When You Need to Get Hit By a Bus

A colleague recently had a family medical crisis, and was amazed at the clarity that this brought to his life. This guy is a passionate business owner and a bit of a workaholic. He confesses to always feeling a bit behind, certain that without his daily presence his "business would go to hell."

In the midst of the crisis, all the niggling details at work fell away, and he was amazed that "people just handled it." As the family pulled together to deal with the crisis, he found himself turning off his cellphone and ignoring the constant stream of emails, for hours and even days at a time. When he did check messages, he was amazed at how quickly he was able to evaluate which phone calls and issues he truly needed to handle, and which could be left for another day, another week.

In managing our time and our business, we talk about prioritizing, and planning, and doing the right thing. But sometimes, we need a crisis to drag us away, to give us time to think, to detach from the daily churn.We often worry about getting hit by the proverbial bus - the unexpected catastrophe that takes us out of the business. But sometimes, there's nothing better than getting hit by some virtual bus, some crisis that gives us clarity about what is truly important.

What's Your Problem?

If you're in business, you need to know what your problem is; what is the problem that you are in the business of solving?

T. Harv Eker, high-octane creator of Secrets of The Millionaire Mind, says that an entrepreneur is someone who solves problems for a profit. Good definition. The more problems you solve, the more profit you make. The bigger the problems you solve, the more profits you make.

When you realize this, and look at your business in terms of solving customer problems for a profit, you can't get to problems fast enough. Bring them on! Seeing problems as opportunities for profit is quite a bit different from seeing customer problems as a nuisance to be avoided.

One household appliance company kept hearing laments from their customers about how hard it was to get rid of their old clothes washers and dryers. Apartment dwellers especially had a problem, with no place to store their old appliances until they could hire someone to eventually haul it away. While the company had ignored this customer problem for years ("We're in the new appliance business, not junk hauling!"), an employee suggestion led them to consider the opportunity it presented.

They were delivering the new appliances anyway. They had capable staff onsite with the equipment needed to move appliances. They had space on the delivery truck, since they had just unloaded the new appliances. The staff were returning to the truck empty handed. The truck was returning to the depot empty. The company decided to offer a removal service, charging a small but highly profitable fee to haul away the old appliances at the same time as they delivered the new ones. They built a relationship with a recycling organization and a used-appliance outlet to get rid of the old equipment. The customer problem was solved, the company's profits increased.

How many more problems might they be able to solve?

• Customers have a problem unpacking, installing and connecting the new appliances. It's often pretty complicated and needs a good handy man to complete. Solve that problem with some cross training and a few tools, and you have an on-the-spot installation crew. More profit opportunity.
• Customers have another problem getting rid of all the packaging and large cardboard boxes from the new appliances. Solve that problem by taking the packaging back in the mostly empty truck. More profit opportunity.

So, next time your customers complain, or share a problem with you related to your business dealings with them, think about how you might solve that problem and turn it into profit. Because that's what entrepreneurs do.

Is Technology REALLY Making You More Efficient?

As we strive to improve productivity, we embrace technology. And it's great, we get so much faster and more efficient! Life is grand! Until something goes wrong. Simple, small-scale case in point...

Love my Blackberry. Love the integration of my calendar and contacts with Microsoft Outlook. Love the integration of Adobe Acrobat with Outlook and with everything else. Life is grand. But then...

1. Installed a routine update to Blackberry Desktop Manager.
2. Suddenly, my Blackberry wouldn't sync to Outlook.
3. Suddenly, Outlook wouldn't connect to my email account.
4. Checked all Outlook settings. Fine. No change.
5. Checked all Blackberry and desktop software settings. Fine. No change.
6. Uninstalled and reinstalled Blackberry software. No change.
7. Uninstalled and reinstalled USB drivers. No change.
8. Reinstalled Outlook. No change.
9. Uninstalled Outlook and Blackberry software and reinstalled. No change.
10. Hard reboot of Blackberry. No change.
11. Reboot computer again.
12. Outlook working! Magic!
13. Blackberry still won't sync.
14. Adobe Acrobat integration with Outlook lost.
15. Reinstall Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat working.
16. Blackberry still won't sync.
17. Technical support? No solution.
18. etc, etc, etc.

Now, in our little office, this is nuisance and a headache, and caused hours of frustration. Multiply this by a couple hundred staff, and throw in an IT department and fifty more integrated software applications, and you start seeing the cost of all your "improved productivity".

Technology always makes great claims for productivity improvements, and it delivers, as long as it works. It always comes with a cost, and it always comes with the need for specialized technical knowledge. As we embrace more-and-more technology, we make most of our staff more-and-more powerless when things go wrong.

So yes, look at technological options when searching for solutions to your problems. But don't believe the brochures, and don't ignore all the real, inevitable complications and costs that come with any technological solution.

Is There Really a Top Priority?

How do you do time management in a real, messy company? In a real, messy management job?

