Dave's Whiteboard

Tom Fox, in the Washington Post’s Federal Coach column, provides some advice for managers in the federal government who oversee younger workers.  Fox holds that “the best leaders recognize that potential talent is nurtured by developing expertise, executive skills and solid judgment, along with providing constant feedback and opportunities for personal growth.”

The advice may be obvious, but it’s also pertinent:

• Connect the dots between now and the future.
  • Or, help the less-experienced worker see how current responsibilities fit into a larger picture that makes sense for that worker.
• Encourage an apprenticeship mindset.
  • A real leader will know that the root of “apprentice” means “to learn,” not “to do all the scutwork.”
• Reinforce lessons learned through constant feedback.
  • It’s true that learning can happen anytime.  You can increase the likelihood of its happening by helping your staff to reflect, reprocess, question, and re-express what they’ve been doing and the results that have followed.

All of which reminded me of the skillful approach to coaching that’s wrapped in the sometimes flashy, sometimes sly trappings of What Not to Wear.

If you haven’t seen this TLC program: in each episode, fashion consultants Stacy London and Clinton Kelly critique the clothing choices of someone whose family or friends nominated them for this, um, performance review.

As with many “reality” shows, WNTW has a certain OMG appeal.  Worldly folks like you and me would never dress as poorly or as blindly as the folks on the program, right?

I’ve watched many episodes (sometimes as an antidote after watching an especially grim movie).  Beneath the apparently lightweight notion of focusing so intensely on fashion, Stacy and Clinton pay a lot of attention to helping the individual focus productively on goals.

Stacy: We don’t want you to label yourself just as a mom.

Lori: But my daughter is my priority.

* * *

Lori: If you’re trying to change my distorted version of what I look like with form-fitted clothes, you’re not helping with these styles. Period.

Clinton:  You do not have a crazy distorted body, a weird body shape. You have your own body shape.

WNTW follows a set pattern.  I was thinking about this pattern as a model for helping inexperienced people start figuring out an area of complexity.  Sort of a well-dressed version of complex learning.

You can think of the nominated-by-friends aspect as just part of the randomness of the workplace.  We don’t always get to choose our learning opportunities.  Sometimes they show up dressed as crummy assignments, annoying coworkers, or the departure of a favorite boss.

Some of the standard elements in a What Not to Wear episode:

• The individual models 3 of her own outfits and explains why she likes them–while surrounded by mirrors.

• Clinton and Stacy create 3 new outfits that demonstrate fashion  rules suited to the individual.
• The hosts ritually toss out most (or all) of the person’s old wardrobe.
• The person goes shopping solo, armed with the new rules (and a $5,000 credit card from the program).
• Invariably, Clinton and Stacy intervene to deal with poor choices from Day 1′s shopping, and to help with Day 2′s.
• A hair stylist and makeup consultant try”reframing in their areas of expertise.
• The individual returns home for a reveal with family and friends.

Whatever you think of fashion, you have to admire the way the gurus guide the individual into the (typically strange) word of style with mindfulness.

They’ll make outrageous comments about the old wardrobe, but they’re also respectful of the individual, her life, and her career.  I’ve seen them dealing with a professional witch (from Salem, Massachusetts, no less), an Episcopal priest, a dreadlocked “alternative model,” and a cancer survivor who’d had a double mastectomy.

Looking past the show’s structure, you find:

• Rules of thumb (with the why).
  • If you’re small-statured, coats and blazers that fall just above the hip are an ideal length; otherwise, you run the risk of a longer coat length distorting your proportions.
• New approaches gives as experience shared.
  • Don’t despair if the first four or five pairs of pants you try on don’t fit the way you want them to – sometimes you have to kiss a lot of jeans frogs before you find your denim prince.
• Simplified cognitive maps (the mannequin outfits and the rules they exemplify).
• Opportunity to apply basic rules
• Feedback on that application in a collaborative setting

From time to time, WNTW does a “where are they now?” show, reconnecting with people who’ve been on the show.  I suspect these are less interesting to the show’s audience (or there’d be more 6-months-later episode).

I’m sure it’s tough for the individuals to maintain or even heighten their new style awareness when in their old settings.  The answer, though, isn’t requiring Stacy and Clinton Refresher Training.  Instead of a single answer, I’d say there are many possible ways for the person to adapt to real life, continue strengthening newfound skills, and to avoid falling back into stretchy sweats and rock-concert T shirts.

