The reality is no match for the legend.

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Wed, 20 Jun 2012 13:39:00 +0800

Model: Jinri Park | Photo by: Jay Tablante

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 22:46:00 +0800

Model: Jinri Park | Photo by: Jay Tablante

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Thu, 07 Jun 2012 00:40:00 +0800

Article: Feeling Boxed In?

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:36:30 +0800

Feeling Boxed In?
by Deanna Hartley | Diversity Executive

She was born in Cuba; she must speak Spanish fluently. He’s a millennial; he must be tech savvy.

These types of statements float around offices so often leaders frequently assume certain individuals possess expertise in certain areas simply because they are affiliated with a particular group.

She’s just back from maternity leave; she must not be ready to take on this project. He has a visual impairment; how could he possibly perform this job?

Perhaps worse, leaders may unconsciously discount certain employees based on unfounded perceptions or stereotypes. Even if this behavior is unintentional, it has the potential to impede successful execution of business objectives.

Patterns of Pigeonholing

Stereotypes are pervasive in North America and in Europe. Catalyst, a consulting company focused on women and leadership, has conducted numerous studies examining different cultural perceptions, and the stereotypes that result from them, around the world. “People tend to perceive that women are more effective than men at what we call ‘take care’ behaviors, things like supporting and rewarding their subordinates. Men tend to be seen as much more effective than women at ‘take charge’ leadership behaviors, things like influencing superiors, delegating and problem solving,” said Jeanine Prime, senior director of research at Catalyst.

Public perception tends to favors men as default leaders because people think they possess qualities that embody effective leadership, which naturally places women at a disadvantage. As a result, women are more underrepresented the higher one travels up the corporate ladder.

“If they do ascend to leadership positions, we often find that it’s in support roles - in HR, in administrative-type roles, which gets back to the stereotype of women being sense as caretakers,” Prime said. “Stereotypes create these patterns that we see when we look at both the level of the position that men and women are occupying and the types of roles.” One specific instance where stereotypical misconceptions can hinder women’s opportunities for advancement occurs when they want to start a family yet also want to progress in their careers, said Wanda Brackins, head of global diversity for RBC Wealth Management.

“When an employee returns to work after having a child, many times the person may be overlooked for large special assignments because the idea is, they now have little to no flexibility given child care constraints and the need to adhere to stricter work hours,” she said. “This perception may stifle employees who would otherwise be relatively assertive or who would be top performers. Neither the company nor the employee benefits because the employee is not motivated to give 100 percent.”

Another example of this type of workplace stereotyping - intentional or inadvertent - can occur with employees who have disabilities.

“For example, an individual with a visual impairment might be interviewing for a position in the IT field, perhaps as a programmer. Immediately the interviewer draws the conclusion that the person would not be good for the role,” Brackins said. “How is this person going to program when they can’t see? Or, if they have some type of functional impairment, how are the going to perform a role that requires motor skills?

“Oftentimes people are hung up on the fact that they don’t know how they would accomplish certain tasks under similar circumstances. These conclusions are drawn without ever asking the person with the disability to explain their process and what accommodations they would require.”

What leaders should do in this type of situation is provide the candidate with the job requirements and have the individual explain how he or she would get the job done. Marci Paino, director of learning services for S2 Learning Ltd., is a member of one of the most talked-about generations in today’s workforce: Gen Y. She said she often has experienced stereotypical behavior - even from senior leaders.

“One stereotypical I experienced quite a bit with a previous boss was being treated like a child,” Paino said. “When I was given a project or activity or task to do, and I asked for some reason behind it or some explanation around it, the response I got often was, ‘Just do it because I told you so.’”

This type of response likely is more appropriate for a parent-child relationship than a working one between colleagues where a mature, reciprocal discussion with respect for each other’s points of view is necessary.

“That’s where the stereotype about Gen Y always questioning everything and feeling entitlement comes from,” she said. “We just want to know the reason behind things, to understand things thoroughly, and that sometimes comes across as threatening because other generations have more of a ‘do what you’re told’ mentality.”

Risky Business

The potential business implications of assuming employees possess a skill set they do or don’t have based on their affiliation with a certain group are far from trivial.

“Let’s say somebody assumes that I speak Spanish fluently just because I’m Latina and I was born in Cuba,” said Graciela Meibar, vice president, global diversity at Mattel, Inc. “They ask me to take care of the translation of an important document for the company, and I’d rather not do it; my professional Spanish is not that great, but my boss insists. “I speak Spanish, but am I the person qualified to translate that document? I do it, and it’s full of errors and mistakes. We waste time; we waste energy, and I’m like, ‘Why am I doing this?’” she said.

This type of scenario directly impacts business goals. Not only have resources, time and productivity been wasted, but employees also may become disengaged.

“If you make assumptions about any group without really getting to know the individual at a personal level, you’re not maximizing the capabilities of the individual or the group,” Meibar said.

Further, organizations can risk arriving at the wrong conclusions if its employees make sweeping generalizations about groups of individuals.

“Organizations that allow their talent management processes to be biased by stereotyping risk not being able to assess and evaluate the talent that they have,” Prime said.

“That can create huge inefficiencies and cause the organization to be ineffective because if you can’t evaluate, you don’t know how to deploy, so the wrong people get promoted, the people who need to be promoted aren’t, they become demotivated and you can’t train the correct groups of people. Organizations need to try to avoid stereotyping and prevent bias from creeping into talent management processes because if they do, they can’t fully avail themselves of the best talent in the marketplace.”

What’s tricky is that stereotyping often occurs under the radar, so many organizations are under the false impression that their performance management processes are gender neutral.

“The intention is not to discriminate in application of those processes, but discrimination does occur, and that really speaks to why companies have to be proactive, putting in checks and balances to make sure that women and men have equal chances of succeeding, and that the organization really leverages the best of those women and men,” Prime said.

Thwarting Typecasting

Whether it’s intentional or not, stereotyping has the potential to adversely affect employee morale and performance.

“A team’s productivity is impacted, especially if it’s one person stereotyping another person with that same team,” Prime said. “It also drives workplace cliques. All of that impacts a person’s emotions, which directly links to them being able to perform. They’re thinking about the drama going on around them; it’s hard to focus on what they have to get done for their jobs.”

Paino said some of her previous employers hosted generational awareness meetings or training sessions during which they presented sweeping generalities of each generation’s characteristics - a format that only served to reinforce stereotypes.

Instead, she said companies that focus on team building activities to showcase how generations are similar might have greater success at helping different generations bond. Tactics to thwart typecasting are essential to move diversity - and the business - forward.

“At the end of the day, what you want to do through diversity and inclusion is truly improve processes, engagement and employee involvement, and you do that by getting to know them on a personal level, getting to know their skills without making assumptions,” Meibar said.

“It’s about developing the soft skills in individuals, especially the leaders because it’s a benefit for the company that you have the right people doing the right jobs, and they’re engaged in doing them.”

That’s why a significant aspect of Mattel’s internal leadership training is on honing soft skills.

“It’s all about maximizing the team, making sure that you, as a leader, are taking into consideration not only the objectives and goals of the team, but also the individuals,” Meibar said. “It’s all about making sure that you’re never making judgments based on your biases or based on your own beliefs.”

One technique leaders can leverage to ensure they judge each employee on his or her individual skills and merit is to encourage dialogue among teams. For instance, before a team of 10 begins work on a project, members can take a handful of minutes to get to know each other.

“I might speak Swahili, but people will not know unless they ask me about who I am,” Meibar said. “Every time we do training, we do little games - and at times people might think we’re being a little silly, but we ask, ‘What’s the first record you ever bought?’ or ‘What do you like to do on the weekend?’ Make sure you’re always maintaining a dialogue that’s beyond the project itself because that’s where the richness of contributions will come through.”

To reduce or prevent potential bias of stereotyping, some companies also put checks and balances in their performance management systems, Prime said.

“One company calls them talent challenge sessions, where people have to defend why they’re recommending John but not Sue for a promotion,” she said. “Research shows that when you have to explain and argue your choices, subjective factors and stereotyping are less likely to occur, so part of it is really encouraging people to think about their talent decisions and why they make recommendations for promotions.”

The Danger of Making Assumptions

Pigeonholing employees based on blanket assumptions because of their affiliation with a group - such as assuming all millennial employees are tech savvy - can have far-reaching consequences that include legal liability and adverse business impacts.

First, leaders may not just be starting with a false premise, they may be setting this employees up for failure, explained Kathleen McLeod Caminiti, partner with Fisher & Phillips LLP.

“It may adversely affect them because they may not have the level of skill you believe they have, which could lead to a skills gap that could affect their performance and ultimately business goals,” she said.

Conversely, when leaders make erroneous assumptions they may inadvertently underutilize segments of the workforce. For example, Caminiti said leaders may underestimate older workers’ skills by assuming that because someone is in their 40s or 50s, they are not tech savvy. “You may be leaving a lot of talent untapped because those people may have an interest or experience that you’re not taking advantage of as an employer,” she explained.

Underestimating workers’ skills or not evaluating exactly what those skills are also could lead to leaders making wrong decisions when setting up teams or establishing expectations on how employees should meet business goals.

