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."

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

Teach Employees to Set Life-Changing Goals

When people lose spirit, the cause can often be traced to a rootless sense of mission. They lack clear goals. They don't target opportunities. They can't decide on simple criteria for how they define their lives. And so they wander aimlessly, spin in circles or stand in place, which in a rapidly changing world actually amounts to falling behind.

Many of us, especially if we work for others rather than for ourselves, have forgotten that we have the choice to set our own goals. Instead, we operate under criteria handed to us by others that lure us into mindlessly running with the herd. When this happens, we rarely take the opportunity to set our own criteria.

The best thing about having criteria is that it forces you to be precise - in what you do and how you hold yourself accountable afterward. It's the difference between saying, "I'd be happier if I spent more time with my kids" and "I am going to spend at least four hours a week with each of my kids." The former statement is vague, and therefore meaningless. What's "more time" mean? One minute more than you're spending now? How will that tiny incremental improvement matter to your kids - or you?

On the other hand, "four hours" is specific and measurable. It creates accountability. You either hit the target or miss. And it you hit the target, you reward yourself with an invisible gold medal every week. That makes you feel good about yourself on the inside - and this quickly shows on the outside, especially to the people who really matter, namely your kids. That's how a renewed spirit happens. It's not magical; it only seems that way.

A few years ago I was working with a woman named Barbara, who appeared to be a highly motivated, high-achieving executive at a marketing firm - except she was miserable. She couldn't really pin down why. She liked most of her work, she liked her colleagues, she was good at her job, and she saw a clear growth path in her career.

"OK," I said, "If you don't know what's making you unhappy, what would make you happy?"

"That's easy," she said. "Happy would be not having to go to any meetings that I do not want to attend."

That was a breakthrough for Barbara, because suddenly she has articulated a very specific criterion for her working life. It was all about meetings. She hated them. But more than that, Barbara was chafing at a lack of autonomy and self-direction.

So she quit her job and set herself up as a consultant, working out of her home, which can be risky and stressful. But she was also completely in control of her time. Instead of endless meetings, she communicated with clients by email and phone, and when she needed a face-to-face with anyone, it was her choice. Acting on her simple criterion not only removed the forced attendance at pointless meetings, it cut out the daily commute into the office and her obligatory presence on equally fruitless conference calls - all of which helped to liberate three or four previously occupied hours from her day.

When I tracked her down 18 months later, she was no longer working at home. Her business had grown so quickly that she'd opened an office a few minutes away from home and now employed four people. "But still no unnecessary meetings," she said. "My staff is not complaining."

Barbara's story is neither unique nor extraordinary. There are, after all, millions of refugees from the corporate world who are working out of their homes or in small offices. What makes her special is the spark that initiated her new life change - namely, identifying a criterion that made a difference. When you articulate a criterion for leading your life, it dictates many of the major choices that follow, closing some doors but opening others.


By Marshall Goldsmith - author or co-editor of 31 books, including MOJO.]

Behaviors of Collaborative Leaders

In order to become a chief catalyst for collaboration, you will have to model behaviors that embody the way you'd like your employees to work. For 150 years, corporations, governments and militaries were built for up-and-down leadership, with incentives and rewards that discouraged cross-organization thinking and, in many cases, actually created or encouraged internal competition. Your challenge is to develop and model the behaviors required to inspire people and teams to genuinely break through organizational silos and make collaboration a competitive advantage.

How you lead your people has a direct impact on your ability to eliminate or mitigate the types of human behaviors that slow organizations down. In our experience, both inside Cisco and with our customers, highly collaborative leaders share four leadership traits. They:

1. Focus on authentic leadership and eschew passive aggressiveness

2. Relentlessly pursue transparent decision making

3. View resources as instruments of action, not as possessions

4. Codify the relationship between decision rights, accountability and rewards

Focus on authentic leadership and eschew passive aggressiveness. 

For collaboration to succeed, leaders need to be authentic. Cisco studied which characteristics of leaders on collaborative teams are most important, and we found that the most critical attribute was a leader's willingness to follow through on commitments. This involves two elements. 

