by jonathan_denn | Jan 27, 2021 | Uncategorized
I read over 60 books last year, well, listened mostly, my eyes get tired from all the screen time. The number of books is down a bit from 2019 because I was doing a lot of writing myself.
Audible is my go to resource, although Alexa has a tolerable machine voice now for text-to-speech for kindle books, and is seamless and synced. There are glimmers of Alexa being the “computer” on Star Trek, that oracle of all wisdom. But just glimmers. The other day I asked Alexa how long to Instant Pot some foodstuff, and she actually just told me the answer. Weird that.
I chose No Rules Rules by Reid Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix, as my BOTY for 2020. But not for the reasons you might expect, it’s not just a voyeuristic view inside the mouth of FAANG. While, IMO, this is “the” book on ROWE Results Only Work Environments, it’s more just the far end of the “delegation” scale.
We humans like “either/or” a bit too much. We can Micromanage, which is the other far end of the “delegation” scale or we can ROWE together. In practice every CEO operates somewhere on a spectrum between these two. I can make an argument that if one is a micromanager one is really the COO more than the CEO—because CEOs should be spending a fair amount of time on things three years out or more.
It’s the Eisenhower Matrix, a leader should be working on the “most important but not urgent things.” Managers should be working on “urgent and less important things,” Administrators should be working on “not important but urgent things,” and the rest of your team works on the “not that urgent or not that important things.” E.g. Blockbuster, RIP, had really clean VHS tape boxes, delicious smelling popcorn, friendly staff, and a great selection. How’d that turn out?
The thing about Netflix is, it’s difficult to not claim they are the masters of the both the innovation drum AND the execution drum. The way they roll is that each employee has a shocking amount of freedom of which to do their job. But here’s the catch, Netflix can afford to pay top and I mean by far, the best salaries for each position. For this they get the best players for each position on their team. Not many organizations have this kind of competitive advantage, maybe the other FAANGs, and SaaS companies with gigantic profit margins.
Never-the-less No Rules Rules is a roadmap for the pinnacle in delegation. Having said that, it begs our…
Question of the Week…
What stops the typical micromanaging CEO from delegating more, and stressing less?
I propose the short answer is, “Fear of Loss.” Now recently there’s been a little controversy to this next statement but it still appears to be generally accepted that, “most people are motivated more by fear of loss than hope of gain.”
Another good book on this point I read this year was The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova, poker being a metaphor for decision making. She certainly plays the percentages, to take that whole emotional “thing” out of the equation.
The long answer is,
“What are you prepared to invest, how much pain are you willing to endure, in your team’s learning from their own darn mistakes?”
If you are micromanaging, then your team is absolved from all kudos or blame for their decisions, because they aren’t making any decision—you are. If you are looking at an exit in the future, you will get a way less multiple if your team doesn’t know how to run the place without you.
I’ve had CEOs tell me in one breath that their team is awesome and can do anything, and in the next breath tell me that they work way too much, don’t sleep well, and they are still working on day-to-day stuff because they have to. It can’t be both.
Here’s the crescendo.
None of us reading this are Netflix, but let’s see what the first step might look like, what one position could you almost totally delegate to an extreme “A” player, and then let them do what they do, without micromanaging, to take your business to the next level?
If you’d like a thinking partner on anything you read here—just reply !! Cheers ¡¡ Jon
by jonathan_denn | Sep 3, 2020 | Uncategorized
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a three hour workday? The rest of the day you can follow your flow wherever it may lead. Some people including psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi think that’s as good as life gets. Here are some time management tips how to do just that.
It’s like that moment when you’re surprised and say, “where did the time go?” Think back to days where you had a really productive morning and blew off the rest of the day. What was the quality and quantity of your work? How did you feel? Relaxed, focused, alive? Did you make significant progress on an important project?
We now know from neuroscience that we only get about three hours of quality focused thinking time a day. The rest of the day we are basically phoning it in using mental models and habits to keep us from falling off the rails.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of mental models and habits. If you want to learn more about the former you should check out my friend Shane Parrish’s Farnam Street Blog. But back to the three hour workday, what should it look like?
Here’s how the Three Hour Day is structured.
