Novus Leadership Institute

Helping you succeed despite relentless change

Insights

4 part harmony works well at work, too

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Have you ever given someone a task to do and wondered how in the world they produced something completely different from what you wanted? 🤔  When you thought it was absolutely clear about what to do?

Been frustrated with a person 😠 … and the person gets frustrated with you 😠 … because they just didn’t “get it” about what to do?

Common, seemingly minor problems like that can lead to major friction and other issues … current examples being the “great resignation,” “quiet quitting,” and the like.

The “fix” to get everyone on the same page and in tune starts with a simple approach we call “4 Part Harmony.”

We’re making a short video about how to use it and get everyone on the same “sheet of music” and in harmony (aligned) … we can also walk you through it in a brief conversation -> contact us.

DISC assessments are highly useful but also highly misused

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DISC is a highly useful assessment. It is one of the most widely used personality assessments for the past 70 years.

It is also highly misused.

We’ll look at some of those common misuses.

DISC background

For those not familiar with DISC, here is some background. DISC is directly related to classic psychological, counseling, and business research and use. “Personality” can be defined as “characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions which may change throughout our lives as influenced by personal experiences, situations, events, and external conditions.”

The “DISC” name comes from the first letters of the four DISC personality styles:

  • Dominant Director,
  • Interacting Socializer,
  • Steady Relator, and
  • Cautious Thinker.

(There is some name variance among assessments, but almost never in the first letters).

The styles help us understand several aspects of our personalities. A crucial aspect is indicating the primary sources of our long-term personal satisfaction.

The assessment also helps from a work perspective. DISC can help us understand what jobs naturally suit us. It can also predict natural areas of compatibility and conflict with others. DISC is a key assessment for improving both individual and team performance.

No one personal style is better than others, though each can be more effective in different types of situations.

12 common types of mistakes/misuses

While DISC is highly useful, there is widespread misunderstanding and misuse of this powerful behavioral concept.

There are 12 key, common types of mistakes in effectively applying DISC. The 12 mistakes fall into these general areas:

  • Content
  • Process
  • Interpretation
  • Usage

We will look at at least mistake from each area as examples.

First, a content mistake

AND the most crucial mistake.

DISC alone does not cover everything essential to understand performance. Unfortunately, it is commonly used alone for predicting and improving performance.

DISC, by itself, does not and cannot predict higher performance. The simplest reason is because DISC describes what we do or don’t do naturally. It does NOT describe how well we perform in task or people situations. Instead, our developed capabilities are more predictive.

The most important capability both now and in the future is a person’s developed ”adaptability” … ability to deal with new, different, changing, complex, or difficult situations. Higher performers are those who perform beyond their own natural “comfort zone.” This is regardless of a person’s natural style.

Other determinants of performance are a person’s:

  • beliefs/values
  • the types of work they enjoy
  • emotional energy in different situations, and
  • job-specific skills
  • transferable skills
The most common process mistake

The most common, process mistake is using DISC as only a self-assessment. In fact, most “style” assessments are used only as self-views.

Self-view assessments have limited predictive validity for several reasons.

Among the most well-known are:

  • Lack of self awareness,
  • Tendency for self-views to be over rated/positive, and
  • Difference between a person’s responses (may be more their intentions) and their actual behavior.

Does that mean that DISC assessments should only be by others/observers?

No!

For self-improvement, it is important to know both how we actually “show up” and how we think we “show up.” Understanding the gaps is a key part of effective improvement action plans.

For leaders, getting others’ views is critical to leadership effectiveness. Self-perception alone can lead to wrong actions and wasted time (and maybe wasted relationships).

Another important process mistake

To get useful results from a personality type assessment like DISC, there should have a consistent role or scenario focus in answers.

For example, in what area are you trying to understand behavior? The current job, a desired job, a role outside of work, or what? Even in current jobs, there can be multiple roles like leader, mentor, coach, peer, and so on.

The reason for a single, consistent focus is that behavior tends to be situational. Research shows our attitudes and actions can be affected by forces outside of ourselves. The “forces” can be job requirements, expectations of other people, perceived reactions/impact of personal behavior, and so on.

Without focus on a single role and consistency in answers, the assessment is more likely to:

  • Provide mixed or confusing results.
  • Be less predictive.
  • Indicate less useful or even wrong approaches to increase effectiveness (e.g., action plans can be wrong and even decrease effectiveness).

… and if you are a coach or assessment administrator, help the assessment taker with this. Often, assessment instructions either don’t include this kind of instruction or are unclear.

An interpretation mistake

Incorrect role focus can also produce an interpretation mistake. If a person changes a role (or the role significantly changes), then it’s time to do a new assessment. Otherwise, any improvements or actions will be targeted to the old role. Interpretation should be in the current context.

Pick the right role focus and at the right time.

A usage mistake

A key usage mistake is thinking that DISC represents the whole person.

DISC is only one of 6 factors largely explaining why people do what they do. The 6 factors affect both motivation (what a person will or won’t do) and capability (what a person can or can’t do).

DISC is a motivation component along with values and interests.

The capabilities components are those related to:

  • Capabilities for a specific job or role,
  • Capabilities transferable/applicable across jobs/roles, and
  • Capability to adapt (willingness, ability).

Don’t assume that DISC alone is sufficient to describe a job or role and then find a person who is a good fit.

