Do I Dare Say Something?

As every company knows, employees are its greatest resource. It's more than a shame, then, that many workers are either not encouraged or afraid to speak up and communicate ideas at work. Employers are losing valuable knowledge and experience, and their companies are weaker for that loss.

Latent voice episodes and Upward voice

Latent voice episodes describe those moments at work when someone considers speaking up about an issue, problem, or even an improvement opportunity. How do people think about speaking up? The episodes are called "latent" because they are potential communications that may or may not in fact occur. Understanding the factors that encourage or inhibit people speaking up at work with the relevant ideas and concerns they have is the focus of this research.

Upward voice refers to communications directed to someone higher in the organizational hierarchy with the perceived power or authority to take action on the problem or suggestion. This is why leaders are inherently important to the improvement-oriented voice process — because leaders are the targets of voice. If they send signals that they are open, interested, and willing to act on subordinate voice, it is logical to expect that subordinates' motivation to do so will be increased; conversely, where subordinates perceive leaders' behavior to indicate it is either unsafe or futile to speak up, they are less likely to do so.

Factors that determine whether or not an employee feels safe using their upward voice

Research suggests two types of factors that lead people to feel more or less safe speaking up: individual differences and contextual factors.

Individual differences include personality dispositions such as one's level of extraversion or pro-activity, or one's developed skills such as how to communicate in ways that don't evoke defensiveness, and also personal concerns about job security and / or mobility. These factors tend to be seen as applying across situations. For example, a person with greater communication skill might be more likely to speak up despite an unfavorable context.

In contrast, context refers to organizational factors, outside the individual, that provide cues about how voice is likely to be received. Leader behavior is one such contextual cue. Aspects of organizational culture and structure also matter, such as the degree to which an organization is hierarchical or egalitarian, or has explicit mechanisms for inviting upward input (e.g., suggestion boxes, regularly-scheduled meetings, surveys).

Specific features of the situation in which voice is contemplated, such as the size and formality of the venue and level of hierarchy present, also matter, as does the degree of demographic similarity between the speaker and the intended target of his or her communication.

Why are we so hesitant to take the risk and speak up?

The fear of speaking up — and therefore a tendency toward silence — is over-determined by both the general nature of humans and the specific realities of the modern economy. Even from an evolutionary point of view, it seems we're all hard-wired to overestimate rather than underestimate certain types of risk — it was better (for survival) to "flee" too often from threats that weren't really there than to not flee the one time there was a significant risk. So, we've inherited emotional and cognitive mechanisms that motivate us to avoid perceived risks to our psychological and material well-being. As Daniel Goleman² observes in his seminal work Emotional Intelligence,

One emotional legacy of evolution is the fear that mobilizes us to protect our family from danger. Automatic reactions have become etched in our nervous system because for along and crucial period in human prehistory they made the difference between survival and death.

Turning to the modern economy, most of us depend on hierarchical organizations and their agents (i.e., bosses) to meet many of our basic needs for economic support and human relationships. Thus, fear of offending those above us is both natural and widespread. One way we can get in trouble with those above us is to speak up in ways perceived as challenging of authority or critical of cherished programs. Given the exaggerated and real reasons to fear offending authorities, it isn't surprising that people clam up when the signals seem unfavorable. (Even during our upbringing most of us have grown on the fear of punishment and reward from our parents and teachers.)

How to change a culture so that employees feel more comfortable expressing their opinions?

It's difficult to change a culture of fear. An organization that has fully transformed itself from one of fear to one in which most employees would rate the organization as open or conducive to speaking up, is hard to pin-point. At the same time, there are many organizations that have pockets — groups, departments, work units — that are palpably open and actively engaged in discussion, debate, experimentation, or improvement. Companies in which voice or other learning behaviors are relatively widespread, were founded on principles of respect for all employees, deep commitment to openness, etc. But changing a culture so that people believe speaking up is expected and desired requires some fairly drastic indications of commitment to change. This includes placing individuals who are known to be open in key roles, illustrating in visible ways that voice is celebrated rather than punished, and making fundamental changes to how people get evaluated and rewarded.

In one organization, many employees suggested that "openness to input from below" should become a key component of each leader's 360-degree performance evaluation, and a cut-off score be set for this component, such that those below the threshold could not be promoted. This would have been a fairly radical change in this company, where technical excellence was seen as the primary basis for promotion. Although senior management did not act on this suggestion, which would have been, admittedly, very difficult in their well-established culture, it points in the right direction.

