If you subscribe to the “what’s new” approach to organizational change, Work-Out might seem like yesterday’s news.  But, recent experiences reinforced Work-Out’s continued relevance. In some ways, arrival of tough times for all organizations has made Work-Out – and concepts like it – more contemporary than ever.

The Wunderlin Company’s approach to cultural change is rooted in our collective experiences with GE’s Work-Out process. Work-Out places the work to be done (or the problem to be solved) in the middle of an organization and surrounds it with the people who know it best. This unlocks new resources for problem solving.

From the beginning, Work-Out was a source of major transformation at GE.  In the mid 80’s GE was still a stodgy, monolithic enterprise, weighed down by bureaucracy and bureaucrats.  The earliest Work-Out wins were in the moments that we observed the combination of problem-solving teams asking, “Why do we do things this way?  What if we could try…” and leadership teams saying, “I’m listening….and I’ll support you to make that change.”  It’s a transformational combination!  And, more than 20 years later, it’s exactly the same in organizations who are just beginning Work-Out.

While the process is directed from the top of the organization, it is implemented with broad participation from employees throughout the organization. Work-Out develops broad coalitions across the organization. Employees start to care deeply about success because they are connected to the organization and can make change happen. The Work-Out process also provides a vehicle for organizations to optimize speed, cost and quality – without compromising any of these measures, and results in new levels of success.

Proof it works

Last year, we helped a financial services organization introduce Work-Out and facilitated a number of their early problem-solving sessions.  A highlight for Laura occurred when true “breakthrough thinking” occurred, resulting in a 90% cycle time reduction.  By making a few simple changes to their standard business contracts, the contract negotiation process was shortened and the legal department was no longer consumed by iterative “red lining” of agreements.  It was proof that Work-Out really works – even in a legal department!

Early on in Karen’s consulting career, The Wunderlin Company was engaged to instill the Work-Out process throughout Louisville city government. From the city garages, to garbage pickup to purchasing processes, we worked with government employees to tackle difficult problems and the results were nothing short of remarkable – in terms of time and money saved, citizen services improved, and overall morale boosted. In fact, the program was so successful that the Louisville government was awarded a Ford Foundation Innovations in Government Award to teach other cities how to implement the process.

Carol worked recently with a utility distribution business that was able to save $1.8 million by buying pre-fabricated parts and expects to save nearly $20 million by rolling out the program system wide – all thanks to the Work-Out process. That same company was also able to make similar improvements to its collections, prepayments and safety programs.

Another example of success was a Safety Work-Out that was instrumental in turning around a difficult ongoing trend for the company, achieving a 25% reduction in preventable motor vehicle accidents and OSHA recordables within one year. The company also revamped the entire Accident Prevention Manual in just five days with 35 union and 15 management employees.

Why it works

Work-Out gets the whole system in the room. How many times have you or an associate been frustrated by a work process that you know can work better… but how to make “those people over there” – whether it’s production or people in the field or finance – cooperate?  An essential tenet of Work-Out is to get the whole system in the room.

Work-Out significantly shortens decision times. A typical task force meets for two hours every week or so for a couple months, presents to leadership, and then waits days, weeks or months to hear the final decisions.  With Work-Out, teams work with a facilitator for 2-4 days, and then leadership joins the group.  The teams make their recommendations for improvement and leadership makes the decision on the spot. In 20 plus years of leading Work-Outs, we have yet to see a Work-Out session that received less than 80 percent “Yes’s” to the recommendations – and that isn’t because senior leaders become easy marks in public forums; it is because if you ask the people who do the work how to do it better, they know and they come up with highly workable solutions.

Work-Out is much better than training. Frequently leaders talk to us about how to get employees to change their behavior.  What we have seen is the “double benefit” of Work-Out experiences – in addition to identifying and implementing recommendations to improve business results, associates learn new ways to do their work.  A participant in a Work-Out about fleet maintenance told us a year after his Work-Out experience “If I came in tomorrow and we went back to the old way of working, I would quit.”  Now that’s sustained organizational change!

People support what they help create. In Work-Out, participants own their approved solutions. Instead of “selling” their good ideas to the rest of the organization, the organization gets involved in selecting the best approaches to improvement, making implementation go more smoothly and faster.

The Work-Out process is elegant in its simplicity – yet deceptively powerful on so many levels

• You can get traction quickly working on important problems or opportunities.
• You can increase associate involvement and ownership in generating solutions. The people closest to the work are called upon to create and own the solutions; thereby creating support and buy in.
• You can breakdown real (or imaginary) organization boundaries – between manufacturing and engineering, sales and marketing, field and headquarters –because you start to look at the process end-to-end and with a customer-focused perspective. Participants gain valuable perspectives on their jobs and learn about other processes within the company. Leaders can demonstrate a way of leading that engages people in a more transparent and interactive way and gives associates, those closest to the work, the power of being involved in decision-making.

Here’s how it works.

1. Leadership identifies a critical organization issue or problem.

2. A small group of people from several functional areas comes together for uninterrupted work time with the pressure of a deadline as a catalyst and the assistance of skilled facilitators to support their work.

3. The group works to develop and present recommendations it can implement.

4. Leadership hears their recommendations and gives a “Yes,” “No,” (and here is why) or “Further Study” and then empowers teams to implement approved recommendations.

5. The teams implement accepted recommendations.

6. The teams come back together at a predetermined time (usually 90-120 days later) to report their progress.

At its core, Work-Out is a means for driving cultural change. In the short term, you can increase efficiency, improve work processes, eliminate nonessential work, involve your people in the process and increase communication. Long term, it empowers your people, sustains productivity improvements, and, perhaps most importantly, creates true partnerships.

What has to happen?

Senior leadership has to support the Work-Out. Participants’ most common fear: “Senior management will never really let us do this.”

Planning is critical. A small group of folks has to spend a couple weeks crafting the question to be answered, recruiting the right people to participate and gathering relevant background information.

Skilled facilitators are needed. Teams need a facilitator who knows Work-Out, and is highly skilled in bringing cross-functional teams to a high-performance state. The facilitator ensures the Work-Out teams’ efforts are focused and efficient, completing specific Action Plans to be accomplished within 90 days. The group must feel free to disagree, discuss, explore and problem solve in a short, intense period.

Try Work-Out

If you want to quickly see results, try Work-Out. If you want to improve dialogue, remove barriers between functions and bust bureaucracy, try Work-Out. If your work group has been wrestling with an issue for some time or is struggling to improve its performance, try WorkOut.

In 2010 being able to move quickly to take advantage of emerging opportunities and to streamline processes differentiates recovery from continued struggles.  When considering your department or organization’s recovery strategy, consider working in Work-Out—it really works!

– Warren Buffet, 2008 Letter to Shareholders

Sounds awfully gloomy, doesn’t it? Reminds me of the ballad which begs hard times to “come no more” and made fresh by Bob Dylan as he strums and laments: “Tis the song, the sigh of the weary.” (Click here for video of Dylan’s rendition). As I talk with business owners and organization leaders I almost expect them to break out into the chorus: “Hard times, hard times come again no more.” What is one to do?

Last week I took two actions to help me survive these tough economic times. Both felt like positive steps forward. First, I made a conscious decision to limit the amount of news I listen to. Avoiding reality, you say? Shying away from the truth, you wonder? I prefer to think I am preserving the sense of balance that shrill pronouncements of defeat and ruin drown out. Yes, I still listen selectively to NPR, watch the national news and read the New York Times (albeit, I pick up the Style section before tackling the World in Review). But I’ve quit listening to the “talking heads” predicting gloom and doom at every turn. I don’t need that. Thank you.

The second thing I did was read two publications that helped me frame my thoughts about the economy: Warren Buffet’s 2008 Letter to Shareholders (22 single spaced pages) and renown business writer Ram Charan’s Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty (138 pages). I highly recommend both publications, but since I realize that many of my colleagues and clients are too busy to read even these useful publications, this post highlights two quotes from Buffet’s letter and a summary of Charan’s points with some added examples.  For leaders in the not-for-profit and public sector, I have also attempted to “translate” Charan’s guidance into your frame of reference.

Charan begins his book by noting, “Whether you lead a small group of people or a whole business unit or company, these next few weeks, months, and years will test you.”

