August 13, 2008
So the Olympics have got off to a positive start with an incredible opening ceremony and gold medals in the pool and the cycling for Team GB. But not all athletes have been as successful as we saw in the case of the 14 year old Tom Daley and Blake Aldridge, who came 8th out of 8 in the final of the 10M synchronised diving event on Monday.
However, it wasn’t until afterwards that the bullets started to fly as Aldridge (almost twice the age of Daley) told the press that he blamed his partner for their failure. He said:
“Unfortunately it’s a partnership; you both have to be on the top of your game. I wasn’t on top of my game but Tom was nowhere near the top of his.”
These kinds of comments are dangerous in what is essentially a team event and there are parallels with the world of work here, where blame cultures never, ever deliver good results. When blaming others for failures and looking for scapegoats becomes the norm in organisations it becomes toxic for those involved and for the business as a whole. Trust and responsibility breaks down, people resent those who should have taken responsibility and take this behaviour as a message or role model that gives them permission to do the same.
People often find it easier to blame ‘the system’ or the organisation and, by extension, its leaders as a group of people. However, this is no better than employees blaming each other and is just another substitute for taking responsibility and working together to solve the problems that arise as part of working life.
I hope the swimming coaches in Team GB have taken the time to sit Aldridge and Daley down and explain the value of sticking together to solve their problems, rather than trying to do so in the media. They should also be taking steps to ensure that this is not the start of a blame culture developing in Team GB, where individual athletes value their own success over that of the team. The Olympic silver medalist Leon Taylor, who acts as mentor to Tom Daley, had it right when he said,
“Synchronised diving is a partnership and the last thing you need to be doing is apportioning blame.”
He could have substituted the words ‘Synchronised diving’ for ‘Work’
No Comments » | 
Leadership, Uncategorized | Tagged: blame cultures, leaders, Olympics, responsibility, team, Team GB, Trust | 
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Posted by Cary Cooper
July 2, 2008
One again I have the pleasure of sharing my blog with my good friend and colleauge Gordon Tinline who is a Director at my University spin off company Robertson Cooper - I hope you find Gordon’s post of interest and as always I welcome your comments!
Understanding how to balance Control and Support is critical for managing pressure and maintaining a sense of well-being – indeed, both are acknowledged in the Health and Safety Executive’s Management Standards for Work-Related Stress. Research shows that when work demands are high the difference between the highest and the lowest levels of performance is largely predicted by perceptions of control and the extent to which employees feel supported.
However, it seems to me that there is quite a difficult balance to strike between these elements. This is because performance outcomes are influenced by multiple factors – including your line manager’s behaviour, your behaviour and the context you are operating in.
I’ve recently been working with a team of professional footballers at the very highest level of the game. They encounter a version of this issue as they try to maintain control over the direction of their careers when surrounded by agents and other advisers who present themselves as essential sources of support. The risk here is that an over-reliance on these sources of support turns the puppeteer into the puppet – the result is that situations where agents end up exerting a controlling influence over the player are commonplace. This is understandably frustrating for many football managers, who are keen to educate young players to be able to make good judgements about when to exert control and when to draw on their support network.
There are obvious parallels here with the workplace situation – we need to be given enough space and autonomy to do our best work, but at the same time we need to know that we are not alone and can call on our manager / organisation for support when we need it.
Over-reliance on support means losing control. The solution lies in understanding where you need to exert control and where you need to seek the advice of others with more knowledge of a particular area - or whom you trust as truly having your best interests at heart. You are at the centre of the axis and to get the balance right you have to make good judgements about what you need as you go through your career.
Gordon Tinline
No Comments » | Guest Blog Spots, Leadership, Management, Productivity, Stress, Well-being | Tagged: autonomy, control, Gordon Tinline, HSE, managing pressure, support, Well-being, work related stress | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
June 10, 2008
Well, according to The Great Place to Work Institute (http://www.greatplacetowork.com/), which named Google as America’s ‘Best Company to Work For’, it’s because its employees think that….
“..this company has created a culture that is high on trust, low on politics, great at sharing resources and sharing the wealth, and is full of meaning and significance.”
As one Google employee put it “The don’t be evil” mantra is more than skin deep; it is the core of the culture”.
So, the culture runs a lot deeper than the perks that ‘Googlers’ receive, but they can’t hurt either – just take a look at the selection below:
And more recently they have added:
• Annual on-site Health Fair offering various free testing services, including eye exams and cholesterol testing; plus free flu shots.
• Fuel Efficiency Vehicle Incentive Program encourages employees to purchase hybrid cars by providing a $5,000 financial incentive.
