April | 2011 | Dan Marbes

Archive for April, 2011

I before E equals fail

Posted in Empowerment, Leadership on April 26, 2011 by danmarbes

“I before E except after C.” Remember this mantra from elementary school spelling? I do, and I’ve used it many times since to spell check my own writing and that of others (my notepad has yet to spawn an F7 key). Mnemonic devices like this stick with us years after we learn them and for that reason I’m going to pirate the idea.

I’ve been reflecting on what core attitudes, concepts and values really drive success in the workplace. How, really, is it that we as leaders can create an environment where those around us consistently give their best? I believe the foundation of this workplace is EMPOWERMENT; the first and most powerful “E”. Allowing those around us the opportunity to make decisions and feel ownership in their professional life is so basic, yet so powerful. Rather than simply being cogs in the great corporate machine, empowered employees strive to make things better because they have a more vested interest in the outcome and they understand that the choices they make actually matter.

This concept probably scares some leaders to death. “How do I know that they will make the right decisions or know which decisions they should make?” The answer lies in EDUCATION. Empowerment does not mean that a leader turns over the keys and gives everyone free reign to do as they please. We need to educate employees so they understand the difference between a decision they should feel empowered to make and one that may have farther-reaching consequences. Perhaps the employee works in a regulated industry with oversight and audit frameworks and if so, they need to understand the scope of those frameworks so they can make informed decisions about when a decision point needs to be escalated.

In addition to “learning the ropes”, we need to encourage our employees to become active learners with respect to their professional role. Understanding new technology, process, regulations and whatever other knowledge is relevant to a specific job is key to understanding how it can be done better. You wouldn’t expect to see a golfer turn in a good round with only a 7-iron, so why would we expect creative and innovative ideas from our employees if we don’t encourage them to add more clubs to their bag?

We also have to realize that occasionally even the best intentioned employees will make a bad decision. Again it falls to us as leaders to take advantage of this teachable moment. Rather than dispatching discipline from the mountaintop, we need to review what happened and make sure that employee (and the employee’s team) understands how to avoid a similar mistake in the future.

If we allow our employees into the decision making process and give them more control over their environment, I suspect we will see more ENGAGEMENT, ENTHUSIASM, ENERGY, EFFORT and EFFICIENCY. Once converted, this environment will feed on itself to drive continued improvement. Employees will replace outdated processes with new ones that actually make sense for people doing the work. They will gravitate towards the work they are really passionate about and will drive positive change in that space. Attitudes will be better all around and when a big challenge or project comes along we’re likely to see much more willingness to go that extra mile.

At face value, it seems like everyone should be doing this. If we can create a workplace where our employees come every day EXCITED that they can make a difference, how do you explain why so many Americans are utterly miserable and disenfranchised with their professional status?

I suspect that from a leadership perspective the single largest obstacle we face is INSECURITY. If we are afraid that our employees are going to “show us up” or think less of us when we’re not the ones coming up with the new ideas it’s hard to give them any decision making power at all. As true leaders we need to move past these feelings. Our world changes too fast for us to be experts in every area that we manage. We have to become secure enough in our own leadership ability to promote the good ideas of those we lead. To borrow a metaphor from a previous post, you don’t need to be a virtuoso on every instrument to be a great conductor.

INSTITUTIONALIZATION is another gigantic pitfall that swallows up good ideas. “We don’t really want to consider your idea because we’ve done this thing this way as long as we can remember and it’s still working for us”. Ack. This line of thinking blows my mind. If you think about some of the many things we now take for granted (cars, television, cellular phones, the Internet) may not have been developed if someone didn’t want to improve an existing idea. I can get from my house to the office on the back of a mule, but I would argue that’s not the most efficient way for me to accomplish the task. Just because something isn’t broken doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.

As leaders, we must continue to break down these walls and remove the obstacles that keep our best and brightest from living up to their full potential. If we allow “I” to stand in the way of “E” we will never realize the CHANGE that will make us great.

The LEGO experience

Posted in Creativity on April 3, 2011 by danmarbes

This post is dedicated to my parents, without whom I could never have realized my aspirations. I love you both very much and am forever indebted to you for the lessons I learned growing up, especially those I didn’t even realize were occurring, and the sacrifices you made to facilitate them.

One of the truths I see every day in IT is that things are in constant motion. Technology changes so quickly that it seems we are designing solutions for new challenges on an almost daily basis. While I’m sure this keeps some people up at night in cold sweats, it’s actually one of the things I most enjoy about my current role in IT systems design. I never know when someone is going to walk up to my desk with the need to produce some new widget, make a new application work, or just have some vexing issue that is important to solve. Recently I’ve started to wonder why I’m often been able to conceptualize multiple design strategies on the fly and I think the answer reaches all the way back into my childhood.

When I was young, I loved playing with LEGO®. I could spend whole days building elaborate buildings, vehicles and even complete cities. While I always enjoyed getting a new LEGO® set to play with and took the time to build it according to the included directions, the greatest fun came when I could spend time with my full collection of pieces limited only by my creativity. I would build, rebuild, tweak, disassemble, and build again. Each project was always a work in progress. I’m sure I didn’t think of it at the time, but this experimentation would prove invaluable years later. I truly believe that LEGO® play had a profound impact on my creative development (and still does to this day).

Well, great, I was a happy kid, but where’s the professional relevance? Fear not! I think there are several concepts which can translate into the modern workplace.

1) Understand what you’re working with – Part of that LEGO® experience was spending time learning how to manipulate a bunch of raw materials to form a solution. Through repeated tries, I learned a lot about which pieces worked best to accomplish specific tasks and how pieces could also be used in different ways when the ideal component was not available. By continuing to understand all of the “tools in the toolbox” I was able to build more complex and elaborate creations. In the professional world, some people may gain this knowledge by reviewing documentation, manuals and use cases while others may just need time to experiment to figure out what the “tool” can actually do. Irrespective of the way the knowledge is gained, this foundation will allow the construction of better and better mousetraps.

2) Find new uses for existing pieces – When I got new LEGO® sets, there would be specialized pieces like aircraft wings, antennas and the like. While this was their original purpose, very often they worked nicely to solve other problems. In the workplace, this type of thinking can help you leverage existing solutions to solve problems without additional cost or complexity. At our office we use Microsoft Live Meeting as a collaborative platform. It works great for its intended purpose but I figured out that I could also use it to record audio and video to create procedural demos that I could distribute to other engineers as a training tool. Using “LEGO® thinking”, I was able to fill a gap in training without having to invest in a separate application.

3) The creative process needs time – Part of my mother’s wisdom was the way in which she would suggest a concept “Why don’t you build me an airport?” to provide some initial direction and then leave me to my creative process, sometimes for hours. In that time, I was able to experiment and figure out what I felt was the best way to reach the design goal. While time seems to be a resource in perpetually short supply, managers and supervisors have to realize that standing over someone’s shoulder asking for a status report every fifteen minutes radically diminishes the odds of a truly creative solution to a problem. Some of the best solutions I’ve come up with for design challenges in my professional experience have stewed in my subconscious for weeks.

4) Today’s failure may become tomorrow’s success – I built a lot of LEGO® creations that were failures. Some broke, others were just ugly. Wings fell off airplanes, wheels didn’t steer, doors didn’t open and the list goes on. While all of these failures helped me figured out better ways to build so I gradually improved my skill, some of them sent me in different creative directions altogether. Just because the square peg doesn’t fit into the round hole doesn’t mean it is devoid of value. It may have incredible benefit if used in a different way.

As the pace of change in our lives and our world continues to accelerate, we will need more people with the creative skill set to meet these challenges head-on. We need people who can conceive innovative solutions, people who can develop effective and efficient process, and people who can creatively lead others to realize their full potential. I hope that the people who emerge in these leadership roles have in their own way learned the lessons that I did as a young boy with a box full of LEGO® pieces and a world of possibility.