A New Remit and Mandate for HR/OD: Human Results through Organization Destruction

BadConsultant has been sojourning on a small island off the coast of somewhere warm, enjoying mojitaritas

[® BadConsultant, 9th August, 2010]

and reading many upon many books.

And we’ll start this post by being very clear, you are currently taking a first look at a concept that will become a book within the next year

[which you will scan and turn your nose up at when walking through airports - but that, 3 years' later, you'll be claiming you'd been an early reader of - and that's fine, BC will get the royalties eventually]

The book’s working title is “Destruction HR” – though that will likely change long, long before it’s published.

First, some reference points which you need to read to have some sense of where BC is standing:

1. “The Future of Management” (Hamel w/ Breen)
2. “Beyond HR” (Boudreau, Ramstad)
3. “Ishmael” (Quinn)
4. “The Black Swan” (Taleb)
5. “The Drunkard’s Walk” (Mlodinow)

[NOTE: in all the above, I've edited out the post-title sentence all these books carry for brevity's sake]

From all of the above, and BadConsultant‘s inordinate opinion and experience, we contend:

Human beings have, for centuries, been diving deeper into the delusion that it’s a) possible to live in a rational universe; and b) that human beings can create rationality through the power of their brains alone.

Note that word, per Merriam-Webster online:

Delusion (noun)

Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin delusion-, delusio, from deludere

Date: 15th century

1 : the act of deluding : the state of being deluded

2 a : something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated b : a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary; also : the abnormal state marked by such beliefs

[Bold courtesy of BadConsultant]

Fast forward to now, a century into the mythology of the modern organization. Most people who enter the workplace every day are trapped in the delusion – organizations perpetuate the myth that they are somehow rational; that things occur in line with immutable and forecastable laws.

They are not. And things don’t.

HBR case studies, best practices, business books – they all sell on the basis that the delusion can be maintained. That it’s possible to live in rational times.

[The first line of the book will be "This book does not contain a single best practice" - in fact, if BC has his way, it's the only time those two words will appear together in the whole text"]

It isn’t. We are human. We are programmed to exist and survive through

[and therefore create]

randomness.

As BadConsultant has written many times, the illusion of hunky-doryness, is largely driven by the need to perpetuate delusional rationality.

And the corporate functions are the keepers of the hunky-dory, and therefore the keepers of the delusion.

So, why a new mandate for HR/OD?

Because the organization that succeeds in becoming completely irrational, completely human, will succeed beyond the wildest dreams of competitors. The Human in Human Resources is increasingly being proven to be the pivot point; the R of HR is increasingly demanding to be thought of as Results – i.e. what comes out of the sausage factory, not what goes in

[pig lips! I need pig lips!]

A new remit for HR: Human Results.

But what about the OD? While BadConsultant would love it if the concept of organization – pre-ordained structures, departments, roles, responsibilities – quietly slipped off this mortal coil and went to meet its maker, that’s not about to happen in the next few

[billing cycles]

decades. So, the O remains Organization… simple enough.

But it’s the D that needs radical change. It’s the D that will demand a new mandate.

Because over the years HR/OD have become addicted to a) keeping leaders happy and self-contained in the illusion of hunky-doryness; and b) adding things to the organization. Removing things is one of the great holy grails of HR/OD.

• We’ll be more strategic when we lose the transactional stuff (that never goes away)
• We need to focus only on work driven by the strategic plan (but if a leader asks me to do what I did yesterday as a favour, I’ll salivate)
• We need standard processes, but my client group needs it done their way (so we’ll help them create a shadow system)

Nothing ever comes off the conveyor belt.

It could. It really could. But the current D in OD – Development – means additive development.

As a profession, we are now introducing fixes for the fixes that were supposed to fix the fixes that were designed to fix the…

Don’t believe ye olde BC?

Take a long, hard look at your performance management process. If it isn’t a lash-up of 5 or 6 legacy processes that bears no relation to business performance, we’ll be very surprised. If it is pristine, clean and simple, understood by every manager and deployed without deflection from business performance, then a) congratulations, you’ve achieved the impossible; or b) sorry that you are so far into the delusion of rationality that you believe that.

So, BadConsultant argues the the D must change. Radically.

The new D is for Destruction.

