A few weeks back, I joined yet another online meeting, and something felt instantly different. Smooth music was playing in the background while the host welcomed me to the meeting.
The host was Michael Doyle, and that was the first time I was exposed to that approach of welcoming people in online meetings. I tried to think about what felt different, and it is tough for me to describe—something like a cool down, calm and relaxed atmosphere. The meeting then went very well, and I was delighted with the outcome.
Was it only chance? Was it only about the people involved? I needed to test that in other settings.
I picked a team and a meeting that would be much more challenging, and I played smooth, positive jazz music to open the meeting.
People were surprised. They made a few comments about the music and what it reminded them. If we were not in the middle of a pandemic, the meeting would have probably been in-person, and we would have been in a hotel, so I guess that is why the first thing they mentioned was the elevator, the hotel lobby, and the breakfast lounge. The chit-chat went very smoothly and relaxed. I felt the meeting went very well.
As a result, I decided to play the music again during the breaks. I will do that again!
What about you try that too?
Do you know any research on the topic? I would love to read some!
In Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of Zappos, shared how he learned to play poker out of boredom. Poker is not like the other gambling games played in casinos with odds stacked against you. With Poker, you don’t play against the casino. You play against the other players. So, if you know the rules and you understand the statistics, then you can win. The question then is to pick the right table to play.
“Act weak when strong, act strong when weak. Know when to bluff.”
― Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
Do you want to compete with excellent players with no money on the table? Or do you want to play with not so strong players with a lot of money on the table? It depends on your motivation behind playing.
Two big learnings from that experience in Poker:
Know the rules of the game you play,
Pick the right table.
All that brings a question: Are you at the right table?
Let’s bring back Igraine from the Primary Team story. As you may recall, Igraine is a fictional character who leads the global company’s EMEA Field Organization.
Emile is one of the consultants in that organization. Emile is passionate about Leadership and Organizational Development. He joined the company mainly because of its higher-purpose communication.
STAGE ONE These are tribes whose members are despairingly hostile—they may create scandals, steal from the company, or even threaten violence.
STAGE TWO The dominant culture for 25% of workplace tribes, this stage includes members who are passively antagonistic, sarcastic, and resistant to new management initiatives.
STAGE THREE 49% of workplace tribes are in this stage, filled with knowledge hoarders who want to outwork and outthink their competitors on an individual basis. Each employee is a lone warrior.
STAGE FOUR The transition from “I’m great” to “we’re great” comes in this stage where the tribe members are excited to work together for the benefit of the entire company.
STAGE FIVE Less than 2% of workplace tribal culture is in this stage—where members who have made substantial innovations seek to use their potential to make a global impact.
Emile is frustrated with some aspects of the current organization. He sees the stages as:
Gang: Life sucks. Life is constantly threatened. You have to join a gang to survive.
Dictatorship: Your life sucks. You are under the pressure of an authoritarian boss.
Individual Greatness: People say: “I am great.” They hoard information in one-on-ones to outthink their competition. They made jokes at the expense of others to demonstrate their greatness.
Organization Greatness: People say: “We are great.” They collaborate to outpass the competitors.
Life is Great Culture: People say: “Life is great.” They collaborate and cooperate inside and outside the organization to create a positive impact on the world.
Emile believes that the individual incentives, the individual awards, not speaking of the crazy number of one-on-ones, prove that the organization is at stage 3 at best, far from the promise of stage 5.
Furthermore, when he shared to one of his mentors about his willingness to develop leadership in the organization, the response came as a shock:
“I understand that you want to develop leadership in the organization, but is it the kind of leadership the organization wants?”
Emile’s anonymous mentor
Do you believe Emile has to leave the table to find another one?
The first thing to realize is that similarly as human development stages present simultaneously in all of us:
baby: me,
child: us,
teen: all of us.
The same applies to organizations. Part of the organization, or even people in the organization, could be operating at one stage while others operate at another stage. So, what can be observed in one part of the organization is probably not true somewhere else.
“A great question for coaches to ask is this: “What triads, if built, will fix this problem?” The “black belt” version of the question (most useful in stable Stage Four cultures) is “What triads will help us spot and fix problems so big we can’t even think of them?”
