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Competitive advantage through people has always been a goal of modern leadership and becomes more critical as product and price differentiation narrow. Traditionally, the role of creating more skilful and focused people has been given to HR and training.
Research tells us that classroom training (whether it be real or virtual) is only appropriate for 15% of development needs (Rummler 1995). Not only does this cause concern about the use and abuse of training events, it also raises the tantalising question of what is appropriate if training is not?
The broad answer is workplace rather than classroom development. To explore this more closely, the researchers seem to indicate that regular interaction, rather than one off events, leads to enhanced skills and increased performance.
The diagramme Coaching and Training has been created as a result of applying a range of performance improvement techniques to varying organisations over a 20-year period (www.prosell.com). It indicates that with a “clean sheet of paper” (i.e. no preconceptions or bad habits, as with new starters or new roles), people can more easily accept, in a training environment, that specific skills and approaches are correct and need to be mastered.
With individuals that already have a perception of what is right and wrong and in some cases extremely entrenched opinions, a different approach needs to be used. Not only do we need to explain why new skills are needed, we also need to sensitively reassure people that they and their (old) skills are not redundant, but need to be adapted and updated. If we are attempting to change behaviour, as opposed to initiating it, coaching is shown to be a more effective tool.
In order to develop further the rationale for this model and the positioning of coaching, we need to be familiar with the relationship between management intervention and performance/behaviour change.
The US organisation Technikron conducted research into the level of intervention needed to drive behavioural change. (Technikron work with performance measurement and feedback systems in contact centres. The research was conducted in 1997.)
They concluded that to change behaviour the manager needed to interact with the individual, on average, 2-3 times a week. This raises serious concerns about the effectiveness of more traditional performance management tools, such as annual appraisal and performance reviews (Appraisals – A Good Investment? Prosell Research, 1993).
Whereas we accept that most good managers talk to their people more often than just at appraisal time, our experience tells us that this is not a series of regular interactions which are carefully planned to reinforce changes in behaviour and provide input (coaching), when needed.
Coaching also has greater impact in terms of immediacy of resolution and as such, should be a primary development tool.
There seems to be growing evidence that organisations accept that people will go through the same training (level and subject matter) at regular intervals (apart from compliance training). This implies a number of unhealthy traits within the organisation:
Once this becomes accepted practice it also has an impact on the quality of training delivered. If people are not measured in their application of what they have learnt, then the training does not need to ensure comprehension, let alone competence.
The other major implication is centred on who is nominated for training in the first place. Research suggests that the primary reason for training is performance discrepancy or skill weakness. Those with skill weaknesses or areas for obvious development are not those who implement training well and willingly in the workplace. There is clear evidence that, “those who need it most use it least” (Dettaman and Steinberg, 1993).
Questions must therefore, be raised about both the economics of re-training and the validity of the practice.
The model Acquisition of Competence shows that individuals go through three stages when acquiring skills. Typically, the first and last stages, those of awareness and application, are workplace activities and in the main, management responsibilities.
The two figures on the left hand side of the model above illustrate important points. The 35%-40% marks the point where people end up after training (on a competence scale of 1%–100%). This means that the majority of the acquisition of competence takes place in the workplace.
This is broadly accepted within the training fraternity. Whereas training allows people to explore new ways of doing things and hopefully exposes them to “best practice”, it does not create experts.
If expertise is acquired in the workplace and not the classroom, then we must accept that specific things need to happen in the workplace. Primarily, people need to be coached and given feedback on their competence.
Our 20 years experience tells us that, proportionately, the following time and effort needs to be expended to successfully take an individual through the skill development process:
The second figure (5%-9%) is where the research tells us people end up if nothing is done in the application phase. This is typically between unconscious incompetence and conscious incompetence. This typically happens with 4 – 5 months. This is a startling figure and perhaps explains why many people in business have a cynical view of the value of training. It seems they are right. Without specific application strategies, companies are wasting between 91 and 95 cents of every dollar they spend on training.
