Zaufanie fundamentem współpracy w zespole (projektowym) (1/3)

This time about TRUST in Polish. "Trust is an essential ingredient in an organisation's ability to collaborate, drive business results, and achieve overall effectiveness". More on trust in English in my previous post.

„Zaufanie jest jak pieniądze. Potrzeba wielu lat, żeby je zyskać, a wystarczą minuty, żeby je stracić” 

~ Jurgen Appelo, Management 3.0 Workout

Czym jest zaufanie?

Zaufanie jest emocją okazywaną ludziom, przedmiotom czy instytucjom, takim jak firma, rząd czy społeczeństwo. Zaufanie wobec jakiegoś obiektu jest to wiedza lub wiara, że jego działania, przyszły stan lub własności okażą się zgodne z naszym życzeniem. Często oznacza nawet przekonanie jednej ze stron w to, że motywacją drugiej strony wobec niej jest bycie uczciwym i chcącym działać dobrze. Zaufaniem obdarowujemy osobę, której wierzymy, że będzie doradzać nam dobrze, myśląc o nas, a nie o sobie.  Zaufanie może, ale nie musi być odwzajemnione; jest jedną z podstawowych więzi międzyludzkich, zarówno w rodzinie jak i grupach społecznych, i bywa szczególnie cenne w sytuacjach kryzysowych. Definicja zaadaptowana z Wikipedia.

Czym jest kapitał społeczny?

Fakt podzielania wspólnych poglądów i przekonań, z których wywodzi się zaufanie, stanowi podstawowy składnik kapitału społecznego i istotną wartość ekonomiczną. Kapitał społeczny to formalne i nieformalne związki między jednostkami, społeczne powiązania oraz normy wzajemności i zaufania. (W. W. Powell, L. Smith-Doerr za Krzysztof Nowakowski, Wymiary zaufania i problem zaufania negatywnego w Polsce).

Brak zaufania powoduje, że ludzie przestają wierzyć w sens działania zespołowego, stają się aspołeczni. Francis Fukuyama dzieli społeczeństwa na: zaufania społecznego i braku tego zaufania. Przez zaufanie rozumie mechanizm oparty na założeniu, że innych członków danej społeczności cechuje uczciwe, kooperatywne zachowanie oparte na wspólnie wyznawanych normach (za Krzysztof Nowakowski, Wymiary zaufania i problem zaufania negatywnego w Polsce).

Jak jest w Polsce z tym zaufaniem?

Skoro bez zaufania nie ma pracy zespołowej. To czy w Polsce, przy tak” żenująco niskim poziomie zaufania do kogokolwiek i czegokolwiek”, mamy szansę na sukces w realizacji projektów i dalszy rozwój?  

Źródło: http://civicpedia.ngo.pl/wiadomosc/955642.html

Psycholog społeczny prof. Janusz Czapiński uważa, że Polska nie wejdzie do grupy krajów wysokorozwiniętych, czyli opierających rozwój gospodarczy na wiedzy, bez zwiększenia zaufania i aktywności społecznej. Podkreślił, że kapitał społeczny trzeba budować przede wszystkim w administracji publicznej i w szkołach.

Wg. prof. Czapińskiego: „w krajach słabiej rozwiniętych, a do takich nadal należy Polska, decydującą przesłanką wzrostu gospodarczego jest kapitał ludzi. Z kolei w krajach wysokorozwiniętych tempo wzrostu gospodarczego zależy przede wszystkim od tzw. kapitału społecznego. Przy obecnym poziomie kapitału społecznego, awersji do współpracy, wzajemnej nieufności we wszystkich środowiskach, nie jest możliwy dalszy rozwój Polski. Polska - na tle Europy - jest na szarym końcu pod względem deklarowanego poziomu zaufania wobec innych ludzi. Bardzo mały odsetek Polaków jest przekonanych, że ludzie "najczęściej starają się być pomocni". - Dużo Polaków ma awersję do współpracy. Nie ufają kontrahentom - m.in. dlatego w Polsce kultywowane są mikro- i małe przedsiębiorstwa, które nie będą zainteresowane tworzeniem klastrów. W Polsce jest bardzo niewiele grup producenckich. Trzeba uchylić tę awersję i wzbudzić zaufanie Polaków do siebie i do instytucji.

