Everybody talks about results in business; it’s what we’re all about. But, what kind of results are we talking about?

What do great results look like today?

Enhancing Capital: Financial and Social

First, let’s start with the obvious: financial results.

Return on investment is the name of the game. Investors, analysts, board members, employees: they all expect to be compensated for their investment of money and/or time. But simply delivering top quartile financial ROI, while necessary, is no longer sufficient.

In addition to enhancing financial capital, great companies (great organizational systems) are also enhancing their “social capital.” What is social capital? Larry Prusak, perhaps the father of “knowledge management,” says that social capital is, “the stock of active connections among people: the trust, mutual understanding, and shared values and behaviors that bind the members of human networks and communities and make cooperative action possible.”

Why is it important for organizations to enhance their social capital? Because success in today’s economy depends on people. Because knowledge work (people making smart decisions and carrying them out in coordination with other smart decision makers) demands trust, understanding, shared values and behaviors. The so-called, “soft stuff”; the stuff that is so hard for most organizations to achieve.

Social capital is an organizational characteristic, the sum total of the system’s overall capacity for quickly evaluating situations, appraising its resources, generating solutions, and implementing them effectively. Performance like this takes outstanding communication, coordination and action.

Social capital is what makes excellent performance possible.

Growing social capital means making tangible investments in improving the capabilities of the individuals, networks and communities that make up your organizational system. Improve connections, enhance social capital.

Talent: Finding and Keeping Great People

Secondly, achieving great results depends upon finding, inspiring and keeping the best people.

Who hasn’t felt the impact of today’s fierce competition for the best people? At TrueTalk, we believe the answer to finding and keeping great people is pretty simple: great management.

While much of the “talent talk” focuses on technical talent, management talent is even more critical for delivering results. In a recent McKinsey & Co. study, 58% of senior and mid-managers described their boss as an “underperformer”; 86% of those managers said that this, “made me want to leave the company.” Clearly, keeping great people means leading them well.

How do underperforming managers damage their companies?

We believe there are two important things they typically don’t do well:

• they don’t find the best people; and,

• they don’t create the right kind of environment to motivate and retain the best.

What do the best people look like? Creativity expert Teresa Amabile of the Harvard Business School puts it simply: they have more expertise, they do things differently, and they are more passionate about their work.

What does the right kind of environment look like? Again, Amabile has clear answers: it encourages creativity by challenging talented people, giving them the freedom to explore their ideas, and providing them adequate resources (including time).

So, only some results show up in “the numbers.” Equally important are the results in the organization’s social systems.

Ask yourself: how are we are doing at creating environments that enhance social capital and make our company an exciting place for the best talent?

If you’re not satisfied with how you’re doing in these areas, TrueTalk can help.

A gang of years ago, an old friend said something that’s stuck with me ever since. He was frustrated about leading a “change process” in his organization. The more he talked, the more frustrated he got. Finally, he just stopped and said, “You know, leading this thing is like pushing a couch: as long as you push it, it moves; as soon as you stop, it stops.”

I just looked at him and laughed. What a great way to put it!

Since then, I’ve probably used that line hundreds of times, trying to get leaders to understand the importance of rethinking the fundamental mindset at work in their organization.

Change. The idea of “change” is interesting. Because our brains work in such funny ways, if somebody says, “change” we immediately think of its opposite. Can’t be helped.

Here, try this. Say the first word and see what happens.

Black…White.
Up…Down.
In…Out.
Change…

See what I mean?

So, we need to stop talking about “change,” because our reflex is to contrast it with notions like “stability.” And “stability” is a word that has little place in 21st century business.

We need to find another way to talk about what we have to do today. “Adapt” is too passive. “Be proactive”; too “consultese”. “Constantly keep our eyes on the customer”; too 90s.

The only way we’re going to stop talking about “change” is to change (oops!) our assumptions about what makes organizations successful.

What is that?

Well, it’s actually pretty simple. We need to know the things that work and the things that don’t. We need to have the courage to keep doing the things that work, and to stop doing the things that don’t. And we need to have the wisdom to tell the difference between them.

Daily.

See, when you think like that, there’s no such thing as “change.” Or, more accurately, there’s nothing but “change.”

So, we think you need to “Stop Pushing The Couch”; stop thinking, and talking about, “change” like it was something special, and start thinking about how to get your organization in shape to do what you need to do for your customers…every day.

And, we can help.

Explore the rest of our site…read our blog…watch our videos…listen to our podcasts…leave us ideas and stories. We’d love to know how your organization is handling “the couch”!

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Innovate? That’s great…but, how?

Tom talks about going beyond slogans in the pursuit of innovative solutions.