The three-hour Set is broken up into three Sessions. First a 90 minute uninterrupted Solo or Duo thinking session. It can’t be with three people, that would be a meeting and that’s got different rules. In those 90 minutes, close your door, do not answer your phone, turn off notifications, do not check email, do not pass notes. The point is to get to the bottom of whatever challenge or opportunity you have chosen to invest the better part of your working day on. This needs to be important but not necessarily urgent. It’s probably strategic or at least tactical, instead of operational.
The next session is a 60 minute Jam Session for making beautiful meetings with others—whether in person or on the phone or video conference. It’s not only for jamming with them like a jazz ensemble but also to jam the time out of most those interactions. I say most because two different kinds of meetings do benefit by taking your time and letting everyone including the meeting breath. Those are the two types of divergent meetings: for creative solutions, and purely social gatherings to build relationships.
I lump writing complex emails into the Jam Session. When a phone call or meeting just won’t do sometimes you have to put it in writing. For this you need to have an open-minded listening mindset. That’s why I like to take complex emails out of the deep thinking session because it needs you to use your communication skills a little more than your focus skills. Thinking sessions can be abstract, disjointed, chaotic. That’s not a good mindset for conversing.
Then there is a 30 minute session for rapid task Finales. These are for any little projects that can be completed in 30 minutes or less and that probably don’t need you to turn on your focused mind. Things like paying a bill, purchasing an item, a quick thank you call, run a mundane report. Frequently these tasks are just scanning or sorting items, not highly engaging with them. If the Solo sessions are long and deep, the Finales sessions are short and thin.
Juggling Snowballs in a Tornado
Here are some other time management tips. You can choose to do these in any order. That’s a matter of style. Tornados like to get the little things done so they can concentrate on the big things. Snowballs like to get the big things done first and the little things last, just like stacking snowballs. And Jugglers just do whatever they want whenever they want. I like to call these styles—Juggling Snowballs in a Tornado. In other words, if you don’t intentionally stick with your style—you or someone else may get snow splashed on their face.
Now, if you have no choice but to work a standard 8 hour day, I suggest you do a 3 Hour Set before lunch, and another after lunch. This still leaves you with about 2 hours a day for Improv. Improvisation is a mental state of, “Yes, and…” which is open mindset instead of, “No, but…” which is closed-minded.
If you don’t have an open-mindset around your team then you’re probably micro-managing and that’s probably not going to end well. Micro-managing may be necessary if you are in an exacting business with exceedingly high quality standards—but those businesses are getting rarer and rarer because of technology’s help.
But if you truly are an artisan, and you truly do something that no one else on your team could do—then a closed mindset may be required. I’ve heard it called being a tyrant for quality. If quality is your product or service, and only you have that magic touch—then go for it. If not, life is much more enjoyable when you delegate.
There is some current thinking that you cannot motivate someone. All you can do is give them some autonomy, have them be with other like-minded folks, and make sure they have the skills they need to grow. Once these people and the team catch their rhythm you’ll have a drumbeat everyone can dance to. A good manager or supervisor needs to focus on trusting, supporting, and encouraging—instead of doing their people’s work for them. That’s what really eats up the day.
If you can just work three hours a day and follow this system, then each day you will be doing only the most important things for success, doing whatever communicating that requires, and quickly tidying up those little loose ends. It’s like a mini-day. And one of the little things is to plan what tomorrow’s Set looks like before signing off for the day.
During the rest of your day you will get insights into course-corrections or adjustments you’ll need to make. This is the divergent part of your day. Why not leave a bit of your best “thinking time” for choosing what to think about, first?
The 3 Hour Set in the morning was mostly convergent. It’s kinda like do-ing and be-ing. Do be do be do. While Do-ing will get you there, Be-ing is choosing where to go. You need both, now more than ever. Societal innovation is fast and only getting faster.
Now, again, depending on your style you might like to get your convergent thinking done at night rather than in the morning. You may be a early bird or a night owl, maybe a crow that squawks at dusk and dawn. It’s a similar theory to juggling snowballs in a tornado. Style is important.
You probably already know which you like best. I know for myself, when I’m tired I can have an unusually creative session. That’s because my “inner critic” my convergent self is too tired to put up much of a fight and my creative mind can come out to play. More and more, it’s those creative solutions that account for the really BIG wins.
It’s not about working hard, it’s about working smart with a rhythm. What’s your DRUMBEAT sound like?
by jonathan_denn | Aug 6, 2020 | Uncategorized
If every Boss lets each of their direct reports know in advance what their filtering questions are—how much time would be freed up for other more productive activities? Three percent, thirty percent? What amounts of productivity gain might that bring your organization? 2x, 3x, maybe more? Can you see how this simple time management tip can help your team’s decision making?
This almost amounts to an AI of your first line thinking—then share it with your team. If you keep it to yourself, is that a power thing? Don’t want anyone else to figure out your mojo?
Sharing your filtering questions is a far superior process than everyone wasting time sitting around a table and asking each other what they think? Why? Because they haven’t thought it through, yet. Those responses are just knee jerk reactions to how much more work/aggravation they’re going to get themselves into. Style matters but so does consistency. This blog will give you a framework to do both. I call it the Square Drum. But first let’s lay down the rhythm from DRUMBEAT the book, an Amazon bestseller in both Time Management and Decision Making.
Filtering questions are the interface between your internal and external. It is where you and your team have the opportunity to do some serious second line thinking together. Small groups are almost always smarter than the smartest person in the room. We also know that process beats analysis maybe even by a factor of 6, or so says McKinsey.
The Square Drum process is where your external Notes bubble up in the Kettle Drum of Questions for future action. Notes usually are not what you are working on this week or next. Notes are ideas that are waiting to become worthy of your time. They are probably best sorted in folios by topic. They need to live somewhere so you can easily find them and see how they sound. Having them digitally sort-able is a major plus. If one Note sounds good it has to get past the Filtering Questions. Filtering Questions are the guardian of your time gate. If the Note makes it though the Filtering Questions they can float up and become their own questions. Hence I call this process the big, booming, Kettle Drum of Questions.
To begin the Filtering Question process, you might use a lateral thinking technique or you may have a stroke of genius and see where that leads. Ideas count. We live, or should live, in an idea meritocracy. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that’s where the Square Drum comes in. Essentially, there are four sides Marketers who prefer Risk, Marketers who prefer Safety, Operators who prefer Risk, and Operators who prefer Safety.
By the way, if your team is only on one side of the table then you may be taking too much or too little risk, and you may be overly focused on marketing or operations. At the end of the day the CEO or business owner has to decide on the balance between safety and risk, and when to invest in operations or marketing. That’s usually called Strategy, whether intentional (analytical) or from the gut (intuition.)
We now know from science that the gut actually has brain cells throughout. This gives credence to the saying, “trust your gut” as it actually is your second brain. How you balance the analytical and intuition is a huge topic itself, and for another day. But as it pertains to sharing your Filtering Questions with your team, and knowing your team’s bias for risk, safety, operations, marketing—the goal is to understand their Filtering Questions up and down the organization.
Here are some examples to get you started…
How does this advance the mission (state it clearly) of the organization? In other words, if the mission is to be the friendliest plumbing business ever, then the question is “How does making this change help us become the friendliest plumbers ever? Can you see how this clarifies matters quickly?
“If we are saying ‘yes’ to this, what do we have to say ‘no’ to?” Attention is a limited resource, if the company starts chasing every shiny object then it’s possible nothing will ever get done. This is an example of a Safety bias. In the other hand, this may or may not be the time to abandon another initiative. Not only is attention limited but resources are as well.
Now let’s get back to lateral thinking processes. You might consider using the Six Thinking Hats, a process developed by Edward de Bono to help develop your own Filtering Questions. First, “What are the Facts?” Then, “How do I feel about it?” Then, “What could go right?” Then “What could go wrong?” Then, “What haven’t we considered?” And finally, “What’s are the next steps?”
The point here is to think something through completely without just trying to manage the outcome to favor your pet idea. When done inside your head—you stand a chance to get the “whole” picture before deciding on an action. If done with a thinking partner or a team—it eliminates the tendency for the extroverted alphas to status manage their way to victory—almost every time—even when they’re wrong.
