Monday, July 24, 2017

Mediocrity vs. High Performance

I came across the title of an article today that was contrary to what I seem to teach in my leadership courses, 'Collaboration' Creates Mediocrity, Not Excellence, Says Science. So of course, I had to read it.
Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash
As it turns out, the article isn't disagreeing with what I am telling people, but it focuses on the negative aspects of team collaboration instead of providing a solution.

The average team isn't very effective. According to Dr. Eunice Parisi-Cerew, 60% of teams fail to accomplish their objectives. If Johnny brought home a report card with this sort of grade, we would be very unhappy, and we'd be sitting on him until results improved. In the workplace, we tend to tolerate mediocrity. That's what I see as the most important underlying theme of the article, and it is barely mentioned at all.

We do tend to allow people to get by in the workplace. If they are doing satisfactory work, we allow it. Instead of merely looking for the trappings of team collaboration, we should be shooting for high performance results. Yes, in many of the average teams, high performers tend to carry others. Eventually, the person doing the carrying is going to get mad and go somewhere else--and the effort collapses.

Collaboration is merely working together to produce or create something--there is nothing in the definition that indicates the quality or value of what is created. When we focus merely on collaboration, we are focusing on form over substance. Instead of collaboration being the end result, collaboration should be a tool to achieve the result.

High performance teams are different. They focus on results--not just mediocre results, but outstanding results. They hold one another accountable. They are not afraid to communicate expectations and to push one another.

I am not a believer in having all A players on a team. They bring their own problems. But I am a big believer in developing balanced teams of high potential players--may be they're B's now, but they are willing to work hard and work together toward outstanding results. I have seen a group of B players achieve better results than one with multiple A players because they were focused on a team win, not a personal best.

Creating and nurturing high performance teams is hard work. It isn't luck. And it begins with a focus on high performance standards, not merely collaboration.


Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Don't Ask The Question If You Don't Want to Deal With the Answer

I'm a consultant. Business owners come to me for advice. They don't always like the answer I give them. But it's their company--they don't have to use that advice. And that's OK. I reserve the right to do the same in my own company.

This happens to me when doing audits as well. When a company asks me to do any type of an audit, I always ask, are you sure you want to know? Because if you know something is not right, you have an obligation to fix it. If you are going to ignore what you find, then don't audit. You can at least plead ignorance. But once you know, it's hard to convince a government agency you were operating in good faith.

I was meeting with a group of people today to discuss employee engagement surveys. One of the people asked, "So, what if a company does the survey, and they fail?" Well, first, taking a survey and getting a poor result is not failure....if you use the information you get to make improvements. Companies only fail if they ignore the answers they get.

It's the same with employee satisfaction or engagement surveys. If you ask employees for their feedback, you can't ignore it. If you do, the employees figure you were just pretending to care what they think and the result is a further decrease in satisfaction and/or engagement. When you take these surveys, there are going to be negative responses. It's a given. No one and no company is perfect. However, you do need to go back to the employees and say, "Okay, here's what you liked and what you didn't. These are the specific issues we are going to tackle in the near term because they seemed to be the biggest concerns." Then get them involved in fixing the problems and keep them apprised of what is happening. Just the knowledge that the company listened and is trying to improve has a significant positive impact on employee motivation.

It's a waste of your time and your employees' time to ask them to complete a survey and then ignore what they tell you. If you don't want to know and don't want to take action, just don't ask in the first place.

The purpose of an audit or an employee survey is to make your company better. Properly used, these tools can not only improve compliance and engagement, but they can help you get better results in terms of profit--a win/win in my book.

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Winning the War for Profit

Warning! This post contains shameless self-promotion, as well as a modicum of useful information.

In an earlier post, I talked about leadership training as often pursued by companies, versus leadership training that actually works.

I recently released a short eBook (paperback to follow in a few months), Winning the War for Profit: Developing Leaders Where It Really Matters, that contains a roadmap to leadership development at the first-line supervisor level, as that is the place where (in my opinion) it can do an organization the most good.

