LEADING THOUGHTS

Management deep thinkers have been spending time of late talking about the hidden value of informal people-based networks, both in driving innovation and in greasing the wheels for employees handling situations outside of established processes and structures.

How do leaders identify and tap into effective employee networks? One way is by undertaking a network analysis, essentially surveying employees about their collaborations. Who do they look to for information and expertise? Who do they turn to for innovative brainstorming and how much time do they invest in specific collaborations?

This type of analysis gves leaders insights on critical “junctions” and structural problems, write Cross (U Virginia), Gray (U Virginia), Cunningham (CIO, Monsanto), Showers (CIO, Reinsurance Group of America), and Thomas (Institute for High Performance) in MITSloan Management Review.

They suggest network analysis can improve performance in at least four ways:

1. It brings benefits of scale through global collaboration. “Organizations can construct teams to leverage diverse expertise and drive adoption of new ideas across geographies.”

2. It drives workforce engagement and performance. “Uncovering the network characteristics of high performers can show employees who play similar roles how to improve their own performance.”

3. It allows collaborative staffers to be aligned with business partners and external stakeholders. “By creating a detailed map of the existing cross-departmental relationships, they can see where innovations are occurring, where sufficient support is being provided and where investments should be made.”

4. It can show you where to minimize network inefficiencies and costs. “It is important to reduce network connectivity at points where collaboration fails to produce sufficient value.”

The conclusions by the research team are based on six years of network analyses of IT functions in 12 large organizations in the utility, pharma, petrochemical, professional services, and high-tech industries.

Their network analysis involved asking leaders to identify challenges and opportunities facing their organizations. The researchers then developed survey questions to tease out employee relationships. (For example, “Please indicate the degree to which you typically turn to each person below for information to get your work done”.)

The survey was automated and combined with”network analaytical software” to produce diagrams and scatterplots to visualize patterns and connections. The researchers, for example, were able to produce a chart that combined the “number of times an individual was cited by another person” with “total interaction time”. That revealed the most efficient and lease efficient collaborators.

The Collaborative Organization: How to Make Employee Networks Really Work, by Rob Cross, Peter Gray, Shirley Cunningham, Mark Showers, and Robert J. Thomas; MITSloan Management review (Fall 2010, vol. 52 no. 1)

photo credit: Marc_Smith

It may disappoint you to read this but anger has a productive role in negotiations. Empirical studies (such as those by Sinaceur and Tiedens in 2006) have shown that expressing anger induces larger concessions when negotiating with another party. Angry negotiators are perceived to be tougher and to have higher “reservation prices” (higher standards for the worst deal they are willing to accept) than other negotiators. But these studies are all based on North American and Western European subjects. Is expressing anger in negotiations equally effective in other cultures?

Adam (INSEAD), Shirako (U of California, Berkeley), and Maddux (INSEAD) conducted the “first investigation of how the interpersonal effects of discrete emotions in negotiations vary across cultures,” according to their paper published in the journal Psychological Science.

They hypothesized that anger would elicit larger concessions from Western negotiators but smaller concessions from East Asian negotiators. They figured that anger is at odds with the East Asian emphasis on interdependence and social harmony and would therefore be perceived by East Asian negotiators as an inappropriate display.

The research backed them up. Adam et al conducted three studies using scenarios and computer simulations (none involving face-to-face interactions) and found consistent evidence that “anger not only may be less effective in East Asian cultural contexts, but may actually backfire and lead to worse outcomes.”

Culture, they say, has a significant impact not only on how people from different cultural backgrounds perceive certain behaviour but also how they actually react to that behaviour.

Hajo Adam, Aiwa Shirako, & William W. Maddux (2010). Cultural Variance in the Interpersonal Effects of Anger in Negotiations Psychological Science, 21 (6), 882-889 : 10.1177/0956797610370755

photo credit: Frederic Poirot

The March/April 2010 issue of Communication World includes an article on how to communicate a changed employee value proposition to a skeptical audience. I was less interested in that storyline than in a set of statistics cited from the Towers Watson’s 2009/2010 Communication ROI Study. Here’s the noteworthy finding.

Phase at which communication function became involved in the change process:

• Identifying the problem > 8%
• Identifying possible approaches to resolve the issue > 23%
• Implementing the change > 27%
• Selecting the approach to resolve the issue > 11%
• Planning the implementation > 31%

Frankly, I’m surprised that almost one-third of the organizations surveyed involve their comm people only when they are planning how their change project will be implemented. I would have figured that communications is more embedded in change management than that. Could that be why so many change projects rot on the vine?

The Towers Watson survey involved 328 companies and 5 million employees.

Dirk Lindebaum of Manchester Business School argues that organizations should forget about trying to develop the emotional intelligence (EI) of their employees. Lindebaum doesn’t have an issue with EI itself; he just feels it is best developed as a result of individual initiative.

In the Academy of Management Learning and Education, Lindebaum identifies three barriers to workplace EI initiatives.

Industry barriers: Some industries, such as construction, are notorious for encouraging aggressive management styles and fierce competition. In such environments, EI may not be an advantage. “Owing to the dominance of males in some industries, and their influence on power relations, an inauspicious framework for introducing EI indiscriminately across various industries emerges.”

Intra-organizational barriers: EI workplace initiatives can ignore the varying personal motivations to commit to organizational objectives. Many employees, for example, may not be receptive to developing their emotional intelligence, and shouldn’t be forced to. Lindebaum: “Some individuals may be perfectly content to pursue with little organizational involvement their ‘nine-to-five jobs’ while others are keen to climb the organizational ladder.”

Intra-personal barriers: One, it is believed that EI is partly an innate ability that cannot be developed. Two, Lindebaum says that as workers become more emotionally astute, they could end up reevaluating whether they fit in their existing jobs (what’s wrong with that, I say), which isn’t necessarily in the organization’s interests. “Does the individual benefit from high EI or is it the organization? I argue that the individual is the primary beneficiary and organizations come second.” And three, more emotionally intelligent workers could be so preoccupied orchestrating favourable impressions that honest social interactions are few and far between.

Linebaum advocates individual initiative to foster EI, focusing on learning rather than performance. “Since emotions are an individual’s engagements with the world,” he writes, “the fostering of EI is a profoundly personal and private affair.”

“Rhetoric or Remedy? A Critique on Developing Emotional Intelligence”, by Dirk Lindebaum; Academy of Management Learning and Education (2009, Vol. 8, No. 2, 225–237)

photo credit: xiaming

Communication and trust go hand in hand. Good communication builds trust within organizations and boosts employee involvement. But what qualifies as “good” trust-building communications? Well, it depends on who is on the receiving end.

Thomas (Naval Postgraduate School), Zolin (Queensland U of Technology), and Hartman (Colorado State U) set out to investigate the linkages among quality of information, quantity of information, trust, and outcomes such as employee involvement. For data, they used communication audits from 218 employees in the Texas and Oklahoma oil industry. Audits are used to identify communications patterns within an organization.

Thomas et al found that for building trust among co-workers and supervisors,  quality of information — its accuracy, timeliness, and usefulness — is most important for building trust than quantity of information. But for building trust in senior management, it is the quantity of information that is most important.

Information coming from top management is seldom specific to an individual’s job and is generally focused on the big picture, write Thomas, Zolin, and Hartman in the Journal of Business Communication. “Top management depends on supervisors to translate this abstract information into more task-related, relevant communication. While employees count on top management to set the strategy and determine criteria for organizational success, then, supervisors must be trusted to show workers the connection between employees’ jobs and the organization’s goals and to provide the more specific, high-quality information needed to perform their jobs well. Coworkers, likewise, are depended on for high-quality information needed for job execution.”

The researchers also found that, in all cases, trust was very closely tied to perceptions of organizational openness which, in turn, is linked to high employee involvement.

“The central role of communication in developing trust and its effect on employee involvement”, by Gail Fann Thomas, Roxanne Zolin, and Jackie L. Hartman; Journal of Business Communication (Vol. 46, No. 3, July 2009; pp. 287-310)

photo credit: evilpeacock

CEO of Yahoo! Carol Bartz argues in The Economist (Nov. 13, 2009 issue) that, in the age of ubiquitous information, traditional management is “impossible, or at least ill-advised.”

“The hierarchical, layered corporate structures in which company information was carefully managed and then selectively passed down the line have crumbled,” Bartz writes. “The online era has made command-and-control management as dead as dial-up internet.” Ouch.

The problem, she says, lies in the stream of 24/7 commentary and instant opinion and gossip generated and amplified by bloggers, tweeters, and their ilk. It makes it impossible to control the message and hampers decision-making. So what’s the answer?

Learn to live with it, for one thing. Develop a thick skin. And understand “how important they [leaders] can be to their own team by interpreting both the news and the disinformation that swirls around them,” Bartz writes.

Bartz advises leaders to identify and mentor thought leaders, employees who have the ability to digest and interpret information for others. “Grooming these in-house ideas people helps foster a culture of openness to fresh thinking—the greatest energy an organization can have.”

photo credit: nregimbal