Predicting Turnover – It’s not Rocket Science; It’s People Science

By Michelle Malay Carter on December 19, 2007 

Turnover RiskWe conducted a Talent Pool Evaluation for a client years?ago and found?four out of tweleve?of their district managers?had problem solving capability one level above?the District?Manager?role.??

Underutilized Employees Are At High Risk for Turnover?

When we mentioned these particular District Managers to the client, she said these employees needed little training upon hiring and required no hand holding.? They?were great employees.?

We explained to the client that although were great employees,?they would likely not want to stay in their current role more than about six months, as the role would lack challenge for them after they had traversed their initial learning curve.? In other words, these employees were underutilized and, as such, represented a turnover risk.

Our client responded that two of the four have left between the time we conducted the talent pool evaluation four weeks earlier?and our?current meeting.

How?Do We Spot Underutilization??

Want to know how we did it?? This post got too long so I split it in two; tune in tomorrow.

I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s?fix the system.?

About 20% of employees are underutilized.? Have you ever left an organization because you were underutilized even after specifically telling them you were bored and wanted a greater challenge??

Filed Under Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, High Potential, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Talent Management | Comments Off on Predicting Turnover – It’s not Rocket Science; It’s People Science

The Perfect Job Title?

By Michelle Malay Carter on December 18, 2007 

Speaking with ConfidenceGoogle is currently recruiting for a Director of Other.? This sounds like a?dream job?because it affords?the potential to clench the proverbial best of both worlds.? Imagine the freedom to set your own agenda.?

If you are given an assignment that does not interest you, you can say:? “Obviously, that doesn’t fall into the category of Other,” and?walk away unapologetically.?

Conversely, if you want to get your hands into an unrelated but?particularly?appealing project, you can inject yourself by saying: “Why clearly you can see how this is related to Other,” as you boldly take a seat next to the project leader.

Your success will all boil down to confidence in your delivery of the two key lines above.? Second-guessers need not apply.

Thanks to Hrush at cleartrip Blog for the pointer to this unusual job title.

What would your perfect job title be?

Filed Under Accountability, Employee Engagement, Personal Observation | 5 Comments

When Everyone is Accountable, No One is Accountable – The Team Accountability Fantasy

By Michelle Malay Carter on December 16, 2007 

bart-simpson-generator.gifWhen?a project fails, people cover their tails trying to avoid being blamed.? (This sounds like it could be the beginning of a limerick, but I digress.)? One main reason projects fail in the first place is due to the failure to assign an accountable project leader.

The Slippery Slope of Egalitarianism
The idea of an egalitarian work team is attractive upon first mention, but it fails miserably in practice.? When one person is not given the ultimate authority for the project, then one person does not have the ultimate power to decide critical issues along the way.? This opens the door to consensus-decision making which is time-consuming, emotionally charged, and lends itself to coalition building, sabotage, manipulation, withdrawal, etc.

All Advise, One Decides
With an accountable project manager, all team members are accountable to give their best advice, but the manager ultimately decides.? If a project leader does not have the last say in critical decisions, then the organization cannot ethically hold the project leader accountable for the project.

Accountability Must be?Matched with Authority?
Notice how accountability and authority are partners in this?? One without the other creates dysfunction.? Quite frequently, organizations expect accountability but do not equip their leaders with requisite authority.

Have you ever been asked to lead a project, but your team members felt free to ignore your meetings, your assignments, and your requests for information?? I have.? It’s a helpless feeling.? Helplessness breeds cynicism.? Is there any wonder why we are experiencing an employee cynicism epidemic?

In order to hold a?project leader accountable, the leader must have four requisite authorities in relation to the project.? A project leader must have the power to:

  1. Veto assignment of an unacceptable team member.
  2. Assign tasks (and have them carried out as if they were assigned by the team member’s manager.)
  3. Report on team member performance and effectiveness to the team member’s’manager.
  4. Remove a non-performing team member.

I believe project accountability would not be a problem if it were matched with these requisite authorities.? Explicit authority is an often overlooked but?critical resource organizations must provide to their leaders.

I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.

Have you ever been held accountable for something without being given the authority you needed to get the job done?

–Image created at Add Letters.

