Dispatches from Mayo: “It’s a Privilege to Work Here”
There’s no doubt one of the most significant challenges any service organization faces is how to sustain excellence in service delivery over long periods of time. After all, service organizations live or die based on the passion and commitment of the people providing the service. Once the passion goes, the service trends to the ordinary. Or worse.
Continuing my social anthropological work while immersed in Mayo, I had an opportunity to chat informally with a nursing student serving as an assistant here as part of her education. Her comments speak volumes about Mayo’s approach to passing along that pride and passion from generation to generation of service providers.
She grew up in the area around Rochester, MN, and when I asked her directly what it was like to be training and eventually working here, she offered (I paraphrase):
When you grow up around here, you just come to expect Mayo as the “normal” in healthcare. It’s not until you go to school somewhere else and then come in here and start listening to the patients and their stores that you begin to realize this is some place truly special.
Me: How does Mayo work with younger professionals like you to help build that sense of pride that is so evident?
Her: Really, it’s working with the patients and then working with the people that have been here for a long time. You learn very quickly about how much patients from around the world value being here. And you learn very quickly from the staff what a privilege it is to work here.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
I’ll end at, “What a privilege it is to work here.” Think about that. How many people do you know who view their employers through that filter? Those that do are the fortunate ones. And for those of you leading others, how do your people feel about working for you and your team? If it’s something short of “privilege,” you’ve got a few decades worth of work to do.
Dispatches from Mayo: Are You Pushing Your Colleagues to Grow?
Note from Art: My next few posts will be brief insights gained as a result of my observations and experiences at The Mayo Clinic.
From Dr. William Mayo in his description of the three conditions essential to the future success of the Mayo Clinic:
“#3 Continuing interest by every member of the staff in the professional progress of every other member.”
I love that Dr. Mayo recognized the critical nature of learning and development as a part of the core values of this remarkable medical institution. There’s no denying the importance of this action-oriented value for learning from and developing others, and there’s no deferring it to another department. It’s right there for everyone to see, ponder, think about, act upon and support.
In thinking back on the cultures I’ve been part of or those that I’ve had the occasion to support as a consultant, I truly haven’t observed more than a handful that had their own form of focus on the development of everyone, as articulated so succinctly by Dr. Mayo. Interestingly, the organizations that did seem to get this, even if they didn’t describe it in quite the same way, were (and are) leaders in their markets. Somehow, when people seek to learn from each other as well as take collective ownership for promoting organization-wide learning and professional development, good things happen.
While all organizations have their faults and warts and I suspect an institution that has 40,000+ people show up for work everyday has more than a handful, Mayo continues to be the brand of choice when we truly need help. Walk the halls and talk to and share stories with people supporting their family members here, and the message is the same over and over again: We’re here because it’s the best. We’re here for answers. We’re here again because of how they helped us the last time. It’s consistent and never-ending.
While there’s no claim of causation or even correlation between the value described above and the performance and reputation of Mayo, I see and hear the values at work in every encounter. (More on this in an upcoming post.)
Too often, we push the development of others off to a department or worse yet, to a third party training organization that has no basis in understanding the culture and no authority to support the teachings through coaching and on-going learning. This is lousy management. Similarly, instead of encouraging learning and knowledge sharing, much of our built-up knowledge remains cloistered in silos. Again, poor management.
If you have the privilege of leading others, consider what Dr. Mayo’s 3rd condition for sustaining success means to you, your team and your organization.
It’s time to take the important people development responsibility back from whatever department purports to own it, and work to knock down knowledge barriers and other fences that keep people from sharing and learning from each other. You might just be building the foundation for your own high-performance culture.
Management Excellence Toolkit: Better Design for Workplace Discussions
Filed under: Decision-Making, Performance, Professional Growth, Project Management
Getting to a good decision on big issues is challenging. Getting through the discussions leading up to a decision however, often resembles something on the difficulty of slogging through the Amazonian jungles in search of a mythical lost city made of gold. If you survive the process, you are bound to come out a very different person.
It doesn’t have to be so hard.
Some background: last winter, I authored a multi-part series on the challenges and pitfalls individuals and groups encounter on their way to making more effective decisions (see: The Management Excellence Toolkit for Effective Decision-Making.) And while many of the suggestions for strengthening DM effectiveness involved improving discussion elements, I didn’t tackle the important and separate topic of managing overall discussion quality as a core part of the process.
It’s time to introduce a new tool that will help us separate facts from emotions from opinions, in pursuit of designing our discussions and our way forward, instead of battling our way forward as is commonly the case.
A Powerful Discussion Management Tool: Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono
De Bono developed Six Thinking Hats as a tool to take the complexity out of discussions and to engage the full power of groups by ensuring their common focus on a particular element of a discussion. He offers that “arguing our way forward” has its roots in the foundations of western thinking, yet often, what is required to simplify complexity and reduce overall discussion duration, is a method for designing our way forward.
The Six Thinking Hats technique uses colored hats where each one represents a distinct topic theme, including: emotions, negatives/risks, positives, creative ideas, process issues and facts (known and needed).
The facilitator manages the discussion flow by choosing a colored hat and ensuring that everyone turns their attention exclusively to contributing to the topic defined by the hat. A scribe takes notes for all to see and someone else might serve as a judge, calling out “hat violations” as they occur.
While there is no substitute for a great facilitator, Six Thinking Hats is something that you can put to work with your team after few hours of reading time and some live-fire practice. I include a practice scenario below that will help you and your team uncover the power of this guided discussion process. Of course, spend some time reading De Bono’s book before trying it on for size.
Practice Vignette-Let’s Make it Personal:
When introducing groups to the technique for the first time, I provide a practice round on a non-business topic. A favorite practice scenario involves learning from your significant other that he/she has suddenly (out of the blue) decided to quit work tomorrow and pursue opening the Bistro you two have always dreamed about. The only fact that I supply involves the existence of your combined savings, which might tide you over for one year, assuming you don’t use it to start the Bistro. Just about everyone can imagine their own reaction to being on the receiving end of this type of pronouncement from a significant other, and it doesn’t take long to get the discussion started.
In This Case, Emotions Followed by Risks and Negatives Before Turning Sunny:
When facilitating the discussion around any case, it’s important for the discussion leader to apply the hats in an order that works for the situation. The order will vary from case to case. In this situation, the shock and risk of the announcement are likely to breed early, strong emotional reactions. Venting may be required for moving forward. As such, I instruct the group to put on their Red Hats and let the emotions fly.
After some creative expressions of shock, outrage and anger, it’s important to shift away from emotions and start building a productive conversation. In this case, I’m interested in the group continuing their venting, albeit, in a slightly more constructive manner than the Red Hat provided. I ask the group to put on their Black Hats and identify everything that might go wrong with suddenly quitting a job and opening a restaurant. We run a real-time risk brainstorming session.
As the list generation on negatives runs out of steam, I often will guide people to the positive side of the street. At this time, the Yellow Hats go on and the focus is on generating all of the sunny ideas on why this might just be OK. We’re looking for “what can go right” with the idea, and talk of dreams fulfilled, financial independence, freedom from a corporate job and so forth begin to emerge.
Process Notes:
It’s interesting to work with a group after the emotions have been vented and the negatives listed, on viewing the situation positively. It sometimes takes a bit of facilitation effort to move off of Red and Black Hat thinking, but once the positives start flying, the stage is now set for the next phases.
Another important facilitation note. The group can request to move back towards a particular hat at any point in time. The key is that the entire group must go there…not just one person. This technique does not work if everyone has on a different color hat. The goal is parallel thinking…focusing everyone on the same destination at the same time. A good facilitator manages both the group focus and return trips to the various hats as needed.
We’ve Vented, Listed Risks and Allowed Ourselves to Go Positive. Now, We Need Ideas!
In my practice example, I might invoke the Green Hat (creativity/brainstorming) next and follow-it up with a White Hat to ascertain facts…what we know and importantly, what we need to know. The brainstorming process (green hat) is not dissimilar to traditional brainstorming endeavors, and as a facilitator, you can encourage building and jumping and you can even introduce other creativity tools. Remember, the hat doesn’t tell the group how to run the discussion, it simply signals direction.
White Hat discussions must focus on clearly establishing what we know…and importantly, what we need to know. A good discussion on the facts can help minimize data errors and other anchoring, estimating and data-related biases.
