Jul
16
I’ve been reading, for the second time, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.
First of all, if you’ve not read it you should.
Second, both times I’ve read it my mind drifts to some of the best and worst team situations I’ve encountered. I believe there is a lot of truth in the book but I don’t think they take it far enough. I think there is a lot of what we call Human Architecture that can be brought to play.
I will not tell you many stories about Motorola during the time I was there for a couple of reasons –
- They are merely a shadow of what they once were in terms of market dynamics and human dynamics. Why? Lots of reasons but first was the leadership. Gary Tooker and Chris Galvin were no Bob Galvin. Tooker had no passion for change and Chris Galvin took the message of Participative Management a step too far and could not act autocratically even when he was clear he must for the good of the organization. This is not something his father Bob, or Larry Bossidy and Jack Welch suffered from. Also the guys at cellular skipped the Econ class on Sunk Cost Fallacy.
- Motorola was not a monolith. What I experienced was unique to the two places I worked there and they were also quite different experiences. I worked at GEG first and it is credited with being the birthplace of the ideas and methods of Six Sigma. Which is kind of true. I can tell you for a fact that I gave Mikel Harry a copy of Managerial Breakthrough in late 1993 and it is the template for Six Sigma. GEG was an awful place to work for the most part, very slow moving, just like their customer – the US government. There were a handful of exceptions, like FMU-139. What is true is what a talent pool came out of there! With the cover of Bob Galvin, several of us learned well beyond theory. The second place I worked was AIEG (automotive). The customer was aggressive, the management was aggressive and there was truly a group of people working in a clear direction. Oh, and we had Marty Rayl. It was the most fun I’ve ever had working. Not everyone working for Motorola in that period had fun or learned.
Anyway with that said, I’m going to tell you about AIEG with respect to the Five Dysfunctions (or how to build a cohesive team).
1) Dysfunction # 1 absence of trust / Cohesion # 1 presence of trust – This was the work of leadership. They expected results, they expected unfiltered data, they expected honesty. It was not done in a day, but those that could not meet those expectations left. Most on their own, some after being assigned to the library for six months (a kinder, gentler Motorola that never laid off anyone). Done, trust was gained because everyone knew everyone else was working in the same direction.
2) Dysfunction # 2 fear of conflict / Cohesion # 2 unfiltered conflict around ideas – The easiest way to explain this is there was nothing you could say that was wrong as long as it was heartfelt and backed by data and hard work. You could cuss, you could challenge, and you could lose your temper. When meetings were over, everyone knew to leave it in the meeting and go out with a common purpose. I encountered the opposite of that soon after leaving Motorola, telling some folks at Compaq what I thought about their processes (they sucked and I had data to back it up), several in leadership positions shunned me for several months.
3) Dysfunction # 3 lack of commitment / Cohesion # 3 commit to decisions and plans of action – This was simple, leave your opinions and concerns on the table (see #2) and when you leave a meeting have a common purpose. We had a real neat way of doing this too. We called it a “contract”. When a group of people made an agreement, it was written down in very simple terms and everyone involved signed it. You left the meeting and did what you agreed to do or the expectation was you had to reconvene the group to tell them about what obstacles you were encountering and make a new agreement. No surprises. Peer pressure took care of this one.
4) Dysfunction # 4 avoidance of accountability / Cohesion # 4 hold each other accountable – see number 3, it says it all.
5) Dysfunction # 5 inattention to results / Cohesion # 2 focus on achievement of collective results - working level results were reviewed daily, teams took time to go over results weekly and agree on what to go solve, leadership reviewed PROCESS results monthly. The expectation was to have adequate movement in the right direction every month or have a plan to get on course – no tap dancing and no excuses. You would lose your status as a leader if the team under you did not make significant, consistent results. We were talking about not tolerating anything less than a four sigma process in 1988 and launching new processes at greater than five sigma in 1990. Anyone who has ever done it knows that is a significant achievement and there was no nonsense with the data or stupidity around opportunity counting.
How do you build a team environment like this? Strong minded leadership and getting the right people on the bus. Read some off what I’ve written about Predictive Index, it can take some of the trial and error out of the process.
Gary
Jul
8
Arguably the most successful change initiatives in the past 20 years were that of AlliedSignal and GE. Let’s talk about their outside help.
AlliedSignal – Three major components to their business at the time Automotive ($6 billion), Specialty Chemicals and Aerospace (each about $5 billion). Automotive and Aerospace each had three outsiders. The Chemical business had one who was brought internal almost immediately. Allied also had a wild man outsider working as an insider (Corporate VP) orchestrating the change. They also had been through at least two rounds of trying to initiate change under the TQ banner before. They mobilized about 200 insiders in the second month and another 200 or so every four months for the next 2 years. And these we all full time jobs with expectations of visible, quantifiable change on a regular cycle (expectation was 6 substantial projects a year after the training project). One year in, the outside resources were reduced to 1 in Automotive.
So the requirement? 7 outsiders and almost 1% of the work force in a full time change management role plus visible, active leadership from the top down.
GE – I don’t know about all of GE’s businesses, but GE contracted for 30 man days per month from myself and 2 partners to cover 8 of their 13 businesses. Only two worked there as I stayed back at Allied to develop some of the finest MBB’s in the business today, but GE got their 30 days plus a little more. They also were 15 years into an intense change culture uner Jack Welch and they dedicated much more of their workforce, full time, to the effort.
So the requirement? 30 man days per month from two people plus upwards of 7 or 8% of their salaried work force full time.
Another small detail – there was only ever 1 trainer in a class room and the classes were as many as 40. > 75% of outside resources were on the mentoring support side, 90% in GE’s case.
So what’s the deal these days with 2 trainers per class with class size limited to 20? The support end is loaded up with 1 full time mentor per 10 change agents.
Does this mean that today’s implementations are even better?
Gary