Fear Driven Work

In the country where I'm currently living, many people have a weird view of what an "error" is. Whoever commits a mistake is considered as guilty; thus, everybody fears the possibility of making errors. This is very perceptible in the work environment.

A deplorable consequence of this attitude is that it prevents people from trying something better, it prevents them from innovating.

Their usual attitude is to stop when the solution is just enough. Trying to find a better solution could lead them into an error, and thus into a punishment.

Errors are part of the normal learning process

In anglo-saxon cultures the errors ave valued as experiences. There is a well known quote saying:

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."

Niels Bohr

It perfectly shows that "failing" is the normal process of learning. What is important is to make the most of those experiences ant not to fail again in the same points.

More successful people in science history have demonstrated that it is important to test many different paths before finding the final solution. For example, Thomas A. Edison has expressed in his known quote that he has had much more failing results than successful ones.

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

Thomas A. Edison

In my working experience I have found some so called "managers" who always searched for the "guilty" person. Every time something wrong happened, these persons tried to find a guilty; of course, it was never himself. 

In my opinion, it is not important who is the responsible of the error since most of the times it is due to a mistake, a lack of attention, and it is pretty probable that the person will not make the same error again.

Instead of wasting energies and polluting the atmosphere over the team by searching for a guilty, all the energies should be focused in finding a solution and in deploying it as a team.

This management attitude shall certainly motivate the team to try new solutions, to improve what it's already done without fearing to be punished if an error occurs.

Atychiphobia or "Fear of Failure"

Atychiphobia is the abnormal, unwarranted, and persistent fear of failure, a type of specific phobia. As with many phobias, atychiphobia often leads to a constricted lifestyle, and is particularly devastating for its effects on a person’s willingness to attempt certain activities. The term atychiphobia comes from the Greek phóbos, meaning "fear" or "morbid fear" and atyches meaning "unfortunate".

ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atychiphobia

Fear of failure or fear of punishment?

I know many persons suffering from a light version of Atychiphobia; and they do not know it. of course this is not their fault since they have get used to that along their life.

But, in fact, if we analyse the situation, they are not afraid of failing, that is only a consequence. In reality, they fear the punishment, they fear the fact of being spotted as the guilty person.

For innovation teams it is very important to unchain the team by removing all the limits raised by the guilty-culture. It is essential to motivate the teams to try new solutions, to discover new paths without fearing the consequences of failing; knowing that failing is the normal way to a success story.

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?

--------------------------------------------- 

What would you attempt to do if you knew you wouldn't be punished for not succeeding? 

Team Building / Corporating People

Comment fidéliser vos employés
How to win the loyalty of your team

Corporate team building

Some days ago I read a presentation created by the HR team of an international company. I was amazed reading their vision about hiring (and as a consequence, firing) people.

For example, they said that it is more profitable for the company to have One Outstanding employee instead of two Adequate Employees since the outstanding employee gets more done and costs less than two adequate employees. So they work hard to have only outstanding people. For doing so they pay Top of Market so the employee will not desire work anywhere else. This reasoning is based on the following questions:

• what could this person get elsewhere?
• what would the company pay for replacement?
• what would the company pay to keep that person?

as a consequence, they developed the following strategy

• pay the employee more than anyone else likely would
• pay the employee as much as a replacement would cost
• pay the employee as much as the company would pay to keep him if they had a higher offer from elsewhere

However, this strategy is specific to this particular company. Most of the companies do not pretend to pay this kind of salary and they do not have only outstanding people, but a balanced mixture of outstanding and adequate employees, which at the end form a good and performing team.

Team building ideas

In any case, once you have managed to have a good team, once that you have inspired the team and make all the other teams to feel jealous; it is necessary to keep the peace and make the team members to work together as a single entity.

A good manner of doing so is by giving them a common goal and a "team spirit".

A very graphical example is a Rugby team where all the members have the same goal, the same motivation and everybody knows his own role and trusts in the other members. Moreover, the team is auto-organized and goes at the same peace.

This is a common  practice in Agile Methods.

Team building principles

Many companies have a very strict policy about Customer Satisfaction, how to follow it and how to satisfy it.

Very few of them also have a Reliable Employee Satisfaction policy. However, this is the work produced by the team which can satisfy the customer, isn't it? Thus, having a strong team will lead to a strong customer satisfaction.

The goal is to shape the team so it can answer as a single entity to any customer request. The most the team will be cohesive, the most the responses will be solid.

Moreover, a solid team will inspire the members and will motivate them. The goals and the responsibilities will be shared between them and will make them to be “committed”, and not only “involved”.

Some techniques have been developed to help work-groups evolve into a cohesive unit, this is the case of team building.

Team building skills

The team cannot be “auto-built” since the main goals are given by the management. Thus, Team Building actions shall be launched by the management and driven by the team. Remember that the team members will held the company image and reputation.

One of the reasons of the success of a company depends on its ability to build effective teams and and its capacity to maintain them.

