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Streamline Training & Documentation
Streamline Training & Documentation
Thursday, January 07, 2010
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").
Elinor Ostrom's Research on Management of Common Resources
You can get an overview of Elinor Ostrom's work on "self-organizing and self-governing forms of collective action" in an interview (pdf) she gave Paul Aligica in 2003.
Elinor Ostrom talking in Stockholm about getting "Beyond the Tragedy of the Commons" (2009) (Stockholm Resilience Centre)
In the interview, Ostrom explains the gist of her thinking:
Academics, aid donors, international nongovernmental organizations, central governments, and local citizens need to learn and relearn that no government can develop the full array of knowledge, institutions and social capital needed to govern development efficiently and sustainably. The sheer variety of cultural and biological adaptations to diverse ecological conditions is so great that I am willing to make the following assertion: Any single, comprehensive set of formal laws intended to govern a large expanse of territory containing diverse ecological niches is bound to fail in many of the areas where it is applied.
Improving the abilities of those directly engaged in the particulars of their local conditions to organize themselves in deeply nested enterprises is potentially a more successful strategy for solving resource problems than attempting to implement idealized, theoretically optimal institutional arrangements. There is plenty that national government officials can do to help a self-governing society. They can provide efficient, fair, and honest court systems, effective property right systems and large-scale infrastructure projects — such as national highways — that cannot be provided locally.
Ostrom emphasizes the importance of viewing self-organized groups as complex adaptive systems and of recognizing the value of polycentric governance.
Complex adaptive systems are composed of a large number of active elements whose rich patterns of interaction produce emergent properties that are not easy to predict by analyzing the separate parts of a system. One can see them as consisting of rules and interacting agents that adapt by changing the rules dynamically on the basis of experience. ... [S]ocial scientists have yet to develop many of the concepts needed to understand the adaptability of systems. ...
Many of the capabilities of complex adaptive systems are retained in a polycentric public enterprise system. By "polycentric" I mean a system where citizens are able to organize not just one but multiple governing authorities, as well as private arrangements, at different scales. Each unit may exercise considerable independence to make and enforce rules within a circumscribed scope of authority for a specified geographical area. ... Self-organized resource governance systems, in such a system, may be special districts, private associations, or parts of a local government.
...
Serious empirical research has now shown that polycentric systems tend to generate higher levels of output at similar or lower costs than monocentric systems governing similar ecological, urban, and social systems.
Another, more recent overview of Ostrom's work is provided in the video below, which records the 8½-minute talk she gave earlier this year at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
(Background information on Ostrom's Stockholm talk is here.)
Schwartz outlines the scenario planning process by working through an example in which an aerospace engineer gets the process started by deciding that the question in need of investigation is "How can I future-proof my career over the next five years?"
Schwartz then outlines the five steps in the process:
List driving forces.
What variables, trends, and events could change the aerospace industry? Which are fairly certain? Which are uncertain? Which are the two most important uncertainties?
Using the two most important uncertainties, make a scenario grid showing four possible futures.
Imagine possible futures and write them up like news stories.
What could happen over the next five years?
Brainstorm implications. Then devise suitable strategies and tactics for coping with each of the futures you've imagined.
Track indicators so that you recognize when a particular future is emerging.
Schwartz closes by noting that if none of the futures you've imagined comes true, "You can always reevaluate you sense of the forces at play and rework the grid to reflect reality more accurately."
On July 22, Knowledge@Wharton published an excellent overview of how scenario planning can help companies maintain a state of preparedness despite the uncertainties that figure so prominently in today's business environment.
My own copy of the article is so heavily highlighted that I know it's something I must recommend reading in its entirety — it's only about four pages. I'll simply highlight two main themes:
Scenario planning is a way of gaining strategic flexibility in the face of an uncertain future.
"... some companies ...have developed a competitive advantage by leveraging scenario planning — first in stimulating discussion about potential outcomes arising from the swirling mix of trends shaping the world, and then in establishing monitoring mechanisms to identify which scenario is starting to unfold. In the end, the major objectives for these companies are to minimize surprises and to consistently anticipate — and act on — major emerging opportunities and challenges, ahead of competitors."
The leaders of a company need to be directly involved in the scenario planning process so that they are forced to examine their assumptions about how the world works and to experience what's involved in analyzing data with an open mind.
The artcle quotes Kristel Van der Elst, head of the scenario planning team at the World Economic Forum: "You end up changing how people think. The long-term benefit is that you open up people's minds ..."
