Thoughts on Millennials, Workplace Aging, Conflict, and Innovation

Three different articles this morning got me thinking about the workplace. One was by Lisa Woods about ideas to manage conflict in the workplace. It is posted up in her Managing Americans blog at this location and was referenced in a LinkedIn posting. It focuses on positive ways to look at and deal with conflict as it occurs.

The second piece was about the aging workforce. It referenced a book called The 2020 Workplace, which is about how the workplace will look.  It is by Jeanne Meister and Karie Willyerd.  The basic point is that our aging workforce will push 5 different generations of workers into the workforce soon.

I also recently posted on the issues of team performance, collaboration and managing workforce age diversity in my blog. In it I focused on some ASTD research about how people are choosing not to retire and how that is impacting the workplace, which is actually getting OLDER rather than younger as people deal with the economic uncertainties of our times. (Read this blog article here.)

It says, in part:

And. according to a new survey by the Conference Board, two-thirds of workers between the ages of 45 and 60 are now planning to DELAY their retirement and work longer. That’s a 20-point jump from 2010 – when only 42% of workers had plans to put off their retirement. Job losses, low salaries, and declining home values are some of the main reason why Americans can no longer stick to their retirement plans and plan to keep working.

The new workplace will apparently have 5 tribes, each bringing their own technical and cultural perspectives and each with its own worldview. These groups will have to co-exist and also collaborate in order for companies to generate desired outcomes and results. Think about the elderly customer who calls into customer service and gets the young kid, or the young kid that calls in and gets one of us Oldsters to handle their problem. There are all sorts of opportunities for mismatching and poor communications. The Millennials may see their co-workers as simply elderly:

While the older workers may not appreciate all that the younger workers represent:

Getting the younger workers to get up to speed on how things work may be an interesting challenge, since many workplaces have traditional ways of structuring and managing transactions.

“Traditionalists” are probably a bit more resistant to new technologies — teaching my mom how to use a cell phone has been interesting. Using the remote control is sometimes even a challenge when the one-button push gets out of synch and some devices are going on while others are going off! Coaching over the phone is fun. So, imagine the Traditionalist calling in and being told they need to give their pin number and access their account online in a conversation with a person who has been online and had a iPhone since they were two.

While the younger workers feel like so much is old-fashioned and not up to modern standards, some questions may arise as to whether we are using the newest of technologies:

Similar issues arise as systems and process get upgraded and no longer work like they used to. Some of the older workers may simply feel pressed to adapt to new technologies that are uncomfortable, so there may be some issues of resistance:

To make progress we need to consider workplace conflict a GOOD thing. It generates discomfort with the way things are now and also helps generate “considered alternatives,” things that might be done differently if we choose to do so. But, if an alternative is not considered, it cannot be implemented — it is good to have people thinking out of the boxes we are in… Conflict supports that, for sure.

Having a workplace in some level of conflict is what generates creativity and innovation and forces changes in how things work.

At the same time, a clarity of mission and vision, alignment of measurements and feedback systems to support the generation of desired results, plus sufficient non-direction and the ability to build intrinsic reward mechanisms is important.

We cannot just bring new workers into the workplace and set them free to do what they do. After all, they have no idea as to how we got to where we are and what our history looks like. We have, in so many workplaces, a long history of successes.

And we have a management team that has helped to bring us to our current point. Consider that good, but that it also represents a solid opportunity for a lot of organizational and leadership development. We need some new tools and some new approaches to getting things done.

The reality that there will be FIVE generations of workers in the workplace by 2020 is mind-boggling, and that the workplace will actually keep AGING as people keep working instead of retiring (all sorts of drivers). I posted up some thoughts and statistics about this before: (http://performancemanagementcompanyblog.com/2013/02/04/on-performance-teamwork-millennials-and-collaboration/ ).

So, let’t look to drive MORE conflict and chaos, but let’s make for some effective conflict managements to help direct the focus and energies in our workplaces. We do that by being tight on missions and goals and purposes but being a little looser on processes and procedures. And keep people throwing mud at the wire fence — it is the only way to see what might work.

Conflict is good. Manage it well.

And let’s figure out how to get there from here!

Our Square Wheels toolkits and our team building games offer some powerful, bombproof and inexpensive ways to improve teamwork and impact organizational effectiveness. Talk is cheap, but directed focus on issues and opportunities is effective in generating alignment and collaboration.