Filed Under Accountability, Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization | Comments Off on When Everyone is Accountable, No One is Accountable – The Team Accountability Fantasy

When We Lose Hope, We Cope – A Friday Serious with a Funny Ending

By Michelle Malay Carter on December 14, 2007 

The Long Path to AuthenticityWe all have our default coping mechanisms for dealing with stressful situations.? Some try to?dominate and intimidate.? Others accommodate and people please.? Others try to hide and withdrawal.

The raw material for our “mechanism of choice”?begins with our natural hard-wiring and then we develop and refine it in a delicate dance of trial-and-error with our environment over time.

As deeply ingrained as these mechanisms are, the road to authentic behavior is long and uncomfortable.? Many people never so much as step foot on the path.

From a purely ROI standpoint, does it make sense for organizations to invest in interventions to try to develop individual employee maturity, self awareness, and character, or would it pay more to design its systems in a trust-inducing, consistent, sane-making way so as not to trigger stress reactions in employees in the first place?

Personal development is a noble endeavor.? However, I believe humans are wired to work and can be relatively productive even when immature, given a work-supportive environment.?

Most current management systems DO NOT enable productive work.? Rather, they impede it and frustrate employees with a barrage of conflicts of interest.

Let’s start by creating a work-enabling environment first, and only then pull out your “Employees in Need of Therapy” list.? I’ll?bet the list will be shorter than you think.? I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.

For a chuckle, watch this FedEx clip featuring a variety of coping mechanisms.? Anyone who knows us, knows our coping mechanisms.

Filed Under Corporate Values, Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Talent Management | 2 Comments

I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money – Why You Should Deliver Sensitive Messages in Person

By Michelle Malay Carter on December 12, 2007 

The Dangers of EmailI’ve got some heavy writing commitments outside my blog this week so my entries will be a little lighter and less often.? It’s painful because I’ve stumbled upon some good stuff this week that I have not had time to research.

Back in the day when I did customer service training, I used the following sentence to make a point about communication:

“I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.”

This sentence is interesting in that if you say the sentence seven times, each time placing the emphasis on a different word, the meaning of the sentence shifts.

Try it…

  1. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
  2. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
  3. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
  4. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
  5. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.
  6. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.?
  7. I Didn’t Say You Stole My Money.

My?advice to managers:? If you have something sensitive to say, do it face to face.? Email not only?keeps us from using body language cues, but also it?denies us the ability to place emphasis on a certain word in a sentence, leaving the sentence open to multiple interpretations.? This can be a dangerous management practice.

Have you ever had an email message misinterpreted?

Filed Under Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Personal Observation | 10 Comments

Managerial Leadership – What Doesn’t Get Measured, Doesn’t Get Done

By Michelle Malay Carter on December 11, 2007 

What Does Your Performance Management System Focus Upon?One of the services we offer our clients is a Leadership Scan.? We interview employees about whether basic managerial leadership practices are occurring in their department.? Further, we check to see whether?these practices are a simply a positive anomaly or whether they are specifically codified and organizationally system-supported.

One of the questions we ask is:? What are the measures of performance in your role?

Unfortunately, I have yet to have anyone in a managerial role mention any performance measures related to execution of their managerial leadership duties.

Systems drive behavior and telegraph values.?
Performance management systems which focus solely upon the technical aspects of managerial roles and make no mention of managerial leadership effectiveness send a message loud and clear.

In return, employees are sending one back – 71% disengagement.

Does your performance management system include a managerial leadership component??

I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.

Filed Under Accountability, Corporate Values, Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization | 3 Comments

Playing the Character Card Exclusively – Let’s Get a New Deck

By Michelle Malay Carter on December 9, 2007 

house-of-cards.jpgClemson University professor of management, Terry Leap, wrote an Article in the Wall Street Journal entitled, Keys to Spotting a Flawed CEO,?which gave a list of behaviors which should call into question a CEO’s character.?

Michael McKinney’s Leading Blog featured the list of suspect behaviors,?and I, as a commenter, suggested that some of the behaviors might be emanating from a CEO having inadequate cognitive capacity relative to?his role, rather than a character flaw per se.? Meaning, if this?”flawed CEO”?were put into a role suited to his current capability, those derailment behaviors might cease or lower? dramatically.?

