Working People of Holyoke III: The Decline of New England's Mills
Stagnant wages in Holyoke mills, enforced by the availability of low-wage workers in the southern states, contributed to pervasive disenchantment with mill work among young people in New England after World War II. William Hartford describes the situation in
Working People of Holyoke: Class and Ethnicity in a Massachusetts Mill Town, 1850-1960:
The crucial decade was the 1930s. As Marc Miller has written of Lowell [MA] during the depression, "a natural partner to high unemployment was exemplary school attendance." ... As late as 1950 in Holyoke, median school years completed was still only 9.9. But this was an increase of nearly a full school year since 1940, and there was every indication that this and related measures would continue to rise in the future.
{. . .]
... A number of parents simply stated that they wanted their children to be happy, to be able to do what they wished. However vaguely phrased, these statements tell us much about the meaning of social mobility in working-class America. What these parents most wanted for their children was that they have choices, choices that they as children did not have; and in the end, what their children chose to do was less important than that they be able to choose at all. As Madeleine Biehler [a Holyoke resident of French-Canadian extraction] said of her mother, "It was always do what I didn't do"
When the next generation began making these choices, textile employment ranked low on its list of career alternatives. ... This was the case not only in Holyoke, but throughout much of New England as well. From Adams, Massachusetts, Wauregan, Connecticut, West Warwick, Rhode Island, and Biddeford, Maine, came similar reports after World War II, all stating that young people were consciously avoiding textile work. The reasons for their decisions were perhaps best summarized in a 1950 study of the state textile industry by the Massachusetts House of Representatives:It was represented to the Commission that because of beliefs such as that mill work entailed lack of opportunity, unpleasant surroundings, absence of progressive personnel and industrial relations policies, relatively low wages, and the uncertainty of regular employment, a stigma is attached to employment in the industry in the Northern States. These beliefs repel younger persons and children of textile workers, the normal replacement, and results in their turning to other forms of employment.
Holyoke TWUA [Textile Workers' Union of America] official Anna Sullivan put it more bluntly: textiles was "at the bottom of the heap." [pp. 202-203]
###Labels: Classroom training, Employee development
Working People of Holyoke I: Commitment to Learning
In 1990
William F. Hartford, an independent scholar, published
Working People of Holyoke: Class and Ethnicity in a Massachusetts Mill Town, 1850-1960. His book is a detailed study that helps one understand how workers in Holyoke's factories — principally paper and textile mills — gradually, and with plenty of setbacks, arrived at somewhat improved wages and working conditions, only to see the mills close as owners shifted production south, where wages were lower.
The passage below, from Chapter 6, touches on learning activities — one dimension of the workers' efforts to improve their lives in the years after 1905.
As they struggled to preserve some semblance of independence [i.e., having an independent voice in community affairs], trade-union respectables [as opposed to "saloonists," who tended to have a relatively casual connection to the industrial workforce] displayed an intense commitment to learning, not only for themselves but for all working people. The Dynamiters [a group of Holyoke trade unionists who met every Saturday evening] regularly badgered the state legislature to appropriate funds for university extension classes, and individual members ... periodically organized adult-education programs for local wage earners. Even more important than these efforts was the meaning that trade-union respectables attached to education. In their quest for knowledge they were not seeking to emulate or impress the local bourgeoisie. Rather, they saw learning as a valuable resource that could be used to engage life's problems. The Dynamiters thus maintained a file of the Congressional Record
and other reference sources that members consulted to frame legislative petitions, contest the actions of local authorities, and challenge the assertions of visiting academics who, as the Springfield Republican
's Sunday correspondent observed, "came [to Dynamiters Hall] hotfoot for argument and got it good and plenty." [p. 127]
In Chapter 7, Hartford offers an example from the mid-1920s of one of the more formal programs sponsored by the Dynamiters Club:
A course on "Labor Problems in Modern Society" conducted by Paul Douglas, then a professor at Amherst College, covered such topics as wealth and income distribution, recent wage movements, family-allowance systems, unemployment insurance, and the history of organized labor. During discussion periods, particpants debated whether centralized labor markets reduced unemployment, why welfare capitalists [owners who adopted a paternalistic approach to labor relations] so often opposed worker organization, and what impact technological innovation had on trade unionism, among other questions. [p. 169]
###Labels: Critical thinking, Employee development
What's the best way to believe in yourself?
According to Stanford psychology professor
Carol Dweck, working up to one's potential requires a
growth mindset, i.e., the belief that one's abilities are malleable and can improve.
This is in contrast to a
fixed mindset, i.e., the belief that one's abilities are inborn and fixed and, therefore, one is basically helpless in the face of skill deficits, such as poor public speaking or written communication.
(click to enlarge)
Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset
(Nigel Holmes [pdf])Fortunately, there is good evidence that it is quite realistic to believe that one can improve one's abilities. What's needed are challenging opportunities to acquire experience in specific fields, which, over time, develops into deep expertise.
Most of Dweck's work has been directed at school students. For example, she and a colleague,
Lisa Blackwell, have recently launched
Brainology, a computer-based training program for middle school and high school students aimed at producing better academic outcomes by imbuing students with a growth mindset.
Dweck's research has demonstrated that students with a growth mindset have higher motivation to learn. When this heightened motivation is coupled with plenty of good instruction and practice, the students show solid increases in achievement.
A
corollary of Dweck's findings concerning the importance of a growth mindset is the idea that trying to build students' belief in themselves by telling them how smart they are is not helpful. Doing this can, in fact, lead to worsened performance. Students are demotivated to undertake learning tasks at which they may initially fail because they're afraid their "native" intelligence will be called into question.
A much better approach to building students' belief in themselves is helping those with a fixed mindset to convert to a growth mindset.
The Brainology program is an example of how to achieve this conversion. It consists of an introduction and four units. In
sum (pdf), the four units cover:
Unit 1— basics of brain structure and function, particularly what is required to maintain readiness to learn.
Unit 2 — brain behavior, how it functions, effect of emotions (e.,g., performance anxiety), and strategies to manage emotions (e.g., strategies for handling tests calmly).
