HR Forum Offers Tips for Smooth Sailing

Anchored off the coast of Atlantic City, N.J., the Norwegian Dawn cruise liner provided the backdrop for the ninth annual Human Resources Forum, a three-day conference dedicated to best practices in human resources and training. Hosted by Richmond Events, a London-based company that organizes cruise-based business forums, the Dawn set sail from New York Harbor last month.

Winds of change--on board and at work

Changing tides happen both at sea and in companies, but management consultant and author Ray Bender, Ph.D., has some suggestions for handling the latter.

First off, make sure the sponsor of your change initiative is committed enough to connect his or her name and reputation to the project. "If you can't name the sponsor, it'll fail," he says. And, make sure your sponsor is willing to stick with it, even after company boats start rocking. "As a change agent, you can't work hard enough if your sponsor has lost interest."

Even if the horizon looks clear, rest assured change will come, Bender says. One method to getting employees to roll more gracefully with the tide is giving them structured time to vent emotions associated with the change, or time-limited "pity parties," as Bender referred to them. "You want to give people a chance to check out publicly," he says. "If you don't, then feelings are going to simmer underneath, and you're not going to know what's wrong." But, be sure to set a time expiry to the cathartic ramblings. Bender says when he's used this approach, it's understood that after the structured venting period is over, the complaining will be as well.

The motivation for getting change right is substantial, he says, with consequences including damaged morale and loss of confidence in leadership.

Running a tight ship

It's essential that organizations make sure their internal processes match their goals. Getting processes, such as IT, in line with your company's objectives, paves the way for innovation, says Michael Schrage, co-director of Cambridge, Mass.-based multimedia and technology research institute MIT Media Lab, and one of the conference's keynote speakers.

"Is process the sum of choices made to make the system work and the pain end?" Schrage asked his audience. "Not a bad thing, but not particularly well designed." He says to ask yourself whether your company uses the concept of process as an organizing principle. In the area of IT, for example, he says to think about whether employees have been given computer applications that are such a strain they end up driving the way things are done, or whether, as it should be, the computer applications are designed around workers' end goals.

Since thinking about how technology can lend itself to creativity can sometimes take companies into abstract territory, a good exercise to illuminate the case is to substitute the word "information" for "process," Schrage says. "Instead of saying, 'Information is at the heart of what we do," say, "Process is at the heart of what we do.' " In other words, focus on the utilization and application of information because that's where innovation comes from.

If enough of that creativity just isn't flowing, you can find clues to figuring out why by examining the nature of resistance to internal ideas. "Whatever follows, 'We can't do that because [x]' is your process information culture," he says, illustrated by comments such as " 'We'd love to do it, but our computer systems don't have the capacity,' or, 'That would be great, but we can't afford it.' '' The culture of how your organization handles process can be defined by what's holding innovation back.

Once you've designed a process that accommodates your employee's needs, the next step is "incentivizing" workers to come up with the ideas the old system was keeping them from realizing. "For all the discussion of good design, you learn the most by application," Schrage says. "You learn the most in the testing phase."

For instance, he suggests, you could give five employees five days to submit five fresh ideas, which can't cost more than $5,000 or take longer than five weeks, but will result in at least $500,000 in growth or savings. Half may be a waste of time, and of the remaining 15, seven or eight may be OK, but without exception, he says, there will be at least a few that "people at the highest level of the company will say are kind of interesting."



Loose teams sink ships
"The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" was on the mind of keynoter Patrick Lencioni, founder and president of Lafayette, Calif.-based management consultancy The Table Group. It's not enough for a company to be smart these days, he warns. In addition to financial savvy and acumen about the market it's selling to, a thriving organization is healthy. "A lot of organizations are smart but things like politics get in the way," he notes. Fit companies, he explains, are those with "minimal politics, minimal confusion, high morale, high productivity and low turnover." That ideal state can't be attained through any kind of automatic corrective reflex, but he says there are pointers to getting there.

"Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team," Lencioni emphasizes. And that's no "touchy feely" nonsense, he clarifies. "I'm talking about an organization that can get more done in less time." Once cohesiveness has been built, or you're on the path to getting there, be sure to repeat the message over and over—and perhaps over again—to workers. Research shows, he says, that employees have to hear something seven times before truly believing it. Lencioni jokes that management should be communicating so much with staff that workers should be able to do a good impression of them with no problem.

After you have ensured that cohesiveness has been cemented at the top and have communicated its importance throughout the organization, start encouraging a corporate culture that emphasizes teamwork. If you don't take the time to do so, a default corporate culture that is possibly dysfunctional will emerge. For instance, there may be an absence of trust where team members don't feel they can talk honestly because they don't feel comfortable being emotionally vulnerable. "If only one person on your team is not willing to get to that place of vulnerability, it spreads like a disease," Lencioni says.

There's no better way to establish trust than through a top-down approach, he says. The CEO has to show that he or she is willing to "go first" in sharing vulnerability. "People will walk through walls of fire for a genuinely vulnerable leader." Don't worry about the arguing that may ensue. "Great companies argue," Lencioni says. "Great teams hash it out."

Lencioni also says to watch for signs of wavering commitment levels and the avoidance of accountability. To encourage commitment, he recommends encouraging employees to feel connected to company decisions, explaining that if employees feel their ideas have been given a fair hearing, they'll be more likely to accept change—even when they don't necessarily agree with it. When it comes to encouraging employees to hold one another accountable, there may be some use for the oft-derided "peer pressure." Lencioni says it's great in the office. "Peer pressure is your best friend in an organization," he says. "The best motivator in an organization is the fear of letting down a team member."


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