Hosted by Wally Hauck
About Wally Hauck
Wally is an author, lecturer and trainer. He is a contributing author to the book Blueprint for Success which provides ideas that can help leaders unlock their potential, remove metal blocks to success, and provide new insights to accelerate positive change. Wally’s insights in the section entitled; The Power of Influence: 7 Secrets for Successful Leadership, provides leaders with the tools to help create an environment of trust, continuous learning, and employee loyalty. His latest book is The Art of Leading: 3 Principles for Predictable Performance Improvement. Wally has worked with dozens of firms and government agencies in the last decade. He has been President of the National Speaker’s Association Connecticut Chapter 2008-2009 and was a speaker for the W. Edwards Deming Institute Annual Conference. Wally was the master of ceremonies and a session leader at the 2011 Connecticut Quality Symposium this past June.
December 27, 2011
Why Leaders are Rated Poorly – Doing Too Much of the Wrong Things
Have you ever tried to do too much at the same time? I have. I ended up doing average or below average work in all the tasks I tried. Our organizational leaders are doing this. They are trying to do more than they are capable of doing and they are doing poorly.
Recent studies support this point:
· 18% of mid-level leaders and only 37% of senior leaders are rated excellent – Bersin Associates
· 45% of employees are satisfied with their jobs – Conference Board
· 29% of employee are engaged at work
· 60% are ready to look for a new job as soon as the economy improves
This data confirms our need for a boost in leadership skills but the answer isn’t to do more training with the current model. Instead, the answer is to change the model. Thanks to the Frederick Taylor Scientific Management model we continue to expect our leaders to be both omnipotent (all powerful) and omniscient (all knowing).
Our Human Resources departments search for and fight for the best talent. We create pay for performance schemes to keep this exceptional talent happy. We expect these highly talented leaders to “drive performance” by providing brilliant and continuous feedback to employees through the typical performance review. Our HR managers continue to look for the “Jack Welch’s on steroids.” We expect them to know too much and do too much. This is why we are disappointed. They can never meet those expectations. Furthermore, they should not be expected to meet them.
All this is done while we continue to see poor performance of organizations, employee engagement measures, and leadership skills. This model is flawed. This model puts leaders in a position to try to know too much and do too much. We put our leaders on a pedestal so high that they get dizzy and can’t help but fall off. We put them in an impossible situation and then we wonder why we are disappointed.
Instead of omnipotence and omniscience let’s have leaders who are great facilitators. Facilitators know they don’t have the answers. Facilitators know they can’t effectively direct all the work. Facilitators know they can’t control people. Instead they use influence to tap into the collective intelligence of the entire workforce. Instead they create a trusting environment that fosters creativity in the team. These new facilitator leaders know that synergy is more valuable than the solo top performer. They know that no matter how highly rated or highly intelligent an individual may be, they cannot out perform an aligned team.
Facilitation is one of the most valuable new skills leaders must develop for success in the new knowledge economy. Our economy requires the accumulation of knowledge not the accumulation of control. Knowledge allows teams to make accurate predictions. The more knowledge we have the more money we attract and knowledge accumulation accelerates when people cooperate and communicate effectively in a safe trusting environment.
The act of facilitation sounds so simple but it is definitely not easy. As the knowledge economy unfolds the skill of facilitating will grow in importance. Get on board now. Develop your facilitation skills. Stop trying to be omnipotent and omniscient. Start bringing your people together to create new ideas. Don’t rely on the top talent for answers. The top talent (including you) can never out perform an aligned trusting team.
December 7, 2011
Organizational Democracy: The New Model of Leadership
Some hierarchical organizations are collapsing around us. Greeks are protesting. Libya hunted down a killed Gaddafi. Egyptians threw out Mubarak. The Post Office is losing money and is reorganizing to reduce services to reduce costs. Nearly every state and municipality is financially challenged and some have even declared bankruptcy. Even our beloved USA is severely stretched financially with $15 trillion of debt and growing.
Why is this happening? One could make the case that faltering of the global economy is the major cause. I submit it is deeper than that. Our command and control leadership model is failing us and we are witnessing the symptoms of the past 150 years of its implementation. Hopefully, we are witnessing its demise.
What we have now
We have been taught an authoritarian leadership model for at least 150 years. The industrial age brought the need for mass production. Factories needed to make high volume of goods to ship overseas to fill the growing demand of a connected world. The uneducated workforce needed to be directed by managers. Only managers knew how to solve problems and how to direct and discipline workers. Workers were thought to be mindless and naturally lazy and that meant they needed to be controlled and incented by managers to get them to work. The main forces keeping people working, according to the industrial age manager, was the carrot and stick.
The need for mass production denied the need for a worker’s mind. Policies such as pay for performance and performance reviews were refined to ensure workers kept working. In preparation for the factory workforce schools were modeled after factories. Curriculums were created to give the key skills needed to work in factories. Curiosity in schools was unnecessary and even discouraged. Students instead only needed to fit within a certain model of behaviors. They were tested according to certain standards.
We still have this model today. It too is not working. The hierarchy in schools is delivering an average 25% drop out rate and the need for colleges to do remedial skills training in order to prevent drop outs.
What we need
Growing up I would often receive “hand me down” clothes form my brother. They were often too large at first and eventually I grew out of them. Although they were useful for a while I eventually needed to discard them because they just did not fit. The same is true for our hierarchical command and control management model. We have outgrown it.
We are transitioning into the knowledge economy. The mass production is making way for customization. Being managed by others is making way for self-management. Being told the answers is making way for creating our own solutions. We now need every heart and every brain to be engaged to solve the complex problems in today’s knowledge economy. We now need everyone to be capable of self-management.
We can see evidence of success of this model in the extremely popular social networks. Social networks are self-organizing and self-managed systems. Social networks such as Facebook and Linkedin are examples of self-management and optimum freedom of choice. People in these social networks are free to opt-in because they share the same interests and objectives.
Organizations need to be more like social networks. This will require people to follow basic principles while being given optimum freedom of choice. Organizational Democracy will take many of the same characteristics of a social network. Optimum freedom of choice within a context of specific principles will begin to define an Organizational Democracy.
How we can begin to create Organizational Democracies
We need to first agree on solid principles that will allow people optimum freedom of thought and action while managing optimum relationships and trust. Three principles that provide an excellent start are:
First, the context is the most important element of performance. Leaders must take responsibility to create a context that allows for optimum freedom and encourages self-management with positive conflict (not negative conflict). This requires clear vision, mission, and values along with a clear understanding of self-management and how it can change the role of managers and employees.
Second, in an organizational democracy, the quality of the interactions is more important than the quality of the individuals. Managers and employees must accept the joint responsibility to manage the quality of their interpersonal interactions and their system interactions. Interpersonal interactions are those that occur one-on-one. This requires a clear understanding of emotional intelligence and the skills that accompany it.
System interactions refer to how processes work. Everyone must understand how to manage the variation in their processes and in their connections between organizational functions. They must be able to understand how to study and improve processes which work between people and between functions.
Third, trust and relationships are as important personal performance. Everyone must accept the responsibility to manage the variation in trust. Trust is a key component of self-management and organizational democracy. Everyone must begin to understand how to create trust and how to repair trust. This requires everyone to know how to manage relationships.
November 7, 2011
What is Usually Missing and Stops Employee Engagement?
I visited a client this past week. I conducted leadership training for a Human Resources team in a large organization. I asked them to give their impressions about their customers (the employees). I was astonished at their answer. I can summarize with this statement, “You can’t fix stupid.”
Why would a professional organization that must provide service to its employees feel they are stupid? Are they? Certainly not! Is the HR department flawed? Have they hired the wrong people? Certainly not! This belief (feeling) is a symptom of the quality of leadership at the top. The senior leaders have failed to include one of the most important things managers need to do a good job, to feel joy in work and to be engaged. They failed to fully empower employees to manage their own processes. They are attempting to manage from the top instead of leading from the top.
I have identified seven key initial conditions to create an engaged workforce. The article can be found at: http://ezinearticles.com/?The-7-Initial-Conditions-to-Achieve-Employee-Engagement&id=6555104. I won’t take the time here to repeat all seven. The empowering of employees to remove their own barriers is usually missing and that is what stops employee engagement in its tracks. Empowering employees to solve their own problems is only paid lip service and rarely fully implemented. That is one of the key root causes of the “You can’t fix stupid” attitude. If leaders truly trusted employees to study and improve their system interactions, this poor attitude would quickly disappear and would be replaced by joy in work, improved productivity and profitability. It is the lack of empowerment that causes a feeling of frustration which leads to blaming the very people should be served, the customers.
I want to answer two questions. First, why do senior leaders only pay lip service to this important responsibility? Second, how can senior leaders begin to shift this responsibility to the employees?
First, why do senior leaders continue to claim employees have empowerment and yet they still withhold full responsibility? We have all been taught that the person(s) in authority is all knowing. It all starts in school where we think the teacher has all the answers because they are the ones who tell us what to study, what questions to ask, how to think, and the answers to all the tests. They are the ones who grade us. This naturally follows into our organizations. It is consistent with managing from the top and not leading from the top.
Also, we have policies that continue to reinforce this idea including the performance review and the pay for performance policies. The managers grade our performance and control how much we get paid based on how they score us in a performance review. This role played by our teachers and our managers dies hard. It is thoroughly ingrained into our brains, reinforced in our language, and supported by our policies.
Second, how can senior leaders begin to make this shift to push responsibility toward employees? The key lies in making a shift in thinking. I recommend the study of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. More than ever we need his Theory of Profound Knowledge. We can embrace his appreciation for systems thinking, his theory of how knowledge is accumulated, and his theory of psychology. Profound Knowledge is the most effective way to think about how an organization works.
Leaders can also begin to build trust with each and every interaction. This requires trusting employees first. It requires the realization that employees really want to do a good job and they want to develop trust and pride. They are not, in their hearts, looking for shortcuts. They only look for shortcuts when they are encouraged by flawed policies.
Senior leaders can begin to build trust by trusting first. A good way to show trust is to stop the policies of performance reviews and pay for performance. These can be replaced with policies that reinforce trust and systems thinking. Building trust and embracing Profound Knowledge is an example of leading from the top (not managing from the top).
Finally, senior leaders can start small and allow a small group of employees to take responsibility for one process at a time. They can teach them simple and powerful tools such as The Six Thinking Hats by Edward DeBono (www.sixthinkinghats.com).
Senior leaders can read about systems thinking and begin to use the principles to build up trust. This will begin to eliminate the symptom of “You can’t fix stupid.”
October 25, 2011
Paying for Non-Performance
I made a presentation at a Society for Human Resources Management Conference. I asked the audience of HR professionals if they wanted to hear something new and exciting. They indicated they always wanted something new but when I showed them a model of leadership that did not include pay for performance they revolted.
Human Resources managers have difficulty seeing a world of high performance and optimum accountability without the pay for performance policies. They insist that top performers must be paid according to their results. Most are addicted to this policy and, the sad fact is, it doesn’t work. Here are three compelling reasons why.
First, pay for performance is a method of control. Control is the opposite of freedom. Without freedom people are hesitant to take risk and to be innovative. Pay for performance damages innovation and creativity. Furthermore, in his book “Why We Do What We Do”, Edward Deci explains how pay for performance rewards causes people to lose intrinsic interest in the tasks they are being paid to do. If policies that control behavior damages both innovation and interest in the task can we conclude they can also damage performance?
Second, pay for performance policies ignore factors that come from the system within which people work. Ignoring system issues prevents innovative and significant performance improvements. For example, a sales person who makes huge bonuses might be benefiting from his/her specific assigned territory. Why should he/she continuously make those large bonuses when the client mix is the major contributing factor? Furthermore, if the client mix is the major reason for the performance success, why can’t the other sales people develop their territories to match that client mix? These questions rarely get asked or answered because the sales person will protect their position or risk losing their competitive edge against his/her fellow sales people.
Finally, pay for performance bonuses policies very often encourage unethical behaviors. These behaviors are difficult to prevent especially when the bonuses are large or when the stakes are large. There are dozens of examples I could site. The most disturbing involves our children. In July 2011, 178 teachers and administrators in Atlanta schools cheated to boost test scores for the students and avoid penalties by the No Child Left Behind policies.
People addicted to alcohol and cocaine continue to use these substances even though they experience the damaging results. I believe HR professionals do the same with pay for performance policies. They see the damage yet they don’t make the connection and they don’t change behavior. It takes courage and persistence to change this policy. I think it is time we stop this addiction.
October 10, 2011
Stop Managing People – Start Facilitating Self-Management
For me, it is so easy to fall prey to the spell of Frederick Taylor. Taylor promoted Scientific Management in the mid 1800’s. His theory reinforced the ideas that people should be told what to do and controlled with pay policies. The Taylor theory promoted the idea management is smarter and must therefore “manage” the employees who are less intelligent and less educated. Our language still reflects this theory even though most managers will deny they believe it.
We use phases like, “we need to better manage our people; we need to drive improvement, or drive change; we need to manage employee performance every day.” These are all consistent with the Frederick Taylor model which holds that employees need to be managed. Let’s change our paradigm. To begin to do that let’s change our language. Let’s start encouraging and facilitating self-management.
Self-management means helping everyone to focus on the improvement of their interactions. There are two steps to start facilitating self-management. First, we must draw a distinction between interpersonal interactions and system interactions. Interpersonal interactions are one-on-one communications with co-workers and/or customers. System interactions are the bits of information that pass between people in a process. I call these “hand offs.” Discussing issues or having a conflict with another is an interpersonal interaction. A new sales order is a hand off between a sales person and operations. Employees can manage both their interpersonal interactions and they can manage their individual hand offs. They don’t need a manager to help them with either one. They can manage the quality, speed, efficiency, effectiveness of all their interactions. They can take responsibility for their behaviors and for the quality and speed of information they process. Some employees may not be fully ready to manage these on their own. This is where managers can help them by facilitating. They can facilitate by identifying and removing barriers to self-management.
The second step in self-management is to give “Fearless Feedback.” Instead of “working on employee performance” we need to provide immediate, respectful, and accurate feedback. When employees are behaving in ways that damage trust or in ways that prevent learning, they need to know. If they are building trust or learning, they need to be appreciated. It sounds so simple and it is not easy because it requires discipline.
Dr. W Edwards Deming said 94% of the problems are in the system. If this is true we should spend at least 94% of our time on improving the system. When people act out with poor behaviors (those that damage trust and learning) it is because the system created frustrations for them and they over react. In my experience, those behaviors are a “red flag” indicating problems in the system interactions. The key is to deliver and receive fearless feedback at all times. Fearless feedback can create total responsibility to correct both interpersonal interactions and system interactions.
Leaders can begin to facilitate self-management by helping everyone understand the distinction between interpersonal interactions and system interactions and then encouraging respectful feedback on both. It is estimated the average manager spends nearly 30% of their time managing poor performers and correcting their mistakes. Imagine how much more profit could be generated if we freed up this valuable management time. We can do that if we stop trying to manage employees and begin to facilitate self-management. We can change our language first.
September 30, 2011
Why Do Employees Behave Like Children?
Virtually every Human Resources person I have spoken to in the past 15 years vigorously shakes his/her head up and down whenever I ask if they regularly see employees behave like children. Why is it that adults behave like children at work?
There are two major types of childish behavior we see from employees. The first type of childish behavior is very useful. Employees who are playful like children can be innovative problem solvers. Innovative childlike behavior can offer a big advantage because employees can see things from a completely different perspective. They are open to new ideas. They are playful and enthusiastic about simple things. They are fun to be around. We feel young and energetic around them. This is the playful innovative child. This is the kind of childish behavior we want from our employees.
The second type of childish behavior is damaging. This is the type of behavior that caused the Human Resources people to shake their heads like bobble head dolls. This is when employees behave like immature victims. They avoid responsibility and blame others for their problems. They fail to take action to solve problems unless they are told to do so. When they do take action it is usually incomplete or of poor quality and they rarely, if ever, will be proactive to avoid problems. Their best excuse is “It’s not my job.”
The ironic thing is, when we treat employees like adults they have a much higher probability of behaving like playful innovative children. When we treat them like children they act like childish victims. Here are three major reasons why employees behave like childish victims.
We have policies that scream ‘I don’t trust you’
85-90% of organizations conduct performance reviews and that policy sends a clear message, “I don’t trust you.” Performance reviews rate employee performance. It is like giving the employee a grade. Pay for performance policies attempt to control employee behaviors by making them focus on specific goal achievement. Both policies send a subliminal message that “we can’t trust you to do the right things and so we must control your behaviors.”
We teach what we allow
One thing that drives Human Resources professionals crazy is the unwillingness or inability of managers to discuss difficult performance issues with employees. Many managers avoid these confrontational discussions. A manager’s unwillingness to confront bad behaviors teaches employees that is is OK for them to behave like childish victims. Without feedback the “children” will repeat the behaviors. Furthermore, they may either encourage others to either behave badly or become demoralized. We need to give managers better tools to have these discussions immediately. We need to shift the conversation from negative confrontation to trust building and learning.
We have all been treated like childish victims and so we carry-on the tradition
Our public school system treats us like children. One might say, “of course we treat students like children because they ARE children for much of their schooling.” The problem is the lack of freedom of choice. Students have little choice in what they study and they have little understanding about why they are studying it. Even teachers have limited choices about curriculum or learning outcomes because they are told to teach to specific tests.
This lack of freedom creates a feeling of victim hood. People need and want to have choices. They want to feel they have control over their own world. They need to have freedom to act on their own (within boundaries). Even children need that feeling to boost their innovative playful tendencies. When we control behaviors we damage or kill that innovative playful nature. When we create the perception of limited control we end up with 35-40% drop out rates or kids pumped up on Ritalin.
We have grown up with these limited choices and so we perpetuate the culture of control in our organizations because that is all we know.
Summary
We must capture the good childish nature of our employees and avoid the childish victim behaviors. The only way to accomplish this is to treat employee like adults, give them more freedom, and trust them. We need to rethink our policies that send the wrong message of mistrust and replace them with those that send a message, “I trust you.”
We invite your questions or comments via e-mail
September 20, 2011
Three Actions to Focus on Good Problems and Not Wasteful Problems
Life is a never ending series of problems. Leaders cannot avoid problems nor should they want to. Problems bring about change. The key is for us to spend most, if not all, of our time on solving good problems while minimizing time spent on wasteful problems. An example of a good problem is, “we are growing so fast our systems can’t keep up.” This type of problem aligns your high performance people to improve processes to better manage and deliver products and services to new customers. This is a good (positive) problem to have. Good problems bring about positive change.
A wasteful problem example is, “Employees are complaining about the boss and many are threatening to quit.” This is a wasteful problem and most people avoid confronting it in hopes it will solve itself. They wait until the very last minute to address it and this causes the problem to intensify. Wasteful problems bring about wasted time and emotional upset.
What are the root-causes of wasteful problems? That is a challenging question. I can safely express my opinion and say that most wasteful problems exist because of a lack of trust. The higher the level of trust in an organization the more likely employees will identify and address problems before they become wasteful. Leaders can take three actions to minimize wasteful problems.
Action #1: Avoid hiring heroes and heroines
First, avoid hiring heroes and heroines. High performance talent can have big egos. Big egos can get in the way of high performance. Big egos require big feeding. I have seen talent who create wasteful problems just to be able to jump in and save the day and to be the hero. Design your hiring and screening process to uncover the individuals’ priorities and avoid the heroes.
The best way to do this involves first identifying the desired organizational values behaviors. You can then design your interviewing process and questions to solicit the candidates’ priority values. If you realize they often need to be the center of attention and/or they need to be the hero or heroine, run for the hills. They will create wasteful problems so they can look good when they solve them.
Action #2: Once you hire them trust them
Second, once you hire them, trust them right away! Tell them you have high expectations and that you don’t need to micro-manage because they are highly talented and trustworthy. Take every opportunity to trust them and be sure to communicate when you appreciate their actions. Also, get permission from them to give feedback when needed. Feedback is data not opinion. Tell them there is no need to evaluate their performance unless they want your opinions. There is a need to manage their agreements. Let them know you will give them feedback when they fail to keep expected agreements or expectations. Don’t forget to give them permission to do the same for you.
