I’m thrilled to be leading a radio team retreat this month for KAXE, a northern Minnesota station rooted in people, place, and storytelling. In a time of shrinking federal and state support, their work is more vital than ever.
KAXE is at the forefront of community-powered radio, with programming that connects and inspires— a few examples of how the station:
Helps us identify the birds at our feeder (as well as other fascinating nature observations) through the program Phenology
Gets us up and dancing to the largest variety of music we’ve ever heard on Headwaters and On the River
Keeps us informed via in-depth Local News reporting on issues that matter to rural MN—like local government, housing, daycare and education
I have designed the team’s retreat to:
Tap into the energy of the local communities, including loyal listeners who raised $160K+ in a recent “Defunded but Not Defeated” campaign
Strengthen local news, music, and conversation. Our practical strategic planning involves reinforcing community radio’s vital role in free speech and amplifying underrepresented voices
Brainstorm how to celebrate KAXE’s 50th anniversary. Since the station is powered by the people of northern MN, we will craft events deeply rooted in community.
This moment is personal. I first volunteered at KAXE as a student, creating a youth news program. Now, years later, I get to support their mission via helping to empower a community radio station and radio team that is in short, irreplaceable.
This blog does not reflect the views of my clients.
There’s no substitute for business advice that’s practical and useful. Yes, I’m talking about suggestions that actually work — as in, they make things better in the real world.
Drivel, on the other hand, is defined as “silly nonsense.” Unfortunately, there’s plenty of it floating around in the field of organizational development.
At their best, management tips and techniques have helped me navigate tough organizational challenges and find clear, successful solutions.
But when you’re in the middle of a structure, process, or people challenge, it’s tough to rise above the chaos and see a way forward. Yes, management thinkers really can be your best friends.
However, not all management thinking is created equal. In my experience, most of it falls into three buckets:
Bucket 1: Interesting, But Not Practical
Much of the academic work around management presents clever concepts that have limited real-world application. These are the kinds of ideas that are fun to think about — but when Monday morning rolls around, you’re left asking, “What exactly am I supposed to do with this?”
Take leadership styles, for example. The theory categorizes leaders as dictatorial, authoritarian, consultative, or participative. Great. So let’s say you want to be more participative — now what? What actions do you take, and what do you tell your team to create that environment?
These theories often answer the what without ever addressing the how. They describe what it means to be a manager, but don’t provide much guidance on how to actually do it. Interesting? Yes. Helpful? Not so much.
Bucket 2: Practical, But Not Useful
In this bucket, you’ll find management ideas that seem practical — but fall apart in execution. These are the ideas that leave you saying, “Well, it looked good on paper…”
One example is the business reengineering craze many organizations jumped on a decade ago. Reengineering called for reinventing the way work was done by redesigning processes and workflows. Sounds practical, right? But in practice, it often resulted in mass layoffs without improved performance. Employees quickly caught on that volunteering for a reengineering initiative wasn’t in their best interest. Tony Carter, After the Aftermath of Reengineering (1999)
You can usually spot theories in this bucket by how your team responds. When you introduce these ideas, they’re often met with skepticism or confusion. Employees either ignore the advice because they suspect it won’t work, or try it and see poor results. These ideas are quickly abandoned.
Bucket 3: Practical and Useful
As in so many areas of life, we have no shortage of opinions — but wisdom is much harder to find.
Once we set aside the first two buckets, what we’re left with is a smaller group of management approaches that are both practical and useful. The good news? There’s less to learn — because you’re focused on what actually works.
The tools in this bucket are real organizational interventions. They consistently help people navigate structure, process, and people challenges. These are the approaches I’ve leaned on time and time again.
Here are a few examples that have stood the test of time in my own work:
Structure: Jay Galbraith’s Organizational Design Principles
Galbraith emphasized using design principles to ensure that organizational structures achieve their goals. These principles guide the design process, help with trade-off decisions, and keep everyone focused on a shared outcome. This method helped me align a dozen independent marketing groups within a Fortune 100 company so they could quickly respond to customer needs and unexpected challenges. 🔗 www.jaygalbraith.com
Process: Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle
Deming’s PDCA framework is my go-to for managing improvement projects. It keeps teams focused on gathering data, analyzing root causes, and making meaningful change. I’ve used this approach to save millions of dollars while improving the quality of products and services. 🔗 asq.org/learn-about-quality/project-planning-tools/overview/pdca-cycle.html
People: Start/Stop/Continue Exercise
‘Start/Stop/Continue’ is a simple group exercise any manager can run. It helps teams move from strategy to action, and it improves alignment, effectiveness, and efficiency. I’ve had employees tell me this tool has been transformative for their teams — it’s that effective. 🔗 www.mindtools.com/pages/article/SKS-process.htm
There’s a huge volume of management thinking out there — but only a small slice of it is truly practical and useful.
