The Biggest Problem For HR Strategy

Author: Dave Crisp

28 Aug

Over the last years and months I’ve come to believe the biggest problem with HR Strategy and getting results is individual leaders. We know in all companies there are pockets of satisfied, highly motivated, engaged employees who turn out superb work. We also know those are mostly the exceptions. Results and motivation are lost because the good work in one area is cancelled out or sidetracked by what’s going wrong in others. Only a handful of companies have spread engagement thoroughly across their organizations.

We further know that it’s the leader of each unit who makes this happen or not. So I’ve been pursuing the question ‘what’s the problem, why is it so hard to develop enough positive leaders to establish a culture (a set of typical habits) of supportive, innovative leadership across an entire organization?’ We know exactly what behaviors are actually necessary to achieve this and they are things anyone can do, any day, anywhere, if they simply keep them in mind and do them. These can work almost literally by rote if need be. And if you get someone behaving a certain way, their thinking usually changes to match according to psychologists. So why can’t we get leaders giving positive reinforcement, asking for feedback, supporting trial and error and so forth – the keys to great results?

The answer seems to be that we all too easily fall back into ‘natural’ ways of behaving toward others. We find it hard to empathize in most situations (some are far better than others) and without that guide to how another person might feel, we do what first comes to mind – which often means we immediately critique what’s wrong, follow our own instincts without reference to others opinions, etc.

Reading the 2008 autobiography of a US turnaround specialist (The Turnaround Kid by Steve Miller) gives some insight into these problems. He helped Lee Iacocca save Chrysler and then wrote a particularly damning condemnation of Iacocca’s leadership behavior, which he repeats in the book – lack of listening, favoritism, ego-generated strategy blindness and more.

A couple of assignments later he turned around massive construction company, MK, where he followed fired CEO Bill Agee. Bill ‘managed’ MK for his last two years from his Pebble Beach, California mansion, requiring Boise, Idaho head office execs to fly down for ‘instructions.’ Visiting Boise he was known to wear a bullet proof vest for fear of employees and his execs learned to wait a day before implementing his orders because his much younger, controversial wife from a scandal-rocked former work liaison would often convince him to change decisions. Really. You can’t make this stuff up. It’s all on record. But people still hire Bill for management advice. Really.

Miller, a self-styled sensitive manager, despite being a hard-nosed, typical CFO-type by style and training was able to do the right things – most of the time. He did remarkable jobs in numerous situations, including Chrysler and MK, of motivating and aligning large numbers of employees and unions to accept cuts and bankers to take lower rates on loans.

Surprisingly, even he stumbled later when he took on saving Delphi, the near-bankrupt auto parts spin-off of GM, where he promptly put his feet straight into his mouth. He insulted unions and even landscape staff as greedy for accepting on-par pay with the rest of the automotive industry. At the same time he was proposing cuts for them and increases in the C-suite. That’s a far cry from earlier massaging of pay cuts by empathetically pointing out everyone was in the same boat and awarding himself a $1 a year salary. Most recently he’s back (just this summer) to save AIG. It remains to be seen which approach he will take, but the bigger question is how can even a person who knows how to behave effectively suddenly do the reverse and create major problems? Was it just perception or a major glitch? At least we can be sure he has noticed and will rethink.

I’m not sure I have answers, but for HR and organization effectiveness this may be the biggest question of all.

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Filed under: 4 Honest - Finding Reality, Books, Coaching Yourself, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future

Napoleon’s Glance

Author: Dave Crisp

23 Feb

Strategically it sometimes pays to step back from daily routine and read or experience something different… but not necessarily too different – the busman’s holiday they call it – as when you work for a charity, gaining pleasure and learning from doing more of what you do at work. Reading for pleasure, I stumbled on a book by William Duggan, associate professor of management at Columbia Business School, an expert on strategic thinking and author of three books in the field – The Art of What Works (2001), Napoleon’s Glance (2004) and Strategic Intuition (2007). The gist: Napoleon and other amazing leaders followed a route to highly effective strategy that is very, very different from what is normally thought of as strategic planning or strategic thinking.

