The best learning experience I ever had - John Costello
Our next guest post comes from John Costello. John is CTO of careergro, the social development planning tool for employees and you can follow him on Twitter here.
John's learning experience has a sporting context but more arm power and less horse power...
I recently had a learning experience in which the challenge stretched my skills. I was out of my comfort zone and, in terms of the flow model by…
Career development from the bottom up – Talk to Organisational Psychologists
Last week the Division of Work & Organisational Psychology (DWOP) of The Irish Psychological Society invited me to talk on the topic of career development. It was one of the first really fine evenings of the summer and I was a bit concerned about whether or not we would get an audience. It turned out to be a great event, with real engagement from attendees and plenty of discussion. I want to thank them, and particularly Kathryn McCarthy, Heather Weight and Karen Lopez Moore for organising the event.
My slides and an audio of the talk are available here. It is roughly in three parts:
- My career story and how I came to be involved with career development from an engineering background
- The role and importance of career development in organisations, including some discussion about performance management and talent management. See these other posts for more on the topics discussed The new psychological contract , Performance Management v Career Development and The social enterprise, more equal or more successful? .
- A brief overview of how careergro can support employees in managing their career development.
I was scheduled to talk for 1 hour with 20 mins for questions, however I was interested in getting some discussion going with everyone in the room and so I spoke for less than 30 mins. The discussion continued for at least 40mins, which was great. Even better if the discussion continues here, so please share you comments, thoughts and questions below.
The social enterprise, more equal or more successful?
Last week I attended the connectingHR unconference on the theme of ‘The Power of a Socially Engaged Organisation’. Many things were discussed (See here, here, here, here, here and here.), but the question that I want to focus on is: what is the case for social media tools in the enterprise?
Democratic work place
Miranda Ash (@mirandaash) from WorldBlu spoke about freedom and democracy in the workplace, “Organisational democracy is a system of organization that is based on freedom, instead of fear and control. It’s a way of designing organizations to amplify the possibilities of human potential — and the organization as a whole.” Enterprise social media (i.e. the use of social media tools to connect people within an organisation) is one of the enablers of organisational democracy. Read our post about HCL technologies for a case study.
In an excellent post – Less formal doesn’t mean more equal – @FlipChartRick reminds us that, in general, while hierarchies are becoming flatter and company culture less formal, pay differentials across organisations are growing and the control of resource allocation remains in the hands of those at the top.
“So, while it is difficult to deny the impact of technology and changing social attitudes on organisations, I’m still not convinced that this will lead to any form of organisational democracy. Real sharing of control would mean that big decisions about resources would be opened up. Corporate leaders are still extremely reluctant to do that.”
This is an interesting debate, but it is a debate about organisational design and control. Is this the core issue? I think that is it more useful to ask: can social media in the enterprise contribute to success and how? After all, an organisation is a group of people who come together and hope to achieve more than they would as individuals.
Organisational success
In ‘Organisational Deign’ 101 I was taught that the primary goal of any organisation is to survive, and after that to grow and be effective. Survival is a crude measure of success, but it’s a good indicator that the organisation is achieving it’s mission effectively, otherwise it will cease to exist over the long run. Some of the most successful organisations in history are the world religions and universities. These organisations have very different designs, with religions tending towards a bureaucratic design and universities towards an organic design, i.e. with more autonomy and a flatter structure. If both can succeed then what is the right one for your organisation?
It depends on the environment. For organisations where there is a slow rate of change in the external environment a more bureaucratic type of organisation is more effective, whereas in a fast changing environment with a lot of information to process a more organic structure is more effective.
Not in Kansas anymore
In the past most organisations were bureaucratic. A small number of organisations, for example R&D intensive organisations, were more organic.
Deloitte’s career lattice
Today an increasing number of organisations operate in an environment where a high level of information processing is required. This is driving the trends of flatter organisations and more knowledge workers. It’s not possible for a bureaucratic hierarchy to control and coordinate everything in a fast paced environment like this, it’s better to have a more organic structure where individual employees have greater autonomy over their activities, coordinate with their peers and make more of their own decisions.
In addition the career ladder has been replaced by the career lattice and individuals are expected to take responsibility for their career development. For all sorts of reasons (ensuring that the organisation has the right people and that they are highly motivate) it is critical that career development within organisations works.
Coordination: the role of social media in the enterprise
Typical informal communications network in an R&D laboratory – Allen 1971
Knowledge intensive organisations have always relied on informal networks, inside the enterprise, to process information and to coordinate activity. Enterprise social networks can support and amplify those networks. Yammer is a well known tool which can be used for this, although almost any other social enterprise tool can be used for this too.
