The Performance Improvement Blog

How to Manage Temporary Employees

Temps, independent contractors, contingent workers, and free-lancers have become the norm, not the exception. As I wrote in a post in March 2010:

Unlike previous recession recoveries, this one will not re-employ large numbers of laid off workers. Because of technology, operational efficiencies, a project focus, and out-sourcing, many companies are finding that they can be more productive with fewer employees. And because of uncertainty about the post-recession economy, they are reluctant to make new hires permanent. Employers have found that they can get the job done by supplementing their regular employees with temps. This gives companies the freedom to increase and decrease their workforce depending on what is needed at the time.

The May 10 issue of Crain’s Detroit Business confirms this prediction. The author writes:

Increased consumer demand, a greater need for flexibility and new health-care requirements are prompting businesses from Dearborn-based Ford Motor Co. to the PeaceHealth health-care system in Washington state to turn to staffing firms…The U.S. has added 913,200 temporary workers since the end of the recession in June 2009 – about 19 percent of all new jobs. Their number rose to 2.66 million in April, about 11,300 shy of the April 2000 record, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures released May 3.

Labor economists are predicting that the number of temporary workers will set a new record in the very near future. And this is without including all of the contracted services such as legal, PR, accounting, Web support, employee training, and management consulting.

Are business leaders prepared for this change in the workforce? How will managers help temporary workers maximize their contribution to the organization?  

BusinessWeek labeled them the “disposable worker”, a pejorative term but symptomatic of the way many managers view this segment of employees. This view is based on at least three misconceptions: 1) temporary workers are not committed to the work, they just want a paycheck; 2) temporary workers are not critical to the success of the organization; and 3) it’s not worth investing time, energy, and money in the development of temporary workers.

The truth is that most temporary workers want to do a good job and care deeply about the quality of their work. The work they do is often critical to the success of the organization. And if they are customer-facing, then they are shaping customer attitudes toward the company.

As far as investing in temporary workers, that time, energy, and money will have immediate payoff and, because you never know how long that person will work for the organization or how many times they will come back to the company in the future, it is worth the risk to train and develop that person. When they go elsewhere, they take the goodwill and learning with them which is good for the community and good for the reputation of the organization.

Regardless of how long temporary workers have been with your organization, they should be treated as important contributors to your success. Applying the 5As Framework, here are five things you should keep in mind when supervising these employees:

1)      Make sure that they understand how their jobs are aligned with the success of the organization. They should know how what they are being asked to do contributes to achieving business goals.

2)      Let them know that you anticipate that they will have a positive experience and that their work is significant. Communicate high expectations for their performance.

3)      Form an alliance with them for the purpose of their learning and success. Give them informal and formal feedback on how they are doing and how they can improve.

4)      Create opportunities and give encouragement to apply what they know and what they are learning to their jobs. Being temporary means that it is all that much more urgent to provide these opportunities.

5)      Measure their success and hold them accountable for doing a good job. This means being clear with them about the indicators of success and how you will help them achieve those outcomes.

It is easy to make the mistake of assuming that temporary workers are not the real workforce and do not deserve our full attention. That is, in effect, discarding a large and growing portion of the workers who can make our organizations successful. We need to embrace this segment and apply the same good practices to them that we use to develop any high performing and engaged workforce. 

Agile Learner; Agile Leader

I have to admit that prior to hearing Elliott Masie talk about “learning agility” last week at the virtual Human Captial Media Symposium for CLOs, the concept was not on my radar. However, aspiring to be agile myself (mentally and physically), I’m willing to learn something new and, maybe, discard some old notions about human development and leadership.

It appears that there are at least three definitions of learning agility being used in the field. Each is worth considering. One has to do with openness to experience, another has to do with adaptability to change, and a third has to do with the range of methods one uses to acquire new information and abilities.

