Ebooksclub.org Partnership HR New Norms for Effective Recruitment Performance and Training of Today 039 s Workforce

Praise for Partnership HR

“Provides an essential set of tools and concepts for building the self-organizing, self-monitoring, self-managing, and self-amplifying workculture needed for survival in today’s global economy. Buchen instructsHR to take the lead in researching, identifying, and justifying changesnecessary to assemble, train, and empower a global workforce for across-cultural global reality.”

—Albert J. Cacace, MBA, PMP; PMI South Florida Chapter,board of directors; founder and president, the MultiMedia Republic;executive producer, Rewind PBS

“A timely contribution to the fields of human resources and manage-ment leadership, focusing on issues of recruitment, performance evalu-ation, and training. The book addresses meaningful perspectives forhuman resources professionals and institutional leaders to consider aschallenges for understanding the new multitasking talent needed inthe twenty-first century.”

—José A. Quiles, faculty mentor for higher education leadership,Walden University; former provost/VP for academic affairs, Kean University

PARTNERSHIP

NEW NORMSFOR EFFECTIVE RECRUITMENT,

PERFORMANCE, AND TRAININGOF TODAY’S WORKFORCE

Irving H. Buchen, PhD

HR

DAVIES-BLACK PUBLISHINGMOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA

Published by Davies-Black Publishing, a division of CPP, Inc., 1055 Joaquin Road,2nd Floor, Mountain View, CA 94043; 800-624-1765.

Special discounts on bulk quantities of Davies-Black books are available to cor-porations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details, contactthe Director of Marketing and Sales at Davies-Black Publishing: 650-691-9123; fax 650-623-9271.

Copyright 2007 by Irving H. Buchen. All rights reserved. No part of this book maybe reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or mediaor by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of briefquotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and MBTI are trademarks or registered trademarksof the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Trust in the United States and other countries.CPI 260, Strong Interest Inventory, and Davies-Black and its colophon are regis-tered trademarks and CPI is a trademark of CPP, Inc.

Visit the Davies-Black Publishing Web site at www.daviesblack.com.

11 10 09 08 07 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataBuchen, Irving H.

Partnership HR : new norms for effective recruitment, performance, and training of today’s workforce / Irving H. Buchen.—1st ed.

p. cm.Includes index.ISBN: 978-0-89106-214-1 (hardcover)1. Personnel management. 2. Corporate culture. I. Title.HF5549.B8734 2007658.3—dc22

2007007434FIRST EDITIONFirst printing 2007

To my dear wife, Devora, and all our grandchildren—

Benjamin and Daniel Buchen

Mikaela and Lexi Gilbert

Jack and Kylie Buchen

Devon and Kiera Swanson

Zachary and Nicholas Swanson

Introduction ix

About the Author xiii

part one | New HR and Workforce Partnerships 1

1 Workforce Centrality and Corporate Self-Definition 5

2 Partnerships with Research 15

3 The HR–Tech Interface 25

4 HR Support of Emerging Manager-Leaders 35

5 Workforce Innovation and Company Culture 43

6 HR’s Alliance with Simulation 55

part two | Redefinition of the HR Mission 65

7 Orientation and Hiring Practices 69

8 The Challenge of Job Satisfaction 87

CONTENTS

9 Strategies for Retention 101

10 Reexamination of Work and Its Relationships 117

part three | Perspectives on Evaluation and Training 131

11 Evaluation of People, Training, and Teams 133

12 A New Handbook for Training 149

13 Goals and Roles of Managers and Leaders 165

part four | The Future of HR 181

14 Future HR Operations and HPT Professionals 183

15 Demographics and the Future of HRM 197

Conclusion 205

Index 211

P A R T N E R S H I P H Rviii

Sometimes the most tried, tested, and trusted artifact can providea breakthrough. For example, consider that old warhorse, the jobdescription, and especially its last line: “And all other duties as maybe assigned.” This catchall phrase has often been used to silencethe objection “But that’s not in my job description!” and to sendthe complainer grumbling away from the boss’s desk. But of latethat game of gotcha has been invoked more frequently, more sig-nificantly, and by more people than ever before. The discrepanciesbetween the official and the unofficial job description have finallyemerged as a serious issue.

The basic response has typically been to review and update jobdescriptions to make them more current and more nearly accurate.But that is a temporary fix; the day after the revision gets approved,new adjustments are likely to be required. And the day after that,still more, and so on ad infinitum. This kind of tail chasing does notend or answer the continued complaints of discrepancy. In fact,

INTRODUCTION

ix

complaints increase because the gaps become more visible, moredramatic, and more widespread.

The new truth is that work is no longer describable in final ordefinitive form. It is unfinished, open-ended, and protean. Discre-pancies between stated and actual performance expectations—farfrom being resisted, bandaged over, and obscured—need to beaccepted and even welcomed as the new work norm. Indeed, giventhat new reality, the most significant adjustment to the traditionaljob description would be to bring the last line to the front: “Dowhatever it takes to get the job done.” That would at least honorwhat is really going on. Also, adding the same concept to everyitem on the list of duties would at last begin to bridge present, past,and future job profiles.

But this new work pattern also has raised questions about whatmay be lacking from or amiss about a number of other HR opera-tions. Three areas emerge as in need of review and revision: recruit-ment, performance evaluation, and training.

With respect to recruitment, the most obvious point is that weare not always truthful. The job description does not square withwhat the job really is or requires. But HR duplicity does not stopthere. It is perpetuated and even reinforced by the cheerleading ori-entation sessions for new hires. In fact, problems of retention fre-quently begin the day the job actually starts. Newcomers who havebeen led down the garden path as candidates often lament their fail-ure to ask a number of questions during the original interviews. Theentire recruiting process becomes a sort of information shell game,instead of the first stage of talent retention that it should be.

Then, too, the performance evaluation process needs a realitycheck. Annual reviews are clearly inadequate. Stretch goals mandatefrequent performance reviews—every three months, if not moreoften. But evaluation must not be one-sided or top-down, either. Itmust be mutual and two-way. Employees should be empowered tomaintain and share an updated version of their job profile with theirsupervisor. That serves as the current version of the job descriptiondeveloped by those who know the job best. The task of the supervi-

P A R T N E R S H I P H Rx

sor is big-picture coaching: identifying and updating the currentgoals of the division and the company so that alignment with eachemployee profile can be negotiated.

Sometimes goal changes unknowingly cross over and requirerole changes. If so, what kind of training would be required toassume such new roles? What would be the joint training recommen-dations of employee and supervisor, and how would they then be fac-tored into subsequent evaluation and salary? In addition to specificand focused training that addresses and ideally ensures the future ofeach job, organizations need generic training across the board for all.The goal is to best equip employees at all levels to know and masterprotean change in general and the way the company has shaped itschange management vision, mission, and culture to remain competi-tive and profitable in particular. In fact, because so many orienta-tions of new hires are so problematic, and the need for truth tellingand the big picture to ensure talent retention is so critical, a strongcase can be made for turning orientation over to the training special-ists. Certainly, sessions on the company’s views of crossover, transi-tion, and stretch goals would be a more bracing and challenging wayof saying “Welcome to our world and reality” than trotting out thecompany’s stars.

This book is devoted to the detailed analysis of all these factorsand the various ways cutting-edge companies and cultures haveimplemented the required changes. It is designed to be a successmanual for HR at all levels. Throughout, what also will be describedis the total transformation of the workforce. Successful companieshave found new ways of doing whatever it takes to get the job done,and in the process they encourage the emergence of a new breed ofworkers, managers, and leaders. Those new job profiles benchmarkthe future of HR.

What all this adds up to is the centrality of human resources as away of examining companies, measuring them, and turning themaround. The biggest mistake modern business ever made was out-sourcing or reducing HR to token levels to save money. All that didwas throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Introduction xi

Welcome though it may be, the notion of human capital as equalto financial capital and other resources means little if it does notreach down and change basic company relationships and conversa-tions. In the final analysis, God is in the details. We need to restoreand rebuild HR. Indeed, the final section of this book outlines whata reconstituted HR might be like and how the job of every supervi-sor would be that of HR manager, and that of every CEO and sen-ior staffer would be to build and sustain work cultures that areempowering, open-ended, and permanently unfinished.

P A R T N E R S H I P H Rxii

Irving H. Buchen, PhD, serves on the doctoral business faculty atCapella University and is associate vice president for IMPACUniversity. Previously, he was a professor and academic adminis-trator at Cal State, the University of Wisconsin, and Penn State. Healso has served as a management consultant, trainer, and executivecoach in the United States and abroad for numerous corporationsincluding CITGO, Bankers Trust, and American Can Company.He received his PhD degree from Johns Hopkins University.

Buchen is the author of six books, and his nearly 200 articleshave appeared in The Futurist, Foresight, Executive Excellence,Chief Learning Officer, and Training Management, among otherpublications. He also writes a monthly column, “Reflections,” forthe online journal Training Prism.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

xiii

Two opposing yet intertwined forces currently dominate allorganizational operations: external outsourcing and internalreconfiguration. Productivity and competition drive both.The rationale is simple and compelling: outsourcing occurswhen the organization can find outside ways to accomplishkey internal functions at lower costs without compromisingquality or productivity. Too much outsourcing, however, dis-rupts the remaining workforce and breaks its bond with theorganization, which must find ways to work with its peoplethat restore their effectiveness. Otherwise, the triple sav-ings of outsourcing—in reduced operational expenses,salaries, and benefits—are washed out by the overwhelm-ing cost of the breakdown of core functions that cannot beoutsourced.

The practice of outsourcing has proceeded through threestages. The first was the appearance of niche firms—

New HR andWorkforcePartnerships

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specialists on the periphery that by virtue of price, speed, and expertisecould lure away internal operations. Because their chosen offering wasall that they did—it was their core business—they could be better at itthan those who also had to do other things. For example, many HR func-tions of payroll, benefits, and even background checks have beenparceled out to firms that do a better job at lower cost.

The second wave was a logical extension of the first, but its impact wasenormous. Not just job functions but jobs themselves were exported. Inthis case, competition was still the driver, but now the arena was theglobal economy and its electronic partner, the Internet. Call, reservation,and technical centers were exported abroad to provide customer service,especially in English-speaking or Commonwealth countries. Telephonecosts were minuscule compared to the salary savings. Computer techni-cians in India signed contracts to develop software that tutors Americanyoungsters in math. And the list goes on.

The third wave grew from an increasing need to provide guidance tocompanies contemplating outsourcing. Specialized consultants and firmssurfaced. They offered one-stop service. They not only advised and guidedcompanies on which outsourcing opportunities were most reliable andleast costly but also managed technical agreements and contracts.Indeed, a new HR specialty has emerged, that of HRO—human resourceoutsourcing. More about that important development later.

While all these shifts were going on, jobs were eliminated or combined,divisions totally disappeared or survived in skeleton form, and companiesshrank in size and numbers. Frequently, the announcements that precededor accompanied downsizing hailed a happy and necessary form of refo-cusing on the core business and restoration of profitability. But it alsogenerated some unhappy trade-offs—some unforeseen—the principaland most serious one being the loss of company loyalty.

The survival of the company seemed more important than that of itsemployees. Often, with perverse logic and sequence, the cost savings ofreduction in force were followed by scandalous salary increases at exec-utive levels. Those let go as well as those who survived adopted a new

P A R T N E R S H I P H R2

and protective ethic of “numero uno”—of looking out for what was bestfor them, not the company. That in turn led to the major HR problem oftalent retention. Valued employees would suddenly jump ship for a bet-ter or more secure job, especially if they sensed another wave of down-sizing in the works. Executive search firms cruised the job market for tal-ent, talking to people who were more open to new opportunities thanever before. Talent acquisition was also affected. Prospective candidateswere more cautious about applying for a job that might later be out-sourced or disappear. They also became more savvy about companycycles and were reluctant to consider applying to firms still working theirway through to stability and downsizing options.

But as Toynbee claimed, “The greater the challenge, the greater theresponse.” Those who remained were resourceful. Although still embracingthe new necessity of looking out for themselves, they found ways to sur-vive. In particular, they tied their job performance to company survival andeven growth. They sought to become not only valued but indispensable.

Although that story is the general subject of this book, what is clear isthat the overall response to outsourcing and downsizing included insourc-ing and partnering. Survivors found new lifelines and formed new alliancesbased on a new perception not only of their common need but also oftheir common creativity. The pursuit of survival opened new doors tointernal reconfiguration. Not only did the survivors change their jobs; inthe process they also changed the way the company was structured.

HR provides a strong case in point. Although stripped of many of its keyfunctions, its professionals found ways to survive and adapt that dra-matically illustrate the pattern of creative insourcing. The most obviousfirst stage was to acknowledge the handwriting on the wall. There wasno way to challenge or deny the benefits of downsizing and outsourc-ing. Indeed, many HR professionals adapted to those trends by acquiringthe expertise of and serving as in-house HRO consultants. But whatpropelled HR back into the driver’s seat was talent acquisition and reten-tion. That also required two new or closer partnerships—internally withmiddle managers and trainers and externally with executive search firms,

New HR and Workforce Partnerships 3

especially those with a global range. But the partnerships did not stopthere.

The driving force of productivity had to become an HR cause backed up bydocumentation. New relationships with data tracking and measuring sys-tems had to be formed and advocated. The science of metrics became thenew language of HR and shaped employee work profiles. Another part-nership involved advocating innovation as the new norm of productivity.

Although each of these new alliances will be discussed in detail, HR’smost important commitment was to both advocate for the remaining in-house workers and argue for their new centrality. Indeed, the extent towhich HR accepted that vision determined its own centrality and futuremission.


The workforce has emerged as the make-or-break factor of companysurvival and growth. In many ways, recognition of this developmenthas been reluctant, even grudging. The insistence on preservingindispensability of leadership both at the top and at the middle hasminimized or obscured the new prominence of the rank and file.After all, CEOs have faces, personalities, and belief systems thatcan be described, admired, and regarded with awe. Not so the masses;even middle managers are too numerous to be the specific objectsof hero worship. And so CEOs and senior staff could go about set-ting dramatic goals, and managers and supervisors could be chargedwith moving matters along—but in the final analysis it was still inthe hands of the workforce to make it happen.

And it did. Year after year productivity gains were posted. Theworkforce routinely did whatever was required to get the job done.They stretched to meet the changing goals. Even the constantemphasis on alignment is a direct outgrowth of workforce impor-tance. Never before was the issue of synchronizing job goals with

WORKFORCE CENTRALITY ANDCORPORATE SELF-DEFINITION

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company goals so critical. But now top-down designating of futureobjectives required bottom-up coincidence. It could not happenotherwise.

WORKFORCE CENTRALITY AND CORPORATE IDENTITY

One way to test the centrality of the workforce is to see how signif-icantly it contributes to corporate identity. For example, instead ofthe typical company vision and mission statements (which are aptto be so generic and generalized that their owner cannot be identi-fied), imagine the separate composition of an HR version: a visionstatement that identifies and upholds company-wide performancegoals, and a mission statement that spells out implementation inthe form of preferential workforce profiles. Combining and apply-ing the two would sum up and guide some of the most critical func-tions of the company: recruitment would be more precise, retentionmore customized, performance evaluation more targeted, trainingmore preferentially focused, and alignment of goals and rolesongoing. Above all, the outside and the inside would be of a piece.Internal divisional knowledge would shape external companyimage. No longer window dressing, such HR vision and missionstatements would sum up corporate self-definition in terms of work-force centrality.

But all this is easier said than done. What would those valuedperformance goals and preferential work profiles look like? Doessuch a preferred performance database exist? It does—but not inovert, explicit, or usable form. And that takes us to the subtlestobstacle of all, which also masks the most promise.

The obstacle is made up of two problems. First, preferentialwork profiles do exist, but they are not generally articulated.Second, these unarticulated versions are on the divisional level—and imprisoned there. Supervisors are interested only in their ownunits. Their job descriptions are totally and exclusively inward fac-ing. They are not concerned with crossovers or promotions. Then,


too, they know what they need now, and not what they will needlater. Their focus is on finding a round peg for a round hole.

Supervisors rarely talk across divisions about each other’s jobspecs. They assume that their tasks are so operationally distinctthat any general exchange of views would be wasteful, academic, orobvious. But that assumption is generally untested. Seldom if everis there any structuring of cross-divisional conversations aboutworkforce goals and behaviors. To be sure, a vice president maybring supervisors together to address new goals or targets. But theneach unit is given its marching orders and off they go on their sep-arate ways. Even when the new goal stresses interoperability, littleor no attention is paid to the compatibility of workforce behaviorsand values. And then, when mismatches occur, people fall into theblame game. How shortsighted is that?

Here, then, is the multiple dilemma. General workforce qualitiesare divisionally known but not articulated across the board. Theyare available but not aggregated; precise but not generic. The chal-lenge thus involves at least a three-stage process:

1. Identify shared performance standards and goals across theboard, and then come up with a work profile designed to accom-plish those goals. The profile would be compiled division bydivision, and it would consist of what is common to all the jobdescriptions in each unit.

2. Review all divisional performance standards and preferentialprofiles and distill and compile the generic traits that all super-visors commonly value. This would be the task of HR.

3. Share the composite with all supervisors and divisions. Ineffect, such common company-wide performance goals andpreferential work profiles now would constitute the vision andmission statements of the workforce. They would also serve asthe preferred profile to guide all hiring activities, retentionefforts, evaluation sessions, training recommendations, andoverall alignment.

Workforce Centrality and Corporate Self-Definition 7

Although the way to launch and facilitate each stage will varyaccording to the culture of the company, the emerging performancestandards and profile are remarkably uniform. The compositevision and mission statements that follow are drawn from consult-ing experiences with a number of different companies in differentindustries.


A Composite HR Vision

Of the numerous proposals, five performance goals or standards goalsemerged as shared across the company. The negotiation process requiredthat proposals satisfy and survive three tests in the process of developingconsensus: the goals had to be common horizontally to all divisions; verticallysummative and thus company-wide; and interoperable or reinforcing of eachother. The issue of prioritizing was put aside as unnecessarily contentiousand left to the discretion of each division. But what was allowed to standwas the notion that performance goals and standards were to be envi-sioned as two sides of the same coin. That is, the objectives chosen had tospecify the workforce quality necessary to meet those goals. Ends andmeans were to be one and the same from the outset.

Here, then, are the visionary goals, briefly annotated.

Purpose

The entire company and all its people must be possessed by a commonsense of purpose. Staying focused and on task is not enough. Nothing is tobe undertaken mechanically. All employees must be able to explain not onlywhat they are doing but also why. Work knowledge has to attain the statusof self-knowledge. Purpose drives performance. Vision must be an integraland operational part of individual and divisional work and task definition ifcompany self-definition is to attain a comprehensive common purpose.

Power

Purpose requires participatory power. Nothing changes and improves with-out the power to do so. Initiative has to become not just available but dis-tributed and delivered company-wide. All employees must become CEO oftheir own work. Participatory self-management must become company cul-ture. Every job profile must be reconfigured not solely as a description but

as an invitation to manage and also to change that job. Every job is to beendowed with a future whose realization is also the task of the current jobholder.

Future-Driven Orientation

Purpose and power mean little without foreknowledge. Sights have to beraised on a daily basis. All choices in the present must involve positioning. Allemployees must be in charge of the future version of their own jobs, andwhat it will take to preserve those jobs. When anticipatory management isjoined to participatory management, vision and mission become one.

Holistic Integration

The big picture—the company version of vision—must cascade throughoutthe company, animating and vivifying everything down to the smallestdetail. How all things work—and work together—must be made transparent.Mere displays of multiple linkages on organization charts are not enough.How productivity, profitability, preservation of market share, and customersatisfaction interrelate to achieve common purpose must be documentedand shared. Leaders and managers need to have regular conversations oninteroperable relationships and how all is perceived as a total unit. Systemdynamics must be adopted as the official company-wide language.

Knowledge Training and Learning

Training and learning should be permanent in company culture. The operat-ing assumptions of the company culture are that we are unfinished, wedon’t know all that we need to know, and we never can know enough.Unlearning must precede new learning to clear the field of preconceivedand foreclosing assumptions. Working smarter and not harder must nowinclude understanding not only how smart we are but also how we aresmart. Systems dynamics should not be limited to structure; they mustapply to the new findings of cognitive studies as well. Training and learninghave to benefit from and incorporate brain research and the insights of mul-tiple intelligences.

A Composite HR Mission

Discussion of preferential or optional work profiles and roles rapidly trig-gered two strong views and opposing directions. One was realistic, theother aspirational. The first group argued for dealing with the current and


urgent realities of recruitment and what kinds of employees we need rightnow, then assessing the kinds of applicants likely to continue to be in theemployment pool. The other group maintained that we should not sell our-selves short or set our sights too low. Besides, without a superior work-force—beyond what was currently in-house—we would not be able toachieve our performance goals, let alone meet the quality standards thataccompany them.

As is true in many conflicts, both sides were right. As they began toacknowledge their mutuality, they started developing more inclusive defini-tions and adjustments. Thus the realistic group embraced visionary purposeby developing a profile that was preferential. The aspirational group won itscase by insisting that the preferential profile keep alive the aspirational bydeveloping an optimal version. The final compromise was signaled by ahyphenated joining of the two. In other words, all HR goals were to be drivenby the preferential but pushed always to include the optimal. Lest that leadto pie-in-the-sky expectations on the one hand and ignore the in-housecapabilities of the present workforce on the other, training was to take upthe slack. Only such constant interventions could ensure that those hired oralready in-house could reach not only the preferential performance level ofthe workforce but also that optimal level required for future company sur-vival and growth. Happily, by linking the preferential to the optimal, the present to the future, the hyphenated profile also provided training with itstargets and agenda.

The mission preferential and optimal profiles described here are perfor-mance essentials.

Extra Mile Work Ethic

The workforce is committed to doing whatever it takes to get the job done:never using the job description as a refuge or perceiving its parameters asfixed, constantly pushing both work concepts and process beyond currentdefinitions and goals, and designating best practices as temporary bench-marks rather than permanent milestones. The ultimate, optimal version ofthis profile sees job management and self-management as versions of eachother.

Mutualizing of Work Relationships and Satisfaction

Although job satisfaction is high on all employees’ preferential lists, no company can guarantee it. Indeed, increasingly, job satisfaction requires ashift of focus—from the organization to the workforce, from the job to


the jobholder. In other words, job satisfaction now has to be largely self-generated. It is what the workforce brings to the task, not an inherent qual-ity. After all, a given position in different and optimal hands is no longer thesame job. The ability to do the job thus has to be expanded to include theability to make it personally satisfying. Equally important, job satisfaction isalso interpersonal—requiring the recognition of how others contribute toindividual job satisfaction. The optimal work commitment then becomes theobligation not only to generate personal job satisfaction but also to con-tribute to the job satisfaction of others. Indeed, such mutualizing of satis-faction imparts to all team and work environments the commonality of adistinct company culture. Productivity is then the outcome of the multiplica-tion of job satisfactions and the mutualizing of multiple work relationships.

Market and Customer Segment Knowledge and Focus

Every job description needs to be amplified by two flowcharts. One identi-fies in specific, not abstract, terms how that position directly influencesmarket share and customer satisfaction. The other pictures how that posi-tion is linked and aligned to a cluster of similar positions, reinforcing them toachieve the same common ends. Such job extensions, like the one of provid-ing job satisfaction to others, are ultimately a form of job enrichment.

Unfinished, Allowing for Constant Incremental Gains

Constant and continuous improvement must be guided and driven by theassumption that incremental gains are infinite. No advance, no matter howsignificant, ever finally determines the end to further progress. Work per-formance is thus defined as an endless series of incremental gains stretch-ing off into an infinite future. The unfinished worker and the unfinishedtask are ultimately to be perceived as one. Job improvement is the preferen-tial version, job transformation the optimal.

The Collectivized Individual

Teaming is perhaps the supreme and most profound current work challenge.Typically it is summed up with a rallying slogan that each employee is ateam player and it is accompanied by training in conflict resolution. Butteaming is not simply harmonizing. Strong individuals resist blurring orblending what makes them distinctive. If such resistance is not recognizedand factored in, teams may perform below the level of their potential. Soinstead of focusing only on the supreme model of the team as the end goal,HR also needs to emphasize the supreme and evolving model of the individual.


APPLICATIONS TO TEAMWORK

Teams are usually defined and managed as singular and collectiveunits that remain constant and function consistently over time. But anunacknowledged trade-off—reliability for creativity—may be atwork. A solely group-based definition of team members may be reas-suring, but it is also apt to lead to groupthink and lock in the rangeof problem-solving approaches. But if one were to combine and strivefor both predictability and innovation (successfully enjoying one’scake and eating it too), three new assumptions would quickly surface.

First, team definition would have to focus on a double goal:achieving harmony but preserving difference. Second, each occa-sion the team convened would be regarded not as a set routine butas a new and dynamic opportunity for reconfiguration, and everynew external challenge would lead to rearranging and reposition-ing team members and soliciting their different and unique contribu-tions. Third, the mobility of the individuals who compose the teammeans that team identity would be constantly evolving, therebyredefining and re-creating itself. In fact, keeping alive and not blur-ring individuality determines the quality of team problem solving.

The operating strategy, then, is to suggest that teaming in factuniquely offers further stages of individual development not avail-able any other way. Teaming asks each member to develop an addi-tional and outward-reaching dimension of individuality. The acqui-sition of this new and more adhesive identity evolves as singularindividuality encounters the multiple intelligences of teams—as thesolitary impulse is challenged and extended by a new and largerlinked identity. In other words, the goal of teaming and team train-ing should be the creation of a new kind of individual—a collec-tivized individual.

To tie all this together, Table 1 presents a range of traits, fromthe preferential to the optimal.


COMMENTARY

Preferential and optimal profiles combine the realistic and the aspi-rational. They thus offer the clarity and focus of a checklist that canbe applied to recruiting, training, and retaining a superior work-force. But lest these qualities become mechanical, they need theownership of supervisors to dramatize and to document work pro-files with their scenarios and war stories. In such cases, anecdotalevidence is not only valued but also determining and is an indispens-able contribution to corporate self-definition and the preferentialand optimal contributions of the increasingly central workforce.


TABLE 1 • PREFERENTIAL—OPTIMAL SPECTRUM

TRAIT PREFERENTIAL VERSION OPTIMAL VERSION

Can-do Job management Job transformationattitude

Satisfaction Self-generated Self-enhanced

Linkages To customers To bottom line

Growth Incremental Discontinuous

Teaming Individual Collectivized individual

Research is like innovation. Both optimize. In particular, researchdrives businesses to be not just knowledge based but knowledgecreating—not just research users but research providers. It alwayscompels the next step, the road not otherwise taken, the inquirynot otherwise pursued. Increasingly, savvy professionals, beforethey embark on any new venture, supplement the basic question,What is the competition doing? with, What does the research show?

The first question is urgent, up close, and unavoidable. It is asurvival issue. It involves constant and current monitoring and vig-ilance. The second is more reflective, even speculative. It oftenmoves beyond the immediate and the obvious to identify newsources of competition and even new competitors. Above all, itaddresses whether the current problem and its solution have afuture. If the research answers fall short or are deficient in rangeand depth, some companies will opt to do the research directly.And on that decision hangs this analysis.

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TRADITIONAL RESEARCH PROVIDERS

Historically, research has come from four types of providers: uni-versities, proprietary R&D divisions, think tanks and centers, andthe government. Some discussion of each type is in order as back-ground to the research issues affecting HR.

Universities

Institutions of higher learning have traditionally dominated researchin at least three ways: by supporting and sustaining research cen-ters, by maintaining a research faculty, and by offering doctoraldegree programs. Such efforts have produced a steady stream oforiginal findings, especially of basic research, and also of futureresearchers. The findings, in particular, are highly valued by indus-try—a significant number of subscriptions to scholarly researchjournals are from the for-profit sector. Although happy to borrowthe results of such expensive and long-term projects, companiesoften view university findings as initial grist for the mill. They stillrequire the applied and supplementary science of their ownresearch staff—both to tailor the results to their needs and toensure that the results will be proprietary.

Proprietary R&D Divisions

R&D units of companies seek to generate competitive edge andadvantage by developing new products or services or improvingthose already on offer. Often their staff members are as impressiveand degreed as those of any major research university. Indeed, theyfrequently attract and retain outstanding talent by offering researchassignments so seductive or unique that they cannot be resisted ormatched. For example, when stem cell research was restricted in theUnited States, China sought to recruit frustrated Chinese Americanresearchers by offering unlimited access to stem cells. Recently, byapproving a referendum permitting such research, California votersgave that state a recruiting edge. In its heyday, Bell Labs had more


PhDs than many small universities. Currently the R&D researchmantle has fallen largely to the pharmaceutical industry and to soft-ware entities such as Microsoft, Apple, and their competitors. Butwith the increasing demand for innovation, the search for researchtalent may rival that for senior staff.

Think Tanks and Centers

The third generator of research has been various think tanks andcenters, often privately and even handsomely funded, and some-times driven by political agendas. One of the most prolific and con-sistently competent is the RAND Corporation. Typically, the researchsubjects selected are complex and national in scope and involvemajor policy issues.

Government

Finally, government has been directly engaged in research fordecades as well as being a major promoter and funder of originalresearch, especially through grants focused on national health. Ofcourse, national security is a characteristic government researchfocus—perhaps the most dramatic example being the ManhattanProject.

PROFILE OF NEW RESEARCH PROVIDERS

However, many new contenders have unexpectedly arrived on thescene. A number of for-profit companies have made research theircore business and used their findings to create or increase theiraccess to a customer base. Moreover, because the research focus isfrequently industry tailored and customized, research and market-ing are aligned from the outset. All these new research- and market-driven enterprises do resemble the four major research providersto some extent. That is not surprising since many have provided analternative employment path for university-trained PhDs. Not yet

Partnerships with Research 17

recognized—let alone examined—is the overall impact all the doc-toral business graduates are having generally on their employersand specifically on their research agenda. But in any case, thesenew research providers are both sufficiently distinct and creativeenough to be recognized and examined in their own right. Indeed,although each may have its own focus of specialization, applica-tions, and even research methodology, they have enough in com-mon to generate the following generic profile:

• Like university research, their work is designed to be shared.However, unlike university research, their work is sold.

• Their basic product is always new intelligence and partnerships.

• Their work is frequently focused on the workforce and its train-ing, and training thus has become increasingly research based.

• Targeted customers rarely know as much about themselves andthe behaviors of their workforce as the research reveals.

• Because their findings may have an impact on organizationaland even mission change, these groups also function as research-driven consultants.

• Their preoccupation with macro problems or lost opportunitieswithin the big picture engages the interest of top decision makers.

• Often anticipatory, even futuristic, their work tends to redeemand extend the short-term strategic planning of their clients.

• Functioning in an entrepreneurial environment, they are self-selective in the niche they research and in effect brand theirexpertise.

In surveying and illustrating the HR research field, I have cho-sen to profile KnowledgeAdvisors, Thomson NETg, Bersin andAssociates, Brandon Hall, IDC, and Gartner. These major researchproviders illustrate the typical features and the range of offeringsavailable, possessing an impressive and often unique track recordof HR goals and customer sales. In the process they all fuse andoptimize three functions: research, marketing, and learning.


KnowledgeAdvisors

The research and market niche of KnowledgeAdvisors (KA) islearning measurement. The organization’s goal is to provide train-ing operations with learning analytics through its trademarkedMetrics that Matter (MTM). The basic overall outcome is to justifythe costs of training through the application of return on invest-ment (ROI) methodology. But in the process KA rightly evaluatesnot so much the training as the implementation of training. Not justone but many impact variables are assessed—productivity, customersatisfaction, innovation, talent retention, and more. KA uses intenselydata-driven metrics to bring detailed transparency to work profilesin general and even to individual and team performance. Managerscan view more than a hundred Web-based reports generated froma database that contains more than thirty million data points.

Typically, KA—like all research enterprises—claims not only tooffer best practices but also to embody the state of the art. Towardthose ends, KA (like Thomson NETg) sponsors annual nationaland even international symposia on the subject. KA mounts anannual meeting on learning analytics, as does NETg. Althoughgenerally more about marketing than research, such conferencesnot only showcase the research wares but also offer case studies byusers like Microsoft of how MTM is used and altered to addressunique situations. Indeed, such documentation provides a demon-stration and evaluation of a distinct new best practice: the use ofresearch to enhance market advantage.

Thomson NETg

The distinction and branding sought by Thomson NETg is its abso-lute commitment to innovation. Toward that end, it has recruited andmaintained a robust research and development group that collec-tively constitutes its Innovations Lab. Its creative track recordincludes the technologies of learning object architecture, EKG soft-ware to measure the effectiveness of simulations, and, most recently,Precision Skilling, which links job skills to training directions and


designs. The last innovation in particular is bringing about a majorreview of training foci and the diagnostic management of learningdiversity.

When NETg functions in a consultant capacity, its focus isalways synthesizing in nature. It seeks to deliver an integratedlearning solution, which frequently requires three activities: updatingcurrent in-house technologies; linking older systems to NETg’s in-novations; and keeping the now-integrated learning managementsystem (LMS) open-ended to future development. As noted, thecommitment to research and marketing unexpectedly changesconsultant-client relationships. The fusion of research and market-ing is no longer outside but inside, no longer distant but infused, nolonger separate but partnered. What drives consultant and clienttogether is research, which reveals more about the behaviors, prob-lems, and situations of clients and companies than they knewbefore. That creates the kind of captive and receptive audience,open—often for the first time—to innovations that already embodythe research insights. In short, branding is not limited to productsbut includes process as well.

Bersin and Associates

It is not necessary to be big to carve out a big research niche. Bersinand Associates has staked out the research area of developingindustry-wide information and practice patterns of e-learning. Theanswer to the critical question of who in our industry is doing whatis the group’s research focus. Its most recent source book, LMSCustomer Satisfaction Survey, completed and distributed during thefirst quarter of 2005, is a research case study.

To ensure that what is being researched is needed and valued,and to spread around the cost of undertaking such a large-scaleproject, Bersin has formed the LMS Quality Council, whose mem-bers represent about 80 percent of the LMS market. Many researchtasks are too enormous for any single member to undertake; in-house research capacity may not be available, and bias tends to


intrude. So the council in effect subcontracts to Bersin andAssociates to conduct surveys and compile a source book that,among other patterns, will reveal for the first time how the productsof various LMS vendors stack up to one another from the purelycustomer perspective.

Once again, research and marketing are fused to the point thatit is not possible to discern where one begins and the other leavesoff. In addition, to ensure that synthesis drives inquiry and remainson target, a consortium is formed of users whose common knowl-edge needs override their competitive and proprietary separate-ness. In other words, such an arrangement enables Bersin andAssociates to function as a research university serving its alumni(its customer base).

Brandon Hall

The research and marketing niche of Brandon Hall involves pub-lishing best practices for e-learning. Last published in March 2004and authored by Tom Werner, the volume offers a comprehensivesurvey of case studies and organizational profiles of the e-learningindustry. Extremely rich in detail, the compilation features best prac-tices in five categories: steps and documents for building the businesscase for e-learning; ROI methodologies; developing company-wideLMS; criteria for selecting outstanding and award-winning LMStechnology, courses, and evaluation systems; and linkage of learn-ing to human capital HR management.

Brandon Hall singles out firms and practices for Excellence inE-Learning Awards each year. The identification of such industryleaders supports Brandon Hall’s focus on establishing benchmarksand thus guiding the strategy and technology selection of clients.Recently, Brandon Hall announced the publication of its latestresearch: “Hosted Versus Installed LMS.” This three-year perspec-tive reveals a surprising preference for installed rather than hostedLMS. Finally, Brandon Hall offers customized research to individ-ual clients who seek to know the best practices of their industry and


competitors. Such individual and focused surveys benefit both fromBrandon Hall’s tried and tested methodology and from its extensivedatabase of best practices. Recycling research methods and findingsin effect has become Brandon Hall’s own best practice.

IDC

The focus of IDC is IT; its span, global. It produces The WorldwideBlack Book, which provides extensive quarterly analysis of the sta-tus and projected growth of the worldwide IT industry in fifty-threecountries. The book also contains regional subset profiles such asthose of Central and Eastern Europe and Asia/Pacific. IDC alsogenerates The Worldwide Telecom Black Book, which presents aconsolidated view of market size and growth opportunities for network equipment vendors. Current and comprehensive, IDC’sresearch survey products accommodate multiple users and perspec-tives and routinely fuse macro and micro foci and issues. The resultis an indispensable research data support system for the entire ITindustry.

