Post 570 - I used to take pride in working as a consultant to Hewlett Packard some twenty-five years ago. There was a company that was economically successful while treating their employees in an enlightened fashion by following a humane philosophy called "the HP Way." However, that's all in the past these days and employee morale must have hit an all time low, judging by this employee comment about support for the new CEO which was recently posted on the web:
"What do I or any of us think of the new HP CEO, Leo Apotheker? What does it matter? HP has stopped caring what any of its employees think or how we feel about anything that is done. We are no different than printers or laptops, just covered in flesh. The underlying problem here is unbridled greed - greed of the board, greed of the executives, greed of the shareholders. Did anyone care that when Mr. Hurd was hired by Oracle, its stock rose? Mr. Hurd was responsible for over 50,000 layoffs and massive pay cuts. Does anyone actually believe that morale at HP has been anything but abysmal for a number of years? How can anyone expect "quality" work from such people?"
"From reports and past performance, Mr. Apotheker appears to be a "cost cutter" (yes, some of us do read more than technical journals). We may not be rocket scientists, but please give IT professionals a bit of credit - we know exactly what that means. More layoffs and pay cuts via reorganization. When HP bought EDS and "moved" some HP people to EDS/ HP Enterprise Services, THEIR pay was cut using the justification that they were being placed into new roles. Of course, this is what HP has been known for - just ask those former Compaq employees who are still around."
"Certainly, a pay cut is better than a layoff, but it is like a water torture. Drip by drip, dollar by dollar, we await the next slash with dread. Customers are starting to feel the difference, although they may not care, at least not yet. IT work still requires "brains," which I think requires some level of enthusiasm. When you cannot afford to care for your children or pay your mortgage, it is difficult to be enthusiastic. The value loss is immeasurable - how can one determine what someone might have been able to do if his heart was in it? I see many employees trying, but only they know if is their "best work."
"Of course, Mr. Apotheker would know nothing about this. A $1.2 million salary, plus a $4 million signing bonus, PLUS a $4.6 million dollar "relocation package"? I won't even get into the tens of thousands of restricted stock he'll be getting, and he's not even started work yet. For those of us who've gone for years with no raises and worse (pay cuts of 25-30% and more after years without raises) despite quality performance, it is clear signal that things will not be getting better, at least for us. But who cares, as long as stock values rise?"
I know that there are many other 'wounded giants' in the same boat as HP. It's time for another industrial revolution to lead our executive class back to the first principles that America was founded on.
Showing posts with label Building better management teams.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Building better management teams.. Show all posts
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
How to manage virtual teams.
Post 496 - Success in business increasingly depends on the ability to manage a team of people who come from different disciplines, who aren't at the same location or from the same culture, don't necessarily report to you, and may not even work for your company. So there's a growing body of research on virtual management. Here are some of the lessons being learned:
- Be able to walk before you can run.
Someone who can't manage a conventional team probably can't handle a virtual one either. Success in a virtual world means making the needs of team members a top priority. In our technological age, paradoxically, you have to spend more time managing people than in the past.
- Get everyone involved.
Teams that fail usually do so because they lack a clear purpose. So it's crucial that team members know and agree on exactly what they're trying to accomplish together and how they plan to do so. Experience shows that it's good practice for geographically dispersed people to come together and discuss these issues in person during a kickoff meeting.
- Spell everything out.
Take nothing for granted and test all assumptions. As my daughter reminds me on occasion, "Assume puts an ass between you and me." For example, at the beginning, test assumptions about how the team will communicate, what the term "quality" actually means in practice, whether meeting the schedule means the same thing to different team members. Check on what exactly people are signing up for when they make agreements.
- You can't over-communicate.
Once the work gets started, make sure team members don't become isolated. It's good practice for the team manager to stay in touch with the members every day and to encourage the members to keep in touch with one another. Familiarity builds trust and people who trust each other are always more productive.
- Learn to manage up.
Virtual team members often work on more than one team at a time, so the manager is often competing with others for an individual's time. It helps to have a relationship with someone higher up who can approach the right people and ask for help on your behalf. Look for an executive sponsor who's really committed to the team's success.
- Be careful about compensation.
Monetary compensation usually works best if it's tied to the success of the project and to personal performance. However, virtual team members are likely to receive different benefits from their different employers and it helps to make this explicit from the beginning. That way, team members can say what's important to them during the project in order to protect their benefit status.
- Manage conflict.
Since conflict is inevitable, keep a constant eye out for it and make every effort to nip it in the bud when it appears. Check email archives daily for signs of disagreements and if they appear to be surfacing, call the parties involved and talk with them in person rather than relying on email. As an early warning system, consider designating one employee to regularly go from site to site listening to gripes from team members and making these explicit so they can be dealt with.
And finally, managers and team members should bear in mind Oscar Wilde's observation that, "To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect."
- Be able to walk before you can run.
Someone who can't manage a conventional team probably can't handle a virtual one either. Success in a virtual world means making the needs of team members a top priority. In our technological age, paradoxically, you have to spend more time managing people than in the past.
- Get everyone involved.
Teams that fail usually do so because they lack a clear purpose. So it's crucial that team members know and agree on exactly what they're trying to accomplish together and how they plan to do so. Experience shows that it's good practice for geographically dispersed people to come together and discuss these issues in person during a kickoff meeting.
- Spell everything out.
Take nothing for granted and test all assumptions. As my daughter reminds me on occasion, "Assume puts an ass between you and me." For example, at the beginning, test assumptions about how the team will communicate, what the term "quality" actually means in practice, whether meeting the schedule means the same thing to different team members. Check on what exactly people are signing up for when they make agreements.
- You can't over-communicate.
Once the work gets started, make sure team members don't become isolated. It's good practice for the team manager to stay in touch with the members every day and to encourage the members to keep in touch with one another. Familiarity builds trust and people who trust each other are always more productive.
- Learn to manage up.
Virtual team members often work on more than one team at a time, so the manager is often competing with others for an individual's time. It helps to have a relationship with someone higher up who can approach the right people and ask for help on your behalf. Look for an executive sponsor who's really committed to the team's success.
- Be careful about compensation.
Monetary compensation usually works best if it's tied to the success of the project and to personal performance. However, virtual team members are likely to receive different benefits from their different employers and it helps to make this explicit from the beginning. That way, team members can say what's important to them during the project in order to protect their benefit status.
- Manage conflict.
Since conflict is inevitable, keep a constant eye out for it and make every effort to nip it in the bud when it appears. Check email archives daily for signs of disagreements and if they appear to be surfacing, call the parties involved and talk with them in person rather than relying on email. As an early warning system, consider designating one employee to regularly go from site to site listening to gripes from team members and making these explicit so they can be dealt with.
And finally, managers and team members should bear in mind Oscar Wilde's observation that, "To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect."
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Six key design insights.
Here are six key insights about designing high performing teams that I’ve learned through my professional practice:
- The basic assumptions underlying the team’s design choices determine the behaviors, activities and relationships of people who end up working there. Traditional assumptions produce traditional performance and traditional problems. You can only generate different behaviors and better outcomes if you think differently and use other models and design processes.
- Design begins with a clear vision about “what you want your teams to be when they grow up.” In a fast changing world, vision determines direction, not destination. The race to the future will belong to the swift and the adaptable, so design choices must embrace agility and flexibility. As Santayana observed, “No specific hope about distant issues is ever likely to be realized. The ground shifts, the will of mankind deviates, and what the father dreamt of, the children neither fulfill or desire.”
- The design of high performing teams isn’t so much a process of invention as an ongoing process of discovery and collaboration. Good design draws the most advantageous use from all available resources and is always conscious and comprehensive. It’s built on knowledge and insights about all relevant internal and external patterns and relationships. It involves not so much looking for ”the answer,” but selecting the most sensible alternative for a given time and place, with the certain knowledge that when the current contexts change, another answer will probably be more appropriate.
- The process of designing high performing teams involves making choices, allocating roles and responsibilities, specifying task assignments and job content, and defining the relationships between them. Without a disciplined way to do this, managers base their decisions on little more than opinions, past experiences, personal biases, desires for personal power, and untested assumptions. These are a poor replacement for a proven process of open investigation using validated data.
- Searching for a “silver bullet” that will painlessly resolve all existing difficulties is a distraction rather than a step in the right direction. Adopting other people’s solutions won’t work either unless you understand exactly how they’ll help you address and avoid the real causes of your problems.
- Design considerations should always bear in mind that people support what they help create.
Since many aspects of the world we live in today change at lighting speed, successful companies need to be able to change quickly as well. Survival in an uncertain world calls for discarding organizational structure as an end in itself. There’s no right way to organize any more, no final end-point to structure. What matters is the capacity to recognize, adapt to, and sometimes take the lead in inventing continuous change.
- The basic assumptions underlying the team’s design choices determine the behaviors, activities and relationships of people who end up working there. Traditional assumptions produce traditional performance and traditional problems. You can only generate different behaviors and better outcomes if you think differently and use other models and design processes.
- Design begins with a clear vision about “what you want your teams to be when they grow up.” In a fast changing world, vision determines direction, not destination. The race to the future will belong to the swift and the adaptable, so design choices must embrace agility and flexibility. As Santayana observed, “No specific hope about distant issues is ever likely to be realized. The ground shifts, the will of mankind deviates, and what the father dreamt of, the children neither fulfill or desire.”