It is very interesting to see that a single highly motivated person can inspire others, he only needs an opportunity to share his passions.

A united team will care about holding one each other and thus holding the company’s goals.

If you are working in something exciting that you really care about, you don't have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.
S. Jobs

I is very simple, it is like a flu, put one inspired and motivated person in contact with others within an appropriate environment and the virus will spread by itself as I explain in "Working in an Inspiring Company".

Motivated and united teams will easily hold the company’s prestige by making the members to feel “Corporate”. In this way, Team Building equals Corporating People.

United teams will be happy to work in your company and will persuade the members to not to leave: why looking elsewhere if the motivating team with challenging work and the inspiring company are there?

Team building is a perfect way to win loyalty of your employees. Moreover, people around will wonder about and will desire to work with you.

Team Building Activities

There is no “one-fit-all” activity”. You cannot propose any kind of activity to your team; it depends on everybody’s preferences (sports, games, etc) and on your specific goals and objectives  (role definition, team reinforcement, problem solving, team creation, learning new strategies, etc).

The building activities may be different from one team to another, it really depends on personal interests, on peoples profiles, on the work itself and on the goals you are targeting, of course. Then, it is no easy to find the Building Activities to propose to the team; but the easier way is simple:

Ask the Team

Build your teams

Corporate your employees

Inspire customers

Motivate people

Further reading:

• SlideShare presentation: http://fr.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664
• Working on an Inspiring Company (post)

Answering to impossible requirements

Be interested in finding the best way, not in having your own way.

Creative Thinking

One day I was waiting for a meeting and there was a poster in the room. this poster was about “Creativity”, "Creative inspiration", "Creative activities" or "Creative Activities". The poster showed a room where two strings hang from the ceiling and a person was placed in the middle of the room. The two strings were far enough so one person cannot hold one string and then take the other one  without releasing the first one.

The the goal of the exercise was to tie the two strings together.

Many years later I’ve read that this was an experiment created in 1931 by a psychologist from the Michigan University named “Raymond Frederick Maier” (1900 – 1977). In his book “Problem solving and creativity in individuals and groups” [Brooks/Cole Pub. Co., 1970] he describes this scene and gives an analysis of the possible issues.

Problem and Solutions

In the poster that I’ve seen, there were some other elements. For example, some tools are available in the room:

• A chair
• A pair of scissors
• A heavy piece of metal
• A bottle of water

First solutions

In the beginning, the person in the middle of the room could imagine solving the issue by using some "naive" methods:

• Try to stretch his body and make it more “elastic”
• Try some odd postures
• Force his body to extend itself from one string to the other

This is because the person is limiting himself and doesn't take into account his environment. It is evident that the person should use the tools around him. For example:

• Take one string in one hand and try to use the chair as a "hook"
• Take on string in one hand and climb over the chair to try take the other one

In a more elaborated solution, he can think about some extravagant solutions

• Wet the strings in order to change their elasticity
• Hang the heavy metal piece from the string in order to elongate it and then repeat the process with the second string

These kind of solutions clearly show that the person is limiting himself by some restrictions that hasn't been mentioned and which may not even exist.

Breaking the rules!

In order to give an issue to some impossible problems, some rules shall be respected while some others can be broken. if no special restrictions have been give, it is a good idea to try to break all of them. Thus, the person in the room could try to simply cut one of the ropes off.

Imaginative solution

Of course, with some more imagination, the person could use a medium-weight object hang from one of the strings in order to swing it while taking the other and using the chair to gain some distance.

Ask an Expert

In a previous post named “The gap between Customer's explanation and his real needs” I've shown a very funny video  clearly schematizing how Customer's requirements are often unclear, contradictory, fuzzy and even crazy or impossible to implement.

At the end of the video, the Expert accepts the project, mostly because “he is an expert” and that’s what everybody expects from an Expert.

But, in the real life, how an expert could have answered to these questions?

Lets take this video as example!

He was asked to draw seven lines, all of them strictly perpendicular between them. What limits him to do it? Geometry! This is because he is thinking about linear Euclidean geometry, but nobody enunciated this requirement's limitation. Thus we can think about breaking this rule. We can easily draw two perpendicular lines in a bi-dimensional space. We can also easily imagine three perpendicular lines in a three-dimensional space. So, let’s say to the customer that the lines will be drawn in a seven-dimensional space but only three of them will be visible!

The expert was also asked to draw the Red lines with Green ink. No more limitations were given. So let’s say to the customer that the lines will be drawn in green ink, but the user will need to use some special “chromatic glasses” converting green colors into red colors.

Fresh eyes

The point is not to be limited by imaginary constraints. Instead of that, to take a look to the problem with fresh eyes.

What distinguishes an expert?

A Free Mind and a tendency to Break Some Rules!

Do you think that anyone can be an Expert?
Do you know other expert's skills that should be mentioned?



