Using Control Chart to Understand Free Throw Shooting Results

comment on: Is Andre Drummond Sustaining His Free Throw Improvements?

Nice use of data to understand the system results (and if there is a measurable improvement or not). I still want to see these chronically poor free throw shooters use the pretty clearly better underhand free throw style. I wrote about this previously in Why Do People Fail to Adopt Better Management Methods?

It really is remarkable how much effort is put into so many aspects of gaining small advantages yet a fairly obvious big advantage (underhand free throws continues to be ignored).

Related: Lessons for Managers from the Wisconsin and Duke Basketball Programs - Change Management - Post Change Evaluation and Action - Taking Risks Based on Evidence

Failing to Adopt Better Methods is Sadly a Common Management Practice

comment on Is Andre Drummond a Better Free Throw Shooter This Season?
Using "Process Behavior Charts" to Answer This Question

There is also a fairly convincingly better method to shoot free throws - underhanded. As I stated in my post, Why Do People Fail to Adopt Better Management Methods?

People can be very attached to the way things have always been done. Or they can just be uncomfortable with the prospect of trying something new.
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Wilt Chamberlain was 28 for 32 from the line shooting underhanded in his 100 point game (the most points anyone has scored in a NBA basketball game).

He was a career 51% free throw shooter (almost entirely shooting traditionally).

But he had a good reason not to use underhand style more often. He felt like a sissy using that style and making them. I am sure the Boston Celtics were happy to let him focus on being scared of looking foolish while they won championships. You are correct if you don’t think I really meant he had a good reason.

This reluctance to use better methods is not limited to underhanded free throw shooting. Managers fail to adopt better management methods every day that are equivalent to failing to improve free throw results using a proven method.

Coaching: Helping People Improve the Results of the System

Comments on: Lean Quote: Coaching is about...Others

I wouldn't put it as "their own problems and improve their own performance." I do agree it is about helping others. But especially for management I think it is more about helping people improve the results of the overall system.

That does include helping them grow and improve their capabilities. But a huge part of what is holding back the performance of our organizations is the limited understanding of how to improve the overall system. Just improving yourself doesn't necessarily improve the overall results.

In a similar way an athletic coaches focus is on how to improve the team. A big part of that is how to improve each team member but the interactions (how everything works together) are often more important than the individual improvements.

It is important to give people the tools they need to understand how to improve the system including how they fit and how important interactions are within a system.

Related: Helping Employees Improve - Manage the System to Take Advantage of the Strengths Each Person Has - Lessons for Managers from Wisconsin and Duke Basketball - The Psychology of Change is Often the Trickiest Part of Process Improvement

Quit Looking for Silver Bullets and Get to Work Improving Management

My comments on There Are No Silver Bullets:

It is somewhat amazing that nearly everyone would agree with the sentiment that there are no silver bullets but if you evaluate what they seek for management improvements they want silver bullets :-(

If you like to find the silver lining amidst clouds this tendency to want magic solutions means that you can make great progress if you are willing to do the work. Others are not using well known management improvement strategies not because they don't work but because they are not silver bullets.

Related: Why Use Lean if So Many Fail To Do So Effectively - The Quick Fix Doesn't Exist - Everyone wants instant pudding

Earning the Trust of Employees

My comments on: Why good employees (should not) leave (good companies)? – The employer perspective

One of the very challenging tasks as a manager is to get people to trust bringing up difficult topics. Often people are punished for doing so. Most people learn to keep quiet about management problems. Even when managers say they want to hear there are many instances when they then punish those who speak up.

I agree with you that for organizations to flourish management must know what needs to be improved. But few executives or managers put in the effort to earn people's trust. But building that trust is what organizations that want to flourish need to do.