Action #3: Give them permission to experiment
Finally, give them permission to experiment. Let them know you trust their judgment to solve problems. Let them know you are available to brainstorm if they want help to create new solutions to the problems. Remind them they are talented and let them know as long as they are respectful, keep their agreements, and are willing to admit their mistakes, let them go. Let them ask for forgiveness instead of asking for permission. Forgiveness takes much less time. If they are willing to experiment and they make a mistake, but admit it, forgive them. The big wasteful problems will most likely be avoided. The good problems will be solved. Wasteful problems get worse when people make mistakes and never realize they made them.
If you are going to take the time to hire great talent you might as well trust them to be talented. This is part of a strategy for focusing time on the good problems and avoiding time on the wasteful ones.
September 12, 2011
The 7 Initial Conditions to Achieve Employee Engagement
A cliché is an over-used a phase or term. I can certainly understand why people can feel this way about the phrase “employee engagement.” We have delivered poorly on the promise of employee engagement. Employees keep hearing it but don’t experience it. It is a lot like the story of “crying wolf” or the “sky is falling.” After a while when it doesn’t happen people stop listening.
Unfortunately most HR departments either don’t know HOW to create engagement or have no authority to do so. This damages the credibility of HR and can cause employees to roll their eyes when they hear the words “employee engagement.” Failure to deliver employee engagement can dilute its importance.
I will soon be speaking at a 2 day HR conference. The first full day is totally devoted to addressing legal issues. That is a great summary of how HR is forced to think and perform today. They have to either know the law or they have to be an attorney to do their jobs. I don’t blame the HR professionals. I blame our Frederick Taylor way of thinking.
If organizations have to depend on attorneys then they really can’t achieve engagement. No offense to attorneys. They perform a valuable function but we really don’t need them in an organization if there is high trust and high engagement. HR and senior leaders are sadly stuck in the Taylor Scientific Management theory of treating people like children and then expecting them to be engaged and grateful adults. Too often HR professionals claim that performance would improve if managers were better trained to be coaches who could deliver better feedback during the performance review. Although these are important skills I must disagree. Blaming it on the managers for not being able to play a “dysfunctional game” with limited Frederick Taylor thinking will NOT create the change we need. Taylor created a manager dependent approach. This type of thinking just perpetuates that approach. This causes employees to think “cliché.”
What will create engagement? It isn’t just “one-thing.” I believe we have failed to create the correct initial conditions to bring about employee engagement. Much like the story in the Bible about the good seeds that fall on poor soil, they sprout but quickly whither. We need to know the seven initial conditions. These are:
· Identify and communicate why employee engagement is so important. This includes the need to adapt to the new knowledge economy. We must see everyone using the full potential of their intellect and creativity.
· Adopt the most effective thinking. Taylor theory ignores systems thinking. We must adopt a systems thinking approach.
· Create a foundation for the culture of trust that can be managed by everyone (not manager dependent). We must have a specific set of expected behaviors that describe integrity, respect, and the actions necessary to serve our customers (both internal and external).
· Create a specific plan for transformation and communicate it continuously. Allowing employees to create their own plan of action helps create engagement.
· Empower a small group of committed, well connected and influential natural leaders to remove barriers.
· Create Fearless Feedback loops on interpersonal interactions and system interactions. We have failed in our ability to deliver honest feedback without fear. This needs correction.
· Communicate and celebrate successes. We can only celebrate once we have success. The top six factors will deliver the success we are seeking.
Employee Engagement IS the future. It may be an overused term but we need to start to learn how to create it because it is essential for survival in the new knowledge economy. Taylor Scientific Management won’t do it. Clinging to attorneys won’t do it. Continuing to embrace the policies of Taylor like the typical performance management and the typical pay for performance processes won’t do it. As long as HR keeps using the term employee engagement but keeps those old policies and the old way of thinking the term will not be taken seriously.
September 6, 2011
Is There A World Without The Performance Review?
You may have heard the interesting story “allegedly found in a diary in Magellan’s own handwriting”, which describes how the South Americans he first encountered in the early 1500’s could see the boats that his explorers landed in, but not the ships anchored offshore. As the story goes, only their shaman was finally able to make out the ships offshore because he was open to the possibilities of strange things from other worlds.
The story may or not be true but the lesson for Human Resources is valuable. Being open to very new ideas from different worlds would be very useful for this important function within an organization.
In my opinion, the current performance review process and rewards and recognition are a form of control that is left over from the industrial age and Taylor Scientific Management methods. Like the South Americans in 1500’s, HR professionals are having trouble seeing a world without these outdated management tools.
There are consultants today making a great living claiming the Millennial Generation is very different and the workplace must adapt to their special needs. I can agree that their behaviors and beliefs may be different because the context within which they grew up. Even I can remember the 60’s and how my generation felt unique. We expressed ourselves in my new ways because of the context of the 60’s. We had different music, lots of love, drugs, and anti-war sentiments. The Millennial Generation has computers, iPods, IPhone, iPads, the Internet, multi-tasking, social consciousness etc.
Each generation is entitled to its own behaviors and tendencies. It is NOT entitled to its own principles. The principles upon which the typical performance review and pay for performance policies are based are flawed. The shift from the menial task Industrial Age workplace to the complex system knowledge age is shedding the bright light of truth on why and how these polices no longer add value. They don't work anymore, not necessarily because of the generational differences per se but because the nature of work has changed. We don't do menial tasks any more. Menial tasks can be done by computers. For example, if we wish we can shop and then checkout at the grocery store without even contacting a human.
To function more effectively in the knowledge economy we need less control and more freedom and choices. If we want to understand what the millennial generation needs we can read the book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. They want the same things we all want including to know why and how our work makes a difference to others. They want challenge, feedback, a sense of progress, and a chance to focus on their work. They want to use their creativity and they want freedom. These principles of motivation don't change over generations and they don't get satisfied with rewards and recognition and they certainly can be damaged by the typical performance review. That is why as many as 60% of people see either no value or see negative results immediately after participating in a performance review.
I am hopeful HR professionals can begin to see the ships off shore soon. Those ships are from the new knowledge economy and they don’t carry policies that include the typical performance review or the typical pay for performance policy.
September 2, 2011
One Big Reason Employee Engagement Remains so Low
The latest survey results from Blessing and White reports a 31% employee engagement level nationwide. A Canadian survey is similar. Why is it so low? The typical answer from consultants, such as me, recommends managers must change their behavior, their policies, and the work environment. I agree. Those are great strategies. However, another big reason is the “learned helplessness” we have taught our children and our employees and they all continue to embrace it. This attitude must change concurrent to changing management behavior. This philosophy is so deep seeded that its resilience can frustrate managers who are making an effort. Employees need help to “unlearn” this attitude.
In my opinion we have been, and are, so immersed in the Frederick Taylor model of Scientific Management (from our schooling to our Federal Government) that we think it is our only option. We think it is our only way of thinking. In fact, we are not thinking about it at all. We are just reacting because that is what we have always done.
To change we need to continuously reinforce an alternative theory of management to employees and not be deterred. This alternative theory will be consistent with our Declaration of Independence and our American Constitution. Employees (and students) have been taught to be dependent on managers for answers and for direction. They have been taught that management is omnipotent and in charge. They are conditioned to know it is easier to just wait for decisions to be made for then. It is scary and challenging to take responsibility and risk being criticized (or worse) for making new decisions.
In order to be engaged employees must be willing to take responsibility for their own engagement and for making decisions they have never made before. This feels risky and they often immediately hesitate. It takes faith, effort, and an investment of time by management to retrain employees to trust their own abilities. Employees have been asked to put their innovative problem solving muscles aside and allow others to make decisions for them. Those muscles have atrophied. They need to be exercised and as we all know, when we exercise muscles for the first time in a long time, it can cause pain.
I often hear managers complain that employees are just not willing to speak up. I hear them complain about the lack of motivation. I hear them say they must tell people what to do or they just do nothing. I agree. That is what we have taught them to do. They need to unlearn and we need to help them to not be helpless. We need to help them to stop being victims and to start being leaders.
Teaching managers how to engage employees is not enough. It is like a short burst of fresh oxygen but then they go back to the work environment where they all have to breathe toxic fumes left over from the Taylor thinking. It takes a while to clear the air. Don’t lose faith. Don’t stop trusting. Give the employees time to come around. They are trained to be helpless and we did it.
August 22, 2011
Be Engaged or Else
I received an email recently from the local SHRM chapter (The Society for Human Resource Management) promoting six different webinars for HR professionals. I say the webinars were different while I hold my tongue firmly in my cheek because 5 of them were about HR law. HR professionals continue to embrace the “you better get engaged or else” Frederick Taylor model of engagement management.
Pre-employment exams, process audits, wage and hour pitfalls, EEOC regulations, and recent changes in workplace law highlight the 5 out of the 6. Even the last one has to do with playing games in order to boost engagement. Is embracing lawyers and games the new strategies for employee engagement? How is that working for us? According to Blessing and White only 31% of employees are engaged. In my opinion, it’s pathetic.
Isn’t it time to move away from Frederick Taylor and ask the lawyers to take a long vacation? Isn’t it time to get serious about building a culture of trust by embracing the new leadership strategies of self-organizing systems, chaos theory, and quantum physics?
We are stuck in the Frederick Taylor management model which holds dear the following assumptions about people:
- They are lazy and need to be nudged to do work
- They can’t really be trusted
- Management has all the answers and must control employee behaviors with extrinsic motivation techniques such as performance management and pay for performance
- Individuals need to be improved in order to improve organizational performance
- Hiring talent will boost the organization’s performance
The Taylor model worked well for about 50 years because employees were uneducated and global competition was non-existent. Now that we are competing on a global scale and those competitors are embracing systems thinking we are in trouble. It is time we started to evolve our leadership thinking and our leadership models. Businesses should not exist to make lawyers rich.
In Japan they have 1 attorney for every 5,500 population. In the U.S. we have one in every 285 population. In California it is one in every 174. Do we really need more attorneys for HR?
The embrace of Frederick Taylor has led us down the rat hole of skyrocketing litigation costs, poor employee engagement, falling productivity, poor quality, and loss of global competitiveness. Isn’t it time we started to seriously embrace trust as a strategy instead of control? Maybe we need litigation to force HR professionals to embrace a strategic initiative to improve trust.
August 5, 2011
Which Skill is More Important Emotional Intelligence or Systems Thinking?
This question is like a “chicken and egg” question. There is no right answer. In my opinion, systems’ thinking wins the race (just barely) because the appreciation for a system can prevent the need for emotionally intelligent (EI) response to a problem.
A colleague and I were traveling for a training project from New York to Los Angeles and we were on the same flight. I was driving with her to the airport. As we reached the terminal I pulled up and asked her to check us in while I agreed to park the car. She agreed.
I found her in the security line which was exceptionally long. Security had only one station open and hundreds of people were on line. Although we originally thought we had plenty of time to catch the flight, the extended wait at security made it very close.
We waited and waited. We watched as nuns were shuffled ahead of us. Then the flight crew had permission to jump ahead. We were getting close to departure time and a man behind us went to the front of the line and complained that he had to catch his flight (same flight as ours). My colleague informed him that we were also in line for that flight and that he was moving in front of us. He turned to her and rudely said, “I am not speaking to you.” He clearly behaved without emotional intelligence.
His lack of interpersonal skills created an argument with elevated emotions. Had he been more emotionally intelligent we could have avoided the negative interaction. However, the real root cause of the tension was the extended wait in security caused by the limited number of open lines and the number of people who had to pass through. Had the system been able to handle the larger crowds we would not have had the altercation.
Obviously the two set of skills work together to solve problems. We really can’t have optimal system solutions without emotionally intelligent responses. On the other hand, emotional intelligence is a skill that is needed less often when stress is low. Stress can be reduced with emotionally intelligent responses. Stress can be eliminated with a system improvement.
The ability to improve systems and avoid problems is at least as important as emotional intelligence. In my opinion, it is more valuable because stress is eliminated with predictable system. The skill of understanding systems, understanding variation, and appreciating the impact systems can have on the performance of individuals and performance of an organization are the key skills.
Systems are also a big part of the problem today because they are often seen by employees as burdensome, controlling and designed to coerce grudging compliance. If systems are a barrier to self-organization and high performance then the skill to recognize that (and to fix it) is a skill as important if not more important than EI. The ability to behave with EI when dealing with dysfunction in the system (or the bureaucracy) is fantastic. The ability to recognize and understand the real root cause of dysfunction (the system) is a skill few leaders possess and less practice.
The next time you have an altercation with your significant-other be sure to remember to look for the system flaws that caused it.
August 1, 2011
3 Things Leaders Can Learn About Engagement from the Constitution
There is an interesting alignment between the elements of an engaged workplace and the environment created by the Constitution of the United State of America. Leaders could learn from this alignment. Furthermore, organizations could benefit from significantly from adopting and implementing these key elements. This significant improvement will manifest in not just increases in engagement but will also boost profit, productivity, quality, knowledge accumulation, and an overall competitive advantage.
The inalienable rights specified in the Constitution are: Life; Liberty; and the Pursuit of Happiness. The elements of an engaged workplace include: understanding the larger purpose the work serves; being challenged; having the freedom to make choices that can impact work tasks; receiving and giving feedback; seeing progress. Although the words are different, the concepts are aligned.
The industrial age warped our thinking. Industrial age thinking subverts the importance of the minds of workers and puts management on top. In the industrial age, employees don’t need their brains if the one best method or action has already been identified by management. They merely need to be controlled to perform the tasks the way management designed them. This way of thinking was inconsistent with the key elements of the Constitution and yet it accelerated the productivity of workers who tended to be less educated. It also decelerated the full engagement of those same workers.
The Element of Life
The Constitution was referring to reverence of actual life. In an organization this key element can instead represent the dignity of the individual or “being treated with respect always.” Protecting the dignity of the individual and their life experience is a critical element of engagement. Often, organizations play lip service to respect. They can’t play lip service to respect and expect to create engagement.
The Element of Liberty
Individual liberties in the Constitution include freedom of speech, to assemble, to practice religion, to enjoy privacy, and others. Furthermore, Government is limited by the Constitution and the people are given the power. Organizations don’t always follow these elements. Freedom of speech, for example, may need to be limited. It may not always be totally appropriate to be able to say anything you want when you want it. Some information is confidential and some is private. On the other hand, full authenticity and full openness is critical for engagement. People must feel as if they can speak up when necessary. Openness and engagement will increase together. They are interdependent.
Having the freedom to offer ideas that will become part of the culture, strategy, and/or policy of the organization is another freedom that impacts engagement. Organizations that provide opportunities for employees to contribute toward the factors that impact their environment will improve their engagement.
The Element of Pursuing Happiness
In the Constitution this element originally referred to rights to own private property. In an organization, property rights and happiness rights can refer to having choices and control over one’s actions. It can refer to personal responsibility and choosing to take action to improve work.
This element of the Constitution also aligns perfectly with those engagement elements that enable a worker to optimize learning. These include the understanding of the higher purpose served by the organization and the work the employee performs, ability to choose responsibilities that are challenging, the ability to choose actions that can improve those responsibilities, and the ability to give and receive feedback.
Learning is a key factor that can create happiness for employees. When the key elements of learning are optimized, engagement improves. When engagement improves happiness improves. Pursuing knowledge in an organization is aligned with pursuing happiness in our economy.
The Constitution can teach us all about how to create engagement. We moved away from the key inalienable rights, during the Industrial Revolution, in both our schools and our organizations. We did so with the best of intentions. This must change now because we need engagement more than ever to remain competitive in the global economy. It is time leaders revisited how to manifest these rights in their organizations.
July 25, 2011
GET’EM IN or GET’EM OUT: 4 Strategies for Engaging or Removing Poor Performers
In these challenging economic times optimizing the ROI of your most important asset – your people – is more important than ever. Poor performers distract everyone. They waste management time, damage motivation of co-workers, reduce productivity, damage quality, lower customer satisfaction, and slow down the achievement of results.
Poor performers demonstrate consistent indifference for customer needs (internal and external) and/or continuous improvement of their work tasks.
We are doing a dismal job managing the poor performers here in the U.S.:
· The U.S. is wasting $105 billion annually on poor hiring and poor management (Lawrence Karsh, SHL Americas)
· 68% of employee mistakes go unreported (Lawrence Karsh, SHL Americas)
· 27% of management time is spent on poor performers or correcting their mistakes (Lawrence Karsh, SHL Americas)
· 23% of U.S. employees believe colleagues are incompetent (Steven Covey, The 8th Habit)
The root causes of poor performance and complex and numerous. The current leadership tools, such as the typical performance review, are failing to help us manage poor performers. Effective leaders must use new strategies to accomplish either a successful turnaround of performance behaviors or a respectful “de-selection” (removal) of those employees unwilling or unable to fulfill their responsibilities. Here are four of them to flush out the results.
Strategy #1: Identify the specific outcomes you want the employee to achieve
Always start with the end in mind. What specifically do you want to accomplish in your department or team? Do you want to improve the quality or speed of a service or product? Do you want to reduce mistakes, improve customer service? Clarify a specific and measurable goal. Communicate that goal to all the employees. Ask them to think about how they personally can contribute toward this goal(s).
Strategy #2: Identify a process to accomplish the outcome(s)
Once a goal(s) is identified the team can create a process(s) to accomplish that goal(s). For example, a client wanted to improve the service to their customers by reducing the number of surprises encountered when providing services. The surprises would catch employees off guard and would disrupt the quality and speed of service and waste the associates’ time (especially when mistakes were made). The manager and the associates agreed on a process to identify when surprises occurred. They also agreed on how to collect the data about those surprises. They also agreed to educate everyone in the department so everyone could participate in the data collection activity. Once that process was created, everyone could see their roles and responsibilities clearly.
Strategy #3: Facilitate agreements/tasks that must be done to implement the process(s)
Clear processes give way to clear agreements. Clear processes enable managers to facilitate specific agreements. Agreements are tasks that are specific, clear, measurable, and time-sensitive. It is much easier to hold an employee accountable to their agreements than it is to hold him/her accountable for the results. Poor performers need to be put in a position to make a decision. Will they keep their agreements or not?
High performers can often be trusted to achieve results. Poor performers need to go back to basics. Can they keep their agreements? If yes, then we can challenge them to meet more agreements with an even bigger goal. If not, then they can’t be trusted and must step aside.
As the leader, by clarifying the outcomes, creating a process, and then clarifying the specific agreements you put the poor performer in a position to make a decision. Will they chose to step up and keep agreements or will they step aside and de-select from their responsibilities? It is up to them to choose, not you. If they keep agreements there is hope. If they break agreements they are sending a message “I want to leave.” Help them. They have already left anyway. They just happen to still be collecting a paycheck.
Strategy #4: Watch what they do and report successes and document failures
Don’t try to control their behavior. Don’t threaten. Offer a choice. Are they with you or not. Will they keep their agreements or not? If they are with you and they keep agreements then celebrate and acknowledge them publically with a “thank you.” There is no need to offer rewards and no need to threaten punishments. Just give them a chance to demonstrate their integrity and to show that they care.
Poor performers waste everyone’s time and often cause negative emotions. The poor performance must be addressed but not with the current performance management tools because those tools attempt to control the employees. Control makes things worse. Instead, offer a choice that is reasonable. Ask them to keep their agreements. Watch what they do. If they choose to follow through they are IN. If they choose otherwise, document their behaviors. This allows you to justify moving them out while using their own behaviors as evidence. Get them OUT. It was their choice anyway.
July 20, 2011
3 Reasons Why Soft Skills are No Longer “The Redheaded Step Child”
Soft skills are those personal attributes, attitudes, and communication methods that enable people to have high quality interpersonal interactions. Softs skills have been the “red-headed step child” of the C-Suite leaders for a long time. They have been dismissed and/or ignored because they were thought to be unimportant or even unnecessary.
