Year: 2019

Gemba Walking: A ‘how to’ guide

giantknave Brain Farts , ,

Gemba basicsThis is a quick guide I wrote to explain: what is meant by ‘Gemba walking’; who should do this and why; and how to go about doing them (regularly!).

It is a detailed follow-up to an introductory post I wrote some five years ago (called ‘Meet the process’).

The What:

‘Gemba’ is a Japanese word meaning ‘the actual place’.

In service organisations1, this is likely to mean the front line, where the value is (or should be) created for the customer.

Gemba can be thought of as four actions:

  • Go to the actual work place;
  • See the actual work in process;
  • Observe what is happening; and
  • Collect the actual data.

It is fundamentally about working with facts (evidence) obtained in the work, rather than discussing opinions derived away from the work.

A Gemba walk would be to follow an initial customer demand being placed on the system all the way through to its conclusion (i.e. the proper resolution of the customer’s need) and observing (in detail2) everything that happens in between.

The Who and Why:

Anyone and everyone in a management position3 (all the way up to the CEO and the board) should be regularly going to the Gemba, to find out what happens and why.

“Most leaders’ assumptions about what is happening on a day-to-day basis really don’t align with what is actually taking place!” [Michael Bremer].

Put simply, managers should be managing based on what is actually happening. To go to the Gemba and really look is to open one’s eyes to reality!

The need for regularity in Gemba walking is that:

  • it takes time for those in hierarchical positions to establish trust with those working at the front line (such that the people believe you are there to help, rather than judge, them);
  • there is great variety within customer demands and, in order to understand this, you need to observe many different customers; and
  • if changes are being made (as is nearly always the case), you need to be going back to see the effect (i.e. is it better? worse? no different?)

The How

The following is meant as a generic guide:

Create the ability to visit the work – talk with the site management, and whomever will be supervising on that day. Set them at their ease as to why you want to visit.

Once there, understand what customer demands are being handled.

Engineer your ability to (respectfully5) sit alongside employees who will be handling customer demands.

Introduce yourself to the employee – explain what you are wanting to do, and why. Set them at their ease. Discuss that you are interested in understanding:

  • what the customer is asking for and/or needs – and why;
  • how the organisational system responds; and
  • what makes it hard (or impossible) for the employee to be able to help the customer

Listen and observe – take good clear notes.

Don’t interfere in the work – no tinkering or attempts at instructing/ advising/coaching. Let it happen as if you hadn’t been there.

Talk to the employee after the customer interaction has ended (perhaps walk through what you observed, asking any clarifying questions6) – demonstrate that you have not been making judgements about them.

Provide the opportunity for the employee to reflect on the customer interaction – help them think about the customer purpose and how the organisation responded.

Summarise your key findings.

Repeat until you see patterns in your findings.

Discuss your findings with site management such that they are pleased you came and would welcome you again.

Do something about what you found! (though see clarification 4 below).

Clarification 1: ‘Meet the process’ vs. ‘Meet the people’

Senior Managers may consider that they regularly go out to sites and that, in doing this, they are already ‘going to the Gemba’. However, there is a huge difference between going to sites to:

  • meet the people; and
  • encounter what’s actually happening

A typical management site visit would be to meet people when they aren’t dealing with customers, and ask these people questions along the lines of ‘how are things going?’

This is a very poor, and typically misleading, approach to understanding the work.

Conversely, if managers sit with people whilst they perform the work, the meeting between manager and worker is a healthy by-product. It is also more likely to allow ‘conversations between equals’ (i.e. remove hierarchy as a barrier).

Clarification 2: Mindset

The point of Gemba Walking is to find things to improve, NOT to hope that all is working according to expectations.

The mindset is to look for opportunities for improvement. It is completely unrealistic to suppose that everything is going wonderfully. It won’t be. Rather than being disappointed that all is not going as desired and/or as ‘instructed’, be thankful that you’ve found out what’s actually happening and can now facilitate doing something useful about this.

Clarification 3: Surveys aren’t ‘in the work’

You can’t understand how the work works (or why it is like this) from performing surveys. You can (perhaps) gain some idea of the outcomes that the work created from surveying people afterwards but even this is likely to be limited, biased and muted (Ref. my earlier posts on ‘Net Promoter Score’).

The place to understand is in the work.

Clarification 4: Making improvements

When you go to the Gemba you will notice lots of things – many (most) that have been hidden from you.

You may want to rush off and make changes! However, if you act in this way:

  • you will likely be swamped with things to do;
  • you will have taken ownership of them (and away from the people in the work); and
  • you risk acting in a component (rather than systemic) way

For each thing you notice, the need is to work with the people to ascertain:

  • what the people can own – and your role is to help them develop the capability to improve their own work (and how they would know if it is an improvement); and
  • what is systemic and therefore out of their direct control – and your role is to champion the bigger changes for them.