In Learning About Learning Agility, a white paper from researchers at Teachers College, Columbia University and the Center for Creative Leadership, the authors argue that agile learners are effective leaders because they are life-long learners about leadership. They write that agile learners…

…show the willingness and ability to learn throughout their careers, if not their entire lives…Learning-agile individuals seek opportunities for growth and are able to process these opportunities in order to learn. They are open to new experiences, seek challenges, and are willing to introduce new ideas and question “norms”. Moreover, they are able to remain present in challenging situations, performing and adapting “on the fly”. Finally, learning-agile individuals understand that experience alone does not guarantee learning; they take time to reflect, seeking to understand why things happen, in addition to what happened.

The authors make the point that we usually judge people based on what they have done and what they already know when another, maybe better indicator of leadership success is how well they learn. This is a profound observation because it flies in the face of standard recruiting and selection practices. Do we throw out the resume and observe how people behave in novel situations instead?

Vicki Swisher, with Korn Ferry International, in a webcast says that organizations with learning-agile leaders succeed more than other organizations. These leaders adapt their leadership style and actions to the changing internal and external environments of their organizations. Agility, according to Swisher is about having the flexibility to change given the circumstances.

I would say that this kind of learning agility is most needed when leaders are under pressure to respond quickly and decisively. We know that when people are under stress they become less mindful, their perception of options becomes restricted, and they often make the most expedient and safest, rather than best, choice. Agile leaders are able to step back from these pressure situations, engage with others in a way that helps them see the range of possibilities, and make choices that are best for the organization.

Masie’s comments suggest a third definition of learning agility. This is the ability of leaders to find the information they need when they need it, to use a wide range of methods of learning (technology, social, practice, etc.), and turn that information into the knowledge and skills they need to be effective leaders in the situation. Being an agile learner by this definition means being able to sift through all of the sources of information that we have at our fingertips (literally), evaluate what is useful and what is not, and apply that information to solving problems and improving the performance of employees and our organizations.

 

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Culture vs. Control

The dust has settled a bit on the working-from-home issue which was stirred up about a month ago when Yahoo's 11,500 employees received an email from the HR department putting an end to “work-from-home arrangements” throughout the company. Apparently, Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo, is trying to change a culture that had lost the nimbleness and creativity that it needs in order to compete in the world today. Whether you agree with this action or not, it is clear that she needed to do something about Yahoo’s workplace culture and reign in the behavior of some folks who were taking advantage of Yahoo’s work-at-home policy.

Unfortunately, the media debate quickly focused on the future of telecommuting and the plight of working-mothers rather than on the real issue which is creating a culture in which everyone is focused on innovation and results. Sometimes, to change culture, especially in a large, complex, global organization in a fast-changing industry, one has to exert greater control in the short-term to create a culture in which collaboration and teamwork will be how work is done in the long-term.

In a results oriented culture, how one works is determined by what one needs to achieve. If that goal can be achieved by working from home, then that could be an option. If achieving a particular performance goal is best done by face-to-face contact with other employees, then being in the office is probably the answer. 

For example, if my work objective is to write code for a particular Web site transaction and I can write that code from home just as well as I can from the office, then maybe working from home is a good option for me. If my goal is to create a new look and feel for an online news service, and I need the creativity that comes from give and take with other employees, then I should be in the office.

The problem is not with working from home per se; the problem is how to achieve the intended results. To start with location without consideration for the performance goal is to put the proverbial cart before the horse.

If a CEO is concerned with how employees are using their time, then she needs to talk with her managers about helping these employees set goals and be accountable for achieving results. Often, employees are not clear about what is expected of them. In the absence of this specificity, they (like all of us) fill the void with their own ideas of what they should do and how they should do it (within a general policy). When their actions come into conflict with the goals of the organization, then leaders may have to institute controls on behavior until managers can shape the expectations of employees and create a culture that is aligned with intended outcomes.

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Meetings: Love Them or Leave Them

Why is it that after all that has been said and written about wasteful meetings, managers continue to conduct meetings that are unnecessary and wasteful?  Carson Tate writes in the New York Times:

The meeting culture that is dominating corporate America is unsustainable and unproductive.
How many meetings did you attend last week that didn’t even have an agenda? How many resulted in a new idea? And at how many meetings did you think, “Why am I even here?”

