Coach’s Corner – Responding to the most Frequently Asked Questions posed by our A-CHIEVE! publication readership…

QUESTION: What is the best way to deal with a difficult employee?

RESPONSE: Oftentimes the leader asking the question is hoping for a simple “terminate the person” reply. The reality is that termination is not necessarily the right solution at that particular point in time for several reasons. As we probe further, we oftentimes discover one or more of the following conditions:

• Clear and concise expectations, deliverable accountabilities and meaningful performance measurements have not been co-established by the leader and employee. Caution: a job description typically does not fill this void because: 1) content speaks to generalities vs. specifics; 2) the employee’s role may have evolved based on business needs and therefore, might not even resemble the original job description; and 3) job descriptions rarely include metrics. We recommend presenting the data in an easy-to-understand, easy-to-reference Performance Scorecard format, so expectation specifics, including deliverables and metrics, are crystal clear.

• Clear, concise, timely and actionable performance feedback has not been discussed with the employee. Caution: conducting semi-formal or formal performance reviews even as often as once per quarter does not fill this void if: 1) on-going performance discussions are not occurring as a natural part of engaging the employee on a regular basis; and 2) the employee is not provided with specific examples of both desired and undesired behaviors plus expected results. We recommend presenting the data in an easy-to-understand, easy-to-reference START | STOP | CONTINUE format, so expectation specifics are crystal clear.

•  A leader/employee stand-off. Both parties have dug in their heels, each embracing his/her own position (point of view) vs. both parties engaging in open, honest and candid dialogue in an attempt to discover the root cause(s) of the leader/employee disconnect, which is the first step toward co-designing a workable solution. Caution: someone must assume the role of ‘adult’ in this type of scenario. We recommend that the leader be the adult and with that, adopt the right constructive conflict attitude plus demeanor which includes:

– Actively listening to vs. tuning out the employee
– Being inquisitive & curious vs. close-minded & defensive
– Posing probing questions vs. taking positional stands
– Being personable vs. warlike
– Focusing on the facts vs. being drawn into or contributing to an emotional swirl
– Seeking out the truth vs. embracing untested beliefs, assumptions & conclusions
– Engaging in discussion richness vs. discussion rightness (aka I’m right – you’re wrong)
– Solving problems vs. winning positions
– Using positive, consistent word choice, tone & body language vs. negative, incongruent language

• A leadership opportunity for self-improvement. The world is continuously evolving and so must our leadership thinking, approaches and capabilities continue to evolve. Caution: one of the most challenging aspects of working with an employee that we perceive as being ‘difficult’, is being able to look past the employee’s persona, keep an open mind, sort through their messaging and, in doing so, objectively ask ourselves “What is it about our leadership style and/or approach that may be unintentionally contributing to the employee’s negative attitude and/or behaviors? As an example, a criticism that we frequently hear as we’re helping teams improve their performance results, is leadership inconsistency – where the leadership team is saying “X” but doing “Y”. When that occurs, team members become disenfranchised to a degree where some become quietly frustrated…others drift into a state of apathy…and a few act out and quickly become our ‘problem employees’. We recommend interjecting a healthy dose of self-reflection when working with a difficult employee because we may actually be contributing to the dysfunction without even realizing it.

There is a time and a place to terminate employees who make choices that are not in the best interests of achieving organizational goals and objectives and advancing organizational agendas, but let’s make sure that, as responsible leaders, we have performed ALL of our due diligence before we arrive at that conclusion.

Check out this article plus more in A-CHIEVE! (July 2011).

Do you use your power of positive persuasion or negative persuasion when selling your ideas and influencing your co-workers?

Check out our side-by-side comparison and evaluate yourself, or better yet, ask one or more co-workers, who will be candid and open with you, to objectively assess you!

Check out this article plus more in A-CHIEVE! (July 2011).

When we first read Harvard Business Review’s “The Big Idea: The Age of Hyperspecialization”, the graphic that came to mind was a knowledge worker assembly line – very similar to a manufacturing industry’s production assembly line, but with workers contributing a very narrow slice of intellectual capital (or narrowly defined skill set) based on each person’s area of expertise. For those of you who may not be familiar with the term ‘hyperspecialization’, it is defined as extreme specialization. What exactly does that mean? 

