Posted by Peter Prevos on 20 August 2010 under Think | 
Just as a new house owner likes to change the paint colour, new managers like to introduce change. The literature shows that most change processes do not achieve the objectives they seek and a whole library of books has been written about the best ways to create and sustain change.
Managing change is more often than not about changing the behaviour of people. Management speak uses words such as alignment, creating buy-in and other bendable learnings.
However, as soon as the word ‘change’ is mentioned in a workplace, people will raise their defensive shutters and try hard to keep doing what they have always been doing.
One aspect of management where attempts to change behaviour is very successful is marketing. Good companies are able to manipulate the attitudes and behaviour of consumers so that they buy their product. Why does it work in marketing but not so much in management?
Change management strategy is more often than not exoteric. This means that all details of the approach are revealed to the subjects of the change. Change managers, and more often than not consultants, openly explain how they will change behaviour.
Marketing managers are a bit more devious about their motives and use esoteric techniques to change the behaviour of consumers. Some adds openly admit to the techniques they use to change the behaviour of consumers – best example is a Molson beer ad from some years ago:
Maybe change managers should take a leaf from the book of marketing and use the sophisticated sociological and psychological techniques employed to convince people to change their buying behaviour.
This might raise the question whether it is ethical to change people’s behaviour esoterically. But all I have to say to that is that we change our behaviour based on our interaction with other people all the time. The anti-marketing crowd often underestimate the intelligence of consumers, which they portray as will-less victims. Creating change, whether in marketing or management is about creating an environment in which people feel comfortable to change, can identify with the proposed changes and feel that the change will provide them with benefits.
Posted by Ian Watson on 13 August 2010 under Do |
How often have you been in a meeting and when discussions reach a sticky issue someone, who I’ll call the ‘processifecator’, chills you to the core by saying:
“We obviously need to develop a process for this”
You let out a sigh of disbelief, knowing that the momentum of your team is in jeopardy and you need to break this impending deadlock before the project stalls. Fortunately you know how to deal with situations like this because you know the seven wrong reasons for developing a process.
A process is an instruction on how to perform a routine task to reduce the risk of tripping over problems that have been anticipated or encountered in the past. Processes often form part of a business management system, such as ISO9001). Processes are useful, however…
A process is a precision weapon that should only be used when it adds value. Wrong processes leads to toxic processifecation, which grinds innovation and creative thinking to a halt. Here are seven good reasons not to have a process.
1. Punishment
You’ve made somebody angry and now they want to exert some power over you. Under these circumstances it is important to deal with the underlying reasons that the processifecator is punishing you and move on.
2. Laziness
The processifecator doesn’t want to do the work and rather play Minesweeper or check Facebook. A process can provide an excuse not to think about an issue and just tick the boxes as you progress. Laziness is definitely going to have an impact on innovation as a process can stop free thinking in its tracks.
3. Ignorance
There is already a process that is available and documented that is appropriate – maybe with some minor modification. Provide a copy of it and move on.
4. Security Blanket
The processifecator doesn’t want to be blamed for a decision and hopes to avoid this by ensuring that all of the stakeholders are “on board”. While communication with stakeholders should not be ignored, you should not disregard the money you’re paying someone for their expertise, rather than slavishly following a process.
5. One-off Activity
Almost universally, one-off activities should not be documented – unless health, the environment or large amounts of money are at stake. In most cases it will be enough to discuss the task first, do it, then move on.
6. Performance Management
Processes are sometimes developed because an individual is not competent and requires guidance in performing a task. Creating a process to manage performance is risky because somebody is performing a task that is beyond their level of competence.
7. It’s a trap!
The final and worst reason for creating a process is to deliberately spring a trap so that someone (the ‘target’) will fail to follow that process, justifying the subsequent disciplinary action or dismissal. This is one of the worst reasons for developing a process because you’ll be left with a flawed process and team members who will shift from performance behaviour to risk avoidance behaviour. This will have a fundamental impact on trust between team members and performance of the team.
When it’s all said and done…
There are good reasons to create a documented process. The most appropriate occasion to write a process is when documentation leads to significant improvements in production efficiency or customer experience and, more broadly, when the risk of not documenting the task is greater than the risk of documenting the task.
If the reason for a documented process is not clear when the processificator speaks up, it is likely that you’d be better off without one.
Posted by Ian Watson on 23 July 2010 under Think |
The title of this post is patently absurd.
The purpose of a title like Women Do Not Make Good Executive Managers is to appeal to anyone who holds a strong view on the matter (and welcome to this blog – I hope the following thoughts don’t hurt too much!). Admittedly, I could have chosen the title, Men Do Not Make Good Executive Managers, but that was in a strange twist of political correctness, less controversial and attention grabbing.
Key skill of a lucid manager is the ability to challenge your own beliefs and respond to evidence and data. In the words of Carl Sagan:
“It is better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable.”
I’ll lay my cards on the table here and let you know that I personally believe that the effectiveness of an Executive Manager is a combination of intelligence, people skills, training, innovative thinking, technical knowledge, corporate and team culture combined with myriad external factors. Gender, of its own accord, is unlikely to significantly change the Executive’s effectiveness. Regardless, a vast majority of Executive Managers in Australia (and other countries) are males.
