How do we rebuild trust in our leadership?
It is up to all levels of management to take the lead in the rebuilding process.
How do we repair broken trust?
Trust underlies a foundation of success. But what practical fixes does this entails?
In this time or organisational restructuring, rapid operational/technological changes and uncertainty, rebuilding trust is definitely a challenging, and not uncommon task.
However, all levels of management can take the lead in this rebuilding process if they follow some basic principles and seven strategic steps.
1. Hold a focus group
One of the best ways to begin a healing and trust-building process is a meeting, or a series of meetings, that allows people to appropriately share their concerns or vent frustrations about people or processes that have contributed to a destabilizing or trust-eroding organisational atmosphere or culture. Definitely, you need a skilled and very objective Leader/facilitator. When employees see that management does not get defensive during this exchange and acknowledges broad concerns and in fact, takes meaningful problem solving steps, trust levels begin to rise.
2. Acknowledge hidden agenda
When possible, speak the unspeakable. Being transparent does not mean you have to put everything on the table, but certainly share appropriate information about problematic issues or about what is and is not in your immediate control, along with what information you do and don't have.
3. Talk straight and ask good questions
Try to get to the point without too much digression or over-explanation, as this will diminish your credibility with your employees. When possible do some preparation; precision of language command attention.
If this is an issue, what keeps you from talking straight - fear of consequences or being wrong, fear of hurting others, wanting to be liked (read..being popular), etc...?
Ask good questions. The essence of a good question is:
a) Humility..I don't have all the answer
b) Openness...I really would like to hear and learn from your point of view.
Remember, when a person is communicating with high emotion, he or she likely still feels misunderstood.
4. Do not bad-mouth others behind their backs, especially members who no longer in the company.
All this does is fuel employee mistrust. What do, or will people say about me when I am not around, or when I am retire? And if people are talking negatively about a current employee, encourage people to talk directly with the person; offer to mediate (or to find a mediator) when appropriate.
5. Do not over-promise and under-deliver (Keep your commitments)
As I like to say, beware of being motivated by ego goals; that is, when your goals are driven less by the needs, demands, resources and challenges of a situation and more by ego and false pride.
Remember the advice from the Guru of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen R. Covey), WHEN YOU MAKE A COMMITMENT, YOU BUILD HOPE, WHEN YOU KEEP A COMMITMENT, YOU BUILD TRUST
6. Create a learning, trust building culture
In addition to acknowledging a personal mistake in a timely manner, when possible view errors as less sign of incompetence and more an indicator of inexperience or some maturity, perhaps even boldness.
7. Extend trust
Design rules and procedures for the overwhelming majority of people you can trust. Grant trust abundantly to those who have earned it.
Extend conditionally to those earning it, while examining the situation, risk potential and credibility - the competence and character of those involved for more opportunities to extend trust.
This Q&As are partly extracted from the following source:
[Source: Mark Gorkin; AMT]
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Workforce Planning and Analytics
A good article written by Trish... for your reading pleasure..
Recently in NYC and at the end of one conference, I was granted a press pass into the HR Week ‘Human Resource Executive Forum‘. Many thanks to Eric Winegardner from Monster and Rebecca McKenna from Human Resource Executive Magazine for helping me get there. I’m always amazed when you go to a “real conference” vs. an “un-conference”. The vibe at the real conference is so formal. I was greeted by the very efficient team of people at registration and soon, badge and information in hand, I was rushing down the hall to catch a session.
One I was able to attend was “Workforce Planning and Analytics: New Face of Planning” which was led by Dr. Jac Fitz-enz. He is a leading authority who specializes in measuring human capital. You can learn more about him here.
I quickly got settled in the back of the room, next to Eric Winegardner, and we fired up our netbooks to take notes. I wanted to tweet during the sessions but earlier I noticed that there was no wifi available to participants UNLESS I WANTED TO PAY $100!!! WHAT?? Anyway, we were just getting ready to take notes when something shocking happened. Dr. Fitz-enz introduced himself and one of the first things he did was ask participants not to text or use their computers. I’m stitting there thinking, how on earth am I supposed to cover this session as “press” without being able to take notes? This attitude is completely behind the times. I will suggest that conferences going forward should make sure to offer wifi to all participants and should certainly allow netbooks or pcs to be able to take notes to bring back to the organizations. That said though, I really enjoyed the session and learned quite a bit.
Words matter
Although the session was called workforce planning, Dr. Fitz-enz wanted us to understand that words drive attention and action. So by using the phrase “capability planning” rather then workforce planning, you will be creating a mindset that is receptive to thinking in terms of the capabilities that individual employees bring to your workforce.
What human capital is about
According to Dr. Fitz-enz, human capital planning is not about, “filling jobs or putting butts in chairs.” It’s about looking at how capable your workforce is and how that affects your organization’s mission. How capable are the incumbents? If you’re not considering the skills of the people waiting in the wings, you may lose them. You have to keep them challenged and progressing. Human capital is about managing the risk of losing your great players. You need to find employees that can anticipate what you’ll need them to do A YEAR FROM NOW, not someone who is able to do what they did for you last year. Dr. Fitz-enz says, “when you have about 75% of your mission critical positions with someone ready to step in tomorrow, you begin to see revenue per employee increase. Until that point, it’s flat, and research bears this out.”