Venting Again and then Deciding How to Decide (or at least, Deciding What to Do Next):
After brainstorming on creativity and fact related issues, I typically return to red (emotions) and black (negatives) one more time for some additional venting. Often, there isn’t any. I then have everyone put on my hat (Blue) and discuss and define the process for moving forward.
While You Might Not Face the Bistro Decision…
My silly little vignette has all of the elements of common workplace dilemmas, including: emotions, risk, unknowns, the potential for success and the need for a reasonable way to work forward. It’s not hard to imagine the Bistro discussion in reality and just about everyone acknowledges the potential for the issue to be a relationship killer.
Your strategic decisions are filled with the same issues…and then some, including politics, silo views, conflicting agendas and different views on the best way forward or even the best direction for the business.
If you are facing some tough discussions and decisions, try enlisting the help of an experienced Six Thinking Hats facilitator and watch and listen as the quality of the discussions improve and the complexity and duration of discussions reduce in scale and scope.
If you simply want to find a way to improve discussion quality on your team or in your home, pick up the book, check out the web resources and then start applying the technique. Your groups will enjoy the change, you will develop valuable facilitation experience and everyone will benefit by a bit of parallel thinking!
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Just like the best woodworking tools in the world won’t make me a skilled cabinetmaker, the Six Thinking Hats approach won’t guarantee decision-making success. However, with study, practice and regular application, DeBono’s cute little colored hats can help to transform discussion quality over time. Improving discussion quality is step one on the road to making better decisions.
The Millennial View: Mentors Wanted
Note: Eric Rodriguez is the voice of The Millennial View here at Management Excellence. Eric’s guest posts offer perspectives and insights from the eyes of an early career professional navigating the challenge of today’s workplace.
Everyone wants to achieve success, and those of us new to the workforce are no exception to this rule.
In the quest to climb the corporate ladder many early career professionals plan to go to grad school, work overtime, and some plant their lips firmly on their boss’s posterior hoping to get ahead.
Some of these methods work. Grad school is great; if someone has the time and money, working hard is a cornerstone of success; but it isn’t everything, and sucking up might work although it’s sleazy, shameful, and nobody likes an ass kisser, with the exception of bad management.
The Case for Mentoring:
A simple step that we can engage in to help our careers along is to find a mentor to guide and coach us in the workplace. A great mentor is a blessing because of the knowledge that they have accumulated through years of experience in the corporate jungle and their willingness to pass it on to their mentees.
A mentor knows what it was like to be a newcomer in the workplace. They have experienced success and failure, they probably have had bad bosses, and they have definitely learned lessons that many of us have yet to experience.
There is no silver bullet for success, but working with a good mentor provides an opportunity for seeing our developing careers from a different perspective. We have an opportunity to gain some valuable lessons and apply them towards building a successful livelihood.
A young professional not having a mentor is like a boxer not having a trainer. The boxer, or in this case the newbie, may have tons of talent, but if they don’t have somebody to offer them advice, give constructive criticism, or share stories of their experiences, their chances at winning their bouts in the ring or in the boardroom are limited.
Mentoring-It Works:
Many of my friends have shared stories on how a mentor saved them from taking a bad job, assisted them in navigating the labyrinth of office politics, or in some cases gave them their first start out of school. Most of my contemporaries appreciate being mentored. We truly want to listen to what other successful professionals have to say about their work experience and learn in the process.
In addition to providing guidance, Mentors also help us see where our careers can go in the future. When we look at our mentors and the things they achieved it plants a positive thought in our head, “If he or she can accomplish these feats – I know that I have the potential to do it as well.”
If it were socially acceptable I would hang a sign outside of my cubicle that would say, Mentors Wanted. That’s how strongly I feel about the power of mentoring.
We all Win:
What mentor wouldn’t be proud of their protégé when they masterfully executed a project or when they see their mentee develop into a polished product? And what protégé wouldn’t think that mentoring hasn’t made them a better employee and made them aware of new approaches to solving problems that they haven’t thought of before?
