The Heart of Engagement : Leadership Development, Management Education, Retreat Facilitation & Executive Coaching : Mike Cook : AMJ Group

 This week I'll continue with Part Two of my interview with Bill Catlette, co-author of 'Rebooting Leadership.'

MFC: Bill, I am wondering about something else; you are a former HR manager/leader, I am merely an "old" HR practitioner, however, I think I have noticed a dramatic shift in the practices of HR departments over the past decade, maybe even a bit longer. To put it bluntly it seems to me that HR has gone from meaning Human Resources to meaning Human Regulation. I know this is not very subtle yet I have heard little positive about HR departments in many organizations I have worked with over the past 23 years. Again, is this just my view or have you noticed this trend as well?

BC: In fairness Mike, I think the road to “Human Regulation” or “Human Remains” as some put it, has a lot more to do with much larger tectonic shifts in our workspace and society in general, than with any failing on the part of HR professionals.

As a nation, we find ourselves extremely divided and in deep yogurt on so many fronts, yearning for some success, some fresh air. As former Medtronic chief, Bill George put it; the situation we find ourselves in was caused “not by subprime lending, but subprime leadership.” I am in furious agreement with Mr. George.

 To be sure, the terms of the deal in the workspace have morphed radically over the last decade, to a point where many (most?) managements no longer enjoy the benefit of the doubt of their workers. The terms, “employer” and “job” have lost nearly all relationship to what they meant just twenty years ago. So much so that in the case of the former, British management scholar, Charles Handy suggests that we should give up the name entirely, and refer to ourselves not as employers, but “organizers of work.” Chew on that for a minute or two.

 Things like worker engagement get pretty tricky when most of our workers are, as my son put it, “not married to their jobs, but just dating them.”

 Do HR professionals and pundits share some of the blame? Sure we do. Staring unemployment in the face, some have no doubt become weak-kneed, while others struggle with just what becoming “more strategic” really means. Hint: Earning and keeping a seat at the “big table” does not stem from losing either your head for business or your heart. While many by necessity spend a lot of their workday plastering lipstick on a pig, we mustn’t lose sight of real sunlight at the end of the tunnel, or the courage to quietly but clearly remind the CEO that it is still after all, a pig. If we can’t or won’t do those things, we should find something else to do for a living.

 And, I think that those of us who have been practicing the HR craft for more than 15 years should regularly ask ourselves if we’re truly willing to learn and adapt to new realities. If not, then the Millennial rant about the Boomers who just won’t get out of the way has some merit.

MFC: To be fair, I don't want to paint the entire profession with the same brush. There are plenty of bright stars in the field; Kris Dunn immediately comes to mind. I follow his blog HR Capitalist and the one he founded and coordinates, Fistful of Talent on a regular basis. What I especially like about Kris is that a) he thinks like a business person, a quality I find missing in many HR professionals. and b) he is an active HR professional, not just a commentator like myself. But why so few Kris Dunn's, or is this again just data from my limited perspective?

BC: I don’t know if it stems from the cable “news” model where only the negative or outrageous stuff gets covered or what, but too many of the good stories get buried. I would trade just one story about an HR manager who is keeping his/her CEO from looking like a complete bozo on Undercover Boss for the next 1,000 pieces on Charlie Sheen or Lindsay Lohan.

There are a lot of good CEO’s and good leaders, and good HR professionals out there who get neither the attention nor credit they deserve. People like Brian Ennis (ETEX),Christopher Smith (H.J. Baker), Niki Leondakis (Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants), Jim Goodnight (SAS),Dan Cathy (Chick-fil-A), CSM Michele Jones (U.S. Army Reserves, ret.) and on the HR front, Steve Browne (LaRosa’s),Tim Kern (Pfizer), and Susan Merfeld (Pebble Beach Company). There is nothing, repeat, nothing I enjoy more than working with folks like this, and focusing whatever spotlight we might have on them and other deserving leaders.

I try to live by the motto, “Feed the Opportunities… Starve the Problems.” If all of us, me included, could do a little better job of that, our world might be a better place.

MFC: There are two things I do not understand about this, first, CEO's who allow their HR leadership to not think like business people, you know, risk/reward not just risk avoidance. Second, HR professionals seem to have at best limited interest in what I think may be one of the highest leverage vantage points in any business. HR is involved in everything. They see the smoke before the fire becomes visible. I do not understand why they often seem reluctant to "name" what they are seeing and initiate or at least encourage the difficult conversations to take place. You have worked with many "C" level executives. In your experience what is the prevailing view of the value added by HR from the line executive’s point of view?

BC: Sorry to sound like an attorney (I’m not), but the answer is, it depends… on the CEO or other C-level exec. Some “get it” and some don’t. Many have never had the pleasure of working with a real HR pro who is a business partner in every sense of the word, so it is a hard concept for them to appreciate. In fairness, it is incumbent on us to show them, not the other way around.