Time is a commodity. And time spent in a meeting should generate a return on investment. But how often do we think about our time that way, and set expectations for meetings to produce real returns? In my experience working with Fortune 500 companies, the answer is rarely. This is just one result of a meeting-intensive culture.

This problem is not new and neither are the solutions. The famous John Cleese video, Meetings Bloody Meetings, was first produced in 1976 and dramatizes humorously the ineffectiveness of most meetings. As I have written in previous posts, meetings are overused and under-designed. We can no longer afford to have meetings just because that’s what we do at 1:00 on Mondays, or because the planning committee has something to report, or because the COO wants to announce a new policy. These are not good reasons to bring people together, wasting their time and energy. 

Technology has been both a blessing and a curse when it comes to meetings. On the one hand, location is no longer a barrier to group conversations. Smart phones, tablet computers, and laptops are all devices that allow people to participate in meetings remotely. On the other hand, meetings can be called with little planning and often with little consideration whether this is the best use of everyone's time.

In his 2003 book, Making Meetings Work: Achieving High Quality Group Decisions, John Tropman offers
very practical advice on how to have a useful meeting. His research on this problem found that when leaders had successful meetings they almost always had these four features:

1. Their meetings were characterized by decision accomplishment. Decisions got made in these groups. Participants appreciated the sense of closure that almost always occurred.
2. There was little decision rework. The group did not have to get together to decide again something that had already been decided or, as likely, had been avoided.
3. The decisions were good. There was a feeling, buttressed by reality as time passed, that the work of the group was of high quality. These were not just decisions made to “get something done.” They were thoughtful and reasoned, and they were actions that made a difference to the bureau, company, or agency.
4. People had fun! These were meetings that participants looked forward to. There was a sense of enjoyment and involvement. Participants felt that their time was well spent. They felt the meeting they were in was the “real” meeting. It was an authentic team experience.

Meetings can be productive, meaningful, and fun. However, this requires leadership that is intentional about the design and facilitation of these gatherings. Meetings should have a plan, involve group decision-making, and create a collective sense of accomplishment. Otherwise, there is no need to meet. 

Invisible Gorilla Strikes Again

This time it’s radiologists. In a study reported by NPR, 83% of radiologists failed to see the image of a gorilla on slides that they were reviewing for signs of cancer.  The conclusion by reporter Alix Spiegel is:

… what we're thinking about — what we're focused on — filters the world around us so aggressively that it literally shapes what we see. So, [the researcher] says, we need to think carefully about the instructions we give to professional searchers like radiologists or people looking for terrorist activity, because what we tell them to look for will in part determine what they see and don't see.

This phenomenon of selective attention permeates our society. Drivers don’t see approaching bicycles and motorcycles. Police can’t always determine who’s the victim and who’s the perpetrator in a violent situation. Soldiers responding in a conflict don’t always see the innocent bystanders in their line of sight. Teachers don’t always notice when a student for whom there are low expectations suddenly does something extraordinary.

When I was a teenager, I along with others observed a socio-drama as part of a lesson in tolerance. In this theatrical event, a crime was committed. We were asked to say who committed the crime. To us it was obvious. When the action was repeated it wasn’t so obvious and we learned about how our prejudices and perceptions influence our judgment, especially in quickly evolving situations.

And I wonder about leaders of large, complex organizations.  Do they sometimes display "selective attention"? Do they look at but not see the signs of a failing business model? Do they look at but not see the signs of a recessionary economy? Do they look at but not see managers who are not doing their jobs effectively? Do they look at but not see customers who are dissatisfied and looking elsewhere. Maybe it’s denial, but it also might be an inability to see something that is unexpected. 

Curation: Making Sense of Digital Information

So much information; so little time. This is a universal dilemma of the 21^st century. We are inundated with email, tweets, blog posts, Linkedin updates and comments, Facebook news feeds and messages, rss feeds, in addition to old-tech media like newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio.  It’s more than the human brain can comprehend. But the solution is at our fingertips. It’s called curation!

The title "curator" used to be reserved for someone who cares for the content of large cultural institutions such as galleries, museums, and libraries. These people protect and organize collections of objects for the purpose of making them physically and intellectually accessible to researchers and the public. They are professionals who have the expertise and credentials to do this kind of work.

