By Mike Leamon

Field News Flash! Clients and prospects admit to historically spending less than 2% of their time on improvements!  Ouch!

First, let us clarify that we “get it!”  Steven Covey’s “Chopping the wood verses sharpening the axe” analogy is classic and heavily used because we all struggle with this deferred gratification.  We also applaud our clients and prospects for the refreshing honesty to admit low investment rates.  Some have even engaged our services to ramp that number in an efficient sustainable way.  We all know that admitting we have a problem is the first step!

The second step is to set the Goal.  If “Here” is 2%…. what is “There?”  One CEO had a jaw dropping response.   First, you could see that he struggled with the question because, in his mind, improving was an integral part of getting the most wood chopped!  Now that’s a cool (and sometimes rare) leadership mindset!

He then went on to say that his goal is to have staff spend 20% to 25% of their time on improvements.  WOW!  He wants us to collaborate with his teams on tangible improvement projects but also methodically expose the teams to world class best practice theories.  This will allow the team to pick and choose the continuous improvement concepts and methods they want to make habitual as they grow and evolve.  That’s not all.  He is also designing a continuous improvement culture.

In the comments below, share your reasons why organizations don’t invest enough time in improving the way they operate?

Examples so far:

• Foundation Blindness:  Leaders are focused on results (amount of wood chopped) and don’t consider stopping to sharpen the axe to be legitimate work.

• Bad Reputation:  Many of us have been turned off by heavy or “flavor-of-the month” improvement approaches like Six Sigma and Total Quality Management that didn’t stick.

• No Time:  Switching gears from intense wood chopping efforts to sitting down to sharpen the axe ISN’T EASY! Leadership must creatively find ways to support the ramp of improvement.  If you start by removing waste, you can reinvest the time savings in improvement efforts.

Avoiding the Shiny Marble

We all do it.  We see a new method or theory that excites us and attraction leads to distraction as we pursue the sexy new shiny marble!

Any new tool, method or approach you or your business decides to adopt should address or aid a human trap or weakness.  Said another way, methods and approaches that consultants introduce into your company MUST be shown to solve a business problem before you burn the calories to absorb them into your culture.

Why do we advise that you be careful?  Have you ever seen a company which has overdosed on tools and theories?  Leadership is progressive and hungry but the collage of tools and methods bewilders employees.

Carefully building a single “Way” is one of our professional passions which we find to be both art and science.

Here are some examples:

Chain of Success:

• Addresses our tendency to over focus on our favorite project component
• 2/3 of projects fail – often because of critical links we are blind to

Effectiveness Foundation:

• Humans tend to focus on the money or results
• We need help to defer gratification today as we build the foundation for improved effectiveness and results tomorrow
• Humans tend to cram way too many methods and tools into the foundation layer

War Room Problem Solving

• People tend to have their own stories and agendas which are not aligned
• People forget stuff when they don’t visualize it or put it in a logical story line
• Spreadsheet action items are easy to ignore and are no match for public commitments to action

What classic traps or problems do your favorite methods or tools help people solve?

My partner Mike was eating dinner with his girlfriend Lisa at the Macaroni Grill this week.  Now, for those of you that don’t know Mike yet, putting a paper table “cloth” and crayons in front of him is like dangling meat in front of a shark.  Within moments he was figuring out how to draw his name upside down, drawing pictures, flirting with Lisa (the heart) and strategizing a current client.  He e-mailed me the photo from the restaurant and it got me thinking…

Visual planning and communication can happen anywhere!  All you need is a surface and a writing utensil.  I drew a breakthrough idea on the dust on the side of my car.  My daughter uses chalk on the sidewalk.  My wife uses post-it notes on the mirror.  Anytime we start drawing, it engages a different part of our brain.  We are able to have a shared understanding of an idea.  This seems like such a simple thought, but in reality, most people don’t use pictures, drawings and visual planning.  They use talking, texting and e-mails.  Retention suffers and creativity is dampened.

