AchieveGlobal's blog

Leading for the Greater Good

By Craig Perrin

This is the last of seven posts on AchieveGlobal's international study of leadership today, "Developing the 21st-Century Leader." Be sure to read the complete report.

Daily headlines continue to underscore recent high-profile failures of ethical leadership: manufacturers that hide physical dangers, finance companies that sell ruinous products, federal employees who violate the public trust.

These horror stories might call to mind your college ethics class - maybe even Mill's Principle of Utility (the greatest good for the greatest number) or Kant's Categorical Imperative (what's right in one situation is right in all).

While received wisdom can lead us astray, AchieveGlobal's 2009 global study suggests, in this case, that wisdom may be on target. The research identified "Society" as one of six critical zones of 21st-century leadership (along with Reflection, Diversity, Ingenuity, People, and Business). Effective leaders, we found, apply principles such as fairness, respect, and "the greater good" to balance individual and group welfare.

Still in the throes of a slow-motion economic crisis, we continue to ask, "How can leaders correct and avoid the mistakes that got us into this mess?" Seven best practices that the research grouped in the zone of Society offer one credible answer:

• Act ethically to serve the larger good, not just to obey the law.
• Encourage others to take socially responsible action.
• Openly challenge what you consider unethical decisions and actions.
• Take action to benefit others, not just yourself.
• Recognize and reward others based on merit, not on politics.
• Make fair decisions, even if they have a negative impact on yourself.
• Take steps to reduce environmental harm.

For reasons we understand, many leaders focus obsessively on the numbers, in the worst cases maximizing short-term profits with little concern for social and economic damage. The recent AchieveGlobal research suggests that increased awareness and positive action in the zone of Society is at least one ingredient in the antidote to failed 21st-century leadership.

Craig Perrin is Director of Solution Development at AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

The Leader ’s New Chisel

By Craig Perrin

This is the sixth of seven posts on AchieveGlobal's international study of leadership today, "Developing the 21st-Century Leader." Be sure to read the complete report.

"Innovate or die" is no longer a cliché. That phrase now describes the real choice many organizations face in the current economy: rethink themselves from strategy to products to daily operation - or risk oblivion.

AchieveGlobal's 2009 international study identified six "zones of 21st-century leadership" - Reflection, Society, Diversity, Ingenuity, People, and Business.  Ingenuity, in particular, has taken on new meaning and new urgency. Today, offering and executing good ideas is not enough. Leaders must help others do the same by creating a culture in which innovation can thrive. To respond to new threats and opportunities, leaders must question everything, right down to received wisdom at the heart of their business.

Innovation at one time was a little-used skill at the bottom a leader's tool box, fished out for incremental improvements here or there. Today, leaders need sharp new tools and the requisite skills to create a true culture of innovation: curious, challenging, collaborative, confidence-building, and customer-close. Leaders strong in the zone of Ingenuity help their teams - even their organizations - to create a motivating shared vision of future success.

What defines Ingenuity in the 21st-century leader? Maybe exactly what defined it in that 16th-century sculptor, Michelangelo, who into his 80s, laboring over his unfinished "Bound Slave," could say, "I am still learning."

Craig Perrin is Director of Solution Development at AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Must a Leader be a People-Person?

By Craig Perrin

This is the fifth of seven posts on AchieveGlobal's international study of leadership today, "Developing the 21st-Century Leader." Be sure to read the complete report.

A couple of years back, the Harvard Business Review ran an article about how difficult it can be for new managers to develop the interpersonal skills to lead effectively.

No kidding.

But that challenge doesn't apply only to new managers. Consider some daily realities for any manager, new or experienced: dealing with an array of personalities and work styles, communicating clearly and effectively, inspiring and motivating teams, and doing all this with a sense of fairness.

Our recent international study identified six zones of leadership - Reflection, Society, Diversity, Ingenuity, People, and Business - that address key 21^st-century challenges. The People zone paints a vivid picture of how effective leaders connect with others to boost morale and guide action toward shared goals. 

Reflecting on Leadership

By Craig Perrin

This is the fourth of seven posts on AchieveGlobal's international study of leadership today, "Developing the 21st-Century Leader." Be sure to read the complete report.

