Truthiness: The customer is always right, except when he isn't.

Truth is a slippery concept - there is the mathematical definition of a Boolean - true/false, it is or it isn't. There is the scientific definition of it's true until it isn't. And there is the social definition of consensus - it's true because we agree it is. There are some gaps between these definitions and then we add issues with the concept of right. I'm right - you're wrong.

Last week we had a an interesting experience in the Truth when my eldest son missed the bus. His Mother, who now needed to take him to school, was not pleased. Her version was simple - our Son was dawdling. His version was also simple - he was hurrying as fast as he could and the bus came. Likely both are correct. Both are true, if contradictory.

There is only Time

Try this on for size - there is only time.

1. Time is not money. Money is time.
2. There are no goods only services. Goods are tangible evidence of services.

The Work Life Firewall

... as employers require individuals to check digital devices and respond 24/7, there's no clear separation between home and work. Samuel Greengard ¹

One of the key revolutions in medieval Europe was the idea of the ownership of time. It allowed Europe to create new institutions and was for good or ill one of the underlying cornerstones of the Industrial Revolution. It created the framework for the modern corporation. It also create the framework for social revolutions in slavery, child labor, and education. It is one of the things that makes being a "wage slave" satisfactory. It condenses time into money and allows us to trade money for time.

Electronic devices may inadvertently be reversing this. We may be heading back toward a world of serfs with little to no choice. With all the talk of "work life integration", some people may be losing the ability to manage time and are letting tasks manage them. There's the risk of tasks that garner our attention or that appear urgent push out the things that are truly important. With the frenetic pace many people have created for themselves and their overbooked lives, most lose the ability to take time to reflect and actively choose what is important.

Electronic toys - like the one I am typing on, have the ability to take over our lives. One of my former managers had the habit of working at odd hours to ensure he had a "work life balance". It was not unusual to receive emails composed and sent at 2:00 am, when the man was on vacation. I still entertain the fantasy of being his boss and putting his cell phone and lap top under lock and key when he leaves on vacation. I see many people trading freedom for a higher status, larger paychecks, more company owned devices with the expectation they will take the lap top - cell phone - tablet home and be available. It appears they believe that being busy is the same as being important - that the volume of work that they cram into their lives equates to having a life in balance because they can attend family activities.

I view cell phones as electronic leashes. If you give me a cell phone, I expect you will call with an expectation I will respond. I don't want to be so important I need to be available at anyone's beck and call except my children. And then only until they are self sufficient. I've built firewalls into my life - as was so succinctly put on my last review: does his work and goes home. And the projects are on time, and the fire drills are ignored. The non work troubles stay out of work. Work troubles don't go home. The work lap top stays off, except for the occasional important late meeting. The occasions are rare.

There is a movement called the Sabbath Manifesto. They're recommending we disconnect periodically for time to reflect. It sounds like a great idea to me. It's another firewall to keep life and work separated.

Sources:
¹ Samuel Greengard,  Communications of the ACM, 10/2011 Vol. 54 No. 10, Living in a Digital World, pp. 17-19

Capacity or Efficiency

Jim Highsmith wrote an interesting blog ¹ on the impact of the velocity measurement on Agile programming methods. Velocity is a measurement for how fast a group of programmers complete tasks. I've seen velocity graphs at team Scrum meetings. Usually, the velocity isn't fast enough to complete all the team hoped. For most of my team it means we were too ambitious and underestimated the effort needed. This isn't a bad thing when you acknowledge we use Scrum methods because we've never done these things before. If we had done them before we could use Project Management methods. I believe Jim's concern is managers use velocity as a measurement of efficiency rather than a measurement of capacity.

If velocity is a measurement of efficiency, individuals are accountable - they aren't working smart enough. If velocity is a measurement of capacity, managers are accountable - they aren't setting priorities, hiring enough workers, or assigning work to the right individuals. I believe velocity is a measurement of capacity - we've never done a project like this before. The process is cut the project into small pieces, you concentrate on those pieces and if you're too ambitious, you push the excess on to the next round. So you keep moving toward a goal. There is no way to be efficient - we're stepping into the unknown and probably the unknowable.

