The 70-20-10 rule represents, by percentage, how people actually learn and develop:  70% from job experiences, 20% from feedback and collaboration, and only 10% from courses and from reading.

If 70% of learning happens on-the-job, what the employee can take back and use after the actual learning remains the most critical reinforcing loop for both the employee and the organization benefit.  As an employee needs a space to practice, competence equals confidence.

If 20% of learning happens through interaction and feedback then a healthy work environment needs practice as well as both informal and formal feedback.  The space for people to practice within their work demand is critical.  You only know what you know when you socialize what you think you know, so an employee will find this out only through feedback. 

Growth and development builds employee knowledge, skills, and abilities.  Learning provides employees new and necessary resources to do their jobs better.  The investment in learning and an environment to reveal skills is an investment in resources.  With new resources [knowledge, ability, and skills] people feel more confidence they can do the job.  Confidence builds motivation.

Growth and development at the individual and team level in turn builds the collective organization’s knowledge, abilities, and skills as a renewable stock that all within the organization draw on.  When learning is applied, new situations provide the organization gains and returns on training investment through increased motivation, increased job satisfaction, engagement, and a way for people to manage job stress.

An organization can only develop if people develop.  The only way for your organization to develop is through a place of practice.  This is systems theory in reality.

Talent acquisition, recruiting, is useless if the environment retards further growth.  Acquisition without practice is only collecting and unless your company is your hobby if you only collect and store talent without an opportunity growth, you and your company lose.

Here is the source inspiration to this blog:  Learning Fosters Psychologically Healthy Workplaces — Chief Learning Officer magazine

A boss gets things done through others.  An ability to influence others to meet a goal is critical to get things accomplished.  Some call management influence, others call management coercion.  Influence or coercion, controlling bosses cause employees to strive towards goals that are opposite to the boss.

Bosses are managers, bosses manage resources:  time, money, and employee each are finite resources.  Employees value freedom and autonomy and will react to a boss with poor work.  A Duke University study looked at significant others and the impact a significant other, to include boss, has on goals.  As little as a subliminal flash of the name of the controlling ‘other’ was enough to produce poorer work.

There is a psychological mechanism that connects the love of freedom and the behavioral response, this mechanism is called reactance.  Unconscious and unintentional rejection of goals [that status report that you asked for] are associate with overbearing people.  A rejection of a goal [that presentation you need to review] reveals itself by goal in opposition.

I came across the above study through Andrew O’Connell’s Harvard Business Review blog Why Controlling Bosses Have Unproductive Employees.  O’Connell sums it nicely;

“It’s all too easy, once people become managers, for them to forget how deeply their employees value freedom and autonomy, and the extent to which some of them [the employees] … react to any infringement of it, even unconsciously.”

Not getting quality work from your people?

Need to watch your people like a hawk for them to get anything done?

Need to spell out every detail to make sure it is done right?

That bristle of hair on the back of your neck when you think of your overbearing mom or dad may be the reaction employees have at work around overbearing bosses.

Memo to controlling bosses:  the more you control the less quality work your employees provide.

There is a clear difference between getting things done and getting things accomplished.  Similar to the difference between being consistent and reliable.  Better quality may require your goals to synch with their goals.

A .pdf copy of the Duke University study:  Nonconscious relationship reactance: When significant others prime opposing goals

At work do you ever say, “let me give you some advice”?  If so, do people lean forward with anticipation to hear what you have for advice?

When reviewing a draft ever heard someone tell you, “well, here’s my advice”?  If so, do you take a deep breath so as not to lose your cool?

When you hear someone ask for thoughts have you ever heard a reply start, “here’s what I would have done”?   if so, ever look around the room to catch people roll their eyes?

The point of communication:  action.

However, turning someone off, is rarely a strategic intent of those who hope to influence.  The intended reaction to your communication should not turn someone off, but yet so many turn people off with their communication.

Successful communication creates intended result(s). The performance measure for your communication:  did you get the intended result.  When you gave someone advice was your advice followed?  To the letter or just a little bit?

Do your realize, even as a leader, when you offer advice, you have really only offered weak, wishy-washy communication.  Advice alludes to an option, not a direct expectation.

Why communicate if your intent is missed. Waste of time.

Advice is a waste of time

Giving advice implies your advice is optional.  If your advice is not optional, then why not make it more clear what you expect.

.pdf link from LeadershipIQ website, free white paper, email registration required

A recent brief from LeadershipIQ called, “Why Giving Advice Doesn’t Work”*, lists samples of advice you may have heard or said yourself:

• “Personally, I wouldn’t bother the client before noon.”
• “If it were me, I’d get started on this right away.”
• “Have you tried talking to the client?”
• “You should probably make a few extra just in case.”

This article, one of this year’s most thought-provoking reads I have tried to adopt, lists 5 reasons why advice does not work:

1. Judgmental
2. Directive
3. Gotchas
4. Narcissism
5. Unsolicited

A sample nugget this 4-page, white paper offers:

… [h]owever, when you phrase it as advice, it sounds more like a recommendation than a directive. And as we’ve seen, that [directive] creates a misunderstanding that wastes everyone’s time.

If what you need to tell a subordinate is NOT optional, then be honest with them. Don’t play coy and pretend they have a choice when they actually don’t.

Advice – run that by yourself, first

It seems so logical in corporate America, or socially correct, to couch your expectation in soft-peddled advice or a pleadingly-weak suggestion.  Problem is, if it sounds like an option, people usually take the option of least resistance; resistance being:  they don’t want to redo work.

People will, however do extra work when based on fear, but, of course, fear is not much of a long-term gain for you, as it creates a bottleneck of indecision in your people and retards your people’s development.  And fear usually does not produce quality work as controlling bosses cause poor work.

So, after reading the above article to learn advice does not work doing something about it takes action.  As often as possible, I prepare for a difficult meeting or a difficult conversation by running my intended sentence(s), out loud, to myself.  I try what might say to that person to try to hear how I might react if it someone said the same to me.  Plenty of times this self-reflected sentence/message provides me the realization that what I intend to say would come across poorly.

If I can not get a practice sentence tried out ahead of time and the need is immediate, I at least sit back for 10 seconds and try the sentence I want to say in my head.  A 10-second pause is well worth the investment.

Being able to take that practice run, the subsequent self-reflection, and the modification to properly reassemble my message is always an investment well worth it.  Because, if it is worth communicating, it is worth communicating properly.  Clear communication saves time in both the short- and the long-term.

Source: *Why Giving Advice Doesn’t Work whitepaper — LeadershipIQ [.pdf link, no email registration]

Inspired by a chapter on providing feedback from Mark Murphy’s book:  Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your Employees to Give It Their All, and They’ll Give You Even More.  Mr. Murphy is Chairman and CEO of LeadershipIQ

People, process, and technology.

• Announce a policy, full adoption.
• Map a process, cycle time guaranteed.
• Buy a server, flip the switch.

Seems so simple.

Interconnections, systems, are never simple.

The intent of keeping people, process, and technology in mind is to think through the impact change has on the 3.  Identify that impact and then you should have a good idea of what it will take for a project or effort to succeed.

Thinking strategy, systems, and change-type initiatives the 3 make for good sanity checks.  The reality is that people, process, and technology do not add up to a full picture.  This heuristic trinity leaves a critical hole, in reality you should divide all 3 by the most important factor:  behavior.

Too often within the 3, process and technology take a majority of dialogue and budget.  Why?  Perhaps people, often considered the soft side, represent the heart of change challenges.  Dealing with people is more difficult than plugging a machine.  It is easier, on paper, to map a process or design a system than to build new behaviors.  But, without people, who follows process?  And without people who turns on, utilizes, and maintains the technology?

People, process, and technology.  Planning without deep exploration that the impact change has on all 3 is a project aiming for the scrap heap.  The hardest part, is the softest part:  people.  Usually the soft is ignored so we can get on to the hard work of process maps or vendor selection.

And, admittedly, the people portion might include a review of new skills needed, the new competencies developed, the new reporting relationships, or the new span of control.  But, without a focus on behavior, people, process, and technology does not cover the true impact

• People:  identify the behaviors needed to sustain progress.
• Process:  identify the behaviors that exhibit commitment.
• Technology:  identify the behaviors for target utilization.

People, process, and technology is not a law, it is a rule of thumb; we could quibble that people should not need it’s own category, as both process and technology rely on people.   However, it is clear in most change that people draw the short straw in design.  So, let’s add a policy to include behavior in the design:

• What are the behaviors expected?
• When are they expected?
• How are they expected to change?
• What happens if they do not change?

Recently I felt lucky to get a solid refresh to the oft-quoted S.M.A.R.T. goal design by introducing “Y”, as in WHY are you even doing this, I’d like some more discussion on the behaviors expected for people, process, and technology to succeed.

Behaviors as a denominator keeps end-user adoption in mind from the start.

Leaders at the top of the organization are accountable to deliver results.  Some leaders believe results come from questioning others.  Here are 4 questions leaders need to ask themselves, before they begin to ask anything of others:

1. When’s the last time someone disagreed with me in a meeting?
2. What am I teaching?
3. Am I getting 100% from my people?
4. How is my competition eating my lunch?

Leadership is not a title, it is a position.  A leader’s influence positions people and teams for success.  This positioning does not come with a salary range, but is found at any level of an organization.

If you are looking at positions of leadership make sure you constantly ask yourself these questions.

Want to gut-check the quality of the leaders around you?  What do your supervisor or manager or director or VP or SVP or C-level or board member clearly exhibit as answers to each of these 4 questions?

This book provides further grist for building a strong team.

And of course building a strong team is a leader’s ultimate measure of success.

CEOs care about learning programs.  To gain more executive-level interest, guess what learning and development folks? CEOs want metrics.  The learning metrics you may have collected and reported on might need adjustment to become important to an executive.

The organization challenge that leader’s need to recognize is that an organization’s ability to learn and to adapt is the only source of competitive advantage.  Development professionals only gain stature in the business environment when they meet and plan business solutions.

The ROI Institute and Chief Learning Officer magazine have a study recap that should provide a clearer map of our worth.  The targets of this survey were CEOs at Fortune 500 companies and the top 50, privately held firms.  From this population 450 firms were sent a survey.  21.3% responded.

Quick hits:

• 4% of CEOs avoid learning and development investments
• 20% of CEOs invest only in the minimum
• 10% of CEOs invest in all learning and development needs
• 18% of CEOs invest when they see value

The survey further landed the reality of learning and development environments in the results to determine how close the CEO works with their lead learning and development (L&D) executive.  To assess this, the survey asked CEOs to check “1″ to indicate the L&D executive reports direct to the CEO; a “2″ if there are 2 levels between them; and a “3″ if there are 3 levels between the CEO and the L&D lead.  The average response:  3.2, meaning the CEO is more than 3 levels removed from their L&D executive.

The chart below provides the greatest opportunity to get, or stay, in the business discussions with CEOs.  Along the left column 1 through 8 signify metrics currently in use.  3 through 7 are roughly mapped to classic levels of evaluation*.  1 and 2 are process measures or inputs to the process.   8 was included as awards are typically reported in larger organizations.

The column on the far right lands the case for change in our relevance:  impact and ROI.  Impact and ROI are 1 and 2 to “my ranking of the importance of this measure”.

CEOs are telling us they want details on learning and development mapped to:  1) business strategy impact and 2) ROI

What are we reporting?  Let’s take a look at learning and development scorecards.  Though the survey reveals only 22% of CEOs said they had one or see one, of those, only 1 CEO indicated they were pleased with the current scorecard.  Comments from the 22% include:

• “inadequate”
• “incomplete”
• “doesn’t have all the data”
• “doesn’t really connect to the business” [emphasis added]

The first rule in communication:  know your audience.

If we were unsure before or banging our heads against the wall looking for an opportunity, we now have gold to work with from these results.  Consider these results as if you had a conversation direct with your CEO.

An organization’s ability to learn and to adapt is the only source of competitive advantage.  Our ability to become or remain relevant also comes down to an ability to learn and adapt.

*2-page visual of Kirkpatrick’s 4 Levels of Learning [.pdf]

Sources:

1. How Executives View Learning Metrics Chief Learning Officer magazine
2. The ROI Institute

Social intelligence, social competence, emotional competence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, emotional adaptiveness, emotional quotient, emotional intelligence, EQ, and EI.  There are many schools and many thoughts about what is and is not emotional intelligence.  And just as many tools that attempt to measure, monitor, and predict the impact of emotional intelligence.

