I understood instantly what my daughter meant. The person to whom she was referring was really good at her chosen vocation. It’s a comment not lightly given. We admire it when we see it. Such talent! Conventional wisdom though stops us from seeing virtuosity as a possibility for many. After all, isn’t being outstanding at something usually the result of a natural gift? Current evidence points to a rosier possibility. There is a growing consensus among cognitive psychologists that “bad” is not confined to the few.
Here’s the rub: there’s no free lunch. High level performance in a particular field (or domain) requires a lot of hard work—endless hours of practice and experience. It takes at least ten years on average of daily, focused practice to attain a certain level of mastery.
It’s not just rote practice, however, that distinguishes the good from the great. It’s deliberate practice---gradual improvement of performance during extended experience. It is attained by setting explicit goals (performance outcomes) just beyond one’s level of competence, practicing the new, desired level over and over again (learning strategies), getting feedback on the results (from self and others), adjusting the learning plan and repeating the cycle again.
Ultimately, the journey to becoming a master and retaining mastery lies in deep learning. Reliable concepts and solution procedures for a wide range of situations are literally quickly at the finger tips of the masters. We’ve seen this with Tiger Woods who is adept at recovering from any and all dilemmas on the golf course. Despite his stellar and astonishing performance, commentators often mention that he’s never satisfied, always wanting to get better. Tiger’s a consummate learner self-propelled and surrounded by coaches who are themselves masters—both of these conditions are essential as it is difficult to see oneself clearly.
You might be thinking that this is fine and dandy but it does not apply to leadership. Or, put another way: how can this be relevant to such a diverse field as leadership? True, there’s a vast amount of knowledge and skills to tackle. At the same time, we are each a human laboratory in which we’re doing very well in some areas and not so well in others. That narrows the skill areas on which to apply hard work.
To get better, the first step is to identify which of the many leadership or management skills need our attention. The choice is based on feedback from others, our own self-knowledge from what works/doesn’t work in daily practice and information about best practices. The next step is to go into overdrive on deliberately practicing selected skills---performance goals and learning strategies that stretch us a little, repetitive practice and so on.
In your role as a leader-manager, you can encourage this same notion of deliberate practice to those whom your coach and mentor. It’s a more sophisticated twist on “performance management”. The idea is applicable to both hard and soft areas of practice provided a process is in place for frequent follow up---annual or twice a year sessions just won’t cut it.
Why is mastery worth pursuing in leadership? We know when leadership is lacking and it’s often not pretty. It’s costly and wasteful when leadership has failed or is muddling along. As we are confronted with more complexity, uncertainty, instability and conflicts in values, the pursuit of superior achievement in leadership looks better than the options. If high performance is truly available to the many, it makes sense to head in that direction. The result could astound us.
Hope is like a road in the country.
There wasn’t ever a road.
But when many people walk on it,
the road comes into existence.
--Lin Yutang
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Power Distance Enlightens Managing
As the population becomes more diverse, the challenge for everyone in working together productively skyrockets. There are so many factors interacting, it’s hard for leaders and managers to see clearly let alone get results that stick. Blindness to the subtleties is not an option when engagement is the new desired norm and disengagement of too many a persistent reality.
Power distance is one way to better understand the underlying subtleties of today’s working and learning environments. It refers to the extent to which the less powerful members of an organization or institution expect and accept that power is distributed unequally. For example, does an employee (or student) value a dependent or interdependent relationship with a manager or teacher? What does the manager/teacher value? It’s all relative though as the style of the person in the authority position (learned from cultural background and working experiences) affects what the employee or learner perceives and values.
Let’s look at this more closely. According to researchers from the Netherlands, Gerte Hofstede and Gerte Jan Hofstede (Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind), there are three dimensions of power and authority that reflect employees’ views:
>the frequency with which they are afraid to disagree with their managers (very frequently to very seldom)
>their perception of a manager’s actual decision making style (for example, autocratic, majority vote, consultative)
>their preferences for a manager’s decision making style
Apparently, there is a close relationship between the reality employees perceive and the reality desired. If employees are not afraid to speak up and their bosses are generally not autocratic or paternalistic, the employees prefer a consultative approach. If employees seem less inclined to disagree with their managers and the latter are autocratic or paternalistic, employees express a preference for bosses who decide autocratically or paternalistically.
So which comes first, the cart or the horse? The working environment as experienced through the style of the leaders (those who manage as different from individual contributors and front line personnel) matters.
This begs the question: how does a leader-manager know where he or she sits on the power-authority scale? Without such knowledge, and given that employees tend to mirror what they are experiencing, the manager is left in a blind leading the blind situation.
The findings from countries provide a useful starting point. The different national cultures in which people grow up affect the mind set around power distance. Based on Gerte and Gerte’s research on IBM employees in 74 countries, most Asian, Eastern European and Latin American countries have high power distance values (higher acceptance of inequality between managers and direct reports). There are lower values for German-speaking countries (Austria, Switzerland and Germany), Israel, Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland), the United States, Great Britain and its former colonies (Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and Australia) and the Netherlands (but not for Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). These findings can be used as a general rule of thumb to know where you are as a manager in relation to the people who report to you.
