Encouraging the doing

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright, is well known to many of us as the author of the one of the kind book: "Don Quixote". This is not the only book written by him, but indeed the most influential one. In his book, Saavedra writes: "There is a big difference between speaking and doing".
Being honest with ourselves, all of us, as managers, workers and private people, are living examples. We all know that there are things that are right to be done and even though we are aware, we do not behave accordingly; we know about techniques and methodologies that were proven successful, and yet we do not take action.

What makes us concentrate on speaking rather than on doing? What makes us know more and implement less? How can we be sure that our employees, whom we manage, do more than speak? In an era of knowledge, when we rely on what our employees decide to share, and can only partly control what actually is done and achieved, it is important to give them, and give ourselves, the tools to encourage doing, and better balance speaking and doing.

I think I always tried to preach what I say. Enough? Probably not. A book I have read over a year ago, "the Knowing Doing Gap", written by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, is my guide to this non-ending dilemma.

Why do people tend to speak rather act? There are several reasons:

First, we appreciate people who speak. Sometimes even more than those who do: Because speaking wisely is here and now, and results of doing are observed only later;
Because speaking outlines the message, but it takes some thinking to understand the messages behind the acting;
Because people who speak (if they do not exaggerate) are considered as people who influence and in some cases, even thought leaders;
Because in colleges and universities in management programs we talk and write, but hardly actually do;
And...Because most of us were appointed to our jobs after checking mainly our speaking skills.

Secondly, we all were all brought-up learning that planning is essential before acting, and the more we plan, the less we need to work on doing. In some projects, we finish all resources of time, money and management care, and yet we are in the phase of planning.

Furthermore, it is easier to speak than do; it requires less energy.

The list is of reasons why to speak rather act is not that short. I will just add that it is very challenging to change existing habits of work, in order to do new things. Leading the change is so difficult, that in some cases we convince ourselves that if we speak, we also implement. Are organizational activities of building a vision and sets of values, actually turning the vision and values into reality? Is a manager stating in the company broad meeting that innovation is important, actually implementing innovation of his people? And there are many more examples.

A few tips that assist in assuring that we will also act and not only speak:

• Pay attention to the balance between meetings and doing; pay attention to the balance between documents (presentation, white papers) and fieldwork.
• Implement the organization's values and turn them into reality; they probably are guiding us in the right direction.
• Promote mainly, workers from inside the organization; less, bring managers from outside. Encourage the incentives of employees to act.
• Assure that every manager and manager works on the field level and does not purely manage others, just remembering the fieldwork from the past.
• Speak simple. It is OK to have a complicated idea if it can be explained in simple words and can be translated into simple actions. If people understand what is expected from them, there is a good chance they will actually do it.
• Distribute responsibility and authority; be patient to mistakes that result. People will not act if they are to be punished when they err.
• Prevent measuring results of the individual employee. If we measure- measure processes of work rather than results. Measure teams rather than individuals. By that, we encourage work within teams (that is so important in the era of knowledge workers). Only measuring results may trigger short-term benefits, but can damage and act as a boomerang in the long term. How to measure the individual? Measure them as to how they comply with the organization's values.
• Prevent competition inside the organization. Most of the competitions are sum-zero and if someone wins, we have others that loose. We all know that competition is a trigger for motivating the people and we all have examples that prove it (i.e. in sports). Competition is important? Encourage outside competition.
• Nurture learning via workshops and hands-on experiencing. Lectures deal with speaking. Teach people through doing. Who learns from doing – does.

In addition, a last tip. I, personally, prepared a short list based on these guidelines and it is presented in front of me every day, pasted on the wall in my study room. At least, once a month, I check myself to see that I did not turn to be an over-speaker in one way or another.

What will we benefit? First, more doing. Later on, more self-satisfaction; and in the end- probably better performance, to our organization, our families (if we took the tips that direction), or if we are lucky- then both.

It is worthwhile. Try it.

