Impact of Positive Leadership

Amazon is one of the more performance-oriented companies. They are guided by a set of leadership principles (http://www.amazon.jobs/principles) worthy of emulation.

1. Leaders start with the customer and work backward. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
2. Leaders are owners. They think long term and do not sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job.”
3. Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here.”
4. Leaders are right a lot of the time. They have strong business judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.
5. Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others.
6. Leaders have relentlessly high standards—many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and driving their teams to deliver high-quality products, services and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.
7. Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.
8. Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. Calculated risk taking is valued.
9. Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense.
10. Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.
11. Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.
12. Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them.
13. Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.
14. Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.

Leadership such as this is a prerequisite for quality and productivity improvement. Unless a leader’s commitment is visible and real, those involved in the performance improvement efforts do not see the quality process as important. A leader’s day-to-day behavior is an important clue to others as to what value performance improvement has to that person. Some possible actions include

1. Practice what is preached. Set examples of quality and productivity improvement at top levels.
2. Regularly review the organization’s progress toward meeting its goals and objectives.
3. Find out why goals have not been reached.
4. Pick a few important areas and demonstrate your commitment through visible personal involvement (e.g., personal phone calls to customers).

People need to know that their managers have the capability, desire, and resources to help them solve problems and to provide advice on quality and productivity improvement. Toward this end, make sure middle-managers and managers follow up on problems brought to their attention; learn about quality and productivity tools and techniques; and serve as coaches for quality improvement projects.

The managers (at all levels) in an organization, by their words, actions, support, and choices, make it clear to organizational members what is important. For everyone in the organization to become committed to quality and/or productivity improvement, it must be clear that the managers are so committed. Some ways to send this message include

1. Listen to organizational members.
2. Emphasize quality and productivity improvement at all levels of the organization.
3. Hold regular meetings attended by representatives from all levels of the organization to discuss progress and barriers to improvement.
4. Recognize and publicize success stories.

Motivation

People are the most basic quality and productivity factor in any organization. The attitudes and morale of the workforce are important determinants of quality and productivity improvement. Motivation underlies every person’s performance. Motivation is affected by the quality of leadership, job fulfillment, personal recognition, and the overall support present in the working environment. Here are some things to consider to improve morale.

• Resolve complaints.
• Assign jobs in an equitable manner.
• Recognize top performance.
• Make sure appropriate training is available for advancement.

It is important that a spirit of cooperation and teamwork exists in all areas of the organization. When individuals are rewarded only for their own accomplishments, team efforts can suffer. Some actions include

• Reward team accomplishments—utilize recognition, increased responsibilities, and some time off.
• Set aside a few hours every few months for team members to sit down together to discuss how they are working together or any problems they may be having.
• Encourage teams to develop group identities (a logo, team name). Locate members in the same area if possible.
• Establish cross-functional quality teams.

People want to have their ideas and opinions given careful consideration. When initiating a quality improvement process, everyone should be involved since people’s support and commitment are necessary for success. Some ideas to get people involved follow.

• Use a team approach to clarify mission, define performance measures, set goals, and so on.
• If a total-team approach is not appropriate, allow work group members to “vote” and to suggest alternative performance measures, goals, and so on.

People must perceive that there are enough of the appropriate personnel to get the job done and that their work goals or standards are fair. Some actions include

• Reexamine workloads and reassign people if necessary.
• Allow organizational members to participate in setting work goals/standards. If participation is not possible, perhaps voting among a set of alternatives could be utilized.

Social interactions may not appear to be related to quality improvement at first glance. However, in most organizations people need to work together for a common goal to accomplish their work successfully. It is certainly easier and more enjoyable to work together in a friendly atmosphere and, most likely, more productive as well. In order to promote a friendly work environment, you may wish to

• Encourage after-work recreational activities.
• Encourage fair treatment of all organizational members.
• Make sure work is assigned equitably.
• Ensure that work goals/standards are reasonable.
• Discourage favoritism.