I used this same line of reasoning in another blog post?when analyzing the Fast Company article, Ten Habits of Incompetent Managers.? The crickets chirped, and no one commented so I’ll try stirring the soup again, using a slightly different angle.

Michael of Leading Blog?and one of his readers weren’t having my explanation.? They believe the situation to be solely about character – an unchecked ego.? Granted,?ego?will fuel?many of the behaviors in question, and ego flares will cause?inappropriate behavior, but I want to stop short of labeling ego flares an inherent?character flaw.? Further, I want to look for systemic solutions rather than psychoanalytical ones.?

The question not being asked is:? Can organizations design systems less likely to?catalyze ego flares or any other of a variety of other stress-related coping mechanisms?

Do You Wish to Cast the First Stone?
Have you ever behaved badly at work?? Is your character flawed?? I’ll bet you can give me a list of reasons why you acted the way you did.? They wouldn’t be excuses, but explanations.? We all have certain situations that “push our buttons”, and?these situations can cause us to act in a ways that we later regret.??Conversely, let me ask:? When you spend time with your friends, doing things you enjoy, are you prone to selfish, childish, egotistical, defensive, bullying or passive-aggressive?behavior??

We cannot deny that the environment within which we are operating is a catalyst for our behavior – laudable and regrettable.? Yes, some people are more mature than others.??Highly developed individuals are?able to keep their behavior aligned with their core principles in the face of button pushing, and I am not arguing that we all, including CEOs, should not strive to develop our character.

Current Management Systems Compel Button-Pushing?
What I am saying is that current management systems,?absolutely compel incessant?employee button pushing to include the buttons of the CEO.? First and foremost, mismatching employee cognitive capacity to role complexity will not only push the employee’s buttons, but that of their manager, peers and direct reports.? It’s a petri dish for dysfunction.? So the system-level solution lies in understanding work levels and human problem solving capability and designing processes to better match the two.??It’s downright cruel to?ask employees to be accountable for controlling disease when the organization has not first installed indoor plumbing!

Am?I a Bad Girl?? Or?Am I a Human?Who?Behaved Badly in a Frustrating, Dysfunctional Situation?
When we spot regrettable behavior,?can we look to the system FIRST before?labeling people?? Any of us who have ever acted poorly at work would appreciate this concession.??I was fired from my first job out of college.? My boss?called me?lazy and said I would never amount?to anything.??Did I have an inherent laziness character flaw?? No.? I was bored and?being asked to spend my time on tasks I wasn’t hired to do and didn’t value.??My lack of interest in my job led me not to apply myself so my slack-off behavior was contextual, not inherent.? Did I handle things well? ?No.? Was I?immature?? Yes.? But I honestly believe that had I been matched to a role that challenged me with work I valued, I would have been a star performer as I have been in other contexts.

Dysfunctional employee, manager, and CEO behavior can usually be traced to something other than an inherent character flaw.? Our current diagnostic deck of cards contains only causes rooted in individuals.? Let’s stack the deck with system-level causes, and our interventions might actually net results.

I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.

Has your character ever been called into question at work?

Filed Under Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Talent Management | 2 Comments

Creativity Versus Innovation – A Friday Funny

By Michelle Malay Carter on December 7, 2007 

Creativity is the bursting forth of new ideas.? Innovation is putting them into application.? Many creative people have no interest in the application of their ideas.?? Their satisfaction comes solely from the creation of the idea.? If you are a manager creating a team, keep in mind that you need both.? All talk with no action can kill you.

Thanks to Nathania at Bold Interactive on this video from the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Filed Under Employee Engagement, Managerial Leadership, Personal Observation | 2 Comments

Work, Work Everywhere, But Not a Drop of Understanding

By Michelle Malay Carter on December 6, 2007 

Water DropNot all work is the same.? Would you agree?? Aren’t some roles more complex than others???Having a definition of work levels and a common language to discuss them would advance the field of management by leaps and bounds.

I went to a business simulation yesterday and the crowd was loaded with human resource and organizational development professionals.? The group was arbitrarily divided into three groups:? the tops, the middles, and the bottoms.? Each group was charged with making money for “the company” and each person with advancing his/her career.? The odds were against the bottoms.? Their opportunities to earn were less, and because there were double as many of them, their earnings were divided by more heads.?

