Checking in, not checking up

Been a busy few days for ye olde BadConsultant, launching DidWe.net (I’ll be posting about that in the coming days).

DidWe very much builds upon the Strengths Springboard, which I created last year. At that time, I couldn’t quite be as transparent as I generally aim to be, so it was the Strengths Springboard was something of a soft launch. Now that I’m unfettered and free, I thought I’d share some of that document here to level-set the group-tipping-point

[misused hyphens are cool]

as it really is the distillation of much of what I write about here at BadConsultant.

So, without further ado

[and definitely without annotations and formatting gorgeousness you can get at the linked PDF]

from ‘The Strengths Springboard – is your organization ready?’ I present ‘Checking in, not checking up’.

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Hopefully by now, I’ve managed to convince just one little corner of your thoughts that if you get a clear, specific focus on customers and the outcomes that are meaningful/critical to them, then encourage colleagues to first meet and then exceed outcome-driven performance standards, you’ll begin to create an environment where strengths-based working can flourish.

Play it right and you will see a virtuous cycle begin to form: Aspire à Succeed à Aspire à Succeed à Etc.

But that doesn’t mean that the cycle will be self-fulfilling, or maintenance free. It’s true that, in some rare organizations, a control-free culture has been created but none of us should be naïve enough to believe that a quick flip of the Strengths Springboard switch will magically change a century’s-worth of the ‘modern’ organization.

We have to change the nature of performance relationships – particularly that of the manager-colleague.

First, let’s speak openly of beliefs that are enshrined in the ‘modern’ organization: Theory X & Y. McGregor proposed this motivation theory in the 1960’s and it has become so deeply baked into subsequent theory, management science and practice to be taken for reality.

The ‘modern’ organization built its Taylorist utopia on the Theory X assumption that employees were lazy, work-avoiding, ambitionless drones that had to be energized, organized and controlled by the manager.

In Theory Y organizations, however, employees were seen as desirous of self-fulfillment, aspirational, seeking opportunities, ready to learn and… well… strengths-based, I guess.

Which leaves managers with a choice – to be either a Theory X or Y manager. The difference?

·       A Theory X manager checks-up on her direct reports (i.e. doesn’t trust them to deliver on their commitments and therefore manages their work).

·       A Theory Y manager checks-in with her direct reports (i.e. trusts them to deliver and offers support to their efforts).

The trick here is to recognize that, while managers need to be a bit of both, if you truly pursue the Strengths Springboard, the Theory Y approach will be much, much more prevalent.

Checking-in, not checking-up.

Strengths-based working benefits from strengths-based management.

That seems pretty common-sensible to me.

But this paper isn’t about strengths-based management directly – once again, I recommend Marcus Buckingham’s outstanding work on that subject. Remember the Strengths Springboard is about the organization’s belief system. How can we gear the system to help a manager see why the nuance in belief is important?

Theory X – given a chance, employees are a net drain on the organization.

Theory Y – given a chance, employees create value for the organization.

Perhaps looking at the value created by each employee will help build the case for Theory Y beliefs.

To do this, we’ll make use of GAAP data published on any publicly-listed company. Here’s the equation:

Value Created per Employee ($) =	Gross Revenue – Operating Costs
	Number of Employees

What’s great about this equation is that it recognizes that there are costs associated with employees, but that for those costs there is a return on investment. It’s almost the perfect equation for symbolizing business intent.

1.     Are we growing revenue?

2.     Are we managing cost?

3.     Are we optimizing each employee?

Let’s take a look at an example using figures quoted on Yahoo!

Intel Corp 2008 Gross Revenue:                 $37.6 b 2008 Operating Expenses:                       $27.9 b 2008 Number of Employees:        82,500 2008 Value Created per Employee = $117,139

Some others:

·       Whirlpool Corporation =       $10,429

·       GE =                   $175,610

·       Google =                   $328,902

Thinking in terms of Value Created per Employee begins to position the time spent with employees not as a Theory X “get their lazy butts moving” but instead very much more along the lines of a Theory Y “I am investing in an asset that is capable and willing to grow”. Indeed, a manager of 10 direct reports at Intel in 2008 could be described as managing a value portfolio of $1.1 million.

Have you ever thought about a manager as an investment professional?

Checking-in, not checking-up. How are my investments doing? Active portfolio management. All of it comes into play once value is on the table.

Now, let’s add one more spin of the wheel in regards to checking in.

