theoryu2017

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Our Theory U Process...

This blog is a chronological documentation of our process, and journey as a group into routine work and the ways in which we can improve it. We all felt as a group that a blog would allow us to show our creativity through media (videos, pictures, gifs) as well as text (reviews, opinions, observations)

Team Members:

Vikesh 

Terry 

Steve

Saad

Shivani 

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What is Creativity...

To begin our project, we wanted to first define an aim that we could all work towards and we felt that the perfect aim would be to define Creativity. After discussion, we realized that this would allow us to work from a similar mind frame and would allow us to comprehend our individual perspectives easier.  

Due to the ambiguity of creativity we decided to mutually agree on a definition that best portrayed our different perspectives:  

“Creativity is the process of identifying and embodying an idea or innovation that displays a perspective gained through experience, learning and expectation. Creativity can be used to change, build and improve the world around us and is a process as opposed to a single act.”    

We felt that having a collective definition would give us a more clear aim and provide us with a common goal to work towards over the course of the project.

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Introduction to Theory U 

After we had built a foundation to work upon, we wanted to understand Theory U and creativity in business more deeply so we could implement it throughout our journey.  

The extent to which organisations encourage creativity can be understood by analysing the nature of management and leadership. To understand why many organisations, fail when encountered with challenges, we must focus on understanding the process behind leadership and transformational change. We often find ourselves facing a problem and immediately formulating solutions that we hope solve the issue. However, solutions that appear to be justified through rational and logical thinking may not be the best fix. The recognition of the deeper dimension of which effective leadership and social action come into being is crucial for problem solving. 

The process of Theory U acts as a framework or method that guides the gathering of information as well as shifting the way we connect ourselves to a situation . Theory U proposes that we must go through differentiating levels of awareness, attention and consciousness to fully understand a problem situation and deliver effective leadership.

The process involves working through stages of awareness; Co-initiating, co-sensing, presencing, co-creating and co-evolving, with the hopes that we listen and assimilate information on deeper levels. The “field structures of attention” refer to the different levels of listening; downloading, factual, empathic and generative. Engaging in these different stages will affect the way we understand a situation, listen and communicate with others.

As a group we realised that we needed to reach inner dimension that delivers successful leadership, we must change the quality of our awareness and attention we apply to our problem environment. We intend to document our journey of exploration using Theory U which should unveil how we have moved from through the different levels of awareness.

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Our Starting Point.

After meeting and discussing the coursework, we identified these initial questions that we should undertake answering with Theory U in mind:  

1.           Recall an experience of routine work  

2.           What were our motivations for working?  

3.           What are the problems we face in routine work situations?  

We decided that writing about our individual experiences in working with people in routine work situations and discussing the problems each of us faced would answer these questions in the best possible way as it would give us a breadth and depth of different perspectives and experiences. We decided that we wanted to focus on looking at work situations with people because we believed that teamwork and collaboration were one of the key foundations that allow for creative thinking.  

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Individual Routine Work Problems

Vikesh  

During the Summer of 2015, I worked at Outfit Central Six; a retail fashion store selling several brands of Arcadia clothing. My role as a Sales Advisor included the responsibility for working on the shop floor, in the fitting rooms and behind the till serving customers. My motivation for getting the job was primarily the wage I was receiving as I believed the money would be useful when going into university just a couple months later.  

One of the key problems I faced whilst working at Outfit was psychological safety. Managers at Outfit were often controlling and people, including myself, were often hesitant to express their opinions due to no action being taken regarding problems. An example of this can be seen when I was working behind the till and realized that the carrier bags for the clothing were placed in the middle of till and I believed that it may be more efficient to place them in front of each employee. After raising this issue with my manager, no action was taken to solve the problem though she agreed it may be an issue. Due to this experience and the experience of my colleagues, it was deemed as a waste of time to share ideas as they were likely to be ignored.  

Another problem at Outfit was the scheduling of shifts. Work scheduling was done on a week-by-week basis which meant that employees were not able to gauge when they would be working and how long for which had a big effect on work-life balance as it was difficult to make plans. For example, when working at Outfit, I found it difficult to organize to take the train to university open days due to the lack of knowledge about when I'd be working and because of this, I had to organize in very short notice travelling to events such as these.  

