Different Work Practices

Most people feel comfortable working in familiar ways. However many of these familiar ways make seamlessly working together very difficult. This is a major problem when you are trying to keep work flowing.

Work practice incompatibilities arise from one or more of the following:

• Different stakeholder have different needs and expectations (differing agendas, motivations and behaviours)
• Poorly integrated processes and tools (gaps, rework, delays, personalized tools [not team tools])
• Different working hours (full-time, part-time, casual, volunteer)
• Different working locations (office, mobile, home)
• Different organization operations (large, small to medium enterprises, consultant, home based)
• Different cultures [ways of working] ( get it done now, wait until the last moment, wait until I am directed, operate independently)
• Different work models (in-house, out sourced, home, office, Wi-Fi spot)
• Different time zones
• Different countries

Different Work Practices

Most people feel comfortable working in familiar ways. However many of these familiar ways make seamlessly working together very difficult. This is a major problem when you are trying to keep work flowing.

Work practice incompatibilities arise from one or more of the following:

• Different stakeholder have different needs and expectations (differing agendas, motivations and behaviours)
• Poorly integrated processes and tools (gaps, rework, delays, personalized tools [not team tools])
• Different working hours (full-time, part-time, casual, volunteer)
• Different working locations (office, mobile, home)
• Different organization operations (large, small to medium enterprises, consultant, home based)
• Different cultures [ways of working] ( get it done now, wait until the last moment, wait until I am directed, operate independently)
• Different work models (in-house, out sourced, home, office, Wi-Fi spot)
• Different time zones
• Different countries

The 20% of all leadership and management must accommodate all work practices, so people can work as close to ?naturally? as possible. This minimizes resistance and the amount of the amount of learning required.

Training Required

Currently most leadership and management processes are applied manually. Some tools are used, but they largely automate manual processes that usually need to be understood to use the tools correctly.

The effective application of manual processes requires training plus the commitment and ability to apply the processes consistently at the right time and place. This is a big ask when many people are involved. Consequently most processes fall short of their potential.

Significantly less training is required when processes are redesigned and automated. The optimum solution is to limit people's involvement in processes to inputs and using outputs.

Poor Planning

One of the major problems for leaders is that planning is generally poor. Without an effective plan it is hard to lead, because you have not thought through what needs to happen and followers will not know what they need to do, when and with whom.

Many leaders argue that they have a plan in their head. The problem with a plan in your head is that the plan is not readily available to followers and you can update the plan without followers knowing (unless they are mind readers).

It is normal to update a plan as more information becomes available. However unless you have an explicit plan to start with, it is very difficult to keep followers updated when something they should know about changes.

A solution that make planning simple and fast for everyone will make one hard part of leadership easy. Then leaders and followers can develop explicit plans that detail who needs to do what, when and with whom. In addition, explicit plans provide a baseline for reporting progress, and for keeping followers and other stakeholders informed about changes.

Physical Memory Limitation

Lists not synchronized

Lists are used widely. We use lists to remember the things that need to be done. For example, a strategy is usually expressed as a list of tasks that when completed achieve the strategy goal. Lists of tasks are also used in projects, operations and recording actions agreed in meetings.

At a personal level, most people keep some form of ToDo list to remember what they need to do. A personal ToDo list is usually a manual aggregation of actions required to do relevant tasks.

Because lists are fundamental to the way people work, it is a hard job for leaders to be able to manage and synchronize organization, team and personal lists. A simple method and tools to manage and keep lists synchronized will make leading easier and more productive

Unclear Context

People need context to understand how a task fits in with what is happening and why they need to do something. A task usually has little meaning without some understanding about the goal of the task, other related tasks and how it is proposed to be done.

We have found that a good way to provide context is to show the tasks around the task being considered. For example in a task tree, context would be provided by the task directly above (parent task), tasks at the same level (sibling tasks) and tasks directly below (children of the task).

Further context is also provided by the list of actions required to complete the task and people involved in the task.

Inconsistent Structure

For people to work together the key pieces need to fit together. There needs to be some points of commonality, so the information passed can be understood.

I am not proposing that everyone should work the same way. In fact, the opposite is true. Everyone should be able to work in a way that suits them, but there needs to be some structure (albeit minimal) that allows a person to easily work with other people anywhere and at any time.

