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Do not mistake your Pedagogy for your Andragogy

Posted on | February 4, 2010 | No Comments

Andragogy is not only a word you can throw into conversations to impress and confuse your friends, it is a concept that all trainers should know about. Andragogy describes the adult learning process versus pedagogy, which describes how children learn—the two processes are quite different. Those of us responsible for training adults need to understand these differences.

Andragogy tells us that adults generally develop a deep seated need to be self-directed. Thus, when adults find themselves in a situation in which they are not allowed to be self-directing, they tend to be resentful and resistant. For trainers this translates as:

1. Adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their own instruction.
2. Experience (including mistakes) provides the basis for learning activities.
3. Adults are most interested in learning topics that have immediate relevance to their job or personal life.
4. Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented.

The bottom line—trainers need to adopt a facilitative style that involves people in their own learning and not think of themselves as simply purveyors of training content.

Employee Discretion – Another Way of Looking at Empowerment

Posted on | February 2, 2010 | No Comments

There is a lot of talk these days about empowering employees to get the job done. To “empower” someone is to give or delegate power or authority to them—as in “She authorized her assistant to sign the papers”.

In the UK they tend to use the term “discretion” rather than “empowerment”. Discretion relates to individual judgment and the ability to make responsible decisions. About forty years ago Eliott Jaques came up with the concept of the Times Span of Discretion (TSD) as a way of measuring the judgment that an employee is expected to demonstrate in a particular position.

TSD is not a type or amount of discretion; it is the length of the longest task assigned to a role (e.g. 1 day, 1 month, 1 year…). For example, a manager may allow an employee a TSD of one month—in other words the employee has the discretion to make judgments about what needs to be done on tasks that last up to one month without checking in with the boss. TSD is not a metric that is used much in the US but can be a useful way of putting some definition around “empowerment” and just might be a practical way of making “empowerment” a reality in some organizations.

Are Hierarchies Obsolete in Today’s Dynamic Business World?

Posted on | January 25, 2010 | No Comments

Several hundred large organizations around the world have applied an approach to organizing themselves called “Requisite Organization Theory”. This includes over 20 of Business Week’s “Most Admired U.S. Companies”. And yet you have probably never heard of it? This is not surprising as Requisite Organization Theory is not generally taught in US business schools and it is somewhat counter cultural in the current “flat is good” organizational design culture.

Requisite Organization Theory was developed over forty years ago by Eliott Jaques, and it has been refined and improved ever since. Jaques discovered through his extensive research that people organize themselves naturally into hierarchical layers to get work done. The key to this layering was problem-solving capability. Each higher layer must be able to solve the work problems the layer below cannot solve. Each higher layer also must be able to design work and goals that the next lower stratum can accomplish.

Jaques found he could measure this capability by the time-spans of the assigned tasks. He identified eight levels (he called them strata) with the following problem solving time horizons:

• Level 8 - 50 to 100 years
• Level 7 - 20 to 50 years
• Level 6 -10 years to 20 years
• Level 5 - years to 10 years
• Level 4 - 2 years to 5 years
• Level 3 - I year to 2 years
• Level 2 - 3 months to 12 months
• Level 1 - 1 day to 3 months

The role of CEO of a Fortune 100 company, for example, would be at Level 7 and only a handful of the largest organizations in the world would require Level 8. In his interviews with employees Jaques found they sought out a problem solver at the next higher level of complexity when they were stumped at work. It was the employees who defined the next higher stratum of problem solving. These levels were boundaries between the time-horizons of the employees and their “real” managers. Jaques did not set these boundaries—he discovered them from the way people behaved when they needed help.

Using Jaques approach to organizational design he claimed that we can design and build an organization structure using layers in which:

• People are clear about the capabilities they need to do the job at the assigned level and they know the decision making discretion they have in their jobs. This reduces interpersonal strife and conflict. For example, employees report to a “real manager” at the next level who can solve their problems and not a supervisor with limited power and knowledge.
• Work and goals are clear at each level thus increasing effectiveness, and
• Work problems are solved quickly thus increasing efficiency.

Requisite Organization Theory also covers issues such as compensation, promotions and succession planning through the levels. This approach to organizational design has been adopted much more widely in Europe, Australia, and Canada than in the USA. So perhaps the concept of organizational hierarchies is not dead but waiting in the wings for the popularity pendulum to swing away from flat organizations (the pendulum always swings back). Who knows, maybe in the future we will see a more widespread adoption of Jaques empirically based approach to organizational design here in the US.

Trust: The Foundation for High Performing Teams

Posted on | January 20, 2010 | No Comments

Trust is the foundation of great teamwork and a prerequisite for developing high performing teams. Trust is the confidence among team members that:

• Their team colleague’s intentions are good—even when they disagree
• There is no reason to be protective or careful in what they say or do in the team setting
• They are comfortable being vulnerable with one another

If you spot team members engaging in the following behaviors you can probably bet that trust is low:

• Team members conceal mistakes and weaknesses
• They hesitate to ask for help
• They do not provide constructive feedback to each other
• They jump to conclusions about the motives of others
• They do not tap into other’s skills
• They hold grudges

The solution: address the root causes of low-trust through conducting meaningful team building sessions run by the team leader or a capable external facilitator. Left unchecked, low-trust teams will under perform, waste resources, and fail to deliver.

Talent Management Lessons from American Idol

Posted on | January 19, 2010 | No Comments

Well here we are again—a new season of American Idol (sans Paula Abdul) and the hordes of hopefuls are lining up for hours—most with no hope of getting to Hollywood. Based on a very unscientific analysis I have developed the following hypotheses regarding American Idol as it applies to Talent Management:

1. You need to screen a lot of people before finding someone with talent.
2. Few candidates have the insight to accurately assess their own level of talent.
3. People who progress through the show are personable, self-aware, technically competent, and highly motivated.

Maybe there are a few lessons that can be learned from American Idol that can be applied to your organization’s talent management process:

• Do you have a Simon Cowell who will speak bluntly when assessing candidates even if it goes against the grain? This can be invaluable in avoiding group think about candidates who have a lot of “form” but little “function”.
• Is there a Ryan Seacrest who keeps the succession planning process moving smoothly and gets thing done?
• Is there a diversity of perspectives among the judges so that talent does not slip through the net?

Could this be a case of art imitating organizational life?

keep looking »

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