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Streamline Training & Documentation
Streamline Training & Documentation
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Alfred Sloan's Memoir X: Summing Up
In Chapter 23 of My Years with General Motors, Alfred Sloan summarizes one of his central convictions concerning management of a multi-division corporation: It has been a thesis of this book that good management rests on a reconciliation of centralization and decentralization, or "decentralization with co-ordinated control."
Eash of the conflicting elements brought together in this concept has its unique results in the operation of a business. From decentralization we get initiative, responsibility, development of personnel, decisions close to the facts, flexibility — in short, all the qualities necessary for an organization to adapt to new conditions. From co-ordination we get efficiencies and economies. It must be apparent that co-ordinated decentralization is not an easy concept to apply. There is no hard and fast rule for sorting out the various responsibilities and the best way to assign them. The balance which is struck between corporate and divisional responsibility varies according to what is being decided, the circumstances of the time, past experience, and the temperaments and skills of the executives involved.
The concept of co-ordinated decentralization evolved gradually at General Motors as we responded to tangible problems of management. As I have shown, at the time its development began, some four decades ago, it was clearly advisable to give each division a strong management which would be primarily responsible for the conduct of its business. But our experience in 1920-21 also demonstrated the need for a greater measure of control over the divisions than we had attained. Without adequate control from the central office, the divisions got out of hand and failed to follow the policies set by corporation management, to the great detriment of the corporation. Meanwhile, the corporation management was in no position to set the best policies, since it was without appropriate and timely data from the divisions. A steady flow of operating data, for which procedures were later set up, finally made real co-ordination possible.
[. . .]
Much of my life in General Motors was devoted to the development, organization, and periodic reorganization of these governing groups [governing committees and policy groups] in central management. This was required because of the paramount importance, in an organization like General Motors, of providing the right framework for decisions. There is a natural tendency to erode that framework unless it is consciously maintained. Group decisions do not always come easily. There is a strong temptation for the leading officers to make decisions themselves without the sometimes onerous process of discussion, which involves selling your ideas to others. The group will not always make a better decision than any particular member would make; there is even the possibility of some averaging down. But in General Motors I think the record shows that we have averaged up. Essentially this means that, through our form of organizatipon, we have been able to adapt to the great changes that have taken place in the automobile market in each of the decades since 1920.
Portrait of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (1875-1966) Sloan Building (E52) MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan Japan Club)
For instance, in Chapter 3, "Concept of the Organization," Sloan writes about his frustration in 1918, when General Motors acquired United Motors, a group of parts and accessory companies of which Sloan was president: ... I found that if I followed the prevailing practice of intercorporate relations I would no longer be able to determine the rate of return on investment for these accessory divisions individually or as a group. This would necessarily mean that I would lose some degree of managerial control over my area of operations. At that time, material within General Motors was passing from one operating division to another at cost, or at cost plus some predetermined percentage. My divisions in the United Motors Corporation had sold both to outside customers and to their allied divisions at the market price. I knew that I operated a profit-making group, and I wished to continue to be able to demonstrate this performance to the general management, rather than to have my operating results on interdivisional business swallowed up in the extra bookkeeping profits of some other division. It was a case of keeping the information clear.
It was not, however, a matter of interest to me only with respect to my divisions, since as a member of the Executive Committee, I was a kind of general executive and so had begun to think from the corporate viewpoint. The important thing was that no one knew how much was being contributed — plus or minus — by each division to the common good of the corporation. And since, therefore, no one knew, or could prove, where the efficiencies and inefficiencies lay, there was no objective basis for the allocation of new investment. This was one of the difficulties with the expansion program of that time. It was natural for the divisions to compete for investment funds, but it was irrational for the general officers of the corporation not to know where to place the money to best advantage. In the absence of objectivity it was not surprising that there was a lack of real agreement among the general officers. Furthermore, some of them had no broad outlook, and used their membership on the Executive Committee mainly to advance the interests of their respective divisions.
I had taken up the question of interdivisional relations with Mr. Durant [president of GM at the time] before I entered General Motors and my views on it were well enough known for me to be appointed chairman of a committee "to formulate rules and regulations pertaining to interdivisional business" on December 31, 1918. I completed the report by the following summer and presented it to the Executive Committee on December 6, 1919. I select here a few of its first principles which, though they are an accepted part of management doctrine today, were not so well known then. I think they are still worth attention.