If we were to dissect an employee’s job description, we could typically break down each role into component parts. As an example, let’s dissect the Project Manager’s (PM) role since many organizations are familiar with this job function. Traditionally PMs are chartered with delivering a discrete body of work while attaining timeline, budget, advertised outcome and customer satisfaction targets. Generally speaking, while many PMs excel in building work breakdown structures, assigning activities and tasks to the right subject matter experts and managing their teams to task completion, PMs are also expected, by default, to: 

• Create highly collaborative and engaging team environments
• Manage customer, key stakeholder, executive management, team member and vendor expectations
• Navigate through ambiguity, political landscapes and various other organizational complexities
• Arbitrate team conflicts
• Hold team members accountable to time and cost estimates plus quality outputs
• Develop then execute project management deliverables requiring capabilities such as the following:   

 …all of which are not ‘typical’ PM wheelhouse strengths. To further exacerbate the situation, the PM is additionally responsible for creating the project’s Scope Definition, which is the single most crucial project deliverable because it positions the project for out-of-the-gate success or failure. In today’s tumultuous business climate, unlike years gone by, scope development requires that the PM consider all of the before-mentioned moving parts from a systems thinking/cause and effective relationships perspective plus vet out and wrap in two oftentimes overlooked success criteria: 1) solution usage; and 2) anticipated business value. Whew! Not only is that a lot to take on, but many of the required talents aren’t prevalent within the PM ranks. We know this based on data. Depending on whose survey results you embrace (Forrester Research, Gartner Research, Carnegie Mellon, Standish Group, and the list goes on and on), projects continue to fail at a rate of 30% to 80%, year-over-year, with the 10+ year pattern continuing to fall at the feet of the Project Managers. As Benjamin Franklin would say “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Obviously, the wide swath of expectations that we have layered onto the Project Manager’s role isn’t working and is therefore, ill-conceived as evidenced by the results. It’s time to take a step back and reassess.

With the advent of hyperspecialization, what if organizations were to recalibrate the Project Manager’s role, breaking the work currently performed by one person into more specialized components fulfilled by several people (percents of people, either employees or consultants, whichever approach is more feasible given your particular organization’s talent pool plus construct), with the end goal of leading to organizational improvements in project outcomes – specific to increased quality, speed and value and decreased costs? As an example, for medium to large-scale projects, particularly those projects of strategic importance, what if organizations were to engage a part-time:

• Systems thinking expert
• Business results expert
• Finance/cost accounting expert
• Communications expert
• Human behavior expert  

…as project team members, consolidating ‘experts’ where feasible, meaning, you could find systems thinking, business results and finance/cost accounting expertise all rolled into one credible resource, and even then, only draw upon the resource on a percentage basis. Could the benefits of implementing such an approach offset the costs? If your answer is intuitively “yes”, because you know that your organization is struggling in the project management delivery arena, how would you sell your organization on the hyperspecialization approach? In the case of the Project Manager, it shouldn’t be too difficult to:

Taking hyperspecialization to yet the next level, consider Boeing’s hyperspecialization-on-steroids example, where the world’s largest aerospace company engaged 379 ‘major’ suppliers to build the 787 Dreamliner. While initially hailed as the epitome of subcontracting, the end result proved otherwise, when the parts failed to come together as seamlessly as envisioned, and delays ensued. Other organizations have successfully plunged into the world of hyperspecialization – as both service providers and customers – and are reaping the benefits. TopCoder, a community of 300K freelance developers representing 200 countries, touts Acatel-Lucent, FaceBook, LendingTree and PayPal as customers who tee up ‘competitions’ (identify complex business problems requiring innovative, technology-based, expert solutions), where TopCoder developers openly compete with their colleagues to create the ‘ultimate solution’ in order to win the contest. It’s not unusual for customers to reward competition winners with six or even seven figure payments. Beyond the monetary incentives, the winning developers advance in TopCoder’s highly publicized ‘top contributors’ ratings plus continue to select only those competitions that align with their passions plus areas of specialization. But like the Boeing example, quality control and seamless integration are key when operating in a world of power brokering at the task level. 

For those organizations who want to reap the faster, better, smarter, cheaper benefits of knowledge worker hyperspecialization, the best place to start is a three-pronged approach:

• Select a job that is a competitive advantage enabler; 
• Map both the primary and secondary tasks associated with that particular job; and
• Identify which tasks could be performed with higher quality, at a greater speed, or at a lower cost by a specialized resource(s).

