"You're hauling bomb parts in our minivan?!" ... clearly explaining and providing feedback on expected behaviors can form lasting habits

Check out my prior "Life Lesson" articles here

Okay, so this sounds worse than it actually was. But not the best question in the world to hear from your wife. Now before you contact ATF, we never had explosive parts in our bomb kits, just metal and electronics. That said, why in the world would I be hauling them around in our family van?

This life lesson is less about the specific story of hauling bomb parts. Rather, it's a mindset that I chose to have about getting things done. The world I worked in for the first 30 years of my career at Boeing were an equal balance of 'you have to follow the rules' ... 'but get it done'. The rules were a complex set of policies, procedures, and business practices developed through decades of experiences and shaped by Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARs) and a myriad of other federal agency requirements. Here's a glimpse into FARs | Acquisition.GOV.

I've had many discussions over the past few years with people about culture. Some companies and leaders will try to explain that the stated values and behaviors are its culture. That's not really true. Culture is represented by the everyday habits of an organization. Undoubtedly, they are shaped by those values and behaviors, but only if that shaping has made them visible through the everyday actions of everyone in the organization.

Through the mid-90's, all McDonnell Douglas employees were evaluated on a set of performance factors as part of our Continuous Performance Improvement Process. Here they are: Customer Focus - Quality Output - Resource Management - Planning - Implementation - System/Process Discipline - Effective Teamwork - Communication - Personal Ownership - Acts with Integrity - Job Knowledge - Continuous Learning. You'll see that the company included implementation defined as "Persistent and resourceful in analyzing and solving problems to meet the plan and achieve results; contributes high quality ideas and successful solutions; gets the job done."

Today, many companies have a very high inertia to overcome when making changes. That inertia is its culture. That culture is often created through, years, decades and sometimes over a century of "this is how we do it." Often regulations were the impetus to create that culture, but the accountability for allowing it to happen rested with the leadership. And, if that culture exists today, it is the current leadership that has to drive the change resulting in the desired everyday habits throughout the entire organization ... especially by creating the foundation in which they can thrive. It requires being crystal clear about what you expect in terms of actions that can turn into everyday habits.

McDonnell Douglas did this quite well and it shaped many of us for our lives. Below, you can read more about the "Performance Factors" and the detailed descriptions of expected performance actions that we were expected to model. This type of clarity was essential to create the culture of how we all should work. Simply stating high level expectations using wording that required interpretation would have been woefully insufficient.

So, did I haul bomb parts around in our minivan? Yep. Did I sit back and worry that I might not have known something and let it take days for someone to figure it out before getting the job done? Nope. Fortunately, the program I was working on was not beholden to all the FARs as it was a commercial acquisition program. They were pre-production sheet metal parts that we needed to find some spare parts to fit that could then be evaluated by engineering and quality as acceptable substitutes and added as such to the parts list for that item. I chose to focus on modeling personal ownership and implementation to get the job done.

MY LIFE LESSONS: As a company or organization, being prescriptive about how you want people to behave every day is essential. Helping them be accountable to this by providing feedback on how well they are doing on those specific actions can shape their habits forever. And it starts with leaders modeling the habits expected of everyone; not just delegating them down for others to interpret. Clearly explaining and providing feedback on expected behaviors can form lasting habits.

PS. Yes, I still have many of my performance reviews from 30+ years ago. I knew they'd come in handy someday!

PPS. If you want to go a layer deeper into the 1990s McDonnell Douglas performance factors, here they are with their descriptions. After reading them, you might find something to focus your team on or even yourself. Going back through them was a really good reminder for me. I continue to try to model these behaviors yet to this day, knowing I can get better at every one of them.

• Customer Focus: Knows who the customer is; understands customer needs, expectations and priorities; seeks customer input regularly; keeps customer informed. <note: customers can be internal or external>
• Quality Output: Delivers quality products and services that satisfy the customer; defines standards for quality and evaluated products, processes and services against those standards; achieves first-time quality while meeting work quantity, cost and schedule requirements.
• Resource Management: Makes decisions with full consideration to the cost impact on own organization; manages own time, equipment and supplies effectively; identifies ways to reduce costs and eliminates waste.
• Planning: Develops practical plans and schedules for meeting goals; sets the right priorities; bases planning decisions on facts and data; considers alternative approaches and anticipates barriers to getting the job done.
• Implementation: Persistent and resourceful in analyzing and solving problems to meet the plan and achieve results; contributes high quality ideas and successful solutions; gets the job done.
• System & Process Discipline: Takes advantage of opportunities to systemize and document key processes; regularly examines approaches and supports changes in processes to bring about continuous improvement; appropriately follows company processes and procedures.
• Effective Teamwork: Works well with others to accomplish team objectives; shows respect for team members and their ideas and is sensitive to cultural and gender differences; expresses own ideas and information in both verbal and written forms.
• Communication: Keeps appropriate people informed; listens effectively and seeks to understand different viewpoints; encourages the open expression of ideas and opinions; clearly expresses ideas and information in both verbal and written forms.
• Personal Ownership: Accepts personal ownership for performance commitments and goals; anticipates, identifies, and works effectively to remove performance barriers; sets high standards for performance; works hard to drive for results and successfully achieve goals; willing to take on challenging assignments.
• Acts with Integrity: Adheres to company ethical standards; actions consistently match words; builds trust; treats people fairly; follows through on commitments.
• Job Knowledge: Demonstrates understanding of systems, processes and skills necessary to perform the job; applies required technical and business knowledge.
• Continuous Learning: Keeps up to date on business and job-related knowledge and skills; seeks to broaden perspective beyond immediate job; continuously pursues learning and self-development.