What about planning analytics?
Planning analytics is about applying logic, accounting, statistics, and data mining to analyze current and historical data to make predictions. But, what if people were your brand? Whenever knowledge is your product, it is much harder to apply metrics and measures. Even so, you have to find ways to tie performance to business measures so that you can predict. In addition, Dr. Fitz-enz believes that in the future, HR professionals will need to focus on the future instead of looking at the benchmarks of the past. You have to look at what is going on in the environment both internally and externally in the marketplace. Only then will you be able to plan and get all departments integrated and focused on the organization’s vision.
On processes and effectiveness
One critical component of effective workforce planning is how well you organize your workforce. Is the facility they work in configured properly to maximize efficiency? What steps can you take to improve productivity relative to the way in which people are working? You’ll also need to take a hard look at your organization’s processes before you just decide to make and upgrade and throw technology at it. That is not what will drive effectiveness. Careful analysis of current processes will help guide what type of technology makes the most sense. This should be done after you’ve taken time to examine each process.
Engagement is not correlated with productivity
This was something that came up in two sessions and really caught the attention of the audience both times. I think it’s because as HR professionals, we are constantly told that if you have a high level of employee engagement, you will see productivity increase. It just makes sense. I think the clarifying point that Dr. Fitz-enz made is that while that may be true in most cases, there is not a mathematical correlation. So, if the engagement scores increase by 2%, you will not see a 2% increase in productivity. Related, not correlated.
Where I disagree with Dr. Fitz-enz
Whenever you hear an industry expert speak, you are most likely going to be hard pressed to find flaws. Not that I was looking for them, but one thing he said I whole-heartedly disagree with. He said, “Leadership is a finite thing. There is only so much that can be said about it.” In my notes that day, I actually followed that sentence up with an expletive. Very unusual for me to do that. It just struck me as an odd thing to say for such a progressive thinker. I think the only way we’ve heard enough on leadership is when we are at the point where a “right” way of leading has been established. I do not ever think we’ll be at that point. As long as there are people leading companies, there will need to be many types of leadership styles to put toward making the organization a success. Therefore, the discussion of what makes good, solid leadership will continue.
Recently in NYC and at the end of one conference, I was granted a press pass into the HR Week ‘Human Resource Executive Forum‘. Many thanks to Eric Winegardner from Monster and Rebecca McKenna from Human Resource Executive Magazine for helping me get there. I’m always amazed when you go to a “real conference” vs. an “un-conference”. The vibe at the real conference is so formal. I was greeted by the very efficient team of people at registration and soon, badge and information in hand, I was rushing down the hall to catch a session.
One I was able to attend was “Workforce Planning and Analytics: New Face of Planning” which was led by Dr. Jac Fitz-enz. He is a leading authority who specializes in measuring human capital. You can learn more about him here.
I quickly got settled in the back of the room, next to Eric Winegardner, and we fired up our netbooks to take notes. I wanted to tweet during the sessions but earlier I noticed that there was no wifi available to participants UNLESS I WANTED TO PAY $100!!! WHAT?? Anyway, we were just getting ready to take notes when something shocking happened. Dr. Fitz-enz introduced himself and one of the first things he did was ask participants not to text or use their computers. I’m stitting there thinking, how on earth am I supposed to cover this session as “press” without being able to take notes? This attitude is completely behind the times. I will suggest that conferences going forward should make sure to offer wifi to all participants and should certainly allow netbooks or pcs to be able to take notes to bring back to the organizations. That said though, I really enjoyed the session and learned quite a bit.
Words matter
Although the session was called workforce planning, Dr. Fitz-enz wanted us to understand that words drive attention and action. So by using the phrase “capability planning” rather then workforce planning, you will be creating a mindset that is receptive to thinking in terms of the capabilities that individual employees bring to your workforce.
What human capital is about
According to Dr. Fitz-enz, human capital planning is not about, “filling jobs or putting butts in chairs.” It’s about looking at how capable your workforce is and how that affects your organization’s mission. How capable are the incumbents? If you’re not considering the skills of the people waiting in the wings, you may lose them. You have to keep them challenged and progressing. Human capital is about managing the risk of losing your great players. You need to find employees that can anticipate what you’ll need them to do A YEAR FROM NOW, not someone who is able to do what they did for you last year. Dr. Fitz-enz says, “when you have about 75% of your mission critical positions with someone ready to step in tomorrow, you begin to see revenue per employee increase. Until that point, it’s flat, and research bears this out.”
What about planning analytics?
Planning analytics is about applying logic, accounting, statistics, and data mining to analyze current and historical data to make predictions. But, what if people were your brand? Whenever knowledge is your product, it is much harder to apply metrics and measures. Even so, you have to find ways to tie performance to business measures so that you can predict. In addition, Dr. Fitz-enz believes that in the future, HR professionals will need to focus on the future instead of looking at the benchmarks of the past. You have to look at what is going on in the environment both internally and externally in the marketplace. Only then will you be able to plan and get all departments integrated and focused on the organization’s vision.