Recruitment

A survey from global services provider Appirio (appirio.com/category/resource/it-talent-wars-gig-economy-report) found that 90% of C-level executives agree that recruiting and retaining technology talent is a top business challenge. The study also found that organizations now devote about one-third of their human resources budgets to hiring IT talent.

Perhaps the most productivity-enhancing thing an organization can do is hire the right people in the first place. Back in 1912, the intelligence quotient (IQ) was introduced. Popular for decades and still used at times today, the IQ test has fallen somewhat out of favor. In the 1990s, emotional intelligence became the desired metric. Emotional intelligence is a set of skills that contribute to a person’s ability to judge and regulate emotion in oneself and others. EQ, as emotional intelligence has come to be called, has really taken off as a measure of personality traits that will lead to success in a particular role.

Of course, the field of personality and skills measurement never stays stagnant for long. TIME magazine (Gray, 2015) talks about something they refer to as the X quotient—or XQ. It is a set of qualities that are so murky that they are hard to describe. What they do know is that an algorithm has discovered a correlation between a candidate’s answers (such as a preference for art or music) and responses given by their most successful current employees.

That this can be done at all is due to the availability of big data, where any and all data are collected to be mined for predictions and lessons through the use of powerful software called data analytics. Data analytics looks for patterns to help optimize performance, of both the organization and its employees.

Infor, a New York–based software company (www.infor.com), asserts that they assess the “Behavioral DNA” of a million candidates a month. This is a measure of 39 behavioral, cognitive, and cultural traits, and compares them with the personality traits of the company’s top performers. The claim here is that assessment in this way lowers turnover and provides a better job fit for the employee. As can be expected, these tests are stressful, often requiring the prospective employee to answer hundreds of questions, some quite similar to one another. Employee assessment has become the next big thing. Romantic matchmaker e-Harmony is entering the fray in 2016 with Elevated Careers. Their claim is that no existing jobs website (e.g., Monster) has really matched personalities in terms of the applicant and the manager.

Testing is no panacea, however. Often, the company can get caught up in the claims of the test designers and their interpretation of the answers. For example, a question about the number of books read in a year tells the test designers that the test taker wants to come across as intellectual. The test takers make the grand leap that readers of 10 books a year (what 10 books are we talking about, by the way?) also can be presumed to take courses, go to museums, and probably keep up to date in their jobs. These correlations are not necessarily true.

Quite some time ago, Google wanted to develop a better way to promote engineers. The analytics folks discovered an algorithm that could predict, for some employees, who would get promoted with 90% accuracy. When the engineers heard about this, they protested. They did not want to be involved with any part of the algorithm. They insisted that these decisions were too important to be left to a “black box” and wanted people to make them. Google has not abandoned analytics, however. It does use these in combination with other techniques. One of these techniques is the fabled live interview wonderfully portrayed in the hilarious Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn movie, The Intern. Two of the questions that are rumored to have been asked at one of these interviews are

1. Why are manhole covers round?
2. You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone number, but you cannot ask him directly. You must write the question on a card and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the answer to you. What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure that Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number?

More Google and other IT-field-oriented interview questions can be found in Appendix I.

Fernández-Aráoz (2014), a senior advisor at a global search firm, insists that there is really a scarcity of talent to be hired. He suggests stressing potential over experience. Indicators of potential include motivation, curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination. While Fernández-Aráoz’s take is that potential should be the defining measure, he also suggests evaluating other traits including intelligence, values, and leadership abilities. The best leaders should be able to demonstrate strategic orientation, market insight, results orientation, customer impact, collaboration and influence, a drive toward organizational development, success in building and leading effective teams, and change leadership.

Employee Appraisal

There is no hard and fast rule on how to conduct a traditional performance appraisal interview. Fairly typical is the methodology used by Jacksonville University (2010), with common pitfalls to be avoided found in Table 5.2.