Since the middle of the 19th century, with the rise of the industrial age, leaders with knowledge and education usually rose to the top of organizations. They organized work in their companies to make it easier to control behaviors. The fundamental premise behind this approach was “the primary cause of problems is the dereliction of duty” by individual workers. Individuals needed to be managed (controlled) to prevent mistakes and to maintain high productivity. Control the individual and you can control the organization. The purpose of the organizational chart is to sufficiently specify those duties so that management can quickly assign blame, should a mistake occur.
This approach took on a militaristic tone, which is not surprising because retired military officers had great influence on the leadership of early businesses. New businesses relied on the technical and managerial contributions of engineers. One of the few and certainly the best source of engineering education in the US was the US Military Academy at West Point.
Our economy has evolved. Competition is global and more intense. We need everyone to have knowledge not just a few concentrated at the top. We can no longer control behaviors from the top and remain competitive. Soft skills are needed. Our “redheaded step child” must be fully welcomed into the family! There are three specific reasons why everyone, especially leaders, must develop their soft skills.
Reason #1: Employee engagement is a competitive advantage
Employee engagement is a highly desirable measure of organization performance today. Employee engagement is emotional response employees feel that causes them to exert extra discretionary effort into their work without bribes or threats. Employee engagement can only exist when employees are treated with respect, listened to, and trusted. Unless leaders know how to use soft skills, such as effective listening, expressing empathy, and treating people with respect (avoid bullying) in all communications they will unknowingly be damaging employee engagement. Leaders without soft skills actually damage performance of their staff and their organization.
Reason #2: Employees must feel safe to offer new ideas
New ideas are the life blood of a growing enterprise. New ideas and innovation can only be generated by employees in a safe environment. Leaders who understand soft skills can consistently create that safe work environment.
Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence and Primal Leadership clarifies. Those leaders who have the ability to use soft skills to influence good moods with employees will create an environment of innovation.
Reason #3: Productivity improvement must come from leveraging knowledge and tasks
Productivity in our country has consistently improved in the last 30 years. This improvement has helped us grow our wealth and improve our lives. Productivity growth is slowing because much of the gains have been with major leaps in technology that have helped us all work longer hours and/or more days per week. We are now able to work 24-7 because technology allows us to stay connected regardless of where we are or what we are doing. I don’t know about you, but I can’t work any more hours without becoming exhausted or even psychotic. Growth will still come from technology but we need more growth to maintain our living standards.
To boost productivity and profitability leaders must leverage their knowledge and allow employees the ability and opportunity to self-manage. Self-management requires high levels of trust. Leaders who can create trust quickly and maintain it will boost productivity. Improvements in trust require soft skills.
Our economy has evolved and so our leaders and their skills must evolve with it. Soft skills are more important today because the knowledge economy has arrived and the industrial age is waning. Leaders need soft skills to make the adjustment. Soft skills cannot be learned with just training classes. Leaders must create environments that encourage the use of soft skills. They must receive feedback from peers and employees and they must heed that feedback and adjust their behaviors accordingly.
June 20, 2011
Two Ways to Know If Your Leadership Effectiveness Needs to Evolve
When I was young I had a reading disorder that held me back in school and reading at high rates of speed. I was a very slow reader. I could get by with a little extra effort and re-reading some books over and over. Today, with the flow of information growing exponentially, it is practically impossible for me to stay fully informed unless I can read at high speed with high comprehension. To survive in this new world of information I had to develop new skills. I had to evolve.
Our leadership skills today are in a similar place. In the industrial age we could use command and control skills. They served us well. In his time, Henry Ford needed to hire people with little or no education. That is all that was available. Our management systems were created to deal with people with little or no education. We needed to tell them what to do. We needed to command their commitment and control their actions. The industrial age influenced us to think this was the only approach. The world changed and now we can’t keep up with that old approach. We need to grow up. We need to evolve to survive and thrive.
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s Frederick Taylor introduced his ideas of Scientific Management. He saved companies millions of dollars and boosted profit for organizations with his time and motion studies. He analyzed larger tasks into small individual motions. He instructed workers to conduct the tasks very specifically. He told them to follow his exact instructions and it saved huge amounts of time. This boosted productivity which boosted profit.
This sounds like a great approach. It is up to a point. Once the manager runs out of ideas or runs out of time to solve the problems improvement stalls. I call this a “manager dependent” system. This is exactly what Taylor developed. He had to. In the beginning of the industrial age people were not capable of managing their own improvements because they were not fully educated.
A better approach is offered by W. Edwards Deming and the System of Profound Knowledge. Deming offers the opportunity for everyone to participate in the improvements in quality and speed. Deming is our evolution for business and management. Yet, we are still stuck in Taylor model. Is your organization still stuck there? Is your management? Is Human Resources? My guess is yes. Let me explain.
Performance Management
Does your organization use a typical performance management process? Is it the annual review? Is it mandatory? Does it give a grade to employees? Does it help distribute pay raises? Is it tied to bonuses and other pay-for-performance decisions? If you have these policies you are still embracing Taylor Scientific Management.
What about Management by Objectives (MBO)? This too is a Taylor consistent policy. All of these are attempts to control employees. They are all manager dependent processes that send clear messages such as, “I don’t trust you.” Or, “You are not smart enough to have the freedom to improve your own work.”
Hiring Decisions
Consider your hiring and promotional decisions. Who tends to get the promotion? Is it the person with the most knowledge? Is it the one who has the most experience? This type of decision is consistent with Taylor thinking.
In a manager dependent system the manager must have the most knowledge because it is the manager who must be fully responsible for all the problems and solutions to those problems. We can also see evidence of this in a job search. Descriptions of job requirements list both skills and experience. Specific knowledge in an industry is more important for those who have Taylor thinking.
New skills are needed in the Deming organization. Management must understand systems thinking, understand variation, and understand how to manage variation. They must understand how to use the Plan-Do-Study-Act learning cycle and they must be able to teach the learning cycle to others. They must be facilitators of change and not causes of change. Finally, they must understand the latest psychology. They must come to realize the focus on extrinsic motivators is consistent with Taylor thinking. They must realize that performance appraisals and MBO are also control methods. They must shift their thinking to intrinsic motivators which include providing freedom choice and challenge to employees something Taylor can’t do.
Is your organization still stuck in Taylor thinking? Do you have the performance review and the MBO policies? You can make the change. You can evolve. Read material about Deming and see the differences from Taylors. To survive in this new world we must develop new thinking and a new set of skills. I had to evolve. I am sure you do too.
May 16, 2011
Employee Engagement Is Out and “Self-Propelled Employees” Is In!
I have been researching and writing about employee engagement for years now. I am starting to wonder if it is not the ideal. Employee engagement may not be the highest form of productivity. Self-propelled employees may be even better. Let me explain.
Employee engagement is a heightened emotional connection that employees feel such that they are willing to exert greater discretionary effort. This definition comes from the Conference Board. I believe it captures the concept of high productivity. People who voluntarily give more to the job are a fantastic indicator of leadership and management excellence. I am wondering if there might be an even higher level. Employee engagement still requires a high level of management involvement. To have self-propelled employees suggests an even higher level of freedom and a higher quality of leadership.
There are five key characteristics of an engaging environment. These include:
1. Having a sense of purpose greater than oneself
2. The opportunity to focus psychic energy
3. The autonomy to make important choices (freedom of choice) that will create a sense of freedom
4.A balance between the skills needed to perform a task and the challenge the task is offering. The better balanced these two factors are the better the performance will be
5. A sense of progress created with specific data feedback
Leaders who can create an environment that delivers all five of these elements will create an engaged workforce.
In most organizations the feedback given is often delivered by management. It is often delivered in the form of regular interactions between the employee and his/her manager. I suddenly realized employees that create their own feedback are actually freer and more productive.
What if employees could give each other feedback without depending on managers? What if employees could collect data from their own processes? Imagine an environment where employees had total permission to interact with each other when they needed feedback. Imagine cooperation between employees to improve both their personal interactions and their process interactions. Imagine employees propelling their own improvement efforts. Imagine fearless feedback that doesn’t require management. Let’s take a real life example.
Imagine a restaurant. The employees want to improve service to customers while reducing their own wasted time. The employees create a check list for an “optimum dining experience.” Everything that would create an optimum experience for customers, for “front of the house” (waiters, waitresses, and hostesses) staff and for “back of the house” (kitchen) are listed on the check list. In other words, all stakeholders must have an optimum experience and that experience is defined by the items on the list. The ideal dining experience will equal all of the items for all three stakeholders are experienced during the meal.
After each meal, the staff reviews the check list to see which items occurred. They keep the data. After a month they meet to review any and all those items that have been missing. They work as a team to identify changes to the process that will improve the probability of creating those experiences in the future meals. Decisions are made as a team to change processes and behaviors to change the experiences. Everyone contributes to the improvement effort. Everyone has a say. Everyone has the chance to offer ideas.
Management is not needed for the feedback. Employees now have their own freedom of action and their own method of feedback. Management is needed to set it up. They are Management is needed to create the sense of purpose, the opportunity to focus attention, and the opportunity to make choices for improvement. But, employees have their own process to give each other feedback. They are self-propelled. Manager dependent feedback is now unnecessary.
In summary, employee engagement is a high level of productivity and it is something to shoot for. There is a higher level. Self-propelled employees are the ideal.
May 9, 2011
Fearless Feedback Equals Employee Engagement
What is feedback?
Feedback is data for the purpose of learning. Feedback is a safe way to understand how to improve your individual performance, skills (personal development), tasks, and/or the processes within which you work.
Why is feedback needed?
There are four major reasons why feedback is needed. Feedback helps us learn, it helps us adapt to change faster, it creates accountability, and it provides a key element for employee engagement.
The ability to learn faster than your competitor is a huge advantage in the knowledge age. Feedback is a necessary element of a learning cycle. In the 1950’s Walter Shewhart and Dr. W. Edwards Deming popularized this scientific learning cycle. In many business and scientific circles today it is known as the Shewhart Cycle or Deming Cycle. There are four steps to the learning cycle: Plan-Do-Study-Act. Feedback occurs in the Do phase of the cycle where data is collected to best understand how a process is working. It helps answer the question, “Is the process delivering the expected outputs and outcomes?” Without the feedback there can be no learning.
In the industrial age learning was mostly dependent upon how fast managers could solve problems. New policies and procedures were created mostly by management and needed to be implemented by the employees. Management used command and control and the Taylor Scientific Management Theory to accomplish this. In the Industrial Age it’s management who knows best. They were responsible for creating the policies and procedures and then holding people accountable to those using Management by Objective or MBO (performance appraisals and pay-for-performance policies). Feedback took the form of corrections to the policies and procedures created by management. Feedback was manager dependent.
Feedback is needed to work with change. Change can occur both within and outside the system. A system is a series of interdependent processes that are in existence to achieve an aim or purpose.
A key success factor is having the ability understand the nature of change and to respond to the change appropriately in order to achieve the desired outcomes. Change therefore becomes something to detect and take action in order to adapt to it. Therefore change can’t be controlled or managed. It can only be detected, anticipated, and adapted to (Wheatley, 2006).
“Feedback is a critical element in the ability to make rapid strategic integrated choices concerning the pace and direction of change.” (Cloke & Goldsmith, 2002). The organization that can accelerate change and involve everyone to participate will create a competitive advantage. Now we find ourselves in the knowledge age and these MBO strategies and techniques no longer give us the speed to adapt to the changes fast enough to remain competitive.
Feedback provides a stimulus to cause change. All change creates disequilibrium which creates motivation to adapt. Feedback provides that disruption that can cause change (Wheatley, 2006).
Holding employees accountable to methods and to their agreements (commitments) is the most effective strategy for performance. Holding people accountable for results can result in unintended consequences. Feedback provides the key final step for our definition of accountability. In order to create trust we must expect employees to keep their agreements. We must expect they can be trusted to have integrity. We must expect them to do what they say they will do. When they fail to keep their agreements we must remind them. We must bring that to their attention. This is the role of feedback. Feedback provides confirmation that people kept their agreements. It provides confirmation that people have integrity.
Finally, feedback is important for retaining talent. Retaining talent and creating a culture of trust are two of the most important challenges facing leaders over the next ten years according to a 2011 study by SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management). To optimize retention and trust managers (and all employees) must know how to create employee engagement. Operating income and employee retention are higher with high levels of employee engagement according to a 2008 Towers-Watson Study. Frequent feedback is an extremely important element for creating an environment of employee engagement. An improved ability to give and receive feedback will improve the relationship between supervisors and employees. According to Gallup (Cherniss & Goleman, 2001), employee retention is directly dependent upon the quality of the relationship with the employee’s immediate supervisor.
Willingly giving and receiving frequent feedback means we are invested and committed to the organization and to our relationships (Reina & Reina, 2006)
Why Fearless Feedback?
Organizations must learn faster than their competitors, must create engaged workers, must, create an environment of accountability, and must adapt to change more quickly than competitors. All managers need to learn how to work with change and stop trying to manage change. A key element to achieve these outcomes is creating a culture of trust. Most organization development research confirms the importance of trust. High trust either destroys fear or neutralizes the effects of fear. When there is high trust people are willing, by definition, to be vulnerable. The IABC research Foundation published a study about trust and the definition they used for the study was the willingness to be vulnerable because of the presence of integrity, concern, shared objectives, and competence (Shockley-Zalabak, Ellis, & Rugger, 2000).
Because the most successful organizations are those who are able to adapt to change, the ability to work with change becomes a required competency in today’s fast paced global economy. Receiving feedback in a fearless environment enables everyone to take positive action to work with change. In his book, Managing Transitions, William Bridges emphasizes the need for trust in management as a building block of working with multiple simultaneous changes (Bridges, 2003). “When people trust their manager, they’re willing to undertake a change even if it scares them.” (Bridges, 2003). Stephen Covey confirmed this by saying trust is the highest form of motivation (Covey, 1989).
Giving and receiving feedback is a critical element for trust communication (Reina & Reina, 2006).
May 6, 2011
Is Work Engaging or is it Just “Work”? - 5 Elements of Flow
A recent article in a professional Human Resources online magazine in the United Kingdom raised a disturbing and controversial question. Is employee engagement just about helping employees “feel good” or to have fun at work? Has feeling good over taken the need to improve the quality and efficiency of our work?
The premise of this question is wrong. It ignores the correct definition of engagement. It also ignores research that already exists. This research proves that fun, engagement, productivity, and conscientiousness are all compatible, and interdependent.
Doing more work and high quality work are compatible with employee engagement. People want to be challenged and they want to accomplish tasks. The definition of engagement I use is from the Conference Board: “the heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization such that they exert greater discretionary effort.” Engaged employees willingly give their energy and time to the work they love to do.
According to a University of Chicago professor, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, people can achieve a Flow state of mind at both work and at leisure. Flow is the state of mind Csikszentmihalyi that describes a set of conditions that allow people to achieve their greatest level or productivity, quality, creativity, and engagement. Flow is another word for fully engaged. Flow means an experience of joy. Flow means being “in the zone” with a task. Flow is putting all the concentration and energy toward a task for intrinsic reasons only.
Flow requires a very specific environment with very specific elements. Unless these elements are in place, Flow will be illusive. Furthermore, if Flow equals joy, engagement can and will be achieved with these elements.
Csikszentmihalyi conducted a 25 year study as a professor of psychology. He asked hundreds to wear random timers that would “buzz” 20-30 times per day. Participants were instructed to write down what they were doing and how they were feeling each time the “buzz” occurred. The results were compiled and analyzed. From this the professor created the key elements of Flow (emotionally enhanced activity or engagement).
With his research the professor uncovered five key elements that create Flow. These are the same five key elements that can define an environment with optimum engagement. The elements are: a clear sense of purpose; the opportunity to focus full psychic energy on the tasks of the job; a balance of challenge and skills for the job responsibilities and tasks; the opportunity to make choices and to make decisions; and finally having a clear sense of progress.
A clear sense of purpose
This element confirms the need to have a clear vision statement and a clear mission statement. A vision is an ideal picture of the future state of the organization. A mission is a statement of purpose about why the organization exists. Once employees appreciate both of these statements and can see a connection between those statements and their everyday tasks they experience a sense of purpose.
The opportunity to focus psychic energy
We have all had the experience when time flies by while fully involved in a task. Employees who have the opportunity to focus their full attention on a task can experience this feeling. Full focus is always an element of engagement. Focus is also directly dependent upon a balance between the skills of the person and the challenge of the task.
The balance between challenge and skills
Focus is required when the challenge employees feel is balanced with the skill(s) needed to complete the task. When the challenge is too small employees can get bored or feel indifferent. When the challenge is too great, anxiety or fear is the result. Employees may freeze with indecision. Csikszentmihalyi’s research confirms that employees desire to be challenged at work. This part of his research destroys the myth that people can’t or don’t enjoy work. Work can be joyful. This element contradicts the premise of the UK article. Joy and challenge are compatible. Work and joy are also.
The chance to make choices - autonomy
People crave the freedom to make their own choices. The overused term is “empowerment” but having choice to achieve Flow goes well beyond empowerment. Freedom to make choices make employee motivated to do their job better. It means less bureaucracy and more autonomy. Having choice requires high levels of trust and a clear understanding of the vision, mission, and responsibilities. We can begin to see how all of these elements work as an interdependent process to generate a valuable environment.
A clear sense of progress
People need feedback. They can’t always depend upon managers to observe their work and tell them how they are doing. They need some other systemic measures that provide an indication solid positive progress. When you combine all five of these elements in your work environment you have created an engaged workforce. Joy and optimum performance can occur simultaneously and are indeed compatible.
April 18, 2011
Assertive-respectful Leaders “Finish First” with Employee Engagement
They say nice guys may finish last but aggressive-controlling managers finish last on employee engagement. Assertive-respectful managers finish first in long-term performance and employee engagement.
At a recent leadership seminar one of the participants came in 20 minutes late. I greeted him politely and he grunted without looking at me. He was clearly disengaged. At the break I called him aside and asked him if he wanted to call his manager and ask permission to leave the seminar because he clearly did not want to be there. He told me he had been told to attend on his day off without pay and he didn’t think he needed the training. His boss was an aggressive-controlling micromanager who believes results come from employees being told what to do.
Even though I could understand why he demonstrated this poor behavior he still wasted my time and the time of everyone else in the seminar. He also damaged my credibility as the seminar leader and damaged my ability to transfer the knowledge and skills I was hired to deliver. What was the root cause? His manager’s behavior was a major contributor. The participant stayed in the seminar but it clearly was not going to get much from the training because of his attitude. The same attitude his aggressive-controlling manager influenced.
Aggressive-controlling managers are not always mean managers yet they create unintended negative consequences with their behaviors. The seminar participant’s manager will probably never know he demonstrated poor attitude and wasted everyone’s time in the seminar.
Many aggressive-controlling managers justify their behavior because they see unengaged employees. They remain unaware of how their behavior actually could be the cause of the disengagement. I want to replace aggressive-controlling behavior with assertive-respectful behavior because the results will be at least as good (if not better) and the unintended negative consequences will be significantly reduced. This requires a change in culture which must start from the top. Culture change is challenging and can take time. But any leader can start to make the shift right now by simply managing agreements
.Agreements are the building blocks of organization results. Just as the atom is the building block of life, agreements form the foundation for every successful organization. If the agreements in an organization are weak the results will suffer.
Agreements are specific measureable and time sensitive tasks that employees perform to accomplish a goal. Every leader works hard to align their organization around strategy. I like to describe this as the flow of action.
The Flow of Action: Vision Strategy Goals Processes Agreements
We start with the vision of the organization. We then form a strategy to move us toward the vision. The strategy requires goals or objectives. Goals are accomplishments along the way toward achieving the strategy. Goal accomplishment requires processes which will help achieve the goal. Nothing can be achieved without a process. Processes are a collection of agreements (tasks that are specific, measurable and time sensitive).
Here is an example. A technology company wants to be the best in its domain (the vision). Its strategy is to provide data storage services to the health care industry (strategy). The company set a goal to obtain 10 new customers by the end of the year. They created a sales process.
