You have to love the article’s opening line, reminiscent of Fast Company’s “Why We Hate HR” – “Would it be a strategic, forward-thinking utopia [if HR took on the CEO role] – or a backwater that focused on tissues, teabags and time and attendance?”

I think this describes part of the problem – along the lines of saying the biggest disability so-called disabled people have is the opinions of the abled. One of the biggest disabilities of HR executives is the outright desire of other executives to paint them as concerned primarily about “tissues, teabags and time and attendance.” If true, it’s almost inevitably because that’s what the CEO and the organization demand and limit HR to. More often it’s what others want everyone to believe so they don’t have to accept suggestions from HR or face them as competitors for senior roles.

The article goes on to point out that few HR people end up as CEOs of big operations, but some do, of whom some make mistakes – what a surprise – ignoring the fact these mistakes are similar to the mistakes other appointees make – over-spending, etc. In the article this is naturally attributed to lack of “business acumen” (but no comment about how many other CEOs make the same mistakes, presumably showing an equal lack of business acumen).

Then follow some lengthy bits about how necessary it is for career HR people who aspire to CEO roles to get some profit and loss experience in some other function. That certainly fits with today’s view that leadership development for all types of top roles requires rotation through a series of assignments judiciously chosen to provide perspective and experience in dealing with varied types of situations including failure, turnarounds, P&L, functional and more. Quite a few organizations now see experience in the HR role as critical for future leaders who otherwise may not be aware of the huge scope and importance of this territory and its many potential pitfalls. So the article wavers on to a somewhat shaky lack of conclusion about whether HR people can or can’t expect to succeed as CEOs, with more examples of those who have than those who haven’t (it is an HR magazine article after all).

One interesting aside from the main thrust is the question of whether they don’t get to be CEO because they don’t want to. Again one might well ask if this is true of other department heads as well. Everyone sees CEO tenure tending to be short, CEOs being criticized and fired for nearly every variation of mistake it’s possible to make and the incredible hours and other commitments CEOs are expected to make, often to the detriment of family and having a life in general. Of course there’s always a line up to be CEO, but never the entire or even majority of the executive team.

My guess is that many HR VPs get to see up close just how complex, difficult to master and ultimately thankless the CEO job really is (unless you consider huge severance to be a form of thanks, which is arguably a cynical, but useful perspective). By contrast I believe a great many CFOs imagine they could do better than their current boss because they believe they understand what business is really all about much more – ie: in their view MONEY. Unfortunately success isn’t that simple, a fact some companies are recognizing to their great advantage.  It even includes tissues, tea bags and time and attendance at time. It doesn’t hurt a CEO to understand those.

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In fact, there are many parts of any organization that don’t function as well as they could and those are all areas where HR could take a lead role in improving things. That might even reach up to the C-suite where the Board might be wise to look at the CEO and other C-level incumbents with a view to improving performance.

Of course, you can’t do everything, so you have to pick your areas – ones where you think you will get results and where you think you will survive. I won’t say ‘where you are safe to tread’ since a key part of leadership is taking risks and pushing limits. For instance, you may well be able to coach C-suite members, but hesitate because they won’t accept it willingly and may retaliate. Survival is a serious issue to consider. If a particular project you really believe in is clearly not survivable, you have to make decisions. Is it worth pursuing even if it results in you being pushed out or can you contribute satisfactorily (in your view) by staying away from that project and tackling lesser ones that nonetheless make a difference? Every leader at least sometimes has to come to terms with such questions. It’s not optional, but a clear aspect of leading. If the stuff isn’t tough, others would be doing it.

It’s pretty scary and awfully presumptuous perhaps for HR to think it can wield authority in areas that haven’t been previously defined for it, but that’s what being a valued contributor to a senior team is all about. Every member of the team ought to have opinions and ideas for improving every other area. Silos often prevent team members from even raising these thoughts, but that in itself is something that falls into a key role HR is intended to consider. Organizations function better without silos, but someone has to tackle the questions of how to get rid of them.

So, no, HR can’t own the entire world, but does have an opportunity to choose to take on significant pieces of it, areas that other functions in the organization probably wouldn’t dream of touching or areas that others, who could take them on, aren’t. HR is the only function that shares with the CEO the responsibility for what’s going on in every area of the organization. In sales you worry about sales and maybe about ‘adjacent’ areas – engineering of the products you are being asked to sell and the marketing and social media issues, but you rarely find sales worrying about what’s happening day-to-day in IT or finance or how to fix them. Yes, they may have opinions at a distance, but hardly the access directly into the heart of what makes those organizations function the way HR potentially does.

