Monthly Archives: October 2017

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

The Endless Search

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During my high school days I had a personal goal to determine the meaning of life.  Not the Monty Phython  variety which was more tongue in check, but a logical rational explanation.

God Explains All

During my early childhood there was an attempt to indoctrinate me into a belief that God explained all.  Simplistically man was created in gods image, mankinds purpose (the meaning of life) was to serve god.

My own observations led me to the conclusion that god was an artifact invented by other humans  to both satisfy their own need for meaning as well, for those with  less scruples to leverage as a power base.

The Search Continues

So far, my own experience is that the search for meaning is endless.  The purpose of my own life has ultimately become; “to search for meaning”.

That is to say the action of searching is both the purpose and meaning of my life.  The search itself has no result beyond more searching.

The actions associated with the search give me pleasure and realization my purpose lies in more searching, that is what I do and I enjoy it.

The End

This personal solution to the meaning of life is gratifying but it does not explain the ending; i.e., death.  If death is linked to the meaning of life, searching endlessly stops at death.

What then is the purpose of death?  To stop the cycle of endless searching?  If that is the case, as with all questions around meaning – why?

So while the meaning of life being an endless search for answers is satisfying me at the moment, I wonder if this will change with time.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

What about Trust

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Trust is about reliance.  Whether you place your trust in a person or a thing, the level of trust will affect how you behave.  Typically low trust levels drive more cautious behaviour.

Why bother with trust.  It seems trusting carries a risk.  Bad things could happen if your trust is misplaced.  For example, most people trust the elevator cable won’t break, use after use.

If it did break, the resulting iact would likely be significantly negative, that is physical injury or death.  There are some safety features in place to mitigate the risk of a cable breaking but these also could fail.

Trust in Yourself

Some argue you should only trust in yourself, after all that’s who you know and understand best.  Most importantly,  relying on yourself provides the highest level of control.

While trusting yourself can  be easiest and provide the most underlying confidence, without trusting in others or things like elevators or planes accomplishing things anything can become more difficult.

Like most things, practicing too much or too little of a particular behaviour (in this case trust) is less likely to enable achievement of optimal results,.  The balance you place between healthy cynicism and measured trust is key to achievement.

It is virtually impossible to operate without some level of trust in others or things but the risk of trusting too freely can lead to disasterous results.

Don’t be afraid to embrace practicing trust, just be sure to balance it with some healthy optimism.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Honesty

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If your behaviour is free of deceit and untruthfullness, you are percieved as honest.  Assessing if someones practicing honesty requires knowledge of truth.

It is important to note that incorrect facts, shared with sincerity do not constitute dishonest behaviour.   That is behaviour that derives from genuine feelings, albeit potentially misguided.

Judging

Determining if someones behaviour is honest or not often derives from others personal judgement.  This is not always simple and can involve assumptions, always a tricky practice.

In the famous parable about truthfullness, George Washington cut down a cherry tree and displayed the value of true honesty by admitting to it, when asked.

The tree was cut down, that is a fact.  No one saw who did it so believing George to be truthfull is based on the assumption he would not lie about a misdeed.

I have no idea if George cut down the tree or not.  Personally I cannot be sure he was not accepting the blame to protect someone else or even to establish a perception that he was a truthful person.

Proof and Evidence

Our judicial system is founded on the believe facts should be used to judge honesty.  This is to avoid assigning dishonest behaviour arbitrarily.

Overall, there is no perfect way to judge a persons level of honesty, however, keeping an open mind and researching, validating and freely communicating your opinions are good practices to help avoid making erroneous judgements.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Earned Power

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From a personal perspective, the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events is the exercise of power.

Exercising power others have endowed on you through a role or title (e.g., policeman, manager, organizational leader) is more about others recognizing the authority granted to you.

This type of power is often supported by consequence or penalty if ignored.  For example, ignoring a judge could result in a fine or even imprisonmen ( contempt of court).

Granted power does have some limitations, the motivation for others behaviour is not necessarily a result of agreement but possibly fear of negative consequences.

Earned Power

The exercise of power, whether earned or granted has the same purpose.  The difference is in how the behavioural influence is initiated.

