Competition Drives Costs UP

by Don Harkey

Every American knows that nothing drives down costs like competition. The more players in a particular market, the lower the costs will be for the consumer because of the different players will need to drive down costs to compete with the other players in the market. Pretty simple, right? Wrong.

Competition does not always drive costs down for the consumer. Think about an airport that utilizes 4 different airlines. Let's say that each airline operates its own ticket counter, manages its own security check in, its own crews, its own airplane maintenance crew and even its own arrival/departure boards.

First of all, as a consumer, you will see a quality issue in terms of service. If your United flight is canceled, it is unlikely that they will put you on the Northwest flight leaving in a half hour. Imagine running 4 different security lines (all unbalanced because you have to go to the security gate of YOUR airline. Imagine the confusion on switching flights. You have to find your departure board and only people from your airline can help you. What about the costs? The operational costs of these 4 airlines are sky high (pun intended). Instead of one maintenance crew capable of handling the entire airport, they must maintain 4 crews. This means more parts inventory, more people, and sacrificed efficiency.

The point here is competition does not always drive costs down. In fact, the opposite is frequently true. Most of today's most successful companies are constantly looking to their competition for opportunities to collaborate and share resources. As long as price fixing doesn't occur, the value of these collaborations are passed to the customers.

This is also true for people. Competition can inspire people to do great things, but in the end, it is team work that truly makes people more effective and more efficient. Inspiriting competition within your organization in a way that discourages collaboration will lead to increased costs, decreased morale, and inefficiency!

Personality Conflicts

by Don Harkey

Have you ever heard the story of the eagle and the snake? I'm going to butcher it, but the story as I remember it is simple. A snake asks an eagle for a ride across a wide canyon. The eagle hesitates knowing that the snake is poisonous and refuses. The snake pleads his case promising not to bite the eagle until finally the eagle agrees. Half way across the canyon, the snake bites the eagle. As the two fall into the canyon, the eagle asks "why?". The snake replies, "because I'm a snake and you knew I was snake when you picked me up".

I don't know why, but that story sticks with me as I work with people. I don't think many people are snakes (although some are!), but I do believe that people have a certain hardwired personality. Sure people can make choices on what they do and how they carry themselves, but underlying every decision is a "personal current". This personal current is often both a strength and a weakness. Let me give you an example of someone I know pretty well... me.

I am what is known as a strategic thinker. I look at a situation and immediately work to put it into context. I then formulate a series of next steps in my head that will lead to the desired outcome. Seriously, that's what is happening in my brain hundreds of times a day.

When I am working with a client, this is a strength. I am constantly taking in information and converting it to a comprehensive action plan that will help get the client to where they want (or need) to go. I can facilitate a staff or board meeting and help the team look at things a different way that will lead them to action. I can see the "big picture" when looking at a process. I can move all of the pieces in my head before we act and judge the best course of action.

Sometimes, this is a weakness. In my interaction with some people, I often play out their responses to situations that haven't yet occurred and sometimes I am disappointed in what I think their response will be. That's a little crazy, right? I have walked into meetings with people angry before we even get started because I anticipate their reaction to the meeting. This also makes me very impatient when I can see a clear course of action and I have to spend my time convincing others to move. A great (and too common) issue I run into is when my wife tells me of a problem and I immediately lay out 10 part solution (hint to guys out there... she was not looking for a solution).

The good news is I know these things about myself (thanks in part to personality profiling like Myers-Briggs and Strengthsfinder) and can use my strength to control my actions and responses. If I feel myself getting angry at an anticipated response, I tell myself to calm down or imagine the negative reaction I will get if I come in with my "guns blazing". I am successful some of the time (more as I get older), but I still mess up from time to time.

You can see what I mean, right? Everyone has this internal, hardwired way of approaching and processing inputs and yielding outputs. Or to put it a slightly less nerdy way, different strokes for different folks!

The mistake that often occurs within an organization is that people latch on to each others flaws and expect them to change. It is OK to expect people to try to control themselves, but it is not reasonable to expect people to "rewire" themselves. If someone on your team likes to talk too much, they will always like to talk too much. You won't change that, but you can help them to control it. That means that they can control themselves in certain situations, but that also means that YOU can't become sensitive to every time the person opens their mouth.

