Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category
Employee Potential in the Eye of the Beholder – Part 1
Posted by: grandma in Leadership, Performance Management, Succession Planning, Talent Management on July 11th, 2010
One of the challenges companies face today is managing their employee turnover, specifically for key positions in the organization. A key position is defined as a critical role that would adversely affect a company’s operations if it were vacated. These positions are typically leadership or managerial and make up between eight and twelve percent of all positions (Berger, 2004). When an employee vacates a key position, via unexpected leave, retirement or promotion, an organization ideally backfills the position with a cadre of highly-qualified candidates ready to replace that person. Human Resource (HR) departments plan for succession to hedge against the risk of departure. Hence, companies cannot afford turnover of high-potential employees in line for key positions.
Like leadership, potential has as many definitions but is even more ambiguous. These definitions range from “inherent capacity for coming into being” to a “latent excellence or ability that may or may not be developed.” Leaders need to start somewhere; their entrance into the realm of leadership usually begins in a front-line management position. One of the key criterion in selecting a leader is the anticipation of their success to lead their team. In essence, what is their leadership potential? Most organizations measure potential by intuition or “gut feel.” The problem with this informal measurement is that it is often wrong. Society is littered with poor managers hired by people who thought the person had leadership potential. The fallacy in their selection is based on past performance, not on their potential to be a good leader. These are generally the data points that create the ubiquitous “9-box” companies use to slot future stars. Performance is regularly measured, albeit inexactly. Potential is not something that is actively measured and companies do not utilize the proper research instruments to measure it.
A Manager Provides the Right Antecedents for Employee Success
Having the proper antecedents for leadership development will likely produce better leaders. Malcolm Gladwell (2008) extensively analyzes the conditions that make people successful in his book “Outliers.” Date of birth for junior hockey players, affinity relationships for certain professions like law, and native languages assisting math skills for Asian children are all foundations that provide better success. These antecedents are harbingers of success and set the stage to bring out the best in their subjects. Silzer and Church (2009) discovered that an employee’s potential can be stifled by his or her immediate manager by not providing the right antecedents for high performance. Hence, a good manager provides the right conditions for an employee to realize his or her potential.
In part 2 of this post we will look at ways of identifying high-potential outside of past performance based on two predictive attributes: self-efficacy and mindset.
Communication – The Common Leadership Competency
Posted by: grandma in Employee Engagement, Leadership, Talent Management on June 6th, 2010
“If they are to be effective, all communicative acts must be interactive.”
-Conrad and Poole, Strategic Organizational Communication (2005)
Yukl (2001) examined a number of definitions of leadership and concluded that no one definition encompasses all of the aspects required of a leader. Most agree, however, that communication plays a huge role in effective leadership. Communication rolls into some of the other leadership traits like setting an agenda, strategic planning, modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, and transformational leadership.
Employee engagement largely rests on upper management’s ability to communicate with line and staff. According to Towers Watson, 15 of the 20 factors of engagement are directly related to the manager. The other 5 are engagement factors related to the organization – meaning that it very important for the employee to feel connected to a company’s culture, policies, and strategic direction.
Let’s look at 8 of the 20 following factors for engagement for both sets:
• Provide fair and accurate informal feedback
• Emphasize employee strengths in performance reviews
• Clarify performance expectations
• Leverage employee “fit” to the job
• Provide solutions to day-to-day challenges
• Amplify positive employee performance traits and filters negative effects
• Connect employees with the organizations’ strategy and its success
• Instill a performance culture of open communication, flexibility, and innovation
What do all of these have in common? Communication…!
HR is the staff function that should facilitate organizational communication. Communication, like other competencies, has different behavioral anchors depending on the leadership level. Certainly CEO’s in large companies have anchors that require them to communicate with the entire organization.
So how does a CEO/Leadership connect with the company of 10,000 employees? How does operations roll out a project? How does a VP of HR convey new programs? I happened to be in demonstration with a major ERP vendor when they presented a new product called “Workforce Communications”. It gives a company the ability to do targeted communications with its employees based on attributes contained in their HR systems. It also has the ability to conduct bi-fabricated organizational surveys (meaning a certain answer in the first survey could trigger another survey or follow-up question) like employee engagement. So if the CEO of a company wanted to send a congratulations to the engineering team for obtaining 100% safety compliance, you could simply identify the requisite job codes in the HR tables (and throw in other criteria to personalize it) and send the targeted communication. Does it send a message to those engineers that safety is important when the CEO writes? Absolutely!
