1. An arena is what I know about myself and what others know about me. There is what you know about yourself and you also show it outwardly. Others know and see what you are also aware of.
2. Another arena is that which is unknown to you but which others know about you. There are things that you show outwardly, but you are unaware of it.
3. The third arena is what you know about yourself, but others do not. You have a ‘secret’, which you choose not to share.
4. And the fourth arena is what neither others nor you know about you. These are things that are hidden.

What I find interesting, unlike many typical four-bar windows, is that you can measure this and get different sizes of the parts in the window. The bars in the window end up in different places depending on who you are. Some have larger open fields, while others have larger hidden fields. Some know more about themselves, others less.

What is it like in our businesses?

Then I shift the focus from us as people to our businesses. Because this can be translated to our organizations. As I mention in my trainings, in a business we need to focus on the individual, the group and the whole organization. The organization is made up of groups, which are made up of individuals. That is, an organization is built as a sum of all its constituent individuals. This means making 2+2 more than 4, because then we have created something more in the synergies between people. An organization also needs to create an internal image of who it is before it can be seen outwardly in the way it wants to be perceived. If you want to be an honest and fair business, with a real focus on customers, then you first need to agree internally that this is how you really are. I think you can probably immediately think of businesses that outwardly say they are customer-centric or “have the customer in focus”, but then they deliver quite a poor customer experience.

Is the patient in focus?

“The patient in focus” is quite common in healthcare, but then the care queues and reports to IVO grow, and patients are sent here and there. This is because they do not internally have the common view that it is actually the patient who is in focus, but they are more based on their own organizational affiliation. At the same time, there are so many other things that they have to deal with, which has not supported the patients. It’s similar in many organizations, so I’m not just going to highlight healthcare as the only problem area. Far from it, however, it is extra important that it works with “customers” who in this case are in great need of getting the help they need and are weak in their role as “customer“. There is an extra responsibility on such a “provider” to live up to a good business. I come across many organizations that say they struggle to retain staff and have difficulty recruiting new ones. Those who leave because things are not working well in the organization naturally pass this on, which in turn means that those who might previously have considered applying for a position in that organization refrain. Of course, such an organization does not really want to be a negative place, but they have not managed to do anything about it internally.

Tip of the week!

So this week’s tip is for you to work together in your organization on the following:

1. Decide that the points below are important. If they are not, don’t do them. It will only take a lot of time and hurt your improvement efforts if you do things you are not serious about. If you are serious, then read on…
2. Describe how you want your customers and others to see you as a business. What are the epithets you want to be known for? Be precise in your description, because fluffy descriptions make it harder to live up to them.
3. Find out how your external stakeholders, mainly your customers, see you in terms of who you want to be. Ask them. This will create a baseline against which you can measure in step 5.
4. Then describe what these external epithets require of you on the inside. How do you need to think and behave to confidently become who you want to be and who your customers should see?
5. Create a plan of activities to ensure that what you came up with in point three will also be able to come true. This plan has three perspectives: short, medium and long term.

• The short-term perspective needs to include very concrete things to do in the next three months. No longer, because then there is a good chance it will run out of steam. It wants to lift you up quickly, change course, completely change, or whatever expression resonates best with you.
• The medium-term perspective should include ways to measure and follow up that there is the desired change internally. Ask yourselves if you think you have come closer to your own desired self-image. If not, take corrective action to continue developing.
• The long term perspective includes measuring and monitoring how external stakeholders now view you. Use the same survey that you used in three above. Now you will be able to see if there is a development in the right direction. If it is not, you will have to implement corrective actions again to ensure progress.

Then perhaps I need to be very clear that there are no sacred cows when it comes to creating the business you want to be known for. No “it’s not possible because…”, because then you have already given up on becoming who you want to be. It’s probably going to sting in places, because it makes improvement work. It costs to get better, but it will also be much better and easier up front, when you have become who you want to be.