So deciding where and how to attempt to lead is a challenging set of choices for HR, knowing that you can’t own the entire world. It gives one freedom to focus where it will make the biggest difference, but how many HR functions sit down and actually attempt to decide that?

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Previous posts pointed out the ever increasing need and opportunity to improve HR management by measuring and developing strategy according to what’s found mathematically. Few HR departments have paid enough attention to developing the requisite measurement and math skills in house.

A second area that’s unavoidable is social media. As with measurements, there’s an unfortunately tendency among many HR professionals to think this belongs somewhere else, in this case with legal advisors or departments or with marketing or communications specialists rather than in HR.

Of course things can be set up that way. Leave hard numbers and technical processes to finance or IT or audit, or social media to marketing and legal. Inevitably, though, HR becomes involved. As soon as you want to re-engineer some process and have to move people around or if you need to discipline staff members who breach privacy or libel rules, reveal secrets or make derogatory comments about the company or staff on the Internet, you’re smack in the middle of HR territory, areas where legal may have an opinion, but culture, past practice, performance and disciplinary systems all weigh even more heavily.

So HR can choose to leave the upfront issues of measurement or social media to others, but will almost certainly complain that they weren’t brought in early enough when things start to happen and specifically when things start to go wrong as they affect people. For HR to be in a leadership role it makes sense to walk into these territories with a view that HR should own a major chunk as well as the knowledge that no one department can develop all the answers effectively.

It’s much easier to break down silos and gain your rightful input into issues such as these if you are leading the evolution of policy and practice than if finance, IT, marketing, legal or other areas are attempting to enunciate rules and procedures and HR is simply ‘helping’ or giving input.

Essentially these are perfect areas to do cross-functional planning and discussion. Again HR has a huge opportunity to show the way rather than be hauled in as an afterthought or an add-on. These aren’t easy areas to come to grips with, the best approaches are still just emerging from the muddy surroundings. There’s lots of room for mistakes, regrets, embarrassment and more, but that’s exactly what distinguishes leaders from average managers – the willingness to stand up and be counted on important strategies, where the first mover is often criticized at least as much as lauded.

Being willing to stick ones neck out and accept criticism for a new product, partially formed, that everyone immediately wants to add their two cents worth to is a key element in seizing the first-mover advantage. Getting your policy keys in place early and offering to add in others’ is a better position than letting others lead and later trying to argue for a change to suit HR needs.

Power grows for those who exercise it. This is an area where certainly if you don’t use it you lose it because someone else will take the lead and set the basis on which the rest of a program is built.

So is there new stuff in HR? You bet, if you see it that way and grab the opportunity to step forward first, knowing there will be some criticism, but that advantages far outweigh disadvantages.

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The two elements fit nicely together. Transferrable, prepared employees are the most valuable to any business. They don’t have to be jacks-of-all-trades, but they will be looking at what else they could be doing that the company needs and what skills they need to develop to do that. Good bosses will be identifying such employees routinely as those who could take on more or different roles and encouraging them to prepare, to try them out through cross-department projects and assignments.

Clearly this breaks down if any element, the employee, the boss or the organization, refuses to participate in such a program. But that’s how some companies come to have great reputations for protecting, nurturing and promoting their employees and some employees come to have great reputations for being ready to take on tasks the company needs.

All this is even more important as the pace of change and innovation continue to accelerate. Yes, it’s still possible to find organizations that don’t change. much. But even government, which used to be counted on never to change much at all is faced with having to keep up with changing expectations of the public for new and better services. Just take a look at how many things can now be done via the Internet and are often done better, faster, cheaper and with fewer staff. Imagine what happens to staff numbers in particular departments.

A close relation worked for many years in the cataloguing section of the National Library. In time his personal interests motivated him to study data base management and move to the computer systems site of the department where he survived quite nicely through a number of downsizings. Cataloguing just isn’t done by hand much any longer.

Not everyone has to move into IT for safety. In fact, IT can have considerable turnover as well when new systems and approaches are introduced, so it would be foolish to assume it always represents a safe haven. The plan for individuals needs to be that they keep an eye open for other things they could do and request opportunities to learn and take on some of those types of work so they’re ready when things change.

