Leadership Principles -- How Do They Build Motivation and Commitment?

Back in March, David Sharpley published a new book entitled Leadership Principles and Purpose: Developing Leadership Effectiveness and Future-Focused Capability, which provides a fresh perspective on leadership and the steps required to achieve high performance. It explores how we create purpose by moving from vision and values through principles to action. When I spoke with David this month, I asked him directly: "How do principles shape competencies and build motivation and commitment?" Here is his complete answer: 

We hear executives talk about "vision" and "values," but there’s less mention of the principles that define how activities are completed. These provide points of reference and set boundaries. They also underpin competencies linked to high performance. Higher-order principles influence people’s expectations of what is fair and reasonable. They help clarify how leaders create enabling conditions that enhance motivation, commitment, and shared purpose.  

Self Determination Theory (SDT) offers insight into why principles matter. The SDT Model reveals that everyone has an innate need for positive, trust-based Relationships. We also seek to develop the Competence that fuels meaningful activity and builds motivation. Autonomy adds to self-direction, responsibility, and purpose. Underlying needs are also reflected in people’s desire for social cohesion and stability. Significant principles therefore relate to Justice, Equality, Compassion, and Accountability. Principles are closely aligned with ethical values but expressed in the form of rules, protocols, and norms.  

Clearly stated principles ensure consistency of approach, support cascaded leadership, and define the work culture. Effective leaders build on principles that will develop capability and create shared purpose. They appreciate that discretionary effort is influenced by a range of factors, which include opportunities for self-directed, meaningful activity. Significant, Superordinate Principles strengthen trust-based relationships and motivation. They help build commitment, which is the emotional connection and identification people feel towards the organization. It is enhanced when people feel valued and there are opportunities for personal development (e.g. "my manager supports my development"). Commitment helps maintain motivation when we are faced with the inevitable setbacks that undermine progress.  

Over time, authentic leaders internalize important principles, including an emphasis on transparency, equality, and accountability. Clear principles increase personal conviction, but also our willingness to develop capability in others. Acting on the basis of higher-order principles conveys integrity and establishes a clear rationale for effective action, which adds to the leader's credibility. Principles have a significant role in building and maintaining people's motivation and commitment. They help leaders create shared purpose, develop effective systems, and achieve more meaningful connections with others.

What do you think of David's perspective? What is the state of leadership in your organization? Do the principles stated and practiced build motivation and commitment?

The Evolution of Product Development -- Has Lean Adjusted?

In October, Cécile Roche and Luc Delamotte published a book entitled The Lean Engineering Travel Guide: The Best Itineraries for Developing New Products and Satisfying Customers. This book explains many Lean Engineering practices in some detail and the best itineraries to develop better products, discussing the underlying intentions and offering advice for implementation. It includes numerous concrete cases that illustrate this part with case material drawn from the authors’ own experiences. In addition, there is a brief guide to where and how to get started.  

When I spoke with Cécile this month, I asked her: "How has Lean adjusted as product development evolves?" Here is her complete answer:

The power of the Lean approach is that it is based on two strong convictions. 

The first is that a company will succeed if it really takes care of the customers, and therefore offers products that will solve their real problems - Do the right thing!

The second is that the company will make money thanks to the ingenuity of its employees, which must be encouraged by the existence of organized thinking spaces. 

By doing this, you avoid the biggest wastes imaginable: products that don't sell, products that you don't know how to produce, maintain, or recycle at the right cost, and all the rework caused by poor choices - Do the right thing, then do it right!

The practices and tools of Lean are all geared towards answering this question: what are we doing to give our staff the means to understand customers properly, and the means to identify the waste caused by our misconceptions? This constant questioning, which always begins with "Do we know what we don't know?” is the best way of ensuring that we are constantly adapting to change.

To encourage this questioning, we must set up a system that can very quickly identify the gaps, knowledge gaps, and trade-offs that need to give rise to creative discussions and train people to solve problems using appropriate methods. It is the Lean system.

Lean is a dynamic approach. It's not about freezing practices in procedures that are excellent one day but already unsuitable the next, but about regularly questioning all changes (in the context, of technology, resources, skills, etc.) to assess their impact. This is what we call the Kaizen spirit. As Allen Ward said, "Instead of learning to surf, conventional organizations try to control the waves! This almost never works."

