Isn’t it interesting how it often takes someone from far away to introduce you to someone in your own neighborhood? Earlier this year, one of our friends from the Netherlands contacted us to suggest a speaker for our annual conference. Each year, a team of Dutch educators makes the journey to the U.S. for our event, and this year, they were hoping we would invite Andy Hargreaves to keynote.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t familiar with Andy, so I Googled him. Imagine my surprise to find that he is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College—which happens to be in the next town over from the Pegasus offices. Small world!
The more I learned about Andy, the more obvious it became that we had to bring him to our audience. Although he is mainly known for his groundbreaking work on educational change, Andy has also done research on sustainable leadership and is currently engaged in an exciting project on organizations in business, healthcare, education, and sports that perform “beyond expectations.” We were delighted when Andy accepted our invitation to present at the November conference.
My colleague Keith McKinnon and I recently had an opportunity to visit Andy and get a preview of his keynote presentation. In the brief video below, Andy touches on some of the themes that he will explore in greater depth on November 9.
You can also click below to read some of Andy’s writings:
On Sustainable Leadership
This piece appeared in a publication for independent schools, but the principles hold more generally.
This piece appeared in an academic journal.
On “The Fourth Way," a framework for sustainable education reform that integrates teacher professionalism, community engagement, government policy, and accountability.
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
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by Robert Fritz
In part I of this post, Robert used the example of a pottery class to make the case that the more you produce, the more mastery you will have in any given realm. Here, he addresses the question, "How does learning take place?"
We begin, as always, with structural tension, a clear vision of an end result and a clear view of the current reality in relationship to that result. This is essential, because without structural tension, you would be limited to a series of spontaneous improvisations.
Quantity without structural tension does not lead to comprehensive learning. Without an end in mind, you are left with a purely statistical approach: make a lot of things, hope that some of them work out. When that is the case, each creative event is random. Each event is an individual episode that does not connect with future creative events. This is like a non-relational database in which the information is isolated and does not connect with other bits of information. Therefore, there is no traction leading to momentum, no sense of development, no foundation upon which to build. No organizing principle that enables learning to lead to mastery.
One thing that the pottery students had was enough of a vision of each piece so that they could establish structural tension. They had their target. The current reality was under their fingers and in their awareness. This was true for both the quality and quantity group. So we can conclude that structural tension is simply a prerequisite. Without it, it would be hard to throw a pot. But if the vision were to produce the highest quality imaginable, the final result would miss the mark. Higher levels of quality come from adequate experience over time.
When I was a high school kid, I studied with the Boston Symphony clarinetist Felix Viscuglia at the New England Conservatory of 
Music. I would bring Phil a coffee (he insisted on everyone calling him Phil) to every weekly lesson, not unlike the proverbial apple to the teacher. He always talked to me as if I were a colleague rather than a student, which was kind of nice for me. He would say of the college students who studied with him, "How can they expect to play like me? I've been playing over 25 years." I would nod as if I knew what he was talking about. But I only realized what he meant after I had been playing for over 25 years.
There is a long-term view of the creative process, which includes experience over expanded periods of time and learning. And there is the short-term view, which tries to rely on inspiration, impulse, and improvisation. And while there is a place for short-term impulsive moments, you can't build and sustain real mastery from that alone.
So, make a lot of creations. Make sure you have structural tension as the framework. Don't get obsessed about how good any creation is, but do make a point of learning from each episode of the creative process. Mastery will come over time, and you will find your ability to create what you want increases dramatically.
©2010 Robert Fritz
What is your experience with the question of quality versus quantity in the creative process? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
Robert Fritz, a composer, filmmaker, and organizational consultant, is founder of Technologies For Creating® and author of the international bestseller The Path of Least Resistance. This post first appeared in his free monthly e-newsletter, Creating. Click here for more information about Robert and his work.
