Formatted Text
Speaker A Now you've got your structure, it's been approved. Now you got to implement just some very basic guidelines and issues in implementation. Number one is to be clear on the business problem you're solving. Not being requisite is not a business problem. Jam ups and gaps are not a business problem. Business problems are not reaching your strategic targets. Being inefficient in doing so, breaking trust in doing so. So the test isn't how requisite are you? The test is are you solving a business problem? Really important, we said this before, the logical order is strategy leads to structure, leads to staffing, leads to management practices. And sometimes you have to be optimistic and you get down that chain and you realize, wait a minute, we can't staff it. We don't have people with the expertise that we can do that may affect the structure, which then may affect the strategy. So if you can follow that order but be ready to be iterative about it. People typically are unrealistic in their expectations of how much time it's going to take, both the duration of the project and how much managerial time you start adding up, how many sessions are a manager is going to be sitting in on in terms of training, in terms of working with new role descriptions, something like that. Add that time up and let's be realistic about how quickly you can connect the change. Having a senior enough executive accountable for the program absolutely critical. And it's got to be the CEO. The CEO has to understand that it's her project but may delegate dos work we call direct output support to a subordinate who really ought to be no more than one strategy below the CEO. If you're doing a full organizational transformation, barriers the client underestimates what it takes to make a change doesn't give it sufficient priority of resources. And if you see that coming, hold on to things because you don't want.
Speaker B The project to fail.
Speaker A So don't get going until you've got those resources. Insufficient dissatisfaction with how things are. People aren't going to want to change if the problem isn't big enough. Not understanding the benefits of the change, insufficient unlearning. I think that's really important. People. I shudder to think of how many years I've taught what a manager is. Not thinking that everyone in the audience already has a concept of manager to which they are assimilating every word I'm speaking. So you can't just lay this nuance on top of what they have already. Business crises will sometimes be a barrier. You get right into it and then it's September of 2008, something like that. Culture, it's not in your books, but I just realized it's a big issue. The culture of the organization is being nice and had a major problem with a client where that was the culture. And you got things done by being nice to people. And it's not enough to lecture about why it's important to hold people accountable why it can be important to deselect people. Thomas Coon in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which is the book that put the word paradigm in the common vocabulary, he said people do not go to a new paradigm because they like it. You're not even interested in another paradigm unless you are convinced that your current paradigm leaves important problems unsolvable. And so one of the things I do very often, very early now in the situation, for example in that client was to trap around, okay, so you don't want to hold her accountable who in this room happens when she's not doing her job well. And so to help them realize that they're being nice to the person in front of them and not being nice to everyone else who depends on that.
Speaker C Person.
Speaker A In that same one I had a wonderful session, had done a session with the CEO of this business unit at four and his strata three subordinates. And then we had a meeting with three tables. Each of the threes was at his own table, and his stratum two subordinates were there. And we were working through the cross functional relationships. And someone at one of the tables know this all looks lovely, but it makes things so rigid. And there are times when we absolutely need to pull Dimitri into to help us in a cris situation. And I ask this table, what happens when this table pulls Dimitri in? And they say it throws us into chaos because we were counting on Dimitri for our own work. So you've got to build those connections for people to help them see that what they see is flexibility, is order in my area and chaos elsewhere. You've got to collapse their paradigm before they're going to integrate and assimilate yours. Difficult finding appropriate people for key roles. You've elevated some roles to stratify that were lower before and the person who was head of that function may not be stratified capable and you may or may not be able to shop around and find someone realistic problems insufficient capability at the top to run the business and change the organization simultaneously. So just to give you one reason why, we say you need a stratum hired to transform the business, if you're in a unit, let's say it's stratum three and the person running it therefore is running serial processes. But what the change is going to be a whole new set of serial processes and to bring them in while you've got the current situation you've got.
Speaker C To be able to look at the interdependencies between them.
Speaker A That's strategic. So that's why you may need to look at capability at the top. Can you take a few minutes at your tables on your own consider a client organization or your own consider or some part of your organization? What business problem might ro help solve? How would it solve it? How long would it take? Significant barriers share with your group so take five minutes to think about that, ten minutes to share and come back. One key learning or issue from this table watch.
