Dealing With Whole People

The past couple of weeks have been interesting to me. Sometimes I find myself to be more of an observer than a participant in things and my observations really stay with and sometimes trouble me.

A week ago today was Father's Day. As I get older the value of being a father and the significance of my children take on more and more meaning to me. We have kind of a tradition. My father in law, brother in law, and I celebrate Father's Day at least partially together. A big part of that is the recognition of the joy it gives my father in law to be surrounded by his children and grandchildren. My own father passed away several years ago, but I recall how much it meant to him. 2009 has been for me, like many others a tumultuous period to date. I can say that when I look at my children and what they have accomplished and the promise I see in their future it gives me a renewed sense of purpose.

My father and I did not always enjoy a cordial relationship. I am very glad to have the relationship with my children that I do. I respect them as people and as young adults and as a result we talk pretty openly and honestly. I hope that continues.

I watched the elections in Iran over the last two weeks as well. I was disappointed by the results, but heartened by the number of Iranians who voted their conscience and had the courage to openly express their sense of betrayal at the process. I am perplexed by the reaction of many Americans as to the role we should play in the process. We are currently engaged in civil wars in two different Muslim countries where to a great extent we were not invited and I am not sure we are welcome. Some would say that our "influence" in Pakistan is equally resented.

I find the newly "re-elected" President of Iran to be a petty tyrant and a demagogue of the first order, but do we really have the right or the need to insert ourselves in yet another countries electoral processes without invitation? When W won the election against Gore, a decision some would say was decided in the Supreme Court, did any other country threaten to invade us to "fix" the process?

One of the last things I find perplexing is our continuing fixation with Michael Jackson. I consider him almost a contemporary. We are essentially the same age and I have found his music at least on the periphery of my awareness since I was an adolescent. He was a gifted song writer and choreographer, but he was also a tortured soul with a lot of dysfunction surrounding him. The last several days the press seems obsessed with rehashing everything about him.

He was an entertainer, not a statesman. His personal life was an episode of the bizarre. Why with all of the other real issues surrounding us are we obsessed with him. Farrah Fawcett was a beautiful woman whose depth and dignity seemed to grow as she matured. She died from a horrible illness that didn't seem to be correlated to her life style. She has been almost a footnote.

I just read a couple of interesting opposing issues on one of my favorite websites- BNET.com. One of them is dealing with managing the whole person that is your employees; recognizing and cultivating their hidden talents and creating opportunities for them to utilize these abilities to your mutual benefit. The other is about why CEOs and other powerful people don't use social networking; because they are so powerful and so connected they don't need to, social networking is for those of us who are seeking validation.

I find that interesting to the point of amusement. Our current President seems to value the idea of connection and social networking; both as a candidate, and in his elected capacity.

My research and experience tells me that true engagement is one of the most powerful tools that organizations have at their disposal to improve their performance in every critical area and that only 30% of organizations in the world have a formal engagement strategy. I also read daily that trust in organizations, especially senior executives is at historic lows. Two of our mainstay industries; financial services and the automotive industry are relying on government bailouts to survive and much of the public is baying for the blood of their senior management.

Although it is very popular with consumers,health care industry professionals and others find a public health care model unacceptable. Good thing their network has their "back" and they don't need to rely on social networking or related media to make their case.

A lot of stuff in here I know. I will continue to try to understand and appreciate people one at a time and to build relationships. It is what I know and what I trust.

Social Networking, Engagement, and Change; Are They All Related?

The last few weeks have been very interesting. I continue to marvel at the stories I hear about communications, information, engagement, management practices and a host of related issues.
As you all know I think engagement is the most compelling productivity and profitability strategy since the industrial revolution. I just got what I believe to be some validation from an article I read on BNET summarizing and interview with Daniel Pink.

In the interview Pink talked about why "right brain" thinkers who are skilled at communications, empathy and related skills will "rule the world" and that how "left brain" thinkers especially in English speaking countries could find themselves "commoditized".
His thinking is that many of the highly linear "systematized" left brain skills like accounting, engineering, mathematics, and related activities are relatively easy to transfer cross culturally especially if the "language" barrier is not a factor. He went on to point out that in the very near future the largest population of highly educated, linear thinkers may be in India, not the U.S. or other "English speaking" countries.

He argues that the skill sets that are and will be in high demand are those with creating alignment with ideas, seeing the big picture and being able to articulate in a powerful way to others, and the skills of empathy and engagement. He points out in his research that this may be why many business leaders educational backgrounds are in liberal arts rather than "technical" disciplines.

As you know I strongly believe that the most critical factor in successful organizations is relationships, so you can see why Pink's thinking resonates with me.

I have had the opportunity of late to talk with two different executive groups about what I perceive as the critical link between engagement and social networks. As I mentioned in a previous blog - Tell Me a Story; I see social networking in some ways as returning to our old oral traditions, passing along information person to person.

In some ways just as the Industrial Revolution damaged the social contract and concept of personal competency it largely shifted control over the flow of information to "management". Mainstream media contributed to that phenomena, to quote my friend John Mayer again " when they control the information...". Social networking has returned control in some ways to the individual.

