Tag Archives: Leadership

Can logic models work for you?

The “logic model” is a tool that is widely used in public and social sector initiatives. Like any tool, there are obvious on-target applications (e.g. hammer for inserting nail) as well as more creative applications (e.g. hammer to open a paint can). In all cases, the user is responsible for picking the right tool for the application. To me, there is relevance for the logic model in the private sector because this tool can expose assumptions (logical or not) and bring rigour to the thinking. Here is a quick primer on logic models, followed by some suggestions on if/how/when to use it for your business.

USEFUL VOCABULARY

Theory of Change: this is a set of fundamental assumptions that underpin a line of reasoning. This is often referred to in solving large social issues like homelessness or poverty. Relevance to a private sector context could be, for example, an ad agency president believes that to be successful, her team has to know our clients business better than they do. She believes sees her team as “providers of insight” rather than “meeters of needs.”

Logic Model: a framework that allows you to portray the specific linkages of your reasoning from the resources you expend to the final impact that you will have. The model takes into account the linkages between four fundamental components:

Inputs – These are resources that we control and choose to deploy toward the end objective. This is usually about money and time. Energy fits in here, too.
Outputs – This is what we create or produce or get from expending the “input” resources. This could be a report, the provision of a service, creation of some capacity, etc.
Outcomes – What we get helps us out in some way. This is the specific way in which it helps us out. We are better able to do something or something is improved because of the output created from the inputs.
Impact – This is the higher order calling of the whole endeavour. What did we set out to address in the first place? This is what we were after all along.

WORKING EXAMPLE

The thing about logic is that it can seem both commonsensical and obvious, while also seeming a bit opaque. To alleviate the latter, here is a quick example: Our agency leader (who believes that “provider of insight” is the way to success) might have the following idea.

Let’s get some of our junior staff to work on developing industry reports that capture both analyst information, as well as “chatter” from social networks. They will create an overview document as a summer project, and monitor/update on an ongoing basis. Our senior account people will refer to these before client meetings, and also share insights gained from the direct client interaction.

Breakdown using Logic Model:

Inputs – Junior staff hours in creating foundational document and ongoing monitoring (hours); Senior account staff time in inputting client insights (hours)
Outputs – The actual document, once it is created. The document is actually updated.
Outcomes – Senior account staff go to meetings with broad industry knowledge that they use to: (1) demonstrate knowledge to clients; (2) share value-adding insights; (3) initiate strategic conversations, etc.
Impact – Clients will use us more

Note: The understood “we hope” as a qualifier gets louder with each step of the model.

USING THE TOOL

Really thinking through these connections demands a good degree of effort and will: what do we want to “impact”? And how we will actually go about getting there? To illustrate the difficulty, recall the success of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. (Remember, this space is the sweet spot of the logic model). This was a huge success in gaining awareness (Mel B. did the challenge on America’s Got Talent!), but you may still ask: “So what? Are those afflicted by ALS better off? If so, how?” You can imagine that asking such questions without being labelled as “doubter,” “hater,” “loser,” etc., would be no mean achievement. This is an inherent challenge of such models. People don’t like to have the gaps in their logic exposed.

To use this tool effectively, leadership has to be comfortable explaining their logic (e.g. “provider of insight” beats “meeter of needs) and the followership has to be comfortable trying it out (if they don’t believe it in the first place).

Building the connections between the elements is an important exercise. You end up asking really good questions, for example:

Input to output questions: What are we getting for all these hours that we have put into research?

Output to outcomes: Is our new report, tool, capacity, etc. actually contributing to something that we are using, noticing, applying, etc.?

Outcomes to impact: Is our idea of the “means to the end” actually playing out? What do we really want here? What are we trying to achieve anyway?

This is the kind of thinking that goes into our “performance playbook” process to help ensure that the measures you are choosing hang together with the logic under which you are operating.

Leadership and decision-making

Earlier this winter I had the good fortune to spend 2 days with a group involved in development and education on Leadership as part of the professional certification offered by the Supply Chain Management Association of Canada. Any discussion of Leadership brings forward a philosophy, whether spoken or unspoken, and the approach in this context was “leadership can come from anywhere in the organization.” This orientation is fitting because this program includes people at many different career stages. Through the program, we spend time gaining a better understanding of characteristics of leadership and, as a follow-up assignment, participants determine the characteristics that are most important to them, and use these to build a personal development plan.

