Outside-In Process: The New Path to Customer-Centricity

Sep. 04, 2009
By Dick Lee, High-Yield Methods

Peter Drucker famously opined that the greatest risk to organizations was neither doing the right work wrong nor doing the wrong work but not seeing or reacting to profound change occurring around us. Today, we're in such a period of transformational change, with a powerful confluence of forces driving up the power of customers in buyer-seller relationships—and correspondingly depressing the potential for sellers to stay competitive while putting their own interests ahead of customer interests. That this change is occurring is almost beyond debate. But how to effectively respond to this sea change is not only a matter for debate, but a source of great frustration for sellers. Fortunately, a growing number of companies are showing the way by proactively treating the rise in customer power as an opportunity rather than a threat—and using an approach becoming known as "Outside-In Process" or just "Outside-In" to build bridges extending out to customers.

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Ten Procrastination Avoidance Techniques for Techies and also for all other people

Article that appeared on Dice.com about how procrastination reduces productivity

PC or peril:your workstation provides state-of-the-art productivity and development tools, IM and videoconferencing to stay in touch with distributed project team members, project management applications, e-mail notifications, and blinding fast Internet access, not to mention the potential for quick downloads of the latest Battlestar Galactica and Lost episodes plus networked Unreal Tournament frag-fests. How’s an IT staffer supposed to meet deadlines? Learn 10 procrastination avoidance techniques for techies. By Mathew Schwartz
Birds and bees might not do it, but when it comes to procrastination, we humans have it down cold. Many people even elevate procrastination — known as “a hardening of the oughteries” — into an art form. As Mark Twain put it, “never put off till tomorrow, what you can do the day after tomorrow.”

According to researchers, almost everyone procrastinates, and up to 20% of us do so chronically. Unfortunately, putting things off — besides making us less productive — also stresses people out. “The more people procrastinate, the less happy, the less healthy, and the less wealthy they are,” notes Piers Steel, an expert in motivational problems and associate professor of human resources and organizational dynamics at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business.

Procrastination — “to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse-off for the delay,” he says — always has repercussions. “It takes everyone’s game down a notch, at least, and some people much more than that.” Yet avoiding procrastination is almost impossible. “It’s who we are: we have a mindset that’s best suited for a hunting-and-gathering society.” Thus we’re easily sidetracked by BlackBerries, Internet surfing, IM, YouTube, foosball, and other modern workplace distractions.

Technology Drives Productivity, Procrastination

Compounding the problem, workloads are increasing, which creates a greater need for us to maintain peak productivity. Indeed, according to a 2006 survey by Accenture, nearly two-thirds of full-time employees reported their workload increased during the previous 12 to 24 months, due to insufficient staffing levels, strategic changes, or reorganizations. Of course broadly speaking, economists credit IT with helping boost workers’ productivity to record levels, which has allowed companies to accomplish more while employing fewer people.

Yet with heavier workloads, more long-term tasks to manage, and greater reliance on technology, employees face more distractions and thus tend to procrastinate more frequently. Tech workers battle even more interruptions than the average employee, given their especially heavy reliance on — if not outright fetish for — technology. “That’s the weird thing about progress,” notes Steel. “Not only does it increase our productivity, but it also speeds the delivery of our vices. So in one way, it makes work easier and harder to do at the same time.”

How to Manage Procrastination

So how can techies avoid procrastinating? “We need to get this mismatched person and environment to somehow fit together,” notes Steel. Accordingly, start by pursuing these 10 changes:

1. Catalog distractions. According to a 2005 study from Basex, distractions consume 28% of a knowledge worker’s day. Accordingly, attempt to minimize workspace interruptions: let calls go to voicemail, hang a “Do Not Disturb: Coding Deadline” sign outside your cubicle, and consider noise-canceling headphones.

2. Back away from the e-mail. Of all corporate distractions, e-mail arguably zaps the most productivity. “If you want to be 10–15% more productive, and this means probably an extra 30 days of work a year, turn off the automatic indicator on your e-mail,” says Steel. In other words, “lose the ding, and lose the [notification] icon too.”

3. Defuse bad habits. Make bad habits — your IM addiction, or checking MySpace nonstop — harder to indulge by deleting quick-launch buttons and desktop links to related applications. “As soon as you have an impulse, even if it’s fleeting, you’ll act on it, if it’s available in those few seconds,” notes Steel.

4. Banish the Dew. The predominant reason people put off tasks: they’re too tired. So get sufficient sleep and exercise, eat right, and lay off the Mountain Dew and Red Bull. Most of all, pursue unpleasant tasks when energy levels are high; you’ll accomplish them more easily and quickly.

5. Chunk it up. “A lot of tasks have something called motivational surface tension,” notes Steel, meaning getting started is the hard part. So break a task into small enough pieces that you can visualize each one’s outcome, then spend 10 minutes on one chunk. After 10 minutes, continuing for another 10 minutes — and so on — probably seems like no bother.

6. Procrastinate by working. “When I find myself procrastinating,” says Steel, “I allow myself to procrastinate as long as I do another piece of work I was procrastinating on.” His inspiration: that unrivaled procrastinator, the college student. “I caught onto this when I found out a lot of students were cleaning the stove the night before an exam.”

7. Build good habits. Psychologists say routines help us avoid procrastinating. To build good habits, start simply by breaking tasks into smaller chunks. “In the long term, as you get better at things, you can start chunking upwards, the tasks don’t have to be so small, and that’s where the routine comes in,” says Steel.

8. Don’t play Spock. Remember, many human tendencies are incredibly hard-wired. “We’re not Spock from the Planet Vulcan, we’re quasi-rational,” he says, “and it’s best to work with who you are, rather than who you want to be.” In other words, strive for changes relative to your existing procrastination habits, instead of some abstract ideal.