Pretty inventive software which you would not expect coming from an ERP vendor, which by the way, was Oracle.
Safety and Contingent Workers – are the Savings worth the Costs?
Posted by: grandma in Employee Development, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Talent Management on May 9th, 2010
Some industries heavily utilize contingent workers to save money from employee owned burdens. One of those industries is oil and gas. A recent illustration of this issue is the Transocean oil rig incident in the Gulf of Mexico. Of the 126 people onboard that rig, 79 worked for Transocean, 6 for BP, and 41 of them were contingent/contract workers. Sometimes, contingent workers have skill sets outside of the core competencies/operator qualifications of employees – in this case Halliburton had just cemented the 18,000 foot well before the explosion. In other, and in most cases, contingent workers are hired to simply save money.
Contingent workers are less safe than employee owned workers. Why is this?
The metaphor I like to use for contingent versus worker is renting or buying a home. I think both of these illustrate the difference between owning a process or simply being part of one. Do the renters of your house take care of it like you did when you lived there? Probably not. Employees absorb the culture, the symbolism, the politics and the human factors of working in an organization. They have an ownership experience. Contingent workers, on the other hand, collect a paycheck and do not receive the same indoctrinization as an employee would.
Jeffry Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford, studied contingent workers in 1994 and determined that they were less safe than employee owned workers. I continue to validate his findings with HR professionals when discussing safety and human capital practices – they always concur with Pfeffer’s conclusion. Laurie Bassi, of McBassi and company, showed that companies with optimized human capital practices recorded fewer safety incidents than those with subpar HR practices. One of the pillars of her research was “learning capacity.” Learning capacity describes and organizations ability to instill learning in its employees. She showed that American Standard was able to reduce the number of incidents by nearly 25% when elevated levels of human capital were present.
I am a huge believer in the value of training and you can train someone into a mindset if they are willing to learn. You can train any employee into a safety mindset. There are many international laws that define the contingent classification. In some countries, like Canada, training for contingent workers has to be separate than those that are company trained. This disenfranchises employees from the cultural mindset needed to be safe. Willingness of contingent workers to be trained is also an issue – what is the upside of this training with no positive payout in the end? Even before the incident, Transocean put safety ahead of production as a company-wide goal. If they really want to create shared ownership and permeate a safety culture, they should stop sourcing contingent workers and start hiring them.
Broaden Your Talent Pool – Lessons from “Undercover Boss”
Posted by: grandma in Employee Development, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Performance Management, Succession Planning, Talent Management on February 8th, 2010
There is an excellent CBS reality series on TV right now called, “Undercover Boss.” Executives from Waste Management and 7-Eleven go undercover and pretend to be entry-level employees. They experience what the front-line employee experiences.
Too often I encounter companies that completely ignore the hourly or salary non-exempt employee in the field when it comes to leadership development. (See previous post) This is easily discovered in the systems they own to enable this process. Companies don’t acquire software for the entire employee population. Sadly, and this really is the true divider, those employees with ready access to the internet get included. This is not a legitimate trigger.
The evolution of Talent Management has not evolved to every employee. This conundrum is often encountered in retail, manufacturing, oil and gas, hospitality and utilities where there is large percentage of skill workers. Most of the workgroups are out in the field, detached from corporate. High-turnover compounds the issue because companies are disinterested to go through the pain of measuring someone who is likely to leave within a year.
– How does a roustabout in an oil field get recognized as a high-potential when no one is looking at him?
– How does the retail employee get recognized when no one measures her?
– How about the hotel clerk who performs exceptionally high for the competencies required for the position?
