Are You Making Progress?
Filed under: Leadership, Leading Change, Marketing, Organizational Transformation, Project Management, Quality Systems Management
Not surprisingly, it’s often difficult for senior executives and management teams to gain objective feedback on their individual and collective performance. I’ve worked with clients and in organizations where the management team was generally satisfied with their own performance and would give themselves high marks at a time when the employees would give them lower or even failing grades. In all cases where I’ve observed this perception gap, there was no objective, systematic means of measuring performance and perceptions in place.
During periods of widespread growth, the rising tide effect and decent numbers tend to support management’s belief that they are doing the right things to secure the future of the business. Along comes a slowdown in the economy, a movement in the key metrics in the wrong direction and the painful recognition that all is not right in Camelot. We all know what happens from here. Top management runs around, holds a bunch of meetings with employees, consultants are invited in to help out, “strategy” becomes the new buzzword, lofty new goals are announced and somewhere in here there’s a reorganization or two. (I don’t mean to sound cynical, but even in these enlightened times, this cycle is repeated over and over again.)
At least one critical component to avoiding the scenario above and to isolating on problem-areas before they manifest themselves as crises or at least significant organizational performance problems is to consistently monitor employee and leader perspectives on the issues and areas that count. You can do this the hard and expensive way by investing in outside resources or you can take advantage of some remarkable and free resources courtesy of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program.
Baldrige Is About Performance:
While you may assume that the Baldrige program is focused on quality (that’s part of the story), it is also heavily focused on performance and on the integration of all of the systems and processes that interact to create sustained, outstanding performance. The criteria for the award are covered in seven categories:
- Leadership
- Strategic planning
- Customer and Market Focus
- Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management
- Human Resource Focus
- Process management
- Results.
According to the site, the intent of the program is to: help organizations enhance their competitiveness by focusing on two goals: delivering ever improving value to customers and improving overall organizational performance.
Part of the expansive set of tools available license and restriction free for you to use are two different, brief and easy to use survey instruments: Are We Making Progress? and Are We Making Progress as Leaders? The surveys follow the seven categories described above, and ask leaders and employees to give their opinions of organizational effectiveness on the most critical issues that drive overall performance. As a bonus, the site includes the aggregated survey ratings of the companies that applied for the award in previous years for your use in comparing your organization’s results. All in all, these are some remarkably important and powerful tools available free for your use at the click of a mouse.
Observations and Suggestions: The Answers Are Closer Than They Appear:
- Thoroughly read and digest the Criteria for Performance Excellence document(s) at the Baldrige site. You might be surprised how much wisdom has been nicely aggregated over twenty plus years into some powerful and brief documents. In my opinion, this 70+ page document has more insights between the covers than entire shelves of business books found in stores.
- Assess the gap between employee perspectives on organizational activities and effectiveness and your leadership teams perspectives by using the surveys. Compare your results to the summary results of past year Baldridge candidates to develop some context for the gaps. I promise that the results from this survey will be fascinating, eye opening and actionable.
- Leverage the survey results and the vast body of Baldrige tools and materials to architect a holistic and sustainable business improvement program that focuses on the key drivers of organizational performance. You don’t have to search for the secret formula or even the answers…they are right in front of you, and in this case, neatly organized, well documented and supported by an ample body of cases for your use.
The Bottom Line for Now:
If you’ve not studied Baldrige, you would be well served to fill that gap as part of your professional development(see my post, Back to School!). There’s a remarkable amount of good common sense in gauging your organization’s performance and maturity against well-established criteria for success. You don’t have to pursue a Baldrige award and I certainly am not interested in inviting debate over the efficacy of one discipline versus another (e.g. Six Sigma, ISO, Deming Award Criteria etc.). However, I am interested in suggesting that a great starting point for figuring out what ails you is to ask people, to understand perception gaps, and to mine the gold from those gaps as part of your improvement programs.
Back to School!