By working together and engaging in mentoring, we can bridge a gap and form a bond that creates a mutual respect for each other’s talents and experiences. And remember, one day we will be management and there will be a new generation coming into the workplace. If we experience good mentoring from those who came before us in the workplace, we’re going to want to pass that knowledge and experience to the new professionals entering the workforce.
This creates better employees and a better work environment. Mentors should always be wanted and welcomed in any career.
It’s Time to Start Teaching Your Teams to Succeed
“I have no question that when you have a team, the possibility exists that it will generate magic, producing something extraordinary… But don’t count on it.” -J. Richard Hackman with Diane Cotu, Why Teams Don’t Work, HBR (article requires fee/subscription).
If you’ve ever been part of a truly effective team…a high performance team, you know the experience is memorable and potentially career altering.
For those who’ve lived and thrived on a high-performance team, the memory of what it was like to work with a motivated, caring, challenging (but respectful), accomplishment-focused group of individuals provides sustenance for the lonely, near-death experiences that characterize so many other team and project experiences in the workplace.
This Would Be Easy If it Weren’t For the People:
If you are in the unenviable role of pulling together a group to tackle a project, you’ve got more than a few obstacles to overcome, including:
- People
- The egos of people
- Histories, biases and prior experiences of people
- Politics (yep, people again.)
- Communication challenges in working with…you guessed it, people.
Compounding the interpersonal and social challenges found in groups referenced above, groups struggle to learn how to make effective decisions, how resolve conflicts and how to be creative together.
At the end of the day, this group stuff would be really easy if it weren’t for the people.
The Basics Provide the Foundation, But Sometimes You Need a Little Help from Your Friends:
Even if you get everything right up front with a new team…a clear and compelling reason for being, clear roles, group-generated team values, proper organizational support and so forth, you will still run head-on into the human factors referenced above. Every time.
Sometimes you just need help to get beyond the noise created by throwing a group of people together and expecting them to become productive at a high level. A number of years ago in my role as a software company executive, our team and Board agreed that we would invest to completely redevelop the firm’s core software. This Bet-the-Company project called for adoption of new approaches and new technologies and after sputtering along for a period, we recognized the need for help.
This strategic initiative would have died on the ash-heap of failed software development projects if it weren’t for the help of some great people at the firm, Construx , who helped us rethink not only our development approach, but, how we worked together to cut through all of the issues described above. (Note: I have no affiliation or relationship with Construx, just high regard. Thanks, Jerry)
The true value in the approach provided by Construx was not so much the consulting…it was great, but the cultural transformation that resulted in how teams and people worked together. And while not every project merits (or can afford) high-powered consultants, can you truly afford to allow your teams to sputter and struggle along, seriously endangering the health of your business?
If getting work done in groups and via teams is important in your firm, perhaps it’s time to get some help in rethinking how these entities work together.
A Timely and Relevant Editorial Comment:
As an aside, one of my unofficial observations on team performance inside organizations is that over time and based on a series of poor experiences, managers and leaders begin to accept suboptimal outcomes from project teams as the norm. Team members are very aware of the group’s performance problems, but for many reasons, too few people feel empowered to take on the problems and drive change.
Strengthening Team Potential and Performance Beyond the Building Blocks:
Great groups and high-performance teams find a way to be creative together, to fight and then move forward together and to make many more right than bad decisions together. They move quickly across the gap spanned by starting up and breaking the ice on one side to achieving trust on the other side. For some groups, this span is simply never bridged.
Whether you draw upon great outside advisors and coaches to help your teams improve, or, you leverage your best internal talent (good formal and informal leaders) to observe and coach your teams on the difference makers, just do something. Don’t accept consistently poor performance, when high performance may just be a short distance away.
Recognize that new groups don’t naturally know how to work together…don’t know how to fight together and they don’t know how to make decisions together. In many cases, they don’t really know how to talk with each other on the tough performance topics. It’s not that you don’t have smart people in your organization and in these groups, it’s more about how difficult it is to do this right together.
Teach your teams great practices in creativity and problem solving and hold them accountable to applying those practices and tools.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
I’ll echo Hackman’s quote at the opening of the post: the potential for extraordinary with teams is always there…just don’t count on it. Improve your chances of success with group efforts by teaching your teams to work together. A little effort will go a long way towards strengthening your organization.
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