The Performance Improvement Blog

The Course Catalog Is (Should Be) Dead

Recently, I was asked a very thought-provoking question by the director of HRD for a large organization. I was explaining the “5As Framework” to her and she asked, “What are the implications for what we do here?” I immediately launched into my usual speech about getting managers of learners
involved in actively supporting the learning process. This led to a discussion of all the excuses she hears from managers to explain their lack of involvement in employee learning. It wasn’t until later, after further rumination, that I realized the better answer to the director’s question is, “Throw out the course catalog!” 

Like HRD departments in many large organizations, each year they offer a long list of courses and programs that have all of the current buzz words in their titles. I have no doubt that her department delivers excellent, world-class courses and programs. And I’m sure employees enjoy the courses and even say that the knowledge and skills will be very useful to them in their work. However, I’m also quite sure that very little has changed in the wider organization as a result of the many outstanding events put on by this unit. The problem is the lack of alignment between event-based instruction and important business results.

The competency model, which provides the underlying theory of event-based training, is doing a disservice to the current needs of organizations. Training and development professionals seem to believe that if they can identify the competencies that people need in order to do their jobs and then offer courses to teach those competencies, employees will be more productive and successful. The problem with this way of thinking is that performance has as much (if not more) to do with work culture as it does with job competencies. To be successful, employees need supervisors and co-workers who are supportive of learning and performance improvement, they need a supervisor/boss/mentor who talks to them regularly about learning and results, they need the opportunity to apply new learning and to receive feedback, and they and the organization need to be held accountable for learning and results. If there is this culture of learning, employees will continually improve performance.

According to my colleague, Ralph Jacobson, we have to change the local environment so that people actually “work differently”, not just learn how to work differently. All the courses in the world will not change behavior and improve results unless the local culture supports change. At one time, when jobs were static and organizational change came slowly, a menu of well-designed courses was sufficient. Now, when change has to happen rapidly, when we have to find ways to lower the cost of learning, and when we have better and better online, just-in-time, mobile learning resources, event-based learning is no longer the best answer.

We must provide learning experiences to people when and where they need it and in ways that optimizes application to achieving important business results. We need training and development that is timely, short duration, and project-focused. We need frequent on-the-job feedback from supervisor/boss/mentor to employee. For example, leadership skills are best taught during a challenging, team project while the leader is trying out new behaviors and receiving ongoing feedback from a coach. This way of learning will have much more impact on performance than a course or conference on leadership.

What do you think? Can we throw out the course catalog?

Improving Communication in High Performance Organizations

My colleagues, Leslie Stambaugh and Jim Stilwell, and I have published an ebook to illustrate principles and best practices of effective communication in organizations. Leaders in every organization in which we have worked have told us that their organizaion had a "communication problem." The
communication problem bucket is very large, making it quite easy to pour most organizational concerns into it. Lack of productivity, lack of efficiency, failure to meet budget requirements, failure to meet market demands, delivery of products to customers that are out-of-the-box failures, and a whole host of departmental, team and interpersonal issues are all attributed to a “communication problem.” No doubt there is some truth to this attribution, but what does it really mean when people say they have a "communication problem?" These problems can be extremely complex because of the multiple factors that cause messages to go awry.

We have created scenarios (short, fictional case studies) from a composite of our own experiences that reflect many of the assumptions stated above. These scenarios  provide reality-based situations that are typical of what managers face in most complex organizations. The situations are:

• Facilitating Cross-Functional Projects
• Planning for Organizational Change
• Building Support for Organizational Change
• Collaborating Between Teams and Non-Team Members
• Resolving Conflict Among Team Members
• Organizational Transparency
• Communicating Down the Organization
• Communicating Up the Organization
• Building Trust in Leadership

For example, the chapter titled, "Facilitating Cross-Functional Projects," starts out with this story: 

Bill Smith, VP of Sales at High Tech Inc, and his leadership team, had gathered feedback from customers and concluded that the sales department needed a major reorganization. Customers were complaining that they were no longer receiving the customized solutions they had come to expect from High Tech Inc.  

