I’m normally an advocate of complete transparency and openness. The more information you share with your employees and community, the more involved they are and the more support and help you get from them in return. I’ve been a bit shocked lately, though, at the complete dismissal of this approach when it comes to ideas or plans that are in development and not yet finalized. The response is stated so matter of factly like “of course we can’t distribute the plan yet; it’s not been finalized or approved.” The stated concern is that there is no reason to keep people up in arms about something that might change later – that releasing an incomplete plan is simply asking for trouble and creating chaos for no reason.
I’m pretty sure I disagree with this argument. That the plans are not finalized makes it the PERFECT time to share them with people. To do otherwise seems to me to be saying that the people can’t be trusted to distinguish a work in progress plan from a final plan – that somehow they aren’t smart enough to know the difference. It also seems to be saying that we don’t want people’s input in these plans; we will simply tell them when it’s all been ironed out. Even if this isn’t the intent behind withholding the in-progress information, it ends up being the perception. People feel untrusted and unvalued.
If there are concerns about an idea or plan, isn’t it better to get them out ahead of time – when they can actually be addressed? Time spent debating, understanding, and fixing the issues up front will be much more useful than time spent convincing people the plan they had no input on is the best way to go after the fact. The way to get buy-in for an idea or plan is to let people get involved in its formation, not by spinning it to them afterward.
The one concession I offer to these folks is if you can’t share these in-progress works now, then at least make it clear what the process is, when information will be shared, and what role people can then have on helping to shape and finalize it. Without these steps, I don’t see any way to get trust and acceptance by the affected people and what good are new plans and ideas if no one accepts them?
So, I’m interested to hear your ideas- am I wrong? Are there occasions (other than sensitive personnel or contractual issues) where plans should not be shared until after they are finalized? I tried the experiment I mentioned in an earlier post: google “advantages of open communication” then google “advantages of closed communication” and various variants thereof. A lot of hits on the former; nothing significant on the latter.
Scot thinks releasing information sets you free; no need to worry about what you can say and what you can’t and more likely to get valuable input and help from others. Scot would probably make a terrible politician.
I learned this particularly powerful combination of words from one of my (few) regular commenters here, Andy Flach. I might generalize them slightly, though to “What are you concerned about?” If managers used these words more often, they’d make their lives a lot easier.
Andy uses them a lot during contract negotiations. Inevitably one side has issues with a particular contract clause or detail and then the other side proposes alternative wording which doesn’t end up satisfying the objecting side and long delays and discussions ensue. Andy cuts through all that by asking quite early in the process, What are you really concerned about here? and I can tell you not only is it a huge time-saver, but it often leaves us with a more advantageous contract than if this question had not been asked. What happens without this question is that side 1 objects to something, side 2 tries to figure out what the objection is and how much it is willing to compromise and then offers some substitute terms. Since side 2 is only guessing at what is bothering side 1, it usually guesses wrong (which means another round of negotiating) and it often gives up too much in an attempt to compromise as it tries to cover all possible bases of discontent.
Instead, by asking directly what the real concern is, Andy can offer a limited, targeted change of terms which directly addresses the other party’s concerns. The issue is usually resolved quite easily thereafter, with each getting more of what they want than would have happened otherwise.
What every good manager should do- carefully look under each rock for trouble or gold! (Photo borrowed from snailstales.blogspot.com.)
Another use for this phrase is for managers to understand what is going on that their people know about, but they don’t. These are often issues that are so apparent to people on the lines that they simply assume that since management is doing nothing about, they must not care. Actually, more often management simply doesn’t know – or worse – doesn’t want to know. By continually asking what are you concerned about? or what should I be concerned about?, leaders and managers can learn a lot about those thorny issues that no one likes to talk about, but that everyone (except themselves, of course) knows. In Good to Great parlance, this is the process of “looking under the rocks”, of finding and dealing with potential problems of the future before they get too big.
And as described in my last post, asking questions like these is a direct, visible request for input. If the response is really heard and actively and transparently processed as I described, employees will feel their input is valued and that they can make a difference to improve the organization by noting and reporting on current and possible future issues. What an empowering environment to work in!