If you'd like to take a look at the sample set of scenarios cited in the article, you can find the paper in question — "Scenarios for the Downturn & Rebound," by Rob-Jan de Jong and Paul J.H. Schoemaker — here (pdf).
A s a follow-on to an earlier post dealing with discovery-driven planning, an approach to developing and executing initiatives involving new markets, products, or services, here is a video in which the developers of the technique, Ian MacMillan of the Wharton School and Rita Gunther McGrath of Columbia Business School, discuss application of the technique in a period in which growth in the economy as a whole is decelerating, or even turning negative.
As a follow-on to yesterday's post, I'd like to mention the Miradi software that the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) and Benetech have been jointly developing since 2007. ("Miradi" is a Swahili word that means "project" or "goal.")
Miradi is designed to provide project teams with the essential features that they need to design, manage, monitor, and learn from their conservation projects, in other words, to practice good adaptive management. Currently, most conservation practitioners go through the adaptive management process either using pen and paper, or by cobbling together functions from a wide range of programs including flowcharting, mapping, project planning, spreadsheet, accounting, and other software packages. Miradi takes the right functions from each of these different kinds of programs and bundles them together in one easy-to-use integrated package.
To get a project set up in the software, the user works through a step-by-step process that matches the flow of the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation developed by the CMP. Those steps are:
Once the conservation project is set up in Miradi, the project can be managed and tracked using the various data views the software provides.
The Diagram View shows the conceptual model underlying the project:
In a complete conceptual diagram, the overall project scope is linked to specific conservation targets that are each in turn linked to direct threats and the contributing factors that lead to these threats. The diagram also displays the strategies that the project team is taking to counter these threats, showing the key assumptions that the project team is making about how their actions will lead to their desired outcomes. The diagram also allows users to focus on the specific results chain that they predict will happen as a result of their interventions and to determine what indicators they need to measure to test these assumptions over time. [emphasis added]
Other views include the Threat Rating View, Viability Analysis (showing the status of each conservation target, e.g., "coral reefs"), Strategic Planning View, Monitoring View, Work Plan View, and Budget View.
For over thirty-five years, BRAC, an NGO founded by Fazle Hasan Abed, has been pursuing a gradually expanding mission of alleviating poverty, first in Bangladesh and, more recently in other Asian countries (e.g., Afghanistan) and Africa (e.g., Tanzania). (Originally, "BRAC" was an acronym for "Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee," but now the name BRAC stands on its own.)
The video below is Abed's own summary (in January 2008) of BRAC's history and mission. Note the importance he attaches to developing programs that can be effectively scaled up.
In the video below, produced by the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation, you can get an idea of BRAC's approach to alleviating poverty, which involves an array of programs — notably, in microfinance, education, health, disaster management, environmental protection, social development, human rights, and legal services — aimed at promoting long-term development in a systematic fashion.
A shorter article about BRAC was published in the May/June 2009 issue of Saudi Aramco World.1
__________ 1 As a sidenote, I'd mention that the virtual walking tours of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain; the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul; and the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem offered at the Saudi Aramco World website are not to be missed. I am grateful to my friend Diana Wolfe Larkin for calling these virtual tours to my attention.
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.
Paul Levy, the President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, maintains a blog he calls "Running a Hospital." One of today's posts reproduces a write-up by two employees describing how overdosing a patient was avoided, and further, how the root cause of the near overdose was identified and corrected.
As you can see from reading the post, Beth Israel extracted two main lessons from the near-miss:
Even though an automated medication dispensing machine reduces the risk of mistakes in administering meds, it is still necessary for a human being at the bedside to doublecheck that the medication picked by the machine is correct.
When a near-miss occurs, all interested parties must be notified so that unwitting repetition of the problem is forestalled. Beth Israel has a safety reporting system into which personnel are expected to enter the details of all adverse incidents. Those monitoring the incidents can then see any trends that suggest a systematic weakness that needs to be fixed.
Since hospitals, like the military, are literally dealing with issues of life-and-death, they have strong incentives to consciously and consistently implement effective operating practices. Thus, the best hospitals serve as good models for any organization looking for specific ways to strengthen its own culture of excellence.
PS. You can watch a video to hear Levy talking at a 2007 conference in the Netherlands about how to run a hospital, how to use new media, and reasons for an executive to blog.