It is only one piece of the puzzle … include the other 5 factors for better organizational results and personal success and satisfaction.

What to do

Don’t throw out DISC as an assessment … check if any of the 12 mistakes are present in your assessment or how your organization uses DISC. Contact us for the free full list of mistakes.

Also, if you are a leader and haven’t had a DISC assessment, or that assessment didn’t include others’ views, contact us for a free assessment and analysis.

Minimize project dependencies … don’t manage them

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“Traditional” project management had a lot of focus on managing dependencies. The better approach is to eliminate or at least minimize them.

Jonathan Smart referenced this and also mentions “high cohesion” and “low coupling.” Those are software engineering terms that became mainstream in the 1970s. Coupling and cohesion are also reflected in “object oriented” design.

“Cohesion” is how well elements in a single component or module work together and to what degree there is a common goal or purpose. Low cohesion means there are multiple purposes/directions being served and looser relationships. You can see how cohesion has parallels with teams and workgroups in organizations.

“Coupling” is the degree of interdependence between modules or components. Low coupling means there is less chance that changes in one component will affect other components. Low coupling is also related to the “black box” concept where one doesn’t need to know the internal workings of a component to use it effectively as part of a larger design. Here, too, you can see parallels to organizational interactions.

The aim is for high cohesion and low coupling.

This discussion is a parallel I have talked about before. There is a link between software engineering and organizational engineering. We are even rediscovering some good organizational principles through good software engineering and agility principles.

In one sense, we are reversing Conway’s Law that an organization will recreate its structure/communication patterns in the systems it designs. We are now applying better technical systems designs the other way, in a sense, into better organizational designs/communications 😉

While we’re at it, there’s another software concept that correlates to organizational design and coupling. APIs – application programming interfaces – govern how a software unit interacts with other units. The principle behind APIs is that one should only need to know how a unit’s API functions to interact effectively with that unit. One need not know how the other unit functions internally. An API can help lower coupling and increase independence. This also means less need to change one unit’s internal workings when another unit changes *if* the API remains the same.

The same concept can apply organizationally. One organizational unit can run experiments (e.g., improving workflow) without causing problems in other units if there is low coupling and how interactions occur stay the same. The other units can choose to change via leveraging the learning from the experiment. However, they are not required to do so for the overall project or organizational “system” to keep functioning.

The same goes with a unit’s backlog of work. Lower coupling/higher independence means a unit can change the backlog sequence without outside coordination. A change in one unit backlog doesn’t automatically require change in other unit backlogs.

Note that this doesn’t mean contractual relationships between units. It just means that there are understood and followed protocols and ceremonies for interacting. And as lightweight as practical.

The above is another reason why software folks and non-software folks should talk 🙂

The “anti-CEO” playbook is popular … but wrong

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This is a very popular TED talk by Hamdi Ulukaya who argues that the playbook for businesses and CEOs is wrong. He contends what is needed is an “anti-CEO” playbook.

I feel his pain and understand the sentiment.

But the “anti-CEO” playbook part is wrong.

We need instead a C.E.O.S. playbook as suggested by Dr. Michael O’Connor decades ago.

The C.E.O.S. are:

  • Customers
  • Employees (or any direct worker)
  • Owners or shareholders
  • Significant other stakeholders (e.g., communities, major vendors)

True sustainability and business longevity/success comes from balance across the C.E.O.S.

The true role of the CEO and leaders, then, is working to constantly maintain the balance amid constant destabilizing forces.

The “Wall Street” focus has historically been focused on the “O” … this leads to a primarily financial view of a company. Success is then measured by profits and other financial measures like stock price. This financial imbalance in the C.E.O.S. is a primary driver of the issues highlighted in the video. Maximizing profit and focusing solely on that leads to the issues.

Profit, however, is necessary for a for-profit business to survive and achieve all the other aims advocated in the video. It should not, though, be all-consuming to the continuing detriment of C, E, and S.

Another reason the “anti-CEO” stance is wrong is that the CEOs are doing what they have been tasked to do. Public companies – where most of the outsized CEO compensation mentioned in the video resides – are governed by Boards. The CEO in turn works for and responds to the Board (at least in theory ;-).

Especially in larger corporations, the Boards are often representatives of significant shareholders. The shareholder short-term interests are, naturally, financially oriented … especially given quarterly results cycles and effects on share prices. The CEOs are incentivized accordingly. Singling out CEOs with an “anti-CEO” playbook seems to focus on a visible and convenient target … but not the right one.

Want improvement as advocated in the video?

One that also addresses many of the employee issues and lack of engagement uncovered during the pandemic and persist?

👉  Change the mission, values, and vision – then change accompanying strategies, the culture, etc. – to match and implement a C.E.O.S. model.

That’s the true transformation that is needed, beyond any of the other “transformation” stuff currently in fashion.

Contact us to discuss what harnessing the power of all the C.E.O.S. can look like in your situation.

Challenges and solutions in developing software for regulated environments

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Ginny Kwan Gattinger, and I discussed common challenges and solutions in developing software for regulated environments during a webcast for the combined Ontario and Western Canada chapters of the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society. Great questions and comments by the over 100 professionals attending!

If you would like us to provide the webcast for your team, let us know. Have Zoom, will travel 😉