Month: June 2015

The North Korea Leadership Style?

You know, The Dictatorship. The cultures where The BOSS * tells people what to do because they know best, expecting people to simply follow along wholeheartedly.

It’s that style that Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup was probably thinking of when he said that his data supported getting rid of “The Managers from Hell” and generating more of the behaviors we see with the top performing ones. (My article here and here and Clifton’s article here)

There is simply a lot of data out there, from a bazillion different sources, showing that supervisors and managers can simply do a better job of facilitation discussions about the workplace and working with their people to define better ways of getting things done. Involvement is so closely linked to engagement and alignment and discussions about issues and opportunities will relieve a lot of the frustration that most people report. If you had a situation where you simply had a better idea that would benefit you and others, wouldn’t you like the opportunity to share that idea and have it listened to by someone who could make a difference?

How would you define Facilitation?

For many people, based on the data, it would seem that a lot of people would liken it to Fear of Public Speaking, something dreadful and dangerous. Asking for ideas from people might open up that can of worms and cause all sorts of issues and problems. So, why would one possibly want to do that? (answer: engagement and motivation).

My own definition of Facilitation would stress that, in Spanish and other languages, facil means “easy” or “requiring little skill.” After all, it is the perception that asking for ideas generates worms and spiders and other creepy crawlies but that is not the reality. ASKING for ideas is really pretty simple.

To facilitate the process of such behavior (linking it to motivation, innovation, and involvement), we have packaged up The Stupidly Simple Square Wheels Facilitation Toolkit.

For $25, you get instructions and explanations, handouts, powerpoints of the concept, and all the tools you need to involve and engage people in helping to step back from the wagon, identify the Square Wheels® and generate round wheels solutions.

Help your leaders to escape from North Korea and move to the sunshine of one of the fine beaches of the world. Get them out of the ditch of despair and up on the road of improvement. It isn’t hard; Just Ask!

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

* By the way, BOSS spelled backwards is self-explanatory…

Best Practices – Performance Shortcuts that need sharing

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On June 25, 2015

In Change Facilitation, employee motivation, improve organizational performance, Metaphors for business improvement, people and performance

My thinking for the past 30 years has been about people and performance, about innovation and peer support for change and all that stuff.

In LinkedIn this afternoon, Ingrid Kelada shared an image from Arvin Jayanake that caught my eye since it illustrated so much about how things really work in so many organizations. (I do not know the source for this, even after a search, so please advise if you know the ownership.)

If you have spent any time on a college campus, you have seen this reality.

The best way to build drainage for a new road is to build the road and then watch how it floods… THEN, build the drainage. A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world, especially when you are trying to generate optimal performance and “control behavior.” Do what works best; design from that perspective.

It is the same thing in organizations. The best way to operate is the best way to operate!

In reality, lots of organizations REALLY operate like the illustration above, with the exemplary performers using the shortcuts and doing things differently (to generate the exemplary results) and the average performers using the walkways like they were trained. We see these Best Practice paths everywhere, but a typical HR or management response to this situation is to build the wall across the shortcut!

My approach says that we simply need to step back from the wagon and look at how things are really working, finding those square pathways that can be improved in some way so that more people can operate more effectively. It looks like this when the top performers can get the attention of leadership:

Don’t Just DO Something, Stand There! Those best practice ideas already exist and we simply need to take the time to share some of them with the people who are pushing the wagons forward.

POEMS For the FUN of It!

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

We just released our new toolkit for improving organizational communications. Check it out:

A "Stupidly Simple" Square Wheels Facilitation Toolkit

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On June 22, 2015

In business team building exercises, employee motivation, Engagement, Facilitation, manager as motivator, team motivation

I just uploaded a new and improved engagement toolkit, wrapped around using my Square Wheels image. I include both the LEGO as well as the line-art versions of the images.

For $25, you get the powerpoints, handouts, instructions and ideas on how to share the image and generate involvement around ideas for improving the workplace. You also get me, since I continue to support the work personally, so you can email me questions or thoughts about how to optimize results using these tools.

You get worksheets and handouts and posters, the tools to both get things started and keep the wheels turning:

These are great tools and simple to use. They easily link to innovation and creativity initiatives and also work for improving teamwork and communications. Since leadership is also about teambuilding and alignment, you will find this approach to be simply effective,

For the FUN of It!

