A635.3.3.RB_BorutyAlan_50 Reasons Not to Change_The Tribes We Lead

50 Reasons Not to Change_The Tribes We Lead

Looking back on myself as far back as I can remember, I have always had an aversion to change.  I was a fan of the status quo, a creature of habit, a digger of ruts.  In many ways, that has changed; in some ways it remains the same.  Sometime in the early 1990s, I had to start making changes in my life because someone, somewhere changed the phrase from ‘we have always done it this way’ to ‘we don’t do it that way anymore’.  Reluctantly, I began to comply.  For that, I am grateful.  The world I grew up in does not exist anymore.  For that, I am sad. 

I entered the Air Force before the phrase changed.  One morning I overheard my shop chief talking about making changes to an area where we stored and refilled large bottles with dielectric gas we used to service aircraft.  Later, I questioned the logic of that change with my supervisor.  And, the job was mine.  That only happened one more time and I learned my lesson.  The lesson I learned was that keeping an Airman with an attitude busy is enough to justify making any change.  The lesson I learned about change is that it is a job that must be done whether I agree with it or not.  When the job is done, feel pride, but miss the old way.  Before long, the reason for making the change becomes clear.  Soon after that, the old way does not make sense anymore and you wonder why we ever did it that way to begin with.  Every change that I have been involved in since has followed a similar pattern.  

So, why is it that when I am faced with change, I get that uncomfortable feeling inside that tells me to avoid it at any cost?  It still happens, but today I can ignore the flight response.  The Air Force taught me through repetition that change is necessary, often mandatory.  Obsolescence is real.  You either change or you find yourself not knowing how to do something you were good at yesterday.

For that reason, when I hear someone using one of the 50 reasons not to change, I try to be understanding, I briefly explain why the change is necessary and the positive impact it will have, then I end the debate.  They will eventually realize (like I had to) that most of the pain associated with change is self-imposed and unnecessary.  I sometimes struggle with my conscience when I take this stance because I know I have used the same excuse myself.  I have not used any of the 50 reasons in a very long time.  I learned my lesson.

There is a big difference between the military and civilian organizations when it comes to change.  I have experienced many significant changes in the Air Force.  I have never experienced the resistance, anger, or opposition that Brown (2011) described.  It simply does not occur, at least not that I have witnessed.  I have seen violent displays outside of the military.  It may be that military members have been broken and accept that resistance is futile.  However, I believe it is the environment and culture.  It is interesting to me nonetheless. 

For myself, I overcome the thinking that creates the negative responses to change efforts by thinking about my children and their generation.  For them change is the norm.  They count down the days until they are eligible to upgrade to the newest version of technology.  They are genuinely bored by the status quo.  It is fascinating to me that two generations can be so opposite.  It reminds me that change is not necessarily bad and it can be embraced.  Brown (2011) might advocate different “ways to reduce this resistance, including good communication and participation in the change process” (p. 159).

Seth Godin’s presentation was thought provoking and true; people are waiting for a connection and they want to be led (Godin, 2009).  However, the concept is not new.  Many negative examples of it exist today as well as in our history books. 

For positive applications, I not only agree with his concept but tribes can be incredibly powerful.  In an ethics class I took recently, I wrote a paper on the morality of eating meat.  They call it eating animals.  I felt very strongly that it is ethical to eat animals and provided strong arguments supporting my position.  My point is I never actually met anyone in the movement that opposed the practice; I only read their arguments.  I did not agree with them and did not find them to be well supported.  Yet, I found myself near anger defending what I had for dinner the night before.  The tribe supporting that movement is extremely powerful.  The may not ever achieve their goal for change, but they will convince a lot of people to join their effort along the way. 

My takeaway from this exercise is that change often makes room for progress.  It is necessary and generally good.  Many people are by nature averse to the idea of change.  I have and should use the tools that can reduce the urge to resist change.  I have a responsibility to understand the details of change and a right to oppose change I disagree with.

~Pete

References

Brown, D. R. (2011). An experiential approach to organization development (8th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Godin, S. (2009, February). The tribes we lead [Video file]. TED2009. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead

A635.2.3.RB_BorutyAlan_How Companies Can Make Better Decisions

How Companies Can Make Better Decisions

 In her eleven-minute interview with Sara Greene from Harvard Business Review, Marcia Blenko (2010) explained that better decision making has a significant correlation with financial performance.  My initial thought was of course it does.  It seems obvious that a business that consistently makes good business decisions would make more money than if it routinely made bad business decisions.  After all, that is how businesses fail.  However, the correlation is so high and so consistent that Blenko (2010) suggests that decisions should be the basic unit of organization.  In other words, build organizational structure to support making specific decisions.  That is significant.

