Formatted Text
Speaker A Fantastic.
Speaker B Okay, we're going to start out with a video clip, actually, to demonstrate a wonderful what we believe is a great example of upward context setting. How many of you are familiar with.
Speaker A The movie Saving Private Ryan?
Speaker B Is there anybody who's not? I guess that's a better way to ask the question. Okay, so first of all, let me assure you that it's a bloody movie, but there's no blood. This is an office and back office scene between some people. And I'm going to ask you to watch very carefully a variety of things, keeping in mind that what we're trying to understand, this handout that just came around, you're going to spend a few minutes with this privately in the classroom in a bit. But the top sheet here has to do with assignment giving. The sheets behind it are more devil in the details because that's where we always have to look to understand if we really know what we're supposed to be doing or not. So while you're watching the video clip, see if you can determine it's pretty clear, I think, but what's the actual assignment? And we're going to use the video clip a bit and then one slide to kind of help you understand context setting and what we mean by that. So look at nonverbals, listen carefully to.
Speaker A The conversations that are going to go on. And Michelle, would you just grab the light. So let's just take a look for a second at this front sheet together because we can't get to these slides, obviously at the moment either. An assignment and it doesn't really matter whether you say Qqtr Qqqrt, Elliot said Qqtr. The Deans have switched it around a bit and they say Qqrt. Because really time is the boundary condition that we need to really always be thinking of. And that's, I think, the most difficult part of a conversation. When you're giving an assignment, it's the one that appears very open ended. And if it's open ended, it's really not. As Sheila and Barry very cleverly have done a play on words. If a task without the T, which is time, is merely an ask and people will do it when they feel like doing it if it's not their favorite thing to do, it goes to the bottom of the pile. So we really need to get very crisp, clear and defined in our understanding of when is this due and we need to get the game playing out of the system. So you got a manager who is asking you to do it and have it done by a week from today, next Friday. They don't really need it until two weeks from Friday, but they know you always do things late. So they build in all this extra padding to the assignment to accommodate for poor work practices rather than to have an open, clear, honest dialogue. This is what it's due. And the QQ, it's quantity, quality, time and resources. What is it you've got to do to what standard of quality? Because not everything is to the nth degree. Maybe it's a quick proof of concept. It's a one two six, and once that one two six shows us this is possible, then we'll do 12345 and 1.11 and point eleven. We'll go to that level of detail when we need to. So let's be clear what we're looking for. If it's a secretary, is it a rough and dirty get my in the old days handwritten notes into something just typed? Or is it a PowerPoint presentation for a board meeting? Big difference in the amount of time and effort it takes. And this is why dialogues are so important. If somebody just accepts an assignment and walks away, then you have not done your job as a manager. And getting them engaged around these different elements.
Speaker C Time is first and is more important, and then we allocate the resources to complete it in that time.
Speaker A I don't think I'm saying that time is more important. It's something that has to be well understood. Because when we get into putting this in the framework of a context discussion, if I've got all of you as my subordinates and we've got some big initiative that's coming and this is when context is critical during times of change. Because we are going down the pathway on this project and it's not going well. So it's been decided we're going to go in this direction. That's a moment where you have to reset context and help people understand why are we switching directions, what's that in service of? What's the business purpose for that? How is that going to change what I've asked you to do? It's going to change your in basket of tasks, so to speak. So we've got to have a dialogue then about not just why it's changing, but what are the priorities. And I had a subordinate once when I was director of clinical research for a biotech company. The FDA very seldom called you and said, hi, we'd like to have our meeting with you earlier. It was usually where they're putting it off to later, but this is a very important pediatric vaccine. They were tried, they were very eager to get it to the marketplace. They said, we're moving your meeting up by four weeks. So I went into my people that work for me and I said, heads up, I got to set in quick contact right in the hallway of our little area. This is what's happening. And I said, this is a number one priority and this is one of the sloppiest things you could ever say. My It person that did all my data support for this clinical group looked at me and she said with this wonderful smile, of the twelve number one priorities that I'm working on right now, which one is this? See, that's where you have to hold the mirror. And I want Ha. I have met the problem, and it is me, because to convey a sense of urgency, we say things like that. And really, seriously, how many number one priorities can somebody have? So managers have to be much more critical thinking and understanding what they've assigned, how to reallocate the priorities based on the things that shift. And that's what happens at work. It's a very dynamic environment in an organization, and things are changing a lot. And as I come to communicate with that, with you, I cannot leave it to you to decide which are the things you want to do. See, because now we no longer have a requisite organization, I need to help you understand what the changing priorities are. What I'm taste, for me, it's like a cooking metaphor. I have a big old Viking in my kitchen. I love to cook and bake and stuff. And for me, it's rearranging which things are on high heat, medium heat, low heat, off the