Pardon My Absence

I have just returned from a 3,300+ mile odyssey whose central purpose was to be present at the birth of our first grandchild. Despite feeling pretty worn down from the drive to Vermont, I am excited to report that the world has been brightened with the addition of Stella Michael (both grandfathers are Michaels).

I'll return to my more normal topics very soon.

Everything From The Center

Does your life have a center? What is it? You don't have to visit with someone for very long before you can begin to see the answers to these two questions. The challenge then is to avoid associating the person with your perception.

A key principle of relationship and communication is that a person can --and will--change. The change may be profound as in moving the center of their life. In relationship, it is best to assume the best possible motivation for the other person and, at the same time, give them room to make mistakes. It is just possible that, even if we share a common center, are motivated by the same high purpose, and are both "good people", that we might not take exactly the same path to the goal.

In the best of all worlds, we would be attentive to each other and aware when we seem to be diverging. When we see this happening, we would talk about the divergence and the reasons for it. At this point, there have been no mistakes, no recovery is needed. All we need to do is realign ourselves with our shared goal. The path chosen might be mine or yours or some new one created out of the improved understanding derived from our conversation.

These principles are as applicable to groups as they are to individuals. Many a "leader" has brought disaster to himself and his followers by becoming focused on the problem in front of his nose and losing contact with the overall objective. This happens when the leader's center either moves inside of himself (glory, revenge, hate...) or was there to begin with (advancement, wealth, recognition...).

Don't lead your followers into a trap. Keep (or move) your center outside of yourself.

Keeping Your Own Counsel

"The man who says what he thinks is finished, and the man who thinks what he says is an idiot."
Rolf Hochhuth

What do you think of this sentiment? Would it help to know more about Herr Hochhuth?

I believe that a significant portion of humanity operates as though these two statements were true. I'm sure there are many reasons for this, but the root of all the reasons is fear. Fear is such a powerful emotion in us that many can't even acknowledge it--even to themselves. The result is that it transforms and appears (I like the word manifests) as another emotion altogether.

Earlier I posted regarding controlling personalities and said that insecurity and low self-worth, two manifestations of fear, were at the root of the need for control. When I saw this quote on MSN today, I immediately went back to the control issue. These two statements nullify everything we teach about collaboration and teamwork. If they ring true to you, may I suggest that you ask yourself why.

This isn't a casual investigation. You're not going to be truthful with yourself at first. You'll have to do the kaizen "seven whys" and do the seven whys repeatedly because, if you hope to help yourself and are attempting to be honest with yourself, you will get different answers each time you get to the seventh why. One day you will name a specific thing that is the cause of your fear and you will feel good because knowing is better than not knowing. But this is just the first plateau.

Now you have to ask why this particular thing is producing fear in you.

Each time you reach a new plateau, you will look around and see your world differently.

Do you recognize in yourself the need for control? Do you share your vision, plans, objectives freely and listen to the responses? Do you say what you believe and believe what you say?

How can your company, organization, team function productively if you answered no to any of these questions?

People First--Technology Somewhere in There

Very briefly, if you don't have the human side in order, meaning attitudes, capabilities, interest, no technology can be successful. Of course, it is possible to define "successful" so that your implementation passes the standard, but if that's how you work, you're probably not reading this anyway.

It certainly does help to have an idea of what kinds of technology benefits you are looking for and the types of technology that might help to deliver those benefits BEFORE you begin to design the change management program. Countless technology implementations costing untold millions (or billions) of hard-won capital dollars have been scrapped or have taken so long that the purchased technology was obsolete before the implementation was completed. The reason (and the solution) is in these two paragraphs.

Best Practice and Best

It occurs to me that many people may be confusing best practice with best. I thought I might devote a few lines here to separating the two concepts in the hope that better (more productive) use of effort might result.



Best Practice is the survey of how others are doing whatever it is that we would like to do, picking out those that seem most successful, and documenting how they are doing it.



Best is an objective determination, based upon comparison, and using some standard of comparison, of several alternatives within a context.

