Episode 155 – Events for Leadersights and 579 Leaders

Good morning, I'm David Veech and this is Elevate Your Performance. 

I want to share some other ideas I've had about 579 Leadership and share a couple of events that I'm planning. 

First, I'm starting to record episodes for a podcast I'm simply going to call Leadersights, after my book.  It'll be a mix of me telling stories of the things I've learned about leaders and lean systems and conversations with leaders about overcoming problems and setting goals.  Those leaders might be CEOs or they might be Team Leaders from a manufacturing plant.  The key is to share some insight. 

I'll have discussions with each of them about 579 leadership, which, as I hinted at yesterday, is about the application of the Leadersights of Love, Learn, and Let go.  So I'll want to hear their stories about each of those and share them with you. 

My target length for a Podcast episode is going to be 579 seconds, twice.  579 seconds is 9 minutes and 39 seconds, and twice that will be 19 minutes and 18 seconds; which should be plenty of time for a good conversation. 

I hope you'll share with me some of the things you are looking for in a podcast so I can keep making it better.  I'm going to launch the podcast on my birthday, August 22 with the first 3 episodes, then release a new episode every week. 

Second, in September, I am launching a new mastermind study group that will focus on 579 Leadership.  Here, the members will be the stars as we share the things we discover about leadership in every situation you can imagine.   

Here's what I'm planning: 

Members will complete an application for the program, committing to a 579-day-long program (1 year, 7 months, and 4 days). Our key objective will be to become more effective as leaders, coaches, parents, team members, business owners, etc.  

Individually, I'll work with each member.  We'll have a 360-assessment done and together we'll set goals and build your action plan to become a more effective leader.  We will complete a few other assessments or diagnostic instruments for your business and set goals and build actions plans to improve there as well.   Members will get an hour of coaching with me every two weeks, plus additional access if you're working a particular problem or goal.  Members will also have access to exclusive materials I've created just for the group. 

The group will meet virtually every two weeks for 86 minutes and 51 seconds (or there abouts) which is 579 seconds times 9.  This will largely be in a Lean Coffee format where members will bring issues and we'll discuss those issues and try to help you take action to solve a problem or drive an improvement. 

Once a quarter (six times in the 579 day cycle), we'll meet face to face for 579 minutes (9 hours and 39 minutes).  We'll meet in different spots for everyone who can make it.  I hope that the members will rotate hosting in their companies and invite us in for a Genba walk while we're there and let us work on a problem they're wrestling with.  I'd like to have an agenda that includes the genba walk, focus time on a problem or lesson, a guest speaker, open networking and discussion time, lunch, and end with dinner and drinks - 9 hours and 39 minutes is a long day – so we'll make it as valuable as we can. 

Twice a year (three times in the 579 day cycle), we'll have a retreat for 3 days someplace we decide we'd like to see.  I hope all members will be able to make at least one of these, as we'll have some special recognition activities in addition to guests, tours, and cases to study. 

Once a year, we'll take a vacation – pushing us to have some balance.  So I'll book a cruise or a resort for us to take our families to and we'll spend a week or so just enjoying each other's company and taking in some cultural aspect of wherever we go.  I have Japan, a European River cruise focused on wine and beer, a Mediterranean cruise focused on culinary delights, and the Bourbon trail in mind. 

I'm still working on a pricing structure that will reflect the value of the program.  For the first cohort, I'm thinking about $15,200 for the 19 month program if paid up front, or $894 a month if paid monthly but committed for the program.  I promise we'll get much more value that that from the journey.  Of course the travel will be extra, but I'll get the best rates I can for wherever we go and offer them to the group through our partner travel agency, Clandestine Travel.  Part of the fees will contribute to a partner charity that I'm sorting through now so we can also give back to our community. 

I'll release the application which will include schedules for the 19 months on July 26th.  I'm limiting the size of the mastermind to 28 people per cohort.   

I'm pretty excited about both of these events – the podcast and the study group.  I've been thinking about these for a long time.  Let me know what YOU think. 

Have a great day, and I'll see you next time. 

Episode 152 - Plans

I’m David Veech and this is Elevate your performance. 