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Addendum – from an article at http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/older-workers-doing-better-than-younger-counterparts-study-suggests/21620

Older workers doing better than younger counterparts, study suggests
(by Joe McKendrick in SmartPlanet, with Scott’s rewriting)

There has been a lot of discussion about the plight of older workers and their supposed disappearance from today’s hyper-competitive economy. Anecdotal stories of age discrimination abound. A study funded by the Social Security Administration, however, shows older workers are more educated, more productive, and make more money than ever before. And with the increasing numbers of Baby Boomers hitting age-60 mark, these trends are accelerating as few choose to retire because they can’t.

Older workers also earn premiums over younger workers, and tend to have the same educational levels. 20 years ago, only 20% of workers who were high-school dropouts remained in the workforce past age 60, versus 60% of those with doctoral or professional degrees. This metric stays essentially the same for men, but has risen for women. Plus, since average educational levels are rising for older workers, greater labor participation rates are coming with it for non manual labor workers.

Employees between the ages of 65 and 69 have had 30%-point gains in income between the years 1985 and 2010. In addition, 70-to-74-year olds saw their income grow at least 28% points higher since 1985. The issue is that they are not allowing for a lot of hiring of younger workers

Incomes of workers 25-29 dropped 7%, and those in the 45-49 group dropped 1% since 1985.

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For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant. 
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/

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Here is a bit more interesting information: This from
www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/cost-to-replace-a-gen-y-employee-up-to-25000/26144

A new survey of employers finds the cost of replacing a ” Millennial” employee — an individual in his or her 20s — ranges between $15,000 and $25,000.

Cost to replace a Gen-Y employee: up to $25,000

by Joe McKendrick

That’s the conclusion of a survey conducted by Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting firm, and Beyond.com, an online career service.

Actually, the cost of replacing any employee across the generational spectrum is high. A recent study by the Center for American Progress puts this number at about 20% of anyone with a salary up to $75,000 or less. By this estimate, assuming a Millennial employee is making about $50,000, this means a $10,000 replacement cost — a little more conservative than the Millennial Branding estimate, but still something to ponder for organizations.

What adds to the Gen-Y replacement cost is their greater proclivity to job-hop: the Millennial Branding study finds that the average worker under the age of 30 changes jobs every two years, compared to the five-year job-hopping rate of Gen X-ers (30 to 50 years of age),  and seven-year-itch of Baby Boomers (50 years or older).

The major costs associated with replacing employees includes training and development, interviewing, job posting/advertising and on-boarding.

Also, as Millennial Branding put it: “Considering that approximately 40% of companies currently employ 50 or more millennial workers, these costs are expected to rise dramatically over the years to come. With current data showing more than 60% of millennials leaving their company in less than three years, employers are facing a very expensive revolving door.”

What can be done to keep to attract, rather than repel, needed talent?  Some thoughts:

Don’t compartmentalize the solution within a “program”: Millennial Branding states that some companies have “retention programs” to keep employees in the fold. However, keeping people engaged and excited about a company means a cultural change across the board, a different way of looking at management — or even better, a more management-free workplace.

Promote entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship: Nothing creates passion and personal responsibility more than being able to build one’s own business. Provide ways to ensure incentives and rewards for innovation. Don’t be afraid of employees even proposing disruption — creating a product or service that turns the mainstream business on its head.

Remove the barriers between employees and customers: Organizations that remove employees from meaningful engagement with the customer risk souring those employees. As a great example, look to the customer call-center function — a hotbed of turnover. Those companies that provide career tracks, training, and decision-making discretion to customer-care representatives see far less turnover than those that just want warm bodies at the call stations. At another level, employees caught up in a bureaucracy — and are far removed from customers — also are likely to be disenchanted.

Use social media: In its report, Millennial Branding points out that while 62% of HR professionals use job boards and corporate websites to recruit millennials, only 9% use LinkedIn, 3% for Facebook and 1% cited Twitter as a resource for recruiting purposes. You have to go where they live.

Flying, Skills, Performance Management and Performance Appraisal – Crazy Thoughts

Sometimes, you just have to jump. Things come together to force you to do something. Sometimes, it is easier to just step up and do things. Sometimes…

With plenty of things on today’s agenda, I opened an email from an old friend in the UK and he sent me a story with the subject: “Saw this and thought of you.” Yep. And, I am also in a LinkedIn discussion about Performance Management and the relationship of that to Performance Appraisal. A goodly number of the responses are from newbies, who think that they even know what Performance Management is. (More on that later…) So, I like what Geoff sent and jumped!

So, I first went to check out the origins of Geoff Cook’s story and it turns out that it appears as a parable on line in a couple of places, once of which is a blog post by my old pal, Fred Nickols. I mean we were on Message Boards back 15 years ago when I had a CompuServe email address and no website (1995?)! (I seldom use the word “old” loosely these days–grin–.) Fred posted his embellished version and ideas here (click this link).

