A631.2.5.RB - Cooperation and Competition

New class, new subjects for the blog. For this week I am looking at the process that went into forming a geographically separated team. This team will form a work-group throughout the weeks to come


What behaviors seemed to help your team successfully complete its task?

Communication was key. In this week I was the weak link in communication as I had overlooked the project being assigned so early. As a result my communication wasn't timely and therefore not helpful. While I added my inputs towards the end of the week they were not useful as a whole. The other team members were not able to make use of my data. Thankfully, the data inputs are individual and not requiring processing or I would have set them back.

What factors inhibited decision-making or problem-solving?

Geographic separation encompassing several time zones is the biggest issue. Had everyone been on my time zone the deadlines would have been easier to manage. Additionally, until my inputs were in place it was impossible for me to be reached. This makes it even more difficult for the team to be able to understand what is happening.

How much time was spent on decision-making and problem-solving?

This would be hard to answer without knowing how long it took each person to formulate their parts of the charter. I know my contributions were fairly straight forward. Also, we would need a defined problem to solve to truly answer this question.

How was information shared among team members?

Information appeared to be shared openly and evenly. Contact numbers and emails were exchanged which should facilitate future information sharing. Information was not always given in a timely fashion but that was more my failing than the team's failing.

How did issues of authority or power affect the team?

They did not seem to affect the team at all. This was a straightforward assignment with very little need for interventions or process examination. True issues of power tend to develop when there is more than one way to solve the issues. This assignment did not lend itself to that paradigm. Additionally, all members have done these before and are practiced in the information needed. Having this experience removed any need for direction or true authority.

How did collaboration and competition influence the outcome?

The team seemed to be very collaborative. The outcome was influenced by one team member posting close to the end of the deadline. The aforementioned issues played a part in this outcome.

Did team members make process interventions?

They didn't seem to be needed. The members of the team have all done this type of work in the past. Having done that type of work the team was able to smoothly add information and produce a product. Once again, as the projects grow in complexity this will change.

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Hiring and Recruiting

Watch this awesome video. I really enjoy learning about Google's culture and I hope you do to!

1. Does Schmidt's description of the Google Culture make sense to you?

Yes it does. I love flat cultures and I like recruiting to fit an atmosphere rather than a job. Not having huge hierarchies allows people to feel very empowered. When they know they are free to pursue their own projects and are supported in this idea it goes even further towards creating an empowered and trusting employees. These types of cultures also fosters innovation. Centralized command stifles innovation and having worked for an organization where centralized command is the norm I can tell you that I feel very nervous floating new ideas. I often joke with a few trusted co-workers that I have angered the Collective and while most of them don't get the Start Trek reference they at least get the idea that I feel we are expected to be drones (if you click that link a guy shows up at your door and gives you back your virginity).

2. Is this a reasonable way to view the work that most people are doing in your workplace?

I wish. Working in a hospital means that I have to have somewhat stricter guidelines than programming. However, that being said, I think it would be nice if teams dedicated to program improvement were given more latitude to make decisions. Suffice it to say we are not particularly innovative and that bothers me a great deal. It seems we repeat the same things over and over and hope that somehow results will just magically appear. I have always enjoyed process improvement and I actually plan on loaning out this class's textbook to a few people to see if I can gain some small amount of traction.


3 As a leader, does it take courage to have and to implement this point of view? Could this backfire?

I think it just takes faith in your employees. It isn't comfortable relinquishing control. And I see how managers have been burned by placing trust in weak employees. I am a union supporter but they can make it difficult to remove obstinate employees or implement organizational change. So when a manager wants to empower an employee he or she needs to be careful to pick trusted employees. Trust is a two-way street but I do see how managers often have more to lose. It can take a great deal of courage to be willing to make mistakes to find those correct employees.


4. What can you take away from this exercise to immediately use in your career?

That I need to apply to Google, or a firm that specializes in helping create the type of culture that Google has established. I am not in a place where I am truly empowered to make decisions and that can be very frustrating. I also don't think any great changes will be coming around any time soon. I work for an organization that still thinks flash-drives will activate Skynet if plugged into the computer. Overall I think it takes external pressure to create new cultures in well-established organizations. When there is no incentive for change it becomes very hard for new ideas to take hold.