Yours,

Moria

Time Management

Most of us are in a rush. We are always busy. We have to prepare a proposal for the day before yesterday, to give an answer to an open question for our boss, and we are three hours late, and to accomplish another mission within one day. We live in a "no time" reality. Once, we used to believe that this is a result of the bubble age, but the bubble exploded and yet we have no time. Still we experience requests ASAP; yet in every project, we work around the clock up-till the due date, and many times, even after.
Lee Iacocca, the former CEO of Chrysler Corporation, once said that the ability to concentrate and smartly take advantage of time- is everything.
Without being as smart or successful as Iacocca, I could not agree more. I feel, on a personal level, that time is a most precious resource, and in some cases, more important even than money.
Time is a misleading resource. On one hand, it is limited; there are only 24 hours every day. On the other hand, many times, those people who seem to be busier than others are, find the time to take additional responsibilities, much more than other, less busy people.

It is important to manage time as managers, twofold:
First, the knowledge work is characterized by handling many tasks and working in parallel. Even, if we are under the impression that we are handling one task, it usually includes many sub-tasks, and these do not tend to be processed one after the other. We, as managers, surely have more than a handful of tasks, whenever examined.
Secondly, we manage people, who have to know how to manage their time, by themselves. It has already be written, that knowledge workers manage their own routine. We, as their managers, have to give them the right tools to manage the time, and to find ways to assure they actually do so.

A few tips I can share, for managing time, based on my own experience:

• To understand that feeling busy and being busy are not exactly the same thing. One of the reasons that some people tend to overload themselves with additional tasks, and do succeed in carrying them out, is based on them not living with the feeling that they have no time. Coping with the feeling of "no time", is sometimes more demanding that actually having no time.
• Defining regular and steady hours, in which we read and handle Emails. Reading every Email, as it arrives, disturbs and interferes our concentration. It harms, both the source task being produced and the Email now arrived.
• Define in advance (and teach the employees to do the same), for every task that is meant to take longer than an hour, the time we are willing to invest in performing it. We tend, many times, to invest more, in order to achieve the highest quality level we can. In many cases it is not worthwhile the effort. In other words, we put more than the organization, or the customer, wants us to. As in other situations, dear Pareto, plays a significant role (20:80) in advising us where to stop. However, it is not good enough only to plan efforts. We must assure we do what we praise. We must assure we do not only plan, but also finish tasks within the frame time defined. Defining time is already a first step in helping us managing our time better. Our will to fulfill is the second step. Performance is the third.
• Work on tasks and complete them, as soon as they arrive (after finishing the previous ones we already started). I usually say that starting earlier does not mean I spend more time on a task. Vice versa. When the issue is fresh, it is easier and faster for us to work on it and complete it. We also save time of managing all open tasks, if we keep a clean table.
• Assure ourselves, that we leave time for handling, not only the urgent, but thee important as well. Handling the urgent wears us out. Handling important tasks is sometimes more important, both for the organization and both for us as individuals.
• Define frame times in the calendar for working on tasks that we do not find any other time for completing. If we are strict with ourselves and do not cancel these self meetings, time after time, we can clean-up the table, from time to time, and restart managing better our time, every time we think things go out of control.
  

In addition, one last tip: See that your people take vacations. For us, as an organization, it is cheaper that they work and we pay them for these days. For their sake, see that they really take vacations. That will give them the strength to go on. That also, is part of time management.

Some wise person (unknown) once said: "Two facts about time management: a) you cannot control the time you are born or the time in which you die. b) all points between the two, are negotiable."
Probably we can control most. Let us take advantage and indeed do.

Yours,
Moria

Innovation

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower" (Steve Jobs).
No doubt, that we all want to be innovators; we want to be leaders. We want the organization we live in to be innovative. By all what is said and written, innovation is a key for business success; moreover, it is exciting to work in an organization that innovates; much more than to work in a conservative organization that never changes.

However, innovation is not as trivial as we would expect. Continuous innovation even may contradict the concept of knowledge re-use. One of the challenges, that few people have dealt with, is how to define when it is right to re-use, and when innovation is preferred.
Innovation is not as trivial as we would expect. Because innovation is not only hiring a good consultant and setting an innovation team, and ending the year, we have a new product or service. Innovation is a way of life. Innovation is something ongoing, part of the routine, not a project with a beginning, some tome and an end. Innovation is one thing we would want employees to have in their blood; not only one exceptional excellent employee, or one group of managers, rather all of them.
Innovation is not as trivial, as it is not only related to products, rather relevant to various organizational layers: Operational innovation; Innovation in processes; Innovation in products or services; strategic innovation; and innovation in management.
Innovation is not as trivial, as it not really can be managed. It relates to culture. Therefore many steps can be proceeded, all in the right direction- but the aim of all is nurturing the continuous innovation and not creating it.