Originally, the department had been regionally-focused, with U.S., China, and India sales offices providing services to all industries, types, and sizes in their specific regions.  This strategy had been extremely effective during the past ten years as High Tech Inc was perfectly positioned to take full advantage of the rapid regional growth in the computer industry. However, new entrants into the market had increased competition making the old structure no longer effective.  

Based on the customer feedback, Bill and his team determined that there was a clear need for change.  They decided that the structure that would enable High Tech to compete most effectively was to change from five U.S. regionally-focused sales offices and two global offices (China and India) to one centralized office with salespeople dedicated to particular industries and sizes of companies. They also understood the magnitude of this change and potential impact it would have throughout High Tech. To make a change of this size, Bill and his team would need company-wide support.

This situation requires careful planning of an organizational communication strategy. What would you do? How would you handle communication with the sales force and the wider organization? How would you ensure buy-in from all of the stakeholders? Our book offers suggestions and explains the principles that should guide managers through this situation and other similar challenges to effective communication.

 

Evaluating Training Through Stories

Participants rated the management training program 4.3 on a five-point scale. Sixty percent said that they have applied the training to their work. What do we know about effectiveness of the program? Not much.

We cannot determine from this data if the management training program made a difference for the organization. If it didn't make a difference, there is little reason to continue to offer the program to managers in the same form. Unless we’re talking about a training company, training is a means to an end, not an end in itself. This is how Maggie Bayless, head of training at Zingerman’s, a “Small Giant” company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, describes this link between training and business results. She is quoted In an interview for a local magazine:

"We call it ‘bottom line training,’ Bayless explains, “because we know that the purpose of Zingerman’s businesses isn’t to train staff. For The University of Michigan, one of their bottom lines is education; that’s why they exist. But Zingerman’s wasn’t launched with the idea of creating an organization where we train staff. Zingerman’s was created to be an organization where people delivered a great experience, with great food and great service. To do that, we need to train staff effectively.”

 “So in order for it to make sense to do training,” Bayless explains, “it has to improve food quality, improve service quality, or improve financial results. Those are our three bottom lines; that’s why we’re here. Otherwise, we shouldn’t be doing it.”

So, if the purpose of training is to achieve bottom-line results, then we should measure how and to what extent the program does that and what the organization needs to do to improve results in the future. A “smile sheet”, or even a follow-up survey, is not going to give you this information. We must tell the employee's story. That is, we must create a narrative that clearly explains the causal links between what people learned in the training program, how they applied that learning, and what the effect was on business results. In addition, the story should describe what the organization did and did not do to facilitate learning and results (e.g., providing an opportunity to apply newly learned leadership skills).

David Zinger describes the power of stories in his blog post, "Employee Engagement Stories: Altering Our Personal GPS." He writes:

Stories are the building blocks of understanding. We understand the world through story. Story is not just something we read in a book or see in a movie. Story is how we make sense of ourselves, situations, and others. Stories function as fundamental building blocks of understanding and also as a social GPS. Stories are the conclusions, judgments, hypothesis and assumptions about what we see and hear. Stories are the way we communicate with ourselves.

It’s like evaluating a summer car vacation by counting the miles driven, gas used, days on the
road, and money spent. All nice to know, but it’s the experiences along the way, anticipated and unanticipated, that make the trip meaningful and memorable.  

 

St. Jude Trains Its Leaders

We could have been invited to speak about org charts, making tough decisions, managing finances, etc. Instead, we were asked to talk about vulnerability, trust, and engagement. This is what my co-presenters and I did at a one-day leadership program for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital last week. This exceptional pediatric research and treatment center recognizes that it needs to keep learning and that the intra/interpersonal aspects of leadership are as important as the mechanics of managing hospital departments and labs.  

