Start at the Beginning
When I was in the classroom, I taught students a lot of content. After I moved into a STEM role, my job became more about teaching students to think using the engineering design process. After watching IDEO: Shopping Cart Design Process (Sahakyan & Dateline NBC, 2017) for the fifth or sixth time, it dawned on me how much time the engineers spent researching problems with the shopping cart before they considered solutions. First, they brainstormed potential problems. Then, they categorized types of problems. Next, they divided into teams to brainstorm potential solutions for each problem. Finally, they brainstormed again as a whole group. Much of what was shown on the program demonstrated that to really meet customers’ needs, we needed to know what problems they were facing.
Define Your Problem
In his TED Talk Change Behavior- Change the World (Grenny, 2013), Joseph Grenny describes a woman named Jane who ended up in the sex trade in her country through some unfortunate circumstances. As he talks about her life and how to help her change her situation, he asks how to define the problem of Jane (Grenny, 2013). This question resonated with me. As I struggle with my proposal on The Paperless Office, I have a hard time determining what the problem really is. Much like Jane’s story, the scope of this problem seems so large. I find that I’m left with more questions than answers:
- What do I want to accomplish?
- What will the lead measure be?
- How will I determine which behaviors are vital behaviors?
- How will I determine the real problem of the paperless office?
Create A Goal
According to Influencer (Switzler et al., 2013, p 13-14), the 3 keys to influence are:
- Focus and measure
- Find vital behaviors
- Engage all 6 sources of influence
I know that eventually, my goal will be to connect to each of the 6 sources of influence, but like the engineers at the IDEO, I need to start with the problem at hand. Based on the Influencer worksheet and book, this involves setting a SMART goal. My SMART goal is:
Goal: Decrease printed paper use by administrators and administrative assistants over the course of one year by 20%.
This is just a sample goal. To be honest, I’m not sure I’m measuring the right kind of influence. I’m pretty sure measuring paper usage is a lag measure. Should I focus instead on writing a lead measure? According to The 4 Disciplines of Execution (Covey et al., 2012, p. 109), a lead measure focuses on a behavior that is observable before the fact, while a lag measure looks at something in the past that you can no longer act on. Decreasing paper usage is definitely a “past” measure.
Back to the drawing board
As I think through what I’m measuring, it’s important to think through the vital behaviors that I might need to measure before I can plan how to engage the sources of influence. On his site, 4 Effective Ways to Find and Test Vital Behaviors | It’s About Learning, Dr. Harapnuik (2016) talks about 4 vital behaviors for identifying behaviors to change:
- Notice the obvious
- Look for crucial moments
- Learn from positive deviants
- Spot culture busters
What are obvious uses of paper that I can address that might be a lead measure?
- Taking notes during a meeting
- Creating meeting agendas and printing them
- Use of sticky notes or notebooks
As I think about making meaningful change, I think I might have the start of a goal:
Goal: Increase the use of digital notes during meetings, training, and day-to-day tasks by administrators and administrative assistants over the course of one year by 20%.
While this is definitely in the brainstorm phase – I plan on doing research to determine the percentage increase – I can start to think about what steps I need refine this goal. This will help me to adequately determine the problem. Otherwise, what am I even doing? If I don’t know the problem and can’t communicate it, I certainly won’t be able to influence others to implement solutions.
References
Covey, S., Huling, J., & McChesney, C. (2012). The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals. Free Press.
Grenny, J. (2013, April 26). Change Behavior- Change the World: Joseph Grenny at TEDxBYU. YouTube. Retrieved January 26, 2022, from https://youtu.be/6T9TYz5Uxl0
Harapnuik, D. (2016, January 28). 4 Effective Ways to Find and Test Vital Behaviors. It’s About Learning. Retrieved January 26, 2022, from https://www.harapnuik.org/?p=6253
Sahakyan, D., & Dateline NBC. (2017, September 29). IDEO: Shopping Cart Design Process. YouTube. Retrieved January 26, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izjhx17NuSESwitzler, A., Maxfield, D., Patterson, K., Grenny, J., & McMillan, R. (2013). Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, Second Edition (Paperback). McGraw-Hill Education.