The sales engineers where asked to make an agreement to make 20 new calls to potential customers each working day. Unless the calls are made the entire system breaks down because the strategy is not implemented and the ability to reach the vision is delayed.The assertive-respectful manager works with employees to clarify each level of the Flow of Action. Every employee then understands each level and understands why and how the levels are interdependent when this is done. When the manager asks the employee to make an agreement he/she is much more likely and willing to do so without resistance. The aggressive-controlling managers just say “do it!” The assertive-respectful manager asks, “Are you willing to make this agreement?”
The employee is more engaged because he/she has a choice to either do the agreement or not. If they can’t keep the agreement(s) they are encouraged to speak up and discuss the agreement with the manager. The employee and manager can negotiate a different agreement the employee is more confident in keeping. Once the agreement is made the employee is expected to complete it on time. Results are improved because the employee is more likely to keep the agreement and is expected to communicate if something changes causing them to miss the agreement date. The unintended negative consequences are avoided because the employee is empowered and willingly engaged in the activities and tasks. They are not told to do it by an aggressive-controlling and unconscious manager.
The aggressive-controlling manager thrives on chaos and solving problems. The assertive-respectful manager wants to avoid chaos and works with his/her people to clarify the Flow of Action. What if the seminar attendee was first asked to make an agreement to attend the seminar? What if he/she was able to express concern about attending on their day off? What is the assertive-respectful manager was able to explain why it was so critical for the employee to attend? Would this have made a difference in the attitude? Would this have caused the seminar attendee to get more out of the seminar? Would his/her performance improved? Would the strategy been implemented more quickly? Would the vision be reached more quickly? We will never know but what do you think?
April 5, 2011
3 Actions to Enhance Employee Engagement When Mistakes Occur
Most, if not all, of us drive. Imagine driving your car on a straightaway and not touching the wheel. I sometimes do this to test the alignment of the front-end. If the car stays in the lane for a long period of time it must be aligned, right? Well, it depends.
Most often we need to make small adjustments to the steering to keep the car in the lane even on a straightaway. Making these little adjustments come naturally for experienced drivers. These little adjustments correct little mistakes. Without little adjustments we might be in trouble. They are necessary to keep us safe in our lane and on the correct road in the right direction.
Senior leaders decide which road we should take. This is derived from the vision, mission, and strategy they create for the organization. If employees don’t completely understand either one of these, or key parts of these, employees can drive too slow, or go in the wrong direction, go on an incorrect road, or even drove off the road.
Senior leaders also create the context of the organization. The context sets the expectations of employees. Do employees have the ability and willingness to make those little adjustments to the wheel or do they need to wait for managers to direct them? A leader’s reaction to employees when they make these little adjustments sends a clear message. Do they encourage or discourage these little adjustments? How do you behave when mistakes are made? Do your actions encourage or discourage? Here are three actions you can take to ensure you protect and even enhance employee engagement when mistakes are made.
Treat mistakes and an opportunity to learn with experimentation in a complex system
How a leader views or defines mistakes will determine his/her reaction and the employee response. Leaders who enhance employee engagement look at mistakes as an opportunity to learn for all levels. They see the mistake as flaw in the process or system within which the employee operates. They don’t see the mistake as a flaw in the employee who was involved. For these leaders the employee was not really the cause of the mistake.
Instead, the employee was merely one of the many factors. Some of these factors are obvious and observable while others can be hidden and unseen. For example, a driver who hits a nail and gets a flat tire will be late for an appointment. The driver’s choices to be on a certain road and in a certain lane are only two of the many factors that contributed to this problem. In other words, systems are complex.
Employees, unless they purposely make the mistake, or purposely sabotage, are only one factor in a series of complex factors. Sabotage is a serious offense and is a totally different matter and must be treated differently from mistakes.
Leaders who hold employees accountable for results and for numeric goals can damage employee engagement because they are not acknowledging the complexity of factors in the system. Blaming employees for mistakes will damage engagement.
Leaders who want to enhance employee engagement will allow the employee to “drive the car” and make the little adjustments necessary to get to the destination. They clarify the vision, mission, and strategy to be sure the employees are all on the correct road. They look for opportunities to remove barriers by “looking for potholes and detours” and they coach employees around these barriers when necessary.
Acknowledge and teach that there is variation in everything
There is always variation and there is variation in everything. Life is largely about adapting to variation. Keeping to our car metaphor, when we stop holding the steering we may stay in our lane anyway because the variation in the road surface might keep the car in the lane or a misalignment of the front-end might also contribute to the car staying in the lane on its own. Perhaps the curve in the road contributed to keep the car straight. The assumption that the car stays in the lane because the front-end must be aligned may not be completely accurate. It depends on a lot of factors.
Recognizing there is variation in everything is very useful. It allows employees and leaders to work together as a team to manage the variation. If we acknowledge variation we can measure it, publish the measurement and then ask, “How we can experiment with little adjustments to improve that measure?”
Recognize and understand the two types of mistakes
According to Dr. W. Edwards Deming there are two types of mistakes, common cause and special cause. Leaders must understand the difference between common cause variation (inside the control limits) and special cause variation (outside the control limits) because each requires a different strategy for resolution. Common cause variation is not caused by any one special event. Instead, it is the “voice” of the system. It is the way the system is currently operating.
For example, if the daily commute to your office is, on average, 30 minutes one way, it might take 28 minutes on Tuesday and 32 minutes on Thursday. That difference of 4 minutes is probably common cause variation. It is just the typical variation we can expect for that commute.
If a leader wants to improve common cause variation he/she must study the process using quality improvement tools. He/she must make decisions based on knowledge of the system. This will probably require the use of process improvement tools.
A change in one process can cause an impact (unintended negative consequences) in another process. Leaders, if they are not careful, can make small changes with one process (with the best of intentions) and can actually make things worse. For example, an increase in the pressure on schools to meet the higher test scores in the “No Child Left Behind” program had administrators see a significant spike in cheating by teachers, students and parents.
Leaders must also understand when a special cause occurs so immediate action can be taken. With special causes there is an assignable cause to the event. For example, the recent “one-two punch” (earthquake and tsunami) on Japan caused the nuclear disaster at the electric utility company. The natural disaster (earthquake with the tsunami) is the assignable special cause for this nuclear accident.
Summary
Leaders must treat mistakes as opportunities to optimize learning. Unless the mistake is purposeful any blame on the employee is unsophisticated and will cause a leader to miss an opportunity to identify real root causes.
April 4, 2011
Creating Employee Engagement Requires 2 Imperative Skills of Leaders
I am a member of Linkedin.com, the online social network for business people. In a recent online conversation in one of my Organization Development (OD) groups I was surprised to see how many OD professionals still do not agree with me about which skills are needed for the high performance workplace.
Many OD Consultants still focus their improvement efforts on promoting tools such as 360 degree instruments and performance reviews for improving the performance of individuals. Many OD professionals claim that leaders can and should, with just the right amount of effort and training, be able to provide a valuable evaluation of an individual’s performance if they could only skillfully collect potent and integrated data and then thoughtfully deliver it.
In my opinion, when we focus too much on evaluating individuals we miss an opportunity to make an even bigger positive impact. We miss improving the quality of the interactions between individuals and their system.
The two “new” employee engagement skills
There are two imperative skills leaders need to continuously improve employee engagement. I predict these two skills will eventually replace the “skills” of evaluating individuals. These employee engagement skills are the ability to improve the quality of:
- 1. Interpersonal interactions
- 2. System interactions
Focusing on the quality of interactions reduces the probability the individuals will be defensive or fearful. That fear (of criticism) is a barrier to open and honest communication. Any barrier to communication will be a barrier to quality improvement and innovation.
Interpersonal interactions are those one-on-one communications we make with individuals that can have an impact on the relationship or on trust (face to face or on the telephone). Leaders must manage their impact on trust. They must move from “fractional interactions” which damage trust (because something is missing) to “benefaction interactions” where both parties benefit.
The quality of interpersonal interactions often gets the most attention when 360 degree instruments and performance appraisal tools are used. Unfortunately those tools often miss the impact made by second type of interactions i.e. system interactions.
System interactions are those connections we make with all the processes within which we work. These often involve hand offs of information, knowledge, paper, or data between one part of the organization to another part. Hand offs allow us to do our work in the organization. The quality of these interactions either helps or hinders our ability to do work for our customers.
In my opinion the typical organization doesn’t focus enough on improving system interactions. The poor quality of system interactions can have a hidden negative impact on the quality of an individual’s performance. The current 360 degree instruments and performance management practices are often inadequate (or completely ignore) the factors and hidden forces. These tools instead isolate the individual contribution and assign responsibility (or blame) to the individual by giving a rating (grade) or ranking for the outcomes.
At a recent training program I was told there would be a projector for my PowerPoint slides. It never arrived. I had designed my presentation around the slides. The lack of projector impacted my performance. If I were to receive a performance evaluation immediately after the presentation it probably would have been lower than usual and certainly lower than I would want. The system interaction failed (no projector when one was expected) and that prevented me from achieving optimum performance.
The competencies for improving quality interactions
Quality interpersonal interactions require certain competencies.
Instead of demanding or telling, leaders must listen, provide empathy, and coach. Instead of being expected to know the right answers to problems leaders must instead facilitate dialogue with their teams to optimize learning.
Improving the quality system interactions requires an emphasis on certain competencies. Instead of reacting and judging leaders can instead create a context of engagement. They can and must clarify the vision, mission, values, and strategy of the organization (or team). This requires an ability to clarify these elements and then communicating them consistently and clearly. Doing this allows leaders to trust employees. Giving this trust is almost always a bit scary for certain leaders probably because they don’t possess the competencies needed to create and communicate them.
Instead of making quick decisions leaders must facilitate problem solving and encourage employees to solve their own problems. They must encourage experimentation. This too can be a bit scary. Instead of pretending to know all the answers, effective leaders will understand how to synergize with employees to generate answers they could not have discovered on their own.
Instead of being demanding of employees to achieve stretch numeric goals through “carrots and sticks” policies, leaders can facilitate new agreements with employees to create and improve processes. This improves the probability to achieve goals.
The two skills of improving the quality of interpersonal interactions and system interactions will eventually replace the skill of evaluating individuals. It must because evaluating individuals tends to keep fear alive.
April 1, 2011
Employee Engagement with Optimum Performance Feedback Made Simple
The greatest challenge for Human Resource Professionals over the next ten years will be the need for obtaining, retaining, and fully engaging human capital. This is according to a recent poll of HR professionals by the Society for Human Resource Management. [1] Effective performance feedback can cultivate a culture of trust, open communication, and can create alignment between employees’ work and the organizational objectives. In other words, effective performance feedback is a critical management skill for attracting, engaging, and retaining the talent needed to remain competitive in a global economy.
How does the typical manager deliver performance feedback? The answer is unfortunately, “It depends.” Providing feedback to a high performer who is open to growth and personal development is very different from handling an issue with a “bad apple” who is disrespectful and lazy or avoids responsibility. Typically performance feedback is saved for the annual performance review meeting. Most organization consultants cringe when they hear this because they know feedback is needed every day and most managers and employee dread the typical performance review process.
If feedback is so desired and so important for performance improvement yet managers often avoid it or are poor at the delivery, how can we improve the results? That is exactly the question most HR professionals are asking themselves knowing they must address the strategy of attracting, engaging and retaining talent better than their competitors. There are four steps to make it simple yet not easy.
Step 1: Agree on definitions
First, it is critical to agree on definitions and basic characteristics of feedback before designing a new process. Feedback is different from criticism. Feedback is defined as data from a process for the purpose of learning. Criticism is opinion or judgment. To make feedback simple we must use data and avoid opinions. This is one of the reasons why the typical performance review fails to be used properly and fails to deliver predictable performance improvement.
Because the typical performance review requires a rating or a grade (on a scale) managers are put in a position of an omnipotent judge and the employee is the one being judged. This context can damage the credibility of the information and can even damage the relationship and trust between manager and employee.
Step 2: Make a distinction between Values Issues and System Issues
The Values and Systems Problem Solving Model is based on research by Rob LeBow and Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Simply stated, this leadership model encourages managers, when faced with a performance problem, to ask: Is this problem a values issue, or systems issue?
A values issue involves a purposeful break in integrity such as lying, sabotage, being disrespectful or failing to follow through on an agreement. Problems that are values issues are behavioral, which means individuals have choices as to how they can react or behave. For example, telling or not telling the truth is a choice. Being respectful in the face of disrespect is a choice. Values issues are very serious because they create an emotionally charged environment, which puts relationships at risk.
Every problem that is not a values issue is a systems issue. Problems that result from systems issues include: mistakes, oversight, forgetting, poor training, poor quality, poor performance or lack of motivation. More often than not, the root of a problem is due to a problem with a specific process. These issues must be fixed using quality improvement tools.
For example, if I don’t receive a specific report on time from another employee and that delay prevents me from doing my work I might call the employee and shout disrespectfully. The disrespectful shouting is a values issue. The delay in the report is a system issue that requires an improved process to avoid in the future.
Step 3: Decide to deliver only data
As stated earlier, we want to deliver data only. We want to avoid receiving and delivering unsolicited opinions or judgment. This requires designing a standard tool that describes specific observable behavior. This tool is called the “operational values behaviors.” By describing specific observable behavior we are then able to provide feedback when we see (or hear) behavior inconsistent with the desired standard.
Step 4: Create a safe method to approach anyone with
Finally we need a safe tool to provide permission to give feedback instantly when these values behaviors are not being followed. This tool is called the White Flag®. A White Flag® is an international sign of truce [i] ceasefire, and/or request for negotiation. The White Flag® is therefore a metaphor for “Truce! Don’t attack me, I have valuable information and I am just here to help.” The White Flag® Process enables everyone to provide feedback about values behaviors. Employees can give feedback to each other, and even to managers, using The White Flag® process. The American Red Cross uses a similar symbol. When they go into a dangerous area of conflict, they are always displaying their “red cross on a white background”. This prevents them from being attacked and allows them to help the wounded.
When an employee or manager observes behavior that is inconsistent with the standard described in the values behaviors, they approach the person and assume they are unaware of what they did. The White Flag® enables feedback in a safe and caring environment for the purpose of learning. It’s not for the purpose of evaluating the employee but for the purpose of providing insight to the employee on any deviations to the standard for which they are unaware. Receiving The White Flag® feedback is the consequences of not following the values. This creates a culture of accountability to values behaviors which leads to performance improvement.
Summary:
By following these four steps managers and employees can provide instant feedback to each other and work as a team to continuously improve behaviors and processes. A method like this is desperately needed by HR professionals to address the daunting challenge of attracting and retaining talent in a highly competitive market.
March 31, 2011
Employee Engagement Just by Changing the Way We Think
The local shop installed a “shiny new part” that looked much better than the old part but there was absolutely no improvement of the performance of the whole car. Replacing and improving parts claiming improvement on those parts does not guarantee an improvement in the overall system.
The local shop replaced, and therefore improved, one of the parts of my car. That action did not improve the performance of the car. I still could not trust it. The car might still stall until the proper part was replaced. What is the insight here? Improving the parts of an organization does not predictably improve the performance of the organization.
The Flawed Tools of the OD Professional
Performance appraisals and 360 degree development tools are used to improve the performance of the parts of the organizations (the individual). The intention is to improve the performance of the individual in order to improve their effectiveness and therefore lead to the improvement of the whole organization. This thinking is flawed. This thinking is left over from the beginning of the industrial age. This belief still prevails even among many Organization Development (OD) experts.
These consultants and their respective clients believe that dereliction of duty, and or poor development in leadership skills of individuals, especially managers and leaders, is still the main cause of most of the performance ills in organizations. Many OD experts continue to promote these tools in their management consulting practices today. Many consultants make a very fine living promoting and implementing a useless and wasteful tool. They promote and install “a shiny new part” in the form of improved skills of a manager and they really have no way of knowing if it really makes any improvement at all in the overall performance of the organization. They really don’t even know how to measure the improvement other than the subjective claims of those who participated in the instrument implementation and/or the observations of those who surround and observe them.
Change to Systems Thinking
As OD professionals shouldn’t we be focusing on the overall system and not the parts? A system is a series of interdependent processes that attempt to achieve an aim. This means the interactions between the parts is more important than the quality of the individual parts themselves. That is why the replacement of that one part in my car made no difference. It was the wrong part and had nothing to do with the interaction within the electrical system.
At worst, many organizations create a competitive environment where individuals compete for bonuses, promotions, and other recognition in order to improve themselves. This detracts from the correct focus which should be a team effort to study the overall system and improve the interactions immediately.
Why do we need a specific instrument(s) to tell us anonymous information about a person’s behavior when a short and immediately truthful conversation would instead provide more instant feedback with more immediate results? We need these wasteful instruments because it is not safe to tell the truth to managers because of fear of being evaluated by performance appraisals, a threat of loss of promotion or bonus. The very wasteful tools that cause the problems are the same ones we continue to use and they perpetuate the lack of trust.
I have developed a process that enables everyone in the organization to instantly and continuously assess the quality of their interpersonal interactions and the quality of their system interactions and give and receive feedback for the purpose of improving those interactions. The intention is to find flaws in the quality or deficits in the speed of the interactions in order to serve customers better and therefore more easily and quickly achieve the vision mission and strategy of the organization.
Like a flock of birds that move as one self-organizing system, my process can help your organization to improve its interactions instantly and respond to changing needs of customers, the work environment, or trends in the economy. This new way of thinking is called the Values and System leadership model. The description of this model is detailed in my new book The Art of Leading: 3 Principles for Predictable Performance Improvement.
March 30, 2011
Employee Engagement Is Vital Now – 2 Global Trends Compelling Leaders to Change
The other day a friend of mine asked me “how can I convince my CEO that employee engagement is critical for performance improvement?” He asked, “Are there any performance measures that show a direct connection between higher levels of employee engagement and improved profit and/or improved performance?”
Although there may be many performance measures that show this connection, for me that's not the critical motivation to improve employee engagement. Rather, there are two global trends influencing the need for employee engagement that leaders need to understand. Leaders must align their environments with these global trends immediately or their competitive edge will begin to disappear.
Organizations Must Become “Social Networks” or Self-Organizing Systems
The Internet and mobile phones are accelerating the development of social networks. Networks are communities of people who have certain things in common and they want to communicate quickly, consistently and frequently. Each Community is connected to other communities through individuals who share those common connections. People love social networks. People feel connected and a sense of belonging when they share their interests, passions, values, priorities, and trust. Facebook is a great example of people who want to stay in touch. LinkedIn is another example of business people who want to network to learn or find jobs
These networks are voluntary, chaotic, complex, self-organizing, and innovative. Organizations who want future success must embrace the paradox of needing to be predictable in product and service while embracing the complexity, voluntary nature, and chaos of a network. Members of networks are naturally already engaged. That is why they opt-in. Organizations that adopt the right methods of leadership will naturally create a network type of environment and that will generate engagement.
Organizations must shift their thinking and behaviors from the old industrial model to the new social network (systems thinking) world to influence more employees to “opt-in.” This means treating employees like volunteers. Chaotic, diverse high change environments that allow flexibility, flexible work hours, mobility, work-life balance, and collaboration are now needed. Most leaders are sorely unprepared to deliver these environments.
Chaos and disequilibrium are necessary for networks to continuously learn. Organizations must get comfortable with this disequilibrium in order to continually adapt to change. Leaders must be expert facilitators of chaotic environments and must understand how to manage trust.
Organizations are now social networks whether our leaders like it or not. Furthermore, vast amounts of knowledge are generated by social networks. Look at Wikipedia as an example. The accumulated knowledge is more valuable than any other asset in the organization. This is why the Huffington Post just sold to America-On-Line for hundreds of millions of dollars. Leaders no longer control this knowledge. The network naturally generates the knowledge.
March 29, 2011
Leaders Unknowingly Damage Employee Engagement: Leaders Can Be Smart but Very Wrong
I was scheduled to conduct a training session for a new client. I use flip-charts in my training programs because they help optimize the learning. The charts can be posted on the wall and used for review and reinforcement of the learning process. Without the charts the learning would not be as effective and retained as well by the participants. The training coordinator for the client told me flip charts are never used in their training processes. Accordingly, she explained, “Flip charts are not needed because they have “white boards” which are just as good and save money.”