In terms of your professional development, is that your standard outfit?  I don’t mean on your body, necessarily.  How are you dressing your mindset?

In her comment on yesterday’s post, Kathy Sierra included a link to a presentation she made at a recent Government 2.0 Expo.  Here it is:

Sierra’s often talked about passion, and makes a good distinction here between “passion” and “fantasy models.”  In the workplace (as elsewhere), passion means more than “I’m interested in” or “I care about” something.  For her, it means that you’re so into whatever you’re into that you’re constantly learning.

Not everyone is, which explains the difference between 15 years’ experience and one year repeated 14 times.

That’s how I interpret her remark about passion meaning that you’re engaged in “a sustainable way.”  You’re not just connected to something passively.  You interact with it, and that interaction changes you.

In her talk, she touches on the fact that many people don’t learn and change even when they’ve got a real stake in the outcome–like people who’ve had coronary bypass surgery.

That doesn’t mean they can’t, of course.  It may mean that they need better tools to help them change–clearer examples, support systems, networks, all that stuff.

In the meantime, her suggestions for getting started include:

• Teach something cool (as a bridge to other things)
• Provide opportunity for self-expression (meaning, let people do things with what they’re learning)
• Wrap the mundane or pragmatic in a compelling context

If you’re in the U.S., your local jurisdiction produces an annual water quality report (here’s the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission’s version).  Sierra points to recent reports from the city of Bryant, Texas (available from the Water Services department’s main page).  Since 2004, they’ve worked at doing things differently, at least in part to raise awareness of what the department does for citizens.

Links at the Water Services page offer reports from earlier years, like the 2004 edition from which I took the picture above.  Even without reading all the text, you get a striking image.  They’re talking about backflow prevention–keeping hazardous material from contaminating the water system (not to mention the water from your faucet).  The city has backflow prevention in place, and so can you.

So the citizens of Bryant could learn more about their water and modify their usage based in part on the report.  And on a couple other levels:

• The staff of the water department has more visibility.
• The city thinks differently about how it communicates with citizens.
• Individuals (workers, citizens, passers-by) see a fresher, potentially more effective way to share a message.

Maybe it’s not always calendars.  Or maybe the calendar form, and the increased resolution that Kathy Sierra talks about, helps drive people to more and more creativity.  It’s like what the poet Robert Francis said about the sestina in general and his poem Hallelujah: a sestina in particular:

If you drape thirty-nine iron chains around your arms and shoulders and then do a dance, the whole point of the dance will be to seem light and effortless.

Robert Francis knows, as Kathy Sierra knows, that “light and effortless” won’t happen unless you pick up those chains, get out on the floor, and dance.

Microsoft Word for DOS appeared in late 1983.  I’d started using a word processor only a few months before–WordStar, which at one time did bestride the computer world like a Colossus.  Relatively speaking, WordStar was geek heaven; its article on Wikipedia states, apparently with a straight face, that “WordStar is still considered by many to be one of the best examples of a ‘writing program.’”

That notion evidently comes from admiration of the small file sizes that WordStar produced because it didn’t fool around with things like WYSIWYG display on the screen or with formatting commands sent to the printer.  WordStar focused on text, dammit, and you were lucky it bothered doing that.

I got pretty good with WordStar, but when I came across a working demo of Microsoft Word for DOS, I was more than ready to switch.  Nowadays, the differences between the two seem minor (WordStar screen shot, Word screen shot), but the move away from technoid control codes and the inclusion of a few formatting touches (on-screen bolding and underlining) was a clear advance.

I use several obscure features in Word, like the seq field code, but I’m also painfully aware of drawbacks like its capricious approach to numbering paragraphs.  In general, software companies feel compelled to add features to their products.  I think that’s because they–and some of their customers–confuse “feature” with “benefit.”  There’s some relationship, of course, but over time it tends to be more hypothetical (if not downright fanciful).

Why?  As Naomi Dunford points out on the IttyBiz blog, “With very few exceptions (medicine and cutting-edge technology come to mind) you are wasting space and money by telling people about your features.”

This morning, one of the people I follow on Twitter shared this comment on feature-itis:

Track Changes is, as Senator Bob Dole said of another bright idea, is one of those things that seems great until you take a look at it.  I don’t know what aspect of Track Changes was making Chris shouty, but for me it’s always been quantity: the more changes (and changers), the more you feel like you’re being trampled to death by weasels.

