Action Learning for Teams

Action learning programs provide multiple beneficial outcomes, including:

a)Team effectiveness.
b) Analysis of the leadership capabilities of individual team members.
c) Individual leadership development.
d) Problem-solving and planning on a real-time business issue.

Offsite team building programs are increasingly unpopular with many business leaders who want to spend their team's time on more immediate work matters. Employees seem to agree: A recent study by mobile phone company Vodafone UK and market research company YouGov found most employees believe that team-building exercises are a waste of time and involve embarrassing exercises that fail to build morale and engagement.

In the past, team building experiences were often scheduled activities using simulation, game play and immersion experiences to help a team develop awareness and better communication and partnering skills. Many learning leaders encouraged these activities believing they would jump-start success in the office. But the days of "trust falls" and multiple-day adventures in the wild are over.

Andrea Weinzimer, vice president of human resources at publishing company Hachette Book Group, said, "there is not enough long-term benefit to justify the financial spend. It's hard to measure its success and correlate it to the business."

"Today's context requires that the business see more immediate and tangible value from an offsite [event]," said Judy Jackson, chief talent officer of Digitas, an integrated brand agency. "We need to remove all the clutter and show the ROI of the efforts."

Further, only including a portion of the workforce can hurt engagement for employees not involved. It also sends a poor message when a few employees get to go on expensive retreats and the workforce is dealing with declining salary increases.

Instead of pulling a team out of work to build collaborative skills, leaders can use offsite meetings to do real work on strategic planning, problem-solving or other long-term needs that require in-depth thinking.

Action learning provides an opportunity to combine the real work objectives of an important offsite event with the beneficial outcomes of a reflective team-building experience. Many companies such as Goldman Sachs, UBS, IBM and GE also use action learning for high-potential employees as part of leadership development initiatives which include other elements such as 360s, executive coaching and MBA programs. This high potential-focused action learning also may include real-time project assignments focused on company business with time built in for reflection on how the participants perform as leaders in high-pressure, problem-solving environments.

Jackson employs action learning for high potentials at Digitas to "give them an opportunity to influence and have their voices heard on something important to the business, while building a community of partners in the learning process."

How to Conduct Action Learning for Teams

Action learning for teams can be especially effective if a team's leader is looking for multiple outcomes from an offsite meeting beyond the defined business goals. These might include better team communication, more effective partnerships between team members, more team synergy and agreement between members in conflict.

If key business challenges are the focus - such as realigning a sales process, integrating a new acquisition or fixing a client service problem - the core business goals which precipitated the need for an offsite meeting become the central problem-solving element of the action learning process.

In this context, the team is taught to approach the work assignment differently. For instance, most teams will move quickly into a brainstorming process when an issue is presented. When brainstorming, individuals drive forward with a degree of certainty negotiating their perspective. With action learning, the team moves forward with curiosity, wanting to uncover the best approach by asking great questions. The question before statements approach of action learning can drive higher-level strategic work.

Lynn Pinkus Lewis, executive vice president and global managing partner at Universal McCann, an advertising agency, used action learning for an important offsite event focused on planning a client initiative. "We accomplished very strategic work at a higher level than anyone anticipated," she said.

The question-based approach to problem solving invites participants to probe deeper and ensures that they think through the implications of their decisions. Bill Guerin, senior vice president of sales, marketing and strategy at Prudential Group Insurance, used action learning as a management consultant. "[It] gets people to think differently and break old habits by forcing them to look at an issue from many new perspectives. This helps to reinforce trust within the group because a participant sees the other members of the team stretching themselves. This gives him or her permission to stretch too."

Through this process, team members learn to communicate their individual perspectives to the other participants and build on their partners' ideas. The work process includes reflection on the quality of their communication, questions and listening while evaluating the work process. The team also analyzes how well members are partnering as a team and fixes gaps as the work continues.

This reflection occurs during the process, providing more meaning to each participant since the feedback from peers and a coach is in close proximity to the expressed behavior. Individuals learn and grow in self-awareness while the team develops techniques to improve its effectiveness.

Building an action learning team typically involves the following steps:

1. Set the team challenge:

The team leader designs an opening question or problem statement for the team's action learning process. The challenge should be a real business issue that impacts the participants so they feel engaged and concerned about the outcomes. It is important that contextual analysis occurs so the facilitator understands the organization's strategy, culture and leadership gaps.

2. Conduct pre-session learning planning and assessment:

Each person participates in an assessment process, typically through psychometric tools, and meets with the facilitator to discuss individual learning plans. This orients participants to reflect upon their style vis-a-vis the team. At the same time, the facilitator gathers information about the team's effectiveness to prepare a team assessment report to be shared at the meeting. This team analysis will include specific development goals for the session, and it should help to expose any team issues.

