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

 If you have been involved in management/leadership development for any length of time I am sure this thought has crossed your mind…

   “There must be a more effective way to do this!”

I’d also be willing to bet that you’ve wrestled with this question…

           “How can we get senior management to see that budgets for management development need to be related to as essential not discretionary?”

You may have also wondered this…

           “Why is it that managers wait to be sent to our programs rather than ask to get in?”

If any of these thoughts/questions seem familiar to you let me then ask you this; do these common elements of a corporate developmental approach seem at all familiar?

Development is done…

• Away from the workplace, with a classroom focus
• On a periodic event basis
• With the assumption that development is learning, meaning we focus primarily on providing new information.
• Centers on individual rather than group learning process, most classes made up of unconnected participants  
• Assumes all developmental issues to be more or less technical, developing skills is sufficient.

If you noticed yourself identifying with any of these elements chances are good that in your version of a “corporate university” participating managers are exposed to the traditional transmission model of adult education. The transmission model is a carryover from the way in which we have taught children for many years. This format rests on the premise that a subject matter expert can transfer crucial knowledge to us by some means, lecture, videos, role playing, simulation etc.  The expectation is that the learner has an insufficient store of information, the expert will “add” some of what is missing and voila! Performance improves.

In this model there is no presumption that the learner may already know what to do and by virtue of other factors cannot execute on that knowledge. The transmission model assumes perfect ability to apply what is being learned and if not then there is some defect of character or attitude involved. These defects of course become diagnosed as opportunities for individual coaching!

So getting back to those opening thoughts and questions… “Why are managers waiting to be sent to our programs…?” Given the way we go about development it is highly likely that they don’t see our offerings as having a critical relationship with what they are accountable for getting done. This can be corrected but it will take be willing to think differently about development.

As for the question, “How can we get senior management to see that budgets for management development need to be held as essential not discretionary?” What if they came back to us and asked, “If we don’t cut your budget what do you really think the odds are of us getting the performance we are counting on from our managers based on what you are proposing?” Would you be willing to put your job on the line?

If we answer honestly we all know there is plenty of research to suggest that betting the mortgage payment on the current and most common approaches to management development would not be wise. Might this not then drive us right back to our lamenting declaration… “There must be a better way to do this!” and encourage us to transform to a more  responsible and engaging statement like “I am going to find a more effective way to do this!”

So where would we start to redesign management development from?

Where would you start if it was your project? **

Consider these questions as part of your process? What if...

• You could link manager's problem solving ability together like computers can be linked for greater efficiency and processing power?
• Management development could become process driven rather than event bound?
• Development and the application of learning took place in a near real time experiential environment using actual situations faced?
• Managers derived most of their developmental benefit from conversations with other managers facing similar issues working collaboratively on real problems?
• Managers engaged collaborative development on a long term basis could dramatically improve their aggregate efficiency and reduce the time it took for results to be produced across all functional lines?

Here is a bigger and tougher question...if all these "what ifs" were possible would you be willing to scrap your existing approach to management/leadership development for outcomes such as these? 

** In coming installments I'll be sharing some of my thoughts on how to revolutionize management/leadership development where it may matter most, in the middle of your organization.

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I don’t think the Super Committee is going to get it done, the European economies are in turmoil, the stock market is poised to whip itself into a frenzy, asking “What does all this mean?” yet once again, and we’re coming into the holiday season. Welcome to wonderland, as in, “Wonder how we ended up here?”

Right about now if you told me left was right or up was down I’d be inclined to at least give the thought some consideration. So many things that we’ve taken as a matter of fact have been turned upside down in the past three years we’ve reached the point where I’ve come to completely understand that nothing is permanent. I was thinking today about what I am thankful for that I look to for inspiration when there seems to be no solid ground. It is my trust in myself and the recognition that as I have trusted myself I have been able to forge some amazing relationships over the years that I am confident will support me through whatever upheavals lay in front of us in the near term. For these relationships I am deeply thankful. Since it is my belief that a trust in myself is what has allowed for this nurturing network to take form I decided this week to re-publish an earlier post on this topic…here it is with my best wishes for a fulfilling holiday.

• Can you imagine being a manager and not trusting people? I don’t necessarily mean specific people, I mean people in general. Unfortunately, I think many managers are unconscious of their biases in this regard, having “handy stories” justifying behavior that might otherwise be considered paranoid. I think you know the stories I mean, they usually include some element of “well you can never be too careful,” or “if you want something done right do it yourself.” Both of these are versions of how to avoid depending on others. These “stories” do a major job of invisibly undermining accountability in any organization. Put in the simplest terms, no trust = no accountability. So let’s take a closer look at trust in a way that opens space for accountability.