In responding to that test, he advises that you transfer your attention to cash.  “Your focus must shift from the income statement to the balance sheet.  Protecting cash flow is the more important challenge.”  You know the three sources of cash in your organization—earned funds (or donated funds in the not-for-profit world); working capital invested in inventories and accounts receivable, and proceeds from the sale of assets.  Make maximizing the cash flow from these three streams your relentless focus.

Another important change is shifting your focus from growth to gaining cash efficient market share. What Charan is referring to is that growth your organization can attain without excessive outlays of your precious store of cash. And, shrinking to providing only those products and services that provide cash will be a mandate. “Eliminate the rest,” he implores – that means shrinking will present opportunities to simplify your processes and reduce the layers of management.  In the end you will have fewer customers, fewer products, fewer facilities, fewer people, fewer suppliers –and a stronger [organization].”

In this new environment leaders need to dive into the details of operating their organizations in unprecedented ways.  Charan calls this “hands on, heads in”.  In adopting this leadership stance, we will all adopt a more intense approach to managing our companies.  We will communicate more with sales or development people, field people, our customers, and our employees who will need an ongoing balance of information from you about both the challenges of the current reality, and your optimism that your organization will come out in 2010 or 2011 healthy and strong.  The cycle for measurement and rewards will compress. Charan advises, “You have to increase your frequency of control, setting targets on a quarterly, monthly or even weekly basis.  Aggressive actions and decisions build optimism and confidence—your own and others’.”

The Six Essential Leadership Traits for Hard Times
Charan argues that the new economic reality changes the attributes leaders must have for success.  Think about your work, your decisions and your leadership since September.  Which of the following are your strengths?  Which do you need to intentionally add to your repertoire?

Honesty and credibility. Do the folks in your organization absolutely trust you to tell them the truth, even when it is a difficult truth?

The ability to inspire. How skilled are you in finding the compelling strands in your organization’s or department’s future and knitting them into a story behind which your folks can align?

Real-time connection with reality. To what extent are you getting real-time information from your customers, clients or donors?  Basing decisions from even January’s information could be very misleading

Realism tempered with optimism. How balanced are you in your communication and decision-making?  Have you unwittingly become the prophet of an apocalyptic future?  Or are you clinging too hard to the belief that this will all go away in 90 days?  How skilled are you at finding that balance?

Managing with intensity. What is your personal energy level these days?  To what extent are you modeling “Hands on, Heads In?”

Boldness in building for the future. What investments are you making with limited resources to ensure your organization’s or department’s strength when the recovery does kick in? Again from Buffet’s most recent Letter to Shareholders:

“Amid this bad news, however, never forget that our country has faced far worse travails in the past. In the 20th Century alone, we dealt with two great wars (one of which we initially appeared to be losing); a dozen or so panics and recessions; virulent inflation that led to a 211⁄2% prime rate in 1980; and the Great Depression of the 1930s, when unemployment ranged between 15% and 25% for many years. America has had no shortage of challenges. Without fail, however, we’ve overcome them. In the face of those obstacles – and many others – the real standard of living for Americans improved nearly seven-fold during the 1900s, while the Dow Jones Industrials rose from 66 to 11,497. Compare the record of this period with the dozens of centuries during which humans secured only tiny gains, if any, in how they lived. Though the path has not been smooth, our economic system has worked extraordinarily well over time. It has unleashed human potential as no other system has, and it will continue to do so. America’s best days lie ahead.”

The balance of Charan’s Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty is organized around the actions, skills and decisions required for the major functions in most organizations, many of which build on the concepts already outlined.

Despite my swearing off (or maybe weaning off) of gloomy news programs, I did catch a recent NPR report (click here to listen) on the Arizona Diamondbacks which illustrated the success organizations can achieve in implementing Charan’s approaches (although as far as I know, Charan and the Diamondbacks are not in contact!) The Diamondbacks have lowered their cash breakeven by implementing a player acquisition strategy that keeps them significantly under the salary cap.  They forgo marquis players with back-loaded ten-year contracts in the hundreds of millions in favor of talented but lesser known players. They are adjusting their products and services to suit the times—you can now bring your own food to the baseball park, or for $25 you can sit on the suite level and enjoy their All You Can Eat Buffet.   Their General Manager, Derrick Hall notes their philosophy is “One Fan at a Time”.  By maintaining this highly personalized approach to customer satisfaction, their season ticket sales remain strong.  Hall noted that they are working with their season ticket holders to define packages for next season that fit their reduced circumstances—such as partial or split season tickets—and keep them coming to the ball park.

I hope this post has inspired at least one or two new approaches or tweaks to your leadership that will make you more effective, and more confident, and your organization more successful during these most difficult days. I’d love to hear from you about what is working for you and what you are doing to survive. Please post your comments as a REPLY in the box below.

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A New Look Is Coming Your Way

We are currently revamping The Wunderlin Company website and blog to make the format and content more engaging for our readers. We will let you know when it is up and running and available for your perusal. In the meantime, you can still visit us at www.wunderlin.com. or contact Karen at kw@wunderlin.com.

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count.
It’s the life in your years.
~Abraham Lincoln

2008 is proving to be a year of tremendous challenge for many of us. The financial markets continue to decline, oil prices have ascended to unimaginable prices – and then descended at a “bends-inducing” rate, there is continued uncertainty about the health of the global economy, contamination in the food supply… You name it, it seems like many areas of our lives are in turmoil.

In our year-end issue, we recognize these stresses and challenge ourselves to “seize the day!” That’s right: carpe diem, make the most of current opportunities. There is much we cannot control—so let’s focus on what we can control.

We are firm believers that people who make things happen – who seize the day – act as if time is at a valuable premium. (Well, isn’t it?) When we say “seize the day,” we mean seize this moment, develop a powerful sense of urgency around your projects and plans. Your sense of urgency is what makes dreams come alive and work for you.

Seizing the day is one way of being (at least slightly) in control of your life – even while parts of it seem to be spinning out of control.  Winston Churchill said, “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”

While you may not be able to control the world, you can control how you respond to it. So wake up! Get going! Life is short and time is fleeting…Over the next six weeks, we’ll give you our top suggestions for how you can seize the day. We begin with this one:

Push yourself to breakthrough thinking
Successful inventors, entrepreneurs and writers say they are often asked where their big ideas came from.

So goes the lead line in a story by Mickey Meece in the New York Times about the 2008 IdeaFestival which happens to take place in my hometown, Louisville, KY. Meece’s NYT article points out that breakthrough thinkers “will acknowledge that serendipity often plays a role. But equally as important, they say, is having an open mind — especially in tumultuous times like these. Big and small ideas are out there, they say, if you are looking for them.”

Now heading into its 10th year, the IdeaFestival (IF) is a world-class event that attracts leading and highly diverse thinkers from across the nation and around the globe to explore and celebrate innovation, imagination, and cutting-edge ideas.  The multi-day festival is presented as a non-linear program designed to stretch people’s horizons and promote breakthrough thinking… utilizing multiple venues to showcase, discuss and “connect” important ideas in science, the arts, design, business, film, technology, education, etc.
I attended the IdeaFestival this year and came away with a number of business relevant ideas. Under normal circumstances I would not be in a conference for gamers or neuro-biologists, but the opportunity for my brain to bounce literally from one thought-provoking and unfamiliar topic to another provoked new ways of thinking for me.

A surgeon, a global leader in his specialty, attended this year and was so energized by the experience he is proposing that he and all his colleagues attend next year to assess for themselves whether they are really thinking innovatively and pushing themselves to the highest levels of new thinking.

Here’s advice from one of the IF presenters, Jane McGonigal, a top game designer and future forecaster: “You have to systematically expose yourself to things outside your domain because the breakthrough ideas will come from areas where you are not constrained by doing the daily job.”

Innovators at the 2008 IdeaFestival offered 10 suggestions on how to come up with new ideas. Click here to see their list.

• What’s the best advice you ever got?

Mayor of New York City, founder of Bloomberg LP

“I can’t remember who told me this, but I certainly didn’t grow up knowing it, so I must have gotten this advice at Salomon Brothers in the 1970s. The advice was, first, always ask for the order, and second, when the customer says yes, stop talking…” Fortune Magazine, May 12, 2008

On a long flight recently, I was catching up on some reading. An article in Fortune’s May 12 issue got my attention: The Best Advice I Ever Got, featuring responses from 19 very successful people including Larry Page, the founder of Google, Tina Fey, Gen. David Petraeus, and Robert Iger, CEO of Disney. (Click on the article name to read all 19 pieces of advice.)

