Exploring Digital & Global Education
Discovering
Work and Learning Strategies
for the New Millennium
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Exploring Digital & Global Education Discovering
Work and Learning Strategies |
GETTING to the HEART of CHANGE
by Ed Oakley and Doug Krug
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To order a copy of Enlightened Leadership,or to order a complimentary copy of articles which include "Quality: the Human Factor", "Team Health Indicators," "The Missing Piece in TQM," or "Enlightened Leadership: The Heart of Quality" call 1-800-798-9881. We at Enlightened Leadership International, Inc. hold a simple belief: "An organization's p[eople already have the solutions to virtually every challenge they face; the issue is how to access those solutions." |
The following text is taken from the book.
FORWARD
" . . . The only differences between countries and markets will be skill levels, education and the level of empowerment of the workforce."
. . . the admission by the high-level folks that they do not have the answers. And they're right, they don't. By themselves, they do not know how to increase competitive advantage, how to create innovation, or how to become world-class.
. . . another company wakes up and realizes that its most underutilized resources are the minds and hearts of its people.
"It's the soft stuff that is the hard stuff, but it's the soft stuff that makes the difference."
Today's leaders are there to serve, rather than to be served. They are there to empower people; . . .
. . . good leaders do three things. They provide permission for their people to try new things . . .
Second, they provide protection.
. . . processes to help them tackle and solve problems.
. . . 85% to 88% of the time, traditional training and typical approaches to change left business leaders disappointed with the results.
Classical change programs, like the one described in the previous example, seek to implement the systems first and deal with the attitudinal/people problems¾ like resistance and lack of commitment¾ later.
. . . enlightened leadership¾ leaders who not only have the vision but who have the ability to get the members of the organization to accept ownership for that vision as their own, thus developing the commitment to carry it through to completion.
. . . "discretionary effort," the amount of energy workers choose to put into their jobs.
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1. Many traditional change programs take years to implement.
2. Change can be implemented more quickly and effectively when people’s mindsets are dealt with before, or at least concurrently with, system changes.
3. An Enlightened Leader has the ability to get the members of an organization to accept ownership for a vision as their own.
4. This book provides an opportunity to help shape that new model of leadership for your own unique situation. |
. . . knowing they could continue dong things "the way we've always done them before," today these words indicate that a manager or a company is already in or headed for trouble. Yesterday we could rely on policies and procedures to assure our people were doing things right. Today's highly competitive market demands that our people do the right things.
. . . never before has there been such an urgent demand to continually create new and better solutions.
Change is a factor that every organization must accept, so how effectively change is implemented becomes more and more critical to the long-term success of an organization.
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When in your career have you felt boxed in or limited in how you could do your job? What structures or attitudes kept you feeling that way? When in your career have you felt the greatest freedom to do your job? What were the factors or circumstances that allowed this freedom? |
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What is your organization doing right now to prepare for where the market will be one year from now? Three years from now? What could you be doing differently to better anticipate corporate or marketplace changes? How would your organization be better positioned today if it could have better anticipated the needed changes it now faces? What benefits have you received when you have successfully anticipated corporate or marketplace changes? |
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What new idea holds the greatest potential for gain in your area of responsibility? What will it take to have it work? If your idea did work, what would be the benefits for your organization and yourself? |
. . . dynamics of our current marketplace, renewal must be an ongoing, never-ending process.
. . . renewal is not something to do¾ it is a mindset or culture, a place effective organizations and people come from.
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What would be the long-term benefits if your people were more change-friendly? In what ways would it benefit you and your organization if you had a straightforward way to create a change-friendly environment? |
To survive and thrive in the '90's and beyond requires that organizations become change-friendly and continuously renewing.
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2. If present trends continue, organizational environments will be more unpredictable than ever during the coming decade¾ perhaps more so than most analysts are forecasting.
3. The myriad obstacles facing organizations today demand fundamentally new modes of thinking and responding.
4. Only the most flexible, creative, adaptable systems will be able to convert today’s challenges into exciting and rewarding opportunities for their organizations and their people.
5. A leader’s challenge is to renew continuously, to anticipate change¾ to anticipate where the market will be, not where it is or has been.