Destruction as in tearing down global career families and losing job titles. Destruction as in giving managers complete control of their budgets, including compensation and demanding on-budget, results-based management. And once that’s in place, Destruction meaning no salary bands, no calibration, no norm distribution, no across the board merit increases – just Managers paying their team what they believe they’re worth based on the measured results they’re achieving.

[How many managers? Many fewer than currently - of course]

Destruction as in removing every policy that protects against the worst behaviors of a small minority by legislating the behavior of all. Destruction as in firing people who consistently under-perform, not moving them sideways to spread cancer elsewhere in the organization.

Getting the BC drift yet?

The shape and scope of that word – Destruction – will be the shape and scope of the book.

And there could be no better function than HR/OD to lead the future – but it won’t be the HR/OD of today.

It’ll be “Destruction HR”.

With a new remit and mandate:

Human Results through Organization Destruction

We rather think we’re starting a movement, so drop BC a line if you want to be part of it.

’til we meet again, may the mojitaritas(®) flow freely,

BC

The Illusion of Hunky-Doryness – Part II: As luck would have it, I’m bulimic

The latest in our line of mythology illumination…

• Part I

BadConsultant really should have learnt his lesson

[denial, avoidance, resistance... anyone... Anyone?]

by now. But sure enough, a moth to the networking flame, I found myself doing the circuit again a couple of weeks back. Margartias were quaffed, nachos nibbled and… erm… well there was much conversation and mutual distribution of business cards. All in all, a fun and successful week.

So why my dismay?

Well, let’s start with the obvious: HR in its current state is rapidly becoming obsolete, almost a parody of itself. So, an HR conference was always going to make me go ‘Hmmmmmm…’ more than I normally do. But that wasn’t it… If anything, I was reassured that while the function’s leaders may be missing the point, there is talent deeper in the function that is ready to emerge

[and for whom BadConsultant will be writing a book later this year]

and reinvent the future of talent and organization capability.

No. It was simply this. Being an organization culture

[groupie, geek, nerd, guru, observer, catalyst]

student, I was pleased to see the word culture appear in at least one presentation title

[did I mention that many HR leaders are missing the point?]

until I got to the session. Which was OK. Really. It was OK. BadConsultant didn’t grind his teeth once.

It was slide 3.

Slide 3.

Which repeated the homily:

“Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast”

[funny, when you type it with capitals it looks like a newspaper headline - Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast, police are searching for a bloated bureaucracy addicted to manipulating financial reports that maintain the perception of double-digit growth]

Turning to my ready reference source, Google, I get 4,640,000 hits on “culture eats strategy for breakfast quote” – and even in the first page worth of links, I see it attributed to several sources.

[obviously, the management quote just appears fully formed... like paperclips - c'mon have you ever purchased one?]

Some inventive spark had even extended the concept by suggesting that culture also ate strategy for lunch.

[though no-one had yet suggested that dinner was on the menu - a nod to work-life balance, perchance?]

Hence my dismay at the conference. Here was somebody preaching to the supposedly enlightened about a subject that IS the future of the function, leading with a phrase just about as hackneyed as something about someone being someone else’s ‘greatest asset’.

Like it or not, while BadConsultant is pleased to note that there is at least awareness that culture is eating strategy for breakfast, he can’t help observing that most corporations keep feeding new strategies to the beast in the hope that it’ll get full and stop stuffing its face. Truth is that it doesn’t… it quietly nips to the bathroom, pukes up the last strategic solution it sampled and returns to the table for more.

And there’s the problem. We’ve created another myth that supports the culture of averageness, where failure is acceptable so long as it doesn’t do too much damage, so long as the illusion of hunky-doryness is maintained.

Organization culture is bulimic. It binges, pukes, binges, pukes, on and on in a continual cycle

[and it has REALLY bad teeth]

and the one group of people who are able to see it for what it is, has even the closest appreciation of what makes it so and, some would argue, already have political permission to act upon it, choose not to do so but instead – because they’ve been indoctrinated to believe that a seat at the table comes from being a ‘Strategic Business Partner’ – collude with the self-destructive behavior.

So, if organization culture is bulimic, why aren’t we treating it as such:

1. Intervene
2. Introduce self-awareness of the situation
3. Identify automatic thoughts
4. Encourage behavioral experiments
5. Structured, controlled rebuilding of identity

BadConsultant would argue that we’ve actually got pretty good at steps 1 and 3 – well, those of us running organization surveys may have done if we’re not just using a framework off the shelf, however the very last thing that HR

[heck, let's be expansive: Corporations!]

will do is encourage experimentation in order to rebuild identity. That might destroy the illusion of hunky-doryness. It might erode the slavish HR belief structure that leaders have all the answers

[clue: they don't]

that it’s possible to make everyone behave in predictable ways

[clue: it isn't]

that a corporation can protect itself from all risk

[clue: it can't]

That’s the mythology that is the illusion of hunky-doryness.

So.. Bottom line…

The next time your business leaders offer up a strategic solution to your current business challenges, start watching your culture closely. If it goes quiet and politely excuses itself from the table, it may be time for you to knock on the bathroom door and say “it’s time we had a talk”.

And that knock may be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.

With love,

BC

Innovation isn’t just for things – Part VI

As if there’s any point in providing the history:

Part I – Part II – Part III – Part IV – Part V

From your exhaustive re-reading of all the preceding parts, you’ll know that we have three questions:

1. Who is your ideal employee?
   

   A: Those employees most likely to maintain and grow their productivity in the future and who have the most potential to increase value for our future customers

2. What proportion of your workforce could be classed as your ideal employee?
3. How do you increase that proportion?

In Part V, we were beginning to build the answer to the second question, by looking at how to derive products

[yes, and services]

from a simple customer value proposition

[BINGO!]

and identifying 5 areas of work most critical to bringing that product to life:

• Innovation
• Production
• Brand
• Face
• Culture

So, there you have your answer… R&D, Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales and… er… HR?

Except.

Not really. The answer to question 2 isn’t simply that those organizational functions are important, despite the

[claims of the respective leaders of those functions trying to avoid budget cuts]

mythology of corporate abnormality holding them near sacrosanct as it perpetuates the illusion of hunky-doryness .

You see, we know those functions and there’s a panoply of individual contribution within and across them. We’re not talking about performance – we’ve got that covered in the answer to question 1. The contribution we’re referring to here is that of making the future look different to today. Yes indeed, even amongst the home of the future(®) that is R&D, there are more folk intent on keeping things just the way they’ve always been than those who truly want to break new ground.

Even R&D is populated with

[geniuses, geeks, nerds, robots... delete as appropriate]

people. And without a catalyst or

[cattle-prod]

leadership, the majority of people will seek to maintain an uncomfortable status quo rather than leap into the unknown.

So, one way of answering question 2 is simply:

Those employees who are willing to be your ideal employee

but that’s somewhat circuitous logic

[which BadConsultant would only use if being paid for this contribution]

and wholly unsatisfying.

So let’s try and construct a more detailed and nuanced answer to question 2 – What proportion of your workforce could be classed as your ideal employee?

Those employees who willingly and consistently flex our innovation, production, brand, face and culture to develop and deliver products and services that release unseen potential for our customers

OK, let’s throw that against the wall and see what sticks.

[yes, this stuff really is as easy as cooking pasta]

Taking the first two answers together, we have increasing individual productivity to meet future customer needs by willingly flexing innovation, production, brand, face and culture to release unseen potential. Or:

Performer – Customer – Potential

And yes, there are those who will say that Customer should always come first, and to those commentators BadConsultant would say

[bad luck, we're writing this]

this blog doesn’t make it easy to draw venn diagrams but, if it makes it easier for you:

The answer to question 2 is, therefore, those employees who use innovation, production, brand, face or culture willingly and consistently to stay in the red ‘sweet-spot’.

Alles klar? We’ll be back soon to transition from question 2 to question 3 – What can you do about it?

Stay cool,

BC

This and That – Part II: So now you’ve got them, what do you do with them?

• Part I: The basic error of who you ask to manage

You know, BadConsultant always provides us much linkicity

[made up words are cool]

as he possibly can, but all the while remains conscious of the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, that his executive readership clientele are simply too important and busy to actually spend time absorbing information

[unless it's in Arial font, 48-pt bullets on the very last page of a powerpoint presentation]

in order to drive better, more considered decisions.

Yeah right.

So, we’ll summarise as we always do – aiming to please, and keen to at least get past the introduction – the essence of Part I:

Most of your management population entered that role by accident because they, and the modern organization they work in, wanted more of their individual contribution. By the time this fundamental error was realized, it was too late to reverse and compounded by the ‘climb, climb, climb’ myth. Bottom line:

You have way more managers than you need, most of whom aren’t interested in the role and are doing the minimum necessary to not be demoted or fired for dereliction of duty.