The study also correlated employee engagement with better decision making.  This also makes sense to me.  If a company is consistently making good business decisions, it is listening to and including employees at every level in those decisions.  Approximately 60 percent of the solutions to an organization’s problems come from the lower levels of the organization (Obolensky, 2014).  When those solutions become decisions that make the organization better, the employees feel more a part of the company and that they have a say in how the company does business.  They get more satisfaction from their work and will continue to offer suggestions to make it even better (Obolensky, 2014).  "Making information available at every level increases employee motivation and permits faster decision making" (Brown, 2011, p. 67).  That is how employee engagement relates to decision effectiveness.

Consistently making effective decisions is no small feat.  There are many things that can get in the way of good decision making.  Blenko (2010) talked about how people in an organization often do not know who should make the decision which slows the process down.  Sometimes a person must make a decision and the circumstances pressure a quick decision, but they do not have enough or the right information to make a quality decision.  This happens a lot in maintenance.  No two jobs are the same and something unexpected always comes up.  Usually experience can get you through, but sometimes you need more information.  The trick is to know and respond correctly to the difference.  Blenko (2010) continued by explaining how leadership behavior could be a barrier to making good decisions specifically if they do not have open discussions.  

I had a supervisor that genuinely believed information was power.  He liked to know things before anyone else and he would use that to make himself look more important.  More than once, he received information that involved committing our team to do volunteer work on one of the commander’s projects.  He would make the decision without telling (or asking) anyone else.  It allowed him to say yes to the boss and let everyone on the team know he was our boss.  He got it wrong twice in a row; we could not do what he committed us to do.  If he had discussed his decision with us, we would have reminded him of the prior commitments he forgot about.  We could not change plans.  On both occasions he had to go to the boss and retract his decision.  I assume there was some discussion between him and the boss because it did not happen again.  Not discussing his decision or getting all the information he needed before making the decision, resulted in him making a poor decision that he ultimately regretted.

Bias is another impediment to making good decisions.  I find bias especially dangerous because often the decision maker does not know that bias has affected their decision.  Psychologists have identified scores of these bias traps that anyone can fall into and not realize it.  The result of bias can be disastrous (Neal & Spetzler, 2015).  While all bias has the potential to undermine the decision-making process, nearly three quarters of companies still have no organization-wide process for effective decision making (Neal & Spetzler, 2015). 

Blenko (2010) defined an effective decision using four measures: quality, speed, yield, and effort.  Each of the measures do seem to have merit although I am not fond of the use of of the term speed.  Blenko uses the word to describe the ability to make and execute an effective decision before the competition.  As a standalone word one might get the impression that the idea is to rush decisions just to get to the next.  Unfortunately, I do not know what else she might call it. 

I would, however, add one additional measure to define effective decisions.  I would add timing.  Timing would measure where on the scale of proactive to reactive the decision occurred.  You can consistently be quicker to the decision than the competition but still be reactive.  Yes, the decision created value but I would argue that if the timing of the decision was more proactive, it would have generated even more value.  “Proactive strategies are superior because they allow the company using the strategy the freedom to make its own decisions rather than responding out of necessity to a situation that already may be out of control” (Thompson, 2018).  Each decision should be looked at to determine what could possibly be done to improve the timing of decisions.  Being more proactive is a lesson I need to use in my daily activities.  Otherwise, someone else is making my decisions for me; I am only choosing how to do what has already been determined.

I tried to write this exercise off as stating the obvious which, for the most part, is exactly what Blenko’s (2010) study did.  However, the implications to developing an organization are huge.  Determining the decisions an organization will have to make and assigning those decisions at the appropriate level then building an organizational structure that effectively support those decisions is not obvious.  I have questions on how to predict those decisions as well as how to determine which organizational level will make the decision.  It seems like an inside-out way to create structure and I have not quite wrapped my head around the concept.  I do, however, believe the concept has merit (Blenko, et al., 2010).  For now, it is an area I need to research further.

Effective decision making requires a process developed by the top executives and taught to the entire organization (Quain, 2018; Neal & Spetzler, 2015).  Top executives make the critical decisions, but many decisions happen at lower levels in the organization.  This implies that the organization will have to become transparent internally and openly share information, knowledge, and processes (Quain, 2018; Neal & Spetzler, 2015).  I would also add that doing so sooner rather than later will likely add value to your decision.

~Pete

References

Blenko, M. (2010, October 13). How companies can make better decisions, faster [Video file]. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_ continue=23&v=pbxpg6D4Hk8

Blenko, M. W., Mankins, M. C., & Rogers, P. (2010). The decision-driven organization. (cover story). Harvard Business Review, 88(6), 54-62.

Brown, D. R. (2011). An experiential approach to organization development. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Neal, L. and Spetzler, C. (2015, May 27). An organization-wide approach to good decision making. Harvard Business Review.  Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy. libproxy.db.erau.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=a52f2b69-7be5-4938-a1b6-0c7e3baf5545%40sessionmgr4010

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership: Embracing paradox and uncertainty. Burlington, VT: Gower Publishing.