Joe DePinto, CEO of 7-Eleven, encountered a high-potential first hand in Igor Finkler, a midnight fresh food delivery driver in Lewisville, TX. DePinto recognizes him for his energy, positivity, and enthusiasm – he wants more people like Igor working for 7-Eleven. (See the video here)
So how do you measure the potential of an employee like Igor? This is where I think the ERP vendors like SAP and Oracle have major advantages. They have way more touch-points into an employee than a niche talent vendor through core HR, portal, and self-service pages. Since they own the core HR system, they have the largest window from which to measure an employee. Having access to the internet shouldn’t be the gateway into the talent pool. You certainly shouldn’t have to send the CEO undercover to find a high-potential. I hope this series will open executive eyes to the potential of someone in these ranks.
Father of Talent Management – Robert Owen
Posted by: grandma in Leadership, Talent Management on December 20th, 2009
The market term “Talent Management” has been around for the last 15 years or so. Only recently have companies realized that people are their greatest asset. One of the earliest pioneers of the modern company was Robert Owen, a Welshman born in 1771. Owen was the Jim Goodnight (from SAS) of his time and a successful textile entrepreneur by the time he was 30. He was berated in the business community because he didn’t think eight-year-olds should work thirteen hour weeks. Here is an excerpt from a historian who covered him (O’Toole, 1995).
Owen provided clean, decent housing for his workers and their families in a community free of contagious disease, crime, and gin shops. He took young children out of the factory and enrolled them in a school he founded. There he provided preschool, day care, and a brand of progressive education that stresses learning as a pleasurable experience (along with the first adult night school). The entire business world was shocked when he prohibited corporal punishment in his factory and dumbfounded when he retrained his supervisors in human disciplinary practices. While offering his workers an extremely high standard of living compared to other workers of the era. Owen was making a fortune.
Owen tried to convince his fellow capitalist that an investment in people provides greater return than an investment in tangible assets. He was 150 years ahead of his time. Numerous studies conclude that an investment in people yields long-term success in any company.
Best and Worst CEO’s
Posted by: grandma in Leadership, Talent Management on April 30th, 2009
In the May 2009 issue of Conde Nast Portfolio, they list the best and worst CEO’s ever. Number 1 on the “best” list was Henry Ford; Number 1 on the “worst list was Dick Fuld from Lehman Brothers. Now this list was judged on criteria for creating destroying/value, innovation, and management skills (or lack therof). The panel they chose for this list were professors from some of the best business schools in the United States (Sloan, Kellogg, Wharton etc.) What disappointed me the most about the “best list” was not one comment was written about how these CEO’s embodied strong human capital practices.
A couple of things stood out for on this list:
Best/Worst -Jack Welch of GE– the panel couldn’t decide whether or not to put him in the best or the worst category? Really? In my book, he is one of the best, if not the best CEO ever. Jack Welch may have fired many employees but at least he did it based on a credible measuring system. GE in many ways set the benchmark for Performance Management best practices. Jack thought his whole job was to put the right people in the right positions. Do this, and strategy and execution will come along for the ride.
Worst - Al Dunlap of Scott Paper and Sunbeam– if you asked the same panel back in 1998 what they thought of him, I’m sure they would have put him on the “best” side of this list. To me, Al Dunlap isn’t even a CEO. He was a liquidator. It doesn’t take much management skill to take a “chainsaw” to a company. When he actually had to manage Sunbeam he failed miserably.
Best – Herb Kelleher – SWA is the best, non-subsidized airline in the world. Instead of setting organizational goals to enrich shareholder value, they focus on the customer and their employees. Increased shareholder value is a by-product of this effort. It was disappointing to see the magazine cite their fuel hedging program as the reason for success when it’s the employees that make this company what it is.
The list focused on CEO’s of Public Companies and really looked at shareholder return. One person I would put on the “best” from the private side is Jim Goodnight of SAS. He said in an interview with 60 minutes a few years back, “95% percent of my assets leave the building every day, it is my job to bring them back.” Wouldn’t you like to work for a company whose CEO values you as his most important asset?
Time and time again, CEO’s who focus on their employees significantly outperform their competitors in every financial metric that matters. Hopefully, this panel will question the ratings criteria next time and rank CEO’s on their Human Capital practices. Now this is a list I would like to see.