In adopting these words into his daily life, Scot learned (the hard way) to be careful about the word “really”. Someone once thought Scot was implying this person was hiding her true motives by using “really”. He now uses “really” less often, or changes the phrase to “what’s the core issue here?”, when deemed appropriate.
It’s funny, I’m starting to feel a bit like Scott Adams, I mean beyond sharing part of a first name. About the time I start wondering what I should next write about and figuring I might finally have to go back and re-read the ends of recent posts to figure out what I said I might write about, something happens, or someone says something that rings a bell- and ding! I have a topic for my next post.
See if this one rings a bell for you, too:
These people are always complaining that we never give them a chance to tell us what they think. They have plenty of chances. I don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re just crazy!
Well, OK. That’s one way to handle it. I say X, you say Y; you’re clearly an idiot. OK, let’s first assume that you really did give people plenty of chances to provide input, yet they’re still complaining. Sure, they might be idiots, but it is probably more productive to take a little deeper look, first. If nothing else, you have a perception problem, and that’s something you probably can and should work on.
So, there are really two issues here. First, if you really want to understand what people are saying about you, take some time to look beyond just their words. In this case, if you’re confident that there really were opportunities for input, yet people still complain about there not being enough, then ask yourself what else might it be they are really complaining about. (You should also ask yourself if their complaint is valid, too. i.e., are you really giving people opportunities to provide input?) Dismissing the complaint as erroneous or nonsensical does nothing to promote a better understanding and relationship between you and “them”. Avoid the easy way out by saying they are simply wrong, and look behind the surface for what’s really going on.
In this case, what’s really behind the surface might be a number of things that are really being complained about.
You never really asked for my input, so although I found a way to state it, I don’t feel you did enough to actually seek my input.
Sure, you let me say what I wanted to say, but you didn’t really hear it.
I gave my input, but I never really heard about what happened next, so I don’t really understand how the final decision was reached. Was my input weighed at all?
You never do what I want. Why should I waste my time giving input if you don’t take my advice in the first place?
And I’m sure there are other possibilities, but these issues are pretty common so probably bare a bit more discussion:
It’s not enough (even though you may think it should be) to say something like “my door is always open” or “you have my email address” if you don’t also explicitly seek input. Input given that doesn’t appear to be really wanted or requested, doesn’t really feel like giving input.
Upon receiving input, you need to really show that you’ve heard it, even if you disagree with it. You need to at least acknowledge the point of view contained within. Don’t ask for input then as soon as it’s given, continue on with what you were going to say anyway. You have to hear, process, and acknowledge the input. What you say/do next should reflect the new point of view you were just offered, even if it doesn’t change the actual action you end up taking.
You can actively ask for input, receive it, and even properly acknowledge it, but if the decision process from there is opaque, you won’t get any credit for it. It must be clear that the gathered input was considered and evaluated, even if it wasn’t ultimately taken to heart. The decision process needs to be clear and transparent, else people will just assume their input was ignored and the normal decision decided upon anyhow.
The last step is to explain the ultimate decision. Be clear that alternative options and views were considered, but for reasons x,y, and q, the final decision was made as it was.
If people feel their input was wanted, heard, and considered, and the rationale for the eventual decision was clearly stated, most of the time they will be satisfied even if things don’t end up going completely their way. People want their ideas heard and considered; they don’t expect to always get their way. Treating their opinions with respect and explaining your own will go a long way to making your people feel happy and valued.
As readers of this blog know, Scot has plenty of opinions. Do they always get listened to and acted upon? Nope, but at least through this blog, he can make believe people are reading, agreeing with, and acting on everything he writes! 🙂
I was recently sitting in on an oversight meeting of Gemini management. Most of the meeting was spent in executive (ie. private) sessions, but during one of the two public sessions, one main topic was to explore how and what we have learned from past mistakes. This discussion made me realize that learning from mistakes is not an easy thing to do for many institutions. I’m not saying here that Gemini is doing all these things wrong, but I have seen all these issues first hand at various places, including Gemini. I’m sure that if asked, most people would say that they, personally, learn from their mistakes. Yet, institutions and corporations often don’t. Why not?