For me, Emotional Intelligence boils down to:

1. the way I motivate myself,
2. the way I motivate others, and
3. focusing my intentions to result in correct consequences

If being smart or a high IQ was all that mattered than only those with the highest IQ would ascend to the C-level or highest public-sector positions.  Every valedictorian would be successful.

There is something more to knowledge.  Something more than being a valedictorian to get along and to succeed.  This something includes self-awareness and relationship awareness.  Below are a series of blogs I’ve written on EI  and the importance I see to how people, organizations, and cultures succeed or fail.

Is emotional intelligence (EI) more important than IQ?  I won’t claim that, but in today’s world we rely on teams and on each other to get things done and being smart is not enough to motivate someone else to work with you.  Someone with high EI has an ability to adapt to social demands and stressors – all very welcome in today’s workforce.

1. Culture war (brief) —

What good is it to hire for culture fit when we work and live in a dynamic world where change is constant?   People who don’t fit your culture are the people who keep your business and your team sharp, challenge the status quo, drive new conversation, and stimulate cognitive diversity.

2. Emotion versus intelligence – the tortoise and the hare (brief) —

IQ intends to measure the ability to reason deductively or inductively.  However, thinking, behaving, and communication skills, also known as emotional intelligence, might just provide a higher set of behavioral competencies vital to success.

3. The VC’s missing formula: human capital discounted cash flow —

Without human capital financial assessments, there is no accurate financial picture or ability to factor expected payoff. Only talent designs and delivers strategic plans. Only talent leverage assets at the operational and functional talent. It takes talent to design, implement, and follow processes. All these are merely conditional to if and when talent is motivated.

4. Innovation, the technical risk to IQ —

Emotional Intelligence is the bedrock for an innovative culture and for developing innovative people.  Innovation is not an earned degree, it is both a skill and an ability.  Professionals in a knowledge economy are not innovative only from the hours of 9 to 5.  Innovation is largely reliant on motivation and without Emotional Intelligence you can’t hope for innovation.

5. The cost of human capital is emotional intelligence —

Relationship management is where emotional and social intelligence manifests most visibly.  For obvious reasons your ability to identify and understand relationships is vital for motivation and team.  More than 1 million employed U.S. workers concluded that a bad boss or supervisor is the number 1 reason people quit their jobs; now that is real cost.

6. The NFL draft and your company recruiting strategy (round 2) —

You need to look beyond someone’s technical skill, as technical skill is not an indication of future success, it is an indication of performing a task. Unless you are a hermit, you need to interact with others and how someone manages their emotions and manages relationship. This skill is often referred to as Emotional Intelligence (EI) and EI highlights the importance of how people interact with others and perform in a team – there’s a connection to an NFL team for every organization.

7. Human capital risk, now that’s real risk —

In many evaluations there is a disproportionately low due diligence around human capital risk compared to financial, market, and legal due diligence. Too often the human capital due diligence focuses on industry experience, work history, and academic education, which has little positive correlation to successful ventures.

8. Discounted risk is human capital risk —

In my 15 years work in, multiple, post-merger environments that were the result of post-merger triage or life support, human capital risk is the real risk to returns and is every bit as important at the valuation stage, front end, but rarely gets there in as serious a discussion as market, legal, and financial valuations.  The firm that has a human capital risk model identifies and builds mitigation strategies that offer higher market returns and higher investor rates of return.  Human capital risk models are a competitive and comparative advantage.

9. Hiring the right person is more emotional than rational —

Technical skills do not correlate to an effective employee and do not lend insight into someone’s ability to work well with a team, to fit in culturally, to manage, or to lead.  Technical skill is not an indication of future success, it is an indication of performing a task.

In the current state of affairs driving more with less, demanding more integration and cooperation, and working across cultures, language, and borders, any focus on self-awareness, relationship management, social awareness, and self-management is valued.

The below book is a sober source to cut through the hype and promises of too many within the Emotional Intelligence field:

In school, those model students who shine above others and are always ready to “help” others risk more than a roll of their classmates’ eyes in the working world.  In organizations the model employee willing to help others risks outright employee resentment.  How you identify and manage these star performers may impact more than just your work, but your efforts may impact the motivation of your team.

I read about this with interesting in a Human Resource Executive Online article called The Selfless and the Despised:

The symptoms:

• Those who are willing to spend extra time helping other team members, without being asked, can inadvertently alienate their teammates, who may find their behavior off-putting;
• Organizations depend on the willingness of certain employees to spend additional time helping others without expecting anything in return, yet those [that help other] employees can undermine the organization by arousing their colleagues’ ire;
• People weren’t negatively reacting to the fact that this type of person was very generous, it was that the person was very generous and asked for little or nothing in return;
• Selfless team members are not playing by the rules and make the rest of the team look bad

The cure:

• Selfless people often make the mistake that others are motivated by their example, when in reality small victories along the way that really motivates a team;
• Selfless team members can defuse hostility or other nonproductive behavior — and inspire the team to even better results — by actively celebrating the team’s achievements;
• Selfless team members can say, ‘Look, I’m no saint, I’m benefiting from this just as much as you are,’ it would really go a long way toward helping others be more tolerant and accepting;
• If everyone receives the same carrot when the team hits a realistic target, you flip the dynamic — rather than employees protecting their underachieving brethren, employees will become the watchdogs of each other

To manage these powder keg situations you have to devise rewards around the team accomplishments; it is all about team, Team, TEAM goals and needs.  Like a teacher has a lot of influence on how classmates treat each other, a manager also has influence on how teams leverage each other’s strengths.

3 sources I’ve collected for you that the original article never provides links to:

1. The Seven Arts of Change: Leading Business Transformation That Lasts
2. The Happiness Advantage:  The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance At Work
3. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; The desire to expel unselfish members from the group

A good piece in Sunday’s Boston Globe Ideas section reveals we human beings disappoint easily.  And if we are easy to disappoint we are acutely set up for big letdowns from leaders all around us.  However, the big letdown and disappointment we beings feel really may have more to do with us then the leaders themselves.

Here are a bucket of paraphrased quotes and article take-aways:

• Disappointment and regret are distinct emotions, triggered by different sorts of events and motivating us to act in different ways. Being disappointed with a person feels different from being disappointed with an outcome, and the difference demands a different response.
• Research suggests that the counterfactual, what might-have-been if different decisions had been made, different policies pursued, or different politicians elected, grows increasingly positive in memory.  This then sets us up for future disappointment.
• Regret is triggered when we think our own decisions don’t pan out
• Disappointment is what we feel about circumstances that are beyond our immediate control.
• Regret–or, more accurately, our desire to avoid future regret–is a major factor in how we decide what to do, what to say, and what to buy.
• Disappointment … usually drives us to do not much at all, making it a less fruitful emotion for marketers and professional motivators. Negative emotions like anger or fear give people energy and incentive to act; disappointment does the opposite.
• Art Markman, a psychologist at the University of Texas says, ”[w]ith disappointment and sadness, they’re very low-energy kinds of states…[w]hich is why people who are sad and disappointed don’t do things like vote.”
• Disappointment depends on its target:  when people are disappointed in other people–a friend that fails to show up for a birthday party, for example–they tend to be angrier and less sad than when they are disappointed in a blameless outcome like a rained-out baseball game.
• People who are disappointed seem to prefer to blame people over circumstances.
  • Justin Kruger and Laura Kressel at New York University, along with Jeremy Burrus, then at Columbia Business School, last year published a paper in which subjects were told of people forced to make a decision between two or more bad options–in one study the experimenters used summaries of real-life custody cases in which judges had to choose between two seemingly unfit parents. Even when the lack of good options was explicitly laid out in this way, the test subjects still blamed the decision-maker for the poor outcome.
• Over time, people tend to get less rather than more forgiving of missed opportunities.
  • People say their regret depends on how far back in time they’re asked to go.  One reason is over time we steadily minimize the barriers to action that shape our decisions. Our instinct is to come to believe that the thing we didn’t do would have been less difficult than we found it at the time.
• How does one fight disappointment? In our personal lives we can try to keep our expectations realistic, or work to change whatever it is that’s not living up our expectations.
• Psychologists categorize feelings as either “approach” emotions like hope–and, interestingly, anger–that impel us toward the object of our emotion, or ”avoidance” motivations like fear or disgust that drive us away. Hope and anger feel very different, but at the most fundamental level, both emotions send us toward the thing that incited them.
• Disappointment, because it is deflated hope, is essentially an approach emotion, just a very low-energy one.  The way to reach low-energy people is, somehow, to reinspire them, to give them a vision of the future that gets them into the voting booth again.
• There’s ample research in the psychology literature that shows just how incorrigibly optimistic and trusting human beings can be, and how vulnerable, as a result, they are.

Perhaps we should look less for leaders to lead more to the leadership within ourselves and own the change we want to see.  We can’t continue to project what leaders should be if we, ourselves, fear taking a leadership role.  There is little today to show that followers are what make the innovation engine hum along.

We are bound by paternalistic organizations, where leaders deem your worth, your direction, and your approval, if you want to own a stake in your future, it rarely involves following.  Leaders need to quell their fear of who knows best and invite skepticism and strangers into the discussion, only then is ownership shared.

As I’ve seen and advocate in organization change and transformation, sustainable change happens less through leaders driving their vision downward and more from an organization’s base.  When the base identifies, communicates, and insists on the need for change they want to be part of they then create, construct, and take part with greater commitment to the future they helped construct.  I wrote a bit more about this in Change management bottom up or top down.

Leadership comes from all levels.  Leadership is a verb, not a noun.  Those titled or gentry leaders should take confidence in their hard decisions from a quote the authors of the paper Between a Rock and a Hard Place include:

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” Eleanor Roosevelt

3 Sources or further insight:

1. The Big Letdown by Drake Bennett from the Boston Globe
2. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Damned if you Do Damned if You Don’t .pdf download
3. Investigating Appraisal Patterns of Regret and Disappointment

September’s Talent Management magazine writer Mr.Harold D. Stolovitch provides a reality check within his Human Performance column titled Dispelling Performance Myths:

1. High job satisfaction results in high performance
2. When employees select their own work goals, their motivation to achieve them is greater
3. Personality inventories used for selection purposes are strong predictors of job performance success
4. Organized, supervised work teams outperform self-managed teams

Fortunately Mr. Stolovitch also offers what to do differently for each myth.

And to continue with another dose of cold-water in our never-ending quest to motivate and manage our greatest assets, September’s Talent Management magazine cover story tells us How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Employee; Start With a Performance Review.  Mr. Samuel Culbert advocates doing away with performance reviews, entirely!  Heresy you say?  Well, here’s his 7 pieces of advice for true employee growth.  See Mr. Culbert’s article for deeper insight:

1. Make subordinates see that you understand their perspective
2. Show subordinates that change is important for the company
3. Be willing to make exceptions to the rules
4. Show subordinates how making changes to themselves can make a difference for their future
5. Be specific
6. Avoid comparisons
7. Use “I” speak

Well there you go, 2 sources to shake performance and people management inertia.

Talent Management 2010-09-29, Click to Open Digital Version

Let me also mention you can get an annual subscription to Talent Management magazine delivered to you electronically or physically for free and without cost [I get no compensation for the recommendation]. It is a great monthly read.

Today’s drive for continual innovation, as it is taught, as it is written about, as it is sought, and as it is crowd sourced has a lot to do with early pioneers in management theory.  For example why is hygiene important to innovation?  Innovation needs motivation and motivation needs hygiene to succeed.

The humanistic  management school emphasizes, however strange it may sound, the human aspects of organizations.  The humanistic school stands in direct contrast to the mechanistic views of people, jobs, and organizations.  A distinct management theory split from mechanistic to the introduction of humanistic views is usually assigned to the mid-1940s, or just after World War II.

We all know the saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.  By blowing some of the dust off first edition humanist theorists we might highlight where we’ve come, what we’ve forgotten, and what we should learn, as well as incorporate their thinking more effectively into what we read when we peel back the latest Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly, or “Who Moved My Cheese”.  It is worth a stroll with the pioneers of modern management theory who include:

• Abraham Maslow
• Frederick Herzberg and his famous work Bernard Mausner and Barabara Bloch Snyderman
• Douglas McGregor
• Elton Mayo, and
• Mary Parker Follett

These humanistic thinkers are in direct contrast to their mechanistic contemporaries:

• Frederick Winslow Taylor,
• Henry Ford, and
• Alfred Sloan

Taylor, Ford, and Sloan were very engineer-focused towards the science of efficiency, less on the drivers of human performance.  Though it is true you can design an assembly line to produce more widgets through engineering and time studies, however, until you involve the humanistic view how does the cost of quality intersect with the people performing on the line?  How do the human interactions along that assembly line impact throughput?

