We all like to hear stories about how an outsider was successful with an innovative idea and they claim "I was too naive to know my idea couldn't work - ha ha". These stories are common mainly because we like them, but also because they really do happen. Experienced people learn the accepted way of doing things and are hesitant to innovate, in particular they are hesitant to take on wild ideas that will probably fail. So there is value bringing outsiders into projects who can see possibilities experienced people dismiss--and which outsiders can pursue them without ruining an established reputation.
However, let's not be too quick to lionize the outsider. What I see more often than great out-of-the-box ideas is outsiders inventing a mundane approach that experienced people know won't have impact. An outsider is more likely to re-invent an old mediocre idea than a fresh excellent one.
The trick is drawing on the strengths of both insiders and outsiders. For example, getting the experienced people to kill ideas if they are mediocre already-in-the-box ideas and not toss out wild, improbably out-of-the-box ideas that might actually work.
mardi 16 septembre 2008
lundi 15 septembre 2008
Valuing Questions
Many people have noted that asking the right questions is often a more critical skill than coming up with the right answers. For example, if back in the 1990s Kodak was asking "How do we build our market share in the film business?" then that question wouldn't have been nearly as useful as "What is digital photography going to do to this industry?"
However, the value of questions goes beyond that. There are questions with no firm answers like "What is the right balance between rewarding the team and rewarding the individuals on the team?" The value of the question is that it keeps this polarity or predicament clear in our mind so that we continue to manage it.
Peter Block probably goes further than even this in valuing questions for their own sake. He likes the question "How valuable an experience do you plan for this to be?" Here it is not so much about the answer or even keeping an important predicament in mind, it's about changing the relationship between presenter and participant. It is a kind of speech act that has force rather than just conveying information. It puts the onus of creating value on the participant not just the presenter.
So there we have 3 different ways questions can be of more importance than answers, perhaps you can think of more.
However, the value of questions goes beyond that. There are questions with no firm answers like "What is the right balance between rewarding the team and rewarding the individuals on the team?" The value of the question is that it keeps this polarity or predicament clear in our mind so that we continue to manage it.
Peter Block probably goes further than even this in valuing questions for their own sake. He likes the question "How valuable an experience do you plan for this to be?" Here it is not so much about the answer or even keeping an important predicament in mind, it's about changing the relationship between presenter and participant. It is a kind of speech act that has force rather than just conveying information. It puts the onus of creating value on the participant not just the presenter.
So there we have 3 different ways questions can be of more importance than answers, perhaps you can think of more.
mercredi 3 septembre 2008
Carat Blunder
If you've ever made a dumb HR mistake you'll feel better after reading what Carat's Chief People Officer did. She accidentally sent out news of an impending layoff to all the agency's employees.
Ad Age Story
It's a mess-up but perhaps the outcome will not be bad. There is no good way to announce layoffs. After employees get over the initial shock they may be in no worse a mood than if the communication had unrolled as planned.
Ad Age Story
It's a mess-up but perhaps the outcome will not be bad. There is no good way to announce layoffs. After employees get over the initial shock they may be in no worse a mood than if the communication had unrolled as planned.
dimanche 6 juillet 2008
Intangibles / Social Economics
I wanted to say to someone "I'll discuss the economics of this later". I hesitated because most of the 'economics' of the matter was in improving public relations, networking, and self-development. There was a good deal of value being discussed, but largely intangible. To frame the topic as a discussion about economics would send us down the unhelpful path of treating the deal as accountants not businessmen.
So I changed the phrase to "I'll discuss the social economics of this later."
Is this tidbit worth sharing? I'm not sure. But it seems an easy turn of phrase to build into our existing business language. Imagine you are making a business case for new HR software. If you say, "And now let's talk about the social economics..." or have a part of the written business case titled "Social Economics", then it firmly puts intangibles right in the discussion on par with accounting.
In these discussions make sure you keep all the usual accounting stuff, but have it in the context of all the intangible value being created.
So I changed the phrase to "I'll discuss the social economics of this later."
Is this tidbit worth sharing? I'm not sure. But it seems an easy turn of phrase to build into our existing business language. Imagine you are making a business case for new HR software. If you say, "And now let's talk about the social economics..." or have a part of the written business case titled "Social Economics", then it firmly puts intangibles right in the discussion on par with accounting.
