Tackling Your Organizational Culture

I had an appointment with the Head of HR & Learning of a prominent listed company recently.  Upon announcing myself at the reception, I was told that ‘somebody’ will come down to escort me to the meeting room.  I waited.  Soon a presentable young lady showed up to take me to the meeting room.
Just as we were approaching the elevator bank, my escort pulled back and suggested we allow “him” – indicating a suited individual who was waiting for the elevator – to go first.  I obliged of course, but it piqued my curiosity. 
“Who is he?” I asked. 
“He’s our CEO”. 
“And why are we not waiting with him?”
“It’s not proper, right?  I always avoid going in the same elevator with top management”
 This was a young, up and coming technology company.  The CEO may have been 40 or so.  (Did he know what his staff was “doing to him”?)

Got me wondering.  What if my company was the same?  Would I even know?  What have I put in place – systems, processes, structures – to ensure this will not happen to me?

The fact is, I had never given this issue serious thought.  Just assumed we had the right culture!  So what can a CEO do to ensure the culture he wants to establish is seeded, nurtured and thrives in his organization? 
Luckily we have some help from the Gurus of Management!

Ram Charan

One of the best I have come across on influencing organizational culture, comes from Ram Charan, best selling author and consultant for the top F-100 companies and ex-faculty of Harvard Business School.  In his landmark 2001 article, Ram gives us some powerful insights:

1. It all begins with dialogue
2. The right social operating mechanisms (rhythmic meetings on strategy, performance review, talent, etc)
3. Follow-through and Feedback 
4. Rewards and Sanctions

When you read about systems and processes like these and compare them to a typical Asian situation, you will readily find the typical blind spots.  In my view, for

Asian companies, these are dialogue, feedback and sanctions.

• Dialogue

For some historic reason, Asia has a problem with open dialogue.  One could trace it to the culture of respecting elders.  But, to my mind, the more important problem

is the definition of elders.  Elder, in Asia, is defined as anyone in a position of authority; it could be the father, the priest or the king.  These people got into their positions the hard way and then do everything possible to keep it that way.

I would additionally argue that North Asia (India, Pakistan…) have been able to wash this away a bit better than the rest of Asia (Maybe, we should thank the British authoritarianism for this).  Proof of my ‘theory’ lies in the controlled economies of China and Singapore and to a lesser extent, even Malaysia.  Political leadership either abhors open dialogue or struggles to ‘open’ dialogue in selective areas.  This naturally carries into business management.  Having an opinion different from that of the Boss is equivalent to raising a rebellion.  Bosses are not told the bad news.  Rather the masses will somehow manage the issue, even if it means pleading with the customer, or other external organization.  Ram offers four ‘must haves’ for a culture that encourages open dialogue: openness (i.e., the outcome is not pre-determined), candor, informality, and closure (you don’t go home without reaching a decision).

• Feedback. 

I have spoken earlier about feedback.  Here, I will only add a quote from Ram: “By failing to provide honest feedback, Leaders cheat their people by depriving them of the information they need to improve.”  I will also go out on a limb and say that most managers do a poor job of providing feedback because they lack the courage to see the employee in the eye and give negative feedback.  This, in turn, is because they have not been trained in providing non-threatening, constructive feedback.

• Sanctions. 

Most companies lack both rewards and sanctions.  But things are getting better and many companies are introducing rewards systems.  Unfortunately, sanctions are still unheard of.  Many argue that lack of reward is a sanction in itself.  I would not agree.  To my mind, there have to be three classes, separated by the majority, who would be ‘average’.  X% above average, a large chink of average in the middle, and Y% below average. 
Why should we continue to tolerate the Y?  By doing this we equate them with average and are doing a major disservice to the average.  Of course, there is lot more to culture than what we've covered here.  Do expect more in forthcoming posts

Sri
www.sigmax-e.com

The Power of Feedback

Feedback is one of the most under-utilized tools of leadership! There is, of course, lots of literature on customer feedback and how that helps product development, relationship management and the like; but precious little on its importance in Performance Management, and therefore on the criticality of feedback in leadership training.  Now, I would not be so vocal about it if I had not learnt of this MNC taking up feedback training as a strategic leadership initiative across all its global offices.

Today, I want to focus on management feedback.The ones we (are supposed to) give to and take from our teams.

The more I dig into this, the more I am convinced that it is a critical part of a performance improvement program.  If you have a Performance Improvement program or training going on in your company, I’d advise you to dig into it and ensure there is a big chunk that talks about the importance of and the 'how to' of giving and accepting feedback.

Most of us do use some types of feedback extensively.  The problem is more to do with the adequacy and the richness of the feedback we get and give.  Lets focus on that for a moment.