There's nothing like a long look in the mirror to motivate needed change. Gazing thoughtfully at your reflection can reveal positives to build on and negatives to improve or eradicate.

The same goes for business leaders: Those who often reflect on their own strengths and liabilities are far more likely to transform unproductive behaviors into behaviors that make them stronger and more effective.

Our recent research into how leaders can succeed in the 21^st century uncovered six zones or groups of best practices: Reflection, Society, Diversity, Ingenuity, People, and Business. Of them, Reflection is perhaps the most central.

To leverage strengths and remove the blind spots that lead to poor decisions, reflective leaders habitually assess their own motives, beliefs, attitudes, and actions.

If "the more you look, the more you see," as the adage goes, it should be no surprise that reflective leaders tend to succeed in other zones, as well. Why this spillover effect for the zone of Reflection?

It's quite simple.

The practices grouped under Reflection help leaders assess their performance in other zones. Because reflective leaders see their place in the big picture, they tend to "take responsibility for their own mistakes" (the highest-rated practice in our global survey). In this way, reflection helps them clarify what makes them strong and where they can improve in every zone. 

The Business of Leadership

By Craig Perrin

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

Leaders with superior strengths in "Business" make successful business leaders.

Now there's a redundant statement, if ever there was one. But I recently have taken a few contemplative steps back from this statement and discovered a core truth.

Our recent research identified six zones or categories of best practices required to meet the challenges of 21^st-century leadership. Of these six zones (Reflection, Society, Diversity, Ingenuity, People, and Business), leaders tended to rate the Business zone of highest importance.

What are some characteristics of leaders who excel in the Business zone?

• They adapt quickly to changing business conditions.
• They're effective at managing the costs of operation.
• They seek new ways to make the business competitive.

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. 

We Have Met the Enemy...

By Craig Perrin

This is the first in a series of posts on AchieveGlobal's international study of leadership today, "Developing the 21st-Century Leader." (Download the report HERE.)

To succeed in the volatile 21st century, leaders must rethink their historical views and cultivate a new configuration of beliefs, attitudes, and abilities.

That is the crux of AchieveGlobal's multi-phase study of how leaders can reverse the current economic trajectory. Our comprehensive literature review, focus groups, and survey of 971 leaders worldwide identified 42 best practices grouped in six "zones," or vital areas of action for modern leaders:

             

Notably, the study found a chasm between the perceived importance and observed use of the best practices, implying wide dissatisfaction with leadership today. Respondents identified their central challenges and in effect pronounced their leaders unable to meet them.

As leaders, we all share in our global ennui, and this study found our fatal flaw to be nothing new: hubris, or blindness of pride, or the mistaken view that business is just business, that we know all we need to know, that we can solve any problem arising in obsessive pursuit of short-term gains. The antidote to hubris, said the study, is the six zones of mindful action - one revered (Business) and others sometimes ignored, including Reflection, which makes us more effective in any zone. As a financial executive recently told us, "We have to learn how not to repeat the past." The six zones and 42 best practices articulate that lesson.

Posts to this blog over the next few weeks will briefly outline our findings in each leadership zone.

A Coach ’s Epiphany: “Open Your Eyes and Bend Your Knee!”

By Craig Perrin

A conversation this week recalled an epiphany from my early career, when I coached tennis.

As an academic at the time, I found it difficult at first to build physical skills in week-end hackers, hot-shot juniors, and pre-teens with their parents eyeing me from the bleachers. One break-through came when I learned to keep groups moving for an hour. A more serious problem was individual instruction. I shouted – “Open your eyes as you strike the ball!” or “Bend your knee!” – and then I puzzled why students couldn’t integrate my superb advice in one smooth stroke. I wondered, numbly, “Why is everyone so bloody frustrated?" Finally, I thought, “How did my best coaches coach?” One thing they did was point out progress, no matter how slight. So I tried something different in my next lesson. Instead of correcting a jittery beginner, I called her attention to anything at all that she did right. To my youthful astonishment, she promptly started ripping cross-court forehands! I continued to refine this method: “I loved the way you punched through that volley!” “That was beautiful when you took short steps to the ball!” Eventually, I found myself praising every student for any hint of doing something right. I might say, “Your wrist looks firmer now!” – even if only barely. And it all worked. Students gained more confidence, rallied more consistently, made more difficult shots, and laughed more often. Soon I had more students and raked in more money. That career morphed into something else, but to this day problems of my own making often follow when I forget that early epiphany. What approach works for you when you coach, or receive coaching? What epiphany can you share?