Approach personality issues with understanding and know that it is a hardwired issue. I have used the term "hardwired" enough that I need to draw the distinction of what I mean. The "hard wiring" of an electric device is the physical wires and components. You can reprogram the computer over and over, but changing its fundamental operation is much more difficult. For people, brains are making hardwired connections at an incredible pace from a few months in the womb to about age 5 or 6. After that, the hard connections are still occurring, but they are MUCH slower than before. This means that you pretty much have to work with what you've got.

This also means that you pretty much have to work with what your co-workers and employees have. An employee who is quick to anger will likely always be quick to anger. A boss who snaps at employees when he feels threatened will likely always have that desire to snap. The opportunity for improvement lies in understanding (from others) and control (of themselves). This can built through awareness using tools like Strengthsfinder (see the book on Amazon).

My main point here is that you can work with a snake, just don't put him in a position where if he bites, you end up falling into the canyon. Be realistic about what people can do and control and most of all, be patient (something I work on every day!).

Not MY People

by Don Harkey

A couple of friends of mine are both business owners and they also happened to be husband and wife. The husband owns a service oriented technology company. The wife owns a research company specializing in motivation. The three of us were talking recently about applying motivational principles to an organization. The service company owner complained that while he understood the principles of the motivation theory and agreed with them, he had difficulty applying them. He went on to admit that despite numerous offers, he had not utilized his wife's consulting services for his own business. "I just struggle to see how it applies to MY people.", he said.

This is a constant barrier to consultants in my line of work. As a consultant, I have to be very knowledgeable in a the areas in which I consult. I spend a lot of my time reading books and articles on organizations, people, management and anything else that offers some insight. The way I look at it, I am building on my foundation of knowledge by examining different theories.

Through the years, I have read enough books that I can assess and evaluate the material to determine its value based my collective knowledge. Its as if I have a "grand unified" theory of management in my head and every book presents a new hypothesis that can either add, take away from, or be discarded from the theory. This may be giving too much insight into my brain, but that is how I am trained to think. What do I use to determine if I buy into a new theory or reject it?

First, I use experience. Does the new theory "feel" right? When "Freakonomics" came out with the theory that the crime rate drop is largely caused by the legalization of abortion, I think to myself, do they make a compelling argument. They do (read it for yourself!). My next question is how can this knew information be applied to my general knowledge. The result from this example is that it doesn't apply directly, but the analysis is an interesting example of thinking outside of the box. Thus, a small building block in Don's Great Unified Theory has been placed onto the wall.

I especially like when I get the same information from two different approaches. Deming talks about a "pride of workmanship" in his books "Out of the Crises" and "The New Economics" and how people are not well motivated by "stuff", I can apply my experience to conclude that he is probably right. When I read research driven articles on "self-determination theory" that supports this same information, I get really excited and I put a little more mortar on the wall of knowledge (nice imagery, eh?).

However, having a wall of knowledge just to have a wall is not very useful to a consultant. The bottom line is that all knowledge is useless it can be applied. What is the point of knowing how people are motivated unless you can apply it to companies who have trouble with unmotivated employees? Guess what... that's where the consultant comes in!

The devil, as my service company owner says, is in the detail. Theory is often general and difficult to apply in itself. That is why management often dismisses some of the "touchy-feely" theories in favor of hard theories that use metrics or scorecards. Math has a right answer where philosophy struggles to even find the right question! Management is about answers!

This is where a good consultant earns their money. Applying theory to specific circumstances with baggage and ugliness and cloudiness and uncertainty is challenging, but possible. I have worked in the shops where the workers all hate each other and their supervisor. I have seen them spit on their product and collect their low wages while on this latest stop in their career bouncing from one company to another as a human commodity. I have seen these same people realize that they can make a positive impact at work and suddenly find joy in what they do. I have seen their supervisors show them grace, direction, and some trust and begin to heal the wounds of years of mistrust. It is possible!