Theory X assumes that the organization owns, and is stuck with, the colleague. But remember the stats relating to Free Agent Nation that I described earlier. When 30% of the US workforce is self-employed, choosing to be freelance, how exactly does any manager or organization hope to perpetuate a Theory X belief system?

When the worker is choosing to deploy their talent, you’d better not be checking-up on delivery. When the worker knows by the very nature of the employment relationship that they are a competent, proud professional, there really is no space for pseudo-parental checking-up shenanigans. In the Free Agent scenario, it really is time for mutual respect. It really is time for Theory Y.

So, get your managers positioned as investment professionals, focused on making the performer successful and maximizing the return on investment. Teach them to be active portfolio managers. Celebrate those who increase the return on investment – measured increase in meaningful outcomes coupled to increased engagement – through an action-based approach to strengths development.

Checking-in, not checking-up.

So, what are you gonna do about it?

I was asked to guest at PunkRockHR this week during the ERE Expo in San Diego. In the interests of repurposing work already produced

[and charging twice]

BadConsultant is pleased to reprint the piece here…

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Hello everyone, BadConsultant here. How’s the conference? How’s the weather? How’s the networking?

[how’s the hot tub?]

Enough with the small talk, time for this BadConsultant to get down to undermining the artificiality, resetting the levels and making absolutely sure that s*** hits fans everywhere.

We’ll start with the basics.

There is no more important decision for any organization than who it hires.

[though my grammar-checker wants me to change that to ‘whom it hires’ – curse you Microsoft!]

Every day you help organizations make that decision. You must be very proud to be improving the growth, development and, above all else, performance of the organization.

[cue swollen ego, puffed-up chest, warm smiles and congratulatory mojitos by the pool]

Except.

From the manifest recruitment literature, including this conference agenda, BadConsultant isn’t sure if that’s how you see it.

Sure, we see the focus on attractiveness, sourcing, closing and everything else that happens before the decision to hire, but try as we might, BadConsultant couldn’t quite spot anything focusing on recruitment effectiveness, i.e. the difference the hire makes.

[except for one lonely pre-conference workshop focused on culture that… wait… no, that looks like its focused on web-site and corporate brand…]

Here’s our contention: Human Resources

[the last bastion of the abnormality that is the ‘modern’ corporation]

suffers from an inferiority complex to the business, which is why it is still obsessed with the saying “seat at the table”. And because every victim of bullying needs someone else to beat up, HR treats recruiting as its own ugly stepchild

[after all, every recruiter aspires to be a generalist when they grow up, right? Right?]

As it realized that HR was still basically the cost-laden administrative function it had been for the last 30 years, even with multiple sliver-thin veneers of “transformation”

[but I tell you, I’m a strategic business partner now, goddamit!]

the business started demanding savings. It started demanding efficiency. It started demanding metrics. And of course, rather than choosing to truly grasp its own potential, the HR function decided to slap the recruiters around a bit. Under attack, recruiters retreated to where they were unassailable – presenting the company in the market and landing the next generation of talent. Who they handed off to the HR generalist

[/business partner/strategic lead/representative/counsel/insert meaningless term here]

at point of hire to do with whatever they wished.

Battle-scars avoided. Job done. Collect the fee. Move on.

Coupled to the explosion of talent information and channels on the interwebs, recruiting quickly grew to more closely resemble sales and marketing – measured on similar metrics, operating in similar methodologies.

[cue Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glenn Ross – have I got your attention now?]

All of which is understandable. But it’s not good enough.

Not anymore.

HR is dying, you see, and what will replace it is a seamless talent continuum from customer to colleague. In the world that’s developing, recruiter performance won’t be judged by simply getting someone through the door, instead you will be judged on the outcomes created by that talent.

Stop.

Read that again.

[and, for executives who are too important, clever and busy to go back up the page, here it is again]

You will be judged on the outcomes created by the talent that you hire.

Recruitment effectiveness.

While it is hardly a new subject – BadConsultant recalls a long conversation with Dr John in 1999 on the very same subject – it is the next frontier and it’s time for recruiters to stop patting themselves on the back for efficiency and sourcing and attractiveness and all the other stuff that is important but not critical

[wait… you are doing all that, right? You don’t get a pass]

and start measuring what counts.

The outcomes created by the talent that you hire: Recruitment Effectiveness.

[Oh, and before anyone says it, measuring voluntary turnover in the first year doesn’t cut it – do you know how many people are staying employed just to maintain their health coverage?]

