It is very difficult for those inside a box to think outside of it – Russell Ackoff When we want people in our organization to ‘expand’ their learning horizon, we face a standard challenge. Get people from our own industry to train and those with experience believe there is nothing new to learn. They are too familiar with their own industry and organizational challenges. Get people from outside the industry and people ask, “What do they know of our industry? How will they relate to our company challenges?” As a learning & development (L&D) practitioner, I believe the greatest contribution L&D professionals can make is in equipping people to learn how to learn. When they learn how to learn it is equivalent to learning how to catch fish & feed themselves. To help people how to learn, we have to start with ourselves. How do we respond to the standard challenge I referred to earlier? Have we ourselves learnt how to learn about expanding people’s horizon? What experiences can trigger that kind of learning? What beliefs and assumptions hold us…
Stakeholder Centered Coaching : An activity-based overview of the coaching process
SCC involves three sets of activities. 1) Selecting growth areas that are important to the leader and the organization 2) Involving stakeholders while implementing change actions 3) Measuring leadership growth as perceived by stakeholders. The coach & the leader collaborate in the implementation. The coach facilitates the entire coaching process. The coach is committed to unlimited coaching hours to guarantee measurable leadership growth. Selecting Leadership Growth Area The coach and the leader identify respondents best placed to give relevant feedback on what the leader can improve upon. The coach gets this feedback from structural assessments and behavioural interviews. The coach and the leader then assess the collated feedback and identify the 1-2 leadership growth areas that the leader can work upon. These areas need to be important not only to the leader but to the organization as well. The required buy-in from the leader’s boss ensures that the organization backs the coaching agenda. This set of activities is completed by the end of two months. To explain the process better, let us say, that the leadership growth area for the…
On hyped-up management solutions
Daniel Vasella was the former Chairman & CEO of Novartis AG, one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical firms. In 2004, he was voted as the most influential European business leader of the last twenty-five years in a Financial Times poll. In a Mckinsey interview in 2009; in response to a question on management learning this is what he had to say, ” You asked about new management techniques, and I would say I have rather the opposite reaction. I go back and I read more in Peter Drucker’s books than on the newest kind of monolithic theme, because what we have watched and observed—and I know you know this in and out—we regularly have one theme which is blown up to a book, a new paradigm. But, frankly, it is just one element which has been specifically well investigated and then, you know, exposed and sold, but it always has been present. So if you go back to the roots, I think you see that most has been said and written” I love Peter Drucker. Vasella sums up very well why I focus on Drucker’s thinking…
Coaching – A basic introduction
At its simplest, coaching is a one-to-one learning conversation. In the conversation, if one person asks more than he tells, and builds upon previous questions, we can call it an elementary form of coaching. Asking questions is what coaching boils down to. We can trace this art to Socrates- perhaps, the world’s first coach. Going by this historic legacy, coaching has been around for a long time. Coaching as a practice with coaching models and frameworks is only a few decades old. This development was spurred on in 1974 by the publication of a book, called ‘The Inner game of Tennis’ by Timothy Gallwey, a tennis coach. The word ‘’inner’’ was used to refer to a player’s internal state or, in Gallwey’s words, “the opponent within one’s own head who is more formidable than the one the other side of the net”. Gallwey challenged the tennis coach to do away with instruction – telling the player what to do or not to do. Instead, if the coach can help the player remove the internal obstacles (self-limiting beliefs, negative assumptions) to…
Nelson Mandela – Three specific inspiring actions
Nelson Mandela has passed into the ages. The tributes pouring in from all over create a rare opportunity to spur ourselves into a life of significance and action. Rare because of the near universal reverence for him and his indelible leadership impact. If something stirs in us on knowing what he achieved in his life, then this powerful resonance can spark off a little of the same greatness in each one of us. How will the sparks fly? Where can we be touched by his greatness? Three significant actions stand out for me. First, Nelson Mandela on being released from prison did not harbour any animosity or bitterness towards the white supremacist government. Centuries old oppression of blacks in general, and 27 years of incarceration in particular can make any human-being want to retaliate. More so, when the tide has turned in his favour, as indeed it had, when he was released in 1990. Nelson Mandela did not get carried away. He looked ahead. South Africa was in the throes of a historic transition. In creating a new South Africa,…
Wanting what we measure
Isn’t it wonderful that we can measure the things that really matter in life and work?! Really straightforward, isn’t it? Not quite so, explains Russell Ackoff. Ackoff’s F/law Managers who don’t know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure. For example, those who want a high quality of work life but don’t know how to measure it, often settle for wanting a high standard of living because they can measure it. The tragedy is that they come to believe that quality of life and standard of living are the same thing. The fact is that further increases to an already high standard of living often reduces quality of life. Unfortunately and similarly, the ( unmeasurable) quality of products or services is taken to be proportional to their ( measurable) price. The price of a product or service, however, is usually proportional to the cost of producing it, not its quality: and this cost tends to be proportional to the relative incompetence of the organization that produces it. Like economists, managers place no value on…
A focus-creating question for new executive leaders
Sometimes, your journey to the top makes you believe you already know the view from the summit. Even before you get there. Executive leaders work diligently to get to the top. As deserving performers over the years, they learn in the school of hard knocks. Many a time, they have made a mental note of how they will do things differently once their time comes. Ask them questions and they will have ready answers. How their function, their area is performing. What the ‘real’ obstacles are. What the most crucial tasks are, who the most critical team-members are. All this and more. In effect, they know what efforts they want to put in when their time comes. And when they do take charge, the first impulse is to intensify effort. They want their team, their function to do better on all parameters. What does the executive leader do? In good faith, he takes upon himself the responsibility of being a good leader. And looks inwards, to his responsibility area, the team in place, and how he can lead them. What…
4 Standard Learning & Development Practices & Their Unintended Harm
What if the ‘right’ things to do in training are hurting you without you even coming to know of it? What are they? And how do they hurt? Organizations have mandatory training man-days, dedicated external training partners, full-time internal trainers, plans to track return on investment. They point to these resource commitments as a reflection of their solid commitment to training. And they are right. They do walk the talk. They put in the time, the money, and the resources. But, do they evaluate the unintended consequences or the missed opportunities of their actions in the areas referred to? That is something to explore. Mandatory Training man-days – Planning is not an event. It is a continuous process that adapts to everyday reality. Mandatory Training man-days are cast in stone. Mandatory Training days are a relic of the industrial era when safety drills had to be incorporated into the running of plants. Downtime had to be scheduled. When an organization has mandatory training man-days, it can showcase its commitment to people development in a tangible way. A grand plan can be…
Understanding Systems- As explained by a Systems Pioneer
Early on in teaching about systems I often bring out a Slinky. In case you grew up without one, a Slinky is a toy – a long, loose, spring that can be made to bounce up and down, or pour back and forth from hand to hand, or walk itself downstairs. I perch the Slinky on one upturned palm. With the fingers of the other hand, I grasp it from the top, partway down its coils. Then I pull the bottom hand away. The lower end of the Slinky drops, bounces back up again, yo-yos up and down, suspended from my fingers above. “What made the Slinky bounce up and down like that?” I ask students. “Your hand. You took away your hand,” they say. So I pick up the box the Slinky came in and hold it the same way, poised on a flattened palm, held from above by the fingers of the other hand. With as much dramatic flourish as I can muster, I pull the lower hand away. Nothing happens. The box just hangs there, of course.…