Disruptive Innovation

Africa is a fascinating place.  According to a documentary that I saw last year we are ALL descended from a small tribe who escaped from North East Africa about 90,000 years ago. Our DNA carries clues to the story of our journey and it shows that modern man (Africans, Europeans, Asians, Chinese, Japanese, Australians, Americans, Russians etc) – all come from a common stock. It is salutory to reflect how short this time scale is, how successful this tribe has been in replacing all the other branches of the human evolutionary tree, and how the genetic differences between colours and creeds are almost insignificant.  All the evolution that has happened in the last 90,000 years that has transformed the world and the way we live is learned behaviour. This means that, unlike our genes, it is possible to turn the clock backwards 90,000 years in just one generation. To avoid this we need to observe how the descendents of the original tribe learned to do many new things – forced by their new surroundings to adapt or perish.  This is essence of Improvement Science – changing context continuously creates new challenges – from which we can learn, adapt and flourish.

To someone born in rural England a mobile phone appears to be a relatively small step on a relentless technological evolution – to someone born in rural Africa it is a radical and world-changing paradigm shift – one that has already changed their lives.  In some parts of Africa money is now managed using mobile phones and this holds the promise of bypassing the endemic bureaucratic and corrupt practices that so often strangle the greens shoots of innovation and improvement. Information and communication is the lifeblood of improvement and to introduce a communication technology that is reliable, effective, and affordable into a vast potential for cultural innovation is rather like introducing a match to the touchpaper of a firework. Once the fuse has started to fizz there is no going back. The name given to this destabilising phenomenon is “disruptive innovation” and fortunately it can work for the good of all – so long as we steer it in a win-win-win direction. And that is a big challenge because our history suggests that we find exploitation easier than evolution and exploitation always leads to lose-lose-lose outcomes.

So while our global tribe may have learned enough to create a global phone system we still have much to learn about how to create a global social system.

Small Step or Giant Leap?

This iconic image of Earthrise over the Moonscape reveals the dynamic complexity of the living Earth contrasting starkly with the static simplicity of the dead Moon. The feeling of fragility that this picture evokes sounds a warning bell for us – “Death is Irreversible and Life is not Inevitable”. In reality this image was a small technical step that created a giant cultural leap.

And so it is with much of Improvement Science – the perception of the size of the challenge changes once the challenge is overcome. With the benefit of hindsight it was easy, even obvious – but with only the limit of foresight it looked difficult and obscure.  Our ability to challenge, learn and adopt a new perspective is the source of much gain and much pain. We gain the excitement of new understanding and we feel the pain of being forced to face our old ignorance.  Many of us deny ourselves the gain because we cannot face the pain – but it does not have to be that way. We have a tendency to store the pain up until we are forced to face it – and by this means we create what feel like insurmountable barriers to improvement.  There is an alternative – bite sized improvement – taking small steps towards a realistic goal that is on a path to our distant objective.  The small-step method has many advantages – we can do things that matter to us and are within our circle of influence; we can learn and practice the skills in safety; and we can start immediately.

In prospect it will feel like a giant leap and in retrospect it will look like a small step – that is the way of Improvement Science – and as our confidence and curiosity grow we take bigger steps and make smaller leaps.  

Synigence

The “Qualigence, Quantigence and Synergence” blopic has generated some interesting informal feedback and since being more attuned to this concept I have seen evidence of it at work in practice. My own reflection is that synergence does not quite hit the spot because syn-erg-gence can be translated as “knowing how to work together” and from this small niggle a new word was born – synigence – which I feel captures the concept better. It is an improvement. 

Improvement Science always considers a challenge from three perspectives – quality, delivery and quantity. The delivery dimension involves time and can be viewed both qualitatively and quantitatively.  The pure qualitative dimension is the subjective experience (feelings) and the pure quanitative dimension is the objective evidence (facts) – very often presented in the Universal Language of Money (ULM). The diagram attempts to capture this idea of three perspectives and that there is common ground between all three;  the soil in which the seeds of improvement take root. There is more to it though – this common ground/vision/goal/sense does not look the same from different perspectives and for synergy to develop the synigent facilitator needs to be capable of translating the one vision into three languages. It is rather like the Rosetta Stone an ancient Egyptian grandiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic Egyptian script, and Ancient Greek and, as it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts, it provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.  With this key the wisdom of the Ancient Egyptians was unlocked.

My learning this week is that this is less on an exercise in how to influence others and more of an exercise in how to influence oneself and by that route the sum can become greater than the parts.  Things that looked impossible for either working alone (or more often in conflict) now become not only possible but also inevitable.  Once we have seen we cannot forget – and once we believe we cannot understand that it is not obvious to everyone else: and there lurks a trap for the unsynigent – it is not obvious – if it were we would have seen it sooner ourselves.

Ignorance Mining

Ignorance means “not knowing” and as the saying goes “Ignorance is bliss” because we do not worry about what we do not know about.  Or do we?

We are not totally ignorant – because we know that there are “unknowns” that would be of value to us. This knowledge creates an anxiety that we are very good at pushing out of awareness and despite the denial the unconscious feeling remains and it is emotionally corrosive. Repressed anxiety leads to the counter-productive behaviour of self-deception and then to self-justification – both of which are potent impedients to improvement.

We habitually, continuously and unconsciously discount the importance of what we do not know and in so doing we create internal emotional dissonance.  Our inner conflict drives external discounting behaviour and the inevitable toxic cultural consequence – Erosion of Trust.  Our inner conflict also drives internal discounting behaviour and the inevitable toxic emotional consequence – Erosion of  Confidence. This is the toxic emotional waste swamp that we create for ourselves and is the slippery slope that leads down to frustration, depression, cynicism and apathy. Ignorance  leads to anxiety and fear – and because we have conditioned ourselves to back away from fear we reflexly back away from ignorance and we end up trading fear for frustration. We do it to ourselves first and then we do it to others.

The antidote is counter-intuitive: it is to actively acknowledge and embrace our ignorance – and to do that we have to deliberately expose our own ignorance because we are very, very good at burying it from conscious view under a mountain of self-deception and self-justification.  We need to become Ignorace Miners.

The opposite of ignorance if knowledge and the good news is that we only need to scratch the surface to find knowledge nuggets – not huge ones perhaps – but plentiful. A bag of small knowledge nuggets is as valuable as an ingot of insight!

Knowledge nuggets are durable because they withstand cultural erosion but they can get washed away in the flood of toxic emotional waste and they can get buried under layers of cynical-resentful-arrogant-pessimism (CRAP).  These knowledge nuggests need to be re-gathered, re-freshed and re-cycled – and it is an endlessly exciting and energising experience.

So, when we are feeling fustrated, demotivated and depressed we just need to give ourselves a break and indulge in a bit of gentle ignorance mining – and when we do we will start to feel better immediately.

Qualigence, Quantigence and Synergence

It seems that some people are better than others at figuring out what to do when presented with a new challenge.

Every day we are all presented with new challenges – c’est la vie – and for one challenge some of us seem to know what to do and others of us are left scratching our heads.

Yet, when presented with a different challenge the tables are turned.

Why is that?

Until recently I believed that improvement was just a matter of accumulating enough knowledge and experience – but the pattern seems to be evident in people of all ages and experience: there seems to be more to it than just experience.

So, I searched the Internet on the topic of “problem solving” and many of the references mentioned the word “intelligence” – a word that generates mixed feelings for me.

My mixed feelings came from an experience I had as a student. I am, by nature, both competitive and curious and I felt it would be useful to know my IQ and to meet others who shared my curiosity – so I did the Mensa test. I “passed” and was duly invited to a get-together at a local pub and was informed that I only needed to look for the distinctive yellow magazine to identify the meeting table (mensa is latin for table). I did not need the magazine to identify the table of Mensans and after that first encounter I chose not to return.  I had a sense that there was something missing – high IQ was not enough – and it was that “something” I was looking for.

I now know that mixed feelings are often a symptom of an over-simplification; a signpost to a deeper awareness; and a hint to keep digging for the deeper meaning. Here is a definition of the word “intelligence” that I found on Wikipedia:

“Intelligence: A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—”catching on,” “making sense” of things, or “figuring out” what to do.

This definition resonates and prompted a question:
“Are there more forms of intelligence than the ones we are familiar with in the Mensa-style Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests? And if so, how many forms of intelligence are there and what are their characteristics?”

My intuition said “Yes – there are more than one” and I had the sense that are at least two forms; one that is conscious and that deals with quantities – so I labelled that as quantity-intelligence or quantigence; and another that is unconscious and deals with qualities – so I labelled that as quality-intelligence or qualigence.

It also felt that these are not independent of each other – they do not feel like two separate dimensions – they feel like two views of the same thing.  It just did not feel right that we might be observed, measured and scored on independent IQ scales and then classifed, arranged, ranked, selected, compared, and improved; it feels more dynamic than that.

Perhaps it is how well we are able to employ the multiple forms of IQ in a dynamic and synergistic way to figure out what to do more easily, more quickly and more often.

But what does all this have to do with Improvement Science?

Well because improvement only happens after we figure out what to do and then we actually do it. Both diagnosis and treatment are necessary and the sequence order is important – treatment before diagnosis carries a greater risk of unintended consequences – and unintended consequences are usually negative.

Challenges that require a balance of qualigence and quantigence at the diagnosis stage will appear “tougher” to solve and siuch challenges will tend to accumulate as a list of long-standing, unsolved and unspoken niggles – like a veritable herd of emotional elephants in the room.

This niggle-mine seems to be where the greatest opportunities for improvement are buried – nuggets of new knowledge waiting to be uncovered.

How then do we know if we have a qualigence-quantigence gap?

I concluded that if we are continually struggling with the same old problems; are spending a lot of effort, time, and money; and are not making progress then we  can be sure we have a gap somewhere. The questions are “what, where and how to convert our niggles into nuggets – our weaknesses into strengths?”.


It would appear that we need three ingredients – qualigence, quantigence, and an ability to dynamically integrate them into something that is even greater than the sum of the parts – something we might call synergy-intelligence or synergence.

To test this idea I searched the Internet for the word “synergence” and found many hits that resonated with this concept. Good.

Our next step might be to look more closely at the three ingredients and to ask:

  • Q1.  What would I need to diagnose and treat a quantigence gap?
  • Q2. What would I need to diagnose and treat a qualigence gap?
  • Q3. What would I need to diagnose and treat a synergence gap?

These are powerful questions.

Passion, Persistence and Patience.

One goal of Improvement Science is self-sustaining improvement. This does not mean fixing the same problem day-after-day: it means solving new challenges first-time and and for-ever. Patching the same problem over-and-over is called fire-fighting and is an emotionally and financially expensive strategy. We all get a buzz out of solving problems; and that is a good thing because when we free ourselves from the miserable world of the “can’t/won’t do mindset”  we gain the confidence to take action, to solve problems and to gain access to an endless supply of feel-good-fuel.

Be warned though: there is a danger lurking here in the form of the unconscious assumption that if we solve all the problems then we will run out of things to do and our supply of feel-good-fuel will dry up too.  This misconception and our unconscious fear of ego-starvation conspires to undermine our efforts and we can unintentionally drift into reactive fire-fighting behaviour – which sustains our egos but maintains the mediocre status quo. We may also unconsciously collude with others who supply their egos with feel-good-fuel from the same source – and by doing that condemn us all to perpetual mediocrity.

The root cause of our behaviour is our natural tendancy to see challenges as problems – the negative stuff –  the niggles – what we see that is getting the the way and must be removed. We are not as good at seeing challenges as opportunities – the positive stuff – the nice ifs – because we do not see what is not there.  The reason for our distorted perception is because the “caveman wetware between our ears” hasn’t evolved to give us a balanced perspective.  Fortunately, we have evolved the ability to see with our mind’s eye: to dream, to imagine and to conduct “thought experiments”. When we apply that capability we start to ask “What if?” questions.

What if …  I were to see challenges as either niggles (to be lost) or nice-ifs (to be gained)? 
What if … there is a limited or manageable number of niggles to be removed?
What if … I believe there is an unlimited supply of nice-ifs?
What if … I do not get the nice-ifs because I spend all my life fighting the same old niggles?
What if … I nailed some niggles once and for all?
What if … I had time and energy to focus on some nice-ifs?         

None of us enjoy disappointment. We do not like the feeling that follows from reality failing to meet our expectation – we see it as  failure and we often take it personally or accuse others.  As children we can dream freely because have not yet been disappointed enough not to; as adults we appear to lower our expectations to avoid the feeling of disappointment. We learn to settle for smaller dreams or no dreams at all.  I believe the reason we do this is simply because we are not taught any other way – we are not taught how to deliberately and actively access the inexhaustible supply of feel-good-fuel that is the locked-up in our dreams – our nice-ifs. We are not taught how to nail niggles once and forever and how to re-invest our lifetime into make some of our dreams a reality.  To learn those skills we need passion, persistence and patience – and a process. That process is called Improvement Science.

“Wars Not Make One Great.”

There appear to be two kinds of conflict: the one initiated by an individual and the one initiated by a group.  There also appears to be a natural cycle to conflict – the individual acting on behalf of a group gains power and can become so disconnected from reality that they are later removed from power by the evolving group. So, both autocracy and democracy appear to have a light-side and a dark-side: with the benefit leading the risk. The problem is that this system design creates the necessary and sufficient conditions for oscillating behaviour: boom-to-bust; centralise-to-decentralise; expand-to-contract. It it not a true cycle though because time cannot be reversed, we can never go back to a previous time – so what we see as oscillating is more like a driver swerving from one side of the  road to another when the road ahead is not straight and the forward view is limited.  To progress quickly along a winding road at night we need early warning of the next bend, good lights, quick  reflexes, and a responsive engine, brakes and steering. We need quick and accurate feedback and the confidence to decide and act.  The less feedback we get the more bumps we have, the lower our confidence falls, and the slower our progress becomes until we are paralysed with anxiety and fear.  Asking for feedback is relatively easy – giving feedback is much more difficult because to be effective it must be tailored to the recipient. General and anonymous feedback is ineffective. This implies that the person who asks for feedback must also specify why they want it and how they want it – they need to set out the terms of the psychological contract.  Without that clarity we descend into confusion. Conflict is often seen as unhealthy and destructive and when conflict is manifest as as battle the out-of-date paradigm that is blocking progress is destroyed but the collateral damage is the price that is paid.  Innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire. It is this fear of collateral damage that often paralyses action and hands power to the autocrat. The good news is that conflict can be healthy and constructive  – when it is manifest as a race for understanding, for meaning and for a common purpose.  As a race and a challenge and with vision, agility and energy the unknown winding road ahead can be transformed into a safe and exhilarating ride!