We delivered our oldest son to college on Friday and our high school senior survived (barely) the annual “first day of school picture” in our backyard this morning. I am busy preparing class materials for my Fall MBA courses and it feels like summer is officially over regardless of what the meteorological calendar says.
I love “Back to School” time every year. There’s a palpable level of excitement in the air tinged with just a bit of sadness about the end of vacations, beach reading and weekend barbecues. It’s also a time where education is (or should be) the focal point in many households as students and parents get ready for homework, tests and projects. And while we all know that education and learning have no season, our reliance in the U.S. Midwest on an arcane but not unpleasant long summer break (versus year-around school interspersed with shorter breaks in many other regions), makes the return to school all the more dramatic.
One of the things we often lose as busy working adults is that sense of excitement about learning. It’s easy to let years and even decades slip by and focus on everything but our own self-development. Sure, we attend mandated training in our company and possibly even the periodic seminar to earn the Continuing Education Units (CEUs) mandated by our professional certifying organizations. Unfortunately, neither of those formats creates the exhilarating sense of learning and discovery that we may have had at some time earlier in our lives, but lost along the way to becoming responsible adults.
As a hiring manager for many years and now as a leadership development trainer and consultant, I’ve talked with hundreds of people about their continuing education, and I am always surprised when people struggle to describe anything substantive in this area. Somewhere earlier in my school career, I remember an educator banging the drum repeatedly that “learning is a life-long process,” and I believed him.
It’s my observation that the most capable and most successful individuals are constantly seeking knowledge, relentlessly working to expand their skills and often driven by some inner-sense of the need to learn through exposure to new ideas. If you fit this description, quit reading and get back to what you were doing. If you have to go back decades to recall the last course you took or the last time you read a book that wasn’t on the fiction best-seller list (nothing wrong with fiction best sellers, but diversity is good), here’s a list of activities to help you rekindle your love of learning and your pursuit of knowledge:
- Join a local book club (contact your library for ideas) and gain from the perspectives of others and the rigor of having to stay on task with your reading assignments.
- Start and lead a book club at your place of work—you might even get the company to pay for the books!
- Spend some time researching the state of the art in education and certifications for your profession. If you end up feeling hopelessly outdated, it’s time to take the next step and choose a workshop, a certification program or even another degree program.
- If you hate the idea of physically attending class, investigate on-line opportunities. The number of programs delivered on-line is growing daily and the flexibility is great for busy people.
- Consider a program outside your core field of expertise. In the Chicago-area, Northwestern, University of Chicago and DePaul all have some remarkable humanities and literature programs that are designed for and filled with doctors, lawyers, teachers and professionals from every other possible vocation. If you don’t want the rigor of a degree investigate certificate options or possibly even just auditing a course. Individuals that I know that have gone through these courses credit them for helping open their eyes to a whole world of ideas that they didn’t know existed.
- More reading. Put down the trade journals for a while and pursue something in the history or biography sections. It’s remarkable what we learn from studying what others have already gone through.
- Executive Education can be exhilarating. I go to Kellogg to recharge and I always leave a program with ideas to help improve my performance and my business. Exec Ed is big business and big $, but many companies support the initiative.
- Take advantage of tuition reimbursement dollars from your company. Most organizations never spend what they’ve budgeted in this area. You can help solve this problem.
- Seek out a mentor. Depending upon where you are at in your career, this can be an enlightening experience. If you are beyond the “seeking” phase, consider becoming a mentor.
- Teach a class. A wise person indicated that if you want to learn about something, sign up to teach a class about it.
- Volunteer to lead an initiative in the community. Some of the best leaders and project managers that I know are found on the teams and programs in schools and churches.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The brain is a lot like the body…use it and it stays fit and ready for action. Allow it to atrophy and everything becomes a struggle. You have a remarkable capacity to learn. Whether you use it or not is up to you.
