After conducting 100’s of critical thinking workshops and facilitating the analysis of thousands of real organizational issues during those workshops, my opinion is that HR does NOT care if the problems brought up within the workshops they sponsor are solved or that the organization is wasting hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars by not following up on what is discovered within these classes.

I have my own opinion as to why, but I want HR professionals to share their thinking.  Please answer two questions: First: “Are you interested in working on this and making a difference for your organization?”  Second,  “If not, why not, what barriers do you see to taking action?”

There are exceptions to the above which unfortunately has become the rule.  But, exceptions are few. The typical HR and HRD professional whether manager or specialist does nothing that we can detect to make sure the gems discovered in the workshops actually benefit the organization.  Perhaps this is because most training classes are not like ours, they don’t have a direct impact on current realities, they work through improving more general attitudes or capabilities whose effects are difficult to measure (e.g. Emotional IQ or Communication Skills or Seven Habits of Successful People)?

How do we know that action is not being taken on high impact problems?  After all it could be that fantastic things are happening when the participants return to their work duties and report to their manager – how would we know?  We are confident that is not happening spontaneously because when we return to conduct the next class, the new participants identify the SAME problems that were already analyzed in previous classes!  The new analysis confirms the old. And this pattern continues for months and even years within some organizations and typically on the bigger, higher impact issues, ones that require management involvement to address.  We have many workable solutions to address this problem, but first HR needs to care and be willing to collaborate with us. We can’t do it alone.  HR is typically our point of entry into the organization.  However, we often find ourselves all dressed up with no where to go.  We are not granted permission to follow-up with stakeholders or problem owners.

Would somebody PLEASE help us to understand what is going on?  It is not unusual for one single problem to be worth more than the whole training budget for the year and participants analyze 3-4 of these problems in every workshop.  Yet, our appeals to our HR contact stir nothing detectable, crickets?

Companies in any country must run better, smoother and effectively in today’s competitive world. They can’t afford to leave “money on the table” while turnover, layoffs, disappearing research funds and rapid change affect every industry.  Step one is caring enough to look into this, communicating the newly discovered root causes of issues that are delaying production or draining organizational resources.  We want an internal champion for this most worthwhile cause.  No matter who we contact with our value proposition at a prospective organization, we get directed to HR or HRD (often called the Talent Development department.) – stuck with someone who has no bottom line incentive to do something, to risk being an advocate.

“Thinking clearly” is a competitive advantage one that can show immediate results.  Let’s work together to leverage what participants are discovering, like clockwork, workshop after workshop!.  Training can have a very large, visible and powerful impact on eliminating some of the most troublesome issues your organization is facing.

Guarantee!  Our training will return every training dollar x10 or our training is free.  Now it is your turn to step up to the plate.  I am asking not to waste the discoveries individuals are making in our workshop!  Together we can do this.

ADDENDUM: Here’s a theory that helps make some sense of this phenomenon of no action!  At www.infed.org/thinkers/argyris.htm the article: Chris Argyris: Theories of Action, Double-Loop Learning and Organizational Learning (key aspects of his thinking) seems to apply directly.  Argyris also has a book: Overcoming Organizational Defenses.

In brief:  Most organizations, especially unexceptional and poor performing ones, are Model I learners.  These are characterized by defensiveness, self-fueling processes, and escalating error.  Feedback loops inhibit detection and correction of errors.  The model one learning organization itself can begin to function in ways that act against its long-term interests.

[As I understand, Model I is based upon single-loop learning where the governing Values (objectives) are used to limit action to safely protect self and others unilaterally against change, to control the environment and the task unilaterally.  This so the organization can carry on its present policies and procedures.  Learning that threatens any of this is kept in individual memory and not organizational memory.]

Double-Loop learning occurs when error is detected and corrected in ways that modify an organization’s underlying norms, policies and objectives (culture?).  Model II learning organizations use double-loop learning.

[It appears to me that the leaders of such organizations have Theories-In-Use updated to be compatible with the evolving current reality as revealed by the experience of people solving problem, defining root causes, taking corrective actions and observing consequences.  Organizational memory is complete and accurate as reflected in the organization’s policies and procedures.]

I hope this helps!

TOP 5 BEST BUSINESS NOVELS

Chosen because they succeed at teaching powerful concepts while entertaining the reader.  Read ALL is my recommendation.

