Shiny uniforms. Full-body contact with the risk of serious concussions. A pigskin ball flying like a bullet into a tiny, moving target. Touchdown! Yes, we're talking football. And... wait, we're also talking higher ed?
I've been marveling at Greg Bedard's account of the New England Patriots' stellar no-huddle offense against the Denver Broncos on October 7. Sure, the execution was awesome. But what struck me more about the no-huddle strategy was a lesson to be applied to higher education, the industry first and foremost on my mind. If you put aside the content (sports vs. education) and focus on the form (teamwork and competition), the Patriots have a lot more to teach than simply how to run 89 offensive plays in 60 minutes.
Bedard writes, "Just one word can be powerful." One shared word makes efficient communication. Communication is integral to coordination. Coordination maximizes organizational productivity. Productivity begets business results. Now, rinse and repeat.
Often times I catch myself using GMAT vocabulary to convey simple ideas that end up in a mental wastebasket. In football, the quarterback could replace "Flip right, double-X jet, 36 counter, naked waggle, X-7, X-quarter" with "Bama left" to signal the same play. At work, instead of "please gather the members of the steering committee for a brief meeting to efficiently discuss the latest responses from the second-choice vendor", I could say "please convene the steering committee to review __'s responses". Wow, I bet I can cut most of my emails in half!
Furthermore, businesses all talk about being nimble, agile, responsive, resilient. But how do we actually achieve that speed? Keeping things simple certainly helps. To explain how Chip Kelly sped up his Oregon Ducks, Bedard quotes Ed Dickson, "[Kelly] wants to make it easier to where you’re not thinking about anything, you’re just going fast. Make it as simple as guys can learn it so you can go really fast. That’s the key, making it simple for your players so they can play at top speed." Translated to business: Streamline processes, remove barriers and keep people focused on what's important.
So, instead of fancy quotes or clever memes, maybe one word can be used to guide my work and that of others. In my current environment, I'd say good candidates for that one word are "learn" and "teach".
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
Delegating for success, not setting up for failure
Harvey Mackay said it well, "For the sake of your company (and your sanity), at some point, you're going to need to let go." As a rational manager, I agree with Harvey wholeheartedly. As a leader, I worry about Harvey's instruction to "focus on teaching skills." The reason is that ultimately I want to delegate for success, not to set everyone up for failure.
On the surface, "letting your employees stretch their skills and judgment" sounds great. Just reading it twice gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside! But the school of hard knocks isn't so kind. I learned of some critical questions to ask, when faced with the choice to delegate a task to an employee who has never encountered the challenge.
Does the employee need training?
If you ask a systems analyst who is well versed in JavaScript to create a new, custom alert for a webpage, most likely the analyst will figure it out autonomously without needing additional guidance. But if you ask the same systems analyst to launch a new marketing campaign for baby formula sold to first-time mothers in Oklahoma City, some training is probably warranted (along with a job re-classification in this case).
There are many factors that go into deciding whether to train the employee: how adaptive (s)he is, how receptive (s)he is to change, how difficult the new task is, amount of widely available documentation, support network, etc. In the end, deciding whether or not to train an employee is a judgement call based on decidedly imperfect information.
A C# analyst asked to write simple code in Java may flounder, and on the flip side a marketing guru may turn out to be an excellent R&D engineer! In the ideal world, I believe we can groom individual contributors who are capable of searching and learning for themselves with minimal supervision.
If training is needed, how should it be delivered?
Okay, so we end up deciding that training is necessary. How do we actually deliver the training? The options are endless: shadowing, reading, simulation, in-house training modules, external training modules... Obviously, some are more expensive, while others are much more limited in its use and appeal.
How much on-the-job training is justified?
And most importantly, the question of "how much training" must be addressed. I would love to literally be a lifelong learner and never leave the student role, but then I would never become a contributing member of society. The same is true of workers int he workplace. If one spends all of his or her time in training, when is the contributor actually contributing or producing something of value to the organization?
For a full-time employee working 40 hrs/wk with 13 holidays and 24 vacation days per year, 5% of that person's time only comes out to ~1.6 hours per week. How much can you learn in that period of time? And who in their time-strapped days has the time to create such training?
Closing thoughts
I've succeeded in applying the philosopher's strategy to question deflection: Answer a question with more questions that are even more complex than the original. But seriously, the art of delegation is a skill that needs to be honed, and for me part that I really need to learn is when and how to train and develop my staff.
Do you think about all this and/or more when deciding to delegate work?
On the surface, "letting your employees stretch their skills and judgment" sounds great. Just reading it twice gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside! But the school of hard knocks isn't so kind. I learned of some critical questions to ask, when faced with the choice to delegate a task to an employee who has never encountered the challenge.
Does the employee need training?
If you ask a systems analyst who is well versed in JavaScript to create a new, custom alert for a webpage, most likely the analyst will figure it out autonomously without needing additional guidance. But if you ask the same systems analyst to launch a new marketing campaign for baby formula sold to first-time mothers in Oklahoma City, some training is probably warranted (along with a job re-classification in this case).
There are many factors that go into deciding whether to train the employee: how adaptive (s)he is, how receptive (s)he is to change, how difficult the new task is, amount of widely available documentation, support network, etc. In the end, deciding whether or not to train an employee is a judgement call based on decidedly imperfect information.
A C# analyst asked to write simple code in Java may flounder, and on the flip side a marketing guru may turn out to be an excellent R&D engineer! In the ideal world, I believe we can groom individual contributors who are capable of searching and learning for themselves with minimal supervision.
If training is needed, how should it be delivered?
Okay, so we end up deciding that training is necessary. How do we actually deliver the training? The options are endless: shadowing, reading, simulation, in-house training modules, external training modules... Obviously, some are more expensive, while others are much more limited in its use and appeal.
How much on-the-job training is justified?
And most importantly, the question of "how much training" must be addressed. I would love to literally be a lifelong learner and never leave the student role, but then I would never become a contributing member of society. The same is true of workers int he workplace. If one spends all of his or her time in training, when is the contributor actually contributing or producing something of value to the organization?
For a full-time employee working 40 hrs/wk with 13 holidays and 24 vacation days per year, 5% of that person's time only comes out to ~1.6 hours per week. How much can you learn in that period of time? And who in their time-strapped days has the time to create such training?
Closing thoughts
I've succeeded in applying the philosopher's strategy to question deflection: Answer a question with more questions that are even more complex than the original. But seriously, the art of delegation is a skill that needs to be honed, and for me part that I really need to learn is when and how to train and develop my staff.
Do you think about all this and/or more when deciding to delegate work?
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Align email rules with Chatter to maximize ROI
At work, I face many regular communication challenges: some daunting, others frustrating, and still more that are just annoying. In broad categories, some general pain points are:
If you look at Salesforce's pitch for "Why Chatter?" you will see answers and solutions to many of these questions and problems. And Chatter's promise of higher productivity is clearly communicated, with fewer meetings and email reduction presented as the first two benefits. These are the promised ROI's from using Chatter.
But after reading about topics such as, "Is Email Dead?" and the ambitious Zero Email plan from visionary CEO Thierry Breton, I am beginning to believe that I can do more to lead the way toward email reduction and, if I dare to dream like Thierry Breton, internal email elimination. If Chatter can take the place of internal email, then I believe we will be close to maximizing ROI from institutional adoption of this new communication tool.
To that end, I suddenly realized a way to align my own technology with the adoption of Chatter and elimination of email: Create an email rule that will "hide" all non-Chatter emails by moving them into somewhere, anywhere, that's not my inbox. As a result, the "move non-Chatter to email folder" rule was created.
The idea is simple. In the short term, I anticipate that internal emails will be reduced and that Chatter will become the preferred method of internal communications. So, raising visibility of Chatter activity and lowering visibility of non-Chatter are natural ways of not only preparing for the future but also accelerating our transition toward it. If I always see Chatter first when I open Outlook, then I would be subconsciously cued and trained to use Chatter as my primary communication tool, right?
Some of my colleagues have already formed an ambitious group to tackle the challenge of defining communication protocols for Chatter. Should the "move non-Chatter" rule be included as part of the protocol for handling Chatter? I think it's time to convene the jury.
What do you think? Will this rule help an organization achieve the promised ROI from adopting a social communication platform?
- "Who has knowledge about __?"
- "Who can answer this question, __?"
- "How do I communicate this news: __?"
- "How can I tap into the collective intelligence of the organization for __?"
- "How do I work remotely with __ to accomplish __?"
- "Why am I answering the same question a second (or third, or fourth, ...) time?"
If you look at Salesforce's pitch for "Why Chatter?" you will see answers and solutions to many of these questions and problems. And Chatter's promise of higher productivity is clearly communicated, with fewer meetings and email reduction presented as the first two benefits. These are the promised ROI's from using Chatter.
But after reading about topics such as, "Is Email Dead?" and the ambitious Zero Email plan from visionary CEO Thierry Breton, I am beginning to believe that I can do more to lead the way toward email reduction and, if I dare to dream like Thierry Breton, internal email elimination. If Chatter can take the place of internal email, then I believe we will be close to maximizing ROI from institutional adoption of this new communication tool.
To that end, I suddenly realized a way to align my own technology with the adoption of Chatter and elimination of email: Create an email rule that will "hide" all non-Chatter emails by moving them into somewhere, anywhere, that's not my inbox. As a result, the "move non-Chatter to email folder" rule was created.
The idea is simple. In the short term, I anticipate that internal emails will be reduced and that Chatter will become the preferred method of internal communications. So, raising visibility of Chatter activity and lowering visibility of non-Chatter are natural ways of not only preparing for the future but also accelerating our transition toward it. If I always see Chatter first when I open Outlook, then I would be subconsciously cued and trained to use Chatter as my primary communication tool, right?
Some of my colleagues have already formed an ambitious group to tackle the challenge of defining communication protocols for Chatter. Should the "move non-Chatter" rule be included as part of the protocol for handling Chatter? I think it's time to convene the jury.
What do you think? Will this rule help an organization achieve the promised ROI from adopting a social communication platform?
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