HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Human Resources & Organizational Behavior

Competencies: oral communications, assertiveness, influence, building effective relationships, parenting, negotiation skills, change management, entrepreneurial leadership

Who benefits: readers interested in current business literature, parents of teens or soon-to-be-teens

Consultant Usage: executive coaches, organizational consultants, communication trainers, labor relations professionals,

What’s it about? I am looking at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management for my last installment of Summer Reading List.  I specifically looked at their Department of Human Resources and Organizational Behavior as a source for my reading interests.  I found two surprises.  One, they don’t seem to write as many books as the other schools I have reviewed.  Surprise number two was finding a couple of absolutely amusing book titles in this highly academic environment.

First prize in the most surprising title award goes to Sam Culbert in his just released Beyond Bullsh*t: Straight-Talk at Work.   In the book Sam argues that straight talk is possible, but not without some pre work involving trust and commitment.  Making this book title even more amusing is a book jacket endorsement from Stanford University’s Robert Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule!  Where is academia headed?

Second prize for most surprising title goes to UCLA’s John Ullmen and Kathryn Stanley for their December 2007 book Which Bird Gets Heard? How to Have Impact Even in a Flock.  This book is a leadership fable aimed at improving influence effectiveness.  (By the way, what is it about LA and bird fables?  My dear friend BJ Gallagher Hateley’s Peacock in the Land of Penguins is a fable about corporate life and culture and is now in its third edition.)

Using a narrative format (UCLA writers will never be confused with MIT writers), John Ullmen and Melissa Karz demonstrate the principles and practices of relationship building in professional life with Invisible Bridges: Building Professional Relationships for Results  (2006).  For those of you with teens or pre teens, you might find their follow-up book helpful: Invisible Bridges for Teens: Building Relationships for the Best Things in Life (2007)

Long time UCLA professor Eric Flamholtz has co-authored Leading Strategic Change: Bridging Theory and Practice (2008) about an organization’s ability to adapt to and manage different types of change.  He also has some updated advice for entrepreneurs in the 4th edition of Growing Pains: Transitioning from an Entrepreneurship to a Professionally Managed Firm (Flamholtz and Randley, 2007).

If you are the labor relations field, there are two books you will find interesting authored and co-authored by UCLA’s Sanford M. Jacoby.  The must read of the two: From the Global to the Local: The Contributions of Daniel J.B. Mitchell to the Study of Labor and Public Policy (2008) by Daniel J.B. Mitchell, Sanford Jacoby and Christopher Erickson.  A somewhat more narrow focus but highly acclaimed book in the field of labor relations is The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance and Employment Relations in Japan and the United States (2007).

Well, that concludes the development of my summer reading list from my (virtual) tour of excellent business schools.  Six schools, dozens of new possible reading, scores of writers – now if I can only find the time.  Hope you have the same dilemma.  Happy reading.

Technorati Tags: , oral communications, assertiveness, influence, building effective relationships, parenting, negotiation skills, change management, entrepreneurial leadership, eric flamholtz, samuel culbert, sanford jacoby, bill bradley, william bradley,   bradley

“The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts–the less you know, the hotter you get.” 
 
Bertrand Russell

I have a habit of collecting some “facts” that I often find in non-academic journals.  I try sometimes to go back to the source but can’t say I am always 100% successful in finding the original study.  So, with a qualification that I’ve captured these as I’ve read them, I share some interesting leadership and talent management “facts” I’ve collected and updated recently:

1. According to a recent 2008 survey of 43,000 U.S. undergrads by Universum USA, the companies Google, Walt Disney, Apple, Ernst & Young and the U.S. State department were the top “ideal” employers.

2. Two top career goals were tied in the same 2008 Universum USA survey: “Work/Life balance” and “to be dedicated to a cause” followed by “to be secure and stable in my job.”