What do you think of Cécile Roche's thoughts on Lean methodology? Do you feel that Lean continues to benefit the changing face of product development? 

Performance-Measurement Systems -- What are the Common Design Mistakes?

In October, Dennis Sherwood published a book entitled Strategic Thinking Illustrated: Strategy Made Visual Using Systems Thinking -- His book is about the behavior of systems. Systems are important, for we interact with them all the time, and many of the actions we take are influenced by a system – for example, the system of performance measures in an organization influences, often very strongly, how individuals within that organization behave. Systems thinking, the main subject matter of this book, is the disciplined study of systems, and causal loop diagrams are a very insightful way to represent the connectedness of the entities from which any system is composed, so taming that system’s complexity.

When I spoke with Dennis this month, I asked him: “What are the most common mistakes made when designing performance-measurement systems?” Here is his complete answer:

Let me choose just one. The BIG ONE. Unintended consequences.

A (real) example. A number of years ago, the UK government was becoming increasingly concerned about how long people had to wait in the reception area of hospital Accident and Emergency Departments until they were seen by a nurse or a doctor. To address this, they introduced a performance measure that at least 98% of those arriving must be satisfactorily treated and discharged, or transferred elsewhere within the hospital, within 4 hours.

That all sounds eminently sensible, and the intention was to act as a spur to hospitals to speed things up. 

Not long after this performance measure was introduced, a story appeared in a national newspaper with this opening paragraph:

"Hospitals were last night accused of keeping thousands of seriously ill patients in ambulance 'holding patterns' outside accident and emergency units to meet a government pledge that all patients are treated within four hours of admission."

It turns out that the "4-hour clock’" only starts running when the patient arrives at the front desk of the hospital. So if the patient is still in the ambulance, that doesn’t count… 

The "holding pattern" enables the hospital to meet its performance measure, but with two "unintended consequences." From the patient’s point of view, nothing has changed, nor has the government’s objective been met. And as a by-product, whilst the ambulance is acting as an "external waiting room," it remains stranded, and can no longer fulfill its primary purpose.

Not only did the performance measure not drive the intended outcome, it made matters worse by reducing ambulance capacity. Oh, dear.

This is by no means uncommon. Performance measures are introduced to influence behaviors so as to achieve some intended result. The problem, however, is that those behaviors take place within a complex context, and unless that complexity is well-understood, it is very easy to fall into the trap that a well-intentioned intervention has an unintentional, and perverse, effect.

How can this trap be avoided?

"Systems thinking" can really help, for systems thinking is a very powerful, and pragmatic, way to tame the complexity of real systems, so ensuring that, for example, performance measures can be introduced that really work. That designs out "unintended consequences." Indeed, in my view, that term is just a mask to disguise the fact that whoever designed the performance measures that failed just didn’t understand the corresponding system. Don’t let that happen to you!

What do you think of Dennis Sherwood's answer? Has your organization ever instituted a measure or process designed for improvement that drove incorrect or "gaming" behavior? His book is available here.

"Greening Solutions" = Healthier Workplace?

How much have you considered the "health" of your organization's work space in regard to the success of your organization? Sustainable design is proven as an effective approach to the development of productive and healthy work spaces. Sustainably designed and redesigned work areas not only benefit practical aspects such as energy costs, but longer-term social issues such as reducing employee absenteeism and recruiting a wider pool of talent. 

Just recently, a forward-thinking book book entitled Green Up! Sustainable Design Solutions for Healthier Work and Living Environments by Stevie Famulari was published addressing this burgeoning topic. During this past month, I had the chance to discuss this new book with Stevie, and I asked her directly:  “What are ‘greening solutions’ and how do they contribute to a healthier workplace environment?” Here is her complete response:

There are many ways to look at healthier work place environments.  Greening solutions is one approach that improves the air quality, as well as the emotional health of the people who work there.  Let’s consider this -- we spend notable portion of our time in a work environment.  The views, air, colors, scent, lighting -- all these factors influence the health of the space and affect how we feel about it.

Greening solutions look at using natural resources, including plants, composting, recycling, and other sustainable resources to create a sense of ownership in how each person can improve the space.