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Stupidly Simple Thoughts on Employee Engagement

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On June 18, 2015

In Change Facilitation, dis-un-engagement, employee motivation, Facilitation, improve organizational performance, Involving and Engaging People, manager as motivator

It took me about two seconds to come up with the title for this post, after looking at a number of different posts around ideas for engagement and ideas for improving performance this morning. I put up a couple of things on my scoop.it page on Employee Engagement and I was completing a chapter for a book, so some thinking around the issue was fresh.

There is a lot of writing around what to do and how well things are working. Generally, the information provided by Gallup and Sirota and others suggests that little is actually improving. It begs the question, why not.

My belief is simple: there is not enough effective communications going on between the supervisor and the workers. There is not enough alignment to visions and goals and expectations, not enough or sufficient performance feedback (and I do not mean coaching here — see this analysis) and there is not nearly enough listening or asking questions by the management team.

So, why not?

• Is it task interference? Do the supervisors simply have too little time to devote to listening about issues and opportunities?

• Is it an actual lack of employee interest in what is going on in their workplace?

• Is it the reality of measurement, and that workers just do not have the scheduled time available to them to be in meetings with their boss?

• Is it somehow related to the overall training and development goals of the organization, in that these meetings should be produced and directed by the people in Training and Development or HR and that developmental and coaching discussions with people are not the role of the managers?

• Is it a disconnect between the manager and the supervisor when it comes to themes of productivity and employee retention and performance levels?

I am not really sure, but I do know that the opportunity for improvement absolutely exists and that it IS relatively easy to involve and engage people and get their ideas about workplace improvement and job performance skills and techniques. And I know that we can improve real teamwork and collaboration with this same approach.

Let me illustrate with two simple thoughts, expressed through my Square Wheels® theme and thinking:

and then there is this reality:

Is this really so HARD to accomplish? Aren’t you pretty sure that people have ideas for improvement and will share those ideas in a meeting and discussion? Sure, if the workplace has a poor history of engagement and innovation (“bad managers” abound, the research suggests), you should expect some initial venting of frustration. But most people DO have positive intentions and DO want to have a positive impact on things. They get intrinsic motivation from doing things successfully.

Implementing Round Wheels in a Square Wheels World is not all that difficult to accomplish.

If you don’t believe it, go ask somebody!

And if you are looking for a simple tool to better involve and engage, we just uploaded the new “Stupidly Simple Square Wheels Toolkit” on our website – $25 with instructions and tools.

For the FUN of It!

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Perspective: Stepping Back from The Wagon

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On June 3, 2015

In Change Facilitation, experiential learning, improve organizational performance, Involving and Engaging People, manager as motivator, Metaphors for business improvement

Life is funny. Seriously…

There is a great story about Scott Adams and how his Dilbert cartoons got started. It was shared in LinkedIn, which had the hotlink to the article. You can go to that story by clicking on this link. It is a laugh, and goes on to share some of the realities of “Corporate Life.” (Is that an oxymoron?)

I shared that HBR – Dilbert link with my partner and my son, who is getting involved with the business and my son reflected back to me with a simple email:

Very clever….sort of. Funny how a lot of people could have done the exact same thing, but he was able to step back and disengage from it and see look at it from afar to bring it into perspective. There’s a lesson here somewhere…

My partner / his mother saw his response and then emailed me:

Yes, I just read that from the email you had sent to Jeff and saw Jeff’s comments about it. Quite interesting and shows how one person can, as Jeff said, step back and take a different kind of initiative.

My reaction to the second, anchored in the first is an email back to her, saying:

THAT is the whole point of what I have been trying to teach for 20 years!!! The Round Wheels are already in the wagon!

I’ve been talking about the need to step back from the wagon to see things that might not normally be seen for 20+ years; this is one of the key learning points underlying my thinking around Square Wheels.

Don’t Just DO Something, Stand There!

Step back and see things from a different perspective. Take a few minutes to talk with other people who might see things differently. Everyone brings their own viewpoint to a discussion so ASK instead of TELL.