Openness need not be a nice feeling

As Gandhiji tells Munna in Lage Raho Munnabhai, telling the truth requires maximum courage. So does openness. Openness is not about being "nice" or creating a "nice" workplace. In fact, those organizations where voice is more natural and welcome can be pretty tough places in the sense that people are direct! Managers need to hear from the people in the organization who are closest to the work, closest to the customers — that is, from those who are in the best position to recognize problems and have new ideas.

How can managers create a free work environment where employees feel free to express their opinions?

Research has shown that two beliefs are essential preconditions for the free expression of upward voice: first, the belief that one is not putting oneself at significant risk of personal harm (e.g., embarrassment, loss of material resources) and second, the belief that one is not wasting one's time in speaking up. In short, voice must be seen as both safe and worthwhile. Anything an organization can do to prevent the widespread belief that voice is unsafe or not worth your time is likely to increase the upward communication flow.

Environments where risk-taking is championed and visibly rewarded rather than punished, where leaders have good personal as well as technical skills, and where factors that create psychological distance between bosses and subordinates are minimized are likely to be better places for speaking up. Yet, even in such environments people have to speak up to specific individuals, and our research suggests that people can be afraid to speak up to their boss even when the overall organizational climate appears conducive to voice. This makes facilitating voice every manager's job. Expecting a general suggestion system or a semi-annual feedback meeting to take care of the "voice problem" is almost certainly a mistake.

Ultimately, every manager needs to work at being open and accessible and taking action on ideas or reporting back on why action can't or won't be taken. These are behavioral skills that all of us can continue to practice and improve. These don't need to be grand, highly contrived actions. Some people have pointed to immense value in leaders simply stopping by in the cafeteria, or pulling them aside in the hallway for a couple minutes and really listening. This sounds a lot like "management by walking around" but it seems to be worth a lot in this regard.

There are certainly some contextual factors — cultural and structural — that contribute to making larger companies difficult places for speaking up. Size itself is one such factor: People speak up more in smaller groups and in settings that are more intimate. In smaller companies, where everyone knows and regularly interacts with top managers, there is less likelihood employees will be silent based on lack of established relationship or lack of accessibility. Given the physical distance between sites and culture differences that MNCs have to deal with, creating a positive setting for voice can be a serious challenge.

Leadership behaviour is the key

However, bosses can be arrogant or busy or lacking in interpersonal skills in any size or type of company. Similarly, senior management in any type of firm can consciously or unconsciously fail to utilize the formal mechanisms that facilitate speaking up. In fact, much of our research has been conducted in settings that don't fit the descriptions of "large" or "multinational" and yet we have consistently identified the same types of individual differences and contextual factors (especially leader behavior) as key influences on speaking up by subordinates.

The degree to which fear appears to be a feature of modern work life is a startling revelation. A large amount of untapped knowledge goes waste and a lot of pain and frustration results from this silence. People are genuinely hurt and frustrated about their silence. This suggests that employees aren't failing to provide ideas or input because they've "checked out" and just don't care, but because of fear.

Source:

Q&A with Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School (HBS), March 20, 2006, HBS by Sarah Jane Gilbert , content developer at HSB’s Baker Library.

Ref:

1. Latent Voice Episodes: The Situation-Specific Nature of Speaking up at Work, HBS Working Paper, December 2005, revised June 2006 as Everyday Failures In Organizational Learning: Explaining The High Threshold For Speaking Up At Work, Amy Edmondson and James Detert
2. Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, Bloomsbury, London, 2004.

Are Indian Business Leaders Different?

Do Indian CEOs and business leaders operate in a way that is markedly different from those in other parts of the world? What is the source of their competitive advantage? Can other managers learn from their experiences?

Four Wharton professors – Peter Cappelli, Harbir Singh, Jitendra Singh (now dean of the Nanyang business school in Singapore) and Michael Useem – answer these questions in a new study titled, "The DNA of Indian Leadership: The Governance, Management and Leadership of Leading Indian Firms," co-sponsored by India's National HRD Network. Based on interviews with 100 CEOs of leading Indian companies, the researchers concluded that while top Indian leaders do share several attributes with their U.S. counterparts, they also have distinctive characteristics.

In contrast to U.S. business leaders, Indian CEOs tend to be more preoccupied with internal management, long-term strategic vision and organizational culture. Financial matters, on the other hand, are not at the top of their agendas. Indian leaders care a good deal more about motivating employees and setting an example than about currying favour with shareholders or the markets.

Advantage: Leadership? Is there an Indian Leadership Model?

