Cut Time

Fresh start

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 18:14:00 +0000

I've started a new blog. Catch it here.

Just for fun

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 16:36:00 +0000

Learning to play with others

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 14:12:00 +0000

One day in the 7th grade, I lost all of my friends. We had no argument; there was no scene. I simply found myself one day shunned by the girls whom I had considered close friends. I found myself eating lunch alone, walking to class alone. No phone calls after school. No eye contact or recognition that I existed from this group of girls. My time alone probably lasted just a couple of months, but it felt like a lifetime. In the end, a girl who was previously my closest friend called and said she wanted to be friends with me, even if the other girls disapproved. I asked the question that had been my constant companion through the time of my blacklisting: Why? What had I done to deserve this? The answer astounded me: “One day you went to the front of the algebra class and wrote the answer on the board.” Apparently, the way I did this had angered one of the group, who then persuaded the rest of them to drop me.

I’ve known these facts about myself since I was 12: it’s not enough for me to get an A; I am driven to be at the top of the class. Another fact I learned: basing achievement on competition harms relationships. Differentiating yourself by achievement can provide the kind of distance that is hurtful. I have tried to remain mindful of this difficult lesson. It’s one I have a hard time learning once and for all.

These memories came back to me as I was thinking about a book by Mary Catherine Bateson called “Composing a Life.” Bateson explores the concept of complementarity in personal and working relationships. Complementarity recognizes that people are different in many ways, without placing those differences in the context of value -- higher/lower, better/worse, more/less. It also incorporates interdependence -- the necessity of the complement to complete the whole.

Complementarity is therefore the antithesis of the two most widely-held models of thought in American business or culture: competition and teamwork. In the American ethos, competition must be fair, which means no competitor can be naturally disadvantaged -- that is, the competitors must have symmetry, what we call a level playing ground. Teamwork similarly demands that everyone on the team is either equal or made equal within the context of the team. Any differences due to authority outside the team are artificially stripped whenever the team convenes.

These concepts fail to account for the fact that people are different, and different in many ways. Airbrushing out all of the differences to create fair competition or teamwork takes out of the picture the differences that could make a difference. Finding common ground is important to enable people to work together, but if they limit themselves to the common ground they limit their collective possibilities. Rather than benignly ignoring each other’s differences, why not recognize them and see if those differences could help collaboration?

We are restrained from embracing those differences when we place a higher value on our own attributes. Recognizing a difference in another person, and welcoming that difference because you lack it, would require that you accept that you don’t have it all. You’re not at the head of the class; if you perceive you are then perhaps you have defined the class too narrowly.

I’ve witnessed this struggle in many manager-employee relationships. The manager, whose position of authority frames this relationship, can feel compelled to be the expert, the guide and the monitor, enhancing the one-dimensional asymmetry of the relationship. Because a manager is expected to achieve through employees, any failure of an employee therefore reflects on the manager. When a failure does inevitably occur, the manager has to find some way to reconcile his/her rightness in the face of another’s failure. This is nearly always destructive, both to the manager’s ego and to the relationship between the employee and the manager.

What if instead we conceived of a manager achieving with employees rather than through them? The differences between the manager and employee -- not only position and authority, but also life experiences, perceptions, and skills -- could be included rather than excluded in their working relationship. If someone fails in a task, the focus could be on learning from the experience rather than (self-) recrimination. This could be freeing in some ways, but the manager would also have to accept that the position doesn’t make a person better, or more special. It just makes you different, in some ways, from some people.

Undoubtedly, my 12 year old nemesis was as stunted by her math insecurity as I was by my need to write the answer on the board. Had we the wisdom then that age confers, we might have seen in our differences a way for her to improve her grade and for me to learn humility.

Making Tracks

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:47:00 +0000

My previous post challenged two assumptions: that career progression equals (management) promotion, and the division between labor and management. I wondered: What could be possible if we changed the existing paradigms?

Every group of people trying to achieve something together needs leaders who have the interest, talent and skills that are not readily found in a single individual: the abilities to think strategically and tactically; the skill to communicate to a wide range of people; the talent to solve problems analytically and creatively; the skills to coach and develop others; the ability to shape work, communicate it, and monitor it; the skill to hold others accountable and celebrate their successes with sincerity; the ability to be self-critical and the humility to own up to failures and learn from them; a sincere and passionate interest in the needs of others. Additionally, managers must also possess credible technical knowledge in the areas in which they work.. Although none of these abilities are rare in themselves, they are not commonly found altogether in a single person – and yet, these are surely the minimum requirements of managers.

That’s a tall order. Now think of how many of these super-talented people a business needs. Using the typical division of labor thinking, every work group (departmental shift) needs a manager. This could be 10% - 20% of the workforce, even if this set of skills weren’t resident in, for instance, 10% of a given population.

This is the point at which businesses begin to loosen standards, and promote into management roles some people who should not be managers, due to their lack of interest in the required work, misapplied talents, or undeveloped skills. This is the path taken to the Peter Principle, even though we know it’s a path we don’t want to tread.

What if we didn’t have a category of workers called ‘managers?’ If we were making a completely new organizational design, we could unbundle all of those attributes listed above, and add in all of the attributes and responsibilities that the business requires in order to function and thrive. It could look something like this:

Supplier relationships	Customer relationships	Order processing	After-sales service	Product selection
Product analysis	Sales analysis	Process analysis	Work design	Scheduling
Process monitoring	Internal communications	Internal feedback	Coaching	Strategic design

If we removed the limitations imposed by the organizational chart and its salary structures, we could then consider what skills could be bundled into individual jobs, and how we could group those jobs into meaningful work groups and structural relationships. Roles that require the scarcest talents and skills, and those that make the most significant contributions would be most highly compensated.

In the end, we may still have some manager roles, and some leadership roles – the point is not to get rid of these roles but to loosen our thinking from traditional assumptions. We may also discover a way to create non-management roles that are equal to management track roles in their potential to fulfill and reward. The exercise could enable us to adopt something of an artisan model, in which individuals hone craftsman-like skills within a business context.

A more incremental approach is to consider alternatives to management when you think of the exceptional employees who work for you. If you manage people because of your interest in helping others achieve their goals, you probably give a lot of thought to those outstanding employees who make your department and your company great. If the employee is clearly interested in and has the native talents to move into a management role, your task is a familiar one: give the employee the training and opportunity to develop necessary skills, and select for management progression those who prove proficiency. If the employee is a terrific performer but lacks the interest or talents necessary for management, challenge yourself to consider how you can provide financial rewards and skill development within the context of that individual’s interests and passions.

In the traditional corporate mindset, management is highly valued because managers define value. In an artistic or artisan mindset, craft rather than management is valued (hence the natural tension in the business of the arts). Placing a value on the individual’s talents and skills, and discovering ways the individual can best make use of them, could open up untold possibility for individual and corporate fulfillment.

Getting off the management track

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:37:00 +0000

Why should career growth imply management progression?

Over time I’ve asked many job candidates and employees what they want from their careers. Almost inevitably the talk turns to the management track. The perception that career growth is only achievable on the management track is so hardened in our thinking that I’m never entirely sure whether the desire is sincere, or if this is just considered the right thing to say.

To prepare for a recent talent review session, I asked a group of managers to submit names of employees who could be candidates for management development. During the discussion, the managers admitted that several of the names belonged to employees who were either indifferent about or uninterested in a management role. So, why did the managers want to consider these employees for management development? The answer was that these are great employees, and their managers want to recognize them and retain them.

I left the meeting puzzled by the managers’ logic. But then came my Eureka moment: the managers were using the only tool they have for recognizing, rewarding and investing in their employees. Although I had initially thought the managers limited in their thinking, it was actually I (… and the company and culture I represent…) limiting them.

Our culture largely defines business success in terms of where you are on the corporate organization chart, which is itself defined by management and executive hierarchies. Your success is positively correlated to the number of direct and indirect reports you have.

The interest, skills and talents required to manage and lead others are not distributed equally amongst the population. Sadly, there are far more managers than great managers. Consider all of the managers you’ve known in your career: how many have been truly skilled and talented in the role? If your experience is anything like mine, excellent managers are a small fraction of the total. This may be something of an anomaly: I can’t easily think of any other job that is often held by people who lack the necessary interest, skills and talent to do their job really well. This is partly because standards are very high for managers; a merely good manager really has to be exceptional. A role that impacts others' livelihoods must require the highest possible standards.

I think this is an outcome of an assumption within the business culture that progression means promotion. It is also a holdover from a much older cultural assumption that divides the work environment into labor and management: people who do the work, and the people who direct and supervise them. This division of labor is based on any number of assumptions: that people who perform work are incapable of shaping, directing and monitoring their own work, that formal leadership is preferable to informal leadership amongst work groups, that the direction of work is more highly valued than the work itself.

In all of these assumptions, some things are useful and some things are not, and each business works out for itself what is and isn’t. For instance, most businesses find that designating a small group of leaders with shared goals enables the alignment necessary for the business to achieve its goals. Although it is probably not impossible to align a large population of self-directed employees, it’s surely much more difficult.

I’m not interested in discarding these assumptions, or even trying to disprove them. I do want to point out, though, that these are decisions that people have made or unconsciously accepted. If there are consequences we don’t like, it is within our power to make other decisions.

Like any assumptions, these can be challenged. What would be possible if we did?