The principles apply directly to HR strategy. Oddly, just recently, one of the many HR/Learning & Development blogs out there published “Four tips for Effective Leadership,” namely: Be counterintuitive, live comfortably in gray areas, learn by doing and exercise soft skills – exactly what Duggan points to with his great strategists. Strategy isn’t arrived at by ‘planning’ in the sense of laying out exact steps and stages with time lines and benchmarks. Napoleon and the others ‘put their teams in motion,’ ‘looked for small battles they could win decisively,’ ’stuck to the course with firm resolution,’ and learned to evolve strategies as they went rather than work them out in detail beforehand.

Reading these, I realized that, yes, most successes I ran into along the way evolved ‘in the midst of action’ (a phrase I also recognized from a Zen master talking about finding your way calmly ‘in the midst of action’). Does this apply to HR? My former company got into elearning early and heavily, with great results, because we were asked to look at ‘expert systems’ that the CEO saw at a conference (a different computer technology) and we jumped to use the budget and just get going, without being in the least sure where we were headed, but seeing some possibilities in using technical systems to leverage more people learning more things.

If we’d waited for our IT process that called for developing a technical plan in detail, with projected costs three to five years out, we’d never have gotten off the ground. Yet planning is valuable. In the words of Eisenhower, the top allied General of WWII, “Plans are nothing, planning is everything.” The difference, in other words, is active versus passive. Get going, planning as you go, through the unexpected twists and uncertainties – don’t wait for “a plan” designed to resolve something you think may happen – it won’t.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, 5 Habits - Action, Books, Business/Strategy, Coaching over Command Leadership, Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

How Fast Can a Behemoth Change Culture?

Author: Dave Crisp

10 Nov

Giant GM is struggling to change, that much is certain. But recent reports confuse the reader about what’s really going on. Take Workforce Week for October 7 and October 19. In various ways, from the headlines to content, both articles suggest that new CEO (Fritz Henderson), named March 30 to replace the former old-style executive (Rick Wagoner), has ‘done’ the work needed to change the culture.

Depending on how you read these, the messages are puzzling. The long term HR head is replaced with a former operations executive. Layers of management have been laid off to streamline things and shake up the physical bureaucracy, but whether this shakes the bureaucratic habits of thinking and behavior that inevitably form the anchors of culture remains to be seen. HR is dropped from some key operating senior teams, but is tagged as an ‘enabler’ of the change process. Enabling from the outside?

There are suggestions that the new CEO sees the culture change as ‘done’ (or more likely sees it as having been given a momentum-driving start through his bankruptcy restructuring, which appears to have been sold to managers as ‘a gift’). There are other hints he understands it must be a continuing process. I’m skeptical of calling precipitous down-sizing a gift. For sure you can try to make lemonade from such lemons and if you look at the CN restructuring (in Les Dakens excellent new book, Switchpoints) that preceded the sort of culture change GM is talking about, you can see it is possible to make necessity work more for you than against you, but it’s still a wrenching process with some uncertainty as to what it produces.

You can also see with the CN example that it took 10 years in various stages to evolve something like the full impact on culture that GM almost certainly needs. Yes, you can make early gains, but if you assume that’s all, you will certainly fall short of what’s possible and perhaps even create a situation where culture falls back toward what it used to be. Habits take time and repetition to change.

It’s very hard to tell from reports such as this whether the people managing the new structure really understand that it takes years of stable and continuing reinforcement of consistent practices to actually change culture. Are reporters putting their interpretations on things – that change is ‘done’ or that it is ‘in progress?’ We won’t know for some time, but the reporting is worrisome.

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Filed under: 5 Habits - Action, Books, Business/Strategy, Fix The Jerks, Human Resources (HR)

Two books worth reading

Author: Dave Crisp

15 Sep

I finally broke down and made the effort to read both of Obama’s books. He’s a truly remarkable writer for a start. and they certainly appear to show his own hand despite the undoubtedly large number of ‘fact checkers’ and ‘assistant editors’ he may have had specifically with the second one. Whatever your political beliefs it’s hard to ignore the value of reasoned debate and a clear point of view expressed in a readable way. The views fit mine, as they do for most Canadians, but I was also pleasantly surprised at the depth of discussion and breadth of ideas they bring together.