Technically, feedback describes the situation when output from an event in the past will influence the same event in the future.This is enabled by informing the performer about the outcome and the manner in which the outcome was achieved (or missed). The idea is for the performer to appreciate, both intellectually and emotionally, the manner in which s/he put in effort and how that effort impacted the outcome. The idea is for the performer to use the new information to do a better job of the next effort s/he makes. Thus, feedback can be said to be effective only if the information provided changes performance in the desired direction. To look at it differently, one really cannot (it, really, is impossible to) improve one’s performance without feedback.
The most common form of feedback we receive is in the form of the outcome of our effort itself, i.e., whether or not our efforts have resulted in output that works. Whether we have passed or flunked. This is great and definitely qualifies as the first and primary form of feedback. This level of feedback is OK for the most basic of activities. Activities that are so simple - or where one's understanding of it is so deep - that the mere binary information of good or bad tells me what exactly I should change to get it right next time. Unfortunately, most often this is far from adequate. Lets call this Level Zero feedback.
Six Sigma teaches us that finding a defective unit, in itself, can do very little in terms of improving our performance. At best, we can remove that particular unit or activity from the pile of finished goods (or our CV) to ensure that it does not bother the customer (or employer). We still may not know how the defective result came about in the first instance, and much less about how not to repeat that part of the process. So, we do need a deeper analysis or insight into the process to make out where exactly we went wrong and what it is that we need to change.
This is where feedback can be most helpful. If you can use your experience and expertise in helping your team member identify the ‘Defect Opportunity’* in the process, you are adding significant value to his/her learning. The cognitive element of understanding where exactly I went wrong and the emotional element of generating a new hope that I will definitely do better next time, gives me a massive boost of adrenalin. That is the power of feedback. That is the spring action that effective feedback results in. That motivational aspect is the reaso feedback is so important from a leadership perspective as well.
Importantly, the Defect Opportunity does not lie in the output. The output only tells us of defects present, if any. The Defect Opportunity lies in the Input and / or the Process. This means it lies either in our knowledge or understanding of the process or its intended outcome, or in the actions taken to achieve it.
If you, like me, are hooked to visuals, I would picture it as shown in Figure 1.

Of course, you can do better than merely pointing out the defect opportunity where s/he went wrong. You can help analyze and diagnose it for him / her. This can help even better in avoiding the same mistake next time. This means, through your past experience you have learned the various points in the process where one could go wrong and you share this with your team. The idea is that your protégé will be able to use this information to be more ‘careful’ at these points, to avoid making defects. We may call this Level One feedback.
The fact is, you can do even better! To make your feedback even more effective, you can also share how best s/he could avoid going wrong at each defect opportunity. The tips and tricks you have learnt from your own experience and received wisdom on how to avoid making those mistakes in those circumstances. When you do this effectively, you have achieved Level Two feedback. You are now clearly on the journey of performance improvement.
Finally, the very best kind of feedback I know is where we coach our ward on how s/he can analyze his/her own performance to improve results… teaching them to fish, as it were. This is what kicks off a virtual feedback cycle for your protégé; where s/he builds this analysis / feedback phase into the core process. That is Level Three feedback! Figure 2 depicts the feedback Maturity Model.

Let me also sound a cautionary note. What we have talked about above is assuming your protégé cannot perform these tasks him/herself. This is important for the leader to understand. If your team member is shrewd enough to do this analysis by him/herself, you will only end up killing their enthusiasm by going through the four levels routinely.  As a good leader, you need to be able to effectively assess the capability, energy and enthusiasm of your protégé / team to give the right level of feedback and back-off at the right time!

Hope this helped... I am waiting to read your feedback!

Sri

www.sigmax-e.com

* The element, action or event that gives us a chance for making a defect.

A Key Performance issue: Design of KPIs

Working on performance issues of a Dutch MNC in Malaysia.
Issues are (of course) more Malaysian than Dutch. The big ones?
- One, KPIs are loosely defined... basically each Manager is left to set their own KPIs for their team. There's no 'roll-up' in to the company's objecitves - at least the's no process or system to ensure this happens.
Working on this, I found the concept of Value Tree extremely helpful. Ever tried that? Simple and powerful concept. Start with your vision / value / objectives and go on drilling down layer by layer to factors contributing to it. (Six Sigma types will recognise the Transfer Function here; {Y = f(x)}. When you reach specific activities or a point where the responsibility lies with a specific Manager, list out the KPIs. I'm not yet comfortable with the linkage with KPIs. Got to pilot in real life and check-out. Maybe for my next entry!
- Two, No rhythmic / regular follow-up on the KPIs. There is of course a generic, informal, "how is it going?" kind of follow-up and the Supervisor does stay in touch with their team's performance. The issue was that there was no feedback to the subordinate. This meant, the sub did not know how s/he was doing and the annual performance reviews always became nightmarish.
Funnily I've seen this across the board in Malaysia as well as India and Indonesia, the three Asian countries I'm familiar with. I think this is very much a cultural issue. We Asians do have trouble giving face-to-face feedback - whether positive or negative. I'm working on a Training Program to imbed this in to the culture. I guess, to start with I've got to build it into a process and ensure the process stabilises... hopefully it will become a culture eventually.

Sri

www.sigmax-e.com