stevencerri.com

#90-9/10/09-How Do You Manage?

2009-09-10T14:21:00Z

How Do You Manage?
“Do you manage for the sprint or the marathon?”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Thursday, September 10, 2009

Hello everyone!

Do you manage for the sprint?...or ....

Do you manage for the marathon?… or ...

Do you manage for the race?

What is a sprint?
Imagine a Summer Olympics bicycle sprint race around a track. The racers are poised on their bikes. Their leg muscles are tense. Their hearts are pounding. Their muscles are ready to consume incredible amounts of energy and oxygen. Their heads are up and their eyes are looking forward. They are full of concentration, of tension. They are thinking about leading at the beginning, leading in the middle, and leading at the end.

The gun goes off and away they go.

They are full out until they cross the finish line. They have either won or lost and that’s the race.

Now consider the Tour de France.
The racers are poised at the starting line. Their legs are relaxed. Their heads are up and their eyes are looking forward. All their support personnel and vehicles are standing by. The racers are thinking about pacing themselves. They are thinking about the early part of the race as well as the middle and the end portions of the race.

The gun goes off. They begin the race. The support cars and motorcycles follow along. The support people communicate important information to the racers. The racers grab nourishing liquids along the route. They stop at various locations for rest and food.

This then is the “marathon” race. It goes on for days, even weeks.

How do most managers and leaders do their jobs?
Most managers and leaders do not know how to manage or lead for a race that is a combination of sprint and marathon. Who runs a race that is a combination of sprint and marathon, anyway?

Most managers and leaders I have met, worked with, or coached, tend to manage or lead… for the sprint. More rarely, I have found managers and leaders who manage and lead for the marathon. But seldom have I met managers and leaders who manage and lead “for the actual race”.

Most manage and lead as if their job is to put their direct report(s) on the bike, fire the starting gun, and sit back and watch the employee race, full out, around the track until they cross the finish line; until the task is done. They expect their job to be done after the starting gun goes off. If the direct report(s) fail it is “their fault”.

When you hear leaders talking about their job being to “inspire” you know they think their job is just to fire the starting gun. They think their job is to make the employee “excited” and “fired-up” to do the job and then they are supposed to get out of the way. Their goal is to let the race run it’s course. They sit back in order to let the employee feel “empowered”.

You should at least manage and lead for the marathon
The better managers and leaders manage and lead for the marathon. They not only inspire and excite their employees, they also work with, monitor, and help their employees succeed during the entire project. Like the pace cars in the Tour de France, like the people who provide nourishing drink to the racers, the marathon manager and leader is there to help and advise their direct reports along the way. Why is it that we assume that Lance Armstrong, who won the Tour de France seven times still needs and deserves pace cars, nourishment, and advice along the route, while on the other hand, we think we should “empower” and “cut loose” our employees to do their work alone and on their own?

Ideally you should manage and lead for the sprint AND the marathon.
The best way to manage and lead is to manage and lead for the “race being run”. That is, it is important to understand that every task has both a sprint portion and a marathon portion and maybe several portions of each. The sprint portion can vary from an hour to a month and the marathon portion can vary from a month to several years.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

P.S. By the way. If you’d like to leave a comment, and I’d sure be interested if you did, I’ve changed the comments software. Only your comment and your name will show up at the end of the comment. I have modified the software so that your email address will not show up anywhere.

#89-9/1/09-Keeping Your Job

2009-09-02T06:15:00Z

Keeping Your Job
“The difference that makes the difference”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Hello everyone!

Last week I attended two very interesting and significant events.

In the morning I attended the commemoration of NASA Ames Research Center as an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Historical Site, honoring all the great work that has been accomplished at that world-renowned facility. Work in the areas of aeronautics, astronautics, computation, spacecraft and satellites, wind tunnel research, to name just a few of the technologies.

As the chair of the San Francisco Section of the AIAA, I was honored and pleased to have been invited to make a short presentation.

For those of you who don’t know much about the NASA Ames Research Center, it has been the pre-eminent NASA research facility on the west coast for many years.

NASA’s Ames Research Center has been in existence since the early 1940s and has been involved in wing deicing systems for early aircraft right through to modern-day spacecraft.

Ames was initially know for wind tunnel design and testing, flight testing, and supersonic and hypersonic aerodynamics. The center conducted pioneering research in rotorcraft and vertical flight aircraft. Then expanded into spacecraft engineering, supercomputing and information technology, air traffic control, thermal protection for re-entry vehicles (the Apollo ablative shield was developed there), astrobiology and space life sciences, and Earth and planetary sciences. Ames led the development of simulators for human factors research, and has made major improvements to air traffic management.

Even with this great history, several years ago, there was some question as to whether NASA Ames would remain open or be closed. Budget cuts were placing in question the future of the facility.

It was clear that NASA Ames needed to adapt. To not only bring in more technology but to be more than technology. The world had changed. New relationships had to be developed. New ways of doing business. As I like to say it, “a new way of moving through the world”.

With a plan for keeping the best of technology and people, coupled with a plan for changing their relationship with the outside world, several years ago, NASA Ames was told that it would not be closed.

One of it first assignments was to build a new building.

The building plans began to develop along a typical path. The building envisioned was a 20th century building. It was just another building.

Enter new leadership and management in the latter part of 2008 regarding the building. One of the first orders of business was to scrap the “first” new building plan. Management then challenged the team to come up with a building that was a 21st century building, one that was completely sustainable. One that didn’t use more energy than it produced. One that used geothermal energy sources; recycled all it’s water; and used the environment to cool and heat the building. One that was a net-zero energy building. A building that was the most sustainable government building in the United States.

Apollo 11
When the astronauts of Apollo 11 landed on the moon Neil Armstrong named the landing area Tranquility Base. The new sustainable building has been named “Sustainability Base”. The ground breaking event took place last week and when completed, this building will be the most energy efficient and most sustainable government building yet built. It will set the standard.

NASA Ames didn’t close; it didn’t lose it’s job. It kept it’s job.
NASA Ames not only didn’t have to close, but has become a reinvigorated organization that will set the standards for many sustainability technologies going forward.

A lot like people.
In a very significant way, NASA Ames is a lot like people. NASA Ames is a lot like engineers and technology managers and leaders.

We love our technology. When the world around us changes we think the best thing to do is to be “better” at our technology. But very often, the world wants something different from us. The world wanted something different from NASA Ames. The world didn’t want NASA Ames to abandon all of it’s technology. The world wanted it to add something it didn’t have to the technology it already had.

The same holds true for engineers and technical managers and leaders. Your organizations don’t want you to abandon your technology. They want you to add to it. And 99% of the time, what they want you to add is the ability to communicate effectively. They want you to be able to integrate yourself and your ideas into the ideas of the team.

They want you to be able to have a wide variety of conversations with a wide variety of constituents. Your communication skills, your management and leadership skills (which ultimately also boil down to communication) can be the determining factor as to whether you get laid off or keep your job.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

#88-8/17/09-Un-Conferences Can Be…

2009-08-17T18:45:00Z

Un-Conferences
“What is an Un-Conference and can it help?”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, August 17, 2009

Hello everyone!

