We've talked about vision, journey, culture and results, and the importance of going through the wheel, going through the paradigm in that order. But what happens when you go backwards? Is that okay? Is that ever a good idea? In this episode, Ryan and I talk about the difference between red lining and green lining through the wheel.

Make Work Not Suck. Our podcast talks about exactly that, our process, vision, journey, culture and results. We present real world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to make work not suck. Hosted by Ryan Hodges, co-host Daniel Steere. Join us each episode and make work not suck.

Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast. Welcome back to the Make Work Not Suck podcast. Ryan, we've talked about vision, journey, culture results many times in many different ways, but we've always gone through the wheel in that order, vision, journey, culture, results. And we've even talked about how important it is to always start with vision.

Uh, what can you go backwards? What happens if you do? Or, or maybe just say what happens if you don't go through the wheel, the right way? So there's, there's, I mean, there's rotation forward and backwards. Okay, so let's start with, let's start with going backwards. That's vision, results. Should we start with going forward? No, I'm gonna start with going backwards. I'm gonna start with the wrong way first.

Good. Because there is a time you do go backwards through the wheel. Oh, okay. So, so you've got vision, results, culture, and journey, right? Sure. So most of the time when we're problem solving, we look, whatever it, we, whatever triggers it and we realize we haven't achieved the vision or the goal we are trying to achieve, right? Okay. Something feels wrong or we know is off, right? So we look at the results, we look at the P and L, we look at the metrics. We look at, you know, the tangibles we can see, We look at my paycheck and it's like, this is not big enough that, that Yep, that's works too. Um, and then, and then the first thing we like to do is we like to blame.

Oh, We like to blame people. So usually we start looking for fault in people. Okay. And we very rarely make it to the process. So let me ask, is this just vision result? People that do this or does, do people oriented to any part of the framework tend to go vision and then jump to result? Most, most people will go vision, result, culture. There is a percentage of population that will go vision, result, journey, culture. Okay. But it, it, it, there is a little bit of a slant, but for the most part, most of the time, because we go to the tangible Sure. Because typically a process, unless, unless it's like a piece of machinery or something like that that broke.

Yeah. That's, but typically easier to see. Typically, like in a professional services or services industry, especially if you're working like with intangibles, like with software or you know, accounting or legal or something like that, um, an intangible service, it, you, you go to the person because your first inclination is somebody screwed up. Right? And so that's, that's not necessarily always bad, but the problem is, is when you're always going backwards through that, and we love negativity as humans, we remember negative things, six to one from bad to good, right? Wow. So we keep going down and we keep going back. Very rarely do we go, okay, you know, Daniel did the process wrong. And then, then we go, okay, well let's fix it. Good Companies or people that understand it, and this is kind of going through like an OODA loop or a retrospective and agile scrum, is you work backwards through it and you'll figure out what it is and then you go, okay, how are we gonna fix it? Okay, how do you fix it? And, and the way you always move forward is you go, okay, what is the vision we're trying to achieve? What is the process? You know, the journey, we're going there, what's the culture we achieve in the results? So to that, that's, that's the flywheel effect, you know, good to great, right? Getting the flywheel moving. Okay, so, and spinning up, lemme stop you there.

So you evaluate it going backwards. So did we hit the result? No. Oftentimes, to your point, we want to blame Mm-Hmm. Well, it's Ryan's fault that we didn't achieve the result, and so we just go beat up Ryan, right? Yeah. Healthy companies I think go to that next step and look at the process and then to fix it. So that's how you diagnose it. But to fix it, you go forwards Forward. Well, let me, let me hit a couple things. Okay. So typically we go backwards through the wheel when we're diagnosing, okay? Because we go from the known to the unknown, right? We, we, we did not hit a vision, we didn't achieve a goal. So then we go from the tangible to the intangible. Yep. And usually we stop at the human because that's where we start fighting. Once you get to the other side of this, and, and again, this is, I'll talk about some called red line, green line in a minute. There are circumstances where you have to choose which is the best way to go to, to problem solve. Because if you think about, if you go through the wheel, you can go through the wheel, uh, counter or clockwise to problem solve as well. What was the vision? What was the process? What were the people? What were the KPIs? And, and, and, and when you're, when you're aware of this, you, when you start with the vision to the process, usually you start talking about the problem in terms of we built a, the ba uh, wrong environment, we built the wrong process, and then the people come in, right? Which you actually get, you actually get traction first when you go backwards through the wheel in an unhealthy environment. That's the shame, blame, I forget the other word. Shame. Blame and fear. Shame, Blame and fear, right? When you go back, when you go forward to the wheel in problem solving, usually you've made it through a, a process and you've identified a, a problem and a process and a KPI, right? Because they, they correlate, Right? It's, it's almost more of the, did I give Ryan everything he needed to be successful? Right? And if no, then I can't blame Ryan for that. I've gotta fix the, you know, was he trained? Did he have the tools, blah, blah, blah. Right? Right. And so I'm sure Ryan would appreciate me asking that question before I just lay into him. But I don't see most organizations doing that. Right? And, and in some cases they really are like culture-based a, uh, KPIs where you do go result to, to culture. Okay. Like if you like blatantly violated a policy Sure. Um, or it's, it's, uh, like you're on video camera stealing or something Like that, that sure you steal from your employer. That that was pretty easy. You Go that way. When, when you're going, That conversation pretty much stops at culture. There, there it Stops the culture. Like you, you, you blatantly just, okay. And then as far as problem solving, one, one of the fallacies we make when we're problem solving is we start going backwards through the wheel to solve the problem. Mm-Hmm. And very rarely, there are few, few exceptions. Very rarely do you go backwards through the wheel to solve a problem. And that ultimately because we have an idea and we're trying to expect a result, and then we, we put expectations on people. And because usually when we go backwards to the wheel, we stop at culture. We never get to the process. Yeah. And every company, I've never walked in the door of a company and they're like, oh, we've got too much process. We don't need any more process. There are number one complaints. We don't have enough process. People don't follow the process, process, process, process. Yeah. Because you have a vision and you expected a result and you, you told the people to do it. You told the people to achieve a result. Right. And so the reason why you always go forward through it is it forces you to go, uh, to think through the process. Yeah. Because when you think through the journey, you know, begin with the end in mind, what is the end destination I'm trying to get to? And you walk it all the way back to, uh, now with the measurements in between the people that need to do it, et cetera, you find that one, your process is simpler. Two, your KPIs or fewer, because you don't need as many. And three, your people understand the process, you know, you got the understand and followed by, all right, well, if you don't put the understand and followed by all and part of the process, then how do you expect people to be held accountable to it? Sure.