After taking June off from making videos, I figure it’s time to get back at it, especially since it was one year ago today that I made the first of these.  I managed to run a pretty good streak then.  When I broke the streak, I broke that momentum.  As with everything else, if you’re running a streak and something breaks that momentum, it’s very tough to get back to it, so the videos got more and more sporadic. 

Because of that, I’m hesitant to commit to getting back on this horse, but I do need to make some more and spread some more joy and knowledge.  Let me share some plans with you that I’ve been working on and thinking about. 

I did a short workshop on Fearless Teams for the NK Institute for Human Advancement.  It was a blast and got great feedback.  In my consulting engagements, building effective teams is a major focus area.  We all need teams to WORK.  I’m also building a couple of additional workshops we will offer in the future. 

Fearless teams lead to fearless culture.  Any change you’re trying to make in your workplace, whether it’s new software, or something from the Lean Six Sigma toolbox, if you don’t address the culture change needed, that initiative will fall short of your goals.  I help companies bridge that gap.  While your lean consulting group is doing their thing, or your software implementation team is doing theirs, I work in the space between the technical change and the people to bring about a culture change.  That’s the sweet spot for my coaching work. 

3 other big things I’m planning to launch in the next several weeks: 

First, I want to offer a mastermind study group through the NK Institute that will focus on High Speed Problem Solving.  This will be an ongoing membership-based group that will take lots of deep dives into techniques and skills for problem solving.  We’re still working the details, but I want to meet virtually every couple of weeks and face-to-face about once a quarter with one of the participants hosting at their workplace.  While we’re there, we’ll do some specific work on their specific problem. 

Second, I’ve had this nagging idea about a new leadership study group where the focus is on balance.  I’ll be writing some more on this idea in the future, but this group will be developing more effective leadership behaviors to drive change, build wisdom, and work in cycles where we define a challenge, work to meet that challenge, then set a new one in an upward spiral elevating performance for everyone. 

The third is a podcast.  I’ve been wrestling with this one because producing a podcast is a lot of work, and marketing it to get any followers is real heavy lifting.  But I think I can do this and tie it to the leadership study group.  I want to talk to leaders about balance, about learning, and about problem solving.  Be watching for more information about this.  I’ll need at least 10 episode in the can before I can launch, so I guess I need to start on that very soon. 

I guess I’d better get to work, huh?  Thanks for listening.  Subscribe to get updates and let me know if you’re interested in participating in any of those three projects.  And if you need help developing teams and problem solving skills for your employees, reach out.  I’d love to work with you. 

Have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow. 

Thinking about 2021

After the new year, I'm planning to get back into the daily video business.  I've been spending these past couple of weeks focused first on family, then on developing some new ideas.

Neither of these are really new ideas, but I'm mustering up some energy to get them going this time around.

First is a concept around a high confidence culture.  This is based on what I think is the most significant factor in a successful culture of engagement: self-efficacy.  I've been talking about self-efficacy for years and sometimes it seems like I'm the only lean guy who does.  Self-Efficacy is the confidence we have about our own ability to do a particular task.  It could be a particular job at work, or an entrepreneur's marketing efforts, or my confidence that I can take a train from one part of DC to another.

Self-efficacy isn't something that just happens. Leaders can help shape this in team members, and I believe this fundamental understanding of how to build confidence in team members, and then to let it flourish is the first step to becoming a more effective leader.

The second idea is to build a more focused practice on coaching others.  I intend to take on clients who want to become more effective leaders and build engaging, high-confidence cultures.  I need to keep it oriented toward leadership in organizations, since it's that culture piece that we want to employ to create a better work environment for as many people as we can.

I guess I'll end up with three tiers of membership.  

    Tier 1 is individual, one-on-one coaching.  It'll start with a 360 degree assessment.  I use the LifeStyles Inventory (LSI) from Human Synergistics.  It'll also include an organizational assessment for profitability using the Quantum Profit Science Profit Model and will show how your organization compares with its industry averages.  We'll build a personal development plan and a roadmap to more engagement and we'll connect once a month for an hour to help you with accountability.

