|
KindExcellence is like a revolutionary set of glasses...
...when you put them on you can look at old challenges and find new solutions. More below.
A True Story
This department really exists, it is now a part of Phillips Medical Systems but at the time the corporation had a different name.
Going back in time I want to take you to when things were getting so bad that it felt like the entire future of the company depended on the skills of a single man- a new manager hired into his position only three months before I met him.
This department he headed, the section responsible for testing, debugging and fixing the multi million scanning machines the company produced had the largest collection of professional experts in the entire organization. Some of these experts were the best in the world at their particular field. These guys were responsible for preventing multi billion dollar mistakes, deal breakers and lawsuits.
The CEO of this corporation realized something had to be done when the #1 expert of the department announced that he is interested in leaving. The costs of such a lose, in terms of knowledge and training not to mention a complete breakdown of staff moral, the CEO knew, would cost the business a grave price.
Let me now take you further back in time to about three months before I was called in?. Chaos rules here.
The existing manager does not have the respect of the team. All of his instructions are regarded as unfair and a clear separation between management and staff is in place. Team members in the department are referring to management as "they" clearly setting themselves apart from the "clueless" bunch ant the top.
The team is divided into groups, friction around disagreements is everywhere and as a new incentive is put forth by management inner competition between the groups emerges. Soon some team members are reporting they are working when they are not just to win the competition and collect the incentive and other phenomenon like working hard when a supervisor is around and reducing productivity to an almost standstill when no one is watching occur.
The department's good employees are just playing the game, but the top experts, those who could easily find a new job, are starting to ask themselves why stay?
Conflict, dishonest behavior and a total disconnect to management are starting to weigh more heavily than many years of loyalty? and commitment is falling apart.
This turmoil is what the new manager steps into. He had to solve it and fast but he had a tight rope to walk:
He had to gain the respect of his team
Put an end to the existing conflicts and manipulations
And avoid taking sides to bridge the gap between management and staff.
After we explored the possibilities together he chose to make a few brave and radical changes:
First he announced to the team that from this day on: "I am bringing in total transparency." This meant he had to be completely honest about everything-- no politics, no hidden agenda, and no talking to certain team members about complaints they had behind closed doors. Everything was now on the table for everyone to see.
Practicing transparency is never easy. It means owning up to limitations, turning extremely vulnerable for manipulations which requires great strength in setting boundaries and much more. But we went through it.
Then he placed the future of the department in the hands of mutual decisions where all will debate on the most important ways to move forward and the biggest challenges facing the department.
To do that he had to learn how to train his team of professional experts to think using a new set of skills: he needed to teach them how to analyze and how to synthesize. To do that he needed to quickly master those skills himself and a third skill-- how to teach thinking skills to others.
Disagreements were dealt with as challenges where employees in disagreement had to take on all the information available to the manager, put themselves in his position and offer a better solution. Nothing less was accepted.
He worked with the group to set a challenging yet realistic goal and he worked with all team members individually on a weekly basis to asses where they are in respect to their goals and teach them new and powerful thinking skills of analysis and synthesis.
The underlining principles were:
- Being genuine, honest, empathic, patient, loyal and generous - starting with the manager and demanding it from everyone on the team. Anything else would be brought up for discussion.
- Devoting time to give team members training through two thinking skills: analysis and synthesis - showing them how to use it to look at challenges on all levels. Initially honesty among most team members was a result of having no other option. With the constant meetings talking to all team members and with a blunt demand for complete transparency the new manager was able to see everything.
But somewhere deep inside...employees could sense, like we sense when someone loves us or hates us, collecting the signs and adding clues, that the manager was genuine about his desire to change things for the better. Within a mere two weeks nearly all of them wanted to be honest and build a new work environment for themselves.
They started feeling closer to each other, and as productivity went up with their new acquired skilled of analysis and synthesis, they started taking pride in the change they were making. In a month, conflicts and distrust made room for constructive feedback and within two months no one on the team would make a critical decision before running it by other people and especially those who were most likely the biggest opposition.
Because of the open discussion about the hope for change the department's top expert has decided to stay and this department's turnover has come to a complete standstill.
I checked in with this team a year later to find a few more interesting results:
Because of the trust levels and the safety that surrounded feedback, innovation has now blossomed. Employees were happy and reported that they look forward to come to work, that they are more motivated now even without monetary incentives and that they would never consider moving to a new organization for as long as they can imagine. They have bonded and productivity went sky high.
The manager had a very similar reaction. Without the need to work through constant conflicts and other dysfunctional behaviors he now had time to strategize and plan for the department's growth. He found the team was working like a well oiled machine and he kept meeting with the individual team members on a monthly basis, setting monthly goals around tasks and personal growth and thinking through challenges together fine tuning their analysis and synthesis thinking skills.
He found that people on his team were more alert to threats and opportunities, that they would come forth and alert him if a task was not going to be accomplished on time, providing him with the opportunity to do something about it. In essence all he did was provide a safe nurturing and healthy environment combined with top business skills training and it almost felt like his team was managing itself.
Defining Kindness
By Kindness we don't mean being nice - sometimes being kind requires saying some pretty harsh things, at times even at an unpleasant way. The most important aspect of kindness is the intent - it is not done to please others or please oneself but to be a system wide effort to promote well being.
Some of the values that follow kindness are: honesty, respect, self esteem, warmth, humility, forgiveness, empathy, patience, loyalty, joy, and generosity.
Defining Excellence
By KindExcellence definitions Excellence is the endless pursuit to master business skills. Some business skills are: planning, prioritizing, strategizing, marketing, sales, communication, feedback, interviewing, problem solving, innovation and creativity and so on.
When the eight skills and principles below are applied excellence is achieved and business results follow.
What Is KindExcellence Exactly?
KindExcellence is made out of eight skills that are used as lenses to examine managerial challenges:
- Receptiveness-- learning to listen, process ideas and speak from an open, non judgmental or neutral place
- Seeing things as they truly are-- staying aware of one's limitations, staying aware of the system's limitation, avoiding generalizations, getting feedback etc. (seeing things as they truly are depends on receptiveness)
- Core analysis-- identifying the root cause of challenges
- Studying the operational codex of the system-- identifying the basic assumptions and the "guidelines" the lead the system to prefer one choice over another
- Local optimization vs. global optimization-- examining the priorities of resolving the urgent needs of here and now vs. developing growth and putting in place structures that will eliminate the needs of the here and now later in the future
- Conscious thinking vs. subconscious thinking-- learning how and to which challenges to apply conscious (linear, analysis based) thinking models vs. subconscious (intuitive, holistic, synthesis based) thinking models
- Moving from giving instructions to providing core skills-- in effect learning how to provide one or more of the above principles instead of giving directions.
- The eight skills is kindness-- associated with: honesty, respect, self esteem, warmth, humility, forgiveness, patience, joy and generosity. It is a balanced state of caring for others and caring for oneself with actions and choices stemming from the best of intentions for the wellbeing of everyone involved. Kindness does not come from negative feelings like anger or fear; it is a quality of being genuine and it resonates with authentic giving.
|
