anecdote.com.au

The people part of change

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:37:23 +1100

In late May 2009 I was invited to advise on change management on a big project in Sydney.

The client was a medium size logistics organisation with a history of poor performance, low staff engagement and sub-standard customer service. They were in the midst of something of a crisis. They had been directed to substantially down size, two recent reviews had condemned them for their inefficiency and appalling service and a recent reorganisation appeared to have made matters worse.

One of the first things I did was to talk with the senior leaders. The CEO explained that they had reorganised twice, reviewed and substantially modified all operating procedures and introduced new and more efficient technologies to support their work. And despite all that he explained with frustration, nothing had improved. Most of the staff were "hopeless" and he thought the best thing was to replace them all. He had introduced a compliance team to monitor staff adherence to the new rules and processes, but despite many staff being caught and punished, they hadn't improved.

I gently explained that there was no point changing structures, processes and technology if people continued to behave as they had in the past. They had neglected the people bit of their change agenda. I was mildly surprised when this explanation appeared to come as a revelation for them.

My surprise was short-lived as I observed the way they talked about their staff and behaved over the next few days. I wish this story had a happy ending. I also wish it were an isolated incident.

One public workshop this year: influencing change with stories

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:16:12 +1100

We often get asked whether we are running any public courses on our techniques but for the last couple of years we have reserved these courses for our clients.

But this February and March we are running one workshop on influencing change with stories in collaboration with Kevin Bishop, most recently the Royal Bank of Scotland's change manager in the UK.

If you would like to attend here are all the details.

We only have limited places so please let us know as soon as you can to secure a spot.

Keeping richness in our decision making

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 07:28:10 +1100

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807–73) was a Swiss-born American zoologist and geologist who taught at Harvard. Imagine that you went to Louis Agassiz’s laboratory at Harvard as a student. Agassiz would place a small tin pan in front of you with a small fish and utter the stern requirement that you “should study it, but should on no account talk to any one concerning it, nor read anything related to fishes” (Cooper, 1987: 79) nor use any artificial aids like a magnifying glass until he gave you permission to do so. As one student said, “To my inquiry ‘What shall I do?’ he said in effect “Find out what you can without damaging the specimen; when I think you have done the work, I will question you” (Cooper, 1987: 82). Students kept telling Agassiz what they had found and Agassiz kept saying “That is not right.” This went on, typically, for 100 or more hours with the same now “loathsome” fish. Agassiz would keep asking “What is it like?,” “Do you see it yet?” and saying “You have not looked carefully” and “You have 2 eyes, 2 hands, and 1 fish” (Cooper, 1987: 81). Gradually, things would begin to change. One student replied to the professor’s query as to whether he had seen one of the most conspicuous features of the fish, the symmetrical sides with paired organs, “No I have not seen it yet, but I see how little I saw before.” Agassiz replied, “That is next best . . . now put away your fish, go home; perhaps you will be ready with a better answer in the morning. I will examine you before you look at the fish” (Cooper, 1987: 81; emphasis added). Another student reported the following experience: “I pushed my finger down its throat to feel how sharp the teeth were. I began to count the scales in the different rows, until I was convinced that that was nonsense. At last a happy thought struck me—I would draw the fish; and now with surprise I began to discover new features in the creature. Just then the Professor returned. ‘That is right,’ said he; ‘a pencil is one of the best eyes’” (Cooper, 1987: 81; emphasis added).

Agassiz (nicely told by Karl Weick on an article on richness) was acutely aware of the human propensity to name something, to categorise it, and then discover its properties vanish before our eyes. Once named we no longer need to attend to the details to work it out. As Weick points out, naming things is an essential action to coordinate activities. Unfortunately we lose detail in the process.

One way to keep richness in our understanding is to identify the stories that represent situations. We are currently working for a government agency helping them to create and tell their strategic story. They've identified seven strategic directions and in and of themselves are abstract ideas such as, achieve with our partners, be easy to deal with, nurture independence. These ideas only make sense when illustrated by an prototypical story.

References

Cooper, L. 1987, 'Louis Agassiz as a teacher', in CR Christensen (ed.), Teaching and the case method, Harvard Business School, Boston, pp. 79–82.

Weick, K.E. 2007, 'The Generative Properties of Richness', Academy of Management Journal, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 14–9.

HT to Tim Kannegieter for pointing me to the Weick paper.

