Tag: leadership

Why too much trust hurts innovation

Research shows that too much trust decreases innovation. Read what ‘trust’ is and how it affects your workplace and innovation.

Most managers understand that trust is a key ingredient to effective collaboration and innovation yet few actively try to cultivate and nourish trust in their own organization to achieve the right mix between trust and constructive tension.

The trust gap between theory and practice
Over 80% of managers believe trust is important to have good work relationships that enable effective collaboration and superior results. So why do only 40 or so percent actually take action to build and maintain trust within their organization? Obviously, there is a disconnect between the theory and the practice. Why is that?

My assumption is that ‘trust’ is perceived as an ‘intangible’ that managers like to stay away from because they find it hard to measure and to manage. It further requires an individual to open which comes with vulnerability. Perhaps we also fall easily into the only so human trap of making over-confident assumptions when it comes to ourselves and our single-sided perception of the trust we believe to have established with people we work with….

What is trust?
Let’s take a closer look – what makes up trustful work relationships? Trust is the degree that people trust one another, so trust is an interpersonal phenomenon. It comes down to three factors that make up trust at the workplace as Karen Sobel Lojeski, NYU professor at Stony Brook and CEO of Virtual Distance International, identifies:

  • Benevolence  –  co-workers have your best interest at heart
  • Ability  –  co-workers have the knowledge and ability to get the job done
  • Integrity  –  co-workers will do what they promise.

Trust is the ‘glue’
Trust is the social ‘glue’ that holds together teams and organizations. It is critical for success of virtual teams, i.e. the increasing trend of co-workers worked separated from another and spread across different countries and time zones. With a lack of trust productivity dwindles as does the willingness to share information. Instead, our energy gets wasted every day on avoiding perceived threats from others.

Innovation needs trust
High trust correlates with more successful innovation – why? When colleagues trust another they open up and share information. Besides the obvious benefit of cross-fertilization that leads to more ideas and creative approaches, by giving away your views and knowledge you become vulnerable as an individual and even more so in a competitive professional environment. This openness comes with a risk to fail that people are only willing to take if failure is acceptable among colleagues and does not come with repercussions.

Sharing ideas alone is not enough though. Asking thoughtful questions, constructive criticism and mutual support lead to better solutions while curbing hostility and competitiveness. Opening up happens when a task-related conflict will not easily deteriorate into a personal conflict. Innovation within an organization relies on trust among colleagues as a key ingredient that cannot be substituted.

Too much trust impedes innovation!
So, how much trust is needed? And can there be too much trust? The MIT’s Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan Management Review, Summer 2010, Vol. 51, No. 4) offers some answers. An increasing level of trust leads to more effective innovation, as we expect, but the researchers also observed that there is a limit after which the correlation negates and where innovation declines with too much trust. What happened here?

Too much mutual trust deteriorates the innovative effectiveness of partners. Where trust sparked creativity and led to better solutions earlier constructive criticism and challenging each others ideas now suffers. Finding the ‘sweet spot’ is the tough part where a high level of trust consistently fuels innovation and leads to best results.

Take-home message for managers
Should managers reduce investing in trust? Certainly not!

A high level of trust remains the most crucial requirement to build a solid relationship between people that becomes the basis for effective collaboration and innovation. Most organizations seem to suffer from a lack of trust more than anything. It makes collaboration a drag and leads to poor results and mediocre solutions.

Actively building trustful relationships is an important part of a manager’s role and even more so in virtual teams, when the team members work separated by barriers of location, time, culture, language and others. Trust must be built and nurtured actively especially when face-to-face communication is not possible and becomes replaced by using less-rich digital media (video conferencing, phone, email, etc.).

When trust is getting very high, however, we need vigilance and a reality check. You do not want to lose constructive argument and challenging dialogue between team members that turn creative ideas into innovative solutions.

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Leadership vs Management? What is wrong with middle management?