- The design of high performing teams isn’t so much a process of invention as an ongoing process of discovery and collaboration. Good design draws the most advantageous use from all available resources and is always conscious and comprehensive. It’s built on knowledge and insights about all relevant internal and external patterns and relationships. It involves not so much looking for ”the answer,” but selecting the most sensible alternative for a given time and place, with the certain knowledge that when the current contexts change, another answer will probably be more appropriate.
- The process of designing high performing teams involves making choices, allocating roles and responsibilities, specifying task assignments and job content, and defining the relationships between them. Without a disciplined way to do this, managers base their decisions on little more than opinions, past experiences, personal biases, desires for personal power, and untested assumptions. These are a poor replacement for a proven process of open investigation using validated data.
- Searching for a “silver bullet” that will painlessly resolve all existing difficulties is a distraction rather than a step in the right direction. Adopting other people’s solutions won’t work either unless you understand exactly how they’ll help you address and avoid the real causes of your problems.
- Design considerations should always bear in mind that people support what they help create.
Since many aspects of the world we live in today change at lighting speed, successful companies need to be able to change quickly as well. Survival in an uncertain world calls for discarding organizational structure as an end in itself. There’s no right way to organize any more, no final end-point to structure. What matters is the capacity to recognize, adapt to, and sometimes take the lead in inventing continuous change.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The Ten Commandments of High Performing Teams.
1. Thou shall understand the nature of teams, their strengths, weaknesses, processes and structures.
2. Thou shall not wander in the desert for 40-years without knowing where the team is going; thou shall develop performance goals, and team operating rules and stay focused on them.
3. Thou shall communicate openly and have no hidden agendas.
4. Thou shall be patient, but thou better do something that quickly delivers meaningful results.
5. Keep thy meetings meaningful; make sure people have a reason to show up.
6. Let thy meetings be fruitful and multiply, but use sub-committees when appropriate.
7. Thou shall make sure all members share a common sense of accountability and responsibility for achieving the desired outcomes.
8. Thou shall strive to know each other and understand each other's point of view.
9. Thou shall know thyself and periodically ask other team members, "How am I doing?"
10. Thou shall love thy team with all thy heart, since commitment is the most critical element in a successful team. Forget the first nine commandments if the members’ commitment is missing.
High performing teams have been shown to produce much higher levels of quality, productivity, innovation and creativity while at the same time lowering costs, reducing levels of supervision, and encouraging flexibility.
However, perhaps the most important thing teams can do is attract and retain quality employees. Once a real sense of teamwork is in place, people will fight to work for the company because it capitalizes on a fundamental human need to be a part of something larger than themselves. This is why families, tribes and communities are so important to us. We can draw on that need in a work setting as well, thus providing great benefit to ourselves and to the company.
2. Thou shall not wander in the desert for 40-years without knowing where the team is going; thou shall develop performance goals, and team operating rules and stay focused on them.
3. Thou shall communicate openly and have no hidden agendas.
4. Thou shall be patient, but thou better do something that quickly delivers meaningful results.
5. Keep thy meetings meaningful; make sure people have a reason to show up.
6. Let thy meetings be fruitful and multiply, but use sub-committees when appropriate.
7. Thou shall make sure all members share a common sense of accountability and responsibility for achieving the desired outcomes.
8. Thou shall strive to know each other and understand each other's point of view.
9. Thou shall know thyself and periodically ask other team members, "How am I doing?"
10. Thou shall love thy team with all thy heart, since commitment is the most critical element in a successful team. Forget the first nine commandments if the members’ commitment is missing.
High performing teams have been shown to produce much higher levels of quality, productivity, innovation and creativity while at the same time lowering costs, reducing levels of supervision, and encouraging flexibility.
However, perhaps the most important thing teams can do is attract and retain quality employees. Once a real sense of teamwork is in place, people will fight to work for the company because it capitalizes on a fundamental human need to be a part of something larger than themselves. This is why families, tribes and communities are so important to us. We can draw on that need in a work setting as well, thus providing great benefit to ourselves and to the company.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
How employee involvement creates successful mergers.
One of the key concepts behind high-performing teams is employee involvement. Therefore when merging with or taking over other companies, don’t move to immediately eliminate duplicate departments and positions. Instead, set up cross-company teams to decide who has the best skill-sets and which company has the best processes. It may take more time and cost more, but it results in better outcomes. In a variation of this approach, some merging companies developed a survey program to uncover industry ‘best practices’ as perceived by the combined customer base of the two companies. The survey, which was very qualitative in nature, gave respondents lots of freedom to say what they liked about each company and where they felt there were opportunities for improvement. These findings were then used by integrated implementation teams to introduce changes into both organizations.
When ATTCC management bought the company from AT&T, it couldn’t share much information with employees while the deal was being finalized. So employees were given an 800 number to call where they could review all the information that could be shared with them. This information was updated weekly and additional news was immediately advertised and broadcast in meetings, on bulletin boards and in memos. As the divestiture process took longer than expected, the 800 line featured ATTCC’s CEO talking about the change, explaining what he was personally experiencing and how he and his family were dealing with it.
Newcourt Credit Group subsequently acquired ATTCC, bringing the combined assets under management to $21 billion. Immediately, an integration office with six senior management members was established to lead and manage the work of 12 dedicated integration task forces comprised of more than 60 individuals selected from among the employees of both companies. An executive vice president with extensive previous experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and reorganizations, was in charge of the integration process. The full integration of the two companies was accomplished over the following 18-months.
On a local note, the San Diego Union Tribune has just been acquired by Platinum Equity, which subsequently announced it will lay off 192 of its new employees. If you were planning to buy a troubled organization, particularly an information company, whose greatest asset was its trained and experienced workforce, would you:
1) Take possession, put some of your own people at the top, assess the situation first-hand, then meet your layoff goals? Or,
2) Leave the reduction in force to the current company management that got the paper into the very mess that allowed you to come in and buy it?
Platinum chose #2, which suggests that it's more interested in the Tribune's real estate holdings than the newspaper itself.
When ATTCC management bought the company from AT&T, it couldn’t share much information with employees while the deal was being finalized. So employees were given an 800 number to call where they could review all the information that could be shared with them. This information was updated weekly and additional news was immediately advertised and broadcast in meetings, on bulletin boards and in memos. As the divestiture process took longer than expected, the 800 line featured ATTCC’s CEO talking about the change, explaining what he was personally experiencing and how he and his family were dealing with it.
Newcourt Credit Group subsequently acquired ATTCC, bringing the combined assets under management to $21 billion. Immediately, an integration office with six senior management members was established to lead and manage the work of 12 dedicated integration task forces comprised of more than 60 individuals selected from among the employees of both companies. An executive vice president with extensive previous experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and reorganizations, was in charge of the integration process. The full integration of the two companies was accomplished over the following 18-months.
On a local note, the San Diego Union Tribune has just been acquired by Platinum Equity, which subsequently announced it will lay off 192 of its new employees. If you were planning to buy a troubled organization, particularly an information company, whose greatest asset was its trained and experienced workforce, would you:
1) Take possession, put some of your own people at the top, assess the situation first-hand, then meet your layoff goals? Or,
2) Leave the reduction in force to the current company management that got the paper into the very mess that allowed you to come in and buy it?
Platinum chose #2, which suggests that it's more interested in the Tribune's real estate holdings than the newspaper itself.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Using teams to expand the business.
Continuing last week's story, AT&T Capital Corporation (ATTCC) expanded aggressively through mergers and acquisitions so that six years after introducing high performing teams, it had grown to include eleven strategic business units managing combined assets of nearly $7B. With its early acquisitions, ATTCC left the companies it bought virtually unchanged. Managers in the newly merged companies attended a roadshow that explained how the acquisition fitted into AT&T’s business strategy and how ATTCC’s high-involvement high-performance team culture contributed to its spectacular success. However, there was no direct order telling them to manage their businesses differently.
As a result, nothing much changed after the companies were acquired. As cultural differences festered over time, the situation gradually became more and more difficult to deal with. It was finally resolved several years later by changing the leaders in many of the businesses when ATTCC finally acknowledged that these managers would never voluntarily adopt the high-involvement team-based way of operating that ATTCC valued.
In its later acquisitions, ATTCC learned to be more directive. Once an acquisition was made, it was very clear in stating, “Here’s what we think the future state of this company should look like and here’s the change timetable we expect you to follow. We acquired you because we believe you have great possibilities. Here’s how we plan to explore these possibilities and this is the framework we’re going to use. We assure you we’ll keep and honor the good things you’ve done in the past and we’ll involve you in the process of working through any changes that are judged necessary in the future.”
ATTCC knew from previous experience that employees often feel that, “Everything that we did that made us good is going to be taken away from us and we won’t be given enough time to demonstrate our strengths in the new relationship.” To deal with this, ATTCC set up transition and integration teams immediately after acquisitions were completed. These teams included representatives from both organizations and began by announcing a list of the issues they planned to work through together.
Typically, these issues involved the physical consolidation of facilities, the integration of information systems, reconciling differences in policies, practices and standards, agreeing on common financial reporting formats, establishing equity in pay and benefit plans, agreeing on common job classifications, criteria and titles, dealing with uncertainty about careers and identifying positions to be eliminated.
