Category Archives: Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Enforcing standards

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Governments, companies organizations and associations (to name but a few types of structures) all set standards for their constituents, members  and employees.  These can be integrated, overlapping or stand alone

Enforcement

Personal adoption and adherence to standards (or rules) usually occurs through either discipline or accountability.

In the case of discipline the standard is imposed and then is achieved through enforcement. The intent is that the punishment will act as a deterrent. Therefore, the key to effective discipline is power.

Alternatively when the standard is adhered to through exercise of personal accountability punishment is not needed and adherence/performance to the standard is typically superior.

In short, and I believe this intuitive, wanting to follow the standard and being willing doing so of your own volition produces much higher qaulity results.

The satisfaction of exercising accountability is far more motivating than the practice of discipline to avoid punishment.

Can you influence how others react to standards?

If you agree the practice of accountability is superior to discipline as an approach to enforcing standards, the first question is probably can I influence others to practice  personal accountability and if so how?

Everyone has the power to influence regardless of whether it is granted by your place in an organization or you earn it through your own positive (or even manipulative) behaviors.

A key practice I often find effective is to influence by example.  This is definately a foundational behaviour to use as you begin to exercise your power to influence the use of accountability over discipline.

Directed humor, demonstrating benefits or using praise are just a few others out  of a  myriad of options.  My intent here is not to make this an explicit how to blog post but rather just to generate some ideas of methods you could try.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Fitting in

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Integrating with your environment is a basic human behavior.  I had an interesting discussion today about new entrants to an organizational  culture.

Checking at the door

When you are bringing someone new into your organization the first step is usually to check their fit.  Through a variety of techniques (interviews, references, resumes, aptitude tests) the potenial candidate is vetted.

The entry level question is does the person possess the skills to do whatever tasks the organization needs to be performed.  Another key focus is usually on attitude.  Will they fit in with the behavioral expectations.

To exaggerate a point, if the organization expects members to regularly swear at each other you would want to confirm this behavior is not considered abnormal or offensive by the candidate.

What if you miss?

Given it’s impossible to fully confirm a persons fit to an organizations attitudinal and behavioral norms its not unknown for mismatches to occur.

When the new entrant recognizes this, usually within the first three to six months, there are generally three options:

  • Adopt the attitudes and values of the organization
  • Work from within to create change (they view this as cultural improvements) that align better with their own value system.  in some cases this can be a real benefit to the organization
  • Exit.  In this case the person believes they can ‘t change , or there is such a mismatch to their personal values (most likely the case) they don’t want to change.

If new blood has been recruited to your organization with the specific goal of intiating change, it is important to support them and monitor the situation carefully so the first or third options do not occur, unless of course you want them to.

Alternatively if you see the newbie is not fitting in but their skills are valued and you don’t want them to exit it could be of value to encourage them to adopt the organizations existing norms.

The key idea for consideration in this post is the importance of being aware of potential effects of attitudinal mismatches that could be incurred by new members of  a group so you can consciously and proactively influence which of the three options will result. You can then influence events to go in the direction best for the organization.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Not right, not wrong; Just is

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I have recently been experimenting with an attitude that sounds ambivalent on the surface but I am finding to actually be very powerful and effective.

Often how you feel affects how you behave.  How you behave determines results.   This is not just about what you do to achieve your objective but also doing in it cleanly in a repeatable way.  Leaving a trail of dead bodies as a means to an end typically only works for while.

Attitude as a tool

If you can persuade yourself there is no right or wrong answers, it will help you collaborate to sucessfull achievement of the goal. Remember as you move down the path, what you seek is answers that work.

This attitude can be a key practice toward maintaining an open mind.  Others will tend to mirror your approach,  making it even more effective.  Ultimately conflict is greatly reduced and collaborative activity increased.

