Monthly Archives: March 2012

Who is the First Person You Should Hire (Part Deux) – Lutts and Mipps?

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A question that has been asked repeatedly after my last post is related to asking the right questions so I thought that instead of responding individually, I would use this week’s blog post to respond to it.

Those that have been through the Decision Making or Change Management training with The Mpower Group may well remember the experiential learning simulation called Lutts and Mipps. In essence, teams are handed lots of answers related to a classic time/distance/speed problem. The only challenge is dealing with Lutts and Mipps instead of miles and hours to put the participants in a different context. In addition, the teams are provided with way more information than they need. The challenge is in identifying that they were given two of the variables and they can easily solve for the third, in a total of about 45 seconds – IF THEY ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS! Invariably, there are many teams who never get to the answer in the allotted time(45 minutes) let alone the “solvable” time which is under a minute. And the ones that fail the most miserably? Glad you asked. It’s always the overly analytical types who start gathering the data and crunching it with all kinds of wild formulae. They are also the ones who insist that we must not have given them all the data that they needed! And this is after we have just finished a module on problem solving thinking!

We have been trained and trained and trained to gather as much data as possible and start crunching all kinds of analyses with that data – without determining the Key Questions we must address to arrive at the answer. And this rush to action is nothing but a fool’s errand. We would be far, far better served to make sure that we take the time at the beginning to make sure that we fully and deeply comprehend the question(s) we are trying to answer. Otherwise, how will you know that you are capturing the right data, the complete data, no extraneous data etc. etc.? Which is really what my two friends Pete (Drucker) and Al (Einstein) were essentially saying. And we have proven time and again to many of our clients that determining the right Key Question(s) is a critical and an absolute necessity. Unfortunately, we have all been conditioned to jump into action and time spent in reflection is often viewed as an unnecessary delay. Ironically, that reflection time and developing the right Key Questions and getting consensus on them is a powerful accelerator. And oh by the way, if you follow a structured methodology to develop the Key Questions, it is also a significant Change Management enabler as it builds tremendous credibility with your most reluctant stakeholders. In addition, it enables you to logically structure your argument and essentially serves as a blueprint for your presentation. Furthermore, you can also employ the technique of a reverse hypothesis to completely disarm your most stringent and die hard resistor(s)e.

I cannot begin to tell you the level of frustration that Lutts and Mipps generates in our workshops (which have included CEOs, EVPs, etc., etc.). This is clearly not an issue that distinguishes between seniority. Most people are pretty dumb founded when they realize that they wasted the entire allotted time when they could have had the answer in 45 seconds – if you invest the 3-4 minutes needed to develop the Key Questions. I wish I could show you some of the bizarre answers we have received from teams. How about your organization? How often does it take the time to make sure that it knows what the Key Questions are? And if not, do you think it should? If you would like to know more about any of the concepts mentioned in this post, give me a jingle.

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Who is the First Person You Should Hire?

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If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked that question-well you know how that story goes?  At every single conference across the globe I’ve spoken at, that question has been asked in some way, shape or form.  Almost every single client has asked that question or some variation thereof.  And the ones that did not should have asked that question.  You can think about it in terms of what is a critical role that you must fill in your Sourcing/Supply Chain organization or any other internal “support” function (IT, Finance, legal) or shared service to confirm my contemporary bona fides.

Before I give you the answer, we need to make sure that we are asking the right questions.  And for those of you that have been through TMG’s decision making module, that refrain will sound very familiar.  Remember the New England Journal of Medicine exercise where physicians were asked to evaluate patients for toncillectomies and they were wrong 49% of the time ?  Otherwise, we can turn to what a couple of my friends said.  Pete says “The most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than the right question.” My friend Al goes on to say basically the same thing: “The formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.”

Typically, would you agree that in most cases (not including yours of course):

  • Organizations struggle with convincing their stakeholders of the value they create?
  • They face strong resistance in expanding their influence or footprint?
  • Budget wars are an annual and the quarterly norm?
  • Savings numbers are always questioned for validity?

If any of the above is true, then the answer to the title becomes self-evident.  A Marketing person!  I kid you not.  In the first Sourcing organization I set up in my career 16 years ago we had a full time marketing person (Peter).  His job was to constantly market our services and we took a marketing approach to it.  This wasn’t about creating some spreadsheets or graphs of generated savings.  He had to make sure that we continued to expand our footprint inside the company.  To sell our value to the stakeholders.  To keep in constant communication with them.  To make sure we were getting repeat business.  To ensure that we were getting referral to other stakeholders.