Gartner

Although Gartner shares much of its focus and scale with IDC,Gartner is unabashedly and explicitly in the forecasting business.Indeed, as I write, its current forecast is simply titled Predicts 2006.But what sets Gartner’s trend monitoring apart is the degree towhich it supports both short- and long-term decision making andstrategic planning. Thus, it alerts print buyers and vendors to mul-tiple technological and market trends that will have a direct impacton them and drive their immediate profitability and manufacturingchoices. Of special value are those anticipatory predictions thatread the emerging transformations of products and services beforethey are fully apparent. Such heads-up predictions basically displayfuture agendas for company review and decision making. Indeed,


tapping Gartner’s forecasts provides companies with a researchpartner and consultant that is not only typically beyond in-houseexpertise but also maintains an authority and independence essen-tial to all projections of the future.

THE FUTURE OF RESEARCH

It is clear that much of what we currently know about marketingand learning and the marketing of learning is being generated bythese new research providers. Indeed, the process has become self-recycling or self-perpetuating. A new and more demanding andholistic generation of HR and learning and training leaders andsystems has further required that research learning intelligence bealigned with both ROI and innovation. In many ways theseresearch providers define the training and learning industry andgrant it autonomy and distinction. Above all, such alliances ensurethat LMS, hosted or installed, will be smart, effective, targeted, andprofitable.

The new research enterprises will not eliminate or reduce theneed for the traditional providers. They all will exist side by side andproceed as they have in the past—on parallel lines, never meeting.But in substance and output, new room may have to be provided forthis new fifth class of research provider. Moreover, with the creationof an alternative career path, new university PhDs may find notonly a new home but also perhaps a more congenial and collabora-tive one there. Bersin’s research fraternity—like Bersin’s QualityCouncil—might turn out to be a more welcoming and convergentway of identifying and addressing the increasing multidisciplinarityof knowledge, the management of learning diversity, and the globalholistics of training. If that occurs, then these new research providersmay not only identify and address the research agenda of the futurebut in the process also secure and extend their market niche byserving as an alternative research fraternity of distinction.


COMMENTARY

In many ways, these new research providers represent the state ofthe art. By accepting, supporting, and partnering with such researchentities, HR has not only embraced the research function, it hasapplied the new findings to enhancing workforce productivity andadaptability. Research-driven HR is enjoying greater credibilitybecause it has addressed trends not only close at hand but alsoglobally. Moreover, it has also mirrored the rigors of research method-ologies by developing new relationships with data-gathering ana-lytics. That has enabled HR to present and display the patterns ofworkforce behavior and skills with greater precision and accounta-bility. Although that partnership with technology was matched inevery division, what is unique is the HR integration of researchfindings with data-tracking technology and systems. If the advocacyof workforce centrality is to be recognized and valued, hard evi-dence and metrics must be the persuading means.


The development and evaluation of managed work basically coin-cides with the shift from an agricultural to an industrial economy.The farm was family based. Elders passed on their horticulturalskills to younger members. But the production of goods and ser-vices was guild based. The apprenticeship system fit into a hierarchy.Certification was conferred by the master practitioner, occasionallyin written form. In fact, in some religions and cultures today,novices are still educated and certified through the same ritual ofguided mastery. Gurus and Zen masters retain their ancient appealand power.

But the industrial economy changed virtually everything. Degreeswere suddenly required to certify competence. Even subspecial-ties needed certificates. Training became ubiquitous. These daysmiddle managers are trained as supervisors, workers as teammembers. Information technology and new data systems now rou-tinely manage and define workforce performance. Coincidentalwith the emergence of this modern culture of work management

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and measurement was the gradual appearance of the work special-ist, the human resource professional. And even that nomenclaturehas taken on a new importance: human capital has replacedhuman resources to signify an importance equal to that of financialresources. In short, nearly a hundred years of transformations ofhow work goals and processes are conceived, managed, and eval-uated have taken place. But perhaps the key transformation is inthe focus on measurement and its conversion from observation todocumentation, from anecdotal review to statistical rigor. Howthat occurred and what its principal stages were require a brief his-torical analysis as the context for understanding the current rolesof HR and its versions of evaluation.

HR HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHTS

The first development occurred in 1911 when Frederick Taylor pub-lished his Principles of Scientific Management. For the first time,work was conceived as a task to be managed in detail. To demon-strate the value of such rigor, Taylor provided supervisors in thesteel industry with extensive time-and-motion efficiency studies. Inthe process, Taylor concluded that the apprenticeship system ofwork preparation was inefficient and unproductive. It consisted ofa series of miniature fiefdoms tyrannically presided over and monop-olized by master craftsmen, who resisted all efforts for work to bemanaged and evaluated by anyone other than themselves. InsteadTaylor proposed that all work be viewed scientifically and analyzedinto tasks, and then those different job parts became separate jobsfor which employees could be trained and evaluated. Scientificmanagement marked the end of the guild system and imparted tothe assembly line the kind of tight sequence and fusion of time andtask necessary for improving and measuring productivity.

Time-efficient studies represented a major challenge to existingHR professionals. They required a new relationship between engi-neering and psychology, between measurement and motivation.


They also required a more analytical approach to task definitionand spurred the development of job descriptions. Above all, theytied the effectiveness of scientific management to company train-ing, which then became for the first time a domain of HR. Some ofthe excesses of this singular approach were satirized by CharlieChaplin in his classic film Modern Times (1936), which was subti-tled The Tyranny of Time. But what Taylor signaled was measure-ment as the new absolute of performance. Indeed, all subsequentacademic programs preparing future HR professionals required acore course in tests and measurements.

The next major stage occurred after World War II, led by W.Edwards Deming. Although he acknowledged Taylor’s work andreaffirmed the value of time as a measure of efficiency, Demingpointed out that what was missing was a focus on quality. What wasthe value of producing products quickly if they were shoddy?Deming was aware of engineering obsolescence. He knew thatFord himself had asked his designers to tell him which part gaveout first. Then he ordered that all other parts be built to last nolonger, so as to stimulate the purchase of new cars. Deming did notadvise his clients, the Japanese automakers, to manufacture a carthat would last forever; he advised them to make a car whose qual-ity would be the source of its longevity. Moreover, Deming devel-oped a new means of ensuring and measuring that quality, which hecalled statistical process controls.

Continuing the tradition of Taylor, Deming insisted that objec-tive and constant records of progress be compiled but now focusedon specific quality goals. That alone provided what all leaders andmanagers wanted: quality control of process and outcome. Indeed,what subsequently emerged was the Japanese passion for incre-mental quality improvement. Every worker at every stage of themanufacturing process was expected to identify ways of improvingquality, ways of reducing steps, or both. When both reinforced eachother, Taylor and Deming were fused.

But Deming did not stop with quality measurement. He invadedthe HR area with his famous fourteen points. The major one called

The HR–Tech Interface 27

for driving fear out of the workplace. Quality products required aquality environment. Workers intimidated and dominated by bully-ing bosses do not produce quality or incremental improvements.Cultural paternalism coupled with traditional commitment to life-time employment made Japan receptive, a fertile soil for Deming’sphilosophy of the humane workplace. Only with the subsequentsuccess and competition of Japanese industry did Deming’s ideastake hold in the United States and again find their way into the academic HR curriculum. By then his notions took the form ofTQM—Total Quality Management—and its updated version, SixSigma.

What powered the significant jumps in Japanese productivity inthe postwar period was the relentless pursuit of quality as thesupreme form of worker motivation. Benchmarking (also intro-duced by Deming) established the key points for measuring qualityimprovement and identifying best practices. Finally, his advocacyfor the workforce led him to describe and measure work cultures asthey emerged in Japan as models of quality environments and ofworker empowerment. The net result was a dramatic increase notonly in the complexity of the HR function but also in the range ofits expertise. In addition to the knowledge of psychology and thebehavioral sciences, HR professionals had to master and apply sta-tistical analysis and the principles of scientific management. On topof that, to be effective, task differentiation had to precede training,which in turn also had become a new responsibility for HR. In theprocess, HR attained a newly pervasive and persuasive importanceand visibility throughout the entire company. But while HR’s artic-ulation and implementation of Taylor and Deming was takingplace, two new paradigms of work management appeared.

Norbert Wiener and Jay Forrester, both of MIT, can be pairedbecause both advanced the notion that everything, natural or man-made, is a system. Much of systemic behavior is cybernetic innature, in that parts of any system are involved constantly in elab-orate feedback exchanges. In fact, Wiener claimed that a machine


that changes its responses based on feedback is a machine thatlearns. That perception served as the basis for the notion of artifi-cial intelligence and (looking even further into the future) for theprospect of the fusion of human and machine intelligence.

Forrester linked systems dynamics with the information revolu-tion. All complexity, he claimed, can be understood and renderedin systemic terms. Whether the subject is the human body, a man-ufacturing plant, or urban traffic, it houses an invisible series ofrelationships of its parts, which can be modeled. But to test thevalidity of a model requires extensive and reliable data. WhenDennis Meadows and Jay Forrester produced their global simula-tion model, their major concern was not only the design of themodel but also the availability and reliability of data to test its sys-temic nature. In other words, it was the capacity of the computernot only to generate the data needed to run the parts of the systembut also to complete computations previously too complicated ortime-consuming that provided systems dynamics with the equiva-lent of Taylor’s time-and-motion studies and Deming’s statisticalprocess controls. It became increasingly possible to trace the circleof cause and effect animated by systems dynamics and cyberneticfeedback. Data managed such new complexities and also offeredthe prospect of predictability. In short, the legacy of Wiener andForrester is not only the notion that all work relationships are sys-temic and symbiotic, but also that they can be tracked, documented,and ultimately directed by information technology.

METRICS AND SOFTWARE ASSESSMENT SYSTEMS

This brings the evolution to the present. The current work scenedisplays a nearly total emphasis on the application of data to work-force management and evaluation. Indeed, its extent has in effectstructured a new and permanent HR–tech interface. Although thecontributions of Taylor, Deming, Wiener, and Forrester still inform


and guide that current partnership, the use of workforce informationtechnology has restored or newly granted HR strategic importanceand participation in the major leadership decisions of companies.What forms that new indispensability has taken may be suggested bythe range of five developments, all involving information technology.

• Software has been developed to totally track and document theproductivity of all work performance. It can be individually aswell as divisionally applied and extracted. Performance evalua-tion is thus constant, historical, ongoing, and instant. Aggre-gated upward, it can profile total company performance at anygiven time. Using benchmarks of both past and present per-formance, the tracking is contextual. It can thus be disaggre-gated to pinpoint and test the individual impacts of leadership,training, incentives, or any intervention on productivity. Inshort, it offers management by the numbers. Taylor would be inheaven.

• Systems have been designed to micromanage. Competenciesand skills for every job have been compiled on both an individualand divisional basis. Most recently, the list has been expanded toinclude team competencies. This system supports the analysisof two kinds of linkages: first, the identification of what compe-tencies and skills most support significant increases in produc-tivity, and second, the extent to which they are aligned withcompany goals. Data generated here is designed to be the basisfor corrective intervention by management and training.

• Software has emerged to trace and evaluate degrees of interop-erability between individuals, teams, and divisions. This focus isdriven by research, which has shown that gains in productivityare greater between divisions than within divisions. As a result,interpersonal skills can function as interstructural skills. Bothaffect the extent and quality of work outcomes. Thus, to the tra-ditional work competencies are now added the measurement ofsocial styles. Tracking the degree to which interpersonal skills


drive and support productivity is not only a management tool,it also provides HR with data profiles for interviewing and hiring applicants with the kind of strong interpersonal skillsdesired and needed by each company.

• Training and reskilling of workforce competencies has becomea major expenditure. Over a hundred companies maintain theirown corporate universities. Millions are spent each year on uni-versity tuition. With such expenditures increasing, chief finan-cial officers want documentation of the capacity of training toincrease productivity before approving budget requests. As aresult of this call for accountability, company learning manage-ment systems have had to build in or embed follow-up trackingsystems to measure the effectiveness of the training at increas-ing productivity, profitability, and quality. Once again the lan-guage of persuasion is data.

• To support the decision-making process at all levels, a compre-hensive master visualizer was required. That led to the devel-opment of data-driven and -rendered dashboards. Like physicalcontrol panels, dashboards at any given moment provide aseries of statistical stills or summaries of the status of every-thing in the system. All is poised for daily review in the serviceof three critical functions: corrective action, proactive position-ing, and strategic decisions to abort or change direction. To besure, dashboards are displays, not decisions. They require theoverlays of company vision and mission, bottom-line priorities,and above all future initiatives and trends. But the dynamics ofthese factors can be accommodated and defined by softwaredesigned to facilitate the construction of dashboards for strate-gic decision making and planning. Indeed, new systems in thewings can activate dashboards and scorecards to produce simu-lated decisions and plans according to a series of customizedcontingencies. But data and documentation again determinewhich of those science-fictional scenarios become persuasivescience fact.


This list is far from exhaustive; in fact, it would change daily. Iwill propose some new electronic adaptations for recruitment laterin these pages. But if all the founding forerunners were alive today,they would applaud the capacity of workforce data systems to bringnew mastery to the measurement and control of quality performance.

HR ADVOCACY OF DISTRIBUTED METRICS

The temptation is to claim that all these new domains reestablishthe importance of HR. But that would be self-serving bravado,missing a subtler and more critical point. The mastery of measure-ment systems and their multiple linkages to company goals is not amonopoly of HR but an across-the-board general and generic com-petency required of all. The specific role of HR is to expand itsadvocacy of the workforce by not only embracing this new form ofaccountability but also insisting on its company-wide dissemination.

Information and data sharing must be available at all levels forits value to be appreciated—and to minimize the paranoia inspiredby thoughts of Big Brother. Transparency must be welcomed asself-knowledge. Data potentially makes everyone a manager, espe-cially a self-manager. Continuous improvement is inescapable andmust be applied to both the job and the jobholder. The transforma-tion of the former is in the hands of the latter. Data empowers. Itmust be used to stir individual and interpersonal growth. The keyHR orientation is that every individual is unfinished and that thefuture of all data tracking serves to record and to celebrate therealization of individual potential.

The additional value of focusing on HR is role change. It hashad to reconfigure itself. As a result, it may offer a new managerialmodel common to all professionals. Specifically, every HR special-ist now has to be a generalist too. Information technology and datameasurement must become the common means to HR ends. Inaddition, outward identity now has to become interpersonallydefined. Management is a constant crossover and bridging activity.


Expertise must minister to the whole by expressing itself in thecommon language of data measurement. In this way, company-wide strategic decisions are shaped by aggregation—by multiplecontributions at all levels. Data helps ensure that the big picturerules. Internal negotiation for larger pieces of the pie no longer fol-lows traditional or familiar allocations but is a transparent processdominated by metrics.

COMMENTARY

To be effective as the advocate of workforce centrality, the HR pro-fessional must combine and align the macro and the micro, missionand measurement. Work environments and cultures must be scien-tifically and statistically rendered, measured, and documented. Asa hybrid, HR has to interface human capital and information tech-nology. That way the realization of worker potential can be grantedan avenue, and the documentation of continuous improvement canaffirm and reflect that faith and investment. Indeed, ultimately it isthe task of HR not only to advocate but also to deliver the perfor-mance yields of data documentation.

No one can be left out of the information loop, least of all man-agers. But they too are in motion. The task of supporting managersand supervisors to accomplish the formidable task of documenta-tion is compounded and contingent on its being built into anddefining managerial transformation. Each will have to play catch-up with the other.


At a recent Conference Board annual meeting titled “EnterpriseLearning Strategies,” one of the sessions was devoted to middlemanagers. Its content and focus were shaped by surveys of CEOswho collectively agreed that “in every change initiative, one of thebiggest stumbling blocks is middle managers . . . who frequentlyresist change,” and it presented various strategies CEOs havedeveloped for enabling their middle managers to become changefacilitators.

CEOs’ application of such correctives rests on the larger juxta-position of the concepts of leadership and management. The com-parison always favors the former and may well have achieved per-manent status as a cultural icon, having been confirmed by so manyleadership experts. Table 2 gives a typical overview.

Little wonder that everyone on the corporate ladder aspires tobe a leader and that books on leadership are regularly best sellers.But perhaps the contrasts between leaders and managers are too

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severe. Is the unequivocal and unqualified superiority of leadershipjustified? Is the comparison a balanced analysis or a loaded designto make leaders look good at the expense of managers? Besides,are we comparing apples to apples? Most serious of all, by main-taining such an absolute juxtaposition, are we not also distortingthe roles of both leaders and managers?

LEADERS VERSUS MANAGERS

As the construct goes, leaders and managers display some primarydifferences. The first represents excess in two directions. Leadersbecome singular saviors; managers, everyday practitioners. As aresult, expectations are apportioned and adjusted accordingly.Deification of leaders is justified by their monopoly on vision.Managers have to be content with mission.

A more nagging problem is development. How do aspiringCEOs outgrow the stigmatizing limitations of being managers?Often, they do not. Many are unable to delegate responsibility toothers or may see themselves as relinquishing their power by doingso. Then, too, fixing rigid profiles of these positions may obscurethe transformation of both roles, especially that of managers.


TABLE 2 • CONTRASTS BETWEEN MANAGERS AND LEADERS

GOALS MANAGERS LEADERS

Direction Planning Vision

Alignment Controlling boundaries Creating shared cultures

Relationships Focus on objects Focus on people

Role Boss Coach

Outcomes Maintain stability Create change

Finally, when such changes do occur, how are they known andpromulgated? Who takes the lead in noting, documenting, andcommunicating such transformations?

Typically HR does. But now through its partnerships, its per-ceptions and analysis have become more pervasive and persuasive.The alliance with research provides objective confirmation andindustry-wide authority. Its interface with metrics also tracks thelarger pattern of role and goal change that exceeds the parametersof existing job descriptions. That immediately activates the inter-vention of revision. Talent recruitment has to reflect current prac-tices. Indeed, as the official keeper of job descriptions, HR is in aunique position to serve as the company-wide monitor of virtuallyall workforce change.

Such positioning generates multiple HR interventions. The mostobvious—as noted—is the need to keep updating job information ifrecruitment is to match reality, a task that essentially remains a workin progress. HR must be sensitive to and aware of the often difficulttransitions of transformation, and also of what support these transi-tions may require if they are to take hold, be wired in place, andfinally gain acceptance as a new productive norm. Above all, HRhas to communicate the nature, direction, and degree of workforcechange to senior executives and planners as well as to training direc-tors. Both need to know the current capacity of the workforce iftheir decisions on new initiatives and training support are to beshaped not by old assumptions but by the new dynamics of whatmanagers are actually accomplishing. Nothing is more demoralizingthan the ignorance of such capacity. And nothing could be moremyopic and counterproductive than to fail to factor into future plansand training agendas such cutting-edge workforce developments.

HR ALLIANCE WITH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Speaking out for job change acquires greater credibility when HRis allied with research and information technology. Internal obser-

HR Support of Emerging Manager-Leaders 37

vation of in-house best work practices is tested and verified by theresearch literature and the confirmation of industry-wide develop-ments. The calipers used for performance management may be toonarrow to pick up larger and more qualitative work transforma-tions. Indeed, many HR researchers themselves have undertakenthe development of more inclusive scorecard and dashboard sys-tems to reflect the linkage of role and goal change. Above all, allthis has resulted in a closer, often more interdependent and sup-portive relationship between HR and middle managers, especiallyas it affects talent acquisition and retention.

HR provides hiring managers with a window and avenue to therecruiting world. Collaboratively recrafting job descriptions, HRand managers also develop the hiring criteria and interview proto-cols. Above all, HR’s knowledge of the job pool and the conditionsthat suggest the need to tap executive search firms allows HR tofunction as a coach and consultant. Critical to the efficacy of sucha partnership is the acceptance by middle managers not only of theanalysis and documentation of workforce changes but also of thechanges’ driving creed—doing whatever it takes to get the job done.And HR’s credibility with managers rests on describing the newperformance behaviors of managers based on in-house observa-tions, confirmed and amplified by the research literature. In effect,HR certifies the essential drivers of managerial transformation.

DIMENSIONS OF MANAGER-LEADERS

An examination of the job description of managers reveals ten newdimensions:

• Information gathering. Managers must scrutinize and maintainsources of organizational knowledge by developing informa-tion interfaces and internal networks.

• Market competition. Managers must observe, be knowledge-able about, and communicate the behaviors and reactions ofcompetitive firms.


• Holistic strategies. Typically, managers are given the task ofintroducing and implementing the company-wide systems selectedby CEOs or senior staff. In the process, implementation must bedistributed divisionally across the board, and the chain of com-mand both immediately above and below has to be adjusted.Finally, such overall coordination is essential to managing thetotal impact on the entire organization and its decision-makingprocess.

• Strategic monitoring. Because of volatile environments, mana-gerial monitoring has become an important ally and adjunct ofstrategic planning. Aligned, both serve as indicators not only ofcompany direction but also of restructuring.

• Technology supervision. Managers are increasingly also tech-nology managers whose task is to link and optimize informa-tion to achieve operational success.

• Consumer-centric responsibility. Managers are responsible forcreating, implementing, and aligning customer relationship man-agement (CRM) systems and applications across divisions.

• Resource optimization. Managers oversee enterprise resourceplanning (ERP), which is a shared management tool used acrossthe board to optimize both internal and external resourcesaccessible at an unlimited number of points to achieve higherlevels of productivity.

• Financial thread accountability. Managerial awareness of andcontributions to financial and accounting processes are drivenby cost-control and cost-saving goals.

• E-commerce linkage. Managerial development and engineer-ing of an e-commerce value chain is used to promote marketadaptability and agility.

• Success overlays. Managers need to identify and communicateindustry-level knowledge of critical success factors (CSFs),especially those of innovation, as defined in the literature ofbest practices.


Although not all these roles are assumed by all managers at alltimes or in all contexts, it can be argued that some do even more.Most companies can (and often do) operate without leaders, butthey would have difficulty without the managerial leadership ofthese ten tasks. The most obvious HR intervention is to rewritemanagers’ job descriptions to include the ten competencies. Butlest this become merely a strategic and mechanical add-on listrequiring constant updating, it should be accompanied by an analy-sis of the dynamics driving the changes.

In particular, two factors need to be articulated. The first is topostulate emergence of a new hybrid—the manager as leader.Indeed, the success of many companies in sustaining annualincreases in productivity year after year has largely been broughtabout not by CEOs but by manager-leaders.

The second factor is to explore and explain the dynamic rela-tionship between goals and roles that accounts not only for theemergence of the manager-leader but also includes the entireworkforce—in today’s world, virtually everyone needs to be aleader.

INTERPLAY OF GOALS AND ROLES

The starting point is the job description and in particular its threekey descriptors: goals, roles, and their fusion. But because the focusis on change, the three need to be rewritten as morphing goals,emerging roles, and the resultant restructuring of the goals androles of the position, in this case of manager-leaders. All three existin tandem and require a brief reexamination of the basic nature ofthe relationship between goals and roles.

Not all goals are changing, even now. Traditionally, goals in jobdescriptions were stable, explicit, and enumerated. The tasks theydescribed, in fact, appropriately reflected the job title. But gradu-ally (sometimes precipitously), some fixed managerial goals haveappeared to develop an elusive life and speed of their own.


Workers and managers have increasingly found themselves calledon or required to go beyond the parameters of their job descrip-tions and to accept and embrace new kinds of tasks and assign-ments. But the remarkable achievement is that even though allthese new goals have exceeded job description provisions, theysomehow have gotten done. And because such higher productivityhas been accomplished, even with downsizing, we have generallyfailed to ask why.

It is an understandable sin of analytical omission. Productivitytargets have been met, quality maintained, customers satisfied,market share retained, and so on. All that has been needed hasbeen to maintain the pressure of competition and performanceimprovement. But the argument here is that competitive demandswill increase—and if performance is to be maintained, we need toknow the dynamics behind current success. Specifically, whatdrives change is not so much explicit and definable objectives asgoal-role reciprocity—the interplay between task and talent.

Traditionally, the relationships between managerial goals andmanagerial roles were those of alignment. Spelling out such equiv-alents was in fact the function of job descriptions. But as an unex-pected consequence, stretch goals compelled role changes.Managers regularly had to multitask, exceed the parameters oftheir job descriptions, embrace and implement new systems, andabove all stir and train the rank and file to do the same.

This unnoticed and pervasive series of transformations wasbased on the special, dynamic, and reciprocal relationship that existsbetween morphing goals and changing roles. All stretch goals carrywithin them in embryonic form the roles required to accomplishthose goals. The goals and roles thus constantly evolve in tandem.

Conventional goals require conventional managers. Morphinggoals require manager-leaders. Managers had no choice but to stepup to the challenge, exceed their job parameters, and close the gapbetween emerging goals and moving targets—in short, to do what-ever it took to get the job done. Managers had to move up the


chain of command out of necessity, not desire for aggrandizement.The result is that they now inhabit both greater horizontal and ver-tical extent across the organization chart. In the process, the visionof distributed leadership proposed by Robert Greenleaf may havefound its realization in the emergence of manager-leaders.

COMMENTARY

HR did not create the new hybrid of manager-leader. Circumstancesand initiative did. But its recognition as shaping company successrequires HR analysis and documentation if it is to contribute tocontinuous company-wide survival and success. In a sense, HR’salliance with research and the documentation of performance pre-pared the way for its current pivotal role as the supreme monitorand articulator of workforce change and potential capacity. Bycoinciding its position with evolving best practices, HR therebyjoined the workforce at the future’s edge and became a spokesper-son for a new alliance—with innovation.


The relentless and never-ending drive to increase productivityenough to offset the economic advantages of global competitorshas led to the absolute endorsement of innovation. Incrementalgains, though still valued, are not enough. What is sought is theextra boost that comes from the creative reduction of steps, thedesign of self-changing structures, the discovery of not just newways of doing business but new businesses, and more. It is alsoclear that the sources of innovation have to be multiple. Like lead-ership, innovation must be distributed, accessible, pervasive. It can-not be the sole monopoly of professionals in R&D or of elite divi-sions. It must reach down to the rank and file on the factory floor.For innovation to work its magic, it must be total. In short, it mustbe company culture.

Easier said than done. Such a culture has to engage and resolvea troublesome romantic notion: everyone is creative (or at leasteveryone can learn to be creative). Even if that were true, other

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formidable obstacles exist: narrow education and training, belit-tling and often punitive work environments and bosses, the newinsecurity of downsizing and outsourcing, and finally the omnipresentrequirement for metrics to measure effectiveness. Indeed, the sub-mission of a substantial training budget focused solely on across-the-board creativity would have difficulty getting past and persuadingany chief financial officer of its value to the bottom line.

INNOVATION STRATEGIES

Overcoming such misgivings on the part of the CFO requires anumber of strategies, not the least of which is the commitment ofcompany culture to practice what it preaches—to become itselfinnovative.

In one strategy, integrative metrics, measurement must be of apiece with what it is measuring. It should not take place separately orafter the fact. Rather, it needs to be embedded in and shadow thetraining. The net result is a seamless integration of training contentand its documentation. Integration and innovation thus quicklyemerge as partners. Indeed, sometimes integration itself is innovation.

A second strategy is to carry over the alignment to instructionaldesign. In the past, stirring creativity was a separate and singularfocus. Although workshop examples and exercises were oftenheady and stimulating, the relationships and linkages to work real-ities and routines tended to be nonexistent, weak, or left to individ-ual applications. But current instructional design is less casual andmore causal. Innovation is totally aligned with performance: it isbuilt into and integrated with overall efforts to reskill employees,to upgrade performance goals and expectations, and to supportcompany goals. Available across the board, it is thus a less costlyform of piggybacking and supports the collective expectations anddefinitions of an evolving culture.

Another integrative strategy links past and present learning in aninnovative way. All new learning has to be prefaced with unlearning—


with a systematic uncovering, exposing, and correcting of oldassumptions that may preclude new or divergent thinking. Fashion-ing such square-one positions also serves to demystify creativity asthe monopoly of the genius or the geek. To further support innova-tion as an everyday and everyone option, more comfortable andfamiliar language is helpful. The “innovation quotient” perhapsshould become an “idea quotient.” Instead of the dramatic eurekamoment, the focus should be on ideas that are less intimidating,more available, and still able to serve as thresholds to innovation.

A totally new approach is to apply the findings of brainresearch and multiple intelligences. Both are changing the standardquestion from “How smart am I?” to “How am I smart?” But per-haps the most elaborate (and hence seldom undertaken) innova-tive approach is to examine the entire organizational structurefrom top to bottom, from recruitment to retention, and therebyinventory the extent to which innovation is encouraged or deflected,and whether at its root and branch the company supports and isitself an innovative culture. Such a comprehensive survey wouldalso sum up basic assumptions about human potential and whetherit is perceived as a given or amenable to an integration of natureand nurture. (A profile of the characteristics of such an innovativecompany culture is shown in Table 3, at the end of this chapter.)

While all these strategies are necessary to clear the way for stir-ring creativity, perhaps nothing is more persuasive than examplesof breakthroughs, especially those that illustrate the capacity ofcompany cultures is shown in Table 3, employ innovative means toachieve innovative ends. In addition, lest expectations be fixed onlyon spectacular magic bullets or wands, the examples offered shouldnot be sensational, exotic, or pie in the sky. Rather, applicationsshould be immediate, urgent, and needs based. If they illustrate theold adage that desperation is the mother of invention, the despera-tion at least should reflect current and familiar difficulties.

Organizations tend to be so overwhelmed and beset by chal-lenges that they are often exhausted. Corporate energy is low; what

Workforce Innovation and Company Culture 45

remains is constantly drained away by firefighting efforts. Crisismanagement—a contradiction in terms—becomes a norm; planninga luxury of the past. The call for multitasking may really describe ajuggling act in which balls are regularly dropped and even fallbetween the cracks. What is desperately needed is to reduce theturbulence—to carve out some peace and quiet so that once morework can be managed and professionals can exercise their intelli-gence. In short, a new and different need has surfaced: managingeffects instead of causes—problem impacts and not problems.

PROBLEMS AND TROUBLE MANAGEMENT

Of course, ideally, problems should be solved. But problems are socommon and they are often so persistent, tireless, and relentlessthat they may appear intractable and thus unsolvable. The attemptto address them dissipates resources, scatters attention, and con-sumes energy. Creating some measure of relief from such a grindwould provide a welcome opportunity to regroup. In short, what isneeded is damage control. It often involves using troubleshootersto function not so much as problem solvers but as trouble findersand trouble pacifiers—in short, trouble managers.

The conventional wisdom is that if you keep doing what youhave always done, you should not be surprised if you always get thesame results. But now uncertainty has upped the ante. Now if youdo what you have always done, you may not even get what youhave always gotten. Not only have the rules shifted; the game itselfhas changed. The result is that CEOs and senior managers, in addi-tion to all their familiar positive, creative, and forward-looking initiatives, are also asking that HR provide them with somethingnew and negative—trouble-avoidance insurance, a pacifying SWATteam.

This request poses a unique team challenge for a number ofreasons. It should not operate within any one existing division butbe cross-divisional. The range of expertise would have to reflect


the whole company. Participants would remain in their presentassignments but essentially be on loan. When team projects wereconcluded, members would return to their regular full-time jobs.Limiting the members of the team to local talent, even the bestavailable, also may be inadequate. Ideally, such a team should beglobal. If so, when and how could its members meet? Then, too,why would anyone volunteer? What would be the incentive?Members get no extra hazard pay. They are not singled out for spe-cial praise or distinction. With no fanfare they silently slip back intotheir regular jobs. In fact, they may have to play catch-up for thefirst few days.

PROFILES OF VIRTUAL TEAMS

The innovative solution is to use volunteer virtual teams wiredtogether by audio and video teleconferencing and Web-based com-munication networks. That basically solves almost all problems oflogistics as well as the range of expert participation and of interac-tion. But what is missing is a shared methodology to structure teamexchange. What seems appropriate to the task at hand and also hasenjoyed some history of success is risk analysis and risk avoidanceand reduction applied now to problem impacts. Other methodolog-ical adaptations and interfaces would be encouraged and devel-oped by team members. Thus, Total Quality Management, ISO9000, Six Sigma, and similar techniques would serve as additionalbridges and in effect surround the task with a rich and enhancedseries of approaches.


One Virtual Team in Action

The initial team exchange produced three basic goals for the team: help thecompany get out of trouble; prevent more trouble from happening; antici-pate trouble before it becomes trouble. The next step was to identify the

essential orientation of problem spotters. In the process what surfacedwere performance qualities often far removed from those the companyofficially looked for in its initial hires. The immediate yield for HR was rec-ognition of the need for an alternative set of guidelines for hiring andretaining talent.

Again by consensus, the team came up with the following profile for all itsmembers, who must be:

• Failure-oriented thinkers. They must operate on the assumption that ifsomething can go wrong, it will. They thus must be chronic worriers andaccept problem dislocation and debilitation not as an exception but as anorm.

• Anticipators. They must view the future as the enemy disguised as afriend. In addition, the group cannot wait for anything to unfold. Theymust be time travelers who visit the future before it has a chance toarrive and threaten the present.

• Caretakers. They are almost parental in their capacity to offer protection.They all have to behave like secret service agents protecting the presi-dent.

• Rescuers. They always have emergency kits and supplies. They have toknow where all the exits are.

• Survivalists. They are basic minimalists. They use string, spit, scraps ofwire. No high tech, just fast, essential, portable problem solving. Nothingfancy or dazzling. Square-one stuff. Quick and safe ways to get in andout. Escape artists.

Initial team orientation took the standard form of using survival simulations(crashing in the Arctic, desert scenarios, boating disasters, and the like). Butin the process a unique issue surfaced and was debated. What is the chainof command? Who do they report to? Because of its scope and focus, theteam believed it should report only to the CEO or to very senior manage-ment. They perceived themselves essentially as an advisory arm of theexecutive level, where problem intelligence and its management should beshared, valued, and ultimately acted on. But such a precedent might disturbthe general chain of command. They proposed an innovative compromise.

All the team members would establish and maintain separate two-way rela-tionships with their divisional head or senior staff. Debriefing would occurregularly. Equally as important, feedback would be shared with the team.That would serve as a reality check. It would correct the team’s natural


tendency to be solely inward facing and self-referential. The group’s collec-tive identity would not be allowed to be independent of or at variance withexisting structures and territorial divisions. But perhaps the most importantbenefit of surrounding the team with access to a constellation of authorityis that such required communication brought team recommendations closerto the next step of implementation. Above all, if the causes of the problemwere found to be structural or systemic, that was the only appropriate levelfor corrective action.

Did trouble management work? Yes and no. Sometimes, the findings werelike a hot potato that no one wanted to handle. Or they disappeared bybeing referred for application from one department to another, swept undernot one but many rugs. Occasionally, they were farmed out and subjectedto the analysis of other specialists: attorneys, risk managers, communica-tion specialists. But trouble management did succeed in buying time, carv-ing out quiet places, and holding at bay the overwhelming impacts of prob-lem proliferation and intensity. Most important, a new form of productivitywas born: that of problem management.


Implications

Pausing at this point, we might reflect on and evaluate at least threesummary leveraging points that address the relationship betweenbreakthroughs and the nature and interventions of an innovativecompany culture. The most obvious is focusing on roots rather thanbranches—on real, urgent, and recurrent situations of problemparalysis severe enough to compromise and affect everyone’s per-formance. Adopting such a caretaking role on behalf of all alsoserves as a no-fault form of exoneration. Professional limitations orfailures are not the issue. The villain is generic and situational.Indeed, for such advocacy to exemplify and enjoy greater credibil-ity, another strategy is not to summon outside consultants.Outsiders should not be a substitute for tapping in-house talent.Besides, to encourage across-the-board innovative problem solv-ing, managers need to step back and grant those insiders selectedthe autonomy of task definition and outcomes even to the point ofbenign abandonment.

