Untangling the Mess

Untangling the Mess

by | Jan 19, 2025 | Consulting

He was introduced to us as “Charley, an old-time key logger,” an introduction that seem to both amuse and annoy him.

“Thanks, I guess, Carol, Did you really have to put in the “old-time” bit? These folks can see I’m old just by looking at me.”

“Oh, sorry Charley,” Carol from HR laughed, blushing a bit, “But I hope he tells you some stories about being a jam-breaker.”

Charley didn’t look like a lumberjack. He was about five-nine, slight of build, and lean in a hard sort of way. He was bald with the gray fringe buzz-cut short except for a little forelock which stood straight up about three quarters of an inch in what might have once been a crew cut.

There were about ten of us in the group, contract facilitators of what were called “quality circles,” for a forest products company. This was our half-day orientation to the business, a multi-slide show with various speakers, to be followed by a small school bus tour of some facilities.

I don’t know why I instantly liked Charley, but I think I wasn’t the only one in the group who did. His face glowed of working outside with deep smile lines. I thought he must be over seventy. Maybe he was younger, but I was in my thirties, what did I know?

“Well,” Charley began. “most of those stories are what a male cow leaves in a field. Nowadays, most all product moves by truck, but when I started, way back with the cavemen, much of it went into rivers. There were logjams and some of my early training was as a jam-breaker. I might have actually had the title of ‘key logger,’  but the idea that a guy could show up in a pick-up and point at a log in a jam, say ‘that one,’ and drive away while the crew pulled it and all the logs flowed downriver is pure Disney. Most of what I did, was stop dumping logs upriver and make sure no one was standing on the jam when it broke.

There is an analogy though, to what you folks will be doing here. Our improvement efforts depend on information from guys at the mills, and field surveyors and logging crews. They’re going to have complaints, and identify problems. Some’ll suggest solutions. Your job is to untangle the mess, to see the connections, and the stuff in the way, like the old-time key loggers used to do.”

Charley went on to orient us to the business, to show us slides of logging sites and roads, of raw product sawmills and pulp mills and manufacturing facilities for paneling and composites. He spoke for about an hour, handed out a glossary of terms and took some questions. He was a lot more interesting than the accountant who followed him.

The first session I facilitated was a disaster. The session process we were given, was as Charley had described it, three questions: complaints, problems, solutions. In a three hour session I never got out of complaints. Evidently, other facilitators were having the same problem. Someone suggested starting with “What’s working well?”

That made a huge difference in the mood of the groups and facilitators were actually able to get to some solutions.

By the third of the six sessions I evolved four questions:

  • What is happening that should be happening?
  • What is not happening that should not be happening?
  • What is happening that should not be happening?
  • What is not happening that should be happening?

These questions started with what was working well. That placed some perspective on the complaints and problem definition that followed. The “positive” view outlined what was working, identifying constraints for any solutions, so we didn’t break what was working.

Staying with the fundamental question, what is happening, was a fact based approach  and avoided the kind of fact-free speculations that we would call “conspiracy theories” today.

In the rest of my career in consulting, I used these same questions in many contexts. I used them with continuous improvement teams who were having difficulty defining a problem because they had combined many different problems in a tangled mess. I used them in an initial meeting with a division CEO who was unclear what was wrong, but knew it threatened planned results.

Over time I learned to record these questions in this matrix:

What is happening: The Is-Should matrix

This matrix makes the tangled mess visible. It shows that what might seem like one problem is many problems, which may be interrelated, but also may be able to be addressed separately.

I always started with the positive, what is happening that should be happening and what is not happening that should not be happening. I asked “what else?” until we ran out of the category before moving on.

When the tangled mess was complete, I asked which problem was the greatest priority, or had the biggest pay-off or was linked to others so that solving it would help the others. People were often amazed at the clarity it produced and were grateful to be “unstuck.”

 

That felt a little like Charley’s key log stories, not as tangible, nor as cool, but rewarding all the same.