Now the activity of curation has moved into the mainstream. Technology allows consumers of information to also be curators of information.  Steven Rosenbaum, author of Curation Nation: How to Win in a World Where Consumers are Creators, writes:

…curation is about adding value from humans who add their qualitative judgment to whatever is being gathered and organized…there is both amateur and professional curation, and the emergence of amateur or pro-sumer curators isn’t in any way a threat to professionals.

We can use technology to select, organize, present, and evolve the information that we need. We can take charge of the flow by controlling quality, timing, and topics. Users can control amount as well as when and where the information is received.

I like the description of curation used by the International Arts Movement for their online publication, Curator. They write:

In keeping with IAM’s belief that artistic excellence, as a model of “what ought to be”, paves the way for lasting, enduring humanity, The Curator seeks to encourage, promote, and uncover those artifacts of culture – those things which humans create – that inspire and embody truth, goodness, and beauty. We do this through considering and grappling with the zeitgeist.

IAM has criteria for deciding which “artifacts of culture” they will collect and how they will make these materials available to the public. People who buy into their beliefs about culture and art, will appreciate the curation that this publication does for them.

It has been difficult enough to make sense of the large number of tangible art objects. Without curation, it is impossible for consumers of information to manage the amount of digital data and objects. As Rosenbaum puts it, “The world needs thoughtful filters.” He recommends that these filters do three things: 1) make choices about which data to include; 2) endorse a small set of information; and 3) provide clarity to the information provided.

Aggregators of online information, such as Scoop.it and Zite.com, serve a useful purpose, but they don’t make choices and don’t provide clarity. Curation takes the management of information a step further, adding value to the set of data by selecting what best fits the criteria of consumers and helping consumers understand the meaning and usefulness of the information.

Learning to be Great™ is an example of curation of digital objects. Jim Stilwell and I created the site to make high quality orphan, organizational improvement tools available to organizational leaders seeking to influence change. The site narrows down the set of tools to a manageable number and brings clarity to the application of these tools. All of the material, which comes from our members, is organized into an easy-to-search, three by four matrix. The matrix has three forms of tools: 1) surveys; 2) models; and 3) solutions; and four foci: 1) individuals; 2) teams; 3) whole organizations; and 4) communities. For each tool there is an explanation of how the tool should be used and under what circumstances, as well as features and benefits. Finding organizational improvement tools can be an overwhelming task for a leader. Learning to be Great™ curates the information for leaders, hopefully contributing to their success.

Specialized sites are needed to help users find the best resources within the digital morass of cyberspace. Search is time consuming and provides no quality control. Curation is needed to make sense of it all. 

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Hyper-Connectivity: Get Used To It! Educate for It!

Why is it that the economy is expanding but the number of high-paying jobs is not increasing (and possibly decreasing)? Tom Friedman in his New York Times op-ed column suggests that the answer to this question is the “Great Inflection”. This is a time of dramatic change in work and education due to technology. He writes:

Because of the way every industry — from health care to manufacturing to education — is now being transformed by cheap, fast, connected computing power, the skill required for every decent job is rising as is the necessity of lifelong learning.

Job seekers, employees, and managers need to prepare themselves for this change. The days of going to school, learning a skill, and working for a company until retirement have long since gone. If you don’t come well educated, familiar with the latest technology, but also ready to learn whatever is new, you are not likely to find a good-paying, career-shaping job.

I live in a region of the country where many new businesses are being started. However, these businesses won’t make a dent in overall unemployment. They are too small, require only a few highly skilled IT professionals, and don’t have jobs for the secretaries and entry-level folks who filled workplaces in the past. Some of these companies have been created to get flipped, so they outsource as much work as they can. The few employees who are hired by these companies are tech-savvy, but even so, they will have to continually reinvent themselves as these companies grow and morph.

At the same time, not much has changed in the way we educate students and train workers to accommodate this new workplace. We continue to emphasize K-12 schools, two and four-year colleges, as well as employee classroom training even though all of these are centuries-old, arbitrary constructions designed primarily for the benefit of teachers, not learners. These methods of educational delivery are reinforced by a system that rewards time in class, credit-hour production, and continuity at the expense of learning. These institutions are not adequately preparing learners for the “Great Inflection”.