“Evaluate all your employees based on their actual talent, actual experience, actual training,” she said. “If you don’t do that, it can lead to frustration in the workplace and morale problems, and it could also lead to missed business opportunities or unrealized business goals.”

If leaders rid themselves of stereotypes, it can enable organizations to reach their full potential. That’s why it’s important for diversity leaders to remain proactive in guarding against antiquated or limited thinking.

“Older worker stereotypes include not having stamina, assuming somebody is going to retire because they’re of a certain age, or assuming they might not want to work longer hours or might not want to travel,” Caminiti said. “All of those assumptions may be false, and in those circumstances you are holding back people to the extent that you’re denying them opportunities for advancement.”

In the same vein, if leaders base other business decisions - such as which individuals to let go in the event of a workforce reduction - on stereotypes as opposed to legitimate reasons, it could provide grounds for employees to take legal action.

Gender discrimination is another area where a leader’s stereotypes might expose a company to legal risk.

“Women of childbearing age, or who are married or have children - sometimes the stereotype is they won’t want to travel,” Caminiti said. “Leaders who find themselves saying or thinking, ‘Well, we can’t give women this promotion because they’ll need to take [time] off because of their kids; they don’t have the level of commitment that their male counterparts have’ may have a problem.”

This could lead to discrimination suits in addition to other potentially expensive legal missteps.

“Not only are there lawsuits that arise where managers are making employment decisions based upon stereotypes or preconceived notions as opposed to actual skills and performance, you have the potential for suits for hostile work environment and discrimination, pay disparity. Those types of lawsuits certainly lend themselves to situations where employees are not treated based upon objective performance data, but rather on stereotypes,” Caminiti said.

[About the Author: Deanna Hartley is an Associate Editor for Diversity Executive magazine.]

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Wed, 30 May 2012 15:40:00 +0800

Article: Four Steps to Manage Workplace Arguments

Tue, 29 May 2012 15:15:48 +0800

Four Steps to Manage Workplace Arguments
by Travis Bradberry | Talent Management

Arguments, disagreements and differences of opinion are unavoidable facts of working life. Our inability to see eye-to-eye is so central to the human condition that some clashes stem from our physiology more than our free will.

A recent study published in Current Biology that was conducted by the University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience found significant anatomical differences in the brains of liberals and conservatives that contributed to their opposing political beliefs. It appears the human race is built for conflict. So, what’s a talent manager to do?

When your opinions don’t mesh well with those of the person sitting across from you, the mark you leave on the situation comes from how well you understand and manage your emotions - not from what you say to prove your point. When emotions are allowed to run haywire during a disagreement, things discombobulate very quickly and the discussion goes nowhere.

From the boardroom to the break room, arguments will inevitably surface, and the key to enabling employees to handle these situations well is emotional intelligence, or EQ. Employees who are trained to argue with emotional intelligence will accomplish two things:

1. The argument itself will be far more rational and productive.
Removing their strong emotions from the equation by following the steps outlined below will keep them from fanning the flames of discord. Regardless of how agitated the other party is, when someone remains calm, people are forced to lean further in this direction than they would have otherwise.

2. The argument will do less damage to the working relationship.
Disagreements are fine, as long as they are conducted with consideration and respect. When someone explodes with emotion and says things that are better left unsaid, it has a lasting, negative impact on the relationship. However, if the person approached a disagreement with emotional intelligence, it has the opposite effect: It strengthens the relationship by showing the other person respect even when there’s disagreement with his or her opinion.

Talent managers can lead by example: When they find themselves in the middle of a disagreement, they can take the emotional high road for the greater good of the relationship. It’s crucial to avoid being defensive, remain open and practice the following strategies.

a) Ask good questions.
People want to be heard; if they don’t feel heard, frustration rises. Managers can beat frustration to the punch and ask the other party to elaborate on his or her point of view. Even if the other person has already gone on and on about his or her opinions, it’s critical to ask good questions about what he or she thinks and why he or she has reached these conclusions. Managers must control their own feelings as needed and focus on understanding where the other person is coming from. By asking for input, they will show that they care about the other person’s opinions and have an interest in learning more about his or her beliefs. This act establishes respect as the foundation for the discussion.

b) Resist the urge to plan comebacks and rebuttals.
A person’s brain cannot listen well and prepare to speak at the same time. Managers must use their self-management skills to silence their inner voice and direct their attention to the person while he or she is speaking. The key is to focus their energy on what’s required to engage in an emotionally intelligent discussion or argument. When they do the opposite - by focusing on winning the argument, or at least sneaking a barb in - they are engaging in an unproductive habit.

c) Help the other person understand your side of things.
Now it is the manager’s turn to help the other person understand his or her perspective. This is an important step because people are usually happy to voice their opinions, but they do nothing to bridge the gap between their perspective and how the other party sees things. Managers can describe their discomfort, thoughts, ideas and the reasons behind their thought process. They must communicate clearly and simply, and avoid speaking in circles or in rhetorical code. This ability to explain their thoughts may not win the other party over, but it will certainly garner their respect.

d) Keep in touch.
Any resolution to an argument is not going to come in the heat of the moment. Managers can demonstrate a high degree of emotional intelligence by checking in with the other person once the dust has settled. The idea here is to see if the other party is satisfied with how things are being handled and to determine if there are any new avenues both parties can explore to reach common ground.

[About the Author: Travis Bradberry is president and co-founder of TalentSmart, a provider of emotional intelligence tests and training products, and author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0.]

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Thu, 24 May 2012 16:58:00 +0800

Article: Perfecting Performance Management

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:21:01 +0800

Perfecting Performance Management
by Marc Effron | Talent Management

Few talent processes are as powerful or as widely despised as performance management. The steps to align employees with corporate goals, coach them to higher performance and assess their accomplishments often elicit an unending stream of complaints from managers and employees alike. Talent managers should ignore the siren’s calls to eliminate the performance review, and instead create a process that’s guided by science, easy to use and features clear accountability.

Thanks to 60 years of psychology research, we have information to set goals that create higher motivation and drive performance. Science tells us that:

1. More difficult goals produce higher performance:
We increase our effort as a goal becomes more challenging. The old performance management maxim of “three regular goals and a stretch goal” doesn’t cut it. Today it should be four stretch goals.

2. Goals motivate better when they coincide with self-interest:
When we believe a goal can help us earn, learn or realize other personal objectives, we’ll be more motivated to complete it. This doesn’t mean employees should set their own goals. In fact, allowing them to do so can easily reduce the power of the first point.

3. Fewer goals are better than many:
The more goals we have, the less effort we can give to each. Science doesn’t tell us the right number of goals, but my experience is few of us have more than five truly important goals in any given year.

Many parts of the typical performance management system add complexity to the manager’s life without adding value. You can eliminate many traditional bells and whistles to make your process easier and more efficient for your managers.

4. Encourage a one-page goal setting and review form:
We can all agree it’s not about the form, but a complex, difficult-to-use form can poison the process for both managers and employees. The only form elements supported by science are a goal statement, metrics and a section to evaluate results. Anything else you want to include should be considered guilty until you prove it innocent.

5. Kill the labels:
Fancy classifications such as “valued contributor” or “star performer” complicate the message you’re trying to send to employees. Simply tell them they exceeded, met or partially met their goals last year.

6. Precision does not equal accuracy:
Especially popular in scientific and engineering cultures, the precise, formulaic calculation of a performance score gives managers comfort but adds absolutely no value. It is impossible for a manager to accurately measure the difference between a 3.7 and a 3.8 performer. Eliminate the calculation, and force managers to consider the totality of accomplishments and assign a rating.

Even the most well-intentioned manager might not always complete performance management in the time and fashion you require. Two powerful levers can help.

a) Time-bomb communication:
We can help managers do the right thing by making our expectations visible. At key points in your process - goal setting, coaching, reviews - have your CEO or HR leader send a message to every employee covered by performance management detailing the process and expectation.

The message should describe the process, timing, what employees should expect from their manager and what managers should expect from employees. You’ve handed the manager a ticking time bomb and given him or her easy instructions to defuse it.

b) Forcing/guiding/managing a distribution:
Highly controversial but increasingly popular, providing strong guidance for performance distribution is a response to the chronic inflation of ratings seen in most companies. If properly challenging goals are set, a reasonable distribution should be achieved. But until managers are fully competent at this activity, the training wheels provided by managed distributions are a helpful tool.

Spend one hour today thinking about how you could decrease complexity, increase transparency or drive more accountability in your performance management process. You don’t need to redesign the entire process; simply chip away factors that are causing the most pain. It’s the most powerful thing you can do to improve your company’s performance.

[About the Author: Marc Effron is president of The Talent Strategy Group and author of One Page Talent Management.]

Article: Setting the Strategy Is Just the Beginning

Tue, 15 May 2012 18:15:50 +0800

Setting the Strategy Is Just the Beginning
by Ladan Nikravan | Chief Learning Officer

The execution of strategy is dependent upon executives and team members on the front line being clear about the organization’s priorities and how they must act to achieve the stated objectives. To be successful leaders, executives need to be as diligent in guiding strategy execution as they are at setting and communicating strategic direction.

