“Don’t Bring Me Solutions! Bring Me Problems!” – The Truth about Toyota
First Thoughts
This is a very short post about today’s study trip to Toyota, Burnaston, Derby. I will add to it….especially if you post questions and comments. This is a conversation 
It’s all about what you can’t see…and you must look, see and understand
The thing that particularly struck me on today’s visit was the sense of calm engagement about the factory – and how polite people were! The Japanese culture has permeated to such an extent that people drop the definite article (as in…”we must look after (the) company and (the) members’ interests”).
And perhaps it was me, but I swear there was a slight bow when I paid one of the managers a compliment….
I was also blown away by the modesty and humility of senior managers. They were so calm and seemed to be looking so long-term….and yet had little truck for “Strategy”. Before visiting, I’d not been clear what the managers’ behaviour would be like. If you’d pushed me, I’d probably have recalled that Toyota values management understanding of each task (deep knowledge)…so I might have expected folk with a smidge of over-focus on detail. Not so.
While the managers AT ALL LEVELS are committed to continued improvement, they seemed very strategic to me. Charmingly self-depreciating, they criticised themselves for perhaps not being nimble enough, or being too focussed on detail. I don’t agree with their self-criticism. The two core philosophies of Continuous Improvement and Respect for People are in harmony – and everything that supports that (Challenge, Kaizen, Genchi Genbutsu, Respect and Teamwork) seem like a pretty elegant Strategy to me!
I am totally committed to Deming’s concept of “Joy in Work” but I really couldn’t see how this would apply in car manufacture. And it it’s not immediately obvious. But, if you have a smiley sort of face and ask a couple of questions, you get to great humour. Or at least, it makes me smile.
For example, the AGV (Auto-Guided Vehicles) in one area of the assembly line played tunes to warn you that they were coming. I couldn’t help grinning daftly at the tune….”My Grandfather’s Clock”….a childhood favourite. And then, when someone noticed me grinning, I also discovered that this particular group are all named after the characters from the Magic Roundabout.
This is a place where people with constancy of purpose, who understand Hoshin Kari and that Job Security is the key building block for engaged, flexible employees….think that they aren’t perhaps Strategic enough. This is a place where the andon cord is pulled 100′s of times a day…and each member carries out at least one Kaizen a month…but they feel they have so much more improvement to make.
This is a place where when you stop to Look, See and Understand – tasks that at first seem repetitive turn out to be a source of endless creativity and pride…thanks to the never-ending quest to find out how to make it better!
I Am Not A Number
Yes. The machines have names. And so do the people. Teams are organised in a 1:4:20 ratio (so each Group Leader has 4 Team Leaders in their group, and each Group Leader has 5 members in their team). So here is this huge factory (2,000 plus people and all kinds of incredible machines) – but a member really is a member of their team and their QC Circle.
And all this meant that it felt like a much smaller, friendly place. I saw plenty of evidence of people taking care of their ‘home’…from picking up a dropped flourescent jacket the second it fell…to a man deftly picking up a carelessly regarded chocolate wrapper and putting it in the (right recycling) bin, while barely breaking a purposeful stride. This didn’t feel like one huge factory – but lots of different villages – with the ‘parish notices’ showing fabulous charts of andon pull rates, variety charts and oodles of graphs. And these weren’t produced by some central Auditing Gods either….but were frequently hand-created and clearly owned by the people who posted them. This ‘homemade’ feeling was not at all what I’d expected. And I loved it!
I See YOU
Recognition is a huge theme at Toyota. I found myself wiggling at a few of the management ideas (such as ranking people on a ladder and then applying a curve to give appraisal scores). And I’m not sure what Alfie Kohn would make of some of the carrots. But, on the other hand, if I’d been part of the team that came up with the idea of hoovering the dust from the overhead monorail automatically (thus saving money and increasing safety), I would, I confess…have been delighted with the reward of travelling to Japan for a spot of Yokoten (sharing our ideas with others).
I need to do quite a lot more reflection on this question of targets and rewards. Today has made me requestion some of the questioning of previous questioning. This learning stuff is an endless, yet endlessly-rewarding journey.
And Finally (for Now)
Imagine a place where your managers expect you to fail your targets…and would be very annoyed if you didn’t. Imagine a place where it is RIGHT to find and flag a problem.
Imagine your manager asked you:
“What is your problem?”
Imagine if you replied that you didn’t have a problem.
And imagine that they said, “No problems? Then why are you here?”
This is a place that turns conventional wisdom (and the organogram) on its head.
Tell me – why were there only 45 delegates? Is British business still not ready to really learn?
Remember
This is my FIRST draft (typed after a massive day of excitement and learning). I will improve it and add to it. And please do feel free to ask me about anything of particular interest to you. I will do my best to relate as accurately as I can, what we were taught today. Especially if you bring a problem
And remember, this is the first large-scale experiment of the TPS in the UK. “They” said it couldn’t be done. “They” said that the Unions would never agree to the flexible working needed for takt-based production. “They” said that British workers wouldn’t ‘get’ Kaizen. Well I Looked, I Saw, and I Understand….that “they” were wrong in this case. And there is NOTHING to stop you doing this in your organisation too….