The nexus of Maslow and Herzberg are continually fascinating to me.  We’ve all come across Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, first published in 1943.  In this, he argues an ascending scale of needs that must be understood if people are to be motivated.

 You will find my crude picture to the left.  Needs are built upon each other and each need must be satisfied before another need is sought.

Some things to keep in mind when looking at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

• People will never land on a need and be satisfied, they will always move towards a higher aspiration or need
• When people’s self-actualization is achieved they’ve reached their potential
• People always want more, but if they are stuck trying to meet safety and belonging needs, can they really ever deliver innovation?
• In today’s environment of little loyalty, layoffs, and job reductions, where is your workforce getting their needs for safety and belonging?

So, if our employees don’t feel safe in their job, don’t feel safe they’ll have a job, or don’t feel like they belong to your organization’s future, how can we expect innovation or better, faster, cheaper, smarter, processes and harder-working employees?

Frederick Herzberg, along with Bernard Mausner and Barabara Bloch Snyderman, published The Motivation to Work in 1959.  The focus on hygiene factors, not oral hygiene as the American Dental Association has conditioned us to think, but hygiene as basic needs at work.  Work hygiene is not keeping the refrigerator clean, hygiene includes:  working conditions, supervision levels, company policies benefits, and importantly job security.

If hygiene is poor or deteriorating then employee’s develop poor attitudes and dissatisfaction.  Poor hygiene factors are a barrier to good work environments.  Improvement in hygiene reduces the barriers to “true job satisfaction”.  Hygiene enables job satisfaction.

Only after hygiene concerns are mitigated can someone than look at job satisfaction.  And just a quick peek at Herzberg’s motivation theories reveals achievement and recognition as the 2 most important motivations for workers.

Hygiene factors are the enabler or foundation’s strength that motivation is then built upon.  Harvard Business School psychologist Teresa Amabile observed, “Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity, but extrinsic motivation is detrimental.”

Source: Justin Gerber

Herzberg’s research indicated that motivation takes 2 forms:  to avoid pain and to grow psychologically.  Improvement in hygiene factors alone is not sufficient to provide satisfaction.  But without hygiene there can be no hope for satisfaction.  Just as he found recognition without achievement a hollow motivator.

We have a long way for any effective changes and innovation drives from our current employment environment if we are to gain the elemental needs for safety and hygiene required for the innovations demands we put on our workforce.  The environment of loyalty is under assault by more than a decade’s worth of the following:

• Outsourcing
• Offshoring
• Layoffs
• Downsizing
• Pay freezes
• Mergers
• Buy outs
• Reduced benefits
• Furloughs
• Discrimination (age, employment status, or other)
• Reduced benefits
• Hiring freezes
• Shutdowns

Before focusing on innovation and creativity, take a look at where your organization stands through Maslow’s safety and belonging and Herzberg’s hygiene factors.  If those are lacking, you certainly can not expected a motivated workforce.

Look beyond their respective Amazon book sales rank and if in the 1950s is was good enough for Herzberg to ask, “How do you motivate employees?”  I think it is equally relevant 60 years later.  Plus most of what you are reading relies on both Maslow and Herzberg’s pioneering thoughts.

Just to try this new set of glasses on for size, check out the link to an October Wired Magazine interview with Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson on Where Ideas Come From and give it a read through with a safety and hygiene lens prescription.

I continue to see many managers and leaders with a mechanistic view.  Let’s put World War II management and leadership styles behind us for good.  If you want innovation, it’s time for some lessons in hygiene.

No doubt I got some things wrong, or left out some important ideas.  Please let me know what you think and suggestions you have for me to add value.

You have to assume every person you interview has the technical skill to do the job.  Once past the traditional human resources gate-keeper by the time you meet a candidate they have the skills.  When assessing a hire it is not only technical skill that keys your decision, it is about integration or how they will fit in within a team and the organization’s culture.  If technical skill was the key indicator of future success wouldn’t your hires all work out?  Hiring is more emotional than rational.

When you interview what do you rely on to understand if the candidate can successfully integrate into your culture?  If technical skill or industry experience are all it takes to succeed than highly-selective firms such as Booz Allen Hamilton and Deloitte Consulting would not find cause to invest more than $6,500 on each employee’s new hire training over their first year.*

The results of poor hiring and recruiting drag down your company and your team.  A poor hire also risks your firm’s client dissatisfaction.  Each hire is a face of your company and customers and stakeholders have to deal with the results of a poor fit.

Does your organization have a consistent, organization-wide recruiting strategy?

Does your organization provide interview training skills for your interviewers?

What is your on-boarding strategy to ease the integration of new employees?

How does your organization measure fit:

• GPA?
• IQ?
• Work samples?
• References?
• Interviews?

Technical skills do not correlate to an effective employee and do not lend insight into someone’s ability to work well with a team, to fit in culturally, to manage, or to lead.  Technical skill is not an indication of future success, it is an indication of performing a task.

To assess someone’s potential there are at least 4 levels of fit that matter:

1. person to job;
2. person to team;
3. person to manager; and
4. person to culture

That list, like your interview and recruiting strategy, is intended to project future performance, but like all the great financial advisors tell us, “past performance is not an indication of future results”.  If these assessments worked, the inference would be clear.

There are, however, indicators beyond someone’s technical skill such as Emotional Intelligence and culture that help improve the likely success for all involved.  Each employee has both internal and external customers and how a candidate interacts with others, how they manage their emotions, and how they manage relationships is extremely important.  Unless you willingly recruit a hermit, people rely on each other to succeed.

The competencies of how people motivate themselves and others is broadly referred to as Emotional Intelligence (EI) and EI highlights the importance of how people interact with others and perform in a team:  their role, how they motivate themselves and others, and if they deliver to the organization’s goals.  In a follow up post I will focus on the importance of culture in interviewing, recruiting, and on-boarding success, but this post will look at EI.

EI is the term for how you manage yourself and others and how you react and adapt to challenges through the relate to 4 competencies:

1. self-awareness
2. social awareness
3. self-management, and
4. relationship management

The picture below identifies each competence and categories of each.

A recruiting strategy linked not only to technical need, but collaboration and culture is one of the most powerful ways your organization can remain competitive, reduce costs, and deliver customer excellence. So, what is the answer what is the prescription? There is no 1 answer, there is no blanket prescription, but there are better approaches.

In my follow-up Hiring the right person is more cultural than technical I will add a 2nd component to recruiting and interviewing that identifies culture at the individual, team, and organization level.  I will also provide sample questions you might add to your hiring process to gain a better sense for a candidate’s Emotional Intelligence and the culture type they are likely to succeed best within.

I’m sure you can begin to frame interview questions just on the insights above.

No doubt I got some things wrong, or left out some important ideas.  Please let me know what you think and suggestions you have for me to add value.

Sources and resources:

*Successful Onboarding: Strategies to Unlock Hidden Value Within Your Organization, by Mark Stein and Lilith Christiansen

Where many leaders chose to cut staff, cut talent management programs or to cut both to reduce costs, a Deloitte Consulting year-long study of 1,800 executives at large companies around the globe found retaining key employees, increasing the hiring of rivals’ future stars, and increasing programs to develop high-potential employees and corporate leaders are strategies to continue to invest in.  The firms with these strategies posted stronger performances since 2008.

Deloitte found that the September 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and the financial sector losses that led to a worldwide recession provided an opportunity to collect leadership and talent management data, real-time, for organizations dealing with a crisis.

The Deloitte study showed that companies using the recession as an excuse to ignore the fundamentals of employee development — and cease efforts to nurture a new generation of star talent — did so at their own peril.

335 top executives and talent managers from the America, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa at firms with more than $500 million in annual sales were surveyed.  Though the survey shows the priority remains managing costs and making cutbacks, 3 of 4 managers thought leadership development was either critically important (27%) or very important (45%).  The cold water:  31% rank reducing employee headcount as the highest priority.

Current strategic issues by industry, page 3; from Deloitte Consulting study "Talent in a Turbulent Economy: Where are you on the recovery curve?"

Jeff Schwartz, global leader for Deloitte Consulting’s Organization and Change service line, and who I was fortunate to have as a boss while I was at Deloitte, presented some of the study’s details at the Wharton Leadership Conference.

We didn’t expect to have a majority of respondents say that they were world-class at [leadership development], but we expected that … more than one in 10 would have [thought they were] really good at it, Schwartz noted.

Everybody’s talking the talk but even by their own admission, not everybody is walking the walk.

Other details directly from the study*:

• The 10% of companies that considered themselves leadership-oriented stood out because “they were less focused on layoffs and they were not bound to a weak economy. They were continuing to invest in training and development,” he said.
• Companies that anticipate no layoffs over the next quarter have a different view of the world—and their employees have a different view of them. Broadly speaking, these companies have a more optimistic view of the future, are having an easier time holding on to high-potential employees, and are investing more heavily in leadership development.
• Companies heavily invested in leadership development—particularly those with “world-class” leader- ship programs—act and operate differently than their competitors. While many other companies are still focused on cutting headcount and managing costs, these organizations are effectively opening new career paths to their top performers and cherry-picking the best talent available in the marketplace.
  

  Elements in leadership development strategy, page 12; from Deloitte Consulting study "Talent in a Turbulent Economy: Where are you on the recovery curve?"

• Overall, companies that reported no layoffs over the last three months appear more confident that their workforces have been right-sized for the new economy. By a 60-point margin (76% to 16%), the executives from these companies foresee no need for layoffs over the next quarter. Of those companies that did experience layoffs, however, 65% expect more layoffs to come.
• Overall, companies that do not anticipate making additional layoffs in the next three months are better able to keep top talent. Just 18% of executives at surveyed companies expecting no additional layoffs have seen increases in voluntary turnover among high-potential employees compared to 31% of executives at companies predicting future layoffs.

Investing in talent during trying times is a way to assure important talent remains.  Faith in leadership, motivation, and improved performance are all real impacts for the most successful and sustainable global businesses.

Talent investment comes is a competitive marketing and operating advantage over your competition.  There is a distinct cost of culture and those that pay attention to the return on talent investment show real results.

No doubt I got some things wrong, or left out some important ideas.  Please let me know what you think and suggestions you have for me to add value.

Sources:

1. Deloitte Consulting Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy:  Where are you on the recovery curve? .pdf download
2. ‘Talking the Talk’ Jeff Schwartz on Building Talent in a Downturn
3. Human Resource Executive on Building Talent During a Downturn
4. Wharton Leadership Conference

What does the social media fad have to do with business?  How is this social media fad related to organizational development (organization development)?  Are you asking yourself if you really need to bother learning about social media?

I’ve heard it all too often and continue to cringe hearing about the lack of effort OD and human resources professionals have to understand the most important communication and collaboration tool since the smoke signal.

What is crucial for today’s work environment has to include:

• Involvement,
• Communication,
• Listening,
• Collaboration

These all make for any organization development (OD) practitioner’s short list of requirements crucial to successful OD interventions.

What does OD have to do with social media?   Surprisingly, an awful lot, like: involvement, communication, listening, and collaboration. Both OD and social media seem to have more in common than appreciated. So, why is it the practitioners most likely to need involvement, we OD folk, so resistant to social media?

Why is it an organizational discipline that requires communication, so eager to ignore social media?

Why is it a group so reliant on listening, so adverse to social media?

Why is it a profession where collaboration is vital to understanding, so suspicious social media has a hidden agenda of coercion?

I worked for a decade [the 90s] in marketing, but for the past 10 years I’ve been an OD consultant and living within organization transformation, learning, leadership development, strategic planning.

In 2007 I came upon social media with a marketing mindset, whoa, things had changed.  Instead of interruption or command and control marketing, social media [or Marketing 2.0] looked to contribute and collaborate.  The first rule in communication is, “know your audience”.

If you are not looking at how social media has prepared us for collaborative business, you are forgiven, if you won’t look, you are at serious risk for relevancy, both as an OD professional and an up-to-date professional.