The coordinator is a very smart person. Her theory of adult learning is very different than mine. Her priority was to use white boards to save money (avoid purchasing flip chart paper). My priority was to optimize the retention of the learners by posting the completed flip chart paper during the training. Very different theories result in very different strategies and very different actions.
Leaders improve actions when they embrace systems thinking
Many leaders are not yet “thinking in terms of systems.” Most leaders still believe an improvement in the parts in an organization (the employees) will improve the organization. This is a false belief that actually damages employee engagement and performance improvement.
General Motors provides a good example of this. In 1982, GM closed its Fremont, California plant in 1982 because, of all of its plants, it had the worst record for: employee absenteeism, productivity, quality and morale. Then in 1983, Toyota and GM agreed to re-open the plant under two major conditions: one, that the plant would be managed by Japanese-trained leaders; and, two, 85% of all previously employed United Auto Workers would be re-hired.
By 1991, that same plant, renamed NUMMI (New United Motors Manufacturing Inc.) had catapulted from having the worst track record to having the best in all the areas in which it had previously failed. What made the difference? The change simply cannot be explained using conventional management theory, which typically blames the people for poor performance. As the example illustrates, the people, who were once part of the failure, became part of the success. The explanation lies in new a leadership style that used influence to change the methods that in turn changed the environment to produce positive results. The explanation lies in the different type of thinking.
Leaders still rely on Performance Management
I believe that leaders who continue to embrace the typical performance management process are probably very smart but also very wrong. The typical performance management process doesn’t work well yet most organizations continue to use it and most leaders continue to rely on it as the most important management tool. Even so, managers often avoid it and employees often are discouraged by it.
When organizations recognize the ineffectiveness and damaging effects of their appraisal system, they sometimes embark on fixing it. Usually the “fixing” focuses on one of two areas: (1) improving the design of the process (e.g. new criteria, new scales, more interaction, more raters, and more frequent appraisals) or (2) improving the implementation (e.g., better training, stricter rules to ensure timely execution, checking raters for consistency and bias tendencies). These improvement initiatives do little to help.
The problems with the current performance management process are neither in the design or implementation. Rather, they lie beneath the surface in the form of underlying theory.
The alternative is The Complete Performance Improvement Process or CPIP
There is an alternative to the typical performance management process. It is called CPIP and it has some similarities and some major differences to the current process.
The similarities:
The manager and the employee will meet one-on-one. One formal meeting is held each year to have an in-depth conversation with each employee while the management of performance occurs all during the year (without a grade or a ranking of the employee). A document with agreements and actions is generated.
The differences:
It is no longer necessary for the manager to “formally” evaluate the employee on their competencies and characteristics. Instead the manager and employee cooperate and partner to improve the quality of the interpersonal interactions and the quality of the system interactions. The rating of the employee is eliminated. It is the improvement of the quality of the interactions that becomes the focus for improvement. The focus is no longer the improvement of the individual.
There is no formal report of the employee competencies. There is only a series of documents with agreements the manager and employee must keep and act upon.
The manager has the ability to improve his/her behavior at the same time the employee improves theirs. It is a partnership.
Another change is pay for performance is separated from the CPIP performance management meetings.
Accountability is protected
Those leaders who are nervous about sacrificing the level of accountability can be comforted with the knowledge that CPIP actually improves accountability. In the CPIP everyone, employees and managers alike, must be accountable to certain values behaviors and they must be held accountable to keeping their agreements. Any employee who is unwilling to behave accordingly is making a decision to deselect from the organization and should be helped to do so.
Just as the missing flip charts will unknowingly damage the learning of training participants, the current performance review processes will damage engagement.
The Art of Leading: 3 Principles for Predictable Perforamnce Improvement
March 28, 2011
Employee Engagement without Criticism: Feedback with Civility to Protect Productivity
Tonight I heard a joke about criticism. Before you criticize someone be sure to “walk a mile in their shoes.” When you are done you will be a mile away, they won’t be able to hear you, and you will have a new pair of shoes.
Criticism damages engagement. Leaders who rely on it for performance feedback will create unseen damage that may never been completely healed and will probably continue to damage performance.
While networking recently asked a colleague to request specific opinions from her boss about a document I was writing. He responded via email. His comments seemed harsh, sarcastic, and critical. He claimed no one would ever want to finish reading my document. He pointed out a few specific places where he would stop reading and left the impression I should have known this already. In other words, he accused me of making these mistakes on purpose. “I would never finish reading this document and neither would anyone else” he said with a sarcastic tone. I was left with the impression that he was annoyed because he arrogantly accused me of making the mistakes just to waste his time.
My immediate reaction was to ignore his advice because it was so accusatory and condescending. He will probably never know my reactions and, in this case, it probably doesn’t matter because I don’t work with him on any regular basis. However, his lack of tact and condescending attitude immediately created a chasm between us. Furthermore, I now have no desire to meet him or work for him in the future. I will avoid his opinions in the future. My productivity took a huge drop. I needed time to recover before I couild take action.
Three Drawbacks
The drawbacks of criticism include a reduction in trust (damaged relationship), a loss of focus on the specific possibilities for change, and a reluctance to communicate in the future. All three of these factors damage the opportunity for learning and can most often contribute to a lack of motivation or engagement which directly impacts productivity and profitability. Criticism by senior managers damages employee engagement because it damages the relationship and the possibility for learning. These are two of the most critical factors for creating an environment of engagement.
Two Types of Criticism
Although it is important to draw a distinction between solicited and unsolicited criticism, all criticism can be damaging depending upon the way it is delivered. Unsolicited is more damaging because it is completely unexpected. Solicited at least is requested and somewhat expected. Unsolicited criticism should be avoided. Solicited should be delivered with data and with a helpful, empathic tone.
Three Things to do Instead
Criticism causes the most damage when the person delivering it carries a certain negative tone of voice. Second, when the deliverer uses only their opinions and fails to use data the relationship and trust will be damaged. The use of data will mitigate the sharp edge and prevent the relationship from being cut. The use of data and probing questions with the right tone of voice (even in an email) will protect the trust and prevent the damage to engagement.
For example, if my colleague’s boss had merely explained, “did you know the sentences could be shorter and if they were, in my experience, it would increase the probability of people reading the entire document?” The shift to a positive tone and the emphasis on specific data changes the entire impression. Criticism suggests a lack of caring and indifference. Sharing data (instead of opinions) while asking probing questions will provide an optimum learning experience. A positive tone creates a calm and caring environment perfect for learning.
Leaders who want optimum learning and therefore optimum engagement must change their way they deliver performance feedback. Emphasizing data, using probing questions, using a calm supportive tone, and avoiding opinions will create a learning environment that protects engagement and avoids fear, resentment, and loss of productivity.
We invite your questions or comments via e-mail
March 23, 2011
Employee Engagement Is Vital Now – 2 Global Trends Compelling Leaders to Change
The other day a friend of mine asked me “how can I convince my CEO that employee engagement is critical for performance improvement?” He asked, “Are there any performance measures that show a direct connection between higher levels of employee engagement and improved profit and/or improved performance?”
Although there may be many performance measures that show this connection, for me that's not the critical motivation to improve employee engagement. Rather, there are two global trends influencing the need for employee engagement that leaders need to understand. Leaders must align their environments with these global trends immediately or their competitive edge will begin to disappear.
Organizations Must Become “Social Networks” or Self-Organizing Systems
The Internet and mobile phones are accelerating the development of social networks. Networks are communities of people who have certain things in common and they want to communicate quickly, consistently and frequently. Each Community is connected to other communities through individuals who share those common connections. People love social networks. People feel connected and a sense of belonging when they share their interests, passions, values, priorities, and trust. Facebook is a great example of people who want to stay in touch. LinkedIn is another example of business people who want to network to learn or find jobs
These networks are voluntary, chaotic, complex, self-organizing, and innovative. Organizations who want future success must embrace the paradox of needing to be predictable in product and service while embracing the complexity, voluntary nature, and chaos of a network. Members of networks are naturally already engaged. That is why they opt-in. Organizations that adopt the right methods of leadership will naturally create a network type of environment and that will generate engagement.
Organizations must shift their thinking and behaviors from the old industrial model to the new social network (systems thinking) world to influence more employees to “opt-in.” This means treating employees like volunteers. Chaotic, diverse high change environments that allow flexibility, flexible work hours, mobility, work-life balance, and collaboration are now needed. Most leaders are sorely unprepared to deliver these environments.
Chaos and disequilibrium are necessary for networks to continuously learn. Organizations must get comfortable with this disequilibrium in order to continually adapt to change. Leaders must be expert facilitators of chaotic environments and must understand how to manage trust. Organizations are now social networks whether our leaders like it or not.
Furthermore, vast amounts of knowledge are generated by social networks. Look at Wikipedia as an example. The accumulated knowledge is more valuable than any other asset in the organization. This is why the Huffington Post just sold to America-On-Line for hundreds of millions of dollars. Leaders no longer control this knowledge. The network naturally generates the knowledge.
March 11, 2011
Management by Objective is like Frankenstein: Good Intentions that Turn Into a Monster
Frankenstein started out with good intentions. The Dr. lost his brother to a tragic accident and vowed to bring him back to life. With all the best of intentions to create life, his work led to the creation of a monster. Management by Objective (MBO) is much like a Frankenstein monster. I am sure Peter Drucker had the best of intentions when he created the idea of MBO but it hasn’t turned out that way.
MBO is a tool to align all actions in an organization around a set of objectives by first identifying the objectives, giving employees objectives consistent with those of the organization, monitor progress, evaluate the employees and the performance (usually through performance appraisals), rewarding the achievers, punishing the slackers, and then revising the organization objectives again.
MBO is an outgrowth of a certain set of assumptions and these include:
- Employees won’t put in extra effort unless they are constantly reminded, rewarded, and threatened to work on what is most important. The pay-for-performance portion of MBO is a critical element for this.
- Improving the performance of individuals will improve the performance of the organization.
- Measuring results and holding people accountable to those results will create improvement
The unintended consequences of MBO (the monster) have just recently been confirmed thanks to the “No Child Left Behind” legislation passed by President Bush in his first term. A recent series of articles by USA TODAY[1] uncovered frequent cheating by teachers and principals. This is not the first time cheating has appeared since No Child Left Behind was implemented.
A study by the Wall Street Journal[2] uncovered purposeful tampering of the Regents exams in New York. I think they should re-name the program: No “Cheating” Left Behind: MBO Fails Again!
Holding people accountable to results where they can’t control (or even influence) all the factors necessary for success will cause either manipulated numbers or cheating. The environment created by pay-for-performance and MBO encourages manipulation because of the pressure for results. Various studies show that students (when asked if they cheat) report as many as 80% admitting to some kind of cheating. The reports by USA Today and the Wall Street Journal confirm the pressure to achieve as one of the root causes.
Some of you may be thinking that these are isolated instances. If so, then why did Bausch and Lomb executives forge sales data and hide inventory to meet stretch goals? Why did Auto repair managers in Sears bilk customers with unnecessary repairs to meet monthly bonuses? Why did Jiffy Lube managers sell unnecessary parts to customers to meet weekly goals? Why did Enron executives manipulate projects? I could go on.
Pressure to perform damages employee engagement. It robs employees of pride and encourages breaks in rules to achieve the results. It puts results in front of ethics.
With the best of intentions your senior leaders may be creating a monster with MBO, stretch goals, pay-for-performance, and performance appraisals. This monster will damage employee engagement and stunt performance improvement. These are the exact opposite of the original desired outcomes. It is time to eliminate the growth of MBO and to reverse its course before it consumes more employee engagement and valuable resources.
March 7, 2011
How to Drive Results without Forcing “Employee Engagement” into the Ditch
Our current management model is still based on the military model. I say that because most organizations still use an organization chart showing a pyramid structure, pay-for-performance policies, and the performance appraisal policies to control behaviors. These are all symptoms of embracing the management model consistent with the military model where you give a command and you follow it. It is based more on fear than on trust.
Think about the language we use to describe how leaders must lead. We have managers who must “drive” results or drive outcomes. Drive is a control word. Drive is a military term. In the dictionary even the words “to manage” means “to control.” Control is a military term. The General, or manager, gives an order and you need to follow it.
What does it take to move away from the military model? It has served us well for years but it is as outdated as Windows 3.1 operating system. The first thing we can do as leaders is to change our language. If, as leaders, we want to increase trust, leverage our knowledge (increase delegation with confidence), and create higher accountability we can begin to use the word “agreement.” An agreement is a specific, measurable, and time sensitive task or action that a person can complete because they already have (or can predictably obtain) all the tools and/or resources necessary to complete the action (task). A goal is different. A goal is also a specific objective or task that can be measurable and time sensitive but all factors, resources, or tools may NOT be available.
My wonderful wife and I decided to lose weight together as a team. She brilliantly suggested that we skip dinners for six weeks and see how well we do. She most often makes dinner for us because I always work late. I told her this was a great idea for her because it would take the pressure off her to always plan and make dinners. She could exercise or do something nice for herself.
Our goal was to lose weight. We agreed to shoot for 20 pounds each. To accomplish the goals we agreed to keep the following agreements:
- Eat breakfast and lunch and skip dinners
- Remove all sweets and snacks from the house
- If we got very hungry at dinner time (or afterwards) we could have a treat like nuts or fruit but no large meals
- We would support each other
The agreements we made will predictably get us to our goal. The agreements are actions or steps that will lead us to our goal. The agreements represent the steps in a process.
Most leaders, because of the military model, still attempt to bribe or threaten to hold employees accountable to the results without thoroughly discussing the agreements that need to be performed along the way.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of high school Regents test scores in New York showed a “bulge” in scores of 65 or just barely passing. Apparently teachers saw scores close to the passing grade and just “pushed” those kids over the line to be sure they passed. The goal of the teachers was to increase the number of kids passing the Regents exam. There was no apparent clear set of agreements to achieve that goal and avoid the “gaming” of the system. The teachers made up their own method by pushing kids over the edge. Also, how much are the teachers learning about their teaching methods and/or future improvements by “gaming” the system. This approach also damages learning.
Leaders who skip the step of the “creation of a process,” skip the creation of agreement, and then threaten or bribe employees are “driving” results. However, they risk unintended consequences. To protect employee engagement, improve performance, optimize learning, and maintain integrity, leaders must learn the skill of “facilitation of agreements.” They must begin to learn how to study a system, identify those steps necessary to reach a goal and then create the list of agreements from those steps. It is a lot better (and sometimes easier) to hold people accountable to agreements than it is to hold people accountable for results.
March 4, 2011
Human Resources is Sadly Unsophisticated
I just read Susan Heathfield’s article in About.com on how to create an environment that encourages employee engagement. Susan claims organizations are bad at employee engagement because it is hard work. This response is true yet sadly incomplete and unsophisticated.
Susan is right about some things. We need to improve employee engagement. It is a critical condition for success as we continue to feel global competitive pressures. We must protect the intellectual property of our organizations by reducing turnover of employees and protecting the knowledge they continue to accumulate in their brains.
Susan and Human Resource professionals continue to avoid a sophisticated discussion about the root causes of the lack of engagement. They claim to know what managers should do to create employee engagement and they always list the same tasks, i.e. adopt an engagement as a strategy, align the values, listen to employees, measure performance, hold employees accountable, yadda yadda yadda. Most of these ideas are fine but they don’t address the real root causes.
Human Resources professionals continue to recommend these basic steps but fail to recommend the abolishment of performance appraisals and the dissolution of pay for performance. In fact, in Susan’s case she continues to support these policies by recommending holding people accountable for results. This recommendation is the same thing as supporting Management by Objectives which almost always includes the current performance appraisal as part of the process. She also recommends an effective reward and recognition program. She still recommends rewarding top talent and using pay for performance as a carrot and club to both threaten and motivate top performers. This dysfunctional policy is what got Enron in trouble and Human Resource professionals continue to ignore the data that supports its demise.
Human Resource professionals continue to be in denial. These two policies represent the root cause of organizations inability to fully accomplish these other steps.
This is disappointing coming from the typical HR professional. It borders on incompetence when it comes from someone who is supposed to be a professional consultant and an author and advisor for Human Resources on About.com. There is no excuse. Research abounds supporting the dissolution of performance appraisals and pay for performance and anyone who is supposed to be an expert with forward thinking recommendations should know it and at least discuss it. I am seriously underwhelmed.
We invite your questions or comments via e-mail
March 3, 2011
Work as a Team to Remove the Cookies – Create Engagement by Discouraging Incivility
We have a problem with incivility in our country. We even hear the President of the United States appealing for it from Congress and from the public while conducting political debates.
A 2011 study by Blessing and White (a management consulting company) reports only 31% of employees are engaged.1 Employees who are not engaged or especially those who are actively disengaged will have a higher likelihood of exhibiting inappropriate or uncivil behaviors. This means that 69% of the employees in the average organization might exhibit discourteous behaviors.
A University of Michigan researcher (Lilia Cortina and her colleagues from two other universities) found that 71 percent of workers (1,100 surveyed) had experienced workplace incivility in the previous five years.[2] The incivility was from coworkers and superiors.
The problem of incivility in the workplace is compounded by our tolerance of it. We teach what we allow and we are allowing it more and more. We need to change this. What do we do?
Like most of you I wanted to lose a few pounds. My first strategy was to eliminate all sweets. This is a huge challenge for me for a number of reasons including my wonderful wife is a great cook and she is Italian. These two factors combine into a large family with lots of birthdays and anniversaries and she shows her appreciation and love for family members by baking.
The very first morning of my new “diet” my wife made two dozen chocolate chip cookies. The smell filled the house. They are my favorite. Do you think I broke my diet pledge? You bet I did. I asked, “What harm could one cookie cause?” I ended up eating four.
Which strategy will work best to help me lose some weight? Take a seminar on how to be more disciplined or remove the cookies from the house? Improving discipline is always useful to ensure better behavior but removing the cookies is the most effective strategy.
Which is the best strategy for leaders who wish to remove incivility from the workplace? Should leaders continue to try to change the individuals who demonstrate incivility or should they remove the real root causes of the outbursts and frustrations?
How does incivility play out in the work place? How do it manifest? In my experience rude behaviors most often occurs because someone is upset that they can’t do their job with pride. It is not because the person was born a jerk. Everyone gets frustrated and some of us behave poorly. They act out. They say things they regret. They damage relationships. All they really wanted was to be able to do their job to the best of their ability but something got in the way. Something triggered a negative reaction.
One of my clients has an employee who is demanding and a high driver. He easily confronts people and often offends them because he is so demanding and wants to look good. He wants to do the best for his clients. His co-workers get offended. Certainly, his style is rough and some even say it’s obnoxious. Yet, he is not purposefully mean. He is driven to perform and he has little patience for what he calls “incompetence” of others. He defines incompetence as events when he doesn’t get the information he needs to do his job or when he can’t provide the very best service for his clients. His style stinks. His motivations and intentions are good. His communication method is damaging. His motivation to provide quality service is strong.
What should a manager do with this person? Sure, improvements in his communication will help. Coaching will help. But is the real root cause of his incivility communication style? Or, is the real root-cause poor hand offs of information within the processes that fail to deliver the information he needs?
The poor performing processes and the poor hand offs are the chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen. If the cookies weren’t in the kitchen I would not have broken my diet. If the hand off of information was optimal, there is no reason to misbehave. Which is better? Remove the reason or improve his style? This is the choice leaders must make. If you keep the dysfunctional processes and incomplete hand offs there will always be a high probability of incivility.
The answer of course is both. I just find it useful for everyone in the organization to work as a team to remove the real root causes of the dysfunction. I find it most useful for everyone to get the “cookies out of the kitchen.” Any effort to reduce poor behaviors in the workplace must include a two pronged approach. Help with coaching for improved communication style but remove the root causes. We need both to protect the motivation and engagement of employees.