…as long as you:
1) Are in it for the long-term
2) Have top-level commitment
3) Choose to get started with something that really matters to you and your organisation
Sounds easy, doesn’t it?! A simple recipe…but finding all those ingredients in one place is more rare and precious than diamonds.
Best wishes, as always,
Ems x
Adoption – Can Systems Thinking Help?
What is Adoption?
Adoption is the permanent placement of a child, or children, with someone other than their birth parent(s). Sometimes the adoptive parent may be the new partner of a birth parent. Or they may be a member of the extended family of one of the birth parents. This means that your adoptive Mum might also be your birth gran, aunt, uncle or some other blood relative. Generally, when people talk of adoption, I suspect they are thinking of cases where the child/ren is/are placed with a completely different family to the birth family.
What is a Natural Child?
This week I was incensed to hear the Prime Minister use the term ‘natural child’. I think what he meant was that they have some of your genetic material. As far as I am concerned, every child is natural. Except for those really strange ones that never have snotty noses, don’t accidentally break things, and prefer vegetables to sweets. Obviously, those children are spies from intelligent life-forms on other planets But basically, a child, is a child, is a child. Some are born to you (birth child), while others arrive in other ways. Other than that, they’re people, just like you (only younger)
What is Systems Thinking?
I recently wrote a post about Systems Thinking, which you can find:
http://progpart.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/mother-teresa-was-not-a-systems-thinker/
Basically, it is a series of ‘lenses’ that we can use to help us look at the world in different ways – and decide how best to interact with it. Systems Thinking does not have inherent morality and – like any form of thinking – can be used for good or ill; depending on your perspective.
There are lots of different ‘lenses’ in the Systems Thinking body of understanding – and I’ll suggest a few useful ones for the Adoption ‘System’. This is by no means an exhaustive study. It’s just a very long blogpost!
To Adopt or Not To Adopt….That is the Question….
The whole area of choosing whether to adopt or not is one where the Soft Systems approaches and Complexity Theory might be useful. These same approaches could benefit the professionals deciding whether or not to take a child into care – and whether to make that permanent through adoption.
I believe that the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) could help everyone involved in the process to recognise that they cannot know the ‘real’ situation. Since this whole area is a highly emotive one, the use of models to make clear that there is uncertainty and risk in every potential option, seems to me to be sensible. There is no ‘right’ decision – only the best decision possible at the time – knowing as much as can be known at the time.
In our world of binary, pendulum-like thinking, it is worth noting how court applications to adopt drop after miscarriages of justice where children were taken into care when they should not have been (such as the tragic cases of Sally Clark and Angela Cannings). Conversely, courts report upswings in applications from social services after high profile deaths of children who should have been taken into care (like little Victoria Climbie and Peter Connelly).
We will NEVER (sadly) be able to be 100% sure that we are getting the balance right in every case. But we can move away from the swings in trends. If we stop trying to kid ourselves that the world is really simple and knoweable – and instead embrace the fact that it is complex and unknoweable – we could develop our understanding of Complexity Theory and uncertainty-acknowledging approaches, to help us have greater confidence in making good decisions. My favourite book on this subject is Capra’s “The Web of Life”. Not an easy read, but ultimately uplifting. Much the same could be said of Hughes’ “Building the Bonds of Attachment”. Either will help us to remember that things are never as simple as we wish; but we can still function and create wonderful outcomes – even with that knowledge.
Preparing to Adopt
And if you are not quite sure whether to adopt? Well, take lots of time. In our case, while my husband and I were keen to have children – we were even more determined to make sure that we gave our match the maximum chance of success. Just as we went to see a counsellor (yes, really!) before we finally got married…we also talked to a counsellor before we began on our adoption journey. Even then, we paused the process twice just to be absolutely, absolutely sure. Adoption is for life and is not affected by your body clock….you’ve got plenty of time to really look it through. And one of the things we did (although we didn’t call it SSM) was to check through the “purposes” of our adoption, from our perspective as individuals – and a couple…and we also spent lots of time thinking about how we might appear to children. With the help of our social worker, we did our best to think through different scenarios and how we might feel and respond in those scenarios. We also talked to lots of other people about their experience. We also looked at the systems of behaviour that we took part in, or witnessed, in our own childhoods and considered which we wanted to keep (emulate from our parents) and which we wanted to do differently – and why (e.g. what outcome we thought would result…systems dynamics / SSM). This type of thinking is akin to Systems Dynamics – which is the main ‘Systems Thinking’ covered by Senge in his famous book “The Fifth Discipline”.