6. The ability to be flexible, highly adaptable, and anticipatory requires a particular mindset, an attitude of openness and opportunity. |
CHAPTER 3
We tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.
PETRONIUM
Greek Philosopher (210 B.C.)
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What are your two or three most pressing organizational issues¾ issues that, if you could resolve them, would place you in the best position to achieve your objectives? |
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Recall a time you grudgingly had to do a project at work when you would have preferred to be doing something else. How long did it take you to complete the task? What was the quality of your work? How did your attitude affect the outcome of the project? |
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What "hard" issues have you poured resources into with less than satisfactory results? |
This belief that our soft issues will disappear if we get our systems, structures, and processes right has caused the downfall of many organizational change efforts.
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What are the soft or people issues that are keeping your organization from achieving the hard objectives important to your surviving and thriving? As you look at the critical issues in your organization, what’s making the most sense about this? |
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In what ways do you recognize that the attitudes of your people affect the results they achieve? In what ways do you notice that your mindset affects your own performance? |
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2. Symptoms, or "hard" issues¾ poor quality, productivity drop-offs, declining profits, sales downturns, and unacceptable customer service¾ are certainly problems, but they are primarily indicators of the real, or "soft" issues¾ attitudes, mindsets, and states of mind.
3. Soft issues are human issues and seemingly cannot be measured. It is these people issues, however, that directly impact the hard issues and, therefore, the bottom line.
4. Even with the most up-to-date systems and processes, an organization’s performance is limited severely without cooperative attitudes and the support of its people. The real issue is the collective attitude of the people in an organization.
5. Many business leaders have seized on W. Edwards Deming’s ideas to support their own concepts of changing the processes and systems. However, their misunderstanding of his ideas subsequently has been used to justify their not dealing with attitudinal issues.
6. Structures and processes are important, and they go hand in hand with attitudes. Our reason for emphasizing the attitudinal side is that many organizations work very hard on the structures and process side and seem to ignore a critical piece: attitude. |
. . . Pareto's Principle.
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How have you been frustrated recently by individuals or a group who resisted an idea of yours, regardless of how good you thought the idea was? |
In our eighteen-year study of outstanding performance, scores of teams have validated that attitude as by far the dominant factor separating high performance Creative Thinkers from their less productive Reactive Thinkers counterparts.
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Notice how performance reflected in this figure relates directly to ways of thinking. In what ways might you relate this to your own people? Think about two or three of the best people in your organization, the ones upon which you know you can count. What specific factors differentiate these top performers from the rest of your team? How many of those factors are primarily attitude-based vs. knowledge- or skill-based? Retrieve the list of characteristics describing Reactive and Creative Thinking. How many of these factors are predominantly attitude-related vs. skill- or knowledge-based? |
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In what ways do differences in attitudes show up in your people? How would you describe the collective attitude of your organization? What would be the long-term impact on your organization’s effectiveness if you could have more of your people operating naturally as Creative Thinkers? |
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For additional tips on maintaining an effective attitude, call 1-800-798-9881 and ask for a complimentary copy of "Team Health Indicators." |
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Think about a time when you might have had a setback of some kind. How was your attitude affected by the thoughts and feelings you were having? How were you likely to respond to a difficult situation while in that frame of mind? How would that frame of mind, or attitude, most likely affect your performance? |
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Think about another time when you were feeling good about yourself, perhaps after a recognized success. What was your general attitude? In what ways were you better equipped to deal with difficult situations in this frame of mind? How did this attitude effect your performance? |
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What would be the value if you could have the majority of your people operating from the magical mindset of having "already made quota" throughout the year? |
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As you were growing up, in what ways were you encouraged? In what ways were you discouraged? Were you continually criticized for what you were doing wrong, or were you rewarded or acknowledged for what you were doing right? As a leader, in what ways can you better encourage your people (and yourself)? |
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Are conversations or meetings with your people primarily about what they are doing wrong or what is working and what you want more of? |
The Reactive Thinkers often see any suggested change, even those that make logical sense to them, as a statement that there is something wrong with the way they are already doing things.
