Reflections from my Hiatus

It has been a long time since my fingers last visited this blog.  Ironic, really, because just before I went on a hiatus I blogged about how you have to be disciplined and "make" time.

Well, I have been making time for a lot of things.  Probably too many things.  But not blogging.

My writing energy has been devoted to a couple of other projects.  This summer, I'll be using a new textbook that a colleague and I wrote and edited, for our MBA strategy/capstone classes.  I developed a paper with another colleague about measurement systems for social ventures; it won a "distinguished" research award and is forthcoming in the Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal.  My favorite, though, is an article I wrote to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Fredrick W.Taylor's Scientific Management. The call for papers from the Journal of Management asked whether his work was still relevant in today's businesses.  You betcha!

A key insight of Taylor's was that overloading workers made them less productive.  Well, that's certainly still true today, although the overload tends to be mental rather than physical.  My paper specifically addressed the issue of information overload, why it is so detrimental, and how scientific management and lean manufacturing principles could alleviate the problem.

All this is to say that I have realized I need to take a dose of my own medicine.  I am overloaded.  And very, very tired.   So the stories I will be writing this summer will be reflections about applying scientific management and lean principles to my personal and professional lives.  Comments and suggestions are welcomed!

Help! I'm Becoming One of "Them"

With an engineering background and information technology industry experience, I have long considered myself to be self-sufficient in personal technologies. Until now.

About two years ago, I became an Apple customer -- after being an "IBM user" since 1984, when the first PC was announced by IBM. I did this to challenge myself (and because my teenage son was an Apple devotee).

Now, I have an iMac at work, an iPod at the gym, and an iPhone in my bag. None of them really came with a user manual. And I just do not find any of it intuitive. Where is the on/off switch for the iPod? How am I supposed to know that Time Machine is a backup tool? And the interface in iTunes makes no sense to me (and I have been syncing for years with a PDA).

Last night, my son and I were helping my mother with her iIssues. She wanted to move her audio book from her iPod to her iPhone. First we had to install iTunes on her new computer. Nope, that was the wrong version -- she needs the 64-bit version (who knew?). Done.

Next we File-Transfer Purchases so that her e-book is on the computer. Done. We synced her iPod. Done.

At this point, the Jets-Patriots game was getting down to the short strokes, so my son was checked out. I eject the iPod, connect the iPhone and click on its audio book tab and tell it to sync. Abort! Abort! Abort! Doing this operation will erase everything on the iPhone. Why? Because I didn't transfer purchases with the iPhone plugged in, so her apps didn't download. Argh.

Anyway, I had created about 80% of a blog with my BlogWriter app last week. It's no longer there. Where did it go? It is not in my blog. It's not in my drafts on the cloud. It's not on my phone. Double argh.

I must be getting old. Or overloaded. The rate of change in technology is faster than my rate of change in learning technology (we were talking about differential Calculus this morning, sorry). I just don't get it.

Business Cycles

One of my favorite things about my profession is that it is cyclical. As a college professor, I have the sense of a "new beginning" every fall (actually, every August). This is another opportunity to "get it right," whatever that may be.

This is not to say that I don't work during the May 15-August 15 hiatus. I do (although obviously my blog was not part of that workload)! I teach a fun course at one of our satellite campuses, which entails 4-5 weekends away from home. I also try to produce at least one paper, either to present at a conference or to submit to a journal. But I relish the less structured time and especially enjoy the time I can spend with family and do projects around the home.

Around this time in the summer, though, my entropy becomes overwhelming to me, in the sense that I have less energy for work and feel more random. (Boy, do I get spacey!) It is time to embrace a routine, institute self-discipline, and build my enthalpy.

So I approach the academic year with a renewed sense of drive, purpose and commitment.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if businesses could leverage their cycles like that? Some do, e.g., closing for a week or two during the slower summer months. One company I worked for had half-days on Fridays during the summer. I do not think throughput suffered as a result.

When I was in corporate sales, business cycles were more of a mixed blessing. At the beginning of the fiscal year, my quota was reset -- and my attainment went back to zero. That did not mean that my energy and enthusiasm were restored, though.

Recently, I read an article in the Harvard Business Review (Perlow and Porter, October 2009) about the benefit of enforced time off. The context was the consulting business and the point was that consultants had better staying power when they could anticipate and permit themselves some "down time."

Wouldn't we all benefit from that?

When Initiative Can Backfire

John Maxwell has what he calls "the law of respect," explaining people naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves.

I believe this is true. I also believe it can make working for a manager who is not as strong a leader as you are EXTREMELY frustrating. You need to make an extra effort to "manage up" in a way that is not threatening to that person. Otherwise, you may find that showing initiative can backfire on you.

Managers who "micro-manage" tend to be insecure, making them more controlling and less trusting. When others show initiative, micro-managers try to lead from behind, i.e., hold back or stall the effort.

