Archives for August 2018

 

Asking open-ended questions is one of the most productive coaching techniques.

Conflict shows up every day in our lives in one form or another. It can be over which route you take to a destination or a tough situation at work. Taking time to think it through and ask more questions is typically when you get the relief of that “AHA” moment of clarity.

Not just any old question. Closed-ended questions that be answered with a “yes, no, or I don’t know”, give you no further information.  Asking an open-ended question begs for more information which can be critically revealing.

A while back, my client Darrell and I were going through a list of his current clients in order to make some decisions on which ones were good for him to continue working with, while also wondering if there were any that he should drop. Darrell was a big man, a retired NFL player, so I found it surprising when he told me he was intimidated by one particular client. Darrell felt he had to let him go.

Dreaded answering the phone

Even though I couldn’t imagine Darrell being intimidated by anyone, he shared with me that this particular client treated him like he was an idiot, questioning every transaction they did together. Darrell dreaded answering his phone when he saw the man’s name come up on his caller ID.

To complicate matters further, this client gave him more business than any of his other clients. In spite of how profitable their relationship was, he was anxious to stop working with this guy because he was tired of being treated poorly.

Now was the perfect time to ask an open-ended question! I gave Darrell the homework of calling his client and asking, “Somewhere along the way you seem to have lost your trust in me. Help me understand….” The client roared with laughter and said he treats everyone like an ass and that he actually loved working with Darrell and had great respect for him. This was certainly not at all what Darrell expected to hear!

With one conversation their entire relationship changed. They now look forward to working together and challenging each other with a great deal of laughter! Understanding each other’s behavior, the path is clear for effective communication.

It took the right question

Imagine the alternative – walking away from a really good client because Darrell failed to discover the truth. Something he finally did simply by asking an open-ended question

What assumptions have you made about relationships at work or the rest of your life? The next time conflict shows up, give yourself a chance to look at the situation without your emotions involved. Take a breath, get curious and ask these questions:

• What do I know about this situation to be true?
• What stories am I making up?
• What assumptions have I made?
• What questions do I need to ask?
• What is absolutely right about getting into this situation?
• What lessons have I learned and how did I grow?

Be the example for others on how to handle conflict. Show your leadership skills and help others to calm down by simply asking curious questions rather than simple agree/disagree questions which give you a data point but nothing more.

There is a beauty in open-ended questions and how they can change everything.

Learning agility is an important universal indication of top talent. Paired with adaptability it is one of the essential characteristics of innovative leadership and agile talent.”

Recently in Thailand, on the occasion of the annual global conference of Cornerstone International Group, I presented to a group of local CEOs on how to select tomorrow’s Top Talent. Thailand has an extreme low unemployment rate and a very tight labour market; conditions which can make for a challenging executive search process. A huge focus was being put on finding talent that combined fluency in English with relevant industry experience.

As tempting as it may be to recruit someone with years of experience in a similar job, it turns out that it is not the holy grail. Research conducted in 2014 by Claudio Fernández-Aráoz and published in the Harvard Business Review showed conclusively that experience, although not trivial, is perpetually overrated.

In recent years, other key performance qualities have become more relevant and popular. These include the right motivation and drive, commitment, mental acuity, determination and openness to new things. Although I am happy with these developments, I am convinced it is still not the whole story and that selecting people based on those qualities alone is not going to cut it.

In a world in flux – the impact of which is unprecedented – positions themselves are evolving before our very eyes. Most organizations have little use for employees with outdated knowledge and “past performance is no guarantee of future results” applies to working as well as investing. Someone may achieve great things in a certain job, and still be confronted with outdated knowledge in the immediate future, which ultimately renders them obsolete.

I am convinced that in the very near future, it will become impossible to select people based on their current skills and experience and expect them to perform well on the job. Instead, it will be imperative to shift your focus to finding future proof management and talent.

As businesses come to depend more on agile talent, their only way forward to successfully coping with the future is by unleashing their employees. Selecting the right people then takes on monumental importance. This means focusing on people who are resilient and adaptable, and who can quickly learn in completely new circumstances.

Learning agility in more detail

Learning agility is a mental trait whereby a person is willing and able to learn from experiences and then apply this knowledge in situations that are often unforeseen and quite challenging. But you have to bear in mind that unlearning, or the ability to let go of familiar opinions and ways of working, is a key dimension of learning ability.