It’s been shown that high performing teams are ones where everyone participates about equally and feels they are in a safe and caring environment. The behavior we want to hear here is “we just need to get to the best answer.” If you really want to jam, I mean like a jazz quartet totally in the groove, try silent ideation using the Six Thinking Hats. In about 15 minutes you can have almost everything you need to consider before arriving at a solution. Well, after everyone has read it, anyway.
Before getting back to Filtering Questions and the Square Drum, it is important to note the difference between a challenge or opportunity that is relatively simple to one that isn’t. Recently folks have written about the difference being when there are more than say ten or twenty moving variable. Less than that you can probably run a convergent process. More than that a divergent process is probably called for. The former you probably have enough information to make a decision. And for that matter, all the solutions may be so similar that a coin toss might be best practice. I suggest having someone in every meeting be on the look out for coin flip topics.
Get on with it.
A divergent process is called for when not only are there no apparent “good” answers but the team probably hasn’t even identified the problem needing to be solved. Not enough is known to even begin formulating any patterns or cause and effect. It’s a good idea not to hold divergent meetings in the same space as convergent meeting. Another way of saying it is—work on numbers in one room, and not numbers in another.
Numbers usually turn off the creative mind.
Not even knowing the correct questions to ask brings us nicely back to your Filtering Questions. Here’s the best way to pen your Filtering Questions to share with your team. For a couple weeks, maybe even a month, every time a team member comes to you with an idea, challenge, or opportunity, and you blind them with your brilliance—write down said brilliance in the form of a question. Shortly, you can just give them your rules, your filtering questions for them to run in their heads without you having to be there.
Would that improve your productivity?
In turn, your direct report can do the same with their direct reports. What will that do for their productivity? So on and so on until you reach folks who are totally client or customer facing. And even there, the Filtering Questions begin to resemble a Kanban or Kaizen of their position. This is also the AI that’s coming to replace the jobs of people who essentially are sorting though a customer’s requests just to get them what they need—as fast as possible.
This brings us back to the Square Drum. If everyone on your team has a bias towards taking Marketing Risks, but “statistically speaking” it is only the best solution 25% of the time—this workgroup will feel like they are at war with everyone else. Of course, it is important to understand the excellence in Marketing Risk, but not when operational safety is the goal for the day, week, month, quarter or year. That’s up to central management.
More and more is being talked about having a diverse team that can consider the whole problem because it prevents “groupthink” in a department or company. How can you arrange that at your shop? Here are some easy ways to look at things. If your Marketing Department isn’t A/B testing on a regular basis then your Marketing Department may be playing it too safe. If your operation people aren’t continuously looking to improve process, again they may be playing to too safe. It is up the central management and ultimately the marketplace to decide.
If you are in a hot market then the best strategy may be to grab market share as fast as you can before the eventual downturn. If you are in a bad market then it’s time to start dotting the “i” and crossing the “t” whenever possible by upgrading to best practices. Why? Your competition isn’t—that will give you a competitive advantage.
Take a look at your department or all of the workgroups in your shop to see if they have at least one person banging away on each side of the Square Drum. This will up the thinking game in your business and keep a steady beat your company can dance to at year’s end. It all begins with the right questions.
by jonathan_denn | Jul 6, 2020 | Uncategorized
School systems have likely beaten the ability to ask quality questions out of your once and future team members. The people you need to take care of your customers, drive innovation, and sound like a well-rehearsed orchestra to your audience—simply aren’t thinking. Are your policies and procedures, or lack thereof, focused on high quality thinking? (Yes, that’s a pic of Mount Drum, a summit for thinking)
Thinking Test
If you don’t believe me, how many times did someone knock on your door last week to ask you a stupid question? There are stupid questions that need to be asked and then there really, truly are stupid questions that raise eyebrows. How many times was it on a subject you already told them they could make a decision themselves? How many times have you walked into a department and found them working on goofy stuff?
The DRUMBEAT is first and foremost a thinking system. Next it’s a playbook to use at the critical junctions of the game. Then finally it’s a common language for you and your team to use to decide how to think together. If you are falling behind your competition, or want to make sure you stay ahead—it probably starts with higher quality thinking.
Whoever thinks best will usually win.