And it got me thinking about the best advice I had ever gotten…

From Rollie Tillman at University of North Carolina’s Business School
“Separate the decision of what to do from how to pay for it.”

So frequently in strategic planning sessions with clients or when making personal decisions, the tendency is to go immediately to the shortage of current resources. This sage advice from my professor has frequently helped facilitate first the conversation about “What is the right action to take here?; What do we really want?; What is our vision for our best future?” Then, armed with a compelling view of what we want, we can begin to think about how to achieve it, and how to pay for it.

From another business school professor
Professor Rader at the Darden School taught Rader’s Rules and they had a profound impact on my husband, David. He has often shared them with me and the one I have found most useful is: “Get the facts or the facts will get you.” Harold Geneen, CEO of ITT called this “shaking the facts”. He told the story of buying a tract of land in Canada because of the plentiful and high quality lumber. After purchasing the land, someone finally went to see the land… and learned that the trees were all very small and thin because of the short growing season, and were many many years from being harvested. A graphic example of the need to verify the facts!

So often a conversation or problem-solving session roams from opinion to opinion. Those who know me know I am not always right, and I am rarely in doubt! Life has taught me to look for the facts in a situation and to base my decisions on them. If ignored, the facts have this incredible way of showing up when my actions contradict them.

From my Aunt Alean
“Don’t expect anyone to take care of your financial needs except you.”

My aunt had a difficult life as a single parent in the 1960’s. She and my three cousins even had to come live in our three bedroom house for a time – and it already had seven people in it! Her determination to provide for her girls when life threw her some serious curve balls helped me see the value of being able to take care of oneself.

It was the same important lesson that Maria Shriver shares in her book: Ten Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Went Out in the World.This short book is based on a commencement speech she gave at the College of the Holy Cross. It is full of wisdom and insight for young folks beginning their careers. Now, how do we transmit that value to our children? It is a question that has real meaning as our children, Julie and Ed, become young adults.

So, what is the best advice you ever got? Please share it here by hitting the comment button… we’ll compile all the responses and share them later this summer!

Positive Image; Positive Energy; Positive Action

This new approach to organizational change, called Appreciative Inquiry, emphasizes and builds on a company’s strengths and potential. It asks the question: “What is working around here?” Organizations around the world find that the answers create tremendous positive energy.

Here’s how a typical Appreciative Inquiry session might look, as described by leading practitioners and authors Jane Magruder Watkins and Bernard J. Mohr in a Harvard Business School article by Tom Krattenmaker, entitled, “Change through Appreciative Inquiry.”

1. Make the focus of inquiry positive. Seek out what is good and right about your organization. A company interested in improving client relations could ask: “When have customers been most pleased with our service, and what can we learn and apply from those moments of success?
2. Elicit positive stories. Use interviews to evoke stories that illuminate an organization’s distinctive strengths. When the organization is functioning at its best, what characteristics are present? Unlike data or lists, positive stories stir imagination and generate excitement about the company and what it is capable of accomplishing in the future.
3. Discover common themes. Through the shared stories, find what elements are common to the moments of greatest success and fulfillment. Look for the ones that are most promising and inspiring as components of a desired future. According to Watkins, “The themes become the basis for collectively imagining what the organization would be like if the exceptional moments uncovered in the interviews become the norm in the organization.”
4. Create shared images for the future. This stage in the process asks employees to create a future in which the high points identified in the stories are the everyday reality. The team then designs the structure – the policies, business processes, resources, etc. – for achieving the desired future.
5. Find innovative ways to create that future. Finally, the employees identify specific ways to bring the preferred future to life.
   

Want to Learn More?

You can read more about Appreciative Inquiry. Here are some books we recommend: The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry, by Sue Annis Hammond. Appreciative Inquiry, Collaborating for Change, by David Cooperrider & Diana Whitney, Berrett-Koehler. Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination, by Bernard J. Mohr and Jane Magruder Watkins. The Power of Appreciative Inquiry, by Diana Whitney & Amanda Trosten-Bloom. Lessons from the Field, Applying Appreciative Inquiry, edited by Sue Annis Hammond, & Cathy Royal, Ph.d. Encyclopedia of Positive Questions Volume One: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Bring out the Best in Your Organization, Diana Whitney, David Cooperrider, Amanda Trosten-Bloom, and Brian S. Kaplin.

Success in business today demands that we constantly innovate. We must continually reinvent our organizations and ourselves, dissolving old ideas and creating new models for changing markets. We must continually look for the next opportunity by finding hidden connections and insights into new products or services. Creativity is a requirement.

Savvy managers understand that brainpower is their most valuable resource and that harnessing creativity requires passion and commitment. The payoff is big – as success flows directly from innovation!

The conference room at TWC is plastered floor to ceiling with white boards. When one of us gets stuck we go into the conference room, alone or with a colleague, to map out the issue and get new perspective. Just freeing ourselves to work in a big informal space, make problems visual, and use some color and drawing frequently leads to new and creative insights. To find out how your organization can ignite the creative spark and foster innovation, read on.

It’s Not a Gift; It’s a Habit Formula for Creativity Involves Preparation and Effort

Creativity: it’s not a gift from the gods bestowed by some divine and mystical spark. Rather, it is the product of preparation and effort. It’s a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.

That’s the premise behind Twyla Tharp’s new book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life. Tharp should know a lot about creativity – she is one of America’s greatest choreographers and a very successful business woman. She takes the lessons she has learned in her remarkable thirty-five year career and shares them with her readers.

Tharp tells us that creativity is not just for artists. “It’s for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it’s for engineers trying to solve a problem; it’s for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way.” She claims, “It takes skill to bring something you’ve imagined into the world! No one is born with skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that’s both painstaking and rewarding. It takes time.”

Here’s a peek at some of the practical advice she offers.

Routine is as much a Part of the Creative Process as the Lightning Bolt of Inspiration

To get the creative habit, you need a working protocol that’s habit-forming. Tharp touts the rituals of preparation. For her, it’s rolling out of bed at 5:30 a.m. and hailing a Manhattan taxi to take her to the gym for a two-hour workout. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training she puts her body through each morning; the ritual is the cab. “The moment I tell the driver where to go, I have completed the ritual.” She believes that it is vital to establish some rituals – automatic but decisive patterns of behavior – at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up or going the wrong way. For Tharp, turning something into a ritual eliminates the question: Why am I doing this? “By the time I give the taxi driver directions, it’s too late to wonder why I’m going to the gym and not snoozing under the warm covers of my bed. The cab is moving. I’m committed. Like it or not, I’m going to the gym.” Her morning workout ritual arms her with confidence, jumpstarting her creativity.

To Help You Focus on a Project, Consider Subtracting Things from Your Life

Before Tharp begins a big project, she tries to place herself “in a bubble of monomaniacal absorption where I’m fully invested in the task at hand.” She lists the biggest distractions of her life and makes a pact with herself to do without them for a week. Here are some of the things she suggests that you consider cutting out: television, the Internet, mirrors, clocks, numbers, and music. She believes that subtracting your dependence on some things you take for granted increases your independence. “It’s liberating,” she says, “forcing you to rely on your own ability rather than your customary crutches. The act of giving something up does not merely clear time and mental space to focus you; it too can become a ritual.”

Before You can Think Out of a Box, You Have to Start with a Box

A box, the kind you buy at Office Depot for transferring files, is Tharp’s solution for an organizing system. She starts every dance she choreographs with a box. “I write the project name on the box and as the piece progresses, I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the dance.” For Tharp, this means a card with the project’s goal(s), notebooks, news clippings, CDs, videotapes of her working alone in her studio, videos of the dancers rehearsing, books, photographs and pieces of art that may inspire her. For Tharp, the box “makes me feel organized, that I have my act together even when I don’t know where I’m going yet.” It also represents a commitment. “The simple act of writing a project name on the box means I’ve started work.” The box also means that she doesn’t worry about forgetting.” One of the biggest fears for a creative person is that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn’t write it down and put it in a safe place. I don’t worry about that because I know where to find it. It’s all in the box.” Tharp notes one final benefit to the box: it gives you a chance to look back. The box gives you the opportunity to reflect on your performance. “Dig down through the boxes archaeologically and you’ll see a project’s beginnings.” Ask yourself: How did I do? Did I get to my goal? Did I improve on it? Did I change along the way? Could I have done it all more efficiently?” Tharp contends that, in the end, “your box is proof that you have prepared well.”

