Innovation Skills Teams Need to Succeed

Came across this very interesting video where authors talk about innovation skills needed for teams to succeed.

 

They differentiate between 3 kind of professionals at workplace - innovators, executors, and developers (who can do both innovation and execution).

 

They then goes on to list 5 skills that innovators have (questioning, observing, networking, experimenting, and association), and 4 that executors have (analyzing, planning, self discipline, and detail oriented).

 

Leaves you with interesting thoughts. Give it a see!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy4oQh_Qyto

 

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Sourav

Onboarding Leaders

Will onboarding a leader require a different/additional/modified focus compared to onboarding any other employee?

I don’t think so. If onboarding were to be defined both as onboarding (into role) and induction (into company), then these will be required to be focused on for any new employee including a new leader.

But HR might need to play a more involved role in onboarding leaders.

In case of IC employees or managers, there are enough systems and informal feedback mechanisms in place for employee to understand how s/he is inducting into company. HR will check in on health of induction – but it is mostly periodic check ins.

In case of leaders, feedback may not come in diluted from below hierarchy. Secondly there may not be many role models leader can refer to – leadership positions may be lonely positions J. So leader does need a frame of comparison (with other successful leaders –present/previous) and a way of getting feedback (in a non –threatening space).

These 2 are specific ways in which HR can play a required more involved role in onboarding leaders.

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Sourav

Talent Development

In last few weeks, I have been in midst of some ‘talent development’ work.

A few thoughts have been running through my mind.

Someone is identified as ‘talent’ because s/he will be demonstrating differentiated performance consistently, behaviors/abilities that company is betting on in future, and/or demonstrating behaviors/abilities for higher order/critical roles for company.

Development options charted out for a 'talent' have to reflect atleast last two of above.

These options again can be in form of classroom trainings, development experiences (e.g: projects), and/or learning for leaders/coaching/mentoring.

What we attempted, as a first step, was learning from leaders.

We had 3 leaders speaking to ‘talent’ and what they left them with were clarity, inspiration, motivation, and reflection. Additionally having all ‘talent’ in one room provided them an opportunity to ‘extend personal networks’.

Question I am left with is ‘what’s next’.

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Sourav

 

Communities!

How does one build a community out of a large group of managers?

 

I am not talking of just setting up a body and asking them to meet in regular intervals. The members must feel they are a part of the community and they are invested in success/failure of community.

 

Well!  Over last few months we took our first steps towards creating a community of managers.

 

We have rallied leaders/managers around a common purpose. So relevance seems to be there.

 

There was high business involvement in creating community. Leaders and managers are actively involved in running community.

 

So basic design elements for a successful community - relevance and business ownership - seem to have been taken care of. This is getting manifested in predictable periodicity- community has determined frequency in which it meets and agenda items for their meetings.

 

 

So what next? What should be imperatives in remaining months?

 

A core managerial/leadership group has been involved in designing and launching the community.  How do we get even more managers invested in success of community? That surely is an upcoming agenda.

 

We have made decent progress in facilitating sessions. 

But I feel facilitator’s needs upskilling in facilitation skills. Additionally discussion need to be more conversational – this will ensure higher peer learning during sessions.. These two surely are focus areas for next few months.

 

I like the term go-dos. It's catchy and it brings in element of transfer of learnings to workplace. We have made go-dos a unit of conversation of this community. 

But how do we know whether these  go-dos are getting done? How do we enable community members to egg each other on in execution of go -dos?  Are go-dos actionable enough?  These are areas we could further look at.

Technology can play a role here. We can create a virtual community space where managers come together and exchange notes at regular intervals (how do we build consensus around frequency?) on progress against and further learnings from go-dos.

 

 

A related thought – manager community is a large group- consisting of around 90 managers.

‘Large group interventions’ is a separate field of study. I am not sure whether this means that I need to do different things for this community or do things differently. That's something I want to explore further too.

 

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Sourav

 

Diversity and Inclusion

Mid-year is a good time to pause and reflect on progress made and what to do ahead.