Related: Ignoring Unpleasant Truths is Often Encouraged - How to Create a Continual Improvement Culture - Practical Ways to Respect People - The Problem is Likely Not the Person Pointing Out The Problem - Build an Environment Where Intrinsic Motivation Flourishes

The Importance of a Work Culture That Values and Supports Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is tremendously important. I have come to think it might be the most important precursor to management improvement (evidence based management, continual improvement...).

One of the big issues is for people to understand thinking critically about ideas isn't an insult to whoever came up with the idea being discussed. This isn't something I would have thought of as important until seeing so many cases where people are not comfortable discussing ideas (and weaknesses in those ideas) in the workplace.

Comments prompted by: thinking critically

Related: A Good Management Culture Encourages the Debate of Ideas - Respect for People Doesn’t Mean Avoiding Any Hint of Criticism - Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data

Spend More Time Doing What You Do Well

Comment on: Is it Better to Work on Strengths or Weaknesses?

As you say to the extent your weaknesses are things you have to do spending time improving them usually makes sense. I think often the most productive thing is to spend time working on the system to maximize the use of people's strengths and minimize the use of their weaknesses. This often has a big impact without much effort.

And when you do that it is often the magnitude of strengths that makes a big difference. So you can avoid dealing with much of the weaknesses in the team and focus most effort on the strengths. And when you do that my getting even better at x allows the improvement not to just be x * 1.1 but (x * 1.1) + (y * 1.3) + (z * 1.4) - (if say I am now 30% "better" than y at the task and 40% better than z. Obviously it doesn't work so cleanly in the real world but that concept that you can get way more improvement normally by adjusting the way work is done than just by having everyone get less bad at the stuff they really should avoid doing most of the time.

You do also have to pay attention to the long term, so if someone wants to move into supervision but has some weaknesses they need to address and strengths to improve working on that makes sense.

Related: Take Advantage of the Strengths Each Person Brings to Work - Helping Employees Improve
- Many Good Employees Want to Continue to Do Their Current Job Well - Lessons for Managers from Wisconsin and Duke Basketball

Businesses Need to Capture Potential Information and Use the Creativity of Employees

Comments on: Asking the Employees

The problem I see is that management systems can't be seen as independent from the specific tactic in some area (for example getting employees to share ideas). So the effectiveness of soliciting ideas from employees varies mostly by the overall management system unrelated to the specific tactics of the attempt to get ideas from employees. The specific tactics matter but less than the management system (which is often a mess and something no one wants to address).

My father wrote an article a long time ago on how to use ~"two resources, largely untapped in American organizations: potential information and employee creativity."

I think it provides worthwhile ideas.

Related: Trust Your Staff to Make Decisions - Leading Improvement and Enjoying the Rewards - Do What You Say You Will

Deming Wanted Managers to Understand the Systems They Managed and to Visit Where the Work was Done

Comments on Deming wasn’t a fan of Management by Walking Around

Deming’s view is entrenched in Lean management practice in the form of “Genchi Genbutsu”, literally “go and see” at the “real place”. Where practitioners of Management by Walking Around merely visit the workers for a chat, practitioners of Genchi Genbutsu stay with the workers to understanding what is going on.

True, and the details you provide are important. It wasn't managers going to the gemba Deming was against. What mattered is the system. Some people did Management by Walking Around (MBWA), even decades ago, in a useful way - with understanding. But most did not.

Gemba walks are much more likely to be useful (because the expectations are for a more engaged leader) but there are plenty of times those are not done well, and are no better than bad MBWA. Jim Womack has a book out on Gemba Walks which provides good details to managers on what they should do (and what Deming wanted them to do).

Related: Out of Touch Executives Damage Companies, Go to the Gemba - Leadership and Management - Jeff Bezos Spends a Week Working in Amazon’s Kentucky Distribution Center (2009) - Customer Gemba

Building a System to Reduce Interruptions for Software Developers

I feel strongly about the damage done by interruption to maker's focus. My appreciation for this damage to system performance was greatly enhanced as I became a software developer.