Sometimes, innovation is itself innovative and produces unex-pected creative offshoots. Indeed, innovation has the capacity to benot only reverberating but also retroactive—to move forward andbackward at the same time. Troubleshooting teams often havebeen converted into advance early warning groups, applying theirunique integration of multiple methodologies to future problemmanagement. In the process, they routinely pursue alternative direc-tions. If the organization turns right, the team goes left. Managingthe difference of the future may thus require managing the ambi-guity and multiplicity of not only decision making but problemsolving. But most important, tapping internal consultants not onlygenerates alternative and creative ways to manage current opera-tions and structures, it also yields alternative workforce profiles.Specifically, the five qualities of problem managers itemized earlierperhaps need to supplement the traditional qualities of problemsolvers. Innovation may thus require HR to value and seek to hirethe artful dodger as both the ultimate problem manager and prob-lem solver.

But innovation always combines retrospect with prospect. As aresult, it compels company cultures to return to and reexamine theroots exposed by innovation. The organization is thus providedwith a guided opportunity to revisit its square-one assumptions.Although in the process many essentials surface, what is commonto all innovation is that it is basically a mode of inquiry. Thus doingwhatever it takes to get the job done requires not just work com-mitment but work intelligence—not just working harder but work-ing smarter. An innovative culture requires backing up not just tothe way we think, but to the way we know and question. That inturn requires identifying not only preferred and optimal modes ofinquiry, as a company-wide vision, but also the role models thatexemplify and embody such modes of inquiry.

Already noted and tapped are the modes and role models oftroubleshooters and proactive worriers. Indeed, these problemmanagers not only articulate and define a new mode of inquiry,


they also integrate it creatively with other methodologies. By alsofusing modes and role models of inquiry, they surface other exam-ples that offer the same integration and promise of breakthroughs.

NEW INNOVATIVE AND GENERATING ROLES

Although the range and variety of such inquiry models and rolesmay be extensive, three examples are illustrative and defining: theworkforce as researchers, as students of the business, and as third-degree forensic practitioners.

The Workforce as Researchers

This is not as unfamiliar a stretch as might initially appear. Typically,employees hedge their bets about applying for or remaining at aposition by doing research. To be sure, their approach does not—and should not—follow the classic research model or employ thestandard and elaborate critical apparatus. But no matter how prim-itive or partial, research is a powerful inquiry mode that pushes theneed to know—not only to know more but also to know more dif-ferently, to multiply and diversify the sources of knowledge acqui-sition. The researcher thus builds on and increases both the rangeand depth of the knowledge worker. Above all, by virtue of explor-ing additional sources of information and of inquiry systems,research can provide a key threshold to identifying the need forinnovation. Research typically backs the researcher into the prover-bial corner and begins the process of emptying and exhausting non-divergent and in-the-box ways out.

The double trick is to prevent such analysis from becomingparalysis and to forestall the temptation to settle for the familiarsuccess of incremental gains. Consequently, research training canserve as a structured form of desperation that still serves as themother of invention. As a result, a research-focused workforce isprimed for innovation.


The Workforce as Students of the Business

Although obsession is seldom regarded as appropriate, especiallygiven the need to balance work and family, it like research canserve both as an ally of innovation and as an important commit-ment of company culture. But here the emphasis is not so much oninformation gathering as on information sharing. The companyversion is to share all so that all employees in effect become obses-sive students of the business. Companies already use simulationboard games to introduce and spell out the internal financial flowprocess. But perhaps the most important value of such a commit-ment is its diagnostic power, allowing a company to identify andinvestigate why information in fact is not shared or is shared in lim-ited circles. Such inquiry would find that information is generallyimprisoned in hierarchical structures to such an extent that whatone knows defines who and where one is.

Those in the know endure the martyrdom of their greaterknowledge base and see their role and importance as restrictingrather than enhancing knowledge dissemination and exchange. Butthat also limits their range and stimulation of challenge and therebyof creativity.

Of all the obstacles facing the shaping of an innovative culture,none is more critical than X-raying company structure to identifyinformation blockage and deflection. Facilitating rather than imped-ing information flow would benefit by being anchored in theinquiry mode and model of the student of the business. A goodplace to start might be the obsessive behavior of CEOs who live,breathe, and eat the business. Failing that, the model of the entre-preneur might suffice. In either case, a students-of-the-businessworkforce is poised for innovation.

The Workforce as Third-Degree Forensic Practitioners

A new mode and role model of inquiry has surfaced dramaticallyand prolifically in the media but generally has not been recognizedor applied as such. It is team-based forensics. Its information base


is scientific, its team range minimally 180 and frequently 360degrees, its interactions always interoperable. Research-driven andinformation rich, it also resembles and even exemplifies typicaltask force operations and thus affirms the collective power ofteams to achieve breakthroughs. Equally important is its detectivediscovery pattern.

Converting the focus of a brilliant and solitary Sherlock Holmesto that of the multiple talents of a forensic team, it invariably reen-acts the classic drama of the dead end. The operating thesis fails.That inevitably requires going back to square one. Reformulationand redirection essentially define the collaborative creativity of thenew team direction. In the process, previous accumulation of incre-mental knowledge is brought forward, but now freshly perceivedby being fused with the new perceptual and conceptual focus.Solving the case is the equivalent of a breakthrough. By combininginquiry mode with team roles, this forensic model has the furthervalue of paralleling, crossing over, or reinforcing that of theresearcher and student of the business. The detective may thus bethe ultimate artful dodger.

As a way of summarizing at a glance, Table 3 provides a profileof what it would take for conventional company cultures to becomeinnovative ones.

COMMENTARY

Although the forms innovation may take are perhaps infinite, whatis clear is that organizations can stir, stimulate, and structure itsemergence. As Table 3 indicates, the options and approaches aremany and reinforcing. The value of focusing on the centrality of theworkforce is that it takes an organization to its operational core. Itexposes its basic inquiry modes, information structures, problem-solving and decision-making processes, and performance expecta-tions and measures. Such anatomical analysis of basic assumptionsinevitably involves identifying work profiles for review and revi-sion. The net result is the development of alternative work profiles.


When implemented through refocused training and recruitment, anew workforce driven by research, information totality, and teamforensics begins to emerge and leave its collective mark on companyculture. No partnership can match that between innovation and theworkforce to provide the pervasive leverage and capacity to shapecompany culture into becoming, in turn, an agent of innovation. Inthis instance the chicken–egg problem contains its own happysolution.


TABLE 3 • CULTURE CONVERSION FACTORS

CONVENTIONAL INNOVATIVE FACTOR CULTURES CULTURES

Information Impeding Facilitating

Focus Branch Root

Structure Pyramidal Disaggregated

Leadership Concentrated Diffused

Work Profiles defined Evolving

Knowledge Familiar Discovered

Resources Outsiders Insiders

Productivity Incremental Out of the box

Team range Divisional Interoperable

Team management Directed Benign abandonment

Empowerment Partial Total

Evaluation Blaming No-fault

Training Updating Futurizing

One of HR’s most important contributions to an organization is theknowledge and analysis of its workforce. HR monitors personnelpatterns, functioning in effect as a workforce census. In the process,it reflects not only linkages of employee development to productiv-ity but also any dramatic changes in workforce composition. Forexample, one important pattern is generational. Currently, four(sometimes five) generations coexist and overlap. The differentia-tion of Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y is critical because eachcohort exhibits different generational values, expectations, andeven work ethics. Thus, imposing one-size-fits-all training willinevitably fail and frustrate. In addition, other layers of differenti-ation have to be added, especially those of the changing distributionof racial and ethnic types. Specifically, different cultures evidence apreference not only for certain forms of communication but alsofor responses toward authority and initiative. Indeed, with theincreasing globality of the workforce, such cultural distinctions

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have in effect defined the new range of diversity. But of late a sur-prising determiner of workforce difference has emerged in thegames people play.

Gaming is not a peripheral or exotic preoccupation—it furtherdefines all census patterns. That means that all current sports,domestic and international, reflect current racial and ethnic distri-butions. Indeed, changes in societal makeup are often mirroredfirst in the composition of sports teams. In addition, gaming is alsogenerational and thus provides a key entry point for understandingnot only how different generations and cultures play but also howthey think, learn, and work with others. Indeed, the younger end ofthe workforce shows a strong preference for gaming in general andvideo games in particular. This generational cohort has been raisedin visually intense environments and learned through increasinglyexperiential means. They are thus prime targets for the applicationof serious games. Indeed, their future and that of gaming are notonly of a piece but also reveal how deep-seated gaming is apt to be.

Gaming is rooted in childhood. It is thus a profound repositoryof basic value preferences. In addition, child’s play is formative. Itgoverns acceptance into and by the group. Being evaluated andthen chosen as a member of a team is a critical experience of thepecking order. Managing both relationships and knowledge meansthat teaming is not only a socializing force but also a learningmode. Not surprisingly the gaming model has been tapped to buildand develop the problem-solving ability of company teams. One ofits favored versions is simulation. To understand that preferenceand to appreciate its endorsement by HR requires defining andexploring the dynamics and applications of simulation.

At its core, simulation resembles an art form. Unlike traditionalexploratory and explanatory modes, it is not predigested, predeter-mined, or preprocessed. Its surface and look are thus persuasivelyneutral, unbiased, and intriguing. Like its companion, scenario,simulation is a fictional and imaginative re-creation of people,events, and circumstances. But unlike novels or short stories, sim-ulations are purposeful—they are crafted toward a chosen end or


outcome. To be sure, such goals fail if they are too obvious or insis-tent, or they surface prematurely. They need to be buried in thereality offered or they appear manipulative, subvert reality, anddestroy the illusion. Poetry rightly has been defined as an imagi-nary garden containing a real toad. Verisimilitude must be hon-ored. Indeed, in many ways the effectiveness of simulation as alearning and teaming tool is contingent on its seductive power topersuade users that it is in fact a real world and not indulgent fan-tasy, and further that it awaits, invites, and needs their entry andparticipation to be activated and consummated. Like all good art,it is intentionally incomplete and empowering.

THE DYNAMICS OF INVOLVEMENT

The power of simulation lies in the dynamics of involvement.Simulation fuses play and learning, for example, and sugarcoats thepill of new knowledge. In addition to those advantages, simulationattractively structures participation in other ways. It is:

• Challengingly dramatic

• Experiential (learn by doing)

• Hands-on and absorbing

• Not boring, theoretical, or pedantic

• Threatening but safe

• Unarguable in its results, which carry over to the real world

• Often surprising

• Always revelatory

Simulation is a discovery process. It brings to the surface basicassumptions about self-capacity and sustaining relationships thatordinarily remain hidden. It can do so because it offers a reassuringsafety net of illusion of art and play. But it also is exacting and excit-ing. It gets the adrenaline going to such an extent that misgivings

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are abandoned and the desire to compete, succeed, and win takesover and involvement becomes total. Although such dynamicsdefine and sustain all simulations, the degree of variety and com-plexity of applications that simulation is able to accommodate fur-ther accounts for its range and endorsement by HR.

One of the strengths of simulation is its capacity to render thewhole in miniature. It is thus an ally of the big picture and of sum-marizing the macro in micro form. Thus, for example, to facilitatea comprehensive understanding of the flow of finances throughoutan entire organization, board games can trace and simulate themoney stream as it moves through and impacts the jobs of all theparticipants. By seeing the finances of the organization as a dynamiccirculatory system, players emerge with an overall picture as wellas a clear understanding of their own piece of the pie. A moreambitious version of this application fuses holistics with anticipa-tion—the scenario of thinking ahead but at the same time movingthe big picture forward so as to preserve that larger context andrecord the impacts of the future on company decisions. Here simu-lation may enlist scenario as it crosses over to resemble the cre-ations of science fiction.

Another key distinction of simulation is its focus on strategy.Characteristic of chess, this application of simulation endows everypresent choice with the seeds of the whole implicit range of subse-quent moves. That requires investing every contemplated step withtactical positioning so that what follows is strategic sequencing—not a series of isolated or unrelated decisions. Video games, fastand furious as they are, structure this type of strategic thinking andlearning. But they often do so singularly. Many of the strategicprinciples inherent in video games are more entrepreneurial thanteam based, more competitive than collaborative. But such atti-tudes may be desirable in their own right, as well as grist for the millwhen transmuted into team aggressiveness. Indeed, it would not befar-fetched to characterize such simulations as war games usingtechnology to practice the art of war.


GAMES AS STRATEGY

In any case, here is a brief summary of some of the strategic optionsand positions that are posed and discovered by the players of typi-cal video and computer games:

• Remember that sacrifice is inevitable for long-term gain.

• Be aware that excessive hostility always consumes valuableresources.

• Build quietly and slowly; don’t rattle cages.

• Be ready to abort or disengage at any time.

• Keep in mind that the short term is the first stage of the longterm.

• Invest in and trust your fellow players.

• Maintain mind over brute force.

• Win without being vengeful.

• Constantly review and revise the game plan.

• Don’t box yourself in.

• Develop backups and contingency plans.

• Always keep your strategic options open.

Clearly, by putting participants in charge, simulation compelsthe problem-solving and decision-making process to be a strategicendgame. Winning or posting the highest score can become a wayof signaling not only a strategic mind-set but also an effective lead-ership style and behavior. Winning is thus ultimately the equivalentof leading. But perhaps the most challenging issue serious gamesconfront is that of uncertainty.

Of course, that is not new. Uncertainty has always existed. Butcurrent versions are not just different in kind and scale—they arealso more secretly and unpredictably connected. Indeed, theknowledge of such subtle or hidden linkages derived from system


dynamics and computer analytics and metrics, while welcome, hasalso upped the ante. Are there more secrets? And are those notjust undiscovered but undiscoverable? Uncertainty also has becomea major object of study by forecasters and generated an impressivefuturistic literature. In the process the inadequacy of current man-agement tools has been exposed. As a result the problem is com-pounded. On one hand, we face the unprecedented and deep chal-lenges of globality, technology, and unfettered competition. On theother hand, we are finding that the traditional strategic tools ofmarket segmentation, value chain and factor analysis, and cash-flow tracking generally seem to fall short of managing the complex-ity of uncertainty. But happily a series of consensus positions seemsto be both emerging and converging to better manage uncertainty.

Managing Uncertainty

The first consensus position is acceptance—acknowledging thatuncertainty is in fact a new norm of all planning and decision mak-ing. Reducing uncertainty to zero is thus regarded as an illusion.There is no such thing as a surprise-free forecast. Wild cards alwayshave to be included in the deck. Probability always has to partnerwith possibility. Most important, the approach does not seek riskelimination; instead it settles for risk reduction. That especiallyapplies to the knowledge base of decision making. We can neverknow enough or accumulate enough data to guarantee the out-come. We must forsake the hubris of totality.

Rather, the knowledge base now needs to be adjusted to andaccepted as a mixture of the known (extrapolation), the unknown(trending), and the unknowable (surprise). Planners consequentlyhave to be content with less than the whole. In short, a greater humil-ity and respect for unpredictability strangely may make the increas-ing unpredictability more manageable. The value of simulations isto shift the implacable enemy of uncertainty into a more or lessfriendly adversary, which can spur inventive risk management.


Another contribution of simulation is to put in place a systemof internal reality checks. This series of wake-up calls has to bebuilt in at every step of the way, including just before launch. Itfunctions as a chain of interventions that automatically stops theproduction line when quality is compromised. Above all, it facili-tates and welcomes the perception that the emperor may not haveany clothes on. Such checks and balances are not easily negotiatedin a culture that is exclusively inward facing and inclined to valueits management of uncertainty excessively.

Traditionally, outside consultants and executive coaches couldbe counted on to bring a company up short before it went into theabyss. But a combination of cockiness and cost cutting has takenits toll and eliminated that perspective of valuing uncertainty andhearkening to minority opinions. There is thus a new need to fol-low and apply the pattern of distributing quality control correc-tives throughout the ranks and at every stage. Insiders have to betrained as outsiders. That may be the only way the enemy insidethe gates can be granted the same importance and threat as theone outside the gates. Happily, simulation is one of the few wayssuch contrary views and voices can become the object of training.Indeed, inculcating such a perspective not only may provide morerisk insurance, it may also enrich the problem-posing and solutionprocess.

Finally, simulation also can break down uncertainty into moremanageable pieces. It is not unlike the typical challenge of motiva-tional speakers: “How do you eat an elephant?” (The happy—andoften thunderous—answer is “One bite at a time!”) Similarly,although simulations are generic, they can be customized. Forexample, privatization has created uncertainty and angst for anumber of U.S. public utilities and government entities. Its interna-tional version is the conversion of state-run units into market-responsive economies. In both instances, those in charge have toadapt to a more competitive environment and be newly judged bybottom-line profitability.


Customized and granulized simulations can structure that transi-tion effectively. They possess the unique rendering power to createand simulate the nature of the totally new world, and also to struc-ture the operations of a different business model. They thus canbring to bear the power of macro-micro alignment while spellingout a larger paradigm shift in the details of day-to-day operationalprocesses.

For example, in one simulation an imaginary electric genera-tion plant, initially nonprofit but subsequently for-profit, is createdin skeletal form. Its operations are reassuringly familiar to all pres-ent managers, but it is different: efficiency now must be measuredby profitability. Although such new measures would ultimatelyhave to be applied across the board to all operations and personnellevels, the acclimation process is granulized by using a series ofmore focused and applied simulations.

Structuring Opportunities

One customized version requires all managers and engineers toaddress the familiar issue of maintenance—but do so not only fromthe point of view of downtime but also that of cost saving. The netresult is a maintenance game that provides all participants withstructured opportunities to create and flesh out their new opera-tional world. In the process, the accomplishments are many. Thisbrief list provides some of the highlights:

• A new cost definition of the role of maintenance exists.

• Resource allocation becomes a collective decision.

• The whole system must be rendered, which facilitates discover-ing systemic breakdown patterns.

• Quality and cost control have to be applied to maintenance.

• Increased allocation of resources would be offset by less down-time and increased revenues.


The maintenance simulation functions as a rite of passage. Notonly does it gradually introduce a new operational reality, it alsoprepares the way for other customized versions to follow and forthe transition to approach totality.

COMMENTARY

Organizational re-creations and reinventions are made possible andenhanced by five essential principles that are common to all simu-lations. The first is holistics—imaging the whole so as to managethe system collectively and collaboratively. Second, returning tosquare one, raising to the surface buried assumptions, and redefin-ing and reinventing all essential operations and roles. Third, invest-ing problem solving and decision making with tactical and strategicnext-step options. Fourth, accepting uncertainty not only as thenew operational and data reality but as the ultimate spur of futurecreativity. Fifth, building an internal early warning system by empow-ering all levels of the workforce to participate in and criticallyreview future choices and directions.

Simulation embraces and empowers the workforce and strate-gically positions its contributions to bear on the future survival andgrowth of organizations. Given the extent of these benefits, it is notsurprising that HR has endorsed simulation as the new globalmodel for managing uncertainty and accommodating workforcediversity.


The alliances and partnerships examined in Part One haveseparately and collectively granted HR a new lease on life.Its conversations and contributions now have a currencythat reflects and recasts what is driving company-widechange. As a result, HR has positioned itself to confront notonly the workforce challenges it is facing but also the largerprospect of the apparent decline of the United States as amajor power and economy. That latter task has fallen inlarge part to HR because the possible loss of U.S. domi-nance is dramatized and mirrored directly by the presentand future changes in the workforce.

Recently U.S. News and World Report (March 27, 2006)asked five CEOs to project what the job market would belike in 2020. The replies showed nearly total agreement onthe following issues:

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• Intense work competition will come from overseas.

• Emulation of U.S. jobs and lifestyles will be a motivating force.

• Globality will rule all markets and professional preparation.

• Digitization of work will facilitate outsourcing.

• Imitation will be supplemented by innovation.

• Bilingual competence will become a norm.

• Chinese will rival English as the international language of business.

• Investments in education and job training will determine who leadsand who follows.

The prospect of winners and losers, in fact, characterizes the rest of thearticle and even its title: “Can America Keep Up?” The consensus positionis that we are falling behind in the race for global economic leadership.The reasons for such decline are many and obvious. R&D investmentshave seriously declined; of the world’s top information technology com-panies, six are based in the United States—compared to fourteen in Asia;U.S. eighth graders rank ninth in science and fifteenth in math amongforty-five countries; more than 55 percent of engineering PhDs grantedin the United States go to foreign-born students, and non-U.S. studentsalso earn more than half the online MBA degrees that are awarded. Inshort, the conclusion is that the United States has become a nation ofcomplacent, fat (literally—look at the obesity stats), and easily satisfiedcitizens preoccupied with being the world’s outstanding consumersrather than its producers.

To combat the unfortunate evidence that supports the case for the ero-sion of U.S. preeminence, at least five correctives are in order. The first iscontext. A global framework is now the measure of stature. That in turnrequires a new and constant double-counting system. Traditional talliesby country now have to be supplemented by aggregate global cumula-tive totals. All the standard metrics of GNP, productivity, and profitabilityalso have to be perceived singularly and en masse. National and industry-wide comparisons will still be made, but because companies (unlike coun-


tries) are statistically, financially, and operationally interoperable, themeasure of their performance now also needs to be global. Indeed, U.S.companies already have largely blended and merged their assets, work-forces, and strategic markets to function in a global economic network. Itis the increasing extent of economic interdependence that defines theframework not only for describing and evaluating the collective perfor-mance of an overall new world economy but also for assessing the indi-vidual performance of countries operating within those parameters. Inother words, the U.S. obituary I described earlier is premature, as it failsto invoke the new double standard. National declines may be more thanoffset by international gains. A U.S. company may have shifted its sizeand substance to the point where it is a giant overseas and an almosttoken presence here. Apparent domestic failure may obscure dramaticinternational success.

Although rallying wake-up calls always have value, this one’s unfavorableanalysis and conclusions rest on at least four other equally staticassumptions. The most serious is the assumption that the U.S. workforcehas not changed in response to the new pressure, and that it is perhapsincapable of change (too comfortable, too fat, and so on). It is the task ofthis book to describe and document not only how our workers haveresponded to and met global challenges but also how they have done soin distinctive ways characteristic of our culture. In fact, the preservationof the nation’s historical competitive edge has required both reaffirma-tion and reinvention to the point where what is distinct and inimitableabout its work culture is once more made indigenous and resistant tobeing outsourced abroad. Once again double counting is required. Microand macro statistics need to display and accommodate work culture. Thecurrent global battle for leadership is being rendered in miniature in thetransformation of the workplace.

A third serious misconception has to do with the assessment of U.S. tal-ent. The percentage of our best and brightest youngsters in math andscience has remained basically the same over the past fifty years.Currently, they are learning Chinese, spending internships abroad, and

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developing an understanding of their new global roles. The apparentdecline reflected in international test comparisons is more the result of alarger pool of students whose lower average scores affect the overallcomparative positioning rather than the actual loss of superior perform-ers. But even among this emerging larger group, the number of studentsgoing on for further study, especially in technical fields, has raised theoverall level of aspiration and competition just as rising water elevates allboats. The net result is the substantial appearance of a new segment ofthe middle class functioning at a technical and managerial level of agrowing service economy.

Fourth, surveys of decline also fail to factor in the massive infusion offunds for company training and the creation of more than five hundredcorporate universities.

That story happily also involves the fifth and last corrective: the chang-ing role of HR.

The chapters in Part Two discuss how HR has redefined one of its maintasks of recruitment and retention. In the process, alliances withresearch, technology, and metrics have equipped HR to speak for thenation’s continued capacity to be a competitive and innovative force inthe global economy, as well as to advocate for the centrality of the work-force. Toward these ends, HR has developed and compiled an extensivemanual of best practices to guide companies in the critical directions ofglobal performance competition.


Exit interviews routinely ask only what led to the decision to leavethe company. They do not include questions about how the depart-ing employee got started there. It turns out that adding such ques-tions can reveal a clear linkage between beginnings and endings.Terminus backs up to genesis directly when promises made at thebeginning have not been honored. Overeager recruiting sets thenew hire up for disappointment that is often compounded by anorientation process that adds to the misrepresentation. But firstthings first.

Why and how does deception slip into interviews? It is often adesperate move to attract an outstanding candidate leaning towarda competitor. At other times, many people are conducting inter-views without sharing and coordinating a common interview proto-col, and suddenly one breaks ranks and makes a spontaneous offerthe candidate just cannot refuse. But the most serious lapse is nottelling the truth—especially the new truth of the workforce: namely,that the job is likely to change, and change often; that all goals are

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stretch goals; and finally that constant adjustment and doing what-ever it takes are the new norms.

JOB DISAPPOINTMENT

When job disappointment occurs, how should it be managed? Atthe outset it should be assumed. Dislocation is typical in the firstweeks. The issue is how extensive it is and whether it also involvesbroken promises. Supervisors need to be sensitive to the situationof a new hire. The candidate—now employee—may have had torelocate, move, and settle a family in a new community andschools. The work environment will certainly be new and different,with its own systems of doing things. The immediate supervisorsmay be unavailable or their management style may require gettingused to. Then, too, only the new employee knows what other joboptions were on the table, so it’s impossible to predict how muchvariance between reality and expectations will inspire regret aboutthe choice. So the first order of business is to look for signs of dis-content. Above all, benign abandonment is not an option. It isoften not benign—and abandonment itself is not a commendablemanagement strategy.

Corrective action requires fusing talent acquisition and talentretention. Indeed, the time it took for hiring—often sixty to ninetydays—should also be allowed for fitting in and settling down.Moreover, this orientation period needs to be communicated bythe supervisor. An outline of what needs to be mastered should bespelled out, given a reasonable timetable, and discussed andshared. Effective managers also set up a number of frequent butbrief meetings (no more than ten or fifteen minutes). At least oneearly on should be an off-site breakfast meeting with the supervi-sor picking up the tab. To structure such meetings, the new hireshould be asked to keep a daily work log and develop a weekly barchart of activities and time allocations, color-coding it to showwhich activities are new and unexpected and which ones reflect thepriority of being aligned with company goals.


RETENTION STRATEGIES

The focus of all retention exchanges should be on the mutual flex-ibility and alignment of the new hire and of the hiring manager.Indeed, what defines a supportive company culture is a similarvalue placed on adaptability and the commitment that nothing ismore important than hiring and retaining talent. Above all, thecompany must move to prevent the loss of talent as a result offaulty interviewing and unrealistic promises followed by inept andimpatient management of the initial probationary period.

Preventing early talent losses requires not only a companycommitment to HR but also the established practice of evaluatingmanagers by their ability to retain talent. It is well known that themain reason talent leaves is bad bosses. Indeed, the reason goodapplicants are so cagy and suspicious when involved in job searchesis precisely their bad experiences with broken promises, benignabandonment, and punitive supervisors. The only antidote is fulldisclosure in the form of information-rich sharing of job informa-tion, followed by strategic interventions early on by supervisors.

Orientation Blunders

Even when the interview process is not compromised, attending anorientation of new hires may jeopardize retention. Here is a quicklist of orientation blunders and tactics that start new hires down theroad to their exit interview:

• Intimidate them. “We are distributing a policy book and man-ual. We call it the bible. It totals 639 pages. We will go throughit, page by page, line by line.”

• Control them. “We take the organization chart seriouslyaround here. It documents the chain of command from whichthere is to be no deviation. Here, everyone knows their place.”

• Dazzle them. “We believe in being cheerleaders. We live,breathe, eat, and sleep the company’s success. You will too.”

Orientation and Hiring Practices 71

• Amuse them. “We will show you episodes from Wings, Frasier,and a lot of sitcoms that deal hilariously with starting out on anew job. You are going to have a great time.”

• Impress them. “We are a company of winners. Unfortunately,none of our stars are available for this orientation.”

Orientation is often an afterthought or a stepchild. All the realeffort has been put into advertising the position, crafting the jobdescription, working with headhunters, conducting multiple inter-views, doing the reference checks, and so on and on. Frequently,orientation is not handled by senior personnel dedicated to overallculture, mission, and vision. Rather, it is conducted by supervisorsat a lower level who are concerned primarily with how this newperson fits in and can contribute significantly to the specific workthey have to do right now.

But such superficial or token introductions can lead to a seriesof negative conclusions. It takes very little to make new employeesthink that accepting this job in the first place was a big mistake.They may take themselves to task for failing to ask the right ques-tions during the interview. Worst of all, they may conclude thattheir interviewers did not tell the truth at the outset. They maybegin to become distrustful.

Retention and Orientation Principles

Orientation should be perceived as the way to keep what it costyou so much to get—in short, as the first step in talent retention.Ten basic practices can help guide the development and evaluationof orientation programs. They are basic and yet ambitious, easy toinstall but hard to coordinate, requiring a lot of work and planning,and contingent on cooperative involvement with many others,including some at a distance from the job position and division.Although often difficult to obtain, such a larger range of participa-tion offers a miniature of the big picture, and that is critical to


retention. In any case, these ten recommendations are effective fororientation-retention programs:

• Build a seamless bridge. Everything must be of a piece. What issaid in the posting, what is covered in the job description, whatinformation about the company is conveyed in the interviews,and everything else that applicants encounter must match whatnew employees hear at the orientation and what their supervi-sors say when they join their department. In other words, orien-tation is a replay of the interview process. Discrepancies invitesuspicion and even lawsuits.

• Make the orientation a miniature of the whole company. Theopportunity to sample the organization in miniature, to talkacross divisional lines, to meet people who ordinarily would notbe encountered, is usually lost because the prospect of suchinteraction is either not valued or a cross section of relevantpersonnel seems too troublesome to assemble. But this kind ofoverview is critical to later cross-divisional productivity.

• Make orientation ongoing, not a one-shot chore. Follow-up anddebriefing are standard business practices. Why should orienta-tion be a one-shot affair? Why should everything be crowded inone day or even week? Why overload employees when follow-ups can be scheduled? Remember how long hiring takes, andrun orientation as a series of short sessions over at least sixweeks so the information has a chance to sink in.

• Cover vision, mission, and essential information. What andhow much does the organization want its new people to know?The answer is what it would also want its customers to know.One entire session should be devoted to customer demograph-ics and metrics and to the customer as data.

• Help new hires become students of the business. New employ-ees should be encouraged to build their understanding of theirbusiness and of its industry, especially if they have stock options.


This is the time to present the big, big picture—industry-wideand global.

• Identify the challenges. What drives what we do now? Costbecause of competition? Quality because of customer com-plaints? Morale because it affects everything we do? Innova-tion because that is what will set us apart? Continuous improve-ment because we constantly have to exceed ourselves to reachour stretch goals? Let new employees know what worries thecompany so they will be able to help make things work better.

• Outline the future. What are the critical trends that may impactthe company, the new hire’s specific job, and the industry ingeneral? Have HR show changes in job descriptions and in thenature of workshops over the past ten years. Set out the short-and long-range targets and forecasts for the business.

• Outline effective internal communication patterns. Commu-nication can save or break an organization. How many organi-zations have rumor mills stronger than all their e-memos andnewsletters combined? How many organizations regularly havethree meetings: the original meeting, the next one in the hall-way or around the water cooler, and the third on the phone atnight? Communication has to be elevated to the level of beinga culture. It is the glue that holds everything and everyonetogether.

• Apply instructional design principles to the program itself. Thenew-hire orientation should be seen as the first training work-shop. It should be memorable—and very few are. It also shouldbe interesting. And the supervisors of new employees shouldalways be part of the design team so that they know what to fol-low up with what.

• Discuss the performance review and improvement programand show how it is an extension of the orientation. Discuss thecapacity of performance improvement to affect productivity,profitability, competitive edge, customer quality, and even inno-


vation. Don’t just maintain that performance is the key to theorganization’s success, prove it. Show correlations between per-formance improvement, training, and company gains. Identifyinnovations that have been generated by employees, and whatsavings and earnings they resulted in, so the new hires will seethat you mean what you say.

Orientation should neither be boastful nor intimidating. Itshould be a sample of the whole. And it should be as engaging asthe work that is to follow and the reasons for accepting the job inthe first place. To be sure, companies rightly seek to put their bestfoot forward—but truth and not hype should govern. Orientationis not the time to engage in elaborate justifications or claims ofsuperiority.

Waving the flag should be replaced by a fascinating array ofexamples of company problem solving. Why we structured thecompany this way; why this brand of information technology wasselected; what correlations exist between training and productivity.And finally, what challenges remain? Above all, orientation—liketraining itself—should build leadership. It should undergird,enhance, and strengthen the commitment of top management tomake their success and that of their employees—especially newones—one and the same. Indeed, one of the best orientations is forevery new hire to have breakfast with the CEO. Imagine theimpact that would have on talent retention and growth!

HIRING FALLACIES

Most companies big and small believe they have an effective hiringsystem. But when pressed on how they do it, what principles guidehiring decisions, and how happy they (and their new hires) are withthe results, serious deficiencies surface. Indeed, having served formany years as a professional headhunter and HR consultant work-ing up close with hiring managers, I have found not only a numberof misconceptions and even delusions but also a high degree of


commonality across industries. It is worth taking the time to exam-ine what’s not working and why regarding recruitment.

Juxtaposed in Table 4 is a list of ten seriously flawed hiringbeliefs with the actual situation, followed by a brief commentary oneach of the ten belief–reality pairs.


TABLE 4 • HIRING FALLACIES

BELIEF REALITY

Interviewing is infallible. Interviewing is effective only50 percent of the time.

Hiring decision time is short. Average decision time is 90 to 120 days.

Selection is determined by Selection is determined by best best qualifications. interviewing skills.

Traditional interviewing is Traditional interviewing is 95 percent subjective. 95 percent objective.

The interview process involves The interview process has broad participation. job-related limitations.

Selling the job too soon creates Overpromising creates a shorter hiring time. retention problems.

Fit is gut instinct. Chemistry is often unpredictive.

Salary offers reflect the best Salary offers can distort the that money can buy. value system.

The hiring system is foolproof. The hiring system notes hiring mistakes.

The system provides The system enables information sharing. information hoarding.

Interviewing

Most people involved in job screening are not trained in interviewdynamics, let alone in the adjustments needed for face to-face, tele-phone, or electronic interview modes. At best, all they can tap istheir own interviewing experiences, which may or may not beapplicable. Then, too, they usually are given and asked to obedi-ently follow an elaborate checklist of questions, many of which areblunt instruments rather than penetrating inquiries. In addition,who asks what is often randomly parceled out, without regard toexpertise and decision authority. Finally, the candidates on theshort list often get mixed up; the answers attributed to one reallywere from another. Often the interviewers come up with a compos-ite but imaginary candidate who may share a name with one ofthose on the final list for consideration, but little else. In short,companies that put all their eggs in the interview basket—especiallyone that depends on untrained interviewers—are not much betteroff than they would be if they just flipped a coin.

Hiring Decision Time

Although most companies and hiring managers believe the processshould be short—say, two to four weeks—procrastination rules. Inpart the delay stems from the fact that those involved are doingother things, many of which they regard as more important. Awake-up call occurs when they learn that the best candidate hastaken another job. Then they scurry together to accelerate thesearch with those remaining or conclude that they need to adver-tise the position again or hire a headhunter. What should have beena relatively short process has become too long. The division in needof a replacement is forced to limp along longer. The conclusion?Hiring is not a high priority. If it were, it would be so stated in thejob description of every manager, whereas in truth references tohiring are either absent or muted. It may take a CEO to proclaimloud and clear that there is nothing more important than the acqui-sition of new talent to establish company-wide practice.


Selection

Companies tend to favor those who interview best. Candidatesknow that. They understand that they have only one chance tomake a good first impression. So they hire coaches to do interviewprep, make videos to see how they look and talk, use colleagues toanticipate questions to be asked, research what they should wear—in short, they set themselves up to be the most outstanding inter-viewee. If the ability to look someone directly in the eye, have afirm handshake, and be modest but assured happens to coincidewith the right qualifications, then all is well. But more often thannot externals trump credentials.

Traditional Interviewing

The standard pretension of a systematic approach is round-robininterviewing—spreading the candidate around over many divisionsand among many different hiring authorities. That is then followedup by collecting opinions and impressions. But the emerging con-sensus may be more the result of herd instinct. Believing that yourwhole group can’t be wrong does not guarantee that you haveselected the one who is right. A more rigorous and less fallible sys-tem that is gaining HR support involves carrying over the 180-degree or better still 360-degree evaluation process that was devel-oped for performance appraisal. Such a comprehensive approachto employment interviewing rescues the piecemeal sorting out byrequiring the range of distribution and participation to be moreinteractive and self-correcting.