In defining the scope of their research, the professors describe their objective as follows: "Our ultimate goal for the project is to see whether the practices and priorities of the [Indian] CEOs in our study suggest something like a different or distinctive model for leading and managing business enterprises. The rise of the Indian economy, and especially the international competitiveness of Indian businesses now, raises the question as to whether there is a distinctive Indian model and, if so, what that model might be."

The competencies most important to their success in the past five years, according to the Indian CEOs were shared values and vision, as well as building the top team.

For example, B. Muthuraman, MD of Tata Steel talked about a leader "being a visionary" as an important capacity, thus being able to make people envision their future as well as energize, enthuse and empower them." The respondents also noted that leading from the front and leading by example were important personal characteristics.

A number of the Indian business leaders also stressed that their vision for the company should be rooted in its underlying values, and that the vision in turn should energize and excite the company's employees.

When asked how Indian leaders might be different from their Western counterparts, the CEOs responded that Indian business executives were marked by flexibility, being in a family ownership structure and entrepreneurship/risk-taking. The leaders noted that the strict regulatory climate and challenging infrastructure environment in India necessitated a capacity to be resilient, adapt and move forward in the face of adversity.

Anu Aga, former chairperson of Thermax India, an energy and environment management firm, pointed to the many obstacles Indian companies have to deal with, such as "roads and ports in terrible conditions". Family ownership stakes sometimes helped leaders have a more long-term approach to strategy, reported the respondents. In addition, they noted that being entrepreneurial was important in order to get large companies to act nimbly and take advantage of the changing marketplace.

The CEOs believed that their firms' competitive advantage lay in their high-performance culture, customer focus, innovation and entrepreneurship, and low cost. Even when asked how their roles are changing, they overwhelmingly noted that they spend more time these days setting strategy and dealing with customers rather than worrying about shareholders.

Look Inside to Get Ahead?

Perhaps the most telling responses were the CEOs' ranking of their management priorities. They chose "Chief input for business strategy," "Keeper of organizational culture" and "Guide or teacher for employees" as the top three. "Unlike CEOs in America, Indian leaders tend to focus much more on internal issues -- on people management, motivating employees and so forth," says Cappelli. "U.S. CEOs spend a lot more of their time on shareholder issues."

Harbir Singh adds that, "in the U.S., CEOs often see shareholders or the board as their primary constituency. In India, CEOs need to focus on employees because of the safety net factor (which doesn’t exist in India). With the Indian economy booming, and a shortage of talent, investing in employees is the right thing to do.”

Cappelli notes that the best way to be successful as a manager is not to focus solely on short-term profits and to reward or punish leaders based on such performance: "If you're a manager, it's hard to motivate employees when the big goal is to increase quarterly profits by a half-percentage point. Not enough pay is at risk for that to be sufficient motivation.

What ails Indian Leaders?

Subodh Bhargava, CEO of telecommunications firm VSNL, told the researchers that, "In India we tend to be hierarchical, not just in administrative and management structure hierarchy but we are very conscious of personal hierarchy in our position. Second, in India we are over-emotional, and a lot of big decisions tend to be emotional. The attachment or other softer dimensions emerge, whether it's an acquisition or an investment or while evaluating people or opportunities. Finally, one of our biggest weaknesses is that we are unable to use scientific, reasonable assessment of white-collar productivity. We are poor judges of people, their capabilities and expectations."

Are Indian CEOs simply better at internalizing best practices that they have read in the management textbooks? "Of course, they have seen a lot of how U.S. CEOs operate," says Cappelli. "They know that U.S. leaders are more concerned with shareholders; they have been exposed to U.S. models and best practices. But then why did the Indian CEOs take it up, and not the American CEOs? I think it's more organic than that." Cappelli notes that many U.S. employers were exposed to Japanese models of management for some time. "But right when the Japanese model was hot -- that's when U.S. employers were abandoning it," he notes. "It's just not the way they saw themselves, and they didn't adopt it."

Time-Tested or Flash in the Pan?

It is tempting to think that Indian CEOs can afford to indulge in their inward preoccupation simply because the country's economy and markets haven't developed quite as much as they have in the U.S. Even though Indian companies are competing with U.S. and other Western firms, the CEOs don't report that they are subject to the same investor pressures

"While the Indian CEOs certainly engaged in some self-criticism -- they admitted that some aspects of management could be more professionalized, their staff could have more competences or deeper expertise -- they didn't feel that the financial aspects needed more attention," says Cappelli. "It was quite remarkable in that there was no significant dissent on this. When asked about their legacy, they talked about their firm's performance, about growth, influence and reputation -- not about share prices increasing."