With the advice of our social worker, we also talked to our family members about what we were doing and why. We also went into lots of detail about the ‘system’ of our family. Like, who would be likely to take on which bits of which role in our family unit. It became clear that ironing is not an essential function Since my husband loves cooking – he does most of that; and I’ve learnt not to feel guilty about it! While we don’t literally work through the Viable Systems Model, this idea of ‘fractals’ and different functions is something that I do use from time to time when thinking about how we might ‘tweak’ the ‘system’ of our family unit. Given that many birth families are described as ‘chaotic’ – I often find myself thinking what would happen if we gave more help to school kids on how to have a healthy System 3* in life
Only 60 Babies in Care were placed out of 3000!
This headline in last week’s news tells us pretty much nothing. I fear that too many people buy into the stigma of “Care” as A Bad Thing. Perhaps we are all still haunted by those images of the babies and toddlers languishing in Ceausescu’s Romanian orphanages?
If we used Soft Systems Methodologies to consider the PURPOSES of Care, we might have some more useful insights and understanding. Until we were well into the adoption process, I had mostly thought of foster care as the interim step between ‘birth family’ and ‘adoptive family’; or extremely short periods for respite care (particularly for children with severe disabilities). But when I met my children’s foster carers, I realised that in many, many cases, foster care is just for short periods while the family gets back on its feet. This function is rather like sending the kids to stay with Granny for a few days while you sort out a disagreement – or deal with some issue (like an affair, period of depression, illness etc). Just because only 60 babies were adopted – please don’t create images in your mind’s eye of these babies languishing in cots without cuddles. More likely, many of them went home again – and most of them are successfully reunited with their parent(s).
One of the many things that Systems Thinking offers us is the ability to not assume causality (or even correlation) where this does not exist. By disciplining our thinking, we can cease to jump to the newspaper headline / sound-bite conclusion. Which should help us to have a deeper understanding – and make better decisions!
Speeding Up The Process
If you have kept with me so far (long post – sorry!) then you will have noticed that we chose to pause the process ourselves. From first considering adoption (a trip into the Birmingham social services where we flicked through a book of children’s photographs and fell in love with every single one)…through to finally going to court and having the whole thing official was about 3 years or so. But for one of those years, our kids were HOME with us. The paperwork took a while to catch up. So how long was the process? Depends how you measure it.
One of the things that the hard systems approaches (of which, I consider Lean to be one) can offer us is sensible approaches to statistics. I believe that a good study of Don Wheeler’s books, building on Shewhart’s work in the 1930′s (on Statistical Process Capability) and the use of good operational definitions, could help us to get a much clearer understanding of how long ‘adoption’ really takes.
And, speaking as an adoptive Mum – I’m GLAD the process took a long time for us. Having a kid or two to stay for a few days will never prepare you for the feeling we had on the second Saturday our kids were home. At 5.45 on that Saturday morning, Better Half turned to me and said “Oh my goodness. They don’t know about lie-ins!”. Adjusting to parenthood is tough enough when you can sit on the sofa and stare in awe at this wee little human in a car seat on the sitting room carpet. It’s a whole other story when your child can walk, run and tells you off for forgetting to put their bib on before they start eating their Wheetabix…..
From the CHILD’s perspective (which is the main one) – what do we mean by “speeding up the process”? Too quick, and a birth family going through a rough patch lose a child whom they could have successfully parented with a little more support and time to adjust; too slow and you leave a child at risk (or actuality) of abuse or neglect. Having spent time with social workers through our process (and professionally), I believe that Systems Thinking could help. In particular, approaches that document uncertainty (and, thus, professional judgement) – rather than tick-boxing – could be of great help. In practice, great social workers use the forms, because they have to – but they rely on experience and judgement. No form will ever make the ‘right’ decision…. I think that the Total Systems Intervention (TSI) approaches can ensure that creativity and choice are integral to decision-making; and that these are made with many different expert opinions (and perspectives) taken into account.
Doubtless there ARE significant delays in the process that cause frustration – and lead to risk. We could definitely use some of the hard systems approaches to help courts to process paperwork more quickly (for example). And we can also uses methodologies like hierarchical process models (with uncertainty and linguistic descriptors) to help make decisions that – while they many not be ‘right’ – are recorded in such a way that we can learn from them…. And we can certainly Lean paperwork and help social workers to be more efficient in the way they plan their visits (reducing unnecessary mileage by planning visits with geography in mind – as well as risk).
There are also radical approaches from the child’s perspective that might be worth considering for birth families where multiple children are placed into Care (or the same children are repeatedly placed into Care). This is a very tough area – and deserves a blog of its own. We go very quickly into ethics and the balance of human rights (both the mother’s and the unborn child’s). However, if a Mum has had several children taken into care – sometimes at birth – then it doesn’t seem humane to me that she should continue to suffer such horrific loss. I can empathise with how it could be that a Mum gets pregnant again to try to mask the pain of losing one child – but the cycle with some birth Mums of this happening again and again is just heartbreaking from every perspective. Similarly, it must be incredibly hard for social workers to know that a child is likely to be born with severe disabilities resulting from birth Mum’s choices during pregnancy (such as Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), or issues related to maternal smoking). I have read children’s own stories of living with FAS and it is interesting to see their perspective on things.
