management skills for a vuca world
DESCRIPTION
These are the slides (including the exercises) from a 1-day workshop I designed, which covered a range of skills and tools to help managers cope with an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world.TRANSCRIPT
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Management skills for a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous WorldFacilitated by:
Ian J Seath
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Workshop Aims
As a result of this workshop, you will be able to: Explain how planning needs to be adapted to cope
with a VUCA world Identify the key components of good planning and
prioritising Use a variety of practical tools and techniques to
improve work plans Identify personal actions to improve time management Apply a simple behavioural skills model to improve
face-to-face interactions
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Workshop Agenda
Morning Introductions It’s a VUCA World! Planning and the
Management Cycle Short-term Plans How long will it take? Who’s responsible?
Afternoon Weekly and Daily
Planning Overcoming the Time
Stealers Win-win Communications
and Influencing Dealing with difficult
situations Personal Action Plans
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IT’S A VUCA WORLD!“We are moving from a world of problems, to a world of dilemmas”
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VUCA
Volatility
Uncertainty
Complexity
Ambiguity
Increasing rate of change
Less clarity about the future
Multiplicity of decision factors
There may be no “right answer”
A term originated by a US Military College to describe the new challenges facing leaders.
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What do you want from today? Identify some specific examples of VUCA
situations that impact on you and your day-job
What challenges or issues do you face as a consequence?
What will make today a success for you? Your Learning Objectives
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The 4 management environments
Simple• Change a wheel
on a car
• Build a wall
• Prune a tree
Complicated• Build a car
• Build an office
• Re-plant a fruit farm with new trees
Complex• Design a new
car
• Design a new office
• Manage an area of outstanding natural beauty
Chaotic• Deal with a
multiple car crash on a motorway
• Deal with a fire in an office
• Deal with the aftermath of a major earthquake
Ordered Unordered
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The 4 management environments
Simple• Known knowns• Facts• Right answer• Domain of best
practice & rules
Complicated• Known
unknowns• Facts• May be more
than one right answer
• Domain of experts
Complex• Unknown
unknowns• Patterns (not
facts)• Many
competing ideas
• Domain of emergence
Chaotic• Unknowables• High
turbulence• No right
answers• No time to think• Patterns• Domain of
rapid response
Ordered Unordered
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The Manager’s role
Simple• Sense, categorise,
respond• Delegate• Standardise
processes• Adopt best
practices• Communicate
directly and clearly
Complicated• Sense, analyse,
respond• Set up panels of
experts• Listen to conflicting
advice• Encourage
challenge• Identify good
practices
Complex• Probe, sense,
respond• Generate ideas• Experiment: try
hard, fail fast• Increase
interactions and communication
• Encourage dissent and diversity
Chaotic• Act, sense, respond• Look for what works• Command and
control to re-establish order
• Communicate directly and clearly
Ordered Unordered
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PLANNING AND THE MANAGEMENT CYCLE
“Plans are nothing, planning is everything”
[Dwight D Eisenhower]
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The FPOC management cycle
Forecast
Plan
Organise
Control
What might happen?
What do we want to
achieve?
Who is working on
it?
Are we succeeding?
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A forecast…
Is made with a particular
decision in mind
Is a statement of expected future circumstances
Should be made at the last
possible moment
Should be for the shortest
possible period
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All plans should start with “why?”
Why: Set objectives
How: Decide activities
What: Assess/ allocate resources
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Bringing plans to life
Daily Plan
Weekly Work Plan
Look-ahead Plan
Master Plan
Overallprojectschedule
4-6weekview
Nextweek’splan
Today’splan
What should happen
What can happen
What will happen
The right people, collaborating on the right level of plan, at the right time
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The Master Plan/Schedule
The aims of Master Schedules are to: Give us confidence that the end-date and
milestone dates are feasible Develop and display overall execution strategies,
based on known, current facts Identify and schedule long lead-time items
i.e. anything that cannot be planned within the look-ahead window
Divide the work into phases, identifying any special milestones of importance to the client or other stakeholders
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Tools to use
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The Look-ahead Plan
Shapes the workflow sequence and rate Might range from 3-12 weeks depending on the overall
timeline A 5 or 6 week look-ahead is typical, where “Week 1” is next week
Used to ensure all thenecessary resources will bein place in time for theplanned activities to start
Begins to develop detailedplans for how the work willbe done weekly and daily
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CREATING SHORT-TERM PLANS
“Man cannot control the current of events; he can only float with them and steer” [Otto von Bismarck]
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Put first things first
Schedule your priorities,don’t prioritise your schedule
If something is reallyimportant, make the time for it
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What’s the priority of each quadrant and what proportion of your time you should allocate to each?
HIGH
LOW
LOW HIGH
IMPORTANCE
URGENCY
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What’s the priority of each quadrant?
3Distraction?
2Plan
4Waste!
1Manage
HIGH
LOW
LOW HIGH
IMPORTANCE
URGENCY
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What’s your current workload in each quadrant?
Identify 10-15 “things to do” from your current work
Write each one on the Urgency / Importance grid
Do them in the sequence you suggested!
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ESTIMATING HOW LONG TASKS WILL TAKE
Hofstadter's Law: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.”
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Estimating: scenarios…
1. You have been asked to help a team in the early stages of a project to build a new production facility in the UK which will use some emerging technology that has only been used at pilot scale, so far
2. You have been asked to help a new manager who has to create a 45 minute e-learning course, to be delivered via the intranet
3. A Senior Manager, preparing a Business Case, needs help thinking through the likely costs and times for an organisational re-structuring project for a Department of 150 people, to achieve a 25% cost saving
How would you go about creating an estimate of the likely costs and timescales?