Scratch for the Small Idea

When you first begin a project, you must dig through everything to find something. Big ideas are all around you, but when you can’t wait for the thunderbolt to hit you, you must scratch for a small idea. Twyla Tharp gets started on most of her new dances by scratching for the idea. “A dance doesn’t hit me whole and complete. Inspiration comes in molecules of movement, sometimes in a nanosecond. A quick combination of three steps is an idea.” And from that idea, she builds her dances. “When I’m scratching, I’m improvising,” she says. She likens it to a jazz musician jamming for an hour to find a few interesting notes; a choreographer looks for interesting movements. Tharp believes that there are as many ways to scratch for ideas as there are ideas. To get you started, consider:

Reading. It’s your first line of defense against an empty head. Reading generates ideas, because you’re literally filling your head with ideas and letting your imagination filter them for something useful. “If I stopped reading,” says Tharp, “I’d stop thinking. It’s that simple.”

Everyday conversation. If you listen, you will hear ideas. Tharp recounts how Paul McCartney and John Lennon spontaneously wrote “Eight Days a Week” after being inspired by a comment that a chauffeur made when McCartney asked, “How’ve you been?” “Working hard,” said the driver, “working eight days a week.” That comment became the launch of “Ooh I need your lovin’…”

People’s handiwork. Take a stroll through a museum; go to a theatre or an exhibition. Inspiration abounds.

Mentors and Heroes. Use the paradigms of your mentors and heroes as a starting point. Ask yourself, “How would they solve this problem?” But, be careful, warns Tharp, not to turn yourself into an imitator rather than a creator.

Nature. Step outside. Observe wildlife, plants, and sunsets. Mother Nature is a wonderful source for scratching.

Tharp sums it up this way: “Reading, conversation, environment, culture, heroes, mentors, nature – all are lottery tickets for creativity. Scratch away at them and you’ll find out how big a prize you’ve won.”

Prepare to be Lucky

There is a fine line between good planning and over planning. You never want the planning to inhibit the natural evolution of your work. “In order to be habitually creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative,” says Tharp, “but good planning alone won’t make your efforts successful; it’s only ” after you let go of your plans that you can breathe life into your efforts. Tharp tells us that creative endeavors can never be thoroughly mapped out ahead of time. “You have to allow for the suddenly altered landscape, the change in plan, the accidental spark – you have to see it as a stroke of luck rather than a disturbance of your perfect scheme.” She tells us that you don’t get lucky without preparation, and there’s no sense in being prepared if you’re not open to the possibility of a glorious accident.

Build Your Creativity on a Foundation of Skill

Tharps reminds us: Great composers are usually dazzling musicians. A great chef can chop and dice better than anyone in his kitchen. The best fashion designers are invariably virtuosos with a needle and thread. The best writers are well-read people. A successful entrepreneur can do everything and anything – stock the warehouse, negotiate with vendors, develop a product, close a deal, placate an unhappy customer. Her point is that all these people have mastered the underlying skills of their creative domain, and built their creativity on the solid foundation of those skills. “Skill is how you close the gap between what you see in your mind’s eye and what you can produce: the more skill you have, the more sophisticated and accomplished your ideas can be.”

Don’t Get Stuck in a Rut

“It’s going to happen sometimes: despite all the good habits you’ve developed, preparation rituals, the organizational tools, the techniques for scratching for ideas, there will come a time when your creativity fails you,” acknowledges Tharp. You are in a rut. Tharp offers a three-step process for dealing with ruts: First, you have to see the rut. Second, admit you’re in a rut. Third, get out of the rut. It’s this third part that is hard. “Knowing and admitting a problem are not the same as solving it,” acknowledges Tharp. “But executing a solution is also the fun part, because the solution saves you and gets you moving again.”

The Long Run

Tharp tells us that there is no long run for a creative life without devotion, commitment, and persistence. “When creativity has become your habit; when you’ve learned to manage time, resources, expectations, and the demands of others; when you understand the value and place of validation, continuity, and purity of purpose – then you’re on the way to an artist’s ultimate goal: the achievement of mastery.”

We hope the ideas presented here trigger you to think about how you develop your own creative habit. We’d love to hear what works for you – and what doesn’t. Click here and share your thoughts with us.

Gain a Different Perspective to See an Issue Freshly

By Judy Futch, TWC associate

“People…they just keep trotting back and forth thinking there is something better on the other side. If they would just wait quietly – something good will come along. But no – with humans, it’s rush, rush, rush, every minute.”

“So how do you do it?” Her colleague asked.

“I sit still a good part of the time and don’t go wandering all over creation. I know a good thing when I see it. I stay put and wait for what comes.”

What wise sage made these statements? Of course, it was Charlotte; the renowned web-designer from Charlotte’s Web and Wilbur, the pig that was radiant, terrific, and “some pig.”

So what can we learn from a spider? To tap into your creative side, you must begin by accepting that you have a creative side – even if you are the most linear of thinkers. We all have insights that come from our unique backgrounds and experiences.Sometimes you have to walk away, literally or figuratively, from the issue to gain insight. That may mean a physical walk, run, or swim. Rhythmical action lets your brain rest and stimulates the creative side of your brain. For some people, spending time outdoors – gardening, walking in the woods, or extended time in the wilderness, gives them insight from the natural world. The idea to repackage potato chips into an uniform shape and thickness (Pringles trademark) came from an observation that after a hard fall rain leaf piles were condensed to half their size. The issue? Potato chips were packaged in bags to reduce breakage but shipping was too expensive. The idea? Reduce potatoes to “mash” (like wet leaf piles), dry the mash, and “cut” uniform chips that would fit into a cylinder. Uniform potato chip shapes, uniform container, cheaper shipping costs, and all because of a walk in a fall rain!

Sometimes one of the best ways, as Charlotte suggests, is to sit and wait for what comes. It takes moving from the question of what and how…to the question of why am I focusing on this issue. What is underneath the need to create or to know? And then allowing the image to emerge.

From The Power of Appreciative Inquiry, A Practical Guide to Positive Change by Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom (Berrett- Koehler Publishers, 2003) inquiry creates change and the moment we ask a question, we begin to create a change. What are key questions that you can use to stimulate your thinking when you are in a creative funk?

• Think of a highlight from your experience when you were engaged in a creative activity (woodworking, child raising, problem-solving). What did you do? What did you feel like? What sparked that insight into the possible?
• If you were eight years old and unencumbered with the rules of the adult world, how would you look on this issue?
• What are your three hopes or wishes for you…your organization…this issue, that a creative spark will help resolve?

It helps to identify people who are your creativity catalysts – people you can call upon to exchange ideas and who stimulate your thinking and perspectives on the world. It sometimes just takes explaining the issue to someone who thinks differently, who works in a different field, who views the world somewhat differently to re-ignite your creative spark. It’s there. Like Charlotte, you may just need to gain a different perspective to see the issue freshly.

Jump in the Shower to Jump Start Creativity

Why is it that inspiration often strikes while you are lathering up in the shower? Does something magical happen when you blend soap, water, steam, and a few minutes alone? Turns out, the answer is “yes.”

A recent article in Inc. offers this explanation: According to clinical psychologist Joshua Coleman, “Creativity requires an attitude that is a paradoxical blend of attention and relaxation.” What better place to cultivate such an attitude than the shower? Steven M. Smith, a cognitive psychologist at Texas A&M. describes it this way: As we scrub, “our minds revert to a sort of neutral state in which we are receptive to issues or themes that bother us or that are unresolved.” The author of the Inc. article, Alison Stein Wellner, speculates that as our minds wander as the water beats down, “it is easier to entertain playful thoughts. In most cases, these playful thoughts lead to nothing, and you leave the shower all wet. But on occasion, you’ll hit on something really great.”

The shower is a near-perfect environment in other ways, too. Assuming you are showering alone, you are in a personal space, free from anxiety, negative feedback, and other distractions. Your relaxed mind is free to generate and sort creative ideas.