“The classic pitfall in executing any kind of strategy is not properly engaging your leadership and broader employee population on what it is that you want them to do,” said Rommin Adl, executive vice president at BTS, a strategy implementation consultancy. “Lack of alignment, mindset and capability are leading barriers to effective execution. It is very straightforward: If your organization doesn’t get what you want them to do, [is] not passionate about doing it, and [does] not have the proper skills to execute, chances are your strategy is dead in the water.”

Despite the great amount of time and energy that goes into such strategy development, many companies have little to show for their efforts. Research by consultancy Marakon Associates has found that on average organizations only deliver 63 percent of the financial performance their strategies promise.

A 2007 study by OnPoint Consulting on the gap between strategy and execution reported that 49 percent of leaders surveyed perceived a gap between their strategies and execution. Of this group, 64 percent did not have full confidence that their company would be able to close the gap.

“A good strategy includes proximate objectives whose accomplishment lie within the organization’s capabilities,” said Richard Rumelt, author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. “That by itself is a huge step toward execution. When executives define strategy in terms of financial or other performance measures, the gap between these goals and their accomplishments is really a failure of strategy. However, it’s often blamed on execution.” Successfully achieving execution takes more than clarifying and communicating the organization’s strategic direction. A good business strategy also addresses problems and challenges.

“Too many so-called strategies are all hope and forward-looking projections,” Rumelt said. “A strategy acknowledges the frictions and difficulties. It is those difficulties [that] shape it.”

He added that a good strategy sets priorities as well. “A good strategy addresses the issue of focus or choice,” he said. “Many organizations try to ring many bells at once and consequently do not coordinate enough energy on any one bell to actually get a good, solid ring. Good strategy focuses energy on what is critical.”

In May, a survey by consultancy Aon Hewitt of 1,328 employers nationwide reported 56 percent of respondents indicating leaders play a vital role in meeting business goals and profitability targets and delivering service. Forty-four percent said they play a vital role in retaining talent. However, only 12 percent of respondents said their leaders are extremely effective at meeting business goals. Further, the survey discovered that almost half of the leaders surveyed do perceive a gap between their organizations’ ability to develop and communicate sound strategies and their ability to implement those strategies.

The leader’s job is to create the vision for the enterprise in a way that will engage its people’s imagination and energies. This gap is a hindrance to business performance, and the solution is additional learning.

Seventy one percent of respondents in a recent survey conducted by BTS and business association The Conference Board considered the biggest threats to strategy execution to be lack of understanding, commitment and skills.

According to BTS’ Adl, the way to build these skills is through learning initiatives that allow leaders to test the strategy implementation via hands-on experience.

“Through immersion in a risk-free environment, leaders can practice executing the company’s new strategy, make mistakes and gain firsthand experience in what superior execution looks and feels like,” Adl said. “The outcome is powerful alignment, ownership, motivation and confidence to make the strategy happen back on the job. Traditional event-based learning programs do not provide the opportunity to practice strategy execution, especially compared with applied experiential learning programs, but there may be an opportunity among learning and development practitioners to improve their business acumen and become better partners to senior executives in the strategy execution process.”

[About the Author: Ladan Nikravan is an associate editor of Chief Learning Officer magazine.]

Article: Doing Competencies Right

Mon, 14 May 2012 18:02:00 +0800

Doing Competencies Right
by Marc Effron | Talent Management

The field of talent management faces an interesting challenge. We should be fully equipped to solve any talent issue.

Yet, when corporate executives are surveyed about the state of their company’s talent, they’re decidedly unhappy. McKinsey, Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group each have found executives disappointed with the quality and depth of their company’s talent and its processes to build more. There seems to be a gap between our potential to deliver results and our actual impact.

Bridging that gap is the key to our long-term success, and we have a potentially powerful tool at hand to drive organization success - the behavioral competency model. If well-constructed, it should tell employees which behaviors are essential for corporate success in a simple and emotionally compelling way. Unfortunately, that’s an infrequent result. What’s not working?

The science behind competencies is extremely thin. Talent practices such as performance management rely on a strong foundation of academic research; competencies do not. Before we start development, we should define what we’re trying to accomplish. The purpose of competencies is to ensure employees’ behaviors support the business strategy. With that as the objective, we should identify the simplest possible way to achieve it.

Value must outweigh complexity. Managers are willing to use an HR process only if it adds more value to their life than it does complexity. That’s why the 12-competency, four-level, five-descriptors-per-level competency model is dead on arrival at most companies. That type of model might add some value, but it completely overwhelms managers, so they ignore it or do the minimum necessary to comply. Maintaining the value/complexity balance is your secret to designing a competency model that really works.

Create an effective competency model. Remember your business goal to ensure that employees’ behaviors support the business strategy. Then, do the following:

1. Listen to your senior team.
Interview your top team members using one simple question: Which three behaviors are most critical for our success in the next three to five years?

2. Identify the vital themes.
Review interview data to identify the four or five themes that emerge. Don’t frame those themes in HR speak, just capture sentiments as they were expressed. You’ll find two or three themes everyone agrees on and two or three more with some group support.

3. Write a short sentence that describes each theme.
Each sentence should capture the behaviors in the theme and also should use the language you use in your company; be intuitive and easily understood; cause an emotional connection to the company; and be applicable across all people practices.

Here is an example: “Hate bureaucracy and the nonsense that goes with it.” You read that and instantly you know what that behavior would look like. It causes a positive emotional connection to the company, as long as you hate bureaucracy. It uses the language of your organization. If your goal is to have employees’ behaviors support the strategy, sentences like that will provide 90 percent of what you need.

What to Do Next

Integrate into every HR process. Use the power of HR processes to reinforce the new behaviors. They should be part of selection, performance management, training, talent reviews and 360s.

Answer the question “Why should I?” You can hold employees accountable for these behaviors through performance management, talent reviews or 360s. But pick one area and build in consequences for not aligning with the model.

Revise them when the strategy changes. You’re trying to align behaviors with the strategy. When the strategy changes, so should the behaviors. The less structure you’ve built around them, the easier this will be.

What Not to Do Next

Define them by level. These behaviors should apply to employees throughout the organization. Measure the frequency with which someone demonstrates them.

Pay for them. Pay for results, not behaviors that enable results. “Some of the time” might be appropriate for managers and “all of the time” for SVPs.

If you can create this simple, compelling and business-driving competency model, you’ll lay a strong foundation for your talent processes and remind your executives of the true value of great talent management.

[About the Author: Marc Effron is president of The Talent Strategy Group and author of One Page Talent Management.]

Article: The Four Ps of High Performance

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:44:47 +0800

The Four Ps of High Performance
by Carol Morrison | Human Resource Executive Online

Just as marketers use four Ps for business-marketing strategies — price, product, place and promotion — employers can, and should, adopt a different list of Ps to become high-performing organizations.

Is there a business-school graduate who can’t recite the four Ps of the marketing mix in their sleep? Price, product, place and promotion remain as relevant today as they’ve always been, providing the framework that underlies organizational marketing strategies and programming.

But move over, marketing mix. A new survey reveals another set of four Ps — a “performance mix” that turns up among the winning practices of standout business organizations.

The Seattle-based Institute for Corporate Productivity brings together a fast-growing network of high-performance organizations (defined by their five-year achievements in revenue growth, market share, profitability and customer satisfaction).

Focusing its cutting-edge research on identifying the traits that differentiate those consistently high market performers from their less-successful counterparts, i4cp identified domains that it calls the hallmarks of high-performing companies: strategies, leadership, talent, culture and market focus.

In its 2011 High-Performance Organizations Survey, completed by 914 business leaders from organizations representing companies of varied industries and sizes, i4cp took a deep dive into the domains that characterize high performers.

Responses to questions within each of those defining core elements led to greater insight into top companies and how they function. In fact, the survey, which was conducted in conjunction with Human Resource Executive, revealed interactions among the domains that can be described by four Ps — a performance mix that high-performing organizations apply:

a) They take a proactive approach.
b) They strive to be predictive.
c) Their cultures are pervasive.
d) They reward performance.

Know Your Customers

Establishing a mutually rewarding and lasting relationship lies at the heart of good customer service and drives satisfaction and retention of those customers. Organizations that consistently perform well take a more assertive approach when it comes to getting to know the consumers of their good and services.

A number of survey inquiries underscore the differences in the ways high-performing organizations regard their customers and examine their needs. When compared with lower performers’ responses, significant gaps revealed that the high performers are much more likely to say that they:

a) Organize their internal processes to best meet customer needs,
b) Organize their functions and departments to maximize value to customers,
c) Aspire to be the best providers of value for their customers,
d) Use highly developed strategies to determine customer’s expectations, and
e) Communicate customer information internally so that employees can work more effectively.

Demonstrating that they take customer insight to the uppermost reaches of their firms, high performers also differ markedly from lower performers in describing their leaders as having in-depth knowledge of customers. Further, the top companies confirm that customer insights factor into their development of business strategy.