Systems Thinking doesn’t give us any easy answers. BUT – if Churchman is right and “Systems Thinking begins when first we see through the eyes of another” – then I do believe that it can equip all parties involved to understand the complexity of the issues – and have empathy for every party. For me, part of loving my gorgeous children is also about them knowing that I feel love for their birth Mum and Dad. I never talk about my children’s birth family – or use their names in public space. That’s because this is THEIR identity – and THEIR story – not mine. But suffice it to say that I feel at peace with their birth family and I hope my children will always know that I accept every part of them – including their birth heritage. They are who they are – and I love every atom of them. Genes has nothing to do with it.
Besides, I’m with Kahlil Gibran on this one. Whether they are genetically ours or not…our children are not our children.
http://www.katsandogz.com/onchildren.html
I draw the boundaries of ‘family’ on a universal scale. Our children are all of ours. That’s a key part of what makes a society ‘civilised’.
Setting Targets
I’m going to finish this mega-post with a last thought. No wonder politicians use soundbites. And what wonderful soundbites targets are. Please contribute to this blog, and also @ermintrude2′s wonderful blog at:
http://notsobigsociety.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/adoption-league-tables-and-targets/
If Systems Thinking teaches us anything, let it teach us:
- Life is more complex than we like to pretend
- Pretending things are simple is not a great idea – it usually causes other issues
- Everything is connected to everything else
- Most things are emergent (result of many factors – not predictable in advance)
- Uncertainty exists and needs to be acknowledged
- Sometimes systems keep going round. They can be broken – but interventions may not do what we expected
- Systems Thinking starts when first you see the world through the eyes of another
Conclusion
This is probably the least elequont and well-worded piece I’ve ever written down. There is so much that I want to say. Please do read what adopted children think (“Adopted Children Speaking” – by BAAF) – also read stories of how a series of events can lead to abuse and harm – and how careful fostering (and, later, adoptive parenting) CAN help children to heal even the greatest of hurts (“Building the Bonds of Attachment” – Hughes). If you are interested in Systems Thinking and how it can help us tackle these issues, you might try “Systems Thinking – Creative Holism for Managers”- by Jackson; “The Web of Life” by Capra; or “The Leader’s Handbook” by Scholtes).
After 12 years’ looking at Systems Thinking and about 6 as part of the Adoption system (from first choosing to adopt) – all I can be sure of is that I become less and less sure of ANYTHING the older I get. But I hope that this post at least starts a conversation…..
So Please Add Your Thoughts Below!!
Many thanks,
Ems x
Let’s Tweet Up for Christmas!
Good morning folks – and welcome to another day on Planet Earth!
I expect that it will not have escaped your attention that the shops are now full of signs encouraging us to part with cash in time for Christmas. Chatting to friends on Twitter over the last few days, we thought it would be a great idea to get together to do something rather more meaningful than standing in the shop queues.
You are invited to come together for a Christmas Tweet Up!
This is an opportunity to meet up with like-minded folk from Twitter, to talk about whatever it is you feel moved to discuss. Recent topics on Twitter include systems thinking, action learning sets, inequality, child protection, the NHS, adoption and much, much more. Or you could just talk about what you are hoping for in your Christmas stocking!
What you need to do to be part of it
All you need to do to be part of the Tweet Up, is to express your preference for the date at the following link: http://www.doodle.com/bgkz5iw7vaamd4n7
At the moment we are planning to meet in Birmingham, but we could coordinate a North and South event, if there is sufficient demand.
Please let your friends know
You are very welcome to share the doodle link and let people know that this is happening. Please use the hashtag #XmasTweetUpUK
More details…
Once we found the most popular date(s), we can all start to publicise this. The Tweet Up will be very informal and there is no cost other than what you choose to spend on travel, food and drink. All you will need to do is to rock up to the chosen area of Birmingham (or Manchester or London…or whatever venues are chosen for the North and South events). We will indicate a street which will be ‘hosting ‘ the tweet up. You can then use a location specific hashtag (such as #XmasTweetUpBrum) to arrange to meet Twitter friends for coffee, lunch, dinner or a drink or two.
Please post below
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for the Christmas Tweet Up, please do add your voice to this conversation by posting below.
Enjoy the rest of your Autumn, and I look forward to the prospect of seeing you soon.
Ems x
PS You might like to talk to two or three friends on Twitter and book a table for your main meal of the day – as it could be quite busy as we get nearer to Christmas!
2 Years Old
Looked at the calendar this morning and suddenly realised what day it was! We are two years’ old
Thank You
A huge thanks to all our friends for all your support and encouragement. We wouldn’t be here without you!
(Please note that the term ‘friends’ includes our clients, employees, associates, suppliers, people who chat on Twitter, comment on the blog and so forth. It’s relationships that make the world go round – and we’re glad to have got to know you)
Annual Review Statement
Mother Teresa was not a Systems Thinker…
This post is a response to my frustration at seeing yet more arguments about what is and what is not systems thinking. I am seeing this ‘debate’ on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook…and live at conferences.