OK.

We’re patient.

We’ll wait for the apoplexy to die down.

…

…

…

Calmer now?

Because, really, we want to help. This is for your own good.

A couple of weeks back, we posted a section from ‘The Strengths Springboard – is your organization ready?’ entitled ‘Checking in, not checking up’

[we know, we know... you're too busy and important to read other posts]

which basically illuminated the fact that in most modern corporations, a manager of 10 or more direct reports is running a multi-million dollar value portfolio. And that would be People Value(®) as opposed to Human Capital

[a terminology designed to perpetuate 20th century industrialized manufacturing expansion thinking]

Let’s see now… So, you have multi-million dollar value portfolios being managed by people who never wanted to grow value and who have only the minimal skill to protect against value loss. Doesn’t exactly speak to growth, does it? In fact, BadConsultant might hypothesise

[and would happily submit a statement of work for an in-depth study]

that much of the culture of resentment is bred by the presence of this perma-bear attitude towards People Value.

And as there’s no way on earth that there would be any performance management of any but the most disastrous of managers

[performance management? hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha]

you’re left with a simple challenge: how to move the bears to a more bullish frame of mind?

[not too much though, we wouldn't want to let them loose in the china shop now, would we?]

Or in other words: What do we do with all these managers?

And here’s where the second error of the management chain comes in.

All managers can be great managers

Erm…

No.

They can’t. Like everything in life

[as measured by statisticians]

you’ll find a normal distribution.

But still you’ll believe the error – it’s what the modern organization excels at doing, finding mythologies that fit the status quo, refusing to validate or measure those myths, and presenting them as absolute truths. In this case, the status quo has been built on the mythology that people higher in the organization hierarchy are superior to those below, and therefore

[it's almost painful to type this bunk]

have fewer/less weaknesses than those below them. The mythology feeds upon itself until senior execs are considered infallible.

[which may sound similar to another organization you've heard of?]

All managers can be great managers

Sheesh!

The fall-out from this second error is huge and, as this post is getting long already, BadConsultant will be back soon to cover it in much, much more detail…

Byeee

BC

This and That – Part I: The basic error of who you ask to manage

The corporate abnormality that is the modern organization could well carry a sticker

created by managers for managers

A system that extends beyond natural social patterns – which is precisely what happened in the industrialized expansion of the twentieth century – requires energy to prevent it from regressing back to its natural state. In the end, the unnatural status quo comes to focus almost solely on keeping that energy flowing.

Management is the fuel, the process and the outcome of the modern organization.

So, if management is a necessary construct of any modern organization that insists on maintaining its corporate abnormality, we might expect to see a near-clinical focus upon spotting, selecting and placing the very best managers in position to

[reap the benefits of others' work]

do what they do best.

BadConsultant is willing to bet that you just rolled your eyes. And you wouldn’t be alone in that. Because one of the greatest factors of corporate abnormality is that it is largely un-self-aware

[we'll say it again, misused hyphens and made up terminology is cool]

and certainly often delusional.

Were we being paid by the word for writing this, we might extend into the psychological roots of why that delusion prevails – but we’re not, so we won’t. We’ll stick to the subject in hand. The basic error of who you ask to manage.

Most managers enter the role by accident; and it happens when this becomes that.

We’ll explain.

Think of a human being, working on a task. We might call them an individual contributor, a team member, a performer, a colleague, an employee or

[Heavens forbid]

a worker. Now let’s make them really good at what they do. We might call them a high performer.

And now, reaffirmed by all the labyrinthine complexity of the annual performance review and compensation cycle, our high performer receives the message loud and clear that:

We love it when you do this

Insatiable for higher levels of achievement, and noticing that other people aren’t able to replicate the performance of our high performer, the message is refined through the objective setting process, becoming:

We love it when you do this, and want to give you every opportunity to do more this

The high performer, who likely enjoys the strokes s/he is receiving and relishes the opportunity to receive more, who may even be fundamentally wired to the achievement motive, shoots for the moon and gets the moon. And probably keeps getting new moons for a few performance cycles

[we wouldn't call them months, quarters or years now, would we?]

until… well… there are limits to how much one person can do. The high performer hits breaking point and the organization, sucking up all this productivity like a black hole, quietly and un-self-aware-ly

[cool]

panics. How can it get more this, when the person who does this can’t do any more this?

