Rules of Engagement - Part 4

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

4) No one thinks they are jerk. I want to write a book called “The extreme effort the human mind will put forth to deny wrongdoing” or “Hitler didn’t think he was an ass.” No one thinks they are an ass. No one thinks they are shifty or wrong. Sure maybe we’ll admit we’re wrong on small matters and the catch-all “nobody is perfect” clause, but we are very slow to admit our wrong doing on larger matters or matters of personal interest. It takes a lot of soul searching to honestly look at ourselves and bring our faults to the surface. We as humans will go to great lengths to justify our actions. We will do amazing mental acrobatics to justify our actions that we know are not right. Hitler thought mass genocide was a good thing. He never thought, hehehe, I’m an evil bastard bent on killing innocent men, women, and children. Obviously, we are not dealing with such large issues day to day...at least I hope not. But it’s the little things. It’s the way we come up with justifications for why “Bill” sucks at his job, when in actuality, it’s just that we don’t like him, we are jealous of him, or we don’t like something he believes in. We can’t fool ourselves into thinking we don’t do this. WE DO. Be aware of it. Just be honest with yourself. Just understand that you can fall into the trap of mental acrobatics to justify your stance or reasoning behind a decision. Just know that the truth may be that you are simply covering your butt and justifying your poor decision or poor conduct by projecting the problem onto someone else.

The flip side is to use this knowledge as a tool. There’s a reason behind everything. Here’s the scenario:
You and your coworker Bob have always been on good terms. It’s not like you hang out after work or anything, but he’s a good guy and you two get along fine. Then one day, Bob isn’t so nice. He short with you, calls out your mistakes at every opportunity, and generally makes the mood far from ideal. Why the change? It’s not because Bob picked up the “How to be an Evil Guy in 5 Easy Steps” book at Barnes and Noble the other day. The truth may be that you got the promotion that Bob secretly thought he should have had and now he treats you poorly. It’s not your fault. You didn’t know and you didn’t do anything to “take it” from Bob. Just know that there may be more going on than you are aware of and if you approach a personal problem from the standpoint of no one thinks they are a jerk, you will be more effective at getting to the heart of the problem. Put yourself in their shoes, try to “think like they do,” and know that no one thinks they are a jerk and you can often figure out why someone is behaving a certain way. You may not agree with it. It may not be “right.” But at least you are closer to the truth – or at least their “truth”. Once your have that understanding and insight, you don’t waste your time and energy on why is Bob suddenly being a jerk and how can I get back at him. You can get on to solving the problem and moving past interoffice misunderstandings. More importantly, you can honestly look at yourself and make sure you don’t become the one doing mental acrobatics to justify some poor actions.

Rules of Engagement - Part 3

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3) Play to people’s strengths and minimize their weaknesses. It’s obvious to say that we are better at some things than others. That goes for personalities and the way people approach a problem or devise a solution. Just because it’s not the way you would do it, does not mean it’s wrong. For instance, some people are very analytical and like to evaluate the entire problem and come up with a definitive solution before they make a move. That’s a good thing, right? Yes and no. They are very prepared. They have accounted for almost any situation. No time was wasted once things are set in motion. Sounds good. However, by the time they have all their ducks in a row, quite often it’s too late. In the time it takes to account for all the variables, the variables will have changed. You never have all the information. At best, you’re lucky to have 80% of the information you need to make a good decision. If you spend all your time trying to gather that other 20%, the project will never get done. And then there’s the X-factor. You may account for every scenario you can think of…and then X happens. The analytical personality has a hard time dealing with this. They want to stop everything and re-evaluate. But when the X-factor hits, you don’t have that kind of time. You’ve got roll with the punches and make a call. You’ve got to take a risk and go with your gut. Analytical people HATE that.