An appraisal interview should help improve an employee’s job performance by

1. Using this opportunity to communicate your appreciation for the employee’s contribution.
2. Informing the employee of his or her overall performance appraisal and the criteria used for determining the rating.
3. Having an open proactive dialogue with the employee about how he or she can correct any performance weaknesses and build on strengths.
4. Clarifying any misunderstanding about the performance expectations of the employee.
5. Building and cultivating a stronger working relationship between the manager and employee.
6. Establishing goals and objectives for the coming year.

More harm than good can result if the appraisal interview is improperly conducted. Therefore, careful planning is necessary prior to conducting the interview. The manager should select a minimum of five factors applicable to the employee’s position requirements. If there is more than one incumbent in the same position, all should be evaluated with the same chosen criteria. Additionally, the manager should:

1. Schedule an appointment time convenient for both the manager and employee.
2. Provide a private environment to keep interruptions to a minimum.
3. Review pertinent employee information, including personnel records, performance and project status reports, and position descriptions.
4. Decide what is to be accomplished in the interview. Avoid ambiguity to (a) clarify the chosen performance criteria, (b) carefully measure the reasons for giving specific ratings, and (c) determine which areas of improvement are needed.
5. Consider the employee’s point of view. Anticipate what his or her reaction to the discussion might be, remembering that each employee is different and each may react differently in an interview.
6. To begin the discussion satisfactorily, have an opening statement carefully prepared (e.g., We are here to discuss your performance for the 2015 rating period.)
7. Maintain a positive attitude. At the time of the interview, if the manager is upset or angry, the interview should be delayed to a more appropriate time.
8. Have the necessary forms or information ready to present at the proper time; searching for such information during an interview is distracting. Have information ready to present to avoid distractions (i.e., searching for information, etc.)

The manager’s introductory remarks often set the tone of the entire interview. For that reason, it would be advantageous for the manager to create a friendly, constructive atmosphere at the outset. The manager should

1. Be natural. The approach should be friendly, courteous, and professional.
2. Put the employee at ease and establish a rapport. This can be done with a pleasant greeting and a friendly statement that is of interest to the employee that would prompt a reply.
3. Explain to the employee the purpose of the interview and how he or she will be appraised. The employee should have a clear understanding of the criteria used in determining the rating.

The employee–manager discussion is the crux of the process—the manager should be prepared to face various reactions from the employee. Most employees are doing a satisfactory job and are happy to know where they stand and how they can improve job performance. However, dealing with employees who are poorly performing or who are skeptical of the ratings is more difficult. The following guidelines may be useful in dealing with either situation. The manager should

1. Compliment the employee without going to extremes. Failure to recognize good performance may cause a “what’s the use?” attitude. However, overdoing the compliments will raise questions about the manager’s sincerity and abilities.
2. Constructive criticism. If pointing out a weakness, offer the employee a constructive means to correct it.
3. Clarify the reasons why the rating was given. Cite specific examples of performance—deal with facts and avoid generalities.
4. Be sure that the employee understands what is expected of him or her.
5. Ask questions and listen. Allow the employee to express reactions to the evaluation; this can result in discovering the underlying causes for marginal performance. This process should not be a one-way dialogue, but a meaningful conversation.
6. Do not interrupt—but make sure the discussion is not sidetracked by irrelevant topics.
7. Ask the employee for suggestions on how job performance can be improved. Use this opportunity to guide employees toward improvement.
8. Keep the appraisal job-centered. Avoid discussion regarding personality shortcomings, unless they adversely affect departmental operations or the employee’s performance.
9. Maintain objectivity. Do not display anger or hostility, regardless of any hostile remarks the employee may make—remain calm and professional.
10. If the employee gets angry, listen. Do not expect to convince the employee of anything while he or she is angry.
11. Allow the employee his or her self-respect. Nothing is gained by “proving” the employee wrong, being sarcastic, overbearing, or unduly stern.
12. Develop and cultivate the employee’s commitment on specific steps for improvement and any follow-up activity. This commitment should be documented.

