With a Little Help From My Friends

The wonderful thing about the social web is how easy it is to make new acquaintances into friends. Often, all it takes is just helping each other. So that's how this guest blog happened. I met Erin Osterhaus in the usual online manner. She had a need for opinions, and I'm never short of them. In this case she was asking for predictions, which I was only too happy to offer. And here she is, returning the favor with a guest blog:

The HR Department of 2020: 3 Bold Predictions

The human resources department will disappear in a matter of years. All HR functions will be taken over by software or outsourced. At least that’s what some are saying.

They’re wrong.

Yes, software is changing how HR operates. But instead of spelling the the demise of the human resources function, experts predict these changes will allow HR professionals to grow. Software Advice interviewed industry analysts and HR practitioners to better understand what will change and why, as well as find out how HR professionals can prepare.

Prediction 1: In-house HR will downsize while outsourcing will increase.

While this prediction may seem somewhat, well, predictable, the reasons experts give for the change might surprise you.

Brian Sommer, an industry analyst and the founder of TechVentive, explains that new technologies--many of which allow for employees to participate directly in HR processes through self-service systems--will drive the shift to leaner in-house HR departments. As he says, “Many businesses are going to get a lot of capability done by better technology, more self-service and the employee doing a lot on their own.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Janice Presser, CEO of The Gabriel Institute, predicts many transaction-heavy HR jobs will be outsourced entirely to agencies or specialists, saying, “Entry-level HR jobs, as they currently exist, will all but disappear as transactional tasks are consigned to outsourced services.”

However, despite these trends the internal HR function will survive. Chip Luman, the COO of HireVue, explains that, “Given the ongoing regulatory environment, the need to pay, provide benefits, manage employee relations issues, and process information will go on.”

Prediction 2: Strategic thinking will become in-house HR’s new core competence.

The HR department that remains will need to reposition itself as a strategic partner within the business. In fact, SHRM’s 2002 report, The Future of the HR Profession predicted the trend toward leaner, strategy-focused HR departments 11 years ago.

More recently, an Economist Intelligence Unit report highlighted the need for C-level management to partner with HR departments as a prerequisite to drive growth. The experts agree, and most emphasized HR’s need to increase its strategic value to the business--or else. Dr. Presser says, “This includes the ability to make accurate projections based on understanding the goals of the business and using metrics that describe more than lagging indicators, such as how long it takes to fill a job or the per-employee training spend.”

This strategy role cannot be outsourced. As Dr. Presser says, “Strategic planning requires in-house expertise.”

Prediction 3: Managing a remote workforce will be the new norm.

Companies like Yahoo and Best Buy recently ended their remote work programs. These companies are the exception, not the norm. Undoubtedly, HR will have to tackle the challenge of managing a growing remote workforce. Luman points out that companies will need “to leverage employees where and when they are most productive and impactful”--even if that means they’re halfway around the world.

But managing employees from afar isn’t a skill you can pick up on the fly. Dr. Presser cautions that, “The trend toward remote workers is a growing challenge to managers who are not effective in managing people at a distance.”

To help HR departments and line managers adjust, automation will play a large part in successful remote management. Wim de Smet, CEO of Exaserv, predicts that “New technologies will be used to analyze the work production instead of the working time. Results will become more important and business will expect HR to be producing more result-driven performance analysis.”

Preparing for 2020

With so many changes on the horizon, what can current HR professionals begin doing now to prepare? The experts endorse three key tactics: keep learning, be active in your field, and take risks.

“Get ahead of the curve,” Dr. Presser advises. “Realize that many of today’s ‘best practices’ evolved under very different business conditions, and may well become obsolete within this decade. Learn everything you can about your industry, your competitors, and pending legislation that affects your business operations. Most of all, define yourself as a businessperson and act accordingly.”

Finally, Luman encourages HR professionals to find their own voice and be active. As he says, “Network inside and outside of your field. Blog, communicate, read and help others achieve success. If you are not outside of your comfort zone, you are stagnating.”

Erin Osterhaus is the Managing Editor for Software Advice’s HR blog, The New Talent Times. She focuses on the HR market, offering advice to industry professionals on the best recruiting, talent management, and leadership techniques. For the full article, click here.

Thanks, Erin!

The Power of Parallax

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A week or so ago, I shared a rather dense article about sub-nuclear physics with Jack (TGI’s co-founder, Dr. Jack Gerber), and then we connected on Skype. I said, you know, this is what we were talking about fifteen years ago. He agreed, saying he’d always meant to write it up. (We work that way. He’s a Curator of the most brilliant sort, and he knows how to pull information together in exactly the right way. Then I inject the vision and launch it into the future.