Rather than accept them at face value, better to use the idea of power distance as a framework for discussion. As a manager, ask how your direct reports view power distance (chance to disagree with you, your style, what they prefer) and negotiate a relationship that fits the issues to be resolved.
Keep in mind that there are sub-cultures within every grouping. For example, generation influences the desire for equality too. Demographers are quick to remind us how the Echo generation---those born between 1975 and 1990--- as a whole have a very casual attitude toward supervisors. That implies a narrow power distance perspective which could potentially conflict with some members of other generations who have a more formal attitude toward their bosses. Thus, this needs to be tested and taken into consideration by a manager in calibrating expectations.
Making our mental software----how we think, feel and behave---more conscious is a critical skill of effective leader-managers. None of us can ever figure out accurately where a person comes from on power distance or on values. It is a constant challenge to know ourselves, the virtues with the vices. We can, however, engage in fruitful discussions to table the different views and find areas of commonality.
Enlightenment about self and others increases the odds that the right decisions facing any group or team will emerge despite the formidable complexities of the problems to be solved. Leaders who strive to understand how power distance is helping or hindering creative discussions in their workplaces will see a little more clearly.
Power distance is one way to better understand the underlying subtleties of today’s working and learning environments. It refers to the extent to which the less powerful members of an organization or institution expect and accept that power is distributed unequally. For example, does an employee (or student) value a dependent or interdependent relationship with a manager or teacher? What does the manager/teacher value? It’s all relative though as the style of the person in the authority position (learned from cultural background and working experiences) affects what the employee or learner perceives and values.
Let’s look at this more closely. According to researchers from the Netherlands, Gerte Hofstede and Gerte Jan Hofstede (Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind), there are three dimensions of power and authority that reflect employees’ views:
>the frequency with which they are afraid to disagree with their managers (very frequently to very seldom)
>their perception of a manager’s actual decision making style (for example, autocratic, majority vote, consultative)
>their preferences for a manager’s decision making style
Apparently, there is a close relationship between the reality employees perceive and the reality desired. If employees are not afraid to speak up and their bosses are generally not autocratic or paternalistic, the employees prefer a consultative approach. If employees seem less inclined to disagree with their managers and the latter are autocratic or paternalistic, employees express a preference for bosses who decide autocratically or paternalistically.
So which comes first, the cart or the horse? The working environment as experienced through the style of the leaders (those who manage as different from individual contributors and front line personnel) matters.
This begs the question: how does a leader-manager know where he or she sits on the power-authority scale? Without such knowledge, and given that employees tend to mirror what they are experiencing, the manager is left in a blind leading the blind situation.
The findings from countries provide a useful starting point. The different national cultures in which people grow up affect the mind set around power distance. Based on Gerte and Gerte’s research on IBM employees in 74 countries, most Asian, Eastern European and Latin American countries have high power distance values (higher acceptance of inequality between managers and direct reports). There are lower values for German-speaking countries (Austria, Switzerland and Germany), Israel, Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland), the United States, Great Britain and its former colonies (Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and Australia) and the Netherlands (but not for Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). These findings can be used as a general rule of thumb to know where you are as a manager in relation to the people who report to you.
Rather than accept them at face value, better to use the idea of power distance as a framework for discussion. As a manager, ask how your direct reports view power distance (chance to disagree with you, your style, what they prefer) and negotiate a relationship that fits the issues to be resolved.
Keep in mind that there are sub-cultures within every grouping. For example, generation influences the desire for equality too. Demographers are quick to remind us how the Echo generation---those born between 1975 and 1990--- as a whole have a very casual attitude toward supervisors. That implies a narrow power distance perspective which could potentially conflict with some members of other generations who have a more formal attitude toward their bosses. Thus, this needs to be tested and taken into consideration by a manager in calibrating expectations.
Making our mental software----how we think, feel and behave---more conscious is a critical skill of effective leader-managers. None of us can ever figure out accurately where a person comes from on power distance or on values. It is a constant challenge to know ourselves, the virtues with the vices. We can, however, engage in fruitful discussions to table the different views and find areas of commonality.
Enlightenment about self and others increases the odds that the right decisions facing any group or team will emerge despite the formidable complexities of the problems to be solved. Leaders who strive to understand how power distance is helping or hindering creative discussions in their workplaces will see a little more clearly.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Napping as a Competitive Advantage
As one who is often sleep-deprived, I am perpetually drawn to articles on the subject whenever they appear in the media. With daylight savings time upon us, the media provided its annual commentary on the subject. After reading that sleep-deprivation measurably reduces IQ, and that we are not acting fast enough to account for this in our places of work, I am convinced that institutionalizing napping needs to go down on each leader’s priority list.
