Over the past weeks I’ve come in touch with several companies with the same exact challenge.  Though, to be sure, it’s nothing new.  I encounter this challenge several times each year.  Perhaps, even following Pareto’s principle, 80% (or more) of the companies coming to me for improved processes have a variant of a form of distress that accounts for no more than 20% (or less) of the possible modes of distress.

In particular, the challenges are variants of a very basic problem: they want things to change but don’t have an objective performance capability to aspire towards.  Put another way, they can’t articulate what it is that their operation cannot currently accomplish that they’d like their operation to be able to do once the changes are put in place.

I’ve mentioned “SMART” objectives before.  Here’s another application of those same objectives, only now, they show up at a higher level within the organization. 

Choose the right objectives.

Executives of the organization often confuse “SMART” objectives with “fuzzy” objectives.  By “fuzzy” I mean objectives that appear to be “SMART” but aren’t, and, the fuzziness obscures the situation so as to over-render the truly uninspiring nature of the objectives as being substantial accomplishments.  In fact, fuzzy objectives are not actually objective (lacking a solid way to measure accomplishment), or, are easily “gamed” (data or circumstances can be manipulated), or, are very deep within their comfort zone – or the opposite – are ridiculously unreachable (achievement is too easily attained or excused for not attaining), or, are indicators of task completion rather than indicators of actual outcome changes (don’t actually achieve anything but give the appearance of making progress), or, aren’t tied to actual increased capabilities/performance (don’t cause anything to change that anyone cares about), or, are dubious achievements that can be accomplished by simply “rowing faster” (working harder by working longer hours or assuming too much risk or technical/managerial debt), and so on. 

These same “fuzzy” objectives are frequently couched in deceptively goal-esque achievements such as achieving a CMMI rating, or “getting more agile”, or getting ISO 9000 registered.  What I noticed among the recent crop of companies with these issues is that they shared a particular set of attributes.  They were after “improvements” but didn’t know what they wanted these “improvements” to enable them to do in the future that their current operation was preventing them from accomplishing.  Sure, as in the case of CMMI, achieving the “objective” of a rating would enable the company to bid on work they currently can’t bid on, but that’s a problem addressed in two separate posts (here and here) from a while ago.

Digging a little further, I uncovered a more deeply-seated challenge for these same companies.  In each case, they could not articulate what they actually wanted to be when they “grow up”.  Closely related to not being able to explain how they wanted to be able to perform that their current operation precluded them from performing, they also couldn’t say whether they wanted their company to be leaders in:

• product innovation,
• operational excellence, or
• customer intimacy.

According to Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema, in The Discipline of Market Leaders, every company must decide the ordering of the above three values and how to organize and run the company to pursue the value they’ve chosen as first, followed by the second, etc.  Furthermore, and most seriously, leaders in the companies I visited were having serious issues.  Sometimes in more than one area: delivery, quality, scaling, proposal wins, proposal volume, cost pressure, and so on.  In none of the distressed companies were they looking at the performance capabilities of their operation.  And, in none of the companies did they have metrics that gave them insight into the performance of their operation or helped them make decisions about what to change or how.  In other words, they weren’t connecting their challenges to their lack of performance to the role their operational system of processes plays in that performance.

One thing that could help these companies climb out of the mud they’re in would be to simply and clearly define how it is they’d like to be able to perform that their current operations don’t facilitate, and, to define this capability in terms that represent an actual shift in how the operation functions.  Changes for improved performance is not about adding more work, adding more bureaucracy, or making people work harder.  Often, “working smarter” is easy to say but lacks substance.  “Working smarter” actually shows up as changes in the operational and managerial systems that carry out the performance of the operation.  A company that wants to perform better doesn’t need to add more work, or crack the whip louder, it needs to change how its operation runs.

More about this is in my upcoming book, High Performance Operations, available now for pre-order and due out at the start of October 2011 or earlier.

A more appropriate title would have been "counting changes" but it would have hardly been as interesting. 

Change happens.  And often.

In particular, when a product is in its operation and maintenance ("O&M") phase, changes are constant.  (Note: O&M is frequently called "production", and this simple choice of words may also be part of the issue.)  But, too often, changes to products are handled as afterthoughts.  When handled as "afterthoughts", product features and functions receive far less discipline and attention than warranted by the the magnitude of the change were the new or different feature/functionality have been introduced during the original product development phase.