On processes and effectiveness
One critical component of effective workforce planning is how well you organize your workforce. Is the facility they work in configured properly to maximize efficiency? What steps can you take to improve productivity relative to the way in which people are working? You’ll also need to take a hard look at your organization’s processes before you just decide to make and upgrade and throw technology at it. That is not what will drive effectiveness. Careful analysis of current processes will help guide what type of technology makes the most sense. This should be done after you’ve taken time to examine each process.
Engagement is not correlated with productivity
This was something that came up in two sessions and really caught the attention of the audience both times. I think it’s because as HR professionals, we are constantly told that if you have a high level of employee engagement, you will see productivity increase. It just makes sense. I think the clarifying point that Dr. Fitz-enz made is that while that may be true in most cases, there is not a mathematical correlation. So, if the engagement scores increase by 2%, you will not see a 2% increase in productivity. Related, not correlated.
Where I disagree with Dr. Fitz-enz
Whenever you hear an industry expert speak, you are most likely going to be hard pressed to find flaws. Not that I was looking for them, but one thing he said I whole-heartedly disagree with. He said, “Leadership is a finite thing. There is only so much that can be said about it.” In my notes that day, I actually followed that sentence up with an expletive. Very unusual for me to do that. It just struck me as an odd thing to say for such a progressive thinker. I think the only way we’ve heard enough on leadership is when we are at the point where a “right” way of leading has been established. I do not ever think we’ll be at that point. As long as there are people leading companies, there will need to be many types of leadership styles to put toward making the organization a success. Therefore, the discussion of what makes good, solid leadership will continue.
Building a High Performance Workforce
Building a High Performance Workforce
Research from the Corporate Leadership Council concludes that to build a high performance workforce - organizations need to think beyond the typical performance management system. A high performance culture is much more than filling in appraisal forms and following a performance management process. It is not a quick fix and it requires commitment to creating a sustainable approach to performance improvement. It is a culture that goes beyond short term metrics and one that must include a range of organizational, managerial and employee principles.
Research predicts a minimum of 5% productivity improvement all the way up to 35%. As a way of visualizing this - the minimum 5% improvement is equivalent to your people having an extra 2 hours productivity per week.
1. Organizational Principles:
1a. The Performance Management Approach.
Be clear on the expected standards of performance. This ensures that all employees understand what is expected of them in their role and how their role contributes to the success of the organization. Any system for providing feedback should allow for multiple sources of feedback - not just the direct line manager.
1b. A High Performance Culture.
Ensure there is a regular and open communication of business performance data. Managers and leaders should make a clear distinction between employees making good and poor contributions. They should encourage employees to take suitable risks and remove the fear of failure.
2. Managerial Principles:
2a. Interaction with employees.
Managers should set clear and consistent expectations and try not to constantly change plans and priorities. Using a coaching style of management helps your people find solutions to business problems. Managers should provide the resources needed by their people to allow them to be successful.
2b. Formal Reviews.
The emphasis should be on the positive aspects of performance. Performance weaknesses should only be discussed when the manager has also thought of specific suggestions for improving performance. Formal reviews should also include a discussion and agreed actions relating to your employees' medium- to long-term career aspirations.
2c. Informal Feedback.
Informal feedback should be provided on a regular basis. The most powerful driver of high performance is feedback which is specific, timely, accurate and balanced and comes from a knowledgeable source.
3. Employee Principles:
3a. Day to day work.
Take some time to provide the big picture for your people. Help them understand how their roles and current assignments contribute to organizational success. People who understand and enjoy their work deliver greater contributions - so take time to carefully match people to their roles.
3b. Opportunities.
Understand your people's strengths and then look to provide them with opportunities to utilize those strengths. Timely training and on-the-job coaching provides the most effective learning. Any learning and development provided should be relevant to people's assignments and their role.
Implementing a High Performance Workforce
The good news is that these principles are simple to understand and both managers and employees can intuitively understand the connection to improved performance. Done effectively - the benefits of high performance workforce can be achieved without the need for huge capital expenditures, high-profile change programmes and major upheavals.
However simple should not be confused with easy. To execute successfully - the organisation's leaders must position high performance as a key priority. They have to insist that line managers (not Human Resources) become the champions of high performance activities.
The first step is for the managers of other line managers to hold those line managers accountable for performance improvement in their staff. This starts by including performance management-related goals into managers' own performance expectations.
Visit http://exceptional-performance.co.uk for free resources and inspiration to help you develop your workforce.
Peter Leather is a specialist in improving the productivity of your workforce and he is a recognized expert in implementing skills frameworks and developing Communities of Practice. He is MBA qualified with over 20 years experience advising major IT, financial services and professional services organizations. He prefers to work collaboratively and to coach and motivate internal teams in order to bring about sustainable change.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Peter_Leather
Research from the Corporate Leadership Council concludes that to build a high performance workforce - organizations need to think beyond the typical performance management system. A high performance culture is much more than filling in appraisal forms and following a performance management process. It is not a quick fix and it requires commitment to creating a sustainable approach to performance improvement. It is a culture that goes beyond short term metrics and one that must include a range of organizational, managerial and employee principles.