First, as a leader of a team, department or business unit with people, budgets and resources under your control, you must follow through on organizational commitments. Unfortunately, people don't always do what they promise. Passive aggressiveness is a subtle, nuanced form of human behavior in which people find ways to undermine others. They often give tacit agreement in a meeting, for example, but then proceed to take counterproductive action once the meeting is over. Or they might agree to help another team, but then are slow to follow through or put an under-performer on the assignment. Think of how much organizational inertia is created because leaders don't always do what they say they will do.

Expert Tip on Perseverance:

"Leaders need resolve, resilience and determination to affect collaborative transformation. They need to 'walk the talk' for a sustained period of time."
-- Professor Tony O'Driscoll, Duke University Fuqua School of Business

Second, when there is disagreement about a decision­ -- one made by you or someone else -- fight the instinct to make it personal. Ultimately, most disagreements are not personal in nature, but rather result from differing approaches to making a decision. The more you focus on communicating what drives your decision making, the more time you can spend making good decisions instead of arguing a choice with a peer. This leads us to the next leadership trait.

Relentlessly pursue transparent decision making. 

Decisions are always about making choices; it's critical that you are clear about how you make them. Tell people your style and thought process for navigating tricky, or even every day, decisions. In our experience, and this is backed up by research, there's a direct relationship between the agility and resilience of a team and the transparency of its decision­ making processes. When you're open and transparent about the answers to three questions -- who made the decision, who is accountable for the outcomes of the decision, and is that accountability real -- people in organizations spend far less time questioning how or why a decision was made. Think of how much time is wasted ferreting out details when a decision is made and communicated because the people who are affected don't know who made the decision or who is accountable for its consequences.

Answer Three Questions to Foster Transparent Decision Making:

Transparent decision making requires that all stakeholders know the answers to these questions:

- Who is making the decision?

- Who is accountable for the outcomes of the decision?

- What are the consequences -- positive or negative -- of that accountability?

In a later chapter, we discuss the importance of establishing a common vocabulary for decision making, especially as a communications platform that can scale an organization's collaborative processes. As a leader, your responsibility is to document the key decision paths of your organization and communicate them to your team as often as you can. There was a time in business when hoarding information was a source of organizational power. Today, the inverse is true if you want to motivate a team that is increasingly mobile, global and socially driven.

Explain the guiding principles of your decision-making style at each stage of your organization's decision paths. Share your biases and tell war stories of how your successes and failures shaped these biases. We often hear the phrase "intelligent risk taking" -- nothing empowers people to take good risks more than understanding the conditions for taking the risk in the first place. Transparent decision making is critical to empowering your people.

View resources as instruments of action, not as possessions. 

The promise of flexibility and agility as an organization, inspired by establishing shared goals across organizational boundaries, is only attainable if you back it up by sharing resources as well.

It's hardly a new observation that people sometimes stockpile resources around their business unit or department, or are slow -- perhaps even hesitant -- to share those resources with other departments. There might even be incentives in place that discourage sharing. For as long as companies have pursued profits, the size of one's organization has defined the size of one's financial opportunity. But are your resources truly applied as optimally as possible to your market opportunities in a way that best serves the total business? By unlocking these trapped resources, organizations can more quickly and successfully pursue emerging market opportunities.

Having a common approach to assess and communicate resource decisions is critical to creating a transparent environment among leaders. The more transparent the envi­ronment the more willing leaders will be to share resources in support of the shared goals of the entire business, and the harder it will be for resisters to hoard them. This shift in approach is not an easy one for leaders to make and requires a balancing act between clear expectations, patience and follow through. Ultimately, it's as much a mindset as it is a process. The fundamental enablers of collaborative leadership are viewing resources as instruments of action rather than as possessions and aligning your company's larger shared goals to an accountability system that includes rewards and incentives for working together effectively.

Codify the relationship between decision rights, accountability and rewards. 

Modeling the desired collaborative behaviors -- showing your employees that you walk the talk -- is the goal. But what happens when you're not around? The more these behaviors are codified into an end-to-end system across your organization, the greater the odds of collaboration succeeding when you're not there to reinforce cultural norms. As you define the decision paths of your organization and build a common vocabulary to make those decision paths as transparent as possible, take the time to establish clear parameters. Who gets to make decisions? Are all decisions tied to funding? These are the types of questions to which everyone must know the answers. Publish the parameters for these decision rights and tell people which leaders have these rights -- that information is crucial to breaking through any consensus logjam; decision-rights holders should have 51 percent of the vote when collaborative teams can't reach natural agreement.