3. Create an action learning program:

The process typically is managed in two days broken into specific steps. The steps include:

a) Restate the problem statement.

The team vets the presented challenge for relevance, importance and accuracy. This principle here is to ask the right question to get the right answer. Guerin said, "This process moves away from a typical deterministic view that occurs at offsites. It offers a place for innovation and helps people confront areas of personal weakness."

b) Determine assumptions behind the issue.

The team outlines the assumptions behind the challenge to determine if there are any hidden risks that need to be exposed and considered before moving forward.

c) Set goals that would solve the issue at hand.

Learning how to create goals is a key dimension to the action learning process. The goals provide an opportunity to identify the desired end state.

d) Set specific tasks to realize the goals.

The team identifies specific, clear tasks needed to be accomplished to reach the desired end state.

e) Create an accountability matrix.

The list of tasks is placed into an accountability matrix, which includes enumeration of each task's owner, partner, resource, next step, date for next step and date for total completion of the task. Then the team is given clear assignments, which include sub-teams partnering to drive the group forward to the desired end state.

f) Offer post-action learning feedback:

Once the program is completed, each participant should sit with the facilitator or coach for feedback. This in-depth feedback reveals potential blind spots and offers coaching on how to better interact with this team and in team settings in general.

4. The team leader should participate in the entire process:

Unlike action learning for high potentials where an executive sponsor delivers the assignment at the beginning and receives a presentation on the team's work at the end, the leader of the intact team stays engaged as a total team member from start to finish.

Leadership development consultant Peter Prichard shared an experience where action learning benefited a team leader who habitually rescued his team in challenging times. "In this process, he learned how to not step in and save the group when they were struggling with the exercise," Prichard said. "This forced him to be comfortable with silence and learn to trust that the team could end up delivering the output together. He stepped back, and they were able to step up."

At the end of the process, the team leader takes ownership of the accountability matrix, making sure the team's activities are well managed and completed in light of agreements made at the offsite event. All of the follow-up steps can be measured by the leader who can clearly determine if the offsite event delivered positive outcomes. The leader also receives post-session aggregate analysis from the facilitator about the team's needs and how the leader can best manage each member. This additional information creates opportunities for the team leader to act as a coach.

5. Sustainability is the key to this learning process:

Because active reflection continues throughout the process, which takes about two full days, the team learns how to perfect its working relationship, which can be used when members return to their offices or gather again for significant decision-making moments.

With action learning, busy teams that cannot step away for team building interventions can still produce multiple ROIs from one offsite program.

By Paul Gorrell - Chief Learning Office- Progressive Talent Partners LLC

Get honest feedback as a boss

Build a culture of trust 

Leaders need to build a culture of trust through innovative policies and measures that value employees. For instance, Manmohan Agarwal, CEO of Bigshoebazar.com and brand owner of Yebhi.com tries to ensure all his senior professionals work as entrepreneurs and not as managers. "All our managers take independent operating and strategic decisions and the company stands behind them. We allow all employees to share their grievances," he says.

Be a good listener 

"It is important to be a good listener to be able to draw out honest feedback from employees," says VD Wadhwa, MD and CEO of Timex. "Leader should be impartial and should refrain from passing judgements. They cannot demand loyalty and honest feedback. It has to come through their behavior," he adds.

Encourage ideation 

Yebhi.com has a programme called Idea Gine to encourage innovation among employees. "Employees are encouraged to share even the most random ideas with the management," says Agarwal.

Do what you hear 

Taking feedback and not implementing it is futile. "It is important to take both formal and informal inputs from employees and to use them in any of the corrective measures," says Wadhwa.

Meet them individually 

As all employees do not open up in meetings, one-to-one sessions are critical to get to know them better. "Most managers only talk to direct reports, so I make it a point to meet two employees every week in the absence of their immediate supervisors," says Wadhwa. 

Article courtesy of Economic Times 

How Do Others See You?

Chief diversity officers spend their days dealing with the positive and negative images projected onto various ethnic, religious, cultural, gender and age groups. They have to untangle and process these images to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse global workforce by infusing their organizations with understanding, tolerance and an application of the differences within these groups.

There is another, more subtle way images play out and influence CDOs' effectiveness - the image they have of themselves and the efforts and energy they put into managing that image.

Image management, or the way a chief diversity officer proactively - and often unconsciously - attempts to shape others' positive and negative perceptions of his or her competence and character, can manifest in two ways: dreaded or desired images (DDIs).