I stated the basic argument as follows:
The profit resulting from any business considered abstractly, is no real measure of the merits of that particular business. An operation making $100,000.00 per year may be a very profitable business justifying expansion and the use of all the additional capital that it can profitably employ. On the other hand, a business making $10,000,000 a year may be a very unprofitable one, not only not justifying further expansion but even justifying liquidation unless more profitable returns can be obtained. It is not, therefore, a matter of the amount of profit but of the relation of that profit to the real worth of invested capital within the business. Unless that principle is fully recognized in any plan that may be adopted, illogical and unsound results and statistics are unavoidable ...
There is a little parable in The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John M. Barry, that I particularly like: … a young graduate student entered a laboratory and saw a renowned Harvard professor at the sink washing glassware while his technician was performing a complex task at the workbench. The student asked him why the technician was not washing the glassware. “Because,” the professor replied, “I always do the most important part of the experiment and in this experiment the most important thing is the cleanliness of the glassware.” [pp. 286-287]
Barry notes that the renowned British scientist Thomas Huxley gave the keynote address at the September 12, 1876 ceremony marking Hopkins' opening. Below is an excerpt from Huxley's speech, in which he explains what he thinks a medical school's curriculum should include, and the importance of academic support of original research. At present, young men come to the medical schools without a conception of even the elements of physical science; they learn, for the first time, that there are such sciences as physics, chemistry, and physiology, and are introduced to anatomy as a new thing. It may be safely said that, with a large proportion of medical students, much of the first session is wasted in learning how to learn — in familiarizing themselves with utterly strange conceptions, and in awakening their dormant and wholly untrained powers of observation and of manipulation. It is difficult to over-estimate the magnitude of the obstacles which are thrown in the way of scientific training by the existing system of school education. Not only are men trained in mere book-work, ignorant of what observation means, but the habit of learning from books alone begets a disgust of observation. The book-learned student will rather trust to what he sees in a book than to the witness of his own eyes.
There is not the least reason why this should be so … There is not the slightest difficulty in giving sound elementary instruction in physics, in chemistry, and in the elements of human physiology, in ordinary schools. In other words, there is no reason why the student should not come to the medical school, provided with as much knowledge of these several sciences as he ordinarily picks up in the course of his first year of attendance at the medical school.
I am not saying this without full practical justification for the statement. For the last eighteen years we have had in England a system of elementary science teaching carried out under the auspices of the Science and Art Department, by which elementary scientific instruction is made readily accessible to the scholars of all the elementary schools in the country. Commencing with small beginnings, carefully developed and improved, that system now brings up for examination as many as seven thousand scholars in the subject of human physiology alone. I can say that, out of that number, a large proportion have acquired a fair amount of substantial knowledge; and that no inconsiderable percentage show as good an acquaintance with human physiology as used to be exhibited by the average candidates for medical degrees in the University of London, when I was first an examiner there twenty years ago; and quite as much knowledge as is possessed by the ordinary student of medicine at the present day.
[. . .]
I rejoice to observe that the encouragement of research occupies so prominent a place in your official documents, and in the wise and liberal inaugural address of your president. This subject of the encouragement, or, as it is sometimes called, the endowment of research, has of late years greatly exercised the minds of men in England. It was one of the main topics of discussion by the members of the Royal Commission of whom I was one, and who not long since issued their report, after five years' labour. Many seem to think that this question is mainly one of money; that you can go into the market and buy research, and that supply will follow demand, as in the ordinary course of commerce. This view does not commend itself to my mind. I know of no more difficult practical problem than the discovery of a method of encouraging and supporting the original investigator without opening the door to nepotism and jobbery. My own conviction is admirably summed up in the passage of your president's address, "that the best investigators are usually those who have also the responsibilities of instruction, gaining thus the incitement of colleagues, the encouragement of pupils, and the observation of the public." [The full text of Huxley's speech is available at http://www.fullbooks.com/Science--Education4.html.]
A couple of days ago, Joe Hodas, senior VP – Brand Communications at a Colorado marketing agency, published a column in Advertising Age that offers a checklist of ten do's and one don't that will help you "advance your career witout selling your soul."
