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untitled folder 2/A whole new global mindset for leadership.pdf

36 PEOPLE & STRATEGY

A Whole New Global Mindset for Leadership

By Mansour Javidan and Jennie L. Walker

VOLUME 35/ISSUE 2 — 2012 37

to 63,000 (Gabel, Medard and Bruner, 2003). During that same time period, multinationals in the United States created 31 percent of the country’s growth in private-sector real GDP and 41 percent of labor productivity gains (McKinsey Global Institute, June 2010).

Despite the exponential growth (or perhaps because of it), leaders continue to be unpre- pared for global contexts. A recent survey of senior HR executives revealed that a shortage of global executive talent was the primary concern in their firm’s global expansion plans

G lobal Mindset includes specific knowledge, skills and abilities that have been defined through scientific

research at the Najafi Global Mindset Insti- tute at Thunderbird School of Global Management. This article discusses the criti- c a l i m p o r t a n c e o f G l o b a l M i n d s e t development for leaders. It also defines and describes each component.

A Whole New Global Mindset for Leadership In 1969, Howard Perlmutter was among the first researchers to point out that running suc- cessful global operations required a whole new mindset. This gives pause for reflection. How did this mindset differ from status quo leadership? Perlmutter found that global leaders needed to navigate increased com- plexity in organizational culture, management practices and recruitment of top talent (1969) — the very domains human resources profes- sionals are charged with developing. This holds true today. Global leadership is excit- ing, challenging and certainly complex (see Exhibit 1). It has only been recently, however, that the whole new mindset to which Perl- mutter referred was scientifically defined by the Najafi Global Mindset Institute at Thun- derbird School of Global Management.

Are Your Leaders Prepared for Global Complexities? Before we dive into the specifics of Global Mindset, take a moment to assess the global leadership needs in your own organization (see Exhibit 2). Chances are that your orga- nization is touched by global complexities, even if it does not have geographically dis- persed operations.

In the past 40 years, both the number and impact of multinational companies grew exponentially. Between 1990 and 2003 alone, the number of multinational corporations throughout the world increased from 3,000

Global leaders need to navigate increasing complexity in organizational culture, management

practices and recruitment of top talent — the very domains human resources professionals are

charged with developing. This requires a whole new mindset for leadership: Global Mindset.

ExHIBIT 1: THE COMPLExITY OF GLOBAL LEADERSHIP

• International JV, global partners and alliances

ExHIBIT 2: GLOBAL MINDSET NEEDS ASSESSMENT (SHORT-FORM)

1. Throughout the next five years, your corporation’s opportunities, in terms of markets and supplies, are mostly outside of your country.

2. Throughout the next five years, managers at your firm will increasingly need to work with people from other parts of the world.

3. Throughout the next five years, managers at your firm will increasingly need to work with direct reports who are located in different parts of the world.

4. Your company believes that a key to its sustainable competitive advantage in the future resides in its capability to manage cross-cultural complexity in its value chain of suppliers, managers, employees, distributors and customers better than its competitors.

5. Influencing people who are different from you is harder than influencing people who are like you.

Javidan & Dastmalchian, 2009

38 PEOPLE & STRATEGY

(Smith, A., Caver, K., Saslow, S., & Thomas, 2009). And managers agreed: In a survey of managers in global positions, more than 60 percent reported themselves to be poorly pre- pared for their jobs (Howard, A. & Wellins, R.S., 2009, September). It is important to note that even domestically based leaders are faced with increasing global diversity. In a survey of 500 senior executives at 100 global corporations, almost 60 percent reported that their workers will have more diverse backgrounds and experiences and more than half expected managers to become more international in composition (Economist Intelligence Unit report, 2010).

The Global Mindset Project Based on an extensive research project that now includes data from more than 13,000 managers from companies around the world, we view Global Mindset as the set of attri- butes that help a manager influence individuals, groups and organizations from diverse cultural, political and institutional backgrounds. In short, Global Mindset is the capability to influence others unlike yourself — and that is the key difference between lead- ership and global leadership. Leadership is all about influencing others. In terms of the clas- sic distinction that leaders must manage “data, people and things,” ask any manager and they will almost certainly tell you that the management of people is the most complex and difficult of the three. And for a global leader, it is all the more challenging, because they must influence people different from themselves in numerous, compounded ways.

The Global Mindset Project (GMP) started in late 2004 at the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Eight professors reviewed the literature on global leadership, cross-cultural leadership and Global Mindset, conducted interviews with another 26 Thunderbird pro- fessors who are experts in various aspects of global business, and interviewed 217 global executives in the United States, Europe and Asia. We also convened an invitation-only conference where more than 40 academic experts known for their scholarly contribu- tions to the global business field from around the world were asked to test, stretch and refine our thinking — and so they did.

The above process helped us identify the scope and components of the concept of Global Mindset. We then worked with the Dunnette Group, a renowned instrument

design firm, to empirically verify the con- struct of Global Mindset and to scientifically design an instrument that would measure an individual’s profile of Global Mindset. We used an iterative process involving more than 200 MBA students and more than 700 man- a g e r s w o r k i n g f o r t w o F o r t u n e 5 0 0 corporations in a series of surveys and pilot tests. The process resulted in an empirically verified construct of Global Mindset that consists of three major dimensions: Intellec- tual Capital (IC), Psychological Capital (PC) and Social Capital (SC). Exhibit 3 shows the scientific structure of Global Mindset.

Toward a Theory of Global Leadership Despite the plethora of advice and writing on global leadership, there is little effort to clearly define the concept. With few excep- tions, much of the literature on global leadership tends to focus on lists of compe- tencies and suggestions for improvement without offering a clear definition of global leadership (e.g., Brake, 1997 Rhinesmith, 1996; Mendenhall, et al., 2001; Black, Mor- rison and Gregersen, 1999). This is in part due to the fact that no theory of global lead- ership currently exists, despite the plethora of published leadership theories. Case in point, Stephen Covey wrote a very concise and use-

ful review of leadership theories in the appendix of “The 8th Habit: From Effective- ness to Greatness” (Covey, 2004). He lists 20 leadership theories that were put into prac- tice from 1936 through 2003. For those of us in the business of leadership development, the chart should serve as a reminder that, as our world changes, so must our leadership approach. Yet there is a noticeable absence of a theory of global leadership on the chart. This was not an oversight on Covey’s part; the truth of the matter is that it simply did not exist as of 2004. Enter our work at the Najafi Global Mindset Institute. We define global leadership as:

The process of influencing individu- als, groups, and organizations (inside and outside the boundaries of the global organization) representing diverse cultural/political/institutional systems to help achieve the global organization’s goals (Beechler and Javidan, 2007).

We view global leadership as a process of influ- ence, in line with the conventional literature on leadership where most definitions reflect the notion of intentional influence exerted by one person over other people (Yukl, 2006). While much of the extant literature is focused on how leaders can motivate their direct reports toward common goals, we also explic-

ExHIBIT 3: THE STRUCTURE OF GLOBAL MINDSET

VOLUME 35/ISSUE 2 — 2012 39

itly acknowledge that the direct reports may be scattered around the world and may not neatly fit in a typical hierarchical structure. Additionally, since a typical global organiza- tion is more of a network of supply chain partners, joint venture partners or strategic alliance partners trying to execute integrated global strategies (Brake, 1997), the boundaries of the typical global organization are more permeable and fuzzy than the traditional orga- nization (Ashkenas et al, 1995). Global leaders need to influence individuals, teams and orga- nizations from different parts of the world to help achieve their organizations’ objectives. And they need to do this without relying on traditional lines of authority.

Global Leadership Requires More Than Cross-Cultural Intelligence Much of the literature on global leadership tends to focus on leading across cultures (Adler, 1997; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorf- man, and Gupta, 2004; Javidan and Carl, 2004; Dorfman, 2004). While the difference in national cultures is indeed critical, it is not the only issue. The global leader’s targets of influ- ence may come from cultural backgrounds, institutional systems, legal frameworks and social structures that are different from those in the global leader’s home context (North, 1990). They may even have different views on the whole notion of the corporation and its role in the society (Hunt, 2000). Because global leadership is about influencing those who are different from the leader in many important ways, it is useful to identify what those key differences may include.

Global Leadership Requires Intellectual, Psychological and Social Capital Exhibit 3, developed from our research, shows the three core “capitals” and nine underlying building blocks of a global mind- set that enable managers to influence others unlike themselves in achieving their organiza- tions’ global ambitions. Here is a closer look at each, and why they matter.

Intellectual Capital (IC) — the cognitive side of Global Mindset

IC refers to the leader’s knowledge of his/her global surroundings, as well the ability to digest and leverage the additional level of complexity embedded in global environ- ments. It consists of three building blocks:

Global Business Savvy: Knowledge of the way world business works

• Knowledge of global industry

• Knowledge of global competitive business and marketing strategies

• Knowledge of how to transact business and manage risk in other countries

• Knowledge of supplier options in other parts of the world

advances in information technology, trans- portation and distribution, it remains very bumpy in terms of cross-cultural differences. As Douglas Ivester, former CEO of Coca- Cola, summarized, “As economic boundaries come down, cross-cultural barriers go up, presenting new challenges and opportunities in business.”

Our work in the GLOBE project has identi- fied a number of cross-cultural bumps that show, for example, American managers are typically much more performance oriented than are Greek managers. We have also shown that American managers expect their supervisors to be much more enthusiastic than do French managers. A typical American

The global leader’s targets of influence may come from cultural backgrounds, institutional systems, legal frameworks and social structures that are different from those in the global leader’s home context.

Cosmopolitan Outlook: Understanding that the manager’s home country is not the center of the universe

• Knowledge of cultures in different parts of the world

• Knowledge of geography, history and im- portant persons of several countries

• Knowledge of economic and political is- sues, concerns, hot topics, etc., of major regions of the world

• Up-to-date knowledge of important world events

Cognitive Complexity: Global is just more complicated than domestic-only

• Ability to grasp complex concepts quickly

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills

• Ability to understand abstract ideas

• Ability to take complex issues and explain the main points simply and understandably

IC matters because, despite what you may have heard, the world is not flat. Although Thomas Friedman’s world is flat, with respect to its being much more interconnected via

manager may find it difficult to make the necessary adjustments in working with his Greek or French team. Also, the United States is relatively low on “power distance” versus Thailand, which is very high. So the U.S. man- ager who goes on assignment in Thailand and engages her direct reports in empowered, consultative decision making may be greeted with confusion, dismay or disbelief.

These bumpy challenges are why, in a recent survey of CEOs, “mobilizing teams” and “working across cultures” were the top two critical leadership competencies (Howard, A. and Wellins, 2008/2009). The same CEOs reported that “decision making in complex environments and ability to read cultural nuances and to adapt leadership style accord- ingly” is the key to successful global leadership. This was reinforced in a more recent survey of senior executives who identi- fied “ability to influence people from other cultures” as the most important skill for a global executive (Smith, A., Caver, K., Saslow, S., & Thomas, N., 2009).

Psychological Capital (PC) — the affective aspect of Global Mindset

PC helps a manager leverage his/her Intel- l e c t u a l C a p i t a l . W i t h o u t a s t r o n g ➤

40 PEOPLE & STRATEGY

psychological platform, extensive knowledge of global industry and global environment is less likely to result in successful action. Psy- chological Capital consists of:

Passion for diversity: Do not just tolerate or appreciate diversity, but thrive on it

• Interest in exploring other parts of the world

• Interest in getting to know people from other parts of the world

• Interest in living in another country

• Interest in variety

Quest for Adventure: The Marco Polos of the world

• Interest in dealing with challenging situations

• Willingness to take risk

• Willingness to test one’s abilities

• Interest in dealing with unpredictable situations

Self-Assurance: The source of psychological resilience and coping

• Energetic

• Self-confident

• Comfortable in uncomfortable situations

• Witty in tough situations

A senior executive we have been working with, who is low in psychological capital, is originally from New Zealand. He had a suc- cessful track record at home and was promoted to a senior position for the firm in a Middle Eastern country, reporting to an Italian senior executive in Milan and working closely with his colleagues in the Mediterra- nean. His one-year tenure was full of frustration and confusion. He was having a hard time building trust with his direct reports. He had a hard time figuring out what was really going on and felt uneasy about the local culture. He was also struggling with his supervisor and the Mediterranean colleagues. After a few months, he found himself gravi- tating toward other New Zealand or Australian expats and Western clubs and res- taurants in his city. He was so stressed during the day that he wanted the relief of a familiar environment in the evening. He was spending more of his time with other expats who were also suffering, avoiding those who were enjoying their experiences. In sum, he lacked

the psychological and emotional resilience necessary to make sense of cultural and national differences, manage them and enjoy the process while doing so.

