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Good Thinking

By John Canfield
Management Consultant
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Some years ago Charlotte Roberts (coauthor of 5th Discipline Fieldbook and others) introduced me to a wonderfully mind contorting phrase: “Can we discuss the discussability of the undiscussed?”

Some background to my reference. Some months ago, my July 2009 MiBiz article “What Are They Thinking?” solicited some responses from a number of people. This article outlined a structured methodology to uncover the helpful and not-so-helpful behaviors and driving thinking of individual leaders.

These responders thought it would take a really strong team, a team willing to take risks, to actually complete an exercise like this. In other years, past conversations I have had leaders clarify how someone thinks is their own business — you can’t talk about that.

One of my primary insights after 10 years in industry (Intel and Herman Miller) and 20 years as an independent consultant around the world is that thinking drives performance.

Consider:

• Improved performance is the result of improved behaviors and decisions
• Improved behaviors and decisions are the result of improved ideas
• Improved ideas — breadth, depth, content, etc. — are the result of better thinking.

If this is close to true, considering the thinking that a leader uses is considering the DNA of their leadership and its effect on an organization.
You could target behaviors and ask the suspect not to use them, but if you haven’t provided an opportunity for the suspect to select new thinking, their behavior is likely to stay the same.

So just how serious is an organization that says it really wants to be profitable, and a great place to work, but doesn’t want to/can not talk about the real source of the behavior. These nasty unproductive behaviors are likely present in an organization that describes itself at the water cooler as dysfunctional. These nasty unproductive behaviors are sources of waste right along Taiichi Ohno’s famous seven sources of waste. So it’s OK in some companies to actively and deliberately pursue factory and process waste, but not OK to talk about waste-behaviors.

Considering the enormous cost of dysfunction, this may be the next organizational performance frontier. Like finding mineral deposits in Afghanistan, it could change everything in an organization. Super kudos for the person who goes looking for either.

The chart below sort of captures my thinking about this Performance/Thinking link across a range of possible individuals:

Canfield’s Attitude Matrix

First of all please notice the setting; the five individuals (columns) shown above are all sitting in the same situation.
Yet their perceptions are significantly different.

In the first column, this person sees a mess, considers themselves a victim (my bad luck…), react by blaming situations and others, and not surprisingly generates awful results.

On the other end, in the same situation, the person sees the light at the end of the tunnel. They lean into the opportunity, owning the situation, leading their team and likely generating admirable results.

Thirty years of industrial experience says this is neither naïve nor simplistic. It is fundamental and comprehensive. Improve your thinking, improve your performance.

And to my point of view, the column a person operates in is directly related to how they choose to think.

So What

So back to the performance improvement discussion — if we don’t talk about thinking, what do we talk about? Improving morale? Have a very entertaining offsite or spectacular one-hour keynote speaker? Or move the horse in front of the cart, deliberately have the tough conversations about how leaders think, deliberately improve their performance, and then celebrate. How about a full day of community service? Whaddya think?

Note: I am not suggesting having these tough conversations in an unstructured way. The exercise outline in the aforementioned article summarizes a well-structured process and careful delivery. The process and structure allow the team members to consider and build positive alternatives while not falling into careless and emotional volleys.

I am suggesting (pleading) that having these conversations in a productive way may be one of the most important improvement strategies an organization can implement. Improve the leadership — improve the organization capacity to improve.

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