Do you sort your tasks into A, B and C priorities, and then choose one of the A tasks and start hacking away at it? Then, when that one's done, you start hacking away at the next one. Or, more likely, you get interrupted by a crisis and get drawn back into the world of daily fire-fighting before you've made much progress on any top priority items.

One assumption that many people make is that they can somehow identify the top priority task, as if there is some universal rule that states "There will always be a single top priority." Unfortunately, that ain't the way it works.

It is very likely that there are two or four or five equally important areas you need to work on, four or five comparably-important tasks. The consequence of this is that you need a time management strategy that isn't based on finding the one top priority, but one that allows you to effectively make progress on several important priorities at the same time.

Think about it.

Nothing to do With Technology

A TV news production company has an online presence, a 24-hour news channel with text, photos, and videos; glitzy and content-rich, but basically, a website. The technology and tools they use are identical to the tools you can use to do this at home, with the same kind of software running on the same kind of computers. Sure, they have fancier cameras, and professional staff, but there's nothing in the technology they're using that differentiates them from us, from the masses. So what does differentiate them? What gives them a competitive advantage?

Touring their facility, you see computers, cameras, computers, microphones, and more computers. There is a physical desk and background set where the news is produced, but most of what you see throughout the building is technology. Indeed, a news production company is a technology company, an IT company. But that's not what they feel is responsible for their success.

The people in this organization are remarkable, the relationships are remarkable. The production engineer talks more about how well the different groups work together than about how the technology works. The person who creates the headlines and graphics enthuses about how good the internal technical support group is. The technicians are so grateful for how well the five branch offices work together, with a frequent and free flow of problems, solutions and support. The union leader is proud of how well management and labour get along - "we just talk things out; it seems like everyone's just trying to help people do good work and enjoy their work. We do really cool things. People love coming to work here."

Over and over, throughout the company, people would willingly demonstrate the technology they used. But, more noticably, people would enthusiastically rave about how good the people were, how positive the environment was, how strong the relationships had become and how much of a joy it was to work there. These were people who were doing an unplanned technical demonstration for an unplanned technical guest, but their enthusiasm and their presentations had little to do with technology.

Indeed, the success of their technology company has little to do with technology. The continuing success of their company is firmly rooted in the human side of things. Isn't yours?

Twelve Leadership Tips That Really Work

Are your people taking too much initiative? Do they solve problems spontaneously, and apply their creativity to problems that arise? Are they functioning effectively as a team, with great communication and conflict resolution skills?

If so, there is no time to lose. Here are twelve proven techniques that are guaranteed to reduce motivation, and inhibit those pesky spontaneous problem-solving activities that sometimes arise amongst your staff.

1. Give Orders - When someone presents you with a situation, make sure to tell then what to do and what not to do. Direct them and give them commands to make sure they know who is supposed to do the thinking.
2. Warn and Threaten - A little fear goes a long way. In no uncertain terms, lay down the law. Something like "If you don't shape up, then ... blah, blah, blah ... dumpster diving and food stamps ... blah, blah, blah ... cattle prod."
3. Preach the Gospel - Where fear falls short, guilt can save the day. Talk about responsibility, and duty, and should's. Make it a moral issue. If necessary, beg, and appeal to their conscience.
4. Advise and Solve - Suggest a different approach; tell them what would be best. Whatever you do, don't let them come up with ideas on their own. That's just asking for further creativity in the future.
5. Persuade and Argue - Especially when there's conflict, make sure to present facts and arguments explaining why they're in the wrong. If they stubbornly try to have their issues heard, try speaking louder or covering your ears.
6. Criticize - Point out how they are being foolish, or overly sensitive. Identify how their thinking is skewed, how they're wrong, and why what they're saying is, at best, wrong, and at worst, stupid.
7. Praise Them - Butter them up with compliments, and try to put a positive spin on their complaints. Let them know how intelligent they are, how they've always managed to succeed in the past. Just make sure you don't let them talk about how this challenge might be different.
8. Ridicule and Shame - Call them a whiner, or a sloppy worker. Or dismiss what they're saying because they're a typical engineer, or accountant, or a woman, or Ukrainian, or whatever. Labelling is an effective tool, because it quickly addresses their delusion of being an individual by lumping them into some arbitrary group.
9. Interpret and Analyze - Let them know that you completely understand them (even though you really don't have a clue and honestly don't care - you just want them to do their job). Imply that you fully understand their inner motivations - they're just jealous, or have a problem with authority, or they're angry. Just make something up - it still works.
10. Reassure and Console - Especially with interpersonal problems, a kindly "you'll feel different tomorrow" goes a long way towards dismissing the importance of the issue. Platitudes like "every cloud has a silver lining" are also useful for avoiding their snivelling.
11. Interrogate - Challenge everything they've told you with lots of questions. Why did you do that? Why didn't you come to me earlier? How long has this been going on? What have you tried? Anything to imply that they were wrong and should change their behavoiur. If you have a bright light you can shine in their eyes, all the better.
12. Distract and Divert - Tell a funny story, or, better yet, tell them about your own problems. Sometimes a cup of coffee or a shiny trinket can take their mind off the situation, and save you from having to hear about it. Whatever you do, don't let them focus obsessively on the problem at hand - that's unhealthy.