Do You Design?

Most of us think of “design” as something done by special people in special jobs. In this video, Tom explores the idea of “design for the rest of us.”

Living In A One-Of-A-Kind World

Remember when we all wanted to have the same things as everybody else so we could show we were part of the “in-crowd”? Those days are gone.

Organizational Silos

Where did those pesky silos they come from? Why are they so hard to address? What’s their impact? Listen to this podcast for some thoughts.

Innovation, Execution, Leadership

These three elements are all necessary for success. How can you develop and integrate them in your organization? Listen to this podcast for some ideas.

What Is TrueTalk?

We created our firm’s name to represent our core beliefs. Listen to this podcast to more fully understand what we meant.

Organizational Cultures and Individuals

What’s organizational culture and how does it impact on the people who work in your company? Listen to this podcast for some thoughts.

Great Teamwork Works:

Here’s a link to Fortune’s June 12 Sony story in which CEO Howard Stringer discusses his company’s current cultural revolution.

The Irresolute American Worker: Afraid To Speak The Truth?

This is an interesting article from The Conference Board by Susan Davidson, a cross-cultural consultant. Davidson’s research shows that American workers are more and more reluctant to speak up when they disagree with those in authority. While the image of Americans is one of rough and tumble businesspeople, Davidson found the reality to be one of increased caution, duplicity and fear. The consequences of this trend are indeed dire.

Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

Anne Kirah, Microsoft’s senior design anthropologist (didn’t know they had one of those, right?) says that the biggest challenge to companies in the future will be establishing cultures that accommodate the different ways digital natives (young people born to use technology as an integral part of their lives) choose to work. Read the short piece here.

TrueTalk’s principals have been coaching executives in a wide variety of industries for almost two decades. In that time, we’ve learned some important things about leadership and coaching.

• We’ve learned that situations dramatically affect leadership priorities, so leaders need to have a deep appreciation for the situation they are in. Situations are nested, complex, and constantly changing.
• We’ve learned that leaders need to have the courage to reflect with “new lenses” and really see themselves in the situations they are in.
• We’ve learned that leaders need to practice with rigor in real-time situational work.
• We’ve learned that feedback communicated internally (often with all the right intentions) is often not heard, believed, or understood by the recipient. We have develop a meaningful way to be heard and, as a result, partner effectively to help calibrate performance changes.
• We’ve learned that leaders need to receive feedback about the things they do well and the things they don’t.
• We’ve learned that leaders improve when they focus on adopting a strategic approach to every business encounter.
• We’ve learned that coaches can help leaders stay focused on how they can best reflect, plan and act.

As you’ll see when you read our whitepaper (this should be a link to the PDF), there are several elements that are key to any executive coaching engagement.
We invite your comments and questions on “Coaching Leaders” and would welcome the chance to talk with you about how TrueTalk could help your company develop great leaders.

More recently, the network has emerged as a new organizational metaphor. In networks, every component has the potential to communicate with every other component. This vibrant model was derived from the operations of living systems.

The icon of the hierarchical organization is the machine; the networked system, the living organism. Networked systems are highly social. Their hallmark is interaction. While the hierarchical model focused on centralized control and to reliably achieve replicable outcomes, the networked organization seeks flexibility and innovation. In the industrial age the physical strength of the workers powered the organization. In the post-modern economy, it is the creativity of the knowledge worker that creates value. These evolutionary changes have necessitated an evolution in our thinking about how workers are led in these evolving organizations.

The IRI Model (Identity, Relationships, Information) is our idea of how organizations function as systems. While the Model arises from ideas derived from science (post-Newtonian physics and modern biology), its principles are highly relevant to today’s networked organizations.

The IRI Model begins by thinking about the system as a whole. Every system has an identity, which provides answers to key questions about that system.

• Who are we?
• What are we trying to accomplish?
• What is our purpose?
• What are our boundaries?

The answers to these questions define the system’s identity. The leader’s role, at whatever level of the organization involves articulating and disseminating a common identity throughout the organization.

Next, all organizational outcomes require relationships among system members: an individual within a system can never function in isolation. Organizational relationships raise two key questions: with whom must I interact to accomplish the organization’s mission?; and how I must interact with those people in order for the system to be functioning optimally?

Relationships are the key to the IRI model. Ultimately, because relationships center on trust, it is crucial for organizations to seek ways to establish and enhance trusting relationships. Modern leaders must be expert at establishing the organizational conditions that enable required relationships, keeping in mind that human relationships can only be facilitated, not mandated.

In organizations, relationships become formalized as processes. A robust system views its processes as opportunities for conversation about operational and strategic concerns. It then facilitates the kinds of relationships that will enable important conversations to take place.