Then there are the divers. People who just dive in with both feet and make changes, retool, and retweak as they go. This too, is both good and bad. These people are very “organic”. They can roll with the punches and flow through the problem. They adapt quickly. However, they run the risk of making poor decisions based on too little information. They also run the risk of changing directions many times in a process. They may end up in the same place as the analytical, but the team is worn out by the time they get there from all the direction changes. The team with the analytical is often frustrated, because they reach a point where they just want to stop planning and do something. The answer is somewhere in the middle. You need both and you need to at least acknowledge the “other side”. Understand their value. Focus on the good aspects and not the bad. Know that there is a time and a place for both and be willing, as hard as it might be to hand it off to the “other side” when the time is right. Who decides when the time is right? You both do. You are not going to change the way people think, feel or act. You may change their opinions on things, but you are not going to re-hardwire the way people think. Don’t try. Its takes along time, and even then, many would submit that it’s not possible. So don’t try. You sure aren’t going to do it in the span of a meeting. You are not getting paid to change the way someone’s mind works. So accept the difference and play to their strengths and downplay their weaknesses. Put analyticals in analytical roles and divers in diver roles. It sounds obvious, but people have a tendency to try and convert people to their way of working/thinking rather than playing to their strengths. It’s hard to admit, subconscious or not that someone else is better at something than you. And that’s what’s happening here. Many would say it’s not a case of someone being better. They would argue that the opposing way is wrong. Analyticals are too slow to move and scared to take a risk. Divers are random and have a short attention span. Both of these things are true. But if you let everyone play to their strengths you end up with this scenario:

• Divers explore new directions and ideas
• The divers hand off their ideas to the analyticals to add logistical concerns to the ideas
• Then get the divers come back in and help the anaylticals with X-factor scenarios
• The analyticals chew on those for a while and lay out a process for project completion
• The Divers, now armed with the guidelines for the project, implement the plan – rolling with the punches as they come.

The whole process is all about checks and balances, but there must be mutual respect. When the ball is in the divers court, the analyticals are quietly there to make sure the divers stay on track. The analyticals are not there shoot down the divers’ ideas. The analyticals are there to make sure the divers stay on track with the predefined goals of the project. When the ball is in the analyticals court, the divers are there to say “are you ready?, are you ready?, are you ready?” Not in an aggressive way, but with an excited push. The divers are also there to help the analyticals with the “outside the box” ideas (Lordy, I hate that overused term) and solutions to the analyticals logistical problems.

It’s not a fight. It’s not a contest. The fight is with the rival company. Focus on that.

Rules of Engagement - Part 2

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2) Be productive or be quiet. No armchair quarterbacking. It’s really easy to say what the problems are. It’s much harder to come up with solutions. 95% of the people in the world will be more than happy to tell you what is wrong with a situation. 2.8% will have some type of knee-jerk solution to offer up short term fix to the problem. These tend to be short sided and biased toward whatever department the person with the idea works in. 2% will actually be trying to think of the big picture, but not willing to put forth the effort to really fox the problem. “A” for effort, but that’s about it. It’s only about .2% who are willing to actually put forth the effort to solve the problem and follow through to make sure it was a success. You are that .2%, like it or not. Take it seriously. Make some real change. This involves the dreaded words in business – “Take a chance” and “Do the work.” GASP! Too many companies today have a corporate culture of cover your butt and tow the line. No great innovation EVER comes from this mentality. The key is to not necessarily make huge quantum shifts. That’s too risky and too much to ask of most people. But making incremental and measurable change toward a quantum shift is fine. In the end, it’ll take longer, but it will minimize risk, keep everyone motivated, and it just makes good business sense.

Rules of Engagement - Part 1

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Building off my last entry on Zen and the Art of Project Management, I got to thinking about meeting dynamics. Specifically - creative meetings. When I say creative meetings, I don’t just mean brainstorming sessions with the marketing department on the new ad campaign. I’m also talking about the kind of meetings where we evaluate the company’s past performance, latest progress, and forge a new business initiative. (You are doing that, right?) Some might wonder how this could be a “creative meeting.” It’s an analytical meeting where we evaluate hard metrics of past performance to spell out the future of the company. That is 100% true. However, if it’s a purely analytical venture, we end up simply repeating what we have done in the past to a greater or lesser degree. The conversation tends to stay in the realm of ‘sales were down last quarter, so we need to look at scaling back production for the short term and increasing sales initiatives in these key markets.’ This is not a bad thing. It makes good business sense. But it never innovates. If you include some creative types in the room, they tend to look at the data (in far less detail mind you) and come up with much bolder company moves. It was the creative thinkers in the conference room at Apple that brought that company back from the brink of bankruptcy. Why would a computer manufacturer make a high tech Walkman®?

