Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
How Does It Feel To Commit Prematurely?
Is it too soon to get married?
In February, I wrote about premature commitment. According to Paul Nutt in his book, Why Decisions Fail, premature commitments all too often lead to debacles — decisions gone spectacularly and publicly wrong. The process is fairly simple: 1) we have a problem; 2) a beguiling solution is proposed; 3) we jump on the solution with undue haste and without considering our options or searching for alternatives. After all, we have a solution, don’t we? Why bother looking for another one?
As we read Nutt’s book in my classes, I can tell that students are grasping the general concept intellectually. It’s clear — intellectually and academically — that you shouldn’t commit too soon. Step back, look around, ask questions, survey the possibilities — then make a decision.
That’s all well and good in the classroom but will my students actually be patient when the pressure is on and everyone wants to be a hero? I’m not so sure. So, I’ve been looking for ways to show students what it feels like to make a premature commitment. By experiencing the process — rather than just reading about it — I’m hoping to imprint something on them. When you’re under pressure and a crisis is looming, it’s hard to think clearly. It’s easier to remember an experience than it is to organize your thoughts and respond to a novel situation.
I’ve discovered a video that helps students make the connection. Actually, I’ve known about the video for some time but I used to use it for a different purpose. Then it dawned on me that the video provides a good demonstration of a premature commitment. So, I’m re-purposing the way I teach it. Perhaps that’s an example of mashup thinking.
The video requires you to concentrate your attention for about 90 seconds and count the number of times a specific action happens. Here’s what I’d like you to do: Watch the video twice. The first time, focus intently on the task at hand (the video will explain what to do). Count the number of times the specified action happens and record the number. There is one (and only one) correct answer. Then watch the video a second time and don’t bother to count. Just observe what goes on. Don’t read on until you’ve watched the video twice. You can find the video here.
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Watch the video (twice) before proceeding
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Did you miss anything the first time you watched the video? Did you notice it the second time? (I’m not going to give it away here but, if you find this confusing, send me an e-mail and I’ll explain it).
About two-thirds of the people who follow the instructions miss an important element of the video the first time they watch it. Perhaps the key phrase here is “people who follow the instructions”. Basically, I conned you into making a premature commitment. I convinced you that — to get the right answer — you needed to pay close attention to the action and count carefully. You decided that it was important to get the right answer, so you played by the rules I imposed. Because you played by the rules, you missed something important in the environment.
What’s the message here? It’s easy to get caught up in the situation. It’s easy to buy into the “rules” that a situation seems to impose on you. It’s easy to let other people rush you to judgment. It’s easy to con yourself. The next time you’re at work and a problem arises and everybody is rushing to find a solution, just ask yourself: “Am I missing the gorilla?”
When Will We Have a Vision?
I’ve heard many executives try to answer questions about vision. The responses tend to be wordy. Perhaps the speaker meanders a bit. That’s unfortunate because a question about vision is often a plea for help.
Here are some questions you might hear:
- When will we have a vision?
- What’s the vision?
- When will you clarify the vision?
If the question comes from a junior employee, I’m inclined to take it at face value. The questioner just wants to know about the vision.
On the other hand, if the question comes from a more senior person – especially a person who manages other people – it may have a different meaning altogether. The question is not so much when we’ll have a vision but:
- When will we have a vision that I can (easily) explain to my employees?
The person may well understand the vision (in general terms) but doesn’t feel comfortable explaining and defending it. The question is actually a plea for help.
You could, of course, answer the question and explain the vision. But you would miss the opportunity to convert the person into an ambassador for your message.
If you answer the question literally, you’ll give information to one person. If you can create an ambassador, on the other hand, you can amplify your message and deliver it to hundreds of people. Moreover, your messengers will be trusted members of the local environment. That’s often much more powerful than hearing the same message from an executive who works thousands of miles away.
How do you create ambassadors? There are at least three steps:
First, make them feel like part of the team. Someone who feels they’re off the team, won’t convince others to join. How do you make
Oh, I see.
people feel like they’re on the team? Include them. Ask their opinion. Listen. Treat them with respect. Say “thank you”. It’s not so hard to do but it does take time and requires some thoughtfulness.