Research predicts a minimum of 5% productivity improvement all the way up to 35%. As a way of visualizing this - the minimum 5% improvement is equivalent to your people having an extra 2 hours productivity per week.
1. Organizational Principles:
1a. The Performance Management Approach.
Be clear on the expected standards of performance. This ensures that all employees understand what is expected of them in their role and how their role contributes to the success of the organization. Any system for providing feedback should allow for multiple sources of feedback - not just the direct line manager.
1b. A High Performance Culture.
Ensure there is a regular and open communication of business performance data. Managers and leaders should make a clear distinction between employees making good and poor contributions. They should encourage employees to take suitable risks and remove the fear of failure.
2. Managerial Principles:
2a. Interaction with employees.
Managers should set clear and consistent expectations and try not to constantly change plans and priorities. Using a coaching style of management helps your people find solutions to business problems. Managers should provide the resources needed by their people to allow them to be successful.
2b. Formal Reviews.
The emphasis should be on the positive aspects of performance. Performance weaknesses should only be discussed when the manager has also thought of specific suggestions for improving performance. Formal reviews should also include a discussion and agreed actions relating to your employees' medium- to long-term career aspirations.
2c. Informal Feedback.
Informal feedback should be provided on a regular basis. The most powerful driver of high performance is feedback which is specific, timely, accurate and balanced and comes from a knowledgeable source.
3. Employee Principles:
3a. Day to day work.
Take some time to provide the big picture for your people. Help them understand how their roles and current assignments contribute to organizational success. People who understand and enjoy their work deliver greater contributions - so take time to carefully match people to their roles.
3b. Opportunities.
Understand your people's strengths and then look to provide them with opportunities to utilize those strengths. Timely training and on-the-job coaching provides the most effective learning. Any learning and development provided should be relevant to people's assignments and their role.
Implementing a High Performance Workforce
The good news is that these principles are simple to understand and both managers and employees can intuitively understand the connection to improved performance. Done effectively - the benefits of high performance workforce can be achieved without the need for huge capital expenditures, high-profile change programmes and major upheavals.
However simple should not be confused with easy. To execute successfully - the organisation's leaders must position high performance as a key priority. They have to insist that line managers (not Human Resources) become the champions of high performance activities.
The first step is for the managers of other line managers to hold those line managers accountable for performance improvement in their staff. This starts by including performance management-related goals into managers' own performance expectations.
Visit http://exceptional-performance.co.uk for free resources and inspiration to help you develop your workforce.
Peter Leather is a specialist in improving the productivity of your workforce and he is a recognized expert in implementing skills frameworks and developing Communities of Practice. He is MBA qualified with over 20 years experience advising major IT, financial services and professional services organizations. He prefers to work collaboratively and to coach and motivate internal teams in order to bring about sustainable change.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Peter_Leather
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Roles of Total Quality OD Process Planning
Total Quality OD Process Planning requires competence in assessing, interpreting, designing, transforming and sustaining an organisation’s stable system processes.
OD Professionals need to statistically distinguish between common and special causes of variation.
OD Professionals need to statistically distinguish between common and special causes of variation.
A Generic understanding on OD Practitioner’s Roles in the Organisation
Total Quality Business Process Improvement
When making process improvement
· As an intervention factor while working together with Sr. Manager on creating process map for complex processes for major incremental change, to get the process diagram sufficiently correct for HOD to buy into the model and the improvement process.
· Paying close attention to the needs of directors through clarifying and influencing decision makers.
· Conduct value analysis to help HOD to understand how much waste is involved in poorly designed processes. Use graphical analysis of the present vs proposed processes to the benefits of process improvements. Care must be taken to avoid judgment and blame.
Process integration:
The strategy implementation step can be explored through the process dimensions that ensure continuous improvement i.e : Total Quality Continuous Improvement - TQCI. Three types of TQCI are :
1. Kaizen
2. Competitive parity
3. Breakthrough dominance
Type One: Kaizen
This approach requires individuals, process and project teams and cross units (inter-organisational cooperative network) to incrementally improve procedures towards reducing costs and increase efficiency. More that the QCC only. It also requires a right attitude and incentives exist in the workplace.
Type Two: Competitive parity
This involves a strategy of becoming at least equal of the best class of the existing market leaders.
Type Three: Breakthrough dominance
It is oriented towards outdistancing competitors by reengineering or restructuring processes to achieve quantum breakthrough advantages.
Note:
OD practitioner should ensure the company to engage in all 3 types of improvement above simultaneously, in appropriate contexts and times
Note:
Definition of reengineering ;
“ The fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed.”
When making process improvement
· As an intervention factor while working together with Sr. Manager on creating process map for complex processes for major incremental change, to get the process diagram sufficiently correct for HOD to buy into the model and the improvement process.
· Paying close attention to the needs of directors through clarifying and influencing decision makers.
