of the most important communications instruments for a change manager is the meeting. In order to use this channel in the best possible manner you need to be aware of the different reasons why meetings are held and you need to adapt the format of the meeting accordingly. Here are some examples:
- providing/gathering information
- generating ideas/brainstorming
- listing of issues
- solving of issues
- taking decisions
- generating solidarity with the team/teambuilding

If you fail to clarify one of the above objectives in the beginning of the meeting, some participants may be tempted to take advantage of this situation in order to bring their own agenda forward.

The above diagram is titled ‘Doing away with belly-aching – the clover-four of a healthy meeting‘. If you are clear on all four of these ingredients, the odds are that you are about to chair a healthy meeting.

According to Bill Jensen participants are entrusting you with part of their life, i.e. the time that you are meeting with them. Therefore you should always ask yourself the three following questions before taking into hostage a part of your participant’s lives:
- What is the participant getting from this meeting?
- What is the participant’s added value?
- If the participant is suddenly taken ill, can the meeting take place without him/her?

We all know that meetings can be a big time consumer, but we also know that they are a necessary evil – so why wouldn’t we make the best of it?