Post from Leadership Turn

When a bit of serendipity, no matter how small, drops into your life it’s a wise move to notice and appreciate it.

Last week our channel editor sent a reminder that today was theme day (when participating Biz Channel bloggers all write on the same subject) and the subject was “Does Experience Matter?”

A day later I read a fascinating article based on Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard’s co-authored paper titled Unpacking Prior Experience: How Career History Affects Job Performance about the dangers in hiring dominantly based on experience.

Obviously a post match made in heaven.

Experience is good, right? Not always.

I remember 30 years ago arguing with managers who wanted to fill their position with a person doing the same job at their competitor—and I’m still arguing.

It’s a mindset best described by the catch-phrase “buy IBM”—meaning making a decision that your boss couldn’t argue with. This was/is especially true in hiring.

The smartest engineering vp I ever worked with had a different attitude. He said “Find me someone who fits our culture and already knows at least two [software] languages and I’ll hire her. If s/he’s learned two s/he can learn more.” He never worried if the experience was directly applicable.

Few managers would move to an identical job at a competitor, yet they look for candidates to do that same thing.

Experience in general has enormous value, but by holding out for direct or exact experience you can shoot yourself in the foot.

“A senior human resource manager told the research team, “We tried to hire from our competitors and paid a premium for the experience — but those hires were the least successful.” Another manager quoted in the paper said: “People are weighed down by the baggage they bring in.””

So the next time you’re hiring look first at the candidate’s MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), then at talents, then skills, then experience—the experience that shows that the person knows how to learn and enjoys the challenge.

What do you look for when hiring?

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This is an archival post from March 23rd, 2007.

A lot of technology is being deployed these days, driven by the emergence of Web 2.0 offerings and the critical need for increased productivity.

All that technology reminded me of a post I did early last year. I thought it was worth revisiting, so here it is.

I was talking with Tom Wohlmut this morning and, in the course of the conversation, he passed on a great line that I’d like to share with you.

“Give a fool a tool and you’ll still have a fool.”

A sage comment, frequently forgotten in our tech-happy world.

But how, exactly, does this wisdom impact you, as a manager?

To start with, it warns that you can’t fix an underperforming person or group by showering them with outside tools, whether technology or the latest silver bullet du jour.

And you can’t fix everybody. If, in fact, you truly hired a fool, or what’s passing for one, then you have a responsibility to yourself, your group, and the person hired to unhire him before too much damage is done.

However, the majority of fools really aren’t fools; they’re more like lost souls looking for a path to productivity and personal satisfaction. Most people want to do their work well and they want to feel good about what they do.

It’s not simple or easy or even much fun, but that’s your real job as a manager; guiding them to the path out of fooldom and into becoming an appreciated member of a powerful team.

It’s also one of the most satisfying experiences you can have.

Continuing the saga of George II as it parallels Shakespear’s Richard III. Come back every Sunday to see this saga play out. See all mY generation posts here.

A great barometer with which to evaluate your company’s culture and your boss’ skill is to get conscious about just how much you’re encouraged to think. That’s right, think.Most employees say that they’re encouraged to take the initiative, but not necessarily to think.

Hello, how do you do the former if you haven’t done the latter?

“A company will get nowhere if all of the thinking is left to management.” — Akio Morita (And it’s good to practice before you’re promoted.)

“You can’t always wait for the guys at the top. Every manager at every level in the organization has an opportunity, big or small, to do something. Every manager’s got some sphere of autonomy. Don’t pass the buck up the line.” — Bob Anderson, GE’s former CEO (Don’t pass it down, either; whatever your position be the place that it stops.)

“Solve it. Solve it quickly, solve it right or wrong. If you solve it wrong, it will come back and slap you in the face, and then you can solve it right. Lying dead in the water and doing nothing is a comfortable alternative because it is without risk, but it is an absolutely fatal way to manage a business.” –Thomas J. Watson, Jr. (Or as Nike says, “Just do it!”)