Corporate Re-invention

These past two weeks have had me pulling my hair out getting ready for a national inspection. As this affects our accreditation as a hospital I will leave it to your imagination to visualize how busy it's been. So this is a no-frills post. Enjoy!


1. Michael Bonsignore, CEO of Honeywell, states that Honeywell will not be an extension of the old Honeywell or Allied Signal. He is creating a new culture that blends the best of the merged companies of Honeywell and Allied Signal. He says that Honeywell will compensate and reward people that look for best practices from both companies in creating a new corporate culture and punish those who do not. Do you predict Honeywell will be successful?

The nice thing about being Honeywell is that you are Honeywell. They have their presence in so many aspects of electronics and defense that they can still fail upwards. 

If the question asks if I think the merger of cultures will be successful than I can say that I believe it will. It won't be an easy transition but ultimately people will go along if they feel supported and valued. It's amazing the return on investment one can get from simply letting people know they are supported even in times of trial. By adding in an incentive measure the CEO is letting people know that contributions to this change will be valued and that also can secure some buy-in. 

2. What barriers do you see based on what you observed in the video?

The biggest barrier I can see will be psychosocial in nature. The employees of the bigger Honeywell, and this is pure supposition, may feel that they are the "bigger brother" and that since theirs is the acquiring company the smaller company's employees should be doing the listening. This is not in line with the CEO's vision for the company's future. It would behoove Mr. Bonsignore to let Honeywell know that the smaller company is an investment in the future of Honeywell and is not to be seen as a lame duck that needed rescuing.

A second barrier would be the sheer size of the merger. In smaller companies it would be easier to merge two cultures, if the company is small enough the cultures can be merged over pizza and beer. With Honeywell there are geographic challenges, layers of managers with varying degrees of loyalty and competency, and thousands of employees for whom change is very scary. To assume that this will go smoothly would be fantasy. A steady and patient guidance will be needed. 

3. What critical success factors should Honeywell consider as it crafts its organizational strategies around a new culture?


Though it can be hard to measure I would list morale as a big success factor. Honeywell needs skilled and motivated workers in order to survive. Skilled and unmotivated workers will lead to stagnation. The merger will strain morale (more in some areas than others) and watching for upticks here will be important.

 Increased shareholder value is an obvious metric for success. This is largely dependant on getting the new system working as quickly as possible.

 These first two will build a third factor of public perception. Once again this is hard to quantify but increased sales, positive press, actual growth, and favorable returns are generally good indicators of how the public is perceiving a company to be functioning. I think these are too often viewed as separate entities rather than the all-encompassing concept. Wal-Mart's recent market woes are largely due to the public perceiving their labor practices to be poor. They may very well be poor or they may very well be industry standard. If the latter is the case Wal-Mart forgot they ARE the standard due to their size and as such the public will focus its attention there. Honeywell is not in the same market and caters to a different demographic but the paradigm can be the same.

4. What can you take away from this exercise to immediately use in your career?

 I am trying to focus on learning how to use small changes in a resistant system to formulate bigger changes downstream. I am not ready for a Honeywell merger or a culture shift as the system in which I operate still thinks that I plug in a flash drive I will activate Skynet and bring doom to mankind. In essence, I hope to bank this insight for a time when I can formulate bigger change. Right not I work with the tools at hand.

50 Reasons Not to Change

Change is frightening for many. It removes us from our comfort zones and  challenges us to think of new ways of doing things. Hopefully change is something that happens to all of us, but as we know it is often avoided and we do so with a variety of excuses.

1. How do you react when you hear colleagues using some of the excuses listed in the 50 Reasons Not to Change graphic?

My personal pet peeve is hearing "we've always done it this way." It really does drive me nuts. My initial resonse is to ask "does that mean it cannot be done more efficiently?" It is rare that things cannot be improved upon, but even if the examination determines that a particular system component is working correctly that does mean that it should be exempt from future examination. The world is constantly changing and what works today might not work tommorrow. There needs to be constant feedback and examination of processes.

