Tag: learning culture

Fostering Critical Thinking

As a leader, fostering critical thinking in my team and beyond is a core part of my job. Fostering critical thinking means an approach that encourages open-mindedness, curiosity, and structured problem-solving.

Encourage Questioning and Healthy Debate

It is essential to create an environment where team members feel comfortable questioning assumptions and engaging in constructive debates. Encourage them to ask “why” and explore different perspectives. This open dialogue promotes deeper thinking and prevents groupthink.

Foster a Culture of Curiosity

Inspire your team to ask questions and seek deeper understanding. Role model this behavior by starting meetings with thought-provoking “what if” scenarios or sharing your own curiosities. Celebrate curiosity and reward those who think outside the box.

Assign Stretch Assignments

Provide your team with challenging tasks that push them beyond their comfort zones. These stretch assignments force them to think critically, analyze information from multiple angles, and develop innovative solutions.

Promote Diverse Perspectives

Encourage diversity of thought within your team. Diverse backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints can challenge assumptions and biases, leading to a more comprehensive understanding and better decision-making.

Engage in Collaborative Problem-Solving

Involve your team in decision-making processes and problem-solving exercises. Techniques like role reversal debates, where team members argue a point they disagree with, can help them understand different perspectives and refine their argumentative skills.

Provide Training and Resources

Offer training sessions on critical thinking techniques, such as SWOT analysis, root cause analysis, and logical fallacies. Equip your team with the tools and frameworks they need to think critically.

Lead by Example

As a leader, model critical thinking behaviors. Discuss your thought processes openly, question your assumptions, and show the value of critical evaluation in real-time decision-making. Your team will be more likely to emulate these habits.

Encourage Continuous Learning

Recommend learning resources, such as courses, articles, and books from diverse fields. Continuous learning can broaden perspectives and foster multifaceted thinking.

Embrace Feedback and Mistakes

Establish feedback loops within the team and create a safe environment where mistakes are treated as learning opportunities. Receiving and giving feedback helps refine understanding and overcome biases.

Implement Role-Playing Scenarios

Use role-playing scenarios to simulate real-world challenges. This helps team members practice critical thinking in a controlled environment, enhancing their ability to apply these skills in actual situations.

Build Into the Team Charter

Building these expectations into the team charter holds you and your team accountable.

Value: Regulatory Intelligence

Definition: Stay current on industry regulations and guidances. 

Desired Behaviors:

  1. I will dedicate time to reading industry-related guidance and regulation publications related to my job.
  2. I will share publications that I find interesting or applicable to my job with the team
  3. I will present to the team on at least one topic per year to share learnings with the team (or wider organization)

Value: Learning Culture

Definition: Share lessons learned from projects so the team can grow together and remain aligned.  Engage in knowledge-sharing sessions.

Desired Behaviors:

  1. I will share lessons learned from each project with the wider team via the team channel and/or weekly team meeting.
  2. I will encourage team members to openly share their experiences, successes, and challenges without fear of judgement.
  3. I will update RAID log with decisions made by the team.
  4. I will identify possible process improvements and update the process improvement tracker.

Value: Team Collaboration

Definition: Willingness to help teammates when they reach out for input/help

Desired Behaviors:

  1. I will be supportive of my teammate’s requests for assistance
  2. I will engage and offer my SME advice when asked or help identify another SME to assist 
  3. I will not ignore requests for input/help
  4. I will contribute to an environment where teammates can request help

Utilizing the Nadler-Tushman Model for Culture of Quality Initiatives

The Nadler-Tushman Congruence model is a diagnostic tool developed by organizational theorists David A. Nadler and Michael L. Tushman in the early 1980s. It analyzes and identifies the root causes of performance issues within an organization and can be a helpful model for diagnosing and improving a culture of quality.

Nadler-Tushman Congruence Framework

The Nadler-Tushman Congruence model is based on several assumptions that are common to modern organizational diagnostic models:

  • Organizations are open social systems within a larger environment.
  • Organizations are dynamic entities (i.e., change is possible and occurs).
  • Organizational behavior occurs at the individual, group, and systems level.
  • Interactions occur between the individual, group, and systems levels of organizational behavior

The model is based on the premise that an organization can achieve high performance when four key elements – work, people, structure, and culture – are aligned or congruent with each other. These elements are defined as:

Work

This refers to the core tasks and activities that the organization performs to achieve its goals. It includes the processes, workflows, and the skills/knowledge required to carry out the work effectively.

