Design Of Thinking: How To Bring Teams To Success

Genuine teamwork remains as elusive as it’s ever been, that is what says Patrick Lencioni, founder of The Table Group.

Since ancient times we have been researching to understand human behavior. We like to know and understand what people do, how they do it and why they do it. We, as human beings, always tried to observe in ourselves and others.

Different civilizations described human behavior according to different methods and systems, until modern psychological schools came. William Moulton Marston developed a new model in the twenties of the last century to help understanding how normal people felt and behaved in the world around them.

Interacting individuals gives a big chance for all of us in our daily activities. We usually need to pay serious attention to our patterns of behavior and the different models we find in our businesses. So we have to design how we think, but above that, how we interact in our teams and what happens with our relationships.

There are two main concepts to consider very important. Perception and Environment and how they interact, how we see others, circumstances, challenges, chances and events. This would be the external vision. But the perception of oneself is also very important when we compare our own power with the environment. This is how we see the environment around us, more or less powerful.

When we create, develop and build teams, we need to consider different approaches and at the same time to understand that people have different views of the same situation. None better than the other, each style is somewhat unique and different, just like our individual fingerprints, but they provide richness and completeness to the different situations. If everyone would view the situations in the same way, people would not enrich with diversity offering different perspectives and solutions.

Different patterns of behavior have different perceptions of the environment and self, so each one of these behaviors try to adapt themselves to the environment they perceive. Teams are built with different styles, so the leader will have to understand it to manage them effectively and balance them enhancing them with some behaviors that bring together all members of the team.

As I said on my last post, “Telling Stories with Design of Thinking”, our believes will determine our thoughts and these will make real our feelings. This will define our personality and finally our behavior will define the result of our actions.

Team building has different stages, and most likely, different behaviors would be the best to connect with those different stages. So if we are in a forming stage, we need team members more enthusiastic, team oriented, with a dimension of behavior that considers the environment favorable.

When we achieve the storming stage, which is probably the most difficult stage for the team, group members realize that the task is more difficult than they had imagined and express their individuality through hostility and overzealousness.  In that period of time we will need as leaders to manage the team developing the commitment and accountability in a strong way to succeed. Different patterns of behaviors, which they are the dimensions, behave in a different way in front of commitment and accountability, so we will have to lead them to achieve those ones effectively.

But previously, managing conflicts in a positive way will be definitive to overpass all the difficulties in that stage.

During this next stage, norming, members accept the team.  The team starts to develop and become cohesive.  Realizing that they aren’t going to drown, they start to work together to keep each other afloat.   Trust development, based on vulnerability, will bring high level of intimacy, through sharing and discussion, and new abilities to express emotions and give constructive criticism.

Performing is the last stage, and results are coming. Members of the team perform as a unit and have discovered and accepted their various strengths and weaknesses, but also the different styles and behaviors that make a unique, cohesive and balanced team.

Leaders are responsible to achieve the effectiveness and alignment of the team. Managing team members, knowing and understanding the different dimensions of behavior, will facilitate the impact on the team results.

Leaders cannot change the way of thinking of team members but they can enhance the performance of the individuals and the team, understanding the different team member’s dimensions of behavior and themselves.

In these times of deep and rapid changes we need to pull our heads out of the sand and design new ways of thinking.

 

Telling Stories With Design Of Thinking

We design products, solve problems, define value propositions, incorporate storytelling in our marketing efforts but we also should design the way we think.

We are not conscious of our mental models but our values are the base of our believes. These ones will determine our thoughts and these will make real our feelings. That’s why is so important how we think as individuals and what happens inside our heads.

As individuals we have different levels of competence and to be great designers of our thoughts we need to achieve unconscious competence. This will require to iterate with our prototypes and tests until we can achieve that excellence.

One of our main method of communication has been telling stories. Along our history, since ancient times, human beings told stories even through paintings. Stories can put your brain to work and can influence in our decisions.

Anything you’ve experienced, you can get others to experience the same. Or at least, get their brain areas that you’ve activated that way active too. Our stories make up 65% of our conversations.

In a 2006 study published in the journal NeuroImage, researchers in Spain asked participants to read words with strong odor associations, along with neutral words, while their brains were being scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. When subjects looked at the Spanish words for “perfume” and “café” their primary olfactory cortex lit up; when they saw the words that mean “silla” and “llave” this region remained dark.

