What a delightful surprise to open the January 2012 edition of The Controller: Journal of Air Traffic Control and hear labor and management leaders singing a very different song; in fact, sounding like they’re on the same sheet of music!

The publication, produced by the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers Associations, focuses on collaboration, and carries articles penned by David Grizzle, Chief Operating Officer of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization, and Darrell Meachum, IFATCA’s Executive Vice President of Finance.

Both men approach the subject from their own unique background and perspective. Grizzle, an attorney by training and former airline executive, cites the initiatives the FAA and labor are on working on together to improve the efficiency of the national airspace; assure the safety and health of employees; to minimize fuel costs to carriers while protecting the environment; and more.  In Meachum’s article, he recounts the ups and downs on a collaborative roller-coaster that spanned his nearly 30 years as an air traffic controller with the FAA, 20 of which he served as a union official with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

And while the paths to their current leadership posts have been decidedly different, their comments indicate they have arrived at very similar conclusions:

Grizzle, explaining why the agency and labor decided to take a deliberate and structured approach to collaboration, notes, “The reason is simple. People doing the day-to-day work know where change is needed and have the experience to find innovative solutions. Collaboration harnesses this expertise at a pivotal time, as the FAA champions the development and implementation of NextGen.”  And Meachum, also referencing that next generation systems are being designed and built, states, “How quickly and efficiently these will become operational, will to a large extent depend upon the degree of involvement by line air traffic controllers in the future system’s conception and implementation.”

And just as Meachum asserts, “A management philosophy that treats employees with honor, dignity and respect is generally rewarded with the same,” Grizzle concludes,  “Collaboration at all levels is worth the effort because it almost always produces better outcomes… we have been able to accomplish things that we probably couldn’t have done without collaboration.”

Those beliefs, and the resultant leadership actions, are indeed music to the ear.

The full text of the articles are here:  www.orginc.com/news-views or visit the magazine website www.the-controller.net  or IFATCA website www.ifatca.org .

*In the spirit of full disclosure, we are proud to note that the Air Traffic Organization, NATCA and PASS (referenced in the article pictured) are among our joint labor-management clients.

Cathy Wright

Partner – Overland Resource Group

And yet, when it comes to practicing that preaching, we often stutter. We fall prey to the “Well, I’ve told them,” trap, which means we think we’ve communicated a message because we uttered or wrote it. Our words found voice, or print, so we can check the box, and hurry off to our next pressing matter. But let’s hold it right there. Where’s the action in that? Where’s the modeling the collaborative behavior we’re espousing? Where’s the feedback gathering to assure the message was heard, or read, or understood?

Here are some simple ways one pair of “joint” leaders is cracking the code on the challenge of effectively communicating through actions. Tom Brantley, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, and Teri Bristol, the FAA’s Vice President of Technical Operations, have been working alongside their management and labor leadership teams to cultivate a culture of collaboration.

• They meet bi-monthly as a Joint Leadership Team in a city with an FAA facility and they do something that initially stunned the work force: they go into the workplace together to meet with and listen to employees! What began as a simple gesture to model collaboration rather than just talk about it, has now evolved into a standing practice that includes All Hands meetings, with an informal question and answer session. Afterward, when the JLT debriefs the workplace visit, they talk about what they heard and how they can work together to address systemic issues, which often results in pulling together people closest to the issue to help resolve it. The JLT has learned the art of listening, and they use this practice to identify trends and issues of concern to their employees.
• The leadership team also recognizes there is power in words, so they considered how they could harness that in a collaborative fashion. A “joint” union/management newsletter provides background on the collaborative process and seeks to keep employees informed about the JLT’s work.  But what speaks perhaps loudest of all are the two logos, one for the PASS union and one for the FAA, that share the masthead, signaling that while they may be distinctly different organizations, on this content, in this format, they agree.
• Recently the JLT convened a meeting with its district managers and union reps, and to assure the session met the need of those mid-level leaders, they put together a planning committee made up of.., guess who?  A group representative of those who would be attending. And then, the JLT worked diligently to incorporate their feedback in the meeting design, including a Listening Panel as one of the core activities during the session. Absent was the typical panel discussion with leaders droning on about their beliefs and points of view. Instead, participants engaged in a robust round-robin session in which the JLT members cycled through small groups of mid-level leaders, asking about a specific topic, including the open-ended, “What’s on your mind?”  Several imposed constraints helped the JLT stay in listening mode: “No problem solving. No explaining. Clarifying questions only.” After-session evaluations indicated the mid-level leaders really felt heard, and the JLT members were honored by the unbridled feedback they received directly from those they lead. The input from the listening panel  became the basis for much of the JLT’s strategic plan for the following year.