Footnotes

1. In Manufacturing, Gemba is likely to mean the factory floor.

2. Re. in detail: “It should take you [Management] hours to walk 100 metres each time you enter the factory [i.e. the work place]. If it takes you no time at all…that means no one is relying on you.”[Taiichi Ohno]

3. Re. regularity: If you are sat in a management meeting and aren’t regularly going to the Gemba, then what on earth are you talking about?!

4. The word Gemba: Another (and perhaps more correct) way to refer to what is being meant when we use the word ‘Gemba’ is (as I understand it) Genchi Genbutsu – meaning ‘the real location, the real thing’.

5. You will need to understand the nature of the customer interaction and what is most appropriate. There is a difference between listening to a telephone call and observing a face-to-face meeting. The need is to be able to see and understand what happens without getting in the way/ affecting the interaction.

6. All your questions should be about ‘why’ and not about ‘who’.

Autonomy Support

giantknave Brain Farts , , , , ,

Tree of handsOver my years of reading and experiential learning, I’ve understood that there are three fundamental elements relevant to a human being’s psychological well-being1:

  • Competency;
  • Autonomy; and
  • Relatedness

Competency (‘sense of efficacy’) refers to our need to produce desirable outcomes; to be effective whilst experiencing an agreeable level of challenge in doing so; and to experience mastery. Basically, we want to be good at stuff, and we like getting better at it.

Autonomy (‘sense of volition’) refers to our need to feel ownership of our actions; to perceive that we have choices and can self-determine what to do and/or how to do it. As per my previous post (The comedy of…), the opposite of autonomy is control. Put simply, autonomy is the freedom to decide for yourself.

Relatedness (‘sense of caring relationships’) refers to our need to feel connected with others; to care about, and be cared about by, others without ulterior motives.

Together, these three are what makes life meaningful. It follows that they are necessary for meaningful work to occur and should therefore be front-and-centre for anyone (and everyone) trying to design an effective management system.

  • If you get this right, then just wow, what a place to work!
  • If you get it wrong… no prizes for guessing what that might look like.

I want to focus this post in on the autonomy piece, and how those in management positions can (and should) interact:

What’s so good about this ‘autonomy’ malarkey?

Edward Deci writes that:

“When autonomous, people are fully willing to do what they are doing, and they embrace the activity with a sense of interest and commitment. Their actions emanate from their true sense of self, so they are being authentic.”

“Autonomy fuels growth and health, because it allows people to experience themselves as themselves, as the initiator of their own actions. The person who feels competent and autonomous, who directs his or her own life, is immeasurably better off than a person who does not.”

Now that’s going to be a powerful force if we can create the conditions for it to occur!

“The key to whether people are living autonomously is whether they feel, deep within themselves, that their actions are their own choice…The main thing about meaningful choice is that it engenders willingness.”

I should note that there are whole bodies of research performed over decades that powerfully back these statements up.

Being in a ‘one up’ position

Deci uses the ‘one up’ language to refer to a person having a role ‘one up’ a hierarchy in respect of another. It applies across many situations, including:

  • a parent/ guardian to a child;
  • a teacher to a student;
  • a manager to a direct report; and
  • a ‘case manager’ to a client

I’m particularly interested in the last scenario. There are heaps of public sector roles in which someone in (what can generically be referred to as) a case management position has the goal of assisting their client to get to, and stay in, a much better place.

Examples include:

  • a probation/corrections officer with a prisoner
  • a nurse/medical worker with a patient
  • social workers and benefits officers with their clients
  • ….and on and on and on

A ‘one up’ working with their client

A conventional approach to case management is often one of control. It starts with a prescription (“I’m the expert here – this is what’s needed”) and then direction (“and therefore this is what you need to do”).

Deci writes that there are two potential responses to control – compliance or defiance.

The problem with compliance is that the person isn’t actually doing it for themselves, they are ‘going through the motions’. Any outcome is most likely to be superficial, short-lived and requiring of continual (and potentially escalating) maintenance.

..and the (rather obvious) problem with defiance is that you’ve got them running in the wrong direction!

“Compliance produces change that is not likely to be maintained, and defiance blocks change in the first place.”

There are many people out there that distinctly dislike attempting to control others and go in the other direction of permissiveness – i.e. letting people ‘get away with [whatever they want]’. This isn’t healthy – for the client, the system or society. There is a need for a degree of structure, with limits and consequences.

Control spectrum 1

The risks2 of operating anywhere on the control spectrum include: undesirable and/or ineffective behaviours; a lack of personal responsibility; and the creation of dependency (on the system).

Introducing the concept of ‘Autonomy Support’

Neither control nor permissiveness are what’s needed for people/clients to achieve meaningful and sustained outcomes. Instead, we need to adopt a totally new orientation that is perpendicular to (i.e. removed from) the control spectrum.

Deci introduces:

“Autonomy Support [as] a personal orientation you take toward other people.

It requires being able to take their perspective – being able to see the world as they see it. It thus allows you to understand why they want what they want and why they do what they do.

As an autonomy supportive [Case Manager], you would be building an alliance with your [Client] and you would engage new situations from that perspective.”