9. Separate work and play: Working makes you work more; playing makes you play more. Yet how can techies — for whom work often resembles play — strike a balance? Start by hiding the work laptop when you’re not at work. According to Steel, “it’s almost worth it for professionals to have two computers: one for surfing and video games, and one for working.”

10. Think you can. While it might sound trite, overcoming procrastination requires positive thinking. “The more self-doubt you have, the lower your motivation,” he says. “As a general rule, it’s best to be your own number-one fan, and to err on the side of believing you can do it

Mathew Schwartz is a freelance business and technology journalist based in Cambridge, Mass.

Rank Based V/s Peer Based Leadership Assumptions

RANK-BASED VS. PEER-BASED LEADERSHIP ASSUMPTIONS

To understand the power and durability of the myth of leadership—why it has such a strong hold on our imagination—we need to examine its assumptions about leaders and followers. We must begin by recognizing that these assumptions are not absolute, universal truths—they have a history. This history has helped establish the now implicit justification and legitimization of our current rank-based notion of leadership.

Three events, beginning in the seventeenth century and maturing in the nineteenth century, have contributed to the acceptance of the myth in modern organizations:

• The triumph of Newtonian science and its accompanying worldview

• The understanding of human nature inherent in Enlightenment philosophies

• The reaction to Enlightenment rationalism in Romanticism, creating the modern concept of individual genius and celebrity

Each of these events has worked its way into modern business assumptions about leaders and followers, affecting the way we organize work and relationships. They have led to rank-based organizations that overestimate the senior executive and underestimate the rank-and-file employee. They have introduced rank-based thinking into business in a way that makes work less than meaningful for the majority of individuals involved. Table 1 outlines some of these rank-based assumptions and contrasts them with peer-based assumptions that can lead to more successful relationships and more successful organizations. We will discuss each of these contrasts in detail.

Table 1: RANK-VS. PEER-BASED ASSUMPTIONS

Rank-Based Assumptions	Peer-Based Assumptions
Employees are lazy	Employees are productive
Employees are selfish	Employees are caring
Leaders are heroic individuals	Each individual is unique
Leadership command and control	General input and participation
Knowledge at the top	Knowledge at all levels
Manipulation	Cooperation

Employees are Lazy vs. Employees are Productive

The influence of science on business is a key factor in our first rankbased assumption.

Rank-Based Assumption

Employees are by nature lazy and need external motivation.

Peer-Based Assumption

Employees tend to be productive and self-motivated.

In most business organizations, employees are treated as costs that have to be justified. They are just parts, expensive parts, of the machine of business that must be operated as cheaply as possible. Where did this view of individual employees originate? Most organizational theorists agree it was in science, specifically Newtonian science. Newton introduced the most comprehensive and powerful explanation of how natural systems behave the way they do. His fellow scientists wept when they read his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687), thinking that it was now all over, that there was nothing great left to discover. He "proved" that systems were composed of bodies, and those bodies were governed by basic forces. Bodies were inert and would change course only if acted upon by these basic forces. His system of natural science soon shaped the way we viewed human systems, organizations, work, and hence the leadership of work performed in organizations.

Newton's model seemed to justify its imitation in all fields of human endeavor, including management science. Just as nature had been mechanized and reduced to nothing but bodies in motion, labor was thought to be nothing but bodies in motion that had to be coerced through external force. Without an outside push or pull, the "Newtonian" employee would remain inert; that is, lazy and unmotivated. Frederick W. Taylor was the chief promoter and practitioner of this view, albeit motivated by socially admirable goals. His time and motion studies reveal the belief that a rigorous mechanical approach to organizations would bring superb results in the scientific management of workers.

Taylor believed that leadership must be imposed from the top down in a command-and-control manner. The brains and intelligence of a company resided at the top, while the muscle for doing the actual work resided at the bottom. He made two critical assumptions: (1) brain work should be taken from the shop floor and placed in the executive office, and (2) management should take all relevant knowledge and reduce it to rules, formulas, and laws for the rank and file to mindlessly follow.

In this system, employees were reduced to machines competing for scarce goods with other similar, yet separate, machines in an alien and often hostile workplace. This mentality was soon applied to organizations, people, and the environment without differentiation by the new scientific business leaders, not all of whom, by the way, shared Taylor's high ideals. They believed that to motivate they must push or prod a worker into action, overcoming the worker's inertia by the sheer force of their own bullying. For this, they found complete justification in science.

Now there is general agreement that the understanding of the nature of reality in classical science is not only wrong with regard to the natural world, but is detrimental to organizations as well. The majority of processes and systems found in nature cannot be reduced to nothing more than the behavior of inert bodies in motion. Similarly, employees are not machines, but living, open systems capable of self-renewal and self-direction. While natural science, with its self correcting method, has moved beyond this limiting belief about natural systems, management science has all too frequently remained bound to this inaccurate assumption about human systems. Today the belief that employees tend to be lazy and require external motivation is part of the unconscious fabric of leadership thought and practice. It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, where seeing employees as lazy and unmotivated creates an organizational culture where the employees become lazy and unmotivated.

When managers treat their employees as unmotivated "cost centers" who require constant supervision, employees become defensive and respond by doing the bare minimum to avoid making mistakes or standing out. It doesn't take long for an employee who started out with great enthusiasm to become dependent on the rank-based leader's management of all important decisions, until soon the employee loses all initiative. New hires in a rank-based organization come to work full of innovative ideas and energy only to retreat into a compliant "just doing what I'm told" mentality after repeatedly being put in their place by some threatened rank-based manager.

Employees Are Selfish vs. Employees Are Caring

The second rank-based assumption finds its roots in the nature of the individual as described in the writings of Enlightenment philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes.

Rank-Based Assumption

Employees are by nature selfish and self-seeking and therefore need external control to keep them in line.

Peer-Based Assumption

Employees tend to be caring and willing to cooperate.

Hobbes argued that individuals are naturally in constant anxiety motivated by two basic emotions: (1) a negative emotion, the fear of death, and (2) a positive emotion, desire for all material goods and the domination of others. These two motivations put us into constant agitation with an insatiable craving for material wealth and, at the same time, a fear of death in a world that will not satisfy our infinite wants and constantly threatens to destroy us as well. In this world only the paranoid survive. As autonomous individuals constantly responding to these two emotions, individuals are in a state of a constant war of everyone against everyone. As Hobbes (1982) pointed out, in this environment, "life is poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (92).

Hobbes, like most Enlightenment philosophers, wanted to discover how and why individuals join together in organizations. Organizations will only come into existence, he argued, if autonomous individuals consent to organize for their own protection against each other and thus sacrifice certain freedoms to the organization and whoever controls it. In this view, individuals give up much of their freedom and enter organizations via common agreement (the social contract) in order to escape their natural wretched condition. Even as they enter organizations, they still retain their basic motivating emotions of fear of death as well as the insatiable desire for material goods. The purpose of any organization, in this view, is one of protecting people from each other as each struggles to acquire as much wealth and power as possible. (Certainly, this is a view of organizations expected and favored by market analysts.) These assumptions place the individual in constant opposition to others in the organization. They permeate through all our organizational thinking, planning, and communication, leading to the all-pervasive us-versus-them thinking that poisons relations between the company and its employees, or management and labor.

Us vs. Them

No one has captured the ironic nature of this conflict better than the writer Franz Kafka. He depicts the perplexed individual trapped in a maze not of his own making—the more he struggles, the more entrapped he becomes. The protagonist in my favorite Kafka story, The Metamorphosis (1915), is a young office worker by the name of Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one morning after unsettling dreams to discover he has turned into a dung beetle! Stuck on his back, unable to move, he fails to make it to work for the first time in his career. Gregor has been the ever-faithful employee even though trapped in a menial and boring job. He has accepted his fate while never once coming to work late. But guess who shows up rather quickly to evaluate the situation? It's none other than his manager, who immediately casts suspicion on his honesty and work ethic.

"Mr. Samsa", the manager now called, raising his voice, "what's the matter? You barricade yourself in your room, answer only ‘yes‘ and ‘no,’ cause your parents serious, unnecessary worry, and you neglect—I mention this only in passing—your duties to the firm in a really shocking manner. … The head of the firm did suggest to me this morning a possible explanation for your tardiness—it concerned the cash payments recently entrusted to you—but really, I practically gave my word of honor that the explanation could not be right. But now, seeing your incomprehensible obstinacy, I am about to lose even the slightest desire to stick up for you in any way at all. … Your performance of late has been very unsatisfactory; I know it is not the best season for doing business, we all recognize that; but a season for not doing any business, there is no such thing. Mr. Samsa, such a thing cannot be tolerated." (Kafka 1981, 99)

In this passage we see the first two assumptions of the myth of leadership: (1) employees are naturally lazy, and (2) they are naturally prone to dishonesty and self-seeking behavior—even to theft against the employer. Kafka's antiheroes are always getting caught in the absurdity of command-and-control hierarchies that threaten their wellbeing for seemingly trivial reasons. Here, with the anonymous and unpredictable power the manager and head of the firm hold over Gregor's head, his fear of failure is heightened. Today, with almost constant layoffs and restructuring, which seldom actually improve organizations, this nameless and capricious power held by leaders over their followers is incredibly harmful to our social fabric.

The Desire to Make a Difference

A rank-based organization informed by the myth of leadership tends to limit the creativity of employees to the narrow confines of their job description. What these rank-based assumptions overlook is that most people work for a broader reward, including at least the following three things:

• Fair compensation

• A chance to develop skills and new talents

• The opportunity to contribute to a cause larger than themselves

Employees bring their whole person to work, but the rank-based organization seeks to limit their involvement to impersonal tasks. This tension between individuals as whole persons and the limited organizational role assigned them often leads to employees just putting in their time at work before getting to do what's really meaningful for them after work. This doesn't have to be, for most employees seek first to find meaning and value at work, but it is too often denied them.

Leaders Are Heroic Individuals vs. Each Individual Is Unique

The third rank-based assumption has given the leadership myth its potent emotional appeal.

Rank-Based Assumption

Leaders are heroic individuals who have risen above the masses—possessing either an innate or learned genius. They are better than those beneath them, thus have the right to control decision making in organizations and do all the commanding and controlling.

Peer-Based Assumption

Leaders are no different than employees—they each have their own unique strengths and weaknesses.

I once worked with a leader who had quickly climbed to the top of his organization. When we first talked soon after his promotion, he was anxious to tell me he wasn't surprised by his meteoric rise, "for the cream will always rise to the top." This, I believe, captures an essential part of the leadership myth, namely, that those at the top of the organization are somehow better, or more deserving, than those beneath them on the organizational chart. What are the roots of this conception?

The Renaissance saw the rise in the fame of artists, but it was Romanticism, with its belief in creative genius and the romantic hero, that gave birth to personality cults and the appeal of the leadership myth of the twentieth century. From Romanticism we get our idea of the superhero, the master-of-the-universe type, who single-handedly controls others and the elements to achieve his desires and set the course of history.

Two books on the subject, both of which were tremendously popular when published, were pivotal. One is a series of lectures by Thomas Carlyle published in 1841 as On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. The other, published in 1850 by Carlyle's friend and correspondence partner Ralph Waldo Emerson, is entitled Representative Man. Both books promote the greatness in men and provide the arguments for the importance and presence of "great men" in society and business. Carlyle wrote:

We… discourse here… on Great Men, their manner of appearance in our world's business, how they have shaped themselves in the world's history, what I call Hero-worship and the Heroic in human affairs…. A large topic; indeed, an illimitable one; wide as Universal History itself. For, as I take it, Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modelers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realization and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world. (1)

If you believe, following Newtonian science, that the majority of people are by nature lazy and need external force to motivate them—and if you believe, from the selfish individualism of Hobbes, that people will give up their freedom and join organizations because they are coerced and controlled by their own or others' self-seeking fear and greed—it is an easy step to assume that it could only be through the heroic efforts of some creative genius, a leader, that such an organization could be established and made successful. This "Great Man" (or today, perhaps "Great Woman") has, through his own wit, work, and luck, climbed to the top, assumed his destiny as the leader, and can now benefit the organization. His position at the top enables him to reap huge rewards, command large organizations, and demand that others give up their freedom to his judgment.

Of course, the reality of this heroic leader frequently resembles the "emperor's new clothes." The executive I mentioned earlier, who quickly climbed to the top of his organization, was not respected by those beneath him in rank. As I learned more about him and his successes, I discovered that he often claimed credit when others had done the work. I also found out that many of the contracts and partnership deals he arranged in his quick rise were poorly structured and fell apart soon after he was promoted to his next leadership position. The senior executives had so thoroughly bought into the assumptions of the myth of leadership, however, that these failings were blamed on his replacements, and his image remained untarnished.

Leadership Command and Control vs. General Input and Participation

The fourth rank-based assumption is that the corporate leader, as hero, must also have nearly superhuman capabilities.

Rank-Based Assumption

The heroic leader can control a complex organization from the top down, can accurately predict what is going to happen in the future, and should therefore be making all the critical decisions.

Peer-Based Assumption

Only with input and participation from all levels of the organization can leaders make effective decisions about current and future business conditions.

This leader becomes the indispensable avenue for every significant action in the organization; indeed, it wouldn't happen without her. Such a leader will be suspicious of, and unwilling to delegate any important decision to, anyone who does not see things her way. As a leader, she of course has vision, and those who follow her will be on the front wave of future success. Those who disagree with her vision, or, if they're without vision, will not progress within the leader's organization. In this view, decisions can be made only by the leader and not by the mass of people in the organization, who cannot be trusted to share the genius of the leader.

This rank-based assumption not only keeps decision making at the top of the organization—thus robbing the organization of the intelligence and talents of the vast majority of employees—it also corrupts communication. A rank-based leader will see his position as more important than the positions of those lower in rank. Because of this perception of superiority, the leader will not seek input or, if it is given, not take seriously the input of someone lower in rank.

This view of genius in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Romanticism merged with Hobbes's belief in the nature of the individual, and the belief in how they interact from Newtonian science, and created the myth of leadership in twentieth-century organizations to justify rank-based forms of social arrangements. It is a belief that must be constantly justified in organizations. The justification is enforced through the tight control of information via closed books and closed meetings; through the media's obsession with celebrity and emphasis on leaders as larger-than-life individuals; and through the plethora of popular books on leadership.

Knowledge at the Top vs. Knowledge at All Levels

In the fifth rank-based assumption, knowledge and understanding are also considered to be the domain of the few.

Rank-Based Assumption

Employees tend not to know the best thing to do, while leaders do know.

Peer-Based Assumption

Individuals closest to where the work is done have a good grasp on what needs to happen.

Numerous books on leadership promise to reveal the leadership secrets of Attila the Hun, Moses, or Abraham Lincoln, or even Jesus as a CEO. They attempt to justify an implicit theory of motivation and human nature where only a few great individuals can lead—and if you want to lead, you have to be just like them. Not surprisingly, it is also a theory that tends to reward only a few with tremendous benefits in salaries and other bonuses; for if it takes superhuman abilities to lead, then it also requires superhuman salaries to reward these few "Great Men." So, the myth in many ways justifies the great disparity between salaries paid to senior executives and the wages of the majority of people-in organizations. It certainly helps drive executives' compensation way out of proportion to their actual worth to organizations.

In fact, some recent studies show an inverse relationship between executive compensation and profit performance of the company. A report issued by Scott Klinger (2001) of United for a Fair Economy showed that over half the companies in the top 10 percent in executive pay had a stock price that underperformed the S&P 500. In addition to the poor profit and stock performance, companies with the highest paid CEOs were more likely to announce significant layoffs within three years of their CEO appearing on the top paid list. An interesting aspect to exorbitant executive pay is that if minimum wage had increased at the same rate as executive pay since 1990, which was at a rate of 571 percent, then it would be not $5.15 an hour, but $25.50 an hour.

More often than not, celebrity CEOs are a product of their organization and not its cause. Very few find similar success when they go somewhere else, though they do pull in quite substantial compensation packages. Not surprisingly, the myth is supported by those who have been anointed leaders as well as by those who would like to be anointed leaders and reap the huge monetary and social rewards.

Paradoxically, our present myth of leadership, which arose from currents of thought that stressed individualism and individual greatness, has resulted in organizational managers turning into carbon copies of one another. In the words of Edward Young (1683-1765), "Born originals how comes it to be that we die as copies?" Further, what Vaclav Havel (1994) observed about political leaders could be said as well for CEOs of organizations:

He becomes a captive of his position, his perks, his office. What apparently confirms his identity and thus his existence in fact subtly takes that identity and existence away from him. He is no longer in control of himself, because he is controlled by some thing else: his position and its exigencies, its consequences, its aspects, and its privileges. (73-74)

The myth of leadership also creates several mistaken assumptions about ways to motivate employees. For instance, many leaders assume that the chief way to motivate employees is to give them more money. However, research conducted by Fred Emery has shown that money, while a work satisfier, is not a work motivator (Weisbord 1991, 167-168). Understanding the difference between work motivators and work satisfiers is important in creating a successful organization. What will motivate employees is to give them greater control and influence over their work; however, this is something a leader who accepts the myth of leadership will never do.