Look to the Future

High-performing organizations look ahead more than lower performers do, and they use predictive data to drive long-term orientations in multiple areas. They inform product and service design with predictive insights in order to meet customer needs over long time periods, and they identify and address future customer needs.

In fact, the survey respondents representing high performers told i4cp that they do a good job of assessing those future needs, and that their firms are committed to innovation and ready to meet new challenges.

The sense of organizations with workforces that are perpetually facing forward and determined to meet the future head-on is almost palpable in the survey results that separate the higher and lower performers. Top companies are far more likely to say they respond well to changes — those that directly affect the market, as well as the business environment in general.

Further, they see their cultures as being adaptive to market changes, a key trait of a company that is able to look ahead and navigate the volatility of our risk-laden marketplace, making the kind of rapid shifts that turn potential perils into profits.

High-performing companies carry through that penchant for the predictive when it comes to process design, too. They are far more likely to say they craft organizational processes for flexibility, along with efficiency and effectiveness.

Certainly, designing for process flexibility requires prediction and anticipation of changes in technology, customer preferences, supply chains, talent capabilities, market circumstances and the many other factors that shape the business environment.

One Culture for All

What, exactly, is a pervasive culture? As they reviewed the survey data, researchers at i4cp discovered that high market performers differ from less-successful organizations in their answers to questions that, collectively, paint a clear picture: The top firms present the same face internally that they present externally. Their culture is porous. Their values permeate the organization.

Together, these are empowering characteristics because they mean that the brand identity the world sees is consistent with the employee value proposition and the strategies that define and achieve business objectives.

How do we know that high-performing organizations have such pervasive cultures? In the area of market focus, the trait is underscored by high performers’ affirmation that their brand “accurately reflects how we operate as an organization.” When the topic shifts to strategy, gaps in the responses of higher and lower performers offer even stronger signals. “Our organization’s publicly stated philosophy is consistent with its strategy,” say the top firms. They are also more likely to describe their strategies as “clear and well thought out.”

They rest assured that their employees understand the strategy because it’s clearly communicated to all levels of the organization. Further, workers have line-of-sight understanding of the ways strategy affects their individual roles. In a pervasive culture, everyone is on the same page. They know who they are, what they’re about and where they’re going.

A key facilitator of pervasive cultures is communication, and high performers’ responses demonstrate that they get this. Leaders in the top companies deliver specific feedback to their employees, and they make sure it’s done in a timely manner. They clearly communicate what the organization’s goals are and encourage workers to maximize their productivity.

For their part, employees in high-performing organizations enjoy open communication with the managers and leaders who have decision-making authority. Workers feel free to talk about company policies, spending and strategies. High-performing companies make sure their employees get information they need about customers so that they can do their jobs better.

The top firms also are more likely to keep up with advances in technology, enabling faster and more flexible communication across their organizations and more efficient knowledge management. The powerful result is higher levels of employee engagement, a recognized component of individual and organizational performance.

Reward the Performers

In companies that make their strategies transparent and topics for open and ongoing discussion across all organizational levels, expectations and objectives become clear. Because workers in such high-performing organizations understand the connection between their jobs and business strategies, the behaviors needed to accomplish company objectives are more readily apparent, too. That makes it easier to ensure that workers are rewarded for their positive actions that contribute to organizational performance.

High-performing companies outstrip lower performers in their approaches to performance management, the survey results confirm. Top organizations have good systems in place for gauging workers’ performance, and their appraisals are based on objective data instead of managers’ judgments. Performance-management processes are consistent across the organization, too. Perhaps most importantly, high market performers go the extra mile and evaluate the quality of their performance appraisals to ensure that the system functions fairly and effectively.

Responses to the survey statement that “our compensation and rewards system supports employee performance” reflected one of the larger gaps noted between high- and low- performing organizations. The top firms understand that reinforcing desired behaviors in both monetary and non-monetary ways can generate powerful results, and they act on that knowledge.

High-performing organizations recognize that employees’ capabilities drive performance. Those companies make sure that performance appraisals include plans for workers’ development during the near term. They give employees specific goals for learning and skill-building, incorporating their progress toward those objectives into the next appraisal period. The short-term focus keeps development front of mind and ties it to performance.

Not only do the high-performing organizations have strong mechanisms in place to track and improve individual performance, but they also confirm that they track and assess overall organizational performance. That devotion to measurement and dedication to continuous improvement ultimately produce tangible results in revenue generation, profitability, customer satisfaction and market share.

Blending the Elements

The four Ps of the performance mix are not independent elements. Rather, they interact closely. For instance, it’s easy to see that developing proficiencies in using predictive data combines effectively with high-performing organizations’ keen interest in uncovering and anticipating customers’ needs and preferences. The energy and synergy created by each feeding and driving the other makes for a powerful fusion of strategic actions that lead to strong outcomes for companies and customers, alike.

Obviously, some organizations will be better at rewarding performance, while others have more finely honed capabilities in gathering, analyzing and applying predictive data or in aligning rewards with performance. Within and across organizations, there will be fluctuations and differences in what constitutes the “best” blend of the four elements. Organizational values, business objectives, missions, leadership and other factors can shape the degree to which any of the four Ps is emphasized and leveraged at any given time.

But overall, top companies that achieve consistent success in the quest to reach the pinnacle of their industries demonstrate that high performance is driven, in part, by four potent ingredients: a proactive approach to understanding customers, an intense desire to predict and plan for future conditions, a pervasive culture that signals consistent values, and rewards systems that directly support and reinforce performance. Taking command of the four Ps and balancing them to achieve optimal organizational success across the high-performance domains — of strategy, leadership, talent, culture and market focus — becomes the challenge that tops leaders’ agendas.

[About the Author: Carol Morrison is a senior research analyst with the Seattle-based Institute for Corporate Productivity, specializing in organizational leadership, change, strategy and talent management.]

Article: The Science of 360s

Thu, 10 May 2012 15:42:05 +0800

The Science of 360s
by Marc Effron | Talent Management

As talent professionals, we faithfully believe that 360 feedback will help managers change their behaviors or at least increase their motivation to change. Unfortunately, those expectations are completely unrealistic. To actually get great results from 360s, we need to focus on what science says works and forget most of what we believe is true, including:

Feedback does not lead to change. Many HR professionals believe that simply receiving feedback causes sustained behavior change, but there is no science that supports it. Research says feedback often creates negative emotional reactions that inhibit change and, in one-third of cases, actually worsens performance.

Gaps between self-perceptions and others’ perceptions do not motivate change. Many of us believe that when confronted with a gap between how we see ourselves and how others see us, we will try to close that gap. While this is an intuitive model of human behavior, it’s not supported by science.

Research says that when confronted with that perception gap, we will diligently try to excuse it or explain its cause. We aren’t resisting feedback; we’re experiencing what’s called cognitive dissonance. Our mind works hard to preserve our carefully developed self-image. When feedback conflicts with that image or could cast us in a negative light, the natural reaction is to reject it.

Most of us chronically overrate our capabilities, which means cognitive dissonance only increases when we see our self-ratings compared to others’.

Comparison to norms isn’t helpful. Data comparing you to other 360 participants don’t provide guidance or motivation for change. If you score below others, cognitive dissonance inhibits action. When our ratings compare favorably to norms, we don’t experience any positive emotions; we simply don’t experience any negative ones. The science is clear: We respond best when given information about only our behaviors, not when those behaviors are compared to others.

More information is not more helpful. Typical 360 reports have more than 50 pages filled with charts, graphs, norms, bars, icons and comments. It’s nearly impossible for someone to tell what they should do and how they should do it.

Research says that how we experience feedback predicts how much we’ll change. A 360 that challenges us with negative feedback or overwhelms us with information creates a barrier to change.

To make 360s work, we need to find the simplest science-based way to help managers change their behaviors. And because processes alone don’t ensure successful outcomes, we need to establish clear accountability for results and make the process transparent.

1. Focus on the vital few:
Help managers quickly understand their two or three priorities for change by clearly stating these in the report’s first few pages.

2. Don’t rate them; tell them how to change:
Telling a manager they scored 3.5 out of 5 on strategic thinking leaves them clueless about how to improve. Instead, include direct statements of exactly how to change that behavior.

3. Don’t include normative data or self-ratings:
It sounds like heresy, but the science described above is clear. Don’t let your curiosity about how you compare to others get in the way of actually changing your behaviors.

4. Use transparency to drive accountability:
A misguided orthodoxy in some HR circles says that we shouldn’t consider 360 behavioral data when making personnel decisions, including promotions and assignments. But using that data is actually the most powerful way to drive accountability for change. While managers may ignore HR’s requests to behave differently, knowing that their next promotion depends on it creates an entirely different level of commitment.

In those situations, the organizations have known how those managers have behaved for many years. They’ve been talked about behind closed doors, around the water cooler and have likely already affected organization decisions, but now that they’ve been recorded on a few sheets of paper, they’ll be part of a more fact-based discussion.

Realizing the true potential of 360 feedback requires doing less, not more. If we focus on the core science and make the process easy for managers to use, we’ll finally get the return on investment that we know is possible.