Learn Baby Learn

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Thu, 06 May 2010 02:10:00 +0000

This seems to be the year for training, at work. The company's on a growth curve, and old tactics that just got us by (on-the-job-training that was really just 'watch me while I do my job') when the company was younger are clearly not up to the task now. I find myself most days thinking about, collaborating on, developing, and giving training classes. Thankfully, this is a joy for me and not a chore. I've always felt fortunate that I have such a natural love of learning, and it is a gift to have the opportunity to share that experience with others.

Coincidentally (or not), I happen to be reading David Rock's fascinating book, "Your Brain at Work." One of the book's insights is that the human brain is wired to enjoy learning. Here I was, thinking I was special. But no. Brains love novelty. Learning embraces the 'new,' which lights up the brain. True, the discipline that learning requires is maybe not so fun for the brain: focus requires suppressing a lot of other brain activity, and focus uses up the brain's resources, which feels draining. All of which is just to say that learning is also work, not just fun and games. But does that resource drain (the work) overpower the jolt of excitement from learning?

I've always marveled at how we humans start our lives as learning animals. That's the life of a baby: eating, sleeping, and learning. This experience is not always fun: mom gets irritated when you pull her hair; there's a lot of falling down before you can walk; there's a lot of crying that happens too (but the crying generally results in being comforted -- not much to complain about there). And yet, the 'not fun' doesn't get in the way of the fun. Babies and small children just love to learn - and they happily spend most hours of the day actively learning, and it's considered 'play.' No parents would think to limit the number of hours per day their children spend learning.

As we grow up, humans slowly become accustomed to seeing learning as work. We limit the number of hours our children should spend on learning (which generally is bounded by class time and homework). It is seen as a burden, an obligation. And I must admit, there's little joyful about grades, or studying for exams, or writing essays on a deadline. Rock's book suggests to me that perhaps this is not an attribute of maturity, but rather of the way we are expected to learn as we mature. Learning becomes more about getting it right -- the grade -- rather than about learning, which by definition is about getting it wrong a lot of times first. As we get older, we realize that proficiency is valued; being a novice (a learner) is a low-status position. If you expected your baby to walk without error after having seen it demonstrated a couple of times, perhaps most of the human population would be crawling on all fours.

At the risk of over-simplifying, I suggest: Your brain loves to learn. Your mind isn't entirely convinced. It's the job of a teacher to get your mind to be quiet and step aside, so that your brain can have some fun.

If the entire human population were able to hold onto the joy of learning that we experienced as infants... if expertise were not valued more than curiosity... if failure to try was penalized more than failure to succeed... what kind of world would we pass to the next generation?

A Matter of Supply

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 15:45:00 +0000

Nicholas Kristof's column in the New York Times today reports on the school in Sudan founded by Valentino Achak Deng (whose story was told by Dave Eggers in "What is the What" - I can't do that book justice bracketed by parentheses but I highly recommend it). Thanks to a best-seller that distributed Valentino's story across the world, the school is being generously supported by donors around the world. The school is starting its second year, and it is taking on an awesome task. Kristof reports that last year, only 11 girls in all of southern Sudan sat for high school graduation exams, and chillingly:

Based on official data, a girl there is far more likely to end up dying in childbirth than she is to gain a primary education.

The school can accommodate only 150 students in its incoming ninth grade class. Thousands have applied, many of them adults; the actual need is surely more than that. And yet, even to supply the educational needs of its relatively few students, the school is stretched not only because of its limited resources, but also due to the paucity of infrastructure. Lacking the power grid that we in the US take for granted, the school relies on generators and solar panels to power its computers. And then there is the question of books:

Recent donations have enabled the school to build a library, which is starved of books, but there is no local postal service for American friends to send books. Valentino looked into the possibility of having books mailed to Kenya and then trucked in, but found he would have to pay prohibitive import duties.

John Sviokla recently wrote "If one looks throughout history, workers' productivity has always been proportional to the quality of the tools they use." This is an important aspect, but equally important to economic development is the quality of distribution or infrastructure access. A person without access to infrastructure is by definition living off the land. Without access to tools for preparing the soil, planting, irrigation, and harvesting, that person (and that person's family) must by definition live hand to mouth.

Education requires very sophisticated infrastructure, which if you have it, is simply invisible. Basic literacy can be taught one to one, with few tools: as Kristof points out, Valentino learned his letters by drawing them in the sand. That's a necessary foundation, but not what it takes to articulate within the world as we know it today, from Seattle to Sudan. That requires tapping into an immense network of information, and having the tools and access to do so.

This is necessary even for very modest education efforts. I'm currently collaborating on a problem solving course. Without a second thought, I availed myself of the following tools that any corporate worker in the US today expects is readily on hand: computer, high speed Internet connection, projector, training rooms, software to create presentations and manuals, reference materials (books, articles, videos), books for students purchased on-line and delivered within a week for the class, copying and binding services, on-demand electricity, subject matter experts and colleagues who can review and advise. Because of this wealth of infrastructure, tools and knowledge that I could access with little effort or delay, my co-workers and I are able to produce a series of training classes in very little time, just in the normal course of our work lives.

Humans have solved the problems of distribution in many parts of the world; the technical answers are not elusive. Investment is not necessarily the constraint - there are a lot of investors who see the value of the untapped potential of communities around the world. The bigger problems to solve are -- as always in the human condition -- politics and exclusion. These too can be changed: even modest prosperity can empower transformative change. Distribution can promote prosperity.

A Beef with Unregulated Business

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 20:43:00 +0000

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm reading Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser). Last night I finished the chapter that effectively updates Upton Sinclair's The Jungle to document the meatpacking workplace in the late twentieth century. This chapter ends with the story of Kenny Dobbins, a man of incredible strength and company loyalty who worked in Monfort meat processing plants for almost 16 years. After surviving many horrific injuries on the job, saving another employee from being crushed by a pulverizing machine, and supporting the company in its stand against unionization, he was fired without notification and without a pension.

"They used me to the point where I had no body parts left to give," Kenny said, struggling to maintain his composure. "Then they just tossed me into the trash can." Once strong and powerfully built, he now walks with difficulty, tires easily, and feels useless, as though his life were over. He is forty-five years old." (Fast Food Nation, 2001, p. 190)

Monfort may not have broken any laws in their employment practices; their industry has influenced the dilution of workplace safety regulation over the past twenty years.

This weekend, the front page headlines are dominated by the SEC civil suit charging Goldman Sachs of fraud. Were Goldman Sachs's actions in fact legal as they claim, it would be a condemnation of the shabby state of our regulatory system rather than a defense of their integrity. Predatory business practices across industries integral to our economy (food, health, finance, real estate) cause incalculable real, ongoing harm to employees, customers, other businesses and the overall economy -- affecting not just our nation's stability but that of the broader global community as well. The far-reaching impact of these practices should not, however, imply a far-reaching use of these practices.

In my experience, businesses large and small are run with an emphasis on ethics, making decisions based not on what they can get away with, but rather on what is the right thing to do. They require their employees to use safety equipment and procedures not just because the business doesn't want to be caught by OSHA, or in fear of a large worker's comp claim, but because they don't want their employees to suffer the pain and loss of an injury. Having a strong agency overseeing workplace safety is, however, important to not only the nation's workers but also to the nation's businesses. OSHA and insurance companies provide the valuable service of educating businesses about potential workplace safety risks and how to avoid them. The regulatory system also functions to level the playing field: if company A incurs expenses in training and equipment to protect their workers (because it's the right thing to do), but their competitor company B does not, company A and the market as a whole have to bear the costs resulting from B's irresponsible behaviors. A regulatory system, therefore, is not an enemy of business: it functions to reduce and eliminate negative outcomes and therefore supports a vibrant and competitive marketplace.

And yet, it seems that many ethically-run, good companies sometimes fail to recognize that their interests and values are not aligned with those businesses with predatory practices that seek to influence the market, business journals, and policy makers. I am sometimes perplexed these days by the term 'pro-business,' when it is used in the context of protecting corporations that have abused the public trust. We hear a lot of talk of free markets from many who have demonstrated a willingness to act without regard to basic ethical constraints that the rest of us find binding even in the absence of a regulatory scheme. Markets without ethical boundaries become dominated by a few reckless, unethical actors. Totally unregulated markets are anything but free and competitive.

Most business people I've had the good fortune to work with want to make a positive impact on the world they inhabit. They enjoy fair competition, and like to win. But they want to win knowing that the game wasn't rigged, and that success is a function of their company's efforts, creativity, and hard work. They like to give back to the community. They take pride in and feel humbled by the success stories of their employees. I suspect that this description of business owners and managers is a portrait of legions, and depicts the majority of people who run companies not only here but around the world. Those legions must oppose the practices and influence of businesses who use the profit imperative to rationalize any unethical action.

It is vital that we understand the divisive intent behind the use of the term 'pro-business' when it is used to imply government meddling in business affairs. The real antagonism is not government against business, but between businesses whose predatory tactics destroy value and those businesses that create value. We must acknowledge that some who have been touted as business leaders are not representative of the business community when their profits are the result of taking advantage of lax regulation rather than creating advantage through ethical and humane business practices. We, as business people, must call these others out when they seek to tilt the game in their own favor by instilling fear and outrage over what they characterize as regulatory burdens. And we must point out at every opportunity that predatory business practices create even more burdens for other businesses, communities, and markets at large.

If you run your business responsibly, and trust that other businesses do the same, you must take a stand against those businesses that abuse that trust.

