To really understand any team, it is important to understand the distribution of power within the group and how that power is exercised.
Archive for the ‘Investigation’ Category
Understanding the background to power in a group
Posted by James King on February 2, 2011
Posted in Implementation, Investigation, Leading change | Tagged: change management, politics, power, teams, tribes | Leave a Comment »
The 7-S framework (+2) for evaluating change readiness
Posted by James King on January 30, 2011
I recently explained the “Arenas of Change” approach that I often use to understand a team and its environment. So I thought it might be a good time to discuss another approach that I often use – the 7-S framework developed by McKinsey Consulting.
Posted in Consulting, Investigation, Leading change, Techniques | Tagged: 7S, change management, change readiness assessment, consulting | 1 Comment »
The Arenas of Change for assessing change readiness
Posted by James King on January 29, 2011
To communicate effectively, you should align your message to your audience. And to drive effective change, you should align your change to the drivers and constraints faced by those you are planning to impact.
But, as I discuss in a long-winded recent article, that is easier said than done. And unfortunately my solution here is just as long-winded as the last article.
Posted in Idea management, Implementation, Investigation, Leading change | Tagged: change management, change readiness, stakeholder management | 1 Comment »
Bad logic. Some common fallacies
Posted by James King on January 25, 2011
I was talking about assessing documents (and statements) to see whether they are “logical”.
Critics of “logical communication” will quite rightly make the point that a document can be logical, but boring, irrelevant and completely un-compelling. This is true and I should get to talking about it soon.
But before I do I wanted to talk about “Bad logic”.
Posted in Arguing, Investigation | 3 Comments »
Assessing the logic of a whole document
Posted by James King on January 24, 2011
In my last article (“Is that logical?”) I discussed a way to test the logic of a statement. But a document filled with logical statements can still be gobbledegook if the statements are not linked together logically.
So how can we assess the overall logic of a document?
Posted in Arguing, Investigation, Techniques | Leave a Comment »
Is that logical?
Posted by James King on January 23, 2011
(Editors note – this is not the article I promised to write on “Arenas of Change” – I got distracted by the wondrous world of logic).
I promised a class that I would write something on “The Arenas of Change”, which is a theory about how teams interpret reality.
Posted in Arguing, Investigation | Leave a Comment »
The one thing you can’t outsource is innovation – or is it?
Posted by James King on September 8, 2010
This blog is normally a collection of my own thoughts rather than a source for links to other people’s thinking.
But it seems a lot of companies are now deliberately asking others to do their thinking for them, so it seems fair enough for me to do the same.
Here is an interesting link to an article on crowdsourcing.
http://knowledge.asb.unsw.edu.au/article.cfm?articleId=1202
So my question is - if you can even outsource your thinking, what does it mean to be an organisation in the new world order?
Posted in Decisions, Investigation, Observations | 1 Comment »
Should measures be “SMART”?
Posted by James King on September 6, 2010
I was having a debate with a friend of mine recently. He said that all measures should be “SMART”.
The term is usually used for goals and says that the goal should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely (or something similar).
The problem I pointed out was that the M in SMART means measurable so the concept of SMART measures is a bit redundant. He responded that in his experience many of the “measures” he saw in place were not actually being measured and so, he claimed, it would be good to remind people to actually have measures that they will measure.
I am not sure if he is exactly right or not, but I came up with my own standard for measures. Its a little lazy compared to some, but I find it useful.
I think measures should be Credible, Useful and Easy (CUE).
The most important component is Useful – the meansure must assist you to either make a better decision, change a specific bahaviour or reduce the ambiguity in your understanding of something. It is suprising how easy it is to forget that the measure is only worthwhile if it can be used for something – in which case you should understand what you are likely to use it for before designing the measure.
But the measure also needs to be Credible so that you and others are confident that you can rely on it. Note however that being Credible without being Useful is actually worse that not being Credible – you will confidently make decisions on the wrong data. Thus you also need to understand where the measure will sound good but not be relevant.
Easy means that it should be easy enough to measure to make it worth doing. So a measure might be worthwhile even if it is a substantial effort as long as you gain a huge benefit from it. But my experience is that if it is hard to measure then people will forget to measure it, take short cuts and even fudge the information. So the harder it is to perform the measure the more you need to ensure the people doing the measuring believe it is Credible and Useful to measure it propoerly.
So there you have it – measures should be CUE. Not quite the same ring to it as saying goals should be SMART but good enough to be useful (I hope).
Posted in Investigation, Measurement | Leave a Comment »
Questions for project audits – part two
Posted by James King on July 24, 2010
When auditing a project (or taking over a project or even taking on a senior role in a team) I like to go and talk to everyone in the team.
When I do, I generally ask them the same questions to get a better feel for what is going on.
I really liked a set of questions I picked up from a book called “The First 90 Days”, so I use a modified set of them:
What is your role?
- What does that mean?
- How would you explain it to my mother?
- How would others explain what you do?
How confident are you the project will meet it’s objectives?
- What are the objectives? Really?
- How clear are you on the objectives?
- What do management think the project is doing?
- What do others think?
- If it fails, where will it probably have gone wrong?
What is the biggest issue facing the project?
- What would happen if we could get rid of that problem?
- What would need to change to get rid of it?
- How could we deal with that problem?
- How is it impacting us/the project? How does it impact you?
- How are we currently dealing with it?
- Why is it still there? What is stopping us deal with it?
- What should we do about it now?
What is the biggest unexploited opportunity in the team?
- What would have to change for us to exploit it?
- What would happen if we did?
What would you do if you were me?
Most projects are really really complicated. But most people know how well it is going or how scary it is if they have time to think about it. So I find you get a pretty good overall understanding if you just ask everybody these questions.
Posted in Investigation, Reflection, Risk | Leave a Comment »
Questions for project audits – part one
Posted by James King on July 24, 2010
I was talking to a colleague recently and promised to share some of the questions I ask when auditing a project (or taking one over).
My first question is generally “what is the project about?” But that generally leads to a vague answer. So I use my “question compass”:
My question compass
These are the questions I use to get a basic orientation when analyzing just about anything. By way of explanation though, I don’t always use the exact wording shown.
When asking “what do you mean” I use a technique that sounds really simple and is surprisingly effective – the “nouns and verbs” technique.
I listen for a noun in a sentence and then ask “what do you mean by ‘noun’?”. When I get a response I ask about one of the verbs in the response “How do people currently ‘verb’?” or “How do you envision people will ‘verb’”.
I keep doing this for a little while even if I think I know what people mean because it is amazing how often it clarifies my understanding. Then I pick one of the things the person said and ask “why are we doing this project?”.
I do use the famous 5-whys technique to probe more deeply (ie ask why several times) but I also add the question “why else?”.
I was once told that we do things for two reasons – the right reason (the one we tell people) and the real reason. I think it is a quote from someone famous. But it certainly clarifies my thinking when I ask this question.
My next question is “Is that true?” and I ask this one in a number of ways:
- What would the team say the purpose is if I asked them?
- Do all the steering committee share the same understanding?
- How do you know that is true? How do others know?
- How would you know if that was not the case? (my favourite question).
Almost there – but I still have one last question – “So what?”. Like asking if something is true, asking so what can seem a bit blunt. So I ask it in a couple of different ways:
- What impact is that having?
- What would happen if we didn’t do it?
- What would the impact be over the long term if we don’t do it?
- What will happen if we do it? What else will happen? What won’t happen?
- What are you hoping won’t happen if we do that?
- What will the team/customer say when it happens?
After these questions I generally at least have some idea of what is going on – which is often the best place to start.
Posted in Investigation, Leading change, Measurement, Reflection, Risk | Leave a Comment »