Put simply, Autonomy Support starts from the position that we ‘get’ that a person’s autonomy is key, and therefore our role is to support (nurture, enable, and enhance) a client’s ability to ‘work it out and/or do it for themselves’. This might take some up-front time and effort, but it is undeniably worthwhile.

Control spectrum 2

Right, so that sounds lovely, but how do we go about it?!

How to promote autonomy

The following diagram is my summary of the key points from Deci’s work, which I’ll then attempt to explain and open up. It represents the dynamic collaboration between two people (the person and a ‘one-up’):

Autonomy Support from Paint

The two prominent points are that:

  • The most important role of the ‘one up’ is to fully and continually understand (the situation, the context, the immediate and emergent needs, what really matters and so on); and
  • most important for the person/client is to feel like they are in control (autonomous), and this will be achieved through the ‘one up’ providing them with real and meaningful choice.

…but, as you can see, there’s more to it than this. Taking each piece in turn:

Understanding: “to relate to others as human beings, as active agents worthy of support, rather than as objects to be manipulated…It begins with listening openly.”

Put another way, if we don’t really understand what’s going on, how on earth can we expect to help them get to where they need to be? If we merely assume, judge and cajole, we will most likely make matters (much) worse.

Knowledge: This point refers to the person’s/client’s knowledge. If we are going to provide them with choice, then it is our responsibility to ensure they have the necessary knowledge to reasonably decide. It would be unfair not to do so!

Choice: This is perhaps the central point but there are some clarifications to be made:

  • In some situations, we may not be able to allow choice in the ‘what’. If this is the case, we should turn to providing choice about the ‘how’ to go about the what.
  • Sometimes the offering of choice isn’t appropriate…HOWEVER, we need to be very careful that we haven’t conveniently ‘presumed’ this simply to control.

Deci notes that a usual critique is that ‘[my person/client] doesn’t want the choice – they want to be told what to do’. He goes on to write that:

“If [this is true] it is because people have been pushed to that point by being overly controlled in the past.

If you control people enough, they may begin to act is if they want to be controlled. [This is] a self-protection strategy…

People adapt to being controlled and act as if they don’t want the very thing that is integral to their nature – namely, the opportunity to be autonomous. They probably fear that they will be evaluated – perhaps even punished – if they make the ‘wrong’ choice. And they may well be.

Being autonomy supportive can be very difficult, especially with people who are accustomed to being controlled…we have to be patient…to work with [them] to reawaken what is basic to their nature and what will almost surely lead to more positive results.”

Limits: Remembering that we aren’t about permissiveness, we will need to be clear on societal limits to a person’s choices and actions.

“Supporting autonomy does not mean condoning irresponsibility, nor does it mean allowing people to engage in dangerous or harmful acts. Central to promoting autonomy is encouraging people to understand where their rights end and others’ rights begin. Setting limits is a way of communicating about people’s rights and about constraints that exist in the social world. As such, it helps people to learn to be responsible in making their choices.”

Some considerations in setting limits:

  • The person/client should (where possible) be involved in setting the limits, rather than having them unilaterally imposed upon them
  • The reasoning for any limits needs to be well understood by the person/ client, together with the likely consequences of breaking them
  • We should aim to keep limits as wide as possible, and allow choice within them
  • Limits should be communicated in factual, rather than controlling, language

Consequences: “Once limits are set and the consequences communicated, it is important to follow through, else one is undermining one’s own credibility.”

Some key points on consequences:

  • Consequences must be appropriate to any lapses or contraventions. This MUSTN’T be about punishment or attempting control. It should be about encouraging responsibility
  • The person/ client should be free to choose whether they stay within the set limits…and then experience the (previously communicated) outcomes of whether they do or don’t.
  • However, if we (the ‘one up’) don’t follow through, we are really back at permissiveness.

“…it is easy to confuse autonomy support with permissiveness [because] people find it hard to admit that they are being permissive, so they mis-portray their permissive behaviour as autonomy support.

Permissiveness is easy, but autonomy support is hard [yet ultimately rewarding] work”

Control spectrum 3

Reset and repeat: and finally, if and when a person/ client chooses a given course direction (whatever direction this may be), we are dynamically back at understanding.

We don’t judge a client for their choices, we work hard at understanding more deeply why they made them, so that we can go round the ‘autonomy support’ loop until we and they succeed.

In Summary:

It’s not about saying ‘No’ (Control) or ‘Yes’ (Permissive)…it’s about moving from an overly simplistic view and on to real understanding and valuable human interactions.

It may be hard (in the short term) but hugely effective (over time). Conversely, we may be surprised at how easy it is – many a client is just stuck, waiting to be understood!

Future Linkages from this post:

I’ve got a couple of related topics that should ‘dangle’ off this post. They are:

  • ‘Motivational Interviewing’: Discussing a method that fits with equipping those in case management roles with the skills to be autonomy supportive; and
  • ‘Decentralisation 2.0’: Discussing how the central and support functions of large service organisations should interact with their sites to enable, rather than (attempt to) control.