Here's a short excerpt from the book that highlights why I think this is such an important topic:

"Here are just a few other reasons to focus on your supervisors:

  • The right managers contribute 48% more profit than average managers (Frontline Managers, 2014)
  • Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units. (Beck, 2014)
  • Businesses say that manager and supervisor involvement was "extremely important" or "very important" to the success of their change efforts (Manager/Supervisor's Role in Change Management, 2016)
  • Total Return to Shareholders (TRS) over a 3-year period is 286% higher for those companies with a high level of employee trust versus those with a low level of trust, according to Watson Wyatt.
  • Ninety-one percent of employees rated their relationship with their immediate supervisor as "very important" or "important" to their job satisfaction. (SHRM, 2016)
"If you are still stuck on the first bullet, you should be. That statement, by itself, should justify every penny of investment you make in your supervisors." 


Winning the War for Profit shows businesses how to select, train and support first-line supervisors. The information is transferable to leadership development at all levels of the organization, but there are some unique aspects to that first leadership rung, so I wanted to focus on that.

The next book, Leadership in the Trenches: Developing Your First-line Leadership Ability, will be focused on the specific skills required by first-line leaders and will be useful for organizations to use in their training programs or for first line supervisors to use independently. Look for that book around 1 October.

You can find Winning the War for Profit on Amazon.

Friday, June 2, 2017

Trust and Face-Time

I was speaking at an HR conference last week on the subject of managing change. In that talk, I talked about the importance of trust in getting employees to adopt change.

In the Q&A at the end of the session, one of the attendees asked, "How can one get employees in remote locations without regular interaction with management to trust the management team?" My response? "Facetime."

I know we have gotten into the whole virtual workplace theme. I interact with my clients mostly in a virtual environment. But I have met all of them, in person, usually more than once.

We've probably all heard the sales maxim that people buy from people they trust. In order to trust them, they have to like them, and to like them, they have to know them. The same is very true with employees and trust. If employees don't see management, they cannot develop trust in management, and if they don't trust management, they are unlikely to buy into the change.

This is one of the big reasons first line supervisors are so important--they are the accessible face of management. But let's not get me on that soapbox this morning. The old "Management by Walking Around" rule applies in today's workplace every bit as much as it used to. Perhaps even more, as workers are seeing their management less and less all the time.

Yes, your job is busy. At a point not too long in my past, I took over a work group of about 350 people that were spread out in several buildings. The tendency is to stay in the building where your office is located. I made it a point to visit every workcenter on a regular basis and to talk to every single person there when I went by. And to make sure I did it, I appointed someone to hold me accountable.

The visits weren't long. Initially, the employees were completely thrown off by management in their area. It was obvious that it was not something they were used to and when it happened, it wasn't a good thing. It took several weeks for them to relax and some months before they would actually bring up and discuss problems and make suggestions. They had a chance to ask "why" about policies and procedures from the person who made/approved them. I don't think it is enough just to glad-hand your employees (except maybe the first time.) Be interested; ask questions; recognize good work.

This simple, but regular, action was part of the reason this group gelled so well and actively pursued better ways of doing the work. In the case of the person in my conference session, to visit her group required overnight travel. So you don't see them every week, but you have to make it a point to see them occasionally. In between, yes, other forms of contact help reinforce the relationship.

My point? Get off your butt and walk around. Even if it's a long walk.

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Retaining and Propagating Knowledge

Have you noticed it is a never-ending battle to keep yourself proficient? Things are changing every day. You are never done learning. And neither are your employees. No one can be expert in everything you do.

Personally, I hate everything to do with accounting. I don't want to learn it in any detail. I want to know enough to understand the financial statements--I am perfectly happy to leave the details to someone else. I hire someone to do the bookkeeping who will make sure we have the records we need and know where the money comes from, where it's going and what's our current status. It keeps me sane. I use that information to make decisions, but I don't want the time suck of trying to keep up on this myself.