Do You Have A Miserable Job?

If you feel miserable at work and do not know what to do then then take heart because you could be suffering from a treatable organisational disease called CRAP (cynically resistant arrogant pessimism).

To achieve a healthier work-life then it is useful to understand the root cause of CRAP and the rationale of how to diagnose and treat it.

Organisations have three interdependent dimensions of performance: value, time and money.  All organisations require both the people and the processes to be working in synergy to reliably deliver value-for-money over time.  To create a productive system it is necessary to understand the relationships between  value, money and time. Money is easier because it is tangible and durable; value is harder because it is intangible and transient. This means that the focus of attention is usually on the money – and it is often assumed that if the money is OK then the value must be OK too.  This assumption is incorrect.

Value and money are interdependent but have different “rates of change”  and can operate in different “directions”.  A common example is when a dip in financial performance triggers an urgent “drive” to improve the “bottom line”.  Reactive revenue generation and cost cutting results in a small, quick, and tangible improvement on the money dimension but at the same time sets off a large, slow, and intangible deterioration on the value dimension.  Money, time and  value are interdependent and the inevitable outcome is a later and larger deterioration in the money – as illustrated in the doodle. If only money is measured the deteriorating value is not detected, and by the time the money starts to falter the momentum of the falling value is so great that even heroic efforts to recover are futile. As the money starts to fall the value falls even further and even faster – the lose-lose-lose spiral of organisational failure is now underway.

People who demonstrate in their attitude and behaviour that they are miserable at work provide the cardinal sign of falling system value. A miserable, sceptical and cynical employee poisons the emotional atmosphere for everyone around them. Misery is both defective and infective.  The primary cause of a miserable job is the behaviour exhibited by people in positions of authority – and the more the focus is only on money the more misery their behaviour generates.

Fortunately there is an antidote; a way to break out of the vicious tail spin – measure both value and money, focus on improving value and observe the positive effect on the money.  The critical behaviour is to actively test the emotional temperature and to take action to keep it moving in a positive direction.  “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job” by Patrick Lencioni tells a story of how an experienced executive learns that the three things a successful managerial leader must do to achieve system health are:
1) ensure employees know their unique place, role and value in the whole system;
2) ensure employees can consciously connect their work with a worthwhile system goal; and
3) ensure employees can objectively measure how they are doing.

Miserable jobs are those where the people feel anonymous, where people feel their work is valueless, and where people feel that they get no feedback from their seniors, peers or juniors. And it does not matter if it is the cleaner or the chief executive – everyone needs a role, a goal and to know all their interdependencies.

We do not have to endure a Miserable Job – we all have the power to transform it into Worthwhile Work.

In Whom and in What do We Trust?

The issue of trust has been a recurring theme again this week – and it has appeared in many guises.  In one situation it was a case of distrust – I observed an overt display of suspicious, sceptical, and cynical behaviour. In another situation it was a case of mistrust – a misplaced confidence in my own intuition. My illogical and irrational heart said one thing but when my mind worked through the problem logically and rationally my intuition was proved incorrect. In another it was a case of rewarded-trust: positive feedback that showed a respectful challenge had resulted in a win-win-win outcome. And in yet another a case of extended-trust: an expression of delighted surprise from someone whose default position was to distrust.

Improvement Science rests on two Foundation stones Trust and Capability. First to trust oneself to have the confidence and humility to challenge, to learn, to change, to improve, to celebrate and to share; second to extend trust to others with a clear explanation of the consequences of betraying that trust; and third in building collective trust by having the courage to challenge trust-eroding behaviour.

At heart we are all curious, friendly, social animals – our natural desire is to want to trust. Distrust is a learned behaviour that, ironically, is the result of the instinctive trust and respect that, as children, we have for our parents.  We are taught to distrust by observing and copying distrustful and disrepectful behaviour by our role models. So with this insight we gain access to an antidote to the emotional poison of distrust: our innate child-like curiosity, desire to explore, appetite for fun, and thirst for knowledge and meaning. To dissolve distrust we only need to reconnect to our own inner child: One half of the foundation of Improvement Science.

Deming’s “System of Profound Knowledge”

W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) is sometimes referred to as the Father of Quality. He made such a significant contribution to Japan’s burgeoning post-war reputation for innovative high-quality products, and the rapid development of their economic power, that he is regarded as having made more of a difference than any other individual not of Japanese heritage.

Though best known as a statistician and economist, he was initially educated as an electrical engineer and mathematical physicist. To me however he was more of a social scientist – interested in the science of improvement and the creation of value for customers. A lifelong learner, in his later years (1) he became fascinated by epistemology – the processes by which knowledge is created – and this led him into wanting to know more about the psychology of human behaviour and its underlying motivations.

In his nineties he put his whole life of learning into one model – his System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK). What follows is my brief take on each of the four elements of the SoPK and how they fit together.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
Everyone is different, and we all SEE things differently. We then DO things based on how we see things – and we GET results – of some kind. Over time we shore up our own particular view of the world – some call this a “paradigm” – our own particular world view – multiple loops of DO-GET-SEE (2) are self-reinforcing and as our sense making becomes increasingly fixed we BEHAVE – BECOME – BELIEVE. The trouble is we each to some extent get divorced from reality, or at least how most others see it – in extreme cases we might even get classified by some people as “insane” – indeed the clinical definition of insanity is doing the same things whilst expecting different results.

THE ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE
So when we DO things it would be helpful if we could do them as little experiments that test our sense of what works and what is real. Even better we might get others to help us interpret the results from the benefit of their particular world view/ paradigm. Did you study science at school? If so you might recognize that learning in this way by experimentation is the “scientific method” in action. Through these cycles of learning knowledge gets continually refined and builds. It is also where improvement comes from and how reality evolves. Deming referred to this as the PLAN-DO-STUDY-ACT Cycle (1) – personally i prefer the words in this adjacent diagram. For me the cycle is as much about good mental health as acquiring knowledge, because effective learning (3) keeps individuals and organizations connected to reality and in control of their lives.

UNDERSTANDING VARIATION
The origins of PDSA lie with Walter Shewhart (4) who in 1925 – invented it to help people in organizations methodically and continually inquire into what is happening. He observed that when workers or managers make changes in their working practices so that their processes run better, the results vary, and that this variation often fools them. So he invented a tool for collecting numbers in real time so that each process can be listened in to as a “system” – much like a doctor uses a stethoscope to collect data and interpret how their patient’s system is behaving, by asking what might be contributing to – actually causing – the system’s outcomes. Shewhart named the tool Statistical Process Control – three words, each of which for many people are an instant turn-off. This means they miss his critical insight that there are two distinct types of variation – noise and signal, and that whilst all systems contain noise, only some contain signals – which if present can be taken to be assignable causes of systemic behaviour. Indeed to make it more palatable the tool might better be referred to as a “system behaviour chart”. It is meant to be interpreted like a doctor or nurse interprets the vital sign graph on the end of a patient’s bed i.e. to decide what action if any to take and when. Here is an example that has been created in BaseLine© which is specifically designed to offer the agnostic direct access to the power of Shewhart’s thinking. (5).

THINKING SYSTEMICALLY
What is meant by the word “system”? It means all the parts connected and interrelated as a whole (3). It is often helpful to get representatives of the various stakeholder groups to map the system – with its parts, the flows and the connections – so they can see how different people make sense of say.. their family system, their work system, a particular process of interest.. indeed any system of any kind that feels important to them. The map shown here is one used that might be used generically by manufacturers to help them investigate the separate causal sources of systemic variation – from the Suppliers of Inputs received, to the Processes that convert those inputs into Outputs, which can then be received by Customers – all made possible by vital support processes. This map (1) was taught by Deming in 1950 to Japan’s leaders. When making sense of their own particular systemic context others may prefer a different kind of map, but why? How come others prefer to make sense of things in their own way? To answer this Peter Senge (3) in his own equivalent to the SoPK says you need 5 distinct disciplines: the ability to think systemically, to learn as a team, to create a shared vision, to understand how our mental models get ingrained, and lastly “personal mastery” … which takes me back to where I started.

Aware that he was at the end of his life of learning, Deming bequeathed his System of Profound Knowledge to us so that we might continue his work. Personally, I love the SoPK because it is so complete. It is hard however to keep such a model, complete and as a whole, continually in the front of our minds – such that everything we think and do can be viewed as a fractal of that elegant whole. Indeed as a system, the system of profound knowledge is seriously – even fatally – undermined if any single part is missing ..

• Without understanding the causes of human behaviour we have no empathy for other people’s worldviews, other value systems. Without empathy our ability to manage change is fundamentally impaired.

• Without being good at experimentation and turning our experience into Knowledge – the very essence of science – we threaten our very mental health.

• Without understanding variation we are all too easily deluded – ask any magician (6). We spin our own reality. In ignoring or falsely interpreting data we are even “wilfully blind” (7). Baseline© for example is designed to help people make more of their time-series data – a window onto the system that their data is representing – using its inherent variation to gain an enhanced sense of what’s actually happened, as well as what’s really happening, and what if things stay the same is most likely to happen.

• Without being able to see how things are connected – as a whole system – and seeing the uniqueness of our own particular context, moment to moment, we miss the importance of our maps – and those of others – for good sense-making. We therefore miss the sharing of our individual realities, and with it the potential to spot what really causes outcomes – which neatly takes us back to the need for empathy and for understanding the psychology of human behaviour.

For me the challenge is to be continually striving for that sense of the SoPK – as a complete whole – and by doing this to see how I might grow my influence in the world.

Julian Simcox

References

1. Deming W.E – The New Economics – 1993
2. Covey S.R. – The 7 habits of Highly Effective People – 1989
3. Senge P. M. – The Fifth Discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization – 1990
4. Wheeler D.J. & Poling S.R.– Building Continual Improvement – 1998
5. BaseLine© is available via www.threewinsacademy.co.uk.
6. Macknik S, et al – Sleights of Mind – What the neuroscience of magic reveals about our brains – 2011.
7. Heffernan M. – Wilfully Blind – 2011

Politics, Policy and Police.

I love words – they are a window into the workings of our caveman wetware. Spoken and written language is the remarkably recent innovation that opened the door to the development of civilisations because it allowed individual knowledge to accumulate, to be shared, to become collective and to span generations (the picture is 4000 year old Minoan script) .

We are social animals and we have discovered that our lives are more comfortable and more predictable if we arrange ourselves into collaborative groups – families, tribes and communities; and through our collaboration we have learned to tame our enironment enough to allow us to settle in one place and to concentrate more time and effort on new learning.  The benefits of this strategy comes at a price – because as the size of our communities grow we are forced to find new ways to make decisions that are in the best interests of everyone.  And we need to find new ways to help ourselves abide by those decisions as individuals without incurring the cost of enforcement.  The word “civis” means a person who shares the privileges and the duties of the community in which they live.  And size matters – hamlets, villages and towns developed along with our ability to behave in a “civilised” way. Eventually cities appeared around 6000 years ago – and the Greek word for a city is “polis”.  The bigger the city the greater the capacity to support learning and he specialistion of individual knowledge, skills and experience. This in turn fuels the growth of the group and the development of specialised groups – tribes within tribes. A positive feedback loop is created that drives bigger-and-bigger settlements and more and more knowledge. Until … we forget what it is that underpins the whole design – civilised behaviour.  While our knowkedge has evolved at an accelerating pace our caveman brains have not kept up – and this is where the three “Poli” words come in – they all derive from the same root “polis” and they describe a process:

1. Politic  is the method by which the collective decisions are generated.
2. Policy is the method by which the Political decisions are communicated.
3. Police is the method by which the System of Policies are implemented.

The problem arises when the growth of knowledge and the inevitable changes that result starts to challenge the current Politic+Policy+Police Paradigm that created the context for the change to happen.  The Polices are continulally evolving – as evidenced by the continuous process of legislation. The Paradigm can usually absorb a lot of change but there usually comes a point when it becomes increasingly apparent to the society the the Paradigm has to change radically to support further growth. The more rigid the Policy and the more power to enforce if present the greater the social pressure that builds before the paradigm fractures – and the greater the disruption that will ensue as the social pressure is released.  History is a long catalogue of political paradigm shifts of every size – from minor tremors to major quakes – shifts that are driven by our insatiable hunger for knowledge, understanding and meaning.

Improvement Science operates at the Policy stage and is therefore forms the critical link between Politics and Police.  The purpose of Improvement Science is to design, test and implement Policies that deliver the collective Win-Win-Win outcomes.  Improvement Science is an embodiment of civilised behaviour and it embraces both the constraints that are decided by the People and the constraints that are defined by the Physics.

Do Bosses need Hugs too?

The foundation on which Improvement Science is built is invisible – or rather intangible – and without this foundation the whole construction is unstable and unsustainable.  Rather like an iceberg – mostly under the surface with only a small part that is visible and measurable – and that small visible part is called Performance.

What is underneath?  To push our Performance through the surface so that it gets noticed we know we must synergise the People with the Processes but there is more to it than just that. The deepest part of the foundation, the part that provides the core strength and stability, is our Paradigm – our set of unconscious  beliefs, values, attitudes and habits that comprises our psycho-gyro-scope: our stabiliser. 

Our Paradigm creates inertia: the tendency to keep going in the same direction even when the winds of change have shifted permamantly and are blowing us off course.  Paradigms resist change – and for good reason – inertia is a useful thing when there are minor bumps on the journey and we need to avoid stalling at each one. Inertia becomes a less useful thing when we meet an immovable object such as a Law of Physics – because if we hit one of these then Reality will provide us with some painful feedback. Inertia is also less useful when we have stopped and have no momentum,  because it takes a bigger push for a longer time to get us moving again.