I haven’t written them yet…but I hope to find the time to do so.

Footnotes

1. These three elements are central to Deci and Ryan’s ‘Self Determination Theory’

2. These risks apply equally to the person/client and the ‘one up’ person/ case manager!

3. All quotes from Deci in this post come from his highly readable book titled “Why we do what we do”

The comedy of…

giantknave Brain Farts , , , , ,

100% Authentic…being asked (or, worse, told) to be authentic.

I’ve long had a sneaky suspicion that having to tell yourself (internalising), or wanting to proclaim to others (externalising), that you are ‘being authentic’ suggests that something else is going on.

What is authenticity?

I’ve noticed a fair amount of focus on the rather interesting ‘authenticity’ word within the organisational world over the last few years and yet I’ve often felt a deep discomfort about its (mis)use.

I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I was uncomfortable. A recent read of Edward Deci’s work1 (I think) assists:

“Authenticity necessitates behaving autonomously, for it means to be the author of one’s actions – acting in accordance with one’s true inner self.

The key to understanding autonomy, authenticity, and self is the psychological process called integration. Various aspects of a person’s psyche differ in the degree to which they have been integrated or brought into harmony with the person’s innate, core self.

Only when the processes that initiate and regulate an action are integrated aspects of one’s self would the behaviour be autonomous and the person, authentic. It is in this sense that to be authentic is to be true to one’s self.” (Deci)

Wow, that sounds a bit deep! But the key point is that authenticity is reliant on autonomy.

The opposite – control

It’s worth stating that the opposite of ‘autonomy’ is ‘control’ and, as such, we can understand human behaviour in terms of whether it is autonomous or controlled.

“To be controlled means to act because one is being pressured. When controlled, people act without a sense of personal endorsement. Their behaviour is not an expression of the self, for the self has been subjugated to the controls. In this condition, people can reasonably be described as alienated2.” (Deci)

Deci goes on to identify the two types of controlled behaviour (i.e. responses to control) as:

  • Compliance; or
  • Defiance

If you are doing something out of a sense of ‘having to’ rather than ‘choosing to’ then you aren’t acting autonomously.

Conversely (and perhaps not so obvious), if you are not doing something (or doing something else) in order to defy, you are also not acting autonomously – your defiance is a result of an attempted control, rather than your true volition.

The meaning of autonomy

So, if autonomy is key, I should make clear as to what is (and is not) meant by Deci when using the ‘autonomy’ word.

“To be autonomous means to act in accord with one’s self – it means feeling free and volitional in one’s actions. When autonomous, people are fully willing to do what they are doing, and they embrace the activity with a sense of interest and commitment. Their actions emanate from their true sense of self, so they are being authentic.” (Deci)

The Point

 “Choice is the key to self-determination and authenticity.” (Deci)

It follows that if you are being controlled (don’t have free choice), then you won’t be truly authentic.

Don’t ask or tell me to ‘be authentic’. This doesn’t make sense!

Further, if you find yourself wanting to add a ‘this is me being authentic’ proviso within your oral or written word then it might be worth thinking about why you consider this to be necessary, and what this means.

Addendum: clearing up a few misunderstanding

Deci identifies a couple of misunderstandings regarding authenticity and the ‘self’ which need to be cleared up:

  1. Equating ‘self’ with ‘person’ and in so doing, suggesting a problem of being ‘absorbed with the self’; and
  2. Confusing autonomy (and freedom) with independence (and aloneness)

Regarding Misunderstanding 1: Some social commentators have suggested a (problematic) narcissistic preoccupation with the self within some western cultures. Deci sets out how this is a misunderstanding:

“Narcissism involves desperately seeking affirmation from others. It involves an outward focus – a concern with what others think – and that focus takes people away from their true self.

The narcissistic preoccupation results not from people’s being aligned with the self but from having lost contact with it…

…Narcissism is not the result of authenticity or self-determination, it is their antithesis.” (Deci)

Regarding Misunderstanding 2: Other social critics suggest that autonomy leads to separation. Deci clears up this misunderstanding as follows:

“…the misconception that when people come into fuller contact with themselves, when they become freer in their functioning, when they unhook themselves from society’s controls, they will opt for isolation over connectedness. But there is no evidence for that. Quite the contrary, as people become more authentic, as they develop greater capacity for autonomous self-regulation, they also become capable of a deeper relatedness to others.” (Deci)

(As I understand it) humans can be summarised as having three innate psychological needs: competence3, autonomy and relatedness. Put simply, autonomy and relatedness (or its opposite, independence) are very different concepts.

Deci points out that I can be:

  • Independent and autonomous (to freely not rely on others); or
  • Independent and controlled (to feel forced not to rely on others)

Footnotes

1. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan are two of my giants – and I’ve just added a ‘giant’ record onto this blog for them. Their research on motivation (and the resulting ‘self-determination theory’) has been ground-breaking for decades.

