DDI’s Talent Management Intelligence

And the most undervalued leadership skill is…

By Mike Hoban

Delegation. Granted, it’s not as sexy or as au courant or as seemingly transformational as other leadership competencies such as vision creation or organizational talent building. In fact, the name itself sounds a bit stodgy and shop-worn, compared to its cousin “empowerment.” When’s the last time you saw a CEO’s picture on the cover of Fortune magazine proclaiming him or her to be best-of-breed delegator? Me neither.

But it’s a foundational skill for leaders and I find in my executive coaching work that it’s a competency many leaders struggle with. That leadership philosopher, Tommy Lasorda, who just happened to make a living coaching in major league baseball, said it so very well: “I believe managing is like holding a dove in your hand. If you hold it too tightly, you kill it; but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it.”  Drucker or Deming never said it so compellingly or so succinctly.

Not delegating well can be a barrier to a leader’s – and the organization’s - success. Decisions get bogged down; staff doesn’t get developed; managers put too much focus on what Juran called the “trivial many” instead of the “vital few;” managers get burned out working too many hours trying to handle everything themselves. Being a poor delegator can also overshadow and contaminate even a good leader’s reputation (“Micromanager!”).

Let’s get specific about what this thing called delegation is. Effective delegation is about defining the “what” but allowing others to have a substantial hand in defining the “how” within established constraints. That is, the manager needs to define what the outcome is, what the “specs” are (cost, timing, quality, satisfaction, etc.) and where the chalk lines are drawn on the field for discretionary and independent action on the part of the delagatee. Technically, that’s called “defining latitude.” When a manager defines both the whats and the hows it’s not delegation – it’s simply a task assignment.

At the same time, Lasorda also said holding the dove too loosely is also a bad thing.  Just providing the “whats” to someone and giving him/her absolute freedom for getting it done without any guidance is not delegation. That’s called abdication and is akin to throwing the non-swimmer into the deep end of the pool.

Seems simple enough, so what’s the deal with not being able to do it effectively? Well, let me count the ways…

Some managers:

• Are unwilling to let go of tasks or activities they like to do and which got them promoted over the years;
• Have a perfectionist type of personality and find it difficult to not do things themselves because ONLY THEY can accomplish it with the excellence that they think is needed;
• Need to always be in control and find relinquishing even the “hows” to be an unnatural act;
• Take on too may things because they believe their own staff is already overworked and they don’t want to further overwhelm them.

In most cases, the above tendencies are “fixable,” assuming the individual has self-awareness and has made the decision that the cost of the fix is less than the cost of continuing down the delegation-free zone. The perfectionist personality is probably the most challenging because those people’s “wiring” contributes to and often drives the behavior.

One final point. Delegation is not about letting go of the appropriate attention to detail. It’s about finding the right balance. Steve Jobs is considered by many to be a spectacular CEO and he has steered Apple to great success in the last 10 years. Yet, Jobs is notoriously hands-on when it comes to product and functional design and he gets very personally involved in many of the decisions about product style, look-and-feel, color, etc.—things you’d expect a CEO to delegate to others. But he also focuses on the big picture – the strategy, cultural caretaking, talent management, alliances, board relationships, etc., and in fact considers his obsession with the product details to be part of his strategic focus.

Come to think of it, this delegation stuff is pretty sexy and transformational after all…

Mike Hoban is a senior consultant for Development Dimensions International (DDI).   

Defining Done

By Barry Stern, Ph.D.

 For about the past six months, my newfound friend and colleague Russ has an out of office message that simply says "define done."  Easy for HIM to say. Pretty much impossible for me to do, even when I'm mowing the lawn.  In two words Russ has captured one component of my lifelong struggle. I've never been very good at finishing.  It’s rare that anything I touch really seems done. When I write a sentence I can always tweak it. Is the split infinitive bothering me today?  Why did it bother me yesterday but not today? Can it be said in a more parsimonious way?  My life and my career seem to exist in shades of gray.  I envy those decisive people who just seem to know when something is "finished".  Their world, so black and white, so clean.

Perhaps Russ' question is borne from his IT/software background.  I have been surfing the net and found that one possible definition of done in the world of agile software development is that "a feature is implemented, reviewed, and unit tested, but not necessarily documented". 