Hold those emotions

Both negative and positive emotions can color your thinking and impact  it’s effectiveness.  Think about just a few of the emotions we all experience regularly (e.g., anger,fear, joy, satisfaction).  All of these can be triggered by a strong belief.  Now think of a time you were in the thrall of such emotions, was your thinking clear and logical or clouded?

I meant that as rhetorical questions, emotions cloud our thinking.

Think of a time you have known yourself to be right and were angry at another for being wrong.  Or time you felt joy when someone agreed with you because you knew it was the right answer.

These emotional responses won’t necessarily block the best approach but there is a higher risk they will.

Help check emotional responses

Just remember, there is no right, nor wrong answer, seek the best answer.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

What goes around come around

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My wife and I watched “Straight outta Compton” last night.    The movie is a depiction of the development and popularization of gansta rap focusing on the key founding members ( Ice Cube, Dr Dre and Easy-E), their initial success with the group NWA (Niggas With Attitude) and finally to the solo branching off of their careers ending with the death of Easy-E (he contracted AIDS along the way and died from related illnesses).

Seen If Before

I was really intrigued by the contrast between the career path of these rappers and predecessor youth focused musicians who challenged social boundaries.   For example groups like the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Marylin Manson to name just a few.

The similarities lie in the behaviors, song lyrics and controversial statements that are directly focused on questioning the establishment.

For example the Beatles were condemned for comparing themselves to Jesus Christ (challenging religion), the Rolling Stones for their allusion to drugs had songs banned from airplay (Satisfaction), the original version of the music video sAINT by Marilyn Manson was banned from commercial play because of it’s controversial depictions.  NWA was publicly derided, sent a desist and resist letter by the FBI and even arrested in Detroit for playing the song Fuck tha Police.

Ice Cube made the comment in the movie that “all publicity is good publicity”.  Not original, nor necessarily true,  but certainly on target for gansta rap.

Youth Music

There has long been an element of rebellion associated with youth music.  Watching this movie was very cool for me as it highlighted the continuous cycle of youth rebellion through their musical heroes.  While my own rebellion started in the sixties, centering around what is now called classic rock, it stemmed from listening to loud music played by artists pushing the establishment standards.

As I watched the story unfold it occurred to me it was hard  to distinguish the difference between the forces of opposition between youth and the establishment, the disillusionment developing among the artists as their careers took off and their hard partying lifestyles ( for example little different from those of NWA and Led Zeppelin as far as I could see).

Generational Differences

On the whole each generation, baby boomers, gen X and the millennials definitely have clear distinguishing behavioral characteristics, that being said some things remain the same.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Strategic Planning in Action

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In organizational context I frequently view “strategy” as having a broad set of meanings. And so unfortunately it is misused and often just a “flavor of the month” provided organizational lip service.

I believe developing and implementing business strategy is a continuous cycle and the strategy itself is really nothing more then directional and if done right it can be a very powerful and effective tool.

Implementing a strategy

Implementation of a strategy is through a defined set of measurable activities that each have a start and end point and an associated clear, measurable outcome.  (although a single activity my be repeated, making it part of an ongoing operation.)

Enough bureaucratic double-speak – Example please?

This post was triggered by a newspaper article about a recently adopted business strategy developed by a Canadian legal medical marijuana producer.  Apparently a number of the larger companies in the business are also adopting this strategy.  That of course does not make it a good strategy but it is indicative others think it has value.

Most interesting to me was how this was a simple example of what a business strategy is.

The strategy is ” To prepare the business now for the potential legalization of marijuana use in this country so the revenue and profit opportunity can be fully leveraged out of the gate”.

For me this has all the attributes of a well thought out strategy:

  • simple  (it’s one sentence not 180 pages of hard to understand gobble gook.
  • it is clearly actionable (implementing it is totally feasible for a company already in the business)
  • It has a number of readily and easily measured components (e.g., market position six months post legalization – should be #1)

Implementation

The actual plans and activities to implement a strategy are often mixed up with the strategy itself (hence 180 page analysis documents).

