Creativity and the needs for standardization

clipped from theleanthinker.com “standardizing” is simply setting down what we believe is our best shot at what should work. Once reality sets in, there are nearly always things nobody thought of – opportunities to learn. Capturing those moments is impossible if there is no consistent baseline in the first place. And, just for the sake of argument, let’s say that the process, as designed, works pretty well. The question must then be asked: “Are we able to provide our customers exactly what they need, exactly when they needed it, on demand, one-by-one, perfect quality, in a perfectly safe environment?” If the answer to that question even includes a hesitation, then it there is work to be done. Respect your people. Simplify the things that should be simple. Let them focus their creativity on something that matters, not on how to get through the way without screwing up.

When we speak of standarizing a process people feel this is removing the creativity from the process. In reality creativity is exploration of the boudaries of the standard process and ensuring that the variables, which are human centered are controlled.

What are your thoughts? Should we keep simple things simple and allow team members to do their jobs?

-Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning-Team Building, an experiential based training and development consulting organization, as well as a blogger for TeamBuilding NY. Mike specializes in team development and leadership development consulting and training, creating team-building programs that retain talented staff members, increase production and effectiveness of your team. He lives in Buffalo, NY, and travels to you to serve your team-building and leadership training needs, wherever and whenever fits your schedule.

Leadership Development Program

Leadership Development Program

Leadership Development Program Overview:
The organization has a need for leadership development.

The leaders will benefit from the ability to effectively delegate tasks and hold others accountable for success and failures. Additionally the current leadership has an unknown fear to take risks that may move the organization to a new level.


Program Objectives:

The objectives for this project include;
· Leadership Development
· Task delegation
· Calculated risk taking
· Agreement to decision making within team
· Accountability of actions within the Leadership Team
· Implementation of leadership project(s)


Value to Organization from Leadership Development Program:

The value to organization will include;
· Improved and new programs to implement within the organization
· Faster implementation of decisions made by Leadership Team
· A model for other team member who may be interested in developing leadership skills.

Leadership Development Program Methodology:

We will facilitate the participants to effectively develop, plan and institute projects within their current programs.
Each of these projects will have an overarching reach into the organizational goals and mission as a whole.

A focus will be on the ability of the individuals within the leadership team to openly discuss their perspectives on the issues and projects that they have chosen.

A second area of focus will be on the team member’s ability and necessity to delegate project directives to their direct reports.

We will facilitate the team members on how to effectively delegate, hold accountable, and create an absorptive capacity for new ideas and change with the organization.

Allowing the team to have a greater understanding of all the individual perspectives they will be able to institute the best option for success.

We will meet regularly with members of the team over a 6 month period.

Meetings will include one-on-one (Michael and the Team member)
All program participants
Organizational Executive & Administrative Leadership will also be included when their input is necessary to the project.

Additionally we will partner participants of the team together to create an individual accountability model. Team members will have to chart and record their progress, set-backs, learned failures, delegation, and success on a weekly basis. These reports will be read by Create-Learning and the team partners that will be assigned.

At the conclusion of the project each team member must present their work and findings to the Organizations’ Executive Team. As well as turn in a documented policy and procedure manual for their project.

Contact Us -To Facilitate Leadership Development
for Your Team

-Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning-Team Building, an experiential based training and development consulting organization, as well as a blogger for TeamBuilding NY. Mike specializes in team development and leadership development consulting and training, creating team-building programs that retain talented staff members, increase production and effectiveness of your team. He lives in Buffalo, NY, and travels to you to serve your team-building and leadership training needs, wherever and whenever fits your schedule.

Corporate Team Building - Low Ropes Course Conference Center

Create-Learning led a 2-day corporate team development program for 70 team members. Below are photos from our time together. The program was held at a Corporate Conference Center that was accessible to the Buffalo NY and Rochester NY employees.

The quotes and italics are comments that the participants made about the program.

A piece of a large Corporate Personality Puzzle - I like the Buffalo and Rochester overlapping circles and the idea of collaboration amongst offices.