Everyone, in other words, should participate in the on-going growth and change that every organization must foster in order to ensure it survives and thrives. Not paying attention may leave you high and dry when change overtakes your type of work. Are you ready?

That goes for HR as well. The move toward measuring results and managing HR by measurement, for instance, seems to be catching many HR professionals flat-footed. When a shift in employment numbers comes within HR, it won’t wash to say, “I don’t know much about computers, I joined HR to work with people.” There’s nothing wrong with doing both and nothing stopping anyone from becoming more computer literate as systems become easier to use and understand.

These are skills you can work on even at home or in spare time in various ways. Everyone benefits as more and more HR managers develop a more sophisticated understanding of what capabilities exist for enhancing current HR practices even if many of those individuals are never called upon to actually tap a keystroke on any program. In fact, if you aspire to be the boss in an HR function, at least understanding such capabilities is quickly becoming an absolute necessity. Yet how many HR people do you talk to who have “learning more about systems” on their development plan?

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Alan Collins operates a site called Success in HR and recently offered 20 Brutally Blunt Career Tips to Ponder.. One stood out for me – one that wasn’t even among those he highlights, but which is what I see missing in so many careers:

“The time for creating your new HR career is not the day you get downsized or when you decide it’s time to move on. You need to plan this months in advance. This planning is mainly because you need to grow your network first..”

Emphatically, the first part is correct, except I’d say “years” not “months.”

I’m not so sure how most people would interpret the networking part. I wasn’t a great networker so maybe that would have turned my ‘years’ into ‘months,’ but I have to say I relied on trying to do the job better than anyone else wherever I could (including better strategies for whatever needed to be done). and on keeping an eye on a strategy for myself and making choices whenever any arose that fit its general outlines. That way I’d have success stories to tell if and when opportunity arose. I’m a firm believer in the old saying: luck happens when preparation meets opportunity. I can wait, but I want to be ready. What you get ready for is where you end up. if you’re keeping your eyes open and volunteer when you see a chance at that sort of work.

The very essence of strategy as an approach is what most people miss. You won’t get to the end result if you don’t have an idea of what it might be, but a loose idea that leaves some flexibility for variety in getting there. The problem most people seem to encounter is they get frustrated, become negative about themselves and cease pursuing their strategy as soon as they don’t see immediate progress to some specific result. It takes a certain kind of confidence to tell yourself, I will work toward being the best HR person ‘somewhere’ one day whether I get much proof along the way or not.

As a sub-strategy I began to keep an eye out for interesting and remunerative problem situations. To get better at HR meant looking for challenges where HR seemed difficult and moving consistently toward industries and sectors where there was more pay. (I came from a poor family and always knew I had only myself to count on – creating a mixture of risk averse, wanting never to be out of work, yet strategically preferring higher paying, somewhat riskier positions). In time, I became continually ‘ready to move’ in case the worst happened, but equally ‘ready to take on a bigger challenge.’ The result was promotions and moves to progressively more challenging roles, learning more constantly and eventually funding the coveted ‘freedom 55′ without actually planning when to become VP or asking for raises except in one obvious case where the job doubled in size.

To me, strategy is this ‘always getting ready for something bigger in your chosen area.’ Today, organizations prize innovation, which comes down to exactly the same thing. And U.S. political strategy? The same. Are they “getting ready for something better” – no – it’s more a case of “getting ours” as if we exist in some zero sum game where winners only get what they can take from losers. That’s what happens if you believe you’ve arrived and can only go downhill if you let ‘those people’ get more. That’s why so many successful companies and cultures ultimately fail. Reasonable prudence is fine. If it becomes cutting everyone else’s expenses so your immediate income goes up, with no investment in future growth, you have a guaranteed disaster waiting to happen. Strategy has to be about waiting. and preparing. with both eyes open, yes, but being able to wait till preparation enables seizing opportunity. That’s what the marshmallow experiment with kids is all about!

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When I think back to situations I’ve been in this is all too true. So when you read reports like Wallace Immen’s piece for CTV on the poor state of leadership development in Canada (which is pretty similar to all you read about the US and even worse in other countries), you have to think there are very few executive teams asking where the process needs to start.

