A635.8.3.RB_DavisCarl Transformational Strategies

                                                CN Tower, Toronto, ON July 2016 - CSD

Welcome back, readers! We’re to the last week of blogging for our Organizational Change class and the topic is strategies for transforming teams. The situations involving this kind of change that we may encounter as leaders may very well be some of the most daunting we could face.

As part of the lesson this week, we watched two videos. One, a TED Talk, was a lecture by General Stanley McChrystal (TED Talks, 2011). The other was a YouTube™ presentation of an interview with Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale (VitalSmarts, 2012). Both leaders faced dynamic situations in which their teams needed to make cultural and operational changes quickly in order to survive. It should also be noted that McIngvale cited the book, Influencer (Grenny, et al, 2013) as the major guide to the changes he made in his company’s culture. Some other information that will be helpful this week came from our class textbook, An Experiential Approach to Organizational Development (Brown, 2011).

Ok, back to discussing culture change. McChrystal and McIngvale faced different challenges and decided to deal with them in appropriately different ways. McIngvale faced a sudden and dramatic downturn in the economy that dropped his customer base approximately 70% in less than a year. Shortly after the downturn, his main furniture warehouse caught fire and he lost $30 million in inventory overnight. McIngvale faced two situations that put his company in dire jeopardy. He knew he had to change the way his business operated. In the book Influencer, which McIngvale read, Grenny, et al (2013) describe a plan they espouse for leaders to influence change. They teach leaders to Focus and Measure, Find Vital Behaviors, and Engage All Six Sources of Influence (2013, p. 13-14). McChrystal was charged with commanding an army from long distance via means he had never tried.

Focus and Measure means leaders need to be completely clear on what they want to accomplish and measure their progress relentlessly. Find Vital behaviors relates to identifying the behaviors that need to change to drive the most impact. Engaging the six sources of influence covers personal motivation, personal ability, social motivation, social ability, structural motivation, and structural ability (Grenny, et al, 2013, p. 14-34). Personal ability and motivation are fairly self-explanatory. Social motivation and ability relate to the encouragement that workers and managers provide each other and whether or not the behavior is then enabled. Structural motivation involves reward programs that are available to be used. Structural ability relates to the quality of the surroundings and tools available for the leaders and workers to use. Without a doubt, engaging all six sources of influence is a very complex and difficult task.

Coinciding with the techniques from Influencer (2013), are some considerations about corporate culture that Brown discussed and illustrated in his book (2011, p. 405-408). Describing the relative strength of the current culture is valuable information for a leader. Figure 15.4 (Brown, 2011, p. 406) illustrates a way to classify the culture of the organization and will provide a leader with a relative idea of the amount of force that will be needed to drive change. A strong culture may be resistant to change. Figure 15.5 (Brown, 2011, p. 407) illustrates the Strategy-Culture matrix and can be used to understand the relationship between strategy and culture in the particular organization. The various quadrants define the relation of strategy and culture and can be used to optimize the tools and techniques to affect change.

So, Mattress Mack had an economic disaster followed shortly by a gigantic fire. He knew he had to change, defined his new goals, and applied the techniques from the book. He began measuring his progress, communicated the goals religiously to the managers and workers, made changes to the social motivation and ability of the team, added training to affect the personal motivation and abilities of the team, and made changes to the structural (reward) motivation and abilities of the team. It took a couple of years, but the company is making money again and McIngvale notes multiple other benefits to the company and its employees from making the changes.

McChrystal faced a different situation with the consequences of failure being far more severe for those involved. The war in Afghanistan was conducted in a manner unlike any other before it. McChrystal had to manage a force that was spread across half the globe. His team ran the gamut of ages from teenagers to fifty-somethings. Many of his youngest employees (as it were) were skilled in technology with which he was unfamiliar. Maybe most importantly, he had to lead them through electronic media instead of face-to-face. McChrystal and his leadership team had to learn how to give and receive trust across long distances. They had to adapt to being able to see situations happening over which they had little to no direct influence. They had to succeed because failure cost more than money, it cost lives and could impact the future of human civilization. No pressure, right? McChrystal managed around the culture (Brown, 2011, p. 407 and Fig. 15.5). He reinforced the value system, which is strong in military cultures. He reshuffled power and used any available lever he could find to influence change. He learned to listen harder and to accept reverse mentoring, as he called it (Ted Talks, 2011).

As you go forward in your leadership career and continuing education, remember these two situations. They are very good examples of leadership and impacting cultural change. The Brown text provides more information that can become part of your leadership toolkit as well. A visit to your favorite brick-and-mortar or on-line library will provide you with a multitude of other examples and great information.

Thank you for following my blog through this term. I look forward to posting again for my next class and hope you will join me then!