Each of these examples is about a way of communicating; they are the direct result of a leadership team giving deliberate thought to how they could use actions to underscore their commitment to collaboration, and to model the type of leadership behaviors they are working to instill in the work force.

The truth about the trite expression? Actions DO speak louder than words, if only we can be quiet long enough to figure out how.

We’d love to hear from you. When have actions spoken louder to you than words ever could?

Cathy Wright

Partner – Overland Resource Group

“I’m going to a training session to learn how to collaborate,” one of our clients told his wife recently as he headed out for a work.

“What?!” she responded. “People in business today have to be taught how to work together? Seems simple enough to me.”

And while Sam’s wife was right about collaboration seeming simple, it is in fact harder to practice than preach—especially when the organization striving to have people work together has a history of adversarial labor-management relationships.

We call it “muscle memory”—that practice of reacting out of habit, of responding with familiar behaviors—often the same ones that have historically won praise and promotion. Never mind that those tried and true responses may be different from those required in a collaborative environment. Just as a doctor’s expertly placed tap below the knee cap will send the lower leg reflexing without a deliberate thought from the patient, so too will organizational cues “push the buttons” of even well-intended leaders. Often this muscle memory on the part of one leader can launch a spiral of escalation that derails early attempts at working together.

Without a deep level of understanding and skill, the best-intentioned efforts at collaboration can be overcome by old muscle memory. It goes something like this:

A group of leaders come together and agree they will work collaboratively. It makes sense and it seems simple. They talk through it, get excited about the possibilities and share their enthusiasm with very public pronouncements to their members and employees. They talk about trust; tout the new way of doing business; even show up as labor-management leaders in previously unexpected ways and places. Momentum builds; skepticism diminishes; expectations soar.

Then something “breaks.” It’s hard to know where it will happen, or when, but it will. When muscle-memory kicks in, the escalation volley begins. Pull up a chair and sit a spell—this is just the bout the skeptics have been eagerly anticipating.

Now comes the: “See? I told you so! You can’t trust management.”

Or, “It was just a matter of time. Labor can’t change its stripes.”

It’s easy to pile on, and even the thoughtful, well-intentioned initiators of the collaborative effort get swept in: “I guess I can’t trust them.”

Or from labor’s perspective: “How could they do this to me? I was out there on a limb with my members, and they sawed it off.”

And then the unfortunate lob comes back, often in the form of retaliation. “Let’s see how they like this stack of grievances!” Or, “Wait’ll labor sees what it looks like when we really enforce the rules!” And the ever-popular labor or management response:  “I’ll show them we haven’t forgotten how to be adversarial!”

And so it goes. Muscle-memory wins the organizational tug of war and the parties’ efforts to collaborate have been derailed by the very forces they set out to change.

The cycle, while predictable, isn’t inevitable.

Overcoming it requires leaders at all levels to recognize that muscle memory is both the spark that ignites the escalation spiral and the fuel that fans the flame. Recognition is a critical first step in interrupting the cycle. The harder work of replacing reflexive behaviors with new, more productive ones calls for a process of learning that enables leaders to analyze concepts, actively experiment, observe and reflect on them, and gain concrete experience in actually applying the new behaviors. As the research of David A. Kolb and others confirm, adults learn by doing, observing, thinking and planning.

So, back to Sam’s wife. She’s right. The concept of collaboration is simple. But creating and practicing a new collaborative muscle-memory isn’t.  It requires enlightened leadership, deep learning, deliberate effort, perseverance and, yes, even training.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on muscle memory and the escalation spiral. How have you seen this this all-too-familiar scenario play out?