In call centers we have a similar measurement - it's called average handle time or AHT. Accountants like AHT, it gives them a way to measure the cost of a call center, but is it a measurement of efficiency or capacity. For one thing, there is an uncontrollable variable - the skill and knowledge of the person on the other side. If the calls are transactional, the impact of the other persons skill can be minimized. AHT might be used as a measurement of efficiency. If the calls are technical, the impact can go way up - unless you have a very select group of  customers with a set minimum skill level, a manager should treat AHT as a measurement of capacity and hire accordingly.

1. Velocity is Killing Agility, Jim Highsmith, retrieved 8 November 2011

Coreolis Effect

Two of my children like to run in clockwise circles.
Do you think if I took them south of the equator, they would run counter-clockwise?
If I took them to the equator, would they stop?

Manage Knowledge Socially

My colleague, Allan, pointed me to this blog by Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald, Social Media versus Knowledge Management. It's generating some discussion in the office. The point of the authors is:

• Knowledge management is what company management tells me I need to know, based on what they think is important.
• Social media is how my peers show me what they think is important, based on their experience and in a way that I can judge for myself.

This is useful model, and it may apply very well to most organizations. The frustrated librarian/researcher/information explorer in me rebels because

• Social media doesn't guarantee information will be shared outside of a social network. Information sharing is a largely social activity. Most of what you know came from someone else. There is no benefit for a group of peers keeping information in a closely held tribe. We have a name for this in the corporate world - it's called a silo.
• Social media is often about the conversation instead of the information. I've been monitoring/moderating an online community. There is a constant call from the corporate knowledge management community to pull knowledge for reuse from the community. The problem is the majority of the value in the community is from the conversation not from an answer the community comes up with. The task of finding "reusable content" in a community like trying to write Wikipedia articles from the debates on what should be in each article.
• Social media only exposes the existing knowledge social network - i.e. who do people ask.
• Social media doesn't protect you from hierarchy, it just creates a different one base on reputation. Each user still has a responsibility to use due diligence assessing information. It is not enough that the author is a Vice President, or has a high on-line reputation.

I believe there is a role for making the shared information available to a wider knowledge. Knowledge should be managed socially - i.e. organizations should be engaged in encourage transparent information sharing, hierarchies be damned.  Systematic sharing is not necessarily anathema to peer review. Academic publishing has been very successful for decades with peer review. Similarly organizations can establish communities of practice and allow users to create and edit documents. Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) is one way organizations can manage information socially. One of the base principles of KCS is "Reward learning, collaboration, sharing, and improving" What is more social than that?

Quality Without Control Charts

(Place soapbox down, hop up, start babbling like an idiot...)

You may not have noticed there was an article in the Smithsonian magazine this month that suggests Finland is better at educating students than (shock, horror) the United States.¹ Without control charts, or standardized test, or competition.Clearly something is seriously wrong.

So what are the Finns doing? I think they are

1. Focusing on long term outcomes - the Finns are focused on a very specific well defined goal. If it were written out it would look something like: Prepare our children to be contributing members of Society.
2. Investing in preparation - Finnish teachers spend more time preparing and less time teaching
3. Completing long term tasks - Finnish teachers move with a class often teaching the same students for years.
4. Letting the people doing the work design the work - Finnish teachers have guidelines not mandated curricula. This means they can tailor the class room experience to their own strengths and the needs of their children.

Can you run a business without control charts? Can it be a high performing quality business? Why don't we?

(Step off soapbox, pick up, quietly leave...)

Sources:

1. Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? LynNell Hancock, Smithsonian magazine, September 2011

Doctor, Doctor, give me the news

I'm shopping for a new doctor. Not because, I don't think my current doctor is not doing what he thinks is best, but because I want to make an informed risk assessment. Also, I think Doctors spend too much time telling people what they can't do instead of giving the positive message about what they can do.

Statistics are hard. 

I am not a very good statistician, but I am an adult and I believe I know how to weigh statistical evidence. So I understand when someone says smoking increases your risk of hyperventilating by 200%, I know the follow up question is "What is the base risk of hyperventilating?" I'm believe this puts me out in the fringes of the standard population, but it does give me a way to make an informed decision.