Having published decision rights is just one element of an accountability system. While it's never pleasant to talk about the consequences of poor decisions, the reality is that to succeed, collaboration demands more distributed and empowered actions across your organization. With that empowerment comes not only more good outcomes but also the increased potential for bad ones. You will need to consider new ways of gaining input from teams on the quality of collaborative decision making and reward people who consistently make good decisions in a collaborative environment.

As part of their overall performance management, every Cisco employee is measured by peers and their managers on their collaboration factor, the result of which directly impacts how their performance is rated and, ultimately, the size of their total compensation. Other factors that determine the size of bonuses are tied to how well employees collectively perform in achieving certain shared goals that Cisco establishes annually, such as customer-satisfaction metrics and financial results. Collaborative cultures not only foster teamwork, they also reward it. Performance measures must strike a balance between how well employees carry out their individual roles and how much they contribute to collective outcomes. 

Legendary Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski knows a thing or two about working together to reach shared goals. He reminds team members -- and business leaders -- that the name on the front of the jersey is more important than the name on the back of the jersey.

Author Bios:
Ron Ricci, co-author of The Collaboration Imperative, is the vice president of corporate positioning and has spent the last decade helping Cisco develop and nurture a culture of sharing and collaborative processes. In addition, he has spent countless hours with hundreds of different organizations discussing the impact of collaboration. He is also the co-author of the business best-seller Momentum: How Companies Become Unstoppable Market Forces (Harvard Business School Press, 2002).

Carl Wiese, co-author of The Collaboration Imperative, is senior vice president of Cisco's collaboration sales -- a multi-billion global business. He has presented on the importance of collaboration to business audiences in dozens of countries, including Australia, China, Dubai, India, Mexico and all across Europe and the United States. With more than 25 years of sales, marketing, services and product-management experience with Cisco, Apple, Lucent, Avaya and Texas Instruments, Wiese has spent his career working with companies worldwide to advance their business goals with technology. 


Guest post by By Ron Ricci and Carl Wiese

AIDS in IOrganisation

Appraisal & Increment Deficiency Syndrome

Our Corporate Employees Across The World Are Now Suffering From This AIDS,

But It Is True!

Ten Essential Leadership Models

While there have been thousands of books written about leadership, there are a handful of leadership models that have served me well as a leader and leadership development practitioner. These are the tried and true models that have shifted my thinking about leadership and help create teachable leadership moments for others. Mind you, I’m not a scholar, so the models I favor tend to be simple, practical, and I have to had seen evidence that they are effective.

Here are 10 leadership models that I believe any leader or aspiring leader should be familiar with (Kudos to Mind Tools for supplying many of the summaries in the links, and to Vou):

1. Situation Leadership.

Developed by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey, it’s a timeless classic. If I could only teach one model to a new manager, it might be this one. It’s all about adapting your leadership style to the developmental needs, or “maturity level”, of your employees. It’s easy to understand and can be used on a daily basis. Your only dilemma will be which version to choose: Hersey or Blanchard? I say Blanchard, but that’s because they follow @Great Leadership. (-:

2. Servant Leadership.

A philosophy and practice of leadership developed by Robert K. Greenleaf. The underlying premise here is that it’s less about you as a leader and all about taking care of those around you. It’s a noble and honorable way to lead and conduct your life.

3. Blake and Mouton’s Leadership Grid.

OK, so it’s really more of a management model, but it’s another timeless classic. Explained by a nice, simple 2x2 grid, it’s all about balancing your concern for people and your concerns for getting things done (tasks). You gotta love those 4x4 grids!

4. Emotional Intelligence.

While Daniel Goleman’s book popularized EQ, his HBR article “What Makes a Leader?” does a great job explaining why the “soft stuff” is so essential to be an effective leader. 