Speaker B Pull out the photograph and tell us again. Yeah. We were discussing several practical cases and one of them, which was quite fun and interesting from our principals is that sometimes when you start working with a client you can face problems at the top level. Very basic problems that even experienced and capable managers they don't realize. And if you use, for example, such things like clarity or accountability or task for the CEO and for the direct team, you may have a lot of surprises how the team, which claim to be a very tiny team working together, may realize that they know about themselves, about each other, probably 10%, about the roles, about the expected tasks, et cetera. So that's what we share. I guess what I heard is that.
Speaker D It'S sometimes hard to get CEO to.
Speaker B Swallow the whole thing at one time.
Speaker A Sorry.
Speaker D It's hard to get the CEO to.
Speaker B Swallow the entire thing in one time and therefore what do you have to do? Well, therefore.
Speaker A Find debate and try to heal it.
Speaker B Yeah, right.
Speaker A Requisite organization is a system all of the parts are interdependent.
Speaker B Right?
Speaker A So sort of a downside of that is you can't get the full benefit of any piece of it without doing all of it. The upside is you can start anywhere. I mean, logically you start with structure the strategy having been clarified but I have come into organizations at any pain point and then you can build out from there sable communication problem.
Speaker B So if everyone knows who is responsible.
Speaker A For what everyone was knows who is.
Speaker B Responsible for what then the communication is better resolve this kind of problem.
Speaker A The communication problem are you saying you come into it and they already have a communication problem or it's in terms of the implementing requisite no one area.
Speaker B Or one organization has communication problem then.
Speaker A That comes in and apply the request.
Speaker B Repeated organization and can solve this problem.
Speaker A Can solve it. Yeah.
Speaker B Okay.
Speaker A The requisite will solve communication problems. Yeah. Thank you. Here, this table, there are a couple.
Speaker B Of problems we looked at.
Speaker D One was the merger of two entities, both about the same scale and the question as to whether the merger strategy and the infrastructure does or does not mean a level might be added.
Speaker A Yeah. So just it's not obvious to begin with.
Speaker D Yeah, it's not obvious to begin with. We were talking about one thing would be to clarify the strategy is it longer term or qualitatively different infrastructure argument as to how light or heavy the two organizations were before they came together.
Speaker A Right.
Speaker B Okay.
Speaker D Challenging existing conventions project management so using time span of discretion to determine the complexity of the project which is contrary to some existing practice and the experience of poorly defining the boundaries of the project. So the project being to deliver X, which results in that project being delivered to lower level rather than actually understanding.
Speaker B The full scope of that project.
Speaker A But when we say using time span for the complexity of the project but the project sounds like a task.
Speaker B Yes. Okay.
Speaker A But time span is a property of a role.
Speaker D Yes, but understanding the complexity of the.
Speaker B Task, if you bring something together, actually.
Speaker D Getting those boundaries of the task correct, so the role must be coming in specifically to do that task into the role, and therefore the necessity to get the boundaries of that task well defined so you understand the perspective of the role.
Speaker A We want to make sure that obviously, this is not the end of your learning, and we would like to know where else you're going with it, because the Society would like to know how we can support your learning. One last exercise. What opportunities will you explore to practice time span interviewing? To make use of requisite templates or methods to solve a business problem, to make use of resources to network with others. We'll want one statement from each of you about what do you intend to do about furthering your learning. I guess, in addition, is there some support you would like from the Society?
Speaker B We'll give you a couple of minutes.
Speaker A To think about that, and then I'd like to go around and fold everyone, and then we'll close.
Speaker B One thing I would suggest for all of you, if you haven't been already, for your further learning, at the end.
Speaker A Of your book are two articles. One is Harold Solace's, one on why requisite isn't better known. And the other is the Elliot's HBR article in the Hierarchy. Fundamental pieces. They're in the very back of your book.
Speaker B Should be the very last thing. Additional reading.