Of Good and Evil

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 23:26:00 +0000

Umair Haque argues in a blog post today "The Case for Being Disruptively Good." Haque poses the question: how is it in the self-interest of a business to act in ways that are socially responsible? It's an interesting argument, although I think his reference to Wall Street in support of his theory actually dismantles it. But it is intriguing to contemplate whether hyper-connectivity and its resulting transparency challenge the ethical models of corporations. I'm not so optimistic. Haque notes: "Yesterday, the global economy was built on debtors' prisons, usury, expropriation, colonialism, and slavery. Today, it isn't. " I'm reading Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation right now. I can't see the case for progress quite so clearly.

I think most people, whether they work in entry-level jobs or the corner executive suite, want their work to mean something. A person fully employed spends more waking time at work than doing those things that bring emotional enrichment to their lives. We really don't want just a paycheck in return for our individual production. We want to make a contribution, and to make a positive difference in the lives of customers and co-workers.

And yet, people at all levels of any company routinely make decisions that harm customers and co-workers. I don't think most people are evil. I think we can all be unmindful of the power we have in our relationships to harm others, and are too uninterested to understand the context before making a decision. When Wal-Mart's HR policies are criticized in the press for being socially irresponsible, I tend to think that the people who set those policies weren't so much evil as disconnected from the employees who were affected negatively by the policies and perhaps too connected (exclusively) to the people in the boardroom. When a customer relates an incident where she felt wronged by an employee's comments or behaviors, I likewise tend to see the failing as a result of disconnect rather than personal morality. But the employees harmed by their employer or the customer harmed by an employee could both, rightfully, judge those actions evil.

Whether intentional or not, the actions were wrongful because of the power the decision-maker held over the other party. In a traditional corporation and in a typical retail environment, the corporation has the power in the relationship. If the power an executive held derived from his or her employees, not shareholders or other executives, the executive would be much more mindful of the context within which boardroom decisions affecting employees are made. If the retail store understands its power derives from its customers, not from the corporation that owns it, behaviors would be different.

It's true that people act differently when their actions are transparent. However, it matters who is observing. Fellow motorists will happily exceed speed limits well beyond acceptable tolerances, until a car with the authority to ticket them appears. Wall Street will continue practices that are self-serving, even if they are clearly not sustainable, until a body with the authority to hold them accountable makes it matter to them. I can't imagine how the financial products companies (I can't in good conscience call them banks anymore) who wrecked the economy would have learned anything from the last couple of years other than: "We have the power." What else could they have learned from the consequences of their actions?

But you don't have to be too big to fail to consider the impact you have -- for the good, or for evil -- on the relationships around you. That is the hyper-connectedness that I think is at the heart of substantive change for the good. First you must be aware, and then seek to understand your responsibility to that relationship.

I'm also reading now The Lemon Tree (Sandy Tolan). It narrates the history of the relationships between Israel and Palestine, on both state and human levels. It is a story of how truly evil people can be to each other (reminiscent of Caligula's line in I, Claudius, which John Hurt so deliciously rendered: "Aren't people awful?" was his comment in response to a litany of particularly sadistic and horrifying acts). But the people in Tolan's book aren't awful at all, in fact they have marvelous and sometimes heroic qualities... within the context of the relationships that matter to them.

We cannot be connected more than superficially to more than a small number of people, those that really matter. Beyond a couple degrees of separation, the relationship has a diminishing power to influence us. But in the workplace, our co-workers, employees and customers should be only one degree away, and they matter.

Now, what is it that you do?

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:34:00 +0000

In my last post I pondered briefly whether mentoring can be effective, if the mentor does not consciously articulate how he or she is effective.

Recently, a professional said to me that he 'leads by example.' I asked what that meant: "Well, I act professionally, so that employees know what it looks like." Was he ever disappointed because some people didn't pick up on his cues? 'Sure. Some people just don't learn.'

Now, here I have to hit the [PAUSE] button. Before anyone criticizes, think about it, and ask yourself to be candid: haven't you done this very thing? Maybe you've coached an employee on a performance issue, and you've taken care to do all the right things in your coaching session: you make it safe for the individual to listen and learn; you describe the gap; you explain why it's important to close the gap; you gain a commitment. The employee responds well to the coaching, and even turns around his or her performance. Then you witness the same employee holding someone else accountable -- and he's doing ALL the wrong things -- it's a complete disaster. How did he not understand what you expected him to do when he was coaching his staff? You demonstrated it, right? He's a manager; he shouldn't have to be told everything!

Well, maybe your employee thought your behaviors were just a stylistic difference (you're 'touchy-feely'; he's 'direct'). Or maybe he thought that your approach works well with people on his professional level, but hourly employees need to be handled differently. There could be dozens of different assumptions that your employee holds. Thing is, you don't know what they are, because you didn't talk about it. At the end of your coaching session, it would be oh so easy to segue to asking what your employee experienced and learned in the session. Then, ask, "Is this what you would want for your own employees? Let's discuss how I led this discussion, to understand what I did that was helpful for you. It's important to me that you are able to benefit not only as an employee, but also in your professional development. It will also help me understand how I can better support you, as your manager."

I can readily admit that I have never gone to that next step, and explained how I manage to the managers who work for me. Yet almost everyone who works for me has expressed an interest in moving forward in his career to the next management or professional level. And yet, I focus my development coaching on what they are doing, and never what skills I have that I could share. Actually, it feels a little self-important to articulate my own behaviors -- who would be interested in that, right? Well, your employees who aspire to your role (or your level) would be absolutely interested. Employees would probably be fascinated to understand what you do every day, what you find challenging and what you learn. They definitely want to know what you're thinking. And they would be so grateful to hear about your mistakes, and what you learned from them.

I hear there's a television show that places CEOs in front-line positions, I assume to demonstrate just how clueless executives are. I agree that executives need to be present at all levels of the company, to understand employee and customer engagement. But equally important to employees is what the executive does. It's the same sort of curiosity that underpins Inside the Actors Studio (or the film Being John Malkovich?) or reading the autobiographies of famous business leaders. But you don't have to be John Malkovich or Jack Welch to be interesting to people in your company. And perhaps just reflecting on your own behaviors will help you become more aware -- which may even make you more effective than you already are.

Build or Buy?

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:02:00 +0000

The cover story in this weekend's NY Times Magazine, "Building a Better Teacher," intrigued me. I'm interested in the country's educational system from any number of perspectives: as a parent, as an employer, as a citizen, I am a stakeholder. Recent studies have illuminated the significance that the quality of the teacher has on the educational outcomes, far outweighing other factors such as curriculum (teaching to the test), class size, race, class, or ability.

"Eric Hanushek, a Stanford economist, found that while the top 5 percent of teachers were able to impart a year and a half’s worth of learning to students in one school year, as judged by standardized tests, the weakest 5 percent advanced their students only half a year of material each year."

One popular response to this data is to create strategies for employing more of the 'good' teachers: raising salary offers to attract the best and the brightest from industry, making it easier to remove the ineffective teachers. The downside is that this is not scalable. The country has 3.7 million teachers. If you only select those who are naturally talented and skilled in teaching, how do you staff this many positions?

Doug Lemov, featured in the article, advocates a different strategy, to build rather than buy teaching skills. His extensive observation-based research indicates that excellent teachers -- those who have measurably superior student results -- all employ specific behaviors that enable them to engage students in learning. (If you're interested, I suggest visiting the article online so that you can watch the short videos of teachers employing some of these behaviors. I can't say that I've ever witnessed classroom experiences like these.) His book Teach Like a Champion will be published in April, and I can't wait to read it.

I think it's possible that there is something to learn from this to inform management development programs in industry. To achieve consistently high performance requires not just great processes but also great managers and leaders. A high performance company can only afford managers capable of achieving high performance through others -- just like, I would think, a school could only employ highly effective teachers to enable their students to achieve high scores in standardized tests. One way to get there is to buy the talent, and performance manage out any manager who is not a great manager. This isn't an easily scalable strategy, and it limits how much the company can promote internally, which increases employee turnover, which further limits the company. The other strategy of course is to build great managers. Lots of companies, including the one where I work, have waded deep into this strategy. The challenge remains how to do it effectively.

I've read my fair share of business books that attempt to teach management skills, but in reading this article I was struck by the thought that there could be a taxonomy of behaviors that differentiate effective teachers (managers). Teachers need to hear not just 'get control of the class' but how to do this with reproducible behaviors such as hand signals, timing of transitions, cold calling (asking for student responses). I'm not suggesting that managers treat their employees like children; I am suggesting that adult human beings probably respond to body cues and verbal communication no differently than they did when they were younger. I don't think that people become different in kind as they age. If as children we need positive feedback, clear instruction, physical engagement, and context in order to learn, why should we not need the same as we mature?

Although mentoring is thought to be a highly impactful means to develop managers, I am now questioning that assumption. A person who is naturally talented may have little awareness of his own behaviors that enable his success. Talent allows a person to remain unconscious of the skills that increase effectiveness. If the mentored student is not highly observant himself, and the mentor isn't conscious of his skills, the only lesson learned may be to emulate the mentor. The effective manager undoubtedly demonstrates consistently behaviors that support others to succeed with his management; with awareness, he could help other managers learn how to do the same.

To make something reproducible, you must be able to define and describe its process. A taxonomy of management development would provide that nuts and bolts description: how to write an e-mail, how to communicate direction, how to conduct a performance review. If this seems too reductive, perhaps you're holding onto a hope that management is an art. Leadership may well be. Management, however, should be reproducible and scalable, and very definitely not driven by personality or unpredictability. When I watched the videos of effective teachers in action, I realized that these were undoubtedly people of great talent and expertise in their subjects, but what differentiated them from other teachers was the level of engagement between them and their students, and how attuned they were to each other. When we in business speak of alignment and employee engagement, surely these images impart the essence of those meanings. "Joy and Structure" - what could a company achieve that melded both of these seamlessly into its daily work?

