Lou Quinto

Meetings Will be the Death of Us!

September 3, 2013 by Lou Quinto Leave a Comment

In 2004, Patrick Lencioni authored a book titled Death by Meeting. The title alone summed up how many people felt about meetings. Not surprisingly, studies have shown that the average professional spends 25% of their time in meetings and half that time is wasted. That’s 250 hours a year! Most people just accept this waste as the reality of today’s business environment – like commuting to the office. However, you can dramatically improve the quality of your meetings with a few simple questions.

If you consider the meetings you attend, you’ll notice that about half of the meetings are simple information exchange meetings but the other half are problem solving/decision making meetings. The higher your position in the organization, the more likely you’ll encounter the problem solving variety. By asking four simple questions, you can dramatically improve the quality and even eliminate many of the problem solving/decision making meetings you attend:

1. What is the problem we are trying to solve? Try this one question at your next unproductive meeting and see if you don’t get some very different responses.

2. What is causing the problem? This question is frequently overlooked as people assume they already know the cause. You won’t get agreement on the ultimate solution if you don’t get agreement on questions #1 and #2.

3. What ideas do you have for solving the problem? We often allow our biases and incorrect assumptions to narrow our choices. Don’t fall into this trap…ask the question.

4. What is your recommendation? This should be a logical outcome from the responses to questions #1 – #3.

The answers for the above questions should be expected from every person that invites you to a problem solving type meeting. If they are answering these questions in advance, they’ll find that they often don’t even need to meet. Sometimes you’ll need to meet to help answer one of these questions but then your meeting will be dramatically more focused and productive. Try it and you’ll be amazed at the clarity and productivity of your meetings.

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Action Management and Associates

Turning Negative Thinking Into Positive Results

September 3, 2013 by Lou Quinto Leave a Comment

By Lou Quinto, Executive Coach and Speaker

When my youngest daughter was in kindergarten, she was learning her numbers from 1-100. Her teacher sent home a newsletter with some games we could play with her at home that would help her in this learning quest. One of the games she suggested was “Guess the Number.” This is where you – the parent – think of a number in your head and your child has to guess what number you have selected.

“Alright Tess,” I said “Let’s play a game. (Over the years I have found children -and most adults – prefer to play games, than to do homework!) I am thinking of a number between 1 and 100. Your job is to ask me questions to figure out what that number is.”

She sat down next to me and with a huge smile expressing her excitement said, “OK, dad.”

Putting my hand to my forehead and massaging it as if I were actually rubbing the number into my head I said “O.K. I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 100… Got it…. Go!”

Using information of which she was confident, my daughter began by guessing. “Is it one?” No. “Is it two?” No. “Is it three?” Uhhhh, No!

I soon realized the game which I originally thought would end quickly could painfully involve 100 questions (99 of which would be wrong!) By the time she asked, “Is it 18?” it dawned on me that I didn’t have to use the number “65” that I had chosen. So I shouted, “Yes Tess, it’s 18!” We both clapped and I gave my five year-old daughter a hug for her Mensa-like accomplishment.

She was excited and so proud of her demonstration of superior intellect that she demanded we play again. So I obliged. This time when I told her that I had selected my number her first question was different than before. She didn’t start with, “Is it one?” Instead she asked, “Is it 18?” I realized how quickly she had learned a problem solving process that so many adults use to solve problems in their professional and personal lives, and that is going back to what it was the last time. Sadly, that problem solving process is incredibly ineffective.

When teaching or facilitating I find most people immediately assume that a problem occurred because of the same cause which created the same or similar situation the last time. Whether it’s a software problem, a new product, or a manufacturing process, we often jump to solutions because they worked the last time. Thus, ignoring new data and contradictory evidence. Our experience can actually lead us astray as we compound the problem by seeking data that supports our conclusion – a phenomenon called “confirmation bias.”

In “Guess the Number,” the best first question is the one that eliminates the most possible choices. For example, if we ask, “Is it greater than 50?” With one question, we may not know the answer, but we definitely know what the answer is not, and have immediately eliminated 50% of our problem. Continuing that line of thinking, if we discover the answer is not greater than 50, our next question might be, “Is it greater than 25?” So in just two questions we identify what the answer “is not” and have eliminated 75% of our possibilities. If you continue to play the game out you will be surprised at how “few” questions you need to ask until you get down to just one number from 100 possibilities…

There is power in this type of negative thinking, and when we’re looking for the root cause to problems, asking questions which help identify what it “is not” can have tremendous benefit such as saving time and becoming more productive. When attempting to solve your next problem, here are some tips to try:

1. Ask what the problem could be, but is not. Don’t just describe what the problem is. Spend time identifying what the problem could be but is not.

2. Don’t ask “Why?” Ask “Why Not?” instead. Often we encourage confirmation bias by asking people to justify why they believe something is the root cause of the problem. Instead, ask people to uncover data that explains why a potential cause is not the root cause. If you can’t identify any “why not’s,” then it could be your most likely cause.