You may find, like the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, that their most highly skilled knowledge workers were spending 20%-40% of their day on data entry, web research, basic spreadsheet analysis and PowerPoint development tasks. Pfizer offloaded these tasks to several specialty firms to optimize their knowledge workers’ capabilities. Or, using the previous Project Manager example, you could find that engaging specialty resources to perform the work that falls outside of the typical PM’s core capabilities, will result in less project failures and increased business value.

Check out this article plus more in A-CHIEVE! (July 2011).

In last month’s “Top 3 Forward-Looking Global Trends” article, cultivating creative leaders was identified by 707 Chief Human Resource Officers across 61 countries as the #1 challenge facing organizations as they compete in the dynamic global marketplace (IBM’s 2010 “Working Beyond Borders” Study). 

In this issue, we were initially going to examine how cutting edge organizations aggressively develop their creative leadership bench strength. While conducting our research, Cornell University ILR School’s study “Recognizing Creative Leadership: Can Creative Idea Expression Negatively Relate to Perceptions of Leadership Potential?” (2010) caught our attention. Their statistically-driven and evidenced-based approach revealed the following three ‘Creative Idea Pitcher’ (aka Idea Pitchers) and ‘Leadership Potential Evaluator’ (aka Evaluators) outcomes:

Study 1: Idea Pitchers who presented creative (novel) and useful ideas were perceived as having less leadership potential by the Evaluators in a sample study involving employees working in jobs that required creative problem solving.

Study 2: Idea Pitchers who were presenting creative (novel) and useful ideas were perceived as being competent by the Evaluators, but having less leadership potential than Idea Pitchers who were presenting useful (but not novel) ideas.

Study 3: Idea Pitchers who were presenting creative (novel) and useful ideas were perceived as having leadership potential when the Evaluators were introduced to a ‘charismatic leadership’ definition (nonconformist and unique) prior to assessing the Idea Pitchers.

The study’s first conclusion…all things being equal, creative employees who are perceived as being charismatic ‘have a leg up’ on creative employees who are not perceived as being charismatic. In fact, being creative but not charismatic is a promotional liability. Why would that be the case?

The reality…organizations are not as receptive to filling leadership positions with creative thinker candidates even though, according to the study’s author, Jennifer Mueller, “There is research that shows that those who have their own creative ideas are open to them and know how to get creative ideas through [the organization].” Per Mueller “It is not easy to select creative leaders…it takes more time and effort to recognize a creative leader than we might have previously thought.” Mueller believes that negative creativity bias is fueled by traditional leadership philosophies. “The value that leaders bring to groups is in creating common goals so the group can achieve something. And goals are better the clearer they are – you don’t want uncertainty. So leaders need to diminish uncertainty and create standards of behavior for everyone in the group. And they create those standards by conforming to them.” But the negative bias doesn’t stop there.  Leveraging academic literature, Mueller found that creative people are labeled ‘quirky’, ‘unfocused’ and ‘non conformist’ in addition to being perceived as ‘visionary’ and ‘charismatic’. Mueller concluded “The fact is people don’t feel positive about creative individuals – they feel ambivalent about them.” The net result is that original thinkers may be overlooked “…in favor of selecting leaders who would preserve the status quo by sticking with feasible but relatively unoriginal solutions.”

The challenge…those leaders who were promoted based on their status quo styles “…now find themselves in a world that has vastly changed, one that requires much more creative responses and thinking” per Mueller. It’s no wonder that cultivating creative leaders was identified as the #1 hurdle facing organizations given the pervasive stereotypical barriers that are not generally recognized, understood or proactively addressed by most organizations.

What’s the solution? Mueller suggests that organizations consider the following:

How do you break through stereotypes? The very first step is to build awareness among your organization’s leadership ranks plus develop and execute an actionable plan. We recommend constructing executive/senior leader working sessions that are designed to:

Where do you start? We’ve compiled the following creative leader characteristics and traits that you may wish to introduce during your working sessions – creative leaders:

Check out this article plus more in A-CHIEVE! (June 2011).

In our Facing the Leadership Chasm article, we cited multiple key points from Cornell University ILS School’s study “Recognizing Creative Leadership: Can Creative Idea Expression Negatively Relate to Perceptions of Leadership Potential?”, including:

• Creative employees who are perceived as being charismatic ‘have a leg up’ on creative employees who are not perceived as being charismatic; and  
• Being creative but not charismatic is a promotional liability.