Brown, D. R. (2011). An Experiential Approach to Organizational Development (E. Svendsen Ed. 8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Joseph Grenny, K. P., David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler. (2013). Influencer. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

Talks, TED. (Producer). (2011). Stanley McChrystal -- Listen, learn...then lead. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/stanley_mcchrystal

Video, VitalSmarts. (Producer). (2012). Influencer -- Gallery Furniture Video Case Study. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E20RW75Fhu4{,  #166@@hidden}

A635.7.3.RB_DavisCarl INSEAD Reflection

                                    Ceiling of the Naval Chapel at Greenwich  (CSD 2015)

We’re back again, readers and let’s get right into another entry of the Educated Leadership Blog!

This week’s topic is self-managed teams and how leaders interact and manage those teams. At first, saying a self-managed team needs leadership may sound almost oxymoronic. However, even teams that are self-sufficient need to have an idea what they are supposed to accomplish and how it fits into the big picture.

Brown, in his text, stated that “A self-managed work team is an autonomous group whose members decide how to handle their task” (2011, p. 349). The team needs to have a defined task, service, or product. They may be a permanent fixture or a one-time team or variations in between. The teams may be called by different names. I have participated on a cross-functional team, which is a type of self-managed team. There are also self-regulating work groups, autonomous work groups, high-performance work teams, and sociotechnical systems (Brown, 2011).

The teams are often made up of personnel from across the organization. The team is given authority to manage their processes by upper management so the group may accomplish its objectives. In short, a diverse group of people is brought together, given a task, given authority to act, and then senior management gets out of the way so they can work. It is up to the group to determine a plan and then to execute that plan to meet the goals and deadlines senior management has set.

As self-managed teams are a version of high-performance teams, their characteristics are nearly identical. It should be a small team of no more than 15 members. It should be diverse in make-up. The team members need to be skilled, knowledgeable and capable. The team and management need to have a strong sense of partnership and desire to achieve the goal. They should have a physical site and be able to procure the tools and materials they deem necessary for success. (Brown, 2011)

Self-managed work teams have benefits and drawbacks, as do most any management processes. The advantages include a strong sense of accomplishment for the team members, the ability to work at a pace and in the style the members find most advantageous, the opportunity for team members to stretch themselves and grow, and a chance for the team members to learn about other parts of the company from people with whom they do not usually interact. Management gets the rewards from all the opportunities afforded the workers and the learning they accomplish. Management will also get to see their people operate in new ways which may open new doors for the employee. Last, but not least, management gets a situation handled that requires less oversight than normal which allows them to focus their energies elsewhere. The drawbacks, in my opinion, center around the change in leadership that is required to lead these groups. Those who struggle with delegating authority will find working with self-managed teams distasteful.

It is incumbent on management to set the goals and deadlines for the team, as well as defining the restraints. They also need to monitor the team with periodic check-ins to look for possible issues that are negatively impacting the group. Anytime a new group is put together, there will be growing pains and sometimes the pains are bigger that the self-managed team can handle on its own. Also, at the check-ins, there needs to be feedback provided to the group so they have an understanding of how they are progressing. The teams are not purely on auto-pilot, but it is close. However, there may be times when the external leader needs to get more ‘hands-on’ with the team. The leader needs to pay close enough attention to see if there are major disruptions that are impacting the team’s ability to perform. At that point, the leader intervenes to get the team back on track and then steps back again (INSEAD, 2008).

If the team is not set up properly, there will be issues. The characteristics and needs of the team need to be carefully considered by management. There needs to be training and cross-training for the members. There needs to be recognition and compensation for success. As Professor Paul Tesluk mentioned in his interview with INSEAD (2008), as companies flatten their management structure, there is more need for teams that can self-manage. There just aren’t going to be enough managers to pay full-time attention to the teams.

Professor Tesluk also notes that the leadership style for “external leaders” of self-managed teams is different from the style of a leader that is in charge of a team (INSEAD, 2008). The leader must move away from a directive style and move toward a transformational type of leadership where the development of the team members is at the forefront. The members must learn and become proficient at setting schedules, defining processes, and managing the diverse perspectives the team will have within it. Those are learned skills that are not prevalent across most companies. They will need to be nurtured in the self-managed team.

I have had the pleasure of having a high-performance team work for me. I love it and am always on the lookout for opportunities to put together another group like that one. I was also a participant on a cross-functional team a few years ago. That experience was not as gratifying because the leader that set up the team was not able to step back and let the team work, he was always giving direction. The team didn’t meet the tasks it was set up to accomplish and most participants left with a bad taste in their mouth. To this day, the mention of a cross-functional team being considered will cause numerous eye-rolls in meetings.