So, so then let me talk about red line, green line. Oh, actually, before you do that, I, I've actually been in a situation where I, uh, I worked for, worked for a guy who worked for a guy who just went results culture. Like never vision, never process, just results culture, results Culture. And you know what the problem with that is? Is you’re flying blind, right? Like you don't, you don’t know where you’re going. If you keep results, culture, results, culture, you're, you don't know where you're going and you, you don't know the steps to get there. And the people always seem to be the problem. They can never meet expectations. It’s a mess. Yeah, no, I mean that sounds, sounds like a horrible place to work. Uh, redlining and greenlining. So redlining and greenlining are the ways to determine if you have a healthy process versus an unhealthy process, okay? So, so redlining, we talk about redlining a lot, and we've talked about redlining in terms of people's performance, right? So, so, so redlining a process is when you work backwards. Okay? When you, so you did not achieve the result. So you look at the result. So what are the metrics? What's the, what are the KPIs? Okay. What, what, what did we not achieve? And then we blame people, right? And, and this is an organizational structure that's very unhealthy, where people become, uh, scapegoats. And so, so we focus on people. And then if, if we do, uh, for whatever reason, we, we finally make it to, um, the process and we start fixing the process. And then we never really get to the vision, right? So we go backwards through the wheel, um, and we end up in shame, blame, and fear. And that's kind of the result that people can end up in a very toxic culture, right? Yep. And that's redlining. And redlining is where people are basically putting blame on other people and they're never getting to the process. It's always, somebody else's fault. Nobody can get anything done because they're trying to dodge blame. Sure. And they're trying to survive. And that’s the problem with redlining. The problem with greenlining is we never get to the point of determining where we're missing. We just keep going in the circle. So greenlining is when you stay in the vision, journey, culture results, you go through it, but you never stop to figure out where you're missing. So, so you’re always just, you know, you don’t fix a process, you don’t do anything. You’re just like, okay, you’re getting the, the cycle going. And the cycle going is good, but you don’t fix anything. Right. Okay. You’re just always working on the journey, working on the culture, working on the results, working on the vision, but you never go backwards to actually figure out where your bottleneck is. That’s the problem with greenlining. The problem with greenlining is you don’t have a good diagnosis of what’s wrong with the system. You’re just perpetually in motion without ever fixing anything. You’re just kind of feeling good and keeping the culture happy, right? Yeah. You’re just like, oh, we’re getting results, we’re, we’re improving, improving, improving, but you’re, you’re not getting to the heart of the problem. So that’s the difference between redlining and greenlining, is one, one stops at people. One never gets to the problem. Yeah. You know, to summarize that redlining, unhealthy organizations, greenlining, the result is an ineffective organization. So we’ve talked about it in two episodes ago in our podcast that in order to make work not suck, we have to stop the redlining. But greenlining’s not necessarily better. It just seems better. It seems better because you’re in the process and you’re making progress and you’re always in motion, but you’re not actually fixing the problems.

Awesome. All right. So let’s finish up. Make work not suck. How do you apply this to make work not suck? Okay, So don’t redline, greenline instead, but really we talked about greenlining, is, is unhealthy for organizations as well. So, so you need to go through the wheel forward, right? So, you know, vision journey culture results, and, and if you don’t achieve the result, you go back to the process and you evaluate the process. And, and ultimately you have to make sure that you take care of the people along the way, but that’s not where you start. And, and the only way to, to make sure that you’re always in the right direction is to go forward through the wheel, but that if, if you’re really wanting to make sure that work does not suck, you have to go forward through the wheel and make sure you don’t just stay perpetually in greenlining. And you can’t be stuck in redlining. You need to diagnose and fix.

Excellent. Thanks, Ryan. I hope everyone out there gets value from this.

So you're actually doing what appears to be parallel work, but what you're doing is you're testing it, and when you're testing it, you're going through it. Right? You're like, okay, oh, we need to tweak that. Oh, we missed that. Oh, yep. Oh, gotta have this meeting. All this stuff. It takes time and energy. That's again, green line. But when you've got through that, the testing phase, and you've worked all the kinks out again while running the old process, and then you train the people so everybody understood, followed by, all right. And then when you do the transition and actually do the crossing, it's actually really interesting because there's all these organizations I've worked with where we spend all this time here. We’ll spend a quarter getting ready for all these changes. And then the day we make all the changes, everybody's like, "Are we doing this?" We're like, "We’re already done." What do you mean? Like, we spent all that time and energy getting ready for it and we’re done.

Yeah. Hmm. Because we did all the hard work. The change was easy versus what a lot of organizations do. The red line. Yeah. The red line is, "Hey, we're gonna make all these changes now. Go." Right. And then, because it's just cascading red lines and system failures and bugs and p****d off customers, etc., it’s, and sometimes it’s six to eight months of cleaning up the mess because you’re reactionary to it. Yeah. Yeah. You didn’t think through all the consequences of the change you wanna make and all the people are feeling it, which means you’re left with a negative culture. Negative is…

Sure. You know, here's another one is when you redline versus greenline, redline is reactive. You react, oh yeah. That's good. Greenline's proactive. You have to think, take the time and energy to cognitively think through it. But when you greenline major change in an organization and you get to that zero crossing day and everybody's like, "Wow, you accomplished something." Yeah. You really did. That's impressive. You accomplished. I've been in a lot of companies that have done that very poorly. I've seen very few examples of organizations doing that well.