It is commonly understood that people develop skills through one primary mechanism, practice and feedback. Conventional training tends to be squeezed for time and it is inevitably the practice sessions that are sacrificed. Too much content and not enough practice creates uncertainty in application, through issues of confidence and competence. If a person cannot, through practice, feedback and practice again, achieve a point of competence (“I have practiced this to the point where I feel competent to do it in the workplace”), they have no confidence in applying skills. The implications of this are that many people (over 75% in one study) actually avoid applying skills trained because they have no confidence that they will be effective. Those organisations that use coaching as a development tool do not seem to face these issues.
Noted behavioural scientists, Detterman and Steinberg, published a book in 1996 entitled Transfer on Trial. The book focused on the issue of learning transfer (the measurable transfer of learning and skills from classroom to workplace). Their research had concluded that 86% of training did not transfer effectively. There were a variety of reasons for this – measurement, support, feedback (all key components of coaching). They also spoke about the difference between near and far learning as a critical issue.
Far learning means completing exercises which are broad, generic and explore our understanding of principles. Detterman and Steinberg’s research concluded that people found it difficult to relate broad principles to specific work situations – and as a result did not apply skills effectively.
Near learning produces significantly better results. Near learning is practicing the specific skills needed, through customised and intelligently constructed exercises, so that the individual is practicing exactly what they are being asked to do in the workplace. Coaching is the ultimate example of near learning – it says to the individual, “We are going to practice this until you feel you are doing it effectively and then evaluate as you do it live”. As a result it is significantly more effective in ensuring learning transfer.
Performance management practices (appraisal, review, goal setting, etc) all become uncomfortable, bureaucratic exercises if those responsible cannot add value and direction through coaching. If neither party feels value is being added by the other, then both parties view the process as lacking in worth and tend to avoid it.
This also is reflected in a more serious deficiency that is commonly observed in management practice. If a manager cannot rectify a performance deficiency they seem to imply that this is not their responsibility but solely that of the individual.
These situations end up with a management style of “I point out your weaknesses and you have to fix them”. If one considers the fact that research tells us that the main reason people leave jobs is dissatisfaction with the way in which they are managed (Institute of Directors, UK survey, 2001), then managers’ inability to coach and develop may be having a much more serious impact.
Conversely, a good coach does more than just coach. In order for a coach to be effective they must have a reasonable grasp of:
Feedback also tells us that competent coaches add value to staff and have much better relationships with their people. Creating a competent coach therefore, also creates competency in a number of essential areas.
Edward Johnson, one of the founding members of the Johnson and Johnson empire, was famously quoted as saying, ‘Leadership is cause, all else is effect.’ Leaders of people must all be aware that it is their behaviour, not the training department, which determines whether your people will out-perform the competition.
Douglas Detterman and Robert Steinberg, Transfer on Trial: Intelligence, Cognition and Instruction, Ablex Publishing, 1993
Geary Rummler and Alan Brache, Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space in the Organisation Chart, 2nd ed, Jossey Bass, San Francisco, 1995.
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In the industrial model of student mass production, the teacher is the broadcaster. A broadcast is by definition the transmission of information from transmitter to receiver in a one-way, linear fashion. The teacher is the transmitter and student is a receptor in the learning process. The formula goes like this: "I'm a professor and I have knowledge. You're a student, you're an empty vessel and you don't. Get ready, here it comes. Your goal is to take this data into your short-term memory and through practice and repetition build deeper cognitive structures so you can recall it to me when I test you."... The definition of a lecture has become the process in which the notes of the teacher go to the notes of the student without going through the brains of either.
THE IMPENDING DEMISE OF THE UNIVERSITY [6.4.09]
By Don Tapscott
Introduction
In his Edge feature "Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus", Clay Shirky noted that after WWII we were faced with something new: "free time. Lots and lots of free time. The amount of unstructured time among the educated population ballooned, accounting for billions of hours a year. And what did we do with that time? Mostly, we watched TV."