Every OD professional relies on communication and usually a change management communication plan is a critical component for change and for any transformation to succeed.  Marketing communications has a natural affinity towards effective change; after all marketing hopes to motivate action and change management or OD hopes to motivate action.

So what are the rules?  Well, here is a quick hit list of 21 from Brian Solis

21 Rules of Engagement:

1. Discover all relevant communities of interest and observe the choices, challenges, impressions, and wants of the people within each network
2. Participate where your presence is advantageous and mandatory, don’t just participate anywhere and everywhere or solely in your own domains (Facebook Brand Page, Twitter conversations related to your brand, etc.)
3. Determine the identity, character, and personality of the brand and match it to the persona of the individuals representing it online
4. Establish a point of contact who is ultimately responsible for identifying, trafficking, or responding to all things that can affect brand perception
5. As in customer service, representatives require training to learn how to proactively and reactively respond across multiple scenarios – don’t just put the person familiar with social networking in front of the brand
6. Embody the attributes you wish to portray and instill – operate by a code of conduct
7. Observe the behavioral cultures within each network and adjust your outreach accordingly
8. Assess pain points, frustrations and also those of contentment in order to establish meaningful connections
9. Become a true participant in each community you wish to activate, move beyond marketing and sales
10. Don’t speak at audiences through canned messages, introduce value, insight and direction through each engagement
11. Empower your representatives to offer rewards and resolution in times of need
12. Act, don’t just listen and placate — do something
13. Ensure that any external activities are supported by a comprehensive infrastructure to address situations and adapt to market conditions and demands
14. Learn from each engagement and provide a path within the company to adapt and improve products and services
15. Consistently create, contribute, and reinforce service and value
16. Earn connections through collaboration and empower advocacy
17. Don’t get lost in translation, ensure your communication and intent is clear and that your involvement maps to objectives created for the social web
18. Establish and nurture beneficial relationships online and in the real world as long as doing so is important to your business
19. “un” campaign and create ongoing programs that keep you part of day-to-day engagement
20. “un” market by becoming a resource to your communities
21. Give back, reciprocate and recognize notable contributions from participants in your communities

Read the list again with an OD practitioner lens, then reread the list as a social media practitioner.  Seems there is far more in common in the process than many OD folks are willing to admit.

OD is a planned, organization-wide effort to increase an organization’s effectiveness and viability.* Doesn’t seem there is much in common with social media. But it is not the intention I’m interested in presenting, it is the process.

Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention, generates online conversations, and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. The message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand or company itself.**

So, do OD folks who rail against social media really miss out on the most elemental of OD prerequisites:  involvement?  Are they afraid things will get beyond their control and this fear manifests itself in blissful ignorance of social media or wishful thinking for social media’s demise?

Seems to me ones railing against social media’s involvement, communication, listening, and collaboration is really railing against the most basic principles of OD.  OD has never been a completely accepted business driver, so OD practitioners looking for a way to gain traction can do little harm learning social media.

Where social media is sometimes called marketing 2.0, OD struggles to even get to an OD version 1.0 foothold?  Perhaps social media practices are less the threat and more the enabler for a more open organization.

I don’t know, what do you think the gap is?

Involvement might be the secret for those who get neither social media nor organization development.  Let’s keep this under our hats.

No doubt I got some things wrong, or left out some important ideas.  Please let me know what you think and suggestions you have for me to add value.

*Wikipedia:  Organization Development

**Wikipedia:  Social Media

Bonus:  How Virgin Media use social media as a key part of their internal communications strategy

This morning I read something that made me hold my, very hot, coffee in my mouth longer than I expected as I processed their information.

Laura Bassett of the Huffington Post reports “Disturbing Job Ads:  The Unemployed Will Not Be Considered“.

Ms. Bassett comments on a job board search for quality engineer that notes states:  “Client will not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason”.

A nugget in defense of screening out unemployed:

“It’s our preference that they currently be employed,” he said. “We typically go after people that are happy where they are and then tell them about the opportunities here. We do get a lot of applications blindly from people who are currently unemployed — with the economy being what it is, we’ve had a lot of people contact us that don’t have the skill sets we want, so we try to minimize the amount of time we spent on that and try to rifle-shoot the folks we’re interested in.”

I then found an article from the Fistful of Talent site [that has as a tagline of 'Recruiters, HR, Consultants and Corporate Types on all things Talent...'] that share’s an internal debate about from fistfuloftalent staff on the ramifications of not considering unemployed in job searches.

These 2 nuggets try to guess some logic behind the ‘unemployed screening’ policy:

“We’ve got nothing against the unemployed.  That said, if you’re unemployed and applying for 300 things a day (270 of which you really aren’t qualified to do), chances are you’re part of a growing problem – raw volume of applicants for each open position that make it harder for us to give attention to candidates who are strongly qualified or on the periphery of being qualified.  How can you help?  Cut down the number of jobs you apply for each day to 5 at the most.  Use some other tools to find out who you can call in your network to find a decision maker or influencer…”

the 2nd then guesses:

“Look, if you’ve been unemployed for 12 months and haven’t done anything besides collecting unemployment and sending out resumes – please don’t apply.”  Now, if they can show they’ve actually done some other things during that time to pick up their game – volunteer, start a blog, mentor someone, etc. – then you get your ticket back to apply at will.”

My take, is within the story(ies) there is desperation on both the HR side and the unemployed.

On the HR side they are overwhelmed with the amount of resumes and need a new screening criteria.

This speaks to a too-frequent trend that puts HR in the gatekeeper role and task is to create a short-list of candidates for hiring managers.  Therefore they need a safe, low-risk, low return human resources filter.  Unemployed is a nice new filter that takes even more responsibility away from HR.

Also, in this task-oriented organization role, HR is a transaction-based department, not a strategic business partner and I might better be convey this view when I replace HR with gatekeeper. Gatekeepers are not business drivers and through transaction-only hand offs of down-select candidates they hand off a reduced stack to the true hiring manager – like a fast food order…next!  Last week I wrote about the distinct risks to reasons human resources hurt your organization.

On the unemployed side this seems to reveal a state of desperation many unemployed are in:  as unemployment lingers, more applications/resumes/cover letters are thrown at all spectrum of job opening.

Many of these are not good-fit jobs, from any number of competency, experience, or skill requirement – however in an attempt to find something, finding anything begins to become appealing.

Both sides, the HR and the unemployed, find themselves in poor strategic situations, and therefore without leverage.  This lack of leverage drive tactical, reactive efforts to manage their resources (time/money) and expectations; all in the name of motivation.

From the HR side there is a risk to miss a great candidate.  A diverse candidate.  Of strategic hiring risk when you recruit only people who are employed, you can’t expect they, in turn, will not punch their free-agent ticket out of your company when the first attractive offer comes their way again.

From the unemployed side, the goal to avoid the gatekeeper is to network, network, volunteer, network, and NETWORK.  Avoid the gatekeepeers who are not asked to bring forward great candidates, but asked to perform a transaction – that is staff function and not strategic function.

Kristine Dunn, a New Hire Training Specialist at Constant Contact, and also a friend from Massachusetts Bay Organization Development Learning Group wrote a recent blog What’s the Difference Between Job Hunting and Internet Surfing with solid employ-ability advice.

Where it goes from here?  No one knows.  But stay on your strategic path and you won’t waste time and money.  You can always make money, but you can never make time.

My 11-odd-years in business and talent management consulting [the other 9 in marketing] have shown a few disturbing trends that I see from most poorly-run companies.  These type of organizations, across all industries, ascribe to, what they believe is a low risk strategy, but in reality it is a low return strategy for human resources:

1. Taking advantage of the economy to lay off the workers they don’t manage – the problem cases;
2. Taking advantage of a recession to lay off more staff than needed to slash costs; and
3. Recruiting for industry experience over technical experience

There are far more, but I wanted to just get this list started.

A problem with strategy number 1 is that the root cause of the problem remains:  the lazy incompetent leaders, managers, and human resource professionals who don’t manage talent.  These people and their policies are the reason ill-fitting workers are recruited and ill-fitting workers remain.  And the staff worker is far less damaging as an incompetent then the manager or executive who is incompetent.  Management and executives are the ones guiding the policies and charting the course for success as well as modeling the organization behaviors and norms.

A problem with strategy number 2 is that when you lay off more workers than needed, you distribute work to those that remain.  Perhaps they seemingly handle the distributed work load, but the reality is they become over worked and unmotivated.  The only people who advocate this strategy and remain happy are the myopic bean counters who trumpet quarterly results – the short term.

The real cost of strategy 2 is that productivity slips, quality slips, and your organization reputation slips.  And no, you should not confuse these people as feeling they are lucky to have jobs.  Some of them wish they were the ones laid off, yet others will jump ship when the opportunity arises as more workers voluntarily quit their jobs.  Not much for a workforce dedication with strategy 2.  But you can not expect better from reactive short term strategies that usually result in long term consequences.

A problem with strategy number 3, especially in a hiring upturn or war for talent, is that you miss out on great candidates and great opportunities for innovation [there's that buzz word we all hang on today].  This is a huge cost too few take into consideration when their job description requires 10, 15, 20 years industry.  I have been part of job description, job family design, and recruiting efforts too often where the ultimate requirement comes down to time in industry.  A candidate with more skill and accomplishment will be rejected against a candidate with more industry experience and I advocate strongly against this.

I want to take number 3 a bit further, as today you have the greatest opportunity to gain with changing this.

Make a case for me that industry experience is not overrated?  With technical skill being equal, anyone can learn an industry behavior:  financial analysts write and recommend industry buys all the time and they’ve never worked in the industry – anyone can learn an industry.

What people don’t get from industry experience is job competency, technical knowledge, and/or the relationship skills important to do a job well, work in a team well, conceive and contribue ideas, and solve challenges.

If we believe diversity is a core organization competency than we have to believe companies that are exclusionary to outsiders are, in the least, missing an opportunity, or, at worst, running diversity programs as compliance or litigation mitigation.  These companies and industries lose out on great talent eager to bring their skill and their fresh perspective to your meeting and your industry challenge.

Recruiting looks for fit on 4 levels:

1. person to job;
2. person to team;
3. person to manager; and
4. person to culture

Of those 4, where is industry experience most needed?  You are not going to tell me you have the most difficult industry to work in.

The more industry diverse someone’s industry experience, the more their view of options and alternatives to the same problems.  I’m deeply reminded of this in the record industry as they retread the same management and executives into the same jobs, but expect different, game-changing results.

Don’t be afraid of diversity.  Be afraid of group-think.

And we in human resources have a job to do to make the business case for diversity a business case.  That is unless we are afraid of risk…

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal presented More Workers Are Considering Quitting Their Jobs

This is the boomerang effect of companies cutting payroll costs to the bone, redistributing work to the smaller remaining staff, and leaving an environment where workers feel “lucky to even have a job”.  This leaves little left for motivation and the result of these talent management strategies?

Some nuggets of interest quoted from the article:

• Before February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) had recorded more layoffs than resignations for 15 straight months, the first such streak since the bureau started tracking the data a decade ago
• In a poll conducted by human-resources consultant Right Management at the end of 2009, 60% of workers said they intended to leave their jobs when the market got better
• The increase in employees giving notice is a product of 2 forces:  1) the natural turnover of employees leaving to advance their careers didn’t occur during the recession because jobs were so scarce and 2) the effect of the heavy cost-cutting and downsizing during the downturn on workers’ morale
• ~5,400 members of TheLadders.com, a job board for positions that pay $100,000 or more, responded to an April survey that asked how much more money it would take to convince them to stay if they wanted to leave. More than 20% said it would take a raise of more than $25,000. In all, about 50% of respondents said it would take more than $15,000

And the article presents the real cost:

• An 850-employee hospital in northern Florida, faced a 30% turnover rate in 2008, almost double the average for area hospitals. That dipped to 20% in 2009 as the economy suppressed voluntary departures, but the hospital still spent $3 million in 2009 on covering open positions, and finding and training new employees. The average search for a new nurse, for example, costs the hospital between $52,000 and $60,000
• Dice.com, a job board for tech professionals, asked members what could persuade them to stay in their jobs if they found another opportunity. More than 57% of the 1,273 surveyed said nothing could persuade them to stay. Of those who said they could be persuaded, 42% said they wanted a higher salary and 11% wanted a promotion
• It typically costs a company about half of the position’s annual salary to recruit a person for that job, but the cost can run up to several times that if the position requires rare skills

Short-term profits and tactical reactions over long-term strategy and managing your most important asset:  human capital.  This is a negative by-product of managing a company for Wall Street and quarterly results over long-term growth and health an ROI versus and ROT (return on talent).