Grading can be one of the more tedious activities for any educator, but these are often extremely interesting and insightful. Some commonalities in these papers struck me. Many selected “communication” as a core component of leadership and went on to identify that as an area for improvement. As a rule, I think we often admire the gifts of speech making and communication exhibited by leadership role models who speak eloquently, exude confidence, and excel at getting ‘buy-in” from important constituencies. Another grouping of characteristic that garnered attention were those attached to “honesty,” “integrity,” and “authenticity.” By contrast, none chose this as an area of development and several offered this up as a personal strength. (In addition to causing me to ponder, I had a laugh-out-loud as one paper listed “humility” among key attributes, going on to self assess this at 10/10.)

I will confess to having difficulty with the stark distinction between making the decision (with integrity, etc.) and communicating that decision. A disingenuous leadership metaphor would be “putting lipstick on a pig,” but is it not equally disingenuous to allow a bad situation to continue because we are “picking out battles” or “not rocking the boat” or in some other way rationalizing a decision to let something slide?

This is not my areas of expertise, but the realms of critical thinking and ethics would, I believe, provide some guidance as to how to make decisions. Many situations faced by leaders are ambiguous and they may not even know what to believe. Outwardly, they must convey confidence, but determining if that confidence is warranted is a different issue. I will lay a great deal of responsibility in this area on leadership to not only communicate, but also engage in the thinking that deserves trust.

As a further comment on the connection between “the decision” and “the support of that decision,” I spoke with a colleague of mine regarding the subjectivity of some business courses (e.g. mine in management) compared to others (e.g hers in corporate finance). We concluded that Finance’s rigourous and specific tools bring a common language to “make the case” to various constituencies so as to predict future scenarios and be ready with contingencies if things fail to go as planned. We must have faith in leadership (or decision makers) that the original decision is indeed sound. I can’t help but think that this misses a very important moment in leadership when you decide what you are going to do, especially if you have (1) the authority, (2) the personal communication gifts to sell anything and (3) a team of financial experts ready to make your case.

Using “No” to shape your culture

When it comes to a corporate culture, a simple “No” can be defining. Descriptors of a culture can range from “awesome” to “toxic” on the “what is it like?” continuum (public examples of the former would include the “culture of fear” reported at Toronto’s school board). From my experiences, I think you could make an argument for another continuum from “distinctive” to “yet to settle in.”

Like the famous “I know it when I see it” description of obscenity by US Supreme Court Justice Potter, a desired workplace culture can be difficult to describe. Cultures define how people act, and a more cohesive culture has people acting in similar ways, especially around the important issues. This can be a good thing, but can also be disastrous.

If you have not seen the movie Lars and the Real Girl, it is worth a watch. One memorable scene takes place in a church basement, where a community group wrestles with a complicated problem. (Note: going into more detail would risk spoiling your viewing experience, so I will stop there.) As the discussion reaches a point where some action is imminent, the priest starts to answer the unspoken question of “what do we do now?” He begins stating that “the question” is always the same. Pausing dramatically, he continues, predictably, to state that question: “What would Jesus do?

The moment of his pause is well worth considering. Many times, I have been in situations where someone tries to provide an overarching consideration for a complicated situation. In management speak, this is may be termed “framing the problem.” Such questions could include:

what is our duty as… Board members? Executives? Managers? Corporate Citizens?
what works best for… our customers? our suppliers? our employees? our investors? us?
where do we stand to be… most competitive? most profitable? most innovative?

In a less charitable light, one might assume that the pause-breaking question be:

What can we reasonably get away with?
What is going to make this problem go away?
How can we avoid short-term conflicts?

Such questions may be useful, but a shortcut to cultural insights comes through clarifying “what we can’t” or “what we won’t do.” Saying “No” seems to be more active than not saying “No,” which tends to imply that something is OK (e.g. silence is consent). These “Nos” and “Don’ts” are very telling in clarifying unstated criteria that drive action and inaction. Hiding things from leadership (or having leadership turn a blind eye) is a sure path toward the “toxic” work environment. Progression down this path will vary, but in the journey that lead to the TDSB’s current woes, we likely will find significant doses of both deception of leadership and willful ignorance by them.

So to set (or reset) a positive cultural path, consider saying “No” more publicly and maybe more often. Such “Nos” shine a special light on what is really important.

A culture that pays attention to employee retention, will say “No” to a client who routinely bullies their account managers. (We don’t have to fire the client, but there will be action to stop the behaviour.)
A culture that is serious about innovation and risk-taking, will say “No” to attempts to punish failure and mistakes. (This is not to say that we encourage recklessness, but we will take time to discuss and understand risks, as well as plan to mitigate the consequences of attempts that fail.)
A culture that embraces work-life balance will say “No” to initiatives the needlessly restrict work-from-home initiatives. (This may mean that we look to different means of accountability than simply “hours worked” or time in the office.)

If you are a leader in your environment, your “No” will speak volumes. Others can bring items to leaderships attention, and ask them to make such calls, which are part of their role in leading, shaping and clarifying a positive culture.

Aligning for Performance – Where to start

The Lululemon stories coming out this week illustrate, if nothing else, that running a successful business is a complicated endeavour. There are a number of interests to balance, and something always has to give. Determining what exactly what should “give” and how exactly to implement that decision introduces an interplay between three dimensions of an organization:

Overall Direction
Measures and Metrics
Rules and Norms

To have a serious look at “performance,” each of these is necessary though no one dimension logically prevails. The result of the interplay is very tangible to those operating in and around the environment. Employees actually live it, and investors, suppliers and other stakeholders are deeply affected by it.

From an organizational development perspective, these dimensions offer distinctly different lenses through which to analyze and evaluate performance. They can also inform opportunities for on-course corrections that can pre-empt a larger “realignment” or “change project.” Here is a quick explanation of what you could see through each lens.

Dimension #1 – Overall Direction (balancing inspiration with reality; clarity with rigidity)

Done well	There is alignment toward an overarching purpose. We all know why we are here. We have an obvious shared interest and our conflict is about how to get there not where to go.
Overdone	Attachment to “core values” grows rigid such that an unrealistic zeal drives activity. People are quick to become indignant when others suggest that we would ever compromise or question the direction that has been set. There is talk of “sacred cows.”
Underdone	Lack of consistent focus makes it hard for people to assign priority. Lower levels of management feel compelled to check with upper levels. Management shows reluctance to exercise judgement because decision-making criteria is unclear.

Dimension #2 – Measures and Metrics (balancing art and science; means and ends)

Done well	There are appropriate and trackable indicators of performance at individual, team and organizational levels. Discussions around performance, including performance reviews, have some objective and tangible criteria. With negative changes in measures and metrics, discussions turn to “what can we do to affect this outcome?”
Overdone	Emphasis on “making the numbers” leads to situations akin to “the operation was a success, but the patient died.” Rampant gaming of the system to make “my numbers,” with complete disregard for overall impact. No concept of “taking one for the team” because there is no opportunity to provide a context or expectation of reciprocity.
Underdone	There is no meaningful indication of results and outcomes. Well-intentioned people often feel that although much gets done, little may have been accomplished. There is little perceived connection to and control over end-results (positive or negative)

Dimension #3 – Rules and norms (balancing constraints with restrictions; formal with informal)

Done well	There are a few key parameters that people maintain (and don’t need to look at the website for guidance). These are supported in formal policy (e.g. vision, mission and values). There is a “spirit” of the rules not fully captured by the “letter” of the formal statements
Overdone	Decision-making may be stifled because everything is prescribed and no judgment is required. Rationale for doing something is often replaced with explanation of rules, guidelines and norms that prescribe behaviour (more “we/you can’t” than “why couldn’t we?”) People look for air-cover from a policy or from “so-and-so said we have to do it this way” to justify actions/decisions.
Underdone	The walls of the office have signs like: “DO NOT LEAVE FOOD IN THE OFFICE FRIDGE OVERNIGHT.“ & “DO NOT LET THIS DOOR SLAM.” The funnel of “policies in progress” is always full. Existing policies are routinely reworked to be clearer. (e.g. Coffee cream is exempt from “Food left in Fridge” policy.)

What now/what next?

An analysis of this nature has to sift through competing perceptions of the situation. If the goal is to improve performance, the first step should be to better understand it. The interplay of these dimensions is similar to the combination of individual life philosophy, personal goals, and code of conduct that form a human being. Some degree of misalignment is inevitable, but very often it is manageable. Large misalignments and inconsistencies will become obvious over time and become more difficult to manage and to hide.

Using these dimensions as a periodic diagnostic within an organization can bring insight to where to focus time and energy to proactively affect future performance. This can also help to prevent large crises that require swift and sudden change.