All of these techniques contain the powerful message that they need to change; they need to think, feel or act differently; they are not OK. All of these techniques are wonderful for showing people that we don't accept them as they are. And, as we all know, feeling unaccepted is the perfect environment for poor psychological health, personal stagnation, and poor communication.

Of course, if you're a bit of a wingnut, and actually want to encourage creative problem solving, team work, and good communication, you might want to avoid these behaviours. These are the Roadblocks to Communication outlined by Dr. Thomas Gordon in Leader Effectiveness Training. Surprisingly, he actually recommends NOT using these techniques, in favour of other, more effective leadership techniques. Go figure!

Rapid Improvement Projects

Are there areas of your business that continually struggle? Are your people having trouble keeping up with your customers’ continually increasing requirements? Maybe growth has strained your systems beyond their capacity. Or perhaps a slowdown has made you realize how out-of-control everything has been. Regardless, it’s gotten to the point that you have to make some changes, and you have to do it now.


You don’t have to figure it out yourself. By pulling together a cross-functional team that includes people who work in the area, people from other involved departments, and outside eyes from valued customers and suppliers, a Rapid Improvement Project can help your people to:

• Map out the current process, warts and all.
• Recover from the shock of seeing your current process.
• Learn to see wastes in the process.
• Map out a future version of how the process could be, should be.
• Identify specific changes to help make the leap from here to there.

Using principles and tools from Lean Enterprise and Systems Thinking, a Rapid Improvement Project empowers your people to address a struggling area of your operation. Along with some pre-interviews and preliminary data gathering, a Rapid Improvement Project can often accomplish in a day what has been dreamed of for years. And, because your people create the improvement, it tends to be an enlightening, positive, and productive experience.

The idea is not to create a perfect process in a day. The idea is to get the right people in the room, get everyone looking at how the work really happens (not how you think it does), and identify changes to make it immediately more efficient. It’s not magic, and your ugly old frog might not instantly turn into a handsome prince(ss). But it is a strong, quick and reliable method for improving whatever it is you do.

Who's In Control? Four Ways to Help Someone

There are four main types of leadership that a manager can provide; the same four types of intervention that you can seek from a consultant. All can be helpful in different situations, but it is useful to clarify what you're looking for. The four types vary in the degree of control exercised by both the leader/consultant and the employee/client.

Command

"Do something, or stop doing something. I am in control."  

This is the domain of the expert, the guru who fixes your problem for you. At Superior Millwork, we would fly in equipment specialists from Italy to recalibrate the computer-controlled drilling machines or set up a new production saw. We did what they said, because this was their area of expertise. Outside of specific technical services, or emergency situations, this is rarely the most effective approach.


Consult

"Here's some information. I'll lead, but you can take or leave what I present." 

Here's where a facilitator or consultant is brought in to teach principles, lead a group improvement effort, or redesign processes. They know less than you do about your business, but they know more about process and ways to get better results. Their is a definite element of persuasion and influence, but with respect for your knowledge of your daily work.


Collaborate

"Let's explore ideas together as equals." 

True partnerships of equals aiming to create a mutually satisfying solution. Although the process often requires a facilitator, it primarily involves different stakeholders with complementary or conflicting interests. A good example is the Business Ready Investment Development Gateway (BRIDG), which aims to bring First Nations together with viable business opportunities. The First Nations have capital and labour, but often lack management skills and experience. The businesses often have management skills and experience, but lack enough capital and labour. The opportunities for collaboration are exciting.


Coach

"I will help you on your journey. Where do you want to go? You are in control." 

Unlike the cliche drill-sargent coach who makes you run 'til you puke, an executive coach helps you get where you want to go. With open-ended questions, reflective listening, and group facilitation skills, the coach draws out your priorities, and helps you decide between your options. Working as a coach to another consultant, I help him review his activities for the week, compare them to his objectives, hold him accountable for deviations, and help him find workarounds when barriers prevent him from achieving his goals. He decides where he wants to go, I help him get there. He is in control.


Next time you intervene in the daily problems in your business, consider whether Command, Consultation, Collaboration or Coaching would be most effective at resolving the situation. And, next time you look for outside help, ask about what kind of help they'll be providing.

Thanks to Andrew Bergen of Bergen Coaching for the inspiration for this posting. Andrew speaks about four types of conversation, with a continuum of control ranging from Calibration, Consulting, and Collaboration to Coaching.

