Change facilitation – Innovative Management Tools

INNOVATE – Product Analysis Activity

Patrick — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 14:59:53 +0000

Companies need to stay current, fresh, and relevant. Most people would agree with that when talking about their products and services. While companies know this, 71.4% of surveyed companies say that this is a challenge for them. To be more precise, this is the scenario that resonates most with them and is most challenging:

“There are complaints about current products or services and a product revisit, review, upgrade, update, or analysis is needed.”

Revising products or services does not mean that the company must throw everything out and create something brand new. There are many different aspects that can be factors in a product/service upgrade project. There are 20 aspects, to be exact. Pricing to Packaging. Policies to After Sales Support. Design to Distribution. Positioning to Quality. These only scratch the service of how a company make internal and external adjustments and tweaks to refresh and renew a product or service. While some are traditional or “obvious”, other factors are less “front-and-center” but can have a significant impact on the market.

This is where the Conversation Framework INNOVATE – Product Analysis Activity comes in. INNOVATE provides prompts and ideas in the 20 different areas to help spark ideas and collaboration around how a product or service could get a makeover. Including people from the various areas of the company enriches the session even more. More diverse perspectives give a broader set of possible ideas. A broader set of ideas opens the door to ideas outside the traditional lower price or significant overhaul.

INNOVATE can help participants to generate enough ideas to build out a multi-phase roadmap for a product or service.

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REORGANIZE – Internal Restructuring Activity

Patrick — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 14:53:53 +0000

In recent years there was a reset within companies around the world. Everything as we knew it was put into question and scrutiny. Employees started moving around more, leaving companies for a different position, challenge, work environment, or lifestyle. Some companies downsized; some closed their doors. Some company owners decided to hand over the reins to the next generation.

The reality is that the people movements of the last few years and tendency for people to move more and more presents challenges for companies. No company is immune from people movement at some point.

81.0% of surveyed companies about common and recurring challenges identify with two scenarios that impact a company’s org chart and structure:

“There is new senior management or owners. The time is right to review the structure for possible changes to the org chart.”

“Some departments have shrunk in headcount, and it might be time to consolidate people and departments.”

When faced with the need or even curiosity to entertain the idea of considering a restructuring of the org chart, that activity should be done intentionally and with an open mind, thinking about the how, why, and who. Org chart redesigns can be super stressful to employees and when done poorly, impact the company negatively in many ways.

This is where the Conversation Framework REORGANIZE – Internal Restructuring Activity can assist. This framework guides a group through the org chart redesign in a structured, organized, and collaborative manner. It helps the group step back and look at the company’s org chart from different perspectives with the goal of designing an org chart that meets the needs of today and also ensures that it will make sense to the employees.

This collaborative, facilitator-led activity allows the group to step back and see things at a different level, through different lenses. Redesigning an org chart can become more successful to all parties involved when the conversation and activity is placed in a structured and organized environment where everybody works toward the same objective and goal – company structure clarity and performance improvement.

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PROFILE – Skills Assessment Activity

Patrick — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 14:41:56 +0000

“Some employees don’t seem to be the best fit for a position but aren’t horrible either. Need to understand their skill set to find a better fit.”

“Certain departments have been caught without the needed skills present among the staff, causing issues, backlogs, or customer issues.”

“Some “good” employees are never invited to be on projects mainly because the breadth and depth of their skills is not fully understood, resulting in continually relying on a few people and overloading those people.”

Do any of these comments sound familiar to you? Are you and your colleagues having conversations about one of these topics with HR, the owner of the company, or between yourselves?

My guess is that you are because in an on-going survey of companies performed by Innovative Management Tools, these scenarios as a group rank #2 out of 28 groups as the most frequent challenges today.

If you have been “talking” about these scenarios and things don’t seem to be changing much, maybe it’s time to take a different approach. Talk about the topic in a collaborative, engaging, and comprehensive way.

Enter the Conversation Framework PROFILE – Skills Assessment Activity. PROFILE allows a department or company take a proactive approach to taking an inventory of staff across a variety of skills to better understand what talents each person brings to the table. Many of these talents might not be known to people because they were developed or learned at another company and have never been used in their current position. Untapped talent that could serve the company and enrich the employee’s contribution to the company.

Taking an in-depth inventory of employees (outside of looking at résumés or CVs) is a worthwhile endeavor. There is likely a goldmine of talents and skills deep across the company that is just waiting to be uncovered and leveraged.

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FRAMING – Project Definition Activity

Patrick — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 13:05:29 +0000

How you frame the problem determines how you frame success.
How you frame success determines how you frame the work.
How you frame the work determines how you frame the agreement on how to proceed.

Projects rarely succeed when they are rushed into without planning and proper definition.

Defining the problem is often rushed over, confusing symptoms as problems.