· Conduct value analysis to help HOD to understand how much waste is involved in poorly designed processes. Use graphical analysis of the present vs proposed processes to the benefits of process improvements. Care must be taken to avoid judgment and blame.
Process integration:
The strategy implementation step can be explored through the process dimensions that ensure continuous improvement i.e : Total Quality Continuous Improvement - TQCI. Three types of TQCI are :
1. Kaizen
2. Competitive parity
3. Breakthrough dominance
Type One: Kaizen
This approach requires individuals, process and project teams and cross units (inter-organisational cooperative network) to incrementally improve procedures towards reducing costs and increase efficiency. More that the QCC only. It also requires a right attitude and incentives exist in the workplace.
Type Two: Competitive parity
This involves a strategy of becoming at least equal of the best class of the existing market leaders.
Type Three: Breakthrough dominance
It is oriented towards outdistancing competitors by reengineering or restructuring processes to achieve quantum breakthrough advantages.
Note:
OD practitioner should ensure the company to engage in all 3 types of improvement above simultaneously, in appropriate contexts and times
Note:
Definition of reengineering ;
“ The fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed.”
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
10 Questions for CLOs
What Next? 10 Questions for CLOs
by Brian Klapper
The speed, length and magnitude of the global recession have staggered many companies, and senior executives have struggled to adapt their time-tested strategies to the economic realities of the environment in which we now live. As companies slowly shift their focus from fighting the recession to getting the most from the recovery, an effective CLO must help keep the organization focused on the future.
To gain deeper insight into these issues, in June 2009, The Klapper Institute surveyed 226 corporate managers across North America. Their replies offer insight into how executives view the crisis and how they are planning to respond to the recovery. From the survey results and extensive personal interviews, The Klapper Institute developed 10 questions all CLOs should be asking themselves and their executive colleagues as the recovery approaches.
1. Are you exhibiting - on a daily basis - the essential behaviors to contribute to your company's recovery and growth?
Much has changed over the past year, including the way in which leaders interact with their organizations. However, as executives look to the future, there is a pretty clear consensus that there are several key behavioral elements that must be demonstrated to lead organizations to prosperity. The Klapper Institute survey assessed how senior managers approached leadership during the past 12 months and whether they expected that approach to change during the next two years. Respondents generally indicated that during the crisis they found themselves focusing on short-term objectives, opportunities for "quick wins" and cost-reduction opportunities. Interestingly, nearly all realized that these behaviors only marginally helped them manage through the downturn and would not likely position their companies for a prosperous future. The kinds of leadership behavior that executives say they will try to exhibit over the next 24 months will encourage innovation, creativity and growth. Specifically, executives from companies emerging from the recession should be focused on behaviors that:
a) Inspire others by developing and reinforcing powerful messages about senior management's vision for the organization and how each employee can play an important role in achieving its success.
b) Drive innovation and creativity by challenging assumptions, encouraging risk taking and pursuing controlled failure.
c) Clearly define expectations and offer significant rewards for success.
d) Thoughtfully and systematically engage the key influencers throughout the organization to encourage input into program development.
e) Transform themselves and others through role-modeling desired mindsets and actions.
2. Are you doing everything possible to help employees embrace change?Former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki once stated, "If you don't like change, you will like irrelevance even less." As the economic recovery leads to growth, teaching employees to manage, and ideally embrace, change has come to the forefront of responsibilities for the chief learning officer. The CLO can play an enormously powerful role by developing programs to accelerate the change process. Far too often, these change programs are developed in isolation or brought in as a discreet product by an outside agency. And far too often, they fail to deliver on the promises made. For a change program to be successful, learning must be linked with doing to change the way in which people work. At the end of the day, the success or failure of a new initiative is dependent less on the content of the initiative and more on the employees' willingness to embrace the change.
3. Are you doing all you can to ensure your workforce is sufficiently nimble to take advantage of rapidly shifting market conditions?The Klapper Institute survey asked respondents whether the economic crisis would cause significant foundational change in their industry over the next 24 months. Nearly 60 percent of all respondents said they expected "significant change" to their industry as a result of the crisis, versus only 18 percent of respondents who didn't anticipate major changes. As Avon CEO Andrea Jung recently commented, "The going-in assumption is that this is a new world order - we need to run the business as if that's the case." The implications for the chief learning officer are clear: enterprise learning is moving to the forefront of business strategy, and the mandate to deliver programs that result in a fast, flexible, well-trained organization is critical. Because companies must have the capabilities in place to meet rapidly changing market needs, enterprise learning has now moved well beyond its former status as a support capability and has become central to any company's business strategy. Since the range of possible futures confronting business is great, companies that nurture flexibility, awareness and resiliency are significantly more likely to thrive in a period of post-recession growth.
4. Are the learning strategies you have traditionally employed optimally suited for the rapid pace of the new economy?So many of the formal training classes and ubiquitous e-learning programs simply do not deliver an acceptable ROI. Most formal learning - even with updated e-learning platforms - remains based on antiquated models that were designed for efficiency, not effectiveness. Dumping knowledge followed up by a test will not result in the meaningful behavior change that is essential for true learning to occur. Learning here means insights into customers' unmet, unspecified needs; enlightened experimentation; scientific problem solving; and rapid piloting. In essence, this means building an organization that has innovation coursing through its veins. The good news here: In most cases, the innovation required to meet a new marketplace need exists somewhere in the organization; the greatest challenge is finding it and harnessing it.
