Reframing To Unlock Innovation

The subtitle to Tina Seelig's new book inGenius is 'A Crash Course in Ceativity' and Fast Company magazine recently featured an adapted excerpt which looked at the issue of how how reframing a problem can in and of itself unlock innovation 

We create frames for what we experience, and they both inform and limit the way we think. Mastering the ability to reframe problems is an important tool for increasing your imagination because it unlocks a vast array of solutions. All questions are the frame into which the answers fall. And as you can see, by changing the frame, you dramatically change the range of possible solutions. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first fifty-five minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.

You, too, can spark a revolution by looking at the problems you face from different perspectives. Reframing problems takes effort, attention, and practice, and allows you to see the world around you in a brand-new light. You can practice reframing by physically or mentally changing your point of view, by seeing the world from others’ perspectives, and by asking questions. Together, these approaches enhance your ability to generate imaginative responses to the problems that come your way.

This concept of 'reframing' is central to FranklinCovey's 'Basic Change Model', which we have been working with for over 20 years. At the heart of this we focus on the power of paradigms and the 'truth' that "we don't see the world as it is, but rather we see the world as we are". Being aware of this in the first instance is the first step towards being able to change our paradigm and look through a different 'lens' when it comes to addressing problems or achieving desired results. To complement this mindset shift, we also help people to develop specific proactivity skills, which ensure they while they can draw on the power of previous experiences to inform new thinking, they do not become restricted by (or dependent on) these experiences.

Modern Day Performance Management

Strategy and Business's Organisation and People blog recently featured a post by Susan Cramm reflecting that, while many areas of leadership thinking have advanced in the last 20-30 years, for many organisations the approach to performance management is still a throwback to the 1980s

Employment isn’t what it used to be and it’s not what it should be. Reid Hoffman said it right, “You can’t have an agile company if you give employees lifetime contracts—and the best people don’t want one employer for life anyway.  But you can build a better compact than ‘every man for himself.’”

A new compact needs to be forged that’s win-win, one under which employees provide skills that build businesses and employers offer experiences that build careers.  A key element to making this shift is changing the focus of the annual performance review process from a backward-looking, narrow perspective that answers, “What have you done for me lately?” to a forward-looking, productive conversation that asks, “How can you contribute to the company, and how does this benefit your career?”  And when the “gives” don’t synch up with the “gets,” it’s time for direct, grown-up talk that allows each party to get on with their lives.

There’s broad agreement that the traditional performance-management approach, (courtesy of  GE in the 1980s) has outlived its usefulness. According to research from advisory firm CEB, “two-thirds of employees who receive the highest scores…are not actually the organisation’s highest performers” and “conventional reviews only generate a 3–5% increase in employee performance.”

The field of neuroscience provides wonderful insights as to why the current system generates lots of paperwork but little progress. According to David Rock, the problem is that the traditional approach fires up a threat state in the brain and limits a person’s ability to hear messages. The traditional approach to performance management, where the leader acts as judge and jury and does all of the talking, evokes a defensive reaction where feedback is rejected and current behavior is rationalised. 

In contrast to this 'outdated' approach, the definition FranklinCovey uses for leadership is that the role of a leader is to 'recognise and affirm the potential in people such that they come to see it for themselves'. To enable 'modern day' performance management in this context, we then provide input for leaders to work on some key mindsets and skillsets. 

• At a mindset level, we distinguish between leaders who look to supervise, control and direct and those who look to unleash talent and to help people 'find their voice'. (In applying these mindsets to performance management, we also distinguish between telling people how they need to do things and creating clarity on key outcomes to which people can be held accountable and towards which the leader can help to 'clear the path'.)
• These mindset shifts can then be supported by complementary skills of giving and receiving feedback and being able to mutually explore desired outcomes, with additional inputs such as 'win-win performance agreement', 'voice finder' and 'Q2 role statement' tools also available. 
  

Hiring For Trust

Bloomberg Businessweek recently featured an article in its ‘Human Business’ section entitled Because Employees Can't Be Trusted, which pointed to often hidden costs of hundreds of millions of dollars inherent in low trust company cultures

Because employees can’t be trusted, we have put in place a massive system of policies and controls to make sure no one steps out of line. It costs hundreds of millions of shareholder and customer dollars to manage this system, but it must be worth it because we’re so certain our employees are untrustworthy - notwithstanding the fact that we hired every one of them ourselves.