And it’s frustrating in the extreme…because if all the great minds who call (or are called) ‘systems thinkers’ joined up their hearts to their own heads….and then to each others’ - they really could change the world.
Systems Thinking Begins…
One of the lesser known Systems Thinkers (and…if you read about him, you’ll see why) is C. West Churchman. I was first introduced to him by Aidan Ward at a meeting of SCiO. I was immediately captivated by a key quote (and am still buried in his book – reading and re-reading!) that:
Systems Thinking begins when first you see the world through the eyes of the other
Systems Thinking is…
I still find it very strange that “Systems Thinking” seems to be a contentious subject. For me, it really is quite simple. There are lots of different lenses and approaches to help you to ‘do’ systems thinking – but when you extract the essence – it’s really just about (to me) the idea that everything is connected to everything else and what emerges from the whole is more than you might know from analysing the parts.
Let us be clear; Systems Thinking is neutral. Just as divergent thinking is not morally superior to convergent thinking (or vice versa) and synthesis has no greater ethical weight than analysis (also vice versa) – systems thinking is neither a ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ thing. But what we use it for can be. Unfortunately, the ‘label’ seems to have been purloined for the use of branding, rather than anything much more profound.
And before someone attempts to turn this into a Vanguardista /Seddonite debate and fill the column with angst and vitriol… John and I have had some great chats about the Vanguard Method – and YES – I do believe that it is a useful approach within the plethora of useful methods that sit within the broad umbrella of ‘Systems Thinking’. It is one lens among many (I love Richard Veryard‘s use of the idea ‘Lenscraft’). So are we done with that bit? Good… let’s move on!
…popular and unpopular
Churchman has a wonderful quote:
The idea of a “systems approach” is both quite popular and quite unpopular. It’s popular because it sounds good to say that the whole system is being considered, but it’s quite unpopular because it sounds either like a lot of nonsense or else downright dangerous – so much evil can be created under the guise of serving the whole.
And since so many of the conversations on Twitter and LinkedIn end there…let’s do it. Yep; Hitler was a Systems Thinker. A terrifying, murderous, sociopath – but he certainly knew how to eliminate some parts of a system for what he considered to be ‘the good of’ the whole. As I said…Systems Thinking in itself doesn’t have a conscience. But humans do. And that’s what matters! And Systems Thinking is just a type of thinking. People can do vile things (and wonderful) things as a result of linear thinking too. Perhaps even more so – since they have not even begun to think through the unintended consequences…
And what of Mother Teresa?
Well…in fact – I think Mother Teresa was a wonderful example of a systems thinker at work. In my view, she was an incredible philosopher – but she was also a doer.
If I were to model myself on a systems thinker – it would be the ‘doers’. It’s easy now to look back at Deming and Juran and co and think that they were lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Not so. Japan was under direct rule from the States and had been – as we all know – incredibly badly damaged during the War. While many of us might wish that we could get rid of senior management and start again – the remaining context of the time is no picnic! These guys MADE there luck by DOING stuff. And they were driven by a really strong desire to make things better. Deming’s “Joy in Work” (having experienced The Great Depression first hand) was a genuine motivator for him – and he really lived what he believed in even the tiniest aspects of his life. If you don’t believe me, ask Hazel Cannon for her story about the cheese….
As the wonderful @DemingSOS reminds us…Deming never called himself a Systems Thinker. And nor did Mother Teresa. People like that are too busy doing things to worry about what other people call them. Thank goodness they are!
And so…
Here are a handful of quotes from Mother Teresa that I believe echo Churchman’s work. What a woman. I bet she didn’t spend a lot of time arguing about a label for what she was up to. But if she did, she might have just called it “Love”.
“Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.”
“Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”
And, she really understood emergence
“What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.”
Question:
How could you use your knowledge of Systems Thinking to do something small that might make a big difference?
As always – please add to the conversation. Your thoughts are very welcome.
Ems x
(work: @progpart home: @emmalangman)
Why Business Analysts have a bad name!
I have spent the last 3 days with Business Analysts at the “Business Analysis Conference Europe 2011″ (http://www.irmuk.co.uk/ba2011/)
This blog will get updated when I have a little more time – but I have been inspired by @euan to get something down ‘on paper’ and will improve it, I promise!
Assumptions and Pre-judgements
I am probably not the only person who might have assumed that Business Analysts would be an introverted bunch with an excessive fascination with data. What we once called ‘spods’, I suppose.
Stupid me!
What I found was a group of people that were….ummm…a group of people. A great mix of fantastic talent, enthusiasm, ideas and energy.
After two days spent learning lots of fascinating things about creativity, innovation, use cases etc, I had the great privilege of being the keynote speaker this morning.
Business Analysts do a lot more than that…
The topic of my talk was about the role that Business Analysts have a major role to play in a world (and workplace) that is changing rapidly. This includes supporting HR, Quality functions – indeed the whole business from ‘top to toe’. The skills Business Analysts have will be valuable across many silos and at different levels of hierarchy?
Why?