And now the basic error.

Let’s get an assistant for the high performer. The message is revised once more:

We love it when you do this, and want to give you every opportunity to do more this, so we’re providing you with a way to extend your thoughts and actions to do even more this

The assistant is thought of as an extra pair of hands, a mindless appendage that doesn’t think for itself, does just what it’s told to by the super-brain of the high performer

[can I get a 'Taylorism rocks!' - sing hallelujah!]

and, while the assistant is learning, it works just fine. But sooner or later, maybe even through the performance review process, it becomes clear that the assistant isn’t a robot or Taylorist work-unit. It speaks, it thinks, it feels, it…

You know how we loved it when you did that? Well, we need you to do this now because the assistant wants to do more of that…

This and that.

The high performer has become a manager, simply by being hooked on growing her own performance. Stroked, recognized and rewarded for delivering the goods, suddenly he’s adrift in unfamiliar seas. This has become that.

And right here is the point where the error is either corrected or compounded. And most modern organizations miss the point completely

[did we mention the words delusional and un-self-aware?]

It’s a simple question

This is your new this – do you want to do this? If not, you can go back to doing that with no penalty – no harm, no foul. Which this works best for you?

Of course, we know the answer.

And it isn’t pretty.

Because the modern organization sells the myth of climbing the ladder, of colonialists overseeing empires, of bigger is better, of being the energy that holds regression at bay, of… Well, most people trapped into management by accident find it very hard to answer the ‘which this’ question honestly – bigger paychecks, social recognition and elevation in the tribe are addictive.

By the time the ‘which this’ question gets asked – if it does at all – it’s mostly too late. The basic error gets compounded.

So, if it’s so hard to correct the error later, it stands to reason to intervene at the point where that basic error is introduced.

And, indeed, we’ll be diving into that in the next post in the ‘This and That’ series.

‘Til we three meet again,

BC

DidWe.net – the revolution starts here

Well, as ever, BadConsultant has been busy rewriting rule-books, upsetting applecarts and dreaming the impossible

[the future is a glorious place]

in order to make it real.

Our latest foray in re-righting corporate abnormality?

DidWe.net

For the first time, recruiters can access a simple, impartial measure of candidate and hiring manager confidence in the hiring decision at the point-of-hire.

[pause... let that sink in...]

All right, we’ll explain.

Here is the recruiting cycle:

• Vacancy
• Sourcing
• Assessment
• Selection
• Offer
• Acceptance

Depending on company and/or recruiter, different stages of the process take precedence – often in synergy with the business being supported. So, for example, in research organizations, much is made of the data from assessment and the selection decision

[boy-oh-boy do scientists LOVE to pore over resumés]

whereas in sales recruitment, it’s all about volume and the close

[cue Alec Baldwin - do I have your attention now?]

But so long as the role gets filled, everything’s just fine and hunky-dory.

Except.

That’s not good enough, not any more. We wrote a piece for ERE Expo a couple of weeks back that covered the subject of recruitment effectiveness – you may want to head over and read it, though

[as you're likely an executive who is far too busy and important to spend time reading anything longer than three bullets on the last slide of a powerpoint presentation]

we’ll summarise here:

The business world is changing, and HR is failing to keep up with the changes. In the world that’s developing, if you are a recruiter, you will be judged on the outcomes created by the talent you hire.

What does that mean for all of us in the talent and organization capability business?

Putting someone in a job isn’t success, putting the right person in the right job at the right time in the right way is success. So we recast the cycle above, introducing some terms that aren’t common lingo for the average recruiter:

• Customer
• Strategy
• Culture
• Organization capabilities
• Workforce plan
• Talent management
• Sourcing
• Assessment
• Selection
• Offer
• Acceptance
• Onboarding
• Engagement
• Performance
• Development
• Talent management

In truth, the recruiting cycle is a wholly contained aspect of the talent cycle and can no longer be hived off into a perceived ‘second-class’ citizenship within the HR function. The talent cycle above will increasingly become the frame for hiring decisions. And recruiters will have to expand their scope to consider what happens after the decision to hire.

So, the hiring decision is no longer:

“have we found a person capable enough to do the job in hand”

[summarised in some quarters as could/would they do the job without pissing off too many people]

but instead:

“are we hiring a talent who will be willing to perform and grow to meet the evolving contribution our company makes to society”.

