LEADING THOUGHTS

According to social network theory, people on average are only a few connections away from the information they seek. But in large organizations, this theory falls apart: some employees clearly have longer search paths than others in locating the knowledge they require. Is this simply because they have an inferior network?

Not really, say researchers from INSEAD and Apple University. Singh, Hansen, and Podolny suggest there are two dynamics at play. One, employees who belong to the periphery of an organization — women and those with lower tenure or poor connectedness to experts — have limited awareness of who knows what in an organization and a lower ability to seek help from others best suited to guide the search. Two, when these employees do seek information, they tend to contact colleagues like themselves who are also outliers.

The researchers say employees on the periphery need to cross social boundaries to discover “who knows what,” and that their managers have a role in making this happen.

“We speculate that reliance on interpersonal networks remains crucial when a firm’s knowledge cannot be easily codified and stored in databases, when it changes
quickly (making it difficult to keep track of who knows what), and when it is distributed across people who are not official experts,” the researchers write in their working paper The World is Not Small for Everyone. “This calls for managers to recognize that formal IT systems are rarely substitutes for inter-personal networks. The implication is that managers need to help members on the periphery develop their networks.”

“The World is Not Small for Everyone: Inequity in Searching for Knowledge in Organizations”, by Jasjit Singh, Morten T. Hansen, and Joel M. Podolny; INSEAD working paper 2009/49/ST/EFE

photo credit: Sambhu Sankar

Learning Orgs communication, learning, Org Design

Does age have an impact on having and offering ideas at work? According to the “deficit model”, older people are less likely than younger people to be a source of innovation due to deficits from the aging process. Up to now, there is more evidence for a decline in innovative work behaviour and creativity during older age than for no age effects, though the findings are not conclusive.

To test this assumption, Birgit Verworn (HTW Dresden, Germany) studied the suggestion systems used at two German locations of a large European company, focusing on a sample of 633 submitted ideas. In these systems, suggestions were rewarded depending on their quality; quality was assessed by the resulting potential revenues or savings.

The surprising finding: the over-55 age cohort scored highest. “In contrast to our assumptions, older employees submitted more valuable ideas than younger employees,” Vermorn writes in the journal Creativity and Innovation. “The most and the most valuable ideas came from employees older than 55, who also achieved the highest average value per employee of that age group of EUR24,918.”

“Does Age Have an Impact on Having Ideas? An Analysis of the Quantity and Quality of Ideas Submitted to a Suggestion System,” by Birgit Verworn; Creativity and Innovation Management (Vol. 18 No. 4, 2009, pp. 326-334)

photo credit: Adam Melancon

Learning Orgs, Uncategorized demographics, innovation, learning

The UK suffers from a 30 percent productivity gap with the U.S., which translates into 85 working days per worker. Research has shown that up to half of that gap is due to how U.S. competitors deploy resources within their businesses, which in turn is traced to different management and leadership practices.

Kieran Mannion (Dept. for Employment and Learning, Belfast) wanted to figure out why U.S. managers seemed to be more productive than their British counterparts. He discounted the usual reasons trotted out, such as cultural differences or the fact that American managers work longer hours.

Instead, Mannion conducted interviews with 45 American HR managers and leadership development practitioners with first-hand experience working in both the U.S. and the British Isles. And what did he learn?

Higher instance of degree-level education among managers in the U.S.
Most respondents said business leaders in the U.S. were generally better qualified than their counterparts in the UK. “In the private sector, managers expressed surprise that so many of their UK colleagues had not been to university, pointing out that a degree, or even an MBA, was simply the starting point in the recruitment process in the U.S.”

More focus among students on business as a career
Again most interviewees said business management was more highly regarded as a mainstream profession in the U.S. “The perception was that European business was dominated by professional accountants rather thabn marketers or other generalist leaders. . . On the other hand, fewer people in the UK enter directly into management.”

Greater mobility among U.S. managers
Many of the managers interviewed from multinational corporations said American leaders were more mobile compared to colleagues in the UK and Ireland. “In the U.S, business leaders tend to take a much greater level of personal responsibility for the management of their own careers. This leads to much more proactive job searching and generally lower tenure in any one job.”

More flexible employment laws allow for non-performing managers to be weeded-out
While the HR specialists interviewed recognized that labour laws in the UK and Ireland were among the most flexible in Europe, the predominant view was that it was difficult to terminate the employment of a non-productive manager.

