Speaker A With bunch of people in the room and often they're the experts on a particular business process. And I often ask detailed questions how does that process work, what happens then? What happens then? How many people are in a particular area that do this task? What type of people are they? And sometimes that to myself this feels like I'm sitting down and sometimes that may be the business where I'm currently my current thinking is that what I'm doing is entirely appropriate. I think that it's very easy to think that once you're operating at level four you don't actually have to worry about the work that's happening. The last year I've spent Learning Organization also very interested in a bunch of work. That's a book that some of you might have read by John Den. It's the application of Lean process. And one of his premises, which makes a lot of sense to me, is that managers often get involved in just management work, where it's actually people on the front lines that are doing work, and managers are creating their own management factory where they write reports and business plans, and they do all their own.
Speaker B Work up here that often So the.
Speaker A Actual work that the organization is there to do. In my organization I run a group job to send accurate bills out every quarter for the provision water and food services. Accurate bills bills account.
Speaker B For the provision.
Speaker A Of water and food services. And I also run the contact center. His job is to take filling queries and to take calls around my water is more so. I actually believe that you do need to get down to a certain level, but what I find is when I get down to that level in task on it and I need to get down to that level to have all the context I need. What I do find is once the task is set appropriately, I can step right back. And I never find myself doing my support job for example, because I think I've given them a very clear path of time and they can do it. So I share some of the dilemma. I might come back next year and share a different condition and a different feeling. But as the one, I'm very confident that it is appropriate to spend enough time to understand how various pieces of work works in order to graphic path. But I'm certainly not answering calls and doing the work.
Speaker C Commenting on this. I think there's a fine line between how much you want to instructions you want to give and how much you want to step back. As you said, if you give too much in practice, easier later to you, you can step back and everything will work properly, but you will have skilled creativity. And if you want to build somebody, if you want them to come to be creative and come up with new thoughts, you have to give them some gray area so that they can use their brain, but that will demand more work from your side to keep an eye and see if it's going the right direction. So depends on how much you want to build new talent and how much you want things to be easy on the long run.
Speaker A There seems to be a bit of concern that is too detailed and climate.
Speaker B People had to do their job.
Speaker A I haven't 98% of managers 98% of the time and in terms of erroring on whether we're giving too much advice or too little advice that we're all so far on slide of giving not enough information, context and clarity around the past, there's a risk of being too detailed is actually really low not saying this can't happen. I would suggest that if the manager, when they are running this task, getting down into the detail of telling the next level down how to do their job, I would do my diagnostic on that would be that the manager was actually not at the right level in the organization. But if they're writing detailed instructions on how to do the job step by step, then they're probably actually thinking at that level, they're probably in the wrong way. I'm not saying that that risk can't happen, but I think it's pretty low and at the end of the day, the man is the one that everyone's pretty pressed the time. Okay, we might move on to the resources. Can you talk about.
Speaker D Office report?
Speaker B Yeah. Okay.
Speaker A And that's perfect. This is one of the simpler areas but again, when forced to write it down in order to get this part, we might need some help from engineering. And I'm not manager engineering, I'm the manager of Health and Operations Engineering. And we know that it's inappropriate for me to pass the sign to someone who's not in my group that would immediately flag me to go and talk to the manager of engineering or crossover manager and say the context I've got, I need some resources. This is what it looks like for three days of time, give them a written task and ask their manager. So again and to make sure you.
Speaker B Get them if you put a result.
Speaker A In there and it's from engineering and you haven't got actually access to resource you actually haven't made in this instance, probably what you need to do is make available at least a proportion of senior investment time. You're going to do this in an organization. This is not something that you can get into play with by means of a conversation, but you might sit in here. I will make it available a full day of the entire executive time for you. Let me know again, something to ask.
Speaker B You in terms of what.
Speaker A And often I put in we may need the assistance of XYZ I don't know because we've got to actually get into the task before we understand. But I might also put in there in breakfast. Please come and see me before you actually go and spend hundred thousand. So I might be providing a recognition that we may need, but I want to be short before. At this point in our group, we found it really, really difficult to come up with things for that line without.
Speaker B Consulting with consulting with the HR person. So what I want to know is when you're setting up, how much interaction can interested?
Speaker A So what I often come in and stand to have standing here in a workshop session with pretty much everyone who's got any interest whatsoever. But it might be when I'm assigning the task to a particular individual, then I reckon it's always work. Go over, think about it, because I'm actually going to have to I haven't got the data I'm going to need to get in. But that's negotiated. Okay, yeah. I think one of the things that's.
Speaker D Coming to my mind is listening to the discussion on those lists is that all the graphic used to work and it works between certain limitations. This is really one of the points to discuss what some of those limitations are. Because if you don't discuss limitations, just.
Speaker C Having the objective of what's needed to be done, I don't think you're going.
Speaker A To get us to reach our objective that goes beautifully. Again, the result is actually that defining the answer.
Speaker B Okay, just a comment. And it has to do with a.
Speaker A Lot of the other areas with scope control of any assignment, then defining the quality, defining the resources.
Speaker B Maybe I've given the person six months to do this task, but I may.
Speaker A Be thinking they're going to spend 25% of their time for six months on the task. And if they don't perceive the same.
Speaker B If they don't understand the exact quality scope, they may be spending 75% of their time.
Speaker A Therefore, I'm not getting other output that I would expect because they've spent too much of their own time or their people's time or the resources on this activity. Another reason to define the quality of resources. Absolutely. And as we sort of bring this into timing so you might want the project to live in six months time, but you might not stay in resources. I only want you to spend six weeks total.
Speaker D If I assume this was a requisite situation and I was scoping this and I was assigning this task, first of all, I would assume that in this situation that I really understood the capability of my person. And so in that process, I would assume that if it was beyond what they could do in that period of time because of their other workload, that we would have that conversation and it would just naturally appear. Would that be absolutely correct? In a non requisite though, a person could just go away and say, oh my God, how am I going to do this? Right? Because I can't really talk back but in a requisite one, I would expect it to be very natural.
Speaker A Agreement even past it, because that's what you actually.
Speaker B That'S the conversation we had at the table too.
Speaker A Well, maybe they're gonna have to devote.
Speaker B Their entire time to that resources.
Speaker A What do we want them to stop? That would be our going in point and then we would have that discussion. And look, in any organization there are always going to be things that come up that you're going to want this person to do in a hurry. And in a requisite organization, that individual. If you want me to do double, I just need to inform you what impact on the double. And anyone good on Outlook, I love you tips on how to use Outlook short once task has been agreed entirely, send us a task on Outlook and attach tasks when the time has been recognized. So I've.
Speaker C Thanks Kenny.
Speaker D So this has been a very rich session. A lot of information. Some points I want to make sure that you really get clear because again, you're going to be held accountable for all of this. One point I want to make clear is we talked about quantity, we talked about time. You should be able to specify that objectively in objectively countable or measurable ways. So we're not talking about a lot of output, we're not talking about an increase in output. We're talking about a 20% increase in output. We're not talking about doing in a hurry. We're saying I want it Friday, and not just Friday, I want to buy you on Friday. That can be specified in measurable accountable ways. Quality will always have a judgment aspect to it. It may have some quantifiers. You may say I want to report 80 to 100 pages long. But even at sprouting one when you are, yes, measuring the measurable part of variation in a surface, the manager is still going to rub their hand over the table and say feel that surface now, feel that one.
Speaker B Does that feel the same to you as that?
Speaker D There's judgment aspect in every quality part of the task. And that means that that's why the quality will take longer to communicate. And you know, some of your people, if you say do a good job, they know exactly what you mean. Just only because you have that history with them and other people is a 1 hour conversation. You do what it takes to get across your concept of quality. Dialogue is very important to making sure that you correctly and accurately communicate quality part. When your subordinate produces work that is below quality, who do I hold accountable for that? So that's why I'm saying pay particular attention to this thing about how you communicate the quality standard because you're the one accountable for the result of that. And I'm going to hold you to accountable for that point. About context, context, one reason why context is important is your subordinate should always be giving you their best advice. If they know the context of the task they're working on, that helps them give you relevant advice because they know the greater goal that their particular task is supposed to contribute to context also helps clarify some of the necessary ambiguity quality. If my wife says she wants me to buy a terrific looking raincoat for her, it helps if I know is that to go to work or to go to a wedding. So quality gets communicated sometimes through context. And last point about quantity and specification do not be embarrassed or feel inadequate if the quantity is one. Again, one plan, that's the quantity. Now tell me what you want, what are the qualities of it. But we get sort of thrown off when we say it's one plan.
Speaker A That's okay.
Speaker D It's okay for the quantity to be one. Is it Anne Marie? No. What's?
Speaker B Sherry.
Speaker D Sherry. So to Sherry's point, when you're specifying quality and you say and I want one transformation as part of the quantity of that I want 100 managers trained.
Speaker B Well, think before you say that.
Speaker D Are you saying to Sherry's point, are you saying, well, that's how I move, in which case I'm now starting to do my subordinates work? Or are you saying, hey, if there are 100 managers who aren't trained, you haven't done the job. It's a question to answer. So again, in your groups, advice to your group leader about questions to put forward at the end of the day and including that ten minutes from now, take break, whatever we.
Speaker B The purpose of your role explains that the key accountabilities are your role statements of which one of them is to make ally. And there's usually a process, whether it's business or not, there's a process for doing the work. So this task assignment is routine. Part of your role is already implicit in the role statement. It should be contained in your work processes and stage accountability for the purpose of the role. And there are boundaries around that. Okay, so these are the types of airlines, and if you move out, you get asked to do something that moves out of. And you're not doing the Cpqrt as the manager to make the airlines because it's embedded in the phrase. The person is asking you to do the work, though. Will need to give you elements of the seat to give you our team. I need three stopovers, I need three in London on Friday and so on. So they still apply the framework. But it's in the context of routine where you must always write a task or formulate testing with an engagement with the individual as a manager is when something is outside the routine and different to what they would normally expect to do, future focus or improvement work. And then it is going to take additional time and resource to complete task and it's new. New information, new work. Just assuming that you've had a long working relationship because you're responding to something different in the environment. It's worthwhile even on a whiteboard going through the task assignment. So that's your future focus on improvement and even an element of roles they have. This is that you provide airline bookings and there's a percentage of your time where you may also provide the service to your customers which may be beyond the standard airline booking. And that's what so that's routine and improvement work. The other point is the manager must always start the task. So load engagement process is critical because what you're doing is engagement. You're getting clarity. The team members and the person you're assigning to is getting clarity from you. You will always start what's tough.
Speaker A You'Re.
Speaker B Just defining the understanding with the team member and what your employee is doing is giving insights about what they don't know and what they need to know and additional information about the workplace that you might not. She was learning about the work, getting close to her subordinate to understand what they were about and the issues they face every day. So I imagine in 18 months her task decided to become better through this process of creation. There's a question about context before purpose. The reason why we say context before purpose is because the reason why you're assigning a task is because there's a problem or there's an issue, there's a background, which is why you're articulating to context which then enables you to be successful. But I have found managers say yes, I've got that in my mind but I'm still having a clear single statement. I don't have a backfill context. It's just that context leads to the reason for you having task. I think those are the key points on task assignment. What I'd like you to do within your handouts. We found there's an exercise that's really valuable to exit managers and we're not going to spend a lot of time, I'm only going to demonstrate it. There's two things we do. First of all, there is a checklist and we say to a manager there is task. And he said when he learned about in the classroom situation he thought it was fine and he said it's really interesting. It took him two weeks. He found him a courage. He writes courage to actually write a task. So what we're saying here is this exercise is just to enable you to help you understand issues you're facing when you write. But imagine when we run these workshops, we run leaders and their own direct support. We do not have a sheet of approach of people coming through the organization.
Speaker A So we can give you some non.