The language and style are very engaging, although I’m a reader at heart, so they may not suit everyone. For a leader who exudes all five of the core leadership principles I promote, there is none better. I’m glad I’ve lived to see a truly logical, sane individual in what many consider the most powerful office in the world. I have to express surprise that a political system as much criticized as the US has been able at last to put someone of his mental caliber in the role. As Churchill observed, ‘democracy is the worst political system except for all the others.’ Sometimes it really seems to work visibly.

It’s just a shame that so many of the most vocal individuals we elect are not up to this level. Of course, the even greater shame is that the efforts and abilities of just one person are likely to be mostly thwarted by the rest, though I believe the effort still pays off in the long term by establishing ideas that won’t ever go away and someday will see action. I’m a great believer that we don’t give politicians enough credit for the good struggles they attempt and the tremendous efforts and goodwill most of them bring. Unfortunately getting consensus on consistent directions is notoriously difficult at best among so many varied interests and opinions. and often it seems like two steps back to one forward. Nevertheless our humanly flawed leaders have produced some great societies for us to live in.

Regardless of whether specific policies never get passed in the welter of competing interests, I think Obama has already given the world a gift – a logical, well-argued set of objectives that will undoubtedly be quoted far and wide for years, perhaps centuries, to come. And his very human struggle to come to terms with his own life and place in the world are.

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, 3 Strategic - Thinking, Books, Current Affairs

Happiness is Multi-faceted

Author: Dave Crisp

11 Aug

This may be more than one post’s worth of ideas, but researching following the World Congress of Positive Psychology (mentioned in an earlier post) led to some great resources.

Perhaps the most important concept is that happiness isn’t a single thing. When thought of as if it were you tend to think of leisure and joyful moments, but it really runs much deeper. Todd Kashdan makes the point in his excellent brand new book Curious? that we might not even want to set happiness as the most important goal in life. That’s carried through in the very interesting Positive Psychology News Daily (PPND) web site authored by graduates of the first MA programs in the field.

In fact, the PPND site impressed me with several graphics or “image maps” that allow you to click on elements that make up, for instance, ‘a life well lived image map‘ and find the components to a ‘positive emotions image map‘ and other facets of living well. The concepts they capture reinforce Kashdan’s point that maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree trying to focus on happiness alone.

A similar point emerges from another new book, The Happiness Equation, by others of the Positive Psych movement. It gives brief information about 100 items that add to or subtract from happiness and well-being – quite a list, from which you can generate a score to assess how happy you are relative to others, but even more importantly you can see from that which factors are contributing or are missing that create a sense of a good life.

Once again one of the most impressive things about this is the vast amount of research and publication that’s been done in the few short years since this field of study emerged. It really puts in perspective the sort of counseling that goes with mild mood prescriptions to form what Jonathon Haidt and others have shown to be the best antidotes to depression and how closely some of these relate to the elements needed for people to be happy and engaged at work.

While it might seem that these are intensely personal concerns, the fact is that happy employees have consistently been shown to produce better results. It isn’t either/or, but both/and. We can do the right thing by helping people identify what would make them happier and simultaneously improve profits and market share. What a concept! Great to see it born out again and again in modern research.

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, Books, Coaching Others, Fix The Jerks, Learning Organization

So Much Discussion Today Impacts HR

Author: Dave Crisp

25 Nov

I had a chance to hear speaker/consultant David Hurst today discuss his book Crisis & Renewal about how organizations need to change continuously to stay competitive and productive. As with many intense presentations it will take some time to get his points in perspective, but the implications for Human Resources (HR) and how people lead and manage organizations are clearly important to get a grip on.

Coincidentally I’m also re-reading The Toyota Way and see some interesting contrasts and parallels. Both agree that you need to create a sense of crisis to keep people forging forward in organizations. Sounds bit like "burning platform," which I’ve always objected to.

In Hurst’s view he likens the necessary crisis to the choice in forestry management of making controlled burns to eliminate dead underbrush or trying to avoid fires entirely – which only allows deadwood to pile up and ensure a monstrous, uncontrolled fire at some point in future. Toyota decided to pursue a sensible long term strategy – to build a car that was 40% more fuel efficient in five years or so. Then a new CEO moved the target to 100% great efficiency and cut development time to 18 months. That created a "crisis" for the team to be sure, but one which the company had some clear reasons to believe was possible.