Greater use of leveraged compensation packages and stock options
Variable pay schemes, including bonuses and profit sharing, form a much larger proportion of the US managers’ overall compensation package than is the case in the UK.

Greater development and adoption of business strategy theories
“The sheer volume of research into business strategy and management techniques and practices in the U.S. had created a clear role for business process engineering that had given the U.S. a competitive advantage.” Factoid: As recently as the 1980s, UK universities had little involvement in the business world.

More prevalent geographically distributed management teams
American corporations could pioneer standardized management practices because the U.S. is a single large marketplace with no currency, language, or cultural barriers. This encouraged much higher growth levels and more widely distributed management teams. This, in turn, forced U.S. companies to find ways “to ensure consistency across widely geographically distributed managers to replicate the same standards of performance across different regions and markets. In turn, the development and adoption of standardized management practices helped these companies to achieve higher productivity, better returns on capital and even more robust growth.”

“Leadership. . . for success”, by Kieran Mannion; Leadership and Organization Development Journal (Vol. 30 No. 7, 2009; pp. 639-648)
photo credit: R4vi

Global HR, Uncategorized britain, business education, ireland, learning, productivity, training

If you were to identify the 10 most important skills that leaders must have and compare it to the 10 skills that leaders actually possess, how closely would those two lists overlap?

The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) set out to answer that question in a study involving 2,200 leaders from 15 organizations, conducted between 2006 and 2008. The CCL’s conclusion: there is an alarming leadership gap or deficit.

In the CCL survey, seven leadership skills are consistently viewed as most important now and in the future:

• Leading people
• Strategic planning
• Managing change
• Inspiring commitment
• Resourcefulness
• Doing whatever it takes
• Being a quick learner

Of the top five needed skills, only resourcefulness is considered a top 10 skill. The four most important future skills “are among the weakest competencies for today’s leaders,” the report concluded. Other areas where there is a significant gap between the needed and existing skills levels are: employee development, balancing work and personal life, and decisiveness.

“These data show that many leaders’ strengths are not in areas that are most important for success,” the report concludes.

For a copy of the report, send me at email at Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

photo credit: splityarn

Org Development assessment, leadership, learning, strategy, training

The answer to this provocative question, according to John Peters and Kate Snowden of Emerald Group Publishing, is “no, but. . .” Organizations still have a role to play as centres of learning but their role of “controlling and specifying a learning environment” is on its last legs.

Peters and Snowden write that the democratisation of information, from Google and blogs to wikis and YouTube, is an “irresistible tide.” On a personal level, we can easily call up information on any subject, “and can add our own voice, usually unmoderated, to the discussion, or start a brand-new discussion of our own.” In the organizational world, a company can buy an online collection of management research and own a  library of research similar to that found in a business school.

So in this information-saturated environment, what can organizations add of learning value? The authors suggest two things: action learning and critical thinking. Action learning is essentially “learning by doing” and then reflecting on successes and failures, either with the support of other learners or a coach. Critical thinking is a particularly vital skill these days because it enables people to be more discerning about the information they consume.

“Both of these, the latter especially, will help both individuals and organizations gain more from the increasing democratisation of information, and from the increasing informality of learning.”

Video killed the radio star, but has Google killed the learning organization?, by John Peters and Kate Snowden; The Learning Organization (Vol. 15 No. 6, 2008 pp. 449-453)

Email me for a copy of this paper: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

photo credit: swortman53

Learning Orgs action learning, learning, training

Creating or performing art can be a powerful way to develop managerial and leadership awareness and skills. It can also be a flavour-of-the-month technique that is used as a novelty with little understanding of how it may benefit individuals.

Writing in the Academy of Management Learning & Education, Steven S. Taylor (Worcester Polytechnic) and Donna Ladkin (Cranfield U) offer a model of four unique processes underpinning arts-based management development methods.

Skills transfer: development of artistic skills that can be applied in organizational settings (medical residents being taught theatre skills to increase their clinical empathy). “Arts-based methods allow managers to feel the experience of those skills rather than think about them, such as when theatrical improvisation exercises are used to get managers to feel what it is like to listen deeply and be listened to deeply.”

Projective technique: the output of artistic endeavors allows participants to reveal inner thoughts and feelings that may not be accessible through conventional means (managers building 3-D representations of their org strategy using LEGO bricks). “Two managers can have a discussion in which they differ about what an image that has been created means in a way that doesn’t make them feel defensive but rather fosters learning about each others’ perspective.”

Illustration of essence: participants can apprehend the “essence” of a concept, situation, or tacit knowledge in greater depth than conventional methods (viewing the film Twelve O’Clock High to illustrate key leadership lessons). “Reading and seeing Henry V performed and engaging in extended discussion of leadership as Shakespeare has portrayed it can help a manager have a much more complex and nuanced understanding of leadership in a way that is based in a felt, emotional, personal connection rather than through an abstract, intellectual theorization.”

Making: creating art can foster a deeper experience of personal presence and connection (MBA students taking art classes to enhance their creativity). “It is a form of personal development that is not tied directly to specific organizational outcomes, but rather is undertaken with more generic long-term goals in mind. Thus we can imagine arts-based programs being included as part of wellness initiatives aimed at the long-term health and development of employees.”

The authors caution that not all arts-based techniques are the same. Managers engaging with Shakespearean plays experience something different from those making masks that represent their leadership styles. Using their model, trainers can select the right art form for their learning objective.

Understanding Arts-Based Methods in Managerial Development, by Steven S. Taylor and Donna Ladkin; Academy of Management Learning & Education (2009, Vol. 8, No. 1, 55–69)

Email me for a copy of this paper: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

photo credit: paurian

Personal Development arts, business education, learning, storytelling, training

Executive coaching has become a hugely popular management development technique. The International Coaching Federation alone boasts 17,000 professional coaches from more than 95 countries. But research on what makes coaching a successful development process has not kept pace. Not even close.

Louis Baron and Lucie Morin (U of Quebec at Montreal) set out to fill that vacuum. Choosing to focus on the working relationship between coach and “coachee”, the researchers collected survey data from two samples: 73 managers in a large North American manufacturing company who received executive coaching for a period of eight months, and 24 coaches. The coaches were company executives participating in a coaching certification program.

Results indicate that the quality of the coach–coachee relationship is a prerequisite for coaching effectiveness and an important factor in the development of the client’s “self-efficacy.” (Self-efficacy is the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain goals.) Particularly significant was the coaches’ ability to facilitate learning: establishing a development plan, tracking learning progress, using a structured approach, making connections, and identifying obstacles.

On the client or coachee side, the more a manager is motivated to apply newly developed skills in her work and the higher is her perception of supervisory support, the better the coaching relationship.

“Our results . . . underline the importance, when implementing internal executive coaching programs, of working with future coaches on ways to favor the development of a good working relationship,” the authors write. “Certification programs should sensitize coaches on the working relationship, by making them conscious of how they influence its development and the obstacles they may encounter.”

The Coach–Coachee Relationship in Executive Coaching: A Field Study, by Louis Baron and Lucie Morin; Human Resource Development Quarterly (vol. 20, no. 1, Spring 2009)

Email me for a copy of this paper: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

photo credit: NeeDeeAhh!

Personal Development coaching, learning, training

Goodman and Beenen from Carnegie Mellon University recently developed the concept of an “organizational learning contract.” The key is the first word: organizational. Their learning contract creates shared and specific expectations among students, faculty, and educational administrators concerning learning outcomes, learning environments, and the educational assessment system.

Goodman and Beenen developed the contract specifically for university management schools, and you can guess why: schools are under continued pressure to be relevant and deliver value to their “customers.” But it is intriguing to consider how their model can be applied to a non-academic organization. If you are truly committed to building a learning organization, writing this into a contract with each employee is one powerful way of getting your point across.

There are three basic elements to Goodman and Beenen’s organizational learning contract:
1. Learning outcomes. These are specific, explicitly communicated, and developed with the organization in mind.
2. Learning environments. What types of learning environments will be used to ensure the various outcomes.
3. Learning systems. How the contract will be implemented, outcomes measured, and curriculum redesigned.

The authors say organization-level learning contracts build in accountability, are a force for integration, and can be used as diagnostic tools to identify learning gaps or mismatched expectations. This is quite a radical concept for business schools but is no less valuable for non-academic organizations.

Organization Learning Contracts and Management Education; Paul Goodman and Gerard Beenen; Academy of Management Learning & Education (2008, vol. 7, no. 4, 521-534)

Learning Orgs assessment, learning, outcomes