For Outfit, the lack of opportunity for promotion meant that employees felt like they did not have goal to work towards and instead worked almost entirely for their wage. As well as this, the lack of commission-based pay bonus also meant that working to increase sales or being attentive to customers was minimized which effected motivation and enjoyment at the workplace. Although this was not a problem for myself specifically as I did not intend to stay working past September of that year, myself and colleagues found it difficult to enjoy working and were often unhappy and/or bored at the workplace.  

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Individual Routine Work Problems

Steve

During my time at university, I work part time at Nike which is the leading sports footwear and apparel company in the world. Like Vikesh, my role as an Athlete included the responsibility for working on the shop floor, serving customers and providing the managers with feedback on how products are selling. My motivation included several factors which included personal development, perks and benefits and financial stability.  

One of the issues I have faced working at the largest Nike store in the world was the lack of opportunities to change roles or change career path within the company. Having worked in the same role can be demotivating and reduce the ability to be more creative and implement changes that can develop the business. This issue was raised by many employees, however there was not much changes to the hiring structure.  

Another problem I faced whilst working at Nike was psychological safety. Managers at Nike often conduct and review which is done secretly by observing the employees, in many cases the employee notices them and feel under pressure to perform and feel that he isn’t trusted by the management. For example, an employee can work an 8-hour shift and provide excellent customer service to the customers, however towards the end of the shift when the manager decides to review the employee a rude customer may come and therefore effect the level of customer service. This issue has been communicated to senior management a few times however nothing has been done as they feel this is the best way to judge customer service.  

At Nike, the employees have not much say about the layout of the store or what can be done to improve the store. furthermore, the lack of targets or goals individual have at Nike reduce the need and the motivation to be creative in the work place, although some managers have their own goals employees that deal with customers have non-which may be a reason for reduces sales and revenue.  

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Individual Routine Work Problems

Shivani

My time in the hotel industry was a prime example of a monotonous working environment. As a Front Desk Officer, the role involved administrative tasks such creating bookings, updating room rates using online software and answering phone calls. Furthermore, I was responsible for allocating rooms, check-ins/ check-outs and customer relationship management. My motivation for working was mainly driven by the experience gained interacting with customers and putting myself in challenging situations. As it was my first job, I had a strong desire to learn new skills and help myself become more marketable in the world of work.  

In relation to my personal experience, the extent to which staff were encouraged to contribute using creative problem solving was very limited. Management had little confidence in ideas suggested by staff members. The environment cultivated was not one where managers empowered employees to think independently, and any ideas that were suggested by staff were never supported and executed by higher management. As the role required constant interaction with clients, we as employees were arguably the best source of feedback to improve customer relationships with the business. When ideas were raised during staff meetings, such as complimentary drinks and snacks upon check in, the management were hostile to change and believed cost optimisation was to remain the main objective, above improving customer experience. Other examples include suggestions on renovating the main reception area to create more space that would be used efficiently. Suggestions like this would have improved employee motivation and customer satisfaction, but sadly were never embraced.  

Another problem I encountered specific to my working environment was the lack of movement and exposure to different scenery. Our responsibility was to ensure the main reception and customers were never left unattended. This meant most the shift was spent at the front desk, severely restricting employee freedom to move around or have a change of environment. On occasion where the hotel lacked staff, employee freedom was further restricted as one staff member was left with all responsibility, as opposed to two, which often became overwhelming. Myself and many other colleagues found that remaining in one place (the front desk) hampered our motivation and enthusiasm which affected our performance as staff members. In some instances, this damaged business reputation as reviews were left commenting on the lack of staff enthusiasm and friendliness.  

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Individual Routine Work Problems

Saad

During the summer of 2016, I was working as a Sales Associate in Zara, which is a Spanish clothing retailer and its parent company, Inditex, is the largest apparel retailer in the world. My responsibilities, amongst others, included ensuring that customers receive a good quality of service and we went out of our we to satisfy their needs. Maintaining the shop floor presentation and replenishing the stock throughout the day and continually developing stock knowledge and latest fashion and trends.  

My motivation for pursuing this job included various factors such as a genuine interest in fashion and clothing. Experiencing the retail industry and developing work skills in a fast-paced sales environment and gaining financial stability to pay bills as a student.  