 

Cover Traveling the Consulting Road

There are more stories and consulting tools like this in Traveling the Consulting Road: Career Wisdom for New Consultants, Candidates, and There Mentors.\ Available on multiple platforms here

Patience Redux

Patience Redux

by | Jan 12, 2025 | Living

Some life lessons we are meant to learn. . . over. . . and over again.

Not long ago I wrote about patience.  I quoted a one-time client, who didn’t take well to my advice to “Be Patient.”

“Patient?! Alan, the world was not built by patient men!”

I went on to note that high performing entrepreneurs and inventors were not known as the soul of patience. Neither, I suppose, are military leaders. It is hard to imagine General Patten, Napolean, or Genghis Khan, being described as patient.

I have in my life been patient, sometimes with children, sometimes too much with people who were behaving badly towards me. One thing I have learned about myself: I am NOT a patient patient. By reasons of my upbringing, it takes a long time for me to concede to see a doctor. When I finally do, I expect miracles, instantaneous miracles, or faster, if possible, please.

I am not patient with my own body, which  (who?) I sometimes accuse of, and demean for, letting me down, even when I have been abusing it (him?). Separating my body from myself and anthropomorphizing that part of me as separate from me, is an artifact of my upbringing too.

For most of my life, I have been fortunate to be extraordinarily healthy.

At seventy and seventy-one, my patience as a patient was tested when I fell running and did some damage to my cervical spinal cord. I wrote how helpful I found Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer:

“Lord, please give me the serenity to accept those things I cannot change,

The courage to change those things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.”

A surgeon performed a minor miracle on my neck. I am extraordinarily grateful. I wasn’t patient. I pushed myself in physical therapy (PT) and I recovered use of my disconnected body double. “Good job, body, ole pal. Took you a while, but you got there.”

Now I face another challenge.

As a child my mother reacted to an ugly face I made. “Don’t do that. Your face will freeze that way.”

A week ago, my face froze. Or, at least, the left side of my face stopped working and drooped. Thankfully, my problem is not one of the more disastrous causes of such an effect, stroke, brain tumor, or meningitis. I have an attack of Bell’s Palsy.

Bell’s Palsy is an overload of cranial nerve number seven, which controls facial movement and expression. The cause is “idiopathic,” which is to say that medical science has no clue why it happens. It sometimes happens in response to a virus, or bacterial infection, stress, or multiple minor issues.

Recovery time is indeterminate, five days, three weeks, three, six, nine months. A few unfortunate sufferers need surgery to recover; fewer still fail to heal, smile crookedly, but live otherwise normal lives.

“So, lighten up Alan,” my estranged bod might rightfully respond. “Yeah, drinking coffee through a straw is a pain and you have to remember to chew on the right side so the food stays in your mouth. But quit whining! There are too many people in Greater Los Angeles whose everything has been consumed by fire, and too many in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan who live with bombs falling on their heads, and too many injured, ill, or hungry, who may not live to see the dawn.”

“Suck it up. Rest. Get through the effects of Prednisone withdrawal, see the neurologist. Do the PT.”

“Yeah and I can practice the lines of side-talkers throughout history:

  • WC Fields: ‘my little chickadee,’
  • Edward G. Robinson: ‘Tough guys don’t dance, see. Tough guys’ guts cut and bleed in a knife fight.’
  • Edward Teach, Jack Sparrow, Pegleg Pete: ‘Arrgh, Matey’ (Actually, I won’t be eighty for three years –  hopefully this’ll be over by then. Arrgh, Matey, I’m 80 – get it?).”

“STOP! Send some money to relief efforts!”

“OK body, bud, I’ll be a more patient, patient. You know we ought to work together more. Integration. That’s the ticket.”

“Yeah? I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Change: Alarms and Indicators

Change: Alarms and Indicators

by | Jan 6, 2025 | Leading

How do I know if things are going wrong?