Steps to close the interview include

1. Summarize the discussion and the employee’s plan(s) for improvement.
2. Schedule a follow-up interview, if necessary.
3. End the interview on a positive, constructive note.

After the interview, the manager should consider the following questions. If “yes” has been answered to each question, the appraisal interview has been successful.

1. Does the employee clearly understand the goals and objectives of his or her position?
2. Does the employee clearly understand the reason for any unsatisfactory ratings?
3. Does the employee have a clear understanding of what and how performance improvements can be made?
4. Is the employee motivated to improve?
5. Does the employee understand the repercussion of what will happen if his or her performance does not improve?
6. Were plans for performance follow-up made clear to the employee?
7. As a result of the interview, did a better relationship occur between the manager and employee?

The manager should record the essential points of the interview and note anything that could have been done differently to make the next interview more effective. It should be remembered that the interview is part of a continuing process of communication between the manager and employee. The final step is follow-up.

Automated Appraisal Tools

Employers are increasingly using automated tools to monitor employees’ workplace efforts. Hitherto the domain of sales managers, these data-crunching tools now allow white-collar jobs, such as programmers, project managers, and so on, to be tracked, monitored, and managed. Banks, wounded by the financial crisis and Madoff-type scandals, are turning to firms such as Paxata (http://www.paxata.com/), Red Owl Analytics (http://redowlanalytics.com/), and Palantir (http://www.palantir.com/) to monitor in real time everything from employees’ social media, how often they send e-mails on personal accounts, withdraw money from automated teller machines (ATMs), when they enter and leave the building, and what they do on the deep web. At what cost, however?

Tracking professional, often creative, employees comes with its own set of questions. Though workplace tracking programs can promote enhanced connections and, sometimes, increased productivity among geographically dispersed employees, one wonders how much management can ratchet up intensity. Further, how does the data redefine who is valuable? In the end, if this form of measurement is done in the wrong way, employees will feel pressured or micromanaged.

BetterWorks is one of the new breed of products that promotes the connectivity side of the equation. Facebook-like, and geared for millennials and mobile workers, it promises to help better align teams, set clear goals, measure progress, and promote effective execution, as shown in Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.1 The Betterworks interface. (From http://www.betterworks.com/press/.)

Capco (http://www.capco.com/), a financial services company, is one of BetterWorks’ customers. Three thousand Capco employees, many of whom are spread out geographically, use BetterWorks to post their goals for the year for all colleagues and management to review. This results in either “nudges” or “cheers.” The goal is toward transparency and continuous, spontaneous feedback (Streitfeld 2015.)

The most controversial user of these sorts of measurement technologies is Amazon. Amazon uses an internal tool they call Anytime Feedback, which allows employees to submit praise or criticism to management. Many Amazon employees complain that the process can be quite hidden and harsh, some referring to a “river of intrigue and scheming.” This is just the tip of the Amazon data iceberg, however. A lengthy and far-reaching article in the New York Times (Kantor and Streitfeld 2015), which detailed how Amazon collects more data than any other retail operation in history, generated thousands of comments on the New York Times website and a response from Jeff Bezos himself. Amazon employees are held accountable for what seems like an infinite number of metrics, which are reviewed in weekly and/or monthly team meetings. Many Amazon employees say that these are anxiety-producing sessions, and understandably so. At these meetings, employees are pop-quizzed on any of these numbers and it is simply not acceptable to answer with an “I’ll get back to you.” The response to this just might be “you’re stupid.” Employees talk about the often hostile language used in these meetings.

Customary 80-h work weeks are also a concern, with the feeling that unless you give Amazon your absolute all, you are perceived as a weak performer. The Kanter and Streitfeld (2015) article documented vacationless 80/85 h work weeks; and a woman who had breast cancer being put on a “performance improvement plan,” a euphemism for “you’re in danger of being fired.”