So, if more Executive Managers are male, does that imply that males are more predisposed to being Executives? The simple answer is, ‘No”. This type of reasoning is a common logical fallacy known as post hoc ergo proptor hoc, which is a popular device among politicians. In this case the fallacy lies in the assumption that the fact that most Executive Managers are male (post hoc) is proof that they are executives because of their gender (ergo proptor hoc). While the absurdity of this extreme example may seem obvious, less obvious fallacies go undetected in the workplace. It seems that critical thinking is less likely to be engaged when encountering many of the popular personality tests.
Many different personality tests are used around the world to separate people into categories. The intention is to suggest a behavioural or career predisposition; an example being those categorised as ENTJ – “The Executive”, the clear implication being “ENTJs Make Better Executives”. In some cases research is claimed, but rarely cited, to demonstrate that particular ‘types’ are found in particular professions or roles implying that people of a particular personality profile are most appropriate for that type of role. This post hoc ergo propter hoc rationalisation is as unjustifiable as the statement “Women Do Not Make Good Executive Managers”. It is this type of rationalisation that can undermine the decision-making process of any manager which, in turn, undermines their effectiveness.
On a daily basis managers are faced with many decisions and each managers’s effectiveness is, in a large part, determined by the effectiveness of their decision-making ability. A lucid manager will be more effective if aware of decision-making traps such as post hoc justifications; particularly when the faced with the question, “Do you think we should use a personality test?”.
When confronted by this question it is far better for a manager to challenge their own beliefs and to possibly even embrace hard truths by asking whether personality tests are merely a reassuring fable.
Notes
Posted by Peter Prevos on 16 July 2010 under Think |
Would you like to work on the front lines of contemporary management?
Hypotheticorp is hiring and we are looking for people that don’t fit the culture of their current workplace and have difficulty being aligned with corporate goals. At Hypotheticorp we believe that the only thing you have to be aligned with is your own self.
We acknowledge that deviant behaviour and taking calculated risks is the foundation of innovation. We therefore look for independent critical thinkers who can add value to Hypotheticorp.
If this was a real recruitment add it would have been a very odd one indeed. Most companies are looking for so called alignment and matching cultural values. At Hypotheticorp we believe that this will lead to a severe lack of innovation.
The major corporate collapses and scandals of the recent years have caused a tightening of corporate governance and many organisations have moved away from open models of leadership that value self initiative to more regimented models of management.
Even though the western world is waging war to spread democracy around the globe, the one aspect that dominates most people’s lives, their workplaces, are ideally meritocracies, but are mostly more like dictatorships. Most organisations are managed through clear hierarchical lines and people are not very likely to go against the grain.
Research shows that employees do not only remain silent because of a fear of retribution, but also because it is perceived as a waste of their time. This silence creates psychological tension and cognitive dissonance and eventually less commitment with organisational goals.
Organisational deviance is a major source of innovation. Without the freedom to make mistakes there can be no learning.
The current wave of tightened corporate governance leads to the silencing of dissenting voices and pruning of innovative actions. The ultimate consequence of this is the impoverishment of management practices.
Posted by Peter Prevos on 9 July 2010 under Do |
Nepotism is considered one of the great sins of Western culture. As society has been levelled and shaped to create a level playing field for everybody, race, religion, gender and family relationships are not supposed to play a role in any one’s chances of success. The Wikipedia definition of neopotism is:
“Favouritism granted to relatives or friends, without regard to their merit”.
When Ian and I undertook some research in Vietnam we came across some interesting recruitment practices. From our interviews with local managers it became clear that using family networks is an accepted recruit source for staff.
From our data we formed the hypothesis that recruitment in countries with a collective nature, such as Vietnam, is primarily conducted through social networks. This in contrast with the developed world where, specially in the government sector, a level playing field is created by publicly advertising positions.
Although the Vietnamese practices smell like the dreaded nepotism, some people made clear to us that the family networks are used as a primary recruitment source, but within that pool of people, the selection is nevertheless based on merit. A training manager of a large company told us that they have many teams in which several generations of one family work together and that this creates a great culture and sense of common purpose within the organisation.
This sense of common purpose is considered a holy grail by most organisations in the developed, individualistic, world. Many activities are aimed at ‘aligning’ people to the common purpose of the organisation. But given that most businesses are a grab bag of people, working together more by change than by common purpose, this has proven to be an illusive goal.
Research in Australia has shown that people recruited through anonymous sources such as newspaper advertisements missed almost twice as many days as those recruited through other sources, such as employee referrals. This underwrites the importance of using social networks as a source of recruitment.
Human beings are inherently social beings and we like to spend our time with people we like. Within that we have a definite bias for people that we are related to. One of the major reasons many people don’t enjoy work is not because of the work itself but the people they are forced to socialise with. Open recruitment processes aimed at creating a level playing field are problematic and many organisations use abstract tools, such as personality tests, and reference checks, which have been discussed in Hypotheticorp recently.
Next time when hiring people, look around your immediate and extended social circle and see if there is anybody you would like to work with that can potentially do the job.
The moral of the story is: nepotism is not inherently bad, as long as the final selection is based on merit.
