Decoding Culture

In recent post author and consultant Ron Ashkenas makes the following observation about how leaders fail to fully understand and deal with culture as focal point for change:

The truth is that most leaders don't know how to develop a useful picture of their organization's culture, which is why they resort to platitudes. However when managers can better articulate the behavioral patterns that constitute the culture, they can determine which behaviors facilitate results — and which behaviors should be avoided.

What Ron recommends is to engage leaders in dialogue based on simple questions. Our Competing Values Culture Survey is a proven framework of questions that help leaders get to heart of what makes their culture tick or what's gumming up the works. This simple tool allows leaders to explore and understand how their culture is impact performance and competitive advantage.

Drop me a note and I'll send you a link to this survey and share with you ways to get your leaders talking about, understanding and ultimately transforming the culture.

If you'd like to read the rest of Ron's post, here is the link.

Vision. If Seeing is believing, believing is...?

As an element of successful change, a vision may be best defined by what it does rather than what it is. Because what a vision needs to do is more important that what a vision needs to be / consist of, there should be a generous strike zone for what a vision includes; content, how many words it is, who it’s “for”, etc. What is of real importance is what a vision must do; clarify, focus and galvanize intention.

Last week I helped kick off the 2011 Maryland World Class Consortia’s Lean Facilitator program- 19 new candidates from several member companies. This program is a year long certification program (6 months for academic track) built upon the Shingo Prize criteria for Lean. Jeff Fuchs kicked off the program with an orientation for candidates and their “sponsors” and introduction to Lean principles, thinking and tools. I followed Jeff and worked with the group for two days to strengthen their change leadership. In this program we explored the relationships between vision, purpose and leadership.

“Homework” between day 1 and day 2 of change leadership is on Visioning. I used a simple “2012 press release” technique to help each participant develop a personal vision for themselves in their role as Lean Facilitator. The press release is a vehicle to paint in a picture of success, of the desired future and to focus their intentions on that future. Vision helps us prepare for the future, today.

On the second day candidates came to the front of the room to share their press releases. WOW! Below is the press release / vision from Al Baity, a production manager with Atlas Container. What would you like in a change agent? Passion? Perspective? Focus? Commitment? Connection to a greater good? Clarity of Purpose? Al and his fellow candidates delivered all that and more. These presentations were the highlight of the program for me.

“On January 4, 2011 Atlas production was at a very low spot in manufacturing. They had tried many ways to cut cost while sales were staying stagnant. They would ask employees to volunteer to leave early to cut labor cost and avoid lay-offs. They tried to reduce waste. They took a strong action to improve quality. All of these actions did not increase sales nor did it add value to the bottom line. Things looked so bleak that lay-offs in all departments was the next step.

Tom Wood and Al Baity went to the owner and CEO Peter and Paul Centenari and asked could we give Lean manufacturing a chance. With very much doubt and uncertainty Peter and Paul agreed to give them a shot.

Tom, Al and David Austin signed up for a six month course to be Lean Facilitators. After each month session they returned to Atlas to implement some of the practices they have learned. They would ask employees what can we do to help you bring up set-up times and run speeds. That was the ball that started the game, asking 1 question. By the end of each month they had several ideas and suggestions from employees. The next step was to put in a plan of action and let the employees implement the process. Not all employees were on board with the idea, such as employee Mac Dickens, “I just knew this was going to be a dumb Atlas idea. So to keep my job I went along with it. Suddenly I found out that things became easier. Tools and materials were always at my work area, I did less walking and was able to focus on the job at hand. I reduced my set-up times by 15 minutes and my run speeds went up to 1500 pcs an hour. This freed my time to focus on quality and waste.”

Waste at Atlas has reduced from 16% to 9%. Atlas has had a full year without a single quality complaint. Dale Holston Associate of Sales: “Due to the great quality I have increased my sales 20%, customers are asking how I can get my company involved in this Lean process?”

Paul Centenari: I did not want to trust Tom, Al and David. I knew I had a great group of dedicated workers. I did not think that I would have seen such a dramatic turn around in this process of Lean. The amazing thing is they are always doing more to better the practice of Lean.

Customer Dixon Valve, Mr. Hollinswood. “I knew Atlas had potential but when I toured the company people were working and getting things done with little or no effort. That’s when I knew Atlas would be my only supplier.”

Due to Lean efforts: Atlas has increased sales dollars from 3.5 million a month to 7 million, from 40 million square feet to 85 million and 150 orders a day to 325 orders a day. They added 4 new machines while maintaining the same labor force. There are leading efforts for 30 customers to become a Lean facility.

Congratulations Atlas Container! Lean is working and manufacturing is changing in Maryland due to Atlas Container. “

Vision and visioning is common denominator in nearly every successful change endeavor. Regardless of the change opportunity, we can help you, your team and your organization focus, clarify and galvanize intention with the power of vision.

Team Based Management Guideline: Supervisor's Role
Becoming Team Based means committing to use high performance teams as the structure and process for work. Becoming team based should be approached as a strategic level decision and a means toward competitive advantage / differentiation.

Whenever our clients plan for becoming team based we encourage them to address the role of supervisors as fully as possible before any implementation. Supervisors are critical to the ultimate maturation and performance of teams. Here are a few key guidelines to consider.

