by William Barclay | Oct 16, 2022 | Management, Training and Development
Staff Training – Do you Like It or Hump It?
Staff training and development has its champions and many dedicated practitioners. But in many organisations their messages are still to take hold so as to create a critical momentum. There is no shortage of evidence of the benefits: increased productivity, better customer service, reduced employee turnover, and improved company culture. Turbulence in the working environment is resulting in new opportunities and challenges: the digital revolution is allowing much more flexible and tailored training delivery; the pace of change is creating a need for more frequent upskilling; and the recognition is increasing that training can be a competitive differentiator as a means of attracting talent. So why are training and development still not more frequently central in operational strategies? It’s necessary to take a step back and consider fundamental prevailing attitudes. The inconvenient reality is that many managers starting in the job possess little enthusiasm for it. It can be said that there still exists the ‘Training Hump’ – attitudes that have a variety of causes. Training can be taken to imply accountability: managers might fear that putting in place training schemes makes them more clearly accountable for the capabilities and performance levels of the workforce. They might worry that training others might in due course create an enhanced risk to their own position. They might perceive that they have achieved some personal success despite having received only limited training so why should it be different for others? They might question the effectiveness of formal training or have concerns about the cost. The possibility that time and money will have been wasted if trained staff leave the organisation might be a further concern. These attitudes can often be demonstrated in the Staff Performance Review Skew – the process is often much more taken up by appraising other staff rather than with the identification of their future training and development needs. This attitudinal underbelly exists and persists but is not acknowledged by managers themselves or the organisations they work for. It may not even be recognised. But the inability to develop staff capabilities in line with needs is a route to failure. Whole-organisation skills strategies require the development of an emphatic training and development culture having advocacy from senior management and widespread ownership. If significant attitudinal resistance exists, particularly on the part of first-line and middle management, it needs to be strongly addressed. The message is clear: training and development – like it, don’t hump it!
by William Barclay | Sep 22, 2022 | Management
The Introvert/Extrovert Debate – Let’s Have the Intro!
The intro/extro debate goes on! What are the relative merits of extroverts and introverts as managers – always with a subtext of ‘can introverts really be good managers?’ But the fact that it’s still being discussed so frequently reveals a big truth: the value of introverts as managers is grossly underestimated. In many workplace situations they perform more effectively than extroverts. Here below is the reality from my experience in the English public services – not a scientific survey but conclusions based on many years’ wide professional experience.
Whilst many features of performance are not unique to either personality type there are some aspects that are more strongly associated with one rather than the other. Of course personalities can change with age and staff may behave differently in different workplace situations. But some major differences do occur, so to consider them let’s think about those individuals whose characteristics lie in the top thirty per cent at either end of the introversion-extroversion scale.
Introverts are likely to possess these advantages:
- a more consistent focus on the task in hand, and a willingness to persist in the face of difficulties
- more interest in the design and development of processes and workflows, something that extroverts may find a little tedious
- a disposition more likely to inspirit trust in others
- better judgement of the character and abilities of others, a particular weakness of some extroverts
- a deeper analytical approach to general workplace issues
- a lesser tendency to allow ‘Dark Triad’ characteristics of narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellism to impact on others. Such impacts are more likely to result from the behaviour of extroverts.
Extroverts are likely to posses these advantages:
- better performance in representative roles when dealing with peer organisations, clients and outside bodies
- a wider breadth of perspective on organisational issues with likely fewer blind spots than introverts
- more effectiveness in dealing with short-term projects, recovery situations and emergencies
- a greater propensity to belong to formal and informal networks within the organisation potentially assisting business coordination and benefitting their own careers. There may be a marked opposite tendency for introverts
- a greater tendency to make necessary trade-offs between pressing exigencies and over-formal compliances.
Of course these characteristics have been selected as those for which the most marked differences are apparent. Many others will be common to both introverts and extroverts. But there is a very clear key message: introverts can provide many important contributions that extroverts cannot. In particular – and contrary to much generality of opinion – they can be excellent managers of people. They can provide strengths in strategy development, business process and efficiency programmes, and organisational cultural improvement. Any organisation that consciously or unconsciously is suppressing the involvement of introverts in management is likely to be depriving the organisation of skill sets that can directly impact on top-line performance. So it’s time for the debate to end. Extroverts and introverts – they are both needed in management. But in the face of some apparent attitudes at the present time it’s necessary to emphasise – Let’s have the intro!
by William Barclay | Aug 13, 2022 | Management
The Reality of Public Services Management in England!