We link up metaphors and literal happenings automatically. Everything in our brain is looking for the cause and effect relationship of something we’ve previously experienced.

When we face with business problems or other kind of business situations, we usually face with design challenges where design thinking can help us very much.

Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools for achieving immediate results and it will be very useful in our Design Thinking activities. Leaders can use it to turn dreams into actions and finally getting goals. When we tell stories, we must be convinced about them, we must feel them as own to share with others with authenticity. A story is the only way to activate parts in the brain so that a listener turns the story into their own idea and experience.

It is also very important to tell the stories in different circumstances in different ways. You cannot repeat the same story without adapting to the moment and the audience.

We like that others adopt our stories as their own. This is the feeling you have when a friend tells you a story and a couple of weeks later you tell him the same story as if it was your great idea. This is the best way how to get people on board with your ideas.

Peter Guber, film producer, defines this very well in “The Four Truths of the Storyteller”, when he considers The Truth of the Teller, The Truth of the Audience, The Truth of the Moment and The Truth of the Mission.

The frontal cortex area of your brain is responsible to experience emotions and only is activated with words and sentences that move you. This is not merely an opinion; this was many times researched and proved that metaphors have a bigger impact on individuals than more common words.

You should remember all these concepts each time you create your own story.

Change Management: What’s This?

After many years of research, nowadays, more than 70% of all major transformation efforts fail. Organizations do not approach to changes and engage workers effectively in those processes.

Changes affect both individuals and organizations and succeeding in increasingly unpredictable and uncertain environments, we can’t simply remain static. We must constantly change, adapt, and strive to fan the sparks of innovation.

This is much easier said than done.

Being in a hypercompetitive world we need constantly adapt and readapt so, why do you keep from being more innovative?

Sense of perspective and some barriers definitively keeps us away from. These barriers include fear, anxiety, insecurity between others.

Have you ever run up against these barriers either in your own life or business?

You are not alone.

We all want to reduce our stress, increase our effectiveness, and give a higher value proposition to our employers, customers and organizations. However, our perceptions diminish our abilities to take the best decisions, assuming risks and perform at maximum level.

Do you think all this can impact in your ability to succeed?

If you think so, change your outlook, and you can change your future or the future of the organizations.

Change is all around us, and in business specially it seems that the scope and speed of changes taking place today are immense.

But today I will focus on change in business more than those affecting our life. I will have time latter to talk about how to succeed despite uncertainty managing changes.

Change in business can take the form of:

  • Unstable economic conditions
  • Unpredictable operating environments
  • Changing customer needs and expectations
  • New tools, communication systems, techniques
  • Emerging new information technologies or other kind of technologies
  • Unexpected opportunities and challenges

Only to name a few ones.

So this rapidly accelerating rate of changes need to be managed properly to succeed.

That’s why we studied different methods and models to face these challenges and we opted for Kotter model, the famous 8-Step Process for Leading Change. Based on that model we developed a methodology to help individuals and organizations to face transformations.

Our methodology considers two main aspects of our businesses. Firstly, all related with the operations of the business and on the other hand the emotions of the individuals. Most of the times, that 70% of failures are due to how we manage the emotions of our employees and we help mobilizing organizations to achieve results.

The world of business is a risky place to be and it can seem intimidating. We should routinely be stepping outside the comfort zones we operate in. It is the only way to continually thrive on both an individual and an organizational level.

When we allow fears and anxieties influence our decisions and doubts to lead our actions, we often constrain our ability to grow and innovate.

Embrace change taking calculated risks and correct actions and you will discover that innovation is a part of yourself, learning will drive your ability to change,  change will make you grow up, and you will reinvent yourself.

Reaching The End… Design Thinking

We did an amazing and productive job in Design Thinking. We are reaching the end of this process.

We are very lucky. Some great professionals supported us. Thank you to all of them we have validated our prototypes.

Last Friday we enjoyed in the company  of some entrepreneurs, Managing Directors and Managers of Via Express, Nebula, Concha Baeza Escritora por Encargo, linkmyjob, Centro Farmaceutico, Maxxium y Movistar.

We had a great time and we learned all together. Thanks Manolo, Quique, Concha, LuisMi, Ernesto, Marian y Diego.Después de un trabajo muy interesante y productivo estamos llegando al final del proceso de Design Thinking.