Does your organization communicate or inform. Does your leader invite conversation at the table?  Does your leader offer an environment of dialogue? If the answer is no, how does that affect organization motivation throughout all levels?

Do your project leaders and project sponsors sit around the table and audit the failed implementations with comments like “but I told them about the change, isn’t it enough that I told them?”

Information is a 1-way presentation, communication is a 2-way dialogue. Communication has to include a feedback loop to be called communication.

What about dialogue?  Some might label, alternatively, call, communication, dialogue.

Should organizations open themselves up to dialogue?  I can’t imagine why they would not.  With 65% of projects dead on arrival and 70 – 90% of all projects failing to deliver on time, within budget, or up to expectation, why not?

Even Leading Change‘s author John Kotter believes 70% of all major change efforts in organizations fail. Why not start more more communication moredialogue?

With an optimistic measure of only 35% of projects getting beyond planning stage and 10% of projects underway failing to succeed in their original scope, there should be an obvious difference between getting it done and getting it accomplished:   1-way presentation is getting it done, 2-way communication is striving to get it accomplished.

Why plow forward with a strategy likely to fail?

Who in your organization communicates and who informs? Are decisions made and a “communication” strategy built to only really inform the organization of the direction, similar to a press release campaign?   Or is a communication strategy built to invite dialogue, insight, and shared experiences in a forum that builds understanding, commitment, and ownership from a view that stakeholders can contribute and relate to?

How is information measured for effectiveness? Clicks? Meetings held? Number of views? Attendance?

Communication offers a message constant development to grow with feedback and stakeholders insight. The opportunity to be heard is one of the greatest motivators for commitment.

Spend more time on stakeholder awareness, improve communication and information before your project is funded. No 1 person can understand the full impact of a project. However, through dialogue you can understand stakeholder views or hang ups to commitment. Instead of informing, open a dialogue, build a collaborative effort that invites people into the organization’s future.  A future people want to be part of.

With communication strategies, ,more people will understand where they will make a difference and what their role is. This improves alignment.

With involvement, opportunity is given to hear concerns previously unidentified or not provided credence. Getting drawn into dialogue can only improve confidence and help tighten an approach.

Getting things done and getting things accomplished are not the same things.

Leaders, those in name only, want things done.  However, the risks are too high for your leader to not provide a culture of accomplishment, and that only comes through communication.

How’s your credit score?

Perhaps I could ask another way, how accurate is your credit score?

Perhaps another way, how accurate is your credit score in assessing your talent, management, or leadership potential?

According to Equifax, their internal assessments “directly aligns human resources to overall organization goals” and you can read about it here:  Talent Score Report – Talent Management

The article is a good read.  But here’s hoping Equifax doesn’t market a talent score product that’s as poorly a constructed mix of irrelevant algorithms as their credit score reports.  We’ve seen the current credit score system has replaced a host of decisions people used to make and this has not led us down a good path, as our recent economy has proven.

These reports aren’t just used by your friendly-neighborhood lending agencies, but insurance companies and your utilities and it seems these organizations rely on scores to take responsible and decision-making away from people.

We need accountability to make a comeback in talent management.

The NFL draft reveals all things wrong with talent acquisition and recruiting.

Looking at how an NFL team drafts provides terrific insight into what you and your company can improve upon. I wrote in the last blog, The NFL draft and your company recruiting strategy round 1, a sample list of the assessments an NFL team uses to evaluate fit:

• 40 yard dash,
• Bench press,
• Vertical jump,
• Broad jump,
• 20-yard shuttle,
• Three-cone drill,
• 60-yard shuttle,
• Position-specific drills,
• Physical measurements,
• Injury evaluation,
• Drug screen*,
• The Cybex test,
• The Wonderlic Test,
• game film* (work samples),
• scouts and coaches who attend games,
• interviews*, and
• recommendations*

That list, like your interview and recruiting strategy, is intended to project future performance, but like all the great financial advisors tell us, “past performance is not an indication of future results”. I’ve put an asterisk on some of their tests that may be similar evaluations your organization might also do.

Here’s the rub, if these assessments worked, the inference would be clear.

Is it?

Well, with the amount of quantifiable and qualitative information used to assess players, how well do NFL teams draft? Let’s take a look, data is from 2004 – 2008, after 4 years of drafting there were a total of 4,064 draft picks for the 32 NFL team:

• The average amount of players [acknowledging the injury factor for an NFL player] still on the team’s roster is 46% or just under half.
• The team with the highest amount of drafted players still on their roster was the New York Giants with 66.7% and the team with the lowest amount of drafted players remaining was the New England Patriots at 31.7%.*

The immense amount of resources involved trying to project future success of a player on an NFL team, or in your company, does not provide a high success rate. With the resources involved, an improved recruiting strategy is one of the most powerful ways your organization can remain competitive, reduce costs, and deliver customer excellence. So, what is the answer? There is no 1 answer, but there are better approaches.

When we recruit people we really have to look at a person’s fit on at least 4 levels:

1. person to job;
2. person to team;
3. person to manager; and
4. person to culture

You need to look beyond someone’s technical skill, as technical skill is not an indication of future success, it is an indication of performing a task.

Unless you are a hermit, you need to interact with others and how someone manages their emotions and manages relationships is extremely important. This is referred to as Emotional Intelligence (EI) and EI highlights the importance of how people interact with others and perform in a team – there’s a connection to an NFL team for every organization. Know your role, know how to motivate, and know how to deliver within the organization’s goals.

The second way you can assess and interview candidates is to understand your organization’s culture. The Competing Values Framework allows you to identify how your organization values ability and the norms of getting things done.

Hiring a superstar who does not gel within a culture is a waste of effort. It is not the failure of the person, but a failure of the recruiting process to identify fit. But please, PLEASE, don’t just bandy about culture as a weapon, identify the key traits, values, and norms of the culture and create behavioral questions to identify how well a recruit fits or does not fit.

If you care about diversity, someone who does not fit your culture may be a strategic hire, but for that strategy to work, there needs to be a high regard to coach and cultivate diversity.

Neither EI nor Competing Values should be a used as a final assessment of fit. They should be part of the total picture of fit. The sooner you understand the culture the sooner you can move beyond technical excellence and into collaborative or emotional intelligence. Just imagine what San Diego would have found out about Ryan Leaf if they had emotional intelligence on their side.

Don’t let your recruiting strategy turn into a crap shoot, unlike NFL teams, you don’t have the chance to wait 3 years: NFL teams believe it takes 3 years to completely integrate rookies into their roles on the. You don’t have the time or the resources to wait 3 years even if you have a plan and most organization experts believe it takes 1 year for a recruit to integrate and get up to speed enough to begin to earn their salary.

*of interest is the winning percentage of both teams during those 4 years: the New York Giants winning percentage was 58.7% and the New England Patriots was 78.75%. This lends insight into successful organization cultures, but is a topic for another day, I don’t want to stoke a NY/Boston sports war here; that the Giants beat the undefeated Patriots in the Super Bowl in 2007 season, fortunately, is not relevant to organization recruiting…

I welcome your comments.

And from a player’s perspective “There’s one thing separating the great players from the good in NFL“

There is little doubt each National Football League (NFL) team spends an extraordinary amount of resources preparing to draft their number 1 pick. An NFL team’s number one pick is intended to be the team’s future star and this year the NFL draft has changed their format to glorify the first round draft even more.

Sure the NFL draft rounds 2 through round 7 does allow teams to fill their talent needs or find complimentary players, but with upwards of a $30 million guaranteed payout, an NFL team looks at their first draft pick as an impact player and as a team franchise star.

However, the NFL has shown the sad state of talent evaluation because something more than technical skill is clearly required to succeed in the NFL. If technical skill was the most important evaluator of future success, then every NFL team’s first round draft pick would be a star. The reality is every draft pick has proven their technical skill, but let me give an even more sober reality, one statistically proven: technical skill is not an indicator of future success [more on that later].

How does your organization draft (or hire)?

How does your organization assess fit?

Does your organization have an organization-wide recruiting strategy that is consistent?

Does your organization provide interview training skills for your interviewers?

How does your organization measure fit:

• GPA?
• IQ?
• Work samples?
• References?
• Interviews?

NFL teams have an incredibly high stake in their top draft choice. As Vic Carucci of NFL.com says about an NFL team with the top overall pick, “[t]he top overall pick of the NFL draft assures its owner of only one thing: It will pay a player, who is no more a proven pro than an undrafted rookie, more than $30 million in guaranteed money just for putting his signature on a contract.”

With first round draft choice guaranteed money, when a team makes a mistake on a rookie who does not deliver, the organization can be back for years. How does a bad hiring decision affect your organization?

Look at all the assessments the NFL uses to evaluate talent before they make a commitment:

• 40 yard dash,
• Bench press,
• Vertical jump,
• Broad jump,
• 20-yard shuttle,
• Three-cone drill,
• 60-yard shuttle,
• Position-specific drills,
• Physical measurements,
• Injury evaluation,
• Drug screen,
• The Cybex test,
• The Wonderlic test,
• Game film,
• Scouts and coaches attending games,
• Coaches coaching all star games,
• Interviews, and
• Recommendations

Even with all these evaluations teams drop the ball more than they get what they wanted. From 2000 – 2009, the total number of Pro Bowls earned by the number 1 overall pick in the NFL draft was 9. The highest amount of Pro Bowls earned by 1 player is 3 and the player with that dubious distinction is Michael Vick – he’s kind of the Kenneth Lay of number 1 picks.

So, outside Michael Vick, who has done his time and is completely rehabilitated [would you hire him?], the numbers reveal 6 Pro Bowls were earned out of a possible 55 Pro Bowls. That is only 10.9% of their expected return. Do you have similar numbers when you set out to recruit stars. Of the number 1 overall picks, 3 of the 9 are no longer with the team that drafted them. [Which is a good analogy for today's job market, so I won't dig into that...]

As the NFL marshals great resources in talent evaluation, talent evaluation is equally your concern. How do you evaluate who to hire? The NFL, like you, gets it wrong. The NFL does not get it wrong not once in a while, but considering the evaluations and proportion of resources involved, the NFL gets talent evaluation so wrong, so consistently, you might begin to think the NFL were screwing up on purpose.

However, if talent evaluation was a simple assessment of technical ability, the NFL draft would be a certainty. The reality is in the NFL, or the NBA, NHL, MLB, and other sports leagues, the draft has come to be known, at its best, as an inexact science and, at its worst, a crap shoot. There are more failures in stocking teams with talent then there are successes. Is your recruiting policy really a crap shoot as well?

I am sure you are thinking with the amount of footage available and resources dedicated how can an NFL team possibly misfire on so many draft choices? The talent evaluation reality is that draft day busts are far more common then draft day success.

Does this sound similar to your company’s strategy? Are the results of poor drafting/recruiting endangering your company or your team in the face of the market or your clients or your customers who have to deal with the results of your organization’s poor recruiting.

In practice you, and the NFL, look to assess someone’s potential on at least 4 levels, as I mentioned in human capital portfolio management:

1. person to job [position];
2. person to team [team/scheme];
3. person to manager [coach]; and
4. person to culture [organization]

From 2004 – 2008 the percentage of all draft choices still on the roster of the team that drafted them is 46%. So, 54% of players drafted are no longer with the team that drafted them. What is the record of your company’s recruiting over a 4-year period? I would expect a smaller percentage, but have you figured the replacement costs, turnover costs, lost productivity costs?

Friday I’ll follow up with my proposed solution to better recruiting and better drafting. In the meantime take a look at draft failures across the 4 major U.S. sports leagues while you think about your company’s recruiting strategy.

Update: 05/07/2010 Raiders release former No. 1 overall pick Russell; there’s a valuable talent management lesson here, thanks to the NFL.

I welcome your thoughts and comments.

What, really, is the cost of culture? Is culture tangible to business bottom line or is culture an intangible behavioral science term only useful for dissertations?

Culture, innovation, values, diversity, opinion. Related? Perhaps to each other, but related to the bottom line?

