|
Greetings!
In the past weeks, we were able to use our online scans with different clients. We had the opportunity to put our methods to the test with Scott meeting with the teams, and me working exclusively from the scan results, and then comparing what we observed. We were stunned by the accuracy of the insights into team dynamics and issues that the scans deliver. More importantly, our clients find them a very effective framework for teams to discover their common reality and find ways to improve, and to do all that quickly.
In this issue we explore the impact of purpose and mindset in organizations. These two aspects are revealing themselves again and again as critical to team performance.
Sincerely,
Alain Bolea
|
| Mindset and Performance |
Most people know intuitively that the more negative the mood of the team members the lower the performance of each individual and the team. There is rarely a moment of discussion when we show the correlation in the graph below. Leaders usually acknowledge the fact also, yet largely fall short from implementing the logical conclusion in their efforts to reverse low performance effectively. We use this powerful information as a means to spark rapid, new results.
In our work with teams, we ask individuals to go through a very simple assessment of their working experience, and invariably, the results we get track the upper part of the graph very closely. Thankfully, we have never worked in situations where the results would fit in the lower part of the graph, but I am convinced that it is possible.
This phase of our work with any team is crucial in turning its performance around. We show the aggregate results to the team members so they can see in a tangible way what they already know.
Working with multiple teams within an organization, with similar duties and challenges, we are able to show that the teams with lower mindset are producing less efficiently or are showing signs of functional stress that predict performance problems.
This correlation also shows that there is little hope for performance to improve without changing mindsets. The path to improvement is always about both facing the practical reality and the mindset reality of the team.
From experience, we know that the decisions that team members make about their commitment to work, to the team, their every day level of effort and their interaction with the rest of the organization and their clients are linked to the individual mindset. Mindset is what holds the patterns of performance in place. Why it is so is not always easy to explain, but our findings and methods have just been corroborated by a recent article in the Harvard Business Review.
In his work on the impact of emotions on decisions, Dan Ariely professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University has demonstrated that negative emotions not only lead to suboptimal decisions, but also create a learned response that will be retriggered when the same situation occurs. For more information, please read http://hbr.org/2010/01/column-the-long-term-effects-of-short-term-emotions/ar/1.
This is the core of our work with coaching to leaders and to teams: creating new possibilities and unlearning limiting beliefs and behaviors. |
| When Not-for-Profits Lose Their Purpose |
|
That a business can operate with no purpose other than making money is generally accepted as a fact of life. The surprise comes when not-for-profit organizations realize that they have no clear sense of purpose either. How can that be? How can organizations dedicated to service to others have stated objectives or goals but no larger, galvanizing purpose? In fact it is not uncommon for such organizations to have no inspiring definition of what they stand for, no organizing principle that animates leadership and guides every day decision for all staffers. |
|
In his book "It's Not What You Sell, It's What You Stand For", Roy Spence describes how successful businesses all have a clear purpose. He also talks about his work with the American Red Cross, helping them redefine what they stood for. Over time, the Red Cross had lost a coherent self-image while its underlying separate programs began to drive the organization's decisions --an issue found in many not-for-profit organizations, NGOs, even humanitarian public agencies when the overall purpose is assumed but no longer an active reality.
In most charitable organizations, the absence of purpose is not immediately obvious. The ultimate goals are lofty and deeply motivating for the individuals that are attracted to work for them. There is nothing more inspiring than making the life of others better. The issue is this goal can be accomplished in so many ways that as a statement of purpose it does not provide a clear guiding light.
As charities begin to succeed at what they first set out to do, they often take on new activities related to their original one. Each human drama can be seen as inter-connected when people do not have basic life-management resources available: illness, homelessness, hunger, jobs. Expanding the range of organizational activities is invariably the logical next step. For example, if you develop a supply system for AIDS medicines and become good at it, shouldn't you also make your delivery platform available to other medical supplies?
While commercial entities have a built-in incentive to optimize their organizational resources, non-commercial endeavors face a reverse reality. People who pay for the services, donors, are not the recipients of the services. These funders want to make sure that their moneys are used for their intended objective. This requires control and segregation of funds. This is particularly important in developing countries where corruption can be high and many local institutions have few financial safeguards in place. The high level of control by donors thus becomes the organizing principle at the expence of the service impact on intended beneficiaries.
Even if donors agree to co-mingle funds, non-profit program management models are built using 'silos' where every function, such as finance, research or a specific program, is dedicated primarily, if not solely, to performing its dedicated role well. This arrangement does not optimize the resources of the group. The symptom is often that the overall organization loses its abilty to influence decisions while the influence of particular groups within it grows. There is then a covert struggle for resources and priority-setting rather than cooperation to best use the resources available to carry out the larger purpose.
The absence of clear common purpose feeds increasing dysfunction throughout the vital aspects of the organization. The more effective models have four common elements: a clear compelling vision and direction from leadership, grounded in an actionable strategy, supported by defined processes, and a culture where individuals are always intimately engaged in the success of the organization's purpose. | | |
|
|
|
| Create Trust
To Build Performance |
|
|
The first hurdle for teams to work through performance issues is to acknowledge, openly, what's really going on. Our experience with a new tool and meeting format is promising, quickly surfacing what members think and how they feel in a safe environment so the real issues get addressed.
In a recent project more than a dozen teams in the same organization took our two, 7-minute surveys in preparation for a team stocktaking meeting half-way through a 5-year plan.
When the facilitated meeting began the group had graphic representation of their opinions that revealed their relative views on personal and team performance, mindset and team set-up. The visual information immediately stimulated a discussion on how similarly participants saw reality.
Right out of the gate, so to speak, what people really thought about the situation was already on the table for all to see plainly, without anyone having to take the risk of the first step. This reduced the tendency to be in a self-preservation stance when problems are raised, such as the tendency to defend one's intentions, or point to external pressures as the culprit.
Also, by bypassing the temptation to first analyze the complexity of team dynamics and performance, and instead focusing on getting quickly to the emotional experience of team members, the team came to quickly validate their collective reality, and to honestly drill into its core issues.
Within minutes the teams could engage more safely in deep conversation supported by a new positive emotional state. An emotional state they had generated themselves by coming to agreement on team performance reality in their own words, without it becoming 'touchy/feely' and without much need for anyone to save face.
When teams agree on their shared experience, the impact is very noticeable: everyone in some way acknowledges it. (An act often exhibited by fewer words, and more body communication, such as thoughtful nodding of heads.) From this point, the team instinctively shifts its attention to their potential to work closer. The assessment tools then become the framework to keep new action and commitments aligned to move from their agreement on what's real to where they need or want to be.
Of the 13 teams using the scans and facilitated stocktaking approach a few never managed to engage openly and frankly even with the contrasting data in front of them. The reason? In each case the team leader remained in a self-protective mode that prevented honest sharing.
Dismissing ideas, avoiding personal responsibility, or displaying controlling behavior communicated to the team that some topics were not to be aired. When that occurred, the team could not go very far. Solutions did not appear, and there was a rush to wrap up the meeting.
For the other teams, however, deep satisfaction in the acquired power of their authentic agreement of what's going on now became a highly leveraged tool for them to address their pressing performance issues quickly and confidently.
Scott Brumburgh |
|
|