[About the Author: Marc Effron is president of The Talent Strategy Group and author of One Page Talent Management.]

Article: Lies About Learning

Fri, 04 May 2012 10:19:48 +0800

Lies About Learning
by Edward Trolley | Chief Learning Officer

In 2006, I joined a group of esteemed industry experts who collaborated with the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) to publish a book about corporate learning. In it, we explained common lies regarding learning and focused specifically on lies around managing the learning function.

In that regard, have any substantial changes happened in the last five years? Not enough, in my opinion. The latest research from NIIT reveals only 12 percent of companies have learning programs driven by business goals and can demonstrate quantifiable business value. It seems the more things change in business, the more things stay the same in the training and learning department.

This brings us to three common lies about corporate learning:

1. Everything is under control.
The investment value equation for most learning programs is broken. Money - as much as $1,000 per employee per year - is going out the door to hire dedicated learning teams and put people in classes. Yet businesses are not seeing the value from these investments. Many seem to think that just because learning is happening, everything is under control, but it’s not. Organizations don’t have answers to a key set of questions about corporate learning:

a) How much is our organization spending on learning enterprise-wide?
b) Are our learning programs making a difference? If so, how do we know that?
c) What expectations do our customers have of our learning programs?
d) Are our learning programs adequately leveraging our people, processes and technologies?
e) Is our learning portfolio sufficiently addressing how to run the business and advance the strategy?
f) Are we maximizing the amount of time our people spend on activities which add value?
g) Are we as efficient and effective as possible?
h) What are the quantifiable results and outcomes of the work we do?

It is problematic if even one of these questions cannot be answered with certainty, but a majority of organizations have trouble with some or all of them. In the absence of clear, valid answers to these questions, the learning function cannot successfully help business owners create business value and deliver business results.

2. Outsourcing learning is not a good business strategy.
It’s common for leaders to think an outsourcing vendor cannot know their business as well as internal employees do. This is a smoke screen thrown up by those who simply don’t want to consider outsourcing. I thought the same thing 18 years ago when I faced my first outsourcing project at DuPont, but I learned that my vendor partner was a quick study, and that I really didn’t know my business very well.

People also think they will lose control if they outsource. On the contrary, most organizations experience a single point of accountability, improved control and final approval.

3. It’s all about learning.
Here’s the truth - it’s not at all about learning - it’s really about results. Good learning that doesn’t deliver any business value is pretty much irrelevant. Business executives expect it, but they aren’t actually getting that business value, as evidenced by a 2009 research study from the ROI Institute: “96 percent of executives want to see the business impact of learning, yet only 8 percent receive it now; 74 percent of executives want to see ROI data, but only 4 percent have it now.”

So, why aren’t more learning programs structured to prove the ROI of what they do? It is clear that the practices involved in running a learning program like a business are directly linked to delivering value to an enterprise; it doesn’t exist for its own sake. In the latest research NIIT sponsored with Corporate University Xchange (CorpU), five must-dos for learning programs were identified:

1. Run at the speed of business.
2. Be lean and agile.
3. Ensure a laser focus on the business to drive business value.
4. Provide data-driven analytics to prove business value.
5. Drive innovation.

Do these five things and banish the other lies, and you can develop an advantage in the industry by creating some truth for your business.

Here’s the truth - it’s not at all about learning - it’s really about results.

[About the Author: Ed Trolley is the vice president of managed training services for NIIT and co-author of Running Training Like a Business: Delivering Unmistakable Value.]

Article: Building an Ownership Culture

Wed, 02 May 2012 10:17:24 +0800

Building an Ownership Culture
by Mike Prokopeak | Talent Management

Companies whose managers have more ownership of talent management processes are more effective. And talent managers who focus on acting as stewards rather than owners of their people processes can reap the benefits.

In April, advisory and consulting firm The Hackett Group released an analysis of 200 companies for its annual HR Book of Numbers. The data from top performing companies showed that HR partners with business line managers on change management, organizational effectiveness and cultural alignment activities 69 percent of the time, compared to 32 percent at their lower-performing peers.

In performance management, that rate is even higher. At high-performing companies, HR partners with line managers 73 percent of the time versus 38 percent at other companies. That partnership, and the greater ownership of key talent management processes such as employee development and performance management that goes with it, benefits the business and the individual employee, said Brian Hults, vice president of global organization and people development at Newell Rubbermaid.

“There’s a hard benefit in terms of ensuring alignment of the organization’s objectives, [ensuring] resources [are] allocated properly and that type of thing, and then there’s a soft benefit in terms of substantially improving employee engagement in the organization,” Hults said.

In principle, having line managers take greater ownership of talent management makes sense to boost individual and organizational performance. In practice, it is necessary to deliver results in a time of tightened HR budgets and lean talent management departments.

“The truth is there just aren’t enough of us in the organization to effectively manage performance and development of all these people,” Hults said. “In our organization our ratio of HR professionals to operating managers is over 100 to 1. No HR person can manage performance and development for a hundred people. The operating manager has to do that.”

Having line managers step up also ensures that managers don’t abdicate their responsibility for people management to an often-distant HR organization and are therefore more effectively leading business operations.

Centralizing Process, Decentralizing Ownership

At Newell Rubbermaid, a $5.8 billion producer of consumer and commercial products including brands such as Rubbermaid, Sharpie, Levolor, Paper Mate and Goody with more than 22,000 employees, Hults and the central talent management team work with HR generalists embedded within the company’s three core product groups to implement processes.

“Our human resource philosophy or approach to these things is we develop them centrally, then decentralize them to the extreme,” Hults said. “The generalists take the lead role in educating our operating partners on execution, and they’re executed via the operating partners.”

For this approach to be successful business unit leaders need to take ownership of management processes for their employees.

“That means everything from managing their performance, managing their development, helping them with their career aspirations - all of that stuff put together is critical in terms of engaging people and developing them to their fullest potential so they can be successful in their current roles and in their future,” Hults said.

The level of ownership can vary depending on the capabilities and proclivities of any leader. To counteract this variance, Hults said the most effective HR generalists at Newell Rubbermaid embed performance management and development into the “operating rhythms” of a business. In one business unit, the HR generalist meets monthly with the division president and senior staff to review employee performance and development.

“It’s reinforcing the message that the onus is on them to execute the processes she’s helping them learn and manage and also quality checking to be sure they’re being executed effectively,” he said.

Hults said successful execution of the basics, such as reviewing objectives, evaluating employee reviews and preparing leaders for objective-setting and performance management meetings is about 90 percent of what’s needed, but those processes are often ignored in the hectic pace of day-to-day management.

Regular meetings are a reminder and useful quality check on talent management. They give HR managers the opportunity to offer critical feedback and advice, such as ensuring employee performance objectives and required behaviors are clearly set and defined. Effective business ownership of talent management is more than just regular meetings and reminders, however. Busy operating managers focused on growth and revenue need help to manage their people in the form of easily executable processes and procedures.

“One of the things my department does … is we give people really streamlined tools [and] templates,” Hults said. “We do a tremendous amount of training around all these processes - the idea being to enable our operating partners to execute these processes in as efficient and effective a manner as possible.”

That means stripping out clutter, removing complicated issues such as compensation from succession planning and focusing on key roles, such as identifying the strengths and weaknesses of incumbents, determining successors and what needs to be done to get them ready.

“That has tremendous face validity for our operating partners because they can directly see how this process helps them in terms of filling their key roles over time as they come open with quality candidates,” Hults said.

Boston-based IT storage company EMC takes it a step further. Employee learning and development is structured as a partnership between development experts and business leaders.

“They view us as a trusted adviser, and they view the education function at EMC as theirs,” said Tom Clancy, vice president of education services and productivity for the company. “We’re not some training organization that’s over in the corner taking orders. We are fully engaged, fully immersed into the business.”

EMC ensures alignment by having business leaders like Clancy, a veteran of the company’s sales department, run employee development. This approach creates a two-way partnership where learning and development experts teach business leaders to effectively manage employee development and business people keep development focused on the organization’s needs.

“The business people taught the learning people how to be better aligned and how to meet audience requirements,” Clancy said. “It was really a teamwork approach.”

That close alignment of employee learning and development ensures talent management produces results and raises its profile within the organization.

“We’ve built it in such a way that it’s really their education organization,” Clancy said. “They’re making the investments, and they expect to have a huge ROI on education.”

The Benefits of Greater Ownership

In addition to better alignment with corporate objectives, business manager ownership of critical talent management processes brings additional benefits, such as more effective performance management.

“When you think about performance management in its purest sense, it’s really an organization development activity to ensure that resources and people are effectively aligned to the strategic plan of the business,” Hults said. “By having your operating leaders own the cascading of objectives through the organization, you optimize that alignment.” Business managers have a far deeper understanding of each employee’s performance relative to objectives than an HR person who is not engaged directly in the work. That closer connection results in better feedback.

“It’s really a problem-solving system and a performance improvement system so the operating managers and the employees can talk about, ‘What are my objectives, what am I doing today, how’s it going, and how can we as a team, the leader and the associate, be more effective in the execution of these objectives,’” Hults said.