Much of the program focused on how individual strengths add to the team. Developing an understanding that Gen-Y, Gen-X, and baby boomer leaders are all necessary for the success of the organization



All group photo
here is a comment on the evaluation forms
"I totally enjoyed my experience with your group of trainers. Each of the exercises gave me insight on myself and how I perceive others and situations"


"It was alot of fun - even to challenge myself. I learned about my cohorts and working with different styles and gained new perspectives of each of us work and work together"

"I thought the ropes course was challenging + made me see things in a different light. I hope that this training will enable our office to interact more with Rochester and Buffalo"

The team is working together to aid in goal completion. Just because one is complete the task in not finished.

Partners sharing their experience as well as what they learned.

"Outstanding thank you"

"Exploration and understanding that we have to work as a team, be aware of who excels, who struggles and who never gave up!"

A great group and an amazing Corporate Program!

-Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning-Team Building, an experiential based training and development consulting organization, as well as a blogger for TeamBuilding NY. Mike specializes in team development and leadership development consulting and training, creating team-building programs that retain talented staff members, increase production and effectiveness of your team. He lives in Buffalo, NY, and travels to you to serve your team-building and leadership training needs, wherever and whenever fits your schedule.

Quantum Theory & Business Ethics

I am so pleased to see the Multi-verse being used for ethical models of business.
Perhaps now we can begin to explain how the 2 Slit experiment with wave vs. particle function applies to leadership?

came across a link to this from http://twitter.com/corvidae on twitter

-Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning-Team Building, an experiential based training and development consulting organization, as well as a blogger for TeamBuilding NY. Mike specializes in team development and leadership development consulting and training, creating team-building programs that retain talented staff members, increase production and effectiveness of your team. He lives in Buffalo, NY, and travels to you to serve your team-building and leadership training needs, wherever and whenever fits your schedule.

Leader is to Manager as Stapler is to Staple

Managers lead and innovate while staying within the boundaries set by their organization. For people to be innovators they must have a solid idea of the boundaries. A manager knows what the boundaries are and is able to innovate and improve existing processes within the system.

Leaders are thought to be outside the boundaries, this is not true. Many leaders are working within confines of organizations and systems that have clearly defined boundaries. Once a leader begins to work with a team the management becomes evident. Leaders do manage and managers do lead. The term manager has gotten a bad name, any ideas why?

The manager and leader paradox is one that can work in conjunction with each other. As stated so eloquently in the post below from Leading Blog the leader and manager are conjoined.

clipped from http://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/2009/06/leadology_leaders_versus_manag.html The point here is not that leadership is good and management is bad. They are simply different and serve different purposes. The fundamental purpose of management is to keep the current system functioning. The fundamental purpose of leadership is to produce useful change, especially nonincremental change. It is possible to have too much or too little of either. Strong leadership with no management risks chaos; the organization might walk right off a cliff. Strong management with no leadership tends to entrench an organization in deadly bureaucracy. Management gives leadership a foundation to work from. Leadership keeps us growing and relevant. If a leader can not manage what they have created, then their leadership is not effective and serves no end.

- post from Leading Blog

-Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning-Team Building, an experiential based training and development consulting organization, as well as a blogger for TeamBuilding NY. Mike specializes in team development and leadership development consulting and training, creating team-building programs that retain talented staff members, increase production and effectiveness of your team. He lives in Buffalo, NY, and travels to you to serve your team-building and leadership training needs, wherever and whenever fits your schedule.

Ballooniture - TeamBuilding activity for creative use of existing resources

Ballooniture is an example of 60 minute long team building activity that Create-Learning created to compliment a 2 day off site staff development training.

The objective of the program and activity was to facilitate innovative ways to engineer, market, and sell their product.

This group developed and sold medical products to health care and nursing care facilities.

This training took place at a conference center outside of Buffalo, NY.

Prior to the group arriving we facilitated many small brainstorming as well as innovation process oriented workshops.

The purpose of this initiative was to push the groups to begin to think about creation and innovation of their ideas, introducing some chaos as well as developing the dynamics of the teams.

