Develop Processes to Celebrate Experiments and to Recognize Individuals and Teams
Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.
—Mary Lou Cook
A transformational change journeys can be exhausting; time consuming; and physically, mentally, and emotionally draining, but it does not always have to be that way. Having fun, celebrating small wins, encouraging creativity and experimentation, supporting one another during difficult times, saying thank you more often, and appreciating one another’s perspective can make a huge positive impact on the organization’s environment. Often ignored as trivial or time consuming, these behaviors are instrumental in the journey to organizational excellence and culture transformation.
The Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in their white paper, “IHI Framework for Improving Joy in Work” summarizes the results of their study on the impact of “joy in work” and conclude that it not only impacts individual staff engagement and satisfaction, but also patient experience, quality of care, patient safety, and organizational performance. The paper shares the nine elements of the framework for the joy in work (Figure 18.1) and discusses how happy, healthy productive teams and systems in an enterprise of healing contribute to creating a culture that encourages and fosters trust, improvement, and joy in work.
Figure 18.1 IHI Framework for improving joy in work.
The authors emphasize that transformation requires “joy in work” and senior leaders are responsible for ensuring physical and psychological safety, articulating the organization’s purpose, providing a clear line of sight from the work of each person to the mission of the organization, and ensuring meaning and purpose in work. Leaders ensure fair, equitable systems that embody the fundamental human needs that drive joy in work. By understanding daily work, leaders recognize the context in which colleagues work, ensure the effectiveness of systems, and identify opportunities to make improvements and celebrate outcomes.
James Quincey, CEO of Coca Cola, says the tone of culture has to be set by the top management: “You have to be clear and consistent with your people. We must not overinvest time and energy on making things perfect. In this new world, we need to get a version 1.0 quickly, from which we learn. If something doesn’t work, we stop it. And that’s perfectly okay. If something is good but not perfect, we need a 2.0 fast, and then a 3.0 version. We then scale what is successful. We must be bold and fast, and we have to execute and perform. We need to have the mentality of a technology company. In order for this cultural change to work out, leaders must set an example.” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook too believes, “Done is better than perfect,” meaning that being perfect is not important, but getting the job done matters.
Mistakes are the portals of discovery. Thomas A. Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Neuroscience researcher Alex Korb says, “Trying for the best, instead of good enough, brings too much emotional ventromedial prefrontal activity into the decision-making process. In contrast, recognizing that good enough is good enough activates more dorsolateral prefrontal areas, which helps you feel more in control.” To stimulate a culture of innovation, encourage (1) diversity, (2) permission to fail, (3) experimentation, (4) learning fast and cheap, and (5) the ability to pick up weak signals. Does your organization celebrate the festival of failure? If not, start one soon.
Some of the other opportunities created to celebrate experiments and recognize individuals and teams at Hospital Heal included:
Leadership presence during Go See Learns
CARE awards
Monthly project report-outs in the auditorium
Kudos cards
Tokens of appreciation
Thank-you cards from the CEO
“Perfection is the enemy of good” was wholeheartedly promoted and lived at Hospital Heal. For that reason, the title on the huddle boards read “Experiments.” Employees were encouraged to explore, experiment, and learn from their experiences. Also, ensuring that the huddle board had a placeholder titled “Celebrations” encouraged in-the-moment recognitions of individuals and teams (Figure 18.2). The idea was to celebrate the lessons from reflection and not just successes alone.
Figure 18.2 Teams at Hospital Heal celebrating their first huddle and scorecard.
In their book Gung Ho!, the authors, Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, while describing the principle of “The Gift of the Goose: Cheering Others On,” say, “Active or passive, congratulations must be TRUE—Timely, Responsive, Unconditional, Enthusiastic.” In the football game analogy, the authors mention that fans don’t sit mute as the ball is moved down the field, waiting for the touchdown before cheering. They lay the emphasis on cheering the progress as opposed to just the results. They say, “Measurement shared with everyone generates excitement.” Senior management can infuse energy by reinforcing what is working well, and spotlighting success. Stories crystallize the effects of change and inspire confidence.
In Figure 18.3, you would note that the quadrants labeled “Process” and “Innovation and Growth” are diagonal to each other, which means if you allow innovation and growth culture to thrive in an organization, you have to be less stringent with your processes. Likewise, organizations who wish to be more competitive in the marketplace, will have to reduce time spent by people on small talk and water cooler talk, and instead use that time in implementing benchmarking strategies. The amount of diagonal tension that is acceptable depends upon the risk aptitude of your organization and the culture you want to build.
High performance organizations promote healthy tensions between teams without creating chaos in the organization. Structured chaos is better than random chaos. The provision of the huddle board is a good illustration of allowing structured chaos. Teams huddle, discuss, challenge, and celebrate one another around the goals that are meaningful to their department, thereby creating constructive chaos, instead of everyone randomly wanting to do their own thing and creating disruptive chaos. Disruption is good when teams want to do something radical to achieve a bigger goal as a team, not as an individual. Therefore, the need for establishing a process that is repeatable and instills behavior change takes precedence over an event-based activity.
Another example from Hospital Heal, shared below, was the development of standard template (Figure 18.4) for conducting monthly report-outs for sharing improvement initiatives. All teams were provided a format, time duration, and venue to share their work with others and get recognized.
Structure sound boring, doesn’t it? You may think that the report-outs would be a snore fest. However, you may be surprised to learn that the monthly report-outs were the most awaited and sought-after event. They drew staff to a full-house auditorium at least 10–15 minutes before the start to secure a good seat. The report-outs were a fun event where teams showcased not just the technical content but also their creative talent in the selection of props, theater lighting, songs, costumes, and much more (Figure 18.5). The ambience created supercharged individuals and motivated them to take personal accountability in changing their behavior toward problem solving and delivering results.
Sensei Gyaan: Encourage the use of a pencil instead of a pen to remind leaders that continuous improvement is all about change, that very little is permanent, and what may be good today could be a thing of the past, as new information is made available.