As a result, nothing much changed after the companies were acquired. As cultural differences festered over time, the situation gradually became more and more difficult to deal with. It was finally resolved several years later by changing the leaders in many of the businesses when ATTCC finally acknowledged that these managers would never voluntarily adopt the high-involvement team-based way of operating that ATTCC valued.
In its later acquisitions, ATTCC learned to be more directive. Once an acquisition was made, it was very clear in stating, “Here’s what we think the future state of this company should look like and here’s the change timetable we expect you to follow. We acquired you because we believe you have great possibilities. Here’s how we plan to explore these possibilities and this is the framework we’re going to use. We assure you we’ll keep and honor the good things you’ve done in the past and we’ll involve you in the process of working through any changes that are judged necessary in the future.”
ATTCC knew from previous experience that employees often feel that, “Everything that we did that made us good is going to be taken away from us and we won’t be given enough time to demonstrate our strengths in the new relationship.” To deal with this, ATTCC set up transition and integration teams immediately after acquisitions were completed. These teams included representatives from both organizations and began by announcing a list of the issues they planned to work through together.
Typically, these issues involved the physical consolidation of facilities, the integration of information systems, reconciling differences in policies, practices and standards, agreeing on common financial reporting formats, establishing equity in pay and benefit plans, agreeing on common job classifications, criteria and titles, dealing with uncertainty about careers and identifying positions to be eliminated.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
High-performing teams in action.
Here's an example of what can happen when you remove the impediments that get in the way of high-performing teams.
AT&T Credit Corporation (ATTCC) was established to provide finance and leasing services to AT&T’s customers and others acquiring telecommunications products. The company was organized into two divisions: the General Markets Division (GMD) which handled high volume, small ticket business, and the Business Markets Division (BMD) which took care of small volume, middle-to-large ticket items. Both divisions were organized according to traditional work design principles, emphasizing top-down hierarchical control, functional separation and a high degree of task specialization. Credit approval, funding and collection functions for the GMD were sub-contracted to an outside vendor.
It soon became apparent that smaller customers weren't getting the personal service and flexible financing alternatives they wanted from the GMD. ATTCC didn't "own" their customers' accounts because the subcontractor's leasing processes weren't traceable by AT&T staff. ATTCC's management felt the subcontractor's operations were inefficiently run and unnecessarily costly as a result. Customers lacked a single point of contact for leasing and customer service. Employees had no sense of how their efforts contributed to satisfying customers since work was divided into small, separate tasks and processing groups were functionally organized.
Some managers were familiar with a work reorganization initiative undertaken by AT&T's American Transtech when it moved its operations from New York to Florida. Impressed by the dramatic improvements in service and productivity that resulted from Transtech's high performing team-based work design, ATTCC decided to pursue a similar approach.
ATTCC started by taking back the high volume GMD business, hiring their own employees and operating it themselves. They set out to give the employees ownership and accountability for costs and customers throughout the entire leasing process. While the BMD continued to operate traditionally, the GMD was set up to operate in eleven self-managing teams, each accountable for a specific geographic assignment. Area Sales Managers were also assigned to corresponding regions. Sales agents and processing teams worked together to establish a personal relationship with their customers. Each team took care of all four aspects of the business; credit evaluation, funding, customer service and collection, all of which had previously been managed separately. The new arrangements eliminated the shuffling of calls between different departments and encouraged team members to take responsibility for solving any and all of their customerís problems. Thus, a culture developed that, "Whoever gets the call, owns the problem."
In two years, it was clear that the new GMD organization was a success. Teams were processing 800 applications a day, up from 400 when they started. Instead of taking several days to approve credit, the teams did it in one day. Teams scheduled their own time off, reassigned work when people were absent and interviewed prospective new employees. Team members could now relate their own success and their team's success with ATTCC's success. Employees who previously had individual, parochial goals shifted their thinking to supporting broader team goals. Sales representatives were no longer just interested in "doing deals." They now had a greater incentive to write "good deals," which fully satisfied the requirements of the team members who made credit approvals. This resulted in lower delinquency rates and fewer write-offs. As a result, ATTCC's business grew at a compounded annual rate of fifty percent a year.
AT&T Credit Corporation (ATTCC) was established to provide finance and leasing services to AT&T’s customers and others acquiring telecommunications products. The company was organized into two divisions: the General Markets Division (GMD) which handled high volume, small ticket business, and the Business Markets Division (BMD) which took care of small volume, middle-to-large ticket items. Both divisions were organized according to traditional work design principles, emphasizing top-down hierarchical control, functional separation and a high degree of task specialization. Credit approval, funding and collection functions for the GMD were sub-contracted to an outside vendor.
It soon became apparent that smaller customers weren't getting the personal service and flexible financing alternatives they wanted from the GMD. ATTCC didn't "own" their customers' accounts because the subcontractor's leasing processes weren't traceable by AT&T staff. ATTCC's management felt the subcontractor's operations were inefficiently run and unnecessarily costly as a result. Customers lacked a single point of contact for leasing and customer service. Employees had no sense of how their efforts contributed to satisfying customers since work was divided into small, separate tasks and processing groups were functionally organized.
Some managers were familiar with a work reorganization initiative undertaken by AT&T's American Transtech when it moved its operations from New York to Florida. Impressed by the dramatic improvements in service and productivity that resulted from Transtech's high performing team-based work design, ATTCC decided to pursue a similar approach.
ATTCC started by taking back the high volume GMD business, hiring their own employees and operating it themselves. They set out to give the employees ownership and accountability for costs and customers throughout the entire leasing process. While the BMD continued to operate traditionally, the GMD was set up to operate in eleven self-managing teams, each accountable for a specific geographic assignment. Area Sales Managers were also assigned to corresponding regions. Sales agents and processing teams worked together to establish a personal relationship with their customers. Each team took care of all four aspects of the business; credit evaluation, funding, customer service and collection, all of which had previously been managed separately. The new arrangements eliminated the shuffling of calls between different departments and encouraged team members to take responsibility for solving any and all of their customerís problems. Thus, a culture developed that, "Whoever gets the call, owns the problem."
In two years, it was clear that the new GMD organization was a success. Teams were processing 800 applications a day, up from 400 when they started. Instead of taking several days to approve credit, the teams did it in one day. Teams scheduled their own time off, reassigned work when people were absent and interviewed prospective new employees. Team members could now relate their own success and their team's success with ATTCC's success. Employees who previously had individual, parochial goals shifted their thinking to supporting broader team goals. Sales representatives were no longer just interested in "doing deals." They now had a greater incentive to write "good deals," which fully satisfied the requirements of the team members who made credit approvals. This resulted in lower delinquency rates and fewer write-offs. As a result, ATTCC's business grew at a compounded annual rate of fifty percent a year.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Removing impediments to better teamwork.
In many organizations, processes are handed from one department to another across the company like a relay race. R&D starts and passes the baton on to Manufacturing, who in turn pass it on Marketing and so on. This baton passing is seen as an efficient way to move a process forward across a siloed organization. However, linear processes that are designed this way act to foster separateness and competition and cut off opportunities for employee cooperation and collaboration, which is key for high performance and innovation.
Tivo, which is known for its innovative products, brings product managers, marketers, designers, engineers and user advocates together to work closely on projects. It finds ways to bring teams together to collaborate on specific projects rather than simply checking and reviewing each other's work. Coordinated processes are more efficient — collaborative processes are more innovative.
I see two different kinds of team development initiatives. One tries to improve teamwork between employees within existing organizational boundaries. These kind of initiatives emphasize training to improve interpersonal interactions, such as listening, open communication, positive feedback, conflict resolution and good meeting skills. It's assumed that the firm's current structures and policies are OK as is. You'll certainly get some bang for the buck by teaching people to interact more effectively together. However, many of the barriers to true cooperation come from how work is currently set up and rewarded in the first place.
For example, employee evaluation systems that focus only on individual performance and tie pay and rewards to this foster competition rather than collaboration. Why should I take the time to work with you if in the process I lessen my own "star" status? Sales people are often rewarded this way - the person with the most sales gets a vacation in some lovely place they wouldn't normally go to. As a result, they're unwilling to share what they know about customers and sales processes with their colleagues in case one of them might win the prize instead. This continues even though research has convincingly shown that overall sales would increase significantly if everyone shared what they know rather than keeping it to themselves.
Similarly, physical boundaries, time boundaries and task boundaries interrupt work process so people end up with tasks that have no clearly measurable output. As a result, they can't be held accountable or receive meaningful feedback about how well they're doing. And this encourages people to spend their energy in finger-pointing and pass-the-blame tactics instead of trying to improve how they work together.
When I write about building high-performing teams, I mean team building initiatives that change structural processes and impediments as well as teaching people to interact together more effectively. This is where significant performance improvement of 5X to 10X or more can be achieved.
Tivo, which is known for its innovative products, brings product managers, marketers, designers, engineers and user advocates together to work closely on projects. It finds ways to bring teams together to collaborate on specific projects rather than simply checking and reviewing each other's work. Coordinated processes are more efficient — collaborative processes are more innovative.
I see two different kinds of team development initiatives. One tries to improve teamwork between employees within existing organizational boundaries. These kind of initiatives emphasize training to improve interpersonal interactions, such as listening, open communication, positive feedback, conflict resolution and good meeting skills. It's assumed that the firm's current structures and policies are OK as is. You'll certainly get some bang for the buck by teaching people to interact more effectively together. However, many of the barriers to true cooperation come from how work is currently set up and rewarded in the first place.