The challenge is once you have a great idea how do we make it happen?

The group had 80 people they were placed into 10 groups of 8 people with cross functional purposes (i.e. on each team were staff representing - engineering, manufacturing, marketing, sales, customer service, human resources, management) these are the groups that the participants work in on a daily basis.

Here is the letter they received when they walked through the door.

Ballooniture:

A new client has asked for you to make ballooniture for a large grouping of in home care facilities. They would like this ballooniture to be safe for people of all ages and abilities.

The client has given the following guidelines for building the new ballooniture;
- Practical (can actually be used)
- Able to hold a team member for a full count of 10sec - Portable
- Creative use of resources (They have a very low
budget)

The resources are limited, each team will have the following
- 72 balloons
- 15 feet of string
- Rubber bands
- Roll of Masking Tape

The scarcity of some resources mean that teams will have to share the following items;
- Packing Tape
- Scissors

Each group will present their innovative Ballooniture to the clients executives as well as explaining the many benefits of their product design.

Your group will have a total of 45 minutes for planning, design, creation and marketing of your Ballooniture to the clients executives who will be observing and deciding whether to award your group the contract.

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Conclusion and Processing:

Once the 45 minutes was up two of the Create-Learning facilitators represented the clients executives.

We asked them challenging questions and kept pushing the group to explain their process and design method.

Following the presentations we gathered the group together for some processing of the innovation and team dynamics that happened

Possible Processing questions;

How did your group approach the problem?

Did you develop a particular method of collecting, organizing, gathering and interpreting the innovation process?

Did a leader emerge in the process? What impact did this leadership, or lack thereof, have on the groups performance?

Did individuals find ways to support the team beyond taking responsibility for their own roles? How is this similar to or different from supporting one another at work?

-Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning-Team Building, an experiential based training and development consulting organization, as well as a blogger for TeamBuilding NY. Mike specializes in team development and leadership development consulting and training, creating team-building programs that retain talented staff members, increase production and effectiveness of your team. He lives in Buffalo, NY, and travels to you to serve your team-building and leadership training needs, wherever and whenever fits your schedule.

How can team building be effective?

Within a team building program participants are encouraged to do things that scare them, to push their comfort zone to create and connect new brain based synapses and discover new ways of approaching and solving problems.

To empower yourself and teams to see people and feel experiences in a way that at one point seemed impossible.

Managers and leaders are encouraged to create procedures and policies that encourage people to follow proven “trails” to create a measurable outcome, maybe a sale, or a product.

Mangers spend time working to make people be at their most effective.

How often do mangers, individuals, and teams push themselves out of their discipline?

How often are individuals and teams given the opportunity to safely practice pushing that comfort zone, to walk a different “trail”?

Once a manager, individual, and team pushes past a comfort zone and prescribed roles they then have the ability to view a procedure or policy through a different lens.

This change of lens empowers the team and manager to create policies and procedures that can raise the effectiveness of those on the team. The manager when pushed past a comfort zone may now see that the procedures and policies themselves are an evolving and dynamic process, full of synergistic solutions.

This change of lens has the ability to illustrate that there is an abundance of ideas and creative solutions to be seized upon, and all it takes is changing you perspective pushing past the prescribed roles and comforts of the daily routine.

Within a team building program participants are encouraged to do things that scare them, to push that comfort zone to create and connect new brain based synapses and discover new ways of approaching and solving problems.

To empower yourself and teams to see people and feel experiences in a way that at one point seemed impossible.

An example of something that is scary to participants does NOT have to be dangling off a rope 60 feet in the air on a ropes course.This has little to no applicable references to the work environment.

An example of a brain based push past set limits can be a leader truly quieting and listening to the team.
To some leaders this is the change in lens that is needed.

As leaders we tend to feel that our lens is clean and that others are the problem.
The outside is the problem, pushing and opening yourself up to listening to team members whether you are a leader or not is a frightening push into discomfort. A leader may hear from their team that it is not the outside that is the problem it is inside, the leader and the current environment that is the problem.