By H. Thomas Johnson
Toyota's current quality crisis is not a sign that its longstanding reputation for excellence was a mirage, that its fundamental management system was never really superior to the systems in competing organizations. Rather, it reflects disastrous policies adopted after 2000, when top management's thinking changed 
sharply in a direction that, while consistent with that of most other Western companies, would never have been tolerated at Toyota in the past.
In a bid to surpass General Motors as the world's largest automaker, after 2000, Toyota's top managers became ensnared in a destructive mode of thinking--thinking that focused their decisions and actions on achieving immediate financial targets, no matter the long-run consequences to the company's welfare. Popularly known as "management by results," or MBR, this approach dominated American businesses after 1970 and remains the prevailing business philosophy today.
Before 2000, however, Toyota followed an alternative mode of operating that I refer to as "management by means," or MBM. A company employing MBM succeeds by building and continuously improving the system of relationships among customers, managers, workers, suppliers, owners, and the larger community. The system's purpose is to enhance human well-being by providing safe and useful products and services, meaningful livelihoods, and sustainable financial returns.
One of the first things I learned when I began observing Toyota's operations almost 20 years ago was that accounting-based financial tools, such as cost targets, standard cost variances, performance budgets, and compensation incentives, are not needed in a Toyota plant. Indeed, the company's legendary industrial engineering genius, Taiichi Ohno, reportedly said that he was able to achieve the changes in plant operations that led to what became known as the Toyota Production System because "my boss, Mr. Toyoda, kept the accountants off my back."
While creating and refining its unique MBM management system from the 1950s through the 1990s, Toyota rose to become the most successful and trusted manufacturer in the world. So it was surprising that the company embarked on a "management by results" strategy after 2000. With financial executives gaining control of top leadership positions, Toyota's management grew less attuned to operations than to the demand for steady growth in shareholder wealth and share prices. The current engineering and design failures that have caused unprecedented recalls are classic symptoms of pushing to achieve short-run financial and growth targets beyond the company's current capacity to integrate new plants, new suppliers, new workers, and especially new managers into a coherent whole.
Can Toyota regain the reputation for excellence that it enjoyed until recently? It depends on top management's commitment to restoring and nurturing the disciplined pattern of continuous improvement in operations that originated with the company's founders. Toyota's new CEO Akio Toyoda would be well advised to reflect on how the current MBR thinking espoused by the architects of Toyota's disastrous growth policy of the past decade differs from the MBM thinking that led to its previous record of sustained success.
H.Thomas Johnson is professor of business at Portland State University and Distinguished Consulting Professor of Sustainable Business at Bainbridge Graduate Institute. In 1997, Harvard Business Review named his book Relevance Lost one of the most influential management books of the 20th century, and in 2003, Harvard Business School Press listed Tom among today's 200 leading management thinkers. In 2001, Tom's book Profit Beyond Measure received the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research, and in 2007, the American Society for Quality awarded him its prestigious Deming Medal.
Photo of country road supplied by freefoto.com
By Janice Molloy
Daniel H. Pink's latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Riverhead Books, 2009), couldn't come at a more apt time. As the outcry over exorbitant bonuses for Wall Street traders and executives rises yet again, Pink has turned to 
science to learn what truly compels people to perform their best. He found that a focus on financial rewards can lead to shortcuts, unethical behavior, and short-term thinking--the kind of attitudes and activities that contributed to the recent global financial crisis.
Research shows that "carrots and sticks" can still play a role in motivating performance of routine tasks that don't demand much creative thinking. But in a work environment that requires innovation, self-direction, and advanced problem-solving skills, external incentives actually undermine people's ability to come up with novel solutions to complex challenges. In addition, Pink notes, "In environments where extrinsic rewards are most salient, many people work only to the point that triggers the reward--and no further."