It is time to step beyond the sibling rivalry of the broken HR function, to step into the true responsibility of the recruiter to build the business, to step into the potential you have to shape performance, careers, lives and society.

[and you thought you were just trying to close the deal to get your placement bonus – sheesh!]

Which leaves BadConsultant with one question for you: What are you gonna do about it?

A bientot,

BC

http://badconsultant.wordpress.com

How many are the shades…

… of thy deficiency?

BadConsultant is a complete, total adherent to strength-based working and how organizations and cultures either amplify or erode the chance to do what you do best

[and boy-oh-boy is there a lot to see]

in fact, you might call us a strong believer

[ba-dum-tish]

Just this last week, we had an insight into how alarmingly early the die can be cast. Our 4-year old BadConsultant intern recently got her first pre-Kindergarten progress report – 6 pages of skills and behaviors that had been deemed as appropriate for her age group and that were assessed by a knowledgeable adult.

We’ll stop right there

[because our teeth are grinding]

6 pages. 6 pages!

Of how much our little intern does or does not look, sound and act like every other child in the pre-school.

[don't mention the D-word in our vicinity right now]

OK. Breathe. Let’s continue.

We’re not going to even get into assessment by a knowledgeable adult. Not because we doubt the teacher’s abilities, but because they have little room for manoeuvre within the system.

Which had 5 ratings. From top to bottom:

• C: Consistently demonstrates skill or concept, has developed mastery
• W: Is working on a skill of concept but is inconsistent in its demonstration
• I: Is beginning to show interest in a skill or concept but is inconsistent in its demonstration
• NE: The skill or concept in [sic] not evident at this time
• NA: Not applicable; subject matter has not yet been introduced

Stop. Read that list again. Got it? OK, let’s go…

Stevie Ray Vaughan played the guitar. Eddie Van Halen plays the guitar. Matt Bellamy plays the guitar. BadConsultant has been playing the guitar for more than 35 years but doesn’t come close to being able to do what the greats can do. ‘Mastery’ is NOT a subset of ‘Consistently demonstrates’.

According to this oxymoronic scale, the only gradation is in how much the kid is unable to do something – essentially, “just how deficient is your child?”

Let’s move down the list.

And ask a simple question – what exactly is the difference between W and I?

[aside from 18 letters in the alphabet - yes, you can count on your fingers if you want]

When exactly does ‘beginning to show interest’ become ‘working on’, given that the net outcome is inconsistent demonstration? And, while we’re on the subject, when do we ever stop working on a skills or concept… Oh, wait a minute, that would be the search for mastery and, as that is just a subset of C we don’t really need to worry about it, do we?

We really must have trained our educational establishment to be able to differentiate levels of incompetence.

We won’t even comment on the NE grade – save to say that the spelling error in the original is irony at its crystalline best.

Finally, we have the NA indicating that the child can only learn or be assessed upon material that has been introduced. In other words, “your child doesn’t learn or express interest unless we tell her to”

Except.

The littlest BadConsultant intern likes to tell stories, likes to sing and dance, to get a laugh out of anyone who is paying attention. She’s as funny as it gets. Her imagination is weird, though

[we don't know who she could possibly get it from]

and listening to her free play is like diving down the rabbit hole with Lewis Carroll. She introduces subject matter that adults find hard to follow.

How can that be assessed? And… er… Who can assess it?

So, here BadConsultant sits, far from a competitive parent, simply looking for those early signs of strength to be nurtured and cultivated in the face of the dreadful negativity of the weakness-inspired modern educational approach.

And gets 6 pages of C’s. What is BadConsultant meant to say?

“Well done, darling… you are competent! Although you may have developed mastery, the main thing is that you aren’t even working on something!”

Hardly the stuff of energy, positivity and love is it?

Do we really need to draw the parallel between this weakness-based approach and the performance management systems in most modern organizations?

If education serves to prepare the child for work

[an 'if' that BadConsultant is beginning to challenge more and more as the years go by]

then this is how society breeds its automatons.

And BadConsultant sits here wondering how many parents would receive those 6 pages of C’s and rejoice in the conformity it represents

['scuse us, an unpleasant shiver just went down our spine]

content that their kids aren’t slipping into the quagmire of deficiency assessment, aren’t falling behind, aren’t learning anything that won’t help them succeed in the culture of averageness.

And how many of those parents are managagers?

Grrrrr.

BC

And then NBC said “watch out, here comes the boss!”

