News & Views

April 25, 2007 from Harvard Business School – “Most people at one time or another feel as if they are just spinning their wheels, unable to gain traction either in career or in life. This feeling of being stuck in one place, while troubling, is part of a necessary crisis leading to personal growth, says Dr. Timothy Butler, Senior Fellow and Director of Career Development Programs at Harvard Business School. “

180 View (written by Lawrence Young) – How often do you feel that you are ‘stuck in the mud’? What do you do when the challenge you face seems overwhelming and insurmountable? When was the last time you approached a difficult problem by truly thinking ‘outside the box’?

In this Harvard Business School article, HBS’s Timothy Butler shares with us his six-step approach to getting ‘unstuck’. He tells us how to determine when we’ve really ‘hit the wall’, and more importantly, how to get beyond the impasse we face both at work and at home.

If you find yourself making the same mistakes over and over again, or if you simply have difficulty managing change in your life, this article is a must read for you. It was even an eye-opener in certain places for a change management consultant with 30+ years of experience like me.

October 3, 2007 from Harvard Business School – “What do you do when the people with whom you are negotiating act in ways that can best be called counterproductive?”

180 View (written by Lawrence Young) – Unless you live alone on a deserted island, you are constantly required to negotiate for what you need to live and what you want out of life. Whether it’s getting your kids to do their homework and eat their vegetables, or getting your boss to give you a raise or a promotion, what do you do when you seem to be negotiating with someone who ‘just won’t give in’? Have you ever tried persuading someone to see it your way that just doesn’t seem to ‘get it’?

In this Harvard Business School article, HBS professors Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman tell us that “Negotiators who are quick to label the other party ‘irrational’ do so at great potential cost to themselves”. They then describe how to improve our dealmaking skills by showing us what to do when the other party’s behavior does not seem to make sense.

To further learn how to negotiate more skillfully and confidently in any environment, click here for another HBS article published on September 26, 2007.

July 10, 2007 from Harvard Business School – “The flood of writing about leadership continues. It reflects our fascination with what many believe to be the most important influence on organizational performance. In a thought-provoking book published last year, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton suggest that the overriding impact of leadership on performance is a myth, or at least only a half-truth. 30 years ago, in reviewing research on leadership, Pfeffer concluded at that time that actions of leaders most often explain no more than 10 percent of performance…”

180 View (written by Lawrence Young) – As Charles Dickens wrote in 1859 in his acclaimed work ‘The Tale of Two Cities’: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.

Perhaps the same can be said nearly 150 years later. Our world today is mired with political, social and economic volatility. The ‘haves’ are a tiny minority amongst the ‘have nots’. The newspapers are awash with story after story telling us ‘regular folk’ that our leaders seem more driven by their personal agendas than their mandates and fiduciary duties as leaders.
We count on our leaders, be they politicians, businesspeople, or those who guide non-profit organizations, to “make things happen”. But alas, there are three types of leaders in this world-those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who say “what happened?”

The issue of leadership has been the subject of intense study since the earliest days of recorded civilization. Modern day research on organizational performance, as evidenced by Jim Collins’ bestseller ‘Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t’, have usually suggested that leadership is omnipotent insofar as corporate results are concerned.

However, other studies disagree on the overall affect of leaders on organizational performance. For example in their 2006 book ‘Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management’, authors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton suggest that “the overriding impact of leadership on performance is a myth, or at least only a half-truth. Thirty years ago, in reviewing research on leadership, Pfeffer concluded at that time that actions of leaders most often explain no more than 10 percent of performance. Such things as a company’s operating environment, the economy in general, or its long-run success or failure account for more of its current performance.”

Harvard Business School Professor James Heskett invited commentary on this thought-provoking topic that has far-reaching consequences, and this article contains his original article together with 127 comments that he received from readers with various backgrounds and experiences.

In short, the comments indicate that we sorely need leaders that are visionary, creative, courageous, intelligent, persistent, charismatic, and most of all, passionately committed with unfaltering integrity to placing the needs of those they serve ahead of their own personal needs and wants.

History has proven that our greatest leaders shared a common strength and purpose – the ability to envision a radically different future from the condition of life during their lifetime. They were also relentlessly persistent notwithstanding that they understood that they would not see the full results of their efforts during their lifetime. As well, they had the personal courage to confront both internal and external threats, with vision beyond the conventional wisdom of their day. We must therefore look to our past great leaders as role models in order to seek out or become the great leaders of tomorrow.

July 25, 2005 from Harvard Business School – “When given the choice of whom to work with, people will pick one person over another for any number of reasons: the prestige of being associated with a star performer, for example, or the hope that spending time with a strategically placed superior will further their careers. But in most cases, people choose their work partners according to two criteria. One is competence at the job (Does Joe know what he’s doing?). The other is likability (Is Joe enjoyable to work with?). Obviously, both things matter. Less obvious is how much they matter—and exactly how they matter…

These two criteria—competence and likability—combine to produce four archetypes: the competent jerk, who knows a lot but is unpleasant to deal with; the lovable fool, who doesn’t know much but is a delight to have around; the lovable star, who’s both smart and likable; and the incompetent jerk, who…well, that’s self-explanatory. These archetypes are caricatures, of course: Organizations usually—well, much of the time—weed out both the hopelessly incompetent and the socially clueless. Still, people in an organization can be roughly classified using a simple matrix.

Our research showed (not surprisingly) that, no matter what kind of organization we studied, everybody wanted to work with the lovable star, and nobody wanted to work with the incompetent jerk. Things got a lot more interesting, though, when people faced the choice between competent jerks and lovable fools…”

180 View – As I (Lawrence Young) have repeatedly observed, the great majority of individuals empowered to hire new employees are genuinely concerned with ensuring that each new employee will be effective with respect to fulfilling the duties stated in their job description (alas, the importance of a clear job description!).

How likable the candidate is, while significant, is normally secondary to his or her core competence. As the article states about one person’s view on the subject: “I really care about the skills and expertise you bring to the table. If you’re a nice person on top of that, that’s simply a bonus.”

It’s also well understood that how the new employee will be perceived by others becomes an important factor in that employee’s overall effectiveness. As the article states, “…social psychologists have long known that we like people who are similar to us.”

My experience has often showed, as the article states, that the problem of choosing to work with similar people is “the limited range of perspectives that a homogeneous group often brings to bear on a problem”. In other words, a group comprised mainly of people who are similar often suffers from the’ drinking your own bathwater’ syndrome. In acute situations, the authors suggest that “if you keep hiring only people you like, you can kill a company.”

Given all of the above, who is the ideal candidate to hire? Cleary, it’s the ‘lovable star’, someone who’s both ‘smart and likable’. Only one problem-the candidates you have to choose from may not always include such a sought-after individual.

Assuming you will always avoid hiring the ‘incompetent jerk’, you may have to choose between the ‘competent jerk’ and the ‘lovable fool’. Not an easy decision to have to make, but sometimes in life, ‘it is what it is’. Given this choice, I suggest that the job description may facilitate the decision. For example, hiring a chemist who will be working in a laboratory and who will be secluded from the rest of the work force is arguably different than hiring a front line individual who will be answering the phones in a call centre. And as the authors point out, when given the reality of having to hire a less-than-ideal candidate, “that doesn’t preclude executives from doing some things that will positively affect those interactions…”

April 23, 2007 from Harvard Business School – “Learning promotes performance—is there any argument? Without learning, organizations, teams, and managers are stuck in yesterday’s world.

In fact, says Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, there are built-in tensions between learning and performance, which smart organizations must learn to recognize and deal with. For example, an organization that has just completed a learning initiative may see a drop in productivity, at least in the short term…”

180 View – From our vantage point, this Harvard Business School article is ‘right on the money’.

Like Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, Lawrence Young has often observed employees that are ‘…thoughtful, caring individuals that were stymied in their genuine desires to make a difference at work-that is, their desires to help make their organizations more effective and responsive’.

This is most disturbing, given that today’s workplaces are for the most part understaffed, and need to shrink further in order to remain competitive in today’s ever-changing world.

So what’s driving this unfortunate phenomenon? A simple question without as simple an answer!

The first reality is that study after study has shown that for the most part, North American business leaders do not embrace organizational change as readily as, say, their counterparts in Asia. This can largely be explained by the fact that organizational change is often painful-it’s disruptive, rarely goes according to plan, and costs are incurred upfront while benefits typically accrue well into the future. This creates significant tension when business leaders feel constant pressure from stakeholders to produce better and better short-term results.

The second reality, as the author’s research showed, is that changing from ‘what is’ to ‘what needs to be’ involves learning-‘…learning occurs in reaction to changes in the world that require brand new responses’. Furthermore, ‘…there is a natural relationship between learning and performance in a changing world. That is, performance cannot be sustained over time without learning, because yesterday’s performance is inadequate in today’s world. So, to maintain or improve performance, learning is required’.

So, if we accept the fact that learning is a fundamental component of change for the better, then we also must accept the fact that ‘even if we are learning the right things, there is a transition to get through’. And during the transition, we will inevitable have to deal with failure!

As the author states-‘…learning processes by their nature involve facing failures-problems, mistakes-head on. The presence of problems or mistakes doesn’t signal high performance to most people who might be watching’. As well, ‘in well-led teams, a climate of openness could make it easier to report and discuss errors-compared to teams with poor relationships or with punitive leaders’.