Speaker B Specific general examples like we just gave. But imagine if your manager had a real problem and you had a real task in a team and you were using this workshop to understand about task assignment and you were starting the process of task assignment. How powerful would that be because you're on the journey with your manager and you're learning the issue of task assignment and the engagement process started. So what we try to do is trigger that engagement process in the workshop, just an evening journey in the workplace. So what we do to give them that and then we say now do based on this model having done the exercise, do a self assessment and I'm going to ask you to do one yourself now. And self assessment takes two parts. One is how effective are you as a task assignment? So there's an in that handout page that says task assignment A. How do you assign tasks? Just rate yourself. This is a selfish, this is for imagine it's an improvement task. So this is a task of some substance, not a receiver. And give yourself a quick rating, one, two, three or being present, it's consistent and a one being it doesn't happen. And then rate yourself as a receiver. So when you receive a task from your manager, how effectively do you receive your task from your manager? So if you know you need your manager here task, we're asking you to speak to your manager. If you're a consultant, your client from the perspective of a client, just do that for yourself as an exercise to feel what the exercise is about. What we do in workshops is we get an impact team to do and we actually look at the map of what this looks like, how consistent the team is doing it as a leadership team and what the risks are because this says it is increasing. There's risks to your execution capability and if you're a leadership team, this is insignificant.
Speaker D Their questions I'd like to go to my people and have them do how does trading how do you guys receive cats?
Speaker B That's a fabulous insight and I was going to suggest when you've done it yourself, that's only half the picture. Highlight and give it to your staff. Ask them to do it. Look at your scores for yourself and look at their scores for you and have a good conversation about that. Not great in fact. Well, I would say that pastor science and the next topic that we're going to do are the two things that you can take out immediately that draw through accountability and authority and nature of work and the definition of a manager and team member accountability very specifically. It's a great tool to use and it's something that we can improve on immediately. All of us, all the time. Just when I think I got it right, I find that I've somehow come up short again. But I just thought I was able to write okay.
Speaker D Yes.
Speaker B I'm not sure if that's about.
Speaker D Whether.
Speaker A Relationship with your energy or.
Speaker B Well, okay, when we've done the teamwork that might have more context, we'll move into that straight away. But task assignment and task proceeding is about building and developing that two way relationship with your manager. The manager has, remember, the authority and therefore the power in this relationship. So the manager is accountable to set your task and to make sure that it's understood by the team member, but the team member was receiving the accountability. So if you're not assigning tasks well as manager, then your team members are obviously not receiving tasks where either because they're not parasite, they're not saying, hey, where's the tea? The time in the task I haven't quite understood. You say, what if I pray and then we've got all these other things we're going to do. Can we just do a bit of a timeline here to check? So it's a two way relationship here. That the manager stuff teamwork.
Speaker D So and just a quick comment on that. We have in the past talked about dialogue about things like team members about to be, about building the employee's commitment. Your subordinates have already given us all of their commitment by virtue of becoming employees. They have already agreed to work with full commitment on every task you would assign them and give you their full, their best advice. So the dialogue is not about gaining their commitment. The dialogue is saying two things. One, without it you're not going to be able to tell whether they understand the ass. And two, there's just maybe a chance they know something that you don't know. Yeah, you're a level more capable than they are, but their feet are on the ground where yours haven't been in five or ten years. So they just may have some advice for you that might alter your notion of what the task ought to be. So the purpose of the task isn't to gain commitment, going back to trust. Your subordinates will not trust you if you don't respect them. And assuming that they have nothing to contribute to clarification of the task would be to me a sign of disrespect. I'm not going to stand for it. So the other thing is that dialogue with them is you're getting their best advice, considering it and making a judgment yourself to go on. It is not negotiation. You don't give them two more months to get a task done because they've asked for four more months. Right? You listen to them and then you say, you know what, given the level of your role, given what we're paying you, you ought to be able to do that. Twelve months. Or you say, wow, I haven't thought of those factors. Yeah, I'll give you the $4, but the decision is yours. This is not a negotiation, it's not a joint decision. The quality of this task assignment is something I'm going to hold you accountable for to work effectively at all right. And the other thing is this you now have the basics of task assignment. I expect from now on for you to use that. I realize this is a new skill to most of you, it's going to take you a while to develop it. And I'm going to have coaching conversations with each one of you about how.
Speaker C You'Re doing on it.
Speaker D I'm going to monitor your progress, but I do expect you from now on to start following the formula that we've been working with. Context. Purpose. Q-U-R-T dialogue. Yeah. We also can swear to that battle. You've already given me your full commitment to I'm. Next is teamwork. And like so much in regular organization, other approaches, looking at the person in ways that we look at the roles. Teamwork with your neighbor probably has a.
Speaker A Lot to do with how well you.
Speaker D Understand them and how well you like them. Teamwork in the workplace is about cooperation and that's part of our treat. Everyone in this workplace with respect and coordination. The coordination is the part that's your job as a manager. And we're now going to give some more instruction, Sheila, on how to do that it.
