A521.7.4.RB - Secret Structure

A521.7.4.RB - Secret Structure

Nancy Duarte in her TedX Talk: The Secret Structure of Great Talks (Links to an external site.) describes a few different structures/outlines. She also describes techniques used by Steven Jobs and Martin Luther King, Jr. In your Reflection Blog, discuss the structure and techniques shared and how you might use them.

Duarte’s TED talk validated what I have always believed, that you can be the smartest person in the world with the best idea ever conceived…but if you can’t effectively communicate it to anyone, the idea will be meaningless. “So a single idea, from the human mind, it could start the ground swell, it could be a flash point for a movement, and it can actually rewrite our future. But an idea is powerless, if it stays inside of you. If you never pull that idea out for others to contend with, it will die with you.” (Duarte, 2011)

This video made me so happy! I love that she took two enigmatic speakers, Steve Jobs and Martin Luther King Jr. and analyzed one of their most impactful speeches. She noted that the speeches had a similar flow and a similar shape. They started with a current situation, elevated to a great new situation, and then repeated that formula to invigorate and motivate their audiences. (What are the odds that someone who was at MLK’s famous “I have a dream” speech was also at Steve Jobs’ 2007 iPhone launch speech? Just a random thought.) The brilliance of the pattern is that the audience doesn’t realize that that’s what’s happening…but they will remember the experience.

I think that I will do more research on this phenomenon and seek out more from Nancy Duarte. In my line of work, I have to do presentations on mostly pretty dry topics such as behind schedule metrics and recovery plans, or schedule/capacity planning scenarios. I do my best to make sure that my presentations aren’t full of eye charts and I don’t read verbatim off of the slides. But how to tell a more compelling story with the data would absolutely make my job a lot more interesting and add a new element to what and how I present. “I was fired up about presentations back when it wasn't cool to be fired up about presentations. I really think they have the power to change the world when you communicate effectively through them. And changing the world is hard.” (Duarte, 2011) I couldn’t agree more.

Reference:

Duarte, N. (Nov. 2011). The Secret Structure of Great Talks. TED talks. http://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks

A521.6.3.RB - High Performance Teams

A521.6.3.RB - High Performance Teams

Based on this week's readings from the Denning text, identify the elements of high-performance teams and apply them to teams with whom you have worked in your organization. Next, identify the importance of shared values and discuss the influence of shared values on your team's performance. Finally, examine the four patterns of working together and detail one positive and one negative experience. What could you have done to influence the outcomes?

In my experience, high performance teams have a special synergy. The team members just seem to work well together and are able to collaborate without ego or personal agendas. They work together to produce something that is beneficial to everyone in the organization and because of these things, mostly resemble a community. Shared experiences bring the people together in a way that is powerful and creates an atmosphere of possibility.

The four patterns of working together are: work groups, teams, communities, and networks. (Denning, 2011) Work groups are generally those groups who are working on the same project in the same space. This is the most common kind of group in any organization. Work groups generally report to a common supervisor. When the organization I was working for decided to come up with a “Transformation Team” – this was a work group that consisted of people from different departments who for a year all worked together on the same project and reported to a common supervisor.

Teams are “organizational groupings of people who are interdependent, share common goals, coordinate their activities to accomplish these goals, and share responsibility for the performance of the collectivity.” (Denning, 2011) In my organization, when we are behind schedule or have an urgent project that needs immediate attention, we usually have a “Tiger Team” of people who come from the impacted areas and work together to solve the problem and prevent it from happening again. They are dedicated to these teams until the solutions are found, tested, implemented, and sustainable.

Communities are a recent addition to the work patterns and refers to a group of people basically share a common interest. “[C]ommunity meant a group of people in a specific geographical area who lived, worked, played, worshipped, and died together, sometimes over many generations.” (Denning, 2011) In my organization, we have an inSite internal website that brings communities together within Boeing. I belong to a few of these communities such as the Lean group, the Women in Leadership group, and even the Group of Awesome. We share articles, ideas, and even debates about things that we care a great deal about. We are not in the same geographical location, usually, but we all come together for a common interest.

