Tag Archives: maturity

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Invest in Yourself

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When you have the opportunity to provide yourself with something,  that has a particular quality or attribute that enhances your life, now and in the future, take it.

Investing in yourself is your choice.  The value equation needs to be considered.  Does the effort to gain that certain something outweigh the benefit.

For Your Own Good

When I was younger my parents encouraged me to undertake many activites like swimmimg, socceer, tennis, clubs, outdoorsman and so on.

I would ask, why?  The answer was consistently, “ For your own good”.  Unfortunately I came to dislike the phrase because it has negative connotations.

Today I fully embrace the concept and I am truly grateful to my parents for perservering against my rebelliousness.  For their dedication to my improvement worked.

I would be far less the person than I am today had I not invested in myself so ferociously at my parents urging (perhaps a little beyond urging), albeit against my will.

Hidden Benefits

The personal payback for spending a little time, learning exercising, socializing, helping others can be enormous but is not always apparent.

Sometimes the thirst for easy fruit backfires.  We will overlook the long term benefits of spending some time and effort updrading versus instant gratification.

Motivating yourself to invest in yourself is not always easy and takes thought.  Not reconizing the benefits to you down the road for completing a work intensive activity now is a large part of the reason.

Take time to think through the value down the raod and don’t discount yourself when an improvement opportunity exists.  Take it, you will be glad you did.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Personality and Maturity

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Your personality, basically a word to describe your habitual behaviours, is believed to be formed as a result of both nature (neurological development) and nature ( the environment you grew up in)

In general the foundation of your personality, based on nature and nurture, is believed to be set by your early teens.  Your habitual behaviours can change over time but like habits in general, it is usually slow and difficult to do.

Maturity

Maturity decribes growth and advancement in your behaviour.  This is largely based on experience.  The behavioural changes you make as time goes by and you gain maturity can include impacts to your habitual behaviours (personality).

The way a person might typically behave in given situations have been studied and labled as personality types.  The level of conformity, efficiency and effectiveness of overall behaviour is typically used to gauge ones maturity.

While typically personality is considered set at a young age, as you grow older and mature in other behaviors so can your personality mellow and mature.  Personality and maturity can combine to create change.

Continuous Improvement

The point is, although your personality can be an underlying defining aspect of your core behaviour, as you mature it can and will change.  Continuous improvement of your overall behaviour is not only possible, it is desirable.

To coin an old television conmercial for a ladies cosmetic product, your not getting older, your getting better.  Don’t ever give up improving your behaviors, both those you interact with and those you will be interacting with, salute you for continual striving to behave better.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Self Awareness/ Confidence and Arrogance

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The ability to focus on yourself separate from the environment and other individuals, is the basic concept underlying the emotional intelligence attribute of self awareness.

Typically this requires an internal belief in the abilitiy to rely on yourself and your judgement.  You believe and trust in yourself.

Combined these behavioural traits can appear to others as an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions (i.e., arrogance)

Avoiding the Arrogance Label

While confidence and self awareness are powerful personal attributes, valued and invaluable tools for you to achieve your personal goals, being percieved as arrogant is something to avoid.

The ability to be both self aware and confident in a way that is not percieved as arrogant requires concious effort.  By default these behaviours can send the wrong message.

As you travel down the road of winning friends and influencing others (to quote Dale Carnegie) make sure you use your sensitivity to balance the way you are percieved.

That is, use your self awareness of others reactions toward you to influnce and change those reactions.  Manage your personal behaviours in a way that those you are interracting with like.

This is not a natural or unconcious approach.  Be fully aware of how you are behaving, constantly judge how others percieve it and change as needed to get the desired reaction.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Immaturity

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Germaine Greer, noted Australian born scholar and femminist said “You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.”. Wow, someone who understands me.

This quote is quite witty given the definition of immaturity “, that is “behaviour that is appropriate to someone younger.  The definition implies age overcomes immaturity.

Ms. Grier is thinking, age does not necessarily equal mature behaviour.   Passing from youth to middle or old age is not the defining variable relative to immature behaviour.

Immaturity and Experience

As you age you collect experience.  With greater experiential knowledge underpinning your behaviour, it is logical to expect more consistent and effective behaviour.

Of course if one ignores the lessons of experience this would not neccessarily be the case.  Hence, the logic behind the Grier quotation.

The passing of youth can reasonably be expected to be accompanied by the wisdom of age.  However, the ability to effectively leverage your experience through mature behaviour does depend on a few other variables.

Age and Expectation

While it is reasonable to assume our behaviour will improve with age, the zeal and exuberance of youth can carry forward to a late age.  This is not necessarily detrimental.

As I often note in my posts, balance is the key.  Matching your behaviour to expectations while still endulging your inner child is possible.

The key is to avoid surprise or disaffection by creating a perception of the level of maturity your audience expects without ignoring your own inner needs.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Define, communicate, practice

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In the 1980’s the Software Engineering  Institute of the Carnegie Melon University formed and partnered with the US Department of Defence (DoD) to develop a model that could be used to assess how likely a software development contractor was to deliver a quality on time product.

Software development at the time was notorious for being late, over budget and not satisfying all the requirements.  The DoD was eager to find a tool that would help them select vendors that could deliver.

Price matters, but a product that works  can trump price when the result of defects and failure can be catastrophic. (e.g., the software in a jet fighter).

Capability Maturity Model Integrated

The current version of the original model is called the Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI).  The model comes in three flavours now and can be used to assess organizational maturity on a scale of 1 (chaos) to 5 (highly capable, consistent and sustainable).

The key feature of this methodology is the requirement to define, communicate and practice.  With consideration to continuos improvement, reviewing and updating ongoing is a critical aspect.

Does it Work

I have had the good fortune to be exposed to the model on a number of occassions in different ways.  I have implemented the processes from definition to practice as well as observed the outcomes from organizations operating  at both high and low maturity levels.

In every case,  with successful implementation and certification as a level 3 maturity or better, I have observed significant  material improvements. (For lower maturity organizations it’s never clear what the outcome will be.)

Three key benchmarks in software or product development projects (on time, on budget, on scope) typically change from being achieved less than 40% of the time before CMMI is implemented to over 80% after.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Maturity

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The concept of maturity is about behaviour.  In essence, the greater ability to respond to the environment in an appropriate manner, the higher level of maturity.

Maturity responses are generally learned/ experience based rather than instinctive or emotionally driven.   Mature behaviour is reasoned and results are usually positve.

Capability and Maturity

The ability to perform effectively (skill/capability) does not in and of itself equal maturity.  That being said, mature actions require capability to execute.

Ability is easier to measure objectively.  For example a high jumper who has the ability to jump higher than all others in a particular competition is clearly demonstrating strong ability.

If their winning high jump is followed by a dropping of shorts and waving a bare bum at the crowd in a victory salute, many might question the maturty of their behaviour.  On the other hand a slight bow and gracefull acceptance of the applause might be considered more mature.

Both these assessments of matuity level are subjective,  based on perceived acceptability of the given behaviour.

The Value of Maturity

Albeit a subjective assessment, on the whole,  mature behaviour coupled with average or better capability will generally produce better results.

The principle basis for this derives from the fact maturity is experience based (i.e., learned behaviour) and so the results are predictable.  That is based on past experience you know what to expect.

Maturity does not just apply to individual behaviour  but can be applied to a collective whole.  As a group behaves at a higher maturity level the results improve are more consistent and sustainable.

Sadly even with a wealth of experience, behavioural maturity can still be average or even low.  Maturity is gained through experience but having experience does not necessarily mean your behaviour is mature.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Organizational Maturity

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There are many models and much consulting provided around an organizations capability and maturity.  My favorite framework for an insttitutional capability / maturity model is based on the following concept.

The level of maturity (see definition) is assessed and then coupled with the organizations capability (see definition)

 The overall capability / maturity rating depends on the assesment of both these factors and could be low even if maturity was high but capability was low (or vice-versa)

Maturity and Capability Definitions

Maturity – degree of formality and optimization of of the organizations processes.   This can range from largely ad hoc practices (no maturity) , to formally defined steps (low maturity), to managed result metrics (medium)to active optimization of the processes (high).

Capability – the consistency of execution and quality of the result is based on defined measures. These can range from following the process occassionally making it up as you go along (low, sporadic capability),  to one hundred percent uniformity in both practices and results (high capability) proven by real artifacts.

The Maturity Trap

Some organizations have well defined processe and practices which are largely ignored by the organizations human resources as they go about performing their roles each day.

The organizations stated goals (it’s reason for existing ) might be achieved  – or might not and this success or failure is largely “figured out” as time goes by.

This might be an organization with some maturity, but capability (do you perform?) could be sorely lacking.

In a truely capable -mature organization his would not be the case.  Outcomes can always  be accurately predicted in a highly mature /capable organization .  That is in fact, a key defining attribute of such organizations.

In short, a highly capable and mature organization will have clearly documented, well defined processes together with “artifacts” to prove they were executed and the expected results achieved.

In essence they ,say what they do and prove they did what they said.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Good Experience/Bad Experience

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I recieved some interesting feedback yesterday on my post about the value of experience.  I had seemed to imply all experience was good.

Most of us have had bad experiences (think about Ryan Lochte’s recent Brazilian experience for example) and do agree experience can be percieved as being positive, negative, good or bad.

Life Lessons

I would argue though that in the context of life lessons, any experience, regardless of how it is percieved by the recipient, is valuable and sets the frame for growth, increased competency and ultimately success.

In the context of life lessons or even just professional activities experiences lay the ground work for us to choose to repeat or avoid actions based on past results (i.e., the experience)

Avoid Bad Experiences

The feedback I recieved suggested experience in and of itself does not have value and some experiences were to be avoided (e.g., a car accident).

In the context of capability to perform certain tasks (e.g. a medical operation) I would argue having the benefit of performing surgery in addtion to training and skills derived from practice positions me to be a better practitioner than someone without that experience.

Does this mean I would strive to avoid the experience of an unsuccessful surgey with a resulting fatality, of course.  However, if I did encounter that situation I would use the experience to advantage,

The knowledge of what went wrong and possibly how to a avoid a reoccurrence is golden. A bad experience can ultimately be leveraged for good.

My thought is that while the experience itself could be classified as negative, unpleasent, not to be repeated; in terms of the triumverate of attributes that forge sucessful results (education, ability and experience) all types of experiences are needed

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Process and Behavioral Maturity Link to Performance

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Both from a personal and organizational perspective high performance is integrated with the overall maturity of both processes and behavior.

Today’s post explores these concepts in a little more detail, still at a high level.  More detail and examples to come in future posts.

Behavioral Maturity

Maturity is about responding to your environment in an appropriate manner.  The higher the level of maturity the more closely aligned and effectively integrated are both response and environment.

Process Maturity

Processes maturity can be described as a ladder of increasing effectiveness in the employment and practice of the associated activities.    Using high level descriptors a five level maturity model could be defined as:

  • Level 1 –  Chaos  (processes are not documented, inconsistent and mainly adhoc focusing on whatever works.)
  • Level 2 –  Superman (processes existed but are scantily documented and not consistent.  A few practitioner are found to get things done – somehow.  These super people (trying not to be sexist) drive the performance and results.  Given they focus on “getting it down” this can leave a pile of dead bodies (metaphorically) in their wake.
  • Level 3 – Institutionalization (one clearly documented process exists for each activity and controls exist to ensure they common processes are followed consistently by all.  Communication of where the process library is confirmation everyone knows about it is key to ensuring standardization.
  • Level 4 – Continuous Improvement ( the institutionalized processes are constantly reviewed and improved)
  • Level 5 – Ongoing Measurement (confirming process effectiveness through defined metrics while practicing – e.g., continuous checking of the quality of a product being created while it is being created.

Performance

And topping it all off, where do high levels of behavioral and process maturity get you?  Intuitively is your actions are fully aligned with the goals (environment) and the tools exist to support execution of these actions efficiently (clear processes) the overall outcomes (performances) will improve.

Think about it, give it a try!  More details to come in future posts, comments and questions will be responded to.  ( The processes are in place here at Kerrzone and the behavioral maturity is high).