stove altogether. And if you don't take the time to have that dialogue with people, then you're leaving it to them to decide on their own. And again, we're human beings, we are all frail in this pathfiling way. I'm going to do what I like to do, and that I know I do best. That's what I'll pick if you don't tell me, and it could be the thing I like the very least, that's the hardest for me, that you really need me to bring to the top of the pile. And so context is not just about an individual assignment, but if I'm changing a lot of the you know, I've got Jean picking up something that Bonnie's doing because Bonie's got an expert in a particular thing. And this new change we're going down the path of, I'm going to need to pull Bonie off of some of the stuff she's doing. So the best way to have a context setting session is to do it with all of you so you all understand why. Because from each of your perspectives based on the roles you're in, you're going to have different kinds of questions for me, and your questions enrich in the whole conversation about the why we're doing this, the business purpose for this, and help me understand. If you're a manager in a really busy environment and somebody walked up to you off the street and said, so tell me exactly what you've got your ten people doing today. If you say you could tell them, then, a, you really are a micromanager by my definition, or you're a liar, because people are right. People are coming sideways for them. I need this kind of report, and that puts them off something you don't know. You can't remember when Kim and I sat down for five minutes after that question she asked me. It was quite incredible because I found at least two things that had totally died, see? And the worst thing I could have done to her was to leave them in her in basket, so to speak, because that was mental stress. She wasn't working on them actively, but what was she doing? If you're a very responsible person and you've been told this is the number one priority and you're not working on it at the moment, what does that do to you, inside of you? Yeah, I think it makes you feel pretty guilty, doesn't it? And you're worried and you're distressed and you're like, oh my God, I'm not getting these things done. I'm always behind. And this is a very poor work environment for people. That is not trust inducing. It's not fair. So she and I cleaned up her in basket, so to speak, and we got things reprioritized interestingly. She called me recently because she wanted a referral. She'd been a stay at home mom. She said you might not remember me. I said not remember you. I said, I use your name every week and tell us this particular story. And there was this quiet moment and she said, I remember that exact day because the scene was big for her. She was feeling so overwhelmed. And this is a person that had a hard time pushing back. So that really caught my attention when she said to me, wait a minute, I've got twelve number one priorities. So this is why you also have to know your people and know when they push like that, you've done something pretty egregious as a manager that they're responding to.
Speaker C Can I clarify something?
Speaker A Yes.
Speaker C The priorities that you said the manager is like, is it the client projects priority or is it an internal project priority, which the manager is setting with the team?
Speaker A What I would hope in your circumstance is that your manager is adjusting those appropriately on behalf of the company and the project. Because if they're not, then they could potentially be undermining the whole right? That's a very good question for me. Context setting, we teach this as the most important managerial practice that you will ever do. But it also gets to the heart of why it's hard to do because human beings in the workplace are fairly fragile in the following way. But you spent your life in education systems and jobs and roles and you're trying to become something wonderful and you feel like you've arrived at something pretty wonderful. Now you're in a meeting and they're starting to talk about stuff and you have no freaking clue what they're even talking about. Which one of you is going to be the brave one to say, wait a minute, I'm totally confused. I don't get what you're talking about. No, you're going to wait till you go out in the hallway. You're going to ask your friends, your peers, your colleagues because you don't want to appear stupid. And so the biggest tension we have in setting context is for managers to understand human nature and understand how to create a dialogue, help people understand. There is no such thing as a stupid question. There's stupid answers, but there are not stupid questions. People are trying to learn, understand and clarify. And if you cannot create the environment where people feel open to do that, then you will never be able to set good context for your people. They will always walk out of the room and ask somebody else instead of getting it right from your brain to theirs. And that is what is the desirable state, right? You want to be able to understand together. And I don't care how long we have to sit here. This is part of what good planning is, and it's absolutely worth every penny of time you spend to get it right the first time. And when we teach this, often there's people going, well, wait a minute, we don't have the time for this. Well, then I'd like to ask you, where is the other clock you use when you fix it, when it's wrong? Where did you get that clock from? Oh, got to do over. Three more days of time. Do over. And what do you do to the relationship, to the psychological contract under those conditions? You erode it enormously. So this is about taking the time to set people up to succeed. First time out of the door to keep the pace you need to keep to be a competitive business, right? Okay, let's see if we can make this happen now. Powerful clip. So what was the Qqtr? What was the actual assignment? What did you hear right at the end? Right? There wasn't a time that they don't know how long it's going to take them, but we're going to get them the hell out of there, right? That's the assignment. Now let's go back and look at the context. What happened? How did that happen? Somebody started don't tell the whole story. Somebody else pick up the thread.