Social Capital (SC) — the behavioral aspect of Global Mindset

SC reflects the individual’s ability to act in a way that would help build trusting relation- ships with people from other parts of the world and also consists of three building blocks:

Intercultural Empathy: Display “global” emotional intelligence

• Ability to work well with people from other parts of the world

• Ability to understand nonverbal expres- sions of people from other cultures

• Ability to emotionally connect to people from other cultures

• Ability to engage people from other parts of the world to work together

Interpersonal Impact: Difference maker; sel- dom ignored across boundaries

• Experience in negotiating contracts in other cultures

• Strong networks with people from other cultures and with influential people

• Reputation as a leader

• Credibility

Diplomacy: Seeks first to understand, then to be understood

• Ease of starting a conversation with a stranger

• Ability to integrate diverse perspectives

• Ability to listen to what others have to say

• Willingness to collaborate

Social Capital includes the trust-building and networking behaviors that allow managers to knit together the various elements in their increasingly cross-cultural, complex, global network of relationships. As Sam Palmisano, outgoing CEO of IBM, observes: “Today’s global corporations are shifting their focus from products to production — from what things companies choose to make to how they choose to make them, from what ser- vices they offer to how they choose to deliver them. Simply put, the emerging globally inte-

grated enterprise is a company that fashions its strategy, its management, and its opera- tions in pursuit of a new goal: the integration of production and value delivery worldwide. State borders define less and less the boundar- ies of corporate thinking or practice”11.

A high stock of Social Capital, together with Intellectual Capital and Psychological Capi- tal, equips companies to pursue a new source of sustainable competitive advantage: superi- o r i t y i n m a n a g i n g t h e c r o s s - b o r d e r complexity of their global supply chain. In sum, Intellectual Capital (IC) ensures that the manager is aware of the many dimensions of global complexity. Psychological Capital (PC) generates the enthusiasm, energy and self-confidence to deal with such level of com- plexity. And Social Capital (SC) helps the manager behave in ways that are likely to build trust and help achieve his objectives.

In order to find Global Mindset in people and have a basis for nurturing it, companies must be able to measure it with confidence. One means for doing so is through the use of the Global Mindset Inventory (GMI) survey instrument. The GMI measures a manager’s profile of Global Mindset in terms of nine dimensions and three capitals.

Identifying Global Mindset in Managers Our research to date has identified a number of factors that point to a high Global Mindset in individuals:

• Proficiency in more than one language is a strong predictor of Global Mindset. Anglo speakers (citizens of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zea- land and Australia) who speak other lan- guages are more likely to have higher Global Mindset scores. But proficiency level is a major factor. For those with low proficiency, the magic number is three. Those who have low proficiency in more than three languages actually score lower on Global Mindset. For those with moder- ate to high levels of proficiency, the more languages, the better. (The more languages, the better? Is there not a level where “di- minishing returns” occur?) We also found that for non-Anglo managers, their profi- ciency in the English language is a strong predictor of their Global Mindset.

• The number of countries one has lived, studied and worked in is also important. In

VOLUME 35/ISSUE 2 — 2012 41

general, the more countries a manager has lived in, the higher the average Global Mindset score. However, there is an impor- tant caveat: The length of stay is also an important consideration. The optimum length of stay in each country seems to be between six months and two years. Rela- tively speaking, stays of between six months and two years have the largest im- pact on a manager’s Global Mindset. We also found that the number of countries a person is educated in, up to four, has an impact on Global Mindset score. Further- more, we found that the more friends a manager has from other countries, the higher his/her Global Mindset score.

• An international graduate degree matters. Those with a graduate degree in interna- tional management, international business or international affairs have a higher aver- age score on Global Mindset. While such a degree is indicative of an individual’s inher- ent interest in global issues, it has other important contributions. Our data show that the impact of living and working in multiple countries on the Global Mindset score is quite larger for those with an inter- national master’s degree. Of those with experience in several countries, managers with an international master’s degree have much higher scores than those without it. In other words, an international degree boosts the manager’s ability to leverage the international experience. Finally, our re- sults show that those without an interna- tional degree need to live in two additional countries to achieve the same Global Mindset scores as those with an interna- tional graduate degree.

• Age matters, and that’s the bad news! In our database of more than 12,000 indi- viduals, we found that those in the age group of low-40s to mid-50s had the low- est average scores on Global Mindset com- pared to other age groups. It is not entirely clear why this is the case, but whatever the reason, it is cause for concern, because this is the age group that is typically in charge of running corporations and governments. Most CEOs, senior executives, senior gov- ernment officials and politicians in many countries are in this age group. This raises the question: How easy will it be for cor- porations to globalize their mindset if their senior leadership is not leading by exam- ple? But perhaps an even bigger concern is: How will governments prepare their citi- zens for the globalized world if those in charge just don’t get it?

Building the Company’s Stock of Global Mindset To build the company’s stock of Global Mindset, the options are largely to find it from outside talent or nurture it from within. It would be ideal if we could find individuals with high levels in all three capitals (IC, PC and SC). But we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world with few super men or women. In an imperfect world, which of the three capitals should you look for when hir- ing managers? Our work with hundreds of mangers shows that Psychological Capital has some unique features compared to the other two. You can teach people about glob- al business and cross-cultural issues, and you can help them improve their Social Capital through a variety of experiential experiences. But enhancing someone’s Psychological Cap- ital is much harder and takes much more time. For example, it is not that easy to improve someone’s low passion for diversity. Therefore, at a minimum, companies need to make sure the people they hire or promote have reasonably high levels of PC.

In our work with one Fortune 50 corpora- tion, we helped them incorporate Global Mindset as an integral component of their senior executives’ annual personal develop- ment plans. Every year, all executives set an objective regarding their own Global Mind- set profile. They also prepare a set of action plans to achieve those objectives.

All such interventions have beneficial out- comes, but our view is that to have maximum impact, you need an integrated strategy that has elements from your talent management system, your performance management pro- cess and your leadership development strategy. Global Mindset should be an impor- tant part of your talent management system. It should be a critical competency for several managerial levels in your organization. Your leadership development strategy should ensure that Global Mindset capitals are prop- erly developed, and your performance management system should ensure that they are properly assessed and rewarded.

References: Bloomberg Businessweek. 2010. Charlie Rose Talks to Mike Duke. Bloomberg Businessweek website: http:// www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_50/ b4207000177109.htm.

Boyacigiller, N., Beechler, S., Taylor, S., Levy, O. “The Cru- cial Yet Elusive Global Mindset.” pp. 81-93. In Lane, H. W., Mazrevski, M. L., Mendenhall, M. E., and McNett, J. Handbook of Global Management: A Guide to Managing Complexity. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004.

Gabel, Medard, and Bruner, Global Inc.: An Atlas of the Multinational Corporation. The New Press. 2003.

Global Firms in 2020, Economist Intelligence Unit report, 2010.

Hamel, G. The Future of Management. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. 2007.

House, R.J., Hanges, P.W., Javidan, M., P. Dorfman, and V. Gupta (eds). Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, SAGE. 2004.

Howard, A. and Wellins, R.S. Global Leadership Forecast, 2008/2009. Development dimensions International Inc. Available on the Internet: http://www.ddiworld.com/pdf/ globalleadershipforecast2008-2009_globalreport_ddi. pdf, accessed Sept. 6, 2009.

Palmisano, S. J. The globally integrated enterprise. Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006.

James Reed and Paul Stoltz, Put Your Mindset to Work,” by, Portfolio, 2011.

Javidan, M. and R.J. House (2001), “Cultural acumen for the global manager: Lessons from GLOBE.” 30th Anniver- sary Special Issue of Organizational Dynamics, vol. 29, no. 4. pp. 289-305.

Javidan, M., Teagarden, M., and Bowen, D. 2010. Making it Overseas. Harvard Business Review, April.

Smith, A., Caver, K., Saslow, S., & Thomas, N. Developing the global executive: Challenges and opportunities in a changing world. Pittsburgh: Development Dimensions International. 2009.

Multiple award-winning executive edu- cator and author whose teaching and research interests span the globe, Dr. Mansour Javidan received his MBA and Ph.D. degrees from the Carlson School at the University of Minnesota. He is former dean of research at Thun- derbird School of Global Management and is currently the Garvin Distin- guished Professor and Founding Director of the Global Mindset Institute.

Dr. Jennie Walker is a faculty associate for the Najafi Global Mindset Institute at Thunderbird School of Global Man- agement. Her area of expertise is in global leadership development. She began work in human resources devel- opment in 1995 and has specialized in developing corporate leadership pro- grams for Fortune 500 companies since 2002. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Denver.

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__MACOSX/untitled folder 2/._A whole new global mindset for leadership.pdf

untitled folder 2/Bringing bias into the light.pdf

COVER STORY

into the

Like it or not, everyone harbors unconscious prejudice. The trick is gaining enough insight to prevent it from affecting w ho you hire and how you trea t people.

By Dana Wilkie

J ennifer Allyn is not someone you’d expect to embrace the notion th a t a w om an’s place is at home. She earned a mas­ ter’s degree from H arvard Kennedy School, served as an HR consultant to Fortune 500 companies and is currently leading diversity efforts for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. She sits on women’s leadership boards, won a Feminist Press award and is her

family’s primary breadwinner. So it stands to reason that when this accomplished professional

sees the word “career,” she thinks of women as often as men. Except she doesn’t. Somewhere in her subconscious—so deeply buried that she isn’t

aware of it—Allyn associates women with families and men with careers. So says the assessment she took called the Implicit Associa­ tion Test (IAT), a well-respected tool designed to uncover hidden biases about everything from race to gender to age. >

k W A T C H an interview with diversity expert Howard Ross on addressing hidden bias: www.shrm.org/1214-hidden-bias

22 HR Magazine Decem ber 2014

IM A

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COVER STORY

30% o f male CEOs o f Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. are 6-foot-2, w hile only 3.9% o f adult A m e ri­ can men are this tall.

Source: M a lc o lm G ladw ell, Blink (Back Bay Books, 2007).

The salaries o f blond w om en are

70/ . t / U higher

than those o f wom en w h o are brunettes or redheads.

Source: Queensland U niversity.

“I was raised in a family where my father was the breadw inner and my m other was the care­ giver,” says Allyn, who was stunned by the IAT results. “It’s a pretty good jolt when you realize th a t no m atter w hat your con­ scious m in d m ay th in k , there are other dynamics at play.”

T hose “o th e r d y n a m ­ ics” may be biases th at we embrace on an unconscious level— deep prejudices or ste re o ty p e s im p a rte d by upbringing, culture and mass media that influence our perceptions about people and our behavior toward them.

“Hidden biases are not a sign of a bad person,” says Zabeen Hirji, CHRO of the Toronto-based Royal Bank of Canada, which in 2013 co-hosted, with Ernst & Young, a forum on hidden bias for 300 corporate and com m unity leaders. “M ost people have them. Once we accepted th a t ... it allowed us to talk about these issues in a nonjudg- mental way. W h at’s bad is not trying to under­ stand what your unconscious biases are.'

Skin color, gender and age are gen­ erally what people think of when they consider biases, but individuals can harbor unconscious prejudice about myriad characteristics, including: • Height and weight. • Introversion and extroversion. • M arital and parental status. • Disability status (for example, the use of a wheelchair or cane). • Foreign accents. • W h e re s o m e o n e a tt e n d e d college. • Hobbies or extracurricular acti­ vities.

All of these characteristics and many others can imperceptibly influ­ ence everything from who gets inter­ viewed to who gets hired to who gets fired. They can affect the way people are mentored, how employees social­ ize w ith one another, who is given plum assignments and promotions, and much more.

Which is why a growing number

of U.S. corporations offer train in g program s aimed at rooting out hidden biases.

“M ost of our large clients are doing some kind of unconscious-bias train in g , com pared to five years ago— and this is happening glob­ ally,” says M argaret Regan, president and CEO of The FutureWork Institute, a global diversity consultancy. “It is probably the one topic th at is requested for global and U.S. training by all of our clients going into 2015.”

Sara Taylor, a diversity expert and founder of deepSEE Consulting, says unconscious-bias training is among the top three e-learning subjects requested by her clients. “More people are start­ ing to see this as something th at we’ve got to pay attention to,” she says.

None Are Im m une Lest you th in k you’re im m une to having h id ­ den biases, try taking one of the IATs at https:// implicit.harvard.edu/implicit. Chances are you’ll be surprised by the results.

Test participants, who click on specific let­ ters on the keyboard to sort words into one of two categories, respond more quickly when they perceive that certain words—such as “men” and

Tips for Avoiding Biased Behavior . increase purposeful mentoring and coaching. S po n so r p e o p le w h o are n o t like you.

. Be proactive about recognizing people s different

capabilities, and help prepare them to take on challenging

! SS' Consider w h o m ight consistently feel like an outsider,

and take steps to actively address the situation. . Establish clearly defined, measurable interview crite­

ria against w hich all candidates w ill be evaluated. . Set reasonable parameters around the nature am ount of help you w ill offer to special connections.

