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Streamline Training & Documentation
Streamline Training & Documentation
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Working People of Holyoke VI: Urban Agriculture
In the nineteenth century, the largest immigrant groups arriving in Holyoke were the Irish and, later, French Canadians. More recently, the population of Puerto Rican extraction has grown to the point that it now comprises over a third of the total.
Many of the Puerto Ricans come from a rural background, so there was a logic back in 1992 to creation of an organization — Nuestras Raíces (Our Roots) — that promotes and enables small-scale farming within the city by adults and youth.
Senorita Ada's Casita at la Finca (The Farm) of Nuestras Raíces (2008) (masslive.com)
Urban agriculture has proven to be an effective way to promote community development because it is a way for the residents of downtown Holyoke to maintain a connection to their culture while putting down roots in their new home. Most of our members grew up on the farms of rural Puerto Rico and many first came to the Northeast as migrant farm workers. Though they may live in the city now, they are farmers at heart. They have lifetimes of experience in agriculture and it is part of their heritage. Projects based on agriculture, such as markets and community gardens, build on the skills and knowledge that participants already have, and are proud to have the opportunity to use to improve their community and to teach to a younger generation.
To read about Nuestras Raíces' various projects, including La Finca (The Farm), a thirty-acre spread on the shore of the Connecticut River within the city limits, you can start at this page of their website. A nine-minute video showing an exhibition of paso fino horses, some of which are stabled at La Finca, is below.
The trauma of the Great Depression was intense in the auto industry. Alfred Sloan's response was to re-emphasize the importance of having a strong and agile central policy-making capability, even as policy execution remained the responsibility of the individual GM divisions.
As Sloan recalls in Chapter 10 of My Years with General Motors, The automobile industry in the United States and Canada dropped from a production of about 5.6 million cars and trucks, worth about $5.1 billion at retail, in 1929, to about 1.4 million units, worth about $1.1 billion in 1932. That was lower than any year since the war year 1918.
Thanks to the financial and operating controls, the development of which I have described in earlier chapters, General Motors did not approach disaster as it had in the 1920-21 slump. We made an orderly step-by-step retreat in all matters, including wage and salary reductions. Sales by our United States and Canadian plants dropped to 526,000 cars and trucks in 1932 as compared with about 1.9 million in 1929, a tremendous drop (72 per cent) when you consider the many expenses that are fixed. That we fared relatively better than the industry is shown by the fact that our share of the market increased from 34 per cent in 1929 to 38 per cent in 1932, the trough year of the depression. Our profits dropped from about $248 million in 1929 to $165,000 in 1932, still in the black, thanks mainly to our financial-control procedures. In 1932 we were operating at less than 30 per cent of capacity.
[. . .]
... Inevitably when an industrial enterprise is shaken with such a force as we met at the onset of the great depression, there has to be confusion. In November 1933 I began to write again on the subject of new policies, beginning at the beginning, on the subject of policy itself. I said:
I feel that this [policy] phase of the general organization problem is of particular importance to General Motors, not because of its size particularly but on account of the nature of its business, subject as it is, to what I might term "rapid changes". In other words, I contend a unit of the automotive industry has far less "coasting ability", I might term it, than units in most any other industry that might be selected for comparison. As I analyze our picture, looking forward into the future, our success or, let me say, the maintenance of our position, absolutely depends upon the ability of our organization to lay down a strategy as will enable us to forecast the rapid changes that are taking place and will continue to take place in the various activities in which we are interested, involving all the functional divisions within such activities, and to provide for those changes with sufficient rapidity.
In making this statement I am not minimizing in any sense, the importance of effectively and economically carrying out such policies as may be adopted — I am simply trying to emphasize the point that the policy phase is of vital concern because, unless we can, with reasonable intelligence, meet this issue — no matter how able an administrative set-up [i.e., policy execution set-up] we may have, it is limited in its opportunity to function. I might add further, that looking forward I feel that we have got to more aggressively deal with that phase of our problems than we have in the past. It is going to be harder to maintain both our competitive position and our profit position. We can not afford to take the time in the future that we have in the past to make up our minds what we should do with respect to changes in trends which are having an influence on our position ...
My main purpose in the memorandum from which the above passages are taken was to reassert the purely policy-making role of the Executive Committee.
Don Vandergriff V: "Deciding Under Pressure and Fast" Workshop
Don Vandergriff's main training program is his "Deciding Under Pressure and Fast" workshop. The video clip below — from 0:30 to 3:17 — gives you a taste of the workshop's approach, a look at what Vandergriff's Adaptive Leadership Methodology looks like in action, and a couple of participant responses to the workshop.