An elephant has a lot of inertia because it is big – and perhaps this is the reason why we refer to  attitudes and beliefs that represent resistance to change as Elephants in the Room.  The ringleader of a herd of organisational elephants is an elephant called Distrust which is the offspring an elephant called Discounting who in turn was born of an elephant called Disrespect.  We see this in organisationswhen we display and cultivate a disrepectful attitudes towards our peers, reports workers and our seniors. The old time-worn and cracked “us-versus-them” record.

So let us break into the cycle and push the Elephant called Distrust into spotlight – what is our alternative. Respect -> Acknowledgement -> Trust.   It doesn’t make any difference who you are: the most valuable form of respect is feedback:  Honest, Unbiassed and Genuine (HUG).  So if we regularly experience the Elephant called Distrust making a Toxic Swamp in our organisations and we feel discounted and disrespected then part of the reason may be that we are not giving ourselves enough HUGs. And that means the bosses too.

Sentenced to Death-by-Meeting!

Do you ever feel a sense of dread when you are summoned to an urgent meeting; or when you get the minutes and agenda the day before your monthly team meeting; or when you see your diary full of meetings for weeks in advance – like a slow and painful punishment?

If so then you may have unwittingly sentenced yourself to Death by Meeting.  What?  We do it to ourselves? No way! That would be madness!

But think about it. We consciously and deliberately ingest all sorts of other toxins: chemicals like caffeine, alcohol and cigarette smoke – so what is so different about immersing ourselves in the emotional toxic waste that many meetings seem to generate?

Perhaps we have learned to believe that there is no other way and because we have never experienced focussed, fun, and effective meetings where problems are surfaced, shared and solved quickly – problems that thwart us as individuals. Meetings where the problem-solving sum is greater than the problem-accumulating parts.

A meeting is a system that is designed to solve  problems.  We can improve our system incrementally but it is a slow process; to achieve a breakthrough we need to radically redesign the system.  There are three steps to doing this:

1. First decide what sort of problems the meeting is required to solve: strategic, operational or tactical;
2. Second design, test and practice a problem solving process for each category of problem; and
3. Third, select the appropriate tool for the task.

In his illuminating book Death by Meeting, Patrick Lencioni describes three meeting designs and illustrates with a story why meetings don’t work if the wrong tool is used for the wrong task. It is a sobering story.

There is another dimension to the design of meetings; that is how we solve problems as groups – and how, as a group, we seem to waste a lot of effort and time in unproductive discussion.  In his book Six Thinking Hats Edward De Bono provides an explanation for our habitual behaviour and a design for a radically different group problem solving process – one that a group would not arrive at by evolution – but one that has been proven to work.

If  we feel sentenced to death-by-meetings then we could buy and read these two small books – a zero-risk, one-off investment of effort, time and money for a guaranteed regular reward of fun, free time and success!

So if I complain to myself and others about pointless meetings and I have not bothered to do something about it myself then I now know that it is I who sentenced myself to Death-by-Meeting. Unintentionally and unconsciously perhaps – but me nevertheless.

Is a Queue an Asset or a Liability?

Many believe that a queue is a good thing.

To a supplier a queue is tangible evidence that there is demand for their product or service and reassurance that their resources will not sit idle, waiting for work and consuming profit rather than creating it.  To a customer a queue is tangible evidence that the product or service is in demand and therefore must be worth having. They may have to wait but the wait will be worth it.  Both suppliers and customers unconsciously collude in the Great Deception and even give it a name – “The Law of Supply and Demand”. By doing so they unwittingly open the door for charlatans and tricksters who deliberately create and maintain queues to make themselves appear more worthy or efficient than they really are.

Even though we all know this intuitively we seem unable to do anything about it. “That is just the way it is” we say with a shrug of resignation. But it does not have to be so – there is a path out of this dead end.

Let us look at this problem from a different perspective. Is a product actually any better because we have waited to get it? No. A longer wait does not increase the quality of the product or service and may indeed impair it.  So, if  a queue does not increase quality does it reduce the cost?  The answer again is “No”. A queue always increases the cost and often in many ways.  Exactly how much the cost increases by depends on what is on the queue, where the queue is, and how long it is. This may sound counter-intitutive and didactic so I need to explain in a bit more detail the reason this statement is an inevitable consequence of the Laws of Physics.

Suppose the queue comprises perishable goods; goods that require constant maintenance; goods that command a fixed price when they leave the queue; goods that are required to be held in a container of limited capacity with fixed overhead costs (i.e. costs that are fixed irrespective of how full the container is).  Patients in a hospital or passengers on an aeroplane are typical examples because the patient/passenger is deprived of their ability to look after themselves; they are totally dependent on others for supplying all their basic needs; and they are perishable in the sense that a patient cannot wait forever for treatment and an aeroplane cannot fly around forever waiting to land. A queue of patients waiting to leave hospital or an aeroplane full of passsengers circling to land at an airport represents an expensive queue – the queue has a cost – and the bigger the queue is and the longer it persists the greater the cost.

So how does a queue form in the first place? The answer is: when the flow in exceeds the flow out. The instant that happens the queue starts to grow bigger.  When flow in is less than flow out the queue is getting smaller – but we cannot have a negative queue – so when the flow out exceeds the flow in AND the size of the queue reaches zero the system suddenly changes behaviour – the work dries up and the resources become idle.  This creates a different cost – the cost of idle resources consuming money but not producing revenue. So a queue/work costs and no queue/no work costs too.  The least cost situation is when the work arrives at exactly the same rate that it can be done: there is no waiting by anyone – no queue and no idle resources.  Note however that this does not imply that the work has to arrive at a constant rate – only that rate at which the work arrives matches the rate at which it is done – it is the difference between the two that should be zero at all times. And where we have several steps – the flow must be the same through all steps of the stream at all times.  Remember the second condition for minimum cost – the size of the queue must be zero as well – this is the zero inventory goal of the “perfect process”.

So, if any deviation from this perfect balance of flow creates some form of cost, why do we ever tolerate queues? The reason is that the perfect world above implies that it is possible to predict the flow in and the flow out with complete accuracy and reliabilty.  We all know from experience that this is impossible: there is always some degree of  natural variation which is unpredictable and which we often call “noise” or “chaos”. For that single reason the lowest cost (not zero cost) situation is when there is just enough breathing space for a queue to wax and wane – smoothing out the unpredictable variation between inflow and outflow. This healthy queue is called a buffer.

The less “noise” the less breathing space is needed and the closer you can get to zero queue cost.

So, given this logical explanation it might surprise you to learn that most of the flow variation we observe in real processes is neither natural nor unpredictable – we deliberately and persistently inject predictable flow variation into our processes.  This unnatural variation is created by own policies – for example, accumulating DIY jobs until there are enough to justify doing them.   The reason we do this is because we have been bamboozled into believing it is a good thing for the financial health of our system. We have been beguiled by the accountants – the Money Magicians.  Actually that is not precise enough – the accountants themselves  are the innocent messengers – the deception comes from the Accounting Policies.  The major niggle is one convention that has become ossified into Accounting Practice – the convention that a queue of work waiting to be finished or sold represents an asset – sort of frozen-for-now-cash that can be thawed out or “liquidated” when the product is sold.  This convention is not incorrect it is just incomplete because, as we have demonstrated, every queue incurs a cost.  In accountant-speak a cost is called a liability and unfortunately this queue-cost-liability is never included in the accounts and this makes a very, very, big difference to the outcome. To assess the financial health of an organisation at a point in time an accountant will use a balance sheet to subtract the liabilities from the assets and come up with a number that is called equity. If that number is zero or negative then the business is financially dead – the technical name is bankruptcy and no accountant likes to utter the B word.  Denial is not a reliable long term buisness strategy and if our Accounting Policies do not include the cost of the queue as a liability on the balance sheet then our finanical reports will be a distortion of reality and will present the business as healthier than it really is.  This is an Error of Omission and has grave negative consequences.  One of which is that it can create a sense of complacency, a blindness to the early warning signs of financial illness and reactive rather than proactive behaviour. The problem is compounded when a large and complex organisation is split into smaller, simpler mini-businesses that all suffer from the same financial blindspot. It becomes even more difficult to see the problem when everyone is making the same error of omission and when it is easier to blame someone else for the inevitable problems that ensue.

We all know from experience that prevention is better than cure and we also know that the future is not predictable with certainty: so in addition to prevention we need vigilence, prompt action, decisive action and appropriate action at the earliest detectable sign of a significant deterioration. Complacency is not a reliable long term survival strategy.

So what is the way forward? Dispense with the accountants? NO! You need them – they are very good at what they do – it is just that what they are doing is not exactly what we all need them to be doing – and that is because the Accounting Policies that they diligently enforce are incomplete.  A safer strategy would be for us to set our accountants the task of learning how to count the cost of a queue and to include that in our internal finanical reporting. The quality of business decisions based on financial data will improve and that is good for everyone – the business, the customers and the reputation of the Accounting Profession. Win-win-win.

The question was “Is a queue and asset or a liability?” The answer is “Both”.

The Rubik Cube Problem

Look what popped out of Santa’s sack!

I have not seen one of these for years and it brought back memories of hours of frustration and time wasted in attempting to solve it myself; a sense of failure when I could not; a feeling of envy for those who knew how to; and a sense of indignation when they jealously guarded the secret of their “magical” power.

The Rubik Cube got me thinking – what sort of problem is this?

At first it is easy enough but it becomes quickly apparent that it becomes more difficult the closer we get to the final solution – because our attempts to reach perfection undo our previous good work.  It is very difficult to maintain our initial improvement while exploring new options. 

This insight struck me as very similar to many of the problems we face in life and the sense of futility that creates a powerful force that resists further attempts at change.  Fortunately, we know that it is possible to solve the Rubik cube – so the question this raises is “Is there a way to solve it in a rational, reliable and economical way from any starting point?

One approach is to try every possible combination of moves until we find the solution. That is the way a computer might be programmed to solve it – the zero intelligence or brute force approach.

The problem here is that it works in theory but fails in practice because of the number of possible combinations of moves. At each step you can move one of the six faces in one of two directions – that is 12 possible options; and for each of these there are 12 second moves or 12 x 12 possible two-move paths; 12 x 12 x 12 = 1728 possible three-move paths; about 3 million six-move paths; and nearly half a billion eight-move paths!

You get the idea – solving it this way is not feasible unless you are already very close to the solution.

So how do we actually solve the Rubik Cube?  Well, the instructions that come with a new one tells you – a combination of two well-known ingredients: strategy and tactics. The strategy is called goal-directed and in my instructions the recommended strategy is to solving each layer in sequence. The tactics are called heuristics: tried-tested-and-learned sequences of actions that are triggered by specific patterns.

At each step we look for a small set of patterns and when we find one we follow the pre-designed heuristic and that moves us forward along the path towards the next goal. Of the billions of possible heuristics we only learn, remember, use and teach the small number that preserve the progress we have already made – these are our magic spells.

So where do these heuristics come from?

Well, we can search for them ourselves or we can learn them from someone else.  The first option holds the opportunity for new insights and possible breakthroughs – the second option is quicker!  Someone who designs or discovers a better heuristic is assured a place in history – most of us only ever learn ones that have been discovered or taught by others – it is a much quicker way to solve problems.  

So, for a bit of fun I compared the two approaches using a computer: the competitive-zero-intelligence-brute-force versus the collaborative-goal-directed-learned-and-shared-heuristics.  The heuristic method won easily every time!

The Rubik Cube is an example of a mechanical system: each of the twenty-six parts are interdependent, we cannot move one facet independently of the others, we can only move groups of nine at a time. Every action we make has nine consequences – not just one.  To solve the whole Rubik Cube system problem we must be mindful of the interdependencies and adopt methods that preserve what works while improving what does not.

The human body is a complex biological system. In medicine we have a phrase for this concept of preserving what works while improving what does not: “primum non nocere” which means “first of all do no harm”.  Doctors are masters of goal-directed heuristics; the medical model of diagnosis before prognosis before treatment is a goal-directed strategy and the common tactic is to quickly and accurately pattern-match from a small set of carefully selected data. 

In reality we all employ goal-directed-heuristics all of the time – it is the way our caveman brains have evolved.  Relative success comes from having a more useful set of heuristics – and these can be learned.  Just as with the Rubik Cube – it is quicker to learn what works from someone who can demonstrate that it works and can explain how it works – than to always laboriously work it out for ourselves.

An organisation is a bio-psycho-socio-economic system: a set of interdependent parts called people connected together by relationships and communication processes we call culture.  Improvement Science is a set of heuristics that have been discovered or designed to guide us safely and reliably towards any goal we choose to select – preserving what has been shown to work and challenging what does not.  Improvement Science does not define the path it only helps us avoid getting stuck, or going around in circles, or getting hopelessly lost while we are on the life-journey to our chosen goal.

And Improvement Science is learnable.

Happy Xmas

Have you ever had a Christmas day that felt like you were trying to cram too much into one day – and ended up feeling stressed and irritable – and not enjoying yourself as much as you wanted – then doing it all the same next year just because you felt it was what was expected?

This is a feeling we all get all the time with many things – we keep doing them the same way and get into a rut.

So what would happen if you changed the plan on year?
Would the world come to an end? Probably not.

What have you got to lose by pacing yourself?
It is possible to get further by going slower?

We all know that it is – we all know that if we all rush for the same goal as a disorganised rabble we can trip each other up and everyone goes slower – just observe our behaviour sometimes.  And the more stressed and panicky we get the more likely we are going to switch to look-out-for-number-one behaviour and starting pushing in and pushing others out. Someone will get through first but they do not get through as quickly as they could have. Smooth flow is more efficient than turbulent – so with consideration and collaboration everyone gets further, faster and easier. Everyone.

Inborn Errors of Management

There is a group of diseases called “inborn errors of metabolism” which are caused by a faulty or missing piece of DNA – the blueprint of life that we inherit from our parents. DNA is the chemical memory that stores the string of instructions for how to build every living organism – humans included. If just one DNA instruction becomes damaged or missing then we may lose the ability to make or to remove one specific chemical – and that can lead to a deficiency or an excess of other chemicals – which can then lead to dysfunction – which can then make us feel unwell – and can then limit both our quality and quantity of life.  We are a biological system of interdependent parts. If an inborn error of metabolism is lethal it will not be passed on to our offspring because we don’t live long enough – so the ones we see are the ones which and not lethal.  We treat the symptoms of an inborn error of metabolism by artificially replacing the missing chemical – but the way to treat the cause is to repair, replace or remove the faulty DNA.

The same metaphor can be applied to any social system. It too has a form of DNA which is called culture – the inherited set of knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that the organisation uses to conduct itself in its day-to-day business of survival. These patterns of behaviour are called memes – the social equivalent to genes – and are passed on from generation to generation through language – body language and symbolic language; spoken words – stories, legends, myths, songs, poems and books – the cultural collective memory of the human bio-psycho-social system. All human organisations share a large number of common memes – just as we share a large number of common genes with other animals and plants and even bacteria. Despite this much larger common cultural heritage – it is the differences rather than the similarities that we notice – and it is these differences that spawn the cultural conflict that we observe at all levels of society.

If, by chance alone, an organisation inherits a depleted set of memes it will appear different to all the others and it will tend to defend that difference rather than to change it. If an organisation has a meme defect, a cultural mutation that affects a management process, then we have the organisational condition called an Inborn Error of Management – and so long as the mutation is not lethal to the organisation it will tend to persist and be passed largely unnoticed from one generation of managers to the next!

The NHS was born in 1948 without a professional management arm, and while it survived and grew initally, it became gradually apparent that the omisson of the professional management limb was a problem; so in the 1980’s, following the Griffiths Report, a large dose professional management was grafted on and a dose of new management memes were injected. These included finance, legal and human resource management memes but one important meme was accidentally omitted – process engineering – the ability to design a process to meet a specific quality, time and cost specification.  This omission was not noticed initially because the rapid development of new medical technologies and new treatments was delivering improvements that obscured the inborn error of management. The NHS became the envy of many other countries – high quality healthcare available to all and free at the point of delivery.  Population longevity improved, public expectation increased, demand for healthcare increased and inevitably the costs increased.  In the 1990’s the growing pains of the burgeoning NHS led to a call for more funding, quoting other countries as evidence, and at the turn of the New Millenium a ten year plan to pump billions of pounds per year into the NHS was hatched.  Unfortunately, the other healthcare services had inherited the same meme defect – so the NHS grew 40% bigger but no better – and the evidence is now accumulatung that productivity (the ratio of output quality to input cost) has actally fallen by more than 10% – there are more people doing more work but less well.  The UK along with many other countries has hit an economic brick wall and the money being sucked into the NHS cannot increase any more – even though we have created a legacy of an increasing proportion of retired and elderly members of society to support. 

The meme defect that the NHS inherited in 1948 and that was not corrected in the transplant operation  1980’s is now exerting it’s influence – the NHS has no capability for process engineering – the theory, techniques, tools and training required to design processes are not on the curriculum of either the NHS managers or the clinicians. The effect of this defect is that we can only treat the symptoms rather than the cause – and we only have blunt and ineffective instruments such as a budget restriction – the management equivalent of a straight jacket – and budget cuts – the management equivalent of a jar of leeches. To illustrate the scale of the effect of this inborn error of management we only need to look at other organisations that do not appear to suffer from the same condition – for example the electronics manufacturing industry. The almost unbelieveable increase in the performance, quality and value for money of modern electronics over the last decade (mobile phones, digital cameras, portable music players, laptop computers, etc) is because these industries have invested in developing both their electrical and process engineering capabilities. The Law of the Jungle has weeded out the companies who did not – they have gone out of business or been absorbed – but publically funded service organisations like the NHS do not have this survival pressure – they are protected from it – and trying to simulate competition with an artificial internal market and applying stick-and-carrot top-down target-driven management is not a like-for-like replacement.    

The challenge for the NHS is clear – if we want to continue to enjoy high quality health care, free at the point of delivery, and that we can afford then we will need to recognise and correct our inborn error of management. If we ignore the symptoms, deny the diagnosis and refuse to take the medicine then we will suffer a painful and lingering decline – not lethal and not enjoyable – and it is has a name: purgatory.

The good news is that the treatment is neither expensive, nor unpleasant nor dangerous – process engineering is easy to learn, quick to apply, and delivers results almost immediately – and it can be incorporated into the organisational meme-pool quite quickly by using the see-do-teach vector. All we have to do is to own up to the symptoms, consider the evidence, accept the diagnosis, recognise the challenge and take our medicine. The sooner the better!

 

The Drama Triangle

Have you ever had the experience of trying to help someone with a problem, not succeeding, and being left with a sense of irritation, disappointment, frustration and even anger?

Was the dialog that led up to this unhappy outcome something along the lines of:

A: I have a problem with …
B: What about trying …
A: Yes, but ….
B: What about trying ….
A: Yes, but …

… and so on until you run out of ideas, patience or both.

If this sounds familiar then it is likely that you have been unwittingly sucked into a Drama Triangle – an unconscious, habitual pattern of behaviour that we all use to some degree.

This endemic behaviour has a hidden purpose: to feed our belonging need for social interaction.

The theory goes something like this – we are social animals and we need social interaction just as much as we need oxygen, water and food.  Without it we become psychologically malnourished and this insight explains why prolonged solitary confinement is such an effective punishment – it is the psychological equivalent to starvation.

The emotional sustenance we want most is unconditional love (UCL) – the sort we usually get from our parents, family and close friends.  Repeated affirmation that we are ‘OK’ with no strings attached.

The downside of our unconscious desire for UCL is that it offers a way for others to control our behaviour and those who choose to abuse that power are termed ‘manipulative’.  This control is done by adding conditions: “I will give you the affirmation you crave IF you do what I want“.  This is conditional love (CL).

When we are born we are completely powerless, and completely dependent on our parents – in particular our mother.  As we get older and start to exert our free will we learn that our society has rules – we cannot just follow every selfish desire.

Our parents unconsciously employ CL as a form of behavioural control and it is surprisingly effective: “If you are a good boy/girl then …“.  So, as children, we learn the technique from our parents.

This in itself  is not a problem; but it can become a problem when CL is the only sort available and when the intention is to further only the interests of the giver.  When this happens it becomes … manipulation.

The apparently harmless playground threat of “If you don’t do what I want then I won’t be your friend anymore” is the practice script of a future manipulator – and it feeds on a limiting-belief in the unconscious mind of the child – the belief that there is a limited supply of UCL and that someone else controls it.

And because we make this assumption at the pre-verbal stage of child development, it becomes unconscious, habitual, unspoken and second nature.


Our invalid childhood belief has a knock-on effect; we learn to survive on CL because “No Love” is the worst of all options; it is the psychological equivalent of starvation.

And we learn to put up with second best, and because CL offers inferior emotional nourishment we need a way of generating as much as we want, on-demand.

So we employ the behaviour we were unwittingly taught by our patents – and the Drama Triangle becomes our on-demand-generator-of-second-rate-emotional-sustenance.

The tangible evidence of this “programming” is an observable behaviour that is called “game playing” and was first described by Eric Berne in the famous book “Games People Play“.

Berne described many different Games and they all have a common pattern and a common objective – to generate second-rate emotional food (or ‘transactions’ to use Berne’s language).  But our harvest comes at a price – the transactions are unhealthy – not enough to harm us immediately – but enough to leave us feeling dissatisfied and unhappy.

But what choice do we believe we have?

If we were given the options of breathing stale air or suffocating what would we do?

If we assume our options are to die of thirst or drink stagnant pond-water what would we do?

If we believe our only options are to starve or eat rubbish what would we do?

Our survival instinct is much stronger than our belonging need, so we choose unhealthy over deadly and eventually we become so habituated to game-playing that we do not notice it any more.

Excessive and prolonged exposure to the Drama Triangle is the psychological equivalent of alcoholic liver cirrhosis.  Permanent and irreversible psychological scarring called cynicism.


It is important to remember that this is learned behaviour – and therefore it can be unlearned – or rather overwritten with a healthier habit.

Just by becoming aware of the problem, and understanding the root cause of the Drama Triangle, an alternative pathway appears.

We can challenge our untested assumption that UCL is limited and that someone else controls the supply.  We can consider the alternative hypothesis: that the supply of UCL is unlimited and that we control the supply.

Q: How easy is it for us to offer someone else UCL?

Easy – we see it all the time. How do you feel when someone gives a genuine “Thank You”, cheers you on, celebrates your success, seeks your opinion, and recommends you to others – with no strings attached.  These are all forms of UCL that anyone can practice; by making a conscious choice to give with no expectation of a return.

For many people it feels uncomfortable at first because the game-playing behaviour is so deeply ingrained – and game-playing is particularly prevalent in the corridors of power where it is called “politics”.

Game-free behaviour gets easier with practice because UCL benefits both the giver and the receiver – it feels healthier – there is no need for a payback, there is no score to be kept, no emotional account to balance.  It feels like a breath of fresh air.


So, next time you feel that brief flash of irritation at the start of a conversation or are left with a negative feeling after a conversation just stop and ask yourself  “Was I just sucked into a Drama Triangle?”

Anyone who is able to “press your button” is hooking you into a game, and it takes two to play.

Now consider the question “And to what extent was I unconsciously colluding?


The tactic to avoid the Drama Triangle is to learn to sense the emotional “hook” that signals the invitation to play the Game; and to consciously deflect it before it embeds into your unconscious mind and triggers an unconscious, habitual, reflex, emotional reaction.

One of the most potent barriers to change is when we unconsciously compute that our previously reliable sources of CL are threatened by the change.  We have no choice but to oppose the change – and that choice is made unconsciously. So, we unwittingly undermine the plan.

The symptoms of this unconscious behaviour are obvious when you know what to look for … and the commonest reaction is:

“Yes … but …”

and the more intelligent and invested the person the more cogent and rational the argument will sound.

The most effective response is to provide evidence that disproves the defensive assertion – not the person’s opinion – and before taking on this challenge we need to prepare the evidence.

By demonstrating that their game-playing behaviour no longer leads to the expected payoff, and at the same time demonstrating that game-free behaviour is both possible and better – we demonstrate that the underlying, unconscious, limiting belief is invalid.

And by that route we develop our capability for game-free social interactions.

Simple enough in theory, and it does works in practice, though it can be difficult to learn because game-playing is such an ingrained behaviour.  It does get easier with practice and the ultimate reward is worth the investment  – a healthier emotional environment.  And that is transformational.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics!

Most people are confused by statistics and because of this experts often regard them as ignorant, stupid or both.  However, those who claim to be experts in statistics need to proceed with caution – and here is why.

The people who are confused by statistics are confused for a reason – the statistics they see presented do not make sense to them in their world.  They are not stupid – many are graduates and have high IQ’s – so this means they must be ignorant and the obvious solution is to tell them to go and learn statistics. This is the strategy adopted in medicine: Trainees are expected to invest some time doing research and in the process they are expected to learn how to use statistics in order to develop their critical thinking and decision making.  So far so good, so what  is the outcome?

Well, we have been running this experiment for decades now – there are millions of peer reviewed papers published – each one having passed the scrutiny of a statistical expert – and yet we still have a health care system that is not delivering what we need at a cost we can afford.  So, there must be someone else at fault – maybe the managers! They are not expected to learn or use statistics so that statistically-ignorant rabble must be the problem -so the next plan is “Beat up the managers” and “Put statistically trained doctors in charge”.

Hang on a minute! Before we nail the managers and restructure the system let us step back and consider another more radical hypothesis. What if there is something not right about the statistics we are using? The medical statistics experts will rise immediately and state “Research statistics is a rigorous science derived from first principles and is mathematically robust!”  They are correct. It is. But all mathematical derivations are based on some initial fundamental assumptions so when the output does not seem to work in all cases then it is always worth re-examining the initial assumptions. That is the tried-and-tested path to new breakthroughs and new understanding.

The basic assumption that underlies research statistics is that all measurements are independent of each other which also implies that order and time can be ignored.  This is the reason that so much effort, time and money is invested in the design of a research trial – to ensure that the statistical analysis will be correct and the conclusions will be valid. In other words the research trial is designed around the statistical analysis method and its founding assumption. And that is OK when we are doing research.

However, when we come to apply the output of our research trials to the Real World we have a problem.

How do we demonstrate that implementing the research recommendation has resulted in an improvement? We are outside the controlled environment of research now and we cannot distort the Real World to suit our statistical paradigm.  Are the statistical tools we used for the research still OK? Is the founding assumption still valid? Can we still ignore time? Our answer is clearly “NO” because we are looking for a change over time! So can we assume the measurements are independent – again our answer is “NO” because for a process the measurement we make now is influenced by the system before, and the same system will also influence the next measurement. The measurements are NOT independent of each other.

Our statistical paradigm suddenly falls apart because the founding assumption on which it is built is no longer valid. We cannot use the statistics that we used in the research when we attempt to apply the output of the research to the Real World. We need a new and complementary statistical approach.

Fortunately for us it already exists and it is called improvement statistics and we use it all the time – unconsciously. No doctor would manage the blood pressure of a patient on Ward A  based on the average blood pressure of the patients on Ward B – it does not make sense and would not be safe.  This single flash of insight is enough to explain our confusion. There is more than one type of statistics!

New insights also offer new options and new actions. One action would be that the Academics learn improvement statistics so that they can understand better the world outside research; another action would be that the Pragmatists learn improvement statistics so that they can apply the output of well-conducted research in the Real World in a rational, robust and safe way. When both groups have a common language the opportunities for systemic improvment increase. 

BaseLine© is a tool designed specifically to offer the novice a path into the world of improvement statistics.

More than the Sum or Less?

It is often assumed that if you combine world-class individuals into a team you will get a world-class team.

Meredith Belbin showed 30 years ago that you do not and it was a big shock at the time!

So, if world class individuals are not enough, what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a world-class team?

The late Russell Ackoff described it perfectly – he said that if you take the best parts of all the available cars and put them together you do not get the best car – you do not even get a car. The parts are necessary but they are not sufficient – how the parts connect to each other and how they influence each other is more important.  These interdependencies are part of the system – and to understand a system requires understanding both the parts and their relationships.