One problem is that people try to cram several kinds of editing (for facts, for sequence, for syntax, for style) into a single Pickett’s Charge of revision.  A more dire problem is the confusion of “change” with “improvement.”  Shakespeare had something similar in mind in Henry IV, Part One.

GLENDOWER:
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

HOTSPUR:
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?

The number of changes tracked doesn’t equal the number of improvements made, any more than the number of features added equals the amount of benefit delivered (are you listening, Quicken?).

Which points toward an inherent contradiction for training or learning in organizations.  You can almost certainly reap benefits when you help people move from “can’t do X at all” to “can do Basic Things A, B, and C” — assuming, of course, that those people see A, B, and C as benefiting them.

Working further through the alphabet of features (D, E, and F…L, M, and N…) means you’re getting farther out on the long tail.  Each addition becomes more specific, which means more contextual, which means has decreasingly less appeal to most people (even though potentially more appeal to a small number of people).

I rarely see much mileage for me in talking to others about customizing Word toolbars, let alone creating multiple templates for different kinds of outlines.  As for Google Docs, one less-than-obvious reason for their popularity is that the relative lack of features makes for easier collaboration among groups of people who might have widely varying levels of skill in more traditional word processors.  If you can’t add internal cross-references or sequence codes, you’re not going to frustrate or confuse people who don’t know what to do with them.

WordStar box and disks image from Wikipedia.

My previous post talked about goals related to a complex problem.  I even reframed the problem, from “losing weight” to “being in good shape.”  Yes, there are still covert qualifiers, but the main thrust is: poke and prod a problem statement for a while.  This is what Joe Harless had in mind with his dictum that an ounce of analysis is worth a pound of objectives.

You want to look for some evidence that the possible causes are in fact contributing to the problem.  Evidence is what helps prevent cause-jumping, charging full-tilt toward a solution based on the cause you’re sure is at work.

Outside of its meaning in Morocco, Louis Renault’s order to round up the usual suspects is not all that different from prescribing doses of training to solve some pressing on-the-job problem.

I’ve been studying Weight Watchers as one multifaceted approach to losing weight, whether as an end in itself or as part of an  overall goal of good health.  I see a cluster of “health skills” that are like constituent skills from Ten Steps to Complex Learning:

• Eat smart (when you’re in charge)
• Dine smart (as a guest, in a restaurant, at a party)
• Shop smart (at the grocery store)
• Cook smart
• Live smart (get along with those you live with)

I’m sure there are plenty of others, and not all apply to everyone: maybe you don’t cook much and don’t want to.  The various tools and approaches used by Weight Watchers work in different ways as part of a performance system.

For example, they rate food by points based on fiber, calories, and fat.  You calculate your own point allowance based on your age, your height, your sex, your activity level, and your starting weight.  My initial “point budget” was 33% higher than my wife’s.  That meant I didn’t start out feeling as though I was going to starve to death.

Performance standards: I haven’t yet done the math, but I’m pretty sure your point allowance aligns with the Mayo Clinic’s strategy of setting a realistic goal for weight loss.  To lose 1 to 2 pounds a week, they say, you need to burn 500 – 1,000 more calories per day than you take in.

Monitoring and feedback: By tracking your points, you’re increasing your awareness of what you eat.  I use a third-party app on my phone, but there are also paper checklists, including some with a grid to track your state of mind throughout the day (full, satisfied, hungry).

Social support: people like my wife participate in weekly meetings, with the benefit of both the meeting leader and the other people working through the program.  For me, it’s mainly the fact that the two of us have collaborated (for four months now).

Process change: in a series of 10 booklets, the program offers quick-start tips, menu ideas (with points already calculated), suggestions for increasing your physical activity, and even strategies based on the particular problems or setbacks you identify in yourself.

In a related change, we spend about 45 minutes each weekend picking out dinner recipes for the week, then building a grocery list based on those menus.  (An unexpected discovery: many of the recipes in Jacques Pépin’s cookbooks fit our “point budgets” just as they come.  This one I estimate at 6 points per serving; my daily allowance is 32.)

♦ ♦ ♦

I don’t want to turn this post into a dieting column.  Really, I’m looking at a number of ways to go about accomplishing what Tom Gilbert would call a worthwhile result.  And part of the point is that long-term, significant performance requires a wide variety of interventions.  Some are pretty straightforward, procedural skills: learn to manage portion size; always track points.  Some are more situational.