One problem that I faced in the work environment was communication. As most employees were Spanish there started become a language barrier between me and my colleagues as most of them spoke Spanish. When they requested something, it hadn’t communicated clearly and that was essential in a retailer like Zara as there is a broad amount of operations to carry out and this can be distorted when employees misunderstand between the different operations from stockroom, cashier to sales assistant.  

Another problem that was faced by many employees was psychological safety. The team that I was working in wasn’t a “safe” team psychologically speaking because there were many procedures within the store that could be improved to make the running of the business smooth day to day. For example, when products needed to be transferred from the stockroom to the shop floor, the stockroom assistant would place it in a way in which it would make sales assistant work that extra harder to get the clothes on the shop floor. This should be normally taken up by the manager but the level of cohesiveness was lacking for the team to push and get these ideas to the manager and improve this process.  

In terms of reward and recognition, there was a problem with managers failing to recognise the efforts put in by employees as it was overlooked often. The sales driven environment disregarded the time and effort people put in the actual process which make the sales such as the quality of customer service and building a rapport with a customer. This was overlooked and worse still the commission was not based on that single sale that you had made despite the efforts given.  

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Individual Routine Work Problems

Terry

My experience of the workplace is perhaps different from others. I do not have the hustle and bustle of a busy office, or colleagues I see every day, or even staff meetings; I am a tutor. My hours are flexible, I have numerous working environments, and I decide who my clients are. My motivations for tutoring are both intrinsic (personal) and extrinsic (financial stability). My dad used to be a teacher and he was always so energetic passionate about education and I guess he instilled that that in me. In terms of finance, tutoring allows me to earn money whilst at university with the added benefit of being in control of my working hours. This is an aspect of the job which I appreciate very much as I am aware that conventional work often involves long shifts commonly known as the ‘9-5 ‘slog’.  

Issues I have had to contend with in the past do include creating an environment that promotes freedom of expression. My tutees should not fear getting wrong answer or thinking that I will judge them based on for example their lack of knowledge on a given subject. Especially since I do 1 to 1 tutoring creating a safe space is very important. My job requires constant creativity; every tutee is different and that requires me to tailor my session to their specific needs and likes. This is particularly difficult in the first few sessions that we have because I know very little about them. Although, it is often overlooked one of the skills I had to improve/work on where my listening skills. I found that listening with an open heart yet still looking for new information, helped me to understand the tutee better and what exactly they needed me to help them with.  

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Mind Matrix 

After reading and discussing our individual experiences at the workplace, we could decipher that there were several common features and so, to understand our connections better, we created what we deem as a "Mind Matrix". This refers to all our general ideas and issues on a plane where we can show the connections between people and problems to find the problem most prevalent.

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Review and Problem Finding  

Psychological Safety 

After developing our "Mind Matrix", we could see that among our problems, the one that all of us faced was the issue with Psychological Safety. This was why we decided that we would look at developing an answer to a research question that looks as follows:  

How can improvements upon psychological safety in the workplace lead to improvements to routine work situations?

This question will be developed throughout the process after research has been conducted in order to find and answer and a question that we believe relates further to our own personal experiences.  

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Listening. 

Downloading as group... 

The following explains our process of downloading as a group:

Gathering intel on a problem situation can be done through several different ways. Naturally, our first plan of action was to focus our attention on each other’s experiences and relate them back to our individual working environment. Our group had most definitely “listened” to one another, and often, found ourselves agreeing with what others had experienced. As a group, we were operating from the “past\old” worldview, and conversation reconfirmed habitual judgments between us. These judgments had stemmed from our individual experiences of the difficulties in working within an environment that lacked psychological safety.  

To further our investigation, we decided to choose Steve’s working environment (Nike) as he is still currently employed with them and so would be able to change his judgement more easily. Having access to the working environment and gathering primary research from a personal perspective will help our group understand the hardships of the employees on a level that goes beyond what meets the eye particularly focusing on psychological safety.  

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Co-initiating 

After revisiting Theory-U, we realised we had met the first stage called Co-initiating. According to Scharmer (2009), Co-initiating is to:

Build common intent. Stop and listen to others and to what life calls you to do.

We found our common intent by reconfirming what we knew about routine work situations from our past experiences – we had downloaded as a group. Our common intent is to answer our research question about psychological safety in routine work situations.