3. A 2007 survey study by Bersin & Associates on the Top 22 “Best Practices” which drive business impact based on 750 corporations, they rank the top six as being: 1) Coaching programs for employees (48%); 2) Consolidating staffing requirements across the organization (42%); 3) Ability of current workforce planning process to identify current and future talent gaps (38%); 4) Competencies maintained through annual maintenance process (384%); and 5) Staffing metrics (33%); Development planning (33%); and 6) Aligning goals to manager or corporate goals (33%).

4. The International Coach Federation in 2007 released the “ICF Global Coaching Study” which was conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and they conservatively estimated there are at least 30,000 coaches worldwide.  Estimated revenue generated by the industry is close to $1.5 billion (USD).  Approximately 400 new members are added to ICF each month and the organization has doubled in each of the last 3 years from 237 in 2004, 441 in 2005 and 807 in 2006. 

5. A 2006 survey by Marshall Goldsmith Partners, LLC and the Institute of Executive Development suggests that the coaching industry will grow at least 10% for the next three years.

6. A recent survey by Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 
(CIPD) research in the UK that indicates that some 88% of organizations now expect line managers to deliver coaching.

7. In a 2007 survey of 180 organizations by the Institute for Corporate Productivity, 75% reported they are currently using psychological assessments for executive recruitment, selection and promotion.  52% utilize external psychologists and 64% utilize both interviews and assessments. 

8. Monster and Developmental Dimensions International (DDI) recently surveyed 1,250 hiring managers and 4,000 job hunters in their study “Slugging Through the War for Talent: Selection Forecast 2006-2007.  Job hunters reported their top three to be 1) Opportunities to learn/grow (78%); 2) Interesting work (77%); and 3) A good boss (75%).  Hiring managers and staffing directors reported that they believed what was most important to the job seeker was opportunity to advance (69%) although hiring managers also rated working for a “good manager/boss” as equally important.

9. A recent survey from Hudson Institute suggests that half of American workers fail to take all of their vacation time.  30% take less than half of their allotted time. And 20% take only a few days in stead of a week or two.  Among extremists, 42% claim they cancel vacations regularly. Even when we go away, we don’t seem to really get away. 

10. University of Michigan professor David Meyer suggests that at least 6% of Internet users have become clinically addicted.

So, I better wrap up this Blog and go check my email….Be well….

Technorati Tags: talent management, envisia learning, envisia, recruitment, human resources, assessment, succession planning, coaching, executive coaching, executive development, surveys, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Center for Effective Organizations

Competencies: talent management, leadership, change management, driving change, financial leadership, judgment, decision-making

Who benefits: readers interested in current business literature

Consultant Usage: executive coaches, organizational consultants, leadership trainers, HR professionals

What’s it about? This week I am enhancing my Summer Reading List by exploring new books coming from the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California (disclaimer: my old stomping grounds and I still root for their sports teams!).

If you are not familiar with the Center, here is what they have to say about themselves: “Since its founding in 1979, the Center for Effective Organizations (CEO) has conducted cutting-edge research on a broad range of organizational effectiveness issues. The leading university-based action-research center, CEO, has conducted research that influences how organizations are managed while also making important contributions to academic research and theory from its inception. The Center for Effective Organization’s pioneering research in the areas of organizational design and effectiveness has earned it an international reputation for research that bridges the gap between academic theory and management practice.”

The CEO of CEO is Dr. Ed Lawler.  The man is major writer of books!  He must write while the rest of us sleep.  Or he has a 30 hour day…not sure which. 

His latest is Talent: Making People Your Competitive Advantage (2008).  This book goes way past just the management of people.  He argues for something I too have pushed for during my working years.  It is not enough to hire, train, and retain excellent people; you need to implement organizational structures, processes and systems that will help manage and support the performance of an organization’s human capital.  This book goes to the top of my reading list!

While not quite as new, his 2006 book co-authored by James O’Toole (another of my favorite authors) The New American Workplace is a very important and worthy read.