The urge to start getting something done often results in a lack of alignment with what success looks like for the various stakeholders.

All the stuff in between those two points is often left figuring out the details in the moment, after the project is launched.

61% of companies surveyed in our on-going organizational challenges survey, DIAGNOSE, indicate that they have challenges with gathering project information and detailing the project up front. Their most common scenario is the following:

“There is a time-sensitive project coming up that will require a tight control and transparency of the tasks and accomplishments and leaves no room for a “Regroup” after starting the project.”

This scenario is closely followed by another common challenge:

“An important project is on the horizon that needs to go as smoothly as possible and as formal/structured as possible.”

Companies know that the infamous “regrouping” does not benefit them. Companies also have important, strategic projects that require more than a “we hope this project goes off without a hitch”.

While these are not wild ideas, and there is likely a never-ending list of projects from the past that could have gone better from the start, companies find themselves in the same situation over and over.

Enter FRAMING – Project Definition Activity, an collaborative activity that allows the project stakeholders to “frame” the project starting with the problem, then defining what success looks like, then filling in the middle section. It’s kind of like filling up a bookshelf. The problem and success definitions are the bookends. The other topics, Approach, Deliverables, Investment, etc… are the middle books that complete the frame.

If you want to take a different approach to defining projects, consider the Conversation Framework FRAMING – Project Definition Activity.

For a short overview of this framework, please watch the video.

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BRIDGES – Communications Analysis Activity

Patrick — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:50:41 +0000

Communication, communication, communication. It is at the heart of everything we do. Before the pandemic we thought we had an ample amount of communication tools. That was shadowed by the tools that emerged a couple years ago.

But isn’t it ironic, funny, or maybe even a little sad that despite all of the communication tools we have at our disposal today, 94.44% of our on-going Organizational Challenges Survey respondents cite that they have challenges with “Communication”? It ranks #3 in the challenges list.

Want to know what the most cited challenge is? Something that seems so simple but is impacting employees, our businesses, and their productivity over and over. Ready? Here it is:

“Employees complain that information needed to do work arrives late, or not at all, impacting their performance and productivity.”

Seems so simple to fix, but something is getting in the way. That is where the Conversation Framework BRIDGES – Communications Analysis Activity comes in. BRIDGES tackles the sticky topic of working with those who voice their complaints about lack of communication to get their job done and works with them to resolve the problem. It helps open up the communication BRIDGES (yes, pun intended) to improve things. Sometimes a little communication about the communication problem is the solution.

The second most cited communication challenge is the following:

“There is a general perception or evidence that there is poor or inadequate communication in the company and a task force or team has been assembled to look for ways to improve.”

While task forces or teams can be effective at identifying where some issues lie, the question comes back to HOW to correct the problem. Again, those identified people fit nicely into the BRIDGES activity.

I invite you to watch this short video about BRIDGES – Communication Analysis Activity and reach out if you feel that it could help tackle issues in your organization.

Interested in assessing your company at various levels to know what your most frequent challenges are? Contact me to discuss. Within two weeks your organization could have insights into the challenges that are impacting performance, morale, and productivity.

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HAND-OFF – Delegation Enabler Activity

Patrick — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 00:32:20 +0000

In recent surveys from organizations of all sizes, delegation has shown up in 100% of the surveys as a challenge they face.

New supervisors and managers need to delegate tasks from their individual contributor days so they can dedicate the necessary time to their new role. They are told to delegate, but very often they don’t know how to do it effectively.

For seasoned managers, they may have “delegated” in the past, while the recipient feels like they were “dumped on.”

The Conversation Framework HAND-OFF is here to help all supervisors and managers learn the process of effective delegation so that it becomes an intentional, proactive development tool for those being delegated to, not a reactive, quick solution just to clear the supervisor’s or manager’s plate for more supervisor time.

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NAVIGATE – Planning and Preparation Activity

Patrick — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 17:17:18 +0000

Lack of planning is one of the three root causes of business problems.

How many projects have you been involved in where the group or team rushed into action without upfront planning and with the idea that you would figure out the details along the way? Then, the project hit that infamous moment when things weren’t going as well as has been hoped and the team needed to “regroup”?

The Conversation Framework NAVIGATE is designed to help that project team do a short 4-hour planning session prior to jumping into action. Avoid or minimize regrouping costs, time losses, and frustrations by proactively planning instead of reactively regrouping.

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Mismanaged Brainstorm Session Syndrome (MBSS)

Patrick — Sun, 27 Aug 2023 17:15:42 +0000

IDEAS – Brainstorm Activity Overview

How many times have you been part of a brainstorming session only to come out of the session thinking one (or more) of the following:

What a waste of time!

Well, that was productive. I got all of my e-mail Inbox reading caught up.

It sure would have been nice to get a word in. _____ (fill in the name) did all the talking.