Ubiquitous communication options and the liquidity of words has made defining done even more challenging. When am I done with participating in the never-ending email thread du jour?  I want to be "first out" or "never in".  More pervasively,  I notice nobody "writes" formal communications any more.  Now we "craft" them, which yet somehow elevates to new heights of verbosity and self absorption.  We are drowning in a world of crafted bits.

What about HR professionals? How do we define done as we develop people? Do our definitions of done limit those who can fly so much higher?  Or place too many undeserving artificial ceilings on folks? Are we really taking the time to systematically identify their apogees?  Can we ever say that a person has been developed, reviewed and unit tested?

How do you "define done" in your work?  When you deftly design that onboarding  experience for your new employees?  When you develop your new competency model?  Do others agree it's done? How are your definitions of done in fact defining you and your body of work to yourself and others?

Rather arbitrarily, I guess I'll stop here.

Barry Stern Ph.D. is vice president, Consulting Services and Delivery for Development Dimensions International (DDI). Follow him on Twitter.

Have we crowned the wrong folk hero?

By Barry Stern

It’s 6:21 AM Eastern Time on Thursday, August 12th and I just Googled our new folk hero Steven Slater - 4,840,000 results. He has clearly touched an international nerve as a courageous representative for all the downtrodden masses of customer service providers. But I’d like to express my anger and frustration at the folk hero status ole’ Steve seems to have achieved. The high or low point depending on your vantage point was my viewing of Jimmy Fallon’s “Ballad of Steven Slater” the other night on his talk show. Now stories of course are emerging about his apparent instability or that his “fuse was lit”.

As a frequent traveler, this saga certainly caught my attention; I too have felt like exploding at people countless times over the last 25 years of travel. In fact, I felt like clobbering the woman in the row in front of me 2 nights ago who screamed at her kids for the entire flight when all they were doing was being kids.  Or the idiot in the seat in back of me who really didn’t need the phone he was talking on for the person on the other end to hear him before they closed the hatch. You know, I really didn’t need to hear you strut your stuff about your big “deal.” I get it, you’re a very important man, so important it just couldn’t wait. But I had a book to read and I was exhausted, grumpy, and just wished I wasn’t on the plane. I really just wanted to tell you that I thought you sounded like a complete arrogant idiot. But the point is, I didn’t.

I will never forget the angry man sitting in front of me many years ago who was so hostile to a flight attendant that he literally dropped his newspaper in front of her in the aisle in the hope that she would trip.  Or the idiots on my trip back from Puerto Rico who came on board with boatloads of duty free liquor, stuffed them into the first class luggage compartment when they were in coach, and so abused the flight attendants that the pilot eventually had to threaten to land the plane prior to our destination. But these flight attendants held it together. You could see them gather themselves, their training and mindset kicking in.  They are my folk heroes.

I’d like to celebrate you and everyone in your organization who provides customer service. It’s a skill and a motivation, one which you have and companies select for and develop. I’d like to put in each and every one of your names and get 6 Million results. I want your internet presence to out-Slater Slater. I’d like to see your pictures all over the internet coupled with testimonials from clients who were upset about the fact that they didn’t get the prescriptions they need, that their paychecks weren’t deposited, or panicked about how they were going to get to their city after missing their connection. I’d like them to tell us all about how well you handled that situation, and in the end how you brightened their day and alleviated their fears.

I’d like to see stories about how in the face of dealing with the most ornery, unreasonable, and threatening customers your fuses remain “unlit”. You are my real folk heroes.

I want to hear from YOU. Who are the customer services heroes in your lives, in your companies?  Send me a post. Let’s give them their due!  

Barry Stern is vice president, Consulting Services and Delivery for Development Dimensions International (DDI). Follow him on Twitter.

Slouching Towards New Normal

By Barry Stern

Lately I’ve been obsessing about the power of culture to determine individual action. This has been less of an intellectual exploration than a personal one resulting from experiencing various cultures marking my personal journeys nowadays. In fact, I write once again from Dubai, the Middle Eastern summer desert heat forcing a consciousness about how to get the few blocks from hotel to office tower in a halfway presentable state.