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Some possible approaches
Create a WBS or PBS Use this to build bottom-up costs
Analyse the historical cost and time data from a series of previous projects and use average data
Find an example of a similar project and adjust the times/costs to allow for the difference in technology/scale/objectives
Ask some experts
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5 Estimating methods
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Expert Judge-ment
3-point Estimate
Comparative Estimate
Parametric Estimate
Bottom-up Estimate
Perception Fact
HighAccuracy& Detail
“Quick &Dirty”
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Which estimating method is being used?
Expert 3-Point
Compa-rative
Para-metric
Bottom-up
The team identifies a best, worst and most likely case and averages them
The team asks two suppliers who have done similar work before
The team uses a spreadsheet of data from previous projects and it calculates cost and time estimates for them
Members of the team have been involved in 4 previous projects and know exactly how long each one took and what they cost
There’s so much work to be done that the team breaks the project down into 150 work packages
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Estimating methods in your day-job
With a colleague, choose a current project or work activity and decide which method(s) would be most appropriate for creating the best estimates or choose a past project and identify which
estimating method(s) you should have used
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ALLOCATING RESPONSIBILITY
“All organisations are perfectly designed to achieve the results that they do”
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The RACI Matrix Who is Responsible for doing
that task Who is Accountable for
ensuring it is done to the required standard, on time
Who should be Consulted about the task, or be involved in decisions about it (2-way communication)
Who should be Informed about the task, its progress and its completion (1-way communication)
Tasks
Ann
Bill
Carol
HR Dir.
Trg. Admin
Ops. Dept.
Finance
Develop Objectives for Service
AR
R C I
Agree Budget R A I C
Create first draft of Specification
AR
C I
etc.
R = Responsible, A = Accountable, C = ConsultI = Inform
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WEEKLY AND DAILY PLANNING
“Eventually, all plans must degenerate into hard work” [Peter Drucker]
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The 80:20 Rule
20% of the time leads to 80% of the results.
20% 80%
TIME RESULTS
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Scrum Board for Weekly/Daily Plans
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Percent Plan Complete
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A key metric for your WWP is the “per-cent plan complete” (PPC) value
It is calculated as the number of activities that are completed as planned, divided by the total number of planned activities
It is a measure of the accuracy and reliability of your WWP
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DEALING WITH THE TIME STEALERS
“Events my dear boy, events”[Harold Macmillan]
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Scenario – where are the time stealers? Ian gets into his office, starts his computer and logs on to
check his e-mails. After 10 minutes he has a quick look through his Twitter stream and checks his Facebook page. He then spends 30 minutes preparing the first part of a report which is due tomorrow. After attending a 45 minute meeting he grabs a cup of coffee and chats with some colleagues. Back at his desk he notices he has 5 new e-mails which he decides to read and he replies to 2 of them. Returning to his report he spends 10 minutes collecting his thoughts and another 30 minutes writing before deciding it’s nearly time to break for lunch. He makes a couple of quick ‘phone calls, then goes off for lunch.
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Time stealers
1. Procrastination/indecision
2. Ineffective meetings
3. Interruptions - visitors, telephone, e-mail
4. “Never say no”
5. Lack of delegation
6. Lack of planning before starting tasks
7. Waiting time - between meetings
8. Starting too many things and not finishing them
9. Changing priorities
10. Communication failures
11. Unclear responsibilities
12. Unnecessary Travelling
etc.
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Dealing with your time stealers
• Step 1 - Individually, select the top 3 time stealers that affect you, day-in and day-out
• Step 2 - Share your thoughts with the group
• Step 3 - As a group, identify and share some possible solutions
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What is “quality time”?
• A person’s average uninterrupted time at work is usually less than 10 minutes
• Respect your colleagues’ quality time by not interrupting them unnecessarily
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The four Ds…
Do it
Delegate it
Delay it
Dump it
Does it require action?
No action?
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The 2 minute rule:
Less than 2 minutes? Do it
More than 2 minutes? Delegate it Delay it
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Delegate it…
“Tell me what you want me to do and why,
then let me get
on with it.
If I make a mess of it, coach me so I know
where I went wrong.
But, don’t fuss !!!”
A Subordinate’s Prayer
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If it doesn’t require you to DO something…
Dump it “I might need this later”File it
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WIN-WIN COMMUNICATION
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” [George Bernard Shaw]
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4 Communication styles
• Question• Listen• Summarise
• Withdraw• Silent• Apologise
• Inform• Persuade• Direct
• Attack• Dominate• Threaten
Aggressive Assertive
ResponsivePassive
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Communication in a VUCA World
Vision
Under-standing
Clarity
Agility
Clear intent and direction
Listening, empathy and
sensingOptions and
recommendations
Try hard, fail fast, learn [JFDI]
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Seek first to understand… Open Questions
– What, Where, When, Who, Why, How
– To get the candidate talking and open up discussion
Closed Questions– Did, Can, Was, Were, Is– To confirm facts and close
down discussion Probe Questions
– “Why did that happen?”– “How did that affect you?”– To get behind the first answer
Reflective Questions– “You mentioned training, in
what way was...”– “Challenging, how was
that...?”– Reflects back the candidate’s
answer and leads to a further question
– Demonstrates active listening Leading Questions
– “Do you prefer X or Y?”– “You agree, don’t you?”– Should not be used
Multiple Questions– “What... & was...?”– Should not be used
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DEALING WITH DIFFICULT SITUATIONS
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” [Henry Ford]
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PERSONAL ACTION PLANS
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Say it, see it, write it…
Identify from all of today’s inputs and colleagues’ ideas, what you plan to do differently
Be specific and ensure the improvements are measurable
Be prepared to share your plan with the group
Do it…50
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Facilitated by Ian J Seath(2014)
07850 728506
@ianjseath
uk.linkedin.com/in/ianjseath