. A ttend professional affinity group meetings and siveness events to enrich your understanding of diversity.

• Evaluate your actions daily. . Seek out regular feedback on your o w n behaviors

and actions from trusted ye t objective colleagues.

iA/ith n p .rm is s io n fr o m Outsmarting c o__ nminn UiflHpn

Zabeen Hirji, the Royal Bank of Canada

24 HR Magazine Decem ber 2014

Leaders who addressed unconscious bias at the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) (from left) Dave McKay, RBC president and CEO; researcher Mahzarin R. Banaji; Zabeen Hirji, RBC CHRO; and Gord Nixon, former RBC president and CEO.

F o r e v e r y

in c r e a s e in a w o m a n 's

b o d y m a s s , t h e r e is a

c o r r e s p o n d in g 0 .6 %

d e c r e a s e in f a m ily

in c o m e .

Source: The N ational Bureau o f Economic Research.

“career”— are closely related. One version, the Race IAT, reveals th at 75 percent of its takers, including some black individuals, have an implicit preference for white people over black people. Other versions show that Americans prefer thin people over fat people, heterosexuals over homo­ sexuals, and young people over old people. Most Americans, like Allyn, tend to associate women with families and men with careers, according to

some versions of the IAT. Research by a leader in

the field of hidden bias— M a h z a r in R. B a n a ji— shows that the human brain is wired to make lightning- quick decisions th a t draw on one’s assum ptions and experiences but th a t may also be based on misguided generalizations.

“ P eo p le m a k e ju d g ­ ments and decisions that are totally wrong,” says Anthony G. Greenwald, a University of W ash­ ington psychology professor who created the IAT in 1994. “This automatic operation of the mind can lead to behavior that produces dispa­ rate impacts—totally w ithout any awareness or intention.”

Most recruiters, H R professionals and manag­ ers are taught to avoid behaving differently toward

people based on obvious traits such as gender, race, age or disability. Harder to recognize is the dispa­ rate treatment that occurs based on subtler biases. For example, is the applicant a married man, and does that make him appear stable? Is she a single mother, and does that make her seem unreliable? Does he speak with a Southern twang, which may give the impression that he’s not terribly bright?

Hidden bias can have legal repercussions. Inter­ national organizational consulting firm Human Facets asserts on its website that “unconscious bias is increasingly being used in employment litigation to prove discrimination.”

Indeed, it was a central issue in Dukes v. Wal- M art Stores Inc., in which 2 million women sued the retail giant for gender discrimination. Uncon­ scious-bias argum ents have also been used in class-action suits against Home Depot and FedEx, with the companies settling for $87.5 million and $53.5 million, respectively. And hidden bias has been raised in class actions against Fortune 500 companies such as Best Buy, Johnson & Johnson, Cargill, Merrill Lynch, General Electric, Ameri­ can Express, MetLife and Morgan Stanley.

Retraining Your Brain Recognizing the pervasive effects that hidden bias can have on the workplace, companies large and small are hiring consultants— or turning to their HR departments—to do something about it. >

Anthony G. Greenwald, the University of Washington

" M a t u r e - f a c e d "

p e o p le e n jo y a

c a r e e r a d v a n t a g e

o v e r " b a b y - f a c e d "

c o m p e t it o r s w it h

la r g e , r o u n d e y e s ;

h ig h e y e b r o w s ; a n d a

s m a ll c h in .

Source: Duke University.

D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 4 HR Magazine 2 5

COVER STORY

R esum es w ith "w h ite -s o u n d in g "

nam es receive

50% m o re callbacks th a n

th o s e w ith "b la c k ­

s o u n d in g " nam es.

Source: The N ational Bureau of Economic Research.

M ale and fe m a le s cie n ­ tis ts —ty p ic a lly tra in e d to re je c t s u b je c tiv e

c rite ria —w e re m o re

lik e ly to h ire a m ale a p p lic a n t, rank him h ig h e r in co m p e te n c y

and p ay him

$4,000 m o re th a n a fe m a le .

Source: Yale University.

A t th e R oyal B an k of C a n a d a (RBC), H irji e m b a rk e d o n h id d e n -b ia s tr a in in g by h av in g Banaji speak in M ay 2013 to the b a n k ’s CEO , as well as to senior m anagers from RBC an d E rn st & Young (EY). T he response was so positive th a t RBC an d EY then hosted their hidden-bias forum w ith 3 0 0 C a n a d ia n leaders fro m co rp o ratio n s, acad em ia, g o v ern m en t an d diversity advocacy groups. Today, about 1,000 RBC employees have p articip ated in train in g sessions on hidden bias, w hich involve a m ix of speakers, discussions and test-taking. T he b an k also has an in tern al social m ed ia p la tfo rm th a t allow s em ployees to ta lk about unconscious bias.

T h e tra in in g has h ad a palpable effect. H irji tells of one executive w h o confessed th a t, after receiving train in g , he cau g h t him self reflexively deciding to pick one of his m ale stars for a plum overseas job. “H e stopped and th o u g h t about w ho else m ight be on his list, an d it ended up being a w o m an ,” H irji recalls.

Fiona M acfarlane, EY’s chief inclusiveness offi­ cer for C an ad a, adm itted th a t, as a South A frican im m ig ran t, she ten d ed to give o th e r new im m i­ g ran ts special access an d privileges because she em pathized w ith them.

M a c fa rla n e has developed a p a m p h le t fo r m anagers encouraging them to tak e people w ho appear very different from themselves to lunch or

to include team members who may seem like outsid­ ers in social events. The pam phlet notes th a t diverse team s perform better th a n homogenous ones.

In 2011, global pharm aceutical com pany Pfizer held a th re e -h o u r w o rk sh o p on hid d en bias for com pany leaders. Today, before m anagers in te r­ view job applicants, they’re given a “tip sheet” th a t helps lim it hidden bias from playing a role. W hen­

ever possible, job interviews are conducted by a panel of diverse stakeholders.

B e f o r e P r i c e w a t e r - h o u s e C o o p e r s m a n a g e rs w rite p e rfo rm a n c e e v a lu ­ a tio n s , A lly n sen d s th e m rem in d ers to be o n g u a rd a g a in s t “p r o to ty p e b ia s ” (the tendency to h ab itu ally th in k of the same people for

choice assignments) and “affinity bias” (the incli­ nation to identify w ith employees w ho have inter­ ests sim ilar to the m anager’s).

Som e e x p e rts su g g est c o n d u c tin g “ b lin d ” review s of resum es— th a t is, assessing resum es th a t have been stripped of identifying inform ation such as nam e and gender—w hen narrow ing a list of applicants. In this approach, the com pany cre­ ates objective scoring systems: A m aster’s degree m ight earn more points th a n a bachelor’s degree,

Jennifer Allyn, Pricewaterhouse- Coopers

well-dressed B a b y B o o m e r C0mputer-literate masculine

ta lk a tiv e West Coast jona-distance M l # fnndie I r\ r i m r t Native American

analytical

attractive

. , Latina UPDB3I feminine E u r o p e a n

morose ---- ---- u : „ u ______ ■ _ local

00 baby-faced

fit!USj I wtflii nnrifii l l i l l 1 i l l

fllnn male creative

obese

indigenous high-energy

outgoing .... S a l e

optimistic well-read laid-back literal-minded g j y

26 HR Magazine December 2014

i t r j h t i Questions to Ask Yourself • Do I typically hire the same type of person? • When I say a candidate is not the right fit, what do I mean?

• What does my slate of candidates look like? Do I speak up if it is not sufficiently diverse? • Which of my past hires were successful, and what can I learn from the choices that didn't work out? • Who do I like to assign to work on— and lead— proj­ ect teams? Do I have the same go-to people all or most of the time? • Who do I take to important client or cross-team meetings? • Who do I encourage to lead or speak out at meet­ ings? Am I creating opportunities for those less extro­ verted to demonstrate their capabilities? • How do I identify candidates for promotion and suc­ cession?

Reprinted with permission from O utsm arting our brains: Overcoming hidden biases to harness d iversity's tru e p otential, ©2013 Ernst & Young LLP.

for example, and points may be earned based on number of years in a relevant position. This gives managers a method for ranking resumes w ith ­ out knowing whether an applicant is a man or a woman, Asian or white, 25 or 45.

For Smaller HR Shops While the RBCs and Pfizers of the world have the money and staff to invest in training about hid­ den bias, th a t’s not always possible for smaller companies.

Lisa Whealon is director of hum an resources for the GL Group, a midsize, family-owned com­ pany in St. Louis with about 200 employees that distributes and sells books to schools.

“Larger companies tend to have protocols and processes in place to limit the possibility of bias,” Whealon says. “I feel it is companies our size and smaller th at really have to watch out for these biases during the recruiting and hiring process.”

She and her team assemble questions designed to reveal if an applicant’s skills and personality are suited to the company’s culture, rather than allowing managers to ask questions that might be informed by their own biases. W healon’s queries may explore if an applicant would be comfortable around employees who wear jeans and engage in

spontaneous water balloon tosses, for example, or w ith taking charge and m aking decisions w ithout a supervi­ sor’s approval.

The importance of this vetting pro­ cess became apparent after the com ­ pany discovered th a t one employee wasn’t working out, even though a hir­ ing manager had insisted that the per­ son would be a “good cultural fit.”

“ We realized th e m an ag er and [employee] had many personal factors in com m on, such as their kids both played soccer and they had sim ilar career backgrounds,” W healon says. Thus, the hiring decision appeared to be more about personal fit with the m an­ ager than cultural fit with the company. “We give hiring managers a road map of questions that speak to our culture,” she says. “W ithout these questions, you leave a lot of room for interpretation and bias when trying to assess a candi­ date’s match.”

Janet H arding, director of cultural awareness and inclusion at Frederick M em o­ rial H ospital in M aryland, uses role-playing so medical staff can understand that hidden bias is often a factor in patient care. All new employees attend workshops where they’re told a story about a patient experience and then asked to rank the story’s characters based on how “m orally” they behaved. During one workshop, a woman who cared for people with substance abuse realized that she disliked working with addicts because as a child she had had to cope with the painful experi­ ence of a family member grappling with addiction.

“She realized that she had to put aside her per­ sonal feelings and be professional with whomever the patient was,” Harding says.

Taylor of deepSEE Consulting acknowledges th at there are still too few companies th at take the time or make the investment to root out hid­ den bias.

“We aren’t quite there yet,” she says. “It’s still at a surface level for a lot of organizations. But the good news is that more folks are paying attention to this.” G3

Dana Wilkie is an online editor/manager for SHRM.

People who

s m ile appear more trustwor­ thy than those with straight faces.

Source: Journal o f Economic Psychology.

For each child a woman has, her wages will decrease by about 4%, even when marital status, work hours, job characteristics, past experience and quali­ fications are taken into account. When a man has a child, however, his earnings increase by

6% Source: M ich elle J. Budig, Third W ay.

D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 4 H R Magazine 2 7

Copyright of HR Magazine is the property of Society for Human Resource Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

__MACOSX/untitled folder 2/._Bringing bias into the light.pdf

untitled folder 2/New kids on the block.pdf

Organizational & Employee Development

New Kids on the

Bl on me •ock Millennial employees are driving changes in HR practices involving

flexibility, transparency and community.

By Kathryn Tyler

Deloitte ôcToucheLLP hired 17,000U.S. employees during2012, and most of them were Millennials. "By 2015, over half of our employees will be Millennials," says Paul Silverglate, a partner in the financial services company and managing partner for work/life in San Jose, Calif. To understand what is important to this generation, Deloitte created a national Gen Y Council in 2009 to serve as a sounding board for senior leaders.

Who are the Millennials, and why does their influence matter? The Millennial generation, or Generation Y, is currently the young-

est working generation and will make up 75 percent of the U.S. labor force by 2025. Born between approximately 1978 and 1999, they range from 13 to 35 years old. This generation does not remember a world without personal computers. It's the most virtually connected, team-oriented, technologically savvy generation in history. .

October 2013 HR Magazine 35

Organizational & Employee Development

And the most overprotected: Millennials grew up in "an over-adult-supervised environment," explains consultant Chuck Underwood, founder of The Generational Imperative Inc. in Miamisburg, Ohio. "Their parents convinced them they were the center of the universe."

Millennials have strong opinions about work. "They are more likely to say they don't want to work that hard—20 percent said this in the 1970s, but 39 percent said this by the 2000s. And work is just a way to make a living—23 percent said this in the 1970s; 34 percent by the 2000s," says Jean Twenge, a psychology profes- sor at San Diego State University. "Most still say they are willing to work overtime to do the best job—91 percent said this in the 1970s, and 84 percent [said this] in the 2000s."

Underwood explains that "Millennials have gotten off to an uneven start with American employers." He offers an anecdote. During a training seminar for 60 supervisory personnel at a Cali- fornia hospital. Underwood asked participants to shout out the strengths they saw in Millennial employees. Almost as a chorus, they answered "technology." When he asked "What else?" the audience went silent.