5. Are you helping your organization build an adaptive culture?Volumes of research suggest that regardless of industry, a company's culture, not its leadership or structure, is the single biggest deterrent in creating a nimble organization. Previous research from The Klapper Institute has found that leading organizations foster an environment that encourages ongoing refreshment in daily operations. As a result, these companies develop an adaptive culture that views change as normal part of everyday operations. By viewing change as an ongoing part of normal business, rather than an episodic event, an organization creates a culture that supports and motivates the kinds of behaviors required to be more nimble, viewing challenges as opportunities rather than barriers and looking beyond the way things have always been done to the way things could potentially be done. As a result, adaptive organizations tend to enjoy great employee and customer loyalty, clear labor cost advantages, front-line ownership for business results and a culture of "the best serving the best." The challenge for the chief learning officer is to weave together the most critical components to create an adaptive culture that will enable the organization to thrive in uncertain times. The CLO should be fostering a collaborative approach across the enterprise and promoting continuous learning among the workforce, with particular emphasis on active learning over passive, classroom-based approaches. CLOs should also be extracting relevant front-line experiences through advanced knowledge management tools and moving them into learning programs and knowledge bases that quickly get the best knowledge and experience to the entire organization.
6. Are you utilizing innovative scalable learning strategies to do more with less or the same budget?Teresa Roche, Agilent Technologies' CLO, has repeatedly said that "more dollars does not translate into more impactful development." She believes the traditional measures of learning impact (e.g., percent of payroll allocated to training, total number of training hours) are antiquated. Last fall, as Roche and her team watched the economy begin its downward tilt, they quickly revamped an already planned next-generation leadership program, shifting it from a high-cost, face-to-face event that would bring in people from around the world to a regional event that used webcams and low-cost collaboration tools such as Skype to bring teams together virtually. That focus and flexibility has allowed her learning organization to weather the economic downturn and maintain its role as a core contributor to business success. "We constantly prioritize," she said. "When people make it an either-or, like you either invest in development or you don't, that's the wrongway to approach it. The challenge is how do you keep doing effective programs but find ways to have that impact differently?"
7. Do your initiatives encourage idea generation?Productive ideation is the consistent generation of ideas, for both products and services that can be converted into growth. The CLO can play an essential role in developing programs to tap into the latent ideas that exist throughout every organization - but far too often fail to see the light of day. In some organizations, the ideas are plentiful, but they are buried under layers of bureaucracy that keep them from surfacing. They generally tend to exist closest to the customers - and therefore farther away from corporate headquarters, making them difficult to spot.
8. Are you doing everything possible to effectively train your future leaders?Career development efforts in large corporations are too often limited to programs that target high potentials and future leaders. This approach is shortsighted. In the knowledge economy, the skills demanded of employees at all levels are constantly being redefined. To deal successfully with that reality, talent-powered organizations invest in developing the capabilities of all employees, with a particular focus on accelerating the development of skills and workforces that are most clearly linked to business strategy. As Roche said, the focus is on "roles impacting strategy and roles impacted by strategy."
9. Are you creating accountability for business results?For many CLOs, creating accountability for the business results that emerge from learning initiatives remains an ongoing challenge. Leading CLOs use the following strategy to generate clear accountability for their work in a growth environment:
a) A clear statement of mission and strategic direction:CLOs use learning as a platform to support ambitious growth and profitability objectives. Creating a business discipline for enterprisewide learning begins with a precise understanding of learning's role in the overall corporate strategy.
b) A formal, accountability-based learning infrastructure with clear empirical objectives and milestones:As with other business disciplines, learning must be represented by well-defined processes supported by performance targets and indicators. Too many organizations do not view learning as a process and, as a result, fail to utilize objective outcome-based measures to evaluate their success.
c) Dedicated budgets and resources:Organizations should invest in learning with the expectation of measurable results. A dedicated budget is a critical component of success in learning. This doesn't mean that all the learning efforts should be centralized, but there does need to be an adequate level of resources to fund the learning infrastructure.
d) Repeatable, accessible tools and capabilities:Organizations should provide the processes, structures, tools and training necessary to deliver effective enterprise learning. If senior executives expect to achieve repeatable and ongoing improvements in business performance, the learning discipline needs to be supported by tools, capabilities and resources that are accessible across the organization.
10. Have you remained vigilant on internal marketing?For many CLOs, particularly when emerging from a recession, the tension between learning and performance is palpable. Clearly, CLOs must drive value by focusing on issues such as business alignment, managing resources, innovation, customer service and ROI. The challenge is the need to show value to the organization that financial analysts and business leaders can understand and appreciate, while responding to the need for learning versus performance. As Gene Brown, CLO of ZirMed said, "Internal marketing is so much more than internal promotion and thoughtful communication - we must demonstrate value through business results." Regardless of the industry they are in and a company's competitive position, now is the time to act decisively to position for growth. The Klapper Institute's top 10 list requires little capital investment. Rather, behavioral change, innovation, ideation and creativity are the common themes woven throughout the list. CLOs need to face the tough decisions and not let budget reductions prevent them from seeing the opportunities that permeate the organization.