A car is a mechanical system; the human body is a biological system; and a team is a social system. So to create a high performance, healthy, world class team requires that both the individuals and their relationships with each other are aligned and resonant.

When the parts are aligned we get more than the sum of the parts; and when they are not we get less.

If we were to define intelligence quotient as “an ability to understand and solve novel problems” then the capability of a team to solve novel problems is the collective intelligence.  Experience suggests that a group can appear to be less intelligent than any of the individual members.  The problem here is with the relationships between the parts – and the term that is often applied is “dysfunctional”.

The root cause is almost always distrustful attitudes which lead from disrespectful prejudices and that lead to discounting behaviour.  We learn these prejudices, attitudes and behaviours from each other and we reinforce them with years of practice.  But if they are learned then they can be un-learned. It is simple in theory, and it is possible in practice, but it is not easy.

So if we want to (dis)solve complex, novel problems thenwe need world-class problem solving teams; and to transform our 3rd class dysfunctional teams we must first learn to challenge respectfully our disrespectful behaviour.

The elephant is in the room!

Must We Unlearn First?

In the famous “Star Wars” films when Luke Skywalker is learning to master the Force – his trainer, Jedi Master Yoda, says the famous line:

You must unlearn what you have learned“.

These seven words capture a fundamental principle of Improvement Science – that very often we have to unlearn before we can improve.

Unlearning is not the same as forgetting – because much of what we have learned is unconscious – so to unlearn we first have to make our assumptions conscious.

Unlearning is not just erasing a memory, it is preparing the mental ground to replace the learning with something else.

And we do not want to unlearn everything – we want to keep the nexus of knowledge nuggets that form the solid foundation of new learning.  We only want to unlearn what is preventing us adding new understanding, concepts and skills – the invisible layer of psychological grease that smears our vision and leaves our minds slippery and unable to grasp new concepts.

We need to apply some cognitive detergent and ad some heated debate to strip off the psycho-slime.  The best detergent is I have found is called Reality and the good news is that Reality is widely available, completely free and supplies will never run out.

Watch the video on YouTube

Are there Three Languages?

When we are in “heated agreement” with each other it feels like we are talking different languages and this is a sign that we need to explore further and deeper. With patience and persistence we realise they are just dialects of the same language. Our challenge now is to learn to speak clearly in one language at a time and in the same language as the person(s) we are communicating with. Improvement Science has three primary languages – the language of quality (100% qualitative) , the language of money (100% quantitative) and the language of time (100% qualitative or quantitative depending on our perspective).  Learning to speak all three languages fluently – dreams are painted in the language of quality, processes are described in the language of time, and survival is a story told in the language of money which is the universal currency that we exchange for our physical needs (water, food, warmth, shelter, security, etc).

The engagement is emotional – through the subjective language of quality – and once engaged we have to master the flow of time in order to influence the flow of money. Our higher purpose is necessary but it is not sufficient – it is our actions that converts our passion into reality – and uncoordinated or badly designed action just dissipates passion and leads to exhaustion, disappointment and cynicism.

Reactive or Proactive?

Improvement Science is about solving problems – so looking at how we solve problems is a useful exercise – and there is a continuous spectrum from 100% reactive to 100% proactive.

The reactive paradigm implies waiting until the problem is real and urgent and then acting quickly and decisively – hence the picture of the fire-fighter.  Observe the equipment that the fire-fighter needs:  a hat and suit to keep him safe and a big axe! It is basically a destructive and unsafe job based on the “our purpose is to stop the problem getting worse”.

The proactive paradigm implies looking for the earliest signs of the problem and planning the minimum action required to prevent the problem – hence the picture of the clinician. Observe the equipment that the clinician needs: a clean white coat to keep her patients safe and a stethoscope – a tool designed to increase her sensitivity so that subtle diagnostic sounds can be detected.

If we never do the proactive we will only ever do the reactive – and that is destructive and unsafe. If we never do the reactive we run the risk of losing everything – and that is destructive and unsafe too.

To practice safe and effective Improvement Science we must be able to do both in any combination and know which and when: we need to be impatient, decisive and reactive when a system is unstable, and we need to be patient, reflective and proactive when the system is stable.  To choose our paradigm we must listen to the voice of the process. It will speak to us if we are prepared to listen and if we are prepared to learn it’s language.

Is it OK to Fail First Time?

Improvement Science is about learning from when what actually happens is different to that which we expected to happen.  Is this surprise a failure or is this a success? It depends on our perspective. If we always get what we expect then we could conclude that we have succeeded – yet we have neither learned anything nor improved. So have we failed to learn? In contrast, if we never get what we expected then we could conclude that we  always fail – yet we do not report what we have learned and improved.  Our expectation might be too high! So comparing outcome with expectation seems a poor way to measure our progress with learning and improvement.

When we try something new we should expect to be surprised – otherwise it would not be new.  It is what we learn from that expected surprise that is of most value. Sometime life turns out better than we expected – what can we learn from those experiences and how can we ensure that outcome happens again – predictably? Sometimes life turns out worse than we expected – what can we learn from those experiences and how can we ensure that outcome does not happen again, predictably?  So, yes it is OK for us to fail and to not get what we expected – first time.  What is not OK is for us to fail to learn from the lesson and to make an avoidable mistake more than once or miss an opportunity for improvement more than once.

The Plague of Niggles

Historians tell us that in the Middle Ages about 25 million people, one third of the population of Europe, were wiped out by a series of Plagues! We now know that the cause was probably a bacteria called Yersinia Pestis that was spread by fleas when they bite their human hosts to get a meal of blood. The fleas were carried by rats and ships carried the rats from one country to another.  The unsanitary living conditions of the ports and towns at the time provided the ideal conditions for rats and fleas and, with a superstitious belief that cats were evil, without their natural predator the population of rats increased, so the population of fleas increased, so the likehood of transmission of the lethal bacteria increased, and the number of people decreased. A classic example of a chance combination of factors that together created an unstable and deadly system.

The Black Death was not eliminated by modern hi-tech medicine; it just went away when some of the factors that fuelled the instability were reduced. A tangible one being the enforced rebuilding of London after the Great Fire in Sept 1666 which gutted the medieval city and which followed the year after the last Great Plague in 1665 that killed 20% of the population. 

The story is an ideal illustration of how apparently trivial, albeit  annoying, repeated occurences can ultimately combine and lead to a catastrophic outcome.  I have a name for these apparently trivial, annoying and repeated occurences – I call them Niggles – and we are plagued by them. Every day we are plagued by junk mail, unpredictable deliveries, peak time traffic jams, car parking, email storms, surly staff, always-engaged call centres, bad news, bureaucracy, queues, confusion, stress, disappointment, depression. Need I go on?  The Plague of Niggles saps our spirit just as the Plague of Fleas sucked our ancestors blood.  And the Plague of Niggles infect us with a life-limiting disease – not a rapidly fatal one like the Black Death – instead we are infected with a slow, progressive, wasting disease that affects our attitude and behaviour and which manifests itself as criticism, apathy and cynicism.  A disease that seems as terifying, mysterious and incurable to us today as the Plague was to our ancestors. 

History repeats itself and we now know that complex systems behave in characteristic ways – so our best strategy may the same – prevention. If we use the lesson of history as our guide we should be proactive and focus our attention on the Niggles. We should actively seek them out; see them for what they really are; exercise our amazing ability to understand and solve them; and then share the nuggets of new knowledge that we generate.

Seek-See-Solve-Share.

How to Kill an Organisation with a Budget.

The primary goal of an organisation is to survive – and to do that it must be financially viable. The income must meet or exceed the expenses; the bottom line must be zero or greater; your financial assets much equal or exceed your financial liabilities.  So, organisations have to make financial plans to ensure finanical survival and as large organisations are usually sub-divided into smaller functional parts the common finanical planning tool is the departmental budget. We all know from experience that the future is not precisely predictable and that costs tend to creep up; and the budget is also commonly used as an expense containment tool.  A perfectly reasonable strategy to help ensure survival.  But by combining the two reasonable requirements intoi one tool have we unintentionally created a potentially lethal combination? The answer is “yes” – and this is why ….

The usual policy for a budget is to set the future budget based on the past performance.  Perfectly reasonable. And to contain costs we say “if our expenses were less than our budget then we didn’t need the extra money and we can remove it from our budget for next year.” Very plausible.  And was also say “if our expenses were more than our budget then we are suffering from cost-creep and the deficit is carried over to next year and our budget is not increased.”  What do we observe?  We observe pain!  The first behaviour is that departments on track to underspend will try to spend the remainder of the budget by the end of the period to ensure the next budget is not reduced … they spend their reserves.  The departments on track to overspend cut all the soft costs they can – such as not recruiting when people leave, buying cheap low quality supplies, cancelling training etc.  The result is that teh departments that impose internal cuts will perform less well – because they do not have the capacity to do their work – and that has a knock on effect on other departments because the revenue generating work is usually crosses several departments.  A constraint in just one will affect the flow through all of them.  The combined result is a fall in throughput, a fall in revenue, more severe budget restrictions, and a self-reinforcing spiral of decline to organisational death! Precisely the opposite intention of the budget design.

If that is the disease then what is the root cause? What is the patholgy?

The problem here is the mismatch between the financial specification (budget available) and the financial capability (cost required).  The solution is to recognise the importance of the difference. The first step is to set the budget specification to match the cost capability at each step along the process in order to stabilise the flow; the second step is to redesign the process to improve the cost capability and only reduce the budget when the process has been shown to be capable of working at a lower cost.  This requires two skills: first to be able to work out the cost capability of every step in the process; and second to design-for-cost. Budgets do neither of these and without these skills a budget transforms from a useful management asset to lethal organisational liability!

Egomatosis

There is a common, and often fatal, organisational disease called “egomatosis”.

It starts as a swelling of the Egocentre in the Executive Organ that is triggered by a deficiency in the Humility Feedback Loop (HFL), which in turn is linked to underdevelopment or dysfunction of the phonic sensory input system – selective deafness.

Unfortunately, the Egocentre is located next to other perception centres – specifically insight – so as the egoma develops the visual perception also becomes progressively distorted until a secondary cultural blind-spot develops.

In effect, the Executive organ becomes progressively cut off from objective reality – and this lack of accurate information impairs the Humility Feedback Loop further – accelerating the further enlargement of the egoma.

A dangerous positive feedback loop is now created that leads to a self-amplifying spiral of distorted perception and a progressive decline of judgement and effective decision making.

The external manifestation of this state is a characteristic behaviour called “dystrustosis” – or difficulty in extending trust to others combined with a progressive loss of self-trust.

The unwitting sufferer becomes progressively deaf, blind, fearful, delusional, paranoid and insecure – often distancing themselves emotionally and physically and communicating only via intermediaries using One-Way-Directives.

Those who attempt to communicate with the sufferer of this insidious condition often resort to SHOUTING and using BIG LETTERS which, unfortunately, only mirrors the same behaviour.  As the sufferer’s perception of reality becomes more distorted their lack of insight and humility blocks them from considering themselves as a contributor to the problem.

The ensuing conflict only serves to accelerate their decline and the sufferer progresses to the stage of “fulminant egomatosis”.



“Fulminant egomatosis” is a condition that is easy to identify and to diagnose.  Just listen for the shouting, observe the dystrustosis and feel the fear.

Unfortunately, it is a difficult condition to manage because of the lack of awareness and insight that are the cardinal signs.

Many affected leaders and their organisations now enter a state of Denial – unconsciously hoping that the problem will resolve itself – which is indeed what happens eventually – though not in the way they desperately hope for.

In the interim, the health of the organisation deteriorates and many executives succumb, unaware of, or unwilling to acknowledge the illness that claimed them; meekly accepting the “inevitable fate” and submitting to the terminal option – usually delivered by the Chair of the Board – Retire or Resign!

The circling corporate vultures squabble over the fiscal remains – leaving no tangible sign to mark the passing of the sufferer and their hapless organisation.  There are no graveyards for the victims of fulminant egomatosis and the memory of their passing soon fades from the collective memory.  Failure is a taboo subject – an undiscussable.


Some organisations become aware of their affliction while they are still alive, but only after they have reached the terminal stage and are too sick to save.  The death throes are destructive and unpleasant to watch – and unfortunately fuel the self-justifying delusion of other infected organisations who erroneously conclude that “it could never happen to them” and then unwittingly follow the same path.


Unfortunately, egomatosis is an infectious cultural disease.  The spores, or “memes” as they are called, can spread to other organisations.  Just as Dr Ignaz Semmelweis discovered in 1847, the agents-of-destruction are often carried on the hands of those who perform organisational postmortems.  These meme vectors are often the very people brought into assist the ailing organisation, and so become chronically infected themselves and gravitate to others who share their delusions.  They are excluded by healthy organisations, but their siren-calls sound plausible and they gain entry to weaker organisations who are unaware that they carry the dangerous memes!  Actively employing the services of management consultants in preference to encouraging organisational innovation incurs a high risk of silent infection!  Appearance of the symptoms and signs is often delayed and by then it may be too late. 


The organisations that are naturally immune to egomatosis were “built to last” because they were born with a well-developed sense of purpose, vision, humility, confidence and humour.  They habitually and unconsciously look for, detect, and defuse the early signs of egomatosis.  They do not fear failure, and they have learned to leverage the gap between intent and impact.  These organisations have a strong cultural immune system and are able to both prevent infection and disarm the toxic-memes they inevitably encounter.  They are safe,  fun, challenging, exciting, innovative and motivating, places to work – characteristics that serve to strengthen their immunity, boost their resilience, and secure their future.


Some infected organisations are fortunate enough to become aware of their infection before it is too late, and they are able to escape the vicious cycle of decline.  These “good to great” organisations have enough natural humility to learn by observing the fate of others and are able to detect the early symptoms and to seek help from someone who understands their illness and can guide their diagnosis and treatment.  Such healers facilitate and demonstrate rather than direct and delegate.


All organisations are susceptible to egomatosis, so prevention is preferable to cure.

To prevent the disease, organisations must consciously and actively develop their internal and external feedback loops – using all their senses – including their olfactory organ.  Cultural and political bull**** has a characteristic odour!