2. Alienation: “The concept of alienation…philosophically means to be separated from one’s self.” (Deci)

3. Competence: This has been expressed by others as ‘the desire for mastery’

4. All quotes in this post come from the highly readable “Why we do what we do” by Edward Deci.

I’m hoping to find the time to write some more in this area, particularly regarding what Deci explains as ‘autonomy support’. I believe that this is a hugely important concept for anyone and everyone who is trying to help others.

How do you think about people’s abilities?

giantknave Brain Farts , , ,

fixed vs growth mindsets1I’ve been facilitating discussions on mindsets for a few years now, but I’ve not yet written a post specifically on the subject. So here goes with a basic introduction…

You may have heard of the work of Professor Carol Dweck in respect of the mindsets that people adopt. She has devoted decades of her life to the study of how we think about ourselves, and wrote the first edition of her best-selling book ‘Mindset’ back in 20061.

The book compares and contrasts what Dweck labels as Fixed and Growth mindsets.

What do these labels mean?

Dweck noticed that there is a major divide between how people think about their abilities2. She explains that:

Someone within a Fixed mindset believes that people are born with (or without) their ability i.e. that our ability is innate (as if ‘given to us’) and therefore static. You either ‘have it’ or you don’t3.

If you believe in innate ability, then your actions will necessarily be about judging yourself and others, to determine who fits where in some sort of pecking order.

Someone within a Growth mindset believes that people are on an incremental journey, and that any and all of our abilities can be developed. They believe that people can substantially change what they are capable of.

If you believe in the possibility of ever-changing abilities, then your actions will be concerned with learning and development.

I should note that you or I probably don’t realise which of the two paradigms we (truly) believe. It would likely have to be (carefully) shown to us before we could clearly see it.

Whichever mindset someone adopts leads to some prevalent behaviours and predictable outcomes.

An enlightening experiment

Before revealing these behaviours and outcomes, I think it is useful to summarise one of the foundational pieces of research performed by Dweck and her colleagues:

Working with a group (numbering in the hundreds) of early-adolescent students, they started by giving each of them the same set of problems to work on. The students did reasonably well in solving them.

They randomly assigned each student to one of two categories, in order to treat them differently:

They told students assigned to (what I’ll refer to as) Category A that they must be really smart/ talented to have done so well i.e. they praised them for their ability.

Conversely, they told those assigned to Category B that they must have done well because of the effort they had put in.

They then gave each student the choice to undertake some further problems of a similar difficulty.

Those in Cat. A rejected the choice, not wanting their (supposed) talent to be called into question.

However, 90% of those in Cat. B wanted to undertake the further problems, such that they could learn from them.

They then gave each student some harder problems to complete, which (as might be expected) they didn’t do so well on.

Those in Cat. A (the ‘ability’ praised) now thought that perhaps they weren’t so clever after all. They took their poorer performance on the harder problems as a sign of deficiency on their part.

Those in Cat. B (the ‘effort’ praised) didn’t see it as failure or a reflection on their ability. They simply saw it as requiring more effort and a need to try out new strategies.

They then asked the students about their enjoyment of working on the problems.

All said that the first set of problems (those they had been successful at) had been fun.

The students in Cat. A said it wasn’t fun anymore once it became difficult. They hadn’t enjoyed their ‘talented’ status being in jeopardy.

Those in Cat. B still loved the problems, with many saying that the harder ones were the most fun.

They then returned the students to some more of the easier problems (i.e. like the first set that they had done well on).

Surprisingly, those in Cat. A (the ‘ability’ praised) did worse than they had at the start. They had lost confidence in themselves.

Those in Cat. B (the ‘effort’ praised) got better and better. They had used the harder problems to learn and had moved way ahead.

Finally, they told each student that the researchers would be repeating the study at other schools and asked them to write a short note about the problem exercise that they had just undertaken so that these other schools could read about it. They asked each student to write their overall score at the top of their note.

Some 40%4 of the Cat. A (ability-praised) students lied about their score, where this lie was always an exaggeration. They felt a degree of shame in their score and wished to hide it.

Dweck summarised the experimental outcomes as follows:

“So telling children they’re smart, in the end, made them feel dumber and act dumber, but claim they were smarter. I don’t think this is what we’re aiming for when we put positive labels (‘gifted’, ‘talented’) on people.” (Dweck)

Putting people into a mindset

The experiment is a sobering demonstration of our ability to put people into (or at least direct them towards) a given mindset by the way we talk to and interact with them. This is especially true with young people.

The following image nicely sets out Dweck’s findings of the predictable behaviours and outcomes of each mindset:

fixed vs growth mindsets2

You can probably see that the simple act of learning about these ‘mindset’ concepts can be a catalyst for a constructive shift in the way people see themselves and others. It is the beginning of understanding that:

“Mindsets are just beliefs. They’re powerful beliefs but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change your mind” (Dweck)

Dweck’s ‘Mindset’ book is an excellent place to continue this thinking.