I facilitated a workshop on the leader’s role in ensuring the success of employee learning and development programs.  Brené Brown gave a keynote address about how everyone's sense of vulnerability and shame can be a barrier to leading. Greg McKeown had St. Jude managers 
thinking about how they can make the people around them smarter, more motivated, and more successful. Jim Ferrell talked about minimizing the self-deception we all do as both individuals and organizations. Rich Brandt emphasized the importance of leaders building trust and engagement. And Carl Cohen described the interpersonal dynamics of leading biomedical research teams effectively. The day provided a tremendous learning opportunity for St. Jude’s managers to become more effective leaders. 

 

College Completion Matters

If companies care about having high performing managers, they should become involved in supporting high quality K-12 and post-secondary institutions. They should care deeply about government policies and legislation that affect education for all students. Success in the workplace is related directly to success in college and success in college is related directly to success in K-12 schools. Managers who cannot read and write at college level  or don’t understand the math needed in automated, computer-driven, 21^st century companies will not be successful and, worse, will be a detriment to their organizations. Managers today need the kind of critical thinking and creative problem solving that one can learn in good educational institutions. Businesses need schools and colleges to help more people complete a post-secondary education with the basic knowledge and skills for the modern workplace.

The research supports this emphasis on completion. Lou Glazer, President of Michigan Future, Inc., reports a high correlation between the percentage of college graduates in a region and the vitality of the economy in that region. Speaking of Michigan, he writes:

Human capital is the asset that matters most to knowledge-based enterprises. Michigan’s fundamental economic challenge is that we rank 34th in the proportion of adults with a four-year degree. States without concentrations of talent will have great difficulty retaining or attracting knowledge-based enterprises and are unlikely to be the place where new knowledge-based enterprises are created. 

In a more recent blog post, Glazer writes:

…all the evidence is that the premium for college attainment is increasing. The gap in pay between college educated adults and those without has been growing for decades. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that life time earnings of those with a four year degree is a million dollars more than for those with a high school degree.

And job growth is coming in those industries where college educated workers are most concentrated. From 1990 to 2007 job growth in what we call high education sectors (predominantly health care; education; finance and insurance; information; and professional and technical services) was twice that in the rest of the economy (primarily manufacturing, hospitality, transportation, construction, retail and temporary services). And during the Great Recession those trends accelerated. Of the 8 million lost jobs, 7.6 million came in the low education attainment sectors.

President Obama has made college graduation a high priority of his administration because of the evidence that connects education to jobs. This week Vice President Biden announced an initiative to reward states and schools that are doing something significant to increase their graduation rates. The administration has set a goal of 8 million additional college graduates by 2020.

The College Board has set a goal of 55 % of the 25 to 34 age group achieving a post-secondary degree by 2025. They write:

The United States ranks fourth out of 36 nations in terms of postsecondary attainment for citizens

ages 55 to 64 years old. The United States is fourth behind the Russian Federation, Israel and Canada in the percentage of citizens with postsecondary degrees.  However, among 25- to 34-year-olds, the United States falls to 12th in degree attainment. For this key demographic group, Canada, Korea, the Russian Federation, Japan, New Zealand, Ireland, Norway, Israel, France, Belgium and Australia have managed to leap ahead of the United States, while Denmark and Sweden are close to parity with the United States.

One can quibble with the notion of a causal relationship between a post-secondary education (one-year certificate, two-year associates degree, or four-year bachelors degree) and an increase in jobs and income. It is clear, however, that there is a significant relationship and, given this, it seems to be in the best interests of all of our institutions (business, nonprofits, government) to encourage and support post-secondary education for all students.

 

Retaining High-Impact Employees

As we crawl out of the recession, high performing employees will be in greater demand than ever (See blog post: The Coming Turnover Storm.). What are you doing to keep them? Kelly Goldsmith, professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and Marshall Goldsmith, executive coach and author, offer excellent advice for retaining these valued employees. They contend that companies need to do essentially six things to keep their talent: 1) show respect for them; 2) create a work environment in which they can thrive; 3) provide ongoing training and education to them; 4) develop a coaching relationship with them; 5) provide continual feedback to them; and 6) involve them in decision-making.

They make the case that developing these “high-impact” employees is strategically important to a company. They write:

Developing people is a strategic process that adds value to both the employees and the bottom line of the organization. Highly committed, highly competent people create financial rewards for the organization; organizations that develop their people and provide opportunities for growth are sought-after by high-impact performers. Great leaders know this simple formula. They understand it and strive to create an environment that supports it. And the result is success!

The tendency of executives is to assume that employees are motivated by money and that if they are paid well, they will stay with a company. Money is a motivator but it is not the only motivator and often it is not the strongest factor in retention. The opportunity to develop one’s skills and abilities, to continue to learn, and to feel respected and valued, are stronger drivers of retention for many high performing employees.

And this is not only true for high performers; all employees are happier and more productive when they feel respected, are developing their abilities, can contribute to the success of the organization, and are involved in making important decisions. The Goldsmiths' recommendations for retaining high-impact employees are also the characteristics of a high performance organization. 

 

Does Your Organization Suffer From ADD?

Organizations, as well as children, can have ADD (attention deficit disorder)? Do your managers have trouble keeping their attention focused on new performance-improvement initiatives? Do they get excited about new management models and new (or reconstituted) management/leadership theories but lack the persistence to follow through on implementation. Many executives, because either they are desperate to achieve performance goals or they are afraid they will miss out on the latest management trend, will flit from one new program to another. Wally Bock aptly describes this phenomenon in reference to a client who worked in an ADD organization.

He worked for a large company for seven years. In that time, the company had at least one management fad per year. They found their cheese, learned about some fish market, discovered their strengths, and tried to master the carrot principle. When they found that they couldn't balance their scorecards, they aspired to develop into Level 5 Leaders. They only got to level 1 before they moved on to something else.

Each “fad” could be helpful to managers in this company, but by not following through on one method and giving it a chance to take hold and improve the management practices of the organization, two detrimental things happen. First, the company wastes time, energy, and money on activities that do not help the organization achieve its goals. Second, the company creates a culture in which employees don’t want to commit themselves to new initiatives because they assume management will move on to something else within a short time. Managers might go through the motions of attending training events, or company-wide meetings, or becoming familiar with a new method. However, if they are not committed to change, they will not support implementation. They will not talk about the new approach with the people they supervise, they will not provide resources for the initiative, they will not make time available for teams to work on related projects, and, worse, they might intentionally sabotage efforts to change anything.

Then the management method gets blamed for a lack of results.

• “We tried lean six sigma but our quality ratings didn’t improve.”
• “We gave all of our managers 360 feedback and they still don’t talk to each other.”
• “We sent everyone to three days of emotional intelligence training and it seemed like things improved for awhile but now it’s back to where we were before.”

Usually the problem is not the method; it’s the way the method is implemented. If managers don’t see how the method will help them achieve important business goals, if managers don’t have clear expectations for learning and success, if managers aren’t being supported by their bosses, if managers don’t have any immediate opportunities to apply the new method, and if managers aren’t held accountable and rewarded for applying the method, then the company can’t expect to reap any significant benefits. Like a diet, it doesn’t matter which one you choose. It could be Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Zone, or Biggest Loser. You won’t be successful unless your goal is clear, you have support from others, you are persistent, and you get feedback on your progress.

 

Just-In-Time Learning

Facts and figures everywhere…not a drop to drink (my apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge).  We are inundated with information and advice about what leaders should and should not do. Books and blogs are full of ideas. The problem is in having easy access to the best of this information when and where we need it.

Mobile tools have promise in this regard. In their simplest form, mobile phones and PDAs of various types provide ready access to the Web. Wally Bock identifies some Web sites that are rich resources of information. Clark Quinn writes about mobile learning and also formal social learning and informal social learning as formats that open up tremendous possibilities for providing information where it is needed. He argues that integrating these technologies will do things for us that our brains can’t do. It’s not only about accessing information; it’s also about processing that information in creative and useful ways.

RealTime Performance has a product called Inspire which is an example of making information useful to leaders. Inspire is “…a web-based tool that empowers employees to take ownership of their leadership development by enabling them to build, drive and track their own leadership development plan.” From that tool, RealTime Performance has created something that they call Inspire 10X10 which is 10 tips matched with 10 resources on topics that are most important to managers and leaders in organizations today. 