Dreaded images are ways diversity executives don't want to be seen. Some of the most common dreaded images can be that the diversity executive is: not knowledgeable about all dimensions of differences; incompetent; biased or prejudiced; too strongly sympathetic toward a specific group; compromised or co-opted by the system; a sellout, or is upholding the status quo; not working hard enough for all groups that are different; or lazy or not fully committed.

Desired images, on the other hand, are ways in which diversity executives hope to be viewed. For instance, most hope to be perceived as: open-minded, empathic and tolerant; competent; someone who adds value; a change agent; an expert in a wide variety of cultural, ethnic and other differences; someone who challenges the status quo; and an activist against -isms such as racism, sexism and ageism.

Dreaded or desired images are not just a matter of concern for CDOs, but rather an overall business issue that everyone in their organization, from executives to employees, faces. In America, culturally speaking, the most common desired image is being competent, while the most dreaded image is being lazy. Diversity practitioners, however, often have the additional job-specific DDI of wanting to be seen as tolerant and open-minded and avoid being seen as compromised or unknowledgeable about differences.

DDIs can be powerful influencers for diversity executives' behavior because of their fear that not measuring up to perceived positive images or being painted with negative ones can lead to social rejection, professional disapproval and even job loss.

"Desired and dreaded images are pivotal [because] most diversity officers feel compelled to be advocates," said Martin Davidson, associate professor of leadership at Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia, and author of The End of Diversity As We Know It: Why Diversity Efforts Fail and How Leveraging Difference Can Succeed.

"In the quest to be an advocate for women, people of color and other minority and disenfranchised groups, CDOs strive to be knowledgeable about differences. In pursuit of this goal, they often end up behaving in ways - sometimes subtle ways - that give the impression they are experts even when they are uncertain," Davidson said. "[Because of this] CDOs can find it difficult to admit when they don't know something about diversity."

CDOs often have the desired image of being knowledgeable, expert and competent around diversity issues. It's a requirement for the job. When they attain the dreaded image of being incompetent, inadequate or unsure, their ability to foster meaningful diversity dialogue and understanding can be severely hampered. Here are a few common ways in which diversity executives may contribute to their own dreaded image:

1. Dominating the diversity discussion:

A tendency to speak intellectually about diversity and dominate discussions with an air of authority can backfire.

Davidson, who was the CDO for the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia, said his desire to be seen as smart and an expert led him to this very problem. "It was very seductive to me to be seen as the expert," Davidson said. "Discussions ended up becoming a question and answer session, and people were disempowered and intimidated because they felt I must be right since I had the academic background in this area."

Davidson said he realized his DDI was impacting his ability to engage the people around him, cutting down on creativity and idea generation and actually making it harder to create the change around diversity with which he was charged.

"The more I was in that desired image of having to have all the answers, the less other people participated," he said. "The key thing I did to get out of this was to stop answering questions and to start asking questions of other people. As a result of my making that shift, people became much more involved in programs and activities. They got energized and brought skills I didn't have, and I started learning things from them."

Another form of this dreaded image is when the diversity executive puts him or herself forward as the sole champion of justice. When this happens, it becomes more about the diversity leader being noble than about all key stakeholders in the organization collectively promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace and allowing others to contribute their perspectives and ideas.

2. Putting political correctness above communication:

When this dreaded image drives behavior, diversity executives not only do most of the talking, they may be dealing with diversity issues through a politically correct rather than a solutions-focused lens.

When people of differing backgrounds and perspectives engage with one another, resulting conversations can be messy and turbulent. That's not always a bad thing. It's natural for some conflict to arise from diversity, and often airing issues - especially in a controlled and respectful environment - can pave the way to constructive solutions. The diversity executive who wants to be seen as competent or feels pressure to make progress may experience turbulent diversity interactions as counterproductive, instead of as an opportunity for a rich exchange of perspectives that can lead to greater understanding.

Viewing these types of situations as counterproductive, instead of as learning opportunities, also causes diversity practitioners to shut out contributions from colleagues who may disagree with one or more of the tenets of diversity by keeping the conversations within a limited scope. The unwanted result: They unconsciously sabotage the honesty they hope to draw out. Over time, employees may feel unsafe engaging in a dialogue, which hinders learning.

For instance, if a staff person attempts to communicate his or her feelings on a specific diversity issue and is stopped by the diversity leader, he or she may withdraw from the discussion and withhold further attempts to communicate. Employees who are shut down from expressing their honest thoughts too easily often conclude all of the talk about diversity and the need for dialogue is just lip service. When a large number of employees feel shut down, diversity conflicts become taboo, and the majority may feel as if certain groups are actively being protected. Further, the minority group in this situation may conclude that the larger majority culture does not care about them. In this environment, stereotypes likely will flourish rather than diminish.