Ten Years to Fix a Gate - Why We Should Procrastinate

In a few short minutes, you can easily create a To Do list that will take forever to complete. "Invent an anti-gravity machine" would be one example. "We should renovate the kitchen," would be another. Whether in business or personal life, you can easily take on more projects than you can possibly complete within the available time and money. So, we make our To Do lists, and some things stay on the lists forever.

One anonymous do-it-yourselfer had "rebuild the gate" on his To Do list for about ten years. When he finally got around to it, the job only took about three hours, start-to-finish. Think of the mental energy consumed by this as - four or five times a day for ten years - this poor sap would go through the gate and think "I've got to fix this."

Yet, despite what his wife and her mother may have thought, our do-it-yourselfer was probably not a "lazy good-for-nothing bastard who's ruining my life!" In fact, he was actively working on many other projects throughout that time, although he did take the occasional nap on the couch. Day-after-day, month-after-month, something else on the list was always a higher priority than fixing the gate. And so it was continually put off, until one day, it finally made the cut.

There's lots of advice out there on how to avoid procrastination, and if you have a chronic problem with that, certainly explore your options for becoming more decisive and action-oriented. But there are definitely situations where procrastination is exactly the right thing to do.

1. The options just don't feel right. Sometimes, especially with difficult or unusual problems, the options we've come up with just don't seem adequate. We may arrive at this conclusion as a result of rigorous analysis or as a result of intuition. Either way, the problem sometimes needs to simmer a little longer for a more complete solution to emerge. Creative problem solving is a process, and part of the process is being exposed to an adequate supply of new ideas and stimulus to work with. Sometimes that simply requires you to wait.
2. We're not convinced it's important. Again, whether from analysis or intuition, we just don't have enough evidence to convince us that the task is necessary. While we routinely make decisions despite incomplete information, sometimes there just doesn't seem to be a compelling case for action. One technology company had planned a major re-write of some embedded software, but tabled the project for a few months due to significant debate about the necessity. In those few months, a new hardware innovation made the re-write unecessary and eliminated the need for hundreds of hours of engineering and development.
3. We're not convinced of the value. Even if we're quite sure the project is important and we have a clear path forward, we worry that the solution will cost more than the problem we're solving. While this can just be fear talking, often it's a signal that we need to collect more data or do an experiment. A mid-size manufacturer was planning a major marketing campaign that would cost more than they'd ever considered in the past. Rather than not making a decision out of fear, rather than diving in despite the concerns, and rather than simply waiting for enlightenment, they did some carefully measured tests of the concept. Within a few months of this intentional procrastination, their testing providing convincing data that the approach would be effective. Waiting, and using the waiting to study and learn, proved to be just the ticket for success.
4. You don't have a plan. Project management is all about breaking the work down into manageable, achievable chunks; little steps that, when added together over time, get the whole project done. If you've been putting something off that is valuable, important and right, perhaps you are not yet ready to tackle the project. Perhaps you need to step back from "starting the project" and invest some time in "planning the project" - creating a sensible work breakdown structure, and a plan for success. Perhaps that's why you've justifiably been delaying the start.

So, if you've been putting things off, and putting things off, and putting things off, you may just be a lazy good-for-nothing bastard. Or perhaps you've been doing exactly the right thing.

For 80,000 people to support you on your journey, consider joining the Procrastination Facebook group tomorrow, or maybe sometime next week, or maybe next year.

Why Not Drop Your Drawers?

9:37am Busy hospital ward. Drawer stuck shut. Three nurses banging, prying, pulling, sticking a ruler in - trying to get inside for supplies that are needed for one patient.

9:57am Three nurses still taking turns trying to open drawer. Lots of banging noise, reverberating through the entire ward.

9:58am Nurse calls Maintenance. Now two patients waiting for the supplies.

10:37am Maintenance staff arrives with large rolling toolbox, pulled off of another task. He dissassembles the cabinet to open it up. Cheers of relief.

10:38am Groans of dismay - the needed supplies are not in the drawer. Out of stock!

10:39am Nurses phone other wards and central supplies, searching for stock of needed items. Two patients still waiting. Three nurses still scrambling.

10:41am Another ward has four available ! Nurse leaves to go get two.

10:48am Nurse returns with two; staff disperses to treat patients.

11:03am Maintenance completes the reassembly of the cabinet.

11:05am Conversation between maintenance and a nurse indicates that this is the "second time that drawer's been stuck shut. Somebody should do something about it. But nobody will! (Laughter)"

All of this waste adds nothing to the patient experience - it makes it worse. It adds nothing to the staff's experience, other than chaos and frustration. It costs money, disrupts care, and interrupts the flow of the daily work.

Many nursing stations are nicely equipped with cabinetry, complete with drawers and cupboards to neatly tuck things away, out of sight. And, most drawers and cabinets are packed with outdated useless stuff that make it hard to know what you have, what you don't have, and what you should have.