An effective and long term team building plan is to create an open environment for team members to speak their piece have their voices be heard and respected, while at the same time having commitment to the success of the team.This can be accomplished and it takes work, a push of the comfort zone of daily routine.

The brain and mental push past limits of comfort for leaders and managers alike is a more challenging zone to break.

Several of us push physical limits, how many managers and leaders push their intellectual limits and team limits?

What an effective team building facilitator is capable of doing is facilitating an environment to challenge these intellectual limits. When the facilitator leaves, your team is smarter and has new lens with an enhanced perspective on what the team is capable of accomplishing!

Is your team and you ready to break comfort limits and achieve greater results?

I have customized team building programs to accomplish just that - Physically and Mentally!

image ky_olsen

-Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning-Team Building, an experiential based training and development consulting organization, as well as a blogger for TeamBuilding NY. Mike specializes in team development and leadership development consulting and training, creating team-building programs that retain talented staff members, increase production and effectiveness of your team. He lives in Buffalo, NY, and travels to you to serve your team-building and leadership training needs, wherever and whenever fits your schedule.

What Motivates Greatness?

Intrinsic Motivation

A Team Building activity that lasts 30 minutes to inspire and empower teams and individual to focus and determine what motivates then to do great work.

This team building initiative uses an activity called *rope handcuffs, Also Known as Infinite loops or shackles.

A) Ask the group to get into teams of three.

The individuals spend 5-10 minutes sharing and discussing what motivates them to greatness.

Ask them to share motivation that is internal -

how they started their business?

What keeps them going when challenges arise?

What are some challenges they have overcome?

etc... Ask the groups to briefly share what they spoke about.

B) Then speak about overcoming challenges that appear impossible although with assistance and motivation from a network (the group that is here with you today) we can take our level of expertise and amplify it - with help.
Pride causes us to not ask for help when needed. We feel that we built this thing (business etc...) we can do it alone, and often time our motivation for greatness causes blind spots that we are not aware of. Although greatness comes to those who admit that they need help and learned from the mistakes and successes of others.

Spend about 10 minutes speaking about challenge, motivation, and helping others.

C) Have enough Rope Handcuffs available for one for each participant.

Ask the teams of three to connect themselves.

For a team of three you are just adding one person to one of the participants ropes.
Explain that this team building initiative takes motivation to work through what appears to be impossible problems.

This team building activity is not complete until all the groups are separate. (By adding that all groups must be successful leaves a processing time at the end of helping others reach success).

D) If you notice teams are struggling - I generally walk into the crowd with a rope on my own wrists and start illustrating the solution VERY FAST to random teams. (This concept of teaching a confusing concept fast - develops a teachable moment of how as leaders we feel we are helping, when those whom we are helping have no idea of what we are speaking about)

F) After about 15 minutes tell teams that are still attached to stay attached while you process the time together.

G) Possible processing questions;
What was the goal?

Was the goal achieved?

Why or why not?

Where did the team find motivation?

Where did individuals find motivation?

Where was the breakthrough moment?

When the fun stopped describe your thoughts?

How, as a business person, do you solve challenging problems?

Did you accept help when it was offered?

Did you offer help?

What does helping others have to do with motivation?

When can motivation block you from achieving success?

What can we learn from this?

H) Show them how to free themselves.

I) explain that motivation is a great concept - helping others to achieve and find their motivation creates cultures that are internally motivated and more profitable.

- To see a team building program write up of ropes cuffs

Contact Us

-Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning-Team Building, an experiential based training and development consulting organization, as well as a blogger for TeamBuilding NY. Mike specializes in team development and leadership development consulting and training, creating team-building programs that retain talented staff members, increase production and effectiveness of your team. He lives in Buffalo, NY, and travels to you to serve your team-building and leadership training needs, wherever and whenever fits your schedule.

Team Work is the single biggest advantage for success

Patrick Lencioni author of 5 Dysfunctions of a Team speaks about team development in an interview with Success Magazine.