I have seen the professional staff who have damaged their relationships with each other beyond repair begin to come together under a common purpose and begin to release their baggage and plan for the future.

All of these improvements come from theory, but more importantly, they come from the ability to apply the theory. I often spend time with companies teaching the theory, but this is only the first step. The next step, applying the theory, is where the real benefits arise. Not sure how? I can help with that. It my be YOUR people, but its MY job!

Touchy-Feely Stuff

by Don Harkey

When people ask me what I do, I tell them that I own a consulting company. When people ask me what I consult, I tell them "process improvement, strategic planning, vision and mission generation... that kind of thing". I usually tell them that I am an engineer at that point, and then they really seem puzzled. What does the "touchy-feely" stuff like vision and mission have to do with process improvement?

Last week, I met with a trainer/coach and we were talking about how different "consultants" always do very different things. A good analogy might be in the field of marketing. A marketing consultant might really be a graphic designer, a product placement expert, a marketing strategist, an advertisement consultant, or maybe a marketing specialist in a specific area like technology. The point is that each field is complex, but rather then try to explain all of that, consultants often over simplify. Almost every consultant "specializes" in something.

My "specialty" is process improvement. I can work with any company to find significant improvements on any process. What is a "process"? Everything is a process, whether it is defined or not. You have followed several processes already today from getting dressed this morning to turning on your computer. Organizations have multiple processes interacting everyday, some deliberate and some undefined. By focusing on key processes, an organization can become more efficient and provide better quality to their customers. What are the key processes? Perhaps even more importantly, how do we make the process improvements not only "stick", but continue to improve?

The goal is to get organizations to understand their key processes and continuously improve them. One of my goals for my clients is for them is to get them where they no longer need me. How do we accomplish this? This is where the "touchy-feely" stuff comes into play.

The first step for any organization is to understand its core purpose. What is truly important? What is it they are trying to accomplish? Without knowing this, process improvement efforts can actually hurt and even cripple an organization.

Imagine a company who applies process improvement to their customer service process. They decide that their goal is to cut down the average call time and the total cost of customer service. They outsource the calls to India and provide them with a strict script designed to keep the call length at a minimum. They figure out that the average customer will wait 10 minutes without getting too upset, so they design their capacity around an average wait of 10 minutes. Now take a step back. As a customer, does this sound like a company you want to buy a computer from?

Zappos was recently in the news for their unusual practice of NOT using average call time as a success metric in customer service calls. They instead looked at whether they successfully resolved the customer's problems. This is substantially harder to measure and doesn't analyze as cleanly, but Zappos has a different goal than the first unnamed company. Zappos has a clear vision of who they are. They know what their purpose is. They remain very connected with their customers (you can even follow the Zappos CEO on Twitter at http://twitter.com/zappos).

When I work with a new organization for the first time, I have to make a quick judgment of whether they understand their own organizational purpose. Some do, some don't. Few have it clearly outlined. Before we embark on significant process improvement efforts, the organization MUST understand what "improvement" means. Does it mean reduced costs? Does it mean improved quality? Does it mean growth?

Once an organization knows where it wants to go, the next step is for them to understand how they will get there. This is where the strategic planning comes in. While the "how" is important, perhaps an even better question is "who". This is the key to "continuously" improving a process. Real and continuous improvement is only accomplished when EVERYONE in the organization becomes involved. Management must understand their role and must utilize the talents (both realized and hidden) of all the people within their organization.

One we have a core purpose, I like to work with front line supervisors and managers to help them see what their people can actually do. I have worked with organizations who have treated their bottom level employees as commodities for many years suddenly discover hidden talents and passions from unexpected places. One hourly floor worker who disliked his job discovered a way to save the company $50,000 per year in waste. This employee was suddenly energized to find more improvements and has gone from an "underperformer" to getting promoted to supervisor. This is when REAL change begins to occur.

Too often, management does not like to focus on the "touchy-feely" aspects of organizational improvement. That is probably because they have never applied it with the nuts and bolts of process improvement. Once an organization knows who they are and acknowledges the talent of their people, I can teach them a plethora of tools they can use to understand and improve their processes. These are the "hard" skills that management loves to jump to, often before they are ready.

