Productivity – How to Get the Most from Your Team: Have a Collaborative Work Culture

Do you operate a fear based work culture or a collaborative work culture?

It’s easy to tell: just take a break, have a holiday. Come back to your work place and if it based on fear you will find work has slowed to a standstill.

A collaborative work culture and you’ll wonder why came back – performance may have actually improved!

Now we humans are a learning animal – we learn from each other – for good or for bad. Having the experience I have in the engineering business (the consultancy or working for hours business – see my presentation on how to measure business performance here) I have seen the effect of focus on maximising revenue alone: training falls by the way side.  Or if it does occur, it is focused on technical, task related skills. That leaves us in the least desirable learning environment: informally from each other!! In an environement like this leadership and managerial skills are taken for granted and left to “brew” in the culture of the company. Managers modeled their styles on the only thing they have – their own managers. And if their own managers were promoted engineers – technically orientated, not people orietnated – well that “brew” will be interesting indeed.

What’s new? Most companies actually run like this: focusing on short term imediate results, deferring training and improvement to a another day, “when things get quiet”. I suppose the confusing element with selling hours for a business is that you are actually trying to buy and sell the same “thing” you need to manage: people.

Confused… How is this related to the culture?

Well consider where fear usually comes from? It’s a fear of something? In business, as an employee, it is a fear of what?  Loosing that job of course, and that comes if the boss perceives you as not performing (whether you are or not is a diferent matter). And there will be fear of being found out that you really don’t know what you are doing.  Because for a technically trained person to have the wrong answer, is to be a failure.  It’s black or white, pass or fail.

From what I have just described – a work team where there’s no formal training in how to lead, how to manage, even how to communicate, the fall back position is to manipulate people like inanimate objects – you can expect that fear will be a natural outcome. Getting promoted into a position you’ve never been trained you will naturally be fearful. And worse, being fearful of anyone finding out that you don’t know.

By the way, don’t bother hiding – it’s always obvious to your team and your managers if you are struggling. It’s how you deal with that struggle that your managers are interested in.   With your team, lie to them and you loose their respect. Loose their respect and you loose your team.

That’s why I enjoy collaborative cultures the most: continual feedback, formal, informal, positive, negative, eliminates the fear.

A culture where the leader recognises that a shortfall in team member is a shortfall in their ability to lead.  A culture where the leader knows that to improve their team they must first improve themselves.

But it does take courage.

Courage is not having no fear – that is fool hardy. Courage is acting despite your fear.

This is the basis behind the collaborative work culture instilled by Ricardo Semler.

Here’s a great lecture by Ricardo at MIT.  He says something very fundamental about the predominant way of working in the 21st century: collaboration.

A meritocracy is another word for it.

by Jeremiah Josey, August 2009

Quotes from Colin Powell

Quotes from Colin Powell

The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve.

Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity.

An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people.

As you grow, your associates will change.

Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want you to stay where they are.

Friends that don’t help you climb will want you to crawl.

Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream.

Those that don’t increase you will eventually decrease you.

Consider this:

• Never receive counsel from unproductive people.
• Never discuss your problems with someone incapable of contributing to the solution, because those who never succeed themselves are always first to tell you how.
• Not everyone has a right to speak into your life.
• You are certain to get the worst of the bargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person.
• Don’t follow anyone who’s not going anywhere.

With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it.

Be careful where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life.

Wise is the person who fortifies his life with the right friendships.

If you run with wolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, you will learn how to soar to great heights.

A mirror reflects a man’s face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses.

The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you closely associate – for the good and the bad.

Note: Be not mistaken.
This is applicable to family as well as friends.
Yes…do love, appreciate and be thankful for your family, for they will always be your family no matter what.
Just know that they are human first and though they are family to you, they may be a friend to someone else and will fit somewhere in the criteria above.

In Prosperity Our Friends Know Us.
In Adversity We Know Our Friends.

Never make someone a priority when you are only an option for them.

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.

These quotes are from Colin Powell, a recent United States Secretary of State.

Posted by Jeremiah Josey

Working with different cultures

Working in different countries and with people from different cultures is a great way to learn about your beliefs, your shortcomings and especially about your ego.