But therein is our dilemma. Not only do people need to stay current in their knowledge, but the organization needs to find a way to use, keep and expand upon that knowledge. People quit for other jobs. Others retire. They take a lot of knowledge with them.

How do we retain knowledge in our organization? How do we spread that knowledge around the organization, so we learn faster and aren't floundering when something happens? I talked about some of the mechanical ways in my last post, Let's Talk Systems. But there are other, more interactive ways to learn and share knowledge quickly.

I'll use myself as an example. I decided to write a book. It comes out in just a few days. (Dancing!) I have been meaning to write the book for a couple of years, but trying to learn all of the steps in getting published on my own just frustrated the heck out of me. I talked to the couple of people who I knew had written a book, but I just couldn't get the steps down in my mind. Finally, I signed up for a class and joined an on-line Facebook group. The class led me step-by-step (mostly) through a process and the on-line group provided a way to get my questions answered and provided encouragement along the way. Voila! Slightly more than 60 days later, I'm a published author.

Other than bragging on my accomplishment, what's the point? My point is organizations only stay on top by constantly learning--which means the people learn. But since people can come and go, we need to be sure to capture their knowledge in some way and share it with others to ensure the entire organization can capitalize on that knowledge. This again points to the need for planning and using a systematic process. At the same time, people engage more with the learning and can learn faster when they interact with others more knowledgeable and those also learning. Shared questions, experiences, and knowledge help to reinforce concepts and enable the learner to apply the knowledge more quickly.  In addition to faster and arguably, better, learning, this type of learning helps keep your experts engaged and helps everyone feel more a part of the team. A real win-win in terms of retention.

I suggest you try to find ways to incorporate social media tools into the learning plans in your organization.

Monday, April 17, 2017

Let's Talk Systems

I am a big proponent for setting up systems. For many reasons.

HR is an interruption-rich environment. If you have never worked in HR, it can be a madhouse. I find that if I don't have some way to keep track of what needs to be done and where I am in the process, things get forgotten. Just because I was thinking of doing a task or partially done with a task when I am interrupted, my brain translates that to "Done!"

Often, multiple hands touch an action for different purposes. If you're a one-person HR department and do all of the HR and payroll yourself, maybe not so much. But for many of us, different people do different things. Take for example a new hire. Someone has to report the person as starting to work. Someone has to ensure the I-9 gets done. Someone needs to ensure the new person is properly set up in the HRIS (and possibly payroll, if the system is not the same.) Someone has to ensure they are scheduled for all of their orientation/new hire training. Someone has to set up their personnel file. Someone has to take care of sending out the benefits paperwork,....and so on. You get the point. How do you track whether everyone with an action to take has indeed gotten the information they need and completed their tasks?

People leave. Employees leave. They quit, you fire them, they die. Sounds a little hard-nosed., but face it--people leave. All of these have happened in my department. Sometimes with little or no notice. Does anyone know how to do their job? Can anyone pick up and at least fumble through the actions that need to be done?

We forget. Some actions in HR need to be done only once a year. Do you remember to do them? Can you remember how? Do you know where to get the information you need?

For these reasons and more, you need to set up systems. That means you have to sit down the think out all of the steps you take, who does what, when they need to be done, etc. There is nothing wrong with manual systems. I used them for years and they work fine. I have to admit though, I like to automate as much as possible. Automated systems can be easier to share as well.

