Allegiance

During a Productivity Improvement Project, I asked this question to my trainees of managers : Do you want your people to do their work? As in, doing it properly, according to the system and the rules, following the do’s and avoiding the don’ts? They answered enthusiastically, “YES!” Well, of course we want our people to do their work correctly, mistake-free and flawless. We want professionals who know what they are doing and do it right.

Then, I startled them that if I were them, I DON’T want my people to do their job. Of course, some of them frowned and asked “why?”, to which I responded with a single sentence that made their frown even uglier : “I want my people to WANT to do their work”. Well anyway, it’s a strategy to give an opening for explanation . . . it keeps people focused.

I believe I explained it somewhere in my previous posts, that modern people are smarter and more critical. Instead of fully dependant on their muscles and physical traits, they use their brains and mental powers to improve themselves and make use of them to their benefit in everyday activities. Thus, it’s one of the reasons behind the term “work smart, don’t work hard”.

With all the skills and knowledge, people tend to think “why should I give more? It’s not worth my salary”. Well, this salary thing is so common. The company doesn’t want to pay more, but the employee thinks that his skills and hard work deserve better compensation. But it’s interesting to find that one guy feels comfortable with his salary and willing to give more, while the other guy keeps complaining and demanding more salary, although they are doing a relatively same job. I’ve seen courageous and motivated employee in one company, and depressed, complaining employee in other organization with the same job description.

So what’s wrong?

Later on, I’ll write something more detail about the 8 Effective Leader’s Behaviors, but now all I’m saying is that it’s people we are dealing with here. We don’t just want them to do their work correctly, but we want them to actually own and develop a sense to do their work right. We want them to – say – automatically do things right and flawlessly. Of course, we would want to implement control systems like Pokayoke, ISO, 5S etc. to improve our organization in a more systematic way, but again, it’s all about how eager our people want to make use it in their everyday life. Or, we might want to push them, squeeze them or bully them to use their skills and knowledge to the benefit of the company, but it would only make them robots who will only move on command, they will not start the initiatives to work and improve.

What should we do?

Be a good leader. Yeah, it may sound naive to you, but I’ve seen people willing to die for their manager, and dedicate their lives to serve under their superiors. It’s all about good leadership, maintaining good work environment and open communication. Win-win solution, involvement in problem-solving, mutual respect and two-way communication are a few among others in order to create a good relationship with our employees, which leads to courageous and creative employees who are willing to “die” for us. They are willing to give more to the company, they are willing to dedicate their skills and knowledge to the benefit of the organization. They might not become super employees, but they have enough sense of belonging to improve themselves, helping the organization and the company to improve itself.

So, back to the statement above : I don’t want my people to do their work, but I want my people to WANT to do their work. I want my people to have the will to work correctly, I want my people to follow the rules and implement well-laid system without me being depressed and stressed-out to make them do it, and I want my people to have the initiatives to improve themselves. I want my people to have allegiance to the company.

It is a cheaper way to improve the company. In a good way, that is . . .

The Thaw – Freeze Concept

If I ask you how to change the shape of an ice cube into a cone-shaped ice? It's as simple as thawing the ice cube, and put its liquid form into a cone-shaped container, and store it in the freezer. Then, after an hour we'll have the cone-shaped ice.

Simple.

So, what does it have to do with continuous improvement? You see, most of the time people tend to feel comfortable with the work they have been doing for years, or people feel that there's nothing wrong with the thing they've been doing all this time. They don't know (or being ignorant of the fact) that they can do more, or something better. It's just about being aware of our room for improvement. And this is when the thaw-freeze concept might help.

Here's an analogy to explain it : There was a guy who always go to his office walking. He felt nothing wrong with it, and he was happy. Someday, a friend told him that if he buy a bike, it'd make him reach his office faster, it'd safe his time. At first, the guy felt that it's not an urgent necessity, and it's a bit expensive, so he put it aside and kept his walking routine; but the thought of the bike was still there and bugged him, sometimes.

Later, the friend, upon knowing that the guy still walk to his office, told him the benefit of having a bike : He can travel everywhere faster, which would save his time AND money, and there's also the workout element on it : It's also a healthy option. So finally, the guy felt that it's a necessity, a good workout, and he made a calculation and found that indeed it'd save his money, and then went to buy the bike. The learning process was quite fast, and now he's happy with his bike, and travel faster to the office.

Same thing with our everyday life at work. As mentioned before, people tend to feel "okay" with the current situation, which is one of the major barriers in change management. In this state, people are like the ice cube : They just don't know exactly the benefit of improvements, "unconscious incompetence". All we have to do is to make them realize that they can do more and improve, by simply showing the fact that there's a room for improvement. Make people realize it. Make people see the mutual benefit of the improvement. Sometimes we might want to bug and annoy people to make them feel the need to change and improve themselves. This is what we call the "thawing" process : Make people KNOW that they can change and improve, and that the improvement might bring mutual benefits, so they would have a "conscious incompetence". They know that they can improve, but they don't know how to do it properly.

At this point, you might think that this is all about selling technique. Well, you're right . . . to some extent. A salesperson is able to make even ignorant people feel the need to buy his products, and make him finally buy the product.

But here's how it differs.

Now, the teachings begin. We teach the people on how to improve, make them learn from their mistakes, and help them up when they fail. Guide them through the change process. We teach them the how-to's and we do this until they have what we call a "conscious competence" : They KNOW how to improve and they are doing it.

Then, we help them maintain the new behavior, and keep ourselves open if there's a need for help. Soon, if they do it consistently, they would do it autonomously, which we call it an "unconscious competence" : They know how to do it, and they just do it.

And when we want to improve further, do the cycle all over again. And there's no end to this . . . there's always room for improvement. People might think WHY it has to be this complicated. I can simply answer it : It's human we are dealing with.

So now . . . what will it be if I want the guy up there to buy a car. An automatic transmission car. A "green" car :D