In this case the tactical plans in support of the strategy are  numerous and cover a longer duration (probably 18 to 36 months) but the simplicity of it is the clear framework for what the work is are defined by the straightforward and easy to understand objective underlying the stated business strategy.

The strategic implementation work includes thing like the companies lobbying government for early postioning, storing product, planning wholesale and retail pipelines, etc.  By defining a visionary but realistic strategy these fledgling businesses are getting themselves ready to move to the next level.

Now, please excuse me, I am off to find a marijuana farm to invest in.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Making Royalties

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I have a few investments in royalty funds.  Basically these are, in essence, a flavor of an investment capitalist firm.  They seek out fledgling companies with good potential, reasonable risk and provide capital to get going or grow and expand.

A key difference is the investment is linked to a royalty agreement.  Basically a percentage of revenue or profit or both, usually for the life of the company although they can be for a fixed term or tied to return of capital plus a reasonable rate of return.  This sort of guarantees the fund ongoing income (assuming the companies invested in keep operating).

This can result in a very effective “income” investment.  I don’t really do it for capital gains but rather the constant stream of relatively low risk return (assuming the fund is making good investment choices).

Other Common Royalty Models

Governments often use royalty models to recover the cost of resource removal from their territories.  For example oil companies pay the jurisdiction where the oil is been taken from a percentage of their revenue or profit or both.  This is to compensate the owners of the oil,  that is the people of the country or region it’s being extracted from.

By virtue of living there they derive some benefit (or their government does).  In some cases only citizens (people born to the oil laden lands) receive direct payment of the royalties from their government (Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are examples of this).

Alberta’s Royalty Review

The current NDP government of Alberta made an election promise to conduct a review of the royalty rates being charged in the Province.  There was much innuendo during the election about how the people of the province were getting ripped off by big oil.  Not sure if the current price of oil had anything to do with it but the oil sands royalty structure is not changing. (What a surprise?)

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Balancing your behavior

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Whether at work or play how you behave drives your effectiveness.  Getting things done on your own, with others or through others can be efficient or effective or sloppy and slow.  Or anywhere in between.

The behavior impact

The factors that influence outcomes are broad and deep with multitudes of integration points.  Predicting the best approach with absolute certainty is impossible but focusing on and controlling key factors which will have the greatest impact on the end result is a good way to lay the foundation for success.

Your behavior is usually always a large contributor to the result and a discussion of behavior principles is the focus of the rest of this post

Balance

Extreme actions, for example like shouting, swearing at one end or hibernating and allowing yourself to be dragged along at the other can be effective behavioral approaches depending on the context of the situation, however, I personally find this to be the case very rarely.

Balancing extremes and tailoring your direct actions and responses to the other participant,s or if alone to the situation itself, is most likely to give you the best control.   Control lets you adapt and modify what you are doing as you are actually doing it.  This is really continuous improvement in the moment.

To practice the skill of balancing your behavior for optimum results requires a very high level of self awareness.  You need to be able to absorb, analyses and  determine the best response in an instance and constant awareness of whats going on is a prerequisite to this.

Remember as well what you do can change the behavior of others and this is a great tool to help achieve the objective although it needs to be used with caution.

To clarify, getting angry could be an example of using your behavior to changes others.  Don’t be surprised if your getting angry doesn’t cause others to get angry (unless they are practicing strong behavior control themselves you can count on it.)

The key thought here for the best use of personal behavior to drive to your goals is balance.  Use the right actions at the right time.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Drinking with your buddies

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I met some colleagues from a previous job for drinks the other day.   It got me thinking about the social convention of socializing with your friends.  I am referring to the process of setting up a meeting, then getting together, chatting,  sharing experiences, ideas and generally catching up.

What occurred to me is how this process is regularly coupled with drinking alcohol.    I wonder what would happen if alcohol had never been discovered.