The Mahout, the Elephant and the Path—an analogy for change

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:02:53 +1100

Dan and Chip Heath have a new book coming out (Feb) and they sent me a copy of the first chapter. The title is Switch and like their last best seller, Made to Stick, it promises to be a keeper. It's all about how to motivate people to change. The first chapter has left an indelible impression because of the strong image they conjured to explain what we need to consider to influence change: the Mahout (they call it The Rider), the Elephant and the Path.

Changing behaviour involves a struggle between our rational and well-reasoned thinking and our emotional urges. The mahout represents the rational and reasoned. If the mahout clearly understands where he needs to go he'll direct his charge that way.

The elephant represents emotional urges. While the elephant might be happy to go the way the mahout directs, if she decides to go another direction there is not a single thing the mahout can do about it.

The path represents anything that might impede or assist the mahout and the elephant to get to where they are going. You want the path to be as easy to follow as possible.

So how does this translate to a business setting? Imagine you're a leader of an organisation that's decided to compete on exemplary customer service. To engage the mahout you need a clear rationale describing why customer service is so important. You would find the research that shows the factors that influence customer service and illustrate to the mahout in everyone the concrete actions you want them to take. Engaging the Mahout, however, is the easy part and the one most organisations spend most of their time doing. The hard bit is the elephant.

Engaging the elephant, the emotion, will take action and stories about things that happened. You might start by telling some stories of customer service blunders to grab their attention. Here's one that happened to me recently. It's important you find stories from the organisation. Real life examples. Negative stories, however, often in themselves wont change behaviour, partly because people don't know exactly what they need to do to get it right. So you also need to find stories of great customer service from your company. We call them Gibson stories because William Gibson (the sci-fi writer) once said: "the future is already here; it's just unevenly distributed." You just need to find these stories that represent your company's future. Tell them. Get people to discuss them. Inspire that elephant.

After engaging the mahout and the elephant you need to pave the path and remove anything that's getting in the way of progress. This might be a rewards system that's encouraging the wrong behaviour. Or it might be an IT system that is unintegrated and hard for call centre staff to use slowing down their support for customers. There are a myriad of obstacles to remove from the path.

Don't forget, the Heath brothers were the authors of Made to Stick which dedicates a chapter to the power of stories. Chapter one is full of great stories. Some you might have already heard, such as the 424 gloves that save a company millions or the 100,000 lives saves by the Donald Berwick and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

The Heath brothers conclude the chapter by saying:

Whether the switch you seek is in your family, in your charity, in your organization, or in society at large, you’ll get there by making three things happen. You’ll direct the Rider, motivate the Elephant, and shape the Path.

Photo credit: goofball12

Creating more humanistic workplaces

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:07:44 +1100

"If you go into a grey concrete box with one little window, it's claustrophobic, it's cold. If you put a skylight in it and you make the window bigger and put a tree outside and put wood on the floor, it gets better. And it can get better and better until it becomes a humanistic space to which our bodies respond, our emotions respond." Frank Gehry in Wisdom by Andrew Zuckerman.

We can do the same in our workplaces. Not just with the physical space but with how we work, interact, connect and get things done. Frank Gehry adds skylights, wood flooring and trees. We add stories.

A story designed to change your mind

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:50:00 +1100

Seth Godin has a new ebook out called What Matters Now. It consists of 80 or so thought leaders each with a page to talk about an idea that matters to them. Each idea is summed up in a single word such as Dignity, Autonomy, Attention, Difference. You can download the ebook here.

Dan and Chip Heath have a page with the title, Change. They incorporate three ideas in their one-pager that is dear to our work: stories, positive deviance and changing behaviour. Here is what they wrote.

A troubled teenager named Bobby was sent to see his high-school counselor, John Murphy. Bobby had been in trouble so many times that he was in danger of being shipped off to a special facility for kids with behavioral problems.

Most counselors would have discussed Bobby’s problems with him, but Murphy didn’t.

MURPHY: Bobby, are there classes where you don’t get in trouble?

BOBBY: I don’t get in trouble much in Ms. Smith’s class.

MURPHY: What’s different about Ms. Smith’s class?

Soon Murphy had some concrete answers: 1. Ms. Smith greeted him at the door. 2. She checked to make sure he understood his assignments. 3. She gave him easier work to complete. (His other teachers did none of the three.)

Now Murphy had a roadmap for change. He advised Bobby’s other teachers to try these three techniques. And suddenly, Bobby started behaving better.