We write mistrust into our management guidelines. We institutionalise it in our policy handbooks. We reinforce it with every insulting memo and “to the staff” broadcast e-mail. We ding employees when they forget their ID badges and penalize them for leaving work a half-hour early to pay a traffic ticket. We willingly take and make the most of the juice and spark our teammates bring us because they can’t help connecting to their work at a level far above what the paycheck requires, but we fall back down to the level of the transaction as soon as it’s convenient to do so.

When it matters, we say: “It’s business.” When we need the extra effort, the last mile, the work-all-weekend push, or the thankless, endless trip to God-knows-where, then it’s all about the team. We don’t deserve the trust we get in those moments, but humans are trusting.

If we were to treat our customers the way we treat employees, they’d run for the hills. Somehow, because customers give us their cash, we believe their every wish is our command. Since employees give us only their brains, guts, emotional connection, time, and goodwill, the deal is slightly different. We treat our employees as though they’re only waiting for the chance to take us down.

If we value talent, we’ll start dismantling the lumbering Godzilla of controls and policies that hampers creativity in virtually every organisation, and we’ll start trusting ourselves to hire people we trust. Then our jobs will get easier and the energy at work will improve dramatically. What are we waiting for?

The solution proposed - 'to start hiring people we trust' - is a sensible one, but our experience from specialising in this area over the past 7 years is that while many may aspire to trust based recruitment policies, they don't start with a strong definition of what trust is or what its component parts are. This 'truth' reflects Thomas Davenport's observation that The more an organisation knows about a term or concept relevant to its business, the less likely it is to agree on a common term or meaning for it, and leads to the conclusion that without this common understanding it becomes very difficult to consistently hire, assess, develop and reward people based on trust.

Influencing Within A Matrix

Carol Bonett and Elizabeth Rayer from Vantage Partners recently published a short paper looking at the issue of being effective within matrixed organisations, where individuals must rely more heavily on their ability to influence others to achieve their own business

We have all heard it — the structure of today’s organisations drives the need for influence to be developed as a core competency across all levels and roles. Enterprise-wide initiatives and matrixed reporting lines means more of us are increasingly dependent on the cooperation of others, over whom we have no formal authority, to complete tasks and achieve our goals. However, knowing that the ability to influence others is the way through the sticky web of a complex business environment is one thing, being successful at it is quite another. Common influence strategies and tactics often prove inadequate:

• Approaching influence as something that is done to others, and not a collaborative activity to be engaged in with others 
• Creating conversations that allow for only two responses — agree or disagree 
• Focusing only on attractive ways of presenting our own ideas without doing enough to understand resistance of others 
• Using organisational hierarchy to determine who is the decision maker

So this is our challenge — when important  outcomes are at risk, when we are

confronted with a complex landscape of stakeholders with conflicting interests, and when we need to influence others with whom we will have ongoing interactions, and thus need to build strong working relationships, how do we avoid 4 common influence traps?

1. Spending too much time trying to get others to understand your point of view
2. Spending too much time trying to get people to say “yes” and not enough trying to understand why they are saying “no” (and “selling”)  
3. Spending too much time trying to influence the wrong people  
4. Assuming efficiency and inclusion are mutually exclusive in decision making

In parallel to the support we offer to enable effective external client relationships, FranklinCovey's work on internal client and colleague relationships works on two basic (and for many 'groundbreaking') premises 

• The first is that, before we consider the skills and techniques around influencing, the starting point is to connect with the 'intent' we bring to the relationship in question, as this will determine the dynamic of everything that follows in that relationship 
• The second is that, when it comes to ensuring the success of internal clients and colleagues (and by extension, our own success) it is not actually about influencing, convincing, inducing, compelling or urging them to do something. Rather it is about recognising that, in any given situation, they will be looking to make a decision, and the reputation we build for ourselves within the matrix will be based on our ability to enable that decision in a way that benefits all parties involved.