The book Targets and Terror lifts a lid and provides an insider’s view of the true nature of management in England’s public services. It describes the highly negative impacts of the plethora of targets that exist, the wide-ranging behaviours of staff – not all of which are positive, the poor standards of performance management, why teamwork sometimes succeeds but just as often fails, and how setting strategy is a wobbly enterprise in the face of an ever-changing political environment. If you ever find some other management textbooks a little esoteric and divorced from the realities of organisational life you are not alone. This book aims to set the record straight! Author William Barclay is a professionally qualified manager with many years of experience in public services. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Targets-Terror-Englands-Management-Revolution/dp/1916035388
by William Barclay | Jul 22, 2022 | Management
What factors are really necessary for teams to work effectively? Unfortunately a great deal of nonsense is talked about this. Articles about teamwork are ten a penny but reading them one is bound to ask if the authors have ever really been involved in a team seeking to meet major challenges.
The major error is to over-elevate the importance of secondary factors for team success that may possess a warm aura but are not key to driving achievement – namely good communication, shared mindset, patience, delegation, conflict management, mutual respect, trust. To be sure, all of these factors can be important but they are not primary drivers for success.
The performance of the team leader is the single most important determinant of team success. A team cannot succeed without good leadership. The most important attributes of team leaders are:
▪ drive and a focus on operational priorities
▪ the ability to set roles for the team and assign team members to them
▪ the ability to maintain effective working relationships across the team
▪ the ability to sustain a positive team culture.
The key set of knowledge and skills that underlie these attributes are:
* understanding the real-world priorities of the team
* communicating the need for hard work, good organisation and professional habits
*monitoring performance and instigating any necessary corrective actions
* understanding people, their capabilities and their potential capabilities
* assigning individuals to roles and modifying roles if necessary
* making new appointments to roles when necessary
* treating individuals fairly
* diffusing tensions and dealing with incidents
* putting in place social actions in support of good relationships
* providing a personal example of professionalism, hard work and courtesy
* possessing a genuine desire to communicate openly with team members
Apart from the abilities of the team leader, the most critical determinant for team success is the design of the team roles and the choice of individuals to occupy them. Real World Management have derived a method of team development based on roles and relationships termed R2 Team Development because of the reciprocal relationship between roles and relationships and the multiplicative benefits from their positive interplay. It is essential that roles that directly fit all the main functionalities of the team are put in place. Mapping the service delivery process – the activities and interfaces – assists this process. A set of roles that provide full coverage of functionalities avoids uncertainties about responsibilities and is a basis for good relationships. A team leader often has the opportunity to redefine roles in relation to job workflows. Whilst considerable variation exists, the following stages may be present in the delivery process: acceptance of job – signing in of job – allocation of job – devising a work plan –delivering on the plan – reporting the work – maintaining job records.
Specific roles – possibly completely new and unique as a result of the particular circumstances of the team – can be designed around any of these stages of the work or combinations of them. It is an opportunity for creative thinking. Team roles can sometimes be low effort, big reward – their positive impact can be greater than the apparent plainness of the duties might suggest. A significant issue is the extent to which routine tasks common to many staff are combined into a separate role. Team leaders need to take the initiative: some team members may not appreciate role opportunities. In making changes, small pointers in the performance of team members may be significant such as the particular ways that they organise work, the issues that they comment on and what disappoints them when it is not achieved. In the longer term, role changes may be driven by changes to the service delivery process, staff losses, performance and relationship issues or simply by a need to refresh a team and provide new impetus.
The main reasons team fail are:
▪ the team leader does not possess the necessary mindset and skills
▪ roles are not set correctly, and the wrong people are appointed to them
▪ the culture is poor, leading to poor relationships and a loss of focus
▪ bad luck in the nature of targets, the availability of team member skills or the skills and attitudes of more senior management
To end on a happier note, the reasons teams succeed are the opposite of this. The ultimate team compliment is reached when observers remark ‘your team runs itself’. It does not; it only appears to do so because it has good leadership, well designed roles, well chosen role appointments, well crafted processes and a positive culture – a major leadership achievement.
Read more about effective teams and the R2 Method of Team Development in the book Targets and Terror, England’s Public Services Management Revolution by William Barclay. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Targets-Terror-Englands-Management-Revolution/dp/1916035388
by William Barclay | Jun 10, 2022 | Management
DO MANAGEMENT TARGETS WORK?