Cathy Wright

Partner – Overland Resource Group

I’m always suggesting to our clients that when they are having a recurring problem it helps to consider a few other points of view before beginning to formulate solutions.  So here’s what I did…

First I gathered a little data.  I began to notice that an unusually high percentage of my missed putts passed to the right of the cup.  Failing to follow my own advice, I immediately jumped to solution without bothering to seek any other perspective or best practice counsel.  I decided that I must either be swinging wrong or failing to grip the club with the face pointing at the intended target.  Wrong!

After wasting a couple of hours trying those solutions unsuccessfully, I noticed that the guys on the big money tour look at the putt from more than one angle before deciding how to address it.  They get at least two perspectives before making what could be an extremely high dollar decision.  Then they ask their caddy – a third perspective.  Only then do they putt the ball.

So I decided to try the multiple perspective approach and sure enough I found that when I walked past the cup and looked back at the putt, the alternative perspective gave me data I had missed by only looking at it one way.  But I still kept missing my putts to the right until one of my playing partners asked me a key question.

After watching me struggle, Jon remarked, “I notice you are doing a great job of carefully lining up the putt better than you have in the past but, at the last minute you take one more peek and then turn your clubface slightly open.  Why is that?”

The answer was simple physics and a last minute failure to value all of the perspectives.  When lining up the putt, I was getting multiple perspectives and using two eyes.  When standing over the ball, I would take my last glance and using one perspective and one eye make a less informed last minute correction.

Golf is a hard game, but compared to being a union or management leader in the current business climate, it’s a walk in the park.  Most leaders recognize that to make better decisions, they must be willing to get multiple perspectives.  However, when faced with economic pressures that threaten to erode decades of hard earned market share, it is very tempting to ignore alternative perspectives and “step up and make the hard decisions they are paying me for”.

In our practice we strongly encourage our union and management clients to regularly dialog about what’s important in their world.  Management retains their “rights” and the union leaders remain obligated to “represent”; but often when they have honest discussion about key issues, they come away from the conversation enlightened about why their past attempts to solve the problem were singularly unsuccessful.

Like me hovering over the putt at the last minute, both parties find it difficult at first to hold onto the perspectives other than their own while making their final decision.  But when they do, they are rewarded with something better than a low score – they find they have a partner who is also invested in a successful outcome.

So what’s your story?  Have you witnessed the dangers of ignoring alternative perspectives?

Robert Hughes

Partner – Overland Resource Group

After several months of careful exploration, a group of labor and management leaders formed a team to lead a change process aimed at creating a collaborative culture to improve both the quality of work life and operational performance.  They defined the future state they wanted to create; openly discussed the barriers they would have to overcome; set in motion specific work groups to address several areas of opportunity; painstakingly built a strategic plan to focus their efforts and keep their change process on track. They progressed well, and quickly became a Best Practice others sought to emulate.

Then it happened: the inevitable “break point.” They occur in every organizational change process. Some unforeseen issue or event emerges to challenge the fledgling collaborative effort; to test the mettle of the leaders; to call into question the level of commitment the management and labor institutions really have toward the process they have set in motion.

In the case of this maturing collaborative leadership team, the “break” stemmed from a management decision to implement a policy. It was well within their management right to do so, and by all accounts after the fact, was based on a well-reasoned approach. Problem was, management failed to give its labor counterparts a heads-up, so as word of the policy change began hitting the field, labor leaders got blindsided.

Members started calling union reps in the field, who in turn called the national labor leaders, using language that harkened back to the days of adversarial rather than progressive labor-management relationships.

But just before the heat got ratcheted up another notch, Labor took a breath. Instead of running the familiar litany of accusations and attributions, they placed a call to the management leaders. Not only did they get the facts of what happened (which of course were slightly different from the “spin” in the field), they got something really surprising.

An apology.

“I got sucked into the emergency of the moment and I didn’t think to give them the heads-up call they deserved,” the vice president said, noting that many union members were skeptical about the collaborative process and not in favor of labor’s support for it. “I unintentionally put them in a bad spot and I failed to model the collaborative behaviors we wanted other leaders to adopt.”