Pink has found that the key to personal and organizational success in today's context is drawing on people's higher instincts: our drive for "(1) Autonomy--the desire to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery--the urge to get better and better at something that matters; and (3) Purpose--the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves." A genuinely motivating work environment provides adequate and fair compensation; a congenial atmosphere; a sense of autonomy over what, when, how, and with whom people do their work; opportunities to develop mastery; and duties that relate to a larger purpose.
So what practices can, in Pink's words, "strengthen our companies, elevate our lives, and improve the world"? One example he offers is from the Australian software company Atlassian. Once a quarter, engineers are given 24 hours to work on any software problem they want, as long as it isn't part of their regular jobs. The company calls these "FedEx Days," because the goal is to deliver something overnight. The result: Employees have fixed countless long-term software glitches and developed numerous new products.
Google has a similar tradition, in that engineers spend one day a week working on projects that aren't necessarily in their job descriptions. The company reports that half of its new products got their start in the 20% time, including its popular Gmail and AdSense applications.
Online shoe retailer Zappos has injected autonomy into the traditionally rigid, routine work of the call-center employee. Unlike their peers in other businesses, Zappos' workers can use their own discretion in solving customers' problems. They aren't required to follow a script or limit their time with a buyer. As a result, the turnover rate at Zappos is exceptionally low, and its customer-service scores are comparable to those of high-end companies such as the Ritz-Carlton.
Clearly, as Pink reports, "Companies that offer autonomy, sometimes in radical doses, are outperforming their competitors." And that's the bottom line of Drive--by using what research can teach us about human motivation, we can create both more humane and more effective workplaces.
We can also create more ethical ones. When people are driven by intrinsic motivators, they are less likely to cut corners or pursue short-term gains at the expense of long-term value creation. So, how can we get our financial leaders to take these lessons to heart?
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
By Janice Molloy
What words do we use to describe a team that's functioning well? Whether we realize it or not, we often use musical terminology. We say we're "in unison," making a "concerted" effort, "attuned" to each others' concerns, and, at our best, "harmonious." In a sterile office environment, it may seem difficult to draw substantive parallels between our work groups and a professional orchestra. Yet conductor Roger Nierenberg has gleaned lessons about collaboration and leadership for businesses and other organizations from the inner workings of a world-class musical ensemble.
Several years ago, I was lucky enough to take part in an unusual workshop that Nierenberg offers, called "The Music Paradigm." (Nierenberg has recently written a book, Maestro: A Surprising Story About Leading by Listening, based on this work.) When participants enter the room, they encounter an orchestra, its members clad in formal performance garb, waiting to play. Executives are encouraged to sit side-by-side with musicians.
The program begins with a brief concert. It turns out that a symphonic performance serves as an ideal laboratory for studying organizational dynamics: Observers can easily view the entire system; communication is transparent; and the connection between behavior and results happens immediately.
Nierenberg points out that, like a business, an orchestra has an "org chart": Each "division"--such as strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion--is divided into "teams." The strings division consists of five teams: first violins, second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses. The audience compares the results when the orchestra plays normally and when one of the teams is out of sync or missing altogether. This experience dramatizes the interdependence of the group as a whole and the importance of each team to the quality of the final "product."
To illustrate the impact of different leadership approaches on performance, the orchestra plays the same selection in several ways: as they normally would with a conductor, without a conductor, with the conductor carefully controlling every aspect of the performance, and with a "guest conductor"--someone from the audience. Even the untrained ear can perceive variations in the style and tone of the different scenarios.
When asked to perform without a leader, the orchestra plays accurately, but the music lacks emotion and pace. When Nierenberg micromanages the performance, the group sounds stilted and flat. When the inexperienced conductor stands in, the performance is tentative and uneven. But when the maestro confidently wields the baton again, the musicians respond with a lush and expansive rendition.
In describing their experiences under a controlling leadership style, the musicians report that the group may be together in terms of timing, but they give less emotionally and feel less able to make their own unique contributions to the overall effort than in the other scenarios. The leader's dominant style blocks the flow of information, isolates the players from their network of colleagues, and squelches their creativity.