The Transatlantic Network 2020 (TN 2020) summit where this workshop took place ran from September 28 to October 3, 2008 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Dublin, Ireland. The Vandergriff workshop took place on September 29 and 30.
As explained on their website, TN 2020 "works to strengthen ties between Europe and North America through the creation of a sustainable network of young leaders." TN 2020 is sponsored by the British Council.
Don Vandergriff III: Themes in the Adaptive Leadership Methodology
In a long blog post (which seems to be the source of the article I discussed yesterday), Don Vandergriff and Fred Leland, a lieutenant in the Walpole (MA) Police Department and a security consultant, discuss the Adaptive Leadership Methodology (ALM) in detail.
Some of their key points have been covered in my previousposts. Today I'd like to note the three themes that they identify as applying to all Adaptive Leadership scenarios:
"[S]tudents learn to approach their analysis of the terrain (or tactical environment) and the opponent (criminal) with the objective of identifying that which they can use to their advantage. With respect to the enemy (criminal element), we teach our students to identify enemy strengths (which they must avoid) and weaknesses (which they must exploit)."
"[I]t is vital that students understand the long term consequences of their immediate actions. This requires the ability to operate within the framework of their higher headquarters 'Commander’s Intent.' In order to reinforce this concept, students see orders as 'contracts' between senior and subordinate. The higher commander assigns a mission (the short term contract) with the understanding that the subordinate leader will be allowed maximum latitude in figuring out exactly how he will accomplish that mission. The only stipulation is that the subordinate leader’s 'solution' must not violate the Commander’s Intent. This intent constitutes the long term contract between senior and subordinate. Ethical conduct and adherence to the Rules of Engagement (ROE) are always part of the Commander’s Intent, and this serves to emphasize the often strategic-level consequences of actions at the lowest levels."
"ALM-based courses [focus] on the way that 'tactics' are defined. In ALM-based courses, instructors describe tactics as unique 'solutions' to specific problems, not tasks or drills that must be executed through doctrinal formulas or set procedures. Following fixed rules not only results in predictability, it quickly becomes an excuse for not thinking. Since courses using ALM focus on 'how to think' about tactical problem-solving, while developing an individual’s competence and confidence, anything that discourages creative thought has no place in its curriculum."
Leland and Vandergriff cite William Lind's theory of "maneuver warfare" as the basis for these themes. Lind's theory is spelled out in his 1985 Maneuver Warfare Handbook.
Don Vandergriff II: Developing Adaptive Leaders at West Point
A couple of earlierposts discussed John Boyd, who served as an Air Force officer from 1951 to 1975. Among his notable contributions to military thinking is the "OODA loop," aka the "Boyd Cycle," a decision-making process summarized in the graphic below.
Adapted from ""No 'Approved Solutions' in Asymmetric Warfare" (pdf), by Maj. Chad Foster. The Orientation phase is highlighted because the orientation process is emphasized in West Point's military science classes that use the Adaptive Leadership Methodology.
The OODA Loop is now embedded in military science courses taught to cadets at the US Military Academy at West Point. This is part of a broader framework designed to develop students' adaptive leadership skills.
As Maj. Chad Foster explains in a brief article (pdf) published in the August 2009 issue of West Point's Assembly magazine, Don Vandergriff's Adaptive Leadership Methodology (ALM) is now used in Academy military science classes in order to nurture "effective decision-making and adaptability through experiential learning."
The graphic below shows how ALM governs the flow of a class. The OODA Loop comes into play at the points where students need to reach decisions on how to handle scenarios the teacher presents.
The emphasis is on the Orientation phase of the OODA Loop
because this is when the cadet attempts to make sense out of the information at hand. The decision is important, but how the cadet arrived at it is just as important.
In concluding his article, Foster notes that implementing the Adaptive Leadership Methodology at West Point involved considerable effort, but that the results — in terms of student engagement and learning — have clearly made the effort worthwhile.
Don Vandergriff I: Teaching the Adaptive Leadership Methodology
Back in December, Donald Vandergriff, a retired US Army officer who now acts as a consultant on leadership development, wrote a post for his blog that gives a good idea of the type of training he recommends — and conducts — for members of the armed forces and civilian law enforcement organizations.
Vandergriff advocates leadership development training that emphasizes adaptability. As you can see from his blog post, Vandergriff is focused on adaptability because it is essential for being able to handle complex problem situations, especially when time is of the essence.
