LEADING THOUGHTS

By nature, I go out of my way to help colleagues with no thought of personal gain, but for some reason, I seem to continually find studies that depict altruism as a behaviour for yokels and rubes, certainly not the way to win friends and influence enemies. Sure enough, here are researchers from the Kellogg School of Management who report, based on three studies, that altruism is a double-edged sword. “On the one hand, generous individuals are admired for their kindness, compassion, and willingness to help. On the other hand, they may be perceived as feeble ‘bleeding hearts’ who lack the guts to make tough decisions that might advance the goals of the organization.” Read the article

Well, this is progress, I guess: A growing number of HR directors are clawing their way onto their company Boards. In many cases, they’re doing a decent job, even chairing remuneration committees, right at the heart of strategy. They’re also becoming trusted confidants of the CEO, probably because they are the only directors not gunning for the top job. And that’s the truth: You’re more likely to see a vegan at an Aussie barbeque than an HR director as a CEO. Read the article

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You’ve caught the reorganization bug and want to come up with a whole new org chart. Only trouble is, you can’t decide which comes first: people or structure? Do you focus on the employees you already have and then figure out how best to organize them? Or do you design the organization around your business strategy and the capabilities and competencies required to execute on your business strategy? Go to article

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

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

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Public agencies may be doing a good job at slashing waste using Six Sigma and lean techniques but they could be doing a lot better by focusing on the “soft” side: implementing a robust management structure and changing employees’ mindsets.

In the publication McKinsey on Government, consultants Maia Hansen and John Stoner offer a step-by-step approach to establishing the right infrastructure for a lean transformation (lean has been defined as strategy that focuses on eliminating waste, which includes all processes that do not add value to the final product or service).

Create a value-stream map that identifies where value lies in each step of the process. “Our strong recommendation . . . is to form a cross-functional team with representatives who interact with the process in a variety of ways and therefore see it from different perspectives.”

Get data to the right people at the right time. That means focusing on Key Performance Indicators that matter most and ensuring that the right people are viewing them.

Establish new roles to smooth processes. The lean initiative may be best served, for example, by creating a new coordinating position to boost efficiency.

Align interests to drive momentum. The McKinsey consultants like gainsharing arrangements to embed the concept of continuous improvement, build morale, and sustain enthusiasm.

Hansen and Stoner also offer suggestions on how to change employee mindsets.

Get staff to focus on the consumer. This may be a challenge for a public agency with no competitors, but a good technique is to have employees follow a customer through the entire process of interacting with the agency/employer and to experience bureaucratic frustrations.

Break down silos. Make sure units know what other units are up to or create shared metrics to help units better understand shared goals.

Inspire employees to overcome risk aversion. The public sector may be allergic to performance measurement and risk but managers can change that perception. “Managers should thank employees for trying new approaches,” the authors write, “and focus on solving problems rather than assigning blame for mistakes.”

A Leaner Pubic Sector, by Maia Hansen and John Stoner; McKinsey on Government (Number 4, Summer 2009)

photo credit: Toban Black

In this video clip, INSEAD Professor Herminia Ibarra discusses perceptions of women being relatively weak at “envisioning,” essentially the ability to articulate a vision of the future and translating it into a strategic direction.

Ibara’s study is based on 360-degree evaluations of some 2,000 male and female managers. Prevailing wisdom is that there is a bias against female managers, who are generally rated less favourably than their male counterparts. Not so fast: Ibarra found that women score higher than men on many measures (such as communication, emotional intelligence, feedback) except for one: envisioning.

Yes, this is perception and not reality, but “when it comes to senior management,” she points out, “perception is reality.” (3:15 mark)

At the 4:00 mark, Ibarra says it is possible the way in which women arrive at a new vision is simply different than the process used by men (consensus versus going to the mountaintop), and that this organic process is not as evident.

At 6:10, she wonders if some women prefer to stick to the facts rather than striking out with a bold vision because they are often in a more vulnerable position in organizations.

And at 8:50, she talks about the “identity trap” in which men and women often find themselves: being pigeon-holed as an expert in one area. One way to escape this trap is to get out of the office to enlarge your perspectives with your network and do some “pattern recognition” in other areas. (11:24).

Writing in Human Resource Management Review, Mark Lengnick-Hall and his U of Texas at San Antonio colleagues show how the concept of strategic human resource management (SHRM) has evolved over the past 30 years. SHRM has been defined as “those activities affecting the behaviour of individuals in their efforts to formulate and implement the strategic needs of business.” It is the overall framework that determines the shape and delivery of individual HR strategies — big-picture HR.

Lengnick-Hall’s historical analysis is worthwhile reading for those interested in the evolution of ideas. What is particularly useful for practitioners, though, is his size-up of the crucial SHRM questions that still need answers.

There is not much solid research, for example, showing how organizations fit HR system components into corporate strategies (“vertical fit”). Even less is known about how to move in the opposite direction and convert HR capabilities into strategic competencies.

Measuring “horizontal fit” of an HR system presents special challenges. Figuring this out means teasing apart what is intended with what actually happens. “For example, many organizations have pay-for-performance systems that are sabotaged by managers in implementation,” writes Lengnick-Hall. “Perhaps a better approach to measuring internal fit is by surveying employees regarding whether or not they receive consistent messages across the various levels of the HR system.”

Given that organizations today pursue multiple strategies across many business units, Lengnick-Hall suggests researchers focus on SHRM strategy at the corporate level rather than the business level. Here’s one of his research questions: “How can SHRM contribute to crafting the underlying commonalities that enable diversified firms to leverage their infrastructures and create synergies across products and markets?”

Other areas ripe for research:

• The intersection between knowledge-based advantages and human resource systems
• SHRM applied to the supply chain: “Do organizations in a supply chain coordinate their HR activities in a way that benefits the entire “ecosystem”? Do supply chains that have a SHRM focus gain a competitive advantage over supply chains that have little or no coordination among HR activities across member organizations?”
• The human elements of SHRM: “the impact of diversified HR practices for distinct groups of employees, the fatigue effects associated with a focus on continuous learning and continuous improvement, seeing employees as resources to be leveraged rather than resources to be nurtured, and a number of other related concerns that arise from a limited understanding of the boundaries for popular SHRM practices.”

Strategic Human Resource Management: The Evolution of the Field, Mark Lengnick-Hall et al; Human Resource Management Review (19 (2009) 64–85)

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

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