Another exceptional book that came out from CEO in 2006 was The Practice of Leadership:  Developing the Next Generation of Leaders.  Edited by Jay A. Conger and Ronald E. Riggio, what I especially liked about this book is that each chapter ends with specific “take aways” that applies to the practice of leadership.  The book is a little on the expensive side, but rich in content.

Investing in People: Financial Impact of Human Resource Initiatives (2008) by Wayne Cascio and John Boudreau shows “how to choose, implement, and use metrics to improve decision-making, optimize organizational effectiveness, and maximize the value of HR investments.”  Very important book for HR professionals.

Another important and related book that is especially valuable to the HR professional is Beyond HR: The New Science of Human Capital (2007) by John W. Boudreau and Peter M. Ramstad.  It is all about talent strategy and how it can impact an organization.

And for you fans of Built to Last, Ed Lawler (I’m telling you he is a writing machine) and Chris Worley teamed up to write Built to Change (2006), which focuses on identifying practices and designs that organizations can adopt so that they are able to change.

And finally for this week, not long ago I wrote a post about Noel Tichy and  USC’s Warren Bennis joint effort: Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls (2007).  Several of you expressed great satisfaction with the book.  Well, staying at the USC campus but moving away from CEO, I though you might like to know of a book of similar theme but more narrowly focused: Judgment and Decision Making in Accounting (2007) by Sarah E. Bonner.  This book is more of a “serious read” than a “summer read”, but what the heck!

Next week I will make a (virtual) stop at the UCLA campus for my final installment of Summer Reading Lists.  Meanwhile, happy reading!

Technorati Tags: ed lawler, human capital, talent management, organizational structure, American workplace, leadership practices, ethics, workplace culture, culture at work, human resource metrics, judgment, decision-making, accounting, finance, bill bradley, william bradley,   bradley

“Just because you’re not sick doesn’t mean you’re healthy.” 

Author Unknown

I just returned from a trip speaking and visiting my strategic business partners in Spain.  I couldn’t get over the contrast in waist lines between leaders in the US and in Spain.

Being overweight has become a big issue for companies in the US.  The Conference Board, a business research group, finds that obese employees cost U.S. private employers an estimated $45 billion annually in medical expenditures and work loss:

Obesity is associated with a 36-percent increase in spending on healthcare services, more than smoking or problem drinking. More than 40 percent of U.S. companies have implemented obesity-reduction programs, and 24 percent more said they plan to do so in 2008.

Rand, the nonprofit research institution in Santa Monica, last year released a research report showing obesity contributes more to higher costs for medication and health care services than smoking or alcoholism. The number of obese Americans grew by 60 percent between 1991 and 2000. (Rand)

Employers spend 77% more on prescription drugs for the seriously overweight (Helen Darling, WBGH)

It’s good to see that some countries are doing something about the increasing waist line.  Under a national law that came into effect several months ago, companies and local governments must measure the waistlines of Japanese workers between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups.

Those exceeding government limits(33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women), will be given dieting guidance if after three months they do not lose weight. To reach its goals of shrinking the overweight population by 10 percent over the next four years and 25 percent over the next seven years, the government will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments that fail to meet specific targets.

Guess I better put in a few extra miles each week on my daily runs before I go over to visit our Japanese strategic business partner….Be well….

Technorati Tags: obesity, BMI, overweight, health promotion, wellness, depression, sleep disorders, fatigue countermeasures, dieting, stress, health, job burnout, envisia learning, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Be Big: Step Up, Step Out, Be Bold

Competencies: self-development, diversity, team building, interpersonal skills

Who benefits: employees, teams, organizations

Consultant Usage: diversity training, team building, one-on-one coaching

What’s it about? I interrupt my six-part Summer Reading List to bring you this warning: Beware of this dangerous book.  The authors want you to want to change.

I don’t like it.

I don’t like it one damn bit!

I live in a comfort zone and they want me to move out.