In the "new" engagement model discussed by Rhoads and Whitlark, BlessingWhite, and others they describe the highest level of engagement as being pride of association. You have moved past a transactional relationship with your employees, customers, and other stakeholders to sharing a set of ideals. Is it just me or can others see why using social media appropriately and effectively contributes to this?

As a corollary I continue to be dumbfounded by organizations that do dumb things and some how assume that their actions aren't going to show up on a blog site, and in a big damn hurry! Do we think that our customers, employees, and future employees live on Mars where they can't access that information?

I hear stories about organizations that are perceived as using the recession to practice some pretty Draconian human resource practices; Do they really think this isn't going to show up on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, etc? Do they really not believe that when the economy recovers that those memories will evaporate? That is the corporate equivalent of the kid not believing his naked beer bong pictures on MySpace affected his interview possibilities!

It is interesting to see what social media is doing in a fundamentalist country like Iran. Do we really believe the Ayatollah is just trying to play well with others?

So I guess my perspective is that indeed there is a relationship between these phenomena. They all come down to the need to build and sustain trust based relationships.

We have already discussed the link between engagement and productivity, sustainability, and profitability. We have seen the power of social media to distribute information (sometimes even accurately) in almost blinding speed. We have also heard that one of the single biggest reason change initiatives and strategies fail is because they aren't properly communicated.

Sounds to me like Pink is right, math and science aren't the answer this time. It's going back to systemic big picture thinking, creating a bridge for people, and trust. Daunting, but not un-doable.

A Matter of Balance

The power of language intrigues me. I participate in a group of people much smarter than I am in trying to re-shape how we define words and their context and the effect that has on perception and understanding. I find it plays an enormous role in many applications, but the place that intrigues me the most is in the arena of leadership.

As many of you know I am an enormous proponent of engagement as a cultural norm. I feel that organizations where the inter linked relationships are based on shared values, respect, and a common vision and goals will always be more successful than a transaction based relationship. I also differentiate true engagement; which involves employees, customers, and shareholders, from engagement models that focus exclusively on "loyal" customers.

The Sotomayor nomination has created an interesting debate regarding the appropriateness of empathy in the judiciary. Should a jurist consider context and circumstances in rendering a decision or merely the "facts"?

I used that as the basis for a question I posed on LinkedIn as to the appropriateness of empathy not only in the judicial system , but to the essence of leadership. Is empathy an essential or at least important characteristic in effective leadership? The vast majority of the responders agreed that it is, but there was some dissent arguing that empathy can cause decisions to be made on the basis of emotion or disparate consideration for the interests of one "stakeholder" group over another.

I think we are finding much about our "objective" models that are based exclusively upon numbers and singular shareholder groups is flawed. I mentioned in a previous blog that Bill George of Harvard stated that a possible positive outcome of the current crisis is a new "balanced" model. Even more recently Richard Rumelt of UCLA mentioned in an interview with McKinsey that much of our current circumstance was based on reliance exclusively or primarily on short term "numbers" and indices that don't tell the whole story.

Another interesting debate is whether or not organizations should focus their efforts on shareholder satisfaction or stakeholder satisfaction. As you might suspect my perception is that organization who focus exclusively on shareholder value rarely maintain sustained success. I would submit that much of our current financial crisis is predicated on focusing on the value to the shareholder as represented by stock price to the exclusion of other stakeholder values. I have seen debates on LinkedIn and other venues insisting that shareholder value is the primary or exclusive measure of organizational success, but if you ignore or minimize the interests of the other stakeholder groups how do you stay in business?

In the past week I had a great conversation with a colleague who is trying to "re-invent" the practice of human resources management. Like me she is concerned that HR has become overly concerned with policy and procedure and systems rather than "people". We want to ignore or minimize the human element. Organizations are staffed by people.

I have another colleague who works in the area of trust. She has become frustrated occasionally with potential clients who don't particularly value strategies and systems to build and sustain trust with their customers, suppliers, or employees. They are not sure they can track a direct correlation to the bottom line. Hmm, sounds like a shareholder versus stakeholder issue.

Yet another colleague has designed a management system she calls KindExcellence(TM). Her belief (and I share it) is that kindness and excellence are not a polarity, but rather an axis. You need both to operate as an effective leader.

In my model responsibility and respect form a similar axis. If you allow someone to perform in a manner that doesn't live up to your expectations or their capabilities is that truly a respected based relationship?

I guess at the end of the day I agree with Margaret Wheatley that the most powerful force in organizational systems is relationships. These other elements are important as long as they are kept in "balance".

I think I will continue to endeavor to manage "whole people" and to include empathy in my decision making model. I particularly like the way a Buddhist philosopher put it in a quote a colleague shared with me.

"A person who cannot genuinely empathize with others can never excel as a leader. So much of what ails society today is the result of too many people in leadership positions who do not or cannot identify with the plight of their fellow men and women. It is in enduring pain and struggles that the earth of our humanity is cultivated. And it is from this earth that a capacity to be genuinely concerned for the welfare of others blossoms." - Daisaku Ikeda.

I think that sounds like balance......