Rethinking Competition

- Submitted by Cindy Leavitt

I grew up playing sports and would label myself as a competitive person. I like to win. You can ask anyone in my family and they will agree. My experience in sports shaped how I approached building and participating in teams at work. This competitive approach seemed to serve me well earlier in my career, but I don’t believe that I understood the cost of this approach until recently.

Creating a high functioning team was easier when I was leading a small group, and we were focused on delivery something of high value in a limited period of time. I look back fondly at the eResearch team, the deep connections that we built, and the value we delivered in advancing research at the University of Michigan. We had an “us against the world” view; we bonded as a team and were able to successfully deliver a highly complex project.

While I was managing the eResearch team, I joined the leadership team of the Central Campus IT organization. One of the challenges that I experienced as a member of a leadership team was that my peers and I were focused on developing and optimizing our own individual teams and the leadership team didn’t feel like a team. I remember the CIO challenging us all to start thinking of the leadership team as our team.

Fast forward a few years, and I found that I was now the leader of a leadership team where the team members were optimizing their own individual teams and our own leadership team didn’t always feel like a team. This forced me to ask me what I was doing that contributed to this dynamic on both teams.

I spent a lot of time studying and thinking about this, and identified several things that I was doing that were increasing competition and undermining trust and cohesiveness within the team.

• I realized that I was quick to criticize and judge. I often fell into the trap of thinking and acting like I could do (fill in the blank) better. This created resentment, resistance, and undermined trust.
• I was playing favorites and relying too much on a few of the team members, which increased the internal competition on the team and underutilized really talented people. 
• My vision for the group was self-focused and competitive with other groups.  

Competition is a built-in survival response to scarcity that we have transferred into our modern context, and it especially shows up in a hierarchal organization. How much energy and time do you spend battling over budget, title, position, credit, control, and ideas? Does it increase your energy? Does it increase your effectiveness? How does it affect the rest of the team when you go to battle with others?

This is a seismic shift in thinking for me and it is easy for me to slip back into being competitive because it is a habit. However, when I can replace the competitiveness with aligning to purpose and supporting others regardless of whether they are on “my team,” it is energizing, fun, and much more effective. It is the difference between focusing on being “Leaders and Best” to focusing on being “Leaders who Help Others be their Best.”

Virtual Servers: What a difference a year makes

-- Tony Markel

Recently, the virtual server team passed a significant milestone.  It's been one year since we established a small cross-functional team to evaluate and govern Virtual Server requests.  The goal is to provide customers with a more consistent, and timely service that encourages customers to use existing services they may or may not be aware of. We ask a lot of questions of ourselves and our customers, and the result, rather that being a bottleneck to service, is one of acceleration and performance.

Virtualization Service Snapshot

How did we do it? 

• Communicated the Service Strategy to the Team every time we met 
• Listened to our customers unique needs on every ticket 
• Asked questions as a group with the customer present 
• Empowered team members and stakeholders to make the process better 
• Produced consistent output in the form of a Statement of Work 
• Used Lean Huddles both physically and virtually to maintain momentum on complex requests 
• Recognized progress and effort towards goals 

What’s Next? 

• Integrating complex storage requests 
• Accelerating Security and Overall Compliance through 
• Standard Work 
• Standard Configurations 
• Finding Compliant Alternatives 
• Flexible Application of Standard Practice

If you see one of these fine folks in your journeys, give them a high-five: Zack Munce, Joe Fodor, Bruce Taylor, Javan Thompson, Len Merritt, Buzz Nau, Sue Boucher, Stratos Kotzabassi, Lyn Victorio, Gray Carper, David Glaser, Jonathan Mills, Jack Kufahl, and let's not forget Sarr Blumson.

MSIS NPS Survey Results: Quarter 1 2016

-- Gray Carper (gcarper@med.umich.edu)

Performance & Improvement Management recently closed another round of our periodic customer and staff survey, based on Net Promoter Score methodology, and you'll find the results below. This data will catalyze improvement actions using existing mechanics, like our Problem Management process, and we'll be launching another survey round in the near future. If you have any questions about this or any other improvement initiatives, please reach out to PIM.

Thanks to all of you who participated in the survey this time - please continue to do so in future rounds!

If the report image isn't displaying properly below, you can also see it in Confluence and Infogr.am.

Problem Management Update

 --Sue Boucher and Steve Sarrica

Last October through the completion of Monica's project titled "Big Bad Wolf," MSIS began officially investing in work using the PROBLEM ticket type utilizing the main  output of that project - the problem management process.  Below are summaries of those efforts.  

Team: Dave Cuevas, Monica Webster, Erik Zempel

Problem: Unknown Core Competencies for Service Desk Agent

Resolution: Service Desk Core Competencies created and incorporated into performance expectations

Team: Dan McClenaghan, Waynard Shreve, Brandon Boucher

Problem: Increase in number of code blues related to return visits

Resolution: Refined imaging workbook and did more communication on use

Team: Roger Burns, Michael Fragale, Gray Carper, Joe Malak, Mike Yockey, John Westfall

Problem: Customers were asking for deeper understanding of excel

Resolution: Created self-help guide that could be shared with customers

Team: Mayumi Yoneta, Jianfeng Wang, Roger Burns, Bon Thomas, Jonathan Komorowski, Erik Zempel, Gray Carper, Tom Bellinson

Problem: Improve communication practices when providing support to speakers of World English

Resolution: Development of strategies that were integrated in Customer Experience 101. Training of Service Desk to use these strategies

Team: Dave Glaser, Jeremy Hallum, Drew Montag, Eric Smith, Javan Thompson

Problem:  Installation of linux software on servers is inconsistent and takes longer than necessary

Resolution: Created a system for building software, storing it in git repositories and using Rundeck to deploy

Team: Monica Webster (Managing to Learn course)

Problem: It is challenging to fulfill customer software requests

Resolution: A complete A3 was done and a project intake was created for this major effort

Team: Erik Zempel, Tony Mignano, Sue McDowell

Problem: Outage notifications were not being properly sent

Resolution: Updated existing processes and performed retraining on these processes

Team: Michael Warden (Managing to Learn course)

Problem: System Administrators are leaving at an unacceptable rate

Resolution: A complete A3 was done on this which resulted  in reforming team roles and workflow and providing the team with more ownership of the workflow

Team: Elaine Lauerman, Jonathan Komorowski, Bon Thomas, Javan Thompson, Jamie Keeley, Charlotta Jared , Susan Topol

Problem: Medical School community want to know who MSIS is and what services they provide

Resolution:  Created a leave behind card that highlights MSIS Services

Acknowledging our Stories

Submitted by: Cindy Leavitt

The idea of the importance of stories was first introduced to me in the “Crucial Confrontations” course that I took in 2004. I found the training to be incredibly useful, both in my professional and personal life. The training was so valuable to me that I have asked every supervisor and manager who has worked for me since then to take the course (since retitled to “Crucial Accountability”).

One of the important steps in the accountability process is to “master your story.” It sounds so simple, but is one of the most challenging things that I have found to do in practice. This is because we all naturally attach meaning and motive to actions based on our past experiences. And we do it without even thinking about it. Usually those interpretations involve the feeling that the motives of others are ‘bad’ or in some way, harmful to us. This is known as the fundamental attribution error.

As a simple example, I had a coaching appointment with one of our promising managers. He didn’t show up. My initial reaction was anger. He was being disrespectful and irresponsible. Luckily for me, a professional coach was involved in the meeting as well and was able to guide me through my reaction and mastering my story by asking me to be curious.

• It started with reframing. This is interesting and provides more information about the organization.  It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It is just data. 
• What could have happened? Was the meeting set up correctly? Were the expectations of the manager’s participation clear? Could there have been a customer emergency that prevented the manager’s attendance?

When the manager burst into the meeting room 15 minutes late apologizing, my attitude was completely different than it had been and we were able to talk about why the disconnect had happened and we developed a deep coaching relationship over the next several months.

I don’t always have a coach sitting next to me and so I have looked for other ways to improve my ability to master my stories and to avoid harsh judgment. For me, being aware that I am doing this is the first step.

The second step is to allow myself to tell the story with all the ugliness. This means that I have to honestly acknowledge all of the things I am thinking without a filter. Brene Brown calls this our “S****y First Draft (SFD).” The third step is to deconstruct the story. For simple stories, like the interaction with the manager, being aware of the story and consciously stopping the judgment and being curious may be effective. For more serious problems, I find it helpful to talk about my SFD with someone I trust and who will challenge the assumptions. I have a few cherished professional and personal relationships where this can happen.

My challenge for you this week is to be more aware of the stories that you are telling yourself. In order to master our stories, we first have to acknowledge them fully.