When Cultures and Strategy Clash

Jon Katzenback recently co-authored an article in Strategy and Business entitled 'Stop blaming your culture' which looked at the issues of implementing new strategies and how this is best done by recognising and leveraging the cultural characteristics which make an organisation distinctive 

An organisation’s culture can be defined as the set of deeply embedded, self-reinforcing behaviours, beliefs, and mind-sets that determine “how we do things around here.” People within an organisational culture share a tacit understanding of the way the world works, their place in it, the informal and formal dimensions of their workplace, and the value of their actions. Though it seems intangible, the culture has a substantial influence on everyday actions and on performance.

Organisational cultures don’t change very quickly. Therefore, if you are seeking change in your company or institution, you are most likely to succeed using your existing culture to help you change the behaviours that matter most. Bit by bit, as these new behaviours prove their value through business results, the culture you have can evolve into the culture you need.

When a new leader’s strategy puts the culture of a company at risk, the culture will trump the strategy, almost every time. There are good reasons for this. Every company’s identity — the body of capabilities and practices that distinguish it and make it effective — is grounded in the way people think and behave. Deeply embedded cultural influences tend to persist; they change far more slowly than marketplace factors, and cause significant morale problems when not addressed effectively. When your strategy and culture clash visibly, more likely than not, the culture is trying to tell you something about your own leadership philosophy.

But many leaders overlook this message. They blame the company’s culture for the resistance they encounter. In the most extreme cases, they assume an explicit mandate for wholesale cultural change. This leads them to remove key leaders and old practices, restructure operations, set in place new rewards and promotions, and announce other across-the-board programmatic changes. This approach is costly, disruptive, and risky. Moreover, it takes years to accomplish. Working in a culture that is under attack reduces employees’ energy and de-motivates them. It may require a major marketplace or economic disruption to get people to buy in. Clearly, this is not a game for the faint of heart. Worst of all, it is rarely successful; few major corporate transformations, especially those involving a wholesale change in the culture, achieve their intended performance goals.

Alternatively, leaders may try to ignore their culture and act as if it isn’t important. But when overlooked, the hidden power of a company’s culture can thwart any leader’s strategic aspirations. No matter how many top-down directives you issue, they will rarely be executed, at least not with the emotional commitment and consistency needed to make them successful.

FranklinCovey's input when supporting strategy execution is specifically focused on the behaviours, mindsets and beliefs which Katzenback defines as making up culture (as opposed to 'stroke of the pen' initiatives which can also make up a large part of strategic change). 

We recognise, in particular, that 'top-down directives' are unlikely to work and instead look to create the conditions where strategic change happens 'through' people, not 'to' them. We do this by first focusing on the nature of the goals that are set, then by translating these down the levels in an engaging way and finally by establishing a repeatable approach which taps into the resourcefulness and initiative of people at the front line in defining 'how' they can achieve the 'what' defined within the strategic goals. Our experience is that, rather than 'blaming their culture', this approach allows leaders to start using it instead to execute on their most important priorities and build sustainable high performance.

Unleashing The Power of Hope

Earlier this year The Gallup Business Journal featured one of the key elements of successful change in it's article Making Hope a Business Strategy  

Hope -- the belief that things could be better and that you can make them better -- can help companies prosper, says Shane J. Lopez, Ph.D., professor of the practice at the University of Kansas School of Business, Gallup senior scientist, and a leading researcher on hope. But first, leaders must understand what hope is and how to unleash its power in the workplace.

Hope is an active stance, says Lopez, author of the forthcoming book Making Hope Happen. It helps people launch new businesses that thrive and dream up new products that sell. Hope also pushes people to be ambitious and become successful. And it accounts for 14% of productivity in the workplace. To take advantage of hope in the business world, leaders must make goals meaningful, strategise hope and plan for "what ifs," and help employees understand that they can use hope to make the workplace better.

The more you do it, the better it works and the more you can do it. "It's hard to be successful without being hopeful," Lopez says. "When you think the future will be better than the present, you start working harder today."

A large part of FranklinCovey's work in change projects also involves leveraging Hope, and the approach we take involves 2 stages. Firstly, we help people understand that while the new and different results being asked of them may seem challenging, this is typically because they are being looked at through the lens of their current experiences, mindsets and behaviours. Then, having identified which new ways of thinking and new ways of working may best enable the new results they are targetting, we are able to codify these and make them accessible in scalable learning formats so that these characteristics can become part of the business's culture, thus unleashing the power that a collective sense of hope can create.