Tag: behavioural waste

Is The Biggest, Unchecked Business Disease – Behavioural Waste™?

The biggest, unchecked Business Disease – Behavioural Waste™

Organisations believe in leadership development as there are $billions invested in leadership development every year, made on the assumption that “better leaders get better results”. Some, more focused (maybe informed) investors focus their leadership programmes on engagement, assuming better leaders create more engaged employees and teams and that then leads to higher productivity, better results.

If leadership development programmes are an investment, what’s the ROI?

Why make assumptions when the facts are there, if you care to look?

Well one thing is true and has been unequivocally proven that changing and improving attitudes and behaviours will improve performance (1). So it’s great to know that all those $billions spent on leadership are based on having the right belief. It can work! And that is also true in every part of life and can simply be seen in athletes and sports people, where focused training, changing behaviours by doing something marginally different will increase performance. You only have to look at the stories behind Olympic and Paralympic athletes, broadcast on most TV networks, to see where they started and how they progressed. The whole idea behind terms like ‘marginal gains’ is nothing new but has been exposed to a much wider audience thanks to TV, the Press and social media.

But who notices those improvements in sports people can be replicated in business, or other areas of one’s life? What if you saw the Head Coach as the COO, driving the business forward?

Interestingly, books like “Winning” by Sir Clive Woodward demonstrate the processes that Sir John Whitmore (of coaching fame) and his team were practising in businesses way back in the 1970s and 1980s.

In sport, it’s also well known that talent isn’t enough and Woodward’s TCUP (Think Correctly Under Pressure) made the difference between winning and losing. The bottom line is that attitude and behaviour makes the real “sustainable” difference to performance.

If you changed your mindset and believed everyone were talented in your organisation, how would that change your thinking?  

Now if that’s got you thinking differently, and prepared to take the first step, the burning question is…

Where do we start?  Behavioural Waste

There’s lots of great advice from evidenced and relevant research that says mostly the same as Sutton and Rao (2014) in their book “Scaling up excellence: Getting to more without settling for less”, highlighted in the Harvard Business Review in 2014. They point out the intuitive good sense that before leaders attempt to adopt good practices, it is necessary to remove the bad; and that this can be done by

“… identifying and reducing destructive and negative attitudes and behaviours that block the adoption of necessary change.”

In other words, the importance of removing embedded avoiding and blocking behaviours before introducing innovative practices. The authors’ research found that negative interactions with bosses and co-workers have five times more impact than positive ones to the extent that bad behaviours usually swamp the good, undermining the “scalability” or wider adoption of new excellent practices.  A key insight from this kind of thinking is the power of encouraging leaders and employees that they are “doing the right thing” when they start to focus not just upon their own needs and wants, but upon the people affected by their actions.

Eliminate or Reduce Behavioural Waste™ (BW) – the business disease

We could list all the negative behaviours and disruptive activities that could be in existence in your business. The 10 Fatal Leadership Flaws  –  Jack Zenger & Joseph Folkman (2009) – are all in that list.

But it’s easier to define them in what they are collectively –

Behavioural Waste TMBehavioural Waste™ – all forms of behaviour that divert energy, talent and resources away
from the personal or organisational purpose


Rao and Sutton and others have merely pointed out that (1) above also works in a business setting. Change (negative) behaviours and results improve, and you can now innovate, value-add and grow. Now the question is

“ How much Behavioural Waste™ have we and what do we do to get rid of it?”

Well the key is you don’t have to get rid of it and eliminate it. Reducing it so it doesn’t prolong and impact the business performance is good enough. Pareto’s 80-20 rule still exists here!

Organisations will have 3 forms of BW that can be quickly identified : Personal, Cultural and Systemic.

Each of these BW are business diseases and with the right diagnosis coupled with the right remedy, you can permanently get rid of them. A leader that operates their own agenda for personal gain, “do as I say not as I do”, or constantly uses management (MBA/MA) speak for effect are not the engaging, inspiring examples for your employees.

Next Steps?

Being a leader puts us all in a position of making decisions, but only those decisions that are ours to make. As you are still reading then there are now 4 choices:

  1. Free chapter of Recycling Behavioural Waste download – the business disease http://bit.ly/BusinessDisease
  2. Assess your own organisation’s BW http://bit.ly/MindFitFootprint
  3. Do something else
  4. Do nothing – keep doing what you’re doing and hope your medicine works

As ever the choice is always yours.

So what’s your choice? If you choose any of the above we’d like to have your feedback on what influenced your decision.

Is Behavioural Waste the missing link to Lean Programmes Succeeding?

Why do Lean Programmes fail?

Research suggests that over 70% of all lean programmes fail. If you’d like to see some research about what might be the why then this link is useful http://www.lean.org/Search/Documents/352.pdf

Yet during my years in the oil&gas, construction and retail industries I’ve implemented many successful lean programmes. Not all were perfect, but all were successful and some were done in record time. Some teams were forced together, mostly multi-disciplined by need, many given what seemed an enormous task again driven by the demanding nature of the business.

We also had no real concept of the origins of lean programmes in Toyota and our approach was focused on our business – it was simply known as a Business Process Review, BPR.

So why did we have success?

The simple answer is people made it happen. It’s all too often that Lean Programmes know that people count, but do nothing or not enough to make the people effect have the right or the best impact. The focus is all on the process and assumptions are made that people want the change, or are prepared to change but they are are assuming something that may actually not be there.

The issue as we now know is what we term Behavioural Waste™, and organisations have so much of it that before you enter a change programme, you need to change attitudes and behaviours first. If you eliminate or significantly reduce Behavioural Waste™ , any improvement is possible and innovation, creativity, engaged employees, inspired leaders become everyday norms not exceptions.

Behavioural-Waste

 

Recyling Behavioural Waste™

The great thing about our behaviours is that if we want to change them we can – we have a choice. The hardest part is to define or assess what we actually do and then simply by raising our awareness we can then decide to do something different to improve.

You can therefore recycle the bad stuff and improve. To show you what’s possible this new book is for you.

Recycling Behavioural Waste Cover

Key Messages from this book:

1. There’s no point in trying to grow your business if you are currently busy doing the wrong things. You won’t have time to adopt new approaches. Begin by reducing wasteful behaviour to create the space to grow purposeful behaviour.
2. People like doing lean, fixed systems or efficiency exercises because it focuses attention onto processes, which are seen as impersonal, and thus avoids the issue of having to change your behaviour. Behavioural Waste™ is the largest hidden cost that businesses fail to account for.
3. When people talk about culture, they don’t realise that they may have already chosen to fail because talking about the culture of an organisation doesn’t help solve the problem of what in particular, needs to change. The real cultural issue is everyone’s contribution to the accumulated Behavioural Waste™ that is collectively strangling your purpose. If you have  purpose that is meaningful, you can empower people to say “no” to futile, wasteful working,
and to innovate usefully.
4. Behavioural Waste™ is parasitic. The old Parkinson’s Law quotation that work expands to fill the time available for its completion is only partially true. In reality it is unchecked Behavioural Waste™ that expands to cripple meaningful purpose.
5. When people understand their own Behavioural Waste™, as well as the consequences of that Behavioural Waste™ on other people’s behaviour, and begin to control and reduce it then new capacity for growth begins to appear and people have time to consciously think and to innovate.

If you’d like a free digital copy then email us at growth@mindfitltd.com with your organisation’s details.

As ever you have a choice.

  • want to Recycle Behavioural Waste?

  • continue to do what you do?

  • do something else?

What’s your choice?

Is Recycling Behavioural Waste your missing link?

 

 

 

What is the cost of Behavioural Waste? How much can you afford?

What has been ignored - Behavioural WasteBehavioural waste – what is it?

Have you ever wondered why no one makes decisions, there are too many meetings, some people never seem to be available and always busy, and projects always take longer? Could it be true in your business or with your clients and suppliers?

Surveys suggest your business could easily be losing half the time available through behavioural waste. Although you may not think it or believe it, you do have a choice. So how much behavioural waste do you choose to handle?

 

Behavioural waste is

All forms of behaviour that divert energy, talent and resources away from the personal or organisational purpose.

One of the problems in larger organisations is where people are over-whelmed with long ‘to do’ lists. The problem only starts there, as when you merge them all together separating out each project, it becomes abundantly clear that priorities assigned by people are different, so projects will take longer. And then tomorrow it all changes as the next top priority pops up from more fire-fighting operations in a different department. And so it will continue until the next meeting…

Here are a few more examples of behavioural waste:

  • Unnecessary meetings occur through habit
  • Underperformance not challenged
  • People say things like – ‘it’s not my fault’ or ‘we didn’t know that’
  • Disengaged people: people give up, go through the motions
  • Conflicts not addressed
  • Businesses fail to adapt to change
  • Rigid and habitual processes and systems become dated
  • Poor leadership
  • Cynical attitudes
  • Over-controlling behaviours – maybe bullying

Any behavioural waste means your business is underperforming and if you deal with it now, not only will you improve the business but it will be a better and happier place to work. People will be engaged and looking to improve and be more effective and efficient in what they are doing.

Current thought leaders like Dan Pink will agree

…this internal drive as the result of three factors: autonomy, mastery and purpose. People want control of their own destiny. They want to be challenged and find fulfillment in getting better at something. And they want to feel they are making a difference.”

Do you know how much behavioural waste you have in your company? Can you calculate it?

Consider that a recent survey in the IT industry suggested that in a 7 hour day only 3.1 hours were productive – that is 55% of the working day being unproductive. Global surveys are carried out regularly and report that about 80% of the workforce is disengaged, and these will add to the unproductive state in your business.

You can easily calculate a rough cost of the waste in your company by taking a look at the IT example above. We’re not talking about a return to the days of an old style of time and motion study here where you’re timed every time you leave your desk!  One of the most productive areas you’ll see in some organisations is where people congregate informally and communicate effectively – the coffee machine – but it could also encourage unproductive behaviour too. Again it’s down to your people and the level of engagement or disengagement.

So what would it look like if you improved your business by an hour a day per person? In the IT example that would be an increase of 30% in base line productivity – that could be managing 30% more clients, finishing projects much faster and still there’s room for more improvement. And it’s a fact that people enjoy being valued, engaged and productive – the day goes faster when the job and environment  is a pleasurable experience.

 

For more on the cost of behavioural waste to your organisation click here