For one, you first have to be willing to acknowledge the mistake. This step can be a key roadblock for some. If you don’t have an atmosphere where honest inward looking thought and speech is encouraged, mistakes get covered up, denied, assigned to something else, and not brought out as potential lessons and means for improvement. If you believe in hiding bad news in an (ultimately futile) effort to look good, then you will never learn from mistakes.
Second, you need an environment where the mistake is viewed in context of the system that allowed the mistake to happen and that allowed its effect to be as big as it was. What you don’t need is an environment of blame – where mistakes are dealt with admonishments of “don’t do that again”. What you need is a faultless exploration of what in the system could be changed to prevent future similar mistakes. Making and acknowledging mistakes is not about placing blame, but about fixing the system. People will always make mistakes, but you want the system in which they work to be as fault-tolerant, and fault-preventive (if I can coin a new compound word) as possible.
Mistakes will be made as a natural part of the learning and improvement process. It’s what you do with them that is important. Are your mistakes opportunities for improvement, or shameful things you hide and ignore?
Finally, you have to really broaden your horizons and fix the system, not the symptom. To make up a hypothetical example, if an instrument is damaged because a heating circuit failed (OK, the event is not so hypothetical, but the implicit bad response outlined below is), you could simply decide to remove the heating circuit from the instrument when it’s repaired. That fixes the symptom and you certainly must address the symptom, or you look really foolish if the same accident happens again, but you can’t stop there. What allowed this single point of failure to exist in the first place? What allowed the failure to occur unnoticed? Was there real-time monitoring? Was anyone overseeing the project? Was anyone contacted? Was there a timer on the heater? Are other possible single-point failures being identified and backed up and/or isolated by a fail-safe or some other subsystem? If you don’t start asking yourself these types of questions, there will be no learning from your mistakes. On the other hand, if you are not afraid to take a rigorously honest look at what other similar vulnerabilities might exist, if you are willing to go beyond placing individual blame and look at how the process allowed both the single point failure to exist in the first place and for the eventual failure to go unnoticed and un-contained, then you are probably on a continual course of improvement and empowerment. Isn’t that a better place to be than only a few instances of bad luck away from a repeat of a mistake you chose not to learn from?
Scot remembers several bits of advice he received about mistakes. His water-skiing cousin told him if he wasn’t falling, he wasn’t trying hard enough. His graduate advisor told him “wisdom is that sinking feeling that you’ve made this mistake before.” He learned from these people and others that making mistakes is part of life. Making the same mistake twice, doesn’t have to be.
A colleague sent me a link to an interview with Kip Tindell, Chief Executive of the Container Store. In the interview, Kip describes how important it is to his company to have a policy of full disclosure, open communications, and transparency with his employees. It helps promote team work and motivates the best employees. Here’s a small excerpt from the interview:
The way we create a place where people do want to come to work is primarily through two key points. One of our foundation principles is that leadership and communication are the same thing. Communication is leadership. So we believe in just relentlessly trying to communicate everything to every single employee at all times, and we’re very open. We share everything. We believe in complete transparency. There’s never a reason, we believe, to keep the information from an employee, except for individual salaries.
I always make it a point to give the same presentation I give at the board meeting to the staff, and then that trickles down to everybody in the company. I know that occasionally some of that information falls into the wrong hands, but that’s a small price to pay for having employees who know they know just about everything.
This concept has nothing to do with astronomy management, unless you consider that astronomers and other staff members are usually people, too, and that Kip Tindell’s approach is about getting the most out of people and forming the best team you can with the people you have.
I wonder if I could find similar articles confessing the benefits of hiding information and keeping secrets from employees and customers. I bet not, but it would be an interesting exercise.