Most, if not all, have evidence to support their value.  Whether that evidence is pertinent to you is something else.  Evidence suggests, for instance, that frequent monitoring of weight (like weighing yourself daily) helps you progress and also maintain the new weight once you reach your goal.  Helps, not guarantees.  But stepping on the scale every day isn’t usually too strenuous.

CC-licensed photo of retro scale by teresia.

I’ve lost about 18 pounds in the past three months, so I’ve been thinking about goals and performance improvement. (When I say there’s more to me than you might think, I’m not necessarily bragging.)

In February, people in my wife’s office started a Weight Watchers group. It seems if enough people sign up, the Weight Watchers organization arranges for a leader who coordinates weekly meetings. My wife saw this as an opportunity to lose weight that had begun to bother her. I’ve gotten to benefit from the program without having to be in the group.

This post and its planned successor aren’t meant to advocate for Weight Watchers per se. What I’m doing is examining this specific program as a multifaceted approach to a complex problem.

You’d think the goal part would be simple. “Lose 20 pounds” sounds reasonable. When you hear that, you assume someone’s done some analysis, and a 20-pound loss is the desired result. In a way, it’s like a client who wants people to “understand” some business process.

When I’m off duty, I think “understand” is a terrible word to see in a goal. It utterly fails the Heydad test: “Hey, Dad, watch me while I understand inventory management.” Not that I don’t believe in understanding. It’s more that people will load this over-broad term with their own meanings, and it’s inevitable that the various meanings will clash.

I’m reluctant to change a client’s own vocabulary at the outset, though, so I’ll try to find out what “understand” means in terms of observable results. And that’s an approach to take with “lose 20 pounds” as well, even if the client is your own fair self. Probe for the symptoms, probe for the possible causes, and look at the fit between cause and possible intervention.

What tells you you need to lose weight? What indicates that 20 pounds is a good amount to lose? What time frame do you have in mind (and why)? How do you know a diet is the way to go?

To make some of those answers explicit for myself, I’ve come up a goal of being in the best shape I can be. That’s tough to write, because I’m not in particularly good shape, and because I can be mighty self-critical. But it helps me reframe weight loss as an enabling objective: I want to lose weight as part of getting myself in shape.

This reframing also helps keep quibbling down. Take body-mass index, a widely used formula to relate weight to health risks. If you’re really tall, or really short, or really muscular, then your BMI may not be a good indication of health.

On the other hand, if you’re six feet tall, not muscular, and weigh 243 pounds, you could do worse than pay attention to your BMI number.

That number would be 33. It’s beyond overweight; it’s  more than 20 pounds into the “obese” range. Whatever a good weight for you is, it’s probably not one with a BMI of 33.

When you come to Weight Watchers, the program assumes you’ve done some of that analysis, and that weight loss is a reasonable goal for you. I can’t say for sure, but I’d guess the meeting leader tries to counsel people who don’t seem to need to lose weight.

The program’s “healthy weight ranges” make use of BMI, suggesting that you aim somewhere between 20 and 25 (for that six-footer, 147 to 184 pounds).  But dogmatism isn’t the characteristic tone:

For now, use the Healthy Weight Ranges chart as a guide… your ultimate weight goal is totally up to you, and any weight loss that results in a lower BMI than your current one and can be maintained for the long term means success.

In addition, if you adopt a goal outside the range for your height, the program will accept that with a note from your doctor.

While I assume many people have some ultimate goal in mind from the beginning, Weight Watchers suggests an interim target of 5% of your current weight. (That 243-pound person’s target would be 12 pounds.) So you’ve got a flexible goal tailored to the individual, one that relates to the short-term desire for progress while acknowledging that its achievement is a stage on the way to greater accomplishment.  The next target?  10% of starting weight.  (That’s cumulative, not an additional 10%.)

I see a great deal of value in this. For most people, it’s hard to lose weight. Without extreme effort, a pound or so a week is good progress. But who wants to “progress” through 20 or 30 or 40 or more weeks? Three months isn’t a bad time horizon. In fact, in the initial stages of a weight-loss plan, most people lose at a slightly more rapid rate.

Here’s the deal: if you want to lose weight, you have to use more calories than you consume. How you manage that equation can vary: eat less, move more, or combine the two. “Eat less” and “move more” are concise expressions of complexes of behavior.

In my next post, I’ll talk about a number of approaches to initiate and sustain behavior to help achieve the overall goal.

CC-licensed photo of baby and scale by Salim Fadhley.