This week, we are going to talk more about these "touchy-feely" business principles and how important they are to any organization.

Accountability Principles for Teachers

by Don Harkey

I am a geek. There I said it. I'm a geek and that is OK. I am a big fan of the scientific method. You establish a hypothesis and try to prove it wrong. If you can prove it wrong, you need a new hypothesis. A lot of knowledge can be pulled from this method. If the laws of gravity don't work the same in Las Vegas (because what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas), there is something about gravity that we don't quite understand yet. Studying gravity in Vegas would be very beneficial.

The same is true for behavioral theory. If a principle applies in one place but not in another, it is very beneficial to study the exception to the rule to find out why it is so.

There has been some interest in applying some of the motivational theory we have been discussing to the classroom. Its an interesting exercise! Let's see if it fits.

The basics of the theory is that motivation is driven from the fulfillment of 3 basic needs; Competence, Autonomy, and Relatedness (use the acronym CAR to think of "driving" motivation). The theory also states that there are different levels of motivation. It could be said that a person is either motivated or not motivated based on whether they do something or don't do something. However, we all know that we sometimes do things for which we are barely motivated and sometimes we do things where we are very motivated. This means that we can be demotivated by something and still do it (although begrudgingly).

The "levels" of motivation can be easily understood by thinking about ways to get someone to do something. Here are some of the levels...

- Amotivation - A person does not feel like they can do something, they feel like it is outside of their control, or they feel like they don't relate to the task. Consequently, they don't do it.

- Reward/Punish - If I were to hold a gun to your head and ask for your wallet, you would likely be motivated to give me the wallet. However, would you feel good about it? What happens when I go away? The same is true if I offered you a piece of candy to wash my car. You might do it, but once the candy is gone, would you still do it? This is the lowest form of motivation because it not driven by the task itself, but by some "extrinsic" form that might be taken away. By the way, compensation (salary) falls into this category.

- Pride/Shame - A clever person can "guilt" or "pride" someone into doing something. I might ask for your help on a project because you are the "only one who can do this right" (pride). I might ask you to help me move because "I don't have any other friends who will do it and I don't know where else to go" (guilt).

- Identification - What if I can convince you that what you are doing is important? I might ask you to help volunteer for a church program after showing you all of the great things the program does for the community. You might see the value in the task and be motivated to help out.

- Integration - Sometimes you don't need anyone else to motivate you to do something. If you hear music in your head all day long, it is completely natural for you to want to learn how to play an instrument. If you feel like a task is part of your Core Purpose, you will do naturally do it.

The pattern that you might see in these increasingly effective forms of motivation is that motivation is best when it is driven internally rather than externally. This is really important because there might be multiple reasons to do something and you want people to focus on the reason that is more motivating. What do I mean?

I once lost my wallet and a neighbor found it. The neighbor called me to return the wallet and when we met, he was clearly proud that he was doing the right thing. He has a true look of satisfaction on his face until I went to hand him a $20 bill. He was completely deflated. What had happened?

The man had decided to return the wallet because it fit with a value system which he saw as important. When I tried to give him a reward, his motivation shifted from internal to external. I robbed him of his internal motivation. This happens frequently at work where you are payed to show up. When you start working for bonuses or pay increases, you will find that you won't enjoy your job nearly as much. If you were paid double, would you really do your job differently? (I know, let's try it and find out!)

Apply this to students in a classroom. The "best" students are the ones who truly see value in what they are learning. The next "best" students are the ones who see school as a means to an end. Further down the motivation line are the students who feel embarrassed or feel great pride in their grades. Still further down in the motivation spectrum are students who are threatened if they get bad grades and are rewarded if they get good grades. Finally, there are students who simply don't see the purpose of school at all and don't put any effort down.

Students in kindergarten probably don't have a lot of "vision" for the future. They might enjoy some of the things they are learning, but they often won't understand the value of everything they need to learn. They probably aren't thinking about their "permanent record" or getting into a good college. Kindergarten students are often motivated by pride/shame or by reward/punishment. Is this OK?