Nierenberg describes the group's performance without a conductor as "business as usual." In the absence of guidance from the podium, the players turn their eyes to the concertmaster and listen to each other with greater intensity. In this way, they manage to work together remarkably well.
That observation raises the question: If an orchestra can function successfully without a leader, then what purpose does a conductor--or general manager, president, or CEO--serve? Nierenberg suggests that the leader's first job is to provide others with a sense of the big picture. From his or her central position, a conductor is able to see and hear the whole, gather information, and convey that information to the group.
Even more important, a skilled conductor infuses the notes of a musical score with meaning, inspiring the orchestra to perform with richness, depth, and emotion. In this way, Nierenberg argues, strategic, visionary leadership can make a qualitative difference in a team's functioning.
Conductors don't make music directly; the people they lead do. A skilled conductor focuses on enabling musicians to execute their jobs well: revealing things about the music to the players, showing them what's important, and lifting them out of their silos. Likewise, in organizations of all kinds, good leaders elevate people's awareness beyond their day-to-day tasks by articulating a unifying vision and sense of new possibilities.
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
photo: European Union Youth Orchestra
By Mark Alpert
Each year, some the highest-performing companies in the U.S. receive the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The Baldrige Award recognizes organizations with role-model management systems that demonstrate continuous improvements in the delivery of their products and services, have efficient and effective operations, and engage and respond to customers and other stakeholders.
One of the key concepts underlying the Baldrige criteria is taking a systematic view of the organization as a whole. Within the Baldrige framework (below), the system is depicted by seven interconnected categories:
1. Leadership
2. Strategic Planning
3. Customer and Market Focus
4. Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge Management
5. Workforce Focus
6. Process Focus and
7. Results
Arrows show the linkage between categories, highlighting the relationship between activities and results as well as the importance of feedback between activities to ensure an effective system.
A systems perspective provides organizations the means to create alignment toward a common vision, mission, and objectives throughout the entire organization--fertile ground for systems thinkers. Most of us can only dream of working in an environment where everyone is educated on the power of taking a systems approach and the importance of optimizing the interconnections between the different activities of the business, all in service of one overarching purpose.
But as the Baldrige Award winners show, it can be more than just a dream. And where better to apply systems thinking than to support the development of such an environment within our own settings? Here are a few ideas on how to have a positive impact on your organization:
- Facilitate meetings to help senior leaders focus their attention on strategic direction and your customers.
- Collect data that supports decision making. Help others build confidence in data-driven decision making in order to monitor, respond to, and manage performance.
- Demonstrate how measures, indicators, core competencies, and organizational knowledge can be used to build key strategies.
- Communicate to ensure a crystal-clear understanding of the links between strategies, work systems, and key processes to drive improvements aimed at increased customer and stakeholder satisfaction.
But why stop there. Take it to the next level by getting outside of the organization. Apply the same internal philosophies to the larger system beyond your institution's boundaries. Examine the interconnections that exist between your organization and the rest of the world. Understand the connection between your enterprise and global security, healthcare, climate, food, education, etc., and look for opportunities to strengthen those connections.
Ah, systems thinking at its best--supporting the applications that view organizations as a system, aligning resources, and focusing on the customer. Accomplish it within your organization, and you too could win the Baldrige Award and a whole lot more.
Mark Alpert is president of Pegasus Communications.
By Mark Shunk
Take a few moments to ponder the following question: Think of the people you know or have known, and list the names of those whom you can say you truly trust. Like a "9" or "10" on a scale of 1-10.
Got it? How long is your list? If you are like many, your list of names will be fairly short, perhaps as few as two or three people. Now, ask yourself a second question: I
f people who know you were similarly asked to list those they would say they truly trust--a "9" or a "10"--would they include your name on their list?
Sobering thought, isn't it? Trust, or the lack thereof, is a critical component of leadership relationships. Unfortunately, in most of our clients, trust in leaders and among the leadership team is disappointingly low. And, therefore, the leaders experience considerable "drag" as they seek to move their organization in new directions.
Sound familiar? If so, perhaps you could benefit from intentionally working to improve the trust others have in you.
Trust can be defined as the "firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something." Therefore, to increase one's trust in another is to increase their belief in the other's trustworthiness.
David Shore, in his book The Trust Crisis in Healthcare, describes three key components to demonstrating trustworthiness:
- Empathy--the ability to understand and share the feelings of another
- Integrity--the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness
- Performance--the action of carrying out or accomplishing a task
So, if your desire is to increase your trust "score" in the eyes of others, you can do so by:
- Showing genuine empathy--by honoring and appreciating their concerns, fears, and hopes.
- Being good for your word, being clear about the principles that underpin your leadership actions and always acting consistently with those principles.
- Promising what you will do, then doing what you promised. And when circumstances change and prevent you from doing so, acknowledge the broken promise, apologize sincerely, make amends (restitution) as necessary, and make (and keep!) a new promise.
As the axiom goes, trust is difficult to earn and can be lost in an instant. However, as leaders, we have an enormous responsibility and accountability to act in a trustworthy way--at all times (even when no one is watching.) When your employees and stakeholders truly believe "We have a leader we can trust!" the resulting impact on organizational performance and morale is substantial.
Mark Shunk is a senior partner at the O'Brien Group. He is former president and CEO of Cadence Network, LLC.
By Mark Alpert
In business, it is often said that if you're not moving forward, you're falling behind. For most organizations, moving forward means both external growth and internal gains from improved operations.
If you want to know how well things are working--and where there is room for improvement--ask your employees. Conduct an organizational self-assessment. Your employees are your best source of performance information. Who is in a better position to share their unique insights and ideas on how to do things better than the people actually performing the work?
A self-assessment can help ease the pain for leaders who know all too well that change is hard. It's difficult to leave behind conventional wisdom, comfortable processes, and traditional methods for nagging doubts, organizational turbulence, and conscious and unconscious attempts to slow the process down. Unfortunately, when faced with these challenges, a leader's commitment to the shift may waver. In response, employees may be tempted to cling to the status quo, and backsliding can occur.
By asking workers for their insights and feedback, you pull them into the process by raising their curiosity of what others think and their desire to help drive improvements. A well-planned assessment ensures that you ask the right, critical questions, analyze the feedback data, identify high-leverage improvement areas, prioritize, and establish action plans.
The trick is to keep it simple and not get overwhelmed by the resulting feedback or number of opportunities for change that emerge. A well-developed self-assessment has three components:
- An understanding of all the requirements that influence the internal management system
- Data on how those requirements are being met through the deployment of process and procedure
- An analysis of how well the organization is meeting those requirements
An internal assessment can also provide:
- Educational value--use the assessment to help spread an awareness of improvement cycles, best practices, and high-leverage opportunities throughout the organization
- An integrated way to collect information so that it may be meaningfully evaluated
- An evaluation of all of the key aspects of the business
- Historical data for longer-term trends, in response to the question: Are improvements being made?
System thinking teaches that, in a healthy organization, the parts must work together as a complete system and that no one part can perform better than the system as a whole. Successful companies are able to integrate key organizational performance data into their daily management practices to ensure that improvement opportunities are fact-based, systematic, and addressed in a way that benefits the entire organization.
Mark Alpert is president of Pegasus Communications.
photo of lock: Nancy Daugherty
By Mark Alpert
The current business environment has provided organizations the green light to do things differently, break old habits, optimize processes, and partner up with others in ways they never would have considered in years past. Businesses that are waiting for the economy to pick up again so they can get back to doing things as they did before are missing a great opportunity to improve performance over the long run.