I read a recent blog on Fistful of Talent had me revisit diversity’s important to innovation. Here’s an excerpt from that blog “Looking for Diversity? Look for a Difference of Opinion Not Value“:

Today’s market place moves quickly. Almost too quickly. Making a living, making a profit requires individuals and companies to think fast and adjust course with cheetah-like speed. Innovation is the “new normal.” (I just needed to throw in the newest overused phrase to feel like a business hipster.)

Innovation is a function of diversity. Innovation almost always comes from an amalgam of ideas that create something new and different. In other words, you need people in your company that think differently than you.

But you don’t want people who ARE different from you.

Opinion VS Values

Opinions are beliefs and judgments not based on certainty; held with confidence but without proof. Opinions are the raw materials of innovation. Opinions are what lead us down the path to proofs which lead to facts. Different opinions are required for innovation. Values are beliefs in which we have an emotional investment. Values are consistent. Values are the foundational blocks on which we act. Values define us. Opinions can change. Values usually don’t. Something huge has to happen to realign values, but the introduction of a new fact can change an opinion.

Why spend so much time on definitions of the terms opinion and values? Simple. Hire for differences of opinion not differences in value.

Too often we seek to introduce “new blood” into an organization to help us up the innovation quotient. Good plan. We want and need people with different points of view. Different opinions. That’s good. But don’t confuse a difference in value for a difference in opinion.

Similar values are required for a strong, ongoing organization.

Different opinions are required for innovation

Very different.

Why Do You Have That Opinion?

Often in our hurry to inject diversity, we listen for people who have different ideas than ours – different opinions. But we gloss over the foundation for those opinions. Are their beliefs based on available information and some mental extrapolation leading to that opinion? Or are they driven from a different set of values? Are they “emotionally invested” in that point of view? Could you sway their opinion in the interview? If not – it’s probably a values issue and you want to be sure their values and the company’s line up.

Ask the questions that dig deep into the reason people hold their opinion. Find out if they have different values – or if they just have a different opinion.

Similarity in values – differences in opinion. That’s what you really want

But this is just my opinion.

Source: Fistful of Talent

I like the Paul Herbert, the author, making the clear distinction of opinion vs. values.

I had a two posts called that strike a similar chord diversity = innovation.

From Diversity facade, part 1:

While qualitative diversity or quota-driven diversity goals too often compel organization’s diversity missions, I wonder the benefit gained when there is no environment to contribute divergent thoughts? Diversity training should focus less on acculturating people to accept the qualitative diversity aspects of others, but instead encourage the acceptance to cognitively, diverse contributions. An environment that encourages and supports a variety of perspectives, that truly celebrates uniqueness of thought, will assure robust thinking. It is this thinking, this cognitive diversity, that teams and organizations can maximize to increase profits.

In the absence of cognitive diversity an environment of groupthink and consensus forces conformity and manufactured consent. Not only is groupthink uncreative, groupthink in a knowledge economy is dangerous to your organization’s health. If your organization is to survive and prosper your continuing challenge is to overcome groupthink.

Only in an environment where unique thought is valued and protected does diversity exist. Therefore an organization%u2019s greatest challenge is to create an environment where thought is appreciated, not where push back is judged negatively, but where push back builds a better dialogue to contribute to a better conversation.

From Diversity facade, part 2: diversity hijacked

When all can contribute thoughts, skills, and abilities, the entire social network benefits. Diversity is the opportunity to contribute a view and share your perspective. When an employee expects a fair opportunity to stand on their own merit, the only barrier to their advancement is their motivation. When all have comfort to contribute then motivation becomes the core work culture and inertia of sustained excellence.

Diversity does not keep an organization out of public relations or legal trouble. Diversity provides opportunity. Diversity impacts an organization through opportunity, not fear. Political correctness is the enemy of diversity.

Does your organization enforce diversity or celebrate diversity?

Is your diversity initiative a political correctness campaign in disguise?

Let’s revisit the candidate interview that seeks to match culture, are we really trying to identify values? If so, let’s use the proper term and make sure we update our HR strategy accordingly.

My prior post looked at the return on human capital innovation and I recommended the book “Googled: The End of the World As We Know It” for perspective on the power of culture.

For a polar opposite view on diversity, innovation, and culture [as well as a doozy-of-follow-up-book to "Googled"] I recommend “Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry’s Road from Glory to Disaster” as a cautionary tale of an entire U.S. industry that sprang up around innovation, but within decades became crippled by success.

Innovation is an intangible asset. Though it can not be itemized or added to a balance sheet, innovation can be tangibly destroyed by group-think and by shunning diversity. “Crash Course” is brilliant book, and a sobering case, on how a lack of diversity and opinion in an entire industry culture can negatively effect on innovation, relevance, and survival.

In a future post I will draw a parallel between the automobile industry to the record industry.

2 more diversity-related articles of that merit that you consider a diversity strategy to drive innovation:

• Strong Relationships: Diversity is the foundation of disparate ideas
• Diversity Is Not a Numbers Game

Update 08/21/2010:  Recent article Rising from the ashes in Detroit from the Economist puts a nice bow on Crash Course, The American Automobile Industry’s Road from Glory to Disaster

What does culture really costs a company? Is it worth investing in culture or passively letting culture form, also known as luck-based leadership? What is the cost of culture, in profit or loss?

I found this one company a great example:

Maternity leave: 5 months full salary
Paternity leave: 7 weeks full salary Plus new moms and dads are able to expense up to $500 for take-out meals during the first four weeks that they are home with their new baby.

Free meals, free snacks, free physicians (on site), free medical care (on site), massage (on site), gyms (on site), trainers (on site).

On-site hair cutting, car wash, oil change, day care, dog care, and dental care.

And what does this cost? Well, the percentage of revenue these perks cost the company each year starting in 2005 are as follows:

2005 1.15%
2006 0.66%
2007 0.42%
2008 0.32%
2009 0.30%

Adding more benefits, assuming more costs, not cutting costs? Well, what did this do to their revenue growth? From 2001 the company I’m talking about grew revenues 28,517.27% by 2009 and from 2001 grew net profits 94,302.90% by 2009.

Further, the company gives people the freedom to take 1 day a week, 20% of their time, to dedicate themselves to projects they feel passionate about.

Though cutting many fringe office expense and cutting staff might halt short-term costs, what does it cost the culture and the motivation of those lucky enough to remain. Clearly, from this one example adding and expanding costs. If you rely on people, and that should not be open for debate, then the culture you build becomes the culture that motivates.

Showing up to work and getting paid does not infer innovation, collaboration, communication, and output.

Hearkening back to Herzberg’s motivation theories of:

• achievement,
• recognition,
• the work itself,
• responsibility,
• advancement, and growth fuel motivation.

What has this company done to enable these?

Now layer Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs on top of Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory with a view above basic physiological needs and safety and security needs, and revisit with a view of how companies enable:

• love and belonging — friendship, family, intimacy, sense of connection;
• self-esteem — confidence, achievement, respect of others, the need to be a unique individual;
• self-actualization — morality, creativity, spontaneity, acceptance, experience purpose, meaning and inner potential

Investing in, not cutting, human capital can be highly profitable, and that’s a real return to an investment in culture.

To find out more about this company, just Google…Google

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a capacity to recognize how our own emotions motivate ourselves and the awareness of our emotions on others.  Still a little to warm and fuzzy?  What about a 30% increase in bottom line performance?

Emotional Intelligence is vital to maximize any return on human capital.  Why does this matter?  The happier your people are, and you can’t claim happiness without clarity and consistency from your leaders, teams, and organization culture, research has shown an increase in bottom line performance measures by 30%.  I say, again, by 30%!

Think about the worst boss you’ve had.  What did this person do that ranks them the worst?  How motivated were you to give your best and strive to meet their goals?

Bad boss in your career? If you haven’t had one you are in a happy minority because a Gallup poll of more than 1 million employed U.S. workers concluded that a bad boss or supervisor is the number 1 reason people quit their jobs; when career advancement, work environment, pay, and lack of fit are viewed individually, or collectively, the direct influence of their boss or manager was tantamount.

You might say, who cares if a boss works his people hard or you don’t have to like me, I pay you to produce.

Paid to produce?  Well if you are bottom-line inclined, then how do these numbers sit with you?

• Poorly managed work groups are on average 44% less profitable than well-managed groups*
• Poorly managed work groups are on average 50% less productive*
• 70 to 80% of people say they quit their jobs because of a bad boss**

Imagine, further, the real cost of replacing employees as a breakdown of:

• lost team productivity missing a full time equivalent;
• lost productivity interviewing;
• cost of on-boarding;

Then speculate the break even return of the time and the salary for that person to contribute to the organization and a team.

EI framework reveals how we draw on different competencies, depending on strengths, preferences, and the needs of people and situations we work with.

One EI assessment*** I highly value collects behavioral traits around 4 clusters through a 360 degree survey that, in turn, are made up of competencies:

• Self-Awareness:  recognizing and understanding our own emotions
  • Emotional Self-Awareness
• Self-Management:  recognizing and understanding the emotions of others
  • Achievement Orientation
  • Adaptability
  • Emotional Self-Control
  • Positive Outlook
• Social Awareness:  effectively managing our own emotions
  • Empathy
  • Organizational Awareness
• Relationship Management:  applying emotional understanding in our dealings with others
  • Conflict Management
  • Coach and Mentor
  • Influence
  • Inspirational Leadership
  • Teamwork

Relationship management is where emotional and social intelligence manifests most visibly.  For obvious reasons your ability to identify and understand relationships is vital for motivation and teams.  However the lever of someone’s emotional intelligence is directly dependent on self-awareness.

EI reveals how intentions are perceived by others and impacts others.  It is a behavior-based assessment.  It provides a reality check on how intentions really come across no matter someone’s IQ or technical brilliance, if they don’t get along and don’t motivate others, what is the cost of their emotional intelligence?

It’s a great coaching tool and a great framework for changing intentions and realizing aspirations – individually and at the organization level.

I’d love to talk about how emotional intelligence, and this tool, could build great capability for the people you manage, the people you motivate, and the organizations that rely on managing how our emotions, our relations, our social acuity, and ourselves provide the real organizational competitive advantage.

There is no shortcut, but the return on investment is a real opportunity cost for your project, for your department, for your company, for your portfolio of companies, and for your assets under management.  There, does that make it real enough?

Contact me to find out how to implement an Emotional and Social Competency Inventory to help your organization and leaders cultivate excellence and steps to build manager, teams, and organization strength.  Perhaps 30% quicker product release, 30% top line growth, 30% less turnover costs, 30% less project delays…

*Gallup “Turning Around Employee Turnover”
**Terry Bacon, president of Lore International Institute
***The Hay Group

It starts with an executive need: a new market evaluation; improve operating margins; a game-changing technology; your competition is eating your lunch. Whatever the reason, a project is how an organization translates an executive strategy.

The ability to scope and deliver a project is a competitive advantage. The best organizations realize project management capability as a strategic differentiator, the lagging organizations only staff project management skills within Information Technology departments.

What is a project:

• a project has a definitive beginning and end;
• a project is a temporary effort, specifically to create a unique product, service, or result;
• a project is not part of business operations, but can develop capability and become part of operations

Note:  Do not confuse temporary with short duration and do not confuse temporary as something that does not, ultimately, becoming operational once the project is stabilized or delivered i.e. a new facility or new production technique

I have come to rely on using the term portfolio planning to describe the translation of strategy to a group of project options an organization can undertake. By using a portfolio view, projects are prioritized using the same risk and return criteria capital expenditures and other financial or strategic commitments are evaluated.

C-level business executives fully understand financial risk and when I link a portfolio of projects as organization risk then projects take their place as business drivers and begin to reveal that the capability to deliver projects is an organization risk.

Organizational planning impacts the projects by means of project prioritization based on risk, funding, and the organization’s strategic plan. Organizational planning can direct funding and support…on the basis of risk categories, specific lines of business, or general types of project. *

RSS streams, Tweets, eBooks, email, meetings, phone calls, magazines, social media, and books, to name a few, I propose 2010 the year of less noise and more decisions.

We are swimming, some might say drowning, in communication saturation*. Nearing the end of the year I thought to post this blog to share with others my goal to manage noise and get an idea from many of you how you approach information and communication saturation to break ourselves from being slaves of the feed**.

Knowledge is power, but decision making needs to make a comeback for us to realize our potential. With all this noise, this information, this data, is your decision-making process improved? We now have access to more information than we can possibly process, the constant challenge: you can never have all the information and time is your biggest enemy against knowing everything.