5. Kouzes and Posner’s Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership.
K&P do a nice job breaking leadership down into five practices: Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart. I’ve always liked the Leadership Practices Inventory 360 degree assessment that supports the model.

6. Jim’s Collin’s Level Five Leadership.

First published in a 2001 Harvard Business Review article, and then in the book, "From Good to Great, Collin’s leadership model describes kind of a hierarchy of leadership capabilities, with level 5 being a mix of humility and will. 

7. The Diamond Model of Leadership.

Although not as widely known as Collin’s Level Five model, my colleague Jim Clawson actually wrote the book Level Three Leadership two years earlier than the Collin’s HBR article. Jim introduced the Diamond Model, which describes four elements of leadership: yourself, others, task, and organization.

8. Six Leadership Passages.

Charon, Drotter, and Noel did a nice job explaining six key developmental passages a leader can advance through in thier book The Leadership Pipeline, along with the skills required to be successful for each passage. I actually came up with my own six passages, in which I made a distinction between management and leadership. 

9. Authentic Leadership.

I’ve only recently become a fan of Bill George’s work (True North), and it’s made a difference in how I think about leadership and leadership development. Instead of trying to find and copy the prefect set of leadership characteristics, George argues that you’re better off figuring out who you are and what’s important to you, and leading in a way that’s true to yourself.

10. The GROW model.

Widely attributed to Sir John Whittmore (although it’s not certain who really came up with it), GROW stands for goal, reality, obstacles, options, and way, will, or what’s next, depending on which version you use. It’s really more of a coaching model than a leadership model. However, it’s an essential tool for leaders and one of the easiest to understand and effective coaching models I’ve come across.  

How to Identify Multi-Generational Leaders

As today's leaders face an unprecedented multi-generational mix of workers, the challenge is that each generation brings differing expectations to the workplace. Skilled leaders have to account for varying expectations, work styles and communication preferences.

Whether promoting from within or recruiting a new leader, the organization must look for leaders who are able to:

1. Support flexible working options:

Today's office is a far cry from the classic ''cubicle farms'' of the past. Computers, smartphones and wireless Internet make it possible to work productively anywhere. Some more traditional employees may prefer the office, but younger employees approach work with a 24/7 anywhere, anytime attitude. Savvy leaders can yield higher productivity by remaining flexible about working options.

2. Coach employees and provide them with frequent ''just in time'' feedback:

In today's competitive business climate, annual-only reviews and infrequent feedback can lead to poor performance. Leaders must try to ''catch employees doing something right'' to reinforce productive behavior and motivate high standards of performance.

3. Encourage employee engagement:

Engagement among many workers continues to dwindle. Providing them with development opportunities, such as ''stretch assignments,'' special projects and regular training, can make them feel valued and engaged.

4. Create mentoring opportunities:

Mentoring relationships benefit both employees involved in the process. Older workers are flattered to share their experience while younger workers benefit from new insights. On the reverse, younger employees can help older ones with the latest technologies, programs and applications. Mentoring has the added benefit of bonding younger and older workers.

5. Employ a multi-channel communication style:

Baby boomers and Gen X and Y don't always communicate the same way. Boomers often prefer memos, emails, voice mail and face-to-face meetings. Gen X and Yers tend to prefer texting, tweeting and video-conferencing to face-to-face meetings. Savvy leaders maximize all of these communication channels to make themselves understood.

6. Accommodate individual employee schedules:

While baby boomers and now Gen Xers, traditionally prioritized work over personal time, younger employees typically don't want to abide by the old 9-to-5. Allowing for flexibility when it comes to employee schedules can go a long way - it allows employees of all generations to take care of personal and family needs while remaining productive.

7. Celebrate employee accomplishments:

Leaders must seek opportunities to pat employees on the back for good work. Formal recognition programs can help build teamwork. In addition, frequent feedback on performance is crucial - especially for millennials.

Bridging the Gap

When managing different generations we also have to remember that each employee is an individual with unique characteristics, skills and needs. One of the leader's most powerful tools is the ability to manage employees individually. Multigenerational leaders can do this by:

a) Assessing employees' personality and behavioral styles.
b) Discussing the employees' wants, needs and aspirations.
c) Soliciting employee input on organizational issues and opportunities.