A couple of months ago I wrote about the basics of Change Craft, which comes down to simple questions: Why? So What? Who? What? How? I finished with “expect back sliding, missed targets and failure.”

A reader commented to me by email, “Alan, those are all results indicators. By the time I see those, the change process has already gone off the rails. What are the initial condition indicators or process alarms that will help me avoid a problem before it happens.”

“Good point, Ted,” my response began and I went on to describe the flashing red lights a change leader should look for. They aren’t always obvious. Mostly they are language cues that indicate a dangerous mindset.

If you hear yourself or your boss or those on your team say these things, watch out!

“Easy Peasy”

Change is not easy. Individual self-improvement is hard enough, but add to that the difficulty of groups of individuals it gets exponentially harder. Different people hear the same word differently. For example, my wife believes that “worry” is much more serious than “concern,” but if I hear “I’m concerned” that is “DefCon 3, Stop everything you are doing and FIX this.”

So even people who share the same national and corporate culture will hear the same words differently, complexifying describing change rationale, and giving instructions. That complexity multiplies by the numbers of people involved. Now imagine cross border communication, or acquisition integration communication. How do you know people are hearing what you mean?

Also, a change plan, inputs, activities, outputs, and responsibilities, especially recorded on Microsoft project or similar software, looks like every other plan. It is likely to produce a “of course – we got this” reaction, which has to do with tasks not people.

“Need to know basis”

Secrecy and change success are negatively correlated. Oh, I get that when making a strategic change in products or markets, you might want to keep some of the information close to keep it away from competitors. However, in the absence of information, people just make stuff up, and what they make up is often destructive.

I once worked in a health insurance company that was breaking into the Medicare Advantage market. An IT manager decided to “get ahead of the game,” and installed time clocks on the Customer Service Representative’s (CSR) screen, and a new call code MAD (for Medicare Advantage Deployment). A rumor started in the call center among the CSRs that MAD stood for “Measured Against Downsizing.” The not-yet-operational clocks were perceived to be measurement devices and that each CSR was being evaluated against some criteria that would lead to a workforce reduction in force. In a matter of weeks the rumor spread across the company to other call centers and CSRs were threatening a walk out – all because some executive wanted to keep the new market entry strategy a secret, and CSRs didn’t “need to know.”

“We/they, us/them”

This is a tricky one because talking about us and them happens frequently in business, we-company, they-suppliers or customers. But when you hear leader saying us/them about layers or departments, or change teams talking about other change teams using we/they, it’s a signal of artificial divisions and a lack of integration, which is death to change initiatives.

This shows up in change activities. “The training is for them, not us.” We get the full briefing; they don’t.” “They get paid overtime for out of worktime change work; we don’t.”

Most organizations are hierarchical; and “siloed” vertically, but when you need the whole organization to move as one, as in an integrated change, then hierarchies and siloes can slow you down or stop you dead.

“Resistance”

“Resistance to change” is a cliché, “We fear change,” Is a frequent Saturday Night Live joke. Many change models actually describe what you need to do to overcome the rational, political, and emotional resistance to change.

While it is true that some of us don’t like arbitrary change, (“So why exactly is it better to put the apple corer here, instead of where we’ve always kept it?”), most people don’t fear change and they don’t resist change. They fear loss in unknown circumstances, lost of job, pay, reasonable workload, etc. Mostly they fear a loss of autonomy, the right to choose the change on their own terms. In short, they don’t resist change; they resist your change, because they weren’t consulted, or it wasn’t explained to them.

So when you hear your change team talking about “resistance to change,’ they may be covering up their failure to engage people properly.

“That’ll never happen”

I don’t know for a fact if anyone on the IT manager’s team at the Medicare Advantage change effort brought up the unintended consequences of “getting out ahead of the change”, described above. I imagine that if it was brought up, it would have been met with, “What? That’ll never happen. The CSRs won’t even notice!”

“That’ll never happen” is the command and control leader’s response to raising low probability-high consequence events. In risk analysis, real dangers are glossed over with the conflation of the likelihood and consequence scales. “Come on. What’re the chances?”.

Unintended consequences are a real concern in change. What seems like a simple action changes unseen variables. “Raising the temperature one degree, did increase viscosity and therefore throughput, but it also increased pressure and the ‘U’ pipe sprung a leak.” Uh-oh.

The biggest single oversight of unintended consequence I ever saw, was in an acquisition of a competitor in specialty chemicals. The low value brand bought the premium brand, both US firms. Realizing that acquisitions are an aggressive competitive act, the leaders paid attention to market share and concluded that combined global market share of 16% wouldn’t be threatening in a market where the number one and two players had a combined share of almost 70%. In public relations announcements they signaled that this was a one-time event, (i.e., “don’t worry ‘bout us – no threat here”). One month into integration the number one player, a German firm, bought one of the firms’ domestic suppliers. The combined two US firms bought 60% of this supplier’s output and the German firm didn’t want to get squeezed out of US supply. Instead the combined firm was.

The head of production at the acquiring firm had raised this possibility and suggested long term supply contracts. He was told “What? That’ll never happen.”

 

People make change happen

A consulting partner once told me, “change is about the decision; people will fall in line.” And sometimes they do. Usually, when they do, it is because some leader engaged them in the process and treated them as equals worthy of trust. People don’t come equipped with warning lights. The only flashing alarms we have are body language and words.

 

Pay attention and listen.

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men”

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men”

by | Dec 28, 2024 | Living

This post will send in the wee hours o’ New Year’s Eve 2024.  Here, in the good ole US of A, New Year’s Eve is amateur alcoholics night, when teetotalers, and even those with a serious drinking problem, know to leave the roads to those idiots who binge drink once a year, loud-singing the Robert Burns anthem, “Should auld acquaintance be fergot an’ nev’r braught ta maieend, . . .” followed by sloppy kisses and hugs.

The still slightly sober may ask, “What the hell does “Auld Lang Syne” mean anyway?” To which a more pedantic tippler-friend may answer, “Old long seen, or days and friends long gone, in short, the ‘good-ole-days.’”

Early in the flow of whiskey-wine-and-beer, some may ask, “Got any ‘New Year’s Resolutions?’” In these settings, the answers range from the “Nah, don’t believe in ’em,” to “Oh, the usual, exercise more, spend more time with friends and family.” When I was in with this crowd, I did not encounter any who were truly serious about the annual self-improvement ritual.

In my experience, most New Year’s resolutions spring from the New Year’s Day hangover and timid step upon the bathroom scale, ignored “over the holidays.” It is why the single biggest sale days for gym memberships are January 2nd and 3rd.

The earliest recorded New Year’s resolutions were made around four thousand years ago, in the Babylonian festival of Akitu. This was held around the spring equinox, the beginning of planting season. Babylonians reflected on any of their behaviors, which might have offended their gods, and resolved to change those behaviors so the right amounts of sunshine and rainfall might bless this year’s crops. New Year’s resolutions were serious business, and while I imagine there was some partying in the 12-day long festival of Akitu, the resolutions that were recorded were reaffirmation of loyalty to the king, return of items borrowed, and repayment of debts. These were promises to the gods and probably not made lightly.

For much of history, the New Year, whenever it was celebrated, was a time of religious reflection and rededication. Julius Caesar, in 46 BCE created the Julian calendar, with the first month, January, named for Janus, the two faced god of thresholds and gateways. It was a time to reflect upon the events of the past and to look forward across the threshold into the future.

John Wesley, English founder of the Christian Methodist Church, created the Covenant Renewal Service for New Year’s Day in 1740. Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, is a fall celebration of the creation of the world, the beginning of the Days of Awe, ten days of reflection culminating in Yom Kippur, days of atonement. The Hijiri, the Islamic New Year, is observed in June to commemorate the new beginning when the Prophet and his followers migrated from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE. The Hiriji is a time of prayer, and reflection, and time with family. Some Muslims make resolutions for the new year.