Let’s first take a step back and define ‘charisma’. According to Wikipedia, charisma is a “…compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others.” The term is derived from a Greek word meaning ‘favor given’ or ‘gift of grace.’ Charisma can arise from two opposing foundations:

• Honorable, collaborative and authentic
• Dishonorable, manipulative and disingenuous (e.g., narcassism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy)

Our context is the former vs. latter.

In today’s society, charisma is referred to as the ‘it’ factor — either you have ‘it’ or you don’t. But what is ‘it’? According to Psychology Today’s contributing author Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D., charisma is “…a constellation of complex and sophisticated social and emotional skills” that includes the following six key ingredients:

According to research, charisma is shaped by one part temperament and personality (innate qualities) plus two parts life experiences (developed qualities over time). Per Dr. Riggio, charisma “…is deeply rooted in [one's] ability to communicate emotionally (related to the notion of ‘emotional intelligence’ and relationship skills that allow charismatic individuals to make deep connections with others. Oratorical skills being positive and optimistic, and being emotionally expressive are also part of the building blocks of charisma.”  

What does charisma look like? According to Dr. Alex “Sandy” Pentland, MIT Human Dynamics Lab Director and Harvard Business Review contributing author, charismatic people:

• Are positive and energetic
• Exude self-confidence
• Talk more but are also great listeners
• Spend more face-to-face time with others
• Pick up cues from others, draw people out and get them to be more outgoing
• Appear to know what they’re talking about in the short term
• Prove they know what they’re talking about in the long term

Mr. Pentland and his colleague, Mr. Daniel Olguin, have drawn these conclusions based on quantitative data. They’ve developed charismatic measuring devices that, when affixed to business executives in competitive situations, record ‘social signals’ or ‘social cues’  that analyze the executives’ tone of voice, gesticulation, proximity to others and more. The collected data is used to successfully predict who will succeed in competitive business situations without the data analyzers being privy to the business executives’ pitches. The results — those business executives who convey the above attributes consistently succeed in selling their ideas, products and services. Although that outcome may be jaw-dropping for individuals who are not charismatic and/or who don’t genuinely value the importance of connecting with people both emotionally and socially, the results are far from surprising to those who are charasmatic.

Charisma is, no doubt, a highly powerful and influential tool when built upon an honorable, collaborative and authentic foundation. The good news…if you have a ‘charisma conducive’ personality and temperament, which is one-third of the equation, you can develop your abilities to emotionally and socially connect with others. Like any behavioral change, your transformation will not occur over night and will require a targeted plan, dedicated time investment, focused energy, a positive attitude plus practice, practice and more practice!

Check out this article plus more in A-CHIEVE! (June 2011).

CHRIS CLANCY, Director Network Technology for the Cleveland Clinic, is a highly motivated leader who has an unquenchable thirst for learning as evidenced by his philosophy: “If you’re going to be an effective leader, you must continuously carve out time to learn and grow through a variety of venues. As Lou Holtz said ‘In this world you’re either growing or you’re dying, so get in motion and grow.’” We were excited to interview Chris to learn how highly motivated leaders and avid learners, like Chris, develop highly motivated teams. Chris shared his approach.

“Before a leader attempts to analyze team member motivations, the leader must first understand what motivates people. There are numerous human behavior methodologies that explain how our brains biologically work and how we function as a species. I’ve adopted the SCARF Model developed by NeuroLeadership.org. It’s easy to understand, remember and apply.

SCARF’s premise is that there are two predominant themes regarding how humans relate to each other and to themselves. The first overarching theme – motivations driving social behavior are governed by minimizing threats and maximizing rewards. The second theme – social needs operate similarly to our basic survival needs for food and water. In the social arena, at a survival level, human beings need:

• Status – Feeling important relative to others
• Certainty – Feeling certain about the future
• Autonomy – Feeling in control (having choices)
• Relatedness – Feeling a sense of ‘safeness’ and belonging
• Fairness – Feeling of being treated objectively and fairly

Rewards and threats impact each of the five domains, creating scenarios which will either attract, incent and engage employees (rewards) or detract, de-incent and disengage employees (threats). When applying this model, a leader must have a firm understanding of each domain:

STATUS – This isn’t about promotion. It’s about appreciation and positive feedback. It’s knowing that even though I’m not the ‘top guy’, I still matter. The tricky part – it’s easy to accidentally threaten someone’s sense of status when giving advice, instructions or constructive criticism, especially when the recipient isn’t self-confident. A leader must craft the messaging so the receiver hears the golden nuggets without perceiving the feedback as being threatening, then moving into defensive mode and/or shutting down altogether.