Brad Karsh, co-author of Manager 3.0: A Millennial's Guide

to Rewriting the Rules of Management (AMACOM, 2013) believes that Millennials get an undeserved bad rap. "Millenni- als are blamed for attributes every young person has," he says. "Every generation comes into the workforce clueless and per- ceived as lazy."

Regardless of how they are perceived, Millennials are set to become a driving force in the workplace. They will outnumber Baby Boomers in the workplace by 2015. "The tide is rushing in. It's inevitable, so prepare for it," Karsh says.

Start by understanding what is important to Generation Y employees—flexibility, transparency and community—and adapt policies, practices and procedures to leverage this genera- tion's strengths and minimize its weaknesses.

Flexibility "Millennials need more flexibility—not just around time but around everything," says Angel Pedersen, SPHR, an HR business partner at Dyson Ltd., a vacuum manufacturer based in Chicago that has 2,950 employees worldwide. Millennials seek flexible work locations, schedules and assignments.

Locations. Millennials want to work remotely and use

Grooming Millennials as Managers

Millennials are looking for "flatter orga-

nizations and less hierarchy," says Brad

Karsh, co-author of Manager 3.0: A

Miiienniai's Guide to Rewriting ttie Huies

of Management {AMACOM, 2013),

who says he has spoken with 10,000

Millennials. "They think about their

careers as scaffolding, not ladders. On

ladders, there's only one direction and

only one person can go up at a time. You

can't pass anybody, and you can't walk

over, drop down a bit, and then keep

going up. Millennials don't think 'Ann I

driving to be the next CEO?' They think

'Am I learning, growing and developing?

Am I fulfilled?' If so, it makes sense to

make a lateral move."

Chuck Underwood, founder of The

Generational Imperative Inc., a consult-

ing firm in Miamisburg, Ohio, and host

of the PBS television series "America's

Generations with Chuck Underwood,"

believes that Millennials will change the

traditional corporate hierarchy. "Instead

of vertical, it will be horizontal," he

says. "They will lead by group decision.

Millennial leadership teams will be con-

nected virtually, rather than physically."

Because Millennials are team-

oriented. Underwood recommends that

organization leaders capitalize on this

characteristic. The health care industry

provides an example of how things are

changing. "It had always been very

hierarchical, with the doctor, then the

nurse, then the nurse's aide, etc.," he

says. "Now health care is focusing more

strongly on team dynamics and team

care. Millennials flourish in groups."

They aren't comfortable acting alone,

however, so Millennials being groomed

for management need training on how to

stand strong alone and work individually.

"They are excellent in group and team

dynamics. They are not as strong when

given a single, long-term task they must

complete on their own," Underwood

says. "Management needs to train

Millennials in being decisive and how to

be stand-alone decision-makers."

Millennials also benefit from develop-

ment programs that help them under-

stand all the parts of the organization,

Emily Forrester, SPHR, vice president

of HR for the Iowa Bankers Association,

says: "The most common developmen-

tal program I've seen at our member

banks has been emerging leadership

programs that are designed to give

Millennials exposure to the senior man-

agement teams and to additional opera-

tional areas within their banks. This gives

Millennials an opportunity to connect the

dots across the bank to see how every-

one's role is important to the overall suc-

cess, identify areas for improved collabo-

ration, and understand the opportunities

available for future developmental and

leadership opportunities."

36 HR Magazine October 2013

Organizational & Employee Development

different technologies, says Geoff Peterson, manag- ing principal at General Lead, a micro-recruiting firm in Pittsburgh with 50 employees. "Generation Y feels threatened by the four walls of a cubicle." With that in mind. General Lead went completely virtual.

How does the company ensure that employees are working when they are not physically at work? At first, it was difficult to track who was doing what, when and how well. So managers implemented online project management software called Liquid Planner.

"It weeded out a couple of employees right away," Peterson says. "Some didn't feel they needed to have a tool like that, but the majority of employees really liked it. We didn't care when they did the work, only that they did it by a certain time, with high quality. Most of them are proud to show us everything they have accomplished."

the group, such as "We should be home on Thursday nights," and the teams hold themselves accountable. "It gives them a bigger sense of control and flexibility, and the performance is significantly better," says Silverglate, who adds that the pilot has done well and there are plans to expand it.

Work assignments. Millennial "like to learn a lot of different skills. They like variety, and they like it early on in their job tenure," says Neil Howe, author of Mil- lennials in the Workplace: Human Resource Strategies for a New Generation (LifeCourse Associates, 2010). "Sometimes this is mistaken as wanting to move up right away. They want to move up just because they want to do something different."

Karsh says rotational programs feed into Millenni- als' need for change. VanBroekhoven notes that such programs "give emerging talent opportunities to experi-

To develop and retain thiageneration, we've had to evaluate our performance appraisal and compensation

adjustment procedures.'

With the software, managers can see how long it takes for an employee to complete a task and lever- age employee strengths accordingly. "We had an employee who was taking a long time to do phone screens with candidates but was really good with research, so we shifted her into research," Peterson explains.

Vocon Partners LLC, a 100-employee design and architectural firm in Cleveland, allows employees to work remotely and has Wi-Fi throughout the building and on an outside terrace. "This generation expects flexibility around mobility," says Scott Ashley, Vocon's workplace strategist. "They've got to have laptops and smartphones, the ability to be mobile."

Schedules. "We see the end of the 9-to-5 work- day," predicts Jacqueline VanBroekhoven, consul- tant for Hogan Assessment Systems in Tulsa, Okla. "Workers—especially Millennial—expect more flexible work arrangements to accommodate the changes in the typical workday structure."

Deloitte & Touche has a pilot program called Small Things Big Differences that organizes work teams. Each team determines specific guidelines for

ence different areas of the business, step outside of their area of expertise and gain large chunks of institutional knowledge in a relatively brief period of time."

Tïansparency Millenniais are driving HR policy changes involving transparency as well. "They want to understand the rationale behind every decision," Karsh says.

Emily Forrester, SPHR, vice president of HR for the Iowa Bankers Association, has experienced this first- hand. "To develop and retain this generation, we've had to evaluate our performance appraisal and compensa- tion adjustment procedures," she says. "It's been impor- tant for us to maintain transparency with this group. We've been asked a number of times for more informa- tion on how we set compensation amounts, so we've had to be more forthcoming."

Karsh advises: "If HR can pull the cloak off certain things, do it. When you can't, explain why."

Community For Millenniais, work is a "second home." In an ongo- ing study by Nick Shore, MTV's senior vice president.

38 HR Magazine October 2013

Organizational & Employee Development

Strategie insights and research, 90 percent of Millennials say they want their workplaces to be social and fun, and 71 percent say they want co-workers to be like a second family.

"Be open to new ways of doing things to make the work more engaging, more fun," advises Pedersen, a Millennial. "Don't immediately shut down Millennials' ideas or they won't stay. Valuing our opinions and ideas is important. People need to have fun and want to have fun at work. It's not all about getting the work done. I take work home with me, on week- ends, on vacation. It's about finding the balance of work and play. Make the environment more like a community."

How can HR professionals do that? Experts recommend: Gathering spaces. Consider coffee-bar-type spaces for con-

versing. Millennials see these as places to exchange ideas and ways to build trust, according to Ashley. "If I know a few personal things about you, I'm more comfortable asking you to help with a project," he says.

Group onboarding. "Group onboarding appeals to [Millen-

O N L I N E RESOURCES

For more information about training and developing Millennials, seethe online version of this article atwww.shrm. orq/1013-manaqinq-millennials.

with Millennials, Howe warns. "We have never seen a generation of 20-somethings so close to their parents. They are calling their parents every night."

Howe recommends that managers "use the parents as a resource. Let them join the conversation." That might mean having a parents newsletter or host-

ing a "Bring Your Parents to Work Day." The New York Stock Exchange encourages new graduates to bring parents to the half- day orientation.

Social responsibility. Millennials want to know how their organization—and their contribution within that organization^ fits into the community. "They don't want to just give money; they want to be involved with charity work," says Susan Austin, PHR, chief HR officer at Vocon Partners.

Accommodate All By 2020, due to the delayed retirements of Traditionalists and Baby Boomers, experts estimate five generations will be working

Use parents as a resource. That nnight nnean having a parents newsletter or hosting a

'Bring Your Parents to Work Day.'

niais'] core peer personality traits. Bond them as a group to the organization so they are loyal to the company and to each other," Howe says.

Karsh recommends a "starting class" concept where groups of 30 or so employees train and do rotational programs together. " Companies that have a'Classof2013' have found the employees end up being as, if not more, loyal to each other than they are to the company," he says. "It's a powerful retention tool."

Affinity groups. Millennials want to have social opportunities at work. "Book clubs or running clubs are popular," Karsh says.

Mentoring and formal career planning. Millennials "need to know they are being looked after and there is a plan; it isn't just a bunch of random different experiences," Howe says. "There should be continuity, a mentor and some sort of plan for career advancement."

The company as a parent. "Millennials consistently want more noncash benefits than Xers," Howe says. "It is the desire for the in loco parentis employer."

Parents in the workplace. In the past, HR professionals did their best to keep parents at arm's length. "That's a mistake"

side by side. This diversity will affect practices around employee benefits, flexible work arrangements and compensation, accord- ing to VanBroekhoven.

That does not mean HR professionals need to cater to Mil- lennials. "Focus less on the characteristics society has ascribed to the emerging Millennial generation and more on policies and practices that support the changing demands being placed on our workforce," VanBroekhoven says. "Flexible work arrangements do not just apply to one generation."

Howe says HR should recognize the contributions that each generation brings. "Older generations have to understand how different they were than the generations that came before," he notes. "Once they understand that, then they can start to see how they view the Millennials through the eyes of their own genera- tion." Eventually, Millennials will recast the workplace in their image. Will you be ready? ÜB

Kathryn Tyier is a freelance writer and former HR generalist and trainer in Wixom, Mich.

40 HR Magazine October 2013

Copyright of HR Magazine is the property of Society for Human Resource Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

__MACOSX/untitled folder 2/._New kids on the block.pdf

untitled folder 2/Speeding up team learning.pdf

BEST PRACTICE

Speeding Up Team Learning

The most successful teams adapt quickly to new ways of

working. Now, a study of 16 cardiac surgery teams offers

intriguing insights on how to make that happen.

CARDIAC SURGERY is One of medi-cine's modem miracles. In an oper- ating room no larger than many house- hold kitchens, a patient is rendered functionally dead-the heart no longer beating, the lungs no longer breath- ing-while a surgical team repairs or replaces damaged arteries or valves, A week later, the patient walks out of the hospital.

The miracle is a testament to medical technology-but also to incredible team- work. A cardiac surgical team includes an array of specialists who need to work in close cooperation for the operation to succeed. A single error, miscommunica- tion, or slow response can have disas- trous consequences. In other words, sur- gical teams are not all that different from the cross-functional teams that in recent years have become crucial to business success.

We studied how surgical teams at 16 major medical centers implemented a difficult new procedure for performing

by Amy Edmondson, Richard Bohmer,

and Gary Pisano

cardiac surgery. What we found sheds light on one of the key determinants of team performance: a team's ability to adapt to a new way of working. In cor- porate settings, teams frequently have to leam new technologies or processes that are designed to improve perfor- mance. Often, however, things get worse - sometimes for a long time - be- fore they get better. Team members may find it hard to break out of deeply in- grained routines. Or they may struggle to adjust to new roles and communica- tion requirements.

When a product development team adopts computer-aided design tools, for example, designers, test engineers, pro- cess engineers, and even marketers have to learn the technology. But they also have to create and become comfortable with entirely new relationships, working

collaboratively instead of making con- tributions individually and then hand- ing pieces of the project off to the next person.

Most teams become proficient at new tasks or processes over time. But time is a luxury few teams-or companies- have. If you move too slowly, you may find that competitors are reaping the benefits of a new technology while you're still in the leaming stages or that an even newer technology has super- seded the one you're finally integrating into your work. The challenge of team management these days is not simply to execute existing processes efficiently. It's to implement new processes-as quickly as possible.

Whether in a hospital or an office park, getting a team up to speed isn't easy. As a surgeon on one of the teams

OCTOBER 2001 125

BEST PRACTICE • Speeding Up Team Learning

we studied wryly put it, the new surgical procedure represented "a transfer of pain-from the patient to the surgeon." But if that came as no surprise, we were surprised at some of the things that helped, or didn't help, certain teams learn faster than others. An overriding lesson was that the most successful teams had leaders who actively man- aged their teams' learning efforts. That finding is likely to pose a challenge in many areas of business where, as In med- icine, team leaders are chosen more for their technical expertise than for their management skills.