So, I popped in LinkedIn and sent Fred a note that I wanted to use his graphic here in this blog, using the “forgiveness prior to permission” approach. Of course, he just responded back and said to send him the link to this.

Here is the story that Geoff sent me – and I will admit to making a couple of minor changes and there are some differences in the published versions of this:

Once upon a time, there was a man named Clarence who had a pet frog named Felix. Clarence lived a very modest life based on what he earned working retail but he never gave up his dream of being rich. One day, hit by sudden inspiration, he exclaimed, “Felix, we’re going to be rich! You will learn to fly!”

Felix was terrified at the prospect. “I can’t fly, Clarence! I’m a frog, not a bird!” Clarence, disappointed at the initial response, told Felix: “Your attitude isn’t helping matters. I think you can benefit from some training.”

So off Felix went to a three-day course where he learned about the history of aviation, the basics of aeronautical engineering (e.g., lift, thrust, drag, etc), gliders, parasailing and the lives of famous fliers. (For obvious reasons, the instructor did not mention Icarus, but they did talk about Why Geese fly in a V.)

After the training and on the first day of the “flying lessons,” Clarence could barely control his excitement (and Felix could barely control his bladder). Clarence pointed out that their apartment building had 7 floors, and each day Felix would jump out of a window, starting with the first floor and working his way up to the top.

After each jump, Clarence and Felix would analyze how well he flew, isolate the most effective flying techniques and implement the improved process for the next flight. By the time they reached the top floor, Felix would surely be able to fly.

Felix pleaded for his life but his pleas fell on deaf ears. “He just doesn’t understand how important this is,” thought Clarence. “He can’t see the big picture.”

So, with that, Clarence opened the window and threw Felix out. He landed with a thud. They discussed and analyzed his performance…

The next day, poised for his second flying lesson, Felix again begged not to be thrown out of the window. Clarence opened his pocket guide to “Managing More Effectively” and showed Felix the part about how one must always expect resistance when introducing new, innovative programs. With that, he threw Felix out the window again. THUD!

On the third day (on the third floor), Felix tried a different ploy: stalling. He asked for a delay in the “project” until better weather would make flying conditions more favorable. But Clarence was ready for him: He produced a timeline and pointed to the third milestone and asked, “You don’t want to mess up the schedule, do you?”

From his performance appraisal feedback, Felix knew that not jumping today meant he would have to jump TWICE tomorrow. So he just muttered, “OK, let’s go.” And out the window he went.

Now this is not to say that Felix wasn’t trying his best. On the fourth day he flapped his legs madly in a vain attempt at flying. On the fifth day, he tried “visualization.” He tied a small red cape around his neck and tried to think “Superman” thoughts. It didn’t help.

By the sixth day, Felix, accepting his fate, no longer begged for mercy. He simply looked at Clarence and said, “You know you’re killing me, don’t you?”

Clarence pointed out that Felix’s performance so far had been less than exemplary; failing to meet any of the milestones he had set for him. With that, and knowing that there was one more floor, Felix said quietly, “Shut up and open the window.” He leaped out, taking careful aim at the large jagged rock by the corner of the building.

And Felix went to that great lily pad in the sky.

Clarence was devastated. His project failed to meet a single objective he set out to accomplish. Felix not only failed to fly, he hadn’t even learned to steer his fall; instead, he dropped like a sack of cement. Nor had Felix heeded Clarence’s advice to “Fall smarter, not harder.”

The only thing left for Clarence to do was to conduct an after-action-review and try to determine where things had gone wrong. After reviewing the records and giving the data much thought, Clarence smiled knowingly and said, “Next time, I’m getting a smarter frog!”

Fred Nickols said this in his introduction and asked these questions:

I first heard the parable of Felix the Flying Frog in the early 1970s. It appears in many places nowadays and its author is unknown. I think its staying power owes to the many points it illustrates – some subtly and some not so subtly. It has great utility as a discussion piece for use in reflecting on life in organizations – and life in general for that matter. Toward that end, you will find some potentially useful questions at the end of this version.

• How did Clarence’s expectations get so out of line with Felix’ capabilities and how might better alignment have been achieved?
• Why did Clarence reach so quickly for training as a solution?
• What role did the power differential between Clarence and Felix play in shaping the course of events?
• Why was Felix so compliant, even in the face of his own destruction?
• What blinded Clarence to the role he played in the failure of his attempt to make Felix fly?
• What talent did Felix possess that might actually have made Clarence and he rich and why didn’t Clarence see that?

I had never seen this parable before. And there are lots of things to consider related to performance, capability, perspective, leadership and engagement. And Fred uses it in a great way. And could Clarence have made some money by having a talking frog? He was too enraptured about flying…

The irony for me, as I mentioned, was this LinkedIn discussion about Performance Management and Performance Appraisal, generally with a bunch of young HR people chatting about what they think these things are and talking about “performance.” I think they get at the concept of people and work, but feel like they are trying to teach Felix to fly. Some said things like:

• I see Performance Management oriented towards Indicators (much more quantitative) on the other side Performance Appraisals cover both, quantitative as well as qualitative, thus I see them as two different tools
• Performance Management is a process, whereas, Appraisal is an activity (part of Performance Management).
• Performance Management is a technique to measure the level of performance of an Employee. Its result is Excellent, Good, Average, Poor. Action is ‘IMPROVEMENT’  Appraisal Management is a technique to measure the result of a performance. Its result is used for ‘Salary Hike’ & ‘Promotion’
• Performance Management is the policy guidance which will vary as per existing need, progress made and future demand of the company. Performance Appraisal is the periodical matching aspect of the prescribed criteria with the actual performance of the employee, for compensation and career planning purpose.

Me. I posted this up to explain that there are real differences in these things and that Performance Management has nothing to do with Performance Appraisal and that it was simply a substitution of words that were an attempt to cover up the appraisal and subjective evaluation and assessment of the person:

Performance Management was the term applied to the issue of Human Behavioral Improvement as used by people like Tom Gilbert, Aubrey Daniels, Ed Feeney and many others back in the mid 1970s to look at ORGANIZATIONAL performance. It was generally anchored to Skinnerian Operant Behavioral Psychology and applied systems for behavioral analysis (such as Feeney’s BEST Program: Behavioral Engineering Systems Training), the analysis of performance feedback programs, and the application of contingent extrinsic rewards to drive desired behaviors.

As pretty brief explanation is available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_management

Tom Gilbert’s book, “Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance” is one of the critical works in the field, comparable to Peter Senge’s work on “Learning Organizations.”

In the mid 1980s, the phrase was co-opted by Human Resource people to try to make the concept of “Performance Appraisal” less offensive and less emotional, kind of like how “Re-Engineering” was used in place of the concept of “Downsizing.”

I say this, watching the name of the company I founded in 1984 – Performance Management Company – undergo a shift in anchor points from my focus on systemic organizational and human performance improvement to having people think we did performance appraisal systems. You can read a lot of different articles on human behavior at www.PerformanceManagementCompanyBlog.com

Many of us Old Guard still work in the area of best practices, organizational alignment to goals and expectations, refining performance feedback systems and using extrinsic and intrinsic reward systems to drive performance improvement. And it seems like a shift back toward organizational improvement is happening once again.

But Performance Management sure isn’t Performance Appraisal, much like preparing a Christmas dinner sure isn’t popping a frozen dinner into the microwave. (grin)

So, I read that Clarence / Felix The Frog parable as linking right up into the issues related to performance and capability. Could Felix fly? Yeah, we have this new drone technology where we could strap that little guy into a helicopter and fly him anywhere we want.

But a Talking Frog? Now THAT is really something.

Let me end this with a brief discussion of the thoughts of W. Edwards Deming, one of those really key guys in the whole quality improvement leadership literature.

Deming was really clear in his writings that he felt that merit pay, incentives, numerical targets without discussion of methods, quota systems, and annual performance appraisals are some of highly counter-productive management practices. He clearly thought that Performance Appraisal was one of the Seven Deadly Sins of management and lots of us have lots of good examples of how appraisals screw things up for people.

Deming said, “Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review… The idea of a merit rating is alluring.The sound of the words captivates the imagination: pay for what you get; get what you pay for; motivate people to do their best, for their own good. The effect is exactly the opposite of what the words promise.” (W. Edwards Deming, “Out of The Crisis”)

There are lots of issues with evaluation and being evaluated that do NOT contribute to organization improvement and operational effectiveness. Many of these are deadly when it comes to implementing teamwork and innovation.

Get your people to talk. Get out there and talk about what things are not working well and what might be improved. The Round Wheels are already in the wagon! Just DO it!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

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On Performance, Teamwork, Millennials and Collaboration

I got an email flyer on workforce development from ASTD this afternoon and thought to paste a reaction to some of their thinking, which I think tracks reality pretty well in this case.

