The best advice I can give consultants is to use frameworks, old slides cooked up years ago, and other debris only to help spark ideas.  Then ”create” your presentation as if the ideas are your own.

Rule of thumb:  Don’t put up a framework unless you can, a) perfectly explain all of it and b) have an anecdote or two from your experience to support each component.  The audience perception of a consultant “kind of understanding” is much, much, worse than the audience perception of a consultant admitting they don’t understand at all–and quickly skipping to the next slide.

In his classic essay, “On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B,” Steven Kerr presents a clear example from the world of professional sports. “Most coaches disdain to discuss individual accomplishments, preferring to speak of teamwork, proper attitude, and one-for-all spirit. Usually, however, players are rewarded according to their individual performance. It is therefore rational for players to think of themselves first, and team second.” So how can we design policies and practices that encourage and reward the behavior that is intended?

I’m learning that the best way to lay the groundwork for successful adoption of a new policy is for the people in charge of designing it to talk directly with the people in charge of implementing it. Find out what the unintended consequences might be, and listen carefully to understand what the change would mean in practical terms. Will they have to undergo training, fill out many extra forms, or communicate with a new department? Make sure that they have the resources to actually carry out the task that is being asked of them. Finally, ensure that the behavior being encouraged with the policy is in alignment with organizational objectives.

I once worked with a team of help desk specialists who were evaluated based on the quantity of calls they completed each week – effectively discouraging them from spending too much time with any one caller and diminishing the overall quality of support. Taking the human element into consideration to develop a process that makes it easier for someone to do the right thing helps the organization achieve its goals. In this case, figuring out a metric that would reward each specialist according to a customer satisfaction rating (Were they helpful? vs. Did they answer the phone?).

In the New York Times this week, Richard Thaler writes about businesses and governments that are experimenting with unusual approaches to get their employees and citizens to change their behavior. Volkswagen’s Swedish division wanted to encourage Swedes to improve their health by using the stairs instead of an escalator; they bet on the idea that walking up and down stairs that functioned as a piano-style keyboard would be more fun and they saw stair use increase by 66%. If implemented internally, Volkswagen could have issued a directive stating that any employee caught using the escalator would be fined, or they could have paid a small incentive to employees each time they climbed the stairs – but these approaches would not have been as likely to create the same buzz and intrinsic motivation for doing the right thing and lining up with organizational objectives.

Can we find ways to make every part of an individual’s work day fun? Probably not. But it certainly seems worth the thought experiment to consider what can be done to improve their experience and, at the least, reduce barriers to doing the right thing.

The things that strike me most:

• 7/10 of students think that being in an office regularly is unnecessary
• 3/5 of students think that working remotely is a *right*

We have a lot of work to do to fully live up to the concept of results only, but I feel pretty good about our firm’s ability to attract more phenomenal talent for years to come. We already see the benefits for our clients — more bang for the buck, teams laser-focused on client results, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to get a great result.

Many facets of a well functioning organization hinge on effective communication: strategy, operations, employee motivation and morale, funding (public), investments (private), and a variety of others.  An employee will best execute his job when he understands the bigger strategic picture of what he is doing.  And how will he understand that if he’s not effectively told?  Likewise, how will a member of Congress be able to effectively fund an Agency if she doesn’t understand the value it creates through its operations?

At its core, authentic communication builds trust between a leader and his or her stakeholders.  And trust is a vital prerequisite for any highly effective organization.  Communication is always a tricky balancing act between telling stakeholders what they need to know and keeping private, proprietary, or sensitive matters confined to the appropriate audience.

One of the major failures I see in leadership communication is what I’ve heard people refer to as “excessive happy talk.” Excessive happy talk means just what you think it does:  a leader providing nothing but a rosy outlook for the organization without acknowledging the challenges and limitations of their current environment.  Excessive happy talk destroys trust and erodes leadership effectiveness.  I’ve seen this happen time and time again, and have actually measured its effect on operations through organizational culture surveys.

The tips that I typically relay to leaders whom I coach on communication are:

1. You must believe in what you are communicating
2. Be honest about what’s going on without instilling fear
3. Be approachable and answer every question that is posed to you with sincerity
4. Proactively bring up relevant topics that affect the organization even if no one has explicitly asked you
5. Ask for feedback on your communication (Did I give you enough information?  Did I give you too much information?  Did I answer your question?)
6. If there is a topic that you can’t or won’t discuss, just say so, but also say why

I’ve too often seen leaders use communication as a tool to manipulate their stakeholders.  The fact of the matter is people in general are quite adept at sniffing out insincerity.  And when they do, their trust diminishes.  And when people lose their trust in a leader, it is very hard to gain that back.

My favorite quote on communication is from Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, who states, “The problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.”  As I tell my clients, you can only be sure of effective communication when you observe an individual’s behavior change in accordance with what you told them.  Absent this change, your communication is just an illusion.

Here at Big Sky we strive to be a ROWE – a Results-Only Work Environment.  Among other things, being a ROWE means that every team member has the right to question if a meeting is necessary and if he or she should attend.  As long as everyone gets the results they need, and the work gets done, meetings are optional.

Unfortunately, that concept has not spread to every organization,  Meetings compose the bulk of a typical day, and they often drag on needlessly.  I’ve frequently wondered how much organizations could accomplish if they decided to act instead of meet.

Stand-up meetings offer an interesting – and free – way to energize and refresh the boring, old meeting.  Until organizations latch onto the ROWE concept and begin questioning whether or not they should even be having meetings, standing up seems like a clever way to move things along.

Some of the decision biases from the article include:

• Executives weigh potential losses significantly higher than potential equivalent gains
• Decision makers focus their analyses of opportunities on reasons to support a proposal, not to reject it
• They use inappropriate analogies based on experiences that aren’t applicable to the decision at hand
• Managers defer more than is warranted to the person making or supporting an investment proposal than to merits of the proposal itself

At large companies, the fewer biases that come into the investment decision process, the more likely they were to make more, and better, investment decisions. 

At Big Sky we need to be sensitive to the level of decision bias at our clients and help them make better decisions by avoiding the decision bias traps.

Big Sky will develop and execute communications strategies on behalf of the directorate to positively shape stakeholder perceptions, influence resource allocations and raise stakeholder confidence in strategic investments. Key stakeholders include the United States Congress and Department of Defense.

“We’ll serve as consultants to key members of the agency’s technology leadership team,” said John Dillard, president and managing partner of Big Sky Associates. “We’ll help effectively communicate their issues to important legislative committees and decision-makers in the military.”

The performance-based contract is for three years, with options to extend it to seven years, for a total of $2 million.

Big Sky has multiple contracts within the national intelligence community and helps federal agencies streamline their operations and decision-making processes.

Based in Charlotte, N.C., Big Sky Associates is a management consulting firm that focuses on strategic decision analysis, process improvement and technology strategy. With offices in Charlotte, Washington and Atlanta, the firm specializes in creating thorough action plans to help organizations solve their most complex challenges.