And thus the third reality which we must acknowledge is that most business leaders have a very low tolerance for failure. This is quite paradoxical, since these same leaders were often praised when they ‘failed’ as a student i.e. getting an ‘A’ in a course when you get a score of 80 % means that you ‘failed’ to answer 20 % correctly. Therefore, we are conditioned to believe that a certain degree of failure is acceptable when we are students, but much less so when we enter the typical workplace. But as the author states, ‘…if learning is about identifying error, in the short term, performance will appear to be weak (error ridden) while learning is occurring. At the very least, if learning involves trial and error, the error part does not resemble most people’s idea of good performance. So, they’re at odds’.

So, what does this all mean? In short, business leaders must accept the fact that while continual learning is necessary for an organization to remain successful in today’s quickly changing world, productivity will likely drop in the short term. In other words, there will assuredly be some “short-term pain for long-term gain”. In other words, there will likely be incremental costs incurred in the short-term with no corresponding benefit until the mid to long-term.

According to Lawrence, the key challenge that managers face during a change activity such as learning is to better understand what will occur during the transition, and set realistic expectations for all participants, including corporate leaders. “After all” says Lawrence, “inconvenience is temporary, but progress is permanent-just ask any bodybuilder who feels pain as his muscle is being strengthened!”

November 27, 2006 from Harvard Business School – “The topic of performance reviews triggers a wide range of complex responses. The fact that most of their strongest critics elected to reply anonymously to this month’s column suggests that there are also political overtones to the subject. This month’s debate was much like a case discussion, one that is often hard to summarize. But in an attempt to do it, here is my “take” on what you have said collectively…”

180 View – While this Harvard Business School article and related survey addresses many of the important issues surrounding Employee Performance Reviews, perhaps a ‘refresher’ on the importance of performing such reviews would be helpful.

Most of the companies that Lawrence Young has consulted with only do employee performance reviews on an annual basis, and usually as part of a yearly salary review. Lawrence suggests that employee performance be evaluated on a quarterly basis at minimum, and that these reviews are of a great benefit to not only the employee, but to the company and the employee’s supervisor as well.

Performance evaluation benefits the employee by:

• Translating job duties into specific performance expectations (goals/strategies) and standards;
• Prioritizing goals to be accomplished during the evaluation period;
• Helping the employee focus on the job and on how it contributes to the overall goals of the business unit;
• Providing meaningful job performance feedback;
• Providing concrete suggestions for how job performance can be improved;
• Laying out a plan for future career development;
• Recognizing work achievements;
• Providing a formal opportunity for the employee to inform the supervisor about barriers to work accomplishment, to ask for clarification of duties and roles, to identify resources and tools needed to help improve performance, and to highlight work achievements and the strengths he brings to the job.

Performance evaluation benefits the supervisor by:

• Clearly communicating job performance expectations and standards to all parties involved so there is no basis for confusion or disagreement later on;
• Serving as formal documentation of numerous personnel actions such as training needs, performance improvement needs, recognition of goal accomplishment and exceptional performance, pay increase, job redesign, and discipline;
• Providing a means of either encouraging the employee to continue good work or to change/improve in areas that don’t meet expectations;
• Providing an opportunity in time to paint a picture of past performance and lay a roadmap for future planning and development;
• Reinforcing the employee’s accountability for job performance

Performance evaluation benefits the company by:

• Communicating to employees the overall corporate strategic plan so that they can plan for the future;
• Engaging everyone in the organization, from top to bottom, to help the company successfully fulfill its mission;
• Helping to define and clarify roles – who does what, how and when – in order to foster responsibility and accountability throughout the workplace;
• Helping determine when program and policy changes need to be made;
• Aligning the work goals/strategies of each employee with the mission and strategic goals of the company in order to deliver its products and services effectively;
• Providing a uniform method of giving each employee constructive feedback about their job performance.

According to Lawrence, the importance of doing employee performance reviews on a frequent and regular basis cannot be overstated. “After all” says Lawrence, “you cannot manage what you cannot measure!”

By the way, are you aware that there are usually government grants available to train your employees if your company is based in Quebec and its gross payroll in 2006 was between $1 million and $5 million?

As well, there are a host of other grants, subsidies and cost-saving measures that may be able to help your company significantly reduce its labour costs and address its human resource issues.

To obtain more information, without cost or obligation, on how your Quebec-based company can benefit from one or more of these opportunities, please contact Lawrence Young at lyoung@180systems.com.