Well, what do/did you expect?

Any discussion regarding performance has to include both outcomes (e.g. what you accomplished) and conduct (e.g. how you accomplished it). These concepts can exist together in statements like “they won fair and square,” but with the current mayoral race in Toronto, many would encourage to keep them separate.

Pro-Forders say: Look what he’s done (e.g. outcomes). So what if he’s not perfect (e.g conduct).
Another camp says: I don’t care about his record (e.g. outcomes); his behaviour is unacceptable (e.g. conduct).

A reasonable response would be to balance the two, which is what I believe is at the heart of John Tory’s code of conduct. One truism of the performance evaluation is: “clarify expectations.” In more practical terms, this quickly becomes an exercise in managing expectations. Unfortunately, the result of that, more often than not, is defining the “barely acceptable.”

Enter the “Code of Conduct.”

Such well-intentioned documents set the bar for accountability for future actions. It states: “Here is how I am going to go about my business, and please call me out if I conduct myself otherwise.” But that is where the clarity ends because we are stuck with statements like Tory’s Point #2 “I will show up to work each day to get things done…”

So, John, do you mean that you will show up to work “everyday”? “Every workday” (e.g. you will take vacations and weekends)? Everyday that you show up to work, you will try to get things done (e.g. you could indeed be absent, maybe even absent a lot, but when you are there, you are there to get things done.)?

Note: If the response is to tighten the wording of the “code,” we will undoubtedly get stuck with unreadable legalese!

Transparency, honesty and integrity are far too conceptual to be prescribed on a code of conduct. That said, I think we have every right to expect these traits in leaders, political or not.

My second problem with defining the “barely acceptable” conduct is that inevitably the code is used to counter any critique of performance. As of April 4, 2014, Rob Ford can factually claim: “I have not been charged with a criminal offence while in office.” The binary distinction of charged or not charged is apparently the expectation here. Does integrity and honesty really come down to “I have not been charged with a crime.”? This is akin to Lance Armstrong’s claim that he had “never failed a drug test,” which, in retrospect, was not the best evaluation of his performance.

Even if a candidate for Toronto’s mayor said: “Trust me, I am going to pay better attention to my conduct than the current mayor has been,” some still won’t care. Unfortunately, the outcomes Toronto will have received by 2018 will remain a mystery past voting day.

When it comes to conduct (e.g. the “how you go about doing it”), leaders should give us much more than “barely acceptable,” so why bother defining it? The effort in defining the “barely acceptable” should be spent on the outcome side. (e.g. If I have not achieved X by 2018, I will not run again.) This will demand leaders accepting responsibility for things beyond their individual control, which might create a necessity for people to work together.

I would love to see more leaders clarify the “barely acceptable” outcomes rather than trying to pin down the specifics of “integrity” and “respect.”

Profits and purpose: what really matters? (Survey Insights part 4)

The BBC published an article on Abraham Maslow this week describing the impact of the hierarchy of needs that bears his name. Any social psychology or organizational behaviour course will touch on this in trying to explain the motivators and needs that have people do what they do.

Like many such frameworks, their utility in explaining/predicting the actions of others tends to fall short. It becomes an endless guessing game of rationalizing conscious decisions and analyzing subconscious yearnings. We are going to move the focus to: “me, and what I want” not “them, and what they want.”

In our Summer Survey, we asked:

“If individuals were looking for a sense of purpose from their professional life, to what degree does your organization provide that?”

NOTE: If you don’t subscribe to the “purpose need” theory, you debunk this whole line of thought. People want money; pay them and they work. Pay them more and they work harder. We will address this later.

The results were not unexpected. At the leadership level of the organization, the “purpose need” appears to be fulfilled: one third report that the purpose is “obvious” and more than half say people could find it in different ways.

Further down the organization, the results are opposite. The number of people who report being “here to work” (e.g. absence of purpose beyond Maslovian survival) grows to one-third at the middle-tier level, and to more than half at the lowest levels of the organization.

One explanation for employees not taking the opportunity to be more invested, involved, and engaged with their work is that the organization is not being clear or consistent enough about how their work matters.

For a moment, let’s put the onus on leadership to declare a preference for the kind of success they will pursue. Yes, we want to be profitable, but our self-imposed constraints (e.g. constraints we select not restrictions/rules to which we comply) reveal what matters most and may embody one’s sense of purpose.