The task of explaining what innovation is, what its components are and how to facilitate it, is complicated and suitable for a book and not for a post. However, I think it is possible to share some of the tools I use, in the organization I manage, in order to nurture and encourage innovation.
There are two types of activities: practical ones, and cognitive one. Both are important and I do not believe one type can be skipped.
Practical activities include:
Working in teams; small teams that enable discussion and strengthen innovation.
Employing different people to work together on the same team/project/type of job. Formal job definition may lead us to the "ultimate". There is no such thing. Several years ago, I found myself employing female managers, one after the other, with two many similar characteristics to those of myself: women, mission oriented, very energetic. Today, the staff is heterogynous. So are all other employees. Heterogynous in their characteristics, heterogynous in their education (for the same job) and heterogynous in the experience they had in life.
I make efforts to assign each employee to more than one project (in parallel), and as much as possible, to different types of projects, and with different contexts. I make efforts to mix people, so that every employee has the chance to work with and see different perspectives of different employees.
I make efforts to enable my employees to be independent; to distribute the power and the decisions. I encourage the managers under me, to act in the same way.
We professionally enrich all workers on a regular basis (twice a month- six hours altogether). The things we teach and share include practical knowledge together with higher-level knowledge, knowing that what is not relevant for the employee today, will help him or her tomorrow. Help on a different project, or even help in understanding and seeing more perspectives to what is done today.
We demand our employees share new knowledge and good ideas, on a monthly basis. When the company was small, we did it as part of our face-to-face meetings. As the company grew, this became very impractical, and we now renewed the new sharing in some other routine formats.

However, beside the practical activities, there is the cognitive perspective.
The cognitive perspective includes:
Us recognizing, as managers, that knowledge and ability do exist, and mainly in the field. The first consequence of such understating is that everyone has to be some part of his or her time in the field, including all managers, top down. The second one, is recognizing (and that is not as simple as one says it) that our employees, even though they are younger, even though they have less experience, still, are those to innovate. Not tomorrow, rather today. Moreover, not only adding new but also contradicting what we successfully did yesterday. Dealing with Knowledge Management so many years, it indeed took me some time to open myself to learn from my employees. The change- was in me.
The employees recognizing that innovation is expected from them, and even as a demand. Innovation is not only a nice value declared as part of the company's mission and strategy, rather practical. Recognizing that innovation is a right, that innovation is an obligation, enable and ease the minds to start innovating.

More than all, personal example is required. Never, never stop renewing and innovating myself. Innovation is an organizational engine for growth, but not less a personal growth engine.
It contributes me, and a lot.

Yours,
Moria

People

I have a long drive today, as I am giving a lecture somewhere far. Long trip means lot time for thoughts. My thoughts are wondering, thinking about a friend, a customer who has passed a significant surgery. Will she recover? When? The questions stand open, and no one has an answer. The hours go by, and we are all waiting. Tensed.
People.

Yesterday, several people have told me that they are looking for a job, as the organization they have worked in is experiencing a reduction in force. Last week I spoke with another colleague, who spoke about a near re-organization, and again, reduction in force. For two or three months now, everything seems sad there. Even though, in his division there is a lot of work to be accomplished, people are not as in the past. They leave early, speak quietly, and every week a few more people leave, as they found themselves a new place to work. My heart is with the people laid off; my heart is with the people who have to fire.
People.

In the 21st century, it seems as if we became more sophisticated; the advertisements and rating have led us to places we did not dream of. Communication and media consultants of politicians lead strategy and we stare and do not believe. Is everything fake? Where does reality stop?

