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December
20, 2000 Issue 7
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LEARNING
LINKS The Personal Development Review: Aligning Personal and Organizational Vision |
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SHOP
TALK How Can We Collect, Document, and Retrieve Learnings? and More Reader Thoughts About Team Empowerment |
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THE
RESOURCE SHELF Telecommuters as Deep-Sea Divers: Building Social Networks Beyond the Workplace |
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LEARNING
LINKS The Personal Development Review: Aligning Personal and Organizational Vision by Kellie Wardman O'Reilly and Lauren Keller Johnson In today's age of rapid job turnover and accelerating change, companies that help their people clarify and achieve their highest aspirations are more likely to succeed than others. The Personal Development Review (PDR) can support this process. PDRs were initiated by Daniel H. Kim and developed within Pegasus Communications to help associates flesh out detailed visions and provide a way of integrating those aspirations with the organization's plans. The review process begins with the employee inviting two colleagues to take part in a coaching session. In advance of the session, the individual explores his one- and five-year visions, aided by a list of questions. He then distributes his written comments to the other attendees before the session. During the PDR, the individual leads the discussion, while his colleagues ask questions, listen, and offer ideas. After the session, the individual shares a synopsis of the discussion with his boss, team, or larger organization, so the goals and action items can be integrated at a broader level. Simply encouraging people to hold PDRs is a powerful step in supporting individuals' growth, productivity, and satisfaction at work. But the real leverage in the PDR process lies in integrating people's visions with the organization's visions. For instance, you might discover that someone has a passion for coaching, so you create opportunities for her to develop those skills while staying in her current job--to the benefit of both the employee and the organization! Read the complete article and access related resources online, or see LEVERAGE Number 38, February 2000. Readers who wish to discuss this topic are invited to go to the Pegasus Forums topic "Personal Development Review" in the Leverage Points Discussions Forum. |
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SHOP
TALK As a member of a Learning Team, I am challenged with the task of documenting the new information we are collecting and putting it into retrievable form. We are experimenting with outlining, hypertext, multiple views, and key word or key phrase searching using a Lisp language. Is anyone else thinking about these things? --Question submitted by Bill Butler Please take a minute to share your thoughts about this issue at the Knowledge Cafe Forum under the topic "Using Knowledge from Team Learning." Selected comments will be shared in a future issue of LEVERAGE POINTS. Continued from Issue #6: TEAM EMPOWERMENT We had so many thoughtful and thought-provoking responses to the issue of team empowerment that we include two more here. I am interested in Fifth-Discipline type approaches to implementing World-Class (Lean) Manufacturing Techniques. The organizational development issues that efforts to become Lean raise are difficult. The issue I would like to raise here is what I call the "empowerment trap." The scenario is that management says "We've given the shop-floor teams all the training, but they are not doing anything" and the shop-floor teams say "They've given us all this training, but we are not sure what they want us to do." The problem is trying to move from command-and-control to self-directed teams just by saying it. As a moderator of this conversation between shop floor and management, I try to help the managers understand that teams still need direction and support from them while they learn to be empowered, and I try to help the teams define what they are being expected to do under their own authority. My Japanese Sensei looks at it in an interesting way. He says that management's role is to define What needs to be achieved and Why, while shop-floor teams should be empowered to work out, with help, How to achieve this. In his view, too often management is communicating the How, not the What and Why. I find this a very helpful distinction to make. Malcolm Jones, Productivity Europe I have just finished a very intense week-long experience during which my role was to provide process consultation and to facilitate a group of 30 employees of a very large healthcare organization in New Mexico. Their task was to completely rethink and redesign the way they contract with physicians and other providers. As a result, I am intrigued by your topic. My most recent experience plays out the following scenario: Something is broken in an organization. Senior management recognizes this fact due to declining revenues, increased expenses, etc. However, they are not close enough to the day-to-day activities to have a clue as to why this is so. The reaction is to "empower" a group of the brightest and best employees to "fix it." Now, these employees have known for years that there has been a problem, yet only now are they given a week to come up with a solution. (Keep in mind, most solutions require a very large output of resources, money, and thought in the short term, in order to realize gains in the long term.) My experience is that this kind of solution can only work if the senior management team members truly act as sponsors, stating the problem, making their presence known, and setting forth any parameters, monetary limits, etc. at the outset, and then constantly checking in with the employees who have been charged with this task. Short of this kind of commitment, the intervention will fail. I look forward to hearing about the experiences of others. Carolyn Thompson Readers who wish to view the complete responses to this question or to continue this discussion are invited to go to "Learning to Be Lean" in the New Workplace Forum. |
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RESOURCE SHELF Telecommuters as Deep-Sea Divers: Building Social Networks Beyond the Workplace by Janice Molloy In recent years, many employers have experimented with flexible work arrangements to attract workers in a tight labor market. For certain job candidates, telecommuting offers an appealing alternative to an arduous commute. Technological advances have made it easier for home workers to stay in touch with their colleagues and clients than ever before. But many telecommuters and their employers have found that technology isn't enough. Some bosses claim that home workers' inability to interact spontaneously with their coworkers undermines their performance. In their book, The Social Life of Information (Harvard Business School Press, 2000), John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid agree with the need for informal contacts among employees, emphasizing the "social character of work." However, they don't automatically write off options such as telecommuting. Instead, they encourage companies to think of telecommuters as deep-sea divers rather than as frontier pioneers. As such, home workers must rely heavily both on technology to connect them to the home base and on a support team to monitor and maintain that connection. Following this metaphor, companies must offer telecommuters ways to connect with their colleagues beyond phone, fax, and e-mail. These tools are fine for intentional contacts but inadequate for less calculated interactions. Access to department "chat rooms," electronic bulletin boards, or real-time teleconferences may offer home workers informal ways to network with and learn from their coworkers. The bottom line? Organizations need to give home workers opportunities to cultivate productive relationships with their peers. Discuss this topic in The New Workplace Forum. |
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| Copyright 2000 Pegasus Communications. LEVERAGE POINTS can be freely distributed in its entirety, or reproduced or excerpted for another publication with written permission from Pegasus Communications. | ||||||||||||||||
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"Like
a child growing up who brings intelligence but
little experience to his reach for understanding,
we must be patient with ourselves in learning
new lifeways. Only time, only experience leads
to true understanding."