The concept of the Learning Organization is well established and widely acknowledged as a requirement for realizing and sustaining success. Senge described the need to not only create organizations that learn and adapt, but to realize those that become generative and to create their own futures. Your ability to consistently add value to your organization is in large part related to your active pursuit of new ideas and new ways of looking at the world.
What’s on your mind today?
HR Has Yet to Establish Credibility As Weapon in War for Talent
The August, 2008 Issue of the McKinsey Quarterly Chart Focus Newsletter includes an interesting article highlighting the expanding perception gap between HR Professionals and Line Managers over HR’s role in Talent Management.
The article: Realigning the HR Function to Manage Talent, identifies three major challenges in the continuing war for talent:
- Minimal collaboration and talent sharing among business units
- Ineffective line management
- Confusion about the role of HR.
Additionally, the article offers up the latest survey results on what McKinsey describes as the declining influence of the human-resources function. Line Managers significantly differ with their HR counterparts over:
- HR’s capabilities to develop talent strategies aligned with business objectives (33 percentage point gap)
- HR’s accountability for success or failure of talent-management initiatives (28 point gap)
- Whether Talent Management is the responsibility of HR (22 point gap).
None of the gaps are favorable towards HR.
Art’s Quick-Take:
I’ve observed a few great HR leaders that really understand that they are key enablers of a firm’s talent management success and key participants in the strategy process. However, many others and many HR departments remain pigeonholed as compliance police and benefits administrators. An enlightened management team and CEO recognize the strategic value of HR. They also recognize that talent development and management is the responsibility of all of a firm’s leaders and not just HR.
As an aside, there are no excuses for the perception gaps highlighted above. Twenty lashes for the leadership groups that allow those gaps to emerge and sustain.
One suggestion if you are a manager or leader in a firm with a generally tactical HR function: ask for help. You might be surprised how anxious your HR professionals are to engage in something outside the normal bounds of compliance or benefits.
While not quick to throw stones as my own functional counterparts (sales and marketing) have plenty of their own challenges, it is time for HR to stand-up and be counted on as a key enabler of strategy. They can start by helping their firm institutionalize talent identification, recruitment, retention and development.
The Leadership Art (and Importance) of Encouraging Constructive Dissent
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Skills, Making Decisions, Professional Growth
I hear frequently from leaders that wish their employees would disagree with them more often when discussing complex issues.
“I’ve told everyone over and over again that they should be comfortable disagreeing with me, but other than some polite alternatives, no one seems to have the courage to speak up,” indicated one frustrated executive that I talked with recently.
“We all know that when the discussion ends we’re going to do it her way, so why bother wasting our time debating,” said one of the employees of the frustrated executive.
In this situation, the executive was sending mixed signals. While her employees acknowledged that she verbally encouraged constructive debate, no one seemed to believe that she truly meant it. One of her employees indicated that the message never matched the body language—“she never looks like she truly wants anyone to disagree,” he said.
In the article Reaching Your Potential, by Robert S. Kaplan, in the July-August, 2008 Harvard Business Review, Prof. Kaplan cites a scenario where a CEO was frustrated that none of his three top reports raised their concerns over a prospective hire, in spite of the fact that two of them had serious reservations. The candidate was hired and the concerns only came to light once he began to struggle. The executives had concluded, “the CEOs mind was made up and that speaking up was unwise.”
Professor Kaplan observes that: “Otherwise overconfident executives sometimes overestimate the career risk of speaking up and meaningfully underestimate the risk of staying silent.” He adds: “I have seldom seen people hurt their careers by speaking up and appropriately articulating a well-thought out contrary position. However, I have seen many bitter and confused people who stalled their careers by playing it safe.”
Leader, Heal Thyself!
In both examples above (and in most examples that I've observed), the leaders clearly failed to create the working environment that allowed and even encouraged constructive dissent. While the employees can be faulted for not acting in the best interests of their firm, there was something in the environment that triggered their survival instinct and indicated that it was safer to stay silent than to speak up. The leader invariable controls the “something” and needs to focus on reshaping the environment to open up the communication flow.