Greater manager ownership also enhances the organization’s ability to respond to rapid change.

“The only way you can do that is to have strong alignment with the business,” Clancy said. “We knew that right from the start, so we made sure we put the right people in place that were interfacing with the business units so we could truly understand what their requirements are.”

At EMC, that alignment and focus resulted in higher customer service scores. EMC’s education organization ranks at the top of customer ratings for loyalty and impacts the company’s Net Promoter Score, a measure of how likely customers are to recommend EMC to others. According to Clancy, customers who receive training from EMC are seven times more likely to recommend the company than those who don’t use its education services.

While talent managers should work to build ownership of strategic HR processes among business managers, that doesn’t mean they forfeit responsibility. There’s still a pivotal role to be played.

Assessment and evaluation in particular require the kind of special expertise only experienced talent managers can provide. “It’s one of the more difficult and technically complex areas of human resources and one where some gaps are pretty evident,” Hults said.

While the gaps are relatively easy to work through, it’s important to have expertise to determine the development required to turn a person into a general manager or group president, for example.

“That’s one area where in certain situations you may want to bring in experts within the organization or outside the organization to help the operating leaders,” Hults said.

In addition to providing clear benefits for employee engagement and organizational and individual performance, greater business ownership of talent management processes positions HR as a talent consultant that can help business leaders focus on critical imperatives.

“The big criticism of HR - and in a lot of instances it’s warranted - [is] it’s HR for HR’s sake,” Hults said. “We’re more concerned with the functioning of our internal processes and policies to serve our own needs versus putting in place processes and systems and then working to support the success of our operating leaders.”

Decentralizing processes and building ownership among managers raises a talent manager’s profile and casts him or her in a new, positive light with business managers. “They can see the HR person as a supporter of them in terms of the effective execution of these processes, supporting their personal success and the success of their operating unit,” Hults said. “That’s a powerful combination.”

[About the Author: Mike Prokopeak is vice president and editorial director at Talent Management magazine.]

Article: Your Brain on Vacation

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:48:28 +0800

Your Brain on Vacation
by Natalie Morera | Chief Learning Officer

Put on those sunglasses and go explore the new sights and sounds of an unknown territory during vacation - because it’s going to help the learning process.

The brain is interested in reconstructing environments and is always looking for the surprising, unusual or different, explained Michael M. Merzenich, chief scientific officer of Posit Science, a brain fitness programs company.

“You can say that taking a holiday is a little bit like going back to childhood, when the world was full of wonder and everything you saw was full things that you hadn’t expected or seen before, you had to calibrate it in your brain,” Merzenich said.

As people age, less and less attention is paid to details in the world. Therefore, keeping a childlike attitude is important - it’s one of the reasons children learn so much, he explained.

“It’s really important that we be challenged about that every so often, that we’re reminded to pay attention, that we’re really engaged again,” he said.

The brain is constructed to be alert and to go into a “special epoch” when what is seen is really interesting or surprising.

“One of the things that happens in your everyday life is that things can become so predictable, so controlled, and you can live a little bit of a dream-like life,” Merzenich said. “Our environments after all are constructed so that we are relatively rarely surprised by what’s happening in them.”

Routines that people develop can bring down their states of alertness, but every time a person takes a vacation to a place away from their immediate environment, it’s healthy. “The more distant, the more different they are, the more full of surprises they are, the more wonderful that is, the more positive that is for our brain,” Merzenich said.

The brain controls learning while controlling how bright, alert and engaged a person feels. It tends to become activated the more it’s stimulated and exercised.

“Part of maintaining your basic vitality is contributing in a very fundamental way to sustaining learning rates,” Merzenich said. “In a sense, the more you engage your brain in ways that stimulate it, the more you’re doing to maintain your capacity to learn and to improve. It’s actually right at the heart of maintaining yourself in a fundamental sense.”

Though a vacation may feel like a break, it’s actually a time when the brain is most active. In terms of how often a person needs a break, it really depends on the nature of the tasks they perform. Repetitive and dull tasks typically prompt the need to take breaks, Merzenich explained.

“If you look at some elemental learning exercises, the strongest learning actually happens in the first minute - after five or six or seven minutes, you’re actually waning,” he said. Every seven minutes or so, the learning efficiency actually decreases.

Ideally, individuals shouldn’t have to deal with the same type of tasks over and over again. “If you really had enough variation in the kind of problems you’re trying to deal with or solve throughout the day, then you’re energized all day long,” he said.

Take, for instance, a February 2011 study, which found judges were more lenient to prisoners who appeared before them earlier in the day. As the day proceeded and lunch time neared, the leniency of sentences dropped until the judge took a break. Once the judge took a break, leniency went back up.

It doesn’t matter if the break involves eating lunch or jet-setting 1,200 miles away, the brain needs it.

“You could think also to encourage people to travel in their own environment by opening up their eyes and brains to the wonders that are actually out there all around them,” Merzenich said.

He recommends trying to reconstruct one’s neighborhood by memory and then venturing to see how much was detailed correctly.

“Most people are pretty surprised by what they didn’t remember or what they could not reconstruct mentally even literally in their own front yard,” Merzenich said.

Adults may not have enough moments to stimulate and engage themselves, but there’s a need to seek those opportunities out. It’s important for individuals not to sleepwalk through life, but instead to pay attention to the world around them - even if it’s not in a vacation setting.

“A lot of people can’t afford to travel as much as would be good for them to do, but they don’t really have to do that,” Merzenich said. “They can look around and live life again in the actual physical environment in which they live.”

[About the Author: Natalie Morera is an associate editor at Chief Learning Officer magazine.]

Article: The Sum of Many Talented Parts

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:20:02 +0800

The Sum of Many Talented Parts
by Kellye Whitney | Talent Management

Holding company Marsh & McLennan Cos. has roughly 50,000 employees globally and is composed of four different operating organizations: Marsh, an insurance broker, Guy Carpenter, a risk reinsurance specialist, Mercer, an HR consulting firm, and Oliver Wyman, a management consulting firm.

As vice president and global head of talent management, Arturo Poire runs talent strategy for the entire enterprise. He said the systemic use of development and performance management practices, workforce analytics and a new focus on social media tools are helping to create coherence between the companies and expand communication between all of its leaders.

TM: Describe your company’s approach to talent management.

Poire: We are basically four companies in one, and our strategy has to account for that. There is a good level of decentralization that goes on, so each operating company has its own model when it comes to talent management. At the same time we have a large umbrella because we are an intellectual capital company, so there are certain processes and programs that run across the company.

Our company focuses on performance management and talent to a very big extent. We have a very strong performance management process that cuts across all the different operating companies. We make sure that we have consistency in terms of language, we share the same systems and platforms for that process, and in the past few years we’ve been working very hard on talent reviews, succession management and leadership development. We have meetings with the enterprise CEO once a year to review the top talent across the organization. We also have meetings with top functional leaders, CFO, head of HR, head of legal, head of technology, to look at the functional talent across all of the operating companies. That’s what I’m building now, programs that cut across the enterprise in terms of leadership development and managerial skills with a common language and approach for talent management. Much of what I do is leverage what we have internally, learn from each
other’s best practices and try to reuse things that have been developed in other companies. You have measurement processes - performance management, talent review - then you apply the action - leadership development and learning strategy.

TM: How are those different performance measures linked to strategic objectives?

Poire: We have a common set of competencies, which have been designed with the strategic objectives in mind. What we’re building heavily now is workforce analytics, the tools and instruments to measure the impact of all the actions we are taking, the evolution of our workforce effectiveness and efficiency, and we’re trying to create consistencies in how data is produced, analyzed, and how we gather information through different processes such as our colleague survey, internal labor market analysis or our talent reviews. We try to analyze and combine all of those to make sure we link the behaviors we ask our colleagues to exhibit to the actual results.

If you take a 10-year cut of our history, you’ll see this is a company that was extremely successful. [We went] through a period of crisis around 2004 with some regulatory problems and then into a little bit of a tailspin. If you look at the past three years, which coincides with the tenure of Brian Duperreault, our CEO, you see a steady improvement in every single measure, and that coincides with a strong focus on our main asset, our human capital. When you put our financial performance side by side with the investments we’ve made in talent management strategy, you’ll see those two lines coincide.

TM: What other challenges impact talent at Marsh & McLennan?

Poire: Our structure is a big challenge - that we are four different companies - and that’s a very important part of our culture. I am driving for coherence, for common language, but I have to be careful to respect the individual businesses’ strategic objectives and the company landscape that they face. I have to allow them to do what they have to do to achieve goals. Of course, the fact that we’re a global company with more than 100 countries also creates its own dynamic. Probably for the first time in history you have the emerging markets being very healthy, growing very fast, enjoying the benefits of progress, and then you see the more developed world struggling with financial problems. How you structure your colleague-value proposition, how you design your compensation strategy needs to adjust for that new world.