Interview Process

It is a fundamental axiom of work that no one knows the job as wellas the one who does it. And yet those selected to be an integral partof the recruitment process are often unrelated to the job in ques-tion or distant from its performance. In part this reflects again thepolitical need for group exoneration. But more disturbingly it


betrays a failure to see the vacant position as interoperable and notsolitary. What precedes and what follows it, how it serves as a com-munications nexus to other positions and divisions, and finally howit is related to customers and the bottom line—that should deter-mine the choice of interviewers. Some firms have begun to seeinterviewing as a two- or three-tiered process involving corre-spondingly different groups. The first focuses on the job, the sec-ond on its relationships, the third on its likely future versions.

Overselling the Job

Hiring time is a variation of eager selling of the job to a particularcandidate. Often that involves one interviewer who breaks awayfrom the ranks, but sometimes it includes all or a majority. Thedanger here is twofold. The choice is often premature. More seri-ously, it overpromises what the company is or can deliver. It cancreate serious problems of retention later when a new hire bringsup such promises to the supervisor who made them. Finally, over-selling creates a potential problem of company credibility, especiallyif it is at odds with the research the candidate has done.

Fit Versus Chemistry

When the traditional emphasis on fit is coupled with gut instinct,the results are often disastrous. Applying the notion “I can’t defineit but I know it when I see it” to hiring decisions makes the entirehiring process superficial and amateurish. First, fit is limited to theinterviewing committee, whose members may or not be typical.Then, too, some or many may not even be around to witness whetherthe chosen candidate still exhibits fit over the longer term. Besides,given the need for company change, too tight a fit may not reflectroom for the necessary growth. No matter how it may serve andaffirm the egos of the hiring committee, obedient replicationshould not determine selection. Even speculating on future fitwould bring a more predictive reality to the process.


Salary Requests/Offers

A standard (often knee-jerk) dimension of the hiring process is therequest for salary levels from candidates. The fear is that the oneselected will ask to be paid at a level in excess of the amountauthorized. So pay is used to eliminate such candidates from theoutset and to spare the committee the pain of not being able to hirethe one they want. But it does not work. Shrewd candidates areevasive or indicate that salary is negotiable so they can get a foot inthe door and find out what the job is really like. They can alwayswithdraw later. But there are even more serious and subtle conse-quences of an emphasis on salary. The most obvious may be exces-sive turnover. Devaluing the position may actually cost the companymore in both personnel dollars and lost revenue caused by down-time. In addition, hiring committees should not try to run with theirlegs tied. They should negotiate a salary range that reflects both thejob market and company needs. Above all, they should not betempted into making money a driving definer but rather an impor-tant item among other job values.

Hiring Mistakes

Most companies are so determined to prove that their hiring systemis foolproof that they not only fail to admit to hiring mistakes, theyalso keep them around longer than they should in the vain hopethat they may yet work out. Given everything discussed thus far, itmay be surprising that more hiring errors do not occur. In any case,companies have to bite the bullet and limit the damage by termi-nating a new employee who cannot do the job. Just as important—but seldom done—they need to run the process backward to detectwhere things went wrong. Often that brings to the surface a cor-rectible fault or weakness in the system. Sometimes it highlights anintersect of process and individual action on the part of certain pro-fessionals whose bullying egos may compromise or jeopardize bal-anced judgments and review. That more delicate problem may bebest handled by a training workshop on hiring dynamics.


Information Sharing Versus Hoarding

The availability of job information ranges from the stingy to thepartial. Candidates are usually given only a job description—oftenan out-of-date job description, a hoary document that has survivedsince its approval at many levels a number of years ago and is nowtrotted out whenever a vacancy occurs but not otherwise regardedas significant. A revised version would have to go through elabo-rate rites of passage with no assurance that it would be approved.But the more basic problem, of which job descriptions are only apart, is that companies generally hoard rather than share informa-tion at all levels, a custom that certainly leaves its stifling mark onthe hiring process.

ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION ACCESS

Effective recruitment begins with assessing an organization’s infor-mation culture. What is its information environment and thenature of its conversations? What does it typically talk about? Arethose exchanges frequent and open or occasional and whispered?Is the company information chart largely vertical, with few if anyhorizontal crossovers? With the increasing emphasis on knowledgeworkers, to what extent is information access available to serve asthe supply side of informed workforce initiatives? In short, are jobdescriptions fundamentally information documents?

Mere listing of job duties and responsibilities, no matter howcomprehensive or detailed, exhausts a position’s information base.For example, it fails to link knowledge to competence—or moreimportant, to link knowledge to expertise and talent. To pretendthat it does is symptomatic of an information culture and processthat is fundamentally and intentionally obscurative. The degree towhich job data is available and communicated is largely deter-mined by a political process ruled by rank.

Chain of command is really chain of information. Informationavailability is restricted to insiders. Indeed, it is used to set apart


those on top from those below them. Layered access defines theextent of access. But whether executive or managerial, the processidentifies the circles of those in the know. Sometimes it even mayinvolve information martyrdom—suffering the burden of beingamong the elect. In short, information sharing is really the keyform of privileged positioning protected and sustained by the lawsof scarcity and hierarchy.

When information flow is routinely guarded and controlled,imagine the information paranoia when outsiders are involved.Information flow becomes restrictive and stingy as those in theknow regard truth as too valuable to share. The language chosenbecomes intentionally opaque and unrevealing. Most seriously,without realizing it, this knee-jerk information withholding is oftencarried over and applied to job applicants, a maneuver that is par-ticularly inappropriate and counterproductive because many candi-dates judge an organization by the transparency of its informationdissemination. In fact, it can be argued that the current problems oftalent recruitment have been compounded and even compromisedby niggardly releases of information about a job and its duties. Eventhe newly developed electronic talent tracking systems are mana-gerial in nature. They neither directly engage the informationproblem nor improve the recruitment process itself. That requiresfocusing analysis and change on information barriers and thenhearkening to Robert Frost’s wise warning: “Before I built a wallI’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out.”

Information Limitations of Job Descriptions

It is useful to pause at this point to consider the basic informationlimitations of even the best of current job descriptions. They arealmost universally:

• Purely verbal

• Lacking interoperability

• Devoid of examples of whatever the job takes


• Fixated on the past and present

• Noninteractive

Employers do not want to sift through piles of résumés in thehope of matching skills to jobs. Over and above any perception ofthe scarcity of talent, companies hire search firms precisely becauseof the burden of prescreening, just as book publishers use literaryagents. But the key point is that good candidates are equally dili-gent. They are researchers. They are their own headhunters. Theyseek to know as much as they can about the current position andthe company culture. Past annual reports and industry ratings aregrist for the mill. But they also are future oriented. They want toknow where this position can lead and where the company is going.In short, many of the best potential candidates begin to lose inter-est after reading the typical job description and finding it jargonrich but information poor, falling far short of their need to know.

A New Interactive Job Inquiry System

How can employers and candidates be brought closer together tomeet each other’s needs? Information sharing is the key. Employerscannot withhold or hoard job information. If the desired match is tooccur with any precision, more not less information sharing mustoccur. Specifically, the information exchange of an initial interviewmust be simulated and then front-loaded and made available tocandidates in an interactive form before the interview. In addition,employers must do their homework by identifying the essentialmatch minimums—benchmarking the position as it were. Finally,the job description needs to be expanded to include and answerquestions as to the future projections of both the position and thecompany.

Candidates in turn must be willing to engage in self-screeningand self-qualifying. The traditional static job description needs tobe transformed into a dynamic exchange process. It must beredesigned as a prequalifying interface, empowering candidates to


interview themselves. Through a series of at least three initialexchanges, candidates must be asked to come to two judgments:whether they are qualified or not, and if so whether they are inter-ested in pursing the job quest further.

When this interactive prequalification process is done properly,both sides get what they want. Employers finally receive only qual-ified candidates. Applicants are more knowledgeable about whatthe job has to offer now and in the future, and whether or not thatis what they are seeking. Consequently, the classic process of fit ismutual.

To accomplish all this requires structuring the content of eachof three stages into a new job inquiry system.

Information Access of an Initial InterviewImagine a job description set up as a Web site. Using virtual tech-nology and simulation, job profiles would be enriched and housemore extensive job information than what is offered in the typicalskeletal and exclusively written job posting. For example, if theposition requires the supervision of twelve professionals, an appli-cant should be able to click on each one and see a photo, a job sum-mary, and a résumé. If the position involves regular and significantexchanges with other divisions, examples of such interoperabilityshould be accessible. Even for that elusive and tantalizing sectioncalling for the performance of all other duties in order to get thejob done, past and present examples should be provided. In short,candidates would gain the basic informational benefits of an initialinterview without the time and costs of such a meeting.

Self-Scoring and Self-QualificationThe minimum qualifying essentials for an acceptable match wouldbe listed by the employer. Collectively, these criteria can serve asgatekeepers. Each one could carry the numerical value of ten,which would signify a perfect match. Prospective candidates wouldrespond by inputting aspects of their résumés and backgroundsappropriate to the key descriptors. They would estimate how close


each of these responses are to satisfying each qualifier by selectinga number between one and ten. A minimum total score would alsobe provided to indicate whether the applicant has met the basicqualifications.

In effect, this is an interactive self-qualifying interview. Appli-cants would advance or abandon their own candidacy. Only thosewith satisfactory scores would go on to the next step. Candidateswould be cautioned not to exaggerate or be self-serving. The lackof objective and accurate judgments would only reflect negativelyon their candidacy. Providing more information in an interactiveself-scoring format winnows the list to a pool of qualified candi-dates. Those who are successfully self-screened are then invited toundertake the next and final step.

Future FitCandidates always want to know where the job will lead. Firms areequally curious about the future expectations of candidates. Againthe match is the target. Employers generally seek employees whoare not only ambitiously realistic but also in tune with the articu-lated future directions of the company. In short, the final prelimi-nary assessment involves not just a present but a future fit.

The job description thus must provide two projections: thefuture of the job and of the company—and how the two are linked.But answers should be more than anecdotal. Records of careerpaths of former employees holding that position should be providedelectronically. Equally important are the future trends projectedfor the industry and especially the company’s own five-year visionand strategic plan. The rationale for this component is to providecandidates who meet the minimum qualifications with an additionalstage to determine whether the future projections of this positionas well as those of the company match their own vision of theirfuture career. Finally, those who pass all three stages constitute theshort list and are then invited for face-to-face conversations.

This new job description model, then, is essentially a front-loading process. It also builds on a company knowledge base that


is already in hand. What benefits would it bring? The job descrip-tion model:

• Is always current and updated

• Produces a dynamic self-screening process

• Reduces turnover due to mismatching

• Generates a final list of self-qualifying candidates

• Creates a new career pathing database

• Meets not just present but future needs

COMMENTARY

Perhaps the time has come for job descriptions to take advantageof the technology now available and to reflect the realities oftoday’s work. In effect, by outsourcing the process to candidates,the system I propose puts them in charge. It places a high valuefrom the outset on initiative and on operating both independentlyand interdependently. But such welcome results from an interac-tive job inquiry system will be contingent on two changes in theexisting culture: information sharing has to replace informationhoarding, and empowerment has to be predicated on always know-ing more about the future.


Historically, the workforce has placed the highest values on thebasic trinity of job satisfaction, security, and recognition—notalways in the same order. For a while, downsizing and issues ofcompany loyalty elevated job security to the top spot. But still theneed to find work fulfilling and for it to be recognized remainedhigh priorities. Indeed, HR’s efforts to minister to such values haveled to job development and job enhancement. Of late more focushas been placed on the nature and sources of job satisfaction,because job satisfaction is part and parcel of company morale,directly affects productivity and customer satisfaction, and is amajor factor in talent retention.

Efforts to promote job satisfaction have tended to be self-focused and singular. The employee is placed at the center of theuniverse, and all else revolves around individual attitudes and work.Both the job and the company are perceived to be obligated tooffer satisfying experiences. When that fails to happen, both thejob and its holder should become objects of job enhancement.

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But should that be the only (or even primary) approach or rem-edy? Perhaps job satisfaction should not be perceived so narrowlyand egocentrically. Perhaps it is really too important to be so rigidlydefined as inward facing. Besides, it is not that cut-and-dried. Amore complicated process involving many variables is at work.Other factors and workers encircle each employee, with aninevitable influence and impact on job satisfaction. Beyond that,the organization itself needs to link and align job satisfaction andcompany outcomes. In short, the current self-centered way of posi-tioning job satisfaction needs to be reconfigured to go in bothdirections—from the employee outward to a circle of relationshipsand then back. Supplementing the lines from the periphery to thecenter, the new norm would be a two-way street.

VALUING THE NEGOTIATION OF MUTUALITY

Work is not merely what we do. It is also increasingly who we areand how we relate. Every company has three basics: this is what wedo, this is how we do it, and this is how we do it together. The lastitem is the culture of an organization. The research shows that whatwe mostly talk about—to friends, spouses, or ourselves—is whatpleases or bothers us. Thus, typically an employee’s immediateworld minimally involves key workplace relationships and processes.Those central relationships are with coworkers and the immediatesupervisor. And when someone complains and moans about thoserelationships, job satisfaction and perhaps also performance suffer.In fact, that is why we are concerned about job satisfaction in the firstplace. It directly affects not only individual but team productivity.

Currently, job satisfaction as an evaluative category is one-dimensional. A new assumption needs to guide inquiry. Job satisfac-tion is not just inherent, it is also created. A given job done by dif-ferent workers is not the same job. The difference is in the doers—what they bring to the task. Similarly, job satisfaction operates the


same way: the satisfaction extracted varies with input—more in,more out. The task then is to develop a model that not only embod-ies the two-way process but also allows for individual differencesnested within the common requirement for all to pursue job fulfill-ment. At the heart of that model are relationships and the dynam-ics of dialogue. Job satisfaction then can be defined as negotiatedrelationships.

For example, employees’ job satisfaction is often linked to theirsupervisor’s job satisfaction. Many managers actually tell workersthat it is their individual and collective task to make the managerlook good to the next level up. Unfortunately, supervisors oftenreward those that do and punish those that don’t. Many supervisorsare very unhappy when they regularly have to take time out oftheir busy day to soothe ruffled feathers or to stop a shoutingmatch. Contentious behavior generally reflects negatively on theevaluation of the employee who regularly demonstrates inability towork well with others and on the evaluation of the supervisor whoseems unable to manage such behavior. But maintaining relation-ships is not made an explicit and shared goal of all. It is not definedas a minimum performance expectation. It is seldom linked to jobsatisfaction. That sin of omission haunts the entire process.

Company policy manuals and evaluation sessions almost neverstate explicitly that employees’ job satisfaction is tied to the satis-faction of their supervisor and coworkers. No one points out that itis not enough for individuals to be self-satisfied—it is also part ofeveryone’s task to help those who work with them to attain satis-faction as well. And because that has not been made explicit andofficial, it is absent from all job descriptions. In short, serving oth-ers (and being in turn served) has to be made a job requirement.More than any other category of performance appraisal, thedynamic of negotiating job satisfaction is the nexus for evaluatingand achieving individual and team performance. In the process, themutualizing of job satisfaction has to become the principal meansnot only for talent retention but also for talent acquisition.

The Challenge of Job Satisfaction 89

DETERMINERS OF JOB SATISFACTION

Company culture has to place at its center the negotiation of rela-tionships so they build job satisfaction. Assessing that capacity alsohas to become a key focus of the testing and interviewing ofprospective employees. Although the forms they might take arevarious, five guidelines should help define a symbiotic matrix thatlinks job satisfaction and relationships:

• Self-starting. Initiative is the key—encouraging and persuadingworkers to go the extra mile, to take on the task of achievingthe collective identity of teams. Creating and sustaining job sat-isfaction is the only leverage available. Bonuses, job security,and company loyalty can no longer be promised. Only what isintrinsic and self-motivating can work.

• Self-defining. The job and its satisfaction can be defined onlyby the jobholder. This definition serves as the basis for thenegotiation of priorities of alignment with the supervisor.Above all, it establishes the threshold for all subsequent formsof self-empowerment, such as self-organizing, -managing, and -evaluating.

• Self-generating. Job satisfaction is neither inherent in the jobitself nor supplied or guaranteed by the company. It is not givenbut made, not assured but discovered. It is what each workeruniquely brings to the table.

• Self-supplementing. The generation of job satisfaction has tobe captured and incorporated into job descriptions so as toimprove performance evaluation and talent retention andacquisition. The net result is a more empowered statement notonly of what the job requires but also of what it has to offer.The latter serves to encourage and entrust the supplementingof job development to those who hold it. Each employeebecomes in effect a personal HR advocate.


• Self-mutualizing. The benefits of job satisfaction need to bemutualized. What and how others contribute to individual ful-fillment must in turn become what is offered to others as well.The constant negotiation of mutuality thus not only describesthe interpersonal and team contributions of each jobholder, italso defines company culture as dynamically collaborative innature.

It is the task of HR to demonstrate how the alignment not justof job goals but of job satisfaction leads to greater gains in all areas.Above all, this kind of advocacy leads to the enhancement not justof work but of the entire work environment and culture. Job satis-faction is too important to be allowed to face inward.

We all work in worlds that are near and far. The first step is toturn people around so they are not locked into themselves butinstead see how they are linked multiply: to others, to teams, to cus-tomers, and to structures—big and small, near and far. Employeeshave the potential to be big enough to perceive themselves asextensions of their division and their company. Indeed, if theincreased demands for competitive performance are to be met, jobsatisfaction may be the primary way—and perhaps the only way—to drive not only continuous improvement but also those innova-tive gains beyond the incremental. Job satisfaction is too rich not tobe wisely spent, too critical to talent acquisition, and finally tooexpansive to be rigidly caged.

GROWTH POTENTIAL AS JOB SATISFACTION

Another important component of job satisfaction can be found inthe opportunity for individual development and growth—and thispotential should be kept in mind even during recruiting and hiring.Testing is one of the norms of today’s hiring process; it has becomeas basic as the application form. Current tests, however, exhibit anumber of common limitations. Most serious, the questions are soobviously patterned or tilted toward favored answers that only


idealistic or cynical choices are encouraged. In either instance littleor nothing is revealed about the true views of the applicant.Similarly, being designed to apply to many clients, they oftenreflect little or no specific knowledge about the company or its val-ues. But whatever the tests’ limitations, the most significant lapse isin not capturing, storing, and analyzing their results.

With the findings of a wide range of employee tests, HR cancreate a database at the front end to generate comparisons ofworkforce changes over the years and also serve as a series ofbenchmarks to measure later company training. Such metrics, inshort, reinforce the double HR function of tracking and communi-cating changing workforce patterns while establishing the baselinefor measuring later development. The one identifies what appli-cants bring to the table by way of native talent, and the other theirpotential and capacity for growth. Ideally, then, testing should beboth short and long term—focusing not just on present but also onfuture fit. It should address that favorite interview question:“Where do you see yourself three to five years from now?” Finally,given the substantial allocations companies make in tuition remis-sion and extensive training programs, the resulting data providesHR and organizations with a powerful tool for measuring return oninvestment.

PROACTIVE TALENT TESTING

It costs too much time, money, and effort to find the right peoplewithout also considering whether they will stay and how adequatelythey will perform later on. Development and retention should notbe an afterthought or exist apart from the original hiring process;instead, talent acquisition and talent retention should be one fromthe outset. Present fit should involve future fit.

The time span should involve not only the immediate present(the first thirty to sixty days) but also the short term (six months)


and the longer term (twelve months). Performance assessment andprojection need to function as two sides of the same coin. In addi-tion, proactive examination of later adequacy has to be set withinthe context of evolving company goals and needs. Insight aboutfuture candidate and company alignment can then in turn beapplied to current fit, tightly linking job start to job growth.

But the challenge of all innovation is that it cuts both ways. Itchanges the change agents. The hiring process is no longer one-sided. “Where do you see yourself three to five years from now?”has to be answered not only by the candidate but also by the hiringteam. To anticipate and determine future fit requires projecting thecompany’s future. Proactive assessment cannot be an abstractprocess or take place in a vacuum. It must be company specific.Indeed, when company vision and plans are defined and thenapplied as an overlay to the growth capacity of the applicant, hir-ing may also be better able to answer applicants’ questions aboutthe company’s future. Above all, the assessment of future fit servesas a critical defining lens on current estimates and hiring choices.Mutual growth assessment enhances retention.

The case for proactive talent assessment as well as for bringingtest results within the larger purview of metrics reinforces and sup-ports the other key HR goal of making the process more predictive.But such results require targets for measurement. Moreover, theyhave to be more precise and focused than just generalized assess-ment of talent for further growth and development. Although thatmay vary by company and industry, the search always has to strikea balance between common assessments of potential and specificcompany-driven applications. Joining and aligning the two leads tothe development of a preferential performance profile, which inturn generates the recruitment targets that will reinforce companymission and culture. That profile, for example, would identify can-didates who place a high value on information access, on expecta-tions of job transformation, and on interpersonal negotiation tobring about mutual job satisfaction.


The challenge then is how to test what drives workforcegrowth. That requires going deeper in areas normally left unexam-ined: who we are, how we have come to be that way, our values andcareer preferences, how we relate, how we learn, how we work,how we work together, and finally how we change—or fail tochange. The problem is compounded by the need for privacy andby the general lack of suitable testing tools. One approach is toreturn to the commitment to grant greater information access andinvolvement to candidates.

MEASURING GROWTH POTENTIAL

Measuring growth potential has to fuse talent recruitment and talentretention. Extending the principle of providing candidates with max-imum access to job information, HR can request qualified applicantsto be involved in and observe the results of various simulations cur-rently available. Indeed, this involvement seeks to reflect the samekind of forward-looking answers sought by situational, what-if inter-view questions: “What would you do if this or that occurred?” Butsimulation is a better way of eliciting anticipatory behaviors becauseit is so involving and spontaneous that little can be faked or hidden.It can also accommodate preferred company targets easily.

General company and specific job preferences become vari-ables of simulation design. Such customized simulations provideprospective employees with the key performance preferences thatalso define the company’s workforce mission. Above all, such sim-ulations would elicit and measure growth capacity in the followinginterpersonal terms:

• Work as mutual dependency

• Work as not solely job parts but job relationships

• Job knowledge that integrates what we know with what othersknow


• Job skills that require negotiation and persuasion

• Job communication as a collective problem-solving activity

Using the same simulations over time generates a baseline forfurther qualifying candidates in terms of future fit as well as currentfit. Companies would be hiring not only the kind of talent theyneed now but also what they will need to face future challenges. Inthe process it also provides talent with the major reason for long-term retention.

Yields of a Reflective Journey

A different approach, more invasive and time-consuming, is to askcandidates to undertake an introspective and reflective journeythat links who they are with how they learn and change. Few can-didates have ever been asked to do this consciously. To ease theirway into such a process of self-revelation requires that it be gradu-alized and converted into a step-by-step, building-block process. Itsmajor stages need to be structured so that they are reassuringlyprogressive and cumulative. Together, they simulate a total learn-ing journey and inventory involving five stages:

1. Compiling a personal inventory

2. Identifying its operating values

3. Portraying its operating relationships

4. Assessing the learning potential of that inventory

5. Linking the personal inventory and learning potential to jobperformance

Throughout, the focus is always on three major relationshipclusters: self, others, and teams. Each of the five stages wouldreflect those three areas along the lines demonstrated in Table 5. Ifyou also give each of the five areas an aspirational and futuresdirection, a summary would emerge as in Table 6.



TABLE 5 • MULTIPLE SATISFACTION LINKAGES

PERSONAL INVENTORY AND PROFILE: “THIS IS WHO I AM.”

Subject Lines of Inquiry Influences Goals

Self Who am I? Familial impact? What satisfies me?

Others How do I relate? Where did I How can I change?learn that?

Team Responses to Friendships? Sharing and trusting? authority?

VALUES PROFILE: “THIS IS WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO ME.”

Subject Beliefs Moral Mentors Behaviors

Self Family? Memorable Right and wrongAchievement?

Others Equal treatment Values Open-minded

Team Diversity Team leaders Respect

RELATIONSHIPS: “THIS IS HOW I RELATE.”

Subject Family Friends Coworkers

Self Remain intact Favor family Civility

Others Their commitment Acquaintances If possible, buddies

Team Another family Trust Satisfaction

ASSESSING LEARNING POTENTIAL OVER TIME: ”THIS IS HOW I LEARN.”

Time Focus Learning Successes What Works and and Blocks What Doesn’t

Child, teen, adult Recollections list In previous workshops

Others With certain teachers With certain supervisors

Teams Sports plus other teams Team knowledge level

LINKING LEARNING TO JOB PERFORMANCE: “THIS IS HOW I WORK.”

Focus Work Values Job Performance Job Learning and Growth

Self What’s important Evaluations Gains and losses

Others Working Interpersonal Team learning together ratings

Team Innovation Collective Group stretchachievements

Composite Profile

The final assignment is for each participant to assemble a compos-ite profile using selectively the input from the five stages in Table 5.Here are some samples.

Sample 1“My name is Sally B. I work in assembly section B. I have alwayshad a strong sense of who I am and my worth. My folks gave methat. So family is probably what is most important to me. I find ithard to understand those who don’t believe in a strong family. Itrust my bosses or supervisors. I guess they are sort of parental fig-ures to me. I prefer their giving us directions or telling us what todo rather than all this discussion about options. The supervisorknows more than all of us put together anyhow. Besides, he has hismarching orders.”

Sample 2“I usually get along with others. I am a hard worker; so I like towork with hard workers. I have a hard time with goof-offs. I cut


TABLE 6 • PROGRESSION FROM CURRENT TO FUTURE SELF-EVALUATION

CURRENT FUTURE

This is who I am. This is who I want to be.

This is what is important to me. This is what I want to value more.

This is how I relate. This is how I wish to relate differently.

This is how I learn. This is how I unlearn and change.

This is how I work. This is how I work more productively.

people a lot of slack, give them enough rope to hang themselves.When they do, that’s it. I will be civil, but that’s as far as I will go.If you are lucky enough to be a member of a good, tight team—thatis heaven. You could not ask for anything better than that. Theybecome a family of friends. Sometimes they are so good they leadthemselves.”

Sample 3“I never was good in school. I just graduated high school by theskin of my teeth. So I was kind of surprised that in some of thetraining, I learned a lot. What’s more, I put it to good use on thejob. In one class I really loved, the instructor took me aside andpraised me for my participation. I was embarrassed. I told him Ialways thought I was so dumb in high school and here I am takingto it like a duck to water. He told me that I am at a different placenow in my development; and high school might have been too faraway from work to engage my interest and intelligence. I could feelmy cheeks flush when he praised my intelligence. What a wonder-ful thing to say to me! He reminded me of Father Ryan, who waslike a second dad to me.”

Sample 4“Working in a terrific team and learning how to be more produc-tive and innovative has resulted in the best evaluations I have everhad. Going through this five-step exercise also has taught me a lotabout myself, my job, and my relationships. I find that I am nowinto everything I do. Work has become personal. It might as well bethat way because of all the time I spend here. It also helped mewrite a better self-evaluation. But what I liked best about it all ishow it changed my attitude toward the future and where I can be.Or as we always say in the team, this is Operation Leap Frog: whilewe are catching up, let us also get ahead.”


COMMENTARY

With this approach, recruitment and retention can be grounded ineach employee’s identity, motivation, and belief system. Althoughit is inevitably personal, it does not pry. It is a voluntary exercise ofself-study and self-review. In the process, it establishes key linksbetween employee and work, between personal values and workbehaviors, and between individual learning styles and performanceimprovement. It thus identifies the key motivators for change.Above all, it compels employees to perceive interpersonal relation-ships as knowledge relationships and job satisfaction as mutual.Finally, it dramatizes how beneficial it is to alter and improve suchrelationships and the extent to which improved relationships canlead to increased learning and job performance. Indeed, hiringsuch growth employees introduces change agents along desiredfuture lines into the workforce and shapes the future of companyculture. Such gains alone should not only invest the entire hiringprocess with greater importance but also improve the way it testsfor, discovers, and retains talent that is basically unfinished.


Organizational culture is both official and unofficial, set and evolv-ing. Formal vision and mission statements and policy formulationsestablish its identity and direction. A less acknowledged but oftenmore telling version of the culture shows up in conversations. Is theorganization a busy and restless place of exchange? Are peopleconstantly talking things over, revisiting earlier settled discussionswith new bits of information or perspectives? And do people enjoytalking their way through problem solving? Finally, should notorganizations be defined in terms of the extent and character oftheir conversations? If so, then they inhabit and reflect an interiorworld not reflected by conventional organization charts.

Every company has a persona and a personality. More impor-tant, it has a voice. It regularly has something to say; its messagesare defining. The choice of spokespersons often determines thelanguage selected. Official communication employs a recurrentvocabulary of operations and structure. The language tends to besomewhat smug and self-confident. It is also usually familiar and

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comfortable—so much so that sometimes it sounds processed andgeneric. Ultimately it blurs the image of the company—it couldcome from anywhere. Its descriptors, like those found in many mis-sion statements, are applicable across the board to all organiza-tions. But to many such uniformity is reassuring. They can sit backand relax because what they hear certifies that the organization isbehaving in the manner typical of all organizations. Unfortunately,that kind of official communication does not reflect the organiza-tion’s own conversations, which are its lifeblood.

The difference between announcements and conversations isthat the former settle the matter, while the latter keep the dooropen for further exchanges. One type of message is proclamation,the other invitation; one disembodied, the other personal. WhenCEOs or senior vice presidents speak for the company, they oftendo so in generic operational terms. When managers or rank-and-file employees speak, they always do so in work and personal terms.Official communications always use the language of efficiency,alignment, and the bottom line. But when the company is per-ceived and defined in terms of its work conversations, whatemerges is a network of relationships. The company thus becomesrecognizable in another and different way. Its organizational iden-tity is no longer abstract or static. It is alive and insistent. It is, inshort, a culture.

SOCIOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNICATION

Although analyses of company life have often benefited and beenfacilitated by psychology, perhaps official communication needs theapproach of sociology. An organizational identity and communica-tion profile would then be rendered by the following ten principles:

• An organization is a community.

• Its conversations are what constitute its evolving identity.

• Its exchanges are strategic, multifaceted, and managerial.


• It operates as a highly reflective and self-examining culture.

• How work is organized is a recurrent subject of that exchange.

• Such strategic work conversations are often anticipatory.

• They routinely involve what-if questions.

• As a result, they serve as thresholds for innovation.

• They are also designed to intervene and alter the evolution ofthe organization.

• Finally, they are always agents of talent retention.

At least two aspects of this conversational profile can be fused.One is the role of the manager; the other how work design is shapedby empowering conversations that, in turn, support retention.

Managers have been trained to be better listeners—to listenwith the inner ear. But effective listening also involves asking bet-ter questions. It requires managers to be not just information gath-erers but question generators. The process resembles the classicquip of Louis B. Mayer: “For your information, let me ask you aquestion.” Questions are the heart of exchange because they areeliciting and emerging. Open-ended questions do in fact openthings up. Because they are also unfinished, they constantly extendthe life of the discussion into the future.

Stirring and sustaining such work conversations has to becomea critical requirement of a manager’s job description. What makessuch exchanges strategic is that they are goal-driven and expansive.Their range includes conversational exchanges between individualand company goals, between employee and company mission state-ments. The entire process of work problem solving becomes increas-ingly collaborative; it evolves and is guided by inquiry and collec-tive exchange. Only then can problem solving be recast in terms oflonger-term planning.

Managers can also use the data of conversation to assess andredesign work environments. By listening strategically, they candetermine the degree to which each unit is cross-communicating or

Strategies for Retention 103

is essentially an inward-facing and separatist community. They candetect whether information flow and exchange is clear or muffled;whether work flow is correspondingly focused or scattered. Suchoverlays can be put upon all divisions and aggregated upward. Thenet result would be a series of conversational interfaces betweenwork and worker, between work design and work productivity, thatsum up and approximate the company-wide whole. Such interfaceswould also address how communications and conversational rela-tionships between supervisors and employees shape performanceimprovement and talent retention.

MANAGERIAL COMMUNICATION INTERFACES

Three primary managerial interfaces—work, design, and interper-sonal and organizational—are involved. A brief definition for eachfollows.

• The work interface. Developing a more reflective and self-conscious series of conversations leads to a clearer understand-ing not only of each employee’s job and performance expecta-tions but also of the impact of each job on work environmentand work flow.

• The design interface. Perceiving and altering the relationshipscorrelates the impact of work environment and work design onjob performance and retention.

• The interpersonal and organizational interface. Identifying thedegree of collaboration shapes the interactivity and interoper-ability of the entire work community and its interdependence.

The value of using interfaces as the focus of strategic conversa-tions is that this approach not only facilitates the exploration of workdefinition and change as dialogue but also keeps alive and factors inthe official language of company goals and mission. The sequence andthe content of the three interfacing conversations also would involvemanagers’ role-playing the behaviors and language of their employees.


The Work Interface

Many managers find it difficult to accept that conversationsbetween managers and employees should not always or essentiallybe evaluative. If and when a conversation is evaluative, then the gulfis preserved and collaborative exchange is jeopardized. Rather,conversation has to be exploratory and nonjudgmental. Above all,it should not be dominated or monopolized by the supervisor. Thefocus, in fact, should be on questions, eliciting the employees’views and their description of their jobs and the parts of those jobs.In the process, the manager needs to affirm that no one knows ajob as well as the one who does it, but that it is also critical to keepin mind company goals. Jobs do not exist in the abstract in and forthemselves; they contribute to overall organizational objectives.The manager is thus not only able to certify the employees’ exper-tise but also to redirect it toward strategic ends.

Because strategic conversations aim to get at root causes and todiscourage the routine, mechanical response of reciting jobdescriptions, they make it possible for the manager to focus theexchange in a more reflective direction. This encourages a moreself-conscious attitude toward job definition by suggesting that theemployee verbalize—that is, talk out loud the kind of thinking thatoccurs while doing the various parts of the job. Prompts for thiskind of analysis go through three steps:

1. Give personal examples based on the manager’s own work. Forexample, the manager may describe the kind of thinking andrethinking that is involved in putting together a productionschedule or ordering parts from competing vendors while stay-ing within budget.

2. Discuss the difference between the written job description andwhat really happens, and suggest describing the job as thoughtalking to someone new to the division.

3. Ask some basic questions: What concerns you when you startdoing your job? What do you think about? Look out for? Worry


about? How much and often do you look ahead to the next stepor where the work goes after it leaves you?

The Design Interface

Such responses to the job process lead to the next series of ques-tions: Does your way of thinking about your job resemble the wayother people holding the same job think about it? Identify some dif-ferent types of workers and ambitions and their sense of standardsor values. How do you think they approach the job? What would bethe range of attitude and thinking—from the best to the worst?

Finally, the key question: Given everything said to date, whatwould you change in the way the job is done? If you could design orredesign your own job and the work environment, what would youchange, and for what reasons? How do you think that new way ofworking would affect your fellow workers in the division and those onyour team? If negatively, how would you suggest that be managed?

If nothing else, a more self-critical attitude toward work leadsto job and worker redefinition. The gains of self-consciousness andself-confidence are also reflected in a more involved, more knowl-edgeable employee. The worker-job interface is fused. Conversationson work environment and on the way the work is organized sup-port company-wide goals of productivity, quality, and retention.Aggregated upward, the multiple changes generated by manyemployee conversations impact company culture. Moreover, oncein place, the conversations are ongoing, just as are the people whosustain that dialogue.

The Interpersonal and Organizational Interface

This approach to communications also encourages employees toexplore collaborative relationships. Team and group conversationsare different. The interpersonal interface thus now involves notjust two but many contributing voices.


The model of strategic conversations requires that each unit ordivision be perceived not as a separate series of job interactions butas a total community sustained by thoughtful and self-consciousreflective conversations. That dialogue in turn not only has to sub-sume but also align the three interfaces to the point where all arenow more integrated and collaborative. In the process conversa-tional accountability is shared by managers and employees. Themore contributive role of the employee is matched by a managermore receptive to employee self-definition. The number of therecommended changes of different ways of designing jobs andwork environments can also affect structure. In addition, divisionalleadership may not be singular but multiple, not unilateral butshared.

