http://plum-oakmont.patch.com/search/articles?cat=1998198825&contributor=143492

Back in September of 2005, on the first
day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High
School in Little Rock AK did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of
school, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the
building supervisor, she removed all of the desks out of her classroom. When
the first period kids entered the room they discovered that there were no
desks.

‘Ms. Cothren, where’re our desks?’

She replied, ‘You can’t have a desk
until you tell me how you earn the right to sit at a desk.’

They thought, ‘Well, maybe it’s our
grades.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Maybe it’s our behavior.’

She told them, ‘No, it’s not even your
behavior.’

And so, they came and went, the first
period, second period, third period . Still no desks in the classroom.

By early afternoon television news crews
had started gathering in Ms.Cothren’s classroom to report about this crazy
teacher who had taken all the desks out  of her room.

The final period of the day came and as
the puzzled students found seats on the floor of the deskless classroom, Martha
Cothren said, ‘Throughout the day no one has been able to tell me just what
he/she has done to earn the right to sit at the desks that are ordinarily found
in this classroom. Now I am going to tell you.’

At this point, Martha Cothren went over
to the door of her classroom and opened it.

Twenty-seven (27) U.S. Veterans, all in
uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. The Vets
began placing the school desks in rows, and then they would walk over and stand
alongside the wall. By the time the last soldier had set the final desk in
place those kids started to understand,  perhaps for the first time in
their lives, just how the right to sit at those desks had been earned.

Martha said, ‘You didn’t earn the right
to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you. They placed the desks here
for you. Now, it’s up to you to sit in them. It is your responsibility to
learn, to be good students, to be good citizens. They paid the price so that
you could have the freedom to get an education. Don’t ever forget it.’

By the way, this is a true story. And
this teacher was awarded Teacher of the Year for the state of Arkansas in 2006.

Rule #1: Observe colleagues as they work.
“To respond to complexity intelligently,” says Morieux, “people have to really
understand each other’s work: the goals and challenges others have to meet, the
resources they can draw on, and the constraints under which they operate… The
manager’s job is to make sure that such learning takes place. Without this
shared understanding, people will blame problems on other people’s lack of
intelligence or skills, not on the resources and constraints of the organization…
Real cooperation is not a matter of getting along well; it’s taking into
account the constraints and goals of others.”

For example, a hotel chain had
falling occupancy rates and poor customer satisfaction. The finger was pointed
at the receptionists, but when several managers closely observed day-to-day
work at the front desk, they discovered what was really going on: unhappy
customers were badgering the receptionists, who weren’t getting adequate
support from housekeeping, room service, and maintenance and gave refunds or
upgrades to angry customers and often ran up to rooms to try to fix things
themselves – leaving the front desk unattended. “Exhausted and discouraged, the
young clerks would often quit after a few weeks,” says Morieux, and it wasn’t a
lack of commitment or motivation. In fact, the least committed and motivated
receptionists were the ones who stayed.

“Indeed, when managers rely on
traditional metrics and peer feedback,” continues Morieux, “they may end up
rewarding people who actually avoid cooperation… In many cases, just a day on
the ground watching the interplay among people from different functions will
provide insights into where and how cooperation is breaking down. Once you
identify that moment of truth and some simple root causes, you can move on to
applying the other rules.”

Rule #2: Empower key “integrators.” When companies get larger, they
tend to add another layer between front-line and back-office people or impose
new procedural requirements like computerized job requests. Morieux says this doesn’t
work. A better solution is to identify existing staff who interact with both
worlds – in the struggling hotel chain, it was the receptionists – and give
them a stronger voice. When the receptionists in the hotels were given a say in
the job status of housekeepers and maintenance staff, those people’s
performance improved dramatically – they checked all equipment and appliances
during the day and customers were no longer discovering problems at night. “The
change had a snowballing effect on customer satisfaction,” says Morieux,
“…Within 18 months, the company’s gross margin had increased by 20%.”

Rule #3: Expand the amount of power available. “Usually, the people
with the least power in an organization shoulder most of the burden of
cooperation and get the least credit,” says Morieux. “When they realize this,
they often withdraw from cooperation and hide in their silos. Companies that
want to prevent this and increase cooperation need to give these people more
power so that they can take the risk of moving out of isolation, trusting
others, showing initiative, and being transparent about performance.”

Rule #4: Increase the need for reciprocity. People need to need
each other, says Morieux, giving the example of an airline that increased
profitability – the percent of time airplanes were in the air – by making cabin
crews responsible for cleaning and loading their plane before takeoff: “They
cannot blame someone else – like the cleaning subcontractor – when customers
grumble about a messy plane or a slow boarding crew.”

Morieux adds a
counterintuitive twist: sometimes reducing
resources results in greater
cooperation. “A family with five television sets doesn’t have to negotiate
which program to watch because everyone can watch the show he or she wants. The
result is the kind of self-sufficiency that kills family life. Removing
resources is a good way to make people more dependent on, and more cooperative
with, one another, because without such buffers, their actions have a greater
impact on one another’s effectiveness.”