The other challenge we’re facing that I see as one of the hot topics is engagement. We’re putting a lot of effort, focus and money there. We’ve started doing colleague surveys on a more regular basis. When the other companies are at the top and then go through a crisis, it impacts the morale of your colleagues. Making them feel that they belong to something bigger, something positive, it’s worth making sacrifices. The benefits will come, but it’s tough. What’s happening now for many companies, ours included, is the economic slowdown in the world has made it more challenging for companies to reward colleagues the way they want. Typically you end up asking your colleagues to do a lot more with less. I’m spending a lot of my time trying to [figure out], what is it you can do to motivate your colleagues in the right way? The fact that you have multiple generations of workers sharing the workspace makes it a little bit more difficult because what motivates
Generation X is not the same thing that engages baby boomers, and it’s definitely not the same thing that will engage your Generation Y or millennials.

TM: How does the company promote workforce performance?

Poire: Learning and development is a key aspect, but it’s not the only one. For example, in the insurance services side our business is very, very regulated. You need to have a robust learning strategy and structure because you need to satisfy regulators because of licenses and all of that. Then you have technical learning. When it comes to leadership development, our companies are at different areas of evolution. Some, like Mercer, have done amazing work to create a strong curriculum that goes from first stage manager to becoming a leader, and I’m trying to leverage that for some of the other companies. Oliver Wyman also has a very strong focus on leadership and management behavior. The other companies are following suit.

Our learning strategy is tied to our objectives, but we’re also trying to find other ways that you develop leaders. It’s not just by participating in a classroom. That’s why the talent review process is key. We’ve launched 360-degree feedback, multi-rater reviews for all of our leaders across the different operating companies where they can actually get feedback on their leadership style, and we’re looking at that to create common trends and then to see what kinds of tools and solutions we can create. In addition, we’re creating a program that will allow colleagues to have more on-the-job-type development through assignments and working on cross-company projects with colleagues and leaders from other parts of the organization. They can not only make connections and learn about other parts of the company but also learn new behaviors by looking at how others behave.

I recently did a survey of our talent management philosophy with leaders of my organization and one of the things they said loud and clear was one of the strongest ways to develop leaders is by having them have experience through special projects or assignments and giving them the opportunity to receive feedback. Our talent management strategy is moving to make sure we are aligned to that, that the solutions we design are more about real application of learning versus the more theoretical approach you see in other places. Lastly, we are using social media to communicate with each other, share ideas and teach each other in a more effective way. Through that we expect to get more real-time information on issues, concerns and feedback for the leaders of our organization. We’re trying to attack this from multiple points.

TM: What does your social media use consist of? How does it play out exactly?

Poire: We are investing in a new platform. One of the operating companies, Marsh, is leading the way on this. That platform, which is up and running right now, is a lot more than a LinkedIn. Imagine a virtual university where you enroll your leaders to become teachers, create online classes, colleagues can attend those classes, share feedback and have real dialogue with those teachers. We’re expanding that technology to the different operating companies.

We have also revamped our intranet to enable more real-time conversations with our colleagues. We want companies to be engaged in advancing the company’s strategy not only by doing their jobs and doing them very well but also by leading in something that goes beyond day-to-day work. We’re going to create message boards, which we’ve done in the past, where we ask colleagues for cross-company goals, ideas to advance the company strategy, and based on the recommendations we’re going to bring them back to our colleagues so they can incorporate the goals into the annual planning process. It’s all about leveraging technology, but also changing the mind-set in terms of how you communicate with colleagues in a more fluid and active way.

TM: What’s the next for Marsh & McLennan’s talent efforts?

Poire: The focus for this year goes back to this emergence of different types of conversations with colleagues. We’re going to invest more in that as well as in social media tools. My focus will be to continue building organizational coherence and making sure we have processes that are aligned to talent across the enterprise. The other big one is workforce analytics. We’ve done a lot of work in the last two years to improve the quality of data and the depth of analysis, and we are working more on that. Our company’s growing. We’re turning to new markets, new segments, so things look very bright. To be successful our talent strategy has to be at the center of it.

[About the Author: Kellye Whitney is managing editor for Talent Management magazine.]

Article: The New Learning Composition

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:56:49 +0800

The New Learning Composition
by Cushing Anderson | Chief Learning Officer

Staff sizes are expanding for learning organizations, as is the impact of the learning function on business strategy. More importantly, the latest research from Chief Learning Officer magazine’s Business Intelligence Board (BIB) indicates the function will have a critical role to play in organizational efforts to bounce back post-economic crisis.

Every other month, IDC surveys Chief Learning Officer’s BIB on a variety of topics to gauge the issues, opportunities and attitudes that are important to senior learning executives. In March, L&D staffing data revealed enterprise learning staffs are adjusting well now that the recession is over, sales are increasing and companies are refocusing on growth. However, despite a strong belief that learning is critical to organizational success, there is a disconnect between learning’s perceived impact and its actual position as a business solution provider amidst key stakeholders.

A Critical Role to Play

IDC’s “Impact of the Downturn” research from October 2009 revealed some 80 percent of organizations polled thought learning and development plays a moderate to significant role in helping organizations achieve their strategic plans. Chief Learning Officer’s BIB research in 2009 and 2010 echoed that sentiment, revealing that while learning organizations were busy tightening their own belts, they also redoubled their efforts to ensure the workforce was prepared to execute on strategic imperatives. Strategies varied among hunkering down, repositioning or taking advantage of the downturn to push the learning/business agenda.

Depending on the strategy, learning leaders believe their organizations have a greater or lesser ability to influence strategic outcomes. When the enterprise hunkers down, more than a third of CLOs in the 2011 BIB L&D staffing study think they will have no role in helping the organization weather the crisis aside from their ability to tighten their own belts and shift from more classroom formats to more online or self-paced learning.

When the enterprise is positioning for future growth, 65 percent of CLOs believe they will have a significant role to play and only 10 percent believe they will have no role. In forward-thinking strategies those roles include helping communicate the repositioning strategy and to not only prep key job roles with development options to enhance their skill sets, but also helping front-line employees to maximize their capabilities and perhaps develop those needed to ascend to higher ranks.

When organizations attempt to aggressively grow, 60 percent of learning organizations believe they will have a moderate role and the remaining 40 percent believe they will have a significant role to play in helping to achieve the stated strategy. Overall, learning organizations can play a large role in facilitating a winning organizational strategy if development options are completely aligned with growth objectives. Further, it appears the more dramatic the organizational change, the greater role the learning and development organization has to play.

Going forward, a key imperative for learning leaders must be to ensure their ability to play a significant role in helping the enterprise meet its objectives. Otherwise, the CLO will preside over an organization ripe for trimming at the first sign of organizational stress.

New Players on the Stage

Since 2006 the learning and development staff mix has changed. As a result of increased focus on learning strategy, organizational development and performance, learning-related positions have become an increasingly meaningful component in many organizations. That is a benefit to the L&D profession and to the organizations they serve.

In the last four years, there has been a significant shift away from content development and use of instructional designers. That’s likely because technology and tools have helped improve the efficiency of learning teams. Other trends, such as shorter course lengths and more rapid course development approaches, have reduced the need for content developers by half since 2006.

The trend toward online learning hasn’t had the impact some observers expected, however. CLOs report the percentage of their staff members who are instructors actually has increased slightly since 2006.

Also somewhat contradictory is that while technology is playing an increasing role in learning - for instructor-led training, self-paced instruction, content development and facilitation of social learning experiences - the percentage of technology specialists has declined in most learning organizations. This may signal a shift in responsibility for both technology management and learning administration, both of which saw a comparable percentage increase since 2006.

Regardless of the economic recovery or the ability of the learning organization to help achieve strategic initiatives, the overall size of learning and development organization has remained relatively unchanged.

From November 2008 to mid-2010, learning organizations lost about 10 percent of their staff. The ratio of L&D staff of the broader enterprise is highly variable. Before 2008, the percentage of employees in large organizations who were L&D staff could be close to 0.5 percent - with a small number of L&D professionals serving a large employee base - or in smaller organizations it could have been as high as 3 percent.

In late 2010, those ratios were slightly lower. Learning organizations’ staff may become slightly smaller in 2011 and beyond because any operational shift the L&D organization instituted during the crisis - in delivery or development efficiency or organization consulting staffing - is unlikely to be undone.

Despite slight changes, organizations that do not think they have an appropriate level of staffing were measured at 2006 levels. About 60 percent of CLOs believe they don’t have enough staff. This is down from a high of 66 percent in 2007. In 2009, fewer than 55 percent of CLOs reported not having enough staff.

Staffing expectations for 2011 closely resemble those from 2008. Significantly more companies are expecting to add learning and development staff in 2011 compared with 2010, and fewer firms expect to cut L&D staff. This change reflects optimism that the importance of learning is increasing, along with budgets. In the BIB research on training outlook published in January, researchers found 60 percent of companies were more optimistic about employee development in 2011 compared to 2010. CLOs have passed through the difficult period that has resulted in “a greater appreciation of internal knowledge to support informal training.” This is resulting in hiring opportunities for L&D staff.

Learning Professional Talent Shortage Easing

A little less than 50 percent of companies expect to hire learning and development staff in the coming 12 months either as a replacement for transitioning staff or to increase the size of the L&D organization. When companies do hire, more L&D professionals appear to be available at a level comparable with 2008. And CLOs expect to spend between three and four months looking for the right candidate, which is comparable to 2008 data and much less time than 2006 data revealed.

Even though the mix of L&D skills has shifted away from content developers, individuals with those skills are the most likely to be hired and are likely to be the most difficult roles to fill, according to CLOs. Instructors and technology specialists are the next most sought-after roles.

Some 45 percent of organizations think their learning organization will play a role in the changing strategy their companies will adopt as the recovery builds. Still, more than half of learning organizations must find a way to have more impact or influence on the achievement of strategic objectives.

This may be a case of better application of existing resources, or it may require changing the role learning plays to become a more significant business adviser and change consultant. Either suggests CLOs must critically evaluate their ability to help their enterprise rebound during the recovery, and ensure their learning staff is both ready and able to lend all appropriate assistance.

[About the Author: Cushing Anderson is the program director of learning services at IDC.]

Article: Overqualified and Bitter

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:28:30 +0800

Overqualified and Bitter
by Dirk Verburg | Human Resource Executive Online

In the current economic crisis, employees are taking whatever job they can find — but not necessarily a job that will make them happy or engaged in the work. In fact, dysfunctional behavior in the workplace by bitter employees may be increasing. HR leaders need to help their line managers deal with the issue.

As a result of the economic crisis, a number of people took a step back in their careers and accepted smaller roles than they were used to or hoping for. These people face a choice between accepting this new reality with a positive mind-set or rejecting it and becoming bitter.

Strange as it may sound, acceptance can bring joy and fulfillment.

It can put a stop to the personal ‘Peters Principle’ a number of people cope with (assuming they were promoted beyond their level of competence), take them out of a rat race, give them a chance to reload their batteries and build up new energy to invest in valuable things outside the work place (such as their family or hobbies).

These people can be a joy to have around: They are at ease, relaxed and thankful in the workplace.

Unfortunately there are also people who become bitter and resentful. These resentments are usually directed at their previous company (in case they had to switch) and their line managers. Sometimes, they even resent their parents (“I never wanted to study X”) or even significant others (“If it were not for my partner I would have switched to another employer years ago”).

They prefer to ignore their own contribution (if there was one) to their new situation and prefer to view themselves as innocent victims of their environment.

So what does it matter if certain people are bitter at the workplace? Why should this affect their work and the work of their fellow employees? Why can’t we simply ignore them?

It matters because these resentments usually have an influence on their new company, colleagues and line managers.

Although one would expect they would be thankful to have a new working environment, quite often their anger and frustration will also be directed at their new company and line manager (“In my previous company I was empowered to decide about X, Y and Z. Why can’t I do that here?”).

Other targets of this resentment will be colleagues who happen to be grateful and happy (“Why don’t they support me when I am complaining?”).

This attitude will definitively have a negative impact on their working environment and the job satisfaction of line managers and co-workers, but it can also result in “subtle sabotage.” One of the most effective ways bitter employees do this is by playing everything completely and utterly by the book, thereby violating the purpose of policies and processing and frustrating not only fellow employees, but sometimes even customers. Since ignoring does not work, bitter employees need to be confronted with the negative effects their attitude has on others. In these kinds of situations, the following steps can be taken:

1. Gather data on the negative attitude of the individual and the effect this has had on his/her subordinates, colleagues, leaders, other people in the organization and customers.

2. Confront them about their behavior and the effect this has on others inside and outside (in case they have external clients) the organization.

3. Ask them if they understand these comments, and if they can provide the background to their behavior.

4. Offer them help and/or coaching to change their attitude.

In this discussion, it will be important to differentiate between two categories of frustration. The first category consists of extrinsic factors that have disappeared or are significantly reduced (e.g., status, income, number of direct reports, geographic scope, etc.).

In this category the keyword is acceptance. The individuals need to learn to accept their losses and focus on possible gains. This is not easy and might require professional help. HR leaders may want to coach these individuals or suggest a referral to the company’s employee-assistance provider.

The second category of frustration could be intrinsic and related to the underutilization of their skills and capabilities.

They may feel they lack respect from their co-workers for the insights and best practices they may have gained in the past. Here, the key word should be “recognition.” Smart line managers and peers could and should do themselves and the employee in question a favor by listening to him or her and take their insights into account when it makes sense.

In case this does not help, line managers should point these bitter employees another way: to the exit. Personal frustration should never be a reason to make the work experience of co-workers less satisfying, the already heavy job of line managers even heavier and hurt the interests of customers and shareholders.

[About the Author: Dirk Verburg is HR director at Covidien in Zurich, Switzerland. He has worked in the area of individual and organizational renewal for a number of international blue chip companies, including AT&T, PA Consulting Group, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Philips Electronics, Shell and Swiss Re. He studied Sociology at the University of Amsterdam and Business Administration at the University of Sheffield.]

Article: Learning How to Handle a Crisis

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:49:13 +0800

Learning How to Handle a Crisis
by Daniel Margolis | Chief Learning Officer

Any organization that remains in business for a while will likely face a crisis of some sort. These can be difficult to train for, as crises often emerge quickly, with little or no warning.

But crises are not necessarily unpredictable. Davia Temin, founder and CEO of consultancy Temin & Co., defines a crisis as any set of circumstances that throws a company into disarray, whether it’s predictable or not. “If you sit down and do a crisis preparedness plan, you can come up with a whole list of predictable crises,” Temin said. She cited market crashes, product contamination, criminal behavior and natural disasters as examples of predictable crises.

“Then there’s the black swan, out-of-the-blue stuff,” she said. “[These are] harder for people to predict [and] harder for corporate people to predict, by the way, because they’re generally thinking a little bit more linearly.”

To assist people and companies in preparing for such circumstances, Temin has created the “Crisis Game” case methodology. Crisis Games are hosted as events in locations ranging from auditoriums to board rooms to television studios. They generally run for 90 minutes and may be attended by a few dozen or as many as 250 people. Attendees are generally executives, though Temin has presented a Crisis Game to a group of journalists. She’s done roughly 35 of these events to date.

Prior to any Crisis Game, Temin meets with previously selected participants who will act out the fictional crisis they’re presented with. They’re given envelopes assigning them specific job roles - not necessarily their own.

“I meet with them a little bit before [the event] and hand them their envelope,” she said. “Of course they always want to know long before, ‘Well, what am I going to do and what’s the situation? I want to prepare.’ And I won’t let them.”

Temin also fleshes out personalities for the participants. “I give them a lot of color, like real people,” she said. “And so then they respond both from their role and the personality I have suggested.”

As the actual Crisis Game starts, the participants are seated in front of the audience and Temin describes the case. She was reluctant to say what these cases are exactly, as that ruins the element of surprise that is a key element. But she cited as potential examples situations such as a pharmaceutical company facing a drug recall; a company facing a hostile takeover; a company being investigated for money laundering; or a company experiencing a sudden, serious supply chain disruption.

“Then I set it up a little bit more and turn to one person and say ‘OK what would you do in this particular case? Well, what do you think about that?’” she said. “I start them talking with one another and what happens is they warm to their roles. They get very involved [and] engaged.”

This engagement is central to the effectiveness of the games. Often, executives don’t know how they’ll react to a crisis until they’re faced with one. “People don’t know how to do it because most of this stuff, unless you’ve been there you can’t figure it out, and you know what? By the time all that hits it’s too late,” Temin said. “Your intuition that you have learned throughout your career, that has been non-crisis related, is not always correct within a crisis, so you have to develop a different muscle.” The hands-on nature of the game facilitates this development.

David Haynes, CEO and chairman of Opinionology, a market research and surveying firm, attended a Crisis Game in November. He said his core take-away from the event is that crisis management requires fast and clear judgment. In particular, he learned some important points about dealing with the media during a crisis.

“Ignoring the press does not work,” Haynes said. Instead, companies in crisis need to “communicate early and often; designate a single point of contact for media communication; keep public messages anchored in supportable facts; [and] retain a capable media consultant before a crisis strikes. Don’t expect the press or government officials to always be fair or seek justice.” Haynes also learned the inherent dangers in panicking in response to a crisis. “Strong emotions diminish intellectual capacity,” he said. “Stay balanced.”

One of the most important things to learn about crisis management is how to recognize a crisis, something the gradually unfolding nature of Temin’s Crisis Games helps participants and attendees develop.

“The trick is of course to determine when it’s a crisis and when it’s just a little blip that’s going to be self-correcting,” she said. “The hardest thing that I find in working with clients is when they cut and say this is a crisis, because otherwise it’s business as usual and they don’t start to put in solutions. It’s human nature, but it is especially corporate nature to go into denial mode. In these Crisis Game, one of the very important points is to say ‘OK, is this a crisis yet? Are you worried now? Are you not worried? Is this just business as usual?’”

Haynes said companies should realize that the missteps that lead to a crisis are often just a natural part of doing business. “Every company makes errors,” he said. “Errors become mistakes when they are not corrected. Admit real problems, implement an authentic solution and communicate the action taken.”

[About the Author: Daniel Margolis is managing editor at Chief Learning Officer magazine.]