In brief, Vandergriff teaches the Adaptive Leadership Methodology as follows:
Experimentation comes first through the execution of Tactical Decision-Making Exercises (TDEs) [see below] followed by the officers briefing their decisions, plans or orders. After the officer explained him or herself and responded to criticism from their peers and me, the group executed an intense instructor-facilitated after-action review (AARs). The “teaching” was accomplished through AARs as the officers discovered for themselves the concepts and principles included in workshop’s outcomes.
Vandergriff explains how the TDEs are set up:
Each TDE consisted of a scenario summary and a map with graphics. I either handed out a printed copy of the scenario or issued it verbally to the officers, requiring them to listen closely and take notes. The TDEs were two types (1) immediate decision exercises that gave the officers only 30 seconds or a few minutes to make a decision and (2) planning exercises that are longer in duration and culminate in the briefing of orders. In either case, the officers were given limited time and limited information to make their decisions and to complete their plans. This induced stress and allowed them to discover for themselves that delaying decisions until one has “perfect intelligence” or to wait for “permission” is both unrealistic and ineffective.
Citing the work of Robert Bjork, a psychology professor at UCLA for support, Vandergriff reports that he has consistently found that long-term learning is greater if specific tasks are taught in the larger context of problem solving (as opposed to being taught in isolation as a series of lessons that take the form "in situation X, do the following").
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)
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.
Michael D. Watkins on Managing Business Transitions
In the January 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Michael D. Watkins, a one-time business professor and now chairman of Genesis Advisers, lays out a robust approach for leaders to follow in handling various business transitions, such as getting a start-up off the ground, or overseeing a distressed company's turnaround.
"Picking the Right Transition Strategy" explains Watkins' STARS framework, which outlines the challenges and opportunities inherent in five types of business transition. In addition to start-ups and turnarounds (S and T), STARS covers situations of accelerated growth (a company entering a period of rapid expansion), realignment (a company facing the need to significantly adjust its strategy in order to remain successful), and sustaining success (an executive taking over a company whose previous leader was highly effective).
Watkins spells out the full details of the STARS framework in his recently published book, Your Next Move: The Leader's Guide to Successfully Navigating Major Career Transitions. The HBR article focuses on a case study that illustrates how one senior executive, with conscious deliberation, handled a pair of assignments quite differently because the first was a turnaround, while the second was a realignment.
The case example highlights the fact that the same fundamental principles which "will ease your transition and increase your odds of long-term leadership success" come into play in all situations, but must be applied in ways specific to the particular type of transition involved. The fundamental principles are (in edited form):
Organize to learn about the business — Figure out what you most need to learn, from whom, and how you can accelerate the learning process.
Define the new strategic intent for the organization — Develop and communicate a compelling vision for what the organization will become. Outline a clear strategy for achieving the vision.
Establish priorities — Identify a few vital goals and pursue them vigorously. Think about what you need to have accomplished by the end of your first year in your new position.
Build your leadership team — Evaluate the team you inherited. When bringing new members onto the team, aim for a balance between people from inside and outside the organization.
Secure early wins — Think through how you plan to "arrive" in the new organization. Find ways to build personal credibility and energize the ranks.
Create supporting alliances — Identify how the organization really works and who has influence. Create key coalitions in support of your initiatives.
In parallel with the above principles relating to managing organizational change, Watkins addresses the "pillars of self-management" that someone assuming a leadership role must embrace in order to adapt personally, as needed:
Enhance self-awareness — In particular, know the leadership style that you adopt most reflexively, and be prepared to set it aside for a more suitable style if the particular transition you're managing requires that.
Exercise personal discipline — Ask yourself what behaviors with which you are particularly comfortable, you should now be doing less of; and what behaviors that you don't much enjoy, you should now be doing more of.
Build complementary teams — Get people to help you who have strengths that offset your weaker points.
You can listen to Watkins discuss much of this material in the 9:24 video below, in which he is interviewed by Sarah Green, an editor at harvardbusiness.org. Watkins also talks about on-boarding and about how you can help your family adjust to changes they have to make (e.g., moving to a new city) because of your new role.
From Part III, Chapter III, of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. . . The animosity of hostile factions, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is often still more furious than that of hostile nations; and their conduct towards one another is often still more atrocious. What may be called the laws of faction have often been laid down by grave authors with still less regard to the rules of justice than what are called the laws of nations. The most ferocious patriot never stated it as a serious question, Whether faith ought to be kept with public enemies? — Whether faith ought to be kept with rebels? Whether faith ought to be kept with heretics? are questions which have been often furiously agitated by celebrated doctors both civil and ecclesiastical. It is needless to observe, I presume, that both rebels and heretics are those unlucky persons, who, when things have come to a certain degree of violence, have the misfortune to be of the weaker party. In a nation distracted by faction, there are, no doubt, always a few, though commonly but a very few, who preserve their judgment untainted by the general contagion. They seldom amount to more than, here and there, a solitary individual, without any influence, excluded, by his own candour, from the confidence of either party, and who, though he may be one of the wisest, is necessarily, upon that very account, one of the most insignificant men in the society. All such people are held in contempt and derision, frequently in detestation, by the furious zealots of both parties. A true party-man hates and despises candour; and, in reality, there is no vice which could so effectually disqualify him for the trade of a party-man as that single virtue. The real, revered, and impartial spectator, therefore, is, upon no occasion, at a greater distance than amidst the violence and rage of contending parties. To them, it may be said, that such a spectator scarce exists any where in the universe. Even to the great Judge of the universe, they impute all their own prejudices, and often view that Divine Being as animated by all their own vindictive and implacable passions. Of all the corrupters of moral sentiments, therefore, faction and fanaticism have always been by far the greatest.
Today's New York Times contains one of the more interesting interviews with a businessperson that I've read recently. Below I quote the story with which Gary E. McCullough, CEO of Career Education Corporation, answers Adam Bryant's opening question, "What's the most important leadership lesson you've learned?" I encourage reading the whole interview because McCullough has much wisdom to share.
The biggest [leadership lesson] I learned, and I learned it early on in my tenure in the Army, is the importance of small gestures. As you become more senior, those small gestures and little things become sometimes more important than the grand ones. Little things like saying “please” and “thank you” — just the basic respect that people are due, or sending personal notes. I spend a lot of time sending personal notes.
I’ll never forget one of the interactions we had with my commanding general of the division in which I was a platoon leader. We were at Fort Bragg, N.C. We had miserable weather. It was February and not as warm as you would think it would be in North Carolina. It had been raining for about a week, and the commanding general came around to review some of the platoons in the field. He went to one of my vehicle drivers and he asked him what he thought of the exercise we were on. To which the young private said, “Sir, it stinks.” I saw my short career flash before my eyes at that point.
He asked why, and the private said: “There are people who think this is great weather for doing infantry operations. I personally think 75 and partly cloudy is better.”
And so the commanding general said, “What can I do to make it better for you?” And the private said, “Sir, I sure could use a Snickers bar.” So a couple days later we were still moving through some really lousy weather, and a box showed up for the private. And that box was filled with 38 Snickers bars, which is the number of people in my platoon. And there was a handwritten note from the commanding general of our division that said, “I can’t do anything about the weather, but I hope this makes your day a bit brighter, and please share these with your buddies.”
And on that day, at that time, we would’ve followed that general anywhere. It was a very small thing, and he didn’t need to do it, but it impressed upon me that small gestures are hugely important.
It seems that John Baldoni is a man after my own heart. In a June 22 blog post, he argues that
Explanation is a key attribute of leadership communications. Leaders know to inject their communications with verve and enthusiasm as a means of persuasion, but they also need to include an explanation for the excitement. What does it mean and why are we doing it are critical questions that every leader must answer with straightforward explanations.
Not only does Baldoni recommend taking a straightforward tack, the approach I myself consider most appropriate when making an argument or launching an initiative, but he goes on to suggest the Is/Is Not way of clarifying what one is saying, also an approach I endorse for its effectiveness is helping people grasp what they need to understand in order to coordinate their efforts with others.
Finally, Baldoni points out that you, in the role of leader, need to tell people what action you expect them to take so that they are contributing to advancing the new initiative, solving the problem the organization is facing, or otherwise addressing the issue you have been discussing.
The MIT OpenCourseWare site recently added materials for a Sloan School of Management course in Communication for Managers, taught by Neal Hartman during the Fall 2008 semester.
Though the materials are not complete — lecture notes for nine of the fourteen class meetings are missing — there are a number of items that anyone interested in this particular skill area will find helpful, even if only as a refresher.
I'd suggest starting with the notes for the course wrap-up (pdf), which provide an overview of the principles Hartman emphasizes in the course:
Four types of leadership:
Visioning.
Relating.
Inventing.
Sensemaking.
How to do a situation analysis as the basis for devising a communication strategy:
Define your purpose.
Analyze your audience.
Assess your credibility.
Analyze the cultural context.
Factors to consider in deciding on your communication strategy:
Managerial style — distinguished in terms of writer/speaker control and the degree of audience involvement.
Structure of the communication — direct statement of your main points or recommendation, followed by rationale vs. indirect approach that begins with subsidiary points or with arguments that set the stage for your recommendation.
Liking — People are inclined to say yes to requests of a person they know and like.
