The Performance Improvement Blog

Coaching Results

The Winning Teams Blog alerted me to a recent study of coaching. Defined as a relationship between an organizational leader and a consultant to improve work performnance,this study is evidence that coaching has solidified as an important tool in the development of successful organizational leaders. Commissioned by the American Management Association, the Institute for Corporate Productivity conducted an online survey of U.S. and Canadian managers (854) and directors (176) in international companies during December 2007 and January 2008. Both respondent groups had a relatively large percentage who were HR managers. That said, the findings and conclusions are noteworthy. The investigators wrote in their report:

This study confirms that external and internal coaches have a role in executive leadership development that improves organizations’ productivity and profitability. This study also confirmed that the more frequently respondents used a formal process to measure results, the more likely they were to be successful in their coaching programs... Generally speaking, our team believes that coaching will continue to expand and mature as an important leadership development practice. We expect that coaching will become one of the keys to developing and retaining scarce talent in the future, and we think companies that learn to leverage it well will have a significant competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

I commend the authors of the ICP report for the clarity of the results and their candor in describing the survey method and instrument used to conduct the study. This helps consumers of this information make their own judgments about the validity and reliability of the findings.

However, one point of contention that I have with this report is the suggestion that ROI, a business indicator of financial value of something, is the sine qua non of evaluation. On the contrary, if by ROI, they mean a mathematical calculation of the financial value of results compared to what it cost to achieve those results, the time and energy to calculate ROI usually does not make it worth the effort, especially given that it is never coaching (or any other single performnance intervention) alone that makes the difference. Many other factors come into play. And even if you could sort out which factors contribute to change, you still would not know how and why coaching resulted in the bottom-line result. Rather, I recommend constructing through interviews a story (narrative) of the coaching process and its link to outcomes. In that way you are more likely to be able to describe the specific way in which coaching contributed to change in the coachee and the organization. Besides, most executives are influenced more by an illustrative story than they are by a ratio of dubious origin.

Mission Possible

Major urban universities are getting serious about collaborating with other institutions and stakeholders to build the local workforce and improve the economic and social vitality of their communities. Of course, universities have always been major employers in their communities and individual faculty and many departments have a long history of projects that help local schools, hospitals, and businesses, but total university commitment to community transformation has been rare. I was privileged to be asked to help facilitate one of the planning sessions at the annual summer meeting of the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU). Their mission is to…

… partner with cities and metropolitan regions to prompt transformative investment in these urban areas to: ✦ Develop human capital and create a workforce ready to compete in the new economy of the 21st century, ✦ Revitalize neighborhoods and increase economic development, and ✦ Reduce health disparities and improve community health. USU will achieve this through research, strategic initiatives, and collaborative action.

No doubt the 39 member institutions of the Coalition have the best of intentions. However, they are facing a very difficult challenge given their missions and traditions. Universities, especially the large, research universities, do not embrace collaboration easily. The traditional mission of the academy (i.e., research, publication, grant-getting, teaching, and service to the academy and one’s profession) and its primary activities are not aligned with what it takes to transform communities (i.e., cooperation, teamwork, equity, mutual support, inclusion, systems view of problems, and patience). Faculty are rewarded for individualistic, self-directed, independent, narrow courses of research and teaching. For universities to participate in their communities as equal players who approach problems from a systems perspective, they must make a dramatic shift in mission, values, and practice. This can be done as long as these institutions accept that internal change is needed before they can contribute successfully to change externally.

Learning Creativity

Teaching creativity is as important as teaching literacy in schools…according to Sir Ken Robinson. He argues that we live in extraordinary times when nobody can predict the future, not even five years from now (See his talk at the 2006 TED conference on BizzFlip.). This observation has been recently made evident to me when hearing leading economists say that they are unable to explain exactly why the world economy (e.g., housing market, banking, price of oil) is behaving as it has and that they can’t predict what will happen in the months and years ahead (It's been said that economists can't even predict the past.). More evidence is the old line auto companies (i.e., the Big Three) that have been amazingly inaccurate in predicting the demands of the marketplace. And still more evidence is our healthcare system that seems beyond anyone’s grasp. Our systems have grown so complex that we can no longer rely on the past to predict the future.

We have to be prepared to constantly create new ways of responding to conditions that are continually in flux. Robinson seems to put the onus on public education. I would argue that we can’t put the total responsibility for learning creativity on school teachers. I think we have to help families teach and reinforce creative thinking and risk taking, help colleges and universities integrate the arts into the total curriculum, and help employers support innovation and not treat failure (or lack of success) as a disease.

From College Life to Work Life

I don’t envy young college graduates today. They have completed a rite of passage only to find that the next stop on their journey can be a cold and heartless place. It can also be exciting and full of opportunity. Gradspot.com is helping to make this transition a positive experience. The company recently published a book, The Gradspot.com Guide to Life After College, which is a practical handbook written by twentysomethings for twentysomethings with humor and sensitivity to the issues that concern college graduates. The authors, Chris Schonberger and Stuart Schultz, have made the book available as a free downloadable ebook or for purchasing as a paperback.

On first seeing the book, I immediately went to the chapter titled “Working Life” (Chapter IV) and was pleasantly surprised by the usefulness of the content. For example, here is some of what they said about starting a new job.

Starting work can potentially be one of the most awkward things you’ve ever done in your life. Waiting to be told where to sit, how to log into your e-mail, and who (if anyone) is going to go to lunch with you can make you feel like a helpless infant waiting to suck at the teat of responsibility. It can also be an incredibly nerve-racking experience—an unofficial survey conducted by me shows that first day nerves register even higher on peoples’ fear factor than losing their virginity! The thing to remember is that adults in the workforce can be as awkward, lazy, or self-absorbed as the people you knew in college, and unfortunately not everyone is going to jump out of his seat to make the new person feel comfortable. You have to slowly work your way into the fold—don’t force it. (p. 119)

That’s good advice. But the book is not only for grads. People that are responsible for recruiting, hiring, and retaining twentysomethings (Generation Y) will find this book to be a useful guide to the concerns of this generation as they join the workforce after college. For example, it caused me to wonder if I have appeared “awkward, lazy, or self-absorbed” when I have been responsible for new hires.

Workplace Problems

BusinessWeek has embarked on an interesting project: to discover the most pressing workplace problems and solutions to those problems. The magazine plans to publish the results in a mid-August issue. They've distilled nearly 8500 responses down to six major topics (See below.). The red bar indicates the relative strength of each category.

The magazine has also posted comments (and photos) from 15 of the respondents. The characteristics of these 15 respondents reveals a bias. Most were either independent consultants talking about previous experiences working in companies or they were current managers and CEOs from very small companies. This is probably not a group that is representative of all workers. For example, I suspect that, as a group, they are more entrepreneurial and technology dependent than most workers.  I am not saying this to diminish the value of the study. I am only pointing out the lens through which to view the findings. Stay tuned for solutions.

PowerPoint is Not the Point

The use of PowerPoint in business presentations (in-person and online), reports, and training workshops has become rampant. It's like an epidemic that shows no signs of running its course anytime soon. In many organizations, it's the standard way of conveying information, in large part because Microsoft has made it part of its Office suite of applications, ensuring easy access to the millions of users of Microsoft Office. PowerPoint is a great example of technology driving the message rather than the other way around. Apparently, if you can't get everything you want to say on 20 slides, it's not worth saying.

However, the more you put on a PowerPoint slide, the less you communicate. The slides should be used as an aid to punctuate a key point that you are trying to make. Too often, managers fill each slide with everything they want to say, like one would use a teleprompter, including all of the detailed charts and graphs related to the subject at hand, then they read the slides to the audience while facing the screen, and then wonder why nobody got the message.

An article by Eleni Kelakos in the July 3-9, 2008 issue of Ann Arbor Business Review reminded me of all the things that are wrong with how PowerPoint is used in business communication and what presenters should do differently. Here are Kelakos' ten suggestions for a great presentation:

1. Use very few slides.
2. Use very little text.
3. Use big, legible fonts and striking colors.
4. Use one striking visual instead of text.
5. Practice the presentation aloud - with props and technology - until it becomes second nature.
6. Bring back-up notes on paper in case the technology goes kerflooey.
7. Use one big, bold bar graph or pie chart instead of a slide full of numbers.
8. Use the "B" key on the computer to temporarily blank out the screen to assure complete attention when making a crucial point.
9. Ask for guidance and direction from a professional coach.
10. Always - and above all - connect deeply with the audience, one human being to another.