 

My blogs this month will be reflect this theme.

 

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) is one space I have been working on.

 

First and foremost you need to be able to assess comprehensively as-is phase and to track progress. Hence necessity for creating and putting a calendar/rhythm around a reporting mechanism. 

I have managed to get buy in for such a reporting mechanism. I have created sustainable reporting structure.

The next steps are to ensure timely report preparation and using the reports to drive relevant conversations.

 

Second you need to be able to introduce D&I conversations in every HR process.

This is something I feel I have made decent progress in.  I have managed to introduce D&I conversation in almost every HR process. Different stakeholders (business and HR) are increasingly getting bought in to the idea of having these conversations too.

But then progress has mostly in space of representation in all HR processes. Either we are ensuring fair representation or keeping visibility on representation.

Next steps are in sustaining D&I conversations in HR processes and steering conversations towards inclusion too.

 

A related point is leadership and managerial buy in for D&I. We have kept conversation going in space of what’s and how’s in D&I.

Going ahead we need to surface and discuss the why with the leadership and managerial team. The discussion needs to also include an exploration of their beliefs/values around this space.

 

We are in process of setting up a D&I committee. This committee will consist of members across organization and is another step in integrating D&I into fabric of organization.  Getting this committee to action on D&I agenda will be another goal. Hence need to see them through to norming and performing stage within a month? We usually use the term onboarding for a new joiner – getting an individual employee ramped up quickly enough to do his/her job independently. In this case I have to ensure onboarding for a team.

 

Fourth, we need to have clarity on priority action areas in D&I. I think we treaded right path in using analytics/data to identify possible action/outcome areas. We now have clarity on priority areas. Next steps are how and when.

 

A few further related thoughts.

We already have a community where 'diversity' employees come together.  These employees do feel a sense of identification with this community. How can we leverage this group better to execute D&I initiatives?

I also feel that we can do more work in space of inclusion. We can look at beliefs behind our actions and how or actions can be inclusive/non-inclusive.   As shared earlier, we need to work with leaders and managers. But we also need to work with other employees/peers.

 

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Sourav

Dividing Limited Resources Appropriately!

How do we react to limited resources/win-lose scenarios?

Performance bell curve is a classic limited resource example. 

There are only a few slots for top performers- usually a manager wants just a tad bit more slots for his/her top performers and a tad bit less slots for his/her low performers.

What are different ways of dealing with this situation? Two obvious ways are:

• ·         Give limited resources proportionately to each team – everyone gains or loses equally.

• ·         Give limited resources appropriately to each team – some teams may get more than others.

Usually a leaders´ decision (1^st line of authority that both/multiple teams report up to) is required to drive non-proportionate/appropriate division of resources amongst different teams.

What happens when a leadership decision is not possible ?–maybe because leader isn´t there.  Is only solution to delegate decision higher up in hierarchy?

I would place responsibility on manager of each team. They have to come together and discuss allocation of resources. 

What are imperatives in such a process?:

• HR is facilitator in this process. I might be asked to recommend appropriate division of resources. But that makes it easy for managers to abdicate responsibility for decision taken. I would put responsibility squarely back on shoulders of managers – it´s your teams and you have to take a decision.

• Before we start discussion division of resources, managers have to debate and agree on principles on basis of which resources would be divided appropriately.  When there´s no principle, it´s difficult to find agreement.

But what does a facilitator do when he finds managers not willing to come on table and discuss?

• First, it´s a symptom of managers behaving ´territorially´.

• In such a case, discussion needs to be taken a notch higher. Discussion is no more about merits of coming to table and discussing.  Discussion should be about exploring with each manager ´why is s/he not coming on table and how might s/he being perceived because of that´. That is not an easy discussion but is certainly a necessary one. A Type A (go getter) person might respond to this process. Would a Type B person respond to this kind of a process? I think discussion with a Type B person would be about what is right thing to do.

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Sourav