Now that you know this, you needn’t feel guilty about spending a few extra minutes alone with your soap and your thoughts in the shower. It could be a “Eureka!” moment.

Lessons from an Expert

Hewlett-Packard Company, a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services, holds “invention” at the heart of its core values. Its culture is based on the belief that invention depends fundamentally on creativity and that creativity is a process and a skill that can be developed and managed throughout the entire organization.

HP’s philosophy for fostering an environment for creativity and innovation is embodied in its core values – its way of thinking and a set of behaviors – published under the title: Rules of the Garage. (The reference to the ‘garage’ is to signify how and where HP started, in “the garage” at Palo Alto California, where Stanford University classmates Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded HP in 1939.) Click here to find HP’s Rules of the Garage. By most accounts, they seem to be working!

What I have come to know is that storytelling, done appropriately, is the key to catalyzing change. It doesn’t replace analytical thinking; it supplements it by enabling one to imagine new perspectives and new worlds. The right story can communicate complicated change ideas while generating momentum toward rapid implementation. The right story can help an organization reinvent itself by getting into the minds of individuals and affecting how they think, wonder, agonize, and dream about themselves and their organization. It can help them see things in a different light and change behavior. Simply put, a powerful story can transform individuals and organizations. It can drive commitment and action.

This issue is devoted to the art and craft of storytelling in the business environment. Settle in and journey along with us as we explore this powerful tool for managing change.

Craft the Right Kind of Story to Accomplish Your Business Goal

Different kinds of stories achieve different results. Crafted and told properly, a story can spark action, communicate who you are, transmit values, foster collaboration, tame the grapevine, share knowledge, or lead people into the future.

Choosing the right narrative form allows you to accomplish your business goal. Business author Stephen Denning explains how to pick your story carefully to match it to your business situation. Denning advocates that the ability to tell the right story at the right time is emerging as an essential leadership skill.

To determine which kind of story to tell, ask yourself:

• What do I want my listeners to FEEL after they hear my story?
• What do I want them to REMEMBER from my story?
• What do I want them to BELIEVE as a result of hearing my story?

Are You a Good Listener to Other People’s Stories?

Being a good listener to other people’s stories has a big payoff.

First of all, people who are good storytellers learned how to tell stories by listening to others and picking up storytelling skills from them. It may have been a parent telling you a bedtime story, or it may have been a teacher who made the subject come alive through storytelling, or perhaps it was a manager who achieved remarkable results through the stories she told. But from each you can learn what storytelling techniques really work and then you can weave them into your storytelling efforts.

Secondly, by being a good story listener, you can learn a great deal about the people and environment around you. Business guru Tom Peters has long advocated “management by wandering around” as an effective leadership tool. It works because you hear stories as you wander. By listening to the stories of your employees and customers you can uncover problems and solutions that you may never have otherwise known existed. And only by knowing about them, can you respond.

In her book Corporate Legends & Lore, Peg Neuhauser reminds us that “storytelling is a two-way street that requires telling and listening to forge strong relationships with lasting results.”

Questions to Consider for Getting Stories Started in Your Organization

Whether you are the supervisor of a work team or the CEO of a large company, storytelling can be one of your most effective management tools. Even if you are not an experienced storyteller, your job is to continually talk about and emphasize the key values and goals of your organization. If you are relentless in this effort, you will find that members of your organization will take this “material” and fashion their own stories to exemplify these key values. In her book, Corporate Legends & Lore, Peg C. Neuhauser poses six questions to consider for getting stories started within your organization:

• What are the two or three key ideas or themes about this business that the people who work in this organization associate with me?
• When and where can you repeatedly bring up these themes so that everyone knows they are on your mind all the time?
• What stories are they already telling that have these themes?
• How much time do you spend listening to other people in your organization, at all levels, tell their stories?
• When and where could you repeat stories you have heard that represent the themes you want to encourage? Or, how could you get other people to repeat these stories?

Using Storytelling to Determine: What does Your Organization’s Future Look Like?

Here’s a way that we use storytelling techniques when working with organizations to envision their future.

Working with a group, we tell them: “It is January 2010 and you have just learned that your organization will be featured in Fortune magazine’s June edition. In addition to a cover photo, the magazine will include a full feature on your organization. The reason your organization was selected is its outstanding success over the last five years.” We then ask them:

• What/who is on the cover of the magazine? Draw it on a flip chart.
• What is the title of the article?
• Please write an outline of the article. Be sure to include quotes from your customers, professional staff and employees, industry experts, and competitors. Describe the factors that have contributed to your outstanding success. Note the barriers that had to be overcome.

When each individual is done with this exercise, we have them exchange stories with other members of the group and then identify what the stories had in common and what was unique among them. Later they share their collective story with the whole group and then work to develop a common vision from the stories.

A Gatherer of Stories

by Judy Futch, associate of The Wunderlin Company
I’m a gardener. I have a variety of baskets and crates and two wheelbarrows to carry produce, weeds, tools, rocks, and plants. If I go into my garden and find too many ripe tomatoes that I can’t hand carry, I improvise and use the tail from my workshirt as a carrying sling.

Stories are like my carrying devices – they hold the richness of people’s experiences, their beliefs, values, hopes, and dreams and also dark-side fears and blocks. Stories operate on two levels – the level of the story text and the level of the subconscious – where the images conjured up in the telling simmer and mix. Our thinking mind is engaged answering the questions who did it or how did that happen? and our imagination and intuitive intelligence is awakened and engaged making connections, enlarging our ideas, stretching our boundaries, and stepping outside our current realms of possibilities.

Everyone is a storyteller – a weaver of their experience. If we operate from the assumptions that people in organizations are rich with insights and understandings to share about their positive perspective of the organization, and that by asking questions the organization begins to shift in the direction of the inquiry, then it makes sense to ask our organizational “partners”:

• What are the best times that you have had at our organization – a time that you felt most alive, involved, or excited about your contribution?
• What do you value deeply about yourself, your work, and our organization?
• What do you think is at the core of this organization – what would make this organization more vital than it currently is?
• What in our organization gives you confidence for the future?
• If a genie emerged from a bottle and gave you three wishes for this organization, what would they be?

The stories that emerge from the simple asking of these questions can be “mined” by listening appreciatively for the words, phrases, ideas, and emotions and truly hearing the responses. This approach begins the appreciative inquiry process which seeks to understand the forces within an organization that encourage vitality. EPA, Roadway Express, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, University of Kentucky Hospital, and ANZ Bank (Australia’s largest bank) all have embarked on appreciative inquiry processes to align their organizations and to accelerate whole system changes.

We have included a number of resources you may want to explore on our website. Visit www.wunderlin.com to check our favorites on this subject. Or step out into your hallway and ask a colleague for a story about a time when they felt “most excited about their involvement at your workplace.” Be that gatherer of stories! “Stories are like my carrying devices – they hold the richness of people’s experiences, their beliefs, values, hopes, and dreams and also dark-side fears and blocks.”

“Let’s Count Motion Instead of Doors”

In one of the first Workouts at GE Appliances we had a team of employees working on a number of refrigeration factory productivity issues. One of those issues was the factory’s inability to consistently manufacture the same number of refrigerator cases as doors. Numerous analyses and continuous improvement projects had been initiated in this highly automated plant to address the issue; none successfully. At the report out on the last day, a manufacturing engineer stood up to begin presenting an idea. Soon, a member of the team, a union member who actually worked on the line, stood up and said, “Here, let me tell them what’s really going on.” He went on to recount how he worked downstream from the paint booth. Because of his quality circle training, he knew that a door with a drip, crack, or imperfection should not go to the customer. So he would pull those doors to be reworked. Trouble was, right past him was an electronic eye that counted motion, not doors—so the system didn’t know that hook was empty! This fellow’s idea was, “Let’s start counting doors instead of motion.”

This story so graphically demonstrated many of the issues we were struggling with to transform the organization—it got told and retold.

Managing by Storying Around

The story above comes from Karen’s experience at GE. In his book, Managing by Storying Around: An New Method of Leadership , author David Armstrong offers a collection of 75 stories from his experience running a family business. Each of Armstrong’s stories has a moral. They work for him because he “invests a bit of his soul in each of these small sagas.” It makes for good reading-and makes a good case for the power of storytelling within your organization!