One of the short pieces at the front of the May issue of the Harvard Business Review describes how the International Finance Corporation (IFC), an arm of the World Bank that undertakes private-sector investment and provides technical assistance in developing countries, is using a knowlege transfer program called "SmartLessons" for internal dissemination of best practices and lessons learned from various IFC projects.
Importantly, the narratives published by the IFC in their SmartLessons write-ups are by no means entirely free-form. Rather, as you can see in examples concerning reform of company inspections in Tajikistan and establishing corporate governance codes in countries of the Middle East and North Africa (pdf), there is a structure to the narratives that makes it easy for the reader to understand project goals, rationales, processes, and responses to challenges. The lessons learned are explained with reference to the specific experiences that suggest that these lessons are indeed principles that can be productively emulated in comparable circumstances in subsequent projects.
For example, Lesson 1 (of six) from the Tajikistan project is "You need strong credibility if you want key players to listen to you." The commentary on this lesson reads as follows:
In Tajikistan, infrastructure or rural development projects often appear far more urgent than advisory projects. It was crucial for IFC to position itself as a credible actor, first through the high quality of the Business Environment survey conducted in 2003, and then through constant responsiveness to government's needs. The Project reacted swiftly to requests, and provided ample review of international practice. Also, it was essential for the Project to combine readiness for confrontation, and for engagement:
Confrontation — No compromise on the message. Survey results were hard on the government; intense "discussion" ensued, but in the end all key players agreed that the results were valid and had to be acted upon.
Engagement — The Project did not just provide advice, but argued for it. It also worked with governmental partners directly on legal drafting, instead of just providing them with reports.
Note that the writing style here is plain English, a key point. I'd also mention that as one reads through the whole set of six lessons learned, they parallel quite closesly the principles for community problem-solving advocated by Xavier de Souza Briggs, as discussed in a previous post.
Strictly speaking, this is a rhetorical query because, at this stage of the game, a wealth of reports has accumulated of companies that have realized valuable results from adding tools like blogs and wikis to their intranets. The real questions Conry-Murray addresses are "Under what circumstances does enterprise social networking pay off?" and "How can you gauge the size of the payoff?"
The whole article, including its sidebars, is worth reading. As an overview, here are the five best practices Conry-Murray recommends for making the most of social networking:
Start with a low-cost pilot to see what tools deliver useful results.
Set modest expectations. "Don't promise executives that enterprise social networking will unleash, ignite, or synergize anything." Instead: "Describe one or two general business improvements you think are achievable. Set reasonable goals for user adoption, and salt your initial deployment with a few teams that are eager for these kinds of tools. And keep an eye out for ways to measure business value. You may not be expected to produce hard numbers from a pilot, but corporate management will want to know the payback down the line."
Let employees use the tools with lightly controlled freedom. If you impose any but the most obvious restrictions (e.g., "No flaming."), you will inhibit participation and constrain dialogue.
Resist exclusivity. When a business unit or team says they want their tools to be accessible only to themselves, press the argument that the full benefit of enterprise social networking comes from openness to broad participation.
Include robust search capabilities. And: "Be sure the search engine allows for user-generated feedback such as tags and content-rating systems, because the point of social networking in business is to let people provide input into the relevancy of content and people."
As a final note, if you find the powers-that-be are leery of the term "social networking," shift to something more business-sounding, like "collaboration tools," until the "social networking" label becomes familiar to the people who have to authorize introduction and roll-out of the tools you believe will contribute to your organization's productivity and growth.
How to know if your business model needs to change?
With some regularity, I find myself reading — usually with considerable interest — articles discussing how to adjust a company's business model to increase the company's competitive differentiation.
The latest item that has come my way is an article in the December 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review by Mark W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen, and Henning Kagermann (JCK). Johnson is a consultant, Christensen teaches at Harvard Business School, and Kagermann is co-CEO of SAP.
JCK sound a similar note to that of Julian Birkinshaw and Jules Goddard, as discussed in yesterday's post: If a company does not understand its current business model in detail, it won't be able to analyze properly the issue of whether the model needs to change in order for the company to take advantage of a new opportunity that is big and that involves a significantly different value proposition from what the company is currently offering customers.
Such opportunities entail one of the following:
Doing a job for customers in a dramatically better way. (JCK cite Swiffer products, which I wholeheartedly agree are a major improvement over various older cleaning tools. JCK also cite FedEx overnight delivery service.)
Solving a problem that has never been solved before (e.g., delivering music digitally easily via the iPod and iTunes technology combo from Apple).