Is ‘middle management’ to blame? About the differences between managers and leaders, two conflicting roles that are both needed in an organization.

What is wrong with middle management?
Listen around, ‘middle management’ gets blamed all around for many things and even more so, for the big disconnect between executives and the staff and managers in the trenches.

A colleague just asked me again today – what is wrong with middle management?
Is there a systematically flaw that affects so many organizations?

Management versus Leadership?
The confusion originates from a lack of clarity over the roles: We need to look first at what the difference is between a manager and a leader: Is there one at all and are these roles exclusive or do they overlap?

Don’t be mistaken, significant differences exist between managers and leaders; yet an organization needs both, managers and leaders. It is necessary to distinguish these roles, since their focus and goals are quite different. Not only can they conflict to some degree, they actually have to for the better of the effective organization overall. ‑ Let’s take a close look at both roles:

Management role
A manager typically supervises a unit that produces an output consistently (such as a product or service). The manager’s job is to improve the input (resources) and output (deliverables) and make tactical adjustments. Most changes are moderate and of an evolutionary character focused on optimization by refinement of the here-and-now.

Given their tasks and responsibility, managers do have a professional tendency and even obligation to resist changes that disrupt their well-oiled and optimized “machine” whose output is also their immediate measure of success in most organizations.

For an effective manager it is all about “doing-things-right”. The ways often get documented in procedures to solidify and guard the established processes to guarantee the reliable delivery of results. Focused on preservation and functional optimization, managers can also easily fall in the trap of judging too soon and then making an adaptive decision too late.

Leadership role
In contrast, a leader takes a step back and looks at the bigger picture that aims strategically at the organization’s future. The effective leader shakes up the established structures and “does-what-is-right” by bringing about change that will position and optimize the organization for future success through transformation. (Read more on Innovation Strategy: Do you innovate or renovate?)

Leaders must stay flexible and willing to deviate from the current path to drive the needed change to successfully shift or even turn the course of the organization. Consequently, the leader must take into account major disruptions of otherwise smooth and sub-optimized operations.  (Read more on How to become the strategic innovation leader)

The farther a leader is removed (usually way up in the hierarchy) from the level where the output is produced, the more abstract the work appears. It becomes easier for leaders to make game-changing decisions flexibly that may turn out unfeasible on the factory floor or other real-life business settings or that confuse the staff.

A good leader follows guiding principles and keeps the staff in the loop to prepare them for upcoming changes. Removing elements of surprise where possible is an effective early step of successful change management when it comes to implementation.

We need both!
The goals of leaders and managers conflict and create a constant tension field. It requires active balancing and healthy negotiation to prepare the organization for the future while not sacrificing the ability to deliver results reliably as the organization moves ahead on the bumpy road of change and uncertainty. (More on Mastering the connected economy – key findings of IBM’s 2012 CEO study)

This makes clear that an organization needs both, effective managers and visionary leaders. It also makes clear though that both roles may not be best united in one person to avoid a conflict of interest that compromises best results for the organization overall.

Where middle management gets stuck
As you move farther down in a hierarchy from the leadership level and closer to operations, the harder it becomes for managers to balance the high-flying leadership vision with the demanded production or service targets on the ground.

So here is where you find the clash and overlap between leadership and management: The middle management gets caught in the middle, literally!

Middle management needs to bridge the gap even for self-preservation by negotiating and brokering between the workers and the leaders. It’s a tough job! Middle managers deserve some sympathy as they get torn by the conflicting needs of the organization every day and often enough not fully included by leaders while yet having to make sense of the dilemma and translating it for their staff.

Can’t do without…
Thus, there is no ‘systematical flaw’ but only the reality of conflicting needs of an organization that requires both, effective managers and visionary leaders. This comes with accepting the entailing tensions and conflicts to deliver results reliably and consistently while readying the organization for meeting the challenges of the future – which puts the middle management in the hottest spot!

Fear of change?

Do people fear change? I doubt it. See how fear relates to ‘change’ and how to harness it.