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2. People’s perception of themselves and how they believe others perceive them defines their self-esteem/self-image.
3. Self-esteem is a major factor in people’s attitudes. People with low self-esteem may resist change because they interpret it as an indictment of their worth.
4. Reactive Thinkers often see any request for change as a suggestion that something is wrong with them. Creative Thinkers tend to see a request for change as an opportunity and challenge. |
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What situations can you think of in your organization in which people may be so focused on all of the problems that they may have lost sight of the original objective? What situations can you think of in which people were so focused on what they wanted to achieve that they overcame any obstacles to achieve the goal? |
"Failure to understand the subtle distinction between focusing on what is wrong with were we are instead of on what will it take to get us where we want to be costs organizations dearly."
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Consider the most critical issues faced by your organization. Is the predominant focus on the objective and what needs to be done to achieve it, or is the focus on what’s wrong with the current status or all the reasons the team or organization cannot achieve the objective? What benefits could you reap if the focus could be shifted so that more of the attention was on solutions? |
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When was your organization being distracted from its mission by trying to avoid something? On the other side of the equation, what obstacles have you overcome recently by keeping focused on what you want to accomplish? |
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Think of what happens when people have distracting personal problems. How does this effect their work performance? When people are distracted by work-related problems, how does this effect the energy they put into their job objectives? How does this effect the results they get? What is this effect on people’s performance costing your organization in wasted time? In productivity? In stress? |
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How much more effective would your organization be if more of your people approached their work by focusing on the desired results consistently rather than focusing on the problems or reasons they cannot achieve the results? Where in your organization could you have the most immediate impact by shifting where your people are focusing their attention? What would be the benefits to your team when the shift is made? To the organization as a whole? For you personally? What is one thing you could do today to begin causing that shift to take place? |
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In what ways do you already support your people in staying focused on the desired results? Knowing that our culture tends to pull us into the problem orientation, what can you do to get your people back on the solutions-orientation track? |
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2. A person or team has a great deal of choice about where they focus their attention.
3. How and when we focus also determines what we will attract more of. The amount of energy we focus on problems reduces the energy available to create the desired solutions.
4. The attention and energy we put into trying to avoid something frequently draws us closer to what we are trying to avoid.
5. The distinction between focusing on what’s wrong with where we are and what will it take to get to where we want to be can be astounding in its impact on our ability to achieve an objective.
6. A primary role of leadership is to manage where our people’s energy and attention are focused. |
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Where in your organization may people be doing things one way just because they always did them that way? What paradigms is your team or organization operating from that may be limiting your ability to achieve your objectives? What is it costing? What needs to change? What paradigms about management exist that may be limiting your organization? What does management do that tends to perpetuate those limiting paradigms? What one thing can you do differently today to help your people make the essential shift in paradigms? |
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Where might the "we-versus-them" paradigm be costing your organization? What would be the benefits to your organization of moving from a "we-versus-them" mindset to an "it’s-all-us" attitude? In what ways could you lead this shift? |
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Where have you experienced a similar problem orientation that squelched the energy and creativity of your people? What was the environment like? What were the attitudes of the people? How was performance impacted? What was the cost in terms of stress? |
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In what ways could you better focus your people’s energy toward the results you want? When things get off track, how could you continually bring them back on track? What would be the effect on performance to be able to do this consistently? |
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In this scenario, what would happen if we were suddenly surprised by some bad news? How would our Net Forward Energy Ratio be affected? What is the extent of the impact of a small bad-news distraction? |
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Think of a time recently when the energy level dropped in your organization. What caused it to happen? |
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Reviewing the five steps more closely, what do you notice about them that would support the desired mindset shift? What is it about this particular combination of focus statements that is especially effective? How do they support dealing with problems in an empowering way? What is the overall intention behind this framework? |
By focusing on the higher levels of value first (i.e., benefits for customers, the organization, and the team), . . . what achieving the objectives would do for each participant personally.