Networks are more dynamic because they are always being built on, maintained over time and careers, and keep people connected in a mutually beneficial way. LinkedIn is a networking site that can help connect people to find new careers, mentors, and just connect with people in the same industry. It’s a place for recruiters to search for candidates and for former co-workers to keep in touch. Networking helps a lot in my organization because of its size. People come and go in a very cyclical manner and it is always good to know people in other business units who may be able to help solve issues for you and vice versa.

I was part of a workshop, a Lean team, last year that yielded both a positive and a negative experience. The positive experience was that I got to work with people I had never really met before. It built up my network of people and exposed me to some interesting aspects of the business of which I was previously only mildly aware. I learned so much over the week and even got to build a scale model of our process improvement using Legos and creativity. In my book, that is always a good thing. The negative part was the Lean facilitator. His manager was well known to all of us as just not a great manager. She would talk down to you one second and then compliment your presentation in the next. She was unpredictable, mean, and insincere. So I know he felt the pressure to get data up to the stakeholders of this project and because of this, some things were rushed, overlooked, and just wrong. We didn’t have all of the necessary people on the team and when we brought that up we were told that it didn’t matter. Of course it mattered! In the end, we were successful with coming up with an alternative process that would actually save substantial time off the existing process at a relatively low cost to the organization. I ended up taking a job in South Carolina less than two weeks later so I’m not sure what ever happened with the actually implementation.

References:

Denning, S. (2011). The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

A521.5.4.RB - Aligning Values

A521.5.4.RB - Aligning Values

Based on the readings in the Denning text and the assessment you took in A521.5.1 identify in detail the process of developing and aligning organizational values. Identify the three basic components of an ethical community and discuss how they might be applied in your organization. Are there values that are missing from your organization?

Discuss how you might develop those values and also align them with the values of the individuals in the organization.

When you hear a company proclaim that they have integrity, compassion, or care about you, the customer, but then turn around and double charge your account and argue with you when you call to get it fixed…that is misalignment of message: the organizational values do not align with what they are actually doing, and it is quite frustrating. Recently, Wells Fargo has been in the news for fraudulent activity regarding employees who actually created false accounts, moved customer’s money to these created accounts, and caused customers to have overdrafts and additional fees. “The San Francisco bank, with its folksy stagecoach logo, has positioned itself as a solid, Main Street lender that avoided the excesses of the financial crisis and other missteps on Wall Street.” (Glazer, 2016)

 I worked for Wells Fargo in Tacoma, WA back in 2001 – 2003 as a teller. I was working there when the 9/11 attacks happened and watched customers come in and demand their entire balances in cash. We rolled an old black & white TV from the break room and had the news coverage playing all day. We cared about our customers and tried to put them at ease during a time of great confusion and pain. As tellers, we were encouraged to help our customers every day by reviewing their accounts and seeing if the customers qualified for higher interest accounts – without incurring additional fees for minimum balances. We were not to make these changes without permission though so we had to know and understand the products in order to sell the customers on a change. After 9/11, and in the aftermath of the economic problems that came after, we started getting new directives. We could still help our customers but we’d only get credit for upselling mortgages and any credit accounts. This “credit” was that we had to have a minimum number of sales per month in order to do well on our reviews which led to potential raises. I had to convince people to open credit card accounts even though I could see that they had over 60 overdrafts in their checking account for the month. Wells Fargo would never issue them a credit card – unless it was a secured credit card. Either way, the hit would go against their credit ratings and I really didn’t think this was right. I can see why the employees ended up thinking they needed to create false accounts in order to succeed in the company. “Wells Fargo employees, often chasing sales goals and bonuses, created fake accounts for customers, invented personal identification numbers and moved funds between accounts without authorization.” (Glazer, 2016) I also worked at Wells Fargo for their 100^th anniversary – and it saddens me to see that a bank with a reputation of being more of a people’s bank has gotten so lost that it has forgotten the very values it stands for.