Unit 3 — how learning changes the brain, and what sort of activities promote learning. You can exercise your brain "by exploring new information, learning new concepts, and practicing skills. [P]ractice is the key to learning."
Unit 4 — how memory works, and study strategies to apply the Brainology lessons in real life. "[I]nformation moves from working memory to long-term memory through a process called encoding. In order for encoding to happen you must pay attention, attach new information to existing information that supports it, and repeat the information. [O]ther mnemonics (memory strategies) include connecting information together by chunking, visual images and acronyms."
Organizations that want to cultivate learning-oriented behavior among their employees are well-advised to encourage a growth mindset, accompanied by opportunities to build experience. In practice, this means that a company's performance management system should give heavy weight to skill development, with lesser weight placed on grading employees in order to make compensation and retention decisions.
###Labels: Cognition, Employee development, Employee performance management, Motivation
Helping R&D People Pitch Their Ideas
The January 2010 issue of
Chief Learning Officer has an excellent
case study describing how one company improved its approach to identifying ideas generated by its technical staff that have strong commercial potential.
Authors
David Midgley (INSEAD) and
Carlos de Pommes (now at
Cambiio) explain that
QinetiQ (think "kinetic"), a defense technology and security company, designed a program to:
- equip their scientists and engineers to present ideas as compelling business propositions, and
- make sure that ideas were brought to the attention of all relevant business units, not just the unit to which a particular research team was attached.
The program, launched in the spring of 2007, was called "Pitching to Win." For details, do read the Midgley/de Pommes
write-up. I'll just highlight the training component of the program:
To make a convincing and compelling pitch, teams needed to master four key parts of an investable proposition, known internally as NABC: the need of the customer; the approach the team took to deliver the solution; the benefits for both the customer and QinetiQ; and the likely competition. Experienced instructors taught these skills during the 90 days of the competition and supported the teams throughout.
As of the time of writing, 50 ideas have been proposed, of which 11 were ultimately approved for funding.
###Labels: Employee development, Innovation
"The Peter Principal Revisited"
The Peter Principle, whose fortieth anniversary arrived this year,
1 has diminished relevance in our era of flattened organizations.
2The Peter Principle, devised by
Laurence Peter, an education professor at the University of Southern California, is geared to hierarchical organizations. It states that employees in such organizations are promoted until they reach a level at which they are unable to perform well. In flattened organizations, opportunities for upward career moves are, by definition, limited, so the scope for misquided promotions is also limited.
All the same, it would be interesting to know how to counteract the Peter Principle in an organization which still has numerous levels to which people can be promoted.
Alessandro Pluchino (a professor in the physics and astronomy department of the University of Catania in Italy),
Andrea Rapisarda (ditto), and
Cesare Garofalo (a member of the Chaos And Complexity Theoretical University Study Group at Catania) have recently published a
paper (pdf) that addresses this question. Its counterintuitive results have attracted considerable attention.
3The model the researchers use is illustrated in the graphic below.
(click to enlarge)
Pluchino, Rapisarda, and Garofalo's hierarchical organization model.There are 160 positions, 81 at Level 6, 41 at Level 5, 21 at Level 4, 11 at Level 3, 5 at Level 2, and 1 at Level 1.
The numbers in the lefthand column are responsibility factors for the respective levels. The responsibility factors increase as one moves up the pyramid, meaning that an individual's impact — positive or negative — on the organization's efficiency increases as the individual rises through the ranks.
The Competence distribution at the upper right indicates that competence is distributed normally. Rising competence is represented by deepening color of the employee figures in the pyramid — from pink to dark red. Emply positions are yellow.
Pluchino, Rapisarda, and Garofalo (PRG) use an
agent-based simulation to show that, if an organization promotes people to positions whose skill requirements are independent of the skill requirements in their previous positions (the "Peter hypothesis"), the organization should make a point of choosing the most
incompetent person at a given level for promotion to the next level up.
Although PRG do not state this explicitly, the idea behind this "Worst" promotion strategy is that the organization moves someone out of a position where he/she is creating minimal value (what I call "value" PRG call "efficiency"), while retaining all those at the same level who are doing a better job. Over time, this strategy is optimal (again, assuming skill requirements of jobs at the various level are independent of each other), as shown in the graphic below.
(click to enlarge)
Organizational efficiency in the PRG simulation model.Efficiency over time is plotted for each of six cases, three based on the "Common Sense hypothesis," in which a promoted employee is assumed to be roughly as competent in his/her new position as in his/her previous position; and three based on the "Peter hypothesis," in which a promoted employee's competence in the new position is independent of his/her competence in the previous position.
The three variants for each hypothesis are (1) the "Best" strategy for promotion, in which the most competent person is the one promoted to the next level; (2) the "Worst" strategy, in which the least competent person is the one promoted; and (3) the "Random" strategy, in which the choice of whom to promote is made randomly.
The greatest positive impact on efficiency occurs if the Peter hypothesis is correct and the Worst promotion strategy is adopted. Next, in descending order of impact on efficiency are: the combination of Common Sense hypothesis and Best strategy, the combination of Common Sense hypothesis and Random strategy; the combination of Peter hypothesis and Random strategy; the combination of Common Sense hypothesis and Worst strategy (negative impact); and the combination of Peter hypothesis and Best strategy (negative impact).
Note that if skills in the new position
do reasonably closely match those in the previous position — the Common Sense hypothesis — the best promotion strategy, as you'd expect, is to pick the strongest performer, i.e., to adopt the "Best" promotion strategy.
I'd further note that if an organization follows the rational approach of promoting people whose skills
match the requirements of the new position (with a plan to fill manageable gaps through appropriate training), they should realize their intended value creation more often than not.
And, as pointed out at the beginning of this post, in a flattened organization promotion is less of a focus than assembling teams with complementary skills. Effective organizations will plan individual employees' development so that people are assisted in filling new roles and responsibilties competently.
To follow PRG's suggestion of promoting randomly, or else alternating between promoting the best performers and the worst performers, would not only be unnecessarily defeatist, but would also generate disgruntlement that would have its own serious negative effects on value creation.
__________
1 Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull,
The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong (William Morrow, 1969).
2 For an opposing view, see Robert Sutton, "
A New Look at The Peter Principle,"
Business Week, March 31, 2009.
3 Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo, "The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study,"
Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Vol. 389, No. 3 (Feb. 2010), pp. 467-472.
If you want run the PRG simulation yourself, you can do so
here.
I was made aware of this article by an item in the "Ninth Annual Year in Ideas" feature published in the
New York Times Magazine on December 13, 2009: "
Random Promotions," by Clive Thompson. There is also a short
write-up at
Technology Review.
###Labels: Employee development, Employee performance management, Simulation
MIT Course on Project Management I: Training
This past spring
Fred Moavenzadeh, a professor of systems engineering and civil and environmental engineering at MIT, taught a
course in Project Management whose PowerPoint lecture notes (along with other materials) are now available at MIT's
OpenCourseWare website.
In this and a few subsequent posts, I'll highlight items that I found of particular interest that are also understandable to someone accessing the PowerPoint slides online without the benefit of hearing Prof. Moavenzadeh talk about them in class.
The graphic below, from
lecture 22 (pdf), shows a three-tier program for training engineering, procurement & construction (EPC) project managers.
Training for EPC Project Management
(click to enlarge)
(Infrastructure World LLC,
via Prof. Fred Moavenazdeh)If I were in Prof. Moavenazdeh's class, I would ask for details about the curriculum for Tier III, a matter of some importance since moving engineers more or less smoothly from technical roles to general management is a notoriously
###Labels: Employee development, Learning resources
Realizing Maximum Return from IT Investments
Productivity is in the
news these days as people take note that it is rising impressively in the US even as unemployment remains high. What lies behind the ability of companies to maintain needed output levels with fewer employees?
One known source of productivity gains is investment in information technology. But some companies do markedly better in realizing productivity gains from IT than others. Why?
Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management and Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business, and
Adam Saunders, a lecturer at UPenn's Wharton School, have been investigating this question. The
answer they offer in a recently published
book is that
companies with the highest level of returns to their technology investment are doing more than just buying technology; they are inventing new forms of organizational capital to become digital organizations. These innovations include a cluster of organizational and business-process changes, including broader sharing of information, decentralized decision-making, linking pay and promotions to performance, pruning of non-core products and processes, and greater investments in training and education.
You can access the introduction and first chapter of Brynjolfsson and Saunders' book
here.
[Earlier reference to the points Brynjolfsson and Saunders make in their book can be found in a
post from July of last year. Brynjolfsson's views (along with those of co-auther Andrew McAfee) concerning measurement of economic activity that improves on the standard GDP measure are discussed in a
post from last month.]
###Labels: Communication, Decision-making, Employee development, Innovation, Management practices, Organizational culture, Productivity, Rewards and recognition, Strategy
Increasing Emotional Intelligence
Thanks to the
Greater Good blog, I have been alerted to a study that suggests people can learn to be more emotionally intelligent.
The study was conducted by four Belgian researchers —
Delphine Nelis,
Jordi Quoidbach,
Moïra Mikolajczak, and
Michel Hansenne. Nelis, Quoidbach, and Hansenne are at the University of Liège; Mikolajczak is at the Université Catholique de Louvain.
1As the researchers explain in their
abstract,
The construct of emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the individual differences in the perception, processing, regulation, and utilization of emotional information. As these differences have been shown to have a significant impact on important life outcomes (e.g., mental and physical health, work performance and social relationships), this study investigated, using a controlled experimental design, whether it is possible to increase EI. Participants of the experimental group received a brief empirically-derived EI training (four group training sessions of two hours and a half) while control participants continued to live normally. Results showed a significant increase in emotion identification and emotion management abilities in the training group. Follow-up measures after 6 months revealed that these changes were persistent. No significant change was observed in the control group. These findings suggest that EI can be improved ...
Because the text of the study is not available for free online, you might want to turn for additional detail to the description of the research
Timothy A. Pychyl, a psychology professor at Carleton University, provides at
www.PsychologyToday.com:
The EI training intervention consisted of 4 sessions of 2.5 hours each over 4 weeks with participants divided into two smaller groups (10 and 9 participants, respectively). The training was based on Mayer and Salovey's model of EI,[2] with an emphasis on: 1) perception, appraisal and expression of emotion; 2) emotional facilitation of thinking; 3) understanding and analyzing emotions; 4) reflective regulation of emotion. During the program, particular emphasis was placed on techniques to enhance emotional regulation and emotional understanding. These sessions were based on short lectures, role plays, discussions and readings. Participants also completed a daily dairy of emotional experience that they analyzed in light of the theory explained in class as part of their learning.
The moral for corporate trainers is that well-designed coaching and training in the interpersonal skills that reflect emotional intelligence can equip people to do a better job of communicating with each other and managing conflict — assuming training participants are willing to learn.
(I will be on the lookout for further information on the exact nature of the training the Belgian researchers used in their experiment. I am also interested in anything I can find about their thoughts concerning how to improve the specifics of their training in light of their experience with their initial group of subjects.)
__________
1 Delphine Nelis, Jordi Quoidbach, Moïra Mikolajczak, and Michel Hansenne, "Increasing Emotional Intelligence: (How) is it possible?"
Personality and Individual Differences, Vol. 47, No. 1 (July 2009), pp. 36-41.
2 John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey, "
What is Emotional Intelligence?" (pdf) in Peter Salovey and David J. Sluyter (eds.),
Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence: Educational Implications (Basic Books, 1997), pp. 3-31.
###Labels: Classroom training, Cognition, Communication, Conflict management, Employee development
MIT/Harvard Course on Organizational Economics
As a follow-on to my recent
post dealing with Nobel laureate Oliver Williamson's work on the boundaries of the firm, I'd mention that you can get a good idea of the state-of-the-art in the study of organizational economics by looking through the reading list for a course on that subject offered jointly by MIT and Harvard.
Uses of organizational economics within firms, between firms, and beyond firms
(Robert Gibbons)Taught by Prof.