• Their new maternity leave policy gives new mothers, who have been Google employees for at least 1 year, 6 additional weeks of paid leave (a total of 18 weeks) to bond with their baby. New fathers can take up to 7 weeks of paid time off during the baby’s first year.
Now, I know you’ll be thinking that this is an impossible vision. That Google is one of the world’s richest companies and doesn’t have to worry about making a profit each month. And you’re right, it does highlight a gulf between most UK workers’ experiences and those of the Googlers; but it also shows us what’s possible. What if your business leaders applied the philosophy of Google’s leaders in your organisation? It wouldn’t be the same, but how might work feel different for you and your fellow employees?
No Comments » | Leadership, Well-being, reward and recognition | Tagged: Best Company To Work For, work culture, Perks & Benefits, business leaders | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
June 6, 2008
It’s been tragic this week to see arguably the most talented footballer of a generation, Paul Gascoigne, being admitted for treatment again after years of depression and alcoholism. One of the most thought provoking reactions to the news came from our most successful club manager of all time, Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson. He reminded us that he tried to sign Gascoigne for United in the late 1980s and, he believes, that things could have been very different had he done so. He was quoted as saying the following:
“We had a structure of players who could have helped him and I think it would have given him some discipline. Maybe it would have helped him, too.”
There are lessons here about the perils of following a career path driven by the quest for thrills and money, whatever the occupation. Indeed, it has been reported that it started badly when Sir Alex left the UK for his holiday that year believing he had signed his man, only to return to discover alledgedly that another club had tempted Gascoigne to sign for them by buying his mother a very large house. This would have been undeniably tempting for a young man, but is hardly the right platform for a stable, open and two-way psychological contract between player and club.
Ferguson’s point about structure and discipline is the important one though – we all want to tap into the raw talent and enthusiasm of younger employees, but it needs to be carefully nurtured if we are to generate sustained levels of high performance that serve the organisation over the long-term. Managers of all kinds have a responsibility for creating a climate where discipline and structure sits in the background, but is not constraining and does not stamp out energy and creativity.
There’s no doubt that younger workers can benefit from the parental / mentoring role that Ferguson plays for his team members and it can be that which makes the difference between a career defined by 2-3 explosive years followed by burn-out and twenty years of sustained brilliance. Returning to the football example – just look at two players from Gascoigne’s era who have just lifted the European Champion’s League trophy for the second time - Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs. The latter has also just broken Sir Bobby Charlton’s all time appearance record for Manchester United at the age of 34. That could have been Paul Gascoigne.
No Comments » | Leadership, Management, Well-being | Tagged: high performance, psychological contract, Talent | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
May 21, 2008
I’ve been struck recently by how widespread the application of Lean Management principles has become in the UK economy – both in the private and public sectors. Traditionally reserved for the manufacturing and retail sectors, Lean is a model for managing organisations in a way that focuses only on delivering exactly what the customer wants, when they want it. In other words, there is no slack or waste in the system and this allows businesses to keep costs to an absolute minimum. The current trend for using these principles pre-dates the credit crunch, but the shortage of cash in the economy makes them more relevant than ever.
However, these are not new ideas. In fact, the American Edwards Deming pioneered many of the techniques associated with the Lean approach when he exported this way of thinking (which became Total Quality Management and Just-In-Time manufacturing) to the Japanese car industry in the ‘50s - a time when US car manufacturers were on top of the world - rich, comfortable….. and complacent. This complacency came back to bite them over the next forty years as leaner foreign manufacturers gradually eroded their market share. And the effects of this abide to this day, as I’m reminded by the proliferation of Japanese cars I see every time I return to the States!!
The claims made for the efficiency gains that Lean processes can deliver sound impressive – with 50% improvements in performance and quality being perfectly achievable in relatively short timescales. But are we to believe that there are no negative consequences to such major change? Think about it for a minute - even if the costs vs. outputs balance better on paper after the changes are made, removing cost generally means removing people (often in significant numbers) as well as other resources. How can removing hundreds of people from an organisation not affect morale, motivation and employee engagement?
As a result of such changes, the workload of some people grows exponentially which, in turn, puts pressure on work relationships, communications and employees’ ability to maintain quality under pressure. For some this will change what work feels like forever in terms of the nature of the relationship they have with both their job and their employer. These people may feel that their employer has broken the psychological contract and the risk of the best people leaving is increased. All of this is against a new background of relative job insecurity that has accompanied new economic times and this is a particularly unusual feeling for public sector workers who in the past have been immune to such concerns. But these days, given the current climate, we can all justifiably ask ourselves the question “Will I be next?”