Now I’m sure that you are doing all of the above but I’m talking about most of the other organizations.  We have not seen  a true marketing focus being applied to this effort and I’m always surprised by that.  Especially given the tools available today.  It does not necessarily mean that you need to have a full time dedicated resource but you do need to fulfill that role.  So next time you are sitting in a budget meeting being asked one more time to take another haircut, you may want to think about your marketing effort.  Oh, Pete is Peter Drucker and Al is Albert Einstein.  Let me know if you would like more details.

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Education vs Reality

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I wanted to build upon Anne’s post last week regarding human development and the importance of a sound education system. I found her post right on point, especially because I just finished reading Stop Stealing Dreams (what is school for) by Seth Godin (you can download it for free here).

I am most familiar with Seth from his books and blogs on marketing. However, this work was slightly different. In Stop Stealing Dreams, Seth talks about America’s education system and how it is completely outdated. He states that we are not educating people to function in the new economy but for the manufacturing-focused economy of the past.

I found this interesting, especially because I can relate. Commonly in my adult life I have felt like I wasn’t educated or trained to handle the tasks that professionals face on a daily basis. These are things that were overlooked in my K-12 education. I don’t once remember a teacher saying, “Here is how to manage a project, work in a team, or handle a difficult personality.” Perhaps I was sick that day. College helped some, but it didn’t prepare me for what I faced outside of the Ivory Tower.

I remember my first job out of school was working as part of a four-person production team. We created hardbound visitor guides that were placed in hotel rooms. Revenue was based on ad sales.  At one point our team was producing 16 books a year. Did my education prepare me for the pressures of working with three other people with personalities different from my own? Was I prepared for the stressors of working under extreme deadlines? Did I feel comfortable reaching out to customers regarding their ads? The answer to all of these questions was a resounding no, but I had no choice but to figure it out. After a lot of trial, error, and learning through experience, I found the answers to these questions. I realized that I had left school without the key skills needed (communication, leadership, teamwork) to succeed.

We keep talking about how the strategic skills are what really matter, skills like communication, leadership, and teamwork. These are the skills that are needed in this new economy. Very few of us head to a plant and put widgets together. Which, according to Seth, the old educational system was designed to teach us. We are now constantly connected, thrown together into different situations, and are expected to make things happen. Most of these situations don’t have a rule book. There are no rules. They are unique to the transformative economy we find ourselves in. We either sink or swim. The only skills that are going to save us are those strategic skills. But how do we get these new skills if our educational system is focused on us sitting in lectures and completing assignments home alone. Isn’t it better to work in a group and combine the collective knowledge of the team towards a problem?

Developing these skills is now falling to companies and individuals. Organizations are struggling to find talented individuals to fill their teams, and employees are struggling to find their place. Perhaps it is time to look at the beginning instead of the end.

I lucked out as my love of learning and excellent mentors have helped me over these hurdles. However, life is a marathon not a sprint. There is plenty I still need to learn. I just need to stay flexible and push myself to keep growing.

Have you faced these same issues in your professional life? If so, how did you grow professionally?

Please Share!

Crystal

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Making America More Competitive through our People

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The theme for this month’s issue of Harvard Business Review is “Reinventing America – Why the World needs the U.S. to Bounce Back”.  There is one article in particular which highlights the need for the U.S. to become more competitive.  Here Michael E. Porter (ever hear of Porter’s Five Forces Model?) and Jan W. Rivkin discuss the need for America to repair some “cracks in the foundation” which from a macro perspective include:

  • Sound monetary and fiscal policies (such as manageable government debt levels);
  • Strong human development (good health care and strong K-12 education systems) and
  • Effective political institutions (rule of law and effective law-making bodies)

The area that I found most critical is human development, particularly the lack of focus on our education systems and the training / development of our employees.   There is a sister article in HBR entitled “A Jobs Compact for America’s Future” which really hones in on the human capital side of America’s challenges. In this article, author Thomas A. Kochan states “Without a well-trained, well-paid workforce the United States cannot compete with other nations effectively…”  He observes that “Corporate leaders frequently say that people are their most important asset.  Evidence suggests that many of them don’t believe a word of that claim.”   Kochan also points out that not all U.S. firms have fallen behind the rest of the world.  “Every industry includes firms that compete on innovation, product development and service quality.  These companies invest heavily in human and social capital. In the HR literature, the approach is called a high-road strategy, accompanied by high-performance or knowledge-based work systems. The specific practices vary across industries, but there are some generic features:

  • selection of employees with technical, problem-solving, and collaborative skills;
  • significant investment in training and de­velopment;
  • commitment to building trust and relying on employees to solve problems, coordinate operations, and drive innovation;
  • compensation systems that align the firm’s and the employees’ interests;…“

“Two decades’ worth of research on high-road companies has documented their ability to achieve world-class productivity and service quality.  If we define U.S. competitiveness as the capacity to be attractive to businesses and to simultaneously create a more widely prosperous society, then high-road strategies become critical.”

Mr. Kochan is not alone in his thinking or his research.  There have been numerous articles written about how professionals (even those with advanced degrees) are leaving school with a lack of “soft skills” (we call them strategic competencies), which are the very skills (problem-solving, collaboration, communication) that are required for America to be competitive.  MBA and Masters programs (particularly in Supply Chain) are listening to the complaints from corporate America and are adjusting their curricula accordingly.  But many companies have not gotten the message and continue to cut training and development budgets entirely OR focus merely on technical training thereby cutting out all “soft skills” training.  Those “soft skills” or strategic competencies are the backbone of high performance work systems (“HPWS”).  HPWSs have been around for decades but seem to have gone through a resurgence as America scrambles for answers to our lack of global competitiveness.

If you think about it, the answer really isn’t all that hard.  America needs to put its money where its mouth is and make the American workforce an asset for our country.  Like any other asset it requires investment:

  • strengthening early childhood education
  • access to affordable post high school education
  • university curricula that REQUIRE more emphasis on strategic competencies
  • a significant investment in training and development within companies

If we can do all this, maybe America can be a global competitor once again.

Please join in the conversation.  We welcome your comments  . . . . . . . . .

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Why You Should Feel Good About the Economy, and Why That’s Good for the Economy!

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While I was growing up with my grandfather (who was quite a management whiz) in India, he explained the concept of inflation when I was quite young.  He told me that people were going out and buying necessities and then storing them to protect against rising prices.  India was going through very high inflation in those days.  He went on to explain that what these people didn’t realize was that it was exactly that thinking and behavior that would lead to higher prices.  A self-fulfilling prophecy!  The science of economics has long conceded this point to the behavioral economists.  How people think about the economy and their economic future actually has an impact on their economic future.

For a fascinating discussion on this, you should read this transcript from NPR here. Two very authoritative prognosticators, David Wessel of The Wall Street Journal and Zanny Minton Beddoes of The Economist, have much to say when they read the tea leaves.  Granted that their focus is on the US economy. As you will note, the health of the US economy is very elastic to the global economy, at least in the short term. Some things to note are:

  • Steady decline in unemployment
  • European meltdown averted – for now
  • Manufacturing showing signs of life
  • Interest rates make government borrowing very cheap
  • Mortgage rates are nudging the housing recovery along
  • The so called “asset bust” related to real estate is almost over
  • Stock Markets – need I say anything about this?
  • Actual growth in the number of jobs

They both sound notes of caution that it’s not quite time to start celebrating, but that the light at the end of the tunnel is not a mirage.

  • Europe has only managed to defer the crisis for now. That does buy the global economy and the U.S. economy some extra time to recover without that Damocles’ sword hanging over our head.
  • Gas prices are always volatile and very elastic to world events and speculation.  They are already showing their volatility.
  • The political situation still does not look like it will lead to actual governance in the near future.  The impact of that was clearly felt during the debt ceiling discussions in Washington last year, including the credit downgrade.

But then the discussion turns to what they call the “intangibles,” which is all about how people feel about the economy.  They agree that how people feel about the economy actually drives their economic decisions.  When people feel good about the economy, they generate far more economic activity (spending, investing, borrowing etc. etc.).  They all agree that the intangibles are finally turning positive.  People are starting to feel better about the economy and their economic future.  David Wessel summed it up best when he said, “Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary, once said that you know a period of crisis is over when the surprises are consistently on the up side. And we’ve been through a period where for so long, the surprises have been negative. The fact that they’re positive now does kind of breed a self-fulfilling cycle of confidence that could be very important.”

My advice – pour yourself your favorite libation, and start feeling good about the economy.  It’s the least you can do to help the global economy?  N’est ce pas?

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