Rule #5: Make sure employees feel the shadow of the future. The
problem with long-range plans and targets (3-5 years into the future) is that
many employees know they won’t be around for the day of judgment. Smart
managers create performance targets much closer to the present and hold
employees’ feet to the fire in real time.

Rule #6: Put the blame on the uncooperative. A railway company
couldn’t get its on-time performance over 80% no matter how hard it tried. Improving
traffic-control mechanisms, hiring more agents, monitoring delays, and skimping
on cleaning and equipment checks – nothing they tried improved punctuality, and
there were increasing problems with cost, quality, and safety.

Then the company applied Rule
#1 and focused on the way train drivers, conductors, station crews, and
maintenance workers were interacting. It turned out that most delays could be
avoided – but only if workers in different units cooperated. But everyone was
more concerned with getting blamed for delays than with reducing them, so they
didn’t cooperate. It turns out that a perverse accountability system put the
blame for delays only on the unit responsible for the root cause. “So, when
Unit A had a problem, Units B and C did not feel impelled to help solve it,” explains
Morieux. “Why would they? If they didn’t cooperate, only Unit A got the blame.”
People tried to make up for the lost time themselves, often without success.

Realizing this, the company
incentivized transparency and cooperation. Once a unit told others about a
problem, the units that failed to
cooperate were blamed for the delay by station managers, who were on the scene
to make the judgment. In just four months, the railroad’s on-time performance
increased to 95%.

Morieux sums up: “Smart rules
allow companies to manage complexity not by prescribing specific behaviors but
by creating a context within which optimal behaviors occur – even though what
is optimal cannot be defined in advance… Voluntary frontline cooperation breeds
creative, customized solutions to problems… Problems are solved entirely by
leveraging, through cooperation, the skills and ingenuity of employees…
Employee satisfaction rises along with performance, as companies remove the
complicatedness that causes both frustration and ineffectiveness.” In a
sidebar, Morieux gives his list of what not
to do:

-
Never
add a process or a layer unless you absolutely have to: “Adding or keeping what
is unnecessary is at least as damaging as lacking what is needed.”

-
Never
blame a problem on someone’s mentality or mindset: “This reflects only the
limitations of your analysis. Instead, look at the goals, resources, and
constraints people face.”

-
Don’t
let people escalate decisions to you: “Push them back to those who failed to
cooperate on a solution. But if you must take on a decision, hold the local
people accountable and make it a learning experience: ‘What will you guys do
differently the next time so I don’t have to arbitrate?’”

-
Don’t
rely on financial incentives: “The counterproductive side effects are too
severe. Instead try to embed feedback loops into people’s tasks.”

-
Don’t
try to measure specific behaviors: “The most valuable behavior – cooperation –
cannot be measured… Focus instead on results, and use judgment rather than
measurement when cooperation is required.”

“Smart Rules: Six Ways to Get People to Solve Problems Without You” by Yves Morieux in
Harvard Business Review, September 2011 (Vol. 89, #9, p. 78-86), no e-link available

Reprinted from The Marshall Memo #399 August 29, 2011

Time has a way of moving too quickly and catching us unaware of the passing years.

It seems only yesterday that I was young, just married and embarking on my new life with my mate. And yet in a way, it seems like eons ago, and I wonder where all the years went.  I know that I lived them all and I have glimpses of how things were back then and of all my hopes and dreams.

But, here it is … the winter of my life and it catches me by surprise!

How did I get here so fast? Where did the years go and where did my babies go? And … where did my youth go?

I remember well, seeing older people through the years and thinking that those older people were years away from me and that my winter was so far off that I could not fathom it or imagine fully what it would be like. 
 
But, here it is … we’re retired now and we both are turning getting gray … we move slower and I see in us those older folks I used to see that we never thought we’d be. We’re not in such bad shape considering our years … but, I see the great changes and our winter is upon us

 Each day now, I find that just getting a shower is a real target for the day! And taking a nap is not a treat anymore … some days it’s mandatory because if I don’t do it on my own free will … I just fall asleep where I sit! And so, now I enter into this new season of my life unprepared for all the aches and pains and the loss of strength and ability to go and do all the things I love.

But, at least I know, that though the winter has come, and I’m not sure how long it will last … this much I know, that when it’s over … it’s over.  Yes, I have regrets.  There are things I wish I hadn’t done things I should have done.  But indeed, there are many things I’m happy to have done.  It’s all in a lifetime of living and loving.

So, if you’re not in your winter yet … let me remind you, that it will be here faster than you ever thought possible. So, whatever you would like to accomplish in your life, please do it quickly!

Life goes by swiftly, so … do what you can today, because you can never be sure whether this is your winter or not!

You have no promise that you will see all the seasons of your life, so … live for good today.  Say, and do, all the things that you want your loved ones to remember.

“Life is a gift to you. The way you live your life is your gift to those who come after.  Make it a fantastic one.”

 
Live It Well, My Friend!!

  ~author unknown~
Don’t be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin.