Improvement And Language

Improvement comes from egoless scrutiny of past actions and deep reflective thinking about what could be better, more efficient, more relevant, more resilient, and more responsive. To look for ways to improve requires open-minded inquisitiveness and curiosity from everyone on the team. 

Although contemplation and self-reflection are key to learning, creativity, and innovation, we should not be in that state for a long time, which results in overanalyzing the data and endless planning sessions. Overcontemplation blocks progress.

When to Improve?

There are always chances of improvement but resist the temptation to suggest improvement opportunities and ideas whenever they pop up in your head or you learn something new. No one will be as excited about the new ideas as you are. Instead, it will cause distraction, waste, overcontrol of the process and instability. 

If a leader continues to share ideas with the team that he or she thinks are very helpful suggestions while the team is busy with their work, the team perceives it as indecision, lack of focus, and confusion. So maintain your good idea log and only bring it up after the team pauses for completion. And let the team decide which ones to move forward with. 

Defenders and Open to Get Better People:

Note that there are some people who get defensive when they are asked to look at ways to get better or if they are questioned or even presented with an alternative perspective. They take it as a threat. Such people sound like this:

• I didn’t do anything wrong 
• We did the best we could
• I would do it the same next time
• I assumed that’s what you wanted 
• We have always done it that way
• I have been doing this a long time
• You think you knew better all of a sudden?
• Well, you are new here. You will learn why we do it like this.

On the other hand, there are people who have an open desire to learn, get better, and grow. People speaking from the perspective of getting better sound like this:

• Tell me more about that
• How do you see it?
• What do you think came before this?
• How might we see it differently?
• What does this look like from your perspective?
• What could we do differently?
• How could I have done better?

The defenders actively inhibit and crowd out the people who are open to look for ways to improve. To activate the behaviour of being open to improvement, at first calm down the people who get defensive, when it’s pointed out to them that there is room for improvement. 

It is natural to hold the thinking that I am good enough and I am doing my best, that is why questioning others has become a social taboo. We risk alienation by the group when we do it. Being good gets in the way of getting better.

Intrinsic motivation 

Intrinsic motivation comes from within. That is why let the team take responsibility for their improvement, instead of leaders taking that responsibility. People do better when they are motivated from within. 

Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan studied how healthy human behaviour can be derived through intrinsic motivation. These are the fundamental human needs that almost all people feel:

• Competence – The feeling of mastery
• Relatedness – The sense of connecting with other human beings
• Autonomy – The sense of being in control of things that matter in one’s life.

Deco and Ryan call it self-determination theory. 

Motivation comes when any of these needs are threatened. When teams have candid discussions about how they can improve, it threatens the above-mentioned fundamental needs which in turn provide motivation to act unless they satisfy themselves by blaming others. 

Examples:

• Admitting that you could have done something better, threatens the feeling of competence. People protecting their competence sounds like this “I wasn’t trained on that” or “Well, let me explain why I did it like that” or “Sure I would have done that if I had enough time”
• Pointing out errors of others threatens your relatedness to the team. So some people sound like this to protect their relatedness “I know Adam did his best, but …” or “I think everyone did their best— I like to see the positive”
• Being transparent about what you did and why threatens your autonomy. That’s why sometimes people sound like “Don’t worry about it. We have it under control” or “All the clients need to know is that we are taking care of it”.

Language that invite focus

For encouraging improvement, use language that invite mental focus:

1- Focus on forward rather than backwards (invokes ‘get better’ self)

• What do we want to do differently next time?
• How should we change the process during next iteration ?
• What worked well that we want to keep and not change?
• If you go back in time on this, what would you tell yourself?
• What do we want to remember about this for next time?

2- Focus on others instead of oneself (protect ourselves and team – relatedness and competence)

• If someone else had to take over this project, what would you say to them to make it even more successful?
• What changes would the board want us to make here?
• What could we do to better serve our customers?
• Let’s focus on what’s going right here that we can build on!

3- Focus on process and not people (prevents people from getting defensive)

• Thinking about the work itself, what do we think could be improved?
• How could this be done better?
• What improvement could we make to the process?

4- Focus on achieving excellence and not on avoiding errors, as avoiding errors invokes the behaviour of avoiding actions, which does not motivate to improve.