Month: April 2017

I generally post up pretty complete thoughts and frameworks but this one is more of a blurt. If you want me to do more of these, pass the word.

My friend Frank Navran said, “Trust is the residue of promises fulfilled.”

And I think that employee engagement ties solidly onto the tail of trust, in that you need to feel that there is a peer-group safety net to take the risk of showing that you care about the job and about the organization in many organizational cultures.

Workforce said that 1/3 of all employees would forego their raise to have their boss fired. How might that reflect on the likelihood of employee engagement and active involvement, one might think…

Maybe we need to look to do something differently. I mean, does this REALLY need much in the way of New Thinking to generate some alternative behaviors in most workgroups? Is this a Training Issue, or could people simply CHOOSE to do things differently?

Don’t Just DO Something; Stand There.

Choose to do some things that will actually generate some active involvement among the people in your workplace. Allow people to address some issues and to successfully implement changes and improvements, Those Round Wheels ARE already in the wagon,

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 blog on themes of People and Performance is here.

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

Simple Bad Teambuilding

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On April 26, 2017

In Articles on Teamwork, business team building exercises, Corporate Team Building Games, employee motivation, executive team building exercises, experiential learning, improve organizational performance, large group team building events, Leadership Development Game, Organizational Development Tools

My associate in Singapore posted up his comments in a LinkedIn group post and I got copied. The posting consultant in India put it up for thoughts comments (and there are almost 200 comments!). He initially said:

Client: We are having an offsite for our leadership team. They all work in silos and there is a trust issue. We want to communicate to them that they should all trust each other and work together. Only then we would be able to achieve our roles.

Me: Why do not you tell them that?

Client: We want a facilitator to bring these issues subtly and indirectly. Our CEO does not want to address this directly. May be you could do this through some games or activities. We are also talking to couple of other organisations like yours and want to see who offer the best solution.

Me: I took leadership team of a client three times in two years to Rishikesh and to address trust and silo issues I made them do whitewater rafting. They enjoyed the rafting. After two years I learned that they became very good in rafting but the trust issues remained. So no indirect approach to the trust and silo issues.

I will pass this opportunity. Lets work together some other time.

If you did not notice this, let me point it out again:

“…to address trust and silo issues I made them do whitewater rafting. They enjoyed the rafting. After two years I learned that they became very good in rafting but the trust issues remained.“

Well, duh! Really. People on this executive team actually expected that a consultant-led raft trip would improve corporate functioning? Why do we experienced consultants somehow believe that a paintball or lasertag event, or a Firewalk or go-kart race is going to transfer anything to the issues of improving organizational performance results? We see people learning how to crew an 8-oared rowing shell, or learning how to climb and rappel, or even going parachuting or hang-gliding. Neat! Fun!! But real teambuilding?

These kinds of team bonding activities are actually expected to change organizational results? Seriously? (And how is it going to drive that change, through cognitive dissonance or improved leadership or impacts on intrinsic motivation to do something differently?)

Why not choose to do team building to accomplish team building?

We just reached our 25th anniversary of selling The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine teambuilding simulation. You can see a Press Release with details here.

And we will guarantee that using the exercise as designed will generate solid discussions about what specific changes need to be generated it one follows the suggested line(s) of debriefing to link to issues and opportunities. You WILL generate discussions — and what you choose to do subsequent to that program will drive the implementation of results.

For the FUN of It!

One of the best teambuilding exercises in the world, as rated by his users, is The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, which focuses on leadership, collaboration, alignment and focuses on implementing the collective performance optimization ideas. He is also known for his Square Wheels^® approach to innovation and engagement.

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

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/

Press Release on Lost Dutchman’s Teambuilding Exercise 25th year

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On April 20, 2017

In Articles on Teamwork, business team building exercises, Corporate Team Building Games, employee motivation, executive team building exercises

We’re a small business and some things are just normally out of our range of motion but we wanted to do a Press Release about our 25th year of supporting The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine team building exercise worldwide. It has continued to be a fun and interesting and rewarding experience for me to be supporting so many people and trying to have an impact on people and performance.

Joan created and polished this piece, which I think is outstanding given the limitation of 600 words and the focus of making this an integral part of our interesting company story:

Are Team Building Exercises a Waste of Money?
No, According to New Survey

User survey for “The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine”
finds 100% would recommend the exercise to others based on performance and value

TAYLORS, SC, April 17, 2017—While many people believe that Team Building Events don’t generally work, Users of Performance Management Company’s The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine Team Building Exercise hold a much different belief. Based on results received from a Users’ Survey of Dutchman, 100% of the responders said they would recommend the exercise to others based on its performance outcome and value.

Celebrating its 25^th year in the global marketplace, this top performing exercise has helped hundreds of companies generate real discussions about the negative impacts of competition on organizational improvement. Dutchman’s design produces measurable results to clearly show participants how their behaviors sub-optimize outcomes, including the overwhelming choice to compete rather than collaborate.

“A good teambuilding game design, one allowing teams to make choices, can link beautifully to a debriefing focused on making better choices for improving and optimizing organizational improvement. In Dutchman, players readily see the many negative aspects of inter-organizational competition, so we get them to choose alternatives to generate more collaboration and alignment to shared goals and outcomes.”

So says Dr. Scott Simmerman, Dutchman’s creator, a behavioral neurophysiologist specializing in organization performance and Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984.