Today's leaders have to allow for the differences that diverse generations bring to the table while remaining flexible and dynamic enough to engage employees individually.

By Chuck Sujansky | Diversity Executive & CEO of KEYGroup

How to Measure Engagement With a Stay Interview

When it comes to measuring employee engagement, there's an oft-overlooked method - one that isn't traditionally woven into the formal HR process - that some engagement specialists say might be the most effective of all: the stay interview.

Unlike the exit interview, where HR managers gain insights into employee sentiment just before they walk out the door, and the performance review, where managers assess employees' performance for the year, the stay interview asks the question most managers yearn to ask their top talent: What could we do to make you stay?

''The ultimate goal of the stay interview is to stay in someone's head and make sure we retain them,'' said Kevin Kruse, author of WE: How to Increase Performance and Profits Through Full Engagement.

The stay interview is perhaps a manager's most honest grip on engagement, according to Kruse. It's a one-on-one meeting with a front-line manager and a direct report to gain insight on that employee's perspective on the organization's key engagement drivers, and to learn which of those drivers need fixing to retain top talent.

Kruse said stay interviews work best when they happen at least once or twice a year. The stay interview is also not typically owned by the HR manager. If a manager feels that his or her relationship with an employee is particularly trustworthy, the stay interview might be more effective outside of the office - say at a coffee shop or over lunch, Kruse said.

A successful stay interview, however, isn't as simple as just asking the question: ''What could we do to make you stay?'' HR managers need to train leaders to ask questions that help drive understanding on employee feelings about the key areas of engagement - company culture, communication, growth and recognition.

''It's less about, 'Are you going to leave?' and more about, 'How are you feeling about the things that would make them [want to] jump on Monster.com,''' Kruse said.

Managers should exercise caution on how stay interview questions are framed. For example, when asking employees about their feelings about communication, it would be best to refrain from asking blunt questions such as: ''Do you think communication is going well here?''

Instead, managers can engage employees in a more open approach: ''Is there enough two-way communication going on at [insert company name here]?'' Kruse said.

It's also important for managers to separate the stay interview from discussions about employee performance, said Dick Finnegan, the author of The Power of Stay Interviews for Engagement and Retention and the CEO of C-Suite Analytics, an engagement and retention firm.

''It's [a meeting] about how is the job working from your perspective [the employee] and not my perspective as a manager,'' Finnegan said.

In addition to holding stay interviews for top talent, Finnegan recommends managers conduct them on a more frequent basis for new hires - after the first 30, 60 and 90 days on the job.

Finnegan also said stay interviews should always be done one-on-one and not in a group. Further, if a formal stay interview procedure were to be implemented throughout the organization, it should be conducted in a cascading fashion - start with the CEO and move down the firm's ladder.

For organizations that conduct wide-ranging engagement surveys each year, it's best to conduct the stay interview not long after those results become available. ''If you know the [engagement] scores, you can focus more time and attention on the areas of validated need,'' Kruse said.

Finnegan added that while engagement surveys are effective in some areas, the stay interview is a better overall measure of employee engagement.

'' Engagement surveys are great for benchmarks, but they're really bad for solutions - because they tell you how people respond to survey questions, but they don't tell you what they really want,'' Finnegan said. ''They don't lead to solutions.

''So stay interviews become the lynchpin to solutions ... and they help you learn the unique needs of your high performers. Engagement surveys tell you average information about your average employees.''

Both Kruse and Finnegan agreed that while not currently a formal process, HR managers should make efforts to implement stay interviews in their organization and hold front-line managers accountable.

While Kruse said he's known of some HR managers who conduct the stay interviews themselves, he cautioned against it. ''The power in this is getting a conversation going between that critical link between the manager and the direct report,'' he said.

Finnegan agreed. ''Trust is the absolute most important skill that managers need to have,'' he said. ''The stay interview becomes a way to build trust.''

By Frank Kalman | Talent Management [About the Author: Frank Kalman is an associate editor of Talent Management magazine.]

Should We Dispatch With Annual Performance Reviews?

Q: What are the alternatives if we scrap the annual performance review?