The change that companies and their employees face due to technology is mind-boggling. Friedman
quotes Craig Mundie of Microsoft as saying:

…not just elites, but virtually everyone everywhere has, or will have soon, access to a hand-held computer/cellphone, which can be activated by voice or touch, connected via the cloud to infinite applications and storage, so they can work, invent, entertain, collaborate and learn for less money than ever before.

We need education and training that are in line with this fast changing world of work.  As Friedman points out, it’s not only a flat world; it’s also a hyper-connected world.

A perfect example of this point is Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village for orphan and vulnerable youth in Rwanda. A third world country but the residents and graduates of this village communicate with each other using Facebook. They are hyperconnected which has profound implications for how they will live and work in the years ahead.

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Learning and Performance Improvement in 2013

The Internet Time Alliance principals have made predictions for 2013. Charles Jennings offers this picture for the year:

A confluence of technology and improved connectivity, increasing pressures for rapid solutions and better customer service, and demands for higher performance, will force the hands of many HRDs and CLOs to refocus from models of ‘extended formal training’ to place technology-enabled, workplace-focused and leader-led development approaches at the core of their provision.

Clark Quinn predicts that “…we’ll see more examples of the notion of a ‘performance ecosystem’ of resources aligned around individual needs and responsibilities, instead of organized around the providing silos.” While he expects greater use of mobile devices to support individual needs and responsibilities, he thinks many organizations will fail to use these methods effectively.

Harold Jarche reminds us that “…work is learning and learning is the work in the network era…” However, he also believes that most organizations will continue to deliver formal courses and instructor-led training programs.

Jane Hart says that no matter what IT and T&D departments continue to do, individuals and teams will find ways to bypass these units and use technology to access what they need when they need it.

Jay Cross, similar to Jarche, argues that because of the speed and complexity of change, “Learning will continue to converge with work. Increasingly, workers will learn their jobs by doing their jobs.” He believes that “smart companies” will recognize the need for a management style that supports this kind of learning.

This group of thought-leaders seems to envision a world that is making strides away from classroom-based, formal learning and towards informal, social, mobile learning. My prediction is that 2013 will be a time of sorting out instructional delivery methods, with mobile devices taking center stage. But I don’t think there will be much overall gain in support of learning. The economic and legal pressures on organizations, perceived and imagined, will prevent most from adapting to the technological, social, and demographic changes that are going on around them.

To make learners accountable for their own learning, to push down responsibility for learning to customer-facing employees and project teams, and to engage workers in continuous performance improvement, means admitting that the way managers have been doing things might not be best for employees and it means giving up centralized control. This is difficult stuff for CEOs and other managers to accept.

So, while I hope the ITA prognosticators are right (Full disclosure: I have co-founded a business to support individual, team, whole organization, and community learning.), I’m afraid that 2013 is not going to be a year of substantive change in our organizations. Executives will talk a good game, and may even look like they are adapting to the new reality, but when faced with a choice most will opt for the familiar and safe path. 

Managing to Outcomes in Nonprofit Sector

This is the traditional time to reflect on trends observed during the past year. One major trend I have observed is performance management of nonprofit organizations. Actually, this is an accelerating trend that got its impetus from Peter Drucker decades ago. Nonprofits are becoming more and more focused on what McKinsey & Company calls “managing to outcomes”.  

I know, you thought all organizations managed to outcomes. Not so, particularly in the social sector. Nonprofits have been more like manage-to-what-makes-you-feel-good or manage-to-spend-the-money. It has been less about results and more about the process of doing the work and providing services. Now a shift is occurring towards greater recognition of the importance of measuring outcomes and using that information for learning. That is, learning how to be a more effective organization and how to increase impact of programs and services.

If your organization is involved in philanthropic activity, if you serve on the board of a nonprofit organization (or NGO), or if you work for a nonprofit or a philanthropic foundation, or if you donate to nonprofits, then you should pay special attention to this trend. It will affect what you do and how your money is spent.

