Welcome
Welcome to the
latest issue of Bringing Work to Life.
We explored
the following topics in the past twelve issues (all newsletters are
available at
www.elsdon.com/newsletters.htm):
o
Career plateaus – what to do about them (July/August 2007)
o
Workforce planning (May/June 2007)
o
Assessing your organization (March/April 2007)
o
Individual change (January/February 2007)
o
Guiding organizational change (November/December 2006)
o
One to one (September/October 2006)
o
New horizons (July/August 2006)
o
Our greatest asset (May/June 2006)
o
Bringing development and performance home (March/April 2006)
o
Progressing in your organization (January/February 2006)
o
Bringing our best to work (December 2005)
o
The promise of affiliation (November 2005)
In this issue
we address “Finding the Peaks.”
Finding the Peaks
Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks recently
raised a dilemma for his organization: “… in a passionate internal
memorandum to Starbucks executives, the company chairman said that a
drive for efficiency has led to a ‘watering down of the Starbucks
experience.’'' (New York Times February 24, 2007). Starbucks is facing
questions about focus and resources, how does the organization address
cost saving opportunities but stay true to its core experience? How
does Starbucks strengthen its foundation in creating relationship and
community while continuing to grow rapidly and efficiently? Somewhere
in this dilemma there is a preferred choice, a peak choice. This is
made particularly poignant by Mr. Schultz’ strong commitment to valuing
people in the organization that has led to Starbucks remarkable
success.
Another example of a peak choice is the question of
what attrition rate is optimal for an organization. For it surely isn’t
zero as there are employee situations that are not a good fit, and it
surely isn’t 100% turnover each year, as the upheaval is costly,
inefficient and disruptive. There is a peak, a preferred choice for an
organization (this situation and its resolution are explored in depth in
Affiliation in the Workplace: Value Creation the New Organization, by
Ron Elsdon, Praeger, 2003).
How about peak choices on a personal level? An
important personal choice is where to live. While many factors are part
of this decision sometimes a central trade-off is between proximity to
work and housing availability/cost. Moving close to a city such as San
Francisco may simplify commuting but escalate housing costs. Similarly
on a community level there are peaks choices. What community resources
and social infrastructure, such as accessible healthcare, should we seek
to provide? How will this be financed and by whom?
We see similarities in these organization, personal
and community situations. They each involve complex, multi-faceted
decisions for which the preferred choice is not obvious. The
consequences of these choices are significant in terms of personal
fulfillment, organizational survival or community prosperity, or a
combination of all three.
Complicating the situation is the reality of
choices being made by some for personal gain (their own peak) while
leaving others in a deep trough. Today we see CEOs, enriching
themselves at the expense of others – employees and owners
(shareholders); and some of our current political figures pursuing
destructive foreign policies that ravage others physically and bankrupt
our ethical principles. In such cases the issue is not one of peak
choices but effective governance, on an organizational or a national
level. We will leave this topic of effective governance for possible
exploration in a later newsletter, and here focus on those situations we
can directly influence, where we have the opportunity to make a peak
choice.
Are there tools available to help us thread through
complex decisions to find the best use of resources, tools that can help
us find the peaks? We will look at one example that illustrates the
application of such tools in the organizational realm. This example is
how to best allocate resources for learning and development among people
with different levels of performance in an organization. In this
example our peak is based on organizational value and how this increases
as we invest in learning and development.
We know there is a peak since at one extreme,
namely no investment in learning and development, we lose the benefit of
new knowledge. At the other extreme, if we excessively invest in
learning and development, it becomes so time consuming that productivity
plummets. Indeed, if there were no peak our decision would be easy,
simply invest all resources in the single, top-performing individual.
We know this won’t work, on the other hand investing in everyone equally
may not be the best answer. So how should we distribute learning and
development resources by performance level? It is in addressing this
question that the tools of modeling and simulation can provide
insights.
By modeling we mean quantitatively describing a
situation and making predictions from it. When we have such a model we
can run it many times in a simulation, to find where most value is
created - the highest peak. This can help guide us to the best way to
distribute learning and development resources. Using a simulation,
rather than subjecting the organization to repeated changes, means we
can do this without disruption. We touch here on selected results to
illustrate how the tools of modeling and simulation can help; the
example is described in detail at:
http://www.elsdon.com/learning_resources1.htm.