First, Move the Ficus

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:33:00 +0000

Last month I reorganized my office. I should have done it long ago. It's a big change, and I was looking for a big change. Actually, I needed a change inside my head, but of course I wasn't thinking that at the time.

The new office look has brought lots of curious peeks, surprised approvals, and flat out questions. 'Why'd you....' (everyone has a decorating opinion in a furniture retail company, but, thankfully, always diplomatically phrased). The most persistent question has been "What made you do it?"

It all started with the ficus in the corner that was uncomfortably close to the meeting table. I can become easily distracted in meetings when people are mildly discomforted by the physical environment: dodging the slatted sunlight coming from open blinds late in the late afternoon; brushing off the wayward leaves of an office plant that is only inches away. When the environment is my office, I'm more than distracted -- I'm responsible. One day, I finally acted. I moved the ficus across the room. Easy fix.

But then, the ficus was clearly in the wrong place. For a week I walked out of my way, around the ficus, to reach my desk. I also realized the room was unbalanced with the tree sticking out like a hitchhiker's thumb. So for a week I suffered it, and contemplated that even though I had hated my office layout since I'd moved in, now I'd made it even worse. And then the second shoe dropped: this is something I can change. So one Saturday I dug in and dug out. I even organized my pencil drawer, uncovering relics and antiquities, which soon made their way to recycle bins.

This was a few weeks ago, and I'm still surprised by how organized my thinking has been. I've been more effective in staying on top of projects. I've been more receptive to coworkers who drop in. I'm thinking more consciously about producing stuff to put in paper files. It's a wonderful feeling. Metaphors are wonderful for change. I needed to clear out, open up, and organize my physical environment so that I make the same changes in my thinking.

But why did it take me so long to figure this out? I realized as I was moving my desk and cabinets just how much I loathed the old arrangement. Before the move, I sighed internally every morning as I switched on the lights and approached my desk. How is it possible that I didn't recognize my own reactions, and do something about it?

Well that's simple - it seemed like so much work, and as evidenced by the piles of stuff around me, I was already buried in work. Making a change for me was just in the too-hard basket. It would take a day out of my life. I didn't have that to give. I would just have to make do.

Instead, I did one small thing that was easy. I moved the ficus. I thought I was creating a more comfortable space for my colleagues. Actually, I was creating more discomfort for myself. Necessary discomfort, it turns out -- necessary to commit to the more unwieldy task of actually fixing the real problem. I had to make it worse to release the inertia.

I'm now thinking of ways to move the ficus metaphorically in other areas of the business. We're surrounded by operational status quo, some of which clearly doesn't work for us or our customers, but which we tolerate, with a sigh. Is there a ficus to be moved?

Re-launch

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:23:00 +0000

In several posts late last year I started engaging with an idea that felt both confronting and yet inevitable: that we should not expect our career paths to follow an unnatural linear progression, but rather to follow the natural rise and fall that we witness in business life cycles. We should expect that the skills and experiences that brought us to our current position will eventually not be enough to continue professional growth. Witnessing a career start to flag should not be cause for alarm or dismay; we should anticipate the necessity of this natural progression and be grateful for it.

That last statement may sound too far fetched: wouldn't it be great if you never experienced a downturn and every year you were increasingly more successful? The popular notion of what our careers should look like on a resume reinforce this idea: with every job change, a promotion with more responsibility and higher income to prove your increasing value. Well yeah - that's the popular idea. But it's a fiction: either the resume writer is skimming over the actual career challenges, or -- worse -- the writer believes that the job title confers enhanced qualities that people lower on the org chart don't have. I have learned to be grateful for feedback that signals where my current abilities are wearing thin. Without this signal, I have no incentive to acknowledge my current limitations. If I can't acknowledge them, I will still be limited, but incapable of progressing.

Sadly, the popular notion of career progression leads people to conclude that they should never make career moves that are anything but up the career ladder. In this way of thinking, lateral or backward moves are considered career killers. I think we should change this rigid mindset both in our own careers, and when evaluating others' careers. This idea is very much on my mind right now, as I read resumes for a management position for which I'm hiring. Of course I'm looking for a specific set of skills and experience that are required for basic competency in the role. But, this is a role in which I want the successful candidate to develop into a director level position, and even further, to a C-level executive over time. It won't be good enough to just be a competent manager. I am looking for someone who has gained an awareness of his or her limitations, and seeks to develop beyond those limitations.

If you're fortunate, you work for a manager who gives you honest feedback on your limitations and coaches you on your development. Those less fortunate receive superficial feedback -- insincere cheer leading, tepid performance reviews, or generic appraisals -- that leave them stranded. If you're receiving development feedback, good for you. If not, where do you start?

Here's something to try: Draw two large circles on a piece of paper. Label one of them 'S-1' and the other one "S-2." On another sheet of paper list the projects you worked on over the last year. Now, assign each of these to one of the circles, based on whether you considered the outcome successful ("S-1") or not ("S-2"). Once your outcomes are sorted, consider each one in turn: what were the common attributes when you were successful? when you were not? Be completely honest with yourself: no one but you will see this paper, and you can destroy it later.

Once you've finished, consider that the "S-1" circle describes the sphere in which you can be successful today, with the skills and experience and knowledge you already own. The "S-2" circle describes the sphere that is just beyond the reach of your current skills, experience, and knowledge. This is a sphere you can occupy successfully, but only by extending your knowledge and gaining the practice necessary to become skilled. I don't know what's in your S-2 sphere, but I feel fairly confident that changes outside of you will not bring their success to you. Re-launching your development will, however, bring you closer to their success.

Yet again...

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:33:00 +0000

I was just finishing up my next post on the career development series when my mom passed away.I hope to return to topic soon.

Since some readers know me personally, I'm enclosing links to the writing I have been doing over the past month. This is for my dad, Barry Blackmon, and for my mom, Lyn Blackmon. They were extraordinary individuals and their marriage was inspiring. I was so fortunate.

Life intervenes

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 01:34:00 +0000

Just a quick note on my recent absence from this blog.... My dad died this month, and I've been traveling to be with family. I will restart the blog within the week.

Wishing everyone a peace-filled year that is generous and welcoming.

The Decaying Orbit

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:02:00 +0000

My last post suggested that careers follow a natural curve of maturity, decline, and renewal rather than follow a linearly progressive curve, which is the more common conceit. The linear growth progression is an artificial construct we superimpose on the natural rhythms of human development.

Closely tied to this is an idea that as a person navigates his or her progression up the career ladder, management skills become increasingly important. This is of a piece with the idea of linear progression: the higher up you go, the more time a person spends controlling and directing others, and increasingly less time is spent making an individual contribution. I disagree on both counts.

Consider an individual's growth as a human being, starting from the first days in the cradle. We all start life completely focused on the self. An infant only focuses on objects outside himself so that he can meet his own basic needs: influencing a care giver to feed him, keep him comfortable, touch and hold him. With time, he differentiates between the people most important to him (the people who meet his needs daily) and everyone else. He strives to control the environment around him, primarily by influencing those people who can help him control it. By school-age, the individual is learning self-control, and how to influence people outside his family so that he can control his environment. Eventually, the individual expands his world to care about those he does not know personally. Over time, the individual's world expands outward by degrees, and in this process affects his relationship and responsibility to the world in concentric circles around him. Graphically, it looks something like this:

But imagine if you will that each of these circles is actually a 3-dimensional sphere comprising a world relative to the individual, who is the point at the center of it all. Of course, each sphere or world can exist without that individual; this is simply the view from the individual, looking out beyond himself. Only the world of self is entirely dependent on that individual.

A person can manage himself, because that world begins and ends with him. He and only he can direct and control his actions. Although we like to think we can manage others, we can really only influence them; they control their muscles and thoughts, ultimately. Although parents are advised to control or manage their children, in reality parenting consists of setting limits to keep a child within the sphere in which the child can control herself. That's what a time out is all about: remove the child from the sphere where she is acting out, returning her to the sphere of her self so that she is able to regain control of herself. As the child matures, the time out evolves into being grounded. These are similar methods to assist a child to learn self-management, which is essential for becoming socialized.

Self-management is also important in the workplace. It becomes less significant as responsibilities increase, but only because the individual must be highly competent in self-management in order to gain additional responsibilities. As a person is promoted to a position in which she is responsible for the work of others, we call that person a manager. However, the most important role that person plays is to influence others, less than to manage them (if manage means control and direct). Someone who has hundreds or thousands of employees underneath him on an organizational chart can't be said to manage that many people. I can only be puzzled by resumes that claim "250 direct reports" -- just what does that mean? But even with a smaller number of direct reports: what does it mean to 'manage' them? If manage means to control and direct their actions: how is this possible?

I recall a discussion with an employee a number of years ago. He was a senior manager who led a technology team, and I knew he was unhappy. I sought the meeting to learn what was amiss. I explained to him that his success was important to me, and asked how I could be a better support for him. After a bit of talking around it, he finally blurted out, "What kind of manager are you? You aren't managing me!" Whatever I expected to hear, that was not it. This was a professional whose job description gave him significant latitude in directing his team and creating their product line. I had assumed he enjoyed that latitude. Although he didn't want me to boss him around, he was put off by my not even attempting to. We finally agreed upon some structural changes in our relationship, but I couldn't agree to do what only he could do: manage himself. I did learn, however, that the influencing skills that were working well with others in the division were less effective in working with him. I had stepped into a sphere I hadn't understood, and stumbled because I didn't recognize the difference. I had to become a novice again, with this employee, to gain a firmer footing so that I could support his success.