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More information as to how the morale was transformed at the Colorado State Patrol is available in a two-page article. For a complimentary copy of "Quality: The Human Factor," call 1-800-798-9881. |
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What has been most frustrating for you about more traditional approaches to issue resolution? What level of true success have they achieved in your organization? What level of commitment to the solutions have they generated? In what ways has the level of commitment affected the team’s ability to achieve desired results? What benefits would your team enjoy from having a higher level of commitment and ownership? |
. . . these two factors: supporting our people and creating results.
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2. To establish a renewing organization, the primary need is to bring about a fundamental paradigm shift in the way people think, behave, and manage. The shift is from being change-resistant to change-friendly.
3. When enough people within an organization become change-friendly, renewal is naturally continuous.
4. The ability of an organization to move forward depends upon how much productive energy people are expending while moving toward the organization’s objectives. This is the Net Forward Energy Ratio.
5. It is vitally important to balance the energy focused on two key factors:
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How do you feel when someone tells you how it’s going to be, giving you no choice or input in this matter? What might our people be hearing when we tell them our good ideas? |
. . . that people don't resist change as much as they resist being changed.
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Think of a time when you had a good idea and couldn’t wait to tell someone. When you did tell them, what was their level of enthusiasm compared to yours? Did you find yourself trying to convince them how good the idea was? How did you feel about their response? |
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What resistance have you faced recently to what you considered to be a superb idea? What insights have you gained from this book so far that are most helpful in understanding what caused the resistance? In thinking back about the situation, how might the way the idea was presented have contributed to the resistance? What would you do differently next time? |
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In your leadership role, what was the last significant change you implemented or tried to implement? How did your individual people respond outwardly to the plan? How did they respond in implementing the change? How did the response vary among your people? How effective was the change? What did you do that best contributed to its success? |
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What would mean to your organization if 60% of the people gave just 10% more to their jobs? |
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What has been the value of the questions we have asked you, as the reader, in this book so far? |
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2. The ideas people will support most are the ones they come up with themselves.
3. Whenever we tell someone how to do something differently, we may convey a subtle negative message that the way they’ve been performing is wrong or not good enough, which often creates defensiveness.
4. Asking people for their input encourages both creativity and buy-in.
5. The real experts about your organization are your own people, and the management challenge lies in tapping into this wealth of knowledge. |
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What do these questions do for your personal sense of confidence or self-esteem? How do they make you feel? Where do they cause your focus to be? How does this focus affect your ability to be creative enough to find solutions? To create the results you want? If you were bombarded consistently by these kinds of questions, how would it impact your energy level? How would it affect your attitudes about your work? How would it likely affect your long-term performance and satisfaction? On which side of the NeFER do these questions focus? |
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What do these questions do for your personal sense of confidence or self-esteem? How do they make you feel? How does this focus affect your ability to be creative enough to find solutions? To create the results you want? If you were consistently asked these kinds of questions, how would it impact your energy level? How would if affect your attitude about work? How would it likely affect your long-term performance and satisfaction? On which side of the NeFER do these questions focus? In terms of impact on you personally, what is the difference between the two sets of questions? How would the two sets of questions impact your people differently? |
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What do you think the differences are in these two sets of questions? Which ones cause more thinking? Which ones are more energizing? From which set of questions are the answers likely to be more informative? |
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Review the two different sets of questions offered on pages 143 and 145. In what ways do they differ in terms of which side of the NeFER they focus on? What differences are there in impact on attitude, energy, feelings, and performance between the two focuses? Which one is more effective? |
Keep asking, "What else?" until it is uncomfortable to do so. Then, do it one more time.
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Notice the difference in the "why" and "what" questions asked earlier in this chapter on pages 143 and 145. What is the difference in impact on attitude, energy, feelings, and performance between the two focuses? Which are more effective and how? |
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Remember a time when you were explaining something to someone for the first time or even the tenth time. In either case, as you were explaining the concept got clearer for you than it ever had before. How did the newfound clarity make you feel? How was your energy affected? |
. . . to "listen, listen, and listen."
We must learn to listen thoroughly until the response is absolutely complete before moving to the next question or level.
This critical aspect of Effective Questions is the intent behind the question.