Speaker B And then I'm going to meet you and the short break and then we're going to relax and we're going to build on the task assigned exercise that we lunch and we're going to demonstrate just a small task on the teamworking process. And Jenny is going to use the new skills in teamworking to demonstrate that. As well as an architecture, this is an extremely powerful tool to be very clear about, again, about accountability and quality. We find it clear pathways for management to enable them to get work done. It works hand in hand with the task time. So what I'm going to do is direct you to in your handout you have a document that looks like that, which is a highly model. And then behind it is a detail behind it. I'm only going to talk to you before I do that. I want to define a team. So the definition of work here a team. This implies here that a team is a group of people who must work together in order to need to interact, in order to limit the outcome. So it's not a group, I'm not defining it as a group of people. You don't need to work together to get your outcome. And I'm defining that with a specific exercise of how to work with team because it's an accountability model. The power of this model is basic. It sets accountability for the manager or the leader of the team. And it sets and makes fear the accountability of the team members. Once your team, your managers and the team members understand the process and understand the model, you'll find that getting cross functional work done, which is always one of the most difficult things we find in introducing rape of an organization moves more effectively. We're not teaching you how to do all the detail about cleaning dynamics. That's not what we're doing here. What we are doing is global framework for accountability and you will fit in all your own approaches to managing group dynamics because I'm sure there are many who have your own every organization needs to have their own processes on how to make decisions, how to get rainforming, et cetera. We'll demonstrate one just to demonstrate. The first thing is that there is a process. Now this process is not necessarily sequential. It does have a specific staff but it may also be iterative depending on the feedback we're getting from your team members. So we're saying just as in past, that if you look at this process I'm going to walk you through the process and then for each step I'm going to explain the leaders accountability and the men's accountability very quickly. First you just say that the leader is the person who is accountable for the task. So we have in order to achieve an outcome we have a task assignment that has come from a manager to a direct report, right? So Joe has signed the task to Peter and in signing the task to Peter it has become obvious that Peter needs to draw resources from across the company to help him deliver on his task. The manager, Joe would have heard that with the managers elsewhere in the organization. So when Peter goes to draw on those resources he's not going chocolate asking for some time. It has already been agreed and assigned by those people's managers. So that's the assumption we're making. That task assignment has been appropriately assigned. Given that Joe has assigned Peter this task, peter now needs to work with him. So he's brought a group of people together who he believes are the key people who need to contribute to him. This is Peter's task. All team members are accountable to contribute to that but only Peter's accountable will be held accountable for the final outcome. Well, the step, first step is obviously I don't need to say context and curses, why that's important, we talked about that in the morning. But the leader is accountable to provide the context and explain. Member is accountable to listen, to understand the dream, clarifying it, asking the questions that need to ask to make sure they understand. So from this point on, as managers, by the manager, I would say to them that it was no longer acceptable that we had a team working process, a team working on a problem. And I hear corridor conversation about, oh, well, I didn't quite understand what he was going on about, and I don't really agree with this task, but we'll just see how things go. If you say that as a team member you are not carrying out your accountability as an accountable team member from this point. So there are different accountabilities but they are very specific. And if I teach you that have not given you fear you're accountable to.
Speaker A Advise and to give this fear.
Speaker B But I decide and I decide when I'm ready to move on. Now with context and purpose being. Here. In other words, what is it that we are actually working on? It's also at this point that I find in working with managers in the organization and as a manager myself, that if I have a cross functional team and the manager has assigned their team member onto my team and it's the wrong person, this is their moment to actually identify that. To say, I don't think I'm the right. How many teams have you worked with where you've met a group of people? They don't think they should be there, they don't want to be there, but they were the last remaining standard person in the department and they managed to say, go, that's not accountable team membership. And once you start getting clear in an organization, you remove white because what you are going to do, teamwork process, is you are going to be able to help and you want to be mobile, the best available resource. And again, as team leader, if you've not got the right resource, you need the appointment of that resource because you're not going to get your outcome. The next step is critical issues. Now, what do we know about particular technical organizations, organizations that get the problem, get the context, get the purpose, know what the task is, what's the first thing they tend to do? Jump straight to the decision, the solution. We know that we live every day. So this is saying, have you checked that you have identified the previous we turned to the task assignment earlier, all the issues coming up while you were trying to develop that task assignment. So this is about what are the things we need to address to ensure that the outcome of this task is successful before we start assigning people subtasks and before we develop our plan and.
Speaker A Make our final decision.
Speaker B If you're a manager and you bring a team together and you've already got the decision in your mind and you think, oh, well, I just want to engage to get commitment, so I'll bring them along the process, but I've got the decision in my mind anyway. And now you're going to sign up. What's going to happen to your team? You have lots of them because basically you've called them together, taken up their value and you already got the answer. And so called getting engagement, not only have you not got engagement, you actually got reversed because you lost your credibility as a leader. So this is a genuine this is an authentic process to engage the capability of the people in your team to give you the insight and the information that you don't yet know or that you want to conserve the things that they need to do that you need to do they need to do to get these tasks successfully. The team members will have the knowledge, skills and experience to contribute and to offer these issues. But the team leader must decide what they are because if you've got six people in the team, you're going to have, depending on their frame of reference, where they're coming from, they're going to offer different issues. So it's up to the leader to take that information and take that advice and decide what the critical issues are, what superordinal subordinates are, so that we can work with us. And it may mean you then assign your team members to go away and get more information on those issues. Only then are you in a fixed state to start looking at options. Looking at options. Once you think you've got the critical issues, you look at what are the options and with all the critical issues, if you've got six critical issues or five critical issues you are looking at, you need to look at what are the options? Beginning with that, the step before that is what's the future state looks like, what's the desired outcome that we want when we deliver this? That enables you to have that as.
Speaker A A measure or a check when you're.
Speaker B Actually doing the work and when you complete the task. So you're going from issues to decisions. Engaging your team by deciding the issues, by looking at the future state, what will it look like when we sort it and by looking at the option to get there. And then when you make the decision, there's only one person who makes the.
Speaker A Decision on this model.