As mentioned earlier, the article was met with a flurry of indignation. As I write this, close to 6000 comments can be found in response to this article, with many saying they will not shop at Amazon ever again, and some lambasting employees who would put up with this sort of toxic atmosphere. Obviously, this is a public relations disaster for Amazon. More importantly, health, morale, and productivity will be negatively impacted if not now, then, at some point.

Perhaps the biggest criticism of this sort of constant employee monitoring and measurement is that it might contribute to wage inequality (Cowen 2015). If measurement pinpoints only the best of the best and everyone else is given a pink slip, then there are going to be a whole lot of people on unemployment or taking lower-wage jobs. Working under constant threat of being fired can be unfriendly and quite discouraging. We might end up favoring only certain personality types and bypassing others who might bring more creativity to the table.

Dealing with Burnout

A joint Stanford and Harvard study (Goh et al. 2015) found that workplace stress is about as dangerous as secondhand smoke. The study examined 10 workplace conditions, of which the following 5 were asserted to harm health: long working hours, shift work, work–family conflict, high job demands, and low job control. An additional four workplace conditions were presumed to mitigate the five stressors: social support, social networking opportunities, availability of employer-provided health care, and organizational justice (i.e., fairness in the workplace.) The pivot condition was whether or not the person was actually employed. While employers are not responsible for global economic conditions, they can be held accountable for decisions about layoffs and downsizing, which increase economic insecurity. The researchers concluded that workplace stress contributes to at least 120,000 deaths each year, and accounts for $190 billion in health-care costs. It should come as no surprise that the researchers link better health to increased productivity and lower costs (for health care and health-care taxes.)

Groove, which makes helpdesk software for small businesses, found that its team was working long hours and getting close to burnout. It had few employees, like most start-ups. Their productivity was on a downward spiral (Turnbull 2014.) The company used Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/) to better manage its agile projects. Pivotal Tracker enables the teams to estimate how complex a feature will be to complete. This achieves the goal of steady velocity with low volatility. Groove noticed that over 4 weeks their velocity dropped by close to 20%.

Based on this, and discussions with employees, they needed to find a way to stop burnout in its track. One of the problems was that employees did not take their allocated time off. The reasons being fear and guilt. Employees were afraid that when they came back from time off, the backlog of work would be even worse. They also felt guilty about dumping the workload onto someone else while they were away.

Aside from hiring a new employee and leading by example (the chief executive officer [CEO] took some time off), the main thrust of their solution was to take a close look at the workload. What they found was that there were far too many high-priority tasks listed in Pivotal Tracker. They were tagging more tasks than needed as being mission-critical because they were critical to keeping productivity in line with all of those overworked weeks in the past. The key takeaway here is to be realistic and fair when estimating task times and criticality. In other words, do not crush the golden egg.

In his best-seller, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey (1989) uses the fable of the golden goose to highlight the differences between product (P) and production capability (PC.) A farmer finds a goose that produces golden eggs. Every day it lays a pure golden egg (P). The goose laid these eggs for quite some time so the farmer became quite wealthy. After a while, the farmer gets greedy and becomes impatient, so he kills the goose and opens it up to get to all of the eggs at once. There were no eggs inside. He killed his source of gold—the production capability (PC)—and now he has no production (P) to show for it. The moral of the story is that without taking care of your production capability (employees), production (the work) will suffer.

Covey’s four quadrants can be used to promote more effective time management. The Covey time management grid, shown in Table 5.3, differentiates between activities that are important and those that are urgent. The Covey approach is to create time to focus on the important things before they become urgent. Often, this means trying to do things a bit earlier, more quickly, or automatically.

Employees are wired as never before: 24 × 7 via phone, e-mail, text, and social media. This requires a very high degree of multitasking. One would think that employees who multitask are far more productive than other employees. That would be wrong thinking. Researchers used a driving simulator to compare the performance of drivers who were chatting on mobile phones with drivers who exceeded the blood-alcohol limit. What the researchers found was that drivers who were using mobile phones were just as dangerous as drunk drivers. Drivers who use the phone while they drive took much longer to respond to events outside of the car and failed to notice a lot of the visual cues around them. Essentially, doing two complex things at one time results in a shortage of mental bandwidth.