 MFC: Bill, if it sounds like I am grinding an ax here on the heads of HR departments I am. I don't mean for you to give a boost to my bandwagon but this is a big deal for me. Going back 39 years I received a Masters in Labor and Industrial Relations from Michigan State. I worked in the profession for nearly 10 years before moving to OD, I worked on the original ERISA conversions in the 70's and the whole bit. We always worked like everyone in the organization was counting on us to get things right, not just management. We felt, acted and thought like we needed to represent everyone's point of view to management, like it was a sacred trust. I am not seeing a lot of that these days so for me I ask these questions from the perspective of someone whose heart is broken by the unfulfilled possibility that HR represents. Have you ever given any thought to writing a book directed strictly at engaging HR professionals in your vision for what an HR function could provide if it were truly focused on engagement?

BC: Stay tuned. We’re not done.

MFC: Thanks Bill, as always the pleasure has been mine and the learning priceless.

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Recently I have not been feeling very positive about the HR profession. If I was really being specific I wasn’t feeling good about a couple of interactions I had with HR managers that I thought were shortsighted. Well, really I thought the interactions reflected an unnecessarily biased perspective towards management’s interest. OK, so I didn’t get what I wanted! Are you happy now?

When such an occasion does arise and I find myself “screwed into the ceiling” I often turn to cooler heads to provide me a new perspective and allow me the opportunity to come down from my high horse. One person I always feel confident can talk me off the ledge is my long time associate, former Managing Director of HR at Federal Express, Bill Catlette.

Unlike me Bill is one of those people who suffer from perpetual “level headedness”, a trait I can honestly say I only aspire to. My hope would be that whether you are an HR professional or a manager in some line function that you have someone like Bill that you can turn to when you can’t get out of your own way.

That’s where I was a couple of weeks back and I was embarrassed about it. I like to think I am above taking things too personally, it is “just business” after all but I know I will on occasion get “hooked” so when I contacted Bill my face was still red and I had to sort of sneak up on my agenda by asking him about his recently published book, ‘Rebooting Leadership’. I knew he’d be ready to talk about that and once we got started I could launch into my true purpose. What transpired was an exchange that became an interview and I am pleased to share it with you here, a conversation with a true leader in the HR profession.

Here goes.

MFC: Bill, along with your longtime partner Richard Hadden and Meredith Kimbell, you have recently written and released a new book, 'Rebooting Leadership' that is targeted at front line managers and their managers, my favorite place in the management structure. I say favorite because this is where I believe authentic employee engagement is encouraged or damaged. Why did you feel this was the time for a book directed at this segment of the management hierarchy?

BC: Thanks, Mike, for giving me the opportunity to talk with you about what has become our favorite topic, too.We wrote Rebooting Leadership for exactly one reason:

For us, the topic - trying to do something to help front-line managers, was like a blinking red light with a wailing siren attached to it. Even on the best of days, front-line leaders have the toughest jobs in any organization, with increasing performance pressure, very little support, and no place to hide. Add to that an increasingly dispirited and disengaged workforce, the complete cratering of trust in the workspace, having precious little training for going on 4 years, and their jobs are made near impossible. Think about it, before they even show up for work in the morning, a glance at their email in-basket forewarns them of intense data water-boarding for the first couple of hours. And unlike a lot of others, they have real work to get done. In short, most of them are stuck in a real hard spot.

We committed to doing a book that offers the front-line leader the practical benefit that a stuck computer gets from pressing Control+Alt+Delete… a fresh start, using a time honored operating system, yet applicable to today’s challenges. Practical advice like, how to build your own high performance team (aka Friending), how to survive a failed project or bad decision (Failing), and how to get people engaged (Getting Sticky).

Early reports suggest that we may have struck a chord with it. I got a note just the other day from a business school professor at Butler University, advising that the book is required reading for his fall term graduate class on leadership.

MFC: You have a deep background in Human Resource management; you played a key role in that function at Federal Express, among other places. Your first two books 'Contented Cows Give Better Milk: The Plain Truth About Employee Relations and Your Bottom Line' and the more recent 'Contented Cows Move Faster: How Good Leaders Get People to Put More OOMPH! Into Their Work seemed to appeal more to the rational side of managers and leaders; this new book seems to be almost an impassioned plea to supervisors and managers. Can you comment on this or is this simply my interpretation? If I am in sync with you here can you also comment on this shift into another gear?

BC: Each of those books, and thank you for remembering them, was written for a specific purpose and audience. The first, ‘Contented Cows Give Better Milk’, was written as the capstone to our research that showed quite conclusively, for the first time, those organizations that treat people right, and are legitimate employers of choice, grow faster, are more productive, make more money, and create more wealth for shareholders. We made the business case, not with faith, but facts. In essence, it validated the hard work of good leaders and hard working HR professionals. Game, set, match.

The second book, ‘Contented Cows MOOve Faster’, did a deep dive on the whole notion of Discretionary Effort, that extra morsel of effort, the turbocharger that each of us can turn on if, but only if we want to. It is somewhat more prescriptive than the first book, and is intended for leaders at every level. It shows them how to tap into that extra 30 – 40% of capacity that our people choose daily to either expend in the workplace, or take home at days end unspent.

