The Performance Improvement Blog

How To Be A Courageous Trainer

Courageous Training is the title of a new book by Tim Mooney and Robert O. Brinkerhoff. Some people reading this title might leap to the conclusion that this is a book about training people to be courageous. In a way, that is true. But the “people” in this case are trainers and managers of trainers and anyone who contributes to learning interventions in organizations. If you view your job to be delivering training workshops and courses to employees, then this book is not for you. However, if you view your job as using learning interventions to improve the performance and results of your organization, then this book is definitely for you. Four leaders that view their jobs in this way, tell their stories of how training and development programs contribute to important results for their organizations.

When training fails to contribute to significant results, part of the problem is usually that the learners are not prepared to learn. The authors describe the problem in this way:

From interviews with and surveys of hundreds of trainees across scores of organizations, we find that the most common reason that trainees give for attendance in a training program is:”My manager sent me”…Ask these trainees what they will learn, how they will use their learning on the job, what performance applications they will be held accountable for, or other questions about the focus and intentions of the training, and they are mostly stumped. (p. 79)

Nobody should attend a training program, whether front-line technical or strategic-level leadership, without knowing the answers to these questions. To participate in training, regardless of content and format, without knowing why you are there, what you should learn, and how you will apply that learning to achieve results in the workplace, is a waste of your time and company resources. One of the things that courageous trainers do is make sure that this rarely happens.

U.S. Economic Crisis, Mokita, and Organizational Learning

In all the blaming and arm-chair quarterbacking that has been going on regarding the U.S. financial crisis, little is being said about the performance cultures of large financial institutions. In an article titled, Eyes on the Wrong Prize: Leadership Lapses That Fueled Wall Street's Fall, the author, quoting several Wharton School professors, attributes the problems with Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers, and AIG, the latest financial institutions needing rescue, to a lack of alignment between rewards and the factors that lead to organizational sustainability and to a culture that puts up barriers to employees surfacing important problems and risks in the market. Thomas Donaldson uses the term “mokita”, a term used by a tribe in New Guinea which means “…the truth that everybody knows but agrees not to speak about.” Donaldson is quoted as saying, "When it came to subprime and many of the other problems that have tripped up Fannie and Freddie and so many others, there was mokita."

This sounds much like what Chris Argyris wrote about in his 1990 book, Overcoming Organizational Defenses. In that book, he warned about workplace cultures that put up barriers to “discussing the undiscussable.” Would a trader in Lehman Brothers say to his boss that a particular investment is too risky for their clients, even when the potential payoff to the company is very high? Would a manager discuss business ethics with co-workers in a departmental meeting?

Of course, the U.S. Congress must consider new regulations that will hold large financial institutions accountable and the U.S. Treasury must consider interest rates and borrowing limits and many other financial factors. However, long-term solution must include the workplace culture of these organizations. What do they value? What do they reward? What kind of communication is encouraged? What kind of communication is discouraged openly and unintentionally by what is said and done by managers and co-workers?

Urgency

We all need “A Sense of Urgency,” according to John Kotter. I was alerted to his new book by that title in David Zinger’s employee engagement blog. According to Kotter, what looks like urgency in most organizations is not true urgency. Employees might be very busy, have full work schedules filled with meetings, and feel overloaded, but this doesn’t mean that they are achieving important outcomes that will make the organization successful. Kotter argues that in the current business environment of rapid change and increasing competition in all sectors, employees at all levels in an organization must be determined to do something every day to make that organization successful. In his manifesto, It All Starts With A Sense of Urgency, Kotter wrote:

True urgency is not the product of historical successes or current failures but the result of people, up and down the hierarchy, who provide the leadership needed to create and re create this increasingly important asset…A real sense of urgency is rare, much rarer than most people seem to think. Yet it is invaluable in a world that will not stand still. Complacency is pervasive, in part because it simply is not seen, even by many smart, experienced, and sophisticated people. A false sense of urgency is pervasive and insidious because people mistake activity for productivity.

I agree with Kotter that complacency (See my blog post about the “complacency syndrome.”) and a false sense of urgency are huge problems from the C-suite to the front-line workers in every organization. The current crisis in Lehman Brothers is a perfect example. The signs were obvious from the beginning of 2007, if not before, and yet it appears that it was business as usual for this leader among financial institutions, once the envy of the banking industry. They had grown complacent. And now the company is on the brink of being merged, sold, forced into bankruptcy, or bailed out by U.S. citizens. The Lehman situation makes the point clearly that urgency, as Kotter defines it, should be a national concern as well as an individual company concern.

Creating a “sense of urgency” requires a change in corporate culture. Kotter talks about “bringing the outside in”, which, for him, means getting data about opportunities and hazards and communicating that information to all levels of the organization. I think that companies often do not have to go “outside” for this information. Employees have the information; the problem is that they are afraid to tell the truth, or they only have a piece of the puzzle and someone else has to put all of the pieces together, or they don’t have the communication channels to get the information to people who can make the change that is needed.

We need to create cultures in organizations in which people feel safe in sharing what they know about opportunities and hazards and have the mechanisms to do so. Top leadership must set the tone for this and all managers must encourage an open and honest exchange of information at every level and among all departments. This will contribute greatly to creating a sense of urgency; to employees doing something important every day that helps the organization learn and change and achieve success.

Communication and Financial Performance

I am always suspect of self-serving studies done by consulting companies...probably because I have conducted these kinds of studies myself. But a recent study by Watson Wyatt Worldwide of the relationship between internal communication and financial performance of organizations grabbed my attention. One of the findings in particular surprised me. Referring to their 2007/2008 study they said:

Since the 2003/2004 study, there has been a decline in the number of companies that take the time to explain the reasons behind major decisions and give employees the opportunity to provide input into decisions that affect them and into how the work gets done.

Where have these executives been? Experience and research show clearly that for any kind of major change in an organization to be successful employees must understand the reasons behind the decisions and have an opportunity for input. Handing down edicts from on-high doesn't work. We all know this. Peter Senge wrote in 1990, in the Fifth Discipline, that organizations have a learning disability that prevents them from learning from their own knowledge and experience and the knowledge and experience of others. Apparently, the number of organizations that have this disability is increasing.

Experience vs. Inexperience: Who Should You Hire?

The importance a job candidate’s experience should have in the hiring decision has become an obsession of both major political parties in the U.S. during the current presidential campaign. All of the political commentators seem to be arguing both sides; that experience should and should not make a difference in “hiring” a President or Vice President. Democrats and Republicans are spinning the issue so fast, it’s hard to tell what they mean.

An article in Knowledge@Wharton, titled Unpacking Prior Experience: How Career History Affects Job Performance, is generating a similar debate about hiring experienced employees, which bring with them a set of values and learned behaviors from previous employers, vs. hiring new employees, which, in theory, come tabula rasa and can be more easily molded by the new culture. The authors, from their research, give the example of a talented insurance adjustor who had considerable experience in one particular insurance agency where he was rewarded for keeping down costs. He was hired into another agency where service to customers was more important than saving money. This caused problems for him and his new organization. The authors wrote:

It was so embedded in his ideas about how to do the job that even at this other firm, where management tried to instill the other set of values, it didn't translate...He had the skills to get up and running quickly in the [basics] of what an adjustor does, but ... he was ultimately not adaptable to the strategy and norms of the new firm. His experience tended to trap him.

This can sound like an argument for hiring the young and inexperienced person who doesn’t come with baggage. However, everyone, regardless of age, brings a set of values and behaviors with them. The intention should be to recruit and hire people who are a good fit with the attitudes and behaviors expected in the particular job and workplace culture. Experienced and inexperienced, young and old, should all be mentored and trained in the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs that will make them successful in the new environment. We shouldn’t assume that experienced hires have nothing to learn and we shouldn’t assume that inexperienced hires have everything to learn. Each person has to be taken from where he or she is and helped to get to where he or she needs to be...even future Presidents and Vice Presidents.

High-Tech Teamwork

A company in Ann Arbor, Michigan is a great example of a truly learning culture. Menlo Innovations has a work environment that encourages collaboration, teamwork, group problem solving, sharing information, and everyone understanding the customer from the customer’s point of view. Very unusual for any company, but especially for one that develops software solutions. But this is not your father’s software development company. See the workplace and hear Rich Sheridan, co-founder, talk about his company at the Ann Arbor News Weblog .