Workarounds That Work: How to Conquer Anything That Stands in Your Way at Work - Hardcover

Russell Bishop

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 007175203X ISBN 13: 9780071752039

Publisher: McGraw Hill, 2011

Synopsis

Break through the barriers to get things done!

What's more frustrating than knowing how to do your job, working hard, making tough decisions . . . and not getting results because some system, procedure, bureaucratic detail, or difficult personality gets in the way?

In Workarounds That Work, Huffington Post columnist Russell Bishop shows how to boost your productivity with a complete strategy for outmaneuvering anything that stands in your way. The key is to know which procedures and people you can circumvent without causing even greater problems for yourself or coworkers. Bishop provides valuable insight into the workarounds that often hide in plain sight, including:

Bypassing key stakeholders who stand in the way

Preventing malicious people from shooting down good ideas

Handling misaligned leadership and unclear directions

Working around other groups or “silos” whose goals are at odds with yours

Managing the power plays going on above and around you

By following the strategies in Workarounds That Work, you will not only get the results you need-you will also be perceived of as someone who can always be relied upon to get things done, no matter what obstacles stand in the way.

About this title

About the Author

Russell Bishop is an internationally regarded speaker, educator, coach and consultant. His corporate clients include Fortune 500 executives in aerospace, healthcare, information technology, and telecommunications. His work has been delivered in 43 countries around the world, impacting hundreds of thousands of people. Russell is a former editor and frequent columnist for the Living section of The Huffington Post. A recognized expert in personal and organization transformation, Russell has coached thousands of individuals around the world, helping them to create balance and success in their personal and professional lives. Today, Russell is the founder and President of Conscious Living, a consulting and coaching company whose seminars, coaching, and consulting offer individuals and organizations a new approach to integrating values into their personal and professional lives. He has lectured on productivity for the executive MBA programs at UCLA, University of Texas and Washington University in St. Louis.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

WORKAROUNDS THAT WORK

How to Conquer Anything That Stands in Your Way at Work

By RUSSELL BISHOP

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Russell Bishop
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-07-175203-9

Contents

Foreword by David Allen
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 It All Starts with You
2 Getting the Right Things Done
3 Misaligned Leadership and Unclear Direction
4 How You Frame the Problem Is the Problem
5 Communication and Action
6 Accountability and Response-Ability
7 Breakdowns Between Silos
8 When Cultures Clash
9 Death by Decision: Stop Deciding and Start Choosing
10 Moving Beyond Consensus
11 Are You a Corporate Firefighter?
12 When the Best and Brightest Are Wrong
13 Making the Most of Meetings
14 The E-Mail Avalanche
15 When Process Gets in the Way
16 Overcoming Criticism, Complaints, and Resistance
17 Multitasking Our Way to Oblivion
Conclusion: Workarounds Get Things Done
Index

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

It All Starts with You

Organizations form when someone has a good idea, experiences early success, andthen needs help in order to deliver on the promise. Somewhere between a goodidea and market success, most businesses run into the challenge of setting up asystem that helps move things forward more efficiently.

As the organization grows, a dilemma appears. Sooner or later we all discoverthe need for reliable, repeatable processes or systems lest the wheel becomesthe constant reinvention. Systems and processes, however, can become overlyengineered and eventually create more headaches than they solve, resulting inextra layers of approval and sign-off, thus delaying progress.

Employees often resist processes for reasons ranging from not wanting to becramped in their style to fears of repeating the kind of bureaucratic nightmaresthey have experienced in past jobs.

Recently, I was working with two different companies, one in the technologysecurity business and another in health care information automation. Both weresuccessful, with a history of innovation and rapid growth, and yet both werefrustrated by the lack of efficiency that had crept into their businesses.

The technology security CEO put it this way: "We're a billion dollar companywith a 50-million-dollar infrastructure." This company manages by consensus.Pretty much everyone needs to be on board. When consensus is lacking, just aboutany project, market plan, or customer service initiative can easily be derailed.Even routine matters require meetings, study, revisions, more study, and thententative exploration of the possibility.