For our example, the organization’s workforce is
divided into three groups, top performers, middle performers and low
performers. We construct a mathematical model to describe the link
between value creation and investing in learning and development and
then put it into a simulation. The example model assumes that the
potential benefit of investing in learning and development builds as we
move from low to high performers. The following figure shows the
results of a particular simulation based on a case where 10% of people
in the workforce are identified as high performers, 10% as low
performers and 80% are in the middle category. The simulation estimates
the best way to distribute learning and development resources among the
three performance groups on a per person basis (the vertical axis
labeled optimum resource), for different levels of available resources
(the horizontal axis labeled average available development resources per
person). For example, when in the mid range with an average of $500 per
person per year to invest in learning and development, the optimum
distribution is to provide $688 per person for each of the high
performers, $531 per person for the middle performers and $63 per person
for the low performers.
When we have fewer resources (moving to the left in
the figure), they are best used preferentially for the high performing
group to take advantage of the greater potential benefit. As resources
become more readily available (moving to the right in the figure) they
can be applied more evenly.
What does this mean in terms of additional value
created by the organization? That is shown in the following figure.
Here we see the additional value contributed (cumulative net added value
in $million on the vertical axis) from investing in available learning
and development resources (shown in $million on the horizontal axis).
The substantial gain from investing in learning and
development is driven largely by the middle performing group, as its
large scale dwarfs the influence of the high performing group.
Organizations that ignore development of the bulk of their workforce, in
this group, do so at their peril.
The benefit from choosing the peak investment
profile rather than just investing equally in everyone is substantial.
For example, the difference between the peak profile and providing the
same resources to everyone, when the available resources are limited to
$400 per person per year, is over $1 million per year of additional
value created. Tools such as modeling and simulation can contribute
significantly to capturing this value.
We have looked at one example. These same tools
can be applied to other situations where we are also looking for peaks.
It is partly through the application of quantitative tools such as those
described here, applied within a compassionate domain of leadership that
we can contribute to building individual fulfillment, enhancing
organizational value and strengthening local and global communities.
The Cost of War
Chris Hedges in his book War is a Force that Gives
us Meaning observes “the Christian ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr warned us
that moral choice is not between the moral and the immoral, but between
the immoral and the less immoral.” Let’s look at the cost to our own
society of the choice to engage in war in Iraq, the consequences of
choosing the more immoral path. In doing this we are mindful that the
suffering of those in other societies bearing the brunt of this war is
one with, and eclipses, our own suffering.
The cost of the Iraq war to American taxpayers is
over $450 billion so far. If that money were spent locally, the
following could have been provided (source National Priorities
Project):
ð
5.7 million people could have been provided with health
care coverage each year since the war began; AND
ð
1 million affordable housing units could have been build;
AND
ð
430,000 school teachers could have been hired since the
war began; AND
ð
4.7 million students could have received tuition and fees
for four years at a state university
The cost of this war is approaching that of Vietnam
as shown in the following figure
Not surprisingly our military spending is almost
half that of the entire world’s military spending as shown in the
following figure:
National defense (or more correctly national
offense) outlays are now moving towards levels not seen since the Second
World War as shown in the following figure:
Having been blessed with abundant resources and
deep capabilities we are called to give of those resources in the
service of building local, national and global communities, not in
destroying them. And occasionally there is a remarkable glimpse of
compassionate leadership in our society. After the ghastly killings of
young girls in a schoolhouse in a Pennsylvania Amish community in
October 2006 by a lone gunman who was not from the Amish community, it
might seem that rage and revenge would be the response. That would
likely be my reaction. Yet we see a different reaction from the Amish
community. “They offered forgiveness to Marie Roberts, the wife of the
murderer. They invited the widow to attend their own children’s
funerals. More than 30 Amish attended the killer’s funeral. And
finally they requested that all donations be shared with the widow and
her children.” (Beth Newman 11/22/2006,
www.abpnews.com). And we can only stand in awe at their compassion
knowing that it is in this outreach and caring that people come together
for a common good.
We are called to recognize as Hedges puts it “when
facts become as interchangeable as opinions. Those facts that are
inconvenient are discarded or denied.” We are called to speak truth to
power when this happens. To recognize that “war never creates the
security or the harmony we desire.”
Quote
“One of the most difficult realizations of war is
how deeply we betray ourselves, how far we are from the image of
gallantry and courage we desire.” “…for war is exposed for what it is –
organized murder.”
Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us
Meaning.