In my work prior to software development I could see that interruptions were not ideal but they were not so damaging to my work and they do also have value. But work that requires extra focus, and software development sure did for me, the damage increasing greatly.

Over 20 years ago at the Madison Area Quality Improvement Network they had a simple visual management sign at everyones office and cube. You could dial between various settings - GREEN available (free to interrupt)... RED busy, don't interrupt... There were 3 to 5 settings. It worked very well for them.

Of course such a system is highly dependent on the overall management system. Just putting that up in most offices would likely fail. MAQIN was an organization that embodied modern management practices (Deming, lean, respect for people, organization as system, etc.). It worked very well for them.

When building a software development team I tried to protect developers from interruption while having very open communication between developers and program managers (product owners). As is often the case, the real roles didn't line up exactly. In our organization, the people that needed us to develop software (to varying levels) didn't want to take on the responsibilities that agile would suggest (setting priorities etc.). Nor did the that organization want to deal with the conflicting priorities of the various people in their organization had for software development. As part of making things work, I took on a bit of the priority setting roles.

One of the things I did was explain to those that had us do software development was why it was critical to allow software developers to have uninterrupted time to focus. I shared various articles and reports over time and would talk about this as I interacted with them. I encouraged people to talk to me first (at that time I had transitioned from developer/software-development-program-manager to nearly entirely a program manager role).

We also had weekly meetings (when it made sense) with the "product owners", me and the developers working on the software. We scheduled additional meetings when necessary.

I also encouraged people to use email when possible to just check on things, ask simple questions, ask to meet. Again I explained how just going up to talk to the developer could impose significantly higher costs to them being able to focus of their work than there were for interrupting my work or others that had work that could more easily be interrupted with lower consequences.

When there were very important deadlines I would increase these instructions not to interrupt the software developers. And I would talk to the developers about how things were going and if the developers wanted help pushing back a bit I would then do so - mainly by trying to work on the system (provide a set time to allow needed discussions, coach the "product owners" on the difficulty caused by interruptions etc.).

As you might expect this worked better with some people than others. It made a significant difference though. And in our organization it was actually a bit less effective because the software developers were all so nice. They could say how interruptions damaged what they could do systemically but were always super friendly whenever they were interrupted. I was by far the most willing to actually disappoint people face to face in the name of improving overall performance.

It is very hard to overestimate the systemic nature of all of this. By delivering great results we were able to reinforce that if we followed the modified Deming/agile methods we were using were important. Those needing work from us ranged from very skeptical to accepting of those ideas but our performance (both in meeting their desires for software and for interpersonal interactions) made them willing to go along with the methods we said were important.

Related: Deming and Software Development - Mistake Proofing Deployment of Software Code - Creating a Culture that Values Continual Improvement

Lowering Expectations Isn't Respect

My comments on good post by Michael Ballé - How demanding can a lean leader be while remaining respectful of staff?

Being respectful means first not dismissing people’s difficulties but making the utmost effort to figure out the problems they mention and their origins.

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Being demanding is a large part of lean leadership and, to be honest, in most cases, all goes well and people respond... there’s always one in ten who throws up a fuss, makes tantrum and will accuse you of being disrespectful in your very requests.

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Being respectful means making sure people can succeed to the fullest of their abilities.

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as a leader, your first job is to teach people to change.

A big problem we have (at least in the USA) is the opinion some people develop that respect has to do with not making anyone uncomfortable. That isn't respect, that is creating a dysfunctional mindset.

Fear driven culture that give mouth service to "respect" often create a climate in which managers find themselves fearful of being blamed for "disrespecting people" (which often means making someone uncomfortable). If they truly are being dis-respectful their boss needs to be dealing with that and helping them improve (which their boss should know because they are actually involved in management - but in many organization, probably most, the their boss would be clueless).

These management system concepts are all connected - weaknesses in critical areas create huge problems. If management doesn't know what is going on in the gemba they are suppose to manage, problems are very likely. Sadly this is often the case.

What you say is well put. We need to have high expectations and expect that people will rise to the challenge. And if people can't (with help and good systems) we need to find them a new position at which they can excel. Babying people isn't respectful to them or everyone else.

Helping people be as contribute is respectful. While ignoring poor performance is often easier for the manager than addressing the issue and helping the person improve doing the difficult task is what managers need to do if they respect people. And likely managers should be spending a lot more time doing this and eliminating other things taking up their time (unless they are in an amazing organization where coaching is a huge part of the managers job - in which case, wonderful).

I have written about this several times: Practical Ways to Respect People - A Good Management Culture Encourages the Debate of Ideas - Respect for People Doesn’t Mean Avoiding Any Hint of Criticism

A Good Management Culture Encourages the Debate of Ideas

my comments on Political Correctness Comes To Lean

Criticism is one of the ways in which knowledge advances. It is a type of thoughtful feedback (and subsequent dialogue) that helps expose blind spots, identify misunderstandings, provide alternate explanations, or uncover errors that others cannot see or are unwilling to acknowledge.

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Without criticism from others, we are unlikely to challenge our own thinking or escape the comfort of self-satisfaction. We fall prey to the confirmation bias and accept information that confirms one’s views and reject all information that does not. We also develop a love for the status quo. Criticism is rejected without consideration and attributed to people who are simply uninformed or who suffer from professional jealousies.

The outcome is blocked information flow, which is the opposite of what we seek to achieve in Lean management.

I agree with you. I put much of the blame on insecurity and mistaking respect for people with not making anyone uncomfortable. When people are insecure or unconfident they often take criticisms of ideas, plans, results, etc. as personal attacks. Then misunderstanding of don't be "dis-respectful" to people comes into play.

I have written about this several times

Respect for People Doesn’t Mean Avoiding Any Hint of Criticism

Building a Great Software Development Team, a significant part of which was hiring people that would debate ideas without becoming overly personally defensive.

And those posts link to more related posts. The retreat into criticism of ideas is dis-respectful is a real problem for management improvement. Usually there are plenty of other more severe problems, but if you are doing well and getting rid of common failures to manage the organization as a system, experiment and base decisions on data (in many ways) you are likely to reach a point where the fear of debating ideas common in the USA becomes a serious problem.

Related: What Does Respect for People Actually Mean? - Disrespecting most people in order to avoid confronting one person is not good management (or respect for people)

Sustaining Management Improvement Through Personnel Changes

My reply to a comment on Reddit about my interview: Leadership While Viewing the Organization as a System.

So if a new manager is able to mess it up, the system was necessarily weak? Not sure I agree.

Looking at the context the interviewer asked about a new CIO coming in a gutting the management system. I said if they have a strong management system that can't happen. Executives can't just have whims (usually driven by a desire to "make their mark") that throw out the principles used to manage the company if there is actually a strong management system.

Most organizations just float with whatever fads are going on, so in most they can flip flop as new executives come into place.

On the question of new managers making mistakes. Yes, I agree they can. Once again good management systems make a significant effort to bring new managers up to speed. Those management systems reduce the likelihood of failures created by new managers making mistakes. Again, most organizations do a poor job of brining new managers up to speed: Toyota does a good job, the USA military does also, Costco does a good job, I think P&G does (but my information could be outdated). Many others do this well, but the majority of companies do this extremely poorly. That is a serious failure of a management system and I would put more of the blame for those failures on the poor management system, that the managers making mistakes when they were put in a position they shouldn't have been (being made responsible without proper preparation).

Related: Poor Results Should be Addressed by Improving the System Not Blaming Individuals - Management Training Program (2005 Curious Cat post) - Curious Cat Management Improvement Dictionary

Pilot on a Small Scale First - Good Advice We Often Ignore

Response to: Pink NFL Penalty Flags Surprisingly Cause Confusion

This is an example of why piloting new ideas is wise. The truth is we often don't pilot stuff. Many times it works out fine (and no-one mentions we didn't pilot it on a small scale). When you don't pilot and it then fails on a big scale this is the question, I think.