The following day, via email, he mentioned new thoughts on the subject, and wanted to speak with me before he started writing. (This is a great thing about having such a seasoned Curator on the team. He can access huge amounts of knowledge, so he checks to be sure that he is delivering the specific bits you asked for.) I was really eager to hear him because I’d had a few new thoughts myself.

We often speak by phone as I’m walking home at the end of the office day (or the beginning of my ‘night shift’ – take your choice.) This time, Jack jumped on the topic so suddenly that I was momentarily confused. I had been expecting a ‘next step’ in our prior conversation, but he seemed to be on completely unrelated path. Or was I just not thinking straight?

Nothing is quite as scary as thinking you’re not thinking straight. But never one to panic, I stopped making judgments and just listened a little harder. Soon I realized that although we were still on the subject of the article, we had each come away from it with a totally different ‘take’ on why it was important and relevant to our work!

There are three ways that people respond to this sort of disjoint. First, they may become annoyed, or even angry. Second, they may get curious and just ask. Third, they may get connected at a higher level. It isn’t that one way is inherently better or worse. They’re just different – and here’s what can learn from this:

If you get annoyed, that’s just evidence that you don’t like your vision tampered with. The upside is you hold your own in a disagreement. The downside might be that you miss a lot of value coming from your ‘opponent.’

If you get curious and wonder where the other person is coming from, make sure that after you ask the question you wait around for their answer. You can benefit a lot that way, even if what you get isn’t what you thought you wanted to know.

While it sounds like getting connected should be the right answer, it isn’t always. If you are ‘going along to get along’, it deprives you of having your voice, and also deprives the other person of hearing it. Connecting in parallax is much more effective.

Here’s what I mean by connecting in parallax. A person’s two eyes work together in seeing the world from slightly different points of view, and this enables the brain to perceive depth by putting the two views together. Depth perception doesn’t exist before the two views merge into the third collective view.

So how do you apply this to your work?

First, remember to simply listen. And to listen simply. That means listening without the distractions of your environment, your electronics, and your own thoughts.

Then try to give your colleague total respect by closing your own ‘eye’ and viewing the interaction completely and solely through theirs. The value of this exercise can be enhanced when you understand their Role and how to respect it. With some practice and care, you will be able to ‘become them’ for a time.

Finally, take time to appreciate their contribution before modifying it with your own. It will help you remember why you listened to them in the first place.

If you are curious about what happened next with Jack and me, I’ll tell you. We discovered that he had made one discovery, and I had made another. But most importantly, through the power of parallax, both of them became ours.

Three Rules for Change Management

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It doesn’t matter whether you’re driving an innovation through a multinational company, or just trying to lose ten pounds. I learned them well, after many missteps. Rules are rules. Here they are:

1. It doesn’t have to all be done at once. There is a writing standard I followed a long time ago (when almost all I did was write books) of doing five new pages a day. What I learned was that doesn’t add up to 35 pages a week or even 25 so you may as well be realistic and double your overly optimistic time schedule. (This particularly applies to losing weight.) There are good reasons for not rushing things.
2. It will go better if you don’t try to control it. A book, like many other projects, needs to develop a personality of its own. It has your voice, but it’s an individual. Actually, this need it will have to ‘breathe’ is going to be responsible for some of that extra time you’ll need (from the first rule). If the change involves other people, especially employees, your kids, your spouse or friends, this goes double. And what makes you think it would be better if you did control everything?
3. The more people involved, as long as they are truly invested in the outcome, the better the results. My current book is, of course, a team effort. My earlier books were too, but the team was formed to get the book out, not before. Investment takes time – and trust, respect and faith. If you have that, whatever the change you are trying to make, it will be more likely to succeed.

2013: The Year of the 'Who'

The turning of the new year is the traditional time for prognosticators to weigh in on what's ahead. I've been known to do a bit of this myself, but this year there will be no predictions about the stars - movie, music, or celestial - although I do have one about sports. Most, however, are about the future of work.

My first prediction: A Person is a 'Who', Not a 'What': Teamability and the Future of Work will be published in 2013. (There's some hedging here, since the first draft is complete, and Mark's been Vision Forming it at an ever-increasing pace.)

Here are the rest:

• The valuation of teams and 'teaming' will supersede the longstanding focus on talents, skills, experience, and 'leadership' because it is where people come together that true value creation happens.
• There will be a new emphasis on promoting from within - but by casting a much wider net for potential successors, creating new opportunities for non-traditional paths to advancement.
• Role-fit and Team-fit will become essential elements in the forefront of consulting for workforce planning, team selection, and management practice, as people begin to realize that both engagement and retention depend on them.
• Sales will no longer be looked at as just one kind of job category, because people will recognize the profound differences required to 'team' with different kinds of customers, for different products, with different sales cycles, and different value propositions.
• Applied research in the workplace will begin to produce new standards for Role Distribution and Coherence Ratios in vertical markets and functional-areas of business.
• 'Role-based Attraction' will emerge in job-sourcing, as phrasing designed to appeal to the desired Roles will find its way into job requisitions and postings. Cost- and Time-to-Hire will decline, and Quality of Hire will improve because of this.
• If you know me, you know I often say leadership is a team sport. (It's just about the only sport I'm tall enough to play!) But as professional sports teams catch on to the power of Teamability, they will be able to calibrate their team synergy for peak performance and build winning team cultures to replace an unreliable 'star system'.