And it gets, it does get very chaotic right up to the zero crossing. Right. But you’re, because you’re greenlining it and, and your urge is to redline, of course you fight through, you greenline it. At that zero crossing day and everybody, you know, the change happens. There may be a hiccup or two of course, but when it happens way smoother than everything, you know, the sucky that happened before. Right. All of a sudden work doesn’t suck. Work doesn’t suck so much because…

It’s, you know what suck looks like. You know what suck feels like. Yep. Because you know, everybody, it’s, it’s where we’ve all been for most of our careers. Right. And when you get into an organization that does it that way and all of a sudden it’s liberating. Wow. And now it’s like, ooh, how do we, now how do we get even better? Right, now it becomes almost like, "Let’s do that again. Let’s do that again." And now that we know how to do this process, we can do it faster, more efficient. And there’s, I forget the law that goes with it, but you know, once you know, there’s, there’s sometimes you take a year to do something and then the next time you do it takes six months. Sure. The next time you do it takes, you know, there’s a point where it just gets more and more efficient because you’ve done it right. That you just, it’s just compound. It’s like compounding interest.

Yeah. And so the thing is, is, but it’s compounding organizational effectiveness.

Effectiveness, yeah. Yes. And as you’re doing that, you’re aligning the health, as you’re aligning the health, you’re expanding the effectiveness. As you’re expanding the effectiveness, you’re aligning the health. Nice. And so that’s why, that’s why harmony is so important. You can’t just have health, you can’t just have effectiveness. You gotta have both. You have to have both. And you have to pay attention to the rotation. And the more and more you go through that, that’s the flywheel effect. Because once the flywheel’s spinning, it doesn’t just stop instantly. Yeah. ‘Cause it’s got mass and…

Yeah. It keeps the momentum going. It keeps the momentum going versus this, and, and you know what’s interesting is once you’ve got momentum and the organization itself has got that momentum in that circular motion, the second someone tries to go backwards, they’re met with a lot of friction. Yeah. They are. And they stick out like a sore thumb and they either quickly get in line or…

Or they quickly find the door. Or…

They quickly find the door. Which is if, if that organization is running that flywheel like that, that protects the culture. Yeah, it does. That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Because once you have a healthy organization, it’s a place that everybody wants to work at. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s back to the one I talked about the other day, the guy that has the line of welders out the door. Sure. And you know what they do? They keep the bad welders out.

Yeah, yeah. They don’t, they don’t let the toxic people in. Yeah. That, that goes to the competition. Yeah. You can have that guy, you should hire him right now. He’s terrible. You know, and that sounds great for a manager or a leader, but as an employee. Oh, sure. That’s awesome. You want the person that’s gonna work with you alongside you and not just take advantage of…

Yeah. You want the people that are gonna greenline and minimize the redlines and go through the wheel in the right way and not try to constantly jump from vision to results. Right. Again, that doesn’t mean people don’t make mistakes. We all make mistakes. Of course. You don’t have success without, you know, failure, which is mistakes. But it’s, it’s, it’s when you constantly greenline, you actually have the room for mistakes. You actually are building margin for mistakes to happen. Right. It goes back into your health and effectiveness…

Tax. Tax, yeah. When you greenline and you’re going through it, you have built in margin for people to compensate for mistakes and you still have success. But those mistakes are what happened at the bottom end of that greenline. Whereas when there’s no margin for mistakes and everything is held, that redline…

Everything’s a fire drill. Everything’s a fire drill. Everything’s criticized. Working nights and weekends because somebody screwed up and…

Yeah. That describes most of my career. So that is, yeah, that is, that is redline, greenline. I think that has been, besides the methodology of the paradigm, the wheel, if you will, redline greenline has probably been one of the most effective things that I’ve ever used. One of the most effective tools.

Yeah, it sounds fantastic. I see it being really powerful working with leaders at any level to help them become the healthy and effective organization that so many of them want to be. Do you work for a redline organization or a greenline organization? Do you find yourself constantly fighting fires and working late nights to achieve unachievable goals? Or do you guys have the time and the space to plan and to handle unexpected events? If you feel like you’re in more of a redline organization than a greenline organization, head to our website and look for the free resources to help.