In this same century, the working relations have changed radically. The information and knowledge era, we are to give more out of ourselves: Not only our time (which seems to be 24 hours of work with the cellular and laptop); not only our brain (even a more precious resource); but also our hearts. People who work technically only, succeed less. Work of the 21st century is composed of partnership. Partnership while working in teams in the organization; partnership while working with suppliers; and partnership, real win-win situations working with customers. Every other alternative will leave us far beyond.
This behavior triggers opening. The way from opening to exposure is short. We enable other people, who we would lock out of our thoughts after 17:00, to continue and stay in our hearts 24 hours a day. When they hurt, we heart; of course, it is much easier, to be happy when they joy.
We turn to be less strong and more vulnerable. But we also turn to be more human-beens. People. Purified.

Steve Jobs spoke this week in the graduation ceremony of the Standford University. Listen to what he said (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA). He shared three personal stories in which he exposes himself been adopted; himself dropping from university; himself walking once a week seven miles to have a decent meal; his cancer; his being fired from Apple. All these stories are relevant. There purpose is not to make people feel sorry for him or to think he is a hero. They all are part of guides of life he tries to share with the graduating students.

I think we are gifted to live in such an era. With the risk of being vulnerable, comes a big chance; I am not speaking of the chance of greater success. That, also. The bigger chance is personal for each one and one of us as a person. As being a human-been.
We are lucky. Work may on take over our personal life; but work in these conditions helps us being people.

Educate your workers to be people; Let us all be people with whomever we work. Not only with our friends back home.

Let us wish everyone health.

Yours,
Moria

P.S. Day after- to all those who wish to know- my friend is better; the surgery succeeded.

Democracy

The origin of the word democracy comes from Greek (Δημοκρατία) and its literal translation to English is "rule of the people". Indeed, this translation guides us on what democracy really means.
A business organization is no democracy. It is ruled by the shareholders and their representatives, and is managed by a small group elected for that purpose. The managers are those to make decisions and not "the people".
Winston Churchill said once that "democracy is the worst way for ruling, expect for all other ways that were already experienced". As other things said by him, this is a wise sentence. Even though democracy is not a good way to rule (a country), other ways are worse.
Usage of the term democracy has expanded and does not serve us only in the political region. We use it in many other cases as a way to speak of taking decisions based on the majority.
Many times we ask ourselves why don't we succeed in building the same atmosphere of will and passion in the organization as people have for home, friends, sports and other topic outside the office. The issue has many perspectives. Let us look, for example, on Blogging. We see people Blogging and collaborating outside work, much more than in. I am cautious. This is not an issue of white and black. People do not suffer in work. It is not a situation, I hope, in most organizations that people do not like the place in which they work. Yet, there are differences between the office and outside it, and there place for improvement. The more we are a place that our employees want to come to every morning, the more they stay (and that for itself is worth a lot). But more important than that, if people like the place they work in- they perform better.
Enabling people to take decisions indeed helps. We like to be involved; we like to have influence on others. This is reciprocal: the more the organization enables employees to be involved and to influence, the more they give back from themselves.
Yet, let us remember that we are a business; a place with defined business goals. Making decisions based on majority can contradict with shareholders favor. The process of taking decisions, involving many people, takes much more time, than if a small group only is involved.
Many organizations, find therefore, other ways for satisfying their employees, and leave democracy out of the organizations door.
However, it is important to understand, that the benefits of sharing in the process of decision-making, go far beyond involvement and good feelings of employees.
Professionally, it is better to take decisions asking many people. This is the wisdom of the crowds. This term, was coined by James Surowiecki back at 2004. He wrote a book by this name. From the full name of the book "The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations" we can understand the relevance to our topic- democracy of decision-making. Consulting more people- brings better results. We have learned this from Wikipedia, that turned to be the leading Encyclopedia wide world and we can learn this from many experiments that people and organizations have performed comparing the wisdom of experts and the wisdom of crowds. Every time we are surprised again to see that in most cases crowd beets experts.
The bottom line: It is beneficial for organizations to involve employees when taking decisions.

When and how?
In decisions that are related to new ideas for strategic moves;
In decisions related to forecasting market trends and wills;
In organizational decisions related to the people as a group (where there is no conflict in interest between the people, or between them and the organization);
When designing user interfaces of products;
Were brainstorming is needed in order to understand a problem or suggest solutions.