Speaker A Okay, you guys, what were your intentions and what support would you like?
Speaker B Maybe a webinar once a quarter.
Speaker A Applications.
Speaker B Okay, applications. And possibly the idea of A lister. Yeah, because I have one through Georgetown University's coaching program. It's very unosive. People ask each other questions.
Speaker A I don't know why we don't have one.
Speaker B It's been wonderful. And also it's a way to share opportunities and questions and different things.
Speaker A Yeah.
Speaker B It's been very useful to us. Is there a LinkedIn group for our own?
Speaker A No, I don't think if we have, it's not all that active.
Speaker B There is one.
Speaker A A LinkedIn group for our well, ROI has it. We do, and we're not doing it.
Speaker B So you see how well we use. Quite well. Can we promote that somehow here, sir? Can we promote the LinkedIn group here? Can we promote it here?
Speaker A Promote the LinkedIn group.
Speaker B Yeah. Get a commitment from everybody to join the group?
Speaker A Yeah. So, Ken, how do people join a LinkedIn group?
Speaker E Create a free account on LinkedIn and then just join a group.
Speaker A Right.
Speaker E And the ROI group is sponsored by them, and we have a very small group, and we need to decide whether we're going to be with that group or have our own.
Speaker A Okay, we're hearing pretty strong whether it's that, but on this serve also would.
Speaker D Be a good thing.
Speaker B Okay, what do you need?
Speaker A What would you want here?
Speaker C So we talked a bit about so I've been on other training courses like change management where we walked away with some toolkits. So we had discs and we had Mean. Certainly we can go out and purchase Jerry software to do charts and stuff, but we were provided that as part of the training that we were on these templates tools, things that we can use to help design let's. Say the charts, do the color thing, do some financial analysis so we could show the cost savings of the benefit to the organization. And some template. We got some presentation material so we could sell the concept to our organization and sell the benefits of it. So to help us promote it.
Speaker A You do have a template for time span interviews in the book, but yeah, we could use a lot more.
Speaker C It was a software right? Software program for instance, it was on a disk and we could put it in our computer, call it the templates and use that if there was some tool that helps us to do the design.
Speaker A Nancy has been saying over the last few days, we've all developed our own methods and processes and there are templates within that. So we need to be able to share that.
Speaker C We could come away with that. Everybody has a consistent kind of toolkit that they can draw on, right? If they so choose.
Speaker A I think we would likely be providing that through the website so that it's just there.
Speaker B Okay.
Speaker C I was going to say exactly what you're saying. If there's a library of the template that we can all access, that would be great. What would be good in terms of that is what other people use as well. People adapt it to their organization, what suits their culture, and so might not be a one size fits all, but people upload what they use as opposed to community of practice.
Speaker A Community of practice.
Speaker D I think that's what the LinkedIn group is really ideal set up to do. If there are conversations happening on a LinkedIn page and you follow those conversations, somebody can ask whether does somebody have a template for this and that can be freely shared and everybody can see that that template shared and can also take hold of it. I think it must be a dynamic process that people can continue to communicate and network because one of my needs obviously to network with very specific people around the data analytics and so forth. So yes, we can share business cards here, but that also may be interesting to other people that may not be interested in data analytics yet, but it's going to come. So it may become part of your network in the next two years. Then you follow back with what's happened on LinkedIn already. So I do think the LinkedIn element and of course I want to promote the Twitter, the Geo Society Twitter Twitter account, which is also important about linking together, talking together, asking questions in that way.
Speaker C I mean, yeah.
Speaker A I have this company.
Speaker D That also train and train consultants in Sweden have a great knowledge because this is my spot for a lot of organizations or companies that are not dealing.
Speaker A With structures at all.
Speaker D Design.
Speaker B Yeah, we're talking about research, good, systemic and continuous research, giving benchmarks, industrial benchmarks, especially success stories, link between those companies who implemented Ro and then their business results so that we can promote that.
Speaker A That's a very detailed yeah, we'll have.