Serving an unaddressed customer base (e.g., the Nano auto that Tata is gearing up to produce for families with very low incomes).
Responding to a shift in the basis of competition. (The most common example is an industry's move toward commoditization.)
JCK note that a new business model will definitely be needed when a competitor successfully challenges an established company's market position.
JCK also note that, under certain circumstances, a company's existing business model will work for developing a game-changing opportunity. (Again, Swiffer products are a prime example. Proctor & Gamble has not had to change its traditional business model in order to bring the Swiffer line to market.)
In general, the existing model will serve the new opportunity when:
you can fufill the new customer value proposition with your current profit formula,
using most, if not all, your current key resources and processes, and
using the same core metrics, rules, and norms you now use to run your business.
JCK argue that any business model can usefully be viewed as having four interdependent elements:
Customer value proposition — A statement of what "job" the company will do for a specific category of customer.
Profit formula — An explanation of how the company will make money from delivering on the value proposition. Consists of a revenue model, a cost structure, a gross margin model, and a planned resource (transaction) velocity.
Set of key resources — The resources essential for creating value and differentiation.
Set of key processes — The processes essential for making the production of value repeatable and scalable. Encompassed here are operational processes (which include employee training and development); managerial processes; and rules, metrics, and norms.
The first two of these four elements define value for the customer and the company. The second two define how the value will be delivered. In sum, JCK argue that
Companies will almost always need to integrate their key resources and processes in a unique way to get a job done perfectly for a set of customers. When they do, they almost always create enduring competitive advantage. Focusing first on the value proposition and the profit formula makes clear how those resources and processes need to interrelate.
Note: Previous posts on business model innovation are here (Alexander Osterwalder provides a business model schematic), here (discusses IBM's WebSphere Business Modeler software), and here (discusses an IBM report that includes a variety of suggestions for business model adjustments that can, in the right circumstances, enable deeper differentiation).
Positive deviance, discussed in a couple of recentposts, is the brainchild of the husband and wife team, Jerry and Monique Sternin.
In May 2005 Jerry Sternin (who, sadly, passed away on December 11) published an article (pdf) in the Harvard Business Review co-authored with Richard Pascale1 that describes how the principles of positive deviance apply in the business world.
The basic idea is the same as in the context of development economics: When seeking a solution to a problem look for "positive deviants" — people who seem already to have solved the problem despite having access to no more resources than others in the community.
An exhibit in the article summarizes the differences between the traditional approach to change and the positive deviance approach. These differences (here, somewhat edited) are:
Leader as path breaker vs. Leader as facilitator
In the traditional approach, the leader has primary ownership, and the momentum for change comes from above.
In the positive deviance approach, the leader guides the positive deviance process, while the community takes ownership of the quest for change.
Outside in vs. Inside out
In the traditional approach, experts identify and disseminate best practices.
In the positive deviance approach, the community identifies pre-existing solutions and amplifies them.
Deficiency-based vs. Asset-based
In the traditional approach, leaders deconstruct common problems and recommend best practice solutions, with the implicit reproach that the company's or unit's employees aren't as good as their peers.
In the positive deviance approach, the community leverages pre-existing solutions practiced by those who succeed against the odds.
Logic-driven vs. Learning-driven
In the traditional approach, particpants think themselves into a new way of acting.
In the positive deviance approach, participants act themselves into a new way of thinking.
Vulnerable to "transplant rejection" vs. Open to self-replication
In the traditional approach, resistance arises to ideas imported from, or imposed by, outsiders.
In the positive deviance approach, latent wisdom is tapped within the community, which helps forestall rejection. "The trick is to introduce already existing ideas into the mainstream without excessive use of authority."
Moving from problem-solving toward solution identification vs. Moving from solution identification toward problem-solving
In the traditional approach, best practices are applied to problems defined within the bounds of existing parameters.
In the positive deviance approach, the solution space is expanded through the discovery of new parameters.
Focus on the protagonists vs. Focus on enlarging the network
The traditional approach engages stakeholders who would conventionally be associated with the problem.
The positive deviance approach identifies stakeholders beyond those directly involved with the problem.
As a final note, I'd mention the emphasis the positive deviance process places on reframing. Pascale and Sternin outline three steps to reframing a problem:
Identify the conventional presentation of the problem. (E.g., "We don't have enough proper food for our children.")
Find out if there are exceptions to the norm, people in identical circumstances who seem to be coping especially well. (E.g., Yes, Mrs. X and Mrs. Y have healthy, well-fed children.")