Before the advent of the light bulb by Thomas Edison in 1910, our forebears slept routinely up to 10 hours a day. We’re down by 30 per cent on average now: between 6.9 and 7.5 hours a day. Sleep researchers generally agree that anything at or below 7.0 hours interferes with our ability to think.
According to Stanley Coren’s research at the Human Neuropsychology and Perception Laboratory, University of British Columbia, if we sleep only seven hours per day, we lose one IQ point each day and it’s cumulative. For each hour short of seven hours sleep, we lose two more points. Over a week, that adds up!
Aside from the health hazards of sleep deprivation, for example, weakening our immune systems, we can assume no organization escapes the consequences in the work place. Collective organizational IQ is compromised.
One antidote is to make napping an acceptable practice. Sleep researchers have long known that our natural circadian rhythms show dips in energy and alertness in the early afternoon and late evening. Yet, we seldom account for this from a policy perspective in our workplaces.
Back in ancient times, they speculate that humans did not necessarily sleep for long times, perhaps to accommodate to the dangerous and uncertain environments in which they lived. Instead, they engaged in polyphasic sleep: lots of short naps throughout the day.
In our modern, fast-paced and frequently tumultuous environments, calling on our ancient habits, may be timely to support not thwart our evolution. Powernaps do help us regain our energy, improve our moods and in the organizational sense, buoy our ability to think and decide. The researchers contend that as little as a daily 10 minute nap can turn our declined performance and attention around.
Some organizations have taken this to heart but the majority has not despite the strong business case presented by sleep researchers. Not surprisingly, the largest obstacle is social: misperceptions about the work ethics of nappers, fears that people will abuse the opportunity, and assumptions that there is no time in the work day to nap (our type “A” personalities). But, we do provide people with time for coffee-breaks and lunch. Thus, there is room already in the way our work days are structured to include a nap.
The researchers estimate that it will take about 20 years before napping becomes widely acceptable in the workplace. Enlightened leaders have an opportunity to seize the moment sooner. In the ever-tightening labour market, making napping an acceptable part of the culture, is a sound attraction and retention strategy. If budgets and space are tight, people will find ways to nap without an investment in sleep rooms or reclining chairs. A more welcoming environment for napping can be built over time, as budgets allow.
No matter the age or stage of life, such a policy has great appeal. At an individual level, personal health and happiness and a feeling that the organization cares will all be enhanced.
Like most innovations, especially at the novelty stage, not everyone will take advantage of permission to nap with no strings attached or career limiting consequences. Even if 10 per cent do, that will go a long way toward offsetting the extent of the weekly IQ deficit of the organization. By association, more nappers and fewer tired people means that the decision making quality may be less compromised and the workplace more fun. Now that’s real competitive advantage!
Before the advent of the light bulb by Thomas Edison in 1910, our forebears slept routinely up to 10 hours a day. We’re down by 30 per cent on average now: between 6.9 and 7.5 hours a day. Sleep researchers generally agree that anything at or below 7.0 hours interferes with our ability to think.
According to Stanley Coren’s research at the Human Neuropsychology and Perception Laboratory, University of British Columbia, if we sleep only seven hours per day, we lose one IQ point each day and it’s cumulative. For each hour short of seven hours sleep, we lose two more points. Over a week, that adds up!
Aside from the health hazards of sleep deprivation, for example, weakening our immune systems, we can assume no organization escapes the consequences in the work place. Collective organizational IQ is compromised.
One antidote is to make napping an acceptable practice. Sleep researchers have long known that our natural circadian rhythms show dips in energy and alertness in the early afternoon and late evening. Yet, we seldom account for this from a policy perspective in our workplaces.
Back in ancient times, they speculate that humans did not necessarily sleep for long times, perhaps to accommodate to the dangerous and uncertain environments in which they lived. Instead, they engaged in polyphasic sleep: lots of short naps throughout the day.
In our modern, fast-paced and frequently tumultuous environments, calling on our ancient habits, may be timely to support not thwart our evolution. Powernaps do help us regain our energy, improve our moods and in the organizational sense, buoy our ability to think and decide. The researchers contend that as little as a daily 10 minute nap can turn our declined performance and attention around.
Some organizations have taken this to heart but the majority has not despite the strong business case presented by sleep researchers. Not surprisingly, the largest obstacle is social: misperceptions about the work ethics of nappers, fears that people will abuse the opportunity, and assumptions that there is no time in the work day to nap (our type “A” personalities). But, we do provide people with time for coffee-breaks and lunch. Thus, there is room already in the way our work days are structured to include a nap.
The researchers estimate that it will take about 20 years before napping becomes widely acceptable in the workplace. Enlightened leaders have an opportunity to seize the moment sooner. In the ever-tightening labour market, making napping an acceptable part of the culture, is a sound attraction and retention strategy. If budgets and space are tight, people will find ways to nap without an investment in sleep rooms or reclining chairs. A more welcoming environment for napping can be built over time, as budgets allow.