• What are we doing well?
• What could we do better?
• What do our customers and others in our environment have to say about us?
• What do we have to learn to do to be more successful in the future?

Leaders need to model these concerns and lead these conversations, which they cannot do without listening well.

Finally, identity-focused action-relationships in networked organizations require quick, targeted sharing of information: what information has to flow within which relationships in order to fulfill the purpose of the system? Systems invariably find ways to transmit vital information, often in spite of formal processes. High performance systems create opportunities for people to talk together about their work and to listen accurately to what others have to say.

The IRI Model shows how systems achieve results through interdependent processes. High performance - improved effectiveness and efficiency - is a result of a system of maximized relationships. In maximized systems, required information flows with little resistance.

As such, real value creation takes place within relationships. The level of intimacy that key relationships attain (characterized by open, trusting conversation) ultimately determines how far any company is able to go.

We can help your organization define its identity, focus its relationships and more effectively communicate critical information.

We all need feedback. It’s the only way we learn about how we’re doing at any task. Golf scores, stepping on the scale, checking our stock portfolio’s performance, all of these are forms of feedback we receive every day.

Feedback indicates connections between actions. We begin receiving simple feedback very early in life: “When I do this, this happens; when I do that, something else happens.” Almost immediately, we use feedback to change our behavior; we learn. And we learn best from feedback that shows patterns. Feedback without patterns feels random; we can’t make connections between actions and consequences. When we become aware of feedback patterns, however, we make reliable predictions about why things happen. (When I exercise several days a week, I lose weight. My handicap has gone down since I started practicing putting.) Awareness of feedback patterns is an important aspect of improving performance.

Business feedback comes in many forms. Financial performance. Employee turnover. Failed acquisitions. New product development time. Alliance problems. But the patterns embedded in that feedback are complex, and often ambiguous. Why are our sales flat? What’s the real reason we’re losing good people? Why does it take us longer to develop new products than our competitors? Why aren’t our acquisitions and partnerships as successful as we hope?

TrueTalk, Inc. developed the “How’re We Doing?”™ interview process to explore questions just like these.

What are “How’re We Doing?”™ interviews? They’re conversations with important people in your organization’s “value network”: the employees, fellow executives, customers, and alliance partners that enable your organization to produce and deliver its goods, services and experiences. About what? About the big things that are on their (and your) minds today. Things like: What’s going right? What’s going wrong? What should we do better? What’s the most important thing for us to think about to win tomorrow?

Feedback about the key issues facing your organization. Things you need to know right now.

But gathering feedback from your network, discovering patterns in that feedback, and using those patterns to guide future actions is easier said than done.

There are two things that make it very difficult to gain in-depth insight into what’s on the minds of the members of your organization’s network. The first is the “Challenger Phenomenon,” the second, the “Thought Onion.”

Problem: How do you learn about the things you need to know?

Most organizations today suffer from some version of the “Challenger Phenomenon.“ This name comes from studies of the conditions surrounding the NASA Challenger accident. In brief, researchers have found that key people in important projects often have information – information critical to the success or failure of that project, sometimes even life threatening information – that they simply fail to express.

Why? Because the organization’s “social system” doesn’t permit them to express it. What is an organization’s “social system?” Every organization has unspoken standards and beliefs about the things that people can and can’t safely say to one another. Each of us watches and listens carefully for clues (some subtle, others pretty obvious) that let us know what an organization’s real (not just stated) rules are.

And then we follow them.

TrueTalk calls the unique constellation of beliefs and practices that govern a network’s relationships, communication, authority, meeting behavior, and so on, its “social system.”

Standard Solution: Surveys or Focus Groups

The conventional wisdom is that doing a survey is the best way to find out what people in an organizational network think.
We’ve found that surveys are a very effective tool for getting a big picture view of important issues. But even the best survey only gives back quantitative measures of the kind of information it seeks. If you ask about employee morale, you’ll get back a number that reflects some measure of employee morale.

But you’re not likely to learn much about employee morale. You won’t hear the voices of the organization’s most passionate supporters or detractors. You won’t get a story that perfectly captures the essence of the current climate. You won’t be surprised by the impact a seemingly meaningless decision had on people in a distant location.

The only way you will learn these things about employee morale is by letting people express themselves openly and honestly.

But, remember the Challenger Phenomenon? Most people won’t express themselves openly and honestly because your social system (which probably isn’t much better or worse than most in 21st century America) either doesn’t encourage or allow them to.

OK, what about focus groups?

