Tsunami Change

We all know that change is a fact of life. Nothing seems to remain constant. Yet the Scriptures remind us that "... there is nothing new under the sun" in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes. What seems to change is the packaging and the intensity.

In my understanding of organization behavior, there are three kinds of change: (1) Evolutionary, (2) Revolutionary, and (3) Planned Change. The first is associated with continuous improvement and the third with transformational initiatives. The second is associated with structural change (albeit it might very well be planned).

Why? Structural changes more often than not can have an immediate impact on the status quo. By structural change I do not mean "bird-cage" reorganizations where all the "birds" fly up and settle in different perches. They change who is on top and who is not, but often do not change performance. They change who is on the giving and who is on the receiving side.

The tactics we use for each type of change are varied. Some are power-coersive while others rational-empirical. This subject is for another blog.

A professional friend, Victor Pineiro, wrote a book several years ago on the tsunami type of change he experienced as a consultant-participant in his native Caribean country Curacao. Victor revised his book a few years ago after the tsunami triggered tragedy in South East Asia. A worthwhile reading! I learned much from his book and from his insights.

Recently, I have been tracking and observing a tsunami-type of change in a multi-national organization. A tsunami has a way of surprising you. There is little or no advance warning when it might strike.

In this case study, the tsunami was triggered by the lack of alignment between the CEO and two major shareholders. The CEO was keen on growing the company aggressively to global status while the major shareholders were more keen on squeezing shareholders' value. So when an opportunity surfaced to sell some of the company operations at a very handsome profit, the difference could not be resolved. Shoving became pushing, and soon the CEO was out.

This started a major tsunami.

Several executives were summarily dismissed. New executives were brought in with ideas more closely aligned with the major shareholders' vision. The short-term profit motive trumped the long-term growth potential. The squabble also surfaced many issues with the aggressive growth strategy of the previous regime. Many executives had reached their Peters' Principle (their position exceeded their level of competence). Under the guise of a family culture, many interpersonal scores were unsettled. People were selected for promotion based on nationality, friendships, culture alignment, seniority, etc. rather than competence or results. Growth had generated excess by some of the top folks too. Profitability, it seems, often hides many managerial weaknesses. The Emperor has no clothes!

Needless to say, the toll was high. Many individuals in lower level positions lost their job as fat was eliminated and/or as a more decentralized style of management began to emerge.

Organizational tsunamis can be deadly.

If you are in a corporate job, you are the most vulnerable. High ground (operations) is a safer place. Like animals in the wild, some individuals can sense it coming before it strikes, and they immediately proceed to higher ground (operations) or leave the company altogether (resign).

It takes years for the employee relations climate to recover. The very fiber of the organization is shaken to its roots. Established relationships collapse. A sense of vulnerability permeates the corporate community. The focus is survival -- the ability to survive another day, the hope for a good "package", the longing for the good old days. The organization goes into shock. Depending on its size, it might take years to recover. Some never do. A few use the experience to their advantage, and do not repeat their mistakes.

How about you? Have you have seen or experienced such a change? What did you do? What did you learn?

I am one of those animals that, more often than not, can smell it coming and I have always left the island before the tsunami strikes. How do I smell it? Hard to say. But I start to pick up changes in the language and behavior of the CEO, and his/her shift from the long to the short term. I start to listen to the major constituencies as they start to murmur.

Murmuring is an early warning system, I have learned. Murmuring is a special way of communicating disagreement, admiration, contempt, or other feeling we are afraid to verbalize. Often, it is not a postive sign.

Tsunami often seems to be triggered by internal forces -- infighting, politics, lack of a common vision, arrogance, intrigue. It can also be triggered by market forces.

I would love to hear your reactions to this subject.

Worst HR Practices

My last blog inspired me to address some of the worst HR practices I have seen during my career. I hope that some have been done away with by now. I do know that in some cases people still cling on to them.

The practices are not in any given order. They are all equally destructive, in my view.