Influence is not a single skill or set of skills. It is less about you, and more about the sphere you are trying to influence. As one's career progresses, the spheres you encounter change in size and in kind. They change with the culture of the population within the sphere -- both the corporate culture and the varied cultures employees bring to their jobs. The sphere is impacted by changes in markets and economies. Therefore, you can never feel that you have finally achieved the skill of influence; this learning is continual.

As one's career progresses and an individual is increasingly more responsible for company outcomes, a couple of things happen. Influence becomes significantly more important, if only because the populations to be influenced become more varied and disparate. At the same time, one has an increasing opportunity to influence in an individualistic way. Although we talk about individual contributors as either professionals or non-management employees, no one is more an individual contributor than the top executive of an organization. That person has a unique opportunity to shape the culture, relationships, and outcomes for employees and customers so that they are entirely aligned with his or her personal vision. Paradoxically, as an individual's influence increases, that influence is both more personal and more outward-focused. Learning how to balance both ends of this paradox is extremely difficult: too much of one or the other can result in executives who are, in the extremes, either self-absorbed bullies or hollow shills.

So, if we superimpose these two concepts together, what do we have?

Each ring of the concentric circles indicates a new sphere of influence. It can be a different population -- assuming leadership of a new group, for instance -- but it can also be a population that has changed. Leading a company in the midst of a great recession is different from leading during a boom period, for instance. With time comes change, and although some behaviors will continue to be successful, others will not. It is at this point that the maturity of your skill set will start to show its limitations, and if you anticipate the cycle, you can start to understand what the spheres you have entered into require of you that was different. Your orbit is decaying; you will need to re-launch.

This is, I think, a more naturalistic perspective on career development. As a metaphor, it more closely reflects the human dynamics of learning and leading than do the popular notions of management and career progression. Most importantly, it is inclusive rather than exclusive: it suggests but does not proscribe. It is a metaphor of possibility that embraces failure because it enables learning and innovation. It is forgiving (don't expect yourself to be perfect all the time) and yet it is demanding (don't rest on your laurels...).

In my next post, I will move from the theoretical to the practical: so what does this look like in real life, and how could it make a difference?

Up the Down Career Ladder

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:24:00 +0000

A young professional recently spoke to me about the unexpected turns his career had taken. Like many, he expected in his early 20s to be able to plot a course and follow that path. It’s easy to see how this happens. Career counseling often inspires young people to assume that planning a career is similar to working out a degree plan. Sign up for the courses, do the work, you get the degree. It’s sometimes a shock to learn life isn’t quite like that.

Once in the work force, young ambitious professionals can grow accustomed to being promoted fairly frequently. They can begin to assume that staying in the same job is equivalent to stagnation, which can derail your career plan. This colleague recognized that despite the fact that he was well off the path he previously thought he his career would take, he recognized this change of course had allowed him to acquire new levels of technical proficiency and develop professionally. But, the fact that he was off-road from the career path of his 20-year old self was nagging at him.

The metaphors we use to frame our life stories can limit or expand our lives. The popular metaphor of a career ladder is particularly limiting. In this frame, one’s career is supposed to look like this:

Each new position moves the individual upward toward the pinnacle, at which point one retires at the top of one’s game. During his work life, when an individual is offered a new position he must consider if that offer is incrementally higher than the last position. A lateral move – much less a ‘backward’ move – can be troubling: how will it look on the resume? For business people, the resume has become the repository of one’s life story, and by every (unwritten) business rule book, that story needs to approximate the plotted line above.

However, this is at odds with the way businesses view their own life cycles. Businesses really don’t expect their products or companies to follow that same linear progression. Rather, the received wisdom is that products and companies follow a maturity curve that looks kind of like this:

What the business does at the point in the shaded area, when it has reached maturity, is critical. This stage requires innovation or reinvention, since the current model is unsustainable. As the company embarks on innovation, it will continue its downward slope until the new model gains legs and the growth curve is restarted. Failure to recognize the maturity decline can be terminal. Although re-invention is risky, it’s less so than the status quo.

Businesses not only accept this life cycle model; the better-run businesses keep watch for signs of maturity in the market or their products, so that they are able to start the renewal cycle as early in the decline as possible.

And yet, professional development is in reality no more linear: it has a natural growth and maturity curve. Young managers typically hit the first ‘decline’ upon assuming their first real management roles. Promoted for technical competency, the new manager must now achieve results through others. First-time managers find that being ‘hands on’ and modeling the behaviors they seek from their employees don’t suffice to change others’ behaviors. The manager’s skills as an individual producer, now in their maturity, begin to drag on the upward curve of the manager’s development. The individual’s career will continue to decline unless the manager learns new skills, becoming a novice once again. Soft skills are generally harder to learn than technical skills, especially if you’re expected to learn these on your own. The manager, who previously had been proud of his accomplishments, can start to feel frustrated, as he’s expected to know how to do things for which he has no preparation. Failing to perceive the inevitable maturity decline is just as risky for the individual as for a business: it can result not in the expected plateau, but rather a downward spiral.

First-time managers are not unique in experiencing this curve; it recurs through an individual’s professional life, and the stakes grow larger over time as the safety nets grow weaker. Many businesses recognize the risk to their entry-level managers and provide them with supervisory training (minimally) and targeted development programs (optimally). But senior executives are expected to be on top of their game – how much tolerance is given for a maturity decline in professional growth to these individuals? Much money is spent on executive coaching, to be sure, within the context of fine-tuning the executive’s skills, not the wholesale reinvention of the executive’s skills. The life cycle maturity curve demands not just tweaking but reinvention. The horse-and-carriage industry didn’t need a tweaked buggy whip when Henry Ford was increasing production; they needed to get into the auto parts business.

Considering one’s own life work within the context of maturity life cycles, we should expect to experience many reinventions over the span of a career, however desparately we pretend to manifest the classic ladder-like career progression. I’ve read a lot of resumes over the years, and inevitably those life stories with obvious reinventions are shoehorned into something that can pass for a linear progression. I imagine what it might be like to read a resume like this:

2001 – 2003: Assistant Manager, Acme Corp.

Oversaw double-digit production and revenue increases by implementing a management by objectives (MBO) program.

2003 – 2004: Manager, Acme Corp

Soon after my promotion, I realized that year-on-year increases were not sustainable, particularly when we lost several key producers due to over-leveraging the MBO program. After two quarters of losses, I accepted the fact that the division needed me to be a different leader. After listening to the 360 feedback from my production team, I undertook a year of rebuilding my leadership and our team’s foundations. The year ended in a slight loss from prior year. This investment led to a phenomenal 2005 fiscal year, as measured not only by the P&L but also in employee retention and engagement.

Unfortunately, the same person’s resume is more likely to look like this:

2001 – 2003: Assistant Manager, Acme Corp.

Oversaw double-digit production and revenue increases by implementing a management by objectives program.

2003 – 2005: Manager, Acme Corp

Under my management, Acme’s production division drove unprecedented profits and revenue.

Typical wisdom is that the resume should market an individual, and therefore it is no place to acknowledge awareness of limitations or failures. For some reason, businesses think it’s in their best interest to hire only people who best convince them of their infallibility – those who exemplify the linearly progressing career. Following this logic, Barings Bank would have considered itself fortunate in 1989 to hire Nicholas Leeson, whose lessons in failure ended up costing Barings over £200 million. Barings’ loss was of course a spectacular debacle played out on the world wide stage. Yet a simple truth connects that experience to one that is universal: everything in the natural world exhibits inevitable patterns of decay and renewal. Don’t expect an artificial pattern from natural elements.

In my next post, I’ll explore an alternative that allows us to view progression in a more rewarding framework. I invite your comments.

Introducing SPC (and Relationships) into Health Care

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:38:00 +0000

The Sunday NY Times Magazine's cover story ("Dr James Will Make It Better", by David Leonhardt) was a fascinating look at something called 'evidence based care.' Dr. Brent James has introduced measurement into the hospital system where he works, and it sounds much like statistical process control (SPC), which has been the foundation for continuous, radical improvements in manufacturing and service industries for decades. Although I've read of other hospital systems that have used lean principles to reduce error and costs, this article implies that it's revolutionary for doctors to change the way they administer medicine based on data-based protocols. Although as a patient you may respect your doctor because of his scientific expertise, apparently many doctors have a deeply held belief that their greatest value derives from intuition. One doctor put it this way:

“I thought there wasn’t anybody better in the world at twiddling the knobs than I was,” Jim Orme, a critical-care doctor, told me later, “so I was skeptical that any protocol generated by a group of people could do better.”

This kind of thinking led to extreme variation in ventilator settings, which had less than optimal outcomes for patients. A group of doctors used data to establish a protocol that James introduced as 'defaults' to the doctors in his hospitals. The soft approach worked:

The crucial thing about the protocol was that it reduced the variation in what the doctors did. That, in turn, allowed Morris and James to isolate the aspects of treatment that made a difference. There was no way to do that when the doctors were treating patients in dozens of different ways. James has a provocative way of describing his method to doctors: “Guys, it’s more important that you do it the same way than what you think is the right way.”

Although I found myself troubled by the revelation that doctors often make their most critical decisions for a patient (what medicine, when, and how much) based on SWAG, I suppose I am to admire scientists such as Dr. James applying well-established process improvement techniques to remove variability and improve patient outcomes (often called 'life'). This reminds me of the insights I discovered in the book "Sway" (Brafman and Brafman): humans tend to go to their gut instincts especially when the risks are high, rather than use facts and logic to guide them.