Reference: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4238#

Published: November 01, 2007 in India Knowledge@Wharton

Only one in five global workers "engaged"

Only one out of five employees of major global corporations is engaged in his or her work, and top managers may be to blame, according to a study released by a global professional services firm.

A survey of 90,000 workers in 18 countries by Towers Perrin HR Services, US-based consultancy, found that only 21 percent of employees are engaged in their work, while 38 percent are disenchanted or disengaged. The study defined "engagement" as being willing to do more than is required to help their employers succeed and measured it by their responses to questions about their feelings about work, as well as their behavior.

Mexicans proved to be the most engaged, followed by Brazilians and Indians. U.S. respondents ranked fourth. The least engaged workers were the Japanese, followed by residents of Hong Kong and South Korea.

The study found that worker engagement was most driven by senior managers -- not by an employee's upbringing or relationship with a direct manager.

"The organization itself is the most powerful influencer of employee engagement," says Julie Gebauer, of Towers Perrin. "People's views about the company are also shaped more by what senior leaders say and do than by what the individuals' direct bosses say or do."

By cross-referencing the survey data with the financial history of 40 companies whose employees were polled, the firm found that companies with the most engaged employees tended to do better financially than those whose workers were disengaged.

Despite the high level of disengagement, many workers say they are happy in their employment situations, with 86 percent reporting that they like or love their jobs and 84 percent saying they enjoy challenging work.

The survey was conducted in May and June, 2007.

Source: Reuters, October 22, 2007

Note: A fuller version of this report can be obtained by writing to manedge@gmail.com

Additional detail about the Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study is available at www.towersperrin.com/gws

Companies face looming leadership crisis - IBM study

Companies worldwide face a looming leadership crisis due to the retirement of baby boomers (see text at the end of this post) and rapid growth in Asia with half fearful they cannot develop the skills they need, a study released on Thursday (Oct 18 2007) said.

The survey by IBM's consulting arm interviewed 400 HR executives from 40 countries and suggests companies are putting growth strategies at risk if they cannot identify and develop the next generation of leaders.

Baby boomers will drain companies of valuable knowledge when they retire, while multinational firms need to find people to lead their businesses in booming markets such as India and China, the study said.

"You've got this perfect storm of leadership crisis that is hitting the mature and maturing markets," said IBM's Eric Lesser, one of three co-authors of the study

"Companies are really crunched both in terms of their current capacity of leadership and also their ability to develop leaders in the future. Three-quarters of the people who responded said this was a significant workplace issue."

The study found 88 percent of companies in the Asia Pacific region are most concerned with their ability to develop future leaders, followed by Latin America (74 percent); Europe, Middle East and Africa, (74 percent); Japan (73 percent); and North America (69 percent).

Fifty-two percent of HR executives say their organizations may be unable to rapidly develop skills to meet current or future business needs. The study also found 36 percent of firms said employee skills fail to meet company priorities.

With competition for talent on the horizon, younger job applicants might want to list online gaming skills on their resumes, Lesser said. Many can be translated to realities of the new workplace.

"It requires using virtual communication techniques, everything from voice over IP to instant messaging to e-mail," Lesser said.

Source: Daniel Trotta, Reuters, October 18, 2007

A baby boomer is a person born between 1946 and 1964 in Australia, United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. Following World War II, these countries experienced an unusual spike in birth rates, a phenomenon commonly known as the baby boom. The term is iconic and more properly capitalized as Baby Boomers.
Source: Wikipedia

Kumar Mangalam Birla on Leadership

PLUGGING INTO PEOPLE'S MINDS AND HEARTS

The criticality of the human element is today more pronounced than ever before. What sparks and sustains the success of an enterprise is its people. This is a universal truth. It’s no different in India.

Leadership is all about plugging into the minds and hearts of people, about rallying them around to a compelling and exciting vision of the future. It is about upping the quality of imagination of the organisation. It is about encouraging a spirit of intellectual ferment and constructive dissent so that people are not bound by the status quo, and mavericks are given space and free play. It is about building the highest levels of empathy, without compromising on fairness and running a popularity contest.

As I look ahead, I believe the war for talent will intensify and that could become a major speed breaker. There is an acute competition – rather a scramble for inducting and retaining people with the competencies apposite for a globalising corporation. When a company globalises, its internal demography transforms into a socio-cultural potpourri. There is an inherent instability. Corporations that embark on this growth trajectory will face churn and uncertainty amidst change. On such a journey success will come to those corporations where the leadership is alchemical and values-driven.

Source: AlumniNews, London Business School, Issue 112 July - September 2007, pp31