For people in this situation, I have several recommendations:

1. Remember that the relationship will not last forever.
2. Find out how your manager likes to be kept informed -- and do it.
3. Keep your boss from being surprised -- let him/her hear from you, rather than someone else.
4. Show your boss respect, if only out of common courtesy.
5. Avoid the politics and backbiting that often accompanies such situations.

Basically, I'm suggesting that you want to take the high road, while still doing your best work. Document your accomplishments. And dress for the next job!

The Best Laid Plans

There are some who would say, "Why plan? Things change as soon as you step onto the proverbial battlefield." In the months since I last blogged, I have been a bit "shell shocked," to continue the military metaphor, with unexpected and conflicting demands on my time coming at me from several fronts.

So, while I agree that it is generally true that things do not work out as they are planned, I still believe that planning is valuable, for several reasons:

1. Plans help me to visualize what is to be done. According to Stephen Covey, one of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is to "begin with the end in mind." Planning forces you to define what the end is to be.
2. Plans help me to adjust to changing circumstances. Rather than simply react, I can be proactive in how I respond when things change. Do I adjust the plan? Do I put the plan on hold? Do I persist?
3. Plans help me to stay focused on my priorities. If I haven't planned, then I am likely to overlook someting that I should do. Like everyone else, I have a lot of demands on my time. I want to be intentional, and address the most important things first.
4. Plans help me to be more realistic. My eyes are bigger than my stomach, and my heart is bigger than my brain! There are so many interesting projects and possibilities and worthy pursuits -- and so little time. Planning forces me to take something off, when I take something on.
5. Plans make me a better colleague and friend. If someone asks me for help, I want to give a reliable response as to if and when I am willing and able to do what is asked.

William Ward, the inspirational writer and speaker, identified "four steps to achievement: Plan purposefully. Prepare prayerfully. Proceed positively. Pursue persistently." Proverbs 16:9 tells us, "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." I hold these thoughts close.

Eliminating Waste?

I've been thinking about lean operations, a lot, lately. What makes them lean is that they eliminate waste, i.e., any activity that does not add value. Generally credited to Toyota, the main sources of waste are typically:

1. waiting
2. defects
3. inventory
4. overproduction
   
5. unnecessary transport
6. unnecessary human motion
   
7. unnecessary processing.

As I explain in my forthcoming book, McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Operations Management, "In examining a lean transformation system, activities are considered value-added (e.g., patient diagnosis); non-value-added but necessary (e.g., requiring patients to sign a HIPAA form); or non-value-added and not necessary (e.g., waiting for the doctor)."

Lean concepts are applied to a wide variety of operations, and can certainly apply to personal effectiveness. I recently learned of an application than I thought might have gone too far.

According to American Public Media's radio show, "Marketplace," Ireland-based "Ryanair, a budget carrier... is considering a plan to charge for use of its lavatories on short flights." Unnecessary... processing? According to the report, the airline wants to modify passengers' behavior on short flights. I can only imagine. I suppose an infrequently used toilet requires less service? Ultimately, if they are able to reduce the number of lavatories needed on each plane, they can add more revenue-producing seats.

But really, is it in the spirit of lean operations that they are eliminating... eliminating waste?

Lateral Thinking

When talking about the value of lateral thinking for the creativity of leaders, I was reminded how much fun it can be.

From a business perspective, lateral thinking improves problem solving skills, and is a great way to kick-off a planning or problem-solving meeting. The general idea is that verbal and analytical processing tends to occur in your brain's left hemisphere; visual and graphic processing happens on the right. By translating pictures into words or words into pictures, you are brain-shifting (in layman's terms). Cultivating this ability enables you to view a problem or an opportunity in a wider variety of ways than without lateral thinking.

How do you cultivate this ability? One of my favorite ways is to play a form of Pictionary(r), a game that gives you a word or a phrase that you have to get others to guess by using only non-verbal images. So if you are the player who is drawing, you first read the card (left side), and then translate it into images (right side). The audience looks at your scribbles, and tries to verbalize what it is that you are drawing.

As a meeting ice-breaker, it not only gets the brain-shifting circuits working, it tends to energize and relax people at the same time. I will often use terms related to the purpose of the meeting to get people thinking along those lines. For example, if I were facilitating a project planning session, I might have terms such as: project, schedule, scope, and milestone. I start the meeting with the easy one, and draw something like you see in the diagram below.

If that didn't work I might try a chart with a forecasting arrow, to represent another way to "project." If that still did not work, I might try a "sounds like" and draw a dog protecting a house. How would you picture it? How about the others?

Another good exercise for lateral thinking is a rebus puzzle. Here, the idea is to look at the words in the puzzle as a graphical image, to understand the implied word or phrase. For example:

MOON
MIAMI

would elicit the song, "Moon over Miami." The Franklin Institute has a page of fun puzzlers.

No shift -- try it, it's fun.