Speaker B That's the manager, the leader. Why? Because the team member is the person who's held accountable for the outcome. The team member is not held accountable for their personal effectiveness in contributing to that team outcome, but only the leader is held finally accountable. So the leader must make the decision about plan and which way we go. But the engagement process means that if you genuinely take them across this process of identifying the issues, the desired outcome, the options, you brought your team with you on that pathway, they see where you're going. So even if it's not quite the decision, it's not exactly the way they would have done it. They can acknowledge it and accept factor accountable to do so. If they think you're on the wrong path, that will give you feedback. They must advise you and why your account will miss us. Is this new information we with our best effort missed the first time around? Or because we've had more chance to explore, we've got new information, do we have to go back to purpose and issues again or do we just adjust? So giving immediate feedback is an important process throughout. But the leader doesn't decide. This is significant because when you've got organizations that are not used to being held accountable and accountability, they think consensus is important. So then we take a vote and we know when we take a vote that we know that it's accountable, something goes wrong. Well, we voted on that every week. We took the majority vote. Should have been the right one? No, it's just the one that the majority of people thought were right at the time. The need is accountable to take the information and to decide based on that and if they're needing more information to get it, what the decision will be. The leader decides and then task decline. Team members are then in a position to clarify and accept the tasks we talked about. And again, because the leader is accountable to manage the work of the team, the team members are then as they do the work, are accountable to report on their progress, provide advice, new issues that come up. If the timeline is a problem, there are issues to advise the leader. The leader then decides to bring the team together. Again, another critical issue or to adjust. So the leader is accountable to monitor, to provide coaching, sometimes to do it personally. But the choice of this coaching when appropriate and when we get to completion, this is the point where you're looking at your learning process. How was our social process getting feedback? What did we do well so that we can make sure that we embed that systemically in our teamwork for the future. And what would we have done differently? A required process which the needer is accountable to ensure that the review takes place and if you don't hold the needle accountable. And so we go on making the same mistakes and losing the value of the things that we've actually worked out. So what we find in the organizations like this that are actually implementing regular organization is that we ensure that they have a very simple process for review and they actually go through a review process systemically whenever they've had their team meeting. And as well at the end of the project to review 35 minutes and then maybe the project will task. How much depends entirely what the work is, the time that it's taken. So that's the overall process on teamwork absolutely. It's amazing to see the clarity, the relief for managers and team members when they understand their respective role. This authorizes the team member to give feedback and ask for review at any stage of the process. Not only does it authorize them, but now they know that they're accountable to provide. So keeping quiet and letting things know and waiting for the mistakes to have to be approved in the right place is no longer. And then you find in fact that when you get accountable, team membership obviously the outcome for better, but you actually also find that you're getting more and more efficient with an organization in addressing your process. Okay, I think we'll have a tea break now and give you a chance to have a break. And then what we're going to do is table two and we're going to take the task that we had earlier and we're going to say this is the early stages of thinking. We're going to demonstrate the Ro base. I'll find this in a minute. Demonstrate how we could use this teamwork model. We're going to have Jenny as the manager of this team. Table two. Work this team to identify issues for designing an arlo based development program and the rest of you are going to observe that process. So if you can't see, need to see. This team will have a fifth chart here. You can bring your chair closer around table two. And we're only going to demonstrate, so we're going to take 15 to 20 minutes. Again, when you're working in the workplace, the power of this is you take a real problem with the real manager, the CEO, the executive team, and you really work it. And yet they go away and they take that value input and they say, we're going to start now too intimately. What you do is you're actually requiring managers to work on something real that carries so they cannot forget about on Monday, they got to continue the work because they've triggered something on 15. How about three to, let's say 25 parts?
Speaker A What I'm going to do now, you got it right over there.
Speaker D We we heard some problems about sound here. Apparently, I guess the people in the audience supposed to speak with a funny accent to it. I told the loud ex American here, I don't know if I have a problem, but the polite Australians. So I've given them instruction to speak up, but we all tend to fade in whatever instruction we're given. And you're not holding them accountable, but you are giving them a signal. So if they do start fading, please do jump right in and eventually we all get training.
Speaker A Thank you. Okay, so what I'm going to do now is demonstrate. And I'm a little nervous about it to be personal because I don't have any tax team, I don't know. And they all get their own pace. And I guess I'm, I would be sad if I wasn't able to demonstrate to you what I find so powerful about the process that we're about to go through. But we'll give it a go. So before I start to demonstrate, just want to be clear that what I'm doing here is demonstrating using teamwork process in order to help. And we worked out quite clearly that's very obvious to us that it's an interactive process. It's two way and it needs to.
Speaker B Be managed.
Speaker A To get to task. What I would have done before I even got into the workshop with this group of people who we specifically put together because of their accountability in the organizational maintenance knowledge is a couple of teams. Firstly, I meet with my direct report every week. And one of the agenda items every week is we will talk about what half the final. I'm just gonna try and move it because I can feel every time I'm.
Speaker B Talking.
Speaker D You have to turn your whole body.
Speaker A Okay, try that.
Speaker B Okay.
Speaker A So I would mess with my direct reports, which I do weekly. And we would have discussed what tasks on this week might need to do that week. And the first thing I would do is put up on the board, I think we need to do a task and I think this is what the purpose is. And we have a bit of discussion, that concept not too great, a little bit and have a go against that purpose, right? And then I would actually ask questions, well if we're going to do a task that looks like this, who needs to be in the room?
Speaker B And we would just put up on.
Speaker A The board who is relevant to this task. Now it's with people that have either got accountability in the area we're talking about, so in this, if we're talking about records of organization, definitely not some people from HR, people who got projects, but also people who are knowledgeable. So we might have attempted twelve months ago a similar project, and the HR manager might have so pissed off with that process that they might be working in another part of the organization, but we think they've got some really valuable knowledge to add. So we'll actually invite them along for the process as well. What I find fascinating about this workshop is I always end up with a different team every time, usually the same. Generally my direct reports are always there, but we always have other people that usually team that never been together in that particular format before, which always works really well because people here is in. If there's anything that we need to do outside my particular group, I'll specifically.
Speaker B Request.
Speaker A Hierarchy that particular people be made available just for the workshop so we can get information. And again, it's really powerful when you hear the engineers, one exercise to do something and people who are on the phone, who step flat from what happened, listening to each other's world and understand where they're coming from, that's how I will actually assemble this group.
Speaker B Now the first thing I will do.
Speaker A Is other than give context, so I'll have a dock and demonstration. Okay guys, the reason we're here is because we want to develop. That's called yarl. So we want to develop. Why do we want to do that? Well, as you guys know, three years ago we started up cultural improvement program. We were using human synergistics tools and we were moving towards the blue zone. Is that something that okay.
Speaker B That'S been.
Speaker A Particularly useful and we can see that that's taken us away and we can see that works really well, but we.
Speaker B Can also see that it's not going.
Speaker A To get to the next step that we want to go. And as you know, as a CEO of this organization, I'm just totally passionate about making sure that our organization can be as effective as possible. And that within the organization that people can achieve to their actual best really passionate about that personal passion, but also I can see the different benefits of implementing records of organization. Now all you guys went through a workshop with me a couple of months ago, so we've also got an idea of what it's about. And I guess we've been spending a fair bit of time in the last couple of months pondering into how this might work. And I'm now coming to the conclusion that implementing rest of the organization for us is going to work really well, but we need to explore it further and make sure that we all understand. So that's really why I put you guys together because I want to implement this framework. Can I ask whether you guys have got any questions about context or any additional context to add? Step outside my demonstration. Now this is when people often say.