Of course I regularly interact with others without the need for alcohol, as do many people I know.  That being said the convention of meeting in a social context is often accompanied accompanied by drinking (usually alcohol, although some stick to non alcoholic beverages) and sometimes snacking.

Why drinking?

I think there are two drivers to the use of alcohol (and perhaps eating) in a social setting.  It actually acts as a signal, drinking is understood to be a recreational activity (and some do eat for recreation) and this makes the meeting less formal and more clearly a time to just sit back and enjoy.

In the Japanese culture co-workers regularly gather for a drink after work.  This was almost a ritual for male white collar workers and represented a chance to release the tensions of the day and under the influence of alcohol perhaps tell your co-workers, and even your boss, what you really thought.   Japanese society is changing and this practice is now a little less common and less mandatory than it once was.

  Getting Older

I really enjoy getting together with buddies to “shoot the shit” as they say but age has changed my tolerance for alcohol and I find myself drinking less alcohol.  I become inebriated faster and this cause some reduction in the speed and clarity of my thinking which for some reason is not as enjoyable as it was at a younger age.  Now, for me the drinking is more for the taste then the reduction in inhibitions.

I really get setting the context of the social engagement and drinking is certainly both an effective and socially acceptable way to do this.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Seeking Answers

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Gathering information can be an art form.   I enjoy reading legal and detective fiction quite a bit.  In these fictional novel the focus is regularly on the questions and answers.  That is both what is asked and how it is asked.  Usually the hero of the story is a  detective or lawyer who  able to get the answers and find the truth through clever manipulation of what they ask and how they ask it.   This of course leads to a satisfying story.

Real Life

Outside the fictional realm, I find the need to phrase the questions carefully applies to many of my daily interactions both personal and in a work environment.

Sometime it seems to me people don’t like to answer questions and it’s not unknown to get unhelpful responses.  This can be because you just were not understood, or it could also be purposeful obfuscation.

Like my fictional detective hero’s I find this frustrating and when dealing with sensitive issues I find my self thinking out the plan of attack in advance, being careful to include tests within the question series that will help validate the accuracy of the responses.

Cynical Me

I would agree, without question, my personal experience over the years has led me to be cynical and I could be overreacting.  Or it could just be me – that is I don’t know how to ask questions without creating anger and thus coloring the responses.  I do tend to be a pretty direct questioner so maybe that is part of it.

I have learned in order to get high quality information it’s necessary to fully think about my objective in advance (what am I trying to find out) and then work out the best way to approach it through a series of well crafted probing questions.

Often I do not have a power base (like my fictional police detective) and so like many of the lawyers I read about I need to be clever about how I find out my answers.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Talent

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I often think of the internet as a very large and easily searchable library.  While it is much more than just a massive storehouse of documentation, it is that at the least.

Definitions

Before the internet I mostly used the dictionary or encyclopedia in my personal library.  The results were limited.  Now when searching for the meaning of a word (for example talent) it is not hard to find a number of variations, some more semantics, some historic while others are interpretive.

Nature versus Nurture

Regular readers will be aware of my ongoing interest in the impacts of nature and nurture on human behaviour.

Talent is mainly (although not definitively ) described as a special skill or aptitude you are born with.  Although how well you exploit your talent, if you even leverage it at all is a personal choice and can be very much influenced by  your environment.

Sexual Attraction

Some definitions include your physical endowments together with your natural abilities to use them as attract the opposite sex as an example of talent you are born with and which perhaps you spend time developing further (an example of nature and nurture).

The base attraction you are born with forms a foundation for you to build on, or you might choose not to and even hide this talent.

Talent, Effort or both, your choice

This thought process applies whether the talent is beauty, artistic, sports or musical abilities (or anything).  You might be born with a fabulous singing voice but rather than seeking a musical career you work hard to become a top tier baseball player although you might have little natural talent in this area and need to work really hard to succeed.

Talent can be natures assist but you can drive your choices through nurture.