In edited form, Hodas's ten principles are:
Nothing replaces hard work.Effective hard work, that is. You do need to produce valuable results.
We all have a personal toolkit — know yours and how to use it. Identify and apply your strengths. Keep strengthening your strengths.
It's about teamwork, but know who is and isn't on your team. Be an upstanding, savvy participant in the office politics you will inevitably be dealing with.
Don't throw any fits. Outbursts are unprofessional.
Decide how much you can take before you bail. "A career is like a relationship, so make sure you're putting as much effort into trying to fix the problems as you put into feeling bad about them."
Earn your raises and promotions. Hodas is "a firm believer that raises are for the work you've done, and promotions are for the work you can do."
Individuality is to be respected — as long as you're still part of the team. "Don't be afraid to stand out, but do make sure you don't alienate your teammates in the process."
Always try to add something smart to the discussion. And be ready with a rationale for what you are saying. I would argue that "because" (or its equivalent in your own language) is one of the most beautiful words you can use.
Sometimes you have to raise the volume in order to be heard. If you feel strongly about something — and are all set with your "because" statement — speak right up.
Have a perspective on the past, present and future. This is the most agency-oriented of Hodas's points, but it still can readily be applied in other industries: "It's not enough to do well today. Your boss wants and needs to see that you have a broader outlook on where you / the client / the work / etc. has been, is now and will be going."
Always be that ray of light in your boss's/ co-worker's day. This is among my favorite precepts. Remember: What you say and do in a particular situation is a statement of what sort of person you are. So be sure what you say and do reflects the you you want to be.
If Hodas's advice seems commonsensical, there's a reason for that. Principles for handling oneself well generally are a matter of common sense. The challenges are to know what to focus on, and to recruit the strength to be consistent in actually following the principles you swear by.
From Part VI, Section III, of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. . . To act according to the dictates of prudence, of justice, and proper beneficence, seems to have no great merit where there is no temptation to do otherwise. But to act with cool deliberation in the midst of the greatest dangers and difficulties; to observe religiously the sacred rules of justice in spite both of the greatest interests which might tempt, and the greatest injuries which might provoke us to violate them; never to suffer the benevolence of our temper to be damped or discouraged by the malignity and ingratitude of the individuals towards whom it may have been exercised; is the character of the most exalted wisdom and virtue. Self-command is not only itself a great virtue, but from it all the other virtues seem to derive their principal lustre.
It's a classic challenge: How to "keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you." Rudyard Kipling wasn't thinking of baseball umpires when he wrote "If," but the frustrating situations he enumerates do bear a resemblance to what umpires, and anyone else in an arbitrator's role, has to be prepared to cope with.
I recently came upon a set of online tips that Little League Baseball provides its umpires that seem apt for people in other organizations, including businesses, where knowing how to manage conflict is an essential skill.
The Little League offers these words to the wise: Umpires must walk a fine line between keeping the game under control and not exacerbating situations with over-aggressive or arrogant actions. Although every situation is unique, umpires on the field should follow the guidelines below:
Umpires should remain calm, professional, tactful, firm, in control, fair and impartial. They cannot be perceived as overly aggressive, confrontational, hot-headed, short-tempered, timid, intimidated or nervous. Umpires must never display impatience or a condescending attitude.
Umpires are expected to understand their role as a steady, calming influence on the game. Umpires must be able to sort out complex and important situations and cannot be hesitant to make unpopular decisions.
Umpires should never ignore occurrences on the field that require their attention to maintain order and control. But when difficult situations arise, it is essential that umpires stay above the emotional fray and never lower themselves to the excitable level of a particular player, manager, or coach. Umpires must be clear and decisive, while not overly aggressive or overbearing. They are expected to become more assertive if the situation calls for such, but must control their temper at all times. All in all, umpires must calm volatile situations while keeping control and managing them.
Umpires should listen to managers if discussions are reasonable and non-emotional. Umpires are to be firm and authoritative in conversations with managers — but should never initiate an argument. Umpires must not create unnecessary friction by ignoring reasonable inquiries. At the same time, umpires must command respect during difficult situations and never tolerate personal abuse.
Umpires must avoid sarcastic remarks and profanity and not insist on the last word.
