The Two Glass Bowls

I created this illustration on one of my management training in Medan.

I presented two glass bowls to the audience, and told them to think of a way to move the bowls two meters on the floor, but they are not allowed to move themselves.

One volunteer tried to slide the glass bowls on the floor to reach the desired distance, and succeeded. Another one tried to roll it, but found that the bowls, being only half a ball, rolled to the left and bumped the wall. Good thing it didn't break.

When the audience were out of ideas, then I proposed another way involving duct tape : I put the lids together to form a kind of glass ball - not a perfect ball, but at least it's close to a round tire - and bound it with the duct tape. Then, I rolled it on the floor, made it reach the two meters target, and roll beyond the line.

At work, people consist of two, completely different sides : Technical and tactical. People can be taught and trained about technical things, like - for example - good soldering methods, sewing techniques, SAP implementation, etc. People develop skills from years of experience doing his work, enabling him to do nice acrobatics through it, like, a mechanical engineer who can manipulate and modify the mechanisms of broken and malfunctioning machineries, or a machine operator who's able to make temporal adjustment to his workstation to keep it productive while waiting for the mechanics to come, etc. All that are the technical side of human being : There's no limit to what we can develop from people, thus we can keep filling the glass with knowledge forever.

The second part is the tactical part : Feelings, motives, courage, creativity, etc. People DO need to be encouraged. People DO need something to drive them to do their work.

But unfortunately, many organizations treat their people like robots, that is, only focus on the technical side. Companies arrange tight and intensive training program on how to operate the production machineries, upgrade their knowledge on new specifications and features of the company's products, or invite experienced and professional gurus to conduct a series of courses and training sessions, etc., while putting aside the fact that they also need to persuade and encourage the people to correctly and appropriately implement the knowledge in their daily activities. Not to mention to keep them loyal and implement their newly-acquired knowledge to the benefit of the company.

Treating people like robots is like sliding one bowl on the floor. While the bowl would eventually develop scratches, people will eventually develop stress and demotivation. Can people achieve when they are treated like robots? The answer is YES. Of course highly-trained people can achieve their goals. For example, a woman with countless hours of experience in sewing and spent many sessions on sewing methods training, will undoubtedly reach the pieces per day targets assigned to her. Or, a supervisor who just came back from his 3 months ISO training in the US would flawlessly know how to learn and implement the local company's standard operation procedures and management control systems. But it's people we are talking about, here. People may be able to keep their ideals high and do their work flawlessly after they walk out of the training room. But people will eventually face problems and obstacles in their everyday activities. Even an easily predictable problems can bring down people's courage.

And at time like this we need to help people back on their feet. Some problems are work-related, and some others are non-work-related. Even a brief argument with the spouse in the morning can cause a whole day of bad mood and unnecessary mistakes. Thus, it needs a good leader to come up with ways to tackle this kind of problems and bring him back to work.

So this is what duct-taping the bowls means : While we keep our employees technically updated, we also need to keep their spirit and morale up. Keep doing this, we will find ourselves see productivity improves with relatively smaller effort. We would start to see them exceed their targets because they want to give more. Remember the story about the two employees in the Toyota factory? Both guys have the same, simple job description : Pulling levers to mechanically and manually continue a small part of the assembly process. When asked about what they are doing in the booth, one guy said plainly, "I'm here only to pull these levers", while the other guy answers "I'm making Toyota!". I'm sure that the first guy never get encouragement and positive feedbacks from his supervisor, while the other guy keep getting positive inputs and encouragement from his superior.

So you see, it's all a matter of treating people as a complete human being. Hard? Yes. But it's learnable.

I don't want my people to do their best. I want my people to WANT to do their best.

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