Extra reading: 
* “The gap between Customer's explanation and his real needs”
* http://cybersavoir.csdm.qc.ca/peremarquette/2012/03/15/tout-lmonde-a-son-gps/ (in French)
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Maier

Bibliographic information

Title: Problem solving and creativity in individuals and groups
Author: Norman Raymond Frederick Maier
Publisher: Brooks/Cole Pub. Co., 1970
Original from the University of Michigan
Digitized 30 Sep 2008
Length: 493 pages

The gap between Customer's explanation and his real needs

Have you ever heard about the gap between the Customer's requirements and the point of view of the project team's members?

All the people involved in a software project have heard about the gap between: 

• Customer explanation
• Project leader's understanding
• Analyst's design
• Developed code
• Business description

And the unfortunately very common poor software results:

 Project documentation

• Operation installation
• Support

In my opinion, one of the most astonishing and even striking differences is between Customer's explanation and his real needs.

My work as Functional Analyst has shown me that very often, the customer doesn't know what he wants or, more precisely, he does not know how to explain it. It gives the opportunity to any unscrupulous marketing agent to sell him any kind of solution.

One of the tasks that I really like is the work with the customer and final users in order to help them representing (or even better, modelling) their needs. All this, in the form of graphical models, requirement specifications, user stories, storyboards, use cases, mock-ups, sketches, etc. This is a a very valuable work since it allows the customer to finely adapt his budget to target:

• All of the "Must-have" requirements
• Some "nice-to-have" requirements

We have also heard about these stories where a marketing guy sells something that cannot be developed. Moreover, with a ridiculous delay and price. Then, the dev-team shall deal with all those restrictions and try to do it in the assigned time, quality and budget. A have written a post on Answering to Impossible Requirements.

The following video illustrates some of these problems:

• Customer doesn't know exactly what he wants
• Customer requirements are
• contradictory
• fuzzy
• impossible to implement
•  Marketing agent pushes the expert guy to accept any requirement

        At the end of the sketch, everybody agrees on a "seven perpendicular red lines drown with green ink" project!

I really laugh at the "perpendicularity" question:

        - ....
        - Seven lines, all strictly perpendicular
        - To..... what?
        - eeuuhhh...... to........ everything!
           ....... among ........ themselves !
           I assume you know what perpendicular lines are like !
        - Of course he does! He is an expert!
        -  ...
        - Why are they blue?
        - Indeed, over it was that myself
        - I have a blue pen with me
        - This was just a demonst.....
        - That's the problem, the lines are blue, draw them with red ink
        - That wont solve the problem
        - How do you know before you've tried?
           Lets draw them in red ink then lets see...

Working in an Inspiring Company

Motivated people make Successful Companies.

If you could chose any company in the world, where would you like to work?

I have asked  this question to many persons around me and the answer was Google.

Then, I have asked: WHY?
The answers were mainly that they would like to work for on of the biggest and more inspiring companies.
Indeed, this company is inspiring for workers and for customers.

What makes this company to be "Inspiring"?

The main answers were:

• Because I can improve my skills by working in that company
• Because it seams that they have a lot of fun
• Because they are leaders in new technologies

A company like this receives hundreds of applications every month and they can have the best workers and propose them to their clients.

There are huge advantages for a company to be Inspiring:

• Make their clients to desire to work with them
• Make other people to envy they workers

First of all, the company need to be known by everybody. The best way to do so is by using the modern Social Media. All the people working on new technologies, experts and potential clients, usually read publications from social networking. Moreover, a real Expert, can only be expert if he is present in the social networking.
However, the best broadcasting tool you can use, is the oral "peer-to-peer". Of course, it is not about file sharing, bit about letting Passionate and Inspired people to talk about the company. Passionate people will find the correct way to inspire others.

So, let people talk about your company, but what shall they say?

Why not letting your employees to explain why are they inspired?
Inspire your Expert Team, give them the time, the tools and the scene and they will inspire the others!

For this, many different strategies are possible:

• Regular technical internal presentations will allow them to share their knowledge with other internal consultants. This could inspire other internal workers.
• Exceptional external presentations oriented to customers would allow them to display their inspiration and to have a more extended impact
• Training. A good expert can on be called so, when he can transmit his knowledge to others. And, of course, every customer wants an expert to work in his team
• Social networking widely and regularly spread their knowledge. An expert is the one being part of the international references on a particular subject

Maybe you company has only few Inspired Experts. But everybody can be an Inspiring Expert, all that you need is to find the correct motivation for every kind of personality: for some of them, there is the money, for some others there is the prestige and for some others is just the "fun". Find the motivation for every employee as I explain in Team Building / Corporating People.

Another solution could be to provide a more Experimented Inspired Expert to guide them on how to transmit their inspiration. Or even to work with them on writing social-media content or public lectures..

Even if the success is not guaranteed, remember that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.


ISSUU presentation

GOOGLE Slides:

Or try the PREZI version:

http://prezi.com/cppxfx7aclqh/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy 

Further reading:

• Team Building / Corporating People