Umpires cannot look for trouble or invite arguments. If a situation can defuse itself, umpires must allow it to happen. Umpires must not be perceived as having escalated a situation.
Interestingly, at least to me, this Little League advisory, which basically describes unfailingly professional behavior, is addressed to a group of people that is almost entirely made up of volunteers. Surely it is not too much to expect employees at all levels (though not of all ages, since allowance must be made for youthful errors) to meet a comparable standard in the workplace.
I am always on the lookout for good examples of how professionalism can be defined. Today I came upon the definition published by the Radiological Society of North America. It reads as follows: Professionalism is the basis of medicine's contract with society, placing the interests of patients above those of the physician, setting and maintaining standards of competency and integrity, and providing expert advice to society on matters of health — in short, a contract that addresses issues of ethics, knowledge, and communication. In practice, professionalism encompasses a set of beliefs, values, and behaviors that reflect commitments to
Professional competence
Honesty with patients
Patient confidentiality
Maintenance of appropriate relations with patients
Sensitivity to patients of diverse backgrounds
Improvement of quality of care
Improvement of access to care
Just distribution of finite resources
Scientific knowledge
Maintenance of trust by managing conflicts of interest
Maintenance of appropriate relations with other physicians and healthcare professionals
Today's Wall Street Journal has a piece by Peter Kramer (pdf), author of Listening to Prozac (1993), that is rich in insight. In his article, Kramer is speaking most directly about the disappointment many recent graduates are experiencing because they don't have much in the way of a menu of tempting jobs to choose from. In fact, as reading the article makes clear, Kramer's thoughts apply to people of all ages.
Kramer is looking at how one's paid work helps shape one's identity and interpersonal style. He argues:
Embracing a profession with its own traditions — whether of the artisan, scientist or soldier — can bring a sense of solidity to people otherwise prone to self-doubt. And the correlation, person and calling, is hardly random. Darwinian forces shape the job market; organizations that use people well survive. The workplace employs the temperaments, dispatching the brash to sell and the finical to check and calculate. And then it encourages employees to stretch. The impulsive are urged to exercise caution, the deliberate to entertain the bold gesture.
Since part of the ethos of a profession is continuing growth in effectiveness, which implies a willingness to change things about oneself as necessary, Kramer posits that deficits in interpersonal skills are easier to address in the context of the job than in the context of such private matters as family disharmony.
In Kramer's view, willingness to make improvements in one's behavior at work can be expected to have spillover effects at home and in one's life in general. Kramer observes:
When I see patients who have been injured in their private lives, by past abuse, say, or a recent trauma, such as divorce, often I suggest that they invest new energy in their careers. The workplace may not overlook anxiety or depression, but often it is more neutrally instructive than the sphere of intimacy. When it functions well, the office teaches all of us when to stand our ground and when to be strategic. We learn that decisions don't always go our way. The workplace says, "Aw, get over yourself." Since on the job we're focused on performance, we are likely to do just that, to absorb advice and move on.
Accomplishments and advances on the job become fuel for developing greater self-efficacy — for developing a stronger sense of identity
Kramer acknowledges that
there are exploitative work environments. ... [E]ven for workers in benign settings, the demands of home and office have come to overlap. ... But the movement has not been all in one direction; the contemporary workplace, when it functions well, embraces domestic virtues: playfulness, empathy and others. This convergence may be for better or for worse, but surely there is something to be said for the integration of aspects of the self, for being able to be one person here and there.
And, as he is concluding his piece, Kramer sounds a note of particular significance:
If people need to bring workplace expertise home, then they simply do. That competence may extend beyond efficiency to awareness of our effects on others.
Being able consistently to think of how we affect others is, in my opinion, a key marker of personal maturity. Kramer goes on to sound another note with which I heartily agree, namely that the ideal situation for people is that they are working in jobs they truly care about — i.e., their day-to-day life at work is infused with what I call critical caring.
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.
In an earlier post, I discussed the Implicit Association Test (IAT), developed by Mahzarin Banaji, a professor of ethics in the psychology department at Harvard, and Anthony Greenwald, a psychology professor at the University of Washington. The test is used to assess the types and degree of unconscious bias a person may have. The most frequently used version of the test assesses unconscious bias against blacks.