In other words, treating real development as one would treat a simple update just because the development is happening while the product is in production is a mistake.  However, it’s a mistake that can be easily diffused and reversed.

O&M work has technical effort involved.  Just because you’re "only" making changes to existing products that have already been designed, does not mean that there aren’t design-related tasks necessary to make the changes in the O&M requests.  Ignoring the engineering perspective of changes just because you didn’t do the original design or because the original (lion’s share of) design, integration and verification work were done a while back doesn’t mean you don’t have engineering tasks ahead of you.

In O&M, analysis is still needed to ensure there really aren’t more serious changes or impacts resulting from the changes.  In O&M, technical information needs to be updated so that they are current with the product.  In business process software, much of the O&M has to do with forms and reports.  Even when creating/modifying forms, while there may not be any technical work, per se, there is design work in the UI.  The form or report itself.  And even if you didn’t do that UI design work, you still need to ensure that the new form can accept the data being rendered to it (or vice-versa: the data can be fit into the report).

It’s frightening, when you think about it, how much of the products we use every day — and many more products that we don’t know about that are used by government and industry 24/7 — are actually "developed" while in the "O&M" phase of the product life cycle when the disciplines of new product development are often tossed out the door with the packing material the original product came in.  Get that?  Many products are developed while in the "official" O&M phase, but when that happens they’re not created with the same technical acumen as when the product is initially developed.

(I have more on this topic, and how to deal with business operations for products in the O&M phase, in this Advisor article from the Cutter consortium.)

In a sadly high number of operations I’ve encountered, once a product is put into production, i.e., is in O&M, the developers assigned to work on it aren’t top-notch.  Even in those organizations where such deleterious decision-paths aren’t chosen, the common experience in many organizations is that the developers are relied-upon even more for their intimate knowledge of the product and the product’s documented functionality — as would have otherwise been captured in designs, specifications, tests and similar work artifacts of new product development.  In these organizations, the only way to know the current state of the product is to know the product.  And, the only way to fix things when they go wrong is to pull together enough people who retain knowledge of the product and sift through their collective memories.  The common work artifacts of new product development are frequently left to rot once the product is in O&M, and what’s worse is that the people working on the new/changed features and functionality don’t do the same level of review or analysis that would have been done were the functionality or other changes been in-work when the product was originally developed.  Of course, it’s rather challenging to conduct reviews or analysis when the product definition only exists as distributed among people’s heads.  Can you begin to see the compounding technical debt this is causing?

I’ve actually heard developers working on legacy products question the benefits of technical analysis and reviews for their product!  As though their work is any more immune to defect-inducing mistakes than the work of the new product developers.  What’s worse is that without the reviews and analyses, defect data to support such a rose-colored view seldom exists!  It’s entirely likely, instead, that were such data about in-process defects (e.g., mistakes in logic, design, failing to account for other consequences) to be collected and analyzed, it would uncover a strong concentration of defects resulting from insufficient analysis that should have happened before the O&M changes were being made.

Except in cases where O&M activities are fundamentally not making any changes to form, fit, feature, appearance, organization, integrity, performance, complexity, usability  or function of the product, there should be engineering analysis.  For that matter, what the heck are people doing in O&M if they’re not making any changes to form, fit, feature, appearance, organization, integrity, performance, complexity, usability or function of the product?!

If anyone still believes O&M work doesn’t involve engineering, then they might need to check their definition of O&M.  Changes to product are happening and they’d better be counted because if not, such thinking fools organizations into believing their field failures aren’t related to this.  Changes count as technical work and should be treated as such.

(I have more on this topic, including how to help treat O&M and development with more consistent technical acumen in this Advisor article from the Cutter consortium.)

I learn so much from failure it’s hard to ignore the good that comes from it.

This week I parted company with a client long before their goals were reached.

Sadly, I knew from the start they would be a challenge and made the mistake of ignoring the warning signs.  Never again.  Honest!

This entry is as much for coaches and consultants as it is for teams, staff, management and leadership.