Speaker B To me, oh, by the way Kenny.
Speaker A Do you realize three years ago we did this and this is what happened. Did you know that?
Speaker B How is that going to affect this.
Speaker A Project, et cetera, et cetera. You're on my team. Yes, thank you very much. So as your manager, we will address that issue. But I see it as an issue rather in context. Yes, but that's why I want you to write it down and we'll address it in that context that you guys would like to add.
Speaker D Yes, it's the rainmaker of this organization consideration. I don't know how this is going to help us get more water.
Speaker A Very good question. I'm not sure that it is. I actually think that in terms of this is what may all be out.
Speaker B Of context, but I think in that.
Speaker A It may all be that now not right time organization framework.
Speaker B So we should have thought about that.
Speaker A If we really think that now is not the right time, we should discuss that and just make a comment. I've had some really varying experiences with this process and the experience I have, I think myself. So I've had experiences where I come in to workshop like this with the intent of working on a task, and I've got to leave people together. And we do all this brainstorming and we identify that there are only two issues, and there was ones I already thought about before, and I just wasted a whole lot of time. Sometimes I had that experience, other times I had this experience and I've come in and I said we're going to do the director of organizational framework. I'm so excited about it. I have spent 2 hours as a team and I've come away even more confused than when I came in and I'm left going. And I'll turn around and I'll actually say to myself, you know what, I was going down in the wrong direction. Now, that question that you posed just there is a beautiful example. It may well be entirely inappropriate at this time to implement a new organizational development framework when it hasn't rained and we are up to our neck in.
Speaker B Difficulties because we're in the middle.
Speaker A And that's an entirely appropriate outcome. So sometimes when I had that experience, I go on edquid just wasted my time and I'm going to do the project. But that is just completely opposite to the reality. What's so important about that is that I have not initiated an inappropriate task. One of the things that I have learned over the last twelve months is that implementing or starting tasks that are not appropriate is far more damaging than not assigning tasks properly. So I'll give you one example. Shield calls these projects lack the O project. Either project you should stop or you should never start. I joined the role I'm in now months ago, and there are a range of It projects. There weren't particularly big ones that were already underway, already signed off, people were working on them. I made the assumption you should never assume that they're all good projects and that someone doesn't put in the elements around. And I was wrong. We actually implemented a project into our.
Speaker B Billing system to the lazy billing system.
Speaker A That firstly caused billing error error. So ashes fucked up the building system and secondly, it didn't even work. And we are still cleaning up. That the resource that the has been phenomenal.
Speaker B So if at the end of this.
Speaker A Process we decide that it's totally wrong time to implement the organization program, the Yarra Valley Water, that's okay. And it's my whole process. Tell me the name of the company again, because I'm having a hard time. Okay, thank you. Yaramali Water.
Speaker B Thank you.
Speaker A Provides Water.
Speaker D I'm looking for a job, guys.
Speaker A Have me read Yarra Valley Water. Provides Water. Okay, thank you.
Speaker D Yeah, we just did six different and mother now we're gonna do this. How much we haven't got time. How much gonna cost? This isn't gonna take years, but ancient.
Speaker A Payment question.
Speaker D Go halfway something.
Speaker A Can I ask that?
Speaker B Sure.
Speaker A So in addition to ISO and Six Sigma, we also endured a three year cultural shift, which we're seeing with results of and we're in the middle.
Speaker B Of a merger and acquisition. How are we going to be able.
Speaker A To pull this off? I'm commenting on the process rather than being in the process. The questions that I'm getting are issues rather than context.
Speaker B So I haven't got one leadership, but still in context.
Speaker A So the point I'm trying to make is I can provide you with context, but often team members have some context.
Speaker B To contribute as well.
Speaker A So all I'm doing is inviting you guys to provide some additional context. I think everybody a lot of this is indicative of what happened in a situation like that.
Speaker C Redirect.
Speaker D You'Ll feel like question I think, you know back to just sit and.
Speaker B Wait for process to I didn't really understand why I didn't understand it was that of yes. My defense yes.
Speaker A We're trying to learn concepts that are in an entirely contrived situation is difficult.
Speaker B That's the talent.
Speaker A So I think you're right. I'll just ask people to hold off and put it on some issues. Once I've just got the purpose up.
Speaker B It's what I do. Probably.
Speaker A What I'll also say is obviously my managerial experience is very different from your. I feel that I have some relationships with my direct court, of whom a lot are around the table. Such that I have not experienced a teamworking process in Yarra Valley Water in my time, where I felt quite as a cat, as I would have to say that clearly this establishing a format in this way, if I was really committed to this would be inappropriate for going and just having whole time I mean, what I was doing in real life what I was doing is you got clearly this organization is a long way from implementing something like this might be walking away entirely. And I'd be doing a hell of a lot of work in building trust with my direct reports and learning with the direct reports. I would probably totally recast the task. I'd say clearly this task is entirely appropriate. The task needs to be something along the lines of we then have an organization that's pretty worn out with initiatives.
Speaker B They can see problems.
Speaker A Tasks needs to be something more along the lines of what are we going to do here to try and refresh ourselves, build trust. It would be completely different process. And there's absolutely no point the manager saying, this is absolutely bloody brutal and.
Speaker B We'Re all going to do it.
Speaker A If you guys aren't bought into the process, it means I haven't done my job doing the trucks and bringing you guys along. And it would be task. Okay, so we got through the thing. So just try. And pretend that you're actually valid entrance.
Speaker B At this point, we've got about so what I'm gonna ask you to do is to follow the process with your team and not just be part of it for the minutes and then leave the comments at the end. Okay. Yep.
Speaker A Now, I'm sorry, Shell quick. Not that it demonstrates point, but basically what I would do next is and I say, have we got purpose?
Speaker B Right?