Currently people decide what to do and coordinate work by communicating with each other in meetings (formal and informal), through emails, VOIP, IM, or over the telephone. A weakness of these communications is that the critical coordination information is not in a common form. So it is affected by interpretation and memory limitations.

The bottom line is that to significantly improve work coordination, a solution needs a simple, unobtrusive, consistent structure that allows workflows to be fitted easily together and to be changed as required. Some form of technology will be required, because current experiences clearly demonstrate peoples' inability to coordinate work.

Too many manual processes

Generally people see the benefits of working together. However when processes required to work together are perceived to be too difficult or take too long, people look for easier solutions.

Unfortunately most coordination processes are largely manual and rely on people being available to participate. This was workable when people were collocated, but when people are dispersed many of these processes become unworkable.

A solution that offers a path of least resistance is required, where work processes are largely automated in the background.

Excessive non productive work

We all spend a lot of time and effort trying to sort through work to understand what is relevant to us and what we need to do. Then we need to track what is happening and watch for any changes that may affect what is happening and what we have to do.

Unfortunately all this sorting, tracking and watching for changes takes time and effort away from actually doing the actions required to complete work. It needs to be done so the core work is done, but it is not productive. It is administration overhead required to do productive work.

A solution that significantly reduces the need for non productive work is urgently needed.

Need to see work from your perspective

We all want what is happening, how we will be affected, and what we need to do presented from our perspective. In this way, we can stay focused on what is important for us and we are less likely to be overwhelmed with irrelevant information.

It is important to note that presenting critical close to real-time information from a personal perspective is just as important for followers as it is for leaders. In fact, the ability to present relevant critical information to everyone in an easy to understand and action form at anytime from anywhere is the greatest deficiency faced by both leaders and followers.

Supporting relationships between People

When we are given a task, we first assess whether we can do it ourselves or whether we need help from others. Where we need help, we usually communicate with the other person or people and decide who will do what, when and with whom.

By working with one or more people, we create a team. We are usually the team leader of a team we create, but at any time someone else can be made the team leader.

One of the ways we gain context for tasks and actions is by thinking about the people we are working with and what we are doing with them. Consequently a solution needs to not only manage the relationships between relevant tasks and actions, but also the relationships between the people we are working with.

Everyone needs to manage

It is common to focus on the work managers are doing and to forget that everyone needs to manage. Each person needs to manage their own time and effort. Personal management is often called Time Management.

The problem in the workplace is that personal time management is only loosely linked to the work actually being or needing to be done. Closing and keeping this gap closed for many people concurrently is a very hard part of leadership.

Minimal use of Technology

The current integrated use of technology is relatively low and limited in scope. In most cases, technology is used to improve communications or to stream line manual processes.

One area where technology has been used effectively is to help project managers lead projects. The project management planning process helps project managers create a high level plan. This plan provides an excellent framework for people to implement higher level tasks. However there is no mechanism to explicitly link what the people in the project are actually doing. Progress is reported as a percentage complete that often leads to confusion about how much work has actually been done.

The other area where technology is widely used is in managing personal ToDo lists. ToDo list tools range from paper based to lists that can be accessed over the web or on mobile devices. The weakness of these lists is that they are manually updated by the owner based on what they believe they need to do. There is no electronic linkage to plans or means to keep relevant people informed of changes that affect them.

However the connectivity (on the web and mobile devices) and processing power available is capable of supporting a solution that can significantly reduce the constraints caused by the dynamics discussed above. All that is needed is a distributed management paradigm that integrates and overcomes the limiting aspects of these dynamics.

Summary of Dynamics that make Leadership hard

Most of the hard parts of leadership are directly affected by work practices, the quality of training, planning and the implementation of plans. Consequently poor training and poor planning makes other parts of leadership unnecessarily hard.

Extreme limitations on people's memory, the need to manage lists to remember, poor context, inconsistent structure, a large reliance on manual processes, and excessive non productive work management make leadership harder than we would like it to be. In all these dynamics, incremental improvements will not make leadership significantly easier. A paradigm shift is required.

Presenting critical information from each person's perspective makes it easier for people to work in teams, and providing an integrated way for people to manage themselves to contribute to the achievement of business goals will also make challenging parts of leadership easier.

A new distributed management paradigm facilitated by current web and mobile technology is required to make the hard parts of leadership easier.

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