Other tools such as basecamp and Jive are used for coordinating project work in a social way, allowing employees to socialise project tasks and collaborate across the enterprise. Thompson Reuters gave an impressive demonstration of this at the connectingHR unconference.
Control or alignment: the role of Social media in the enterprise
It’s clear that social tools can help co-ordination in the flat, knowledge intensive organisation. What about control? In a bureaucratic organisation control is exerted through specific detailed goals and a carrot and stick system of rewards and punishments. We know that the carrot and stick is at best ineffective and can be counter productive in the case of the knowledge worker.
In the knowledge world some of the control via carrot and stick is replaced with alignment between the purpose and goals of the organisation and the needs of the employee. Knowledge workers who are intrinsically motivated by their work, feel a sense of shared purpose with the mission of the organisation, have some autonomy over their activity and are continually developing and achieving mastery in their role will be high performers and an organisation with these people will succeed. Daniel Pink has popularised these ideas recently in his book Drive, however they are not new in knowledge intensive organisations.
A good starting point is to hire for fit (intrinsic motivation and alignment with the purpose of the organisation) not skills, as discussed in this HRB piece. Careergro is a social career development tool to help employees maintain a good fit (purpose, intrinsic motivation and ability) as they navigate the career lattice, to socialise career development goals so that achieving mastery becomes a continuous and collaborative activity and to give them a tool that makes taking responsibility for their career a realistic proposition.
Are you using enterprise social media tools in your organisation? It would be great to hear if they are contributing to success or not and the reasons why. If you’re not using these tools let us know why not.
Can social engagement reduce the risk of losing face and boost performance?
Have you ever been reluctant to seek assistance from someone inside your organisation, perhaps afraid of losing face because you need help?
Extent of communication with colleagues
High performers communicate with their colleagues
In a series of experiments, MIT Professor Tom Allen1 found that people are more likely to look outside their own organisation for ideas, while at the same time these ideas sourced from outside are less useful than those sourced from inside the organisation. The paradox is described succinctly by Allen, “Those information sources that reward the user by contributing more to his performance are used less than those that do not”.
I was reminded of this paradox during recent conversations at the L&D connect unconference and during a meeting with an R&D team at a multinational electronics company. The scenarios described in these conversations were similar; individuals reaching out to their network, reading the literature, attending conferences to seek information and ideas, while in the organisation there existed a rich, untapped resource of people and ideas.
It is essential to take new knowledge and information into an organisation. However, most of the time, most of us should also look to our colleagues if we want to achieve superior results.
Risk adverse behaviour and the cost of loosing face
The paradox can be explained when the decision process of the information seeker is examined in more detail. Gerstberger and Allen2 examined the cost, as well as the benefits, to be expected from an information source. Asking a colleague was perceived as high cost, as it was an admission that you needed help, didn’t understand something you may have been expected to know and the risk of losing face was perceived to be high. In contrast seeking information from outside was perceived as low cost. Interestingly they found that the decision makers were risk adverse, focusing only on the cost of the information source. In fact the higher benefit of sourcing information from a colleague had no impact on the decision. This risk aversion is a common finding in the psychology of decision making and helps explain the apparent paradox described by Allen.
Social engagement – Lowering the perceived cost of consulting colleagues
In another study Allen et al3 looked at the role of informal relationships on communications networks in companies. He concluded, “Simply stated, people are more willing to ask questions of others whom they know, than of strangers”. His advice to management is to increase the number of acquaintanceships within the organisation. He recommends an active program of transfers of personnel between different parts of the organisation and also support for cross functional projects where acquaintances can form.
There is a lot of discussion at the moment in learning and development circles about social learning and it means different things to different people. John Curran wrote a good summary of this in his recent blog post ‘What is social learning?’ . Some see it as learning through social media content (i.e. youtube etc) and others that it’s about learning from each other on social networks.
I suggest that company social networks can contribute to social learning by building acquaintances and lowering the perceived cost of consulting colleagues on important work related tasks, leading to better outcomes and higher performance.
You could counter that real relationships, and high bandwith exchange of information, require face to face communication. I have personal experience of work relationships beginning on-line and then moving offline for high quality exchange of ideas and building deeper relationships. My point is that the online relationships allows people to gain enough trust in one another to make it more likely that they will progress to an off line relationships and to helping one another out with ideas and information that benefit the organisation. This tweet from @MervynDinnen highlights the point “Friendships are made eyeball to eyeball not on social media says @ProfCaryCooper – ignoring that many take online relationships offline”
The research that I have cited is quite old, however I believe still valid. I have heard Tom Allen speak several times in recent years and he has continued his research in this area right up to this day. I’ll be attending ‘ConnectingHR Unconference – The Power of a Socially Engaged Organisation‘ on the 16th of May 2012, and I hope to learn more on this topic there. It would be interesting to hear your experience. Can social engagement reduce the risk of losing face and boost performance?
