Of late, Wheatley has been writing about how to persevere in the face of adversity and how to shift thinking in the midst of difficult circumstances, both timely skills.

So I was eager to read the recent conversation between Wheatley and the sharp-thinking Art Kleiner, editor-in-chief of strategy+business. They don’t disappoint.

Wheatley says that it is a difficult time for leaders to be innovative, and that there is little time in modern organizations for reflection and learning what works and doesn’t work.

“For me, community — people working together and knowing that others are there to support them — is a critically important but largely invisible resource. . . But community is hard to find in most organizations. Not only do many leaders deny that this capacity is important, but they’re actually destroying it through their current management approaches.”

Such as? Whteatley says she many forward-thinking business leaders are being driven by their boards and bosses to implement continuous cutbacks and produce more results with fewer resources.

“Too many leaders fail to realize that the old ways, their mental maps, aren’t giving them the information they need. But instead of acknowledging that, they push on more frantically, desperate to have the old ways work. When human beings work from fear and panic, we lose nearly all of our best reasoning capacities. We can’t see patterns, think about the future, or make moral judgments.”

When you’re lost, Wheatley says, the solution is to admit it and call together everyone who might have information that’s needed to construct a new map, people from all levels of the organization.

Kleiner pushes Wheatley to explain her view that the only leaders who succeed are those who practise a spiritual discipline. Wheatly doesn’t back down, though she makes clear that, by “spiritual discipline,” she doesn’t mean a religious practice per se but rather “some regular activity that leads you to reflect on your struggles and challenges in a larger context.” That might be meditation, time in a natural space, or even Alcoholics Anonymous. Her point is that leaders must engage in some practice that pushes them out of the perception that they are the centre of the universe.

You can find the original article here (registration may be required)

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Meg Wheatley on Perseverance

Read the article in QSB Magazine

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Good Reads: The Faces of Fraud

Organizations are hollowing out their middle manager ranks. Pity: these folks have a greater impact on company performance than almost any other part of the organization. Their influence stems from their role in project management: allocating resources, imposing deadlines. Not sexy stuff but critical for effective operations. Read the article

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Good Reads: Casino as Classroom, Hug your Middle Manager

They are too infrequently performed, though they can help employees immensely. When they are done, they can be biased or focus on the wrong metrics. Can performance reviews be redeemed? Turns out, feedback loops and other innovations are giving performance reviews new life. Read the article

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Good Reads: Breathing New Life in Old Networks and Lousy Performance Reviews

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A new box is being pencilled into org charts: chief operating officer for HR. The motivation: to coax more performance improvements from the talent pool. Business leaders may not be getting the HR services they want, but shouldn’t the existing HR leadership be able to solve this problem? The debate continues. Read the article

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By rights, solid knowledge management techniques should help work teams avoid reinventing the wheel. In fact, new reseach shows that when project teams have access to stored organizational knowledge, they complete tasks more quickly, but the quality of their work doesn’t necessarily improve. Teams that are most likely to show increases in both efficiency and quality are those dealing with constantly changing projects. Read the article

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Good Reads: Women as Negotiators, COO for HR, Knowledge Management and Teams

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How Loyal Are You to Your Net Gen Employee?

Read the article

It’s easy to blame corporate culture for all manner of ills. But if you’re seeking change in your organization, you’ll need to use the existing culture to change the behaviors that matter most. Over time, the culture you have will evolve into the culture you need.

Read the article

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Good Reads: Show Some Love to Former Employees; Why Culture is the Key

On the other hand, the benefits of jointly training managers and shop stewards are tantalizing. The promise lies in increasing boundary-spanning knowledge, reducing the friction that can lead to high grievance costs or work stoppages, and finding shared ways of meeting change head on.

Read the article I wrote for Queen’s University IRC on joint union-management training at ENMAX Power Corporation.

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When Unions and Managers Learn Together

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

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Mapping Your Org’s Go-To People

How do you manage a team across borders and time zones? Start by tearing up your old management rule book. Like to empower people? Be loosey goosey with processes? Think again. Go to article

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Good Reads: How to Do a Re-Org; Managing Virtual Teams