So what do you do to filter down to decisions? When’s the last time you made a decision instead of a deadline making a decision for you?

Here is how I see the funnel towards decisions (if I had time I would have made a mad 3D hierarchy pyramid, but alas … I ask you to envision one from mere words. If anyone wants to send me a graphic, I’ll add it) with noise as the pyramid base:

1. Noise – all the 0s and 1s/bytes and bits throughout the web, over the airwaves, across the spectrum
2. Research – the initial question, I wonder if… that sends you to seek answers
3. Information – the all-source return dump from your question or a 1-way flare (information is different from communication: see below)
4. Data – the filter to makes sense of what is valuable and what is garbage
5. Communication – the 2-way relay of what you find and what needs further refinement
6. Interpretation – the unaccountable and unseen layers of values, wants, needs, bias, emotions, and agendas (to name a few) that your communication target has filtered your communicate through to draw their own interpretation of the information or data.
• Note: you have no control on how or what you communicate is interpreted as you intended; caution when proceeding
7. Conversation – the deeper dialogue to clarify responsibility
8. Decision – the shared commitment

Let’s flip the pyramid with the top now on the bottom, kind of like hanging the world map upside down, an alternative perspective:

1. Decision
2. Conversation
3. Interpretation
4. Communication
5. Data
6. Information
7. Research
8. Noise

Professionals are valued and paid to make decisions and to make tough decisions. The gray-haired sage is expected to draw on experience to help interpret and filter to make quicker decisions.

Here are 3 ways to start with decisions in mind:

1. Begin with a hypothesis – if the hypothesis is proven wrong, all the better, add the new elements and revisit the hypothesis.
2. Identify the constraints to better hone the target – what limits your journey from noise to decision: time? money? competition?
3. Perfection is the enemy of good, go with what you have of course showing up to meetings prepared also helps…

Good luck to everyone in 2010. I value all the great dialogue, writing, Tweeting, and networking you have shared, because this is the power of social media, the wisdom of crowds and, unfortunately, at times, the Oxbow Incident negativity that can happen.

*good name for a blog: Communication in the Age of Saturation part 1, part 2, and part 3 [just trying to help]

**very good December 15th blog post by Thomas Petersen called:  Slaves of the feed – This is not the realtime we’ve been looking for

Cultures are characterized by how things are done around here.  Culture is sometimes adopted from the founder, sometimes developed consciously by teams who try to improve performance, and sometimes culture is formed in reaction to a lack of leadership or need for survival.

Culture emerges from collective:

• behavior,
• values,
• norms,
• assumptions,
• expectations, and
• process

When organization culture is set, it is difficult to change.  Reasons you need to change an organization culture might include:

• accelerated growth,
• strategic change,
• new market expansion,
• operation demands,
• new competition,
• expansion or new acquisition,
• a change in the workforce,
• leadership turnover, and
• change in the economy

Conditions, like those listed above, constantly occur whether your organization is capable of change or not.  Change is rarely linear or ordinal and can come at you all at once.  Without an understanding of your organization culture, change becomes a strategy based on luck or hope, and neither luck nor hope are much of a strategy any leader can confidently expect success from.

Using a Competing Values Framework to analyze your current state allows you to identify organization strength and be aware of what to keep and focus on what needs adjustment or modification to excel or to survive.  The Competing Values Framework involves 2 surveys to allow your organization, leadership, management, and teams to identify what works best and how people within your organization align or disconnect.

Competing values are important to understand effective performance.  People are often recruited to manage within corporate value and demands; too often termed culture.  But what happens as a company grows?  Not all people can manage in the new environment demands.  Many wish for the old days and refuse or can not change.  An organization’s sustained success has:

• less to do with market forces than company values;
• less to do with competitive position than leadership ability to motivate;
• less to do with resource advantages than a compelling vision; and
• less to do with strategy than team delivery

Ever wonder why some people just seem so resistant to change?  What is it about those people who never speak up, but you know never commit to change and somehow resist even the most well-planned efforts?  What about these influencers and a hope that they buy in does your strategy rely upon to get the majority of people on board. Why might they resist?

The output data from Competing Values surveys are plotted across 2 dimensions.  The first dimension can be viewed in the quadrant graph below on the North/South axis and differentiates the North point Individuality and Flexibility, a culture that thrives on flexibility, discretion, and dynamism that moves into a cultural focus on stability, order, and control at the southern most point Stability and Control.

For example North to South:

Some organization are effective because they are changing, adaptable, and organic, whereas other organizations are effective because they are stable, predictable, and mechanistic. These two dimensions from the North polar point of the graph, versatility and pliability to steadiness and durability at the south polar point.

The second dimension, along the West/East point differentiates a focus on an internal orientation, integration, and unity Internal Maintenance to a focus as it moves east of an external orientation, differentiation, and rivalry External Position.

For example West to East:

Some organizations are effective because they have harmonious internal characteristics, whereas others are effective because they focus on interacting or competing with others outside their boundaries. This dimension ranges from cohesion and consonance on one end to separation and independence on the other.

The 2 dimensions form 4 quadrants, the 4 quadrants each represent a distinct set of culture qualities.  These 4 quadrants represent what people value about an organization’s performance and what people define as good, right, and appropriate and found to accurately describe how people process information as well as their core values used for forming judgments and taking actions.

The Competing Values dimensions and quadrants also represent opposite and competing cultures:

Each continuum, North to South and West to East, highlights a core value opposite from the value on the other end of the continuum and are also contradictory on the diagonal opposite:  Competing Values

This picture below highlights this more effectively after I added quality characteristics of each culture you can look at the top right quadrant in comparison to the lower left quadrant and the top left quadrant compared to the lower right quadrant. Change is hard and you are really flying blind if you don’t know where your organization is at, what they value, or the impact (positive or negative) that process, hierarchy, or flexibility really has on people.

With a Competing Values review you can identify the culture people are working in, then identify any disconnect, by team or business unit, and create strategies that align to the culture or need to challenge the culture.

Imagine a board of directors and the Founder (or CEO) take the Competing Values survey with the results plotted on the graph below:

Just from this visual output can see there is a disconnect.  With this data and awareness you can begin with a level set of awareness needs to address before you start change.  Now you have a better picture of what needs to start, what needs to stay the same, and what needs to stop.  Conversely, without a Competing Values output, would the teams arrive at a more clear picture of disconnect?

Imagine a mix of individuals against a management team for each of the below examples.  With a Competing Values analysis disconnect is identify more clearly and can be managed more effectively.

Managing successful teams, leading successful transitions, charting new strategies, and making the right decision on what, or who, to invest in has:

• less to do with market forces than company values;
• less to do with competitive position than leadership ability to motivate;
• less to do with resource advantages than a compelling vision;
• less to with strategy than team delivery

Organizations rely on projects to accomplish strategy.  An organization’s resistance to change is the bait that nimble, flexible, resilient, and hungry market forces and your competition feed on.  Your customers today are your competition’s customers tomorrow.

Organizations that understand competing values and the impact of culture can train and manage and cultivate people who can grow with the organization and help those that don’t find a match for their style.  Managing people out of an organization is always an easier conversation than managing them with overly-sensitive gloves or hanging on and hoping they will change – both at the cost of your competition.

Contact me for further discussions on how Competing Values can help solidify the best of what you, your team, or your organization do and to more successfully implement changes to keep you, your team, or your organization competitive.

3 Sources:

1. Criteria Used by Venture Capitalists to Evaluate New Venture Proposals; MacMillan, Ian; Siegel, Robin; Narasimha, P.N. Subba; Journal of Business Venturing, 1, 119-128 (1985); Elsevier Science Publishing Co., 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

2. Linking Prefunding Factors and High-Technology Venture Success:  An Exploratory Study; Roure, Juan; Maidique, Modesto; Journal of Business Venturing 1, 295-306 (1986); Elsevier Science Publishing Co., 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

3.

The inter-generational divide, a catch phrase that simply shouts separation. The truth is that Baby Boomers actually have quite a bit in common with Gen X’ers or Echo Boomers, particularly because they gave birth to them and Gen Y probably knew them as siblings. The Veterans or Traditionalists may be the one group that is left out of the mix. However, there is a simple solution to getting all of the generations on the same page.

I gave a workshop the other day to a bunch of corporate professionals called: How to Look SMART on Paper. It included things relating to English grammar like What is the difference between affect and effect? When do you use who or whom? What’s the difference between it’s and its?

At some point, we began talking about communication today…what’s happening to it, why is grammar is still important and how has it changed. Swiftly, one Baby Boomer yelled out: I hate texting…I think it’s ridiculous and a waste of time. People who text all of the time have nothing better to do… or something like that.

Participants ranged in age from 20-something to 60-something. All eyes were on me. I thought, hmmm…let’s turn this into a teaching moment.

Who would like to offer another perspective? I asked, letting go of knowing where this was going. A gen Y-er said: I love texting. I have never had such deep relationships and kept in such close contact with my family and friends. I can’t imagine life without it.

There you have it: an example of the inter-generational divide.

Did you know that this is the first time in American history that four generations are working together? Yesirreee…Bob. We have Veterans, Baby Boomers, Gen-X-ers and Gen Y, and we’re working together side by side. For goodness sake (ala June Cleaver) we don’t even speak the same language.

So, is this a bad thing? No. Is it a difficult thing? Only if we make it an issue. One solution: initiate. Refuse to make assumptions and jump to conclusions. Simply do the following: Talk. Listen and Ask questions, balancing all three.

You don’t need to be whatever the equivalent to a rocket scientist is today (Ponzi schemer?). Go back to the basics. If you want to learn about someone, have a conversation. Don’t just read about them in a study, do some field work. Go to networking events, subscribe to blogs and RSS feeds, and open a dialogue.

Here are 12 ideas to help you make new connections among the different generations:

Gen Y

1. Teach a class in texting, downloading video, Tweeting, etc.
2. Share your ideas for social justice with Baby Boomers (they will love this)
3. Don’t text or Tweet in department meetings without everyone’s agreement

Gen X

1. Offer a tutorial in online banking
2. Show the older generations how to create a Facebook or a Linked In page & profile (Their grandchildren will hate you for it)
3. Speak and go slowly…be patient.

Baby Boomers

1. Think about how you can be the bridge among the generations
2. Serve as a role model
3. Don’t’ ask them out on a date or play John Lennon, Vietnam-War era music in your office (at least not exclusively)

Veterans/War Heroes

1. Share your knowledge by offering to be a mentor or a coach
2. Ask them how to Tweet
3. If tempted to start a conversation with I remember when… catch yourself and stop. Don’t share your war stories unless asked

Once you get everyone talking together in an intergenerational conversation, you then have the opportunity to take all of the knowledge, energy and ideas from everyone and put them together to create synergy (Cue sound effects: explosion in background).

You can be the CEO, the COD (Chief Organizational Development person, you wish), a Manager or an entry-level clerk, go for it. Start talking. You never know what you may have in common, and you never know what you’ll learn when you respect one another’s differences.

How are you and your organization creating dialogue? I welcome your comments below and I would enjoy hearing from you.

Today’s guest post is written by Michele Simos of of Simos Consulting, Inc. Michele is an organizational development consultant, trainer, and coach who specializes in helping people reach their potential as communicators.

I am happy to welcome Michele’s thoughts and experience as a guest contributor. Please find more insight and thoughts from Michele through her professional biography, web site, or on Twitter @michelesimos

In today’s Boston Sunday Globe, Ideas Section, under the Uncommon Knowledge, Surprising insights from the Social Sciences, by Kevin Lewis, I read the following:

A Time to Try Something New*

Whenever you’ve experienced major changes in life, have you sought comfort in familiar things? If you’re like most people, your answer is yes. However, new research suggests that the real answer is probably no.

When Americans were offered a choice between American potato chips and British potato crisps, those who indicated a greater degree of concurrent life change preferred the crisps, while those not experiencing change preferred the chips. Yet, most people predicted the opposite choice. This pattern also held for nonfood choices, such as deodorant and entertainment.

The researcher also ran an experiment that randomly assigned people to list more (vs.fewer) life changes that were occurring and then make the same chips-vs.-crisps choice. Listing more life changes increased the preference for crisps.

I am certain none of the above Americans subjects were offered crisps with such gastronomically-challenged flavors enjoyed in the UK like Roast Beef And Mustard, Ham And Pickle, Prawn Cocktail, or Minted Lamb as these options would have destroyed any observation of these contrarian findings.