Emotional intelligence refers to the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions in ourselves and in our relationships. Simply put, emotional intelligence is the intelligent use of emotions. It encompasses maturity, emotional health, and “grownupness.” You intentionally make your emotions work for you by using them to help guide your behavior and thinking in ways that enhance your results.

For leaders, emotional intelligence accounts for almost 90 percent of what sets “stars” apart from the mediocre. And organizations that build emotional intelligence in groups are the ones that are vital and dynamic today – and will remain so in the future.

Unlike IQ, EI can be developed and dramatically increased at any age. But boosting your EI takes extensive practice, feedback, and personal enthusiasm for making the change. Are you up to the challenge?

[audio:http://www.wunderlin.com/audio/changingtimes8.mp3]

Using a Mix of Leadership Styles Yields Positive Results

Emotionally smart leaders know that being flexible with their leadership styles pays big dividends. They know that instead of choosing the style that best suits their temperament, they adopt the style that best addresses the demands of a particular situation.

The most successful leaders have strengths in the following emotional intelligence competencies:

• self-awareness
• self-management
• empathy
• and social skill.

Researchers have identified six basic styles of leadership; each makes use of these EI competencies in different combinations. The leadership style that is chosen in any given situation dramatically affects the way that managers motivate direct reports, gather and use information, make decisions, manage change initiatives and handle crises.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article entitled: Leadership That Gets Results, author Daniel Goleman presents the six leadership styles and suggests situations in which they are effective and those in which they are likely to backfire. Here’s a brief overview of how Goleman describes the styles:

1. The coercive style. This “Do what I say” approach can be very effective in a turn-around situations, a natural disaster, or when working with problem employees. But in most situations, coercive leadership inhibits the organization’s flexibility and dampens employees’ motivation. This style demands immediate compliance.

2. The authoritative style. An authoritative leader takes a “come with me” approach: she states the overall goal but gives people the freedom to choose their own means of achieving it. This style works especially well when a business is adrift. It is less effective when the leader is working with a team of experts who are more experienced than he is. This style mobilizes people toward a vision.

3. The affiliative style. The hallmark of the affiliative leader is a “people come first” attitude. This style is particularly useful for building team harmony or increasing morale. But its exclusive focus on praise can allow poor performance to go uncorrected. Also affiliative leaders rarely offer advice, which often leaves employees in a quandary. This style tends to heal rifts in a team or motivate people during stressful circumstances.

4. The democratic style. By giving workers a voice in decisions, democratic leaders build organizational flexibility and responsibility and help generate fresh ideas. But sometimes the price is endless meetings and confused employees who feel leaderless. It is best used to build buy-in or consensus, or to get input from valuable employees.

5. The pacesetting style. A leader who sets high performance standards and exemplifies them himself has a very positive impact on employees who are self-motivated and highly competent. But other employees tend to feel overwhelmed by such a leader’s demands for excellence — and to resent his tendency to take over a situation.

6. The coaching style. This style focuses more on personal development than on immediate work-related tasks. It works to develop people for the future. It works well when employees are already aware of their weaknesses and want to improve, but not when they are resistant to changing their ways.

Goleman tells us, “The more styles a leader masters, the better.” Being able to switch among the styles as conditions dictate, “creates the best organizational climate and optimizes performance.” While most leaders have a predominate style, they need to work to expand their style repertories. They can do so by first understanding which emotional intelligence competencies underlie the leadership styles they are lacking, and then by working to increase develop those competencies through measurement, practice and feedback.

EI Leadership Dimensions Build Upon Each Other

Work Without Emotion is Like an Opera Without Music

In his book, Primal Leadership Daniel Goleman outlines the four leadership dimensions of emotional intelligence. He contends that the dimensions build upon one another. For example, self-awareness is crucial for self-management; self-management, in turn, is crucial for success in terms of social awareness and relationship management. As Goleman points out: “None of us is perfect on this scale; we inevitably have a profile of strengths and limits….the ingredients for outstanding performance require only that we have strengths in a given number of these competencies….and that our strengths be spread across all four of the areas of emotional intelligence.” While he tells us there are many paths to excellence, in general, leaders who exhibit sensitivity to the range of needs and individual differences in their organizations get the best performance results.

Our emotional intelligence determines our potential for learning the practical skills that are based on these competencies. Our emotional competence measures how much of that potential we have translated into on-the-job capabilities. As Goleman explains it: “Being good at serving customers is an emotional competence based on empathy. Likewise, trustworthiness is a competence based on self-regulation, or handing impulses and emotions well. Both customer service and trustworthiness are competencies that can make people outstanding in their work.” He goes on to explain that “Simply being high in emotional intelligence does not guarantee a person will have learned the emotional competencies that matter for work; it means only that they have excellent potential to learn them.”

The foundation of Goleman’s model is self-awareness. Self-aware people recognize their emotions and their effects on others. The second tier, self-management, demands knowing one’s inner resources, abilities, and limits. The third and fourth tier deal with “People Skills.” Each tier builds on the one below it.

Emotional Intelligence in Action

From Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman: “The aptitudes you need to succeed start with intellectual horsepower – but people need emotional competence, too, to get the full potential of their talents. The reason we don’t get people’s full potential is emotional incompetence.”

“If you are part of a management team, you need to consider whether your organization fosters these [EI] competencies or discourages them. To the degree your organizational climate nourishes these competencies, your organization will be more effective and productive. You will maximize your group’s intelligence, the synergistic interaction of every person’s best talents.”

From a Harvard Business Review article entitled: Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance, by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee:

“Emotional intelligence travels through an organization like electricity over telephone wires. Depressed, ruthless bosses create toxic organizations filled with negative underachievers. But if you’re an upbeat, inspirational leader, you cultivate positive employees who embrace and surmount even the toughest challenges . Managing for financial results, then, begins with the leader managing his inner life so that the right emotional and behavior chain reaction occurs.”

From The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace by Cary Cherniss and Daniel Goleman:

“The higher one’s position in an organization, the more important EI is; EI accounts for 85 to 90 percent of the success of organizational leaders.”

And, finally, from the Harvard Business Review article entitled Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups by Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven B. Wolff:

“Group emotional intelligence is about the small acts that make a big difference. It is not about a team member working all night to meet a deadline; it is about saying thank you for doing so. It is not about in-depth discussion of ideas; it is about asking a quiet member for his thoughts. It is not about harmony, lack of tension, and all members liking each other; it is about acknowledging when harmony is false, tension is unexpressed, and treating others with respect.”

Emotional Competencies: Guidelines for Learning

The good news is that emotional intelligence, unlike IQ, can be improved throughout life. Our emotional intelligence tends to increase as we learn to be more aware of our moods and the moods of others, to handle distressing emotions better, to listen and empathize – in short, as we become more mature.

Developing emotional intelligence differs from intellectual learning in fundamental ways. It requires developing new behaviors – and this takes practice over time. Intellectual learning can take place in a classroom; emotional intelligence learning takes place best in life and over an extended period of time. Nevertheless, teaching emotional competencies can be accomplished using the following guidelines, which are offered by the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, a coalition of researchers and practitioners from business school, the federal government, consulting firms, and corporations.

• Assess the job. Training should focus on the competencies needed most for excellence in a given job or role.
• Assess the individual. The individual’s profile of strengths and limitations should be assessed to identify what needs improving.
• Deliver assessments with care. Feedback on a person’s strengths and weaknesses carries an emotional charge.
• Gauge readiness. People are at different levels of readiness.
• Motivate. People learn to the degree they are motivated – for example, by realizing that a competence is important to doing their job well – and making the competence a personal goal for change.
• Make change self-directed. When people direct their learning program, tailoring it to their needs, circumstances, and motivation, learning is more effective.
• Focus on clear, manageable goals. People need to understand the competence and the steps needed to improve it.
• Prevent relapse. Habits change slowly. Relapses and slips need not signal defeat.
• Give performance feedback. Ongoing feedback encourages and helps direct change.
• Encourage practice. Lasting change requires sustained practice both on and off the job.
• Arrange support. Like-minded people who are also trying to make similar changes can offer crucial ongoing support.
• Provide models. High status, highly effective people who embody the competence can be models who inspire change.
• Encourage. Change will be greater if the organization’s environment supports the change, values the competence, and offers a safe atmosphere for experimentation.
• Reinforce change. People need recognition – to feel their change efforts matter.
• Evaluate. Establish ways to evaluate the development effort to see if it has lasting effects.