Even diversity executives can fall into this trap, since their desire to be seen as unbiased and fair often makes it impossible to acknowledge their own politically incorrect ideas and thoughts.

3. Overcompensating:

When diversity executives feel like others perceive them through a dreaded image that reflects a stereotype, they are more likely to be reactive and overcompensate with behaviors they hope will prove the opposite.

Take the case of Amy Anuk, an executive charged with heading diversity for women at Encore Capital, a financial service company that buys and recovers financially distressed consumer debt. Anuk, who also runs business development, said she realized she had strong DDIs around being highly professional and competent in a male-dominated industry that were limiting her effectiveness.

"I felt that female stereotypes I displayed were dreaded images that men would judge; I couldn't appear weak, emotional or empathetic," Anuk said. "I realized, however, that my desire to appear strong, capable and professional caused me to be very regimented and cold in my demeanor. I wouldn't discuss anything personal or allow myself to show any emotions. This actually undermined my ability to build relationships with strategic partners because I was almost entirely transactional."

Anuk said when she realized she was unconsciously undermining her ability to build strong relationships, she put those images aside and began to act more authentically. "To my surprise, the men around me wholeheartedly welcomed my contribution as a woman. The barriers I felt were only in my head," she said.

Most diversity executives have a deeply personal commitment to creating diverse and inclusive organizations. By becoming aware of their individual DDIs, they can avoid being at the mercy of these images and, more importantly, model behaviors that encourage others to speak authentically, with less hindrance from their own DDIs.

As diversity leaders move beyond their DDIs to be more open, available and approachable around the topic of diversity, they can more effectively forge a context in their organizations for the learning, discussion, tolerance and acceptance they are charged with creating - and that's an image worth having.

Three Steps to Create Open Dialogue

Getting over desired and dreaded images (DDI) can be difficult because of the fear most of us have of being judged. To make matters worse, a person may feel extremely vulnerable while conducting this type of self-examination. To admit this concern to the people whose judgment one may fear can be scary, which is why so few people dare talk about this type of image management. Diversity officers, like the people they hope to engage, are susceptible to being hijacked by this fear. The following three steps can help CDOs and their teams fulfill their missions with authenticity and thoughtful action.

Step one: Build awareness.

Have a conversation with everyone on the team about what their DDI hot buttons are, such as wanting to be viewed as open minded and competent, but not compromised or unknowledgeable. When CDOs can acknowledge up front that they may want to be seen in a certain way, and feel comfortable letting down their guard or releasing a desire to be perfect in favor of being more effective and building stronger relationships with business leaders, it can pave the way for substantive behavioral change.

To build awareness around DDI hot buttons and identify potential solutions, CDOs, or anyone concerned with image management, must feel at ease admitting they make mistakes. The paradox is that while people have a huge fear of what will happen if they do put a foot wrong - social rejection, being judged by others - if they do say what their feared DDI is, the opposite is usually true. When these DDIs are openly discussed, palpable relief often results, and safety and trust among groups members usually increases.

Step two: Choose authenticity.

By asking the team to choose to be authentic instead of politically correct, the group can agree to move beyond judging others and protecting their own reputations to supporting each other in honest dialogue, learning and growth around diversity issues. This doesn't mean there won't be tough or even emotional conversations about what is shared. The goal is to talk about issues and challenge or change thinking through non-judgmental dialogue, not hide true feelings with politically correct posturing. For example, if a team member admits to holding a stereotype about another group in the organization, the tenets of open dialogue dictate the individual's comment won't be ignored, but rather openly discussed and explored.

Step three: Ensure support.

Once employees are aware of their DDIs and have committed to open dialogue about diversity issues, individuals need to be able to talk explicitly about their struggles and get support from the group. In particular, team members, once they know each other's DDIs, can support each other by paying attention when someone in the group is falling into counterproductive DDI behaviors. Instead of silently judging but not daring to say anything, colleagues are empowered to hold a mirror up to each other in a constructive way, and invite each other to be authentic in the discussion. For example: If someone on the team has a dreaded image of being incompetent, he or she is less likely to ask for help when it is needed. Knowing this, other team members can reach out to help when that individual is struggling.

By Shayne Hughes - Change partner and the president of Learning as Leadership, a leadership development company

LEADERS vs MANAGERS

What About the Future?

Most CLOs I talk with are so busy taking care of today's business that they spend little time preparing for the future. Short-term thinking is good to respond to incremental change, but deciding things one step at a time doesn't prepare you to thrive in a world of systemic, wholesale change. You can't leap a chasm in small jumps.

To get beyond immediate concerns, you have to make the future tangible. Examining scenarios - stories about alternative futures - makes the future imaginable and real.