How often do you think?

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The terms ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’ are bandied about constantly, but nowhere more often than in politics, especially during elections.

But did you know that nearly five thousand years ago a Chinese philosopher proved that truly great leadership couldn’t exist in the political arena?

Not true, I hear many of you say.

OK, first, consider three generally acknowledged descriptions of true leadership by Lao Tse in the Tao Te Ching.

• Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.

• The superior leader gets things done with very little motion. He imparts instruction not through many words but through a few deeds. He keeps informed about everything but interferes hardly at all. He is a catalyst, and though things would not get done well if he weren’t there, when they succeed he takes no credit. And because he takes no credit, credit never leaves him.

• As for the best leaders,the people do not notice their existence.
  The next best,
  the people honor and praise.
  The next, the people fear;
  and the next, the people hate—
  When the best leader’s work is done,
  the people say, “We did it ourselves!”
  To lead the people, walk behind them.

Now name for me just one politician who comes even close to fitting these descriptions.

Sadly, the oxymoronic coupling of ‘leader’ and ‘politician’ usually is just plain moronic.

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Oh what fun. I do love a good scandal, preferable in business, because usually the players more interesting to me, but now and then a political one blows that tickles my fancy.

And it just happened.

Here’s the deal. The Interior Department spent two years and $5.3 million to discover that for four years “nearly a third of the Denver office staff — received gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies, including Chevron Corp., Shell, Hess Corp. and Denver-based Gary-Williams Energy Corp.”

That’s the Minerals Management Service office—the folks who collect royalties from the oil companies, in case you didn’t know.

The investigation found a “culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” where “employees frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and natural gas company representatives” who referred to some of the government workers as the “MMS Chicks.”

Whoo hoo, hot stuff. Oh, and don’t forget “the director of the royalty program had a consulting job on the side for a company that paid him $30,000 for marketing its services to various oil and gas companies.”

In a gross understatement, Inspector General Earl E. Devaney called it “a culture of ethical failure.” No kidding, makes you wonder what was taught in the ethics class all but one took.

But what really makes this hilariously ironic is the timing.

Because these are also the people who approve offshore drilling permits and some in “Congress are starting debates pressing to expand oil and gas development off America’s beaches while trying to stave off an election-year rush by Democrats to impose new taxes and royalties on the oil industry.”

So besides a juicy scandal we have a giant load of political…hay.

A post on Dave Brock’s blog led me to an article at IMD’s site called “An Unpopular Corporate Culture” and, as Dave said, it’s a must read for anyone who still thinks that corporate culture is some ephemeral concept with no real impact that consultants use to sell their services.

And a double-must for those who talk about culture’s importance, but don’t walk very well when it comes to creating a great corporate culture.

For those who prefer to put their faith in plans and strategy, hear the words of Dick Clark when he took over as CEO of Merck in 2005 and was asked about his strategy for restoring the pharmaceutical company to its former glory.

“His strategy, he said, was to put strategy second and focus on changing the company’s insular, academic culture.”The fact is, culture eats strategy for lunch,” Clark explained. “You can have a good strategy in place, but if you don’t have the culture and the enabling systems that allow you to successfully implement it… the culture of the organization will defeat the strategy.””

If you’re looking for a best practice corporate culture silver bullet forget it—one size doesn’t fit all.

“Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, describes that company’s top-down command and control culture of consistency and discipline as “the source of our competitive advantage,” and has made it a priority to reinforce it.

Meanwhile, Robert Iger and Steve Jobs, in their discussions about the acquisition of Pixar by Disney, have been concerned with avoiding an Exxon style command and control culture. Jobs says that, “Most of the time that Bob and I have spent talking about this hasn’t been about economics, it’s been about preserving the Pixar culture because we all know that’s the thing that’s going to determine the success here in the long run.””