Were we bozos for not seeing the risk - looking back is it a pretty strong case we should have piloted.

If we often don't pilot and it works 99 times out of 100 it may be we are pretty good at knowing what needs to be piloted and excepting some failures is ok in order to get things done. Part of the decision that is critical is making sure you don't fail to pilot when it is really costly to be wrong (which is part of the decision on whether to pilot).

We can just always point to failure to pilot as the dumb thing to do when it fails. But I see that as a bit overly simplistic. Many organization don't pilot well. Getting them to do so all the time would likely stop you from doing better stuff. Getting them to do so when

1. there are likely to be be things we should learn
2. there are significant questions about how it would work
3. the costs of widespread failure are large
4. we can't consider the potential risks and make a judgement that there is likely not to be a problem

Piloting on a small scale is best. It is what I recommend and encourage. I just think seeing the failure to pilot as a cause of the widespread problem is too simplistic. Why did we fail to pilot needs to be the next question - don't stop at the failure to pilot as the root cause. From there you will nearly always discover, unless maybe you are Toyota or the Kaizen Institute or something :-) that your organization consistently fails to pilot before adopting on a wide scale. Then you need to dive into that issue...

With this particular example it seems to me one that could have been thought about rationally and a decent case that we don't need to pilot could have been made. And that illustrates that there is always a risk to implementing without piloting (there is a risk of doing it anyway including a very big one of failing to catch the problems because your pilot failed to capture some important features (for example - you didn't think of the need to pilot with pink towels... - this would be an easy mistake to make).

And it shows why thinking about pilots is important - which is another thing we often fail to do, considering how to make the pilot cover the risky scenarios that may take place. Sometimes organizations will use certain locations to pilot stuff which can be useful - you can train these locations to provide good feedback, etc.. But as soon as you make the pilot locations different than were it will be done there are risks of not catching things.

It is the interaction of variables that often creates problems which it was this time. Pink flags meet the initial criteria of being noticeable. The interaction of putting many other pink items into play (certain jerseys, towels, etc.) is what seems to be the issue.

Related: What is the Explanation Going to be if This Attempt Fails? - Accept Taking Risks, Don’t Blithely Accept Failure Though - Management is Prediction - Combinatorial Testing for Software - European Blackout: Human Error-Not

Giving and Accepting Advice and Feedback

Reaction to: The Trap of False Hypocrisy

When you are getting feedback or advice the most important factor is if you can use it effectively.

When you giving feedback or advice the most important factor is doing so in a way that is most likely to result in it being used effectively.

When you get feedback or advice that isn't particularly well delivered (lets say much delivered in way that is much worse than the example - even cruelly given). Your reaction (if what you care about is getting better) should be based on what would help you be better, not the form the advice takes. If what you care about is doing what is suggested in a good manner (which may even be lousy advice) then your reaction should be baed on how they give feedback, or advice to you.

People are affected by how advice is given and in fact how much they like the person giving advice and whether they think the advice is good or not. Those are factors to consider in giving advice. In my opinion those are factors to overcome in accepting advice. If I miss good advice because the person delivers it inelegantly or I don't like them or whatever it is I who lose.

If the core issue the person raises with feedback is something you should address, do so. Don't have how you respond determined by how successfully they gave feedback. In the post one of the issues I think Benjamin was trying to address was providing better feedback and in encouraging logical thinking. Both of which are worthy and make sense doing. I would say that is a 2nd issue. Issue 1 is if the feedback has merit. Issue 2 is if the feedback provided could be improved and if the logic behind the explanation of the feedback is good.

As I said in a previous post, I believe you should evaluate advice on merit, not whether the advisor follows the advice.