Humans being what they are, we always have to carefully define the context we are working in. Humans being who they are, the definition is never quite good enough to resolve all doubts. I am cursed with the gift (cursed with a gift--who's with me?) of immediately seeing similarities and differences. Show me a rule and I'll find the exceptions. Show me several random situations and I'll show you the similarities. It's a gift in that I find it very useful--a curse in that it drives other people crazy.

I'll get right to the bottom line. A best practice effort is only going to produce results for you if your investigation examines contexts as well as process, tools, governance... To put it another way, do you have the same history, culture, experiences, skills and attitudes as the organization you're comparing yourself with? If not, that doesn't mean there's no value for you in their practice. It does mean that you're going to have to know more about them and about yourself before you can put your own version of that practice into effect.

As far as best goes, it's time that we gave up on the idea of supremacy. Best in a particular competition among equally matched competitors is still only good for the moment. That's why we have continuous improvement. It's why there are frequent surprises at playoff time.

The best you can find is still just the best that you can appreciate. When we know better, we'll do better.

The Aging Workforce and Your BI

First, in the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I have passed my 60 birthday, though am not quite old enough to apply for social security benefits.

I saw a piece on the Today Show this morning in which one of those being interviewed made a statement to the effect that agism or age-based discrimination, is to be found at both ends of spectrum. That rang true for me. I guess the only question to be answered would be the placing of some scale on the spectrum so the appropriate remediation planning could be done.

We seen many articles and interviews regarding the characteristics of various generations from Gen Y to Baby Boomers (pretty much the endpoints of the employment spectrum). I always have to remind myself that these "portraits" are generalizations only. It's easy to latch on to a singe trait within a generational portrait and, having seen that trait exhibited by at least one member of that generation, apply it to all within the age group. Then it's only another small step to say, well, if that one is true, they're all probably true.

It's also good to remember that tendencies are statistics. An average (or a tendency) requires that some be above and some below. It isn't necessary for any individual to be average for there to be an average for a population.

This is all on my mind because I have been following some discussion forums recently and have begun to form some opinions about abilities of generational groups based on the content of the posts. I'm struggling against this because, when I stop to reflect, I know I'm making a statistical mistake.

Here's the thing: If it's happening to me, it's happening to anyone (everyone). It's very dangerous to attribute knowledge or maturity-related issues to age. Every young person is not immature or ignorant and every older person is not mature or wise. So this is a reminder that each person must be appreciated for who they are and the unique contributions they are able to make.

There's a corollary: You can't really know a person until you've met that person face to face and have shared some of his/her life. Do you know me because you're reading this or because we've exchanged emails or tweets? There are hard limits to what can be accomplished remotely, without personal contact. Some younger people know this and many older people do.

If you happen to run a company, you have a bigger labor pool than you need right now. This won't be the case for long, especially if you're in a scientific, engineering or high-tech market. People pushed to the side now and left to rust away may not be able to step back in after several years (or even several months) have passed. When you push people out of one end of the pipe without making sure there are people entering at the other end, eventually you will find that your pipe is empty. How will you adapt your business then? The knowledge, creativity and energy that created your business will be needed to transform it. It won't be about age. It will be about maturity, wisdom, creativity and energy.

The Health Care (or Healthcare) Vision

I have a vision that can only be fulfilled from the office of the CIO. This vision is characterized by

• The patient of one is the patient of all
• The history will be available wherever and whenever the patient presents
• The patient may know immediately about the services delivered and the charges for those services.
• The revenue cycle can be reduced to same-day for covered (under contract) services
• Costs can be reduced by as much as 50% through attention to the quality of the information captured and used within the system
• People will accept a system of standards when they see that their own interests are satisfied
• The people in health care are highly motivated and need only a shared vision to be fully productive
• Alignment is possible when the vision is clear
• Good, reliable, current information is the key to all of this and getting that will demand the careful cultivation of cultural and attitudinal changes.

I firmly believe that this vision can come to pass with blinding speed in an environment of openness and honesty in which people are encouraged to care about and for each other.