Changing The Way To Design Processes

Currently technologies, digital transformation, industry 4.0, new software to face changes in processes are demanding companies that are either gaining or keeping competitive advantages. But something it doesn’t change is the necessity to apply continuous improvement in our organizations. This will help to manage change as part of corporate life.

Managing change in organizations require a continuous education of our corporate managers, managers, middle level and the whole organization. It is very important to consider some basics at the time a process change is successful. Sometime to underestimate those basics can drive companies to fail.

Once is defined what we want to change and the scope of the change action, the first aspect to consider is the timing for the design process. This should be well defined, not too wide but not too fast. At the same time, we must focus all the change in the output that creates the value proposition the customers.

Latter we must communicate the changes we are implementing to the whole organization. We must consider all the areas. The critical factor most often ignored is the need to take the message to the entire audience – people must be engaged with the project, because it is upon their actions that success depends.

It is very important that the workforce is completely integrated in the strategy of the company, know the importance of the processes and the performance levels expected to understand perfectly well the changes and the sense of them. This will contribute to support the actions of change that organizations implement.

We can build a successful and simple road map to implement the change and re-design process:

a). Process owner will be the one motivating the change. He will be responsible to communicate to the organization the sense and reasons to implement such changes and also will push with the courage and determination get the end with success.

b). We will look for the right Project Leader to re-design the process who will define the team member. That team must be able not only to drive the changes but can also work together in a cohesive way being very effective.

c). Assigning the adequate resources, facilities, technological to handle the project effectively.

d). Main goal will be to eliminate activities without added value and generate extra costs, mistakes and delays.

Before we start with any change implementation in re-designing processes we must check that we are able and ready to face a process transformation. We should check aspects as leadership, culture, experience and management skills.

Too often individuals spend a significant amount of time fixing things that have gone wrong, on top of just performing the tasks and processes that make up their ‘day job’. That’s why many times organizations have to initiate a more radical change in an organized way.

It is also necessary to define the right key performance indicators that fulfil some requirements:

1.- Aligned across all the organization

2.- No gaps in the measures applied through the organization hierarchy

3.- Used to drive improvement

 

Finally, new processes or changed ones must be approved and finally implemented properly. Consolidation and sustainability will guarantee the results and success of processes.

Making Changes Effectively

We all face leadership challenges in our global business environment. We have turned around our organizations and sometimes succeeded as turnaround leaders. But to succeed as such leaders we need to face organizational changes, development and overcoming challenges that can embrace change effectively.

XXl Century has forced us to effect change due to fierce competition. New products and services offered by our competitors made relevant their businesses and made us to enter in new ways to manage our own businesses. But certainly before that we had to restructure, improve or innovate to prepare for growth and beating cutthroat competition globally.

It is very important that our organizations don’t decline over a period of time to the extreme they are nor recoverable. So we must anticipate those moments and turnaround our organizations through various strategies to ensure that our organizations go consistently in the right direction.

Under those circumstances, people are not immune from change and we cannot avoid them.

Our customers demand more and more and they are changing very fast their demands. Meeting their aspirations and expectations is really a hard task and oblige companies to enhance constantly innovation and creativity to follow up changing customer tastes and preferences.

If you want to grow, change is essential.

Many times people confuse growth and change. It is different to say “I want to shift to another career” or “I want to grow in my career by shifting from one place to another”. Change is something that can occur very rapidly whereas growth takes time and requires immense effort and energy. Growth has a very important relation with the definition of grit. Grit is passion and perseverance in the very long-term. I can say that growth is like a marathon and change is a sprint race.

That’s one of the important concepts in change management, sense of urgency. We need to speed change up. Time will run against us.

However, one thing which is in common between change and growth is to come out of the comfort zone.

As I always say, people often assume that the status quo is good. They prefer to remain without change as it is much better known status than unknown one.

Change management is a process of effecting change in a successful way persuading the people to follow the strategy defined by the organization. It also consists in getting the right coalition and aligning the employees to neutralize the resistance to the changes to be implemented.

Change Management and turnaround leaders should create enough confidence between their employees to facilitate all the actions that can conduct successfully the changes required. They will try to fulfill the motivational needs of their people.

Leaders will have to act with optimism and guide the people forward with confidence.  They will define and implement a clear and consistent strategy with a well-defined vision and mission.

All leaders in a change management process must be always beside their people during the transition period and building trust and confidence. They must be passionate and crowd-pullers about the change. They will have to join in the change process their employees and make feel them part of that process.

