Season's Greetings

It's been a busy year but I am glad I ended it working on projects with new partners. It never is easy moving out of status quo / comfort zone to do new things, even for a consultant advocating embracing, managing and leading change. Ironic? No..., just human nature.

With the holiday season upon us, I would like to take this opportunity to thank partners, colleagues, clients for all their support this past year and wish each and everyone of you - A Blessed Christmas!

 

May you also have a Great & Safe 2013 ahead and let us not forget

"The Reason for the Season."

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

 

 

Leadership Vision

Last week, I spent 3 days at one of the training rooms inside the Supreme Court, working with a team involved in the legal industry on a leadership module about change management. Participants included the Chief Executive, Directors and Senior Managers.

On the second morning, as I waited patiently for security to check my credentials and clear my vehicle for entry and parking, I noticed a small visual display just above the card access slot, it displayed upcoming events of the week at Supreme Court like overseas visitors etc.

The other screen shot, perhaps reflective of the current state at the Singapore judiciary with a new Chief Justice just coming onboard on Nov6,  was a very poignant reminder to me about the role of leadership in managing and leading change. The message read as follows:

“ Vision without Action is a Dream …
                                           Action without Vision is a Nightmare.”

The power of visioning by leadership cannot be underestimated, especially in this age of employee engagement and with the different generations and needs at work, in particular the Gen Y.

The leading authorities on leadership are single-minded about this value.

In his seminal work on change management, John P Kotter shared his “8-step Change Model”  in his 2006 book Leading Change with one step being “creating a vision for change”.

Management guru Ken Blanchad also expounds on the topic of leading through change, shared about the need for leaders to provide an inspiring vision by “envisioning the future”.

Leaders must have clarity of purpose and be clear about how to go about achieving, in addition to providing guidance about the way it should be done. So ensuring clarity of vision, mission and values is NOT an out-dated notion, but a management imperative for continued organizational success.

I am currently consulting with the Managing Director (MD) and senior leadership team of a very successful  beauty and food & beverage group here in Singapore. The MD was recently named Tourism Entrepreneur of the Year 2012.

After more than a decade of tremendous growth and expansion, this life-style group finds value in re-visiting their vision, mission and core values to ensure better alignment across the entire empire by each and every employee, as they prepare to meet the challenges of today and grow in the future.

In the book “Roosevelt :  1940-1945 - Soldier of Freedom”, James Macgregor Burns wrote:

      “Where does leadership begin?... Where change begins.”

 

 

Maverickism

It was the call sign for the fighter pilot character played by Tom Cruise in the hit movie Top Gun which propelled him to Hollywood stardom.

And recently when I conducted a talent management training, the participants and I had a lengthy discourse about the pros and cons of having “mavericks” in the organization when I introduced the term to the more familiar mix of core contributors, high potentials, leaders and critical roles.

As Cruise’s character typically portrays – mavericks shun the dictates of the group, tend to be poor team players and generally low in the “agreeableness” quotient. Yet they also have other qualities that can save the day – as in the movie.

In a recent study due to be published later this year in the British Journal of Psychology, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the University of New South Wales, Australia (UNSW), suggests that for businesses to be more competitive in the global market, they need to be more resourceful and make greater use of the talents of mavericks within their organizations.

Dr Elliroma Gardiner of LSE and Professor Chris Jackson of UNSW said in a statement dated 4th April 2012 that “being a maverick is more than just having an idea or a hunch pay off, it is about taking real risks and achieving in a way that is unique and unexpected”.

Mavericks are described as independent thinkers, creative problem solvers, quick decision makers, and goal-oriented individuals. They are open to new ideas and are risk takers, usually extroverts who are highly persuasive in gaining support for their ideas.

Real life mavericks in the corporate world include Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and also Sir Richard Branson - who started his own airline Virgin Atlantic to challenge the mighty British Airways, and which has become one of the more if not most profitable airline in the world.

Gardiner and Jackson go on to say that "understandably, some aspects of the maverick personality profile, such as risk-taking and low agreeableness, might make some hiring managers quite nervous. However, our research suggests that when combined with other traits, such as extroversion, creativity and openness, the results can be quite positive.”

Do you have a maverick in YOUR organization?

 

H.A.R.D Goals

I just got off a busy training month including 2 runs of a WSQ Performance Management program -one for a corporate group and the other a public run.

On the topic of goal-setting and the inevitable KPIs (key performance indicators), there was much debate about what the oft heard refrain set SMART (specfic, measurable, attainable, realistic & time-bound) goals really entailed.