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Results of Downloading...

Instinctively, as a group having already discussed habitual judgment on psychological safety, and our expectations of what we thought Nike’s working environment was like, we had contemplated potential changes that Nike management could undertake to help solve their problem. These changes were drawn from our past individual experiences, most of which we thought could be solutions for the work environments we had participated in.  

Suggestion 1: More Staff Meetings

Shivani had previously worked in a Hotel where staff meetings were rarely held and creative problem solving was never encouraged. However, having decided to engage with some employees at Nike town, we discovered that staff meetings were held every Sunday.  

Suggestion 2: Hire Enthusiastic Employees

Similarly, Vikesh explained that his experience led him to believe that Nike’s psychological safety problem could be a result lack of enthusiasm from Nike employees. Perhaps workers were simply motivated by monetary value, much like Vikesh’s past work experience where colleagues were less attentive to customers and more focused on being present at work for monetary gains. Nevertheless, observations made in store by the group showed that Nike employees were very much engaged and enthusiastic about their work. Customer satisfaction was clearly the main objective most employees at Nike Town.  

Suggestion 3: Anonymous Feedback  

Saad’s experiences taught him working in a large retail operation like Zara, the management team is under pressure and they wouldn’t want to hear from someone who is in a lower position to tell them how to “do their job”.  Also, there is the issue of the managers not actually listening to their colleagues at a level in which they can consider what they have got to say and how they will tackle those specific issues that they mention.  

Saad suggested a system where there can be feedback given to managers in an anonymous way as a weekly routine so that the manager can sit down and seriously consider feedback or comments made by their colleagues. Since it would be anonymous, they will feel more safe and less intimidated by the manager because it can be difficult to face the manager when you want to explain what you feel like is going wrong in person  

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The shift from Co-initiating to Co-sensing ..

It was clear that our group was still operating from Field 1, (our level of attention was only exercising reactive responses and quick fixes on a symptoms level) which was incorrect. The dimension of which we were attempting to generate solutions and effective leadership was one that was restricted to past experience and know-how. We needed to push beyond field 1 and explore field 2 where we could see deeply and understand the situation in Nike collectively.

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Exploring Nike Town on a next level...

Observe, observe, observe...

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Co-sensing pt 1.

Per Scharmer (2009), Co-sensing refers to:  

Observe, observe, observe, go to the places of most potential and listen with your mind and heart wide open.

We recognised that The Nike Town in Oxford Circus is one of Nike’s biggest flagship stores and that we would need to plan our observation method. Our method was as follows:

1. Observe and compare three types of interactions: staff to customer, staff to staff, and staff to managers. The aim being to establish any visual signs that the Nike workers (known as athletes) were perhaps creatively oppressed in the workplace

2. To spend 15 minutes on each floor in Nike Town

3. To have no interaction at all with any athlete.

Our observations were as follows:

Ground Floor: The layout of the store meant that the focus on this floor was to attract customers and get them to the next level, so there was minimal interaction on the bottom floor. The facial expressions of the workers suggested that they were somewhat bored as customers would barely speak to them.

1st Floor: The staff seemed much more engaged on this floor, they were conversing with customers helping them pick the right shoe or training gear with a smile on their face, . Staff members were also conversing with staff members, conversation topics ranged from the latest Nike releases to when their shift would end. There was no sign of any staff to manager interactions.

2nd Floor: The athletes on this floor were very busy. I caught sight of athletes in the stock room; they were actively engaged with their duties but seemed rushed of their feet. Their facial expressions were generally happy and there were no signs of boredom. Staff to staff interaction was extremely low on this floor however the athletes seemed quite enthusiastic. There was no sign of staff to manager interaction

3rd Floor: By now I realized that the higher I went up the less customer footfall there was. The athletes on the 3rd floor were a lot less busy; therefore staff to staff interaction was extremely high. Once again there was no sight of a manager.

Review

Having spent 1 hour at the Nike store I felt that a review session was needed. It was hard for me initially to not draw upon my past working experience at Zara and project that onto the routine work environment at Nike. Although the number of customers fluctuated from floor to floor, most athletes seemed to be content in their working environment (except for those on the ground floor). 

This observation did not reveal any signs that Nike’s employees would benefit from the introduction or enhancement of psychological safety in the work place.