[1] Blessing and White Research, 2011, Beyond the Numbers: Practical Approach for Individual, Managers and Executives
[2] Cortina, L.M. (2008). Unseen injustice: Incivility as modern discrimination in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 33, 55-75
We invite your questions or comments via e-mail
February 25, 2011
Employee Engagement and Wisdom Go Together – 3 Levels of UndrstandingSome recent events have caused me to question how the general population thinks about intelligence and how our leaders think about talent management and employee engagement. An IBM computer named Watson recently appeared on Jeopardy pitted against two very successful human Jeopardy contestants. Watson very successfully demonstrated “his” superior “knowledge” after two days of competition but, was it really “knowledge?” I don’t think so.
Watson is a question and answer machine. Although Jeopardy requires speedy recall of facts and the ability to untangle a variety of thoughts simultaneously, it essentially is a contest between brains that are like encyclopedias. The more facts you know, the faster you press the button, the more you win. The more information one can retain and regurgitate the more money one can win on Jeopardy. Watson doesn’t understand the information; it only processes it quickly according to a software program.
This is the thought that gave me pause. I keep getting the impression that we have this assumption that the skill of regurgitating facts is an indication of intelligence. This is wrong. Leaders with facts only are passé and useless in our economy. We must be clear about the definition of intelligence. What creates intelligence in our new economy?
There are three levels of understanding.
Level 1: Information
Information is raw data that is verified accurate, timely, has a purpose, and is presented within a context that gives it meaning and relevance. A good example is the internet. One can do a search on anything on the internet and receive numerous “hits” explaining or clarifying the search item. Watson is in level one. He is able to understand human verbal input but ultimately he really just processes the request and delivers the “right” answer from his database via a brilliant software package. Watson is Google on steroids.
Level 2: Knowledge
Knowledge requires the processing of information to make a prediction. The prediction, if it comes true, represents knowledge. A chart of ocean tides represents knowledge because it makes a prediction about when high tide will occur. The theory is based on the movement of the Moon in relationship to the Earth.
Leaders/managers must accept responsibility for predicting the outcomes of processes under their supervision. Leaders/managers must be able to predict their outcomes and so their decisions must be based on knowledge. Leaders/managers must appreciate the difference between knowledge and information. Without knowledge, a leader/manager’s world remains as chaotic reaction to solve problems instead of strategic proactive action to prevent them. Continuously accumulating knowledge helps leaders to manage costs and improve customer satisfaction.
Level 3: Wisdom
Wisdom is a deep understanding of people, things, events or situations, allowing someone to take action and consistently produce the optimum results with a minimum of time and energy. Wisdom is the ability to optimally (effectively and efficiently) and consistently apply knowledge to produce desired results. Wisdom allows one to share knowledge with others to make significant contributions to society including solving social ills or optimizing community resources. Wisdom is a high level of accumulated knowledge. It can often manifest as a “gut feeling” based on a combination of complex factors but it is steeped in knowledge.
Our economy is now “brain-based” rather than “labor-based.” While few managers would dispute that we are living in the Information Age, many leaders are still thinking and employing management tools developed during the evolution of the Industrial Revolution, the era when machine-driven economies were the rule.
The complexity of the new “brain-based” competitive world (vs. the labor-based) requires continuous knowledge exchange among its employees; the expansion of competition into a global economy has created the need for leaders and employees to be fully engaged and to understand how to adapt more quickly to trends and techniques which may develop half a world away.
Regurgitating facts is not one of those skills that enable us to adapt to change. The key asset of successful firms resides inside the brains of their employees and their freedom to use their brains to increase knowledge and wisdom, not just process information. Successful firms require diverse and continuously evolving skills and the most important of which is the ability to work with people to help them synergize information, diverse opinions to generate knowledge.
One necessary outcome of this trend is reduced interchangeability. Therefore, employee turnover has to be reduced to a minimum to protect the knowledge inside the heads of these highly skilled employees. This means engagement is more important than ever to keep turnover low. Workers that walk out the door take company knowledge that may never be recovered.
The flow of information is not enough. The flow of facts through a fast and sophisticated computer is not enough to make us successful. Watson can’t create new ideas. Watson can’t synergize. Only humans can problem solve and be creative and synergize with each other.
My fear is we still consider quick regurgitation of facts as intelligence. Many firms are adopting a talent management approach for improving results. Let’s hope the criterion is not just the ability to regurgitate facts or I.Q. (intelligence quotient). Let’s hope it also the ability to work with people to synergize diverse views. Let’s hope it includes the ability to build trust and relationships and create cultures of engagement that accumulate knowledge.
Malcolm Gladwell, in his article “The Talent Myth” (New Yorker Magazine, July 22, 2002) points out there is no correlation between I.Q. and job performance. Other factors are more important such as the ability to manage yourself and your emotions, your ability to maneuver through complex social situations, and the ability to bring people together to synergize to accumulate knowledge.
Watson does not have knowledge and “he” certainly does not have wisdom. Let’s stop calling “fact regurgitation” intelligence. It is merely a sophisticated and speedy way to deliver information. Only humans who cooperate and understand the right theories can fully utilize information to create knowledge and accumulate wisdom. An environment that allows for the accumulation of knowledge will be “employee engagement friendly.” Only leaders with wisdom can create these environments. Leaders with facts only are passé and useless in this new economy.
February 21, 2011
Which comes first, Employee Engagement or Cooperation?
Which comes first, employee engagement or cooperation? Employee engagement is a complex emotional response to a vast number of factors too numerous to mention here in this short blog. Because it is such a complex emotional condition that can vary from employee to employee, an effective strategy for leaders is to create the right environment and manage those factors that best facilitate its natural growth.
Just as a gardener would create the right conditions for a delicate orchid plant to produce its lovely flowers, it is useful to think of engagement as an outcome of just the right conditions and just the right love and tender care.
Following this logic, we might again ask which comes first employee engagement or cooperation? Cooperation must come first. Cooperation is a condition in the environment that allows optimum productivity, achievement, and engagement. This begs the question, “How do we create an environment that encourages cooperation?” Do we just hire cooperative people or are there factors we can control in the environment? Are there system factors we can create?
I walk my dogs twice a day. During the winter I take them to the beach. We have lovely beaches in Southwestern Connecticut. Dogs are not allowed on the beach in summer. It is a local ordinance. It is a shame. One reason for this is because cleanliness of the beach is compromised by those few owners who fail to clean up after their dogs. Anyway, in the winter no one really bothers us and there are very few people who utilize the beach because the weather is very often unpleasant.
The other day while walking with the dogs on the beach I noticed an unusual accumulation of “dog dirt” in various places. Irresponsible owners were walking their dogs and not cleaning up. Having extra plastic bags with me I began picking up the “extra dirt.” Needless to say this was an unpleasant job. I began to get very angry. Yet, I kept working to clean up. I was willingly doing a task that was not my responsibility. Why? Why was I cooperating with people who were so irresponsible? Why was I so engaged in an unpleasant task?
According to the book “The Evolution of Cooperation” Robert Axelrod explains that there are three conditions that can create cooperation. Two parties will cooperate naturally if, there is frequent expected future interactions, clearly understood benefits each party will enjoy if they cooperate, and clearly understand negative consequences if they fail to cooperate.
All three elements were in place for me and the dogs. I wanted to use the beach frequently in the future. The benefits of going to the beach with the dogs are numerous including the lovely scenery, an opportunity for the dogs to run free and get lots of exercise, a place to walk unencumbered by extra snow to name a few. The consequences for not picking up the extra dirt (for not cooperating) is someone will complain, an Animal Enforcement Officer might be called in to inspect, I might get a ticket, and I will have to stop coming to the beach with the dogs.
As angry as I was with those irresponsible owners, I was willing to cooperate and clean up after them. I had a bigger set of reasons to cooperate and my emotional reaction was overridden by other factors, i.e. the factors that create cooperation.
Leaders can do this in their teams. The factors of cooperation are not enough to keep engagement going. These are not the only factors that create “the right conditions for a delicate orchid plant to produce its lovely flowers.” For example, in an organization I would expect to be able to influence the offenders to change their behaviors. I would expect I would have an opportunity to communicate my anger and someone would listen.
Without cooperation engagement is difficult to nurture. If you are a leader keep in mind these factors when you see a lack of cooperation in your team. When anyone of these factors is missing there will be damage to the “delicate balance” that leads to the “delicate flower” of employee engagement.
February 16, 2011
Do you Build Employee Engagement Immune Systems or Damage them?
Our immune system protects us from harmful outside invaders around the clock. Our immune system is able to quickly recognize and either repel or attack these invaders that mean us harm. Without this immune system our body would quickly breakdown. When an invader does find a way in, it takes tremendous energy to resist or keep it from harming us. We have all had a fever. A fever is a symptom of an invader who has entered our system and it’s our body’s way of fending off the harm this invader can cause. The fever puts us out of commission. It zaps our energy.
Leaders who damage trust zap our energy. They are like invaders to your “employee engagement immune system.” As a leader do you pass the “hello-goodbye” test? Are people happy to see you coming or happy to see you leave? If they are happy to see you coming you pass the “hello-goodbye” test. If they are happy to see you leave, you fail.
The Four Trust Invaders that Damage “Employee Engagement Immune Systems”
Leaders who zap energy do one or more of four things to damage trust. They fail to show concern for you personally or they are disrespectful. Secondly, they fail to keep their agreements and so they damage their own integrity and they often do it unconsciously. Thirdly, they are incompetent in their core responsibilities and are often unaware. Finally, they send mixed messages about priorities or they frequently have different priorities in objectives, or even worse, values. Here are some behaviors to adopt to be sure you are not attacking the “employee engagement immune system.”
Show Concern
One way to pass the “hello-goodbye’ test is to be sure to demonstrate concern for employees with every interaction. Do this by practicing very basic skills such as eye contact, listening without interrupting, repeating back what you hear without prejudice, asking questions for clarity without criticizing. Above all else, avoid disrespectful behaviors.
Another important factor is being aware of communication style and adapting to the others’ styles. Some want to chat and laugh, some want to talk only about results, some want to just be heard and some want specific details. Be aware of style and adapt your language. Using a different style is much like speaking a different language without a translator. It zaps energy and damages trust.
Keep Agreements
Next to disrespect, this is one of the worst invaders of employee engagement immune systems. Leaders who break their agreements and are unaware make people turn and run. Insisting people come to work on time and then being late for meetings without an apology is an example. Asking people to put in more time on a project but then sneaking out of work early is another.
Unless employees have the ability to tell the “king they have no clothes” this invader can cause serious damage and zap energy and engagement from employees.
Being Competent in Core Responsibilities
Leaders expect employees to be competent. If they fall down on their responsibilities then any performance feedback delivered to employees will fall on deaf ears. Credibility is lost. For example, leaders must facilitate problem solving and not avoid or delegate this important responsibility. If they abdicate this responsibility they damage credibility and trust. Employees will stop coming to them for help and instead end up avoiding interactions because any effort is seen as a waste of time. This zaps employee engagement.
Have the Same Priorities
First clarify the priorities of the organization or the department. Clear articulation of priority can prevent misunderstandings. Any misunderstandings or inconsistency will zap engagement energy.
If improving customer service is a priority for the organization, any direction from leadership that appears inconsistent will damage trust. For example, if leadership insists on reducing time spent with clients in order to save money (either on the phone or in person) they send an inconsistent message to the customer service improvement priority.
Do you pass the “hello-goodbye” test? Do employees show concern or delight when you approach? If you are not sure start observing now. You can be either a supporter of engagement or a drain on energy. Which are you?
February 11, 2011
Employee Engagement – What NOT to Do
Engaging employees is a complex process and it never ends. Going back to basics is always good advice when things are not working well. When engagement is not going well it is useful to think about the following basic elements: clarifying the vision, the mission, the strategy and the values. Any lack of clarity or any mistakes by management in these areas will show up as a lack of engagement “down the road” in employee attitude, behaviors, and/or performance.
My daughter attends a State University. I encouraged her to apply to be a Community Counselor or Resident Assistant. This position is the student leadership contact within each dormitory. I felt it would give her great leadership experience plus it would help us with tuition (Counselors receive free room and board). My daughter reluctantly agreed to apply.
This semester she found out more information. In order to get an interview she needed to accept a job working the front desk in a dormitory. On the surface that sounded fine except the dormitory was across campus (not her dorm) and it was third shift. Yikes. Although it was only 12 hours per week she was being asked to “survive by fire” to earn her right to get an interview and to eventually be accepted as a Counselor. She needed to walk (or drive) across campus in the middle of the night.
She received a call for her interview after a few weeks of work. I asked her if she was excited. She said no. She told me the work at the desk was bad enough but the worst part was the way she was treated when new problems arose and she needed to ask questions of management. They either ignored her requests for information or they were unavailable when she needed them. She decided to drop out of the program. She said she could handle the rough work but she couldn’t handle the lack of responsibility by management. It wasn’t just one manager; it was all of them who behaved this way.
I am doing my best to remain objective in this situation but I know I can’t because she is my daughter. Therefore it’s easy in this case to be upset with the quality of leadership and management of the Counselor process. That is certainly an issue but my guess is the dysfunction goes much deeper. I am guessing it goes all the way to the strategy of the State University Counselor program. I believe they have consciously decided to set up a “Survivor Show” type of process to weed out those students who want to, and think they can, operate in chaos. It might be an “unconscious” choice of strategy but, to the employee, the result and affects are the same, i.e. poor attitude, turnover, or poor performance.
A University dormitory is a chaotic place to be. I remember my college dorm experiences and they certainly were chaotic at times. Between the drinking, loud music, and worse, the Counselor has to be prepared for anything. It is highly likely the University has chosen to create a chaotic environment in the Counselor training process to simulate the chaos that will occur during the job. Ignoring questions or not knowing answers to questions is not a very good training process. It is more like a trial by fire and my daughter decided she didn’t need that abuse.
Are you seeing turnover, poor attitude and poor behavior by your employees? Perhaps your hiring and training process strategy needs to be clarified and improved. A poor, or non-existent, strategy is certainly one way to dis-engage employees. The effects are subtle. They show up down-stream with wasteful and costly behaviors. It’s too easy to blame the managers and the employees for their poor behavior but that won’t help you address your root causes. That won’t help you change your strategy. Blaming is “What NOT to do”. Going back to basics first when you encounter these symptoms is “What to DO.”
February 4, 2011
What Type of Leader/Manager Are You? – Train-Wreck or Systems?
I recently read a story about large multi-location national organization and an improvement project facilitated by a well know consulting firm. A recent safety accident had taken the life of a production worker. This triggered the intensive and comprehensive initiative.
The consultant did due diligence and found that the standards of work were not being followed. In addition there was no pay-for-performance reward system in place nor was the performance appraisal process being followed consistently. They immediately recommended that managers be trained to develop specific safety goals and hold their people accountable to those goals by conducting frequent review of their work. They reduced the number of people each manager had reporting to them in order to make them easier to manage.
The supervisors under each manager were also trained to hold their people accountable to the specific goals. To reinforce this structure and motivate the workers, the consulting firm designed a “pay-for-performance” policy that rewarded workers (including managers) only if they achieved their assigned goals, and took additional action with those who didn’t. Furthermore, the performance appraisal process was simplified and mandated. The meetings were to be held every 6 months instead of every 12months. This policy was added to the performance goals for each manager and supervisor.
What struck me was the date on this report was October 1841. Months earlier two Western Railroad passenger trains had collided between Worchester, Massachusetts and Albany, New York, killing a conductor and a passenger and injuring seventeen passengers. This story was recanted in Peter Scholtes’ book, The Leader’s Handbook. The consultant was the Prussian Army. This means our management model has not changed for at least 170 years.
Train-Wreck Managers
Train-wreck managers look for someone to blame. They assume the root causes of problems are to be found in the actions and decisions made by people. This manager assumes improvement in the individual behaviors alone will reduce the errors. Train-wreck management is a very narrow and unsophisticated view of the world. These managers ignore two very important ideas. First, they ignore the idea that there are performance factors (possibly unseen or unknowable) outside an individual’s control. Secondly, they ignore the concept of variation. They view the world in black and white terms. Either a mistake is made by the individual or it isn’t. Unfortunately, the world tends to be “gray” (because of variation) not “black and white.” There is variation in everything. Let’s take a baseball example. Everyone knows baseball.
Why is second base the position that has the most errors in baseball? Do baseball coaches always put the worst player in the second base position? If we just improve the skills of the second baseman will the performance of the team improve? Would the team win more games? I doubt it. That field position is in the middle of the most action. Naturally, the more the ball is handled during a play the higher the probability for mistakes and variation.
Train-wreck managers look for those who caused the errors and bring the mistakes to their attention with “feedback?” Train-wreck baseball coaches would spend the most time with second basemen. Train-wreck managers also wreck employee engagement.
Systems Managers
Systems managers appreciate the concept of systems. They recognize and appreciate the interrelationships between the parts in a system. System managers acknowledge that performance of an individual will be influenced by the interaction between the system and the individual. A system is a series of interdependent processes working to achieve an aim. A baseball team is a system. Each individual is interdependent upon the other. The pitcher who tires toward the end of a game might throw with less power. The hitter then hits the ball more accurately and past the 2nd baseman who dives for the ball, touches it and makes an error.
Systems managers look for opportunities to synergize and brainstorm the real root causes of problems. Perhaps sending a relief pitcher in sooner would solve this problem. This acknowledges that the interaction between the pitcher, hitter, and second baseman all combine into a complex process. Systems are complex and require special thinking and special tools for study. Systems managers improve employee engagement. Train-wreck thinking requires a great deal of work but very little thinking at all.
Evaluating individuals alone and attempting to control individual behaviors is an incomplete and ineffective strategy for performance improvement. Train-wreck managers cause more damage than the train-wreck they attempt to fix. Their approach creates more variation and less effective solutions. What type of manager are you?
January 28, 2011
Employee Engagement is Not About Nice, It’s About Performance
In a recent presentation to a potential client who is interested in my new performance appraisal process, a senior manager expressed his concerns, “Programs like yours that eliminate the grading of employees and replace it with a search for root causes of poor performance (in the process) give employees excuses not to perform. They are too ‘airy-fairy’ or ‘touchy feely’ for me. We need something that will increase performance.”
This statement proves there is often a clear dis-connect in the minds of many executives about employee engagement and performance. There is a strongly held belief that employees really can’t be trusted to perform (or to be engaged) without some kind of extrinsic incentives and or threats of punishments. In the past fifty years research has shown to support the belief that employees can be trusted. Furthermore, when they are, performance increases significantly. Furthermore, removal of the typical threats and bribes (in the form of pay-for-performance and performance appraisals) also increases engagement and performance. Many leaders still ignore this research remaining in denial.
Let me put the research aside for now and just focus on three principles and ask you to think about these and their impact.
This is the Knowledge Economy:
First, we are moving into a knowledge economy which rewards organizations that can learn the fastest.
Respect Creates Innovation:
Second, having an environment of complete respect for employees creates innovation. Respect is not about being “touchy feely.”
Systems Thinking Accelerates Learning:
Third, creating a culture of systems thinking is about accelerating learning. It’s not about providing excuses for poor behavior or poor performance. It’s sophisticated and not at all touchy feely.
The Knowledge Economy
Our new knowledge economy is in full acceleration yet our policies are stuck in the “middle ages.” Talk to anyone with a 2 or 3 year old and ask what it is like to be around the toddler for any length of time. It’s exhausting. Why? Because 2 year olds can’t stop moving and exploring. One doesn’t need to incentivize a 2 year old to explore the world. Instead, you have to watch out he doesn’t hurt himself exploring how it works and how he/she can dismantle it while he/she plays. Yet speak to that same toddler twelve years later when a freshman in high school. When their teacher presents a ne concept in class their first question is, “Will that be on the midterm?” We are creating environments that destroy the natural tendency for knowledge accumulation while at the same time we need that natural curiosity more than ever before to remain globally competitive as a society.
According to research by the major HR consulting firms, the number one reason given by employees in exit interviews for leaving a company is the poor relationship with the supervisor. This tells me there is a lack of respect which is most often demonstrated by a lack of listening. Estimates of turnover costs range from 1-1/2 to 2 times annual salary. This cost is impossible to calculate because there are so many factors that contribute to this cost including recruitment, training, and knowledge. Knowledge walks out the door when people leave. There is no line item on the P&L statement for “Loss of Knowledge.”