We’re wired to focus on what’s not working. But Murphy asked, “What IS working, today, and how can we do more of it?”

You’re probably trying to change things at home or at work. Stop agonizing about what’s not working. Instead, ask yourself, “What’s working well, right now, and how can I do more of it?”

Chip and Dan Heath are the authors of Made to Stick and the soon-to-be-released book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.

It's not a coincidence that the Heath brothers decided to tell a story to illustrate their idea and try and persuade the reader to adopt a different approach to change. They dedicate a chapter to the power of stories in their book, Made to Stick and conclude the book saying that most of the other effects described in the other chapters are encapsulated in stories. So let's look at some of the features of this story and why it might be effective.

The simple story structure creates an image for us of both Bobby and Murphy (and let's not forget Ms. Smith). I can see Bobby sitting on a swivel chair restless and bored. If the story creates vivid images for us there is a good chance it will grab our attention and we will remember it. We've all seen Bobbys in our life, so it's easy to picture him in this story.

Names are important. Humans care about other humans. We want to know the names. Case studies often lack names and suffer for it. Again it creates attention through authenticity and empathy for people.

Also notice how they start with the story and then provide the advice. They didn't want the reader to slip into a confirmation bias where we automatically discount suggestions as our first instinct. The story first allows us to pull the idea to us, own the idea ourselves before a suggestion is made by the experts.

Three ways to make your strategy stick

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 08:21:25 +1100

In my hands is a corporate strategy. It’s a glossy six-page document designed for every employee to memorise and enact. There are seven themes each with three sub-themes. There are also seven values. All the information is presented as dot points well set out with lots of white space for easy reading. Sadly this strategy is unlikely to stick. Perversely, it could even cause the exact opposite behaviour the leaders desire. Here are three reasons for my statement.

1. It’s hard to remember a set of ideas without an organising schema. Neuroscientist John Medina reminds us that we need to get the overall gist of something before we can attend to the details. Watch this video for an example of what he means.

One way to provide the overall context for a strategy is to create a strategic story that places the company’s directions within a schema. That way people get the gist of the strategy and can then attach more and more meaning.

2. Too many things on our mind diminishes our willpower. Implementing a strategy requires willpower and as a recent Wall Street Journal article describes it only takes a moderate cognitive load before we succumb to temptation. In my opening example here are at least 28 things to remember about the corporate strategy which will definitely overload our ability to remember it but more importantly it could be sapping our will to stay the new strategic course.

In one experiment conducted by Baba Siv at Stanford University undergraduate students were divided into two groups. One group was asked to remember two numbers and the other had to remember seven numbers. They then had to walk down a hall and choose one of two snacks: a slice of chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit. The students remembering the seven numbers were nearly twice as likely to choose the cake than students with two numbers to remember.

In applying this idea we would be better off introducing parts of the strategy over time so people can concentrate on one or two changes at a time, perhaps over a 90 day period, before introducing the next part.

3. We remember what we see. In a corollary to the aphorism, 'we remember was we feel,' it is also true that we much more likely to recognise and recall something when we can see it. As John Medina puts it, “The phenomenon is so pervasive, it has been given its own name: the pictorial superiority effect.”

This idea immediately gets us thinking of the splendid pictures we can include with our strategies, those striking images that conjure the essence of what our company is all about. This is the standard approach but there are two other types of images you should consider back-of-the-napkin drawings and the images created by stories.

Dan Roam has created a business from helping people sketch out their thinking, back-of-a-napkin style. In his book with the unsurprising title, The Back of the Napkin, Roam illustrates the power of a simple diagram to share an idea. If you can’t sketch it on a napkin, forget it, it’s too complicated. So ensure everyone can tell your company’s strategic story with the aid of some simple sketches.

Effective stories paint pictures for us as well. When someone recounts a compelling story we visualise what’s happening. And because we are playing out the action in our mind’s eye the story becomes memorable for us. If we tell the story a number of times it becomes embedding in what we know. As the story researcher Roger Schank said, “To tell a story is to remember.”

Trusting the system

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:19:37 +1100

Registered Post is reliable system for getting important items from one place to another, right? Well read on - you might re-think your answer.

Last night Con and Faye, old friends from Queensland, came over for dinner. As is usual in these circumstances, the beer and wine flowed and the conversation was non-stop as we tried to fill in the details of the year or so since we last got together. At one stage, Faye asked if I had received to letter she had sent by registered post. My answer was no.