Reciprocity — People repay in kind.
Social proof — People follow the lead of others who are similar to them.
Consistency — In response to personal and interpersonal pressure, people tend to follow through on their clear commitments.
Authority — People defer to experts.
Scarcity — Opportunities seem more valuable when their availability is limited.
The Minto Pyramid (see graphic below, which you can click to enlarge) is a good device for organizing your ideas when you are recommending a change of some sort.
Principles of effective design of visual aids:
Consistency in formatting.
Appropriate titles.
Purposeful use of color and special effects.
Clear and uncluttered layout.
Principles of effective document design:
Use of subheads to show structure.
Use of lists to highlight important and conceptually parallel information.
Use of white space to highlight material and to create transitions through indenting, columns, and lines.
In-text highlighting of key words and phrases.
Use of tables and graphs to make evidence more legible.
Principles of effective cover letters for resumes.
Importance of awareness of values and perceptions that differentiate cultures around the world.
The excerpt addresses the proposition that "the idea that we are well served to have leaders in control of their organizations is a half-truth."
Pfeffer and Sutton argue, with ample supporting evidence, that "Managers often have far less influence over performance than most people think," and go on to suggest, "Perhaps the best way to view leadership is as the task of architecting organizational systems, teams, and cultures — as establishing the conditions and preconditions for others to succeed."
Pfeffer and Sutton also caution that leaders, though limited in their ability to make good things happen, can "make things much worse by taking actions that increase employee turnover and diminish employee motivation, as well as encourage lying and stealing, and by causing numerous other organizational problems." Which "suggests that avoiding bad leaders may be a crucial goal, perhaps more important than getting great leaders."
Pfeffer and Sutton emphasize that
Part of a leader’s job ... is to behave in ways that cause others to believe in the possibility of success of both the organization and the leader. To maintain the impression that you, as a leader, are in control — and to take some actual control as well — you need to start and sustain what we call the "leadership control cycle." The cycle begins when leaders talk and act as if they are in control, persuading key players that they have a strong impact on the organization. When changes happen to the organization, these changes are attributed to the leaders. The leaders believe they actually helped shape these changes, which gives them added confidence to complete the cycle and talk and act even more persuasively. Confidence thus becomes self-fulfilling, setting in motion behaviors that in fact make things better, whereby the leaders’ confidence is justified.
Pfeffer and Sutton summarize by offering this takeaway lesson: "[T]he best leaders are smart enough to act like they are in charge but wise enough not to let their power go to their heads or to take themselves too seriously."
What you have above are my favorite excerpts from the excerpt. Since the whole piece is only a bit over four pages, and is packed with compelling information, it is well worth reading in its entirety.
A friend of mine, Bruce Fleming, who teaches English at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, recently posted an article at SoldiersForTheTruth.org that tries to prepare incoming plebes and cadets for what their years at one of the US military academies will actually be like.
Based on twenty-two years of direct observation at Annapolis, Fleming argues that the approach to education adopted by the military academies drains students of the idealism with which they enter. Students are subjected to a high degree of counterproductive frustration that could and should be substantially reduced, to be replaced by methods that build enthusiasm and motivation for performing well ...
... and professionally.
I benefited from reading the entire article, but here I'll just cite one passage that struck me because it alludes to one of my pet ideas, namely that people often lack a clear understanding of what "professional" behavior actually amounts to.
In discussing the start of a plebe's first academic year (which follows Plebe Summer), Fleming, addressing incoming plebes directly, says:
Simply by keeping your eyes open, you realize that many of the first-class [seniors] you were prepared to idolize are goof-offs, looking for ways to get out of doing things rather than being fired up with The Spirit. Some may be downright unprofessional. Their sloppiness may be in their uniforms, their rooms, their attitude, or their people skills. Yet so long as they pass their inspection and don’t get caught doing whatever it is they’re doing, they seem to think it’s okay. They get away with it. And it doesn’t seem to bother them. You’ll realize that people here aren’t interested so much in being good as in looking good. This will be a huge blow to your idealism, which has all the intensity of an 18-year-old eager to take on the world. How can they lecture you on not being “professional” when they’re so lax themselves?
Clearly, a goodly contingent of the soon-to-graduate first-class students have yet to internalize the notion that a professional, among other things, is a person who has the discipline to practice what he/she preaches. Instead, in Fleming's view, all too often the impact of the Naval Academy culture is creation of passive aggressive behavior that is anything but professional.
In the "Bottom line" section of his article, Fleming sums up:
Mostly you’ll learn to put your chin down and survive. If you just hang on, it’ll all be over. Midshipmen are constantly counting down to something: the next vacation, the end of the semester, Herndon, graduation. Because you get zapped for everything you do, after a while you’ll cease looking for ways to be pro-active. It’s rare to hear midshipmen enthusiastic about an academic or military challenge — unless they make it themselves.
That’s what you have to “get” about Annapolis: it has lots of opportunities, but despite our rhetoric of “ship, shipmate, self,” the opportunities aren’t collective, they’re individual. Take advantage of everything offered, accept every new challenge — vow to become a leader. On your own, I mean, because in my view that’s the only way anybody ever became a leader. Namely, because s/he decided to become one.
The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat has developed a tool that organizations can use to assess their degree of maturity in practicing results-based management. The graphic below summarizes the model on which the tool is based.
The Managing for Results (MFR) model, with its five supporting elements
In addition to the "pivotal characteristic" of Using Results to Manage, the MFR model includes five supporting elements (whose definitions have been edited in the list below):
Commitment to results — Focus on organizational leadership and its support for MFR, on the implementing capacity of the organization, on reinforcement of the values of MFR, and on the inclusion of MFR in evaluating managers' performance.
Questions to ask:
To what extent is your organization using results information to manage and adjust ongoing operations, strategic plans, policies and resources?
To what extent is there tangible support from management for building and strengthening MFR practices?
To what extent is MFR-related training available to managers and staff throughout the organization?
To what extent do the appraisal systems in your organization relate individual accomplishments to outcomes?
To what extent do your organization's values and ethics reflect a focus on outcomes?
Results-based strategic planning — Results should be linked to high-level organizational objectives and should guide design of operational processes. Managing for results should also be linked to risk management.
Questions to ask:
To what extent is there a linkage between immediate and intermediate outcomes and the organization's strategic outcomes?
To what extent are horizontal initiatives reflected in your organization's strategic plans?
To what extent is risk management systematically practised in your organization and linked to outcomes?
Operational/business planning — Focus on performance expectations and how these align with the organization's outcomes. The expectations should include outputs and outcomes, wherever possible.
Question to ask:
To what extent does your business plan specify organization-wide performance expectations that are clear, concrete and time-bound?
Measuring results — Data collection should include outcomes, not just inputs, activities and outputs. Measurement should be linked to planning and reporting, and cost should be integrated with results measurement. Note that the evaluation role is also a key part of the development of a measurement strategy.
Questions to ask:
To what extent do you measure outcomes?
How easy is it to relate these measurements to financial measures? How often is this linking done?
To what extent is evaluation integrated into the management of programs and policies?
Reporting on results — Focus on the integration of external reporting with actual practices and results within the organization.
Questions to ask:
To what extent are the results data used for internal managing and for external reporting?
How consistent is the information used for managing with the information reported externally?
The assessment tool is essentially a rubric that describes five levels of maturity, which the Secretariat refers to as transition stages:
Awareness
Exploration
Transition
Full implementation
Continuous learning
The self-assessment tool is available in MSWord and pdf formats.
Do not be deceived by the title given an interview with J. Richard Hackman, a professor of of social and organizational psychology at Harvard, that appears in the May issue of the Harvard Business Review. "Why Teams Don't Work" is really about why some teams don't work, and about the five conditions that must be in place in order to maximize the probability that your teams will work.
According to Hackman, those five conditions are:
"Teams must be real," by which Hackman means that it must be clear who exactly is on the team and who is not.
"Teams need a compelling direction," i.e., their mission and purpose must be clear. Seems obvious, and it is, but that doesn't mean that you can't find plenty of instances in which different team members have different views of what the team is and should be doing. Leadership in getting everybody pointed in the same direction is essential.
"Teams need enabling structures," which means well-designed tasks, an appropriate number and mix of members, and clear behavior norms that are enforced.
"Teams need a supportive organization," which means reward, HR, and information systems that facilitate the teams' work.
"Teams need expert coaching." This is not to be confused with expert individual coaching of team members. The coaching teams require focuses on team processes, "especially at the beginning, midpoint, and end of a team project."
As the concluding question of the interview, Hackman is asked, "Given the difficulty of making teams work, should we be rethinking their importance in organizations?"
His answer is "perhaps." He goes on to talk about an example I don't find convincing, namely the idea that having a group of people working on a house will actually mean a slower job, or even an incomplete job, than if the project were handled by a single person. (Or perhaps by the standard model of a general contractor who deploys individual tradespeople, as needed. It's not clear from the text what alternative to the group approach you are supposed to imagine.) What does make sense to me is Hackman's observation that
There are many cases where collaboration, particularly in truly creative endeavors, is a hindrance rather than a help. The challenge for a leader, then, is to find a balance between individual autonomy and collective action. Either extreme is bad, though we are generally more aware of the downside of individualism in organizations, and we forget that teams can be just as destructive by being so strong and controlling that individual voices and contributions and learning are lost.
Hackman then comments on the problem of the Abilene Paradox, though he doesn't call it by that name, and reiterates another of his key points, namely that fulfilling the essential function of dissent in team discussions can be a serious danger to one's career.
I recommend reading Hackman's astute, research-based comments in their entirety. Just don't be surprised that he is not actually saying in some sweeping fashion that "teams don't work."
Xavier de Souza Briggs on "Getting Things Implemented"
If you want a compact, rich introduction to the issues organizations must manage in order to devise and implement strategies that produce valuable outcomes, you will be well-served by working through the materials Xavier de Souza Briggs put together for a week-long course he delivered this January, just before taking a two-year leave from his MIT faculty appointment in urban studies and planning, to become Associate Director for General Government Programs at the US Office of Management and Budget.
Creating public value, and The craft of political management (negotiation and coalition building)
Basic questions that need to be addressed: "What is worth implementing [What produces value?] and why? How does one go from concept to capacity and then 'production'? ... How to get things done responsibly and ethically when decisions cannot simply be imposed, downward and in a straightforward way, in a hierarchy?" Briggs emphasizes, "We want to be able to distinguish strong ideas, weakly implemented from bad ideas. These distinctions are often not easy to make — but are hugely important for the support we can build for good ideas."
Developing and changing organizational strategy
Here Briggs is talking about devising the means for accomplishing the organization's agreed mission. "The overall [strategic] challenge (and opportunity) is a powerful alignment: Lining up the value-creating idea with what the environment will support and what the organization (or team or alliance) is actually capable of producing." A key lesson: "There's no substitute for organized capacity, beyond any charismatic, smart, or otherwise talented individual."
Strategic collaboration (partnerships and alliances), and Performance management
Some key lessons about collaboration: "Effective collaboration often demands that implementers play a wide variety of roles well (strategic, operational, mobilization-focused, etc.)." "Collaboratives evolve through stages, navigated jointly: agreeing on a problem, developing strategy, implementing ('co-producing' change)." "Collaboratives can have wider ripple effects (political participation, policy reform, etc.)."
The key lesson about performance management: "Systems of performance measures and rules and incentives coupled with them ('management') should align with broader strategies."
Core elements of operating capacity: organizational structure (e.g., by function, by customer segment), operational processes (mapped so as to highlight, e.g., bottlenecks), human resources
Key lessons: Organizational restructuring "invites resistance, requires political capital, proof of concept, supportive coalitions, etc." "Strategic human resource management addresses flows ([employee] entry, development, exit) and targets (motivation, reward, performance)."
Thinking like an implementer, and Leadership (especially, leading change)
A key lesson: An effective implementer recognizes implementation issues (e.g., lack of funding, lack of operating capacity, opportunities for delivering more value, etc.) and develops skill in generating strategic options for addressing the issues.
Some core leadership concepts: exercising leadership vs. exercising authority; technical challenges (well-defined problems with known solutions) vs. adaptive challenges (fuzzy problems, unknown solutions); leadership styles; the need for a repertoire of various elements of emotional intelligence. Exercising leadership "is particularly important for motivating adaptation and risk taking, and thus deep change, in how implementation systems work."
Please note that the above outline greatly condenses and simplifies what Briggs teaches. To get a fuller account of the principles he espouses, you can download pdf files of his lecture notes and study questions here. Briggs's materials are a model of accessibility and practical expertise, structured in a way that requires students to think about the assigned readings (including a number of case studies) in critical fashion.
Each section of the course (generally, two sections per session) ends with a summary of take-away lessons. For example the first lesson from the first session is that "having a goal is not the same as having a clear, actionable value proposition." A related lesson is that "Effective implementers must often help to define ends (value propositions), not just political or operational means."
The course concluded with a take-home exam which, in keeping with the rest of Briggs's materials, places the emphasis squarely on critical thinking and intelligent application of the concepts covered in the class ("value creation, political management, organizational strategy, collaboration, performance management, organizational design and process redesign, human resource management"). Briggs emphasizes quality, not quantity, in students' responses to the seven "word problems" he sets, as you can see by reading through his instructions for the exam and the sample solutions he provides (pdf files).
Donald Sull Makes the Case for Management by Commitment
Donald Sull, who teaches management at the London Business School, has long been a proponent of what he calls management by commitment.