The criteria: Where information is not classified; where quality is essential; where it is worthwhile comparing to resources (time, cost); where our future lies.

I, as the owner and manager of a company, got use to, in the first years of the company, to decide on my own. As time passed, I learned to involve larger groups of people. The sharing may take many formats: sometimes as the first stage, sometimes in consulting on the way, sometimes in openness to changes- after. In some cases, the group is larger, in others, two or three people take part, No one recipe.
The name of the game, as in many other issues is working gradually; of course if wanting to change an existing organization.

The personal indecision is always there: fast versus comprehensive; wisdom of experts versus wisdom of the crowds. We, as managers have to decide- when alone, when with small group, when as democracy.
On the end of the day, we will be those to pay or profit. We will have to be responsible. Responsibility is no democracy. It remains ours.

Yours,
Moria

Asking

The Jewish people, read the "Hagada" in Passover. The story speaks about four sons: The wise boy, the evil one, the innocent and the boy that does know how to ask. Wise and evil, are easy to understand; maybe even we follow when the "Hagada" speaks about the innocent; but why "The boy that does not know how to ask?"
Knowing to ask is a skill, basic for learning. Without curiosity, without seeking what is missing in an existing product, service, or even situation, it is difficult for us, as workers and as people to advance from the present towards the future.
I wish to focus in this post on the issue of asking, from the perspective of being a manager.
The technique of asking questions can help us as managers, for various needs:

Asking as a tool for control.
Knowledge workers are independent workers. We, as their managers, are not involved in their daily work, and are not always aware of the full picture of the activities they are in-charge of. Furthermore, as I have already written in the past, we understand less than they in part of the topics, they work and expert on. Asking questions can assist control in two ways:

1. Asking can assist in emotional matters, as part of understanding how our employees feel as human-beans, and not only as workers. The trivial questions, "what's new?", "how do you feel?" or "what's up?", turned to be of saying "hello", or "good morning". Most people do not answer these questions with care, and even when they do, most people do not listen to what has been said. We, as managers, are responsible for knowing how our employees really feel and to be out for them, especially when it is not a shiny day. Our responsibility as managers is to ask, to mean it when we ask and to listen to the answer.
2. Asking can assist in professional matters, as part of understanding where issues stand and, maybe, problems exist. Even if we understand less than our employees, a few innocent questions can point to holes in solutions, where people are not to sure. Over confidence, just as lack of confidence, are sticking out evidence for places where we should probably dig in more. I remember myself, twenty-five years ago, as a math student. The professor was stand near the board, showing us a mathematical proof. One hundred students were sitting silent, trying to catch up with him. Then, he suddenly stopped, thought for a minute or even less, and continued on filling the board. After he finished, I raised my hand, and asked him to explain the line, where he stopped, five minutes ago. He looked at the board for a minute and erased all he has written. I did not mean to harm, but I felt something was wrong, as he passed on this message by his behavior. People tell us in so many ways; we have the task of listening.

Asknig as a tool of guiding and teaching.
The technique of asking questions as a tool for guiding other people, or even advancing on ourselves, is familiar and used for decades. It is a significant element of the reflection process, where we go out (mentally), stand and look at things from outside the situation, ask questions regarding, and understand how to perform better.
There are two main advantages in using the technique of asking questions as a tool for guiding and teaching:

1. If we as managers ask our employees questions and leave the answering part to them, we diminish the resistance that can grow in some cases, using other techniques. It is not easy for any of us to absorb criticism, and if the questions are indeed innocent and not dissembling, this technique of asking questions, may turn out to be effective.
2. Asking questions open minds. We here give our employees the tools to turn out to be even more professional than they are now. This, after all, is the essence of guiding.
   

There are many other situations, in which we as managers are to ask: When strategy planning; when planning any future; when selling (whether ideas in to the organization or products and services to our out-of-the-organization customers). Actually, asking may assist in almost every process we carry on.