So this could give you:

a bank that is committed to keeping jobs in the local economy
an oil-and-gas company committed to reducing the effects of carbon emissions
a fast-food company committed to educating consumers on nutrition

Do any of these “commitments” sound familiar?

The internal audiences will be most attuned to inconsistency because they will see (or suspect) what really drives decisions and what lines a being stretched or crossed. Inconsistency is a breeding ground for cynicism and could be a reason for disengagement such that you report being “here to work.” The rubber hits the road when an organization takes a decision consistent with a “commitment” and appears to forego profit maximization in the short-term.

If your organization is poised-to grow, would investors or shareholders support such a commitment?
If you are competing for talent, would good employees reward you with loyalty?
If you are competing for funding dollars, could this build your credibility with foundations and with public sector funders?

In all cases, there will be some important parties who don’t agree or don’t care. The better question is “Would you get enough support for you to succeed?” and “What could you do to gain the support of those who need to see results?” Selecting the right measures and delivering results will be fundamental to your success.

Stay tuned for the next post where we shift the focus to the rank-and-file responsibilities.

The Leadership Blackbox (Survey Insights Part 2)

There is an understanding that with authority comes the responsibility to make decisions. Personal style, organizational structure and corporate culture can encourage varying degrees of consensus building and collaboration, but the buck always stops somewhere. In our earlier survey we explored the extent to which such collaboration factored into decision making.

Note: For the moment, we will ignore the very real issue of authority figures who simply refuse to make the tough decisions!

A number of respondents felt that, in their organization, those in authority tend to make the decisions where important issues are concerned. This could mean adherence to a traditional top-down structure, but there are different ways to convey a decision from above. A savvy leader can walk into a meeting with their decision already made but create the feeling among others that the experience was very collaborative. A more straightforward leader (or leadership team) may adopt the tell-and-sell approach whereby they demonstrate the rationale that went into picking one side of a trade-off situation.

From our survey results, a “blackbox” may be a more fitting metaphor for some such top-down organizations because priorities tend to conflict and information tends to be closely guarded. Based on our survey, of those who perceived a top-down decision structure, 2 out of 3 believed there were “conflicting priorities” and more than half also indicated that “information protection” was the communication norm.

Insight #2 Chart 1 You can see how these connections can emerge: Department A operates under the marching orders that anything goes as long as we achieve Priority A. Department B feels the same way about Priority B. There is no clear guidance for either group (from leadership) about the impact on the overall desired performance. When a stalemate occurs, the boardroom fills up, the doors close and after some time a verdict appears.

From outside the boardroom, this would resemble waiting for an instant replay decision to come down from the booth. That people communicate on a “need to know” basis is understood; it is akin to court proceeding where anything you say could be used against you. This is how the walls of the metaphoric silos emerge and thicken.

As with our earlier piece, we isolated some implications from such a “black box” leadership environment:

For Collaboration with External Stakeholders:

External parties can get roped in to the drama resulting from internal efforts to curry favour with upper management. Suppliers, customers and partners may be sympathetic to the plights of their contact having to work in such a political environment, but revealing this level of in-fighting to an external party rarely paints the organization in a favourable light.

For Internal Collaboration:

Often times the task at hand is difficult enough to begin with, so why burden yourself with the additional strife from the internal squabbling or playing to the judges? “Pitch the idea to authority to gain compliance from others” is not a workable definition of collaboration in environments that need to take performance seriously. Training can make it worse (see below).

For Poised-for-Growth Organizations:

The approach for newer organizations with respect to this particular problem may well be preventative. One of the characteristics of growth is the creation of different “departments” that must operate with a degree of autonomy. There is an opportunity early on to paint the connections within the wider organization so all departments are focussed on the same priorities and silos don’t develop as rigidly.

We have found that requests for training in such areas as “making business cases” and “influencing” stem from an environment where a common understanding has not been allowed to take hold. Building communication skills in warring factions can deteriorate into a cold war of building persuasiveness. There may be an opportunity to build a common understanding by fleshing out the potential links between actions and desired results.

(Note: The semantics of the words “influence” and “persuasion” where explained to me very well by my friend Mark Bowden. Using influence means understanding the logic of the other party and weaving your wants and desires into that logic. Persuasion, on the other hand, is getting a person to trust you to the extent that they are happy to abandon their own logic if you say, “Trust me. It’ll be OK.” We would prefer a focus on the former.)