All posts by steve@kerrzone.com

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Whistle Blowing

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I read a CBC news story today about privacy, and whistle blowing in the context of one of Canada’s five major banks. Having worked at Bank of Montreal for 31 years and experienced events related to both these topics, I have thoughts worth sharing about all these things. (Worth sharing in my humble opinion).

Privacy

The underlying concept of today’s social privacy platform is that you are the owner of information that is uniquely associated with you and have a right to dictate it’s use.

The association is the critical factor.  A birthdate on it’s own is not classified as private but when it is associated with your name (i.e., your birthdate) it is private information.

In my opinion the laws and practices around ownership and management of private information are to all our benefits, continually improving and we are lucky to have a culture that supports and believes in these practices.

Todays news item was based on an employee complaint that the corporation (TD bank) was sharing private information, e.g.,  your name associated with your bank account number, to a third party contractor overseas, without your awareness or permission.

Whistle Blowing

The act of exposing any kind of information or activity that is deemed illegal, unethical, or not correct within an organization that is either private or public.

In this case the Corporation claims their outsourcing practices, including the handling of the private information was both legal and ethical.  Customers had been provided an agreement that advised their information could be shared with third parties overseas.

Of course the agreement did not need to be acknowledged specifically by a signiture but rather by a standard proclimation “by using this service you agree to …..”

Yeah, I always read those things in detail (sarcasm).  My brother however also does and many people are often frustrated by the time he tales to do so.  Kudos to him, but I am not sure this is a standard popular practice.

And this is where the discussion hits a grey area.  I am not sure what the answer is but the following thoughts are interesting food for discussion.

  • Should public, private or government organizations be allowed to first refusal before the whistle is blown [perhaps they are not in the wrong)?
  • Can any topuc be fodder for a whistle blower or are there limits?
  • Is disclosure of privacy abuses open season, it is such an important topic, or should there be guidelines?

And this probably just the beginning of the discussion.  Fun topic.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Communication 101

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When communicating with others, far more important than what you say is what is heard.  We spend the majority of our time in some form of communication, ranging from sending to receiving.

Whether, reading listening to music or a speech, watching entertainment live or recorded, the variety of communication forms is wide and varied.

The key to effective communication is not dependent on the communication form, rather it is the translation of the message into meaning by the recipient.

Regardless of type of communication, the most skilled communicators focus on their audience.

It’s not about you

The most common mistake is crafting the message to tell your story.  Story telling is a fantastic way to pass a message but for it to resonate and be understood the story needs to be aimed at the audience (for them, not for you).

What I want you to know and what you want to know are the two most basic underlying considerations to help you craft your message.

The skill is integrating the information so it is targeted with the audience in mind yet satisfies the scope of all stakeholders, that is both sender and receivers needs are met.

Don’t Ignore the Purpose

What is heard is the message.  If it does not meet your expectation the purpose is not satisfied.  Regardless of how skilled you were at crafting and delivering the message, if it does communicate what was intended, you have failed.

Remember, focus the message on the audience,but not at the expense of neccessary content.  Mould the message to fit the audiences and during delivery continually monitor reaction to gauge your success.

To the best of your ability judge if they are hearing what you are sending.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

The pace of change

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Change is inevitable.   Planned and managed with a clear objective based on reasonable benefit assumptions, change is good.  There are a lot of conditions that needto be satisfied to ensure change is good, but the results make it worth the effort.

Sometimes conditions create the need for a change. For example someone leaves an organization or team.  At a minimum their replacement will be a change, but a reorganization or other restructuring are opportunities that could also result.

The pace of the change

For todays post we assume a good change is in process.  The objective and most beneficial change actions have determined and a approach is planned.  That is the work (e.,g., communication, implementation) activities are defined.

Should this change proceed slowly or rapidly?  Is there an optimal type of approach to change scheduling.  Should we push it through quickly to reduce the anxiety of affected stakeholders or will slow and cautious lead to a higher quality result?

Both approaches have benefits and pitfalls and these can vary depending on the specifics of the change.  Sometimes there are constraints that drive a slow or fast approach (e.g., things are bad and need to improve fast or the culture mandates a slow and discursive approach so you have limited choice of pace.

Most importantly, when determining the schedule for your change (i.e., the timing of the implementation activities) be sure to consider the associated risks and plan mitigation activities. This applies whether a fast or slow paced change.

For example if the pace of change could lead to team demorialization or mass exodus consider this risk and plan what to do if it occurs.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Sharing Imformation

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Who do I tell and what I tell them?  These are questions people are constantly asking themselves, whether conciously or unconsciously. This is a filtering process.

These questions are not intended to imply that we will share all the information we have but rather that we will determine if we can or should share some or none (The answer to the first question could be no one.)

If you are going to share something, what you will share comes into play.  Underlying this filtering process is motivation for sharing.  This influences the what and even how.

What’s the Purpose

All communication or lack thereof has a purpose.  There are four basic categories into which information sharing falls.  These are:

  • unburdening (lessen your guilt)
  • personal gain  ( this includes a wide variety of motivations from monetary to self worth)
  • altruistic (for the benefit of others)
  • malicious (to attack or harm others, could be coupled with gain on your part)

Withholding information can be as effective as sharing and during the filtering – whom do I tell and what – the decsion to not tell could be because that appears to be the best way to achieve the underlying objective.

In a flash

The really scary part is the filtering process often happens without a great deal of concious thought or examination of pro’s and con’s.  For most, it is just managed intuitively.

A thought pops in your head, is mulled briefly and then shared or not.  During that brief interval the reasons to communicate or hold back and what to say and how to position it are determined.

Often this leads to misunderstanding, frustration and conflict.  What we say, to whom and how we contextualize the information is so critical and important to get it right, yet alas, we spend so little time figuring it out.

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).