Preparing for this article, it occurred to me that for many thoughtful people there are three truths about trust and no common definition. The three truths are:

1.       If I trust, I can count on being disappointed.

2.       If I do not trust, my life will likely be safe but it will feel more like surviving than thriving.

3.       If I am up to anything of consequence—anything that will really make any difference—then I will need the involvement of others. Therefore, trust is a foregone conclusion: I will trust or I will accomplish very little in this lifetime.

With the above three truths in mind, I would do well to establish a tolerance for disappointment. If this sounds paradoxical to you I empathize. It appears that there is always a paradox to be dealt with where trust is involved if I insist on defining trust as having anything to do with someone other than myself!

In my consulting experience most people I encounter offer their definition of trust in terms of the behaviors of others. In contrast as I read through hundreds of quotes from "fairly famous" people to prepare for this article, a single insight became clear: there is no power in any definition of trust that depends on the behavior of others. None of these “famous people” defined trust as having anything to do with anyone other than themselves. Consider this:

• Any definition of trust that generates power will be a function of my relationship with myself.

Do I have the confidence in myself to deal with whatever comes my way? Can I interact successfully with various personalities? Can I have direct reports who clearly have superior subject knowledge to my own? Can I honor my intentions when interacting with people of differing agendas? And most importantly, can I count on myself to respond and deliver without excuses even when someone has let me down?

As a manager this perspective on trust gives me reason to think that I can be effective no matter what and no matter who is involved. After reading all those quotes from famous people I concluded that trust, like we often say about beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. By adopting this perspective I place the responsibility for trust in my own lap. My power comes from the fact that there never was anything I could do about your behavior except to ask for what I wanted and hold you to account for what you said you would do.

• Have you trusted yourself to form relationships with people who know you rely on them?
• Have you formed relationships with people that will be there for you when it is that time?
• Who have you let know that they can count on you when the going gets even tougher than it is now?
   

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 “The characteristic art form of our age may be the business plan.”

                                                                                              William Deresiewicz
                                                                                                                                     

I got around to reading an Op-Ed piece in the NY Times by William Deresiewicz titled ‘Generation Sell’ on Sunday morning from which I took the quote I opened with here. In a piece I found very enjoyable to read, Deresiewicz takes us through his analysis of the millennial generation that seems to be so troubling to work with or even understand for many managers today. His central insight is that this is a generation of entrepreneurs…

“Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business. Every artistic or moral aspiration — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms.”

  In Deresiewicz’ view, the Millennials operate with…

“…a distrust of large organizations, including government, as well as the sense, a legacy of the last decade, that it’s every man for himself.”

 …so their entrepreneurial inclinations are driven as much from a self-preservation strategy as previous generations were driven by the desire for security.

While Millennials view the small business as the idealized social form of the current times. many of them continue to work in our mainstream organizations. They literally walk among us, having learned how to play the game by developing an ability to fit in rather than drop out and assume the risks of business ownership.

Given the continued premium we place on compliance it is likely that we have not tapped the entrepreneurial instincts of this generation and likely as not this is why they will eventually leave us. As managers we might do ourselves an enormous favor by asking not how we can get them to be like us but rather how can we give them reason to stay and invest themselves in our future.

The November 14^th issue of the New Yorker magazine features a Malcolm Gladwell piece on Steve Jobs titled ‘The Tweaker’. In the article Gladwell identifies Jobs’ genius not so much as that of an inventor but truly more of a “tweaker.” By definition…

“The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world. The tweaker inherits things as they are, and has to push and pull them toward some more nearly perfect solution. That is not a lesser task.”

As managers, we might prefer a team of “tweakers” to a team of inventors since inventors are notorious for lacking commercial instincts and often times are satisfied with proving out rather than perfecting their ideas. Cases in point abound but suffice for now for me to remind us all of the boon Xerox research has been to the technology industry, if not necessarily to itself.

So if Deresiewicz is on to something, and from my knowledge of my own twenty- four year son I’d say he is, it is incumbent on us to find ways for our Millennial employees to contribute by “being in charge” of something they view as important. This will have less to do with salary category or titles than it will be the idea of having a lot of say in something important to our business … maybe not the final say but certainly a lot leading up to it.

Turning our Millennial employees loose to “tweak” may seem like an invitation to chaos, but it may just be a formula for the engagement and retention of our best and brightest.