Why? Because Business Analysts don’t just analyse – they synthesise too. These are the men and women who know how to join up the dots across their organisations. These are folk who can facilitate change, support the management of risk, drive forward a culture of innovation – and foster creativity.
Their job title suggests convergence and detail. Business Analysts can do that – and they can do so much more. By using divergent as well as convergent thinking and a host of other skills and capabilities – the BA can be a huge asset to their organisation.
To follow…
Please feel free to add your own thoughts about Business Analysts…and perhaps suggest a better name for these multi-talented folk. I intend to add some more notes to this blog over the few days – and you might also enjoy reading through the tweets on Twitter (hashtag #ba2011).
Enjoy the rest of your week
Emma (@emmalangman / @progpart)
John Seddon and Mike Jackson speaking in Derby next week (18th May)
Hi Folks,
Just to let you know that John Seddon and Mike Jackson are speaking at SYTOC (Systems Thinking and Organisational Change research group) next week. This is at the University of Derby.
For more details, please contact: Gino Franco
T: 01332 591861 E: g.franco@derby.ac.uk
The advertising material explains:
Professor Mike C. Jackson is Professor of Management Systems and Dean of Hull University Business School. He studied PPE at Oxford, and then spent 4 years in the civil service before returning to academic life. Mike has studied and taught at Lancaster, Warwick, Lincoln and Hull Universities, being appointed Professor in 1989. Mike is a past President of the UK Systems Society, the International Federation for Systems Research and the International Society for the Systems Sciences. He has also served on the Council of the Operational Research Society. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, the Chartered Management Institute, The Cybernetic Society and the Operational Research Society. He is a Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (New Delhi) and an Honorary Professor at the Universidad Ricardo Palma, Lima, Peru.
and…
Professor John Seddon is Visiting Professor at Derby and Hull Universities and is recognised for his translation of Taiichi Ohno’s innovation (the Toyota System) for service organisations. Change in service organisations is much faster than in manufacturing, but it starts with leaders being prepared to change the way they think. John has a reputation for being controversial, challenging but informed. John is a world leading authority on organisational change and on both the theory and practice of the application of Systems Thinking to service organisations.
Our own colleague, Emma Langman, will be joining the line up. Apparently, she is back by ‘popular demand’ – which is nice The official blurb is classic Marketing and made Ems blush. The pertinent information is that she is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Systems Learning and Leadership at the University of Bristol (a collaboration between the Faculty of Engineering, the Graduate School of Education and the Business School).
As an adopted Mum, Emma is a passionate advocate of adoption – but wishes that it wasn’t necessary – and that all children could be born into a safe and loving home – as part of a healthy and supportive society. She thinks that what is sometimes called ”Systems Thinking” needs to expand its sights to tackle the prevailing systems of management and education so that people have a great quality of life – no matter what the lottery of birth. It’s not OK for people to die 10, 20 or 30 years earlier (and live a lower quality life) than they could have if they had been born a few miles down the road. This is not what we should expect or accept for our fellow humans.
Emma is proud to stumble in the footsteps of great thinkers like W Edwards Deming, Russ Ackoff, Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer, Fritjof Capra, Donella Meadows…
Anyway, if you are free on the 18th – it’d be great if you can come.
Much love,
The @ProgPart Team
xx
Happy Easter!
Whatever (or whether you have) particular faith or religious belief, the ProgPart team hopes that this Easter-tide will mark a period of renewal and revitalisation for you in your work and life.
May you know your purpose and be able to do work and service that supports you in it. May you and the people you manage (if you manage others), parent (if you are a parent) or care for – feel fully engaged in life. May your day-to-day work be as rewarding as your activities outside work. May every thing you do in this role, bring yourself and others Joy.
Life – like the story of Easter Week – is full of ups and downs, highs and lows, delights and disappointments – endings and beginnings. Whatever is happening in your life at the moment -we wish you a spell of brightness.
Question…
If you are much happier on holiday than at work…what do you want to do to change it? If you are happier at work than at home…what do you choose to do to change it?
Good luck with the changes.
Happy Easter!
With love from the ProgPart Team
xxxx
PS Progression Partnership is delighted to welcome employees, associates, partners, suppliers and clients with a broad range of world views. Whatever gender, sexuality, shade of skin, cultural background, physical mobility, mental wellness, creed, beliefs or experience – you have views that are uniquely yours as a completely original – once in infinity – human. We love using Systems Thinking and our curiosity about how others see the world to co-create our products and services. We believe that everyone has the right to a life (at work and at home) that is free of fear, harassment or bullying – and allows us to be engaged and fulfilled in what we do: for the benefit of ourselves, our colleagues, our customers – and society in general. After all, why shouldn’t it be that way?
Beyond Mugs and Mousemats…the new Corporate Giveaway is….
Last year, we were going to send all our customers cup-cakes to celebrate our 1st birthday. We didn’t do it in the end, because Kristin had to take some time off for various reasons, and Emma and the boys didn’t get round to organising it.