Why not think about the above now in the coming months? Make a little plan for yourself and you can start next month. If the above triggered thoughts that you want to discuss with me, please reply to this email and I can give you some advice tailored to your business. We can do an online consultation. No cost or obligation on your part.

Contact me.

The post Does your inside match your outside appeared first on Clean Stream.

Evening comes and dusk falls

The darkness of the well becomes palpable. All he can see is that there are passages leading away from the well, but they are so dark that he dares not take any of them. Just then he hears a voice from above calling down into the well. – Are you okay, asks a woman looking down the well? – Well, yes, but I can’t get up. I can reach the ladder but can’t pull myself up, says the man. – Aha, says the voice, and he sees how she starts to climb down. – But what was the point of this, says the man, when he sees the woman jump down to the bottom of the well. – “Now we’re both stuck down here,” the man continues. – No, says the woman, I’ve been here before, follow me and I’ll lead you out. The man follows the woman through the dark passages leading away from the well and after a while out through a wall near the river, where they can get back up to street level.

The cost of being stuck is high

To translate the story above into what I see in activity after activity, is that you see something that you want to achieve, but put yourself in a situation that you can not get out of. This is because you don’t have the knowledge or method of how to move forward. It is easy to start work, but it is more difficult to move forward when you encounter resistance and difficulties, which means that you ultimately fail to achieve the improvement you really want to achieve. Getting stuck then has a big cost attached to it. Monetarily, you have costs for everything you have done so far in the work, while you will not reach the point where savings or revenue increases occur in the business. Emotionally, you have a lot invested in succeeding. People in the team are energized and willing to work forward, and they dream of how good it will be when they are done. It’s just that if you don’t really push and get past the obstacles that always crop up, the team gets bored too. If the working group is not given the right conditions in the form of training to learn HOW, or relief in the daily work, or perhaps the opportunity to reinforce with future skills and resources, well, then even the most charged working group will soon get bored. As a result, no progress is made. You are stuck. There is no profit. What you wanted to achieve, you do not achieve.

Don’t get stuck in this working year

Don’t get stuck during this working year. You recharge during the holidays, thinking that now you have the opportunity to make the improvements you have been thinking about for so long. It’s like that work starts in the fall and ends in the spring, for the next holiday season. So make sure you don’t get stuck in the well, as in the story above. Take the opportunity to educate yourself, create conditions, make a good improvement plan, get good tools and methods for your future work. We at Clean Stream can help you with all of the above. We can give you advice to get you started and we can also really make sure to support you long-term, throughout the coming year.

Contact me

The post Don’t get stuck appeared first on Clean Stream.

We are not going to get better, they are going to get worse.

Ah, how clever. Instead of having to improve ourselves and step forward and develop, we prohibit those who are better than ourselves from being better us. We do not need to change, but the others are the ones who should change. We should not become better, they should become worse. Does that sound familiar? I would think so. I see this all the time, where businesses or society would rather prohibit than develop. As this occurred 1200 years ago and continues today, it seems to be a spinal reflex in us humans.

For example, someone comes up with…

• A new vehicle for moving around. Then we want to ban it, such as jet skis, hoverboards and electric scooters.
• A new service in the health sector, for example. Then we want to ban it, for example Kry and Min Doktor.
• An alternative way to do something in your business. Then some people want you not to discuss it, with a lot of arguments like “we don’t have the time”, “we don’t have the budget”, or similar. Just put the lid on.

You and I must work hard to change this. If the reflex is to ban as soon as things come up that we don’t like and/or that make us need to change, then those of us who are aware of this must also actively think about asking other questions.

Questions that make us think twice. Questions that question the prohibitionist reflex and actually evolve instead. Everything may not be perfect with the new, but to prohibit it is to fail to see the potential of development.

Keep an eye out in the media for where someone has a new way of doing something, and then follow the debate that follows. Check it out and learn what the patterns are.