    Tier 2 is individual, one-on-one coaching as in Tier 1 but with 2 sessions per month, plus access to a weekly group Zoom call that will use lean coffee dialog techniques to discuss issues that participants bring to the table, rather than a set agenda.

    Tier 3 is the big Kahuna.  It includes the same individual one-on-one coaching as at Tier 2, and this group'll get their own weekly Zoom call.  But for this group, we add a specific project for participants from their own workplace.  Every 6 to 8 weeks, we will have a 3 to 4 day workshop focusing on a deep dive into a familiar topic, or an introduction to something completely new.  Finally, twice a year, pandemics notwithstanding, we'll meet face-to-face as a group in a place where we can learn, reflect, and relax.

What will the coaching focus on?  I'm glad you asked.  As the author of a book on leadership and another book on problem solving, it's a good bet that we'll be spending a lot of time on both of those topics.  But they will always be discussed within the framework of the high confidence culture.  Lots of lean systems thinking, principles, practices, tools and techniques with a special emphasis on standardized work (no, it's not the same thing that you're familiar with), workplace organization, visual management systems, and problem solving systems.

What's it going to cost??  I haven't figured that out yet.  I do know that I'm capping tier 3 at 16 people so I can provide a proper level of attention to achieve their learning and performance objectives.  What would you be willing to pay to get one or two of your key people into a focused development group like that?  Let me know.  

If you want to know when we're going to start and how you can be first in line, send me an email (david.veech@leadersights.com).  If you're ready to take that plunge now, go to https://calendly.com/davidveech/15min and schedule a 15 minute video chat with me.

All the best and Happy New Year.

David

123 - Involvement

Hi, I’m David Veech and this is Elevate Your Performance.

It’s my granddaughter Ivy’s first birthday today.  She’s a fireball already and promises to be the perfect wild child.  I’m sure her moms will be able to handle it…one way or another.  Happy birthday, Ivy!

For the past two days, I’ve facilitated an online workshop sponsored by Lean Frontiers that I called High Speed Problem Solving.  I had 5 active participants that were just great to work with.  

As each introduced themselves, they described some frustration that in their organizations, getting to solutions just seemed to take too long.  Several were holding kaizen events that they hoped to shorten by applying what I might be able to teach them in this “high speed problem-solving” workshop.  

I spoke to them about the Lean Adage that says “sometimes you have to slow down to speed up.”  That pretty much sums up the premise of High Speed Problem Solving:  Slow down and do the thinking required to find the right problem, set the right scope, find the right root causes, and evaluate several different countermeasures to find the right one.  The speed comes from never having to solve that particular problem again.

I did share some very specific techniques for speeding things up, including ways to see problems more quickly through visual management and workplace organization; writing better problem statements, so we don’t have to ask a lot of questions to get the clarity we need; breaking down a big problem; stem-and-leaf cause mapping; and ways to cultivate creativity.

But all of those are just tips and techniques.  The context that makes them work, really, is in the culture of the organization.  Last week I spoke about cultures of defiance and cultures of compliance.  To get to a culture of engagement, we have to navigate our way through involvement and excitement while we build the skills required to thrive in engagement.  These include leadership skills as well as problem solving skills like critical thinking, quantitative analysis, creativity, planning and organizing, execution, and evaluation.

Getting to involvement should be easy, but staying there is very tough.  To get there, all you have to do is ask people for their input.  Staying there requires that you act on their input.  What makes this hard is that this early input expects the leader to solve the problems they point out, many of which are beyond the leader’s authority.  When the leader fails to act, people notice.  They go back into their compliance mode telling themselves that the leadership was never really serious about listening to employees anyway.

To make our way through this involvement stage, we have to have systems that allow us to show that we are listening to people, but we need to make it clear from the start that the leader’s role is not to solve the problems, but to provide resources to people to solve their own.  Those resources include time, coaching, and supplies.  Problems and ideas have to be tangible and work related, so complaints about how lazy other employees are doesn’t count.

If we don’t think through what the new rules should be for involvement, we’ll fall pretty quickly.  I’ll be happy to help you define those rules and help you begin your journey to a new culture.  Just give me a call.

Have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow.