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 154 - 579 Leadership

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

Yesterday, I introduced this idea I've had surrounding numbers and balance.  I showed how odd numbers in the scale from 1 to 9, when depicted as dots on a line, have evenly distributed numbers on each side of a center point, reflecting a balanced system. 

As I researched the meaning of certain numbers: 5, 7, and 9 in particular I made some interesting connections. 

Five is positioned in the center of the scale from 1 to 9.  In that position, it reflects the pivotal point of change.  Leaders should be that pivotal point of change for their teams and organizations.  But the number 5 also reflects characteristics and values like freedom, curiosity, and adaptability.  These are all good qualities for leaders as well.   

5 also values experiences and is more willing to go with the flow than others.   

Seven represents a quest for wisdom.  Here, leaders ask questions...lots of questions, and listen carefully to the answers.  They tend to be more analytical than others and try to find meaningfulness in everything they do.  These all sound like excellent qualities to develop in leaders. 

Nine is a little more complex.  Nine represents completeness, or wholeness, but not finality.  It's like completing one cycle and then beginning another, much like we describe in the PDCA cycle of continuous improvement in a lean system.  Nine emphasizes the importance of transitions and transformations and how leaders should be guiding and empowering their people through these transformations.   

Nine is compassionate and kind and seeks the greater good.  Leaders here are wiser, stronger, more aware, tolerant, and supportive than others. 

These characteristics are all quite similar to what I describe as key insights for leaders in my book Leadersights – Love, Learn, and Let go. 

Nine, as the compassionate, guiding, and supportive leader demonstrates love – actively placing the needs of others above their own. 

Seven, seeking wisdom, asking questions, represents Learn – the on-going quest for understanding. 

Five, the free-spirited, experience-oriented (why not give it a try), going with the flow really captures the essence of Letting go.   

I want to keep exploring these leadership values, characteristics, and behaviors so I am doing two specific things to focus my energies.  I'm out of time now, so I'll tell you about them tomorrow.  Join me here at 9 am. 

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

Episode 153 - Numbers and Balance

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

 

A few months ago, I stumbled onto a little article about numbers and numerology.  As I was reading through what they said each of these numbers meant, I kept drawing connections with leadership.  Weird, I know. 

 

Through much of last year, I’ve been reflecting on balance in all things.  This is one of the keys to lean thinking and making a workplace more productive.  Everything naturally strives for balance or equilibrium.  When things are out of balance, it creates stress on the system or on the human.  We can feel it when we’re out of balance.  Entrepreneurs and many other leaders often dedicate enormous energy to their work, sacrificing balance in the pursuit of success.  But how do you get someone who really loves what they do to take a vacation? 

 

So what does balance have to do with numbers?  I started thinking about how certain numbers can illustrate balance.  Think about just the numbers 1 through 9.  If we use dots to represent numbers you’ll notice that odd numbers each have a center point with an equal number of dots on either side.  With a little push, you can see that these look like scales that are perfectly balanced.   

 

That made me dig a little deeper into those odd numbers and what numerologist say they mean.  Keep in mind, I’m not an expert numerologist.  I don’t even know how a number comes to be associated with a person.  I’m looking for something that might be catchy enough to help me lead leaders to become more effective. 

 

That’s all I have time for this morning.  Over the next couple of days, I’ll share more insight into what I discovered and how I have been able to tie everything back to my 3 key insights for leaders - Love, Learn, and Let go. 

 

Have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow 

 

 

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. 

128 - The Craft Age and craft culture

While this segment is called The Craft Age and craft culture, I’m not sure that "Craft Age" is an appropriate term.  Since the very first human struck two rocks together to make a sharp edge, we've been making things by hand.  

Craft manufacturing is just that.  Making things by hand, with or without the aid of tools.  Crafts people are often called artisans and they make unique pieces of work to trade.  

The success or failure of a crafts person depended upon functional quality.  If the product didn't do what the customer needed it to do, or if it failed to last as long as the customer thought it should, then the craftsman probably couldn't stay in business.  

In the middle ages, when more people began migrating and congregating in villages, towns, and cities, the craftsmen would band together to form a guild, whose purpose was to protect the craft.  They would restrict entry into certain professions, and define training requirements, from apprentice, to journeyman, to master.

The culture surrounding this economic system depended heavily on understanding value from the customer's perspective, and on development of expertise by the craftsman.  That's the only way to guarantee quality.  

These three characteristics - value, mastery, and quality - live on today.  A quick visit to Etsy.com will show you how strong craft manufacturing remains.

On the down side though is availability.  When your business model focuses on making exactly what the customer wants, and your financial situation doesn't allow you to speculate it's impossible to have a product "in stock." 

When today we have Amazon Now delivering products to us in 2 hours, that tells you that people have lost patience except for some special purposes.  While once we were content to wait for that customized quality good to be made just for me, now we're not.  

And the cost doesn't help.  Manufacturing products by hand is expensive.  

As population centers grew and taxed the capacity of the craft guilds to satisfy the demand of the population, inventive people go to work to speed production and lower costs.  We’ll talk about a few of them over the next couple of days.

Now the challenge is to get exactly what we want and at the cost we're willing to pay - the value problem; and to get it to work just as we need it to work - the quality problem.

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

127 - Timelines for industrial and cultural change

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

I love studying historical timelines.  History's stories have always been fascinating.  But there is so much rich detail, and so often contradictory records based on the point of view of the writer at the time. 

We can't see everything and we can't know everything.  Facts from one point of view are different from another.  You and I might watch the same video of an accident, a shoplifter, a police shooting and walk away drawing two completely opposite conclusions.  

My message is to try your best to keep and open mind, and try your best to understand multiple points of view before you charge off to take action.

Among these timelines, if you take a macro view, you can see patterns of change.  Sometimes it might be new knowledge driving the change - like Galileo discovering that the earth revolved around the sun, although this kept him under house arrest while he lived - or it might be new technology driving the change - like James Watt's steam engine.  

Every now and then, you'll find something so momentous that it changes everything and creates a new culture around that technology - think about the smart phone and how it has changed the way we all live.

Over the next few weeks, I want to explore some of these timelines with you and the culture that prevailed in each of these chunks of time.  Specifically, I will talk about craft production and a craft culture, then I'll share some key technologies that resulted in a mass production age and how that changed the culture - particularly in the US and the UK.

To try to help us all maintain that open mind, I have partnered with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky and Hiitide and we're doing a book review online of his book "The Blind Spots Between Us:  How to Overcome Unconscious Bias & Build Better Relationships".  It begins on February 1st.  

Here is the registration link:  https://api.hiitide.com/api/v2/email/click/?cid=David&ea=click&el=click-to-learnmore&cn=david_&cm=social&cs=campaign&redirect_url=https://hiitide.com/crews/the-blindspots-between-us&ci=david

I hope you'll join me on this journey.

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

126 - Culture of Confidence

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

The term "High Performance Culture" has been in circulation for a pretty long time now with probably a dozen consulting firms offering strategies to create one.  Most of these are very good.  

What I want to do is to view the need for higher performance as a management-response problem, one that is created by leaders to take the organization to another level.  We'll have to define what we mean and how to measure it, and there are many components to this.

For example, at one client, they adopted an HPC that involved 15 key components, and many of them had subcomponents for further clarification.  It is an excellent package, but there weren't any measures of performance actually tied to HPC.  It was more of a "reminder" to leaders to behave according to the values described.

Based on my research, organizations want cultures of engagement.  They might call them Problem Solving cultures, or continuous improvement cultures, or even high performance cultures, but the desire is the same:  we want our people to show up, do good work, improve that work whenever they can, and achieve our goals.  So we have 4 key measurement areas:  Attendance, Productivity, Improvements, and Results.  But the way we measure and respond is far more important than what we measure.

Are we measuring these things at work?  Most places I've been aren't really.  But let's say we're not getting what we think we want.  If that's a problem, let's look at the root cause.  In the years that I've been working on this with people, I believe the single most important root cause for failure in all four of these areas is that our workforce has low self-efficacy for engagement.

Self-efficacy is the belief in our ability to influence events that affect our life and our sense of control over the way we experience events (Bandura, 1997). [From Self-Efficacy and Leadership Commitment During Lean Strategy Deployment by Angela D. Pearson. November 2019 PhD Dissertation.] 

Another way to think about it is our individual confidence in our ability to perform a particular task in a particular setting.  I think it is particularly relevant in a work environment.  Performing the work is typically taken care of during someone's on-boarding and on-the-job training.  

We expect people to have to work up to a level of competence over time.  But how much time to we spend reflecting on why that competence is really important?  In most cases, managers will tell you that competence is important only for how it affects the results; not how it affects the person.  

Competence is the most critical builder of self-efficacy for that job.  Competence leads to mastery.  Mastery leads to innovation.  When you're an expert, you don't burn cognitive energy on actually doing the work - you just work.  Your brain is free to think about ways to improve the work - but we, as leaders, need to make that a clear expectation.  We want you to achieve a level of competence because it will allow you to find better ways to work and that benefits both the worker and the company.

I've hit this in a few other videos, and in the future, I'll go into a lot more detail.  But for now, I'm going to shift gears a little over the next couple of weeks and talk about some historical developments that have shaped the way we think about work.  Hopefully, if we understand what shaped that thinking, we can change things and reshape or reframe our thinking.

Subscribe and follow along.

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

124 - Cultures of Excitement

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

Let’s take a quick look back at what happened on December 8 in history, then we’ll get into today’s topic - Cultures of Excitement

Perhaps the first crack in the glass ceiling occurred on this day in 1660 when a woman was allowed to play the part of Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello.  Apparently up to this point, men played all the roles, even email characters like Desdemona.

On the bad news side, today in 1980, John Lennon was murdered outside of his Manhattan apartment building by Mark David Chapman.

Let see what shapes up for today and what kind of history we can make.

Today, I want to continue building on the evolution of corporate culture.  We started with a culture of defiance, then compliance.  Compliance is the default organizational culture.  No matter what we do, we normalize in compliance and we’ll get locked in there if we don’t deliberately shake things up.

For future business survival, we have to break out of Compliance as often as we can think to and we do that first by asking for involvement.  In a culture of involvement, leaders ask for input to improve the workplace.  A lot of leaders in a lot of organizations do this regularly, but we can’t sustain this and push to the next level without certain working systems that allow us to process the input from involved employees productively.

As we push past involvement and begin allowing employees to not just share ideas, but participate in testing and implementing their ideas, we lay the foundation for a culture of excitement.

We love a workplace that’s exciting.  But what is it that excites people?  

Participation is a big part of it.  So what are we asking people to participate in with us?  One of the more popular activities is a rapid improvement event.  These events go by a wide variety of names:  Kaizen Event, Kaizen Blitz, Action Workout, 5 days/4 nights, Improvement workshops…anything.  

They are focused activities that bring a cross-functional group of people together for a set period of time…usually 5 days.  In that week, participants receive focused training on solving the problem at hand or implementing a particular strategy - something like creating a work cell, or a 5S campaign to organize the workplace. 

These same kinds of things make for popular Television Shows like Trading Spaces, Extreme Makeover Home Edition, Fixer-Upper, or Flip or Flop.  These are focused on getting the maximum result possible in the minimum amount of time.

What makes these exciting is the attention, the resources available, and the results.  These events are facilitated by skilled team members.  The tools they employ are designed to equalize the group so that the input from the front-line employee weighs the same as input from the CEO.  That’s very satisfying for most of us mortal humans.

So in that week, we feel listened to.  We feel like we matter.  We help make a real change in the workplace, and we can measure that change to show how much better we made things.  And that feeling of “look what we did” or “I helped” and “We won” is wonderful.  I think it’s winning that excites us the most.  So these events have to leave us feeling like we won. 

But how long does it last?

When the event is over and the facilitators go on to the next event, the participants are usually back to their old status - just team members.  They’ll remember how exciting the event was and they’ll say things like “I can’t wait till the Kaizen team comes back to do that with us again.”

A culture of excitement runs on events.  Since events are usually limited in scope to a small area that can actually get finished in a week, for a large organization, people might never participate in a second event.

These events drive great improvements in organizations of all kinds.  They work.  Don’t misunderstand me.  But they don’t create real, broad employee ENGAGEMENT.  The difference is critical. 

I’ll talk more about that in the next post.

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

121 - Cultures of Compliance II

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

A few days ago I described a culture of defiance in organizations, and I ended up saying that a new leader would usually be necessary to pull the organization into a culture of compliance.  

It takes a leader to create conditions for a culture of defiance - and that leader generally has to convince people that they can trust no one but them and tends to blame everything bad on some group or some person. 

The first step toward getting out of a culture of defiance is to remove that leader.  

The new leader will need to be pretty much a tyrant, enforcing his or her will through the strategic application of power.   But if that behavior persists, the organization will return to the pits of defiance.

The first stages of a culture of compliance  will involve a new set of rules with consistent enforcement of those rules.  There is no room for anything else.  These new rules will form the basis for a new relationship between the leader and the led.  During this period of time, the leader has to be brutally honest about everything.  The more transparent they can become, the less difficulty they will have in restoring trust.

The vast majority of organizations are stuck in cultures of compliance.  This isn't because leaders are maliciously keeping people there.  It's because people have been conditioned for compliance their entire lives.  It's parents, then teachers, then employers who have consistently punished non-compliance over time that creates compliance as the default until you discover how much freedom you actually have.  

The new rules need to encourage and reward compliance, and punish and discourage defiance.  It won't work for some of your people.  That's fine - they can go, either voluntarily, or through termination - If they can't or won't follow the new rules, which you have carefully communicated and taught - there is no reason to keep them.

As we settle into the new culture of compliance to the rules, and as we see some degree of trust returning, leaders have to adjust the rules to allow for more involvement.  But it isn't just adjusting the rules.  It also requires systems to allow for productive involvement of the workforce in setting those new rules.  We have to ask employees for their input.

We will always need compliance to set rules.  But to advance the culture toward engagement, we'll need a defined process for breaking the rules.  So when someone has input to share, that defined process shows them what they much do to confirm that the input makes things better, and then we change the rules - we create a new expectation.  We capture that in our standardized work and it becomes the new source of compliance, until we find a still better way.

More to follow.  Stick with me.  Join me next week, Wednesday and Thursday, for a high speed problem solving workshop sponsored by Lean Frontiers.  It's virtual - four hours Wednesday afternoon, and 4 hours Thursday afternoon.  

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

119 - Cultures of Defiance

How do we find ourselves in a culture of defiance?

Defiance is the open disregard or even contempt of something or someone.

I’ve seen defiant cultures in several different organizations.  In two cases, it was a Union workforce that defied any management policy.  I’ve been doing some digging, plus reading the news, and doing some critical thinking; and I’m closing in on what I believe to be the root cause of this kind of defiance.  

I’m almost convinced that a defiant culture, whether in an organization, or a nation, flows from distrust of the opposition based on false or exaggerated claims by influential people in leadership roles.  When leaders, whether they have actual or official leadership positions or if they are simply the people others tend to listen to and believe, make false or exaggerated claims of the activities or performance of some system or some opposition leader, people believe them and resist or defy.  What's bad becomes good.  What's good becomes bad.

I even saw this in Toyota for a short period of time after the first US president was named at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky.  He happened to take the job at the same time the company decided to make changes to the suggestion system that restricted what ideas would be eligible for consideration and reward compensation.  

Team members associated that change with the new President, and I was even asked by a friend who worked there if I thought the new president was trying to bring the United Auto Workers into the plant.

That was a case of unfortunate timing without clear communication about why a change was made.  Neither the President nor the managers of the suggestion system were malicious in intent, but the influential voices started rumors that spread quickly and were believable.  The result at Toyota wasn’t particularly bad from a performance standpoint that I could tell…They were still producing about 2000 high quality cars a day, but the difference in the way the plant just felt was palpable.  

I’ve been in that plant a hundred times.  Most of the time, the team members working on the line would take a second and look up at visitors and smile or wave briefly.  You could feel positive energy in the building.  During that dark time, though, it felt like a pall on the place.  When anyone looked up at you, there were hard lines on their faces and that energy had changed.

We’ve seen this same growing split in the culture of our country.  I think it started with George W. Bush’s presidency and the stories about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that prompted our invasion.  Then when Obama was elected, we see the partisan shift in several news organizations that slid them decidedly to the left or to the right.  And each began coloring the events with that left or right slant.  When Trump was elected, it seems we stomped on the gas pedal for radical reporting with audiences observing the exact same events, but coming to two entirely different conclusions.

Now, with the seemingly clear election results being openly contested by the sitting president for the first time in our history, with half of the country supporting him absolutely and the other half defying him absolutely, we find ourselves in that same kind of dark and stressful place that is just made worse by the raging Pandemic.

This kind of defiant culture can’t last long without having serious consequences.  

So how would an organization (or a nation) pull itself out of a defiant culture?  I’m still working on that.  

But I believe that without a completely different leader taking the dominant role in the organization, it will only get worse.  But then it gets ugly.  That leader has to be remarkably consistent with the truth, and ruthlessly suppress the disinformation from the opposition.  

We’ve seen some examples of this in history on both extremes.  

When Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, he was immediately, forcefully, branded a tyrant by the opposition.  And he was.  He had to be to draw the nation out of our most terribly defiant culture ever.  

Hitler rose to power by uniting German nationalists against everything else, especially the Jews, by using every lie and exaggeration he could conceive. But he sold it.  

The only way out of both of these cases was a brutal war, and of course, the winners write the history.

Can we work together at the grass-roots level to find the common things that bind us together?  Can we deliberately ignore news and information from the extreme ends of the political spectrum and not let it inflame us to the point where we want to take up arms?

What we have to do is deliberately step toward compliance, together, and build systems that allow us to continue building toward more engagement.  For an organization, that’s not really too difficult.  For a nation, that’s a different story.

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

112 - More of Today's Problems

Good morning!

I love taking a look back through history as I prepare for these daily videos.  Here’s what I found for today:

• In 1636, Harvard College is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• In 1793, Eli Whitney applied for a patent for his Cotton Gin, a device that dramatically changed the economics of growing cotton in the southern United States, which I think allowed slavery to expand because the Cotton Gin made plantations profitable.

• In 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicated Liberty Enlightening the World, also known as the Statue of Liberty.  She was a gift from France celebrating our Centennial in 1876.

• In 1927, Pan American Airways launches the world’s first scheduled international flight.

• In 1955, Bill Gates was born.  Happy Birthday, Bill!

I encourage you to take a step back every now and then and take a look around.  This quick review of the past always sparks some desire to learn more.  I use the Eli Whitney example of one of the seminal events that enabled the transition from the Craft Age to the Mass Production Age.  

We are still trying to make the jump from Mass Production to Lean Production - and when I say production, I don't mean just manufacturing.  We "produce" services as well and the principles are just as applicable.

Today, we still have problems, whether caused by a system failure or a decision to be better.  

To me problems are NOT bad things. They teach us. They challenge us. They drive us forward. We only think they hold us back because our heads aren't always on right.

I've had a few conversations with people about framing this and here's what I've learned.

The fundamental problem for business is "how can we be successful."  In most cases, success = growth.  But there are a variety of ways to shape success, and there are a variety of reasons to grow.

• Maybe we want to keep high paying manufacturing jobs in your region. 

 

• Maybe we want to have some positive impact on the community - one client of mine that makes medical devices said they want to reduce overall healthcare systems costs through improved patient outcomes.  

• Maybe they are focused on providing a reward those invested in the success of the company - following the old “Maximize Shareholder Wealth” purpose.

How can you grow your business?  To me, there’s really only one way:

• Be more innovative.  That means to learn and act faster than others.  This can lead to 2 basic things:

○ New processes for higher quality and productivity (including a faster process for launching new products, better processes for sales and marketing to reach new markets, etc.)  

○ New products for market growth

How can a company be more innovative?

• Get more ideas from more people.  In other words, improve employee engagement and confidence so they are willing to share their ideas.  We can do that in several ways:

○ Give them ownership (leadership has to let go) and rewards (not necessarily money) for sharing their ideas

○ Give them better thinking skills to improve the quality of ideas (teach them how to think critically)

○ Give them a structure that allows them to experiment with their ideas quickly:  Give them structures so that they can more quickly see problems that might prompt ideas (structures that make them more aware of what is going on)

○ Give them practice at doing these things

I've designed the C4 system I've been talking about to do all of these.  Let me help you put it in place.  Send me an email at david.veech@leadersights.com or send me a direct message on one of my social media platforms.

I’m David Veech and this has been Elevate Your Performance.

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

109 - Sunday Reflection

Good morning.

With travel this past week, I missed recording on Thursday and Friday.  Saturday I have managed to skip for 3 weeks in a row.  I still have in mind to do a travel related show on Saturdays to have some fun and to boost my travel agency a bit.  We'll see how that works out.

The pandemic had an effect on my travel to New York.  I had checked the travel restrictions and New York apparently has some of the tightest controls in the country.  I'm happy about that, because we don't seem to be taking it as seriously as we probably should especially since we had  a record number of new cases yesterday.

To make it to my client in Rochester, I had to complete a form for the New York State Health Department giving the details of where I was arriving from and if I've shown any symptoms or if I'd been exposed to anyone with symptoms or been in any potentially hazardous activities that could have put me at risk.  

Unlike Massachusetts, New York didn't say they would waive the requirements with a negative COVID test within the past 72 hours.  I decided it would be prudent to get one anyway, for my client's and my own peace of mind.

CVS does drive through testing that easy and essentially free, so I took care of that on Monday morning hoping to have the results before I arrived in New York.  I didn't, but I filled out the New York travel forms and got an email back with a green check mark that said I'm good to go.

When I arrived in Rochester, the National Guard was there to collect information from everyone arriving.  I showed them my green check mark and they let me sail on through.  I picked up the car at Hertz with no trouble and arrived at the Marriott hotel with no trouble.

The client had a similar statement that I had to sign, plus they took my temperature before they let me in.  Our group met in a large, well-ventilated training room that allowed everyone (a group of 9 people) to spread out.

At lunch, I got a phone call from the New York State Health Department and we had a nice conversation about how I was feeling, and if I'd had any symptoms at all.  They said if my employer had restrictions or quarantine requirements I should follow their guidance.  I was following the client's guidance so I think I'm good to go.

Later that afternoon, I got an email from them (the Health Department) that was pretty much a form letter that they must send to everyone arriving in New York from almost any other state that ordered me to quarantine in my hotel room for 14 days.  There was no hint of this coming based on the phone call I had, which clearly indicated I could work following the employer's guidelines.  

About this same time, my test results arrived - a nice big "Negative" across the top.  I forwarded this to the client, and showed them the email, and we decided to proceed with the second day of training.

I was supposed to get periodic text messages from the Health Department asking about symptoms, but they sent them to the wrong phone number so I didn't see them until I got home.

I'm home now, feeling fine except for not sleeping much because my poor wife is still hurting so badly from her knee surgery.

This past week, I showed you my C4 Card and explained how to use it.  On Wednesday, I talked about 4 types of problems:  Alert Response, Measured Response, Individual Idea, and Management Response and how they tie in to the C4 card as well.  

This week, I'll bring up the C4 worksheet and a Master file I give to groups to use to hold everything they discover on their problem solving journey.  I'll talk through both of those, then go into a little more depth on  the types of problems and on the types of gemba walks.

I hope you'll stick around.  Let me hear from you!  Make a comment.  Let me know if you'd like to know more about anything I'm talking about.  Let me know if you'd like me to come to you and take a group through these steps.  

david.veech@leadersights.com

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

107 - The C4 Card Part 2

Good Morning.

Yesterday, I showed you the C4 Card and what it's used for.  Today I want to show you how it works.

Working the Card

• Problem occurs/team member has an idea

• Post card

• Leader pulls

• Assign coach

○ TL or Peer coach

• Dialogue 

○ Critical thinking

○ 5 whys

○ Initial evaluation

• The Dialog piece not only helps the team member but it teaches the coach how to ask better questions and build stronger relationships

• Cross unit coordination

○ Cross-shift/Cross-Dept

• Adjust inputs

• Countermeasures

○ Explore multiple options

○ Evaluate

○ Plan

○ Execute

• Confirm - Check the result.  Do we need to update any procedures or standardized work? Review the process - did we follow it as planned?  If we deviated, why did we deviate?  What did we learn by going through this?

How it works depends a little on how the problem shows up.  We'll cover these tomorrow!

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

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

103 - The C4 Process

Good Morning!

On this day in 1878, Edison Electric Light co. founded. More relevantly, in 1951, the First episode of I Love Lucy aired on American Television. That's relevant because we use a clip from I Love Lucy in teaching the principles of problem solving. That clip is available on my YouTube channel.

I've mentioned my process for solving problems a few times, but so far, I haven't had an episode dedicated to the C4 process. After discussing the evolution of the scientific method and the history of the quality movement over the past couple of days, I think it fits in nicely here and will help set the tone for future episodes.

The C4 Process is an evolution of the PDCA cycle that I first learned in the Army, but later really focused on in working with Toyota to understand what makes the Toyota Production System tick.

I taught PDCA for several years. It's stages of Plan, Do, Check, Act I found were excellent for conducting a thoroughly scientific analysis of a problem that we needed to solve or for an improvement we needed to make to a process.

I ran into problems with people taking shortcuts in the process. Mostly, people would tend to skip completely over the Plan stage, and Do something, then see what happened, and then do something else.

I was working with the team the developed the Rolls-Royce Production System and having lots of discussions about learning, employee development and engagement, and simplifying the problem solving process.

Separately, we had both began to focus on the key activities within the Plan stage, to call them out separately, so people might stick to them a little better. As we worked through these issues, Mike Kirkby of the RRPS team, told me that they had run a trial of a simple system they were calling the 3C's process because it focused on the Concern, then the Cause, and then the Countermeasure.

I had already decided that Cause and Countermeasure had to stay, but I couldn't find the right word for the first stage until this discussion. I immediately adopted this (or abducted it - or stole it outright) but because my focus was much more centered on what the employees can learn from the process rather than simply getting a solution in place, I added a 4th stage to capture the need for some retrospective thinking to solidify the learning. I called that 4th stage "Confirm."

So the 4 stages of the C4 process are Concern - where we understand the real problem; Cause - where we find the root causes; Countermeasure - where we develop and evaluate potential solutions; and Confirm - where we collect and analyze the results and reflect on what we learned by going through the process.

Tomorrow, I'll break these down into 11 key steps that I teach.

I'm presenting tomorrow and the People Processes Digital Summit that kicks off this morning.  My presentation on Solving Tomorrow's Problems will go at Noon Eastern time tomorrow, October 16.

Hit the link in the comments to register. It's free, unless you want to upgrade to VIP access for only $30 - that will get you access to all the videos for another month plus a few other perks.

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

97 - Today's Problems

There are no shortages of problems in today's working world. 

• Management complains that they can't get the right skills or they can't find people who will actually work.
• Employees complain about mind-numbing jobs, or inequity at work, particularly where there's no accountability.  So some people work their butts off and get no reward, while others do as little as possible and nothing ever happens to them.

COVID-19 has only made these problems worse.

To me, we can sum up all of these problems when we talk about employee engagement. 

Those complaints immediately tell me that an organization doesn't focus on employee engagement nor on its key component of developing people.

What does engaged mean?  Gallup defines engaged employees as those who are highly involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace.

According to Gallup, 52% of employees are not engaged, with another 13% actively disengaged.  That leaves 35% who report that they are engaged at work. 

That 35% is the highest since Gallup started measuring in 2000.  Organizations are doing some things right to build that trend of improvement, but there is still great opportunity in that other 52%.

What about those 13%?  I think we will always have a small group of employees who would rather be somewhere else or doing something else, so I don't think we should put a ton of effort into solving that problem.  The much bigger opportunity is to turn a few of those in the middle into more of those in the engaged block.

That's the core problem that I wanted to solve in my book Leadersights.  In the new book, I want to show that so many other "routine problems" at work flow from engagement.  Everything from productivity, to quality; even safety suffers when employees are not engaged.

What do you think is causing this poor engagement?  I think it's poor leadership.  Over the next few months, let's see how much of this stuff we can tie together and connect so that if we solve the main root cause, we'll see a domino effect of problems disappearing.  And that, conveniently, ties well into our theme this month of Connecting.

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

91 - Integral Leadership

Good morning.

Welcome to October.  We’re entering the 8th month of the pandemic.  People and businesses have found thousands of new ways to work, but we’re still struggling to stay afloat.  American and United are laying off thousands of workers today since new aid packages are still stalled in congress. 

Congress needs fixing, so I’m going to encourage you all to vote against those in both the house and the senate who have been there too long.  I’ll let you decide what “too long” means.  A lot of people cry out for term limits, but we the people have always controlled the length of the terms of our elected leaders.  We have the chance to limit terms with every election.  Please vote next month.  I plan to take advantage of early voting to avoid crowds. 

Now, let me get back to what this time is supposed to be for…elevating your performance.

I started this series on July first.  The theme for July was Love, and I tried to bring that focus into the topics I shared and the way I shared them.  In August, the theme was Learn, and last month it was Let Go.

Love, Learn, and Let go are the three critical decisions leaders need to make to drive their behavior in the workplace.  Love is the decision to be a servant leader and place the needs of your people above your own.  Learn is the decision to be a Level-5 Leader, focusing on developing people for future responsibilities.  Let Go is the decision to lead through Short-Interval Leadership, where you’ve fully empowered people, but stay engaged with them to Challenge them, Support them, Correct them, and Encourage them through gemba walks and management by walking around and through effective visual management systems so they will have the information they need close at hand to allow them to make better decisions.

Once I learned all the stuff behind these three decisions and summarized them, I built them into a new leadership model that I call the Integral Leadership Model.  I wrote about it for the first time in my book “Leadersights:  Creating great leaders who create great workplaces.”  Here I organized these into overlapping zones to indicate that leaders need to be operating in all zones at once, rather than progressing from one to the other.  That’s what I mean by Integral in the Integral Leadership Model.

But there is a fourth zone I discovered, or that I realized was very real for us.  It involves charismatic leaders.  I studied what attracts us to charismatic leaders and concluded that they make us feel connected through their confidence and certainty when they talk to us.  The fourth decision leaders need to make is to Connect with others. 

Connect is the theme for us this month.  This month, I’ve built a schedule that will allow me to focus on making progress on a new book, but I’ll tie all of these into this general theme of Connecting.  I hope you find it useful.

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

90 - Productivity

How do you know if your team is as productive as possible?

I've seen some weird calculations for productivity in businesses.  Most of the time, it depends on who is doing the measuring.

Since we're talking about visual management systems and productivity as a measure for the team, we have to think clearly about what our team members need to know about productivity and delivery.

We have to know our team's output.  What is it that they produce and deliver to customers?  What are they supposed to accomplish every day?

Everyone assembles some type of product, even if it's an information product like a report to your boss.  In places where you only do that once a month, how do you know if you're being productive every day?

It comes down to daily targets set by the leaders.  These targets will break down the product or service to a daily chunk of work, then we'll measure our progress against that target.

In the easy case, my team needs to produce 24 scopes today, in one 8 hour shift.  Our target output is 24, but it'll help me keep pace if I break that down to 3 per hour.  I can check every hour now to see if we're on track to hit the target.  If the plan is 24 and the actual is 24, in its simplest form, that's 100% productivity.

Setting those targets isn't arbitrary though.  The target needs to be based on actual demand, and the team needs to be staffed to complete the work assigned.  If it takes the team longer than 20 minutes to complete that scope on average, they'll never be able to keep pace and hit the target.

I have all kinds of ways to help you determine your demand, your pace, and your targets that will give you truthful information and help you make better decisions.  I've done this with government offices, with manufacturers of everything from steel to apparel, with insurance providers, fast food retailers, warehouses, and hospitals.

Call me and let me help you build a more productive team.

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

89 - Measuring Safety

What should you measure for safety?