What ’s Your Bloatware?

By Craig Perrin

Apple Computer just released a new operating system, “Snow Leopard.” What did they do to improve their already class-leading “Leopard”? They simplified it. They dropped the price. And, as David Pogue points out in the New York Times, they dumped a moldy business model.

To keep buyers buying, many software vendors produce “bloatware” – successive upgrades that contain more features but also eat more memory, run more slowly, and crash more often than earlier versions. “Apple’s release strategy is highly unorthodox,” writes Pogue, who then quotes a fictional Apple marketing genius: “’Instead of adding features for their own sake, let’s just make what we’ve got smaller, faster and more refined.’” The pattern that Apple’s strategy represents – from simple, to complex, to bloatware, to simple – is a very old story.

Consider music:  

Or architecture:

     

The new simple is never the same as the old. Still, this pattern repeats again and again in virtually every arena of human activity, including business. Apple – ever leading the pack – seems to be saying that it’s now time for simple. Even Microsoft, after the bloated disaster of Windows Vista, will release a simpler operating system in October.

What is the bloatware in your business? What can or should you do to simplify?  

The Flower of Romania

By Craig Perrin Last month a colleague and I tested three new training programs in Romania. He facilitated while I observed, and then vice versa. This was my first visit to Eastern Europe in (shudder) 31 years. What did I expect? I’m not sure, but what I found gave me a surge of hope. The Romania I saw is fresh, full of life. And young. Is no one in that country over thirty? A group of mid-level managers in a multinational bank felt like a graduate seminar. A swarm of reporters at our early-morning press conference gave me the odd feeling I was back teaching college journalism. It’s not just the youth. It’s also – and I hesitate just slightly to use a Maureen Dowd-like five-euro word – it’s also the perspicacity. These young people are aware, eager to learn, intellectually fearless. And that press conference. As my partner and I droned on, I could feel it. Jacked up on pitch-black espresso these young people wanted rough-and-tumble, hard facts, numbers, vivid images. “What’s the differences between Romanian leaders and other leaders?” “Romanian leaders are a lot funnier.” “There’s my headline!” blurted the young man whose hair that morning had apparently undergone electroshock therapy. None of these reporters and few of the managers remember the week-long riots and executions of 1989. These fresh minds and this youthful energy – in my mind at least – have flowed forth to fill the resulting cultural vacuum, symbolized today by Nicolae Ceausescu's stupendous, ghastly, and now largely vacant palace in Bucharest. If this is what youth can do unfettered by repressive policies and narrow thinking, then bring on the children.

How Learning and Development Initatives Sustain a Challenging Economy

Let’s face it. Employees need good leaders in order to be productive. A recent study revealed that many organizations are seeing the need to improve upon their leaders’ abilities to motivate and encourage prosperity across employee teams. Leaders across all industries agree that employee learning and development is a must-have. The reasoning behind the need to strategically improve on the employee training process is revealed in this brand new Quick Read Report, “AchieveGlobal Survey Analysis: Learning in Difficult Times.”

I ’m a Leader – So What Do You Expect?

By Craig Perrin We recently concluded a worldwide study of what’s different about leading in the 21st century. What we learned will re-shape both what we say about leaders and how we develop leaders at all levels. Given the 21st-century coming together of peoples, economies, and cultures, we were pleasantly surprised to find a firm picture of good leadership emerging from our research.  Effective leaders, we learned, tend to focus their efforts in six distinct “zones of leadership”:

• Reflection: The tendency to evaluate one’s own motives, beliefs, attitudes, and actions.
• Society: The tendency to apply principles – such as fairness, respect, and “the greater good” – to balance individual and group welfare.
• Diversity: The tendency to value human differences, including gender, ethnicity, age, culture, beliefs, and work styles.
• Ingenuity: The tendency to offer and execute practical ideas and enable others to do the same.
• People: The tendency to engage the hearts, minds, and actions of others in productive work.
• Business: The tendency to make and execute sound plans and decisions.