I have border line high cholesterol. My doctor magnanimously put me on an expensive popular wonder drug that reduces cholesterol. In very rare instances the side effects of the drug can be life threatening. So here's the deal. I'm experiencing side effects from the drug. I may have side effects from all the related drugs. What I want to know is:

1. What is the risk of dieing for someone my age?
2. How is that risk impacted by my lifestyle? (I'm actually an outlier here)
3. What is the expected benefit from taking the drug? 
4. What is the risk of having a life threatening reaction for people who react to the drug?

The last question is really the kicker - there may only be a one in a million chance for anyone who takes the drug to have a life threatening reaction, but since only one in one ten thousand people have a reaction, the risk of having a life threatening reaction goes up to one percent. Now I'm actually making my risk of death higher by taking the drug. And the drug works well, for most people. My problem is I can't find the studies that have the numbers, I need. Yet.

You can't have...

My Doctor also put me on a very restrictive diet without explanation. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Just a list of dietary rules:

• Don't eat...
• Don't drink...
• You can't have...
• Read product labels, you need to avoid... 

I'm trying to back track the reasoning. The drug, I'm taking seems to induce symptoms similar to type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure - more side effects, I'm sure I'd rather not have without a good risk assessment. So now I have two more potential problems I didn't have before.

Curiously, there was a study just released that indicates what you choose to eat may be more important than what you don't eat. What makes the study really interesting is the conclusion drawn by the researchers. The couldn't tell if it is the diet, or patients' willingness to follow the diet that was positive.

Taking this back to work

So what have I learned?

1. Give as much information as you can when your asking someone to do something
2. Tell people what they can and should do instead of what they can't

Just a thought. I could be wrong, but I believe that's right.

Ready, Aim Fire! Part 2

It's been a rough week. My younger son and wife have been expelled from the local Cub Scout Pack. My older son is still in the Pack, but it was made very clear he is only tentatively welcome. In response my wife and I are transitioning him to the pack affiliated with the Boy Scout Troop sponsored by our church.

In the general scheme of things, this is a minor bump on the road for my family. We have a place to go. We have anther community to turn to. I don't things are going well for the community we are leaving.

Being on the Other Side

People make mistakes. Several years ago I was a young Scouter. I got in a battle of wills with a Scout. I blew my stack. I pulled rank. I was wrong. Fortunately, the sponsoring organization quietly moved me out of the position. I didn't lose face and the Scout stayed with Scouting and earned his Eagle. In an ideal situation, something like this scenario would play out with the Cub Pack we are being asked to leave.

When Leaders Fail

In a corporate environment it is very difficult to change levels. In my experience there is a perception the only motion is up. Leaders move through progressively challenging responsibilities until they retire or get caught by the Peter principle. This means failure is not an option. There is no possibility to learn. There is no graceful face saving way to move to a different assignment. There is little possibility to come back with knowledge and use past failures as the basis of maturity and success. In such and environment, leaders who fail to execute plans are in turn executed. This may be why Vice Presidents seem to have an 18 month half life. In any 18 month period half of the VP's will either move to a higher status assignment, or be fired for failing to successful complete a financial goal.

Solutions?

Here is a modest proposal for transforming our organizations:

1. Lose the hierarchy - I'm a big fan of the "inverted triangle" concept. Instead of looking at organizations as a pyramid with the most important person on the top, think of it as an inverted triangle with the leader serving the greater community. 
2. Think in terms of assignments and projects instead of positions and jobs. People like to be the boss. When they are the boss they feel privileged and the power can go to their heads. One way to combat this attitude is to make assignments. Unlike positions, assignments are temporary. There is an implication there will be change. There is the idea that you might be asked to take an assignment where you are needed, not necessarily in the position that looks the best on the resume. 
3. Reward people for what they accomplish not the impressiveness of their title. This may result in some professionals being paid more than their boss. It may result in rewards that don't appear as part of an employees compensation package.