Fair Does Not Mean Equal?
This well intentioned?group quickly began to dismantle the companies “systems” in order to create an egalitarian workplace.? The tops were nobly looking for ways to get the earnings divided equally amongst all levels.??

When you are in a room face to face with other humans, the fact that we all? inherently have equal worth can cloud the fact that some are accountable for more complex work, and as such, should be paid more.? When it comes to compensation, fair pay does not mean equal pay.

Hierarchy Hysteria
When futurist books and articles predict the end of hierarchies, I think they aren’t looking at the work but rather the faces of the employees.? Hierarchies will always exist because work exists in a hierarchy!? Granted, hierarchies as we currently misuse and misunderstand them, need to be eliminated, but hierarchies are the foundation of the universe.? They are not going away.? Let’s seek to understand them and use them to our benefit, not eliminate them.

Clarification through Stratification!!
We often vilify what we don’t understand.? If we understood work levels, when we talked about innovation, we could specify which level of innovation we were referring to instead of confusing one another by implying it looks the same at all levels.? When we talked about competencies, such as leadership, project management, or sales skills, we could specify by level.? Competencies look different at different levels and call for different capability.

Just as H2O can be present in the forms of steam, water, and ice, work exists in different states.? These can be measured and observed.? Any role in any organization in any country can be stratified into one of eight levels.??Correspondingly, as our hierarchical universe would have it, human capability to solve problems can be stratified?into levels as well.? Once this is understood, it paves the way for sane-making organizational design, talent management, and managerial leadership.?

Recommending Reading?
Elliott Jaques discovered these truths decades ago, and you can read more about them in his books, Executive Leadership and Requisite Organization.? If you are interested in integrating your people systems – selection, performance management, leadership development, succession planning, managerial practices, organization design, strategic execution (through people), embedding values into operations – after my blog, these books are the place to go for information gathering.

I’m OK.? You’re OK.?? Let’s fix the system.

Your thoughts?

Filed Under Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization | 2 Comments

Snappy Boring Quotes from Timothy Ferriss

By Michelle Malay Carter on December 4, 2007 

Teh 4 Hour Work WeekI’ve talked about the fact that 20% of workers are underutilized and bored.? Further, we often fiind that many higher level jobs within organizations are not “fully loaded”. ?Meaning although an employee might be matched to his job on paper, much of the employee’s time is spent doing tasks that are substantially lower in complexity than that called for by the organizational level of the role.? Bored.? Boring.? Boredom.

I enjoyed this quote on boredom taken?from a Fast Company interview?with Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join The New Rich.

“Most corporate workers are bored and dangerously comfortable.? They are in that gray area between love and hate that leaves most with constant low-grade anxiety and an acute sense of wasted potential.? This is more common and more damaging than hate, because hate spurs action.? Tolerable mediocrity leads you to wake up one day and ask “what happened to the last 20 years?”?… Boredom should scare people as much as hate.”

I can’t recommend the book because?I haven’t read it, but I do?recommend reading the interview?as it was dotted with edgy quotes to include:?

“I never break rules — I analyze them and question the outdated assumptions and habits based on them.”
“I’m trying to teach people how to be the chess player instead of the chess piece.”
“This book challenges a lot of behaviors people hold dear, even though they are counterproductive.”

Duly intrigued, I went to the library to?get the book, and the librarian said they would put me on the waiting list.? As I turned to leave, it occurred to me to ask what number on the list I was.? “Number 40,” she said.??(Just a small bit of pertinent information the librarian would not have shared with me had I not asked!)? So, I can either buy the book or wait about two years to borrow it from the library.

On a final note, Ferriss says 13 publishers turned his book down before it made its way to the bestsellers list.? This is encouraging as I have had many more executives than that turn down the idea of adopting a total-systems approach to managerial leadership, talent management, and organizational design.? I look forward to the day when I have a two-year waiting list.

Have you read the book?? Is it worth buying?

Filed Under Employee Engagement, Managerial Leadership, Personal Observation, Talent Management | 7 Comments

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