Business learning from walking: 3. Never fear turning back or retracing your steps

I learnt an important lesson last week when walking on the Isle of Wight. Well, I learnt many lessons, but one of them was that sometimes it's easier to turn back and retrace your steps, than to go into unplanned territory.

We'd walked for a hour or so, it was hilly and we'd just headed down a steep hill that was so steep in places there were steps. Popping out between the hedges we realised something was wrong. After much deliberating and map checking, we had two options:( a) take a new, unplanned path that would get us back to where we wanted to be that was longer, less scenic and involved riskier road walking, or (b) hike the half mile back to the last decision point, even if it mean a steep 200ft climb back up the hill. After some whimpering and puffing from me, we got back on our planned track.

All change projects reach dead ends or go off track - often due to enthusiasm for trying new ideas. It's important to keep the goals in  mind and to assess any difficult situations. In my experience we tend not to have the courage to go back a few project steps and start again. Instead we blunder on and end up taking a longer and more tortuous route to get to where we need to be.  In future, I'll be asking more questions and keeping in mind the possibility of going backwards to go forwards.

Part of knowing when to turn back and when to go on is an important skill, and this is covered in the next post in this series.

Business learning from walking: 2. Knowing where you are is more important than knowing where you are going

Picture from simonmainwaring.com

It's a truth that you have to start where you are. Whether it's starting a walk along a trail or a new change initiative to streamline the repeat prescribing process, you begin where you are - not where you think you are.  Anyone who has run a process mapping event will know that participants love to create maps and plans about what they want to happen, where they want to be. Focusing on the reality of what actually happens seems far more difficult. It's fairly boring too. To start your walk you need to be able to place your finger on the map and say "We are here". To start a change program you need to be able to use all the data you have to state your current position.

Would you start walking a linear trail, like the Thames Path or Hadrian's Wall, without knowing where you are starting from and whether you are at the place you expected to be?  I may decide to start walking the Thames path but if my actual start point is 8 miles from the predicted start point, then it's goign to be a very long day and probably one with many disappointments.

After you've started moving, you need to keep track of where you are. In business we do this by measuring our progress. These measurements need to be close in time to the actions and decisions. If I walked a route saying I would check the map at every hour on the hour (monthly reporting?) then I could quite easily waste time and energy by going in the wrong direction.  Every decision point needs a check between plan and actual progress.

I can talk a lot about where I want to end up with my walks, as Many talk a lot about what the results fo their change program will be. But in the end, those results and goals are dependent on a system and practice of knowing where you are, at any point along the way.

Business learning from walking: 1. The plan is not the event

Picture from grough.co.uk

Advice is never to leave for a walking adventure without a map and compass – and a sandwich, drink and set of waterproofs is also a good idea.  In business we have our plan as our map. But just as the map we read and mark while sitting in the comfort of our warm and dry home, the plan we create in our offices is never going to be what actually happens.

 A tree may have fallen across the path – a barrier to change is discovered that the plan didn't take into account.  Someone twists an ankle – a key staff member goes off on long term sickness. It snows – a new directive from on high impacts the organisational plan

Never set out without a plan, but never assume that having spent hours (or days, weeks, months) on the plan that the event is now sorted. The plan is prework. No imagining beforehand can take the place of an actual walk under the trees, beside the sea or over a field. Similarly, no amount of planning can predict the actual path and experience that any organisational change will take. 

Designing social media impact; a challenge for healthcare improvers

Social media is the in thing in healthcare organisations - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. These systems have been around for 5 years or more but are now catching on in healthcare as they are seen as a method for sharing messages quickly and a way to bring diverse and segregated communities together. And this works well.

The challenge is to integrate the use of social media into the mindset of the quality improver.  The Improvement Model asks three questions - all of which are relevant for social media use:

1. What are we trying to accomplish?
2. How will we know its an improvement?
3. What changes can we make that will result in an improvement?

If you're starting out using, say Twitter, and you're in a healthcare quality improvement role the have a think about:

• What do you want to achieve? What is your purpose in using Twitter? Do you want to discover new info from others, link to others, use the media as a broadcast system, raise awareness, raise your own profile... etc? You need to have a purpose.
• How will you know it's an improvement? In the Twitter case, how will you know whether you are reaching your purpose / objectives and in a way that's better than what you do now? It really helps to think about this.  How will you measure your progress? How will you learn? Will you be using an analytics system to learn about what works (classic PDSA processes work very well for understanding how Twitter can work for you).
• Linked to the measures above, how will you maintain your learning and continue to get better and better at using Twitter?

In my experience it's best to thing through purpose and practice as part of starting on the social media road. An online social media account where nothing happens tends not to be a good strategy.

David Whyte: The workplace poet and loaves and fishes

No celebration of poetry in the workplace can be complete without including David Whyte. He has decades of experience of bringing emotion into the workplace - but importantly, does this with respect  dignity and the understanding of employee and organisational processes.  I wasn't quite sure which of his stunning pieces to incidentalnclude in this blog. In the end I have chosen the one I use the most.  

David Whyte shares his poetry via his website. It's a great resource.  You may find this is an interview by Maria Seddio with David Whyte useful background.. I like it because it probes the why he does what he does and gives an insight into his caution and delicateness in bringing poetry to the workplace. [PDF]

Loaves and Fishes

This is not
the age of information.

This is not
the age of information.

Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.

This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

  -- David Whyte
      from The House of Belonging 
     ©1996 Many Rivers Press

How do I use this in the workplace?

This is useful for provoking deeper discussion about social movement and language. How one word, one short sentence, once moment - can create a shift in mindsets of others.  It's also about the difference between information and words that move people.  A good exercise with a group using this poem is to consider their own language and they own use of words. What are they commonly using? What evidence do they have of hyperbole and how effective is this?

The poem is not as straightforward as it looks and some people may read into it and feel quite different perspectives from others. It's important to listen to and respect these differences.

Poetry for the theorist: Poetry Month April 2013

If your interest in poetry in the workplace is broader than checking out a few poems, then there's an excellent Afterword to a book that is available as a PDF. It covers the history of poetry in the workplace, contains poems to illustrate the descriptive analysis and overall give a well rounded exposition on the topic.

I've not been able to find out the source of the PDF as I found it rather serendipitously. If anyone knows please leave a comment on this blog.