These people write a straightforward, easy to read, unambiguous book about being more than you are.  If you read this book it like holding a mirror and taking a good look…you are forced to see the fat and blemishes.  I hate books that know me better than I know myself. 

Until I read this book I was smugly satisfied being small, living blissfully in permanent denial, universally critical of all but you and me.  I read the book “Small is Beautiful” once and decided small was for me.  The Army once had a motto: “Be all you can be”.  Small.  That is all I can be! 

These people are trying to take away my god-given right to criticize others mercilessly.  They want to deprive me of my American right to complain about everything and everybody.  Hey, I am a card-carrying curmudgeon.  Curmudgeonning (is that a word?) is what I do.

Working together?  Why why why?  I tried that once but all those other people were constantly getting on my nerves.  They didn’t do things the way I do them.

Creativity, innovation?  Piffle.  I had a good idea once, but where did it get me.  They couldn’t see the brilliance.

I took a risk once, but they shot me down.  Better safe than sorry, I say!

These authors think we all have potential to be more that we are.  That each of us has important contributions we can and should be making to our work teams and organization.  They think each of us has something of value to contribute to work and to society.  They think some of us would like to express and engage others fully.  They think some of us seek higher goals and bigger challenges.   They think we have the capability of trying and handling something new, all the while contributing something important to our teams and organizations.

They see the BIG in each of us.  They see the BIG in you and me together.  They see better workplaces, societies and world if we would all learn to leave our small behind and bring our BIG to the game. 

So you have been warned.  Now, are you BIG enough to risk reading this powerful little book? 

Technorati Tags: self-development, diversity, team building, interpersonal skills, bill bradley, william bradley,   bradley

“The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal.  The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.”

Benjamin Mays

How do people become elite?  And once they do, how do they sustain it?

In a fascinating in depth interview with 50 people who have achieved high job and personal success, Eva Perea and her associates have distilled out a set of common factors unique to each of these “high flyers”

Ability to take on risk.
Combined with some level of non-conformity to break a situation that perhaps is not ideal, but is perceived as easy and comfortable.

Motivation. All these persons had a great inner strength, a positive feeling that they wanted to change their lives.

Creativity. The skill to look at things from a different angle was, curiously enough, found in all the people who were interviewed.

Experience. Most people has attained quite some experience before they knew where to move on. Most people need to reflect and live long enough before knowing exactly where their dreams lie.

Honesty. When all the outside forces have the effect of anchoring you in the old habits to maintain a ’status quo’, it is very necessary to have a significant amount of clarity and honesty to face the mirror, to look at your soul and ask yourself what you really want to do with your life.

Self-analysis. Before finding the answer, most people who had the courage to take the big plunge had to go through a difficult process with their inner selves.

Move into action. It is fantastic to have a dream, a passion, but if it doesn’t move us towards some action, it will only be a deceptive shelter for the day-to-day disappointments, a mere mirage.

Perseverance. Let’s not fool ourselves: to pursue a dream is not normally a bed of roses. Very often, obstacles appear in the ways that take us to failure or to difficulties. It is necessary to be persistent and try again, and again, in spite of everything and everyone. Each set-back should only be considered as a detour that will lead us to the final victory.

Getting to the top is one thing–staying there is something else.

In the recent June 2008 issue of HBR Graham Jones in his article “How the Best of the Best Get Better and Better outlines four unique characteristics of top performers¹.  These themes can be summarized as:

1. Top performers compete against themselves and their own standards continuously pushing themselves to new limits–particularly when they are the new benchmark.  Their perspective is longer term with respect to goals and accomplishments.
2. Top performers can block out distractions very effectively whether it is competitor behavior (e.g., victories) or personal/family issues (e.g., death of a family member).
3. Top performers play with other elite talent to stretch their skills and abilities.
4. Top performers seek immediate and candid feedback geared to helping them become even better (i.e., they want honest and constructive feedback not admiration and gloating praise).
5. Top performers both celebrate successes and reflect on what got them there–they are strongly interested in their own continuous improvements to sustain their excellence.