- How severe is the problem? The leader should ask his or her reports about their comfort and discomfort in providing feedback. What are the barriers? What behaviors is the leader displaying that shut down constructive dissent? If the personal interviews go nowhere or if there is no 360-degree feedback system in place, try a simple, anonymous survey.
- Leader, learn to manage your body language. We all learn somewhere in our travels that if you combine a verbal message with seemingly conflicting non-verbal cues, the non-verbal wins out every time.
- Recognize that giving in to alternative viewpoints (from your own) does not mean that you are weak or ineffective. To the contrary, it’s your job to hire smart people with different ways of looking at the world and solving problems. The greatest leaders have great advisors. Give your people a chance to play that role.
- If you are like many of the leaders that I know, you will allow a group to run in their own direction even though you had a different idea of where they should go. You will also come to the uncomfortable conclusion that they were right and you were wrong. Your confidence in calling this out will reinforce the notion that you encourage well-thought out dissent.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
This topic goes to the heart of creating an effective feedback culture—one where everyone is comfortable tackling the tough topics and highlighting when the Emperor has no clothes. The discomfort of a team in expressing alternative viewpoints with a leader is one sign that all is not right with the feedback culture. In many cases, some simple behavioral adjustments and appropriate reinforcement on the part of the leader can open the spigot to some great ideas from some smart people. Remember, the contest is in the market for the hearts, minds and dollars of your customers, it’s not in your team meetings to show that you’re the smartest.
How comfortable are your associates in disagreeing with you?
We Are All Just Temporary Stewards
My blogging volume is off a bit due to client engagements and teaching activities (a good problem), but I had to take a timeout this afternoon and share some thoughts from a recent discussion. A very thoughtful manager summed up his perspective on his role in the organization as that of a Temporary Steward.
With his permission, and I am paraphrasing: “It’s not our business, it’s not our company, but we have a responsibility to those that will inevitably take over from us to leave the business in the best possible condition.” Thoughtful comments and an interesting way to look at things.
While I suppose you could interpret the Temporary Steward label as a means of rationalizing subpar performance or lack of engagement, for this manager, it was just the opposite. It was clear from our discussion, that he cares very deeply about the organization’s success, about its future state given the changing world that we live in, and importantly, about the people that work in the organization.
From my own perspective, I like the concept of thinking about our tenure as finite. It creates a sense of urgency and it helps us focus on priorities. I’ve observed too many corporate managers that lost track of the fact that they are not guaranteed a job or even that their company will be there next week. Once you start acting like you own the bricks and mortar and the chair and desk that you sit at and even the people that work for you, your judgment clouds, your motivation weakens and your intentions become suspect.
- I’m responsible for contributing more everyday than I take out of the organization.
- I’m accountable to future leaders, managers and employees to do my best to ensure that there is an organization in place for them to contribute to, earn from and to grow.
- I recognize that I am here on the good graces of customers and stakeholders, and I will seek to create value for them every day.
- If I manage people, I’m responsible for doing the heavy lifting and difficult work of providing constant feedback, supporting individual development and eliminating those that can’t perform or that don’t match our values.
- I’m responsible for watching what is going on in the world around us and for helping pick a path to march down. I’m also responsible for recognizing when we’ve chosen the wrong path and helping us change course.
- I won’t take myself so seriously that it causes me to strike out in anger, play politics or spend unproductive time complaining.
- I’ll work hard to recognize when it is my time for my stewardship to end, and I’ll look back on the successes and failures as learning experiences. I’ll leave the regrets for someone else, because as a Temporary Steward, I’ll know that I left everything that I had on the playing field.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Don’t take yourself so seriously that you start believing that you transcend the organization. Start focusing on what you can do to create value today that will ensure that there is a future for your organization. And remember that you will not pass this way or live this day again. Leave things better than you found them.
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