Last week, we aired an episode about getting started with visual management.  To me, the only thing that makes this easier is if everyone knows the purpose behind the system.  Visual management systems are a countermeasure to some problem the organization has and wants to solve.

When we're clear about the purpose:  Improve employee engagement; Improve work flow; improve communication channels; it's easier to talk to team members about how they can contribute to the success of the system.  There's something in it for them.

The things we measure have to be meaningful for the team.  That means that all team members understand how their actions move the needle on any particular measure.

Safety should be your number one metric.  But how do you make this meaningful for people?  Sure everyone wants a safe work environment, but what are the team members doing to improve safety?  What are they doing to reduce the risk of an accident or incident?  What are they doing to prevent the spread of COVID-19?

Some companies will roll safety in with their 5 S stuff and call it 6S.  I guess it sounds like success, but what I've seen is that very few back it up in any tangible way. 

If you're only counting recordables and near misses, you're trying to move forward by looking in the rear-view mirror. 

So what should you be doing?

I recommend including everyone in your behavior-based safety program that involves doing a safety observation of a particular area.  Make a plan for who will do an observation in the team area and track whether people are staying on the plan by completing their observations on time.  If you include everyone, you'll end up teaching everyone how to look for specific hazards that they might not notice working away every day.

Assign them to observe in an area where they don't typically work everyday.  Have them record their observations as answers to specific questions on their safety observation card.  Then if their observation includes nothing to draw attention to or repair, then the green side of the card is displayed in the safety area of the board.  If there IS an observation, everyone needs to be empowered to stop the work there immediately and work together to remove the threat/hazard.  If it's something that can't be fixed right away, make sure you have a clear process for escalating.

I've seen this in far too many places, where they'll do an observation and turn the card in to the EHS guy but no action ever comes from it.  If that's the case, you're wasting everyone's time. 

People are too valuable to not manage the risk in the workplace.  If you need some help setting something up, I can help.  Send me a message or give me a call.

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

86 - Getting started with Visual Management

Good morning!

Are you wondering how to get started with a new or modified visual management system and the team huddles that go along with them?

What do you measure?   What do you display?  How do you get people to care about the boards?   How do you get people to care about the huddles?

It can be a lot of hard work for leaders.  I don't want to sugar coat this. 

The most important aspect of visual management and huddles is understanding why you want to incorporate them into your workplace or work life. 

You need to understand what problem you are trying to solve with this.

To me, the most important reason to do all this is to allow all employees to feel more involved in what's going on at work and give them a system where they can become engaged. 

Why that?  Because we need engaged employees to help us see and solve future problems, to share new ideas, and to develop the skills they will need to be future leaders.

How do you start?  You'll need some specific measures.  Usually there will be a set that includes a metric for People, Safety, Productivity or Delivery, Quality, Service, and Cost.

The general question for all of these metrics is "what do people need to know?"  This isn't about what the leaders need to know, but this will play directly into metrics at higher tiers. 

"What do the people in the huddle at tier 1 need to know?" 

1. They need to know if their team is here or if they can expect more work because they're short handed today.  So we MEASURE Attendance.
 

2. They need to know if special events, training, or future vacations are going to affect them.  So we have a 3-month rolling calendar people can write on.
 

3. They need to know what they are expected to do that day.  What are the targets for production or service delivery - How many widgets am I expected to make or how many customers should I expect to see today? 
 

4. They need to know that the problems they had yesterday (or earlier) are solved or are being solved if they aren't personally involved.
 

5. For other things, ask them!  

a. Many will want to know how they are doing with customer satisfaction, so you will want some quality measure of their work. 

b. Many will want to know how the company is doing financially - especially if there's a gainshare or bonus structure they will benefit from with higher profitability. 

c. Others will want to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, babies, promotions, or recognition team members have received.

I'll start today with People and the simplest thing you can do to begin bringing people in - Measure attendance at the huddles.

Sounds silly to take attendance, but the way it should work is that each team member has to interact with the board to mark that they are here.  We do this to build the habit of coming to the huddle, picking up a marker, and putting a green dot next to your name.

But that alone will just be annoying, so you have to offer a challenge.  You have to offer something like: "If we have 100% attendance for a month, there's a reward for the team."  The reward can be an office pot luck, but that's pretty much a non-starter in COVID world, or it could be that everyone gets a $5 Starbucks or Walmart gift card. 

Give out the reward as soon as it’s earned.  Don’t wait til the end of the year to reward perfect attendance in February.

For longer periods of 100% attendance, you offer larger rewards. 

Don't forget though, that the purpose you are after is to get them to care about the huddle.  So the other things you measure and talk about in the huddle have to matter to them. 

I'll talk about them over the next few days.  If you need any help with this, send me a message or give me a call.

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