Reframe the problem to focus on the exceptions. (E.g., "What are Mrs. X and Mrs. Y doing that's different?")
Reading the whole article will provide you with a range of helpful examples of reframing and of other aspects of the positive deviance process.
__________ 1 Richard Pascale is currently an associate fellow of Oxford University. Previously, he served for twenty years on the faculty of Stanford University's business school.
Back in October 2007, Chief Learning Officer published a two-page compilation of "The CLO's Top 11 Successful Practices." It was written by Tamar Elkeles, QUALCOMM's VP of learning and development, and I flipped right by it because it was so generic — perfectly reasonable, but also predictable.
Now, about a year later, I've read a brief write-up concerning a particular learning program at QUALCOMM, spearheaded by Elkeles, that is quite impressive, and I realize I should have paid more attention to what Elkeles had to say concerning do's and don'ts of structuring and performing a company's learning function. (I should add that QUALCOMM shows up as #90 on the Training magazine's Top 125 list for 2008.)
... the Employee Communications team — a group within the QUALCOMM Learning Center — developed an Online Employee Tradeshow [for remote employees] that mirrors the live technical learning event held at the corporate campus [in San Diego].
The Online Employee Tradeshow's launch page includes an interactive map that emulates the floor layout of the live event. Employees can navigate through the various technologies and company divisions represented at the tradeshow, or visit the "Information Booth" for more tips. All of the virtual booths sport the look and feel of their real-world progenitors, and include interviews with key QUALCOMM personnel and even video demonstrations filmed during the live event.
What caught my eye was the clarity and persuasiveness of the tips Elkeles offers other companies considering doing something similar:
"... my biggest piece of advice is to highlight the specific technologies, innovations, ideas, and topics that your employees care about." QUALCOMM does this "by maintaining open, clear channels of communication between management and staff. We also have an advisory group that feeds many ideas and suggestions in to us, and we feature an Amazon.com-like 'rate it' feature as part of the tradeshow experience, which gives us a very good sense of what attendees like and want to see more — or less — of in the future."
Make the tour self-guided, i.e., "we let attendees control where they go and which information they take in. Allowing them to pick what's important to them not only personalizes the experience, it also drives attendance."
Enable people to take the virtual tour in a group. "In some of our international offices, groups of employees gather in a conference room to go through the tradeshow together online, with a manager or executive facilitating the experience. If you can rally your international managers and executives to fill the role of event facilitator, it can increase event attendance and create a richer experience for attendees."
It is clear from an article about Elkeles published in Training in May 2001 that she has been pursuing her sophisticated philosophy of how to run the learning function effectively from the time she first arrived at QUALCOMM in 1992 as a doctoral student intern.
As a follow-on to recentposts dealing with nonprofit organizations, I'd mention the recommendations Jeffrey Bradach, Thomas Tierney, and Nan Stone have published in the December 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review. Bradach, Tierney, and Stone (BTS) are all associated with the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consultancy that provides strategy advice to other nonprofit organizations.
In "Delivering on the Promise of Nonprofits," BTS discuss four interrelated questions that they would have any nonprofit organization work through in iterative fashion in order to determine exactly how the organization will carry out its mission:
Which results will we hold ourselves accountable for?
What is the intended impact of our work? Who are the beneficiaries we are targeting, and what benefits will we provide? When the organization has to make tradeoffs in deciding where to allocate resources, referring to the intended impact you have defined will provide steadying guidance.
How will we achieve the results we're aiming for?
Your stakeholders need to understand the rationale for your organization's strategic decisions, so you need an explicit theory of change that spells out your beliefs and assumptions concerning how the programs and services you offer will achieve your organization's intended impact.
What will results really cost, and how can we fund them?
You need to carefully assess total costs of current programs, including an appropriate share of organization overhead allocated to each program. Then appropriate sources of finding must be identified. Each program's effect on the organization's overall financial health must be understood, so that funding and strategies can be better aligned.
How do we build the organization we need to deliver results?
The organization needs to give focused attention to creating better processes, building leadership capacity, and ensuring that needed people and infrastructure are in place (as opposed to succumbing to funder pressure to minimize overhead).
Leadership capacity gets a culminating mention in the BTS article because nonprofits to a large degree are outside the discipline of markets to which for-profit organizations are subject. Therefore, the discipline in a non-profit's direction-setting and operations must come from its executive director, who "shoulders the heavy burden of engaging key stakeholders in a rigorous consensus-building process in which all parties contront the fundamental questions [listed above] — and fully embrace the subsequent answers."