In order to be able to lead a self-managed team, one needs trust and confidence in the team and in oneself. The leader needs to know what needs to be accomplished and be able to communicate that goal clearly. An understanding of the skills the people being invited to join the team will bring is a necessity. A commitment to getting the people on the team opportunities to expand their skill-sets and giving them the space to learn and even to make mistakes (yes, make mistakes) will go far toward providing the team opportunity to succeed. Professor Tesluk also points out that external leaders of self-managed teams need to convey the goals for the team in an inspiring manner (INSEAD, 2008). Therefore, the ability to communicate goals through storytelling may be a very important skill. One other skill will be the ability to pay attention without getting in the way. As mentioned above, the leader needs to be ready to step in and help when truly necessary.

I believe we will see more and more of these types of teams, especially in larger companies. I look forward to working with and on those teams!

Until next time…

Brown, D. R. (2011). An Experiential Approach to Organizational Development. Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice-Hall.

INSEAD (2008). Self-managing teams: debunking the leadership paradox, YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBnR00qgGgM

A635.6.3.RB_DavisCarl EcoSeagate

                                                                London - June 2016                     CSD

Hello and welcome to week six of Organizational Change class!

We were asked to review two YouTube™ videos about Eco Seagate, a team building outdoor lab that the Seagate Technology company puts on each year. Seagate is a computer hardware manufacturer that builds hard drives. The cost of the lab is quoted at approximately $2 million per year (Brown, 2011, p. 274). 200 Seagate employees are selected to participate each year out of 2000 applying to go.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCOfOFMiLtE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etwuap-_Azk

The CEO of Seagate has been unable to quantitatively prove the value of the investment he is making in the company’s people (Brown, 2011, p.274). In the two videos, the examples of team members helping each other and coming together after a challenge are apparent. Since the videos were shot by Seagate, I would expect them to illustrate those points. Team-building is the underlying theme for the entire lab. The participants are thrown into new and stressful situations where they have to rely on each other to succeed. Many of the lecture topics in part two of the video were about conflict and conflict management. That would seem to indicate that Seagate management feels their people are under-equipped to deal with conflict situations at work. This model is used by the military and other organizations who are looking to build bonds of trust and a sense of accomplishment for their teams.

There is value in the process Seagate uses. There is also risk in putting people in these situations. Those that succeed will find benefit in the program. There may be those that fail or get injured. Those people may not find the benefit of the experience nearly as useful. For some, the opportunity to travel to faraway lands may be reward enough for going. Others are probably looking for the chance to test themselves and see how far they can push against their comfort zones. Some are hoping to get noticed by the company leadership for their performance in the stressful situations. Others will have their own reasons for applying and why it would be meaningful to them. As noted above, the issue really lies in attempting to quantify the benefits to the company that are received for the $2 million price tag. The training is slanted toward building high-performance teams and illustrating the habits those teams need to operate. If Seagate could point to a greater number of high-performance teams, the critics may be quieted.

However, high-performance teams are not the workplace norm at any organization. They have a life-cycle and naturally disband when their task is complete, much like the teams do at the end of the EcoSeagate week (Whetten & Cameron, 2011). As described by Tuckman (1965), teams go through the stages of forming, norming, storming, and performing. Many teams do not make it through the cycle. Those teams are apt to perform at a lower level that teams who make it through all the steps. EcoSeagate is an attempt to push 200 employees through all the stages so they can see what the process is and, more importantly, what it feels like to go through the process and succeed. As noted by Whetten & Cameron, “Once a person experiences this kind of excellence, team performance stuck in the first three stages of development will never be satisfactory again” (2011, p. 506). Again, the CEO of Seagate needs to quantify the results if he wishes to get the shareholders and other critics to quiet down. Can he point to a higher number of teams that are performing at a high level?

My company has a Leadership Center that is utilized as a University setting for employees to attend. Various classes are held there and team-building exercises are sometimes carried out. I do not know the budget for maintaining the Leadership Center, but I would suspect that it is at least as much as Seagate spends on EcoSeagate. I have not heard of groups doing outdoor labs to improve performance. I have participated in group testing where leaders are trying to define the personalities, learning styles, and leadership styles in their groups. Very little follow-up accompanied the tests and they became examples of stories that start, “Remember that day we wasted doing that test…?” Simply taking the tests doesn’t do much unless the data is collected and put to use.

My organization could definitely benefit from a team-building outdoor lab experience. The group is not co-located, so we rarely get to see each other. We are usually tasked with numerous projects that have high visibility and relatively high risk. The need for high-performance is definitely present a majority of the time. It would be beneficial to have members from organizations that support the work my team accomplishes, so a level of trust could be built. The trust is low amongst most groups right now. Finding the money would be difficult, but not insurmountable. The asset that would be almost impossible to find is the time. We have too few people doing too many things to be able to dedicate three to five days to really bond. Creative thinking would need to be applied to find a way.

See you next week!

Brown, D. R. (2011). An Experiential Approach to Organizational Development. Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice-Hall.

               

Tuckman, B. W. (1965). "Developmental sequence in small groups." Psychological Bulleting 63(6): 16.

               

Whetten, D. A. and K. S. Cameron (2011). Developing Management Skills. Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall.