Change is pain? Focus is the power!

I’ve read this interesting article called ‘The Neuroscience of Leadership’.

It gives us a ‘brain point of view’ of change. This article talks, above all, about organizational change and the concepts are generally applicable.

I just point out few sentences that define the problem:

In many studies of patients who have undergone coronary bypass surgery, only one in nine people, on average, adopts healthier day-to-day habits [...] [even if] they clearly see the value of changing their behavior.

Change is pain. Organizational change is unexpectedly difficult because it provokes sensations of physiological discomfort. [...] In practice, the conventional empathic approach of connection and persuasion doesn’t sufficiently engage people [and] change efforts based on incentive and threat (the carrot and the stick) rarely succeed in the long run.

Focus is power. The act of paying attention creates chemical and physical changes in the brain.

And the solution:

Start by leaving problem behaviors in the past; focus on identifying and creating new behaviors. Over time, these may shape the dominant pathways in the brain. This is achieved through a solution-focused questioning approach that facilitates self-insight, rather than through advice-giving.

I strongly suggest that you read it.

PierG

Technorati: NLP, leadership, agile, management

Facing waves: persuasion to embrace change

I was lucky enough to have a couple of weeks of holidays. And I was unlucky enough because the sea was not as good as a 2 year old baby can bare.

The first days it was a bit hard to convince my son to have a bath: the waves were too big for him and too noisy.

Then, one day, my brother came and visit us. My son is not used to him so it was something new and a surprise. They played a lot, they had a good time but my son was not 100% comfortable with him (not being so familiar with him).

You know what, when my brother asked my son: let’s go to have a bath! my son looked at him a bit embarrassed and said: yes.

From that day on, no problem with waves or noise!

They say that you are usually motivated by desperation or inspiration . What about this case?Persuasion? Something new that led him to break his schema and embrace change? Was it the authority of my brother? The fear (!?!?! 2 years old ?!?!?) to say no and look scared ‘in public’ (liking or social validation)?

I have to apply this technique even if I’d need Prof.Cialdini (and this) to have an answer on the ‘why’ ?

PierG

Be agile in handling email

I was reading this post from the Panta Rei blog (I strongly suggest to add it to your aggregator!).

It talks about an article on the Wall Street Journal that says How You Handle Your E-mail Inbox Says A Lot About You .

Following the post, I discovered myself in the author’s situation:

What does it mean that I have a desire to empty my inbox each day? It could be “how Mom and Dad raised you” as the article says, or it could be that Lean thinking has seeped into my e-mail habits.

Now that I know that I’m Lean in the way I handle email , I can paste here the author’s consideration about using the 5s principles on your email:

Sort the e-mails you don’t need
- Read e-mail. Act on it or delete it.
- Junk. Outlook does this for me automatically.
- Spam filters are set so that large numbers of e-mail never see the inbox.

Straighten the inbox, as in “a place for everything and everything in its place”
- Put e-mails you need to act on in the proper folder. This may be right in the inbox or separate folders.
- Sequence and prioritize for later action.

Sweep in 5S is cleaning to prevent future cleaning. E-mail 5S sweep is to get rid of e-mails and prevent them coming back.
- Block, don’t delete. Blocking the senders of spam who make it into the inbox can prevent repeat offenders.
- Unsubscribe to newsgroups or other e-mail marketing rather than deleting them.
- Don’t reply to informational e-mails with “Thanks” and certainly don’t CC everyone. If you want to say thanks do it by voice or better yet in person.

Standardize how you handle e-mail
- Check e-mail at certain times of day rather than playing whack-a-mole with every new “you’ve got mail”.
- Agree to limit who is Carbon Copied (CC) so that extra inbox material is not created.
- Spend a set amount of time on e-mail checking.
- Let people know how best to get a hold of you if it’s urgent (other than e-mail).

Self-Discipline
- Spend enough time on a message to get it done and out of the way. If you can’t don’t start it and create WIP.
- At the same time, leave some Standard WIP at the end of the day. For non-urgent items send out replies or requests at the end of the day so that you have actionable replies waiting in your inbox by the next morning or next time you set to check e-mails.
- Don’t check e-mail. This might seem counterintuitive but if we all did it we would all have less e-mail in our inboxes. Think about it.

PierG

Lean + Six Sigma = Lean Six Sigma

I’m not excited in giving everything a name. Especially I’m not excited to give names talking about different dialects inside the agile space … especially after all the mess related the Agile2.0 stuff (have a look at Marco Abis post).

Moreover, I suggest all my readers to have a look at this post from Robert Thomson’s blog.

It’s short (VEEERY GOOD, in my opinion, for a blog post) and clear: give a quick overview of the concept. Well done!

PierG

Does effective CEOs need to be more agile?

I was reading this interesting post on ‘The Practice of Leadership’ blog: it talks about why CEOs are usually fired.

1. Mismanaging change (31%)
2. Ignoring customers (28%)
3. Tolerating low performers (27%)
4. Denying reality (23%)
5. Too much talk, not enough action (22%)

Two interesting aspects, in my opinion.

One is that no one of these words are used: budget, revenue, money, sales, results …

Second is that agile values + principles have their focus MAINLY on solving those problems:

1. Mismanaging change ->
2. Ignoring customers -> customer collaboration (over contract negotiation)
3. Tolerating low performers -> continuous attention to technical excellence
4. Denying reality -> responding to change (over following a plan)
5. Too much talk, not enough action -> Working software (over comprehensive documentation)

Amazing ….