― Dave Logan, John King, Halee Fischer-Wright, Tribal Leadership
The second thing to realize is that your influence level in driving behavioral changes is more important than you think. If you adopt new behaviors, like having one-on-ones only for getting to know people or for development purposes, and stop having one-on-ones for “problem-solving” or “influencing” (the classic “information-hoarding” of stage 3). Then, you can start a movement because other people witness the efficiency of the approach.
The third thing to realize is that it could be the right table to play at if you play according to the rules of the stage. You cannot play “stage 5” with people at “stage 2”. But you may start to play “stage 4” with people at “stage 3” who realize that something has to change in their organization.
With all that in mind, what proposal Emile can make to Igraine?
Assume Igraine is at stage 3; based on the previous story; it is probably not changing everything in her way of working.
Emile wants to identify one thing that a triad could fix (to use the terminology of Tribal Leadership). Shifting from one-on-ones to a group of three people who can, by connecting, build momentum and bring lasting change.
Because people at stage 3 complain about the lack of time, Emile has to pick one thing that gives back Igraine time.
And because people at stage 3 complain of the lack of drive of people reporting to them to solve problems, Emile has to pick a crucial problem for Igraine and the organization. Something that improves the balance on the BEPS Axes of a Leader.
Emile has to bring the idea in a typical “stage 3” way: many one-on-ones to make sure the idea has chances to get through. Emile has to pick the right table, in which he plays the rules of the game even when the goal is to change the rules.
One person asks a question, not even a rhetorical one, followed by an awkward silence. Did it ever happen to you? It happened to me a lot, especially now that my days are filled with online or virtual meetings.
Of course, the facilitator of the meeting, or the person who asks the question, could formally go around the table to ask each participant to express their opinions. It is time-consuming, does not really help with the dynamic of the conversation, and in most cases, does not really help surface the potential disagreements.
The simplest way is to assess the opinion of the room is to introduce hand signals. Here is how it works with the team I interact with. The approach is loosely inspired by the Decider (from The Core Protocols).
The proposer clearly states is one and only one proposal and asks the participants to show their hands. The best results are obtained when everybody votes at the same time that to avoid the temptation of following the crowd (and regretting it after 🙂 ).
Participants can:
Thumbs Up to show their approbation.
Thumbs Down to show their disagreement.
Flat Hand to show they are ready to support the decision of the team.
Let’s review what is coming next when all participants have expressed their opinion.
When everybody thumbs up, or you have a majority of thumbs up and some flat hands. Nothing to really worry about and you can move on.
When you have a thumb down, or you don’t have a majority of thumbs up, it signals the need for inquiring about the reasons of the participants. The way you formulate your question is important. “What will it take to get you to thumbs up?” is a better question than “What do you think?” as it focuses the person on finding a way to move forward, and not to express all the reasons to stop the progress.
You can adjust the proposal and get another vote.
The teams usually adjust very quickly to the approach and find improvements in their way of expressing their opinions. Progressively, team members will be more comfortable to express when they are “absolute NO” on a proposal, which will minimize the time spent attempting to resolve things that cannot be resolved.
The last signal we introduced in one team is: Arms Crossed to signify when is it time to move on to another topic. The equivalent of the ELMO facilitation technique. ELMO stands for Enough Let’s Move On. You can use the real Elmo or a picture of him, just a piece of paper, or Lisette Sutherland’s Collaboration Superpowers Cards.
I also worked with teams that introduced a variant of the flat hand signal. With the Palm up, it then means that the participant will follow the team but would prefer not to, but does not have strong objections.
In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni tells the story of an executive team. To avoid having the functional leaders be only interested in their own department, the CEO asks them to consider the Leadership Team as their primary team.
The idea of a primary team that takes precedence over all the others is key to overcome silo-thinking in the interest of the higher-level company goals.
How can the primary team approach be used when we go deeper into the organization?
Let’s take the example of Bob, a Global Sales and Marketing leader who reports to the CEO. His primary team is then the Corporate Leadership Team.
Let’s assume that Bob’s reports are a Marketing Leader, Rahman, and three Sales Region Leaders: Yun, Igraine, and Aileen. Those four leaders form the Field Leadership Team.
Have you noticed what I just said?
Bob’s primary team is not the Field Leadership Team, even if he is the manager of the people in the team.
Bob’s mission is to assist his reports to form a team so that they can lead Sales and Marketing for the company in all the regions. In addition to his reports, Bob invites in the Field Leadership Team leaders of supporting functions to share the same goals.