The point that they made was that there are these Millennials in the workforce and they should be getting a lot of attention in regards to how we accomplish training and development and build teams and all that. They do tend to have different styles and different values. The social connections and use of technology are different and do represent some opportunities.

On the other hand, we see that Millennials as well as most other workers are also somewhat un-engaged and not greatly aligned and motivated in many workplaces. They are likely to get trained and then jump ship. There was an article online about Apple and how they are burning people out and the shift is to simply work there to get that on the resume instead of looking at them for “lifetime employment.”

(Boy is “lifetime employment” an oxymoron these days, or what!?)

You can see some ideas about involving and engaging people in my article called, “I Quit! Nevermind. Whatever…” on my articles page by clicking this link.

The thing that what caught my eye was this comment:

Despite these younger employees in the workforce, the workforce actually isn’t getting younger.  It’s moving in the opposite direction — the workplace is getting OLDER. Because of recent economic crisis, many workers have delayed their retirement plans and continue to work. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of those 55 and older that remain in the workforce rose to over 68%. (In 1987, that number was 54%.)

Yes, the number of people over 55 working in organizations is 7 in 10.

And. according to a new survey by the Conference Board, two-thirds of workers between the ages of 45 and 60 are now planning to DELAY their retirement and work longer. That’s a 20-point jump from 2010 – when only 42% of workers had plans to put off their retirement. Job losses, low salaries, and declining home values are some of the main reason why Americans can no longer stick to their retirement plans and plan to keep working.

Thus, you have the “young guns” of eager, networked creatives entering in the workplace and you also have the established, grizzled (in my case!) people who have their ways of doing things, who have a great deal of tacit knowledge about how to make things work and get things done, and who might be somewhat resistant to change. How do you identify and resolve some of the conflicts? How do you build alignment and collaboration? How to you increase engagement?

How do you manage both groups, who are quite different? The answer is simple: Involve and engage and form teams and allow them to work together to strategize, design and implement new ideas and new innovations.

We have great team building programs that are designed to involve and engage people and generate momentum for improvement. Our flagship team building game, The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, is the best exercise in the world — from what our extensive user base keeps telling us — for generating inter-organizational alignment and collaboration.

And our various Square Wheels toolkits and games like Innovate & Implement all work to generate a shared language of continuous continuous improvement in how things work and can be used to generate alignment and improve readiness to change.

Your managers should be your motivators.
Your people should be involved and engaged.

You can read a lot about our approaches to organization improvement, dis-un-engagement and engagimentation, and our general thoughts on innovation in the many different blog posts. At last count, there were nearly 200 posts on a wide variety of topics around people and performance in here.

If your organization can meet the challenges of this workplace environment, it should give you a significant advantage over the companies that will be stuck in the mud of performance and change.

We know that both groups can be highly productive and impactful — why not work to make them ONE coherent team aligned to your missions, visions and goals.

The skills needed by your management team, at every level, are those of facilitation and engagement. Good feedback and measurement systems can improve your likelihood of success with behavioral change. Doing things the same way will give you the same results.

For less than $50, you can have a tool to get started.
Check out our facilitation toolkit here.

P.S. – It is also true that 69%t of employed respondents are considered job seekers—meaning they’re actively seeking a new job or open to the idea. (See the Forbes article here)

Lastly, have some BIG FUN out there, yourself!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

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Team Building and Learning – How to make changes

Experiential exercises have significant impacts on individual and organizational learning. Participating and practicing is 15 times more impactful than sitting in a classroom, based on a good bit of research. Being involved and engaged is, well, being involved and engaged. The visual, auditory and kinesthetic anchors for memory are all hooked up and operating.

Motorola University in 1996 published an interesting chart that I reproduce here not knowing how to get permission for use:

Me, I would have built it upside down, so that Teaching Others was at the top. But that is MY learning and memory preference showing up, I guess.

Learning, linking and understanding are neurologically determined — the brain is what controls the process and it is good that it is semi-automatic since if it required much thinking or typing, not a lot of us would ever get it! Our brain uses chemical and physical changes in proteins and membranes to build the electrical circuits that make all this “living large” stuff possible. It works pretty seamlessly, and when it doesn’t, we all realize the consequences (Alzheimer’s, dementia, coma, and the like).

What our brain does is encode our experiences. If there is some boring lecture going on, guess what is probably not going to be recalled? If you are energetically participating in some challenge, doesn’t it make sense that more things will be remembered? Knowing that something might be useful later adds a personal touch — helping someone hang a backpacking hammock works quite well when you know that you will be hanging your hammock the next day. Learning to start a fire with fire sticks or a flint striker is remembered when you know you will head off on a survival venture that afternoon.