Mark Murphy in his 2009 book "Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your Employees to Give It Their All, and They'll Give You Even More" talks about the need for leaders to focus on making their people great, not happy i.e. who can inspire HundredPercenter performance.

He goes on to say that most workplaces are brimming with untapped talent that is suppressed by leaders who fail to connect with and challenge employees to unleash their true potential. He advocates that the harder the goals you set, the better your employees will perform.

Heartfelt - people must feel an emotional connection or attachment to that goal
Animated - the vision msut be compelling i.e. people must be able to visualise / "see" that goal
Required - people know the urgency in the goal and can be passionate in it's pursuit, even obsessively
Difficult  -  great achievements arise from tough(er) challenges

Maybe it's time to start setting really HARD goals at your upcoming year-end review and perfomance planning discussions.

Words of Wisdom

Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck just made The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller lists.

Published by Harvard Business Review Press (2012), authors Tjain, Harrington & Hsieh write about "what it takes to be an Entrepreneur" and I guess more importantly, "build a great business". I have to thank my brother-in-law for clueing me in to this book.

From their work with hundreds of executives and business builders across the globe, the authors found that every one of their subjects—from young founder to seasoned CEO—possesses these attributes in some combination. Finding out which trait drives us can lead to a greater awareness of our entrepreneurial profile and help us, and our organization, achieve the success we want.

Very practical and insightful tips are provided throughtout, but the one that stood out for me was #3 of their so-called 8 "Wisdom Manifestos" - Think Big, Start Small, then Scale Fast.
 
I am currently consulting with a very successful beauty and F&B group in Singapore as well as working with one of Singapore's largest pre-school operators for a series of training interventions - both have to do with changing culture and mindset.

This wisdom manifesto really reminded me on how organisations can adopt this approach to achieve long term and sustainable change, such that they do not become just another HBR "70% of all change efforts fail" * statistic.

Think Big is a must - this creates the vision of where we want to go, but Start Small - find passionate ambassadors who will act as change agents to catalyse those around them, from these seedlings will be the genesis for a much larger pool of advocates which the organisation can now leverage & Scale Fast, reaching across the entire organisation.

Wise words for success, indeed!

* from the landmark 1995 paper by John P Kotter and also later by Peter Senge in "Dance of Change"

Insight...not just Info

 

I just came off a busy week with a public-run WSQ talent management module as well as a corporate team building at Resorts World last Saturday for the Singapore office of a global legal firm.

The opening comments from the sponsor of the team building session really brought home for me about how important it is for organisations to be able to make sense of the data on their people so that they can make the right human capital decisions as part of their talent management (TM).

He said that in looking at the office, he and HR realised that this group, the secretarial/admin group, was the "single largest group" (job classification in TM speak) doing the same function. The lawyers obviously a large group but were in silos according to their specialisations like banking & finance, litigation, M&A (mergers & acquisitions) etc.

This is info (information) that organisations can glean from gathering data / statistics on their workforce. But so what?

He goes on to say that as a result, this group has the "largest impact on the tone of the office" i.e. the culture, how things get done, the feel at the work place, hence the need for investment into them and  this full day team-building program. This to enhance team work, promote collaboration, establish a culture of collegiality so as to achieve better organisational effectiveness and business performance.

Insight.

There are many tools associated with talent managment - job profiling, competency matrix, performance management, job classifications, bench strength ratios, talent mapping, lag measures, lead measures etc

Organisations sometimes get too caught up in collecting "data" on their workforce - attrition rates, MC rates, profile of departing employees, tenure, qualifications, age etc that they become indundated with so much info that they can't see the forest from the trees.

They would do well to understand this simple philosophy of info versus insight.

Are they gaining insight into their workforce to make appropriate human capital or talent management initiatives, or are they drowning in a sea of data and cannot ascertain the right steps or even where to start?

Which describes your current organisational situation today?

 

 

Sharing

Heading into a busy August with training assignments, overseas visitors, kids exams etc. So will get away with this post on a write-up of me in an Apr2012 edition of the HCS CoP magazine.

Corporate Conversations

I recently conducted an employee engagement training for a corporate group that included a survey prior to the start of the program. Amongst the top 3 areas identified as the lowest in terms of engagement for this group of employees was "communication" i.e how this was carried out in day to day corporate life.

As a facilitator and also a Community of Practice (CoP) facilitator, I am a strong believer in meaningful conversations at the workplace as a key differentiator for improved employee engagement, reduced conflict and enhanced organizational alignment and performance.

In an article in the June 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review entitled “Leadership is a Conversation”, authors Groysberg and Slind discuss employee engagement in today’s “flatter, more networked organizations.”