Budowę tak rozumianego kapitału społecznego należy rozpocząć od reformy szkoły, czyli zmiany promowanej tam "formuły indywidualistycznej" na promowanie współpracy uczniów. Po drugie, mówił profesor, instytucje publiczne nadal dają Polakom zbyt mało powodów, aby im zaufać. Wreszcie - zdaniem profesora - należałoby stosować zachęty (m.in. podatkowe) dla firm, aby zdecydowały się łączyć swoją produkcję”. Całość tutaj.

Osobiście obserwuje coraz więcej nowych inicjatyw, które działają na rzecz  lokalnych społeczności. Ba, sama je współtworzę i aktywnie w nich działam. Działalność stowarzyszenia Project Management Institute Poland Chapter (PMI PC) jest też doceniana na świecie. W październiku 2013 PMI Poland Chapter został laureatem nagrody "Chapter of The Year" - najbardziej cenionej nagrody przyznawanej przez Zarząd PMI Global za doskonałe wyniki w działalności i rozwoju organizacji. W październiku 2014, PMI Global ponownie wyróżnił PMI Poland Chapter, tym razem w kategorii "Collaboration and Outreach", czyli za osiągnięcia w zakresie współpracy i spektrum działania. Między innymi doceniono naszą już jedenastoletnią inicjatywę English Summer/Winter Camp oraz kilkuletni program Project Management at School.

Czy więc jest aż tak źle?

W kolejnym wywiadzie prof. Czapińskiego czytamy: „Cały czas wszystkie te organizacje wspólnotowego działania są właśnie tymi wysepkami na ogromnym morzu polskiej nieufności. I niestety nie decydują o tym, w którą stronę idziemy. Oczywiście błogosławię tego typu inicjatywy, ale niestety są one znikome. W większości badań, w tym także w Diagnozie Społecznej, właściwie w ogóle ich nie widać. Jeśli pytamy 26 tys. Polaków, to wśród nich może się trafi ok. 50, którzy w jakikolwiek sposób działają wspólnotowo.”

Źródło: http://civicpedia.ngo.pl/wiadomosc/955642.html

Więcej na temat jak zbudować i odbudować zaufanie w zespole, nie tylko projektowym, w kolejnej części artykułu już wkrótce.

Visual Thinking – the Path to Genius?

This article was published on the dooodleledo website, but I have decided to post it here as well, as visual thinking is one the crucial competencies of a nowaday's Projet Manager. Please join our next Doodleledo meeting in Gdansk on 30th January 2015. More details here.

Visual thinking has been described as seeing words as a series of pictures (Wikipedia). For me visual thinking is the ability to work effectively with the complicated ideas. By unlocking the power of visual thinking we can overcome problems, think more creatively and critically, make better decisions and expand our perspective of what's possible (Visual Thinking Magic).

In times of increasing complexity, competition and constraint, we cannot rely on yesterday’s ideas, products and ways of working. Today’s leaders in order to improve performance need to stimulate creative thinking and unleash the creative potential in themselves and in their teams. IBM study reveals that creativity is the most important leadership quality followed by integrity and global thinking – 1500 corporate leaders, from 60 nations and 33 industries were pulled on what drives them in managing their companies in today’s world. Creative leaders are more prepared to break with the status quo of industry, enterprise, and revenue models.

“Great is the human who has not lost his childlike heart”

                                      — Mencius (Meng-Tse), 4th century BCE

“Albert Einstein believed that the words and numbers — as they are written or spoken — did not play a significant role in his thinking process. Geniuses are constantly making novel combinations. They are always looking for ways to combine and recombine things and ideas in new ways. What’s surprising is that the things they are combining are not new or revolutionary at all — they simply haven’t been combined this way before. When thinking visually, you are constantly combining and recombining things in unique ways. You are looking at the same world as everyone else, but seeing something very different by using pictures to fuse together surprising combinations of thoughts, things and ideas” – Visual Thinking Magic.

Although visual thinking is not limited to drawing, drawing plays a crucial role in developing the visual thinking expertise. And what’s the most important, everyone can draw through practicing.

The whole framework can be found on the quoted several times here Visual Thinking Magic website, which I find very interesting and encourage you to explore in more details. For me personally, apart from competencies, mindset and so on,  the environment is very important. How to inspire ourselves and the people around us to be more enthusiastic, creative and passionate? How to create the space excel?