Finally, as we stop pretending that a resume is a true reflection of a person's worth, we will begin to honor the dignity of all those who contribute to the achievement of business value.

In my view of the future of work, people will be treated as 'Who's, not 'What's. It will be a future in which teaming technology enables more and more people to find and fulfill their true mission in life.

Is there anything more likely to produce Peace on Earth and goodwill to all? May you join us in that dream for the coming year and beyond!

The Project Manager Project, Part 2

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Last month I started my Project Manager Project, intending to answer the questions Project Managers have asked about teams, teaming, and Teamability. Here’s the second part, with thanks to the many PMs around the globe who’ve asked these excellent questions during Teamability webinars.

This one is on a difficult subject: dealing with bullies. And it’s not just for PMs. Here’s the question:

We have one team player that is a bully, and our team is very small. We don't want to work with him so how do the rest of us deal with him?

Bullying behavior is often rooted in fear. People who bully others are dealing with their fear in ways that may make them feel better, but are (at minimum) ineffective, and (more likely) damaging to team performance. The more stress there is in the environment, the worse this kind of behavior can get. Consequently, arranging an occasional ‘stress break’ for the team is a valuable practice, but try to include the bully. Even just a shared laugh is a great stress breaker – which is why so many project teams enjoy ‘gallows’ humor! Once you get the bully laughing, bullying tends to subside, at least for a little while. 

Here’s another little trick. Take note of the degree of ‘friendliness’ the bully is exhibiting. When you are dealing with him or her, don’t be even one little bit friendlier than that. (Don't be nasty; just go ‘cool/neutral'. If you are naturally very friendly and often smiling, this may be very hard for you!) At the same time, pretend you have very little power (which, paradoxically, is just about the most powerful thing you can do in this situation!) and tell him or her you have no answers. When the bully tries to tell you what to do, ask for more, and more, and more details. Sooner or later, he or she will run out of answers and probably tell you to go figure it out yourself.  Which is really what you want, isn’t it?

The key to ‘bully-handling’ is the avoidance of any kind of a power struggle. If you can do this, while practicing Role-respect  and keeping the bully focused on job responsibilities with the right Role-fit, the bully’s fear will subside and the general tone of his/her behavior will improve, at least for as long as the stress level remains relatively low.

This same strategy is also effective with 'know-it-all’ people, and with those who seem to want everyone else to be dependent on them.

A final note: sometimes the best you can do is just not make it worse. If you do that, please congratulate yourself!

Disaster Preparedness, Teamability Style

It's so nice to have a team to remind you of what's really important!

Philadelphia is in the middle of a rare weather event for us: an approaching hurricane. But when your team includes people who have experience dealing with things you don't, at least you have someone to turn to that you can trust to come through for you.

So as we look toward the coming week, which could include enough national disruption to derail some attendees at our intensive, three-day weekend, advanced course in Teamability, we were lucky enough to get these important tips from Carolyn DeWitt, a partner in Coherent Counsel, LLC, who advises CEOs on disaster planning, among other services.

1. The loss of power is what really fouls things up the most. If you have multiple devices, charge them all so you can extend your personal 'connection life' by transitioning from one to the other as they lose power. 
2. Set up a communication list on email and text for all the people who will need to know what's going on. That starts with your team but it also includes key contacts, vendors, customers, and if you are planning any events, attendees.  
3. You will have a point where you need to make a go/no-go decision, for instance on a meeting or conference. You can send a text to tell people to check their email for your more detailed message. Remember: not all people have access or look at their email throughout the day if they are out on business or traveling, but the text will tell them you have important news/updates.
4. Cancelling flights, hotels etc becomes an iffy things for conference attendees during “acts of god”.  Some will honor the 24 hour advance cancel only, some will make smarter choices and allow non penalty cancels. The sooner you can allow attendees to cancel without penalty obviously the better. Remember: if attendees are in an affected area, they may not have power to GET your message, as the impacts spread.  
5. If you DO have power, the other thing that may shut down your communication is overburden of circuits and cell towers, both land and air. Even the paths to internet connectivity can get overwhelmed. Emergency tactics are for you to have a contact outside of the emergency affected area that can be your communication point. Select someone outside of the affected area to be your RELAY point. You then only have to worry about getting your message to one source that then can relay the message to everyone else. Remember: much of the network and frequency capacity gets designated for emergency responder and support networks like the Red Cross. This all happens behind the scenes in the network directly with providers. Especially with everyone who lives outside of the storm zones, frantically trying to learn the status of their loved ones, every network type can be overburdened.
6. Another option is to have the chief decision-maker (located somewhere with generator power) who can have direct posting access to your website as a communication update point. Then delivery is to one (hopefully in a secure and redundant service site).  Again, where email and text messages may be compromised, internet access to a large pipe access website, might be one thing that all or most people will be able to access. But everyone needs to know in advance what your methods of communication will be.  
7. Finally, once you figure out what you want to do, how you will communicate—proactively let everyone know. Send out communication as soon as possible to say that you are on this, and will be keeping communication to them by X process at Y frequencies. Otherwise, everyone will start getting peppered by all sources to 'know what the plan is'.   
8. Lots of people have never been through a huge storm and their first priority will be to protect and communicate with their family and loved ones, then protection of property etc. Snow and ice are one thing, water is another. People will get trapped by rising water, and many people do not know how to swim. The most unexpected devastation is inland, not near water sources. People forget their sewer and drainage cannot cope with the amount of rain, even though they may not be near ocean, rivers, etc. Many emergency responders will meet situations they have never dealt with, so they may have failures as well.  
9. There are many special situations such as call centers, large student populations, where there are other very specific things they can and should be doing. Carolyn can help here.
10. Remember that even less invasive storms create much havoc and loss. Things can start to unravel pretty quickly if you aren't prepared.

Thanks for that advice, Carolyn! I'm just going to add one more point...

If you want to prepare for ANYTHING, start by amassing the very best team you can!

The Project Manager Project

Project managers who attend our course in TGI Teamability™ come from diverse organizations in all parts of the world. What they have in common is the desire to learn new and better ways to deal with some of the challenges that are intrinsic to Project Management, which include:

-       having a great deal of responsibility, and often not nearly enough authority to drive effective performance

-       working with cross-functional teams in environments where the various functions represented are at odds

-       dealing with people who have been assigned to their team, but who are not necessarily prepared for – or supportive of – the mission, or the job responsibilities that they encounter

But PMs also have the ability to ask questions and learn new applications, so I was delighted when I received a transcript of recently asked questions.

I’m going to feature some of the questions that were especially energizing in this and future blogs, including thoughts on how PMs can empower themselves to organize the people, processes, and controls that will enable them to deliver successful projects, by reducing stress, developing team synergy, and improving overall team performance.

Q: How do we get 100% true team players? Doesn't it depend on the company, the culture, the favoritism levels, number of years in the company, true diversity levels, business leaders' professional training levels, and the big one - communication - because being a good communicator doesn't mean you are a good team player?

A: Having 100% true team players is a beautiful goal, and Teamability provides the means to get there – a state that we call ‘Coherent Human Infrastructure’ (CHI). However, because of the various obstacles you mentioned, CHI is very likely to be a long-term effort. So instead, let’s focus on the ways that Teamability can help Project Managers achieve a critically important near-term goal: working with team members more effectively, helping them collaborate more readily, and producing the kind of business results that will raise the value and visibility of successful teaming.

Here are three steps in that direction:
First, for each person on the team, try to align job responsibilities with the person’s Role (as identified by Teamability). Since many people spend every day doing work that doesn’t satisfy (or even connect with) their inner need to serve a specific type of organization need,  any work that actually DOES fulfill that desire will quickly be perceived as exciting and invigorating.

Second, you want to make sure that people who will be encountering the most resistance, tackling the hardest problems, and/or feeling the most time pressure, are also the most Coherent members of the team. Less Coherent people can be excellent contributors, and good team-players, but they are also more susceptible to stress – and as we all know, people who are feeling a great deal of stress are generally not at their best. 

Finally – and this can be the easiest or hardest, depending on those culture and favoritism factors you mentioned – you need to promote a culture of respect, trust, and belief in working together as a team. This effort will be greatly enhanced through principles of Role-respect, and Role-recognition – which are discussed in the basic 4-hour course, and are covered in greater detail in advanced CHI course. (Information about these courses is available at http://bit.ly/TGItraining.)

This blog was inspired by Luma Ousta of http://pduOTD.com. pduOTD (which stands for PDU of the day) services Project Managers, Business Analysts, and Agile Practitioners world wide. Their website launched  Jan 1 2011 and they have experienced explosive growth since 'going Live', having welcomed visitors from over 170 countries. The basic TGI course, which is given free of charge, provides PMPs with 4 hours of Category B credit.