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Describe your best experience in terms of employee development and explain why it was so effective. Then describe your worst experience in terms of employee development and explain why it was so unproductive.https://www.hrdive.com/news/managing-and-measuring-workplace-culture/513998/ jwi_520_w8_l1_1176.pdf jwi_520_w8_l2_1176.pdf h047ee_pdf_eng.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview ! JWI 520 People Management Week Eight | Lecture One - Page 1 - LEARNING BY DOING: THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ! We said in the previous lecture that the opportunity to develop professional and leadership skills is among the most important of all organizational rewards. In fact, countless studies have found that when college seniors and MBA students are asked what is most important to them as they weigh their post-graduation alternatives, the most frequent response, even more than high compensation, is the opportunity for professional growth. With this in mind, consider the responses to a series of questions asked of managers who attended executive-education programs at the University of Michigan. The author of this lecture asked the participants to write a brief description of the most significant developmental experience in their professional careers. They were then asked several questions about what they had written. Here are two of the questions, along with the managers’ responses: 1. “Did you describe a formal course, conference, or program?” (Typically, only two to three people out of each class of 45 said yes.) - Page 2 - 2. “Did your organization deliberately provide this experience for reasons of professional development?” (Typically, between five to eight people out of 45 said yes.) Based on these studies and many others (Ready, 1994), it is clear that the most powerful professional- and leadership-development typically occurs not through academic training or company-initiated professional development programs, but rather through what is variously labeled action learning, on-the-job learning, or learning by doing. The upshot: Managers who design and thoughtfully assign people to jobs that are rich in “job content” can substantially increase the motivation of their team members, and also provide them with abundant opportunities for professional development. By any name, the old saw is true: Experience really is the best teacher. Or, as the old Chinese proverb goes: Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I’ll understand. - Page 3 - GIVING PEOPLE THE OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN BY DOING In the previous lecture we identified a number of job content rewards, including such things as: • Recognition • Responsibility • Autonomy • Performance feedback • Opportunities to participate in decision making • Important, interesting, and challenging work • The opportunity to develop professional and leadership skills To provide employees with distinct opportunities in each of these areas would be impossible in practice. Fortunately, some organizational experiences are so robust that they simultaneously provide employees with numerous examples of enriching job content. Examples include participating in new business initiatives, moving from a line to a staff role, and taking on a position with profit-and-loss responsibilities (McCall, Lombardo, & Morrison, 1988). - Page 4 - Even when someone’s basic job remains the same, significant opportunities for professional growth often present themselves to organizations that are looking for them. Introducing a new product, for example, or implementing a new recruitment or performance program, or launching a new corporate initiative can all provide rich developmental opportunities. Permitting employees to interact directly with customers can also have a dramatic effect. For example, as part of GE’s Six Sigma initiative (which you will read much more about in a subsequent course), Jack Welch created an “at the customer, for the customer” program, whereby GE employees were transferred to a customer’s office for four to six months, to work on the customer’s problems and priorities. REDUCING THE NUMBER OF ORGANIZATIONAL LEVELS A particularly powerful way to increase people’s responsibility, challenge, autonomy, and participation in decision-making, without changing their basic job, is to reduce the number of levels in the organizational chart, also known as flattening the organization. This is what Jack Welch did when he was GE’s CEO. Upset at the number of sign-offs required before actions could be taken, and - Page 5 - frustrated at the slow response times resulting from the numerous organizational layers that separated senior executives from customers, Welch decreed that there should be no more than five layers between him and junior workers. (Keep in mind that at the time, GE had more than 300,000 full-time employees.) Since they could no longer indulge their penchant for vertical hierarchies, managers were forced to organize horizontally. As a result, spans of control in GE increased dramatically. Many managers found that they had 25 to 30 people reporting to them. Welch’s view of effective leadership stood in sharp contrast with prevailing wisdom, which dictated that the optimal span of control should not exceed eight to ten people, lest managers be stretched beyond their ability to direct and control. When warned of these supposedly adverse consequences, Welch replied: “The overstretched executive is the best executive, because he doesn’t have time to meddle.” His point was that GE managers at all levels needed to be giving people more autonomy and responsibility, and greater authority to make their own decisions. GE developed a number of classes to help its executives and managers become comfortable and effective in their dramatically less hierarchical company. To give a feel for what GE’s managers were taught, the following is a brief sample: - Page 6 - 1. When someone comes to you for a signature or approval, you must count the number of people who have already signed off. If the number is greater than two (meaning that at least three people think it’s a good idea), you must ask yourself, “Why am I signing this? What value am I adding?” 2. When someone comes to you for a signature or approval, you must ask yourself, “Why is this person coming to me?” If the answer is that you have information she doesn’t have, you must ask yourself, “What keeps me from making that information available to her, and then letting her make that decision?” 