Speaker A And then we would actually go through and say, no, we only get development plan. We actually or it's not an implementation plan, something else. And often find this time refining and it's actually quite intimidate. But I'm not going to roll that now. We're moving into. So the next thing I'll do is I will just go through what my expectations are and that it's not acceptable for you to not contribute. It's not acceptable for you to be sitting there and saying, well, that's like bullshit to me. But I don't really want to put my hand up and say, you're a town. That's the basis. Then I say, okay, well, what are the issues that we need to address if we're going to do this project? Okay, this is a brainstorming session, so I'm not going to comment on your issue. No one else should comment on the issue. We just need to get up. What are the issues that we need to address as an organization in order to do project? So I would tend to give everyone.
Speaker B Five minutes to write down. I call this introverted brainstorming.
Speaker A People who are thinking client rather than out in the open. I get you guys to write down.
Speaker B A couple of issues.
Speaker A I'm not going to do that now because we've already got a whole lot and I'll start by going around the table. What are the issues, what's one issue that we need to address if we're.
Speaker B Going to do this project?
Speaker A Yeah, it's going to be difficult to sell. I've had such here because people have.
Speaker B Been feeling how do we sell our.
Speaker A Oil, where are we gonna be when.
Speaker D This is.
Speaker B Thank you.
Speaker D Priority? How are we going to know this where we are?
Speaker A You it.
Speaker B I'm concerned about the project given other.
Speaker A Competing projects that I've taken on. Federation.
Speaker B It.
Speaker A You can see how now with this particular problem I reckon we can hear all night, identify issues that we need to address at the once we've done all that, like I said, I'll probably walk away from it. There are too many issues that need to be sorted out before we'll probably be going out. And the way I shop the workshop, someone around the table like to have a go at describing what the world.
Speaker B Would look like if we were successful.
Speaker A In implementing this project. And hopefully someone would have a step at that and they would actually be able to describe what it would look like. I find that really useful process because it helps people get in the right mindset. So that would be the end of the workshop. I would say, thank you very much, everyone, and I will print it down on my electronic whiteboard and I would take it away from my desk. And in this instance, I probably had crypt going anywhere in a hurry. And we would come back and talk to my team and say, look, this isn't applied. What else are we going to do? We clearly got a disenfranchised organization. Looks like we have the wrong task. What's the alternating task? We might come back and say, okay, well it looks like we need to take the organization through a process of doing reflection on where we are maybe and looking at alternatives and we might come back next week with a different bunch of people and I might have a purpose then. Our purpose is to identify a plan to improving your organization. Might come back like that. If I'd been more successful with this particular task, I would take this away. I would have already had on my computer like a straw man task. You got a diet this morning? And then you recognize when you finish. It was totally natural. I would then go on to walk with him.
Speaker B I would have more context because I.
Speaker A Would have had people feedback, more context. I'd be clearer about the purpose and.
Speaker B I would be a lot clearer about.
Speaker A The quality of the task. A lot of these things would be addressing the quality. So for example, one of the issues is how do we sell Ro? I might put the quality that particular effort needs to be made ensuring that internal communications are appropriate, something along those lines in order to be successful. So I can find that I go through and I just keep make sure everyone's issued addressed in the actual quality. By this stage my thinking would have been so if you want to know what it is, that's what my work is. My work going through this entire process. From thinking that up with a good idea of project that I wanted to this year to actually having a task and knowing what the issues were, I might have decided that there were three.
Speaker B Separate tasks that need to go to.
Speaker A Three different people or I might decide that the task was failed and I've rewritten it. Whole pile of things might happen during the process, but I would have at the end of the day a vastly clear idea what I was looking for and what I was expecting must ask. I was hopefully obviously worked out who the hell was actually going to get to help and who the task was actually going to be. That person would have been sitting around playing and they would have been through the entire process. So they would have excellent context because they wouldn't have seen the journey. I would sit down with final draft. I'd say this is what I can't look it. Tell me what are there any gaps and what okay Sheila, we got time for questions now. Is that what you want to do? No. Okay, you better write.
Speaker B It was she demonstrated using the keyword model to write, but not just about writing a house. It's valuable to help engage what she was saying that the mental process of what works is the engagement process of.
Speaker A A group of people.
Speaker B So we use teamwork in a situation where a team leader needs to achieve an output that requires a number of people to work together. And this is a step of the actual team working process where we've identified what our problem is. We're now identifying the critical issues and it has imminent impact on the final outcome. When we've identified issues using that brainstorming or any other process that helps you identify the issue, we find that it's really valuable to take. These are all the issues and typically we'll find you cover up pretty quickly with some French bag. The leader always decides what these are so they get the input. The lead patient says, okay, what are the superordinate. Issues and what are the subordinates but the leader itself, not the team members the leader itself. The benefit of your making process, your experience in the organization, would you contribute to brainstorming? The neither can with the team or away from the team go away and decide. These are IG, so the 1 may.
Speaker A Be.