References:
1 T.J. Allen “Communication networks in R&D laboratories”, R&D Management, 1971, vol 1, 14-21
2 Gerstberger, P. G. Allen, T. J. (1968) ‘Criteria used in the selection of information channels by R&D engineers’. Journal of
Applied Psychology, V01. 52.
3 Allen, T.J., Gerstenfeld, A., Gerstberger, P. G (1968) “The Problem of Internal Consulting in the R&D Laboratory”, Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, Working Paper No. 319-68.
Learning in the woods
Last week I attended the L&D Connect Unconference and met lots of people interested in a conversation about learning and development (L&D). Please have a look at this video by Martin Couzins and this storify by Ian Pettigrew from the event. One of the people I met was Flora Marriott who wrote this post on what she’s learned from trees. I’ve spent a lot of time in the forests in the Dublin mountains over the last year and Flora’s post got me thinking about what I’ve learned in the woods. Of course the discussions at the Unconference find a way in here too.
About 18 months ago I took up mountain biking and joined a local club. The first few times were a bit hairy and there were quite a few spills. I was hesitant, nervous and maintained a clenched fist on the brakes. However I really enjoyed the activity, the social side of it and getting to see a new side to Dublin, so I kept at it. Fast forward to last weekend and I took some friends out for their first time mountain biking. They were hesitant..you get it, they were like me when I started. I realised for the first time that I had developed my ability significantly (with still a long way to go!).
My development experience
As Flora says in her post, it’s long term. I didn’t develop new skills and abilities overnight, in fact I wasn’t even aware of how I had developed until time had passed and I was reminded of where I had started from. I did have a clear idea of what I was trying to achieve and I was able to draw on the experience of others in the club, on line resources etc as needed to help me progress. Mostly, I learned by doing, there were no training courses although that might be useful in the future. Learning was fun, social, and challenging. I was usually operating in a state of flow, immersed in the activity and at level of challenge that was pushing my ability (though not too much). Importantly there was no fear of failure, it’s expected that things will go wrong every now and then and if you play it too safe you feel like the odd one out.
Learning in the workplace
Ok, it’s nice to know about my mountain biking but what’s the relevance to work?
First I think it’s important to pay attention to how we learn. Is it engaging and continuous or tedious and short lived? I think on the job, experiential learning, in a social environment certainly works best for me and delivers results over the short and long term.
Secondly, how to balance short term and longer term learning needs?
Day to day learning needs arise due to performance requirements in your current job. Most people and organisations have this covered to some extent and it drives much of the learning in organisations.
Competency frameworks can guide learning and development (L&D) for more medium term objectives, like advancing to the next rung on the ladder. Competency models are developed from the top down and are relatively static, compared to the blistering rate of change in the world of work. Is it possible for them to capture the full picture, especially over the long term and to stay relevant in a changing world?
There are a wider range of career skills, skills in your chosen field and skills that go beyond the roles defined in the competency model, which may be essential for long term success. Each individual should think about what these career development objectives are for themselves work towards them over the long term and in a way is relevant to their current role.
Ideally career development will be a healthy balance of performance driven L&D, competency driven L&D and L&D driven by the career development needs of individuals. It should be a social experience, engaging and tolerate failure. Mostly, I think the individual needs to be the one who owns their career development, even the performance driven elements of it.
How does all this work in your company? Do you struggle to balance long term and short term L&D? Who owns career development, HR, line managers or individuals?
Career Development – Why Good Companies Care
What does career development mean to you and to your company? Why is it important? How to do it?
This is the first of two posts on the subject of career development practices in companies. First, I want to discuss the reasons why companies are interested in career development. In the next post I will move on to how they are going about it.
Deloitte Ireland
I recently attended Legal Island’s HR Symposium, at which Orla Graham and Dr. Mary Collins of Deloitte Ireland presented on managing talent in Deloitte. The Deloitte talent management strategy is
“To be the number one firm for career and personal development, where talented people can do their best work, progress quickly and fulfill their potential, whatever their background”.