With good reason, much classroom training nowadays is led by facilitators rather than by teachers per se. The idea is that adult learners should generally direct their own learning as far as possible, and they should spend their training time as far as possible working on real issues and problems with a team of colleagues. The facilitator's role is to help with sharing of expertise, keeping discussions on track, and posing questions that get people to think more deeply.
Facilitators do, in fact, generally include periods of teaching in the flow of training, often to present concepts, to provide memorable examples of how to handle various situations, and to demonstrate techniques the training participants need to learn.
There is a type of more traditional teaching that organizations should provide on a regular basis. This is teaching done by the organization's leaders that is designed to pass along expertise and to reinforce internal messaging and branding.
In the November 2008 issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine, Michael Chavez and Gil McWilliam of Duke Corporate Education, and Sushanth Tharappan of the Infosys Leadership Institute, offer advice on how to optimize leaders' teaching. The article isn't as clearly written as it should be, but it's still worth perusing because it captures instructive details of several years' worth of experience with Unisys' "Leaders as Teachers" initiative.
The authors point to three reasons teaching by leaders is valuable:
It's a way of passing tacit knowledge along from senior experts to the rising generation of leaders.
What leaders have to say tends to get attention — "... bringing leaders to the forefront of the process of developing other leaders ... sends a powerful signal to the organization about the value of specific insights and the importance of the development process itself."
The Leaders as Teachers approach forges a productive alliance between the organization's learning and development professionals and top management.
Based on their experience with leaders teaching at Infosys, the authors offer five caveats:
Make sure that what the leaders teach is content making a specific contribution to achieving explicit learning goals.
Content likely to fit the bill includes material that helps employees understand why and how to change their focus or priorities, that helps institutionalize use of new tools or knowledge that the leader doing the teaching has had a direct hand in producing, or that affords the leader an opportunity to solidify his or her own command of concepts, frameworks, and practices by explaining them to learners.
In the latter case, the leader is also, in effect, acting as a champion of specific changes the organization is making in order to develop capabilities needed for executing its strategy.
Make sure the teacher uses techniques, such as posing stimulating questions, that involve the learners "in the creation of new meanings, in finding applications and examples and in stretching" everyone's imaginations.
Make sure a leader being considered for a teaching role is able to invest the necessary time "to work closely with internal learning and development professionals — and often outside consultants and educators — to build learning outcomes and design the content, refine the materials and design, and rehearse the delivery."
Use other training resources (i.e., not a leader) for the more basic portions of a training effort. Have the leader step in to teach how concepts already presented apply to company-specific situations.
Organize a cadre of teachers large enough to handle the number of sessions being scheduled. No one senior leader is going to have time to meet with more than a few groups. Note that it will probably be necessary to allocate time to train-the-trainer preparation.
In a sidebar to their article, the authors note that the actual content of the programs Infosys offers is selected
based on input from multiple listening mechanisms: a survey of high-potential leaders and their consolidated personal development plans; senior management performance reviews; and the opinions of business-enabling functions such as HR, corporate planning and quality.
To actually produce the content, Infosys uses a process that helps leaders "deconstruct their learning into teachable points of view," and then incorporates those POVs into an engaging training design.
To ensure the relevance of the content, Infosys:
Aligns the content to the company's leadership competency framework. Each session provides a "platform for illustrating or narrating examples of how leadership competencies actually play out at work."
Places great emphasis on debriefing — i.e., drawing lessons from the tales the leader tells about problems and dilemmas he/she has had to handle.
Encourages learners to approach their jobs with confidence. Unisys places strong focus on helping learners believe that, with diligent application of their enhanced skills and knowledge, they can achieve results comparable to those achieved by the leader doing the teaching.
You can read more about the Infosys approach to leadership development, including measurement of its impact, in a April 2008 interview with Girish G Vaidya, head of Infosys Leadership Institute.
Like most big pharma companies, in recent years Merck has embarked on resturcturing programs aimed at maintaining profits in the face of slowed revenue growth. Most recently, the company announced plans to reduce its global payroll by 7,200.
As far as I can tell, few, if any, of those layoffs will affect the Merck Manufacturing Division (MMD) plant in Australia, where, according to its website:
The plant has five manufacturing suites, nine compressing suites, four film-coating suites, and eleven packaging suites.
61 medicines are produced in over 1000 combinations for local and overseas markets; some of these are Merck products for which the plant is the sole global supplier.