The Un-Conference
This weekend I had the opportunity to attend an “un-conference” for freelancers. While I am not a freelancer, I thought it would be interesting to attend an un-conference and see how they work. For those of you who have not attended an “un-conference”, they work this way.

A group of people arrive at an event. (In this case we arrived between 8 AM and 9 AM.) The leader(s) introduced the day and the general, overarching topic for the day. In this case the un-conference topic was “Ideas to help people who freelance”. The event was titled “Freelance Bootcamp”.

The event leaders then passed around blank tablets of paper and people wrote a topic they were either interested in learning more about or a topic they believed they were qualified to teach others about, and they signed their name on the paper.

All these papers/topical ideas were gathered and the leader then read each topic out loud. Participants, by a show of hands, indicated their interest in that topic. If a topic had 10 or more interested people (out of 200+ participants), then it was selected as a topic. The originator of the topic indicated whether they wanted to teach the topic, moderate a discussion, or have someone else lead the session.

Each selected topic was scheduled for a duration of 1 hour. In a day lasting from approximately 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM with an a short lunch, about 5 hours can be devoted to sessions. If 8 separate locations/break-out rooms are allocated at the venue, then 40 different topical sessions can be presented. People can move around during a presentation period if they choose, but generally speaking, people will select a topic of interest and stay for the hour. We had 40 different session topics spread over 8 different locations. Therefore, a participant was able to attend and/or present 5 different sessions.

So there you have it. That is the structure of our un-conference.

The Un-Conference and the Internet
There was something about the un-conference that brought me back to the birth of the internet. Here is what I mean.

When the internet was gearing up to hit the big time, the general consensus was that the internet would allow people to share “expertise”. We would have access to “people who were experts” in specific disciplines and we would have more access to them than we had in the past because the internet would make that access easier.

Expertise would be much more available.

The Promise Not Realized
As most people have learned by now, the internet allows us to have more access to experts and also more access to mediocrity. And it is not always easy to tell the difference.

When searching the internet for expertise, it is up to the seeker to validate and verify the validity of the expert. People who really do not know what they are talking about can come across as an expert.

However, there are certain situations in which a person may not want expertise but the opinion of someone who is an average person with average competence on a subject.

For example in the case of restaurant reviews. We may not want the opinion of a professional food critic but rather that of an average patron.

The Un-Conference
Un-conferences function pretty much the same way.

Un-conferences allow us to have access to experts, if they are there, and also access to people who are not experts, and they will definitely be there.

Now I want to be clear. This was my first un-conference, so this is a sample of one. I want to compliment all the people who put it together. They worked very hard and they did a great job. By any account the un-conference was an overwhelming success.

However, and here is the caveat. It depends upon what one expects to get from an un-conference.

I could have taught many of the sessions that ultimately got selected. (Sorry if that sounds not-so-humble, but that is the way I see it.) Remember, I’ve been in this business for many years.

I decided not to facilitate any sessions except one. And I chose not to teach it but rather to facilitate it in order to bring out the level of expertise of the group members. My goal was to learn about un-conferences and the people in them.

The Expertise
The bottom line is that in this un-conference, the expertise rose to only a certain level. And there it stopped. And the expertise was at a relatively low level in comparison to what I was looking for.

So why am I bringing this out in my blog. Because there were two important take-aways from this event. I think they are generally self-evident, but they were definitely reinforced by attending this un-conference.

The first is that “expertise is really expertise”. You know it when you see it, hear it, and get it. You cannot expect people who are not experts in an area or are not experts in transmitting their knowledge to be able to teach others expert information.

For some people who were just starting out in the “freelance world”, probably much of the information they received was useful. It gave them a sense that they were not alone. It gave them an indication of some of the early hurdles that free-lancers face.

But those who had been in the business for a while, were not going to learn too much. They were more likely to run a session. But that did not necessarily guarantee that they were experts who could give “expert information” in an “expert way”.

Second, it is very difficult, bordering on impossible, to get anything really useful in 1 hour. People, especially the younger generations think that the world can be placed in bite-sized segments. “Just give me the nugget”. “The top 10 things....” And yet I met many people there who, it was clear, had been told the nuggets but had not implemented them.

The Conclusion
Un-conferences are good for networking and hearing what others are doing and not doing. This is important, especially if you are just starting out in a certain business, industry, or technology.

An un-conference will expose you to the first-level of information.

But “un-conferences” are not places for training, facilitation, and coaching. They are rarely places to find expertise that can be translated to others. They may not be places to find experts to tap later, either (remember this is a sample of one only).

They are great places where people can learn and hear what others are doing and find “contacts” that they can access, usually for a fee, at a later date to help them be more successful. These “contacts” may be experts or merely people who have been in the business longer which does not necessarily mean “expert”.

They are also places to find people who are just starting out in whatever endeavor they are undertaking.

My Next Step
I will definitely seek out another un-conference just to validate or refute my sample of one. And the next time I will facilitate more sessions. And I would urge anyone who wants to know what others are doing in a specific field to attend an un-conference. They can be fun. You probably will not find a high level of expertise there. But if it is, you will probably only get a taste of it and then you can exchange business cards and access it later.

The bottom line is, if you want high-level expertise seek out known experts.

Apologies to anyone at the un-conference I attended who might think I am dissing the un-conference. I am not. It was a good event, as far as it went. I believe it did the job it was intended to do. Not everything in life fulfills it’s purpose well. I am convinced that this Freelance Boot Camp un-conference did indeed fulfill it’s purpose well.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

#87-3/10/09-Finding a Mentor and Coach

2009-03-11T02:06:00Z

Finding a Mentor and Coach
“How to find the right mentor and coach”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Hello everyone!

This week I was interviewed by Dice (the IT job portal) for an upcoming on-line resource they are preparing to assist young IT professionals in advancing their careers. I was asked what my three top suggestions were for IT professionals who wanted to advance their IT career. We ended the interview on the topic of what makes a good coach or mentor.

The interview got me thinking about how to select a really good mentor and/or coach, whether inside your organization or outside.

I know my own coaches and mentors were extremely instrumental in helping me with my career. So I thought I would share with you some of my thoughts on what are the important qualities to look for when selecting a mentor or coach.

“Mentoring and Coaching IS What You Think!!”
There is a lot of discussion about the importance of mentoring and of coaching for engineers regarding their careers. Many want mentors and coaches to tell them “what to do”. It seems our world is filled with people who want to know “what to do” in order to be successful.

As engineers and technical managers, we often believe that if we just know what to do, we can do it and we will therefore be successful. Knowing what to do seems to be the key.

And yet… the world is filled with people who know a great deal about what to do and yet things don’t change.

Here are some examples.
How many people want to change something in their lives? How many want to exercise regularly, loose weight, stop smoking, save money… the list is almost endless.

