Copyright Executive Excellence Publishing Jun 2007| [Headnote] |
| In a world of Blogs and Wikis, what works best? |
WE CREATE CUSTOM degree programs to assist organizations develop their scarcest resource-leadership. When organizations describe what leaders they need, they do not say "help us find the next CEO." They need leadership at all levels. The leadership function-once the exclusive domain of the comer office-has migrated down into the operations. In the world of blogs and wikis, the corner office is often the last place to get the information needed to make leadership decisions.
This phenomenon shows up in unconventional places. One mile from Bellevue University is Offutt Air Force base, home of U.S. Strategic Command (Stratcom) and U.S. Space Command. Based there are the men and women responsible for command and control of powerful weapon systems. These organizations have defined command-and-control structures-out of necessity. A mistake in operations could wipe out our civilization.
Few organizations have as well-defined command-and-control heritage as the Marine corp. Yet some interesting leadership activities are going on at Offutt. The current top leader is Marine General James Cartwright. He has commanded his troops to blog. He worked hard to explain why it is important for the people under him to blog, and yet senior leaders and managers have resisted. Discontent about the filtering of blogs and the mixed messages middle management was transmitting about blogging initially chocked off the desired flow of critical information. It took several leadership meetings before the commander could get his message fully translated into action. Now the word is that blogging is going on fast and furious at Stratcom and various field operations.
The leadership development lesson taught by General Cartwright is universal. In organizations seeking to develop leaders, we see a fairly consistent set of specifications for what is needed. The leadership requirements start at ground zero, where the customers interface with the organization. The leadership challenges are also at the levels where critical information routinely flows. Today, that is at virtually every level. This tidal wave of information is accelerating the need for change-a leadership challenge of the first order faced by every leader.
How are organizations handling the leadership development challenge? In a nutshell, not well. The challenges are immense-and will only get worse. Teams are being configured and reconfigured constantly to address specific business needs as they are identified and become critical to current operations. Budgets and resource availability are dynamic. Reprioritization is routine, and redirection can occur on any given day. What emerges as a major leadership development challenge is to find out where the key members of the team capabilities are at any given moment-and then figure out what direction the project, team, or entire organization needs to be going at the moment. And the next challenge is to communicate the direction.
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My friend and colleague, General (ret.) Frank Anderson, President of the Defense Acquisition University, states this leadership challenge as "headed west on 1-40: It doesn't matter how fast you are going west on 1-40 if the mission requires that you get north on I-95." The point is that it accomplishes nothing for the organization to be efficient, productive, and fast at any specific tasks if the actions take the end result in the wrong direction.
The building blocks for the leader are the culture, vision, and mission. These elements need to be something more than fancy framed statements. They need to be practical global positioning systems that guide individuals at all levels to make sure their portion of the team is hauling up 1-95 and not headed toward the sunset on I-40.
The retail industry has been ripped apart and reconfigured into a different structure. The local department store business model has been rendered impotent, replaced by hungry global super stores with thousands of similarly configured operations. These stand alone super stores consists of 200 to 300 managers and workers. The department store business model had both long employment tenure and the resources to develop the management experience required to lead in a relatively stable environment. The third floor had always been bedding and household soft goods and would be so as long as the store was in existence, which most of them no longer are. Now in late fall every Wal-Mart reconfigures the seasonal section from flowers, plants and pots to Christmas trees and trimmings, only to yet again reconfigure between Christmas day and the new year. And this takes place in an employee environment where the first line floor personnel are turning over at double digit rates. Talk about running a "west coast offense" with all of its complexities! The quarterback of these teams has a new team every year, and there is no wrist band to look at when these store managers calls the plays for the day. Talk about leadership challenges. And Wal-Mart is not alone. It is true as a result of the new structure of the retail industry.
What Can Be Done?
To improve leadership development, take three actions:
1. Stop the heinorrlmging! Leaders are hard enough to find and develop. It takes time to determine if any given individual promoted up from within is worthy of the investment required to develop their formal management and leadership skills. Each day of experience accumulated, each training seminar attended, each meeting attended, every tuition reimbursement dollar expended represents a cumulative investment in that individual. When these individuals resign, they take all those assets with them. It represents a total loss of investment to the parent organization. And the competitor's gain of the emerging leader represents a double lose to the investing organization. It both weakens the organization, and strengthens the competition. Moreover, given the retirements looming on the horizon, recruiting (raiding) will become more difficult and more expensive. Retention has to be a strategic goal and an operational performance measurement.
2. Invest in new know-how. About 70 percent of the learning required to perform a task comes from experience gained on the job. Some organizations delude themselves into believing that the number for "on-the-job training" is 100 percent. This is an attractive option because it appears to avoid the direct investment in human capital. Such exclusive dependence on the job training flies in the face of development needs. Even being a store manager at a large retail location involves budgets, personnel development, communications, problem-solving, logistics, and more. How a senior leadership unfamiliar with the dynamic world of the Internet is to transport new knowledge through working experience is beyond comprehension, yet many organizations are doing it or at least trying to do it, in the name of cost efficiency.
3. Increase the effectiveness of the training and education activity. Many organizations spend money to train and educate their future leaders-in the U.S. alone, about $100 billion was spent in 2006. For the most part, those expenditures at the firm level are managed without much integration of effort. The total training expenditure is rarely known at the senior leadership level. Where the money is being spent (vendors, skills developed, retention impact, promotion outcomes, business outcomes, sales, productivity) is not recorded and reviewed. The total expenditure-the sum of all training and tuition reimbursement and what business outcomes resulted-are not measured or managed.
We see a tremendous demand for leaders-and an even greater demand on the horizon. We see few integrated, strategic approaches; however, more attention is being paid to the learning and education to develop leaders. In a few places, we see the linking of leadership learning and development investments to measurable business outcomes. It's a start. Now's the time to accelerate the deployment of the development efforts.
ACTION: Link learning to outcomes.
| [Author Affiliation] |
| Michael E. Echols is the vice president of strategic initiatives at Bellevue University. He is the author of ROI on Human Capital Investment. Visit www.bellevue.edu |
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