Fear of change?

An interesting discussion I got involved in recently is about ‘What gets in the way of embracing change?’
It quickly revolved passionately around whether employees like change or not.

People love change!
From my experience, people love change! – Not convinced? Look around you: People love fashion, wearing different clothes and hair styles, driving a new car, using gadgets with cool new features (look at the success of iPhone, iPad, etc.!) and so on. These are all changes we embrace all the time!
Obviously, ‘change’ as such is not the issue; so what is?

Angst or fear?
‘Angst’ describes “an acute but unspecific feeling of anxiety”. There is no specific source, however, so angst is based on the abstract, the unknown.

In contrast, ‘fear’ is anxiety about a “possible or probable situation or event”. Strangely, fear of change hints at something specific and not at some unspecific angst the general term ‘change’ leads up to. Nobody seems to use the term angst relating to change. – So what is the mix-up about?

When it comes to fashion or hair styles the fear is not about the new color or cut but about how others will respond to it and how this will affect me.
Will the person I fancy secretly finally notice me and be attracted to me? Will I appear more daring, more professional or more ‘me’ branded – or what ever else it is you wish to symbolize or achieve through the change that you initiate.

People fear uncertainty of the consequences!
What people fear are the consequences for them that the ‘change’ entails and even more so if they have no control over the change. Translated into the workplace this comes down to what changes for the individual employee: First of all, their gotten-used-to equilibrium gets disturbed by an outside force – not by free choice of the individual. This type of change typically induces much uncertainty for an individual with little or no control over how it will play out for them. Instead, the well-established and familiar routine stops. It is replaced by something different, possibly something they don’t know or understand fully.

Now, where the fear comes from specifically for the employee is that one day the employee is competent in doing their work and delivering results, while the next day (i.e. when the ‘change’ takes effect) they may need to learn, adapt, give up comfortable routines, figure things out the hard way, may not know how, fail and struggle ‑ and be inhibited during this period to produce results again so this comes with a lack of satisfaction and appreciation or other forms of acknowledgment.

Other colleagues may adapt better, learn faster and surpass them in the ability to the work done in the new way. Then, the employee may find they got left behind and may no longer be needed by the new organization. This potential lack of professional competency is the origin of the fear possibly combined with loss of certain perks or proprietary knowledge acquired over time that helped them staying afloat and ahead of others in the good old days.

Ask yourself if you would like to be surprised today with a major reorganization, for example, that let’s you hanging in the limbo with uncertainty about your fate within the company for months or by a new process thought out in some remote ivory-tower that is unlikely to work in the reality of your workplace…

This is where the major opposing force to effective change comes from: the employee resistance. If resistance is high also the chances are high that the change will not be implemented effectively, not efficiently or not even at all.

Change as an equation
Change can be expressed in an equation called Gleicher’s Formula (after David Gleicher and Richard Beckhard, 1969). Several variations of the equation exist but they all include the same three factors, which multiplied need to exceed the amount of resistance (=cost) on the other side of the equation for the change to be implemented successfully.

According to the streamlined formula (by Kathleen Dannemiller, 1992), change (C) is the product of

  • The dissatisfaction with the status quo (A),
  • The desired state (B) and
  • The practical steps taken towards the desired state (D).

These factors multiplied must outweigh the amount of resistance represented here by the cost of change (X). Here is the formula:   C = (ABD) > X

In practice, there must be significant pressure present from dissatisfaction with the current state (status quo), a clear description of what the new state should look like in the future (vision) and effective measures taken to get from the current to the desired state (action plan).

Overcoming resistance in the change equation
Resistance may include different elements but a major contributor is the resistance originating from the people affected by the change. It is crucial for reaching sustainable results to keep this friction low by engaging these vital stakeholders actively and early on where possible.

What it comes down to in practice is having a sound plan and excellent execution of change management together with the people affected by the change. Include them to work issues out as they arise early on when alterations cost little and to buy in to the change and drive it. Don’t underestimate the impact and potential of employee empowerment and the pay-off that it can have for the organization that does it right!