Let’s start building a culture promoting high creativity ( Source: The Handbook of High-Performance Virtual Teams, page 46; adapted from Nemiro  2004):

1. Ideas valued
2. Trust, high level of honesty
3. Constructive tension
4. High level of challenge
5. Collaboration
6. Freedom
7. Supportive management
8. Sufficient resources
9. Understand work style

As opposed to a culture of low creativity:

1. Ideas dismissed
2. Mistrust
3. Unconstructive tension
4. Lack of challenge
5. Competition
6. Lack of Freedom
7.  Status quo
8. Insufficient resources and time

More on creativity can be found in my previous post.

So, let’s start our path to become a genius! Draw, have fun and meet new people! To join our next Doodleledo meeting please follow us on Facebook or website.

Agile Management 2014 - Some Tips from Jurgen Appelo

I had a pleasure to take part in the second edition of Agile Management 2014 conference organised by Governica and held in Warsaw, 17-18 September 2014, as the Program Board member and a round table facilitator.

The keynote speaker Jurgen Appelo kicked off the event sharing some interesting tips from his book Management 3.0 Workout, which can be downloaded for free from here.

Instead of Jurgen’s bio, let me share his definition of a Creative Networker as he calls himself. As the knowledge economy is fading and the interaction/creative economy gains ground, Creative Networkers are replacing Knowledge Workers.

"I came up with the term creative networker as an alternative to knowledge worker, which is a bit outdated in my opinion. I prefer this new term to emphasize that many people work nowadays in the creative economy [Denning, “Leadership”] and that they collaborate in networks, not in hierarchies. .... A creative networker is a person who creates or grows unique value within a network of people, or someone who creates or grows the network in an original way for others to share their value. Even better, it can be a person who does both!" Source: Management 3.0 Workout. By the way: “Creative networkers choose to boss themselves.”

I have chosen 3 tips from Jurgen’s speech, some more in the drawings and far more in his book.

1. Personal Maps

Getting to know a person is critical to collaboration. Create a personal map of your colleague to narrow the mental gap. Write categories of interest such as home, education, work, hobbies, family, friends, goals, and values, and expand the mind map by adding more information you know about this person. By creating a personal map of a colleague, you make an effort to better understand that person.

2. Delegation Boards

Delegation is not easy. A delegation board helps management to clarify delegation and to foster empowerment for both management and workers.

Why do we need to distribute control? “Complex systems survive and thrive because control is distributed. It is why the Internet cannot be destroyed. It is why terrorist groups form independent, self-organizing units. And it is why organizations require workers to have a high level of control over their own work. A top-down style of management is undesirable because it stifles an organization’s ability to deal with complexity (Seddon, Freedom from Command & Control pag:193).”

The English verb “to manage” comes from the Italian “maneggiare”, meaning to handle and train horses. Managing an organization is like leading a horse. Manage people like you would lead a horse with care, love and patience.

The delegation board is an easy tool people can use to communicate the type of delegation between a manager and a team, or between any two parties. This tool can also help both parties be open and transparent about what they expect from each other.

3. Performance Appraisals / Bonus System

Most organisations use a formal process involving performance appraisals as the main (or sometimes only) way of “evaluating” the performance of employees. The performance appraisal is described as a mandated process in which, for a period of time (often annually), an employee’s work performance, behaviours, and/or traits are rated, judged, and/or described by someone other than the rated employee, and documented records are kept by the organization (Coens and Jenkins, Abolishing Performance Appraisals loc:402).

Personally I used hate the annual/mid year review process (happy that do not need to go through it any more). First, it takes so much time, second, it doesn’t work. Nobody has been able to prove that appraisals will help organizations improve their performance in the long term (Coens and Jenkins, Abolishing Performance Appraisals loc:769).

Fortunately, the innovative/adaptive organisations are getting rid of the performance appraisal overheads as it’s unsustainable in the light of the emerging globalized creative economy. Remote working, contract workers, Agile and Lean methods, and many other trends make it more and more difficult to organize formal performance evaluations between “superiors” and their “subordinates”.

So, what can we use instead? Use a peer feedback as the main performance measurement. Contributions to a shared purpose are best evaluated by peers, not managers.

I like the virtual currency bonus system Jurgen suggesting as traditional ones rarely have a positive effect on people’s performance. You can use credits, points or hugs. Virtual currency, in this case hugs, represents the merits that people can collect over time and then exchange for money.

Everyone gets an equal number of hugs, but you must give away your hugs to others. You can pass your hugs to one person or more people who you think deserve them. Jurgen advises to ask yourself this question: “What did others do that helped us to engage people, improve work, and delight clients? Did someone get us a step closer to achieving our purpose?”