Speaker E A LinkedIn table either tomorrow or Tuesday about collaborating on professional development online. So ideas you have because the society needs to do more there and we want your ideas, technologies, and what you're willing to contribute. And we're also going to have a debrief on this for some of the folks from IBM on how to take this kind of professional development in a broader way.
Speaker B Just those two.
Speaker E Watch for the table.
Speaker A How many of you who have not done time span interviews before intend to try that out now? Okay, so with this size group, I'm going to make an offer. I think my email address is available.
Speaker B If it's just five or six of.
Speaker A You, I am happy. If you're doing it, you're stuck and you got something that doesn't work for you, write me and we can talk it through. If I get enough of that, then.
Speaker B Let'S form a webinar about that because.
Speaker A That'S how you learn this stuff.
Speaker C And there's also a book called The Time Span Handbook that you might want to get a hold of. There's some good information in that.
Speaker A Paul, over to you. Over to.
Speaker B I guess we get to finish up. One thing I would like to ask, first of all, before we kind of wrap up, I'd like to get a volunteer from each of the ABCDE groups, one volunteer from each group. So we have five people who would be willing at the session tomorrow on the track that Ken's going to be leading to just talk as a group a little bit, maybe as an individual.
Speaker E Or as a bit of a group.
Speaker B About just share with the group that's gathering tomorrow morning. Mostly kind of from today and particularly from the case study in terms of what were a couple of real major insights that you have. Maybe one group, there'd be some kind of difference and similars and differences in terms of the insights you got, but some insights relative to the structuring around the stuff, around the big data and the It stuff. Just insights about those two things. So would there be a volunteer from this group who would be willing to do that tomorrow morning? And that's after the plenary speech. So it'd be after the coffee break, I guess, and you're free to go after that if you need to.
Speaker E Something, well, best by someone who's going.
Speaker B To be participating in that, ideally. So would there be one someone from this group that would do that? Sam okay. I mean, what we're talking about is about ten, maybe 15 minutes as a group of five, just to converse with the group about your insights. Okay? If you have a couple of notes, if the five of you want to put a couple of notes together before that, fine. Otherwise, just talk extra temporarily about it.
Speaker A Paul not would there be would there be someone who would be who would.
Speaker B Be willing to who would be willing to from this group over here? Okay. Oto who would be willing.
Speaker D Looking?
Speaker B Yeah.
Speaker C So to.
Speaker B Move from this group of.
Speaker A Cooling.
Speaker B Around levels of work related to it and the big data.
Speaker A Just to.
Speaker B Just to pull a close to it, I wonder if, first of all, we'd like to declare on behalf of the island, on behalf of my colleagues, we absolutely had a blast working with you. It was just a delightful two days in an evening. It was stimulating, it was a lot of energy, there was a lot of passion, there was a lot of kind of great working together. We saw the table groups working together really, really well, particularly with the last exercise. I think it felt like it was a coming together at some level, which was always kind of cool when you have a workshop. So we really want to express our thanks to you as a group of participants for the great work that you did and the way you operated with us, in concert with us, to make the workshop from our perspective as facilitators. Thank you very much. Just to quickly get a sense from what if I could we quickly go around the room and just one adjective that describes the two days for you. Just one adjective. So it's really quick. I'll start over here. Peter intense. Interesting. Enjoyable. Enjoyable. Interesting.
Speaker A Differences.
Speaker B Differences. Eleven. Interesting.
Speaker C Multicultural.
Speaker B Multicultural.
Speaker C Up leveling.
Speaker B Up leveling. Thought provoking. New thinking. Rich. Rich. Interesting. Informative. Interesting.
Speaker D Educational.
Speaker B Educational. Enlightening.
Speaker A I was going to say interesting. But being an equal opportunity.
Speaker D In the UK.
Speaker A Twelve years. When they say interesting, they don't necessarily mean interesting.
Speaker D Stimulation.
Speaker B Stimulate.
Speaker D Stimulating.
Speaker B Stimulating. Clarify. Clarify. Humbling. Um.
Speaker A Practical.
Speaker B Practical. That's okay. Inspiring. Challenging.