It is about storage and retrieval. It is about encoding and categorizing and accessing the meaningful information later.

In some of my deliveries, the group might have been through a course or a series of lectures on something or other. Let’s say that the subject is Project Management and the participants are shown a methodology for gathering information prior to planning a program. When we play The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, the funny thing is that these skills are often NOT transferred to the information gathering required to produce high levels of game performance.

So, in the debriefing, we review the choices made, generate discussions as to how the tools could be used, and then often project future scenarios or even do some problem solving whereby those tools are used. This kind of process generates a motivation to learn and the kind of VAK needed to anchor the skills in place. We also encourage a diversity of ideas and reinforce differences in thinking styles, since these generate better options so often. The debriefings often focus on divergent thinking and questioning ideas.

Most people in most organizations are not observed to actually apply things they learned into workplace performance change and improvement. This is a pretty common problem with classroom training — people KNOW how to do things but choose to keep doing them as they did before. Implementing change without changing feedback and measurement systems is pretty hard. Coaching can work, but coaches are often not available immediately after training has occurred.

What we suggest is a game activity to involve and engage people, one that sets up a solid discussion of behavioral choices made along with thinking about possibilities. That activity might include projection, team-based agreement on desired future behaviors, some discussions about how improvements might be measured, personal commitment to doing things differently combined with some level of followup and coaching, and other things to help to anchor in the learning as well as generate new, sustainable behaviors in the future.

Generally, people remember their own behavior, and they tend to remember their mistakes and bad choices a bit more easily than all their good reactions and responses. In Dutchman, we try to generate energy and emotion in our activities by adding pressures of time and scarcity of resources or some level of competition. Ideally the competitive situation has a balance of collaboration and cooperation built in.

If organizations can better use these kinds of engaging activities, they can expect more learning to occur and more commitment to change to result.

Some ideas:

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

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The View from The Front and the View at The Back – some illustrations and poems

Ah, the beauty of cartoons to stimulate some thinking of how things really work in most organizations.

A few weeks ago, I started coloring the cartoons and doing some poems, limericks, Haiku and just simply annotating some of them. Might as well make a few of my ideas “more visible,” right?

Here is the motivating view from the front of the wagon:

But the reality of how things work is that we also have part of the team working at the back of the wagon. There, things might just work a little differently:

To answer that question, here are some thoughts:

But we know that the above is not the best reflection of reality. THAT looks more like this:

So, given that we all understand that the reality of engagement and motivation and performance improvement is a real issue. we might do something like this:

Because that reality really seems to operate like that below:

Ah, the sheer fun of playing around.

But in my own reality of how I think about the above issues, I see a simple solution, one based on that key word: Communications.

If we are really committed to making improvements, consider this:

So, how am I doing with all this?

And how about this as a leadership reality. What to do, what to do, what to do…

Easy Peasy.

Have FUN out there!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

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What is the best corporate team building game?

Today, you can access a wide variety of team building activities free and online. There are simple interactive designs from the “low ropes” kinds of suppliers as well as more formal simulations and packages that you can purchase.

On our Square Wheels website, you can find a variety of different (and free) game frames such as The Egg Drop Auction and a number of LEGO game designs, complete with debriefing frameworks. And that site is one of hundreds of similar places. You can also join groups and networks focused on gaming and simulations on LinkedIn as well as from people like Tom Heck at teachmeteamwork.com

Some companies sell their team building products. We offer, The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine in a variety of formats for different sized groups. We offer rentals as well as outright purchases with no per-participant costs or annual licenses or certification fees. We will even rent the game for large group events at what is a very reasonable cost.

Other programs for team building exist and a simple search will turn up dozens of vendors, worldwide.

We get feedback saying that our combination of low costs and the focus on collaboration allow for a great deal of real-world behavioral change. Dutchman offers measurable results and tracking of lost revenues when collaboration is not optimal. Other games allow less of a business focus and depend greatly on the facilitation skills of the leader to link behaviors to desired future business outcomes.

We think Lost Dutchman is the best game there is, based on this combination of business relevancy, business challenge, congruency of leadership to issues of organizational support, the links between collaboration and improved outcomes, and the effective, simple and constructive debriefing possibilities.

At this location, you can find a direct listing of benefits of Dutchman as well as a comparison of features and benefits to a commonly known exercise called, Gold of the Desert Kings. You can contact Eagle’s Flight directly for more information about that exercise, its costs, etc. They requested that I not provide a link to their website.

We are more than happy to host a discussion of issues and opportunities and values of different training programs and processes here.