What if, instead, they had open shelves, with clear visual markings to show what and how many of each item should be there, when and how to reorder - the visual world of Lean 5S.

Sometimes you need to remove your doors and drop your drawers to improve the daily work.

Fight, Flight or Make It Right

Whenever you're in conflict, whenever you're facing strong differences of opinion or dealing with a challenging office bully, you usually have an additional level of conflict layered on top. This second conflict is an internal one, a personal decision about how to handle the situation, as you're torn between fighting it out, or withdrawing, or continuing to invest energy in an attempt to resolve the conflict.

The decision isn't simple, and often the angst over which approach to take produces as much pain as the conflict itself. Some factors to consider include:

1. Prior relationship. Are there cooperative bonds between you, a feeling of kinship, a prior history of cooperation and trust? The stronger the personal bonds, the more likely that you'll be able to find a constructive path forward. With no prior relationship, or a history of failure and misunderstandings, a pattern of escalating conflict is more likely.
2. The nature of the conflict. Is the conflict about things that are happening here and now? About a specific concrete issue? A here-now-this conflict is much easier to solve constructively than one about principles, history, ideologies, personalities, groups - about things that transcend time or space. When a dispute starts to focus on personalities or group members rather than specific actions, it quickly becomes unproductive. It's easier to deal with "the coffee pot is being left empty" than with "Bob is lazy, sloppy and selfish."
3. The size of the conflict. This is about beliefs, about how much we hope to gain, and how much we fear we might lose. We may be on opposite sides of an issue, or, we may be quite closely aligned on what we want yet have different ideas on how to get there. Either way, if the perceived differences are very large, the chance of things taking a constructive path is small.

4. The characteristics of the people in the conflict. Are you dealing with a soldier or a diplomat? Is your arch nemesis one who displays aggression, and values competition and victory above all? Or do they continually seek to understand, and clarify, and build relationships in the pursuit of mutual satisfaction? And, realizing that it takes two to tango, consider your own nature - are you aggresive and defensive, or do you seek partnership and collaboration? Can you bring different skills to this conflict that might minimize the effects of the others' personality and style?

In all cases, the core of the decision comes down to a comparison of value and effort. Is the value to be gained from successfully resolving this conflict worth the effort? If it is, do you fight or do you try to make it right, do you act the soldier or act the diplomat? Alternately, if the effort seems bigger than the perceived value, it makes perfect sense to consider withdrawing from the situation and focus your energies elsewhere.

Sometimes you need to stay and fight, sometimes you can work cooperatively together to make it right, and sometimes you just need to get the hell out of there.

Seven Features of Destructive Conflict

Conflict is not inherently good or bad. Conflict can inspire growth and creativity, it often carries the seeds of renewal, and it can motivate us to find breakthrough solutions that move us to a much better place. Conflict can be cooperative, with the feel of working together to solve a problem.

On the other hand, conflict can be very destructive, with a competitive, war-like, win-lose mentality that develops a mind and momentum of its own. Destructive conflict has several common features, which you will certainly recognize from your own experiences.

Destructive conflicts tend to...

1. Expand and escalate, often continuing long after the initial causes have been forgotten, or after initial causes have become irrelevant.
2. Rely on competitive processes as each side tries to win the conflict, through force, deception, alliances or cleverness.
3. Encourage black and white thinking, with strong pressure to choose sides and be loyal to your side's point of view.
4. Focus on strategies of power, using tactics of posturing, misinformation, threat and coercion.
5. Shift away from tactics like discussion and concilliation that minimize differences or enhance mututal understanding and goodwill.
6. Minimize direct communication between the people in conflict, relying instead on heresay, go-betweens, espionage, and other round-about ways of gathering intelligence.
7. Allow us to behave towards the other in ways that would be outrageous and morally unacceptable if directed towards us instead. The Golden Rule goes out the window as distrust and suspicion disable our social graces.

There are resources available on how to wage conflict, how to win your negotiations, and how to suppress or contain conflict. Less well known, yet more effective and powerful and pleasant, are the tools of constructive conflict and cooperative problem solving. If the seven features listed above permeate all your interactions, consider that there may be ways to help make your conflicts more constructive and positive.

Three Lessons from a Client Visit

At a high-end high-tech firm, a complex project for a large client had gone sour. An emergency trip was arranged for the three most-involved and most-knowledgeable technical staff to go to the client site in an attempt to get the project back on the rails. With one senior technical lead and two junior technicians, they were to clarify the issues, do some in-depth testing and diagnostics, and attempt to come up with a solution during the three-day onsite visit. The meeting was arranged, flights and accomodations were booked and the agenda finalized.

Shortly before the trip, the project manager for these services initiated a conversation with the client's project manager and, out of the blue, decided to:

1. Reschedule the meeting for a day earlier, adding $1,200 to each of three plane tickets, and
2. Change who was going, removing the lead technical person, the one guy knew the most about the issues and most likely to come up with the solution. In his place, they sent a new services manager who had been with the company less than a week. The reason given was so that the client could "put a face to the name" of this new manager.