The authors concluded that by talking with employees, rather than simply issuing orders, typical of command & control type of organisations,  leaders can promote operational flexibility, employee engagement, and tight strategic alignment.

They identified four elements of organizational conversation that reflect the essential attributes of interpersonal conversation: intimacy, interactivity, inclusion, and intentionality.

Intimacy shifts the focus from a top-down distribution of information to a bottom-up exchange of ideas, advising leaders to “step down from their corporate perches and then step up to the challenge of communicating personally and transparently with their people". It's less about issuing and taking orders than about asking and answering questions.

Interactivity entails moving away from simple monologue and embracing the vitality of true dialogue i.e. traditional one-way media--print and broadcast, in particular--giving way to social media and the idea of social thinking.

Inclusion challenges the employee to play a greater role in the communication process, turning them  into full-fledged conversation partners, enabling them to provide their own ideas so that they can create content and act as brand ambassadors, thought leaders, and company storytellers.

Intentionality enables leaders and employees to derive strategically relevant action from the push and pull of discussion and debate so that the conversation reflects a “shared agenda that aligns with the company’s strategic objectives”.  The leaders role is then to “generate consent rather than commanding assent” for a strategic objective. The belief is that this enables employees at the top; at the middle; and at the bottom to “gain a big-picture view of where their company stands” on any issue which has gone through this process.

The article is not only insightful but thought-provoking and I am hopeful, that finally, conversation(s), will become an accepted and wider-spread part of the corporate landscape.

My Portfolio Life

Tells the story of author Dan Pink's transition from speechwriter for the Vice President of the United States to independent businessperson - detailing how he left his steady job to start his new life as a free agent and his insights and inroads into the micro-businesses, solo workers and independent professionals he met as he travelled across the US with his family.

Pink writes that more employees than ever are abandoning their old jobs and creating new ways to work as proprietors of home-based businesses, telecommuting freelancers, self-employed knowledge workers and independent contractors, highlighting the shift in economic and social power from the organization to the individual.

It has been three years since I embarked on my own "free-agent" journey as a full-time freelance facilitator / corporate trainer. I must admit when I first started it seemed a very daunting task. But by God's grace and hard work, I have managed to carve out a sustainable and enjoyable career that I can integrate work and life into a manageable blend.

I have also had many an individual asking me how I did it? what's it like? and if they could do something like that as well? For obvious reasons, everyone's story is different - arising from financial situation, family committments, career aspirations, time requirements etc.

One advice I give is for them to talk to as many people as they can to sound them out to gain better clarity about their aspirations and secondly, to read this book, which to me, is a compelling read for anyone at their career crossroads and asking what's next?

One of the greats of management thinking Charles Handy coined the term portfolio worker - for someone who worked independently of an organisation and whose living was drawn from a number of differing elements. He expounds this concept of a "portfolio life" in his 2001 book "The Elephant and the Flea".

Are you ready to be a free agent?

Breakfast Talks

I know this flyer is kinda small, but it's a busy training month this March, so I thought to do a quick post on this breakfast talk I am giving at HCS next Friday on a very topical issue of the day - Employee Engagement.

I will be sharing in part from work done by Towers Perrin in their Global Workforce Study and lessons about how organisations can improve engagement at the workplace and I look forward to a lively discussion from the attendees as they share their personal experiences - from the bad to the good to the great!

Kung Hei Fatt Choy

迎春接福 , 歲歲平安 ; 新年快乐 , 萬事如意 ! Wishing One & All

A Happy & Healthy YEAR of the DRAGON!

"THE" HR Guru

I just completed conducting a 3-day training about "aligning human resource services with business needs" where I was reminded about the work of one whom I consider as perhaps THE guru in HR.

Dave Ulrich is Professor of Business at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and co-founder of THE RBL Group. He is greatly sought after as a speaker, management coach and management consultant, who has been listed by HR Magazine countless times as their "most influential person in HR".

More importantly he has authored/co-authored many books that are almost mandatory reading for anyone planning a career in HR.

Some of these essential readings include:-

The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win,with Wendy Ulrich 2010

HR Transformation: Building Human Resources from the Outside In,with Justin Allen, Wayne Brockbank, Jon Younger, and Mark Nyman, 2009

HR Competencies: Mastery at the Intersection of People and Business,with Wayne Brockbank, Dani Johnson, Kurt Sandholtz, and Jon Younger, 2008

The HR Value Proposition with Wayne Brockbank, 2005

HR Scorecard: Linking People, Strategy, and Performance
with Brian Becker and Mark Huselid, 2001

Human Resource Champions: The Next Agenda for Adding Value and Delivering Results, 1997

Happy Reading!