Respect = Innovation
In every major religion there is a statement similar to the “Golden Rule” i.e. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Just teaching and supporting this statement at the manager level can save many thousands or more. Respect is about performance not about being “airy-fairy and touchy feely.”
Systems Thinking
Finally, systems-thinking is about prevention of problems and root cause analysis to prevent waste. It’s not about providing excuses. Providing employees with opportunities to collect their own performance data, analyze it, and make small experimental changes using a learning model of Plan-Do-Study-Act is admitting the system within which employees work is complex and requires problem solving skills to avoid waste. Trying to hold people accountable for specific mistakes only encourages the hiding of the truth and a perpetual continuation of the problems.
Acknowledging the complexity of the workplace is not providing excuses for employees who make mistakes. Instead it enrolls those employees to be managers of their own destiny and explore, like they did when they were 2 years old, how to solve their own problems.
It’s time we started trusting employees. It’s time now to start treating them with the utmost respect and allowing them autonomy to explore solutions to their complex performance issues. Threats and bribes have not worked and they never will over the long-term. If we continue to use them we will fall further behind in the race to accumulate knowledge and to therefore perform in the global competitive marketplace.
We invite your questions or comments via e-mail
January 21, 2011
3 Strategies to Stop “Engagement Terrorists”
The purpose of terror is to harass, weaken, or embarrass others in order to achieve specific goals. We have all encountered an “engagement terrorist” in our workplaces at some point in our careers. This is a person who wants to achieve their goals and cares little for the collateral damage they may cause to others feelings or objectives. They may be either aggressive or
passive aggressive. Either way they can be characterized as a terrorist who damages engagement of others.
Employee engagement is damaged by these terrorists because they damage the motivation of productive employees (their engagement). They do this with two basic dysfunctional behaviors: They either break agreements or they behave disrespectfully. The terrorist has good intentions. They see their goals as most important and will put their accomplishment ahead of other competing tasks. They do this for a variety of reasons and I believe their reasons are not really important. Their belief is that their time is extremely valuable and their goals come first.
The “agreement (or integrity) terrorist”
The “agreement (or integrity) terrorist” damages the performance of other employees who are depending upon them to deliver information or completed tasks. The co-workers of these terrorists are “performance victims” because the quantity, quality, or timing of their work suffers. This damages the pride and future effort of the co-workers.
The “integrity terrorist” will promise to take care of a problem and then do nothing. They will make convincing statements that create the impression they will act instantly, “I’m on it!” They are very careful to not mention any details of when or how the problem will be corrected. They do this because later they can pretend they either had a failure of memory, make some other lame excuse, or lay blame on someone else who was originally never involved in the discussion. They wait to see if the problem goes away or ideally the co-worker forgets.
If the co-worker is bold enough to confront them on their original “promise” their two most frequent responses are “aggressive-defensive”, “I’ll get to it, stop bugging me.” or “a convenient loss of memory”, “Oh, I got so busy and it must have slipped my mind. I will get it done now.”
The “disrespect terrorist”
The co-workers who are victims of the terrorist’s disrespect often experience severe demotivation, reduced confidence, and/or self-esteem. Their self-worth is attacked which puts them off balance and can cause them to even react with poor behaviors. The terrorist will give a threatening look or raise their tone of voice. They send a clear message of superiority and arrogance. Their message is, “I am more important than you, I don’t need you or your request(s) and you need to just leave me alone.”
The Problem
The main reason the terrorist creates such engagement damage is because they are able to get away with their inappropriate behaviors. The lack of consequences enables and emboldens the terrorist. In addition, they are often very intelligent and have honed their techniques for years. Their lack of integrity and disrespect has served them well for years. A consistent predictable set of strategies that create consequences, without stooping to their level, is the only way to stop them.
The 3 Strategies
Step one is to agree on a set of specific definitions. An agreement is a specific, measureable and time sensitive task where all factors should be under the control of the person. Organizations perform based upon agreements. Trust is created by making and keeping agreements. Organizations cannot operate without trust.
Create a definition of agreement and then clearly define the behaviors needed to manage those agreements (integrity). For example, when we make an agreement we do so with full knowledge that others are depending upon us. Therefore, we must make an effort to complete it on-time and if we can’t to let the other person know immediately. In addition we must create a new agreement with a new time frame. We must also be proactive and not reactive.
We must then do the same for the word “respect”. We must clarify those behaviors we need to see in order to treat others with respect.
Step two is to get the employees (not just the terrorists) to agree to the clearly defined behaviors. This is relatively easy because, if written clearly, there will be no reason for the employees to disagree.
Step three is the most challenging. Everyone must have permission to confirm all agreements in writing. You also need permission to tell anyone when they are being disrespectful. Terrorists need to be stopped during their acts of terror. They need to be shown how their behavior does not match the behaviors they agreed to hold up.
Furthermore, any disrespect should be documented as well. Employees can document disrespect respectfully. If the clear statements from Step One are clearly written, any disrespect will be obvious. Obvious disrespect must be documented.
Only when all three steps are implemented can one be sure to diffuse the bombs these “engagement terrorists” want to detonate. Only a disciplined approach to all three steps can begin to avoid the collateral damage.
We invite your questions or comments via e-mail
January 14, 2011
Two Reasons Why It’s Time to Change the “Manager” Title
Take a moment and look up “manager” in the dictionary and you might be surprised. It is someone who is responsible for controlling or administering activities. There is no mention of people. Strange, isn’t it? When we use the word manager don’t we think of the management of people? And, even if the definition included “people” as something controlled or administered, is that really what we mean?
If you want to change a person’s behavior it’s useful to change their thinking first. How can you change a person’s thinking? Change their language. We need to stop using the word “manager” for two reasons: First, a manager really doesn’t control ANYTHING. That’s a myth. Control is an outcome of a predictable process and even that is a myth because there is always variation. Nothing is ever perfectly controlled. Events occur within a manageable predictable range.
Control is not a strategy, it is an outcome. The dictionary makes it sound like a task or a strategy. This thought leads to poor decisions and poor policy. Two policies that most managers (80-90% by some studies) embrace are pay-for-performance and performance appraisals. Both of these are designed to control behaviors. How well are those policies working for you in your organization? If you are like most managers these policies are a constant source of frustrations and dysfunctional behaviors.
Secondly, people really can’t be controlled and anyone with a teenager knows that to be true. This idea of control perpetuates “manager dependent” behavior in our organizations. Employees who are dependent upon their manager to make decisions are not fully engaged. I believe the continued use of the word manager is a barrier to full employee engagement.
Think about it, can you really control anyone’s behavior? If they don’t want to do something they won’t. We can make laws and policies and still see poor behavior. In my State of Connecticut it’s illegal to drive and talk on a cell phone. Every day I see someone breaking this law. Clearly the law is not going to control this behavior. Something else needs to happen.
If the title of manager is inappropriate than what should we use instead? Here are two suggestions: “Process Facilitator” and/or “Human Potential Leader”. Allow me to channel Dr. W. Edwards Deming (the father of Quality Improvement) for a moment. Control is an outcome and has a very specific definition for quality circles. Technically it means a process is predictable within a given range of variation.
For example, most people generally work around 40 hours a week. If we plotted the actual data of the number of hours you work each week we would see variation. It would “probably” not be exactly 40 hours. It might be 41 or 39 and the average would “probably” come in around 40 hours. I am using the word “probably” because managing variation within a process has to do with probability not control.
A manager must identify and influence factors that impact the variation. Deming would say a manager’s job is to be able to predict what a process(s) will do. A manager therefore improves predictability and reduces drama. A manager is therefore a proactive “Process Facilitator” and makes processes easier and more predictable. To facilitate means to make easier or to help bring about. A manager is a “facilitator of process” or a “Process Facilitator”. This suggests that the manager is part of a team that cooperates to achieve objectives. One of those objectives is to reduce the variation of certain processes. A manager is the one who makes it “easier” for the staff to reduce that variation. A sales manager facilitates the variation in the sales process. An IT manager facilitates the variation in the flow of information on the network, etc.
What about people. If they can’t be controlled then they must be lead. Managers therefore create an environment where people can manage themselves. A leader helps people achieve their full potential through inspiration, vision, and motivation. Therefore, a manager of people facilitates an increase in human potential.
Try this out. If you are a manager now think about the title of “manager” for a moment. How do you feel? Think about being a “process facilitator” (whatever that process might be, e.g. sales, marketing, IT, Finance etc.). Now, how do you feel? Is there is a difference? Which is more enlightened? Which requires higher trust and respect? Which can create higher motivation and engagement? What about “Human Potential Leader?” How does that phrase make you feel? I think it is time to change the title. Don’t you?
We invite your questions or comments via e-mail
January 7, 2011
Is your Team “Manager Dependent” or “System Dependent”?
The east coast was buried in a large snow storm this past week. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was lucky enough to be on vacation with his wife and children in Florida. Of course Florida was cold that week as well but I digress. Christie came under sharp criticism for being away from the state during this 5th largest storm in the state’s history. Why would someone criticize the Governor for this? It takes a certain mindset. It takes a “Manager Dependent” mindset. We need more people with a “System Dependent” mindset.
A “Manager Dependent” mindset assumes problems can only be solved by certain people and if those people are not around problems will not be solved. This mindset is the genesis of the Talent Management movement in HR circles today. Talent Management claims “that teams with the best people perform at a higher level.” This mindset is not only incomplete and unsophisticated it is inconsistent with systems thinking. Let me be so bold to correct this thought by describing what the Talent Management experts in HR really mean. These HR professionals really mean “that teams with predictable processes and people trained to play their specific roles and responsibilities within those processes such that they can manage the variation in those processes perform better.” It is the leader’s job to create the environment to accomplish this. It is NOT the leader’s responsibility to “drive the plow” in a large snow storm. If the predictable processes are clear and if people are trained to manage their roles and responsibilities doesn’t the leader need to step back and let people do their jobs? Won’t the people just do their work and be self-managed vs. manager dependent? This begins to describe a “system dependent” environment.
We love heroes and heroines. It is exciting to see a person step up and solve a problem in an emergency. It is dramatic. It is fun to celebrate the success with rewards and parades afterward. Let’s just be clear, when emergencies occur it is often an indication of poor leadership, poor management, and/or poor planning. Dr. W. Edwards Deming defined management as “prediction.” This means to me that if a manager can’t predict his/her results within a relatively narrow range then they are not using tools available to them. They are not doing their job.
The following evidence suggests you have a Manager Dependent environment:
- Decisions are delayed waiting for the boss and/or the boss is a micro manager
- Training is seen as a waste of money and time (or secondary to the work that needs to be done now)
- People look for others to blame for mistakes or problems
- People are more concerned about looking good and taking credit for quick solutions (they run from problems or hide them). This is where the heroes and heroines either emerge or disappear
- The “favorites” are almost always those who look good or who are the heroes and heroines
- Meetings are wasteful and seem to last forever
- People hoard information and/or knowledge to protect their jobs or to look good
- Customer service suffers
The following evidence suggests you have a System Dependent environment:
- Decisions are made quickly at the lowest level possible
- Employees take action to solve problems before the boss even asks
- People admit problems or mistakes to ensure the damage done is limited
- People know what to do and don’t need to ask permission
- Customer Service is not only excellent but is often ground breaking and innovative
- Managers talk about systems improvement and avoid criticizing people
The environment is different and it the creator of the improved behavior. It is not the talent that matters it is the system that matters.
Those who think Chris Christie should have been in town (or come back from vacation) to solve the snow clean-up problem are stuck in the “Manager Dependent” mindset. This mindset limits performance, engagement, and creativity. It is not a way toward performance improvement or innovation. Only system dependent management can deliver the results we all seek.
We invite your questions or comments via e-mail
December 2010
As a Leader, What Message are you Sending?
I was walking our two dogs, as I do almost every morning. We go to the nearby park and walk the 2 miles rather quickly so we all get good exercise. Of course I had my Blackberry so when I think of a quick call I can make it during the walk. While striding up a gradual hill I started breathing a little heavy when I suddenly remembered a call I needed to make to one of my strategic partners. I needed to confirm a seminar date that was scheduled for the end of the following week.
I called my client and one of the owners, Diane, answered the call. I asked to speak to the scheduler Evelyn. As I was asking I was breathing even heavier. Apparently talking and walking up hill creates even heavier breathing. I am sure I sounded like a nasty pervert as I asked Diane to pass on a message to Evelyn to return my call. After I hung up I realized I should have explained my context. What impression did I make? If she didn't know me she may have thought I was an excited pervert while I requested, “Please tell Evelyn to call me. I have a few questions for her.” Thank goodness we have a good trusting relationship so I doubt Diane will think poorly of me. But, can I be sure?
Very often leaders exhibit negative behaviors that unintentionally and unknowingly create the wrong impression. These behaviors can damage the motivation and productivity of employees in ways that are immeasurable. Most organizations have the following dysfunctional cultural characteristics:
- The leader misbehaves
- The poor behavior of the leader negatively impacts the employee’s motivation and attitude toward the leader and the organization
- Most of the employees are too afraid to give feedback to the leader and so the poor behavior continues
- The employees begin to exhibit poor behaviors
- The leader conducts a performance appraisal to correct the employee behaviors
This typical series of interactions does little to address the real root cause of the dysfunction, i.e. the leader’s behaviors. Instead, these cultural procedures serve to sustain the dysfunction.
Leaders are not, nor will they ever be, omnipotent. When they misbehave they need to know it and they need help to change their behaviors to prevent the unintended negative consequences.
When I first begin my work with clients I always explain to the Senior Leaders that one of my roles is to give feedback to them about poor behaviors. I ask their permission to provide that feedback and I insist they agree. I always get that agreement because the leaders (and all people) already think they are behaving correctly. Leaders who misbehave rarely do so purposefully. Almost always they are unaware of the impact on others. They need to be respectfully told.
Ask yourself, how many companies proactively welcome respectful feedback to leaders by employees? I often see leaders who insist on strict discipline yet consistently show up late to meetings. I also have seen leaders deliver criticism to one direct report for a particular issue and then fail to deliver the same level of outrage to a different employee for a similar issue.
To optimize trust and create a high performance culture, leaders must be willing to accept the responsibility for the impressions they create. Because they cannot be omnipotent, they must accept frequent respectful feedback about poor behaviors. They also need to send a grateful message to the messenger. Any defensive reaction will inhibit the feedback in the future and help continue the dysfunction.
Therefore, leaders need to either be very insightful and emotionally intelligent in order to observe their own dysfunctional and misunderstood behaviors. In other words, they need to be aware of their “heavy breathing”. In addition, the leader must be truly courageous and purposely set up a small team of trusted advisors who will provide respectful feedback when he/she unconsciously creates the wrong impression. Without these two approaches surely the negative impact on productivity will continue unchecked.
Leaders need to be aware of the impact and impressions their behavior creates. A leader's number one job is to create a functional and respectful context. Often leaders unknowingly damage this environment and therefore unconsciously damage productivity.
November 2010
Trust Leads to Autonomy Which Leads to Engagement
Trust is a vital ingredient in high performance organizations. High levels of trust enable improved communication flow and productive problem solving. Research shows that improved flow of information improves performance, reduces unproductive conflict, increases adaptability, and innovation. Having trust in someone (or in a team) allows us to give autonomy to that person. Autonomy leads to engagement. The more autonomous one is in their work the more creative they are and the more engagement they feel.
Right now engagement is a critical factor for an organization’s success. The higher the engagement the higher will be the productivity and profitability. Yet the latest engagement research shows only about 29% of employees are fully engaged in their work. This tells me leaders are not trusting employees. Trust must come before engagement.
Successful leaders recognize they must trust employees first. They purposely put people in situations where they will be challenged and allow the employees to demonstrate their skills. A leader will make themselves available but they don’t look over the employee’s shoulder and they don’t micro-manage. They trust first in order to be trusted. Ernest Hemingway once said, “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to manage the variation in trust in their organization or within their team. This requires a keen understanding of the right definition of trust. The definition I appreciate the most is from the International Association of Business Communicators. Their definition is: a willingness to be vulnerable because of the presence of integrity, concern, competence and shared objectives. By managing each of these four elements a leader can then make a decision to be vulnerable. By making themselves vulnerable they bring out the best in the employee. They allow that employee autonomy and with autonomy come growth and engagement.
In the movie The Horse Whisperer Robert Redford plays a middle aged expert horse trainer/cowboy in Montana. He is met by a young girl and her mom who ask him to help rehabilitate their horse. The horse suffered a nearly fatal injury in an accident with an 18 wheeler. The girl and mom wanted to avoid putting the horse down even though the injury was so severe. The horse was not the only casualty. The girl lost her leg. She was only 14.
Redford realized he needed to help the girl before he could help the horse. In one scene he and the girl find themselves out on the range alone with an old pickup truck. Redford asks the girl to drive him back to the ranch while feigning fatigue. He challenges her to use her skills. He trusted she would be able to drive him even though she had never driven a truck let alone a standard shift. He trusted her first, provided support, and allowed her autonomy to give it a try.
It worked. She did it. She became engaged in the process of helping to rehabilitate the horse. By trusting her, giving her training and allowing her to use her skills (providing autonomy) she became engaged. This works for employees. It also can work for students.
Our schools are in trouble. The new documentary Waiting for Superman demonstrates the challenge well. Some say the film blames unions and teachers for the problem. Certainly they play a role. But those who say that are missing a huge piece. The problem starts with how we think about students and how we have set up the system. We have a system set up to send the message, WE DON’T TRUST YOU. We have very strict curriculums. We use standardized testing to drive improvement and reward or punish students and schools. We use grades to attempt to motivate students to do better. What are we left with? Is it engagement? Is it results?
I would recommend we send a message of WE TRUST YOU. Students naturally want to learn and teachers naturally want to do a good job. Don’t they? We can then provide an environment of autonomy. We can then expect them to be engaged.
Successful leaders trust people will do the right things. If they don’t do what they are supposed to do then there needs to be consequences. But why create a system that sends a message of distrust for everyone just because you have a few bad apples? Trust people, give them the tools so they can be autonomous and then watch the engagement happen.
International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) by Pamela Shockley-Zalabak, Ph.D., Kathleen Ellis, Ph.D., Ruggero Cesaria
October 2010
2 Lessons Leaders Can Learn From Nature
This summer was especially dry. My front lawn looks like a flash fire went through. My ability to keep up with the watering fell way short. I waited until September to take action because I know from experience that is the best month to re-grow grass. I asked my lawn guy to prepare the soil with an aeration treatment, growth fertilizer, and power seeding. I carefully watered his good works and the grass is coming back nicely. All I did was create the proper conditions and allowed nature to take over. This is an important lesson for leaders. Don’t focus on improving individuals. Use your energy resources to create the right conditions for performance.
I didn’t attempt to accelerate my lawn repair by conducting motivational speeches or placing posters of motivation on the surrounding trees and bushes. Nor did I offer additional “rewards” in the form of additional fertilizer or water to encourage faster growth from those high performing seeds. I also didn’t threaten to withdraw those goodies from those seeds that were slower to grow.
That approach would have been ridiculous. Just as ridiculous is leaders who use performance appraisals and pay for performance and expect long term sustainable improvement without creating the proper performance context. Performance, like grass will naturally grow when “good seeds” are planted in the proper conditions. Nature takes over.
A leader’s first job is to create that context. The proper context in an organization includes the following five key items:
- Values
- Vision
- Mission
- Management Theory
- Strategy
This is lesson number one for leaders. What have you done lately to reinforce the clarity of the Values: How we want to behave regardless of the situation; Vision: how we want to look as an organization in the future; Mission: Why the organization exists; The Management Theory: Do you believe people want to do a good job or do you believe people need to be pushed to work?; Strategy: What differentiates you from other organizations in your industry?
The second lesson from nature is autonomy. Nature allows choices to be made. Make the right choices and you succeed. Make the wrong choice and you lose (or you experience pain). Nature does not control. Nature encourages autonomy.