3. When someone comes to you for a signature or approval, you must ask yourself, “When was the last time I reversed one of these?” If the answer is “almost never,” again you must ask yourself, “Why am I signing this? What value am I adding?” POPCORN STANDS GE provides another powerful example of learning by doing through the use of what Jack Welch labeled “popcorn stands” (Kerr, Landauer, & Lelon, 2008). In nearly all companies, most of the revenue comes from a small percentage of divisions or businesses. Its sometimes - Page 7 - referred to as the “80-20 rule,” a wide-ranging law of business dictating, for instance, that 80\% of profits come from 20\% of activities. Naturally, experienced A players must be assigned to run the business units that generate most of the money. In the other units, also known as the popcorn stands, high potentials who are unproven and have less experience can develop their skills, experiment with new strategies and business models, and perfect their leadership styles. If they fail, their failure causes little damage to the company. If they succeed, they can be moved to another popcorn stand that provides a different kind of leadership challenge—transitioning from a nonunion to a union business, for example, or from a short-cycle to a long-cycle business. The underlying rationale is that the best way to develop leaders is to let them lead something, and the best way to assess someone’s leadership potential is to scrutinize them closely as they carry out their duties. GE benefited from acquiring extensive knowledge of the strengths and developmental needs of its rising stars, as it observed their responses to a variety of stretch assignments and challenging situations. The company learned how its potential future leaders handles success, and reacted to adversity, in settings where failure wasn’t costly. - Page 8 - As a result of such experiences, both the company and the managers being developed came to discover what they were good at, and what they liked to do. GE isn’t the only company that grooms potential leaders by putting them in charge of relatively unimportant businesses and then promoting them if they perform well. What makes GE unusual is the thoroughness and self-consciousness with which it carries out the developmental process—from the systematic identification of experiences each manager has already had or needs to acquire, to the use of evaluation and feedback mechanisms to assure that both the manager and GE get the most out of the assignment. Unlike most of the University of Michigan participants mentioned above, GE managers’ most significant developmental experiences are almost never by accident. Before closing this lecture, one additional question needs to be answered: Does an organization have to be as large as GE to provide developmental experiences like the ones we have been talking about? The answer is no. For one thing, while it’s true that smaller companies have fewer popcorn stands, they also have fewer people who need to be developed. Also, it isn’t necessary for all the developmental opportunities to be located within your own organization. Remember what we said earlier about GE’s “at the customer, for the customer” initiative. Suppliers who allowed managers to work in their offices often provided an excellent environment to develop new skills. - Page 9 - It is not by coincidence that, as a result of GE’s restructuring, its utilization of popcorn stands, and its use of a wide variety of other programs, GE was ranked No. 1 in the world for leadership development during most of Jack Welch’s second decade at the helm of GE. It also became the No. 1 poaching ground for managerial talent, as numerous other companies sought to acquire leaders who had learned their trade in GE. ! ! - Page 10 - REFERENCES The last section was adapted from Kerr, S., Landauer, S., & Lelon, E. (2008). Maximizing the value of leadership development: key questions (and some answers). In Burke, R., & Cooper, C. (eds.), Building more effective organizations (pp. 127-159). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. McCall, M., Lombardo, M., & Morrison, A. (1988). The lessons of experience: how successful executives develop on the job. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Ready, D. (1994). Champions of change (pp. 26-28). International Consortium for Executive Development Research. - Page 11 - ! JWI 520 People Management Week Eight | Lecture Two - Page 1 - MOTIVATING PEOPLE ! When we introduced the subject of candor in the first JWMI course, we noted that the culture of many organizations tends to discourage people from being candid. In a similar way, the norms and practices that surround most performance reviews and feedback processes reduce the likelihood that the information conveyed will be honest. In this lecture, we focus on how to encourage managers to give useful, candid performance feedback to their peers and employees. Let’s start this lecture with two questions: • In most organizations, who gets more money—high performers or low performers? • In most organizations, who gets more performance feedback— high performers or low performers? If you’re like most people, you replied that high performers get more money, and low performers get more performance feedback. And you’d be right. It shouldn’t be that way, however. Here’s why. According to the dictionary, a reward is anything that increases the probability of a future response. By that definition, money is a great - Page 2 - and highly motivating reward. If you offer your people cash for doing something, you increase the chances that they’ll do it. By the same token, then, performance feedback is also a great reward. If you give your people incisive and productive guidance, you increase the chances that people will behave more productively in the future. We make this point because most organizations don’t think about money and feedback in the same way. In fact, many HR managers refer to their organization’s package of motivational tools as reward and recognition systems—the implication being that reward is shorthand for financial compensation, and recognition refers to plaques, awards, and other lessimportant touchy-feely stuff that makes people feel warm and fuzzy inside. We suggest another approach. When it comes to motivating people, think of incentives as comprising some combination of financial and nonfinancial rewards. Both have their place and, used properly, both have the potential to exert a powerful impact on employee performance. - Page 3 - THE ADVANTAGES OF FINANCIAL REWARDS It goes without saying that money is among the most powerful of all rewards—and therefore an almost universally effective way to motivate people. Money is uniquely attractive, in that no one refuses it, no one returns it, and most people—even people