No matter the age or stage of life, such a policy has great appeal. At an individual level, personal health and happiness and a feeling that the organization cares will all be enhanced.
Like most innovations, especially at the novelty stage, not everyone will take advantage of permission to nap with no strings attached or career limiting consequences. Even if 10 per cent do, that will go a long way toward offsetting the extent of the weekly IQ deficit of the organization. By association, more nappers and fewer tired people means that the decision making quality may be less compromised and the workplace more fun. Now that’s real competitive advantage!
Monday, October 09, 2006
Cultivating the "Nobel" Leader
‘Tis the season for Nobel prize winners, that special class of thinkers who share important commonalities with great leaders: intellectual curiosity, independent thinking and a strong tendency to challenge conventional wisdom. Their collective virtue is a model for the world, including leading and managing any organization or nation. It is unfortunately in short supply, not because of genetic deficits. Blame the habits of the mind---a learning deficit.
The biggest barrier to the “Nobel” approach to leading and managing, by far, is the tendency to believe “facts” that conform to our views, even in the face of conflicting information or outright contradiction. We see this played out in the newspapers every day with many political leaders—at our peril. Insufficiently swift action or lack of attention to urgent issues such as global warming, infrastructure development and maintenance, poverty, the safety of our food supply and the sources of violence and terrorism dominate the airwaves today. Through neglect, squabbling and short term thinking they are becoming bigger not smaller problems. The issues would likely not have grown to their level of the magnitude and seriousness if the “Nobel mind” prevailed. As analytic rigor is a redeeming feature of those who win Nobels, how can we get more of it in the leadership domain for the good of all?
This year, when the Nobels were awarded, I noticed something I had not before. They run in families. From my undergraduate science days when I was fortunate to be taught by a number of outstanding professors, including Canada’s own Nobel winner in chemistry, John Polyani, I remember the Curies the most. Marie and her husband Pierre shared the physics prize in 1903. After Pierre’s untimely death, Marie went on to win again eight years later for chemistry. In 1935, the family garnered a third Nobel and a second in chemistry, by daughter Irene Joliet-Curie and her husband Frederick Joliet. All Nobels related to the study of the behaviour and synthesis of radioactive elements which are now the back bone of many medical procedures. This year, Roger Kornberg won the chemistry Nobel forty seven years after his still living Dad did in medicine. As with the Curies, their research fields overlap, this time in gene research. In the history of Nobels, there are six pairs of fathers and sons, four married couples and two brothers who have won Nobels since they started in 1901. If we add collaborative partnerships, the numbers greatly multiply.
The dynamics of the environment, therefore, have played a role in nurturing the habits of great thinking. Certainly, the American dominance for Nobel prizes this year suggests this too. To borrow from the language of software programmers, is this “scaleable” in organizations? Why not? The habits---questioning one’s own assumptions, testing pre-conceived notions in the field, replicating findings as well as generating novel ideas---are not difficult. Any leader-manager can become a more powerful “Nobel” thinker simply by deciding to be one. One role modeler leads to another. The culture shifts. The organization gets much smarter!
The biggest barrier to the “Nobel” approach to leading and managing, by far, is the tendency to believe “facts” that conform to our views, even in the face of conflicting information or outright contradiction. We see this played out in the newspapers every day with many political leaders—at our peril. Insufficiently swift action or lack of attention to urgent issues such as global warming, infrastructure development and maintenance, poverty, the safety of our food supply and the sources of violence and terrorism dominate the airwaves today. Through neglect, squabbling and short term thinking they are becoming bigger not smaller problems. The issues would likely not have grown to their level of the magnitude and seriousness if the “Nobel mind” prevailed. As analytic rigor is a redeeming feature of those who win Nobels, how can we get more of it in the leadership domain for the good of all?
This year, when the Nobels were awarded, I noticed something I had not before. They run in families. From my undergraduate science days when I was fortunate to be taught by a number of outstanding professors, including Canada’s own Nobel winner in chemistry, John Polyani, I remember the Curies the most. Marie and her husband Pierre shared the physics prize in 1903. After Pierre’s untimely death, Marie went on to win again eight years later for chemistry. In 1935, the family garnered a third Nobel and a second in chemistry, by daughter Irene Joliet-Curie and her husband Frederick Joliet. All Nobels related to the study of the behaviour and synthesis of radioactive elements which are now the back bone of many medical procedures. This year, Roger Kornberg won the chemistry Nobel forty seven years after his still living Dad did in medicine. As with the Curies, their research fields overlap, this time in gene research. In the history of Nobels, there are six pairs of fathers and sons, four married couples and two brothers who have won Nobels since they started in 1901. If we add collaborative partnerships, the numbers greatly multiply.
