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Moving To A Single Solution – why brainstorming is hard!

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I often get to witness meetings where a group of people are trying to solve a problem.  On a good day perhaps two or three options will be generated before one emerges and starts to be refined as ‘the solution’.  This is the managerial mindset – moving quickly to a preferred solution – and moving on to the next problem.

Which is why so many managers and their teams find brainstorming hard.

Brainstorming is not about finding a preferred solution.  It is about finding as many potential solutions and ideas as possible.

It is about quantity.

Quality and refinement can come later.

It is about generating ideas collectively.

Feeding off each others creativity.

Allowing one persons thinking to fuel another’s.

Having fun.

Perhaps it is what work should be like more of the time?

Are They Coachable?

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“Years ago, at the great Bolshoi Ballet, auditions for the troupe were conducted among 8 year old girls. That’s because it took ten years to become great. How did the auditions work? The teachers weren’t looking for the best dancers. They were looking for the dancers who took coaching the best. The rest would come with time.”

This from marketing guru Seth Godin’s blog is well worth a read.

Not that I agree with all of it. For example, challenging the coach’s credentials makes a lot of sense to me. It is a sure fire sign that the coach is advising (if your gonna tell me what I should be doing you had better be an expert) rather than coaching – which is a process that helps the learner to find their own path to improvement. Of course occasionally a coach might go into ‘prescriptive’ mode – but not often.

The quality we should be looking in people who will operate at the highest level is not ‘coachability’ but ‘learnability’. How good are they at learning? How curious are they? How much new stuff will they try? Will they try it for long enough to see if it really works. Will they learn something even if it is not made conveniently packaged in their ‘preferred learning style’?

It is this hunger for performance improvement that really gives the edge.

How do you recruit for it?

How do your management practices nurture it?

How do you model it?

How do you manage those who have lost it?

Lead me, follow me or get out of my way!

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David Greer is deputy CEO of Royal Dutch Shell’s Sakhalin Energy Investment Company. Now this is a business that is navigating tricky waters – and Mr Greer smartly recognised that staff motivation had taken a dip and needed lifting. A familiar problem to most managers.

So Mr Greer (or one of his staff perhaps) scans a copy of ‘Great Speeches from History’ and finds General Patton’s speech to the troops given the morning before the D-day landings. Here is some prose that will surely put the fire back in their bellies. With some careful updating and other contextual adjustments (including delivery via e-mail rather than face to face), a great, if derivative, motivational e-mail is sent to employees. It is soon recognised for what it is, leaked to the media, and Mr Greer’s problem is 10 times worse. Not only has he now got a de-motivated workforce – he has lost credibility into the bargain.
Most of the criticism that Mr Greer has attracted has been about his failure to find his own words.  His decision not to speak authentically – but to borrow from history.
I think this misses the point.
In modern businesses motivation and inspiration cannot come in the form of the occasional missive from the top.  It has to emerge from the day to day interactions of team members and managers who understand that they are doing something worthwhile. Something that matters.  Who respect and trust each other as members of the team.  Who stay in touch with the purpose and meaning of their endeavour.
In the words of Zig Ziglar:

‘People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily’.

If Mr Greer had presided over an organisation where every manager talked regularly with their team members about why the work mattered, about the importance of what they were doing, about what they as team members really wanted to achieve – his desperate clarion call from the Executive Suite may not have been necessary at all.

Recruit, Develop, Improve, Retain and Release

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5 simple processes. Do them well – or even just do them all adequately – and within a year you will have a high performing team that will be on its way to being one of the best.

Recruit – find people with passion, curiosity and a hunger to learn about your business. Find people who will add strengths and personality to the existing team. Do not employ clones. Have a reputation such that there is a queue of talent waiting to join your team – because this is where the action is. This is where people do great work and where people develop reputations and careers.

Develop – Take every opportunity to actively develop your people – knowledge, skill and commitment. Provide weekly one to ones. Provide feedback (both affirming and adjusting) by the bucketful. Delegate to them opportunities that will lead to their growth – and free up your time. Help each team member to improve their skills and their commitment and inspiration in a way that leads to improved performance. Provide coaching to all team members every week that will help them to improve their performance.

