AchieveGlobal's blog

Study Exposes Serious Blind Spot Among U.S. Leaders

By Craig Perrin

This is the second of seven posts on AchieveGlobal's international study of leadership today, "Developing the 21st-Century Leader" (complete report available HERE.)

A surprise for me in our recent research was that of six "leadership zones" - Reflection, Society, Diversity, Ingenuity, People, and Business - U.S. leaders rated Diversity as least important. While this finding begs more study, I can't help wondering about possible causes and effects.

It's important to note that only after we ran the survey did we choose the term "Diversity" for seven related leadership best practices:

• Strive to meet the needs of customers representing other cultures.
• Encourage collaboration among people from different groups.
• Display sensitivity in managing across cultural boundaries.
• Collaborate well with people very different from yourself.
• Effectively lead groups made up of very diverse people.
• Learn about the business practices of other cultures.
• Manage virtual teams with explicit customer-centric goals and practices.

Since we labeled this group "Global" in the survey, we can rule out the term "Diversity" (incorrectly seen by some as code for "political correctness") as a cause for low ratings. Low scores may in part reflect that many U.S. leaders have no urgent need to manage across borders, learn about business practices in other countries, or manage virtual teams. 

Leaping Forward by Staying Connected

By Jack McDaniel Being part of a virtual team is a reality for most of us these days. The nature of virtual teams presents challenges that our parents and grandparents never faced – chief among them the hurdle of feeling “out of touch” with team members. Staying connected in a virtual environment requires planning, effort, and the right tools. Last week, a virtual colleague and friend brought a new connectivity tool to my attention. HP has unveiled “HP SkyRoom.” It’s been hailed as “Skype meets WebEx,” but that may sell it short. The tool was used by DreamWorks Animation during the production of “Monsters vs. Aliens.” HP boasts that its technology was developed in support of NASA’s Mars Rover program. Those are powerful bona fides! In an excellent review from Creative COW Magazine’s Ron Lindeboom, the author asserts the following:

Well, let's just come out and say it right here: Live Office and iChat aren't Skyroom. Skyroom is Live Office and iChat on steroids after working in the gym with trainers. It also isn't one of the many freeware or shareware applications or subscription-based services like GoToMeeting.com.

The differences between other collaboration tools and SkyRoom are significant. It’s not a subscription-based service, the software itself is affordable (under $150), its technical requirements are reasonable (Intel® Core 2™ Duo 2.33-GHz or equivalent processor with 2 GB RAM, a webcam and Microsoft Windows® XP or Vista®, and a broadband network with a minimum transfer rate of 400 kbps), and the visual quality is… well, what you’d expect from software used by DreamWorks. In 2002, I witnessed a demonstration of a “virtual meeting” conducted at a learning seminar. Dozens of cameras in two separate locations, each powered by a roomful of computing and processing power, “joined” two men in two offices hundreds of miles apart. It looked pretty good. Sure, it wasn’t exactly seamless, but it did look like two guys in the same office. Our collaboration tools aren’t there yet, but the industry is making significant strides, enough so that our children and grandchildren should find it both easy and natural to stay connected in virtual teams.

Gardening

By Andrew Calvert In writing my most recent blog post I was searching around for something pithy and clever to use as a theme. In vain (as we all know working to a deadline is a killer to creativity...). But then I saw this gem:

If you want to be prosperous for a year, grow grain. If you want to be prosperous for ten years, grow trees. If you want to be prosperous for a lifetime, grow people. –CHINESE PROVERB

Too often in the hectic pace of today’s just-in-time, make-it-now, instant-return world we forget that the development of our people – at all levels of the organization – is a long term investment in the future.

When you grow anything (and I have several years experience as an organic farmer to back me up here) you start by preparing the soil. You create a fertile environment where the all the prerequisites for growth and development are abundant. As plants respond to warmth, light and nutrition so employees respond to respect, collaboration and support. Once the soil is ready, you choose the right seeds to get the plants you want when you want them. So managers need to get the right people into the right positions so as to take advantage of the available conditions. Just as weeds (i.e. a plant in the wrong place) can consume vital resources, so employees in the wrong job can take away from the environment you strive to create. As a gardener prunes and weeds, and manager coaches and develops. Harvesting in the garden is a time of plenty, in the workplace it is a time where matured employees move onto the next suitable role for them in the organization.

How Can You Prepare Managers to Support Training?

By Craig Perrin This is the fourth of my five-part discussion with Kim Stafford, AchieveGlobal’s Director of International Development. This week we ask, “How can you prepare managers to support training?” CRAIG: If we want managers to support training, we have to stop shaming them. Instead, we should reduce their coaching responsibilities by changing the way we train. Rather than big training events followed by inconsistent or short-lived coaching, we need shorter increments of training over longer periods. Instead of a two-day employee workshop every six months, what if we had a one-hour session with an immediate application assignment and ongoing collaboration with peers, every week for two months? What if we leveraged all the technology now available – Internet, intranet, YouTube-type video, online social networking? What if trainers helped peers to coach each other? What if we developed dedicated coaches – people who like to coach, with the time to observe, provide feedback, and recognize employees? This kind of training isn’t idle fantasy. It’s already here in many organizations, functioning very well, and taking this pressure off managers to be everything to every employee. KIM: That’s one approach, yet it’s not always realistic. For better or worse – and I think it’s better – most organizations will continue to deliver traditional classroom training. As a long-time former trainer and director of training, I’ve seen the power of classroom learning. The classroom remains the number one place where skill development takes place. Larry Bossidy, author of Execution, says “Every leader and supervisor needs to be a teacher; classroom learning should be about giving [both managers and employees] the tools that they need.” People are worth the effort it takes to develop them through formal classroom training and skilled coaching. Dofasco Steel’s tag line is: “Our product is steel. Our strength is people.” In my view, the best way to improve human performance is to prepare managers to coach and then to measure how well they coach. That’s also the best way to reduce turnover and move toward key business goals. I’ll leave you with this thought: The main way employees – whether managers or individual contributors – learn new skills is through training, and the main way they grow and develop is through coaching.