It took Lou Gerstner a decade to remake IBM.

“The key lesson Gerstner learned in his time with IBM, as he later reflected, was the importance of culture.”Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization’s makeup and success—along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like… I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.””

The article is more than just additional proof for my favorite hobby horse.

The analysis of the role of employee complaints/negativity play in culture and the importance of what to keep when setting out to change a culture as opposed to what to jettison will give you new insight on your own company’s culture.

Post from Leadership Turn

I’m not a big fan of much in the modern leadership movement, especially the part that casts leaders as some kind of super person with MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and ethics above the rest of us. (Jim Stroup has written several brilliant posts on this subject.)

A Knowledge@Wharton Opinion comments that “Greed reflects a failure of leadership…” a statement with which I strongly disagree.

Greed reflects a person’s MAP, whether that person is head of a company or an internet scam artist.

One comment said “Greed has been and is a prime motivator of behavior on Wall Street.”

But is Wall Street greedy or is it that its ambiance and structure, i.e., culture, attracts those in whom greed is the driving force within their MAP?

Of course, greed in itself isn’t necessarily bad; harnessed and directed it’s a powerful motivator.

But rampant greed unleashes a drive that steamrolls over all other considerations in its drive to satiate itself—which it never does.

Greed desires to have, hold and control.

The mistake is to assume that greed is always about money. It’s not.

Greed is about many things—food, drink, clothes, politics, souls.

What are you greedy for?

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Make no mistake, this is a rant.

Last year I wrote Being “special” can ruin your children’s lives; yesterday at Small Business Boomers Jean ranted about Millennials’ atrocious writing skills, a subject I’ve bemoaned here multiple times—and not just Millennials!.

Today, at Leadership Turn, CandidProf, a regular on Thursday, talks about education now and what he foresees as a result of additional schools adopting rules similar to those enacted by the Dallas School System.

Previous complaining about the results of today’s education pales to insignificant when considering the long-term results of what Dallas has done.

Consider,

• “…the new rules require teachers to accept late work and prevent them from penalizing students for missed deadlines. Homework grades that would drag down a student’s overall average will be thrown out.
• District records state that the changes are part of a switch to “effort-based” grading and are designed to give students multiple opportunities to demonstrate that they’ve mastered class material.
• Requiring teachers to contact parents instead of awarding zeros is designed to increase home-school communications…
• Retests and deadline extensions are meant to motivate students to do better after initial failure.”

In other words there are no penalties for not doing the work and the tests don’t count since students can take the exact same test over and over until they get a good grade and their previous efforts are deleted from their records.

As to the over-worked/under-paid teachers, do you think that many will take the time to call every parent whose child’s homework isn’t turned in on time. 20+ kids in the class times an average 15 minute call talking to a parent who is more likely to heap abuse on the teacher while defending their perfect child.

It’s not worth it, so the kids will pass.

Pass on to college not only unable, but also unwilling to learn—forcing colleges to dumb down their classes, too.

According to Denise Collier, the district’s chief academic officer “The purpose behind it is to ensure fair and credible evaluation of learning – from grade to grade and school to school.”

Fair to whom?

The students who work hard or the ones who consider teachers lucky that their classroom is graced with their presence.

Fair to the teachers who get those students the following year, and the year after and the year after that…

Even previous graduates think it’s stupid, “Babying the rules so that [students] have almost unlimited chances to pass, that’s unreal,” said Joshua Perry, a 2007 graduate of Skyline High School. “In the real world, you don’t get a whole lot of chances or other ways to make something up.”

But it’s after college that you, my dear readers, come into play.

Because these are the same kids you will be forced to hire and rely on to move your company forward.

And if that doesn’t scare the hell out of you let me know what drugs you’re on and I’ll get some, because it sure scares it out of me.

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By CandidProf, our regular Thursday guest author. Read all of CandidProf here.

I have been teaching college students since 1984 (starting as a TA in graduate school).  I have been at my current institution since 1994.  In 24 years of dealing with students entering college, the quality of preparation for those students seems to fall every year.

I see parents and schools setting students up for failure in college, and this worries me.  Entering students do not know how to study.  They do not know how to do work outside of class.  They do not know how to use outside resources.  They have such a poor vocabulary that many words that are routinely used in technical fields go completely over their heads.  They have such poor math skills that nearly 75% of them are required to take remedial mathematics before they can even take their first college math class.  Worse, we now offer three math classes for college credit that are below the level of the lowest level math class (offered as a remedial class for no college credit) that was available when I began college.  And, students expect that they will pass a class by simply showing up for it.  How did this come to be?

Part of the problem is that parents and politicians put pressure on schools to make it easier on their little darlings. In a rather sad case, an unpopular math teacher was dismissed from a suburban high school where I live because parents complained that she was far too tough on her students.  She gave them way too much homework, and her tests were much tougher than the other math teachers’ tests, forcing her students to study for hours each week outside of class.  Interestingly, her students also scored the highest on state mandated standardized achievement tests as well as higher than other teachers’ students on the quantitative portion of the SAT and on the math AP exams.  Still, she was tough, so they fired her.

Recently, the Dallas school district implemented new policies aimed at preventing dropouts and making sure that students have a better education.  At least, that is what they said the new policies are for.  In my opinion, they are setting students up for failure.  The new policies require teachers to accept late work without penalizing students.

Does this teach the students that they have to meet deadlines?  When they get a job, will their boss allow them to complete jobs when they feel like it instead of meeting a deadline?  Homework can only be counted towards the students’ grades if it does not lower their grade.  So, there is no incentive to actually do homework.  There is no penalty for not doing it.  And teachers are not permitted to give a zero on any assignment or exam that is missed without personally speaking with parents and offering personal assistance to the students to assist them in doing the assignment.

Of course, teachers are not paid to provide assistance to students who don’t want to do the work, so how many are actually going to take time to do that?  They’ll just turn in something on the student’s behalf and get the whole matter behind them.

If students get a grade on an exam that they don’t like, they have the right to retake the exam and keep the higher grade.  A clarification to the rule that came out later indicates that the rule is meant to allow students to retake the same exam (with the same questions) as often as they wish and to keep the highest exam.

So, they can not study, take the exam, find out what questions are on it, go study them, retake the same exam (with the same questions), and then if they still didn’t get the answers right keep on taking the same exam.  And, according to district policy, no grade lower than a 50 is permitted.  After all, a failing grade harms the students self esteem.

This policy teaches students that they don’t need to work or study.  It teaches them that there is no penalty for not doing what you are assigned or for not doing it in an acceptable manner.  It teaches them that deadlines are optional.  It teaches them that learning is optional.  It teaches them that they have to take no responsibility at all for their learning. So, what are they learning that will help them when they get a job or go to college?  Basically, it is ingraining in them habits that doom them to failure.

There is so much wrong with this that I don’t know what to say.  It is defeating as an educator to see this sort of thing coming along.  Of course, some of these students may take my classes.  I maintain standards, so they will try to just show up and expect to pass the class.  They will fail.  It will make me look like a bad instructor to administrators and people outside the college who don’t know what is going on.

I can not teach an entire K – 12 curriculum and still cover college level material.  But if I lower my standards, then I am doing a disservice to those students who do want to learn.

If too many of us in college lower our standards, and I see college faculty all over the country lowering standards because that is the easy thing to do, then that will ultimately make a college degree as worthless as a high school diploma from one of these school districts that adopt these policies that are so counterproductive to learning.

It is no wonder that so many of the best and brightest teachers are leaving the profession.  It is simply too discouraging to know that what you are doing is pointless.

I guess, though, that holding your ground, even under outside pressure to do the wrong thing, is one of the things that separates a good leader from a bad one.

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