Sanbonmatsu et al. (2013) found that people are also very poor judges of their ability to multitask. If you have people who are multitasking a lot, you might come to the conclusion that they are good at multitasking. The study found that the more likely they are to do it, the more likely they are to be bad at it. The data showed that people multitask because they have difficulty focusing on one task at a time. They get drawn into secondary tasks—they get bored and want a secondary form of stimulation.

Multitasking really consists of four practices—multitasking, task switching, getting distracted, and managing multiple projects. It turns out that the highly productive practice of having multiple projects, typical for a normal IT employee, invites the use of rapid task switching, which is considered nonproductive. Interestingly, it has been found that people have a better recollection of uncompleted tasks. Known as the Zeigarnik effect, for psychologist Bertha Zeigarnik who first identified the effect in the 1920s, employees with multiple responsibilities tend to engage in rapid task switching. We jump from task to task because we just cannot forget about all of those tasks left on the “to do” list. So, how do we encourage employees to deal with all of these tasks toward enhancing performance and productivity? One technique, quite natural for IT staff, is to create lists of what you need to do and to review the list frequently enough to make sure you do not miss anything.

Give that multitasking can slow things down a bit, it does have a benefit. Some suggest that this switching back and forth between tasks primes people for creativity (White and Shah 2011). Psychologists use the term low latent inhabitation to describe the filter that allows people to tune out irrelevant stimuli. These filters let us get on with what we are doing without being overwhelmed by all of the different stimuli we are subjected to. It seems that people whose filters are a bit porous have a creative edge because letting more information into one’s cognitive workspace lets that information be consciously or unconsciously applied. Essentially, it is easier to think outside the box if the box is leaky. Additionally, a plethora of tasks (or things to do) just might help us forget bad ideas.

There are several suggestions for dealing with multitasking. First, only multitask when it is appropriate. Sometimes it is appropriate just to focus on one task (keep that in mind the next time you have surgery). Agile development techniques talk about development in short sprints. The same is true for dealing with a large number of tasks. Focus in short sprints, say 25 min, breaking for 5 min and so on. Finally, and this is something the organization can help with, cross-fertilize. Be creative by working across different organizational units or across many projects. Those unexpected connections can lead to the next aha moment.

Deming (2015) found that the labor market increasingly rewards social skills. Since 1980, jobs with high social skill requirements have experienced great wage growth. Deming also found that employment and wage growth are most pronounced in jobs that require high levels of both cognitive skill and social skills. He developed a model of team production where workers “trade tasks” to exploit their comparative advantage.

Letting team members trade tasks, a version of the leaderful and holacratic methods discussed earlier, could also go a long way toward ameliorating the lack of engagement found across workers. Gallup’s 2013 study found that 90% of workers were either “not engaged” with or “actively disengaged” from their jobs. However, when given the chance to make their work meaningful and engaging, employees jump at it even if it means they have to work harder. Pfeffer (1998) found that companies that placed a high value on human resources were more likely to survive for at least 5 years than those that did not. Pfeffer also found that sales growth was more than 50% higher in companies with enlightened management practices than in those that did things the old-fashioned way.

In Conclusion

So, how can we better engage employees? Of course, compensation is a key driving factor. However, employees want to have more of a say in how they do their jobs. They want opportunities to learn and grow as well. Encouraging them to suggest improvements to the work process is important as well. Also key to increased engagement is making the employee understand how his or her work makes other people’s lives better.

People are influenced by the consequences of their actions. When establishing goals and improvement plans, consider the informal and formal rewards that are in place. Besides money, people work for things such as achievement, influence, advancement, job satisfaction, autonomy, and recognition.