In "The End of Universal Rationality", Yochai Benkler explored the social implications of the Internet and network societies since the early 90s. Benkler has been looking at the social implications of the Internet and network societies since the early 90s. He saw the end of an era:
For those of us like me who have been working on the Internet for years, it was very clear you couldn't encounter free software and you couldn't encounter Wikipedia and you couldn't encounter all of the wealth of cultural materials that people create and exchange, and the valuable actual software that people create, without an understanding that something much more complex is happening than the dominant ideology of the last 40 years or so. But you could if you weren't looking there, because we were used in the industrial system to think in these terms.
Benkler believes that these "phenomena on the Net are not ephemeral". And he has spent the last 20 years trying to get his head around the process of understanding what is transpiring.
In a Reality Club discussion "On 'Is Google Making Us Stupid' By Nicholas Carr" W. Daniel Hillis, Kevin Kelly, Nicholas Carr, Jaron Lanier, Douglas Rushkoff and others explored the future of the printed book.
And Shirky, in his recent piece "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable", (with comments from Nicholas Carr, Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas, Marc Frons) wrote:
When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.
Enter Don Tapscott, who is looking at the challenges the digital revolution poses to the fundamental aspects of the University.
"Universities are finally losing their monopoly on higher learning", he writes. "There is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University — the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn."
The old-style lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large group of students, is still a fixture of university life on many campuses. It's a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students, who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently. Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation, not a lecture. They want an interactive education, not a broadcast one that might have been perfectly fine for the Industrial Age, or even for boomers. These students are making new demands of universities, and if the universities try to ignore them, they will do so at their peril.
Contrary to Nicholas Carr's proposition that Google is making us stupid, Tapscott counters with the following:
My research suggests these critics are wrong. Growing up digital has changed the way their minds work in a manner that will help them handle the challenges of the digital age. They're used to multi-tasking, and have learned to handle the information overload. They expect a two-way conversation. What's more, growing up digital has encouraged this generation to be active and demanding enquirers. Rather than waiting for a trusted professor to tell them what's going on, they find out on their own on everything from Google to Wikipedia.
This is a topic that is worthy of a serious conversation by the Edge community and I hope to present comments from contributors in future Edge editions.
Being creative or artistic doesn’t mean you know how to draw or play an instrument. Being creative is a way of thinking, a way of viewing the world.
Creative people use the RIGHT side of their brains more than the LEFT. Take the test and find out if your brain is RIGHT for a creative career.
Take the Test NOW - CLICK HERE
Here is some news from the Centre for Creative Leadership
It is "early pioneering days," according to Forrester Research, but "Virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com, and more business-focused offerings are on the brink of becoming valuable work tools." Forrester predicts that, within five years, the 3-D Internet will be as important for work as the Web is today. Tech consultancy Gartner, too, is predicting the growing popularity of virtual worlds: 80 percent of Internet users will be in a virtual world by 2011.
Virtual worlds open up whole new ways for people to interact. But the technologies may also influence what people communicate, how they innovate and what they learn, says CCL's Cresencio Torres. So CCL's early forays into Second Life are focused on both doing and learning.
For example, CCL's innovation group designed a campus in Second Life for coaching and feedback research. We conducted our first coaching and feedback alpha test in February. The coach and coachee spent three hours "in-world" interacting and using real world assessment data. (The picture below shows the two in the "Visual Explorer" room selecting a picture that began the feedback process.) Through the process, Torres and his colleagues learned a great deal about avatar interaction, focus and sharing of information and goal planning.
A snapshot of a CCL coaching session in Second Life.
"Unexpectedly, we realized that we needed to move beyond the limitations of our current understanding of coaching. It was a major breakthrough in thinking about the entire feedback process and the possibilities that exist once you dramatically change your experience," says Torres. "Maybe in the future, for instance, coaching isn't called coaching at all, but something else."
Millions of Second Life users will have access to a CCL Network and Commercial Island in the summer of 2009. It will be the only Second Life leadership space created for both research and commercial use. Our avatars will see you there soon!
Kevin Byron is an active member and creative leadership practitioner within the international Creative Skills Training Council.
He has sent us the story below that provides an interesting insight into creative thought, conversations, success and other attributes that can be learnt. Education through the power of words is a very important tool used in executive coaching.
It is interesting that many of our planets most successful leaders are also fantastic storytellers...
Fish Ears
There was once a chef who owned quite a successful fish restaurant in a busy city. He didn't make a fortune from his business, but earned a decent living by making a few popular dishes of the time. He was always asking his customers what they thought about his food. He was somewhat obsessed with fish and had fishy thoughts most of the time. From time to time he would come up with a new fish recipe that attracted those extra few customers that made his livelihood worthwhile, and when word got around his business would enjoy a temporary boost.
But because in the city there are so many choices for diners and so much competition, eventually the numbers attending his restaurant would fall back to the average level again as the diners sought novelty elsewhere. At other times it seemed like the business would fail when the number of people eating out for some unexplained reason would drop to a low level. At these times he used to philosophise about what it was that made a recipe special - "What is the magic formula, the perfect dish that would fill my restaurant ?" he would ask himself at these quieter times and with the spare time available he would experiment until he found his next good idea. But he never seemed to find that one really great recipe that would enable him to change direction completely and seek out his other unfulfilled ambitions in life.
One day he was idly sitting in a nearby café where he took his daily break. He was day-dreaming about fish and about his future and wondering if they were inextricably linked. He was also feeling concerned that he hadn't had a really good fishy idea in months, when his introspection was halted by a conversation on the far side of the café that drifted over to his table. He couldn't hear much but listening, he distinctly heard someone - a rather distinguished looking business-woman saying to the group of younger people that were hanging on her every word - "....the secret to success is the right combination of Thyme and Plaice and..." He had heard all he needed to hear through his fish ears because being an expert in this business this was a big 'Eureka' moment to him. He hurriedly jumped up, paid his bill and rushed out to buy the magic ingredients.
He came back to his restaurant with a big bunch of fresh Thyme and some quality Plaice that had been freshly caught that day and he feverishly began to experiment with a new recipe. He worked for hours creating wonderful sauces with the thyme and testing different ways of cooking the plaice and then pouring the sauces over the fish and tasting them. But nothing seemed to work - nothing that is that made him believe this was the magic recipe that could change his life.
Eventually he looked at all the different sauces and the huge amount of cooked plaice and wondered what on earth he could do with them. It was soon going to be time to open up the restaurant. He certainly couldn't offer one plaice dish because he had cooked all the fish and had a range of sauces but not enough sauce to offer a consistent dish on the menu. He decided the only thing left to do was combine them all into one dish and that would have to be a soup - "Soup of the day maybe !" - he thought to himself . So he added a little extra water and let the mixture simmer very slowly over a low heat whilst he got busy preparing all his other standard dishes.
Very soon people started to drift into the restaurant but as he wandered outside the kitchen to see who was there he noticed a very delicate scent in the air and his customers noticed it too "Mmm ! - they said that smells delicious ! - I'll order that please !" they said to the waiters. Soon the scent had drifted outside and along the street. People who were on the point of going into a neighbouring restaurant suddenly turned and followed the scent. Before you could whisper "Lobster Thermidor !" the restaurant was full to capacity with people eagerly chatting and sharing their unique descriptions of the wonderful aroma of delicious cooking.
The chef meanwhile had gone back to the kitchen to locate the source of all this interest and lo and behold he discovered it was the large saucepan of his newly invented 'Thyme and Plaice' soup. "Thank goodness !" he thought to himself that he had done so many experiments with the vast quantity of fish and huge amount of thyme that he had purchased. He had made enough soup to serve everyone that came into his restaurant that night. Everyone loved it and every last serving was consumed. The chef went home that night and though quite exhausted had a lively skip in his step, a big smile on his face and enough energy to occasionally try and punch the Moon.
The next day he had hardly got out of bed after a very pleasant night's dreaming about fish when his head waiter was on the phone informing him that it was only 10.00am and the restaurant had already been inundated with telephone bookings for the next few weeks ahead. The chef rushed out to the fish market and bought even bigger quantities of plaice and armfuls of freshly picked thyme. Back at the restaurant he set about re-creating the recipes he had invented the day. He then combined them in the same way by adding water and making a most wonderful and flavoursome soup. It worked every time - full to capacity night after night his restaurant was soon the talk of the town and everyone wanted to dine there just to experience the taste of 'Thyme and Plaice.'
This went on for many months and the chef enjoyed every material benefit with his newly acquired wealth that his great fish soup had brought him. But in living his success it wasn't long before he was no longer wondering about his future and about his unfulfilled dreams. He was no longer asking questions about what it was that gave that extra something to a recipe. He was no longer curious about being creative with new ideas - for the fame that his soup had brought seemed sufficient to please him.
But what he also hadn't noticed was that every time he prepared the recipe for his wonderful soup he was adding a little more water than the last time. The soup still tasted wonderful and its delicate scent still twisted and turned its' way down the streets outside his restaurant seducing the nostrils of passers by. But each day the distance it travelled got less and less as little bit by little more and more water was being added to the recipe.
It took a while before the head waiter pointed out that for the first time in months the restaurant was not full. It didn't seem a big enough problem to mention though because the takings were still well up on the year before. But after a couple more weeks the restaurant was emptier still and business started to go rapidly downhill. The chef also noticed that very few people were ordering his wonderful soup but just choosing his standard fare.
He had also received quite a few complaints from people who tried it before and said that it was now just a shadow of what it used to be, but he wasn't listening to them like he used to. He believed he had been preparing the soup in exactly the same way. But because he had been adding more and more water a little at a time each day what he couldn't see was that he was now creating almost clear water. It had virtually no taste let alone nourishment and as for the delicate scent that had vanished too. Weeks passed and eventually there was just the usual handful of faithful customers in the restaurant that he had had in the leaner times before his great fish soup creation. No-one amongst them was the least bit interested in experiencing the 'Thyme and Plaice' anymore.
To stay in business the chef had to downsize his newly acquired life of luxury brought about by his fish soup and it was then that some of his earlier thoughts about what makes a successful dish started to slowly arise in his mind again. He soon realised that he had lost something somewhere after dining out on one good idea for too long. No sooner had he realised this when his creative skills were activated once again as he felt the desire to experiment again and to listen to what people around him said about his dishes. He also recognised that his whole life had been determined by fish and he began to think that there might be other things he could cook up in his imagination.
With these thoughts he gradually restored his business to its earlier satisfactory state before the great soup discovery and managed to occasionally win a few more customers with his new creations. But most important of all his curiosity returned and was now extending in different directions. He was still puzzling though over what it was that made a magic recipe - he thought he had found the secret but on reflection realised he may have found something but lost many other things that were far more important.
It was whilst he was musing over these interesting thoughts that he just happened to notice someone he thought he recognised seated in the corner of his restaurant. It was that same distinguished looking lady he had seen in the café many months earlier. Again she was surrounded by another group of younger people their glistening eyes staring at her with rapt attention to catch her every word.
Then there appeared one of those unexplained lulls that occur sometimes in a roomful of people. He was no longer listening with fish ears. He heard what he maybe should have heard all that time ago before he discovered his soup as the lady said ".... the secret to success is the right combination of Time, Place and..... People !"The chef smiled inwardly - somewhat wiser he continued to experiment in his modest way but not just with fishy ideas now but with how he thought and he also remembered to listen more carefully to what those around him were really saying.
"A solved problem is like a broken sword on the battlefield"
Proverb quoted from 'The Dermis Probe' by Idries Shah