- Torn in HR, warehouse/distribution, Virginia Beach, Virginia

A: The issue is not your performance-review system. It's probably a deficiency in coaching skills among your managers.

Keep the annual review, but add the following elements:

a) Launch a recurring training program to help managers develop coaching skills. If you don't do this, none of your other efforts really matter.

b) Work with your senior leaders to implement a system whereby managers are held accountable for ''one-on-one check-ins'' with all the employees they directly supervise. These sessions should occur at least once a month. Implementing this requirement forces your managers to practice and hone their own coaching skills.

c) Be prepared to serve as a coach to the coaches. They are going to need your help.

Coaching is the replacement for the annual performance review. In fact, the lack of coaching skill is the No. 1 reason for performance reviews. The one-on-one sessions should truly be of a check-in nature - no rating scales or other formal assessment measures. The manager schedules time for employees to discuss their own list of items.

Your managers are there to knock down barriers for employees as much as possible. Once each employee is done with his list, the manager uses the coaching skills to talk about which things are going well and refocus the employee's attention on potential areas for improvement.

[Source: Kris Dunn, HR Capitalist, Birmingham, Alabama]

The Empty Soap Box - Japanese Case Study

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."

The Value of Cultural Competence

What would a typical chief diversity officer say if the CEO asked, ''How is the office of diversity and inclusion helping us penetrate emerging markets?'' Few CDOs have a full suite of solutions, but they can provide strategic guidance to help their organizations meet the growing challenges of global expansion.

There are numerous cases where a lack of understanding about cultural norms resulted in mistrust and failed business opportunities. For example, high sales of Mattel's Barbie doll in China did not materialize as expected. Part of the problem was that the Chinese prefer cute dolls like Hello Kitty rather than the sexier Barbie. In Japan, eBay did not generate expected sales because leaders did not take into account that the Japanese prefer to pay with cash.

Cultural competence can be a critical piece of a diversity and inclusion platform because employees, suppliers and markets are more global than in the past. Cultural competence can help employees from different cultures see scenarios from multiple perspectives and encourages them to ask the right questions. The rewards are increased productivity, innovation and sales.

The New Reality

A geographically dispersed, culturally diverse workforce and marketplace is the new reality. Global businesses and organizations need culturally competent members and an environment that promotes mutual respect and creative collaboration to derive the most from their talent.

Roy Chua of Harvard's research on creativity and innovation and the book The Innovator's DNA by Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen conclude that employees with multicultural social networks and exposure to other cultures are more creative and likely to come up with innovations for their organizations. However, exposure alone does not make this happen.

Exposure to new cultures and to multicultural social networks and teams is more likely to have positive consequences if those involved have been properly trained to understand and appreciate fundamental cultural differences and values that impact workplace relationships. Factors such as communication style, management style and approaches to diversity and inclusion are as varied as cultures.

The chief diversity officer must become a major advocate of cultural competence and build alliances with all leaders across the organization who support associates, vendors, markets and clients from diverse cultures. The office of diversity and inclusion should be a center of excellence for cultural competence.

To learn how to design and execute cultural competence programs as a key element of diversity and inclusion initiatives, here are some practices from culturally competent organizations.

1. Build cultural competence into employees' professional development goals.

Organizations such as Johnson & Johnson and Hilton Hotels & Resorts that use a competency-based professional development assessment process have added cultural competence or global mindset to their list of required competencies. Even without such a mandate, increasingly, companies such as Novartis and American Express are offering a basic cross-cultural competence course to all employees at all levels. A core course to meet this requirement should cover:

a) Cultural awareness of self and others.
b) The consequences of cultural assumptions.
c) Ways to promote effective working relations.
d) Styles of doing business around the world.
e) Cultural differences in communication styles.
f) The impact of virtual communications on intercultural understanding.
g) An overview for each major region.
h) An action planning session with clear timelines and metrics to implement the new practices based on a culturally competent platform.

Most programs also feature a cross-cultural diagnostic assessment tool that allows participants to gauge their cultural style and a process to develop strategies to bridge cultural differences. Often the diagnostic tools are completed prior to a program, and the participants bring their results with them. Or, the diagnostic tool is done live, and the results are immediately posted for all to see.