RealTime Performance has done the work of taking mountains of information on leadership/management skills and synthesized it down to short, useable suggestions and then paired those suggestions with books, videos, and other materials that a manager can use to delve into in more depth. You can download a free example of Inspire 10X10, the one on Building and Developing Talent.  

However, even with a tool like Inspire, to really learn, that is, to really internalize these tips and make them part of the way we work, most of us need help from others. We need to understand in conversation with others how managing in this way will help us be successful, we need opportunities to practice these skills, and we need feedback on how we are doing. This is where a boss, supervisor, or coach comes in. They can provide a relationship that facilitates and reinforces learning. Knowing what to do is only part of learning; we also need others to help us with goal-setting, practice, and feedback. 

 

McKinsey Discovers What We Already Knew About Training Impact

Only a fourth of respondents to a McKinsey survey said that their training programs made a measurable difference in business performance. This survey was conducted online in January 2010 and received responses from 1,440 executives “representing the full range of regions, industries, functional specialties, and seniority.”

I wrote about this lack of training impact almost 20 years ago in a book that I co-authored with Robert O. Brinkerhoff titled, “The Learning Alliance: Systems Thinking in Human Resource Development”. At the time, we were using the estimate of only 10% to 20% of training having an impact on business results. In 20 years, that measly percentage hasn’t changed much.

The key to increasing impact, according to McKinsey, is to have the direct, active support of senior leaders. The McKinsey investigators write:

Given how important skilled workers are, companies must do better at creating them. When senior leaders focus on making training work—and get personally involved—improvement can come rapidly. The content of the training itself is not the biggest issue, though many companies could certainly improve it (see sidebar, “Getting training content right”). The most significant improvements lie in rethinking the mindsets that employees and their leaders bring to training, as well as the environment they come back to afterward. These are tasks only senior leaders can take on.

I couldn’t agree more. I wrote about this in the early 90s and recently reiterated the importance of senior leader involvement in a book I wrote with Sean Murray titled, "The 5As Framework". Over and over again, studies of the business impact of training provide evidence that senior-leader involvement, as well as learner-manager involvement, are essential to achieving business results from training. So why are organizations resistant to involving senior leaders in supporting learning? Do these companies enjoy wasting 75% to 80% of their investment in employees?

 

Can a Workshop Change Behavior?

Companies invest billions of dollars on half-day, full-day, and multi-day workshops with the hope that these one-time events will somehow make a difference. Vendors, who would rather sell workshops than results, are eager to claim that their product will make a difference. So it is a marriage made in heaven. What companies don’t know much about is if these one-time workshops truly change behavior significantly.

In the latest issue of T+D, Laurie Carrick takes on this question as it relates to developing emotional
intelligence (EI) competencies in leaders. She writes about conducting an extensive evaluation of a four-hour, EI workshop for 11 people in a company. She describes her measures in this way:

…this study included pretest quantitative Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) assessments and qualitative behavioral event interviews. The participants completed the EQ-i assessment before participating in the one-hour interviews that took place 30 days prior to the learning initiative. The participants attended the training class (learning initiative), which included the distribution of the EQ-i pre-assessment results. Six weeks after the learning initiative, each participant received a 90-minute critical incident interview session combined with a 30-minute coaching session and program evaluation…Three months after the learning initiative, the participants completed an EQ-i self-assessment post-test.

Carrick concludes from her findings that while the workshop raised awareness of EI, it was the combination of the workshop and post-workshop coaching that resulted in competency development. I am not surprised by this conclusion but I think she has missed one of the key factors in learning: the evaluation activity. Her study brought unusual attention to the workshop and EI, heightening the perceived value within the company. The regular assessments caused participants to reflect on the meaning of EI, their learning, and application of that learning. The evaluation process must have shaped expectations and reinforced learning. I would have to conclude that it was not only the workshop and post-workshop coaching that made the difference, but it was also the evaluation process itself that contributed to competency development.