Let’s cascade that at the regional level. Igraine leads EMEA. She has direct reports covering sales in sub-regions, marketing, and dotted-line reports from the region’s supporting functions: People, Legal, Finances, Operations.
Bob wants Igraine to consider the FLT as her primary team. But, Igraine does not see that this way. She has successfully grown the business from a small subsidiary in one country to a significant business rivaling in size and growth rate with Aileen’s Americas region.
Igraine is deeply involved with the business in the region. And every day brings confirmation that she needs to be deeply involved in the details to make sure that decisions are made in the right way.
Igraine would like to form a leadership team with her direct and dotted-line. But where to start when you need to be calling all the shots, and you know that you need to be involved in the details.
Igraine cannot let the business fail. She seems to be the only one who really understands the business’s details and the only one to really care or act at the right time.
Let’s go through some of the aspects of the changes.
Perception
What about if what you see as a confirmation of the need to be deeply involved was in reality due to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When Douglas McGregor introduced the Theory X and Theory Y on human motivation and management he developed at the MIT Sloan School of Management in the 50s, he explained that they were only assumptions.
But, I would say here. Unfortunately, if you agree with the assumptions, they will be realized.
So what Igraine observes as a confirmation, could be in reality, just a consequence of what she is doing in managing herself and her team.
In our fictitious example, Igraine was very successful and was promoted to take “bigger” jobs. Still, in reality, her interest, motivation, and energy come from what she was doing before.
Either she makes the decision and finds interest in the “bigger job,” or she will not make a shift. Not only her progression will stop there, but her whole region is at risk if she does not.
I believe this is what led Laurence J. Peter to formulate his famous principle.
Balance on the BEPS Axes
You may have read about the BEPS Axes of a Leader before. BEPS stands for Business, Execution, People, and System and helps people realize when they don’t invest in one or more axes.
The Business part of the equation is the most important. It’s about understanding the business and the ecosystem your organization evolves in, understanding why you provide solutions, products, features, and services, and formulating a clear vision. We should always start here
Most people make the mistake of focusing on Execution, but this is not usually the main problem. It tends to be an issue for managers when they are deep in execution or defining the precise tasks each person should work on. By going too deep, they forgot the other axes.
People can be more of a problem. Hiring, growing, managing performance, and self-improvement is often passively delegated to HR or managers. However, this is not always a beneficial practice.
System is a big one, and usually, one suffering from underinvestment. As American engineer W.E. Deming said, “a bad system will beat a good person every time.” Understanding the system formed by the people, the organization, the processes, and tools is of paramount importance and will help you remove the obstacles to great work. It’s all too common to see layers of complexity piling up on top of each other. Simplicity is key.
How to help Igraine?
Back to Igraine. What happens is that Igraine is deeply involved in Execution to make sure the business is successful. Igraine knows the System very well and knows how to navigate the System very well.
The chances are that the System grew around Igraine without her realizing the complexity of it. Multiple people took the lead of specific aspects forming teams that grew “natural” boundaries around them.
The silo-effect emerges because of these boundaries, but Igraine can navigate the system without even feeling the boundaries. The problem is only visible to the other people in the organization who will experience the difficulties linked to these boundaries: slow process, busy work, inaccurate and/or inaccessible data.
Now that the system is in place, it can take a lot of energy to change it. The teams would love some change, but usually, they identify that changes are needed in other teams. Not many people have a complete understanding of the whole system and the ones who have usually don’t experience the complexity the same way as others. So they don’t have a big incentive to change it.
This is where Igraine’s deep knowledge of the System can make a difference. By focusing her attention and energy on changing the system to make it simple and efficient for its regular users, she can greatly impact the organization’s performance.
The whole system connects to her, putting her on the critical path of all decisions.
Delegation
Telling Igraine, she should delegate will not help. She knows that. She wants that. It is just not happening. Telling her, she has to intentionally not make a decision but grow the people to make them is not enough.
To help her, people in her organization can influence the change by taking the lead on specific decisions.
Let’s take a concrete example: the definition of the commission plans. Do you want Igraine to decide on every one of them? Let the process runs the way it ran in the past, and this is exactly what you will get.
You have to insert yourself into the system. Start with the Why. Write down the motivation behind the commission plans, the behaviors to influence, and how the plans’ components are meant to influence them.
Now put your thoughts into your proposal. What do you want to achieve and how it will affect the plans: add/remove a component, add/remove a plan, align the plans of different roles.
With that in hand, you can meet with Igraine and involve her in the high-level decision. Once you reach an agreement, you can now propose to review all the plans for your perimeter.
In doing so, you drove a change in the system, you got Igraine to delegate something that was falling on her plate for historical reasons, and you made her decision at the level she should be involved in.
You are not asking for more delegation, or even worse, waiting for delegation to happen. You are driving it.
To do that with confidence, you need to balance your investment on the four axes and involve multiple stakeholders in preparing your proposal. You have to leverage the organization’s knowledge and the knowledge of Igraine to make the change happen.
When the leaders in Igraine’s leadership team can drive those kinds of changes, Igraine will have proof that she can delegate more to her leadership team.
You don’t need to wait for the change to come from the top.
You can make it emerge and help Igraine make the right choice for her primary team.
More important, you will find in the post mentioned above suggestion to keep up with your resolutions.
The last mentoring conversations I had inspired me for that post. In several of them, I believe nearly all of them, people mentioned how tired they were.
In one of the conversations, we went deeper to understand the root causes, and the strategies to put in place to install a sustainable pace for the teams.
I am a big fan of speedy meetings. It is an option to schedule 25 minutes meeting instead of 30 minutes, or 50 minutes instead of 1 hour. I intended never to schedule back-to-back meetings so that I can have a break in between them.
My plan was to use the break either as a real break from the day with a short meditation for example.
Sometimes I felt it was better to use the break to immediately capture and share the action items so that other people will not be blocked waiting for me.
Unfortunately, it does not completely work. I am even tempted to say: “It failed miserably.” The break time is too often used by the previous meeting that runs over, making it challenging to arrive on time for the next meeting. Reading this, you can observe that I am not flexible with time. Read more about that in The Culture Map post.
The consequence of running over is endless back-to-back meetings. More context switching. More pending small tasks accumulating (the ones that I sometimes forget at the end of the day to remember them in the middle of the night). No physical and mental breaks. This impairs the ability even to be oneself, to behave, think, live properly.
In addition to that, as nobody works in an office, there is no water cooler break anymore, no social conversation, no simple ideas sharing or bouncing outside of the context of a formal meeting.
Sounds damning, right?
One of my mentees found what I think is a perfect tactic during an open space retreat with his team. They want to focus their meeting on one topic. They schedule one hour for the topic on their calendar. But their team agreement or social contract is:
The first five meetings are for social conversation,
The next twenty minutes are for collaborating on the topic,
The next twenty minutes are for focused time on the followups of that conversation,
The last fifteen minutes are for a break.
Attentive readers could point out that nothing prevents the twenty-minute discussion from running over and consuming the whole time. It is obviously true. Nothing but the team member themselves. They defined the solution, updated their team agreements, and are now in charge of the implementation.
When I adopted speedy meetings, I wished people would adjust to the unusual timing and follow my lead.
When as a team:
people agree on how to create, review and improve their OKRs,
people agree on how to structure the time of their meeting,
people agree to limit their work in progress so that they limit context switching,
people agree to ask for a clear purpose, clear agenda, and get to a clear understanding of what their contribution is expected to be, before accepting a meeting invite,
people agree to call out each other when they break the social contract or team agreement,
and other aspects they will identify as key to install a sustainable pace.
They can have a big impact.
So maybe a good resolution could be to create or update your team agreement or social contract and have one of your OKRs focused on getting to a sustainable pace even in the challenging conditions we currently face.
In their article, What is agile?, Jen Krieger, Daniel Oh, and Matt Takane discuss what we at Red Hat consider the most important sentence of the Agile Manifesto:
“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.”
I like this sentence because it helps to understand why we could apply “agile” outside of software development. We could replace “developing software” in that sentence with something like “cooking,” and it would still give us a good idea of the mindset of people who engage in “agile cooking”.
Of course, we often associate “agile” with specific practices. Let’s take the example of two agile practices that were used together during a Coding Dojo event. A Coding Dojo is a great way of uncovering better ways of developing… I’ll stop there; you know the rest of the sentence by now. A Coding Dojo is a great way to get better at something by practicing with others in a safe and controlled environment. The practices I uncovered that day were test-driven development and pair programming:
Test-driven development, or TDD, is a process in which a developer starts by writing an automated test for a function, then writes the code that will make the test pass.
Pair programming is when two coders work together using one computer.
The Coding Dojo experience
Imagine yourself in a room with 20 coders, one laptop, and one big screen. Two seats are near the computer for the first pair of programmers, and there are enough seats for the other programmer pairs who will observe before taking their turn at the keyboard.
The kata we used that day was the Bowling Game. The goal of the Bowling Game, as explained on the Coding Dojo website, is to “create a program, which, given a valid sequence of rolls for one line of American Ten-Pin Bowling, produces the total score for the game.”
Each pair of programmers has a five-minute timebox to advance in the resolution of the challenge, using TDD and taking steps that are as small as possible. At the end of the timebox, another pair will follow.These interactions help them express their best in the code they produce.The first coder starts by writing the first test. The test fails to red as there is no code yet (test tools associate green with a passing test and red with a failing test). The second coder writes the smallest possible amount of code to make the test pass green, and he or she then improve the tests. The test goes back to red, and we switch back to the first programmer, who then writes the smallest possible amount of code to make the test pass. And so on. Refactoring is done along the way.
The interaction between the two coders is the kind of magic we all love to see. That’s because contributors are not submitting a patch hoping for a fast review; they have the review in real time. And because they are progressing in small steps, explaining what they are doing, it is easy for everyone to stay connected, whether you are in the audience or the second coder in the pair.
Writing the test first forces an early understanding of what is required. Focusing on the smallest amount of code possible to make the test pass also helps to keep the design as simple as possible. Refactoring along the way ensures that we keep only the code we need.
Here are the key differences between the Coding Dojo experience and the typical development process:
Developers work in pairs instead of alone to code features and fix bugs
Testing is done before development instead of after code is developed
Code review is done in real time, with the pair, instead of waiting for another developer to review and merge
Looking at a larger amount of code makes it more difficult to understand. The process is not only slower but leads to less beneficial interactions between the coder and the reviewer.
Why do we consider pair programming and TDD agile practices? Because they are designed to foster strong interactions between the individual members of the team. These interactions help them express their best in the code they produce.
This brings us to the second sentence of the Agile Manifesto:
“Through this work, we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.”
You can, of course, have processes and tools. But those processes and tools should foster the expression of individuals and their interactions. The latter has more value than the former.
So the next time you are engaged in a conversation about tools or processes, ask yourself (and others): Are we bringing a tool or a process that will grow individuals and interactions?
Answering yes to that question shows you the agile way.
I believe I already told you a lot about the benefit of participating or facilitating a book discussion club.
Last week, I received in a tweet another proof of that. I was amazed by the quality of the visualization the people from the book discussion club at Conserto came up with.
A few weeks back, I attended McChrystal Group Chief of Staff Virtual Academy. I was looking to stretch my thinking to further grow in the role. Since then, I keep a copy of the Chief of Staff four quadrants on my desk to remind me where the focus should be depending on the topic, and who I am talking to.
Source: One Mission: How Leaders Build Team of Teams by Chris Fussell
The quadrants come from Chris Fussell’s book One Mission: How Leaders Build Team of Teams. A follow-up to the book he co-wrote with General Stanley McCrystal, Team of Teams, relating their experience transforming the U.S. military’s Special Forces into a sum of cohesive small agile teams crossing the silos.
“No plan of operations extends with any degree of certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy force.”
Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the Prussian General Staff, 1857
It took sometimes for military organizations to move from a detailed plan approach to a mission approach. Ironically, within enterprises, people who have never been in the military, justify their big detailed plans driven from the top using military vocabulary. Maybe, they could benefit from reading those books?
Being sarcastic will not help if in your Chief of Staff role you aim at becoming a true thought partner to your principal.
And this is exactly where the quadrants and the training help. Becoming a true thought partner is only the third step.
The Virtual Academy is organized in three sessions, each of them covering a step:
Bridging the Organization
Optimizing Decision Making
Becoming a Thought Partner
What I liked about the training was the combination of knowledge sharing from Chris Fussell and others from McCrystall Group, with interactive learning sessions in small groups of Chiefs.
We discussed how our focus, our impact on the organization, our role in the information flow, and the way we communicate have to be adjusted depending on the step we are currently in.
It was highly valuable to me as I was changing role at that time from a global Engineering focused organization, to an EMEA Sales and Services focused organization. I assume it would be as valuable if you are taking on a new role, or to push yourself to grow in your current role.
Happy to discuss it further if you are interested.
The Chief of Staff role is multi-faceted and highly dependant on the company, the principal, and the context in which people operate. I collected a few thoughts and links about the role in the Tech Industry a while back.
Interview questions reveal the essential characteristics of a role. So I wondered what I could learn about the Chief of Staff role from the questions others would ask.
In a previous post, I described a great approach to get people to get to know each other a little bit more thanks to a fantastic one-on-one format. Try it, you will see yourself, it is really fantastic!
Another approach to get people to know each other is to use Appreciative Inquiry.
I used nearly the same three questions in different contexts: during the Wednesday breakfast for new employees in a fast-growing company, and also as an ice-breaker for meetings where people don’t know each other.
The mechanics are simple and highly effective. You ask people to form pairs. Their goal is to interview each other, asking three questions:
Tell a story that you consider being a success,
Without being humble, describe the talents and skills you used to make it a success,
Describe your three concrete wishes for the future of the company.
You give them a limited time, like 15 minutes, to do the two interviews. You probably need to remind them that the time is ticking and be flexible with the timing. As you walk around in the room, people ask you clarification questions, such as “Is it limited to professional life?” (The answer is: “No, of course, you can share non-professional experiences.“)
People usually enjoy that session and ask for more time to interview others in the room. You don’t need to give them that time. Just mention that they will have breaks, lunch, and dinner or, in short, other opportunities when they can interview each other.
If you are ready to invest a little bit more time, you can add value to the exercise by asking each pair to present briefly the talents and wishes of each other. It is really powerful when each writes talents and wishes on sticky notes (one per sticky note) so at the end of the presentation, you have one sheet of flip-chart representing the talents of the group and another with all the wishes of the group.
By starting the conversation there the room is full of energy, confidence, and optimism, and you are ready to have a productive meeting.
After one meeting I facilitated, I received a thank you note from one of the participants explaining that he enjoyed the meeting and the activities because “it created the kind of positive energy that gets things done.”
We are back to the mindset conversation I cover in the first chapter of Changing Your Team From The Inside. Shifting our mindset is essential to be able to interact effectively with others. Helping them to shift their mindset is key to effective collaboration.
Try it and let me know how it goes! I will use it again next week, in a distributed setting this time as we cannot be face to face.
Being a People-First company is adopting the posture of a servant leader, as described by Robert K. Greenleaf in his book Servant Leadership.
If you want staff to give excellent service to customers, then as a leader, you need to give excellent service to the staff.
Alan Mulally, the former CEO of Boeing and Ford, turned over those two American icon companies by having People First in the first place of his principles.
When the company is successful, there could be a problem with that approach. What really matters to the employee? What is really an excellent service?
Patty McCord, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, explains in her book Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, that most companies have it all wrong when it comes to recruiting, motivating, and creating great teams. The question is not about the perks or the bonus plans, the question is more about high performance and profitability.
What happens with success is that companies tend to become self-centered. It is all about them, and everything else revolves around them. They become arrogant and complacent.
It is not about being Customer-First in place of being People-First. It is about changing the perspective and restoring the position of the customer at the center of the preoccupation of all the people in the company.
It is not Customer-First, It is Customer-Centered.
A compelling narrative that reads more like a thriller than a business book.
I could not have said it better! I posted a while back a quote from the book which gives an idea of the toxic starting point:
Ford’s executives no longer spent their days plotting one another’s demise or defending their turf. Instead, they spent their time working together to ensure the company’s continued success. They offered one another help and sought help when they needed it themselves
In his first days with the company, Mulally designed a plan and stick to it for the next years. He also defined ten rules and called the attention of all his executives to the rules. The rules where displayed on the wall of their main meeting room:
People first
Everyone is included
Compelling vision
Clear performance goals
One plan
Facts and data
Propose a plan, “find-a-way” attitude
Respect, listen, help, and appreciate each other
Have fun… enjoy the journey and each other
I strongly believe that a lot of those rules could be applied in a lot of companies.
Thumbs Up to show their approbation.
Thumbs Down to show their disagreement.
Flat Hand to show they are ready to support the decision of the team.
I also worked with teams that introduced a variant of the flat hand signal. With the Palm up, it then means that the participant will follow the team but would prefer not to, but does not have strong objections.
A good addition to the classic: I want to speak!
