Managing Clarity & Performance

During a recent in-depth workshop on coaching, I asked everyone to bring me a copy of the form they used to record their coaching notes. During the break, I reviewed all the forms and found that everyone was using a different sheet. Furthermore, there was no coaching framework to improve performance. Mostly these forms were a way to record that an individual did something at work.

Over a dinner meeting that night, the CEO and I looked over all the different forms and discussed what was happening. Then in the middle of the night, I woke up and realized there were no goals on any of the sheets! I remembered the wonderful line form Alice and Wonderland where the books states, “if you don’t know where you are going, then you can get any where.”

I think our challenge as leaders this summer is to recognize that when people are managing performance, we should not consider goal setting as a known skill. Next, we should not consider working with goals as a known skill. Furthermore, we should not consider holding people accountable as a known skill. 

In the aforementioned organization, the whole focus of performance management was to just get stuff done and then get more stuff done. There were no individual goals connected to department goals connected to annual company goals etc. No wonder coaching was not working!

Upon reflection, I learned that when there is no framework for making sure there is on-going clarity, there will be no reason for coaching other than to acknowledge that people have gotten things done. 

Now when it comes to managing clarity and performance, every one these days just loves creating competencies models, implementing 360 degree feedback models, and having people fill out numerous strengths finder surveys. But my question is where do they cultivate an inside outside approach rather than an outside inside approach?

Now as a side bar, I have observed that 360 evaluations often create defensive reactions and result in little personal growth or change in behavior that lasts. Furthermore, they encourage people to simply deliver desired behaviors without giving them the personal insight and innovation to grow. In short, I agree with Kevin Cashman in his book, Leadership From The Inside Out: Becoming a Leader for Life, Berrett-Koehler, 2008, that 360 degree valuations create a formula destined to limit authentic influence by creating actors vs. leaders.

First, when successfully managing clarity and performance, let us remember that all change will depend on the willingness of the follower to do the work, and the ability of the follower to do the work. Regardless of what the leader does, the productivity and results depends on the actions and attitudes of the followers. Therefore, great leaders do not create followers. They create partners and colleagues.

Second, this whole process begins when we institute regular, quarterly performance management reviews. Here, we ask the following questions:

- How did you do on this quarter’s goals?

- Where can you improve your performance next quarter?

- What did you learn this quarter?

- What are your goals for next quarter?

- How did you role model our vision, mission and core values?

Next, we activate a talent development process. As Bill Conaty and Ram Charan point out in their book,  The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers, Crown Business, 2010, “The first thing to understand about talent masters is that they can identify a person’s talent more precisely than most people because they excel at observing and listening.”

The goal of this work, from my vantage point, is to increase cognitive bandwidth. This begins by always having key people reading something because this expands their perspective and understanding of “world-class performance,” and gives them new language. People who are “talent masters” discuss this reading with them, ask how they are applying this reading, help them discover or improve their talents, and help them to figure out how to measure their progress

As the same time, the above authors share an important insight. “Making talent development a goal that is measured and rewarded helps, but much of the work is done through role modeling. Leaders establish the code of conduct through their own actions, questions, and openness to differing opinions in the struggle to pin down each leader’s unique blend of traits, skills, judgement, relationships, and experience.”  

In sum, I agree with Kevin Cashman when he noted that “all significant change begins with self-change.” This week become the leader you need to be so others can become the people they hope to be.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

People Before Numbers

My search started during a conversation at the Spring 2011 From Vision to Action Executive Roundtable. As a small group of us explored issues related to performance management and talent development plus how to prepare for effective succession planning, I not only realized how inter-connected all of these issues were but I also realized that I wanted to know more about how very large companies integrated these elements into a coherent and consistent talent management system.

During the coming weeks and months, I started asking questions about this subject to a variety of leaders in many different organizations. While the answers were interesting, I just did not feel like I was getting my arms around the whole picture. Then, when reading a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review, I came across some information about a book published in 2010 that I had missed reading. It was authored by Bill Conaty, former Senior Vice President at General Electric, and Ram Charan, co-author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller book Execution. Their book, The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers, Crown Business, 2010, explains that “If business managed their money as carelessly as they managed their people, most would be bankrupt.” Together these two authors explain that talent is the leading indicator of whether or not the success of an organization happens over time. As they explain, “In the fast-changing global marketplace, the half-life of core competencies grows shorter.... Only one competency lasts. It is the ability to create a steady, self-renewing stream of leaders.”

Furthermore, Ron Nersesian, the head of Agilent Technologies Electronic Measurement Group, who is quoted within the book, points out, “Developing people’s talent is the whole of the company at the end of the day. Our products all are time perishable. The only thing that stays is the institutional learning and the development of the skills and the capabilities that we have in our people.”