Dictorial behavior is an extreme exercise of granted power.  The person welding the power relies on obedience based on their authority.

In many ways this type of power is easier to weld.  Just do it, is the mantra.  And if you don’t, you’ll be sorry, is the threat.  Intuitively it is obvious this type of power can be the hardest to sustain over time.

Self Motivation

Earned power empathizes the value equation to motivate actions.  Those who exercise earned power create an understanding of the the results and what’s in it for you.

In brief, people follow the influence of earned power because  they want to.  As long as this desire continues, because it makes sense, the behaviour of others can be influenced and is more likely to be executed with passion.

A key attribute of good leaders is the exercise of earned power more frequently than granted.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

It’s getting better all the time

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Improvement is the act or a thing that makes something better.  This requires a change. By definition the improved state is better and so different from the starting state.

Bad to Good

A common misconception about changing for the better is the starting state was bad.  This is not necessarily the case, in fact, improvement from dire straits to an acceptable level in one step is relatively rare.

Incremental improvements or continuous improvement are both more common and better.  When the environment is at rock bottom sometimes just starting over is more practical than seeking improvement.

Consider an Olympic silver medalist attending the next Olympics and winning gold.  A silver medal is an exceptional achievement in and of itself.  Improvement to gold is a great improvement but, as noted, does not mean tbe starting point was bad.

Managing Change

At it’s core, improvement comes through change .  Whether it be internal change ( you change yourself), external to you or a combination.  Like all change, it is most effective when well planned and communicated.

In  essence, all change will have improvement as an underlying motivation.  There may be a variety of specific reasons to make a change, for example to reduce costs or increase revenue or quality,

Whatever the reason, to be executed effectively with a positive outcome,  those affected by the change must have a clear understanding of what the improvement is and why it’s of value.

Embracing Change

As we go through our lives understanding and believing in the value of change, we can lessen our natural resistance and this allows us to be part of the improvement, we become better.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

How or What?

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We all do things every day. These things range from waking up, eating to a multitude of other activities.  For example  working for monetary compensation or for non monetary motivations.

Two basic attributes can be applied to everything we do.  What are we doing and how are we doing it?  Obviously where, when and why can be important to some degree but what and how must also be known and always come into play.

Concious versus Unconcious

Often what we are doing and how we make it happen occur withput much thought.  We wake up after sleeping (the what) and it could be a concious action with an assist from an alarm clock or it could just be our unconcious internal clock causing us to awake.

Taking control of what you do and how it is accomplished is a critical aspect of personal success.  Deciding what to do based on a well considered motivational understanding is more likey to result in the outcome you desire.

While happy accidents do occur, taking charge of your destiny means there is no need to rely on the roll of the dice.  Whether the out ome was  good or bad, you thought it through.

Doing the Right Things

The message of this post is simple.  If you know waht you are trying to do (the goal or objective) you can plan for success.  If you plan for success and excute the plan effectively the risk of failure is greatly mitigated (although not removed, failure is always an option).

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Structuring for Success – Part 2

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On Wednesday I described the strata theory of organizational structure.  In summary, the workof an organization  (e.g., build a plane) can be categorized by it’s type, e.g., level 1,2,3 ……… and so on.

The type of work at each level generally goes from  long complex tasks requiring a lot of earned power to short simple tasks (i.e., level 1) based on granted power.

My earlier posts describes this in a little more detail. Today I will focus on how the model can help identify problem areas, ultimately leading to resolution. (hopefully)

Comprehension

When direct reports are doing the same kind of work, that is they are both level 3 for example, conflicts quickly arise.  Intuitively you can imagime the angst and confusion when the boss is doing what you have been assigned ( often by the boss).

Terms like micro managing or constructive dismissal can be applied to this scenario.  To solve, study the work done in your organization, based on the length and complexity of the tasks, ensure direct reports are not working at the same level.

Gaps

When someone doing level 2 type work is reporting to a boss doing level 4 work, things can be missed.  Gaps in the work flow , not unexpectedly, create challenges at the lower level of work.