For example, there is this poster:

And there is this one, about Team Perspective:

Sometimes, it takes a whack in the side of the head to realize that one has maybe not communicated that well. A major point to all these images and themes that I have been sharing is that perspective is a most wonderful thing.

Ya think?

Generating a new perspective on things is an important skill for coaching, innovating and change. The skill of “stepping back from the wagon” acts to generate dissociation, the viewing from another perspective. Seeing things from different angles allows you to generate alternatives, and these considered alternatives form the basis of managing change and innovating services. If you keep seeing things the same way, change and improvement are simply much harder.

For employee engagement, can’t each of us figure out some way to get our people to look around and see things from a different perspective once in a while? That is what my tools are for, in part.

For the FUN of It!

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Nobody Ever Washes a Rental Car – Ownership and Herding Cats

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On June 2, 2015

In Articles on Teamwork, Change Facilitation, employee engagement, employee motivation, improve organizational performance, Involving and Engaging People, manager as motivator

“Nobody ever washes a rental car“ is a phrase I have been using in workshops and in my writings since the mid-80s to describe the basic issues around ownership involvement and engagement. The basic concept is simple: people do not take care of things very well unless they have a feeling of ownership about them.

The reason I bring this up is funny, in a way. I had written a chapter for a to-be-published book and the editor makes the change giving the attribution of this quote to someone who published an article in 2002. That was a bit insulting, actually, that she made the change without asking me. Just Do It is not always a good strategy when making changes to someone else’s hard work. Plus, she also added the comment that the phrase was actually “in dispute.”

Seriously? Of course, someone in a workshop will pipe up something like, “I washed one once” when referring to their own car-renting experiences, but under a followup question, they also admit that they did it because they totally trashed the car and were worried that the rental agency would fine them or something, or that their spouse was so appalled by the awfulness of the exterior that he or she would not get into that car!

The explanation actually reinforces my point precisely. People do NOT take very good care of things they do not own. The reality is that some people might actually wash a rental car, but they sure don’t take good care of them. It reminds me of the old joke:

What goes faster than any police car, handles speed bumps and potholes like a Humvee, corners faster with more screeching tires than a drifting WMV, and can crash through small trees and bushes like a tank?

Give up? It’s a Rental Car!!

If you have ever owned a house you rented, you will know precisely what I mean. Or, if you ever lent someone some of your tools or a book, you may come to understand that the ownership has just been functionally transferred…

“But Scott,” you might say, “You write on issues of people and performance, about organizational improvement. What is this “rental car” stuff?”

Simply put, you cannot expect the people to support you to buy into ideas for improvement and change unless they have some ownership involvement in generating those ideas or in putting together an implementation plan. It might look something like this:

On the left, we have typical organizational reality – leader pulling and people pushing and not much alignment, engagement or communications.

On the right, we have people actively involved in making improvements to the situation, with the obvious support of the manager and others. Taking time to be involved generates engagement, can help to implement better processes, and can generate peer support and even more organizational successes down the road.

Lastly, let me end with the line-art illustration we first used in 1993 to illustrate this concept. The cartoon is actually named, Nobody ever washes a rental car, and it addresses one other issue of successfully implementing change and improvement. It looks like this:

In this case, you might consider that the wagon is now beginning to roll downhill faster than the wagon puller finds comfortable. When people feel pushed, they generally push back and resist the change. It is ownership, again, but in a situation reverse to the above. Managers can also resist changes and ideas brought to them from the teams. It is a natural thing for those who are facilitating change and innovation.

If you are interested, we sell a simple and straightforward toolkit for impacting employee ownership:

Leadership is not a simple thing. So, Heads up! Engage them where you can.

For the FUN of It!

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

You can find some powerful tools for impacting corporate teambuilding and improving organizational performance at our website, featuring The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine and our Square Wheels tools:

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Ideas on People and Performance, Team Building, Motivation and Innovation

Month: June 2015

How Square Wheels stop The North Korea Leadership Style in any company

Best Practices – Performance Shortcuts that need sharing

A "Stupidly Simple" Square Wheels Facilitation Toolkit

Stupidly Simple Thoughts on Employee Engagement

Perspective: Stepping Back from The Wagon

Nobody Ever Washes a Rental Car – Ownership and Herding Cats