Technology and Organizations

My first Harvard Business Review blog post went live last Friday! Thank you to Nilofer Merchant for the recommendation to my great editor there, Sarah Green.

Here is the intro to the post:

Leadership Is More than Interpersonal Skills

Most of the 89,000 leadership books offered on Amazon.com focus on traditional interpersonal leadership: the relationships between leaders and followers. Interpersonal leadership sets up an expectation that leaders must be in dialog or at least in view of their followers. Yet this style of interaction is less likely as work stretches across locations and company boundaries as we telecommute, crowdsource, and take on joint ventures. Modern leadership may be as much about facilitating strategy through hiring, training, technology, and focused tasks and goals, as it is about face-to-face interaction. 

 

Clear and meaningful tasks, goals, and technology tools that support the organization’s direction can supplement interpersonal leadership. This is a classic topic in the management field. In the 70s, Steve Kerr and John Jermier offered that leaders do many things beyond their interpersonal relationships with their followers. Talking about the history of substitutes for leadership research, Jermier said in 1997, “[Substitutes for leadership] pointed to unobtrusive and impersonal forces such as technology and task characteristics, professional standards, and formal regulations (policies, rules and procedures).” One of their conclusions was that some people don’t even need leadership in the traditional sense, or find leadership substitutes through interactions with other workers. Hiring for employees who can model the vision of the organization through their work can substitute for interactions with formal leaders. More....

I work on a global team. Many of the team members are 12 hours away. As a leader, that means I need to let go of a lot of day to day interaction. It also means I need to be very clear on the outcomes we are driving and the belief I have in the team to act. The importance of the latter has surprised me. Many people are used to working in an evironment where the boss checks and fronts more than they should. It errodes self belief and personal responsibility -- two key things for great performance. When people are asked to lead, have bought into goals, and encouraged to play to their strengths -- growth happens. I've found I can do much more at a distance that way.

Tools that can substitute for or complement interpersonal leadership?

What I haven't yet seen in the comments are suggestions around tools that might substitute or complement leadership. I've seen value in tools for self-monitoring (e.g., RescueTime). I suspect that teams get leadership value from anything that keeps a project's goals top of mind. Can you suggest specific tools that help leverage more traditional leadership? How are they mixed together with organizational process (e.g., performance management) and/or the kinds of skills available in the team? My colleagues and I would appreciate your examples as we continue our research on this topic.

Friend and co-conspirator, Phil Simon, is offering a day-long seminar in Las Vegas on June 7th.

Topics include:

• The different ways to publish your book–and the pros and cons of each
• Ways to gain traction as an author
• The myths surrounding different publishing options
• Some tips on marketing

Phil Simon is the author of five books, published through Wiley, Cengage, and his own publishing company, Motion.

If you've thought about publishing a book, but the world of publishers, e-books, Amazon and the rest are not yet clear in your mind, you need to attend this event.

I was interviewed recently for an NBC story covering social media, rape, and suicide. Marianne Favro was looking to the positive in her story focusing on the ability of the twitter hashtags #RapeCulture and #EndRapeCulture to mobilize change. As you'll see at the end of the story, I make the comment you see often here: Technology alone can't solve a problem. We need human, technical, and organizational dimensions to all work in concert to make change.

The title of this post rhymes for a reason. Cyber bullying, using electronic media to harm others, was an issue in the news story. Our use, no matter our age, of social media is evolving through trial and error rather than through education. We have an opportunity to make organizational change that might reduce some of the harm.

In school, children are taught about Stranger Danger. Kids are told not to talk to strangers and if they feel something is wrong, they should tell an adult they know. We need something similarly simple for social media use.

Kids: When in doubt, don't send it out

If you receive a message designed to hurt someone, don't forward it. I'm offering this simple rhyme as a first draft. I hope those involved with children's safety will take up the challenge to find something better. There are classes on preventing cyber bullying, but they don't seem to have gone mainstream.

Adults: When in doubt, don't send it out

The Boston bombing taught many adults a similar message. Mat Honen writes today in Wired Magazine that he was taken in by misinformation and tweeted the name of an innocent person as a suspect. He writes of his regret and makes a plea for more control:

We all need to be more careful on Twitter in regards to what is true and what is not. We all should be more skeptical. (And, honestly, I should be better about taking my own advice.) But Twitter can help this process become cleaner, more efficient, more reliable. While it’s true that Twitter is good at correcting errors via viciously effective crowdsourcing, it needs a better way to self-correct, to take it back, to fight the rumors of our own creation.

Please share with the children in your lives: When in doubt, don't send it out. Show the message to an adult. And then we need to follow-up. Let's try and make a tiny bit of good out of these recent tragedies.

The Huffington Post liked Phil Simon’s interview with me on flexible work so much that they posted it twice! Or, it was a glitch, but I like my interpretation. Here is a link from today. A brief excerpt here, then I ask for your advice on moving the future of work ahead, rather than waiting for it to hit us from behind.

In the interview, Phil and I had the chance to talk about my conversation with the father of telecommuting, Jack Nilles. Jack coined the term telecommuting in 1973 and has been working with organizations and their telework programs through his company JALA International ever since. The Yahoo! decision to cancel their telework program gave me a chance to talk with this guru.

Huffington Post Excerpt

[Speaking of Yahoo!]:

TG: The problem with that, is in [Jack’s] experience, most amazing things happen by other kinds of communication and by communication with people who aren't co-located as they are more likely to bring a new perspective to the situation.

[Jack Nilles]: What's important then is to set up the organization so that people do communicate effectively no matter where they are. And to insure that the communication in fact takes place.

TG: When JALA introduces telework, they do communication audits to find out who how often different communication modes are used and then point out ways to maintain the same patterns of results. They don't suggest one change, they suggest a set of changes and how to follow the results of those changes.

PS: This sounds more work outcome focused, like the system Best Buy just killed.

TG: Absolutely! When he made that point it took us into a discussion of results-only work environments -- though we hadn't yet seen the Best Buy story. I asked Nilles, "How do you get them to focus on product and outcomes?"

[Working with the telecommuter and the manager:] Start with a diary of what they did in 15 minute intervals [over pre-telework days]. This helps to set up the communication patterns. We then get them to write a contract with what is going to be required over the next period, and how both the telecommuter and the manager will know when it is done properly. If particular tools are needed, then those are specified. We create schedules, and milestones if it's a long project. Get them through that process to create their joint expectations of the work -- never mind the process.

They then work to help the organization with agreements around when work will be finished and how to handle on-call accessibility for changes and contingencies. "That's what we concentrate on -- getting them to specify this work."

[end of excerpt]

The Nilles model is proactive and thoughtful and so I suspect, quite effective. It takes on organizational practices around work and performance. But can we do more? What if we truly took on the entirety of the future of work, including education, recruiting, talent mobility, and performance management? I know of future-looking tools and communities related to each but think there is value in a more holistic approach.

Asking for Your Advice

Friend and inspiration, Ayelet Baron, had this to say on Twitter today:

We were talking about the growth of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) and the implications for recruiting if traditional education is less of a checkbox, but as Ayelet notes, it is really a much bigger issue. 

Organizations are made up of human, technical, and organizational practice resources. If we change one piece, we need to make additional changes to support the first. If you agree, and if you've gotten this far I hope you do, how do we begin this proactive process?

Who are the game changers?

Using the ideas from Crossing the Chasm, who has the most pain and the most budget to make a difference? Or, do we just try and get startups off to the right start and hope the ideas will spread?