About 53.6 million packages containing one billion tablets are manufactured annually.
The Australia plant, part of Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD), a Merck subsidiary, offers some useful lessons in human resource management.
Specifically, in 2004 the New South Wales Office of Industrial Relations published a case study detailing steps the Merck plant had undertaken to develop "a learning and teamwork culture based on the concepts of best practice in work-based training."
The Before situation at the plant:
Until about [1999] the company's work organisation operated on the traditional Taylorist model. According to Robert Justice, Manager, Human Resources at MSD, despite the company's desire to collaborate with employees and their representatives, MMD was "in the dark ages in the way (they) consulted with people". Management practices were inconsistent with future strategic direction.
Demarcation barriers and the mistrust between management and employees were identified as the biggest barriers to teamwork within the workplace. These barriers existed between management and shopfloor employees and also between employees of different classifications within the workplace. This contributed to a culture of departmental self-interest.
. . .
Prior to 1993 MMD had no developed culture of continuous learning and training. Training was informal, unplanned and based on a need-to-know basis, consisting of a "buddy system" in which an incumbent passed on skills to others whilst on-the-job. Operational instructions then, according to Debbie Samoley, Workplace Change Facilitator, were not user friendly. The result was a range of inconsistent performance levels from employees who did not have a clear understanding of the whole production process.
MMD decided it needed to "move away from an industrial focus and toward a focus on employees including an opening up of the channels of communication and information sharing." One key means of accomplishing this was formation of an Employee Development Committee.
Elected by popular vote, rather than by departmental representation, the Employee Development Committee comprises eight shopfloor representative and four representatives from senior management. It acts as a forum for general discussion between management and employee representatives on issues like training and development, employee initiatives and suggestions, and workplace change.
As a result of the reform efforts, the plant has an encouraging After situation:
Work-based training, based on best practice principles, now constitutes the main type of training at MMD. ...
. . .
A personal training plan is also established to ensure employees who wish to do so may have the opportunity to advance their skills. Training at the site is typically modular and self-paced.
A new plant employee classification structure was introduced with a basic platform of utilising a high level of introductory skills and the provision of training and development opportunities to allow employees to acquire and utilise further skills. Based on a "learning organisation" approach, the classification structure directly links training plans for departments and individuals.
Four skill levels are defined: Introductory, Competent, Mastery, and Expert.
The plant also offers training in interpersonal skills aimed at helping staff build and maintain good working relations. Results have been positive:
Departments now work more closely together. Free flowing communication, training and sharing of information between the manufacturing, packaging, planning and quality assurance departments has resulted in an improved work flow and consequent improvements in productivity and quality. For individuals there is a greater awareness and understanding of the whole production process. That, according to Barry Stevenson, has been "the greatest change of all".
"The level of accountability has changed" says Tony Pusic, Manufacturing Facilitator. There is a feeling of ownership over the process. ... The open communication and the sharing of information has also seen the removal of the "domino effect". Instead of shifting the blame or covering up costly mistakes employees are now aware of the outcome, learning from mistakes made in order to avoid them in future.
. . .
... the differences between management and the shopfloor have been significantly reduced. Greater technical knowledge and skilling up of operators has led to a shift in control over the production process from line management to the shopfloor.
Since not all supervisors and line managers were comfortable with the new environment, senior management took steps to formulate "a deliberate strategy to provide support for managers to involve them in the restructuring process."
As summed up in the case study, the benefits to MSD of its new approach to training, teamwork culture, and communication are:
Increased productivity and quality.
Increased worker flexibility.
Improved quality control and predictable work flow.
An improved occupational health and safety record.
Ability to use down time and idle time for training.
Better integration of training and HR systems.
Improved relevance of training.
The benefits specifically for employees include:
Recognition of increased skill acquisition, including problem solving skills.
Proof of competence.
Mobility between divisions.
Better opportunities for situation-specific learning.
A feeling of responsibility for the production process and ownership of the final product.
Increased job variety, e.g., the opportunity for operators to take on the role of trainer or performance assessor. (MSD has adopted a performance management system that includes formal assessment of competency — self-assessment and assessment by peers, team leaders, and an on-site accredited assessor.)
Use of state-of-the-art technology that is unavailable elsewhere.
The October 2008 issue of Chief Learning Officer has an informative summary by Agatha Gilmore of the importance of informal learning and of how organizations can best facilitate such learning.