George Baker of MIT and Prof.
Robert Gibbons of Harvard,
Organizational Economics, is divided into four modules:
- Boundaries of the firm
- Employment in organizations
- Decision-making in organizations
- Structures and processes in organizations
The
reading list includes both foundational material, e.g.,
Ronald Coase's classic paper on "The Nature of the Firm" from 1937; and contemporary material, e.g, chapters from Baker and Gibbons' forthcoming compilation,
The Handbook of Organizational Economics.
###Labels: Decision-making, Employee development, Leadership, Networking, Organizational culture, Rewards and recognition
C.K. Prahalad on Managing in a Volatile Market Environment
You can get an overview of the thinking of
C.K. Prahalad (Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan) concerning how firms should gird themselves to deal with a volatile market environment by reading the one-page
column he wrote for the September 21 issue of
BusinessWeek.
Prahalad's central point is that in today's environment firms must structure themselves so they are able to operate with
agility — and they must do so in a way that, however paradoxical it may sound, is compatible with maintaining a consistent strategy.
When you read the column, you will see the steps Prahalad would have firms take to protect themselves from the risks associated with volatility, such as conserving cash, converting fixed costs to variable costs, and focusing on core competencies. I would call particular attention to his comments on the type of human resource management that is required in order to have a
flexible workforce:
To better handle the constant project turnover, employees are cross-trained in many different skills. This requires an arsenal of training programs. Employees are regularly tested, and the hallmark of the best of them is the ability to learn quickly.
Having this much flexibility in a staff, and within each staffer, forces these companies to equip their managers with instant access to data on what each employee can do and where they are — physically and in terms of the finish date of their current assignment. All employees know they will be moved from one assignment to another, and in many cases across the world. It becomes the cultural expectation.
There is a clear affinity between what Prahalad is saying here, and the nature of needed employee capabilities and qualities in a "post-Fordist" organization discussed in last Tuesday's
post.
###Labels: Competencies, Employee development, Organizational culture, Risk management, Strategy
The Value of Ambitious Employee Development
I recently came upon a
paper (pdf) presented in 2004 at the 12th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) that offers an illuminating pair of case studies of how firms in a particular industry — banking — have pursued the goal of effectively using information technology and the Internet to accommodate diverse customer needs and preferences and, concomitantly, adjusted their employee recruitment and development efforts to build the type of workforce needed to execute their updated strategies.
Yvette Blount (Macquarie University),
Tanya Castleman (Deakin Business School at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia), and
Paula Swatman (University of South Australia in Adelaide), adopt a model which distinguishes three stages of work organization. The stages center on "Fordism," named after the assembly line method of mass production used by Henry Ford.
1The three stages are:
- Pre-Fordism — the era of craft production in which skilled laborers fabricated products using small-scale production methods. Individual buyers could routinely order on a bespoke basis.
- Fordism — selling standardized products, manufactured using large-scale production methods, into a mass market. Organizations in this stage "are rigidly organised, their processes are determined by their use of technology, and jobs are highly differentiated and typically deskilled."
- Post-Fordism — using flexible production to manufacture a range of versions of a company's products for sale into a segmented market. Organizations in this stage "are decentralised, participative and have flexible employees with differentiated and multi-skilled jobs."
The specific question Blount, Castleman, and Swatman (BCS) investigated was:
What are the employee capabilities and qualities retail banks must develop to satisfy both more sophisticated customers (who demand flexibility of interactions, responsiveness and convenience) as well as the organization's own needs (including expanded sales opportunities, cost containment or reduction and customer loyalty) when implementing eCommerce technologies?
As this question indicates, BCS are particularly concerned with the role of technology in driving the transition from pre-Fordism to post-Fordism. My own focus is on the schema of evolving employee development goals that BCS associate with this transition.
I would argue that this evolution in the goals of employee development can and should be facilitated in all industries that lend themselves to flexible production methods. By moving in the direction of upgrading employee knowledge and skills, firms enable productivity gains that are essential for long-term health in a competitive global economy, and they make it easier to respond with agility to changes in the market environment.
BCS enumerate the shifts in employee qualities and capabilities associated with transition from pre-Fordism to post-Fordism in banking as follows:
Pre-Fordist banking — reliance on a network of branches, local knowledge, face-to-face interaction, traditional sociability.
Qualities of customer-facing employees- Loyalty
- Honesty
- Fitting in with the community
- Deference to superiors
Capabilities of customer-facing employees- Manual accounting
- Branch management
- Local knowledge
- Established relationships with customers; interpersonal skills
Fordist banking — streamlined, IT-dependent, automated, mass banking; centralized back offices; workplaces organized as factories; closure of bank branches; do-it-yourslf telephone and Internet banking.
Qualities of customer-facing employees- Interchangeability of tasks and locations
- Responsiveness to direction
- Discipline
- Ability to deal with routine
Capabilities of customer-facing employees- Knowledge of IT related to back office processes and systems
- Generic skills
- Banking skills (product knowledge)
- Speed and efficiency
Post-Fordist banking — strong reliance on IT and Internet banking; adoption of IT applications such as decision support and customer relationship management (CRM); focus on individualized products, responsive customer service and relationship building, positive customer experience across all service delivery channels.
Qualities of customer-facing employees- Loyalty and organizational commitment
- Customer focus and responsiveness
- Maturity
- Flexibility, adaptability
- Independence and initiative in organizing work
- Diversity of background
Capabilities of customer-facing employees- Individual problem-solving skills
- Interpersonal skills geared to an IT-mediated environment
- Understanding of Internet-banking and other sophisticated technology
- Understanding of context and complexity in products and customer characteristics
- Selling skills
Based on my own experience working on training projects for banks, I cannot emphasize too strongly how much potential there is for creating value by hiring and training skilled front-line employees. I'd also say that I have been happy to see substantial improvement over the years in how well many banks are handling their employee development.
__________
1 It should be emphasized that BCS are using the pre-Fordism, Fordism, and post-Fordism stages as a
heuristic device. These terms are also used in some Marxist analysis to characterize successive stages of capitalism. See, e.g., the
Wikipedia entry on Fordism.
###Labels: Employee development
Oceaneering International's MIMIC Simulator
Prompted by an
article by Bob Moschetta and Randy C. Consolo in the May 2009 issue of
Chief Learning Officer magazine, I've looked up some of the details of the training that
Oceaneering International, a company that "provides engineered services and products primarily for the offshore oil and gas industry," offers its employees.
1 I was particularly interested in Oceaneering's use of simulators to train the technicians and operators who work with its remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).
A screenshot from Oceaneering International's Modular Integrated Man-Machine Interaction & Control (MIMIC) simulator
(Oceaneering International, Inc.)In addition to training, the simulators are used to plan equipment staging, develop procedures, validate equipment designs, and preview and assess projects. The simulators can "be configured to depict various levels of visibility, sonar noise, bottom type, surface action, and water current conditions." The scenarios used for training can also be designed at different levels of difficulty — "from novice oriented basic navigation to advanced skill oriented scenario rehearsal."
Oceaneering's training program includes a range of technical, operational, and supervisory courses in a curriculum that is aimed at steadily increasing productivity and efficiency at the company. Employees are directed to suitable courses be tracking their current skills — and skills gaps — in a talent management system acquired from
LearnShare.
According to Frank Klein, Oceaneering's worldwide competency and development manager for the ROV Group, keeping individual employees' talent and learning profiles up-to-date enables the company to make informed team assignments and promotions, while also informing employees of what is expected of them, so they have "control of their destiny and a strategy for promotion."
__________
1 Bob Moschetta is vice president of health, safety, and environment at Oceaneering International. Randy Consolo is vice president of business development at LearnShare, the company that supplied Oceaneering with its learning management and talent management systems.
###Labels: Competencies, Employee development, Employee performance management, Simulation
Middle Managers Today
On March 9,
Fortune published an online
interview with
Paul Osterman, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, that outlines Osterman's views concerning the status and roles of middle managers in today's environment of frequent corporate restructuring.
The interview is a taste of what Osterman has to say at greater length in his recently published book,
The Truth About Middle Managers: Who They Are, How They Work, Why They Matter. Osterman's thesis is that
... middle managers like their work. They're what I call craft workers: they're very loyal to the tasks they do, they get a lot of enjoyment out of it, and they're loyal to their work group, but what they have lost is loyalty to their larger employer, and there are a set of reasons for that. One reason is they perceive top management as having feathered their own nest, been greedy, and a lot of the management that I've talked to made comments to that effect, and it really does have an impact on their attitudes. Secondly, they perceive that the organization has reduced its commitment to them. That is to say, although most of them won't lose their jobs, some of them will, so the sense of reciprocity is diminished. And then thirdly, it's harder and harder for middle managers to climb the ladder because there are fewer rungs in the ladder and because companies are more willing to bring in outsiders if they want to.
Osterman's recommendations for managing middle managers center on fairness in sharing gains and losses (e.g., those arising from the current difficult economic conditions), and providing middle managers with "a sense of achievement and accomplishment in other ways, moving people around horizontally or laterally, finding ways for people to augment their skills, broadening out jobs so that people have a sense of movement in their careers."
###Labels: Employee development, Management practices
Mission Essential Competencies
In a 2006 report titled "
Linking Knowledge and Skills to Mission Essential Competency-Based Syllabus Development for Distributed Mission Operations" (pdf), researchers at the
Air Force Research Laboratory provide an example of how the Air Force is using "mission essential competencies" (MECs) to guide training design. The approach they use can be adapted by civilian organizations seeking to tighten the links between needed competencies and the training provided to employees.
The Air Force defines MECs as"the higher-order individual, team, and inter-team competencies that a fully prepared pilot, crew or flight requires for successful mission completion under adverse conditions in a non-permissive environment [hostile situation]."
For air-to-air combat, the seven MECs are:
- Organize forces to enable combat employment
- Detect factor groups [suspicious entities] in area of responsibility
- Intercept and target factor groups
- Engage-employ ordnance and deny enemy ordnance
- Do assessment/reconstitute-initiate follow-on actions
- Remain oriented to force requirements
- Recognize trigger events that require a shift in the mission phase
In order to develop these air-to-air MECs, the Air Force designs training that bolsters specific types of knowledge and specific skills:
Air-to-Air Knowledge RequirementsCommunication standards
Commit criteria
Engage criteria
Follow-on options
Formation
Friendly capabilities
Mission objectives
Package composition (aircraft involved in mission)
Phase of mission
Rules of engagement
Threat capabilities
Time restrictions
Air-to-Air Skill RequirementsAdapts to changes in environment
Adapts to friendly changes
Adapts to threat changes
Anticipates problems
Builds picture
Controls intercept geometry
Develops new options
Executes merge game plan
Executes short range game plan
Interprets sensor output
Listens
Maintains formation
Makes assessment
Manages mission timing
Manages stress
Multi-tasks
Prioritizes communications
Radar mechanization
Rebuilds picture
Reforms
Selects tactic
Sorts information
Sorts targets
Speaks clearly
Switchology (which switch to flip when)
Subject matter experts are surveyed to identify "critical experiences," i.e., "developmental events in the training of a warfighter, necessary either to learn or practice a particular Knowledge/Skill under operational-like conditions." The experiences (see below) are then incorporated into training scenarios.
Air-to-Air ExperiencesRestricted weapons load
Limited fuel remaining
Operating area restrictions
Restrictions to visibility
Visual illusions
Marginal/minimal cloud clearance
Daytime employment
Dusk employment
Night employment
Mountainous terrain
G-induced physical limitations
Degraded communications
Degraded navigation
Degraded weapons employment
Battle damage
Supersonic employment
Full range of adversary air threat/mix
Full range of adversary ground threat/mix
Operations with friendly IADs
[integrated air defense systems]
Operations with own and friendly ECM
[electronic countermeasures]
Operations against threat with chaff/flares
[Chaff is strips of metal film released to confuse and reflect signals from radar-guided weapons.]
Operations with friendly use of chaff/flares
Operations against communications jam/spoofing
Operations against adversary ECM
Rules of engagement limitations and restrictions
Fatigue/time on task
Task saturation
Limited time to act/react to situation
Radar search responsibilities
Targeting and sorting responsibilities
Air refueling
Live weapons employment
Simulated weapons employment
Various initial conditions
Emergency procedures
Formation responsibilities
Lost mutual support
Dynamic retasking/scramble operations
Various employment altitudes
1:1 force ratio
1:2 force ratio
1:3+ force ratio
OCA escort missions
OCA sweep missions
["Offensive counter air" is suppression of an enemy's military air power by destroying or disabling the aircraft on the ground and/or destroying or crippling the runways and other infrastructure necessary to operate them.(from
Wikipedia)]
Employment with various packages
The aim of the MEC-based syllabus development is to make training as efficient at possible by designing focused scenarios that maximize competency development for a given amount of training effort.
When tested, this approach achieved good results: "experienced warfighters made dramatic improvements in their ability to 'kill and survive' in just four days, through the focused development of their Knowledge and Skills which was facilitated by a well-designed syllabus."
###Labels: Competencies, Employee development, Expertise, Military training
O*NET III: Occupation Reports
Once you have identified occupations for which you want additional information (see yesterday's
post), you have a choice of three types of report providing information about each occupation on your list. You can save the occupational information in the reports for easy use in word processing, spreadsheet, and database progarams.
The three types of reports are:
Summary Report — provides an overview of the selected occupation, focusing on the most important descriptors. At the end of the report, there is a list of related occupations, and a summary of trends in wages and employment at both the national and state levels.
As an example, you can look at the Summary Report for Training and Development Specialists
here. It's about six pages long.
Details Report — displays all descriptors for the selected occupation. For certain descriptors (namely, Tasks,
1 Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, Work Activities, Work Context, Interests,
2 Work Values, and Work Styles) the report also shows a
rating of how important each descriptor is to the occupation. As with the Summary Report, the Details Report includes a list of related occupations, and a summary of trends in wages and employment at the national and state levels.
As an example, you can look at the Details Report for Training and Development Specialists
here. It's about seventeen pages long.
Custom Report — allows you to select from sixteen different content areas to generate a report with just the information you want for the selected occupation. For certain descriptors, you can also select the scale to display and minimum cutoff scores.
3The Custom Report also provides "crosswalks" (mappings) to other classification systems —
Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP),
Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT),
Military Occupational Classification (MOC),
Registered Apprenticeship Partners Information Data System (RAPIDS), and
Standard Occupational Classification (SOC).
As an example, you can look at the Custom Report menu for Training and Development Specialists
here.
__________
1 There are two categories of tasks.
Core tasks are critical to the occupation.
Supplemental tasks are less relevant and/or important to the occupation.
2The O*NET Occupational Interest descriptor is based on J.L. Holland's R-I-A-S-E-C Interest Structure, which you can read about in
Module 3 (pdf) of the
O*NET Career Exploration Tools Facilitator's Guide. R-I-A-S-E-C stands for Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional occupational interests, as outlined below.
People with
Realistic interests like work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions; enjoy dealing with plants, animals, and real world materials like woods, tools, and machinery; enjoy outside work; and often do not like occupations that mainly involve doing paperwork.
People with
Investigative interests like work activities that have to do with ideas and thinking more than with physical activity; and like to search for facts and figure out problems mentally rather than to persuade or lead people.
People with
Artistic interests like work activities that deal with the artistic side of things, such as forms, designs, and patterns; like self-expression in their work; and prefer settings where work can be done without following a clear set of rules.
People with
Social interests like work activities that assist others and promote learning and personal development; prefer to communicate more than to work with objects, machines, or data; and like to teach, give advice, help, or otherwise be of service to people.
People with
Enterprising interests like work activities that have to do with starting up and carrying out projects, especially business ventures; like persuading and leading people and making decisions; like taking risks for profit; and have a bias for action (as opposed to ruminating).
People with
Conventional interests like work activities that follow set procedures and routines; prefer working with data and detail rather than with ideas per se; prefer work in which there are precise standards rather than work in which you have to judge things yourself; and like working where the lines of authority are clear.
O*NET provides an
Interest Profiler that people exploring career possibilities can use for self-assessment. The online version of the Interest Profiler is
here.
3 Ratings and standardized scores are provided for Tasks, Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, Work Activities, Work Context, Occupational Interests, Work Values, Work Needs, and Work Styles.
An option to view scale anchors (verbal definitions of high, medium, and low numeric values on the O*NET scale for a particular descriptor) is available for four descriptors: Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Work Activities. It is a good idea to select "Show scale anchors" for each of these descriptors that you include in your Custom Report because this helps clarify the descriptor's needed level for the selected occupation. An example of a a set of scale anchors is
here.
###Labels: Competencies, Documentation, Employee development, Expertise, Hiring and getting hired, Learning resources
O*NET II: Searching the Occupation Database
There are seven ways to search for particular occupations in the
O*NET database:
- Quick Search — Enter a word, phrase, or job title to search for a particular occupation, or enter a full or partial O*NET-SOC code. ("SOC" is the acronym for the Standard Occupational Classification maintained by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
- Browse by Job Family — Displays groups of occupations that are similar in terms of the work performed and the skills, education, training, and credentials required. The specific families are:
- Architecture and Engineering
- Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media
- Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance
- Business and Financial Operations
- Community and Social Services
- Computer and Mathematical
- Construction and Extraction
- Education, Training, and Library
- Farming, Fishing, and Forestry
- Food Preparation and Serving Related
- Healthcare Practitioners and Technical
- Healthcare Support
- Installation, Maintenance, and Repair
- Legal
- Life, Physical, and Social Science
- Management
- Military Specific
- Office and Administrative Support
- Personal Care and Service
- Production
- Protective Service
- Sales and Related
- Transportation and Material Moving
- Browse by High-Growth Industry (In-Demand Industry Cluster) — Displays occupations in industries that are economically important, projected to add substantial numbers of new jobs, or are being transformed by technological change and innovation. The currently listed high-growth/in-demand clusters (some of which seem out-of-date) are:
- Advanced Manufacturing
- Aerospace
- Automotive
- Biotechnology
- Construction
- Education
- Energy
- Geospatial Technology
- Health Care
- Homeland Security
- Hospitality
- Information Technology
- Nanotechnology
- Retail
- Transportation
- Other
- Browse by O*NET Descriptor — O*NET Descriptors are categories of occupational information — Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, Work Activities, Interests, and Work Values. Each descriptor contains more specific elements. For example, Knowledge includes such elements as Administration & Management, Chemistry, Production & Processing, etc.