Faye has been guiding Anecdote's new trademark 'Putting Stories to Work' through the approval and registration process. The letter she had sent (on 6 November) contained the certificate of registration for this trademark - an important and valuable document. Naturally, Faye was very concerned that the letter hadn't shown up. This morning, she knocked on my door and voila, she handed over the letter. Faye is very organised and had all the necessary paperwork to collect the letter from the Post Office.

Twice in the past six months I have opened the PO Box and found two registered mail collection notes - you know, the little slips that advise there is something for you to collect. On both occasions, I was advised that there was only one item for collection and they had written out two slips for it. Obviously, on at least one of those occasions that was incorrect. The letter had been there, uncollected and with no subsequent collection notes, since November 6. I recall feeling quite uncomfortable with their explanations at the time, with good cause obviously.

So this should serve as a word of warning if you place a lot of faith in the registered mail system. It has changed my view. As soon as I finish this I am off to the post office to have a word with the postmaster.

Merry Christmas

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 19:50:49 +1100

It's been weighing on my mind for a couple of months now. I haven 't posted nearly enough blogs. There seems to be so much happening. Mark and I have been creating a new business focussed on helping companies make their strategies stick. It's been great fun and extremely well received. At the same time our lessons learning and leadership development activities are progressing at a cracking pace.

Mark and I want to thank all the wonderful people we've had the pleasure to work with this year. We are blessed to be able to work with so many talented folk. London for me was a blast and I'm still enjoying working with the Sparknow folk. Working with Patrick Lambe up in Singapore is always a pleasure and next year the business stream of the Asian storytelling festival will be bigger and better. I want to say big thank you to Kerenza who is a key partner for us. She is an inspiration.

Next year is shaping up as a watershed for business storytelling. I'm looking forward to doing more work with MIchael, Andrew, Brett and Kevin.

So a big thank you and best wishes for the Christmas break (in Australia this is when we get a good set of holidays). It will be great to get back into the swing of blogging next year.

Rules are made to be ???

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:49:05 +1100

This morning, Shawn and I compared recent airline lounge experiences. Mine went a like this

On Monday morning I took my Mum to the airport for her flight back to Melbourne. We arrived at about 9.15 am - the airport was as quiet as I have seen it. We had 30 minutes before the flight and Mum wanted a cup of tea. "No worries" says I. "we'll nip into the Qantas Club for a cuppa". At the entry desk, I showed my gold club card and explained that I wasn't travelling that day, but wanted to come in to get Mum a cup of tea. "The rules say that if you're not travelling you can't come in" was the reply from the Qantas lady behind the desk. I asked if they were particularly busy at that time and the answer was 'No, but we have had to turn other people away so we can't let you in". I left. Furious.

Shawn's experience yesterday was very different.

Shawn took his daughter Georgia to the airport to collect a relative who was arriving. Georgia needed to go to the bathroom and Shawn noticed they were right next to the VirginBlue lounge. He went in, showed his card and explained. The response was "Its against the rules to use the lounge if you are not travelling, but its pretty quiet, so go ahead" They popped in for the necessary few minutes and left. Everyone was relieved.

One could argue that the Qantas staff member was being consistent (fair, equal) in her application of the rules. A good thing you might say, except that a very frequent traveller left with the resolve to travel VirginBlue in the future. In Shawn's case, the staff exercised some autonomy, weighed up the situation and decided to be flexible, whilst still making it clear that it was 'against the rules'. Which is the better example of customer service? It reminds me of my time in the Air Force where our mantra was "Rules are for the guidance of the wise and for the blind obedience of fools'.

The role scripts play in finding stories

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:01:34 +1100

Everyday we tell those closest to us (our family, friends, colleagues) about what happened to us: today, yesterday, last week. Occasionally we'll reminisce about the old days but for those we know well what's worth recounting, what's remarkable, is happening on a daily basis. We don't even need to tell the whole story because the people we know well have much of the background. We tell the smaller details that wouldn't make sense or be interesting to someone we didn't know that well. The storytelling is gradual.

Imagine you grew up without knowing anything about restaurants. You've never heard of them, never seen them and have never had an experience, apart from eating a meal at home, that is anything like going to a restaurant. Then one day a friend takes you to one and you can't believe that you can just order your meal, that waiters bring your meal and clear away all the dirty dishes. For you this is truly remarkable and if someone ask you to share your experience you could do it without hesitation.