It’s also worth noting that the IAT presents race in an extremely stylized way. The test flashes images of faces deliberately cropped so as to exclude hairlines, chins, and cheekbones. The rules instruct the subject to look at the faces for only an instant before pressing the appropriate key. It’s rare that we encounter actual people in such circumstances: divorced from social context; bereft of the telling nuances of grooming, attire, and demeanor that guide us in social encounters. … Of course, the test’s authors would insist that this is the point: the faces are cropped so as to isolate race as the sole variable. It’s the point, but it’s also the problem. Real people aren’t walking avatars of their racial identity. Real people have a lot of other relevant characteristics as well, so associative bias may often be outweighed by other individual characteristics.
And on a personal level, there’s something invasive and uncharitable about the IAT, which evaluates us based on our most primal and unguarded impulses rather than on those improved and refined by conscious effort. The truest self is not necessarily the unguarded self. Just as an author deserves to be judged on his carefully edited final manuscript and not on a surreptitiously obtained first draft, so too perhaps critics should wait for the finished product — outward behavior — rather than seek access to the unedited, unconscious mind. As Banaji and Greenwald are careful to point out, people can overcome implicit biases through deliberate effort. [The Race Card, pp. 192-193]
You can watch an hourlong video of Prof. Ford talking about his book here.
The Information Management Skills that Employers Want
Some years ago, I published an article about Michel Fokine, an important choreographer active in the first decades of the twentieth century. I worked my way through huge amounts of archival material and primary and secondary literature to get as clear a picture as I could of this person who died before I was born.
One of the most memorable recollections I came upon — offered by someone whose name escapes me at the moment — was that pupils who came to classes Fokine taught found the classes mostly devoted to his choreographic ideals and ideas, with little direct attention to dance technique. The person in question explained that Fokine took it for granted that students would obtain technical training elsewhere and arrive at his classes with their technique already well-honed.
Something similar seems to prevail in the world of IT. The Society for Information Management (SIM) recently reported results of an online survey of senior business technology executives that included questions concerning the skills that are most important to them when recruiting for entry-level and midlevel positions. As Rob Preston, editor in chief of Information Week, explains in a column in the November 24 issue,
... in a global economy where technical functions are often handed off to contractors, and where companies increasingly are aligning their IT with suppliers, partners, and customers, employers are looking for people who can manage relationships and excel as part of far-flung teams, not just hammer out internal system and project requirements.
Preston's comment is his interpretation of the results of the SIM survey. It turns out that, when asked about skills most desired in entry-level and midlevel hires, the top items the executives cited are almost entirely non-technical:
Ethics and morals topped both employer wish lists, followed by such attributes as critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration and team-building, oral and written communication, and user relationship management.
Preston concludes, "Employers what well-rounded business pros with a deep technology grounding."
It is my own observation that employers in a wide range of industries where steady increases in productivity are an important component of growth are looking for a similar mix of business, interpersonal, and technical skills in the people they hire. As with IT — and some dance companies — the basic technical skills may be treated as table stakes, with the business and interpersonal profile of candidates becoming the main determinant of who gets hired.
21st Century Journalism XXX: The Savvy View of Office Politics
Kudos to Phyllis Korkki, writing in the New York Times on November 16 about "The Win-Win Way to Play Office Politics." In FAQ format, Korkki does a good job of concisely explaining the ethical way in which savvy people handle the political dimension of their work lives.
Korkki reports input from four experts/gurus (all female BTW):
understanding who has power and how decisions are made; being aware of how your managers and co-workers prefer to operate; adapting to the culture of your organization; and behaving and speaking in a way that helps you advance — and not hurt — your goals and those of your company.
Marilyn Puder-York, a psychologist and author of The Office Survival Guide. Key points: When you've engaged well in office politics, "you've enhanced your reputation with the right people." Effective involvement in office politics also means being able "to diffuse the conflicts that inevitably emerge in a group of people with different temperaments, needs, backgrounds, agendas and goals."
Franke James, editor of officepolitics.com and creator of a game called Office Politics. A key point: Pay attention to the interpersonal dynamics in your organization so that you "develop an awareness of the interrelationships and levels of influence that exist in your office and how those could affect your job and the work that you do."