And for those who want to know what to do in order to exercise regularly, loose weight, stop smoking, or save money, there are more books and more courses than one can read or attend in a life-time (primarily because there are more and more coming onto the market every day.)

But gaining knowledge about “what to do” does not seem to change behavior in many situations. People read books and attend workshops and nothing seems to change. They diet endlessly. They exercise for a while then keep paying their gym memberships but never attend. They stop smoking and then start again. They save, paying themselves first, while running up their credit cards.

In the final analysis, it seems that changing behavior is not just about “knowing what to do”. There seems to be more than one variable to this equation.

How do we change behavior?
The question then is how do we change behavior and how do we move our behavior toward that of a successful long-term engineering career or toward successful engineering management?

What are the important characteristics in a mentor or coach? And how does this relate to your career?

The answer to these questions is embedded in the “way you think”, or more precisely, the way you and your coach or mentor think.

Another way to say it is that it is in your way of “being”. And let me be clear, the way you think and the way of being are not the same as attitude. Attitude is the by-product of the way you think and your way of being. So someone telling you to change your attitude is putting the cart before the horse.

Think of it this way

Your way of being … leads to and produces ...
what you do … which leads to and produces ...
what you have.

Summarized it becomes: Being --> Doing --> Having

Most people focus on having. They think they want to have, have, have.

Some, especially we engineers and technical managers, think that knowing what to do is the key. But alas, doing is not the key either.

So what’s up?
The first step in the process is the most important step. And that step is accessing a state of Being that will produce the doing. It is the state of being that drives what we will do and the doing, in turn, leads us to what we will have.

If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine at: Steven’s March 10, 2009 Ezine And once you are there look for the heading: So What’s Up? to pick up where you left off.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

#86-3/2/09-It’s Easy To Become a Technical Manager

2009-03-10T17:59:00Z

It’s Easy To Become A Technical Manager
“You are worth gold!”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, March 2, 2009

Hello everyone!

Two or three weeks ago I received this comment to one of my blog postings that read, in part, as follows:

“My question is how do I get back to a position of manager vs IC? (Individual Contributor)

When new managers came into play - change happened and because I had the safety of a paycheck I became and now am an IC.

However I am unhappy and I would like a suggestion on how I can get back to a manager position (title not important) but leading people is. Because I let the paycheck manage my career I am now working for an organization that is all I and no WE.

Your assistance and coaching is appreciated.”

J

I truly understand everything J is asking and experiencing. So I’m going to answer his question(s).

“It’s Easy To Become A Technical Managers--Honest It Is!”

Over the last several weeks I’ve been writing in my Ezines and blogs that young people are restless and they often want the world much sooner than many would think they deserve.

Often when I coach young engineers I give them advice as well as some sense of how much patience they ought to exercise.

What I often don’t say quite this way, is: Becoming a technical manger is probably one of the easiest things to do.

Now notice I didn’t say becoming a successful technical manger is one of the easiest things to do. I said becoming one is.

You are rare indeed!

Finding an engineer who can successfully manage and lead people is very difficult. It’s a very difficult combination to find in one person. And therefore, most organizations are so eager to find someone who can, that they are constantly trying to entice engineers to make the transition.

Unfortunately, most organizations don’t understand what is needed for the successful transition, so they just grab someone who is a decent engineer and who “seems” to have some aptitude for management and presto, he or she is a manager, or sort of.

I recently was published in Mechanical Engineering, the flagship magazine of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The article was titled “The 5 Myths” and lists the five myths that many organizations use to justify the selection of engineers to be managers.

Often the selection and transition process fails because the myths are just that, myths and they are false.

Companies and organizations are constantly trying to fit engineers into the management role before they are ready, and this often leads to problems.

All of this leads to the situation in which we often find ourselves, and that is, good technical managers are difficult to find.

So what does this have to do with J?

If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine at: Steven’s March 2, 2009 Ezine

Be well,

Steven Cerri

#85-2/23/09-Engineers Are Natural Leaders

2009-03-06T07:13:00Z

Engineers Are Natural Leaders
“Engineers Are Natural Leaders--Say What?”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, February 23, 2009

Hello everyone!

Engineers Are Natural Leaders… Say What?
I know this week’s blog may cause some controversy but I’ve got to put this out there because by being silent, I believe it’s only making the situation worse.

You see, recently I had dinner with a friend of mine. During the conversation he made a comment that nearly required that someone administer the Heimlich maneuver to me.

I was chewing on some delicious French bread when he said; “You know, a lot of people I work with think that engineers are natural leaders”. That’s when I nearly choked on my bread.

Fortunately I recovered quickly and asked, “You said what?”

He repeated his statement and this time, without food in my mouth, I laughed out loud.

Then I responded, “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?” He responded, “No, I’m not.”

“Engineers Are Natural Leaders...”
I’ll begin this discussion at the beginning. And as a beginning I will state that no one is a “natural leader”. No one is a “born leader”.

I listen, often with great frustration, to people who make proclamations about leadership. They might say that “so-and-so is just a born leader”. Or how someone “is a natural leader”. Or how “everyone can be a leader”.

Well, which is it? Are leaders born? Are they natural? Can everyone be a leader?

The bottom line is that most people who talk about leadership don’t understand the term or the concept and are merely repeating some old phrase that others have spoken. They often make statements like:

“Leaders inspire and managers perspire"… or…

“Leaders know what to do and managers know how to do it.”

Actually, these are generally useless phrases.

I wouldn’t mind in the least if someone wanted to tell me who was a born leader or a natural leader if they spent time up front defining leadership. But most don’t. They assume that everyone has the same definition and understanding of leadership.

And all I have to do is discuss leadership and leaders with these people for a while and I can quickly determine that we don’t all have the same definition of leadership.

My definition of leadership
Therefore, I’ll begin here with my definition of leadership… and it’s not a simple definition.

Leadership, in my book, is a multi-faceted term that has a complex definition. The definition of leadership has multiple parts (six to be exact) and if any part is missing it’s not leadership.

However, for this Ezine and this discussion, there are only two components of the definition that are necessary.

The first component is that leadership is about the relationship between the leader and the context. This may well be the most powerful component of leadership. The leader and the environment must be in a mutually supportive relationship. If the environment doesn’t “need” or “want” the leader, the leaders seems “out of touch with reality”. If the leader is exactly what the environment “needs”, the leaders seems to magically appear, as if out of thin air. They seem to be “born” for the job.

In reality, they’ve always had these traits and now the environment has shifted and their traits are perfectly matched to the occasion. (There are those situations where the leader can “morph” to match what the situation needs as well, and this kind of leader has become more common in the last 40 years or so.)

Therefore, what looks like “magic”, what looks like a leader born to the job of leadership, is actually an individual living their life, waiting in the wings, off stage, until the stage is set for them to step forth fully formed or nearly so.

As long as the environment is aligned with what the leader can provide, then the leader will flourish. However, when the environment shifts, the leader will often vanish or be significantly diminished in stature.