The main theme of Gilmore's article is that informal learning, like anything else of significance to an organization, must be managed, but that the management must not be self-defeating. I.e., it makes no sense to use a management approach that bleeds most of the informality out of informal learning. As one interviewee puts it:
Facilitation is about putting in place the minimum level of systems and processes and providing, in some cases, evangelism to build energy around the subject without going too far in terms of trying to get in the middle of every discussion
Gilmore lists three requirements for effectively facilitating informal learning:
Creating a collaborative culture
Executive-level buy-in
Providing tools (which you keep as simple as possible) for:
organizing learning (e.g., communities of practice and online discussion forums)
easing the process of keeping published information up-to-date (e.g., blogs, wikis, and Web conferencing)
building communities, finding experts, and creating experts (notably, social networking)
As for managing the content that employees access, the goals should be making the time needed to find a particular bit of information as brief as possible, and ensuring that the information is accurate.
Training is also part of the story, but the objective is nothing more elaborate than making sure people know "what the tools are and how and when to use them." This equips them to make effective use of information that is relevant and accurate because it is being captured in ways that enable timely updating, something that is increasingly problematic for formal learning programs.
Getting an Employee's Manager on Board with a Training Program
My latest find, as I keep a lookout for practical and credible advice that fellow training practitioners are offering, is an article by Jeffrey Berk, COO of KnowledgeAdvisors.
In the article, Berk concisely lays out ten best practices for managers whose employees are attending training programs. His list fits my own views, and I encourage taking a look.
To help with improving the results obtained from training, Berk also suggests a half dozen questions to ask when a learner comes back from a program:
What percent of learning actually was applied to the job?
When did the learner apply the learning (e.g., time-to-job impact)?
What are the major barriers to applying the learning on the job?
Did you set expectations with your manager before the learning event?
Were you provided adequate resources to optimally apply the learning?
Did you determine specific uses for the training after it took place?
This combination of best practices and evaluation questions from Berk both embodies useful guidance and illustrates how straightforwardly one can talk about training issues (i.e., no jargon is needed).
Developing and managing the mentoring relationship — Assess your readiness to act as a mentor and your interest in doing so. Assuming you decide mentoring is for you, link up with a mentee and get to know the person more deeply, including his/her career and personal goals. On an ongoing basis, you need to work on building trust, setting goals, and keeping the mentoring relationship productive and congenial.
Sponsoring — As needed, you open doors and advocate for your mentee to enable him/her "to develop new skills and gain meaningful visibility." Typical ways of sponsoring involve "seeking new opportunities for your mentee and connecting him or her with people in your network."
Guiding and counseling — To the degree it is helpful, you can be a confidant and sounding board for your mentee. "You may help your mentee explore and understand emotional reactions or personal conflict or explore ways to deal with problems." You should be ready to tactfully "warn your mentee about behavior that is a poor fit with organizational culture" or that is apt to elicit unwanted responses from others.
Protecting — Keep an eye out for potential threats to your mentee (e.g., problematic rumors) so that he/she can forestall them or prepare appropriate responses before problems have a chance to mushroom. "Protecting may also involve cutting red tape or helping your mentee avoid assignments that aren't a good fit."
Teaching — You transfer knowledge, share experiences, and use discovery techniques to help your mentee learn.
Modeling — Your mentee will learn from watching how you handle "ethics, values and standards; styles, beliefs and attitudes; methods and procedures." Keep in mind that your mentee will undoubtedly make adaptations that fit his/her position and personality.
Motivating and inspiring — You need to support and encourage your mentee, encouraging him/her to take on challenges, to learn, and to develop confidence. "When you help your mentees link their own goals, values and emotions to the larger organizational agenda, they become more engaged in their work and in their own development."
As you would expect, the CCL article makes a point of also listing the mentee's responsibilities. The most important of these are to be:
Honest and open.
Receptive to feedback and the mentor's insights.
Proactive about seeking information and feedback from the mentor and others.
Committed to following through, i.e., to pursuing goals, investing time in learning, and taking steps toward needed change.
Willing to give feedback to the mentor. "The mentee needs to be able to let the mentor know what is or isn't working well in the relationship. If there is a good feedback loop between both parties, the relationship will be more flexible, course corrections can be made, and the relationship will deepen."
You can read more about the value of mentoring in "Why Mentoring Matters in a Hypercompetitive World," an article by Thomas J. DeLong, John J. Gabarro, and Robert J. Lees that appeared in the January issue of the Harvard Business Review.