Think openly. Act decisively. Nobody can predict with certainty when the broader economy will recover, but a thoughtful CLO can most assuredly help accelerate his or her company's recovery.
[About the Author: Brian Klapper is president of management consulting, education and research firm The Klapper Institute.]
by Brian Klapper
The speed, length and magnitude of the global recession have staggered many companies, and senior executives have struggled to adapt their time-tested strategies to the economic realities of the environment in which we now live. As companies slowly shift their focus from fighting the recession to getting the most from the recovery, an effective CLO must help keep the organization focused on the future.
To gain deeper insight into these issues, in June 2009, The Klapper Institute surveyed 226 corporate managers across North America. Their replies offer insight into how executives view the crisis and how they are planning to respond to the recovery. From the survey results and extensive personal interviews, The Klapper Institute developed 10 questions all CLOs should be asking themselves and their executive colleagues as the recovery approaches.
1. Are you exhibiting - on a daily basis - the essential behaviors to contribute to your company's recovery and growth?
Much has changed over the past year, including the way in which leaders interact with their organizations. However, as executives look to the future, there is a pretty clear consensus that there are several key behavioral elements that must be demonstrated to lead organizations to prosperity. The Klapper Institute survey assessed how senior managers approached leadership during the past 12 months and whether they expected that approach to change during the next two years. Respondents generally indicated that during the crisis they found themselves focusing on short-term objectives, opportunities for "quick wins" and cost-reduction opportunities. Interestingly, nearly all realized that these behaviors only marginally helped them manage through the downturn and would not likely position their companies for a prosperous future. The kinds of leadership behavior that executives say they will try to exhibit over the next 24 months will encourage innovation, creativity and growth. Specifically, executives from companies emerging from the recession should be focused on behaviors that:
a) Inspire others by developing and reinforcing powerful messages about senior management's vision for the organization and how each employee can play an important role in achieving its success.
b) Drive innovation and creativity by challenging assumptions, encouraging risk taking and pursuing controlled failure.
c) Clearly define expectations and offer significant rewards for success.
d) Thoughtfully and systematically engage the key influencers throughout the organization to encourage input into program development.
e) Transform themselves and others through role-modeling desired mindsets and actions.
2. Are you doing everything possible to help employees embrace change?Former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki once stated, "If you don't like change, you will like irrelevance even less." As the economic recovery leads to growth, teaching employees to manage, and ideally embrace, change has come to the forefront of responsibilities for the chief learning officer. The CLO can play an enormously powerful role by developing programs to accelerate the change process. Far too often, these change programs are developed in isolation or brought in as a discreet product by an outside agency. And far too often, they fail to deliver on the promises made. For a change program to be successful, learning must be linked with doing to change the way in which people work. At the end of the day, the success or failure of a new initiative is dependent less on the content of the initiative and more on the employees' willingness to embrace the change.
3. Are you doing all you can to ensure your workforce is sufficiently nimble to take advantage of rapidly shifting market conditions?The Klapper Institute survey asked respondents whether the economic crisis would cause significant foundational change in their industry over the next 24 months. Nearly 60 percent of all respondents said they expected "significant change" to their industry as a result of the crisis, versus only 18 percent of respondents who didn't anticipate major changes. As Avon CEO Andrea Jung recently commented, "The going-in assumption is that this is a new world order - we need to run the business as if that's the case." The implications for the chief learning officer are clear: enterprise learning is moving to the forefront of business strategy, and the mandate to deliver programs that result in a fast, flexible, well-trained organization is critical. Because companies must have the capabilities in place to meet rapidly changing market needs, enterprise learning has now moved well beyond its former status as a support capability and has become central to any company's business strategy. Since the range of possible futures confronting business is great, companies that nurture flexibility, awareness and resiliency are significantly more likely to thrive in a period of post-recession growth.
4. Are the learning strategies you have traditionally employed optimally suited for the rapid pace of the new economy?So many of the formal training classes and ubiquitous e-learning programs simply do not deliver an acceptable ROI. Most formal learning - even with updated e-learning platforms - remains based on antiquated models that were designed for efficiency, not effectiveness. Dumping knowledge followed up by a test will not result in the meaningful behavior change that is essential for true learning to occur. Learning here means insights into customers' unmet, unspecified needs; enlightened experimentation; scientific problem solving; and rapid piloting. In essence, this means building an organization that has innovation coursing through its veins. The good news here: In most cases, the innovation required to meet a new marketplace need exists somewhere in the organization; the greatest challenge is finding it and harnessing it.