I agree Teamwork is a necessary component of any organizations competitive advantage. When you have a team, a true team, the speed of implementation, completion of greatness as well as your retention of talent and dedication of the staff increases exponentially. To develop these team talents a focus on team work must be included in the metrics and evaluations of the team members success. It is easy for the leader to state "We need to work as a team" the challenge is implementing accountability for team work.

When the team work function is placed into the accountability of performance the organization will see people helping others out, increases in collaboration, even increased creative ideas and innovative processes.

clipped from http://www.successmagazine.com/get-rid-of-dysfunction/PARAMS/article/723 Teamwork gets a lot of lip service in business. Is teamwork really as critical for success relative to other disciplines like technology or marketing? I honestly believe that the single biggest competitive advantage that a company can pursue today is getting its leaders on the same page. I’m not implying that other disciplines aren’t important—they are. But the truth is that without effective teamwork, without a cohesive group of people leading an organization, a company cannot begin to tap into the potential that it has in any other areas.

Came across this from Andrew Long's I love TeamBuilding

-Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning-Team Building, an experiential based training and development consulting organization, as well as a blogger for TeamBuilding NY. Mike specializes in team development and leadership development consulting and training, creating team-building programs that retain talented staff members, increase production and effectiveness of your team. He lives in Buffalo, NY, and travels to you to serve your team-building and leadership training needs, wherever and whenever fits your schedule.

College Student Leadership Development

I have had the pleasure of working with Buffalo State Colleges' Executive Board focusing on leadership communication.

We spent 6 hours as a group facilitating a discussion about our diverse personalities using a DiSC assessment, communication tendencies of the individual members, as well as how to develop a team force and strategy to effectively serve the Buffalo State College students.

We had laughs and some great breakthroughs, more laughs, then some discussion of how to use all the individuals unique talents to add to the team for focus and effectiveness.

Here are some of my favorite photos of the day.

Participants reviewing their DiSC assessments.

Sharing what leadership behaviors they exhibit as well as how they view success

More Dyad Sharing, I love this photo because the ladies are so focused.

The above behavior traits are common to people high in Conscientious: Persons with High "C" styles adhere to rules, regulations, and structure. They like to do quality work and do it right the first time. High "C" people are careful, cautious, exacting, neat, systematic, diplomatic, accurate, and tactful.

Why does that say Apple?

This is the only group shot I got

Hoopdom

Hoopdom is a Team Building activity that Create-Learning-Team Building uses to highlight planning and roles amongst team members. The power of hands-on reinforcement of learning content makes the information stay in the minds of the participants. Additionally groups are facilitated through a series of learning components based on creative team thinking as well as improvement of existing processes.

The focus of Nailed is a challenge.

This team building activity represents a difficult challenge for your team. You have many different goals and projects that need to be accomplished; each nail is a specific goal and/or project. All of them are important, and for the team to be successful you must find a solution that uses all the nails hence achieving successes with all the projects. The interconnection between each project is critical to your success; all the projects must be balanced and self-sustaining. Your company has no funding for additional resources, so you will only be able to use the materials at hand

I LOVE the Lycra Tube!

Helium Stick
This is one of the team building activities that I led all the time when I started in this field almost 17 years ago, then abandoned for newer ideas. Recently I have been bringing it back and finding it very effective. The concept used with this college leadership group was one of micro-expressions and micro-aggressions. The pole rises up with the smallest movement of your fingers, causing those next to you to raise their fingers to compensate, causing you to raise your fingers even higher to compensate - making the pole float, when it is supposed to go to the floor!

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Thank You!

Buffalo State College Executive Board

I will see you again soon (because we have booked 4 more dates)

-Michael Cardus is the founder of Create-Learning-Team Building, an experiential based training and development consulting organization, as well as a blogger for TeamBuilding NY. Mike specializes in team development and leadership development consulting and training, creating team-building programs that retain talented staff members, increase production and effectiveness of your team. He lives in Buffalo, NY, and travels to you to serve your team-building and leadership training needs, wherever and whenever fits your schedule.