Including and empowering employees effectively in organizational and procedural change projects becomes a powerful differentiator between an effective change implementation and a costly disaster.

How to retain talent under the new workplace paradigm?

The paradigm of work has changed – how does it affect employees and what can be done to retain them?

How to retain talent under the new workplace paradigm?

Most of us grew up with a clear understanding of how ‘work’ and ‘careers’ works: As an employee you could generally rely on job security and a pension guarantee for your loyalty and obedience to the employer. Practically, the organization ‘owned’ a human asset in a voluntary symbiosis that would end with retirement.
– This paradigm changed fundamentally and even more so in our turbulent and globalized economy. Since my current work focuses on employee retention and engagement, let’s see what has changed and how it affects employee retention.

The ‘old deal’ is gone!
When it comes to employment today, employees understand that they stand alone (though this awakening may have come only recently to the more established generations). Organizations now hire people for their specific skills only as long as they need them and then move on to hire someone else for the next task.

This may well be the reason talent acquisition is often valued higher than talent retention. However, this approach also comes with losses through attrition and may not make best use of the added value that an individual can give the organization over time with through learning, personal growth, developing networks and gaining experience.

One way or another, the old paradigm no longer holds true. And the GenY streaming into the working world have not even experienced it to start with, so don’t expect them to respect and live the outdated rules!

One-dimensional career paths are out!
Under the old paradigm career paths were fixed and oriented ‘upward’ following a pre-defined and linear course of advancement in the position line-up. Deviations from the laid-out career model were rare exceptions.
More likely, an employee had to leave the organization to break out of the scheme when seeking growth in a new or different dimension of interest, to apply newly acquired or dormant skills or to make ends meet along their personal needs. There was not much room to move sideways out of the fixed career track slot into a career up through a choice of other avenues.

While the fixed model made it easy for HR and management, it neglected the potential of the individual employee who can evolve and grow, who may change interests and who may seek new challenges outside their immediate or next-up job description.

Retention is more than offering money!
Employers who wish to retain their precious talent need to offer more than a paycheck and blanket perks ‑ but this does not mean necessarily that they have to spend more money. A competitive salary is expected, of course, but not the #1 driver. Key drivers for the new workforce are career opportunities and customized benefits – money follows.

What today’s workforce is looking for are choices: flexible career paths that broaden the options and offer development opportunities instead of narrowing them down. They want to take control and influence where they are heading in a multi-dimensional space of opportunities and receive recognition for their achievements – empower them! Set clear goals and allow employees to experiment and learn on the way – don’t micro-manage them!

It becomes crucial for every employee to be ‘employable’ meaning to stay attractive for the current employer as well as the next employer under the new paradigm.

When it comes to benefits the time is over for one-size-fits-all perks! Consider non-monetary benefits that cater to the individual’s needs, preferences and independence: Non-monetary benefits may range from education opportunities over a free trip with family or friends as an incentive to flexibility along the work schedule and venue including remote working options.

This flexibility and consideration of an individual’s lifestyle is becoming even more important with GenY, who entertain closer social ties to families and friends than GenX. Networking and leveraging personal connections come naturally to GenY and extend seamlessly also in their professional world.

Shared values and inclusion
Employees increasingly chose employers by the values they share and reflect what they believe in.

Does your employer talk-the-talk or also walk-the-walk? Management tends to rely on communication channels to communicate to their employees that derived from marketing. These channels were originally developed to promote products to consumers through messages broadcasted one-way in a propaganda-like fashion. This practice was extended using new social media but still following the traditions of the old paradigm and without making use of the potential associated with the ‘social’ aspect, which is the power-engine behind the new media boom.