A clarification

Dweck isn’t saying that we are all born with the exact same potential and that anyone can do anything. She’s not denying the effects of our unique genetic make ups.

What matters is what you believe about where you could take yourself:

 “No matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.” (Dweck)

Personally, I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to run as fast as Usain Bolt, paint as well as Michelangelo, or think as deeply as Stephen Hawking….and so on.

But I do believe that: if I put the effort in; am happy to seek out knowledge and be taught; don’t mind making mistakes; want feedback and will act on it….then I can get much better than I am right now at anything.

“A person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable). It’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil and training.” (Dweck)

It’s not about comparison with others, it’s just about continually developing yourself (and others) and enjoying doing so.

An over-simplification

The image above presents a binary Fixed vs. Growth picture. However, in reality, we are all a mixture of the two mindsets and it’s important to recognise this. Events and circumstances might trigger us to move in one direction or another.

The need is to recognise if and when we have adopted a fixed mindset and then ‘talk to ourselves’ about it. We won’t move out of it through denial.

A caveat

It’s not just about you. It’s also about what you believe about others!

You might have a fabulously growth mindset about what you can achieve but think highly limiting thoughts about those around you.

You can help people towards a growth mindset through the discussions you have with them. How about conversations along the following lines:

“What did you put effort into today?”

“What mistakes did you make that taught you something?”

“What did you learn?”

They may surprise you – there’s likely far more to them than you (currently) realise and, with the right environment, this will continue to emerge.

Footnotes:

1. Dweck has written a more recent 2016 updated edition

2. Abilities: I’ve deliberately used the generic ‘abilities’ word, rather than perhaps the more emotive ‘intelligence’ or even ‘talents’ because I want to get across that this is about any and all of our abilities, whether it be intellectual, emotional, physical, …etc.

3. Fixed Mindset: If you were in any doubt…Donald Trump sits squarely in this camp as evidenced in this article.

4. Lying: Dweck doesn’t say if any Cat. B (‘effort praised’) students lied but I presume that it wasn’t appreciable given that she signals out the ‘ability praised’ lying as being striking.

5. Praise: This post ties in very well with a post I wrote years ago about the research on praise

 

 

Epistemology – on knowledge and knowing

giantknave Brain Farts , , , , ,

ConfuciusMy experiences and understanding (i.e. my mental model) of the world is (incredibly) limited. That wasn’t a confession – so is yours 🙂

Further, I might tell you about my experiences but my description can only be a partial representation and, however good I am at explaining, you cannot share my experience.

You can only construct your own mental representation of what my experiences might be like…and apply this to your (current) mental model of the world.

Epistemology

So what?

If we don’t realise and (regularly) reflect on the fact that we are all working on limited and incompletely-communicated models then we can get stuck in debates about who is right and who is wrong. And of course, we will always be right won’t we!

Instead, we need to (truly) grasp two things:

  • My (and your) mental model of the world is tremendously limited; and
  • If we don’t habitually see this limitation, then we will likely spend our time reinforcing (rather than exploring and expanding) this mental model.

Why does this matter?

So, you might be gloriously happy with your mental model of the world and not give a damn about what others think!

This would be a reasonable position to hold if your mental model also considers that the world is currently, and will remain, perfect (from your point of view).

However, if (as is likely) you think that there are plenty of problems with the world and plenty of room for improvement, then you are (to put it mildly) unlikely to move towards desirable outcomes if you don’t reflect on your (and others) limitations and what this implies.

Some related words of wisdom:

“The more views we have of a thing, the better we can understand it.”

 “Complete understanding of anything, let alone everything, is an ideal that can be approached continuously but can never be attained.”

 “In systems thinking, increases in understanding are believed to be obtained by expanding the systems to be understood, not by reducing them to their elements.”

 Russell Ackoff

It should be of interest to us if someone’s mental model appears to differ from our own.

Footnote:

1. This short post came about from reflecting on a piece written on the subject of epistemology (on knowledge and knowing) within the course ‘Mastering Systems Thinking in Practice’, at The Open University.

Plugging a long-standing ‘giant’ hole

giantknave Blog 'Admin'

Plugging a holeThis is just a very quick ‘blog admin’ post to let regular readers of this site know that, having neglected things for some months, I’ve finally plugged a long-standing hole in my list of giants…

Here’s the link to a newly published blog page on Walter Shewhart (1891 – 1967) and Donald Wheeler. I hope that you find it interesting and perhaps useful.

Oh, and I’ve finally opened my wallet and upgraded the site (from ‘free’ to a paid plan) so that you shouldn’t see adverts anymore. I’m hoping that this makes your reading much easier.

Cheers,

Steve

Emotions in fancy dress

giantknave Brain Farts , , ,

Fancy dressI published a post last week for the first time in ages.  In so doing, I stumbled across a graveyard of half-written posts (the kernel of an idea comes easily to me, making this relevant and coherent does not). I’ll see if I can finish a few more posts – here’s another. It starts with a quote:

“…opinions are bad things.