Related: The difference between respect and disrespect is not avoiding avoiding criticism - Respect for People, Understanding Psychology - I would much rather hear that someone felt a proposal won’t work than have them be quiet because they don’t want to be seen as negative

=== more thoughts, based on James' comments on my comments above ===

James, I agree with your thoughts. One of the things I continually struggle with is completely presenting my thought in writing - normally I think of 4 caveats I should make then what I say is so long I get tons of complaints it is too long. In general I have tried to reduce that. But I often leave things with too much imprecision (that is too much that is/can be wrong). Trying to be clear, complete and conscience is something I still need lots of work on. Your points about really most isn't right... are exactly my thoughts.

I think not wanting to take the "time to process hostile feedback" is something everyone does though often with less self awareness. And it extends beyond "hostile" to any type that is hard to process (different people have different points they struggle with most). If it is too much bother to figure out why this is useful (logically, emotionally...) we don't want to deal with it.

We will seek out people that we work well with. We will pay more attention to feedback from those who have given us feedback in the past that we used to make a change and saw a good result (either because they are perceptive in seeing the problem, skilled at presenting the case to us, skilled at showing us a way forward, skilled at providing feedback we can actually use (you can give me all the feedback in the world about how to be a better pro basketball player I am not going to be able to use it effectively).

And much more we will block, ignore and deflect feedback we don't want - whether it is hostile, confusing, impossible for us to figure out how to act on, unconvincing... That is why, if you care about having your feedback listened to you often need to design it for the person you are talking to - do they want it all dressed up with compliments about their overall wonderfulness, do they want you to provide some possible options for doing things differently, do they want you to explain the impact of the issue...

I think most people are frustrated with feedback that "takes too much energy and time to process." I think this is why there is so much talk about giving effective feedback. I see too little talk on how to take even effectively given feedback and use it to improve, which is a big part of taking too much energy to implement.

My opinion is that many people have trouble processing the feedback they get, but even more so they have trouble figuring out what to do with it even if they could understand what the issue was (I have a feeling that isn't nearly as big a problem for you but I am just making guess). Even if they can really see what could be improved, turning that into actual improved performance is often not easy.

There are lots of details to consider in order to provide effective feedback. If your goal is to get the feedback used (such as when you are coaching an employee) I think it is often wise to spend the most time on helping people with process of improvement. If people get feedback they can easily use to improve and they can see the results they often want more. The same ideas as your "feedback into information I can use."

And when I say "they can see the results" that again is an indication that it might be an effort to improve feedback in an organization will be enhanced by increasing people's ability to see results (which to me is about understanding data, understanding processes, customer focus, systems thinking...).

Well I went on far to long and it is still not very clear I don't think but, that is the best effort I could make today...

Give People Enough Rope (and the Right Rope) to Achieve

Give ‘Em Enough Rope

How frequently have we heard – or spoken – that expression? The workplace is filled with examples of employees set up to ‘hang’ by being given just enough ‘rope’.

But what if leaders re-wrote this expression… and in the process re-thought how to support employee (and organizational) success with the gift of the right kind of rope being offered for the right reason

Yes, give them enough rope and well designed systems that give them freedom, but also use rope to provide support. You can use rope to help people get themselves to new heights, not just to hang themselves. And you can use rope to give people freedom but also safety.

You want systems that let people take on challenges without too many restrictions but with enough support and training that you don't leave them hanging.

"to figure out how to handle ‘knotty’ problems and tie up loose ends."

Yes, and the ropes should suit their situation. A tightrope over a chasm is fine for a trained acrobat with a balancing pole. It is foolish for someone without the right training or tools. They would be better served with something else - a rope bridge with railings.

Photo by John Hunter on the Juniper Lake Trail in Mount Saint Helens National Park.

Related: Coaching: Don't be Too Timid - Manage Better by Managing Less - What is a Project Manager? - Building on Successful Improvement