For those people who go to restaurants regularly much of the experience is invisible. We're not surprised by waiters, menus, asking for the bill, etc.. We have developed a script for what a restaurant experience will be like and we will only notice things if something unexpected happens. These scripts are important. Without them we would have to think through everything. It would be exhausting.

Important knowledge, however, resides in the scripts. It's difficult to recount stories for someone who is not close about what you do day-in, day-out. You're not sure they care about the small stories you tell to those people who see you every day. There is an art to collecting stories, especially the small ones.

I mention this conumdrum because just knowing that stories can get converted to scripts will help anyone who is trying to elicit stories to go beyond what's remarkable to a stranger. For a long time I was flummoxed at times during an anecdote circle when the participants could only give you broad illustrations of what they did at work rather than specific anecdotes. It didn't happen often but when it did I couldn't explain it. With this explanation I do three things to find the small stories.

be truly interested in every detail. Curiosity must exude from your pores
use memory triggers: timelines, artefacts, pictures
get peers together in the anecdote circle

The next frontier for me will be cognitive task analysis. I have Crandall, Klein and Hoffman's book, Working Minds and I'm looking forward to learning more about the techniques.

More proof that emotion is a powerful force in making sense of information

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:34:47 +1100

In 2004 Drew Westen and his colleagues put together an experiment to see how people of a particular political persuasion (Democrat or Republican) make sense of new information. Drew is a neuroscientist and advises political candidates on how to garner voter support. In this experiment he scanned the brains of 15 committed Democrats and 15 committed Republicans while showing them slides of conflicting information. Here are two examples:

Democrat example

Initial statement (Slide 1): During the first Gulf War, John Kerry wrote to a constituent: "Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition ... I share your concerns. I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work."

Contradiction (Slide 2): Seven days later, Kerry wrote to a different constituent, "Thank you for expressing your support for the Iraqi invasion of Kawait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis."

Republican example

Initial statement (Slide 1): "Having been here and seeing the care that these troops get is comforting for me and Laura. We are, should, and must provide the best care for anybody who is willing to put their life in harm's way for our country."—President Bush, 2003, visiting a Veterans Administration Hospital.

Contradiction (Slide 2): Mr Bush's visit came on the same day that the Administration announced its immediate cutoff of VA hospital access to approximately 164,000 veterans.

The committed Democrats and Republicans had no problem seeing the contradiction for the other party and rated the contradiction on average 4 out of 5 but this contradiction was nearly invisible for their own party where they rated it on average 2 out of 5. And the control group without an affinity saw all the contradictions.

Now that result might be obvious but Drew and his team were scanning these people's brains at the same time as they were assessing this new information and they found something that is fascinating. The brains did register the conflict as an unpleasant emotion but for the political partisans they were able to shutdown that distress quickly through faulty reasoning. But here's the thing. Once the negative emotions turned off, the positive emotions turned on. They weren't just feeling a little better, they were feeling good.

Some implications of this research.

Don't think you can provide nifty arguments to change people's minds. People will reason things away in whatever way they can and feel good in their answers regardless of how faulty the thinking.

Emotion has a large part to play in our decision making so we need to employ ways of connecting with people that are emotional, such as stories.

In a large change initiative you are just not going to get everyone accepting a new way of thinking or approaching things so it's important to work with those people who can take on the ideas and show the others it can be done.

Westen, D. 2007, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, PublicAffairs, New York.

Westen, D., Kilts, C., Blagov, P., Harenski, K., & Hamann, S. (2006). The neural basis of motivated reasoning: An fMRI study of emotional constraints on political judgment during the U.S. Presidential election of 2004. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 1947–1958.

ROI on building management capability

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:50:04 +1100

Today's Australian Financial Review (p7) reports on the release of a study funded by the federal government. The report, titled 'Management Matters in Australia: Just how productive are we?' demonstrates what we know intuitively..that if a company can lift management performance, it will be a key factor in improving company financial performance. The report found Australia is pretty much in the middle of the field compared internationally across a range of management performance indicators. The article includes the statement:

Investing in improved management practices is the single most cost effective way of improving a company's performance.

I am in the middle of running a management development program for one of our clients and the article was bought to my attention at lunchtime by one of the participants. He commented that this article was a good argument for why the company was investing in the program and that he could now clearly see what he can do to achieve the promised performance improvement. It's great to be able to make a difference.

