My
reflection blog this week is to review frame blindness and how to guard
against. In using life experience, I will reflect on how to avoid framing
traps, offering insight on how I as a leader can frame situations differently.
I will also discuss lessons learned about complex decision-making, including
tools or frames that could have helped through the process. Lastly, identify
what I learned about myself during this weeks exercise.
As a planner assigned to a program, there are many layers
of management including an assigned manager, a program manager, and a core leadership
that oversees program planners across the business unit. When it comes to frame
blindness its is very easy for leadership to have a false sense of
completeness, assume there is little to no conflict and be over confident in
their roles.
Illusion of completeness
Working in a complex manufacturing aerospace environment
with multiple layers of leadership can leave an illusion of completeness, or
not everyone “having the complete picture” (p140), especially in comprehension
of process rules. An example of a lack of everyone understanding the picture is
when I had to prepare a report based on performance metric to our
customer. As a planner, I am required to
prepare a monthly report identifying if the program is meeting a metric
standard to include any corrective action if required. I had prepared the same
metric measurement for the previous six months and all of a sudden the customer
did not agree with the criterion used for the metrics. Of course, I was
confused as I was doing the metric as trained and understood.
The problem arose due to the customer had levied the
metric requirement since 2012, however the company policy on how to do the
metric was a new pilot program that rolled out in late 2015 and the metric I
was using. I of course defended my standing of why I was using the new pilot
program metric. The internal root cause derived from having a corporate and
program process that were not in sync. The company process was written to
follow the pilot program metrics. The program policy did not have a defined
metric requirement to use and when this occurs, the program defaults to company
policy. The program customer did not agree and went to the extent of requiring
a corrective action levied on my program. The illusion of everyone being on the
same page was definitely a façade and feel it is due to the many layers of
leadership within the company.
The layers of leadership are comprised of the planners
that are assigned to the core leadership teams who are responsible for the
complete overall requirements for planners including training, program
assignments, and supporting critical needs. The next level of leadership is
aligned with each program that the planners are assigned to. When these two
layers of leadership do not understand the levels of processes from core level
to program, it creates an illusion of completeness. The challenge with this
scenario is it creates an element of surprise, lack of trust and a potential
risk to reputation as the individual and the program. (Hoch,
Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2011)
Framing conflict
When framing conflict there can be a conflict especially
when there is an “overconfidence installed by the frames themselves” and with
“companies using cross-functional teams as an antidote to myopic thinking and
framing blindness” (p141) is very relevant in my personal life and
understanding of our company dynamics. My husband and I are both military
retired and both work within the same company, with two total different career
fields. My husband is a company level ground and aircraft safety investigator
who often has to correspond with the business management team to obtain cost
values for damage and in turn work with the local customer. I work within the
business management team that provides this information to my husband. Often I
hear how horrible our management team and lack of understand we have toward
aircraft damage, which creates communication conversational conflict when my husband
and I talk about our day. I have actually used the example that my husband is
being very myopic in his thinking concept, and he usually called my team a
bunch of bean counters that do nothing but look at numbers. The underlining
issue is civilian cost structure is completely different then the government.
The civilian rate for costs include overhead and labor, therefore it really
messes up his reporting to the customer. The customer only cares about the
direct costs associated with damage, not the overhead. However the company
provides total costs associated. We debated this in depth, where I had to
reframe the concept to prevent conflict in our conversation. Although we did
get to a resolution, my husband had to change how he obtained information to make
sure he met customer and company requirements.
The problem is we are both so very passionate about what we do that we
were creating conflicts without listening to the other person. Although we had
a conflict in communication, we both learned something from each other.
Lockheed has several cross-functional teams, which I think is an advantage from
a learning standpoint for employees, but can be a trap of delays to actually
getting things accomplished. The major value I learned from this part of the
assignment is this is probably one of my strongest suits as I avoid drama;
therefore I like to find opportunities quickly to resolve issues. (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther,
2011)
Overconfidence
This probably is the best segment of the reading this
week when it stated “most of us suffer from a well-documented tendency to
overestimate what we know, which contributes to our tendency to overvalue to
relevance of our own frames and undervalue the relevance of others” (p140). As
a parent in a household where my husband and I both have completed Master’s
Degree and three of our four daughters are attending college, so of course as
parents we know everything there is to know about going to college. My husband
and I have worked and attended school, and I have a hard time trying to
comprehend why the girls cannot manage a work and school environment. Our
little family is blended, where two of the girls are his and two are mine. My
husband’s oldest daughter graduated from nursing school last summer and did not
have to work while she was going, and it is a direct result of my husband
making the argument if he didn’t have to work while going to school, he would
have made better grades in his undergrad studies. However, she passed her
nursing exam within a month and still has not obtained employment. Being a
college student and graduate, my oldest daughter is working and going to
college full-time. My over confidence is related to excuses, and have held my
daughter to a similar standard to my own, without realizing the struggles of
today for our youth. I was not realizing what my daughter was doing as value
added and always seemed to be questioning what she was doing such as why is she
not taking another course each semester because she didn’t have kids or home
responsibilities. I had to actually take a break and self assess the situation
to determine if I was framing her life to be alike mine, verses respecting her
choices. As parents it is difficult to not judge and push our kids to be just
like us, but their life design has been totally different faced with different
adversities and struggles than we did. As parents of four grown adults we have
redesigned our framing for the kids in the last couple of years by being
available verses being directive for decision-making.
Conclusion
What
I learned about myself this week is I have definitely been involved with illusions
of completeness, frame conflict, and overconfidence as elements that overshadow
my framing decision-making. The lesson’s I learned is that not only is my work environment
complex so is my personal life. The valuable lesson is learning to frame decisions
by conducting a frame audit and ensuring that the frames I use are not a misfit
to the scenario or situation. (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther,
2011) (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther,
2011)