Speaker C Someone started the pattern.
Speaker A Yes, she found the pattern. And that's exactly the value add that she brought to that role that she was in. And we don't really know what her role was. What did you notice about her that was somewhat different than the other people in where she was sitting? You might not have picked up on it. I heard somebody say it. She was older, right? She was older. So we don't know if she was a supervisor. We don't know whatever else about her that might be important to know. But she was much older, so somehow she's connecting dots. It may be because it means something quite different to her than the young chippies kind of sitting there just doing this pure dictation kind of stuff. All right, so what does she do? She does the most natural thing in the world. She goes where somebody else now?
Speaker C To her boss.
Speaker A To her boss. Perfect. Right. Elevates it. Look what I found. See these three? She doesn't know anything else right. She wouldn't know who was deployed where. Right. So she elevated her boss and then she and her boss go where? Yeah. Now, did you notice what a big deal that was?
Speaker C Someone else stood up.
Speaker A Not only did she stand up, but she actually goes up on her tiptoes. You can see her. We don't go in there. Something big is up. Right. This is where you start to have the water cooler gossip mill start right. In real life, in our work, when something unusual is observed by people, because that's what we all do. We observe all the time now. They have a conversation, then she drops out and they go, where? Right. So we're now in Marshall's office and what did you see happen there? What those guys do, they're discussing it. They're tussling back and forth with each other. They've all got different points of view about what's happening, and Marshall stands there. We call that input advice. Input advice from subordinates is not nice to have. It's an accountability. You hate my freaking guts and I'm your manager and you're just waiting for me to trip over something so you can go. And I could have told you that was going to happen, right. You must tell me everything you know to keep us on track and aligned and trying to complete what it is we're trying to do together. We can't take those postures of hoping somebody's going to trip up. So these guys are in there. They're all expressing their points of view, their beliefs about what should and could happen here, what they would do if it was them making the choice is what they're really saying. And Marshall listens. And then what does he do? He goes and gets that incredible letter from Lincoln. And that's the setting of contest. Let me help you understand why the weight I feel in my role is so huge and there's precedent set for this. And so we are going to send somebody. And then, of course, the whole movie is about trying to save Private Ryan so that this woman has one of her sons back. We love that visual. It's a great scene and it's a great book coming up. And if you have organizations that don't have information coming up from the bottom, then you have an organization that's missing opportunities all over the place. I'm going to tell you an Elliot story really quickly because I think it cements the image of context setting. And then we'll show one quick slide and then I'm going to have you look at these sheets later, but not now. Elliot did a lot of work with Whirlpool. Now, how many of you have heard of Whirlpool? Okay, if I asked that question in 1990, how many of you have heard of Whirlpool? There probably wouldn't have been any hands going up in this room unless you worked in a Laundromat or a hotel kitchen or someplace like that, because in 1990, whirlpool was one of the world leaders in industrial appliances. And their mission statement in the 1990 was over the next ten years, they wanted to dominate and take over the global market for home appliances. And it's worked pretty well if you think about what Whirlpool's done. Dave sat with his senior team, and again, this is Elliot's story I'm telling. Dave sat with his senior team and he said to them, here are the five key points of our strategy, what we're trying to do, and I want you to one month from today, this information should cascade down through this entire organization. And I'll be honest, I really don't know how many employees Whirlpool had at that time, but a global company, so we've got time zones and all of those things to deal with. One month from today, anywhere I walk in my organization, I should be able to ask any employee two things. First one is, tell me what the five things we're trying to do are. And then the other question is, how does your role fit into that? People need to understand how they support these big global ten year strategic initiatives. And then Elliot further went on to tell the story of how one of the guys, when Dave was out at one of his manufacturing facilities, he was on the shop floor walking around, introducing himself, and he went up to one guy and he said, who was pushing a broom, he was a housekeeper on the shop floor. And he said to the know, can you tell me what are the five key things we're trying to do here at Whirlpool? And the guy could tell him in his own words, but he nailed. Then Dave said to him, tell me how your job fits into know. Those of you who aren't very familiar with manufacturing environments are saying, what the heck will a housekeeper say? But he knew precisely how his role helped because he knew when it was a clean shop floor, it was a safe shop floor. And if it was a safe shop floor, people weren't tripping and falling and slipping and sliding and then ending up away from work because of an injury that kept them away from their machine where they were manufacturing the various things that were sold. And so he had a lot of pride and sense of self worth in understanding how his role fit into the