Teamwork in Operation A conventional cardiac operation, which typically lasts two to four hours, unites four professions and a battery of spe- cialized equipment in a carefully chore- ographed routine. The surgeon and the surgeon's assistant are supported by a scrub nurse, a cardiac anesthesiologist, and a perfusionist-a technician who runs the bypass machine that takes over the functions of the heart and lungs. A team in a typical cardiac surgery de- partment performs hundreds of open- heart operations a year. Consequently, the well-defined sequence of individual tasks that constitute an operation be- comes so routine that team members often don't need words to signal the start of a new stage in the procedure; a mere look is enough.

Open-heart surgery has saved count- less lives, but its invasiveness-the sur- geon must cut open the patient's chest and split the breastbone - has meant a painful and lengthy recovery. Recently, however, a new technology has enabled surgical teams to perform "minimally invasive cardiac surgery" in which the surgeon works through a relatively small incision between the ribs. The pro- cedure, introduced in hospitals in the

Amy Edmondson, Richard Bohmer, and

Gary Pisano are faculty members at Har-

vard Business School in Boston. Edmond-

son is an associate professor; Bohmer, a

physician, is an assistant professor; and

Pisano is the Harry E. Figgiejr., Professor

of Business Administration.

late 1990s, held out the promise of a much shorter and more pleasant recov- ery for thousands of patients - and a po- tential competitive advantage for the hospitals that adopted it. (For a descrip- tion of the procedure, see the sidebar "A New Way to Mend a Broken Heart.")

Although the scene and players re- main the same, the new technology sig- nificantly alters the nature of the surgi-

cal team's work. Obviously, individual team members need to leam new tasks. The surgeon, with the heart no longer laid out in full view, has to operate with- out the visual and tactile cues that typ- ically guide this painstaking work. The anesthesiologist has to use ultrasound imaging equipment, never before a part of cardiac operations. But the mastery of new tasks isn't the only challenge. In the

The challenge of team

management these

days is to implement

new processes - as

quickly as possible.

126 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Speeding Up Team Learning • BEST PRACTICE

A New Way to Mend a Broken Heart

The cardiac surgery technology we studied is a modification of conventional cardiac surgery, but it requires the surgical team to take a radi- cai new approach to working together.

The standard cardiac operation has three major phases: opening the chest, stopping the heart, and piacing the patient on a heart-lung bypass machine; repairing or replacing dam- aged coronary arteries or valves; and weaning the patient from bypass and closing the chest wound. The minimally invasive technology, adopted by more than lOO hospitals beginning in the late 1990S, provides an alternative way to gain access to the heart. Instead of cutting through the breastbone, the surgeon uses spe- cial equipment to work on the heart through an incision between the ribs.

The small size of the incision changes open- heart surgery in several ways. For one thing, the surgeon has to operate in a severely re- stricted space. For another, the tubes that con- nect the patient to the bypass machine must be threaded through an artery and vein in the groin instead of being inserted directly into the heart through the incision. And a tiny catheter with a deflated balloon must be threaded into the aorta, the body's main artery, and the bal- loon inflated to act as an internal clamp. In conventional cardiac surgery, the aorta is

blocked off with external clamps inserted into the open chest

The placement of the internal clamp is an example of the greater coordination among team members required by the new procedure. Using ultrasound, the anesthesiologist works carefully with the surgeon to monitor the path of the balloon as it is inserted, because the surgeon can't see or feel the catheter. Correct placement is crucial, and the tolerances on bal- loon location are extremely low. Once the balloon clamp is in position, team members, including the nurse and the perfusionist, must monitor it to be sure it stays in place.

"The pressures have to be monitored on the balloon constantly,"said one nurse we interviewed.'The communication with perfu- sion is critical. When I read the training man- ual, I couldn't believe it. It was so different from standard cases."

Perhaps it isn't surprising that adoption of the procedure-by all of the teams-took longer than expected. The company that developed the technology estimated that it would take surgical teams about eight operations before they were able to perform the new procedure in the same amount of time as conventional surgery. But for even the fastest-learning teams in our study, the number was closer to 40.

new procedure, a number of familiar tasks occur in a different sequence, re- quiring a team to unleam the old rou- tine before learning the new one.

More subtly, the new technology re- quires greater interdependence and communication among team members. For example, much of the information about the patient's heart that the sur- geon traditionally gleaned through sight and touch is now delivered via digital readouts and ultrasound images dis- played on monitors out of his or her field of vision. Thus the surgeon must rely on team members for essential information, disrupting not only the team's routine but also the surgeon's role as order giver in the operating room's tightly structured hierarchy.

Isolating the "Fast Factors"

The 16 teams we studied were among those that adopted this demanding new procedure. Given its complexity, they exercised great care in carrying it out, checking and double-checking every step. As a result, the rate of deaths and serious complications was no higher than for conventional procedures. But the teams were taking too long. At every hospital we studied, operations using the new technology initially took two to three times longer than conventional open-heart procedures.

Time is important in cardiac surgery. Long operations put patients at risk and strain operating teams, both mentally and physically. And with operating-

rtx>m time costly and profit margins for cardiac surgery relatively high, cash- strapped hospitals want to maximize the number of operations cardiac teams perform daily. •

As teams at the various hospitals struggled with the new procedure, they did get faster. This underscored one of the key tenets of leaming, that the more you do something, the better you get at it. But a striking fact emerged from our research: The pace of improvement dif- fered dramatically from team to team. Our goal was to find out what allowed certain teams to extract disproportion- ate amounts of learning from each in- crement of experience and thereby leam more quickly than their counterparts at other hospitals.

OCTOBER 2001 127

BEST PRACTICE • Speeding Up Team Learning

A Tale of Two Hospitals

The leader of the team implementing the minimally Invasive surgical procedure at Chelsea Hospital was a renowned cardiac surgeon who had significant experi- ence with the new technology. Despite that apparent advantage, his team learned the new procedure more slowly than the teams at many other hospitals, including Mountain Medical Center, where the team leader was a relativelyjunior surgeon with an interest in trying new techniques, Why?

The New Technology as a Plug-in Component Chelsea Hospital (the names of the hospitals are pseudo- nyms) is an urban academic medical center that at the timeofourstudy had just hired a newchief of cardiac surgery. He seemed an ideal choice to lead the depart-

Procedure time

in hours 5 -

10

Number of procedures

Mastering the new technology proved unexpectedly difficult for al! team members. After almost 50 cases at Chelsea, the surgeon said: "It doesn't seem to be getting that much better. We're a little slicker, but not as slick as I would like to be."As at other sites, team members at Chelsea reported being amazed by the extent to which the procedure imposed a need for a new style and level of communication. But they were less confident than team members at other hospitals that they would be able to put these into practice.

The New Technology as a Team Innovation Project Mountain Medical Center is a respected community hos- pital serving a small city and the surrounding rural area. Although the cardiac surgery department didn't have a

history of undertaking major research or cardiac surgical innovation, it had recently hired a young surgeon who took an interest in the new procedure. More than any of the team leaders at other hospitals, this surgeon recog- nized that implementing the technology would require the team to adopt a very dif- ferent style. "The ability of the surgeon to allow himself to become a partner, not a

Mountain Medical Ceriter

Chelsea Hospital

Average of all hospitals in the study

Procedure times have been adjusted for the type of operation and the severity of the patient's illness. The curves are trend lines that reflect the average improvement ir\ procedure times.

ment's adoption of the new technology, as he had used the new procedure in numerous operations at another hospital (one that was not in our sample). Administrators at Chelsea supported the surgeon's request to invest in the new technology and agreed to send a team to the supplier company's formal training program.

The surgeon, however, played no role in selecting the team,which was assembled according to seniority. He also didn't participate in the team's dry run prior to the first case. He later explained that he didn't see the tech- nique as particularly challenging, having experimented for years with placing a balloon in the aorta. Conse- quently, he explained,"it was not a matter of training my- self It was a matter of training the team." Such training, though, wouldn't require a change in his style of commu- nicating with the team, he said: "Once I get the team set up, I never look up [from the operating field], It's they who have to make sure that everything is flowing."

dictator, is critical," he said. "For example, you really do have to change what you're doing [during an operation]

based on a suggestion from someone else on the team. This is a complete restructuring of the [operating room] and how it works,"

Team members, who were picked by the surgeon based on their experience working together, responded enthusi- astically to his approach. One noted that the "hierarchy [has]changed,"creating a "free and open environment with input from everybody." Said another: "I'm so excited about [the new procedure]. It has been a model, notjust for this hospital but for cardiac surgery. It is about what a groupof people can do," He explained that the team got better because "the surgeon said,'Hey, you guys have got to make this thing work.'That's a great motivator."

In the end, despite the team leader's modest reputa- tion and the hospital's limited experience in implement- ing new cardiac procedures. Mountain Medical was one ofthe two hospitals in our study that learned the new technology most quickly.

128 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Speeding Up Team Learning • BEST PRACTICE

The adoption of the new technology provided an ideal laboratory for rigor- ously studying how teams learn and why some learn faster than others. We collected detailed data on 660 patients who underwent minimally invasive car- diac surgery at the 16 medical centers, beginning with each team's first such operation. We also interviewed in per- son all staff members who were in- volved in adopting the technology. Then we used standard statistical methods to analyze how quickly procedure times fell with accumulated experience, ad- justing for variables that might influ- ence operating time, such as the type of operation and the patient's condition. Using these and other data, we also as- sessed the technology implementation effort at each hospital.

Because teams doing conventional cardiac surgery follow widely accepted protocols and use standardized tech- nology, the teams adopting the new pro- cedure started with a common set of practices and norms. They also received

the same three-day training program in the new technology. This consistency among teams in both their traditional work practices and their preparation for the new task helped us zero in on the "fast factors" that allowed some teams to adopt the technology relatively quickly.

Rethinking Conventionai Wisdom We were surprised by some of the fac- tors that turned out not to matter in how quickly teams learned. For instance, variations among the teams in educa- tional background and surgical experi- ence didn't necessarily have any impact on the steepness of the learning curve. (For a comparison of teams at two med- ical centers, see the sidebar "A Tale of T\vo Hospitals.")

We also turned up evidence that coun- tered several cherished notions about the ways organizations-and, by im- plication, teams-adopt new technolo- gies and processes. For one thing, high-

level management support for the min- imally invasive technology wasn't deci- sive in hospitals' success in implement- ing it. At some hospitals, implementation was unsuccessful despite strong vocal and financial support from senior offi- cials. At others, teams enjoyed tremen- dous success despite support that was ambivalent at best. For example, one surgeon initially had difficulty convinc- ing hospital administrators that the new procedure should be tried there; they saw it as a time-consuming dis- traction that might benefit surgeons but would further tax the overworked hospital staff. Even so, the surgeon's team became one of the more success- ful in our study.

The status of the surgeon who led the team also didn't seem to make a differ- ence. Conventional wisdom holds that a team charged with implementing a new technology or process needs a leader who has clout within the organization - someone who can "make things hap- pen" in support of the team's efforts.

BEST PRACTICE • Speeding Up Team Learning

But we saw situations in which depart- ment heads and world-renowned car- diac surgeons coirtdn't get their teams to adapt to the new operating routine. At other sites, relatively junior surgeons championed the new technology and, with little support from more senior colleagues, brought their teams quickly along the learning curve.

Finally, the debriefs, project audits, and after-action reports so often cited as key to learning weren't pivotal to the success or failure of the teams we studied. In fact, few surgical teams had time for regular, formal reviews of their work. At one hospital, sucb reviews were normally conducted at midnight over take-out Chinese food. Some research- oriented academic medical centers did aggregate performance data and ana- lyze the data retrospectively, but teams at these hospitals didn't necessarily im- prove at faster rates. Instead, as we will discuss, the successful teams engaged in real-time learning-analyzing and draw- ing lessons from the process while it was under way.

Creating a Learning Team We found that success in learning came down to the way teams were put to- gether and how they drew on their ex- periences - in other words, on tbe teams' design and management. Teams tbat leamed the new procedure most quickly shared three essential characteristics. Tbey were designed for learning; their leaders framed the challenge in such a way that team members were bighly motivated to learn; and the leaders' be- havior created an environment of psy- chological safety that fostered commu- nication and innovation.

Designing a Team for Learning. Team leaders often have considerable discretion in determining, tbrougb choice of members, the group's mix of skills and areas of expertise. The teams in our study had no such leeway-car- diac surgery requires a surgeon, an anes- thesiologist, a perfusionist, and a scrub nurse. But tbe leaders who capitalized on the opportunity to choose particu- lar individuals from tbose specialties reaped significant benefits.

At one extreme, the leaders-the sur- geons-took little initiative in cboosing team members. At one hospital,the staff members chosen for training in the pro- cedure were, essentially, those wbo hap- pened to be available the weekend of tbe training session.

In a few teams, however, selection was much more collaborative, and tbe choices were carefully weighed. An anestbesiology department bead, for instance, might get significant input from the cardiac surgeon before choos- ing an anesthesiologist. Selection was based not only on competence but also on sucb factors as the individual's abil- ity to work with others, willingjiess to deal witb new and ambiguous situa- tions, and confidence in offering sug- gestions to team members witb higber status.

