Every organization has its culture that you can see when you observe people at their daily work. This observed culture should be aligned with, or congruent to, the official organizational culture. In reality there is often a gap between the intended culture and the real observed one. For example, management might say that quality is above everything else, while pushing to release new versions of low quality product riddled with defects. Or an organization touts its focus on learning and removing impediments, while the reality is the complete opposite. This post discusses the impact and importance of cultural alignment.
Tag Archives: leadership
The Manager Sanity Check
November 9, 2009 .So, you’re planning the future. There are is a lot of stuff you are eager to do. But stop and think – are you pushing forward in the right direction?
Make sure there’s a balance between:
- Product – what would makes up evolving in the eyes of our customers?
We are not pushing features for ourselves right? - People – what would make this a better place to work in?
Are we leveraging the skills at our disposal? - Process – are we limiting WIP, improving quality, surfacing problems early?
Done right we should gain time to experiment and fulfilling creative ideas. - Purpose – are we contributing to the society around us?
The Manager Sanity Check
November 2, 2009 .So, you’re planning the future. There are is a lot of stuff you are eager to do. But stop and think – are you pushing forward in the right direction?
Make sure there’s a balance between:
- Product – what would makes up evolving in the eyes of our customers?
We are not pushing features for ourselves right? - People – what would make this a better place to work in?
Are we leveraging the skills at our disposal? - Process – are we limiting WIP, improving quality, surfacing problems early?
Done right we should gain time to experiment and fulfilling creative ideas. - Purpose – are we contributing to the society around us?
What horizon for should I use for a goal?
February 23, 2009 .If we set the decision lenght of a goal too far - the goals will be eaten up by the imminent future and risk lose focus.
If the set the decision lenght too short, we risk "decision thrashing" (organisation loses faith in leadership because of constant change in direction, seemingly without thought). An example would be changing strategy more often than the strategy can be implemented.
So it is very important we set the goal horizon to a periodicity which allows organisation understand, assimliate and produce results.
Meeting a senior management member from Volvo brought this issue to light for me many years ago.
"How long time does it take when top managment changes strategy from the decision until the shop floor worker understand what it means in his daily work?" – he asked.
"I don’t know" – I replied.
"Three years" – he replied.
An exercise based on my PSL experience:The power of open-ended requirements
February 18, 2009 .Today I held a class in Scrum and Lean.
I was then able to test some of my learnings from the PSL class in a exercises I made up just the day before.
The results were almost too good.
I divided the class in two groups (consisting of about 6 people each) and told them that they in this exercise would do a drawing during silence, following a requirement I would hand out. The would only have one minute to complete the drawing.
I provided them with a number pencils in red, green and blue and one big piece of paper each. Then I handed out one paper with the requirements to each group and started a visible timer counting down 60 seconds.
One of the groups got the following requirement:
Draw a beutiful summer meadow with blue and red flowers in green grass, some cows and birds under a shining sun.
The other group got the following requirement:
Draw a beutiful summer meadow with
- 10 blue flowers with 5 petals each
- 5 blue flowers with 6 petals each
- 13 red flowers with 6 petals each
- 2 cows with 3 black spots
- 1 cow with 5 black spots
- 2 cows with 4 black spots
- 2 birds to reside in the upper left corner
- 3 birds in the middle
- one sun to the right with 5 sun beams
Before reading further, look at there drawings here and guess which drawing was made by which group.
Well, as you might have guessed, the drawing to the left was made by the group that got the open-ended requirements and the drawing to the right was made by the group with a lot of specification detail. And that drawing does’nt even comply to the base requirement; a summer meadow.
And the cows are, although rich in detail, on the wrong angels. – The group behind the right drawing had such focus on implementing every detail of the requirements that they forgot the main purpose of the “assignemnt”, to draw a meadow.
Do you recognize that from software development ? I for certain do, and I do remember how boring it have felt implementing over-specified requirements. I just wanted to get it over with. Which I think is a very natural reaction when you are left with no opportunity for your own creativity. Or worse, find out obscure ways to put in your creativity anyway, in ways that might yeild even worse solutions.
I felt that the class got the same “ah” experience as I did myself on the PSL class.
Once again I have to give my appreciation to Jerry Wienberg, Esther Derby and Johanna Rothman.
The Problem Solving Leadership class continues to make a huge impact on my life.
It is the most expensive class I ever spent my money on in terms of actual swedish kronas, but not a cost but truly profitable in terms of the leverage it has on my consulting.
If you are a consultant like me and work with teams and leaders I think you can do no better investment than attending the next PSL class. It will be held in late march, check it out and click here!