There are many examples of this “match-up”, and then a lack of it, throughout history. They include many military leaders, such as Napoleon, General George Patten, and many political leaders such as Boris Yeltsin, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush just after 9/11. We must wait to see how the leader-environment match-up plays out for President Barack Obama of the United States as well as President Nicolas Sarkosy of France. Both were elected in environments that were making a major transition.

This leader-environmental match-up is is exactly why successful “serial entrepreneurship” is so difficult to achieve.

How many times can a match-up occur between an entrepreneur and the environment? Apparently not very often. It is the rare entrepreneur, indeed, who can start-up several successful companies.

Only the leader who can morph to match the environment can be a leader in a variety of situations. General, and later president, Dwight Eisenhower is an example of a leader who was able to cross contextual boundaries. And Elon Musk is an example of a successful serial entrepreneur.

All one has to do is look out in the world and it becomes clear that there aren’t any born leaders or natural leaders. The phrase, “He (or she) is the leader of their time” is a truly accurate statement. Leadership is about the leader and their “time” being in alignment.

If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine at: Steven’s February 23, 2009 Ezine

Be well,

Steven Cerri

#84-2/16/09-The Young Are Restless--Once More

2009-03-04T07:18:00Z

The Young Are Restless--Once More!
“Young people and the manager”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, February 16, 2009

Hello everyone!

Is it a bad rap?
Last week I wrote “The Young Are Restless” and I received a number of emails commenting on my evaluation of the situation. All were positive and in agreement with what I had written, and yet, there two sides to the story. In this blog I want to address the other side.

“Young People and The Manager”
Last week I told the young people, the young engineers, they had three choices.

They could either “suck it up” and deal with the fact that they are playing by the manager’s rules… or…

They could join a small company or start-up where the rules for advancement are not so structured.... or…

They could start their own company or be a contract employee and not be responsible (so much) to the organization.

But that’s only half the story.

The other half of the story concerns the role of the manager of the team in this equation.

No Pulled Punches
Management is about getting results with and through a variety of resources. Sometimes those resources include people.

Most managers tend to treat people like other resources… like money, or land, or equipment.

Most managers will modify the land to fit the need. Or they’ll get enough money or use the money to get what is desired. Or they’ll buy the right equipment to due a job or perhaps alter the equipment to do the job better or alter it to do a slightly different job.

Whatever the exact requirement, generally speaking, we often secure the right resource for the job and when we don’t need the resource any more we through it away. Or we get a resource that is close to what we need and then we modify it to fit the job.

Unfortunately, many managers treat people the same way. If the human equipment doesn’t do the job correctly, or doesn’t do the job the way the manager wants, many managers often blame the equipment and try to make the person fit the job.

“Oh, Bob is just not suited to this job. We’ll have to let him go and find someone who can do this job.”

or

“I was told to put Mary on my team and I gave her a job and she just can’t do it. I’m going to have to let her go; there’s nothing here she can do.”

Now I understand completely that sometimes people are not suited to the tasks we have available for them. And I also know that people can learn, which in a way, is like modifying a machine to do a different job than originally intended.

However, lets be clear, people learn and people are flexible.

“No, no you say. I’ve met people who were completely inflexible” and not willing to learn.

While I would agree that there are people who are inflexible, my experience tells me that people are much more desirous of being successful than of being stubborn. So the question I have for the manager who wants to blame his or her direct report for being stubborn is; “What have you, as the manager, done to amplify or diminish that stubbornness?”

Cut to the chase
9 times out of 10, the responsibility of the manger is to help the direct report be successful. IT IS NOT to make the direct report FIT the job, but rather to find a way to fit the job to the direct report so that the direct report can be successful.

Now I know… I can hear some managers complaining that my suggestion is unrealistic… and sometimes it is. Guess what? In those cases where my approach doesn’t fit, don’t use it. Do something different. Remember, I said 9 times out of 10.

So where am I going with this?
If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine at: Steven’s February 16, 2009 Ezine

Be well,

Steven Cerri

#83-2/9/09-The Young Are Restless

2009-02-11T03:30:00Z

The Young Are Restless!
“Young People Want Everything Now!”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, February 9, 2009

Hello everyone!

Is it a bad rap?
I often hear managers and training departments in corporations complain about how young people don’t want to wait for their career advancement.

They want to get pay raises after 6 months. They want to be managers 1 year after graduating from college. They don’t want to work 5, 6, or 7 years in one position to earn the “right” to be promoted to the next career level.

This last weekend, in my class I heard it again. One young person said that after joining a company, they found that they were given more and more work, and working longer and longer hours. They were also doing the same work as others who were getting paid much more and who had been with the company many more years. When this person asked for a raise, the manager said “No”. The person subsequently left the company.

Another young person told me that even though they had not yet graduated from college (they would soon) and even though they had been an intern with a large company for several summers, they wanted to be a manager upon graduation. They didn’t want to wait the seemingly standard period before promotion to management...7 years as an engineer.

Equal pay for equal work.
For most of my career I have believed that equal pay should be given for equal work. Although, during my career, I was usually focused on equal pay for women who were doing work equivalent to that of men, my first response to young people who want equal pay for equal work has been to agree with the young people.

And yet, this weekend, when I heard my students talking about their perceptions, their expectations, and their experiences, while I initially responded that it was reasonable to expect equal pay for equal work, on the way home, what I had said just didn’t seem to sit well with me. Did I really believe that equal pay for equal work was always the correct yard-stick? My head said “yes”, but my gut said “no”. I felt that it was more complicated than that.

Here’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
You see, when the baby boomers began their careers, most of them began as “employees” of companies. They even expected to stay employees for most of their career. They expected to get health benefits, paid vacations, and even fixed benefit retirement plans. AND they expected to “work their way” up the organization.

You see, “in those days”, when an organization hired an employee there was an unwritten agreement that the company would do it’s best to keep the employee. That might mean that you might be moved around a little and that you’d do jobs you might not be perfect for, but in return, you’d do the work, you’d gain experience and that experience would actually come in handy over the long haul because you’d be even more flexible and capable of doing other jobs.

And then along came… technology.
The last generation to feel this way and to have this unspoken agreement with the company was the baby boomer generation.

With their children everything began to change. You see, technology began to put a lot of the “organization” into the hands of individuals. For baby boomers there were secretaries who wrote memos. For their children, they wrote their own memos. And so it went, on and on.

The upshot of this gigantic shift was that work became something that could be “packaged” into much smaller and smaller, quantifiable packets. With the emergence of the global economy this trend only accelerated.

At this point, equal pay for equal work took on a very new meaning. If I could pack my task into a tight, neat package, and define it well enough, I could send it to a variety of workers and now experience wouldn’t matter. The only question that mattered would be, “Can they do the job?”. Experience didn’t really matter. Knowing who was doing the work didn’t even matter.

It didn’t matter if the person doing the work was a 12-year-old kid working in her bedroom after her parents thought she was asleep. Experience just didn’t matter… only competence at doing the job at hand.