In these discussions make sure you keep all the usual accounting stuff, but have it in the context of all the intangible value being created.
dimanche 29 juin 2008
Un Transformational Leadership
I once assisted Nancy Nazer on an article about untranformational leadership. It included, or at least implied, the rather obvious observation that transformational leadership programs were a rather unlikely thing. What is the chance that you are going to take a manager, put them through a one or two day program, and have them come out transformed?
Nancy went on to talk about the design of a saner, longer term approach to leadership development, but I want to go in a different direction here. I wonder why the rather strange notion of transformational leadership would develop at all. I used to attribute it solely to the demands of marketing—someone offering transformation would have a better chance of selling their program than someone promising that their course might lead to modest improvements. However, on reading Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age I notice something new.
Unlike the established Catholic orders of Europe where one would simply be born into the church and the church would universally be the bedrock of society, there is, particularly in the United States, a Protestant approach which encourages transformation. The sinner, quite possibly a man spending too much time at the tavern gambling with his buddies, would find salvation through a transformational experience and become a sober family man and disciplined citizen. This can happen because they really do want to change and because there really are two reasonably distinct modes of life.
Thus, transformational leadership courses may find some of their acceptance because a society has already bought into this idea of transformation. It would be interesting to see whether established Catholic or Buddhist countries would be as eager to embrace transformational leadership courses as Americans are.
People generally hate it when you take what to them is a simple idea, “Please take my leadership course”, and embed it in a historical-social context. But if one ever wondered why a certain business practice seems normal one place and absurd another then it is precisely in these historical-social factors that you find the answers.
On a more practical level if, as a business person, you find the idea of transformational leadership appealing you need to ask whether that appeal comes from a sober judgement of the effectiveness of this sort of program or from a more general attraction to the idea of transformation.
Most of business thinking is focused on straightforward facts immediately at hand but one can’t help but hope that thinking grounded in the great sweep of history would at least on occasion provide robust insights otherwise unavailable.
Nancy went on to talk about the design of a saner, longer term approach to leadership development, but I want to go in a different direction here. I wonder why the rather strange notion of transformational leadership would develop at all. I used to attribute it solely to the demands of marketing—someone offering transformation would have a better chance of selling their program than someone promising that their course might lead to modest improvements. However, on reading Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age I notice something new.
Unlike the established Catholic orders of Europe where one would simply be born into the church and the church would universally be the bedrock of society, there is, particularly in the United States, a Protestant approach which encourages transformation. The sinner, quite possibly a man spending too much time at the tavern gambling with his buddies, would find salvation through a transformational experience and become a sober family man and disciplined citizen. This can happen because they really do want to change and because there really are two reasonably distinct modes of life.
Thus, transformational leadership courses may find some of their acceptance because a society has already bought into this idea of transformation. It would be interesting to see whether established Catholic or Buddhist countries would be as eager to embrace transformational leadership courses as Americans are.
People generally hate it when you take what to them is a simple idea, “Please take my leadership course”, and embed it in a historical-social context. But if one ever wondered why a certain business practice seems normal one place and absurd another then it is precisely in these historical-social factors that you find the answers.
On a more practical level if, as a business person, you find the idea of transformational leadership appealing you need to ask whether that appeal comes from a sober judgement of the effectiveness of this sort of program or from a more general attraction to the idea of transformation.
Most of business thinking is focused on straightforward facts immediately at hand but one can’t help but hope that thinking grounded in the great sweep of history would at least on occasion provide robust insights otherwise unavailable.
mercredi 21 mai 2008
Pilots cleverly avoiding training (spot the villain)
This very short posting by David Gurteen is a must read. It describes how pilots cleverly avoid some compulsory e-learning.
The trick for HR is to find the villain.
Is it:
a) lazy pilots who are undermining the company
b) people who design/implement poor e-learning
c) trainers who don't check what learners think of the training
d) management who force trainers to implement training programs that look good on paper without really caring if they accomplish anything.
I'm going to take the generous assumption that everyone is trying to do their best.
So I assume the pilots are right, the training is pointless.
The trainers did their best but didn't have the budget or mandate to do better training needs analysis or training design or follow up to check if it is really working.
Management is under pressure to make the numbers/look good and simply shrug this off as one of those things that they don't have time to fix.
What is the solution?
It is easy to think of specific solutions -- in this case it may just be canceling the training.
One can also think of more general solutions -- insist on proper evaluation of the effectiveness of training (even a 'happy sheet' in this case would have revealed the problem...certainly a few phone calls to the pilots would have).