If this post helps raise awareness about the need for real-world, actionable management thinking, then mission accomplished.
This blog does not reflect the opinions of my clients.
[Note: this post, first publishing in 2018 has been updated with new content]
Why should we return to office? The lament reminds me of Pink’s song “Just Give Me A Reason” where she begs: “Just give me a reason, just a little bit’s enough.” To date, the headlines have instead focused on the reasons for staying home.
For example, a recent Wall Street Journal article cited the difficulties around getting urban workers to head to the office given increasing crime on public transportation, the cost of commuting and continued worry about Covid. [WSJ, Big Cities Can’t Get Workers Back to the Office, July, 7, 2022.]
Those pushing for return to office have missed the most important reason for gathering in-person: The work itself! As a life long organizational consultant I have experienced first-hand how compelling it is to bring people together to share experiences and collaborate. We are social animals. And let’s face it, many of us tire of staring at a screen all day.
Over the past few months I have witnessed amazing workplace dynamics resulting from face-to-face experiences:
A global team that was headed in many different directions aligned, moving together towards their goal. This required focusing team members on the specific tasks at hand. The team members shared what help they needed from their peers in order to perform. This led to dynamic discussions about what the team can realistically provide each other.
A support team determined how they can accomplish annual goals via working in new ways. Team members indicated that they were floundering as they tried to navigate new work challenges on their own from home. The team members shared best practices. They identified ways to collaborate in order to gain new capabilities and adopt new approaches.
An operations team was able to meet face-to-face for the first time in years. Many of the team members were new to their roles. They shared moving life stories and work experiences. At the conclusion, team members indicated that they had gained newfound energy for their work due to really getting to know one another for the first time
The above breakthroughs did not come quickly. It was not as easy as simply gathering team members in-person and hoping for positive outcomes. Rather, powerful interactions happened as a result of planned deep engagement. These carefully designed interactions lasted several days. A number of important factors were at play:
In some cases team members needed to be in person in order to have the time and focus for in depth topics which led to understanding of the work at hand and how their roles overlapped.
In other instances team members benefited from a great deal of spontaneous back and forth discussion resulting from in-person interaction.
In most cases, the age old challenge of trust played out. Team members needed to spend time together building up their faith in their peers in order to open up themselves.
The team collaborations described above do not require us to be in the office all the time. In fact, many teams are carving out chunks of time to gather together each quarter, month and/or week. This is the new brand of hybrid work.
We need a reason to face the risk, cost and just plain old inconvenience of hauling ourselves to the office. Just give me one reason to return: The people!
Note: This blog does not reflect the views of my employer.
Given the challenges our clients are facing, we should “enable” them to improve #organizational performance. Yes, I used the word “enable!” I fully recognize that this term is often times seen as a negative. As in, I “enabled” my dysfunctional cousins to drink themselves silly.” Not so cool.
The type of “enabling” I am talking about involves clients who are currently immobilized by the dozens of challenges they have faced over the past two years. The #pandemic alone has resulted in many of our clients having to take herculean efforts to keep their organizations functioning. Many teams are now transitioning again to #returntooffice which creates additional stressors. [I write about the challenges and triumphs of delivering our work virtually and hybrid in my new book: https://amzn.to/3zvtzyv]
All this adds up to some burned out folks who are not in a good place for launching new #organizationalimprovement efforts. … And yet, we all need to keep getting better! …
Given this back drop, I find myself going the extra step to kick start some performance improvement efforts. A few examples:
Kick Off: I have taken a more active role in getting teams together in order to start an improvement effort. There are a number of leaders and team members who have #organizationaldevelopment efforts on their docket. At the same time, they are so swamped with day-to-day people, process and technology challenges that they do not have the bandwidth to get the effort kicked off. I have found that by doing a bit of work upfront to push the effort into gear, the leaders then quickly follow with action.
Project Approaches: A number of leaders and teams I work with do not have the mindshare to brainstorm ways to approach our performance effort. Again, they are so overloaded with other challenges that the exercise of coming up with new, innovative ideas for improvement is simply overwhelming. In these instances I find myself offering up a slate of ideas to get the conversation going. This provides the initial fuel leading to robust conversations.
Scale Back: I am fine with leaders and teams needing me to prime the pump to get a project going (per the above two bullets). However, this is the case only IF the team is then able and willing to do the heavy lifting. In cases where the team is truly overloaded, I suggest that the project be scaled back, delayed or dropped altogether. It is much better to back away from a project that would end up flailing than to push it forward.