The dynamics of the environment, therefore, have played a role in nurturing the habits of great thinking. Certainly, the American dominance for Nobel prizes this year suggests this too. To borrow from the language of software programmers, is this “scaleable” in organizations? Why not? The habits---questioning one’s own assumptions, testing pre-conceived notions in the field, replicating findings as well as generating novel ideas---are not difficult. Any leader-manager can become a more powerful “Nobel” thinker simply by deciding to be one. One role modeler leads to another. The culture shifts. The organization gets much smarter!
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Being Prepared for the Unthinkable
We grew up with fire drills in the schools that our young minds thought were a bore although it was nice to get outside. In our post 9/11 world, we are now confronted with the call to add another drill: practicing a plan of action when someone terrorizes us with guns or any other behaviours that threaten our security and safety. In the aftermath of the Dawson College tragedy in Montreal where an alienated 25 year old male randomly shot at anyone in his path, I am struck by the lack of preparedness of the administration and teachers.
One rationale mentioned in the media was that such an act was “a rare occurrence”. True enough as the statistics bear out. But, when it happens and people are severely injured or lose their lives, the price of not planning for something that in all likelihood will not happen seems too steep.
As we know, such random acts are not confined to schools. Any place where people meet and work is a forum for a disturbed individual. Thus, our workplaces are as vulnerable as schools. To what extent are we prepared for the kind of act that occurred in Montreal?
Generally we have learned from history turning the lessons into “for the public good” legislation and a myriad of bargaining unit agreements. In the interests of healthier learning and workplace environments, educational institutions and many others have voluntarily put into place harassment, bullying and other related policies and practices to underscore management’s commitment to our safety and security. However, it’s my guess (I have not done the research), that we are less consistent across the board on emergency plans and drills for dealing with dangerous individuals who can do extreme harm in a matter of minutes.
I refer more to low cost, low tech means than to building design, door systems, cameras, metal detectors and additional security personnel. Months ago I happened by chance as I was surfing TV channels to catch a documentary that is relevant to this subject. It described the training that some US schools are providing to staff and students on what to do if the Dawson College scenario occurs. The preparedness plan primarily focused on having a mental plan of action---recognizing quickly what is unfolding and making wise decisions on the spot to reduce personal danger. In reading the newspapers and watching the TV coverage, teachers at Dawson College seemed woefully unprepared to provide the necessary leadership to handle the crisis. I am assuming that there were no drills pertinent to that type of scenario to help them automatically spring into action.
Good fortune and the quick action of the Quebec police proved that taking the lessons of history seriously and creating a better plan of action do produce better results. In this case, less lives lost and fewer people with physical injuries.
It is a sad commentary on the world today that multifaceted “disaster management” is rising higher on the priority list for leaders. Our front line emergency personnel and disaster specialists are well aware that an emergency plan is only the tip of the iceberg. With no shortage of disasters from which to draw lessons (9/11, Walkerton, SARs, AIDs, Katrina, various terrorist plots, global warming…), leaders of all stripes are increasingly recognizing that a systemic approach is the most effective. Prevention, preparation and smart action combined strengthen the robustness of solutions to big issues. On the flip side, too much/too little attention to one part of the system reduces the opportunity for solutions that work both in the short and long term.
Hence, “seeing the whole picture” (or being open to exploring it) is a more pressing skill for leaders in our current world locally and globally. As James Lovelock said in 1979 when he coined the term “Gaia” to describe earth as a single, planet-sized organism where all things are interconnected:
“There must be an intricate security system to ensure that exotic outlaw species do not evolve into rampantly criminal syndicates…”
One rationale mentioned in the media was that such an act was “a rare occurrence”. True enough as the statistics bear out. But, when it happens and people are severely injured or lose their lives, the price of not planning for something that in all likelihood will not happen seems too steep.
As we know, such random acts are not confined to schools. Any place where people meet and work is a forum for a disturbed individual. Thus, our workplaces are as vulnerable as schools. To what extent are we prepared for the kind of act that occurred in Montreal?
Generally we have learned from history turning the lessons into “for the public good” legislation and a myriad of bargaining unit agreements. In the interests of healthier learning and workplace environments, educational institutions and many others have voluntarily put into place harassment, bullying and other related policies and practices to underscore management’s commitment to our safety and security. However, it’s my guess (I have not done the research), that we are less consistent across the board on emergency plans and drills for dealing with dangerous individuals who can do extreme harm in a matter of minutes.
I refer more to low cost, low tech means than to building design, door systems, cameras, metal detectors and additional security personnel. Months ago I happened by chance as I was surfing TV channels to catch a documentary that is relevant to this subject. It described the training that some US schools are providing to staff and students on what to do if the Dawson College scenario occurs. The preparedness plan primarily focused on having a mental plan of action---recognizing quickly what is unfolding and making wise decisions on the spot to reduce personal danger. In reading the newspapers and watching the TV coverage, teachers at Dawson College seemed woefully unprepared to provide the necessary leadership to handle the crisis. I am assuming that there were no drills pertinent to that type of scenario to help them automatically spring into action.
Good fortune and the quick action of the Quebec police proved that taking the lessons of history seriously and creating a better plan of action do produce better results. In this case, less lives lost and fewer people with physical injuries.
It is a sad commentary on the world today that multifaceted “disaster management” is rising higher on the priority list for leaders. Our front line emergency personnel and disaster specialists are well aware that an emergency plan is only the tip of the iceberg. With no shortage of disasters from which to draw lessons (9/11, Walkerton, SARs, AIDs, Katrina, various terrorist plots, global warming…), leaders of all stripes are increasingly recognizing that a systemic approach is the most effective. Prevention, preparation and smart action combined strengthen the robustness of solutions to big issues. On the flip side, too much/too little attention to one part of the system reduces the opportunity for solutions that work both in the short and long term.
Hence, “seeing the whole picture” (or being open to exploring it) is a more pressing skill for leaders in our current world locally and globally. As James Lovelock said in 1979 when he coined the term “Gaia” to describe earth as a single, planet-sized organism where all things are interconnected:
“There must be an intricate security system to ensure that exotic outlaw species do not evolve into rampantly criminal syndicates…”
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Focus on What You Want
At this time of remembrance, it’s easy to see the world as unfriendly and the challenges of life as insurmountable. In organizations where things are not going your way, the lure of seeing the issues not the opportunities looms large. But the flick of a switch can shift you to a place from which all issues seem only as points of learning not obstacles to be overcome.
Focus on what you want. Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying that when you passionately believe in that which does not exist, you can create it. I like the follow up: “It’s on the way” because no one can dissuade you.
I also like the implication---there’s nothing to fuss about.
Focus on what you want. Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying that when you passionately believe in that which does not exist, you can create it. I like the follow up: “It’s on the way” because no one can dissuade you.
I also like the implication---there’s nothing to fuss about.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Examining the Unexamined
Do leaders get the performance they expect from those who report to them? Known as the “Pygmalion effect”, the answer from numerous studies remains a strong affirmative. Does forced ranking, made famous by Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, result in higher productivity? That is, managers rank 20 per cent of employees as A players, 70 per cent as Bs, and 10 per cent as Cs. The Cs get fired and the lion’s share of rewards go to As. The answer from the research is a resounding no. The forced ranking in fact negatively impacts employee engagement, collaboration, trust and productivity.
You might say: “I’ve been duped!” Well, no---you just did not ask enough questions, test the assumptions and do your own field tests. You may also have been influenced by the oversupply of business books—30,000 + according to Barnes and Noble and Amazon with around 3,500 new ones each year.
Given the complexity of today’s business environments, it’s getting harder to transfer success methods from one organization to another. Healthy skepticism is in. Careful field work and pilot tests, long a tool of scientists, to prove that something really works are also in. We’re now calling this approach, “evidence-based management’ akin to “evidence-based” medicine that McMaster University’s David Sackett has promoted successfully for many decades along with others such as, Dr. David Eddy, a heart surgeon and health-care economist in the United States.
Take a scenario from my experience. The kind, gentle and apparently wise Executive VP asked us to determine a prominent high tech firm’s success formulae for integrating new technology companies into its culture and operations. Through our research we discovered that the other tech company had a sophisticated and focused method for welcoming and integrating newcomers. It also had a very different history---it had grown through acquisition from its inception. Our client organization had not. Different cultures and histories—like comparing apples and oranges.
We recommended great caution. Our client said, “thank you very much” and proceeded to buy high tech organizations at a breathtaking pace. Its top lawyer exclaimed to us several months later: “we’re underwater”. That very strategy was instrumental in reducing the firm to a shadow of its former self. The cost and rapidity of the acquisitions made the firm extremely vulnerable when business conditions took a nose dive.
At the time, we did not realize the significance of our research. We were doing our “thing”—being scientists and working within the constraints of our client wanting an answer fast. We did our due diligence on the secondary research: what the literature did and did not tell us from multiple fields. We knew the client organization. The members of our research team combined had both deep and broad expertise. But, we had no time to test our conclusions in the field. We were aware the client was searching for the methodology of the other—the intent was to implement it.
In retrospect, even if we’d made a big fuss and insisted on seeing the President, we would have been rebuffed. We know this now from having since talked with several executives who were part of the President’s inner circle. He wanted proof his views were correct.
Unexamined ideologies can produce “train wrecks”. We’ve seen this with all aspects of the management of Katrina, the hurricane that destroyed New Orleans. With incentive pay, the field is littered with large disasters such as Enron (motivating executives with stock options) and smaller failures in many organizations that attempt to entice more productivity out of employees when they have little control over the results. In economics, many theorists still believe people in organizations and society act primarily out of self-interest because we are hard wired that way. Considerable research paints a more nuanced picture: self-interest is learned and varies widely across people, groups and countries. This is a far more optimistic picture and it provides significant latitude for leaders to work with.
Let’s look at a few examples in more detail.
Back to forced ranking. According to the July 24, 2006 Fortune magazine, Jack Welch remains adamant that “weeding out the weakest” is best for the organization. He exclaims, “The Red Sox and the Mets are not putting on the field guys in the minors. It’s all about fielding the best team…..the cruel system is the one that doesn’t tell anybody where they stand.” But, I say, what about all those other sports team examples, where the raw talent wasn’t obviously present and yet great coaches created great teams?
It’s true that people want feedback even if it’s negative. However, the feedback can be flawed if a manager is working from unproven assumptions or an absolute belief system about the world and how it works.
Hmmm. I wonder what Jack thinks of his successor’s approach. Jeff Immelt has kept the idea of ranking but has added a new system of rating---red, yellow, or green---on five leadership traits. Employees are rated against themselves, not one another. Immelt does not mention getting rid of the bottom 10 %. Instead, he says he’s focused on building a team.
What does the research say on this topic? It cannot be explained simplistically as the limitations of forced ranking depend on a combination of factors. The leader’s theories (assumptions or ideologies) plus the organization itself figure in the conundrum.
As mentioned previously with the “Pygmalion Effect”, a leader’s theories of performance and ability become self-fulfilling. According to Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton’s research described in Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense, if a leader believes that ability is fixed and communicates this, employees will gage performance as related to where they fall with respect to their native intelligence (or, simply to the expectations of the leader-manager). On the other hand, if a leader views performance as more adaptable, employees will tend to see tasks as learning opportunities not tests of competence because of their so-called pre-ordained capabilities.
On the organizational side, NASA’s space shuttle program amply points out that being smart is not enough. Talented people cannot succeed in a flawed environment in which resources, help from colleagues and infrastructure are obstacles to success. For example, over 15 years of research in the auto industry underlines the importance of de-emphasizing status among employees. The lean or flexible production systems characterized by teams, training and job rotation result consistently in the building of higher quality cars at lower cost. This does not refute that there are differences in performance among employees. The system aims to help all employees perform better than they would within a culture that pits one against the other according to criteria which are suspect.
But wait. Smart and skilled people do fuel performance. Jim Collins Good to Great research found that getting the “right people on the bus” is more critical than strategy. Michael Schrage humorously points out that “a collaboration of incompetents, no matter how diligent or well-meaning cannot be successful”. We should not assume, however, that the top 10 per cent are “were it’s at” and the heck with the 90 per cent who don’t qualify.
Talent isn’t fixed, although IQ and conscientiousness are strong predictors. Just as important, talent depends on how a person is managed or led. Exceptional performance, according to Pfeffer and Sutton, happens when people work hard, have good coaching and believe they will keep getting better. We see this in many fields of endeavour: natural gifts cannot be manifested without lots of practice. It takes about 10 years of daily, deliberate practice to become a superstar, as University of Florida’s Anders Ericsson has found. Thus, leader-managers have a key role in hiring talented people and helping them become superstars.
Even creativity research supports this contention. Teresa Amabile and her colleagues in the Spring/Summer 2006 edition of the University of Toronto’s Rotman Magazine explain that people’s subjective experience at work matters as does the emotional side of their organizations. “Positive affective experience is related to outcomes such as job satisfaction and how creatively they will think on the job”. They found that when reactions to ideas are encouraging a virtuous cycle of creativity is established (and vice versa).
Albert Einstein said that “not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Many centuries before, Plato spoke of wisdom: “knowing what you know and knowing what you don’t know”. In these complicated times in which we live, a more conscious effort by leaders in all fields to “examine the unexamined’ will help us move forward not backward.
You might say: “I’ve been duped!” Well, no---you just did not ask enough questions, test the assumptions and do your own field tests. You may also have been influenced by the oversupply of business books—30,000 + according to Barnes and Noble and Amazon with around 3,500 new ones each year.
Given the complexity of today’s business environments, it’s getting harder to transfer success methods from one organization to another. Healthy skepticism is in. Careful field work and pilot tests, long a tool of scientists, to prove that something really works are also in. We’re now calling this approach, “evidence-based management’ akin to “evidence-based” medicine that McMaster University’s David Sackett has promoted successfully for many decades along with others such as, Dr. David Eddy, a heart surgeon and health-care economist in the United States.
Take a scenario from my experience. The kind, gentle and apparently wise Executive VP asked us to determine a prominent high tech firm’s success formulae for integrating new technology companies into its culture and operations. Through our research we discovered that the other tech company had a sophisticated and focused method for welcoming and integrating newcomers. It also had a very different history---it had grown through acquisition from its inception. Our client organization had not. Different cultures and histories—like comparing apples and oranges.
We recommended great caution. Our client said, “thank you very much” and proceeded to buy high tech organizations at a breathtaking pace. Its top lawyer exclaimed to us several months later: “we’re underwater”. That very strategy was instrumental in reducing the firm to a shadow of its former self. The cost and rapidity of the acquisitions made the firm extremely vulnerable when business conditions took a nose dive.