Unless, of course, the CEO sees another "bright, shiny object," and off peoplego again down a track that will drastically redirect company energy andresources. The "bright, shiny object" phenomenon prevents them from thinkingstrategically beyond the latest and greatest idea, while also leaving a numberof groups in the dust when directions change and they didn't get the memo.

The health care information company CEO had a markedly different take on things:"We hire the best and brightest, but still they lack common sense." In thisculture, decisions of any consequence run through the CEO's office, because theCEO does not trust that even senior managers will make the right decisions. Onthe one hand, it's hard to argue with success—while not the largest in thefield, the company is number one in its category and has been growing likecrazy. On the other hand, it is now confronting the consequences of its rapidgrowth and success. Too much going on, too many people involved, and too manyopportunities on the horizon—no one CEO can put that many fingers intothat many pies.

How do these companies adopt processes that can be trusted and implementedwithout overwhelming the cultures they have built? Both CEOs recognized the needto improve the way they operate their companies, for reasons that includeincreasing efficiency as well as improving their ability to compete in broadermarkets. However, as we plumbed the issues and possible solutions, both becameparalyzed with the fear of implementing new processes that would result in anoverbureaucratization of their "fast, flexible, and nimble organizations."

In actuality, though, neither company is quite as fast, flexible, or nimble asit once was. The fact is that they now tend to stumble over what used to besimple things. Coordination among groups has become somewhere between difficultand nonexistent. Approvals either take forever or are granted swiftly only to beoverturned a short time later.

Employees are beginning to express frustration with the roadblocks to gettingthings done. Middle managers are becoming increasingly fearful that theirdecisions will be second-guessed. The combination of frustration and fear leadspeople to slow things down even more in a multitude of ways. Some are foreverlooking for "buy-in" before moving; some simply dig in and focus on dozens ofsmall tasks, enabling them to demonstrate productivity in terms of the number ofthings accomplished—not necessarily the important things, just ones thatcan be counted; some are taking their own initiative, finding ways to get thingsdone despite the organization roadblocks.

This book will look at some of the sources of organizational roadblocks andoffer suggestions that you can employ to get things moving, to overcome internalresistance, and to make a difference. Again, as you find yourself bumping intowhat appear to be roadblocks or resistance, it will be important to keep in mindthat just about every hurdle initially showed up for an apparently good reason.

It's not as if a senior team of roadblock specialists convenes weekly to figureout what else it can do to make things more difficult. For example, lengthydecision processes often come into existence for reasons such as lowering riskor engaging multiple stakeholders. It's hard to argue with lowering risk orengaging employees, yet it's also hard to find the value in delays whensomething critical shows up.

Some workaround suggestions will be fairly low risk; others may require you totake a deep breath, make sure your résumé is in good shape, and forge aheadknowing that the outcome may not be what you hoped for. The larger, perhapsriskier suggestions involve big ideas, concepts, and philosophies, oftencentering on the roles of leadership and management. Some of these will bestrategic in nature, addressing what you are doing and why you are doing it. Thesmaller, lower-risk suggestions will be mostly tactical, emphasizing how you goabout getting things done, meeting milestones, or complying with internalprocess standards.

Some of the actions we will discuss will be individual in form, things that youcan do on your own or that involve just you and one other person. Some mayinvolve you and your team members, and others may involve coordination acrossmultiple teams. I will address a range of issues, many of which will reflect thefollowing paradox: nothing in this book works, and yet everything in the bookcan work. The real difference will be what you choose to make work, to apply, orto utilize. None of these are perfect ideas, but each can be perfected.

A particular paradox and challenge will appear over and over again: what worksfor you and what works for me may be different, even if the same basic conceptis in play for both of us. What you can make work and what I can make work maydepend on any number of variables. Rather than reading this book in search ofperfect answers that work perfectly, look for ideas that you can apply in yourown unique way, and perfect them in your own environment.

CONTROL, INFLUENCE, AND RESPOND

Let's start with a simple way of examining your work world, building on a formof strategic thinking popularized by Steven Covey.

Years ago, the leaders of a unit of our armed forces hired me to help themimprove efficiency in their operations. As part of the background for theengagement, they cited a model featuring three concentric circles as a way ofthinking about strategy (see Figure 1.1). The three circles representeverything in your environment: things you can directly control all on your own,things you may be able to change if you can influence the right folks, and thosethings that are truly external to you and to which you can only respond.

If you control what you can and influence where possible, thenyou are most likely to be as well equipped as possible to respond toexternal circumstances. Change, competitive threats, new technologies, and thelike are just the way it is out there. The only thing you can do about theoutside environment is respond. Winners are able to respond nimbly, withflexibility and adaptability, because they have figured out how to get thingsdone, not just how to appease bureaucracies.

Imagine that the three layers represent your entire work life.

• Control. The inner circle contains all those things that you cancontrol yourself, regardless of what others may say or do. While small, thiscircle does include choices you can make all on your own.

• Influence. The second layer relates to those areas of performancewhere you may be able to be impactful, but you require the approval,cooperation, support, or agreement of another. There may be many more areas herewhere you could imagine improvement, but it's not just up to you.

• Respond. This outer layer represents the rest of life. Turning againto the example of the weather, you can't really do anything about the rain otherthan decide how you respond. You can stay indoors, put on a raincoat, use anumbrella, or just decide that getting wet is OK. This is where most of lifetakes place: competitors do what they do, the economy moves the way it moves,and change just happens.

However, if you have prepared well by controlling what you can and influencingwhere possible, you should be able to respond or adapt to changing conditionsthat surround you in a much nimbler and more deft way. All kinds of people spendtoo much energy fretting about that environmental layer, where they can neithercontrol nor influence the outcome. Contrary to conventional wisdom, where we getin trouble has less to do with what happens in the outer layer and much more todo with how well we manage the inner two circles.

Another common approach, which we will address in more detail later, takes theform of people trying to influence someone or something by complaining andfinding fault with others. Even when the complaints about others are wellfounded, most complainers wind up being dismissed by management as "whiners."That's because the whiner-complainer rarely takes responsibility for his or herown role in the current situation or how to make it better. It's almost alwayssomeone else who needs to change.

The most important place to begin is right in the middle—that apparentlysmall circle where you actually have control.

INTENTION VERSUS METHOD

If you allow yourself to lose sight of your purpose or intention, you will beunlikely to find a way through and will instead become overly focused on thehurdle in front of you. Once you clarify your intention and commit to it, youmay begin to discover multiple ways to get there.

In the Introduction, I described David Allen's flight delay problems and how heworked around them. If he had glumly focused on the "insurmountable" problem ofthat uncontrollable variable, the weather, he would not have found his way tothat meeting in Louisville. However, once focused on the positive outcome, hisbrain was able to step beyond the obvious and start the search for options.

We call this the distinction between intention and method. For every intention,there are multiple methods that may get you there. In the Louisville example,many people would have been stumped by the lack of choices of airplanes going toLouisville. That's because their focus would have been on the method of travelrather than the intention of being there on time.

What do you do when the options come down to unattractive and even lessattractive? That depends on a combination of your intention and your commitment.If the intention is sufficiently clear, as it was in this case, then you simplyhave to ask yourself if you are fully committed to the outcome.

There's an old saying from the early days of the personal growth movement thatapplies here: 99 percent is a bitch, 100 percent is a breeze. I firstheard this in 1973 when I attended a personal growth workshop. I suspect theconcept, if not the actual phrase, goes so far back that no one really knowswhere it came from. With a 99 percent commitment, David might or might not havemade it to Louisville. He might have called it a day in L.A. or a night in St.Louis. He might even have made it all the way to Louisville.

Even if he had made it that far, though, what state of mind would he have beenin on arrival? If David had been operating from the 99 percent level, I suspecthe would have been somewhere between exhausted and grumpy. At the 100 percentlevel, he showed up fresh, alert, and enthused. Not only was he thrilled to beworking with this superb client, but also he could take deep satisfaction in theresult he produced and the creativity he exhibited to get there.

RESPONSE-ABILITY

Fritz Perls, the founder of gestalt therapy, coined the termresponse-ability. The way to apply this concept to your own life is asfollows: whenever you encounter a roadblock of any kind, look to yourself first.I suggest that in just about any situation, your ability to respond(response-ability) will be a function of your ability to controlwhat you can, to influence what you can, and to simply respondto the rest.