World New Years throughout the year

 New Year’s celebrations that are part of religions are celebrated at a time that makes sense for that religion and culture.

These celebrations are reflective and may or may not include a tradition of resolutions.

If there is a resolution tradition, however, it is conscientious. The faithful who make a public declaration of a future action tend to keep their commitment.

In the ole US of A, such faithful achievement of New Year’s resolutions is more the exception than the rule. Gyms and health clubs are full in January, but empty out by March. Every year in December pollsters ask a sample of us if we kept our resolutions from January 1; on average, seventy percent of us did not.

 

This year I read an analysis that categorized the areas of most American’s resolutions:

  • Spend time with family and friends
  • Find ways to stay active
  • Learn something new
  • Help others
  • Renovate, or clean up our living space
  • Read more
  • Eat better

I have no idea about the survey methodology, but I truly believe if Americans did these things we’d be happier and healthier. Not to be negative, but survey says, we do not, or at least seventy percent of us admit that we do not.

Change isn’t easy. Self-improvement is hard. You have to realize that the current state is unacceptable and reject it. Then you have to have a clear vision of the end state and goals.

The human resource, learning and development mafia have drilled into my head that goals must be S.M.A.R.T.

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Relevant
  • Time Bound

I don’t disagree, even though I rebelled against such goal-setting dogma when someone was trying to manage my personal performance to meet corporate goals. These are good criteria for self-improvement goals. They’re just insufficient.

If I haven’t rejected my Dad-bod, then I’m unlikely to say no to the Häagen Dazs that creates it. If I only have one measure, 165 pounds, then I have no way to track a trend. If my time frame is four months to lose twenty pounds and I don’t break that down to a pound and a half a week and have a maintenance program for month five to forever, it may not happen.

Control and correction: If I want to spend more time with my sister, or my grandchildren or my wife, what does that look like? If I find I didn’t do that in January, what am I going to do in February and March?

I’m not saying, don’t set New Year’s Resolutions; I’m saying set them judiciously, religiously, with an eye toward being in the thirty percent who actually achieve them. Cuz as Robert Burns intoned “To a Mouse On Turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785.” The best laid plans o’ Mice and Men, gang aft agley.”

And I hope you know, I am not preaching at you; I’m preaching to myself.

I am the only person who I have any right to expect might listen to my sermon.

Have a healthy, engaged, connected New Year, where you learn what interests you, do what you’ve been putting off, and help others. Or whatever kind of New Year makes you happy.

Just please don’t drink and drive.

A Community of Light

A Community of Light

by | Dec 21, 2024 | Living

It is the Winter Solstice. In the cold we huddle around the fire, joined in our communities. At the dark time of year, when the days are short, we celebrate the light. During this time I often imagine ancient peoples in their shelters, with a roof smoke hole above the fire, bringing evergreen boughs inside, so the green reminds them that spring will come again. I even wrote a song about this fantasy called Deep Winter’s Night.

I was encouraged in this fantasy first by the Megalithic monument Stonehenge oriented towards the Summer Solstice. I felt that these people in 2500 BCE were quite attuned to the interaction between the light of the heavens, and the earth on which we still walk. I was amazed at how, what I thought of as a primitive people could orient such a large monument to the sun on one day per year.

When I saw the older Megalithic Passage tomb at Newgrange north of Dublin Ireland, built in 3200 BCE I was further gobsmacked. There is a transom window over the entrance and on the Winter Solstice at sunrise a beam of sunlight comes through the transom and illuminates the altar on which cremated remains were placed. The sunbeam, archeologists speculate, was believed to enable the passage of the spirit from one plane to another.

This fit with my fantasy of the hope of light at the darkest time of the year.