However, what most interests me are the general forces that lead employees to do the wrong things. One can imagine that if the trainers came back and said "Hey we found out the training isn't working" that no one would have said "Good job!" All the way up the org the discovery would have been perceived as a headache.
Strangely I think they may need a less performance driven culture if they want higher performance. Trainers need to be confident saying "We didn't achieve the objective for that program, let's try something else." HR needs to know jobs or bonuses or budgets are not going to be lost because they are being honest.
The only way to get there is to have time for managers to discuss these sorts of issues to get at root causes. This is not a one off event. Managers need to be meeting quite regularly to discuss what goes right around here, what goes wrong, how are our systems working against us, how can we avoid being stupid? This is how you build an effective culture.
Taking time to invest in maintaining an effective culture is out of sync with the heavy short term performance orientation we see in many companies. But if you want high performance you have to focus a little less on performance and a little more on the overall conditions that lead people to behave in smart honest ways.
The trick for HR is to find the villain.
Is it:
a) lazy pilots who are undermining the company
b) people who design/implement poor e-learning
c) trainers who don't check what learners think of the training
d) management who force trainers to implement training programs that look good on paper without really caring if they accomplish anything.
I'm going to take the generous assumption that everyone is trying to do their best.
So I assume the pilots are right, the training is pointless.
The trainers did their best but didn't have the budget or mandate to do better training needs analysis or training design or follow up to check if it is really working.
Management is under pressure to make the numbers/look good and simply shrug this off as one of those things that they don't have time to fix.
What is the solution?
It is easy to think of specific solutions -- in this case it may just be canceling the training.
One can also think of more general solutions -- insist on proper evaluation of the effectiveness of training (even a 'happy sheet' in this case would have revealed the problem...certainly a few phone calls to the pilots would have).
However, what most interests me are the general forces that lead employees to do the wrong things. One can imagine that if the trainers came back and said "Hey we found out the training isn't working" that no one would have said "Good job!" All the way up the org the discovery would have been perceived as a headache.
Strangely I think they may need a less performance driven culture if they want higher performance. Trainers need to be confident saying "We didn't achieve the objective for that program, let's try something else." HR needs to know jobs or bonuses or budgets are not going to be lost because they are being honest.
The only way to get there is to have time for managers to discuss these sorts of issues to get at root causes. This is not a one off event. Managers need to be meeting quite regularly to discuss what goes right around here, what goes wrong, how are our systems working against us, how can we avoid being stupid? This is how you build an effective culture.
Taking time to invest in maintaining an effective culture is out of sync with the heavy short term performance orientation we see in many companies. But if you want high performance you have to focus a little less on performance and a little more on the overall conditions that lead people to behave in smart honest ways.
vendredi 4 avril 2008
Confident Managers
Imagine the question is "Where is the stapler?"
Someone says "It might be on John's desk"
Someone else says "It is in the coffee room, I'm positive."
Who do you believe?
This works fine for staplers but confident managers are one of the most dangerous seductions of the business world.
When it comes to business strategy or tactics no well-informed person ever feels "I'm positive." They know there are many uncertainties. We ought to reach the common understanding that great confidence is a red flag.
There are many subtleties to this. You want your coach saying "I know you guys can win" even when the evidence is clearly against that prediction. However, the notion of a red flag remains valid. If someone is confident they know the truth on complex matters, you should begin to doubt them.
Doug passes on the quote:
Someone says "It might be on John's desk"
Someone else says "It is in the coffee room, I'm positive."
Who do you believe?
This works fine for staplers but confident managers are one of the most dangerous seductions of the business world.
When it comes to business strategy or tactics no well-informed person ever feels "I'm positive." They know there are many uncertainties. We ought to reach the common understanding that great confidence is a red flag.
There are many subtleties to this. You want your coach saying "I know you guys can win" even when the evidence is clearly against that prediction. However, the notion of a red flag remains valid. If someone is confident they know the truth on complex matters, you should begin to doubt them.
Doug passes on the quote:
"The view that truth is found and that ignorance and error are at anCan you identify the author?
end is one of the most potent seductions there is. Supposing it is
believed, then the will to examination, investigation, caution,
experiment is paralyzed: it can even count as criminal, namely as
doubt concerning truth--Truth is therefore more fateful than error and
ignorance, because it cuts off the forces that work toward
enlightenment and knowledge."(1888)
Inscription à :
Articles (Atom)