Do you see the difference? Are you ready to make that difference?

Measuring both candidate and hiring manager confidence in the hiring decision is what DidWe.net is all about – it’s impossible to measure absolute recruitment effectiveness, but confidence in decision bridges the gap between recruitment and performance

[and it should go without saying that we'll be pleased to submit a statement of work to help you analyse the gap and what you can do about it]

You can read more about what and how we do that at ‘Why DidWe.net?’ – and though BadConsultant is known for

[some would say gallows]

humour, we’re dead serious about the approach and toolset at DidWe.net – so serious in fact that we’re offering free lifetime use for the first 100 members to sign-up and actively use the system. Those seats are filling fast, so if you value your top and bottom lines, you want to get over there NOW and sign-up.

Meanwhile, here at BadConsultant Towers, we’ll be back to normal service very soon – getting ready to illuminate the preposterous notion that managers are your very best coaching option

[hahahahahahaha]

Hasta mañana,

BC

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’.

***************

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.

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

If only everybody would…

Ahhhh, change management

[or, to ascribe its formal status, let's capitalize]

Change Management… How doth we love the sound of thy name? How many are the ways that we shall enshrine your virtues and purvey your countenance? How rich are the opportunities to spread your beneficence across a world that has lost its way in human foibles and trinkets?

Where, oh where, to start?

Well, first off, let’s refer you to our newly coined term: BureaucraSy. And

[because you're likely an executive who is just tooooo busy, important and, above all else, infallible to actually take any time gaining new knowledge]

let’s summarise – people experiencing frustration introduce fixes that don’t work but induce frustration in other people who then introduce new fixes that… over and over and over in an endless cycle of

[billable hours]

well-meant insanity.

And each one of the fixes is accompanied by

[cue parting clouds, rays of sunshines and heavenly host of angels]

a robust change mana… sorry… Change Management Plan.

Because those fixes are firmly rooted from the view of the fixer as to how people should work, not how people are working.

Let’s take as an example the introduction of document management systems that require fifteen fields of meta-data to enable cataloguing and retrieval of information. That’s how the system works, it’s a beautiful, perfect filing regimen – the intranet equivalent of the dewey decimal system – everything in its right place. Disciplined. Clean.

So, logically, that’s how every user should work, right? Right?

The project team runs ahead and builds the chang… Change Management Plan with that in mind, drawing up from/to scenarios, business case definition, executive alignment assignments, training, knowledge transfer, incentive/dis-incentive cycles, WIIFM statements, etc, etc, etc.

[oh, how we love you billable hours]

Except.

Take the average employee – let’s call him Bob – and accompany him home, ask to look in his sock drawer. Chances are it isn’t meticulously arranged by colour, material weight, rate of aging

[sock aging ratios can be made available at badconsultant.com for the right price]

nor will you find order in the t-shirt drawer or the shirt rail in the closet. Join Bob at his desk and ask to look at his e-mail. Chances are that his inbox is overflowing with many items out of date but not dealt with – if you’re lucky, Bob might use a folder structure to store old messages, or he might just be one of those people who copies himself on emails that he sends so they remain in his inbox, rather than making use of his ‘Sent Items’. Finally, let’s join Bob as he looks at his local drive, where he stores working documents. Chances are it’s chaos, absolute chaos.

But it’s a chaos that makes sense to Bob. That doesn’t mean it works, it’s just his reality and he knows how to work within it. It’s the way he is working.

Other, more organized people might take a look at Bob’s ways of working and scream in horror: “no-one should work that way!” Some might shower pity upon him. Others may even claim that there’s no way Bob could ever be a high performer with working practices such as his chaotic use of e-mail.

And they would, of course, be wrong.

But in the modern organization’s BureaucraSy, they would be able to make enough noise to the right people to justify a fix. And so the Change Management Plan would emerge for how people should work.

And everyone would be expected to change.

Every Bob and Bobette would be expected to undo their whole reality because there was a supposedly better way that they should work.

Wouldn’t it be better to invest the time, effort and

[billable hours]

emotional energy to listen to Bob and hear what would help him improve his performance and what gets in the way and then design the limited, minimal solution that he is already seeking – not the fix that tries to change his fundamental being?

Or in other words, how about we de-capitalize change management so we move away from:

“Everybody should… if only everybody would…”

to

“Where performance is blocked… somebody will be able to…”

Now, that’s a Change we could sign up to…

BC

I looked up and BOOM! Drive-by Collaboration!

A while back, your trusted adviser BadConsultant elucidated the madness of the Random Act of Leadership

[and boy-oh-boy haven't we seen a few of those in the intervening years?]

which has proven to be one of the most enduring

[legacy]

of our posts. Not a surprise to us, the RAOL is just so common that we all experience it at some point.

But as we were observing the artificial abnormality of the modern organization, we identified a sympathetic bedfellow to the RAOL, for which we now humbly

[yeah, right]

coin the term ‘Drive-by Collaboration’.

Here’s the thing. The modern organization built it’s mythology upon growth obtained through industrialized manufacturing, where people were akin to ‘human production units’ that could be added and removed much like plant machinery – people were just another part of the machine. Which was fine when industry was only about designing, making and selling ‘things’.

But then, along came the late twentieth century: the internet, conspicuous consumption, lifestyle choices, the escape from the base of Maslow’s hierarchy

[for some of the world, at least]

and, over time, people began to notice that… erm… er… human beings are odd. They have aspirations. They don’t act predictably. They have a sense of fairness. They have energy that they choose to use positively or negatively. They form relationships.

The organization frowned a little, it’s furrowed brow couldn’t quite compute this weird species that didn’t act like machines.

And, because it’s the way things are in organizations, the search for ‘fixes’ for the ‘broken’ machines was on.

• Aspiration? Let’s create career tracks to leadership roles.
• Predictability? Let’s re-engineer processes and increase the BureaucraSy.
• Fairness? Let’s complexify pay based upon activities and ‘calibration’.
• Energy for good or bad? Let’s survey people to try and fix their ‘engagement’.
• Relationships? Let’s, like, er… rilly, rilly get people to focus on teamwork.

And thus every grouping of people in any context was suddenly a matter of team. Any hierarchical organization of working units was a team. Any random gathering of individuals in any context was a team. And team described ‘us’.

• CEOs stood up in front of a thousand people and said “you are a great team”
• Managers sat with their direct reports and said “when it comes to our team…”
• Endless multitudes of HR and OE professionals engaged in the debate of whether it truly was “a team or a group of people”

All of which set against the backdrop of the rise of the boomers, that was so clearly I-hiding-in-us-centric: surely we can find the answer to how to save the rest of the world from itself?

[can I hear you say kumbaya!]

Yup, if you had any sort of relationship at work it was grounded in ‘team’.

Another puzzle-piece of the modern organization myth was put in place: “We are a team”

[more recently enhanced to include the word 'diverse' - killing two birds with one stone]

Except.

The ‘solution’ didn’t match the ‘problem’.

A strong relationship is not a matter of team, neither are the best teams founded on strong relationships. And, with the square peg refusing to fit in the round hole, a weird reverse osmosis began to happen – suddenly relationships were enshrined within the confines of the team.

Being nice was more important than performing.

Consensus replaced urgency.

Activity replaced outcomes.

And everyone… EVERYONE… presumed they had a right to be involved in everyone else’s work whenever they wanted to and in whatever way they wanted to be involved.

So we saw the emergence of the Drive-by Collaboration

[DBC - can I hear you say acronym!]

where a ‘team’ is working to achieve an agreed output, moving against plan, delivering just enough activity to be deemed worthy in the end of year performance calibration exercise. All of a sudden, at a regular meeting, Joe pipes up: “Betty swung by my office yesterday and thinks we should re-gear the change management plan.” The room goes silent. Maybe Betty’s got a point. Maybe they’ve missed something in the change management plan. They quiz Joe, but he doesn’t have much more to add – apparently, Betty had a been on her way out to lunch and had just dropped in to mention the change management plan.

BOOM! – Drive-by Collaboration!

The team, not wanting to upset Betty because we’re all, like… one big team… undoes months of hard labor and sets the project back by two months.

No-one thinks to ask whether Betty has a right to an opinion, a credible base to challenge the plan, or the veracity of her judgement.

That’s the beauty of the DBC, it happens quickly, takes little effort on behalf of the DBC’er and creates major downstream impact for everyone else. And it damages the business.

But Betty’s happy that she’s been heard, the myth that “we are a team” is perpetuated, and nothing changes.

So that’s all right then.

BC