Royal Dutch Shell, the fifth largest company in the world and a long-term player - it is more than 100 years old - has been learning from scenarios for 40 years. At Online Educa Berlin in late 2011, Shell's innovation manager for global learning technologies Hans de Zwart and manager of learning strategy and innovation Willem Manders led a scenario planning process to address these issues:

1. How do different global and national trends shape the future of corporate learning?

2. What opportunities and challenges does this create for corporate learning organizations?

3. How do those insights help to make better decisions around current learning challenges faced by the organizations involved in the exercise?

To answer questions like these, you have to escape your current mindset. In Berlin, de Zwart and Manders led us in an exercise where we came up with these key drivers:

1. Ten years out, how might work be organized? On the one hand, it might be structured, regulated and managed. On the other, work could be flexible, individual and enabled.

2. In the same timeframe, how will work be done? Will it be relationship-driven or data-driven?

The drivers yield four scenarios: Old-boy network - structured and relationship-driven; in crowd - flexible and relationship-driven; big data - structured and data-driven; and quantified self - flexible and data-driven.

These scenarios are neither forecasts nor projections. They do not predict what's to come. Rather, they provide alternative views of the future.

Think about how you'd prepare for futures like these; I'll append a few thoughts to get you started.

1. Old-boy network:

his is a world of clear expectations and roles, organization-driven development, structural talent management, competency mapping, subject matter expert-focused, authoritative knowledge, planned innovation, business cases, calculated risks, planned careers and large structured curricula.

Many old-school companies think this is where they live. They have big plans but don't want to throw away their LMS. Can this methodology work in an increasingly fast-paced world?

2. In crowd:

This is a community of practice that focuses on hyper connectivity inside community, low connectivity outside community, interest/passion-driven strategies, many repositories of content and a wide variation of roles. Development in this scenario is peer driven, self directed and focused on personal networks and professional connections. Community is a curator, personal value aligned, and subject matter experts emerge from community.

This is social business. Informal learning thrives here, and the motto is to make your social networks thrive and get your mobile learning strategy together.

3. Big data:

This scenario is gathered toward the data-driven organization with outsourcing/franchise models, high volume, high variety in personalized information and structural competence visualization.

You have to choose the right data to act on. Customers are creating the data; this setup can make companies more agile responding to change.

4. Quantified self:

n this scenario the individual is in control, and competence development occurs through automated feedback, high talent mobility and self compliance.

Some people predict the end of jobs and corporations as we know them. Might this be where we end up? It could be chaotic. We'll need more engaging learning resources than ever before to keep people's attention. It's time to get those learning games online.

Among other things, this exercise taught me to rip my blinders off. I've been such a cheerleader for one of the scenarios that I'd slighted the rest.


By Jay Cross - CEO of Internet Time Group 

Don't Let Employees Reach Their Boiling Point

Yelling, abuse and disrespect - these behaviors are becoming more commonplace in the work environment, contributing to a culture of incivility, which may lead to decreased engagement and high turnover rates.

Thirty-eight percent of American workers say the workplace has become more uncivil and disrespectful compared to a few years ago, according to a June 2011 study by KRC Research titled "Civility in America."

"There's a real psychological depression out there that is impacting how people are responding to each other," said Jeff Cohen, executive coaching expert and founder of J M Cohen Associates. Discouragement and desperation that emerged as a byproduct of the unstable business environment combined with new trends in social interaction appear to be taking a toll on corporate communication.

Stress and unhappiness - much of it pertaining to the economy - are uncommonly high amongst workers today, and it is beginning to affect employee culture. "People are becoming more fearful for their jobs, even panicky, and when things go awry they do one of two things: They pull into their shell or they start lashing out at other folks," Cohen said.

Technology may also be partly to blame for the deteriorating state of communication today. Meg Clara, director of recruiting and human resources at Caiman Consulting, criticized the disruptiveness of electronic communication such as texts and emails in forming personal and professional relationships. By conducting conversations through devices, workers lose out on person-to-person interaction and the etiquette that goes with it.

As a society we are forgetting the importance of looking each other in the eye when we speak, and old-fashioned courtesy has all but become a thing of the past. This trend is resulting not just in more frequent occurrences of disrespect, yelling, underhandedness and abuse in the workplace, but also decreased productivity and higher turnover.

In January, Harvard Business Review reported that half of employees who encountered instances of incivility at work intentionally decreased their efforts. The article also showed more than a third of them decreased the quality of their work.

Competent workers who have suffered abuse or disrespect in the workplace don't feel the need to stick around, Cohen said.

Since employee engagement, performance and retention are at stake, talent managers ought to consider the following tips to defuse the situation lest things get out of hand.