whole. And I'm going to ask you whether you're in a company consulting if you're running your own company, if you asked people in your organization all the way down to the lowest levels, whether or not they understand simply but cleanly the key initiatives of your organization and how their role fits in. And the answer is, I don't think so, then there's a lot of work to be done to gather people under you, to really accomplish what you're trying to do. And that is one of the biggest things that managers should start to work on. Okay? This is just a quick graphic that shows you the nesting of accountability around contact setting that wherever it starts. If that's the a role of a CEO, or if it's a middle level manager or somebody who's a superintendent in a shop floor where we need to understand the cascading down of the context and purpose. Why are we doing this? What is the business reason? How are we thinking about it? Because how we're thinking about it informs you then where to try and be creative, right? And what is this going to result in? It's going to result in us having a planning process against these business logics that's going to result in us all having to get things done. An actual assignment. So what I'd like you to do, but not now, I'd like you tonight to take ten minutes with this, and I'd like you to think about something that's in your workday for those of you who are employees of an organization, some big initiative that's either coming your way or that you've maybe recently delegated some work. And I'd like you to go through this and see if you can find places where you wonder if you even thought to talk about these things. Because we make enormous assumptions at work because we all work for the same company. We come out of meetings three levels up, and we go down to the people who work for us, and somehow we think they know what we know. They don't. It's our accountability to share and to bring people up into understanding what we're really here for. Every day that goes back to the psychological contract, that's one of the ways you develop people, first of all, is to help them understand what's going on around them because then they can understand how to think about this differently. That's developmental conversation right there. And it's about the trust factor you're sharing in a requisite organization. Unless it's illegal to tell, like, we got a company looking at us to buy us, and that's all hush hush. Anything else should be understood right down to the lowest levels of an organization. It's a transparency, an openness of fairness. One of my CEOs calls that full, true and plain disclosure. And when you've got that, then that engenders trust because people aren't there's no in and out group. There's no politics. We're all in this together. We're all trying to accomplish the same thing. And so let's get on with it and understand and be able to have open conversations. All right? So that's the goal. So we've got a slide in here. Lost the dicky thingy again. So this is the icon, context, purpose, quantity, quality, resources available, and time and the boundaries around that. The very second, you know, you can't deliver an assignment, we said earlier you've got to come give me a heads up because that very heads up helps me have the right conversations with my manager and maybe my manager's manager about how to get things realigned. So we're still on track. Maybe somebody has an extra resource they can give me. One of those people you've just tried to initiate removal from a role has a great skill set that would help us in this. So we can slide over there to work on that for a while until we figure out what to do with him or her. But it's got to have that kind of cohesiveness to it in order for it to work properly. So Cpqrt. Thank you. All right. One of the main reasons I want you to understand my business logic is one of the things when I said I hire you for how you think when there's any problem sitting out here that we have to solve at work, there's usually more than one pathway you can go down to solve that problem. As your manager, I may have some history with a couple of ways we've gone about solving this problem before. And so when I explain my thinking to you and my logic and why I believe we don't need to go down those kinds of pathways, but rather, here's how I'm thinking about the problem that allows you then to respond to my thinking. One of you may have had a different kind of history with one of the pathways I think isn't a viable one. And so these are data driven conversations. This is not how I'm thinking and feeling about this. Finger in the wind. I'm providing you with data to support my logic and thinking when you come and tell me, no, this can't be done, don't make it your opinion. Everybody's got opinions. You're bringing data to support your opinion. And then that becomes the basis of the conversation between a manager and a subordinate to decide whether I'm still going to hold your feet to the fire to get it done or not, because I may see flaws in both your data and your logic. It's a teaching moment. It's a developmental moment. I bring you through that, and I'm still holding you accountable for delivering what you originally agreed on by a week from today, or we renegotiate because you had valid points. I hadn't considered that some things have happened that I didn't know about. You're making sure I now know about them. And I'm seeing that there's a real problem with you trying to get it done. So I either have to take more things off your plate in the short term or find a way to help and support you. And so that's why you have to come to me. I give you your resources. And so screwing around, asking 18 other people and wasting time doing that laterally in the organization really is a waste of valuable time that we don't have. So getting into this very close, strong, as Sheila described