Also keep your eyes and ears open in your workplace, where someone suggests an improvement. Follow closely what happens when others, who do not want to change, respond.

I also think of the pure Vikings who, if they were to follow the law, were not allowed to wash and keep themselves clean. Fortunately, cleanliness won out over dirt, as we realized all the benefits of being clean such as avoiding diseases, besides the obvious that it is more pleasant.

The post We are not going to get better! appeared first on Clean Stream.

I’ve been wondering what it was that made him such a good company commander?

What enabled him to bring all 248 members of the unit to carry out the feats of hunger and cold, and at the same time to succeed in solving the task? I have listed a few things and I think we can all learn from what I have seen as strengths in his leadership.

I just want to point out that it may sound like Lasse is no longer with us, but he is. When I speak in the past tense, it is based on the time together in the unit 30 years ago and nothing else.

So, what was it that made Lasse so good? What I have found are four things; love, knowledge, analytical calm, and determination.

During our years together in the unit, Lasse always showed love for the people around him. He genuinely enjoys people and working with them. He cared about how the rest of us felt and how we perceived the situation. It made us feel like we were a gang where we were together solving a task. I see that caring about your employees and fellow human beings does so much for leadership. Asking how people are feeling and then also being really interested to hear the answer.

Furthermore, he had knowledge of the business. Not that he was down to the details, because the newly trained soldiers knew more about that, but he had a basic knowledge of what the business was and what the needs were. With that knowledge, he could ask the right questions at the right time to get us other leaders to come up with solutions. It gave us an injection to show commitment and that we had someone who understood us and our situation in solving the task.

In addition, he always showed an analytical calm. With this ability, things could happen around you, but then we knew there was a calm point to go to and discuss the situation that arose. Things go to shit in a business. Out in the woods, cars froze up in extreme cold, soldiers got stomach flu (never drink ice-crystallized milk and eat loafs!) and a lot of things that overturn or at least make it difficult to carry out as planned. The ability as a leader to be calm and able to make decisions based on facts and data, and with analytical skills is incredibly important.

When it came to decisions after analysing the data and facts, as a leader you always need to be able to make those decisions. Lasse made these decisions at the right time when they were needed. We were taught at the Academy that “the consequences of not making a decision are often worse than making the wrong decision”. It’s been with me ever since. In the majority of cases, decisions can be corrected by new decisions and future corrections. There are few times in a normal business when we have such crucial decisions that they are irreversible. Of course, these exist in some places, and then we need to have even better prepared structures for how we make these decisions. Unfortunately, I see too many people here who don’t dare to make decisions, even though they are the boss. They should always be waiting for something and/or the perfect moment. It is devastating. The decision is needed sooner rather than later.

So I hope that my learning from my mentor Lasse can give you a good input to become a better leader.

Remember to show love, make sure you have a good knowledge of the business, stay calm and be analytical where you make decisions on facts, and make sure you actually make decisions.

Have you had a Lasse in your life? Please email me and tell me, because I’d love to hear about our great leaders.

I’ll be in touch,

Matts

The post A good leader should be like Lasse appeared first on Clean Stream.

As a talented, ambitious and driven person, she really wants to improve the business. She is one of the 14% that Gallup’s recurring survey shows are committed to their business. But being one is not without its problems. One would think that one would be appreciated by colleagues for one’s drive and forward thinking to really improve the business. Because if you succeed in what you set out to do, everyone wins.

But, no, it’s obviously not that simple. There is always someone who feels threatened by others pushing. Returning to the 14% engaged mentioned above, it also shows that 74% are disengaged and 12% are actively opposed.

For the vast majority, the 74%, it means that Jessica and her like out there in Sweden, driven to improve, can be perceived as a threat.

• A threat to the status quo of the business.
• A threat to the relative calm of the business.
• A threat to being able to hide behind a desk, or whatever, and not having to step forward and act.

To borrow an expression that my friend and colleague Hakan used when I found myself in a similar situation many years ago; “you lower their chord”.