Black’s seems happy with their results and it’s great to see an organization attribute future potential success to a thorough and well thought out leadership development program with KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and actual follow up planned. Two days a month over four months for key leaders makes for a good learning pattern judging from the programs I’ve worked with – enough concentrated time in each session and enough ‘settling’ and application time between them.

Even more important than the time spent by individual leaders furthering the own skills has to be the overall impact within an organization’s environment when everyone knows this is going on and everyone is watching to see who actually improves.

The peer and co-worker ‘pressure’ (really, the attention everyone will pay) is a key element that ensures the program is actually applied and begins to make enough of a difference to stick. Just knowing the new behaviors are expected eases the path for leaders who want to try acting differently and the reinforcement they’re bound to see in happier and more productive employees has a much greater chance of making changes permanent. A little icing on the cake is knowing the senior executives went through similar processes and should be demonstrating similarly improved behavior themselves. Lapses will be highly visible!

Getting momentum is a critical element to making such programs effective and these articles certainly suggest that it can be done, but that most aren’t doing it. yet. With the continuing spotlight on these sorts of innovation-boosting efforts, though, it seems inevitable that more companies will begin them.

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Probably not even though they also showed conclusively at least some individuals can learn and develop the 8 skills sufficiently in a short time to improve results and become promotable when their prior performance was dismal.

We can thank Google for proving definitively what leadership experts have been pressing all along, even though Google thinks it has only proven these work at Google. In fact their ‘discovery,’ though done at Google, for Google, matches exactly what we’ve all been saying. Due to their size, success and ability to undertake such expensive statistical research this should be the ultimate proof acceptable to CEOs and senior executives everywhere.

Don’t hold your breath though. The biggest hurdles will likely continue to be claims that it takes too much time to coach or, a variation of the same, that it distracts executives from their ‘real’ work. These have been consistent objections as far back as anyone can recall. ‘Yes, we could be better leaders,’ the story goes, ‘but we have more important things to do. and it’s a minor benefit anyway.’ Fairly explicit in Google’s findings is proof these are also false. Improved leadership has the greatest impact on results of any factor you can manage.

Google defused objections among their own managers by showing in concrete numbers that these skills form the most important keys to productivity of a manager’s team. That ought to be enough at least for large organizations where teams are the origin of almost all results, but in small and medium enterprises we can bet many owner-operators will argue, like French king, Louis XIV, “the [company], it is I.” And some will be right. In the view of many owners, employees, even managers, are simply there to carry out orders. The fact they don’t effectively means they should be fired, not coached.

What these weak leaders really mean is: I don’t know how to coach, I’ve gotten by without doing it all this time so why should I try now? The answer to that also lies in Google’s findings – that those who do try to improve their team members, who coach, who push productivity in positive ways and show interest in their employees produce results that are many times greater than those who don’t.

Here are the newly re-proven arguments in case you’re trying to convince people – Why employ leaders, or why be a leader, who works at a third or less of the results a half decent coach-style boss can produce? Hire a third fewer people and achieve the same results! Given that payroll is the biggest expense by far in most organizations that should be incentive enough.

Or even more critical, create leaders and teams who innovate, who find and exploit new ideas before your competitors do. or you’ll be out of business. Google knows they’ve got tons of money now to afford less than highly productive leaders, but innovation is their life blood as it is in more and more organizations. Except of course if you are government. In that case, just do it for yourself, to save your own sanity by making your team productive and garnering the respect you deserve if you do it. That works in all organizations. Even if your own boss is a jerk you can excel in ways that make you more confident, more able to succeed in other endeavors as opportunities arise (and they certainly will) and in self-respect.

Given these facts and options, the remaining hurdle is that most leaders (82% by some measures) don’t have these skills, but most don’t notice or admit it. What this makes essential is that we each take a look at ourselves against Google’s 8 skills and decide just how well we stack up. That’s the next post.

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Dr. Ibarra argues leadership isn’t a set of personal skills to be improved like a golf swing, but dependent on relationships you build across situations, a much more complex, far-reaching evolution. This in part depends on skills you learn to apply daily, but also depends on the cooperation and skills of others you team with – mutual adaptation. She points out we tend to train by helping people understand how they relate to others with tools like Myers Briggs or DiSC profiles or by “discovering our strengths” and concentrating on where we fit best, but in most leadership situations it takes more than just our efforts.

What she doesn’t say is we don’t always have the luxury of finding exactly the right fit or even the right team members. Sometimes we have to learn to lead in situations where we need to flex, especially toward the objective of bringing together people who have skills we don’t, who can contribute, who we coordinate and encourage, but who aren’t as easy to work with as we’d prefer.

Where she seems headed in her thinking is that we have to develop skills of opening up our thinking to include those who are unlike ourselves, who approach situations differently, yet productively in ways we can’t always fathom. We have to continually struggle to learn to coordinate the efforts of those we don’t understand and to appreciate what they can contribute.

Most often true leadership challenges call for everyone in the situation to learn, to change and evolve continually from where they are presently. If the situation is so thoroughly understood and routine that ‘leadership’ simply means pushing more widgets out the door the way we always have, it really isn’t leadership in today’s sense of the word. Good management, yes; leadership, no.

To get to something new and innovative, we have to push our point of view, but be prepared to leap on and incorporate a whole lot of other people’s creative ideas. You can’t do that if your mode of managing is only demanding and pushing for your way, insisting people listen to your ideas because you are the boss. True, you might luck out and find someone strong who pushes back. that you can’t fire. that you eventually listen to. But a surer way of achieving the result is to actively press your views and strongly encourage others to press theirs, too. At some point you will jointly have to toss the coin to do it your way or their way. Hopefully by then you have a better understanding of the options and the risks. and have honed them both so you can choose the most probable route to success.

Not always being right, in fact sometimes being shown up as downright wrong, is not a pleasant experience we would normally chose if we were in control. and most bosses don’t. to their detriment. It is, however, essential to developing great relationships with innovative people you want to contribute ideas continually. Ideally we develop those relationships in which both can be vigorously honest and free to be right sometimes, wrong others and work through both without damaging their links. Dr. Ibarra describes it in somewhat less painful words, but learning is continually challenging. We need to acknowledge that.

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Harvard Business Review over a few weeks last year ran a series on what a new leadership model might look like. Some great ideas emerged in a formative state, raising tantalizing possibilities, but with no absolute answers.

Harry Spence, Lecturer on Education, Harvard Kennedy School, put together a fairly short, theoretical, but insightful piece in the series. He points to the pain of reflecting on own ‘nonconscious’ processes and the lack of sense of immediate gain from doing so as the key factors preventing leaders from making more progress. This thinking, he points out is proceeding fast and furiously among consultants and professors, with leaders staying on the sidelines.

He raises some interesting questions. Why do so many leaders need to ‘self-aggrandize’ their self-images? Why do they not see this leads unconsciously or not to undermining contributions many terrific staff members could make, thus destroying commitment and engagement? Why is this self-reflection so hard, especially when there is so much lip service paid to the need for just such reflection if leaders are to improve?

If as leaders, we are really rallying ourselves and our teams toward larger issues, toward objectives far out in an unpredictable future, why are we so reluctant to question ourselves? Is it because it takes a huge amount of energy to drive a team forward? Leaders need tremendous self-confidence to face the daunting challenges and bear responsibility for the risks innovation will require.

One likely explanation is that reflecting, which really amounts to doubting oneself, is diametrically opposed to the unrelenting forward drive leaders need to exert to get results. Most people don’t seem constitutionally built to drive hard, yet question themselves. It just seems too contradictory. Yet nearly every consultant/professor/writer today points toward the need to be able to do just that. One clear example is the universally praised book by Jim Collins, Good to Great, in which one of his six keys to leadership is the ability to maintain what he calls “a powerful psychological duality” that he refers to as the Stockdale paradox – the ability to face “brutal” facts, yet never lose faith.

Ironically, the most “brutal” fact of all is often that we ourselves can be and will inevitably be wrong quite often. while our subordinates will be right. If that doesn’t set up a clear “psychological duality” I can’t imagine a more challenging one. The risk of one’s poor leadership ending in poor results years down the road, which most CEOs have to face, pales beside the potentially humiliating immediacy of having admit you’re wrong in front of subordinates day by day. so instead many leaders strive to be or at least appear to be right all the time – fatal. Are the worst leaders simply defined by being fearless on future outcomes, but gutless on day-to-day image issues?

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To get the idea across, it helps to get people thinking about other changes they want to make in their lives and what those take. For instance, one might start out attempting to lose weight and before long you realize it is more about overall health. It doesn’t take much reading to discover the experts say diets mostly don’t work, that you need an overall lifestyle change – but what’s that?

In practice it means working on one thing at a time, but recognizing it will take more changes to support the one you’re trying to achieve. If it’s losing weight you soon discover it is generally thought the best route is through a combination of moderate dieting and exercise. Both these are sets of habits that take consistent practice to develop. Neither the diet nor the exercise pattern you initially try are likely to be the ones you finally settle on. There are ‘sub-habits’ that have to be developed and other old, established ones you have to ignore (change isn’t really the right word for habits – you never really lose an old habit, just install one that is more frequently used and becomes more comfortable in time).

Habit is comfortable and automatic, so you have to pay attention to notice what your existing habits are and work consistently (tolerating some feeling of discomfort) to practice new ones instead. Most of us don’t last long at this. We try exercising after those New Year’s resolutions or when we get back to work after the summer. and then peter out when work pressure takes over. We skip one visit to the gym, then another, another and finally we hardly go at all. We know how this works.

Instead we have to concentrate on when and why we’re not following through with a view to finding a better time of day, day of the week or whatever until simply by trying variations we start to find the ones that feel most comfortable. and at the same time, by forcing ourselves to try variations we are actually repeating the core element – in this case exercise. which starts to feel not only comfortable, but like something we miss if we don’t do it – it becomes self-reinforcing to a degree, but yes, we still have to make the effort and the time.

If a particular change is truly a priority, it’s because we truly believe it will be better for us in the long run. Building such true belief may take some practice and reinforcement, too, plus reading on the subject, talking with others and willingness to take advice or pay attention to the obvious. We have great skills at rationalizing why our current habits are “close enough” – anything to avoid the discomfort of practicing change.

We can hear the statistics (on smoking, say, or the benefits of a positive employment environment) on our future and still not act, or at least not act consistently enough to make change stick. Senior executives who refuse to work on improving the environment for engagement and individual innovation are no different from the many who prefer to huddle in the cold despite the health risks of continued smoking. I recall one CEO who liked to brag he could outrun same-aged non-smokers on treadmill tests despite his heavy smoking habit. So what? It’s still hard to argue his health wasn’t affected, but at least that’s a personal choice affecting only himself (and eventually his family). Maybe I was lucky early on that my two-pack a day habit didn’t give me a choice if I wanted to keep breathing. Some people desperately want to believe they will never come up against the wall even though they know it’s there in theory. and maybe some won’t change despite the risky gamble.

For CEOs who argue they don’t have to stop yelling at subordinates and firing people for the slightest mistake, the gamble and the consequences affect far more than the individuals caught personally in these episodes. Shareholders, suppliers, customers and all other stakeholders are being shortchanged. Sure a senior executive can get away with bad behavior for a time, but overall results of disengaged staff and high turnover of key people will eventually tell the tale. It’s just proven business fact. Those who don’t acknowledge this can keep kidding themselves, but the rest of the world is figuring out the truth. Increasingly Boards are pushing such changes in habits or ‘culture’ or finding CEOs who will do this for them.

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Bloggers, speakers, news people and the rest of us will continue to write about this until we get an answer everyone can absorb and apply. I was surprised to see a great contribution about this recently. But I suspect like many, I got excited by it and then a day later I can hardly recall why I got wound up. It seemed so obvious and logical and so much like information we already know that it’s easy to discount it. As a result I have to get myself wound up again and I wondered why.

The answer seems to be that because it sounds like much we’ve heard before that takes away much of its validity. Do you find yourself reacting that same way?

The piece I saw is from ‘strategy + business’ (a site I wasn’t familiar with) talking about how to change people’s behavior and organization culture, aka habits, via a ‘modern understanding of brain research.’  Here’s the thing: they refer back to Adam Smith’s theories (in the 1700s) – that’s how long this discussion has been going on, not just (like most HR concepts) the last 100 years or so.

The drift is that to change habits is tough and requires constant repetition and encouragement. and habits are what perpetuate behavior and ‘culture’ of organizations (which is just everyone’s combined habits). They’ve wrapped this old observation in new jargon – brain research – and some of the findings are generally interesting, but they simply reinforce these basic observations that we already know, have known since at least Adam Smith’s time and yet don’t find management people acting on very often.

Yes, it clearly bears repeating, but having repeated it, have we learned anything new? That’s what we always ask ourselves. The answer, I believe, in this case is yes. We learn that a couple of big organizations have changed their cultures through this process. (That’s important, but minor because although we hear lots about change efforts that don’t work, these aren’t the only ones that have.) We learn that modern scientific research confirms what we generally know, so we are on the right track. There’s some biology at work that it  helps to understand and counterbalance – and our beliefs are validated. (Those are always helpful, but again, not totally surprising.)

More importantly we learn a couple of seemingly minor techniques for developing new, better habits that actually could be very important.

First it’s clear the objective isn’t to eliminate old habits (you can’t), but to install new, stronger ones that will take precedence over the old – through endless repetition (in this case endless means you can’t let the focus shift rather than meaning it’s drudgery). You can figure out your old habits by watching your behavior closely, decide rationally what you want to change and start practicing. and persist despite how scary or annoying or frustrating it seems at first. And we ought to surround the core habit with as many new, supporting habits as we can possibly develop. Eventually the new behaviors become ‘the way we do things here’ and you’ve achieved your goal, provided you keep practicing, the more consciously the better so as to ensure when people AREN’T thinking about these things they will ‘automatically’ do the right thing. What you can’t do is order it, enforce a bit of practice and then stop and expect the new, good behavior to continue.

So, it’s always been logic, it’s been observed for centuries, now it’s scientifically proven. and it’s what we all strive to figure out – how to change culture. Shouldn’t that seem unbelievably exciting??? Let’s actually do it this time!

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We needed instant emotional reactions to help us deal with predators and other dangers in our early evolution, but later needed more logical thinking to get beyond that stage. Nevertheless, while instant emotional ‘conclusions’ don’t help as much as logic in today’s world, the latter has never developed enough to fully balance or overcome emotion. So often we make decisions based on emotion and rationalize them afterward rather than logic first even when that would be better.

Marcus makes a solid case that our thinking tends to be biased consistently to see things as we want to see them and to be overly optimistic at times about our own powers of observation and thinking in ways that facilitate conclusions we hope for. We think we’re worth more or otherwise over-estimate our contributions when we’re actually fairly average, for instance, so everyone, including CEOs who more or less have the power to leverage better rewards for themselves, routinely expect larger than average pay increases even in tough economic times when they’re laying off others to save money.

A recent study of executives showed they know managers are generally better at technical skills than people skills like dealing with conflict, coaching and developing others, which consistently rank lowest for the very large majority of executives. People skills are where emotions get in the way of logic. So one might think that’s good news – they see the problem, which is usually the first step to improving. But you’d be wrong. It’s not that they realize THEY are short of people skills themselves! Executives see that OTHER managers are weak, but Korn Ferry’s extensive studies estimate 82% of executives need to improve in people skills. Since they don’t know this, only 15% actually said they felt these were areas where THEY needed help. While they could correctly identify such needs in general (probably areas they think others need to improve at), they were woefully off on where they themselves fit.

So what does Marcus recommend we do with this sort of information? First, make it widely known. Help people see these sorts of limitations apply so widely we ought to assume some apply to ourselves at least to some extent and work on doing something about it. In other words, reflect. Pay attention to research and knowledge that’s developing in the field of human thinking and behavior and take into account that your own decisions and habits may need to become more logical and careful. Pay attention to whether you’re about to make a decision that others will recognize as illogical. Get others’ input, work as teams, but not just with senior members, add diversity of thought and viewpoints. And, for Boards of Directors, do all you can to ensure individuals aren’t deciding their own pay and perks or granting their top teams compensation that will inevitably put upward pressure on their own.

Pay is just one easy example of where these flaws become highly visible. Early, well-known research shows everyone would like 20% more money, but that pay increases, no matter how good, become taken for granted in a year or so and 20% more again becomes the new objective. This is just as true if you make $2 million a year as $20,000. For instance, it’s also been shown that when CEOs order studies of the best place to relocate head offices, they almost inevitably concluded it should be closer to wherever the CEO lives. More research shows more pay doesn’t equate to more long run happiness above a fairly moderate pay level. How many other corporate decisions are being made the same way, based on how one or two people FEEL? And, of course, it isn’t just CEOs deciding in their own favor, but all of us tending to. They just happen to be somewhat more visible. Are we smart enough to find ways to balance these all too human pressures?