It’s like a mind game: working out how to get the best from your team when they come from China, Japan, South Africa, Sweden, England, Scotland, Sri-Lanka, India, the Philippines or Malaysia!

The Japanese style is perhaps the best that I prefer for getting high volume of work done in a very short period of time – they just know how to work together.  The Dutch are similar, but have more connection to the social component of their lives.

Having done business with South Africans I can appreciate the influences of English, Dutch – and the local environment – to give that particularly effective, selective approach to hard work: choose carefully, and dig in hard once the choice has been made.  This is very similar to Australia in fact, and with each having similar cultural and environmental heritage it explains a lot: see if you can spot the differences between the Springboks supporters and the Wallabies…

When I came across the Ingelhart Values Map it helped a lot in my thoughts in this area: collaboration between cultures.  The map has been created by the World Values Survey.

Read more about the World Value Survey and you’ll learn that it is estimated that the map covers perhaps 70% of influences of a culture.  The map looks at Traditional (or religious) values versus secular rational values, together with survival and self expression desires of a culture.

For example, take the Indian culture: over 1 billion people.  They have a very strong follower trait.  From the map India is more traditionalist and survival focused.  This is reflected in higher birth rates, and can be seen in all the great Indian cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata where the infrastructure is pretty much as left in place by the British in 1948, just now it is in much poorer condition.

When comparing India with Australia, the similarity in strength placed on traditional values would support the notion of high popularity in each country for the very traditional game of cricket?

;o)

Jeremiah Josey

Working smarter and not harder

When I was 13 or 14 years old, I’m not sure which, I lived with my mother on my grandparents farm in far western NSW – Outback Australia.

A new local TV tower had been installed about 5 km away and so we could now watch Australia’s equivalent to the BBC without watching it through a blue plastic screen to cut back the snow. That also meant that the 100′ high tower above the homestead holding up the TV antenna was no longer needed.

The bigger boys – my mums’ brothers and her dad – took down the mast and it’s guy wires over the course of a few days and stored away the steel pipe (later to be used in building new stock yards and fences I recall).

But they left the last 3 feet of pipe and the large buried concrete base the pipe was embedded in.

One day I decided to take it out.

From early morning until well into the afternoon I toiled, using crow bar, breaking bar, shovels (post hole and flat) and lots of water to loosen and remove the earth from around the concrete plinth.

The task seemed beyond me. My hands were raw with blisters – they had formed and broken many hours previously. But I had to rest – beside, Gran had arrived with lunch! I sat down on the grass and looked at the mamoth mass of concrete and pondered.

What is going on? Am I doing this the right way? This how you always take out something like this: you dig and dig until it falls over. But it doesn’t seem right. Besides it’s taking too long!

The process was working – hitting it on the side I could see that it was moving every so slightly. This was going to take days!

Then I realised: I don’t want to get this thing across, I want to get it up and then out.

What I need is to lift it….

An idea formed.

I went out the back to the large workshop we had and looked around.

There was always lots of stuff to choose from.

I found what I was after: two very sturdy short pieces of I beam – each piece weighing much more than me! I struggled, shoved, dragged and coheresed each steel section to either side of the massive hole I had dug – concrete massif sitting smugly in the center.

I then carried across a long length of 4″ x 4″ SHS, and placed a 5 or 10 tonne hydraulic jacks on top in the middle of the SHS (one of those big ones you can use on a truck – not a car one).

Getting the picture?

I then found some heavy duty steel link chain and using the same connection method that the mast used before, connected the chain to the pipe protruding out of the concrete.

Wrapping the chain over the lifting piston of the jack and tying it off on itself, I was ready.

I insterted the lifting lever into the jack, and with two fingers (I remember how funny I felt exerting as little effort as I could) watched this massive concrete rise up out of the water and mud.

Magic.

In a few short moments it was done.

I adjusted the chain once or twice I recall, but once the connection with the ground was broken the concrete was mine!

I tied the mass of concrete to my mum’s car and dragged it off into the scrub behind some gum trees. It’s still there to this day I believe.

The lesson I have remembered every since: work smarter not harder.

Even today when I’m head down and focused on a problem, that feeling of “hang on, there’s an easier way” starts knocking and pretty soon, I’ll stop, reassess and find myself an alternative – my present day hydraulic jack and I beam solution.