As I contemplate where 'evidence based care' might take us (robotized treatment centers?), I am reminded of an interesting viewpoint from a doctor who approaches her job dramatically differently from the 'doc in a box' industry. The Nov 2009 issue of The Sun Magazine offers an interview with Dr. Pamela Wible of Oregon (see print version for complete text). She found the 'assembly line' practice in a clinic dehumanizing to her and to her patients, and so she went solo, and reshaped her job to support a strong relationship with each of her patients. She treats the person, not simply the part of the person that needs healing. She says, "I've reduced costs by humanizing the experience. People want to be cared for, which doesn't necessarily require lab work or MRIs." How she defines her work is this: "The most important therapy I deliver is a human relationship. I'm not doing anything controversial or woo-woo. I never thought of myself as practicing alternative medicine until a colleague pointed out that spending time with patients is now "alternative."'

I think it's possible to provide evidence-based care within the context of human relationships. The fact that Dr. James introduced data-based protocols initially as 'defaults' implies that he understood the importance of relationships in gaining buy-in and necessary feedback to improve the process and therefore the patient outcomes. He needed doctors like Jim Orme to enroll themselves in the process for the protocols to be used and tested. He couldn't achieve that without understanding the impacts on his relationship with these doctors.

Dr. Wible conducted eight community forums before opening her practice. She heard from her community what they needed from their health care provider. She used this data to design her practice. The three priorities for her community were: human respect; simplification; payment. I don't think her community is much different from most; these seem both basic and intuitive. The disconnect between customers and the health care industry on what customers value is wide and deep: consider the ubiquitous drug and hospital advertising that focuses on technology, complexity, and consumption.

I'm encouraged to hear different perspectives on how to transform health care and produce better results for more people. Neither viewpoint is comprehensive: yes, evidence based care is preferable to gut instinct, but doctors must care for people, not statistics. Yes, it's helpful for the doctor to listen to her patient and inquire into the patient's nutrition and home life, but science must also be applied to extend healing beyond what a lay person can do on her own. Business has long believed that the only way to reduce costs is to mass-produce and cheapen the product. These two stories illustrate that higher quality and personalization are not only preferable, but can also reduce costs and improve lives.

It matters how money is made

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:42:00 +0000

"Everything happens in the context of relationships."

This concept was a revelation to me a few years ago. I'd been raised on a different business ethic: "Don't bring your personal life to work." In this way of thinking, your job specifies the 'role' you play.To be successful, you must not only embody the role, but also recognize the roles others are playing, and with them perform an unseen script. Bringing one's personal self to work, and interacting with others' personal selves, can't be tolerated, since this intrusion gets in the way of achieving business goals. Good workers must strive single-mindedly toward meeting the corporation's objectives. Those who do this well will be rewarded.

Being very driven operationally and technically, I was more than receptive to a de-personalized work place, and approaching my work this way usually produced good business results. But, when I sought feedback from peers and direct reports, I heard a consistent message that I was 'at times' not approachable. Those 'times' occurred when I was most intently driving to a business objective: meeting a project deadline; overcoming obstacles in reaching business goals. I was grateful that I had good enough relationships with others that they felt comfortable sharing this with me, and yet for years I failed to understand what I could do about it, other than try to play my role a bit differently.

And then a couple years ago, I came across what seemed a completely revolutionary thought: Everything happens in the context of relationships. If you care for those relationships, your outcomes will exceed your expectations. The person you are as a leader either enables or prevents others to be successful. If the people you lead are not being successful, look first to the relationship between you. Is it characterized by honesty and disclosure? Is it apparent to the other person that you care about his or her success, and that you bring a sincere interest in understanding both the facts and feelings of the relationship? As I've put this learning to practice, I have a growing appreciation for its power. A business is not a disembodied entity that people work for. A business is the people who work in it, and it changes measurably as the people within it change. It is simply the sum of the outcomes produced by those peoples' relationships, popularly called 'teamwork.' Moreover, the business exists within the environment of its community: consciously or not, the business contributes to community-based relationships, for good or ill.

Following the nation's economic news, I have come to realize a fundamental difference in the ethos of the community and that of many corporations. The people who work in businesses and whose communities are affected by them share a relationship-based ethos. Listen to interviews of workers who have been laid off recently. Whether the workers are young in their careers or have spent a lifetime with the company, they speak emotionally about their loss: not only of the loss of their livelihood, but also of the relationships lost to them. They speak of the close ties they have forged with co-workers, their 'second family' at work, and of the pride they have taken in what they accomplished together. People view work as more than an exchange of time for money. They bring to work not only their physical bodies but also all the complexities of their personalities, histories, emotions, and aspirations.They witness the contributions that they produce individually and with others for the business. All of the corporate talk of 'teamwork' just reinforces with them the importance of relationships as the singular engine for corporate success.

A corporation tethered by the concept of itself within its de-personalized person-hood can never understand the power that actually drives success in its business. The business's responsibility for its relationships with its employees and community trumps the profit imperative. In my work, I am responsible for profitability, and I take that responsibility seriously. So seriously, that I maintain that a business cannot be profitable both today and in the future unless its management understands that everything happens in the context of relationships. Failure to understand this leads to toxic debt packages that lead to rampant foreclosures that lead to ultimate insolvency (unless your business is 'too big to fail'). It leads to double-digit unemployment, with unimaginable human misery and long-term scarring with unknowable economic impact. It leads to toxic food, loss of life and health. The tolls are incalculable - and for what end?

Profits do not have to suffer as relationships are honored; my experience is that in fact, quite the opposite is true. This seems counter-intuitive only if you accept that the corporation is a mechanical entity that exists only to produce profits. However if you assume that the corporation is the sum of the people who work together to produce services or products profitably, and that the business exists within the context of the community upon which it depends, then it seems perfectly reasonable if not inevitable. I work in a company governed by a set of values that give shape to the relationships inside and outside the business. Not so coincidentally, the company has produced year-on-year growth every year (this one included) since embracing these values. The company's values are not just nice-to-haves; they are essential to the company's business plans and its success.

If all actions were based on the profit imperative, irrespective of relationships, human society as we know it would not be possible. Yet, even when our communities bear the manifold costs of the financial collapse caused by uncontrolled profiteering, society is reluctant to hold the bad actors accountable. I think our failure is partly grounded in an unmindful acceptance of their ethos, even when we do not share in it. We have accepted too readily that as long as it's legal, it's acceptable. But it matters how money is made. Legality is a low standard indeed for a society's norms, and you have to ask:who has decided what is legal and what is not?

Let us accept that human society is nothing if not the relationships that allow us to live together successfully to produce successive generations who may also thrive. Economic security and success are interwoven with those relationships. Everything happens in the context of relationships.

Lean takes on a new meaning

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:37:00 +0000

Update 8 October 09:
This morning's NYTimes reports that Costco has worked out a supply agreement with Tyson, allowing Costco to test Tyson's products prior to resale. And, there's some speechifying from the administration and Congress. Would be encouraging if this goes somewhere, but it's hard to see it will.

The Sunday NY Times featured a front-page story, shocking and deeply disturbing, that explained how E. coli contamination is allowed to occur in the US meat industry. In one example, meat sold under the product name "American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties" was actually a mixture of meat products made by Cargill from three separate suppliers. None of these suppliers, nor the producer of 'American Chef's Selection Angus Beef Patties,' tested their products for contamination. Ms. Smith, a young woman who ate a hamburger made of this meat, became critically ill and is paralyzed.

In combining the ingredients, Cargill was following a common industry practice of mixing trim from various suppliers to hit the desired fat content for the least money, industry officials said. [...] In all, the ingredients for Ms. Smith’s burger cost Cargill about $1 a pound, company records show, or about 30 cents less than industry experts say it would cost for ground beef made from whole cuts of meat [....] The listed ingredients revealed little of how the meat was made. There was just one meat product listed: “Beef.”

But, you may wonder, I thought Sinclair's The Jungle changed all of this last century ... don't we have regulations that protect the consumer? That would be the USDA, and this is what they say:

Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an assistant administrator with the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said that the department could mandate testing, but that it needed to consider the impact on companies as well as consumers. “I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health,” Dr. Petersen said.

No doubt Cargill has worked its supply chain relationships to drive down costs, but it's certainly not practicing Lean principles. This is old-fashioned greed. The article takes pains to point out that Costco, known for its supply chain and cost management, insists on testing the meat it procures: those suppliers who don't want their products tested (like Tyson) don't sell to Costco. Dr. Petersen should not worry about protecting the businesses he regulates. If they have to charge 30 cents more to produce meat that is clean, so be it. What consumer wouldn't prefer to pay an incremental difference for the peace of mind?

The kink in that argument is that consumer trust is badly eroded, because regulation has not been enforced where it exists, and it has been severely cut back. Protections we once enjoyed have been hacked away under the philosophy that government is bad. We are reaping the results now, not only in unclean food but also in huge economic failures. If consumers no longer trust that they are being protected, how can a business assure its customer that the higher price of its product is due to the product really being what it's labeled? Bubba Burgers, the article tells us, attempts to differentiate its product by this label: “100% whole muscle means no trimmings.” Until I read this article, I would have had no appreciation for what's behind this message (or what something called 'fine lean textured beef' really is - for starters, the raw material for this substance is up to 70% fat; centrifuges and ammonia are involved). If you're purchasing ground beef based on label information alone, which would you think the safer choice for your family: Bubba Burgers, or American Chef's Selection Angus Beef Patties? They both bear the USDA Approval label. What are you supposed to make of that?