They also regularly exercise their Humility Feedback Loop to keep it healthy – and they have discovered that the easiest way to do that is to challenge themselves – to actively look for their own gaps and gaffes – to look for their own positive deviants – to search out opportunities to improve – and to practice the very things that they know they are not good at.

They are prepared to be proved lacking and have learned to stop, look, laugh at themselves – then listen, learn, act, improve and share.

There is no known cure for egomatosis – it is a consequence of the 1.3 kg of ChimpWare between our ears that we have inherited from our ancestors – so vigilance must be maintained throughout the life of the organisation. 


Now is When Infinity Becomes One

Time is an intangible – we can’t touch it, taste it, smell it, hear it or see it – yet we do sense it – and we know it is valuable. A precious commodity we call lifetime. We often treat lifetime as it if were tangible – something that we can see, hear, smell, taste and touch – something like money. We often hear the phrase “time is money” and we say things like “spending time” and “wasting time” – as if it were money. But time is not money; we cannot save time, we cannot buy time, and we all get the same amount of time per day to use.

Another odd thing about time is that we sense that it moves in one direction – from past to future with now as the transition. This creates an interesting discontinuity: if we look forward from now into the future we perceive an infinite number of possibilities; yet if we look backwards from now into the past we see only one actuality. That is really odd – Now is when Infinity becomes One.

So, how does that insight help us make a choice?  Well, suppose we have decided what we want in the future and are now trying to make a choice of what to do next; to plan our route to our future desired goal.  Looking from now forwards presents us with a very large number of paths to choose from, none of which we can be sure will lead us safely to where we want to get to.  So what happens? We may become paralysed by indecision; we may debate and argue about which path to take; we may boldly step out on a plausible path with hope and courage; or we may just guess and stumble on with blind faith.  Which we choose seems more a reflection of our personality than a rational strategy. So let us try something else – let us project ourselves into the future to the place where we want to be; and then let us look backwards in time from the future to the present. Now we see a single path that led to where we are; and by unpicking that path we can see that each step of it had a set of necessary and sufficient pre-conditions which, with the addition of time, moved us forward along the path.  Hindsight is much clearer than foresight and each of us has a lifetime’s worth of hindsight to reflect on; and the cumulative hindsight of history to draw on.  This is not an exercise in fantasy; we already have what we need.

To make our choice we start with the outcome we want and ask the question “What are the immediately preceeding necessary and sufficient conditions?”   Then for each condition we ask the question “Does that condition already exist?” If so then we stop – we need go no further on this side branch; and if not then we repeat the Two Questions and we keep going until we have linked our goal back to pre-conditions that exist.  All the pre-conditions in the map we have drawn are necessary but we do not yet have all of them. Some are only dependent on pre-conditions that exist – these are the important ones because they tell us exactly what to focus on doing next. Our choice is now obvious and simple – though the action may not be easy. No one said the journey would be easy!

It’s Not the People it’s the Process!

Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a better result might be called practice, perseverance, persistence, even patience; it might also be called futility or even madness.

We know that sometimes persistence pays off, and sometimes it doesn’t, so how do we know which is which?

Very often this problem is disguised – for example when we want a better outcome of a process.  It is easy to assign blame for poor outcomes to people because of the cause-and-effect chain that you can trace back from an obvious mistake – but it is always valid to do this?

Suppose I repeat the same actions and occasionally get a poor outcome – checking for the mistake and when it happens tracing the audit trail back to the action of a specific person is of little value in this case because it doesn’t expose the true root cause.

Outcomes are usually the result of cumulative actions and it is difficult or impossible to separate out the contributions.

So, the only rational way to improve outcome is to improve every part of the process proactively.  And if there is a bad apple in the barrel it is much easier to spot when the rest of the apples are good than when all the apples are a bit bruised.

Is Good Design Easy to See?

Doh! What a non-question! Good design is obvious. But is it?  Bad design is certainly obvious because it trips you up, it does something you do not expect or doesn’t do something that you do expect – you become consciously aware of bad design and it is a niggle because bad design is effort wasting, time wasting and money wasting.  Bad design generates niggles and toxic emotional waste swamps.  So what was your feeling when you first saw an iPhone, or an iPod, or used iTunes or touched an iPad? Was it was “Wow!” That is the first impact of good design – you notice the difference immediately. However, after that it becomes gradually invisible because the old niggle goes away, and before long you are taking the good design for granted because there is nothing to consciously remind you of it. Your expectation has changed – what previosuly delighted now only satifies. Good design is an invisible nugget. So here is something to try – look around you now and identify all the examples of good and bad design that you can see. What differentiates the two?  For a niggle free existence you will have to actively seek out good design by looking for what is there but not making itself obvious.  Refocus from what doesn’t work to what does work and learn to understand how and why it works. You may find it a humbling experience!!

Can We See the Wood for the Trees?

“The Map is not the Territory” but it is a very useful because it provides a sense of perspective; the bigger picture; where you are; and what you would need to do to get from A to B.  A map can also provide the the fine detail, they way-points on your journey, and what to expect to see along the way.  I remember the first computer programs that would find a route from A to B for me and present it as a printed recipe for the journey; how far it was and, best of all, how long it would take – so I knew when to set off to be reasonably confident I could arrive on time.  Of course, there might always be unexpected holdups along the way but it was a big step forward. One problem was using the recipe as I drove, and another was when I accidently took a wrong turn, which is easy in unfamiliar surroundings with only a list of instructions to go by.  If I came off the intended track I would get lost – so I still needed the paper map as a backup. The trouble now was I did not alwasy know where I was on the map – because I was lost.  Two steps forward and one step backwards.  Now we have Google Maps and we can see what we will actually see on the way – before we even leave home!  And with SatNav we can get this map-reading-and-route-planning done for us in real time so if we choose to, are forced to, or accidentially take a wrong turn it can get us back-on-track. The days of heated debate between the map reader and the map needer have gone and it seems the only need we have for a map now is as a backup if the SatNav breaks down. (This did happen to me once, I didn’t have a map in the car and the only information I had was the postcode of my destination. I was pressed for time so I drove around randomly until I passed a shop that sold SatNavs and bought a new/spare one – entered the postcode and arrived at my intended destination just in time!).

So is the map dead?  Not at all – the value of a map in providing a sense of perspective, context and location is just as useful as ever. And there are many sorts of maps apart from the static, structural, geographical maps ones we are used to.  The really exciting maps are the dynamic ones – the functional maps.  These are maps that show how things are working and flowing, not only where they are.  Imagine if your SatNav had both a static map and was able to access a real time dynamic map of traffic flow. Just think how much more useful it could be? However, to achieve that implies that each person on the road would have to contribute both their position and their intended destination to a central system – isn’t that Big Brother back. Air traffic control (ATC) systems have done this for years for a very good reason: aeroplanes full of passengers are perishable goods – they can’t land anywhere they like and they can’t stay up there waiting to land for ever.  You can’t afford to have traffic jams with aeroplanes – so every pilot has to file a flight plan and will only be given ATC clearance to take off if their destination is capable of offering them a landing slot in an acceptable time frame – i.e. before the plane runs out of fuel! Static maps will always be needed to provide us with a sense of perspective – and in the future dynamic maps will revolutionise the way that we do everything – but only if we are prepared to behave collectively and share our data.  We want to see the wood, the trees and even the breeze through the leaves!

Are we Stuck in a Toxic Emotional Waste Swamp?

Have you ever had the uncomfortable experience of joining a new group of people and discovering that your usual modus operandi does not seem to fit?  Have you ever experienced the pain of a behavioural expectation mismatch – a clash of culture? What do we do when that happens? Do we keep quiet, listen and try to work out the expected behaviours by observing others and then mimic their behaviour to fit in? Do we hold our ground, stay true to our norms and habits and challenge the group? Do we just shrug, leave and not return?

The other side of this common experience is the effect on the group of a person who does not match the behavioural norms of the group.  Are they regarded as a threat or an opportunity? Usually a threat. But a threat to whom? It depends. And it primarily depends on the emotional state of the chief, chair or boss of the group – the person who holds the social power. We are social animals and we have evolved over millions of years to be hard-wired to tune in to the emotional state of the pack leader – because it is a proven survival strategy!

If the chief is in a negative emotional state then the group will be too and a newcomer expressing a positive emotional outlook will create an emotional tension. People prefer leaders who broadcast a positive emotional state because it makes them feel happier; and leaders are attracted by power – so in this situation the chief will perceive a challenge to the balance of power and will react by putting the happy newcomer firmly in their place in the pecking order. The group observe the mauling and learn that a positive emotional attitude is an unsuccessful strategy to gain favour with the chief – and so the status quo is maintained. The toxic emotional waste swamp gets a bit deeper, the sides get a bit more slippery, and the emotional crocodiles who lurk in the murk get a tasty snack. Yum yum – that’ll teach you to be happy around here!

If the chief has a uniformly positive emotional approach then the group will echo that and a newcomer expressing a negative emotional state creates a different tension. The whole group makes it clear that this negative behaviour is unwelcome – they don’t want someone spoiling their cosy emotional oasis! And the status quo is maintained again. Unfortunately, the only difference between this and the previous example is that this only-happy-people-allowed-here group is drowning in emotional treacle rather than emotional turds. It is still an emotional swamp and the outcome is the same – you get stuck in it.

This either-or model is not a successful long-term strategy because it does not foster learning – it maintains the status quo – tough-minded or touch-feely – pessimistic or optimistic – but not realistic.

Effective learning only happens when the status quo is challenged in a way that respects both the power and authority of the chief and of the group – and the safest way to do that is to turn to reality for feedback and to provide the challenge to the group.  To do this in practice requires a combination of confidence and humility by both the chief and the group: the confidence to reject complacency and to face up to reality and the humility to employ what is discovered to keep moving on, to keep learning, to keep improving.

Reality will provide both positive and negative feedback (“Nuggets” and “Niggles”) and the future will hold both positive and negative challenges (“Nice-Ifs” and “Noo-Noos”).  Effective leaders know this and are able to maintain the creative tension. For those of us who are learning to be more effective leaders perhaps the routes out of our Toxic Emotional Waste Swamps are drawn on our 4N charts?

Is this Second Nature or Blissful Ignorance?

Four stages of learningI haven’t done a Post-It doodle for a while so here is one of my favourites that I was reminded of this week.  Recently my organisation has mandated that we complete a 360-feedback exercise – which for me generated some anxiety – even fear. Why? What am I scared of? Could it be that I am unconsciously aware that there are things I am not very good – I just don’t know what they are – and by asking for feedback I will become painfully aware of my limitations? What then? Will I able to address those weaknesses or do I have to live with them? And even more painful to consider; what if I believed I was good at something because I have been doing it so long it has become second nature – and I discover that what I was good at is not longer appropriate or needed? Wow! That is not going to feel much fun.  I think I’ll avoid the whole process by keeping too busy to complete the online questionnaire.  That strategy did not work of course – a head-in-the-sand approach often doesn’t.  So I completed it and await my fate with trepidation.

The model of learning that I have sketched is called the Conscious-Competence model or – as I prefer to call it – Capability Awareness.  We all start bottom left – not aware of our lack of capablity – let’s call that Blissful Ignorance.  Then something happens that challenges our complacency – we become aware of our lack of capability – ouch! That is Painful Awareness.  From there we have three choices – retreat (denial), stay where we are (distress) or move forward (discovery).  If we choose the path of discovery we must actively invest time and effort to develop our capability to get to the top right position – where we are aware of what we can do – the state of Know How.  Then as we practice or new capability and build our experience we gradually become less aware of out new capability – it becomes Second Nature.  We can now do it without thinking – it becomes sort of hard-wired.  Of course, this is a very useful place to get to: it does conceal a danger though – we start to take our capability for granted as we focus our attention on new challenges. We become complacent – and as the world around us is constantly changing we may be unaware our once-appropriate capability may be growing less useful.  Being a wizard with a set of log-tables and a slide-rule became an unnecessary skill when digital calculators appeared – that was fairly obvious.  The silent danger is that we slowly slide from Second-Nature to Blissful-Ignorance; usually as we get older, become more senior, acquire more influence, more money and more power.  We now have the dramatic context for a nasty shock when, as a once capable and respected leader, we suddenly and painfully become aware of our irrelevance. Many leaders do not survive the shock and many organisations do not survive it either – especially if a once-powerful leader switches to self-justifying denial and the blame-others behaviour.

To protect ourselves from this unhappy fate just requires that we understand the dynamic of this deceptively simple model; it requires actively fostering a curious mindset; it requires a willingness to continuously challenge ourselves; to openly learn from a wide network of others who have more capability in the area we want to develop; and to be open to sharing with others what we have learned.  Maybe 360 feedback is not such a scary idea?

Can an Old Dog learn New Tricks?

I learned a new trick this week and I am very pleased with myself for two reasons. Firstly because I had the fortune to have been recommended this trick; and secondly because I had the foresight to persevere when the first attempt didn’t work very well.  The trick I learned was using a webinar to provide interactive training. “Oh that’s old hat!” I hear some of you saying. Yes, teleconferencing and webinars have been around for a while – and when I tried it a few years ago I was disappointed and that early experience probably raised my unconscious resistance. The world has moved on – and I hadn’t. High-speed wireless broadband is now widely available and the webinar software is much improved.  It was a breeze to set up (though getting one’s microphone and speakers to work seems a perennial problem!). The training I was offering was for the BaseLine process behaviour chart software – and by being able to share the dynamic image of the application on my computer with all the invitees I was able to talk through what I was doing, how I was doing it and the reasons why I was doing it.  The immediate feedback from the invitees allowed me to pace the demonstration, repeat aspects that were unclear, answer novel queries and to demonstrate features that I had not intended to in my script.  The tried and tested see-do-teach method has been reborn in the Information Age and this old dog is definitely wagging his tail and looking forward to his walk in the park (and maybe a tasty treat, huh?)

What We Need is a Healthy Crisis!