After a recent post here, a friend sent me a link to this old article from the Harvard Business School, entitledWhy Your Employees Are Losing Motivation. I hate to keep saying the same thing here, but boy does this article hit a few nails smack on their heads. Your best employees, the ones you really want to attract and retain, are already motivated – you just have to keep them that way. (Actually, most all your employees are likely motivated to do well.) This article points to several ways “traditional management” demotivates employees, all of which are good points, but the one that I think is often hardest to re-train managers to do is to really communicate with their employees. To quote from this article:
Communicate fully. One of the most counterproductive rules in business is to distribute information on the basis of “need to know.” It is usually a way of severely, unnecessarily, and destructively restricting the flow of information in an organization.
A command-and-control style is a sure-fire path to demotivation.
Workers’ frustration with an absence of adequate communication is one of the most negative findings we see expressed on employee attitude surveys. What employees need to do their jobs and what makes them feel respected and included dictate that very few restrictions be placed by managers on the flow of information. Hold nothing back of interest to employees except those very few items that are absolutely confidential.
As another colleague said to me recently, this problem becomes particularly acute when your employees happen to be people long-trained to be inquisitive, to search for solutions, and to solve problems- your average observatory staff member, in other words. Keep these people out of the loop so you remain “in charge” and “in control” and you quickly lose anyone to be in charge and in control of.
Promoting open communications is really not hard; it doesn’t take much time and it is not overly burdensome on either the managers or their employees. First, meetings where issues are discussed and/or decisions made should be open to all to attend. Few will actually take the time away from their schedules to attend, but they will appreciate knowing they can and any that do attend obviously have passion for the subject and you’d be wide to keep them engaged. Second, distribute notes, minutes, or a list of decisions for meetings. I think this is best done in a fashion that allows people to pull the information from a web site or mail archive when they want it, but make it available. Three, managers should talk with their employees about results from these and other management meetings. No sense in everyone losing time at a meeting if one person can do and share the results with the rest of the team. Fourth, tell people the good and the bad. Tell people what’s in progress and what might be as well as what has been settled. Informing someone after a decision is made counts for much less than does discussing the process and the possibilities as they occur. No one likes surprises and no one likes to feel their input is not wanted or considered when heard. Fifth, ask people what they want to know, what their concerns are. Ask them what it is they want in their jobs. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to keep employees happy when you simply ask them what it takes to keep them happy. Why guess at the answer when you get the teacher’s guide for the asking?
When Scot was growing it up, it was occasionally said that he talked to much. At home, in school,…. As he grew up, though, he learned that we often get and convey more information more effectively by listening vs. talking.
A while back, the Gemini Directorate tasked an internal team to develop suggestions and techniques for better communications and task management within Gemini. We took our mission very seriously and researched what many successful and unsuccessful companies have done to address these issues themselves. Sometimes we found support for our own biases and ways of doing things, while other times, we learned new ways that were an improvement on what we were doing and thinking ourselves. A recurring theme of our report was the importance of developing more varied, and open communications. As I discussed in my semi-review of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team , the basis of teamwork is trust. I don’t think anyone will accuse me of going out on a limb when I say the basis of trust is good communication. The key word here is good for not just any communications will do the trick; there must be a history of full, honest, and open communications for trust to develop. People often think they are communicating when they say anything, and they are by one definition of the word, but they aren’t building trust and a sense of teamwork unless that communication is received and is both honest and open.
I was reminded of this report of ours after reading an editorial on the current Toyota recall disaster. Toyota’s response to the problem is fairly typical and only served to exacerbate its predicament and cost them a valuable loss of community trust. Bad news? First ignore it, maybe it will go away. Still there? Downplay it; things aren’t nearly as bad as they seem. Still not enough? Say you’re looking into things. You’ll take care of it. What? The people demand more? You have to act? OK, admit to maybe you may have done something less than ideal and you regret it if something bad might have happened for something you might have done or not. What? They mean it? You really have to do something? Well, maybe now you will have to really take action, but if you waited until this point to act, chances are your problem is a lot bigger than it was in the beginning and chances are that you won’t get the credit for having done the right thing once you finally appear forced into doing so. In this instance, one thing is clear: do not emulate the Toyota way!