Elsdon Organizational Renewal (EOR) Recent Mentions
·
Reviews of
“Affiliation in the Workplace: Value Creation in the New
Organization.” Ron Elsdon. Praeger, Westport, CT (2003)
o
Harvard
Business School
·
HBS Working Knowledge: Organizations
o
Global Diversity Institute
·
Global Diversity Institute - The Journal of Diversity Praxis
o
Journal of Asian Economics
·
ScienceDirect - Journal of Asian Economics : Ron Elsdon, Affiliation in
the Workplace: Value Creation in the New Organization, Praeger
Publishers, Westport, CT (2003) 280 pp. (hardcover), ISBN 1-56720-436-8,
$49.95.
o
Greenwood Publishing Group
·
Affiliation in the Workplace — www.greenwood.com
·
Chapter titled
“How Can You Grow Your Practice with Purpose?” in National Career
Development Association Monograph, “Starting and Growing a Business in
the New Economy” Edited by Sally Gelardin, 2007
·
Recorded
Webinar for Project Management Institute
o
“Becoming Career Fit in Turbulent Times”
·
http://pmi-issig.org/Default.aspx?tabid=319
·
“Building a
Strong Workforce Through Affiliation.” Chapter 26 in “On Staffing:
Advice and Perspectives from HR Leaders.” Eds. Nicholas Burkholder et
al, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken NJ (2004)
o
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471410691,descCd-tableOfContents.html
·
“The Growing
Divide Calls for Advocacy.”
o
Article in March, 2007, NCDA Career Convergence magazine
·
http://209.235.208.145/cgi-bin/WebSuite/tcsAssnWebSuite.pl?Action=DisplayNewsDetails&RecordID=947&Sections=&IncludeDropped=1&AssnID=NCDA&DBCode=130285
·
“Reaching for
Our Deep Gladness”
o
Article in May, 2005, NCDA Career Convergence magazine
·
http://209.235.208.145/cgi-bin/WebSuite/tcsAssnWebSuite.pl?Action=DisplayNewsDetails&RecordID=625&Sections=6&IncludeDropped=&AssnID=NCDA&DBCode=130285
·
Mention in
article on cost of turnover
o
East
Bay Business Times, April 2005
·
Turnover costs exceed employers' estimates - 2005-04-25
·
“Worklife
Survival: Finding a Fit”
o
Article for HR West, February 2005 (Northern California Human Resource
Association)
·
http://www.nchra.org/StaticContent/Download/EXT0205007.pdf
·
Interview in
the education field “Affiliation as a Unifying Principle in Education”
o
Career Pro News
·
Affiliation and Education
·
MBTI Step II
workshop
o
CCDA News, April 2005
·
Local Chapter News
·
Review of ICDC
Global Issues Forum
o
CCDA, January 2005
·
ICDC Global Issues Forum
About EOR: Our Value Contribution
We enhance
your workforce, leadership and organization by:
·
Using
proprietary approaches to understand workforce and leadership challenges
·
Creating
tailored action plans and solutions to strengthen workforce and
leadership practices
·
Building
individual capabilities and contributions
We enable you
to focus on external results and building value, confident that your
organization and leadership are operating at peak effectiveness.
Our Mission
To support
your organization by enhancing performance, productivity and
effectiveness through revitalized workforce relationships and leadership
practices.
Our Approach and Values
We tailor our engagements to the needs of each organization with a
process designed to surface critical issues, identify root causes, build
effective solutions, monitor progress and implement.
With a scope that ranges from system and organizational interventions to
work with individuals, our focus is on the heart of the relationship
among the individual, the organization and the community. We believe
that organizational and community prosperity are built on enabling each
person to fulfill his or her potential.
Our Services
We work with
individuals and groups in your organization to drive performance and
development for both the short and long term. As a result people will
choose to work in your organization and will prosper there.
We bring
solutions when you need to:
·
Reverse
declining revenues and performance
·
Revitalize
your workforce
·
Stem the loss
of key talent
·
Redirect your
organization to new areas
·
Stop losing
customers or market share
·
Penetrate new
markets
·
Combat
aggressive competitors
·
Handle major
change
·
Break down
communication barriers
·
Energize your
leadership team
·
Successfully
build on an acquisition or merger
Our
proprietary services include:
·
State-of-the-art tools to take the pulse of your organization and then
move to action
o
Web enabled systems
o
Experts to gather and analyze information, moving your organization to
action
·
Individual
leadership coaching to give you world class leadership capabilities
o
Leaders who know themselves and their aspirations, build their
capabilities and become catalysts developing others
·
Workshops to
build interpersonal skills in your organization so that:
o
Communication is timely, concise, accurate and personal
o
People listen to each other
o
Negotiations are quick and effective
o
Differences create rather than destroy value
o
Teams move forward, get results and quickly commercialize new products
and services
o
People understand and link their motivations to your organizational
needs
o
Your teams understand what it takes to create a committed, energized
workforce
o
People use their time well
·
Systems that
make it easy to drive performance and build capabilities by:
o
Linking objectives throughout the organization
o
Strengthening key competencies
o
Making sure you have the bench strength where and when you need it
o
Giving people tools to take charge of their own careers and development
and have a major long term influence on your organization
·
Proprietary
simulation and modeling techniques that let you explore how to maximize
the value of your workforce
o
Move from guessing what might happen to looking in depth at the
financial impact of different approaches
