What I Read – McKinsey Quarterly, January 2015 Issue.

Tags

character, experience, leadership, learning, McKinsey Quarterly

Recently I read somewhere, that I should make notes of what I read and review them from time to time. I decided to give it a try, since I read a lot and I think making such notes will be for me a way of remembering best ideas, quotes, or whatever from my books and magazines. I also decided to share those notes with you, in edited form as some have gotten pretty long. In many cases I copied whole passages without noting the page numbers, which is against good reference practices, but of course I will list title and author of a book (or article) where I got the notes from.

I do that with hope that at least some of you will reach for mentioned magazine or book when you will find my notes interesting. Ach, one more thing: small number of notes do not mean that the book or magazine was not good…

Here is what I noted from the article “Decoding leadership: What really matters” by Claudio Feser, Fernanda Mayol, and Ramesh Srinivasan:

Telling CEOs these days that leadership drives performance is a bit like saying that oxygen is necessary to breathe. Over 90 percent of CEOs are already planning to increase investment in leadership development because they see it as the single most important human-capital issue their organizations face.

Our most research suggests that a small subset of leadership skills closely correlates with leadership success, particularly among frontline leaders.

What we found was that leaders in organizations with high-quality leadership teams typically displayed 4 of the 20 possible types of behaviour. […]Those 4 explained 89 percent of the variance between strong and weak organizations in terms of leadership effectiveness:

• Solving problems effectively. The process that precedes decision-making is problem solving, when information is gathered, analysed and considered.
• Operation with a strong results orientation. Leaders with a strong results orientation tend to emphasise the importance of efficiency and productivity and to prioritize the highest-value work.
• Seeking different perspectives. This trait is conspicuous in managers who monitor trends affecting organizations, grasp changes in the environment, encourage employees to contribute ideas that could improve performance, accurately differentiate between important and unimportant issues, and give appropriate weight to stakeholder concerns.
• Supporting others. Leaders who are supportive understand and sense how other people feel.

For organizations investing in the development of their future leaders, prioritizing these four areas is a good place to start.

I personally find that leadership many parts experience, some patience, some character and only a little training. Unless that training was done in form of mentoring by someone already possessing qualities we seek. I also think that not everyone can be a good leader, despite notion that it can be learned. First item in the list above is grounded in experience, third in part as well. Second and fourth is a character trait. Look for people who already have those things and let them work. Teaching someone to be result oriented when he is process oriented makes not that much sense… at least to me. I guess that this is why most of the funds spent on leadership courses are wasted.

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Adaptive Innovation

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adaptive innovation, Arvind Gupta, development, innovation, learning, procedures, prototyping, R&D, Rotman, Rotman Management magazine

In the winter 2013 issue of Rotman Management magazine I found an article by Arvind Gupta titled „Adaptive Innovation: Create, Learn, Repeat“ (p. 97 – you can find the article here), which I wanted to comment on. I already touched on the perils of modern-day innovation in one of my previous posts (https://mrrommie.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/i-think-rd-does-it-wrong-sometimes/) There I also stressed the issue of time in development, especially development of complicated products. Mr. Gupta in his article proposes a valid solution for this kind of problems: Adaptive Innovation.

Everyone knows that today speed to market is everything. Ideas, especially the ones poised to change the world, are very scarce. In this world any idea with any chance of success should be exploited and tried, even if to gain a short-lived competitive advantage. But in order to be able to do that, such idea must be turned into a product rapidly, in order for the inventor organization to be quicker than the other guys. Here comes rapid prototyping and learning from market feedback, be it a failure or success. Right now there is simply no time for internal evaluation inside R&D offices or corporate HQ. If we do that, there is a big chance that all of those meetings will miss the factual reaction of markets to any given product, or will miss the opportunity entirely, as it could be already taken by competitor with a quickly patched up prototype.

This happens all the time and I guess that R&D of big organizations need to change in order to adapt. Using in-house old-time procedures, however justified and efficient they may seem, will not be enough. Allowing for long development time justified by evenly spaced reviews may just as well mean that we are busy perfecting something what consumers already bought from someone else.

The solution should be, as rightly pointed out by Mr. Gupta, rapid learning and creation cycle. This can be achieved with special teams, even if from outside of the organization, tasked with creation of prototypes as quickly as possible. Of course one thing needs to precede such action: a decision to run with an idea and this decision must be made also very quickly. But I guess that is another story…

How to Develop Your People

Tags

development, growth, learning, organisational learning, personal development, personal growth

In one of my previous posts I mentioned that there are organisations, mediocre ones, which do not allow their good personnel to grow, only dump on them more and more tasks which are similar in nature. As a digression, I have to say that development program should be applicable to all personnel, also people seemingly lazy or seen as bad workers. Theoretically, for most people one can find a task which they will perform satisfactorily, one just needs enough time and enough tasks to choose from. Only when that choice is exhausted, people should be judged as unfit.

Let us assume though that we are dealing with intelligent and efficient worker, who excels at his/her assigned task. How do we, as organisation, try to develop such person further? The answer, although easy on paper, is not easy in practice; it also does not fit into “ten things” or “five rules” category. It lies, as all things, with people.

I am sure that in all organisations it so happens that there are people who have more understanding for various areas, there are those who can for example work with cash flow better and there are those which solve operational issues better. If you want to grow one of them, you simply pair them and let one learn from the other. By learn I don’t mean understand – I mean knowing how to do it and doing it proficiently. One can understand how the bricks are laid, but that does not make one a bricklayer.

The process of learning requires three things – and this is where the people factor comes in – open mind on the side of the student, respectful patience on both sides, and lastly ability to overcome curse of knowledge on the side of teacher. Most of the specialists (and unfortunately, also most of the teachers) are victims of curse of knowledge. People tend to assume that if I know something (something what so obvious to me), everyone knows it. This is what teacher has to forget – he needs to presume that it is quite the opposite on the side of the student; or at least be able to test assumptions and act upon the results. The reasons for actions and for decisions in taught field need to be explained in greatest detail, in order for the student to be able to learn to make decisions herself. Here the patience and respect on both sides come in. And this, in short, is it. No magic, no recipes, only time, good will and the right people. Making sure that such exchange happens is the first sign that your company educates its people. Taking it further to external courses makes all this even better, and the development plan for employees completes the picture.

Five Points of Proper Feedback

Tags

critique, feedback, leadership, learning, praise

Reading through the “Emotional Intelligence” book by Daniel Goldman, I came across advice from Mr. Levinson on very important subject in any workplace. If you want to teach your (co)workers anything, you need to master the art of proper feedback, built of good critique and praise. Feedback is what makes a system whole – and your workplace is a system, even if what you daily do is different every day. Therefore if you want your system to work better, feedback is one of the main topics you can improve. Here are five points (based on Levinson; somewhat changed by me) how to do it:

1. Be Specific – this applies to critique and praise. If you do that, make sure that you address specific issue and avoid generalisation. That way someone will know what exactly needs to be changed or what should be repeated. Of course you need to set yourself an event threshold when to address your co-worker: not everything should qualify for direct address.

2. Offer a Solution (critique) or a Reason (praise) – if you critique someone, tell him what needs to be done to repair or avoid the error in the future. If you praise someone, tell him why do you think his actions were worthy that praise. Giving reason set in perspective helps to understand positive and negative feedback better.

3. Be Present – do it personally. Avoid phone calls, emails etc. unless you absolutely have to use them. Takes guts – but if you have higher aspirations, you must learn to face your duties.

4. Be on Time – feedback should be instantaneous. If action is worthy your personal attention, it is worthy doing it right after it happened, when it is still fresh in minds of people addressed by you. Whole impact of intended lesson will be gone if you will do it too late. Avoid doing it too early though as well, as that can be equally damaging.

5. Be Human – which means being sensitive, professional in avoiding exercising too much pressure. State what you want as per above and walk away. Don’t overdo it.

Good Luck 🙂

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Source: “Emotional Intelligence – Why It Can Matter More Than IQ” by Daniel Goldman, Bantam Books, 1996, p. 175 and “Feedback to Subordinates”  Addendum to the Levinson Letter, Harry Levinson, Levinson Institute, Waltham, MA (1992).