And at the end, ensure that the change takes place completely and no new bottlenecks could appear breaking the process. Don’t underestimate the resistance to change.

Ensuring the change process requires flexible and adaptable leaders that can lead situations and people successfully. If they communicate with passion and make things clear for people, implementation of change will become much easier. If they give good example they will create trust among the people.

Leaders must hold strong communication skills, resilient; they must empower others, share the vision, motivate others and make change a part of the organizational culture. They must be competent and confident. They must learn to prioritize their tasks and strictly focus on change efforts. It is also essential to show and celebrate small successes to motivate others. They must be risk takers and learn to overcome barriers during the process of change and also they must be good at analytical and problem solving skills by looking at the big picture.

Above all, the change leaders must be passionate in their endeavors to effect the change smoothly and successfully.

Change is unavoidable and CEOs of global companies must outguess than their competitors to face future challenges.

Why Do We Resist To Change?

A change process is not only a rational process; it is more than that. As human individuals, we head toward changes unintentionally but many times we are pushed to.

As a result of change initiatives, we resist against them although this kind of behaviors are not exclusive in change situations.

As managers of change and facilitators in different organizations for these processes, we know that very often, changes, become problems more than a solution. We invest great efforts changing things for the better, but in spite of progressing and changing, most of the time we find the resistance of others. Responses to a change initiative can include at the same time both positive and negative reactions.

Change has itself connotations that provoke on us emotions.

Action and motion are conditional terms for change, but they are not enough to address such kind of process. Much depends on what we perceive as change. Much depends on what we perceive as real.

Enterprise’s life is full of moments of ambiguity and uncertainty, and the concept of common sense has gained importance when we face all these situations. Common sense is the process through which individuals seek to clarify what is going on when they encounter moments of ambiguity or uncertainty. It is a cognitive and conscious process about the meaning of change. As humans we try to use that common sense to understand better what is going on around us.

Change is a concept in which we consider what it changes and what remains the same. It will be influenced by our perceptions. When we face a change, ¿what do we consider? ¿behaviors, relationships, or more the change context we are in?

It also happens that when changes are proposed, sometimes are faced with enthusiasm. We believe they will deliver knowledge, new ways to manage things, but at the end nothing happens.

We are aware of the fact that smoking is very dangerous to health and we are advised about the consequences, through TV and radio messages, magazines, even in a pack of cigarettes. We are also very well aware that being overweight might also cause serious diseases. On the other hand, we know that sport is very beneficial for the body. But to move from that awareness and knowledge to real action is very difficult for almost everybody. Sometimes we succeed for a certain period of time, but it costs a lot of effort. It seems that it is even more difficult to maintain the change after a while.

That’s why Muvens considers of a great importance implementing those processes and consolidating changes that our customers face together with us.

However, under our point of view, challenges presented by changes to leaders and employees, for most of them, is not a problem to wish for them. Most of them are facing the lack of capacity to close the gap between what they wish to do and what are really able to do.

Most of the times this comes from our experiences, what is hidden in our subconscious and how we perceive the things, how we see ourselves and how we manage our relationships.

Resistance is a manifest and conscious behavior within a given social context. It refers to interconnections between cognitive, emotional, and attitudinal components.

For all of the above, change resistance is not only a behavior. It is more than this. We can’t only consider it as a conscious statement of our mind, or a predictive process, or a response to the real.

What it makes us to resist to the change is our own representation and perception of the reality. I remember very well when I was leading projects as International Project Owner. There was a common factor in all of them. They had a standard procedure (Project Realization System). This increased the effectiveness of the project teams. When some team was facing some difficulty, for example, designing some part, they could give a quick fix or they could address the fundamental sources of a problem.

Teams solved the situations by their own applying a quick fix, although they had been much more effective if they had searched the source of the problem that had led them to solve for all the teams. They always were under intense time pressure, so quick fixes were the norm, often without known synergies with the job done by other project teams.

Each team did what made sense for them, but no one could be aware that what they were doing could impact the procedure applying for all the teams. One day, one of the project leaders said, “what are we doing to ourselves?”. The key word in this statement was “we”. When they talked about “we”, there was clear assumption that this situation was affecting to the procedure and furthermore to all the teams.

Up to this point, accountability was always of the other teams, their bosses, not enough time, and few resources. When they became aware of everybody were responsible in the way they were managing, the change could be faced with enthusiasm and determination without resistance.

Change is only possible for any of us after we recognize our own problems and limitations.