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A Culture of Thinkers
Organizational leaders do not always reward thinking. Working "within the box" is acceptable and easy to manage. But there's a big difference between managers and leaders. Managers monitor work activity based on a set of dates and deliverables. Leaders enable and encourage people to set their own dates and deliverables through a balance of independent and interdependent thinking. Today's organizations will not survive without that latter component of leadership. The 21st-century environment provides too much diversity of thinking, mobility and information to even attempt to contain work activity to a set of hard and fast dates and deliverables. The job of today's leader is to engage, empower and enable employees to think. It is not enough to talk about engagement, empowerment and enabling programs and policies; the support to think must be felt by the members of the organization. Reinforcing the risk-takings necessary for thought and innovation to thrive will ensure that these behaviors continue to foster corporate growth. Sometime in the 1950s, a group of actors created Tri-Star Productions, a new phenomenon in the industry of cinema. Prior to that, the established system focused on making and distributing the movies. The big studios controlled everything. As charges of monopoly were filed; as television, big screen and 3-D effects rose in popularity; as movies started to grow in other countries and started to reflect changes in societal norms in the United States, general questioning of the established model emerged. Independent movie companies and the notoriety of independent actors offered an alternative to the older model, challenging the established mode of the industry. This allowed the independent actors to demand higher salaries and to even start their own studios. They could sustain themselves without the big movie studios, such as MGM and Warner Brothers, and without their contracts. This turn of events also made the actors responsible for their own destinies and successes. In some cases, they became partners with their old bosses. The rules of engagement had changed. Movie producers had new relationships with the actors, their formerly contracted and owned assets, and they needed to manage differently to ensure their industry's survival. Movies without actors would not work. This evolving scenario prompted industry leaders to develop new thinking, which effected a shift in power for all involved. This was enabling for the individuals as well as for the studio organizations, but only when their cultures adjusted to this new mode of thinking. The leaders of these organizations had to make adjustments to their management styles. Actors' shares of revenue were dramatically changed. They now had the opportunity to select roles carefully. The studios, meanwhile, had to nurture them in order to establish and maintain good relationships. Because actors had new power to demand larger salaries, owners then had to develop different priorities in managing these independent assets. A new sense of accountability entered the culture, with actors now negotiating salaries and roles in very competitive ways, and working directly for themselves. The studio leader's job was to maintain high levels of productivity and quality, and maximize the actors' expertise in identifying good projects, all while carefully managing finances.
21st-Century Workers If we consider the knowledge worker of the 21st century, we see similar elements of independence, mobility and accountability raising a new set of challenges for employers and human resource professionals. The workers' newfound mobility, independence and empowerment have management implications, for sure. They must be able to think, analyze and make decisions in relevant ways. This implies that they work as informed authorities in their areas of competence, integrating their thinking with others and moving on to subsequent projects in a timely manner. Daily operations and customer relationships must be everyone's responsibilities. Leaders can only set parameters for aligning these efforts. Detailed tracking and directing are not possible. It is up to the individual worker to make good decisions and then adjust these decisions after conferring independently with experts. This scenario really equates to having a culture of internally focused entrepreneurs. Business owners and leaders walk a fine line between fostering independent thinking and requiring accountability to help the enterprise sustain itself. With HR's help, they can ensure the latter is not overshadowing the former. Just as the actors experienced, workers can be independent as long as they add value to the organizations that employ them. They not only need to work in environments that sustain them and allow them to be independent, responsible and accountable; they need the structure of knowing where the organization is going and what resources are available to get there. They need the flexibility of an environment that encourages them to think: inside, outside and even beyond the box.
New Rules of Engagement Today's HR leaders need a thinking strategy focused on three activities to recognize and enable the independence and interdependence of workers: * Creating readiness. Sharing of enterprise direction, goals and general information creates a sense of readiness by establishing a comprehensive and common knowledge of the business. * Developing relevance. Ensuring that workflow, including every business activity and connection, builds a collaborative environment in which people can see the relevance and value of their contributions empowers them to integrate their work with others and understand internal and external customers' needs. * Ensuring reinforcement. Implementing a reward structure can help recognize independent thinking and interdependent work, ensuring that everyone understands the values and behaviors, including risk-taking, that contribute to enterprise objectives. Creating a culture that engages and encourages independent thought is not easy. Line leaders and HR executives need to routinely encourage workers to exercise the power of independence and the constraints of accountability, and to understand the interdependence necessary to work with others to ensure a successful enterprise. These empowering initiatives ultimately enable workers to innovate. People who are empowered and expected to think do just that. Just as the movie moguls had to adjust their operations to work with their more sophisticated workers, business leaders have to recognize the need for creating a culture that supports their knowledge workers. Do all of your stakeholders know how critical their thinking is to enterprise success? Do you reward thinking in all directions? Is risk-taking rewarded? Do you have your thinking strategy in place? World War II Gen. George Patton was once quoted as saying, "If everyone is thinking alike, then someone isn't thinking." He was very insightful. He knew that the power of independent thinking was unparalleled when sparked and expected by a leader. Needs change, so the work must change, and environments that support that work must accommodate. The job of a leader is to ensure that the work environment supports the expert as an effective decision maker. In a culture of thinkers, the expert knows the goals, understands the dynamics of the business situation, feels rewarded for making decisions and innovates regularly.
Jane Hartman Frankel is the founder of The Art of Performance, based in North Wales, Pa., a consultancy aimed at helping companies create cultures for high performance and sustainability.
October 16, 2009 Copyright 2009© LRP Publications |
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