The book Targets and Terror provides a fascinating account of the reality of management in English public services. A new style of managing people has taken hold. On its introduction, hundreds of achievement targets were introduced, league tables put in place to compare performance, and sanctions including dismissal applied to workgroups and individuals judged to have underperformed. Have these Targets and Terror regimes helped or hindered? The book describes in detail how major damage was caused by unintended consequences, gaming and harmful effects on staff. It also provides a graphic account of real-world public service management – the grand, the grind and the grotesque. Guidance is provided on the use of targets, teamwork, managing people, managing teams, performance management, motivation, and job satisfaction. A new team development methodology is described – R Squared – based on the central importance of setting up team roles and maintaining effective working relationships.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Targets-Terror…/dp/1916035388 #management #targets #teamwork
by William Barclay | May 22, 2022 | Management
Stay Ahead of the Gaming
When performance targets exist for workgroups, there have been many reported examples of gaming to meet the targets, particularly in the public sector. Gaming means changes to the working practices of a work unit, or to the ways in which performance data are recorded, that boost apparent achievements against targets without producing a real benefit to clients.
The wide range of gaming approaches that have been reported could be regarded as testimony to human ingenuity. They include:
- Re-assigning resources to target-bearing outcomes to an extent that is bound to seriously degrade non-target-bearing outcomes
- When there is a choice as to the sort of operations that a work centre carries out, choosing operations which are inherently more output and achievement friendly rather then choosing those which will best benefit clients
- Artificially lowering the reported staff capacity of a work centre in situations where targets are proportional to staff capacity
- Reclassifying outputs into different categories to which more credit is attached
- Changing working processes in a way that produces an apparent improvement in timeliness but only by artificially making the job start time later or the finish time earlier
- Dividing jobs into smaller jobs without justification so that apparent timeliness is improved
- Including job types that benefit timeliness and/or outputs within a category when the job types concerned should be excluded
- Working to a target by deliberately slowing activity once a target has been met – the threshold effect; or continuing activity but not formally recording it until the start of the next reporting period. This has further significance when future targets are known to be ‘performance-plus’ i.e., past achievements plus a certain percentage – the ratchet effect.
Certain dynamics can give rise to the spread of gaming in an organisation as the result of a gaming law equivalent to Gresham’s Monetary Principle: bad practice drives out good. If some work groups believe others are operating in a manner that may constitute gaming, but it is not clearly unacceptable according to established rules, or is likely to be unacceptable but unlikely to be subject to scrutiny, then the practice may spread. Once seeded in this way, the spread of such practices may become more rapid. As a result, a stringent target regime may achieve improvements in the short and medium terms but lead to major dysfunction in the longer term.
One of the most high profile occurrences was at Mid Staffordshire Hospital. It was alleged that a very poor standard of care had been provided over the fifty months between January 2005 and March 2009. In 2008 the hospital had acquired foundation trust status, allowing it operational freedoms. Five official investigations were carried out, the final one being a Public Enquiry led by Robert Francis QC. It referred to the ‘appalling suffering of many patients’ and said that while targets can have value, the failure of the provider Trust Board ‘was in part the consequence of allowing a focus on reaching national access targets, achieving financial balance and seeking foundation trust status at the cost of delivering acceptable standards of care’.
Reported gaming approaches for hospitals have included the use of various means of meeting the four hour Accident and Emergency waiting time target including patients being kept in ambulances to avoid the waiting time commencing, unnecessarily referring patients to clinical decision units and discharging people too quickly.
A 2015 investigation by Merryn Hutchings, Emeritus Professor at London Metropolitan University, on the impacts of accountability measures in schools, commissioned by the National Union of Teachers, reported that the measures had narrowed the curriculum that pupils experience, disproportionately hindered disadvantaged pupils, caused some schools to be reluctant to admit pupils perceived to be likely to restrict attainment outcomes, and damaged the quality of the relationship between teachers and pupils.
Business rules can be designed to control aspects of a business’s operation but configuring them to relate to all possible aspects of gaming is likely to be difficult. It is much more effective to develop an organisational culture in which targets are used sensibly and in moderation, for workgroups to have an input to target setting, and to strive for non-blame approaches in which the true causes of alleged under performance – often multi dimensional – can be identified.
Read more in the book Targets and Terror by William Barclay. Available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Targets-Terror-Englands-Management-Revolution/dp/1916035388