While individual contributors and leaders at all levels in Asia, Europe, and North America endorsed these six “zones,” the relative importance of the zones (and of 42 specific behaviors that comprise the zones) differed by organizational level and global region. My limited point here: Good leadership in part is relative to the expectations of those being lead. If I’m a senior leader, for example, I may see profitable operation as my highest priority. Everyone else, however – all the people I lead – may see my ability to admit my mistakes as the bellwether of my credibility. Until I meet that expectation, I’m less likely to secure the commitment and effort that promote profitable operation. This and many other implications of our study will be the focus of a comprehensive report due out this Fall.

Ethics in a Fuzzy Yellow Ball

By Craig Perrin Forgive another sports analogy. Hey, my blogmate made me do it! In a recent French Open tennis match, Serena Williams cracked a ball point blank at her opponent, Maria Jose Sanchez Martinez – a painful and totally legal part of tennis. Slo-mo revealed that the ball ricocheted off Martinez’ arm, then racquet, and dribbled, unplayable, into Williams’ court. Williams apologized, expecting the point to be hers (a player touched by the ball loses the point). To Williams’ surprise, the umpire gave the point and game to Martinez, who had to know she was hit – but said nothing. An ethical lapse in sports usually does little lasting harm (here, Williams won the match). An ethical lapse or cascade of lapses in business can do tremendous harm, as we’ve seen in the global recession. The recession in fact has raised global awareness of the need for ethical business practices:

• At the Harvard Business School, for example, many spring graduates are signing a new code of ethics. In their “MBA Oath,” students promise to “serve the common good” and refrain from advancing “their own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others.
• In a 2009 AchieveGlobal survey, respondents worldwide singled out at least two behaviors required for ethical leadership in the 21st century: “Openly admit your mistakes” and “Act not just to obey the law, but to promote the common good.”

Had Maria Jose Sanchez Martinez followed that advice, she’d have conceded the point. Had certain business and political leaders followed it – in one of the few positive effects of our economic crisis – we might not be reminded to reflect on these matters. Your thoughts are invited and welcome.

Aplomb or a Bomb – You Decide!

By Craig Perrin It was Autumn. I was in Southern California on the Queen Mary for a marketing showcase with over 120 attendees. Our Product Development and Sales VPs were presenting in the ballroom – a daunting task that they handled with aplomb. I was to “spice up” the showcase and decided to include something on the impact of bad service – about six slides detailing the experience of two guys who went to an upscale hotel and had a less than stellar experience. This was a well-known story, at least for anyone in marketing. It was immensely popular – viral marketing at its best (or worst, if you work for that particular hotel chain). That part of the showcase was a hit, with over half the audience handing us their business cards so we could email the story I told.   Unfortunately, several individuals from that chain, our customers, were in the audience, and they were not pleased that we had shared the story about one of their brands. We had a significant amount of service recovery to do. This taught me a valuable lesson: Don’t comment, at least publicly, on the actions or response to the actions of any company with whom we may one day want to do business.   I would love to be neutral enough/big enough/not dependant enough, etc. that we as an organization could say what we wanted about any organization or individual in the news. Our choice, in this blog and elsewhere, is to hold our collective tongue. Have you had a similar experience? Do you agree or disagree with our approach? Please let us know!

How to Avoid a Great Depression

By Craig Perrin I don’t care what your tenure is, three months or 30 years: These days everyone has that queasy thought, “Is my job on the line?” Whether you answer “Yes!” and you’ve already hung out a shingle, or “No, but no one is safe!” – we all want to live to pay another utility bill. Times like these unsettle even this grizzled vet, with 22 years in the same remarkable company. What have I learned about keeping my job? I’m still learning, really, but I’m willing to share five provisional rules of thumb that I’ve tried to follow: 1. Make your boss successful. Create something wonderful. Then delete your name from the title page. If your boss, like mine, has integrity, people will know who’s behind the throne. You don’t need a throne. You need a paycheck. 2. Make no one look bad. I once made a dignitary look bad by knitting my brow at his puzzling ideas. I suffered, nailed to the shed, for two years. Then I learned a lesson I once taught to cheeky college students: “Diplomacy gets you anywhere!” 3. Treat everyone with respect. My friend the janitor is a cool dude. We talk about politics. We talk about handheld mobile devices. He advises me: “Jailbreak, man. You need Jailbreak.” I value this connection more than any on Linkedin. 4. Produce something tangible every week. The best thing is a clever object that people can hold. Second best is a performance, like facilitating a tense meeting. Figure out, “What’s important this week?” Then ask, “What can I do to help?” 5. Smile when you walk in the lunchroom. I learned this at age 18 from a rogue uncle, an IBM executive. Then he uncapped a fresh bottle of bourbon and said as he poured, “One glug-glug per bottle!” I think of Uncle Jim – and that first shot of bourbon – every time I walk in the lunchroom. Or boardroom. The wisdom of the ages! OK, OK, this is pitiful advice compared to your average Sunday-supplement story on weathering the worst downturn since the Great Depression. If you have other advice, rules of thumb, whatever, please help us out! My goal is never to write a tear-stained final blog in which I confess my own Great Depression.

