Promises

Episode 7: Bob Dunham On Reliable Promises And Listening For Commitment

by amiel · Jan 12, 2015

Amazing things happen when you remove your blinders and see what it actually takes to coordinate action with others. First, you focus on how we make commitments to each other through conversation. Then, you realize that listening isn’t about being nice. It’s about producing reliable promises. Finally, you take seriously the notion that your public identity–or “personal brand”–depends on your understanding of others’ concerns, the offers you make to address those concerns, and your emotional mood as you walk down the hallway.

Bob Dunham has been introducing leaders and coaches to these points for three decades–and helping them practice their way to excellence. In Episode 7 of The Amiel Show, Bob distilled these lessons into an hour of actionable insights. Bob and I discussed:

2:00 Our blindness that action starts with commitment
7:00 How understanding conversations demystifies innovation
13:00 Bob’s rapid success as a manager by evoking reliable promises
21:00 The conversation for action, listening acts, emotions, and body language
33:30 Getting people to say “yes” is an absolute disaster
40:00 Having opinions but no evidence
51:00 Personal brands and influencing senior leaders
57:30 What Bob is personally practicing in his life

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Make life bigger than “Yes” versus “No”

by amiel · Aug 20, 2014

Many people want you to stop saying “Yes” to everything. It’s overloading your life, sapping your energy, and keeping you from doing the meaningful stuff. Jeff Goins calls this “the small but soul-crushing word you use every day.”

Their solution? Say “No.”

This recommendation isn’t wrong, just incomplete. What it leaves out are two other legitimate responses to requests. By incorporating these into your repertoire, you not only free yourself from overscheduling. You also live a bigger life.

But first…

The virtues of saying “No”

Let’s give “No” its due. If you’re the kind of person who agrees to everything, making more frequent use of “No” helps you: [Read more…] about Make life bigger than “Yes” versus “No”

$10K Phrases: “Help Me Understand”

by amiel · Aug 6, 2014

One of my favorite $10,000 phrases is “help me understand.” In this post, I describe why this phrase produces powerful leadership conversations, when to use it, and how to incorporate it into your day-to-day communication.

Why say “help me understand”

This phrase has three important purposes: [Read more…] about $10K Phrases: “Help Me Understand”

Unpacking the HealthCare.gov crash

by amiel · Dec 17, 2013

On November 22, the New York Times ran a long article detailing the organizational and managerial problems behind the crash of HealthCare.gov. Art Kleiner, editor-in-chief of strategy+business, calls this “one of the most important articles on management this year.” I agree. Kleiner goes on to suggest that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a test case for the idea that the private sector needs effective government, and that the way to get effective government is to free it to learn and reform. In short, let’s demand and support effective management in our public sector agencies.

What exactly does it mean to manage effectively in the public sector? And how do you produce accountability? In recent posts on this blog, I’ve begun introducing the practices of promise-based management, like making effective requests and reliable promises. The recent experience of HealthCare.gov as described by the Times presents a brilliant opportunity to illustrate these practices through a real-life example that everyone is talking about. Let’s give it a shot.

Knowing how long it would take to complete and test the software, the company’s officials and other vendors believed that it was impossible to open a fully functioning exchange on Oct. 1….Government officials, on the other hand, insisted that Oct. 1 was not negotiable.

Accountability and reliable promises, pt. 3

by amiel · Dec 16, 2013

Part 3 in a 3-part series

In the first two parts of this series, we used the example of nurses filling foam canisters in hospitals (to increase the odds of hand washing that protects patients from infection) to demonstrate what it takes to build accountability in an organization. Accountability requires promises, which in turn require effective requests (or offers) and acceptance of those requests. If the goal is for everyone involved to follow a similar process, i.e. standardized work, then it’s important that they all explicitly promise to do this. But what do you do if a nurse isn’t following standardized work? According to Mark Graban, the first thing to do is to ask why. He proposes asking the following about a surgeon who fails to follow “universal protocol” before a surgical case, but the same applies to nurses who fail to refill canisters.

We can ask:

Is it a case where the person CAN’T do the work properly?
- Do they not know how? This might be a systemic training problem. The individual can’t be held accountable for that.
- Does the person not have the right resources? Maybe they WANT to do it right, but they just can’t. Leadership needs to help eliminate those barriers.
Is it a case where the person WON’T do the work properly?
- Is the situation one where the person truly has a choice and they made a bad choice?

Accountability and reliable promises, pt. 2

by amiel · Dec 16, 2013

Part 2 in a 3-part series

What does it mean to have accountability? As we observed in an earlier post, piggybacking off of Mark Graban, if a hospital manager expect nurses to be responsible for filling foam canisters to increase the odds of hand washing to protect patients, there needs to be an explicit promise between that manager and the nurses. Such a promise requires both a clear request (or offer) and an acceptance. Promise = Request + Acceptance.

Now, what can we say about the components of an effective request or offer? Let’s make explicit what was partly implicit in the above example. An effective request or offer consists of the following:

Clear conditions for satisfaction. There needs to be a shared understanding of what it means to restock a canister.
Clear timeframe or deadline. What days and what times of day will the nurse restock the canister—or at least check to see if it needs restocking?
A specific speaker. What do we mean by this? If a vague pronouncement comes out from “management” about who is responsible for restocking the canisters, there is not a specific speaker. The nurse doesn’t have anybody to respond to (by accepting, declining, counter-offering, or promising to promise). Another way that a speaker can be “missing” is if a manager holds uncommunicated expectations; they want the nurses to refill the canisters, and maybe even mention it in passing, but never actually make a request.
A specific listener. On the other hand, let’s say a particular manager makes the request but communicates it vaguely to a full team of nurses. Now, we have a specific speaker but not a specific listener.
A shared “background of obviousness.” This is a fancy way of saying that when the manager says “restock the canisters in the middle hallway”, both the manager and the nurse understand which canisters these are and which hallway is the middle hallway.

Accountability requires authentic promises

by amiel · Dec 5, 2013

When it comes to building accountability in organizations, what differentiates good from great? Many leaders wrestle with this question. The wrestling typically sounds like this: Why don’t people follow through on their commitments? I don’t like to micromanage, but how else can I ensure things get done?

I love hearing these questions for two reasons. First, they reveal a commitment on the leader’s part to managing effectively and delivering results. It appears as a complaint, but behind the complaint is this deeper commitment to excellence. Second, there is a body of management theory and practice devised specifically to handle this situation. It’s called promise-based management or speech act theory. The basic idea is that human beings make things happen through language. Words don’t just describe reality; they actually bring it into being. There are particular ways to talking—conversations for action—that are the vehicles through which we act. If we want to become more competent at such conversations, it helps to understand the key elements that comprise them. We call these “speech acts.” [Read more…] about Accountability requires authentic promises

Promises

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The virtues of saying “No”

Why say “help me understand”

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