The Distinguishing Features of Nonprofit Organizations
Cate Doty's article on "Training to Lead Nonprofits," which appeared in the November 11, 2008 edition of the New York Times, provides a summary of the activities that distinguish nonprofit organizations from for-profit enterprises. These activities are:
Fund-raising
Community engagement
Meeting ethical standards and legal requirements specific to non-profits
Volunteer management
Concomitantly, it is these activities that require focused attention when training individuals to fill leadership roles at nonprofits. The Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation at Arizona State University, founded in 1999, has identified five areas that their experience and research indicate are essential for nonprofit managers to study:
Governance — the legal responsibilities of boards of directors and how boards operate.
Financial management — the basic accounting and audit requirements for nonprofits. Subtopics include stewardship of the organization's assets, assurance of adequate resources, development and approval of an annual budget, current and year-to-date financial reports, and assurance that the organization is prepared for the annual audit functions.
Program knowledge — how to develop programming and evaluate its effectiveness.
Resource development — how to develop donor relationships that lead to effective fund-raising; foundation and corporate fund-raising.
Nonprofit law and ethics — what specific laws to know and how to understand and make decisions that are ethical and sound.
More detailed specs (pdf) for graduate and undergraduate degree programs have been developed by Nonprofit Academic Centers Council. (See yesterday's post for links to some resources that can help in developing training for people who are already at nonprofit organizations or who want to prepare for a career in the nonprofit sector.)
Case studies — A searchable group of over 100 case studies. Though all of the cases date to the 1992-2000 period, the lack of recency is generally not a problem because the situations depicted are timeless (e.g., conflict between a music organization's board president and its artistic director).1
Course syllabi — for both certificate and degree programs.
Curriculum materials developed by the Nonprofit Leadership and Democracy Project of the Union Institute Center for Public Policy.
I've spent some time looking through the case studies and offer the following as representative examples of what's available:
"New Stage Theatre" deals with "the special problems that nonprofit organizations have in developing budgets and devising management accounting systems." Teaching notes at the end offer suggested responses to the half dozen discussion questions that follow the case scenario.
"The Sports Medicine Program at St. Mary's Hospital" in just three pages of text provides a rich and realistic scenario for analysis. The situation presents both financial and HR issues.
"Where Loyalties Lie" raises fundamental questions about how a nonprofit should seek and use funds.
__________ 1 The case studies are sorted among the following categories (not mutually exclusive): Arts management, Ethics, Evaluation, Financial management, General management, Governance, Health administration, Human resources management, International, Marketing, Museum management, Organizational behavior, Public relations, Resource development, Strategic planning, and University administration.
As a follow-on to yesterday's post, I'd call attention to a comprehensive summary (pdf) of their Influence Model that Allan Cohen and David Bradford published in the Journal of Organizational Excellence in 2005.
(click to enlarge)
The whole article is twenty-four pages (including endnotes) and easy to read. Well-selected exhibits help you pick up quickly on the points Cohen and Bradford are making.
For example, Exhibit 2 lists the situations in which you are well-advised to make conscious use of the Influence Model:
The other person is known to be resistant.
You don't know the other person or group and are asking for something that might be costly to them.
You have a poor relationship (or are part of a group that has a poor relationship) with the group the other person belongs to.
You might not get another chance.
You have tried everything you can think of but the other person still refuses what you want.
Exhibit 6 is a helpful list of "Currencies Frequently Valued in Organizations":
Relationship-related currencies — acceptance/inclusion (feeling closeness and friendship), understanding (having concerns and issues listened to), personal support (receiving personal and emotional backing).
Personal-related currencies —gratitude, ownership/involvement (ownership of and influence over important tasks), self-concept (affirmation of values, self-esteem, and identity), comfort (avoidance of hassles).
Finally, Exhibit 8 is a brief checklist that helps keep in view all the main aspects of applying the model.
Application of Cohen and Bradford's model to a variety of work situations is spelled out in their book, Influence Without Authority, originally published in 1989 and updated in 2005.
You can get a taste of Influence Without Authority by reading a summary of the chapter on influencing your boss that is available here. The main theme of the chapter is that your best bet is to develop a relationship with your boss in which you act as a junior partner (i. e., you are not a mere underling).
The do's for a boss's junior partner:
Do stay loyal to the partnership's objectives.
Do place the good of your organization first, ahead of your own personal druthers.
Do value and take advantage of the differences in skills and perspectives between you and your boss.