LINKAGES OF WORKFORCE CONVERSATIONS

Implicit throughout this process is constantly linking and integrat-ing the conversations of the workforce to focus on the value oftheir active involvement. Retention is thus built in throughout. Theworkforce discovers not only its indispensability but also its self-determining power and capacity to redesign work and even workenvironments. With a community-centered workforce in charge ofsustaining job conversations, interfaces, and planning, the organi-zation is redefined as a place where employees constantly talk andquestion their way through problem solving, strategic planning, andperformance improvement. Finally, even official communicationscan acquire a new voice and language and give the culture a newsense of community and conversation.

In addition to these conversations of forward-looking organiza-tions, other ways of building loyalty, retaining talent, and engagingfuture performance exist. To understand further, it is necessary tostep back and review the challenges HR faces.


THE MULTIPLE CHALLENGES OF HR

The three most pressing problems HR has always faced are hiringgood people, keeping them, and improving their performance.Talent shortages and savvier candidates have complicated the firsttask. Downsizing and loss of company loyalty have upped the anteof retention. However, the one bright area is performance and pro-ductivity, especially stirred by training. That has generally remaineda force for positive and continual improvement. To be sure, evenhere HR faces a downside: inadvertently preparing professionalsto leave for better jobs elsewhere. A more serious limitation is notmaking employee performance improvement an integral part of atotal and seamless continuum from talent acquisition to retention.That would require a new and expanded welcoming of employeeinput beyond all current empowerment efforts.

For example, who usually decides on training topics? Top man-agement often, occasionally HR. Who assigns priorities? Ditto.Occasionally, employees may be asked, but if so it is usually limitedto offering choices from an established list. And with that input inhand, or without it, decisions are made and the company frequentlythen claims it is a learning organization. Or it hooks up a numberof training offerings and occasionally some e-mail linkages anddescribes itself as a corporate university.

In most organizations the selection of training topics is alsodetermined by negative—almost punitive—factors:

• Inefficiency or ineffectiveness. Something needs to be fixed.For example, following the discovery of serious flaws in the wayemployees are evaluated or judged as to who receives incentivebonuses, a new performance appraisal system will be installedand the training will focus on introducing and explaining it.

• Ignorance or updating. Incremental needs require catch-up,mostly technological. Highly technical updates dominate theofferings of most corporate universities and e-businesses.


• Big-picture correction or amplification. Paradigm shifts occurthat require revising training: reengineering the corporation,introducing a balanced scorecard approach, teaming, learningorganization, and more.

When all three are operative, the list is at least representativeand respectable. But it is far from ideal for a number of reasons. Itis essentially external and depersonalized. It may tinker with whatis needed, but it does not touch who the employees are or whatthey can become. In addition, because the selection process is notbroad-based enough to generate comprehensive input, the finalresults, although beneficial, may when applied be partial, frag-mented, or ill-fitting.

For training to be effective, it cannot be scattered or piecemeal;it must have coherence. It also needs to be ambitious or profoundenough to reach down to basics and ahead to future aspirations. Ithas to rest on the fundamental bedrock of self-directed and focusedlearning and unlearning. It has to tap what a knowledge workerreally is and knows and to profile a model of the employee as a con-tributing and developing lifelong partner of the business.

Creating an employee-centered organization thus is based onemployee self-definition. Each member of each division has tocraft an employee mission statement. In fact, they need to writetwo sets of pairs: one summarizing who they are now and whothey want to be; the other what their division is and what it seeksto be.

These overarching statements can be aggregated both horizon-tally and vertically to generate divisional and company perfor-mance goals. They also collectively shape the future training agenda:what instruction will be required to reach those future performancegoals, who will offer it, and what forms it should take. Above all,employee mission statements can become either supplements tojob descriptions or better still a more dynamic, authentic, and ownedreplacement.


EMPLOYEE MISSION STATEMENT

What are the building blocks of an employee mission statement(EMS)? The standard mission statement is organizational. It speaksto the business of the company and its values. Employees are sel-dom mentioned. They are assumed. If they are explicitly identified,they are given an aggregated identity as “teams” or “the work-force.” But empowerment has raced far ahead of such traditionaland impoverishing descriptions. In many cases, it has fundamentallyaltered organization structures, cultures, and charts. It has intensi-fied the importance of interpersonal and teaming relationships.

Capital is now defined as human capital as well as financial cap-ital. Above all, it has required CEOs to be leaders of workers andnot just organizations, because without the focused efforts of individ-ual workers the five major goals of productivity, profitability, quality,customer service, and innovation can never be accomplished. Thusthe notion of an employee mission statement comes as a naturalnew outcome of an evolutionary process. It is an equity step.

One way to help the process along is to identify the major areasor essentials an EMS must address. The temptation is to use man-agerial categories, which in fact dominate most traditional missionstatements of organizations. But the need is to personalize theprocess, to align it as much as possible with everyday conversation,to have it express the genuine voice of employees, and to get it toflow so as to reach down and articulate true feelings and even deepdoubts. The last is important because two paired mission state-ments are to be written. The first addresses the present, the secondthe future.

EMS Descriptors

Although a number of topics can be chosen as guidelines for dis-cussion, the following five cover the basics and have proved engag-ing: attitudes, expectations, learning, relationships, and standards.Managers can facilitate individual or team exchanges or both. The


discussion of each of the five areas can be aided and preceded by abrief multiple-choice questionnaire. The choices can be structuredso that the last one is always the ideal one and thus sets up the keydescriptors for the second or future-oriented EMS. Here, then, aresome examples for each of the five categories.

Attitudes: Toward WorkFour choices generally cover the field: “generally OK,” “sometimesstrong,” “committed,” and “passionate.”

Typically, the first two items are chosen. Discussion betweenmembers then usually centers on definitions. What do we mean bycommitted? By passionate? One or two who have selected eithermay gingerly begin to describe their choice. They may be greetedby sarcasm: “You expect me to be passionate about filling outforms, listening to some stupid customer’s complaints, sittingthrough all those dumb meetings, and the rest of the garbage wehave to shovel through?” Quickly, the rubber hits the road andreality rears its truthful head.

After venting, the new question becomes, “What will it take tochange our attitude to being at least committed if not passionate?”The quick consensus response is, “A lot.” A list then is prepared toserve as the conditions for a change in attitude. But the change isnoted in the future version of the EMS as the stretch goal, and theconditional list is sent upstairs. In short, the future is negotiated.

And so is everything else in each category, including the rela-tionships between categories. Inevitably, trade-offs are required forchange. But the process has just started. Other areas of changehave to be similarly explored. The final results then are related toeach other. The interaction may result in revisions. Thus, eachEMS is a draft.

The process is not linear but circular, cumulative and notsequential. The final point is revisiting all the stages and asking,“Then what kind of training do we need, who will the instructorsbe, and what else is required to help us reach our future stretchgoals?”


Expectations: Of PerformanceThe basic discussion here is open-ended. It addresses three basicissues: What are our performance goals? Who sets them? Howoften do we meet or exceed them?

The value of the initial discussion is to get everybody on boardthe same train. It is often surprising how many are not. The secondissue may result in some spirited exchanges. But here, too, the gapis between extremes: one advocating no leash at all, the otherssome leash, hopefully long. Again compromise comes to the res-cue: a medium-sized leash. Next is to arrive at some commonground: “At least let us have collaborative determination of per-formance goals.”

The future EMS statement puts the two pieces together andattests to the following: “All mutually defined performance goalswill be met and at least half exceeded.” Before leaving this topic,one member of the group notes that it will take a committed, pas-sionate attitude to exceed goals. Everyone nods in agreement atthe emergence of the first linkage.

Learning: Knowing Not Just the Job but the BusinessThis issue regularly generates complaints and reveals some pastbaggage. This venting should be encouraged because it clears theair and the field, and thus prepares for a discussion that turnsdirectly on the employees themselves as knowledge workers. Howsmart are we? How important is it that we be smart? Work smarternot harder? Sharpen the saw? How often are we self-analyticalabout our job? How we do it? Is there another and better way todo it? Do we routinely pursue root causes? Or opt for the easy wayof the fast and the dirty? Of blame and shame? Do we ask “Why?”five times when something goes wrong? Do we ever do research orask for it? Are any of us students of the business? Do we want toget rid of the culture of blame and shame?

Unlike the first two sessions, which by comparison were alwaysvigorous, easy, and fluid, this one stops many employees in theirtracks. They become increasingly reflective and introspective. They


are a bit shocked to find how mechanical, unthinking, and unques-tioning they have been about their work. Many acknowledge—often for the first time—that they have operated with a number ofunarticulated assumptions that need to be examined. Curiously,all find it relatively easy to agree that the future statement needsto focus on the model of knowing not just the job but the totalbusiness.

Finally, they perceive that being a student of the total businessis incrementally beyond being a knowledge worker, and that anemployee university is superior to a learning organization. In fact,they designate both “knowledge worker” and “learning organiza-tion” as belonging to the present, and “student of the business” and“employee university” to the future.

Relationships: Aligning LinkagesThe focus here is on work relationships and job satisfaction. Thegoal is to determine the strengths and weaknesses of interpersonalrelations—and the effects of interpersonal relations, positive andnegative, on performance. If teams are already operative, theassessment is both individual and group. If not, then the exerciseserves the diagnostic function of indicating what strengths can betapped and what areas need improvement if teams in the future areto be more effective. Above all, because again the stress is on pres-ent benchmarks and future growth, unhappy current work relation-ships that may jeopardize performance can with some helpfulcoaching be changed. Indeed, that becomes a future EMS state-ment. But perhaps the most dramatic change in this arena has to dowith present and future definitions of job satisfaction, which hasjust been examined and now needs to be folded into the EMS.

Standards: The Practice of QualityQuality embraces all. It is what holds everything together. It is bothquantitative and qualitative. It can be measured in terms of zerodefects, minimum spoilage, total customer retention, and other fac-tors. It has its data.


But it also constitutes the culture of the enterprise. It is how wedo things around here, and above all what we do not do. It is aboutintegrity of relationships so that every employee is treated like acustomer. In short, every goal, action, relationship, and outcomewill carry the overlay of quality. And where current limitations arediscovered, the future EMS will project quality goals to be achieved.

Those may include the end to bossism, to blame and shame, tomanipulation, to coercion, insecurity, and so on. And in their placewill appear a commitment to persuasion and working by consensus.Not pie in the sky but all reachable because what is aspired to istrainable.

Composite EMS

It might be helpful at this point to offer a draft of the two compos-ite versions of an employee mission statement.

Current“We are part of a dedicated workforce with high expectations ofourselves and our products and services. We are committed to con-stantly improving how we do our job. We also value learning aboutand creating best practices and insist on quality operations through-out the organization.”

Future“We aspire to be a cohesive and passionate workforce committedto the highest quality standards of customer satisfaction. We seekto become students of the business so that we can meet and evenexceed our stretch goals of constant and continuous improvement.We aim to set the standard for the industry.”

COMMENTARY

Although the creation of an employee mission statement is justi-fied in its own right, it also offers and needs to serve as a powerful


supplement to the organizational version and thus acquire thesame official status that the traditional one has enjoyed. In addi-tion, it reflects an organization that values the centrality of itsemployees and provides them with a forum for their own voice. Itthus says to customers that when they choose this company theyare fundamentally choosing its people. And when employees believethat they make the difference to prospective and current cus-tomers, they frequently do.


Increasingly, employees are questioning those in charge and won-dering how smart and anticipatory they really are. The first thing asavvy consultant does when brought in to solve a problem is talkto—and listen to—employees. Invariably, they not only know whatis wrong but also how to fix it. But they are seldom or never asked.

Increasingly, employees are not blinded by hero worship or co-dependent on father-knows-best. They value their own intelligenceand refuse to suffer the consequences of the incompetent and thepaternalistic. Too many have endured downsizing and reductionsin force associated with mergers and acquisitions to have muchconfidence in a leadership that gives lip service to participationbut essentially practices benevolent authoritarianism. And anotherrebellion is brewing too, only in this instance it involves managers.Thinning or flattening out the organization has made overwork anorm. Fewer managers are being asked to accomplish and super-vise more, to fill in gaps left by losses, and to rely on less qualified

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workers to accomplish ambitious “stretch” goals. Moreover, to doall that they have to create, train, and sustain worker teams. Oftenthey have little or nothing to manage. The team does it all. As man-agers become aware that they are being asked to cut their ownthroats, they are less than enthusiastic about supporting teamswhose increasing effectiveness increases productivity but forecaststheir own demise. In short, there is discontent on both sides.

Workers want more say; managers seek to preserve their status.Employees want to become not just shareholders but stakeholders.Managers want their expertise of planning and supervision valued.Workers argue that their experience is critical; managers argue thesame for their education and training. The net result is an impassein which neither side will yield. Employees will not surrender theirrecently achieved centrality nor will managers, after all their yearsof dominance, quietly take a back seat. And the rope in this tug ofwar is the organization that employs both groups. When the CEOsor senior staff speak on behalf of the organization, all the familiardeclarations come from the mount: we are in charge, we set policyand choose direction, we determine who is hired and who is fired—in short, we rule.

Not so anymore. Too many major misjudgments, flawed prod-ucts or services, failed companies, unprofitable maneuvers—toomany outright errors—have torn or tarnished the mantle of infalli-bility. Moreover, the dissension on both sides is generally ignored,and thus little or nothing is done to bridge the two or bring themtogether. Current CEOs and their senior staff preside over a dividedhouse that bitterly resists traditional monarchial harmony andcapacity to resolve.

The net result is a wobbly three-legged stool. The CEOs andsenior staff (and the board) no longer provide constant support formanagers because of the pressure for worker productivity. Themanagers in turn still have to do all the dirty work, fill in holesbrought about by reductions in force, and trade off their traditionalcontrol with worker teams. The employees are becoming increas-ingly distrustful of upper management’s judgment and resentful of


their obscene salaries, often increased precisely when layoffs occurin some kind of perverse reward system.

In many organizations distrust has become the norm. ReplacingCEOs solves credibility problems temporarily, but it is dismissed asan external public relations game as soon as managers and workerssee no internal changes follow in its wake. In short, disunity reignsamong the three major components of an organization: upper man-agement, middle management, and rank and file. When survivingglobal competition is factored in, what follows is a total preoccupa-tion with the bottom line. Then virtually everything and everyonebecomes expendable.

The dilemma is clear: How do we put the organization togetherin a new way? Can a different alliance between the three majorconstituencies be forged or negotiated? If so, what is the glue? I seesome tentative and partial signs that a new understanding and evenre-rapprochement is gradually surfacing. The standard officialnegotiations between workers and their organization have beenextended unofficially between workers and managers. Some CEOsare willing to limit executive power to bring about internal align-ment. They are beginning to understand that their central task asleaders is not to glorify their role but to find and proclaim areas ofcommonality. Increasingly, middle managers are warming to theirnew and different tasks as team leaders and coaches of improvedperformance. Employees are increasingly aware of the need for aless adversarial, more cooperative attitude and for releasingenough productivity and creativity on their part to offset the lowerwages of global competition.

A BRANCH POINT IN CHANGING RELATIONSHIPS

In other words, we appear to have reached a major branch point inwhich all sides are more open to changing their fundamental rela-tionships with each other. We have some hope of producing awhole that may be more than a sum of its contending and divisive

Reexamination of Work and Its Relationships 119

parts. The need then is to explore and to define—no matter howtentatively—the different roles of all the major participants in what I have called collaborative work covenants. Although what isoffered here is not prescriptive, it is based on perceptible changesof practice on one hand and major shifts in the literature of leader-ship and empowerment on the other. If such covenants are to takehold, however, there can be no take-backs in the hard-won battleof employee empowerment. New interfaces born of mutuality andcommonality must be found to close current gaps. In the process,private enterprise may find itself moving more in the direction ofsocialism than capitalism.

How are covenants and collaboratives different from their ear-lier predecessors, the social contract and the union contract? Themost obvious is that the focus is not limited to workers. In fact, themajor problem is not eliminating adversarial relationships, whichcan sometimes be of contributory value, but getting all three par-ties to the table together to negotiate or renegotiate their roles withrespect to one another. That in turn requires all to acknowledgethat what is at stake is the company itself and its future. Indeed,that is the first and most important area of commonality to beacknowledged. The company may be owned by stockholders, butits fate belongs equally to all those who are at the table. All bringtheir special expertise to bear, but that expertise is not exclusivelyheld. It is available for input and overlap from each of the othersas well.

In addition, whatever form the negotiation shapes, it will neverbe final or emerge as a singular legalistic, elaborate formulation.Rather, it will be a mosaic, a series of clusters, a compilation ofagreements of understanding. It will also be deliberately incom-plete. Negotiations can go only so far—and then they must cease.The endless and often trivial details of union contracts cannotbecome the substitute for basic operating principles guiding newrelationships. Moreover, room must be left for fleshing out theskeleton and accommodating the subsequent contributions of allthose who have to implement the accord.


Collaborative Work Covenants

Unlike union contracts, which spell out every point in chapter andverse, and which can require as many hands to monitor as to imple-ment, a work covenant leaves room for day-to-day adjustment. It isroutinely discontinuous and preserves gaps. It compels constantdialogue and negotiation on every level and between every divisionand unit.

In addition, it is defined not so much in terms of the individualbut the group or team. And there are no jurisdictional limits.Nothing is out of bounds. If the team lacks anything, it can beimported. The group may have a core, but its periphery and finalextent may vary with the focus and the process. It is free to expandand even cross divisional boundaries in pursuit of its quarry. Andwhen that happens successfully, new configurations of operationsmay emerge, not even anticipated in the original agreements.Structural dexterity follows goal pursuit. Form catches up with andsupports function.

But no addendum to the contract is required to freeze this newvariation. To etch spontaneous change in stone and finalize itsshape may preclude a different configuration from emerging atanother time and for another purpose. If anything, the workcovenant process resembles the metaphor of a river flowingthrough an organization described and extolled by MargaretWheatley. Self-learning and self-organizing, the process affects thefundamental structure and culture of the company and bringsabout changes gradually from within. The organization chart itselfno longer imposes order from without but benchmarks changepoints. It is the history of a work constantly in progress.

MASTERY OF GROUP DYNAMICS

This kind of change is neither easy nor rapid, and it does not hap-pen without extensive and intensive reconceptualization of workand work relationships by all the members of the triad. Effective


groups attuned to process rather than function are not born. Theyhave to be made, remade, nurtured, coached, challenged. They arenewly created. All the participants need to master at least fivegroup dynamics skills:

• Conflict must be seen as the norm. Managing opposition is thekey to higher levels of understanding and performance.

• Interdependence of teams becomes the model for all. A workerwho is dependent or co-dependent must become more inde-pendent. But ultimately all the workers have to become moreinterdependent, not at the expense of their individuality but inaddition to it. They have to become a new composite: collec-tivized individuals.

• Transition has to be accepted as a dominant and recurrentnorm. Paradoxically, it provides the overriding and ambiguousbenefit of an organization permanently in flux and committedto the dynamic give-and-take of collaboration.

• Work covenants require constant negotiation and persuasion.The process is endlessly consultative. The agreements reachedare always tentative and situational. How they are arrived at isas important as what is finally agreed upon. Negotiating themis an optimizing skill.

• Communication must be constant and total. It is the stuff ofmutual empowerment and a way of leaving no one behind oroutside the circle. Persuasion is the key to bringing groups backtogether into new wholes, healing wounds in the process andforging a new consensus. Again and again the recurrent sum-mary and debriefing has to include the same litany: “OK. Whathave we learned? Where have we been? Where are we now?What is our focus for the future?”

These skills must be supplemented by an understanding andexamination of the assumptions, expectations, and agenda of eachgroup. Often that requires reflection, assumptions analysis, andsubsequent unlearning. For example, CEOs believe they have a


monopoly on leadership. Managers are convinced that workersmust be managed. Workers often think they know more than theirimmediate supervisors or the top brass. But a central covenant valueis the self-organizing principle of groups’ managing themselves.

Overcoming limits to productivity may require that the tradi-tional distinctions between workers and managers be blurred.Workers assume managerial roles, and managers assume workerroles. This is the ultimate cross-training. It is also the key to howand why covenants can also accommodate managers. Managerialfunctions are thus shared and are not the monopoly of one class ofemployees. But aside from the commonality of training and objec-tives that now ties both groups together, what is also required is adifferent definition of leadership.

It is not enough to claim that leadership is shared. Expertise isleadership, and it must be acknowledged and given its due at alllevels or directives and initiatives will not be heeded or respected.Such recognition means that every level leads. Each one not onlypossesses and practices its unique version of stewardship, it is alsoresponsible for harmonizing all the others as well.

Traditionally, shaping the whole was the distinction (or cross)that top management had to bear alone. Bits and pieces of the crosswere parceled out to managers so that they could serve as mini-leaders. But that pecking order pecked at and muzzled or mini-mized the leadership of each level below the CEO. However, thework covenant functions not unlike a multidisciplinary task force:the whole belongs to the whole. It grants not only common pur-pose and focus but also collective responsibility for sustaining andif necessary altering it. The covenant thus defines and celebratescommonality.

GROUP COLLABORATION

One of the key problems of effective group collaboration is keep-ing the big picture in front of everyone and not passing off a half as


a whole. Indeed, the primary responsibility of all leaders at all lev-els is to preserve and optimize the collective individuality of thegroup so that the full force of its diversity can be brought to bearon all problems and opportunities. Finally, one of the key distinc-tions of such groups is in fact the creation of the collectivized indi-vidual, someone who epitomizes the behavioral and cultural powerof work covenant collaboration.

What might a work collaborative look like? And how would itwork? Perhaps a defining way of rendering that is to offer a profileof each of four groups—top management, middle managers, rank-and-file workers, and teams. It should be noted that they have notbeen blurred into each other. Each set of characteristics has beendeveloped to focus on what is within their altered power andprovince and how they now contribute to the process of creatingnew interfaces and a new set of working relationships. A listing ofdos and don’ts may be the most succinct way to present them.

Top Management

The role of top management is to constantly draw, shape, and sharethe big picture—routinely, periodically. It is not to summarilyannounce or promulgate decisions; instead, it is to provide persua-sive reasons and documentation for decisions. Top managementmust also:

• Align policies with vision and mission and be value-driven

• Be proactive, anticipatory, and future-driven

• Conceive and present initiatives in clusters of alternatives andtrade-offs

• Recognize, reward, and value innovation, small or large

• Be intellectually rigorous, savvy, interesting, and occasionallydaring

• Signal clearly that the era of top-down, heavy-handed punitivebossism is dead and buried


• Give to get: to get more accountability, offer more choice

• Finally, always tell the truth, especially if it is bad news

Middle Managers

The role of middle managers is to listen always; especially two-eared listening—hearing both what is said and what is not. Theymust also:

• Minimize nos, maximize yeses, optimize maybes

• Not play the blame, shame, or gotcha game; look for root causes

• Not play favorites

• Be straight shooters and talkers

• Be workers; get their hands dirty

• Not oppose or suppress opposition; incorporate it

• Keep the customer alive and in everyone’s face, every time andeverywhere

• Develop everyone they touch

• Recognize that success is always multiple

Workers

The overriding objective of all employees is to have a say and stakein everything. They should:

• Not allow themselves to be treated like children and acceptpabulum when they have the teeth to chomp steak

• Claim that expertise resides with workers; no one knows thejob better than those who do it

• Constantly ask, discuss, and explore

• Act as if there are no limits to individual and group develop-ment and capacity


• Acknowledge that all are collectively responsible for what isdone, said, and sold

• Treat everyone with respect and dignity

• Value the diversity of commonality and commonality of diver-sity: everybody is the same in a different way

• Practice what is preached

Teams

The primary goal is to create a team that is change-ready, able toshift direction and focus as needed. Teams should also:

• Be intolerant of mediocrity in everything, demanding quality ofproduct, service, communication

• Shape the values of the collaborative work covenant to alignwith the vision of the company, and vice versa

• Be smart about their industry; position their company to takeadvantage of emerging trends

• Minimize bureaucracy—weeds push out flowers

• Be obsessive about customers. Meet them, talk to them. Thecustomers are data. They may not always be right, but that isstill the challenge.

• Move authority closest to the point of action and expertise

• Examine statistics

• Challenge assumptions

• Check alignments vertically and to the right and left

• Give a prize for the best question of the week

• Create employee universities in which teams teach

• Create happiness, camaraderie, and enthusiasm as a uniqueexpression of the team—but never use it to shut out newcomers


• Always seek to be interesting

• Recognize and embody Blanchard’s dictum: “None of us is assmart as all of us”

In many ways, collaborative worker covenants are being builtupon previous breakthroughs and hard-won achievements. Butthese agreements in many other ways are basically new. They sig-nal a new competing centrality. No longer is the spotlight solely oreven largely on CEOs, managers, or employees. Rather, the focusis on the interfacing relationships among them. Commonality isking. The commons of the old village is what is shared and ownedby all. All collectively shape a new organizational configuration.Both vertical and horizontal alignments can be retained, but only ifsurrounded and enclosed by a series of multiple concentric circlesof common cause and purpose. The circular thus governs the archi-tecture because all the knights of the Round Table are equal and all are leaders. Jurisdictional boundaries are no longer sacred.Everything must flow and meander like a river through the entireenterprise.

Leadership is not the monopoly of the CEO or senior manage-ment. Leadership is distributed and written into everyone’s jobdescription. Cross-training and work interchangeability are commonbest practices. Above all, collaborative work covenants should cre-ate a new and interesting home for a new kind of worker-manager-leader as a collectivized individual. Toward that end, the employ-ment matrix in Table 7 summarizes all the changes work covenantshave to manage.

COMMENTARY

To many, perhaps, the prospect of such a covenant appears utopian.But given the realities of the economics of competition on onehand and the forces of empowerment and commonality on theother, workplace collaboratives and covenants may emerge merelyas the embodiment of a transitional present and a transitional future.



TABLE 7 • EMPOWERMENT MATRIX

BEFORE AFTERCATEGORY EMPOWERMENT EMPOWERMENT

Structure Centralized, Decentralized,vertical horizontal

Job description Prescribed Self-directed

Mission statement Organizational Employee generated

Operations Function Process

Employees Workers Assets

Leadership Specified, Distributed,top-down available

Pay Salary Gains-sharing

Human resources Recruitment Retention

Relationships Individual Group(independence) (interdependence)

Training Homogeneous, Heterogeneous,singular cross-divisional

Information Hoarded Shared

Performance Blame and shame Improvement

Manager Boss Coach

Listening Limited and selective Feedback and feed forward

Decisions Top-down Consensual

Innovation R&D Learning organization


BEFORE AFTERCATEGORY EMPOWERMENT EMPOWERMENT

Forecasting Planners Lay forecasting

Agreements Contracts Covenants

Voice Singular Multiple

Roles Given Negotiated

Traditionally, employee evaluation occurs once a year, usu-ally at the anniversary of the job start. The exchange is usually one-sided. The supervisor has a fat folder, theemployee nothing—and with no prior knowledge of whatthe folder contains. Often its contents are surprising, evenintimidating. Employees are thus frequently and under-standably apprehensive, and tend to be defensive.Although they accept the ritual of being judged, they rarelyknow its basis in advance and are equally uncertain as toits final conclusions. Not surprisingly, evaluation is oftendreaded, sometimes by both sides.

Happily, much is changing, and for the better. Evaluation isstill a work in progress, as the information in Part Threedemonstrates.

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In the greater arena of evaluation and training, two absolutes now dom-inate all current operations. Everything is under review, and training isendless. Nothing and no one is ever allowed to remain unexamined, unal-tered, and underdeveloped. Indeed, all are beset by the same currentpressures: increased demands for competitive performance, unevenworkforce preparation, constant need for incremental and even innova-tive gains, and new company directions. Everything and everyone is verybusy. All lean on training for survival and growth.

Thus workers are being reskilled, missions reinvented, operations reengi-neered, divisions reconstituted, and structures reconfigured. Often manysuch tasks are propelled by updating—factoring in new technology andsoftware and adjusting to new markets or customers. But because eventhe need for currency is part of the larger future of discontinuity, man-agers of training and instructional designers have found it necessary toapply both retrospect and prospect. Not content to improve what exists,they have had to reconceptualize the entire process by going back tosquare one and then anticipating what new basics will be required in thefuture. It follows a leap-frogging pattern: while catching up, try to getahead.

But perhaps all these efforts should not be mechanically, automatically,or indiscriminately pursued or applied. Pause may be needed. Does theevaluation in turn need evaluation? Do we have a case of “Physician, healthyself”? In short, are we overlooking some undetected, unexpected, andunexamined opportunities in our hurry to reinvent? Part Three addressesseveral topics—evaluation, teamwork, training, and the goals and roles ofmanagers and leaders—and we must consider the current condition ofeach to enable us to ponder new options and the future. Finally, we mustfuse the best of the past and present to create an optimal future.


Performance improvement, not easily achieved, often requiresworkers to change. They are asked to become more self-consciousabout their work, recast job descriptions as mission statements, andrecognize that job satisfaction is something they not only receivebut also give. And it has worked: productivity has consistentlyimproved or remained steady every year for at least the last ten. Butthe gains may not offset the substantial wage differentials betweenworkers in the United States and developing countries substantiallyenough to keep jobs here. Still, performance improvement rightlyremains the principal source of competitive advantage.

But a number of challenges have emerged. The first is catch-up.So many jobs have changed so drastically that they regularlyexceed their job descriptions. With stretch goals routinely beingbuilt in, such discrepancies are the norm. And yet many companiesand HR divisions still store and trot out their old warhorses. This is particularly dislocating when a new vacancy is advertised and

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applicants are sent job descriptions that do not reflect the realnature of the current position.

A second related matter is matchup. Whether or not the jobdescription is updated, the job evaluation process may havechanged. And if the process is now more involving, participatory,and even proactive, the new evaluative dynamic has in effectbecome a critical part of the job description. Limiting descriptionsolely to what the job requires without also indicating how it will beevaluated is as deceptive as a dated job description.

Finally, there is lineup. Increasingly, workers are required toprioritize their work goals so that they are aligned with companyobjectives. But company goals are rarely shared. Even when theyare, the prioritizing and aligning process is often an add-on andthus not made an integral part of job performance or its evaluation.

SELF-EVALUATING PERFORMANCE PROFILES

How best to update, communicate, and integrate catch-up, match-up, and lineup? Two related approaches might be helpful. Onewould be to bring together and capture all three in a more dynamic,interactive, and holistic form. That form also would accommodatejob changes by regularly and routinely updating job descriptions sothey are always current. Designated a “performing profile,” thenew document would subsume current job descriptions (catch-up),the evaluation process and worker roles (matchup), and prioritiz-ing and aligning goals (lineup). The related strategy would notimpose the new form or process from the top—it would turn thetask over to each worker so that it is a job learning experience forits compilers. That process would allow it to serve as an employee-created and self-evaluating performance profile. The resultingownership would also be self-correcting and -improving.

But first a key distinction. This would not be a performance buta performing profile. The change in terminology signals a changefrom essentially static and written job descriptions to a more fluid,


dynamic, and open-ended database. The aim is to shift the focusfrom job parts to job process, from passive and retroactive descrip-tions to active and proactive compilations updated by ongoingemployee monitoring. Overall it compels a more self-conscious andself-reflective review of work dynamics.

Compiling a Performing Profile

Here are some of the options workers can choose from to facilitatesuch self-tracking and self-evaluation:

• A visual record to supplement the written version of employeesin motion

• Daily and weekly calendars combed to generate patterns ofmovement, meetings, and activities

• Communications and conversations (e-mail, letters, phonecalls, and messages) mined to identify directional flow andimpasse

• Configurations drawn of interpersonal and interfacing net-working relations

• Entries in a daily work journal reflecting self-progress andobstacles to work performance and satisfaction examined

In effect, the performing profile would apply time and motionstudy to job dynamics and help create an audiovisual record of thetotal work process. It would be both more objective and more sub-jective, generic and individualized. Situated in real time and space,infused with thought and judgment, the performing profile wouldmirror not just the job but its flow, not just its outcomes but itsimpacts. Moreover, because it would be basically self-compiled, itwould also be a self-evaluation tool.

Matrix Database

What would such an amplified job database contain? A perform-ing profile, unlike static job descriptions or unilateral managerial

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directives, is interactive, reciprocal, evolving, and goal-driven. Inother words, from the outset it is set up as a workforce action agenda—it identifies the key elements of the performance environment forboth worker and manager and structures the shared developmentof their continuous development. Minimally there are four suchongoing interfaces for each member of a job and work change part-nership summed up and itemized in Tables 8 and 9.

Finally, what benefits would profiling produce as a self-evaluationtool and process? The most obvious gain for employees is that itwould be total, candid, and individualized. It would capture the jobin its entirety. It would be each employee’s equivalent of the bigpicture. Then, too, the profile would tell the truth, the whole truth,and nothing but the truth about the job. It would identify what ischallenging, tough, and frustrating. It would stress how critical sup-portive bosses are, the endless negotiations of teams, and thenature of job satisfaction. Unexpectedly, perhaps, it would strike aconfessional note by suggesting the extent to which problems areoften self-created—Pogo’s familiar conclusion: “We have met theenemy and he is us.” Finally, the individualized profile of strengthsand areas of improvement would be positioned within the contextof the optimum performance of each specific job or position.Employees could thus perceive the extent to which they are alignedor not with that template and with company goals, which wouldmake it possible for them to take corrective action to bring theirperformance more in line with that optimum center and with opti-mum company performance.

The performing profile also benefits supervisors. At the least, itwould expand their knowledge base and focus their intervention.Supervisors would learn more not only about the dynamics of eachjob and how it is perceived but also about what corrections arebeing contemplated in what areas at what points. The supervisorswould thus be cast into a responding rather than a directive role.Instead of always telling employees what they must do, they could



TABLE 8 • PERFORMING PROFILE (WORKER AGENDA)

RECORDING MEANS, MODES, CATEGORY PROCESSES AND SOURCES

Work flow Time and motion Observationmonitoring

Interpersonal Fellow workers Calendarfactors and customers

Communication Job-related conversations Letters, e-mail, phone

Thought and Mental motivation Job journaljudgment

Job satisfaction Giving and getting Feedback

Training Incremental gains HR workshopsand change

TABLE 9 • PERFORMING PROFILE (MANAGER AGENDA)

CATEGORY WORK GOALS WORK CHANGE

Daily activities Increase worker input Implement worker changes

Interaction Coach, not boss Support worker growth

Communication Listen better Encourage worker reflection

Thinking and Become more Encourage workerdeciding self-critical self-evaluation

Job satisfaction Develop interpersonal Give and getskills

Training Develop work profiling Fuse job and evaluation

function as coaches—supporting, redirecting, and enriching theiremployees’ change plans.

Contrast with Job Descriptions

Unlike job descriptions, which are static and sequential, profiling isinclusively circular, continuous, and holistic. It is essentially a jobnarrative. It records in moving pictures worker and work, thoughtand action, process and outcomes. Above all, it measures thecapacity of each employee to be self-defining. It requires employ-ees to demonstrate the extent of their self-management skills byidentifying ways to improve productivity and performance. Indeed,it makes it possible for the involvement and contributions of super-visors to function at a higher level of employee awareness and jobanalysis. Supervisors can tap their knowledge of the performanceof other employees doing the same or related jobs and raise ques-tions about the completeness of the profile as well as the sugges-tions for improvement. And the range of this managerial expertiseis now tapped in the critical tasks of establishing the job template,its performance centrality, and above all its optimum definition. Tobe sure, in the new environment those discussions are not unilateralbut collaborative, evolving and not imposed. With this new alliance,performance outcomes are more likely to take hold because theyare shared, corroborative, and mutually informed.

Implementation would be enhanced by a buddy system. Pairingoff would involve each partner shadowing and observing the otherwhile working. As a reality check, HR in turn could observe theentire process and make suggestions. Initial results and patternswould be reviewed for any midcourse corrections. Partnering withsomeone in another division or with a different job may be moreeasily negotiated and less of an obstacle than initially imagined. Infact, employees may find the process richer because of it. Most crit-ical, it anticipates and prepares the way for a new partneringarrangement with supervisors. Nonetheless, the new process maybe greeted with undisguised resentment and even anger.