Give it a reality-check! – If your company has a Twitter account, for example, does your company account have only followers but follows nobody else? Here we are back to broadcasting!
If your company follows others, does it genuinely connect and communicate with its employees as well as with people outside the company? Does it engages in open discussions and learns from it?
How many managers and companies truly use social media tools to their full breadth as a two-way street of communication?

Transparency for talent retention
Retention does not have to be ‘rocket science’ even when the work paradigm changed.
What it takes is a degree of honesty and respect from an organization to treat employees fair and help them to stay ‘employable’. Authentic and open communication goes both ways and forms the basis for building trust, employee inclusion and engagement that result in employee satisfaction, innovative creativity and retention.

There is no need to fear transparency and open communication for an organization; failing to do so though is harmful to the organization’s reputation with word spreading fast and employees avoiding workplaces that do not live up to high standards and authenticity.

‘Complexity’ is the 2015 challenge! – Are leaders prepared for ‘glocal’?

In IBM’s 2010 CEO study, the high-profile interviews revealed a game-changer for the next 5 years: mastering the increasing ‘complexity’. Yet, less than half of all CEOs feel prepared for the challenge! – Read what is meant by ‘complexity’ and what the CEOs look for in successful future leaders!

‘Complexity’ is the 2015 challenge! – Are leaders ready for ‘glocal’?

What is the key challenge in the coming years and how to prepare future leaders.

IBM released its high-profile annual CEO study with interview results from 1,541 CEOs worldwide. The focus is on ‘complexity’ as newly identified challenge that CEOs face increasingly over the coming years.

(Note: the study results are no secret and available in the public domain:  http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/ceo/ceostudy2010/index.html)

Complexity is what develops when a company tries to make their product and services easier to use for their customers and clients. – Why? Look at what we customers expect of the products that we buy these days:

Example – let’s take cars: New cars these days are highly integrated products that go far beyond only ‘taking you from A to B’. As added features we find WiFi and DVD players installed for entertainment. The radio receives traffic reports feed into the car’s navigation system to guide you around heavy traffic. There are distance sensors that automatically sound alarms and engage the brakes should we get too close to an obstacle too fast. Collision detection systems adjust your seat belt and deploy airbags to keep you safe and then call help through the car’s mobile phone system automatically while directing emergency rescuers to the car’s crash scene.

Integration entails inter-dependencies
These technological marvels in a car are integrated to run smoothly ‘behind the scenes’. They also pose significant challenges for the manufacturer that needs to keep the features as easy to use as possible for the customer or run even completely invisible to the customer. Nonetheless, all these components must work together seamlessly in an integrated way that create complex inter-dependencies among them.

This requires the manufacturer to integrate services and products outside their typical ‘automotive’ spectrum and ability. They need to collaborate with other suppliers that may not even have established ties to the car industry.
Note that the traditional product ‘car’ has undergone change to become an integrated ‘mobility and lifestyle’ product.
This increasing technological complexity at an increasing speed translates into the manufacturer’s organization and challenges its leadership.

Is there a ‘magic bullet’?
“The vast majority of CEOs anticipate even greater complexity in the future, and more than half doubt their ability to manage it.” – This fundamental statement strikes me most IBM’s 2010 CEO Study though it does not hold true though for a minority of outstanding organizations, which found ways to deal with complexity and produce 20% profits over their competitors nonetheless!

The ‘magic bullet’ facing unpredictable uncertainties seems a mix of

  • Creativity (it’s the highest ranked leadership quality by all CEOs!) that allow to react fast to a changing environment
  • Integrating customers into their processes
  • Simplifying what organizations do and produce.

Perspective of CEOs in Life-Sciences
Now, how does this translate into our daily work? Most of my professional life I spent in different areas of the Life-Sciences industry in Germany and the USA that I chose as an example. What caught my eye here are the responses by CEOs from Life-Science organizations in Germany and the USA in comparison. – How do they rate the upcoming complexity challenges, how prepared do they feel and what do they look for in future leaders over the next few years?