“That’s not our core business.”

“We don’t do small consumer electronics.”

“It’ll dilute our brand.”

Now we have the iPod®. The best selling consumer electronic device on the planet.

It takes the creatives to think outside the normal business model and test the waters of the unknown. It takes the support of the analyticals to quickly and efficiently ground the creatives, so they aren’t expending a lot of time and money down an ill fated road. The analyticals also keep the core business moving ahead at a safe and steady pace. This allows the creatives to run ahead and try new things.

I was talking to a friend who works for Toyota corporate. He was saying the biggest difference between Toyota and Nissan is that Nissan is always trying to push the envelop. Nissan’s sales figures show that as well. It’s up and down like the Rocky mountains. Nissan has too many creatives in the room. Toyota on the other hand tended to have too many analyticals in the room. Their sales were always steady and growing, but very few people would say they bought a Toyota because it was a “cool car.” The Camry doesn’t really stand out in the crowd.

However, it appears that Toyota got a couple more creatives in the room with the advent of hybrid cars and the Scion line especially. Toyota got wise to the balance and executed it perfectly. They saw an untapped market of young new car owners who wanted inexpensive, cool cars. So Scion was born. It doesn’t say Scion, a Toyota subsidiary. They were smarter than that. Toyota let their creatives develop a new brand, with a small lineup to test the waters and try something that was historically not Toyota. They created a brand of cool, hip cars that are customizable and stand out from the crowd.

Bottom line, if you team up analytical thinkers with creative folks, you end up with a winning combination. But they have to balance each other out. Swinging too far in either direction can make the whole thing crumble.

You’ve got to let each group “do their thing.” The kicker is that these two groups tend to go in seemingly opposite directions and have a tendency to trip each other up as they go. Here’s where the Rules of Engagement come into play. Each group MUST respect the other and have trust in the other. If you set ground rules from the beginning and give each group just enough understanding of the other that there is some level of mutual respect, things go very nicely. You don’t have to “like” how the other does things, or agree with the way they go about it. You just need to know that they are doing their job and more importantly, IT”S NOT YOUR JOB. You stay focused on your portion and they’ll stay focused on theirs. When they overlap, it needs to be clearly defined whose opinion carries more weight. The Rules of Engagement, at their core, are a clear code of conduct. That way, poor personal behavior (which truly affects company growth) is pulled out of the realm of inter-office politics and into the realm of the bottom line.

The funny part about the Rules of Engagement is that even if you don’t believe what you are saying, simply obiding by the Rules of Engagement works. Everyone may know that you are not saying what you really think, but it doesn’t matter. It keeps the peace and your point was made; Maybe not to the degree that you wanted, but it was still made and you didn’t grind the meeting to a halt over your personal point. I’m not suggesting anyone lie. I’m just saying there is a big difference between “Sue, that’s a horrible idea” and “Sue, I see a lot of challenges that we would need to overcome to make that work, but we’ll look into it. Even if we can’t do what you are suggesting to it’s fullest, I can see some aspects that would be of benefit to the company now.” It may be something you feel really strongly about. Sue’s idea may sink the company in two days if it’s implemented. If it’s that bad, there are ways to express that, without pointing it at Sue. Focus on the issue, not the person.

Rules of engagement:

1) Leave your personal feelings at the door. Be objective. Don’t take criticism personally. On the flip side, be aware that you are talking to and potentially critiquing a person. Be constructive, be objective, but NEVER make it personal. Leave baggage, history, and excuses at the door. We’re here to fix the problem and improve the organization, not point fingers about why it didn’t work in the past. If you make it personal, you will single handedly kill that initiative before it starts. You’ll suck all the energy out of the room and the whole meeting will be wasted. Someone will try to salvage the meeting and try to move on. It won’t work. You might as well stop now and try again in two weeks...and it’ll be awkward then too. You’ll also strain relationships outside the conference room. This is the single fastest way to become the office jerk and be the person who kept the company from expanding. DON’T GO THERE.

More to come.