Nobody really wanted our ideas. Everything has been decided. This was all lip service.

I didn’t contribute anything. Why was I even invited?

It sure would have been nice to have a structured process for the session. It was nothing but a “free-for-all.”

We talked and talked (for hours). But at the end all we had were long list of ideas. We never came to a conclusion on which ideas are the best and should be pursued.

If you’ve experienced anything close to what is listed above, you have fallen into a very common situation – Mismanaged Brainstorm Session Syndrome (MBSS). Even worse is when we fall prey to MBSS over and over and subsequently come to the rational conclusion that brainstorm sessions are not worth the time and don’t generate results even close to our expectations. Therefore, we avoid brainstorming sessions at all costs – we don’t organize them, we don’t participate in them, and we don’t support them with our staff.

However, I am pleased to tell you that MBSS is not a reflection of brainstorming; rather it is a reflection of the facilitator and the (lack of) process used. Brainstorming is a very powerful tool for several reasons.

It brings experts’ ideas together (the employees’ ideas)

It validates employees’ worth to the company

It secures buy-in and support for change initiatives (ideas) when people understand how an idea was developed

It provides a healthy list of ideas for consideration after the best ideas are implemented

It creates a culture where employees and management can truly focus on bringing the best ideas forward without the need to say whose idea it is/was

When people think about brainstorming topics, they most often choose “safe” topics such as “Marketing campaign ideas” or “Employee outings ideas” or “Holiday party activity ideas.” Rarely (if ever) does management organize a brainstorming session around a topic like “How can the _____ staff be more productive, effective, efficient, and satisfied in their job?” Opening a discussion like this can easily turn into a session riddled with negativity and emotion – resulting in more damage to morale than boost.

However, it is exactly this type of brainstorming session that, when properly managed, can boost morale quite high because employees are given a venue to voice their concerns and needs.

I once facilitated a brainstorming session with a group of school district clerical staff on exactly this topic. Through a properly structured process, the ladies were able to voice their concerns. The first idea offered concerned their pay (this is an obvious one, but is out of their control) but soon they moved on to more productive ideas that were in their control and would actually improve the work environment.

By taking emotions and personal agendas out of the equation as much as possible, the group came up with some very insightful, useful, feasible, and realistic ideas on how to make them feel better in and about their jobs. Adding a rationale for making certain ideas the “best of the best” ideas that they wanted to suggest to the District Superintendent, along with a list of benefits and realistic challenges for implementing the suggestions, the final ideas were received openly and taken seriously. In a follow-up, I learned that several of the suggestions got implemented, much to the joy of the clerical staff.

The trick is providing a structured process for collecting, filtering, and documenting ideas generated in the brainstorming session. With the properly selected group, a variety of collection methods to gather ideas, and established rules for choosing “the best of the best” ideas, any topic, no matter how “safe” or “volatile” can be considered.

At Innovative Management Tools we recommend using IDEAS – Brainstorm Management Activity. Here is a link to a short video regarding this Conversation Framework.

And gone will be the days of wasted time, unproductive meetings, dominated brainstorming session, and MBSS.

Benefits of effective Brainstorm Management

1. Lower costs by getting the right people assembled with the best ideas and get those ideas out on the table in as a short of time as possible

2. Increase productivity by securing buy-in through employee engagement

3. Improve morale by validating employees’ ideas and contributions to the company

4. Develop management by giving them a process by which they can tap into the experts and bring the best ideas forward to help the company

Best Practices for Brainstorming Sessions

1. Conduct a brainstorming session not only on “safe” topics, but on topics that will really provide value to the company

2. Select people carefully and let participants know why they were selected

3. Use a facilitator from outside the department (or organization) to manage the process, keep people focused, and avoid MBSS

Use the Conversation Framework IDEAS – Brainstorm Management Activity if you do not have a similar tool that brings structure and organization to your sessions.

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A Conversation Frameworks Process Trio – MAPPING, SNAPSHOT, and IDENTIFY

Patrick — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 13:56:03 +0000

In this video we introduce you to three Conversation Frameworks. Mapping – Process Development Activity, SNAPSHOT – Process Improvement Activity, and IDENTIFY – Waste Analysis Activity.

Processes are the backbone of organizations and these three frameworks have you covered from beginning to end and everywhere in between when it comes to keeping your processes as optimal as possible.

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HATS – Task Management Activity

Patrick — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 13:45:29 +0000

How many hats do your employees wear? Do you have a growing number of staff members? A shrinking staff? Do departments seem to have unbalanced workloads? Are new supervisors or managers to a department struggling to know what each team member does?

HATS – Task Management Activity is the Conversation Framework to answer all those questions. This bedrock activity opens the door to one of the three core focuses of our frameworks – People. A must-have for keeping track of who is doing what now and being able to quickly adjust workloads as people come and go in departments.

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