There you have it. Work smarter, not harder.

Jeremiah Josey

PS, here’s a Google Maps link that will take you straight to the homestead!
Rostella Homestead

Avoid Working with an A-H!

This is a great blog I came across recently by Guy Kiyosaki. I’ve posted a little bit of it below. You can find the entire post here:

…Mean-spirited morons are still running much of the workplace, and it’s time to take a stand. Most nastiness is directed by superiors to subordinates; so before taking a job, do your homework and screen them out in advance. (After all, avoidance is the easier than curing.)

To do this, I propose that you check your prospective boss’s references just like she’s checking out yours. I’m not suggesting that you ask your prospective boss for a list of references (you can try, but it may mean you don’t get the job).

Instead, do a LinkedIn reference check. First, look her up to determine if you have any common connections. If so, find out more from people you trust. Second, use the LinkedIn reference check tool to find people who overlapped with her in the past…

Read the whole post here: Guy’s No Asshole blog post.

Linkedin.com in a great tool for business. You can see my profile by clicking here: My Profile

Chicken Soup?

90% Chickens pair up for the mating season, i.e. choosing only one sexual partner.

50% of them split after the mating season (and go on to form other relationships the following season). The other 50% remain with the same sexual partner for successive seasons.

Humans have similar figures: 90% of people choose to have one sexual partner at a time (90% of us marry). Our divorce rate is 50%.

We are animals after all, but chickens?!!

Another interesting information about chickens:

The “pecking order” commences immediately the chickens hatch and is complete by 4 weeks. The order is then set for the rest of their lives. The strongest rooster never gets pecked; the weakest male and the weakest female are pecked constantly (with the weakest of the weak often perishing as a result).

See any similarities?

Is this where things like “Ethnic cleansing” come from?

And then consider, some of the strongest brightest minds who are living and have lived amongst us have issues that wouldn’t put them near the top of the pecking order if they were in a chicken coop: Stephen Hawkins has motor neuron disease, Richard Branson is dyslexic, Carl Sagan died prematurely from illness.

Do we have a fundamental “animal instinct” driving us one way to the “pecking order”, and another, creative expansive desire pushing us another?

I think so, but we’ll need to cross the road to find out!

The Electronic Communication and Consciousness Conundrum

When an email is sent or a blog is created, it is the written word that is transmitted – nothing more, nothing less.  Many studies have shown that the written word – words – only transmit 10%, at most, of the intended meaning of the communication.   My fellow Australian Allan Pease – specifically “body language” – pioneered these studies in the 1970’s.  I am sure however that implicit and explicit knowledge has been around as long as we have been around.

So what happens to the rest of the communication?  How does the recipient get to 100% of the message, or at least the message they think they get?

We make it up.

Without the balance of the information (the 90%) the recipient will draw on their own database of information to complete the message – to get to 100%.

That means that what is in the recipients database – their mind, their memories, their experiences – will have far more impact on the final message than the original 10% of the orginal message.

Sound like a good chance for miscommunication?  Absolutely!

So, what are the chances that the 90% ADDED to the message by the recipient ALIGNS with the Sender?

That depends on one thing: the level of consciousness of the recipient.  The message will be lost if the receipt is unconscious.  Skewed by bias and innuendo, the recipient will create a message that fits only with their own world view, and will have very little relevance to the senders intended message.

With increasing levels of consciousness, the correctness of the message will approach 100%.

What does this mean – “increasing levels of consciousness”?

Well remember that each human on this planet – that means you and me – is a balance of two things: our conscious beliefs and our unconscious beliefs.  An unconscious person draws heavily from their beliefs, their superstitions, their history, their parents, their peers, and the community around them.  Are they an active participant in their lives?  Not really. Look at them as a leaf in a stream. They will go wherever the stream takes them.  Their Self determination is low.  Awareness of the world around them – and their involvement in it – is low.

Consider a conscious person, even one in the early stages of awakening.  They have assimilated their experiences and even developed their sub-conscious to be a reflection of their conscious self determination.  They are either awake, awakening or somewhere in between.  They understand their role in creation, their influence and their impact.

So what happens?