We wrote a while back about the Winter Oly… Olympic Winter Games and what it could teach us about corporate abnormality. While the sport may be done, the learning continues.

1. Hurtling down a bob-sleigh run at 90 mph has gotta hurt
2. Canada really cares about hockey and curling
3. NBC US really does choose to focus predominantly on US athletes

We know about number 3 because we made use of the NBC online video site

[hideous navigation]

which in turn uses Microsoft Silverlight video player to provide fabulous high-def streaming video – on our iMac the pictures are gorgeous.

So it was that we got to watch all the late night fin de siècle finals that were on just too late for this BadConsultant, Mrs BadConsultant and our two little BadConsultant interns. Digging beyond the front page of videos posted

[often about US athletes who had often come in 19th place rather than the athletes from other countries who had won]

it was possible to see much of the Olympic Winter Games.

Except.

BadConsultant was having one of his moments, triggered by the Microsoft Silverlight player. Or more accurately, the NBC installation of Silverlight on its site.

Down in the bottom right hand corner, there’s a small button marked ‘Boss Button’

[not a new innovation, by the way - we first saw it on the Cisco job-site in the late 90's]

which immediately hides the video player with a screenshot of Microsoft Vista sporting an empty Excel spreadsheet. Nothing else, no icons, no temporarily stored files.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way.

1. As soon as you click the screen (anywhere) the video starts up again
2. There are NO icons on the desktop
3. There are no applications indicated on the taskbar, not even Excel, which is open on the desktop

Bottom line – even the dumbest boss is going to know you’re not working

[just sitting staring at an empty spreadsheet]

remember, the Vista/Office combo is the modern manager’s wet-dream.

But that wasn’t what gave us pause.

[we're used to ranting about Microsoft products, and felt slightly dirty installing Silverlight on our macs]

Encapsulated in that Boss Button is everything that is just deeply weird about corporate abnormality.

Firstly, it goes without saying that it’s reinforces the deeply-held Theory X view of work that permeates the modern corporation – that employees are feckless, lazy and will shirk responsibility whenever possible.

Secondly, it reinforces the old-school ‘them’ and ‘us’ of manager-employee relationship, and presumes that a manager is a) micro-managing; and b) punitive.

We’ve written about both subjects enough to not bring them in here.

What’s most striking about the Boss Button deployment is that, while Microsoft functionality might have made it easy, NBC chose to put it there.

NBC, the national network that runs newsitorials

[made up words like newsitorials are cool]

about how American industry is failing with no hope of improvement. NBC, the national network that daily laments behaviors that contributed mightily to the downfall of modern capitalism as we knew it. NBC, the national network that is clawing for every pair of eyeballs it can get.

NBC, the national network that just threw away a huge opportunity

[once every four years]

to use its unique access to educate and influence its users for the better. In essence the value proposition from NBC for this Olympic Winter Games could have been written as:

We know you hate your job and are scared by your boss, we can help you dodge your responsibilities by watching our videos, and we’ll even keep it our dirty little secret, OK?

Is that what we want from a national network? Is it how NBC will survive and succeed in the integrated world? BadConsultant doesn’t think so.

How about this:

At this very special time, which only comes about every four years, your employees are going to be distracted by the Winter Olympics, many of them are going to be watching our video feeds while on duty. This is going to happen regardless of anything you do, so we thought we’d help you gain some benefit – at our online site, you will find a team chat-room, so that your employees can build stronger relationships with their colleagues rather than watching in isolation and, as you’ll be naturally worried about productivity, we’ve included a widget to post performance progress so that your employees will know if they’re pushing the video-watching too far. In the team area, you’ll also find resources to help assess performance, coaching and management practices from the olympics so that you can gain maximum learning for the time your employees spend on our site. You’ll also find the ‘Who Are Our Olympians?’ recognition widget so your own team can celebrate its star players.

Granted, it’s not so pithy, but it offers at least some sense of value-add.

[and we'd be happy to provide a statement of work for NBC or anyone else wanting to introduce any of the functionality above]

The point being, in a time where every eyeball counts, wouldn’t it be nice to have a national network that understood that the only way it will survive and succeed is to go beyond ‘we are presenting images’ to ‘we are growing others’?

Ah well, as we said, it was just one of those moments…

A bientôt mes amis!

BC

ps: congratulations to athletes of ALL countries for a fabulous Olympic Winter Games, and to Vancouver for a fantastic job well done