1. The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
2. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.
3. The GO-GIVER by Bob Burg and John David Mann.
4. The PROJECT MANIFESTO by Rob Newbold and Bill Lynch.
5. Leadership Simple by Steve Morris and Jill Morris.

(This POST was submitted by Michael McGinty an expert consultant on Critical Thinking and Project Management.)

Eliyahu Goldratt is credited as the author of the Theory of Constraints – a powerful concept which created something of a revolution in process improvement.  He applied these insights to project management in his book Critical Chain.  Here at BPI, we share some of his key insights with project leaders when they attend our one-day workshop in Systematic Project Management.

Goldratt teaches us that one of the best ways to ensure projects don’t violate their deadlines is to re-think our treatment of buffers.  What people typically do, unconsciously, is they build in a buffer for every action step in their project.  For example, let’s say that based on our previous experience, we know that a particular task usually takes about 3 hours to complete.  However, when we create our project plan, most of us will allocate more time to complete that task – you know, just to cover our bases.  So, the task that usually only takes us three hours to complete might instead be scheduled to take five hours.  And we do this for every action step in our plan, which stretches out the project timeline.  We unconsciously set our project deadlines based on a ‘worst-case scenario’ with these frozen buffers.

Goldratt teaches there’s a way to guard against this but without putting your plan at risk.  He says to schedule the average time it takes for each action step, and then build your buffer into the back end of the project.  So, a task that typically takes three hours is scheduled for exactly three hours.  The additional two-hour buffer is built into the tail-end of the project.

You might ask, “Why is that any better?  You’re still allotting five hours for that step!”  That’s true, but the location of the buffer is crucial.  When buffers are built into each step, the time is not available to help other steps.  And, if something actually does get done on time, other people/resources are not ready because they didn’t plan for it to get done “early.”  By scheduling the average time for each action step and collecting the buffers in one place, other people can be prepared for a quick hand-off to the next task plus they can dip into the common project buffer when needed – that’s what it’s there for!

In this way, Goldratt’s techniques are helping companies complete projects in what seems like ‘record-time’, 50% less time or better is not unusual!  But for those of us in-the-know, it’s just ‘average time’!

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Michael McGinty teaches critical thinking for us and decision making is his passion. Please read what Michael has to say about Tyranny and Decision Making. Warning!!! Libertarian rant ahead.

How is Freedom lost? How do we lose our liberty? How do people descend into oppression? How does tyranny happen? Do dictators suddenly just jump out from behind a rock and go “ha ha ha ha!!! Now I’ve got you!!!!”

As most of you know, I’m a libertarian and so I think about questions such as this quite a bit. I listen to talk radio and the other day I was listening to Michael Medved and he was challenging one of his callers to stop talking in the abstract. He was accusing his caller of speaking in the hypothetical, the conceptual. He was accusing this caller of projecting his fear about some possible future tyranny and instead, put him on the spot. He challenged him to name the specific tyranny that was being visited upon him personally, right now, in present time. His assertion seemed to be that very few, if any, singular individuals have lost any actual, specific freedoms.

My question is, how else is a freedom lost? A freedom is not lost only in some theoretical or philosophical sense. Freedoms are lost in an actual way when a person, a single individual, tries to take action but is faced with limited choices, because that’s all freedom really is: choices. Opportunities. Alternatives. Options.

And when those options are slowly taken away, they become invisible to us. Sometimes to the point that we forget that they ever existed.

Let me give you an example, a day in the life of an average American. We’ll call him Lysander Spooner. He gets up in the morning, eats breakfast with his wife and kids, takes a shower, goes to work, comes home, watches a bit of TV, and goes to bed. In your eyes, there’s no problem; his freedom hasn’t been threatened, impinged, or lost in any way. But a closer look will show you many places where his freedom was lost.