When about 1/3 of a workforce would forgo a raise to instead see their boss fired, doesn’t it make more sense to build a cohesive team and increase shared goals? And when only 1 in 3 managers are engaged in their jobs, should we not look to do some real things to improve their workplace? Is doing the same thing going to ever generate a different result?

Users value Dutchman because it:

Easily sets up an engaging, fun learning experience with a successful outcome for any group size or type from shop floor workers to senior management.
Contains extensive, flexible debriefing materials with solid links to issues of workplace collaboration, leadership development and motivation.
Clearly shows participants how their behaviors impact ROI for the organization as well as for their own personal improvement.
Offers real value and measurable impact to their organizations.
Motivates people, improves performance results and strengthens communications.

While many things are sold as “team building,” few have actual impact. They may be fun, such as playing paintball, but do they change anything; do they create a viable return on investment for the organization? Dutchman has the backing of enthusiastic users, worldwide, in all kinds of organizations who use it to implement strategies or generate alternative choices.

Dutchman also wins for its various purchasing or rental options and is sold for a one-time cost with unlimited use and no per-participant fees. And, its “satisfaction guarantee” has yet to be necessary for purchasers. Visit PMC’s website or contact Scott to learn how Dutchman will lead to constructive outcomes and teamwork for your organization.

About Performance Management Company:

Performance Management Company designs team building exercises and is the creator of The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, its flagship exercise. It is also the creator of Square Wheels^® images for organizational improvement that are packaged in various Toolkits for Managers and Supervisors. PMC was founded in 1984 by Scott J. Simmerman, Ph.D., Managing Partner and has been selling its products, worldwide, since 1992.

A partial list of client users: http://www.squarewheels.com/clents.html

It continues to be a great trip, working on team building with my network of users worldwide. AND, we are updating the exercise – if you own it, check with me about a free upgrade of the Intro and Debriefing materials,

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/

Radical Candor and Disruptive Engagement

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On April 19, 2017

In Change, Change Facilitation, dis-un-engagement, employee motivation, Facilitation

Reading a review by Ted Kinni on Kim Scott’s book, Radical Candor, pushed me to publish this short post on impacting workplace performance through conversation and engagement. Her book is well grounded in the nightmare of many typical workplaces and how a lack of good conversations causes such harm.

As Ted writes, “Radical candor stems from Scott’s conviction that interpersonal relationships are the currency of management. “They determine whether you can fulfill your three responsibilities as a manager: 1) to create a culture of guidance (praise and criticism) that will keep everyone moving in the right direction; 2) to understand what motivates each person on your team well enough to avoid burnout or boredom and keep the team cohesive; and 3) to drive results collaboratively,” she writes.”

To deliver that radical candor, a manager must care personally and challenge directly; it is about giving a damn and caring about impacts. It is about coaching for improved workplace performance and sharing observations and feedback.

And this meshes with my thinking in other posts about the issues around issues of personal accountability and action (see “If not you, WHO? If not now, WHEN?“ here). People need to step up, and this needs to happen at the worker / manager interface, not just at some middle-management level or by one of the executives. The real work of involvement and motivation and performance improvement gets done at the bottom of the organization, not from some tops-down kind of communication. And a failure to execute at the bottom will not be corrected with another million dollars spent on some organizational attitude survey.

The real work gets done at the bottom of the organization, face to face, and not tops-down.

Tops-down, Big Corporate Solutions simply do not work to improve much. Sure, for implementing radical organization-wide changes, some percentage of tops-down strategy improvement initiatives are eventually successful (maybe 40% after 3 years of focus). But with my 34 years in the people and performance business, nothing seems to have worked over the years in actually improving active involvement and engagement of the front-line workers, who continue to be about 1/3 engaged. And this after corporations have spent billions on surveys and other tops-down tools and consultants and messaging.

What is needed is some chaos. What is needed is some Disruptive Engagement* at the front lines. Why not allow the people who know what they could be doing differently to involve themselves in conversations with their manager about issues and opportunities. Sure, some of those ideas might clang, or they might need some support from other departments or above to implement.

But if we are not looking for solutions or challenging the way we are doing things, we are simply dying a slow death, one that makes a workplace an insufferable environment and one that stifles innovation and creativity. Let people’s ideas count for something!

The Round Wheels are already in the wagon!

So, encourage your managers and those around you to have some candid conversations around issues and opportunities. Let people suggest ideas for improvement. ALLOW them to be more involved and to work together to make things better, even though there may be some disruption of existing systems and processes.

You can find some simple tools and elegant instruction at The Square Wheels Project.

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/

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

* Disruptive Engagement can be loosely defined as allowing people to take a look at the issues and opportunities for identifying and implementing ideas for workplace improvement done at the very bottom of an organization, without the “helpful” control systems of HR or T&D or other more senior, bureaucratic groups. It is somewhat analogous to Disruptive Innovation.

Links:

Review by Ted Kinni is here: https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Why-Managers-Cant-Skimp-on-Radical-Candor

Book by Kim Scott is here: http://us.macmillan.com/radicalcandor/kimscott/9781250103505/

If not you, WHO? If not now, WHEN?

Engagement – Think Local, Act Local

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

Month: April 2017

Mini-blog on Employee Engagement and Active Involvement – Trust and all that

Simple Bad Teambuilding

Press Release on Lost Dutchman’s Teambuilding Exercise 25th year

Radical Candor and Disruptive Engagement