The book, The Talent Masters, explores in-depth how a variety of companies like GE, P&G, Novartis, Hindustan Uniliver, and Agilent, create and manage their total leadership development systems including such elements as same-day succession planning, performance management, leadership development and career management. The essence of the book revolves around seven core principles. They are the following:

1. An enlightened leadership team, starting with the CEO who really “gets it” and sees talent development as a competitive advantage.

2. A performance-driven meritocracy, a willingness to differentiate talent based on results as well as the values and behaviors behind those results.

3. Explicit definition and articulation of values, citing strong company beliefs and expected behaviors.

4. Candor and trust, leading to better insights into people’s talents and potential, focusing on development needs to accelerate personal growth.

5. Talent assessment/development systems that have as much rigor and repeatability as systems used for finance and operations.

6. Human resource leaders as business partners and trustee of the talent development system with functional expertise equal to the CFO’s.

7. Investment in continuous learning and improvement to build and continuously update the leadership brand in sync with the changing world.

As I worked my way through the book, I enjoyed seeing how the principles played out in different companies and yet resulted in the same consistent and positive results. For those of you who are seeking new insights and perspectives on these subjects and have the time to read 302 pages, I believe you will find this book very worthwhile.

Geery Howe, M.A.Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer inLeadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational ChangeMorning Star Associates319 - 643 - 2257

A New Perspective on Training

THEME: New Year, More Challenges

FOCUS: A New Perspective on Training

Monday morning: April 5, 2010

Dear friends,

The world of training and development is going through a transformation. All subjects are being offered over the internet, because a digital trainers can be downloaded at any time and any place. Years ago, we talked about the importance of just-in-time training. Now, there is a just-in-seconds-or-less training options being offered via the internet. All an employee needs to do is plug in, power up, and then just sit and listen. The miracle of the digital economy is that everything is at your finger tips.

However, in my opinion, this way of learning is meaningless. It is nothing more than TV learning. In a world where everything is fast and getting faster, TV learning has a retention time period in the length of nanoseconds. I recognize that knowledge is dispensed but the form, does not assure that it is learned.

With this in mind, it is time for us to take a different perspective on training. The actual learning process at a company begins when prospective employees are interviewed for a job. The questions that are asked and the answers that are given define what is the best way to match talents with opportunities. It also defines cultural expectations about performance and organizational focus.

Once an employee is hired, national statistics indicate there is a 33% chance of turnover in the first six months. Rather than thinking of on-boarding as filling out paperwork and mandatory HR/Risk Management training, it is time to explore this period in a new light. First, we know that followers bond with leaders before they bond with strategic plans. Second, we also know that people quit who they report to, not always the companies where they work. Therefore, the on-boarding process needs to be the first step in a long bonding period where employees are clear about the culture of the organization, the expectations of the organization and mission of the organization. It also is the next step in relationship building which started during the interview process.

Years ago, I learned that “a loving person lives in a loving world, and an angry person lives in an angry world. Everyone you meet is your mirror.” When we envision on-boarding as more than meetings and begin to truly recognize that it is the foundation for long term employment, then we need to include in the initial relationship building time period, both mirrors and windows. Mirrors to understand where we are coming from as we enter into this new place of work and windows into how this new place of work responds and integrates with it’s service environment. Rather than thinking of this training and development time as an expense which will drain fiscal resources from the company, we now need to think of it as a continuum that will build sustainability into the organization’s strategy and culture.

In an article called “Secrets of an Operational CEO, in the January/February 2010 issue of Chief Executive magazine (www.chiefexecutive.net), Bob Nardelli, CEO of the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, and former CEO of Home Depot and Chrysler, notes “One of the basics in any recovery is finding the best talent. You can never ‘over-talent’ a job in today’s environment.” Later he explains how to develop a talent management strategy. “You have to take it [talent development] seriously as you do any capital investment. When I went to Chrysler, I spent about 240 hours going page by page over the top talent to understand who they were and what their backgrounds and aspirations were.... I had to dig deep to understand what talent I had and elevate some individuals to take some risk.... There’s a saying, ‘If you had a buck, you’d spend 99 cents on talent.’ Rings loud with me. If we’re honest, we all probably have leather-bound binders on the shelf with great strategies that no one will ever know about because we didn’t have the talent to execute them.”

This week rethink training and development. Start by drawing a line with hiring at the beginning to senior management at the end. Then, mark off critical points of learning along this line. The world of training and talent development is deeply connected to the mission of the organization, not just digital trainers on the internet.

Have a fantastic week,

Geery

Geery Howe, M.A.
Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in
Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change

Morning Star Associates
319 - 643 - 2257