Author Archives: Larry Janis

Why Communication Breaks Down

 

 

 

by Phanish Puranam, INSEAD, and Özgecan Koçak, Goizueta Business School

 

As workplaces become more diverse and work becomes more distributed, it is more important than ever to converge on a common code for effective communication.

Even if individuals are highly motivated to work together, they aren’t always able to do so effectively. That’s because communication remains a key challenge. The human ability to communicate what’s in the mind is miraculous; no other species does it with as much richness. Even so, we don’t do it perfectly. 

Communication is the grease that ensures an organisation runs like a well-oiled machine. Yet, miscommunication is persistent in our work and everyday lives. Miscommunication can range from harmless errors to tragic and costly ones. In 1999, NASA lost a US$125-million Mars orbiter spacecraft. The cause? NASA’s contractor had used English units of measurement for a key spacecraft operation, while NASA used the metric system. We each bring our own “codes” – languages, jargon and terminology – to a conversation, and if these are not the same, confusion and sometimes disaster ensues. But we can work towards becoming better communicators.

The many moving parts of communication

Communication problems tend to be complex. First, effective communication entails the interaction of many factors. The message sent by the sender interacts with how much the receiver already knows about it, whether the receiver understands the label attached to the subject, and whether the receiver can make the inference.

Second, communication is dynamic since it typically happens over time. Each time we attempt to communicate something, whether we succeed or fail, we change our understanding of the world. Learning takes place. If communication were a problem-solving game, the problem changes each time we play it.

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LEADERSHIP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early in the pandemic, Josh Bersin called it the Big Reset: “The Coronavirus is accelerating one of the biggest business transformations in decades.”

As the business landscape evolves and employees reassess their priorities, leadership is changing as well. To reset thinking on what it means to be a leader today, we asked Josh Bersin and other thought and business leaders for their perspective.

 

The biggest mistakes I’m seeing in leadership today are twofold: First, the one size fits all or square peg/square hole management style has proven ineffective when building a long term, sustainable growth model and often leads to high attrition. Leadership, like a coach, would be better suited looking for pockets of talent and moving them into positions where they can score, or defend based on skills. Rather than expecting all things from all people, expect individual value and position it accordingly on the field. Second observation, managing and motivating the next generation of professionals will require different styles of engagement and team driven performance/recognition. They will be less interested in being the first one in the office and last to leave, or willing to out work their smarter peers. After all, they have refined the work smarter not harder methodology – and it works. Lastly, leadership starts with the recruitment and onboarding strategies followed by having a mission that inspires the team, but transparent in terms of difficulties of the objectives.

-Gino Andreozzi, Business Development and Client Services Executive, Worldwide Technology

 

Leadership is all about having a plan, communicating that plan and then being flexible in how that plan gets executed. Your team needs to feel like they own the execution and feel like they are driving the plan to success.

-Bill Childress, SVP, Chief Revenue Office, NTT Data

 

Leadership is about convincing, not telling, people on your team to do important things they didn’t think they could do or may have initially resisted doing.

-Marcus Holloway, CEO, MTM Technologies

 

If you’re inspired by these perspectives on leadership today, stay tuned…there’s more to come!  And if you are interested in crafting your own contribution, please email me at janis@issg.net

3 types of meetings — and how to do each one well

 

 

by Amy Bonsall

Meetings are broken. Something happened when work moved online in 2020 and opening up the office hasn’t fixed it. Every interaction with colleagues became a video call, and our days became a game of transactional Tetris: Where can I slot in this or that meeting? Now, with policies directing which days of the week to be where, the Tetris has gotten more complex.

In my work helping distributed and hybrid organizations flourish, I see employees commuting only to spend time in near-empty offices or on calls. It feels less like flexibility than a new constraint, and it’s not building the relationships we intended. It’s the worst of both worlds.

There is a better way. Instead of focusing on when and where we meet, we ought to start with why we’re coming together and let that dictate logistics. When I’m asked to help rebuild relationships and strengthen complex collaboration, I begin with foundational advice: The new work calendar isn’t about office or home, it’s about three gathering types and the conditions that serve them best.

Three Types of Gatherings
Why do I call them gatherings and not meetings? Names signal purpose. Meeting has a strong connotation, suggesting people around a conference table (or the online equivalent) and a tight agenda. Gatherings offer multiple purposes and release the idea that we must conduct a time-stamped march to check things off lists. (more…)

Why HR leaders need talent intelligence to prepare for the future

 

 

By Phil Albinus
If organizations ignore employee reskilling, they are making themselves vulnerable to their competition, analyst and HRE columnist Josh Bersin in a recent HRE webinar entitled, “Understanding Talent Intelligence: Why Traditional Concepts of Talent Management No Longer Work.”

The key to creating useful talent intelligence, as Bersin defines it, is the ability to gather “internal and external data into a useful tool that empowers planning and business growth.” In terms of employee skills, these tools can help HR leaders assess the skills that employees possess currently and will need in the future. HR leaders also need to know what skills are in demand in the outside job market to help with recruitment and employee retention efforts in a competitive job market.

“HR needs to create a company that allows people to transform themselves without waiting for them to tell you what they want to do,” Bersin said during the webinar, which was sponsored by Eightfold.ai.

It is often easier and less expensive for an organization to upskill a current employee than to hire a new employee with those skills, Bersin said. However, reskilling also is more than improving performance and making people happy with their jobs.

“It’s about your company surviving,” he said.

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5 steps to building a new leadership identity

 

 

BY MARLENE CHISM

 

According to a “Global Generations” study by Ernst & Young, 46% of US managers have been managing for over 10 years, and most not received any type of training to develop their leadership identity. The belief is that because this individual was a star performer, has seniority, is a subject matter expert, a rainmaker, or a technician, they should be equipped to lead others. This tacit assumption leads to leadership dysfunction. The star performer micromanages instead of coaching others. The subject matter expert knows it all. The technical operator is overly aggressive, and the one who got promoted due to seniority still feels like “one of them.”

No matter what the context, newly promoted leaders often find themselves unprepared for what’s required of leadership: making difficult decisions, initiating difficult conversations about performance or behavior, coaching others, and holding the team accountable. At the root is leadership identity.  Here are five steps to building a new leadership identity.

1. Uncover your narrative

How do you define yourself? Are you a “hard worker” or a smart worker? Do you define yourself as a hard worker, or just “one of them”? How do you behave under pressure? Do you have the courage to initiate difficult conversations, or are you more of an avoider?  Increase your self-awareness to build identity-based habits. Notice what you think, say, and do. What would you have to tell yourself to behave as you do? Behavior is your narrative acted out. Behavior drives identity.

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