How can we work out our corporate values and help everyone know what they really mean?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:44:29 +1100

Most organisations I know have a set of stated values. You know what I mean, things like integrity, professionalism, respect for the individual. And in most cases they've been developed for the wrong reasons. And when developed for the right reasons, most employees don't understand what the values mean anyway. Let me explain.

Often the starting question for establishing a set of organisational values is, "Which values should we hold each and everyone accountable for so our organisation thrives?" This gets translated to "What values do our stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers) expect us to hold?" The list is then drawn up and the result is a moribund list of words.

I was reading a paper by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras and they suggest an alternative set of questions (in my words): "What values do we deeply hold that reflect the essence of our company?" and "Would we still hold these values if they created a disadvantage for us if things changed?" If you can answer these two questions in the positive then you've identified your core values. What I found really interesting was looking at some examples Collins and Porras gave and noticed how each company held a different set in that the usual suspects weren't repeated: they didn't all have to value innovation, or customer service, or integrity. The lists I'm seeing are starting to look the same.

Sony

Elevation of the Japanese culture and national status
Being a pioneer - not following others; doing the impossible
Encouraging individual ability and creativity

Merck

Corporate social responsibility
Unequivocal excellence in all aspects of the company
Science-based innovation
Honesty and integrity
Profit, but profit from work that benefits humanity

Walt Disney

No cynicism
Nurturing and promulgation of "wholesome American values"
Creativity, dreams, and imagination
Fanatical attention to consistency and detail
Preservation and control of the Disney magic

Collins and Porras' research shows that companies who have enduring values and a clear purpose out perform their competitors. But here's the thing, their core values are not chosen because they think they will be competitive advantages, rather they are chosen because they are held deeply by the core group. Art Kleiner, who wrote a terrific book on core group theory, makes the good point that "The organisation goes wherever its people perceive that the Core Group needs and wants to go. The organisation becomes whatever its people perceive and want to become." And this is double true for organisational values.

Values and meaning

When I worked at SMS (Australian consulting company) in the 90s we had three values: add value, maintain unity, enhance reputation. I knew what the 2nd and 3rd values meant but 'add value' was a bit fuzzy for me. Value fuzziness is a common problem. And you've probably guessed what I'm going to suggest as a way to provide meaning: that's right, STORIES.

Imagine if for every value everyone can tell one or more stories to illustrate what that values means. I often ask people to give me an example to illustrate a value and in many cases all I get is a very intense look of someone desperately trying to remember a story to tell. I've said it before but if a company values [insert value] then it should be teeming with [insert value] stories.

Tyco has worked this one out. Tyco is a global business involved in fire safety, security and manufacturing. A few years back they released a booklet called Doing the Right Thing: The Tyco Guide to Ethical Conduct . For each ethical guideline they included one or more stories that either illustrated what the ethical value means when it's working or what it looks liked when it is broken. For example, Tyco values safety and a healthy work environment and here are their stories of that value when it's broken.

Unsafe Behavior Related to Health, Safety, and Environmental Issues Looks Like …

To save money at his plant, Sam provides half the number of safety goggles as there are employees on the line and instructs them to share.

Piette, the plant operations manager, instructs her people to dump used machine oil on unused acreage at the back of the facility.

Al, the plant manager, allows the contractor responsible for the removal of organic waste material to dump it in a local lake.

At Anecdote we do a lot of work helping organisations find and tell the stories that illustrate their values and also help design systematic ways to embed those values throughout the consciousness of everyone in the organisation. It is only by working at this level of values and purpose can people make the best decision possible in a complex and dynamic environment. Rules don't cut it. And if we think about what really makes an organisation it's those thousands and thousands of decisions are made each and every day, each one guides by the values in action.

Collins, J.C. & Porras, J.I. 1996, 'Building Your Company's Vision', Harvard Business Review, vol. September-October, pp. 65-77.

Kleiner, A. 2003, Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege, and Success, Currency Doubleday, New York.

Blog action day

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:15:12 +1100

On Tuesday morning this week 27 members of the Creative Performance Exchange (CPX) met to work out what we could do to make a difference to climate change. Georges McKails and I facilitated the session and the group developed ideas for what we could do as individuals, what we could do in our role at work and what we can do as CPX members. Amir kindly volunteered to write up all the notes but I can tell you there was a passion among all of us to make a difference. Here are some photos of the morning. I'll post the results of our efforts as soon as we have them.

climate change