Review of Lectures 11-16

We observed three lessons from the discussion of the “lost on the moon” exercise in lecture 11:

·       Teamwork in more effective than individual efforts in solving complex problems.

·       Effective teamwork doesn't just happen by assigning people to a team. It’s important that they are trained or mentored in how to work together in a way that utilizes the best knowledge and skills of each team member.

·       People must be in job assignments that match their styles. Not every worker does well on a team; some are best as individual contributors.

There were two messages in our brief review of Stephan Covey’s teachings on habit 5 from the The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People in lecture 12. We learned that if we expect people to listen to our logical arguments we must first establish our credibility with them, and second, we must listen empathically to them until they are convinced we understand their concerns and problems. Only if they are provided evidence that we are someone they should listen to and only if they believe we understand their situation will they listen effectively to us. The hardest part for most people is listening empathically. Effective managers must learn this habit and use it with their workers, their bosses and the customers for their work.

Lectures 13-16 addressed fear in the workplace. Key points included:

•        Fear of perceived consequences (real or not) causes workers to avoid proper actions and substitute inappropriate or ineffective actions.

•        Managers induce fear by negativity, disloyalty to their boss or to the enterprise and excessive emphasis on numerical goals.

•        Oppressive policies and procedures written in attempts to control the behavior of the 5% of workers that cause problems are counterproductive. They cause fear and distrust in the many good workers and don’t deter the few problem workers.

•        A poor business environment can induce fear; counter this fear with openness and honesty.

•        Blaming people for problems caused by the system induces fear

–       Remember the 85/15 rule. Problems are caused by the system 85% of the time and by people only 15% of the time.

•        Managers that focus on fixing the system and seeking help from workers without expressing negativity build trust and reduce fear.

•        Energy spent on issues you can influence is positive and grows your circle of influence. Energy spent on issues you can’t influence is negative and shrinks your circle of influence.

•        Fear of change and of knowledge are inherent fears. Managers have to deal with both and must learn to help workers overcome fear of change.

•        Cultural change requires patience, persistence and typically training time of about 10% of the total annual hours worked by the organization.

Exercise

You last reviewed and modified your action plan at the end of Lecture 13. Review your plan after studying the review of lectures 13- 16. Are there changes or additions you should make based on what you have learned in lectures 14 - 16? If so, make the changes now.

If you find that the pace of blog posts isn’t compatible with the pace you  would like to maintain in studying this material you can buy the book “The Manager’s Guide for Effective Leadership” at:

http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Guide-Effective-Leadership-Organizations/dp/1449000673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346946310&sr=8-2&keywords=Joe+Jenney

or hard copy or for nook at:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Joe-Jenney?keyword=Joe+Jenney&store=book

or hard copy or E-book at:

http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000269270/The-Managers-Guide-for-Effective-Leadership.aspx

16 Fear of Knowledge and Fear of Change

We have addressed all the topics on fear except fear of knowledge and fear of change. These two fears are treated together and separate from the others because they are inherent in the personality of people and not caused by either the manager’s behavior or by organizational culture. This is a short lecture so I’ll follow it with a review and work on your action plan.

Henry Ford is credited with saying “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”  Unfortunately fear of knowledge is an inherent fear. You can recognize it from comments made by workers that sound like the following:

•        “I can’t go to class, I’ll appear too ignorant”

•        “I’m retiring in (1,2,3..) years. Why should I learn this crap?”

•        “I already know how to do it!”

•        “What? Learn this? Why, then, I’ll have more responsibility!”

Well, they may not explicitly say the last part of the first and last statements but it is what they are thinking.

Fear of knowledge is a challenge for the manager. Workers must retrain themselves more and more often during their careers due to more and more rapid advances in technology. Managers must make this clear and that retraining is expected as part of the job and is a required skill for nearly any job. Peter Senge, in his book The Fifth Discipline says that the only advantage an organization can sustain is the capability to learn faster than its competitors.

Workers must overcome their inherent fear. Even retirement does not relieve them of the necessity to continually learn due to the rapid change of technology used in daily life. The effective manager can help workers overcome their inherent fear of knowledge by listening to their excuses (listening with empathy), being sympathetic but firm in the requirement that they participate in training when necessary and offering to help if needed. However, if you have done these positive things and still have a worker whose fear of knowledge is preventing the worker from keeping up with required training and/or technology change you should look for another assignment for that worker. A manager is not required to be a psychologist.

Is change happening often in your organization? In today’s work environment your organization is the exception if change isn't happening often. To mitigate the damage to organizational effectiveness from fear of change you need to understand that people react to change differently. Some relish change, some fear change, some move out before having a plan, some are immobile until every detail of the plan is explained. This is another example of where the effective manager must treat workers as individuals. People’s response to change can be explained by their personality type from Myers/Briggs or similar personality tests. These tests are helpful in that they explain why people react the way they do and help the manager realize that some workers are not just being arbitrarily difficult, it’s inherent in their nature and they must be treated as individuals to help them overcome their fear of change.

There are some excellent books on managing change and it is worthwhile to own and periodically reread at least one of them. For example try one or more of the three books cited in lecture 4 and Who Moved My Cheese: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard. If you have workers that are exhibiting fear of change recommend that they read Who Moved My Cheese or Our Iceberg is Melting.

People’s fear of change and fear of knowledge are primary reasons why changing an organization’s culture is so hard and fails so often. As cited in lecture 4 research has shown that successful cultural change requires investment of about 10% of the total annual hours for an organization. A rule of thumb is that management must spend 2% of payroll per year for 5 years to successfully change an organization’s culture. (I am assuming here that an hour of time costs an hour of pay.) This is the reason many management fads and quick fixes to organizational problems don’t work. Even if the approach is fundamentally sound organizations typically don’t spend the required time, energy or money to make a successful cultural change.

Managers succeed with change by taking small steps so they don’t create chaos in the organization, by working through the details of each step and having the persistence to overcome mistakes and errors of judgment (get help from experts if possible). Managers that seek too big of a change in a single step or too many changes at the same time risk throwing the organization into instability and collapse. It is better to limit change to a series of relatively small steps so that everyone that needs to change clearly understands each step and has time to adapt. The keys to success are commitment, patience, persistence and having the top manager lead the change by example.

A reminder; what you are trying accomplish with the aid of this self training is to change the culture of your organization so that it will be dramatically more effective. Don’t expect to be successful without investing several years and the time equivalent of 10% of the annual hours of your organization in training your people. Make sure you lead any necessary changes. It is a lot of effort but when you are successful you will realize a 20% or more increase in effectiveness year after year. This is a very satisfactory return on investment. If you are committed, patient and persistent than you can succeed within the limits of the organizational culture that you can influence.

  

If you find that the pace of blog posts isn't compatible with the pace you  would like to maintain in studying this material you can buy the book “The Manager’s Guide for Effective Leadership” at:

http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Guide-Effective-Leadership-Organizations/dp/1449000673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346946310&sr=8-2&keywords=Joe+Jenney

or hard copy or for nook at:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Joe-Jenney?keyword=Joe+Jenney&store=book

or hard copy or E-book at:

http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000269270/The-Managers-Guide-for-Effective-Leadership.aspx