As situations arise that require some form of workaround, consider what iswithin your own power to control, something you can do without needing to enlistanyone else in order to make a difference. No matter what the situation orcircumstance, you will always have some choices in the matter, the foremost ofwhich is how you choose to respond: your response-ability.

As you look for options, you will need to address at least two pieces to thepuzzle: available responses measured against your ability to exercise thoseresponses.

Sometimes people get into difficulty by declaring defeat— "There's nothingI can do about this." "It's hopeless." "Damned if I do, damned if I don't." AsHenry Ford noted, if you believe you can't do anything, you won't even try. Asstated in the Introduction, how you frame the problem is the problem. If youtell yourself there's nothing to be done, there may be available choices orresponses that you simply don't see because of your mental attitude.

On the other hand, you may perceive numerous responses to any particularroadblock and recognize that one of them is the absolute best. It's the mostelegant, most direct, and all-around perfect workaround. Except for one possiblefly in the ointment: what if this perfect workaround response is something forwhich you are not currently skilled, trained, or prepared?

If it's a capability question, two courses are open. In some cases, you may bebetter off taking a less elegant solution that gets you through the immediateworkaround challenge. In other cases, those in which the situation is likely toarise again, you may need to acquire the skill or training necessary to executethe more complex or elegant workaround. It may take more time and effort todevelop the capability for this more elegant workaround, but investing that timeand effort may in turn pay dividends when the same issue arises again in thefuture.

In any situation, you will have a range of responses and a range of abilities totap. What makes one person effective and another less so may come down to howthey frame the problem and how they perceive their ability to respond. If youneed to get someone else on board, your first step is to look to anything youcan handle on your own, your personal response-ability, before trying to enlistthe other person. By taking control of what is truly yours, you will be in amuch more powerful and influential position when you reach out to influence thechoices someone else may need to make. At this point, you will finally be in thebest position to respond effectively to outside circumstances, even those thatseem out of your control, like the weather.

ACCOUNTABILITY: OWN THE GOAL, OWN THE PROCESS

In a way, accountability brings us back full circle, in that intention,commitment, response-ability, and accountability all support one another. Inmany respects, effective workarounds begin and end with accountability. Youmight have already experienced the conundrum of having established what youthought was a clear intention, committed to it 100 percent, and still come upshort. An accountability mind-set asks the question, "What was my role in thisoutcome?" It may also ask, "What's my role in the solution?" This mind-setrecognizes response-ability but stops short of blaming yourself—or anyoneelse, for that matter. Accountability is simply a way of owning the outcome,recognizing what's in front of you, and then taking the next best step you can.

Perhaps you have noticed that blame, complaint, and ducking accountability orresponse-ability have become somewhat commonplace in our daily lives.Not-my-fault and not-my-job attitudes abound out there. Given that many of ushave encountered managers who punish mistakes rather than encourage learning, itis understandable that blame and finger-pointing have become so familiar. Notvery effective, but understandable.

When you encounter problems in your job, it will serve you much better in thelong run if you ask yourself how you could have been better prepared so thatthese kinds of obstacles are avoided next time around. Reverting to complaintsor blame will drain off a considerable amount of your power to make choices andyour ability to influence others.

IT ALL STARTS WITH YOU

Remember, the place to begin thinking about workarounds may just be with you!One of my favorite simple but telling questions is: What could you do thatwould make a difference in your job that requires no one's approval,cooperation, support, or agreement other than your own?

Think about your own job for just a minute. Try answering that simple questionand see what you come up with. If you can discover wasteful exercises orprocesses within the company you work for, ask yourself what wasteful processesor exercises you have of your own. Are you late producing documents,deliverables, or other work products simply because you put tasks off, take toomuch time, or perhaps are a bit disorganized? If so, what can you do to becomemore efficient? What would happen if you got a bit more organized, planned yourwork just a bit better, or otherwise did what you could to improve? The simpleanswer is that you may get more work done, with a little less stress, andpossibly with a bit more appreciation from others. You may even find that bymaking things easier on yourself, you also make things easier on someone else.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from WORKAROUNDS THAT WORK by RUSSELL BISHOP. Copyright © 2011 by Russell Bishop. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw Hill
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 007175203X
• ISBN 13: 9780071752039
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256