CERTAINTY – Our brains continuously try to predict the near term future. They can best do that when we’re working in consistent, congruent and full disclosure (open and candid) environments where we can easily connect-the-dots between the organization’s direction and how that specifically translates into our roles, goals and assignments. The very act of creating a sense of certainty is rewarding. Conversely, when we’re operating in unpredictable environments and/or working with unpredictable people, we feel like we’re on unsteady ground. When this occurs, we move into a heightened alert state because we’re now actively ‘on the lookout’ for potential threats. A leader must regularly help their employees connect-the-dots – especially during periods of significant change. Failing to do so can cause fear, frustration and resistance to the unknown.

AUTONOMY – We all want latitude to influence our environment vs. operating in an organization where our every move is mandated. From the most senior to junior levels, employees want to be able to render decisions and make choices within their span of control and be supported by their leader and team. A leader must establish the right boundaries that each employee can operate within based on his/her knowledge, experiences and talent. For example, a junior employee would not be given responsibility for rendering a multi-million dollar strategic decision, but that same employee can be given responsibility for rendering more tactical decisions that fall within his/her area of expertise. Additionally, leaders must create safe environments where employees can take reasonable risks and can learn from their mistakes (and, of course, not repeat them) without being crucified.

RELATEDNESS – People want to belong – to be a part of the team. In our daily lives, deciding that someone is a friend or foe, ‘in’ or ‘out’, happens fairly quickly, impacting oxytocin levels produced in the brain. As an example, if a person joins a party where they know several people, they tend to feel more relaxed, comfortable and safe, and their oxytocin levels increase. If however, the same person enters the room and doesn’t like or know the group, the person is likely to hold back, feel uncomfortable, possibly retreat and, correspondingly, their oxytocin levels decrease. The concept of relatedness is closely linked to trust. The more two people are able to relate to one another, the higher the level of trust. Relatedness is a delicate balance however, because it takes time to create a sense of safeness and belonging, and it only takes a few seconds to destroy it – intentionally or unintentionally. A leader must choose their words and actions wisely plus create highly collaborative, inclusive and trust-based environments.

FAIRNESS – Creating environments that are perceived as being fair is easier said than done. It’s one of those behaviors that comes with experience as a leader becomes more comfortable with and fluent in systems thinking – analyzing cause and effect scenarios in terms of consistency and congruency – plus adopting a transparent approach. It’s important for team members to know what the leader is thinking, what the leader is doing and even what types of information the leader is leveraging to guide and/or render decisions.

Once we understand how we function as human beings and how we can impact others – that’s half the battle. The other half is active listening. A topic for another day!”

Check out this article plus more in A-CHIEVE! (June 2011).

What is ShareVis?

ShareVis is a user friendly point-and-click solution that sits on top of (and integrates with) SharePoint for organizations who are serious about operating Faster, Better, Smarter, Cheaper.

Why ShareVis?

• Automate your most complex business processes in hours vs. weeks and months
• Define successful repeatable steps that deliver consistent positive outcomes vs. reinventing each and every time and hoping for the best 
• Provide easy access to forms and documents that everyone can leverage vs. wasting time searching for and/or recreating documents

• Create pipeline transparency for high-value processes vs. operating in ‘a black hole’ (as an example, it’s a great project pipeline intake, management and delivery solution)
• Establish and measure against targeted outcomes and clear accountabilities vs. manage against subjective, evasive and nebulous expectations   
• Optimize your existing SharePoint investment in a value-add, cost-effective, goal-attainment way vs. sinking more programming code dollars into a hard-to-use base product

• Manage ‘by exception’ through automated alerts and dashboarding vs. trying to manage everything through information overload
• Become self sufficient where business/non technical people can easily create workflows, dashboards, alerts, forms and document management and collaboration communities
• Increase IT”s value proposition by offering a high impact, easy-to-use business solution that is not IT programming dependent

• Significantly reduce your future SharePoint development costs (low/no code)
• Reduce your programming rework expenses as you upgrade to future SharePoint versions
• Take advantage of ShareVis’ ’licensed per server’ vs. ‘licensed per user’ model

Why aren’t more consulting companies advertising ShareVis?