If you are looking for something to improve your communication skill-set, think back to elementary art class and draw out your next idea.  You will be amazed at the response you get from your conversation partners.

Written by Mike Leamon of the Rockclimbing Leamons

Beat the Odds on Implementation Success

Ever wonder why two thirds of all projects fail to meet expectations?  All it takes is one weak link.  With this in mind, we created the Chain of Success.

Consider software implementations.  The best software code in the world is useless if the training and communication aren’t sufficient.  And without management engagement and support, all the work on the other links is utter and complete waste!

There is a classic human trap aided by using the Chain of Success with your team.  We work extra hard on the links we love and shy away from the painful ones like engaging distracted managers or task accountability.  It is important to “shine a light” on these weak links to ensure success of the whole project.

How to use the tool:

We suggest that you keep it simple with a 30 minute dry erase board exercise as early in the project as possible.  Here are the basic steps of this activity:

1)   During a team meeting, draw a picture of an empty chain on a dry erase board

2)   Challenge the project team to brainstorm 5 to 7 KEY links

3)   Test that each link, alone, is “Essential but not sufficient”

4)   Rate the strength of each link on a scale from 1 to 10.

(“10” is titanium and “1” is cheap plastic)

5)   Identify who is accountable for the strength of each link

6)   Develop action items and additional resources needed to support weak links

7)   Warn the owners of the strongest links that they may be overworking the area

8)   Document your chain use it for ensuring comprehensive updates

The Chain of Success is a simple way for a team to analyze a system of interdependent components.  It pulls systems thinking out of the clouds and into a usable model to help you beat the odds!

In the comments below, tell us what business links you love to work on most and which ones you shy away from.

Guest post by Andre Beausoleil: Senior Account Executive at NetSuite

What’s in a story and why is it so powerful?  More importantly, how do we leverage the power of storytelling to sell more (if you are in sales) or to influence people and get the results that you want? For today’s purpose let’s just focus on the creation of an email sales campaign.  It can be either a nurture campaign where you are building a relationship or a more action oriented campaign where your goal is a setting up a meeting or selling a product.

You’re ultimate goal is to earn attention and get a positive response. Sounds easy enough, but how many of our campaigns actually succeed? Is it possible to grab someone’s attention in just a few seconds? Let’s face it, we are inundated with emails every day and who has the time to filter through them?

In comes the “Storyteller,” out goes the product feature dominating campaigner. Think of your favorite drama, comedy, news or sporting event. It’s always about the story, and what makes a great story – great conflict! We continue to watch because we want to see how our characters will overcome the odds, issues or challenges…Similarly, the key to mesmerizing your audience will ultimately lie in clearly understanding what makes them lose sleep at night. What’s their great pain and how does our product or service help them?

Lose the product focused emails.  Change it up and tell a story about specific challenges or issues your reader can identify with and then provide them with a solution in their language. This is the key to a great campaign or to influencing anyone. The greater your reader’s challenge (related to your product or service,) the more you can catch their interest with a well placed story.

What are your thoughts on storytelling?

Written by Brad Closson and Mike Leamon

Do you manage a team or work with one?  How does the team manage their work?  A Team Wall is an engaging powerful Visual Planning tool.  Teams quickly plan and collaborate by posting ideas, pain points and action items on the walls.  The structure of the wall should make it clear when results are happening or when they are not.  Encouraging people to “write it down!” help make solid forward progress in the context of uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.  Have you experienced any of that recently?

We call this discipline “Team Visual Management”.  The principles are found in leading business methodologies called Agile and Lean.  Done right, it is the answer to the need for co-creative planning, execution and organizational learning.  Each participant “has a voice” in the planning, and with a quick glance, team members quickly contribute to, or challenge, the emerging story on the walls.