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Think back to a time when something was not going well in your organization and you were upset about it. Were you trying to support the team in being their best in the future, or were you really trying to find someone to blame for something that happened in the past? How do you think the team perceived your intention in that situation? How would their perception of your intention affect their ability to move forward in resolving the issues? |
The attitude of the person asking the question determines their effectiveness. . . . and a truly empowered leader will have a forward-seeking intention.
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Think of the different intentions you could have when asking a question as innocent as, "What do you mean by that?" What intention would you tend to have when you are personally empowered at the moment of asking? What intention might you have when you are upset about something? What would be the effect of the question in the two scenarios? |
As you make the gift of these valuable questions, you will be rewarded according to your intention.
The key to renewal is the personal empowerment of the critical mass of people in an organization. Once leadership has become empowered, power can cascade rapidly down through an organization. EQs provide a tool for Enlightened Leaders to transfer this empowerment to their people.
In the empowerment process, what we are trying to do is support people in establishing new, effective thinking patterns to replace old, ineffective ones.
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2. The shift begins when we recognize the need to dig below the surface, to touch the real issues, and to uncover the "What’s-in-it-for-me?" channel, the one m any people are tuned into.
3. The single-most valuable empowerment tool within any renewing organization is skillfully asked Effective Questions (EQs).
4. To succeed as leaders in empowering our team members, we need to become masters at asking EQs and effectively listening.
5. Structured Effective Questions are a five-step framework for focusing and aligning our people’s energy toward achieving the organization’s objectives. They balance the critical aspects of nurturing our people and creating results. 6. Just as important as the way Structured Effective Questions are framed, is the intent behind the questions. The leader must be empowered and clear that the intent of the questions is to support the person or team in finding their own solutions. |
. . . of value grows out of their perception of the worthiness of their organization's purpose or mission and of how what they do contributes to that mission.
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How would your team define its purpose? On a scale of 1 to 10, how clear and elevating is your team’s purpose? |
When people's attention is drawn toward something bigger than themselves, like a clear and elevating goal, there is less energy and less desire available to focus on their perceived faults and limitations.
Aligned team members generally keep their agreements with each other, . . .
. . . more capable of both constructively disagreeing about ideas and resolving these disagreements.
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Where might your team (or your organization) be falling into the trap of focusing so much attention on overcoming problems that the lose track of their primary objectives? How clearly focused is your team on their primary objectives? What can you learn from this story that will help your team stay focused on their objective? |
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What might be the value of occasionally asking your team questions like, "How does what you are doing fit into our objective? or "Describe what we are trying to accomplish." In what areas might your team be doing a good job of "walking safely," yet not getting any closer to its primary objective? |
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What would cause Desired Environment visions to be so similar from team to team? Think about the environment in which you would like to work. How would you describe it in detail? If the environment you worked in was such that you were eager to go to work every morning, what attributes would that environment include? How would you describe the environment that would bring out the best in you? How would you describe, in as much detail as possible, what you would find in an environment that allowed you to be your very best? If you asked your team members these questions, what do you think they would say? List at least 10 aspects that would be important to you. |
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What would be the value of having your entire team clear about and sharing in the vision of the environment it wanted to create? How is the probability of being able to create that environment related to the degree to which your team participates in developing the model and is clear about what it would be like? To what degree is its ownership of the environment dependent on its participation in creating the model itself? Once they are clear about and in alignment with the shared model, how would this clarity and alignment enhance performance? Ask you team, "If we could create the environment here in which we’d most like to work, an environment that would have us excited about getting up and coming to work every single day, eager to be here, how would you describe it?" Have each person write down at least five factors before you begin to collect the ideas. Write them on a flip chart for all to see. |
2. A shared purpose and vision and the resultant alignment must come from the inner heart of the organization. The key to unlocking that door is asking EQs and listening.