who already have more money than they can possibly spend—will go to great lengths to get more. Another distinctive aspect of money is that it doesn’t saturate. Offering too much of most things, even things people really like, will trigger negative results. Providing workers with more autonomy, for example, often improves morale and productivity, but at some point can lead to role ambiguity and confusion. Too much job responsibility and challenge can give an employee an ulcer. As for large quantities of critical, candid feedback—well, we don’t suggest you try that on anyone you like for more than an hour straight. Money, by contrast, is invariably received with considerable enthusiasm. The reason is that money satisfies people on many different levels. You may have heard of Maslow’s classic theory of human motivation, which organized human needs into a hierarchy (1954). - Page 4 - The most basic needs, Maslow posited, are physiological, such as food, water, and shelter. If these are lacking, obtaining them takes precedence over everything else. If physiological needs are met, Level 2, safety needs, then become paramount. Once people feel secure, Level 3, social needs—friendship, belonging, acceptance, giving and receiving love—become dominant as people become preoccupied with the question: “What do others think of me?” Level 4 in Maslow’s hierarchy are ego needs. At this level, with all of your physiological, safety, and social needs met, adequacy, achievement, strength, and freedom become important. The central question defining an individual becomes “What do I think of me?” The fifth and highest level in Maslow’s hierarchy is self-actualization— the need to realize your full potential and strive toward becoming everything you are capable of. Financial rewards pack a punch because they have value to people on every level of the hierarchy. Money makes physiological and security needs evaporate. At the social level, money isn’t everything, of course, but in American culture and many others, it sure goes a long way toward ensuring cultural acceptance and entree. - Page 5 - At Level 4, the importance of money begins to recede, but it remains a key factor to people—of whom there seem to be many—whose ego and self-esteem depend upon their wealth and income. Only at Level 5 does money tend to become irrelevant. THE PROBLEMS WITH FINANCIAL REWARDS We could expound on a number of additional advantages of financial rewards, but you probably don’t need further convincing about money’s effectiveness as a motivator. Thus, let’s turn our attention to some of the problems associated with using money to motivate people. The most obvious of these—indeed, one you may have already noticed in your life—is that it isn’t always available. There’s no point in trying to spend money if you haven’t got it, and most organizations today haven’t got it, or at least, haven’t got enough of it to attract, motivate, and retain everyone who is deserving. Another problem with financial rewards is that even when they are available, they are essentially commodities. That is, because they aren’t distinctive, it’s easy for another organization to match them. So if your team members are working for you just for the money, they will leave when someone offers them more of it. And eventually, someone is likely to offer more. Not to everyone on your team, of course, just to your best - Page 6 - best performers—the people you can least afford to lose. A third problem with financial rewards is that they tend to be difficult to administer, for reasons that we’ll get to soon. But first let’s look at the power of nonfinancial rewards. MOTIVATING WITHOUT MONEY Nonfinancial rewards fall into two categories. Prestige rewards are designed to increase people’s stature, be it inside the company or out. Examples are plentiful: job titles; direct access to top leadership; and the size, location, and amenities of one’s office, to name just a few. (Additional material on this and other topics covered in this lecture can be found in the book Reward Systems [Kerr, 2009].) Far more powerful and sustainable are job content rewards, which increase the satisfaction an employee derives from his work. It’s as the old saying goes: If you want a person to do a good job, give him a good job to do. Performance feedback is a job content reward. So are recognition, responsibility, challenge, and autonomy, as well as the opportunity to participate in decision-making, and to work on important and interesting tasks. - Page 7 - An especially important nonfinancial reward is the opportunity to develop your professional and leadership skills. You will read much more about leadership development in the lecture that follows this one. Unfortunately, job-content rewards are typically not thought of as rewards—indeed, they are often not thought about at all. We said earlier that financial rewards can be difficult to administer. The opposite is true of job-content rewards, which makes it all the more unfortunate that they are so often overlooked or underutilized. Now, what do we mean by easy or difficult to administer? Let’s look at some of the factors involved in using awards to motivate people—and then compare the effectiveness of financial and nonfinancial rewards in these areas. Availability We’ve noted that an essential property of any reward is that an adequate supply of it must exist, and that money is often unavailable. Job-content rewards, on the other hand, are always available, because as a leader you create your own supply. You can give performance feedback to someone, then give it to someone else. You can give the members of your team opportunities to participate in decision making on Monday, then give them more opportunities on Tuesday. You dont have to go looking for funds from your budget or permission from your - Page 8 - boss. You’re limited only by your imagination. Ironically, because people are so used to thinking that value comes from scarcity, the ready availability of job-content rewards may be one reason why managers don’t use them enough. For example, if the managers in your company were told tomorrow that they could only give candid, constructive performance feedback to three of their people, they might give some serious thought about how to get the most benefit from this suddenly scarce resource. But because there is no such limitation, many managers don’t give candid, constructive feedback to anyone. Timeliness Ideally, rewards should be received soon after a reward-worthy action occurs. Employees who must wait a long time to be rewarded may conclude that, by the time the reward is due, either they won’t be there, or the ... Purchase answer to see full attachment