At the time, we did not realize the significance of our research. We were doing our “thing”—being scientists and working within the constraints of our client wanting an answer fast. We did our due diligence on the secondary research: what the literature did and did not tell us from multiple fields. We knew the client organization. The members of our research team combined had both deep and broad expertise. But, we had no time to test our conclusions in the field. We were aware the client was searching for the methodology of the other—the intent was to implement it.
In retrospect, even if we’d made a big fuss and insisted on seeing the President, we would have been rebuffed. We know this now from having since talked with several executives who were part of the President’s inner circle. He wanted proof his views were correct.
Unexamined ideologies can produce “train wrecks”. We’ve seen this with all aspects of the management of Katrina, the hurricane that destroyed New Orleans. With incentive pay, the field is littered with large disasters such as Enron (motivating executives with stock options) and smaller failures in many organizations that attempt to entice more productivity out of employees when they have little control over the results. In economics, many theorists still believe people in organizations and society act primarily out of self-interest because we are hard wired that way. Considerable research paints a more nuanced picture: self-interest is learned and varies widely across people, groups and countries. This is a far more optimistic picture and it provides significant latitude for leaders to work with.
Let’s look at a few examples in more detail.
Back to forced ranking. According to the July 24, 2006 Fortune magazine, Jack Welch remains adamant that “weeding out the weakest” is best for the organization. He exclaims, “The Red Sox and the Mets are not putting on the field guys in the minors. It’s all about fielding the best team…..the cruel system is the one that doesn’t tell anybody where they stand.” But, I say, what about all those other sports team examples, where the raw talent wasn’t obviously present and yet great coaches created great teams?
It’s true that people want feedback even if it’s negative. However, the feedback can be flawed if a manager is working from unproven assumptions or an absolute belief system about the world and how it works.
Hmmm. I wonder what Jack thinks of his successor’s approach. Jeff Immelt has kept the idea of ranking but has added a new system of rating---red, yellow, or green---on five leadership traits. Employees are rated against themselves, not one another. Immelt does not mention getting rid of the bottom 10 %. Instead, he says he’s focused on building a team.
What does the research say on this topic? It cannot be explained simplistically as the limitations of forced ranking depend on a combination of factors. The leader’s theories (assumptions or ideologies) plus the organization itself figure in the conundrum.
As mentioned previously with the “Pygmalion Effect”, a leader’s theories of performance and ability become self-fulfilling. According to Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton’s research described in Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense, if a leader believes that ability is fixed and communicates this, employees will gage performance as related to where they fall with respect to their native intelligence (or, simply to the expectations of the leader-manager). On the other hand, if a leader views performance as more adaptable, employees will tend to see tasks as learning opportunities not tests of competence because of their so-called pre-ordained capabilities.
On the organizational side, NASA’s space shuttle program amply points out that being smart is not enough. Talented people cannot succeed in a flawed environment in which resources, help from colleagues and infrastructure are obstacles to success. For example, over 15 years of research in the auto industry underlines the importance of de-emphasizing status among employees. The lean or flexible production systems characterized by teams, training and job rotation result consistently in the building of higher quality cars at lower cost. This does not refute that there are differences in performance among employees. The system aims to help all employees perform better than they would within a culture that pits one against the other according to criteria which are suspect.
But wait. Smart and skilled people do fuel performance. Jim Collins Good to Great research found that getting the “right people on the bus” is more critical than strategy. Michael Schrage humorously points out that “a collaboration of incompetents, no matter how diligent or well-meaning cannot be successful”. We should not assume, however, that the top 10 per cent are “were it’s at” and the heck with the 90 per cent who don’t qualify.
Talent isn’t fixed, although IQ and conscientiousness are strong predictors. Just as important, talent depends on how a person is managed or led. Exceptional performance, according to Pfeffer and Sutton, happens when people work hard, have good coaching and believe they will keep getting better. We see this in many fields of endeavour: natural gifts cannot be manifested without lots of practice. It takes about 10 years of daily, deliberate practice to become a superstar, as University of Florida’s Anders Ericsson has found. Thus, leader-managers have a key role in hiring talented people and helping them become superstars.
Even creativity research supports this contention. Teresa Amabile and her colleagues in the Spring/Summer 2006 edition of the University of Toronto’s Rotman Magazine explain that people’s subjective experience at work matters as does the emotional side of their organizations. “Positive affective experience is related to outcomes such as job satisfaction and how creatively they will think on the job”. They found that when reactions to ideas are encouraging a virtuous cycle of creativity is established (and vice versa).
Albert Einstein said that “not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Many centuries before, Plato spoke of wisdom: “knowing what you know and knowing what you don’t know”. In these complicated times in which we live, a more conscious effort by leaders in all fields to “examine the unexamined’ will help us move forward not backward.
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