Fixed Mind-Set vs. Growth Mind-Set

Which would you rather have on your team: a high achiever who believes that people either have talent or they don’t, or a person who has a passion for learning and is willing to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from his/her mistakes? According to a July 7, 2008 article by Janet Rae-Dupree in NY Times, if you want to foster teamwork and creativity, you should choose the latter. The article describes the implications of the research of Stanford University Psychology Professor Carol Dweck.

In an interview of Carol Dweck by Coert Visser, Dweck said:

People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill their potential because they’re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes. But people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.

A key question prompted by Dweck’s work is, what can be done at the organizational level to create a growth mind-set culture in businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies? Amy Edmondson offers part of the answer in her HBR article that I mentioned in my post on June 25th titled “Psychological Safety”.  Edmondson wrote that successful organizations have a mind-set that she calls “execution-as-learning” ; they create an environment of psychological safety that allows people to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and move on. In that kind of culture, managers do not penalize people for trying out new ideas and occasionally failing. A mistake is considered an opportunity for learning, and, in Dweck’s terms, getting smarter.

These observations about individual and organizational mind-set made me think of the recruiting practices of Cirque du Soleil, one of the most creative and talented group of performers ever assembled. In an article in Fast Company, the Russian coach who runs Cirque du Soleil’s six-week, new hire “boot camp,” said that he prefers training the “also-ran” to training a medalist:

Somebody who almost made the team probably has the same repertoire of tricks, but is still hungry," he says. "The expectation of recognition is much less, so the prima donna syndrome is much lower.

I suspect that these also-rans have a growth mind-set, ready to learn, open to feedback, while the gold medal prima donnas are trying to prove that they are worthy of the recognition and are continually trying to avoid failure. That fixed mind-set does not fit in the highly innovative environment of Cirque du Soleil culture.

The Boomers Are Coming!

Tamara Erickson, in her new book, Retire Retirement, makes the case that Boomers, those people born between 1946 and 1964, have the motivation and opportunities to work beyond the time at which they would traditionally retire. To some extent, this notion is nothing new. Seniors who could not afford to retire and those in jobs that did not enforce a retirement age (college faculty, farmers, small business owners, etc.) have always continued to work until no longer physically able. The difference now is that the numbers in this retirement-eligible generation are staggering and, due to their level of education, a worsening economy, and the prospect of 20 to 30 years left in their careers, Boomers are increasingly motivated to do something meaningful and productive, and, for many, with financial benefit (whether salary, health insurance, or both).

 

A survey conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc. for The MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures, found that between 6% and 10% of people between ages of 44 and 70 are working in second careers for nonprofit organizations and another 45% would like careers in those kinds of organizations. Civic Ventures labels these “encore careers,” jobs in which people are doing “work for the greater good” in the second half of their lives.

 

A report of the survey results says this about the roles they play:

 

They are public employees, helping to ease the shortage of qualified teachers and classroom assistants. They are social entrepreneurs, starting nonprofits and businesses to improve local education efforts, clean up the environment, or provide health care to the uninsured. They are nurses and hospital workers and nonprofit leaders and homeless outreach workers. And all of them are using their experience to help improve the quality of life in their communities and across the country. In an era of emerging labor shortages in critical areas, they are truly the beginnings of a new workforce for social change. 

 

The report concludes:

 

The millions now in encore careers constitute a new social phenomenon with promise for individuals and society. The tens of millions interested in joining them could add up to one of the most unexpected and significant consequences of an aging America.

 

Sibyl Jacobson, president and CEO of MetLife Foundation, says that retirement-age people who have chosen encore careers are “pioneers”; they are blazing a path for themselves and other Boomers.

 

Being a Boomer myself, I like hearing that this generation still can make a positive difference in society. However, I worry that the government and nonprofit sectors are not ready for the onslaught of this generation. Most Boomers want flexibility, meaningfulness, and the opportunity to continue learning. Some need salary and health benefits. They want to contribute now; they don’t have time to waste. They need an environment that recognizes their knowledge, experience, and abilities while continuing to provide training to help them be effective workers in these organizations. This means that these organizations need to be well managed. My experience is that most nonprofits, schools, colleges, and government agencies are well-intentioned but not well managed, and training, especially for their senior employees, is not aligned with the needs of individuals nor the intended results of the organization. Much change is needed in civic sector organizations if they are going to be successful assimilating Boomers and helping them to be effective contributors.