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Unfortunately the popular media seem to revel in incivility because, apparently, it sells. It certainly must draw major attention and sell advertising if we can judge by which shows survive the ratings battles. One only has to take a glance at Jersey Shores, the many ‘Real Housewives’ and dozens of others including some very popular blogs and even other supposed ‘reality’ game shows like The Amazing Race, to see the tendency to the worst sort of behavior to draw audiences. The first two are more blatant, but the ‘Race’ weekly shows team members berating each other for various shortcomings only partially balanced by later comments about how much they value and support each other.

Where do we stand really? It’s a puzzle because we are doing whatever we can to promote safe, stress- and harassment-free workplaces, yet we apparently enjoy seeing people verbally lash out at each other. We’d like to see greater civility in public discussion, but we not-so-secretly revel in ‘the other side’ getting slammed, often completely unfairly or out of proportion to what they’ve done, in the press. While we Canadians can feel somewhat smug that our level of public discourse hasn’t descended as far as some, we have to admit we are boosting the ratings of offending TV nearly as much as our neighbors.

It’s not news that human beings have contradictory feelings and thoughts. Perhaps we should just be thankful these cathartic ‘un-reality’ shows give us a chance to get our fill of incivility indirectly. On the other hand, there’s some reasonably reliable evidence that watching violence encourages viewers to act violently. Should we not be concerned this applies to violent discourse as much as actual behavior? That would make an interesting study, one I’m sure some college will undertake shortly.

In the mean time, I’m all for holding managers and workers to higher standards than we see outside of organizations. Realistically, though, I’m not sure we can do that as easily if we don’t at least try to address some of these problems in wider public behavior. Certainly schools, hospitals and other public institutions have been working away at the problem, but politics, the press and other media seem immune. Can we not develop the communication skills to have rigorous disagreements without insults to each other and to our intelligence?

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Google seeks to find out and select for a candidate’s broader interests in the hiring process to ensure diversity of ideas that will lead to innovation in products and services. Steve suggested using an internal Facebook-like system that allows staff to share interests other than simply work as a way of finding people in-house with unique qualities for particular projects. One example both cited, coincidentally, was that knowing someone was a skydiver might indicate their willingness to take risks and that, in turn, might be what you need on a particular project. Another instance – Steve is proud of his sideline – playing in a jazz band.

Both are certainly aware that something like skydiving is only one indicator of risk-taking and one not every boss might relish. I like to think I took risks throughout my career by taking on risky assignments like leading the organization’s union (and incidentally doing it well). Oops, that might not be something I’d want to make widely known to a new company since quite a few bosses would likely have the sort of reaction that wouldn’t have a positive effect on my career.

So how would I show my risk-taking ability or outside interests, many of which aren’t typical big-sellers in the old-fashioned leadership climate still found widely today? My affinity for philosophy and particularly Zen might be tolerated as odd, but harmless. or too weird for a senior VP.

On the other hand I had a CEO who referred to some people he didn’t like as Icabods. (That’s the timid, bookish school teacher character from childhood fiction – an image of ridicule.) I was a bit taken aback the first time he mentioned this to me, given my own early background as a school teacher. He apparently didn’t make the connection, but subsequent CEOs were often quick to tell me I ‘sounded like a school teacher’ – something they didn’t mean nicely on the occasions they were moved to point it out. In fact, I think it’s safe to say my bookish, school-teacher-like interests in philosophy and my understanding of left-wing issues made me valuable in environments where few others could relate and someone was needed who could. That’s diversity, but we have to realize not everyone sees the value.

Just as some unwitting students may be ruining their future job prospects by posting online photos and comments about drinking bouts and worse, we might be inviting employees to do the same without clearly being able to delineate what’s ‘acceptable’ or ‘laudable’ versus what’s ‘not wanted here.’ Can we ever promise all managers will be as open-minded as we’d hope?

I definitely don’t have the answers for this one. Skydiving may sound great to some managers and horrendously foolish to others. Anyone got a handy list of ‘great hobbies or interests to ensure promotions?’ I’m not sure we’re going to develop a specific idea of what those are. That’s the essence of diversity. Who will push the envelope? Soon as well as having the right job experience and training, you may need to cite ‘the right hobbies.’ That’s counter to the intent, but sadly seems almost inevitable.

The same challenges apply to other personal attributes as noted with disabilities and other diversity issues (check the post “Really? Do Tell”). Knowing how or when and how much to disclose personal information is a puzzle.

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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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