And yet, I have little expectation that the article will have much more of an effect than grossing out its readers. Maybe Costco will get a brief uptick in their meat department. Maybe grocery store butchers will have more requests this week for grinding whole cuts of meat for customers. That's fine, but it's not the solution. Why shouldn't we expect businesses to eliminate costs by reducing waste, not by reducing quality? Why should we not insist that government do what we individually cannot do? Why are we paying the salaries of bureaucrats who seek to protect the industries they are supposed to regulate, at the expense of citizens? Why aren't we demanding substantive change?

President Obama campaigned on change, and surely that's the message that gave him a four-year lease at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Yet since January, simply the prospect of change has become radicalized. Even in the face of incontrovertible evidence that the status quo is harmful, leaders are fearful of taking a stand for change, as if the safe position was to stand pat. Geoffrey Miller, in his book Spent, cites studies that correlate threat of disease in a population with low ratings of openness. The more people sense threats they cannot control, they become more resistant to change and fearful of outsiders. We can look around us and see catastrophe on all sides: environment, financial sector, housing, employment, education, health care. The response of some will be: "We need to do something about that!" Apparently, even more people will hunker down in their misery, and attack those who press for change.

You don't have to play to those fears, however. If they trust their leadership, people can be inspired to overcome their fears and act. Recently at work, we set a challenge for the stores to achieve sales levels never consistently met before. We were responding to the same economy that other retailers are using to justify hunkering down: cutting back, hyping poor values. But, we decided to inspire new levels of performance. I could give the stores no magic bullet, no certainty that they would succeed -- just my belief they would. I asked them to look only within the walls of their own stores to see what they could do to transform the experience of our customers, and deliver even greater value to them. And you know what? They did it.

Whose problem is it anyway?

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:53:00 +0000

One of our corporate departments is implementing a SaaS application across the company. The application requires that every employee register independently. This is not going well: despite a tremendous effort by the project manager and each location manager, the task deadline is blown and still not complete. The implementation team asked me to pitch in to get this task over the line, something I have been happy to support. And yet, I realize that the only reason we are throwing so many hours at what seemingly was a simple task in the project plan is that the vendor designed an extremely poor process. The application's functionality depends on the independent registration of all employees, using a method that has an overly-complex opt-in design. Just how wrong is that?

Well, the vendor, who only recently minted this application, is committed to the design and has taken the position that it's a 'user problem.' This takes me back to the bad old days of vendor arrogance. Engineers would dictate business processes to all of their clients, even though those engineers had no working experience in the industries or markets of their clients. That didn't work especially well, so technology companies started offering customization services. The end result was essentially unchanged: the business could only contribute to the user requirements documentation, using the vendor's consultants as a conduit. The vendor still retained complete control over the design and specifications. The attitude was: we'll tell you how to run your business. Errors that resulted because the client's employees failed to use the (increasingly complex) system correctly (that is, the way an engineer thought it should be used) were the responsibility of the client. If the client asked for changes to make it easier for their employees to use the system, the client had to foot the bill and increase their risk of process failures due to the introduction of new code.

This may be the world that your business operates in, still. For many, the only opt-out option has been to bring design and modification in-house, so that development can respond to the actual needs of the business and its users. Truly opting out has not been possible for businesses using ERP systems: the cost and time involved in system replacement, and the disruption to the business, are great.

But in this decade, a new model has arisen from consumer-driven technology, which has flipped design on its head. If a web page, or a cell phone, or a mobile app, doesn't work the way the consumer wants to use it, the consumer can easily abandon it. Exit barriers are almost nonexistent in consumer technology. Consumers expect plug and play. They expect to be able to cut and paste from one application to another. They expect the software to be very forgiving, and to let them interact with the software many ways. Consumer technology companies do not expect the consumer to read a user manual, or follow work instructions to use the software. And you know what? These expectations are increasingly met, consistently.

Maybe the signal difference is that the consumer technology business's customers are the users of their technology. Business technology providers still think that their customers are the company execs who sign the contracts (and may never use the technology), not the employees who use the software. If your current ERP provider had to pitch to your front-line employees, would they keep your company's business?

On Best Practice (or not)

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:28:00 +0000

Susan Cramm asks in a post today 'Why Do We Ignore "Best Practices"?.' She cites a CIO who has rejected using a proven project methodology on a high-risk project -- a decision that has now jeopardized his project. Cramm is interested in understanding why people who know better put their projects or even their jobs at risk by failing to use known best practices. The post suggests that the CIO engendered risk on his project because he ignored best practice. I suspect the dynamic is rather different: since the project was high-risk, he ignored best practice... because he knew better.

I wrote on this just about a year ago, when I was reading Ori and Ram Brafman's insightful book "Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior." Particularly when the risks are high, educated well-seasoned professionals abdicate the normal rules (rational but unnatural practices) for emotionally-based instinctive responses -- not what one thinks one ought to do, but what one feels should be done. At the moment the professional reverts to 'common sense' in a life-or-death moment, you might as well place your destiny in the hands of the evolutionary ancestor for whom this worked often enough to pass along his genes. He may have been a veteran airline pilot when your plane took off; in an emergency, you hope he doesn't turn into a Cro-Magnon mid-flight.

There's probably a biological reason why this happens, but our culture certainly reinforces it powerfully. The American culture deifies the action hero for whom normal rules do not apply. Interestingly, these heroes often have a skill set that is only acquired through much professional, rigorous training -- Rambo, Dirty Harry, Gordon Gecko. Because they are at the apex of their professions, we willingly grant them license to discard all of that and play by their own rules. We revere their irreverence for rules that lesser mortals (like us) have to live by. Maybe their Hollywood-style outcomes justify what we really believe is the 'best' practice - acting on instinct.

My older post reminded me of the project that inspired it. At the time, I needed to make a decision on how best to help the team get back on track. We shared the same goals, so alignment was not a problem. No one disputed the metrics; the team understood they were not hitting them despite being highly focused on them. We had a clear difference of opinion on what process changes should be made -- and since I'm corporate, it was easy to assume that I just didn't understand. The team really wanted to achieve their goals, and their confidence in meeting them was based on their belief in their solutions. It felt like an impasse.

So it's a year later: how did it turn out? The team achieved a break-through, and this year has consistently far exceeded what we previously thought would be high-performance results, based on prior benchmarks. Their results are inspirational, and I am awed by their achievements. Yes, we got back to 'best practices' in process improvement, but not by forcing it on them. Instead, I realized that I was working with a team that was highly focused on results. The team thought the goal was the metric, which felt high-risk because they didn't know how to move it. So, they brought their emotions to solving the problem. I simply changed their immediate goal: they would demonstrate to me their competency in process improvement. I agreed that they could implement whatever changes they could support with data from their process analysis.

In the end, they made only a slight change to the process. And yet - they are achieving far more out of their process than they did before. Why? Well, it turns out that during their process analysis the team started to understand why some steps were best practice even though they seemed counter-intuitive. All of the team came to embrace the process as written, and once it was no longer subverted by well-meaning team members who thought they knew better, the process started working for them. After their break-through, I asked one employee how they were so successful. He responded: "It's the process. Don't take my process away from me." It's now their process, not corporate's. I wouldn't dream of touching it now.

Cramm's CIO will never be convinced to change his course by rational argument, nor by increasingly dire metrics from his project. Because he cares deeply, and because he is professionally trained, he is all the more likely to continue with his decision, to which he's by now irrevocably committed. If his board were to take the risk off the table, and re-frame the task in a way that enabled him to bring his professional judgment back online, it's possible he could make a fundamental shift that would engender success.

"And you may ask yourself..."

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:39:00 +0000

The rise of the agrarian culture. Health-care reform. Jared Diamond's book Collapse. Public dialogue about governmental and international policy. Talking Heads. Businesses that awaken too late to impending demise. Fear of failure. These are all on my mind today.

It all started innocently enough, as my husband and I, enjoying a lovely late-summer bike ride this morning, discussed our hypotheses on the establishment of agriculture by formerly migratory human populations. (I guess some people exercise to exercise -- that is, to become more fit or achieve athletic goals. I exercise to think; it's a marvelous way to give the brain what it needs to think creatively, and what great fortune that the rest of the body benefits as well!) So anyway, as we talked, I started imagining what it may have been like to live in a culture that started the transition from opportunistically gathering food from the surrounding environment, to creating sources of nutrition that could sustain a settled population.

I'd never really thought about this much. In school I was told that once people started farming, they weren't so mobile and they settled down and started creating social mechanisms to support and defend their settlement. I must have assumed that (1) this was the sequence of events (farming then settlement then defense and other infrastructure) and (2) this was a life style choice - like city dwellers leaving to start up farms in the countryside. But someone who has lived after the establishment of agriculture has the advantage of accumulated human knowledge: even if the individual knows nothing about farming, he or she can easily find out from people who know, and has access to markets that will supply the raw materials and tools that are required. What if there is no human knowledge to be had, and farming tools are nonexistent?

The first humans to engage in farming must have failed a lot before they succeeded. Creating knowledge is like that: you start from ignorance, and try things out. You learn what works and what doesn't from the mistakes you make. Risk of failure must be quite high: a lot of effort with poor yield in the beginning, and long lead times (a growing season) before you know whether your efforts were successful or not. Meanwhile, you're caring for yourself and others who need nutrition every day, and your movement is limited, since you have to remain close to the plants you're trying to grow. Chances are, the area where you've settled is not overly rich in naturally-occurring food, or why would you be putting so much effort into farming your own? The risk of failure is quite high -- starting from ignorance, it's probable that initially, failure is certain. People die if crops fail and they aren't able to supplement their diet sufficiently with nutrition from the immediate environment. How is it that people stayed with this endeavor long enough to accrue the necessary knowledge to become successful?