I think that this is OK for awhile. If we think about education as a long term process, one of the goals of educators should be to help students see the value in learning. I think any teacher would agree with this. The reason this is important is that kids who see the value in learning become adults who see the value in learning (whether it is learning a craft or learning theory). These are the adults who ask questions, get answers, and push the envelope. These are the professionals in our society who innovate and create great value.

Since many kids (and many adults) are not in the highest phases of motivation, it is OK to use the lower phases in the short term. I certainly punish my kids when they do something wrong. However, it is important for the long term to teach "why". It is also important, once a child (or adult) starts to operate in the upper levels of motivation, not to distract them with rewards or threats or pride or shame. Recognition for a developing student (or adult) is very important in that it confirms their vision of what is important. If the recognition itself becomes the driver, it becomes less motivational.

I would say that this motivational theory applies very well to students and teachers whether they are adults or children. It is important to remember that children have less feelings of competence (which can be broken up into strengths, confidence, and experience). Small victories go a long way in gaining momentum up the motivational ladder.

I hope this helps my teacher friends out there! I like to think of management and teaching as cousin professions. They both work to develop people and they both have a huge impact on people's lives!

(NEXT WEEK'S TOPIC - FEAR)

Creative Accountability

by Don Harkey

"But you haven't had to work with MY people!"

We have talked about how holding someone else accountable to do something uses a lower form of motivation. Getting people to hold themselves accountable by allowing them to relate to the task utilizes a much higher form of motivation. The problem that arises is how you can get someone to hold themselves accountable.

Anyone with children knows the challenge of trying to "guide" the behavior of another human being. If my 2 year old sticks her finger in a light socket, my reaction is probably not going to be working to create an environment where she feels related, competent, and autonomous. I would probably use my "alpha male" voice to command her to stop.

Any person who has worked in an environment that ran strictly off command and control will likely struggle in an environment full of autonomy. This is especially true in jobs where people are traditionally treated like a commodity. Its a viscous cycle. The person who works in an environment where they aren't trusted to do the right things eventually gets to the point where they truly can't be trusted to do the right things. Saying that you are going "hold the person accountable" is hardly effective.

So what do you do? This is never an easy situation to deal with and there is no cookie cutter way of bringing a person from being motivated by fear and threats to being internally motivated. All you can do as a leader is focus on the 3 needs that drive motivation: competence, autonomy, and relatedness.

Start small. Give the person a little bit of control in a small task that they understand. Allow them to feel small successes and build off that. Show them how their small successes contribute to the whole. Show them a little trust in that area. Don't look over their shoulder constantly. Find a mentor for that person who can show them that doing the right things is really the right thing to do.

The most important factor that will keep your people moving in the right direction is a clear vision. I was told recently of a study in hospitals that looked at medical errors. The study determined that the right procedures are usually in place to prevent these errors, but the procedures aren't being followed. The problem is the person who is following the procedure doesn't understand the important of each step.

If I were to write a procedure for an operator to work on a machine, I would instruct them to first shut off and lock down the power to the machine (making it extremely difficult for someone else to energize the equipment while they were working on it). Some people have no idea how many people get hurt in equipment that was supposed to be "off" while they were working on it, but the equipment suddenly turned on. I could train on the procedure over and over again and still have people who don't follow it. However, if I show the operator some statistics on how many people get hurt not following the procedure, or if I can share real case studies, or if I can even show some gory pictures of someone who had a hand smashed in equipment, the message will stick.

Understanding the importance of our work is a key to motivation. Communicate a common vision. Allow your people to feel success. This is why the "thank you" mug can truly be effective. As a reward, a mug isn't something that drives most people. However, understanding that your work is part of a greater good is very motivating. As Dr. Levesque says, the external "reward" drove internal motivation. Its when the reward becomes the driver that we decrease motivation (ex: replace the mug with a check for $1000). Its nice to receive a great reward, but we lose our focus on why we truly do what we do.

My final advice is to keep at it. Keep working with your people. Most people want to do the right things. Once you have your people working with you and not for you, you will discover a whole new resource... the talents and passions of your people!