2. Create country- or culture-specific expertise and training.

Employees working with specific countries need in-depth, cross-cultural training on the nuances of the relevant cultures, including:

a) Communication style.
b) Approaches to risk-taking.
c) Negotiation style.
d) Ways to promote effective working relations with representatives of the country, contrasting styles of doing business between each of the relevant countries.
e) An in-depth regional and historical overview of the country and its relationship to its neighbors.
f) Functional topics as needed such as labor unions, quality/standards, work habits, intellectual property and holidays.

Companies such as Dolby Laboratories, ConocoPhillips and Novartis have such programs on countries ranging from China, the U.S., The Netherlands, India, Brazil and Saudi Arabia.

3. Build global cultural competence into the leadership track.

By now all diversity departments should have a strategic leadership track or program to address the developmental needs of current and potential leaders. If they don't, they need to put this in place first, and cultural competence can help make the case.

The key role for the office of diversity and inclusion is to create a track for global leadership, which requires unique competencies.

Global leaders need to be able to create personal and organizational action plans for effective intercultural leadership in the global/virtual workplace. This includes not only an understanding of globalization, diversity and cross-cultural differences, but also an intuitive grasp of the areas in which misunderstandings are likely to occur so leaders can proactively forecast and develop appropriate strategies.

An effective global leader must be able to view the same situation from multiple perspectives simultaneously to respond effectively to each culture's needs. Global leaders must demonstrate an inclusive, collaborative style that enhances open dialogue with local leaders. They must do more listening than commanding.

A good example of this is the Genesis Park program at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). In this program, cohorts of 50 future PwC leaders from more than 20 countries are brought to a foreign country for 10 weeks and taught how to use cultural competence to work in multicultural teams, build skills they will need as leaders and explore the country.

Global leadership and cultural competence courses are a key element, but also can be a starting point. Making international assignments a requisite for a leadership position makes sense in today's global economy.

4. Link international assignee development programs to diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Most international assignees bring a vast amount of cultural wisdom that is rarely tapped by diversity executives.

Further, all expatriates and their family members need in-depth cross-cultural training on working and living in their host countries; this is usually provided before or after the expatriate leaves for the new country. Chevron-Phillips Chemical Co. trains its expats before they leave on assignment or conducts training in the host country.

While the training is best done in person, Skype and other technologies can be used. The expats will need to learn the cultural nuances of their host country, ways to promote effective relations, an in-depth understanding of the country and region, an understanding of how to balance local versus headquarters requirements, strategies to deal with culture shock and an understanding of how diversity and inclusion are practiced in the host country.

Rather than training just the outgoing expats and their families to adapt to their new host culture, cultural diversity training can be provided to the receiving manager, after which the receiving manager and assignee would have an alignment meeting. There would then be an alignment meeting between the assignee and her or his new team. Finally the assignee would be coached during the assignment and the best practices would be captured for all to share. This is driven by the office of diversity and inclusion in companies such as Dow Chemical Co.

5. Train diverse intercultural teams in concert.

Diversity and inclusion can play a pivotal role in the success of multicultural teams. Diverse insights and perspectives can help teams uncover hidden cultural biases and stereotyping that may impact their work and relationships. Cross-cultural competency team-building programs can help to avoid misunderstandings and to establish team trust in the formative stages of team development.

Programs should discuss:

a) Team members' mutual perceptions.
b) Setting global standards for roles, responsibility, accountability, and leadership and management styles.
c) Establishing protocol for virtual and face-to-face communication styles and the development of a communication plan.

Novartis was putting together an IT team made up of employees from the U.S. and India for a three-month project. After the first three weeks, the director of the program wanted to cancel it due to poor results. Instead, one of the cultural diversity specialists brought in a cross-cultural team-building organization to help the team members realize they have different work habits. Americans would ask the Indians to perform a task and once done the Indians would wait to be told what to do next, while the Americans were expecting the Indians to come to them once the task was done. After a day-and-a-half-long cultural competency team-building program, the project was back on schedule.

6. Strategically utilize employee resource or affinity groups.

Most companies include senior leadership in affinity groups and work closely with these groups on everything from recruiting and retention to marketing strategy for relevant target customer audiences.