- Browse by Job Zone — Displays occupations in five categories based on ascending levels of education, experience, and training needed. the five Job Zones are:
- Little or no preparation needed
- Some preparation needed
- Medium preparation needed
- Considerable preparation needed
- Extensive preparation needed
- Browse by STEM Discipline — Displays occupations that require education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The specific STEM disciplines O*NET breaks out are:
- Chemistry
- Computer Science
- Engineering
- Environmental Science
- Geosciences
- Life Sciences
- Mathematics
- Physics/Astronomy
- Browse by Career Cluster Displays occupations in a particular cluster or field of work that require similar skills. The sixteen career clusters are:
- Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources
- Architecture & Construction
- Arts, Audio/Video Technology & Communications
- Business, Management & Administration
- Education & Training
- Finance
- Government & Public Administration
- Health Science
- Hospitality & Tourism
- Human Services
- Information Technology
- Law, Public Safety & Security
- Manufacturing
- Marketing, Sales & Service
- Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
- Transportation, Distribution & Logistics
Once your search has led you to occupations of interest, you can generate reports for each occupation at differing levels of detail. The O*NET reports will be the subject of tomorrow's post.
###Labels: Competencies, Documentation, Employee development, Expertise, Hiring and getting hired, Learning resources
O*NET I: The Content Model for Occupations
The US Department of Labor has created an online site — the
Occupational Information Network, or O*NET — which enables users to explore a full range of occupations to learn about the qualifications they require, the type of settings in which they are carried out, and other features that are significant for matching people to jobs they can fill successfully and reasonably happily.
I'll talk about various elements of O*NET in a series of posts this week, beginning today with the occupational
Content Model, illustrated in the graphic below. O*NET uses the Content Model to collect and organize the information that goes into their occupation database.
(O*NET)As you can see in the graphic, the Content Model has six major domains:
- Worker characteristics — "Worker characteristics comprise enduring qualities of individuals that may influence how they approach tasks and how they acquire work-relevant knowledges and skills. Traditionally, analyzing abilities has been the most common technique for comparing jobs in terms of these worker characteristics. However, recent research supports the inclusion of other types of worker characteristics. In particular, interests, values, and work styles have received support in the organizational literature. Interests and values reflect preferences for work environments and outcomes. Work style variables represent typical procedural differences in the way work is performed."
- Worker requirements — "Worker requirements represent developed or acquired attributes of an individual that may be related to work performance such as work-related knowledge and skill. Knowledge represents the acquisition of facts and principles about a domain of information. Experience lays the foundation for establishing procedures to work with given knowledge. These procedures are more commonly known as skills. Skills may be further divided into basic skills and cross-functional skills. Basic skills, such as reading, facilitate the acquisition of new knowledge. Cross-functional skills, such as problem solving, extend across several domains of activities."
- Experience requirements — "This domain includes information about the typical experiential backgrounds of workers in an occupation or group of occupations including certification, licensure, and training data. For example, information about the professional or organizational certifications required for entry and advancement in an occupation, preferred education or training, and required apprenticeships will be documented by this part of the model."
- Occupation-specific information — "Occupation-specific information details a comprehensive set of elements that apply to a single occupation or a narrowly defined job family. This domain parallels other Content Model domains because it includes requirements such as work-related knowledge, skills, and tasks in addition to the machines, equipment, tools, software, and information technology workers may use in their workplace. Labor market information defined by the industry or occupation is also provided here. This domain is particularly important when developing specific applications of O*NET information. For example, it is necessary to refer to occupation-specific descriptive information to specify training, develop position descriptions, or redesign jobs."
- Workforce characteristics — "Organizations ... must operate within a broader social and economic structure ... [so] an occupational classification system must incorporate global contextual characteristics. O*NET provides this information by linking descriptive occupational information to statistical labor market information. This includes compensation and wage data, employment outlook, and industry size information."
- Occupational characteristics — "This domain includes information about typical activities required across occupations. Task information is often too specific to describe an occupation or occupational group. The O*NET approach is to identify generalized work activities (GWAs) and detailed work activities (DWAs) to summarize the broad and more specific types of job behaviors and tasks that may be performed within multiple occupations. Using this framework makes it possible to use a single set of descriptors to describe many occupations. Contextual variables such as the physical, social, or structural context of work that may impose specific demands on the worker or activities are also included in this section."
All of the data O*NET uses to populate the Content Model for particular occupations is derived from research into the character of occupations (whence the data on occupational requirements, workforce characteristics, and occupation-specific information) and the people working in each occupation (whence worker characteristics, worker requirements, and experience requirements).
With the Content Model supplying the framework, O*NET uses 277
descriptors to characterize over 800 occupations and to store that information in its searchable occupational database. Use of the database will be the subject of tomorrow's post.
###Labels: Competencies, Documentation, Employee development, Expertise, Hiring and getting hired, Learning resources
Misuse of Leadership Competency Models
The December 2008 issue of the
Harvard Business Review contains at least one example of the annoyingly shallow material that seems to take up more of its space nowadays than in the not-so-distant past, when more of the authors had strong academic credentials (and, BTW, were allowed to use footnotes).
I'm referring to a sidebar on page 66 which cautions about "
The Dangers of Competency Modeling." The sidebar is in an article by
Jeffrey Cohn,
Jon Katzenbach, and
Gus Vlak dealing with "
Finding and Grooming Breakthrough Innovators." Cohn is a consultant at
Spencer Stuart; Katzenbach and Vlak are partners at
Katzenbach Partners.
The sidebar tells us:
Leadership competency models can be found in virtually all major corporations. They seek to institutionalize managerial behaviors, knowledge, values, and motivations to produce steady, predictable results. They provide a common language to help supervisors and HR discuss emerging talent in the organization. These are worthy goals — but overdependence on competency models inevitably reinforces sameness rather than unity or cohesion, by eroding the conditions in which unique points of view and ultimately innovation itself can arise.
Training programs built on these models primarily teach participants how to manage within the organization as is and emphasize formal structures at the expense of informal ones. At the same time, they condition managers to minimize uncertainty and mitigate risk.
The organizational vetting process filters candidates for promotion according to well-known and widely communicated competencies that are ingrained in the company culture. As a result the field of rising stars narrows to those who most closely resemble their peers and bosses. Unique attributes and a willingness to deviate from the norm, take real risks, and embrace different points of view are not cultivated or integrated. Rather, they are slowly and methodically squeezed out of the system.
My complaints:
- Companies do not necessarily adopt leadership competency models "to produce steady, predictable results." I believe companies effectively using such models intend for them to produce good results, defined in whatever manner a particular company considers meaningful.
- "Overdependence on competency models inevitably reinforces sameness" is basically a truism. Smart management will not place excessive weight on how well rising talent seems to fit a particular competency model.
- Effective training programs do not "primarily teach participants how to manage within the organization as is," nor do they "emphasize formal structures at the expense of informal ones." Obviously, a company designing leadership training should steer clear of such defective content. (For more on how companies are using social networking analysis to ensure that managers understand their companies' informal structures and intervene to optimiaze them, see here.)
- Effective training programs do not "condition managers to minimize uncertainty and mitigate risk" in a way that defeats innovation. As indicated in my recent posts on enterprise risk management (e.g., here), the best companies are taking an increasingly sophisticated approach to risk management that identifies its purpose as helping the company achieve its goals, which presumably include innovation where appropriate.
- As indicated in the second and fourth points above, smart companies indeed cultivate and integrate "unique attributes and a willingness to deviate from the norm, take real risks, and embrace different points of view."
In other words, Cohn, Katzenbach, and Vlak set up a strawman in their sidebar, something I dislike paying $119 a year to have access to.
[Previous posts dealing with competency models are
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here.]
###Labels: Competencies, Employee development, Employee performance management, Innovation, Leadership, Networking, Risk management
Crew Advancement Program
In 2009, the
Global Maritime and Transportation School (GMATS), the graduate and continuing education arm of the
U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point on Long Island, will graduate its first class of mariners enrolled in the school's
Crew Advancement Program (pdf).
The Crew Advancement Program (CAP), was launched in January 2007 as a way of providing a career path for deckhands to advance to mate (officer) positions without having to take time off from their current jobs in order to get the necessary training. The expectation is that this approach will improve crew retention at a time when the maritime industry is having trouble finding skilled personnel in adequate numbers.
CAP covers the skills mariners need in order to qualify for a US Coast Guard 500 or 1600 Gross Ton Mates License. Students' classwork and practical training (simulation and at-sea) is scheduled around their regular responsibilities.
In the two-year program "designed for the mariner who has been actively sailing and has the famililiarization and knowledge of what it takes to be a competent deck-hand," the first year is devoted to nautical science, shiphandling, navigation, navigational law and communication, and cargo handling and stowage.
At the end of the first year, students take an aptitude test which determines whether they continue into the second year. The second year covers meteorology, further modules on ship handling and navigation, fire fighting, emergency medical care, and ship construction, stability and trim.
By adding 30 credits of general education courses during CAP, a student can also earn an associates degree from
American Military University.
The December 2008 issue of
Maritime Reporter contains an interview with Kelly Curtin, Program Dirctor in the Nautical Science Division of GMATS. Curtin explains:
Employee/Company loyalty is something which needs a strong foundation. By companies offering paid training to their employees they are working to build a foundation of trust and invesment in one another.
Curtin also comments on lessons he and his GMATS colleagues have learned so far concerning how best to structure CAP:
We plan to incorporate a placement/entrance examination for us to better determine the level of math and reading skills the students have. Also, at the very beginning of the next program we will have [a] one-week seminar focusing on study skills, class preparation, and [a] basic math refresher. Finally, we incorporated review classes in between the courses to keep the students current and on track for their exam preparation.
Further details about CAP and similar programs are available
here (current as of early 2007).
###Labels: Classroom training, Employee development, Simulation
The Distinguishing Features of Nonprofit Organizations
Cate Doty's article on "
Training to Lead Nonprofits," which appeared in the November 11, 2008 edition of the
New York Times, provides a summary of the activities that distinguish nonprofit organizations from for-profit enterprises. These activities are:
- Fund-raising
- Community engagement
- Meeting ethical standards and legal requirements specific to non-profits
- Volunteer management
Concomitantly, it is these activities that require focused attention when training individuals to fill leadership roles at nonprofits. The
Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation at Arizona State University, founded in 1999, has identified
five areas that their experience and research indicate are essential for nonprofit managers to study:
- Governance — the legal responsibilities of boards of directors and how boards operate.
- Financial management — the basic accounting and audit requirements for nonprofits. Subtopics include stewardship of the organization's assets, assurance of adequate resources, development and approval of an annual budget, current and year-to-date financial reports, and assurance that the organization is prepared for the annual audit functions.
- Program knowledge — how to develop programming and evaluate its effectiveness.
- Resource development — how to develop donor relationships that lead to effective fund-raising; foundation and corporate fund-raising.
- Nonprofit law and ethics — what specific laws to know and how to understand and make decisions that are ethical and sound.
More detailed specs (pdf) for
graduate and
undergraduate degree programs have been developed by
Nonprofit Academic Centers Council. (See yesterday's
post for links to some resources that can help in developing training for people who are already at nonprofit organizations or who want to prepare for a career in the nonprofit sector.)
###Labels: Business acumen, Classroom training, Competencies, Decision-making, Employee development, Learning resources, Management practices, Professionalism