The reason why career development is important was clearly expressed. There is a war for talent and the top two factors cited to succeed are ‘Career development’ and ‘Training and development’. Once in the company, developing capabilities is part of the talent management strategy (including deployment and collaboration) that delivers organisational capability, employee commitment, alignment with business goals and, ultimately, performance.
consultingmag.com: Career Development in Professional Services
Other examples from the professional services industry are given in a series of articles (Best Practices in Career Development & Best Practices in Career Development: Point B) from consultingmag.com. They examine seven leading firms and some of the reasons given for investing in career development are:
- “It’s what attracts people to come here and stay” – Russ Hagey, partner and worldwide chief talent officer Bain & Company.
- “Our philosophy is to support people in their career decisions. We hire staff for life. We are not a body shop.” – Aimee George Leary, director of learning and development Booze Allen Hamilton.
- “This is why our conversations with employees is about long-term career goals—not what needs to happen next week or next month.” – Bill Pelster, managing principal of talent development for Deloitte LLP. He adds that this flexibility has assisted retention efforts.
- “Sales and marketing can be broken down into twenty discrete things,” says Jeff Griese, principal and Chief Human Resources Officer, ZS Associates. “An expert to us is someone who has mastered each of these by doing them many, many times. We’re building depth of mastery.”
The common thread is attracting recruits, retention and performance, echoing the message from Deloitte Ireland.
Study of career development in progressive Canadian organisations
A benchmarking study of the human resources practices of fourteen Canadian of organisations, considered to be on the leading edge of career development, identified some common reasons why these organisations invest in career development.
Competitiveness
Leveraging their workforces’ talents and skills is the chief means of staying competitive in the face of global competition and rapid technology change. The authors state that the “quality, innovativeness and commitment of its human resources are what make the difference in terms of a competitive edge”.
Alignment with the business
Alignment between the individuals career development needs and the organisations needs is critical. The career development process can make this alignment happen.
“In today’s ‘lean and mean’ business climate, development is a necessary survival strategy: it helps companies position themselves so they can adjust to rapid changes in their environment. …Development processes enable companies to meet such challenges quickly and effectively. … Organizational career development [is] a strategic process in which maximizing individuals’ career potential is a way of enhancing the success of the organization as a whole.” – (Organizational
Career Development: Benchmarks for Building a World-Class Workforce)
Attraction of recruits
A quote from one of the participants in the study illustrates the point.
“One of the key differentiators for an organization to become an employer of choice now and in the future … is the amount of avant-garde strategic development you do so that people will be learning the newest things that need to be learned in whatever field. … This is the value that people are looking for in terms of … corporate development or institutional development in any organization. … Offering career resiliency and offering opportunity to learn the best will be the attraction for
people coming into the job market. That’s what they are looking for. They’re looking for companies that will give them career resiliency.”
The common points are once again attraction of recruits, and performance. In this study the authors do not cite retention or engagement, however they do identify employee commitment as an important factor.
Career Development a Driver of Attraction, Retention and Engagement
Towers Watson presented the top eight drivers of attraction, the top eight drivers of retention and the top eight drivers of engagement from their Ireland database, at Legal Island’s HR Symposium in February. I assume the results are similar in the UK.
Important attraction drivers were ‘career advancement’, second, and ‘learning and development’, fourth. Pay was number one. Career development’ was the second most important retention driver, behind only pay. For engagement ‘career development’ was number four. Interestingly the top drivers of engagement were ‘leadership’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘image’, all quite things that are difficult to change.
So why invest in career development?
If you’ve keep with me this far, you will have seen some common themes emerging as to why the best organisations are serious about career development. It boils down to
- Attraction
Career development and career resilience need to be on offer to compete in the war for talent
- Retention
You need to have a long term view of your employees careers and allow career development happen if you want to retain the best people.
- Engagement
Commitment comes from within, it’s not something that can be imposed on someone. Aligning personal career development needs with the needs of the business is key to an engaged employee.
- Individual Performance
Engagement and capability building depend on career development. These are drivers of individual performance.
- Organisational Performance
At the organisational level, the alignment of business goals and individual goals lead to operational effectiveness today. The career development process facilitates this alignment.
Career development is essential, in the face of global competition and rapid technology change, to maintaining competitiveness for tomorrow.
Does your organisation take career development seriously? Why? Why not? I’d love to hear your experiences.
Dickens, Davos, and CSR
1854 What the Dickens is CSR?
‘Bitzer,’ said Mr Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably submissive to him, ‘have you a heart?’
‘The circulation, sir,’ returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of the question, ‘couldn’t be carried on without one. No man, sir, acquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart.’
… ‘but I am sure you know that the whole social system is a question of self-interest. What you must always appeal to, is a person’s self-interest. It’s your only hold. We are so constituted.’