The 3 Needs
US CEOs (86%) more than German CEOs (81%) expect higher complexity in the years to come but only 45% (in both countries) feel that they are prepared to cope with this new challenge successfully. This opens a larger-than-ever ‘complexity gap’ reflecting the uncertainty on how to operate in the volatile and murky waters of the new business environment.

1. Creativity
Interestingly, the German CEOs rely confidently on creative leadership making decisions quickly (over thorough decisions) in the future by 18% above all CEOs sampled. The US CEOs, in contrast, seem more pessimistic by relying on quick decisions slightly less that CEOs overall. Both, the German and US CEOs equally make integrating customers to better understand the customers’ needs their highest priority

2. Simplification
The CEOs take different approaches to how and how much to simplify: While the Germans seem more radically simplifying products and operations more than CEOs overall, the US CEOs focus on reducing fixed costs willing to increase variable costs to allow for up-scaling ability as need arises.

3. Focus in Emerging Markets
The study including all CEOs proves that 76% aim at the rapidly developing markets. It is not surprising that market factors is their #1 external focus followed by technological and macro-economic factors.

Key Attributes of Future Leaders
What kind of leadership we need to manage complexity successfully over the next 5 years?

The CEOs agree on the following three attributes:

  • Creativity (60%) ranks highest overall followed by
  • Integrity (52%) and
  • Global thinking (35%).

What CEOs are looking for are leaders that understand and collaborate closely with the customers, show strong people skills and have a deep business insight with intelligence data.

The future leaders are innovators able to think on their feet and open to experiments when speed needs to rule over correctness. The capacity to simplify for the customer is crucial. This entails reducing the resulting complexity by stripping what matters down to the core and focus on that. Sound planning may have to give way to situational yet strategic management to avoid information paralysis and gain competitive advantage.  – The coined term ‘glocal’ means to integrate globally using all resources available worldwide while doing locally only what is necessary.

What do you think – are we ready for the complexity challenge? Any suggestions how to prepare?

“What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM)

ERGs rely on active membership to succeed while the ERG in return can also provide the symbiotic grounds for personal and professional development and careers of its members.

“What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM)

What every new employee resource group (ERG) requires most are people: the life-blood for ideas and activities!  But how do you reach out to employees, help them understand the value of the ERG and get them involved to engage actively?

Communicating the benefits they have from joining and becoming an active member. Give them solid answers to their question: “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM).

From my experience, there are people in every organization that actively seek an opportunity to challenge and prove themselves, who want to develop new or apply acquired skills, make a significant difference even outside their immediate job requirements, impact the business results, going the ‘extra-mile’ and being recognized for it.

Take a look at the volunteers, the activists, the silent experts, the social connectors around you that show positive ‘organizational citizenship behavior’ within your organization. What are they interested in, what troubles them, what makes them ‘tick’? What opportunities does your ERG provide for them?

Now, ERGs may offer different benefits to its members. In general, fulfilling motivators can include:

  • Exposure to other business areas and insight to departments outside their day-job
  • Doing meaningful, interesting and business-relevant work
  • Solving a problem that many people share
  • Making a difference – directly, here and now
  • Personal growth and professional experience and development opportunities
  • Developing skills such as presentation, organization, negotiation, etc.
  • Meeting like-minded people to connect and network with
  • Visibility to management, leaders, and decision-makers within the company and possibly also outside the company
  • Receiving appreciation and recognition for achievements
  • Aiming for new career opportunities.

Find the driver and aim to form a symbiosis between member and ERG to the better of the organization, the individual member and the ERG.

A business focused ERG may even serve as a real-life ‘leadership development pipeline’ for the company where more experienced members support and coach the less experienced ones to reach a shared goal. This way an ambitious ERG member can gain hands-on experience in relevant business projects, lead increasingly larger projects and take on more responsibility over time while establishing a credible and professional track-record for themselves.

Now, those are achievements an employee can proudly point out in their next job interview, while the company and the ERG benefits from unleashing the employees full potential!

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