Everyone in the team (it’s easy to introduce this system in teams working together on a daily basis as people know each other well) collects hugs through a month, quarter etc. and then they can be exchanged to money and the bonus gets paid. For example one hug is one dollar.

Note: The first and the most important  thing you do before you introduce the new system is set up a safe-to-fail environment.

More in the drawings. Enjoy!

Want to succeed in your career? Start playing sports!

The idea of this post came out from the Lady Business Club evening, where we talked about sport and business. More on the meeting here.

December is always good time to reflect on the previous year and even our whole life and I have realized that sport has always had a huge impact on my life. I must admit it’s an inseparable part of my life.

I was not born in a sporty family, neither my father nor my mother did any sport, except for my mum who liked walking, but that time there was not such a thing as nordic walkingJ. Although no one encouraged me to do any sport I kept finding opportunities to practice something. Need to mention that my small village school did not have much to offer, but my parents’ company took care of a concrete pitch, which became a tennis court in sunny days and in winter, poured with water, got converted into a skating rink.

So I played tennis, table tennis, badminton, cycling, jogging, ice- skating in winters and lake swimming during summers. All sports I learnt myself, as no-one had time or skills to teach me and there was no place around I could go to train. As a teenager I fell in love with athletics, as it did not require any equipment or special place to practice – mainly running,  medium and long distances were my favourite. The secondary school PE teacher neglected our class so much and the only thing we played was volleyball, mainly without any support from the teacher, in Polish we call it “ mata i grajta” approach. The result is I hate playing (love watching as Poland is pretty good)  volleyball till todayL.

Fortunately, at the beginning of university studies, all 1^st grade students’ sport capabilities were tested and the athletic coaches discovered my talent for running. I was selected to the athletic university team which I had been representing for 5 years with some small successes – ex: a team bronze medal in a cross-country race, for which I have been awarded with University Chancellor’s Award for the achievements in sport (not academic). 

Although students who are involved in sports, including myself, benefit in many ways: have increased grades, better self-esteem and social skills.

Mover, I made great friends and one of them is my best friend till now, had opportunities to visit different cities in Poland and abroad and learnt some other sports like skiing, which would not be able to afford that time if not within the athletic team – 1-2 weeks during winter we used to go the mountains for training.

University Chancellor's Award ceremony with Paweł Adamowicz, University Vice-Chancellor and present Gdańsk President 

When I joined the university team I had no idea those experiences could later help me succeed in my career.  Let me quote some findings from the interesting study.

“The research report, titled “Making the connection: women, sport and leadership” by the EY Women Athletes Business Network and espnW found that female executives are more likely to have played sports than those in non-leadership roles — and they’re also more likely to hire other women who have played a sport. Playing sports can help women develop motivational skills, team building skills, and the ability to see projects through to completion — and it equips women with the competitive spirit that’s essential for success on both the playing field and in the workplace.

“This study validates long-held theories that women who are athletes are well-suited for the business world and have tangible advantages,” says Laura Gentile, vice president of espnW, in a press release. “From work ethic to adaptability to superior problem-solving ability, these women enter the workforce ready to win and demonstrate that ability as they rise throughout their career.” More in the article.

I still do a lot of sports from which I benefit in many ways:

• 30 min of yoga every day makes me more mindful and helps me to keep fit and slim (believe or not but cannot find anything better to sculpture my body). The feeling of every muscle, even in my small fingers, is great and I break my own limits like standing on the head which was impossible before due to the fear.
• nordic walking and running recently (yes, started running last month after a 15 + year break as planning to take part in charity running races). These sports are easy to do as I live next to the forest and help me to unleash my creativity – all ideas come to my mind when I walk or run.
• swimming gives me the feeling of freedom.
• And more and more which I do for fun: tennis, windsurfing, skiing etc.

All these make me stronger, give me more energy and what’s the most important make me happy!  That’s my secretJ

Let’s add “Play More Sports” to our New Year’s Resolutions lists!

Does not matter what age you are, choose something you like. My mum being 68, instead of taking pills and complaining about health problems, exercises every day!

Start from 20 minutes 3 times a week – small steps is a key to a successful change. A few years ago, when decided to practice yoga every morning, started from 6 asanas and when did not feel like practicing was saying to myself: “do only 3” and usually ended up with 6, because once you start you want more. Happy New Year!