Finnish Education Part 2 - Play

It hit me this week end, the Finns have another advantage in their educational system - they encourage play. In stead of expecting students to sit in class all day, they send students out side to play. Year round. In the far North. It helps the students get more out of the classes. It lets them see the sun every day.

I also realize I'm using the same techniques at home. I've been helping my son learn to play violin. We play violin games together. Notice we don't practice. Practice is a bad word for what we are doing. We aren't doing drills. We are playing games - we're throwing dice, picking cards, and drawing pictures. There is candy and rewards. We make up insane competitions that remind me of Calvinball. I always lose. Some days we do a lot. Some days we do very little. All in the service of working through a difficult complex task. Of course, I am trying to teach him that often something that takes effort is worth doing and can be fun and rewarding.

Using play to teach something or to learn something is not new. I believe there is no reason to keep it out of the workplace. Foldit is a game that helps scientist understand protein folding, by turning the problem into a game. The game players have help scientists find likely solutions faster than they could find them with out the help of the game players. There are computer simulations for everything from flight training to stock market trading. Some companies have "white space" time for software developers and engineers. Can we give white space to front line workers?

Why don't we turn some of our challenges into games and engage employees to play and solve them? Why don't we let our factory workers and call center employees take a crack at rebuilding our processes or finances by letting them play a simulation? Front line workers might just find a solution the specialists and mangers can't. What would be wrong with that?

Ready, Aim, Fire!

So why do we want to execute strategies? Couldn't we just follow them?

Why you need a staff pessimist

OK, I'm the black cloud. You know - the guy who isn't a "team player". Most meetings and motivational events are the purgatory I put up with as part of the job. I'm probably not the guy you want writing your annual review. I understand the importance of maintaining good morale and the need to remove individuals who continually drain morale. However...

Groups are smart when there is a diversity of experience and information. If everyone has the same information of the same experience they are inclined to make the same mistakes. There is a name for this groupthink.

So when you are evaluating your staff pessimist, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions:

1. Why is the individual negative? If you can find out why the individual views something negatively. There are many reasons. How much change has the individual been through? How long has the individual been working for the company? What kind of leaders has the individual had? Is the individual dealing with any crisis? Without understanding why you run the risk of missing something important. You may not have managed change well. A history of bad managers may have squandered goodwill. There may be a crisis that is tainting the individual's perspective. The individual may have information you are not aware of, or that you are ignoring. You may not have provided enough information. You may not have earned trust.
2. What is the individual's role? In sales or marketing, you need eternal optimists - people who believe they can move mountains, because that is what must be done. If the person is in risk management or finance you want someone who is pessimistic, paranoid, and suspicious. Any where else it shouldn't matter.
3. Is the person affecting the morale of the people around them? Or another way to ask the question, does the individual support decisions? There is a fine line between questioning rationale to understand a decision and insubordination. The difference is simply in motivation. Does the individual want to prove you are not a competent leader or does she truly want to understand the decisions being made.

Leaders have responsibility to understand the people that work for them - these people are going to be crazy. You need to understand their kind of crazy and how to use it for the benefit of your company. You need to find a way to make decisions based on all the little pieces the crazies know. You need black clouds just as much as you need eternal optimists. May be more. Not because the pessimist's view is right, but because reality is somewhere between the two views.

Manage Like Captain Kirk

I borrowed a copy of "Star Trek, the complete Second Season" from the local library to show my children The Trouble with Tribbles. Besides watching Tribbles, we watched The Doomsday Machine. I realized I can manage just like a Star Fleet Officer:

1. When in doubt - do it yourself. Captain Kirk heads up the team to investigate the crippled USS Constellation. No Junior Officer training here
   
2. If you don't like the way things are going - take over. Commodore Decker takes Captain Kirk's absence to take over command of the Enterprise and orders an attack on the Doomsday Machine.
   
3. Ignore risk - just do it. Commodore Decker steals a shuttle craft and charges the Doomsday machine.
4. If at first you don't succeed get a bigger hammer. Commodore Decker has the right idea, a shuttle craft isn't big enough. Kirk tries the same thing with the USS Constellation and saves the day.

Maybe for the next installment we should take our next set of Leadership tips from A Piece of the Action.