Examples of Team Visual Management:

Sales Funnel

Top Sales teams have been using this format for years.  They post their goals, demand generation activities, and the status of their sales funnel on a central team wall.  Each stage of the sales cycle can be charted on the wall and the sales manager can monitor the progress of the team and where his/her time is best spent.  Reports and graphs from Sales Force Automation software can be posted and reviewed in context to surrounding data.  THE KEY:  Use the wall to fuel the passion and genuinely help each other rather than coercing sales staff to expose their secrets or embarrass them.  Make it safe and natural competitiveness will drive the process for you.

Photo by one of our clients, Nancy Robbins -The Pinnacle Group with Keller Williams Realty

Visual Idea Engine

Visibly improve your team’s creativity!  We call this unique team wall the “Visual Idea Engine.”  Often, attempts to add “innovation processes” to an organization lose momentum quickly when ideas are buried in spreadsheets and canceled meetings go unnoticed.  Putting ideas on the walls changes the game.  Post-its track the ideas through a simple selection and implementation cycle to incubate innovations and instigate creative breakthroughs.  Each person can add, move or remove posted thoughts on the board.  THE KEY: Let the ideas fly, but focus on solid implementation of the quick win, high impact, low effort ideas (especially at first) to prime the pump.

Metrics Cockpit

Teams also use visual management boards to track metrics or Key Performance Indicators.  The “Dashboard Wall” can be used to unite a group towards common objectives, and assists in communicating where a team stands on a weekly basis.  THE KEY: Use KPI best practices like “every measure should have a goal and change behavior”, and keep the metrics fresh and regularly reviewed and acted upon by the right participants.

Project Team Board

Teams also use visual management boards to track project deliverables, timelines and metrics.  The “Project Wall” can be used to unite a group towards common objectives and assists in communicating where a team stands on a daily or weekly basis.  THE KEY:  Hold short daily standing meetings at the wall and keep team members accountable for having ALREADY updated their content before team updates.

Visual Management Boards are only limited by your creativity and visual problem solving ability.  Most organizations have an abundance of wall space, so block off some space and “Take your Team to the Walls!”

What examples of team walls have you used (or can you imagine using)?  We would love to hear your stories in the comments below!

Written by Mike Leamon & Brad Closson

Organizational success is directly related to the effectiveness of your operations.  But what does “operations” really mean?  For Connective Management, operations is precisely defined in a model we call the Effectiveness Foundation.   The model was created to visually communicate that elegant and efficient inner mechanisms of an organization exist to support the creation of customer value.  This foundation layer of the business is what we deem “operations”.

But Wait!  Deciding on the right operations foundation isn’t easy.  Have you ever faced the situation where someone declared, “We should be able to nail down the ROI behind everything we do!”  We have faced frustrated leaders demanding that, “If you can’t show me exactly how this affects my bottom line, then we can’t move ahead!”  Until Andrea Scully introduced Mike Leamon to the original version of the Effectiveness Foundation, we were hard pressed to contest this common misconception.

To clarify the challenge, we tell a story.  The owner of a professional football team is standing at a football practice watching the team do wind sprints.  He doesn’t think it’s a useful activity.  He walks up to the coach and asks, “Exactly how many points in our next game will each wind sprint earn us?” The coach has no way to directly relate wind sprints to points, but a team must develop speed and stamina to compete.  The same is true for the quality of the pads and shoes or the variety of plays in the playbook.  The coach knows he needs these “core” things, but they cannot be measured directly by points earned.

Like a business, a football team is a living breathing mix of people (the team), process (the playbook) and technology (the protective gear).  The foundation you build to support profitability and customer success represents the “operations” specialty of Connective Management.

Time spent working on any process in your organization is foundation building time.  Choosing and implementing any software or technology is a foundation activity.  Efforts to grow and develop your people, or listen to their ideas on how to improve the business, also constitute foundation activities. Hours spent on these activities are not making you money today. They should however lead to future profit.

We love it when you, our readers, post blog comments below.  Consider answering this homework question:

What happens when a business’ management is “Foundation Blind?”

Example Answers:  Customers may love a company’s products but say that they are “hard to do business with” because of bad processes around the product.

Management simply say, “Make it Happen” to front line staff without realizing their part in building up competencies and readiness.