It makes it almost impossible for people in organizations to focus on results such as increasing profitability and decreasing costs because results are only valued insofar as they sustain a person's position against other individuals in the company. This leads to withholding information and resources from others, as well as trying to control others, even while blaming them for any failures. Workers who don't treat others the way they should can justify their behavior by buying into the myth. It also makes it nearly impossible to organize true teams when the implicit assumptions are that only the very few are "management material." It makes it seem as if an employee's character were fixed in a way that somehow predetermines his or her level in the organization, with only the "cream" rising to management position.

Manipulation vs. Cooperation

The sixth rank-based assumption concerns how to manage employees.

Rank-Based Assumption

You must manage (manipulate) employees to get them to do what you want.

Peer-Based Assumption

You don't manage peers; you cooperate with them.

I was once asked by a regional vice president to deliver some out-of-the-box leadership training to a group of salespeople. They all worked for the company that created the training I was to deliver. In fact, they sold the training to companies on the East Coast. I was told that most of these sales leaders had not had the opportunity to see the content of the training, so the objective was for them to have a "live" workshop experience. So that's what I prepared. Unfortunately, it was only after I began the training, and they all started vigorously protesting, that I realized we had been set up.

It seems that the regional VP perceived this group of sales representatives as troublemakers who asked too many questions. The VP figured that by attending a leadership seminar together, they'd learn to be more compliant to his wishes, but he knew they'd never agree to come to such an event. So, he told them it would be sales training, while hiding this important point from me. When they saw they were not in sales training, that they had been misled, I became the scapegoat for the absent VP who was two thousand miles away. The VP, in classic rank-based fashion, knew he could not win support for himself or his ideas through discussions, so he would have to resort to manipulation and some trickery instead. I felt sorry for this man. Though he felt superior to these sales reps by virtue of his position, he was also afraid of them and afraid to speak to them as peers, out of concern that his own lack of competence would be revealed—bursting the illusion of his leadership.

From the Book

The Myth of Leadership—Creating Leaderless Organizations

Jeffrey S. Nielsen

Davies-Black Publishing

Published by Davies-Black Publishing, a division of CPP, Inc., 3803 East Bayshore Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303; 800-624-1765.

Special discounts on bulk quantities of Davies-Black books are available to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details, contact the Director of Marketing and Sales at Davies-Black Publishing; 650-691-9123; fax 650-623-9271.

Rank Based V/s Peer Based Organizations

RANK-BASED VS. PEER-BASED ORGANIZATIONS

Obviously, an organization designed to be peer based will be very different from its rank-based counterpart. Rank-based thinking suppresses the heart and intelligence of the majority of an organization's employees. Command-and-control managing under the influence of rank-based thinking tends to be harsh, coercive, and demotivating. It is likely to create a poisonous atmosphere in the organization that kills an employee's natural desire to cooperate and be productive. Peer-based thinking rejects rank and supports a different type of organization, one that respects all members of the organization as peers.

The very form of peer-based organizations promotes the heart and intelligence of all employees. The more individual employees participate in decision making, the more their energy and dedication are enlisted by the organization. Allowed to share in business deliberations, individual employees expand their range of concerns beyond narrow self-interest to include a disciplined concern for the well-being of the whole organization. Most rank-based companies discourage the average individual's participation in decision making.

Deprived of a share in business deliberations, individual employees become almost totally absorbed with their own individual concerns and needs. Many rank-based leaders view this as further proof of their need to control decision making. They are blind to how rank-based leadership by nature creates self-centered employees. Thomas Kuhn (1962) said we don't see something until we have the right metaphor to let us perceive it. Most of our mental models, particularly in business, are still rank based. We need a new gestalt.

John Case (1993), in a cover story for Inc. magazine, pointed out that "a twenty-first century company's task will be to organize work so it can be carried out by businesspeople—by men and women who take responsibility and who share in the risks and rewards of enterprise" (93). Ten years later, most companies still have not created this sort of organization. I believe a main reason for this failure is the absence of a proper understanding of rank-based versus peer-based thinking. When a leader tries to share decision-making responsibility with others but fails to address the underlying rank-based thinking, any positive results will be short-term. The long-term results will include an increase in employee cynicism and an increase in rank-based control.

From: The Myth of Leadership

Jeffrey S. Nielsen

Davies-Black Publishing

Published by Davies-Black Publishing, a division of CPP, Inc., 3803 East Bayshore Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303; 800-624-1765.

The boss is always wrong!

Clever people know their worth and expect you to know it too. So how does a manager deal with people who are much smarter than him?

Franz Humer, the CEO and chairman of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, knows how difficult it is to find good ideas. “In my business of research, economies of scale don’t exist,” he says. “Globally today we spend $4 billion on R&D every year. In research there are not economies of scale, there are economies of ideas,” he adds in an article by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones in Harvard Business Review.
For a growing number of companies, according to Humer, competitive advantage lies in the ability to create an economy driven not by cost efficiencies but by ideas and intellectual know-how. In practice this means that leaders have to create an environment in which what we call ‘clever people’ can thrive. These people are the handful of employees whose ideas, knowledge, and skills give them the potential to produce disproportionate value from the resources their organisations make available to them.
If clever people have one defining characteristic, it is that they do not want to be led. This clearly creates a problem for you as a leader. The challenge has only become greater with globalisation. Clever people are more mobile than ever before; they are as likely to be
based in Bangalore or Beijing as in Boston. That means they have more opportunities: They are not waiting around for their pensions; they know their value, and they expect you to know it too.

