LEADING THOUGHTS

If it takes a village to raise a child, then perhaps it takes co-workers to help trainees shine.

Management development experts have long known that organizations get the most out of their training dollars when employees are supported before, during, and after training. Few organizations, however, actually follow this advice.

Models of training effectiveness focus on program design, trainee characteristics, and workplace environment as the key factors that determine transfer of learning. By contrast, Harry J. Martin (Cleveland State University) wanted to study the context in which employees apply and transfer the knowledge and skills learned, specifically the role of workplace climate and peer support.

(Workplace climate includes factors such as adequate resources, cues that remind trainees of what they have learned, opportunities to apply skills, barriers and constraints to transfer, and consequences for using training on the job.)

FACTOID: It is estimated that only 10 to 40 percent of learning transfers to the job.

Martin focused on 237 managers of a manufacturing company in the midwest U.S. who completed a comprehensive training program. He devised a global measure of workplace climate for each of the 12 divisions in which the employees worked and used performance ratings of the participants to measure the level of training transfer.

Martin found that trainees in a division with a more favorable climate and those enjoying greater peer support showed greater improvement. Even better, in terms of transferring learnings, peer support overcame or lessened the effects of a negative office environment.

“The results of this study suggest that follow-up programs should be designed to address both the immediate and general organizational environments,” Martin reports in Human Resource Development Quarterly. “Care must be taken to help ensure that peers and immediate supervisors help trainees put the skills to work. Co-workers could provide general encouragement or be involved in more structured activities such as the peer meetings employed in this study.”

“Workplace Climate and Peer Support as Determinants of Training Transfer,” by Harry J. Martin; Human Resource Development Quarterly (Vol. 21 No. 1 Spring 2010; pp. 87-104)

photo credit: gritphilm

Alas the “glass ceiling” is one of those sad facts of modern organizational life that knows no national boundaries.  Doesn’t matter the country: despite rising female labour participation rates, women can’t seem to crack senior management ranks.

There are the usual reasons: the lack of transparency around promotion policies; work-family conflict; the old boys’ network; and the lack of visibly successful female role models. In her study of female managers in Ireland, Christine Cross (U Limerick) found similar dynamics at play but also what she calls an under-appreciated phenomenon: that “visibility” or being known to the senior management team is a crucial “career progression strategy.”

It is a strategy for which women of a certain age are ill-equipped, Cross says. “The age during which women are most often taking time out of their career for childbirth coincides with the time they are most active in seeking promotion,” she writes in the Leadership & Organization Development Journal. “As a consequence of taking maternity leave, a woman’s absence from the organisation directly impacts her visibility in organisational life. This study highlights that where women are away from the office for these extended periods, they believe, because of their absence, they are ‘forgotten about’ by the senior management team.”

Cross’s conclusions are based on in-depth interviews with 30 female managers from across a wide range of industry sectors in Ireland. The women in the study also observed that men in their organizations overtly engaged in self-generated visibility, a strategy the female respondents did not want to employ.

Hmm. . . do you buy that?

I have seen the way some men network and it’s not a pretty sight. Everyone knows they are doing it, just to get in with the ‘in crowd’. People talk about them behind their backs about how they are always smoozing up to the most senior people, and there is this one guy who is really junior, but wants to hang out with the ‘big boys’. But it’s working for him, even though we are all saying he shouldn’t be doing it because he’s making a laughing stock of himself.
—Retail store manager quoted by Cross

“Barriers to the executive suite: evidence from Ireland”, by Christine Cross; Leadership & Organization Development Journal (Vol. 31 No. 2, 2010, pp. 104-119)

photo credit: Let Ideas Compete

Web 2.0 tools such as Facebook, wikis, and blogs are making their way into organizations, in many cases brought in by employees rather than as part of an enterprise strategy. Some organizations, however, are proactively exploring how new collaborative tools can change the way people work for the better.

Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the MIT Sloan School of Management, sizes up this trend in the book Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for your Organization’s Toughest Challenges. In this interview with McKinsey Quarterly, he discusses some of his findings.

At the 9:08 mark (note: the video clock counts down), McAfee talks about the top-down versus the bottom-up approach to adopting new technology. In the end, he believes culture change is more likely to result when it is led by senior managers.

At 6:26, McAfee talks about the forces that can undermine Web 2.0′s enterprise-wide adoption.

And at 3:54, he talks about what Web 2.0 means for middle managers. If you see yourself as a gatekeeper of information, McAfee says, you’re in for a rough ride. “If you have another view of yourself, which is that you’re someone who’s responsible for output, you’re someone who’s responsible for making good things happen in your team, then these tools should be your best friend.”

Leaders who excel over time utilize organizational networks in distinctive ways to compensate for weaknesses in formal structures, says Rob Cross (U of Virginia) and colleagues who have conducted network analyses at more than 100 organizations.

In Organizational Dynamics, Cross et al map out five principles that drive productive organizational networks.

1. Manage the centre
Cross finds that 3 to 5 percent of people in a network account for 20 to 35 percent of the “value-added ties” – collaborations that generate sales, efficiency gains, or key innovations. But these hubsters are often not managed or leveraged intelligently. The lesson for leaders: locate employees at the centre of networks and manage them well.

Specifically look for bottlenecks and hidden stars. For bottlenecks, figure out if they are central because of their position on the org chart or because of their expertise and leadership qualities. If they are central because of their roles, shift decision rights or responsibilities to others. If they are experts or born leaders, identify the strengths that the network is seeking from them and build these capabilities in others.

And hidden stars? “We have found that there is only a 25 to 40 percent overlap between the individuals classified as ‘top talent’ by the organization and those who are revealed in a network analysis to be critical enablers of others.” The researchers suggest acknowledging the contributions of hidden stars with promotions or increased pay.

2. Leverage the periphery
For maximum benefit, focus on two outlier groups: newcomers and high performers who have drifted. For new hires, create initial assignments and encourage behaviors that integrate people into existing networks rapidly. For underutilized high-performers, re-engagement has to be done on a case-by-case basis. “Roughly 30 percent of the employees considered as top talent – those on high performer lists or in the top 20 percent performance category – have migrated to the fringe of the network.”

3. Selectively bridge collaborative silos
The strength of the network idea at a unit level, writes Cross and colleagues, “is that it allows us to see more precisely how to connect not everybody – but only the four, five, or six junctures that can allow the organization to differentiate itself strategically.” To bridge the “white space” created by divisional boundaries, geography, or hierarchies, a network analysis can be commissioned to show unit heads how they are connected across regional and product groups.

4. Develop the ability to surge
Cross says “surging” happens when networks sense opportunities or problems in one pocket of a network and rapidly tap into the expertise of others in the network to coordinate an effective response. Cross: “As new opportunities arise, employees need to know who has relevant expertise that can be helpful; they need to have a sense of who knows what in the network.”

5. Minimize insularity
Effective networks do not stop at “city limits” but extend out to clients and sources of expertise. For example in professional services, Cross writes, understanding touch points with key customers is a critical network view.

How Effective Leaders Drive Results Through Networks, by Rob Cross, Amanda Cowen, Lisa Vertucci, and Robert J. Thomas; Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 93–105, 2009

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

photo credit: edmittance

Colleague Andrew Graham alerted me to a forward-looking report produced by the Washington-based IBM Center for The Business of Government. “Ten Challenges Facing Public Managers” is a call to action for public sector leaders, particularly in the U.S. Read ‘em and weep:

Fiscal Sanity: “America’s current social insurance programs are both costly and antiquated. It is time to take a fresh look at reforming these programs to reflect current economic and budgetary considerations.”

Crisis of Competence: “The issue isn’t always ‘who does the work’ but rather ‘do we have the right talent at the right time doing the right job with the right level of accountability?’”

Information Overload: “The threats of information overload, and the possibility of missing important information needed to make informed decisions, has increased. However, breakthroughs in data capture, data standards, and data storage have created opportunities for large-scale analysis.”

Governing Without Boundaries: “Government is increasingly turning to non-hierarchical ways of doing business, often called ‘collaborative networks’ and ‘boundary-less organizations.’ However, these new models raise questions about
how to govern effectively in a network-based environment.”

E-Government Is Only the Beginning: “Public managers will need to embrace the long hard slog to standardize and integrate their operations. They will need to reframe service delivery around the customer.”

Government by Contractors?: “The government needs to take a strategic look at contracting, decide how to manage it, the appropriate roles for all parties, and the right contracting methods. Most important, it needs to invest the necessary resources to make working for the government more attractive.”

Results Really Do Matter: “Federal departments and agencies are confronted with long-standing and substantial challenges to becoming more results-oriented. Solving these problem areas will require a performance-driven system that builds on crosscutting connections between agencies, levels of government, and the nonprofit and private sectors.”

“Green” Leadership: “Solving our environmental problems requires a blend of public policies and incentives that encourage technology and management innovations across the globe.”

Security and Privacy in a Flat World: “Security and privacy issues need to be explicitly factored into any technology decision. . . In some cases, the most efficient solution must yield to the more secure solution.”

Expect Surprises: “Policymakers will need forward-looking information to set the stage for early warnings about emerging threats and to make informed choices about effective government responses.”

photo credit: naoki.sato