Many consulting/contracting companies are not pushing ShareVis like we are because ShareVis significantly lessens an organization’s reliance on SharePoint developers – which is the ‘bread and butter’ for many consulting/contracting companies. We’re introducing our clients to this product because our goal is to provide our clients with faster, better, cheaper, smarter solutions that materially accelerate business goal attainment. At the conclusion of virtual or on-site ShareVis Training (which we offer), the Business and IT can be 100% productive in ShareVis/SharePoint Day 1. Eric Hutchinson, our SharePoint/ShareVis expert plus certified trainer, is credited with many accomplishments including his recent SharePoint-as-a-business-solution/ShareVis Training roll-out to Kaiser Permanente’s 13 regions/2,600 users.

Who uses ShareVis?

ShareVis’ client list includes American Airlines, Lockheed Martin, Heinz, Sony, Pfizer, US Bank, Fujifilm, The Library of Congress, United States Special Operations Command, Edwards Airforce Base, Elgin Airforce Base plus many more large, mid size plus small businesses across a variety of industries.

Want to learn more about ShareVis?

Please contact us if you’d like to schedule a ShareVis demo plus allow us the opportunity to automate one of your complex business processes so you can experience ShareVis’ easy-to-use and quick-to-implement feature-rich capabilities. Contact us at 440.248.7488. 

BRANDON DAVIS’ responsibilities cover a wide swath of territory, both literally and figuratively. Within URS Corporation’s Industrial Process Business Group, he manages accounting, financial reporting, human resources and all back office functions, as well as strategic business planning, so their group of highly talented, tightly integrated engineering, construction and technical teams that span the US and more than 40 countries, can do what they do best – service their clients across the globe.

Dividing his time between his Cleveland and Houston offices plus traveling to multi-country construction sites on an ‘as needed’ basis, Brandon operates in a borderless world. We asked Brandon: “What does it take to be a creative leader in today’s global marketplace?”

“When you go international, you must adapt to the other culture’s style and respect each person’s position and country. For example, in Latin America, it’s a different business culture. In order for your team to succeed, you must recognize that the local people know the process and how to get things done – rely on your local experts. As you tap into their culture, engage them in a friendly manner, be open to and actively listen to their ideas and opinions, build strong relationships, be patient and be acutely ‘communication aware’. By that I’m referring to ‘high context’ and ‘low context’ cultures. In a high context culture, many things are left unsaid, letting the culture explain. A few words can communicate a complex message. You have to read into what people mean plus sometimes ask a question several different ways to truly understand the messaging. As an example, in those cultures where it is improper to say “no”, even if you’ve given the team approval to say “no” if they can’t accomplish something within an ultra aggressive timeline, you must dig deeper to understand the reality behind their spoken words. You might also ask open-ended questions such as : “What are we doing right?” and “What are we doing wrong?” – then actively listen. In a low context culture, the communicator is very explicit. They tell you like it is. Most of these aspects apply to both international and domestic relations. Although not as pronounced, there are even cultural subtleties across the U.S.  As a creative leader you must recognize it’s not ‘one size fits all’ and adapt accordingly.” 

Delving further into creative leadership, we asked Brandon: “How does creative leadership translate into the day-to-day?” “Creative leaders seek out both the apparent and sometimes the not-so-obvious solutions. They are proactive, dedicated, initiative takers who, without prompting, regularly lead the charge in figuring out ways to identify and act on improvements, solve problems, break through roadblocks and present new and fresh ideas to advance the business. They have a constant hunger for knowledge and growth combined with a “let’s just fix this” or “let’s just try this” or “let’s just present this” attitude. They care about every aspect of the business. In fact, I coach those whom I work with to always treat company resources like it’s your own money – even down to the smallest details. As an example, if it were my money, would I really stay in that expensive hotel?”

We next asked Brandon “How does an organization go about cultivating creative leaders?” “An organizational culture must:

• Adopt a mindset that every client and every project is different
• Anticipate and embrace new twists on how they do things
• Openly encourage and incent those who both challenge how and why things are handled the way they are and bring fresh ideas and solutions to the table
• Invest in some percentage of creative leader ideas
• Create venues for leaders to present their ideas plus accompanying results in a public setting before the Executive Team – providing  opportunities for creative leaders to receive public kudos.