Since the lead technical person would have driven the entire trouble-shooting project, teaching and guiding the other two, the visit ended up being completely unproductive. Management arranged numerous meetings for the three visitors to meet and greet key people, several long lunches and meeting were held, and zero progress was made on the technical issues. The technical people were completely frustrated and disillusioned.

The service manager and project manager reassured the client that they were "taking the problem very seriously" and were "doing everything possible to find a solution" and were quite proud and vocal about how good the optics were that we "sent a high-level team down to address your issues".  So, the client was able to put a face to the name of the new services manager, but changed the name of the company to "mud," as the technical problem was almost completely ignored on this trip.

Three management mistakes in this scenario, and three resulting lessons to learn:

1. Managers didn't respect the Gemba. Managers need to support the people who are doing the actual, customer-focused, value-added work. In Lean terminology, this is the Gemba, the place where the real work happens. The customer needed a technical intervention, this should have been a technical trip, and the team should have been a technical team. Management face-time is important, but not at the expense of actually solving customer problems and meeting customer needs. This change was disrespectful to the technical team, disrespectful to the customer, and put management wants ahead of the Gemba, of the real work.

2. Managers imposed decisions on workers. The workers were trying to solve a technical problem. The project had anticipated some problems and there was budget for technical trips like this. The client and the technical staff agreed that further remote trouble-shooting wouldn't get them anywhere (they'd been trying to solve this problem remotely for several weeks with no success). Management unilaterally changed this to a management visit, making the trip completely ineffective, and stretching out the customer problem even further. Damage to morale within the technical staff was huge.

3. Managers created barriers, rather than removing them. Effective managers work to consult with staff, and remove barriers, provide resources and help workers get what they need to get the job done. In this case, the managers created barriers and literally prevented the work from being done. Top-down, command-and-control thinking is damaging and ineffective - there are better ways.

The problem remained unsolved for several more months, as this trip had eaten up the remaining travel budget for the project. Eventually, the crisis escalated enough to prompt a repeat trip with the original technical team. On that trip, they were able to solve the problem.

No Guessing

So, you're at the medical clinic and your doctor asks you what the problem is. In response, you say "I don't think I'm comfortable answering such a personal question. Just tell me what you can do for me and I'll tell you whether to go ahead or not."

Or, you're at the mechanic and they ask you what you'd like them to fix. In response, you say "You're the expert; you tell me what you're going to do, and what it's going to cost."

Now that's crazy. If you have a specific pain you'd like addressed, it would be foolish not to tell the doctor where it hurts. If your car needs repairs, it would make sense to tell them about the clunking sound that happens whenever you turn left. And, if you're looking for help with your business, it makes sense to help the consultant understand exactly what your situation is.

After two short meetings, XYZ Company wanted a formal proposal of what the consultant was going to do for them. It was a complex company but the owners just said that they wanted to revise their HR policies to deal with a bunch of problem employees. They wouldn't clarify what the issues were, or what kind of problems were happening, or what exactly they were looking for. They wouldn't share any data about their problems, or their budget for an intervention, or the goals they wanted to achieve other than that they needed stronger policies. They insisted that they needed a proposal immediately; "We can't waste any more time. Just tell us what you can do for us and what it's going to cost, and we'll get back to you."

Despite their protests, further conversations with XYZ Company revealed that they had huge problems with their manufacturing quality that were causing countless problems for employees throughout the organization. Customers were unhappy, everyone was constantly scrambling to deal with recurring problems, and complaints and warranty issues were straining every department. Still, management felt it was a people problem and wanted to address that. Without further digging, they would have ended up with a Band-Aid solution (stronger HR policies) that probably would have made things worse.

In Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play, Mahan Khalsa speaks about "not guessing" in the buying and selling process. You wouldn't want your doctor guessing about which surgery or medication might work on your secret problem. You wouldn't want your mechanic randomly replacing parts in your car. And you really do not want a consultant guessing what will help your business. So take the time to answer questions, invest the time in upfront discussion - it is far cheaper than dealing with the expensive consequences of letting your professional help guess what it is you want.

Occasionally the truth is plain to see, sometimes it's just under the surface, but usually it's buried deep. It takes relentless communication, back-and-forth dialogue and interviewing to dig out the true issues. But it's worth it when you get a solution that truly meets your needs.

Digging Up the Garden - Lean, Reliability and Machine Availability

Living on a prairie acreage, there's a lot of dirt to be dug. Whether it's cultivating the space between the shelterbelt rows, preparing the garden for planting, or digging weeds out of the too-big flowerbeds, there's always some kind of digging to do. Since a big goal of acreage living is relaxing and enjoying nature, you end up with a bunch of different tools in an attempt to get everything done with as little effort as possible. And since work on the acreage usually has to squeeze between the demands of life and your real job, the digging usually has to happen now, or you won't get a chance for another week or two. Otherwise, things (ie. weeds) get out of control.

Preparing the large garden this year, I planned to use our old 35hp Massey Ferguson tractor with its sixty-inch three-point-hitch cultivator. Unfortunately, I noticed a crack in the tractor frame that definitely needed some welding before taking it out in the field.

Since I only had one day between work commitments to get the garden done, I decided to use the 16hp John Deere riding tractor with the 36" rototiller instead. That worked pretty well for a good three-quarters of the garden, but then the drive belt broke and I didn't have a replacement. Since the parts store was on the other side of the city  (a full hour round trip), I switched to Plan C; I wanted to get the job done.

Plan C was the 8hp rear-tine TroyBilt tiller, 24" wide and usually reliable, although I'd remember having trouble with it the previous year. In checking it over, I found there was no lubricant in the worm gear and remembered the leak that I didn't fix last fall. Rather than take the time to fix it and go buy the right oil, I turned to the small 40-year old Craftsman 7hp front tiller, 22" wide that had been sitting in the shop for years. To my surprise, it started fine but the mechanism to engage the digging tines was bent and needed repair.

Since there was only a couple hundred square feet of garden left to do, I turned to plan E, an 8" wide potato fork and a rake. Working hard for about an hour, I dug up the remainder of the garden by hand and raked it to break up the chunks. The garden was ready, but hardly a smooth, lean, waste-free process.

As we strive to improve our processes, and get more done with less work and less waste between steps, we end up relying on things to happen properly the first time. We rely on consistency. When things go wrong, it can bring everything to a standstill. Two simple lessons here from digging in the dirt:

First, your equipment, tools and technology must be well-maintained, reliable, and available to do the job when needed. As your processes become Lean and the inventory and backlog buffers that previously hid downtime are eliminated, equipment failures can have immediate, rippling, far-reaching effects on production. Effort spent on reliability and root cause analysis of downtime is effort well spent.

Secondly, simple tools are pretty darned reliable. Instead of complex ERP systems, computer networks and electronic devices, consider hand-written visual status indicators on a white board in the work area. Which is more likely to break down, be unservicable, and be hard to improve?

Advanced technology, automated equipment and other complex tools can be great, but they dramatically increase your vulnerability to unplanned downtime, and to being stuck with a system that is hard to fix, hard to change. If you are unable to work on the system yourself, the risk of failure, and the effects of a failure, are both increased.

Keep it Simple. Keep it Maintained. Keep it Available.

Ten Reasons to Hire a Consultant

1. You have too much money.
2. You like big three-ring binders full of copied boiler-plate text.
3. You enjoy blaming others for your problems and you've run out of internal scapegoats.
4. The little people in your organization think they have valuable opinions and you need someone to listen to their whining.
5. You can't get enough of bizlit phrases like "on a going forward basis", "multi-stakeholder paradigm shifts" and "disenfranchisment of global constituencies"

6. You're submissive and need to be told what to do.

7. You want to keep your people off balance and worried for their jobs.

8. You don't like the people you work with and want someone who has to listen to you.

9. Astrology doesn't seem to be working anymore and you need answers you can trust.

10. Because consultants need Porsches too.

To help Swift Fox Consulting increase the size of its Porsche fleet, call for an initial consultation.

Painting a Rotten Fence - Sick Leave Among Saskatoon Nurses

At a recently purchased side-by-side duplex, an old wooden fence divides the small back yard in two. The boards in this fence are rotted, the paint is peeling, the exposed wood is soft and weak, and the fence is basically falling apart. In preparation for renting the place, do we rebuild the fence, or do we simply paint over all the soft, weak structure to make it look good for prospective tenants. Do we address the visible problems, or do we fix the underlying core?

A recent article "Sick time abuse eyed" reveals a similar dilemna in the Saskatoon Health Region. Management sees a problem with nursing staff abusing sick leave - some of the nurses seem to be treating sick leave as an entitled right rather than as a means to deal with actual illness. A previous initiative to reduce sick leave by five percent failed, and sick leave in the health region has actually increased. With renewed commitment to tackle the issue aggressively, management is telling nurses that "management will be watching the numbers closely, and looking for suggestions to help reduce the number of sick days."

Most managers experience this kind of dilemma at some point in their careers. They are under big pressure, in this case budget constraints, they have no idea how to really solve the problem, and they're feeling powerless. The only recourse is to blame the workers and plead for a solution. The desperate approach goes something like this:

"If only we had better people, we wouldn't have this problem. The workers are doing bad things, and we have to get them to stop." Management will put more metrics in place, scrutinize every sick leave, find some culprits, discipline a few workers, fight with the unions a bit, and keep the nursing staff under a microscope. The problem will continue, and will probably get worse.