The breakfast cereal he enjoys is made with high-fructose corn syrup instead of sugar because the government subsidizes corn and imposes high import tariffs on imported sugar – so cereal companies no longer offer him a choice because it’s not cost effective. He bought the milk from Vons. He couldn’t buy it from his local dairy farmer because that guy was thrown in jail for not pastuerizing his milk. Lysander then kisses his kids goodbye and sends them off to private school. He feels good about his decision to send them to private school vs. public school, but what did he forget? He forgot his zip-code limited him to just 2 schools competing for his business instead of 10, and that neither of those 2 are very spectacular. But he forgot about that a long time ago, if he ever knew it at all. Forgetting this also allows him to forget that he’s actually paying for both schools – even though his kids can only go to one. And to forget that he’s been paying for that school since he got his first job at 15. Oh, and that he’ll still be paying for that school until he retires at 65. Oh, and that the money he paid into Social Security for 50 years will be long gone by then…. But, I digress, Lysander, back to your life…

He goes to take his 20-minute shower. It used to take 10 minutes but his government-mandated low-phosphate shampoo takes longer to rinse out of his hair, especially now that he’s using a government-mandated, low-flow, water-saving shower head. He also had to flush the toilet twice, which is now, of course, standard practice every morning.

When Lysander gets dressed, his cotton shirt costs twice as much because, once again, cotton subsidies and high import tariffs have prevented cotton farmers from Afghanistan from selling him an equally fabulous shirt at half the cost and have instead encouraged Afghan farmer to export him other products and services that are much more profitable, such as heroin and terrorism.

None-the-less, Lysander dresses, goes out to the garage and gets in his car. But the moment he does so, he loses his 4th Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, which he “voluntarily” waived by signing for his driver’s license because he agreed if a police officer even suspects him of being under the influence he is legally obligated to perform roadside-circus tricks and/or relinquish his precious bodily fluids to the authorities, lest he face heinous punishments even without being found guilty of an actual crime. That’s OK, Lysander tells himself, I’m not drunk. He puts his car in gear, backs into the street, and is immediately in violation of eight sections of the State penal code for a variety of random infractions like tinted windows, low tire tread, and a Student of the Month bumper sticker that’s obstructing a portion of his rear window.

Because the United States Department of Transportation has deliberately set all speed limits at 10 – 15 mph slower than the average speed of traffic, he speeds all the way to work. He’s got an unpaid parking ticket in his glovebox which the Supreme Court recently ruled (5 – 4) is grounds for imprisonment and a cavity search. Lysander flicks on his satellite radio. He used to listen to Howard Stern but now he can’t because the Federal Communications Commission chased Howard Stern out of New York, then out of the United States, and eventually, out of Earth’s orbit. He wonders, for a moment, where they think their jurisdiction actually ends. The radio plays “Dirty Work” by the Rolling Stones. They beep out the word “ass.”

When he arrives at his office complex, he passes ten double-wide handicapped spaces right in front of his building and parks 300 yards away because city planners concerned with the obesity epidemic want him to walk that far. As he walks into his office, he is greeted with the energy-efficient flourescent lightbulbs that illuminate everything in “bright-blue-migrane” because the soft-white incandescent light bulb is now illegal.

And on and on it goes…all day long. I could tell you this story in a million different ways. Because that’s how it happens. In a million different ways, in a million different directions, the path which our good friend Lysander seems to be choosing of his own volition, is in fact, one that has been pre-determined for him. It’s an artifice. A ploy. A bold new promise of false hope. We are facing an ever-diminishing horizon of actual choices, and an ever-expanding vista of illusion. the illusion of choice. Our bold, new promise, is in reality, the promise of a false hope.

Tyranny doesn’t always come down and strike an individual like a bolt of lightning. It doesn’t always leave massive wreckage, scars, and piles of corpses. We’ve all watched the History Channel. We’ve all seen the black and white films. We all know how it ends. But what I want to know is; are we paying enough attention to how it starts? Because it starts out small, at the periphery, gradually hemming us in at every turn. Like a giant picture-window being painted black, starting with the edges and moving closer and closer to the center. The person trying to see through the window is looking through an ever-shrinking window of opportunity. The free man, the man who was born truly free – and by that I mean each and every one of us – we once stood before a wide-open vista of infinite possibilities. But every so subtly, one brush-stroke at a time, we slowly lose more and more of our freedom. Some of them we miss. We bite our tongue and bear the injustice. But the worst part is, most of them we don’t even notice. Most of them, we forget. The choices we once faced became the opportunities we can no longer have. And it’s easier to forget than to remember.

But I remember what freedom tastes like. And I miss it.

Do you?