There are several tell-tale indicators of success and/or failure.  In our own ways and in their own contexts, experienced coaches and consultants know what these indicators are.  Well-rounded, experienced, and seasoned practitioners within companies know them too.  In fact, most people know them instinctively, somehow.  I can therefore safely say that whether it’s through experience or instinct, we all know many of the same indicators.  In fact, we can probably sum-up every indicator in one word: Attitude.

So, yes, Jeff Keller’s famous self-help book, "Attitude is Everything", applies as well.  In organizations, "attitude" is frequently interchangeable or encompassed by company "culture".  And yes, attitude is a derivative of culture.  But sometimes culture is harder to pinpoint than attitudes.  Attitude shows up in your interactions with the company from the very start of your prospecting dance.

Here are some attitudes you may encounter and whether or not they spell greater odds of success or failure:

Failure-prone attitudes:

• Hassling about price/cost/time but expecting the same scope and performance outcomes.
• Focusing on deadlines and schedules instead of real results.
• Not owning the work and expecting off-site outsiders to invent working approaches.
• Shallow goals that aren’t S.M.A.R.T.
• Mistaking a task for an outcome or goal.
• Ignoring, denying, and filtering information that indicates problems.
• Poor communication (which often starts with poor listening skills).
• No allocation of explicit time and/or resources to make improvements.
• Failing to recognize the importance of the right people in the right roles for the right reasons.
• Delivering materials for review with no lead-time for turn-around.
• Persisting in propagating bureaucratic policies despite the obvious lack of value-add.
• Executives who are mostly (if not exclusively) involved in decisions involving budgets but not in making changes.
• Repeatedly using external influences as excuses to not make important changes.
• Assuming a victimization attitude instead of owning up to their circumstances.
• Failure to learn and apply new ideas — even after being presented with the benefits of those ideas.
• Management by motivation 1.0 or 2.0

Success-leading attitudes:

• Focus on results not the cost of getting them.
• Clear, S.M.A.R.T. goals.
• Executive involvement and ownership of leading the changes.
• Respect and appreciation for everyone’s contribution and effort.
• Active concern for overtime, unplanned work, and defects.
• Accounting and planning for everything that takes time by everyone involved.
• Taking full ownership for all the work (irrespective of the “divisions of labor” as seen by the customers).
• Clear-eyed view of effort and not planning around "best case only" scenarios.
• Ability to appreciate the need for non-technical, non-managerial skills in the roles of leading change.
• Seeing beyond the surface: A desire to learn and understand the meaning behind the work, not just following the specific language of the work.
• Dealing with people as people and not numbers.

My best clients have always had direct, clear and unambiguous evidence of two things:

1. S.M.A.R.T. Goals, and
2. Executive involvement in making the changes happen — not just lip service and budget authorization.  This usually took the form of the top leader (or 1-step away) taking personal involvement in not just setting direction, but in working through the best way to make things happen with the people who will be most affected.  (What does NOT count is a “top” leader with a purely administrative role and no executive accountability or responsibility.)

In experiencing the failure with this client, I admit to learning about at least one critical oversight on my part (there were others but this one takes top spot).  As we were interviewing each other, I failed to interrogate the leaders of the company for specific improvement goals.  The only "goals" they came to me with was to make their processes "leaner" and to attain a CMMI Maturity Level 3 rating with leaner processes.  Which turned out to really mean little more than to replace their heavy-handed compliance-oriented approach with a set of processes more projects could comply with more easily.  Again, note that they were still about "compliance".

Despite claims to the contrary, I didn’t fully realize until well into the engagement that compliance was still their primary attitude — at least among the people who were charged with overseeing the process assets for the entire organization. 

During the engagement, I repeatedly worked to identify meaningful improvement goals that being "lean" could help them attain.  I then created a strategy that would bring them closer to these goals and presented it to the majority of the executives.

Despite wide agreement on the goals and the strategy, when it came to rolling out the necessary changes, it was met the same-old resistance to change and fears that I knew spelled doom.

Nonetheless, I had high hopes for this organization so I decided I would bring them around by modeling the behavior I was trying to help them see.  A few people caught on but, alas, not the people who held sway in the organization.  Our mutual falling-out began early when it became apparent that desire among the leadership to achieve a maturity rating without upsetting the apple cart was overshadowing the desire to actually reach the performance goals being a leaner organization would achieve.