As Sull explains in a brief interview posted at BNET.com on March 4, management by commitment involves looking "at an organization as a network of overlapping, continually evolving promises that people make to each other to get things done."1
Sull contrasts management by commitment to two alternatives:
Use of hierarchical power
"This tends to create silos: the hierarchy is very up and down and doesn't work well for work that requires cooperation across different units or functions. It's pretty slow as well; it takes a long time for information to get up the structure and for orders to find their way down."
Management by standardized processes
"This is hugely helpful — it allows you to squeeze out excess resources and continuously improve on what you do. But here we also have limitations, probably the biggest one being that standardization gets in the way of innovation."
For situations that do not lend themselves to standardization, Sull argues that management by commitment allows needed flexibility. Management by commitment also has a natural place in situations in which you need cooperation from someone over whom you have no authority.
Based on research he and his colleague Charles Spinosa have done, Sull cites five characteristics of effective management by commitment:
The commitments are public and they are tracked publicly.
The commitments are active, as opposed to being casual or pro forma.
The commitments are voluntary. The person from whom a commitment is sought can make a counteroffer, or even say no if what's being requested is something the individual really isn't able to take on.
The commitments are explicit, i.e., it is clear which individuals are committing to what objectives and tasks.
The commitments are motivating. People need to care about what they are being asked to do, so that they are willing to carry on when inevitable obstacles crop up. This requires clarifying the importance of, and the rationale for, the actions people are signing up for.
Note: In a longer interview published in 2007 that is well worth reading, Sull explains in more detail how management by commitment helps with strategy execution.
__________ 1 A brief follow-up BNET.com interview with Sull, citing specific examples of use of management by commitment, is here.
An earlier post discussed the "paradox of power." When you look at the research on how people use power, it shows that "empathy and social intelligence are vastly more important to acquiring and exercising power than are force, deception, or terror." On the other hand,
... studies also show that once people assume positions of power, they're likely to act more selfishly, impulsively, and aggressively, and they have a harder time seeing the world from other people's points of view. This presents us with the paradox of power: The skills most important to obtaining power and leading effectively are the very skills that deteriorate once we have power.
For more on the dynamics of power, you can look at the materials John Carroll and Li Tao pulled together for their 2006 course in managerial psychology at MIT's Sloan School of Management. Particularly helpful is Lecture 17 (pdf), delivered by guest lecturer Maria Quijada, now a professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
At the beginning of her lecture, Quijada offers the definition of power that Jeffrey Pfeffer, one of my favorite thinkers on management issues, uses:
The potential ability to influence behavior, to change the course of events, to overcome resistance and to get people to do things that they would not otherwise do. Politics and influence are the processes, the actions, the behaviors through which this potential power is utilized and realized.
All of the lecture notes, which fit onto eleven PowerPoint slides, are worth thinking about. To give you an idea of where Quijada ends up, here is her summary of how someone, presumably wanting to avoid the unfortunate aspects of the paradox of power, can best manage his/her power:
Create resources, find new domains in which to operate
Build alliances by using reciprocity
Build your network — be a bridge, be central
Build your reputation, be careful of first impressions
Be in the right unit of the organization for exercising influence
The vexed question of whether emancipation should be a goal of the Union side in the Civil War has led many to question Lincoln's sensitivity to the need to correct the obvious injustices of slavery and racism. In Lincoln and His Admirals, the book cited in yesterday's post, author Craig Symonds offers this summary and anecdote:
"Conservative Republicans supported the president so long as it was evident that his primary goal — indeed, his only goal — was saving the Union. They were lukewarm to the idea that the party should ensure the permanence or universality of emancipation, and most of them opposed the proposition of granting citizenship or other civil rights to the former slaves. More progressive Republicans, such as Chase [the treasury secretary] pressed Lincoln not only to make emancipation permanent and universal but also to make a commitment to civil rights for blacks. Lincoln was entirely committed to emanicipation in the rebellious South, and encouraged programs by which the border states could undertake voluntary emancipation, but he made no specific commitments either way about civil rights for blacks. On this, as on other issues, Lincoln kept both branches of his party in the fold by postponing the moment when he had to choose between them.
In a cabinet meeting later that winter [of 1863], Lincoln told a story about a black preacher who told his parishioners that there were 'two roads for you' and they must 'be careful,' for one road led 'straight to hell,' and the other went 'right to damnation.' Upon consideration of this warning, the parishioner responded: 'Josh, take which road you please, I go troo de wood.'" (p.269)
I think it's safe to say that Lincoln's anecdote has relevance to just about any factional struggle that threatens achievement of a critical mission.