These guidelines appear in Daniel Goleman’s Working with Emotional Intelligence book and on The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations web site: www.eiconsortium.org.

Build the Emotional Intelligence of Teams and Boost Their Overall Performance

Just like individuals, the most effective teams are emotionally intelligent ones. And like individuals, emotional intelligence can be built within teams. A team’s EI isn’t simply the sum of its members’ EI; rather, it comes from norms that support awareness and regulation of emotions both within and outside the team. Teams with a high EI build the foundation for true collaboration and cooperation – enabling the members to feel that they work better together than individually and enabling them to boost their overall performance.

To build EI within a group, the members must be aware of and constructively regulate the emotions of the individual team members, the whole group, and other key groups with whom it interacts. They can do so by establishing EI norms – rules for behavior. For example, a group’s norm for regulating the emotions of individual team members might be: “to encourage all group members to share their perspectives before making key decisions.” A norm for the whole group might be: “Regularly assess the group’s strengths, weaknesses, and modes of interaction.” And one for other key groups might be: “Designate team members as liaisons to key outside constituencies.”

These norms serve to build emotional capacity and influence emotions in constructive ways. The norms outline the attitudes and behaviors that eventually become habits.

They serve to support behaviors for building trust, group identity, and a belief that the team can perform well and that group members are more effective working together than apart. At the heart of these behaviors are emotions.

A group’s emotional intelligence is not about learning to suppress emotions; rather, it’s about bringing emotions deliberately to the surface and understanding how they affect the team’s work. It is also about building relationships that strengthen the team’s ability to face challenges.

Intrigued by EI? Want to Learn More?

The Wunderlin Company has been using this body of work on emotional intelligence for a number of years with our clients. It provides a springboard for helping our clients understand how their emotions impact their own success and those with whom they work – staff, suppliers, and clients.

We have a number of resources that we use extensively with our work on this subject. Take a look at the books on our “bookshelf” for further learning about this essential subject:

Boyatzis, Richard, Daniel Goleman and Annie McKee. 2002. Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Cherniss, Cary and Daniel Goleman. 2001. The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Goleman, Daniel. 1998. Working with Emotional Intelligence, New York: Bantam Books.

Goleman, Daniel. 1995. Emotional Intelligence, New York: Bantam Books.

Pearman, Roger R. 2002. Introduction to Type and Emotional Intelligence, Palo Alto: CPPI, Inc.

Weisinger, Hendrie, Ph.D. 1998. Emotional Intelligence at Work, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

We also recommend the following articles from The Harvard Business Review:

Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance (Product #8269).

Leadership That Gets Results (Product #4487).

Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups.

And check out this website:

The web site for The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations (www.eiconsortium.org) is packed with research findings including model programs, business cases for EI, practice guidelines, and downloadable reports.

And finally, The Wunderlin Company is so committed to integrating knowledge of EI into our work that we cover it extensively in all our workshops. For more information visit: www.wunderlin.com/workshops.

Listen to the Voices

“I say we fight like hell to do it our way.”

“I’m finally getting it. We have been sitting here thinking it really was business as usual, and a huge wave is about to hit us.”

“It’s total chaos. No one knows what to do; people aren’t coming to work. It varies by group AND by leadership styles within the groups.”

“I really want out of this. It is becoming a whirlpool sucking out all of my energy.”

These are real “employee voices” during a recent and quite dramatic change in an organization.

When leaders are asked: “What do you want your people to do differently to implement this change effort?” or “How do you want your employees to think differently?” they most often respond: “They will figure that out for themselves. These are smart people.”

The problem is people don’t figure it out. People will do the old things with more effort and intensity early in any major change because they are convinced that if they can simply make the old ways work better, they will be able to avoid, or at least delay, the need for making any changes. Does this ring true for your organization?

Listen to what your employees’ are saying. Use them as a gauge to determine if, indeed, they will figure it out for themselves. Then do not shy away — lead the change.

Laying the Groundwork for Change

To succeed through change, leaders are responsible for laying the groundwork. Here are five questions to help you begin thinking about what you have to do to make any change succeed in your organization:

1. Does everyone clearly understand the outcomes this change is trying to accomplish?
2. Does each department, functional group and team collectively understand what they have to do for this change to succeed in their specific area?
3. Do I know where the resistance is, why, and have a plan to address it? (This takes time!)
4. Do all appropriate individuals have the right channels of communication for information to come in and go out, to ensure or check for progress?
5. Does the formal and informal reward system clearly reinforce and support these new behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, etc.?

If you can answer yes to these five questions, people in your organization are likely to begin to make the changes work. Change is a process. This is just the beginning.

Change: It’s a Process that Takes Time and Effort

Implementing change is a process that takes concerted time and effort – time and effort that seems preciously limited. Research shows that most leaders underestimate the magnitude of the change they plan, the level of resistance they will encounter, and the amount of time required to implement their planned change, and overestimate their level of clarity regarding the kind of (organizational as well as individual) change required.

So what can you do to move your people towards making the change? Here are a number of ways to help individuals through the process.

• Legitimize the expression of feelings
• Listen
• Target a few quick wins
• Recognize new performance
• Preserve employee influence wherever possible
• Strategize and plan for the future
• Clarify roles and responsibilities
• Involve individuals in the decision-making process where possible
• Give as much clear direction as possible — daily
• Communicate frequently
• Focus people on the future
• Continue to recognize anxieties that exist

Leading a Change Effort

The Wunderlin Company is committed to helping organizations manage and implement change. We help organizations implement new structures, leadership development processes, succession planning and organization-wide initiatives.

We also recognize that leading a change effort requires a cadre of managers who can inspire, motivate and lead employees so that they perform to the best of their abilities. In other words, it requires managers who are masterful coaches and facilitators. The Wunderlin Company offers both a Coaching Workshop and Facilitation one. To find out more, click on http://www.wunderlin.com/workshops.htm#coaching for the Coaching Workshop and on http://www.wunderlin.com/workshops.htm#facilitator for the Facilitation Workshop.

And From Our Bookshelf

Here are some of our favorite books to help you better understand the process of implementing change within your organization:

Leading Change by John P. Kotter.

The Heart of Change by John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen.

The Change Monster by Jeanie Daniel Duck.

Best Practices in Oganizational Development and Change edited by Louis Carter, David Giber and Marshall Goldsmith.

Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination by Jane Magruder Watkins and Bernard J. Mohr.

Leading Change, Overcoming Chaos: A Seven Stage Process for Making Change Succeed in Your Organization by Michael L. Heifetz

Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

Terms of Engagement: Changing the Way We Change Organizations by Richard H. Axelrod

The Answer to How is Yes by Peter Block

Managing at the Speed of Change by Daryl R. Conner

Conquering Organizational Change: How to Succeed Where Most Companies Fail by Pierre Mourier and Martin Smith

Managing Transitions by William Bridges

Cracking the Code of Change by Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria

The Real Reason People Won’t Change by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey

Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail by John Kotter

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In today’s business environment, it is critical for organizations to respond quickly when the unexpected happens. The organizations that can do this best are ones that know how to execute well. They design strategies that are more road maps than rigid plans filed away in fat planning books. They design strategies that can be executed, and execution paces everything.

Execution is a discipline of its own. It is a discipline for achieving success and gaining competitive advantage. Some individuals and organizations are better at it than others. With this issue, we visit with executives who we believe are really good at “getting things done.” We asked them to share their thoughts on execution in broad terms and then to divulge their secrets for how they go about getting things done. We think you will find their comments inspiring. Who knows what you might get done after reading their remarks!

Meet our “Execution Experts”

We are pleased to introduce our “execution experts”:

Marilyn Carp, president and chief executive officer, Aegon Direct Marketing Services: a subsidiary of Aegon USA. It uses direct response methods to offer life insurance products to potential clients. Headquartered in Baltimore, MD.

Bruce Greenbaum, president, UltraPro: the leading manufacturer and marketer of archival safe-storage products worldwide. Produces storage for sports and gaming collectibles, photo and photofinishing, and products to store and protect multi-media. Headquartered in Los Angeles, CA.

Paul E. Gross, chief information officer, Brown-Forman Corporation: a diversified producer and marketer of fine-quality consumer products (wines and spirits and consumer durables). Headquartered in Louisville, KY.

Ted McQuade, president and CEO, Industrial Powder Coatings, Inc.: a leader in the custom coating industry, specializing in powder coating, electro-coating, and plating for automotive and appliance applications. Headquartered in Norwalk, OH.

Why Does Execution Matter?

Ted: Without an explicit focus on execution, all you do is destroy shareholder value. Let’s face it, manufacturing can be dull and repetitive. But you make the money in the day-to-day details of managing your operations. You transform raw materials into something of value. You’ve got to manage it. You’ve got to execute.

Lynnie: As head of a non-profit organization, I have to be able to execute. Part of being a good steward has to do with being able to deliver good results. Success breeds success. We are doing good work for our clients. We are delivering good results. As a result, people want to be involved in the work of the Center. There is a buzz about what we are doing at The Center for Women and Families.

Bruce: You can have the best plan in the world, but if you don’t execute it, you won’t get the results you need to be successful.

Paul: At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself: Did I achieve what I set out to achieve?

What have you learned about execution and how to do it?

Ted: You must establish a “rhythm of accountability” as one of the first things you do in a new organization. By this I mean a sequence of daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings to review progress. It is important that the execution items be measurable and that they have a single, clearly-identified owner. People must know that they will have to stand and deliver results to the organization at pre-determined intervals. Change the rhythm of the organization and you’ll change their focus.

Marilyn: If you have the right people, then you must empower them to work together as a team and take ownership. As a leader, my job is to support that team. Communication is critical to the success of execution. We have processes in place that have been refined over time to ensure that we execute with excellence.

How do you focus your people on execution?

Ted: When I’m new to a company, I’m probably perceived as a real pain in the butt and a micromanager. I get involved. I ask a lot of questions of the people who are closest to the process. I want to know “How are you going to do it? Who’s going to do it? When is it going to get done?” I keep asking questions until I’m satisfied that they understand my expectations.

Marilyn: Getting the right team together is the most important thing. They must feel that they have management’s support to go out and do the job. Often I will kick off the project. The team needs to understand why the work they are being asked to do is important; how it fits into the overall picture. They must know how to work together as a team; how to collaborate. They also need to feel accountable. They need a good plan and regular communication to keep everyone up to date on progress. If they fall behind or get off course, they need a plan to get back on track.

Paul: I’m a big believer in clearly defining expectations. I drill down pretty deep in conversation to ensure that my peoples’ interpretations of expectations are the same as mine. Then I make sure we can measure those expectations. It puts discipline into the process.

How do you close the gap between results promised and results delivered?

Ted: You’ve got to involve the people closest to the process. If you’ve done a good job of identifying key metrics, if you have checkpoints and milestones along the way, and if you clearly identify who is responsible, then you will know if a gap exists, and you can make mid-course corrections. If you find you can’t meet your goal, then at least you owe it to whomever you promised the results to keep them informed and share your recovery plan. You lose your credibility if you don’t.

Bruce: First I make sure that I have the right people in the job. Are they capable of delivering results and are they motivated to deliver them? Once that is in place, it is important that progress towards achieving the plan in a timely fashion gets visibility, so that, if required, corrective action can be taken. We then share the rewards that come with successful achievement.

Paul: We use the “carrot” approach of reward and recognition. I also encourage open dialogue so that my staff isn’t afraid to let me know if we need to take corrective action to get a project back on track. One of our biggest challenges is keeping the scope of projects from growing. It’s hard to stay focused on a two-year project; it is just too big. Instead, we break it into manageable chunks that can be accomplished in six months or less.

Marilyn: I don’t want people to spend an inordinate amount of time writing status reports, but I am a believer in the value of them. They serve a double purpose; one is to keep me informed of progress, and the other is to cause the team to reflect on what they have accomplished and where they are falling behind.

How do you link your strategy, people, and operations?

Lynnie: We work hard to make sure that our staff is aligned and focused on our goals. Our culture is one that promotes the internal expectation that our people will step up and do what needs to be done. They believe in their work. They believe in our mission.

Ted: Our leadership team provides the link between these three core processes. We all carry the same mental DNA. We are always asking ourselves: “How does this short-term action get us to our long-term goal? Do we have the right people in place to do the job?”

How to you manage your own workload? What tools do you use?

Bruce: I’ve got a 45-minute commute to and from work each day, and I use that time to return phone calls. My days are filled with routine meetings and unavoidable interruptions, so I often use the evenings and weekends to catch up with larger projects. (I hate to admit it, but now I even take my laptop on vacations.)

Lynnie: I’ve really changed my style since I started working at the Center. In the beginning, I tried to do everything. Now, I have a great team in place. I encourage them to think of themselves as the CEO of their area. I’m able to delegate a lot to them. We try to divide and conquer, not duplicate our efforts. I do make use of certain tools to manage my work. I can check my voice mail, e-mail and access my computer files from home. I use a palm pilot. I schedule work time on my calendar for large projects. I keep a to-do list. I try to return all phone calls before I leave for the evening.

Ted: When I have too much on my plate, I step back and ask myself, “What do people really want from me?” The answer is always the same: they want me to be visible; they want me to represent the company well with our board, our customers, our bankers and our constituents. My people want me to listen to them; talk to them about what’s important; and give direction, insight, and feedback. This conversation I have with myself gets me back on track pretty fast.

How did you learn to execute well?

Bruce: Early in my career, I had the good fortune of working with manufacturing-veteran Nels Hoffman. Today my style of execution is very much like his. He taught me well.

Paul: Years ago I worked for a guy who served as my mentor. He was willing to take risks with me and gave me some large and significant projects to manage. He was very good at giving me feedback. He taught me not only about how to manage projects, but also about how to coach others.

Lynnie: I attribute my execution style to two sources. I worked for a time for Humana and participated in its management-training program. It is a stellar program, and much of how I operate today I learned from my experience there. Also, my parents have a really strong work ethic that they have passed down to each of their five children. I work hard, and I enjoy my job. If I won the Lotto tomorrow, I’d probably still be here.

So, in summary, here are some lessons learned for creating a culture of execution:

• Be sure that your people understand why execution matters in your organization.
  
• Execution is a discipline. Create execution processes that have both rhythm and rigor.
  
• Learn to ask tough, incisive questions that will focus people on where execution is and isn’t happening.
  
• Remember, you can’t do execution alone. While execution is a MAJOR job of the business leader, collaboration is the key. You have to
• spread execution capability to the teams and functions in your organization. It must become a core element of your organization’s culture.

Let us know about your organization’s execution successes and challenges. Send your comments to: execution@wunderlin.com.

Getting Started for Getting Things Done: Two Books and One Tool

There are two books and one tool that we highly recommend for learning more about the discipline of execution.

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, by Larry Bossidy (Chairman of Honeywell International) and Ram Charan (legendary adviser to senior executives and boards of directors). This book shows you how to close the gap between results promised and results delivered. The authors contend that leaders who execute well are leaders who understand how to link together people, strategy, and operations.

Getting it Done: How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge, by Roger Fisher and Alan Sharp. The premise of their book is that you must be able to collaborate to get the work done. They offer a no-nonsense guide to successful persuasion and influence. A simple tool that we often use with our clients is an action-plan worksheet. It allows a group to clearly state the actions that need to be done as a follow up to a work session, identify who is respon-sible, and assign a date for completion. It’s amazing how being clear about next steps allows groups to improve their execution. For a sample action plan, link to http://www.wunderlin.com/actionplan.pdf.

Experiential Workshops Can Help You Execute Better

Another way to improve your execution style is to brush up on skills that will make you a better manager – of projects and of people. The Wunderlin Company offers three workshops designed to help you work more effectively. The first one, Facilitator Training, is a foundational workshop where participants learn to plan and facilitate meetings. The second one, Skills for the Advanced Facilitator, builds on the foundation course and is designed specifically for those interested in taking their facilitation skills to the next level. The third workshop, Coaching as a Leadership Skill, will help you become a masterful coach able to inspire, motivate, and train employees so that they can perform to the best of their abilities. The premise of all three workshops is that if you demonstrate the leadership skills necessary to stay ahead in a highly competitive and quickly changing world, you can impact the culture of your organization and move it to one that is successful because it executes well. To find out more about these three workshops and to register for them, log on to http://www.wunderlin.com/ workshops.htm.