PierG

Effective communication via e-mail

When I wrote my posts on ‘Be in rapport via e-mail’ (here is the first one), I was not aware of this presentation by Mark Horstman called: How To Create Relationships And Make The Ask.

There are some slides mapping the DiSC model with e-mail styles:

High D E-Mail
– No Scroll Bars!
– No Names!
– 2 Paragraphs, 2-3 Sentences per Paragraph!
– Tell Me What You Want NOW NOW NOW!
– I Delete Your Jokes Without Reading Them.
– I Do Care About You, But …
– I Am Incapable of Even Noticing All Your Attachments
High I E-Mail
– Start With My Name! (Nickname if We’re “Buds”, K?)
– Ask Me How I Am!
– Tell Me How You Are!
– Long is Cool, Jokes Are GREAT, Include Me, Include Me!
– Work is Great Too – Whatever – But It Better Come First!
– I’ll Do It, Sure! But Would You Please Follow Up?

High S E-Mail
– Would You Please Start With My Name? Thank You!
– I Do Hope You’ll Tell Me You’re Doing Well
– It Means A Lot to Me When You Ask After Me and My Family
– Tell Me The Whole Story If You Can – I Appreciate It
– I Work Harder When You Show You Care About Me
– Reading Those Attachments Takes A Lot of Time… But I Understand
– Don’t You Love Those Warm Fuzzy Stories? I Knew You Did! 
High C E-Mail
– Names Are A Waste of Time and Screen Energy
– Longer Is Better – Please Give Me The Entire History
– I Love Attachments Find Attachments Very Effective
– I Want You to Have Complete Knowledge
– I Will Take Longer To Respond, But I Will Have The Answer By Then

Great stuff, as usual from Mark!

If you aren’t familiar with the DiSC model, I do suggest that you start listening to this podcast.

PierG

Schedule reporting: an agile way

The ‘customer of site’ practice has many benefits: among others it helps in managing and sharing/communicating the scheduling.

Unfortunately, for many reasons, sometimes this is not enough. For example in my company we have MANY different clients with MANY projects per client with a single SW dev team (we mainly evolve applications).

For this reasons we try every week to schedule ‘iterations’ for this or that client based on priorities, importance, urgency, … This means that some high priority user stories, for some users, cannot be scheduled in the next physical iteration (next week) but who knows when.

Following some customers’ (and bosses’) requests, we are designing a schedule report. Well, they asked for a Gant chart but we are trying something different.

So far we have decided that:

. the report must be useful for them AND for US

. the report must be divided into 3 categories: certain time frame schedule (next iteration), uncertain time frame schedule (a couple of months), unknown time frame schedule (> 2 months)

. the report must show info related and meaningful with the defined time frame

That’s all for now, please send me feedback if you have had similar experiences.

PierG

The ‘why’ question: a barrier to effective communication?

I was taught (thanks to my coach Roberto) that the why question, when trying to understand a problem during a communication process, is something that should be used carefully.

It automatically put your counterpart in a defense mode: when we year the magic sound of why our brain try to justify the problem/behavior with the effect of enforcing it. It’s natural, our brain look for the quickest solution to avoid pain!

At first sight, this is NOT true when we talk about technical stuff. When a technical problem occurs, it’s usually important not only to solve it but also to understand why it happened (route cause). In fact, the typical technical manager (often, in my experience, an High C), asks her team: why did it happen?

But I think that, also in this case, the why should be avoided. Because, in any case, it leads the team to find a justification more then a real cause.

So I’d probably (try to) substitute the why with a ‘what can we do to avoid the problem in the future?’, ‘how can we approach this stuff differently?’ ‘what can we do to understand the problem?’ …

In fact you are not looking for the cause just to know it, you are looking for it because you want to avoid it in the future.

Feedback?

PierG

Giving attention

As I wrote in my previous post,  our children (and our directs ) need our FULL attention: no matter if we are tired, bored, angry! They appreciate when you dedicate GOOD time ‘for them only’ and WHEN they need it !!!

This means that you have to be ready to give this attention: ready at 8 o’clock in the morning and at 8 o’clock in the evening.

I know a single way to be prepared: you NEED to be in DECENT PHYSICAL SHAPE. Just being in good shape gives you energy and endurance. I’m not talking about being a ’sport champion’: just do something from your larger muscles, your heart and your stomach.

Of course it’s not enough, you have to be prepared also from a mental point of view BUT, in my opinion, a good physical shape is fundamental if you want to be a really good performer (and a good father too ).

PierG

Managing: lessons learned from my child

I had the pleasure to spend a couple of weeks of holidays with my wife AND my 2 years old child.

Staying with him 24 hours a day, living the full day as HE lives it, gave me some feedback on management.

Yes, a 2 years old child is a young man trying to understand what the environment is, what the rules are, where the risks are. And guess what: YOU are his reference.

He tests you all day long to see your reaction and from this reaction he learns.

And this is exactly what your directs do with you so:

1. Define the ’soapbox’: you must delegate to get GREAT results but they need boundaries and milestones
2. Define FEW rules and NEVER (well, almost ) let these rules not being followed: in an agile world you need agile adaptation. You need few strong ‘principles’ more then a lot of checklist and procedures. But these rules are a bible.
3. The need you FULL attention: no matter if you are tired, bored, angry! They appreciate when you dedicate GOOD time ‘for them only’.

PierG