A 21st Century Equation for Organizational Change

By Craig Perrin To get a sense of the reappraisal now underway in change management circles, consider another reappraisal – at the dawn of modern physics, one hundred years ago. By 1900, physicists had been applying Newton’s laws of motion for 200 years to predict natural events and fuel the industrial revolution. Yet a few scientists had grown uneasy because Newton’s laws failed to explain various newly-observed phenomena. Then, in 1905, Albert Einstein reframed their notions of space and time and paved the way for some startling achievements – among them, releasing the power of the atom. Today, many change leaders feel a similar anxiety. Having seen the failure of important initiatives, these leaders now question some time-honored “laws of change.” They believe that new demands require new ways to conceive and guide their efforts. In the past, leaders counted on periods of stability, assumed that change took time, saw change as a process, saw change leadership as a special role, gained support with a clear business case, and succeeded by delivering customer value. Today, leaders face constant overlapping changes, need quick wins to build momentum, see change as the permanent landscape, see change leadership as everyone’s role, appeal to the emotions as well as the mind, and succeed by meeting threats and opportunities. Like Einstein’s relativity, these new rules may seem no rules at all. But neither Einstein’s world nor this world is anything new. In 500 BC, the Greek philosopher Heraclites said, tersely: “All is flux.” Modern change management, like modern physics, is a sharper image of the world as it is – in constant movement, with every part affecting every other part. If “all is flux,” then no one can reasonably expect to succeed solely with a standard project plan, no matter how detailed. Instead, leaders and employees must respond flexibly to dynamic conditions within and outside the organization. In contrast to a “Newtonian,” phased-based approach, modern change management has a new central task: developing change-capable people who alone can build a change-capable organization. Consider a final parallel with modern physics. To the naked eye, an object, say my desk, appears solid and permanent. At the atomic level, however, my desk is a mass of moving particles, loaded with kinetic energy. In the same way, an apparently stable organization is a mass of individuals, each a force either promoting or opposing needed change. The sum of these forces for change might be described in a kind of equation:

C = LE²

The change capability of an organization (C) equals the quality of leadership (L) times the square of the energy of all employees (E). As Einstein’s famous equation describes the enormous power of the atom, this equation describes the enormous power of the individual – if we can release it – for positive change.

Final Thoughts: Does Training Rely Too Much on Coaching by Managers?

By Craig Perrin This is the last segment of my discussion with Kim Stafford, AchieveGlobal’s Director of International Development, on problems associated with coaching by managers. This week we return to the original question: “Does training rely too much on coaching by managers?” KIM: Craig, you say yes, we over-rely on coaching and we need to get off that drug, so to speak. At the same time, I think you agree that classroom training, which I call effective training, requires coaching if you want a return on your training investment. To reinforce that point, I’ll quote Broad and Newstrom from their classic book, Transfer of Training:

A frequently overlooked factor is management's involvement in the training process... [R]esponsibility for improving transfer of training must be shared by managers and trainees, as well as trainers.