"It needs committee study." I hear this and I know that nothing will be done...ever. Languishing in committee is the death knell of any proposed change. Yes I get that topics need to be discussed and data gathered but to consistently refer to committee tells me that you are unable to make a decision.

2. Do you ever use any of these excuses yourself?

I am often hampered by lack of equipment so I have avoided some change by using that excuse. In my defense the proposed changes did not include the equipment and support needed to carry them out. I can only devise so many workarounds before the change is worse than the problem it was meant to fix.

3. How can you overcome the thinking that creates those responses to change efforts?

It can be very difficult to overcome these entrenched mentalities. Often cognitive dissonace sets in and the target becomes even MORE resistant to change. In many ways this has to be overcome before the change process really starts. In other words, the target has to see a need for change. In the private sector falling sales or monetary losses will often drive change. Even then, there will be resistance and you will probably lose some people depending on the scope of the change.

Once change is in progress it may be that you have to employ coercion techniques, persuasion, compromise, or even outright directive approaches to overcome entrenchement. I prefer reasoned discussions but often people become emotionally invested in their positions, then I find it useful to explore the whats-in-it-for-them portion of the equation. That way they are able to transfer emotions to the new concept.

4. Do you agree with Seth Godin’s concept that change is driven by tribes?

A bigger discussion can be found here where a comparison of Godlin's Tribe Theory and Watt's approach to Influence can be found. Tribe theory is based on a interlocking relationships and those relationships are not always clearly defined. As with any tribe there are a mulitude of variables in play among those relationships such as politics, friendships, romances, and any other human to human interaction possible. This isn't particulary new but it does help frame the discussion in a way that stops setting such clear views boundaries of leadership and influence. And THAT is something with which I can agree. Leading people takes more than strategy (thought that has to be there) it takes an understanding of the relationships and connections among the followers.

5. What can you take away from this exercise to immediately use in your career?

I work for an organization that can be very slow to change. There aren't a great deal of external motivators in play to force change. This has led to a great many entrenched managers. Understanding how these paradigms of resistance have been put in place has been instrumental in trying to change my small corner of the world.

NASA Culture Change

For those of you that want an hour of CSPAN here you go! Grab your popcorn, grab the kids, make a night of it. All kidding aside it is important to understand cultural change in NASA as it pertains to culture change in organizations. Also, it isn't a bad speech from a business perspective and I think it is a great example of a how an organization has hit the reset button and accepted responsibility for how their culture has failed

1. Why did NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe address NASA employees to describe the plan to
bring about proposed changes to NASA's culture?

NASA's employees needed to hear how leadership was accepting responsibility for the failure in culture. He will need the support of the organization's people in order to execute change. It also sends a message that this is a priority for leadership.

2. Was he believable? Is it important whether he appeared to be believable?

I think he was but I also have not had much experience listening to O'Keefe's prior speeches. In some ways managers lose credibility when they repeat themselves over and over yet take little action. I think for a culture that has gone awry actions will speak far louder than words. That being said I think he said things that many people needed to hear. His words on climate and being able to "speak up" were very important and they do send a message. Couple those with action and I think that the cultural will go a long way towards being improved.

3. Why did he talk about NASA values?

It is helpful to remind people of shared values. Not only for the people listening but for himself. Value systems need to be consistent throughout an organization and throughout their partners and when leadership is not only sending the message but acting the message those values percolate throughout the various levels of the organization. However NASA is a large organization with many layers and the message, while consistent in a speech, won't be applied evenly throughout those layers without much effort on the part of Mr. O'Keefe.

How Companies Can Make Better Decisions

You have to love the Harvard Business Review great information without all the glitz and glamour of PBS. This week's video is an interview with Marcia Blenko of Bain & Company. She is discussing decision making as the building block of leadership effectiveness. This means that ultimately that change management will also need to be build on effective decision making.