1. Introduce consequences.

Disrespect amongst employees and even employers is often overlooked and typically goes unpunished. Treating incivility with aggressive discipline similar to the way sexual harassment is addressed will help workers realize that it is unacceptable, Cohen said.

2. Use training to change behavior.

"People need to realize that they are acting in an offensive way ... they feel very disconnected from their jobs; they feel anonymous, they become passive, and when things go off kilter they respond without thinking," Cohen said. When workers encounter high-tension situations, they may act in ways they've never acted before. Training, including workshops and one-on-one counseling sessions with executives, can go a long way toward creating behavioral change.

3. Preventing is better than curing.

Clara said Caiman Consulting deals with incivility by rooting it out from the start. The company's core value of courtesy plays a big role in deciding who gets a place in its ranks. In the same way, employers should consider their culture and values as early as the hiring stage.

The revival of courtesy in the workplace is still in its early stages, but it may go a long way to building a more engaged and productive workforce.

By Mohini Kundu - Editorial intern at Talent Management magazine

Driving agility - HR’s role in enabling change

By implication, HR has an absolutely vital role to play in helping organisations to tackle changing circumstances and ensure they are ‘fit to change’. Let’s look at each in turn. 


Strong leadership
Ensuring a business is agile enough to respond to constant change isn’t just about strong leadership at a given point in time; it’s about future leadership too.

HR has a role to play in identifying and nurturing tomorrow’s leaders, ensuring they build the right skills through good followership and engagement across the business to help them successfully navigate a changing world. They will need support, and at Fujitsu, we offer this through a dedicated Head of Talent Management who is responsible for providing opportunities for employees with leadership potential to work directly with the current executive leadership team on special projects. 

By the same token, today’s leaders must engage with everyone in the organisation to ensure they understand the reason behind organisational changes required to help the business keep pace with external demands. 

The right organisational culture

Similarly, people must understand the reasons for change and be given a mandate to help effect that change. We’ve adopted ‘lean’ principles within Fujitsu, which are founded on a bottom-up approach, whereby the people actually doing a job will take responsibility for making small changes to beneficially impact the business. People don't have to ask permission to introduce improvement; changes are implemented and judged on their effects, rather than changes being proposed and assessed for their possible impact. People are therefore trusted to evolve the business in real time.

A good example of this working in real-life is on our HR helpdesk at Fujitsu. With over 11,000 employees, the department deals with an average of   per day. Instead of having to field those calls around the team for a resolution as we have done in the past, we now provide front-line support on most queries, meaning 90% of them are resolved within 24 hours. 

The capacity to change

If you are going to be able to respond to external changes, you have to get your own house in order first. For the HR department, this means ensuring the team structure is flexible and can adapt and respond.

I realised my own department wasn’t equipped to cope with market and customer demands last year, and recognised I needed to fix our cost base; the structure of the HR department; how we captured and shared knowledge between us; and, most importantly, how we could develop better opportunities for career progression. 

To transform the department to address all of these issues, I knew I had to have the whole department behind me. I personally ran a series of roundtable discussions and focus groups with the whole team so that they understood the need for change and were involved in it right from the very start. 

The right people

Having the right employees in suitable roles is a vital component of business agility. It is the HR function’s responsibility to ensure the right people are deployed doing the right things; and to understand that what is ‘right’ changes over time.

It’s vital therefore that the HR function looks inside the organisation in order to identify the right people, but also outside of the organisation to understand what is required from them based on changing demands. It helps if you can make decisions locally. Too many companies, especially in the technology sector, are forced to refer strategic decisions to executive teams on a different continent. We’re lucky at Fujitsu that our colleagues in Tokyo place their trust in us to make local decisions. That enables us to react quickly and equip our people to adapt to the changing needs of the whole business.

Conclusion

As the HR function within an organisation becomes more strategic, CEOs across the private and public sector will be looking to their HR heads to enable agility and rapid change in response to market needs. Undoubtedly, people are a company’s best asset and as organisations fight to remain competitive and relevant, it is that very asset that will make those things happen. A business that is fit to change has to shift focus quickly and it has to shift as one unit. 

Similarly it needs to know when not to respond to change: when to stay true to the long-term vision – a vision that has to be understood from the boardroom to the mailroom. If this is not at the top of the HR agenda, any attempt to stay ahead in the race to keep up with change will stumble at the first hurdle.

By 

Ella Bennett, HR Director at Fujitsu UK & Ireland 

Don't Just Crunch the Numbers on Talent

Statistical analysis for talent management is the latest hot topic. Everyone seems to want to play, and many don't know what they are talking about.