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

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The Search for the Treasures of Göbekli Tepe – a new team building game

We are well along with the main design of our newest team building exercise, The Search for the Treasures of Göbekli Tepe, an exercise focused on engagement, collaboration and implementation. It is a fascinating story to become the basis of this new exercise.

Göbekli Tepe means “hill with a belly” in Turkish, noting that this hilltop gave a full view of the surrounding countryside for many miles. We are polishing the metaphors, enhancing the design to capture some of the optimized features of our other games, and looking to release this soon in a number of languages.

Modeled after many of the main design features in PMC’s flagship team building exercise, The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, this new simulation will be set in the ruins of the forgotten people of Göbekli Tepe , a neolithic hilltop sanctuary thought to have been constructed around 14,000 years ago in southern Turkey.

Numerous websites describe this location, which is vaguely reminiscent of Stonehenge, but that contains intricate carvings and animal depictions and an pillars. Many of the pillars found weigh over 20 tons with some more than twice that large and archeologists have estimated that it took a work force of at least 500 people to cut them from quarries up to a kilometer away, and bring them to the site. And then there are the exquisite carvings and depictions.

The site predates Stonehenge by 10,000 years and is far older than the pyramids and the ruins in Egypt. It appears to be spread over an area of 22 acres, although new information is being understood almost daily and little has been excavated thus far. It is speculated by its discover and chief archeologist, Klaus Schmidt, that hunter / gather bands met here periodically over man decades. If you have read the Clan of the Cave Bear books, the gatherings may have taken on some of that flavor of worship, competitions, and sharing of information and even resources like seeds and tools.

In play, teams will leave civilization for an excursion to the site of the dig, where we have information that can lead to the discovery of some new and as of yet unseen treasures that depict the life of the people. To succeed, teams will have to plan, share information, and work together under the normal pressures of time and seasonal changes in weather. The isolated nature of the area and the oftentimes difficult climate will make for a fun and educational event along with a solid exercise in organizational improvement.

Contact me for more details and some delivery timelines,

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

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Excuses for Poor Teamwork and Poor Performance – Find Your Own!

Dan Rockwell posted up a short blog on his LeadershipFreak blog about getting past excuses. The gist was that we make excuses for why we do not do what we are capable of, this for ourselves and for others.

Well, sure. ALL of us are capable of doing more than we do, in some cases a LOT more! I do not think that there is anyone who performs to their maximum potential on anything like a consistent daily basis. Some are frustrated by this, some take the gap as motivational, and some just roll along normally.

Who couldn’t work more hours, engage others in more better teamwork, run faster, eat less, and on and on. And I want to also differentiate the anchor of excuses from the issues of failure. Not getting everything done perfectly is not failure, it just might represent expectations that may or not be too high.

Setting achievable goals is an important issue. If the goals are too low, reaching them is not rewarding. If the goals are too high, trying to achieve them may be frustrating or may cause some kinds of cheating for their achievement. It is about overall balance, I think. Achieving good goals is a good thing for a lot of reasons.

Much of my organizational focus is on engagement, collaboration, and teamwork as they relate to optimizing performance results.

In the case of teams, the players will often throw a Blame Frame around things. I have written about that before in this blog on Trial and Error.

In my Lost Dutchman team building game, for example, we tell the tabletops that the goal of the game is to maximize ROI and to “mine as much gold as we can.” But, often, the phenomenon of “My Team, My Team, My Team” gets in the way and teams compete instead of collaborating and thus sub-optimize the gold that could have been mined. They then make their excuses like blaming the Expedition Leader for not being clear (it is always clear — it is their choice to compete).

After all, it is easier to put blame on others and make excuses rather than focus in on reality. So, the Dutchman game is really a tool to get the tabletop to begin to discuss behavioral alternatives and the requisite variety of options in the game and then make the leap to dealing with those same issues in the workplace. Teams in the workplace are often facing a lot of the same kinds of blame frames and individual choices that do not lead to collaboration and improved results.

Getting people to generate their excuses for performance flaws is often a very good idea since it gives the other members of the team a chance to discuss these and even put peer pressure on each other to not let those get in the way.

In teaching a class on consulting skills a few years ago, I assigned final group projects to triads of 3 people — in nearly every case the individuals came to me fearful that they would individually contribute more than the other two on their team. These were adults with workplace experiences probably paralleling this. So my simple solution was to take 30 minutes of the next class to ask what kinds of excuses there might be for a lack of teamwork and collaboration on these projects. Funny thing– how well that worked to generate solid levels of cooperation and shared effort.