1. Force-ranking. Evaluating employees against one another might be an interesting exercise by the compensation folks, but it is demeaning to a person to be told that he/she is at the bottom of the totem pole. If you are selective in your hiring, you should not have bottom-feeders. If you are good at performance management, you might have already addressed performance issues. Bell curves, again an interesting comp exercise, have a tendency of encouraging mediocrity.

2. Complicated Staffing. Putting people through unnecessary hurdles to demonstrate your selectivity slows down progress, creates unnecessary bureaucracy, and rewards patience over speed of action. Experience has shown that multiple interviews often result in a composite rating that is inaccurate of the individual's potential. Line managers need to play a more active role in recruiting.

3. Cumbersome Policies & Procedures. In today's fast-paced world, minimum specification empowers managers and accelerates decision making. Minimum does not mean no specification, only necessary or value-added specification. Managers need to exercise their own judgment, not just follow the rule book. You want managers to make good decisions, not decisions by the book. I realize how important it is to provide proper guidelines for the inexperienced manager.

4. Culture Police. Culture does have an impact on behavior, and behavior has an impact on culture. But, you want to avoid "vigilante" groups. They morph eventually into something akin to the secret police of totalitarian systems. They become informers on their colleagues, thus reducing trust. I have seen many career derailments based on the action of the culture police's determinnation that someone does not fit the culture. This is a pet peeve of mine. I do not see how an outside consultant with casual interaction with an individual can decide whether an employee fits or does not fit the organization's culture.

5. Storm Trooper Layoffs. We all know that business conditions require, on occasion, the rationalization of work force levels. But how you go about implementing reductions in force, for whatever reason, is key. You do it professionally, and with care and respect. You do not use heavy handed methods; methods that embarass the individual; methods that might chip away at his/her own sense of self worth. Terminating employees are not enemies, they are potential customers. You might need them back too. It is not a sign of strength to use Gestapo-like tactics when discharging an employee.

6. Mandatory Performance Reviews. Reviews are an excellent opportunity for a manager and a subordinate to have a periodic dialogue about objectives, career aspirations, development planning, and accomplishments. As a paper exercise per se they have little value, in my view. The value is in the conversation that should be encouraged. Too often, reviews are used for documentation purposes, to protect the organization later on, and to comply with policy. I have always had a problem with this myopic use of performance reviews.

The above list is not complete. I am sure that there many other practices that should be added to the list.

It is the job of HR professionals to identify and eliminate practices that do not contribute to the advancement/usefulness of the HR process.

Whenever someone bashes the HR department, I have found that they bring one or more bad practices up for ridicule.

Have fun ... hopefully, things are not as bad as I might have made them to be.

Worst Employee Relations Practices

I read this interesting article by Liz Ryan in the Business Week magazine.

It is an apropos article. It reminds the reader that although the US employee still leads the world in productivity, US employee relations practices might still lag behind. The US is not alone in engaging in these practices. I have seen them alive and well elsewhere.

Often, under the guise of competitiveness, sound employee relations practices are set aside to justify lower salary increases, dumbed-down performance ratings, and a less respectful work environment for the individual.

As long as we continue to view human resources in elastic terms, we will continue to treat them as an expense rather than an asset. It has been said that you can fool some of the people some of the time, but ...

So, here we go with the worst practices discussed in the article:

1. Make sure you let your employees know that you do not trust them.

2. Do not let them know when they do something great.

3. Keep employees in the dark.

4. Make sure employees know that docility is more important than ingenuity.

5. Squash any signs of individualism.

This list reminds me of a sign I saw in an employee's cubicle some years ago. It said: "Management treats us like mushrooms. First, they keep us in the dark. Then, they feed us shit. And lastly, they 'can' us".

I have never forgotten this. There is much wisdom in popular humor.

Is your organization guilty of any of these five worst practices? If so, what are you planning to do to get rid of them?

We live in the 21st century. These practices have no place in a modern society.

Enjoy your journey ... continue to learn.