Another critical aspect of team design was the degree to which substitutions were permitted. In conventional sur- gery, all members of the surgical de- partment are assumed to be equally capable of doing tbe work of their particular discipline, and team mem- bers within a discipline are readily sub- stituted for one anotber. It's logical to assume that training additional team members would allow for more cases to be performed using the new procedure, but we found that such flexibility bas a cost. Reductions in average procedure time (adjusted for patient complexity) were faster at hospitals that kept tbe original teams intact.

At one hospital where several addi- tional members of the nursing, anes- thesiology, and perfusion staff were trained in tbe new procedure sbortly after adoption, the makeup of the team changed with almost every operation. Again and again, teams bad to learn from scratch how to work together. After the tenth time, the surgeon de- manded a fixed team wbenever he per- formed tbe new prcKedure. Operations went more smoothly after that.

Framing the Challenge. When dis- cussing tbe new procedure with team members, the leaders of teams that suc- cessfully implemented the new tech- nology characterized adopting it as an

organizational challenge rather than a technical one. Tbey emphasized the im- portance of creating new ways of work- ing together over simply acquiring new individual skills. They made it clear that this reinvention of working relation- ships would require the contribution of every team member.

By all accounts, tbe difficulty of the new procedure makes cardiac surgery even more stressful than usual, at least initially. But many surgeons didn't ac- knowledge the higber level of stress or help their teams intemalize the ratio- nale for taking on tbis significant new challenge. Instead, tbey portrayed the technology as a plug-in component in an otherwise unchanged procedure. As one surgeon told us: "I don't see what's really new here. All the basic compo- nents of tbis technology bave been around for years." Tbis view led to frus- tration and resistance among team members. Another surgeon, who char- acterized the procedure as primarily a technical challenge for surgeons, was as- sisted by a nurse who, with grim humor, said sbe would rather slit ber wrists than do the new procedure one more time. Her attitude was shared by many we interviewed.

But that attitude wasn't universal. At si>me hospitals, staff members were ex- cited to be "part of something new" as one expressed it. A nurse reported that she felt honored to be a member of the team, in part because it was "exciting to see patients do so well." The leaders of teams with positive attitudes toward the cballenge explicitly acknowledged that the task was difficult and empha- sized the importance of eacb person's contribution. Tbe surgeon who talked of the transfer of pain from the patient to the surgical team belped his team by highlighting, witb light bumor,the frus- tration they all faced in this leaming cballenge.

Creating an Environment of Psy- chological Safety. Teams, even more tban individuals, learn througb trial and error. Because of the many interactions among members, it's very difficult for teams to perform tasks smoothly the first time, despite well-designed train-

130 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

speeding Up Team Learning • BEST PRACTICE

ing programs and extensive individual preparation. The fastest-learning teams in our study tried different approacbes in an effort to shave time from the op- eration without endangering patients. Indeed, team members uniformly em- phasized the importance of experi- menting with new ways of doing things to improve team performance - even if some of the new ways turned out not to work.

As we have noted, this ieaming in ac- tion proved to be more effective than the after-action analysis so often touted as key to organizational leaming. Real- time learning occasionally yielded in- sights that might have been lost had a team member waited for a formal re- view session. During a procedure at one hospital, for instance, a nurse sponta- neously suggested solving a surgical problem with a long-discarded type of clamp affectionately known as the "iron intem."The use ofthe nearly forgotten medical device immediately became part of that team's permanent routine.

When individuals leam, the process of trial and error-propose something, try it, then accept or reject it-occurs in private. But on a team, people risk ap- pearing ignorant or incompetent when they suggest or try something new. This is particularly true in the case of tech- nology implementation, because new technologies often render many ofthe skills of current "experts" irrelevant. Neutralizing the fear of embarrassment is necessary in order to achieve the ro- bust back-and-forth communication among team members required for real- time leaming.

Teams whose members felt comfort- able making suggestions, trying things that might not work, pointing out po- tential problems, and admitting mis- takes were more successful in learning the new procedure. By contrast, when people felt uneasy acting this way, the leaming process was stifled.

Although the formal training for the new procedure emphasized the need for everyone on the team to speak up with

observations, concems, and questions while using the technology, such feed- back often didn't happen. One team member even reported being upbraided for pointing out what he believed to be a life-threatening situation. More typi- cal was the comment of one nurse: "If you observe st>mething that might be a problem, you are obligated to speak up, but you choose your time. 1 will work around the surgeon and go through his PA [physician's assistant] if there is a problem."

But other teams clearly did foster a sense of psychological safety. How? Through the words and actions ofthe surgeons who acted as team leaders- not surprising, given the explicit hier- archy of the operating room. At one hospital, the surgeon told team mem- bers that they had been selected not only because of their skills but also be- cause of the input they could provide on the process. Another surgeon, accord- ing to one of his team members, re- peatedly told the team: "I need to hear

BEST PRACTICE • Speeding Up Team Learning

Becoming a Learning Leader

Creating an environment conducive to team learning isn't hard, but it does require a team ieadertoact quickiy. Social psychologists have shown that people watch their supervisors carefully for cues on how team members are expected to behave. These impressions form early in the life of a group or project. To set the right tone, team leaders must:

Be accessible. In order to make clear that others' opinions are welcomed and valued, the leader must be available, not aloof One nurse in our study commented about a successful team leader: "He's in his office, always just two seconds away. He can always take five minutes to explain something, and he never makes you feel stupid."

Ask for input An atmosphere of information sharing can be reinforced by an explicit request from the team leader for contributions from members. The surgeon on one successful team "told us to immediately let him know - let everyone know - if anything is out of place," said the team's perfusionist.

Serve as a "fallibility model." Team leaders can fur- ther foster a learning environment by admitting their mistakes to the team. One surgeon inourstudy explic- itly acknowledged hisshortcomings."He'll say/I screwed up. My judgment was bad in that case,"'a team mem- ber reported. That signaled to others on the team that errors and concerns could be discussed without fear of punishment.

from you because I'm likely to miss things."Tbe repetition itself vyas impor- tant. If tbey hear it only once, people tend not to hear - or believe - a message that contradicts old norms.

Leading to Learn While our research focused on the en- vironment of cardiac surgery, we believe our findings have implications that go well beyond the operating room. Orga- nizations in every industry encounter challenges similar to those faced by our surgical teams. Adopting new technok> gies or new business processes is highly disruptive, regardless of industry. Like the surgical teams in our study, business teams tbat use new tecbnology for the first time must deal with a learning curve. And the leaming that takes place is not just technical. It is also organiza-

tional, with teams confronting problems similar to those encountered by the sur- gical teams we studied: issues of status and deeply ingrained pattems of com- munication and behavior.

Implementing an enterprise resource planning system, for example, involves a lot of technical work in configuring databases, setting operational parame- ters, and ensuring that the software runs properly on a given hardware platform. The bard part for many companies, thougb, is not tbe technical side but the fact tbat ERP systems completely change the dynamics-the team rela- tionships and routines-of the organi- zation. As our study shows, it takes time for teams to leam bow decisions should be made and who should talk to whom and when. It takes even longer if people don't feel comfortable speaking up.

There's yet another parallel hetween business teams and surgical teams. Busi- ness teams are often led by people who have been chosen because of their tech- nical skills or expertise in a particular area: Outstanding engineers are selected to lead product development projects, IT experts lead systems implementa- tions, and so on. Tbese experts often find themselves in a position similar to that of tbe cardiac surgeons. If tbeir teams are to succeed, tbey must transform themselves from technicians into lead- ers who can manage teams in such a way that tbey become leaming units.

Thus the key finding of our study- that teams leam more quickly if they are explicitly managed for learning- imposes a significant new burden on many team leaders. Besides maintain- ing tecbnical expertise, they need to be- come adept at creating environments for leaming. (See the sidebar "Becoming a Leaming Leader.") This may require tbem-like surgeons who give up dicta- torial authority so that they can func- tion as partners on tbe operating teams- to shed some of the trappings of their traditional status.

The importance of a team leader's actions suggests tbat the executives responsible for choosing team leaders need to rethink their own approaches. For instance, if an executive views a team's challenge as purely tecbnical, he or she is more likely to appoint a leader based solely on technical competence. In the worst (and not unfamiliar) case, this can lead to disaster; we've all known superstar technocrats with no interper- sonal skills. Clearly, there is a danger in erring too far in the other direction. If team leaders are technically incom- petent, they're not only liable to make bad decisions but they alst> lack the cred- ibility needed to motivate a team. But senior managers need to look beyond tecbnical competence and identify team leaders who can motivate and manage teams of disparate specialists so that they are able to learn the skills and rou- tines needed to succeed. ^

Reprint R0109J To order reprints, see the last page of Executive Summaries.

132 HARVARD BUSINESS REVTEW

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44 HR Magazine • March 2012

Organizational Developme

Juniper Networks is turning words on the wall into behaviors in aotion.

By BiU Roberts

F olks at Juniper Networks Inc. have lofty goals. Last year, one goal embraced by company leaders was to help end worldwide slavery. As Juniper employees see it, this goal aligns with the company's values, talent, technology and another lofty goal to change the world—in part, by designing and developing hardware

and software for high-performance networks. Led by its chief executive officer and HR executive, the 15-year-old Sunnyvale, Calif,

enterprise is in the process of re-energizing company values among its more than 9,100 employees in 46 countries. As corporate leaders seek more effective ways to put values into action, they want to align corporate giving with those values.

Hence, the Juniper Foundation supports Not for Sale, a nonprofit in Half Moon Bay, Calif, whose mission is to abolish slavery, indentured servitude and other human traf- ficking and to use social and other technologies in that effort. Some high-tech companies have begun to target these issues because perpetrators can be found within their sprawling

The author is technology contributing editor for HR Magazine and is based in Silicon Valley.

March 2012 • HR Magazine 45

ganizational Development

supply chains. Juniper contributes money, technology and expertise. "We want to do more than write checks," explains Steven Rice, executive vice president of HR.

Rice says supporting Not for Sale is just one example of how Juniper's leaders strive to create a culture where the company that customers see on the outside matches the one on the inside. The notion of narrowing the gap between values as words on the wall and values as behaviors is starting to permeate HR processes from recruiting to talent management. In pursuit of this quest. Juniper's HR professionals draw on recent research and emerging practices regarding corporate values, cultural transformation and the neuroscience of leadership.

Finding the Way Juniper's approach represents the future of corporate leadership, says Chris Ernst, co-author oí Boundary Spanning Leadership (McGraw-Hill, 2010) and a senior faculty member at the Center for Creative Leader- ship in Greensboro, N.C. He calls Juniper a bellwether for "creating more connected, collaborative, cross-boundary ways of work- ing. The pieces are in place, but there is hard work ahead for Juniper."

Rice similarly believes that the journey has just begun. The values, known as The Juniper Way, are as follows: We are authentic, we are about trust, we deliver excellence, we pursue bold aspirations, we make a meaningful difference.

"One definition of our values is to be confident but not arro- gant," says Rice, an effervescent proponent of the cause. Rice spent 25 years in HR at Hewlett-Packard Co. in Palo Alto, Calif., before joining Juniper in 2006, where he leads a global HR team of 108. The team includes an HR leader assigned to each business unit, centers of excellence in various disciplines, and a shared services group that relies heavily on employee and manager self-service for HR transactions.

Tone at the Top After its launch in 1996, Juniper became one of the Yswn Johnson most watched Internet startups. Its mission was simple and bold: "Connect everything. Empower everyone." Facing formidable rivals. Juniper emerged as one of the leading providers of switches, routers, software and other networking equipment for global networks such as the New York Stock Exchange. In

2011, annual revenue topped more than $4 bulion, up 9 percent from 2010 and a record for the company. The com- pany was less affected by the recession than many other businesses, growing its workforce every year since 2009.

Juniper has always attracted some of the best and brightest talent—vet- erans and new grads with master's and doctoral degrees in science, math, engineering and computer science—to work on hardware systems, computer chip designs, network architecture and software. More than 4,200 employees conduct research and development. The company has a reputation as an innova- tive, collaborative, high-performance meritocracy. So why focus on values and culture?

Enter Kevin Johnson, a longtime Microsoft executive who became chief executive officer in September 2008, replacing Scott Kriens, who remains chairman of the board.

"Juniper was founded with a thought leadership agenda: to be a disruptive innovator in new ways to power the networks that power the world today," Johnson says. At the core: "When peo- pie around the world are connected, it is transformative for business, society,

education, social causes, for the good and advancement of people." Johnson spent his first year clarifying strategy with his leader-

ship team, including Rice. Thus was bom The New Network, a theme that encapsulates Juniper's dedication to fast, fiexible

hardware and software for networks capable of handling ubiquitous voice, data, video and other traffic, wired or wireless, at ever-increasing volume and speed.