3. Seek to eliminate possible causes first, rather than confirm them. Just ask, “Which possible causes can we eliminate because they would cause a problem we are not seeing?” For example, let’s say you can’t open an email. It might be a problem with your internet service provider. But, if another computer in your house uses the same connection and it’s working just fine, then the blame lies elsewhere.

So, turn on your negative thinking. Over the past 25 years, I have seen such thinking save my clients time, energy and money they might have wasted implementing the wrong fixes.

Lou Quinto has been working with companies and their associates internationally for over the past 25 years primarily in the area of critical thinking and communication skills. He is a Master Coach and Keynote Speaker for Action Management Associates in Plano, TX and a Senior Consultant on the Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness team for Executive Development Associates in Oklahoma City, OK. You can read more of his insights on his blog Metacognition or you can contact him at louquinto@gmail.com. Originally from New Jersey, today Lou resides in Indianapolis, IN.

You Know What Happens When We Assume

September 3, 2013 by Lou Quinto Leave a Comment

If you’re looking for signs of a pending Zombie Apocalypse, look no further than your nearest emergency room. Go to an ER at 2:00 a.m. and you will see what looks like a callout for zombie extras. Everywhere you turn you see bleary-eyed souls stumbling around a sea of people, mentally exhausted humans searching for help, or others half-asleep carrying dangerous blades.

And those are just the doctors!

At any hour of any day in any hospital in the United States, there is a chance you will be treated by a resident who has been working thirty hours without any sleep. It’s a chilling thought, but this practice is a common rite of initiation for physicians. In an effort to improve patient care and reduce harmful errors, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education changed the maximum shift length for interns from 30 hours to 16 in 2011. It seems like common sense. No one wants a sleep-deprived resident making life or death decisions. You don’t need to be smarter than a fifth grader to come to that conclusion.

Two recent studies at Johns Hopkins and the University of Michigan Medical School tracked the results of this implemented shift change. The findings were shocking. The shorter shifts actually did more harm than good. The reduced hours did not improve doctors’ rates of depression or increase the number of hours they slept. What’s more, harmful medical errors increased by 15-20%. Some say this is likely due to the fact that the interns’ workloads didn’t decrease, and the number of patient hand-offs, where many errors occur, increased significantly.

While the original assumptions were false, we can consider the research a success. Imagine the lives that could have been lost had hospitals not tested the assumptions behind such a “common sense” solution.

Which begs the question: How often do we make changes or implement new processes in our organizations based on faulty assumptions? How often do we let majority opinion make the decision for us? How often do we make decisions based on our experience, even when that experience may not be applicable to the given situation? It happens far more frequently than we want to admit. Sure, you will have your fair share of successes by doing these things. But you also leave your organization open to a lot of costly risk and rework.

The key to success is in asking the right questions. As you approach your next big organizational initiative, ask the following questions to minimize your risk and improve your chance of success.

1. What assumptions are we making?
2. How can we test these assumptions?
3. Where can we find evidence to contradict our majority opinion?
4. Who else will be responsible for the success of this initiative, and how can we obtain their insights?
5. What alternative conclusions exist?

Organizations benefit greatly from asking contrary questions in advance to a big implementation. Of course, it takes time, but the knowledge gained from the experience prevents costly rework and results in more comprehensive solutions.
__________________________

Action Management and Associates

Collect Information, NOT Data

September 3, 2013 by Lou Quinto Leave a Comment

You can’t solve a problem without good quality information. If you recall the reports of unintended acceleration that Toyota experienced a couple years ago, you know that one of their challenges was the inability to duplicate the problem. Therefore, their best source of information was from a driver who was collecting information as they were hurtling down the road trying unsuccessfully to bring their car to a stop. Obviously, not the best frame of mind for information gathering.

The challenge that many people encounter is that they engage in “activity-centered fallacies” of gathering too much data in the hopes that the cause of the problem will emerge. Such was the case in this example where an airline collected mountains of data in an effort to solve a problem. Instead, the cause of the problem was something quite simple and they already possessed the information they needed to solve it. So where does one stop their information gathering efforts when trying to understand a problem? I’ve found that targeting your efforts to answer a few critical questions will provide a good definition of the problem that will often allow the cause of the problem to emerge from all the data. Here are the questions:

◾ What is the item (or person) with the problem? \ What similar item might also be experiencing the problem but is not?
◾ Where is the specific problem occurring? Where other problem(s)can be occurring but is not?
◾ When was the problem first observed? When might the problem have first been observed but was not?
◾ How often is the problem occurring? How often could the problem be occurring but is not?

Answers to these questions provide an excellent description of your problem. When you can answer these questions with reliable data, usually the cause of the problem will quickly become evident.
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Action Management and Associates