But are cupcakes great – or naff? Have we gone beyond the traditional era of corporate giving – or do mugs, toys, mousemats, four-colour pens (oh yes, baby) still have their place? What else can/do corporates give away that is of value to customers and society as a whole?
An Experiment
We thought it might be interesting to co-author this blog with our readers. We have a committed handful registered, and some ‘lurkers’. Let’s say 20 people read this. That’s 2.43 x 10↑18 different ways of combining our ideas. Add some comments about what you should think we should talk about in this blog (giving away ideas, IPR, CSR, volunteering, charitable giving?) and we can explore together.
We look forward to working on this post with you!
Best wishes,
The ProgPart Team
@progpart
1) Brown Paper Packages, Tied Up in String….
I think it’s a fine line between naff and nice. Things which are useful and not too corporate get used and are appreciated generally
(Louise)
Our first contributor seems to indicate that it is still quite nice to get tangible ‘things’ as corporate gifts. As long as they are useful. I guess this means that they need to be thought about – because they will then be useful to the recipient.
Sometimes, a thing can be ‘useful’ but not for the original purpose. Years ago, following a project with a Yorkshire MBC, I [Emma] was given one of the circular signs for the Pennine Way. I still use that as a coffee mat. The reason I’ve kept it for a decade is because of the people on the project, and the friendships I made. It sums up a whole experience in and of itself. So perhaps a ‘use’ of an object can be to ‘hold’ a memory. Although, according to Phil, an ‘object’ can just be a thing that collects dust. *sigh*
On the other hand, some marketing specialists strongly recommend the old-fashioned fun of a parcel arriving in the post – and use this even for ‘cold’ marketing (e.g where you do not personally know the individual you are sending it to).
Sounds like this needs to be carefully considered though. Something that’s too embarassing to give away doesn’t sound like a good idea…….although…..it’s clearly made a mark in contributor Louise’s mind!
What other ‘Corporate Giving’ do you want to talk about?
How about the green tokens in Waitrose – or the 1% Clubs (where companies give all employees 1% of their year to spend with local – or national – charities). Do corporates (in every sector) have a duty to ‘give’ time and ideas as well (or instead of) money? What do you think of companies, charities and public sector bodies that do that?
Is being a ‘Social Enterprise’ in itself a form of Corporate Giving?
Do these emerging business descriptors resonate with you – or fail to hit the right note? What’s your view? Does it feel ‘real’ or inauthentic? What makes the difference? When does corporate giving smell right- and when do you sniff a rat?
We’re looking forward to reading more of your thoughts and continuing with the collaborative blog experiment….
The Progpart Team x
What do do when you don’t know what to do….
This post is inspired by conversations with our friends and clients over the last few days.
Change is Inevitable….even if you don’t!
Wherever you are in the world today, you will have noticed the speed of change. Peter Scholtes drew a wonderful diagram in his book (“The Leader’s Handbook”) that illustrates how quickly change happens.
Imagine throwing a ball along your street. The time from when it leaves your hand to when it hits the road is the time for the first cycle of change. As the ball bounces along, the time between each bounce is shorter and shorter.
100 years ago, you might use the same technology as your father, or grandfather did at work. Nowadays, an App for the iPhone is considered outmoded after around 90 days.
Changes is happening…and it’s speeding up.
Don’t panic, Mr Manwairing!
In today’s world of rapid change, we see individuals and companies becoming very reactive. ”For Goodness Sake….Can’t You See How Bad Things Are? DO SOMETHING!” But let’s be clear, doing “something, anything, but just DO something” is not always the best thing. In fact, it can be downright daft!
Moving the deckchairs on the Titanic wouldn’t have worked. Will the changes you are planning really help – or just distract people from the bigger issues? Are your eyes open to the REAL threats to your organisation.
Some of our clients have woken up in 2011 to discover that their competitors have changed things in the last 12 months (or 20 years!) and they have been left behind. One oganisation, that we particularly love, seems to have decided to do in 2 years EVERYTHING that their competitors have done in the last 20 years. This includes changing their finance systems, the way HR/Personnel functions, their IT, their operational processes….. You name it, they’re changing it.
Look at the speed of changes in the Public Sector too. I bet we’re not the only ones wondering how many months it will be before Chief Exec’s and Leaders up and down the country wake up with a post-cut hangover to discover that some of the people who took Voluntary (or Compulsory) redundancy were actually essential to the smooth running of services.
We know of just a small handful of organisations (one of whom started working with us in 2009) who started to really plan well out in advance, exactly which posts were utterly indispensable - and how to get the knowledge out of those people’s heads. Succession Planning is oft talked of; seldom implemented.
Hold Your Horses, Cap’n
The thing is that:
- Just because your competitors have done something, this doesn’t mean that you have to do it (or that it will be right for your organisation and context)
- If you don’t do everything your competitors have done, but instead learn from what they have done – you may save a lot of time and money.
She’s Going To Blow!
Trying to cram 20 years worth of change into 2 years is going to stress out your people and cause much time and money to be wasted. See the previous article on Reorganisation for just a few of the reasons why this is the case.