When organizational leaders rely on methods of control to manage, they impair the organization’s ability to respond or adapt to change. To be successful in this fast-paced business climate, leaders must learn to cultivate a context that empowers and encourages informed and rapid decision-making.
A good metaphor for this type of responsive decision-making is a flock of birds in flight. It is a most mystifying phenomenon. As a group, they have no leader to tell them when to turn left or right, or when to slow down or to speed up; yet as a group, they change direction as effortlessly as a single organism. How is this possible? It is possible because, flocking birds naturally follow three basic principles: first, they fly in the same general direction as their closest neighbors; second, they fly at the same average speed as their closest neighbors; third, they fly at the same average distance from their closest neighbor and avoid colliding with them at all costs. Following these three basic principles, they are able, as a group, to respond to their fast-changing environment with rapid, precise adjustments.
Flocking birds are what’s called a “self-organizing system”. Organizations can achieve the same agile capabilities if the leader clarifies the vision and the organizational objectives, and teaches clear effective principles. In doing so, the leader establishes trust and increases his/her influence, while empowering each individual to make the right decisions at the right time. In the presence of a clear vision, clear objectives and sound principles, individuals participating in a self-organizing system learn how to adjust to a fast-paced environment. Like the birds, people will respond quickly, appropriately and in the best interests of the “flock”, without needing a controlling authority to tell them what to do.
The creation of this performance context allows autonomy. The birds are free to make choices within the context of the principles. A leader can create the conditions and then trust employees to operate autonomously within that context. So doing will create the best response to change and the greatest possibility of high performance.
Stop trying to control the seeds or the birds. Create the proper conditions instead and let them perform. It is the natural thing to do.
September 2010
Are you a Leader of Leaders or Victims? 5 Strategies to Enhance Accountability and Responsibility
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. After a few hours a small opening appeared. The butterfly wanted to emerge and the man watched for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop. It appeared as if its task had become daunting. To the man it looked as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no further.
The man decided he must help the butterfly. With a pair of scissors he snipped off the remaining bit of cocoon. The butterfly emerged easily. But, it had a swollen body and small shriveled wings.
The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.
Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.
What the man, with good intentions, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were Nature’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Are you, with the best of intentions, creating dependent victims in your organization or are you creating and encouraging independent thinkers who solve their own problems?
Our culture tends to reward those who provide instant answers to difficult problems. We tend to be impatient with those who take time to think through solutions. We often promote fast paced and narcissistic behaviors because it creates instant results. Instant results can often carry with them delayed unintended consequences.
A leader has willing followers and works with them to solve problems. A victim is most often stuck and often attempts to enroll others to join in the mutual misery. A leader has a positive influence on others and uses it often in place of authority and/or power to create action. Victims more often rely only on authority and power to cause others to act. Leaders are able to persuade. Victims rely on demands.
Victims feel tricked or duped by others and frequently blame others for their troubles. Leaders spend time fixing problems and working to prevent them. Victims feel powerless and spend time complaining about problems instead of fixing them.
What can leaders do to encourage leaders to follow and what can they do (and stop doing) to discourage victims from sabotaging productivity and engagement? Here are 5 strategies you can use now to create leaders (butterflies that can easily fly) and avoid inadvertently creating victims (with swollen bodies and shriveled wings):
- Believe in people and trust them in order to create trust in you. Give people a chance to make mistakes and, when and if they do, avoid punishment. Instead, use the event as a learning experience for both you and the person who made the mistake. That doesn’t mean you allow them to avoid the consequences of their error. Ask them to make amends. Don’t hide the mistake and don’t take away the consequences.
My daughter wanted to buy a motorcycle. She had taken her motorcycle skills class and achieved her license. As her dad, instead of saying no, I encouraged her to drive a few cycles before buying one so she could assess which one might be best. In the mean time, her brother purchased a rather large bike and she asked if she could try it.
After receiving his permission, she took it for a ride and found it to be a bit more than she could handle. She had to lay it down at a stop sign when she lost her balance. The bike was a bit too large. We had a discussion about the size she needed.
We used the mistake as a learning experience to decide the bike size she needed and the need for safety above all else. In addition, she had to pay her brother money to repair the small amount of scratches she caused when she put down the bike on the street.
Proactively empower others. Look for opportunities for others to be independent and give them the option to act on their own.
- Be respectful always in words and tone even in the face of emotional upsets caused by mistakes. Unless people purposely make mistakes, the discovery of the mistake itself is enough motivation for the person to feel remorse. Adding to it by being disrespectful with criticism is unnecessary and damaging to the relationship while stunting the learning opportunity. This doesn’t mean you avoid giving feedback when needed. It means delivering feedback not criticism. Feedback is specific data about behaviors. Criticism is opinions.
Unless asked for your opinion, avoid giving it because you will create dependency. You will be preventing optimum learning if you give your opinion before being asked. You create dependency if you try to solve the problem before they have had a chance to exercise their own problem solving skills. An effective leader offers suggestions and other options to change the observed results but usually only when asked. Even then tend to delay their response to give permission for the person to process their own solution. Wait for the learning to start. Their learning pace may be different than yours. If you jump in with an answer you create dependency. If you jump in it may cause fear to offer solutions in the future.
Truly listen to concerns, use empathy, provide forgiveness, and emphasize continuous learning. Leaders who look for scapegoats for mistakes create victims. Those who focus on learning will make more money. Our knowledge economy requires that we manage the engagement of all employees. Engaging their hearts and minds will be the only way to compete in the global marketplace. W e need every brain focused on improving performance, process, and serving customers. The higher the percentage of engaged brains the more money everyone makes.
- Hold people accountable to their word not numerical goals. Ask people to make agreements and then let them know if they break them. Acknowledge and thank them when they keep agreements. Avoid the accountability trap by attempting to hold people accountable to numerical goals where they don’t have full control over all the factors.
The butterfly needed to work hard to emerge from the cocoon. It didn’t have a goal to fill its wings with fluid and reduce its swollen body. It had the task to emerge through the hole. The normal body and functional wings were the outcomes of the task of emerging through the hole. Identify the challenging tasks people need to perform to accomplish their goals and ask them to make agreements to perform those tasks. Then, hold them accountable for completing those tasks. Don’t help them unless they ask for help and even then, question them about what they need to do to accomplish it themselves. Don’t enable poor behaviors for the purpose of achieving the goal. It damages the learning experience and usually creates dependency.
- Facilitate problem solving. Don’t tell them what they did wrong (unless asked) instead explore with them (with effective questioning) what they learned and how to resolve the issues. Instead of criticizing for missing numerical goals, explore the root causes of problems and provide tools to solve their own problems.
An effective leader knows how to teach and coach. He/she knows the problem solving method and the tools needed for problems solving. They teach and coach people to solve their own problems. They teach people to fish and they stop feeding them the fish. A leader will encourage the butterfly to emerge on its own.
Ask questions to uncover what YOU could have done differently to help them. There is an interdependent relationship between leader and employee. Employees cannot operate completely independently in a system. Ask questions to uncover what you could learn form the situation and what you can do differently.
- Give away credit when things go well and, when things don’t go well, look for the part you played in the dysfunction and take full responsibility. Look for opportunities to express appreciation and gratitude for their hard work.
One of my clients exemplifies humility and yet is extremely ambitious. His leadership has propelled his organization forward to be one of the most admired in its industry. He has expanded the business and continues to praise and give credit to his board of directors and his employees. I reminded him one day that his leadership played a significant role in the success he was enjoying. I told him he didn’t give himself enough credit for the success. He said, “I know, others remind me of that often.” His humility and willingness to acknowledge others is a characteristic of Level 5 Leadership a phase coined by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great. A combination of humility and will creates a Level 5 Leader.
Be a facilitator of performance not a controller. Resist the urge to achieve instant results and be patient by asking questions. Don’t be so quick to take out the scissors. Allow the butterfly to emerge. The beauty of high performance will be the result of your patient leadership.
July/August 2010
Don’t Light the Fire, Stop Throwing the Water
Many leaders believe they must always do something to improve employee engagement. They often have statements such as, "We must drive performance", or "We must light the fire within each employee", or "We must reward individual high performers to increase overall performance."
Very often leaders must STOP doing certain things instead of looking to do more. Leaders create the environment which influences performance. Very often with the best of intentions leaders create an environment that damages performance.
When you throw water on a fire it hisses, smolders, and eventually goes out. So it is with employee engagement and motivation. I believe people are self-motivated. That is why you hired them. They arrive with a "fire in the belly." De-motivating policies cause lethargic and de-motivated employees.
Policies that are consistent with bribes and threats send a message, "You are NOT self-motivated and I don't trust you to work hard and do the right things to improve performance" It is as if you are throwing water on a fire. Using threats and bribes to increase activity, improve sales, or improve customer service causes employee engagement to smolder and eventually go out. At a certain point people get lethargic and lose interest in the activities that are encouraged by the threats and bribes.
Stop trying to turn up the heat in the fire. There is no need to do it. Stop the bribes such as pay-for-performance and stop the threats such as the typical performance appraisal. If you just stop, these things will improve.
Then, if you replace these "fire extinguishing policies" with a laser like focus on improving the system you can reduce waste and increase customer appreciation. Everything will improve. Stop focusing on improving individual performance and start focusing on organizational performance.
Are you inadvertently throwing water on a fire with the best of intentions? Stop it!
First stop throwing water. The fire will reappear.
June 2010
Incentive for Dysfunction
Pay-for-performance incentives don’t work. In fact they make things worse.
About 4 to 5 years ago, I used to go to Jiffy Lube when ever I need a quick oil change. I like taking care of my car so I get the oil changed exactly on time as best as I can.
One day I was there and the manager came to me. He said, ‘Mr. Hauck, you need a new PCV valve.’ I said, ‘What is that?’ He explained that’s an item that helps with emissions and I really need to replace it. I said, ‘Well wait a minute. I just had the car at the dealer and they inspect everything. Are you sure I need that?’ He said, ‘Oh absolutely; look how dirty this one is.’ And he rubbed his thumb across it and showed me his thumb and it was covered with a black smudge. I said, ‘Ok, how much is it?’ ‘$15’. I said, ‘Ok, fine put it in.’
I am at the cash register and my car is ready. I handed him my credit card and I look above the cash register on the wall and it said goals for the week. It read, oil changes – so many; air filters – so many; PCV valves – so many. I said to the manager, ‘Wow, that’s interesting, the goals for the week. Where do you get those?’ He said, ‘We get them from the home office; they fax them down to us every week on Monday and we work to meet them between Monday through Saturday.’ I said, ‘Interesting. Do you get paid a bonus on those?’ He said, ‘Oh, absolutely, I get a bonus and the guys out in the shop get a bonus too.’ I said, ‘Really, interesting. How are you doing?’ He said, ‘You know, not too bad. We are a little behind on PCV valves, but we’re catching up.’
Pay-for-performance can create an environment that generates unintended consequences. The pressure to perform created by the monetary incentive to meet the goals set by the Jiffy Lube home office. In addition, the knowledge that his performance appraisal rating could suffer without meeting the goals added to the pressure. This pressure created an environment that caused the manager and employees to focus on themselves and not on the customer needs. These two policies create expensive dysfunction. We see this dysfunction over and over again in organizations. Another example includes the incentives that caused Fanny Mae, and Freddy Mack to encourage mortgages to be approved for people who could not afford the payments over the long–term. This dysfunction led to the collapse of the trust of the entire financial system in 2008.
The Interior Department’s Mineral Management Service had planned to present two safety awards at a luncheon approximately one month ago and days before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank to the bottom of the Gulf started the largest oil spill in US history. The nominee for the safety awards was non-other than BP -- which operated the oil rig that sank in the Gulf of Mexico.
The awards ceremony was supposed to recognize "outstanding safety and pollution prevention performance by the offshore oil and gas industry."BP was nominated for its work on the outer continental shelf.
The big winner of the 2009 SAFE award was Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded last month under BP's management. BP was also a finalist at the 2009 conference.
In 1975, Congress enacted Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations to reduce gasoline consumption. Current CAFE standards require an average of 27.2 miles per gallon (mpg) for cars and 21.6 mpg for light trucks. Recent legislation signed by President Obama raises these standards. This seems like a good idea if you want reduced oil usage, a reduced dependence on foreign oil, and a reduction in greenhouse gases. These were the three major reasons to adopt the CAFÉ Standards.
Unfortunately, when you consider two unintended negative consequences you can conclude it was not only not worth it but it made things worse in other areas. The reduced cost of operation of a vehicle causes people to drive more miles. This actually does nothing to reduce oil consumption nor does it reduce greenhouse gases since the same miles driven cause the same amount of gases to be emitted (these were the two major intended outcomes of the legislation). Dependence on foreign oil has actually increased since 1975. Furthermore, to meet the CAFÉ standards, the auto industry lightened the vehicle weights causing greater damage during collisions. This caused approximately 2,000 additional deaths every year since the standards were adopted.
Instead of relying on these control techniques of pay-for-performance and the performance appraisal (or awards based on competition) an organization could instead study its processes, uncover innovative ways to improve performance. Those who rely on pay-for-performance and the performance appraisal for improvement embraces the belief that people would do nothing without incentives or threats. Unreasonable goals will create cheating or exaggeration as with Jiffy Lube. Easy goals create de-motivation. Either way we are paying more for more dysfunction. Why not just work as a team to continuously improve? Furthermore, why not embrace the belief that people are willing and able to make improvements and innovate without threats or bribes.
Be careful with pay-for-performance measures performance appraisal policies. They often do nothing to create improvement and often combine to create worse results than if you had done nothing.
May 2010
Following Natural Law is a Key to Employee Engagement and Organizational Performance
We are creating our own problems in our organizations. Our biggest problems occur and persist because of a lack of alignment with natural laws. Natural law is a complex subject and can be easily made more complex when we bring in the factors of God or religion to explain their existence. With the intention of avoiding the complex and the discussion of the origin of natural laws, let’s just agree that there are certain natural laws that exist and that our lack of alignment with these principles (or laws) can make our lives more difficult and can damage the performance in organizations.
Aristotle is often given the credit for best describing the concept of natural law and the assertion that certain principles, if not followed, will lead to unwanted consequences. Our American Founding Fathers embraced this concept and we can see it expressed in our Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Our founders acknowledged the existence of Natural Law. You may believe in a Creator or not but it doesn’t matter for our purposes here because it is only important to acknowledge the existence of universal principles. We don’t need to agree on their source. The belief in natural law rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness gave rise to a Constitution that changed the world. The list of accomplishments of the USA are too numerous to mention. These accomplishments are not because we as Americans are such extraordinary human beings but instead because we were fortunate to be in a system that was aligned with natural laws and universal principles. The United States of America is the primary exhibit for proof that alignment with natural law creates success.
Three Reasons Why Natural Law Creates Success
There are three major reasons why aligning to natural law will help organizations. First, alignment helps avoid problems. Most organizations are very good at solving problems once they appear but they are very poor at knowing how to avoid them in the first place. We are good at arresting criminals for drug charges but poor at solving the root causes of drug dependencies. We fill our prisons with poorly educated youth yet we cannot fix our schools.
Second, natural laws enable us to adapt to change. One of our greatest strengths as human beings is our ability to adapt to change. Think about how much change we have accepted just in the past 20 years. We have cell phones, the internet, iPhones, IPads, and the war on terror. Our ability to respond to these mammoth changes is impressive and yet research shows only 10% of strategic initiatives in organizations are successfully implemented and are completed on time. How can we be so adaptable in the larger economy yet so resistant in organizations?
Third, following natural law enables organizations to innovate faster than their un-aligned competitors. Few organizations truly make innovation a strategy. Google is a good example of an innovative organization. Google holds frequent innovation meetings and provides freedom to their employees to experiment.
What are the basic natural laws?
Integrity and respect come before performance. A leader’s number one job is to demonstrate integrity to set an example for everyone. Without integrity everything eventually fails. Buckminster Fuller once said, “Integrity is the essence of everything successful.” Zig Ziglar said: "The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.” A proper demonstration of integrity must include basic behaviors from leaders and employees. These behaviors include::
- Doing what you say you will do, i.e. making and keeping agreements.
- Admitting mistakes openly and honestly
- Speaking openly and honestly
Unless leaders can demonstrate these basic behaviors their ability to lead and to improve performance will suffer. That is just the way it is. There is no avoiding it. It is a natural law. Those who try to side step this law will pay a heavy price. And, if a leader allows behavior inconsistent with integrity it is just as damaging as if they did it themselves. We teach what we allow. Leaders who want success must be willing to behave with integrity and hold others accountable to that standard without exception.
Respect is another necessary component of every interaction to optimize long-term performance. Treating everyone with respect regardless of the circumstances or the individual performance is another part of this first natural law. Even when an employee makes a mistake they need to be treated with total respect. Any sign of disrespect will damage an employee’s ability to hear what they can learn from that mistake. A leader must demonstrate respect with certain behaviors such as treating people the way they would like to be treated. Every major religion has a statement consistent with “treat others as we would like to be treated.” It is a natural law.
Learning is the best motivator
People need an environment within which to learn from their own mistakes and to make their own improvements. The need to learn is a natural law. Taking away an employee’s ability to learn and improve will lead to severe motivation and performance decline. Empowering employees to make small experiments to improve their work will enable natural motivation and continuous improvement.
Freedom is needed to innovate
The combination of free-market capitalism and our Constitution created the greatest growth miracle that changed the entire world. The need to provide freedom to employees (just as our founding fathers acknowledged the need for liberty for all people) is a natural law. It is essential for innovation and to create a competitive advantage. Those organizations that allow innovation, and in fact plan for it by setting an encouraging environment, are the ones that will be market leaders.
What are we doing instead?
Instead of aligning policies and procedures to these natural laws many organizations have created organizational environments that undermine them. Our performance appraisal processes are a joke. We use ranking and rating of employees which undermine the natural laws of respect (people who are ranked or rated unfairly feel disrespected) and integrity. We have rating scales that are inconsistent and unfair. This seemingly allows poor behavior and performance with some employees while coming down hard on others. These policies also encourage cheating to meet performance goals (80 percent of high-achieving high school students and 75 percent of college students admit to cheating, a percentage that has been rising the past 50 years).
Our performance pay polices create similar damage by rewarding individual employees even though they could not have accomplished any of their goals without at least some support of the rest of their team. Even Tiger Woods’ performance is improved through the positive interaction with his caddie during rounds of tournament golf.
Often our leaders play by a different set of rules than employees. Have you ever seen a leader demonstrate inappropriate behaviors while at the same time criticizing or rating employees poorly for similar behaviors? This undermines performance in ways that are impossible to measure.
Finally, we are creating stagnant bureaucracies. Every time a mistake is made new rules or policies are added that inadvertently stifle innovation, risk taking, and improvements. Bureaucracies cannot innovate.
What can we do instead?
It is time we aligned with natural laws. It is time we examine our policies, procedures, and leadership behaviors to assure alignment with our natural laws and principles. A good metaphor for this type of natural law model is a flock of birds in flight. As a group, they have no ONE leader to tell them when to turn left or right, or when to slow down or to speed up; yet as a group, they change direction as effortlessly as a single organism. How is this possible? It is possible because, flocking birds naturally follow three basic principles (or natural laws): first, they fly in the same general direction as their closest neighbors; second, they fly at the same average speed as their closest neighbors; third, they fly at the same average distance from their closest neighbor and avoid colliding with them at all costs. Following these three basic principles, they are able, as a group, to respond to their fast-changing environment with rapid, precise adjustments.
Flocking birds are a “self-organizing system”. Organizations can achieve the same agile capabilities if the leader clarifies the vision and the organizational objectives, teaches clear effective principles that align with natural laws, and sets policies and procedures that reinforce those laws. In doing so the leader establishes trust and increases his/her influence, while empowering each individual to make the right decisions at the right time with total freedom.
When leaders align their policies and beliefs with natural law, like the birds, people will respond quickly, appropriately and in the best interests of the team (flock) without needing a controlling authority to tell them what to do at every turn. Freedom, integrity, respect, and learning are brought to life and success is sure to follow.
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