Above all, you need to engage your young professionals, support their involvement and ideas, and realize that management can’t fix everything because the reality is, we’re busy creating the problems! Although I say this somewhat in jest, one of my favorite quotes is “‘A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.’”

We next asked Brandon to share advice with our young professional readership. “Young folks in general (we’ve all been there) want to go places really fast, but when we’re younger, we really don’t know what we don’t know. No one can master a job within a few months. This concept is especially difficult for young and successful fast-track professionals to appreciate. At some point, promotional opportunities will slow down. The benefit when this occurs – it provides young professionals with a great opportunity to become a master of their craft by gaining necessary experience which ultimately feeds intuition. There is also nothing stopping a person from diversifying one’s responsibilities. Branching out enables growth and development. If a young professional adopts this type of mindset, it’ll keep the work exciting and challenging and will keep those creative leadership juices flowing!”

Check out this article plus more in A-CHIEVE! (May 2011).

Course content includes instruction, best practices, tips, techniques plus relevant hands-on exercises to help you become ShareVis self-sufficient. Topics include:

• Introduction to ShareVis
• Exploring ShareVis Designer
• Anatomy of a Workflow
• Document-Based Workflows with automatic document updates, DocEx
• Form-Based Workflows with role based Web views, FormEx
• Extending Workflows with Plug-Ins
• Connecting Workflows to Lists and Libraries
• Connecting Workflows to External Data Sources
• ShareVis for Ninjas – Advanced Features
• Putting it All Together
• ShareVis and PowerShell

Contact TechEdge at 440.248.7488 or email ShareVis Course Instructor Eric Hutchinson at ehutchinson@techedgellc.com.

UNLEASH CREATIVITY | MOBILIZE TALENT | CAPITALIZE ON COLLECTIVE INTELLLIGENCE

“…while businesses have traditionally managed their workforces with an eye toward operational efficiency, they have not necessarily done so with the creativity, flexibility and speed to capitalize on the growth opportunities that spring from an ever-more dynamic global marketplace.”

Working Beyond Borders, IBM Study, 2010 | Summary Insights from 700 organizations across 61 countries

We thank companies like IBM who have the capital and reach to conduct expansive and thoughtful global surveys and share results with us so we can leverage their work within our own organizational microcosms. Unfortunately, great surveys like “Working Beyond Borders” come and go with little fanfare because we read a title, and in our age of information overload, quickly decide “Oh, that doesn’t apply to me and my organization because:

• We don’t have a global footprint 
• Our industry and culture are unique
• We’re just fine the way we are
• The study is ‘blue sky’ thinking
• IBM is just trying to sell their services”

– when, in fact, the over-arching concepts apply to each and every one of us. Even more ironic, the study’s first of three challenges – cultivating creative leaders – defined as “nimbly leading in complex global environments”, speaks to our inability of being open to then creatively translating (connect-the-dots between) high-level concepts, trends and statistics into goal-driven, realistic and practical strategies and tactics that scream competitive advantage, unique differentiators, exceptional results, continuous improvement and marketplace relevancy. We love studies like IBM’s because we are anecdotally seeing and experiencing within small, mid size and large organizations, exactly what the study’s 707 Chief Human Resource Officers (CHRO) and Workforce Strategists are seeing and experiencing across the globe. So what are the “top 3″ challenges and how can they be remediated?

Challenge #1: Cultivating Creative Leaders

The CHROs concluded that organizations must develop “…energized leaders with a flair for thinking about opportunities and challenges in completely different ways. These leaders must be able to provide direction to, as well as motivate, reward and drive results from an increasingly dispersed and diverse employee base.” We 100% concur with the CHRO’s assessment. Here’s our practical, on-the-ground, living-it-day-in-and-day-out take…creative leaders, as defined above, are not around every corner. In fact, they are few and far between. We believe in the 80/20 rule, so we would suggest that creative leaders account for about 20% of the leadership population. The other 80% typically fall into one of the following categories – the leader:

Has the right creative leader capabilities but…

• Is consumed with ‘in the weeds’ work to a degree where he/she is not contributing as a high performing leader
• His/her creative leadership efforts are being blocked by the person’s manager, who is not a creative leader and therefore, has no appreciation for creative leadership  

Was once a creative leader but…

• Has allowed his/her leadership skills to atrophy for a variety of reasons  
• Is now personally motivated by achieving his/her short-term goals, such as retiring, rather than being concerned about the long-term health and welfare of the organization and its people

Was never a creative leader but was promoted into and continues on in a leadership role because he/she…

• Is a subject matter expert in a particular field, meaning a person who has mastered his/her craft such as a highly skilled technologist, sales person, engineer, lawyer, physician or even a task-completer, but falls short in having mastered the art of amassing followers, breaking through barriers and achieving his/her vision through a sincere, charismatic and transformational style
• Feels ‘locked into’ a management position since stepping down would result in a title, span of control, office location and/or monetary adjustment
• Is self-unaware and doesn’t realize that he/she does not have what it takes to be a creative leader

In each case there is a common theme  – it is up to the most senior leaders to instill, inspire and expect nothing less than creative leadership at all organizational levels. How is the before-mentioned achieved? We suggest that you read our March article, Retaining Pivotal Talent – Your Company’s DNA, and take the first step toward assessing your Creative Leadership talent pool. In a future A-CHIEVE! publication, we’ll dedicate our feature article to how organizations can cultivate creative leaders.   

Challenge #2: Mobilizing Talent

The CHROs concluded that organizations “…must be willing to simplify processes and provide fast, adaptive workforce solutions to meet the requirements of a quickly changing marketplace. A responsive human capital supply chain and the ability to fluidly allocate resources are essential for competitive differentiation in today’s tumultuous environment.” They further stated that while organizations are somewhat to generally adept at sourcing talent, managing labor costs, evaluating workforce performance, enhancing workforce productivity and retaining valued talent, few organizations are proficient in properly and efficiently allocating their workforce, aka mobilizing talent – a capability deemed critical to high performing organizations. In our world, we consistently see this gap. We would also suggest that if an organization isn’t proficient in properly and efficiently allocating their workforce, they are not positioned to optimize their labor costs, workforce performance, workforce productivity and ‘top talent’ retention, since all of these components are tightly coupled from a systems (cause and effect) perspective.

How does an organization tackle workforce allocation? We suggest implementing a highly effective Demand Intake and Fulfillment Management process that is designed to provide customers with positive business outcomes, results and experiences through predefined and transparent workflows and deliverables that optimize time, cost and resource utilization. We guarantee that those organizations who fail to establish some type of predictable and consistent end-end-end supply chain delivery process have little to no value-add visibility into resource utilization and therefore, cannot properly or efficiently allocate their workforce. It’s simply not possible.   

Challenge #3: Capitalizing on Collective Intelligence

The CHROs concluded that “…application of collective organizational knowledge and experience is essential to building an agile and responsive workforce…yet many organizations lack the structure and resources to facilitate institutional knowledge sharing and collaboration.”

We hold a very different perspective based on our experiences. While we whole-heartedly agree that the gap is real and pervasive, we believe that while a lack of structure and facilitative resources is a contributing factor, the root cause can be traced to leaders and teams lacking the attitude, know-how and skills required to behave in a truly collaborative manner. The cold, harsh truth – if a person isn’t collaborative, he/she will only share knowledge if it benefits the individual vs. the organization. During our Collaboration in Action workshops, we discuss this very topic – why aren’t human beings inherently collaborative? We would suggest that as a species, human beings are wired to be competitive and self-preserving (the survival of the fittest), which doesn’t help. To make matters worse, educational institutions focus on  individual performance starting Day 1, when we take our first step into the classroom. Although team activities and sports are thrown into the mix here and there, we are generally evaluated based on individual vs. team performance. We then enter the workplace and find ourselves in highly competitive environments where individual performance is king, managing upward to appear collaborative is possible, our leaders aren’t setting the right collaborative tone, our organization’s culture is anything but collaborative, and we rarely receive the essential tools required to break our bad, non collaborative habits. The good news – collaborative behaviors can be learned and then instilled and sustained through awareness-building, consistent practice and accountability methods and measures.

Want to take a deeper dive into the “top 3″ trends? Download IBM’s Working Beyond Borders Study.

Check out this article plus more in A-CHIEVE! (May 2011).