This intensified focus on outcomes and learning is a result of a confluence of factors in the growing and increasingly important U.S. nonprofit sector (According to the Foundation Center, “In 2010, nonprofits contributed $804.8 billion to the gross domestic product (GDP); this equates to 5.5 percent of GDP… the nonprofit sector employed 13.7 million people.”). The factors that are contributing to the change include:

• Increasing demand for services for the poor, the disadvantaged, the elderly, and the marginalized
• Less public money for social programs (Mario Morino calls this the “Age of Scarcity”.)
• More people, and a wider spectrum of people, interested in “doing good”
• Greater demand by social investors for evidence of impact
• Greater demand from policy-makers for evidence of impact
• More leaders on nonprofit and foundation boards who want to see results
• Increasing professionalization of the sector (e.g., MBAs leading large nonprofits)

So the need for services is growing while resources are dwindling and, at the same time, funders and boards of directors want more accountability and more impact from their investment. Because of all of these factors, there is pressure on the sector to develop more efficient and effective organizations. These are organizations that embrace a culture of measurement and performance improvement. Mary Winkler of the Urban Institute emphasized this point when she said:

…organizational culture and a predisposition to measurement and managing toward results is perhaps the single most important ingredient to success. A culture of continuous improvement needs to be evidenced at the top. Equally important, however, is the extent to which the culture of continuous improvement is integrated at every level of the organization. 

That means having leaders who are willing to learn from what they do and apply that learning to improving organizations, as well as their programs and services. This is not an easy transition for many of these leaders who have been accountable for only process and output in the past. They will need the support of funders, staff, constituents, consultants, and the public at large, to make this change.

Learning to be Great Organizations

In a previous post, I wrote about the importance of democratizing organizational learning. I argued that organizations need to be continuously learning for the purpose of improving performance and achieving business goals. And in another post I wrote that for this to happen, organizational leaders need tools. That is, they need methods for learning from the organization and for learning how to learn from the organization. I wrote, “If we are going to democratize learning in organizations, we need to teach everyone how to learn and how to use tools to discover useful information. We need to make learning tools accessible to all employees when and where they need them.”

Developers of organizational learning tools, whether they be faculty, internal leaders, or free agents, have very few outlets for getting those tools to the people who need them in a fast and cost-effective way. Major publishing houses take too long, cost too much, and have limited distribution channels. Penelope Trunk addresses this problem in her blog post, “From PR to profits: the problems with publishing.” One could challenge her motivation for writing the piece, but her criticism of traditional book publishing, from my experience, is accurate.

Many tools, such as employee surveys, graphical representations of models, or steps to solving organizational problems, do not require a book. These tools could be made available in shorter forms and without all the trappings of a best seller. However, simply posting materials on the author’s Web site is not the answer either.

Another avenue for distribution is professional associations. These guilds develop and sell their own materials as a major source of revenue. They often work with a select cadre of member-authors and the products can be quite pricey. The American Evaluation Association is an exception to this with their AEA365 blog, a vehicle for any member to post an article and links to related resources. It is intended to be a free exchange of information and tools among members. The Employee Engagement Network is another example of a place to share information about tools for improving performance, specifically by increasing employee engagement. Although both sites serve an important purpose, neither is designed for authors to publish tools or for managers to find what they need when they need it.

It is wonderful that many free resources are available within professional communities. However, an alternative is needed where creators of organizational improvement tools can distribute those tools quickly and easily to any leader when and where those tools are needed.  And to make high quality tools available, creators must be compensated, even in a small way, for their expertise and effort. This is the space that my business partners and I hope to fill with Learning2BGreat.com.  Anyone who has created materials that can be used for organizational improvement may sell their wares from the site. The author decides what it is worth and sets the price. Anyone who needs a tool to help them help their organization may purchase and download the appropriate tool from the site. The tools are organized in topics and linked to information about the authors. L2BG is a virtual marketplace for connecting professional resources with the people who need them, on-demand. This ecommerce site is an experiment that we hope will continue to grow and have a profound effect on improving organizations of all types.