The Toyota President: wondering why he didn't act sooner? Reuters
So here, I want to take some thoughts from our working group report, expand upon them a bit, and start off by wondering why people often do not communicate openly, why they often hide the whole truth and paint a friendlier, but inaccurate picture of the situation. Why aren’t full open disclosures at all times the norm?
For one, people worry that someone will misinterpret something they say, causing great grief and frustration for all involved. Yes, this will happen, but the cause is often a lack of complete information. Complete information provides the context and the motivation behind an action or a situation. The solution, then, is not to further hold back even more information, but rather to provide more information to remedy the confusion. Rumors, speculation, and misinterpretation all arise from incomplete communication. When people only get a small fragment of information through indirect means, they extrapolate and infer to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. Once you start providing regular amounts of real information, people will understand the context and motivations better and will be less likely to get the wrong impression or jump to the wrong conclusion. Your audience will learn how to interpret your news. This broader understanding will end up returning to you in new ideas and solutions to problems from sources never tapped before.
Second, people worry what effect negative information will have on their reputations. Many organizations, however (I cited Redfin and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey through specific examples in the full report and would be happy to talk more about their efforts here, if there’s interest), proved that communicating your problems as well as your successes actually helps your reputation. No organization is problem-free and those that report to be so are undoubtedly viewed with suspicion and distrust When you hide information, you implicitly are stating that you are doing things others will not like. This is not the image you usually want to project.
Finally, some hoard information to seemingly protect their jobs. What these people do not realize is that everyone else is just as busy as they are and few of us have time to take over someone else’s job even if all the instructions on how to do so were readily available. In any growing, exploring, exciting organization (like Gemini), there are always important new projects people could be doing if only there were more time. If, by distributing your knowledge out to the community, you can offload some of your tasks, you can begin new tasks that would not get done otherwise. No one’s importance to a high-efficiency organization is determined solely by what information they know.
Furthermore, information hoarding causes severe inefficiency in information transfer. Someone needing information cannot simply go to a reference source to find it, but must first find out (usually after several failed attempts) who the information custodian is, then try to extract the information. Instead of a quick web search or visit to a document library, many people become involved in the information quest and when the single source is ultimately discovered his/her reputation is not enhanced by the unique knowledge, but lessened by it being so difficult to find.
So, returning to the issue of trust, I note an article from the July/August 2008 Harvard Business Review discussing the common traits of CEOs in a selection of companies that have transformed themselves into high efficiency organizations [the emphasis below is their’s]:
The CEOs we studied [created a link between the people who do the work and the performance they must deliver] by combining four strategies. First, they earned the trust of their organizations through their openness to the unvarnished truth. Second, they were deeply engaged with their people, and their exchanges were direct and personal; employees in the companies we studied had a particularly close connection with the CEO and were seldom surprised to meet him or her. Third, having earned legitimacy and trust, these CEOs were able to mobilize their people around a focused agenda. Finally, while they were all strong individuals, these senior leaders realized that they could succeed only as part of a committed leadership team, and they devoted considerable efforts to building their firm’s collective leadership capabilities.
The emphasis in this excerpt is about building trust within an organization, but the concepts apply equally well to building trust outside an organization as well. By communicating openly with your public early, you provide transparency and engender trust. You forestall the temptation to jump to conclusions and to assume the worst. Your form a sense of team and you implicitly bring in your community in helping to solve the problem, rather than leaving them to wonder why you aren’t doing enough already. You turn your customer base into a community, wanting you, often working with you, to succeed. In this information age, your customers will find out what you’re trying to hide sooner or later and you’ll be well ahead of the game if you are the one supplying that information and engaging your community in an appropriate solution from the start.
Scot finds he has enough to do other than keeping track of and worse, remembering what information he told to whom, so approached the tenet of open and honest communications simply as an incredible boost to efficiency.The beneficial side-effects were a nice added bonus.