In a sense you could say the choice to develop the hybrid Prius early (and incidentally get a huge jump on the market and grab an 80% share out of the gate) was a ‘controlled fire’ within Toyota’s ability to manage rather than waiting for the ultimate melt-down that we’re likely to see at some of the big 3.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Books, Business/Strategy, Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

Are times really changing for HR?

Author: Dave Crisp

16 Nov

Listening to Kevin Cashman this week on the update of his well-known leadership book offered a chance to reflect on the extent to which the climate in which HR (Human Resources) operates is changing… or isn’t. Interesting that Cashman’s writing retains its Zen flavor, something one might think wouldn’t sell well in the corporate world, but he’s been consistent for more than ten years now.

Cashman updated his book to include more research and case studies that confirm the value of its recommendations – that to create change, a leader must first change him or herself. It’s a message more leaders need to hear. In fact, in my piece for Canadian HR Reporter, I make the point that this is why there are so many bad leaders, a question we constantly hear. A leader who thinks their role is to tell others to change, but has no intention or expectation of changing themselves is a bad leader and there are lots.

Cashman’s point with the update is there are many companies beginning to notice this principle and use it to hire or promote better CEOs who in turn create and lead better executive teams, who in turn lead more effectively for results. The problem is that “many” is a relative term. Where before there might have been a handful of such companies, now there are twice or three times as many – still a handful compared to the vast number of organizations out there.

Listening to Cashman and knowing he’s been stumping the world at conference after conference for years makes one wonder how many of have to push this message out before it becomes everyday stuff for leaders in organizations. Somewhere there is a tipping point, to borrow Malcolm Gladwell’s book title and concept. It can’t come too soon for all the people who continue to struggle in companies that haven’t picked up on this message.

As it happens, it’s my pleasure to MC a Gladwell book launch event shortly after his new book, Outliers, hits the shelves finally next Tuesday. I’m grateful to have this opportunity to finally meet him as well as hear directly what he has to say. Of course, I’ll be posting about it shortly after that.

Times are really changing for leadership and HR when such information is absorbed so readily and more people seek to put it to use. How Outliers is received will be the next measure of how much.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Books, Coaching Yourself, Coaching over Command Leadership, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future

Punching In Captures HR Principles of Engagement

Author: Dave Crisp

6 Aug

Thanks to the library’s automated waiting list I got an early copy of the new book “Punching In” by writer, Alex Frankel. I can’t recall where I heard about it, but it’s quite an interesting description of his experience testing and observing applying and working as a front line employee at half a dozen top-rated US employers – UPS, Gap, Starbucks, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, the Container store, Apple and applying at others where he wasn’t selected.

This is a chance for senior execs and HR people to hear first hand what it’s like on their front lines or ones that might be very much like theirs. It reaffirms a number of observations that probably ought to be obvious. First, many applicants honestly don’t know what sort of jobs they might fit into and which they won’t. Frankel was impressed that some screening processes correctly judged, but you’d have to say most didn’t.

The overall conclusion he almost gets to is that fit and perceptions are incredibly important. He really Alex Frankel's new book Punching In liked UPS, a job that sounds as if it would kill some people, while he hated (and implies most people might hate) some of the others. What struck me most is the last chapter in which he returns to his UPS experience and becomes positively rhapsodic about it, to the point where he almost toys with the idea of re-joining permanently. It’s particularly interesting to read how he fell in love with them – via experiences before, during and after his time there – and note what a special and unusual time it was (the Christmas rush, when package delivery takes on a special meaning it doesn’t have to the same extent the other 11 months of the year). For some employees it takes quite a complex of coincidences to hook them.

Considering these are all companies with applicants lined up at the door due to their reputations as employers, it’s daunting to see how difficult it is for even top organizations to impress and hold staff and what a combination of factors it would take to make each company irresistible.

In some ways even more impressive is his recognition that each of these companies has true believers among its staff, people who feel about their employer the way he feels about UPS. He notes how the attitudes of these individuals, particularly when they’re in leadershp roles, get close to rubbing off on him despite his own feelings and scepticism. The human factor is in many ways the most powerful influence, potentially outweighing specific policies and culture as I read it. I’m interested in whether others agree.

Coincidentally this week’s Herman Trend newsletter points to yet another study, this time by BlessingWhite, assessing engagement levels (and strongly correlated retention rates) across organizations in UK/Ireland, Asia Pacific and North America. In general considerably fewer than a quarter to a third of employees are actively engaged while nearly 20% may be actively disengaged. This is actually an improvement on results previously quoted in a number of studies, but not by much. There may be a small trend to improvement as the Hay Group’s Bill Cheshire has noted in Canada, but arguably still a long way to go to reach maximum potential, although we have only thin evidence that this might be in the range of 60% (a number estimated by Michael Koscec at Entec Corporation). While it’s overly optimistic to think we could ever expect all employees to be onside with any organization, it’s important to get a clear picture of where we are at in general. Frankel’s book is an interesting personal look at how such figures come about.

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, 4 Honest - Finding Reality, Books, Leaders of the Future

Bunko or Bunk – Gen Y and HR Challenges

Author: Dave Crisp

18 Jul

I’ve spoken with two university researchers recently who express concern that the hoopla over the uniqueness of Gen Y recruits may be overblown.

It’s been 4 months since futurist Dan Pink (other books: Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind) jumped into the fray with The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, said to be the replacement for What Color Is Your Parachute specifically for Gen Y.

Maybe. It’s light and light-hearted in manga comic format so it’s clearly targeted there. Many reviewers are quite taken with this, but the questions remains, are Gen Ys buying it or reading it when it’s bought for them.

Dan’s advice is six simple (all in favor of that!) principles for career path choices: Dan Pink's manga format Johnny Bunko

There is no plan. [The economy changes too fast for your career to have a plan]
Think strengths, not weaknesses. [Find your advantages]
It’s not about you. [Serving others serves you best]
Persistence trumps talent. [Keep showing up]
Make excellent mistakes. [Take risks, but fail forward]
Leave an imprint. [Do something that matters]

The issue is, of course, there never was a plan. We mostly stumbled into careers before so that’s not new. Neither are the other items.

Will Gen Y really change the workplace or, when they get mortgages, spouses and kids, will they “sell out” just as everyone acuses boomers of doing? More to the point, will our concern for what Gen Y thinks continue past the first blush of staffing shortage. Will we genuinely start listening to diverse employees’ needs and interests?

Meanwhile Pink doesn’t substitute for good career ‘how to’ books like Parachute or Barbara Moses’ excellent What Next. It’s a useful add-on whatever your generation – things we should all be considering, not just when we’re starting out, but for once, could we hear from Gen Y if they actually want this stuff instead of hearing from “grown ups” that they for sure will? If we’re really as interested in listening as we say, perhaps we should show it by doing so. Anyone heard what they think?

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Books, Building A Career, Coaching Others, How Simplicity Works

Book titles that need more work

Author: Dave Crisp

29 Apr

Just back from a couple of weeks travel – conference and vacation – where I made a note to comment on this book title. I noticed it in an airport bookstore, but had made up my mind not to get pulled in while taking time away. In this case, it was easy to say this one doesn’t need to be read due to it’s rather obvious "how to" subtitle.

The book: Make It Glow: How to Build a Company Reputation for Human Goodness, Flawless Execution, and Being Best-In-Class.

Big surprise. Would that be: consistently work at human goodness, flawless execution and being best in class?

Likely there really is more to say. For instance, how would you work at these things and what would your priorities be in relation to the more typical "make the numbers at all costs" approach to managing? Nevertheless the sense of it being so obvious made it easy to ignore.

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Filed under: Books, Communicating Effectively, How Simplicity Works

Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

The Biggest Problem For HR Strategy

Napoleon’s Glance

How Fast Can a Behemoth Change Culture?

Two books worth reading

Happiness is Multi-faceted

So Much Discussion Today Impacts HR

Are times really changing for HR?

Punching In Captures HR Principles of Engagement

Bunko or Bunk – Gen Y and HR Challenges

Book titles that need more work

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