People

This element focuses on the individuals within the organization, their skills, knowledge, personalities, work styles, and how well they fit with the work requirements.

Structure

This encompasses the formal aspects of the organization, such as its hierarchy, reporting lines, policies, procedures, and systems that govern how work gets done.

Culture

This includes the shared values, beliefs, behaviors, and norms that shape how people interact and work together within the organization. The basic premise is that when these four elements are well-aligned and congruent, the organization operates smoothly and performs at a high level. However, a misalignment or incongruence among these elements can lead to friction, inefficiencies, and poor organizational performance.

Use

The Nadler-Tushman Congruence model can be effectively used for root cause analysis of organizational performance issues by following these steps:

  1. Identify the symptoms or performance gaps within the organization, such as low productivity, high employee turnover, quality issues, etc.
  2. Analyze the four key elements of the model – work, people, structure, and culture – to understand their current state within the organization.
  3. Assess the level of congruence or alignment among these four elements by examining their interactions in pairs:
  • Work and people: Do employees have the right skills/knowledge for the work? Is the work meaningful to them?
  • Work and structure: Does the organizational structure support efficient work processes?
  • Structure and people: Does the structure enable or hinder employee engagement/motivation?
  • People and culture: Are employee values/behaviors aligned with the organizational culture?
  • Culture and work: Does the culture facilitate or impede effective work practices?
  • Structure and culture: Is there harmony or conflict between the structure and cultural norms?
  1. Identify areas of incongruence or misalignment among these elements that could be the root causes of the performance issues. For example, a misalignment between people’s skills and work requirements or between an innovative culture and a rigid hierarchical structure.
  2. Conduct a root cause analysis by further investigating the specific reasons behind the identified incongruences using techniques like fishbone diagrams or Why-Why analysis.
  3. Develop an action plan to address the root causes by realigning the incongruent elements. This may involve changes to work processes, training programs, organizational policies, cultural initiatives, etc.

The key strength of the Nadler-Tushman model is its ability to provide a comprehensive framework for diagnosing performance problems by examining the interactions among the critical organizational elements. This systemic approach helps uncover root causes that may be overlooked in a siloed analysis of individual elements.

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!

Resilience

In the current world scenario, which is marked by high volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), threats are increasingly unforeseen. As organizations, we are striving for this concept of Resilience.

Resilience is one of those hot words, and like many hot business terms it can mean a few different things depending on who is using it, and that can lead to confusion. I tend to see the following uses, which are similar in theme.

Where usedMeaning
PhysicsThe property of a material to absorb energy when deformed and not fracture nor break; in other words, the material’s elasticity.
EcologyThe capacity of an ecosystem to absorb and respond to disturbances without permanent damage to the relationships between species.
PsychologyAn individual’s coping mechanisms and strategies.
Organizational and Management studiesThe ability to maintain an acceptable level of service in the face of periodic or catastrophic systemic and singular faults and disruptions (e.g. natural disasters, cyber or terrorist attacks, supply chain disturbances).

For our purposes, resilience can be viewed as the ability of an organization to maintain quality over time, in the face of faults and disruptions. Given we live in a time of disruption, resilience is obviously of great interest to us.

In my post “Principles behind a good system” I lay out eight principles for good system development. Resilience is not a principle, it is an outcome. It is through applying our principles we gain resilience. However, like any outcome we need to design for it deliberately.

Principles behind a good system

We gain resilience in the organization through levers that can be lumped together as operational and organizational.

The attributes that give resilience are the same that we build as part of our quality culture:

On the operational side, we have processes to drive risk management, business continuity, and issue management. A set of activities that we engage in.

Like many activities they key is to think of these as holistic endeavors proactively building resiliency into the organizaiton.

Competence

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

CapabilityWhat people need to do to produce results
SkillBroken into technical knowledge and practiced performance
InterestPassion
Required behaviorsOperationalize 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.