University HR programs are pushing this. Conference companies are rushing to market with offerings. Journals are carrying more than one article per issue on it. Of course, consultants who didn't know how to spell it two years ago are suddenly leading sources for analytic methods.

Nevertheless, this is good news. Research has proven that path analysis techniques - including any form of multiple regression analysis, factor analysis, correlation analysis, discriminant analysis, or multivariate and covariance analyses - are powerful tools for finding root causes as well as predicting future value from current investments.

For years managers believed their experience was better than that of a bunch of number crunchers. Today, most managers accept that their estimations are seldom as accurate as a statistical analysis.

In case you have been on the moon or living in a biosphere for the past year, "quants" stands for quantitatively oriented people and programs. Quantitative or statistical analysis is not the same as strategic analysis, however. Statistics deals with numbers. Strategic deals with thought. Many people start by gathering some numbers they hope are related to an issue and then run some quant exercise to be sure at the end of the process they will have an objective result.

The potential problem is that their output is only partially relevant to the real issue. The amusing thing is they go along believing they really understand what is happening. Because they have not gotten to the root of the real problem, soon thereafter they have to run a do-over.

That premature number obsession is part of the "what should we measure" syndrome. If you are doing an after-the-fact evaluation of a previous intervention, that is a good question. But if you are talking about analysis prior to making the investment, the requirement is much different.

Analysis does not start with numbers. It starts with thinking and asking questions. It starts at the strategic level looking for the macro forces that affect the way you manage talent today, and more importantly, how you will manage it tomorrow. It is about constructing and understanding the context within which you now operate and will operate for the neat future.

Case in point, a prospective client wanted to evaluate the ROI of HR services. As we talked, it was clear the company had not spent much, if any, time consciously aiming its services specifically at the corporate KPIs. Most say they do, but few companies can show direct connections.

Given that gap, what difference would it make which numbers we come up with? I had to take executives back to the beginning and ask questions such as:

a) What are the major initiatives of your company now and into the near future?

b) What outside forces impact your company?

c) What is happening inside your company that is helping or hindering accomplishment of objectives?

Once we got clear on those types of strategic issues, the rest of the analysis went quickly. Going forward the company was able to design, predict, invest and evaluate all in one system.

Quantitative analysis is much easier than strategic or predictive analysis. Clarity is the first step. To hand a sharp strategic analysis picture to a quant, you will have to answer the aforementioned questions and several more like them. Then the quant can apply the appropriate path analysis technique to either predict a future outcome or evaluate a recent investment return. Measuring is much easier than determining what to measure.

If there is a trick to strategic analysis, it is to forget for the moment that you work in HR. Make believe you are a top executive in your company.

What problems and opportunities are your peers dealing with around marketing, sales, finance, production, customer demands and competition? Your services have to support those business issues. Once you see the connections, you can start down the path to identifying the things the quants should be evaluating.

By Jac Fitz-enz founder and CEO of the Human Capital Source and Workforce Intelligence Institute

Don't Just Crunch the Numbers on Talent

Statistical analysis for talent management is the latest hot topic. Everyone seems to want to play, and many don't know what they are talking about.

University HR programs are pushing this. Conference companies are rushing to market with offerings. Journals are carrying more than one article per issue on it. Of course, consultants who didn't know how to spell it two years ago are suddenly leading sources for analytic methods.

Nevertheless, this is good news. Research has proven that path analysis techniques - including any form of multiple regression analysis, factor analysis, correlation analysis, discriminant analysis, or multivariate and covariance analyses - are powerful tools for finding root causes as well as predicting future value from current investments.

For years managers believed their experience was better than that of a bunch of number crunchers. Today, most managers accept that their estimations are seldom as accurate as a statistical analysis.

In case you have been on the moon or living in a biosphere for the past year, "quants" stands for quantitatively oriented people and programs. Quantitative or statistical analysis is not the same as strategic analysis, however. Statistics deals with numbers. Strategic deals with thought. Many people start by gathering some numbers they hope are related to an issue and then run some quant exercise to be sure at the end of the process they will have an objective result.

The potential problem is that their output is only partially relevant to the real issue. The amusing thing is they go along believing they really understand what is happening. Because they have not gotten to the root of the real problem, soon thereafter they have to run a do-over.

That premature number obsession is part of the "what should we measure" syndrome. If you are doing an after-the-fact evaluation of a previous intervention, that is a good question. But if you are talking about analysis prior to making the investment, the requirement is much different.

Analysis does not start with numbers. It starts with thinking and asking questions. It starts at the strategic level looking for the macro forces that affect the way you manage talent today, and more importantly, how you will manage it tomorrow. It is about constructing and understanding the context within which you now operate and will operate for the neat future.

