Tag: team work

Elements of value

Fabrizio1 Comment

It is not enough to say that your company focuses on delivering values to customers.

What is value?

If you don’t stop for a long moment considering this question, you are not focused on value. Value is economical, and it is also technical, social, personal, functional, aspirational. Value takes into consideration material costs, and also possible issues, adoption, expansion, scale. Value is transactional and relational. Value is co-operative.

And once you have identified all the elements that make up your value, you still have two steps to take.

First, you have to understand the why of value. Why does it matter. Not tomorrow, not one year from now, not one day maybe. But now.

Then, you have to build a system that constantly delivers on the elements across the various departments, that captures and measures the elements, that continues assessing them, that creates incremental evidence for them, and that ensures that they are not replicated by competitors and new entrants.

Value is a complex concept, not another organisational buzz word.

Prepared to communicate

Fabrizio1 Comment

If you do not have time, if you are too busy, if you have many things to do, if you are juggling different tasks.

Then avoid sending important messages or giving important speeches.

Effective communication requires time and intentional effort. No, you are probably not a natural communicator, and people will not get it one way or the other.

Depending on your role, communication might have different degrees of importance for you. If you are a leader, or if you are in a position of power, you should probably have it among your key priorities. But unless you can dedicate enough time to prepare for it, silence is your second best option.

[The time it takes me to prepare for a speech] depends on the length of the speech. If it is a ten-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now.

President Woodrow Wilson

Bad bosses

Fabrizio1 Comment

Do employees quit bad bosses?

As a matter of fact, they do.

And they do quit organizations that provide inadequate training and promotional opportunities, bonuses, and non-cash benefits, that foster (willingly or unwillingly) a negative climate, that assign insignificant tasks, or repetitive tasks, that do not leave enough autonomy, that do not give enough support.

The fact is, there is quite a lot that an organization and its leadership can do to prevent people from leaving. And considering the cost of voluntary turnover, the sooner they get to it, the better.

I agree, but

Fabrizio1 Comment

We have heard that agreeing with people is a way to defuse conflict. And we have taken it so far that the words I agree are two of the most used in companies.

Of course, they are mostly misused.

They are often an easy way to gain some short-term sympathy, to prime the others to positivity, to prepare the ground for what you are going to say next. They are a delay to the inevitable.

I agree, but.

To come to a real agreement implies that you are going to at least slightly change your perspective. It means the actions that follow I agree actually show that you are in agreement. It means that you are ready to support what the other just said, even outside the current conversation.

If instead you are just preparing the ground for disagreement, be brave enough to own it and say I disagree instead.

I agree, but erodes trust, openness, and candor.

It is just not worth it.

Engagement

Fabrizio1 Comment

If you are in a position of power, it is important for you to acknowledge that any one of your actions that suggests external causality (i.e. if you do this, I will make this happen) is going to reduce both intrinsic motivation (i.e. the tendency to seek challenges, to use curiosity, to learn) and the internalization of factors such as values and responsibilities.

Using a popular term, we could say that it reduces engagement.

In this study, you can find quite many of such behaviours that are very common in organizations: setting deadlines, giving directives, carrying out performance reviews, imposing goals. The single individual will feel that they are not in control, that they are not autonomous, that they are not competent.

It takes guts to go against what decades of management practices have made normal. And it starts with awareness.