Once I got past my memory of those flavors, I was struck with what the findings could mean to generally accepted change management, project management, and organization development practice. Where so many times I see caution and concern to not put people, teams, or organizations through too much change for fear of organization stress and people shutting down from overload. Perhaps now we should pile on as much change as possible? It seems people may be more receptive to change once change, or at least major change, is under way.

It may not be definitive, but this research certainly heightens my sensitivity to organization resilience and an individual’s flexibility in the face of process, system, or technology change at the team or holistic levels.

Does this research change your view of change management, changer readiness, change tolerance, or organization development?

*Source: Wood, S.; The Comfort Food Fallacy: Avoiding Old Favorites in Times of Change, Journal of Consumer Research (forthcoming).

Organizations, like people, develop.  A start-up has different organization qualities than a 25-year-old, Fortune 500 company.  As operations increase in scale and scope a start-up faces new pressures.  Each increase in production, staffing, or market share increases their operating risk.  What worked as a start-up company with a staff of 5 and $500,000 in sales can no longer manage the same way with a staff of 85 and $2.5 million in sales.

Frustration over organization culture, values, and communication many times comes down to values and interpretations: enter the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessments that seem all the rage.

The MBTI assessment focuses on the individual and the individual to convey and manage both themselves and others from their assessment framework.  For maximum effect there is a need to manage your MB filter and also know the MB profile of each person to manage other’s MB filter need – I believe this is too much to rely on people to communicate in all conditions.

I have also found little proof that an MBTI assessment provides actionable, sustained results for teams, operations, or improved communication with others.  The most repeatable observation I see from an MBTI assessment is the initial excitement to share an MBTI profile result – akin to sharing a zodiac sign and as useful as a zodiac sign to develop and drive organization effectiveness.

I find the MBTI is not nearly as valuable as the Competing Values Framework for a results-oriented assessment. This is less about what MBTI really delivers and more about what MBTI has become within many conversations and organizations.

Alternatively, the Competing Values Framework is an early-level assessment I rely on to help an organization understand their culture and the real gap between strategic, operation, and functional alignment.

Competing values are important to understand effective performance.  People are often recruited to manage within corporate value and demands; too often termed “culture“.  But what happens as a company grows?  Not all people can manage in the new environment demands.  Many wish for the old days and refuse or can not change.

Organizations that understand change can train and manage and cultivate people who grow with the organization and help those that don’t find a match for their style.  Managing people out is always an easier conversation than hanging on hoping they will change or managing them with sensitive gloves.

in the below 4 x 4 matrix are the 4 values, Ad Hoc in the upper right-hand.  A typical organization  progression is a move from the upper right to upper left:  from Ad Hoc to Clan; then from upper left to lower left:  from Clan to Hierarchy; and finally from lower left to lower right:  from Hierarchy to Market.  Though companies need never move in this counter-clockwise progression as they mature and may stand firmly in one quadrant.

**Note:  this is not a matrix describing optimum, operating efficiency or to suggest all organizations aspire to the lower, left, Market quadrant.

Further details from each of the 4 stages:

1. The Ad Hoc organization is built to manage a rapidly changing climate.  The Ad Hoc culture values speed and adaptability and can rapidly form teams to prototype and experiment.  Ad Hoc environments are dynamic, entrepreneurial, and creative focused on rapid growth and acquiring resources.  Ad Hoc leaders are visionary, innovative, take calculated risks to make significant gains.
2. The Clan organization has less focus on structure and control and a greater desire to maintain flexibility.  People in Clan organizations are driven by vision, shared goals, and outcomes and less by strict rules and procedures. Clans have a sense of family where people work well together because of a strong loyalty to one another and the shared cause. Rules, although not necessarily documented,  exist and are often socially communicated and heavily enforced.  Clan leaders are usually facilitative, supportive, and act in a parental role.
3. The Hierarchy has a traditional approach to structure and control from a strict chain of command, best described through Max Weber‘s original view of bureaucracy. Hierarchies respect organization position and power. These organizations rely on well-defined policies, processes, and procedures.  Leaders of Hierarchies are coordinators, organizers, and deeply monitor what is happening.
4. The Market organization seeks control, similar to Hierarchy.  The Market organization is not focused just on marketing, but by all transactions, internal and external, as exchanges of value. Market cultures are results driven and often highly competitive work places.  Leaders in market cultures are often hard-driving competitors who seek always to deliver the goods.

So now values can be identified, what can be done?

With an Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument survey and subsequent scoring you can find out where your employees are at.  Imagine your CEO operating in a Clan environment while your executive team operates in a Hierarchy environment, the disconnect is obvious.

Once an assessment is understood, training, job description roles & responsibilities, recruiting, rewards, and strategic alignment can be evaluated and modified.  Strategically a discussion can begin on the values that should be retained, the values that should be adopted, and the values that are no longer applicable.

The key for me in my use of the Competing Values assessment is to increase organization awareness of risk management.  As an organization moves from Ad Hoc to other stages how they identify, manage, and mitigate risk is a key factor for their sustained success.

Sources:

1.  ChangingMinds.org
2.

Statues are built for leaders, or leaders are built for statues, one way or the other statues are built for pioneers, those who sought a new way; who risked conformity for their vision of what could be; who sacrifice an easy path to retirement for an audacious goal.

The statues you see in your town square, are well-placed: usually set apart with a quick recap of their accomplishments. These bronze versions of Power Point slides are usually far too brief to do justice to the struggle they faced. The statues for these leaders are made to honor triumph over the mortal enemy of awesome: status quo. Change upsets the status quo and there are a great many interested in maintaining the status quo. The status quo is how many hold their power, those who most benefit from the status quo have no desire to see things differently.

Though many statues are of a lone figure, leaders need others to succeed. The finest leaders rally many around a vision. They translate a goal to others and thereby enlist a wider effort and build energy needed to carry the day. A leader needs others to succeed. Leaders need to communicate the role that others have is important and what their role means to success. Heavy lifting can%u2019t be done alone, a leader would burn out with the help, advice, energy, and criticism of other people.

Most statues are built as a memorial of inspiration or appreciation. George Washington has a statue in Budapest, Hungary – he never slept in Budapest, but you can read why they built a statue for him through this American Hungarian Federation link.

Let’s also acknowledge the many statues built for dictators. Are you a leader or a dictator who lead by coercion and fear acting as if the only right answer is your answer? How would others label you a leader or a dictator?

Cultivate the opportunity to listen to what people at all levels of the organization have to offer. Hang out at the coffee pot, there are usually better conversations about the state of your organization, your competition, and your company here than in your meeting rooms where everyone is afraid to offend or take a chance. Cultivate the leaders at all levels of your organization, they just may have the idea that keeps your company relevant.

Intelligence does not guarantee insight. However, diversity does. The very leverage of knowledge is dialogue. And dialogue, a true exchange of ideas and opinions, is only possible in an environment that welcomes and fosters diversity, not the diversity facade, but the diversity lever of possibility.

Although diversity can be a sensitive and often incendiary issue, I want to focus on diversity’s greatest benefit: the birth and exchange of ideas and perspectives.

What is the goal of diversity in the workplace? Why is diversity an important topic? What are distinct, tangible benefits of diversity in the workplace?

I feel diversity efforts attempt to build an environment where qualitatively, diverse individuals are expected to provide insight, cross-learning opportunity, and opinion. However, what too often results is the extreme opposite: a retreat to groupthink and the dilution of individuality to a normative environment or culture.

When diversity’s focus is an adherence to legal needs the competitive advantage diversity truly holds is patently ignored. Since diversity is both a qualitative and a cognitive endeavor, fostering a diverse culture is far harder than simple assembly of a diverse team. Diversity is not achieved through race, religion, or other qualitative attribute. The true benefit of diversity is achieved when individuals are empowered to share divergent views and opinions without fear of retribution or negative consequence. Not qualitative diversity, but cognitive diversity.

I will pick on the easiest of prey, the anglo male, to make a point. If I am in a strategic planning meeting made up of 5 white males, the assumption some might make is that this is not a diverse group. That assumption is patently wrong. When I judge diversity through a qualitative lens I might assume there is no diversity on this team, however, are you comfortable diversity is achieved only if we ask the members of the group their religion? If religion is not good enough, do I have to ask the members of the group what their sexual preferences are? If sexuality is not good enough, do I have to ask the members of the group for any disabilities?

This is one of my greatest pains about qualitative diversity: how many questions do I need to ask to assure I met diversity standards? If one person answers uniquely any one of those questions do I then have diversity? If no, how many unique questions does it take to achieve diversity? [How many of those questions are illegal to ask?]

While qualitative diversity or quota-driven diversity goals too often compel organization’s diversity missions, I wonder the benefit gained when there is no environment to contribute divergent thoughts? Diversity training should focus less on acculturating people to accept the qualitative diversity aspects of others, but instead encourage the acceptance to cognitively, diverse contributions. An environment that encourages and supports a variety of perspectives, that truly celebrates uniqueness of thought, will assure robust thinking. It is this thinking, this cognitive diversity, that teams and organizations can maximize to increase profits.

In the absence of cognitive diversity an environment of groupthink and consensus forces conformity and manufactured consent. Not only is groupthink uncreative, groupthink in a knowledge economy is dangerous to your organization’s health. If your organization is to survive and prosper your continuing challenge is to overcome groupthink.

Only in an environment where unique thought is valued and protected does diversity exist. Therefore an organization’s greatest challenge is to create an environment where thought is appreciated, not where push back is judged negatively, but where push back builds a better dialogue to contribute to a better conversation.

In the next blog I will talk about how open conversation and dialogue builds employee motivation, competitive market advantage, and commitment (not buy in, but commitment).

In The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki states: The positive case for diversity, as we have seen, is that it expands a group’s set of possible solutions and allows the group to conceptualize problems in unique ways.

*I want to thank Nauman Malik and Deloitte Consulting. While both Nauman and I worked with Deloitte Consulting we authored and presented a white paper on cognitive diversity. Some of the thoughts above stemmed from that white paper. Nauman may be the most polar opposite of me I can imagine, it is why our conversations were always rich with insight and humor.

I focus a lot of root-cause analysis on how a leader affects their organization. Though it may seem people are responsible for their own motivation, this assumption is far too variable to count on for results. People, rightly so, have their own view, their own filter, their own experience, and their own goals. These rarely align to an organization or a team.

So, what’s a leader to do? The leader as the figure-head is responsible for the organization’s health. This is a lot of responsibility.

The majority of the leader’s effort to connect and guide involves a leader’s acknowledgment to own each piece of their effort: every communication, every communication vehicle, every interview, every phone call. Each mode of verbal, non-verbal, and intuited communication is a cue that the organization looks to and models as the organization’s way.

Your staff and team are comforted when told what to expect and what resources they have to get it done – how they professionally and personally link to the organization’s success is a very powerful effort that high dividends in commitment and motivation.

Managers manage resources they are assigned towards expected results. Managers [or the executive team who support the lead] are all-to-often the ill-prepared, direct-report, de-facto leader to too many impressionable minds. The level proves the greatest risk to deliver a garble message to their team. However these managers can provide a most important link to translate the team’s role to deliver to the leader’s vision. Any hint of sarcasm or subverted comments will torpedo a leader’s plan.

Managing and leading require very distinct characteristics. Many exclusively can do either well, but too many do handle both even marginally.

Leaders craft the vision and convey the course from what is to what could be. Leaders rely on their managers [executive team] and their team to execute each of their role in the vision. This cascade is the start of the fray in expected results.

How do leaders communicate a vision that is properly translated? They must rely on their managers to manage and the leader should roll their sleeves up and steward the message as far into and across the organization. This communication investment is the biggest pay off – steward the message. In a learning organization this opportunity yields a chance for the leader to hear potential disconnect, confusion, or intended and unintended subversion to the vision. The leader, in this stewardship role, learns far quicker what the organization can handle and if the message has become muddied. Now time is available to alter the needs before the organization is too far of course.

Invest the time in this stewardship and you have a far better pulse on your organization’s health. The leader must remain accountable for a confused or unmotivated organization. Own your leadership role to steward a healthy, flexible organization or a rotting, stagnant organization.

The fish rots from the head down. I heard this first in China. I also heard in China that someone fishing is a sign of protest – silent and individual, but protest. In a Chinese banquet, however, served near the end of the event, a whole fish is a sign of prosperity. How does your organization fish