NEW EVALUATION ROLE OF MANAGERS

Many supervisors may believe that half or more of their employeeslack the intelligence or self-worth to undertake such a self-criticaljourney. On the contrary, they need to be told what to do, and insome cases read the riot act. In addition, many supervisors may befearful that the way this new system is designed, they will becomeincreasingly superfluous. A minimum-wage clerk could take careof compiling the profiles, and a software program could generatethe recommendations. A few might even warn as a parting shotthat as production targets are not met, they would have to be calledback at the last minute to straighten everything out and put it allback on track.

But the most powerful persuaders in the final analysis may turnout to be the final performing composites themselves, combinedwith the promise of a new partnering relationship between super-visors and employees, where the whole may be greater than the sumof its parts. Indeed, in large part the profiling pattern can offer suchrange and focus because the supervisory role is built into the eval-uating process, only now totally shared. It also facilitates the man-agerial role of establishing a nexus between horizontal interfacesand vertical alignment. Individual and company goals are in sync.Aggregating divisional profiles, supervisors could review perfor-mance in multidimensional and optimum terms. And employeeswho are in charge of managing and achieving their own individualproductivity goals would be aligned with the guidance of theirsupervisors to company objectives.

The reason performing can powerfully drive performance isthat it dramatizes and personalizes process. Profiling is insistentlyself-focused. In the process, it makes the job less mechanical andpredictable. It opens it up to review and reconfiguration. It investshow one thinks one’s way through work with more self-consciousprecision and decision. It enables employees not only to see them-selves on their own but also with others, and thus offers the inter-face of interpersonal relations. When compiled, it provides a more


current, accurate, and in-depth profile of work to new applicants.Above all, it restores the job to the one doing it and invests theholder’s decisions to make changes with intelligence and initiative.Finally, profiling drives supervisory role change.

Each manager, far from being diminished, now leads andcoaches a unit that ideally miniaturizes the whole. The supervisorbears the key double burden of alignment and optimum perfor-mance. Without their knowledgeable input, coherence and sharedpurpose might be missing. As a result, managers may now moreresemble middle-level CEOs who display the wise behaviors of theTaoist proverb: “When the leaders lead well, the people think theydid it themselves.” In this case, they both did.

EVALUATING THE EVALUATION OF TRAINING

Most trainers are good at what they do. Their evaluations at theend of a workshop are consistently high. And for good reason.They typically design solid and well-paced workshops, nicely mixlecture and exercises, and provide handouts both to illustrate andto take away for later review. Above all, the presenters are experi-enced and effective. They are adept about adapting their work todifferent audiences or group chemistry. They know how to handledeflective or argumentative employees. But one area even thebest-designed course and the most effective trainers cannot over-come: the application of the training.

All trainers will concede that the real evaluation is not the rat-ing of the training but its on-the-job implementation. But compa-nies generally resist the proposals by HR or trainers for such fol-low-up. Why? Many reasons. They believe many outside trainingorganizations primarily want to increase their billables (which isoften the case). They also believe that supervisors have beenentrusted with that follow-up and they would be undermined if thetrainers performed such managerial roles. (Unfortunately, supervi-sors often do not take the basic course their direct reports take and


hence do not know what needs to be followed up.) Another objec-tion is that trainers may generate the expectation that employeesneed to have their hands held and cannot be trusted to implementcourse objectives on their own. That would incur an expensivedependency the company wishes to avoid.

Given such responses, what can trainers do? Obviously, ifemployers do not wish to protect their investment in training andrecognize the value of follow-up evaluation, trainers have to findenterprising ways of crossing the no-man’s-land of implementation.Here are some tried and tested strategies as well as a few new ones.

New Training Design Options

One strategy is a time option. Workshops should not always becompressed into one or two hours or days but spaced over time.Content would be modular and set up in stages. Although eachstage would be followed by the next, they would be separated by anintermediate period for testing, evaluating, and reporting backchanges. Such review should not be quick, cursory, undocumented,or merely anecdotal. Instead, extensive debriefing and feedbackwould be presented before and at the second stage of the work-shop. Analysis and discussion would focus on finding a consensusof implementation problems, which also may surface during thenext stage. To be sure, that alters the workshop dynamics. It intro-duces a new partnership, which some trainers may have difficultyaccepting because the workshop now has two sets of trainers.There may even be a power and agenda struggle. But if implemen-tation is to be made part of training, such juggling is as inevitableas it is productive.

When it’s impossible to schedule multiple sessions, anotheroption is to employ at least two evaluation forms. The first dealsimmediately with the workshop. The second is due two weeks laterand involves implementation evaluation. Both entries are recordedon the same form, which is set up as a scorecard to identify whatworked and what didn’t, and what adjustments had to be made and


why. To ensure return of the form, trainers can let attendees knowthat the attendance sheet signifying that they have successfully com-pleted the workshop will not be turned in without the later entries.

Follow-up

Still another technique is telephone or e-mail follow-up. Everyoneneeds to know they will be contacted later on. It would be helpfulto provide guidelines for responses. Ideally, the trainer could alsoextend invitations for individual coaching sessions. This wouldallow for a discussion of particular problems with advice soughtand given. If such exchanges take place, the trainer should takenotes and use them, perhaps, to alter workshop design.

Follow-up can be customized. To the standard evaluation formadd a proactive section to solicit what students believe to be themajor problem they will face in implementing the training.Subsequent contact then should be focused on matching problemidentification with actual problem solutions.

Finally, most organizations have a regular newsletter. A monthlycolumn can feature the follow-up feedback from members of theworkshop. That should include implementation success stories andhow employees are advancing company-wide goals.

In short, two feedback continua need to be created. Oneinvolves fusing implementation with training. The other involvescreating ongoing versions of all workshops to report the develop-ment of best practices of creative adaptation. Whether or not thecompany appreciates the value-added dimension of evaluatingimplementation of training, instructional designers and presenterswho provide such all-important linkages of continuity function notonly as professional trainers but also as allies of HR.

It is perhaps regrettable that trainers have to be devious to pre-serve their integrity. Those who authorize the training should rec-ognize and honor trainers whose professionalism requires nothingless than the knowledge that their effectiveness is reflected in ulti-mate terms—the improved performance of those they train.


REEVALUATING TEAMS TO RETAIN INDIVIDUALITY

The dominant configuration of the current work environment is team-ing, and its influence is pervasive and company-wide. Assessmentof someone’s capacity to be a team player usually determines hir-ing, retention, and promotion. In fact, a significant portion of train-ing programs includes conflict resolution, negotiating skills, andvaluing and managing diversity. And managers separately receiveinstruction on how to be effective team leaders, facilitators, andmentors and coaches. Finally, the rallying cry of team spirit andcoherence has replaced the vision of the company as a caring andtight-knit family. But although teams now enjoy the status of moth-erhood and apple pie, improving team performance may havereached the point of diminishing returns. Does a tight identity pre-clude or limit a team’s capacity for creative problem solving and forinnovation?

Teams are made up of two fundamental types of employees:loners and joiners—solitary go-it-alone rugged individualists andgroup-oriented go-along belongers. Their most difficult and impor-tant challenge is to persuade independent loners and dependentjoiners to become interdependent team members. That process isnever finished. New members join and require a reenactment ofthe original fusion. But often what emerges is not a new reflectionof the new mix but basically the same team identity. The change hasnot produced change. Often even external challenges do not alterteam cohesion and identity. No reconfiguration occurs. In short,the evaluation of how to achieve greater team productivity and cre-ativity may have fallen short of addressing what may be the built-in current limits of teams to generate such improvements. Teamsthemselves often possess inherent downsides and blindsides.

Team Downsides

The most obvious and distressing downsides of teamwork are lock-step and groupthink. Ironically, harmonizing has been so effective


that many teams have developed a unique and successful tool kitthat defines both their distinction and their limitation. Indeed, a teammay become so cocky and predictable that it automatically shiftsinto its favorite problem-solving mode regardless of the challenge.The net result is that teams may be both the celebrants and prison-ers of their own success. Trotting out the favorite engine of recur-rent identity, teams often display the kind of knee-jerk responsesthat preclude innovation. Such limitations typically bypass thedetection of team evaluation. Performance is usually factored intothe individual evaluation of a team’s members and leaders. Theteam itself is rarely scrutinized and critiqued, let alone comparedand contrasted with the performance of other in-house teams. As aresult, the comparative benchmarks of team performance are notpart of data and thus metrics.

Equally serious are the limitations that stem not so much fromgroup uniformity as from the nature of the membership. Typicallybecause of workforce reductions and retention problems, manyteams may not be up to par in numbers or quality. New membersmay lack the basic skill sets earlier ones had. Such team unevennessis often dispiriting and may be beyond the compensatory efforts oftraining. Finally, most disturbing of all, team cohesion may exact aprice. It may prematurely force strong individuals to fit in and thusmute their opinions or jeopardize their ability to contribute tohigher-level performance. It also may leave intact and unchal-lenged the overly enthusiastic joiners and eager beavers.

Given these threats to team effectiveness, what appears to beneeded now is to develop a new approach to teaming. Current in-house team training principles and processes, which have evolvedover the years, should not be abandoned. But for their value to beretained, they need to be recast and nested within a new model.That in turn may require redefining team development as individ-ual development, imparting one-of-a-kind configurations to eachteam.


Redefining Team Development

Typically, teams combine team and individual development. Farfrom being at odds, the two halves of an evolving whole are per-ceived not as alternatives but versions of each other. But ratherthan viewing individuality as an obstacle to team cohesion, weshould regard it as an avenue. In short, far from being suppressedor undernourished, individuality would find its ultimate identityand fulfillment in group identity. Teams need to be individualized.

But for that model to take hold, a number of conceptual shiftsare required. The first would be to delay the formation of team sol-idarity and instead concentrate on identifying the different natureof individuality of both independent loners and dependent joiners.That would establish and benchmark team building from the out-set as based not on similarity but on difference: strong individualswho might resist teaming and those who may be too eager to join.The next stage is to minister separately to the needs of each type.Strong loners have to be persuaded that interpersonal team rela-tionships—far from smothering or deflecting their individuality—constitute the means for extending their difference and develop-ment. Eager beavers need the opposite reassurance. They need toperceive the team environment as the special way to build up inde-pendence of thought and character. Third, the two groups thenneed to be brought together as a team. The standard and familiartraining techniques of group dynamics would be tapped butfocused on a new outcome: the capacity of interpersonal relationsto both support and strengthen not only team definition but indi-vidual definition as well.

That new shift of focus from the group to the individual is jus-tified throughout by the rationale that the group offers a degree ofindividual development not possible for someone working alone.The team acts as catalyst and multiplier. In addition, teaming isnow perceived as a unique means to provide thresholds for growth


that are tailored to the individual members. The final step is toevaluate group performance as the degree to which the team nowfacilitates the development of its members and also how such indi-vidual growth shapes the nature of the interaction and contributionof both the team and its individual members.

Individual and team performance would thus be made one.Individual development would be made part of the larger dynamicof interdependent team development. Above all, the primaryemphasis on each individual would be reinforced by granting eachmember the exercise of a veto to stop and revisit. Individuality thuswould never be erased, subdued, or silenced. The team would beredefined as the optimum ensurer, restorer, and elevator of individ-uality. Over time that would contribute to team capacity to developalternative and divergent problem-solving techniques and to pur-sue innovation.

But obviously a double issue remains: application and access.How would instructional designers and human performance tech-nology professionals accommodate this new multiple focus? Andhow would they do so with a moving target? After all, the descrip-tion addresses team formation as a new venture, but most teamsalready exist and are in motion. One suggestion is to employ amechanism that is currently missing and that would put teams onpause, provide access, and render group process as a series of trans-parent stills for examination. The mechanism would be a new teamevaluation form and process designed to capture and measure thecontribution of individual growth to team growth.

Double Growth Factor

A double growth factor would thus be routinely assessed. Eachteam member would be reviewed as to individual development andthen how that development contributed to team performance.Cause and effect, source and end result, would be not only clear butalso intertwined. Above all, the responsibility for individual devel-opment and its alignment with team development in the final


analysis belongs to the team itself. The degree to which each teamassumes and is successful in applying that internal role would pro-vide the missing external evaluative benchmarks for company-wideassessment. Undertaken four times a year, the evaluations wouldbe aggregated upward to measure changes in overall and company-wide team performances and to generate trainer feedback for mid-course design corrections, if any.

COMMENTARY

Implicit throughout this chapter has been a larger ideological issue.All acknowledge the capacity of overseas employees, especiallyAsians, to work in groups. After all, it is part of their culture. Butapproaching teaming from the point of view of individuality notonly plays to the distinctive strength of Western culture, it alsokeeps alive the prospect that this kind of teamwork grants theUnited States a new and future competitive lease on life. In addi-tion, it may temper the current wholesale overseas outsourcing andpreclude obediently going down an alien road of group cohesionand emulating a kind of workforce identity that historically is atodds with Western civilization. Revaluing and reconstructing team-work may provide a new way to tap the traditional U.S. differenceof individuality as the unique way of maintaining our global com-petitive edge and advantage.


All training follows the same paradoxical rhythm. It combines reas-surance with change, affirmation of the status quo with incremen-tal advances—in short, it straddles present and future. It is thuspersuasive, coaxing the now and the given to include more—andmore that is different—beyond its original benchmark position.But venturing forth from comfort zones is typically eased by offer-ing only modest and digestible bites. However, the pressing issuenow is change management. Indeed, the need for that larger com-petence has led to questioning whether incremental gains are com-prehensive enough and sufficient to provide catch-up, let alone toget ahead of the game. Then, too, the expectation is that engagingand mastering discontinuity may also bring the workforce closer tothe threshold of creativity.

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TRANSITION TRAINING

But as in all training, the bold needs to be anchored in the familiar.So the initial search, then, is always for what is in-house—existingexamples of change management and creativity—as well as whataffects the entire workforce. In other words, what stimulates cre-ativity should be sufficiently mainstream that if innovation doesnot occur right away, there is still the consolation of mastery. Wemight call this workforce management of changing change.

Innovative Types

Who, then, are the most innovative types? Invariably, three groupsappear. The first is made up of entrepreneurs. These perpetualmotion and restless start-up protean types live on the edge ofchange. Their career path is measured not so much by how manyjobs they have had but by how many businesses they have created.They generate unlimited variations on a theme, exhibit spin-offthinking, and often display the uncanny ability to stay ahead of thepack. Or as Wayne Gretzky claimed: “I skate to where the puck isgoing to be, not to where it is.” They are a marvel and often exhaust-ing to be around.

The second group is made up of those managerial coacheswhose stock and trade is challenging workers to change. Theirvalue resides in their ability to read signs, decipher the handwritingon the wall, and operate as early warning and opportunity agentsto those they mentor. Their success is always reciprocal.

Finally, there are all the exceptional professionals and projectmanagers found in all organizations and all sectors who are rou-tinely transformational and transactional. They are endless advo-cates of training and unlearning, finding collaborative ways ofdoing things differently, and endorsing leap-frogging: “While weare catching up, let us also get ahead.”


Common Innovation QualitiesWhat characteristics do the three innovative types have in common?

• Living and thinking ahead of their time

• Being impatient with, even having disdain for current paradigms

• Always negotiating change—one state to another

• Having a keen sense of the dynamics of implementation—realitychecks of scenario and simulation

• Imagining and creating what did not exist before

• Being inclusive, integrative, and collaborative

• Patchwork cobbling—always putting together holistically whatis separate

• Thriving on and managing risk and flux

Shared Innovation DynamicsWhat stirs such innovative types? Do some special contexts, condi-tions, and cultures not only match but spur their creativity? If westep back and observe their performance, what dynamics emergeas norms? Several become apparent:

• Their goals are always moving targets.

• Performance evaluations correspondingly have to occur moreoften, sometimes daily.

• Midcourse corrections are regular adjustments.

• Job descriptions are regularly exceeded and outdated.

• Crossover operations and integration are routine.

• Nothing and no one remains intact.

Such workforce impacts are so far beyond the norm that eventhe standard and familiar answer of change addresses only symp-toms and not causes, business-as-usual practices and not basic

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assumptions. Perhaps what is needed is a deeper definition ofchange—one that engages not just branch but also root and aboveall directly reflects the new everyday working reality of employees.

Transition as Creativity

The standard expectation is that when dislocation or disruptionoccurs, it will be both temporary and nonrecurrent. It is a singularevent that happens every once in a while, but if we are just patientand stoical enough, everything will return to the way it was. Afterall, cycles of ups and downs are familiar and inevitable. But sup-pose a transition lasts a very long time, much longer than previoustransitions? Or worse, suppose the transition finally gives way notto reassuring and familiar stability but to another transition? Andfurther that the second transition is then replaced by another andstill another, and so on and on? What then?

When that happens often enough and lasts long enough thattransition and not stability becomes the norm, then we confront theparadox of continuous discontinuity. The only problem is that wehave not been trained to recognize, let alone accept and engage,transition as a permanent and recurrent reality. Instead, we wor-ship the absolute god of stability.

But what if instead one were to acquire another outlook entirely?Perceive transition as not the exception but the rule? With suchexpectations, we would not have to develop surprise-free forecasts.Surprise would rise every day with the sun. Rather than avoidingchange or running away from threats of novelty, we would regardchange as a daily occurrence. We might even welcome it as a newconstant, not an occasional variable. Above all, transition wouldnormalize continuous improvement as the minimum response ofkeeping up with ongoingness. It would also stir innovation to be thenew version of incremental gains.

Transition Training for the Workforce

We need to provide transition training for the entire workforce.But how? Three immediate directions surface. First, consideration


should be given to creating a special and separate workshop on tran-sition as a common orientation for all new hires at all levels. It wouldextend the typical discussion of company values to include companyoperating assumptions. The conventional statement of “This is howwe do things around here” has to be supplemented by “This is whywe have to do those things this way.” Performance expectations thuswould be imbedded in the metrics of the company’s operational real-ity. Second, mission and vision statements should be reviewed todetermine to what extent (if at all) they embody the norm of transi-tion and the performance expectations associated with workforcereality. Third, employing transition as an overlay and not an over-haul, all training offerings should be reviewed to determine to whatextent they support both the continuous and disruptive nature oftransition. Where lacking, a healthy dose of the temporary may haveto be injected. These measures would embody the new principle thatall performance is a work in progress. There are no longer any finalgoals. The endgame has become the ongoing game.

Persuading employees to embrace transition as a permanentcondition of daily work may be eased by developing and offering ataxonomy of transition in the form of a performance template.Although additions and supplements can be encouraged, Table 10can serve as common ground.

Trust is based on truth. In this instance, it requires telling thetruth about the new reality of work. That, in turn, needs to be fol-lowed by the various ways new performance expectations and eval-uation metrics are being shaped and driven by the new norm oftransition. Far from shrinking from the challenge, the workforcenot only may welcome the truth of what is in fact their familiardaily reality, it may also bring new mastery and creativity to thereality of permanent change.

DIAGNOSTICALLY DRIVEN TRAINING

The current process of selecting training topics focuses essentiallyon what the company believes it and its employees need to succeed


together. Relatively little attention is paid to the cognitive psychol-ogy of employees, their intrapersonal and interpersonal receptivity,or the range, actual and potential, of their intelligence and abilityto grasp and implement the training. The current emphasis on e-learning technology and cost savings deals mostly with the exter-nals of training. It generally leaves untouched the question ofassessing and defining the capacity of those trained to contribute totheir training.

In other words, training may be guilty of the old myopia offocusing on the business rather than on the customer. Instead, itneeds to balance what it is offering with how it is being perceivedand received. That step would also accommodate a shift from theevaluation of the training and its implementation to the transfor-mation of the employee trained.

Such a focus would include another implementation evaluationtoo often also ignored: the degree to which the training is inter-nalized—that is, the extent to which not only the work changesproductively but also the employee is altered habitually. In short,


TABLE 10 • TAXONOMY OF TRANSITION

CATEGORY PAST PRESENT FUTURE

Goals Given Stretch Embryonic

Evaluation Annual Multiple Daily

Tasks Singular Multitasking Crossover

Focus Divisional Team Interoperable

Structure Vertical Horizontal Intersecting

Leadership Hierarchical Shared Diffused

Innovation Limited Accessible Required

training needs to be preceded, shaped, and driven by employeedata. It needs to be targeted.

Happily, a number of diagnostic tools are available, rangingfrom traditional to innovative. Training has to catch up and be drivenby the diagnostics of how we sell and serve (marketing), how werelate (human resources dynamics), and how we think (cognitivepsychology). Some traditional tools, although tried and proven,generally have been untapped or applied to training design, andsome psychologically based tools include team as well as individualdevelopment. Another, the theory of multiple intelligence (althougharound for more than twenty years), has only recently captured theattention of instructional designers in business. In other words, thestate of the art of creating the learning management system (LMS)can be advanced by creating state-of-the-art learning managementdiagnostics (LMD) at the same time.

Tools of Learning Management Diagnostics

Training could benefit immediately, significantly, and obviouslyfrom the external and extensive knowledge of customer and mar-ket behaviors. Every training program should employ the overlayof customer knowledge and service. Whatever the specific trainingsubject, the customer would be a recurrent—almost obsessive—generic focus. Regardless of job title, job description, or customerproximity, every employee would have access to a dynamic profileof customers who use the company’s product or service. The prin-cipal form that dynamic profile would take is that of simulation,especially enhanced by role-playing and storytelling. Indeed, thecombination of the three generally has been found to be the mosteffective mode of communication and training. Simulation, role-playing, and storytelling have even proved to be invaluable in testingnew products and services in terms of customer appeal and purchase.All training would thus feature the demographics and sociology ofmarketing to the extent that every employee in every training pro-gram would be customer-driven.


Another key diagnostic that has been used for quite some timeby human resources, in the training arena specifically, is a series ofpsychological assessment tools. CPP publishes a number of them,including the well-known Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®)instrument, the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI),the CPI 260® and CPI™ 434 instruments for leadership develop-ment, and others, as well as career guidance through the StrongInterest Inventory® instrument. The MBTI instrument, a develop-ment tool for helping individuals understand personality type, alsohas a team-building program. The concept is to administer theassessment to each team member and thereby generate the prefer-ences and profiles of the entire team. So armed and informed, com-munication and teamwork can be improved, and the negotiationand resolution of conflicts and differences can be made more man-ageable. Once again, the gain is twofold and synergistic: both thework process and the worker, by being more closely aligned withtask and team dynamics, enjoy greater productivity. The adage ofworking smarter rather than harder finds perhaps its major advo-cate in such diagnostically driven training.

Multiple Intelligence

The concept of multiple intelligence (MI), already mentionedbriefly, is seldom used and generally has not been applied totraining design. It was developed by Howard Gardner of Harvardand presented initially in his book Frames of Mind (1983).Gardner basically argued that intelligence is neither confined tonor measurable by a single kind of intelligence (the literacy ofreading and writing). Rather, there are many intelligences. Heoriginally designated seven, then added an eighth a decade later.Although originally and subsequently mostly taken up by educa-tors and school textbook publishers, MI has the potential by itselfand allied with the other traditional and psychological assess-ments to offer the most powerful training diagnostics availabletoday to business.


Gardner currently posits these eight intelligences: Linguistic,Bodily, Spatial, Musical, Mathematical, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal,and Naturalist. This view of intelligence is trackable and traceableas the basic learning pathways of the brain. In fact, when cognitiveresearchers complete their total mapping of the brain, the resultsand applications may rival that of cracking the genetic code. Butthe critical point for the discussion here is the fusion of physiology(brain) and psychology (cognition). Linking human thinking andlearning, Gardner claims that MI characterizes not just individualor social behaviors but those of the human species itself. In otherwords, MI goes way beyond learning styles or preferences and evennatural or developed gifts or talents. It also transcends historicaldifferentiation. It is what all humans possess by virtue of beinghuman. Indeed, that starting point enables Gardner to present thegeneral operating laws of MI, which may also be those of trainingas well.

The range of MI varies with each individual. The extent anddepth of that range is determined by genetics, environment, anduse. The range of MI is not fixed or predetermined. It can beexpanded by education, exposure, and direction. Goals and envi-ronment can guide, stimulate, and even determine the configura-tion of intelligences chosen or favored. But control is never total,because MI operates with a will and direction of its own.

For goals to be optimal, they should always combine the smalland the big, the immediate and the long term. MI is brought morefully into play, mobilized, and energized by task completion andtask extension, accomplishment and incompletion. MI is alsostirred when the focus is on uncovering rather than covering mate-rials or topics. Basic ideas and concepts—square-one thinking orfirst-cause thinking—stimulate the synergistic interplay betweenMI and problem solving. It is particularly responsive to the multi-ple challenges of constructing scenarios, simulations, case studies,portfolios, and the like—in short, to artificial and futuristic reali-ties. Finally, the ultimate value of MI may be to serve, in Gardner’sterms, as “the optimal taxonomy of human capacities.”


A Series of Multiple SmartsTo many, this discussion of multiple intelligence may appear tooacademic and removed from the urgencies of training to have anypractical value. Perhaps MI can become less distant if it is per-ceived not only as a new way of revisiting human potential but alsoas a series of multiple smarts. What Gardner is really saying is thatas a species we always exceed at any given point in time the defini-tion of who we are, what we know, and what we can learn. There isthus a need to tap and direct each of the eight intelligences so thatthey are rendered and extended in terms of immediate growth andlong-term expectation.

What may be more helpful is to translate and animate multipleintelligences into action applications. The eight could be renderedas follows: word-smart, body movement adept, spatially agile,musically facile, math-sequenced, personally and interpersonallysavvy, and environmentally sensitive. In addition, clustering pre-serves and enriches the dynamics of the process. Operationally, oneintelligence may dominate, but it often taps or engages others in asupport capacity to address a task or solve a problem. The processthus features primary, secondary, and even tertiary intelligences allactivated by the nature and complexity of the task on one hand,and by the interactivity of smarts within the problem solver on theother. Indeed, the more formidable or unfamiliar the challenge, themore resourceful and varied the team of intelligences is marshaled.To be sure, an important and recurrent goal of training is to enlargeand differentiate the range of tools in the toolbox. But the key firststep of diagnostics still has to be taken.

Assessing MI Range and PotentialAll employees need to be assessed as to their MI range and poten-tial. To tie together the improvement potential of both work andworker, the assessment should be linked to and ultimately madepart of the job description. Such data would then be used not only to shape the design of training but also to benchmark growthand realization of potential. Training design also should factor in


Gardner’s key guidelines for optimum stimulation and synergy. Inother words, training design would always incorporate immediateand long-term goals, be intellectually rigorous and focus on gov-erning ideas and first causes, be practical and visionary at the sametime, and offer the multiple challenges of simulation and scenario.

Such a revised and enlarged scope of training would yield out-comes that are both work and worker specific. What is done betterwould always be fused with what in fact drives such improvement:the application not only of more intelligence but also of more intel-ligences. Suddenly productivity would no longer be limited to a sin-gular or narrow definition of the work task or process, and workersthemselves would no longer be confined to singular intelligence.By tying together productivity and human potential, trainers maybe able to tap a whole new vein of learning.

STRETCH TRAINING FOR MANAGERS AS COACHES

Increasingly, managers are serving as coaches or mentors. The dis-tinction offered is to be a guide on the side rather than a sage onthe stage. Although time-consuming, the request makes sense. It isindividualized, addresses resource building of team members, andhopefully advances their contributions. But if current practices ofexecutive coaching are a model, coaching is not always reassuring.Frequently, coaches prod and push leaders to stretch, often beyondtheir comfort zones. When resistance occurs, the counterargumentis that future stretch and strain are the antidotes to future shock.Taking the time to think ahead is always better than hurrying tocatch up. Besides, the fall-back position of crisis management is acontradiction in terms. Such exchanges are a form of stretch train-ing and can help managers become more effective mentors.

Coaching Exercises

Although the following list of ten coaching exercises is not offeredas a universal system, it may be sufficiently generic for general


application. The goal is always the same: to recharge and surprisementors and mentees into being more creative and unfinished.These exercises, focusing on specific descriptors for each one, aredesigned to help managers stir and restart those they supervise.

• Be new. Being new is hard for workers—who typically spendmuch of their time feeling overwhelmed—to accept. But theworry is their becoming predictable, routine, and mechanical;worse, routinely predictable and mechanical. The persuasiveantidote is to sharpen the saw. The newness needed is notfamiliar or friendly. The key is to see the challenge differently,even obliquely, at an angle. It might be a recent arresting bookor article, the lens of a new manager, a difficult stockholder, afavorite professor. Suggest creating and maintaining an increas-ingly expanding folder labeled “The New.” Managers andworkers need to find their work interesting and even finallyelusive.

• Be big. The bigness required in this exercise is not the same asfocusing on the big picture, which again may be a regular pre-occupation. Rather this requires going back to square one andendowing basics with macro extent. That way origins emerge asbigger than life, their impacts as megatrends. Such biggerframeworks may be housed like a series of nested boxes in pasthistory. Or they may require stepping forward to redefine notonly the scope of competition—now worldwide—but driven bynew and more urgent agendas. What are your Chinese counter-parts thinking and contemplating? What is their big picture?Finally, the stretch of the ecological or the divine is often brac-ing and gives pause. But in all cases the key challenge of beingbigger is making vision mission.

• Be multiple. Success may often obscure limitation. Problem-solving kits have carried us through so often that their applica-tion is almost knee-jerk. Although such a single-minded focusshould not be abandoned—that might precipitate an identitycrisis—it should be supplemented, amplified, and multiplied.


One way is to get to know and master the methodologies ofother fields, and to observe and marvel at how they each recon-figure data, display solutions, and capture reality.

• Be contingent. Managers generally place a high value on know-ing all so as to make informed decisions and to avoid surprises.In the process they urge their staff to be independent and inter-dependent—to think on their own and as a team. But it alsomay be important to acknowledge that not everything is know-able or manageable and that leadership may sometimes have tobe less decisive and express itself in contingent and tentativeterms. To be sure, that may not be the popular or conventionalimage of leadership, but in many ways it may be a better modelto follow. Not being so totally sure of all that is going on, nottotally trusting the data, being somewhat uncertain of the hid-den impacts of decisions or new policies, far from appearingindecisive, may encourage contingency planning as a new norm.It also may bring new respect for uncertainty and ambiguity.

• Be quiet. Ways to wisdom and insight are often quiet. Turninga troubling problem over to the unconscious can lead to sur-prising inventiveness. Asking or empowering a problem tosolve itself is another road to solution. Stilling the constant in-your-face noise and urgency can often produce an intelligentstillness. Above all, embracing quiet may introduce workers toreflective inaction. You are not always indispensable. You don’talways have to make a decision—not now, maybe never. Indeed,sometimes the most important leadership act is attitudinal—remaining calm, confident, and committed. It conveys the quietand reassuring steadiness managers and leaders have to provide.

• Be integrative. Productivity gains between divisions are gener-ally greater than within divisions. But they are also tougher toachieve. Division heads tend to be excessively loyal and sepa-ratist in preserving their boundaries and budgets. Integrationhas to be modeled from the top. All have to embrace a constantnew doubleness: facing both inward and outward at the same


time. Whatever else managers may do, they remain the supremeintegrators—the connectors between parts, the bridgersbetween professionals, the aligners between top and bottom.Their obsessive question again and again is, “How is this linkedto _____?” Their view of the future of their company has tomimic the future itself by becoming increasingly symbiotic.

• Be empathetic. The request for managerial empathy is oftentotally misunderstood and resisted. It is wrongly perceived ascompromising being hard-nosed. Actually, it is a supreme formof crossover and stretch. It seeks to understand difference—thebehaviors, thinking, and values of those who are so far beyondyour own orbit of assumptions that they may appear to be aliensfrom outer space. But such appreciation follows the proverbialwisdom of walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. Neverunderestimate the substance of those who are not like you.

• Be inventive. Managers have to help make innovation a com-pany-wide goal for all. Incremental gains may be sufficient forsurvival but not enough for lasting growth. Innovation is grow-ing your own competition from within. It surfaces internally asa potentially new business or a totally new way of doing busi-ness. When it actually appears externally it is capable of puttingyou out of business or becoming an acquisition that could beyour lifeline. Managers have to make innovation an absolute—an expectation that has the same pervasive power as the nowamended catchall line of all job descriptions (brought to thefront if my recommendations are followed): do whatever ittakes to get the job done.

• Be flawless. Never underestimate the endgame—not the pointof sale but the promise of delivery. Pride should always precedeprofit. Quality is painstaking. Contrary to popular advice, youshould sweat the small stuff. One old teaching tale suggests thatif you want to learn from the master, watch the way he ties hisshoes. God is finally in the details. So execute flawlessly.


• Be ahead. In many ways this exercise encapsulates all the rest.It is no longer enough for managers to exist at the future’sboundary. They need to cross over and be embedded regularlyin its flux. To be students of the business now requires man-agers to become students of the future—its history and its ownfuture. Only by granting what lies ahead separate and intimi-dating substance and difference can the present acquire its cut-ting edge and offer the illusion of continuity. Managers have tocourt the future, set aside time every day to read the handwrit-ing on the wall, and require that all executive summaries be inthe form of scenarios and simulations. Managers who lookahead lead ahead.

COMMENTARY

Obviously this chapter is not definitive. Many other exercises couldbe added. But all coaching is payback. It honors how each of us hasbeen helped in turn along the way. It should also be self-applied.

Above all coaching is a change agent. It uniquely facilitates notonly stretch but also transformation—managers’ mentoring workmanagement.


U.S. workers are constantly on the stretch and routinely asked todo more with less—and they have succeeded. Steady increases inproductivity, profitability, and quality are being achieved even withdownsizing. Why? Basically, two reasons: global competition’s sharpedge and performance improvement training. As for the future, itseems all that is needed is more of the same: upping the ante andsustaining the learning. Right? Perhaps not.

Two problems, one practical, the other conceptual. The work-force may encounter the law of diminishing returns. It may not bepossible to reach increasingly competitive goals with fewer employ-ees and managers. In fact, the sign of a new substitution has alreadyappeared: companies are outsourcing to locations where wage dif-ferentials translate into immediate profits. Insourcing can achievethe same cost-cutting ends. Circuit City replaced its entire commis-sion-based sales force with fixed-pay employees at lower hourlywages. Others are following suit by replacing experienced andknowledgeable salespeople with clerks capable only of writing up

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orders. Customers have adjusted by becoming experts beforeentering the store.

No doubt more ingenious outsourcing and manipulative varia-tions will surface as companies seek to remain viable and competi-tive. Financial experts and HR professionals will attend confer-ences displaying the latest cost-saving schemes. But they’re stilllikely to find limits to doing more with less. A quartet can be cutback to a trio but it cannot perform music written for a quartet.

Can training pick up the slack and close the gap? Perhaps, butonly focused training—training backed up with knowledge aboutthose being trained. The proposed framework involves transforma-tion of the give-and-take relationship between work goals and roles.

GOALS AND ROLES

Traditionally, goals are elaborate, roles simply stated. Goals aremultiple, roles singular. Goals may alter or vary, but the roleremains the same. Moreover, goals and roles are not perceived aspossessing a dynamic or changing relationship; they are seen asreassuring reflections of each other. Ideally, they are a mirrormatch. A job title or role is linked with appropriate goals, whichessentially define that role. For example, performance evaluation isalways set against goal achievement and not role change. In short,goals rule. That is where the action is. Because the focus is alwayson the action side of the equation, the role is regarded as static andgiven. It remains intact and the same.

That focus made sense in the past. Goals were manageablebecause they were of a piece with the given role, and they wereachievable because they did not stretch beyond the role’s reach.And even when such efforts routinely did exceed the parameters ofboth goals and role, no one noticed or cried foul because the ploywas successful, and so no one needed to press inquiry or scrutinizemore closely. Attaboys and congratulations were the order of theday as cheerleading managers expressed confidence in future repli-


cation. But it can be argued that what made such achievements pos-sible was an unexamined and even undetected dynamic betweengoals and roles, and that when the nature of that secret interaction isknown and tapped, it can yield a model for more targeted trainingand performance improvement, even upgrades.

The job classification process is both clarifying and imprisoning.All jobs and job titles are acts of positioning, sandwiched betweenone above and one below. The pyramid dictates the pecking order.The detailed list of objectives that accompanies each job title estab-lishes its role parameters. When spillover occurs and is spotted aspart of the evaluation process, it is often interpreted as a basis forpromotion or reassignment of greater responsibility. But only thenis role change—usually a future one and not the one under exami-nation—contemplated as part of the goal achievement process. Inother words, attention is fixed on goals and not roles and hence ongoal change, not role change.

But as noted, times have changed. Not surprisingly, goals bearthe imprint of such changes. Although they are no longer the same,the job description preserves them in amber and gives the illusionof continuity. But an overview and analysis of the workplace andthe workforce reveals that goals have undergone at least five majorgeneric transformations:

• Goals have been stretched incrementally, even exponentially.

• Targets have been altered while still in flight.

• Alignment must now be both vertical and horizontal.

• Goals are constantly linked to structural and personnel cross-overs and cross-training.

• Goals must embrace the discontinuity of innovation.

Stretch

Most current incremental increases are without end. They mayoccur daily, and they are often not evenly spaced. Except for their

Goals and Roles of Managers and Leaders 167

constancy, they are not predictable in scope or degree. Like com-puter advances, they require constant updating and sometimesabrupt shifts brought about by paradigm changes. Constantly raisingthe bar, incremental stretch goals have become the new norm.

Moving Targets

Often even the incremental is not singular but multiple, fanlike andnot linear. Add-ons are affixed. Variations on threads are devel-oped. Direction is altered. Updating and upgrading meetings aremany and constant. The calendar has little or no white space left.The pace is breathless. Heads-up announcements regularly inter-rupt process. Evaluation occurs every Friday, sometimes daily ortied to specific dates so as to capture the goals of the week. Flightplans or repairs have to be undertaken while en route. All mustremain in motion. Everything is in a state of transition. Multitaskingis now a generic task for all. Everyone has had to become a juggler.

Alignment

Individual and team priorities are driven by alignment with divi-sional partners near and far, and with company objectives.Organizational flow systems are nested within the larger big pic-ture of vision and mission and serve as employee road maps ofcoincidence. But the priorities change, routinely and regularly. Forlarge companies, the challenge is how to rapidly change the direc-tion and momentum of an enormous battleship. Agility is whathelps Jack be nimble and quick.

Crossovers

Structural reconfigurations into more open and fluid forms andfunctions increase and hasten cross-training and job rotation. Inthe process, even the smallest cog in the machine becomes manycogs. The overall shape of an organization comes to resemble morea series of rivers flowing through it than a tower of mechanical


boxes. Accordingly, employee stretch goals become increasinglyfluid, open-ended, and unfinished. Every job becomes a variationon a theme, and every employee an artful dodger.

Innovation

Finally, all employees are asked to contemplate the discontinuity ofjob processes and functions. They are stirred to create alternativecost-saving and more productive ways of doing more with less.Every aspect of the process has to become grist for the mill of inno-vation. The assumption is that everything, broken or not, needs tobe fixed. Creativity is no longer the monopoly of R&D.

Although at any given time the press for innovation and allother changes may not be operating at once, sooner or later they allwill have an impact on the workforce. They have to because theyare driven by the unavoidable common impetus of competitionthat will not go away. As noted already, these transformations maycollectively be so daunting and intimidating as to require movingthe conventional last phrase of all job descriptions—“and do what-ever is necessary to accomplish the job”—to the first position. Sucha generic catchall presented from the start would at least serve as amore accurate and appropriate warning of what has becomeincreasingly undefined.

But the key obstacle to the application of this generic taxonomyis a mistaken focus on fixing or faulting only the fluxy goals. Whenthey are not met, the predictable explanation is that the objectivesexceeded the parameters of the job description as well as the skillsets required to succeed. But when success occurs, we are sodelighted that we give up being defensive but still fail to ask whyand how.

NEW GOALS CREATE NEW ROLES

So it is back to basics. Every goal houses the role needed to accom-plish it. If they are not in sync, employees regularly protest and


object to being unfairly judged. So they become territorial anddefensive and complain, “That is not in my job description.”Currently, that disparity is ignored by hard-pressed managers whorespond by snapping, “Welcome to the new world.” But what maybe overlooked and lost sight of is a symptomatic mismatch. The kindof transformation-driven goal changes required cannot be accom-plished without role changes. Goals still may rule, but roles trump.

The argument here is that the current achievement of changinggoals can only come about by changing roles. We have been sofixed on the goal side and its measurement and training that wehave failed to recognize that a secret reciprocity exists betweengoals and roles. Certain goal changes cannot be accomplished with-out role changes. Employees often have to shift into high gear andalter behaviors and attitudes to reach their more demanding goals.But by failing to understand and value that new dynamic betweengoals and roles, managers and trainers have not only ignored theremarkable growth potential of employees, they have also beenignorant of what is deeply at work in performance improvementand its evaluation. To overcome those limits and to develop a morecomprehensive and interactive basis for both training and assess-ment, two critical questions need to be answered: What kinds ofgoal changes require and even compel role changes? And whatkinds of role changes emerge?

Clearly, not all goal changes stir role changes. Some may be dif-ferent only in degree but not in kind. These may still be manage-able and achievable and thus may not require role change. But thefive factors cited earlier do necessitate new roles. The task now isone of dynamic linkages like the matched goal-role relationshipsshown in Table 11.

From these partnerships between goals and roles, two sets ofconclusions may be drawn. The first describes the essential changingand reciprocal dynamics between goals and roles; the second rede-fines the new job descriptions driven by role performance upgrading.

Most current training focuses on goal transformations and noton role changes. Most performance evaluations fail to factor in the


changing relationships between morphing goals and changing roles.Morphing goals cannot be met without changing the roles requiredto achieve the new objectives. Job descriptions create static expec-tations of a dynamic goal-role relationship and need to be totallyredone. The ultimate and cumulative impact of goal-role metrics isthe transformation of the workforce.

CORRECTIVES

The correctives are clear. Training has to pair goals and roles andthen link emerging roles to reach morphing goals. Performanceevaluation has to mirror and reinforce the training by measuringthe emergence of roles appropriate to goal attainment. Job descrip-tions have to be brought in line by spelling out the unfinishednature of “whatever it takes” as the highest and ruling priority.Finally, learning and human resource directors have to contem-plate that, given the transformation of performance goals and thecorresponding emergence of higher-level roles, the upgradingrequired is a matter of kind and not of degree.

When roles are reviewed, what dramatically emerges is a newworkforce definition of rank-and-file workers. Here, then, is the


TABLE 11 • GOAL–ROLE EXCHANGES

MORPHING GOALS CHANGING ROLES

Incremental Flexibility and stretch

Multiple Multitasking and entrepreneurial

Alignment Priorities, decisions, and corrections

Unfinished Open-ended

Reconfiguration Innovation and implementation

second set of conclusions. The roles compelled by morphing goalsare essentially managerial in nature. Employees not only have todo their work, they have to manage it. The level and kind of reflec-tion and evaluation formerly reserved for supervisors now arebeing exercised by those in the trenches. Monitoring, scheduling,and planning—traditional preserves of middle managers—now areroutinely carried out by the rank and file. Innovations of form orfunction are not lofty interventions introduced from above but created and accomplishable at the basic job level. New job de-scriptions have to be written for the emergence of the employee-manager. Goal-role exchanges have to become the new and futurefocus of training and evaluation. But their application has to berevised to develop employees not as workers but as managers.Such a dramatic change at the base reverberates throughout theentire organization and not only alters but also parallels the newgoal-role changes of managers and leaders. Collectively, they con-stitute the emerging workforce of the future.

THE MANAGER-LEADER HYBRID

As noted earlier, management and leadership are constantly juxta-posed. Most of the time it is a lopsided comparison designed not somuch to honor the differences between the two as to preserve andelevate the leader’s position. No wonder everyone wants to beleader and books on leadership far outnumber and outsell any onmanagement. In a typical three-ring circus of workers, managers,and leaders, the leaders always appear in the center ring. But asidefrom being a forced exercise of hype to make leaders look good atthe expense of managers, the comparison entails a number of seri-ous, pejorative, and perhaps unintended distortions.

The first is the way it imputes a rigid and myopic mind-set andlockstep process to managers that may ultimately be embarrassingto leaders. How are those limitations to be discarded, revised, ortrained out of managers on their journey to the top? Evidently it


fails, because some CEOs are criticized for behaving more likemanagers than the visionaries they are supposed to be, or worse, ofbeing micromanagers. But paralleling the two roles involves amore serious distortion: it obscures the current managerial roletransformation.

In successful organizations, managers take on many roles pre-viously considered the leaders’ exclusive arena. A discussion of tensuch transformations of managers is featured in Chapter 4. Areview of that list reveals the emergence of a new hybrid—the man-ager aggregated upward as leader. As suggested, organizational pro-ductivity owes its steady increase to the new manager-leader.

Emergence of Leadership Options

But how did that happen? Three factors: morphing goals, emergingroles, and the general restructuring of the goals and roles of man-agers. All three exist in tandem and require a brief reexaminationof the basic nature of the relationship between goals and roles.

Goals in job descriptions have been recognized as generallyappropriate to the job title role; above all, familiar and accomplish-able. Besides, if anything new surfaced, it went under the last line—“whatever it takes.” But gradually, some fixed managerial goalsbecame more mercurial and even chameleon-like. Workers andmanagers increasingly have become breathlessly involved in chas-ing their own tails—constantly playing catch-up. They have alsobecome nervously accustomed to tasks being perennially incom-plete and even out of reach. And yet, they have succeeded in reach-ing what may at first have appeared to be impossible goals. If thistrend is to continue, everything involved in goal attainment mustbe understood—and training reshaped accordingly. Specifically,learning and training have to be driven not solely by objectives butby the connection between task and talent. Formerly, tasks werelinked to roles and that was that. But with stretch goals and chang-ing environments, managers have had to shift into high gear tofunction in teams and even become team leaders.


This almost imperceptible transformation (described in Chap-ter 4) has made goals and roles somewhat like secret sharers. Asmanagers have assumed roles previously reserved for the top, hier-archy has been leveled. The distributed leadership vision has foundits realization in the new manager-leader. But to be effective, tradi-tional managerial training has to catch up and embody the dynamicsand metrics of goal-role synergy. The need now is to train managersfor their new leadership roles, rewrite the archaic job description,and finally figure out what to do with CEOs.

New CEO Agendas and Executive Composites

Typically, discussions of the future of leadership in general and ofCEOs in particular stress the need for new visions and goals.Although what that must include may vary significantly with dif-ferent organizational and sector priorities and urgencies, it willundoubtedly include globality, forecasting, information networks,and learning management systems, and most important, the pres-sure to integrate all of them.

But if such projections portend a substantial and even radicalchange in CEOs, should not who they are, where they are comingfrom, and where they are heading be as important as what they willhave to do? Should not new goals be linked to new roles?

FIVE NEW EXECUTIVE TITLES

The process has altered even the familiar executive acronym, withfive new C-level titles drawn from the alphabet soup of the future:CIO, CLO, GBO, CIC or CIA, and CIP.

Whether or not any of these prevail over time or appear offi-cially on the masthead, they do serve to identify and perhaps todefine the new dynamics of top leaders and why the new focus onrecasting goals and visions surfaced in the first place. Above all,they may demonstrate that the CEOs of the future, like the orga-nizations they lead, will not be singular but composite, not lone


rangers but a hybrid blend of diverse associates. In any case,exploring and examining each new pretender to the throne may tellus more about the seat of power than the current discussion of newgoals has yielded so far.

CIO as CEO

This top position of chief information officer is the creation ofinformation technology and systems. In some organizations theCIO is designated as CIT to signal and symbolize the degree towhich all business has become e-business. Indeed, all courses incurrent MBA programs are officially or unofficially e-courses todramatize the extent to which research and information sources areWeb based. In some instances the Internet serves as the only cur-rent library available.

The CIO is responsible for creating, maintaining, and structur-ing organizational data and information flow. The extent to whichthat is increasingly the lifeblood and circulatory system of compa-nies has determined the elevation of the director of IT to CIO.What also has pushed that position forward to the executive leveland even to the point of becoming the CEO is the addition of datadecisions. Embedding just-in-time and real-time data in all internaland external operations has brought new transparency and preci-sion to decision making, the key task of top-level executives.

CLO as CEO

The chief learning officer, whatever initial specialization the exec-utive comes from, is a generalist whose discipline and expertise isgeneric learning. The CLO creates, manages, and evaluates learn-ing management systems that operate vertically from top to bottom,cut horizontally across all divisional lines, and provide e-trainingavailable 24/7/365.

The CLO is the heir apparent to Senge’s learning organization.The immediate and ongoing principal task of the office is toincrease productivity, profitability, quality, customer satisfaction,


and market share through knowledge acquisition and manage-ment. The long-term goal is to help create and train the workforceof the future—and that visionary prospect alone nominates theCLO to be a CEO.

What also reinforces that equivalency is cost control–drivenassessment. CLOs constantly evaluate offerings to determinewhether they in fact are implemented by all across the board andbring about the desired degree of performance improvement. CLOsare ruled by ROI, as are in fact all CEOs.

GBO as CEO

The global business officer is an empire-building executive whooperates in two ways and directions simultaneously. First, the jobinvolves creating a miniature of the whole. Depending on existingstructures, it either serves as a global overlay over all operationsand levels or subsumes them all under a new international impera-tive. Second, it involves dramatizing the extent to which companiesenvision themselves and their future to be global in nature, scope,and focus. When those kinds of global reach combine and becomethe primary goal, the GBO may become the CEO.

But even as an intermediate position, the GBO is mission crit-ical. The GBO offers a center that is often lacking altogether oronly occasional and partial: a global mind-set. The task of the GBOis to facilitate the diffusion of that new ideology throughout theentire organization and to spell out the opportunities and chal-lenges of global markets and customers. As overseas numbersclimb and reach the point of matching or exceeding U.S. sales, andoverseas profit margins are greater than those of domestic opera-tions, the prospect of a GBO becoming CEO will proportionatelyincrease.

CIC or CIA as CEO

Progress is always incremental but it is not often holistic as well.Intellectual capital (IC) or intellectual assets (IA) qualify on both


counts. IC was developed initially by Skandia to bring more realis-tic criteria and greater precision and detail to the evaluation ofcompany assets. Book value and annual reports not only failed toreflect critical though intangible assets, in the process they also dis-torted both market capitalization investment and stock purchases.

But the correctives involved required a total conceptual over-haul, not just an overhaul of the financials. That involved factoringin both tangible and intangible assets such as human capital andR&D until all the parts summed up a new whole. As IC became theshaping structure of organizations, it seemed a natural progressionfor a CIC or CIA to become a CEO.

CIP as CEO

The title “chief innovation pusher” may appear whimsical at first,but what is behind it is instructive. Jacob Jaskov claims to be thefirst chief innovation pusher. Not accidentally, Jaskov is a futuristand active member of the Copenhagen Institute of Futures Studies.Indeed, he even suggests that his role is totally future-driven.

The essential thrust of his new title is innovation. He believescreativity will be so critical to future success that it is future-creating.The CIP thus will preside over a future time that will be so con-stantly and intensely new that as much as 90 percent of everythingmay appear different.

Reinforcing and accelerating that prospect will be “the Singu-larity,” a development that is projected to produce more progressin the first two decades of this century than in all previous periodscombined. Future shock may have to be redefined as future dis-placement. Past inventory will be replaced by future cornucopia.Innovation will be the front and back of change and may evenbecome its synonym. The company that redefines change as inno-vation will, according to Jaskov, inherit the future and ultimatelyreplace its CEO with a CIP.

In summary, here are the major alternative titles for CEO, andthe goals and gains that will shape and drive them:


• Chief information officer: information technology data anddecision systems

• Chief learning officer: knowledge acquisition and needs of thefuture workforce

• Global business officer: global competition and the need forworldwide operating systems

• Chief of intellectual capital (or intellectual assets): emphasis onother than financial assets and new integrated enterprises

• Chief innovation pusher: embrace of futuristic surprise and dis-connects so as to stir out-of-the-box creativity

There remains one final matter to discuss: How will all or anyof this come about? Are current CEOs less egocentric than thosein the past and therefore better able to share leadership? Havethey been differently educated or trained to recognize and bereceptive to these new executive-level trends and usurpations?

A Training Program for CEOs

When was the last time a training program for CEOs was offered?Evidently, everyone else needs it, but CEOs are finished learning—or that task has been turned over to a private or invisible executivecoach or trusted adviser. In other words, aside from the shock ofthe new and its future-driven executive titles, the comfort zone ofmost current CEOs would preclude wholesale adoption.

Once again gradualism rules the day. At least three less dra-matic and more gradual courses of action surface. The first involvesthe CEO as hybrid, the second an amplified CEO executive team,and the third a two-tiered executive layer, one traditional, the othertransitional.

CEO Hybrid

The CEO may in fact have come from one of the key new areas, orthe changing direction of the company may have compelled the


CEO to become a quick study. The CEO may be a woman or some-one born outside the United States or both and thus more reflectiveof the demographic and market shifts of the company. In any case,current CEOs have the option to choose a new partner identity andto exist as a hybrid before circumstances force such collaboration.

Executive Team Reconstituted

A CEO who prefers the old role may shift the need for change tothe rest of the executive team. Typically, that minimally consists ofa COO and CFO; sometimes also the head of HR and the head ofLegal. The latter may have been elevated to that level because ofmergers and acquisitions.

To that inner circle, all five of the new roles discussed in thepreceding section, or a selection of them, could be added. But itmay not be an easy fit. The new executives may be younger, cultur-ally more diverse, speak in technical terms or from different para-digms, and behave like young and impatient invaders from outerspace. Putting together this kind of top team is thus not unlike put-ting two very different families together and, the Brady bunchnotwithstanding, it is no easy or automatically successful task.

The CEO may have to become involved in conflict reductionand resolution—to calm the waters during the shakedown cruise aswell as exploit and direct the tensions toward shake-up. But sooneror later the company must forge a new and diverse executive teamwho are all on the same page. That may require a retreat. With this polymorphous group, it may require a retreat every threemonths—but it must be done.

Two-Tiered System

The prospect of such interpersonal turbulence as well as the jockey-ing for power and leverage may lead the CEO to pause. Traditionaland older members who have the CEO’s ear may heighten uncer-tainty. They may argue that these new titles and areas of expertise


are unproven, flashes in the pan, or advanced by and for obviousself-interest and self-promotion. They may ultimately suggest thatthese new areas can be subsumed under traditional operations andthus not incur the additional expenses of a new executive appoint-ment as well as its expensive staff. But a CEO with any vision at allwill hearken to the directions of the future.

The CEO will move toward compromise, creating a two-tieredexecutive team. One will be traditional, the other transitional. Likethe choices of Column A and Column B, they can exist in differentcombinations.

The CEO has a number of options: make the members of thenew top team equal, meet with them separately, and combine themonly for certain topics such as long-range planning. Or one teammay be elevated over the other, permanently or temporarily. Theymay even be set at odds with one another if the CEO assigns themboth the same task.

COMMENTARY

Whatever variations on the theme of future leadership are played,the position of CEO itself is now beset by the same forces ofchange buffeting the rest of the organization. Indeed, the firstorder of business may be to set the executive house in order as thethreshold for developing company-wide future plans. The chal-lenge now is that there are many new and eager would-be firsts.


Nothing is ever finished or done once and for all time. Nor iseven being current enough. What’s new inevitably has toinvolve what’s next. The future is no longer respectful oftime barriers; it crosses over at will, invades the present, andestablishes transition as the new operating norm. But whatis amazing is the workforce’s adaptability—doing whateverit takes to catch up, keep up, and get ahead. That in fact isthe often untold and unexamined story—not only of thecurrent U.S. work ethic but also of why the United Stateswill remain a global force in the future.

In Part Four, the emphasis is on many of the future-drivendevelopments already put in place by HR. I also identifyadditional trends that constitute our future agenda.

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New training metrics, new strategic planning modes, corporate uni-versities and their knowledge cultures, employee empowermentand productivity, and future learning leaders—chief learning offi-cers (CLOs)—all deserve a closer look, especially with regard tothe impact each may have on HR operations. The future of HRoperations and that of human performance technology (HPT)work also need attention.

NEW TRAINING METRICS

How have organizations and individuals coped with flux? Basicallythrough three kinds of training and learning: catch-up, lineup, andcrossover.

The thrust of catch-up is incremental: bringing professionals upto date with the latest developments. These are usually add-ons.Occasionally, they may incorporate new directions, but in almost

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all cases they are focused and designed to bring everyone to thestate of the art. Although future influenced, they are essentiallypresent bound.

Lineup involves structure, not content. It is also multidirectionaland requires not so much the acquisition of new knowledge orskills as their constant repositioning and prioritizing. The aim is toalign individual and divisional goals with company objectives,especially across satellite centers, and especially if these are multi-national. The need for managing and aligning multicultural andmultigenerational diversity and values provides a key new learningcomplexity.

Crossover involves two kinds of additional learning. One iscross-training. Coworkers are trained in each other’s jobs not onlyfor obvious purposes of replacement if necessary but to expand theknowledge and skills base of workers. The other crossover is morestructurally ambitious—more interoperable. It involves linking thework focus of different divisions to promote greater collaboration.It may link such operations as planning and customer service, mar-keting and auditing, or purchasing and production. For example,employees may spend a day or week on the phone in customerservice. The goal is greater integration of function and processacross the board.

NEW STRATEGIC PLANNING MODES

Because of increasing uncertainty and discontinuity, strategic fore-casting needs futures thinking if it is to preserve its integrity as adiscipline and sustain the reality of its mid- and long-term projec-tions. The changes required reflect the degree to which the knowl-edge of at least three distinctive ways the future operates has beenincorporated into strategic planning methodologies, in particular:patterns of escalation, degrees of knowability, and the partnershipof monitoring.


Responding to future discontinuity varies according to reactiontime and with advance intelligence. In fact, the goal of strategicplanning is to preserve decision time and options. But that, in turn,requires perceiving unfolding developments in the progressive andaggressive terms of stretch, strain, and shock. The sequence is ruledby a law of grim escalation. The first version of stretch, if ignored,is followed by the second; and if that in turn elicits no response,then the third dominates the scene.

If the future is an enigma, it is often a transparent one. It is anamalgam of the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. Theobvious strategy is to move the knowledge base along that contin-uum. Extrapolation of present data and demographics builds theextent of the known in the present and short term. Trending con-verts the unknown into knowable long-term patterns. But then allstops short with the unknowable, because that is in fact whatdefines the final future. The consolation is that as much as two-thirds of what may come can be in hand.

Monitoring is no longer occasional and external but perma-nently embedded. It constitutes at least half of planning. Trackingsensors are distributed throughout to function as an early warningsystem to catch deviations. Monitoring requires its own plan.Usually it is a permanent overlay of data tracking equipped with itsown software, which has the capacity to adjust planning when cer-tain parameters are exceeded.

Not only do futuristic adjustments of strategic planning producea more integrated and dynamic whole, but also—and here again isthe critical point—the plan itself would be a futures-thinking docu-ment. It would behave like the future.

Corporate Universities and Their Knowledge Cultures

The incredible growth of corporate universities, across industriesas varied as McDonald’s, Ford, Disney, and Toyota, bears witnessto the centrality of training and learning as a major U.S. and espe-cially multinational investment in the future. Constantly responding

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to new challenges, corporate universities in the process have beeninvolved in at least two major future-oriented shifts: multinationalacculturation and e-learning.

Acculturating new employees whose work cultures are differ-ent and may in fact be at variance from that of the desired main-stream is an increasing focus of global companies. For example,Dell employs a number of programmers from India and recentlyoutsourced a significant portion of its customer tech support there.Typically, employees from India favor supervisors who tell themwhat to do. They find it difficult to act on their own initiative. Theyprefer description to opportunity. Dell, which values worker partic-ipation over obedience and nonlinear thinking over rote, employsextensive situational training to bring about a shift in values andthereby a shift in work dynamics.

The other major change is the gradual conversion to e-learning.In some cases, a blended approach has been used for older, lesstechnologically comfortable workers: traditional face-to-face classeshave been joined with e-classes. The primary motivation is cost:lower instructional costs, less time away from work, elimination ofthe travel and per diem expenses required for centralized trainingsites, and so on. The other gain is increased quality control throughstandardization of content in the three areas noted earlier: catch-up, lineup, and crossover.

To a large extent, corporate universities are themselves futureentities. They embody Senge’s learning organization and incorpo-rate Toffler’s knowledge workers, a combination that creates uniqueknowledge and learning cultures. They are almost like countries intheir own right. To be sure, unlike traditional academic universities,corporate universities are ideological. They promote the perpetua-tion of their own survival and growth as well as their sponsor’s bot-tom line. They are their own lobbyists. In effect, they use them-selves as case studies.

But individually and collectively, they also need to be corporateglobal citizens—including the new ideologies of global interde-pendence and sustainable development. It is not enough to hail and


benefit from the global economy. It also requires the unique lead-ership of multinationals calling for and aspiring to world steward-ship of the global commons. Such a commitment requires goingbeyond singular ideology to embrace an interdependent ideologythat commands the international respect and loyalty of all profes-sionals. In both instances, the value of futures thinking again isinevitably visionary.

Finally, futures thinking would encourage convergent thinking,which raises the integration of thought and process to optimum lev-els of synthesis without compromising differentiation. Whether ornot the Singularity occurs according to its projected timetable,what is clear is that it is born of and driven by convergence. EdwardWilson called it consilience, to signify the future synergistic math ofone plus one equaling three or four or five. Emily Dickinson heldthat “everything that rises converges.” Discoveries or breakthroughsat the apex will in volcanic fashion reach out, touch, extend, andenrich all the other apexes to produce a total greater than the sumof its parts. In short, the visionary corrective here is that the futureitself is essentially a convergent force.

EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT AND PRODUCTIVITY

The obvious goal of training and learning is to increase productiv-ity, profitability, and quality. Of the three, the first enjoys the high-est priority because of the competition of the global economy. Topreserve their middle-class status, U.S. workers have had to becomemore productive. Often, because of downsizing, increasing produc-tivity also involves requiring fewer workers to do more. Among themany ways of increasing worker productivity, one approach thathas received relatively less attention—but offers the option of amajor application of futures learning and thinking—is that ofemployee evaluation.

In the past five years the nomenclature has changed. Employeeevaluation has become performance evaluation—and then shifted


to its present version of performance improvement. Employeesthemselves have become human capital, and that means that train-ing is perceived as a way of securing ROI. Worker agreements havein many organizations become worker contracts and finally workercovenants. The common denominator of all these changes is theincreasing centrality of employee productivity and the increasingdependence of companies on the capacity of workers to constantlycreate or find cost-saving and creative ways of increasing produc-tivity. There are signs that some organizations are contemplating afutures step in the performance improvement process.

Currently, the standard way to improve productivity is toencourage employees to consider how they might do their jobs dif-ferently. Many managers—especially those with seniority—havehad to be retrained as coaches. They found it difficult to confersuch initiatives upon the workers they supervise and to accept theidea that those who do the job know it better than anyone else andthus have the expertise to improve it. In some instances, the inquiryinto performance improvement has been pushed further in twoways: asking employees to define and evaluate the effectiveness ofthe interfaces between divisions, and encouraging more overtinterpersonal attitudes and behaviors so that receiving work satis-faction is accompanied by giving it to others.

The gains have been significant. Structural changes have beenmade, and interpersonal behavior modification has improved themutuality of work environments. Matters appear to have gone asfar as they can go, in the present. Not so if one adds futures think-ing and training.

The next logical step is to push inquiry into the future itself.Welcome though the changes recommended by employees focusedon doing their jobs more productively may be, they are still presentbound. They deal with new configurations of various kinds but aregenerally incremental in nature. But with their empowermentendowed with more forward-looking vistas, workers can be invitedto speculate on what they believe their jobs will be like in the


future. Building upon their increasing competence in job reviewand change, workers not only may welcome such an opportunitybut also warm to the task of projecting their future roles. Suchworker projections can be followed by inquiring what kinds oftraining would be critical to get them from here to there. Such spec-ulation can be a gradual rather than a one-shot process, and it maybe accompanied by discussion and the distribution of some basicreading materials. In any case the yields can be significant.

Individual projections of work change can be aggregated upwardto generate patterns of the future that may shape the companyitself. In addition, the same process may identify the common train-ing needs and in effect identify the training agenda of the future. Ofperhaps greater long-term importance, the process would con-tribute to developing a future-directed workforce. Finally, thosecompanies supportive of futures empowerment would thereby cre-ate an employee-based alternative to the expert model in the formof futures learning communities. In all these instances, the vision ofthe future not only brings a new dynamic to work environments, italso shapes futures learning communities of best practices.

FUTURE LEARNING LEADERS

One of the signs of the future arriving head of schedule is the emer-gence of jobs and titles for which there is often no previous classi-fication or formal academic preparation. The positions of chiefinformation officer (CIO) and chief learning officer (CLO) arecases in point.

No traditional or even corporate universities offer masters pro-grams or degrees in learning management or have retrofitted exist-ing executive educational programs to accommodate learning lead-ership at an executive level. And yet professionals are beingappointed to such top-level positions, and a new journal (hard copyand online), professional organization, and Web site have appeareddevoted to the CLO.


For many the appearance of CIOs and CLOs comes out of theblue. Not so for futurists. Indeed, one can study and compile theemergence of every new profession as reflecting the regular and mostcurrent incarnation of the future. In any case, such emergence alreadyhas left its mark and permeated the entire organization, includingdefining the hybrid nature of CEOs discussed in Chapter 13.

Perhaps the best way to summarize HR future-driven develop-ments and applications is with the visual shown in Table 12. Andsimilarly, the best way of expressing what futures thinking at differ-ent levels can bring to current learning and HR challenges is tooffer Table 13.

THE FUTURE FOR THE FIELD

Although official notice and response has been guarded, HR ap-pears to be making a comeback these days. After many years ofreduced budgets, internal downsizing, shifts of tasks to other divi-sions, and the outsourcing of many of their functions, HR and HPT


TABLE 12 • FUTURES THINKING AND LEARNING SUMMARY

CURRENT FUTURES FUTURE FOCUS CONTRIBUTION OUTCOMES

New training norms Transition training Optimizing knowledge

New strategic Strategic monitoring Optimizing choiceplanning

Corporate Global World citizensuniversities interdependence

Employee Future work Future workforceproductivity projections

Learning Future learning foci Future intelligencemanagement

professionals have led, developed, and presided over a number offuture-driven workforce developments. What are the factors driv-ing the return of HR to centrality? And, equally important, whatdo those forces in turn tell us about overall changes impending incorporate vision and workforce structures?

New Directions and Options

The five areas listed and examined in this section—although notdefinitive—are collectively sufficient in range and substance to out-line the new landscape for HR and HPT professionals.

Hybrid AcronymsThe difference of HR from its earlier versions may be rapidlysummed up by one of its new names—HRM, for human resourcemanagement. Indeed, it can be argued that should be expanded toinclude leadership: HRLM. Then, too, because of its increasing rolein outsourcing, it has acquired a new specialization and even thecreation of a professional society—HRO. Finally, as the initiallyEuropean notion of intellectual capital found a home here, HRitself has frequently been altered to IC or the compromise of HIC. If one puts all the above inputs together, what emerges is


TABLE 13 • FUTURES RESPONSES TO SEVERE LEARNING DEMANDS

LEARNING DEMAND FUTURES RESPONSE

Futures thinking Divergent/convergent thinking

Futures problem solving Multiple methodologies

Futures learning Multiple intelligence

Futures visioning Intuitive and holistic forethought

HICLMOS, or human intellectual capital leadership and manage-ment outsourcing systems. Awkward, of course—but this over-loaded acronym is no mere alphabet soup. It reflects the generaladd-on nature of both workforce and general structural develop-ments, which routinely have embraced hybrids as the new way ofstretching or extending organizational identity.

Talent Recruitment and RetentionThe increasing focus on talent shortages as well as the steadydecline of company loyalty as a means of retaining such expertisehas reinvested the traditional HR role in both areas with greaterurgency. In the process, the general mastery of data managementand application of metrics by HR professionals have signaled thefield’s currency, readiness, and competence to accept and masterthis double challenge through technology. Indeed, a number of newelectronic candidate management systems have been developedand put in place. In addition, HR has had not only to acquire theaggressive hard hustle of an executive search firm but also combineit with the softer—even caressing—retention mentality of mentor-ing and coaching. The net result is that HR not only has becomeincreasingly the key resource for maintaining and retaining thecompetitive edge of personnel, its performance as well as its trackrecord have become in turn the measure of a company’s own com-parative advantage.

The Workforce Training LinkAlthough the empire of training was taken over or parceled out tocorporate universities and to chief learning officers and theirrespective learning management systems, HR has reentered andrecovered its access to training through a number of crossoverareas. First, HR has argued that talent retention is linked to talentdevelopment. But this double gain—for employee and company—required the advocacy of HR and the integration of its agenda withthat of the LMS. Then, too, as team training and performance


became the norm, another bridge of integration had to be forged.The training and nurturing of teams had to be made part of thelarger HR commitment to the care and feeding of work cultures asthe agents of total company vision and mission. Once again thisbecame a shared partnership. Another crossover area involved theinduction of new hires. The earlier HR monopoly now was per-ceived as a joint venture. Orientation programs were the first stepof both retention and professional development. Finally, both HRand Training placed the same high value on research. The findingsof training intelligence were of a piece with those of employeedevelopment. Indeed, such a fusion refocused and grounded tradi-tional support of the human potential movement with the rigorousapplication of metrics and easily incorporated both e-learning deliv-ery systems and measuring of both ROI and strategic alignments.

New Goal-Role Relationship DynamicsAs stretch goals dominated and the timetable of evaluations be-came compressed, HR had to address two inadequacies. Workerswere regularly exceeding their job descriptions. Downsizing, cou-pled with greater pressure for productivity, was tampering with thestatic relationships between job goals and job roles. The inadequacyof job descriptions was only symptomatic of the emergence of anew dynamic between goal change and role change. While HR wasinvolved in mastering such flux, it also had to examine the largerissue of the entire evaluation process. What immediately wasaltered was frequency and equality. Evaluations were scheduledmore frequently and structured more collaboratively. Sessionswere often monthly or on an as-needed basis. Supervisors weretrained to be coaches, and employees were empowered to be part-ners. In short, such solutions to new and intense workforce realitiesnot only became the province of HR but also tapped its further linksto training and the task of talent retention. Such adjustments alsopositioned HR as a supreme advocate and partner of productivity.


The HR Organization ChartPerhaps nothing dramatizes the new centrality of HR more thanthe prospect of the organization chart being turned on its head.Gradually, various forms of employee empowerment implementedby HR to increase productivity and to align work goals with com-pany goals began to be cumulative. Work knowledge was supple-mented by self-knowledge; managerial and leadership roles ofthose at the top were made available and distributed across theboard; the need for alignment led to employees’ crafting their ownvision and mission statements; the demands for interoperability ledto the mutualizing of job satisfaction; future needs were addresseddirectly by employee identification and definition not only of thefuture versions of their current jobs but also what training theywould need to get them from here to there.

Given such interventions, if one now steps back and takes in thewhole new picture of a typical organization, what emerges? The tophas essentially remained intact and the same. The middle has beenthinned out and given a horizontal extent. It is very busy supervisingand coaching more employees, playing catch-up, planning ahead,urging innovation—in short, not just running but leading the compa-ny. The busiest sector is the rank and file, now sharing with managersthe same need for multitasking on behalf of the survival and growthof the company. In the process, managers have become leaders, andemployees have become managers. In other words, the organizationchart has changed both horizontally and vertically.

The middle of the pyramid has been bulked out so that it nowhas a more horizontal extent and shape. But more radically, thebottom has become the top. The new hierarchy features the rankand file first, followed by an extended set of middle managers, andfinally CEO and senior staff last.

New Roles

As goals have changed, so have roles. The rank and file must notonly do but also manage their work. Managers in turn must notonly supervise but also lead. To accomplish its stretch goals, each


group is doing whatever it takes to get the job done. In this case, thatrequires each group to move up in the chain and assume the roles ofthe next level. The organization now has not one but three rulingclasses. To survive, capitalism has to grant internal equality andaccess of leadership to the proletariat so that externally it can remaincompetitive and profitable. The HR version of the organizationchart thus may serve to mirror the reality of not only what exists nowbut also what is to come. In that case, mission and vision merge.