What are your thoughts?

We will continue this discussion in BLOG 2 of this series.

Co-written by Brad Closson and Mike Leamon

(Photo by Mike Leamon)

Since the dawn of mankind, humans have been “taking to the walls” of a canyon or cave to express their ideas and tell their stories.  “Rock art” has been practiced for over 30,000 years!  This is an amazing testament to the power of pictures and the longevity of this form of communication.

We could have named this blog, “Take it BACK to the walls.”  Visual planning returns this simple activity to the world of business.  Even in these modern times of incredible technology, it’s hard to beat post-it notes and a handful of markers.  New clients say things like, “energizing” “tangible” and “a better way to organize our ideas than staring at power point” and finally, “facilitation excellence to support our operational excellence.”

It’s interesting to note that my partner Mike Leamon and I have spent most of our careers in technology and software, yet our cornerstone collaboration pushes technology to the side.  We call our method War Room Solutions.  We are not alone in this movement.  Cutting edge software development methods (called Agile) also use wall-based visual management.

Over the past months we have received overwhelming support on this planning tool-set from our “tribe” which is made up of colleagues, clients and friends.  Here is a list of the aspects favored most by the new fans:

Story-telling

Story-telling serves a central role in human communications and motivation.  It’s another ancient and instinctively powerful tool.  Our brains are programmed to create, look for and follow stories.  Utilizing the walls, allows both individuals and groups to construct visualize and implement coherent stories.

Playful Approach

Connective Management’s style of brainstorming and planning on the walls is energizing and fun!  It increases the buzz in the room instead of sapping energy like traditional meetings or PowerPoint.  Sure, there will be tough conversations to deal with the “elephant in the room.”  Navigate those conversations with candor and respect and you will really lighten up the atmosphere.

Co-Creation

War Room planning allows for “shoulder to shoulder” collaboration.  Problems or opportunities are defined and solutions are created together.

Visual Connection

Colors, pictures and white space engage our brains in a unique instinctive way.  Creatively is increased dramatically when we use the walls as our canvas.

Scalable Integrity

Visual Planning is proving to be effective across large and small groups of people.  During a single day we use the same basic method with Fortune 500 companies and solo entrepreneurs.  Everyone loves the idea of aligning and influencing people but they grapple with how to shift from too many reactive activities and insufficient proactively.

Deep Rich Conversations

War rooms would be ineffective if they did not inspire deep rich conversations about what really matters most to a business.  Our methods simply provide a way to inspire and then capture those conversations.

Our side of the equation is fun as well.  We are passionate about continuously improving our War Room tool-sets and discovering new uses for visual planning.  Who would have thought that age-old practices like story-telling and “cave art” would have to be resurrected in order to revolutionize modern human collaboration.  Be sure to watch for your own opportunity to ask, “Can we take this to the walls?”

By Mike Leamon, Operations Specialist

Blog #2 of “What is a War Room?”

“How” is the War Room method better and faster than the methods you use now?

A War Room changes the collaboration and human interface part of the game.  Incremental meetings and electronic documents on laptops are traditionally used to develop and manage knowledge and projects.  Using flip charts and dry erase boards are considered advanced facilitation techniques by most organizations.   There are inherent limitations when collaborating around one PowerPoint slide, spreadsheet or flip chart page up at a time.  Our world is getting more and more complex.  Only the most gifted presenters with sharp attentive audiences can solve complex business problems using incremental piecemeal approaches.

With a War Room, participants are quickly surrounded by a graphical representation of the system or subject being addressed.  They see every part of the, “What needs to change and why?” storyline.  The core team builds the base storyline on the war room walls.  Then, waves of extended stakeholders can “walk the wall” to contribute their wisdom and insights.

Done right, everyone has fun and gets excited.  The content on the walls becomes a shared narrative and the participants end up being able to tell the shared story.  The “army of story tellers” naturally provides strong informal project communications.  More importantly, the high involvement and public commitments to action ease friction and resistance during implementation.