Second, simplify the message. You’re trying to put words in someone’s mouth – more or less literally. It’s easier to put a short message in someone’s mouth. Long messages tend to get filtered and edited in unpredictable ways. Short messages are more likely to survive intact as they pass from one person to another.
Third, repeat the message. And ask others to do it as well. Your target audience will need to hear the message at least half a dozen times before it sinks in. Even if you think it has sunk in, don’t stop delivering it. Take a hint from Coca Cola. We all know what Coke is but that doesn’t stop the soda giant from continuing to deliver the message.
Once you create ambassadors, be sure to treat them well. More people will hear your message from them than from you. That means you can use more of your time to do other things — as long as you can keep your ambassadors on message.
More Time
Budget this!
Last week, in Time – The Infinite Resource, I wrote about the “time culture” in your organization. If your organization is like most, you keep close track of how employees spend money and no track of how they spend their time. Yet, management gurus like Peter Drucker, say that time is our most precious resource. If you can’t manage your time, you can’t manage anything.
In my post, I outlined three (of five) time management techniques that McKinsey recommends to make organizations more productive and less stressful. The basic trick is to treat time as a corporate resource rather than an individual resource. In other words, we should treat time essentially the same way as we treat money.
Here are the other two time techniques from the McKinsey article.
Refine the master calendar — to identify things that you can stop doing, you first need to identify (to yourself and others) that you are doing them. This often means a master calendar for key individuals and meetings. In fact, meetings are some of the biggest time wasters. (See the Travis Rule). Make them do double duty. If executives travel to a meeting, ask them to schedule other activities at the same time. Perhaps they can visit customers or schedule personnel evaluations on the same trip. McKinsey also suggests categorizing your meetings. Are they for: 1) reporting; 2) collaboration and coordination; 3) managing performance through course corrections; 4) making decisions? (Not approving decisions, but actually making them). McKinsey reports that, in top performing organizations, executive spend some 50% of their meeting time in decision-making meetings and only 10% in reporting meetings. Less efficient organizations often over-schedule reporting meetings and under-schedule decision-making meetings. By wasting time that also increases stress.
Provide high-quality administrative support – how often have I seen companies lay off relatively inexpensive clerical workers and then ask expensive executives to pick up the task? Far too often. That reduces the time efficiency of your most costly employees and adds to their stress. In McKinsey’s study, 85% of executives who manage their time effectively also report that they have excellent administrative support. Only 7% of the poor time manager report that they have excellent support.
It’s also interesting to note how effective time managers spend their time. According to McKinsey, the best managers are alone 24% of the time. That doesn’t mean they’re not communicating — they could be on the phone or e-mail — but it does mean that they’re not in meetings. They also spend 17% of their time in meetings with customers or prospects and another 10% in meetings with external stakeholders. Taking the three activities together, they spend 51% of their time not in internal management meetings. If you’re trying to organize your time more effectively, that seems like a good number to shoot for.
When effective time managers communicate with others, their preferred method is face-to-face meetings. Indeed, such meetings account for 38% of their communication time. This was a revelation to me. I’ve always believed that meeting face-to-face is the most effective way to communicate. But I never thought of them as time savers. Perhaps because face-to-face meetings do provide richer, more nuanced communications, they also save time in the long run. With richer communications, you make fewer errors — and correcting errors is a huge time sink.
Sustainability and Innovation
Nice axe!
When I lived in Ecuador, I climbed many of the highest peaks in the Andes. I carried an ice axe with a carbon steel blade and a shaft made of laminated bamboo. Why bamboo? Because it was very light and very, very strong. Little did I know, I was also using one of the most sustainable products in the world.
Who uses bamboo today? Dell Computer now creates packaging out of bamboo fibers rather than cardboard. Why? Partially because it’s very light and very strong. But mainly because it’s one of the fastest growing, least resource intensive fibers in the world. As with my ice axe, it’s highly sustainable.
Dell’s packaging is a small example of a wave of innovation that’s sweeping the manufacturing world. Companies realize that sustainability is increasingly important to their own survivability. It can also be an important competitive advantage within significant customer segments. Innovating for sustainability can deliver three significant benefits. First, it can reduce costs. Second, it can lead a company into new market segments. Third, those market segments are often willing to pay a premium for sustainable goods, which can mean higher margins.
According to a joint MIT and Boston Consulting Group study, interest in sustainability is growing partially because profits are growing. MIT/BCG have published the study yearly since 2010, when they first identified Sustainability Embracers “who firmly believe that sustainability is necessary to be competitive.” In 2010, 23% of the Embracers were already reporting profits from their sustainability innovations. By 2012, that number had risen to 37%.
To reduce costs, companies are increasingly asking their suppliers to reduce waste and energy use and simplify packaging. Customers — especially in Europe — are demanding sustainability “credentials”. Employees are also pressuring their employers to innovate for sustainability. Ultimately, sustainability may become a differentiator in efforts to recruit top talent.
Companies are also selling sustainability. According to the study, SAP, the huge business-to-business software company now states that its purpose is sustainability. Peter Graf, SAP’s chief sustainability officer, says, “That is why we have started to … help clients optimize their energy requirements and natural resource use across their supply chains.” Helping customers implement Green Manufacturing has to be one of the biggest B2B software opportunities over the next decade.
Dell’s example is one of resource innovation — swapping a less sustainable component (cardboard) for a more sustainable one (bamboo). Many companies are also innovating their business models to achieve greater sustainability and greater benefits from sustainability. The innovations tend to come either in value chain improvements or in market segmentation. Companies that “pull these two levers” are more likely to see profits from their sustainability efforts.
There are still obstacles of course. Companies cite various hurdles: it’s difficult to quantify the benefits, sustainability conflicts with other priorities, it increases administrative costs, and, in some cases, it may increase overall production costs. Still, a growing segment of companies is investing in sustainability. Perhaps the best predictor of success is whether a company has written a formal business case for sustainability. Those that have tend to be the innovation leaders. They are also more likely to report that their sustainability investments are generating profits.
Interestingly, North American companies are not leading this innovation wave. Though Europe is ahead of America, the real leaders are companies in developing countries, especially in Africa. The MIT/BCG study suggest that this may well be “because these regions face significant resource scarcity and population growth challenges.” This may also be an example of “reverse innovation” where innovations in poorer countries are adapted by richer countries rather than vice-versa.
Give and Take and Corporate Culture
At your place of work, is it a good idea to ask for help? If you do, are you considered weak? Are you happy to ask for help or hesitant?
These simple questions about your own behavior can help illuminate your corporate culture. More importantly, they can help you understand whether your culture is pointed toward success or failure. That’s the gist of a new book, Give and Take, and an accompanying article, “Givers Take All: A Hidden Dimension of Corporate Culture” in the McKinsey Quarterly.
The author, Adam Grant, suggests that organizations should focus on developing a “giver culture” rather than a “taker culture”. Grant takes the example of various intelligence agencies in the period after the 9/11 attacks. The single best predictor of effectiveness was “… the amount of help that analysts gave to each other.”
What are the characteristics of a giver culture? It’s a long list and includes, “… helping others, sharing knowledge, offering mentoring, and making connections without expecting anything in return.” In taker cultures, on the other hand, “…the norm is to get as much as possible from others while contributing less in return.”
Grant summarizes the benefits of giving cultures, including increased productivity, improved customer care, greater innovation, and lower turnover. So why don’t more organizations commit to creating giving cultures? Because most organizations are set up to be competitive. Only one person can get that promotion. If my department gets a larger budget, yours gets a smaller one. It doesn’t pay for me to help you.
Grant suggests a variety of steps that executives and managers can take to reap the benefits of more giving cultures. One is simply to “keep the wrong people off the bus.” In the recruiting (and promotion) cycles, focus on identifying, hiring, and promoting givers rather than takers. How do you identify a taker? Three ways:
- Takers say “I” rather than “we” – they take the credit for themselves when it should be shared. (I’ve commented on this regarding the job interview process).
- They kiss up, kick down – managers may see them as supportive but subordinates will see them as little tyrants. Be sure to get references from subordinates.
- They badmouth others – similar to kiss up/kick down, takers will derogate others to improve their own relative status.
While you can hire and promote givers over takers, ultimately managers need to set the example that others can emulate. If you want employees to think outside the box, then you should think outside the box. If you want to create a giver culture, then be a giver yourself. If you pay it forward, you’ll soon be paid back.
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