For example, employee evaluation systems that focus only on individual performance and tie pay and rewards to this foster competition rather than collaboration. Why should I take the time to work with you if in the process I lessen my own "star" status? Sales people are often rewarded this way - the person with the most sales gets a vacation in some lovely place they wouldn't normally go to. As a result, they're unwilling to share what they know about customers and sales processes with their colleagues in case one of them might win the prize instead. This continues even though research has convincingly shown that overall sales would increase significantly if everyone shared what they know rather than keeping it to themselves.
Similarly, physical boundaries, time boundaries and task boundaries interrupt work process so people end up with tasks that have no clearly measurable output. As a result, they can't be held accountable or receive meaningful feedback about how well they're doing. And this encourages people to spend their energy in finger-pointing and pass-the-blame tactics instead of trying to improve how they work together.
When I write about building high-performing teams, I mean team building initiatives that change structural processes and impediments as well as teaching people to interact together more effectively. This is where significant performance improvement of 5X to 10X or more can be achieved.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Building high-performing cultures.
Every company has a culture. The key to building high-performing cultures is to get all employees aligned and focused, with clarity and agreement about the "what" and the "how" needed to get the company where it needs to go, in spec and on time. The following are some of the bases that need to be covered to make sure this happens.
Clearly define what winning looks like:
- Management must model the behaviors they want to see practiced.
- Involve employees in defining the operating principles that will lead to success.
- Define what winning looks like from a variety of perspectives (sales, finance, operations, R&D, etc).
Measure what matters and what employees can relate to regularly, on a monthly basis:
- Involve them in setting up and tracking these measures.
- For example, how well customer leads, orders, returns and inquiries are handled.
- The appropriatness of collaboration or individual effort in getting work done.
- Success in meeting employee and customer retention targets.
Develop an ownership mentality and encourage intelligent risk-taking:
- Make sure everyone knows where the company aims to go.
- Educate employees about acceptable behaviors and boundaries.
- Give them freedom to make decisions and to take action on their own initiative.
- Use mistakes as learning opportunities.
Involve employees in watching the external environment:
- Build deep relationships with suppliers and customers.
- Learn their perceptions of what's going on in the marketplace.
- Keep tabs on competitors and developments in your industry.
- Look at what actions other industries are taking.
Be sure all employees are properly set up for success:
- Ensure they have the tools and information they need.
- Provide them with timely training, coaching and feedback.
- Share ideas together and encourage open candid discussions.
- Practice accountability and positive feedback in order to build trust.
The majority of employees want to be part of a compelling future, want to know what's most important at work and what excellence looks like. Creating a high-performing culture fosters loyalty from customers, partners and employees, and creates advocates who promote the company positively to others.
Clearly define what winning looks like:
- Management must model the behaviors they want to see practiced.
- Involve employees in defining the operating principles that will lead to success.
- Define what winning looks like from a variety of perspectives (sales, finance, operations, R&D, etc).
Measure what matters and what employees can relate to regularly, on a monthly basis:
- Involve them in setting up and tracking these measures.
- For example, how well customer leads, orders, returns and inquiries are handled.
- The appropriatness of collaboration or individual effort in getting work done.
- Success in meeting employee and customer retention targets.
Develop an ownership mentality and encourage intelligent risk-taking:
- Make sure everyone knows where the company aims to go.
- Educate employees about acceptable behaviors and boundaries.
- Give them freedom to make decisions and to take action on their own initiative.
- Use mistakes as learning opportunities.
Involve employees in watching the external environment:
- Build deep relationships with suppliers and customers.
- Learn their perceptions of what's going on in the marketplace.
- Keep tabs on competitors and developments in your industry.
- Look at what actions other industries are taking.
Be sure all employees are properly set up for success:
- Ensure they have the tools and information they need.
- Provide them with timely training, coaching and feedback.
- Share ideas together and encourage open candid discussions.
- Practice accountability and positive feedback in order to build trust.
The majority of employees want to be part of a compelling future, want to know what's most important at work and what excellence looks like. Creating a high-performing culture fosters loyalty from customers, partners and employees, and creates advocates who promote the company positively to others.
Monday, May 4, 2009
High-performing teams.
High-performing teams are teams which produce exceptional performance and are also deeply meaningful to the participants. While examples have been around for decades, the conventional wisdom still remains that:
• High-performing teams are mysterious - we don't know how they emerge. They're like falling in love - they happen unpredictably, by "luck" or "accident" or "chemistry" or when "lightning strikes."
• High-performing teams aren't really such a big deal, because although high-performance teams are better than good teams, they're not a whole lot better. They are not a game-changer.
Steve Denning has a new book coming out in 2010 that refutes these beliefs. Some of the principal findings of Denning's research are:
• High-performing teams aren't rare: in fact, they're quite common nowadays.
• These aren't teams of extraordinary people: they're usually ordinary people who've found ways to act in an extraordinary manner.
• Hundreds if not thousands of companies have already created high-performing teams in very large numbers.
• High-performing teams usually don't die of natural causes: they die because they're killed by management.
• High-performing teams are geographically distributable and scalable, so that large projects and even whole organizations can be being run on this basis.
• The improvement in performance that comes from using high-performing teams is dramatic. These are significant differences in scale: they're many-times more productive than traditional ways of organizing work.
• High-performing teams are mysterious - we don't know how they emerge. They're like falling in love - they happen unpredictably, by "luck" or "accident" or "chemistry" or when "lightning strikes."
• High-performing teams aren't really such a big deal, because although high-performance teams are better than good teams, they're not a whole lot better. They are not a game-changer.
Steve Denning has a new book coming out in 2010 that refutes these beliefs. Some of the principal findings of Denning's research are:
• High-performing teams aren't rare: in fact, they're quite common nowadays.
• These aren't teams of extraordinary people: they're usually ordinary people who've found ways to act in an extraordinary manner.
• Hundreds if not thousands of companies have already created high-performing teams in very large numbers.
• High-performing teams usually don't die of natural causes: they die because they're killed by management.
• High-performing teams are geographically distributable and scalable, so that large projects and even whole organizations can be being run on this basis.
• The improvement in performance that comes from using high-performing teams is dramatic. These are significant differences in scale: they're many-times more productive than traditional ways of organizing work.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Teams and technology.
“Where are the Lakers? Where are the Lakers?” Imagine the uproar if the Los Angeles Lakers couldn’t play basketball because the team lost its suitcases or missed a plane. It could happen if the people behind the superstars didn’t do their jobs properly. The Lakers’ hidden organization - accountants, clerical staff, janitors, video technicians - is many times larger than the player roster. Without these employees, the basketball team couldn’t exist.
A company's success often depends as much on the small, localized decisions regularly made by frontline employees as it does on the larger strategic decisions made at the executive level. For example, adjusters deciding whether and how to pay a claim create (or lose) a tremendous amount of value for insurance companies.
In team based organizations, the role of managers and supervisors goes from working in the system to working on the system – ensuring that the right things are being done the right way. They start by identifying crucial "micro decisions" for their company - those decisions that are made close to the customer interface and have strong economic leverage. They then ask how can these decisions be made consistently and correctly every time? Sometimes they can be automated to ensure the most valuable decision is repeatable. Or for those that require more thinking, they can create checklists to help the decision makers remember key steps or issues.
A collection of collaborative computer technologies called group support systems can also be used to allow large numbers of people to interact together so they can respond rapidly to changing conditions. The use of brainstorming software, electronic voting, collaborative writing and drawing software, mathematical decision modeling packages, idea organizers and stakeholder analysis tools, changes the way people interact, both in face-to-face meetings and at a distance. Electronic workgroup tools provide the data and structure that keeps the big picture in focus and allows teams to build consensus. Team members can contribute simultaneously in meetings because no one has to wait for their turn to talk.
Teamwork and collaboration are essential elements in achieving economic success today. As a client said to me recently, “I’ve never seen a parade yet that was very impressive where only the drum major had the sheet music.”
Poetry day tomorrow.
A company's success often depends as much on the small, localized decisions regularly made by frontline employees as it does on the larger strategic decisions made at the executive level. For example, adjusters deciding whether and how to pay a claim create (or lose) a tremendous amount of value for insurance companies.
In team based organizations, the role of managers and supervisors goes from working in the system to working on the system – ensuring that the right things are being done the right way. They start by identifying crucial "micro decisions" for their company - those decisions that are made close to the customer interface and have strong economic leverage. They then ask how can these decisions be made consistently and correctly every time? Sometimes they can be automated to ensure the most valuable decision is repeatable. Or for those that require more thinking, they can create checklists to help the decision makers remember key steps or issues.
A collection of collaborative computer technologies called group support systems can also be used to allow large numbers of people to interact together so they can respond rapidly to changing conditions. The use of brainstorming software, electronic voting, collaborative writing and drawing software, mathematical decision modeling packages, idea organizers and stakeholder analysis tools, changes the way people interact, both in face-to-face meetings and at a distance. Electronic workgroup tools provide the data and structure that keeps the big picture in focus and allows teams to build consensus. Team members can contribute simultaneously in meetings because no one has to wait for their turn to talk.
Teamwork and collaboration are essential elements in achieving economic success today. As a client said to me recently, “I’ve never seen a parade yet that was very impressive where only the drum major had the sheet music.”
Poetry day tomorrow.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Ten steps for building a team.
1. Start with the right people. Let the excellent and good people know what they're doing right.
2. Do something about the mediocre performers in the next 90-days.
3. Hold a company-wide strategic planning session. Get people together and involve them in planning the firm's competitive strategy. Management should hold back and let other employees speak first in this session. The joint planning process is very important because it draws on a well-known principle of psychology that people tend to be involved in implementing what they're involved in creating.
4. Review the plan quarterly: This sounds straightforward, but most people don't do it. Get away for two to four hours on a quarterly basis and discuss the following:
· What goals have we completed?
· What goals are in progress?
· What goals are no longer relevant?
· What goals have not been completed and what needs to be done to complete them?
Keep this discussion positive and it'll create a sense of confidence in people that they can set goals and complete them. You want the planning and review process to be a living part of your company's culture, guiding how people operate. These meetings should be high energy, high involvement, problem-solving opportunities, not just places to disseminate information.
5. Teach your key executives what they need to do to be successful delegators and coaches.
6. Complete a team review of each team member's strengths and weaknesses. Have people do written assessments of themselves and everyone else on the team and then review it with the team as a whole.
7. Make sure there are no places for poor performers to hide in the company, especially on the executive team. If the teams allow everyone equal time to talk, the top performers will clearly stand out. Eventually, others may decide that they can't keep up the pace necessary to succeed and seek opportunities elsewhere.
8. Develop a performance-based measurement system by asking:
· What do people think they're being paid for?
· How close is that to the firm's "critical success factors?"
· Do people understand that it's the success of the company that provides their
paycheck rather than being on good terms with management, or their longevity, loyalty or effort?
9. Celebrate wins. Most companies don't celebrate enough. Frequent small and inexpensive celebrations that take more creativity than money send the message within the company that "we're winning."
10. Champion the team philosophy. Draw on your own enthusiasm and be ready to jump up at a moment's notice and tell people about your team vision, the kind of people needed for it to be successful and the benefits that'll come to everyone as the team reaches its goals. Use the same energy and conviction in your internal selling as if you were calling on your biggest customer. Other team members need your energy.
Teams can produce quality, productivity, innovation and creativity by lowering costs, taking out many levels of supervision and allowing greater flexibility. However, one of the most important things teams can do is attract and retain quality people. Once you have a real sense of teamwork in place, people will fight to work for your company because it builds on the fundamental human need to be a part of something larger than ourselves. This's why families, tribes and communities are so important to us. You can draw on that need in a company setting as well, with great benefit to the employees and the company.
2. Do something about the mediocre performers in the next 90-days.
3. Hold a company-wide strategic planning session. Get people together and involve them in planning the firm's competitive strategy. Management should hold back and let other employees speak first in this session. The joint planning process is very important because it draws on a well-known principle of psychology that people tend to be involved in implementing what they're involved in creating.
4. Review the plan quarterly: This sounds straightforward, but most people don't do it. Get away for two to four hours on a quarterly basis and discuss the following:
· What goals have we completed?
· What goals are in progress?
· What goals are no longer relevant?
· What goals have not been completed and what needs to be done to complete them?
Keep this discussion positive and it'll create a sense of confidence in people that they can set goals and complete them. You want the planning and review process to be a living part of your company's culture, guiding how people operate. These meetings should be high energy, high involvement, problem-solving opportunities, not just places to disseminate information.
5. Teach your key executives what they need to do to be successful delegators and coaches.
6. Complete a team review of each team member's strengths and weaknesses. Have people do written assessments of themselves and everyone else on the team and then review it with the team as a whole.
7. Make sure there are no places for poor performers to hide in the company, especially on the executive team. If the teams allow everyone equal time to talk, the top performers will clearly stand out. Eventually, others may decide that they can't keep up the pace necessary to succeed and seek opportunities elsewhere.
8. Develop a performance-based measurement system by asking:
· What do people think they're being paid for?
· How close is that to the firm's "critical success factors?"
· Do people understand that it's the success of the company that provides their
paycheck rather than being on good terms with management, or their longevity, loyalty or effort?
9. Celebrate wins. Most companies don't celebrate enough. Frequent small and inexpensive celebrations that take more creativity than money send the message within the company that "we're winning."
10. Champion the team philosophy. Draw on your own enthusiasm and be ready to jump up at a moment's notice and tell people about your team vision, the kind of people needed for it to be successful and the benefits that'll come to everyone as the team reaches its goals. Use the same energy and conviction in your internal selling as if you were calling on your biggest customer. Other team members need your energy.
Teams can produce quality, productivity, innovation and creativity by lowering costs, taking out many levels of supervision and allowing greater flexibility. However, one of the most important things teams can do is attract and retain quality people. Once you have a real sense of teamwork in place, people will fight to work for your company because it builds on the fundamental human need to be a part of something larger than ourselves. This's why families, tribes and communities are so important to us. You can draw on that need in a company setting as well, with great benefit to the employees and the company.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Team "concessions" by the UAW at Chrysler.
I notice in today's paper that among the UAW's concessions for the Chrysler restructuring, the union has agreed to consolidate non-skilled labor job classifications into a team concept at all remaining factories. It's a pity that the union has resisted giving this 'concession' for the past 40-years!
Introducing the team concept at Chrysler won't be as easy and simple as it sounds. Human beings are flawed and fallible; they're imperfect beings. Imperfections at the individual level are one thing. But put a team together with all the various dynamics, toss in people's inherent human flaws, and you get a host of bizarre behaviors and outcomes. Because individuals behave dysfunctionally, teams can't help but operate the same way. In addition, companies often fail to follow through with their teambuilding efforts. They start out with great enthusiasm and lofty goals, and then somewhere along the way the batteries start to run down. More than anything, successful teambuilding requires a sustained effort and follow-through on the important guidelines listed below.
A major reason why so many teambuilding efforts fizzle out has to do with the mindset of the CEO or the senior management team. Often, they're following some highly complex theory or "flavor-of-the-month" approach that they hope will magically transform the workforce into high-performing teams. However, I believe that to have any hope at success, you have to keep it simple.
Interestingly, the best teams look and sound messy. They have more unstructured conversation. They engage in more ideological conflict. They put difficult issues on the table and spend time passionately debating them. As a result, outsiders looking in on high performing teams often get the wrong impression. In contrast, most dysfunctional teams look very neat and tidy. They rarely mix it up. Their meetings have clear, organized agendas and they always end on time. Nobody gets upset, people don't raise their voices, and they avoid conflict like the plague. Dysfunctional teams are a lot like the old Ozzie and Harriet television family, where everything is "nice." Unfortunately, "nice" only works on TV, not in the real world.
Good conflict focuses on issues; bad conflict focuses on people. More important, good conflict gets addressed in the moment, so that people walk away from it finished and with no residual impact. Bad conflict lingers on and on. It continues behind closed doors after the meeting is over. Few things will kill a team quicker than unresolved conflict. Regardless of the nature of the conflict, great teams always deal with it when it occurs. They don't try to shove it back down, hide it under the table or pretend it doesn't exist.
High performing teams usually try to follow these guidelines:
1. Team members make decisions unselfishly for the greater good, not for their own self-interest.
2. Team members are aligned on mission, strategy, goals and priorities.
3, Team members assume best intentions in one another, even when they disagree.
4. Team members openly discuss vital issues in team meetings.
5. When decisions are made in team meetings, everyone owns the decisions and fully supports them outside the meeting room.
6. Team members walk the talk and live by the firm’s stated values.
7. Team members are acutely aware of the shadow they cast on the rest of the organization.
8. Team members fully participate in initiatives to generate constructive change.
Do your colleagues engage in these eight healthy behaviors? If not, perhaps they need to invest some quality time in their own development, thereby improving their effectiveness.
Introducing the team concept at Chrysler won't be as easy and simple as it sounds. Human beings are flawed and fallible; they're imperfect beings. Imperfections at the individual level are one thing. But put a team together with all the various dynamics, toss in people's inherent human flaws, and you get a host of bizarre behaviors and outcomes. Because individuals behave dysfunctionally, teams can't help but operate the same way. In addition, companies often fail to follow through with their teambuilding efforts. They start out with great enthusiasm and lofty goals, and then somewhere along the way the batteries start to run down. More than anything, successful teambuilding requires a sustained effort and follow-through on the important guidelines listed below.
A major reason why so many teambuilding efforts fizzle out has to do with the mindset of the CEO or the senior management team. Often, they're following some highly complex theory or "flavor-of-the-month" approach that they hope will magically transform the workforce into high-performing teams. However, I believe that to have any hope at success, you have to keep it simple.
Interestingly, the best teams look and sound messy. They have more unstructured conversation. They engage in more ideological conflict. They put difficult issues on the table and spend time passionately debating them. As a result, outsiders looking in on high performing teams often get the wrong impression. In contrast, most dysfunctional teams look very neat and tidy. They rarely mix it up. Their meetings have clear, organized agendas and they always end on time. Nobody gets upset, people don't raise their voices, and they avoid conflict like the plague. Dysfunctional teams are a lot like the old Ozzie and Harriet television family, where everything is "nice." Unfortunately, "nice" only works on TV, not in the real world.
Good conflict focuses on issues; bad conflict focuses on people. More important, good conflict gets addressed in the moment, so that people walk away from it finished and with no residual impact. Bad conflict lingers on and on. It continues behind closed doors after the meeting is over. Few things will kill a team quicker than unresolved conflict. Regardless of the nature of the conflict, great teams always deal with it when it occurs. They don't try to shove it back down, hide it under the table or pretend it doesn't exist.
High performing teams usually try to follow these guidelines:
1. Team members make decisions unselfishly for the greater good, not for their own self-interest.
2. Team members are aligned on mission, strategy, goals and priorities.
3, Team members assume best intentions in one another, even when they disagree.
4. Team members openly discuss vital issues in team meetings.
5. When decisions are made in team meetings, everyone owns the decisions and fully supports them outside the meeting room.
6. Team members walk the talk and live by the firm’s stated values.
7. Team members are acutely aware of the shadow they cast on the rest of the organization.
8. Team members fully participate in initiatives to generate constructive change.
Do your colleagues engage in these eight healthy behaviors? If not, perhaps they need to invest some quality time in their own development, thereby improving their effectiveness.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Trust and teamwork.
You don't need to like your teammates, but it's important that you trust and respect them, and they do the same to you.
In The Third Opinion: How Successful Leaders Use Outside Insight to Create Superior Results, one of the subjects covered is trust. According to the author, Saj-nicole Joni, there are three fundamental distinctions of trust:
Personal Trust:
- trust that develops in the workplace from shared tasks and an understanding of what makes your teammates tick. It's knowing that your teammate won’t let you down when it counts, and vice versa. It's asking questions such as:
On a personal level, do I trust this person?
Do I believe this person is basically honest and ethical?
Do I believe s/he will make good when s/he gives his/her word?
Do I believe this person is basically well intentioned?
Do I believe this person will handle confidential information with care and
discretion?
Expertise Trust:
- trust that comes from competence and knowledge in a particular subject matter or process. Expertise trust focuses on the knowledge, judgment and thinking abilities of someone else.
Do I trust that this person is an expert in his/her field?
Is their knowledge current and up-to-date?
Do I trust the information they gather to inform and support their opinions?
Do they have an ability to understand my situation and apply their knowledge to it?
Do I trust their judgment regarding risk, options and tradeoffs?
Do they have the ability to innovate and develop custom solutions to hard problems?
Structural Trust:
- trust that refers to how much someone’s position or role affects your confidence that s/he will be able to deal with you straightforwardly.
Do they have a personal agenda?
Are they in a role where their judgment and thinking is likely to be significantly influenced by their need to advance their goals, self-interests, or advocacy?
“Leadership is trusting enough to be trusted; having a curious mind; having a listening ear; having an open heart” - Robert Cooper
In The Third Opinion: How Successful Leaders Use Outside Insight to Create Superior Results, one of the subjects covered is trust. According to the author, Saj-nicole Joni, there are three fundamental distinctions of trust:
Personal Trust:
- trust that develops in the workplace from shared tasks and an understanding of what makes your teammates tick. It's knowing that your teammate won’t let you down when it counts, and vice versa. It's asking questions such as:
On a personal level, do I trust this person?
Do I believe this person is basically honest and ethical?
Do I believe s/he will make good when s/he gives his/her word?
Do I believe this person is basically well intentioned?
Do I believe this person will handle confidential information with care and
discretion?
Expertise Trust:
- trust that comes from competence and knowledge in a particular subject matter or process. Expertise trust focuses on the knowledge, judgment and thinking abilities of someone else.
Do I trust that this person is an expert in his/her field?
Is their knowledge current and up-to-date?
Do I trust the information they gather to inform and support their opinions?
Do they have an ability to understand my situation and apply their knowledge to it?
Do I trust their judgment regarding risk, options and tradeoffs?
Do they have the ability to innovate and develop custom solutions to hard problems?
Structural Trust:
- trust that refers to how much someone’s position or role affects your confidence that s/he will be able to deal with you straightforwardly.
Do they have a personal agenda?
Are they in a role where their judgment and thinking is likely to be significantly influenced by their need to advance their goals, self-interests, or advocacy?
“Leadership is trusting enough to be trusted; having a curious mind; having a listening ear; having an open heart” - Robert Cooper
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Redefining roles at the operations value level.
"The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime."-- Babe Ruth
Managing at the operations value level today involves three fundamental tasks: first, making the organization’s vision operational; second, consistently delivering timely, error-free products and services; and third, making decisions based on what’s right for the customer and for the organization as a whole.
Converting to teams means a shift in the balance of power. Tommye Joe Davis, who managed a Levi-Strauss sewing plant in Murphy, North Carolina, believed that clarity about the organization’s vision, not the control of higher level managers and developers, would best guide successful front-line operators. The Murphy plant cross-trained teams of workers to perform 36 tasks instead of one or two, and the teams participated fully in running the plant, from organizing supplies to setting production goals. They also set personnel policy, and as a result, the Levi policy manual at that location shrunk from 700 pages to 50.
“You can’t lead by just barking orders,” noted Davis. “I used to say, ‘You do this, you do that.’ I learned to say ‘How do you want to do this?’... But it only worked if we all had the same picture in our head of what we were trying to do.”
Overcontrol kills invention, learning and commitment and inhibits agility and flexibility. In traditional organizations, managers tell employees how to do their jobs and allow them to make decisions only when they feel certain the employees will make the same decisions the managers would make. But in many of today’s most successful organizations, managing occurs “after the fact,” allowing operators to risk making mistakes because, in the long run, they’ll learn and make more right rather than wrong decisions.
Few people understand a job better than the person doing it everyday. To be successful in their new roles, managers throughout the organization have to embrace alternative forms of control, trading in certainty for speed by giving others the guidelines and freedom to act as they see fit. Nimbleness is the only sure way to maintain control in a fast changing environment.
Cigna, the giant property and casualty insurer has transformed its procedure for developing group policies for corporate customers with the help of teams supported by artificial intelligence. The old method, still standard practice for many insurers, had been to send each proposal through ten or more departments sequentially - sales, underwriting, policy service, claims, and so on. Each department would revise the proposal in the light of its own responsibility, information, nomenclature, and schedules. The inevitable result: confusion, and delay. Now, teams made up of representatives from each department assemble new policies with the help of a system programmed with insurance knowledge. Flexible and disciplined, this system can call up, correlate and display descriptions of all existing insurance coverages and options. The teams construct policies from alternatives the system suggests and the system distributes the proposal electronically throughout the corporation for the necessary approvals. Proposals are finished faster, conform better to customers’ needs, yet cost less because they reuse work that's already been done.
Managing at the operations value level today involves three fundamental tasks: first, making the organization’s vision operational; second, consistently delivering timely, error-free products and services; and third, making decisions based on what’s right for the customer and for the organization as a whole.
Converting to teams means a shift in the balance of power. Tommye Joe Davis, who managed a Levi-Strauss sewing plant in Murphy, North Carolina, believed that clarity about the organization’s vision, not the control of higher level managers and developers, would best guide successful front-line operators. The Murphy plant cross-trained teams of workers to perform 36 tasks instead of one or two, and the teams participated fully in running the plant, from organizing supplies to setting production goals. They also set personnel policy, and as a result, the Levi policy manual at that location shrunk from 700 pages to 50.
“You can’t lead by just barking orders,” noted Davis. “I used to say, ‘You do this, you do that.’ I learned to say ‘How do you want to do this?’... But it only worked if we all had the same picture in our head of what we were trying to do.”
Overcontrol kills invention, learning and commitment and inhibits agility and flexibility. In traditional organizations, managers tell employees how to do their jobs and allow them to make decisions only when they feel certain the employees will make the same decisions the managers would make. But in many of today’s most successful organizations, managing occurs “after the fact,” allowing operators to risk making mistakes because, in the long run, they’ll learn and make more right rather than wrong decisions.
Few people understand a job better than the person doing it everyday. To be successful in their new roles, managers throughout the organization have to embrace alternative forms of control, trading in certainty for speed by giving others the guidelines and freedom to act as they see fit. Nimbleness is the only sure way to maintain control in a fast changing environment.
Cigna, the giant property and casualty insurer has transformed its procedure for developing group policies for corporate customers with the help of teams supported by artificial intelligence. The old method, still standard practice for many insurers, had been to send each proposal through ten or more departments sequentially - sales, underwriting, policy service, claims, and so on. Each department would revise the proposal in the light of its own responsibility, information, nomenclature, and schedules. The inevitable result: confusion, and delay. Now, teams made up of representatives from each department assemble new policies with the help of a system programmed with insurance knowledge. Flexible and disciplined, this system can call up, correlate and display descriptions of all existing insurance coverages and options. The teams construct policies from alternatives the system suggests and the system distributes the proposal electronically throughout the corporation for the necessary approvals. Proposals are finished faster, conform better to customers’ needs, yet cost less because they reuse work that's already been done.
Redefining roles at the development value level.
Managing at the development value level today involves three fundamental tasks:
- first, defining and prepositioning the capabilities the organization will need to grow and prosper in the future;
- second, coordinating tactics, programs, and activities linking the organization to its customers, partners and suppliers; and
- third, creating an environment where everyone at the operating level knows what to do and has the resources, coaching and competence to run the day-to-day business successfully.
To improve the organization’s agility and flexibility, managers as developers need to stretch their allegiances across functional boundaries, greasing the skids between departments so the organization can respond swiftly and decisively to resolve problems and pursue opportunities. Meeting these objectives in a global economy involves connecting managers across barriers of time, geography, language and specialization and taking advantage of their different skills, interests and perspectives.
The development manager’s new world is uncertain, scary, moves very quickly and is full of noisy bargaining and deal-making. Adjusting to their new roles is quite a challenge for middle managers who've traditionally been accustomed to getting orders from above and demanding compliance from below. To make the transition successfully, they need training, support and coaching from those to whom they report.
Many companies today are undergoing major restructuring where they’re outsourcing operations, laying off employees and repurchasing their stock in an attempt to appease shareholders by raising the price of the stock. While such actions may succeed in raising prices in the short term, they don’t create new wealth, take the company into new markets, or create fundamentally new value for customers and shareholders.
Growing the business is middle management’s most important responsibility and significant changes in their roles, rewards, relationships and skills are needed before they’ll be able fulfill this responsibility effectively. It’s also important that the methods used to foster group learning and role development are consistent with the type of knowledge and skills that the group needs to use on an ongoing basis. Thus the redesign process should be a collaborative one, consistent with the desired outcome that the management group will function effectively together.
- first, defining and prepositioning the capabilities the organization will need to grow and prosper in the future;
- second, coordinating tactics, programs, and activities linking the organization to its customers, partners and suppliers; and
- third, creating an environment where everyone at the operating level knows what to do and has the resources, coaching and competence to run the day-to-day business successfully.
To improve the organization’s agility and flexibility, managers as developers need to stretch their allegiances across functional boundaries, greasing the skids between departments so the organization can respond swiftly and decisively to resolve problems and pursue opportunities. Meeting these objectives in a global economy involves connecting managers across barriers of time, geography, language and specialization and taking advantage of their different skills, interests and perspectives.
The development manager’s new world is uncertain, scary, moves very quickly and is full of noisy bargaining and deal-making. Adjusting to their new roles is quite a challenge for middle managers who've traditionally been accustomed to getting orders from above and demanding compliance from below. To make the transition successfully, they need training, support and coaching from those to whom they report.
Many companies today are undergoing major restructuring where they’re outsourcing operations, laying off employees and repurchasing their stock in an attempt to appease shareholders by raising the price of the stock. While such actions may succeed in raising prices in the short term, they don’t create new wealth, take the company into new markets, or create fundamentally new value for customers and shareholders.
Growing the business is middle management’s most important responsibility and significant changes in their roles, rewards, relationships and skills are needed before they’ll be able fulfill this responsibility effectively. It’s also important that the methods used to foster group learning and role development are consistent with the type of knowledge and skills that the group needs to use on an ongoing basis. Thus the redesign process should be a collaborative one, consistent with the desired outcome that the management group will function effectively together.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Redefining roles at the strategic value level.
When thinking through new responsibilities for senior executives, it’s helpful to classify employees as strategists, developers and operators, rather than using the more traditional labels of executives, managers and workers. The strategists are responsible for creating new business opportunities, the developers are responsible for growing the business and the operators are responsible for running the business. The traditional distinctions between managers and non-managers become increasingly blurred when everyone is responsible for managing some aspect of the enterprise. In this kind of world, it’s more useful to think of managers at all levels in terms of the value they contribute to the organization rather than viewing them as a special, separate class of people.
Managing at the strategic value level today involves four fundamental tasks:
- first, monitoring and influencing the environment to develop new business opportunities;
- second, articulating, modeling and creating ownership for a vision of what the organization aims to accomplish in the future;
- third, attracting and retaining business leaders, matching them with the right assignments and holding them accountable for results; and
- fourth, investing, distributing and balancing resources across the organization’s portfolio of businesses.
When Lew Platt was chairman of Hewlett-Packard, he believed his most important role in strategy formulation was building bridges among the company’s various operations. He said, “My role was to encourage discussion of the overlaps and gaps among business strategies, the important areas that weren’t being addressed by the strategies of the individual businesses.”
Platt’s strategy sessions were aimed at creating new market opportunities by looking at the entire business ecosystem. Most managers were so involved minding their own business they didn't make time to step out of their day-to-day boxes to identify and plan responses to external threats and opportunities. Successful management teams today work together to search their environments for patterns that connect with one another and to develop strategies that take advantage of these linkages. They also seek to gain significant competitive advantage by inventing bridges that create new patterns that didn’t previously exist.
In the past, only those at the pinnacle of the company’s hierarchy engaged in strategic thinking but in today’s flatter, more flexible architecture, that's become the responsibility of the many rather than the few. In the old structure, strategists or planners were seldom responsible for implementing their plans. Today, just thinking strategically no longer suffices; people are held accountable for acting strategically as well.
It often takes a crisis to change a traditional organization because the authority to set strategy and direction is highly concentrated at the top. As a consequence, a relatively small group of people at the top can hold the organization’s capacity to change hostage to their own personal willingness to adapt and to change. However, in practice the actual work of redesigning our musty old management practices is more evolutionary than revolutionary. You can’t take a large, complicated organization and tear up all the track at once. To do so would expose a company to an intolerable level of operational risk. Yet eventually companies must become as purposefully and creatively experimental in thinking about their management systems and processes as they already are in thinking about R&D or new-product development.
It takes time to discover the operating detail of how to make new ideas work in practice. You can see the broad directions, but you can’t see how it’s going to really work. You can’t even understand the secondary and third-level consequences of the design decisions you make. Those have to be discovered through trial and error.
Managing at the strategic value level today involves four fundamental tasks:
- first, monitoring and influencing the environment to develop new business opportunities;
- second, articulating, modeling and creating ownership for a vision of what the organization aims to accomplish in the future;
- third, attracting and retaining business leaders, matching them with the right assignments and holding them accountable for results; and
- fourth, investing, distributing and balancing resources across the organization’s portfolio of businesses.
When Lew Platt was chairman of Hewlett-Packard, he believed his most important role in strategy formulation was building bridges among the company’s various operations. He said, “My role was to encourage discussion of the overlaps and gaps among business strategies, the important areas that weren’t being addressed by the strategies of the individual businesses.”
Platt’s strategy sessions were aimed at creating new market opportunities by looking at the entire business ecosystem. Most managers were so involved minding their own business they didn't make time to step out of their day-to-day boxes to identify and plan responses to external threats and opportunities. Successful management teams today work together to search their environments for patterns that connect with one another and to develop strategies that take advantage of these linkages. They also seek to gain significant competitive advantage by inventing bridges that create new patterns that didn’t previously exist.
In the past, only those at the pinnacle of the company’s hierarchy engaged in strategic thinking but in today’s flatter, more flexible architecture, that's become the responsibility of the many rather than the few. In the old structure, strategists or planners were seldom responsible for implementing their plans. Today, just thinking strategically no longer suffices; people are held accountable for acting strategically as well.
It often takes a crisis to change a traditional organization because the authority to set strategy and direction is highly concentrated at the top. As a consequence, a relatively small group of people at the top can hold the organization’s capacity to change hostage to their own personal willingness to adapt and to change. However, in practice the actual work of redesigning our musty old management practices is more evolutionary than revolutionary. You can’t take a large, complicated organization and tear up all the track at once. To do so would expose a company to an intolerable level of operational risk. Yet eventually companies must become as purposefully and creatively experimental in thinking about their management systems and processes as they already are in thinking about R&D or new-product development.
It takes time to discover the operating detail of how to make new ideas work in practice. You can see the broad directions, but you can’t see how it’s going to really work. You can’t even understand the secondary and third-level consequences of the design decisions you make. Those have to be discovered through trial and error.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Operating guidelines for senior management teams.
A good way to get started building senior management teams is to involve executives in examining the reality and the consequences of how they interact together and to then reach agreement on guidelines for more effective interactions in the future.
Senior managers sometimes feel a little foolish creating operating guidelines spelling out how they should work together as a team. Surely, they think, we’re all adults and have years of experience working in groups. And that, of course, is the problem. Everyone has practiced dysfunctional behavior for years and this is one of the first things that needs to be changed. If other employees don't see and experience change at the senior management level, they're not likely to adopt more cooperative behaviors as they won't believe this is necessary and they won't have any examples to follow. In addition, their executives won't understand the dilemmas that other employees are grappling with and won't be able to coach them since they haven't experienced these issues themselves.
United Parcel Service discovered that many of its managers fell short as coaches and teachers. When surveyed, only 48% of UPS employees gave their managers favorable marks for helping them develop new skills. John Wooden, the legendary former head coach of UCLA basketball, once observed that, “A coach must prevent, correct or help, and not punish. He must make those under his supervision feel that they’re working with him rather than for him. He must be more interested in finding the best way rather than having his own way, and he must be genuinely concerned about his players.”
Operating guidelines should be explicit, simple, clear and concise. Here are some typical examples:
- Speak honestly. Make clear and direct requests. Be willing to surface issues or take positions that may result in conflict.
- Anyone can disagree about anything with anyone, but no one can disagree without stating the reasons why.
- Listen for peoples’ contributions, rather than editing with assessments, opinions or judgments.
- Support each other. Operate from the point of view that, “we’re all in this together.”
- It’s not OK to win at someone else’s expense or at the expense of the company.
- Support people in fulfilling their commitments and hold them accountable for results.
- Show appreciation by giving, receiving and requesting acknowledgment from others.
The material on senior management teams comes from a presentation I gave at the EEC Conference on “Innovative Work Organizations Operating in a Global Context,” in Dublin, Ireland, which was subsequently published as “New roles for everyone” in The Journal for Quality and Participation, Vol 21, #1.
Senior managers sometimes feel a little foolish creating operating guidelines spelling out how they should work together as a team. Surely, they think, we’re all adults and have years of experience working in groups. And that, of course, is the problem. Everyone has practiced dysfunctional behavior for years and this is one of the first things that needs to be changed. If other employees don't see and experience change at the senior management level, they're not likely to adopt more cooperative behaviors as they won't believe this is necessary and they won't have any examples to follow. In addition, their executives won't understand the dilemmas that other employees are grappling with and won't be able to coach them since they haven't experienced these issues themselves.
United Parcel Service discovered that many of its managers fell short as coaches and teachers. When surveyed, only 48% of UPS employees gave their managers favorable marks for helping them develop new skills. John Wooden, the legendary former head coach of UCLA basketball, once observed that, “A coach must prevent, correct or help, and not punish. He must make those under his supervision feel that they’re working with him rather than for him. He must be more interested in finding the best way rather than having his own way, and he must be genuinely concerned about his players.”
Operating guidelines should be explicit, simple, clear and concise. Here are some typical examples:
- Speak honestly. Make clear and direct requests. Be willing to surface issues or take positions that may result in conflict.
- Anyone can disagree about anything with anyone, but no one can disagree without stating the reasons why.
- Listen for peoples’ contributions, rather than editing with assessments, opinions or judgments.
- Support each other. Operate from the point of view that, “we’re all in this together.”
- It’s not OK to win at someone else’s expense or at the expense of the company.
- Support people in fulfilling their commitments and hold them accountable for results.
- Show appreciation by giving, receiving and requesting acknowledgment from others.
The material on senior management teams comes from a presentation I gave at the EEC Conference on “Innovative Work Organizations Operating in a Global Context,” in Dublin, Ireland, which was subsequently published as “New roles for everyone” in The Journal for Quality and Participation, Vol 21, #1.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Designing work for senior management teams.
Managing at senior executive levels today involves four fundamental tasks:
- first, monitoring and influencing the environment to develop new business opportunities:
- second, articulating, modeling and creating ownership for a vision of what the company aims to accomplish in the future:
- third, attracting business leaders, matching them with the right assignments and holding them accountable for results: and
- fourth, investing, distributing and balancing resources across the company’s portfolio of businesses.
These are all collective rather than individual tasks. If they’re to be managed effectively, learnings acquired from enterprise-level work teams need to be transferred into the executive suite. In today's rapidly changing world, you can’t run the business from memory any more.Designing work for senior management teams starts by identifying the tasks that are unique to the top level of the organization.
People accustomed to managing a particular function often think that their own outputs are the same as the outputs of the group that they manage. The challenge is to help them discover what the senior management team as a whole produces. Start this voyage of discovery by analyzing the current business context and the contributions of the management team as a whole to the success of the business in that context. During this examination, expectations evolve about what work is needed and who's best suited to accomplish it. Individual roles can then be developed by negotiating these expectations.
Experience suggests the steps to use in developing senior management teams are as follows:
- Share individual understandings of the current business context and then collectively agree about important trends, potential problems and emerging opportunities.
- Review what the senior managing team currently produces and evaluate its relevance in relation to emerging business developments.
- Identify any new outputs required from the senior management team to assure that the company will continue to be successful in the future.
- Examine the processes required to create these outputs and agree about how the management team should work together to support these processes.
- Redesign and reassign the current roles and responsibilities of senior managers as needed.
- Define new accountabilities and negotiate new performance and recognition agreements.
- Continue to provide the management team with the skills, information and guidelines they need to operate successfully.
As usual, tomorrow is poetry day. Then, more on teams next week.
- first, monitoring and influencing the environment to develop new business opportunities:
- second, articulating, modeling and creating ownership for a vision of what the company aims to accomplish in the future:
- third, attracting business leaders, matching them with the right assignments and holding them accountable for results: and
- fourth, investing, distributing and balancing resources across the company’s portfolio of businesses.
These are all collective rather than individual tasks. If they’re to be managed effectively, learnings acquired from enterprise-level work teams need to be transferred into the executive suite. In today's rapidly changing world, you can’t run the business from memory any more.Designing work for senior management teams starts by identifying the tasks that are unique to the top level of the organization.
People accustomed to managing a particular function often think that their own outputs are the same as the outputs of the group that they manage. The challenge is to help them discover what the senior management team as a whole produces. Start this voyage of discovery by analyzing the current business context and the contributions of the management team as a whole to the success of the business in that context. During this examination, expectations evolve about what work is needed and who's best suited to accomplish it. Individual roles can then be developed by negotiating these expectations.
Experience suggests the steps to use in developing senior management teams are as follows:
- Share individual understandings of the current business context and then collectively agree about important trends, potential problems and emerging opportunities.
- Review what the senior managing team currently produces and evaluate its relevance in relation to emerging business developments.
- Identify any new outputs required from the senior management team to assure that the company will continue to be successful in the future.
- Examine the processes required to create these outputs and agree about how the management team should work together to support these processes.
- Redesign and reassign the current roles and responsibilities of senior managers as needed.
- Define new accountabilities and negotiate new performance and recognition agreements.
- Continue to provide the management team with the skills, information and guidelines they need to operate successfully.
As usual, tomorrow is poetry day. Then, more on teams next week.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
New management skills contd.
Continuing to identify some new skills needed by senior managers:
*Be an expert in multiple areas of the business.
Toshiba starts its engineers and scientists off in the sales department so they can learn first-hand about the customer’s needs. In earlier days, Chrysler encouraged the development of broad-bandwidth expertise by giving senior executives multiple responsibilities. For example, when Tom Stallkamp was head of purchasing, he also ran Chrysler’s minivan operations. Executive vice president Francois Castaing ran international operations and was also in charge of engine and transmission development. Lester Thurow, a former dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management, noted that when financial managers were running American steel companies, they didn’t understand important new technical processes such as continuous casting. As a result, they decided to wait and see how the process worked in other countries before committing to it themselves. By the time they gained that knowledge, their companies had fallen too far behind to catch up. “You don’t have to be a scientist,” observed Thurow, “but you must be able to read the material and know how to proceed.”
*Have excellent interpersonal skills.
Abba Eban, the former Israeli foreign minister, commenting on a Group of Seven Nation's summit conference, observed that although the leaders who attended represented an extraordinary concentration of power and intelligence, their meetings didn’t result in much progress. He added, “Perhaps, it’s because each of the leaders was thinking individually, not collectively.” Getting senior managers to work together takes a lot of effort, particularly when they grew up and became successful largely as a result of their own individual initiatives in a highly competitive, conflict-averse culture.
Early in their careers, managers spend most of their time dealing with situations where the rules are relatively clear. When they’re promoted to senior positions, they find more gray areas, especially when dealing with other people. In their new roles, success springs not so much from what they know as technical specialists but from their connections, relationships and ability to work with and influence others. While disagreement and conflict fuel the creative process, experience shows that most companies smooth over contentious issues and avoided confronting them at least half the time. Another 30% of the time they lead to non-productive fighting with no clear resolution. Only in 20% of cases is contention truly confronted and resolved.
*Be an expert in multiple areas of the business.
Toshiba starts its engineers and scientists off in the sales department so they can learn first-hand about the customer’s needs. In earlier days, Chrysler encouraged the development of broad-bandwidth expertise by giving senior executives multiple responsibilities. For example, when Tom Stallkamp was head of purchasing, he also ran Chrysler’s minivan operations. Executive vice president Francois Castaing ran international operations and was also in charge of engine and transmission development. Lester Thurow, a former dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management, noted that when financial managers were running American steel companies, they didn’t understand important new technical processes such as continuous casting. As a result, they decided to wait and see how the process worked in other countries before committing to it themselves. By the time they gained that knowledge, their companies had fallen too far behind to catch up. “You don’t have to be a scientist,” observed Thurow, “but you must be able to read the material and know how to proceed.”
*Have excellent interpersonal skills.
Abba Eban, the former Israeli foreign minister, commenting on a Group of Seven Nation's summit conference, observed that although the leaders who attended represented an extraordinary concentration of power and intelligence, their meetings didn’t result in much progress. He added, “Perhaps, it’s because each of the leaders was thinking individually, not collectively.” Getting senior managers to work together takes a lot of effort, particularly when they grew up and became successful largely as a result of their own individual initiatives in a highly competitive, conflict-averse culture.
Early in their careers, managers spend most of their time dealing with situations where the rules are relatively clear. When they’re promoted to senior positions, they find more gray areas, especially when dealing with other people. In their new roles, success springs not so much from what they know as technical specialists but from their connections, relationships and ability to work with and influence others. While disagreement and conflict fuel the creative process, experience shows that most companies smooth over contentious issues and avoided confronting them at least half the time. Another 30% of the time they lead to non-productive fighting with no clear resolution. Only in 20% of cases is contention truly confronted and resolved.
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