Notwithstanding, there were other tell-tale signs from the list above that this organization didn’t have the attitude to make the changes necessary.  I won’t belabor you with the complete saga.  Instead, I’ll return to my point about this entry.
You as coaches, consultants, and staff can’t want to better than your leadership is prepared to be.  The signs are all around you.  Pay attention to the signs early.  You will save yourself a lot of time, heartache and frustration.  If you believe you don’t have enough experience to justify your powers of observation, then trust your instincts.  Is the organization defensive about their entrenched position on their circumstance?  Do they make excuses instead of setting goals?  Are the goals devoid of any real results? 

You don’t even have to go that far.  How are you treated as a person, as a professional, is about all you really need to know about whether or not there’s a hope that things can get better.  If you’re not appreciated, if your organization is willfully blind to the things that cause you grief, if you see signs that tell you the organization lacks "class", you don’t need 20 years of experience telling you you’re right to know you’re right.  This organization is doomed to mediocrity.  Is that the kind of organization you want to be associated with?

I don’t, and, I won’t ever be again.

I make a living helping companies improve their performance.  Bar none, the absolute hardest challenge is dealing with outdated, defunct, and proven-failed management and leadership attitudes and techniques.  It’s even harder when leaders won’t let go of them. 

Attitudes that don’t account for the emotional needs of people. 

Attitudes that don’t start with the fundamental requirement that tough or large changes require the top-down example and behavior to lead the way.

Attitudes that don’t stand up for what’s right and acquiesce to blatant cognitive dissonance.

Attitudes that fail to realize you can’t lay-out the company’s supposed mission or vision, or the staff’s objectives and goals, and not provide them with the tools or empowerment to make anything happen — or worse, to undermine efforts with behaviors and decisions that conflict with the messages.

Attitudes that perpetually fail to create sustainable results, superior performance, and legendary relationships among the company staff, and between the company and its suppliers and customers; yet they are the same attitudes that failure-destined leaders continue to retread in some insane hope or expectation that everything will work out on its own.

Well, here’s some not-so-profound news (which I’m pretty sure you didn’t need me to tell you): these attitudes are nothing short of leadership’s inability to own up to their responsibilities and accountability for actually doing what they’re there to do: lead. 

Instead of leading you’ll often find such cowardly executives hiding behind backbone-belying excuses such as "I lead through delegation" (which, when said by these leaders actually means, "I really don’t know what to do to help you get your job done"), or "I trust my people to do the right thing" (which, when said by such leaders, actually means, "I’m lucky my people know what they’re doing because I don’t"), or "I’m serious about quality, I’ve made Joe, here, the company quality sheriff" (which is poser-leader-speak for, "I haven’t the foggiest idea what drives quality in our company and but it’s a problem and I don’t know how to fix it, but getting someone else to blame is a lot easier than getting mixed-up with all that touchy-feely stuff.").

Such leaders are nothing more than overpaid, over-indulged and over-honored paper-pushers whose lack of involvement in day-to-day operations is probably a blessing.  Because, when they do get involved (especially considering their only natural inclination is to micro-manage if/when they bother), they typically don’t make things better.

In a profound way, most companies’ leaders simply don’t "get it", they won’t admit that they don’t get it, and they’re not open to having anyone help them get it. 

One the basic "its" they don’t *get* is that what’s going on in their company is a culture, and because they don’t see what’s going on as a culture, or appreciate the role culture plays in making a business successful, they not only don’t see that what they need is to change the culture, but that in order to do so they must lead the change themselves. 

Furthermore, they don’t see that what it means to change the culture is not to pass down new rules or to disseminate a verbal memo through subordinates, it means to get out and lead.  To behave or simply *BE* the new culture.  How flat does a new, great-sounding idea fall when it’s delivered in the same mechanisms as all the old, not-as-great (dare I say "dumb") ideas?

Do you agree? 

Perhaps you need validation of your way of thinking. 
Perhaps you need an example to follow.
Perhaps you need to crystallize your thoughts so you can pave a path.
Or perhaps you need something to believe in, something to help you find a better way to work, place to work, or how to start making a difference in your work life and work-life balance.

Maybe you’re someone who’s been burned trying such non-traditional ideas and you’re seeking what might have been missing, or a simple reflection on a point you didn’t see or know to look for.

In any case, if you are seeking how to understand and positively influence culture as a primary business driver of positive change and astounding accomplishments, then Tony’ Hseih’s Delivering Happiness is a must read.  Scratch that.  If you’re reading this review this far you MUST read.  Delivering Happiness.  Even if you’re currently not big on culture as a business driver, or, if you think you know about culture and business but secretly, deep down, you really have no clue what it is, how it looks, or how to create the one you want, you must read this book.  If you *know* your business has a culture problem but don’t know what to do about it, read this book.

The amazing things Tony and his team have accomplished by putting _happiness_ at the center of their existence and by making it unmistakably simple to lead by example will leave you wondering why it’s taken anyone this long to put this sort of content together.  There is nothing new in leading by example.  It’s talked about, written about, lectured about in every credible business and management venue anywhere at any time in history.  But, one thing (of many others) unique in Tony’s book is that he actually conveys _what_that_looks_like_.  It’s not just words to him and his team.  It’s how they *are*.  It’s in everything they do and say and consider.  They wanted a certain culture?  They *became* that culture and started every action from there.  It’s in how they treat each other, their customers, their suppliers, their partners and their extended relationships.  They want to sustain that culture?  They *built* and *rebuilt* their existence to continually refine what it takes to generate the culture they want.  Delivering Happiness is like being the ultimate "fly on the wall" to get the insight into answering the question most business books and theories frustratingly fail to answer, "OK, I get what you /describe/, but what did you *do*?!"  This book lays it out.

Delivering Happiness will probably make you wonder why bother with any other business approach, and even why bother with any other business book!  It’s as though all you ever wanted to know about running a business and making people happy (either as one, the other, or both) are in his 272-page first offering.  I’m not saying other business books don’t matter, and that other business books don’t have valuable insights and concepts.  What I’m saying is that Delivering Happiness is so fundamental that it almost makes no sense to start elsewhere.  If business leaders don’t understand the fundamentals of the role culture plays in their success and what to do to generate the culture they want, then little else can help.

Tony’s done great research.  Thanks (or no thanks?) to Delivering Happiness, my reading list has not only grown, but has sprouted an entirely new branch of exploration.  It’s fascinating stuff.  I was so intrigued I rescheduled several days’ plans to finish-up some of the reading I had already started so I could clear my reading time and my mind for the new stuff Tony introduced me to.

Get it here.

Not only does Tony make an eloquent and convincing case for the influence and effects of business culture, but his amazing story about Zappos.com and the insights from places he worked or owned before — as they all relate to _happiness_ http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com/ — are inspiring and instructive — for anyone with an open mind. 

And… not the kind of "open mind" that rationalizes nonsense, but the kind of open mind that’s open to questioning tradition; asking where a tradition came from and why it continues to exist despite its time having come and gone.  The kind of open mind that’s continually seeking better ideas built on progress and results, not on reactionary fears, theory, or short-term thinking.  And, the kind of open mind that’s ready to make a really big difference in their work, life, or in the world, and not cling to stale thinking born of a time when those old ideas were once new.

It’s time to replace those ideas with ideas built in and for the 21st Century.  It’s time for ideas that deliver results.  It’s time to start Delivering Happiness.

P.S. I received a free copy of the book so that I could read it and write an honest review about it in time for the launch date.  I received my free copy on nothing but the promise that I would write an honest review, and, all I received was the free book.  Other than my own integrity, I had no compelling reason to keep my promise.  I didn’t have to read the book, or write a review, or even write a positive review.  In fact, I could just as easily have written a review (irrespective of whether or not I’d read it) trashing the book — if it were trash.  But it’s not.  I have received plenty of free books to review and even requests to write forewords, summaries, afterwards, etc.  I have written (and had published) unflattering reviews (not something I relish) and I’ve also chosen not to write a review or contribute to a work when, as in the case of reviews, there was little nice to say, or in the case of contributions, I didn’t want to associate with the work.  All this is just to say: this is a very honest, unencumbered review.  There are no strings attached in any way for having written it.  Go read Delivering Happiness.  You’ll be glad you did.

P.P.S.  There’s also a Tweeter (@dhbook) to follow, and a community to join, and a Facebook crowd to like.  If this is your thing, I encourage you do so.