Thus emerged the profound and newly defined category of “contract worker”.

But not the contract worker of old. A contract worker who was told they could be “independent of the man” (i.e., the corporate boss).The flip side of course is that if you are not beholding to the corporation, then the corporation doesn’t owe the contract worker anything in return.

So where do we go from here?
Corporations and baby boomers and older employees (in general) still accept that companies hire “employees” and when you are an employee, experience matters.

The children of baby boomers and all those children right up to those born today, have been raised, without any of us or them realizing it, to believe that contract labor is the way all people are being judged

Here comes the class!
So now we’ve got young people who have been raised on “only performance matters”. Experience doesn’t matter.

These young people are entering a “corporate” and business structure (in most, but not all, cases) where performance is only part of the equation of success.

Is it any wonder that we have a clash?

If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine/Newsletter at: Steven’s February 9, 2009 Newsletter

Be well,

Steven Cerri

#82-2/2/09-Buy-In Once More

2009-02-11T00:00:00Z

Buy-In Once More
“Buy-In, Once More With Feeling!”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, February 2, 2009

Hello everyone!

Buy-in is everywhere… it’s everywhere!
Most of us involved in business, technical organizations, and teams think of buy-in as a common requirement for our success.

Buy-in isn’t just something that managers attempt to secure from their direct reports. Buy-in is a requirement for all human endeavors that require more than one person. Buy-in is the thread, the weave, that holds the fabric of human social structure together.

Every time you see an advertisement that seems to appeal to something inherent in your values, the advertiser is seeking your buy-in.

Every time a politician appeals to your values, beliefs, or needs, the politician is seeking your buy-in.

So how do we get buy-in?
My definition of buy-in is: Buy-in is the “overlap” of one person’s or group’s motivating beliefs and/or outcomes with those of another person or group.

That’s it. There must be an overlap between what the first person or group believes or wants to get with what another person or group believes or wants to get.

If there is sufficient overlap there is buy-in. Insufficient overlap… no buy-in.

And what about work?
Everyday you go to work. What for?

If you’re an engineer, what’s your reason and how does it compare to what the company and/or your manager expresses.

Do you go to work for a paycheck?

Do you go to work to express your engineering creativity?

Do you go to work to creatively solve problems.

What do you do now?
Well you are certainly not at a loss of choices.

Choice #1: You could appeal to their desire to keep their job.

Choice #2: You could appeal to their desire to BE an engineer.

Choice #3: You could appeal to their desire to creatively solve problems, and this is certainly an opportunity to do that.

Choice #4: You could pay them extra for the extra effort needed to solve the issue and put the project back on schedule.

Choice #5: You could instill a competitive spirit by noting that if your product is delayed the competition will get to the market first.

Manager’s mistakes
Most managers make two major mistakes when it comes to getting buy-in at a time of crisis (it’s relatively easy to get buy-in when everything is going smoothly).

The first mistake is that they think that everyone is motivated by the same forces they are. That is, the manager thinks that what motivates the manager will motivate everyone else.

The second mistake is to think that one motivating force will motivate everyone equally.

The successful manager must be able to step into the team’s generalized map of the world. He or she must also be able to step into the individuated map of the world of many of the people on the team.

Ultimately everyone must be treated as an individual, because buy-in is from each individual, not from the group.

How to get buy-in one-on-one.
The easiest way to get buy-in is through what I call, “Conversational Management and Leadership”. It’s a process of seemingly casual conversation that elicits, from each individual, what their motivational drivers are.

The take-away!
The main message is that buy-in is not a mysterious process. There is no reason to consider it something that “others can do” but you can’t.

Buy-in is in our nature. The challenge is not getting buy-in, the challenge is understanding where the overlap exists between management and the direct reports. Once the overlap is found, buy-in is a natural outcome.

If you want to learn more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine/Newsletter at: Steven’s February 2, 2009 Newsletter

Be well,

Steven Cerri

#81-1/29/09-Building Buy-In

2009-01-30T04:44:00Z

Building Buy-In Is Easy
“When you know what to do”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Thursday, January 29, 2009

Hello everyone!

The big question is...
I often get asked these questions: “Steven, how do you get buy-in from people?” or “In this difficult business environment, how do you get people to buy-in instead of worrying about other things that take them away from what they need to be accomplishing?” or “How do I get the team to give buy-in and have everyone pull in the same direction?”

It doesn’t much matter how you phrase the question… it usually boils down to “How to I get everyone to agree to contribute their best efforts to what I want them to be doing?”

The answer comes in 3 parts and Part 1 is...
If you read my Ezine/Newsletter of last week, you know that the first part of the answer to getting buy-in is to understand that no one does anything they don’t want to do.

So getting buy-in is not about getting people to buy-in because they feel that they have to do something they don’t want to do.

You get buy-in by getting people to do something they want to do. The goal is to get them to do what they want to do in such a way that it dovetails with what you want them to do as well.

Part 2 of the answer is...
If people are only going to do what they want to do, and if you want to align what they want to do with what you want them to do, it is important that you understand the motivation of your team members.

You can generalize to some extent but each person is motivated by something a little different and you have to understand this. And this is not rocket science, but it does take some special attention to detail. Here is and example of what I mean.

An example...
Several years ago I was working inside a printer company. Most manufacturers have a number they watch. The number is titled, “First Pass Yield”. When a product, in this case a printer, comes off the assembly line it’s tested to see if it will work “right out of the box”. The ratio of those that work to those that don’t is called the First Pass Yield.

Those printers that don’t work must to be repaired by hand with labor and maybe parts added to the original cost. If the first pass yield for a specific product falls to low, the product line will make no profit. If it falls even lower, the product line will actually loose money.

The particular printer company in this example had a certain printer line that had problems. The first pass yield was around 75%. This was definitely a loosing proposition. The cost of reworking 25% of the printers before they could be shipped guaranteed that this printer line was not profitable.

The CEO established a “Tiger Team” made up of a representative from each department. These included manufacturing, manufacturing engineering, procurement, quality assurance, receiving, test, and sustaining engineering.

This Tiger Team met every week and it had been doing so for 16 months. During that time, First Pass Yield remained stuck at 75%.

Finally the CEO asked me to join the Tiger Team and determine what if anything could be done.

I joined the team, and while I had authority because the CEO sent me into the meeting I didn’t use it.

At the first meeting I introduced myself and then I just listened as the meeting went on. I may have asked a question or two, but essentially I was a “fly on the wall” just observing and listening.

At the second meeting I told the team that I had some questions I’d like to ask, and I respectfully went around the table and asked each person what their responsibility was and what they thought the real issues were.

As I went around the room I listened for what answers were being given. Did they think it was someone else’s fault or responsibility? Did they think it was a poor design? Did they not have any idea? Did they think that the answer was right around the corner? Did they understand the fundamental problem(s), the fundamental forces involved with First Pass Yield?

By the time I went around the table, I had a relatively clear idea of who was “moving toward a higher first pass yield” and who as “moving away from a lower first pass yield”. I was also clear about who saw this as an opportunity and who saw this as a problem. And I saw who was “passing the buck” to someone else and who was willing to jump in and figure out a solution.

After I went around the table I then gave the meeting back to the quality assurance manager who had been leading the meetings and I went back into “observation” mode.

First Pass Yield is all about statistics...
Those of you in manufacturing know that First Pass Yield is all about the statistical reliability of individual components that make up the product. Since I used to teach statistics at the college level, I understood the implications of what was happening to the printer line.

By the third meeting is was clear to me that members of the team didn’t understand the issues around statistics and First Pass Yield. Therefore, in third meeting I took the lead and I told the team that the challenge was essentially one of statistical reliability of the printer components. I then gave them a mini-statistics course in 15 minutes.

This printer had only 5 independent components. Some coming from China. Some manufactured in the U.S. and all five of them assembled at the company’s manufacturing facility. All we had to do was increase the statistical reliability of each of those five components and we were home free.

Here comes the buy-in...
Now the challenge was to get buy-in from each of the Tiger Team members so they would focus on the component reliability that they were responsible for and stop pointing fingers and chasing ideas that didn’t matter.

Most of the team members were hungry for some sign of success after 16 months of 75% First Pass Yield. So when I gave direction, suggestions of what to do in order to adjust our test and reliability procedures, many of the team agreed.

There were certain people however, who really understood the relationship between statistical reliability and First Pass Yield. They got it intuitively. To these people I gave more work and more responsibility. I knew they could be trusted to understand the complexity of what we were doing and the inter-relationships between components. And they wanted the freedom to use their judgment. So I gave them more open-ended direction and suggestions.

To others, who didn’t get the subtleties of what we were doing so well, I gave very clear direction. They were not given such wide latitude to express their own judgment.

And with regard to the one person who was not going to give me buy-in, I removed him from the Tiger Team. It became clear this person was not going to move forward for the benefit of the team and the printer line and it was clear that his power and authority were more important to him than working as a team for the benefit of the product line. Therefore, within a matter of four weeks from the time I joined the team, I removed him from the team.

If you want to know how we did (we did very well) and you want to know what I did to get buy-in, you can get the rest of this story in my Ezine/Newsletter at:
Steven’s January 26, 2009 Newsletter

Be well,

Steven Cerri

#80-1/19/09-First Rule of Leadership

2009-01-21T07:23:00Z

1st Rule Of Leadership
“The #1 leadership rule you need to know!”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Hello everyone!

If you were to pick one and only one leadership rule, I’ve put it in this blog. Everything else about leadership pales in comparison to this rule. I’ve devoted this blog and this week’s ezine/newsletter to just this topic.

We often hear the following definition of leadership:

“Leadership is the ability to get people to do what they don’t want to do”. Or some variation on that theme.

It’s wrong. Period.

That’s not the way human beings work.
Let’s get this really clear… it is impossible for a human being to do what they don’t want to do. We are not wired to do anything we don’t want to do. To act (or even to not act) requires “volition” which means it is impossible to do something that we don’t want to do.

Humans as coins.
Imagine that every human being is a coin. As we know, on one side of US coinage is a “head” or bust of a prominent historical figure and on the other side is something that is not a bust of someone and we call this a “tail”. If we use the analogy that human beings are like coins then each human being is motivated to move toward what they want (we can call this heads) or they are motivated to move away from what we don’t want (we can call this tails).

There is no in-between. We either move toward what we want or we move away from what we don’t want. Both are actions to do what we want to do. Neither one is a movement to do something we don’t want. Both are movements to do what we do want… either to gain or to avoid.

Leadership is NOT getting people to do something they don’t want to do.

Leadership is getting people to do something based on the possibility of an outcome or the fear of an outcome.

So which do you use?

Now here is the important point… there is a place for both motivations; moving towards and moving away from. In fact, there are certain people who prefer to be motivated by moving away from. They tend to be the people who believe their “glass is always half empty”.

So I’m not going to suggest that leaders ought never to motivate using a moving away from motivation. At times its useful. And there are people who will like it and respond to it.

However, I personally prefer to use a moving toward motivation strategy whenever possible. I have at times, used moving away from strategies in leadership, but rarely.

By far the most powerful, effective, inspiring, and successful forms of motivation are those that employ moving towards. This has been my experience.

So here is my final leadership rule now expanded into all its corollaries:

Leadership Rule. True great leadership is getting people to do something as a result of the excitement of achieving the possibility of an outcome or as a result of action prompted by avoiding the fear of an outcome.

Associated Corollaries
1. There is no such thing as “Leadership is getting people to do something they don’t want to do. It’s impossible for people to do what they don’t want to do.

2. People are in constant tug between moving toward and moving away from.

3. Great leaders know how to assess the best motivaiton strategy based on the individuals and the team psychology.

4. A combination of moving towards and moving away from can often be more effective than using any one mode.

5. Too much “moving away from” leadership tends to drain an individual or team of it’s energy and ultimately the team will disintegrate if too much moving away from strategy is employed.

6. The greatest creativity, possibility, and energy come from moving toward strategies.

If you have any comments please add them to the end of this blog. I’d be very interested in your ideas.

Have fun leading!

Be well,

Steven Cerri

P.S. If you want more information on this Rule visit this week’s newsletter where I go into much more detail about it. You can find it at: STCI January 19, 2009 Newsletter

By the way. If you’d like to leave a comment, and I’d sure be interested if you did, I’ve changed the comments software. Only your comment and your name will show up at the end of the comment. I have modified the software so that your email address will not show up anywhere.

#79-1/12/09-Trust Your Experiences

2009-01-13T07:15:00Z

Trust Your Experiences
“How do you recognize good management advice?”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, January 12, 2009

Hello everyone!

“Who do you trust and what is the truth in management?”

This last week I was reading some of the blogs on the people skills necessary for successful management. One blog, in particular, caught my eye. It had to do with “behaviors” that are necessary for a good manager.

Some of the behaviors put forth by the author included things like these soft skills:

1. When you are managing, never show your emotions.
2. When you are managing, never raise your voice. Always have a calm voice. If you get frustrated you can scream into a pillow in your office.
3. Always have a smile on your face.
4. Walk around and talk to your direct reports. Ask them how they are doing and give them suggestions on how they can do their job better.

These were just a few of the “best practices” that this author put forward regarding how to behave if you want to be a good manager. The author had been a manager for five years and wanted to share what he had learned.

Fair enough.

What I find interesting is this; “How is a new manager who is reading this information, to use and apply these suggestions and to know which suggestions are true and which are false?

But wait… the truth!

How do you know that the information put forth is accurate? Is there any way that you might know if 5 years as manager is enough to give authoritative knowledge? Is the equivalent of two years of engineering school enough to allow someone to sign off on the design of a bridge or analyze the orbital velocity requirements for rendezvous with the International Space Station?

Actually there is a way to know.

In our own personal experience we know what works for management and what doesn’t. In our own personal experience we have a sense of what good managers do and what bad managers do or don’t do.

And yet, many, many people choose to discount their own personal experience in order to follow the “leader”. They discount what they know in their gut to be true, because the “leader” says that something else is true, instead. And yet, we know it’s not.

So lets take some of those “gems” put forth on the blog post and see if they align with our personal experience.

When you are managing, never show your emotions.
My experience: Not true.
It’s not a question of showing emotions, its a question of what emotions you do show and the degree to which you do so. It’s not very useful to be a tyrant and yell at people and insult them in public. But it’s certainly useful to show compassion, and determination, and even sternness, and maybe levity, politeness, and at times frustration, disappointment, and even anger. It’s impossible to not show emotions. The key is to show the right ones and at the appropriate level. (I could write a book on this.)

When you are managing, never raise your voice. Always have a calm voice. If you get frustrated you can scream into a pillow in your office.
My experience: Half true, half not true.
Never raise your voice… well it depends. I have had direct reports with whom I would never raise my voice. And I’ve had direct reports with whom a good, hearty, give-and-take, with raised voices and even yelling was the only way to build the rapport and connection that the direct report (and I for that matter) wanted. To be always calm with this direct report would have actually adversely affected our professional relationship.

And the idea of always having a calm voice… come on. Have you ever been really upset and in need of help? So you called a customer service representative and the person at the other end of the line sounded as if they were as calm as could be. What was your response?

I know that my response has been to be annoyed with them. They were too calm. They didn’t understand that my situation was important.

Always being calm is nearly as bad as always yelling, almost.

And yes, if you are going to go off on someone… go scream into a pillow until you calm down.

Always have smile on your face.
My experience: Not true.
First, have you ever been around someone who always has a smile on their face? Have you ever thought to yourself, “What are they doing… always with a smile on their face. It can’t be real.” And often it’s not real.

No one wants to be around a doom and gloom person (except other doom and gloom people) but it’s important to be authentic and yet appropriate.

So rules like “always have a smile on your face” are just not useful. A better suggestion is to always be appropriate and effective in any given situation so that you and the team can achieve your/their desired outcome. (This is a topic for another book).

Now the important point about my comments is this; the suggestions put in the blog I read were a decent attempt to quantify behaviors that would make a manager a good manager.

However, management is not a simple process. It is not given to quick and simple rules. In engineering, F=ma. The laws of physics are clear, stable, repeatable. Unfortunately or fortunately, management doesn’t have similarly clear, stable, repeatable rules. The biggest rule in management is “it depends.” The best way to know if what someone is telling you is true, is to match it to your experience. And if you have no experience in a specific are, then take it “one-step-at-a-time”.

With respect to every suggested soft skill behavior I listed from the blog, we all have personal experiences that contradict what was suggested.

We all know of times when emotion displayed by our managers was just what we wanted to see, hear, and experience. Therefore, when to display what emotion is context dependent. It depends.

We all have experiences when we didn’t want our managers to display a smile. We want to be able to “read” our managers by hearing the tone of their voice. We don’t want them to be smiling when they are laying people off. Once again, it depends.

And, there are times when we certainly don’t want our managers to come around talking to us, looking over our shoulders and giving us suggestions about how we can do things better. There are times when we will welcome the advice and other times when we’ll probably consider it micromanagement. So once again it depends.

The bottom line is...
So the bottom line is this. Management, leadership, even contributing your maximum to your organization is not something you learn in five years of on-the-job training. (How long was the intense training your received for your engineering degree?)

It’s also not something you learn from a simple set of rules.

In basic terms…

Engineering is about knowledge; Management is about judgment.

Engineering is about rules; Management is about context.

Engineering is an application of knowledge in search of certainty; Management is the application of judgment in search of an outcome.

Very different worlds.

Be well,

Steven Cerri

#78-1/5/09-Choice Is A Myth!

2009-01-05T22:41:00Z

Choice Is A Myth!
“Do you really choose anything?”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, January 5, 2009

Hello everyone!

As an engineer or engineering manager, how much of what you do is your choice?

As an engineer or engineering manager how much of what your colleagues do is their choice?

As an engineering manager, how much of the behavior of your direct reports is their choice?

Most people would answer that people are always choosing their behaviors. Right? How can it be any other way? We each choose our behaviors.

Well, as you are probably well aware, we have now entered the era of brain scanning and we can now answer these questions with data-supported statements; and it seems the answer to all three questions is an emphatic… NOT AS MUCH AS YOU MIGHT THINK!

In fact, not much at all.

Martin Lindstrom, a marketing expert, kept noticing contradictions between what people “said” they did and what they actually did when it came to making a buying choice. People told Martin they bought “Product X” for this or that reason but they also behaved in ways that seemed to refute their explanations. Martin wasn’t convinced.

So Martin embarked on a grand scientific study to determine, with real data, what was the truth.

Martin conducted a scientific research project to determine if our “buy decisions” have predictability and similarity to anything else we do, and if that predictability can be measured using the latest brain scan equipment. He wondered if our buy decisions really were structured as we explained or was there something else going on under our conscious awareness that was different from our explanations? The reason this question is so important in advertising is that much of advertising doesn’t work. So if it doesn’t work, why? And when it does work, why? (This research has important implications for management and leadership, as well.)

Martin got grants for millions of dollars, enlisted doctors and subjects, and employed two very sophisticated brain scanning systems, an fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and an SST (which is an advanced version of the electroencephalograph).

He was on a quest to determine the “honesty” of peoples’ buying explanations and the “real” mechanisms by which people decide to buy what they decide to buy.

What Martin found was that people haven’t a clue why they do things (and I’m not exaggerating his words). Whatever people “think” are their motivations, they’re usually wrong! They can’t explain their motives and therefore, they can’t explain their actions. The intellect doesn’t know, in most cases, a person’s true motives. To put it in the frame of art and literature, “The mind does not know the heart”.

It is for this reason that I don’t place much stock in books that purport to teach management by recounting the motives and actions of previously successful executives. When an executive or manager attempts to explain his or her motives for their actions, it’s always been my position, and now I even have Martin’s scientific data to back me up, that people don’t have a clue as to their true motivations. Books touting how certain managers or executives explain “why” they did something are therefore, often hollow at best and misleading at worst. Historically, people can tell us “what” they did. Seldom can they truly tell us “why” they did it.

Some people don’t need an fMRI or an SST to uncover why people do what they do. You’ve seen them. They’re the people who seem to lead naturally. They seem to have the ability to influence without trying.

What are they doing? How do they do it?

The key is that before there were fMRIs and SSTs, human beings had the ability to “read” other people so that signficant and elegant influence was possible. It’s what I call “Effective Conversational Management and Leadership”. The fMRI and SST used by Martin are designed to access brain activities in real time. Similarly, Effective Conversational Management and Leadership is designed to manage and lead individuals and teams “in real time”.