Speaker B And then all of these that have been brainstormed often on this ishikawa diva or fishbone, and you can see if you've got any gaps related to skill and then you're going from the high level, taking each issue skill and you say, that's the issue. How do we decide what we're going to do about it? If you've got all the issues mapped and you're looking at the desired outcome you can then look at your options and when you map them all you might find this option relates to another option on another issue before you make decision. So part of the teamwork when you engage in and at any stage the team will say when we do that we will follow. So for each issue you articulate desired outcome and notice we put a line there. Don't go to your decision until you've engaged your team because that process as well as the engagement what we've done is we shared the data, your information and one page here I as the leader manager have decided what the two broaden issues are and what this task is. I can now in a position where I can look at I've made my decision on step four. Now I'm ready to write tasks and to assign tasks to one person, other tasks to others then I'm in a position to look at the schedule and the budget so I can launch those reports. Teamwork accountable Team leadership and accountable Team leadership. Again I think Jenny would say that has been one of the most significant benefits in taking a practical approach to organization. So management and then we do the session for the rest of the day. Right last topic and this is putting together a few at a particular I'm only going to take ten or 15 minutes because I like to go back to it tomorrow when we have another look at a couple of the other topics, one of which is structure. So I'm only going to make a couple of points here and we'll come back to tomorrow when we talk about capabilities. All of the points I want to make here is in other words, what we're looking at is we're met as a manager that we're judging the individual's personal effectiveness in carrying out and there are a number of factors when we're looking at the individual personal and their ability to deliver successfully. So one of the factors affecting this individual's ability to deliver is the individual themselves. We will go through this in more detail tomorrow but I'm going to cover it really quickly just to make a point. The point here is that the individual brings a whole set their capabilities to the work they do and that has on their ability to deliver. We say that there are a number of things that we take into account when we look at individual capabilities. There's the knowledge, the skills, the experience known as competencies, I guess in your language, in the workspace and the expression of those wisdom in the workplace. We also say the extent to which they value the work is a significant factor in their ability to be effective in this role with those tasks over time. An example of valuing the work is obviously someone like Jenny in a managerial role, valuing managerial work. If she values managerial work, then she will work situously to work a team, to build an effective team, to assign tasks clearly to ensure a clear role definition, to give coaching and to give feedback. If however, Jenny was a technical specialist jenny is an environmental scientist. So let's say she was an environmental scientist and the only way she could progress through the arabella water is to take on a managerial role. And that was her progression. And she was asked to now take on a team of say eight or ten people. And then as a manager, one with a whole function of say 200 people, we predict that over time she could not mobilize her knowledge, skills or skill or her medical capability to deliver effectively in this role. What would you predict would happen if Jenny was a technical specialist doing great technical work, delivering great output to the other as an environment and now we have managing a function of 200 people? What would happen? It would be a problem. What do you mean here what would.
Speaker D Go on 200 prostrated employees.
Speaker B You would have a manager who would probably find a way to deal with the system, managerial system as efficiently as she thought she could and she'd get on with the technical work. In other words, she'd probably be looking down, which is the work of her team, cherry picking the nice work. She's got the ability to decide what work she does, not doing the work at her level appropriately and safely not doing her management. There would be some significant issues there in valuing the work. So valuing the work with say knowledge, skills and experience, you can change the individual and the manager together, work company development plan and you can change that. The gap is not usually a healthy gap. The only issue is what the gap is and do we have the resources to do it? Do I have the time, do I have the resources to actually feel that gap? Am I prepared to do so? Valuing is a bit different. I always say when people have difficulty needs about valuing the work, fundamentally valuing the work and often we discuss through our exposure to it. So when I was speaking and I had my first managerial role, I realized that that was the work I wanted to do. I didn't know that until I had the exposure. But imagine a vegetarian working in a marathon valuing the work. Could they do the work technically? Could they actually mobilize the energy, the commitment to actually solve the problem enthusiastic and in a community way over time. So that value in the work and preferences and we're going to talk more about that tomorrow. But those in preferences, the preferences I have that I bring to the work that enable me to use up my knowledge, skills and experience effectively. Inhibitors are other any negative extremes of temperament that get in the way. Things like things that actually inhibit me in delivering my outcome. And then there is complexity of information processing, level of work ability, cognitive ability, mental processing ability. Those are all terms that I use for my mental capacity, my ability to solve problems, solve the complexity of problems that I face and that we're saying is inherent. It would develop over time but you cannot change it through additional knowledge skills. In experience you're only mobilizing the knowledge skills. But all those factors will impact the individual facility. But that's not the whole story because the other factor we talk a lot today significant factor is the manager. Because the manager is the definition of a manager is accountable for the output of the individual. That's a technical output but also their behavior. So if the manager is not capable either doesn't have the knowledge, skills and experience and is a serious gap, doesn't value the work of managing or is not able to do the work for the role, then what's going to happen to this individual in the hierarchy? If the manager is there and the employee is there let's say the manager is only capable of working at that level, what's that going to do to the individual? Again, it's going to impact this individual's success because the manager can only provide the same context that the individual can sell for their work. The coaching of that appeal would be they're not going to add value to the work of the individual and probably when they're looking at signing work they will be bringing the boundaries into tight end constraining the individual so that's significant and the existing does not have control over their manager. The other is the organization. So even if that's right, that's what's happening now. We have structure and we have the organization working. The individual working across the organization in role relationship and the organization system inhibits effective work. If we don't have clear processes and clear accountability and we're working across the organization that's going to impact the individual's ability to deliver. If the role relationships aren't clear that's going to impact the individual ability to deliver. Have you ever been in a service or support role where your accountability and authorities are not clearly understood by the rest of the organization? Try being effective in your role then where you don't have a team of people to direct you to be successful in your role, but you actually have to work across the organization. Doesn't matter how if you've got the sex manager, your manager will be using processes in the organization to get started. But that will be so what we learn from these settings when we're thinking about performance? Well, first of all, if we're driving on output only, that's a significant problem because the individual can only do their best work within the context of their environment that they find themselves in. They will do their best regarding and may not see. That's the first point. The second point, the manager is comfortable for the output of the individual. So the manager this is a tremendous tool to help you diagnose performance issues. A set the right conditions for your employee in the role to start with. And secondly, if you do have performance issues to diagnose the organization issues around the individual and look at the manager as well. So I don't believe performance management approach is effective unless the manager is looking at how they inhibit or enhance their individual ability to deliver. And then we also look at the individual because the individual is accountable to work with full commitment. That's what they've promised to do, utilizing all of their knowledge, all of their capabilities. But that's the best they can do. They can't do more than that. So in that handout, we've actually got this model HR function to help them actually think through the organization managerial and individual issues related to performance. So that's the document and it's really a checklist of things that say when you go through these, think about the conditions you need to have in place so that you can enable more employees to work to the extent of the presenting there is like. And if a manager has a problem with an individual, they will sit with their manager. In other words, your manager one removed and have a conversation about the individual. That's part of their process. Remember, the manager one removed is accountable for sex and leadership. The managing one removed interest in hype in the function level. It also helps managers. It avoids the trap of going straight for the individual. What's wrong with the individual? And we hear that over and over again. What's wrong with the individual? So principle, it looks at the manager and one of the conditions around the manager. Then he looks at the manager, he is.