According to Denning, the three basic components of an ethical community are: trust, loyalty, and solidarity. He used the example of Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body Shop as an example. “Roddick developed the company around her belief that it is more important than ever before for business to assume a moral leadership in society.” (Denning, 2011) The customers and employees should be able to trust that they will be treated ethically. Employees should behave with loyalty and held accountable to the values and morals that the business is built upon, and remain steadfast in solidarity in compassion for their fellow human beings, even if it conflicts with profits.

Before taking the assessment in A521.5.1, I was struggling with the question of whether or not I felt that Boeing lived up to the values it says it has. These include integrity, safety, and trust and respect. http://www.boeing.com/principles/vision.page  Truthfully, and probably a little naively, I believe in these values too. Do I think that every single person at Boeing follows and lives these values every day? Do I live these values every day? No. But I strive to and I firmly believe that most of my coworkers do too. I think we can get jaded when we focus too close to a situation and take it too personally, but ultimately, Boeing does do what it says its going to do for us, the employees. I am taking this class…working toward a Masters degree, for free because Boeing believes in the advancement of its employees and shows it by paying for college degrees for those interested. It’s definitely not all sunshine and blue skies at Boeing, but whatever the situation, they do invest their money back into their businesses. Yes, the stakeholders and the schedule are major drivers but when we have leaders and employees who live the Boeing values to the best of their abilities, there are some pretty amazing things that get accomplished.

References:

Denning, S. (2011). The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Glazer, E. (2016). Next Test for Wells Fargo: Its Reputation. Wall Street Journal. Sept. 9, 2016. http://www.wsj.com/articles/next-test-for-wells-fargo-its-reputation-1473462195

A521.4.3.RB - Subtleties of Communication and Hidden Messages

Reflect on Chapters 4-6 of Messages and create a blog posting that identifies how you might use the information in these readings to improve your ability to communicate with sincerity and congruence. Think about instances where you have been exposed to incongruent messages and how you felt at those times.

In your blog, use specific situations that you recall and describe changes that you would make using the technical jargon of the chapters. The goal is for you to become a more powerful communicator by understanding these common problems and deploying strategies to overcome them.

The worst case of incongruence of message would be the second to last director we had at Skin & Spar before I left. In front of a large group or when addressing a team, he would talk about how he wanted to learn from us – he had been brought in from outside Boeing – learn about our processes and production flow…why we did what we did the way we did it. Smart. But two weeks after he started, he implemented an asinine directive to take all of the electronic, real-time data down and start going back to white boards and dry-erase markers. I’m all for going back to basics, don’t get me wrong, but don’t say that you’re going to try to learn our system before you make any changes and then completely do everything you said you wouldn’t. This director also ignored any information we gave him, never asked for capacity plans or other specific charts/data one would use when trying to learn a production system. He just assumed that it was all wrong. I firmly believe that he had no intention of ever “learning” the current production system before implementing his changes. I don’t know if he had direction from his bosses or was just an ass, but I can tell you that it was detrimental to the behind schedule numbers, the on-time delivery, and most of all, the morale of the operators. He could have implemented his agenda in a much smoother way if he had just at least trusted that we knew our jobs before completely disregarding everything we had gained for his own glory. “It’s hard to defend against the anger and disapproval expressed in negative metamessages. The attack is often so subtle that you aren’t aware of exactly how you’ve been hurt.” (McKay, et al., 2009)

If I had been in his situation, I would have definitely taken at least 90 days to tour the teams in the shop and in the office areas, introduce myself to them personally, built that rapport and trust and then ask for the help of these teams in implementing a directive. That would have made the crazy (and resource draining) changes something that we ALL had to endure…as a team…together. I think he could have really shown integrity and leadership by being an advocate instead of an adversary.

References:

McKay, M., Davis, M., Fanning, P. (2009). Messages: The Communication Skills Book. Oakland, CA. New Harbinger Publications, Inc.