An “unconscious”, unaware person builds up the 90% missing information in an unconscious way.  So much so, they even believe they are getting 100% of the message from the sender just by reading their words.  This is how wars begin: email wars, and real wars…

The conscious person on the other hand, understands the limitations of the communication medium and will either, depending on their level of consciousness, ask questions until they are clear on the communication (an unconscious person will typically be fearful of asking questions for fear of “offending” the sender, or most commonly, being seen to be “ignorant” or a “lesser person”), or the conscious person will be in direct connection with the sender empathetically. But that my friends is another discussion.

Helping me to remember:  Become conscious.  Meditate.  Be with God.

Jeremiah Josey

Semco Summary

From Maverick, 1993, by Ricardo Semler.

Semco is more than novel programs or procedures. 

What is important is our open-mindedness, our trust in our employees and distrust of dogma. 

We are neither socialist nor purely capitalist, but we take the best of these failed systems and others to reorganise work so that collective thinking does not overpower individualistic flights of grandeur; that leadership does not get lost in an endless search for consensus; that people are free to work as they like, when they like; that bosses don’t have to be parents and workers don’t act like children. 

At the heart of our bold experiment is a truth so simple it would be silly if it wasn’t so rarely recognised.  A company should trust its destiny to its employees. 

No, Semco isn’t a model, with programs to be followed with precision, so many recipes for participation, productivity, and profits. Semco is an invitation. 

I hope our story will cause other companies to reconsider themselves, and their employees. 

To forget socialism, capitalism, just-in-time deliveries, salary surveys, and the rest of it, and to concentrate on building organisations that accomplish that most difficult of challenges: to make people look forward to coming to work in the morning.

The What and Why Applied to Business – Implicity Semco Style

I posted that last story because it always reminds me to ask the “why” about everything.

I find that asking “Why” often enough will eventually reveal the “What” of the “Why”. The reason for doing something then becomes very clear. If there is no “What”, then most likely what ever is being discussed does not need to be done!

This is how a company running the Semco model operates: the key focus is “What?” and “Why?” The “How” is not important and so it can adapt and change to suit the circumstances.

The many businesses that focus on the “how” are unable to explain the What or the Why of their organisation. Their rigidity maintained by piles of procedures, rules and policies do not allow room to ask “Why”.  If it is asked the answer will be: “We have always done it that way”.

What the company actually does, and why it does it. What it does best, why it does things a certain way. No body really knows.

That’s what will make the difference between a company for the 21^st century and one that remains in the 20^th.

Our world is changing rapidly, information is more readily available than ever before, challenges now affect the entire world.

Adapt or perish!

A Story About a Habit

A newly married couple were in the kitchen one Sunday. The wife was preparing a piece of lamb for roasting and the husband was preparing the vegetables. The husband observed as the wife placed the piece of lamb onto the chopping block and promptly chopped 4 inches from each end, discarded the pieces into the bin. She then placed the lamb into the center of the large baking tray, around which the husband began to place the vegetables.

The husband asks, “Why did you do that darling, that looked like perfectly good lamb you threw away?”

“Oh, I never think of it”, she replied. “Mother always did it and that’s what she taught me. We can ask her when we visit her for roast dinner next Sunday.”

So, that next Sunday they visited Mother for her Sunday roast and were served roast lamb and vegetables. Looking at the roast they could both see clearly that the ends had been cut off.

The daughter asked, “Mother, why are then ends missing from the roast?”

“It’s because… I honestly don’t know”, replied Mother. “I’ve always done it that way, just like my mother taught me. She is visiting next week so come for dinner again and we can ask her”.

So, another week passed and they were all seated at the table for Sunday roast, this time Grand Mother is present. And, like last week, the roast with its ends removed appears from the kitchen.

“Grand Mother,” begins the husband, “I’ve seen both your daughter and your grand daughter cut both ends of a perfectly good roast before they cook it, and I was wondering why you taught them to do it that way.”

“That is a very good question Grand Son.” says Grand Mother. “For many years when my daughter was growing up, we lived in a small apartment in New York. In that apartment we had a very small oven with a very small door, and the only way for me to cook my Sunday roast was to cut the ends off so it would fit into the small baking tray I used to fit into the oven. I stopped doing that years ago, ever since I got a larger oven – after my daughter left home I recall. Why waste perfectly good meat?”