So, “how” do you learn structure and moderate a War Room?

Learning to be a War Room Architect is a “mentored discipline.” We have the experience, training and patience to help individuals and organizations “land a fish” with their first War Rooms.  The “teaching to fish” stage for an organization comes after you confirm that War Rooms work and how they work best.  We must warn you that a botched War Room is a very public failure and may sour your organization to this game changing approach.

I’m really excited to announce that Mike Leamon has joined Connective Management as my consulting partner.  I’ve known Mike for over a year and we’ve been consulting together for about four months.  Mike is an an Operations Consultant like myself and one of the key things we share is our passion for visual planning tools and project stakeholder engagement.  (Well, and fishing!)

Mike showed me his “War Room” methodology in August of this year.  It melded great with my “discovery room” style of strategic planning and I started immediately using the War Room tools and techniques.  We have combined our substantial tool-sets to launch a new War Room Solutions offering.

Mike is a high energy, creative thinker that makes a positive impression in every situation.  He is already proving to be a wonderful addition to the Connective Management team.

Here is a story that explains why Mike can help take your operational pain lemons and turn them into Leamon-aid.

Mike Leamon’s Story    

The “What makes Mike different?” story started as soon as he began trying to read and write.  He struggled.  They called it dyslexia.  Turns out that dyslexics are over represented in 2 groups.  Business management and … jail.  The outcome depends on how the child navigates the learning challenge.  Strangely though, the reason why Mike has something unique to add to business challenges is because of his dyslexic brain… not in spite of it!

It is now known that many dyslexic children learn and see things differently.  When they read and write, information goes through a hyper-visual brain translation.  They literally process information in pictures and images.  At first it slows the child down.  Later, it can become a gift.  Mike is now the guy who can hear about a complex business scenario and spontaneously develop a relational graphic to explain it to the masses.  These creations are usually preceded by the warning that he, “feels a picture comin’ on.”

It doesn’t stop there.  Mike’s signature tool is the “Project War Room” which allows participants to rapidly co-create and execute a visual plan on the walls…. and enjoy the experience.  The seeds of this practice were sown in an unusual place: The subway system in London England (The Tube) where Mike started his 20 year consulting career.

Mike’s consulting mentors in London taught him to work with subway front line staff who “knew the business best.”  They would map out processes on large sheets of butcher paper on the walls.  Instead of boxes and arrows to represent the process, they got creative posting everything from actual forms or reports to train tickets and photos.  They took pride in how many improvement ideas we could “bag” in a single session with front line staff.  Well articulated organized ideas for change were then presented to management sponsors with quantified benefits and compelling story line outcomes.

Years later Mike found himself overwhelmed.  He was an internal consultant at an Austin software company which was missing a huge opportunity to make more money.  Yearly “maintenance renewals” were supposed to be paid by existing software customers to get phone support and software upgrades.  The company had focused on new software sales.  Maintenance renewals were a global cross-functional headache which had always been an understaffed afterthought.  To made matters worse, Mike was assigned to the challenge right after everyone had been burned by a hugely expensive project failure.

In Mike’s words, “I had to change the game.  Everyone was pointing fingers and no one knew the whole story so I took to the walls.”  Mike’s executive sponsors let him take over a conference room and start laying out the project’s story line.  Once the Austin team completed the first version of the room, Mike was able to take whole show on the road to get input from the European Finance team in London.  They hated it.  They spewed venom long enough to realize that Mike was listening and updating the plans on the walls.  Eventually they turned into the strongest supporters of the effort and at one point asked Mike “Have you seen Winston Churchill’s War Room here in London?”

Down in his secret World War II bunker, Churchill had maps and data posted on the walls to lead the effort against the Nazi Blitzkrieg.  It inspired the team to name Mike’s method the “War Room.”  It’s interesting that a place as far away as London England has fundamentally shaped Connective Management’s Central Texas consulting practice.  It’s also interesting that Winston Churchill was strongly dyslexic!  Small world, isn’t it?

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeleamon