Day 1 Afternoon- New Rules for Work Symposium

A Door Opens – Making Space for Innovation facilitated by Keith McCandless and Nancy White

“Notice and stop counterproductive behaviors that stifle creativity and innovation”

I felt they struggled to explain the concept of a TRIZ and the breakouts struggled to have an impact as a result. In hindsight, it was definitely a bit of my coming at the methodology a little too vigorously from my quality background. So a bit of an learning moment for me.

I’ll be contemplating this picture for weeks. There was a lot to absorb.

The NeuroScience of Teaming by Dr Michael Platt and Elizabeth Johnson

Start with the need to make time to socialize with coworkers at work. Back to the idea of fun.

Good relationships are critical in business. Finding ways to connect is critical for well-being. We are wired to connect.

The need to practice our social networking and skills. I feel that these days, so often I feel out of shape here after the last few weeks.

Our attention is one of the aspects of our neurobiology we have control over and through attention we can prioritize what our brain processes.

All about meeting structure comes back to managing attention. Discusses how eye contact causes processes in brain that link to team work and trust, and how this is an engineering challenge.

Importance of breaks.

All comes back to building relationships. I was interested in there is causal evidence here around synchronizing as a biomarker.

Perspective taking – shifting frame of reference to someone else’s.

Impact of the hierarchy on perspective taking. It’s not good.

Importance of empathy.

Facilitated Mixer: An Abundant Exchange

Fun experiment with 3 assumptions

Visuals make everything easier to remember
Small groups make valuable conversations easier
We can create benefits that live beyond this workshop

Love the concept that the act of receiving help and knowledge is part of our being generous towards our peers. Thinking of abundance and applying it in professional development is a favorite topic of mine.

Deliberately thinking of what abundance I have that may help others fill their needs, and sharing what challenges I need help on was a powerful way to end my day.

New Ways of Working Symposium

It is critical to carve out the time to develop and challenge oneself, to listen to external exertise and to share with peers. You cannot wait for others to make the time for you to engage in learning.

The learning I am looking forward to is the New Way of Working virtual conference next week co-hosted by two of my favorite thinkers in this space – Elise Keith and Dave Mastronardi.

I’m looking forward to challenging myself on the best ways to work in-person, virtually and hybrid.

I’m told there is still time to register!

Competence

We can break down people’s abilities into four areas:

Capability	What people need to do to produce results
Skill	Broken into technical knowledge and practiced performance
Interest	Passion
Required behaviors	Operationalize the organization’s vision, culture, or way of being in behavioral terms.

Competence is a combination of Capability and Skill. If I do not have the capability for the work, no amount of developmental training will be helpful. And, I don’t have the skill, you will never see my capability. Competence is a combination of both.

Interest or passion for the work will influence the amount of time for practice. The more interested I am, the more time I will spend in practice. And if I don’t practice a skill, the skill goes away, and competence diminishes.

There is also a set of required behaviors. Practice arrives with many qualities, frequency of practice, duration of practice, depth of practice, and accuracy of practice. Accuracy of practice relates to required behaviors. Practice doesn’t make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect.

Deliberate practice allows us to influence all four attributes.

Avoiding Logical Pitfalls

When documenting a root cause analysis or risk assessment or any of the myriad other technical reports we are making a logical argument. In this post, I want to evaluate six common pitfalls to avoid in your writing.

Claiming to follow logically: Non Sequiturs and Genetic Fallacies

Non-sequiturs and genetic fallacies involve statements that are offered in a way that suggests they follow logically one from the other, when in fact no such link exists.

Non-sequiturs (meaning ‘that which does not follow’) often happens when we make connective explanations without justification. Genetic fallacies occur when we draw assumptions about something by tracing its origins back even though no necessary link can be made between the present situation and the claimed original one.

This is a very common mistake and usually stems from poor use of causal thinking. The best way to address it in an organization is continuing to build discipline in thought processes and documenting the connections and why things are connected.

Making Assumptions: Begging the Question

Begging the question, assuming the very point at issue happens a lot in investigations. One of the best ways to avoid this is to ensure a proper problem statement.

Restricting the Options to Two: ‘Black and White’ Thinking

In black and white thinking or the false dichotomy, the arguer gives only two options when other alternatives are possible.

Being Unclear: Equivocation and Ambiguity

Lexical: Refers to individual words
Referential: Occurs when the context is unclear
Syntactical: Results from grammatical confusions

Just think of all the various meanings of validation and you can understand this problem.

Thinking Wishfully

Good problem-solving will drive down the tendency to assume conclusions, but these probably exist in every organization.

Detecting the Whiff of Red Herrings

Human error is the biggest red herring of them all.

Know When and How to Compromise

Quality as a profession is often put into the position of being the cop or gatekeeper. There are a set of regulations and standards that must be met, and it can be easy, especially early in one’s career and without proper mentoring, to start to see absolutes.

It is important to always have a vision of what good and great look like. But the road to that will be filled with compromise, so get good at it.

Compromise is not a weakness in a quality professional, it is a strength.

There are times when, instead of ramping up your argment fill fore to make a case, it is better to step back and think about where you can comprise and still convince the organization to implement most, if not all, of your ideas.

This is where the change accelerators come in. Articulate the vision, and then utilize compromise the build and evolve the guiding coalition and turn that into an army of the willing.

Pilot programs, soft launches, workshops. These tools will help you find your allies and facilitate a solution.

Part of comprise is knowing what you can and will settle for. These questions can help:

What is the first thing I am willing to cede? It may be the timeline or a small adoption of your solution, such as a pilot project.
What is my backup plan? If the stakeholders don’t adopt my plan but offer a counterproposal, what am I willing to accept and jump on board with?
What is fueling the stakeholders’ reluctance? Ask questions, engage in “yes…but…and” practice.
Can I rework my argument? Is there an opportunity to come back with a revised pitch? Can you simplify or emphasize specific parts of your argument? Can you break it down into smaller parts – such as building blocks – first gaining support for the concept, ten gaining support for the first step to test its success, and then building support for the next step or phase?

Compromise is negotiation, and it requires all your emotional intelligence skills – patience, active listening, respect for the stakeholders’ position.

Have a vision, a plan, can really help. You will never get to 100% of meeting a requirement but being able to articulate what great looks like and then showing a plan that builds at a good clip, that allows compromise, will allow you to make continued progress and adjust as you go. Your systems will be stronger as a result.