So what are some of the systems we need?
- Continuity "binders." You may not use binders anymore--electronic files work. The idea is to  have everything you need in one place so that if someone comes into the job knowing nothing, they can fumble through. I learned this one in the military. People turn over all the time, so this is a great way to ensure continuity when there is no time for training. These should contain a process flowchart and/or checklist, who to call, links to references, where to find the documents, forms and manuals needed, and an FAQ.
- Checklists. Yes, I mentioned them in the last paragraph. If you don't feel like you need something as complete as a continuity binder, at least make a checklist. It might be my little military mind, but checklists are our friends. But only if we use them. Did you do this? Who did it? When? It's all right there.
- Task lists. I mean a list of every important task in your department. That way, you can easily see if you have people who are lined up to do all of them and that you have continuity documents for all of them. This will also allow you to set up a task reminder system.
- Task reminder system. If you don't do a task every day, it's a good idea to have a reminder set up, with an early reminder to start gathering information in advance. The year goes by with the speed of light and annual tasks come up before you know it. Time for the annual handbook review. Check. Time to send out the Medicate Part D Notices. Check. Gee, has it already been 15 days for that FMLA certification? What's going on with that?
- Cross training. Look at that master task list. Does every task have a primary and an alternate person assigned? If it's a critical task, maybe even a back up for the back up. I'm just saying...stuff happens. The primary of course, is the person who does the job every day. The backup should at least have been trained on the task and can do it, with the assistance of the continuity book.
- Quality Control. Even if you have a process, you need a way to check it. I had one person who would be the last person to receive the checklists back on a new hire. Her job was to review the checklist to be sure every single task was signed off and to do a spot check to be sure. She also went hunting for checklists if they weren't returned to her in a couple of days of hire. None of these tools do a thing for you, if they aren't used.

If you will take the time to set up (and keep current) systematic processes in HR (and the rest of your company), your work life will be so much easier and you'll be in better shape on compliance.

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Leadership Training Doesn't Work, Does It?

I was reading another article this week arguing that leadership training doesn't work. I agree, but that doesn't mean it can't work.

Here are the reasons I see that the expenditure many companies make in leadership training doesn't yield the results they expect.

First, they invest in leadership training. Training helps people acquire knowledge. It doesn't mean the participant has the ability to apply that knowledge, or that the organization will allow it. I can pass on great information, you can take notes and memorize all of it, but if you cannot apply it in the workplace, it's useless. Training has to be supplemented with developmental activities and coaching. In other words, the participant has to have the opportunity to use what they learned and someone needs to provide some coaching in order for them to become proficient.

The next thing that keeps leadership training is that most of it is applied at the wrong level of the organization. Most leadership training is attended by senior managers. Yes, they need to know how to be better leaders. Yes, they have influence. The assumption is that if we teach the people at the top how to lead better, that knowledge will trickle down to the rest of the organization. Trickle-down leadership works about as well as trickle-down economics. As in, it doesn't.  The people with the most influence in an organization and who touch the most people are the first-line supervisors. They need the training (and accompanying development) most. That is the level at which better leadership skills will have the most impact. But we don't do much leadership training and development at that level. We use the school of hard knocks approach and keep trading out supervisors until one of them "gets it" quickly enough to perform satisfactorily before they get fired. (OK, off that soapbox for today.)

Lastly, almost all leadership training focuses on one person--the leader. Look at the picture at the top of post. What is wrong with that picture? I did a search for pictures of leaders, and this is one that came up. I am happy that at least some photos with women came up, but that's not the issue. The leader in this photo is at the front--large, in focus, and serious. One assumes the fuzzy little people behind her are her "followers." That's the fundamental problem with leadership training. It focuses too much on the leader. Leadership is a group activity. We don't spend enough time talking about how leadership functions in a group. Leadership is the art of influencing people to willingly work toward a common goal. And people are not one-size-fits-all. And people in a group (or team) are different than when they are alone. That's why it is so important that learners actually lead. The information they get in training gives them new tools to try. Practice allows them to become proficient. If they have a skilled coach, they'll become proficient faster, with less frustration.

Back to our original issue. No, leadership training by itself, doesn't show much return on investment. In order for it to pay off, you have to also invest in development and you have to spread the leadership training around the organization, especially those with the greatest touch in the organization--first-line supervisors.