It’s all about winning however you, your team, your boss defines it. Not just by the “numbers” which are managerial and transactional goals, but also by the “words” the transformational leadership to achieve your purpose. If your team isn’t “enthusiastic”—it’s probably not their fault—it’s on you.
First you need to know why each member of your team stays on the team. Then you can help put all the goals and plays (policies and procedures) in context for them and reach a common understanding and accountability—not just to the team but more importantly to themselves. If you can get to this place with each member of your band of characters then you found your DRUMBEAT.
Building Trust
How do you get a mutual understanding with each of your direct reports? There’s only one-way and it involves building trust. The DRUMBEAT Playbook has lots of productivity tips and riffs but here are three to get you started. When someone really goes above and beyond—say THANK YOU, and give it at least a four-sentence beat. You want that team member to be able to dance to it in their head later—and smile. A great thank you is the good kind of dopamine rush from a real human exchange not just seeing if you have a new email. This new “play” for your thinking playbook should be celebrated with your team if you want the behavior replicated.
And the next time you have a “situation” ask your budding superstar what they would do? See if they miss the mark, come to the same conclusion, or arrive at an even better solution than the one in your head. Yes, it’s a test. How else will you know how well each member on the team thinks? That’s what coaches and drummers do—keep the beat figuratively and literally.
Don’t Thunk While Leading
My friend, Chalmers Brothers, says “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.” Marshall Goldsmith (who blurbed my book btw ;o) wrote an epic book called, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. If your team members are coming to you with new and interesting ideas, and all you say is “No, but…” or “That won’t work because…” or send them away and then make it your original idea in a couple weeks (when you’ve conveniently forgotten where you got the idea)—you’re thunking not thinking.
Thunking is when you cling to the past and refuse to integrate new information. It’s almost always bad. Thunking is kinda like being drunk. Don’t drink and drive. Don’t thunk while thinking. What you should do in these situations is ask questions, preferably open ended questions that cannot be answered with a “yes” or “no” answer. “Why?” is a great question. In fact, if there ever was an AI robot that could be a better supervisor than a real human being, it would simply know one word, and it’s name would be “Why?”
A DRUMBEAT Default Day Riff
When you have the ability to structure your day for maximum productivity the best counterpoint to thunking like saying “No, but…” is instead to say “Yes, and…” This is a hallmark of what comedians and actors call improv or improvisation. Two actors improvising a scene kill the scene when the attitude isn’t open minded. In your default DRUMBEAT Day see how long you can keep that attitude with your team in meetings, in one-to-one sessions with customers and vendors, and most importantly with yourself in your focused 90 minute Solo sessions to “get your work done.”
If you want your team to pound the Innovation Drum you can’t run meetings and conversations like an assembly line. The creative mind works differently than the analytical mind. Here are a few tips to wrap up this riff on DRUMBEAT Thinking. Don’t start creative meetings with numbers. Numbers turn off the creative mind. Try to work with the five senses and mix things up by meeting in a new location, maybe stand up and move around, draw instead of talk, write on walls or whiteboards instead of pounding the keyboard, work in teams, eat new foods, drink new drinks, play new music. This is the kind of environment that will let innovation flow.
What are your Thinking Plays?
Let me ask you some Better Sounding Questions. How much of this in your company manual? How many of your new hires do you explain this to? How many of your teammates know the company’s current filtering questions that make sure the team wins—however you define that? Can you define winning?
It’s a great place to start !!
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by jonathan_denn | Jun 6, 2020 | Uncategorized
We can only control three things, our thinking, words, and actions. Your business is probably pretty good at the actions. We have a cognitive bias to get the job done, make habits of processes and procedures, and keep score somehow.
Words are a little trickier. Words are the notes that make music out of your sentences. If you shoot down good ideas with bad words, what’s your company’s culture? How do you want your people talking to each other? What are the good words that bring purpose and enthusiasm to the team? Words matters, a lot. More on this in a future blog.
Do you hand out your proprietary thinking system to all you new hires on their first day? What does that even look like? Do you just hope everyone will figure out how to work together? Would better quality thinking beat your profit goals? Look what it did for Netflix, and AirBnB. Look what it didn’t do for Kodak and Blockbuster.