I guess I better get back to work to compete with myself a bit more, seek out even more feedback and celebrate my small successes like finishing this Blog….Be well….

Technorati Tags: selecting talent, talent development, executive coaching, performance, mastery, expertise, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack, envisia, deliberate practice

1. Jones, G. (2008) How the best of the best get better and better. Harvard Business Review, June 2008, 123-127 [↩]

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: MIT Sloan School of Management

Competencies: work/life balance, visionary leadership,  teamwork, teambuilding, customer service, technological leadership, entrepreneurial leadership, strategic problem solving, driving strategic direction

Who benefits: readers interested in current business literature

Consultant Usage: staying up-to-date, executive coaches making reading recommendations

What’s it about? (Due to an oversight, this entry is being published two weeks late – my bad.) Continuing to develop my summer reading list, I (virtual) travel this week to the Boston area to visit the always interesting and wide-ranging website of MIT Sloan School of Management to find out what their faculty have been writing about during the past 24 months.  I love this site.  You just never know what you will find.  Although I must admit that some of these books and working papers are in a form of English that I don’t understand – I am just not that bright!

He’s baaaack!  And this time he is going to save the world!  Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization) and colleagues have a brand new book (June, 2008), The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals And Organizations Are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World. “Imagine a world in which the excess energy from one business would be used to heat another. Where buildings need less and less energy around the world, and where “regenerative” commercial buildings – ones that create more energy than they use – are being designed. A world in which environmentally sound products and processes would be more cost-effective than wasteful ones. A world in which corporations such as Costco, Nike, BP, and countless others are forming partnerships with environmental and social justice organizations to ensure better stewardship of the earth and better livelihoods in the developing world. Now, stop imagining – that world is already emerging.”  Quick aside: I am putting this one on my reading list.

Another just out book is Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (2008) by Dan Ariely.   Irrational behavior is a part of human nature, but people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion. “Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics can show us why cautious people make poor decisions about sex when aroused, why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug over its cheaper counterpart and why honest people may steal office supplies or communal food, but not money.”  No rational reason why, but I am putting this book on my reading list too!

This is an updated edition of an important book on work/life balance: Breaking the Mold: Redesigning Work for Productive and Satisfying Lives, Second Edition  (2006) by Lotte Bailyn.  The author argues that society’s separation of work and family is no longer a tenable model for employees or the organizations that employ them.

And being a customer service fanatic I want to make sure to sneak in The Outside-In Corporation  (2005) by Barbara Bund even though it goes back three years.  She is a Peter Drucker-type thinker, getting the title for her book from a phrase Drucker used 50 years ago: “(The Book) helps you develop “customer pictures” and, through rigorous customer analysis, create unique value propositions. (The author) outlines techniques for devising and implementing customer-based strategy, pricing, communication, and distribution initiatives that will drive success in the marketplace by building or remaking a business ‘from the outside in’.”

X-Teams: How to Build Teams that Lead, Innovate, and Succeed  (2007) by Deborah Ancona  and Henrik Bresman.  “Why do good teams fail? Very often, argue the authors, it is because they are looking inward instead of outward. They show that traditional team models are falling short, and that what’s needed–and what works–is a new brand of team that emphasizes external outreach to stakeholders, extensive ties, expandable tiers, and flexible membership.”

Here is a most impressive, innovative and creative MIT special: Catalyst Code: The Strategies Behind the World’s Most Dynamic Companies  (2007) by David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee.  The book offers executive and entrepreneurs a roadmap for how to create a successful catalyst business based on work with and analysis of the world’s most successful catalysts (think Visa, Amazon, eBay).  Catalysts are reshaping entire industries as they mobilize two or even more distinct customer groups around a common platform in order to create value and drive profits.