Increased sick leave is not the problem here. Increased sick leave and absenteeism are symptoms of deeper systemic problems. Sick leave and absenteeism emerge from a sick system; from the workplace that legacy has created. Nurses are stressed by the workload, frustrated by the bureaucracy and beaten down by the difficulties of the day-to-day job. Trust between management and labour has been eroded to the point that they're left with airing their differences in public.

Rather than just painting the rotting fence, we need to collectively focus on rebuilding the fence, making the work itself better, making the work environment better, making the leadership better. Otherwise, we'll waste a whole lot of management effort on making the sick leave numbers look better, without addressing the core structural problems in the work itself.

Management needs to go down to the work - in the hospitals, in clinics and in home care - and help get rid of the barriers that are preventing the nurses from doing good work they can be proud of. Leaders should help make the work better, not point fingers at the workers.

Labour leaders need to encourage cross-functional cooperation and integration, encouraging people to work together to give effective care to the patients, regardless of the artificial boundaries created by what union they're in or what their job description is.

And nurses need to try to remember why they went into nursing in the first place - presumably, to care for patients, help people regain their health, and nurture them through difficult times. It's a bit of a flip in thinking, but nurses (and the public) need to start holding management and labour leaders accountable for the stressful, bureaucratic, dysfunctional systems they've created. The leaders need to pull up their socks, and help the nurses regain pride in their work.

If we work on that, I don't think sick leave will be a problem.

Which is Better, an Author or a Reader?

An executive recently expressed a lot of pride in the author/consultant they had engaged to speak to and consult with their telecom company. "They've written a book!" is given as the definitive justification for choosing this particular person. Yes, published authors are naturally embued with credibility; they become our go-to heroes, the guru of their particular area of expertise. We want to believe that this author, this consultant, with their straightforward, focused approach will be able to fix our issues.

Yet, this same executive, with a little more conversation, readily admitted that the issues they were dealing with were complex and far-reaching. They didn't even really understand what their problems were, yet they were confident that an expert (an author no less!) would be able to fix them.

When problems are complex, when causes and effects are widely separated in distance and time, when problems are emergent, arising out of your underlying systems and policies - in other words, in the real, messy organizations that we work in - there are NO experts. Nobody "out there" knows how to fix your problems.

As a leader, you are far more effective if you have read and integrated the wisdom of eighty books, than if you rely on someone who has written one.

How To Create New Money

Step #1 - Solve Joe's Problems
If Joe is hot and thirsty, and you sell him lemonade, he'll pay money for your solution. If Joe doesn't have enough money, he'll go to the bank to borrow money. And, when Joe asks the bank for money, the bank creates new money on the spot. NEW MONEY! Just for your business! And you don't have to pay it back.

Step #2 - Improve HOW You Solve Joe's Problems
As you run your lemonade stand, you do things a certain way, and you earn a nickel. If you improve HOW you do things, by eliminating systemic waste and focusing all your efforts on what Joe really values, you earn a dime. Again, NEW MONEY! Just for your business! And you don't have to pay it back.

Step #3 - Repeat Steps #1 and #2
Look for more problems to solve, and better and better ways to solve them. Soon you'll be earning 50 cents, then five bucks, and then some day ... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

I've run into many businesses and advisors that either don't know or don't remember how to actually create money, create wealth, create value. They focus instead on budget manipulations, funding sources, acquisitions, liquidations, cost-cutting, downsizing, outsourcing, and reorganizing; on shell games that move money from one pot to another; on short-term gains at the cost of long-term pain.

Instead, every day, get better and better at solving customers' problems, on adding value to your solution. That's how you create new money.

Making Millions One Problem at a Time

A young business owner was lamenting the problems she was having with customers; they never seemed satisfied, always trying to squeeze more out of her and her employees. It was making it hard to get jobs completed and off the books, was hurting her profitability and she was frustrated - on the verge of giving up. Why were there so many problems? Why were her customers so demanding?

We talked about scope creep and clearly defining the job up front. We talked about operational definitions, on getting agreement in advance about what constitutes good work. There was obviously a lot of room for improvement in these areas, but her frustration remained. We needed to go deeper.

In answer to the question "What is an entrepreneur?", she felt it was someone who created a service and sold it to make money. She had done a thorough job of this, and was now just trying to make money. The customers' additional problems and demands were a nuisance, a complication, and were getting in the way of reaching her goals.

We suggested a new-to-her viewpoint that an entrepreneur is someone who solves others' problems for a profit. All business, whether health care or entertainment or logistics, is about solving other peoples' problems for a profit. The profit may take different forms, but the task is always to solve others' problems.

A light went on. All of these additional problems were opportunities for her to help more people, more thoroughly, and to make even more money. Rather than just pushing her service and considering everything else a nuisance, she started to see all of these problems as opportunities.

The business has since grown, the range of services has increased, and profits have increased. But, more importantly for the owner, the thrill is back in the business, and she's on track to make her millions, solving one problem at a time.