Working Across Multiple Levels

For me, this is both the most common and frustrating.  In this case the resource at (for example) level three sets the direction and goals assigning them to people who work at level 1 & 2.

Unfortunately they then go and proceed to do the work.  That is the senior manager assigns projects aligned to the strategies and then goes and runs the projects alongside those assigned to do this type of work?

The project managers accountable for the work become quickly disaffected and impotent.    Most often, ultimately, they leave the organization.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

The past is better

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We humans have a very interesting ability to transform reality to fit our conclusions.  This is a form of bias and a well studied and documented behaviour.

I’ve Never Seen it this Bad

An interesting variation on this  natural occurence of bias is the way we can reimagine the past as being far better than the future.  I wonder about comments like “ I ‘ve never experienced service this bad”

Or, “The leadership here is very confusing relative to my previous experiences”.  These statements are subjective in nature but also in and of themselves, self justifying interpretations of the current experience.

In reality, most people experience good and bad behaviours (e.g., service, leadership, relationships) throughout their lives.  Comparison with the past is a great rationalization technique, but is it accurate?

Danger!

A word of caution about justifying conclusions without independent confirmation.  Your interrpretations of inadequacies within your current circumstances might not be as bad as you think, or maybe even not what you think at all.

Your conclusions will influence your own behaviour, but like all actions derived from some form of bias the results could backfire on you.

The past is not necessarily as you remember it.  Years of maturing can mould memories.  Coupled with the conclusion bias ( i.e., what you want it to be, but maybe not what actually is) there is a risk these memories will influence you to act in ways you might regret.

Often discussion with others is all that is needed to help reshape the past to more closely resemble events as they happened.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Structuring for Success

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Organizations of all stripes from family to political party structure themselves in some way.  Whether hierarchical,flat or any of the other numerous formations possible, their is always some shape.

Elliott Jaques

Years ago I had the great fortune to do some work with the renowned Canadian organizational pyschologists, cretor of the stratified systems theory.

His basic concept is organizational work crosses descrete levels (strata) and each level adds value of a specific quality.  The types of work at each level can be classified by length of time to complete, complexity and level of reliance on earned or granted power.

For Example

Consider a hypothtical organization where the work is building planes. This organization has five organization stratum or levels.  The work at each level contributes to the job at hand, i.e., building of planes, but the level of detail at each level is very different,

Examples of the level of detail and concepts at each level follow:

  • Level Five

This is the strategy and definition level.  We build high quality planes at a low cost (the direction is set)

  • Level 4

o&The strategies start to take shape.  Our planes are for civilians, cover medium and long range flights and will appeal to full service airlines

  • Level 3

Details organization and planning begins.  We’ll focus our engineers on 12 to 18 month build cycles using locally sourced products with just in time delivery.

  • Level 2

Down to details.  Our wing manufacturing plant have a staff of twelve responsible for assembly of all aspects of the wings producing 2 wings a month.

  • Level1

The wings are manufactured.

To be continued in tommorows post.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Your Behaviour

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When asked how you act in response to a given situation or stimulus (i.e., your behaviour) it is probably not difficult for you to respond.  Not only can you describe your actions, but your intent as well.

Other also have an opinion about your behaviour and intent.  Your views and others, both can be subjective to a large degree and may differ.  In truth, often differ.

How are you viewed?

Perception is reality.  What others believe about your behavior is fact.  Their beliefs influence all thier interractions with you.  Your own considerations mean little.

If you are a devious liar in practice, but are viewd by others as someone trustworthy and honest, your opportunity to deceive and succeed is enormous.  This is how a “conperson” (aka conman) operates.

It has been said when truth is blurred by lies and misinformation, perception becomes reality and all is lost.  This is a real danger we all face.

Others perceptions may be founded on lies and misinformation, yet it is a very powerful driver of how they may respond to you.  Respect, trust and support can be earned but largely this must be done based on how you are percieved, rather than what you think.

I am me

The intersection of what you are and what people think you are is within your control.  Believing good sense will prevail and people will perceive your behaviour accurately is naive.

Using self awareness to understand what others think of you and then use that knowledge to shape thier perceptions to what you want them to be, is much more practical.