It seems to be a lot about choices and perceived alternative solutions. Too many of us get too close to the wagon too often and fail to step back and see different possibilities. Having different alternatives for change is a key. Requisite variety is the word. If you think that all you have is that hammer, you may use it in different ways but you will still have only a hammer. I think that we can also see that there are different tools in our toolkits and that many of these tools can be applied in different ways.

Teamwork offers an anchor point to excuses, for example. Lots of us choose not to fully participate in teams because of “others.” We either think that we will contribute too much relative to the choices of others or that no one will listen to our ideas because they failed to do so in the past. But much of it is simply driven by how we think.

If you have good excuses for your personal lack of accomplishment, that is fine. Just take a moment, every once in a while, to see if those are still working well for you. After all, you cannot push the wagon at 100% of your effort 24 / 7 — that is just an unreasonable strategy. Step up and push as hard as you can. But also take some time to step back from the wagon every once in a while. You might see some things you could do differently and better.

Me, I am tired and I think I will go take a nap. After that, I might sneak a peak around and see if I can find some new ideas to play with, like continuing my series of poems about performance.

I will plan to get back to work later. Heck, I should probably edit this later, too.

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

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Two Miles of Ditch for Every Mile of Road – Thoughts on Teamwork and Collaboration

There is that old joke about when you are up to your axles in alligators, it is hard to remember that your job was to drain the swamp. Sometimes the tasks at hand simply overwhelm the possible improvements. Organizational improvement is a lot like that, it seems.

Mud has been a most useful metaphor for me around the concept of dealing with Square Wheels when the cargo are round ones. Mud represents the organizational glop, or as I define it, “the stuff that is hard to get a grip on.”

Mud is the goo, the cement, the grinding paste — basically the stuff that is hard to deal with but that directly slows performance. It might be the culture of the organization or the tendency to not reward improvement / punishing failure. It is often the bureaucracy that gets in the way of generating change. It could be one person who tends to simply make everything more difficult for any number of reasons. If organizations had personalities, it could be that, too.

My comments tend to be around choice and choices and defining possibilities. Often, people simply choose to keep muddling along like they always have and not much will change. You just keep plugging away, hoping to make progress.

But it is often useful just to step back from the wagon and look for some ways to “Get out of the ditch and up on the road!” Doing the same thing will generate the same results. And, understanding that there are a lot of miles of ditch to deal with in most organizations is just a thought on reality. Nothing makes sense, and neither does anything else so much of the time. Knowing what needs to be changed and even building a good case for it does not necessarily translate into an organizational improvement initiative.

These situations take group engagement and a sense of shared focus and teamwork in order to generate the energy to change the course of what is happening. One person, no matter how powerful or skilled, will find it very difficult to deal with the glop and get things moving more effectively. There is just too much to deal with, most of the time. Change is difficult. And peer support and teamwork and collaboration are helpful.

Me, I just got up on the road, I think, by doing these little ditty things using the cartoons and illustrating the issues with Haiku and poems and maybe some limericks on occasion. I have a bunch of clients and friends sending me their poems and word changes and the like, so I think I will keep going down this path and see what results.

YOUR thoughts and words would be appreciated, and if you want a couple of cartoons on which to permanently and forever post up your thoughts (attributed to you, of course), pop me a note. I can assist and you can be the poet or wordsmith forever anchored to one of the themes of improving organizations.

Remember:

Or, from The Waterboy:  “You can do it!”

Have fun out there, too. Have a most wonderful New Year!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

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US and THEM – a poem about teamwork and collaboration

The lyrics of Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them” are somewhat about teamwork and leadership — I love the tune (still humming it!). And I have used this cartoon of US being built up full of THEM for 20 years. In Lost Dutchman, a tabletop of people will choose to work together on the shared goal of, “Mining as much gold as we can,” and miss the them of “Mining as much gold as WE can,” which is the purpose of the game from the standpoint of the Expedition Leader. Each team’s success is important, but the overall success is more important, right?

That first lyric talkes about “US” being ordinary people. Ordinary men can do extraordinary things and it is all about the choice and choices people make. But we need to understand that Us is We and that They is Us. We’re all in this together and need to be more aligned, with better leadership.

The song lyrics are below, and you can listen to it on YouTube here

I think we need to remember that our workplaces are full of such “ordinary men” and that each of us has the potential to perform at high levels. What we need are good “Generals” who lead us boldly forward toward a shared vision of the future, but who also engage us and have a real sense of what is happening. After all, as I have written before,

and what we need is something that looks like this from the back of the wagon:

Have fun out there, and remember to involve and engage.

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

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New Square Wheels tools for improvement are on the way, focused on building teams and increasing employee engagement.