Improve – make sure that every team member is clear about their role and how to manage the tensions within it. Make sure that they have a few clear objectives some of them smart – but all of them wow! (A wow objective is one where when you achieve it you will just want to say ‘Wow!’) Review objectives regularly in the 121s and shape them according to the dynamics of the business. Keep score. Use targets.  Make it clear that improvement is an expectation of everyone.  Use feedback, coaching and 121s to help people to improve.  If they fail to improve then consider whether you are playing to their strengths.  Ultimately a team member who consistently fails to perform better has to be let go.

Retain – hold on to your best people long enough – but not too long! If you are doing a great job as a manager then your staff will perform while they are with you – but may over the course of a few years outgrow your team. Celebrate their successes. Celebrate your success. Help them move onwards and upwards – knowing that you have a succession plan in place. Carry out monthly litmus tests on all of your team to gauge how likely they are to leave in the near future and the risk that this carries. Have a clear understanding of who you need to retain and who you would like to see being successful somewhere else. Provide your team with the very best place in which to do their best work – in which to achieve their objectives (and yours).

Release – Release good people who have outgrown your team. If you can no longer provide them development opportunities then encourage them to move on. Help them. Work equally hard with the high performers and the under-achievers. Use the same management processes applied with equal diligence. Agree objectives, provide feedback, coach and use 121s. Document the process! If people fail to improve – after you have given them all the support that you can – talk to an HR specialist. Show them your documentation – 121s, feedback, coaching. Seek their advice about moving the under performing staff into ‘special measures’. Invite the under performing staff member to a meeting to discuss their performance and their failure to improve. Remind them of the investment that you have made in their success. Let them know that if their performance does not improve – you will terminate their employment. Coach them some more. Give them another 3 months (minimum) of your full commitment to help them to make it. If they don’t – then fire them. Acknowledge your failure as a manager. Sleep soundly knowing that you did everything you could to help them to succeed and that the process that resulted in their dismissal was fair, ethical and professional.

Reflect on these 5 processes.

How well are you doing as a manager in each of them. Give yourself a percentage score on how well you think you are doing in each. 100% would mean that you really can’t see any opportunity for improvement. 0% would indicate that you really could not think of any way in which things could be worse.

Sketch out a simple graph like the one shown below. What one thing can you do in the next week that will make things better?

Repeat the exercise often. Discuss your conclusions with your peers, your team and with HR. Start to do the hard work of pursuing excellence.

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Management Challenges from the NHS

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This morning a story has broken about ‘Maternity Support Staff’ drafted in to help hard pressed midwives perhaps putting mothers’ and babies’ lives at risk by taking on jobs for which they are not fully trained. The story illustrates a number of common management failings. How many of them are apparent in your team at work?

  • Roles are not clearly defined – the tasks that can only be done by fully qualified midwives and other medically qualified must be clearly defined and communicated – and they are not. Or rather they are defined clearly, but differently, by various players in the system – leading to confusion.

Solution – Staff should be trained to work with line managers in order to identify and resolve any ambiguities in their role. Roles should vary from person to person according to their skills, experience and training. All team members should be clear on what any individual is and is not qualified to do.

  • Processes for managing staff shortages are not in place – when a Maternity Support Staff sees a patient in need of assistance (that should be delivered by medically trained staff but none are available) what should he/she do? What options are available.

Solution – Record and monitor all instances where care was required for which no competent trained member of staff was available. This will help to build awareness of the extent and criticality of the problem. Hold weekly supervision and support sessions with staff in a culture of trust and openness so that these issues can be discussed and affirming or adjusting feedback can be given.

  • Delegation is not working effectively at the local level.

Solution – Trusts are free to set the day to day work of Maternity Support Staff. However this has to be in the context of a relationship of supervision, support and development in which a responsible and competent manager works with the staff member to recognise and develop their skills and experience and delegate to them accordingly. If a Maternity Support Worker can do tasks that would usually be done by a higher paid midwife or consultant, without compromising quality of care, then this is exactly what should happen. This is good management – creating value and reducing cost.

These challenges of basic management good practice are not confined to the NHS. They arise in every organisation. However the NHS is a classic example of a purpose driven organisation. People join it to be part of a team delivering excellent care. However the task driven culture fails to provide the space for staff to talk about the challenges that they face in their day to work and to develop, in partnership with competent managers, the skills, judgement and strategies to provide better care.

  • What problems are caused in your team because roles are not clearly defined?
  • How much do you really know about the risks associated with staff shortages? How does the work still get done when you are a team member down?
  • Do you have a management culture that develops each team member to the maximum of their potential? Or do you just manage to the job description?