Newstrom's research at the University of Minnesota clearly identified the manager as the most important force both before and after training to reinforce concepts and skills. As Sharon [AchieveGlobal CEO Sharon Daniels] said in her Selling Power interview, “Play chess with your people, not checkers.” To leverage the unique strengths of their people, managers will always need to coach employees as they learn and apply new skills. So, does training rely too much on coaching by managers? I think not. CRAIG: That all makes sense to me, on paper. Unless organizations start making a big effort to support regular coaching – highly unlikely in the current economic climate – we can expect coaching to remain low-priority. What’s needed is a much easier kind of change. Not of the whole organization, but of training. The pieces and also the desire for this change are already in place.  We need to make much better use of the available technologies. We need to leverage the intense social needs of younger workers – witness Facebook and MySpace among Millennials, even Linkedin among older workers. Of course people want to learn, but they want to learn in new ways. You might call it the Google-ization of corporate training: find what you need, now, use it immediately to solve a problem, and move on. These big societal and technological trends will drive training in the 21st century, with intense, continuing interaction among learners. According to AT&T, my 18-year-old sent or received 1100 text messages last month. I’m not saying that constitutes peer coaching – who knows what the heck he was talking about – but it points the direction that training needs to follow. We need to leverage all these forces, all these available technologies; we need to abandon outdated forms of training that rely on big events and follow-on coaching by managers; and, I believe, we need to stop shaming managers by lecturing them on their failure to do what their own managers don’t often do – and frankly don’t often require.

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.

Why Do Managers Struggle to Coach?

By Craig Perrin This is the third in my five-part discussion with Kim Stafford, AchieveGlobal’s Director of International Development, on problems associated with coaching by managers. This week we ask, “Why do managers struggle to coach?” KIM: I think we agree on why managers struggle to coach. Companies hire and promote people for technical skills, not coaching skills. Learning to coach takes time and effort. You’ve mentioned other reasons: Most managers don’t see an immediate payoff in coaching. And some think if they coach too much, they won’t reach their measured goals. But let me rephrase the question: Do managers even know what makes an effective coach? Do they know the difference, say, between giving feedback and correcting performance? At the core of effective coaching is an understanding of what coaching fundamentally is. For example, many managers think coaching is a big thing that takes a huge chunk of time. That just isn’t so. The point is, if you have to learn how to read and write, you also have to learn how to coach. As organizations flatten out and become more virtual in nature, people don’t often observe good coaching. So even experienced managers have to learn what, when, and where to coach, along with how to coach. CRAIG: You’re right. Many managers lack coaching skills. And that fact implies even more of the manager’s time to learn how to coach – on top of learning what their teams learn, observing performance, and actually coaching. You’re talking ideal world, and in the business world there are always other priorities. For coaching to take hold, most organizations need a profound cultural change – from a bottom-line culture, an immediate-results culture, to a coaching culture. And most organizations are either unwilling or unable to make that change. At the heart of this problem that we describe as “no time to coach employees in what they learn in training” is something else: the training itself. Training is usually a big classroom event. It may be wonderful. People may learn a lot. But we agree that if they get no support after training, no coaching, employees are unlikely to use what they learn in their jobs. What we need is a form of training that doesn’t rely on consistent coaching by managers, yet still encourages immediate and long-term use of skills. Good coaching is an enormous help, but training that depends heavily on coaching often fails. To meet the need often unmet by coaching, we need continuous learning, not event-based training followed by coaching. Short increments of training over extended time – and not all of it face-to-face - greatly reduces the need for managers to coach.

Whatever Happened to Transformation?

By Craig Perrin It’s a 21st-century axiom: The sum of accessible information is inversely proportional to the human capacity to absorb it. To illustrate, according to Nielsen, by September of this year the average duration of a web page viewed had shrunk to 47 seconds. That trend applies not just to fast-thinking, fast-texting Millennials, but also to engaged Gen Xers and (maybe for different reasons) to wizened Boomers like me. One of the brightest young leaders I know says she can’t stay with a YouTube video for more than 60 seconds. I get 999 cable channels of news, sports, movies, and UFO programming – and I suffer from carpal-tunnel thumb. So, in a terabyte world, many of us now have a kilobyte attention span. Nicholas Carr explored this phenomenon recently in The Atlantic (Is Google Making Us Stupid?). He quotes from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey”:

“Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.” I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going – so far as I can tell – but it’s changing.

This “remapping” of consciousness is changing my profession, too – corporate learning. At one time, a three-day sales workshop was no big deal. Now, as economic conditions worsen, leaders won’t pull the sales force out of the field. Instead, they simultaneously minimize lost productivity, leverage installed IT, and match shorter attention spans by inserting bite-size learning in tiny crevices of the workday. I’m not saying this is bad. It’s just what’s happening, and it has implications. Clearly, the Google search or equivalent has become a dominant way to learn. A need appears, a question comes up, my memory fails: Who was Vigotsky, anyway? I pull out the iPhone, key in the word, read for 47 seconds, and – oh yeah, Vigotsky – that Russian shrink who laid the groundwork for modern online learning. Yet this instant access to information compels me to ask, Whatever happened to transformation? The historic goal of corporate learning is productive action – application of new skills to boost bottom-line metrics and transform people and culture by realizing dormant abilities. And that question raises other, honestly non-rhetorical questions, some of which I list below – and none of which will likely be answered with a Google search:

• Does information alone bring transformation?
• Is a summary as good as a rehearsal?
• Is knowing the main precursor of doing?
• Does it really take three days to learn how to sell?
• In the future, will everyone be conscious for 47 seconds?

What ’s Self-Esteem Got to Do With It?

By Craig Perrin It’s at the foundation of our view of leadership, an article of faith at AchieveGlobal – a “Basic Principle,” even: “Maintain the self-confidence and self-esteem of others.” To my knowledge, no one has ever questioned Basic Principle 2, so I expect to be burned at the nearest stake for the following account of recent family events. This Fall my son Greg began studies at a well-known music conservatory. We’ll call his violin teacher “Professor V,” an octogenarian and living legend who still performs and often gets calls from the world’s top soloists seeking performance tips. I went with Greg to his first lesson with Professor V, lasting four hours, during which I directly observed his stamina, clarity of mind, and teaching methods – all since confirmed by Greg in many phone calls and a beautiful essay he wrote about Professor V for a humanities class. Let’s not mince words: Professor V is the most brutal teacher I have ever met. More brutal even than my college mentor-slash-torturer, who used to skewer me intellectually, in public, like the Olympic fencer he had been. Professor V does not give a fig about maintaining the self-confidence and self-esteem of others. From Greg’s essay:

The freshman, visibly nervous, again plays the first bars. Laughing, Professor V interrupts: “You speak the language, but you have no idea what you are saying!” He demonstrates on his violin. “Now play!” The student imitates his teacher’s playing. Professor V shouts, “No! Don’t just copy me! Use your imagination and phrase according to what the composer wrote!”

Compared to Greg’s reports and what I saw, this episode is mild. When a student displeases him, Professor V can explode –in shouts, sarcasm, or both – with the sharpest criticism that I’m sure these young people will ever hear. Students occasionally cry during a lesson. Yet talented young musicians from all over the world flock to Professor V, if he will have them, and most have impressive careers after their time with him. Why? Again, in Greg’s words:

I sense a profound love that Professor V has for his students. All his criticisms, painful as they may be for students to hear, reflect his many decades of performing, teaching, and observing. Today, all is focused on requiring this student to rise to the highest standards and realize whatever promise he may show. To conclude two hours of brisk instruction and unvarnished criticism, Professor V says, calmly, “I want you to succeed. I am on your side. But I am preparing you for the people who aren’t.”

The devotion that his students show, the results that he gets, and the love that he expresses so ferociously – I saw it as well – all lead me to ask, Is it always best for a leader to maintain the self-confidence and self-esteem of others?

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

By Craig Perrin No doubt about it, the industrial age worked very well. Without mass production - in which humans served machines, followed directions, performed repetitive tasks - our civilization could not exist. Yet we've seen rapid change. Today, machines serve people, doing many jobs better than we can -more consistently and efficiently, error-free, 24/365. That leaves us to do what technology can't. Only we can make judgments, collaborate, coach, be diplomatic, negotiate, motivate, create. In short, at least so far, no machine has replaced the human ability to sell, service, and lead -three core disciplines for organizations in the digital age. As the pace of change accelerates, digital technologies will increasingly free us to learn and build new skills. Our central task, therefore, will be to adapt - and help others adapt - to this new reality. Here is the bedrock assumption of the AchieveGlobal Blog:

The human capacity to think will make organizations flourish in the 21st century.

Growing from that core belief, future blog entries will explore the many implications of theglobal shift from the industrial age to the digital age. We cordially invite you to join us in this great enterprise - Developing the 21st Century Workforce™.