In summary, I am finding that in some cases leaders and teams need a little nudge to get them going on organizational improvement. Given the huge challenges over the past few years I am willing to do a bit of extra work/hand holding beyond what consultants typically offer given these extra-ordinary times (how many times have we heard that term!).
I am being provocative by using the word “enabling”. Is the consultant by doing a bit of extra work to get an effort going “enabling”? If so, then I guess I am an enabler….
Note: This blog does not reflect the views of my employer.
welcome back written on yellow sticky note- vector illustration
A consulting colleague stared at me with disbelief that I had spent time during the #pandemic writing a book The New Workforce: Productivity Through Virtual and Hybrid Teamshttps://amzn.to/3zvtzyv on navigating these new environments. She explained that she has always operated in #in-person and #online environments, seamlessly switching between the two.
I am an “elder” consultant with decades of experience. My colleague is a millennial new to the game. This gap in perspective is playing out every day in organizations across the globe. This is especially true as many businesses are now asking employees to #return-to-work during 2022, along with remaining virtual for part of the time.
This transition is creating some angst for professionals not acquainted with fluidly moving between work settings. However, should this type of ongoing transition lead to drama? Is focusing time and energy on work settings taking valuable energy away from asking more important questions about how to resolve critical organizational issues of the day?
I believe the below comments of my millennial colleague featured in my book suggest that she would answer these critical questions in the affirmative:
“I’ve spent most, if not all, of my professional career operating in hybrid virtual/in-person work environments on global teams. I was 24 when I joined one of the largest business consulting firms in the world, where I was expected to travel 100% for work, which in my case meant I was getting on a plane each Monday at 6 a.m., coming home each Thursday by 11 p.m., and working from home on Fridays.
Across all industries I worked in, from manufacturing, to consumer-packaged goods, to retail, my clients expected consultants to be onsite physically each week. This was even the case when I was put on a project based in Budapest, Hungary, where I was able to finagle a “2 weeks onsite, 2 weeks working from home” schedule for a year.
I’ve worked on deliverables and carried out entire meetings and workshops on planes, busses, and trains, in coffee shops, lobbies, my parents’ kitchen, the client’s onsite cafeteria—you name it. The idea of “going into work to get things done” is an interesting one in my experience, because I have had to constantly learn how to work with others in whatever context was presented to me. …
If nothing else, this pandemic has tested our assumptions, truths, and rules that we may have held close. By allowing ourselves the space and possibility to hold multiple truths together, we can continue to stay agile and continue operating in whatever environment or context is presented to us next—whether it be a plane, a coffee house, or my parents’ kitchen. I look forward to it.”
In my book I conclude that the virtual approaches I share, such as online polling and whiteboards, can be easily leveraged in hybrid and in-person environments. The key is to become adept at tools and techniques that will help your teams succeed regardless of where they are delivered.
As a fellow “elder” consultant said to me last week: “We have a lot to learn from the millennials about how we approach work.”
Note: This blog does not reflect the views of my employer.
This is an excerpt from my new book The New Workforce: Productivity Through Virtual and Hybrid Teams. For additional ways of getting teams to higher performance in an online world purchase book here and please write a review: https://amzn.to/3zvtzyv
When we worked in-person, the problem of the day was the main topic of conversation. As soon as we landed at the office, someone would ask, “Did you hear about the ERP system?” An emergency meeting invite regarding an angry large customer would appear as soon as we turned on our computers. As we poured our first cups of coffee, team members were huddled together in the cafeteria excitedly talking about the production line that went down.
The office setting provided many forums where team members could share what they knew about the challenge and explore together how it happened. Perhaps most telling, the gaggle of employees in the cafeteria was essentially an informal problem-solving session helping make sense of the current challenges. This was happening at the same time leaders were dropping into each other’s offices to carry out similar debriefs.
After going virtual, the first thing I noticed at our initial online meeting was that team members were no longer benefiting from those hallway and cafeteria conversations. This wasn’t surprising since the hallways and cafeterias were closed. Because the employees were working from home, they no longer had those important informal chats. Virtual employees were now making sense of the problem for the first time when I convened them for an initial meeting. …
I realized that I needed to re-create these pregame informal discussions in a virtual setting where teams hashed through the nature of the problem ahead of time. … The first thing I do is jump onto one-on-one virtual calls with team members to get these conversations going. … I ask them a few pointed questions and make a number of suggestions:
I ask what the problem is and if they know its root cause. I also ask how they know this is the source of the problem.
I encourage them to initiate additional virtual live conversations with their peers.
I point out that exchanging ideas about the problem on collaboration software like Microsoft Teams or Slack builds understanding.
I suggest shooting off a few emails if they don’t have time for live conversations.