it this morning, relationship with me so we can have these kinds of open, trusting, honest dialogues about work really is everything in an employment organization. Okay. All right. Okay, so you got to read this because this is great. We get only one drink per person. And you know why I was fired? I thought outside of the box, there's the cup, there's your one drink. I love that. I know where you got that idea, but it's a wonderful one. All right, so this little chart is in your notebook. It's the basis of this worksheet. So on this worksheet, think about real work that you are either doing yourself or that you have delegated. It's great if it's new work or work that's not yet fully formed in your thinking, but, you know, it needs to be delegated. I'm starting a talent pool system. What do I have to do as an HR person to try and get this off the ground? And my boss gave it to me. But what gaps are there? So there's a sheet that particularly deals just with context and purpose. And this is about scope, because whenever we have a unit of work, there's people who support us from all over the place. What if their manager is not telling them context, and we're depending on support from them? So really identifying people who are involved with what you're doing helps, you know, whether you even understand your own processes well, who is accountable for what in relationship to whom? So any place you find a gap notice, then there's a sheet about the quality and quantity. What am I actually being asked to deliver? Is that clear? And to what quality standard. And there's many different measurements of quality, and it's going to change depending on the nature of your assignment. So you need to know this for yourself. Ask yourself. These are prompts to get you thinking. The list of questions would be endless if we tried to come up with a totally comprehensive list for you. All right. And the final sheet, resources and time. This is where developmental assignments can happen if you need extra bodies. Remembering that managers once removed, have to get involved in those conversations if you want an extra body and I'm your manager, I can't just decide to go get an extra body for you someplace else. My manager has a better understanding of on that line, what's going on at the next level down and even the next level down, as they have their meetings and talk about things. So you have to have the patience to come to me. If it's within my own resources, I can get you perhaps that extra body, but once it goes outside of that, my manager your manager once removed, you are his subordinates once removed. That's the person I go to say, okay. And in the ideal world, you'd have a talent pool system that's computerized. You can pull up the kind of developmental needs people are looking for towards future growth and development and. This fits the sweet spot for five different people. Their managers are contacted. Which one of them can be freed up for this developmental moment and all of a sudden bada bing, you've got your resource of a human being. Stop asking for just money, honey. It's boring. Throwing more money at stuff is not the answer. Most of the time, it's asking people to come to the table with their incredible ability to think through problems, look for creative solutions that gets you the momentum that you need. And so when a subordinate comes to me and the first thing they ask for is more money, I'm very uninterested in that conversation. I want to hear more about why they think money is going to be the answer, but I'm going to try and prompt them to think through how to be more creative in their roles. Okay. Questions about this. So this is the worksheet that basically you're going to be filling in here on the front. What you have to do by when being aware of all of these things. And this is what new people don't know as it relates to your industry necessarily. So these are the kinds of conversations that are critical between manager and subordinates, especially when people are young and they don't quite have a sense of the regulatory environments we live in in North America for sure. Okay. Critical here. Frequency and timing of progress reports. Just because it might be a three month assignment doesn't mean I assign it to you today and I don't hear from you for three months. Right. If you're one of my older, seasoned people who's done this kind of thing before, I may, and you're going to probably give it to me in two months under those conditions. But when it's a younger person or when you have a high need to know exactly where the timing is, I may be asking you every other day to report to me on a couple of things as it relates to this. It's just depending on what your need is legitimately. Okay. All right. This was going to be a table exercise that we were getting rid of around this sheet, but rather have you do some self reflection. Sit with us tonight and then as part of the morning review, we'll take a couple of minutes, I think, and see what you have found. Did you find gaps in your knowledge? Did you tell if it's a subordinate situation, what was it you forgot to tell them? Maybe you didn't. Maybe you did a superb job and good for you if you're that kind of a manager. But that's what we're trying to help you see is where are the gaps? Because this is a big conversation, conversation back and forth. I've watched too many people sit down at a context study table go. I think we can agree that the sky is green and the grass is blue and watch people nodding around the table. When you're an authority figure, you have to understand that you are an authority figure. And that's why setting the conditions within which people will talk with you is so important. Because otherwise, people will just sit and nod their head and you won't have that important dialogue where it's the sharing of thinking and ideas and possibilities together. Okay, Ta.