It’s here that the spotlight falls upon leadership and internal communication. Because I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with the Lean model, just that this kind of ‘all or nothing’ cost-based approach requires extremely high levels of leadership skill and ability if it is to be a success. Apart from managing the aftermath of the change process itself, this is fundamentally about culture change and the trick is not to lose all of the good aspects of the old culture while bringing in the new ways of thinking and acting. For example, I have talked before about discretionary effort - something which has been given willingly in many organisations where in the past there has been space and time to go beyond the current task. But one of the likely side-effects of the Lean approach is a new employee mindset that sees spending time thinking about the bigger issues as a waste of time in a world where it’s only important to focus on the essentials of the next deliverable. Of course, organisations can manage impressions to the outside world so that it looks like they are becoming leaner and fitter for purpose, but inside these things can quickly take on a life of their own and before you know it you have a completely new culture! This is fine if you want a completely new culture and weren’t fussy about what you lost from the old one, but most organisations have positive differentiators that are worth holding onto – cherishing even.
Radical change always has consequences. Lean is a very efficient way of finding the dead wood, but it can be a brutally blunt instrument so the changes it suggests should be thoroughly evaluated for sustainability and implemented wisely. Above all, it should only be considered if a leadership group is confident and talented enough to pull it off.
1 Comment | Engagement, Leadership, Management, Productivity, Talent | Tagged: culture change, employee engagement, Leadership, Lean, morale, Motivation, performance | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
May 13, 2008
This week, I’m really pleased to welcome another colleague and good friend to share my blog, Gordon Tinline. Gordon is a Director of Robertson Cooper and a Chartered Occupational Psychologist. Most of his work in the last four or five years has been helping organisations reduce stress and realise bottom-line benefits through well-being improvement. Increasingly this work focuses on the links between leadership behaviour and staff well-being. Over to you Gordon…
Middle management is so often the forgotten layer in organisations – the focus is always on high profile senior leaders and those subject to the pressures of the frontline – whether that be police officers on the street, Northern Rock bank tellers or nurses in Accident and Emergency. But in reality, being a middle manager is just as difficult – in many cases, more difficult.
My work on well-being as a Director of Cary’s university spin-off company, Robertson Cooper has shown that those in middle management positions tend to experience demands from both above and below. This is often compounded by a feeling of getting all the grief without the power to influence the root causes of many of the problems faced.
Picture the scene: Your boss is on your back and asking you to justify last month’s results… “Oh and by the way, can you also dig up some information to support the strategic change initiative I’m working on at the moment?” Piling on the pressure, your staff keep asking you why they are not being kept in the picture about all the recent changes that they perceive as being designed to make their lives difficult. You are seen by them as ‘the problem’ in that you clearly know what’s going on and are just not telling them. Of course, they can’t see your perspective - you don’t know much more than they do, and when you ask your boss he doesn’t seem to know either – but tells you to stay positive and keep morale high. So it’s back to square one!
So what are your options? A. Get promoted, but be careful what you wish for unless you are heading directly for the top tier!! B. Keep sympathising with your staff and tell them you know how they feel - that it’s all down to the organisation and your boss. But then don’t be surprised when they rate you as a weak manager in your next 360 appraisal and your relationship with your boss deteriorates. C. Chill out and try not to let it get to you – it’ll soon be the weekend and you can forget it all for at least half a day before you start preparing for the week ahead and checking your blackberry in case anything has occurred to your boss on his Sunday stroll.
Of course, none of these options are really going to get you anywhere on their own. The answers lie in building open and constructive relationships upwards, downwards and sideways. Get closer to your boss and find out what it is that’s driving his behaviour – what are his real goals and what makes him tick. Start to join this up with the needs of those you manage - make things more transparent for them. This is not always easy and you will need to devote time to it as a specific goal…….on top of your current workload.
But this is my point- the best middle managers are able to step back from the day-to-day tasks and multiple demands from above and below. They make time to consider the vital role that they play as an ‘operator’ of many of the organisation’s strategic aims and policies; that is, by taking a different perspective middle managers can start to see themselves as the lynchpin of delivery, as opposed to a pawn for more senior managers to move around on a whim.
And finally, option (c) above is not entirely facile - the middle manager needs to learn to switch off. Work pressures may be endless, but you have to believe that you are not failing (yourself or your employer) by not being able to work endlessly to keep everyone happy. If you fall into this trap the result will be a downward spiral of performance and health where no one wins.