Written for Level 1 and 2 leaders and the people who coach and direct them, ‘Rebooting Leadership’ is nothing but prescriptive content (do THIS, stop doing THAT). It’s what your own boss would be teaching you if they had the time, and over 75 years of leadership experience (and the scars to prove it). We actually tried to condense it to a series of 140 character Tweets, but couldn’t quite pull it off. Our publisher, David Cottrell of Cornerstone Leadership so bought in to this concept that he allowed us only 112 pages, on the premise that our intended audience has neither the time nor inclination to read a book any bigger than that. Besides, as Mark Twain put it, long books/letters are what you write “when you don’t have time to write a short one.”

(to be continued) Coming up next, Part Two: Bill Catlette answers my question, "Has HR come to mean Human Regulation?"

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How does an organization sustain the engagement of employees through a significant period of change, not a change management initiative, a continuous period of evolutionary change lasting say, ten years? That experience is one that has been shared over the last decade by the 70,000 + employees of the Boeing Corporation in the greater Seattle area.

Here in the northwest our relationship with Boeing is up close and personal and if you work there, as a leader or not, you might feel like a fish being followed by a group of wide eyed tourists in a glass bottom boat. We cheer when the news for Boeing is good like it was recently when the company was awarded a large contract and we tremble when the company seems vulnerable as it has during the 787 project.

The trials and tribulations of the Boeing’s 787 project are a journalist’s dream come true because so many things have gone wrong. And with a presence as prominent as Boeing’s is here in the Northwest you can bet that EVERYTHING gets reported on and from many perspectives given the wide diversity of agendas that have some dependency on the company. Almost no news day is complete without something being reported out of Boeing.

Something I have wondered about for a while is how any company can maintain employee engagement during this period of rapid and sustained evolutionary change. Boeing provides plenty of opportunity to consider this question. So Monday when an article appeared in this Monday’s (4/4/11) Seattle Times Business and Technology section profiling one of the key leaders at Boeing it grabbed my attention.

I was hoping for some insight into how Boeing’s senior team has been leading the organization? What have they been doing to keep engagement high, have they even been concerned about it? I am a fan of both Bill Bridges and Dick Axelrod. In his highly regarded book ‘Terms of Engagement’  Axelrod outlines three critical leadership practices that are keys to success in any change management process, such as Boeing has been undergoing for a decade. They are: 

·         Honesty

·         Transparency

·         Trust

It is these practices, Axelrod tells us, that when followed create the conditions in which employees can choose to engage fully while leadership is making big demands on them. How is Boeing’s leadership doing as followers of these practices?

As I was reading this new piece I had Axelrod’s model in mind.  

The article by Dominic Gates, the Times Boeing beat reporter, profiles Nicole Piasecki, Boeing’s vice president of Business Development head of Strategic Analysis for Commercial Airplanes. If you live anywhere, never mind simply the Northwest, and are involved in employee engagement you will find some nuggets here, some to save and some to avoid.

The article, as well as being an executive profile discusses some of the key strategic issues Boeing leadership has and is dealing with as it prepares for competition in spaces in which it has been one of two dominant players for many years

Nicole Piasecki has clearly been on both the receiving end of some pretty big decisions made by others that resulted in negative consequences and also an active participant in making some of these same decisions herself. As Dominic Gates points to in his article…

“…some of Boeing's strategic moves in the past decade — which Piasecki had a hand in — now look questionable. Boeing's leadership has conceded that the wholesale outsourcing of work on the Dreamliner (787) program was handled badly. The debacle has trashed the company's stellar reputation for delivering on time and has cost the company billions of dollars.”

Has Boeing’s leadership completely stepped up to full responsibility for the decisions that led to the 787’s problems? Maybe you should judge for yourself but here is how it was reported by Dominic Gates when he directly asked Piasecki about one such decision…

“Piasecki considered her answer for a long moment, pausing, a conversation that was otherwise a fluid mix of lively, confident answers and occasional playful banter.

Finally she acknowledged, as her boss Jim Albaugh did recently, that Boeing's leadership at the time was very focused on shrinking in-house assets to boost Wall Street's assessment of company profitability.”

As I read these words I felt my confidence in Boeing leadership rising and then I read the next sentence…

“Then she briskly moved on, saying she won't "second-guess decisions that have already been made."

For my part, and she may not have intended it to be so, I found this response cavalier and I was left deflated. I know Boeing employee’s read this piece and I wondered whether they might have the same impression as I did. Is this the kind of transparency, honesty and trust that provides a foundation for engagement?

So I am now left wondering a) whether Boeing’s leadership is fully prepared to create the conditions for employees to continue to choose to engage at the high levels the company no doubt needs and b) whether those 72,000 + employees working for Boeing in the Seattle area are coming in each day fully engaged or whether they may just not have anyplace else to go?

•  What about your own leadership? Have you made decisions that went badly? How did you handle these with the people affected?

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