By opinions I do not mean ideas, and I do not mean thought. An opinion is rarely born of thought. Instead it arrives fully formed in a head. Opinions are…almost always emotion in fancy dress. They can be inherited, or they can spring from fears or desires, but they are never right.

Yet look how ferociously, how indefatigably, people cling to their opinions in the face of a flood of evidence that those opinions are at best questionable, and more likely mere dump fodder.

Look at the intransigent folly of so much politics. Look at the nonsense that passes for political debate….if you want to take part in this contest you are required to join a team and in order to join a team you have to have a packaged set of opinions.

Where do these opinions come from? Are they arrived at by rational analysis? If so, and if reason is reason, how come they differ? But opinions are not reasonable.

We are emotional creatures in an irrational world. Anyone who holds opinions is wrong and dangerous…The only comfortable seat for a thinking human being is a fence.

…and that’s my opinion.” (Joe Bennett1)

Joe’s article (from which the quote is pulled) brings a broad smile to my face. I absolutely love the penultimate line. In the societies that I have known (the UK, and to a lesser extent NZ) the phrase ‘sitting on the fence’ is often (i.e. normally) used as an insult – and yet this has always irritated me. I often find myself sitting on the proverbial fence…because I feel that I don’t know enough to pass judgement.

I don’t see this as a bad thing.  Whenever I find myself in a ‘fencing-sitting’ scenario, it suggests that:

  1. I shouldn’t be giving an opinion (no matter how hard I am pushed to do so)….since I clearly feel that I don’t know enough; and
  2. I could do with learning some more.

I see the ‘I’m fence-sitting’ circumstance as a useful realisation because, if I care about the issue in focus, then it should trigger me into putting some effort into ‘digging in’, to uncover facts, to appreciate perspectives, to see the bigger picture. In so doing, I am highly likely to move to a new (and more productive) place.

Merely having an opinion and sticking to it is likely to keep me anchored rigidly to the spot, as if stuck at the bottom of a deep lake in a pair of concrete boots.

A likely critique:

“But you’d never get anywhere Steve! You’d be forever stuck, like a broken record.”

I would suggest the opposite.

‘Not having opinions’ doesn’t have to mean staying meekly silent. Rather, it implies entering and sustaining an open-minded dialogue. This would require skillfully setting out:

  • what you think you know, and why;
  • what you are uncertain of, and why; and
  • what you understand as clear holes in your knowledge.

…and thus collaborating with others who can perhaps expand the group’s (never to be complete) jigsaw of knowledge.

Further, ‘not having opinions’ does not mean ‘not making decisions’. Rather, it means using facts to make decisions, and investing in the (hugely rewarding) effort of collecting facts before doing so.

If you feel that you don’t know, well go and find out some more!

We’d probably move away from ‘implementing ideologies’ (going fast to go slow) to ‘experimenting with hypotheses’ and making adjustments as we learn (going slow to go fast).

…but that’s just my opinion 😊.

On ‘going and find out more’

‘Finding out more’ doesn’t mean canvasing other people’s opinions or biasing your search for ‘evidence’ to that which supports your opinion. It means going to the ‘coal face’, observing reality (and the variation within), collecting the evidence for yourself and reflecting on what it is telling you.

A nice quote I heard the other day from a colleague:

“If you haven’t observed, you can’t talk”.

Now, that’s quite a bold and (perhaps blanket) statement, but there’s a rather important point within.

If we are not (yet) in a position to be able to observe (i.e. gain primary evidence) then I’d suggest that we should listen very carefully to those that have.

Linkages

I recognise that this short post may be questioned by many, since opinions are (rightly or wrongly) a huge part of life.

I’ve written a number of earlier posts in this space and if you’d like to play with the idea further, here are a few to look at:

Addendum

Take ‘Brexit’ as an example (the idea of Britain leaving the European Union).

Who’s got a strongly held opinion regarding Brexit? I’d suggest millions of people.

Who can (really) say that they fully understand what is being proposed and what will transpire? I’d suggest maybe a handful of ‘experts’…and even these will likely be wide of the mark.

…and with that thought, who will move onto the fence, to stop pushing their opinion and, instead, spend some real effort to further try to understand? Perhaps not so many.

‘Fence sitting’, at least while you are (meaningfully) learning, is a most excellent place to be.

Conversely, who’s dug into themselves, to think about the emotions that are answerable for driving their opinions? (Inherited from their parents? Created by their fears? Constructed from their cravings?…)

A reminder that Joe wrote that “Opinions are…almost always emotion in fancy dress”.

What costume(s) are you (and I) wearing? Why?

Footnote

1. Joe Bennett is a most excellent writer of short, insightful, challenging (usually contrarian) articles that are published weekly in our local newspaper (‘The Press’) here in Christchurch New Zealand. https://www.joebennett.nz/

Smoke and mirrors

giantknave Brain Farts , , , ,

Smoke and mirrorsI drafted a post a few years ago, but never got round to ‘topping and tailing it’…and so it never got posted. However, I had a chance conversation with someone this week in which the content of the post became highly relevant. So, after searching around a bunch of digital ‘nooks and crannies’, I finally found it, dusted it down, and completed it:

Over the last few years I’ve run various education courses and coaching sessions to introduce people to the fundamentals of ‘Systems Thinking and Intervention’.