Speaker C Comprehensive.
Speaker B Comprehensive.
Speaker A Provocative.
Speaker C Meaningful.
Speaker A Affirming.
Speaker C Commonality.
Speaker B And lots of that's. What a great one to end on. Deep as it structure. All right, then, last but not least, we did have a contest, if you will. To some extent, it was supposed to be a learning experience, but we did say that there would be a winner, so to speak. And there would be a prize for this exercise, if you will, not winners and losers, but for this particular exercise from your colleagues. All right, and us in terms of what would be sort of the design that seemed to stand out the most. So here I got 25 responses in total. So if you had a perfect score of 500, because it was opportunity for 20, so we had 25 people. Times that, we'd have 500 scores. So we had three groups over 400. We had a couple that were pretty close. All right. The spread top to bottom was just under 198. And just like they do in the beauty contest, they go the second runner up. Second runner up is Group C. First runner up is Group A and the prize winner, which will be a shared prize that if you will sit together at dinner, the association will provide you with one bottle of red and one bottle of white. So that group is group. This, one way or the other, could have made a difference.
Speaker A There's a correlation with the size of.
Speaker C The group.
Speaker B Volume of the.
Speaker A Top.
Speaker B That's right. Harry.
Speaker A Having participated in Elliot's first five and seven day program in Toronto in 1991, I would say this group got in two days far more than the groups there got in seven days.
Speaker B And what happened with that, frankly, is that there was a few of us, I guess, Ron, you were included in that. A few of us had started doing some work in this requisite again, under the encouragement of George Harding and the rest of kind of the professional community in Toronto. We're kind of finding out that the Capells and the terminals and a few other guys are making some money off of this stuff. And so thought, well, maybe we better. It actually was Ken Shepard called me and said, you've been working with this guy.
Speaker A Do you think he would come and.
Speaker B Kind of teach you a bunch of stuff? I don't know him. He's just an independent guy. Here's his phone number. Call him and ask him. So we disorganized this race. This thing was organized. Most of the people who came to the first session were consultants. Consultants who think, oh, a new Holy Grail, we're going to find the next silver bullet. So we had the five day session, then we did this sort of practical thing, went on, got some work, and came back for the second day of the second two day session. And I can't remember whether it was on the first morning of the second, on the first of the two days, or the second. I can't remember which one. But it is an style elliot started out. The thing with you all know, of course, don't you, with the opportunity.
Speaker A You all know, of course, don't you.
Speaker B That this is all a work in progress. Well, and I would encourage us to believe him when he said that, because I think he truly believed. He never considered himself consultant. He considered himself a secret of knowledge.
Speaker A I made the mistake of introducing him to the top of the Canadian Air Force as a consultant. And the first thing he did master of Rapport, Elliot Jack.
Speaker B The first thing he did when he.
Speaker A Got up is Herb was wrong. I am not a consultant. I'm a clinical practitioner.
Speaker B Clinical researcher. I think Ron could support this, and Herb certainly, and Harry and myself, is that he always encouraged us to think of this as a work in progress, that it's not, and that there are some basic things we know, and a lot of what we tried to share in these two days is what we know. But if we truly consider to study it rather than just apply it, I think we will continue to open up opportunities of learning some things that are new and different and will be better for us and better for our clients and hopefully better for the world in general. Because he truly believed that there was a social impact. If you haven't read his book on the social impact of the CEO or his book on the nature of living things, I would really encourage you, particularly the latter one. It's a long way. It's upgrade. It's not the cheapest book in the world to buy, but it's a work.
Speaker C And that was called social power.
Speaker A Social power and life and behavior of living organisms.
Speaker B Yeah. Life and behavior of living organisms. When he was starting that book ten.
Speaker A Years earlier, he thought he was going.
Speaker B To title it A New Theory of Life. Anyways, folks, stay tuned for our time together. Have a great time at the rest of the conference. And if those five people would maybe just quickly talk with each other about whether you want to actually present anything or just do an exam for anything, either one is fine.
Speaker A All right.