Then I had a “flat forehead moment,” so-called because I have repeatedly struck my forehead with the heal of my hand over the years exclaiming, “Duh!” or “Doh” (like Homer Simson). What prompted this epiphany of blindingly obvious perspective dissonance?

In Australia, New Zeeland, South Africa, Peru and Antarctica it is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. So my annual fantasy is a completely Northern-Hemisphere-centric viewpoint.

Apologies to those who live south of the equator, who may say –“Wha?” And people who come from around the equator where the days are the same length year round, and in most places around the equator one will not be huddling around a fire and bringing conifers inside.

Moreover, this ancient Winter Solstice fantasy is probably a Euro-paleo-centric perspective representing a narrow slice of all the ancient ancestors on the planet.  I have trouble imagining this behavior among Aleuts and Innuits at the Arctic circle or the Navaho, Kiowa, Osage, Chickasaw, Choctaw, or Calusa in what became the United States.

Duh!” Or I think I’m gonna go with “Doh,” because I feel as clueless as Homer.

Here is the story of the triggering of this realization.

As I started my annual rumination on our Winter Solstice and the many festivals of light at this our dark time of year, I observed that Hanukkah, the eight night Jewish celebration, starts on Christmas night this year. It moves dates on the Gregorian calendar as result of the six thousand year old lunar calendar used to fix dates of religious celebrations.

I wondered about lunar calendars. Did hunter gatherers use the phases of the moon to track the movements of animals and know which plants yielded edible food? I dunno. My parents would have sent me to the Encyclopedia Britannica in our living room. “Look in up.” And I still do, though on the Internet version. It turns out that lunar calendars are very old. Archeologists have found some evidence of lunar calendars in caves in Southern France that may be as old as 32,000 BCE.

In the third millennium BCE the lunisolar calendar emerged, lunar months and solar years. In addition to Hebrews, the Sumerians, Assyrians and ancient Egyptians had a lunisolar calendar.

“Ah,” I said. “the growth of agriculture?” The moon in her phases pulled upon the waters of the Mediterranean, the Tigris, Euphrates and Nile nourishing the plants that the Mother brought forth. Perhaps with the growth of astronomy in Egypt and Greece solar calendars came to the fore. The distant Sky Father, seeming larger than the Earth, was entrusted with man’s invention, Time.

Lunar calendars now are really lunisolar calendars because there is always an addition of a month every two to three years to maintain accuracy with the ubiquitous 1582 Pope Gregory XIII sponsored DayRunner. China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Banks Islands, part of the nation of Vanuatu in Melanesia in the South Pacific, are all on a lunisolar calendar for cultural celebrations.

It is also true that many religions, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism  schedule religious festivals according to lunisolar calendars

This brought me back to a puzzle I have always wrestled with. Christianity adopted the pagan Winter Solstice celebration, light at the dark time. It appeared that Judaism did too, Chanukah (traditional spelling). But Diwali, Hindu festival of lights is in the fall. And Islam celebrates light  at Eid at the end of Ramadan in the spring.

Here comes the flat forehead moment.

In the home of these religions, what I thought of as the Winter Solstice, cold, snow, seemingly dead deciduous trees, sprinkled with some evergreens, short days, dark time of year, needing to see the light and be hopeful, wasn’t really like that.

“Doh!”

It is however more than a little interesting that these religions have their own festival of lights. So the timing matters less than my Northern Hemisphere, Euro-paleo-pagan genes would indicate.

There is a cycle of dark and light, of fear and hope, of individual independence, joining hands in community and peace.

We may celebrate that cycle at different times of the year in different seasons, but we all celebrate. We all long for community to wrap us in love. We all hope and feel peace in our hearts.

So whether you celebrate at this time of year or not, whether there is a tree in your living room or a shrine, whether there is a fire or candle you gather at, reach for those you love and those you barely know, and share your hope for the light, and your love.

Peace be upon you, and all of us.