My belief is that despite crafted marketing and employee communications to the contrary, many organizations treat culture as we did air quality in the carefree pre-global warming days. We’re alive because it’s there, we measure it just to be sure, but we don’t really understand it that pervasively or believe we need to do too much to change its make-up. In fact, our dirty secret is its better if it doesn’t change too much.

Yes, I’m well aware that many of us have engagement, cultural and pulse surveys galore. And I have yet to find the CEO that considers a revisiting and revamping of culture undiscussible. But the power of information or intent is only released through action and it is in action I fear we fall way short.

We do take halting, expensive steps. One executive recently confided to me his company’s new found success in attracting a bevy of individuals selected for “new normal.” However, since the current culture and systems went under examined and little thought given to how new normal behaviors would be supported, just a few months later only a small percentage remained. In fact, this is fairly typical. Based on data from a recent Recruiting Roundtable study, there’s a 50/50 shot that, mere months after a hiring decision, either a hiring manager or the new employee will experience “recruiting remorse.” Surely a significant percentage of this can be explained by the desperate motivations of an underemployed workforce amplified by an organizational failure to take into consideration the impact of current realities upon employees selected with a critical eye only towards the future.

So have the courage to ask:

• Do your senior executives, despite the data they have, fail to recognize the cultural air deep in your organizational lungs and likely to remain?
• What degree of alignment with the aspirational culture do recruiting practices have?
• How robustly has your organization defined the success profile of individuals needed to bridge the gap between the aspirational culture and the spirit-crushing realities of the current one? Does that profile include the personal characteristics, motivations, and resiliency necessary to survive in both?
• What are the purposeful reinforcements you provide for those more aligned with culture you are trying to create than with your current one? How are you insulating them from “oldthink”?

But most importantly, look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are willing to deal with the implications of your answers. Those of us who will be most effective are the ones who have the courage, skills, and yes the risk tolerance to deal with the answers.

Barry Stern is vice president, Consulting Services and Delivery for Development Dimensions International (DDI). Follow him on Twitter.

Survival of the Fittest? Will Your Leaders Survive?

By Steve Newhall

If you were stranded in the wilderness would you survive?  How do you think you would fare in a survival situation? Could you build a shelter from snow? Could you light a fire without matches? Could you forage for food and purify water? The reality is, without adequate survival training and techniques, humans are unlikely to survive more than three hours in extremely high or low temperatures; more than three days without water and more than three weeks without food.

There are well-publicised exceptions to these rules, yet it gets me thinking.  Could there be an analogy for those moving into more senior roles?  Far too often organisations take a ‘survival of the fittest’ approach to managing career transitions, providing little nourishment or skills for those that must adjust to radically different responsibilities and workload.  In real survival training, the best approach is not often to parachute a group of people into the jungle and see who survives. Rather they are taught how to operate in the environment in which they find themselves and what skills to use. So why then do we expect leaders to survive in a new role, with no training and with little support to equip them with the skills needed to make the transition?

We should also not underestimate the power of the mind in determining success or failure.  It has been proven that in a survival situation, those with the strongest will to live, are the most likely to pull through, despite the odds being stacked against them, but in tough terrain, even those with the strongest will power may succumb to the elements eventually.

Fortunately, in the workplace, it isn’t life or death, yet the stress of a new career transition should not be underestimated.  According to a DDI survey, managing a career transition can be more stressful than bereavement or moving home. Many new leaders just aren’t prepared for strain involved or with the need to think differently. However if they are well prepared they have a much greater chance of survival.

So what are the key ingredients for long-term corporate survival when thrown into a new role, with new situations and challenges to deal with? In fact it’s pretty similar to survival training. Leaders need to understand that they are now in unfamiliar territory and that they will need to think differently in order to survive. The skills that they have acquired need to be supplemented with new skills more appropriate to the new environment. And they will need to practice these skills in order to become proficient. They will need to stop doing some of the things they were doing that would now hinder their chances of survival or success.

None of these new ways of thinking and operating come naturally – but they can be taught. We wouldn’t expect to be able to “naturally” survive in the desert or jungle without help, so why do we expect that of our leaders?

Steve Newhall is the Managing Director of Development Dimensions International (DDI) UK.