Gordon Tinline
No Comments » | Leadership, Management, Well-being | Tagged: 360 appraisal, leaders, manage, middle management, middle managers, performance, pressure, staff | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
May 8, 2008
With the teacher’s strike, the Grangemouth oil refinery worker’s strike in Scotland and other groups considering industrial action, we have to ask the question: Are we going back to the bad old days of industrial relations we saw in the 1970s - the ‘them and us’ mentality that caused so much damage all those years ago?
It is certainly the case that in difficult financial times, with jobs insecure, pension funds under pressure and financial markets in turmoil relations between management and employees often get strained. On the other hand, if employers engage with their staff, treat them with respect and communicate with them accurately and honestly about what’s happening the consequences can be managed more easily.
Senior management must be proactive about trying to empathise with the perspectives of their employees - who at times, like these, feel less secure about their jobs and more worried about their own personal financial situation. They therefore rely on the skills of their manager and other organisational leaders to provide accurate information about the viability of the organisation and future plans so they can make good decisions to safeguard themselves and their families. Where possible, employers should be making every effort to involve staff in decision making on these important issues – this effort will be repaid tenfold when things settle down and the workforce appreciate that they were dealt with fairly. Ultimately, engaging staff in any process of change helps to ensure survival now and growth in the future.
Taking a step back, I think there are signs that the current unrest is not so much to do with salary issues, but more an underlying concern about the openness of management and their lack of engagement with and trust of their employees. There are also signs that the shear amount of work that certain professions are being asked to do is taking its toll and is not in line with the rewards offered – and that’s rewards in all their forms, not just pay. For example, earlier this month figures from The National Association of Head Teachers showed that more than a thousand Head Teachers and Deputies are leaving the profession early every year because of work pressures.
General Secretary Mick Brookes blamed a long-hours culture which saw nearly 44% of his members working 60-hour weeks. This is reflective of a general sea change in public attitudes which indicates that people have started to think that ‘enough is enough’, and that society will have to change. Undoubtedly, it’s going to take some strong leadership and a reappraisal of our values to get us out of an ever frenetic life style, so I’ll leave you with a question even bigger than the one I started with:
Where is the drive for that change going to come from?
1 Comment | Engagement, Leadership, Management, Personal Resilience | Tagged: Engagement, leaders, Leadership, engage staff, work pressure | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
April 18, 2008
The tide seems to be turning for Gordon Brown - Labour are way down in the polls and every other headline seems to voice or imply some negative view of him and/or his leadership. But I wonder how this makes him feel?
We all need to feel valued and appreciated in our roles - when we’re not it starts to affect our motivation, engagement and feelings of self-worth. Whatever you think of Gordon Brown you can’t fault him for effort - he probably works in excess of 90 hours a week and (in his own way) has the best interests of the country at heart. But however focused and determined he is it can be demoralising to work this hard and still constantly receive negative feedback.
We don’t know what those close to him are saying to bolster his confidence or exactly how he feels right now, but the Prime Minister wouldn’t be human if he didn’t feel in some way depleted after the events of the last two weeks.
My university spin-off company Robertson Cooper hosts a Business Well-Being Network which brings members together to communicate about well-being issues in the workplace. A theme that comes up time and time again is that organisations have to try to find ways to ensure that their employees feel valued, appreciated and involved. First, the business and its leaders have to create the right environment for this to happen. Then, Line Managers have to play their role by providing clear direction and feedback to employees (both positive and negative) on a day-to-day basis.
Of course, Mr Brown is unfortunate because his ‘organisation’ doesn’t work that way. He doesn’t have a boss - unless you count the Queen, and I doubt she is providing too much in the way of structured feedback on his behaviour! It can be lonely at the top and the people there need to be courageous when times are tough and Mr Brown will certainly need bucket loads of courage and support in the coming months.
No Comments » | Engagement, Leadership, Personal Resilience, Well-being | Tagged: Well-being, Engagement, motivated, Leadership | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
April 17, 2008
Flexible working is not only important for those at the start and in the middle of their careers – it matters just as much for our most senior workers. There inevitably comes a time when senior leaders actively seek more flexibility because they want to start to enjoy the fruits of their labours - but this is not to say that they don’t still have a lot to offer the business. I can really empathise with this perspective and I’m fortunate enough to have employers who provide plenty of opportunities for academics to work flexibly: The benefit for them is that we stay productive and feel motivated to perform our jobs to the best of our abilities; and can do it in different contexts.
But this is not true for all senior leaders – as often they feel (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly) that the business cannot function without their full attention. This is exacerbated where there isn’t any sign of a well-developed succession plan that delivers the next generation of leaders to the organisation. In this situation, the pressure is piled on a small number of senior leaders with no end in sight - in some cases cutting potentially impressive careers short.
However, where succession planning is well-developed, all sorts of innovative options are available. For example, outgoing CEOs can spend a number of months / years actively mentoring potential successors, and can generally get much more closely involved in inspiring and developing high potential employees.
This kind of behaviour hints at a concept known as ‘Eldership’. Eldership has its roots in African and Asian tribal culture where former leaders pass over into a council of Elders at a certain point in their lives. The role of the Elder is to be a challenging sounding board for the current leadership. So each tribe - itself an organisation - has an impartial group of people who they know only have the best interests of the group in mind. Their role is to draw on their individual, collective and cultural experience to ‘quality assure’ the decisions of the current leaders.
To me this sounds like something that could work well in many organisations I know - both public and private. Of course, some might say that this is the role of Non-Executive Directors, but this is not always the case because, unlike Elders, Non-Execs could be younger but have specific professional skills (i.e. financial accounting, legal) and they may have multiple roles in many different companies. No matter how well-meaning and impartial the individuals concerned, they’re really just acting as consultants.
The closest equivalent to Elders in the western world are experienced statesmen such as Nelson Mandela, Kofi Anan and Jimmy Carter. These are people who have been there and have done it, and who have now crossed a line from being full-time politicians to acting as trusted advisors to the world. In the case of these people, I think the vast majority of us believe that they have the world’s best interests at heart.
Commercial organisations are not tribes, but they do share plenty of characteristics with these most ancient of communities which evolved with the narrow goal of survival. It may be too idealistic to expect senior executives to continue working for the good of the business ‘gratis’ into their dotage, but there are aspects of the concept of Eldership that most organisations could fairly easily adopt anfld integrate with their succession plan for the top level. This is all part of the recipe for designing a sustainable, successful organisation - and of course, providing extra flexibility in the latter stages of a career means the business is looking after those who spend a large part of their careers looking after the rest of the workforce – which, when you think about it, is only fair.
1 Comment | Leadership, Management, Productivity, Talent | Tagged: CEO, Challenge, Eldership, Flexible Working, Non-Executive Directors, pressure, Senior Leaders | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
April 11, 2008
“The war for talent” is an established phrase for summing up the challenge that all organisations face in terms of keeping and securing the best people. Many businesses, particularly bigger ones, have established programmes and processes for finding and developing talent, but the key relationship is always the one with the direct line manager.
Griffeth, Hom and Gaertner (2000) looked at a large number of staff retention studies and aggregated results across them to look for the trends. One of the strongest predictors of whether a person would leave was the quality of exchanges between employees and their boss - stronger than gender, ethnic origin and intelligence. Indeed, the critical role of the line manager in employee retention arises countless times in the literature and it is also frequently cited as a reason for quitting by employees after departure.
So this is where it can all go wrong…..or right. When a manager has genuine concern coupled with the motivation to develop talent and to inspire staff to do their best work you get a fantastic coming together of organisational processes and individual leadership talent that enables employees to realise their full potential.
But the other side of this is when a manager sees a talented team member and interprets it as a ‘let-off’ for him/her. When this happens, and it happens more than you might think, the employee’s talent is his/her worst enemy because it has convinced their manager that he/she is capable of delivering what’s required with minimal intervention. And this can work for both parties…..for a short time. The manager is free to get on with ‘real work’ and the talented team member is rewarded by being given autonomy to get on with his/her work independently. This can feel like a privilege in the early stages of a career, but it’s really an illusion because managing and developing talent is real work - more strategically important than many of the administrative tasks that most managers undertake every day.
So the situation described above is simply not sustainable - after a certain amount of time talented people get bored of doing the same work to a predictably high standard. They start to wonder ‘What’s next?’ They need to be constantly challenged if you are to see their potential and, just as importantly, if they are to stick around.
Then there’s the wider organisational perspective: It doesn’t matter how good the talent management programme is - if the operators of the system (the managers) aren’t engaged it will not deliver. Imagine a business with 200 managers each managing 10 staff- if half of these behave in the manner I’ve just described you have a pattern that will undermine the development of the talent pool that has been earmarked as the future of the organisation.
Finding talented people is no easy task – it’s time consuming and expensive - so it’s nothing short of criminal to use people’s talent as an excuse not to manage and nurture their potential. The best businesses have a constant eye to this potential ‘derailer’ of their talent programmes.
1 Comment | Leadership, Management, Talent | Tagged: developing talent, development, Leadership, staff retention, Talent, talent management programme, war for talent | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