Marcia Blenko argues that decision effectiveness correlates positively with employee engagement and organizational performance. How do you think that employee engagement relates to decision effectiveness?

To put it bluntly and in non-academic terms...people know when their leaders haven't a clue. There can be a tendency for managers to exist in a fog where they think their ineptitude is some how transparent to the people at the bottom of the organization chart. In my personal experience the people at the bottom of the chart are often more in tune with how the company is living and breathing than the people at the top. It is my firm belief that productivity follows morale. Poor morale makes people work just hard enough not to be fired. That link will be the best part of this blog. However, when people feel that effective decisions are being made, even if they are not always in line with what a given person wants, they are more motivated and engaged. This may mean that leaders need to actively listen to what their people are telling them. People are generally wanting to be heard so badly that they are willing to pay for the privilege.

What are some impediments to good decision making?

Marcia lists a few in her interview and I could just refer back to that but instead I will give an example from my own organization.

Leadership in an organization is a learned art. There are very few natural, charismatic leaders that also make effective decisions. Within my organization there are very few trained managers. Sure they are highly educated doctors, psychologists, and the like but having a PhD in psychology doesn't always equate to effective leadership. Add in a healthy does of bureaucratic tomfoolery (family friendly blog here) and you have a recipe for completely ineffective decision making. I feel that being properly trained to handle managerial tasks is crucial and lack of that training is an incredible roadblock to good decision making. I often use the argument that in order to manage three doctors I would need to have a great grasp of doctoring. In order to manage a healthcare system I need to know how to lead.

Blenko suggests that there are four elements of good decisions: quality, speed, yield, and effort. In your opinion, is there anything missing from this list?

Good decisions are no bigger than they need to be in order to get the job done. I would argue that precision would be a fifth element of decision making, and no I am not going to link to two movies in one blog post.

To elaborate I feel that some decisions can be too sweeping in scope. In order to overhaul an entire system one must fully understand all the variables in play. It may be that smaller, more targeted decisions towards one variable can have bigger ramifications down the road. The Law of Unintended Consequences should always be considered when making decisions. There are times bold strokes may be needed but careful leadership will always encompass the downstream effect of decisions. In other words, make a change, measure results, make a change, measure results. Rinse, Repeat. If one does not measure the results of an action before taking another you can wind up chasing the gauges to what can be called an unintended air-frame/ground interface.

A Day in the Life

Another video! I rather enjoy these as I tend to learn something from each one. This video isn't a reflective as others but it was interesting to see how Southwest keeps morale up among their crews as well as promote a culture. As a bonus this video starts with some sweet 90's corporate music. Enjoy. 

Is the Culture Committee at Southwest effective in establishing cultural norms?

Southwest is known for having a unique corporate culture. I think the Committee is doing an excellent job as exemplified by this hilarious attendant. If you watch nothing else you should watch video to see how Southwest's culture is personified. With that I can move on.

From what you can tell, what is the purpose of the culture committee at Southwest?

From just the initial video I would say the purpose of the Culture Committee is to promote the welfare and moral of the crews on the aircraft. However, it is probably safe to say that the committee has more than one function such as designing new programs to keep morale high and ensuring that needs of the crews are being met.

What would you see as a viable mission for a culture committee in your place of work (or your last place of work if you are not currently working)?
Patient care can be a demanding field and there are many ways that culture committees can be useful. However, the hospital does endeavor to provide regular gatherings as well as food and drink for the staff. In addition, the union often does cookouts and bar-b-ques outside in the common areas where staff can gather for a a free lunch. It isn't always possible to promote a uniform culture in an organization as large as the Department of Veteran's Affairs but locally the union does a fantastic job of providing those little thank-yous that go a long way.

What can you take away from this exercise to immediately use in your career?

I have always thought that a positive and fun culture can go a long way towards keeping employees happy. A happy worker is a productive worker. Within my unit we try to keep things as light as possible but that carries with it the danger of seeming flippant to outside observers. It is a careful balance!


With that in mind I am going to go watch the Super Bowl.