These methods spur teams into productive action in our online world…
This blog does not reflect the views of my employer
A Pandemic Story – Performance Through Virtual and Hybrid Teams
The New Workforce: Productivity Through Virtual and Hybrid Teams by Dr. Kevin Anderson tells the story of how going virtual due to the pandemic led to work innovations. The idea of delivering business consulting virtually was unimaginable for Dr. Anderson. He had spent decades building a brand based on being in the same room with intact business teams. He is also a self-described technological idiot. Going virtual in March of 2020 completely shook his world.
This book describes Dr. Anderson’s journey to design and deliver online work and meetings for high team performance. His story of how to approach work in the virtual and hybrid environment has not been told. The book starts with organizational topics such as business problems, strategy to execution, structure, and culture-building. This is followed by practical tips and techniques for succeeding online in these key areas that teams grapple with every day.
Through twelve practical lessons, learn how to craft effective virtual and hybrid work exercises and pair them with user-friendly online interactive technologies, such as online polls and whiteboards. Discover helpful ways to guide and facilitate teams in the virtual arena. Finally, end each chapter by reading the reflections of leading organization development (OD) consultants who have gone on this journey with Dr. Anderson over the past year.
As organizations struggle with remaining virtual, returning to work, or some hybrid approach that’s a mix of both, this book offers invaluable practical approaches for team success in the new workplace.
Here is the back story. As a result of publishing my book Organization Design Made Easy: Structure, Process and People, I met Dr. Joseph Allen who just published this very timely book along with Karin Reed. Dr. Allen is a professor at the University of Utah and the Director of the Center for Meeting Effectiveness. Dr. Allen’s website.
Rather than ‘teaching’ people tips and tricks that are hardly ever applied, Dr. Allen reviews real meetings and provides specific, relevant, and actionable feedback on how they can be improved. True learning in action:) [And BTW: He has written 100s of articles on meeting effectiveness after reading through 1,000s of articles. So you can check that task off your to do list!]
One of Dr. Allen’s findings that I have found most useful is the importance of providing voice opportunities in meetings. He discovered that team members need to feel that they can speak up, be heard and have their opinions acknowledged in online meetings. Participants want to be accepted, validated and have their thinking included in the decision making processes. Creating this open, safe environment is easier said that done online. Dr. Allen’s research offers suggestions for drawing out participants including turning cameras on, as well as active facilitation.
And in case you are interested Dr. Allen is conducting a meeting effectiveness study for organizations. The other connection here is Keith Leust, who I worked with at Accelare, who is part of Dr. Allen’s research team. For more information, give Keith a shout at KeithLeust@MyCareerTransformation.com
Note: This blog does not reflect the views of my employer
The #workplace teams I consult with are driving extra hard to perform in this challenging environment. They stay on task. However, I do get glimpses of stresses around parents’ health concerns, kids online schooling road blocks and other unfathomable challenges around working remotely. This is unchartered terrain.
As these stresses bleed into our daily work, it becomes increasingly apparent that virtual employees no longer have a forum to talk about and work through what they are experiencing. Pre-pandemic, they could grab a cup of coffee with co-workers in the lounge and kick around their daily challenges. Today, for many of us, that forum is gone.
They clearly want to share with their peers what they are experiencing. However, jumping into a meeting and telling their stories may be uncomfortable and frankly not welcomed given the work tasks at hand. This is why I have added opportunities for employees to share their triumphs, challenges, and even the mundane, as part of day-to-day meetings. Any of us leading meetings can incorporate places where the team can interact.
Here are three examples from virtual meetings I have led:
As a meeting kick off, I challenged project team members to show something from their home office. We soon found ourself viewing a home workout area being built, some favorite family pets and even a half-eaten lunch.
As part of a manufacturing plant leadership team, we explored the challenges that they are facing with their workforce given the pandemic. Leaders shared stories and tips and techniques for helping employees who are struggling.
Team members talked about what they have learned about themselves from the pandemic. The responses included funny stories about finding out that that their families despised their cooking. Other discoveries included moving accounts of reuniting with family members that had formerly been distant.
These shared stories may seem small. However, when people are staring at a computer screen all day, followed by being homebound by night, these very human interactions can take on expanded meaning.
The benefits are numerous. Employees feel that they have been heard. Peers have benefited from knowing that they are not alone. Practical ideas for resolving challenges have been shared.
Let’s be honest. At this point, even if all we do is help employees experience a sense of workplace normalcy, that is a job well done!
This blog does not reflect the views of my employer.
If you were on a desert island (or how about quarantined!) and could only bring three change management tools, what would they be? Kevin Anderson took this challenge in his new book Organization Design Made Easy. He spoke about the power of simplifying our field at a recent Performance Excellence Network (PEN) session.
Kevin Anderson, Dr. Organizational Design 