Contrary to what we have been led to believe in recent years, CEOs are not utterly at the mercy of their highly creative and extremely smart people. Of course, some very talented individuals artists, musicians, and other free agents can produce remarkable results on their own. In most cases, however, clever people need the organisation as much as it needs them. They cannot function effectively without the resources it provides. The classical musician needs an orchestra; the research scientist needs funding and the facilities of a first class laboratory. They need more than just resources, however; as the head of development for a global accounting firm put it, your clever people “can be sources of great ideas, but unless they have systems and discipline they may deliver very little.”

That is the good news. The bad news is that all the resources and systems in the world are useless unless you have clever people to make the most of them. Worse, they know very well that you must employ them to get their knowledge embedded. In clever people’s minds and networks, all it would need is a better knowledge-management system. The failure of such systems to capture tacit knowledge is one of the great disappointments of knowledge-management initiatives to date.

The attitudes that clever people display toward their organisations reflect their sense of self-worth. They tend to be scornful of the language of hierarchy. Although they are acutely aware of the salaries and bonuses attached to their work, they often treat promotions with indifference or even contempt. So don’t expect to lure or retain them with fancy job titles and new responsibilities. They will want to stay close to the ‘real work’, often to the detriment of relationships with the people they are supposed to be managing. This doesn’t mean they don’t care about status—they do. The same researcher who affects not to know his job title may insist on being called ‘doctor’ or ‘professor’. The point is that clever people feel they are part of an external professional community that renders the organizational chart meaningless. Not only do they gain career benefits from networking, but they construct their sense of self from the feedback generated by these extra-organizational connections.

This indifference to hierarchy and bureaucracy does not make clever people politically naive or disconnected. Most clever people are quick to recognise insincerity and respond badly to it. David Gardner, the COO of worldwide studios for Electronic Arts, knows this because he oversees a lot of clever people. EA has 7200 employees worldwide developing interactive entertainment software derived from FIFA Soccer, The Sims, The Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter, among others. “If I look back at our failures,” Gardner said, “they have been when there were too many rah-rahs and not enough content in our dealings with out people. People are not fooled. So when there are issues or things that need to be worked out, straightforward dialogue is important, out of respect for their intellectual capabilities.”

7 TRUTHS ABOUT CLEVER PEOPLE

They know their worth

They know how to work their way around in an organisation

They ignore corporate hierarchy

They expect instant access

They are well connected

They get bored easily

They won’t thank you

Three Experts' Tips for Hiring, Retaining IT Staffs

September 28, 2006

By John McCormick, Baseline

When it comes to hiring and retaining IT staffs, the future doesn't look so bright. The Baby Boomers are getting ready to retire, the number of college students entering computer science has dropped 50 percent in the last five years, according to the Computer Research Association, and the need for corporate IT people is growing. In a survey of its members released last month, the Society of Information Management (SIM), an organization of CIOs, found that nearly 40 percent of the nation's information chiefs are looking to increase their staffs, while another 33 percent said they are looking to maintain their current staffing levels—which means they'll have to find people to fill the spots left by workers moving on to new jobs or retirement. It's no wonder, then, that the same SIM survey found that attracting, developing and retaining information technology talent is now the No. 2 concern of CIO’s—right after IT and business alignment. So what steps can CIOs take now to ensure they have the people they'll need in the days ahead? CIO Insight sent question by e-mail to three leading IT staffing experts. Here is the advice they sent back:

Paul J. Groce

Partner

Christian & Timbers, executive search firm

Paul Groce leads the firm's Chief Information Officer (CIO) Functional Practice, which specializes in the areas of Chief Information Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Application Development, IT Operations and other information technology human capital needs. In addition to IT assignments, Paul has search/consulting experience in operations, information security, quality, business process outsourcing and inclusion/diversity focused teambuilding. He also served on sabbatical in the Office of White House Personnel in Baghdad in 2003 in support of international reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

TIPS FOR ATTRACTING IT TALENT

1. Organizations must recruit for the "CIO 2010." Many of today's older CIO’s came out of the "wiring closet," so to speak. They are savvy technologists. Tomorrow's CIO’s—CIO’s 2010—will be different. They will be tech-savvy business leaders. Current early-career IT professionals have much stronger business backgrounds than yesterday's CIO’s. Organizations must understand this shift, and put in place career opportunities and professional development plans that meet the needs of the CIO 2010. Then these organizations must clearly communicate in recruitment materials and other collateral that the organization is on the leading edge of the CIO 2010 career path development.

2. Turn your IT team into evangelists. Any CIO knows that the IT team is connected to the larger tech community. Word of mouth about the organization, management and the state of IT projects is highly influential, perhaps even more so than anything HR can say. If the IT organization is functioning well and engaged in interesting projects, the most visible and satisfied among the team should be encouraged to spread the word. Incentives, such as bonuses, should be developed to support the IT evangelists. Hesitation about encouraging IT team members to talk about the opportunities and organizations signals bigger internal issues, which must be addressed.

TIPS FOR RETAINING IT TALENT

1. To keep the best and brightest, the CIO should develop and mentor his or her own replacement. Unfortunately, CIO’s often find this extremely challenging. Some are afraid that by developing the next generation of leadership, they may be pushed out of the leadership limelight and actually watch these individuals leapfrog ahead of them and win the next stellar career opportunity. However, CIO’s who let fear rule and do not mentor and develop the "next-in-line" talent risk losing team leaders to organizations that will fill these individuals' career development needs.