Focus groups members, too, are prone to a good deal of social pressure. Not only are members likely to say what they think the focus group leader wants to hear, but they are also likely to say things that don’t accurately represent the full picture of their beliefs or intentions.
That is, people in focus groups often won’t tell you what’s on their mind because they don’t really know what’s on their mind. We call this phenomenon, the Thought Onion.

We are aware of only a small portion of what we know. And, when asked a question, what people say is only the first clue to what they really mean. We all know that our thoughts and feelings about important things are pretty complex. Like the layers of an onion, we have to peel back levels to “get to the bottom” of our thoughts and feelings.

If someone asks you about your dentist, for instance, you’re likely to start off with a simple response, something like, “well, he’s pretty good.”

But what if that person was very interested in your experience of your dental care? Very interested in the nuances of your thoughts and feelings about your dentist? Well, then he or she would have to ask you more questions, to probe more deeply, to help you peel back the layers of the onion: get you to think and talk about the subtler, more elusive aspects of your thoughts about dental care, in general, and your dentist, in particular.

And that’s what we do at TrueTalk.

We know that the Challenger Phenomenon often keeps people from saying what’s on their minds. But they will express themselves openly and honestly if they’re convinced they’re speaking to someone they can trust.

We also know that people don’t always know what they know. But they can be helped to explore their Thought Onion by people who know how to help others discover deeper meaning in their experiences.

Innovative Solution: “How’re We Doing?” Study

Consider the following case study.

A medium-sized consulting firm needed an in-depth understanding of the points of view of its 80 senior executives. The CEO and his team had lots of questions: senior leadership’s view of the organization’s strategic direction, the effectiveness of the integration of a recent acquisition, stock option and other ownership policies, compensation methods, Board effectiveness and so on. Traditionally, some form of survey instrument would have been used to gather and evaluate this group’s opinions in these areas.

Instead, this firm engaged TrueTalk, Inc. to conduct in-depth interviews of the senior group to gain a deeper appreciation of the group’s thoughts, opinions and recommendations. Not only did these conversations yield a thorough appreciation of the questions at hand, they also resulted in new insights into the group’s concerns that mobilized the senior leadership to creatively tackle new solutions.

The “How’re We Doing?”™ Process

The “How’re We Doing?”™ interview is a structured conversation with people in your network who are key to your success.

The first step is identifying whom you’d like to hear from. A project team that looks stuck. A group of key customers. Struggling new hires. The people you really need to make your organization go.

The next step: designing the interview. We’ll work with you to write a set of questions that probe the issues you’re interested in while still allowing people the flexibility to say what’s on their mind. After we’ve agreed on the questions, we’ll help you communicate with the interviewees to introduce the study, and get them thinking about the process.

We’ll then conduct the interviews, ideally face-to-face, but over the phone or via video conference if necessary. Remember, one of the keys to success in feedback is candor. We ensure candor in several ways:

• Objectivity – Because we’re outsiders without political affiliation or personal agenda, we’re able to explore important issues without biases.
• Confidentiality – Interviewees can participate openly without fear of attribution and/or retribution.
• Skillful interviewers – Our interviews are conducted by trained, experienced qualitative researchers. We are experts at eliciting straightforward opinions.

We also make sure that we’re peeling the layers of the Thought Onion in every conversation by:

• Full exploration of thinking and emotions – We don’t just record what people say, we help them express what’s on their mind and articulate the ideas and feelings that are on the edge of their awareness.
• Interactive probing of unanticipated themes – We know how to follow-up on interesting leads as they arise, yielding new insights and discoveries.

Next, we carefully analyze the data using proven qualitative research methods.

Payoff

We’ll then compile the feedback, discover the patterns, and help you decide what to do next.

You receive an in-depth presentation of results. We identify key findings: clusters of thoughts and emotions around major patterns and themes. We prioritize themes based on their business importance and their importance for the interviewees. We describe the context for each theme, and explore participant action recommendations. We also provide a database of (de-identified) participant data.

Most importantly, you’ll hear from network members in their own words. We help participants express themselves in depth so that so that you get the full benefit of participants’ experiences. Our experience shows that a combination of patterns (themes) and texture (direct quotes), thoughts and emotions, makes for the most powerful feedback, the kind of feedback that is most likely to prompt action.

Finally, we’ll help you decide what to do about the feedback you’re received. One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is asking people what they think, what’s important to them, an then doing nothing about what they learn. We’ll help you establish “Effort/Impact Priorities” and design a model for addressing the issues raised in the feedback.

Growing Into The Future

We believe your network’s strength defines business success today. And, carefully soliciting, analyzing and acting on candid feedback strengthens the relationships that make up your network.

Let TrueTalk help you grow into your future by taking full advantage of the power of your business network.