January 31, 2007 from Harvard Business School – “What could better symbolize high-level business performance than an eight-oared crew team rowing in perfect unison, their boat powered by a selfless collaboration of strength, skill, and shared purpose? It’s no wonder that advertisers love to use this image to depict successful teamwork

The rowing metaphor also caught the eye of HBS professor Jeff Polzer and HBS associate professor Scott Snook. The pair has produced a case about the behind-the-scenes dynamics surrounding a college crew team. But unlike the beautiful images favored by advertisers, “The Army Crew Team” case reveals a not-so-pretty picture of a frustrating and baffling decline in performance by the varsity boat at the United States Military Academy…”

180 View – Lawrence Young has worked with hundreds of companies implementing IT and HR projects whose success depends on team work. Lawrence has concluded that the maximum benefits derived from highly functional teams accrue when:

1. The strategic and operational goals and objectives of the project are clearly identified and communicated to all team members.
2. The culture of the team ensures a high degree of respect between members of the team.
3. All team members clearly understand the basic dynamic of any team, which is that the whole exceeds the sum of the parts i.e. the overall success of the team exceeds the individual success of any given member of the team.
4. Each team member is given appropriate responsibility to complete their assigned tasks, and is measured and held accountable by the team leader in a timely fashion.

But according to Lawrence, the most critical success factor in effective team work is ensuring that each team member is committed to the success of the overall project, and not merely involved in completing their assigned tasks. As Lawrence says, successful teams are all about bacon and eggs – ‘the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed’.

January 29, 2007 from Information Week – “When UBS PaineWebber hired Roger Duronio as a full-time systems administrator in 1999, it didn’t do a background check on him. An investigation likely would’ve turned up a police record that included burglary and aggravated assault convictions in the 1960s, drug charges in 1978 and 1980 for which he wasn’t convicted, and a drunken driving case in the 1990s.

Those records were filed by the U.S. District Court in New Jersey’s Probation Office ahead of last month’s sentencing of Duronio, 63, convicted this summer of computer sabotage and securities fraud. In 2002, Duronio unleashed a “logic bomb” on UBS’ computer systems that crashed 2,000 of the company’s servers and left 17,000 brokers unable to make trades. It cost about $3.1 million to fix. UBS didn’t disclose the damage from lost business.

Duronio’s criminal past is the kind of information most employers need to know, especially if they’re hiring someone who will have access to key systems and applications. Duronio was one of about 40 people with the company’s highest computer security clearance, according to court documents, and he had root access to the system.

UBS PaineWebber, renamed UBS Wealth Management USA in 2003, did background checks on a selective basis in 1999, but not on Duronio when he went from being a contractor to a full-timer, a company spokeswoman says. Now the company checks all full-time, part-time and temporary workers, she says.

That’s good policy. “You better consider how important IT is,” says Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute (www.sans.org). “Consider if you could keep on doing business if someone inside hit you with a logic bomb,” he says. “If you can’t, you should think about background checks.”

Would a background check have turned up Duronio’s record? At I&T sibling publication InformationWeek’s request, investigation firm Fairfax Group found most of the information in the probation report within four days using only public records, and some within 24 hours. Such a search would cost about $500, or about $250 if the person provided a waiver and information such as a Social Security number, says Fairfax Group president Michael Hershman.

Thirty percent of insiders who launch system attacks have criminal records, says Dawn Cappelli, a senior member of Carnegie Mellon University’s CERT security response team, citing a 2006 study. In that study, 73 percent of companies did background checks, compared with just 48 percent in the 2005 study.

Companies just starting to do checks on job candidates also should do checks on current employees, says Ken van Wyk of Alexandria, Va.-based information security consulting firm KRvW Associates. But be open about it, and make sure people understand why it’s necessary, he says.

IT and HR managers also need to discuss beforehand what’s acceptable past behavior and what isn’t, says Howard Schmidt, a former White House security adviser who’s now CEO of R&H Security Consulting. “If someone had a DUI 20 years ago, or they were arrested for marijuana in the ’60s, you check the circumstances,” Schmidt says. “Was it a drinking problem, or was it one night out celebrating a birthday? It’s the repeating of a failure to comply with the rule of law that I would be looking for.”
Schmidt warns that background checks are no guarantee. But in fighting insider threats, more companies are deciding they’re worth the time and expense.

180 View – While insiders aren’t the most common security problem, they can be among the most costly and the most damaging to a company’s reputation. Insider attacks against IT infrastructure and data are among the security breaches most feared by both government and corporate security pros.

Lawrence Young (an associate of 180 Systems) has always done background checks on the people he employed in the past. Lawrence says that the degree of checking, including using a third party investigation agency, varies with the job the individual is being hired to perform. In fact, Lawrence made every employment offer conditional upon receiving a satisfactory background check, and advised the potential employee that he may use a third party investigation agency.

Investigation agencies typically provide written reports including details on an individual’s education, past employment, lifestyle habits, and encounters with ‘the law’ if any that would otherwise be difficult for the typical employer to gain access to.

Lawrence also strongly suggests that all system access be revoked immediately when an IT employee is terminated. While that may sound obvious, research shows that about half of all insider attacks take place between the time an IT employee is dismissed and his or her user privileges are taken away.