The apology and explanation from the vice president cleared the air, and cleared the way for the parties to have a rational conversation. They talked through what had happened and how, shared factual information they needed to get out to the field, and hatched a plan together about how to get the policy implemented, and how to help employees understand the need for it. Problem solved; collaborative process salvaged.

At the next meeting of the leadership team, they deconstructed what occurred and captured the Lessons Learned. One of the labor leaders shared an important insight: “If we’re not willing to be a little bit vulnerable with one another, we’ll never build the trust we need to sustain collaboration long term. An authentic ‘I’m sorry’ was all I needed to hear.”

Share your thoughts: Is ‘Sorry’ the hardest word to say? And if not, what tops your list of Hardest Words for Leaders to Say?

Cathy Wright

Partner – Overland Resource Group

Now to be honest, reinforcing the value of practicing was never necessary at our house when it pertained to sports.  I was perfectly willing to forego afternoon TV (and homework) to work on my throw to first, my pass catching skills or my hook shot.  Usually, the practice mantra came strongly into play when the topic was trigonometry or Spanish, and Mom was 100% right on both of those.

What is apparent to me in today’s competitive business environment is that leaders have to be willing to change behaviors and/or the processes by which they operate when they are not getting the results they want.  In other words, they have to change and then practice.

For instance, everyone I know in the business world wants highly engaged employees.  Yet very few are willing to take the kind of risks that lead to an engaged workforce, such as pushing decision making to the lowest appropriate level in the organization.  Most are afraid that such a move would result in an unacceptable quality of decisions.

It sounds something like – “Why don’t we let the call center operators decide how best to resolve the situation when a premium customer has a problem?”  And all too often the response is, “because they’ll give the profits away!!”

And they’re right!  Right, that is, if they continue to practice keeping closely held all the relevant information required to make a high quality decision.  Pushing decision making to the people closest to the actual work is a proven best practice when the organization is willing to change and begin to share the key business data and context required to reach a reasoned conclusion and give the workforce training and tools to use when the moment arrives.

What is necessary is not just practice.  Leaders first have to be willing to recognize that the current practice is not getting the bottom line closer to perfect, problem solve their way to a better approach and then commit to practicing it until it is the new practice.

So, we need a new “old” saying.  The closest I can come to it is “Perfect requires committing to and then practicing better approaches.”  But I know someone out there can come up with a better turn of phrase than that.  SO help me out on this one.

Robert Hughes

Partner – Overland Resource Group

Our approach is holistic, and recognizes that each person, department and function is part of a larger system. To affect long-term organizational change, we utilize a systems approach that acknowledges the complexity and inter-relatedness of the many moving parts that make up every organization. As a result, our consulting approach is multi-faceted, and tailor-made with the clients, to have each change initiative introduced at just the right moment when there is maximum organizational receptivity.

Our approach is organic. Ever-changing. Flexible. Fully adaptive to the organizational environment. Holistically integrated into leadership priorities. We don’t create a collaboration program; rather we help clients embed collaboration into how they do their day-to-day business.

We have a rich and varied client base, with experience ranging from manufacturing, service industries, transportation, government agencies and utilities. Some of our former clients have undergone mergers and acquisitions; a few have struggled and not survived transformations in their sectors. All of them have in common that they made a conscious decision to work collaboratively to overcome a unique challenge or pursue an exciting opportunity, and benefited from it. For many, their collaborative work with us and with one another laid a foundation on which they have continued to build.

Our History

First known as W. P. Dolan & Associates, we reorganized as Overland Resource Group in 1996, and relocated our headquarters to Overland Park, in the greater Kansas City area. Robert Hughes, who joined us in 1981, has served as president since 1995. In 2009, we expanded the firm’s executive team, adding three partners, each of whom had been long-time contributors to the enterprise’s success. Today, our leadership team continues to build upon the firm’s reputation as a neutral, third party working collaboratively with joint clients to drive organizational change processes customized to meet their unique needs.