1. It's important to think about the end game. Supervisors quickly understand that more autonomous and independent high performance work teams will require less supervision i.e less supervisors. Think about "off-ramp" roles like customer / supplier liaison, continuous improvement specialist, etc. If possible, creatively attack this issue to the point that supervisors should not fear for their employment through this process.

2. Involve supervisors in the design and planning process. Engage them directly and treat them like the key stakeholders that they are. Be clear about the outcomes and functioning you desire from your teams. Enroll supervisors in aligning the systems, guiding principles and team mechanics, roles, etc. to realize those team outcomes and levels of functioning.

3. Study the Supervisor Role. To get any loft, teams will need a great deal of support and guidance from their supervisor, who has probably been renamed "advisor" or "coach" as part of the change. We like to engage supervisors in a time study and reengineering of their role, activities and duties prior to any team implementation. Over the course of two weeks, supervisors input data on their activities and time spent. We feed this data back to the supervisors during a Role Redesign Workshop. The goal of this workshop is to develop solutions that sweep the their role free of much of the cumbersome and unproductive activities that supervisors seem to be magnets for. This workshop helps prepare supervisors for the change as well as freeing them up to actually support their teams.

4. Nontraditional Development. Supervisors will need training to navigate their team leadership; team dynamics, developing a participative approach, conflict resolution, meeting facilitation, etc. Also look toward less traditional development activities such as regular round tables, peer coaching, lunch and learns, etc. These activities not only give supervisors a voice but keep them engaged as a community in the success of teams.

Becoming team based is a serious undertaking and should require some intensive planning and spot on change management. Of all the things to "get right", doing right by the supervisors and treating them like tier one stakeholders will pay dividends down the road.

Please share you wisdom on how to prepare and engage supervisors in the use of high performance teams.

High Performance Climate Six Pack:
In our research and work with High Performance Work Climates we have found a “hit list of six” essential practices that contributed the most to producing positive work climates. The implication of this hit list of six is that a healthy, satisfying, high-performing climate results when managers do at least the following six well:

1. Clarify people’s roles and responsibilities.
2. Set challenging performance goals and standards.
3. Demonstrate personal commitment to the organization’s goals.
4. Encourage innovation and risk taking.
5. Conduct team meetings in a way that builds mutual trust.
6. Encourage people to participate in decisions

What does this mean? First, these six practices describe a leadership approach that is high involvement, high trust, challenging and committed. This also means that when employees scored their managers as doing well in at least these six practices, you could predict that the overall climate in the work unit would be more positive. Next, it means that ensuring managers are doing these things has a high impact on motivation, performance and satisfaction.

Finally, for those of you who attended our LEAD Program for High Potential Managers (www.leadinstitute.com), these six practices correspond to the Clan Culture: Items -15 & 18, Adhocracy Culture: Item 9, Enterprise Culture: Items 4 & 5 and Hierarchy Culture: Item 2.

Caution — Style Is Important: Please keep in mind that how a manager goes about doing these six practices and the other twelve is equally important. In our LEAD Institute Program we help managers see that good leadership is a function of both substance (what you do) and style (how you do it). Managers can do the 18 leadership factors above and still create a negative climate because of the manner in the way they interacted with others.

Survey Guided Development: The objective of changing the climate or culture is to make your organization or work unit more productive and a better place in which to work. Contact us if you would like to learn more about how we use Organizational Climate/Culture Survey assessments to guide and drive both organizational transformation, leadership development and performance improvement.


** Source: Robert Stringer, Leadership & Organizational Climate, Prentice Hall, 2002.

Levers For Change

Years ago I read a book entitle "Strategies that Work". It's a great book that broke the strategic planning process down quite well with many practical steps for strategy formulation and deployment.

What has stuck with me for all these years was the list of "Influence Systems" that were laid out in the book. Through these influence systems the author made an effective case for the simple truth that in order for there to be change, things must actually change.

Below are these these influence systems or as I have come to call them, Levers For Change. A lever is a simple tool that helps perform difficult work more easily. For a lever to function it requires a fulcrum. One of the items below is the fulcrum, where it's positioned in the process for change makes all the difference in the leverage.
• Goals, Measures, Feedback & Performance Systems.
• Rewards, Awards, Recognition & Incentive Systems.
• Communication Systems.
• Competency Development, Training & Learning Systems.
• Organizational Structure.
• Senior Leadership (Behaviors).
• Rules, Policies, Protocols & Governance Systems.
• Physical Environment & Layout.
• Key Programs & Initiatives (LeanSigma, etc.)
• Staffing, Selection & Talent Development.
• Information & Knowledge Management Systems.
• Ceremonies & Events.

To realize strategies or any other change, there must be substantive changes made. The list above represents key areas where substantive changes may need to occur.

Our technique for culture change initiatives and strategic change initiatives is to use a "from... to..." analysis. This is a simple process where the client characterizes and describes the attributes / functionality of the influence system as it is today and re-characterizes the influence system in a way that better supports the desired change, state or strategy. This "from... to..." work provides a useful gap analysis and allows for powerful objectives, projects and initiatives for change to emerge and be clarified.

Senior leadership, by the way, is the fulcrum and having them "close to the work" adds significant leverage to any change.

In later blogs I'll expand upon these levers, describe them more fully and outline many of the different types (versatility) of work these levers can perform.