By that he means that if you are good and show that you want to push, it makes everyone else look worse. It’s strange that we should see it that way, instead of cheering on those who have the courage, the knowledge and the guts to push on. Because, again, if they succeed, I win in my everyday situation too.

This is in the culture of the organisation. Unfortunately, many times we have too restrained a view of people who want to improve, where we distrust them and begrudge them success. Even though we also gain from it.

Many times we have a strong “we”. Many times it can also be a strength, but in this case it is a weakness. Because if it’s always “us” and consensus on everything, we don’t allow anyone to stand out and do something different. Someone who dares and takes initiative.

It’s like as soon as you make an attempt to step up, to rise above the ordinary, there are hands that grab you and want to pull you back down to the same level as everyone else. The 74% disengaged pull in the 14% engaged to become like them, i.e. disengaged they are too. Because if everyone is disengaged, it’s like no one is. Everyone is equal.

Jessica talked about when, as a teenager working in the summer, she took the initiative to make coffee in the morning, when she was still very early at work. It was appreciated by many.

But then one morning she wasn’t there, and there was no pre-made coffee. After that, she was told by a colleague, who was also often early at work, that it was probably best if Jessica didn’t make coffee. Because it made the colleague in question look inferior, because for all these years she never made coffee for her colleagues, even though she was always there early.

I hope and believe that you are one of the 14% who are engaged at work. Someone who drives and wants to implement improvements for the whole business. I know, because I’m one of them, that we don’t do it primarily to appear good ourselves, but because we actually want things to be better than they are.

I hope you never give up! Do like Jessica, who despite her previous negative experience when she took an initiative and it was not appreciated by some, did not let it discourage her but continues to push and work for the common good.

Good luck in your work and initiatives!

Greetings,

Matts

The post Don’t let others drag you down appeared first on Clean Stream.

As I see it, the answer is “it probably depends”.

On what? Well, what you do with the processes once you have developed them and what activities they contain. In a previous mailing, I reviewed whether the processes are alive or dead. To make sure we have living processes, we have to use them too. Otherwise, they’re as dead as Monty Python’s parrot.

So we assume that you are really working from the processes that you have developed. To ensure that you also have adaptable processes, you need to actively work with process management. If you do so according to all the rules of the art, it is natural to constantly improve them.

In its simplest form, we can say that the management of a process follows the so-called Deming circle; Plan – Do – Check – Act (PDCA). The words “check” and “act” mean that the process is continually adapted to improve.

If we continuously measure and monitor how the process is working and improve it, then the process is very flexible. It is constantly adapting to changing needs and to what we who work with it think should be improved. And as I usually say when I help organisations develop their processes, “everything can be changed”.

It’s better that we create something initially and then run with it, and then evaluate and adapt.

This is in contrast to constantly trying to create the perfect process to be deployed at the perfect time. Unfortunately, there is neither, so it is important to start something and then improve. As they say in English; “better done than perfect”.

We need to make sure that the process is adaptable, which means that if we made some change last month that we saw as an improvement, and it now turns out not to be so successful. Well, then we change back, or we improve in some other direction. The important thing is that we constantly adapt and try things out. We are flexible, which makes the processes adaptable over time.

Moving on to rigidity, it may actually have its place too. When we run our process, we may actively choose to have certain parts of the process as particularly guiding. It may be that in our process we have things that just have to ensure that they are done in a certain way, and that can be perceived as rigid. The reason may be that we have specific quality or safety requirements that require us to work in a fixed way, without exceptions. We may not get away from that.

What distinguishes self-chosen rigidity from involuntary rigidity is that we do not actively manage our processes. This is crucial to whether or not we as employees find the process fun to work in. We can put up with self-selected rigidity.

How do you experience your processes? Do you actively manage them and develop them on an ongoing basis? Or are they involuntarily rigid?

Greetings,

Matts

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