Case in point, a prospective client wanted to evaluate the ROI of HR services. As we talked, it was clear the company had not spent much, if any, time consciously aiming its services specifically at the corporate KPIs. Most say they do, but few companies can show direct connections.

Given that gap, what difference would it make which numbers we come up with? I had to take executives back to the beginning and ask questions such as:

a) What are the major initiatives of your company now and into the near future?

b) What outside forces impact your company?

c) What is happening inside your company that is helping or hindering accomplishment of objectives?

Once we got clear on those types of strategic issues, the rest of the analysis went quickly. Going forward the company was able to design, predict, invest and evaluate all in one system.

Quantitative analysis is much easier than strategic or predictive analysis. Clarity is the first step. To hand a sharp strategic analysis picture to a quant, you will have to answer the aforementioned questions and several more like them. Then the quant can apply the appropriate path analysis technique to either predict a future outcome or evaluate a recent investment return. Measuring is much easier than determining what to measure.

If there is a trick to strategic analysis, it is to forget for the moment that you work in HR. Make believe you are a top executive in your company.

What problems and opportunities are your peers dealing with around marketing, sales, finance, production, customer demands and competition? Your services have to support those business issues. Once you see the connections, you can start down the path to identifying the things the quants should be evaluating.

By Jac Fitz-enz- founder and CEO of the Human Capital Source and Workforce Intelligence Institute.

How to Navigate the Generational Shift in the Corporate Landscape

It's easy to forget that the Computer Era began not with Gen X and Y but with baby boomers. It was the generation born right after World War II and into the 1950s that created the PC and the Mac, desktop publishing and the World Wide Web. Now the boomer generation is retiring en masse, passing this infrastructure, and the jobs that go with it, along to children and grandchildren who continue to build on the digital world's technology base.

The transition is not easy. Many a 25-year-old company is operated by boomers schooled in a scheduled world; working in the office from 9 to 5, news at 6 and 11, hourly rates and sign-up times for conference rooms. Now these managers are finding they must work with an influx of millennial employees who don't even wear a wristwatch. Corporate cultures are being reconfigured like the landscape of a tremor-ridden island.

For millennials, the clock is a decoration. They consistently use the same digital tools all day long and prefer to work whenever they are most productive. They bring their own devices to work and use them there and at home, rather than switching to the company's technology during the day. That is creating a security headache for many IT departments.

Millennials meet via text, instant messaging or Skype. Social networks have furnished an outlet for a generation that disregards privacy and is eager to share everything from their dinner to the winning proposal they have presented to a new client. Communication never stops for millennials - it's like air, always there, always on, always essential.

All of these traits, it turns out, are essential for businesses that operate on a global scale, which affects all generations. Gen Y employees are comfortable working with colleagues in different geographies and thrive on instantaneous communication. In the end, businesses are confronted with two crucial questions: How can we attract this new generation of technology-driven workers to our company? And how can we adapt our culture to retain them?

First, businesses will need to focus more time and energy on measuring the degree to which employees are engaged in the company, its offerings and values. Engaged employees translate to better customer service, product innovation and productivity. By measuring engagement - and determining how the organization can improve upon engagement - managers can ensure that each employee understands his or her value to the broad goals of the company and drive them toward those goals as a technological and cultural challenge.

Second, managers must understand that Gen Y workers are motivated differently from generations of the past. For hiring and retention, it's important to advance the corporate culture in a way that allows for effective communication and new types of motivations.

Employees might be encouraged to bring their own devices to work. They might be given free rein to post to Facebook and Twitter and use those networks for global collaboration. The company might reward risk-taking rather than safety. It might treat its office as a gathering place, rather than only a workplace, to enable employees to work wherever they want and view the office in the casually collaborative way they view a coffeehouse or college union.

That's not to say that accountability must be discarded, but the way accountability is measured may need to change, a third consideration. Perfect attendance may need to be valued less than perfect projects. Revenue generation may need to be measured by the dollars generated from digital prowess rather than hours filled on a timesheet.

Most important is the necessity to realize that the world has changed. Millennials are more likely to watch a video demo on their smartphone than a television program on a monitor, more inclined to wear ear buds than lapel pins, and more likely to change the way an organization does business than managers currently realize.

By John Tobin - National general manager for Slalom Consulting

The Empty Soap Box

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soap box, which happened in one of Japan's biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty.

Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty.

Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high- resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty.

No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent whoopee amount to do so. But when a workman was posed with the same problem, did not get into complications of X-rays, etc but instead came out with another solution.

He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

Moral of the story: Always look for simple solutions. Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problem. So, learn to focus on solutions not on problems.

"If you look at what you do not have in life, you don't have anything; if you look at what you have in life, you have everything."