Best Practices Only Get You so Far
I found the article in the April 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review, “Best Practices Only Get You So Far”, an interesting read. As HR consultants and practitioners we tend to reference best practices and benchmarking stats quite frequently. However C.K. Prahalad, the Paul and Ruth McCracken Disringuished University Professor of Strategy at University of Michigan’s Ross Scholl of Business, believes companies become winners by spotting big opportunities and inventing ‘next’ practices.
Best practices, C.K. argues, may allow enterprises to catch up with competitors, but it doesn’t turn them into market leaders. C.K. believes organizations become winners by inventing ‘next practices’. Next practices are all about innovation: imagining the future, identifying the mega-opportunities–and building capabilities to capitalize on them. Check out the article in its entirety by clicking here
~Kathy Albarado
Can Working Remotely Work?
Samantha Byrd, HR Business Partner
With ubiquitous intranet connectivity, advanced telecommunication and networking technology, employer initiatives for work life balance, shrinking travel budgets, and disaster preparedness planning, many professionals are logging in, signing on, pinging, tweeting, or connecting to networks from home offices, hotel rooms, telecommuting locations or handhelds.
How can working remotely work?
Remote workforces are neither a reward for good behavior or for stellar performance. They are a business necessity. The opportunity to work remotely should not be a reward for good behavior or stellar performance. The case for working remotely is simple: it meets a business objective that impacts the bottom line. As with managing any team, the following key points highlight how to maximize performance of remote work teams.
Have confidence in your management staff - a major reason many companies resist having remote workers is that they are concerned their management teams will not effectively monitor and motivate remote workers. Managing a remote workforce is not significantly different from managing workers in an office, but requires a greater emphasis on regular, formal communication.
Have confidence in your workforce - provide opportunities for your employees and managers to gradually test remote work arrangements. Start with one day a week, or specific “assignments” to complete remotely. Where employees demonstrate effective performance, managers should encourage and support remote work.
Document performance requirements - communicate clear expectations. Managing a remote workforce is not just about when they are supposed to be at work but what the performance expectations are as well.
Provide the right tools - Software companies have flooded the market with portals, platforms, intranet tools and social networks to meet the needs of companies with remote workers. In addition, employers should ensure the appropriate hardware tools are available to support remote workers. Security and backup protocols may need to be formalized or customized.
Communication is key - There is no water cooler for the remote workforce - no informal communication, no quick project updates in the hall, no popping into your co-worker’s office to share a creative idea. Make sure your remote workforce knows how to connect, whether by phone, email, IM, or tweet.
Manage, manage, manage - remote workforces require increased frequency of contact, and scheduled check-ins. Ensure job requirements and performance expectations are clear. Initially, daily deliverables on specific tasks may be useful. Employees and managers should feel part of a team as if they were in the office. At a minimum, scheduled weekly one-on-one meetings with each employee are a best practice.
There are some added positive side effects to the business case for the remote workforce. Working remotely can benefit your employees who will put in more productive hours and experience fewer sick days. Remote working also removes cars from the road, thereby having a positive effect on the environment and moving your company toward green business practices.
So can working remotely work? Yes, just be prepared, execute, and communicate and you can reap the rewards
Are you Ready to Rebound? ~ Seven questions to ask by Donald Sull
The recession of 2007 has leaders realizing that they must set a broad strategic direction while remaining open to unexpected opportunities that appear along the way. History has proven that volatile markets do produce opportunities. You see shifting regulations generate unexpected sources of funding; changing consumer preferences create demand for new products or services; and distressed competitors selling off assets cheaply.
More than ever, companies need the capability to consistently spot and execute on unexpected opportunities before competitors do. Donald Sull conducted research over the last 10 years, studying firms hat excelled at execution in some of the world’s fastest-changing markets, and most unforgiving industries. Through his research he identified common obstacles that undermine an organization’s ability to execute on their established strategies and take advantage of unexpected opportunities. According to Sull, by asking themselves seven questions, manager can quickly assess their companies’ readiness to rebound.
• Do you miss opportunities that others spot?
o To continually identify gaps in the market, firms need real-time data and the ability to share it widely throughout the organization.
• Are your hydraulics broken?
o Organizational hydraulics are the processes to set strategic priorities, cascade objectives, and measure employee progress in achieving goals. In many organizations, execution stalls when executives deluge the organization with multiple—and often conflicting—priorities.
• Do you reward mediocrity and call it teamwork?
o Executives often socialize bonuses in the name of teamwork, arguing that differential payouts could stifle cooperation and long-term thinking. Sull believes this is a mistake. To ensure execution, organizations should recognize and reward individuals who do what they say they will with large bonuses. Paying for performance also attracts and retains ambitious employees and encourages them to execute on current priorities.
• Are your core values a joke?
o Companies that execute on their strategies ensure they have the right culture, people and leadership for execution. According to Sull, the most agile organizations share a core set of values: achievement that recognizes and rewards employees for setting and achieving ambitious goals; ownership to take personal responsibility for results; teamwork to foster coordination; creativity to challenge the status quo and integrity to offset the temptation to cut corners that can arise when employees strive to hit ambitious performance targets.
• Are you talking about the wrong things?
o Managers spend approximately three-quarters of their time in discussions—hallway encounters, formal meetings, phone calls and email exchanges. An organization’s execution depends on how well managers are able to set up and lead discussions for action.
• Have your Vikings become farmers?
o As a business matures, early entrepreneurs may leave for new adventures or settle into safe routines. New employees join the company for its perceived stability, not for adventure. Firms need farmers of course, but companies with too few Vikings on the payroll struggle to execute with sufficient urgency.
• Do you rely on heroic leadership?
o Executives who dash from crisis to crisis are a sign of organizational weakness, not leadership strength.
Donald Sull is a professor and faculty director of executive education at London Business School. His most recent book is The Upside of Turbulence from which some of the ideas in this article were adapted. To read more, check out Donald’s article in the March 2010 edition of HBR http://hbr.org/2010/03/are-you-ready-to-rebound/ar/1
An Overwhelming Number of Indian Leaders Take HR Seriously
I read a great article in the March 2010 Harvard Business Review. According to their research, twice as many Indian leaders as U.S. leaders think that human capital drives business success. Among the Indian firms they studied, 81% of the heads of HR reported that employee training and development was essential to building competitive organizational capabilities, whereas according to a survey by the American Society for Training and Development, only 4% of U.S. Chief Learning Officers head that view of their own operations.
Their research demonstrates that they place an intentional focus on employee motivation by:
• Creating a sense of mission;
• Engaging through transparency and accountability;
• Empowering through communication; and
• Investing in training.
According to its authors, creating a real sense of social mission, whereby employees can feel that their work has impact, is a harder but achievable goal as is becoming a role model for employees. They believe Western leaders would do well to understand the managerial approaches that have fueled the rise of India’s largest companies, and mindfully adapt to them. To read the article in its entirety, click here
~Kathy Albarado
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