One greening solution is to use plants that improve the air quality of work spaces.  Most people have read that any plant benefits a space for air and psychological effects.  That is true, but there are also some plants that can be used to clean contaminants of work spaces -- such as the off gassing of furniture, the VOCs from paints, and the cleaners used throughout the office.  Some plants specifically can be used to uptake those contaminants.  They are called plants for phytoremediation.  Using those can be specific for a site.

Then, go a step further -- Use plants for fresh scents, for color accents, and for soft shapes.  With growing plants, people can experience unexpected moments of joy, change, hope while watching something one cares for flower, leaf, die, and then return again.  These changes allow people to remember that we move forward each day and can make new choices.

Greening solutions come in a variety of scales, and can be specific for each site -- for each budget, lighting, space, users, materials on the site, contaminants, and message the company wants to share.  Greening solutions can help the employees have a work space in which they are healthier and the clients who visit the site to expand their practice of healthy spaces.  Greening solutions experts can help any person look at their space with fresh eyes to find new ways to practice a healthy lifestyle.

What do you think of Stevie's perspective? What is your company doing to improve the health of its office and work space?

Employee Engagement -- Is it Increasing or Decreasing? Can it Be Sustained?

Most companies know the very visible and measurable benefits to having an engaged and involved workforce -- healthy workplace culture, lower turnover rates, and more satisfied customers. Many Gallup research studies are showing that employee engagement is rather low throughout many industries, and this topic is thoughtfully addressed in a new book by Lonnie Wilson entitled Sustaining Workforce Engagement: How to Ensure Your Employees Are Healthy, Happy, and Productive.

I spoke with Lonnie recently, and we discussed his book and the importance of employee engagement. I asked him: "Why are employee engagement levels so low?" Here is his complete answer:

The typical view of an “engaged employee” is some hard-working soul who asks few questions. He just keeps his head down and works hard to get the wash out.  Well, that falls far short of real engagement; which is an employee who is not only making a physical commitment (hard working), but an intellectual commitment (problem solving) and an emotional commitment (caring attitude) to his work, to his colleagues, and to his company.

The most comprehensive studies that have been done to quantify engagement levels in the US show that overall engagement is in the 30% to 32% range, with manufacturing even lower at 25% to 26%. These data are disturbing to most…and should be. That was not always the case.

Many years ago, engagement levels were higher, much higher. That changed when we grew as a country and as an industrial giant.  In the early 1800s, there were few factories and suppliers were very close to their customers. Think of the local tailors who made your clothes or the local smithy who fixed your wagon. They always worked hard. And at that time suppliers not only knew their customers, they cared about supplying them exactly what they needed and when they needed it.  Should problems arise, they would - Johnny-on-the-spot to fix the problems. These craft tradesmen were the epitome of engagement with physical, intellectual and emotional commitment attached to all they did.  

Then came mass production to make more products and make them cheaper. Next the railroads made distribution over long distances a reality and the craft worker became a mass producer usually making only part of a product as assembly lines were implemented. This effectively disconnected the worker from both the customer and the finished product. This drove a wedge between reality and any caring attitude they once had.  

Next, in an effort to improve both quality and worker productivity, the practice of “scientific management” was created. The most attractive aspect to the business owner was the concept of “best methods”. Known as Taylorism, it was now the job of engineers and managers, not the workers, to develop the best methods. This effectively drowned out any intellectual commitment the workers once might have had. 

With the impact of mass production, the advent of the railroads, along with the implementation of “scientific management”;  the concepts of emotional commitment and intellectual commitment were effectively severed from the worker and we are left with what we have today in manufacturing … 25% engagement levels. It need not be that way…..we can do much better.

In his book, Lonnie examines engagement from top to bottom integrating the theories of the scholars, with the experiences of the practitioners. He explains, in simple terms, how engagement can be achieved and why people try so hard to create a fully engaged workforce with both the best of intentions and a true passion to achieve it … yet fall short.

He believes there is a simple reason -- achieving engagement is all about management and the many changes that must be made, and that raises the crucial question: Is management both willing and able to recognize, accept, and execute the needed paradigm shifts? The stark reality is that the changes that must first occur are in the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of the management team. This book gives you a path to follow that may achieve just that. And the remaining question for the senior management is: What are you prepared to do?

How engaged are the employees in your company? Do you feel management is contributing to increasing or decreasing employee engagement?