People with high scores on learning agility will learn quickly in unfamiliar situations. Usually they will proactively ask for feedback, excel at discovering patterns within the unfamiliar and actively seek out new challenges. I believe that learning agility is the ultimate predictor of future success in roles of management and leadership in our new tumultuous world. It’s such an important indicator that it has become a critical element of our executive coaching services.

During a recent interactive guest lecture in Bangkok, I encouraged CEO’s to not only focus on candidates’ experience and skills, but to blend them with criteria such as personality, motivation and – in particular – learning agility.

John Sullivan, an internationally renowned Silicon Valley HR guru, says that learning agility has become the ultimate distinguishing characteristic for the rapidly-evolving business world. Google’s former Chief HRO, Laszlo Bock is of the same mind. He tells people that at Google they view learning agility as the leading predictor of success in the future, leaving factors like intelligence and education far behind.

Still, it is a rare quality in candidates. Korn/Ferry Institute vice president Kenneth De Meuse estimates that a mere 15 percent of all employees have strongly developed learning agility. Research by the Corporate Leadership Council suggests that no more than 30 percent of current high performers have the potential to do excellent work in a higher position. It makes sense to take learning agility into account during your focused interview, the test or assessment stage and in the in-depth reference checks.

 

Learning agility is the capacity for rapid continuous learning from experience. It means giving up what may have worked in the past.” – Monique Vacour, Harvard Business Review, December 2015

The importance of learning agility

There are several reasons why learning agility has become more important than ever before. In this column I cover two:

Rapid developments in technology make ongoing personal advancement imperative and place serious demands on learning agility. In today’s world, people are forced to improve themselves if they wish to keep up. The time-honoured Peter Principle describes how people are generally promoted to the point where they reach their own level of incompetence. A while back I amended it with what I call “the Charles Principle” (after Charles Darwin). The Charles Principle states that people who cannot keep developing themselves, are now becoming incompetent within their current role and will lose the struggle for survival in business.

Globalisation requires development and learning agility, as the world is increasingly becoming interconnected, Brexit and Donald Trump notwithstanding. More businesses are expanding their markets internationally, leading to more information and complexity. Businesses are now operating in a context with different cultures, interacting with a wider variety of foreign languages and broader ranges of legislation and trade agreements. International and cultural differences and the implications of these developments require training on the part of managers and employees. Obviously, fast learners have a better chance of beating their competition. In other words: the pace of learning is well on its way to overtaking knowledge itself in terms of importance.

The Peter Principle, that describes how people are generally promoted to the point where they reach their own level of incompetence, will soon be replaced by the Charles Principle. This means that people are now becoming incompetent within their current role, unless they manage to continue developing themselves.” –The Charles (Darwin) Principle

Measuring Learning Agility

In today’s recruitment process there are at least three ways to measure learning agility:

• A specialized assessment that focusses on learning agility
• A criterion-based interview that focuses on the learning agility and ability to adapt of the candidates
• Serious gaming

Of these, the first is perhaps less known to most people.

One way to measure learning agility is to present candidates with completely new situations in a focused assessment to see how quickly they learn to cope. Using similar online assessments is another way. There are various tools available; one of them is the model used by HFMtalentindex and Korn/Ferry. This model measures learning agility through four separate factors and one transcending element: self-awareness. This last element strongly affects the other four.

1. Change agility. Does the candidate enjoy change? Are they curious and interested in trying out new things? People with high change agility tend to be passionate about new experiences and are keen to explore the unknown.
2. Results agility. This factor focuses on the candidates’ ability to achieve goals in circumstances that may seem strange, unfamiliar and challenging. People with high results agility are generally focused on and driven by a need to achieve.
3. People agility. Is the candidate able to deal with a variety of people? Those with high people agility have an open mind to others with different opinions and from different backgrounds. They are eager to gain in-depth knowledge of others and can easily adapt to different surroundings or cultures.
4. Mental agility. This factor deals with the ability of a candidate to solve problems in an original or unique way. People with high mental agility are frequently provoked by new ideas, relishing the opportunity to think outside the box. They are more adept at discerning patterns in new circumstances than others are.
5. Self-awareness. This factor focuses on the ability of a candidate to have a realistic view of his strengths, weaknesses and areas of improvement. People with a high level of self-awareness are drawn to self-improvement and are eager to deepen their understanding of themselves and the world around them. A high level of self-awareness can work as leverage for the other aspects of learning agility. Conversely, a low level might have the opposite effect.