I was reminded of this episode in ‘Hard Times’ while reading Gillian Tett’s column in the FT this weekend. She outlines two views of corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes. One view is that companies should engage with CSR because many societal problems are too big to address without the help of corporate muscle, and that companies have had a big impact in some cases when they have been involved (she cites the impact Coca-Cola had when it started battling Aids in Africa). The other view is that societal problems are for governments to tackle and the fact that companies are looking at these issues is a sign of government failure.
Having just chaired a panel of business leaders in Davos, Gillian is able to report that CSR is growing in strategic importance because of the failure of government but also because global stability is under threat from issues such as income disparity. Income disparity is an issue for companies because it deprives consumers of spending power. Should self-interest, such as the need to counter income disparity, drive CSR programmes? This is the question that brought Bitzer’s utilitarian comments to mind.
The renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow touches on these issues in the book ‘Maslow on Management’ . Maslow talks about the importance of the far or long term goals and values of an enterprise and how the continued health and profitability of an organisation, over the long run (i.e. 50 to 100 years), is dependent on utopian, ethical and moral goals. It is a question of having a purpose that your employees can get enthused by, develop towards and work together to achieve. A quote from T.K. Kurien, head of Wipro, in the FT article illustrates the importance of the far goals of an organisation, “Young people in India used to be happy to have a job. But now they are aware [of social issues] – they don’t want to work in something such as defense, but [in] something like health”. Well know examples of utopian long term goals are Facebook’s mission “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected” and Google’s mission “to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.
Maslow’s presciption for companies could be described as self-interest too, but of a different character, where the permanent goals and values of the company have a connection with societal issues, in contrast to a more short term approach i.e. let’s deal with income disparity today as it’s going to impact our viability tomorrow. Maslow stated the management challenge as “how to set up the social conditions so that the goals of the individual merge with the goals of the company” , and he stressed that personal development of employees is key to long term success, “if the long run is taken into consideration, hard-headedness and tough-mindedness and profits and all the rest of it absolutely require considerable attention to what we might call personal development“. In Maslow’s view, long term corporate success requires moral and ethical far goals, alignment between employee goals and organisational goals, and a focus on personal development.
If CSR programmes are delivering benefits to society, that is to be applauded and the reasons for these programmes are arguably not so important. But maybe a CSR programme linked to genuine company goals is an opportunity to engage employees and deliver superiour benefits to society and the company. It’s almost 150 years since Dickens hit out at Utilitarianism. Which companies will be around 150 years from now and which will have had the biggest impact on society?
Can your career make you kill?
Jean-Pierre Darroussi at the IFI French Film Festival November 2011
I prefer to avoid learning too much about films before I see them.
When Jean-Pierre Darroussi, the lead actor, appeared pre-show to state baldly that we would not find anything to laugh at in this film, I started to wonder if I had made a wise choice for my evening’s entertainment.
Early One Morning starts with Paul, a banker in his 50s, arriving in his workplace and gunning down his boss and a younger colleague who was threatening his position. Through a series of flashbacks the film explores what has brought this man to take such a desperate act.
The proximate cause is straight forward enough. With the banking crisis underway, Paul’s employer BICF has brought in new management to squeeze more results from the operation. Paul’s results are poor and he comes under pressure. Once a high flyer, Paul is now sidelined to a low status position and routinely humiliated by subtle and less than subtle mechanisms of corporate politics. For example the new boss invites Paul to boardroom meetings at inconvenient times, only for Paul to arrive, flustered, to an empty room.
The root causes are of course more interesting. Leaving to one side the question of what has created a corporate machine capable of chewing up and spitting out someone like Paul, the film focuses on Paul’s story and his choices. Paul has given everything to his career, neglecting his family and friends to the extent that he has nothing to fall back on when his work life falls apart. We are shown glimpses of what could have been. Paul’s family life had been better in the past and he and his wife did charity work, supporting a family in Mali and building a school. In scenes of Paul building the school he is completely engaged in the work and a picture of satisfaction.
It seems that Paul had important values that he suppressed through his single minded focus on his high status job. Rather than seeking to live his values in his work, it seems that Paul was seduced by the effortless rise through the ranks earlier in his career (and the status and money that went with that) and failed to ask the question, ‘Is this work intrinsically satisfying for me, is it aligned with my values?’.
This is a story about how a man was driven to desperate measures by a ruthless corporate machine, with unenlightened management and a corrosive culture, but it also shows how some of the responsibility for what happened is shared by the protagonist who failed to live a life true to his values.