Quain, Sampson. (2018, June 29). The decision-making process in an organization. Small Business - Chron.com. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/decisionmaking-process-organization-21532.html

Thompson, S. (2018, June 26). Difference between a proactive and a reactive business strategy. Small Business - Chron.com. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-proactive-reactive-business-strategy-62157.html

A635.1.3.RB_BorutyAlan_21st Century Enlightenment

 After viewing Matthew Taylor’s (2010) animated presentation, 21^st Century Enlightenment, I had to think about why I was asked to watch the video in the first place.  What was the message I was supposed to hear?  These were not easy questions for me to answer.  How can I know what he meant versus wat he said?  The truth is I cannot know with certainty.  I watched Taylor’s presentation a number of times trying to ‘get it’ or find its hidden meaning.  It simply was not there.  When I stopped trying to hear what was not said, I could hear what was said. 

 Most would agree that the world in the 21^st Century is more advanced, has access to more information, and has the benefit of technology that simply did not exist in the previous century.  As a result, we know more, can learn more, and can do it faster and more accurately than ever before.  So why is it that when faced with the question of enlightenment, do we think about it the way we always have.  It will simply produce the answers we got in the past. 

Taylor (2010) may have titled his presentation 21^st Century Enlightenment to indicate a new starting point for the question. Perhaps the answer we get will be different, more accurate, or provide insight that has not been considered before.  I think most of us have experienced this in our lives.  Until we have all of the information on any subject, we cannot be sure our answer is correct.  Asking the question of enlightenment today assumes that we should apply all of the learning we have compiled since the last time we asked the question.  Moving closer to the correct answer demands it.

For a long time, I had a definition of success that included financial freedom, being the recognized expert in my chosen career, and occupying a powerful position within my field of expertise.  This definition drove my behavior, my attitude and my outlook.  In short, it controlled the way I lived my life.  As long as that was my perception, that was the way I lived my life.  It did not matter that I was not happy in other areas.  As long as I sought success and as long as I defined success in that manner, the way I lived could not change. After experiencing a couple of events that made me question my thinking about success, I changed the definition I had for success. When I did, everything changed.  I live a significantly different and more enjoyable life today as a result.  Taylor (2010) said if we are to live differently, we must think differently.  We are creatures of habit.  Different viewpoints and perspectives offer us options we did not have using our old thinking. 

 Resisting our tendencies to consider familiar things good and strange things bad follows the logic of gathering all the information or having a complete understanding of a subject before passing judgement on that subject.  Many people find it easy to fall into this trap, myself included.  An ethics class I recently took taught me that not everything is as simple as you might expect.  Genetic modification was always something I was against.  Images of cloned sheep came to mind every time the subject came up.  After doing research and learning more about the processes and the possibilities that the science holds, I changed my mind.  Ending world hunger, curing the deadliest diseases are possibilities that are arguably within the reach of genetic modification today.  I’m not trying to sway any beliefs anyone may have.  Solid arguments exist on both sides of the issue.  But, because I looked a little closer my assessment changed.  Taylor understands these tendencies can cause us to misjudge something too important to get wrong.

 Taylor (2010) holds that the path to enlightenment is one of self -aware autonomy where we each seek to discover our empathic capacity.  To determine our true capacity, we should reject the things that make us think of others negatively.  I do believe it is possible to apply what we know about human behavior in a positive way.  It is just as easy to see others in a positive light as we do negatively.  Offering respect and recognizing the worth of others is possible.  However, to do that we need to know who we are and be comfortable with our existence.  I hate to say doing so goes against our normal behavior but it is a sad truth.  This is what Taylor (2010) means when he says we must live differently in the 21^st Century.  A lofty goal but one worth pursuing and one that can be achieved if we change our thinking.   

 Organizational change is an organization-wide project (Browm, 2011).  Involving everyone implies that everyone has something to offer.  Taylor (2010) tells us that this should inspire us to respect and value others. It should not create an unhealthy competition.  All OD activities need to understand this in order to get the best ideas and therefor the most out of OD.  Otherwise full employee participation is not possible.

 This is the lesson I can put to use immediately in my career.  Offering the respect and value to the people with whom I come in contact can be seen as the beginning of a collaborative relationship which will make both of us better in time.  Anything else is time consuming, counterproductive, and ultimately leaves the both of us less capable.

 I do not know that this presentation sparked additional questions in me, but it certainly highlighted areas and situations that I need to be careful of my own tendencies.  It also helped me to think about how to change they way I think in some situations.

 ~Pete

References

 Brown, D. R. (2011). An experiential approach to organization development (8^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

 Taylor, M. (2010, August 19). RSAnimate: 21^st century enlightenment [Video file]. The RSA. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=AC7ANGMy0yo