3. Outstanding organizational performance and deep personal fulfillment work together and reinforce each other.
4. A detailed description of the desired organizational environment, generated by the people, can provide a powerful shared vision to move toward in alignment. |
CHAPTER 10
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Does your organization typically deal with the symptoms (such as a bad product), or does it deal with the real issues (the process problems)? What message might people be receiving about the importance of quality when we continue to fix bad products instead of fixing the processes that made them bad? |
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Does your organization focus on (eliminating) defects, or do you spend more energy on increasing the yield of good products? Are your SPC charts graphing yields or defects? How does this effect the focus of the people? |
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Does your organization seem to settle for maintenance or does it truly strive for greatness in the area of quality? |
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Do your people focus more on what’s wrong with the way it is or on what they want more of? Do you often see people mired in a problem, or do they quickly shift into a solutions orientation? |
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For a complimentary copy of "Enlightened Leadership: The Heart of Quality," call 1-800-798-9881. |
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On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest, what do you feel is the level of buy-in among your people in regard to customer service being the #1 priority? In what ways do you send subtle messages to your people concerning what you think about this issue? |
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How would each of these paradigms affect the relationships of both internal and external customers? What would your people say is the paradigm from which you generally operate? What would they say about whether you are there to serve them and to help them do their jobs or there in a more self-serving mode? How does their perception of your intention impact their performance? |
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What would it mean for customer service if the leaders in your organization could improve in their approach to serving their team members? How could the tools in this book be utilized to enhance this service to team members? |
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What would be the benefits to your organization if the majority of its people were focused consistently on the forward side of these NeFERs? In what ways could you support your people in focusing forward on these NeFERs? What specific EQs might be useful for these NaFERs? |
. . . look for client-perceived gaps¾ not seller-perceived . . .
. . . helping our customers get clear on their needs and desires.
People generally do not resist their own ideas; they buy into them.
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What questions can you and your people ask to help your customers "want to buy" so that you won’t have to sell them?* |
*Note: We have written an article about "Committee Selling," perhaps the most difficult kind of all, which describes the use of these concepts when seeking to gain agreement of a group. See last page of book for how to get a free copy.
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Look at each of the Reactive-Creative Leader attribute pairs. Where do you think your people would place you on a 0-10 scale for each of these attribute pairs? In which areas could you improve to have the most immediate impact on your team achieving their objectives? In what ways could you make improvements in these areas? What specific action could you take today that would make a difference? |
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In what ways have you been frustrated in the past by people coming to you for even simple decisions? Considering the interchange between Joe and Bob, what might you do differently next time to better wean your people from running to you for every decision? What would be the benefits for the organization? For your people? For you? |
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How can I best create and support an environment that brings out the best from my most important resource and asset¾ my people? What else can I do? In order for me to send out the most effective messages to my people, what behaviors do I need to model? Which of these am I already doing well? Which do I need to work on? How can I determine what messages are being received? What else? In this (any specific) situation, how can I best help my people discover their own solutions as a team? What else? What kinds of things can I do to clearly show that I care for my people and am deeply interested in their success? What else? What things can I do to best empower my people? What EQs could I ask (in any specific situation) that would support this empowerment and focus? How can I continually encourage the most effective focus? What else? |
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What was the cost to the organization of the time that Alan spent working with Tom? What would have been the cost if he had not committed the time and Tom had been lost to the organization? What situation do you have in your own organization that this story reminds you of? What could you do to support turning the situation around? What would a successful turnaround be worth to your organization? |
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1. Only by sharing responsibility and authority with our people can we hope to have them take ownership for assuring a prosperous future for our organizations.
2. The transition from classical management to inspired leadership is the key to creating renewing organizations where people take ownership.
3. This will only occur when we extend power to others, when we begin to empower our people. This empowerment is the essence of true leadership.
4. The shift in attitude to an empowered mindset must start at the top in an organization for renewal efforts to be effective and successful long term. 5. If we are to succeed as leaders in empowering our team members, we need to become masters at asking EQs and listening. |
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1. A supportive intention is the critical ingredients that must be present for these renewal tools, disciplines, and framework to work.
2. To encourage change in others, leaders must model their own willingness to change.
3. Most people in leadership roles today have likely developed a high level of self-sufficiency and independence.
4. To move to a new level of personal development and leadership effectiveness, independent leaders must undergo another stage of renewal¾ they must move to the interdependent stage. 5. To stimulate this natural maturity process, leaders must take a risk and take action outside their limiting "independent" boxes. 6. The key to the renewal of our people, thus the renewal of our organization, is our own self-renewal. |