With that strategy in place, Johnson turned to culture. "There was an opportunity to shape the cultural values and environment that will allow great people to do their best work," he says. "We had to embrace the concept of the importance of talent and culture in achieving goals. It is not HR's responsibility, but the business leaders' responsibil- ity. And that is where the CEO has a role to play. "

Rice agrees: "I am the caretaker of the culture; the executive team owns the culture."

As caretakers. Rice and his HR team face the challenge of making sure the company hires, develops, retains, and properly

A Page from Juniper's Values Blueprint Value

We are about trust.

Definition

We inspire confidence in colleagues,

customers and partners by aiways acting with

integrity, fairness, respect and reliability.

Behaviors

• Acts with the highest level of honesty and

integrity.

• Shares agendas and objectives,

encouraging feedback and discussing things

in an open, collaborative and respectful

manner.

• Takes responsibility and delivers on

commitment.

• Acts confidentiy but never arrogantly.

• Respects decisions and supports them

with enthusiasm and foilow-through.

• Assumes positive intentions, viewing

conflict as an opportunity to find constructive

solutions that help all succeed.

46 HR Magazine • March 2012

Juniper Networks Inc.

Products and services: Designs, devel- ops and sells products and services for network infrastructure.

Ownership: Publiciy heid (NYSE: JNPR).

Key executives: Kevin Johnson, chief executive officer; Steven Rice, executive vice president of HR.

2011 revenue: $4.5 biilion.

Employees: More than 9,100.

Locations: Headquarters in Sunnyvale, Caiif., with operations in 46 countries. The largest concentrations of empioyees are in the Silicon Vaiiey, the Boston area and india.

Connections: vi/ww.juniper.net, www .juniper.net/us/en/company/oareers.

compensates and recognizes work- ers that have the requisite science, engineering and business skills, plus the personal traits of collaboration and high energy. Whue offering com- petitive salaries and benefits. Juniper needs people who are willing to col- laborate across business units, driven to innovate, and passionate about their work and how it will change the world, according to Rice.

Ernst, who studied Juniper in his research, says as many as three-fourths of organizational change efforts faü because the focus is misplaced on management systems, structure and process, rather than on leadership. "Real change requires a change in leadership," he says. "And leadership is about culture, beliefs and values." Ernst is conducting workshops with

Juniper's executive team "so they can role-model collaborative behavior for the entire organization. This is one way Juniper is trying to beat the odds," he says.

Values-Centric Cultures Rice and Greg Pryor, HR vice president for leadership and orga- nization effectiveness, retained Ann Rhoades, head of People Ink Corp. in Albuquerque, N.M., to help build what she calls a values-centric culture. She uses Juniper as an example in her hook Built on Values Qossey-Bass, 2011).

Rhoades says some Juniper executives were initially con- fused by the new approach. They said, "We have great values, why change them?" But Rhoades says those values "were not defined. They did not have behaviors behind them." To infuse values into the culture, they must be spelled out as behaviors that are sought, developed and prized. In her patent-pending process, a group of employees examines existing values and explores new ones, defines them, and identifies behaviors associated with them. The result is a values blueprint.

Juniper chose more than 200 employees from around the world—including new hires, senior engi- neers, managers and the CEO—to participate in creating the blueprint. "I had a chance to listen and understand the perspectives of others," Johnson says. To identify behaviors associated with desired values, the group used the Organizational Cultural Inventory from Human Synergistics Inc. and produced a draft blueprint in two days.

The 3 5-member executive team reviewed the blueprint and then held discussions among 120 top leaders. "The executive staff

decided on its own, without any coaching, to share this in small sessions with employee groups of no more than 100," Pryor says.

Thus was born the Trio Tour: Groups of three senior executives, often including Johnson, conducted 75 meetings vsdth groups of employees, mostly in person but some virtual, to promote the strategy, the values and the company's promise to customers: a workforce dedicated to innovation, collabo- ration, authenticity, trust, high performance and leadership in its field. "We framed this incredibly powerful culture work as a renewal of our culture and values, like a long-married couple would renew their wedding vows," Pryor says.

Rhoades applauds the executives' rare commitment to the values rollout.

Steven Rice

Hiring to Build the Brand Rice's HR team began to look for ways to

infuse the values throughout talent management processes. The goal was to hire, retain and develop people who have the right skills and knowledge and who share the company's values, too. "If the customer sees you as team-oriented and such and the customer service guy is different, you have a problem," Rice says. "You have to hire against the brand."

In Rice's view, a strong culture has these three components: • Employees who agree with the mission. • The ability to identify, keep and develop those types of

employees. • Willingness on the part of corporate leaders to let values drive

decisions—from talent management processes to corporate giving. Juniper's HR team began to identify key attributes, based on

the values, that should be sought in any employee and to create about 300 job descriptions (called "architec- tures") that include the skills, knowledge, behaviors and values associated with each role in the company. The central values of collaboration, authenticity and trust defme employees the company calls its J Players. "Our aspiration is 100 percent J players," Rice says.

In conversations and through other communica- tions, business-unit leaders and others asked employ- ees where The Juniper Way fell short in practice. Trust came up, with the annual performance review

seen as a culprit. "We got feedback that our existing performance management process was not consistent with the values," Pryor says, so HR professionals revamped the process.

About this time, Pryor discovered David Rock, founder and CEO of Results Coaching Systems LLC, with headquarters

March 2012 • HR Magazine 47

iiii iliiiii il Hrvelopment

Performance Management Redux When asked which Juniper value was least

apparent in practice, employees said trust.

They cited the annual performance review as

an example of lack of trust.

Employees expressed concern about the

lack of positive feedback, the forced labeling

from a ranking system, and even the use of

words like "review" and "appraisal."

"We fundamentally rethought our per-

formance management process," says Greg

Pryor, HR vice president for leadership and

organization development. "It was inspired by

the managers who brought this to our

attention."

The old performance review was a typical

backward-iooking process to identify where

the employee needed to improve and involved

rating each employee. A distribution curve

was imposed on the ratings of the entire

population.

The process was replaced with a semi-

annual "conversation day." On these days,

employees and managers discuss areas

for improvement and areas for new grovrth,

set stretch goals, and align the goals with

employees' career aspirations. There is no

rating given or a specific measure of improve-

ment expected.

Internal surveys indicated that 93 percent

of employees participated in the first con-

versation day and 66 percent of participants

found it "helpful" to "extremely helpful," Pryor

says. Conversation days would not be pos-

sible without other practices introduced by

HR. For example:

• Goal alignment became a separate

activity. Employees and managers set goals

aligned with the business unit's and the com-

pany's overall strategy. More employees are

included in this activity than were included in

the past.

• Compensation planning now involves a

statement of guidance that gives local man-

agers more leeway in distributing merit pay,

rather than rigid guidelines for doing so.

' Instead of imposing a distribution curve

on employees' ratings, there is now relative

laddering within each occupational and geo-

graphical group. There are 3 0 0 such ladders.

• Detailed talent scenarios for each group

now give managers and empioyees guidance

for steps to take based on the scenario in

which each employee best fits.

- B i l l Roberts

Online Resources

For more information about strengthen- ing corporate vaiues and cuiture, see the online version of this article at www.shrm orq/hrmaaazine/0312Roberts.

in New York City and Sydney, Australia. Rock coined the term "neuroleadership" and founded the NeuroLeadership Institute to promote leadership training.

He uses a model for infiuencing behav- ior called SCARF—which stands for sta- tus, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness. The model gave Pryor and Rice hard evidence to show engineers and scientists, who were initially skeptical of some of the changes included in the new performance management process.

Culture Shift Juniper executives point out that the changes are rooted in the need to achieve authenticity with customers. "We are dealing with the most richly informed buyers in history," says Lauren Flaherty, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, who adds that when companies don't act genuinely, they "do so at their own peril."

Flaherty and Rice work together on overseeing the brand and values rollout internally and externally. "You always hope that what you present to the marketplace externally has an authentic origin from within. But you often hope more than it is reality," Flaherty says.

Juniper is different from most com- panies, she admits. "It has a very open, collaborative culture. It is not burdened by turf. Synergies are seen as a good thing. That's why you can get a marketing team and HR team to work together to change the external face and internal face of the company."

Juniper's efforts are unusual, even for Silicon Valley standards, but other HR executives are taking note. "There is a cultural shift happening more generally, and a lot of HR organizations are waking up to it," says Paul Whitney, vice president of HR and site services for Infinera Corp., an optical networking company based in Sunnyvale, Calif. Whitney is familiar with Juniper's leaders' efforts.

Emst acknowledges that Juniper might appear to be so different that it does not offer any direct analogy to traditional industries. But he cautions that more corporate leaders are experiencing or soon wiU experience simuar demands for creativity, fiexibüity and collaboration.

"Even in government, education and family-owned busi- ness, all organizations are dealing with challenges they have not seen before and need to learn to work in new ways," Ernst says. DB

48 HR Magazine • March 2012

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permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

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22 HR Magazine N o v e m b e r 2014

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COVER STORY

u H o w can em plo yers ca p tu re th e skills and kn o w le d g e

of fo u r generations? By Susan Milligan

h, those pesky Millennials, thinking they can set their own work schedules and demanding . meaning in even the most mundane office tasks. Then there are the Baby Boomers, just biding

their time until retirement, phoning it in, all the while complaining about how younger employ- J ees aren’t paying their dues. And what’s up with those folks from Generation X? Don’t they

know how to work collaboratively? These are stereotypes, of course, but they are based on many people’s perceptions as well as

real inclinations that researchers have associated with the broad generational groups. And while employers have always had to deal with tension among different age groups (experienced old-timers grousing about cocky young upstarts, and vice versa), this marks the first time in history that four distinct generations are coexisting in the labor force. They are the Traditionalists (born 1922-45),

November 2014 HR Magazine 23

COVER STORY

Baby Boomers (born 1946-64), Generation X (born 1965-80) and M ille n n ia l (born 1981-2000), according to Jay Meschke, president of the Cleveland-based business consulting firm CBIZ Hum an Capital Services.

Part of the reason for this four-generation mix at work is the recession, which prompted many Baby Boomers to delay retire­ ment while their 401(k)s recover. Moreover, m any T rad itio n alists—w ho w ould have been considered past retirem ent age in an earlier era—have decided to keep working, either for money or for personal satisfaction.

Each of the generations has a different way of learning, advancing and collabo­ rating. And while th at is its own challenge, H R professionals and senior managers are dealing w ith an o th er issue as well: how to ensure th a t vital knowledge and skills are being transferred among the different groups, especially since the older workers who delayed retirement during the recession are now beginning to think about leaving.

“From an H R standpoint, it’s really critical,” says Giselle Kovary, managing partner and co-founder of n-gen People Per­ formance Inc. and an expert on generational differences in the workplace. “The big piece about the generational perspective is, how does it start to impact your human capital, and what is the capital risk?”

W h y K n o w led g e Transfer M atters Technology has had an enormous impact on the need for knowl­ edge transfer and education, with the high speed of development requiring workers from every generation to learn new technolo­ gies more quickly.

Consider the telephone, says Brad Karsh, president of Chi­ cago-based professional training company JB Training Solu­ tions. When Karsh was born, his family had a rotary phone—a device created in 1918 th at didn’t change much for a half cen­ tury. By comparison, there have been five versions of the iPhone in seven years.

Fast-changing technology means workers have less time to get up to speed on im portant new skills. It also means older employ­ ees must be willing to learn from younger ones—the so-called “digital natives” who grew up immersed in computer and mobile technologies.

In addition, employers can no longer count on employees fol­ lowing routine career paths. Traditionalists, for example, likely entered the workforce with the idea th at they would have one career and possibly just a single employer. Baby Boomers and

members of Generation X were prepared to work for a number of employers, but most likely in the same field.

M illen n ial, however, are interested in both job- and career­ hopping. They might have eight different careers in their life­ times—not because they’re unhappy at work, but because they feel like a change or want to do serial, mini-retirements so they

A lo t o f com panies a re n 't ready yet fo r the loom ing retirem ents

o f olde r workers. T h e y were preparing, then stopped.'

— Deb LaMere, Ceridian

can go hiking for two months. “They’ll be a freelance writer, a chef and then an engineer,” Kovary says. “T h at’s completely reasonable to them.”

While that might produce an exciting path for the worker, it makes workforce planning a challenge for H R managers. They don’t want to lose the knowledge and ideas of the younger gen­ eration, even as they are trying to ensure knowledge transfer from older employees who may start to retire as the economic recovery proceeds.

A lot of companies aren’t ready for the looming retirements of older workers, says Deb LaMere, vice president of employee engagement at Ceridian, a Minneapolis-based HR services firm. “They were preparing, then stopped,” she notes. “Now we have to hurry up again.” And w ith the economy turning around, even employees who aren’t of retirement age are ready to make a change, even a risky one, such as starting a business or mov­ ing to another firm, she says, which adds to the uncertainty for HR managers.