2. Create cross-functional career development plans. You might be familiar with the saying "once a dishwasher, always a dishwasher." Today, we might change that to "once a tech geek, always a tech geek." And that's the mold that many early- and mid-career technology professionals are trying to break. The old IT stereotypes—that IT professionals are unable to communicate effectively with the business side or that they innovate for innovation's sake—are dying too slow a death. One way to hasten these clichés' demise is to create cross-functional career development plans. IT professionals—even those who crave to stay on the hardcore tech side—can benefit from cross-functional training and assignments. They will have a chance to see how the other half lives, create new relationships and enhance their business acumen.

3. Review your IT team member resumes annually. This is a counterintuitive approach to retention, but one that fosters trust. An effective performance review technique is to have your employees brush up their resumes every year. The employee with nothing new to add is one you need to be concerned about. The simple act of discussing resumes and sharing in an open conversation creates a level of trust that too often does not exist between managers and employees. Put the employee's career first...discuss successes and failures and areas of need. At the end of the day, if the employee is not happy or not right, help that person find something else. This technique is a proven win-win approach.

Katherine Spencer Lee

Executive Director

Robert Half Technology staffing firm

Katherine Spencer Lee has been with the company since 1995 and has more than 15 years of experience in information technology consulting services. She is a frequent public speaker and guest hosted several live events on Web sites such as Monster.com, Techtarget.com and CareerPath.com. In addition, she is currently providing career insight and advice through columns in Computerworld, CIOUpdate.com, Optimize and Certification Magazine.

TIPS FOR ATTRACTING IT TALENT

1. Offer competitive salaries and comp plans. Let's face it, money still talks. Check in with recent hires or those completing their first year and see if they feel their salaries are still competitive. Evaluate them frequently.

2. Play to your company's strengths. IT workers, like all of us, can be ego driven. If your company has an outstanding reputation for cutting-edge technology, industrial design, hip culture or an ability to draw top tech talent, play that up in the interview process. People love to know that they are going to a place that everyone else is dying to get into. But keep your sales pitch relevant: A database administrator may not be too dazzled by the fact that you have a first-rate creative team.

3. Highlight cool projects they will work on or may someday aspire to work on. If you're about to release an anticipated new application or technology, people may take less money for the opportunity to work on a true resume-builder. But be careful to keep them interested after the product/service is completed, or they'll just jump ship.

4. Emphasize the pedigree or reputation of people they will get to work with or under. Got rock stars? Then let potential employees know.

5. Look internally to your employees for referrals—good people know good people. IT is a small world and networking with your current staff and even enticing them with a referral bonus can lead to great talent.

TIPS FOR RETAINING IT TALENT

1. Re-evaluate your compensation plans annually or even twice per year and ensure they are up to date. Our 2007 Salary Guide for IT Professionals will be released in early October and will include salary ranges for more than 60 IT positions, regional and national employment trends, management strategies and more. How do you stack up?

2. Provide professional development opportunities to retain your best people. We conducted a survey earlier this year of 1,400 CIO’s nationwide and found that 63 percent of these technology leaders were offering these types of opportunities. Firms recognize that technology workers, in particular, value ongoing educational opportunities that will enable them to keep their skills current and continue learning on the job.

3. Offer flexible schedules. Our survey found that 47 percent of the CIO’s we polled were willing to provide flexible schedules. Effective retention programs also address work-life balance and salary issues. Offering flexible schedules or telecommuting options is a cost-effective way to improve overall job satisfaction, show appreciation and build loyalty. Competitive compensation packages are equally important and demonstrate to employees that their contributions are valued.

Rick Davidson, SVP, Global CIO

Manpower employment-services Company

Rick Davidson is responsible for worldwide IT strategy and operations at Manpower. He joined the company in January 2003. Before signing on with Manpower, he worked at the Feld Group—an IT consulting company that placed temporary CIO’s—and, prior to that, he was the senior vice president and CIO at CNH Global and the vice president of global information services at Haworth Inc.

TIPS ON ATTRACTING AND RETAINING IT TALENT

Manpower has developed and refined strategies for companies to attract engage and retain quality employees, including IT professionals. The world's most populous country is faced with a talent paradox. China, despite its 1.3 billion population, is short on talent. Manpower developed its proprietary Workforce Optimization Model that is used to assist clients in recruiting and retaining permanent employees. The five strategies of this model are not only useful to employers in China, but globally, and apply across all industries and sectors.

The five strategies of Manpower's Workforce Optimization Model to improve employee attraction, engagement and retention are:

1. Create a learning organization.

2. Appoint competent leaders.

3. Establish an appropriate organization and culture.

4. Provide competitive compensation and benefits packages.

5. Select the right people.

It is vital that organizations view the five areas as a holistic, integrated solution; neglecting even one of the areas will weaken the solution considerably.

1. Create a learning organization. Fast learning for high-potential employees can be facilitated through the following channels:

• Give employees projects that go beyond their current job's responsibilities.
• Participate in global tasks to learn Western culture and business management, and broaden employees' views.
• Invite employees to present at next-level local and global management meetings

2. Appoint competent leaders.

• Appoint hands-on leaders and provide role models.
• Improve leaders' communication skills.
• Explain company strategy and link personal goals to business objectives.

3. Establish an appropriate organization and culture.

• Create a simple and "flat" management structure.
• Demonstrate the organization's values.
• Repeatedly communicate the organization's values.

4. Provide competitive compensation and benefits packages.

• Review salaries frequently.
• Expect to give bigger salary increases than in developed countries.
• Develop comprehensive packages with multiple benefits.

5. Select the right people.

• Be open and honest to candidates in interviews.
• Look for soft skills such as flexibility and adaptability.
• Find candidates who have the capacity to grow quickly.

‘All highlighting mine’- Vinod Chand

17 Rules for Marketing Success

#1 Understand Who Buys Your Stuff

• Understand who buys your stuff. Business people? Other lawyers? Consumers?
• Define your audience from every possible perspective: socio-economic, geographic, image-sensitivity, age, risk-sensitivity, etc.
• If your firm provides services to more than one group, design unique marketing strategies (messages and delivery vehicles) for each group.