Overall my conclusion and advice to the CEOs I met in Bangkok was that in contemporary search, we should no longer just focus on skills and experience.  As Laszlo Bock, former senior Vice President HR of Google, would say – “we have found that learning ability is the leading predictor of success, number one above intelligence and education!”

 

 

This is the fourth of four articles digging into cultures aligned with the four fundamental strategies: Independent design, Stable production, Interdependent delivery and Flexibility.

A culture of flexibility is – wait for it – flexible. Its people are going to be all over the map. When you focus people on service or customer or guest experience as a higher purpose, when you ask them to care more about customer impact than about short-term results, when you push decisions out to them, don’t be surprised when your managerial authority is diminished. “Customer first,” by definition means everything else second.

Cultures like this help you win with service strategies. They are counter-productive for producing and delivering and probably distractions for designing.

Flexibility

This culture is labeled “Flexibility.” This is the opposite of stability, which suggests either outsourcing production and delivery or at least setting those functions up as separate groups with their own sub-cultures. There is an unavoidable conflict between people wanting to do whatever it takes to enhance customers’ experience and people trying to make or deliver things in a stable, orderly, safe way.

Ritz-Carleton hotels are filled with “Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” If you ask any bellboy to fix your broken TV, that bellboy owns that problem until it is fixed and has full authority to do whatever it takes to make you happy.  That bellboy does not have to fix the TV himself. But he does have to make sure it gets fixed and that everything that happens from that moment on enhances your experience.

Wonderful examples of retail service happen in high-end bridal boutiques. Their staffs’ attitudes are all about making their customers feel like princesses for the day. Expect Champagne and fawning service with wonderful gowns brought to you. These people don’t design the gowns, make them or even deliver them. Their job is to make you feel wonderful.

Leading flexibility

Leading a culture like this is akin to steering a galloping horse. You’re not really in control – and you don’t want to be. You’re going to have a decentralized organization. You’re going to give those decentralized leaders accountability. But you’re going to use things like the Ritz-Carleton’s “Gold Standards” to guide that accountability.

Polices are like holding the reins too tight. But letting go of the reins completely is a recipe for chaos. Deploying guiding principles is a middle way that guides your decentralized decision makers without tripping them up.

This is why these organizations’ ultimate leaders must think of themselves as chief experience officers. As such, they are keepers of purpose, the most caring people in belief, word and deed. This is how to get people in a flexible culture to follow you and provide the service required to deliver superior customer or guest experience.

ATLANTA, GA.  August 16, 2018 –   Concerns over the loss of company values may be delaying adoption of the gig economy, according to a new survey.

In the gig economy, freelance and contract workers will replace much of the salaried workforce.  The Harvard Business Review finds 150 million salaried workers have already been displaced, with expectations of filling 40% of the workforce by 2020.  But a new survey by Cornerstone International Group (CIG) shows that almost 90% of respondents still rely on full-time employees (FTE) for two-thirds or more of their workforce.

You can download the survey report here.

“The gig economy is a radical change to the traditional workforce structure,” says Larry Shoemaker, president of CIG. “We may have been overestimating how quickly it would happen”.

One overlooked reason for a more measured adoption of the gig economy is concern over company values.  Over 63% of respondents cited low involvement in, and knowledge of, company values as their biggest concern in replacing salaried employees with contingents.

“The concern over company values should not come as a surprise,” says George Bradt, a leading management authority and consultant to Cornerstone New York. “Your culture is your competitive advantage.  Competitors can reverse engineer your processes and poach your people, but they can’t replicate your culture.”

These reservations notwithstanding, survey results convey a sense of inevitability with regard to structural workforce changes.  Proponents of the gig economy cite flexibility as the biggest management benefit of on-demand labor. Over 15% have already changed their recruiting strategy and 74% are in the process of doing so – a total of just under 90% who acknowledge that change is on its way.

Cornerstone International Group provides global executive search and leadership development services through 56 offices in 35 countries.  The new workforce report is the 11^th annual survey of global business and economic expectations.

Are you gearing up for the gig economy ?

Although HBR believes 150 million workers have already left the organized workforce to work as independent contractors, our latest survey finds business leaders are still more comfortable with full-time employees.

Their biggest concern is a decline in knowledge and sharing of company values by freelancers and independents.

Continue reading…

• 2018 GLOBAL BUSINESS SURVEY REPORT – North America
• 2018 GLOBAL BUSINESS SURVEY REPORT – European 

 

This is the third of four articles digging into cultures aligned with the four key strategies. Following independent design and stable production, this deals with a culture of interdependence in support of a delivery strategy. It’s all about enrolling diverse players across the ecosystem.