5. Are you helping your organization build an adaptive culture?Volumes of research suggest that regardless of industry, a company's culture, not its leadership or structure, is the single biggest deterrent in creating a nimble organization. Previous research from The Klapper Institute has found that leading organizations foster an environment that encourages ongoing refreshment in daily operations. As a result, these companies develop an adaptive culture that views change as normal part of everyday operations. By viewing change as an ongoing part of normal business, rather than an episodic event, an organization creates a culture that supports and motivates the kinds of behaviors required to be more nimble, viewing challenges as opportunities rather than barriers and looking beyond the way things have always been done to the way things could potentially be done. As a result, adaptive organizations tend to enjoy great employee and customer loyalty, clear labor cost advantages, front-line ownership for business results and a culture of "the best serving the best." The challenge for the chief learning officer is to weave together the most critical components to create an adaptive culture that will enable the organization to thrive in uncertain times. The CLO should be fostering a collaborative approach across the enterprise and promoting continuous learning among the workforce, with particular emphasis on active learning over passive, classroom-based approaches. CLOs should also be extracting relevant front-line experiences through advanced knowledge management tools and moving them into learning programs and knowledge bases that quickly get the best knowledge and experience to the entire organization.
6. Are you utilizing innovative scalable learning strategies to do more with less or the same budget?Teresa Roche, Agilent Technologies' CLO, has repeatedly said that "more dollars does not translate into more impactful development." She believes the traditional measures of learning impact (e.g., percent of payroll allocated to training, total number of training hours) are antiquated. Last fall, as Roche and her team watched the economy begin its downward tilt, they quickly revamped an already planned next-generation leadership program, shifting it from a high-cost, face-to-face event that would bring in people from around the world to a regional event that used webcams and low-cost collaboration tools such as Skype to bring teams together virtually. That focus and flexibility has allowed her learning organization to weather the economic downturn and maintain its role as a core contributor to business success. "We constantly prioritize," she said. "When people make it an either-or, like you either invest in development or you don't, that's the wrongway to approach it. The challenge is how do you keep doing effective programs but find ways to have that impact differently?"
7. Do your initiatives encourage idea generation?Productive ideation is the consistent generation of ideas, for both products and services that can be converted into growth. The CLO can play an essential role in developing programs to tap into the latent ideas that exist throughout every organization - but far too often fail to see the light of day. In some organizations, the ideas are plentiful, but they are buried under layers of bureaucracy that keep them from surfacing. They generally tend to exist closest to the customers - and therefore farther away from corporate headquarters, making them difficult to spot.
8. Are you doing everything possible to effectively train your future leaders?Career development efforts in large corporations are too often limited to programs that target high potentials and future leaders. This approach is shortsighted. In the knowledge economy, the skills demanded of employees at all levels are constantly being redefined. To deal successfully with that reality, talent-powered organizations invest in developing the capabilities of all employees, with a particular focus on accelerating the development of skills and workforces that are most clearly linked to business strategy. As Roche said, the focus is on "roles impacting strategy and roles impacted by strategy."
9. Are you creating accountability for business results?For many CLOs, creating accountability for the business results that emerge from learning initiatives remains an ongoing challenge. Leading CLOs use the following strategy to generate clear accountability for their work in a growth environment:
a) A clear statement of mission and strategic direction:CLOs use learning as a platform to support ambitious growth and profitability objectives. Creating a business discipline for enterprisewide learning begins with a precise understanding of learning's role in the overall corporate strategy.
b) A formal, accountability-based learning infrastructure with clear empirical objectives and milestones:As with other business disciplines, learning must be represented by well-defined processes supported by performance targets and indicators. Too many organizations do not view learning as a process and, as a result, fail to utilize objective outcome-based measures to evaluate their success.
c) Dedicated budgets and resources:Organizations should invest in learning with the expectation of measurable results. A dedicated budget is a critical component of success in learning. This doesn't mean that all the learning efforts should be centralized, but there does need to be an adequate level of resources to fund the learning infrastructure.
d) Repeatable, accessible tools and capabilities:Organizations should provide the processes, structures, tools and training necessary to deliver effective enterprise learning. If senior executives expect to achieve repeatable and ongoing improvements in business performance, the learning discipline needs to be supported by tools, capabilities and resources that are accessible across the organization.
10. Have you remained vigilant on internal marketing?For many CLOs, particularly when emerging from a recession, the tension between learning and performance is palpable. Clearly, CLOs must drive value by focusing on issues such as business alignment, managing resources, innovation, customer service and ROI. The challenge is the need to show value to the organization that financial analysts and business leaders can understand and appreciate, while responding to the need for learning versus performance. As Gene Brown, CLO of ZirMed said, "Internal marketing is so much more than internal promotion and thoughtful communication - we must demonstrate value through business results." Regardless of the industry they are in and a company's competitive position, now is the time to act decisively to position for growth. The Klapper Institute's top 10 list requires little capital investment. Rather, behavioral change, innovation, ideation and creativity are the common themes woven throughout the list. CLOs need to face the tough decisions and not let budget reductions prevent them from seeing the opportunities that permeate the organization.
Think openly. Act decisively. Nobody can predict with certainty when the broader economy will recover, but a thoughtful CLO can most assuredly help accelerate his or her company's recovery.
[About the Author: Brian Klapper is president of management consulting, education and research firm The Klapper Institute.]
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