The information necessary for effective management and leadership is in the moment, with the direct report, with the team. (This is also why I’m not a fan of personality tests and surveys.) There are ways to “read” and “understand” motives. It doesn’t take brain scans, (although they can be very accurate and useful when scientific, reproducible data is desired); it takes an understanding of the human process. Great leaders know this. Great influences understand this.

If you’re interested in this topic you can check out the book. I highly recommend it. It’s titled: “buy-ology; Truth and Lies About Why We Buy”. And I would add, “Truth and Lies About Why We Do What We Do”. The book is written by Martin Lindstrom. Check it out. It’s a good read. (Click here to go to Amazon.com to purchase the book.)

Be well,

Steven Cerri

#77-1/1/09: New Year Future

2009-01-02T06:14:00Z

New Year Future.
“What future pulls you to it?”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Thursday, January 1, 2009

Happy New Year everyone!

In point of fact, we are pattern recognition machines. All we do is recognize for patterns. Here’s an example. The only reason you can read these words is because your eyes notice where the pattern of black (of each letter) begins and ends and where the pattern of white, your screen or paper begins and ends. It is at the boundaries of these patterns that experience exists. Were it not for our ability to notice for and recognize the beginning and ending of patterns, all of existence would be one field of white noise, (or black noise since there would be no distinction) and then actually there would be no awareness or more importantly, no knowing-ness of existence at all (and by that I mean self-reflection.)

So now that I’ve sufficiently convinced you that we are pattern recognition creatures, and we are very good at it, with all our senses, and our very survival and even existence depends on that ability, what patterns are you going to recognize as the new year unfolds?

Because patterns don’t just exist in what we see or hear, they also show up in the type of world view we construct in our minds and in our consciousness. And unless one is “in the moment” and therefore, takes the world as it “shows up” moment by moment, each of us creates and sustains a world view that allows us to navigate through life on a daily basis. By necessity we use our detected patterns to notice for what to include in our world view and what to not to include.

What patterns will you therefore notice in the world, going forward? What future will pull you into time going forward? What is it you expect the world to become the next moment, and the next?

Of course two major patterns that many people sort and filter for, and they go by various names, are: “good” versus “bad”; or “problem versus opportunity”; or “glass half empty versus glass half full”. Most people don’t realize that which pattern one takes into the brain, which pattern we actually go looking for… is a choice. And even the choices of what patterns we sort for and filter for, can themselves, be patterns that have developed over years. We can however, become aware of those “choice patterns”, and by being aware of our own patterns, choose something different.

Many people are very unaware that they consistently look for the things in the world to support their concept that their “glass is half empty”. It doesn’t matter to them that the person next to them may think that the “same glass” is half full. For them it’s half empty and they can identify all the things in the world to support that position. They look for and sort for the data and patterns that support the glass being half empty.

On the other hand, there are those who look at the world and sort for and locate patterns that support the position that the glass is half full. In most cases, it’s the “same world” that the “glass half empty” person lives in. The only difference is what each person notices.

You’ve heard the saying “If you think you can or you think you can’t, your right”. It’s the same thing. But being an engineer, I’m not willing to accept a flippant phrase. I want to understand how it “works”. (That’s one of my patterns.) My pattern is to look for supporting data. And the supporting data to the flippant phrase is this: The reason “If you think you can or you think you can’t, your right” is a true statement is because we human beings perform certain functions as we take data through our senses and into our conscious and unconscious minds. We “distort”, “delete”, and “generalize” the incoming information. Therefore, if we have a tendency to look for evidence that the glass is half empty we will actually delete and distort and generalize the positive information we see, hear, and experience so that our ultimate experience supports a half-empty glass.

Conversely, if we have a tendency to look for evidence that the glass is half full we will actually delete and distort and generalize the negative information we see, hear, and experience so that our ultimate experience supports a half-full glass.

We always get what we want!… not necessarily what we ask for.

What will you be creating in 2009? More opportunity… around every corner? What opportunities will you take advantage of? What positive efforts will you make? Where will you look for help, a leg up, a supportive word? Who will you give a hand too? Will you walk so the wind is at your back? What future pulls you to it? What will you choose.... since we make it all up anyway....

Be well,

Steven Cerri

#76-10/14/08: Context and Communication.

2008-10-15T05:32:00Z

Context and Communication.
“Context-Static questionnaires don’t work.”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Hello everyone!

I was teaching a management class at the University of California, Santa Barbara, this last Friday.

I was talking to the class about the way in which each of us is “programmed” to behave in certain ways.

I gave the students a questionnaire and one of the categories surveyed by the questionnaire had to do with being oriented toward “details” or toward “big picture”. Those people who prefer to focus on the “big picture” have a tendency to detest details and vice versa. Some people prefer a balance and some people prefer one extreme or the other.

In response to the questionnaire, some of the students displayed preferences for details or big picture, while others displayed a balance.

They got the very clear message that their preferences are real and strong. Students were acknowledging that they either had no real preference or they had strong preferences and they were able to give examples of how these preferences showed up in their lives.

As our discussion progressed, one of the students asked if the scores recorded by the questionnaire ever changed. Essentially, “Do they remain constant or do they change?”

Now here is the very interesting part. Once the students clearly understood that every human being has these “internal programs” that run, often outside of our conscious awareness, my answer to the question was that not only do the preferences change over time, they actually are different depending upon the situation; different depending upon the “context”.

I’ll take myself as an example. When I take my own questionnaire, the survey comes back indicating that I have a very high preference for “big picture” and I have a very low tolerance for details.

Don’t give me details! My eyes glaze over. I want to focus on the big picture. I’ll let someone else attend to the details.... That’s how I answered the questionnaire. And it’s TRUE....

Unless, I’m being creative. If I’m designing a rocket engine, or designing a new training, essentially doing something I consider to be very creative… then I’m all over the details.

So our internal programs actually shift depending upon the context.

Now not everyone has such a strong shift depending upon the context as I have. But most people will display some shift based on context.

This is why I don’t use Myers-Briggs, Disc, or Enneagram. They are context independent. They are great to convince people that people have programs, but then there are a lot of questionnaires that do that. The issue with most systems out there is that they set the internal programs in place assuming that the context is static.

We all know that the context shifts. We all know that situations change.

I’ve developed communication, influence, and leadership processes that allow for a real-time shift in the context, which is exactly what happens in real life. The communicator can actually determine what the context is that is “driving” the interaction and alter the messages so that they can take into account the internal programs of the people listening. It’s a real-time, context-sensitive, communication and leadership process that allows the communicator to adjust the communication process to match the context.

Now I know this sounds like a blatant marketing piece… sorry. But I don’t know how else to talk about what I consider to be a fundamental issue in human communication. And that is that people and the communication and leadership processes are dynamic. They are not static and if we are going to be highly effective in communication, management, and leadership we have to understand that we must engage with people in a real-time “dance”. A real-time give and take that takes attention and awareness and an understanding of all the levels of communication that are taking place simultaneously.

How else can effective communication, influence, and leadership be accomplished?

Be well,

Steven Cerri