T he Four G en eration s To handle the knowledge exchange—whether or not it involves people on their way out the door—managers must understand what drives the different generations and how th at affects the way they teach and learn. It’s about more th an age. Much of what defines the generations is world events and parenting styles.

Traditionalists. This generation may have lived through the Great Depression and World War II. Its members have strong ideas about loyalty and hard work, believing th at both will be rewarded with financial and professional benefits. Job-hopping

f W A TC H a video ab out m anaging fo u r generations at w ork: w w w .s h rm .o rg /1 1 1 4 -m te rg e n e ra tio n a l-k n o w le d g e -tra n s fe r

24 HR Magazine N ovem ber 2014

P a r t i c i p a n t s i n G l a x o S m i t h K l i n e ' s F u t u r e L e a d e r s P r o g r a m , w h i c h r o t a t e s w o r k e r s t h r o u g h

d i f f e r e n t d e p a r t m e n t s t o f a c i l i t a t e l e a r n i n g .

is viewed as disloyal, an d m any have m ade a life­ tim e co m m itm en t to one job o r com pany. By the sam e to k en , T ra d itio n alists are also m ore co m ­ fortable w orking on longer-term projects, Kovary notes in h er b o o k , L oyalty Unplugged: H ow to Get, Keep & G row A ll Four Generations (Xli- bris, 2007).

B a b y B o o m e r s . K n o w n as th e “ m e” g en era­ tio n , B oom ers w ere sh ap ed by th e V ietn am W ar, a tim e o f g re a t so c ial c h a n g e a n d u n c e rta in ty . T h e b ir th c o n tro l p ill gave w o m en m o re f re e ­ d o m to delay m o th e rh o o d an d p u rs u e ca re e rs, a n d th e u n re s t o f th e 196 0 s im b u ed m any w ith a sen se o f so cial re s p o n s ib ility as th e y fo u g h t “ th e E sta b lish m e n t.” L oyalty am o n g th is g ro u p is to th e te a m , n o t th e o rg a n iz a tio n o r m anager. Such em ployees te n d to o p e ra te c o m fo rta b ly in siloed o rg a n iz a tio n s , seek in g to rise to th e to p o f th e ir p a r ti c u la r se cto r. M a n y B o o m ers a re w o rk a h o lic s, w ith identities closely aligned w ith th e ir pro fessio n s.

G en era tio n X. Parenting styles changed d ra ­ m atically sta rtin g in the late 1960s, K arsh notes. Instead of having m others and fathers w ho looked like they cam e from the cast o f “Leave It to Beaver,” m any members of G eneration X grew up in homes where both p ar­ ents w orked and divorce w as increasingly com m on. As a result, they o ften fended for themselves— w alk in g to school, m aking their lunches and waiting a couple of hours at home until a parent returned from work. T h at has made for a group of employees who are perfectly happy to toil away individually, K arsh says. “They don’t like authority figures. They don’t like being told w h at to do.”

M illen n ia ls. Parenting styles underw ent big changes again in the 1980s. “T he m entality w ent from ‘My children are the m ost im p o rta n t thing in my life’ to ‘M y children are the only thing in my life,’ ” K arsh says. Kids were protected and lavishly praised, m ak in g for grow n-up w orkers w ho are eager for feedback and perhaps a bit fragile w hen it’s n o t all positive.

Lor m any M illennials, their first job o u t of college is their first job ever, K arsh says. T he percentage of teenagers w ith summ er jobs has declined steadily for the p ast 18 years. A nd increased hom ew ork loads m ean fewer kids are w orking after schcol. Kids often have th ree or more hours of hom ework a night, says Laura Sherbin, executive vice president and director o f research a t the Center for Talent Innovation in N e w York City. In addition, p a r­

ents have s teered their chil­ d ren tow ard sum m er activ­ ities such as soccer cam p instead of a job a t M cD on­ alds, acco rd in g to K arsh. N ew emp.oyees w no have never h a c to d eal w ith a boss face a big adjustm ent.

W h i le M i l l e n n i a l s tend n o t to th in k th a t they need to “ pay th e i: d u e s” to a d v a n c e a t w o rk — as older generations did— it’s

n o t fair to conclude th a t they have no w ork ethic, says Tam m y Browning, senior vice president ofU .S. Field O p eratio n sat Phil­ adelphia-based staffing firm Yoh. “They have this Justin Bieber th o u g h t process, th in k in g th ey ’ll get discovered on YouTube,” she says. Yet “they’ll still w ork 60 hours a week. They just w an t to do it on their o w n schedule.” >

Parenting styles underwent big changes again in the 1980s. The mentality went from "M y children are the mostimportantthing in my life" to "M y children are the only thing in my life .'"

— Brad Karsh, JBTraining Solutions

N ovem ber 2014 H R Magazine 25

COVER STORY

Generational Learning Preferences Traditionalists Baby Boomers Generation X M illennials • Structured. • Interactive/group learning • Fluid, just-in-tim e learning • Team work and technology. • Traditional classroom through facilitation. using technology. • Edu-tainment. environm ent. • Need tim e to practice • Learn by doing— get • Link learning to making • Dislike being singled out. applying n e w skills. involved! money. • Link learning w ith overall • Link learning to n e w ways to • M ake the learning fun, skill- goals. add value. based; link to marketability.

Source: n -g e n People P e rfo rm a n c e Inc., re p rin te d w it h pe rm iss io n .

M illennials have also had to deal w ith co n stan t global in sta­ bility an d econom ic ups an d dow ns. T his has m ade them very focused on b etterin g th e co m m u n ity an d finding m ean in g at w ork, n o t just a paycheck.

“For this generation com ing up, their needs are so different. T h ere’s got to be m obility [for them]. T h ey ’re going to com e in an d w ork 12 to 15 m onths an d move o n ,” says M ichael M olina, chief hum an resources officer a t Vistage, a San Diego-based exec­ utive coaching service w ith 161 employees. “It has very little to do w ith great pay, a great environm ent or great leadership. It’s th e purpose-driven life m ost o f them w an t.”

Different Ways of Learning A lthough there are com m onalities am ong the generations, there are differences as well. Conflicts often arise from differing learn­ ing styles, especially as they relate to how inform a­ tion is acquired an d used, experts say. M illennials, for exam ple, tend to process in fo rm atio n quickly an d p refer to get it th ro u g h co m p u ters o r social m edia, B row ning says. “M illen n ials le arn faster th a n any oth er generation, and they learn in short bursts,” she explains, so forcing the youngest gen­ e ra tio n to sit th ro u g h le n g th y tr a in in g sessions tau g h t from a podium isn’t the best option.

J a n Becker, se n io r vice p re sid e n t o f h u m a n resources at the 3 -D design firm Autodesk, w hich is based in San Rafael, Calif., an d has 7,390 employ­ ees w orldw ide, has experienced the generational divide. She hosts “coffee m o rn in g s” so sta ff can brainstorm together. W hen Becker asked for feed­ back on the inform ation made available to them by the com pany, a 50-year-old lawyer and a 35-year- old engineer reacted very differently. “T he older gentlem an said, ‘Well, you need to tell me. M y m an ­ ager h a s n ’t to ld m e, an d his m an ag er h a s n ’t told him .’ H e w as very much saying, ‘You need to feed it to me. I’m n o t going to find it,’ ” Becker says. But th e younger engineer had seen all the inform ation he needed online— th ro u g h the com pany’s website

and intranet— an d didn’t w an t or need to be told anything by a manager.

Facilitating the Transfer Fortunately, there are things H R can do to m ake sure knowledge is tran sferred effectively am ong different g enerations, experts say, including through:

M en to rin g a n d re v e rse m en to rin g . In such arrangem ents, tw o employees are paired to share experience an d basic tech n i­ cal knowledge. A younger w orker proficient in social m edia or basic H T M L can teach those skills to an older w orker, an d the older individual can provide in stitu tio n al know ledge o r advice on skills th a t require experience or a learned kind of finesse, such as custom er service o r people m anagem ent.

At Vistage, a “p a l” program matches people a t sim ilar levels

26 HR Magazine N o v e m b e r 2014

J o h n S w e n e y , H R m a n a g e r a t G la x o S m ith K lin e ( a t c o m p u te r ), w o r k s w i t h e m p lo y e e s a s p a r t

o f t h e c o m p a n y 's ob r o t a t io n in it ia t iv e s .

w ith in th e o rg an izatio n so th a t th e tw o can use each o th e r as sounding b oards as well as tu to rs. C eridian has a “b u d d y ” p ro ­ gram to help y cung w orkers navigate the terrain. A nd A utodesk uses a reverse-m entoring p ro g ra m so th a t veteran staffers can learn from you nger ones. Becker herself says th a t she has som e­ one a t th e com pany w ho helps her w ith social m edia for talen t acquisition groups. “ H e ’s tw o o r th ree levels dow n from m e,” she says, “ an d , a t a m ore trad itio n a l o rg an iz atio n , I p robably w ou ld n ’t interact w ith him m uch.”

P h a s e d re tire m e n t. At the Zeeland, M ich., furniture manufac­ turer H erm an Miller Inc., w ith a staff of 6,000, employees are eli­ gible to begin t i e retirement process tw o years ahead of their actual departure date, working fewer hours as full retirement approaches. T h at allows them to ease out of the job while slowly passing on their knowledge ar.d skills to other employees in the process, says Tony Cortese, senior vice president of people services.

T he w orkers continue to get full benefits even as they reduce their hours to p a rt time, while preparing financially and emotion­ ally for the transition to retirement. “It’s a win-win solution,” Cortese says. “The employer benefits from the knowledge transfer, and the employee can co the appropriate planning.”

C a re e r p a r h in g . A t C eridian, H R has m apped career paths for positions in each division an d shares the in fo rm atio n w ith all employees. T his gives employees a clear plan if they w an t to move to a p articu la r position in th e future. Each w orker is then given a m entor to help guide him or her. “It’s integrating all the generations together. It’s tak in g th a t knowledge and experience and using it in a different capacity,” L aM ere says.

A ccording to Kovary, T rad itio n alists an d Boom ers tend to be accustom ec ro career p ath models th a t follow a conventional

“la d d e r” stru c tu re , w ith lower-level positions on b o tto m rungs building up to more-advanced roles th a t require m ore responsibility and skill. But G eneration X and M ille n n ia l may gravitate m ore to w ard p ath s th a t are spiral o r w eb-like, w ith employees moving back an d fo rth between vastly different roles and responsibility levels. By understanding these models, H R and m anagers can get a better picture of employees’ expectations and w ork w ith them to capture w hat they know at different points on their career trajectories.

J o b s h a d o w in g a n d jo b r o ta tio n . Employ­ ees in such program s either follow another w orker aro u n d in his o r her job, preparing for the pass­ ing of the baton or— in the case o f G laxoSm ith­ Kline (GSK), a global health care com pany based in Brentford, England— are rotated around to dif­ ferent jobs upon entering the company.

O v er th e p a s t few y ears, GSK h as passed hun d red s of new college grads th ro u g h various d ep a rtm en ts as p a r t o f its F u tu re Leaders P ro ­

g ram , says J o h n Sweney, one o f th e firm ’s H R m an ag ers an d director of the program . N ew an d cu rren t employees can apply for th e p ro g ra m , w hich ro tates th e w orkers th ro u g h different d ep a rtm en ts over th e co u rse of tw o o r th ree years. GSK also offers a separate internship program , and p articip an ts can apply for the Future Leaders P rogram w hen they are done. “They get exposure to different p arts of the business, having a new m anager and new m entors th ro u g h o u t,” Sweney says.

C r o s s - g e n e ra tio n a l te a m - b u ild in g e v e n ts . Bringing gen­ erations together for nonw ork tasks helps build com m unication, Becker says. At A utodesk, employees w ork together on a H ab itat for H u m an ity project. In general, the more com fortable people feel w ith each other, the more likely they are to ask one another to share w h at they know o r how to do som ething.

I n t e g r a t i n g p r o j e c t t e a m s . A t T riN e t, a San L ea n d ro , Calif.-based H R services provider, w orkers are assigned to w h at are called “cro ss-fu n ctio n al p ro ject te a m s ,” b rea k in g dow n the silos created from the basic w orkplace stru ctu re, says M o r­ gan M assie, m anager of ta len t developm ent. Employees w ork together on various initiatives o r com m ittees, an d it gets them talk in g to each other. “Different generations then w ork shoulder to shoulder, regardless of tenure, age o r experience, an d it’s an environm ent w here anyone can feel free to speak up,” she says.

Dnce H R d ep a rtm en ts begin to accom m odate a v ariety o f learning styles th a t facilitate knowledge transfer am ong the gen­ erations, they can focus more on the h um anity th a t unites every­ one— an d how to capture its w isdom for generations to come. D3

Susan Milligan is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.

N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 4 H R M agazine 2 7

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