Some years ago I read a book by John Kotter that was about how organisations get themselves into and out of trouble.  Recently I read another book by Patrick Lencioni called “Silos and Politics” which carried similar message – some successful organisations become “unfocussed” and “complacent” to the extent that internal silos and petty politics come to occupy more time than improvement – the politics and silos become a self-sustaining name-shame-blame-game.  John Kotter showed that the path out of this unhealthy state is to realise that organisational survival is at risk – and this provides a compelling reason to align efforts – usually in a dramatic and desperate exercise in organisational survival.  The term Kotter used was “burning platform” which is somewhat prophetic given the ecological, economic and political catastrophe that is currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico.  Patrick Lencioni takes a different tack on the same problem – and concludes that organisational silos are the result of the attitudes that filter down from the boardroom. He advocates looking for the “symptoms” and if observed in an organisation then it is a good time to engineer a crisis to focus attention on delivering one collective, qualitative, and audacious goal – something that the whole organisation will need to collaborate to achieve and one that provides a “win” for everyone.  So, before you get sucked into an unhealthy life-and-death crisis look for the early symptoms that indicate the need to create a healthy crisis: one that will require just as much passion and creativity to resolve and which will lead to a sustainable breakthrough improvement!

Are we SELFish enough?

Improvement is selfish behaviour because if I improve (win) it must be at the detriment (lose) of someone else, surely? Ergo – improvement is not an attractive behaviour because we don’t like to be regarded as selfish by others.  What assumptions are driving this conclusion? The obvious one is the zero-sum-game assumption – that if I improve (win) then everyone else must deteriorate (lose).  The Laws of Conservation give us this idea – energy is conserved, momentum is conserved, money is conserved (that’s what accountants are for – to balance the accounts). But do the Laws of Conservation also apply to qualitative measures such as happiness, fun, curiosity, sadness, anger, fear?  If I am having fun does that imply that someone else must be angry?  Our intuition suggests “no” – if we can both be having fun and we can both be angry then the Laws of Conservation does not apply to qualitative measures siuch as feelings.  Therefore, if we focus attention on qualitative improvement then we can be selfish so long as we conciously abandon the Win-Lose constraint and consciously adopt the Win-Win goal.  Selfishness is OK if your goal is qualitative improvement for everyone.  Win-Win-Win.

Sounds great! The trouble is when we look around us we don’t seem to see the Win-Win-Win principle in action very often. What’s missing? Our quantitative measures obey the Conservation Laws, our qualitative measures do not so maybe we are confusing the two somewhere? What measure can be viewed as both qualitative and quantitative? Time maybe? Time is a definitely a quantitative metric and “Time is Money” is a familiar phrase that equates these two quantities. When it is MY time we are referring to it feels different and “Quality of Life” is a phrase that springs to mind.  So is that where I am confusing quality and quantity? When I am talking about my time and my life – my lifetime.  Is it OK for me to be selfish with my life-time so long as the goal is a Win-Win-Win one?

What is so Funny?

One line from the Simpson’s Movie that made me laugh was when Bart says “Dad, this is the worst day of my life!” to which Homer replies “Worst day <dramatic pause> so far!”.  If Bart had said “Dad, this is the best day of my life!” and Homer had replied “Best day <dramatic pause> so far!” it would not have been funny – it would have sounded cheesy. Why is that?  What does this tell us about how we can sometimes confuse humour and pleasure?  If we laugh when we are unexpectedly confronted with someone else’s emotional distress (the basis of slapstick humour); and we also laugh when we see other people laughing; and we also laugh when we have our expectations exceeded (the basis of surprise parties) then by simple association of the feeling (pleasure) with the behaviour (laughter) we have a recipe for collectively laughing at someone else’s distress.  More sinister is that we can unconsciously plan to derive laughter (and by association pleasure) by deliberately engineering distress for others.  Humour, like any process, can become sick.

But Why?

Just two, innocent-looking, three-letter words.

So what is the big deal? If you’ve been a parent of young children you’ll recognise the feeling of desperation that happens when your pre-schooler keeps asking the “But why?” question. You start off patiently attempting to explain in language that you hope they will understand, and the better you do that the more likely you are to get the next “But why?” response. Eventually you reach the point where you’re down to two options: “I don’t know!” or “Just because!”.  How are you feeling now about yourself and your young interrogator?

The troublemaker word is “but”. A common use of the word “but” in normal conversation is “Yes … but …” such as in “I hear what you are saying but …”.

What happens inside your head when you hear that?  Does it niggle? Does the red mist start to rise?

Used in this way the word “but” reveals a mental process called discounting – and the message that you registered unconsciously is closer to “I don’t care about you and your opinion, I only care about me and my opinion and here it comes so listen up!”.  This is a form of disrespectful behaviour that often stimulates a defensive response – even an argument – which only serves to further polarise the separate opinions, to deepen the mutual disrespect, and to erode trust.

It is a self-reinforcing negative-outcome counter-productive behaviour.

The trickster word is “why?”  When someone asks you this open-ended question they are often just using it as a shortcut for a longer series of closed, factual questions such as “how, what, where, when, who …”.  We are tricked because we often unconsciously translate “why?” into “what are your motives for …” which is an emotive question and can unconsciously trigger a negative emotional response. We then associate the negative feeling with the person and that hardens prejudices, erodes trust, reinforces resistance and fuels conflict.

My intention in this post is only to raise conscious awareness of this niggle.

If you are curious to test this youself – try consciously tuning in to the “but” and “why” words in conversation and in emails.  See if you can consciously register your initial emotional response – the one that happens in the split second before your conscious thoughts catch up. Then ask youself the question “Did I just have a positive or a negative feeling?

Why Do We Need Two Ears?

What a curious question! We can hear almost just as well with one ear as two so that is not the reason. Our glasses would fall off obviously though ears evolved long before glasses so that’s probably not the reason.  Just in case we lose one ear by accident? That sounds reasonable but then why don’t we have a have a spare heart or spare brain too – they are more critical organs? Physiologists will explain that we need two ears to accurately determine the direction that a sound is coming from – and we do that by detecting very slight differences between what one ear hears compared with the other. What a neat bit of biodesign! So what relevance does this have for Improvement Science?  Well, to improve a process or system we need to listen to two separate voices – the Voice of the Customer (VoC) and the Voice of the Process (VoP) – and if we compare them the slight difference points us in the direction of improvement. The problem is, when there is a big difference between the two sounds they will interfere with each other and we cannot hear either clearly. In that situation we adopt a policy of selective deafness – some of us choose the Voice of the Process because it can be measured objectively; and some of us choose the Voice of the Customer.  The outcome is disagreement because we are hearing different things. Confusion becomes conflict.

With this insight one way out of this impasse might be for everyone to use both ears alternately: everyone listening to the Voice of the Customer for a while and then everyone changing channel and listening to the Voice of the Process for a while, and back again.  The direction of improvement would become visible and the steps needed to align the Two Voices would emerge naturally.  The Two Voices are trying to tell us something and we only need to learn to tune into both of them. When the Two Voices match we hear harmony not cacophony!

How might some people be offended by performance charting?

Some fabulous new SPC software, called BaseLine© is now available – it’s designed for organizations and individuals who see the advantages in having people use a standard performance charting tool that’s statistically robust yet straight forward to use even for the uninitiated. As well as being highly accessible, at under £50 it is easily the most inexpensive option now available.

There is even a time-unlimited FREE version.

BaseLine© is obtainable via http://www.valuesystemdesign.com

How might some people be offended by performance charting?

The idea behind BaseLine© is that most every organisation is these days awash with time-series data, usually held in spreadsheet form, yet very little of it is used to diagnose systemic change. Even people who are held accountable for performance are often unaware of the gold that lies beneath their feet – or if they are aware, are for some reason reluctant to make use of it. Because BaseLine© is so accessible – there really is no longer any reason to avoid using SPC, but wait ..

.. observing those who are taking the plunge it’s becoming clearer to me where this reluctance might be coming from. Whilst some of it is due undoubtedly to low organisational expectation, I’m detecting that some of it is also due to low self-perception of capability, and some might even be because BaseLine© somehow confronts the personal value-set of particular managers. Let me refer to these value sets and capabilities as “memes”(1) and allow myself the luxury of speculatively labelling each one – so that I can treat each as a hypothesis that might later be tested – to see if the accumulating evidence either supports or refutes it. So here goes ..

1. The “Accountability-avoidance” meme – Those comfortable and skilled enough to hold a senior position may still however be inhabited by this meme, which can actually apply at any level in an organisational hierarchy. To most people it is an essential underpinning of their self-esteem to be able to feel that they’ve personally made a contribution whilst at work. It’s safer therefore (at least unconsciously) to be able to avoid roles for which any direct or personal performance measurement is attached – and there are plenty of such roles.
2. The “anti-Management” meme – According to this meme there’s something dehumanising about asking anyone to manage a process that delivers an outcome to someone who might appreciate it. Those who embody this value-set may also think that Management sounds altogether too boring when compared to Leadership since not much good happens unless people can feel good about it, and people have to be led to achieve anything meaningful and lasting. If there’s any management to be done it should be done by the followers.
3. The “anti-Control freak” meme – People holding this meme tend to dislike the whole idea of control, unless it’s the empowering of others to be in control – and even this may be considered too dangerous since the power to control anything can so easily be abused.
4. The “anti-Determinism” meme – Inside this meme Albert Einstein is considered as having completely supplanted the Newtonian “predict and control paradigm” as opposed to having merely built upon it. Life is viewed as inherently uncertain, and there’s a preference for believing that little can be reliably predicted, so it’s best to adopt an “act first/ ask questions later” approach. Deepak Chopra fans for example will know that “the past is history, and the future a mystery” and that therefore almost any form of planning is repellent – instead, emergence is the thing most highly valued.
5. The “Numerophobia” meme – so widespread is the tendency to avoid numbers, it may be easier to think of this as a syndrome rather than a meme – indeed, in the extreme it is a medical condition called “dyscalculia.” Whilst few people readily admit to being illiterate, there are many who are relatively happy to announce that they “don’t do numbers” – and some have even learned that it pays to be proud of it. In one recent UK study 11% were designated illiterate, but 40% innumerate.
6. The “iNtuitives rule” meme – People who are inhabited by this meme are those who may well feel comfortable weaving (even spinning) their story without the benefit of data that’s been fully “sensed”. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator – scores around 25% of people as N (iNtuitive), the remaining 75% being Sensors – who prefer to look for and absorb data via their 5 senses, data that to them feels tangibly “real.” On average around 12% people score as having N/T (intuitive thinking) preferences – yet exec teams & boards often score at more than 50%. Is this because they have had to become comfortable feeling disconnected from the customer interface, or because they were always that way inclined and therefore gravitated towards the apex of the hierarchy?
7. The “anti-Science” meme – According to this meme even the fact that I’m labelling these value-sets/ memes at all, will be seen as being antithetical – regardless of whether it might in some way prove to be a useful scientific device for advancing knowledge. People in organisations may behave in a way that’s anti-science in that tasks and projects are typically carried out in a Plan-Do-Review sequence – unaware that Plan-Do-Study-Act represents the scientific method in action, and is an entirely different paradigm.
8. the “protect my group or profession” meme – According to this meme, people are confident that they know what they know – and have spent several years of their life being trained to acquire that knowledge. They less aware of the extent to which this has formed their mental maps and how these in turn direct their opinions. When in doubt, reference is made to the writings and utterances of their personal or professional gurus – and quoted verbatim, frequently out of context. When a new tool arrives, the default position is: if I don’t recognise it, it should be rejected – until one of the gurus authenticates it.

Wow, when I started the list I didn’t think there would be as many as eight.

Individuals and organizations that are already, or can become, comfortable with applying the scientific method in their organisations – and personally – as a system, will see the profundity in a tool like BaseLine©. Others will miss it altogether, and one or more of the memes listed above could be preventing them seeing it. I’ll continue to collect more data, both sensed and intuited, and report on my findings in a future blog.

One source of test data will of course be the comments I solicit from readers of this blog, so having read these labels and descriptions, do you notice any reactive feelings? If so, can you accurately describe what you feel most confronted by? I’d be delighted to hear from you.

(1) Richard Dawkins coined (or adapted) the word “meme” in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a value set, or a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices – which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. It’s sometimes used synonymously with the phrase “world view.” Clare Graves then made the Value meme (vMeme) a core concept in his Spiral Dynamics model – see Beck D.E & Cowan C.C. : “Spiral Dynamics – Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change” – 1996

To Push or Not to Push? Is that the Question?

Improvement implies change;

… change implies learning;

… learning implies asking questions;

… and asking questions implies listening with both humility and confidence.

The humility of knowing that their are many things we do not yet understand; and the confidence of knowing that there are many ways we can grow our understanding.

Change is a force – and when we apply a force to a system we meet resistance.

The natural response to feeling resistance is to push harder; and when we do that the force of resistance increases. With each escalation the amount of effort required for both sides to maintain the stalemate increases and the outcome of the trial is decided by the strength and stamina of the protagonists.

One may break, tire or give up …. eventually.

The counter-intuitive reaction to meeting resistance is to push less and to learn more; and it is more effective strategy.


We can observe this principle in the behaviour of a system that is required to deliver a specific performance – such as a delivery time.  The required performance is often labelled a “target” and is usually enforced with a carrot-flavoured-stick wrapped in a legal contract.

The characteristic sign on the performance chart of pushing against an immovable target is the Horned Gaussian – the natural behaviour of the system painfully distorted by the target.

Our natural reaction is to push harder; and initially we may be rewarded with some progress.  And with a Herculean effort we may actually achieve the target – though at what cost?

Our front-line fighters are engaged in a never-ending trial of strength, holding back the Horn that towers over them and that threatens to tip over the target at any moment.

The effort, time, and money expended is out of all proportion to the improvement gained and just maintaining the status quo is exhausting.

Our unconscious belief is that if we weather the storm and push hard enough we will “break” the resistance, and after that it will be plain sailing. This strategy might work in the affairs of Man – it doesn’t work with Nature.

We won’t break the Laws of Nature by pushing harder. They will break us.

So, consider what might happen if we did the opposite?

When we feel resistance we pull back a bit; we ask questions; we seek to see from the opposite perspective and to broaden our own perspective; we seek to expand our knowledge and to deepen our understanding.

When we redirect our effort, time and money into understanding the source of the resistance we uncover novel options; we get those golden “eureka!” moments that lead to synergism rather than to antagonism; to win-win rather than lose-lose outcomes.

Those options were there all along – they were just not visible with our push mindset.

Change is a force – so “May the 4th be with you“.

Are We in Heated Agreement?

Do you ever feel that during a heated debate you are actually arguing the same point? You are in agreement, or rather “heated agreement”. Why does that happen and how can you distinguish this from an real disagreement? Some years ago I came across the concept of “worldviews” while looking for guidance on managing conflict. The idea is that two different people can look at the same thing and see something different; or rather perceive something different. The apparent difference leads to the debate or argument, which if carried to its conclusion demonstrates the zones of both agreement and difference.  When this is done both protagonists can learn from each other and expand their worldviews and their common ground.  If the debate never takes place then their views remain polarised, no exchange happens, no learning takes place and the common ground does not grow. So is heated debate a good thing? Well it depends on the outcome you want.  If you want to improve, learn, change and expand your perspective then “yes”; if you want to change someone else’s opinion to match yours then “no”.  Improvement implies change; change imples learning; and learning implies an altered perspective.  So engaging in heated debate and achieving heated agreement is a sensible improvement strategy!

Am I in a Battle or a Race?

Do you see the challenges that Life presents to you as a series of fight-to-the-death battles or a series of stretch-for-the-finish races? Why does it matter which approach you choose? After all, each has a winner and a loser. Yes, one wins relative to other – but what is the absolute cost for both?  The doodle illustrates the point visually. In a Battle you are in opposition and your effort, time and money are spent and dissipated against each other.  The strong/angry/big will prevail over the weak/timid/small though when the protagnoists are closely matched the outcome takes longer to decide and costs more in absolute terms for both.  One will eventually win while both are weakened from the effort, time and money that is spent.  Contrast this with the race; the investment on both sides is in preparing for the race; in learning, training, and improving.  On the day of the race the more fit/focussed/skilled competitor will win yet both are strengthened from the invested effort, time and money.  In a race the more closely you are matched the more you both improve and get stronger and the quicker the outcome is decided. Exactly the opposite of the battle. It appears that Life will present us with enough new challenges to keep us occupied for the forseeable future; and to rise to those challenges will require that we all learn, train, and practice so that we have the strength, skills and stamina for the challenges we will encounter and cannot yet see.  So, it seems to me to be suicidal to choose to battle with each other and to waste our limited resources of effort, time and money to the point where we are all too weak to survive the inevitable challenges that are over the horizon.  So how would you know which approach you are using?  Well, your feelings are more often sadness, anger or fear then you are probably using the battle metaphor; if in contrast they are feelings of confidence, determination and excitement then you probably see yourself in a race.  The choice is yours.

Delusional Ratios and Arbitrary Targets

This week a friend of mine shared an interesting story.

They were told that their recent performance data showed that performance was improving. “That sounds good” they thought as they started to look at the data which was presented as a table of numbers, one number per time period, as a percentage ratio, and colour coded red, amber or green. The last number in the sequence was green; the previous ones were either red or amber. “See! Our performance has improved and is now acceptable“.

But it did not feel quite right to my friend who did not want to dampen the celebration without good reason, so enquired further “What is the ratio measuring exactly?” “H’mm, let me check, the number of failures divided by the number of customer requests.”  “And what does the red, amber and green signify?” “Oh that’s easy, whether we are above, near or below our target.” “And how was the target set and by whom?” “Um, I don’t know how it was set, we were just told what the target is and the consequences if we don’t meet it.” “And what are the consequences?” No answer – just a finger-across-the-throat gesture.  “Can I see the raw data used to calculate this ratio?” “Eh? I think so, but no one has ever asked us for that before.

My friend could now see the origin of his niggle of doubt.  The raw data showed that the number of customer requests was falling progressively over time while the number of successful requests was not changing.  They were calculating failures from the difference between demand and activity and then dividing the result by the demand to give a percentage that was intended to show their performance. And then setting an arbitrary target for acceptability.

The raw data told a very different story – their customers were going elsewhere – which meant their future income was progressively walking away.  They were blind to it; their ratio was deluding them.

And by setting an arbitrary target for this “delusional ratio” implied that so long as they were “in the green” they didn’t need to do anything, they could sit back and relax. They could not see the nasty surprise coming.

This story led me to wonder how many organsiations get into trouble by following delusional ratios linked to arbitrary targets? How many never see the storm coming until it is too late to avoid it?  Where do these delusional ratios and arbitrary targets come from?  Do they have a valid and useful purpose? And if so, how do we know when to use a ratio or a target and when not to?

It also gave me a new acronym – D.R.A.T. – which seems rather appropriate.

Inspired by actual events

This Sunday I was listening the Aled Jones on Radio 2 – as he was interviewing Mark Kermode of BBC.TV’s Culture Show. Mark posed a profound question:

When you visit the cinema, do you like to watch the kind of film that starts with a caption saying “This is a True Story” or maybe you prefer the kind with a caption saying “This is a story inspired by Actual Events”?

He suggested that it’s best to assume that the first kind is largely a fiction, whereas the latter is almost completely so. Personally, I don’t mind which ever kind it is, for sometimes I actually enjoy being fooled as long as it’s good harmless fun and it’s entertaining – AND as long as I don’t think someone is deliberately fooling me. But then I started wondering: How would I know if they were trying to fool me? Or more worryingly, whether I was fooling myself?

Since the 1850s there have been various “Realism” movements in the fields of cinema, art and literature – featuring the search for literal truth and pragmatism – a representation of objects, actions, or social conditions as they actually are without idealisation or presentation in abstract form – each of these movements was based upon a philosophy that universals exist independently of their having been thought up, and that physical objects exist independently of their being perceived. In this age of political and media “spin” maybe there’ll come a return to such a philosophy? In the mean time, as long as we are aware that the film we’ve chosen to watch is intended as fiction, and is billed as such, most of us won’t mind – indeed we might even view it as escapism – yet in many situations wouldn’t it be nice to feel that we are connected to a representation of events that’s more real, rather than just some one else’s imagined story?

When a patient in the healthcare system, I think I’d rather be treated by professionals who check and double check what they’re doing, and are working within a system that someone has designed to be fail safe – and is measured to be so. I’m hoping that the medics, nurses and administrators know the difference between what’s real and what is imagined. On this week’s Panorama (BBC March 8th 2010) it was suggested that some hospitals have much higher mortality than others, so this isn’t an insignificant hope. The three hospitals featured had all been flagged as having high mortality rates, yet had all been rated “Fair” or “Good” by the Care Quality Commission. This left me thinking that their may be more imagination around in the NHS than hard data.

The thing is, most everyone relies on data (via their 5 senses or their intuition) as if pure and unfiltered – under the assumption that this is all there is. But there’s always more to be known, and some of that missing knowledge may literally be the difference between life and death.

Numerical data in particular is actively avoided by many – even by professionals, be they the designers of the system or an individual who works within it. Many people left school determined to avoid numbers for the rest of their lives – when confronted by even the simplest statistic or numerical puzzle they will happily tell you “I don’t do numbers.” Since seeing the Panorama programme I’m now wondering how many people (clinicians, managers, inspectors) working within the health sector take such a view. Or maybe there’s a full-proof test that every prospective healthcare worker must pass before they’re allowed to practice? Can anyone reasure me about this?

A few weeks ago some very powerful yet delightfully accessible software was launched – called BaseLine©. It has been created so that people can have a kind of 3rd eye perception that mitigates the tendency to fictionalise – so that people can together assess what’s really happening. It’s designed to be a kind of dispassionate “fly on the wall” or a well-positioned “security camera” – and has been designed to be so easy to use that even the numerophobic will want to use it.

It’s actually free software, and even the full version costs under £50 – this is deliberate in order to maximize the possibility of it becoming a health sector standard. Having a standard tool will mean that people won’t have to debate the validity of the statistics, and can move directly to discussing the reality of what’s been happening, what’s happening now, and more importantly what’s likely to happen if nothing changes. Let’s see how long it takes clinicians and managers to discover its power?

www.saasoft.co.uk

What is the Dis-Ease?

Dis-EaseDo you ever go into places where there is a feeling of uneasiness?

You can feel it almost immediately – there is something in the room that no one is talking about.

An invisible elephant in the room, a rotting something under the table.

This week I have been pondering the cause of this dis-ease and my eureka moment happened while re-reading a book called “The Speed of Trust” by Stephen R. Covey.

A common elephant-in-the-room appears to be distrust and this got me thinking about both the causes of distrust and the effects of distrust.  My doodle captures the output of my musing.  For me, a potent cause of distrust is to be discounted; and discounting comes from disrespect.  This can happen both within yourself and between yourself and others. If you feel un-trust-worthy then you tend to disengage; and by disengaging the system functions less well – it becomes dysfunctional.  Dysfunction erodes respect and so on around the vicious circle.

This then led me to the question: Why haven’t we all drowned in our own distrust by now?  I believe what happens is that we reach an equilibrium where our level of trust is stable; so there must be a counteracting trust-building force that balances the trust-eroding force. That trust-building force seem to comes from our day-to-day social interactions with others.

The Achilles Heel of negative-cause-effect circles is that you can break into them at many points to sap their power and reduce their influence.  So, one strategy might be to identify the Errors of Commission that create the Disease of Distrust.

Consider the question: “If I have developed a high level of trust then what could I do to erode it as quickly as possible?”.

Disrespectful attitude and discounting behaviour would be all that is needed to start the vicious downward spiral of distrust disease.

Who of us never disrespects or discounts others?

Are we all infected with the same disease?

Is there a cure or can we only expect to hold it in remission?

How can we strengthen our emotional immune systems and neutralise the infective agents of the Disease of Distrust?

Do we just need to identify and stop our trust eroding behaviour?

That would be a start.

What Can We Learn From Fish?

A few weeks ago we were asked to look after the class fish during the half-term school holiday. Easy enough, just feed it daily and change the water when it gets murky was our handed-down knowledge of fish-management.  So when we observed the fish swimming at the surface apparently gulping air, even our limited grasp of fish-biology suggested that something was not quite right.  After a short web-surf our anxiety was confirmed: our fish was exhibiting high stress behaviour – it was being poisoned by toxic waste – the waste it makes itself.  We learned that a fish-tank is a delicate and complex eco-system.  Too big a fish in too small a tank, over-feeding, stagnation and infrequent complete water changes with toxic (chlorinated) tap-water are the commonest ways we upset this delicate balance. We were unintentionally killing the fish! The remedy was obvious: we had to learn about fish and learn how to maintain the fish-tank-eco-system. And fast! The fish was delivered back to school in a much bigger tank, complete with light, filter, pump, and the output of our learning – written instructions. The reaction was: “Wow! We can’t believe this is the same fish. It looks and behaves completely differently. It looks happy”.

This life-lesson reminded me of a book that I read some years ago called “Fish!” which involves the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle and a story of how the fish-mongers inspired others to dramatically improve their own toxic work places.  The message in the story is that we all swim in the emotional toxic waste that we ourselves create; each of us has the choice to commit to reducing our toxic emotional waste emissions; we can contract to hold each other to account on this commitment; and collectively we have the power to drain our own toxic emotional waste swamps. This led to an “eureka” moment: Improvement can not happen in a toxic emotional environment. So how do we know we have one? What are the symptoms and signs? With this insight I believe we can answer that question by just looking and listening.

And if you fancy a diet of near-pure toxic emotional waste all you have to do is read a daily newspaper. Yeuk!

Can the Finance tail wag the Quality dog?

Money is the “fuel” that all organisations need to survive because all endeavours incur costs. It is the flow of money that is important – static money is just a number.  Money is used to buy time – more specifically LIFE-time.  We trade our life-time for money which we then use to buy the goods and services that we need to survive in the modern world.  These goods and services are delivered by processes that require people’s time to design, implement, operate and improve.  So we all want the best value-for-money that we can get; the best value-for-lifetime. So what happens when the flow of money is constrained? Value, Lifetime and Money are interdependent – restrict the flow of any of the three and all three slow down. It is inevitable. With this perspective it does appear that the finance tail can wag the quality dog; and the lifetime tail can wag the quality dog too. So when you experience low quality goods or services try asking this question: “Is it the flow of money, motivation or both that is the root cause?” Stories please ….

What Blocks Improvement?

Learning LoopsMy focus this week has been to ask the question “What blocks improvement?”. The answers that I found most interesting were “I didn’t realise there was a problem.” and “I feel there is a problem but I don’t know where to focus my attention.” This set me pondering and eventually I had a bit of an “eureka” moment.  It isn’t something that is present that creates this blindness – it is something that is missing. And the only way you can see what isn’t there is by comparison with when it is there – just like the game of “Spot the Difference”. When I compared what I saw with what I know is possible the thing I didn’t see was a fast-feedback loop. Hence the doodle.  It appears that there are at least four dimensions to feedback – sign, magnitude, accuracy and timing.  The speed of the feedback needs to be appropriate to the speed of the improvement; so if we want rapid improvement we need a fast-and-accurate feedback loop – a learning loop.  A slow or inaccurate learning loop not only doesn’t work – it can actually make the problem worse.  So, my take-home this week is to actively search for the learning loops and if I don’t see one then I have something to focus on improving.

What do you do when you don’t know what to do?

One of the scariest feelings I experience is when I am asked “What should we do?” or “What would you do?” and there is an expectation that I should know what to do … and I don’t.

Do I say “I don’t know” or do I play for time and spout some b*****t and hope my lack of knowledge is not exposed?

Reflecting on this uncomfortable, and oft repeated, experience I am led to some questions:

1. Where does the expectation come from? The person asking, myself or both?

2. Where does the feeling of fear come from? What am I scared of? Who am I scared of?

Pondering these questions I have the fleeting impression that my fear comes from me.  I am afraid of disappointing myself.  It is me that I am scared of.

Then the impression is replaced by a conscious process of looking for evidence that proves that it can’t be me – it must be someone else making me feel scared – and to feel better I have to shift the blame from myself.

Oooooo … that’s a bit of an “Eureka” moment!

And now I have a new option. Choose to behave like of a victim of myself and shift the blame; or choose to address the problem – my deep fear of part of myself.

Phew!  I feel better already – I have a new opportunity to explore …