Improvement simply means being measurably better this period than you were the last. It takes discipline and is a test for any leadership team to stick with a plan long enough and endure the delays to see the results.
Improvement requires change, and intelligent change requires understanding. You need to understand:
- Your customers, their needs, likes, and dislikes
- Your competition, what they do well and not so well, and why customers are choosing them over you
- Your markets, the pressures, economic conditions, and shifting technology
- Your business structure and whether it is set up to provide total satisfaction
- Your employees, how to engage them, keep the right ones, recruit new ones, capture their hearts, and develop them, and
- Your culture and whether your organization is one that employees and customers want to be associated with
Change also entails the ability to overcome challenges such as budget and resource limitations, the need to fund technology and infrastructure, rising and shifting competition, and your stakeholders' demands for greater accountability and results.
Last, change requires desire and knowledge. The danger to any organization is its unwillingness to look outside the status quo embedded in the current processes. Knowledge means becoming a learning organization, willing to have honest discussions about the current realities of the organization and the vision of what the future could be like. How strong is the desire to get from where you are to where you want to be?
Organizations that continuously improve share several winning characteristics. They have the ability to build a shared vision, a desire to make positive change happen, and a willingness to discard the old ways of thinking and standard routines. People within these more forward-thinking enterprises are able to openly communicate without fear, view their organization as a system of interrelationships, and rise above their own self-interests to work together as a team to improve the enterprise as a whole.
Address these elements of change and, watch out--performance may get a lot better within your organization!
Mark Alpert is president of Pegasus Communications.
photo of traffic light: Ian Britton/freefoto.com
By Janice Molloy
Even the most organized among us has a hidden pile of reading that never gets done, e-mail messages that need sorting or deleting, or files from completed projects that require finishing touches. In the drive to be productive, we often set aside these kinds of tasks for later in favor of more value-creating activities--and then never get to them. If left to accumulate, such mundane chores can turn into major productions--and distractions--that undermine overall effectiveness.
To help employees gain an upper hand on hidden drains on productivity, at Pegasus, we've instituted a semiannual ritual known as "Amnesty Day." We first heard about the concept from contacts at the Citrus Council of Girls Scouts in central Florida. As we have adapted the practice, Amnesty Day is a time for everyone on the staff to "clear the decks" of all the detritus that has accumulated over the past several months in order to move ahead with renewed vitality, energy, and lightness.
Time Out
We schedule Amnesty Day well in advance so people can clear their calendars of any conflicting obligations. On the appointed day, employees arrive at the office prepared to d
eal with the administrative tasks that always get bumped to the bottom of the to-do list. Anything that serves as an impediment to work productivity is fair game. One person may spend the entire day cleaning her office, while someone else catches up on paperwork in the morning and makes long overdue phone calls to potential vendors in the afternoon.
Amnesty Day works best if individuals choose their own priorities and activities. If managers were to assess what they thought each person should accomplish, the impact of the exercise would be diminished. Only you can know your bugaboos, those nagging messes that impede your progress just when you need to jump into high gear.
To avoid diluting the process, we let the answering machine pick up any messages. We send or respond to e-mail only if doing so fulfills one of our personal goals for the day. Another ground rule is that we only talk with each other over lunch. To ensure that everyone has a chance to come up for air and share their experiences with others, we all meet for pizza at noon.
Clarity and Focus
We also scheduled an Amnesty Day several weeks before moving to a new office and spent the time organizing, discarding, and tying up loose ends. Other occasions for scheduling "Amnesty Time"--it doesn't have to be a full day--might be at the conclusion of a major project, in advance of a new undertaking, or before any kind of organizational transition.
We have found that people feel more energized and clear-headed after spending a day tidying up. And each of us has noticed lasting, if incremental, progress on our personal organizational challenges. Over the long run, taking eight hours to get things in order means more time spent on productive functions and less time spent searching through stacks of papers for that one key document!
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications and managing editor of The Systems Thinker.