Do tolerate each other's foibles.
Do give the boss the benefit of the doubt, i.e., assume that any bad behavior is due to misinformation or misguided views, rather than reflecting bad intentions.
The don'ts for a boss's junior partner:
Don't let your boss make big mistakes.
Don't let your boss inadvertently look bad.
Don't let your boss move along in ignorance of information he or she should know.
In sum: "The idea is to always be on the side of your boss, not an antagonist or critic. You are always seeking to help the boss meet his or her goals."
__________ 1 The graphic comes from influencewithoutauthority.com. The website also offers seven case studies illustrating application of the Influence Model.
Note that in the context of the Influence Model, "Currencies are anything that you and your potential ally value, and can exchange to get what you need to do your work."
Thanks to Google Books, you can sample the book's contents. For example, you might want to have a look at the substantial portion of Chapter 14, "Working through Client Conflict," that is included in the Google Books sections of the book.
In this chapter, Janoff and Cash-Smith discuss three keys to finessing the task of communicating a message to a client that likely to be viewed as disappointing or vexing, such as denying a claim, declining a request for additional services, or refusing to cut your agreed price for a project. These three keys are:
Deciding whether to use direct or indirect organization for your message.
With direct organization — the approach appropriate for most business communications — your main point comes first and is then followed by your rationale and supporting evidence.
In situations where you believe you need to soften the blow of what you have to say, indirect organization helps. This means opening with your rationale and saving the refusal or bad news for the latter part of your message.
Deciding whether to use active or passive voice.
Again there is a default which applies for most messages, and that default is the active voice. E.g., "We'll draft the brochure by October 15, and then you'll communicate any needed revisions by the 22nd."
For negative messages, the passive voice can be a better choice because it obscures who is responsible for an unwelcome state of affairs. E.g., instead of saying "We can't change the copy at this time and still stay within the budget," you may do better by adopting the passive voice: "It isn't possible to change the copy at this time and still stay within the budget."
Keeping your reader's needs and expectations at the front of your mind.
As Janoff and Cash-Smith explain, "You need to write with a sense of empathy, which means asking yourself how you would react if you were the reader of the message you are writing."
Indicate benefit to your client even though the basic message is negative. For example, instead of announcing "The enclosed documents must be approved before we can proceed," say "So we can proceed with your design work, please approve the enclosed documents." The goal is a gracious tone that highlights the value of what you're saying has to happen (or what you're saying can't happen).
The issue of tone comes up in another excerpt of the Janoff/Cash-Smith book that you might like to take a look at. On pages 18-19, you'll find a revision checklist. The checklist is divided into six sections, the last of which covers tone. The questions Janoff and Cash-Smith suggest asking yourself are:
Have you written your message in the appropriate voice for your purpose and reader?
Is it written with the right degree of informality?
Have you avoided slang words and clichéd language?
Have you omitted language that indicates sarcasm and anger from complaints and disputes?
Do you maintain a friendly but business-like tone?
The other sections of the checklist cover:
Focusing on your purpose and your reader's needs and expectations
Organization of your message
Conciseness
Clarity
Layout
The bottom line is that you need to cast any message in persuasive terms that are geared to maximize odds that the recipient will respond in the way you're hoping and minimize odds of seriously frayed relations.
Alerted by a report tonight on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, I've spent some time informing myself about the mission and activities of the Barefoot College.
The Barefoot College was founded in 1972 by Sanjit "Bunker" Roy in Tilonia, the village in Rajasthan, India, where he was living.
In its own words, the Barefoot College takes as its mission addressing
... problems of drinking water, girl education, health & sanitation, rural unemployment, income generation, electricity and power, as well as social awareness and the conservation of ecological systems in rural communities.
The College benefits the poorest of the poor who have no alternatives.
The College encourages practical knowledge and skills rather than paper qualifications through a learning by doing process of education.
You can get an idea of the work the Barefoot College is doing — not only in India, but also in other developing countries around the world — by watching the video below. Note that the women learning to install and maintain solar panels and lanterns at the Barefoot College are generally illiterate or semiliterate, but this does not prevent them from acquiring the necessary skills during six months of practical training.
The Barefoot College has a channel at YouTube where you can browse through addiitonal videos detailing its work.
