It was one of those calls I love to get - someone inviting me to speak at a conference because he enjoyed hearing me speak at the NE ShingoPrize conference so much. (That's me on the left after speaking, with some of my buds.) And it was the kind of feedback I love to get - very specific about how effective the presentation had been. It would have made a perfect quote for my website. I asked if he'd be willing to say those things in writing. He was - or would have been had he had any idea what he had just said. He sent me something in writing that was much more thought-out - and much less interesting or from the heart. 

Thinking isn't all its cracked up to be. In fact, it very often inhibits sincere communication. Don't get me wrong - it's a part of good communication. But don't let it get in the way of expressing yourself.

Yesterday I posted about what to do BEFORE you open your mouth. Now I have a recommendation of what to do WHEN you open your mouth.

Listen to what you say. You might surprise yourself. And you might find that you know exactly how to word things when you have those important conversations. 

The SpeakStrong Method is about getting out of your own way to say what your intellect can't express on its own. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get out of my own way so I can reconstruct what this gentleman said to me before he knew he was going to be quoted. You know, before he thought about it. 

In a recent blog post, Lesa Nichols asks the question, "If I respect you, how do you know?" Lesa Nichols is a Lean Management Consultant who understands the heart of people showing respect for employees.

Lesa contrasts respect in the form of things and programs with respect Toyota Style. She asks you to consider the work people are asked to do. Here are her questions for you to consider. 

"Does the work:

• foster a sense of accomplishment at the end of every day?
• demonstrate that the organization could not meet customer needs without them?
• encourage them to raise problems and solutions without a sense of fear?
• arrange their worksite so that it is comfortable and logical to them?
• show them how their work is connected to the rest of the work being done?
• require that they think about the work and how it could be improved?"

 

Let's go back to Lesa's question. If (as a manager or leader) I respect you, how do you know? The answer? I can answer yes to all the questions - or at least aspire to be able to answer yes. 

Sure, daycare is great. There's nothing wrong with employee appreciation day. Many people like it when their managers remember their birthdays. But random acknowledgements and a menu of perks doesn't make up for treating employees and workers as hired hands rather than thinking people. Check out Lesa's new blog and read the entire post, Respect for People. 

Last newsletter I featured the PowerPhrase:

• How do you want the process to operate?

This week I have the follow-up to that phrase.

• What is preventing the operator from running this way?

In our offices, we might adapt the question to things like,

• What is preventing the sales force from recording their sales the way we instruct them?
• What is preventing my assistant from getting my project to me on time?
• What is preventing my manager from updating his calendar when his schedule changes?

The point is, we know how we want the process to work and if it's not working that way, instead of going into blame, we go into problem-solving. This phrase assumes - as leam managers do- that people want to do good work and need support in overcoming obstacles, not criticism, when their work falls short.

If you manage the means instead of the result, a powerful phrase for you is:

• How do you want the process to operate?

 

Managing by results asks about outcome. What are you trying to accomplish? Managing by means asks about the process that acheives the outcome, and is one of the secrets of Toyota's competative edge.

You can read more about managing the process here.

Wendy Mack's fall newsletter asks: which of the following tools is the most powerful for motivating employees?

• Support for making progress
• Recognition for good work
• Incentives
• Interpersonal support
• Clear goals

If you're like ninety-five percent of managers, you believe recognition for good work has the most impact on employee motivation. But Harvard University has proven that support for making progress is the greatest motivator, particularly for scientists, engineers, programmers, marketers, and other knowledge workers. Managing by objectives, which puts the focus on outcome, misses the opportunities of managing by means (Profit Beyond Measure, Thomas Johnson). Focusing on progress motivates – but requires skill and comes with a warning... continued

Organized Audrey says it well. "Clutter is the result of delayed decision-making."

Become a decision-maker. Practice by looking around your desk - your home - your closets. Chances are you'll see evidence of delayed decisions all around you. 

Then, consider your inbox. How many delayed decisions are in there? In lean terms, consider your cluttered emails as excess inventory - one of the seven wastes of lean. Then, consider the sum-total of conversations you've delayed. How much energy are they zapping?

Here's what you don't want to do. Don't delete all your emails just to get rid of the clutter. Note, you don't need to get your inbox down to zero by the end of the day. You don't need to go out and have every delayed conversation by 5 PM on Friday. Just stop delaying decisions you can make now, stop postponing conversations you can have now, and live your life with more dynamic immediacy. Then, take heart that while you may still have clutter, you're moving in the right direction. 

Clutter is the result of delayed decision-making. Organization is the result of systems and processes that make decision-making easy. But that's the subject of another post. 

After visiting FastCap manufacturing, a visitor emailed back with the observation that everybody presented consisely and effectively at the company-wide morning meeting. He wanted to know - what's the secret?

Paul explains that they teach and train their people to be pithy and consise. As soon as someone starts to give a ramblng response, they stop and ask someone else for their input. Another factor is that everyone leads the morning meeting at one point or another, so they all know what it's like to have the responsibility of keeping the group on track.

Watch Paul explain it here. 

The quality leader W. Edwards Deming is quoted as saying, "If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing." I feel the same way about phrasing. If you can't put your process, teaching or ideas into phrases, you don't know what they are. And if a phrase author reads your work and can't figure out how to translate your words into phrases, your information isn't clear.

Not everyone spends their days writing phrases, so I don't assume others have the skill developed in the way that I have - or care to. However, my efforts to translate information into phrases often reveal the fuzzy areas. If I can't hone from someone's writing how to put their recommendations into action via language, those who don't have the experience with phrasing that I do are likely to be at a total loss. That's where the conversation with some of the experts I work with gets really interesting. They may have no desire to ever write phrases, but helping me write them often clarifies what they know. 

So don't just think about phrase scripting as a communication tool. Think of it as a way to get really clear about what you know. 

This from my engineer, researcher and Toyota Kata author buddy Mike Rother. Another learning experiment involving kindergartners. The Economist reported that proves (okay, indicates,) that when teachers, coaches and guides explain what you can do with something, it inhibits exploration and discovery. 

It's such a fine balance! In Perfect Phrases for Managers and Supervisiors, I refer to Management by Throwing Spaghetti Against the Wall. Perfect Phrases for Leadership Development is all about guiding people to make their own discoveries. I recently heard a Kimberley Clark manager talk about how they don't share best practices because they want their managers and workgroups to find their own answers. They guide them in doing that, but it still takes longer. It also results in managers and workgroups that learn to improve processes on their own.

I work with coauthors. I have my own ideas of how the books should evolve, but I know from experience that if I say too much, their input is more likely to be limited to what they think I'm looking for. If I don't over-direct, they are more likely to come up with things I would have missed. 

So I hold back. I might ask questions, but if I do, they're honest questions, not leading questions to get my coauthors to come to the same conclusions I did.

Of course, synergy comes from a side-by-side exploration. I have a head-start when I invite a coauthor to write with me on a book project I created. I like to give them a chance to do their own thinking and then I'll share mine. Then we experience synergy - mutual discovery where we're exploring side-by-side.

The Economist study did not explore what happens when the teacher and students discover what the toy can do together. I suspect if it had, the discoveries would skyrocketed. 

In the book Toyota Kata, Mike Rother observes that the thinking behind Toyota practices is more important than the practices themselves. Yes, you might be able to improve a process by, say, copying a kanban system, but if you understand what led to that system in the first place, you have the key to improving every process you have - from customer service to product development on around.  

Remember that the next time someone tells you about an achievement. And by all means, ask:

• What is the thinking behind that idea/decision/action?

Achievements are far less interesting than the process that led to them.