I deliberately ‘mess with their heads’ using questions, exercises and simulations that explore systems, value (in respect of purpose), measurement (of system performance), learning, motivation and leadership. It’s good fun but also serious and important stuff.

I sometimes1 experience somebody come up to me at the end of such a course, saying something like:

“Wow, that’s amazing…we need to do something about this NOW…but we can’t do anything without a clear plan of how other organisations have successfully implemented what you have told us about!”

A variation on this is:

“We accept your critique of how we are now, and the problems this causes…but that’s no good if you don’t tell us what to do instead! We need you (or others like you) to come in and sort this all out!”

Now, before I go any further, I should write that I understand the burning desire to do something! The reality is that many of the insights (aha moments) in the education course/ coaching can be quite tender for people – they are having ‘known truths’2 spelt out in black and white to them, they feel uncomfortable about this and they want to go back and change their working reality.

There is a treatment…but it ISN’T me (or others like me) coming in to implement a plan that copies what others have (supposedly successfully) done.

If you want to read some earlier posts that get into the ‘why not’ then:

Often, the person that raised the question doesn’t like hearing this. It makes them think that I’ve just (painfully) diagnosed the truth of their working world but that I am deliberately withholding the cure.

Let’s see if I can provide a rational explanation of the necessary treatment (there’s some irony in that sentence – see footnote 1 again):

Mirrors

First, you must be curious….and if you are not, well there’s not much that I (or anyone) can do for you – except perhaps provoke you!

“And if you can’t come, send nobody” (Deming, quoting William E. Conway)

Okay, so let’s say you show some interest…

Mirror… if you are curious I can find you a mirror

  • that would be your system (which will be made up of its components, their interconnections, and its purpose…though you probably won’t clearly see these yet).

… if you are still curious I can then hold the mirror up for you

  • that would be to help you create meaningful measures as to how your system is actually performing for your customers (in terms of demands placed upon it, and its capability at meeting them).

… if you remain curious I can then help you stand in the right place to see your reflection

  • that would be to help you go to, and immerse yourself within, the place where the work is performed (often referred to by the Japanese word ‘Gemba’)…which will contain the reasons as to why the system performs as it does.

So, having helped you to stand directly in front of the mirror…

…I can never see for you!

I would (and should only) be acting as a catalyst3 i.e. assisting, but not being part of, the reaction.

  • I shouldn’t be writing reports for you – because you won’t then own them…though I will certainly reflect on anything you consider necessary to write;
  • I shouldn’t be taking any responsibilities from you – because you won’t experience the feedback from your actions, and learn from this…though I will certainly stand with you, providing counsel and encouragement;
  • I cannot provide any guarantees as to what you can (and will) achieve – because this is in your gift, not mine. Such achievements will likely be hard to quantify, and should continue to flow long after I have carefully stepped away.

Smoke

Dont smokeThe opposite of mirrors would be smoke. And this is where conventional ‘change’ resides:

  • ‘Going to the market’ to procure ‘solutions’ from (often self-anointed) experts;
  • Contracting with ‘outsiders’ who convinced you that they can ‘do it for you’, perhaps with attractive ‘benefits to be realised’ guarantees;
  • Dealing in reports of recommendations, business cases, ‘benchmarks’ on what others have done, methodologies, plans, resources…;
  • Setting up projects, seconding people away from the work and then requiring those in the work to comply with the outcome;

And, finally, at the end of it all, that champion imposter of ‘transformation’ jargon, the promised knowledge transfer!

…which usually means “we did it to you…and we’ll leave you with the ‘artefacts’ so that you can attempt to copy what we did after we’ve left the building.”

Footnotes

1. At first, I saw such a response as a failure on my part (i.e. as in not getting my message across). I don’t see it this way now – it doesn’t matter how good my rational explanations have been, I shouldn’t expect to have solved anything for people – they have to go and see it for themselves. All I can do in such sessions is create curiosity, and provide a language, concepts and frameworks which can assist what may happen next. Many will be curious. A few won’t.

Update: I (think that) I’m a lot clearer when attempting to educate people now.

2. ‘Known Truths’: Once uncovered, most people understand what is being put to them…and indeed, a number exclaim that they’ve thought like this for quite a while but have never had it articulated to them. In fact, for these people, it can be a release – like a valve on a pressure cooker.

3. Catalyst: My school boy chemistry reminds me that a catalyst is “A substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change” (Oxford Dictionary).

This isn’t strictly accurate because, since I am a human being, I (the interventionist) cannot help being changed by my (attempted) intervention. I hope you get the point though that ‘catalyst’ suggests that it’s ALL about you, and really NOT about me.

4. Source of the smoke and mirrors image:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/theilr/5091351124