Instead, think about this:
The Developing World is not going to bother with landlines.
So?
Well, if you have been languishing behind your competitors in terms of creativity (and just noticing what is going on in the world)…. you might watch Shift Happens and panic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emx92kBKads
DON’T!
Panic just wastes time and energy and distracts you from where you need to be going.
Strategic Delay – Early Adopters
When you think about the infrastructure in the Developed World you start to see something quite interesting. Take Britain, the land of the garden shed inventor. Here we sit with one of the oldest rail networks in the world. Our bridges are too low for double-decker trains, and our platforms are too short for longer ones. Ah!
Our network of technology for landline phones will become redundant at some stage. The cost of retrofitting super-speed broadband infrastructure will not be cheap.
Other countries, who have missed that era of development, will simply ‘leapfrog’ Britain in this respect. It’s great to be creative, but there is something to be said for being an Early Adopter too.
SO – if you find that you are behind your competitors in some aspect, don’t panic. You may have (purposefully, or through luck) saved yourself a development phase that you didn’t need to go through.
Be a Bird, Not an Ant
If you want to gain strategic advantage from learning from your competitors, do not just copy what they do.
Imagine a long line of ants doing some kind of work. If your company is in that line of ants, you won’t catch up by following the original trail. You will face the same difficulties and dangers that the people at the front faced. Why do that?
Instead, think like a bird. Fly up above the whole picture of where all your competitors are. Look for the wider trend – the patterns on the market terrain. Decide which bird is in the best position to deal with this, and then work out what this means for you
We have seen organisations doing changes (implementing new technology, ways of working etc) because their competitors have. What they don’t notice, often, is that just as they are implementing this (to ‘catch up’) the competitor is removing that technology and moving onto the next thing. Don’t copy where they were – understand where they are – and are going!
If in Doubt, Leave Your Options Open
Fans of Cybernetics (which isn’t all about robots, it turns out) will recognise:
Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety: ”the variety in the control system must be equal to or larger than the variety of the perturbations in order to achieve control”
What? What this means is that since everything around you (the wider system, your competitors, oil prices, your customers’ desires, the weather) changes – the best thing that you can do is to leave yourself with plenty of things that you can change, so that you can respond appropriately.
What does this mean?
Be a Sailing Boat, Not a Supertanker
No matter how big your business is, if you get yourself all knotted up in bureacracy and fixed ways of doing things, at some point, you will not be able to turn your business quickly enough to deal with the prevailing conditions. No matter how fantastic your Futurologist and Business Continuity Planners may be – something, sometime, will come out of the blue.
Let your organisation be like a sailing boat. Understand your approximate direction of travel, and then flex with the market (trade) winds.
What does this mean for Leaders?
- You cannot know everything.
- Respond carefully. Kneejerk behaviour is not agility.
- Stay cool. Panic wastes time.
Just as a sailing boat needs a crew who work together and understand how what they do affects the way the boat behaves – the people in your organisation also need to work as a team. This may require flexibility of roles and a clear understanding of each other’s strengths and skills. It cannot be done by one man (or woman) standing at the wheel – it takes a team.
When the inevitable happens, and you do come across something that you hadn’t predicted, don’t make sudden ‘kneejerk’ decisions. What may seem like a necessary, even a small change in the boardroom, can create panic, stress, gossip and other forms of waste and demoralisation at the front-line. Let your crew not what is happening, and then get out of the way while they adjust the sails. Panic is an indulgence; you do not have the time for the luxury to wallow in it.
What does the Boss DO?
Anyone who has read the management staples (Covey’s “Seven Habits”, Semler’s “Maverick!”, books by Branson etc) will know that the boss is meant to be “strategic”. What does this mean?
It means to keep looking out to the horizon. To test out scenarios with your team, and in your own time. To rehearse what could happen and how your organisation might need to react in those eventualities. It means to see what is going on outside your organisation as well as what is happening inside. And it means letting your middle managers get on with their job without you fiddling around with the operations (and undermining their position).
It means to gather data. To look at the long-term. To not make kneejerk decisions and send your boat spinning round in circles. To notice the rocks on the horizon and change your organisation from a slow supertanker to a responsive, adaptive sailing boats – so that you can make the changes you need in time.
And…
…Perhaps most difficult of all…
…Being a really strategic leader means…
….that when you don’t know what to do, the best thing you can do….
….is to do absolutely nothing at all.
DO nothing – LEARN more.
Or as our great friends at PRISM Consultancy (http://www.prismconsultancy.com/) might say:
DO nothing – GET data
Great leadership isn’t about running around like a headless chicken. You know that. So what are you going to find out about your employees, your customers and competitors TODAY, that you didn’t know yesterday?
As always, we look forward to your thoughts and comments. Please add ideas and tips for coping with being able to DO nothing except look, listen, think, reflect…..and prepare for events beyond today’s horizon. How does that feel? How can organisations make that part of senior leadership behaviour?
Your thoughts welcome!
Best wishes,
The Progression Partnership Team
xxx
@progpart