I can only imagine that the immediate risks of not doing it were much higher than the risks of doing it. Groups of people do not assume any risk, much less one that could only have resulted in death amongst their own population, unless they are compelled to do so by a much more extreme and inescapable risk. As a species, we are extremely unimaginative. Risks that could eventuate next year - much less in your child's lifetime -- are just not compelling enough. It could happen -- and the optimistic, here-and-now human brain thinks "Yeah, but it's also possible it won't happen, so let's not rock the boat." It's not enough that the status quo produces hardship and loss; if we've become accustomed to these, they are less fearsome than the fear of the unknown. Diamond's book explains eloquently how one civilization after another faced imminent collapse because of the choices they made, and how many of them clung to the catastrophic choices that ultimately destroyed them. So whatever was happening in these proto-agrarian societies must have been fearsome indeed. Some populations probably decided they could not change their practices, and they perished. Some did, and generations have been sustained by their decision.

There's a lesson here, regardless your viewpoint on how to tackle the many issues facing this nation and those around the world. You can take your pick of disasters: the status quo is unacceptable in any of them. We have to make different choices. We have to do things differently than we've ever done them before, and because we will be novices, we will fail as we seek to learn how to be successful. It could be that, as in the apocryphal Thanksgiving parable, we can metaphorically learn from others how to plant corn and stave off the impending starvation of the colony. It can also be the case that we face some things (how to maintain peace in an increasingly volatile nuclear world; how to sustain the environment as the atmosphere starts to boil) as a species for which we have no collective wisdom.

On a smaller scale, businesses need to do the same: both Wall St and Main St businesses have failed to see disaster looming, and even after this recession's corporate body blows, so few businesses have actually taken on the equivalent of the migratory tribe's foray into agriculture. Too many businesses are just waiting for the bubble to return; that's their plan. Unfortunately, some will stick with the plan until they are no longer around -- wiping out the livelihood of their employees and adding to the continued rise of unemployment. And if the business is considered too big to fail -- well, we'll all pay for that, won't we?

It helps me to realize that what I see around me is the same as it ever was; not that this is comforting, but at least it it helps me understand why so many are clutching desperately to fictions rather than face what is blindingly apparent. And yet, there's a part of the human psyche also that can be thrilled by the adventure of going 'where no man has gone before.' Leaders need to do a much better job of tapping into the uplifting aspect of adventure and opportunity in the face of adversity, while steadfastly loosening the population's terrified grip on the deadly status quo.

How not to enroll others in your process

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:59:00 +0000

My daughter's music school recently sent me a letter stating they were eliminating paper statements and required that we set up an online account. After too much effort and frustration, I now have set up the account. It only took about 10 failed attempts on their website, a trip to their business office, four e-mails, and a 20-minute phone call to finish this task. And my benefit is ... oh yeah, I get to receive electronic statements instead of mailed statements, twice a year. Lucky me.

Now that my gall has (mostly) subsided, I can see where this went off the rails. Whoever directed their process was focused on one outcome (security of student data) to the point of being unmindful of the larger outcome: successful enrollment of customers into their new paperless process. This is an all too-easy mistake. Here are the traps:

1. Not explaining the benefits of enrollment to customers. Academic institutions are not historically customer-focused, even when they are funded by their academic customers. In academia, enrollment just means getting on the class rolls. Customer enrollment requires selling an idea or process to others so that they want to sign up for it. After reading the school's two-page letter, I still didn't really understand why I should care or even participate. I understood that they wanted to eliminate their costs of printing and posting statements, and reduce their delays in receiving payment. But why should I care about that? Not considering the customer's perspective resulted in my starting the process with a grudging attitude. It went downhill from there. This is something to keep top of mind whenever you roll out a process, whether within your company or with your customers. Whatever your project's objectives, when you seek participation from others you have an obligation to enroll them. It isn't enough to direct them, even if they work for you.

2. Not providing all of the information required by the process. Their account set-up process required two pieces of data: an ID and an activation key. I understand they don't want to put both pieces of data in the same piece of mail for security reasons, and the letter contained the activation key. OK - then that's a problem to be solved, which they could have phrased this way: how can we make sure our customers have everything they need before they start the process? Had they sought to enroll customers in the process, this question would have come naturally; since that wasn't their stated outcome, it simply would not have occurred to them. In the end, this customer had to solve the problem: my husband drove to their business office to ask for the ID#. If the school were thinking about the customer's outcomes, they could have solved it easily and saved us a trip and the increasing aggravation. I could have been successful on the first attempt. They'd have me on their side.

3. Providing security keys in a font featuring ambiguous letters. After multiple unsuccessful attempts to validate the activation key, I began e-mailing their support desk. We tried to work out (unsuccessfully, in the end) whether one character was the number 1, the capital letter I, or the lowercase letter L. This issue is unfortunately all too common. Apple's iTunes gift cards suffer from the same issue: I almost never enter the ID codes correctly the first time because the typeface has ambiguous letters. Number 0 or letter O? It's just trial and error, since they have not considered the design of the type face from a usability perspective. I have to believe that for Apple, a company that is extremely design conscious, this is a manifestation of how much (or little) care is given to the customer's experience. I assume someone chose the font because they thought it looked cool. I now have an aversion to buying iTunes gift cards: it's not just the annoyance with having to retype a long random key multiple times; it's the resentment that I'm giving money to a corporation that really doesn't care about how annoying they can be to customers. You don't have to be Apple to make this mistake, and if your stated outcomes don't embrace the customer experience, you're likely to stumble too.

The fact that I dutifully worked through my issues in setting up the music school account will just reinforce with them the 'success' of their project. I have no doubt the project's metrics are aligned with their desired outcomes and not with their customers' experience, and I was aware of this all the way through the dreary experience. I just decided not to sweat it since my desired outcome is that my daughter continues her musical development. The experience just taught me that although I know her teacher also shares this outcome, the school probably does not. I now have an online account with them, but I'm not enrolled.

Just Great Movies - and more

noreply@blogger.com (Dionne Dumitru) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:54:00 +0000

The Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF) this summer was an amazing film-goer experience creatively, intellectually, emotionally. This weekend, as I read through the list of films that won awards at the festival, my appreciation deepened as I realized that my husband and I had seen only a small subset of all the films exhibited. Despite what I felt as a relatively aggressive film-viewing schedule (for someone not in the industry), we had obviously seen a very small pool of the total films, and almost none of those presented with awards. Of the eleven films we saw, only one was average; the remaining ten were each, in its own way, extraordinary and deeply provocative. I have a profound appreciation right now for the many intensely committed, insightful and outrageously imaginative people around the world who make these small films, many of which only find an audience through small film festivals such as TCFF. I need to keep this in mind as pundits criticize the thin gruel that is the fare of the multiplex cinema industry: let's just not call it 'the film industry' but rather 'the corporate multinational film industry.' There is an entire world of film outside the realm of comic book sources, silly chick flicks and crude adolescent male comedy -- all of which patronize and minimize the audience. Most of us just have limited access to this other unenfranchised world. Hence, we are witnessing a rapid rise of small film festivals that are meeting in a limited way a demand that the corporate film industry is unwilling to supply.

If your only film festival experience is from reading accounts in newspapers about Cannes or Sundance, it's important to note a critical difference between those festivals dominated by corporations and the small festivals such as TCFF. Those high-profile festivals are all about big: big names, big cash, big deals, lavish swag and parties. The only things big at TCFF are ideas, choice of films, passion -- you know, all of those things that aren't easily commercialized. Although TCFF does have sponsors who help fund the festival, most if not all of them are small local businesses. Looking at the event as an operation (which, sadly, I cannot prevent myself from doing), its most significant engine is volunteerism. The people responsible for running the festival take leaves of absence from their real jobs and volunteer their time and skills. All of the operations staff are volunteer -- and the size of this temporary work force is staggering. But what is truly amazing is how well they did their jobs, and how committed each of them was to make the experience delightful for every film-goer . Just the logistics of putting together this temporary organization (creating the org charts, hiring, shift scheduling, communication, training, managing resources, problem-solving) is mind-boggling; but additionally they are able to create a culture and mission and enroll every volunteer in it, so that the festival can rely on every part-time volunteer to communicate these behaviorally in every customer interaction. That's not only amazing, it's inspiring.

Think about what it takes in your organization to align hundreds of employees culturally and operationally. Now consider the environment in which this alignment takes place: there's a corporate office, with full time, permanent management. There's company e-mail for communications. The company uses newsletters and meetings held at the employees' workplace, on the employees' work time, to communicate significant messages. The company invests in infrastructure that is permanent and maintained every day of the year. The company has 52 weeks every year to respond to issues and correct them.

The festival does have some advantages not enjoyed by most organizations. The festival only has to get it right for one week - the commitment of its volunteers is passionate but very short-lived, and people can put up with just about anything if they know it will end soon (as I'm reminded with the latest crop of Woodstock anniversary accounts - if it lasted much longer than three days, it might have been disastrous). And, as with the small subset of the films that I saw, similarly I encountered a relatively small number of volunteers, and have no insight into whatever problems the festival organizers and managers handled during the week. But the point is that to this customer, it appeared to be all good, and in my experience this only happens when an organization is getting most things right.

Looking from the outside in, I can only say that I have no idea how this worked operationally. I wish I did. I'm simply inspired.