This is my favorite mistake in the workplace. The “Boss” doesn’t share with key reports all the Filtering Questions that will lead to the team’s success. For whatever reason, maybe to look like the smartest person in the room, the “Boss” holds back the greatest wisdom. It’s actually a power play, “If everyone thinks like me, I’ll get replaced by someone who makes less money, or they’ll quit and compete with us.” This kind of “A” Player is a Taker who is out for themselves not for the team. The “A” Player who is out for the team is called a Superstar.
How is not sharing to develop the next generation of “A” Players—your future leadership?
The litmus test to see if you’re sharing your Filtering Questions and those of the company is how often people are knock, knock, knocking on your door to ask a question? If the team knows how the company thinks, its values, purpose, and they are empowered to make decisions—who’d have time to knock?
An Open Door Policy is Great—if the Door is Open.
A key habit in the DRUMBEAT is getting two, uninterrupted 90 minute thinking sessions in each day. You can’t make excellent decision or have powerful insights without it. And those knocks are like a flag on your thinking. You lose yardage, and your rhythm. If you don’t get in these Solo sessions your thinking is second rate and obviously not of foremost importance. Is that acceptable for your direct reports? Why is that acceptable for you?
Your 90 Minute Solo sessions don’t necessarily need to be by yourself. One thinking partner can be very effective. However more than two people and it’s best to consider these Jam sessions, which have other best ways of practicing. There’s a concept called “racecar” thinking and “hiking” thinking. The former is long on expediency and dopamine, the latter is well thought out and requires delayed gratification. There have been studies done that show the ability to delay gratification is a predictor of overall success. When two people talk things through it might be best to alternate between focus (the solution) and diffuse thinking (other options). I call this alternating “scanning” for options. You might also call it a Duet.
There are four different types of Jam Sessions or meetings are…
…Information Exchange, Convergent, Divergent, and Social. An information exchange is probably best done by email or internet or phone but sometimes it is best to all get together. Just keep it short maybe even without sitting down.
A Convergent meeting means we have enough information and we just need to make a decision or someone needs to identify why not. These challenges or opportunities typically have less moving parts or variables to them. These are the kinds of items that can be knocked out at a team meeting with action plans. The next step is usually fairly obvious.
A Divergent meeting is a whole ‘nother animal. These are usually for fairly complex situations with maybe 20 variables or more to arrange properly. Frequently, a lot of people need to be in the room, too. This isn’t the kind of problem a couple people can solve off to the side because they don’t have all the information. It’s been shown that groups are almost always smarter than the smartest person in the room. Sure, occasionally there’s an unparalleled genius in the company but more often than not you need a group process to beat these conundrums. From the example above this is “hiker” or diffuse thinking. It’s circular not linear.
Some processes to consider are lateral thinking like deBono’s Six Thinking Hats, silent ideation, combinatory play, or random word association. In these situations there’s not enough information to make a decision—yet. In fact, you may not even be able to ask the correct question.
In the DRUMBEAT we call this a Better Sounding Question. You’ll know it when you hear it, because usually it opens up the puzzle to a new way of seeing it. It even helps to use all your senses sometimes because that will help you use more of your brain. Innovation processes don’t look like a weekly staff meeting. Creativity springs from the arts, music, no numbers, questions not answers.
The last kind of Jam session or meeting is Social. It’s important to have your band of characters or team to have social cohesion. This is best done on company time, purely voluntary, and allows for folks to participate in the ways they prefer. Not surprisingly, some quality divergent thinking can get done when people are having fun. The downside to social meeting is that because we are social animals all the other types of meeting have a tendency to devolve into Social and soon everyone’s whole day is taken up with hugely unproductive meetings. Hmm, stop that!
Here’s the crescendo: Don’t schedule a meeting without declaring what type it is, and have your own company rules for each.
What’s your mix of Jam Session, now? Look at it in a month? Are things going better?
This is a key element to your company’s Thinking System. I almost named the book DRUMBEAT Thinking but decided that most people think thinking is too hard. The word “Productivity” I thought would better appeal to at least the owner, executive team, and the superstar “A” players among you.
Instead of developing a thinking system for your company from scratch, why not get the DRUMBEAT and customize it yourself, or give us a call. I did the work so all you have to do is call the plays.
What do you think?
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