Josh McDaniels epitomizes Fixed Mindset
Posted by: grandma in Employee Development, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Talent Management on March 18th, 2009
Fixed Mindset case Number 1: Yoga
“Today somebody came into my office and asked me about a yoga instructor helping the players. I never thought I’d be talking about yoga. I don’t know anything about yoga.” -Josh McDaniels – Denver Post 1/25/2009
When asked about Yoga and other items 2 weeks later: “The football part of it has been pretty much what I thought it would be,” McDaniels said. ”Some of the decisions you make on a daily basis, on non-football issues, have been a little surprising. The color of paint on your walls. Whether to do yoga. I’ve never really had the opportunity to decide things like that.” Asked what he decided on yoga, McDaniels said he said no, even though his mother, Chris, enjoys it. ”There’s not a lot of teams in the league that were doing that,” he said. ”I’m not sure you have to do that to be successful.” – this means the Patriots didn’t do it…
• Yoga helped Jordan Farmar with his 42” vertical in the NBA combine
• Yoga helped Kareem Abdul-Jabaar play well into his 40’s
• Your future perennially all-pro left tackle, Ryan Clady does yoga
Fixed Mindset case number 2: Mike Leach
Mike Leach was the long-snapper for the Denver Broncos since 2002. The first signing that Josh McDaniels in the off-season was to sign Lonnie Paxton making him the 2nd highest paid long snapper at 5.3 million in the NFL shelling out 1 million in a signing bonus.
So what was so wrong with Leach that Josh McDaniels needed to bring in Lonnie Paxton? Did he muff some snaps? Did he send the ball over the punter’s head? Did he throw it too hard so the holder couldn’t place it for the kicker?
Let’s look at Mike Leach’s numbers:
40 extra points – any blocks, muffs?
34 field goals – any blocks, muffs?
46 Punts – any blocks, muffs?
None.
None.
And None.
What was so great about Lonnie? He was a Patriot.
Fixed Mindset Case Number 3 – Jay Cutler – Managing your “A” Player
You are a high-performing individual contributor and you were just notified that your new boss starts today. You didn’t anticipate the change because you thought your manager was solid. You are the star of your manager’s team. You know your skills are marketable and there are several competitors that would love to have you. You get a call from a head-hunter that you know and you find out that your new manager is trying to replace you with one of “his guys” from his old firm. You haven’t had a single conversation with this new manager so how can he assess your skills and assume “his guy” is better than you? Lo and behold, “his guy” went to another company with a better offer. You approach your new manager about this and he denies it; you have the evidence that proves otherwise.
How would this make you feel about your long-term prospects at the firm?
Could you put your full faith in your new manager?
Is this good management?
There isn’t much difference between a player and a coach in the business world:
• The manager/employee relationship is predicated on trust
• You still have a hierarchy – Head Coach, Position Coach, Player
• You have mutual goals – To win the division, to get home field advantage, to win the SuperBowl
• A good manager knows you perform better when you are engaged – The most successful quarterbacks have had a great quarterbacks coach
• A good manager helps develop your skills
• A good manager wants you to be more successful than him
The number one reason why someone leaves a company is the relationship with their manager. If you are not hired by your manager, your performance rating will generally be lower. This is a proven correlation.
If Josh McDaniels were in the business world, he should be fired for incompetence at the manager level. Pat Bowlen should seriously make this consideration.
Succession Planning First Step – Identify your Talent Pool
Posted by: grandma in Employee Development, Leadership, Recruiting, Succession Planning, Talent Management, Workforce Planning on February 23rd, 2009
I had a recent visit to a client that said they had over 500,000 resumes on file for this 28,000 person organization. This was pretty impressive since their policy was to hold resumes for only 1-year. They had over 100 recruiters and a well-oiled process for brining new talent on-board. Their time to hire was 28 days – which by my count has to be in the top 10% of all companies. After hearing them discuss their best practices in recruiting, I asked, “How many internal resumes do you have for the 28,000 employees? A look of consternation came back to me – the answer was none. They even posted for 5 business days internally before bringing the requisition out to the public. (5 days was included in the 28 which makes that number even more impressive) How does a company like that spend its resources on people that don’t even work at the company? This is not a unique case. Amazingly enough, I would say that most companies don’t capture employee data. Resume data for an internal employee (aka “Talent Profile”) is outdated on day 1 of the job.
Building out your Talent Pool accomplishes these two things:
1) It classifies and inventories your Human Assets. Everything else is accounted for – why not account for your people?
2) It allows you to create the foundation for your Succession Planning process.
There are multiple Talent/Core vendors that have Talent Profile functionality. Be sure to take advantage of this. If you are launching a talent initiative, make the Talent Profile step 1 before anything else. Why? It is the easiest win. Here are some tips:
1) Employees won’t update this on their own so definitely send out a task to complete this.
2) The Talent Profile should be updated every 6 months otherwise the information won’t be accurate.
3) The KISS principle applies – half the point of launching this first is to introduce your employees to the system. Don’t overburden them with a long form.
Do these things and you will be well on your way to managing talent.
Two Unique Measurements of Potential for Succession Planning – Part 2 – Self-Efficacy
Posted by: grandma in Employee Development, Leadership, Succession Planning on February 20th, 2009
Let’s start with a definition of self-efficacy. It is a belief that one has the capabilities to execute the courses of actions required to manage prospective situations. Unlike efficacy, which is the power to produce an effect (in essence, competence), self-efficacy is the belief that one has the power to produce that effect.
Self-Efficacy is the single most important determinant of success at anything. Yes – I will say it again: Self-Efficacy is the single most important determinant of success at anything.
So, on that premise, don’t you think you should measure someone’s self-efficacy to determine their potential? How will you know if they can succeed at the next level?
If one of your employees has a high degree of self-efficacy, then they have the following:
1) An appetite to continuously learn – the best leaders are those that never stop learning. Often, managers stop learning after they think they have mastered management. The best leaders never let their willingness to learn expire.
2) More likely to model their behavior after someone or allow someone to model them – mentoring is a very effective for employee engagement both for the mentor and mentee.
3) Attribute of a hard-worker – being smart is nothing without hard work. Those with Self-Efficacy know that anything worthwhile isn’t easy to do.
4) Perseverance when a set back arises – these leaders don’t blame others for failures and take ownership to correct their mistakes.
Self-Efficacy is basically a competency with the above associated behaviors. Make sure you include it as one of your leadership competencies and measure it as a predictor of potential.
This is a great paper on the subject by Peter Heslin and Ute-Christine Klehe. Self-Efficacy
Two Unique Measurements of Potential for Succession Planning – Part 1 – Managerial Mindset
Posted by: grandma in Employee Development, Leadership, Succession Planning on February 17th, 2009
One of the big issues I’ve seen with a company’s succession planning process is how to measure potential. Potential makes up the x-axis of the 9-box (or whatever flavor) versus performance on the y-axis. So how can this be determined?
Much like a focal performance review, you should also conduct a potential review. So what does determine the potential of someone? To most, it is an inate judgement call. Here are two unique measurements that you should obtain with this survey. The first is essential to the measurement because it is a gateway to potential.
1) Managerial Mindset (Growth or Fixed)
2) Level of Self-Efficacy
Today, we will look at the first measurement – Managerial Mindset. I think this is a huge determinant of potential – especially if the position they are coming into is a leadership one. Dr. Carol Dweck (Mindset-The New Psychology of Success) has done decades of research on this subject. A growth mindset is basically someone who thinks anything can be learned by anyone. A fixed mindset is someone who thinks intelligence is capped or that they can’t grow anymore. In other words, someone who adamantly believes in the Peter Principle has a fixed mindset. It is someone who would say “Leaders are born, not made.” In an interview with HR.com, Dr. Laurie Bassi (who by the way has some of the best learning research ever presented) said one of the biggest reasons training isn’t successful is because managers are not really supportive of the training. So on that premise, shouldn’t you measure someone on whether they are supportive? If you have managers that deny training to their employees or don’t encourage it, then they likely they have a fixed mindset. Fixed Mindset managers don’t provide good feedback, feel threatened by their employees growth and have an “elitist” us vs. them attitude.
The most important job at any company is the 1st level manager. They have the most influence on the individual contributor.
What is the cumulative effect of having 1,000 managers with a growth mindset? This would have a staggering effect on your organization. Make sure your measure Mindset in your Succession Reviews.
Update: This is a great article citing Scott Forstall having a Growth Mindset – he managed the team that developd the iPhone.