At this point at least two summaries are needed. One relates toadvocacy, the other to agenda. Clearly, advocacy for HR and HPT isnot totally speculative. Relegated to the sidelines for many years,HR has not only regained but also expanded its position by beingahead of the game. It has led the charge of the hybrids, transformingitself from HR to HRM and then HRO. In the process, it has alsohelped to develop and apply metrics of accountability and align-ment. The current challenge of talent shortages and talent retentionis ready-made for HR, which now employs new software not only totrack but also to manage the entire candidate process. HR has beentireless and focused in arguing for new crossover areas between HRand Training, including sharing its traditional preserve of the orien-tation of new hires. It has been at the forefront of identifying,describing, and addressing the new dynamics between goal and rolechange. Finally, it has held aloft a more operationally and truthfulversion of the organization chart to guide both current and projectedversions of the reality of change and aspiration. Perhaps the onlymissing or neglected step is to apply the reality check internally tothe job descriptions of HR itself as well as externally to presentacademic programs preparing future HR professionals. Both maybelong to the old rather than the newly evolving organization chart.

COMMENTARY

Although encouraging, all these developments still leave the issueof an HPT agenda. And that in turn always involves HPT perfor-mance criteria. To ensure that all the developments discussed here


not only happen but do so with persuasive rigor, HPT performancecriteria must serve as a quality overlay. Specifically, HPT profes-sionals must ensure that such initiatives are not haphazard orunconnected but are subsumed and made part of a total systematicapproach. Only in that way can value be comprehensively addedand change be extended and reinforced by partnerships. Above all,development and implementation require the feedback functionand test of evaluation, including the innovative prospect that HPTprofessionals may have to create new evaluation measures andmetrics. The test of any profession is that it is not only current butfuture-driven.


HR and motivational speaking have much in common. Typically,motivational speakers value knowledge of their audience. In fact,well-known and highly paid ones employ staff to research thedemographic composition of a prospective audience. They alsoseek to discover local and current hot topics and juicy tidbits to cus-tomize their basically generic presentation. Finally, such speakersare aware that they are in the big change business, and that that isno easy task. So they always do two things: they signal from theoutset that the task is formidable, and they also make it clear thatthe engagement and participation of the audience is indispensable.They frequently seek to accomplish both ends with a question:“How do you eat an elephant?” And the audience responds in uni-son: “One bite at a time!”

And so the journey of mutual discovery is launched.Similarly, HR has been involved in a number of change jour-

neys. Not too long ago, the employee virtues that HR extolled and

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recruited for were past oriented: being dutiful, hardworking, trust-worthy, loyal, and obedient. These traditional attributes have beensupplemented by a new crop of present-focused behaviors: adapt-ability, involvement, agility, innovation, ownership, transformation,mutuality, alignment, morale, and empowerment. Finally, future-driven hybrid roles have been added: knowledge worker, teamplayer, customer advocate, technologically amplified, and distrib-uted leader.

The range from past oriented to present focused to future-drivenhas been facilitated by a thirty-year process of structural reengi-neering, talent selection and retention, and worker centrality. Inthe process, the organizational pyramid has been gradually flat-tened, and its new shape has conferred upon managers preroga-tives and responsibilities previously reserved for senior officers.Employee empowerment in turn has taken from middle managersmore control and self-direction. Vertical authority has been trans-formed into horizontal initiative. In short, work has been decen-tralized and redistributed to teams, and the proverbial organizationchart has taken the form of a network as constantly transitional asthe future it seeks to model.

CENTRALITY OF THE WORKFORCE

The new centrality of employees proceeded from the recognitionthat if productivity, profitability, and creativity were to occur and toprovide the competitive edge in a global marketplace, it wouldhave to come from the base of the now nearly flat pyramid. Indeed,in some organizations teams have either replaced their supervisorsor made them marginal. The task of HR was to keep pace with thosechanges and above all to help deliver and train employees to minis-ter to the new challenge of greater task and role self-management.

But in many ways and areas, HR needs to push the envelope ofworker knowledge further. It needs to know more about how work-ers really acquire knowledge, how it is applied, and how it alters


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job expectations. But that in turn requires recognizing that audi-ence knowledge determines how training is designed. Increasingly,the demographics of the workforce have been tapped as the socio-logical and psychological source of worker behaviors and learningpreferences.

In large corporations, typically at least five (soon to be six) gen-erations coexist. The oldest were born in the thirties, the newest inthe eighties. The first group may live until 2050, the second almostto 2100 even without further extensions of the human life span. Thehistories of each generation shape their work attitudes, prefer-ences, and behaviors. The degree to which they are willing to worktogether in turn affects their degree of alignment with companygoals. That is not a problem in an e-commerce start-up. All are usu-ally the same generation. Indeed, that may be why they can moveso fast so far. Differentiation is not an obstacle because it is mini-mal. But that is also one reason why so many fail. There is no inter-nal tension, and diversity is not sufficient to offer the checks andbalances of generational difference.

TARGETED GENERATIONAL BEHAVIORS

The complexity of generational behaviors and values has led to afocus on more targeted behaviors, and three in particular. First,attributes desired by HR and the company, drawn from a combina-tion of those listed earlier and constituting recruiting presences.Second, determining what in the employee’s demographics andbackground supports or opposes change and how training has to bedesigned to turn inertia into action. Third, identifying what bridg-ing strategies coaches and supervisors can employ to bring workersover to the desired side.

Such a process would be daunting if it had to be done on anindividual basis for every behavior. But the diagnostic middle pieceis generational, and the demographic range of indicators, oncedone, can not only be stored in the database but also tapped to

benchmark targeted behavior change. But above all, the task alsohas been eased by having it take place within a dynamic frameworkof changing employee–manager relationships.

LEADERSHIP STYLES

Leadership styles are generational. They range from the past to thepresent to the future: from the autocratic to the consultative tothe participative. They can also be classified as either directive ornondirective, accompanied by respective coaching styles. Table 14provides some essential characteristics of each.

Demographic analysis describes how worker differences affectthe perceptions of managerial style. Eight categories are used: age,gender, nationality, education level, tenure with organization, func-tional area, hierarchical level, and place in the family birth order.Only those factors are included that are relevant to job perfor-mance and do not violate privacy. In effect, these factors constitutethe basic demographics of all employees, but focus on identifyingpotential support for change or obstacles to change. The follow-


TABLE 14 • DIRECTIVE AND NONDIRECTIVE LEADERSHIP STYLES

DIRECTIVE NONDIRECTIVE

Power-driven Achievement oriented

Role oriented Support oriented

Hierarchical Crossover

Chain of command Doing whatever it takes

Rules Goals

Incremental Innovative

ing are interpretations of how each factor shapes leadership stylepreferences:

• Age. Generally older workers prefer and respond to directivemanagerial and coaching styles. Younger workers respond bet-ter to nondirective coaches and managers. Some high-techstart-ups—where all or most employees are in their twenties—show a high tolerance for chaos and even anarchy.

• Gender. Males prefer directive styles, females nondirective.Typically, men are more forceful and assertive, women morecooperative and nurturing. Increasingly, however, convergenceis occurring, with women leading the way.

• Nationality. National cultures shape leadership preferences.Strong and assertive national cultures want strong leaders.Other more egalitarian countries in fact distrust leaders withtoo much power and favor imposing constitutional limits onexecutive power.

• Educational level. Typically the higher the level of education,the greater the inclination to favor the nondirective leadershipstyle.

• Tenure with organization. The longer the period of employ-ment, the greater reliance on directive leadership; although asuccession of poor or mediocre CEOs may mean the allegianceis accompanied by skepticism.

• Functional area. Predictably, blue-collar workers favor strongbosses, white-collar more nondirective ones.

• Hierarchical level. Line personnel and managers favor whatthey are and increasingly want to become. Staff want an easierlife associated with simply being told what to do.

• Birth order. First-born tend to be more aggressive and insecure,and more resistant to authority. Last-born are more distant andharder to reach, and often capricious. The middle-born are usu-ally the most reasonable, although they can lean on occasion


toward the behaviors of the first and last and sometimes bothat the same time.

Organizations, typically through HR, would use the findingsfrom this initial analysis to compile and configure two demographicclusters of each managerial style. That composite provides the keymanagerial and training guidelines as to the key perceptions andattitudes of employees.

Examine the sample employee clusters and configurations inTable 15. The first is of an older director of the transportation divi-sion whose general profile places him within a directive cluster. Thesecond depicts a younger employee who leads a team of mostlyentry-level software engineers and who falls within a nondirectivecluster.

Manager-Coach

What does such clustering offer the manager-coach? A more exten-sive knowledge base to tap for performance improvement and


TABLE 15 • DIRECTIVE VERSUS NONDIRECTIVE CULTURES

DIRECTIVE EMPLOYEE NONDIRECTIVE EMPLOYEE

Older Younger

25 years’ tenure 3 years’ tenure

Male Female

Transportation Division Marketing

High school College

Nationality—strong No declared nationality

Assistant director Team leader

evaluation sessions. It makes it feasible to correlate, for example,instances of initiatives being taken by employees with a partialityfor a nondirective leadership style; or a lack of initiative as a resultof having to relate to a highly directive manager. The manager mayfind employees who prefer a nondirective style to be more openand responsive to questions about seeking different and even morecreative ways of doing the job. In contrast, the employee whoprefers following orders will be more reluctant to volunteer sugges-tions for change or improvement and prefer instead to have thecoach point out what ought to be done differently. But the supervi-sor now has no choice but to minister and adjust to the genera-tional range and preferred style of each employee. Indeed, thedemographic knowledge base also provides the leverage points.

For companies that develop a future stance in which work per-formance is continuously improved, innovation is encouraged, andteaming becomes a new norm, the role of the manager-coach is thatof a stretch agent. The essential task is not only to coach change butalso to align and wire it in place in terms of specific job require-ments and expectations on one hand and company objectives onthe other. But with an expanded demographic and knowledge base,accompanied by the many clusters that it can generate and sustain,the manager-coach has a richer and more diverse and flexible set ofalternative routes to take. In fact, taking the time to provideemployees with an opportunity to share their histories, perspec-tives, values, and the overall complexities of their lives and workoften sets the stage for change and job improvement.

Companies do not have the luxury of replacing an existingworkforce with one that might be better able to manage the future.For better or worse, then, they have to work with what they have.However, they have two options. They can train and they cancoach. But the current argument of HR is that to be effective bothneed more extensive worker knowledge for behavioral change tobe targeted and for future performance goals to be addressed.Moreover, such knowledge should be reciprocal.


COMMENTARY

Both managers and workers have a great deal to learn from oneanother. Such equality and mutuality can generate a tangible modelof what future work relationships should be all about. Turnaroundof employees requires the combination of art and science. Data-bases and demographic clusters set up the science; the coach func-tions as a knowledge artist. The dynamic dialogue of partnershipbetween equals raises the task of integrating performance andchange to a new level. Indeed, performance evaluation, which com-bines the science of data and art of partnerships, may provideemployees and managers with the greatest challenge each has everfaced: creating a workforce that regularly replaces itself.


The HR agenda will be dominated by the search for future-driventalent, learning diversity, and innovation. Although individually andcollectively these qualities will define the critical options for profes-sionals and organizations, the resulting foresight, cognition, and cre-ativity also need to be interoperable. Each one has to participate inand impinge on the others because in the future convergence rules.The future is thus essentially multimodal and innovative, diverseand not singular. Anticipatory leadership and management thriveon the alternatives of the probable, the possible, and the aspira-tional. Innovation not only hastens but partners with the future.Breakthrough ideas and technology also create new businesses orprocesses that if recognized and incorporated give existing organi-zations a future lease on life, or if not become their competition.

But to gain the benefits of multiplicity and creativity, a newrelationship with the future must be formed. It cannot be the oldtop-down dominating relationship in which obedient servants are

CONCLUSION

205

given the marching orders of traditional strategic planning. Nor canone safely stand in the protective present insulated from and tryingto tame the uncertainty that lies ahead. The future has to becomean alter ego—better still, a secret sharer. Fortunately, access to such otherness is facilitated by multimodal and innovative think-ing, learning, and leading.

FUTURE THINKING AND LEARNING

Multiple intelligence and learning diversity, by virtue of combiningboth progressive and circular thinking, enrich both the problem-solving process and its outcomes. The constant insistence on pro-cessing data and knowledge through multiple lenses makes peoplecomfortable with alternatives, the basic stuff of futures and innova-tion. Above all, it offers a learning system that is supremely self-organizing, self-monitoring, self-managing, and self-amplifying.

Learning range is also extended as the more dominant intelli-gences enlist and strengthen peripheral ones to become involvedand offer their difference. As a result, the concept of multiple intel-ligence is not merely a way of explaining how we think, learn, andlead. It is also a powerful way of learning to learn and evenunlearn, lifelong. As such, it is perhaps the optimum way of struc-turing a proactive and multiple relationship with the future,employing innovation as the ultimate version of problem solving.

OBSTACLES TO INNOVATION

As with futurity and multiple intelligence, innovation is similarlybeset by a number of basic misunderstandings and misconceptions.Two in particular: the belief that it is a eureka moment and thuseasy and fast, or that it is reserved only for the privileged creativetypes of R&D. Then, too, its implementation is often hurried andcrude in order to guarantee results. However, no matter what the


Conclusion 207

difficulties and organizational obstacles are, creativity is an absoluteof company survival and vitality. Its ties to the future provide a life-line of continuity to such an extent that futurity and innovationbecome versions of each other.

Creativity does not just happen. Nor can it be ordered intobeing or become an object of company cheerleading. Rather, anenvironment and culture supportive of learning diversity preparesthe way for innovation. Most important, transition has to be acceptedas its new permanent norm. Ideas have to be multiply perceivedand rendered by the dynamics of many intelligences collectivelyinvolved in understanding and problem solving. The question mustshift from “How smart am I?” to “How am I smart?” Building onthat add “How innovative am I?” to “How am I innovative?”

If we reconceive our relationship to the future, expand ournotions of how we think, learn, and lead, and approach innovationas more mystery than mastery, then the promise of synthesis maybe within our grasp, and the coming years in turn may appear lessas a disruptive antagonist and more as a collaborative partner.

DECLINE OF THE UNITED STATES?

One last matter, or rather two. The current state of the UnitedStates is worrisome. There are sadly many signs of decline. Down-sizing and outsourcing have devastated the workforce. The educa-tional achievement levels of U.S. students have slipped seriously inworldwide comparisons. Other countries—even developing ones—are producing more engineers and technologists than we are. Onecould go on, but what is clear is the uneasy sense that the UnitedStates may have passed its peak and that other countries are in theprocess of overtaking it and leaving it behind.

In large part this book was written to demonstrate that such anobituary is both premature and unjustified. In fact, many signs andexamples indicate not only how resilient, resourceful, and innovative

the current U.S. workforce is but also how its embrace of changeaugers well for its future. In short, the U.S. work ethic is not onlyalive and well, but HR has helped to give it a new lease on life.

The other issue may be a more difficult stretch for many. Arecurrent item—often number one—on every future agenda isglobality. But its prominence is ambiguous or adversarial. The out-sourcing of U.S. jobs overseas and its justifications by companyexecutives have not only seriously affected company loyalty butalso jeopardized worker and company goal alignment. Why shouldthe workforce collaborate in its own demise? Support company-wide teaming and collective action rather than protective self-interest? In short, the problem now is not so much accepting thecontent of change as its context. The dilemma is the positioning ofthe United States in a new worldview. As always it is a matter ofperception or, more comprehensively, vision.

The old frameworks of international careers function more likesieves than containers. New paradigms have to be shaped by aseries of new questions. Up until now it has been jobs that movedout. Will that be followed by workers moving out? If so, will glob-alization require workers not only to travel abroad more often butalso be stationed abroad? Will professionals be required to do aseries of tours of duty overseas? Will they be given choices ofwhere and for how long? Will families accompany them or staybehind? How will they be serviced? Will there even be a corporateor parent center anymore? What about the differences not only ofcountry but also of corporate values? In short, what will careersdefined by globality look like?

THREE FUTURE-DRIVEN NEEDS

Understandably, expediency has largely driven current globalworkforce decisions. Survival in the face of global competition hasled to outsourcing as the way to level the playing field of wage dif-ferentials. But far from having answers, in many companies these


questions are only just being asked, usually by HR professionalswith foresight. Three directions of inquiry are emerging.

The first is the practical need of global companies to access tal-ent worldwide. As with multinationals in the past, rather than shipsomeone overseas, mature people already comfortable with andknowledgeable about the existing culture are sought. But now theymust not be expedient add-ons but integrated into what becomes acompany’s globally based workforce. The longer-term solutionrequires HR to go international—to create forums and conferencesto explore and define the workforce interfaces necessary to facili-tate global placements as seamlessly as possible. But the moreurgent and related strategy for HR is to take the lead in research-ing and identifying the kinds of changes an international careermay require by studying the patterns of those employees already soinvolved. The key is to assemble a global workforce profile withinthat would be nested both in global job descriptions and cross-cultural training. In short, we need to globalize every job. The netresult will also be the futurizing of work.

A second approach is technological. It is probably not acciden-tal that globality and interconnectivity coincide. The Internet isalready global. Indeed, a number of virtual teams from all over theworld have already been functioning effectively in asynchronousfashion. When a particular expertise or cultural input is lacking,appropriate international experts are brought on board for the dura-tion of the task. Indeed, such searches would be greatly facilitated bythe compilation of the kind of global database HR would advocatethat each company assemble. Generally, participants find globalteamwork challenging and become familiar with and respectful oftheir global counterparts. Indeed, it is conceivable—especially withfurther technological advances in Internet communications—that asignificant segment of the global workforce will be working togethervirtually. Distance will be overcome, and the need for relocationeliminated or minimized. A new international teaming mind-set willstructure work and its global conversations.

Conclusion 209

But the third and final piece is to better prepare currentemployees as well as future college students for globality. Trainingand curriculum need the addition of the “g” sign. Currently, manyacademic courses and training offerings are designated as e-courses.That signals not just that they are available online but that the basicsubject matter explores the extent to which the content has beenaffected by the Internet. Now the next step is for every e-offeringto be also given a g-designation to spell out the multiple impacts ofglobality on both companies and the workforce. At least that way,as the new global workforce profile begins to emerge, it can be per-ceived not only as part of an evolving big picture, but also as a globalredefinition of every job description.

Preparing the workforce for globality is no small or easy matter—especially for the United States. We are accustomed to being thebiggest or only fish in a relatively small pond. Now the pond hasbecome the entire world. In addition, the complexity of its operationsexceeds the conventional parameters of our understanding. Our per-ception of the worldview turns out to be not so much a worldview asa U.S.-centered version of the whole. The sobering adjustment willnot be easy or quick. Moreover, it requires straddling.

The major challenge we face now is that of acknowledging andpreserving the accomplishments of the current workforce whilebeginning to anticipate and manage global impacts. Integrating andharmonizing the two constitutes the future agenda of HR profes-sionals and of the new CEO hybrids, for whom a changing work-force is synonymous with an emerging future. Finally, the UnitedStates that will emerge will not be what we were or what we cur-rently are now. But whatever its futuristic versions, the workforcewill lead the way.


accountability, 31–32, 39acculturation, 186anticipatory leadership, 205applicants: fit of, 85–86; interview

preparations by, 78; salary requestsfrom/offers to, 80

apprenticeship system, 25

benchmarking, 28, 145Bersin and Associates, 20–21, 23best work practices, 38Brandon Hall, 21–22

CEO: agendas, 174; alternative titles for, 175–178; CIA as, 176–177; CIC as, 176–177; CIO as, 175; CIP as,177–178; CLO as, 175–176; compositenature of, 174–175; description of, 5;executive team, 179–180; GBO as, 176; job market predictions by, 65–66; as manager, 36; training program for, 178

CEO hybrid, 178–179

change agents, 93change management, 149changing roles, 171Chaplin, Charlie, 27chief information officer, 175, 189–190chief innovation pusher, 177–178chief learning officer, 175–176, 189–190CIA, 176–177CIC, 176–177CIO, 175, 189–190CIP, 177–178CLO, 175–176, 189–190coaches, 159, 188, 202–203collaborative work covenants, 120–121,

127–129collectivized individual: description of,

11; preferential–optimum spectrum,13; traits of, 12–13

communication: empowerment and, 122; internal, 74, 101–102; managerialinterfaces for, 104–107; official,101–102; sociological principles of,102–104

INDEX

211

companies: distrust in, 119; downsizingsin, 2; future projections of, 85; internal communication patterns in, 74; loyalty to, 2–3, 108

company policy manuals, 89competencies: compiling of, 30; reskilling

of, 31competition: manager’s awareness of,

38; monitoring of, 15composite employee mission statement,

114conflict, 122consilience, 187continuous improvement, 32convergent thinking, 187conversations: announcement vs.,

102–103; linkages of, 107; managerialinterfaces for, 104–107; strategic, 105, 107

corporate identity, 6–11corporate universities, 31, 68, 185–187covenants, 120–121, 127–129CPI 260® instrument, 156CPI™ 434 instrument, 156creativity: elements necessary for, 207;

by employee, 169; from innovation,50; transition as, 152

crisis management, 46cross-training, 168, 184cultural paternalism, 28customer relationship management, 39customer-focused training, 155

dashboards, 31–32data: empowerment through, 32;

sharing of, 32decision making, 31–32Deming, W. Edwards, 27–28diagnostically driven training: learning

management diagnostics, 155–156;multiple intelligence. See multipleintelligence; overview of, 153–155

directive leadership, 200, 202distributed leadership, 42, 127, 174distributed metrics, 32–33distrust, 118–119downsizing, 2–3, 108, 193, 207

e-courses, 210educational degrees, 25e-learning, 186empathy, 162employee(s): aligning with company

goals, 134; conversations with,104–107; creativity by, 169; directive,202; distrust by, 118–119; empower-ment of, 187–189; experiences of, 117;future-oriented behaviors for, 198;goals for, 125–126; listening to, 117;managers and, 118, 123; new. See new employees; nondirective,202–203; past-oriented behaviors for, 198; performing profile for. Seeperforming profile; present-orientedbehaviors for, 198; productivity of, 187–189; requests by, 118; self-evaluation by, 97–98. See alsoworkforce

employee evaluation: changes in,131–132, 187; manager’s role in,139–140; traditional approach to, 131

employee mission statement: attitudestoward work in, 111; benefits of,114–115; composite, 114; descriptionof, 109–110; descriptors used in,110–114; expectations of performancein, 112; learning in, 112–113; perfor-mance goals, 112; relationships in,113; standards in, 113–114

empowerment: collaborative workcovenants’ effect on, 127–129; communication and, 122; data and, 32; of employees, 187–189

enterprise resource planning, 39entrepreneurs, 150evaluation: of employee. See employee

evaluation; of training, 140–142executive team, 179–180exit interviews, 69

failure-oriented thinkers, 48fit: chemistry vs., 79; future, 85–86, 92follow-up after training, 142Forrester, Jay, 28–29future thinking, 190, 206


future-driven needs, 208–210future-driven orientation, 9

games: pervasiveness of, 56; as strategy,59–63; structuring opportunitiesthrough, 62–63; uncertainty inherentin, 59–62

gaming, 56. See also simulationGardner, Howard, 156–157Gartner, 22–23GBO, 176generational behaviors, 199–200generations in workforce, 55–56, 199global business officer, 176global citizens, 186–187global simulation model, 29globality, 208–210goal(s): changes to, 167–169; in job

descriptions, 40, 173; manageabilityof, 166; morphing of, 171–172; roles created by, 169–171, 194–195; stretch-ing of, 167–168, 194–195; traditionalview of, 166; updating of, 168

goal-role exchanges, 170–172, 193goal-role reciprocity, 41government research, 17Greenleaf, Robert, 42group collaboration: employees, 125–126;

managers, 125; overview of, 123–124;teams, 126–127; top management,124–125

group dynamics, 121–123groupthink, 12, 143growth potential: as job satisfaction,

91–92; measuring of, 94–98guild system, 25–26

HICLMOS, 192hiring: decision period for, 77; fallacies

associated with, 75–76; fit versuschemistry approach to, 79; informa-tion sharing during, 81; interviewersinvolved in, 78–79; interviewing,77–78; job overselling in, 79; mistakesin, 80; salary requests/offers in, 80;selection considerations in, 78

HPT, 195–196

human capital, 26, 110human intellectual capital leadership and

management outsourcing systems, 192human resource outsourcing, 2, 191human resources: advocacy for, 195;

challenges for, 108–109; changes by,32–33; Deming’s influences on, 27–28;employee characteristics valued by,197–198; functions of, 55; future of,190–196; historical highlights of, 26–29;insourcing in, 3; motivational speakersand, 197; research alliance with, 37;role of, 32–33; technology interfacewith, 29–32; training by, 192–193; training topics selection by, 108–109;workforce advocacy by, 32–33

human resources leadership manage-ment, 191

human resources management, 191human resources vision, 8–11

IDC, 22information access: description of, 81–82information gathering, 38information sharing, 52, 81, 83information technology, 37–38information technology companies, 66innovation: as company goal, 162; creativ-

ity from, 50; distribution of, 43; ele-ments necessary for, 207; importanceof, 43; integration and, 44; managerialsupport of, 162; misconceptions about,206–207; obstacles to, 206–207; performance and, 44; research-focused workforce and, 51; strategiesfor, 44–46; workforce affected by, 169

innovative culture: breakthroughs and,49–50; characteristics of, 54; companystructure and, 52

innovative types, 150–152insourcing, 3, 165integrative metrics, 44intellectual assets, 176–177intellectual capital, 176–177interactive job inquiry system, 83–86interconnectivity, 209internal communication, 74, 101–102

Index 213

interoperability, 30–31interpersonal skills, 30–31interview: applicant’s preparation for,

78; deception in, 69–70; exit, 69; information access of, 84; orientationand, 73; self-qualifying, 84–85

interviewers, 78–79interviewing: fallacies regarding, 76–77;

360-degree evaluation approach to,78; traditional approach to, 78

Japanese productivity, 27–28Jaskov, Jacob, 177job(s): devaluing of, 80; disappointment

with, 70; dislocation associated with, 70; information sharing about,81; outsourcing of, 2; overselling of, 79

job classification, 167job competencies, 30job descriptions: development of, 27, 38;

exceeding of, 41; expanding of, 83;future projections for companyincluded in, 85; goals in, 40, 173; information limitations of, 82–83;manager-leader, 40–41; of managers,38–40; outdated, 133–134; performingprofile vs., 138; revising of, 81; talentrecruitment and, 37

job information: updating of, 37job inquiry system, 83–86job market, 65–66job preferences, 94job satisfaction: description of, 10–11, 87;

determiners of, 90–91; growth poten-tial as, 91–92; guidelines for, 90–91;linkages, 96; mutuality of, 88–89; one-dimensional nature of, 88; positioningof, 88; promotion of, 87–88; relation-ships and, 113; of supervisor, 89

knowledge training and learning, 9KnowledgeAdvisors, 19

leaders: future types of, 189–190; managers vs., 35–37; responsibilitiesof, 124. See also manager-leader

leadership: age and, 201; anticipatory,205; birth order and, 201–202; demographics and, 200; directive, 200;distributed, 42, 127, 174; educationallevel and, 201; gender and, 201; hierarchical level and, 201; nationalityand, 201; nondirective, 200; optionsfor, 173–174; organization tenure and,201; preservation of, 5; styles of,200–203

learning: e-, 186; employee mission statement goals and, 112–113; futureresponses to, 191; future thinking and,206; goals of, 187; knowledge trainingand, 9; marketing of, 23; past andpresent, 44–45

learning management diagnostics,155–156

learning management systems: creationof, 155; development of, 20–21; follow-up tracking systems used by, 31

listening, 103–104, 125loyalty, 2–3, 108

managed work, 25–26manager(s): as coach, 159, 188, 202–203;

communication interfaces for,104–107; company-wide systemsimplemented by, 39; conversationswith employees, 104–107; design interface for, 104; development of,36–37; empathy by, 162; employeesand, 118, 123; evaluation role of,139–140; innovation supported by,162; interpersonal interface for, 104;job descriptions of, 38–40; leaders vs.,35–37; listening by, 103–104, 125;meetings with new employees, 70;performing profile for, 137; questionsby, 103; requests by, 118; role of, 125;talent retention abilities of, 71; work interface for, 104–106. Seealso supervisors

managerial coaches, 150manager-leader: description of, 40,

172–174; goals, 41–42; job description,40–41; reasons for creation of, 42


Meadows, Dennis, 29meetings with new employees, 70Metrics that Matter, 19micromanagement, 30middle managers. See manager(s)mission statement: composite human

resources, 9–11; description of, 6;employee. See employee missionstatement; organizational, 6, 110; transition and, 153

Modern Times, 27monitoring, 185morphing goals, 171–172motivational speakers, 197multiple intelligence: assessment of,

158–159; description of, 156–157;expansion of, 157; intelligences, 157;range of, 157–159

multiple smarts, 158Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®

instrument, 156

new employees: discontent by, 70; fit of, 79, 85–86; future of company discussed with, 74; job satisfaction of.See job satisfaction; orientation of. See orientation; understanding ofindustry by, 73–74

newsletter, 142nondirective leadership, 200, 202–203

open-ended questions, 103organization: culture of, 101; distrust

in, 119; future projections of, 85;information culture in, 81–86; over-whelming of, 45–46; structure of, 45

orientation: cross-organizationalapproach to, 73; future of companydiscussed during, 74; individuals who conduct, 72; interviews and, 73; mistakes during, 71–72; ongoing nature of, 73; period for,70; recommendations for, 72–75

outsourcing: benefits of, 1; effects onUnited States, 207; guidance for, 2;stages of, 1–2

participatory power, 8–9partnering, 3, 138performance: employee mission statement

goals and, 112; innovation and, 44;software tracking of, 30; team, 144, 146

performance evaluation, 171performance improvement: challenges

for, 133–134; competitive advantagethrough, 133; programs for, 74–75;requirements, 133

performance review programs, 74–75performing profile: benefits of, 136;

compiling of, 135; definition of, 134;for employees, 137; features of,134–135; job descriptions vs., 138; for managers, 137; matrix database,135–138; self-focused nature of, 139;supervisor benefits of, 136–138

personal inventory, 95–96policy manuals, 89Precision Skilling, 19–20Principles of Scientific Management, 26proactive talent testing, 92–94problem solving, 46–47, 75productivity: employee, 187–189;

work, 30–31progress, Deming’s focus on, 27proprietary research and development

divisions, 16–17

quality measurement: benchmarking, 28;Deming’s focus on, 27

relationships: changes in, 119–121; descrip-tion of, 88; job satisfaction and, 113

research: benefits of, 15; future of, 23;human resources alliance with, 37;knowledge and, 15

research providers: Bersin andAssociates, 20–21, 23; Brandon Hall,21–22; for-profit companies, 17–23;Gartner, 22–23; government, 17; IDC, 22; KnowledgeAdvisors, 19; proprietary research and developmentdivisions, 16–17; summary of, 24;think tanks and centers, 17; ThomsonNETg, 19–20; universities, 16

Index 215

researchers, 51return on investment, 188roles: changing, 171; goals and,

169–171, 194–195

salary requests/offers, 80scientific management, 26search firms, 83self-confidence, 106self-consciousness, 106self-evaluation, 97self-knowledge, 194Senge, Peter, 175, 186simulation: characteristics of, 56–57;

checks and balances use of, 61; discovery-based nature of, 57–58; holistic view using, 58; internal realitychecks through, 61; involvement in,57–58; principles of, 63; scenario and,58; strategy-based focus of, 58; structuring opportunities through,62–63; uncertainty managementthrough, 61; whole organization visualized through, 58

Six Sigma, 28software: interoperability evaluations

using, 30–31; work productivitytracked using, 30

strategic monitoring, 39strategic planning, 184–187strategic sequencing, 58strategy: games as, 59–63; innovation,

44–46; simulation focus on, 58stretch goals, 167–168, 194–195stretch training: coaching exercises,

159–163; description of, 159Strong Interest Inventory® instrument,

156supervisors: cross-divisional concerns, 7;

job satisfaction of, 89; orientation ofnew employees by, 72; performingprofile benefits for, 136–138; self-interests of, 6–7. See also manager(s)

systems: dashboard summaries of, 31–32;importance of, 28–29; manager’s rolein implementation of, 39; microman-agement by, 30

talent: assessment of, 67–68; global accessto, 209; proactive testing of, 92–94;retention of, 3

talent recruitment: focus on, 192; jobdescriptions and, 37

talent retention: focus on, 192; job overselling effects on, 79; manager’sabilities in, 71; orientation of newemployees and, 70–72; recommenda-tions for, 72–75; strategies for, 71–75;workforce conversions linked to, 107

Taylor, Frederick, 26–27team: definition of, 12; double growth

factor, 146–147; downsides of,143–144; goals for, 126–127; individ-uality in, 143–147; interdependenceof, 122; interpersonal relationships,145; performance of, 144, 146; rede-fining the development of, 145–146;troubleshooting, 50; virtual, 47–51

team cohesion, 144–145team members: double growth factor

for, 146–147; group-based definitionof, 12; types of, 143; unevennessamong, 144

team training, 12team-based forensics, 52–53teaming: description of, 11; goal of, 12;

growth benefits through, 145–146;individual development through, 12;pervasiveness of, 143; socializingeffects of, 56

think tanks and centers, 17Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode

Instrument, 156Thomson NETg, 19–20360-degree evaluation process, 78time-efficient studies, 26–27top management, 124–125total quality management, 28trainers, 140–142training: business-focused, 154; catch-up,

183; CEO, 178; correctives, 171–172;crossover, 184, 192; customer-focused,155; design options for, 141–142; diagnostically driven. See diagnosticallydriven training; e-courses, 210;


effectiveness of, 109; elements of, 143; evaluation of, 140–142; feedbackabout, 142; follow-up after, 142; goals and roles addressed by, 171, 187; human resources involvement in, 192–193; internalization of, 154;lineup, 184; metrics for, 183–184; need for, 25; stretch. See stretch training; topics for, 108–109, 153–154; traditional elements of, 149; transition. See transition training

transition: as creativity, 152; taxonomy of, 154

transition training: innovative types,150–152; for workforce, 152–153

trouble management, 46–47troubleshooting teams, 50trust, 153two-tiered executive team, 179–180

uncertainty: in games, 59–60; managingof, 60–62

union contracts, 120–121United States: decline of, 207–208universities: academic, 16; corporate, 31,

68, 185–187unlearning, 44–45U.S. companies: corrective actions for,

66–67; economic interdependenceamong, 67; outsourcing effects on, 207

virtual teams, 47–51vision statement: composite human

resources, 8–9; description of, 6; transition and, 153

Wheatley, Margaret, 121Wiener, Norbert, 28–29Wilson, Edward, 187work collaborative, 124work covenants, collaborative, 120–121,

127–129work management: paradigms of, 28–29;

systems-based view of, 28–29work productivity: interpersonal skills

effect on, 30–31; software tracking of, 30

workers. See employee(s)workforce: acknowledging of, 210;

capacity assessments, 37; centrality of,6–11, 53, 198–199; challenges of, 210;changes in, 37; company-wide articu-lation of qualities of, 7; cultural influ-ences, 55–56; Deming’s advocacy of, 27–28; educational level of, 207; generations in, 55–56, 199; globalitypreparations for, 209–210; humanresources’ advocacy of, 32–33; impor-tance of, 5; innovation effects on, 169;misconceptions about, 67–68; mutual-izing of relationships, 10–11; outsourc-ing effects on, 207; preferential pro-files in, 6; as researchers, 51; as third-party forensic practitioners, 52–53;transition training for, 152–153; workethic of, 10. See also employee(s)

workforce information technology, 30workplace: fear in, 28; quality

environment in, 28workplace relationships: changes in,

119–121; description of, 88; job satisfaction and, 113

workshops, 141

Index 217

Documents

Ebooksclub.org Partnership HR New Norms for Effective Recruitment Performance and Training of Today 039 s Workforce