IBM, American Express, Eli Lilly and Merck have an excellent track record in globalizing their ERGs, and their companies profit from the input. One Eli Lilly group helped to identify doctors in underserved communities who could nominate patients for clinical trials where these populations were underrepresented.

7. Compile, organize and share collective cultural intelligence.

Corporate intranets, diversity websites and other central repositories can be used to pool an organization's collective cultural intelligence. These Web-based interactive resources should have practical information on all relevant cultures, industry-specific case studies and company-specific intelligence. Further, they should enable and encourage interaction across teams and practices to leverage that intelligence.

Pharmaceutical company Sanofi compiled a cultural diversity profile on each of the major countries where it operates and used the system to capture case studies and best practices so employees working across cultures could learn from each other.

Ensuring employees are culturally competent can mean the difference between successful global operations and gridlock, angst and disappointment.


By Neal Goodman | Diversity Executive

How To Successfully Lead Today's Diverse Workforce

Perhaps we need a new word. Roget's Thesaurus provides the following synonyms for leadership: authority, command, control, direction, domination, foresight, guidance, power, pre-eminence and primacy. This presumes a leader is someone out in front, with all the answers in hand and perhaps trailed by a cadre of willing followers.

But being a leader today is more complex. Not only are the business challenges daunting, but the increasing diversity of the workforce makes building a cohesive organization difficult.

There are four things you need to do to lead today's diverse workforce successfully:

1. Appreciate:

Withhold judgment - don't jump to conclusions.

2. Acknowledge:

Legitimize diverse perspectives.

3. Arbitrate:

Surface differences and establish clear and effective group norms.

4. Adapt:

Frame and deliver messages in ways that are meaningful to each individual.

To appreciate requires a willingness to withhold judgment. What seems to be an illogical interpretation or odd behavior to you may seem normal to another. Everyone's initial reaction reflects a particular bias or lens, shaped by each individual's background and experience.

Acknowledging there is no reason any individual's perspective should automatically be given primary significance gives you the ability to fairly hear and evaluate multiple points of view.

Second, leaders must publicly acknowledge the legitimacy and benefits of alternate views. This often requires teaching: helping others discover that colleagues see issues differently and becoming comfortable with differences. As a leader, facilitate group discussions of how a situation looks and create a context in which it is acceptable - preferably desirable - for people to express different views.

Third, leaders must arbitrate the inevitable behavioral differences that will arise. Again, in a group, ask employees to share perspectives on how things might be done, acknowledge the validity of various views and establish ground rules or norms for use in your particular circumstance. To the extent possible, make these rules situation-specific. Rather than pronouncing one view right or wrong, conclude that in this situation, the group will follow this course of action.

For example, areas for discussion may include:

1. How individuals view time and place:

Older employees began their careers when work was the time spent in the office. In contrast, younger workers tend to view work as something you do anywhere, any time, and find set work hours a throwback to another era. In your circumstance, does it matter whether people are working in the office or somewhere else? Does everybody have to work the same hours to accomplish the tasks?

2. How colleagues communicate:

Some are accustomed to brief texts, while others may be uncomfortable with digital communication and even feel offended by a lack of face-to-face interaction. What method of communication will your group use for what purpose? What response time is expected under which circumstance?

3. How we sync up and organize:

Older employees typically are planners and schedulers, while many younger colleagues are coordinators. Neither approach is perfect for every situation. What requires a plan and schedule? What can be coordinated in real-time?

Fourth, you may need to adapt your communication using language that resonates with members' differing values and preferences. Consider how the U.S. Army has delivered the same message - "Join the Army" - to successive generations.

With traditionalists, whose values include respect for authority and a desire to affiliate with institutions, it used a powerful, finger-pointing image and the command: "Uncle Sam Wants You." In contrast, the idealistic boomers, self-occupied and bent on personal growth, would never have responded well to this approach; the Army switched the message to "Be All You Can Be." The self-reliant members of Generation X were asked to join "An Army of One." And today, to reach a generation of family-centric Y's, the Army is speaking directly to parents with the message, "You Made Them Strong; We'll Make Them Army Strong."

By Tamara J. Erickson | Diversity Executive.