A culture of interdependence is a blended culture. The predominant feature is diverse people working interdependently to deliver things. Individuals have to be open to differences as they deal with a range of suppliers and customers.

While there’s generally a bias to stability, order and safety, everything else falls in the middle. Decisions may be hierarchical or diffused. People may be proactive or responsive. They have to balance results and caring and be open to directed or shared learning.

Build a culture like this to manage logistics, product supply chains and deliver things in an orderly and safe way.
Interdependence

This culture is labeled “Interdependence.” This is the opposite of independence and is all about people working together in teams. Those teams cross geographic, functional and organizational bounds as many of the people on core delivery teams may often work for different companies. The lines between employees, contractors, suppliers, allies, partners, customers and competitors often blur beyond recognition.

You Missed Out

The head of one organization bumped into the head of another and told him “We were going to name you our supplier of the year.”

“Were?”

“You never returned my call when I called to tell you that. So, we had to name someone else.”

At the time when Sam Walton told this to Procter & Gamble’s CEO John Smale, P&G did $2 billion per year in business with Wal-Mart. Smale got the message and moved three people to Bentonville to provide Wal-Mart with better service.

Not long thereafter the P&G/Wal-Mart system effectively eliminated all the people placing and receiving product orders. P&G was electronically linked into Wal-Mart’s systems so its systems knew when every individual product left Wal-Mart stores. It was able to ship replenishments to Wal-Mart’s distribution centers perfectly timed to go dock-to-dock from P&G’s trucks to the trucks going out to stores. If there’s nothing in the warehouse, warehouse turns are infinite.

A City of Suppliers

Now there’s a whole city of Wal-Mart suppliers based in Bentonville, blurring the lines between organizations in Wal-Mart’s superior interdependent delivery system.

Delivery requires a broad, loose matrix organization crossing geographies, functions, products and organizations. While you’ll still want one single point of accountability for each task, project, program or priority, the key to making this work is going to be a recognition of shared responsibilities.

Matrix organizations succeed with people working together interdependently to deliver shared objectives. They collapse when people put their own personal or functional objectives ahead of the common good. Thus, the leader’s main role in an interdependent, matrix organization is to enroll people through the use of formal or informal team charters.

Next & Last: George looks into a culture of Flexibility. You can read the first two articles here – on Independence and on Stability

This is the second of four articles digging into cultures aligned with four key strategies – Independence, Stability, Interdependence and Flexibility.  Here, George Bradt deals with a culture of stability in support of a production strategy. It’s all about ensuring reliability.

A culture of stability is more results-focused, authority-driven, formal, hierarchical, directed and closed. Expect people operating in a culture like this to care about order and safety, to be reactive and follow purpose and rules as written. These people will do what you tell them to do and not much more – which is exactly what you want.

Build a culture like this to produce things consistently and reliably on an ongoing, regular basis.

Stability

This culture is labeled “Stability.” Don’t expect flexibility or innovation. Expect compliance with the rules, with your direction. Expect people to deliver the minimum viable product every time. If you push people in a culture like this to operate more interdependently, to make decisions on their own, to be more proactive, at best they will resist and more likely, you’ll break the system.

Coca-Cola is a classic example of a production company with a culture of stability. It operates with a clear hierarchy of command & control with CEOs that see their primary task as enforcing policies. As a result, every Coca-Cola produced everywhere in the world lives up to the same high standards.

One of Coca-Cola’s biggest ever innovations was the introduction of New Coke. A small Skunk Works group worked the project all the way through, leaking nothing until the last minute when the new formula was shipped to every bottler in the world for a coordinated world-wide launch. The product was superior on the dimension of initial mouth appeal, but the brand failed. As a result, the company swallowed its pride and relaunched “Classic Coke.”

It’s an example of why stable production companies should think twice about revolutionary innovations.

Zara is another example of a stable production company. They outsource all their design by relying on copying others’ designs. Their magic is that they can go from seeing a design on a fashion catwalk to producing it and getting into their stores in 15 days.

In some ways, this is the tightest and most easily understood and managed culture. If you’re leading a producing company, drive stability, independence, results and authority. Have a bias to organize hierarchically. Do not shy away from command and control operations. Enforce polices for the good of all.

Next:  George looks into a culture of Interdependence.  You can read the first article on Independence here