If you like technical reading: Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution  (2006) by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David C. Robertson.  “Does it seem you’ve formulated a rock-solid strategy, yet your firm still can’t get ahead? If so, construct a solid foundation for business execution–an IT infrastructure and digitized business processes to automate your company’s core capabilities. Their counterintuitive but vital message: When it comes to executing your strategy, your enterprise architecture may matter far more than your strategy itself.”

Happy summer reading. 

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Technorati Tags: work/life balance, visionary leadership, teamwork, teambuilding, customer service, technological leadership, entrepreneurial leadership, strategic problem solving, driving strategic direction, catalyst code, peter drucker, outside-in company, outside-in corporation, regenerative, sustainable world, behavioral economics, predictably irrational, bill bradley, william bradley,   bradley

“People will forget wtih you said. They will forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel.”

Maya Angelou

We all know that leaders make a significant difference in talent enagement, retention and level of stress¹ but what are the effects of leaders on emotions at work?

Leaders always have a power differential that influences the relationship they have with their direct reports. leaders have the ability to limit autonomy and decisional control that affects levels of stress in all employees.  They also provide evaluations of performance that truly affect pay, promotions and careers.

So, just how do leaders affect the emotions and feelings of talent?

A recent study revealed ² that employees report that, on average, 20% of their interations with their managers are “negative.”  However, the effects of negative interactions with one’s manager on employee mood is 5 times the effects of positive interactions.  So even if 80% of the interactions are pretty positive, it’s the negative ones that have a potent and lasting impact on perceived stress on talent at all levels.

In a very recent longitudinal study from health care workers followed 4 times a day for 2 weeks, employees with managers high on a measure of “transformational leadership orientation” experienced significantly more positive emotions throughout the day.  More importantly, these positive emotions also had a “spill over” affect on customers and peers within their work group³. 

Leaders who have a “transformational” rather than transactional orientation to their approach to supervision and management focus less on short-term goals and more about the needs of talent translating into enhanced engagement and connection to the vision of the organization.  In three unpublished studies utilizing our own measures of emotional intelligence, leaders who are charcterized as being higher on EI also are signifcantly higher on all scales of several well known measures of transformational leadership (e.g., MLQ; Avolio & Bass).

Interestingly, research by others using our Emotional Intelligence View 360 (EIV360) assessment based on Dan Goleman’s EI constructs indicate a very strong correlation with diverse measures of transformational leadership.  It is quite possible that our measure (and others) are essentially overlapping with a leadership orientation that focuses on creating a climatge where talent are engaged, committed and learning resulting in enhance performance and retention.

Taken together, these studies really demonstrate just how powerful leaders have on the emotions of employees. The positive emotions generated by emotionally intelligent leaders with a transformational orientation apparently have the potential to affect both engagement of talent and their behavior with internal/external customers.

I have no doubt that talent will respond in a manner consistent wtih the way they are being treated by leaders….Be well……

1. Nowack, K. (2005). Leadership, Emotional Intelligence and Employee Engagement: Creating a Psychologically Healthy Workplace. Unpublished manuscript [↩]
2. Miner, A., Glomb, T. & Hulin, C. (2005).  Experience sampling mood and its correlates at work.  Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 78-171-193 [↩]
3. Bono, J., Foldes, H., Vinson, G., & Muros, J. (2007).  Workplace emotions: The role of supervision and leadership.  Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1357-1367 [↩]

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Harvard Business School

Competencies:

Who benefits: readers interested in current business literature

Consultant Usage: staying up-to-date, executive coaches making reading recommendations

What’s it about? 

Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal About the Minds of Consumers (2008) by Gerald Zaltman and  Lindsay H. Zaltman.  “Why do advertising campaigns and new products often fail? Why do consumers feel that companies don’t understand their needs? Because marketers themselves don’t think deeply about consumers’ innermost thoughts and feelings. This book  explains how to overcome this ‘depth deficit’ and find the universal drivers of human behavior so vital to a firm’s success.”