• What can you do to give your Millennials more of a say in the business and an invitation to make what is already working even better? 

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We’ve all done this, turned down the opportunity to try a new experience then later regretted the choice we made. The ones we can recall usually involved some negative consequences as well. Sometimes we just missed out on the fun, sometimes we missed out on much more. Sometimes, not often, there may even have been a second chance and we didn’t pass it up.

The history of business abounds with tales of companies that passed up ideas, products or services that later became great commercial successes. These stories only become memorable because some other company didn’t pass up the very same or a similar opportunity.

One company that truly benefitted from another passing up an opportunity was Microsoft when IBM decided that its future was in PC manufacturing, not software, and literally gave the operating system business away.

Ironically Microsoft may have done something similar in 2010 when it chose its past over a possible new future in the newly emerging tablet industry.

This past week in a brilliant two part story CNET reporter Jay Greene  provides the details behind the decision making process that led to the cancellation of Microsoft’s prototype tablet, Courier, and effectively kept Microsoft out of the tablet race and in the continued business of protecting its Windows franchise.

In ‘The inside story of how Microsoft killed its Courier tablet’ Greene documents a compelling exchange between Bill Gates and Courier project leader J Allard in which Gates began to sense that his team was not developing another form of PC:

“At one point during that meeting in early 2010 at Gates' waterfront offices in Kirkland, Wash., Gates asked Allard how users get e-mail. Allard, Microsoft's executive hipster charged with keeping tabs on computing trends, told Gates his team wasn't trying to build another e-mail experience….Courier users could get e-mail from the Web, Allard said, according to sources familiar with the meeting…

…the device wasn't intended to be a computer replacement; it was meant to complement PCs. …Courier was for the creative set, a gadget on which architects might begin to sketch building plans, or writers might begin to draft documents.

This is where Bill had an allergic reaction," said one Courier worker who talked with an attendee of the meeting. As is his style in product reviews, Gates pressed Allard, challenging the logic of the approach.”

• Characterizing something as “an allergic reaction” sounds an awful lot like Gates’ response was promoted by a strong Immunity to Change when it came to offering the public anything that didn’t look like Windows.

 Greene goes on…

“It's not hard to understand Gates' response. Microsoft makes billions of dollars every year on its Exchange e-mail server software and its Outlook e-mail application. While heated debates are common in Microsoft's development process, Gates' concerns didn't bode well for Courier. He conveyed his opinions to Ballmer, who was gathering data from others at the company as well.”

• Many of us have been around situations in our own companies where some project or idea seemed to be sailing along until a senior executive expressed concern and suddenly the “rats start leaving the ship.”

And just like in your own company experience the story of Courier has an unfortunately predictable ending, as Greene reports…

“Within a few weeks, Courier was cancelled because the product didn't clearly align with the company's Windows and Office franchises, according to sources.”

So what about this choice? Did Microsoft avoid a strategic misstep when cancelled Courier?

Since the cancellation of Courier in 2010 Apple has introduced and already updated its iPad tablet. According to Gartner Group there will be 63.3 million tablets sold in 2011, a year after their initial introduction. Projected sales for 2012 exceed 100 million units. two-thirds of these will be sold by Apple. By any count, that’s a lot of tablets and none of them produced by Microsoft.

But the loss of a place at the tablet table was not Microsoft’s only loss…Courier was cancelled and

“A few months after that, both Allard and Bach (Head of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Group) announced plans to leave Microsoft, though both executives have said their decisions to move on were unrelated to the Courier cancellation.”

• With the decision to cancel Courier Microsoft also lost the visionary leadership that had led to the products' inception.

What does the future now hold for Microsoft? Time will tell. The Windows operating system is still the most familiar to most PC users and many would prefer to see it installed in new tablet models. So there is still a market for Microsoft but it has ceded a big head start to Apple in the tablet industry, a lead it is unlikely to ever challenge.

More importantly, for all of us this story offers yet one more example of the adage that you are never to brilliant to be blinded by your own success. As Jay Greene later says… 

“Courier's death also offers a detailed look into Microsoft's Darwinian approach to product development and the balancing act between protecting its old product franchises and creating new ones. The company, with 90,000 employees, has plenty of brilliant minds that can come up with revolutionary approaches to computing. But sometimes, their creativity is stalled by process, subsumed in other products, or even sacrificed to protect the company's Windows and Office empires.”

• If Microsoft can be stalled by its own Immunity to Change it would appear that our own company will likely experience something similar at some point. Maybe it has already?

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