There were times, when employees would come to ask, and I would answer. Nowadays, I try to hold myself (and believe me, it is not that easy for me) and return with a question: What do you think? What are the alternatives? Why? Of course, this takes more time on the short term, and every one who knows me personally will testify that I never have time, but I try reminding myself that this is the proper way to act, and surely, on the long term, it is less time, not more. I try holding myself. Sometimes, I even succeed.

Before ending this post, some open questions, for further thought:
How much to ask: Asking to much is a burden.
How to ask: Asking wrong is worse than not asking at all. Do not patronize; do not dissemble; do not ask "closed" questions; do not ask to "open" questions (if the target is guiding, some guiding has to take place in the question).
Moreover; to understand, when it is wrong to ask questions. To leave our employees with space. They need it (as we do).

Your opinion would be appreciated.

Yours,
Moria

From evaluation to feedback

It is not that easy to manage knowledge workers. It has been discussed; knowledge workers are very independent. In their specific job, they have more expertise than we do, as their managers. The knowledge workers even decide when to share us, and how much we will be shared. This is normative. This is their job. Nevertheless, it does not make our job of management and control easy or simple.

Once a year, many organizations evaluate the performance of their workers. This activity is not a substitute to the ongoing evaluation process that takes place all year long, as we comment, thank and appreciate our workers. The yearly evaluation is different. We stop to think and give an overall evaluation; the evaluation is written down. The yearly evaluation has a ceremonial importance.

The evaluation process; we are not aware to most of what our workers do on a daily basis. In places where we are, many times we hear what they do through their perspective, as they are the ones to report. In the specific job they are in charge of, they are the experts. That is what makes them knowledge workers. Performance is not measured only in quantitative perspective. The bottom line- the evaluation is not an easy task.

The problem is clear, what could and should be done?
I shall start by confessing: I evaluated many workers; knowledge workers. I tried evaluating based on my wide overseeing. I tried evaluating based on quality measures and not only quantitative ones. I tried using many techniques. Sometimes, I succeeded. There are workers that listened, understood even thanked me and changed. The truth has to be said, more times, I failed. Workers, in the evaluation session, always had answers to whatever I commented on. They knew to describe instances where their behavior was the opposite from what I explained. Workers found different meanings to shared reality. Workers did not agree with what was said. Workers did not understand. In some cases, they decided to ignore. I have seen it all. I have been hurt and disappointed; them too.

Until some wise person taught me, how to turn the evaluation process into a feedback one. I know this is not possible in all organizations (or at least in its full transition), yet, wherever possible, even partly, I think it is worth considering.

First, let us redefine the goal of this process: Not evaluating, rather directing the worker; helping him or her working better. We all are not perfect, and each one of us does some things better, some things less. We all have place for improving. As part of the process, it is the right time also to appreciate. As it has been stated earlier, this is an activity with ceremonial aspects, and appreciation here has its importance. Nevertheless, this is not the main goal. The main issue is helping the worker improve.
Several insights to think about:
We are speaking about a feedback process, not evaluation.
Although we may know about many faults, and behaviors that need improvement, we will focus only on two or three. People are not capable to internalize too many changes together.
It is not wise to concentrate on the most sticking-out behaviors. It should be considered what affects the workers performance.
There are things that are hard to be changed. We are not in a justice process, rather in an improvement one. We have to focus only on weaknesses that can be improved.
Every feedback has to be accompanied with a practical way for implementing the change. If I do not have such an idea, sometimes I will not give the comment at all. Yet, the decision how to change is a decision of the workers themselves. We have to give them one alternative, they shall decide whether to implement the change based on it or on any other path, they choose.

In addition, one last tip. When preparing the feedback, think of the organization's values. These values are there to direct us on what is correct. They were built in thought of leading us to the organization's vision. The values are to be examined, and the weaknesses, as points of appreciation are to be derived from them.

Do these directions improve the process of evaluation? I believe so, but some years have to go by, before it is stated clear and loud. Will it always bring success? Of course not, but the chances will be better.

Moving from evaluation to feedback improves the process, improves the output, but also makes it easier for us, as managers of knowledge workers, as we cannot fully evaluate the performance of our workers.

It is a complicated task to be a manager. Complicated, but challenging; and rewarding.

Yours,
Moria