#2 Define and Target Your Audience

• Before you design any marketing communication, know who wants or needs your services? know your potential customers intimately.
• Design your communications to meet the needs and desires of your potential customers.
• Speak to only one customer at a time.
• Buy media that reaches your target audience, not media that reaches the largest number of people.

#3 Understand the Difference Between What you Offer and What People Buy

• You offer services; people buy solutions to their problems. (Proctor and Gamble sells shampoo to people who want clean hair.)
• Go deeper. (People want clean hair because?)
• People buy perception, not reality.
• Express your services in terms of what people buy (security, confidence, experience, value, likelihood of success, understanding, tax-savings, etc.).

#4 Define Your Unique Market Position

• Why should somebody hire you rather than your competition? Be realistic.
• Brand your unique market position (e.g., “the insider,” “always here,” “the lawyers’ lawyer”).
• Find ways to communicate your unique market position in an irresistible fashion.

#5 Know Your Resources

• How much money do you have to invest in marketing? How much time do you have? Allocate your resources to achieve the maximum return on investment for your marketing programs.
• If you have more money than time, hire a consultant with a track record of success and give her a budget. Step out of the way and monitor results.
• If you have more time than money, pursue marketing programs that are time-heavy and money-light. (Direct contact, seminars and workshops, networking, volunteering, public relations, practice brochures, publishing, trade services, etc.)

#6 Lead Your Marketing with the Highest ROI Vehicle

• Of the hundreds of marketing vehicles, which one offers possibility for the highest return on your marketing investment? Invest in the highest-ROI vehicle first. Only after you have saturated your highest-ROI vehicle should you move forward to your second-highest-ROI vehicle.
• Monitor and modify frequently. Any time your ROI slips, adjust your message or delivery mechanism. After adjusting, if you don’t see a return to high ROI, withdraw your funding and invest in the next highest ROI vehicle. Review frequently.

#7 Design Your Marketing around Problems and Solutions

• People hire lawyers to solve problems, or to prevent a problem from occurring. Design your marketing so that it is clear—you solve problems.
• In print advertising, use the headline to present a problem. In the subhead, provide the solution.

#8 Be Faithful to Your Unique Voice

• Once you have created your unique place in the market, stick with it: actively and intentionally grow your brand. Remember, people buy things (including services) because of their uniqueness, not because they are like other things.
• When you stand apart, you get noticed. (Don’t follow others.)

#9 Make Yourself Easily Accessible

• Create an image of warmth and availability. (Too many law firms create images that focus on prestige and tradition. Granite walls may create the image that you’ve “made it,” but if those walls get between you and your potential clients, your marketing will have to work a lot harder to generate new clients.)
• Create marketing-only telephone lines for your office. Publish a unique number in all of your advertising so when that line rings, everybody knows it’s a prospective client calling.
• Create a welcoming, we-are-here-to-please-you message both within your office and in all of your external marketing.

#10 Know Your Competition

• Your firm is not the only firm actively pursuing new customers. To win the lion’s share of the pie, you must know what your competition is doing. You must be more aggressive. You must be smarter. To edge out the competition, you must know what they are doing, and you must play the marketing game better than they play the marketing game. When it comes to generating new clients, the second choice never gets the telephone call.

#11 Keep Egos and Marketing Separate from Each Other

• Your marketing is not about you; it is about what you can do for potential clients better than anybody else.
• If you create a marketing message that makes you look good, throw it away. Even Charlie knows people don’t want tuna with good tastes.

#12 Don’t Design Marketing Communications to which You Think You Might Respond

• You are not your potential client. Your potential clients don’t think like you think. They don’t even like the same food you like! Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking that if you like a marketing message, potential clients will like it too.
• Don’t design an ad layout or direct mail piece so you will like it. Too many truly great marketing pieces have been left on graphic artists’ tables in favor of less powerful pieces because the client liked the lesser piece, and did not see or understand the value of the powerful piece.
• Don’t look at your marketing messages through your eyes. Take your marketing messages out to others for their opinions. (If you take your marketing messages to your staff or to your spouse for “more objective” opinions, you will get more, and varied, opinions, none of which will be much more valuable than your own. The only person whose opinion counts is the potential clients’. Think of it this way: Don’t ask your wife and staff what flavor of ice cream the kid standing on the street corner likes the most. You may love your wife and your staff, but they don't know what flavor of ice cream that kid likes any more than you know. Ask the kid.)

#13 Don’t Buy Statistics

• Most people who sell advertising have compelling statistics that demonstrate buying their advertising vehicle is a prudent choice. Ignore these statistics; they mislead. If you need to rely on statistics, get them from an unbiased source.
• Statistics are not clients. (Nobody has 1.9 children.)

#14 Tell the Truth

• Always.

#15 Adopt a Winning Attitude

• The return you get on your marketing investment is influenced by your attitude. Create and maintain a great outlook every time you participate in building content, designing marketing material, or buying media. If you discover you have a bad outlook on a day you have scheduled yourself to work on your marketing, reschedule.
• Go all out, as though you are designing your future. You are.
• Plan to win. Big.

#16 Never Advertise From Fear of Loss

• Advertising decisions that are motivated by fear (“some other firm will get these clients if I don’t advertise here”) will almost definitely result in poor returns.
• Advertising decisions that are motivated by possible gain tend to produce? gain.

#17 Sell Only the Best

• If you decided to sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door, wouldn’t you research to find the best-value, best-performing vacuum cleaner on the market, and then get a job with that firm? Your advertising will always reflect your beliefs about your firm. If you don’t believe you can offer the best value and performance, your advertising will reflect that.
• If you can’t offer value and performance, change.